supremacy and there you have it a middle-aged white woman claiming that martin luther king was a racist and erg is upside country-specific. what we should be parks having conversation withs teachers and put in separate rooms and similarly in len don and called the american school and going back for them on the line. i would like

... they shouldn't be controversial. when it's right, they won'tlo recognition because those the vast majority were within when itit comes to this combination, they said about there was a such

authority with men who came. so m you don't want to be abraham, then it doesn't matter if they think of themselves as women, that's a reasonable request. so you need to have it. so but she's been monstered as a transphobe, as hateful as a bigot on the basis of no evidence. all and this gives you another example of the the the the fantasy that a lot of these activists is that they generate a narrative that is far removed from the truth. and they demand that everybody else believe it. and not only that they demand that people article that view in the way that you read 1984 by george orwell by the of that novel the lead character winston is parroting the party two plus two equals five. and he says it and he believes it because is no other alternative. similarly, you will have now people who think themselves as progressive, forward thinking, parroting the line transwomen are women. by definition, a trans woman is

not woman. a trans woman is a biological male who identifies as a woman and shouldn't. that isn't to say that people don't the right to identify as they please call themselves what they want to live the life that they want to live, so long as they're not encroaching on other people's rights. but that does not take change. reality. and it's important that we are 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 counsel. yes. good. you make a very good point insofar as cancel culture predominantly affects those who are least able to defend themselves, they don't have the financial resources or they don't have the connections to do so. i mean, there's a bit of a myth about cancel culture because the only time you ever hear of people canceled is celebrities, people who make news. you. when kevin hart lost his gig at the oscars because of jokes he told ten years ago, that was big news. but of course, with someone like kevin hart, you know, he's a fairly rich successful guy

losing that gig. it's not very 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 culture are the people who don't get reported in the news. the guy who works for a supermodel gets get sacked because of a post he's put facebook and can't find employment again. the gender critical feminist who stands up says, no, i'm not going to say my pronouns at work. i'm not going to pretend that men are women and vice and loses their job as a result of that. there's a group in the uk called the free speech union set up by toby, which has been invaluable because. he has been inundated with people who've lost their jobs, be disciplined at work for stating their sincerely held beliefs. beliefs. those are the people who are really affected by cancel culture. j.k. rowling is in the realm of the young council. she's far too rich, is far too powerful. but that is not to say that she hasn't been incredibly

courageous. i mean, she didn't have to say this stuff. it would have been an easier life for her not to because as a result, she receives daily rape threats. threats, murder, threats of violence. because remember, the people who position themselves as being on the right side of history can be some of the most ferocious and vicious and downright cruel individuals in the world. and you know that from history, some of the most tyrannical people, the people who were the most cruel, the people who in the inquisition strapping people to the rack thought they were doing so. so they were on the side of the angels. often those two things glue. so you know, i have nothing but admiration, j.k. rowling for sticking her neck out. it's also made it easier for. other people who who don't have her resources to do the same. i mean, for instance, when the scottish government implemented its hate new hate speech law, this was a law that could have criminalized people, a law, an law and actual law. this came into force on april the april fool's day, which sounds like a joke, but it wasn't and effectively would mean that you could be criminalized for something you

said in the privacy of your own home if it was deemed to be hateful, you could be criminalized for a matter of opinion. you could be criminalized for saying that transwomen are men so j.k. rowling tweeted out some opinions that would violate new scottish hate speech law. it said, come at me, come and arrest me. and she also said that if any other woman tweeted out an opinion and the police went after her, she would tweet the identical opinion and therefore they would have to arrest j.k. of course, they're not going to do that. they don't want that publicity. so she tested law and she won. i mean, the scots the scots scotland is out of control, really. i mean, the snp, which is the ruling party in scotland. well, until the last election it was last week, they were ideological zealots, they brought in 100% to this movement and they wanted to implement law that would criminalize anyone who. well it was a new blasphemy by a

