so the domination of these handful of very big companies i think is inconsistent with the true capitalist system. so, therefore, i some sympathy with antitrust being like enforce any more systematic way. but we need to recognize that at times when that happens something rugs happen. of course it argue in the origin of that is too much regulation so we need to do something about that. we just can'tis do antitrust and expect that this is going to go away. because if you don't deal with the source of the problem, which is to what regulation, too much easy money, then the problem issues going to come back after you arbitrarily killed off something. so it needs to work all, thoughtfully rather than in a piecemeal basis. you dou with antitrust or you don't deal with the source cause of what's led to this big domination of these companies. >> right. we're about to wrap up y but if you don't mind in 30 seconds, your book gives us a lot to worry about in the united states.

.. about the future of the united states? an economic freedom here in capitalism? because i think that eventually america does the right thing after having tried all options, which is that i expect that america in the end will course correct. it's a country that has done so. and i and the fact that we can have this debate out >> the debate out here is great. the fact that i'm able to put this argument out here is terrific. i can't put this argument out there in china, and even in places like india and all, it's more difficult to do so. the fact that i can put this argument out there and the fact that it's early days when the book has just come out and i'm getting like a lot of positive feedback from both the right and the left on some of these issues, makes me optimistic, the fact that, you know, that as someone put it that this is a capitalist critique of capitalism and i say, yeah, because that someone from the inside has seen this and also

from the outside has seen it as an immigrant who came from a socialist country. so the fact that i could put this argument out there and we could have this hour long debate here and discussion still gives me reason that in the end, america will course correct. >> thank you, ruchir, i appreciate it. and book is "what went wrong with capitalism" and thank you very much. >> thank you, enjoyed that. >> if you're enjoying book tv sign up for the newsletter for from the qr code on the screen. author discussions, book festivals and more, book tv every sunday on c-span2 or anytime online at book tv.org. television for serious readers. ♪♪ >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays, book tv brings

you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including comcast. >> you think this is just a community center? no, it's way more than that. >> comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create wi-fi enabled listening so students from low income families can get the tools that they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast, along with these television companies support c-span2 as a public service. >> well, now on book tv, we want to introduce you to andrew doyle. his newest book is called the new puritan how religious and social justice captured the western world. before we get into your book, mr. doyle. introduce yourself to the american audience. >> okay, my name is andrew doyle, i'm a writer, a broadcaster, i'm a canadian. i have a show on a u.k. channel called gb news every sunday called free speech nation,

liberal values and free speech and i also write various comedic projects and that kind of thing. >> how would you describe gb news as a channel? >> i suppose, it was set up to provide within the media grand scape in the u.k. another alternative voice, in other words, we have a problem in the u.k. with a kind of ideological bias, shall we say, from the major mainstream media channels. not so much, if you see bbc news it's not necessarily politics, but they try their best to be impartial, but there's an ideological bias when it comes to issues now known as woke issues, what i might call the critical justice movement, and so, the channel was set up foe that conversations could be had which are not being had elsewhere. >> besides the bbc, would you say that sky news might have a bias issue as well?

>> ideologically 100%, similar with channel 4 news. i would say all of them. i would say that they do try their best to hold people to account from both sides of the aisle, but when it comes to issues of gender, race, the identity of sex, movement that is control of the various major institutions, both in the u.k. and in the u.s., certainly in canada, the bias is absolutely palpable. so you need to have another channel so that conversations can take place. what gb news does, it brings in voices from the left, the right and everywhere in between and goes out of its way to hear the opposing side. so, it's not an eco chamber. >> if you and i were walking down the street in london right now, would people stop you? >> it happens occasionally. i would say only occasionally, maybe once or twice a week,

celebrity. >> when you were in oxford you had a ph.d. in renaissance poetry. >> yes. >> why? >> well, because i was-- my aim at that point was to be an academic, so i was-- i mean, i was also a part-time lector tur for my doctorrate and that's the route i was intending to take, but news in a different way. >> what was that fate that moved you? >> well, i mean, at the same time i was also writing plays and comedy and performing stand-up and i moved to london. and i suppose it just deviated and also had a supervisor that said, whatever you do don't go into this world because you'll end up running around the quad -- so i took that to heart. and i did find spending all the time in the library, he used to work a lot with manuscripts, and to do that, at the

