Roger One of the biggest things that breaks down the hierarchy is the notion of the prophet, or the holy person, or the person with spiritual calling, because they don't have, in concretized ways, sort of like top down power, but they do have authority. A few people do basically lead millions of people and have done throughout history, and they don't necessarily have to fulfill the model of a sort of top down patriarchal orientation. People have different talents and they should be allowed to pursue them. And the obvious point is that there are leaders and always have been, but they don't need to be bad.

Rachel Do you think you're a prophet?

Rachel Hello and welcome to Planet Critical, the podcast for a world in crisis. My name is Rachel Donald. I'm a climate journalist and your host. Every week I interview experts who are battling to save our planet. My guests are scientists, politicians, academics, journalists and activists. They explain the complexities of the energy, economic, political and cultural crises we face today, revealing what's really going on and what they think needs to be done. These are the stories of the big picture. Go to planet to learn more and subscribe.

Rachel My guest this week is Roger Hallam. Many of you will know Roger's name. He is undoubtedly one of the most prominent climate activists in the United Kingdom. Roger helped co-found Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain and other radical organizations. He has repeatedly put his body on the line through acts of civil disobedience. Roger has been arrested countless times, hauled in front of judges countless times. And in July twenty twenty four, Roger was sentenced to five years in jail for participating in a zoom call which was about organizing an upcoming act of civil disobedience. This huge sentence caused shockwaves around the world. It was lambasted as unjust as an abuse of the judicial system. Roger successfully had his sentence reduced on appeal, and I spoke to him from a probation hostel, which is why the audio quality isn't as good as it usually is about his theory of change, his commitment to non-violence, and how we spark mass mobilisation. This is a very interesting conversation. Roger and I frequently disagree on the House, even if we often agree on the what's and the whys, and I'm grateful to him for welcoming the more challenging aspects of this discussion, and for having a real nitty gritty back and forth about these things that he has dedicated his life to. And I want to just take a moment here to remind everyone that even though I do disagree with a lot of what Roger says throughout, I maintain my gratitude towards activists like him who have put their lives on hold and their bodies on the line to confront state apathy, corruption, the destruction of our societies and of course, of Earth's body to whether or not we agree on the semantics or even the tactics. We are all indebted to environmental defenders, no matter where they be on this planet.

Rachel I hope you all enjoy the episode. If you do, please share it far and wide. And if you're loving the show, support Planet Critical with a paid subscription at. Home. By signing up, you'll get the planet Critical newsletter delivered straight to your inbox every week. You'll also have access to the Wonderful Planet critical community, who are full of inspiring thoughts, ideas, critiques and determination. I'm so grateful to everyone who chooses to support the project. I'm a vehement believer in ad free and open access content, so Planet Critical wouldn't exist without the direct support of the amazing community. Thank you so much to all of you who keep the project going every week. Roger.

Rachel Welcome to Planet Critical. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Roger Thank you very much. Thanks.

Rachel Now, I've given you a big, long introduction, uh, for listeners who might not know who you are, because subscribers here are from one hundred and eighty six countries around the world, so I'm going to skip a little bit ahead in the timeline, if I may, and come up to sort of where you are now recently out of prison, uh, after well, being politically imprisoned, I think is a fair term to use after being unfairly targeted for these campaigns of civil disobedience that you helped organize. But since coming out, you've been writing about how you're transitioning seems away from these campaigns of civil disobedience and towards these strategies of mobilizations and how to build a mass movement. Why the transition?

Roger Well, there's a certain practicality to it, in the sense that I got a five year sentence, which was then reduced to four years, but that means I'm on licence for another two years or so. So if I promote civil disobedience and or engage in it, then I'll go back to prison. So on balance, that's probably not a good use of my time, but it's only on balance. The broader point is that without sounding too dramatic, I think there's like a major shift in the climate left spaces towards a meta strategy, like a big picture idea of what we're going to do around creating social alliances in response to the rise of the far right. And obviously, everyone in the progressive left space knows or should know that the far right, when they get to power, will do whatever it takes to do far right things. And and included in those far right things will be scrapping what meager action on the climate is happening. So everyone's got their issues, stroke orientations, but everyone can come together because everyone knows whatever their values or issues or orientations are, They'll be disappearing or be heavily challenged if the far right wins. I think we've moved out of what I would call the neoliberal period, where people have their own campaigns and their own issues and their own intentions, and they pursue them separately or in a weak ecology, as you might say, towards a more mature political strategy where everyone works together on on the two main issues, which is the far right and the power of the rich. Both of those are connected, obviously. And and then that means there's two parts of that strategy and insider strategy and outsider strategy, which is the optimal strategy arguably historically for changing regimes or resisting the far right or combination of the two. In other words, you you run in elections and you build mutual aid systems and you build street movements, and it's the Bringing together of those forces that maximizes the probability that you're going to be successful, rather than just pursuing one of them, or two of them, for that matter. So that's ninety percent of what I've got to say, really.

Rachel So is climate not going to be the umbrella anymore? It's going to be these two prongs sort of combating the right directly and targeting.

Roger Climate.

Rachel Wealth inequality.

Roger Many people know is a word that was constructed in the neoliberal period and is a highly politicized word in the sense that it becomes a phenomenon as something that's technical and partial and open to reform. And those those subliminal messages, every time you say climate, obviously reinforce that, that sort of notion of how you see political and social reality while all the time and obviously it's even more explicit now all the time. The issue is not about the climate. The issue is about the power relations in society. So when, for instance, we set up Extinction Rebellion, we were all from what you might call a nonviolent revolutionary background. And we wanted to see system change. And the climate was one of a number of options, strategies. And I argued that climate would be the battering ram. That's the word I used to sort of force the the unsustainability of the system politically, morally and, you know, materially into the public sphere. And that's what the original idea of exile was. But once we set up XR, of course, you know, lots of liberals moved into it, as you might say, that it started to revert its framing back to the climate as an issue, as a partial thing, and as something that's open to reform, which was never the plan. but, you know, there we go.

Rachel Yeah, right. So the idea has always been systems change. And with this strategic move towards mass mobilization, mass movement, it's still we need an entire systems change. But what I'm interested in is this path this like quite traditional path to doing that i.e. you know, building political momentum, standing in elections, essentially accessing the halls of power. How much can a system be changed from within? Do you think, and how restrictive actually will the opportunities be once we're in power? I mean, is it not, arguably, that we only ever see reform? Because that's what happens from within the halls of power, not revolution, but reform itself.