guy humza yousaf who was the first minister, but he started this law when he was justice secretary. and it's been i mean, i went up to scotland on april first with my comedy night. we a night of comedy unleashed and we told problematic jokes because the police in scotland in readiness for this law had been undergoing training of how to deal with jokes that people offensive. so we went up there and told a lot of offensive jokes no. one arrested us and it was fine, but technically, they could have done under the new rules. scary stuff. i think. have you ever been canceled because of your views? yeah, no, i don't think i think partly because my job has always been to express honestly, if i was still a schoolteacher, as i used to be, i wouldn't be able to express in the way that i do. or if i did, probably would be canceled. i'm in a very privileged position and i'm canceled. i never have been. i can write what i genuinely believe at no risk to myself.

i mean, there are jobs. i'm not going get. i'm not going to get onto a bbc comedy panel show anytime soon. there are avenues that are closed because i express the that are deemed to be heretical by the established ones, but i don't particularly want those jobs or covet those jobs. i would much rather be in a position where. i can say what i think, write the books that i want to write. i consider that a much more healthy way to live. and let's go back to the new puritans the culture war is poorly understood is the attempt destroy the progress of social liberalism in favor of a return to politics of division. it is sustained only through an imagined dreamscape in which fascism is flourishing, which in turn justifies the aggressive demolition of a liberal system that failed to bring about the desired utopia. yeah, it's a bit complicated because of the american definition of liberalism. think in the uk when when we say

somebody is liberal, we mean that they believe in traditional liberal values, such freedom of speech, freedom of the press, individual autonomy. that notion, john stuart mill writes about in our own liberty, which is that you should have the right to do whatever you want and think whatever you want, say whatever you want right up until the point until you are encroaching on the rights of others. that's what social liberalism means. it means that you don't get to prevent someone from having a job simply because they are gay or black or whatever it might be. you don't get to censor other people's views. you live in a society where there are a plurality of views and and tolerance is at the heart of that as well of course in the us. i think when people liberal they generally mean it as being synonymous with the left or the democrats in australia, the liberal is the conservative party. so actually word is kind of fraught with various and misunderstandings. so i'm being very clear in the book what i by liberalism, i'm using it in terms of the old fashioned definition, what i

believe to be the prevailing definition. and so what i'm saying there is that those are the values that underpin a functioning liberal democracy, a society, what you would call a constitutional. those are important values. and we we we let them slip at our peril. and at the moment, what is happening is there is a narrative brewing that neo-nazis and fascism is on the rise actually genuine neo-nazis. the uk you could barely fill this hole with them. there are very, very few. all of the evidence tells us this, and yet we're told that they're absolutely everywhere. the word nazi or fascist has been subjected to people who use it promiscuously so casually, almost to denuded of its meaning. it's very specific meaning it isn't someone who believes that you can't change sex, you know, it isn't someone who wants to preserve free speech. i mean, even that is treated with suspicion now by many people. they think that the nazis were

for speech. well, they don't i don't know their history, do they? so it's very important that we don't allow these false narratives to flourish that when people are crying nazi, you say to them, well, hold on a minute, why don't you reserve word for people who are actually of that ilk rather than people who just believe liberal values? andrew doyle let's go to the subtitle of your book, how religion social justice captured, the western world what's the role of religion in this conversation? simply as an analogy. as an analogy i want people to understand. i mean, a lot of people find this stuff very, very confusing because the words that describe the movements seem to be the opposite of what the movement aims to achieve. so they describe as progressive. but the upshot of that movement is very regressive. they describe themselves as liberal, but they're completely illiberal. they talk about social justice, but what they actually achieve is its precise opposite. they talk about being

anti-racist, whereas the phrase anti-racist in their lexicon actually rehabilitates a new of racism and seeks to see us first and foremost through our skin color and secondarily through our individual characteristics as human beings. so people are confused because. they hear about a movement which calls, woke and calls itself a progressive and anti-racist and they want freedom and liberty and all those buzzwords. and what i want to be part of that, i want to be on side. and then they look a bit closer and they realize that actually the movement does exactly the opposite of everything it says on the tin know. so in to make it accessible. what i tried to do in the book the puritans is make this analogy with religion because all of a sudden it makes sense, it becomes comprehensible, you know, religious fundamentalist believers believe all kinds of nonsense and and they do so because they have a belief system in place, a kind of

