Riots Are Sweeping Across Europe. Is Britain Next?

0:00 The reality is that huge numbers of young people, including young white people, have been raised to believe that if you are from Western Europe, you are the problem. They have been raised, as I keep telling everyone, to see the world through the lens of the oppressor versus the oppressed. I want to convince you that yes, mass migration is part of the problem, but it's bigger than that.

0:23 This is about young people who hate their country because the problem of white guilt is embedded in the politics of youth, schools, and the online world. And I think this is combined with a culture of contagion through social media. Will the riots in Europe come to Britain or America? A few weeks ago, I did an episode explaining the riots in France.

0:57 It started as school protests in Paris, then it spread to elsewhere. Then it became more than protests, and we ended up with burned-down buildings and thousands injured. And before long, there were conversations about whether this felt more like a civil war than a protest movement. But this isn't just a French story.

1:15 It's a European or even Western story, because some of the factors causing this are common to most countries in the West. Here's Greece. Right, students and young people marching. Here's Italy.

1:37 Italy's young people are being priced out of their future, and not only them. This is the outside of the Italian parliament. The students have been camping with their tents outside institutions and university campuses.

1:48 The situation isn't identical in every place, but there's a pattern. Protests, flares, student demands mixed with radical left politics and anti-Western sentiment. Here's Spain. So, familiar scenes, young people burning things and publicly fighting with police. I should say this also extends to outside Western Europe.

2:13 Here's Albania, for example.

2:15 This is the fifth month of the protests here in Albania. They started peacefully, but this week they've turned violent with attacks on government buildings, stores, and this library, for example. This week the focus has been on the student protests here in Tirana and in other cities spreading through to other cities of Albania.

2:37 Here's what one protester in Albania said when asked about the escalations. We feel connected to the youth protests we're seeing across Europe. That's a key part of what I want to talk to you about today. Contagion. Contagion is something we teachers know everything about. Leave a naughty kid in a classroom, and the bad behavior spreads like wildfire.

2:59 That young Albanian woman interviewed is saying, we saw what happened in France, so that's why we've started doing the same in Albania. So I know what you're thinking. Is this type of thing going to come to Britain? Are the conditions that explain rioting in France, Spain, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Albania, Serbia?

3:17 And they aren't all identical stories, I should say. Are they also going to happen here in Britain? Well, I'll get to all that. So how do people explain what's happened across Europe? The left says it's about poverty and lack of funding and education. The right says it's about mass migration. I want to convince you that yes, mass migration is part of the problem, but it's bigger than that.

3:41 This is about young people who hate their country because the problem of white guilt is embedded in the politics of youth, schools, and the online world. And I think this is combined with a culture of contagion through social media. Bad behavior used to spread just in one classroom. Now, with social media, it's as if Europe is one big classroom.

4:04 So let's look at this contagion from France to a bunch of other countries. Now, if you read more mainstream or left-leaning media, the story will go something like this: it began in France, and the reason is the suffering of the youth. Here's one columnist in The Guardian. I can't imagine how hard it must be to be a teenager in general today.

4:22 In 2021, the Lancet found that 75% of French 16 to 25 year olds exhibited signs of eco-anxiety. Elsewhere, it says children are suffering because of the rise of far-right political movements. That's right. Three-quarters have eco-anxiety. That explains everything. This, combined with a lack of educational funding, explains rioting, burning, and fighting with the police.

4:51 Meanwhile, Macon actually was at a Celine Dion concert. Anyway, these protests then spread to Belgium. The BBC summarized the spread as: there's a continent-wide sense of economic malaise felt by large numbers of young people, and it goes far beyond education. They worry about the environment and fret that AI will rob them of job opportunities.

5:26 They fear the spiraling cost of living could prevent them from finishing their education and stop them buying or renting a home big enough to start a family. This is a common theme. It's all about investment in education. Here's ITV.

5:43 The violence evolved from mainly peaceful rallies earlier in the day, which saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets. Dubbed the Gen Z protests, their demand for investment in education and concerns about the cost of living have inspired similar action across Europe.