Roger Main themes that I will probably return to several times in this interview is that in order to effectively change reality, we need to understand how reality works. So it's like you have to go back a step and think about how we think about political reality. And most people on the left are subject to a sort of frame which was established in the enlightenment, without wishing to get too academic about it. But you know which. And there's these words that float around reductive, linear, materialist. What it basically means is, is you think about the world as a as billiard balls. You know, you have an election and that hits, you know, hits the election result and then that hits, you know, getting into government and then you hit a wall and you can't go any further. But that's that's simply not how it works. As you know, we sort of know, but we still, you know, revert to these bad habits of how to look at why things worked, how things work is everything affects everything all the time, which is quite difficult to then operationalize what you want to do. Everything. Everything affects everything. It's like, oh, you know, just a bit of a head fuck sort of thought. But but what it means from an operational point of view is that is there are several sort of zones of outcomes of actions, as you might say. So you can't reduce reality to a certain extent. So concrete. What I mean by this is when you engage in an election, an election in actuality, you're not just winning the election. What you're doing, for instance, is learning how to build a culture which can then be used, you know, in different spheres of social activity. So that's one area. And then another area is that you're animating the social space. In other words, people get excited because there's a radical option, like with Zack Polanski, for instance, at the moment. So that's what I would call like social fluidity. In other words, people aren't so cynical. They're still a bit cynical and a bit hopeless, but they've got a bit of hope and they've got a bit of openness because hope brings openness. And then then you've got a baseline like a social material, if you like, that can then be developed into mutual aid and into our street movements, insomuch as we've got three buckets. So the strategy here is what you might call to use the election in order to animate the social space, in order to create an inside outsider track, rather than a reductive construction of the idea, which is, oh, we're going to win, you know, thirty seats on the local election, and then we'll be able to do A, B, and C, so obviously it is an election as well, right? And not denying an election is an election and it has a rationality to it. And it's got its pros and cons, as we all know. Uh, but the point is, we need to be sophisticated in looking at what the meta aim is, and the meta aim is to animate and then shape the social space progressively through a series of iterations. Right. So that's the other thing is we mustn't look upon this as a static system. It's not like one thing bangs into another thing and everything else stays the same. Everything's always changing and always being reproduced, as you might say. Uh, you know, in every moment, in principle. So that's how I do strategy is, you know, think of we're going to do this, and then we're going to do that, and then we're going to do the next thing.

Rachel Okay. But that's what I'm hearing a little bit of. I'm hearing some contradictions, you know, that things cannot be reduced, except we can actually reduce this thing that we're going to do. A and it will lead to B into C and we're going to animate like animate the social space for example. Of course of course this is hugely important. And I agree. You know this idea of like being able to find a sort of collective common ground on a territory upon which to build a political movement. Hugely, hugely, hugely important. But I do think that it's not taking into consideration, just from what I've heard, the existing power dynamics that have prevented and continued to prevent and subvert, uh, campaigns that come up from the public. And I think a really good example might be of of exactly what you're talking about. Might be might be Podemos in Spain in I think it was twenty sixteen that they won the well, they sort of ground the government to a halt by effectively winning a minority and then had to create a government with other parties. But Spain, I mean, it was an amazing, amazing moment. So many people signed up to vote. So many people came out to vote. It was really like, oh my God, this is going to be the beginning. This is going to be like the pink tide in Europe. This is the first thing. And actually what they've discovered is there's quite little that you can get done in government with the way that things are currently set up because of the interrelation of our global financial systems, of our supply chains, of our trades, even of being a member of the European Union, for example. It's actually quite hard to get things done, so you can really animate the social space quite dramatically, which I think in many ways Extinction Rebellion did, even if people didn't agree with them. My God, everybody was talking. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to lead to change, that it's going to lead to a material outcome. Because especially now, there is so much on the line for those in power, for those who are hoarding wealth, who have shown themselves completely willing now to blatantly break international law constitutions just the way things are done, you know, sort of evict themselves from the gentleman's game of politics in order to do this. And so I think we're in a different moment of history, and I suppose that's why I worry about that. You. We could do a lot on the ground, and it doesn't actually necessarily mean that it'll will translate into anything, because the powerful have so much to lose, and they have shown that they're not willing to give any of it up.

Roger Yeah, well, there's a balance between sort of general principles and sort of contextual analysis. And what do we mean by that? Uh, there's a tendency on the left in order to think about things in static terms, that if you do this, it won't work, but there's no such thing as if you do this, it won't work. There's only if you do this in a particular time and space. It won't work or it didn't work. Inasmuch as your analysis is historical, it's happening at the moment or in the past, and everything that is happening is technically in the past. Right? So, so I think when you're thinking about iterative design, a key understanding is that is that failure is part of the process to getting to success. And you have to go through relative cycles of failure in order to build the knowledge and the culture and the resilience to actually get to success. So the issue often is how to fail in the best way rather than how to succeed. Because if you sort of idealist about it, you're thinking, well, I'm not doing anything because I won't win. Which relates to the other problem, which is which is the privileged viewpoint, as you might say, which is where. Roger. That won't work because of A, B and C as. And my reply to that is, well, what's your plan? Not in a nasty way, but just to say any sort of grounded strategy has to has to opt for the least worst option. Given that there isn't an escape, there's no out of time privileged position, as a lot of what I would call left defeatist take, you know, particularly associated with Western university culture, which is the notion of pure critique, you know. Oh, Roger, that won't work. It's like, of course it won't work, but it works better than all the other options. And, you know, just sitting in a university, writing papers work. Well, maybe, but probably not.

Rachel But, but but why? But why do you think it will work better than all the others?

Roger Because, I mean, sorry.

Rachel To jump in here.

Roger But based contextual analysis, that's first of all. And secondly, I've been in the game.

Rachel What does that mean a data based contextual analysis.

Roger It means if we do this, then that will happen in this context because it's happened recently in the past. So we're building up data all the time on what what can happen if we do A, B and C. So then we can replicate things. So for instance like with with XL. XL was a relative failure let's say for the sake of argument. But it had various elements that were really good. And then when we develop just Apollo, we iterate it on that, on that space and made it better, for instance, by having a proper leadership structure, which is essential, you know, in most contexts in most places. Then, because that worked, then we had the model that was good enough to go, and then we created, you know, the largest climate, inverted commas, movements in Italy, France and and Spain, sorry, Germany, you know, in the space of twelve months. So what that shows and obviously, you know, it's a nuance point. It's not like it's all probabilistic. Right. But if you come up with a model that substantially works, then you can replicate it, or at least around the Western world. And so what the model we're trying to develop, I'm just trying to make it concrete. Right. The model we're trying to develop at the moment is how can you use elections to win elections? By doing A, B and C, you can ask me about A, B and C in a minute if you want. If you if you run elections doing A, B and C, number one, you'll win those elections. And number two, you'll create concrete pathways to enhance mutual aid systems and enhanced street movement systems. Right. So you can burrow down into that. So for instance, you know, I did a stall on Saturday and I got thirty people to put their phone over WhatsApp, and then three of those people turned up to a meeting and two of them are going to go out, you know, and do action. You know, they'll go and do door knocking or they'll go and do a stall, right. So mathematically, I can work out what the return on investment is if I do the stalls in a particular way. So I spend a lot of my time training people how to do micro designs. You may know, because the micro design is the key determinant of whether the iteration, you know, an iteration basically produces more return. In other words, more people get involved. So, for instance, this is the last thing I'll say.

Rachel Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.

