A Change of Heart Towards Jordan | Africa Brooke | Mikhaila Peterson Podcast | EP 120

Because I had had an experience in relation to you years before where I had made a firm decision that I would never in my life listen to anything this man has to say. [Laughter] Based on a three-minute clip, mind you. Do you remember what it was that I said that was so profoundly irritating? I mean, there's many. Can you tell me what that was?

Of course, you were talking about the gender pay gap. This was part of a longer interview, the interview that you had with Kevin Newman. This was a three-minute clip you were talking about the gender pay gap, and you were saying that, you know, paraphrasing here, but that the reason for most women is because most women are agreeable, most women don't negotiate, etc., etc. I believe that was essentially giving people options as to why it could be that there's this thing that exists or doesn't exist.

And I didn't even finish the clip. I didn't even finish the three-minute clip, but based on the things that another out-of-context clip that I had seen before and the way that I'd heard your name being spoken of before, in the context of the trans conversation that was happening around that time—2018, right? Exactly.

Again, I was watching this clip, and it's almost like I wasn't even listening to what you were saying. I had already decided that I don't like this man because someone that I trust has told me that I shouldn't like him. So therefore, you know, the decision is made. Why do I even have to finish that video, right? And it was just normal.

Well, you know, we use heuristics like that all the time. It's easy to get caught up in them because, well, you can't listen to everyone, and so you kind of have to make a snap judgment about almost everyone. The default is you don't listen because there's like seven billion people. So obviously, you're not listening to most of them, so you don't need much of an excuse.

It's really easy for that to get—and I mean, it's not like I haven't experienced that, like on my podcast. You know, I invite people on, Abigail Schreier, for example. She wrote—I don't remember; oh yeah, her most recent book—but it's an investigation into the downside of the rush to make everything gender fluid, essentially. And I was terrified when I had her on. I mean, I wasn't—rather, yeah, "Irreversible Damage."

Yeah, you know, I want to have Andy Know on my podcast, but that also makes me nervous too. And, you know, because he's tarred with the fascist brush, and then you get—it’s guilt by association. And that might have been part of what you were feeling. So those—so you think, well, you need a simplifying heuristic. Part of that is, well, that most people aren't worth listening to, and he's definitely not worth listening to.

Right, and then that can so easily become politicized. Once it is—especially when the political has become religious—it’s really, really hard to overcome that. Yeah, and so it really is, you know, a lot of the things that the radical left are pointing out are in some sense universal human failings, and so they have that truth about them.

I mean, because we could ask ourselves, given the implicit tendency for human beings to have a pronounced in-group preference and the potential we have for violence against out-group members, how do we all address our proclivity to damn the foreigner? Okay, that's a really important question. And then, like, I've got a good answer.

Okay, let me add the one end to that. And then the next thing is, well, we all have these proclivities. How are they exacerbated by power and privilege, right? Those are good questions. But as soon as we make it instantly racist, well then, we can't even ask the damn questions properly anymore.

So, Mick, sorry, my joke is over now. Oh, I'm sorry; I stomped all over your tiny little joke. You stomped all over my tiny little joke. I was thinking about that question earlier, though. If everyone has these tendencies—which they certainly do—I’ve noticed that if I have a guest on my podcast, and I think my audience is fairly open-minded, but then I’ll have a guest on that and they'll hate them.

And they’ll be like, “Well, you can't just even if you don't agree with them.” Maybe they are wrong, but like you can't just cancel people because they don't agree with you, because you're doing exactly the same thing that the people you're complaining about. Well, you know, and also maybe your stupid opinions aren't right. They're probably not right.

And like, are you so sure your life is going so much the way you want it to go, and you're such a bloody paragon of virtue, and the light is shining out every orifice that everything you think and say is correct, and everyone who disabuses you of your notions is evil? You're really so sure of that? Are you?

So, you know, you wander around, and you think, God, maybe I should listen to this person because I'm such an ignorant bastard, and I'm so full of malevolence, and maybe they'll drop one thing on me that won't make me like miserable and doomed to hell and to drag everyone else there too.

That's, yeah, well, you know, I felt something similar when I finally leaned into listening to you properly because what was interesting, even after that moment in 2018 watching that three-minute clip, deciding this man is evil. I want nothing to do with him ever again. And, of course, I didn't think I would ever have anything to do.

Yeah, infiltrated. Yeah, right. People in my—especially people that were not really connected to the digital world—a lot of older men in my life, for example, and women in my life would always tell me to read your book. It's honestly, I—people would always say to me, “Africa, you will really love this book.”

I would have friends of mine send me lectures. I think you're really going to like this, and I would just completely ignore it. In my mind, I'd be thinking, “What am I—what am I going to find? What am I supposed to like?” Because, again, I have this idea of you built up in my head, so I'm finding it very confusing that people that know me very well are telling me that there's something that I'm going to like.

Right, yeah, what the hell? Confusing. But again, for years, what the hell? Yes, I ignored it. So when I started watching your lectures late 2019 and last summer as well, in the beginning, I could notice myself listening to you and finding—waiting for a moment where I could say, “Aha! See, see? Right? I knew I was right!”

And you know what? I waited. That moment never came. That moment never came. That comes for me, right, all the time. And that, again, so it's like there wasn't one moment of being awake and then it's done. So many little tiny seemingly insignificant moments where I'm just sitting here by my sofa just watching and listening, observing myself, waiting, you know, for that confirmation that I'm right and then it never coming.

And then I have to deal with that. And then, so again, my curiosity—I finally allowed myself to be curious again, and now, Jordan, I can say you have been one of the most influential people to me for so many reasons, reasons I couldn't even mention right now. But to be able to have the conversations that I do now publicly... you have—and I could have never, never imagined this ever in my entire life.

This is—things like this don't just happen. And the fact that I can tell you this.

Oh no, thank you, just thank you, thank you. You got him.

It's a pleasure. It's a rough pleasure. But you know you knew what happened to me with Marvel Comics. That was something. It's really something to see yourself portrayed. You know, I got accused of being a Nazi pretty much when all this happened. It was really something because I had been teaching students what we're talking about today—about these temptations that you faced and how people, as individuals, get sucked into that totalitarian hell.

You know, and then so that was something for that to happen, such a reversal, and then to have that comic book come out. Well, it was surreal. It was absolutely surreal to be portrayed because Nazi wasn't enough, right? We had to go right for the archetype itself.

So I think we've raised about four hundred thousand dollars for charity now on the basis of that, so that was a fun reversal. But it was really shocking when I first saw that. I just couldn't believe it. I was very ill at the time too, and I thought, “This can't be real. This has to be Photoshop. This cannot possibly be happening. It's so completely beyond comprehension.”

And you know, to come from the pen of one of the foremost black intellectuals—and I use the racial category only because that's the category that he's using to operate with it.

Yeah, so life is really weird that this is true, right? This is true, as this whole conversation illustrates.