Northstar Politics Show

Today we discuss a range of topics from stopping small boats to Oxford University controversy to AI's threat to civilisation ... through erotica? Alongside this we reflect on our past as young people in politics, the present with what educated people should do with their talent and the future of multiculturalism in the UK.

What is Northstar Politics Show?

Noah & Sean are on a mission to push political imagination. Since becoming best friends at university they've both taken unconventional paths and supported various political movements behind the scenes. Watch weekly as they break down about hot political topics using their knowledge and lived experiences.

Noah:

Welcome back to North Star politics. As Hedi once said, money come first. And in this spirit, OpenAI, which started as a nonprofit revolutionary tech company aiming at curing cancer, has completed its full heel turn into a parasitic Palantir partnering parasocial porn site. I guess there is nothing sexier than maximizing shareholder value. As we predicted last week, Israel's begun dismantling the minimal trust needed for the ceasefire to be maintained, jeopardizing a tenuous and hollow peace in West Asia.

Noah:

After decades of the global community letting them get away with this mania, is it any surprise that they think can they continue to get away with it? In 2020, Kirst Palmer called for an end to spiraling student debt. And if you're one of those bright eyed teens that took him at his words, well, as Eddie once said, we should know better. I've also come up with radical new political stance to hit The UK by storm. Stop small boats.

Noah:

Let me land. Let me land. And we look to the story coming from our alma mater, the Oxford Union president who was flamed up in the press for his comments about Charlie Kirk. He probably should have quoted heady one and kept it. And we're back.

Sean:

Listen. Yeah. One point what? 3,000,000 views across all our clips on social media.

Noah:

Who is counting? Me? I'm I'm definitely counting. I'm counting. I've been counting.

Noah:

Honestly, the dopamine rush that I've been getting over this past week, I gotta thank you guys. The comments, the likes, the subscribes, the follows, all the sorts of words that I've never thought I'd be saying, wow.

Sean:

Loving it. And you know what, Noah? I actually just want to start

Noah:

this off with a

Sean:

serious allegation.

Noah:

Allegations?

Sean:

Yes. Yes. Wow.

Noah:

Don't get too don't don't get too scared now. Allegations.

Sean:

Listen. The viewers want this to be addressed. Okay? Are you a rapper known as AJ Tracy?

Noah:

Well, let me even flip allegation on you. If I'm AJ Tracy, you're biblical Jesus.

Sean:

Apparently so. Apparently so.

Noah:

Everywhere that we've been going and I've been having this for years, like, offline. People saying I sound like AJ Tracy. But suddenly, as soon as I come online, it's getting verified, validated.

Sean:

I mean, not to be too big headed. I personally prefer Prince of Egypt, the cartoon. Mhmm. One of my favorite cartoons ever, Moses. That's the cartoon I go for.

Noah:

Fair enough. I mean, I can't I can't say not to be too big headed because I was born like this, but we'll we'll leave it there. But those are the allegations we're getting so far. So I think that's who it is though.

Sean:

And actually, we do have an even more serious allegation. What? Look. So North Star is all about honesty, transparent transparency, and ambition.

Noah:

Yeah.

Sean:

Ambition. But our ambition has taken us to a point where we're kind of suffering from success right now. Okay? So some people are commenting and thinking that we are officially part of the Green Party or we are Green Party supporters.

Noah:

Okay.

Sean:

So I'll leave it to you to to tell people where we stand on that.

Noah:

Okay. So this is how North Star works and, you know, this week free now. So probably there's a bit of familiarity that our audience is getting with us. Maybe a bit of familiarity that political agents, political actors are getting watching us thinking that, oh, they bought into our way of thinking. Step correct.

Noah:

If you if if you take a step outside of the line that we like, we'll be on you. Just as we'd expect you to be on us if we take a step outside the line you like. The green part, we think they're doing a lot of good things right now. Zach Polansky, we bumped into on the weekend. We'll chat about that.

Noah:

We think he's doing a lot of great things right now. But we have our own particular political philosophies, and we'll happily criticize people that fall outside of that as should be done in a deliberative democracy.

Sean:

And you know what? We do actually want to be a bit more explicit about what that actually entails. And so we took the first step on the weekend by publishing the first Substack written by Noah, of course.

Noah:

Okay. Yeah. It's like pushing the pen. Yep. We've got a Substack or an essay out now on the app Substack is probably the best way to find it or you can find it on our Instagram too.

Sean:

And my and my favorite quote about it, sorry Yeah. Is that from Confucius that you quoted Yeah. Is he that rules by mind is like the North Star, steady in his seats whilst the stars all bend to him.

Noah:

Bars. Bars.

Sean:

Bars for them.

Noah:

There we go. Put over a 60 over a beat, and we've got a little verse there. But now, yeah, as we discussed in the essay, the North was about sticking to our ideological principles. Some of them will be shared by me and Sean. Some of them Sean will have that I don't have.

Noah:

And like you guys at home, we hope that you interact with us in a way that is true and honest to your feelings. So critique us as and when you feel necessary. And relating back to what you were saying about us, some people were thinking that maybe we launched out of a green party support base. No. We just happen to think that the green party is saying a lot of the right things right now.

Noah:

And as Zach Polanski conducting himself in a really great way right now, there are certain things that we're not a big fan of. I'm slightly skeptical about the stance on NATO. That's something we can get into more of the coming weeks.

Sean:

For sure.

Noah:

But just to clarify, we are not members of the we're not part of the Green Party. We're not affiliated with the Green Party. If they start messing up, then we'll be the first to call it out. But if

Sean:

they wanna give us a price, that's something I would joke.

Noah:

We're we're not gonna sell that. We can't be bought

Sean:

priceless. But cool. As you said, we did actually meet Zach Palanti over the weekend at a brilliant event called My Life My Say. Now My Life My Say are a local London based charity that's all about getting young people into politics. How was that experience?

Noah:

What do you think about that? You know what? It was weird. Yeah. Because where was it?

Noah:

Where was the event taken? Where was the event happening?

Sean:

Oh, was at the Ministry of Sound.

Noah:

So at the Ministry of Sound. The last time I was in the Ministry of Sound, I was also with Sean.

Sean:

Okay. This is for context, back in the day.

Noah:

Back in the day. Years ago. Years ago. We were there for a Kenny All Star Carney after party.

Sean:

It was good.

Noah:

It was bro, Kenny All Star was spinning. That was good. But it was very interesting to be back there on the different in a in a different way. Early in the morning, we got there, and it was, really interesting. It was, we're invited there graciously by Remy, so shout out to you.

Noah:

And we met a lot of cool people there. We also got to interact with a lot of the young people who, were coming up to us saying they've seen the podcast. And that was really moving because as much as some of the people who are speaking there have probably seen us because the they're explicitly political. It's their career. You maybe would expect for them to have seen us.

Noah:

For young people to be coming up to us saying, now we saw it. We really related. We really liked it. That's the kind of thing that we're actually looking to achieve.

Sean:

No. Definitely. And it definitely inspires a lot of optimism because a lot of people are asking us and we're getting so much good support asking us in particular, how did you get so you know, not to get big headed, obviously, unfortunately. You know, how do we get so articulate, eloquent? How do we get into politics in the first place?

Sean:

And that's because myself and you were actually beneficiaries of a lot of these young people kind of movements, organizations growing up. Yeah. And I've sort of blindsided you here. Yeah. Sorry to say.

Sean:

Well, you're I've pulled up some old school records of us in the past Right. Speaking as young people.

Noah:

How old school how old school we talking? Pre COVID.

Sean:

Long before pre COVID. I know you have watched. So I'm gonna bring up the first clip now for everyone to hear at home if you're listening online or if you're watching from the state of London on LBC and a debate.

Noah:

Alright. And those those companies need to get their act together. Let's go back upstairs. Noah is from Tower Hamlets. Noah and and microphone five, if you can wave.

Noah:

Here we go. Here comes. So it's up here, mister mayor for our boroughs. Hello, sir. White t shirt again.

Noah:

Hi. My borough Tower Hamlets are largely because of Canary Wharf. The average wage is £78,000 a year, yet we have the highest amount of people using

Sean:

Oh my gosh. And I

Noah:

was wondering what has the mayor done is doing to, spread the wealth and opportunities, to local people.

Noah:

I've been on that wolf. Right. Exactly. I mean, Dominique on the t shirt as

Sean:

We're gonna leave it for people to see the actual clip for Boris to actually try and respond.

Noah:

But that was a good question. You know what? We'll try and leave we'll leave the link, for that clip in the description because it's up live on YouTube. So the question I was asking was, like, my Boratay hamlets has, like, the highest, like, highest level of wealth inequality in London largely because of Canary Wharf versus, like, the poverty a lot people are experiencing around the borough. Like, what is the mayor gonna do about that?