Roger Yeah yeah yeah. You come in. That's another example because otherwise it's going to come in. It's quite it's quite a sort of challenging way of looking at things because a lot of progressive left people don't look at the world like this, but you know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel No it's not it's not difficult to understand. I just I just disagree with you. And I think and also I've heard you disagree with yourself because that is reductive to say if we do A and B and C, then we will win an election that is fundamentally reductive. Just five minutes ago, you said that things aren't static, that people and movements are always happening in a in a certain moment in time, in a particular set of conditions. And you cannot model for those conditions. And also, I mean, there's also the phrase of, you know, like all models are wrong, but some are helpful. Models are not predictive. They cannot tell us what is going to happen. And I suppose it's just it's very interesting and very interested to hear you speaking like this, because I know that your theory of change originally was based a lot on, you know, Erica Chenoweth's work on how many people do you need to you know, first of all, non-violence is always the better way, always more successful. And also that we need only five percent. I think it was of the public to join in a movement to essentially create a whole bunch of social tipping points and, you know, change the world. I. How has that been proven correct? And what have we learned? What have you learned from your work in the climate movement that shows you that using this sort of like mathematical probability is actually the best way to go? And I'm going to end on just this example because, for example, you said that Stop Oil was better than Extinction Rebellion, which I don't think is a quantitative analysis. I think that is qualitative. I think that is a perspective base because, yes, a lot of chapters were started, but also the public feeling towards Just Stop Oil was much more negative than Then Extinction Rebellion, that plus Palestine action, sort of. I don't want to place any blame with activists. The governments took out a lot more seriously and started throwing you all in jail completely unfairly. So. I'm just wondering what what do you mean there by success? And how do you work that out from your models that gives you such confidence that this is the design approach that you want to take going forward?

Roger Well, as I said, the first thing to say is you're designing whether you decide to design or not. Right? Everyone designs because you make a decision about how to act. And to that extent, you know, you are designing in a sense. So then it's a question of how do you design? Well? And part of design obviously is an intuitive element to it, but there's also an empirical, analytical sort of data driven element to it, which helps. But it's not it's not the it's not the only game in town, obviously. But what what you're perfectly right, of course is is a ratio is only as useful as as as long as the opposition doesn't change their game. Right. So so yeah, not being ultra reductive, but I'm being reductive because we're all reductive, obviously, because we need to understand reality, you know. But, you know, to a certain extent. But I think, you know, I'm not trying to make a massively controversial point here. I'm just saying I'm just saying that it's important to look at what you do and what the returns and the activity are, in the sense that what do they lead to? And it's good to put that in mathematical terms. And then you can basically create modes of training. You can train people and say, look, if you do stores in this way, A, B and C, then you'll get five sign ups an hour rather than two. Do you see what I mean? And that's obviously useful. And then you can build this up. So you've used like ten or twelve different designs. Then you'll win the election in this particular space and time obviously. Right. But that's useful. It's more useful than not knowing how to do it at all, or doing it in a way that just doesn't work even in this time and space. Okay, so so the first thing is things are always changing. So yeah, I totally accept that. And the second thing is when when I talk about it working, it doesn't mean it's necessarily working in some ultimate sense of changing the system. Right. So you're totally right that the Just Stop Oil was highly effective as an organization and as a mobilizing force relative to XR, but that didn't obviously, it didn't bring about the revolution, as it were. It failed in the sense that it didn't win over the public and and the government was able to crush it. And I'm reasonably relaxed about that in the sense that at a meta level or at a macro level, that's the name of the game, right? You, you, you do something and it fails and you do something again, it fails, you know, not so badly. And and, you know, on about the fourth iteration, particularly the system's structurally degenerating as it is at the moment. Then you've got, you know, maybe you've got, you know, have a fifty fifty chance of having a pro-social revolution in the next ten years. But you have to do the work right. You have to have those fifteen years of, of, uh, preparation, as you might say. Uh, and that's why organizational and cultural memory is so important and why lack of it is such a problem because people simply don't understand what to do. Right? And so for, for for us, like messing around during local elections in commerce. Uh, I don't think he's messing around at all, but it is part of a meta project, a decade project to work out how you can do things. So a critical mass of people can basically transfer that information and, you know, ways of working internally and external ways of working so that when the ruptures come, you can basically, uh, maximize the probability. You can scale pro-social social forms rather than fascistic social forms, because obviously that's the competition. So that's, that's that's what I'm trying to say. And you're probably not going to let me give you an example. But if you look at solidarity, you know, from the Polish resistance from nineteen fifty six to nineteen eighty one, uh, read a book on it in prison. You know, this is not particularly controversial. You know, they failed. They failed, they failed. And then they won in eighty one, and then they sort of failed again. And then they, you know, won properly in eighty nine. So, you know, this is the history of radical politics, right? It goes through waves of failure.

Rachel The reason I'm pushing you on this is because in one of your recent newsletters, you wrote that, quote, little projects with twenty people are useful, good, even beautiful. But they won't stop fascism or meet the scale of what's coming. And I suppose I was very surprised to read that, because that is mandating one approach over another as opposed to a decentralized movement. And I think it's also sort of removing, I mean, agency from what some people are able to do, especially in, you know, more rural areas. Perhaps it will be these local projects that facilitate people coming together, building common ground, learning about their neighbors, and from there sort of developed, you know, a collective political consciousness that can feed into a national superstructure, if you will. But I find that to be really quite surprising to essentially say, you know, they're useless in the face of what's coming, when I suppose my theory of change would be that if everywhere had the little project with the community workers working on it and coming together, that might be very well. The thing that stops fascism rather than, you know, another, um, mainstream sort of electorate party.

Roger Yeah. I mean, the outstanding thing about it, we need to I'm trying to say something quite nuanced, right? And always trying to get beyond the binary, you know, the binary of loads of little groups or one big group. That's really not the issue that the cons options I would use is close, close ecology and like a loose ecology. In other words, what's what's important is not the nodes but not the groups themselves. But it's the relationships between the the groups and the relations between and the development of those relations over time. Right. So it's dynamic and and it's networked. These are the two phenomenon we need to focus on. So what I'm what I've what I'm really clear about is lots of small groups who aren't in a close ecology are just waiting to be picked off by the bad guys. And what I'm saying is, is that there needs to be mass movements. But when I'm saying there needs to be mass movements, I'm not saying that they are some solid node in a Leninist sort of sense. What I'm saying is, is the mass movement has to be constructed internally with a model of what I would call close ecology. So the notion of a closed ecology and, you know, is a sign of our times that, you know, a lot of people haven't got this concept in their head because people tend to think, you know, this goes back to nineteenth century Objectivism. People tend to, you know, have this terrible binary between the center and, you know, the grassroots and all this sort of business. That's not the issue. The issue is the nature of the relationship and the flows of power and information and inspiration and all the rest of it. It's all about flows, right? So a close ecology basically means that the flows are very intense. The network connections are very intense. In other words, you know, let me give you a little example. The usual neoliberal sort of campaigning idea when you network is you meet once a month and on the agenda is who you are, what you're doing and why it's cool. And then everyone goes away, right? So that's what I call neoliberal networking. The classic ecological networking is when you meet each month and you go, this is us, this is what we're doing, and how can we work together to coordinate over the next month? And then you have the sub the subheadings of funding, you know, publicity, training, uh, social events that you see what I mean? So then you have different buckets where everyone's coordinating. So people it gets beyond the binary. You see what I mean? So is that small groups or is it a big group. Well, it's obviously neither right. It's a network. It's a closed network, but it's not a network that doesn't give sort of some old style sovereignty to the node. The sovereignty is in the is in the coordination and the culture of coordination, which obviously, you know, requires bureaucratic skills but also requires cultural change as well, where you learn to trust each other and don't sweat the small stuff and, you know, good enough to go. And all these things we developed in XR so people don't get sort of dogmatic and go, yeah, well, maybe it will fail. But so what? You know, we'll learn from it and all this sort of stuff. So. So, you know, the model I am trying to promote with limited success is to try and get beyond this binary and say, okay, in the UK, for instance, you know, there should be quarterly gatherings of everyone on the progressive left and they should have, you know, speakers to get people in, and then they should have set workshops on particular skills. But then at least half of those spaces should be in networking. Okay. What's happening in Sheffield? Who. All the groups in Sheffield. Okay. Let's have, you know, an event in Sheffield and then there'll be flows out into mutual aid, street movements and elections and everything's brought together, which incidentally, is what everyone needs to do before nineteen eighty nine, right before the neoliberal period. Right. I mean, arguably a lot of those structures are hierarchical and patriarchical and all the rest of it. But so we don't want to go back to over over bondage, as you might say, in hierarchy. But there's this sort of sweet spot which needs to characterize left in the twenty first century if it's going to succeed, which is everyone keeps their identity, but we're basically all working closely together. And if people are interested in this, you can look at something like Mondragon, which is the best example of sort of social complexes, which is in the economic sphere, but it could be done in the political sphere. Well, the political sphere needs to fuse with the social sphere anyway. Yeah, but that's as I've said.