6:00 They've inspired others. Inspiring Gen Z, injuring thousands, including hundreds of police, is about a reasonable demand for fair funding, that's all. So let's go through some of these ideas. In terms of education spending, in Belgium, it's one of the highest in the OECD. It's higher than almost anywhere else, in fact.

6:22 What about youth unemployment? To be fair, it's 18% in Belgium. But what was the youth unemployment rate a decade ago in Belgium? 20%. What was it two decades ago? 22%. It's lower now than the average of the last 30 years. So youth unemployment isn't an explanation for the rioting. The protests spread to Italy next.

6:46 This is Milan. And then, because this is how contagion works, it spread to Bologna. CNN says in nearby Bologna, students called on the government to review education policy. This is what it looked like. The point is that there is something else going on here. We keep telling ourselves the same story.

7:47 This must be about school conditions. Riots spread to Italy, they must have old classrooms too. And they've only just discovered how bad their classrooms are now that France is burning. What a coincidence! Once the protests started to spread across Europe, the Guardian put out the following headline: School conditions, unaffordable housing, and the cost of living have brought demonstrators onto the streets of several countries.

8:13 But look at the picture. It doesn't say build more houses. It says 2026 revolution. Protests then spread to Spain. There had been some protests there before. However, once there was violence in France, violence came to Spain too. That's how contagion works. Here's Bill Bowell. Okay, so notice once one place is violent, young people in a different country feel emboldened to do the same.

8:57 And since then it's moved to Germany. Here's the BBC.

9:01 There has been violence and looting in Frankfurt after largely peaceful protesters took to the streets across Germany calling for better education and lower living costs. But these are the scenes from Frankfurt where protests turned violent, rioters smashed windows and looted shops. Riot police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse those groups.

9:24 Again, this is largely peaceful, that term again, and apparently all about wanting greater funding for education. So is the explanation from the left sufficient? I would say no. It reminds me of when a child is being naughty in class and they say he must have unmet needs. In fact, what do Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, and Germany all have in common?

9:48 Well, they've had riots and student protests, and they all have above average education funding in the OECD. They all spend more than the United Kingdom on their schools. What about university education? Actually, in a lot of those countries, university tuition is basically free, like in Germany or France.

10:08 In the case of Spain, the European Commission is very proud that tuition fees at public universities usually cost between 700 and 1,700 euros per academic year. For comparison, in England, it's over 10,000 pounds per year. What about job prospects? Well, youth unemployment in the EU is on average 10% lower than it was 10 years ago.

10:34 I'm not saying it's perfect, but the left's argument that this is a simple case of hard times for young people doesn't explain what's happening. There is a further way in which the explanation of the left makes absolutely zero sense. If this is all about the poor downtrodden workers and young people pushing back against the fat cat government, why do you get scenes like this?

11:20 Je sais pas si on a tapé ou comment ça s'est passé avec une barre de fer, je crois.

11:33 So that's an ethnic minority woman who runs a small business that has been destroyed, and she appears to have been hit by a man with an iron bar while they destroyed her shop. Here's another example: Italy this time. Ask yourself: is this about class liberation? Let's watch. That's normal shop workers having to barricade themselves in because they're frightened.

12:05 It's a normal corner shop. The staff are just normal people. It gets even worse than that. In one example, a woman pleads with some rioters to stop setting fire to the place because there are children in the building. Here it is. But we're endlessly told, mostly peaceful. It's genuinely insane. Can you imagine the narrative of these protesters were associated with a right-wing cause?

12:55 So that's the left. Well, what about the explanation given by the right? On the right, you're more likely to hear explanations like this. Here's Douglas Murray.

13:04 Importing generations of people who have no loyalty to or love for the country, many of whom desire to burn it down, has contributed to France's climate of disorder. The French voted for this, many online warriors have said as they watched tearful French shopkeepers trying to stop mobs from destroying their livelihoods.

13:26 But that is not true. The French public never voted for this. Like their counterparts across Europe, in Britain, and indeed in America, the public has consistently voted for governments that promised to secure the nation's borders, maintain order on the streets, and prevent the civil war scenarios that so many people inside and outside the country have warned about.

13:49 Their leaders simply never heeded them, or failed trying.

13:54 Right. So he's saying this is about immigration, importing generations of people who do not love the country, and they're often the ones at the heart of the riots. One of the common features of this is how often you'll see foreign flags flying while people burn public streets, attack police, or smash shops.