Noah:

So first of all, like, we've been on this wealth inequality talk from I think I was probably about 12 or 13 there. Boris Johnson's response was insane. Like, go and watch it, please. But he basically says, like, how can we expect people to interact with the economy when there's, several generations of, Bengalis living in Tel Hamlets who in the same house, who can't even speak English?

Sean:

That's crazy.

Noah:

Like, it was mental.

Sean:

I mean, at least you know he's been consistent in his racism for a long time, though.

Noah:

It was absolutely bonkers. But, yeah, I do remember that. And, yeah, it was it was it's crazy because there's so many things you could have brought up because I've been very involved in politics or things I find interesting from a young age. And luckily, my mom, who's actually sat behind the camera, chuckling along when you said I got a big head as if I didn't get it from her. She was so gracious enough to bring me along to all of these kind of events to really, like, nurture that interest I had.

Sean:

No. Definitely. Like, it doesn't happen overnight. Yeah. In particular, we have a lot of big sports friends, etcetera, and, like, these things takes years of compounding, hard work, etcetera.

Noah:

Exactly. But don't worry. I'm gonna

Sean:

put myself in the fire alarm.

Noah:

I was gonna say, like, you saw how high my voice was. I'm hoping you got one here to demonstrate an even higher voice.

Sean:

It's not even a higher voice because this is when I think I'd post puberty, but still pre

Noah:

COVID is. Look at this. Still pre COVID. Fixing. Look at this match fixing.

Sean:

I'll make myself a

Noah:

little bit. With videos next week. But this

Sean:

is what happens when you host it.

Noah:

Alright. So

Sean:

this is me talking about lowering the voting age.

Noah:

Conclude the debate, please welcome from London, Sean Sinnonen.

Sean:

How do we ensure in our new era of young people aren't fooled by the fake news they see online,

Noah:

statistics, and in some cases, brainwashed by extremist political views. Perhaps we should vote for a topic such as curriculum for life instead to prepare young people for the vote. That's power. Bro, that beard saved you. Oh, okay.

Noah:

Thanks. Pre people beard short, yes.

Sean:

Here's me thinking we're gonna talk about the philosophy of lowering the voting age. Now he's talking about my my facial hair.

Noah:

Bro, that's spooky settings. Fair. Fair play. The voting age might save some people. That beard saved you.

Sean:

But listen. All I have to say is if you're a young person watching right now, say thank

Noah:

you. Where was that for context?

Sean:

No. But say thank you.

Noah:

Oh, it was you? It was me. I just that got the voting age lowered.

Sean:

100%.

Noah:

So we're not even giving KSTAMA credit for that.

Sean:

No. It's all me.

Noah:

It was Sean Sinnon at the tender age of where were where were you there?

Sean:

That was a humble 17, though.

Noah:

Fair enough. Humble 17.

Sean:

But, yeah, that was at the houses of parliament, in the houses of commons. I was part of the UK Youth Parliament, which was ran back in the day by a charity called the British Youth Council, which, of course, now no longer exists. The youth parliament does, but the council doesn't.

Noah:

Why do no longer exist?

Sean:

Just funding, bro. It's literally as simple as that. Look at that. But you know the story.

Noah:

I noticed I'm just making sure everyone's aware that this story is a long, like, thorough well thorough path.

Sean:

No. Of course. That's the place I

Noah:

saw a highlight from there. Big Up Hackney. Oh, yeah. That one. Yes.

Noah:

Okay. Coming now. No. But this

Sean:

is the thing. Right? Like, as a young person, it's so important to actually get these opportunities to kind of build these skills from young to be able just to see if this is for you. And, you know, you never know where or what other things this can unlock. And so I'm very grateful for these experiences growing up.

Noah:

Yeah. And I think as well, like, it can seem a bit dry, like politics as, I guess, quote, unquote, adults adults engage with it. But the reason I was so animated by politics when I was young is because there ways to do it that were really engaging. Mhmm. I was big into debating.

Noah:

I was big into public speaking. I was big into, like, stuff like model United Nations, which is like you're turning up with a bunch of other kids acting as if you're UN delegates. And as funny as I might sound, there's an in there's an interesting way to animate politics for kids, like role playing as if you are really worthy of diplomats. And same for you. It's like, can imagine the excitement and the research you would do to get ready for to model the UK parliament as a 17 year old, whereas you probably just wanna sit at home and read the read the times.

Sean:

No. For sure. And coming from, like, our backgrounds and our experiences as well, like, who else is doing that?

Noah:

Exactly. It's it's it was great things to do. Like we say, like, the level of cuts, it cuts to funding. We'll talk more about the the impact of the labor's having on productivity later in the show. But you worry about what will happen to young people of today if they don't have access to these certain things as they become mature?

Sean:

Precisely.

Noah:

Anything else you wanna anything else we'll discuss before we get into the meaty veg of the episode?

Sean:

I think this is a meaty veg. So this is this is a meaty episode. Let's let's get straight into it.

Noah:

Let's get into it. Let's get into the state of play.

Sean:

Welcome back to the state of play. And in this part of the show, we're gonna discuss the hot topics of this week. Now first, I actually wanna just take it to a recap of the Gaza ceasefire.

Noah:

Okay.

Sean:

So last week on the show, Noah did a wonderful summary of the ins and outs of the Gaza ceasefire, and we both had two main thoughts on the matter. The first was that we were a bit pessimistic it would actually hold because of, I don't know, Israel's addiction to basically violating agreements and international law.

Noah:

And we spoke about how it's, like, embedded within the nature of the Israeli state for that neocolonial or that that ethnocolonial expansion.

Sean:

Precisely. And we also highlighted the importance of holding Israel's actions to account to actually prevent a new global norm being cemented. And I'm sorry to say we were basically proven right. So here's some stats that were reported by Navarra Media. So since the ceasefire, Israeli military has killed more than 40 Palestinians since dawn on Sunday October 19 and launched a wave of at least 20 airstrikes on Southern Gaza.

Sean:

Now overall, Israel has actually violated the ceasefire in Gaza 80 times since it came into the effect into effect on October 10, killing 97 Palestinians and wounding another 230. Now, of course, Israel say this is in response to an attack by Hamas, which Hamas then denies. And finally, this has also given Israel the excuse to actually close its crossing points into Gaza to aid convoys halting transfer of life saving life saving aid. Ben Gavir, a far right Israeli minister has praised this decision saying that the war should actually be restarted as soon as possible. Honestly, after just hearing that, I don't even know what to say at this point.

Noah:

Yeah. I mean, we're no we're not brilliant political predictors, and it really doesn't take a brilliant political prediction to have said what we said last week, which is when you have a state such as Israel, which has been permitted to continue this sort of manic, rampant ethno colonial expansion since the forties, is there any wonder that you think they can continue to get away with it? So that's why unfortunately, you know, last week there was some level of hope and sort of hope against hope sort of thing. But there's also the reality of we know what to expect and we've sort of seen this playbook before from Israel.

Sean:

And I think that's exactly why we actually can't stop speaking about it. Because for many, this is literally a matter of life and death. And we need to literally do our part to keep this on people's consciousness and actually hold these politicians to account. Because even bro, I'm gonna be a bit vulnerable right now. But I even when I was planning this episode, I thought to myself, am I just focusing on this a bit too much?

Sean:

Like, would this content be a bit better if I just kind of, like, skipped it this week or something like that. Right? But then then I caught myself in the moment thinking, that's how, as we speak about in private a lot, how this idea of evil kind of destroys your soul and piecemeal. The the kind of whispers of laziness that gets into you when you're talking about these things, that kind of fatigue on these topics is really when that other side starts winning. Like, they want us to not talk about this.

Sean:

They want us to actually keep this off the agenda, and that's why we have to literally just keep being annoying and talking about it all the time.

Noah:

And last week, we got well, I got into some international relations theory around norms being cemented. And I think one of the things to bring to people's attention is, I think it was maybe a month and a half ago when the British government announced that they would be recognizing Palestine as a state.

Sean:

Mhmm.

Noah:

And that had a lot of, like, semantic value because of over the past sort of fifty years of neoliberal world order, what we've understood, states' rights and state sovereignty to mean. If now we have a situation where a leader within the West such as Britain is recognizing Palestine as a state, but then allowing one of their allies, Israel, to violate their sovereignty within a week of the ceasefire being agreed between them, what does that say about a new norm being created for state hood?

Sean:

Precisely.

Noah:

If a state can be violating this way, they now become hollow words, and the British government is trying to buy into that sort of the remnants of that semantic value rather than anything more substantial.

