YouSaid · the spoken record

Gary Younge

lines on the record: 37
first: 2024-10-24
most recent: 2024-10-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“But it was, I mean, it was bleak and brutal, but if you want a lesson to teach your grandchildren, she's still there. She stood up for herself and she's still there. And that's how she got there and that's why she's still there. And, you know, I think we could all do with that lesson.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But when I went to interview Diane, there were all these packing boxes because she said, I didn't know if I was going to come back or not. I didn't know what the deal was going to be. But, you know, she said, you don't get to be the first black woman MP by letting yourself get bullied in that way. And so in that sense, obviously, I wouldn't have wished that on anybody. But he did teach us a lesson which is that stand your ground she said I know my worth All too often, I think. Minoritized people, black people, people who are underrepresented. Know the And sometimes you've got to test it. And you've got to test them and say, how far will you go with this?”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that wasn't just because of Diane. That was because there was a protest at foot, because they risked this election, they begot the lowest vote that it's ever got since they could count votes of ethnic minorities. And I'm sure that she was a central element of it. There were people I know who, like you could put a sack of potatoes up and say it's labor and advertor, and they're like, I'm done. And so It's a good example. They will do what we make them do. And in this sense, it was like, no, you can't treat her like that. You can't treat black women like that. And they got away with it with Pfizer Shaheen because she wasn't yet an MP.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they were saying, yeah, but you're going to have to, and now you're going to step down on the same day we will restore the whip. We'll restore the whip and you step down. And she was saying, no, you're trying to humiliate me, and it looks like I've sold my sea and I'm not going to do that. And she said to me, it was a question of who blinked first and they blink first. But the reason they blink first was because every time they tried to roll out another piece of policy in the middle of the election, they were getting asked, well, what about Diane Amber?”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They thought that they could do her dirty like they did Corbyn dirty, but they didn't realize the power of her symbolic power, like she wasn't the same as Corbyn. And so they had to step back. There were negotiations that went on for ages. And those negotiations, she was saying, I want to step down. I'm not well.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Diane Abbott, that's right. You know, so yes, I did an interview with Diane that came out a few weeks ago. I'm doing another interview with her online if you're interested towards the end of this month. And then I did a column supporting her before in a way. What happened to Diane if we take it in its entirety was a triumph. They wanted to get rid of her and they couldn't. And they couldn't because her price was too high. Because we did organize. I thought she was my MP, but the boundaries keep changing, so it turned out she wasn't. But I live in Hackney, and people came out. And they demonstrated. And they took so much heat.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think she's impressive, and I dare say that there are all sorts of issues that the closer that you get, I'm sure more of the shine comes off and that people in Barbados, including some of my family, will be telling you she's not all that in the same way that people in Scotland were telling us Nicholas Durgeon's not all that, but you looked at Nicholas Sturgeon and you looked at Boris Johnson and you knew which one you wanted. So, yeah, I think, thank God she is punching above her weight. And then the last, the first question was, you're going to have to remind me.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of a reason, in a sense, because it's in the Americas, it's also in the developing world. It provides a bridge between those two. It has connections throughout the Caribbean with the rest of Europe and the Americas. And, you know, Miamo is the one who is... Central to There is a piece. I've interviewed her a couple of times and there is a piece in here. From nineteen ninety nine, because I'm old I interview her, and she's talking about she's the minister for sport news and something like that. And The other piece did make it in, but it's in vogue. But yeah, republicanism, you know, she made it republic. She set up embassies. She has a plan.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Woman from this small island who, when she's announced, you get a sense of how small it is because it's like she's the prime minister, the chancellor, the exchequer and something else as well. Like there's just kind of not enough people to do all the jobs. And she's taken on Netanyahu. She's out quailing him in scripture, and she's talking fluently and brilliantly, and she is spearheading the kind of call for reparations. And she is part of the kind of... I think she's leading a kind of Caribbean Renaissance in a sense. Because the Caribbean, I was at the UN Decade for people of African descent, somewhere in Geneva. And the Caribbean was the central, it wasn't black America, and it wasn't Africa. It was a Caribbean that was central.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So my departure, you know, I'd left for about four months when George Floyd was murdered, and I was glad not to be there. And I was glad not to be there because I wasn't in America. It was COVID and I was here and I didn't, I was like, well, this is... I'm interested to see how this plays out. And it was good to see some of my younger colleagues coming to the fore. When I was ready, I could write about it, but I could also just say no to 80% of the requests. Question about Mia Motley, who we also deal with in a podcast, I think the one before last. I mean she is punching above her way and thank God Thank God I think she's brilliant and she's you know she's Cop, she was the star of cop, she was the star of the United Nations General Assembly.