14:12 And that isn't just in France. So in Germany, have a look. You'll see that Palestine flags are flying. In Barcelona, again, when you see people smashing shops, there's the Palestinian flag. In Italy, you get the same thing. A lot of conservative commentators will argue: look, we have foreign flags flying because we have had mass migration, particularly from the Islamic world.

14:35 And therefore, we're seeing declarations that the primary loyalty for many is elsewhere. So I would say that there's no question that mass migration and anti-Western sentiment play a huge role. But I'll reiterate the same argument I've been trying to tell conservatives for years. Lots of the loudest voices, and also most anti-Western voices, are white.

14:59 It is true that some are left-wing extremists, but that doesn't explain the numbers that are involved here. Take this young woman defending the violence. She's white and rich. Notice the shopkeeper who disagrees with her is black.

15:12 So you think the looters look at corporate dividends and then go smash shop windows?

15:16 Looters have nothing. Look, you're sitting here talking, but you really don't realize how lucky you are. You have things to lose. The people in these protests, we have nothing to lose. Let me tell you about a very personal case. No, really, I'm just giving my own personal experience. My mom is an English teacher, alright?

15:27 So she's shaping the future of this country. Okay? My mom leaves every morning with a pack of cookies in her bag because she can't afford lunch in the cafeteria. That's the reality for French people today. So your little stores, that's real cute. Great, okay? The footlockers that got looted. But in reality, there's genuine suffering among the French people.

15:41 And that's what I want us to talk about tonight. You've made your point. I talked over here. Yes, but I'm not the only one doing it.

15:46 Lola, I arrived in France when I was nine years old. Okay? I left the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I had to adapt, personally. When I arrived here, I had the choice, right? To just suffer the situation or to pull myself up. Today, as a business owner, I regularly employ 130 people. You're talking to me about poverty.

16:02 You're telling me I'm crying because my storefront is broken. But that's my life, Lola. That is my life. I have children. That's right. Must be nice.

16:09 Let her talk.

16:10 No, really, how lucky I am, how lucky we are to have had. I mean, our businesses smashed up. We have to pick up the pieces with our employees today. I have employees who are terrified.

16:19 Now notice, that young white girl isn't an extremist. She just has zero respect for her country. Her priority is anti-capitalism, anti-West, it's her identity. She isn't alone, and this is true in every Western country. Here are protests in Italy. Notice they're white kids who are waving those flags.

16:46 A lot of people have reflected on the awful burning down of the Limoges town hall in France. This is what happened. Now, the suspect who was arrested, if the telegraph is correct, is also white. The BBC went to interview residents after it happened. The older French people were outraged. They ask a younger white French woman, what does she say?

17:24 What's more important? A town hall or people living in poverty? She isn't fussed to see her town's history destroyed. Notice again, she's white. You'll remember from my Strictly episode on France, girls vandalizing a French church while singing songs glamorizing the terrorist murderers of the Bata clan.

17:44 They were white. Anti-Western sentiment isn't just an immigrant problem. Protesters in Germany carry Palestine flags. Now look at the crowd. What percentage would you say are young white Germans?

18:03 Freiheit für Palestina.

18:16 There's only one solution: Intifada Revolution. That's mostly white people chanting along. The right are being lazy if they think that this is just a problem with mass migration. They're also being lazy to think it's a tiny group of white European youngsters who think this way. The truth is that Western Europe and the West in general is addicted to white guilt.

18:37 Why are there riots in a lot of Europe? There will be a grain of truth in the left's argument that people are unhappy with the cost of living. There is also a lot of truth that if you have migration in huge numbers, you have separate communities and those isolated minority communities will feel no relationship with the country at all.

18:56 The right are correct about that. But the reality is that huge numbers of young people, including young white people, have been raised to believe that if you are from Western Europe, you are the problem. They have been raised, as I keep telling everyone, to see the world through the lens of the oppressor versus the oppressed.

19:16 White and Western is the oppressor, non-Western is the oppressed. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that every country is identical, but all of these Western European countries were once powerful. Most of them had empires, and all of them have modern movements in schools, online, and in universities to reveal the horror of their country's past.

