Should You Dare Criticize Kamala Harris... | Piers Morgan

I was just watching a congressman from the US today claiming that the critics of Biden after the last debate are ablest. Yeah, I mean, well, I don't even know what to think about that. It's like I see, so now here's your theory: your theory is that it doesn't matter whether the president of the United States is able because all discrimination between being able and unable is a form of prejudice. And that even applies with regards to the president of the United States. And so that means that all the people who are concerned that there might be something astray with him cognitively, that we're being lied to about at a level that's almost inconceivable, are now equivalent to, like, KKK racists from the 1940s. That's your argument.

And, by the way, in relation to the same critique of his vice president, should you dare to criticize Kamala Harris, you are de facto a racist. That the only reason, yeah, the only reason that you would feel the need to criticize this black woman who's vice president is not that she's been completely incompetent in her job, which any impartial observer would conclude, but it has to be because of her skin color and her gender. And even though that's why she was put in the damn position to begin with—Joe Biden said publicly, "I want a black woman," right?—and then he gets a black woman who has massively underperformed, which hasn't helped him at all. But no one's allowed to criticize her because if you do, you'll be called a racist.

I find that one of the laziest tropes out there in modern society. It's a way of, I think we've discussed it before, but it's a way of stifling honest debate. It's a way of censoring legitimate criticism, a way of asserting moral superiority that's unearned. And actually, none of them really mean it. I mean, it is the genuine epitome of virtue signaling. What they're really... I mean, I remember the, you know—for example, I remember, um, when the George Floyd murder happened, and it was a horrific incident, of course. But I remember that soon after that there was a black square day announced on Instagram where everybody had to signal their virtue about this by doing a black square.

Now, I'd spent the entire morning on Good Morning Britain hosting debates about the George Floyd killing and showing enormous empathy and support for Black Lives Matter. And what happened? This was very early stages, before a lot of stuff came out about the organization Black Lives Matter, which put a rather different gloss on them. But the principle that, you know, this had been a terrible killing, that this man should never have been killed, that it was possibly racially motivated, all that kind of stuff—I was debating this with an absolutely open mind and being very empathetic to all these arguments.

But I didn't do my black square on Instagram, and my son got in touch with me and said, "Dad, you got to do your black square." I went, "Why? We're getting criticized because you haven't done it." And I actually had posted a picture of a bottle of rosé wine because I was having one in my local square, and I hadn't given any thought to the rule that I had to signal my virtue about this thing. And I then got absolutely annihilated by people saying, "How dare you do this? Where is your black square?"

And I remember thinking, but all of you are going to go right back tomorrow morning to posting inane, self-aggrandizing photographs of yourselves on beaches or in nightclubs or in Ferraris or whatever. None of this means anything to you, whereas tomorrow morning I'll be back on air doing another three hours of debate about this to try and get society in the world, in relation to this issue, back to a place of better racial justice. Now, which one is going to have a better effect on influencing people? Go be an ableist again. Right? And that's the point. I found it such a trivial and kind of pointless example of this cult of virtue signaling.

It's worse than that. I just finished a book which is going to be published in November, and I walked through a sequence of biblical stories trying to explain what they meant psychologically. I spent some time on the book of Exodus for obvious reasons, and there's a commandment in there that people misapprehend. So, I think it's the third commandment: "Don't use God's name"—Thou shalt not use the Lord's name in vain. And people think that means don't swear or curse. And it sort of means that there's peripheral meaning that is associated with that casual use of the sacred, let's say. But that isn't what it means; it means don't claim divine virtue when you're working for your own purposes.

And the same thing happens in the gospel accounts, because the Pharisees, who are Christ's primary enemy, are the people he accuses of utilizing the sacred—the deepest, so you could say compassion, even given its proper place—for their own self-aggrandizement. They're praying in public, they're trying to occupy the best seats in the marketplace, they want the best seats in the synagogues, etc. That's the accusation.

And so that virtue signaling—it's not merely... it's an expression of an unbelievably deep and ignorant narcissism, right? It's part of the victim-victimizer narrative, first of all, which explains all of history with no cognitive effort. And then it's these performative gestures that make you morally virtuous, right? And one of the consequences of that, too, is as soon as you're morally virtuous like that, you get to specify the victimizer, who's your enemy, and tear them into shreds and that's actually a moral act.

And I mean, you saw a bit of that said with the black square. Yeah, but it's an unbelievably pathological. But it was fascinating to me that my own children—all in their 20s—at the time that they were being contacted by friends saying, "Why has your dad done this picture of a bottle of wine? Where's his black square?" And they were kind of damned by association. And they were keen for me to rectify this problem, and I had to say there's a tribal signaling there.

Yeah, and I said, "Guys, I'm not going to do it. I'm sorry. I'm just not going to feel bullied into doing something that I think actually is pointless and trite, and that all the people doing it don't really care much about this cause and will be very quickly back to their normal work on Instagram, which is pumping themselves up and showing off and all the things people do on Instagram." I said, "I'm just not going to play this game."

Well, there's no cost to doing it, right? To putting up a black square, you can indicate commitment. That's exactly right—there's no sacrifice. There's no hard... why use sacrifice? Is that, well, because I think that to really support a cause, whatever that cause may be, at some point you have to show a bit of sacrifice to that cause. You have to commit time or money or resources or whatever it may be to support. Reputation, put your head over the parapet—there has to be an element of risk and an element of sacrifice.

Now, if all you're doing is following the hashtag trend of the day, there's no sacrifice. There's no risk-taking—in fact, it's the opposite. It's actually more courageous to say, "I'm not going to do that; what I'm going to do is I'm going to do this." And it's a far more tangible and effective way of trying to get racial injustice to a better place, which everybody should share that desire.

And I just feel that it comes back to what you said earlier about the victimhood generation. The one common theme of the people who play that victim card all the time is they almost never show any sacrifice for anything. It's all about themselves. It's all about, "How can I get pity? How can I be showered in sympathy? How can I become almost famous for failure and celebrated for it?" Rather than the way I was brought up, which is you celebrated success, you drowned your sorrows with failure, and you didn't let it take you down or destroy you.

You dusted yourself down and got back on with it. But the idea of celebrating failure, the idea of celebrating coming last at the school sports day, you know, the idea that everyone had to get a participation prize even if they were terrible at something—no. You know, I wasn't very good at athletics at school. I was very good at cricket; I was one of the best cricket players aged 12 in the country, and my dream was to be a professional cricketer. I never made it. My other dream was to be a journalist; I made that. But I was terrible at athletics. My two brothers were brilliant at athletics; they used to win everything. But I used to always win the non-finalist race, and I was very happy about that because what it—

I said to my... what is that? Well, so everyone who didn't win a race got put in the non-finalist race, so you were the kind of lepers with the most fingers, right? For one of a crash phrase, and the point was that you were competing against other losers, but you could still win something. And I thought, "Yeah, I'm going to be the best loser because I'm crap at this. I can't really run or hurdle or throw javelins or anything like that, but I can beat this lot." And I was proud of that.

But I never mistook it for actual glory or winning. And I think people that—you know, I see people on social media; they say, "I'm so proud of myself. I just passed my driving test at the 11th attempt." And I'm like, "Why would you want anybody to know that? Why would you want anyone to know that you're so completely clueless at driving it took you 11 attempts to pass your driving test? And what do you want me to do? Do you want me to send you champagne? Do you want to, you know, do you want to be trending number one around the world for being the worst driver in the world? What are you celebrating here? If you passed your driving test 11th attempt, I'm pleased for you, but I'm not proud of you. This is not something that should instill pride in you."

And I think that that's where society is so warped now. We celebrate failure; we also celebrate pride. And pride, like, formally... right, exactly. And we also, um, we've started to feel bad about winners. We don't really feel comfortable with winners anymore, you know, especially if they're a little bit self-confident. And yet I think they're the best possible role models out there. People that can perform in the cauldron of great sport or entertainment, whatever it may be.

You know, I watched all the sort of jealous sniping about Taylor Swift, for example, and then I went to her concert at Wembley. Absolutely mindblowing experience. It's not because she's the best singer in the world, or the best dancer, or the best actress, or the best pianist, or the best guitarist, even though she does all those things. It's just I've never seen an audience so one with the performer, where she gave them what they wanted—three and a half hours of banging hits on a massive stage with huge theatrics. Every kid there, including my 12-year-old daughter, had a fantastic time.

But the sniping... she doesn't sing every song live, she's this, she's that, she's written all these songs herself, she's grossing $2 billion on this tour—practically the biggest tour in the history of music, bigger than the Beatles when they played Shea Stadium. And yet the natural reaction of a lot of people is to snipe while pretending—you can almost bet they all have "hashtag be kind" in their ex bios. In other words, "I'm a really kind person, I'm a tolerant person, I'm a nice person, and I'll destroy any of you fascists who deviate from my woke worldview." But when it comes to Taylor Swift, I'm going to trash her. I'm going to be envious and resentful and jealous and all these things, which flies completely in the face of what they're pretending to be.

And it's that complete double standard that I see with so many of the—what better phrase—‘the woke brigade,’ as I call them. But it is, as Elon Musk said, it's a mind virus. And they are actually leading lives and behaving in a way that is completely the opposite of what they are masquerading.