The Mailbag: Best, F

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This is producer Andy, and you're listening to Here Comes the Guillotine: The Mailbag, with Frankie Boyle, Susan McCabe, and Christopher MacArthur Boyd.

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Research suggests 70% of people believe in an Israel arms embargo.

Why D's primary ask, and only 1% of the population have to be involved in non-violent action for asks to be accepted.

How do we convince the Gammons and other people to stop moaning and join the ranks?

Best FPS.

The invite is open for you too.

I don't know what that means.

The invite's open for us to

is it to TO?

TO

Two.

Yeah, the invite's open for you.

The invite's open for Bono.

to he's not gonna fucking join the cause.

As the whole thing started, they did some mad like song dedication to Zelensky.

Have you seen it?

Zelensky.

It is this really embarrassing thing I send you.

But yeah, it's just sort of not on those people's radar.

And for a lot of people,

they had a thing where they were like, oh, you can't say Israel are attacking a hospital.

Israel would never do that.

Blah blah blah.

They provided a kind of useful

kind kind of obfuscation at the start of the genocide.

And since they've destroyed every hospital, those people are now like, I can't believe Trump has, you know, and it'll be something really specific.

I can't believe that he's referred this judge's ruling to and like they get really worked up and moral high-grounded about stuff that A, they have no influence on and B, that they welcome as a distraction from what they've said about this genocide, which, you know, if you've if you've offered a defence for it at any point, you're partly culpable, you know?

That's complicity.

Yeah.

So what can you do to get it into the mainstream?

I don't know.

I tried out

early on trying a kinda low-key sub-tweet and shame people a bit.

I go, I can't believe more people haven't spoken about this, so blah blah blah.

Put in the story up and go, plenty of people who should know better should be blah blah blah.

It just didn't work.

And people were a lot more invested in not saying anything than I'd imagined they would be.

And that's about as much as I can do.

There's a lot, like you know, 70% of people believe in an Israel arms and burgle, but it's like

with the way politics works in the UK, it's like doesn't really matter what a lot of people do because there isn't really an option

at the top that is not in favour, there's not like just

both political parties both of the main political parties are in favour of the genocide yeah so you can't really so protest is that when they were talking about shutting down protests you're like well protest is the natural result if you have no electoral remedy um

for your um for your grievance um

but

and you know i don't i don't see that there's an easy way to express that in british politics and you know 70 of people believe a lot of stuff that doesn't happen in britain you know because that's not how power works you know power is controlled um in very few hands

it's like the John Swanney thing where it's like man

how can you have a go at some rappers for making a political statement at an art you know a music festival but he talked about um

Palestine the other day and he described it as a conflict and never mentioned arms sales at all and you're kind of like

okay I mean that's a that's a political position.

Like, if you're going to describe it in that manner and not describe Britain's complicity in it, and indeed Scotland's role in it, then

that's a political decision that you're making.

I feel that kneecap thing as well.

I don't know how this will have panned out by the time you hear this, or blah blah blah, but

aren't they, wasn't that like the Coachella festival?

This was the bit we were talking about at the time, but you're like, um,

people from

Northern Ireland and America, that's like

three jurisdictions removed from you, isn't it?

What the fuck has John Swinning got to do with people who operate under fucking Northern Irish law?

Certainly not

under fucking Scots law and then

making a statement that's anti-Israel in America.

Do you know what I mean?

What the fuck is going on there?

Why is John Swinning fault at all?

Well, because you think you're the last fucking time.

But, you know, because they're power friendly and they're like what does power want what does power expect of me oh to condemn this thing yeah

a land grab and a ethnic cleansing

yeah to spea and even up to then so like even starmer at the time when he's going oh i think israel does have that right and they're asking to turn off power and water to gaza right which remember is half fucking children um

then

it's a war crime even then nobody's asking that of starmer no really he's trying trying to maximalize his offer to power because that's what he's about.

What do you guys want?

I'll make it as smooth as possible.

I'm not going to be like these guys who caused the banks to crash.

I'm going to make this as smooth as possible.

Nobody has to panic.

The numbers don't need to go down.

But also, don't forget, like, Britain, power is largely financial.

It's largely a financialized society, and a lot of power is in the hands of people like bankers and hedge fund managers and so on.