19:39 We are all following in the footsteps of America. Take Italy. There's been a move amongst historians to address the myth of the good Italian. The idea that Italy has been a good country and briefly was forced into collaboration with the Nazis. Here is an extract from the work of Luigi Cagani, professor of modern history in Rome from 2013 on how Italian schools need to change.

20:06 The myth of the good Italian, incapable of war crimes and violence against civilians, has been cherished by Italian public opinion for a long time. Italian historians have thoroughly reconstructed the crimes perpetuated by the Italian army, and this issue has slowly entered history textbooks. He's saying we need our teachers to deconstruct the idea that Italians are good.

20:32 What is often taught in schools now? The use of chemical weapons in Ethiopia, Italian fascism, and Italy's complicity in the evils of Nazism. I'm not saying that you shouldn't teach about anything bad your country has done. But if schools aim to convince children that Italians were not good, the risk is that the children become convinced of precisely that.

20:59 And then you have young people who would rather identify with somewhere else, somewhere that is oppressed rather than being oppressive. That's why it makes sense when you see protesters storm the Colosseum in Italy with a Palestine flag on. But notice again, they're white. Personally, I believe there's been a deficit of authority, distinct from authoritarianism.

22:00 Ever since 1968, a situation fostered by the teachers themselves. They are now reaping what they sowed. She continues later. A culture of insurrection, the tendency to cast the West as the root of all evil, and the resulting loathing for who we are. Okay, so it's the same thing. She's saying in France the teachers moved to become anti-authority so that they could show that they weren't like the nasty authoritarians of the 20th century.

22:30 But what it meant was casting the West as the root of all evil. It's the same in Italy. In Spain, they have guilt over the conquistadors or Franco. In Germany, it's the Nazis and Hitler. In fact, through the modern political lens, all of Western Europe can pretty easily be portrayed as oppressors. This is the point.

22:52 A lot of young people understand evil only through the lens of the West. The West is responsible for all of the atrocities in the world. But how many of these young people know about the Arab slave trade, where the numbers were much higher than the European transatlantic trade? Not many. Deaths under communism in the 20th century being as high as 100 million?

23:14 Not a chance. A lot of them know only one story. Generally, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, French, Brits, white Europeans were bad. But the downtrodden non-West remain good. This means that for a lot of younger people, it isn't about preserving a culture, it's about replacing it with a newer utopian vision.

23:35 Here's a German activist explaining why she feels so inspired.

23:38 These protests were really inspired with some of the youth movements we've seen on the streets of France and Hungary, Serbia, Albania, and beyond Brazil, India. So it's quite utopian to see how these different movements inspire each other and you know spark confidence.

23:54 It's utopian to see how different movements inspire each other. She thinks these European riots are progress. That's what's interesting. If you are challenging capitalism, imperialism, the West, you're part of the progressive fight. You're part of solving the problem. That's why you have Greta Thunberg joining the protests.

24:15 Let's listen.

24:16 I'm here because this is one of the places where it started. They have been going for almost three weeks now. Students occupying the school and teachers striking in solidarity with them. Which is an incredible, it's an incredible, beautiful solidarity to see. And again, the French students are now showing the world how we should be standing up and how we should be revolting against an extremely violent system, and they're leading by example.

24:43 It's the same as the German girl. She was also a climate activist who also supported the protests, but didn't seem bothered by the violence. Solidarity, inspiring, showing the way. The idea is that they're all tearing down the violent system. It's about a revolution. The exact same words spray painted everywhere.

25:03 Whereas being proud of your country is seen as siding with the oppressor. Here's a French Arab explaining how Gen Z protesters of the left do not like it when ethnic minorities seem proud of the country. They don't like it because white Gen Z want ethnic minorities to talk about how they are victims, to talk about how oppressed they are.

25:39 An Arab who says, I am this people, I am reconnaissant of what it is offered to my parents, I am patriot, I am pretty to defend, I think. It's a people universalist, it's a people who permit the laïcity, it's a way where you can get the Islam without it. It's a people who can be homosexual settings to risk the prison, it's a people who are a family libre setting to risk the tribunal.