humphreys library. it's quite well-known because in the harry potter film the library of hogwart. you're sitting in there, it's dusty, not much light, and people that spend their whole lives there and driven them mad with the manuscripts and i'd rather get out. >> let's turn to your new book, the new puritans, who are they? >> that's just an analogy, really. i'm not very specific in the book, but not the puritans of old. you have some sort of sense of their own worthiness before god, they certainly were not what i describe the new puritans. what i mean by the new puritans, pro censorship, would like to curtail the arts so

that it becomes a conduit for the message. i suppose the comparison with the puritans makes sense if you think about what happened in london in 1642 when the puritans managed to gain control of parliament and they shut all of the theaters. you have a similar kind of thing now with the woke movement, if you want to call it that, activists and people say well, we need these certain things in the comedy shows to be excised so people aren't corrupted. if you watch bbc series, and scenes of old sit comes are removed and a famous one from a show john kliese show, and the whole one on germans, and it was taken out. an old man was-- it was a puritanic idea the need to sanitize art and comedy

so that it better reflects this idea of diversity, equity, inclusion, that's going on quite a lot. comedians in the u.s. are support of policing each other making sure they don't joke around the wrong thing, it's a disaster for the arts and also for society more generally. and the reason i want to compare them to puritans, in the book i specifically mention salem and i opened up the book, what happened in salem, massachusetts, and there you see you have a group of young girls who claim that they can see devils in the shadows and witchcraft is the first and all they have to do is point their finger and make an accusation, similar to the accusations flying around now from activists who point the finger and say, you're a racist, you're a trans phobe, a nazi on the far right. and the accusation from the truth, and condemned. similar this is happened and

similarly in salem when people stood up and said this isn't real, i'm being truthful, like rebecca nurse, she would hang herself for being skeptical. very few people are on board with the woke movement, a minority in every generation and yet, you would think there is a kind of established consensus along their lines because they are so intimidating that people are very, very wary of standing up and saying, no, i don't agree with any of this. you'll kind in companies, unconscious bias trainings are implemented by hr departments and very few people believe they have any effect and we know it's not up for debate, shows that they have no effect whatsoever. no one is going to say actually, i don't think you as my employer have the right to be probing around inside my head. if they do that, they won't be promoted the next time it comes around and go along with it and ultimately what happened in salem was, it wasn't really the

girls screaming and pointing about witches, they weren't the problem. problem were the magistrate and minister who went along with it, and the figures of authority who went along with it, that's what's happening now. and it wouldn't matter if the activists were called racists and homophobic and cancel culture and destroying lives and reputations, none of that would matter if the authorities would not capitulate to do their bidding and i mean by that the managerial class and major figures in major institutions and go along with it, partly because they're terrified from the hits and they don't want to be scene seen on the wrong side of history. and we call them the ew puritans, analogy to show how this kind of power grab works, but also, how we might overcome it. >> do you think that that's in a sense the conservative party

in britain, capitulated to this movement. >> yes. >> they've been pro presided over and often the culture war is misunderstood as a battle from left and right and it's really, really not. and it's something that transcends left and right in the u.k. and it's something that is detected in the party and even more so the latest party. and you know, similarly in america, i don't think this is something that is just a question of actually a problem, and we had this pushed through at every level by people on the right as well. you know, people have been thinking this is something that's progressive and it really isn't. >> from your book, when bad ideas are allowed to go unchecked, they take on an illusion of incontrovertible author and when they're captured by resistance, it becomes courage that you will

dare to attest. >> yes, would you like me to comment on this? >> well, i mean, i empathize with the emotion of courage there. there's a lot at stake. it's not the same as, you know, no one is being burned at the stake here for heresy, but you can pretty much make yourself unemployable and that's not trivial. we've seen it in all industries, in the u.k., in the national health service, people are wearing rainbow lanyards for their feelty to the movement. if you don't do that, people are, well, they'll raise eyebrows and maybe this person isn't as encouraged. and peopler encouraged to put their pronounce in the e-mails. it's almost like a declaration of faith, a purity test, are you going to do this thing if i ask for your pronounce are you

going to respond? but the vast majority of people don't believe there's such a thing as gender identity. i'm saying more than 90% of people don't believe we have a kind of sex soul within us that might not align with our physical and why are people playing along with the religious declaration. on the day that putin invaded ukraine and they were putting out tweets about pansexual in the morning, and that's not getting it right. that's a declaration of fee fealty for the cause. and there's a control of the corporate world and all other major institutions, the media, the arts, the judiciary, politics, academia, most certainly, education, and