Sean:

No. For sure. And I think, again, if you're watching this at home, keep retweeting, keep reposting, keep talking about it, keep attending the marches when they're organized as well because we have to do whatever we can in our own mini capacities to actually make sure that we hold these people to account.

Noah:

And I think I think also just be be inquisitive about why was it why is this allowed to carry on? Mhmm. Because is it any wonder that Britain stands idly by as Israel violates a ceasefire when a large part of our military industrial weapons exporting is going directly to Israel funding parts for f 35 jets? Is it any wonder that a large part of The US's military interest in The Middle East or in West Asia are supported by the state of Israel that they allow this to carry on? In which case, what what were the pain points?

Noah:

What are the pressure points that we can animate? Because as much as Sean says, yeah, carry on retweeting this and the third, has that been successful? And if if you're an activist at home, should be quite reflective about, how effective your mechanisms have been, what levers you pulled, how effective they are. And I frequently and maybe I'm overly cynical, but I frequently say you should expect impact in proportion to the in proportion to the effort. And if the sort of the protest takes minimal effort, you should expect minimal outcomes.

Sean:

Okay.

Noah:

And, you know, even maybe to push it even further, not to not not as a great sort of call to arms, but, you know, boycotting is one thing. Withdrawing your consumption. Withdrawing your labor is a is a much further thing. You put a lot more at risk there. And I guess the reflection is how much do I really care about certain issues?

Noah:

And if I care as much as I would like to believe I do, why aren't I actually putting more on the line to try and bring about more tangible change?

Sean:

No. That makes a lot of sense. And I think in moments like this, when we're talking about our capacity to actually change things or, you know, resist injustice, I always think back to a old quote from the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in Islam, which is very famous amongst Muslims, and it's this idea that if you see an injustice, stop it with your hand. If you see if you can't do that, stop it with your mouth. If you can't do that, at least stop it with your heart.

Sean:

So I'm paraphrasing here, but there's this idea that there's actually a lot we can all do. And I think picking up on that point about minimal effort, I think it's important to to hone in on that.

Noah:

Yeah. And I mean, I've I've written about this before when it's like kind of the inverse of what the prophet Muhammad there is saying is if, you know, if you can't do the extreme, then you do the the minimal you can. But on the flip side, you know, the the calling cry of the Haitian revolution was cut the heads, burn the houses. And although it's for like a a small c conservative sensibility of modern day, you might say, oh, it's terrible. This time the third, you know, Nat Turner did kill babies and children.

Noah:

But understanding there is we'll take it as far as it needs to go because this oppression is a threat to our life. This is what Yasser Arafat understood when he stood in front of the UN and said, and I'm gonna paraphrase poorly here, but, I come to you today in one hand holding a olive branch of peace and in the other hand, the rifle of the freedom fighter. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. We're making requests based on verbal verbal please, and then you push it towards physical movements within the streets of London. And then it comes to be seen how far people are wishing how far people are willing to push it beyond that if they really care.

Sean:

And and just the final point then, I think, on that then, how does one build the discipline to actually make those decisions to push it and take it where it needs to be when personal sacrifice is also on the cards?

Noah:

I think there's a whole matrix going on that, like, funnels into countless different areas of our life when it comes to social media and the cheap holo dopamine you get, feeling that level of activity. I reposted an infographic. I did this, that, the third, and you get that sort of sort

Sean:

of It's like you've achieved something.

Noah:

Exactly. That false feeling. And the same goes for activism. Activism increasingly becomes an online thing because we are able to get that level of a tangible dopamine or tangible release of tension without actually impacting things in the real world. And let's put it this way.

Noah:

The Palestinians aren't being cyberbullied. The Palestinians are being slaughtered as they stand. And, you know, in some level, you have to meet the enemy with like, in that in the arena in which they play, and it isn't online.

Sean:

Yeah. And I suppose the the matrix of privilege also plays into that because the actual people who you see putting their bodies on the line to get arrested at these protests Mhmm. To, you know, get arrested, destroying the kind of RAF jets who are part of the the group that was called the Filton twenty four. Mhmm. So a group of young people who were prescribed as part of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization because of their direct action.

Sean:

When you look at the makeup of these people, they do actually tend to be, you know, from the backgrounds that we think are more privileged, such as, like, you know, white English pass in backgrounds. And I think that's also an interesting, like, element to this all.

Noah:

It can it concerns me as well how docile people are becoming. It feels like like and brought this up before in the podcast, but Edmund Burke, the fundamental philosopher of British conservatism in, the eighteen hundreds talks about how to institutionalize forms of protest so that they don't actually threaten the status quo or the structure itself. And, like, a few weeks ago when there was all the uproar about uproar about digital IDs, you had a million over a million people sign a government petition against digital IDs. The government just responded to that saying, no. And they're gonna proceed with it.

Noah:

And it's like, where do we take it from there? Sometimes we we we often compare ourselves to France who, you know, you ask a Frenchman and I'm gonna this is here's a joke. But you ask a Frenchman to work an extra minute a day and, like, they set fire to the street.

Sean:

Yeah.

Noah:

Of course. Whereas in The UK, there seems to be a level of docility whether that's through, like, luxury or, you know, we're overly comfortable where we just let these things pass and pass and pass.

Sean:

And speaking of docility, think that takes us nicely onto our next topic, which is about this big news headline around the Mecca Tel Aviv controversy. So I'm just gonna break it down, give people the context at home.

Noah:

Watch it. Just so you know when Sean breaks down, there's a guy that doesn't know ball.

Sean:

Okay. Thank you very much. I play ball. Yeah. I don't support football.

Noah:

Yeah. Play ball. Cardio much. It pulls up for the cardio. Yeah.

Noah:

Hasn't got a first touch, hasn't even got a second touch.

Sean:

When you see this guy getting aggressive, yeah, then you see an ugly side to him.

Noah:

Bro, in football, my

Sean:

thing is As a man

Noah:

My thing is Kalash assist. Kalash assist. And even guys, last week, was play if it's you, I I was playing football in Peckham in the mid feast. Kalash assist is my game. I've Kalash the man.

Noah:

He circled back and said, isn't that you from that podcast? I still got the assist.

Sean:

Listen. But bro, when you get to the Champions League final, act like you've been here before, man.

Noah:

But I haven't been here before. I'm just trying to be grateful to our to our to viewers, our to the spectators, to the fans even. No. He just wants to just funnel in as being getting recognized. Being getting recognized.

Noah:

Know what mean? Not even in Hamlets anymore. We're stretching down south.

Sean:

Okay. Okay. Cool. So Meccaabi Tel Aviv. Okay.

Sean:

Right? Last week, an Israeli football team, Meccaabi Tel Aviv were banned by Birmingham council and the council's safety advisory group from attending an away game against Aston Villa, which is set to take place next month. So this decision was made by the West West Midlands Police after they received a risk assessment. And in that statement, they read they wrote this. The decision is based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offenses that occurred during the twenty twenty four UEFA Europa League match between Ajax, oh, Ajax, sorry, and Meccaabi Tel Aviv, Amsterdam.

Sean:

I'm not beating the I don't know ball allegations. And in their professional judgment, they concluded that it would actually risk public safety. Now, listen, that decision has absolutely made shit hit the fan because as you can imagine, anyone who supported it actually was ended up being smeared as an anti Semite. So Lisa Nandy, the minister in charge of culture, media and sport in this country, recently said that the government will actually find the necessary resources to police the game. Kear Stahmer tweeted out that he will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets, and the response

Noah:

Can I just say, and we'll cut a clip in here? Kear Stahmer does not know ball. He recently got interviewed asking, like, who's gonna start up front for England. He couldn't even name Harry Kane. Fair enough.

Noah:

I don't know I don't know why he's getting involved.

Sean:

Actually, I've even seen clips of him playing football, and it's embarrassing as well.

Noah:

So Jesus. What?

Sean:

And the response from the Lib Dems and Conservatives have actually been similar. Nigel Farage even going further to say that they need to overrule the local decision by the police.

Noah:

And you just remind me. These are British MPs. Yep. British MPs. Fair enough.

Noah:

Don't you thought there's a British club this fan is not fair

Sean:

enough. Mainstream parties.

Noah:

Okay. Interesting.

Sean:

And the irony of it all is that today, Mccabe themselves has said that they actually won't be attending. And in this is because actually in Israel. Right? So I think this was two days ago now.

Noah:

The Derby game.

Sean:

The Derby game. Yeah. So at the Derby game, what happened is that it was so violent that even the Israeli official actually said that, you know what? This game can't go forward. So no.

Sean:

Now listen. I've always been told that in this politics thing, money doesn't go in trees. But if a hooligan Israeli club wants to come and kick ball, then trust me, the streets are gonna be paid for gold. We're gonna find the funding to allow it to happen.