26:09 And these gamins, I don't excuse me, I don't pardon anyone, but they are also the fruit and the result of discourse victims on the whole blind, pardon, I think, who have made their proper enfants at the brick, are to see the people of the Arabs and noirs in their quarries to say to the Arab, toi the noir, what is the ampleur of your efforts, what is the étendue of your life, you are condamed to the check because this pay notes, parce que this pay teacher, because this pay is Islamophobic, and then their people are in the private quartier that's good, they are all cassettes, the discourse victimaires on the Arabs who are in the quartier pourries, and they for a party of each design who detest la

26:50 France.

26:50 Yeah, he's excellent. He's saying the elites, mostly white, push victimhood narratives about Europe to make themselves feel good. And ethnic minority children are told to hate their country, and so they riot. But I would go further than him. I'm saying we tell all children to hate their country, and that's why so many of them, ethnics and whites, riot.

27:12 This is why I think the right can be naive when they focus on immigration alone. You have mass migration, you have the White Guilt Industrial Complex, and that industrial complex is rooted in schools, childhood, and the online world. As I talk about in my book, Diversity is not our strength. It isn't just a small band of far-left, hardened activists.

27:35 It's a lot of young people of all races who share the same worldview. And so this brings us to the question: will it come to Britain? Will it come to America? Like Europe, both Britain and America have had mass migration. We also have a white guilt industrial complex. We also have the narrative that the world is about the oppressor versus the oppressed in our schools.

27:59 So why wouldn't it come here? Now, a big theme here is contagion. In a lot of normal schools, you have a naughty kid who shouts out or talks back or swears, and teachers think, well, he's the exception. He has unmet needs. We'll just try to ignore it or minimize it. Then the next week, mysteriously, you have two kids who act in that way.

28:22 Then three, then four, then before you know it, the school has behavior problems. That's how contagion works. The difference is, in an age of social media, contagion spreads like wildfire. And, like I say, the whole world's one big classroom. Think of the Black Lives Matter protests. You start with a police officer in America and the death of George Floyd.

28:45 Then there's protests in America. There's footage all over social media, and suddenly you have children in Britain saying to teachers, our young black people are gunned down every day. We have to march. It doesn't matter that this is statistically not true. The point is contagion. What one kid can do, another can do.

29:06 You see it online? You think you can do likewise. That's why we ended up with protests in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, everywhere. That's why in Britain we had the bizarre situation of British politicians honoring the memory of an American man they knew nothing about, except that he had died in America because of things that had nothing to do with Britain.

29:27 That's contagion for you. So what are the reasons to think it would come here? Well, I would say the common factors are: first, mass migration and poor integration as a consequence. Second, a culture of white guilt from elites, politicians, universities, teachers, which encourages people to dislike their country.

29:47 And last, schools and the online world that both encourage young people to see the whole world as oppressor versus oppressed, with the West as the ultimate oppressor. Let's start with mass migration. Well, statistically in Europe, the UK has had the highest number of immigrants into the country since the year 2000, with over 7 million people coming into the country, closely followed by Spain and Germany.

30:12 It's there up at the top. 7 million since 2000. We're a population of 70 million or so. Seven million? 70 million. The Office for National Statistics found that between 2021 and 2024, three years, nearly five million people arrived in the UK. So quite literally, nearly one in 20 people in the whole country arrived in that three-year period.

30:42 So that does present a problem for cohesiveness that makes it more likely that you'll have a disconnect between one section of the population and the other. What about white guilt? I've written an entire chapter in my book, Diversity is Not Our Strength, on the problem of white guilt for British intellectuals and public figures.

31:00 There's this constant effort, particularly among the more liberal leaning, to show that they're a good white who is different from the nasty, racist, bad whites. It's the same thing on campuses, with protests every week about Palestine. Again, this isn't an ethnic minority thing. It's a young person thing.

31:18 Here's students at the University of Glasgow.

31:21 And the occupation now! And the occupation now! Israel bombs classball case? Israel bombs, glass or peace! How many cats did you kill today? How many cats did you kill today? Israel bombs class or case! Israel bombs glass your pace! How many cats did you kill today? How many kids did you kill today?