Rachel So projects should not be isolated from the rest of the action that's happening around about them. Otherwise they become vulnerable. Completely agree with you.

Roger Yeah. And that has to be concretized in exactly what that means. You should mean it. I mean, everyone agrees with that, right? You know, because everyone likes to talk, to talk. But what what we need is for people in the spaces to proactively create spaces where close ecologies can be built, and to build the cultures that enable people to have the trust in those close to colleges, because basically it means giving up identity, you know, identity orientations and orientations, because you're sharing power and identity across across the nodes. And this is this is obviously highly problematic for the neoliberal legacy space, because neoliberalism is based upon the egotism of of the self and the organization. If you see what I mean, I'm on my own. I work hard and I'll succeed sort of culture. So, you know, a lot of the legacy organizations won't make that transition, incidentally, you know, and I don't say that because I'm trying to be unpleasant and just being analytical. You know, we need new organizations to form, uh, in, in most cases, most, most in most contexts.

Rachel Okay. I have to say I'm a bit suspicious of anything that claims to want to build cultures for for other people. Uh, but I want to move away from from mass movements and get on to nonviolence, which is something I've been very much looking forward to discussing with you. And I know you read my recent piece, uh, Ken, Nonviolence Save the USA. So I want to go in. Let's go in hard straight away. Um, you, uh, preach this very strict adherence to nonviolence and often cite Gandhi and MLK as these as emblems of success figures and success stories. And you wrote something recently that really echoed what? Something that Gandhi wrote during the Holocaust. And I'm going to quote it to you. In nineteen thirty eight, Gandhi published this open letter to the Jews of Germany, claiming that their voluntary suffering could transform their massacre into a day of thanksgiving, and he later argued that the Jews inability to master nonviolence was the reason, uh, for the slaughter of the Holocaust, which is quite an extraordinary thing to say. You wrote in one of your recent newsletters arguing that Palestine action should abandon their strategies of sabotage and move towards a concrete strategy of non-violence. And you said, quote, such a victory would matter beyond Britain. It could show Palestinians and the world that civil resistance offers a way out of endless war. Roger. That stopped me in my tracks when I read that. I think, uh, to have somebody sitting essentially from the comfort of Britain talking about how Palestinians should or should not fight for their lives, I found to be quite an extraordinary thing to say. Can you walk me through what you're thinking with a statement like that?

Roger Well, obviously you have to be quite well.

Roger Not obviously, but you have to be quite brave to speak the truth. And, you know, you usually destroy you. If you do speak the truth on various levels, that you'll you'll end up getting killed or, or you'll end up getting ostracized. Ostracized. So it's it's quite. It's not. I don't say these things in a casual way. I do them because on balance, I'm only going to be alive for another fifteen, twenty years max. And I'm more interested in in being congruent to what I think I am, which is not a material being, but part of a universal consciousness. So if I wanted a quiet life, I'd lie.

Rachel All right. Okay, let's let's let's attack this. Let's attack this assumption that it's the truth. Okay. So you're doing it because you say it's the truth. And and some people have to be brave. The Palestinians have practiced nonviolence. There was the example, recent example of the Great March of return, which for months they marched upon the the fence and a thousands were shot and hundreds were killed. I think the number is two hundred and eighteen. It had did nothing to help their cause. In fact, they were literally slaughtered.

Roger Yeah. Okay. But before I'm going to answer your question. I'm going to continue developing how I approach the situation. Otherwise you and other people will do me in. Right. So I need to say something.

Rachel Why do you. What do you mean? What do you mean? I'll do you in.

Roger Well, you're you're in. You know, I'm not giving you a hard time about this, but obviously you're making a moral criticism. You're accusing me, you know, implicitly that I'm some privileged person, and what do I know sort of thing? So I think I think I'm.

Rachel Just on relative to the Palestinians, I think. Can we not agree that you are a privileged person?

Roger That doesn't mean that I can't say things that are true that a lot of Palestinians won't agree with.

Rachel But but just because they're true for you doesn't mean that they are true objectively.

Roger Well, yeah, I'll come on to that in a minute. I think I think if we if we're going to have a what you might call a social scientific discussion, we need to identify a certain prejudice which is implicit in patriarchal culture, which is to kill another, is acceptable. But to allow yourself to be killed is a taboo or something to be shocked by. So, for instance, people go something like, we had an armed rebellion and two thousand people died in order to overthrow the regime. And and everyone would go, fair enough. Because that's part of our inherited patriarchal culture, that killing, killing other people is okay for a good cause, as you might say. But if I was to say, okay, what we're going to do. So there's a thousand people have died in that armed struggle. But what I'm suggesting is, is people walk along the road and they're going to get shocked, and five hundred of them are going to get shot. And and then you're going to win, right? So the cultural sort of prejudice is that there's something aesthetically problematic About different types of death, like dying in order to overthrow the regime, is sort of okay. Uh, in terms of violence, but allowing yourself to be killed, even if it actually is effective, it's still problematic. So this this, in other words, there's a prejudice against, you know, turning the other cheek. It's not. In other words, it's irrational from an instrumental point of view. Because at the end of the day, if you argue one deaths equal to another insomuch as you want to go, say that's the case. You know, if I divide by because someone shoots me, because I see it in the road, but he gets the job done, then surely it's a matter of adding up how many deaths there are. If you see what I mean. So having established that point.

Rachel I disagree with quite a bit in that point. So do you want me to come in here and just discuss that?

Roger Well, well, not really in the sense that we disagree. I disagree, but my my position is, is look, you've got the bad guys. You've got two options, right? You've got two options. Your your method is to go and shoot them and you're going to have a thousand deaths. And my method is to go and sit on the road and get five hundred deaths and it works. Then we're going to go for the five hundred deaths, one, aren't we?

Rachel But you're pulling figures out of nowhere. You're pulling these numbers.

Roger What I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, is as soon as you suggest people should die through engaging in non-violence, people think it's problematic in a way that they don't think it's intrinsically problematic to kill by killing the opposition in order to people. This is our cultural default, right? And we need to be aware of it because it goes to the heart of what patriarchal culture is, which is to say it's okay for people to kill each other if there's if there's a good cause, but it's not okay to die in order to overcome a regime. And you have to like extra justify it as if it's intrinsically problematic. And I'm saying, well, maybe it is, but I'm saying it's not. You know, it's like it's anyway.

