Brendan O'Neill: A Heretic's Manifesto

Spiked's leading polemicist defends J.K. Rowling, Brexit, and Enlightenment values of free speech and pluralism.

1x 1.1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 3x

:15 :15

Download

Brendan O'Neill: A Heretic's Manifesto

My guest today is Brendan O'Neill of Spiked, whose new collection of essays, A Heretic's Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable covers heated topics such as attacks on J.K. Rowling by trans activists; dismissals of populist moments that gave rise to Brexit, Donald Trump, and Emmanuel Macron; and the refusal by elites to own up to their mistakes related to COVID lockdowns. I blurbed this provocative and irresistibly readable book, writing that "Brendan O'Neill is the reincarnation of Christopher Hitchens, a devil's advocate who is willing to always state his case clearly, convincingly, and courageously."

Today's sponsor:

• The Reason Speakeasy. The Reason Speakeasy is a monthly, unscripted conversation in New York City with outspoken defenders of free thinking and heterodoxy. On Monday, June 26, Nick Gillespie talks with Tara Isabella Burton, author of Self-Made: Creating Our Identities From Da Vinci to the Kardashians. Tickets are $10—which includes beer, wine, soda, food, and plenty of time to talk about politics, culture, and ideas in one of the coolest settings in midtown Manhattan. For details, go here.

Comments

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

HOLY SHIT! I guess I have to take back what I said. O'Neill's card WASN'T yanked out of Nick's Rolodex.

[AngliaJames17]

Great article, Mike. I appreciate your work, I'm now creating over $35,100 dollars each month simply by doing a simple job online! I do know You currently making a lot of greenbacks online from $28,100 dollars, its simple online operating jobs.
.
.
Just open the link----------------------------------------->>> http://Www.OnlineCash1.Com

[jamesherry]

I am making a good salary from home $6580-$7065/week , which is amazing under a year ago I was jobless in a horrible economy. I thank God every day I was blessed with these instructions and now it’s my duty to pay it forward and share it with Everyone,
🙂 AND GOOD LUCK.:)

Here is I started.……......>> http://WWW.RICHEPAY.COM

[JulianCarter]

Easily start receiving more than $600 every single day from home in your part time. i made $18781 from this job in my spare time afte my college. easy to do job and its regular income are awesome. no skills needed to do this job all you need to know is how to copy and paste stuff online. join this today by follow details on this page.
.
.
Apply Now Here—————————->>> https://Www.Coins71.Com

[xoref50553]

An easy and quick way to make money online by working part-time and earning an additional $15,000 or more. by working in my spare time in 1ce85 In my previous month (bgr-03), I made $17250, and this job has made me very happy. You can try this right now by following the instructions here
.
.
.
Check Profile______ Onlineweb7.com

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Sadly, no transcript so I guess this is a non-starter for some commenters.

Hint: you can get a transcript for any youtube video. Learn how by googling the terms.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Why don't you share how it's done, since you seem to be rather proficient in Youtube videos?

[Mother's Lament]

Is that some sort of weird attempt at a slam?

[Nazi-Burning Witch]

Nah, he's just a moron.

[DeniseDiaz]

Six months ago I lost my job and after that I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a great website which literally saved me. I started working for them online and in a short time after I've started averaging 15k a month... The best thing was that cause I am not that computer savvy all I needed was some basic typing skills and internet access to start.
🙂 AND GOOD LUCK.:)
HERE====)>>> https://www.Salarybiz.com

[Nazi-Burning Witch]

Sadly, this isn't on Youtube...

[InsaneTrollLogic]

And O'Neill is a hell of a better writer and libertarian than most (all?) of the editors here under the sway of Charles Koch.

[Hank Ferrous]

All but Stossel, I posit. But does he have a speakeasy for rubbing elbows w/ the serfs when not at cocktail parties? O'Neill doesn't seem like a cocktail party dipshit, to be honest.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Nick: Why do you open a book on heresy with a chapter titled "Her Penis".