ideology a kind of structure. i mean the notion if you take any ideology, it's not just religion you could it could be marxism. it could be any set of rules that are provided for you so that you surrender your own critical faculties and, are effectively reading from a script. and this makes sense. why are good people suddenly saying we should segregate people by skin color? why are decent suddenly saying that freedom of speech is a bad thing? well, it doesn't make sense. it's and you see it in religious terms. why are people saying that we have an innate sex soul which for which is no scientific evidence. again makes sense if you think of it in religious terms. it makes sense if you analogize, i don't know the doctrine of transparency in the catholic church, how can that piece of bread actually become the flesh of christ, that sense in religious terms, it doesn't make sense in scientific terms. and that's what the trans movement is asking us to believe, that a man can't physically become a woman by merely declaring to be so.

so it's a way to make accessible what, i consider to be an incoherent movement and it does work, as you describe it, as a religion, it seems to say. that's what this is. people get it and they understand why they're suddenly being asked to declare fealty to it in the way that the church used. say, you better go to church every week and declare fealty or otherwise will burn you at the stake. same when i ask you about two other books before we close here. the author is titania mcgrath woke a social guide to justice and. my first little book of intersectional activism who author titania mcgrath. tony mcgrath was a character i invented about six years ago. who was an embodiment of a woke social justice. in other words, very upper middle class, very wealthy, privileged, but liked to lecture everyone about their privileged races. they all she could see racism in anything. she could see homophobia and absolutely. and she wanted people to be

sacked and she wants to sense abuse that she doesn't agree with. and i created that character on twitter because because that's where the activists were that was their playground, that's where they consolidated their dominance. and then i wrote a couple of books as her, and i was outed as against my will and my book of intersectional activism was deliberately a response to all of these books that were coming later. children's books, such as anti-racist baby by ibram x can. there's a book called woke baby. this book, feminist baby, all these books aimed at little kids, which this book called who am i? which is about something like it's a five year old's guide to gender identity. know talks about things like being to spirit or non-binary. this is not something that children passive can possibly comprehend but what it really is is adults trying to indoctrinate and impose their pseudo religious values on the young because of course, if you get people young shopping, how is it you can have them for life. and he wasn't the only one to have said that because it's

common sense. so book was a reaction to that, you know, to try and get and the title i think says it all my first a book of intersectional activism. obviously a kid can't understand what that means, but you place this book in front of them and you demand that they learn. so yeah, that was that was i. my idea of that was to try and laugh it out of existence. i suppose, you know, if you can make it funny if you can expose it's absurd it is maybe the movement will it looks like it is on the way to collapsing, by the way, not anytime soon, but all the seeds are there. it will eventually fall because no incoherent movement can really sustain itself too long. but it has a frighteningly long period. how did woke my first little book do in the marketplace? oh really? well, particularly the first one because i was outed as the author in the week of the book's release sounds, doesn't it? but it wasn't my choice. an investigative journalist

found out that i was the author and i ended up on tv a lot and on radio talking about it. so it's all very and there was a lot of and i was on the joe rogan podcast talking about it. so it a big book but it also generated lot of anger obviously from the activists because no it likes to be mocked it's the thing they don't like at all and so so i started getting a lot of death threats and angry comments online but i guess that comes with the territory. and i also think if, you know, if they liked book i'd be doing something very wrong so they hate it and that's fine by me you see andrew doyle on gb news, host of free speech nation there, his newest book written under his own name is the new puritans. religion and social justice captured the western world. thanks for spending aand now jos mark scouser. he is author of 25 plus books.

