#2448 - Andrew Doyle

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Joe Rogan Podcast, checking out The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Yes.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

Andrew.

Andrew Doyle (0:13)

Hello.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Good to see you, brother.

Andrew Doyle (0:15)

Good to see you, too.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

It has been, you said, six years almost to the day.

Andrew Doyle (0:19)

Almost to the day.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

Last time. So.

Andrew Doyle (0:20)

Lots changed.

Joe Rogan (0:21)

Right before everything went crazy.

Andrew Doyle (0:23)

That's it.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

Right before.

Andrew Doyle (0:25)

Yeah, the whole world sort of shifted after that.

Joe Rogan (0:26)

Because everything went kooky around March, right?

Andrew Doyle (0:28)

Yeah. So it was February 2020 and then we have COVID. And then we have, you know, we've had Trump in between of that. We have BLM. That summer of 2020, everything just exploded. Yeah. Yeah. And then everything shifted.

Joe Rogan (0:40)

And then you wrote a book. It's called The End of Woke, How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution. Isn't that how it always goes though? It goes like we go too far and then we overcorrect and we become Nazis.

Andrew Doyle (0:56)

That's it. Exactly.

Joe Rogan (0:58)

Or it's the opposite. We go socialist.

Andrew Doyle (1:01)

It's a big pendulum. I get that. It goes back and forth. I mean, I was trying to, in that book, I'm trying to make the point that what woke was, was like a kind of the latest manifestation of a kind of innate authoritarian impulse. I think human beings are by default quite inclined towards just shutting people up if they don't like them, just imposing their authority. And so woke, I mean, a lot of people are annoyed that have called it the end of work. I'm not saying it's all over. Let's just go home, forget about it. It's still going on. But the point about it is that in its current manifestation, things are changing now so rapidly, we are moving into some sort of new phase. And that authoritarianism, which we've associated with the left, might come up from the right. It could come up from anywhere. It's what you say about the pendulum. So you just have to be kind of vigilant about it. I don't think we were vigilant. I think that's why woke happened. We weren't vigilant against this prospect that authoritarianism could emerge in what we thought was a free society.

Joe Rogan (1:53)

Well, authoritarianism, it snuck in through a sheep costume.

Andrew Doyle (2:00)

Yeah, a wolf in a sheep's costume.

Joe Rogan (2:02)

Yeah, it was a costume of being more inclusive, being more open-minded, being a better society, being kinder. It led to child trans surgeries, led to chaos, it led to a lot of really fucking freaky things that you would have never expected.

People saying that the First Amendment is not important. What's more important is protecting people.

Andrew Doyle (2:27)

Well, that was the key, wasn't it? The point was that the way it worked was that it was gullying people through language that sounded pretty sweet and kittenish and fluffy. You know, things like equity. Well, that sounds a lot like equality, doesn't it?

Joe Rogan (2:39)

Right.

Andrew Doyle (2:39)

It doesn't mean equality. It means treating people unequally to ensure equal outcomes according to group identity. That's a very different thing. You say you're talking about, let's make everything inclusive.

But what you really mean is let's exclude anyone who disagrees with what we've got to say. So you're using language to mean the exact opposite. They say gender-affirming care. Do they mean that? Or do they mean affirming what is effectively a pseudo-scientific belief among vulnerable people? So it's all about misusing language, because most people, I think, or I like to think, are pretty decent. Most people want to be kind and want to be fair. And when you hear these activists saying, be kind, be compassionate, or else, right? You know, you kind of think, OK, well, maybe their intentions are good, but also they're pretty scary. I mean, there's a weird, there was a weird thing with the woke thing, which was that on the one hand, it proclaimed to be this sort of great, virtuous, kind, progressive, right side of history. How often did you hear that phrase? And at the same time, they're like dangerous dogs. Like, you're like, I better not piss them off. I better not say the wrong thing in the workplace, because they'll destroy you.

Joe Rogan (3:46)

Well, I always find that the most preposterous the idea is, and the least capable it is to stand up to scrutiny, the more violent the enforcement of that idea will be. Because you cannot combat that. You can't defend that idea with logic, so you have to defend it with fear and force. And just shouting people down, and that's what we saw. And that's, it's a natural impulse of human beings. Absolutely. When you're arguing with a kid, you know, when you're a kid, and you're arguing with a kid, and you say something, you don't even know you, you shut the fuck up. Yeah. It starts scaring you.