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, you know, and he was like, Well, you just do it. And I said, say it. Just say it. And he said, fine, I want it shit. And I said, okay, six o'clock, six o'clock. You'll have your 800 words. So I'm just glad, and you know, that was my job. Wasn't always like that, and I had, you know, I traveled the world and I got ringside seat watching Mandela be elected and going into Hurricane Katrina and, you know, I saw a lot of things and it was fantastic. And, you know, I got to a stage where I was like, I want to do other things. And I also think I was taking up space for other younger journalists, that there was this sense. This is in particular to the Guardian, but Got a black Does”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was called. This is normal paper, normal stuff in journalism. I was called, I was Gary. Did you see the speech? Yes, I did. Okay, can we have 800 words? And I said, well, I don't know what I think about it yet. And they said, well, you know, we're going to need 800 words in two hours. And I said, well, can I do it tomorrow? I can figure something out. But it was kind of quite complicated and quite long and I'm going to have to wait for the trans get and they're like, now we need it in two hours. And I said, but it will be shit. And I said yeah, okay, six o'clock. And I said, I'll send it to you if I'll do it if you ask for it to be shared. And there's like, what? And I was like, say I wanted shit, and then I'll do it. Because I don't want to send you the piece. And you go, oh,”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's very kind of you to say that you miss my work in The Guardian. I'm going to be honest with you, I don't miss working for the Guardian. And that's really personal, it's not political, actually I had to have an idea every Thursday. Really exhausting. And, you know, Wednesday's no good. It's now good Thursday. I've been doing it for a while and I felt my voice was getting hoarse and so I was glad to get off that. And take longer to write about less. which I'm enjoying, doing. And there is this. Share this one story with you. It does make me sound like a bit of a dick, but it's a good story that when Obama gave his Philadelphia speech”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll take in the last one first. I am glad to be back in England. I was also kind of, you know, British racism did me a great service, and the service they gave me was to not feel particularly... Attached to the soil, any soil Grow up with people telling me I was a British and in a range of ways. And so Which I am, obviously, and which I learned to claim in time. But that meant, you know, that I didn't particularly miss Britain when I was away. and now I'm glad to be back and My sense of community is wherever my people are, and my people are people who have a sense of humor, they like to laugh, they like to read, they like to talk about ideas and don't take themselves to excuse me. I feel like I can find them in most places.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I said, doesn't that mean that we're stuck about 150 years ago? And she says, well, in a way we are. Things aren't exactly the same as they were before. But many of these issues have not been resolved. And I think that's true. Whoever wins the election, it won't resolve the politics. And whoever wins the election, it will likely be closely. And the resolution of the politics comes with the addressing of the things that made the politics in. In the first place And for that, we will have to look outside of an electoral system, which is awash with money. and lobbyists and so on and is proving itself incapable of meeting the needs of the politics. So My guess, my somber guess is it will get worse before it gets better. Regardless of the electoral result, although there is a better electoral result and a worse one, obviously.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My reading of American historically is that On January 6th, I think, people were saying, oh, this is the next civil war. And I thought, Hatchie is the last one. We still find the last civil war, that the last civil war is about slavery. People in the South will tell you different some people. But the last civil war was about slavery and the consequences of that civil war. We are still living with. The interview that I do with Andrew Davis in the book, she talks about what would it have meant if the end of slavery had meant more than just the breaking of chains because it didn't. And so, and I say to her, but doesn't that mean that we're stuck in the past? I think I interviewed in about 2007.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we really didn't know because we couldn't. I don't know if the polling is going to be similarly kind of complicated this time. That's why I say, well, you know, we're going to find out. It's an incredibly close election. And it's intriguing to me to the degree to which Her race and sex The degree to which they have not come up I mean, of course, they have come up. But there's so much other stuff going on. Israel Palest The issues with Biden, the issues with Trump, the kind of the lies about the hurricane, the kind of, this is not a stable functioning democracy And so anything can happen. That's why I'm not just being flipped when I say, well, find out.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Indiana that night voted for Obama. It's the first time Indiana's voted Democrat since 64, I think. And you could see the kind of scales from her eyes and many other people's eyes that whatever else racism expresses itself in America, it wasn't expressing itself electorally. And that we couldn't know until the day because there was a thing called... There were two electors, one in California and one in Virginia, and I'm forgetting what it was called, but it was the ex effect. I actually interviewed one of the guys, and I will remember on my way home and kick myself. In both cases. The Poles said something different to what people actually wrote. People didn't want to admit that they weren't going to vote for the black guy. And so both times the polls overestimated the vote for the black candidate. And in both instances, they lost.