Where Shall We Meet
Explorations of topics about society, culture, arts, technology and science with your hosts Natascha McElhone and Omid Ashtari.
The spirit of this podcast is to interview people from all walks of life on different subjects. Our hope is to talk about ideas, divorced from our identities - listening, learning and maybe meeting somewhere in the middle. The perfect audio diet for shallow polymaths!
Natascha McElhone is an actor and producer.
Omid Ashtari is a tech entrepreneur and angel investor.
Where Shall We Meet
On Censorship with Marc Levy
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Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Last year, according to PEN America, nearly 12,000 book bans took place in US public schools. Our guest this week is Marc Levy, who wrote The Bookshop of Forbidden Books. He is the author of twenty-seven other novels published in fifty languages. With more than fifty million copies sold, he is the most-read French author alive. A nationwide poll by Le Figaro ranked him alongside Victor Hugo as France’s favourite writer. He currently lives in New York.
At eighteen years old he joined the Red Cross, where he worked for six years. He then founded a computer graphics company operating in France and the United States, and later started an architecture firm with two friends that became one of the leading firms in France.
He wrote his first novel, If Only It Were True, when he was 37. Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks bought the film rights before the book was even published, and the film, Just Like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, went to number one at the US box office in 2005. Several of his novels have been adapted for the screen, including All Those Things We Never Said, which Canal+ broadcast in 2022. His latest novel, The Rebel Sisters, comes out in France this autumn in two volumes.
We talk about:
- How a Florida law can pull thousands of books off library shelves in a day
- Why authoritarians need citizens to be ignorant and scared
- And why books are the antidote to both
- Did the woke movement pave the way for censorship overreach?
- Why 380 words have been struck from official US vocabulary
- Tyrants don’t need monsters, they need a system
- Why the dictionary is the most dangerous book
Let’s begin!
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Welcome And Why This Matters
SPEAKER_03Welcome to the Where Shall We Meet podcast. Last year, according to Pan America, nearly 12,000 book bans took place in US public schools. Our guest this week is Marc Levy, who wrote the Bookshop of Forbidden Books. He is the author of 27 other novels published in 50 different languages. With more than 50 million copies sold, he is the most read French author alive. A nationwide poll by Le Figaro ranked him alongside Victor Hugo as France's favorite writer. He currently lives in New York. At 18 years old, he joined the Red Cross, where he worked for six years. He then founded a computer graphics company operating in France and the United States, and later on started an architectural firm with two friends that became one of the leading firms in France.
SPEAKER_01He wrote his first novel, If only it were true, when he was 37. Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks bought the film rights before the book was even published, and the film, Just Like Heaven, starring Rhys Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, went to number one at the US box office in 2005. Several of his novels have been adapted for the screen, including All Those Things We Never Said, which can I please broadcast in 22. His latest novel, The Rebel Sisters, comes out in France this autumn in two volumes.
SPEAKER_03We talk about how a Florida law compose thousands of books off library shelves in one day.
SPEAKER_01Why authoritarians need citizens to be ignorant and scared.
SPEAKER_03And why books are the antidote to both.
SPEAKER_01Did the woke movement pave the way for censorship overreach?
SPEAKER_03Why 380 words have been struck from official US vocabulary. Why the dictionary is the most dangerous book.
SPEAKER_01Let's begin.
The Real Scale Of Book Bans
SPEAKER_01Hi, this is Omida Schlarik.
SPEAKER_03And Natasha McElhone. And with us today we have Mark Levy. Hey Mark. Hi, Mark. Thanks so much for coming on. Today we're going to talk about, well, many things, but inspired by your book, The Bookshop of Forbidden Books, is going to take us into a conversation about censorship and banned books in the States.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And I think the best way to get our listeners to be up to speed on this topic would be if you just give us a little bit of a landscape and the State of the Union on the situation of censorship in the US in general.
SPEAKER_00Of course. But first, thank you very much for welcoming me in your podcast. So actually, uh, Pan America has um recalled the 26 uh 26,000, over 26,000 occurrence of uh ban books in the United States. About 80% uh are of course in Texas and Florida. Just to be clear, when we talk about book ban, it doesn't mean that it's uh yet forbidden to sell them in bookstores. It means that they have been taken out of any public library uh where they can be accessible to minor and school uh library, university library where me m minor are studying. And when you talk about that, you wonder, you know, okay, maybe um some books can like movies, some some movies are rated, but we are talking on top of the list of the diary of Anne Frank, of all the books of Tony Morrison, of Margaret Atwood, of Steinbeck, and many, many, many major authors.
SPEAKER_03So the classics that we used to be studying at school. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Maybe still have lesbian band in some schools.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_01The back of your book actually has a pretty good greatest hits, basically. Uh so we looked through that and I saw Catcher in the Rise on it, too. I think as a teenager, it was a hugely uh useful book for me to read. Uh it has a bunch of swearing, but I don't think that should make it censored.
SPEAKER_00No, no, but even uh 1984 is banned. Brave New World as well.
SPEAKER_03So this is this is um under the auspices of protecting vulnerable minds of people under the age of 18.
