Transcript/847: Chatting with Sophie From Mars

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I have great respect for knowledge fight I'm sick of them posing as if they're the

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good guys saying we are the bad guys. Knowledge Fight. Dan and George. Knowledge Fight.

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Andy and Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding.

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Hello Alex, I'm a first-time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work.

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Knowledge Fight. Knowledgefight.com. I love you.

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Hello everyone. Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. My name is Jordan. Unfortunately,

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I'm without my cohost Dan today, but I am joined by Sophie McAllister or Sophie from Mars,

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as I've always known you. Thank you so much for joining us.

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Hey Jordan. It's lovely to be here. I'm here on my favorite podcast. What an honor.

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Yeah. People don't know me. I'm Sophie from Mars. I make video essays on YouTube. Someone

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once called me a video philosopher and I found that phrasing of my job pretty

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helpful because I do think too hard about everything and then write it down and then

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say it on video. So that's probably the easiest way to say what I do. I have my kind of structure

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of how I make content is like a lot of long projects that I spend way, way, way too long

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working on and then kind of fill the time in between with shorter stuff. So my portfolio

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of bigger, more noteworthy stuff is like a while ago, I breathlessly defended the matrix

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sequels with absolutely no shame. More recently, I talked about leftist spaces where there are

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like conspiracy theories. So very relevant to knowledge, right? I looked at Jimmy Dore,

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the gray zone, some people like this, and I just released a video called the world is not ending,

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which is about climate change and how the world is not ending. However, some people who are not

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familiar with me, who have no trust, no reason to trust me, might be thinking, oh, that sounds bad.

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It's not climate denialism. It is my belief that the way things are going to shake out.

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It didn't even occur to me. Yeah, no, that's right. It could be. The world isn't ending.

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Yeah, because nothing is wrong. That I would not have seen coming.

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A friend of mine shared it and someone in her replies was like, is this climate denial? And I

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was like, why would you think that she was sharing climate denial? That would be a hell of a turn for

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her. Yeah. I was more interested in the mushrooms. That was the big thing.

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Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, we can talk in more detail about it, but yeah, it's a project I've

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worked on for two years. And basically for reasons that I detail in this two and a half hour

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documentary essay thing, the monstrosity I've created, I believe the world is not ending.

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And it's all about combating doomerism. And yeah, as you say, I've incorporated mushrooms

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throughout as a kind of motif. Yeah. Bringing my interests together.

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Okay. All right. All right. So, Len, I suppose the obvious next place to go is,

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which one do you think is better? Reloaded or Revolutions? Which are we going for here?

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Well, tragically, I have the worst possible take, which is that Reloaded and Revolutions

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are two halves of one movie that should be viewed in one sitting. And a lot of the hate for them

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comes from the fact that they were released with a big gap in the middle, which is not,

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it's just not the right way to approach them. It's one text. Reloaded people tend to feel

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as better because they're watching the first two acts of a three act story where all of the hype

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and action is being built up. And then Revolutions is like all the payoff and it's just one long

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protracted. And this is how it all worked out, which yeah, to watch on its own is really boring.

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I admit that. Okay. So then that's not really, that's not really an unabashed defense.

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That's kind of, that's somewhat embarrassed. Like, well, listen, if they had done a better job,

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I wouldn't be struggling to defend this movie. It's basically what you just said.

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I, you know, I think Cringe is the mind killer. And I think that we have to,

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we have to approach everything that Wachowskis do seeing that, like, they had just sincere posting

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through it all the time. No, no room to cringe at absolutely anything at all. And, you know, bad,

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terrible, full of mistakes, lazy, awful CGI. These are words people throw around,

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but do they mean anything? This is what I'm trying to get at. Like, are there, are people

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actually describing real objective things about movies when they say those words? I think so.

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That's, that's an interesting question. Are people using objective? See, now here's the

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other thing, you know, you think, oh, the Knowledge Fight fan base, we, the Wonks, we talk

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about conspiracy theories most of the time. Swear to God, most of what we talk about is movies.

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Alex and Infowars, the whole right-wing sphere, they just, it's all movies that they're basing

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their lives off of. That's true. That's true. You know, so we might as well be talking about

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Reloaded when we're talking about what Alex thinks of the current political climate.

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Well, hang on, I just realized my position as having, as having this platform for a moment,

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and I just want to voice my deep, deep discontent that we didn't get more Reset Wars. I was so

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hyped about Reset Wars and I just like, since, you know, if we're talking about Alex, if we're

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talking about living in a simulation, if we're talking, right, where's my Reset Wars? Like,

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I was so excited about it. I, I can't begin to describe to you exactly how we felt the same.

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The exact same. We were, when we had finished recording the episode, we were like, I'm kind of

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excited to see what Reset Wars is about. I know, of course, the rug was pulled.

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Yeah, I mean, that is like, I am, I am actually working on a shorter essay about Alex Jones at

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the moment. And I've said this to you already, that I worry a little bit about running afoul

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of your rules of how to cover Alex Jones, but I think I'll be okay.

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Ah, don't worry about it. We're, we're fine.

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But like, these are the kind of questions that I wind up with, you know, I thought it was cute

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to do a, who is Alex Jones intro? And then I ended up naming all the other sections. Why is

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Alex Jones? What is Alex Jones? How is Alex Jones? Right. Right. The who is almost the most

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meaningless part. Right. Yeah, exactly.

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Who is a tornado?

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Yeah, exactly. So as far as all of your professional work has gone, this, I want to kind

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of tie together with the rampant transphobia that Alex kind of spits out on the near constant and is

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now kind of infected the entirety of that conspiracy space world, right? How is it that

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how is it from your point of view, because I'm, I spend all of my time looking at all of this stuff,

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but I'm a straight white dude. It's all made by people who look like me, you know, I, I don't look

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at, I don't look out and, and feel an attack on me personally. So I'm interested in how it is that

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you consume this whenever it's, it's just horrific shit.