31:41 Notice, these are white kids holding that sign, and the majority of those marching are white. They're holding a sign calling Hamas our martyrs. I mean, what on earth is going on? Here's the thing. They look at themselves, posh, white, western, and think, what I need to do is tear down my own oppressive society, and so raise up the victim, martyrs.

32:04 It's that simple. Divide the world into groups, work out who is oppressed, and attack the oppressor. It's the worldview we have given to our children. Here's a British young woman explaining it.

32:16 The Palestinian flag now represents freedom from capitalism, from imperialism, from colonialism. And I know that I say this as a white British person, but we're allowed to be cognitive beings, and I understand that the state and the state in which I've come from has been just completely a net negative on the world.

32:49 We are not different from those in Palestine, and I think the people who get it get it, and the people that don't, I really hope they do at some point. But all of the people that are being targeted in Palestine are people like us. They are the workers of the world, they are the people of the world, and if we can't stand up for them, we can't stand up for ourselves.

33:08 She says it herself. Palestine represents the downtrodden, and so somehow her fight as a rich white Western woman is their fight. In fact, her saying that to her mind sort of atones for her sins of being white. She's a good white now. Now in Britain, this idea is deeply embedded in our schools, and I spend some time on this in my book.

33:28 Our young people think this way because we taught them to. We learn about Islamic civilizations, the focus never touches on slavery, but on the great achievements of those empires. We learn about Churchill, he was to blame for the Bengal famine. He's a racist, and his racism led to him being a murderer.

33:47 Learn about the Tudors, the focus will, in plenty of schools, be on the handful of black tutors. Ask modern children about the Reformation, they won't be able to tell you very much. Ask them about John Blank, the black trumpeter to Henry VIII in the Tudor Times. Plenty will be able to tell you about him.

34:04 Atrocities committed by communists, barely touched on in most schools. Then when our young people go online, knowing almost nothing about their own country other than it did bad things, what do they see on TikTok? Well, things like this.

34:19 British Empire is the darkest sh ever. The Commonwealth. That's the darkest sh ever. British Empire, Commonwealth. That's literally England going to countries and destroying shit. Destroying communities, destroying communities, like put in there and like Britain has kind of like a oh well, that was back in the day.

34:38 Like, oh, that's nothing to do with us. That you're all here now.

34:41 That's the British rapper Stormsey saying that the British Empire was the darkest ever. Okay, so that is what most young people will think. They'll view Britain as basically comparable to Nazi Germany. I mean, i i actually worse, it's the darkest ever. So they'll think there were no slaves anywhere until the West invented it.

35:01 They will define the past of the country as being patriarchal, sexist, homophobic, and racist, but be able to tell you almost nothing about it. That's why in polling of the younger generation, the Telegraph found almost half of young people believe Britain was founded on racism and continues to be structurally racist today.

35:21 Nearly four in ten young people felt Churchill's statue should be removed from Parliament Square because he's a racist. The RAF Benevolent Fund, basically an armed forces charity, found that among 18 to 24-year-olds, only one in three knew what the Battle of Britain was. This is the point. They don't know anything about their country.

35:46 White, black, and brown kids, except that it did bad things. More kids want to remove Churchill's statue than are aware of arguably the most famous battle from his time as Prime Minister. And that is why you get young people who have no problem at all talking about the need for the riots to spread in Britain.

36:08 Here's one young lady.

36:09 So I'm I'm want to ask you about what's happening all over Europe just now with all Gen Z rising up and protesting. Um how do you feel about that? Do you think we're close to a revolution?

36:24 God, I really hope so. I think I'm very pro-revolution. I think we need not just revolution, violent revolution. I feel like you can't get anywhere against you can't get anywhere against like imperialism and colonialism without violence, because colonialism and imperialism is inherently a violent is a violent thing.

36:49 And I think violence is only categor categorized as violence if it's not the people in power that are um are doing it. Like when police are violent, you don't hear them talking about it's not called violence, it's not the same thing. So I think we just need to rise up, and I think but we also need to be organized.

37:09 We need a violent revolution because we can't get anywhere against colonialism and imperialism without it. Notice all she knows about her country are those same buzzwords as the white woman in the video saying that the Palestinian cause is her cause. It's the same worldview we've got from young people all over Europe.