SPEAKER_00Yes. It's an ideological quest made by authoritarian people. I mean it's a it's a part of a playbook which is very common uh around the world and around and for the centuries and centuries of uh dictatorship. When authoritarian uh regime uh take control of a country, uh culture and arts are their first target. But that's not because they just hate it, because uh weirdly, some authoritarian dictators, you know, uh um forbid some pain from uh being exhibited in museums, but they had them in their own living room. It's because uh of a very simple thing. Authoritarian regime needs two seeds, uh ignorance and fear. And books are the absolute antidote to both of them. As you were saying, you know, uh naming one book that you know make you connected with yourself, and uh and that was very important during your young age. I mean, if uh through the prism of a book you understand that you're not alone, whatever your difference is, uh, then you right away belong to a community which is diverse because your difference belongs to the same community than the difference of others, which is exactly what authoritarian people do not want. I mean, to control you, you have to feel isolated and alone and stigmatized by your difference, whatever is your difference. So it's a very, very classical playbook. There is some I would say very mediogenic pictures that we have all in mind about the Nazi burning books, which was, you know, literally the ideological expression of burning culture. But remember on a different register, but it's the same pattern. When RFK Jr. became the equivalent of Ministry of Health, uh Minister of Health in the United States, the one of the first things that he said in front of the camera, it's time we stop to listen to the expert. Right. Which is the same pattern, you know, science, every source of knowledge has to be shut down because uh knowledge can contradict the parallel reality of any authoritarian regime.
SPEAKER_01Right. I assume that a lot of these regimes that do ban books ban similar books then. And these are the greatest hits across all the countries that ban books, really.
SPEAKER_00When an authoritarian regime is in place, there is an ideology behind it. It serves as a vessel of spreading the regime and the strengths of the regime. In my opinion, the real backbone of authoritarian are always corruption and enrichment. But you need an ideology to install an authoritarian regime. So, for example, actually in the United States, behind the motto of what they call MAGA, MAGA is the acronym of white Christian supremacy. And I'm not talking about supremacist, I'm talking about white Christian supremacy. You have a part of the population that is strongly convinced that the world should work with white people, Christian, wife at home, not working, taking care of their husband, and every cultural vessel that goes in the direction of that is okay. Every book that can make sense.
Woke Overreach And Art Integrity
SPEAKER_03How much of this crazy swing or fear do you think has been wrought about by the more extreme elements of the woke movement that preceded it?
SPEAKER_00It's a very good question. I don't think that if you have been too terrified by the devastation that alcohol can produce, that you can be credible by saying let's do heroin if you see what I mean.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I I I don't think it's I don't think it's sincere. I mean let me let me tell you this. When some when major publishers in the US bend down against the censorship of some woke instance, I was as angry as I am. Right.
SPEAKER_03That that was gonna be my question.
SPEAKER_00The rewrite the renaming of books in the uh really upset me. Um because I think it's counterproductive, and and I can uh uh talk about you know the uh Agatha Christie's novel. Um yeah, it's the same obscurantism or uh darkness as the people that want you know to censor the painting of Corbet, The Origin of the World, because you know it shows woman intimacy. Um art the purpose of literature and art is to provoke us and it's to shake our ground. And I'm not saying that you know you have to love it or you have to appreciate, and you can disagree, but be uh disagree is a fundamental pillar of democracy. Read a book, disagree with it, it's absolutely fine and respectful.
SPEAKER_03But really, part of its job is to make us feel uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00I mean it doesn't, I mean it's not uh Well, some people uh let me say Yeah, yeah, it's not I mean it it's not like a purpose to make it, but if it makes you uncomfortable, then it's fine. It's shaken you and what? Are you going to die about that? No, you're going to say in the worst case scenario, you're going to say this is awful, I hate it, I don't sing like that, fine. But then will come a time where if you are so upset about it, you're going to uh try to find why. And why is it so upsetting for you?
SPEAKER_04And grow your argument.
SPEAKER_00And and also, I mean, is it because you're a vegetarian that you want to forbid uh other people to eat what they want to eat, meat or fish? Is it because you you live in a city that you want to prevent people to decide to live in? There is authoritarian is not about you know what is right and what is wrong. This is something that might be personal. Authoritarian is about forcing people to live the way you you want to live, yeah. Which is a very, very different way of thinking.
SPEAKER_01As you're describing it, it it articulates in my mind is that censorship is a tool and it can be used by whatever side of the spectrum. And the reality is that we should always endeavor to let art stay authentic to the creator's intention. And if you go and change the creator's intention uh post hoc, then you're just applying some sort of moral judgment to it that is your uh aesthetic preference about the world. And what we want is a diversity of aesthetic preferences, as a matter of fact.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but one of the absolute craziness of the walk movement, and I'm not saying that the whole work movement, because I mean we can have a conversation about work, was work, the meaning of work is being awake. But like every movement or every intention, you have uh right away some extremist people that want, you know, to exist suddenly uh through that and which are going to do crazy things. But for example, there were a time where in the work movement you were not allowed to talk about a culture if you didn't belong to that culture, and it was called appropriation, which is absolute madness. And and I can cite like a hundred extraordinary movies that would not exist, you know, if we follow that logic. And it was an absolute madness because it's the absolute opposition of uh of what art, literature, music, dance is it's all about sharing, it's all about getting closer to culture that you do not belong to. So I mean, putting this border was the state of mind of other kinds of extremists, which was absolutely crazy was to see that some movie studio or some books publisher banned to that authoritarian uh logic, which was crazy. So, this is to be absolutely honest between what's going on right now in the United States. What makes me even more angry now is that the intention is not the same. I think the intention of the world that wanted, you know, to be so aggressive. I think it was people that you know suffered of being extremely weak in that you know were trying to find a way in their violent behavior to get a little bit of control. I think that it was mostly pushed by the city.