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Well, it's a bit strange because like a lot of this media stuff is, you know,

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well, it's a bit strange because like a lot of this media that goes around, like,

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I think in the UK, maybe it's a little different. In the US, I'm sure that there are a lot more

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people who are much more directly plugged into like QAnon space, Alex Jones space, and then

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going out and doing a hate crime. Here it's like, there are a lot of like, a lot of people we would

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call gamons or whatever, like just, just dudes who are completely red in the face all the time,

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and they read the Daily Mail and whatever else. And it's a lot of like mainstream bigotry that

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actually fuels their hatred. And then we have a parallel conspiracy space of, of toughs who

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are doing a lot of the, a lot of the most Alex Jonesy stuff in the UK, and yet, like,

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not contributing directly to the hate crimes. There's sort of like seven, like there's about

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six or seven guys in between, say, Posey Parker, and someone who yells, like screams at me in the

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street or whatever, which is a thing that's happened to me a bunch, and increasingly over

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the last few years. It's just like, you know, this is something I point out fairly frequently is like,

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the right wing media loves to talk about woke snowflakes, crying, screaming, demanding, whining,

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and it's like, my practical experience is that I'm just trying to go to the climbing center to

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have a little rock climb, and some guy stops and just screams at me in the street, like red in the

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face practically to the point of tears, wanting to attack me. It's like, our side of this is not the,

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not the screaming, crying, emotional side. Yeah, but I don't know how I feel about it.

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As I said, like, this is kind of why I prefaced it a little bit. I have a strange brain,

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and I listen to a bunch of Alex Jones and not as phased as maybe I should be.

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But, you know, it has had a noticeable effect. I can see, like, the influences of

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this conspiracy space stuff. I think that there's, I think that for me, and like,

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I'm a materialist, so this is, putting it together is relatively simple, because a lot of the time

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you can just look at the money and who's paying, who's funding what, right? And it's like,

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and it's like, the attacks on bodily autonomy, and I say bodily autonomy because it's not

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transphobia per se, because a lot of people are like, well, it's politically, LGBTQ people are

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organized into one political block to protect our rights together. But in terms of who's being

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attacked, like, it's an attack on bodily autonomy, and this is why people keep on saying abortion is

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next. Right after transphobia, abortion is next, because states need people, even more than they

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need land. The first thing states need is people in order to function, and then they need to

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control how those people work, like, how those people live and work and think and feel and so on,

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and bodily autonomy is a huge question of that, right? Sylvia Federici's Taliban and the Witch,

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great history of this stuff in the European, you know, Middle Ages and pre-Christian religions,

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there were a lot of beliefs of animism and magic and so on that were literally tortured out of

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people, because as the enclosures took place to enforce patriarchal capitalism, they needed to

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do several things, regularize time, eliminate any myths about the mind and body and create

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a mental structure for people that they believe that the mind and the will is more powerful and

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controls the body, which is like a machine, and that's crucial to the functioning of the state

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and to capitalism, right? And so people discovering or defending rights that they have

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to their own body and life, such as living authentically as myself as a woman, or for

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people who can, you know, people who may need abortions getting abortions, these are issues

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of bodily autonomy, and the state controlling them has to do with it trying to enforce a picture

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where everyone should be not only productive, but reproductive, right? So like, it's very much

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all tied together towards like, states becoming more authoritarian. So it's like, we had this,

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this bizarre little bubble that, you know, I for one was born into 1996, of the of the capitalist

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end of history, like a unique moment of peace and stability, and everything was relatively chill.

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If you lived in the imperial core, if you lived in the richest countries in the world, and then

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as that starts to falter, and as shit falls apart, especially post 9-11, neoliberalism

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neoliberal states need to become more authoritarian, and they need to clamp down on

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stuff that I don't see it as separable at all. So when I say I'm a materialist, like, I think that

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the fact that capitalism is really, really running aground, it's really crashing into like, it's

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potentially final crisis now, with climate change, like, and at the same time, all these states are

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becoming extremely authoritarian. And politicians are allowing a bunch of space for demagogues and

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conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones to like, gain massive support and, and they're sharing

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and funding and spaces and platforms. Yeah, I see this as all extremely, extremely connected.

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Yeah. That sums it up pretty well. Sorry for not being more supportive, I suppose.

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You were just on a roll. I didn't want to, I didn't want to cut in and start tearing things

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apart. Yeah, no, no, Jordan, please debate me. Let's go. I have zero to debate.

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No, this is when out of nowhere, I turn out to be the huge staunch defender of

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United States capitalism and imperialism abroad. That's what I that's my heel turn.

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For the last moment, I got extremely unexpected. Yeah, yeah. The surviving Koch

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brother runs out, but he's not holding a chair. He's holding a like a comically large check.

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Yeah, I like this is this all of this, piecing this together. It's like, this is why I say I'm

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a materialist. People focus a bit too much, I think, on political tendency on the left.

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And there's a David Graeber described. This one's just an in joke for my audience. Sophie said,

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David Graeber, everybody drink. But David Graeber talked about Schismogenesis, right?

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A tendency when when communities of people are near each other, that because your neighbors are

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like A, you need to be like B to contrast yourselves. And so, you know, the context he

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was pointing this out in was like, a lot of evolutionary biologists, evolutionary psychologists

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will have an argument towards efficiency. If something would be efficient, there's no reason

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not to do it. But human psychology isn't like that, right? Our neighbors have developed this

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tool that's more efficient. But we don't use that because we're not them. Right? So, Schismogenesis,

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this is this tendency. And like, I think that a lot of like, what people call leftist infighting

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is this Schismogenesis. And people are way too focused on like, I'm an anarchist, and I'm an ML,

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and I'm a Trotskyite, and I'm a sock dam, and I'm, you know, I'm in the DSA, and I support this

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thing. And it's like, well, so we all want a society where everyone gets what they need,

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and contributes what they can, right? We want a society where our needs aren't mediated by

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capital anymore, because capital is killing the planet. We want a society free of racism and

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transphobia and ableism and these things, right? So, why are we arguing so much?

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And that's why I say I'm a materialist. Like, I am an anarchist, but I just will not waste my time

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arguing, like, too hard. Like, I will talk about stuff that I think is a worthwhile strategy.

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And this is part of like, I don't know, I think that a lot of this, there's old

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workerism that I could spend far too long rambling about, as in the strategy of the 20th century,

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like, organizing the proletariat for revolution. It's all about the workers, the workers of the

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world unite, etc. It's like, parts of this strategy are still useful, but people cling

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to it a little bit too nostalgically. Whereas if you look at our actual material conditions right

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now, people are much more easily organized and mobilized around, and this is something I touch

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on when the world is not ending, about six things, okay? The fossil fuel industry is killing the

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planet. Finance capital will always find new ways to kill the planet. Fascism is rising up. Borders

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are violent and murderous by their nature. The way we do justice in society is fucked and far from

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any notion of actual justice, and we need networks and systems of mutual aid to support each other.