Noah:

Bro, it's I honestly well, first question for you. Yeah. What competition was this game gonna be played in?

Sean:

Europa League. Okay. There you go. There you go. CI is trying to

Noah:

catch me up. I thought

Sean:

it was my friend.

Noah:

But, honestly, when you talk about, like, the weirdness and hypernormalization that we're experiencing in just postmodern reality, first question, why on earth is an Israeli team playing in the Europa League? That's that's number one. Like, we talk about the powers of norm setting. That's the first question we have to ask. Second of all, why are all these British politicians coming out in support of Israeli hooligans?

Noah:

As if, like, one, they're making that same alliance or link that we've said is totally a false dichotomy between Jewish people and the state of Israel. It's totally unnecessary.

Sean:

And I actually think it's actually more antisemitic

Noah:

Yeah.

Sean:

To conflate Jewish identity to racist football hooligans who are literally known for chanting death to Arabs.

Noah:

It's like it's like trying to say that every Muslim is a supporter of the Saudi state. Oh, well, we could get into that. Is that is that do know I mean? It's it's totally nonsensical. And it's actually kind of hurtful that, like, Jewish people around the country have put up with that.

Sean:

100%.

Noah:

I would be absolutely incensed. But my opinions on this is, like, I'm happy. Every now and then, always say, like, within the social sciences, like scientific analysis of the social setting, you don't get these, like, perfect lab grown experiments. And every now and then, it just so happens that one crops up, and here's one of them. All of these politicians coming out saying, oh, why are these, innocent Israeli fans being run out of town because of, the Muslim mob and this anti Semitic?

Noah:

And within two days, you see the the streets of, Tel Aviv or the I'm not really sure what the streets of Tel Aviv run amok with these hooligans to the point where the the club themselves have to admit, yeah, we have a problem with our fan base. And like you said, I remember the scenes when they were running through Ajax screaming like, death to the Arabs. I'm running through Amsterdam screaming, death to the Arabs. It's like, don't want that in Birmingham. I don't want that in my country.

Sean:

No. Precisely. And also, what? So now a local community can't decide for themselves if they want a certain group to actually come or an event to happen.

Noah:

Yeah. And also, all of these all of these are MPs who wanna postures if they're the working man, the normal man. Anyone who's like a working man enjoying football would understand this happens literally all the time. Yeah. Like, constantly, like, teams are not allowed to travel with their fan base because their fan bases are known for hooliganism.

Sean:

And, also, what did UEFA and FIFA do when Russia invaded invaded Ukraine?

Noah:

Exactly.

Sean:

They banned them.

Noah:

Exactly.

Sean:

During the apartheid era, there was a global sporting boycott of all South African teams. So this precedent is not like it just came out of nowhere. This has been set. This is something that has happened before.

Noah:

I just think, like, a lot of these politicians have realized well, maybe not a lot of them, but definitely some of these labor politicians have realized they're on the wrong side of but they're too deep in. So they're just sticking with it until until they make it all the way down to the the fiery basement.

Sean:

Yeah. Well, listen. I mean, Mccabe Tel Aviv themselves said that they're not going through there anyways, and they're not gonna come. So we can only just keep monitoring the situation to see

Noah:

what happens. Is the game still going ahead?

Sean:

So they said they actually wouldn't come.

Noah:

Fans will do I think I think the game might I think the game is still going ahead, but the fans are not coming. Yeah. And, honestly, Ollie Watkins, my boy is there. Buen Dia, smokes it.

Sean:

Hashem in. Smoke a bit.

Noah:

The I can't believe you're lucky. My boy Rashford ain't there still at Villa. It would have been smoky. But even so, yeah, I'm talking I'm talking three, four, and he see clean sheets as well. But I'll be watching this game closely.

Sean:

And I won't be watching this game closely.

Noah:

You see what you see what Harlan done to the Israeli team? I have not. But just Everton dash way. Everton dash way just park barking it off from any route.

Sean:

Actually, watch it for the for the politics.

Noah:

There we go. There we go. Football's politics

Sean:

Everything's political.

Noah:

There we go.

Sean:

Speaking of another big news story that's happened this week, I think we should actually comment comment on it given our backgrounds. Have you seen this Oxford Union controversy?

Noah:

I've seen that. I've seen that.

Sean:

So George, I'm going to butcher this pronunciation of his second name, Aberonia, I think.

Noah:

Perfect.

Sean:

Well, it's two Caribbean people trying to

Noah:

I think it's perfect.

Sean:

Trying to pronounce Aberonia.

Noah:

The George you're talking about. There we go.

Sean:

Anyway, so George a was the president-elect.

Noah:

George a. Yeah.

Sean:

Well, come on. Little nickname. Little nickname. Little nickname. So George a was the president-elect of the Oxford Union and few months ago debated Charlie Kirk, the late Charlie Kirk who was assassinated, I believe, a month ago.

Sean:

So in response to Charlie Kirk's death, texts were leaked which showed George actually celebrated the fact he got shot pretty much straight away. And, obviously, these texts were quickly deleted after. And since then, the the political and media establishment have been in an absolute frenzy. An incredible amount of hate was actually unleashed upon George Sins. They started taking up his a levels, saying he doesn't belong there.

Noah:

What what did he get in his a levels?

Sean:

I believe it a b b. Alright. You you keep you keep quiet

Noah:

right there.

Sean:

You keep quiet right there. And the top mainstream media articles have reported this alongside some of, you know, the right wing's biggest political figures in The US, such as Megyn Kelly even commenting on it. And it's also been reported today that he's been ousted by the Oxford Union as president-elect. So people are taking this as a victory on the right wing side, but he's obviously going to appeal it because of the technicalities and these sorts of things. And look, we were both PPE students at Oxford.

Sean:

We actually kind of experienced the Oxford Union.

Noah:

Was in the uni community.

Sean:

I wouldn't I wouldn't boast about that, but

Noah:

fair enough. We wanna talk about that. No saying. Evident rule.

Sean:

And I just kinda wanna focus in on this one particular question because I can't help get over the irony of it all. Is this not just cancel culture at its finest?

Noah:

I mean, first is first. Like, on a human level, George, you should have taken a touch, my boy. Like, you didn't need to be in in the group chat. Like, also, coming coming from people that know what the Oxford Union is like, this is the most, like, backstabby, like, hater infested place. Yeah.

Noah:

I don't know why you be. Like, you should be knowing yet that everyone's watching to get you down.

Sean:

As in everyone is literally praying on your downfall

Noah:

in Oxford Union. And, like, even me and Sean will give even more insight. I hate because I know a lot of people probably around the world watch, like, the Oxford Union YouTube debates, some of which I've been on, and, like, think, wow. Like, the Oxford Union, there's, like, part there's, like, validated by Oxford University. It's actually just not.

Noah:

It's a bit of a joke within the university at this point. It is not the prestigious, like, debating and free speech club that it used to be, but it's still living off that heritage to have these prestigious guests come to try and keep some gas in the tank. So they're kind of falling foul of their own problems because they built themselves up to be this really prestigious thing, which is why George now is getting lambasted around the whole of the the mainstream media.

Sean:

Yeah. And I think that's exactly why they call it play politics. Because we can see as students at Oxford the absurdity of it all. Yeah. But the reality is politics really is just that backstabbing.

Noah:

Yeah. But at the same time, it's like he didn't this didn't need to be hit like legacy media outlets. But it only is because the Oxford Union impostures if it's still a really significant thing. When in fact, it should just go back to its roots and it should just be an enjoyable debating club for students.

Sean:

No. 100%. So that's the Oxford Union. But the thing I'm interested in is this element

Noah:

of The culture stuff.

Sean:

And this this element of hypocrisy. Do we not think it's quite hypocritical that for years and years, people on the right have protested this idea of cancel culture, people being basically spearheaded for their views? Yeah.

Noah:

Mean we not doing this? Are they not doing the same thing? So my my thoughts on cancel culture have always been this. It's like, you can only be canceled by those that supported you.

Sean:

Okay.

Noah:

So a lot times people say, oh, cancel this person. Cancel that person. You see them never get canceled because the people that actually supported them couldn't give them monkeys. Yeah. And I think what's happened here and the reason I think, like, cancel culture never really existed in the way we thought it did is the people that George relied on for his position, for his prestige have said they're not happy with how you behaved.

Noah:

So rightfully so, if they wanna oust you, that's totally up to them. It's a democratic union. I'm a member still. If if if I was I'm not happy with what George said, then it's totally within my rights to oust him.

Sean:

Yeah. So I don't think many people would debate or deny or question the moral validity of actually ousting him because that is the democratic process. But I do think there has been quite quite a disgusting kind of hateful campaign against George because of his comments. Now listen, I know this we we don't agree with what he said. Yeah.

