What do you mean how do I sleep at night?
You could say that he was a terrorist.
"You could!" You can't even say it! It's shocking.
I've never said every single person that reads Daily Mail is stupid,
however...
Those are the real issues we should be focusing on.
There is a real media double standard
in the way that
white terrorism is framed
as opposed to violence
and terrorism committed by black
and brown people.
You know, we're looking at different kinds of reasons that a white
terrorist might have for committing a mass shooting.
Were they bullied as a child?
Do they have a mental health problem?
Let's look at Nikolas Cruz.
Trump supporter. He goes in, he shoots loads of kids.
The fraught nature of this discussion around what is
terrorism tends to downplay the fact
that we should call Islamist terrorism terrorism.
There's a... We should. Yes.
But on the other hand, the shooting that Nikolas Cruz carried
out might not be terrorism, might be a mass school shooting.
Yeah, but... And what is wrong with having that conversation?
We can have that conversation,
but then I think we need to be very clear about
what we define as terrorism.
If you Google the word terrorist,
it's all stereotypically brown men in scarves, right?
A completely unacceptable definition of something that white media has
essentially created to imprint a certain aesthetic on a certain word.
Often the, you know, discussion about this turns into
if you don't agree, then you are playing into this racist...
OK, but the ones that... ..narrative. Yeah.
Just for me to finish.
When we're talking about something like school mass shootings committed
by someone Nikolas Cruz, who should not be forgiven just on the basis
that he had a hard upbringing or that he was potentially
mentally ill, whether or not this was of the same qualitative attack
as, for example, the Paris attacks.
Well, no, there was different things at stake there.
You know, you're saying
there's a clear qualitative difference. What is that difference?
Well, I mean, to take the example of Florida,
he was not part of or said to be a part of a bigger organisation.
He had made some mentions of support for...
There are a lot of Isis terrorists that are not part of Isis.
They are just a random Muslim living in, you know,
maybe east London who then just says, "Oh, yeah, I'm part of Isis."
They find they've actually never had any contact with any
organisation, so... If they wore an Isis cap
and took a photograph of it, they would be part of Isis,
but if you wear a Trump cap and take a photograph,
it's not cos of Trump. But hang on, Trump and... As much as we...
As much as we can say that Trump is not a good politician -
I'm no fan of Trump - he's not the same as Isis, you know.
Stable genius, though. He's not the same as Isis.
He may not be the same as Isis, but the thing is that somebody can be
a lone wolf and a white supremacist terrorist,
but they cannot be a lone wolf and a Muslim.
We know that the Florida shooter was a member of white supremacist
organisations, we know that he had made racist
and anti-Semitic comments, white supremacist comments,
to his peers, so we know that he was taken by a specific ideology.
White supremacy is done by... Not that it's not done by white people,
it's done by the default human beings to which all other human
beings are compared, and therefore we have to think about their
upbringing, we have to think about mental health services,
we have to think, "Where were the parents?" We have to think
we as a society are at fault here for not looking after our children.
Would you say that the guy who drove into the crowd of worshippers
outside Finsbury Park Mosque, was he a terrorist?
No, but that was linked to terrorist attacks,
so it was, it was in the discussion about...
I mean, what he was doing, he claimed that it was in relation to
previous terrorist attacks... And that's political, isn't it?
Yeah, and that was political. So is he a terrorist?
Yeah, well, yeah, you could say that he was a terrorist.
"You could!" You can't even say it! It's shocking. I'm actually shocked.
The thing about terrorism and the way that we qualify that is -
and this is not saying that the murder is any less bad, right -
is about undermining a whole society's way of living.
The fact that you define it as somebody that's undermining
the morals, the fabric of society,
what is a white supremacist terrorist doing if not...
If somebody is stabbing an MP of this country...
I guess we live in a white supremacist society.
..stabbing an MP and killing her and saying, shouting, "Britain First,"
I mean, is that not undermining the moral fabric of our society?
We should be quite firm in calling him a terrorist.
You should be quite firm in calling the murderer of Jo Cox a terrorist.