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That's about six things, right? And everything more or less falls into those six things,

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and that's what we should be spending our time on. This is the point that I make in the world

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that's not ending, because I figured if I'm combating people's depression and

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doomerism and feelings of absolute certainty climate change is going to kill us all, one thing

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that's really important is to not treat depression like sadness. I've struggled with depression a lot

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in my life. I don't mind saying, I think it's actually important for me to acknowledge if I'm

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talking about how I'm talking to people who are depressed. It's something I have a lot of

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familiarity with, and it's not just being sad, right? When you're depressed, it's not so much

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that you feel overwhelmingly sad. Usually, you don't feel much at all. You just feel numb and

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hollow, and you can't go anywhere. It feels like you don't want anything. I think that's a really

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crucial part is a lack of desire. Something that I focus on a lot in the world is not ending

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is our desire. What is it we want, right? Because if we're so sure the world is going to end,

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and we're all fucked, well, it sounds like we just can't imagine moving to a kind of world that has

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solved the problem of climate change. If we're saying, well, we have to stop capitalism to stop

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climate change, damn, that's a lot of work. Well, okay, firstly, worst case scenario, capitalism

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causes climate change, and climate change is going to make capitalism impossible.

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So this is a... To call it self-resolving would ignore the whatever, billions of people who are

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going to die. It's obviously horrible. We can't just let it be. That's a bad strategy, but let's

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just look at our worst case scenario. When you pull the pin on a grenade,

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it is essentially self-resolving at that point. It will take care of itself from then on out. You

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are no longer a part of the equation. Yeah, so yes. Sure, sure, sure. But to use your analogy,

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how far we throw the grenade away or whether we can hold onto the grenade for some amount of time

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until we find a deep, deep well to drop it down or something like this, right? There are other

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things to account for, but the worst case scenario is we will reach a point where we're no longer

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waiting for the grenade to go off. This is true. But this isn't like the total of my arguments,

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right? A lot of my point is like, if there is some kind of point before when capitalism makes

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capitalism impossible via climate change, where people can see that that's going to be true,

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and so they'd rather jump before they're pushed and move to something other than capitalism,

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well, when is that point? When does that happen? And my belief is it's a lot sooner than most

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people think. I mean, I suppose my concern there, though, isn't any disagreement I have

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so much as it is like, I agree completely with you. We should have done that in 1987. Sure.

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Whenever they knew what was going to happen. Sure. So it's like that foreknowledge of

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we will get to this place. That was there 40 years ago. But for who? That's the point. But

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that's what I'm saying. Did they steal it from us? Did they fuck us over? If we had all known

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about it 40 years ago, if everybody had had a clear base of knowledge and we weren't lied to

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for 40 years, well, I think that I think it's easy to spend a bit too much time focusing on

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people denying climate change. Something I've been thinking quite hard about for a little while now

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is the rights politics is not no like the right. Okay. At first blush, the right wing's politics

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would appear to have no climate change in it because they're climate deniers. Like to be on

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the right wing nowadays involves denying climate change to some degree. The most center right

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people are still arguing that capitalism can stop climate change. Factually, it can't. So the most

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base like the mildest right wing position is still a climate denial position. But in fact,

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it's not that they have no climate change politics, it's that they have entirely climate

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change politics. All of their politics is rooted in the idea that we're completely fucked. There's

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nothing we can do because they know that it would have to involve stopping capitalism to stop

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climate change. So they are just focusing on, to put it kind of grimly, the fun they can have

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before the world ends. Like to bring it back to Alex Jones, everything he says, the transphobia,

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the isolationism, the nationalism, the kind of bizarre, simultaneously Nazi-adjacent and also

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libertarian politics that he holds onto, is trying to describe a world where he gets to like

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ride around in an ATV with a machine gun because they've built the wall and like he's the head of

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some little cult of Proud Boys or whatever. It would be fun for him from his perspective.

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It would also suck and he would probably find out the ways in which it would suck, but he would have

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turned it to a point where it couldn't be turned back. Yeah, and it's all grabbing as much power

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and wealth and everything as they can and having as much fun as they can before what they see as

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inevitable. And that's because they're counter-revolutionaries. There is a natural

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revolution here to fight against climate change, to stop the conditions that are killing us,

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that are killing the planet. Counter-revolution emerges when the social fabric ruptures like

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this. People are like, well, shit should change. Shit should become more equal. I do not like how

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things are. The material conditions are bad. I want something different. And then people who

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have some degree of power or perceive themselves as having some degree of power or relate to the

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people in power form a counter-revolution, either organically or artificially. It's on the side of

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power, so it's often artificially formed because some state or institution funds it, props it up,

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makes it happen. A term that's worth thinking about in the context of the history of the last

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70-odd years is the American global counter-revolution. Because when we say America

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assassinates democratically elected socialist leaders or the CIA makes coups happen or whatever,

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it's worth viewing this through the frame of America has been enforcing a global

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counter-revolution for the last 70-odd years. Sometimes because they're just afraid of communism,

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sometimes to increase the price of bananas, to increase the price of bananas, to increase the

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profit margin on bananas by doing a massive genocide of indigenous Mayan people in Guatemala,

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whatever. Yeah. Generally speaking, there will be a business person who goes to our government and

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says, I would like to be more rich. And they would be like, okay, how much will you give us

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to do that? And they go, less money than I'll make. And nobody realizes how stupid everybody is.

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Yeah. And socialism is the absolute epitome of business people losing out. So,

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it must be stopped at all costs. I mean, there's bigger epitomes of business people, like

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volcanoes. That's a good place to make business people lose. That's another one.

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There are options, is what I'm saying. It is not surprising though, considering that

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to see the faces of the American counter-revolution, the global counter-revolution,

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share the same faces as everybody who's a fan of big oil, as fucking Elon Musk.