we'll get to those in just a minute. but he's also the founder of this libertarian gathering called freedom fest mark skousen. how? how did this get started? actually, 2007, maybe even earlier, because when i was made president of the foundation for economic education, it was the oldest free market think tank. but it kind of fell out, fallen into obscurity with cato and heritage and reason being the really big libertarian conservative type of organizations. george made president v and i said, what can i to jump start the. and i said, well, let's have a feed fest. let's have a national and let's do it in the most libertarian city in the world. las vegas. and it was a big success. we had 850 people show up. we had ben stein as our keynote speaker. and unfortunately, i was not very good at fundraising. so only lasted a year the president fee. but i love the idea of getting

together this. and so i started a four profit organization called freedom past instead of dfs and we've been going great guns ever since and. we have a couple of thousand people show up every year in vegas. when they shut us down in 2020, we the next year we went to a mount rushmore, rapid city and a great time there. we had a huge turnout and then we went back to vegas. and then last year in memphis. so we we now do other year in vegas and the rest of the time we go to other states. what do people get? this is kind of a renaissance gathering. so we talk philosophy, history, science and technology and not just politics. yes, we have rfk coming and we have the party and we have a president. we have presidential debate with all the third parties have shown up. the two major parties have not up. so that's kind of frustrating that they won't they're not

willing to debate third party candidates. and i think rfk has a good criticism of the parties. so. but what do people get out of it? it's an incredible feeling to get together of like minded individuals who believe in freedom within the rule of law. it's the adam smith model, the system of natural liberty, within the rule of you want maximum freedom to to choose your occupation to decide where you want to go to what price pay, who you hire, who you fire, maximum freedom. that's what this conference all about. so we attract people. we actually don't call it a libertarian. we call it the largest gathering of free minds. so if you have a closed mind, we don't want you here, but they come anyway. prior to getting involved with freedom fest, what was your occupation? well i still am. i write an investment newsletter

called forecasts and strategies is published eagle publishing. i've been doing it since the greatest president of the 20th century was elected. so who would that be in your view would be ronald reagan? that's correct so in 1980, i started my newsletter and i'm going for 44 years. that's my major, main source of income. i'm still writing the newsletter, but i'm also a professor or i have i hold the doty spogli chair free enterprise at chapman university in southern california. i taught at columbia school, columbia university. barnard college, rollins college, and now at chapman university. you know, i have one sort of but you've also taught somewhere else. well, i've taught it since saying penitentiaries. all right. yeah, 12 years. not as an inmate, but as a as a teacher. and as a volunteer. and that was an incredible my wife and i were very much involved with inmates who were in a maximum security prison,

state prison, or something quite infamous and about. it was great to see their lives changed and. so it's not just about, you know, it's about changing their lives. so that when they get out, they're not going back to the same crimes and the recidivism rate with our program of education. is a 3% versus 60, 70%. traditionally. so it's been a very successful program at sentencing. we were glad we were part of it. mark scales and as we mentioned, you're the author of 25 plus books, mostly politics or economics, things like before economics and politics. your latest book, there were giants in the land. yeah. what is this? so this is a story, in his own words, of my uncle cleon skousen and cleon skousen was what i regarded a giant in the land, but more known in the west. he was based in salt lake city. i mean, he had a nation wide

program. he was very much involved with the fbi. he was a special assistant to jager, hoover in the fbi. he was assigned to help. he was assigned as a special assistant to georgia hoover. he was there on december 7th, 1941, when japan attacked pearl harbor. so he was the communications director for j. edgar hoover at that time. then he was assigned to the los angeles bureau, and he was assigned to hollywood dealing with the whole anti-caa communist movement during that time period and also organized crime. he had. there's some incredible stories here about him with mickey cohen and bugsy siegel and people like that. so it's quite an interesting book. i think my perspective, but it's all in now, basically in the story excuse me, this is all, in