incredible power there. there's incredible clout and yet, at the same time these very people claim to be the underdogs, against fighting, and there's something incoherent about this so my argument there is, have some courage. if everyone stood up and said we don't believe in this, we breen in genuinely progressive values and we believe martin luther king saying we judge people on the content of their character than the color of their skin. and this, proselytizing being a former white supremist, a middle age white woman proclaiming that martin luther king is, and it's not that we

don't notice race, don't see race, but don't treat people differently on the basis of race and we should be striving for that again so you don't have the situation like you had in california where they were segregated by skin color in order to have conversations with the teachers, put in separate rooms, similar in london, the most expensive school in london called the american school, seg grated children on the basis of skin color and thought they were doing this to be anti-racist. of course, i would have liked to believe that most of us, that there is a consensus that racial segregation is wrong. why are we implementing that in the name of dei. doesn't make sense. >> you write about british writer j.k. rowling getting in trouble over pronounce. >> yes. there's a very good example. j.k. rowling is a feminist and believes there are two sexes

and it's not possible to change sex. and that's not just a belief, a matter of fact. no human being has ever changed sex, it shouldn't be controversial to say. what she's saying is women's rights depend upon the recognition of biological sex differences because of safeguarding, it's very important given the vast majority of sex crimes are by men on women and that when it comes to hospital accommodation, prison, domestic violence refuge centers, j.k. rowling set up a domestic violence center for rape victims in scotland because there wasn't such a facility which didn't admit men who claimed to be women, men who identified women. if you're a rape victim you don't want to be around them. it doesn't matter if they think of themselves as women. that's a reasonable request. but she's been monitored as a

transphobe, and they generate a narrative, that are far removed from the truth and demand that everybody else believe it and not only that they demand that people articulate that view in the way that if you need 1984 he by george orwell, if you read that by the end of it, the character says it and he believes it because there's no other alternative. similarly, you will have people po think of themselves as progressive and forward the line, a trans woman is a woman, and it's not that people don't have the right to live how they want to live and don't trample on other people's rights, but

to change reality and able to say that. but andrew doyle, a person like j.k. rowling has the clout to defend herself and to not worry too much about being canceled. >> yes. >> you make a very good point in so far as cancel culture predominantly affects those and as they don't have the financial resources or they don't have the connection to do so. it's a bit of a myth by cancel culture and people being canceled, the celebrities to make news, you know, when kevin hart lost his gig because of a joke he told 10 years ago, that was big news. but even with people like kevin hart, he's a fairly rich, successful guy and losing that gig, it's not nice and it shouldn't have happened, but it's not going to be the end of the world for him. but what the people who are really the casualties of cancel culture are the people who don't-- the guy who worked at the

supermarket gets sacked, and can't find employment again. the gender critical feminist who stands up and says, no, i'm not going to say my pronounce at work. i'm not going to pretend that men are women and vice versa and loses a job like that. and there's a place in great britain, he's been inundated by people who lost their work for held beliefs and those are the people really affected by cancel culture. >> and j.k. rowling is among the uncancellable, far too rich and too powerful, but that doesn't have to say that she hasn't been incredibly courageous she didn't have to say that. but it would have been easier, she receives daily threats of murder, threats of violent, the people seeing themselves on the right side of history can be

the most ferocious, downright cruel individuals in the world and we know that from history, but some of the most radical people, the people most cruel and people in the inacquisition strapping people to the rack thought they were doing so, thought they were on the side of the angels and often the two things collude so i have nothing, but admiration for j.k. rowling for sticking her neck out and made it easier for other people who don't have their resources to do the same. for instance, when the scottish government implemented new hate speech law, this is a law that could have criminalized people. >> a law, an actual law. >> a law that came april the 1st, april fool's day and sound like a joke, but it wasn't. you could be criminalized forgo is you said in the privacy of your own home if it was seen as hateful. you could be criminalized for a matter, for saying that women

can't be men. and j.k. rowling was like come and arrest me, if any other woman tweeted out an appointment, and went after them. she would tweet the identical opinion and they would have to arrest j.k. rowling. they're not going to could that. she texted the law and she won. i mean, scotland's out of control, really. the ruling party in scotland, well, until the last election, it was, last week, they were ideological zealots, they brought in 100 movements and they wanted to implement a law that would criminalize anyone who blasphemed. well, it wasn't a new blasphemy law, and the minister he was justice secretary and it's been tested. i went up to scotland on april the 1st with my comedy nights, we have a night comedy unleashed, and we told problematic jokes because the