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These are the faces of people who are, I would say probably if you imagined

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a fucking spear, it's these people who grab the LGBTQ plus diaspora and try and stab people

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at the end of their spear. It is that in order to keep you from doing anything about

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larger material issues. Right. So, I think that when we talk about class consciousness,

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something that's important here is like, well, Mark Fisher talked about group consciousness

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instead of class consciousness. I think that's really useful framing. So, he talked about,

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for example, feminist group consciousness. You could apply what you'd call a class analysis

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to feminism. Men are in a ruling class and women are in a subjugated class. Or maybe

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to be a bit more inclusive and accurate, cishet men are in a ruling class and everyone else

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is broadly in one subjugated class, but there are different shades of subjugation to the nature of

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that and so on. You could argue about who is subjugated in which way is under that. But the

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point is group consciousness is the broader version of class consciousness. So, class

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consciousness has historically been focusing on the proletariat realizing their antagonism

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to the bourgeoisie and what do we do about the peasants and so on and so on. But it's like, well,

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capitalism has become an absolute fucking mess. In the 21st century, capitalism has become an

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absolute fucking mess. The proletariat is where? Because there are still industrial sector workers

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inside the imperial core. There are absolutely tons of people employed in factories and people

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doing mining and so on. But the largest sector in the imperial core now is the service sector

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because the industrial sector got really, really organized and unionized and Reagan and Thatcher

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were like, well, we can't have that. So, they pushed it all into the imperial periphery and

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started importing manufactured goods from the imperial periphery instead and changed everything

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to the service sector, which doesn't have any unions. At the same time, Silicon Valley gave us

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this fantastic sparkling new revolution in the way we do work and the way we do business.

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It's called the gig economy. This arguably introduced a new class called the precariat,

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whose employment is so much more precarious than the proletariat ever was that it's worth

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designating them as a different class, the precariat, because a proletarian laborer for all

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that is shitty and oppressive about their work conditions can rely on them unless they're

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explicitly fired going to work next week. And a gig economy worker can't, right? So,

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this is the precarity. So, it's a huge mess. So, is it class consciousness that we need?

Unknown Speaker (00:28:29.519)

I think it's group consciousness. I think we need to understand what the broad sides of this are.

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And I think one way that we can do that is start by latching onto the word woke.

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I really like the word woke. We've shied away from it really quickly because the right wing

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started using it as an insult for everything that they don't like. And it's like, well,

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oh no, Alex Jones doesn't like things being woke? Damn, I'd hate to be woke.

Unknown Speaker (00:28:59.599)

I mean, I think it's more just that by their adopting the word, they've removed any objective

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meaning from it. But why are we letting them tell us what the meaning is, especially if

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that meaning is nothing? Because what they're describing is that in the 2010s, there was a huge

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push towards a general understanding that we can really easily identify the problems in current

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politics, that there is a colonial imperialist history to the world, that racism is still

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extremely present, that the patriarchy is still extremely present, that society functions in an

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ableist way, that capitalism is both harmful to us in our everyday lives and is killing the planet.

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And these broadly define political tendencies that immersion people are more extremely

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massively popularized through social media. So social media is a huge part of this. People were

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able to communicate to each other on a mass scale unlike anything in history. The closest comparison

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would be the Gutenberg press in terms of leaps forward of people being able to share information

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quickly and easily. And the Gutenberg press had huge implications for politics across Europe when

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it was invented. The internet has had as well. And I think that we, partly because of the

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capitalist end of history, have been not looking at what's happening around us with a serious

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enough lens. And like, yeah, a bunch of people became woke, became aware of the problems in the

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world and the kind of obvious solutions to them. And then there was a massive counterrevolution

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pushing back against all those progressive ideas that became extremely popularized.

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I respect the way that that's framed because it does track, but I kind of disagree

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simply because the explosion from the internet was not a unipolar thing. It came simultaneously.

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It was a big bang. So just as people are being exposed to progressive ideas, so are they also

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being exposed to gigantic, massive, racist pieces of shit ideas.

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I'm talking about the Gutenberg press very carefully here because one of the huge

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political implications of the Gutenberg press was the Protestant reformation,

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which led to enormous amounts of reactionary violence across the world.

Unknown Speaker (00:31:28.319)

Sure, absolutely. And that's kind of the thing there, is that it is not...

Unknown Speaker (00:31:36.880)

I want to say it in a very specific, kind of narrow way. I don't think that it is good or bad,

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I don't think that it is good or bad, the internet. I think it needs to be gone. It should

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not exist. Do you know what I mean? It is a thing that I wouldn't wish... Dan and I were laughing

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about this, but I wouldn't wish the internet on my worst enemy because at no point in time,

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can you tell me that an ape has evolved to know things from around the entire goddamn planet?

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No way are we prepared physically for this much information.

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Oh, absolutely. We are not rational, reasonable, what's the word, sapient beings. We are literally

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apes with the capacity for apophenia and depression and that's it. I do agree, but I

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also think that the genie is out of the bottle and I do wholeheartedly agree.

Unknown Speaker (00:32:43.359)

You can burn that bottle, burn the bottle. Well, I think you're taking what broadly gets

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called like an anti-sieve position, right? We have new technologies have emerged and

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their consequences are bad and maybe the solution is that we get rid of those technologies, but

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how realistic is getting rid of those technologies, right? As opposed to trying to use them very

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effectively. They melted the lamp that Jafar was in, okay? See, we have established precedent.

Unknown Speaker (00:33:16.400)

But I think, yeah, no, I think I take your point and I want to be really clear that I'm not

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calling the internet inherently and implicitly good. Like all material conditions, it is simply

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something we should try to make the most of. And one of its implications since its invention has

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been people using it to spread progressive ideas around. I mean, you know, again, to do the

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Gutenberg press analogy, what was one of the most immediate and biggest reactions? The Protestant

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Reformation. What was one of the second or third biggest immediate reactions? The publishing of the

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communist manifesto. So it's like maybe leftist ideas take a little bit, this is incredibly

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reductive of history, but maybe leftist ideas take a little bit longer to formulate and say

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the right way on these new technological informational platforms. And therefore, yeah,

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maybe every time we find a faster way to communicate with each other, the first thing

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that's going to happen is some absolute dickhead is going to be like, we should kill all of the,

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and a bunch of people will agree with him. And then after a little while, someone will be like,

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we should share all of the, and people will be like, oh, hell yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:34:28.880)

I think one thing that people leave out often about the explosions of technologies is that

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the first thing that really happened was a shit ton of masturbating. A lot of erotica.

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Every time.

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Every single time.

Unknown Speaker (00:34:42.159)

Oh, yeah. One has driven human technology far more than the patriarchal capitalist

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system we have will ever admit. One big hope I have for a feminist

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eco-socialist future is that we can just finally acknowledge how important porn is to

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every living person ever.