Sean:

However, one has to realize that now the narratives coming out of this is that the left are known for violent language. The left are basically the ones spearheading a lot of violence in politics when the reality is a lot of right wing politics has been violent for a very long time.

Noah:

Yeah. I agree. I mean, I think to a few things I would say is, like, if we're gonna keep it real Let's

Sean:

keep it real.

Noah:

Bare man were making jokes about Charlie Kirk after he got killed. That's just the reality of it.

Sean:

Yeah.

Noah:

Like but George should have had the cognizance to not be doing this in a public forum, especially a public forum, a relatively public forum of an institution that prizes free speech for someone who's essentially assassinated for his use of free speech no matter how inflammatory that was. So you should have, like, the moral sensibility and the intelligence to have realized that. I don't, however, think that the wider discourse around him is in any way valid because he is literally just a student. He is not a political thought leader. He is not a leader within the left wing of politics in The UK, and he's actually being framed as such ex post to validate the argument from a lot of centrist or right wing media that the left are sort of violent in their in their tone.

Noah:

And there's also the push in

Sean:

this kind of, like, meta narrative that diversity, equity, inclusion has gone too far. This is the kind of consequence of having people there. And, I mean, look, if we it just made me think, look here. If we made a mistake and said something out loud that we shouldn't have when we were 20 and we were in some sort of, like, position where you had a lot of eyeballs on you,

Noah:

would the same things be being said about us? Let me take it back to the thing we said at the start of the episode when we talked about our relationship with the Green Party and the fact that if they step out of line, then we're gonna critique them. And I think, like, probably what Council Court got wrong and what we should be trying to move past is this framing of interactions within a deliberative democracy as a one time game, a one time interaction. By deliberative democracy, for those at home that maybe don't know, what I mean is a democracy, there's a proportional voting based around the deliberation between citizens within it. The disc the the ability to discuss with freedom of speech, different ideas, conflicting ideas to then come to some level of consensus.

Noah:

And what's really important to that is the ability to get something wrong and then move past that and have another have another discussion tomorrow. And both for George and this this this canceling from the right, but also we talk about our relationship with certain political agents whether we support them or not, we're totally happy to disagree with them. Like we had with Gary Stevenson on episode one. Gary, like, disagree with you on that. Love your work.

Noah:

We'll continue loving your work. This doesn't mean that you're an enemy of ours or we're an enemy of yours or that we'll never work with you again. And similarly, it was kind of in the nature of what we said about Garylie. Those people out there who are making problematic problematic comments right now about migrants or about ethnic minority in The UK or within members of the transgender community, I disagree with you. I think what you're saying is quite detestable.

Noah:

But I understand that we're in a deliberative democracy, and I we wanna move past that in the best way we can without resorting to violence. So when it comes to George, it's like, this rearing the ugly head of a a finality to discourse and interaction that really isn't necessary in a deliberative democracy.

Sean:

But that's also because one of the assumptions going into that is that players in a deliberative democracy actually have good intentions on both sides, I feel. Mhmm. Because in this particular political climate, it's very tribal. And so it's very much about point scoring versus an idea of, like, you know, what deliberative democracy is intended for, and that's coming to truth. And that's coming to

Noah:

Not truth, though. But let's not get esoteric, it's coming to consensus. Coming to a legit Yeah.

Sean:

And like a legitimate ruling based off like the actual interactions between multiple parties. But in this, it feels very different. It feels like a witch hunt for a guy who made a mistake.

Noah:

Oh, definitely. And George, like, honestly, maybe to his you know, I was raised by, like, a black British Caribbean woman. Yeah? So maybe let me impart some of that kind of old school wisdom on you no matter how archaic this might sound. You are stood in front of them people in the Oxford Union with long dreads and attracts you on.

Noah:

We're not we're not there yet where you can then go on to, like, make comments about Charlie Kirk and think that something like this isn't gonna happen. Not saying that it was right, totally not legitimate, but I'm in no way surprised because this is the country that I thought it was.

Sean:

Yeah. For sure. And speaking of university, moving on. Today, it's been announced that yet again, university tuition fees in England are set to rise with inflation from next year. So what right now, it's all a bit up in the air, but what we're looking at is that tuition fees will go over £10,000 a year.

Sean:

Crazy. And that's

Noah:

Do know how many BMWs the boys in Telhamnets about that?

Sean:

But you know what our metric is? How many El Caf meals we

Noah:

could get? Do know how many El Caf I could get? Like, the substitution between a uni degree and El Caf is getting crazy right now.

Sean:

And you had some thoughts that you wanted to share on that.

Noah:

Well, first things first. Yeah. I am setting up a an investment portfolio for people to subscribe to, and we're gonna be betting against all of Kirstjarma's old tweets. Everything Kirstjarma Kirstjarma committed to up until becoming prime minister, we're gonna be hedging our bets against that. Because if I remember correctly, 2020, Kirstjarma was screaming from the rooftops.

Noah:

We need to stop spiraling student debt. We need to I think he even ran, like, his leadership one of his leadership pageant was, like, scrap student loans. Like, student fees. Like, my gosh.

Sean:

But we remember what happened to the Lib Dems back in the coalition government and how they will never be able they were never able to actually recover from making that blunder of literally saying that they were gonna lower tuition fees to literally when they were in government end up raising it.

Noah:

Yeah. And that's what I mean about that docile nature of British, the British population today. It's like the Lib Dems only now are just slightly starting to recover from that. Labour made the calculation, and they can just pass that out as an offhand press briefing on a Tuesday. I think that people won't react to it.

Sean:

And I feel like this has come, from a wider push and a wider movement around the idea that is universe or this wider conversation around the fact that is university actually for everyone? Is this gonna deter people from going to university? Do we need actual kind of other alternative avenues for people post secondary education?

Noah:

I mean I mean, this is I'll say. It's like, there's a running theme naturally because it is the running theme within our economy. That, like, the money is being concentrated at the top. And because politicians are beholden to corporate interests and the interest of the ultra wealthy, they're gonna carry on trying to pick your pockets as the middle class or the working class until you're you are widely impoverished and there's two great swaves of people. And what you'll see with the budget coming out, this month, is, again, Rachel Reeves will go back and try and, pick the pockets of the middle class once more and ignore, I expect, the ultra wealthy.

Noah:

The other thing I'll say is Labour's whole thesis around and you actually saw Kiss Armour tweeting about this today trying to, like, have a little dig at, your friend of mine, Zach Polanski. Labour's whole thesis around how they're gonna make any sort of change is growth. What they're basically trying to convince The UK population of is this, is that we're not gonna give you a bigger proportion of the pie. We're not gonna redistribute wealth, but everyone's just gonna get richer. Like, the country's gonna grow at such a rate that you're gonna be good in the end.

Noah:

And what does growth entail? Growth, quite literally, in terms of productive capacity, requires increased productivity. Increased productivity is a whole variety of things, but one of them is upskilling yourself. Upskilling yourself academically, upskilling yourself technically. What are the what's the classic arena for this to be done?

Noah:

University, among other places, but university and, like, secondary education and further education. And totally in contravention or as a contradiction of their policy, labor are now making it harder for people to improve their productive capacity. So where's this growth that it come from? No. It's just short termism.

Sean:

I know. That that makes that makes a lot of sense. But do you actually think university is really for that these days?

Noah:

No. No. No. As in and we've spoken about this again before. It's like, honestly, this is the North Star and you'll see the way as as you'll see in our in our in essay.

Noah:

But, no, university no longer is primarily about the academic uplift or academic amelioration of people. It's about it's become financialized. Ized.

Sean:

Yeah. Of course.

Noah:

And we we saw this on our time at Oxford University and in countless other places as in the the the quality of education is lessening because of cost cutting, the amount of students is increasing because, obviously, university is trying to protect their bottom line and just expand their expand their endowments. So the financialization of the academic sector is totally in contravention with what it's set out to do. There's there's an adverse selection problem

Sean:

there. And I think even in our experience at Oxford, own though those who are actually, you know, bear the the real fruits of university university to take them down the academic route were those who are actually a bit more focused on becoming the academic post university, whereas the other opportunities for the rest of us, what was presented to us, just as you say, the financial opportunities to go into the big banks, consulting, law, etcetera. And there was actually a recent interesting article that came out in Feet this week talking about that misallocation of talent, that misallocation of human capital where the brightest minds right now are needed to solve the most pressing issues in the country. And yet that talent is just getting absolutely swept up by the big banks, the big consulting firms, the big law firms. And that in and of itself as well has pretty much terrible consequences when we're probably living at a time where we need the smartest minds to tackle some of the most pressing civilization problems.