SPEAKER_03Well, it was corrective as well, right? It was to try, you know, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it was other corrective, and it was about, you know, uh overwhelmed feeling and it was uh not sought, and I think it was very disorganized and and not sought at all, you know. Uh and and if the people in the art business, in the movie, in the publisher had been less profit-driven and more courageous and more in phase with what they are supposed to do, those access would not have existed because they were absolutely controllable. You know, if a publisher, which was a private company, was saying to the work movement, I'm not going to forbid to a black writer to write the story of an Indian because that's what literature is. So, you know, um, that's the way it is. If you don't want to buy it, don't buy it. But they were terrified by the internet bashing. Today, what's happening is different because this is not a fight between private corporation and a little part of the population. This is a govern a governmental and lawmaker movement. So uh in governance, you have you know govern, and that's very different.
SPEAKER_01And I think it's very important that we point these things out. But I wonder in a world where people barely read any books anymore and they just scroll, is uh censoring books even still affecting anybody in any shape or form? Right? The the real issue is that I guess autocratic governments also flood the zone with just so much stuff that comes through screens and through digital media that people don't even have the time to pick up a book anymore.
SPEAKER_03Well, in fact, maybe the provocation will finally get kids to pick up books.
SPEAKER_00Okay, yeah. But you're you're right, Natasha. That's exactly what uh the main character of my book showed. You know, he at one time he said, Well, what is more attractive to teenager than something that is forbidden books? Exactly. Yes, he's going to rebound on that, you know, to create these uh books, these hidden bookstores of forbidden books. Now, about the future of reading, I always thought that pessimism is very disappointing and very deceiving. Optimism is uh uh I think is better. The only option, really. Yeah. No, no, but I see I think that at one time the torrent of stupidity that we see on the social networks, and even the one profaned by uh people in charge is is becoming so boring that I I have a tendency to think that you know brains run away, and uh and suddenly we'll say, yeah, let you know enough of that. Yeah, enough of that, and let's get back to uh to what matters and what I I think there is a need of campaigning to remind to people what a book or a movie or an exhibition can uh make them feel, and and because that's what has been forbidden. The um there is the issue of book censorship, but there is also the issue of which book you give to teenagers to read at school that will make them you know want to read more books. And and that's true of any kind of arts. Um I mean Godard is an amazing uh filmmaker, but if you show his movie to teenagers, they will never give go back to theater again. And uh it's something really, really to think about in our democracy.
Florida HB 1461 And The Trap
SPEAKER_01Do you want to just briefly mention this law in Florida just so that we can get everybody to understand what it actually is about and how it works?
SPEAKER_00It's called HB 1461, if I remember well the number, because there is so many. The law is very simple. Uh, anyone can go and pick the name of a book and say, this book is dangerous for a teenager. You don't have to explain why. Uh you can file a claim, like you know, a very simple claim saying, I find it offensive, that's enough. And as the law is being written, because it's very smartly written, to spread uh its effect really widely without any ability to uh counter it, because the law says then if somebody mentioned a book, the book needs to be taken out of the shelves by measure of precaution, preventive, you know, and then it will be looked at by a special commission. And if the book fits for teenager, it will be reinstated on the bookshelves. Except that they never created the commission, they do not exist, the commission. So you can go in any state or county and say, you know, diarrhea fanfranc, too violent, remove it. And the librarian will have to remove it by law, and then you know, they can wait 20 years before the commission reads the book because there is no one in the commission, so no one will read it.
SPEAKER_01I assume they also ban some Kafka, but if they hadn't, people would know that this is pretty Kafka-esque what they've built there.
SPEAKER_00No, it's um it's very efficient because by using this measure of you know preventive action, they were able to ban in one day thousands of books. For example, if you say, okay, in this book of Tony Morrison, there is this scene which is very violent, too violent for kids. Okay, so we might have some others like that in Tony Morrison's literary. So let's remove all Tony Morrison until we find out if they can be read. The funny scene, I mean, it's not funny, the very sad thing is that the same week that uh Ron DeSantis speaks to the book. Yeah, the little emperor, as we called him, bragged a lot about this law, you know, and how proud he was to protect the Floridian children about, you know, the danger of books. But the same week, the little emperor went on a stage with his high boots and declared that for the freedom of speech and the freedom of the American, he was going to authorize in Florida that anyone can uh carry on automatic guns in public places. Because that was, you know, what America was about being free. Not to read the diary of Anne Frank, but to carry an automatic gun.
SPEAKER_01Semi automatic gun in public.
SPEAKER_00And I think the parallel is very interesting in how much bullshit as citizens we are ready to eat before we put those people out of their power.