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It is astonishing. I remember one literature class I took was about the flowering of the

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written word. And it was so much like, hey, you know where you got your underground Bible?

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Same place you got your underground porn? Same place you got, it was all wrapped up together.

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You had to get your New Testament and your Dick Floggan material at the same place on the same

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network. And it's so fun that it is like, that's the internet too. You get your evil racist hate

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and your jerk off material. You got two windows open now. It's easier than ever. Again, we got

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to get rid of this internet thing.

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I also, I want to make an addendum to something I said earlier as well, because I just want to

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be clear that when I say starting with the word woke can be really useful. When you then say

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about it's become meaningless the way the right wing has used it and so on, this is why I say

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starting with. I purely think that the important step I'm trying to communicate is that we with

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politics that combine wanting to stop climate change, being anti-capitalist, being anti-fascist,

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being against borders, being against cops, and wanting to take care of each other as these six

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points, which a lot of people agree on, need to say, we all share these points, and we need to

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have some kind of group identity. We need some kind of group consciousness. That's what I'm

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getting at. And so when I say the word woke, I think it's a starting point because I think it's

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of any word I can possibly find the quickest one to communicate all of these politics together.

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But it is not necessarily the word. I'm not looking for people to fly the woke flag and

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lead the woke revolution. You don't want woke attacks to become your enduring contribution to

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the culture. I mean, I find because I live in Britain, probably, and you're going to spit at

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this, but probably the place with the most reactionary media climate on earth. I know you're

Unknown Speaker (00:37:08.079)

taking that. Oh, do you mean Britain has the most reactionary media? Oh, I don't. So here's what's

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fun about that. I don't disagree with you. And I think it's easier for people to think that the

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American media is more reactionary because we're louder, right? But y'all hide so much more vitriol

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and hatred. Even the most even-keeled person in Britain is screaming the N-word at me all the time.

Unknown Speaker (00:37:35.280)

Oh yeah, it's awful. It's wild. Well, so this is what I wanted to say. As someone who lives

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in Britain, unfortunately, on this wet rock covered in racist barbarians, I would find it

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personally funny if there were a group of people organizing under the word woke and taking pride

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in being woke just because of how much the British media hates. They talk about the woke blob and

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stuff like this. They talk about wokeism and wokery. It would be very funny to me if someone

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described it as the right-winger hallucinating a communist enemy. And it would be very funny to me

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if their hallucination materialized in front of them because they probably all just shit their

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pants. Truly and utterly go completely bonkers. Yeah, it does have that vibe of if they were

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confronted with the enemy that they believe they're fighting, they would realize that they

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are gigantic cowards and would run away. And the only reason that they have the courage to fight

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this enemy is that it is imaginary. And that the people who they hurt through it are small

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enough in number that they never actually have to meet. Well, minoritized enough in political

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power, I think, is a crucial part. So it's like trans people are small enough in number. But then

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by contrast, like, well, I suppose migrants are actually small enough in number as well. I was

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going to say that migrants, the two probably most focused on groups right now in the British press

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are trans people and migrants and arguably the two groups most demonized in British society right

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now. But yeah, I suppose migrants are actually small in number as well. But the point I was

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going to make is that they are the most politically marginalized. The people with the absolute

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categorically least power of anyone, which is why it's just disgusting on a level I cannot

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communicate that people would, you know, band together to bully them because it's just like,

Unknown Speaker (00:39:36.079)

how, how what's next? Should we just go kick toddlers in the playground? What is this?

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How it's possible for us to sit here and then have a person with all the power tell us that

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the people with no power are the ones who are causing our problems is bananas.

Unknown Speaker (00:39:53.519)

Yeah, yeah. He wants to take your cookie away. The guy with all the cookies.

Unknown Speaker (00:39:56.639)

But you have all the cookies.

Unknown Speaker (00:39:58.159)

Yeah, exactly. No, no, no, no. These are my cookies. That guy wants to take your cookies.

Unknown Speaker (00:40:02.400)

What are you talking about?

Unknown Speaker (00:40:04.320)

I baked these cookies myself. I'm a self-baked man.

Unknown Speaker (00:40:07.440)

You stole those from my great grandfather.

Unknown Speaker (00:40:11.519)

Yeah. I think, you know, to pause on bullying for a second, I think it's important to acknowledge

Unknown Speaker (00:40:15.840)

fascism as, as, as a political bullying. And this is kind of an obvious enough statement,

Unknown Speaker (00:40:20.960)

but at the same time, I think it's important for us to note, right?

Unknown Speaker (00:40:23.119)

Right. The bullying is the point if they can successfully bully any group of people,

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successfully create a climate in which those people's rights are materially worsened,

Unknown Speaker (00:40:35.280)

then other people who have just that personality type, they are just a bully, right?

Unknown Speaker (00:40:40.000)

They are a bit of a social fascist. We'll see what's happening there. And they'll go,

Unknown Speaker (00:40:44.480)

ah, those people are gaining power in a way I can understand. So I'm going to join in with them.

Unknown Speaker (00:40:49.440)

And this is why, um, you know, this is why anti-fascism on every level is so important

Unknown Speaker (00:40:53.599)

because it's just, it's, it's simply about standing up to them. And when you say like,

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we would, they would realize they're complete cowards. It's absolutely true.

Unknown Speaker (00:41:01.679)

Fascists are the most cowardly people because they're bullies and bullies are cowards, right?

Unknown Speaker (00:41:06.159)

So it's as soon as they are, as soon as they are visibly outnumbered, they will give up and they

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will run away and they will stop. They will stop holding these beliefs because they don't even,

Unknown Speaker (00:41:14.239)

they don't even really hold them.

Unknown Speaker (00:41:15.679)

Yeah. It's, it's hard. And it's hard to really kind of communicate in the moment. Like it is,

Unknown Speaker (00:41:24.400)

it is the group that they are targeting now. That's who they're bullying now.

Unknown Speaker (00:41:30.719)

Yeah. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:41:31.840)

That could be, that is just a matter of date. That's a matter of time. You could go back a

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hundred years. The people they're bullying are there, you know what I'm saying?