Noah:

And just even to push that the economic trade off even more, if we make university even more expensive, have these great minds coming out of university with even more debt, what becomes even more enticing? Trying to pay off that debt with a high paying job in finance where you just pinch pennies off the pounds of the working person. Precisely. Thanks again, Keir.

Sean:

If if only me and, if only other university students were actually brave enough as us to just start a loss making podcast and talk about politics. Martin. The love of the game, which is great. Just bring on to something also quite interesting. And, Noah, talk to me.

Sean:

How well acquainted are you with artificial intelligence?

Noah:

Honestly, you know I'm a bit of a luddite. I'm a bit of a caveman. Like, behind the scenes at North Star is very much Sean trying to get me to use AI and me just trying to write stuff on paper.

Sean:

And the only time you actually, you know, use AI is when you send me Queen Elizabeth dancing to drill

Noah:

No. Or No. No. One you know the one I like? Queen Elizabeth is serving oxtail in Harlem.

Noah:

Wait. Come on now. Like, this is great.

Sean:

So speaking of, you know, our brightest minds solving civilizational problems Yeah. Well, OpenAI, ChatGPT have just announced that they will be able to allow human allow adults to have kinkier conversations after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that they will soon allow its chatbot to engage in erotica for verified adults. Days of Kiyama, some may say.

Noah:

Alexa, play Kraken Kone and freak it a week.

Sean:

So, look, after three years of banning mature content, Altman said that his company, they decided that they're not actually the elected moral police of the world anymore and therefore wanted to allow more user freedoms for adults. And so OpenAI is definitely not the first company by any means to actually, you know, try and profit from sexualized AI, but sexual content with AI is actually significantly significantly growing. And, Noah, as someone who's an expert in this field who uses it for these particular purposes, I actually kinda wanna dig a little deeper into this idea of how profit maximizing incentivizes OpenAI to make this move and the impact, the sheer impact that's actually going to have on civilization as a whole, which is a easy question to answer, may I add?

Noah:

Bro, flying cars, I was promised. A cure to cancer, I was promised. Four day work week, I was promised, but AI is churning out twerks. Like, honestly, I am I mean, you know, there's a serious element to this. There's a joke element to this.

Noah:

Yeah. Like, hey. There's gonna be AI boobies. Like, that's the the funny part of it is that the second part of it is this, like, the nature of, like, financial totalitarianism, as we've kind of coined it, is that you're pushed to appease shareholders within a timeline and within, like, an economic framework that satisfies them. So the case for, like, central central some level of centralized or government input into AI is now becoming all the more clear.

Noah:

People remember this perhaps because it feels so far in the distance, but OpenAI used to be a nonprofit. OpenAI used to, like, have all these ideological goals of solving cancer and, like, and and solving world hunger and redistribution schemes, and solving the crime in Tahamans.

Sean:

Hopefully, you could solve that.

Noah:

Yeah. Solving the crime in Tahamans would be great, Sam Altman. But now what we're seeing is as they've taken investment from Larry Ellison among loads of others, they're pushed to financialize their model so that these investors can see a return. And what that means, they're preying on the what I'll describe as using economic term as the most elastic forms of consumption. By that, I mean is what can you stretch the price of to a level where people will no longer stop consuming?

Noah:

It'll just carry on because they really, need this. And these are people's base desires and base needs. So we're looking at people's need for friendship. I think there was, like, the New York Times ad, like, make a friend with an AI chat.

Sean:

So across the subway in in in New York, we're seeing Friend AI. So that is literally a company where it's more Black Mirror than you can ever imagine, where it's a AI powered wearable that you can have around your neck, and it's listening to you all the time. So it's different from ChatGPT because this is meant to be a friend that has memory capacity that builds over time to follow you along and just give you companionship.

Noah:

And, I mean, I oftentimes so I think about it this way when you think about when maybe we should look for more government intervention in economics and when we think, yeah, this is becoming like financialization is becoming irrational is when the problem is created and then a further problem is created to solve that. So there's two trades there. So from a so we think about, like, you create isolation through social media, and then you create the friend chatbot to solve that. From, like, a purely financial perspective, that's great. Two trades have occurred.

Noah:

Two sales have occurred. GDP is up. In reality, the better solution would be, how about we just solve isolation? How about we just restore community?

Sean:

But then that's the thing as well. I think in this context, it's so misleading because they're justifying it under this principle of freedom because freedom is so valued to people, in Western and liberal society where the reality is, though, is actually pay playing on addiction. Right? Because in our heads, our sort of dopamine receptors, will trick us into thinking that, you know what, I'm making this choice to use chat GPT to kind of pleasure me in whatever way I want, etcetera. Where the reality is that this is actually just getting us addicted to the product.

Noah:

Yeah. And because of countless different things like, our generation, Gen Z, I guess we are, is like the most sexist generation. And it feels like they're preying upon structural things that have produced a really lonely generation. So so I would put even further beyond that. It is often brought up by, like, socialist theorists or theorists who have an idea outside of anything from capitalism.

Noah:

It's like capitalism is framed as, freedom. You have the freedom to talk to this chatbot or that chatbot. Maybe your chatbot's a brunette. Maybe your chatbot's an alien. But do I have the freedom to actually seek romance?

Sean:

But do you have the freedom to even have the capacity to resist that in the first place?

Noah:

Precisely. I do have the freedom to just have a community outside of me needing a chatbot to be my friend. If I wanted to live near my friends, would that be possible, or would rents be so extortionate that most of my friends can't even move out of their parents' house? Would rents be, so crazy that we can't even have, a secondary space within our home where we're just sharing rooms in a HMO? Do I have the freedom to have that kind of community?

Noah:

Or with my freedom, I get to select whether my chatbot likes football or rugby?

Sean:

Yeah. And, actually, just to kind of signpost viewers to actually some reading, this goes down to even philosophical concepts around the principles of freedom. So Isaiah Berlin talks about negative liberty and positive liberty. Right? So negative liberty is this idea that freedom is all about the absence of constraints.

Sean:

But positive liberty is all about this idea of freedom being autonomy, self determination.

Noah:

And substantive freedoms. Freedom to do actually something that is part of my human essence. Precisely.

Sean:

That concludes the state of play. Now we're actually gonna move into what our favorite section of the show lets me land.

Noah:

Return viewers will know. This is the part of the show where either myself or Sean launches a fiendish fiery hot take. Not necessarily because we totally believe it, but because we wanna get it out in discourse. We wanna have the idea bouncing off each other, to see if we can land this plane.

Sean:

And it's currently two nil to me. So, hopefully, you can be two one today.

Noah:

Remember, like I said, this guy doesn't know balls. He doesn't even know what the score line even means. So I've I've come up with this idea. And I don't think anyone said this phrase before, but I think I'm gonna be the first in The UK to pioneer a new way of thinking about immigration.

Sean:

Oh, dear. Here we go.

Noah:

We need to stop small boats. Oh my gosh. I'm gonna I might trademark that even. I think that's a good one. We need to stop small boats.

Sean:

Good. And then tell me, what do you mean by that?

Noah:

So what I mean by that is this, is in a quite serious way, we have this, like, harrowing scenes day on day of people coming across on dinghies from the European coast to try and arrive in The UK to seek asylum or as refugees or as illegal immigrants, some of them. And this is really animated both visually and semantically and logically a lot of what we cast class of the right wing. The idea of this invasion of working age men, coming across that are gonna commit crimes. We don't know where they're from, and they're gonna victimize, our beautiful blue eyed blonde haired, women and children. And I think quite reactively, what a lot of the left has done is to sort of reject the problem of small boats and to say, because you're villainizing these people so much, what we're gonna do is sort of try and undercut that so that these people aren't seen as villains, which is a very noble thing to do.

Noah:

It's also very true to me. We shouldn't be villainizing our fellow humans who are literally making, like, a horrific journey across, like, choppy seas to try and arrive at our country. But I think there's an alternative route to tackle this problem of the discussion around immigration and stopping small boats. I think people on the left, people who have, like, a humanitarian conscience should actually be quite alarmed by the amount of small boats that are coming across both the Mediterranean Sea and the channel into Britain because that denotes the level of instability within the global order within the around the world and the amount of refugees that are being produced. And we should, in fact, seize the narrative from the right agreeing that, yes, we should be stopping small boats.

Noah:

Like, these are not economic migrants that are flying into Heathrow to start their new job in Canary Wharf. These are people that have been pushed to levels of desperation. They are risking life and limb to arrive on our shores. We should be stopping small boats, but we should be stopping small boats by creating less refugees, by creating less asylum seekers at the source. And this should be the narrative that the right should be running with.