Rachel I think it's it's a very interesting it is a very interesting point. And I did read that in one of your pieces, and I was I was struck by it, this comparison. But I don't think that that's the only binary that's going on, because I can think of lots of examples of.

Roger No, no, it's just it's a preamble. But the point, because I don't want to enter into an argument where basically, you know, if we don't agree with that, that's fine. So we haven't got much of a conversation, but if we agree on that, then we've got a level playing field, right? Because people that believe in violence play this card all the time. They go, oh, your method didn't work and my method did. Right. Uh, and but what they're really saying is I don't like your method intrinsically. You see what I'm saying?

Rachel Sure, sure.

Roger But it's like it's it's so you you've lost the argument because Because you can't win it. Because people dying for non-violence is intrinsically no good.

Rachel Yeah.

Roger You know. So I can't, in which case that's cool. You know, we can. No. But if we're going to, if we're going to have a level playing field, then, then we just need to look at the social science, okay. And the social science is.

Rachel Hang on. Let's let's let's. Hold hold hold hold on, hold on, hold on. Before we get into the social science. Because there's this, this thing, what you're saying about the patriarchal nature of of killing one another. Right. I think what's quite interesting is there is a culture of self-defense which exists all around the world. We all have to practice it every day. And I would argue that actually, the bodies that are not most benefited from patriarchy are those that have to engage in self-defense. So women, for example, women and the rates of sexual assault all around the world, or domestic violence, violence against the female body, essentially, women are constantly having to engage in a culture of self-defense and self-protection in order to survive the violence of patriarchy. So I don't think it's just that that men kill men. And that's what a violent strategy is. I do think that there are strategies of self-defense that are practiced all around the world, and are sometimes absolutely necessary in life or death. Situations that we can learn from that are not just the arena of the male psyche, if you will.

Roger Yeah. So there's a self-defense thing. I'll come on to the self-defense thing in a minute. So it depends what you're trying to do. You've got an opposition, whether it's, uh, you know, like something like ice or whether it's the state, the state regime or part of the state regime. Right. And you've got two strategies. One is broadly, obviously somewhat reductive. I accept, but it's broadly, you know, you've got violent strategy and you've got nonviolent strategy. So the first sort of top level, you know, all system analysis as opposed to cherry picking analysis is done by Chenoweth did it. Lots of other people have done it. Does substantial literature on why non-violence works in reverse commerce better than violence. And obviously it's not non-violence works. It's non-violence works fifty four percent of the time. And the stats and twenty five percent of the time violence works. But obviously, like that's a static analysis. That's not really the big news.

Rachel Just that has been challenged as well. Her methodologies have been challenged by other social scientists.

Roger Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so what? Everything gets challenged. Right. The question is whether it's substantially challengeable, which it's not. And we can talk about that if you want. I mean, in social science, if you've got a fifty four percent versus a twenty five percent, it's a done deal, right? Particularly if you've got three hundred.

Rachel Sure, but not if the methodologies have been questioned as to how you arrived at that number, then no, it's not a done deal.

Roger Okay. Well, you've got to come up with a better methodology, which the critics haven't. But, you know, looking at newspaper reports and, you know, it's good enough to go. I think it's special pleading. I don't think anyone's seriously questioning those that if you've got that degree of separation, you've got the methodology is going to be substantially problematic. I mean, if it is, that's fine. Obviously, if they were just talking to their mate, that's correct methodology. But these are like, you know, top of their game social scientists. Right. So you've got to give them some you've got to give them some credit for doing good social science. And assuming you believe in social science and you believe in empirical investigation. I mean, you know, these methodologies have been developed over several decades now, and they're pretty robust. You know, we don't question, you know, climate because of methodology, right? You know, that's the sort of right wing, sort of crappy thing to do anyway. So.

Rachel Well, well, yeah, sorry, but social science is not the same as climate modeling Because, for example, I mean, Chenoweth as a social scientist that is trying to examine this in a quantitative manner, had to come up with categories as to what certain forms of resistance were, which is an implicit bias or perception of her in and of herself. And that's what makes it different to something that we can fundamentally measure. And that's where the criticism has come from. So that's a bit of a straw man argument to say, you know, do cuz criticisms towards social science, which is inherently different to climate science, is coming from a position of right wing, of the right wing.

Roger Yes, yes.

Rachel It's valid to question the methodology.

Roger But my argument is, is that is, you know, left critical culture is intrinsically fascistic in the sense that it always biases itself towards violent solutions to the problem of human relations, particularly on state level. And it has done and for me, like that's what's going to lead to extinction, right? So we need a fundamentally different system of seeing reality. But I'll come on to that in a minute, because I'm trying to get onto the main case. Right. In the main case isn't that it's fifty four versus twenty five or whatever it is. The main case is of those twenty five where violence wins ninety five percent or ninety five percent of those one in only nineteen out of twenty cases have resulted in civil war or loss of democracy or general general social collapse scenarios within five years in that space. In other words, you need a dynamic analysis which looks over the time. And of course, one of the slates, like the hands of the of the violent argument is, hey, you know, we won in Cuba. Okay. So, you know, twenty five percent of the time you win Cuba. But then five years later, they were killing each other and you left with an authoritarian system, if you see what I mean. So. So I think this leads on to a more metaphysical point, which is which is that that violence in and of itself is fascistic. And the real division in terms of living a good life and having a pro-social project is the division between violence and nonviolence or whatever you want to call it. And that, for me, needs to be like in a twenty first century. That needs to be the division, not the division between the left and the right, but the division between othering and non othering. And, and obviously that's a sort of philosophical, religious sort of metaphysical point which obviously can get challenged, but I think it's massively supported by the empirical evidence over the medium to long term. So the usual move of people that believe in self-defense and violence as a methodology. There is number one, they cherry pick, which is obviously problematic. And secondly, they'll use static context. They won't look over the medium to long term. So so which is obviously what happens in interpersonal likes. You know I hit my wife. It worked. Yeah. But it destroyed your relationship. And and we need to take what, what are now largely accepted cultures of non-violence in interpersonal relations into the sphere of politics, because the sphere of politics is not fundamentally different to the sphere of interpersonal relations. And obviously, fifty years ago, it was, you know, or even in the sixties was perfectly acceptable for men to be violent towards women. Obviously, it still is in many contexts, but there has been a, you know, a sea change in those in social attitudes as there has been, um, you know, racism and various other things, which is one of the biggest successes. And obviously, I'm not saying for a minute that the thing sorted, but but what we need to see in the political sphere is a similar sea change. And I think we broadly have I think we broadly have. But for me, it's not going to last because as soon as you get violent situations like ice, you sort of revert back to the violence arguments. And the reason for that is because it's not metaphysically like it's not rooted in metaphysics, it's rooted in, uh, instrumentalism, which then gets reduced into, you know, cherry picking and, and short termism in the analysis. In other words, we need to make it into, you know, you don't say, oh, you're about to hit a woman because it doesn't work, right. You say you don't hit a woman because it's a really fucked shit thing to do. And that's what we need to be saying when we go into confrontation with people who are being violent towards us.