his words, what we did. my wife and i, joanne, who's an english professor, we took all of his private journals and we compiled and edited and reduced it to 500 pages to tell his own story in his own words. and we got lots of photographs and stuff like that. and what's really cool is you can see if you take hat off and i put my glasses on. there's quite a resemblance. let's see if we can. let's let's see if we can get a little closer on that and we'll let that happen. why did you write a book about your uncle? is this a tribute? well, you could call it a labor of love, right? well, what would a general audience out of this? well, there's a lot of it's a story about a motivational story in many ways, because clarence

gougeon was born dirt poor in alberta, canada, and he kind of became, you know, like a lot of these people like ben franklin, a lot of the other great leaders and stuff, they started with nothing and they built up an empire. he was an empire builder. he was mormon was mormon ancestors. and they built and so forth. he was very an entrepreneur, but he was firmly he was born in 1930. and he said, had me become come into the earth in 1913 because three legislation occurred in 1913, that was all bad legislation and he was there to reverse it. what is what happened in 1913? the income the federal reserve was created and finally the i'm not sure which amendment the constitution had direct of

senators. instead of by state legislatures. he thought these are all bad. and so he worked hard his whole life to reverse these. well, guess what? he failed on all three counts, despite all his efforts. and yet he was always an optimist because at the i tell this story at the end of his life, people would ask him, dr. and he had a j.d. degree as fbi agent, said, to have a degree in law and. so he said, dr. and how can you be so optimistic? all the terrible things that are happening in the world? and his answer was a religious answer because he was a christian. he said, well, i've read the book and in the end we win. so he had kind of optimism stuff, but there's some great stories in here, motivational stories in the fbi, his stories with organized crime, with

hollywood. i tell the olivia de havilland in this book, which is about gone with the wind, the one of the main actresses in gone with the wind who was an actual communist and was very supportive and giving of money to the communist party in 1940. and so my j. edgar hoover said, i want you to visit the home of olivia de havilland and i want you to thank her for her wonderful role in gone with the wind. but needs to know that the communists bad they she needs to learn about the american story. can you do that for me? so clean on makes an appointment to see a lady to have the fbi so she agrees and he goes in and says listen jagger hoover loves your book and wants you to be follower of america and you not you shouldn't give money to the communist party. she said, well, they're my best friends. they're really support. i'm really supportive of them.

so thank you very much. told you edgar hoover. thank you, but i'm going to stay with it and who and so clinton says but before we leave have a tape recording here we have been secretly taping the meetings of the communist central party and your name comes up and i have this recording here. why don't you listen to it? i'll step out and i'll come back. and if you feel the same way. i'll take the tape recording. you never hear from us again. she listens to the recording. she comes outside swearing like a mule skinner and. she said, i can't believe these people are calling me money back and stooge and we're taking we can know how to take advantage of olivia de havilland. she said, i'll have nothing to do with them ever again. it's quite story. so it's stories like that. by the way, clients said, do not publish this story until after olivia de havilland dies. i'm not sure why, but in any case, she lived to be like 103.

so. but fortunately she has passed away in the end. so the story is there. there's a chapter in here called my friendship with black panther, eldridge cleaver. mm hmm. so julian always had a weakness for. people who? he was a communist he was involved. he had to flee the country because he was involved in some murders during the sixties and seventies protests, the black panthers somewhat a revolutionary group that engaged in violence and so on. and not ideologically anything in common with cleon skousen, but but eldridge cleaver changed it and came back to united states because he lived i think he lived in a communist country or something like that it was not what it was cracked up to be. and so eldridge cleaver back and and changed mind about life he

said communism. he rejected communism. and he befriended cleon, my uncle cleon skorzeny, and they went giving speeches together. i've got pictures, them together and so forth. he he still had drug problems and things like that. so the end, the friendship kind of disintegrated. but it was a remarkable story. that's just a little bit of were giants in the land episodes in the life of cleon skousen written by freedom fest founder thanks for being with us. my pleasure, peter. thankactor comedian rob schneids with us to talk about his new book. you can do it. speak your mind, america mr. schneider, what are you doing it? freedom fest. first of all, the libertarian convention. i didn't think it would be necessary to have a freedom in the united states of america. i think there's itself.