To all the people insulting me for lying down, please read the opening text that clearly explains my predicament and think a little bit before making heartless comments. Here is a free interview with Niall Ferguson brought to you by someone who suffered from severe, crippling pain for years and yet still worked hard to keep making films... You're welcome. Don't forget to subscribe! And if you'd like to see the full interview or just support my work, you can go here: travisbrown.locals.com/post/1227910/niall-ferguson-interview

As a student in China in 1986~87, I got to know a few former red guards from the Cultural Revolution. They were just a few years older than me, and had been barely-post-pubescent teenagers at the time, when they were ordering their elders to recite passages from Mao's little red book. (When I knew them, they were grad students at my university.) Dr. Ferguson here seems to imply that they were "driven" to this behavior by Mao's dictatorial rule, but that's not what they told me. They weren't forced to do it, they _enjoyed it._ It was a total power trip, and they got off on it. Yes, obviously it was instigated by Mao, but once it got rolling, it took on a life of its own. This is _exactly_ what seems to be happening with a lot of this cancel-culture nonsense of late. It's a self-perpetuating echo chamber of self-righteous, hyperbolic toxicity. Luckily, the _"body politic"_ seems to be mounting an immune response to the infection. ;-)

Puritanism was a menace to Catholicism, and Catholicism to Puritanism. Just when we thought that we had left intolerant religiosity behind, along comes Neo-Puritanism.

By the way, your journalist who is laying on his back in pain is not the only one who relates to this rhetoric. I too suffer excruciating back pain every day. Believe it or not, I gave it my all in the capacity of a laborer, (truck driver) of 26 years. Not everybody understands this. God bless you both for this conversation. I’ll never tire of true and genuine intellect of the complexities of the human condition and what you have to offer. Satiated over the interview. May the Holy Spirit of God our Father remain with you.

What a treat to listen to someone with genuine intellect discussing such an important subject. This needs bringing to the masses.

7:37 “ I sense that part of the problem with the woke project is that it is inherently divisive. Intersectionality ultimately pits different minority groups against one another.” So true!

10:50 Reminds me of when Ayaan Hirshi Ali answered a snide liberal interviewer "I lived in countries that had no democracy... so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom."

As one who had back spasms during law school just a few suggestions: walk, walk, walk every chance you get, swinging your arms freely. Sleep on the hardest surface you can bear - I sleep on a plywood platform with 4 inches of memory foam. Never bend over to pick up anything. Bend your knees.

This really woke me up, if you'll pardon my words. It is spot on and the last bit about the insane racial discriminatory policies implemented to promote black supremacy, coming from a man in a mixed race marriage, really strikes home.

Can I just say how inspiring I have found it coming across your video. I have suffered myself from back pain for the last 7 months which often has left me unable to walk or sit. The loss of my mobility and the ability to do things I took for granted before has left me very depressed at times and feeling I couldnt face work. Seeing you doing this despite the challenges your body faces and not letting it hold you back is a real Motivation for me. Thank You

Love listening to Niall Fergerson. For me he isn’t on mainstream media enough he has a lot knowledge to share and is style is so calm he’d be a wonderful influence. Many young people could benefit from hearing how he delivers his thoughts and insights.

This was fantastic Travis, really sad also. I do hope the gobble themselves up before they destroy further!!

Thank you, Travis! I enjoyed your excellent and informative interview. Dr Ferguson is lucid and well-spoken. And I understand back pain, but probably not the extent you suffer. God speed!

Thanks for keeping the dialogue going, Trevor. What you are doing is very important and I share much of it.

What an incredibly powerful dialogue. Niall explains so well the contradictions of the woke ideology of the left. Thank you.

I’m glad to hear Victor Klemperer mentioned in this context, since I have frequently cited him myself. His analysis of the denaturing of language to political ends in LTI foreshadows the grotesque distortions of the postmodernist lexicon. Believe in this new “language” at your peril!

Great content. Thought-provoking.

A more rational response to the ‘Woke’ issue. ‘We’ are dismantling our free society as we listen to this. Apathy seems to be one of the main drivers.

Thank you Travis for this excellent interview. Niall was a superb choice to interview, and created a ideal ambient setting. I suffered with horrible back pain for years too. I have overcome most of it following the guidance of internists & practicing Ayurveda. I hope you will be on a road to a healthy recovery to overcome the back pain.

You can really tell the difference listening to a true intellectual speaking from a non emotion based historical drawn perspective. The cleanness of the points raised carry far more gravity than the angry shouty conservative bemoaners, who are increasingly sounding like their intolerant far Left counterparts. Also refreshing to see there are still academics who are ‘responsible’! Superb and uplifting interview. I shall certainly be reading some of this gentleman’s works.

Great interview. Interesting points made by Niall.

An excellent interview with a brilliant guest. I hope you feel better soon.

When you have a woke person nit picking or twisting your words it makes you feel deflated and frustrated and misunderstood at the same time

Wow, great interview!

Part 7: The last section was very powerful. I have spent all day listening to this and writing comments (Parts 1-7!) That is one of the best pieces on this I've ever heard and I've listened to hundreds since 2010 I would say. Many thanks for this discussion to Niall Ferguson and Trevor at Signal Productions.

An enjoyable lecture,a real gentleman.Loook forward to more,thank you.

Excellent video, thank you! I was waiting for someone to corroborate what I´ve thought for a long time, that wokeness has very little to do with politics and everything to do with a neo religious cult mindset. I was brought up deep in the bowels of religious extremism in a Catholic boarding school run by a cult within the Catholic church and everything I see and hear about modern wokeness is just a page out of their book. Virtue signalling, vicious repression of increasingly minor "misdemeanors", total disregard for the very same rules they promote etc.

Man, I'm so sorry your back pain is flared up again. I don't know how you do this work and deal with intense pain. This content is a blessing tho

Part 3: Thanks for the discussion Niall and Trevor. I have a bad back too now for weeks I think. So I can totally feel your pain and it’s a nightmare for sure with a cocktail of pain killers and sleepless nights. I fell asleep for 2 ½ hours a couple of days ago standing up leaning on a settee. Get well soon my friend.

Very good interview.

You're doing a tremendous work my friend! I sincerely wish you a speedy recovery from the back pain.

What a brilliant man! More please.

Brilliant.

This should be mandatory viewing in our schools - and workplaces

Great interview, thank you!

Excellent interview!

Damn - Niall Ferguson! - you score some quality interviews for this channel. Thank you sir 👍🏻

Thank You gentlemen for such a great dialogue , i do think there is more to be said on the subject . Thanks ... I relate a lot of what was said to the UK .

an extremely eloquent summing up, i particularly agree with what mr ferguson says about the comparison between the so called woke movement and marxism, whilst there would appear to be some superficial common ground on examination the two 'ideologies' differ markedly, the one thing which appears to be completely absent from the current woke discourse is the question of class, class struggle and capitalism, in england one can see how the labour party has embraced many of the cultural ideas of marxism but has explicitly rejected the economic ideas, many of the lunatic fringe ideas of woke militants(especially in the field of gender) do appear to have some commonality with some of the intolerance and persecution practised by totalitarian regimes who purport to be on the left

Excellent! Clear! Everyone needs to hear!!!

All the best, Trevor! Good interview--thanks much.

You’re really taking this laying down. Edit: sorry didn’t read the description first. I’m going to leave the comment for proof of my shame.

Great video and some outstanding commentary by a man who is a giant in his field, Really enjoyed. Also, 😍Nora😍 !

so Dr. Ferguson a Scotsman who presumably grew up on cricket is smart enough to know how to use the American expression " ... (not) get to first base". Kudos ... that proves your erudition right there!

‘You’re either with us or against us’ is fundamentally incompatible with ‘live and let live’

What an insightful and intelligent analysis, calmly and coherently articulated - thank you.

Excellent interview, great questions

Very informative.

First time on your channel mate....great stuff.

When freedom feels like oppression you long for a nanny, referee, parent to intervene. The woke managerial class was more than happy to fill the role.

Wow crazy times

Great perspective. Sad to see things that were getting really good in society take such a turn for the worse. This too shall pass.

Great interview

Very illuminating interview. I am greatly disturbed by this new form of racial and sexual domination over the society. We must not give into this abhorrent form of “social justice“. Social justice is in fact a Marxist term. There is only one form of justice, and that is blind justice that does not take into account anything else other than the application of the law. As Albert Camus rightly pointed out the more equity, the less equality, that is something for everyone to keep in mind when you hear them going on and on about equity equity equity. Equity means denying someone else their rights. Message to all leftists; life is unfair, and a struggle.

Excellent discussion

Wow! My head's spinning after listening to this!

Really glad you explained about the back pain. I admit I was getting a little judgy. Great interview.

6:25 thank you for asking this - I had been wondering this question for a while without really finding a clear answer Edit: Gosh, and this one at 9:02

Very important message from Niall Ferguson, should be played to all University students in the US before they get bombarded with woke propaganda.

What an incredible interview.

While Marxism and Cultural Marxism (Wokeism)are dissimilar in many ways, there is a connection in that both see Oppression as the final explanation of all human problems. For Marxism it's the bourgeoise oppressing the proletariat, while Cultural Marxism has white people oppressing people of color, men oppressing women, straights oppressing gays, and so on. The "marginalized" never bear any responsibility for their own condition, it's always imposed by the bad people, by the oppressors. In addition, both Marxism and Cultural Marxism believe that the only thing necessary to reach Utopia is to smash the oppressor. Smash the bourgeoise. Smash capitalism. Smash colonialism. Smash racism. Smash the patriarchy. Smash homophobia. Smash transphobia. See how smoothly it flows from then to now? And once you have smashed everything that needs smashing all problems will just automatically disappear, because the good people are finally running the world.

The thing when people.complain about there being privileged and underprivileged,what they are really bugged about is that they aren't the privileged category. If they become.the privileged, they will have absolutely no complaints about the privileged - underprivileged argument any longer. Very few people are truly concerned or even capable of standing on principle.

Excellent.

Such a great interview. Why aren't there 100k views?

From Crane Brinton's "Anatomy of Revolution" (1964) “This pervasiveness of the Reign of Terror in the crisis period is partly explicable in terms of the pressure of war necessities and of economic struggles as well as of other variables: but it must probably also be explained as in part the manifestation of an effort to achieve intensely moral and religious ends here on earth. The little band of violent revolutionists who form the nucleus of all action during the Terror behave as men have been observed to behave before when under the influence of active religious faith” (Brinton, p. 255)

Very good interview

Enjoyable.

Niall Ferguson is a colossus intellectual but great to listen to 😂

Excellent. Intellectuals without responsibility; young people with nothing to lose

We need to hear so much more from this brilliant man.

The inordinate hostility towards the Western civilization, in my opinion, was an attempt at finding a common rival among those divisive groups.

This is brilliant, this is explaining this mess to me.

watching the presenter scratch his nose and beard while lying down is totally rad

Fergusson needs to read more Lindsay. He seems to be ignoring almost everything in the development (mutations) of Marxism since Marx's time.

Dude, i also have back pain. Just started with deep tissue massage, rolling, stretching. Has made a big difference.

*As much as I love Niall Ferguson (especially since I've been in China while he's covered the subject), he's patently wrong on Woke-ism not being an offshoot of Marxism/communism* Woke-ism is undoubtedly a bastard child of Marxism and identity (grievance) politics (in contrast to inclusive id pol, like the 60s US Civil Rights mvmt, as described by Jon Haidt). I would humbly and highly recommend James Lindsay's recently released Jul 2022 vid series tracing Woke-ism from Hegel to Marx to Freire to today. It's an unbroken line. *Niall's right, Woke-ism isn't Marx's scientific/historical materialism, but Niall's also wrong - Woke-ism is unquestionably a harkening back to socialism/communism's utopian origins.*

Excellent

Niall is my love. I'd love to work woth him.

3:13. The commonality is not at the class dialectic level. It is at the dialectic level, where race, ethnicity, gender and now climate are intermingled with old class dialectic warfare in a cornucopia dialectic.

This is a brilliant man.

Although James Lindsay can be occasionally hyperbolic, I think he's closer on the origins and true nature of Woke. Ferguson seems to identify Woke as, primarily, a religion and Marxism as a political or economic ideology/theory. This seems to be a false comparison: Woke is being defined by the way Woke people tend to think and behave whilst Marxism is being defined by the underlying belief system that drives the behaviour. Ask him for his definition of a religion and then ask him why that doesn't apply to the way Marxists and neo-Marxists think and act. If Woke is being driven by a distinct ideology, and that, according to Ferguson, is akin to a religious ideology - then, how does Marxism get a free pass? The dream (or prophecy) of Marxists is Progress to an Equitable, Socially Just Utopia, isn't it? Effectively, 'Heaven on earth'. Is that a religious goal/belief? If not, why not? Marx focused on the social injustice of Economics. Woke focuses on the perceived social injustices of Race, Gender, Sexuality etc. Both promote the concept of awakening to the true nature of society and the individual's place within it (and within the collective). Once awoken, there is an implicit call to action. Both types awaken to the realisation of systemic oppression. Both worldviews divide the world into Oppressor and Oppressed. Both promote a social revolution with an ultimate end-goal. Both seem to rely on a dogmatic acceptance of the underlying belief. I guess it comes down to whether you define Marxism as (limited to) the fundamental ideology proscribed by Marx (and Engels), or whether you treat it as a project that has evolved / 'progressed'? Nobody is saying that Wokeism is an economic theory. Nor are they saying Marx would necessarily recognise it as Marxism. But, I'm sure Marx wouldn't recognise a lot of what self-proclaimed Marxists espouse. On the question of totalitarianism, Woke lacks a definitive Mao style dictator at the top, but that's what makes it so insidious. It proceeds via (subtle or not so subtle) indoctrination of children and young adults. The top-down aspect is less centralised, it is Leftist social activists becoming teachers, admin officials, governors, lecturers etc. and then working within an environment that deliberately politicises education (operating under the guise of compassionate 'socialisation') in order to breed a new generation of social activists. It is a slower and less bloody form of cultural revolution - this is its greatest asset. Perhaps the best hope of Woke diminishing is simply that it becomes unfashionable. Yet, if there isn't anything more positive for the next generation to adopt, what replaces Woke may be even worse.

"Beauty" cannot be denied by ideology.

Good channel

He is gatekeeping the truth ❤️🙏

I automatically knew it was your back. Its terrible having to explain all the time. I had to crawl to the toilet for a year. You’re a hero to work while you have a bad back. Probably sciatica? Good luck to you sir.

brilliant

Please tell me Niall Fergasen starred in The Fugitive with Harrison Ford. There’s no mistaking him. Oh, by the way I love anything Niall Ferguson. ❤

Could anyone share a link to the Guardian article?

It's very odd that Niall Ferguson stated that Marxists emphasised "social change"... yet the Wokists don't? (He said: "Marx's concentration on economic and social change.") Sure, the economic aspect of politics isn't stressed much by most Woke. So Ferguson plays down the Marxism connection by saying that the Woke don't emphasise "class conflict". Some of them do. Perhaps not many. And certainly not as much (obviously) as Marxists. Yet social class is, after all, another "identity" to make political use of. All this has to be set within the context of the fact that Marxists have always been updating Marxism - since Bernstein in the late 19th century. Both Lenin and Trotsky had their own takes on sacred Marxist texts. And what was Antonio Gramsci doing in the 1930s? What about the Frankfurt School and Althusser?... This updating of Marxism has happened for the last, roughly, 140 years. In that sense, then, Marxism is very much like a religion which never dies. And various religions never die because they are constantly updated to meet the tenor of the times.... So no one has ever claimed that Wokism is *literally identical* to Marxism. Then again, the numerous Marxisms and Marxist groups were never literally identical to each other.

Ferguson has been careful throughout the chaos of recent years. I give him high marks for seeing Trump as an agent of positive change in 2016, but a very low grade on his pandemic response and praise for vaccines. I'm glad that he's coming out with stronger language now, but I do not see him becoming a firebrand for truth the next time obvious injustice is running rampant.

Niall is my love. I'd love to work with him.

I wish those possessed with wokeness learn to dance--many of their worries will evaporate.

This guy was a speaker at the wef

Part *: Note i have added this bit as a reply note to Part 5c: So in terms of say social justice and the idea of institutional racism and reparations: what i have said here mean you only need the original difference as a kind of act at a point in time in the past. the series , the succession and the synchronic stat of affairs now is after that event and sustained as a symmetry through bodily habits and rituals both with rules as a kind of skeleton, we cannot "climb out side our own skin (Davidson) or indeed our own skeleton (me) . thus there is in the left view on this a myth of the need for a continued intentional action to make the difference, this is not the case thee is no intention over time just habit and limits of change of the rules. they make then a kind of intentional fallacy but since the left are weak on the distinction of intention and habit or reflect his is hard for them to grasp. eg they have terms like unintended racism and subconscious or unconscious bias. lie an institution apologising for its racist past . institutions do not have intentions. "They treat objects like people man"

Yes, it's almost incredible. Insane but true. But he's right: it will destroy itself. Such evil always does.

Frederick Douglass who you may interested to know had a statue of himself pulled down by students "protests" he was a former slave who also identified as a republican.

One thing he could add is that violence as a backlash by the extremists or crazys is real. It puts target mark on these minorities regardless if they aspire to such ideology. Recent shooting in the gay club is one such example. The danger of Outburst of violence is real

High style conservative authoritarianism, straight from the sliver tongue on a silver platter.

The problem with freedom is that the individual has to engage in critical thinking, which can be a painful exercise. It is far easier to blindly follow a set of ideological precepts. Freedom also demands a high degree of civic virtue, which is the antithesis of the cult of the self which lies at the heart of our modern consumerist culture.

Rebels without a cause, but quite content to making them up as they go along