Rachel I like that, and I think that it's it's a very, very that's this is why non-violence is a very important strategy amongst the diversity of strategies. And you're completely right with regards to practicing a nonviolent culture and building, creating, celebrating, exploring a non-violent culture does set the it set things in motion. It sets things in motion that can change, you know, ten, twenty, one hundred years down the line. And it's absolutely something that we need to do. What I am pushing back on is the insistence that nonviolence is the only strategy. And I want to give the example of West Papuans. Uh, do you know much about the situation in West Papua?

Roger Yeah, a little bit.

Rachel Right. So for the audience, there is an ongoing genocide in West Papua that has been happening since the United States, essentially, uh, transitioned ownership of West Papua from, I believe it was the Dutch to Indonesia in order to try and keep Indonesia within the capitalist economy, because at the time it was a huge socialist threat. Politically and under Indonesian rule there have been mass loss of village. There are forced sterilization campaigns of women and the rampant rape of the territory, because West Papua is just is one of the most diverse places in the world. It's got it's the third biggest hotspot of biodiversity. That and Papua New Guinea. And it's just a mountain of gold sitting on a sea of oil. And they are having to fight back because very little people know about this. Essentially, it's very rarely in the news. Their story very rarely gets out. There is currently a guerrilla army of thirty thousand Papuans. Men and women who are are trying to impede the progress of the two million strong Indonesian army, and they are doing so. I mean, given the disparity in size, they're really rather successful. The fact that they haven't been completely wiped out over the past four decades, five decades have they been active. And they're doing that because that is their only chance, because otherwise the Indonesians drop bombs on them, gas them. I've seen, uh, images videos of Papuan men being forced to dig their own graves in a line. Line up in front of the graves, and then being shot in the head so that their bodies fall directly into the grave. It is an astonishing violence that is happening there. I think those people have the right to defend themselves from that in any way that they can. Because non-violence demands a participation from the wider world. It demands an audience, it demands a witness. And if nobody is there to witness the Papuans, if there is no possibility of, you know, uh, generating any kind of outcry in support, then what chance do they have?

Roger I've written a book on it. It's called How to Blow Up a Society, which is a response to Andreas Monz. You know how to how to blow up a pipeline. Obviously, my point is, what I'm saying will Society number one, you can have a guerrilla movement that can last for decades, but it doesn't actually take power, right? So instruments, do you think taking power is the important thing, which obviously isn't right, inasmuch as you think it is the important thing, because there's no necessary relationship between guerrilla movements that sit around in a jungle for decades and actually taking part. The literature shows this is normal and it's happened, you know, in Iran and India and, you know, loads of countries, Philippines, Africa. But it doesn't it doesn't mean you're going to win. If you want to win, you need to do civil resistance. And it happens in six to twelve months as a general rule. Secondly, if you do win, you're going to end up with a tyrannous authoritarian regime nineteen times out of twenty, right? So there's that. Those are like the social scientific points. Metaphysical point is, is if someone doesn't see you being non-violent, it doesn't matter, because over infinite time, the universe will see what you do. And in Disproportionately so. If you do something good and no one sees you do it. Inasmuch as someone finds out and eventually someone finds out, then you'll become ten times more a hero than you do something because people will see it. You see what I mean? For me, like, the whole point is to do it for God, as he used to say in the old language, right? This is my fundamental point about nonviolence. Nonviolence is not going to win win the argument against violence through sprouts and social science. The social science is done, but it's not going to convince hardcore people. Most people aren't that rational. What's going to defeat the nonviolence? The violent sort of paradigm is a new religion that's based upon, like, love and acting for the good as an end in itself, and also understanding that by acting, for acting for the good or acting out of love is actually the most instrumentally effective thing over, you know, over a complex system, i.e. earn a large number of data analysis and over the longer term, right. Obviously you can cherry pick, as we've said. I think that probably requires quantum physics to become more like to grow up and stop being to do with physics. And it has to has to react to create a politics based on quantum rather than, uh, rather than Newtonian physics. In other words, nothing's ever lost. Everything affects everything. There's no such thing as death. You're a temporary concentration of consciousness in infinite time. All this sort of stuff which obviously connects with indigenous and wisdom traditions. But I think the strategy, the strategy about the strategy was, were, is that we need to focus on what it is, what it is to be, who we are. And what if we're caught in a egotistical, individualist, materialistic, reductive universe? Then it makes sense to fear death and it makes sense to want to honor the other because they're separate from us. It becomes impossible basically to act against the other in a way that will harm the other. And if you die, then so be it. But, you know, violent people die, as I said. So I don't think they think dying is the issue. I think the issue is, is it right and does it work? And I think on both those adapting to the other would love, i.e. as if the other is yourself was the only way that's going to save save ourselves.

Roger That would be my final statement.

Rachel The thing is though, that's, that's that's playing fast and loose with the royal We, you know, uh, because first of all, indigenous wisdoms cannot all be grouped into one, you know, one philosophy. The head of the freedom fighting Army that I interviewed in the jungle, uh, is an an indigenous man who is fighting to protect his family and is also a devout Christian, and what he spoke about was quite similar to what you were saying about acting, knowing that your path is right and just and and just and good. That is the reason that they believe they will win. That is the reason that they believe they have managed to keep at bay an army that infinitely outnumbers them, and also the fact that they are not just doing it to protect their own flesh, but they are doing it to protect their grandmother, the forest, and all of the kin with whom they share land and territory. And it is also the only route to defending themselves, because as long as the, you know, seat of power is literally overseas and they are not allowed to leave, then there is no real route to, you know, winning an election and and taking over essentially like this. This has to be their fight. So I think this is just the thing that kind of this is the thing that bothers me a little bit about sort of intellectual isms that come out of the the Western tradition of just we cannot speak to every single person's lived experience. And I think it is imperative upon us to not disparage the strategies that are keeping people alive, that are keeping communities alive, that are keeping languages alive because different things are going to work in different places. And I think that there are people that would move towards a strategy of nonviolence given the opportunity, but not everybody has that opportunity. And also this idea that nonviolence is the sort of the thing that can lead to like the overthrow of tyranny or whatever. And I know Gandhi is sort of the example that's often thrown about, but what about India is not violent today? What about what was it about this transition that was inherently nonviolent? Because when the partition happened, hundreds of thousands of women were raped. It is a system of, you know, huge hierarchy and castes. It is a also become an industrialized society that has, you know, abused its own sort of territory just as much as the next one. I don't see how the tradition of nonviolence is inherently the thing that sort of gets us over the line when the entire system is geared towards appropriation or violence or dismemberment, essentially, if you will, of of relationships like whatever Gandhi succeeded by doing and marching was very specific, but also it didn't translate into a nonviolent shift in power and a nonviolent society.

Roger Yeah. Well, you know what? My answer to that is why it wasn't nonviolent enough. You know, I mean, you can make the argument the other way.

Rachel Well, that's just easy, isn't it?

Roger Well, you see, it's easy to say, oh, you did a nonviolent thing, and still things are shit. You know, it's like it's just a bit. I mean, you know, this is where professional social science comes into its own because, you know, then you can do large number of analyses and do analyses over, over a number of years. And and you look at the causality. Right. But as I said, it's not going to persuade people because most people aren't persuaded by science. You know, I mean, I think it's, you know, my semi-professional opinion is it's a total no brainer. It's just like it's a total. And if it wasn't, I would say so for you. No, no, I'm saying like, there are like strong patterns in social in social processes. I mean, yeah, it's not like.

Rachel So things can be reduced and they are static.

Roger Yeah.