Hoo boy. I'm assuming Nick knows the answer to this and is only asking as a formality.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Nick thinks it's just about words and phrases, and so is curious what the stakes are in this "game of language".

Nick is apparently unaware of male rapists being put into women's prisons and then raping their fellow inmates because they're merely "respecting someone's pronouns".

[Social Justice is neither]

I'm sure California and other correct thinking states will solve this like the UK, by defining rape as penetration by a man against a woman and since trans women are women no rapes occur in those circumstances.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

O'Neill: I've had many arguments with my libertarian friends, and I'm prepared to have an argument now...

My man. My man!

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Thanks to Reason, people like O'Neill don't want to be labeled as "libertarian".

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Nick is playing a blinkered game of rhetoric... he wonders why anyone would deny someone their "Promethean transformation" (his actual words) while ignoring the facts of a confused teenager being carved up on the operating table while an entire totem-pole of institutions not only didn't stand athwart the process and shout "let's slow this down a bit" but actively claims it's the only possible method of 'affirming it' and anyone who dissents will have their careers destroyed.

[Social Justice is neither]

So a reckless decision leading to an eternity of pain, sounds fitting.

[Hank Ferrous]

Reasonmag in its current form, and the No True Scotsman crowd that freaked/s out about Mises Caucus, atheism, Ukraine, Trump, covid. Every fucking issue on which some fell in to synchronized thinking while patting themselves on the back that gross misrepresentations, violations of civil liberties were real libertarianism.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Yep... Yep, Nick thinks it's just about bathrooms and pronouns. He literally thinks that's all it is. Jesus h fucking christ.

[Stuck in California]

I don't think that's it.

Seriously, he's a dumbass, but he's not stupid. It's just religious dogma now, and his leaning on that gaslighting shite is willful. He knows otherwise, he's just so dug into his argument he hasn't gotten to the point where he'll commit blasphemy to the progressive church yet.

[Mickey Rat]

Gillespie at one point asks about the pronouns aspect with "if it is such a small group of people, why do you care?" Apparently being unable to empathize with the idea of objecting to being made to care in a specific way or else face penalties, legal, professional and/or social. Which would seem to be strange for someone claiming to be against social conformity.

[Hank Ferrous]

Are you surprised gillespie doesn't seem to comprehend? If he took the stance that the UK's or Canada's laws were unethical and violation of individual liberties, it would demonstrate that he understood. He goes the other direction, choosing as you say, pushing empathy for the person who has contrived victimhood status as superior to the rights of all other members of a society.

[Mickey Rat]

Not really. What he says in this interview is that one of the most important things to him is there being not one iota of moral disapproval of any sexual activity. He is perturbed that despite religion falling by the wayside, most people are still looking for some institution to give them guidance on how to live, and dislikes that the therapeutic institutions are the ones now filling that role.

The reality of overthrowing all traditions apparently does not fit the theory he fell in love with.

[Hank Ferrous]

I'll admit to not listening to all of the podcast yet -like Diane (Paul) I prefer to read transcripts. And, I own that i'm guilty of making an assumption re gillespie here, but do base it on his history. Thanks for the reply; now I need to find the time to finish listening to this.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

FFS Nick, the reason the "rhetoric is much more heated in the U.K." might have something to do with the Tavistock clinic closing over their butchering of children. Read something.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Nick: Just bake the cake, just acquiesce to uterus-having-people and men in women’s prisons. Quit being such a bummer, man.

Nick, why am I being REQUIRED to PARTICIPATE in your "promethean transformation"?

[InsaneTrollLogic]

How much of a retard is Gillespie? The boy (as he's that damn stupid, he doesn't earn the term "man") needs a remedial biology course.

[Mickey Rat]

Gillespie is an admirer of Foucault and defensive about Postmodernism. He is in this pretty deep.