Unknown Speaker (00:41:42.480)

I, again, there's some degree of material conditions because climate, climate change

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has driven a huge migrant crisis. Therefore there are more migrants than there were previously into

Unknown Speaker (00:41:51.519)

the, into the richer nations, into the Imperial Corps. So materially there is not a, not a basis

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for hating on migrants. There is no argument for racism, right? Materially. But like the material

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conditions have driven concerns that people latch onto about migrants. The material conditions have

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driven the state wanting to clamp down on bodily autonomy. And that has driven concerns that people

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latch onto to create anti-trans fascism. But again, it's just about sending up to,

Unknown Speaker (00:42:22.800)

it's just about, it's just about telling them to fuck off. That's really it. Like,

Unknown Speaker (00:42:27.599)

yeah. I have this analogy I've been using a little recently about the ways that fascists lie,

Unknown Speaker (00:42:34.320)

which I find helpful and hopefully people will find helpful listening to Alex Jones and,

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and Steven Crowder and whoever else. Oh, Tucker Carlson actually, since you're covering Tucker

Unknown Speaker (00:42:43.519)

Carlson recently, this is very useful for, for, for watching Tucker. It's, it's obvious enough

Unknown Speaker (00:42:50.320)

to say fascists lie. It's obvious enough to say everything that they say is a lie and you

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shouldn't trust them. And it's obvious enough to say they don't really believe the things that

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they say. And we can find loads of examples where like there'll be anti-trans and they have like

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trans friends in private or they're anti-abortion and Alex Jones has paid for abortions and these

Unknown Speaker (00:43:04.480)

kinds of things. Right? Sure. But a crucial mechanism here is getting you to believe that

Unknown Speaker (00:43:10.000)

what I say is what I believe. I want you to believe that I believe what I say. So it's like,

Unknown Speaker (00:43:17.199)

this is my analogy. It's like you're out with your friend and he turns to you all of a sudden

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and he says, Hey Jordan, do you think it would help if I karate chopped you in the throat as

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hard as I possibly can right now? And you're thinking, help with what? What situation does

Unknown Speaker (00:43:31.280)

he perceive me to be in that a karate chop to the throat would possibly help? And you're already

Unknown Speaker (00:43:35.760)

falling for the, for the problem here. He just wants to do it because he thinks it'll be fun

Unknown Speaker (00:43:39.599)

and it's, and, and, and it doesn't occur to you because you think that he's like a normal,

Unknown Speaker (00:43:43.599)

reasonable person with like empathy for other people, but no, he just thinks it would be fun

Unknown Speaker (00:43:48.000)

to karate chop you in the throat really hard and hurt you. You know, and this is the same with

Unknown Speaker (00:43:51.360)

fascists. They are true. They are just seeing an immoral and unethical route to, to some kind of

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power or personal gain. And yeah, lying in this way is helpful to them. And like, it seems a

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little over obvious to say, but I just, it's worth saying and repeating, they want you to believe

Unknown Speaker (00:44:09.440)

that they believe what they are saying. Yeah. Yeah, it is, it is, it's kind of, I mean,

Unknown Speaker (00:44:16.719)

to bring it back to Woke, it is like, they take words and remove meaning from them.

Unknown Speaker (00:44:22.639)

Yes. You know, you and I impart meaning to words in order to communicate with the people that we're

Unknown Speaker (00:44:28.639)

talking to. Right, right. And they see though, see that, and they remove the meaning from the words

Unknown Speaker (00:44:34.320)

and they try and get you to do what it is they want you to do. Like the Jean Paul Sartre quote

Unknown Speaker (00:44:38.960)

about the antisemite. Yeah. It's like, that is the whole right-wing politics now. They've,

Unknown Speaker (00:44:42.960)

they've adopted this as their strategy for absolutely everything. You know, a really

Unknown Speaker (00:44:47.920)

good example of this would be the patriarchy, right? A lot of, an enormous way, an enormous

Unknown Speaker (00:44:52.719)

amount of the way the patriarchy is maintained in day-to-day practice is men pretending not to

Unknown Speaker (00:44:58.639)

understand that the patriarchy exists, that it still exists or how it works.

Unknown Speaker (00:45:05.360)

I have no idea what you're talking about. Tell me more.

Unknown Speaker (00:45:07.360)

Um, and like, pretending not to is, is, is the same function, right? Um, like making statements

Unknown Speaker (00:45:18.639)

like, uh, making statements like women don't have it worse, uh, or asking questions like,

Unknown Speaker (00:45:26.559)

tell me in what ways women have it worse, or pretending like being told like five times a

Unknown Speaker (00:45:32.480)

day you should smile isn't that big a deal. Cause it's not, it's not the worst sexual harassment

Unknown Speaker (00:45:37.039)

you could receive. All of these things, again, rely on pretend, like rely on you believing

Unknown Speaker (00:45:42.079)

that he believes what he's just said. And so when he says, uh, the, the, the, the, the patriarchy

Unknown Speaker (00:45:47.920)

isn't real, but it's a, some feminist lie. It's like, no, we all live in society and have eyes

Unknown Speaker (00:45:52.960)

and ears and so on. And we, we, we can see this. It's right there. Right. Yeah. Cool. Of course,

Unknown Speaker (00:45:57.599)

you know, it's there and this is, it serves a purpose to pretend that you don't know.

Unknown Speaker (00:46:02.880)

Right. You can't, you they're going to say, I don't know, but what they should say is

Unknown Speaker (00:46:07.679)

it is in my best interest to not know. Right. And this brings me to where I'm like,

Unknown Speaker (00:46:14.079)

where I'm a real nerd about this stuff is, uh, the, the political philosophy going on here.

Unknown Speaker (00:46:19.039)

Right. So we've got epistemic lacunae, right? So there are, there are, there are gaps that have

Unknown Speaker (00:46:23.199)

been created. These, uh, these gaps in how we know things, uh, if people don't, if people aren't

Unknown Speaker (00:46:28.239)

familiar, lacunae just refers to gaps and, um, and, uh, epistemology is the study of how we know

Unknown Speaker (00:46:33.599)

things. Right. So, uh, organized ignorance of this kind, even just pretending not to know stuff

Unknown Speaker (00:46:39.599)

is allowing for a space where people leave like, uh, a gap in their knowledge. And that's a

Unknown Speaker (00:46:44.880)

comforting space from like within which they can, into which they can withdraw and protect

Unknown Speaker (00:46:49.920)

themselves from the obvious consequences of knowing that this is true. So they do know that

Unknown Speaker (00:46:54.800)

you know, your Catholic priest has been doing all kinds of stuff. Right. Everybody suddenly

Unknown Speaker (00:47:00.079)

really doesn't know anything about that. How far? Right. Exactly. Yeah. Uh, there are,

Unknown Speaker (00:47:05.440)

there are no, that's a perfect example. There are loads and loads of, uh, examples and clips

Unknown Speaker (00:47:09.840)

you can pull, uh, from the last like 50 years of people making jokes on the British national press

Unknown Speaker (00:47:16.239)

about, um, Jimmy Saville being a pedophile. It's just, it's everywhere. And, and, and

Unknown Speaker (00:47:21.920)

demonstrating that they knew, and then it was made clear and, and then published as news and suddenly

Unknown Speaker (00:47:28.800)

no, oh, nobody knew. How could, how, how could we possibly, and it was like, people were called out

Unknown Speaker (00:47:32.880)

on this. Everybody knew, and this was part of the horror, but it's very much the same situation with

Unknown Speaker (00:47:36.639)

a Catholic priest. Like you say. Yeah. Anywhere there's a position of power and trust that can

Unknown Speaker (00:47:43.280)

be abused. You know, it's, it's a Catholic priest or Cosby. It is the same, like we have given you

Unknown Speaker (00:47:51.119)

culturally so much trust, so much power that for us to, to like really reckon with what you

Unknown Speaker (00:47:58.559)

actually are, would fuck tons of us up, you know, in a way that we'd rather just pretend that you

Unknown Speaker (00:48:05.599)

only hurt four or five people, you know, that kind of thing. Whereas it's disgusting. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:48:10.800)

Yeah. And, and to go on with, with, with the political philosophy, cause this is like kind

Unknown Speaker (00:48:14.639)

of the bedrock of my interest here. Like this is some stuff I discuss in The World Is Not Ending.

Unknown Speaker (00:48:18.480)

Okay. So Marx has this formulation for what ideology is. He says,

Unknown Speaker (00:48:24.400)

which means they don't know what it is, but they are doing it. It's like people are under some kind

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of magical spell, right? Ideology is happening if people don't know they're doing it, but they're

Unknown Speaker (00:48:33.920)

still doing it. But here's the thing, right? In modern society, a lot of people are aware of their

Unknown Speaker (00:48:38.880)

political ideologies. And this is really important to confront that people can know what it is they're

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doing. And it's crucially a deliberate disconnect that people manufacture between what they are

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doing and the consequences that makes the ideology happen. So my formulation is, instead of

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which means they know that it is nothing and still they do it, right? So my example in the video is

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if you have someone who works in the finance sector in Canary Wharf in London, right?

Unknown Speaker (00:49:11.119)

Odds are they live in one of the shoddily built, ugly, crappy new build apartments around London

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that have these concrete constructions with these brick facades and they're hideous and they're

Unknown Speaker (00:49:22.239)

everywhere. And a lot of them are being built on London's floodplains. And the finance sector is

Unknown Speaker (00:49:28.480)

driving investment, which is driving climate change, and it's also driving construction.

Unknown Speaker (00:49:32.800)

So simultaneously they are causing the building of these shitty houses that are also going to be

Unknown Speaker (00:49:38.000)

flooded also by their work. So, you know, my example is this finance worker, right?

Unknown Speaker (00:49:43.760)

And living in them.

Unknown Speaker (00:49:45.280)

Exactly. That's what I'm saying, right? So you get up every day, you go to work,

Unknown Speaker (00:49:49.199)

you spin the wheels on the big machine that's going to flood your ugly house because you've

Unknown Speaker (00:49:54.320)

manufactured an epistemic gap between what you are doing and its consequences. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:50:01.840)

I mean, yeah, that's a pretty good way of describing how we've kind of segregated

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processing and production throughout every commodity. The fact that I will never have to

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look a cow in the eye before I eat it. That kind of concept is by creating that distance,

Unknown Speaker (00:50:25.039)

we don't have to confront obviously the truth of it.

Unknown Speaker (00:50:30.400)

Or for you and I as meat eaters, right? We may well know that the biggest personal

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consumption change that someone can make in order to combat climate change is to become vegan,

Unknown Speaker (00:50:40.960)

right? And we may well want to stop climate change, but then do we want to become vegan?

Unknown Speaker (00:50:48.079)

No. So we're making an emotional defense, not a rational defense, but an emotional defense by

Unknown Speaker (00:50:53.280)

creating this gap. Oh, I'll just carry on eating meat because it's nothing. What can I do anyway?

Unknown Speaker (00:50:58.239)

It doesn't really matter. And still I'm doing it.

Unknown Speaker (00:51:01.599)

The problem there is that in terms of inertia, right? So climate change has an inertial force

Unknown Speaker (00:51:10.639)

beyond anything I think we've ever experienced in truth. And so when you're dealing with that,

Unknown Speaker (00:51:17.119)

you can have a massive number of people do a small thing or a small number of people

Unknown Speaker (00:51:23.679)

do a massive thing. Right. And you're never going to get enough people to suddenly quickly

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stop eating meat in order to make a difference towards it. Whereas we all know that most of the

Unknown Speaker (00:51:36.559)

emissions are caused by a very small number of companies. With names and addresses, sure.

Unknown Speaker (00:51:42.239)

Exactly. So if somebody is telling me, ah, you know what you should do is not eat meat,

Unknown Speaker (00:51:48.559)

that makes zero sense. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And that's kind of why I get

Unknown Speaker (00:51:55.840)

frustrated with the like, here's what we do. We take personal responsibility because in its face,

Unknown Speaker (00:52:02.639)

it seems like it's the opposite of what you just described. We're looking directly at it.

Unknown Speaker (00:52:07.199)

Right. When in reality, what you're doing is you're looking at a problem that has no effect on

Unknown Speaker (00:52:12.159)

anything and going, I'm proud of myself. Look at that. I did it. Well, my position on this is that

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I will happily become vegan in a socialist society because it will be necessary to end

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industrial livestock farming to stop climate change. But it will be necessary alongside a lot

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of other stuff. And when that stuff's all happening, I'm super happy to become vegan.

Unknown Speaker (00:52:36.000)

I will not complain in the slightest. I will tell as many other people in my life as I possibly can,

Unknown Speaker (00:52:40.800)

hey, this is tough, but we got to go through with it. It's going to save the world when that's

Unknown Speaker (00:52:45.519)

happening. But under capitalism, right. But anyway, to return to like the word woke again,

Unknown Speaker (00:52:51.840)

I don't think that this is going to be the word we start organizing under. But to get back to my

Unknown Speaker (00:52:57.280)

formulation of like capitalism is going to make capitalism impossible through climate change. And

Unknown Speaker (00:53:01.360)

then some point before that, people are going to recognize that that's going to happen. And so,

Unknown Speaker (00:53:05.360)

they're going to jump before they're pushed. We can make that point sooner by spreading group

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consciousness. And I find it fun that like the original metaphor of being woke to stuff, right,

Unknown Speaker (00:53:16.639)

is a metaphor of alertness. And that all of these, all of the right wing, everyone who's

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organized themselves as anti-woke is fundamentally organizing themselves around the idea of not being

Unknown Speaker (00:53:28.239)

alert. They're fundamentally organizing around go back to sleep, carry on with things up.

Unknown Speaker (00:53:34.079)

When you say about inertia, like they are literally arguing for the inertial force.

Unknown Speaker (00:53:38.719)

Yep, totally. And they are arguing to just stay asleep, don't look up, carry on. And yeah, I just

Unknown Speaker (00:53:44.400)

think that like that's the main thing. That's the kind of, yeah, that's the main thing. Like we need

Unknown Speaker (00:53:48.800)

to spread a group consciousness, and then we need to pick one of these six things or, you know,

Unknown Speaker (00:53:54.079)

probably a few of them and dedicate our time to those things. Yeah, it is very annoying how much

Unknown Speaker (00:54:01.760)

of my life has just been watching conservatives react the exact same way they said they weren't

Unknown Speaker (00:54:07.440)

going to five years ago now, you know, like, hey, sheeple, everybody needs to wake up to what Obama's

Unknown Speaker (00:54:14.000)

doing out there. Everybody, this is what's going on. Hey, everybody, let's go back to being sheeple.

Unknown Speaker (00:54:19.039)

We don't need to think about what Trump's doing right now. Everybody go back to sleep. You know,

Unknown Speaker (00:54:23.760)

it is, it is just like, it's never going to end. It just keeps spinning round and round.

Unknown Speaker (00:54:28.719)

Yeah. Well, so this is why I say that like philosophically what interests me probably

Unknown Speaker (00:54:34.559)

more than anything is just the philosophy of lying. Like people telling lies. I think

Unknown Speaker (00:54:40.239)

that's where some of the most interesting applied philosophy happens in the entire world. And so

Unknown Speaker (00:54:45.039)

it's only natural that I would be drawn to political philosophy because as we all know,

Unknown Speaker (00:54:49.039)

politicians are born liars, right? This is, where can I find more lies than in politics?

Unknown Speaker (00:54:55.679)

It's hard. It's hard to find, I mean, you know, money, but that's politics.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:01.920)

The finance and politics are the same thing now. So that's why, yeah, it makes the most sense.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:07.360)

Yeah. But yeah, the reception to the video has been good. I think, yeah, I'm very proud of it.

Unknown Speaker (00:55:13.920)

It's, it is the best thing I've made so far. It's hard to imagine what I will make that's

Unknown Speaker (00:55:18.960)

going to be better than it. A lot of people have been telling me about how much it's pulled them

Unknown Speaker (00:55:23.199)

out of their depression. I've had some very personal comments where people have been talking

Unknown Speaker (00:55:26.239)

about, like, honestly, like they were depressed to the point of suicidality and that it's, that

Unknown Speaker (00:55:30.480)

it's helped them out of that because, and I, and I knew this kind of going in like climate depression

Unknown Speaker (00:55:35.679)

is very real and really, really fucks people up. But I also could see going in, like, we are not

Unknown Speaker (00:55:41.280)

actually approaching this question rationally. We are approaching it emotionally because we can see

Unknown Speaker (00:55:46.639)

that however this shakes out, a lot is going to change about the way we love our lives. And we

Unknown Speaker (00:55:50.559)

just don't want to think about that. That's scary. So it's easier to just think we're all gonna die

Unknown Speaker (00:55:57.280)

than to think what is realistically going to happen. Yeah. But yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty

Unknown Speaker (00:56:04.159)

happy with it.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:05.039)

I, I very, I liked it a lot myself. Yeah. And I think that's a great place to end it. Could you

Unknown Speaker (00:56:11.760)

please tell people where to find it?

Unknown Speaker (00:56:13.519)

Absolutely. Well, I, as you said, I'm Sophie from Mars. So if you just type in Sophie from Mars,

Unknown Speaker (00:56:18.719)

and Google or YouTube or wherever you want, but it is on YouTube on my channel. As I said,

Unknown Speaker (00:56:24.960)

it's about two and a half hours long. I appreciate that that is a long video. But it's also

Unknown Speaker (00:56:30.159)

something I worked on for, for two years. So how selfish are you thinking that's a long time? No.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:34.800)

I mean, if you if it takes more than two hours to talk about climate change, are you aren't you

Unknown Speaker (00:56:39.840)

just like, it's that not that big a deal, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. It's like, I

Unknown Speaker (00:56:45.199)

wish it was a simpler topic. Wish I wish I could sum it up in five minutes. But you know, this

Unknown Speaker (00:56:49.199)

interview has been poking around it, and it's already been an hour. So like, that's Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (00:56:52.639)

Anyway, it's Sophie from Mars on YouTube. And if you want to support my work,

Unknown Speaker (00:56:56.239)

it's patreon.com slash Sophie from Mars, all one word. I'm working on something about AI right

Unknown Speaker (00:57:00.719)

this second. As I said, I've also got some stuff to do with Alex Jones coming up. There's one that

Unknown Speaker (00:57:05.199)

focuses on him quite specifically. And then I have another big project I may need to get out for

Unknown Speaker (00:57:10.239)

Christmas called Apocalypse Preachers, which will focus on him and a few other people. And what

Unknown Speaker (00:57:17.280)

they're up to. Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks. Thank you so much, Sophie. This has

Unknown Speaker (00:57:24.000)

been an absolute delight. I hope people check your stuff out. Thanks for having me. We will see

Unknown Speaker (00:57:28.880)

you again. I'm sure we'll talk soon. That would be lovely. Andy in Kansas. You're on the air.

Unknown Speaker (00:57:34.000)

Thanks for holding. So Alex, I'm a first time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work. I love

Unknown Speaker (00:57:40.239)

you.