Rachel The patterns are fixed.

Roger I think that, yeah, I think there are things that are real. Yes.

Rachel So then aren't you just cherry picking what your argument is depending on what you want to say? Because the first part of this conversation was all about how nothing is static and nothing and everything is relational. And it's very important to understand all the different conditions that are happening. And nothing can be reduced. And it's all mechanistic and sort of, you know, the we're all victims of the enlightenment in that manner. And then when it comes to this topic, no, there are fixed patterns that we can learn from them and we can measure them. And that's why I can say unequivocally, the nonviolence is always in every context. The only way.

Roger Violence is the is what gives you the highest probability of improving pro-social dynamics in a social space. It's not it doesn't it's not deterministic. It's probabilistic because the system is complex. But in terms of practical strategy, then it's a no brainer which one to choose. That's the point, right? It's not that nonviolence works, it's that it works more often than violent, which is the practical issue.

Rachel According to a methodology that has been disputed by other social scientists.

Roger Yeah. Well, it goes goes with the territory. Well, I think you're right. I don't have any time for what I would see as as excessive postmodernism. I think what we need is, is a dogma of love, which basically says the human is basically part of a universal consciousness. And then the role of the human in as much as you're still alive is to love the other, and that's it. And that's a dogma, you know, and I'm pretty happy with that. And I think.

Rachel I think that's very within the tradition of enlightenment.

Roger Yeah, I know you. I know what you're saying.

Roger Well, I think, I think I think, you know, you can play the other the other way round. But, you know, postmodernism is a function of the enlightenment. I mean, you know, da da da da da, you know, go round the circles with it. But what what I'm saying is this fundamental laws of existence and their quantum laws and, and they've been shown to be mathematically correct. But at the end of the day, I'm more than happy to be an act of faith as well. And which isn't to say I'm not opening myself up to, you know, a political criticism, obviously, because I've got my day job. But but, you know, my final volley, as it were, not violent volley, obviously. Is, is is the intuition that since nineteen forty five, human rights has been able to destroy the planet. And, and every time you engage in violence, there's a non-trivial possibility of escalation to the point at which you extinguish the kind of annual human rights. So, you know, as Martin Luther King said, you know, the choice is nonviolence or nonexistence. Because every time you're engaged in violence as a strategy, you're playing a certain degree of Russian roulette with an escalation. And in the good old days, the escalation would lead to the, you know, Russian Revolution or the Napoleonic Wars or some total shitshow. But it wasn't an infinite risk of extinction. And every time we engage in in something that will lead to civil war, like in the US or whatever it is, then we, um, we're shaping that dice. And mathematically, obviously, we shake the dice you know Trump and you know, extinction becomes deterministic. So we need a complete transformation of how we see our role during our lives and how we see the other. And that has to be based on love, God and violence. And if we don't, then we're going to go extinct. And if that means yeah, that means someone kills you, then so be it. But death isn't the end. And that's another, you know, massive pocket of Western fear of death is one of the reasons we're going extinct.

Rachel Well, I get you spiritually. I get you metaphysically. You know, I do agree with that statement. I also just think that it's it it's not a statement that holds up against, you know, mothers that are fearful for for the well-being of their children, essentially, like there are different states of existence. And it is, I think, cruel to erase other people's experiences because there's some sort of like the higher truth or higher goal. And also that might not be true for everyone. So this this is my final point that I want to talk to you about. It's the elitism, right, in this kind of like, top down culture building, organizing, mass mobilization. It has to be a model that fits for the whole world, like everybody in the world needs to come down into this. You wrote recently that in every historical period, a small number of people carry the burden of design and organization. That's not elitism. It's reality. That is elitism. That is fundamentally elitism because it's only within certain structures. Typically these centralized and hierarchical structures where that is the case. You've referenced indigenous sciences, also indigenous politics, whereby decisions are made in a decentralized manner where there is a sort of a sovereignty, a cherished sovereignty of the person, of the body, of the spirit, also of the community and of the land to which they belong and which they serve. If this is going to be a very small group of people deciding what needs to be done for everyone. That is elitist, and to me it looks like a reflection of kind of what we already exist in.

Roger Yeah. Well, you know, I, with all due respect and everything, as they say, you know, I reject the binary between, you know, elitism and elitism as a sort of, you know, simplistic system to break out of that. We need to reintroduce the idea of hierarchies or fluid specialisations. So people have different gifts and of different callings. And obviously, you know, one of the biggest things that breaks down the hierarchy is the notion of the prophet or the holy person or the person with spiritual calling because they don't have they don't have in a concrete type way, sort of like top down power, but they do have authority, for instance. So you can make a separation between top down power and authority not being there, authority coming from being at the bottom of the pile, like Jesus, for instance, you know, says there's patterns. There's complexities around all of this sort of stuff. And obviously, you know, that's a nuanced point. Like, you know, you can definitely you can definitely push my hypothesis into an elitist direction and say, oh, a few people, you know, a few people know what the truth is and they need to tell everyone else. That obviously is problematic. But it's also problematic to pretend that a few people do basically need millions of people and have done throughout history, and they don't necessarily have to fulfill the model of of a sort of top down patriarchal orientation. They can be bottom up people, as you might say. And really, I think what's more interesting here is the notion that power is a single, a single, a single sort of entity in the sense that the power is what people want. And I think what would be quite interesting culture is to try and introduce the idea that power is not only bad, power is really boring, you know, it's like metaphysically pretty rubbish, you know? And I'm not saying I'm a saint or anything silly like that, obviously, but I'm not actually interested. Personally. I'm not interested in power. Like I set things up. I don't want to stick around. I don't want to go and do something else. In other words, I'm into creativity and flow and inspiration and doing things which I think, you know, work, as it were. I'm not interested in this model that you set something up and then you stick around, become, you know, the leader of it, right? The whole idea is to let things flow organizationally. So for instance, in the organization, then I usually don't stick around for about two years. And I've done it about six or seven times in my life. And, and the whole idea is to bring other people on, not because obviously that's a good thing to be, but also because it's not actually a good way to live your life, to have talent. For all the reasons we know about the pathological effects of coal on the human psyche. So so I think if if we sort of accept those two things, that power isn't the big deal anyway. And secondly, people have different talents and they should be allowed to pursue them. And the obvious point is that there are leaders and always have been, but they don't need to be battling. So you might say for those two vegans, that's that's what I'm sort of getting at, really. I'm just making a social, scientific point that, that, that, you know, everything starts off with five people in the room by definition. Right? There's five people are often very creative people. And that doesn't mean they're better than, you know.

Rachel Do you think you're a prophet?

Roger Well, you know, I.

Roger Unfortunately, I can't really give you an answer for that because.

Roger I just get myself into trouble.

Rachel So you do.