SPEAKER_03Um can I read one tiny paragraph from your book just to illustrate what you've just said? I want to pronounce Madame Attelteau or Atleteau is it what is as how I like. Okay, fine. Um I'd welcome any suggestions you might have. Um he finished. This is Mitch, the book owner who's trying to find a way through um this ban. Madame Attelteau held up a hand, not in demand for silence the way she'd done in class, but because she needed a moment to think. She rose and paced slowly back and forth along the riverbank, passing Mitch several times, murmuring softly to herself, once pausing to watch a couple of mallards fighting over a morsel of bread. We'll fight fire with fire, she exclaimed suddenly, her voice filled with the renewed vigour of a teacher readying to tame a rowdy classroom. If the governor is targeting books, it's because he's afraid of them. He fears their power, is exactly what I was trying to teach you when I had you read those books in class. You often resented me for it, but I was teaching you the art of understanding rather than judging hastily. I was shaking up your certainties and challenging your prejudices. In my classes, we met strangers, we travelled to other cultures, explored new ideas, and confronted unfamiliar ways of thinking. The governor is trying to stop the narrow little world he controls from changing. My dear Mitch, the task ahead of us is more important than you can imagine. It's going to take courage and a little bit of madness. We're going to make those books circulate ten times more widely than they did before. It's possible that the authorities will arrest us and make us pay, yes, but if we do nothing, then everything really is all over. And then she concludes by saying, No, I've a much better idea. Young people have an insatiable appetite for anything forbidden. They're going to devour those books, idolize their authors. It'll be all they talk about. We're going to spark a contagion. The censors will be helpless to fight. And I'll speak to a few a few former colleagues who are still teaching, trustworthy ones, of course. So there's this wonderful idea of an insurrection.
SPEAKER_01What's what's forbidden is sexy, right? They said the printers knew exactly which books to print when the Catholic Church said send out like the censored list of books.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. Natasha, it's uh it's amazing to hear you're ready to really I mean you totally you know it Mrs. Adolto was alive, it's amazing. Um it's the first time I hear it. So it was so great. Thank you very much. Sorry, what was your question?
SPEAKER_01It was more about the the point that we made around um that forbidden is sexy, but also the beautiful thing that you say here that horizons are opened by these books, right? You're you're visiting places and ideas and territory that is uncontrollable to the powers that want to have full control over your mind, right? And that's why obviously they're reacting the way they
Social Media Anger And Story Power
SPEAKER_01are.
SPEAKER_00We can talk about the real reason of banning books and why you know uh authoritarian people are so afraid about books and and why social network owners uh like you know Zuckerberg uh are so close to authoritarian governance. The algorithm of social network, which has spread over our societies to divide us. The algorithms are made to make you upset, to make you angry at someone else than you, uh sometimes to make you angry at invisible forces that you can't define yourself, but you're absolutely convinced that they do exist and they are marching toward you to destroy you, and you're upset all the time, and that's why you scroll and scroll and scroll. And Zuckerberg has not invented anything. Zuckerberg has amplified the algorithm of a dictatorship. A dictatorship rose on two ground hate and fear and ignorance and conviction of a parallel reality. It has been the same playbook over the centuries, and we sought over the 21st century with the level of technology that we have, that we would be prevented for any of that because we're too informed to believe to bullshit, and you know, the information was uh circulating too fast to make us believe to uh things and that were not true until they reinstalled the narrative of repeat the lie uh several times and the lie will become a truce. And the only antidote uh to this are stories. Storytold in movies, story told, you know, on dance stage, and story told in books. Why? Because if you read uh Steinbeck, you cannot be insensible to any people suffering from, you know, uh I'm I'm not sure that misery is the right word in uh in English, uh, misery I mean you cannot in be insensible to poverty. You cannot. Because when you see homeless people in the street, you know, there is the dress in which they are in the kind of uniform of poverty, which makes you feel that we are not the same. You know, I'm clean, I'm in my dress, they are dirty, and they are sitting on the sidewalk. But if you read the story of a homeless person, and if you read the book, you're going to discover that behind the dirty coat there is the same human than you, that it might be a father, a brother. And then the book is going to create compassion and empathy in every book, every story makes us understand that we are belonging to the same humankind, and that what we saw where our difference and sometimes our difference make us pride, and sometimes they make us suffer a lot. But when you find, when you meet someone in a book that feels like you, that you you feel connected to, you're not alone. And you don't need to hate everyone around you because you understand that whatever you suffer, someone else suffered in the same way. And so, and that's already a part of eating. And this power that books have to unite us, to make us understand instead of judging, to make us wanting to build instead of destroying by anger, that's is extremely good for humanity, but it's terrifying for dictators. And so that's why they are so upset about books. You can you can have raised, I was in a classroom not a long time ago. And I was telling to the teenager, why do you think that the US government, and as crazy as it looks, has banned 380 words from the official vocabulary. I mean, there is 380 words that you're not allowed to use in any official documents in the United States right now. And that's crazy. And one of these words is woman. You are not, no, you're not allowed. And if you look at the website, and I invite you to do that, if you look at the website of the White House and you you look in the website, and you want to go to the original page of the Constitution, they have darkened some words, even in some extract of the Constitution, because they are not fitting with the ideology of the of the power. So diversity, uh, injustice, reparation, woman, those are all amongst the words that are banned from the official government since Donald Trump is in power. So now I will uh tell you a very short story about the power of words. What why do we need words? If you take two car drivers in the street, okay, and they bumped in each other and they get out of their car and they're going to insult each other. If they have only five words of insult, at the six words, the one missing, they will start to fight because there is no other way for them to express their anger. Now make them a favor, okay, and give them twenty words of insult. At fifteen words, they are going to be so tired, so exhausted that their anger will have gone, and everyone will walk in their car, maybe yelling, you know, 16 ones to the other one, but they won't fight. And that's what's happening at school. The more vocabulary we have, the less violent we are, because the more we are able to express what we feel. And it's true with good feelings and bad feelings. It's true with when I'm saying good and bad, I'm saying the one that you know makes you feel good and the one that hurts you. The more you can express what hurts you with words, the less angry you are, the less upset you are. So reducing the vocabulary is an extraordinary way of being violence. And that's in the playbook.