Noah:

Because a lot of times the right, they start to they like I understand where this comes from. The image of people arriving at our shores for a lot of, like, perhaps fiendishly patriotic people might feel like this is an invasion, and they want to see something equally as visceral to respond to that. You even hear these horrific people sort of saying, we should shoot them down or or wherever it is, or we should have them caged in in Calais and x, y, and z. So understand where that that appeal is for the the the visual response that we can see these people being deterred. But in fact, these people have been pushed to level of desperation clearly that leaving them in Calais or this and the third is not gonna deter them because they made land journeys across Europe and then across sea to try and get here.

Noah:

So in fact, a much more effective route and a much more effective channel that actually leverages Britain's place within the world order is trying to solve the problem of refugee creation at source. What do I mean by this? Quite clearly. Well, even if we look at some of the refugees that are in UK at the moment, Afghan refugees, Iraqi refugees, Syrian refugees. Even we can take it back to partition wars in in in the England's role within South Asia, Pakistani refugees back in the day, Bangladeshi refugees back in the day, Indian refugees back in day.

Noah:

What do these people all have in common? Britain has had a part to play in producing these unstable situations that go on to produce refugees. Even if we look at the, currently, this like, the the problems with Palestine, will it be any surprise if five years down the line, we see, thousands of Palestinian refugees rocking up on our shores absolutely desperate because their country had been totally destabilized at the hands of a state that is, allied with Britain, at the hands of weapons often supplied by Britain? So, yes, we do need to top small boats, but at the source and effectively because that is the humanitarian thing to do.

Sean:

Right. So because this is a let me land, I think it's gonna be very difficult for me to actually say, no. We shouldn't. I mean, we should just, like, kinda let them come through. But I do kinda wanna piggyback off some of the interesting things that you said there.

Sean:

Because I feel like in this conversation, people don't really understand the pervasive effects of colonialism. Mhmm. So even if I take it further back here, just from a personal anecdote, my grandma, okay, Muslim lady born in Trinidad under the British Empire, She grew up in school singing Christian hymns, singing God Save the Queen. And as a Caribbean person, she thought she was British. Mhmm.

Sean:

Right? This is what colonialism has done. Now we have a bunch of people making treacherous journeys across the world to come to this country, and people are asking, well, hang on. They wouldn't say countries before. Why are they choosing here out of all places?

Sean:

And this is quite literally just the consequence of those of that historical legacy. The fact that our countries went into their countries, destabilized it in the first place. And so the real people that people should be blaming for all of this isn't the kind of individual just wanting to make, you know, a better life for themselves. Yeah. I feel like any individual wants to make a better life for themselves.

Sean:

Right? Like, if I was in that state, I would do anything I could to actually find a country where I can make a living for myself. Rather, it's actually the ancestors. Yeah. Right?

Sean:

The actual people who made the decision in the first place to destabilize these countries.

Noah:

No. I agree. And I'll I'll I'll give three brief points just to back up what you said there. One, I'll give a personal anecdote as well. My grandma brought up in Dominica where the native language there for the Afro Caribbean people is Quail.

Noah:

But when she would be walking home from school under the British colonial rule, there'll be monitors on the side of the road, which would literally whip children if they were heard speaking Quail instead of English. So naturally, she started to think that Quail was a was not a great language to be learning, and she ended up not teaching my mom that. And so our vernacular is English. Naturally, we're gonna find more of a cultural home within England. Second one I wanna say, and let's take it back to, the father of modern liberalism, John Locke.

Noah:

John Locke has this idea of how we can come into ownership of private property. And what he says is that by mixing your labor, your physical exertion with the land through that mechanism, you come into private ownership. What I'll say is this, my grandma and a lot of people around the world were born in a British Empire and mixed their labor with the British Empire in a way that for anyone who understands liberal ideology or liberal thinking, gave them some sort of effective ownership or legitimate ownership over that portion of the empire. When the British Empire recessed back to the the British Isles, even though, obviously, there's expansion on the world, but when it recessed back to the British Isles, it took with it a lot of that wealth and a lot of that political stability from these countries that was not rightly gained. That was from the labor mixed from slaves in the Caribbean, indentured servants around the world, menial workers in the the the Asian Subcontinent.

Noah:

Even if you go to Dominica today, you will see there's no railways in Dominica, but there is broken railways that the British government took away with them and was not be able to well, was not able to be upkept because of the state of the economics after the British government left because they took all the wealth with them. So is there any wonder that people that have mixed their labor with the land and gained that liberal effective ownership of some portion of the British Empire's wealth see that they're not being rightly rightly compensated for that, and are not able to survive in a country that's had its, like, rightfully deserved profits stripped away from them. The third thing I'll say is, yeah, is alongside that recession of the British Empire is also, like, I often wonder if I was ever confronted by one of these EDL people. Oh, where are you from? I don't know.

Noah:

Was I'm from East London. Oh, where's your parents from? Well, both my parents, both black and white one, born in England. Where's your grandparents from? Well, on the white side, they're born in England.

Noah:

On the black side, they were born in the British Empire.

Sean:

And then that's where you say, I'm 53% white guys.

Noah:

Don't

Noah:

worry. But it's like and the the same holds true for a lot of people, whether they're from, like, any part of the Commonwealth is, yeah, cool. Maybe, like, the country that my parents are born in right now is not part of Britain. But when they were born there, was part of Britain. So we're as British as you are, especially considering we haven't even got our our good comeuppance for the amount of work that our families did.

Sean:

Yeah. No. No. No. I I'm well, this has let me land on.

Sean:

I'm in complete agreement, so we can't

Noah:

But even to even to link it back to the original point of stop small boats is this will continue happening in Britain in some form or another way where we'll reveal legitimate economic migration or people seeking asylum or refugee or refugee status if Britain doesn't actually leverage its position within the world order to stabilize these countries. Not in some sort of Tony Blair governor of Gaza way, but in an actual way of recognizing our exploitative role in a lot of these supply chains, The Congo, Sudan, supporting UAE backed militias in The Sudan, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Sean:

Yeah. For sure. And I think just to end on that as well, I want to add that there is definitely a sort of beggars can't be choosers mentality when it comes to this Mhmm. Which I think is a bit of an injustice because and it's also quite hypocritical because if anyone was in that situation, they'd also do the same thing. And I think

Noah:

Even one one point I wanted to add on that as well is, like, any any state a reality of having any sort of, like, land state territory is that people are gonna arrive at your border, you should have a mechanism set up to deal with them or not. These people on the right wing, are we expecting there to be a time when no one arrives at our border? And that's just like the the the nature of having a country. What we should be more concerned about is what has happened to the state of the public sector that we can now no longer fund a service that's able to process these people in a reasonable way? Shouldn't that be the question?

Noah:

If you're waiting for a world where no one tries to enter Britain, let me tell you something. I've got a bridge to sell you. But what we should really be addressing your concerns to is why is the public sector assessed so much we can't deal with a reasonable level of people trying to enter this country.

Sean:

And let's let's just not forget as well the fact that safe routes to get into this country are completely obliterated, and so it's been forcing people to actually take this journey.

Noah:

Yeah.

Sean:

So, yeah, I think he landed that. I mean, I was basically agreeing the whole time anyways, so kinda shafted that segment,

Noah:

but

Sean:

it's an important conversation to have.

Noah:

It's an important conversation to have.

Sean:

Welcome back to the echo chamber where myself and Noah are just going to get our ideas out on a topic that means a lot to us, blocking out outside sort of other opinions and just keeping it between us.

Noah:

Last week, we had a little bit of a debate about what the echo chamber actually means. In fact, we put the episode in one of our first ever political clients group chat just to highlight to him. He's a quite a high ranking lawyer. Without any prompt, he got in there and said, Noah, spot on. An echo chamber is when there is one person experiencing a cacophony of their own noise because they're spouting the same ideas back to them or group people.

Noah:

Does the ideas then come back to them? This brain rock guy thought an echo chamber was only an online term.

Sean:

Again, misinformation in real time. You're really good at this shit, though. Maybe you should actually

Noah:

Start a podcast.

Sean:

There you go. So, anyways, look, the question I wanna focus on is this. How do we actually win back the conversation about multiculturalism? And I wanna root it in a political framework that we are both accustomed to. So Benedict Anderson is a political philosopher, and he wrote this amazing book called Imagined Communities, which is basically to understand nationalism and understand what the nation really is.

Sean:

And in that, he basically says, as in the core argument, that the nation is an imagined community because, ultimately, you will never meet every single person in the nation. You might meet your neighbors. You might meet your work colleagues. You might, you know, meet your friends. You see people online, and that's about it.