Roger You see, like, our culture is our culture is sort of obsessed with power, you see. So if I was to say to you, oh, yeah, I'm a prophet. Everyone go. What a fucker. You know what? A sort of arrogant, nasty person. And because they think I'm some massive ego, which obviously could be the case, right? But the problem in our culture is people don't see the role. They don't see that there are people who have special gifts and they can be arseholes or they cannot be arseholes. Right. You know, like Gandhi had enormous prophetic gift. Right. You know, he had massive, massive amount of courage and he had a massive amount of of strategic leadership. But he wasn't an arsehole. I mean, he might have been some at the time, obviously, but he fundamentally wasn't because he wasn't interested in power. So he wasn't Stalin. You see what I mean? So if I said to you, oh, yeah, I'm a prophet. It's like, well, I'm trying to say is I wake up in the morning with some like really ideas that really motivate me. And I go out into the world and try and make them happen because it's going to do so. If you want to call that profit and call it profit, and if you want to accuse me of being a false prophet, that's fine. But you see what I mean? It's like, oh, we're so like we're so rigid about what it is to be human. You know, we've just had all this, this, this indoctrination. Everything's about power. You know, it's Hobbesian universe is just really sad. Sure, we can relax a little bit.

Rachel But but you did make a distinction between power and authority. So you do want authority even if you don't want power. And you do think you're deserving of authority. I'm asking you, Roger Hallam. You're not interested in finding an answer to whether or not you want authority. Oh.

Roger These issues are going to come to the fore increasingly as the whole, our whole metaphysics breaks down. And one of our biggest prejudices is there is such a thing as the atom itself. Like it's so ingrained, it just don't even see it. But for me, I just see the universe and myself in, in a, in a way that most of the people don't. I don't, I don't even believe. I don't believe there is a workaholic. You see what I mean? I know I'm talking to you in this moment, but the, you know, the I in that question is now gone, and I'm in another moment and I'm just going to go and do my stuff.

Rachel Yeah, but Roger. Hang on. You don't believe there's a Roger Hallam, but there's a Roger Hallam. Co.Uk. And you describe yourself on your website as the number one climate campaigner in the UK. So sorry. I'm not sorry. I'm not taking it here. that you are using a ghetto jail free cards here by saying that you cannot answer that question because you don't know who you are. And I find that to be an absurd thing to say that somebody that has their name on a URL and a website all about them. So do you want authority? Do you think you're deserving of authority?

Roger Well, I'm I'm probably someone else about that. I'm not.

Rachel All right, well then.

Roger Because I wouldn't.

Rachel FYI, it's there.

Roger And no, I don't want it to be. No, not at all. I want to do what I think. Right. But that's what I think on a good day. And obviously that doesn't mean I've got an ego or not. I don't have a low self or a voice in my head going, oh, it's cool. You know, I'm on climate, climate critical and that's, you know, that's good. It makes me make me feel important. Obviously, there's always that little voice. The question isn't whether there's a little voice going, you know, your gray, everyone else's voice. The question is the question is how aware you are of it. right. You know my intention. Most of the time is to is to try and help make a better world. I think that gives me a quality. Then so be it, right? But I didn't want to be. I didn't want to do this work, you know? Like, I mean, if you don't believe me, I can, you know, you can look at my past. I was a I was a farmer for twenty years, right? I saw like, two hundred people in twenty years. I just stuck on the farm, I had kids, I worked seventy hours a week. I made one hundred pounds a week, I wasn't interested, I'm not interested in being famous. I'm not interested in this world. You're not saying I'm interested in what it is to blow the reality I'm in. And I played with a certain reality for twenty years, which is what you do when you're engrossed in the earth, right? You know, you don't have loads of thoughts, you know. And then the reason I'm doing this work is because the world's going to die. And so maybe I can make a contribution because I've got to give a certain amount of gifts. And at least I think, I mean, if I'm not, fine. Yeah. No worries. My perspective is the reason I get trouble is not because I'm an arsehole. Right. The the reason I get into trouble is because I think two plus two equals four, and I can't be bothered not saying it to people. And obviously that's, you know, ruined massively, chronically denial based culture.

Rachel Yes. I think I could argue, though, that part of what this conversation has felt like for me as well has been denial from your part about different modes of being, different existences, different, you know, ways of interpreting research as well. And so, you know, I'm very interested to to see where you go. And I'm curious, genuinely curious as to how open you are to how open or willing you are to integrate these other experiences as well into your your you have a very strict certainty about what is going to happen and what does need to be done. And I worry that that makes a lot of the really important stuff that you say that is kind of framed in something that's quite brittle because it's rigid and maybe disparages, you know, the wider network of activity and ecosystems and thought and possibility that are happening all around us. And exactly as you said, you know, we all need to be networked and as nodes networked into what else is happening. And I haven't heard how you are networking yourself into other things that are happening, to be honest.

Roger Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, quite possibly what it is, you know, quite possibly a valid criticism if I'm playing, uh, you know, take that one on board.

Rachel All right.

Roger I mean, you know, life is a constant struggle of nuance, isn't it? Right? You know, it's mean. It's not like. It's not like a wander round, you know, my self-understanding is I don't wander around with some, you know, wander around with a chaos, a chaos of self-criticism all the time. And at the same time, I do think two plus two equals four. I do think, you know, killing someone or other things being a bad thing. And if someone says, I'm, I'm doing, like, you know, dogmatic, then so be it.

Roger You know, you.

Roger Got to you've got to live your belief, haven't you? And, uh, you know, I, I, I try to, I try to remain open. And it's obvious to judge whether I am, I suppose. But yeah, I'm living in a moment of extreme crisis and, and very important things need to happen, in my day, and I've been thinking about it for fifty years, and I think I've got a reasonable idea and I haven't. That's fine, because I'm not going to break a leg for it, right? Because only a authority rather than power. But seriously, you see what I mean? I mean, I don't have any power, right? You know, and maybe that's the essential difference. I mean, I have certain sorts of power, but I don't. It's not like I have. It's not like I run an organization. I'm not Lenin. I can't order you to be shot tomorrow because you haven't agreed with me on this podcast. Right? And I would never put myself in that situation. As I said, I'm not interested in being partnered with something a lot more interesting today, you know, which is the model. You know, like, I've never joined a political right. You know, the work I'm doing at the moment, I'm not standing for election. I'm not even interested in standing for election. Not because not because I'm a good person, but because I think it's interesting. I think what's interesting is enabling enabling spaces to become empowered. That's what I like doing in the same way when I was an organic farmer. I like read the soil, not the plant. It's fundamental organic principle. We don't read the plant. You don't try and take over the state, try and enable people to take over the state to to get rid of the state. If you do, I mean, it's like if I, you know, it's a Daoist thing, isn't it? You know, it's Daoism is true. True. You know, you have more power, the less power you have. And all this goodness and da da da. Anyway, there we go. You're going to have to edit all that, aren't you? That's all.

Rachel No, I'm keeping this all in.

Roger Well.

Rachel It's all interesting. It's all it's it's it's all it's all interesting. Roger, I will let you go now. Thank you for running over with me. My final question for you is, who would you like to platform?

Roger The guy called Mikhaila in Italy, who I think like one of the best breakfasts in the in the sort of movement place at the moment. I need to talk to him. Michaela, who set up a last generation. He and other people generation. And he's quite forthright. So I'm not saying this right. I'm just saying he's he's someone, you know that has robust arguments, which is hopefully what we're all about and make robust arguments. Anyway, there we go. Thank you very much for bearing with my Roger.

Rachel Thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Rachel If you want to learn more, I've put links to everything over on Planet Critical Comm, where you can subscribe to support this podcast and read the weekly newsletter inspired by each interview. If you liked this episode, leave a review and share it far and wide. If you loved it, choose a paid subscription at WW to join the community. As always, my deepest thanks to that community Planet Critical wouldn't exist without your support. Thank you everyone for listening and for coming on this journey together.