SPEAKER_03There's something I want to go back to about censorship and authoritarianism and control. This is a provocative question. As a father, what are the books you would ban your children from reading or ask them not to read? Apart from your own? I know you have a desire not to force your own books on your kids I read about you. But apart from your own books, which are the books that you would rather they didn't read?
SPEAKER_00I would not. I would not. As a father, if my 10 years old daughter, uh, if I found, for example, uh a very violent book like, you know, Clockwork, uh, I would not say to my daughter, I mean, this book you you are not allowed to read it.
SPEAKER_03No, but that's a literary, that's uh an incredibly highly regarded literary feat of a book which is in our vernacular, Clockwork Orange.
SPEAKER_00And no, but I would I think the the it's different of for warning and forbidding. I would say to my daughter, you should not read it now. You're not ready now for reading this book. It might hurt you uh in a way you cannot suspect. It might bring a picture in your head, and please keep the book and let's wait another year or two years before you read it.
SPEAKER_03But back to our previous point. If you if you create a warning like that, it makes the desire even stronger. No, I'm just I'm I guess you're playing with the edges of it.
SPEAKER_00No, I don't think that I did it with movies, and it's it's more easy to understand with movies. I remember um with my older son, um I was careless, and we watched uh um Jurassic Park when he was like maybe the first one when he was nine and ten. And then he was terrified at night. Uh he said that some dinosaur would, you know, go through the wall of his room and at him. And learning that, you know, when my other son later on wanted to watch the movie, I said to him, you know, this movie terrified your brother, and and I think it would be smarter to wait another year. You don't want that. But you see, there is a difference in what I'm telling you. I was very well informed about the reason why I wanted to delay the time that they were reading it, you know. Um, and it was not based on some ideological judgment. Uh if you tell me, you know, I don't want my eight-year-old kid to read the diary of Anne Frank because she might be really traumatized. I can understand that this is something that you can hear. But telling me that you're going to ban the diary of Anne Frank up to 21 years old, this is a joke. You understand?
SPEAKER_03Of course. I mean, I'm getting it in the same way of putting myself in someone else's shoes as a reader and being able to be transported to another continent, another way of living, another set of values that perhaps I don't previously understand. I'm trying to do the same with a mindset of um making these rules and laws. That's all. I was just playing devil's advocate and thinking, in what situation do I have that?
SPEAKER_00No, but there is there is a sense of a logic. I mean, why was I talking to RFK Jr. saying about health issues that, you know, something as crazy as we should not listen to expert anymore? This is the absolute negation of knowledge and expertise. There are librarians, they are booksellers, and they are there to let you know. I mean, you can't know before. I mean, that's their job, you know, to tell you and that their freedom and their expertise to tell you, yeah, this book is fit for a kid over 13, but I would not recommend it before 13. I've written children's books, and in every book fair where I go, some parents come and they ask me, what age? And I tell them, you know, from this to this. And it's not the same thing than, you know, to say, okay, I'm going to forbid this book for up to 21 because a kid of five years old cannot
Self-Censorship And Personal Risk
SPEAKER_00read it.
SPEAKER_01I want to take us slightly in a different direction, if I may, and that is um, I feel that I see a lot of self-censorship now in America in particular, and obviously also in autocratic regimes. How about that as a principle? And how do you think that kind of connects to the wider censorship landscape?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's the same pillar of authoritarian, it's fear. Yesterday I was doing a Zoom with an exiled Belarusian journalist, and he told me that uh one of my books is uh now in Bielorussia on the list of enemy of the states.
SPEAKER_03Which one?
SPEAKER_00Uh Noah. Noah Noah, which was a trilogy of book uh about you know uh resistance. Yeah. And so um, and so he told me that I was now on the list of enemy of the states and that no, it was worse, it's not enemy of the state against national security interest or something like that. Like something really and it's it's really funny because when you use this kind of vocabulary and you say to the guy, are we talking about a book? Really? I mean, you think a book can be against the national interest? Wow, I mean, your national is really weak if you're scared about a book that's uh with all the tank, the bomb, the army, the a book, okay, sure. But anyway, so I wasn't I was displeased to hear that you know I'm against the national interest. Well, if it's against the national interest of uh Lukashenko, I'm I'm very honored. But anyway, but uh I don't live there. And when I published my last book in France, which was about a week ago or two weeks ago, I was really surprised to hear so often people ask me, Are you afraid to have written this book while you live in the United States? And my honest answer is uh I don't know. I mean, if I didn't have a passport, I would be terrified. Because I knew that they would have, you know, uh you have dual citizenship, right? Yeah, I'm dual dual citizenship. And if not, I would be very scared every time you know I cross the border that they would confiscate my uh my my car. Will I be even more scared in a year? Maybe because the acceleration of violence and repression in the United States is absolutely terrifying. I mean, yesterday uh Peter X bragged about you know streaming online a public, I mean, an execution. Which is, you know, like this is really like the barbarians. The only fact that he can say that, I mean, I I'm I hopefully I don't believe they will be able to do that, because then you know, if you let minor watching a public execution, don't tell me they can't read a book.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and I think that would be their end. But that just the fact that he brags about it shows you, you know, how depraved uh they are. And so it can become dangerous in the United States. I mean, you know, uh, it's so easy to find any crazy guy that run over you in his car or, you know, uh are being threatened. When I see what they arrested a few months ago a 75 years old uh extremely important scientist. They raid his house at 5 a.m. They threw him to the ground and cuffed him and and put them put him in a van. Uh he was just not even in pajama. And the reason was that he was accused of having sent an important scientific email from his private email address. So they can use any pretext. They wanted to pursue an Olympic player, accusing him of uh destroying the uh reflective pool in Washington to hide the failure. And remember, the officials were telling that he was a terrorist. Yeah, yeah. The guy was just looking at the pool. So, yes, I mean, hopefully, there is still the backbone of a justice system that does not let go this outrage up to being jailed, like it happens, you know, uh even in Turkey or in some other country where you know that there is no more justice. But what it will be next year, I don't know. You know what I find interesting in London.
SPEAKER_01Well, we'd love to have you in London either way, but uh um what I find interesting about your choice in your book though, is people behind these decisions that we're describing are very much quote unquote operating with ill intent. But the bad guy in your book, Salinas, really is like uh a career bureaucrat, and he's the person that puts Mitch behind bars and who is the protagonist with the bookshop, etc. We don't want to give too much away. But why did you choose to go with somebody this uh I guess boring as the as the bureau a bureaucratic?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. In the book, I if I remember well, uh, there is like two pages where Mitch explained that systems, yeah. Yeah, I mean it's great. I love that part. It's it makes sense. It's a very important, yeah. Yeah, it's a very important mechanism, the little hands of authoritarian. Yeah, I mean, the the one of the other uh playbook of the authoritarian is that they they have an ugly project and they are going to split this ugly project in a lot of different tasks, and each of these tasks does not look ugly. Uh the it's the uh the journey that is being ugly. So, for example, I made a comparison, if I remember, in the book, when I forget his name now, the horrible bold man at the White House that you know is in charge of the immigration problem.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, uh yes, um Stephen Miller.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Stephen Miller, thank you. So when Stephen Miller during the first term of Donald Trump decided that you know it would be a very good idea to separate babies from their mother in concentration camp in the US and children from their parents, because this would be so horrible that it would be a deterrent from future migrants to travel the border. Okay, so this idea came in the deranged mind of Stefan Miller, but it became a reality because hundreds of people accepted to do their part of this monstrous project. I mean, from the god that went into the cell and literally took away a three-year-old kid or five years old kid, or even a baby from the arm of his mother, not paying attention to how much both of them were yelling their their sadness and their fear and their terror. But it was true from also for the guy or the woman that drove the bus that took away those children, from the people that you know took care of those children, from the people that you know stamped the letter of deportation of those children, etc. etc. So what I wanted to remind in this part of the book, and that's why I took Salinas, the monsters are monsters. Miller is a monster. You can see it on his face. He carries all his hate and he does not belong to the humanity anymore. And and he's proud of it. You know, he says it and he plays, you know, he thinks that he's uh Tom Cruise, you know, when he's he's wearing you know his sunglasses. He's ugh. I mean, you would you would create a vilain in a movie. You couldn't find, you know, any actor being so ugh than this man. But the truth is that the chain of command and all the little tasks, all the little hands which are going to carry on, and you know what is important, and that's in the way that resistance spread and win at the end. It's when in this chain, one will say, No, I don't, I won't do that. I can't. No, not not for me. And then the whole chain is blocked.
SPEAKER_03Because if the guy I'm gonna read the little bit in the book, oh yeah, because I I'd I'd highlighted this bit because I I I enjoyed it so much. Selling the book was illegal, not reading it. Who even came up with such an absurd law? The better question is why people went along with it. That's what I couldn't understand. And all I could do was sit around and think. Tyrants don't need monsters to create a tyrannical state. They just need a system. Minor tasks that in themselves don't seem objectionable, performed by regular people. Each person carries out their task in order to get paid, or get a bonus or a promotion. The cops that came for me were only doing their jobs, arresting a lawbreaker, nothing to keep them awake at night. Same thing for the clerk and the jurors, the judge, the bus driver who drove me to prison. That's how authoritarian regimes cement their power, by parceling out responsibility in such a way that no one realizes they're a link in a chain of atrocities. What about the prosecutor? He'd tell you he was only upholding the law, sleeping just fine too, I imagine. For the big jobs, the regime relies on the most eager and cruelest of collaborators. He's been promoted since. He's attorney general now. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But you know, the policeman who arrested my father during World War II and uh interrogate him and tortured him and sent him to deportation. This very man was named at the head of the anti-gang after the war. So promotion.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's definitely the incentive system that you set up. And I think the point that you made is a great one that is ultimately the other side is true too, that it uh requires individual acts of resistance to actually overcome these things. It's the individual acts of people abdicating moral responsibility to a higher power that is setting the agenda so they don't have to think, they just follow orders. But it is also the individual moral duty of every single person is to resist these instincts. And I think that's really important truth uh to consider.
How Ordinary People Enable Repression
SPEAKER_00But it it takes a lot of courage. I was looking yesterday at one image which was very overwhelming when uh optimism is your religion. So there was this show of uh Donald Trump in somewhere of the South States, and there I mean there is maybe thirty percent of the crowd that he was used to have, but that was quite a lot of people. Still, you know, there was maybe like a few hundred people and they are all chanting and yelling. And among them there is one guy that stands up and starts to yell against Donald Trump. And it's it's very symbolic here because um the danger doesn't come from Donald Trump. It doesn't come it it comes from the pack. And but why is it courageous? Because this man is the lonely wolves that decide that the pack was toxic and that he could not belong anymore to the pack. And that's what resistance is, is when your individual conscious is stronger than the reinsurance of belonging to a pack. And this is something you learn in classroom. I always remember I was taught an amazing lesson of life when I was uh when I was something like eight or nine. So I my parents moved to South of France, and I arrived in this small village of South of France, and I'm in this uh in this in school. And I'm because of my name, even if I've never been raised in religion, I've I'm the only Jewish of the school, and the kids have no idea what it is to be Jewish or not. So it's not about anti-Semitism at all, I believe. It's all about difference. And so uh they start they start the uh the the pack starts to bully me every day because I'm the only Jewish. And so there was this expression, you know, at this time, uh they were, you know, waiting for me in the in the in the playing court of the school uh uh every morning at 10 a.m. and they were uh um scratching my my face on the sand uh sandbox, and that was their favorite game. And that that game lasted for like three years, and I was suffering a lot of it, it was very humiliating, and I never wanted to talk to it about to my parents anyway. At the beginning of the fourth years, arrived this new student. You understand we are like 10 years old, huh? And uh, but he's abnormally tall. His name was Eric, and and so he arrives in the middle of the school year, and he's very, very tall. And so the the bullier-in-chief, you know, the head of the pack, you know, uh wants to be friends with him right away because he's big. And he comes to him and he says, Oh, you know, let's go, it's 10 a.m. Uh, and we're going to put Levi's head in the uh sandbox. And Eric didn't even know who I was, you know, said why? And the other one said, Well, because he's Jewish. And Eric looked at him and said, But I'm Jewish too. And it was not true, he was not. And of course, the sandbox stopped that very day, it never happened anymore.
SPEAKER_01Well, 10-year, 10-year old boy, pretty morally evolved at that point, I would say.
SPEAKER_00It's very interesting because I really I I had so many years to sort about that. So he had one guy, which was the bullying chief, who decided that you know he needed to destroy or to attack the only kid that was not like the other ones. And then this guy, because he was strong, convinced the whole pack to do the same. And none had any idea why they were doing that. They were just belonging to a group, they were federated by this feeling of hate. And then you have one guy, one, which decided the opposite, and which says, This shall not happen under my watch. And the whole pact dissolved. The whole, you know, connection against hate dissolved. And that's why I always believe that uh resistance can be a hundred times uh smaller than the oppressor, they will be a hundred times stronger, which is why resistance always win.
SPEAKER_03You know, even before he said, but so am I, Jewish, just the very question of why is enough to stop people in the tracks, right? Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, and and that brings us back to book, because books and movies and and arts in its old form make us wonder why. And that's why, you know, sometimes why is upsetting. Why change your way of thinking? But you cannot read a book of Tony Morrison and and be racist after reading the book.
SPEAKER_01Let me make a point that is uh maybe a bit freighted, and that is for instance, all this Manosphere stuff that's going on. There's a lot of these guys that essentially get a lot of young men into Discord servers or to like into these groups where they sign up, and they purport to ask why. Oh, why is it that this is this way, or why is it that this is that way? Uh, you know, why are you going for a nine to five job? You should be using these gambling sites, or you should be using multi-level marketing schemes, uh, pyramid schemes to come and make money quick and all these things. So, why in itself, I don't think, is the important question to ask. I do think that the why question is an important one with the right moral fiber, right? Because people ask why and they seem different and it's cool and it's sexy. Oh, yeah, these guys are not accepting the system. But that can be used against uh uh a moral.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The purpose of the why is not just to ask why. The purpose of the why is to try to find an answer to the why. And the answer can take you to the end of your uh way of thinking until you realize that at the bottom of your way of thinking there is no real answer, and then you ask why again. So if you say, and we can play this game, you know, why working while you can gamble and win? Okay, let's play the game. So when you gamble and win and you have a lot of money, what do you do? And then you're going to say, Well, I buy a house and a boat. Okay, you have a house and a boat. What do you do? And well, you know, I enjoy my vacation on my house and on my boat, and there is many girls, and we party. Okay, and then what do you do? And you go to the bottom of the way of thinking. And so when you're bored about all of that, what have you done? You've just gambled, but what have you done of your life? And then, you know, you will say, Oh, sure, yeah. So, why is it better to accomplish something than just gamble? Because you accomplish yourself. That's the purpose of the why, you know. It's not just to ask why. I think it's a very natural state in a society where there is a such huge disparity of uh wealth between you know people that work 12 hours a day and people that uh make their capital profit in the bank 24 hours per day, 365 days a week without doing anything else, that it's legitimate that young people ask why? Why would I endure working? Our job as adults is to give them an answer that you know, saying because you you are the one on the right path, not the other one. So I think the why is absolutely essential. Uh, but you shall not stop at the first answer. You have to continue to do that. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01I think that's the that's that's the right point, right? Like you you continuously have to push back until you get to the moral foundation of it.
SPEAKER_00But we can ask in our society, for example, uh, and it's something when I do uh when I visit school, and I always ask, you know, why a headphone manager uh makes one million times more money than a nurse that will save many people. Why? Why do we accept that? That's a very interesting why, you know, and and by asking those why we might one day, you know, walk toward a more just and um balanced society.
SPEAKER_01It's interesting, uh for instance, people wouldn't ask why for Messi. They would say, yeah, it's fine, he should he should earn his money because he he's earned it, he has the skill, he's unique. They would they would question the edge fund manager though. That that's my experience when I asked that question.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I remember the newspaper asking this question a long time ago when the uh incomes, and it was true also about some actors, you know, why they were making so much money, and some singers, you know, why they're it's a I mean it's another subject. I think that at a certain level, some people become societal icons, and so uh it's a different ball game.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you say popular opinion, yeah, popular opinion is different in that.
SPEAKER_03Well, they're they're deified, right? They become gods, yeah. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they become gods, exactly. When when you see the crowd at Celingon uh in in Paris, actually, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But I don't think this hurts anyone, but they bring happiness, it seems exactly. That's what I was thinking.
SPEAKER_00I think that if you when I see that uh Donald Trump and his family have made two billion dollars uh by profiting of their uh position in the White House, and uh when I see you know how much someone like Messi can reunite, yeah, exactly, you know, enjoy millions of people finally, you know, whatever he wins, he deserves it. I don't care. And it's not taking money from any other's pocket, so you know uh it's
The Dictionary Nuance And A Way Out
SPEAKER_00fine.
SPEAKER_01Let's uh wrap up with a question that is, I think, uh one that fits this topic quite well. If you can take one book and put it into the hidden room that is uh in your book, and maybe the most dangerous one, not the most important, what would that book be?
SPEAKER_02Is this like a Svalbad thing?
SPEAKER_01The dictionary. The dictionary, interesting, you have to explain the answer. Why?
SPEAKER_00Because all the all the words are inside the dictionary, and if you start to read the dictionary, and if you start to read the definition of each word, you are going to acquire so much knowledge and so much vocabulary that you can argue in anything, and it's going probably to open your mind in a way that you have no idea.
SPEAKER_01It's basically what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00And it's absolutely nonpartisan. But the the the the the definition of words means a lot and make you wonder why. Read the definition of racism, and then let's just check after you read that definition if you feel comfortable in your shoes by admitting that you are racist. And read the definition of diversity and uh or just uh nuance, you know. The uh it's an amazing word, nuance, uh something that which a word that has almost disappeared of our life, you know, because now you cannot practice nuance. You know, it's not it's not trendy, neither in the social network, even on the TV networks, nuance. And there is so many, many, many fields that would benefit of uh the art. It's an art, the art of nuance. It's the art of debate, you know, using nuance and and and the why lives in this environment of nuance. And and what we just did for uh the last hour was practicing nuance, you know. We we we talk, we argue, we discuss, and the point is not uh to be right or wrong. The point is, you know, uh there is you know what is the most romantic thing that I can think about it's when you see two people walking and having a conversation, but not you know, like fighting, just having a conversation. I remember when when I moved to London a long, long time ago. And it was probably the loneliest uh years of my life. You know, I moved to London to say goodbye to my architectural firm. I just had written one book and I was trying to write the second one, which was absolutely a crazy idea. And I was with my son and we were alone in London. I literally know no one. You know, it's like you know, moving to the end of the world. I remember being in my flat and just picking up the phone to be sure that the line has not been disconnected, but I really did it, and so one of the things that I want I I did the most while my son was at school, I was going by myself in Hyde Park, and I was sitting on a bench and I was looking at people, just you know, to remember that they were people. And the most uh overwhelming thing that I could see was not necessarily the lovers, you know, kissing frantically. Uh it was watching two people sitting on a bench or walking and just talking together. And this is just the art of nuance, which is a beautiful one.
SPEAKER_01That's such a great uh point to end this on. Thanks so much, Mark. It was a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for writing this book, important in the times that we live. Thank you so much. Looking forward to whatever you write next.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you so much for your time, and I I hope to come back soon to London. I really miss you.
SPEAKER_03You will come back to open arms this time.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah, I yeah, absolutely. We can go for a week and hype and uh practice nuance. You too. Bye bye. Thank you so much.