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And yet here we are. So I don't know is the honest answer and I remember watching the results coming in in 2008 and I was in a bar on the south side. It's in the book. And I'm seeing next to this woman who, whenever, if you watch elections in America, here somebody with a big bit of bling comes out and announces the election result. But in America, it's kind of called by the stations and by news agencies. And what next is the next thing? And she'd say, racist deaths, Indiana. Fuck Indiana, you know. And then I'm not quite sure why she was so fixated on Indiana, but she was. And it was this sense of like America's never going to do this. They are never going to do this”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You could say he's half white. He looks pretty black to me. Do you know what I mean? And he looked pretty black to the Tea Party and all the rest of it. I take your point. Of course her sex is relevant. And America has never elected a woman before as president. And so this will be a double leap to elect a black woman And the circumstances of her being in that position are irregular, to say the least. So she didn't get to go through the process of the primaries which would have primed American philanthropy. On the other hand, she standing against him And so it becomes a question of whether America hates black people more than it hates democracy. Which we're going to find out. But it is also true that in 2016, people thought they may not be quite ready to elect a woman, but to elect him seemed unthinkable.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're going to find out, aren't we? I mean. I think they might be. I think that similar questions were asked ahead of Obama and Obama got a bigger majority than Anyone since Count of Clinton in'96?”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We go back to, which is a place that we, in a sense, we might start from. We have to rely on ourselves. In the words of June Jordan, the African American essayist, we are the ones that we've been waiting for. They will do what we make them do. And that's as true for her as it is for him. It will be easier to make her do what we want to do then, and that's as true here as it is there. There was this notion when Obama was elected. People were almost saying why isn't he organizing the left opposition to himself? It's like it's not a reasonable question if you want him to do these things, then you have to get out and make him do them. It's no good. You don't in capitalism get to elect change. You get to elect someone who might make change if you make them. But it's up to us to make them. That's true on both sides of the Atlantic.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I've got to tell you if I was in America, obviously I'd vote for Kamala Harris because of like. You got the black lady or the orange man, you're going to vote for her. She's not offering. An alternative to him. She's offering not being him. And that's not enough. It may be enough to win the election. It's not enough to stop the decline. It's not enough to stop the rot. And so then you have to look outside to the kind of, you know, the things that have really regenerated. The reason why, the primary reason why Camilla Harris was made vice president was because of the Black Lismatic demonstration. So there was no way that Joe Biden was going to get away with not having a black vice president. Now, you know, I think she's more than qualified and, you know, whatever that role is.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Leaves with a complete disdain for whatever democracy there is. And it's not like it was a great democracy to start with, but January the 6th, you're like, well, we'll take what we've got against that. Now, all of these people who were involved, all of these organizations that had been involved, they'd been around for a while. But suddenly they're getting the call from the White House. They're no longer marginal. They're in the building. And the idea now there is nothing new to see in Trump now. He's shown us exactly who he is. So any accusation we are catastrophizing is like, well, there has been a catastrophe, more than one. So now, if they elect him, they know what they're doing. You can't say, well, you know, there was ignorance or they didn't know the lies have been proven and so on and so forth.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rachel answered becoming blurred and white people are going to be a minority. He was the son of a man who was nominally Muslim. I mean his dad was effectively an atheist, but still. At a time when America was losing these wars in Muslim countries. So it represented a set of anxieties. He comes in in the middle of an economic crash and he doesn't deliver, really, for anybody. The gap between black and white kiss bigger. And he held a position for eight years. An immense amount of hope in yes we can. By the end of it, it's like could be worse, which doesn't look as good on a bumper sticker. And these followed by Trump. ripped it all out and inflames donation.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you only get so many presidents. There's only so many black people can become president. And I can see what he does for Obama, but I'm not entirely clear what it does for myself. I'll have to wait and see, which was not the answer that they wanted. And in America where people do get tired. You're boring, I'm going to talk to somebody else. But also people didn't understand when he came in. The degree of the anxiety that he produced in the sexual and white population because it wasn't just that he was black. Though that was bad enough. He was to sum through his that of an immigrant at a time when they were becoming increasingly xenophobic. He was a mixed race man at a time when the”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think there are a few things. First of all, there was very uncritical. View that people had of Obama, which was much worse outside of America than it was in, that they wanted to believe. It was eight years of Bush and war and they wanted to believe that he was going to perform some black magic. He never said he would. And my thing, and it's important to kind of hold these lines, I think, because then, you know, 20, 30 years later, you have Suello and Pri Patella and whatnot. When people would say, this will be really great for your son because my son was born a weekend. He declared. And I'd say, why? Not now, but why will he limit my son's chances of going to prison or getting shop? Will he advance his chances of going to university and getting a good job? That I'm interested in.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It disables us as a country from making kind of rational trees. Why were it, I think, a central reason why we are not in the European Union and now we stand alone and we look as small as we are.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I mean, I think it is that kind of. I think it was a Danish foreign minister during the Brexit negotiations who say, Europe is divided into two different types of countries, countries that are small and countries that have yet to realize they are small. Guess which one we are And that kind of the reckoning that is necessary with. I'll pause isn't just about our past, it's about our present that kind of the The kind of what do you call it? A kind of fever about our decline. Ageo pline our cloud, that need that we have to hold America's coat while it's fighting the rest of the world Insistence on trying to put the great back into Great Britain without actually ever thinking where did it come from? What did it do?”