37:29 Where did they get this? I keep trying to tell people. Schools, online, and the universities. There is another feature of change for young people which makes it more likely that they'll despise their country now. People say it takes a village to raise a child. What did that village look like once upon a time?

37:46 Well, there was the family, and there was also extended family who often lived nearby. And they would teach you right from wrong and your obligations to society. There would often be a local church, Sunday school teachers, ministers, members of the local community. Again, they would be teaching children what they owe others.

38:05 A child would be part of the local sports team, and his older siblings and his friends would be there. This gave a sense of belonging to a community. There were Boy Scouts, girl guides, local clubs where other adults would help teach certain values about how to respect others. You would have town events or fairs or other moments where all of these different organizations, what Edmund Burke called the Little Platoons, they would come together.

38:34 The point is that there was a village where young people would join something bigger than themselves and learn a sense of respect, of obligations to their community. What would I say has replaced that for a lot of young people? Well, Gen Z spend on average six and a half hours a day on their phone. For a lot of them, that's the village that raises them.

38:55 Now, children do still have their schools. Local schools are now sometimes the only places where young people meet adults who aren't in their family. And as we've already said, a lot of modern schools teach children that their country is oppressive, instead of it being something worth serving. And this is the same thing that their phones are telling them.

39:18 So we've got mass migration, we've got white guilt, we have an education system and an online world that encourages total ignorance about the nuances of history, but provides a clear confidence in the evils of the West. This all suggests it can and would happen here in Britain. And indeed, we've had small signs of efforts to make it happen, like this.

40:30 Let's watch.

40:31 We do see young people as soon as be politically engaged in this country, but in terms of direct action, political protest, being whilst just outspoken on TikTok, maybe, but not necessarily on the streets. What do you think that is?

40:43 Part of it is uh that our government is just more repressive. There is a more thriving institutional left culture in in other parts of Europe, mainly because they don't have as restrictive trade union laws. You know, we don't have things like sectoral bargaining, we don't have um protections for different kinds of strikes.

41:02 It's very difficult to um to get strike action in this country. We don't learn our history of working class movement struggle in this country. You know, we don't learn uh that people in this country have mobilized on the street, have taken direct action in our history and have won things. We don't learn about the dock worker strike.

41:22 They don't learn about movements of rebellion. No, they don't learn anything. They just get the vibe. The past was bad, the West was bad, everything else is good. And if you don't believe me, find a 15-year-old and quiz them about their knowledge of history. But there's a fair question in there. Why hasn't it happened in Britain?

41:39 Well, I think it may well do. But if I had to suggest a few factors as to why it might not, I would say the following things come to mind. The first is that I am sometimes struck when I visit Western schools that they sometimes don't see themselves as a little platoon, as part of the pastoral and emotional network of raising a child.

41:59 So I explained in my episode on France that in French schools, teachers are not encouraged to see themselves as emotional and moral mentors for their students. It's a more removed, academic, and aloof role. What do I mean by that? Well, in most schools in Britain, you have a form tutor who is in charge of looking out for the child pastorally.

42:19 The form tutor is expected to call home and talk to parents. They'll be there at parents' evenings. The idea is that children should see their teachers as emotional and moral figures as much as academic or intellectual ones. Britain has this advantage over many other nations across the Western world.

42:36 We care very much about the relationships our children have with their schools and their teachers. That would explain, like the left-wing commentator says, why young people here are so vocally critical of Britain in theory, but don't seem to barricade their schools, for example. I'm not saying this means that riots won't happen here.

42:57 They definitely might, but there's a tiny difference there that I can feel on the ground. I also think it isn't true that we're more repressive here in Britain. I mean, here's Spain. Are there any other factors which mean it's possible that Gen Z protests and street chaos might not come to Britain? There's a basic one that Britain tends to copy America more often than it does Europe.

43:48 America sneezes, Britain catches a cold, as people say. The fact is, we have shared language, and it means that social media feeds from America have a huge impact here. You saw that with Black Lives Matter. There was this immediate importing of American race politics. I'm not convinced British young people have the same connectedness to Europe because of the language difference.

44:12 But do I think overall that pretty much all of the fundamentals are here in Britain? Sadly, yes, I do. However, I actually think there's a lot people can do about that. I think there's lots the government can do, sure, but also teachers and families and how they raise their kids. So if you're sitting there at home feeling a little pessimistic, do not give up hope.

44:34 I go into what's really happening on the ground and what we can do about it in my book, Diversity is Not Our Strength. And I'm trying to convince you all in my book of what we need to be doing with our children, how we need to be giving them different values, how we need to be doing it differently in our schools, in our families, and online.

44:53 And you can pre-order the book in the Amazon link below. I'm really looking forward to hearing what you think. The last chapter is Who Will Be Brave? I'm really looking forward to hearing what you think about that one. Now I get to answer a few questions from all of you. If you have a question you like answered, put it in the comments below and subscribe to the channel while you're there.

45:17 Do subscribe to the channel. So many people just watch and don't subscribe, so you have to subscribe. You can also find me on ex at miss underscore snuffy. And you know, the last episode was on masculinity, and I got a ton of questions. So that was fascinating. Uh, right, first question. Alfon Eldez asks, are you going to make a video talking about how society has failed girls and women and how negative and harmful feminism has been for them in recent years?

45:46 Absolutely, Alphon. Of course we're gonna talk about that here at Strictly. You just gotta wait and see. Look forward to it. Okay, Sally J says, I was one of those insufferable woke mothers who gave my son dolls rather than the boy toys he wanted. When he was struggling in his early 20s, I realized I'd been completely fooled by the culture and how I brought up my kids.

46:09 Female equals good, male equals bad. I look around at the young men his age, and they're all struggling with masculinity. Mothers were strict in supporting the emasculation of our sons. What do we do and how do we help the young men who have been marinated in this toxic feminist mess? Yeah, well, I mean, it's fascinating, really.

46:30 Uh, Jordan Peterson, you can always read some Jordan Peterson, you know. Pull your shoulders back, clean your room, all that stuff. He's pretty good. A lot of young men love Jordan Peterson. Yeah, I mean, look, there's lots of uh help out there nowadays because the the tables have turned. There are a lot of conservative um voices out there commenting on what young men need, but ultimately it's about them showing them what it is to be a good man, you know?

46:55 How can you be a traditional man and be good? You know, there's nothing wrong. I mean, that's what you should say to them. There's nothing wrong with being a man and a traditional man who's strong and powerful and uses his strength to protect others and to help others. Bring back the men who open the doors for the young ladies, you know?

47:13 Now, the thing is, is that it's very possible that they might do that, and young women would, you know, balk at that. But you know what? That's not the girlfriend for you, dear. That's what you need to say. You're looking for a girlfriend who, when you open the door for her, she says, thank you, kind sir.

47:29 Um, that's the kind of advice I'd want to give your young man. Okay, Judy Lansky asks, okay, Catherine, let's start with you. How many male teachers do you have in your own school to serve as male role models? Well, you know, Judy, that's such an interesting question. I couldn't tell you because I tend to not count.

47:49 But I do know, because I don't look at that sort of thing, but I do know that people who visit do tend to comment on the fact that there are quite a lot of men at my school. So um, I suspect I have more than other schools. Uh, and um my young men are made to feel very much like we value young men in our organization, and so they stick with me.

48:11 Come and visit us, Judy. You just need to go online, sign up for a visit, and then you can come see yourself. Okay, so final question. Quiet Heart asks, Catherine, why has this happened? This deliberate quelling of masculinity, what's the cause? And what can those of us outside the education sector do to counteract it?

48:30 Well, you know what? This actually speaks to the heart of my book. Um, you know, what can ordinary people do uh about the whole diversity question, about the masculinity question, all of these uh topics that have been uh sullied by the far left. What can we do about it? Well, read my book, to be honest, because the Who Will Be Brave chapter and the entire book, you know, read that.

48:56 It'll tell you what to do about masculinity too, because it really is about embracing what we know as those old school values and then not being afraid to talk about them. Uh yeah, have a read, Quiet Heart, and then let me know what you think of the book. Well, that's all we have time for for today. I've got a school to run, you've got things to do.

49:17 Until next time on Strictly Education, hold the line, strength and honor. Thanks for stopping by.