[Mother's Lament]

Spiked, the magazine Reason would've been if it had stayed libertarian.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

The difference is Charles Koch and his friendship with George Soros and willingness to go with the WEF. Wrest control of Reason from Koch, and maybe it can return to libertarian from libertine.

[Mother's Lament]

I wonder if that could be done?

Probably need a bigger billionaire and fatter brown envelopes to achieve it. Most of the writers here will only hold opinions they're paid for.

[Stuck in California]

+1

I'm convinced anyone not precisely parroting the party platform is one of the paid advertisers plugging their book (website, blog, onlyfans) in the form of a "story" here on Reason.

[Nazi-Burning Witch]

Sure? I mean, the fucker is mortal.

[CE]

Brexit looks more brilliant every year. The EU is a greater risk to Europeans than climate change is.

[Nazi-Burning Witch]

Too bad fucktards are doing everything they can to scupper Brexit.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

So, O'Neill asks:
"If this is a civil rights movement, then why does it feel so authoritarian?"

The answer is simple: Because on this one, YOU'RE ON THE WRONG SIDE.

I am quite certain that many of the bigots and misogynists and homophobes of the past, when confronted with the movement for greater liberty for minorities and women and gays, would have said the same thing. "They want to FORCE me to ACCEPT their sinful sexual relations as normal!" "They want to FORCE me to ACCEPT women working outside the home!" So yeah, it's entirely understandable that the people on the wrong side of liberty feel like everyone is "forcing" them to accept the liberty of everyone else.

So he says that he is a firm supporter of the gay liberation movement and he claims that that was a genuine demand for greater freedom. However, now, he says that the trans movement is not calling for greater freedom but for "greater recognition" and "validation". Here is a news flash for O'Neill: the gay liberation activists of the 1970s and 1980s were calling for those same things too. They wanted the right, for example, to organize a gay pride parade. That is all about "recognition" and "validation", not really about substantive advancement of core liberty. The whole IDEA behind Pride is that gay individuals should be proud to be who they really are and not shamed into the closet to feel bad about themselves. They wanted then what O'Neill criticizes trans activists now as wanting. If O'Neill had been politically active in the 1970s I predict that he would have had the exact same position on the gay liberation movement as he would now have on trans rights: he'd bash them for being not really interested in freedom but just about validation and recognition. But in the modern day, he can take all of that for granted and pretend "that's different".

And, absurdly, O'Neill claims that trans activists want to "enslave themselves" to "psychic recognition of the modern state and the medical establishment". Excuse me, Mr. O'Neill the Libertarian, but what happened to freedom of choice here? It is their choice to decide what they want to do to their bodies. You think it is "enslavement"? Okay, I will toss your opinion into the round file in the corner. I don't care. It is not your call, it is their call.

[DesigNate]

Hahahahahahahahaha goddamn man.

[Mickey Rat]

It is choosing to live a life of permanent medical maintenance for turning one's body into a costume. Medical science cannot make a man into a functional woman or vice versa. You are not perfectly free to choose to be whatever you want. You are constrained by the limitations of reality.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

O'Neill also talks out of both sides of his mouth.

At about 13:45 he claims that he absolutely supports the right of trans adults to live the life that they wish to live, because "self government means nothing if people are not free to define themselves". Sounds great! But then, later on at about 16:45, he criticizes trans women who are... you know... actually living the lives they wish to live as an encroachment on the hard-won freedoms of cis-women.

So O'Neill is fine with men defining themselves as women, but is NOT fine with those same men LIVING their lives as women. So he favors self-determination, but not self-actualization? "You can define yourself however you wish but you may not act upon it without my permission"? That is a very strange position for a libertarian to take.

[Mickey Rat]

"...he criticizes trans women who are… you know… actually living the lives they wish to live as an encroachment on the hard-won freedoms of cis-women."

Because the freedoms and protections for biological women are incompatible with a person claiming to be a transwoman invading spaces and institutions reserved for females.

Also, stop using slurs.

[Hank Ferrous]

Not merely an ignorant bigots' slur, but the sophist has adopted The Land of Make-Believe's appropriation of a perfectly good prefix from chemistry. 'Cis' isn't correctly used for people, no matter how the fuckwits who re-define language & the 'the dictionary is wrong' crowd would like to make it so.

[Mickey Rat]

Or Roman geography. Transalpine - the far side of the Alps. Cisalpine - the near side of the Alps.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

So, O'Neill thinks the idea that there is a "gendered soul" that may or may not be different from one's "biological encasing" to be an "absurd religious idea". Well, I have no idea about the "soul" part, but the idea that one's gender identity can be different from one's "biological encasing", why is that such an absurd idea? It's called FREE WILL, Brendan. We are free to be who we want to be. In fact, didn't he just say a few minutes earlier, “self government means nothing if people are not free to define themselves”? Hmm? Where does one's ability come from for self-definition? It comes from one's rational brain, our reason, our free will. That some people rationalize free will in quasi-religious contexts by referencing some immortal 'soul' is besides the point. Literally no one is demanding that you accept the specific concept of a "gendered soul", only that you leave people alone to be who they choose to be, regardless of what soul they may or may not have.

By the way, the Founding Fathers, and many of the Enlightenment thinkers, justified their views on liberty and natural rights in quasi-religious contexts too - referencing "Divine Providence" and whatnot. I think it was Descartes who said that the reason why he studied natural science was so that he could better understand God's creation. That they invoked religion to justify their arguments doesn't nullify their arguments; fortunately, there are multiple valid arguments in favor of liberty and self-determination. So bringing up some "gendered soul" idea is a red herring.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Oh, and then O’Neill has the gall to bring up John Stuart Mill and his remarks about social tyranny. Yes, it is true that social tyranny – the oppressive nature of some social customs – can be at times more tyrannical than de jure tyranny imposed by a state. So now, let’s think about who is suffering more at the hands of ‘social tyranny’ here. The 99% of people who are not trans? Really? The social structures and social conventions that have been built up both in the UK and the US, do they support an expansive view of gender identity, or do they mostly support an older form of strict binary gender roles?

Who is really the victim of “social tyranny” here, Mr. O’Neill?

[chemjeff radical individualist]

So one case in which O'Neill might have half a point.

He criticizes people who think that gender reassignment surgery is a valid method to "correct" gay people into the body that they are "supposed" to be in. Yeah, I agree with him, that is wrong.

If you are a biological woman and you want to experience life forming relationships *in a woman's body* with other women, then go right ahead.

If you are a biological woman and you want to experience life forming relationships *in a man's body* with other women, then go right ahead.

They are two separate identities, one is not a correction for the other.

So then he claims that it is homophobic to want to "fix" homosexuality by gender reassignment surgery, and that there is this undercurrent of homophobia in all of this. Nick tries to ask him where all of this homophobia is supposedly coming from, but he dodges the question. But it is a valid question. Among the trans activists and trans-supporting crowd, the ones who would at least be receptive to the idea of gender reassignment surgery, they are the ones who are most likely to have the most liberal, open views on homosexuality, not homophobic or puritanical. That O'Neill brings up Iran, which evidently has all of these gender reassignment surgeries because the religious leaders DO view the surgery as a 'cure' for homosexuality, is just an insinuation of guilt by association. It is possible to view gender reassignment surgery as one option among many that free people ought to be free to choose, without endorsing one particularly vile use of that surgery by theocratic regimes.

[Mickey Rat]

"You've got the punk of Slytherin supporting you..."

Nick does realize that these people are actors and they were not actually Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter, etc.?

[Mickey Rat]

And he also says that J.K. Rowling's views are "retrograde" without ever explaining how. It is an ad hominem dismissal without any support.

[Honest Economics]

For sound economic perspective go to https://honesteconomics.substack.com/

[Mother's Lament]

Piss off