Sean:

And as and as such, it's people's imagination that constructs the nation. And so in a lot of the rhetoric that we see online about nationalism and the British nation, etcetera, we're seeing these big narratives, these overarching themes that, you know, British identity is being corrupted by the other. That other has taken and makes that other has shape shifted in many forms. Right now, it's quite clear. It's Muslims that people are targeting and saying that this does not belong or this way of life does not belong with British identity.

Sean:

And so that is used as an example to undermine the entire institution of multiculturalism, pinpointing it as a scapegoat of why things have gone wrong in the country. And so it's a really broad topic, but trying to understand how do we actually talk about multiculturalism in a way that could not even necessarily convinces people, but just allows people to understand that this isn't the thing that is making your life go wrong.

Noah:

Alright. My answer is not gonna be probably to the liking of people listening and

Sean:

watching at home.

Noah:

But first question, what is multiculturalism? What do mean by that?

Sean:

So I think what I mean, right, is the kind of the equilibrium coexistence of multiple people from different cultures, different faiths, different backgrounds living together. What do you think it is?

Noah:

Well, no. No. I agree with you. My point more being this is I think there is some level of assimilation that is needed for people to interact in, like, the British in British society. I think the two problems that Britain has uniquely is because of its colonial history, there is a hollow understanding of what British identity is outside of empire.

Noah:

Mhmm. So people back in domestic Britain are trying to reach for this idea of what Britain is, but the only thing they can do is just othering people. That is that binary oppositionalism that me and you've spoken about before, where people only have a sense of identity relative to the other. I think Britain suffers from that incredibly. The other thing I'll say is that British values British political values are really underpinned by this idea of liberalism and deliberative democracy, etcetera, etcetera, which cherishes the idea that we can have rule of law and order within a situation of reasonable plurality.

Noah:

Or we've just done away with that. It it's like the British is the British legal system not set up for people to exist alongside each other within a state of reasonable plurality where they have the private sphere of their own life and the public sphere within which they interact. Guess what it seems like, that you just can't abide by a Muslim following the laws in every way, but just being Muslim.

Sean:

Do you know what's interesting? I saw this video online, and it was one of these kind of, like, right wing shows that went into Whitechapel to pretend as if it's this exotic area where these Muslims have taken over the place.

Noah:

Exotic, but, like, in a good way. It's exotic like The Caribbean.

Sean:

But but this is what I mean. And they were trying to pedal and play into this narrative that, yeah, London's corrupted and things are done. But if you actually understand the dynamics of Whitechapel, know that, okay, cool. A lot of Bengalis live there. A lot of very strict Muslims live there.

Sean:

But there's also a of gay gentrifiers who live there, and they live in peaceful coexistence. And I think there's something here around this idea of experience because a lot of the people who hold these views have I don't think they've actually encountered or, you know, had much lived experience in kind of urban, diverse, multicultural areas. And so something I like to think about is from because we're we're both fairly real well traveled

Noah:

Yeah.

Sean:

Is like the uncle index. I see here that when it's a hot summer's day in the East End over here, you get real geezer's top off, belly out, pine. Yeah. Right? If I've traveled into Jordan, right?

Sean:

On a hot summer's day, I see all the uncles, they're not belly out, it's under the thobe, but the belly's there. Yeah. Enjoying a cup of tea, drinking some some coffee.

Noah:

Yeah.

Sean:

And this type of like experience allows you to understand that really people are fundamentally the same just in different brush strokes.

Noah:

It is a I I agree with you to a certain extent. But one thing I will say is, like, there is a tendency on the left to kind of reject right wing criticism in its entirety to say, oh, there's no problem. I think there is a bit of a problem, but I don't think, like I think there is a bit of, like, culture isolation going on, especially in parts of the East and and around the country where communities don't mix with one another. But it actually just takes two to tango. Yeah.

Noah:

100 Like, the the maybe the English patriots, quote unquote, they're saying, oh, they don't they don't integrate. It's like, but you integrate with them as well. Like, they're living totally especially if they're living totally within the law, they're not doing anything illegal. These are, like, citizens of the country that are paying their way and getting by. It's like, you can't just like, they don't owe it to you.

Noah:

What they owe to you is to, like, live legally and pay their owe it to you to come to the pub and, like, ingratiate themselves and ask your name in the same way that, like, you don't have to go to the mosque. But if you ask this British patriot who really cares about integration, go and integrate them. Go and make some friends. I'm just lucky enough to, like, have lived in an area where I grew up around loads of Algerians, Bengalis, Somalis, Caribbean people, white people, everything. I I went to a Catholic school, Irish, Mediterranean, Polish, but I could have also not integrated, and I could have lived side by side with the Bengalis and Tower Hamlets and Somalis and Tower Hamlets and felt, oh, they just keep to themselves.

Noah:

I would have been keeping to myself as well.

Sean:

No. Precisely. And I think yeah. I think I do definitely wanna do in the future some more thinking around how can we actually create the spaces or what other initiatives that people can actually do to make people cross that barrier. So some of our old videos I've done in the past is literally go into a right wing march

Noah:

Yeah.

Sean:

Go into like a Zionist march and just asking people about their opinions and having civil conversations. But I do wonder if there's any sort of, like, kind of formal vehicles that

Noah:

can exist. Think, honestly, you just gotta look for the mediums of interaction that aren't alienating. So, yeah, cool. Like, the Yakis aren't gonna come pub with you. The same way that, like, the EDL man are not gonna go moss.

Noah:

That's just not gonna happen. But you might be able to kick ball together. You might be able to get a little little ball session down at Power League together. That's fine. But and we're not so we're not so alien to one another.

Noah:

There aren't those shared mediums of integration. It's just looking for those. And not complaining when when someone doesn't wanna do something with you that's totally outside of their culture.

Sean:

And the final question on this is then, so what's the reflections on how to win that conversation back then? Because the seem like they're winning. The right do seem like they they have a dominant narrative over the fact that there is a sense of a big kind of cultural inferiority amongst the the other?

Noah:

I don't know if they are winning. I think just the question is like, so what is this British culture then? Like, as if I was like a refugee right now, like, just got to London and being told, oh, you're not assimilating. I'll just be honest. So what is this British culture?

Noah:

I'll get involved. Give me an answer. I'll get involved. Obviously, there's certain things I won't be doing, is totally my right. Like, part of British legal societies that I don't have to do certain things.

Noah:

For example, if I'm Muslim, I'm not gonna be coming to get a bacon sari with you. But, like, I'll come along and maybe get sent on the side or get little fish and chips. And that's weird. But just outline to them clearly and not in a way that's othering and we're gonna hang the flags and intimidate. What is this British culture that you speak of?

Noah:

Let me get involved. Because I have my understanding of it, and a whole host of different communities are involved.

Sean:

And that's the question. What is British culture? Leave it in the comments below. So I think that wraps up for the echo chamber. Think I that was a bit more of a let me land, so maybe we should have switched it a bit.

Noah:

That is true. It's true. But, you know, look at look at that versatility.

Sean:

There we go.

Noah:

Jeremy, we're just flowing.

Sean:

So thank you so much for watching today. Noah, how how was that? The third episode?

Noah:

It was good. Third episode. I'm feeling like a just a natural part of my routine now.

Sean:

Now listen, we are going over a little bit, so we're gonna keep this short, but wrap things up.

Noah:

Too many thoughts. Too many thoughts.

Sean:

Too too much thinking.

Noah:

But Also, let us know in the comments. Like, for the longer episode before the for the shorter episodes. Maybe it's your first time watching. Maybe it's your last time watching. Good reading.

Sean:

But we all but we do obviously want to provide value. So we both have one thing we want to share. So on my day to day in my job, we've just launched a mini foundation for charities and community community organizations to apply, and will give them unrestricted funding. And if you're part of the nonprofit sector, you know about the fact that it's very hard to come across these grants. And so if your community organization, the CIC, or anything like that, search the Flint Foundation on Google and LinkedIn, and it will come up and you'll be able to have something to help power your, yeah, your progress and your impact.

Noah:

Nice. Very nice. I'm back again. Boring. Just reading book stuff.

Noah:

A friend of mine recently Jobless. Yeah. Recently read a book I recommended to her called Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. James Baldwin, one of my favorite writers, born in the Harlem Renaissance and writer from New York, black writer, homosexual writer as well. And it's a book that's kind of outside of his particular canon, but for me is one of the most profound and like passionate portrayals of romance and love.

Noah:

It's quite a short book. I recommend it to literally anyone. But yeah, James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room.

Sean:

So thank you so much guys. And remember, keep your eyes on the North Star. We're posting every week.

Noah:

Substack, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok,

Sean:

follow

Noah:

us and everything. Comment, comment. We literally read every comment. I can't help it.

Sean:

So take it easy guys. See you next week.

Noah:

See you next week.