If you can murder a politician in this country, you know,
actually murder an MP and there's even a conversation about
whether you're a terrorist, that is insane... Outrageous.
..because if a Muslim killed an MP, there's not even a question,
you are a terrorist.
Recently, Corbyn was accused of being a spy
and he had a tirade against what he called
the right-wing press, calling for change
in relation to what the press can publish.
Similarly, Stormzy made an announcement against
the Daily Mail and there's been a kind of cultural trend to
slag off the tabloids and I think that for individuals
and young people, like us, who want to change the world, you must
defend the absolute freedom of the press.
You're arguing for freedom to publish regressive stories that
essentially damage and can cause more harm than good.
For example, Richard Littlejohn's column states
that Dustin Lance Black and Tom Daley, who are having a baby,
and his column said that two men shouldn't be the norm.
Do you think that's freedom of speech?
It certainly was a gross article and I think most people would
condemn it, but he should be allowed to publish it.
But do you not think it incites self-hatred for queer kids?
Do not think it's dangerous for suicide rates?
Well, the argument... The response to bad speech... Yeah.
..is always more speech.
You can't win an argument unless you have an argument. That's what
I always say... I agree with that and I do think... That's fair.
The thing is I understand your argument for freedom of speech,
but the minute that, you know, if somebody wants to come into
a conversation and they want to call me a Paki
or something like that, is that freedom of speech, is that fine?
Like, where do we draw the line?
I'm sure you would agree you would not expect to see it in a newspaper.
No, and a good journalist wouldn't publish them and a good editor
wouldn't keep it in. Would you fight for their freedom to use them?
Yes, because... So you think... Not because I think it's good
or right... It's troubling because theory is one thing,
but the real life, lived experiences of people who are demonised every
day by publications like the Daily Mail, there's a real problem here.
There is, unfortunately,
a tendency to paint people as stupid almost, so that, like,
all Daily Mail readers are just going to...
Not all, but a lot are...
Hang on, are just going to sit in their, you know,
taxi cafes, eating their fried breakfast,
read the Daily Mail and The Sun and go out and be sexist pigs or
hate immigrants,
and that's a really low view of people. Have you seen what people...
But my low view of people, which, yeah, may be true,
I've never said every single person that reads the Daily Mail
is stupid, however, as a... But that's the prejudice.
But it's like there has to be some kind of responsibility.
And I think that goes quite nicely back to Corbyn,
cos what Corbyn was saying wasn't necessarily that we should
censor what the press are allowed to
say. He's saying that we should break up the three corporations
that control almost all of our print media.
That's not a freedom of the press.
That's a dictatorship by three completely opaque, unaccountable,
profit-making organisations,
and so I think if we really want to have a free press,
we do need to regulate billionaires.
But do you trust the state?
I mean, do you trust the state to decide what's in your newspaper?
I trust the state more than I trust the billionaire.
My back instantly gets up when you say regulate
because if we agree as a society, or if you agree amongst yourselves
that you don't like the Daily Mail or you don't like The Sun,
you don't have to read it, you don't have to buy it.
Lots more people get their news online,
where there's lots more alternative news,
where there is a complete opening up now for individuals
who want to publish different media to... I agree. The thing is people
said the same thing about
when printing was first around, but what happened?
The people with more resources dominated the people with less
resources, and we're seeing the same thing on the internet.
The free press in print certainly isn't free
and the free press online is also very dubious.
There are a lot of new digital publications that are popping
up that are essentially funded by these old-school institutions.
Their business is based in click bait,
so it's a free-for-all in that sense.
Good ideas will always win out and this is why society has progressed.
This is why we are a far different
society than we were in the '60s... But look at Trump.
Trump is the president of the United States, so have ideas won out?
And hates press freedom.
He represents a lot of white supremacist ideals, yeah,
and if we're looking at somebody in the White House who is mirroring
the kind of things that I'm complaining about,
we can't with confidence say that they're going to win out.
What you and I might find deeply, deeply offensive, as we know,
other people might not.
That's up for discussion.
What shouldn't be up for discussion
is the ability of people to publish ideas.