They don't trust you, and they're not going to fucking trust you.

And nothing you say is going to make it any different.

So, the whole thing is, there's a fucking hole in the boat before you even fucking launched it.

Um,

and yet he'll still possess until the point where he's completely electorally destroyed,

and then he can go sit in his house for like 40 years or go to speaking to us for 40 years after he's done being prime minister.

I liked how it was best F, which makes me think, is this a a face turn by Soldier F?

This letter.

Wow, Soldier F, they came around and they were.

Oh, senior of my way.

Bloody hell's not that dissimilar what we did over there compared to what we're doing over there.

I just can't believe they're blowing out people in Palestine.

They're not even fucking Irish.

What's the point?

If you listen to this, when we started the podcast, we had a

folder.

we had a large folder of our remarks about Soldier F,

anonymized

guy.

And anytime we said anything that was unbroadcastable, we said

Andy put the stuff we just said about Kier Starmer's marriage in the Soldier F file.

And you can leave that bit in.

Yeah.

Take the actual bit.

How do you convince people to stop moaning and join the night?

I I was read the

The Message by Tina Tina Hassey Coates,

where it starts off with him talking about growing up black in America and he goes to visit the places where uh slavery was, you know, prevalent and then he goes to

oh, where's it go?

He goes to Africa, goes to Dakar, he sees where his family would have came from and what life's like there, and then he goes to where people got abducted and taken to be slaves, and he goes to Palestine at the end of it.

And he just like

does the tour with Israel after hanging out with Palestinian people.

And he's just like, it's just basically him in hotels having just been like, this is so fucked.

It's good.

It's a good book.

He's the guy that got in a lot of trouble because he was on a lot of talk shows going, this is genocide.

And, you know, US talk show hosts would have to be like, now what do you mean by that?

And they're not really equipped.

Yeah,

I've seen little clips of it.

I've not not read about.

Do you know the percentage of Israelis

who

either think

what we're doing in Gaza is just about right or it isn't going far enough?

So

two of the bears in Goldilocks cover this position of just right

or not far enough.

So bearing in mind, you're seeing fucking children's bodies blown onto rooftops.

You've seen

dozens of people being killed a day in airstrikes you've seen mass starvation taking hold

70

of israelis um and remember there'll be a few people who percentage who don't know and so on right so like people who think uh it's wrong is running at about i think it's about 17 but i don't know um

that i mean that's really bad and you've got to remember is what you've got to factor in

um

they're not a mercenary army so we have a mercenary army because we

well america and vietnam found that conscripting people just led to you know these school quarterbacks fucking coming home in a coffin and yeah it really saps the morale and all the buddy bags that keep arriving so like why don't we have a mercenary army and we pay people and it's a job profession um so i was born in oddersville but i was made in the army that type of stuff isrio is a fucking civilian army yeah like you do your turn in it, you know.

Do you see that hanging out?

It was like the tweet Taylor Swift fan account on Twitter.

And she was like, hey, sorry, I didn't post a lot about Taylor Swift very well there.

I had to go to jail.

And people are like, you go to jail for?

I didn't want to join the IDF.

So they jailed Taylor Swift fan in 95 or something for a wee bit.

You just kind of get drifted.

And if you don't do it, and it's like, fuck man, you get raised somewhere and

you get brainwashed and stuff.

I mean, they're still horrible.

Still pretty shocking figures.

Yeah.

Go to jail.

70% of us think it's good or not quite harsh enough for us personally to be going across a border into a fucking refugee camp where we've sent people for fucking decades and murder their unarmed asses as they starve.

Yeah.

And in fact, 35% of us think that's not happening fast enough.

That's good.

Fuck me.

What kind of a society are you?

Yeah.

It's pretty grim.

Have you seen the Lee Through thing, the Saturdays?

No, I've not seen it yet.

I've not seen it yet either.

I watch it.

What can you do?

What can we do?

Like, usefully?

Nothing other than what we do, man.

I don't see any

I don't think there's anything in British media that allows you any kind of platform to seriously critique that, and as we're comedians, that type of comedy has been completely sidelined

and isn't present in any type of thing that we might do.

So, even if you were doing a scripted or something here, you'd never fucking get that away.

They literally closed down all the pun shows as fucking politics got worse.

Let's maybe we should think about not laughing.

Not so funny anymore.

Yeah.

Good on the people who do talk about it, people like Jen Brista and people like Ivo Graham and yourself.

Yeah, like for for what for what it's worth, but like for people who are doing things like direct actions and like Jen has a charity where they raise money called All Our Relations that helps people who want to to leave to be reunited with their families and stuff like that.

And that's a really good thing to do.

And something I definitely wouldn't have the fucking strength to to be involved in.

I know it takes a lot of effort.

But for the average person, I mean, politics has been constructed in such a way

to stop us from affecting the mechanics of our country on any kind of moral basis, you know.

Well, there you go.

Here comes the guillotine

with podcast.

There was a fun bit about Soldier F.

That was face turn is a very funny phrase.

I enjoyed that.

The idea that, but then in wrestling, it is a bit like that.

You know, Randy Orton will tie an old woman up and then kick her in the head till she's in a coma.

And then two months later, he'll go, Hey,

don't you speak about these fans like that?

These people pay for us to put our bodies on the line.

And everybody's like, Yeah, Randy.

And it's like, you kicked an old woman in the head.

I'd say Israel's done a bloody heel turn in the last 70 years.

I'd say that much.

Not that it was a fucking good guy but you know when was it the good

people the baby

two thousand years ago you guys were all right and knew this you know they did some great stuff with the canaans yeah the canaanites and and whatnot

I think it's kind of like it yeah I mean basically there's a whole bit about how and in in Israelis you know obviously you go

There's a whole thing about, you know, you can't criticize Israel because you get accused of being an anti-Semite, but.

Actually, Israel can be quite anti-Semitic because

in Israeli culture there's this kind of issue of like, yeah, if we were in the ghettos,

Matt Damon, no, it was Mark Wolburn

who said that if he was on the flight that 1993

flight

would have ended very differently.

It would have ended very and somebody was like, what do you mean by that?

And he was like, say no more.

If I was in that flight,

9-11 wouldn't have happened.

He would have karate chopped or he would da, you know, grabbed the drinks cart and rammed the terrorists with it or something like that.

And Israel.

Or if one of the actual passengers had been getting up at 4 a.m.

every day and eating like 20 pounds of fucking meatballs.

Raw meat.

He's such a freaka guy.

But Israel was like, yeah, if we were in the ghettos, it would have been very, we wouldn't have let it happen.

Which is one of the worst things you can say, I think, really.

Well, it's the most anti-Jewish operation.

That's the thing, that's the worst thing about it.

Is it's like not chosen safety for Jewish people.

After all Jewish people have been through, they've passed various points where Italy could have chosen a peaceful settlement and said no, we want to, you know, and get to this point where what you're trying to create a greater Israel, which is essentially what it is.

You know, people talk about one state solution, two state solution.

The thing that's actually happening is the Greater Israel project, where you just sort of expand and take all the kind of useful bits and everything that you want through fucking murder.

And, like, is that really worth your safety?

Is that really worth, you know, the safety of all your fucking citizens, you know, and your soul?

And yeah.

I mean, I think it's it's it's profoundly at its heart a kind of anti-Semitic thing.

Yeah, I recommend that book is very, very, very uh interesting.

I'm gonna read more of his stuff.

There is a lot of stuff when he shows up at like events and people and he was like, when somebody brought up that one of my other books was very good, and that made me happy.

I'd be like, all right, I don't know if that's

relevant.

Anyway, thanks for listening to Here Comes a Guillotine.

Mailbag, Mailbag, Mailbag, Mailbag.

Oh, yo, yo, yo, yo.

Someone's just said to me, Who's the wrestler with the little thumb?

I don't know what they're talking about.

What a world.

Little thumb?

I don't know.

How does that even come up?

I don't know.

So much happening in the ring that you can.

How little has this guy got to work with?

That's head to be.

That's this cute gag.

Thank you for listening to Here Comes the Guillotine Mailbag with Frankie Boyle, Susie McCabe, and Christopher MacArthur Boyd.

If you have a problem, dilemma, or issue that you think Frankie, Susie, and Christopher can fix, email hctg at global.com.

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