police in scotland in readiness for the law had been undergoing training how to deal with jokes that people found offenoffensiv we went up there and told a lot of offensive jokes and we were not arrested and everything was fine, but they could have. >> have you ever been canceled because of your views. >> no, i don't think-- i think partly because my job has always been to express myself honestly. if i were still a school teacher as i used to be, i wouldn't be able to express myself in the way that i do or if i did, i probably would be canceled, but i'm in a privileged position, i'm not canceled. i never have been. i can write what i generally believe at no risk to myself. there are jobs i'm not going to get. i'm not going to get on a bbc comedy show anytime soon. there are avenues i closed off because i exposed the views of the bbc and by the establishment, but i don't

particularly want those jobs or covet those jobs. i would rather say what i can, and write what i want to write, i think a lot more healthy way to live. >> the new purtan, the culture wars is attempt to destroy the progress of social liberalism in favor of the return of politics of the division. it's sustained only through an imagined dream scape in which fascism is flourishes, demolition of a liberal system that has failed to bring about the desired utopia. >> yeah, it's a bit complicated because of the american definition of liberalism, i think. in the u.k. when we say somebody is liberal, we mean they believe in traditional liberal values such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press. the liberty that you shall do whatever you want to, say what

you want to say, without encroaching on the rights of others. that's what social liberalism means, you don't get to prevent someone from having a job simply because they're gay, black, or whatever it might be, don't get to censor other people's views, and you live in a society where there are a plurality of views. and they generally need it to be synonymous with the left or the democrats. in australia, the liberal party is the conservative party. so actually the word it kind of draws with various definitions. and so, i'm being very clear in the book, what i mean by liberalism, i'm using it instead of the old-fashioned definition, the prevailing definition. those are the values that underpin a functioning, liberal democracy and society. what you would call a constitutional republic. those are important values and we let them at our peril.

at the moment, what is happening, there's a narrative brewing that neo-nazis and fascism is beginning to rise. and yet, we're told they're everywhere. the word nazi or fascist has been subjected to-- people use it so casually, almost to mute its meaning. it isn't someone who believes they can change sex, or even free speech and even that is treated suspiciously by many people. and they think that the nazis are for free speech and they don't know their history. we don't allow the false narratives to flourish. when people are calling nazi, you say, hold it, why don't you

reserve that word for somebody of that ilk. >> and let's go to the title of your back, how-- book, what is religion in this? >> an analogy. a lot of people find this confusing because the word that describes the movement seems to be the opposite of what the movement aims to achieve so they describe themselves as progressive, but the upshot they're regressive. they describe themselves as liberal, but they're illliberal. and they talk about opposite, they talk about being anti-racist, and anti-racist in their lexicon rehabilitates a new form of racism and speaks to see us first and foremost for our skin color and characteristics as human

beings. people are confused because they hear about a movement that calls itself woke, and progressive and anti-racist and want freedom and all of those buzz words and people say i want to be a part of that, i want to be on that side and they look closer and they realize the movement does opposite of everything it says on this pin, you know? in order to make it acceptable, what i try to do in the book the new puritans, analogy with religion, it makes sense. it becomes comprehensible. fundamentalist religion believes all kinds of nonsense and because they have a belief system in place, a kind of ideology, a kind of structure, i mean, the notion, if you take-- well, any ideology not religion, it could be marxism, it could be any sort of rules provided for you so you surrender aur your own fabbing

faculties. >> why are people suddenly saying people of skin color and why are people saying we have an innate sex soul for which there is no scientific evidence. that makes sense if you think of it in religious terms. and if you're looking at the idea in the catholic church. how can that piece of bread actually become the flesh of christ, that makes sense in religious terms, it doesn't makes sense in scientific terms. and that's what the trans movement wants us to believe that a man can become a woman by declaring it so. and it's what i consider to be an incoherent movement and it does work. as soon as you describe it as a religion, that's what it is, people get it and they understand why they're suddenly being asked to declare fealty

to it the way that the church says go to church every week otherwise we'll burn you at the stake. same thick thing. >> i want to ask you about two things, social guide to justice and my first little book of intersexual activity. who is author tanya mcgrath? >> a character i invented, at the woke privileged, and wanted to lecture everybody how privileged they are, and racist and she wants people to -- she wants you that she doesn't agree with. and i created that character on twitter because that's where the activists were and consolidated their dominance