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let alone go to your Spotify playlist or your football team. The country needs us and has always needed us. That's, you know, power went to India and invited Indians and Pakistanis to come to Britain to staff the NHS. And then six years later, he does rivers of blood. So we have this. We're addicted to both immigration and xenophobia, which is unsustainable. And America is the same, to come back to your point. America has become in some ways more like the rest of Europe, actually, where fascism is a mainstream ideology and xenophobia is central to it.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then suddenly all of these people who said like well Now's not the time to have that conversation or we tough on immigration, tough on the causes of immigration or whatever the horseshit is that they're saying. And suddenly, It's harder for them to get to Tuscany, and they're wondering why. Because the argument has never been made. The argument for immigration was never made by a mainstream political party. And it's not a difficult argument to make. We have a labor shortage right now. We have an aging population Those people that ran out and were saying right to asylum seekers hostels, those men who were Showering about immigrants. Chances are they're going to get a prostate check by a Nigerian nurse or a Jamaican nurse. And I hope they're going hard. But going to any care home, going to any hospital.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think that a large number, if you look at the liberal complicity, for example, of making up the weapons of mass destruction or a bunch of things that were made up that they let go in terms of torture elsewhere, then you can see that the route was paved. For an awful lot of this, and it wasn't just the right. Trump is a product of American racism. He didn't invent it. And he's accelerating it, he's amplifying it, but he is also a product of it. And these are the kind of, these are the moments when. You for the moral cowardice of previous year when you could have made a stand so that if we look at Britain in nineteen fifty eight and that story that I just told. The Britons never had a Fact based conversation about immigration. Certainly not since the Second World War. And then comes the Brexit.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So As well as the racism, and as well as the kind of manifest destiny and all of that kind of stuff that is embedded in American politics and has been You also have, and here, you know, Obama and others are at full, the fact that the debts haven't been paid, that they didn't deliver, that kind of people, this is what I worry about here too, when they kind of win fuel allowance and doing the two-child cap. And I'm thinking, people need some hope. People need some reason to believe. And in the absence of that belief, they will. Reach for desperate things, and trump is an incredibly desperate thing. And we're in a moment now where counter truth doesn't really matter. You can kind of fact check him in real time, man. He can just make stuff up.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is partly, not entirely, but partly what we saw in the summer here. It can't just be class because the people they were attacking were working class. It's a thing where, you know, the rich gy's got twenty cookies and he takes nineteen, leaves one on the table, and says to the white person that asylum seeker is going to take your cookie. He's like, what about the nineteen cookies you just left in your pocket? Why can't we have some of those?”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we are approaching a time now where white people will be a minority in America and what we are realizing is that They had an understanding that this was a wide country that had to tolerate non white people. And so you see places like Arizona which are flipped, Maryland, which have flipped, places like Texas, which are on the way. Even if you look at where the swing states are now. Not all where they used to be. And so you are seeing this really visceral reaction. And you're also seeing the kind of fallout, and this is true here too. The debts of the 2008 crash that hadn't been paid. You know, lots of people have had to deal with the fallout. More than Morda Man, or maybe not numerically more, but proportionally more And so then it comes down to who you're going to blame.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have to accept that the problem is really the blacks, and then we have to find a way to say that without saying it. And that was the philosophy all from the time of the Civil Rights Act was welfare queens, gun violence, whatever it was that you were saying, you were saying race, but you won't say it. And then at a certain point with Trump, He just started saying it, and the world didn't fall And that's when you see how recent, you know, America was a slave state for 300 years and apartheid state for a hundred years. It's only been a non-racial democracy for about 70 years. It's new. If my kids,'cause my wife is African American, if my kids want to know about a civil race here and they have to read a book, they can just ask their grandparents who lived rare and were born in segregation with all the signs and all of that. And so”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean I left in 2015 and I'd been there for 12 years. And interestingly, recently I did a lecture in Manchester for the American studies students and it was about the things that I saw when I was reporting there that help explain where we are now and that so many Which made me have to go back to find the articles that would be relevant and so on. And it was interesting to see the country was deeply divided in 2004. And people were talking about saving American democracy then. George Bush's support were talking about God. Basically smiting the whole country if they allowed gay marriage or if it was It was deeply divided then, but there was still a sense then that Well, there was this thing called the Nixon strategy from'64, and the Nixon strategy was Nixon said this to his chief of staff of Holderman.”
2024-10-24 · Intelligence Squared · An Evening with Gary Younge, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT