What does it mean to "win" an argument?

John Donvan:

Hi everybody, and welcome to Open to Debate, and as you all know, we do debates on this program, but sometimes we have conversations about debate, about the art of debate, about listening, and especially about being open to debate. And so when we heard about a book called Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking, we knew we wanted to bring on its author, especially because he is one of the fiercest debaters I’ve ever seen and I think likely you’re gonna ever see today.

He also does interviewing in the framework of MSNBC on the show that is named after him, The Mehdi Hasan Show, which means I get to say Mehdi Hasan, welcome to Open to Debate. Thanks so much for joining us.

Mehdi Hasan:

Thank you for having me, John.

John Donvan:

Let’s start by having you talk to me about the book. What was your goal in writing this book?

Mehdi Hasan:

So the book comes out of, uh, different aspects of my life. It comes out of my job, it comes out of my childhood, it comes out of my personality. It also comes out of the pandemic. It was something I started writing and thinking about while I was sitting at at home thinking, “How do I share some of the stuff that I do with other people?” And I wrote the book because I genuinely believe that everyone wants to win an argument, that everyone can win an argument, and that argument is a good thing. I think argument, as I say in the book, gets a bad rap. It’s blamed for everything from political polarization in our societies today, uh, to marital breakdowns, to more, and I wanted to make the case for why actually I enjoy a good argument, a good faith argument, and why I believe that debate is actually the lifeblood of democracy, of our free media, of our free society.

As I, uh, as I point out in the introduction of the book, I grew up in a disputatious household, which I think is the polite way to describe my parents, my sister, and I. Uh, we argued and debated a lot of stuff around the dinner table on vacation. My father liked to challenge us both. Uh, he still does. Uh, he always liked to provoke a good argument even with friends of his. I grew up in a Muslim household, where in the late 1980s people were burning copies of The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie’s novel, and my father buys a copy of it, reads it cover to cover, and puts it on a bookshelf in our dining room so that friends of his can say, “What on earth do you have this book for?” And he would say, “We need to… you need to know what’s in it if you’re gonna condemn it.” So that’s the kind of environment I grow up in.

I’m very argumentative. Uh, I love having a good row, and then I tur-, turn up at university. I went to Oxford University, John, uh, which is home to the most famous debating society on earth, the Oxford Union, uh, and I threw myself into Oxford Union debates, uh, and actually not the competitive side. Not the kind of let’s go do competitions with other people, but the exhibition debates. So, uh, at Oxford, for those people who don’t know this, every Thursday night at the Oxford Union during term time, there is a debate, uh, a big performance. It’s… hundreds of people turn up and they invite some of the most famous powerful people in the world, prime ministers, politicians, foreign ministers, journalists, movie stars to debate with students on two sides in a kind of parliamentary-style debate using two dispatch boxes that are actually from the British Parliament.

So I kind of got emersed in that world for three years. Uh, and I, and I, I loved it. I enjoyed it. I, you know, it gave me my adrenaline rush. And then I go into a career in journalism and I take a lot of things that I learned from that period and I took that with me.

Um, so it, you know, formal debate was very much a part of my youth. It’s still very much a part of my time. I’ve done formal debates at the Oxford Union. I’ve gone back and done a debate on Islam. Uh, I’ve done formal debates for Intelligence Squared, uh, in London. So, I still enjoy going back and doing the odd, uh, formal debate in front of a crowd with a judge, with a voting audience, etc.

John Donvan:

How… how good were you, uh, when you started formal? How good were you at formal debate?

Mehdi Hasan:

How good was I when I started?

John Donvan:

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, how, you know, I, I guess I’m asking about did you have a learning curve?

Mehdi Hasan:

So, it’s a great question because the… the entire purpose of the book is that there is a learning curve-

John Donvan:

Mm-hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:

… and that you can learn this stuff. And it frustrates me as much as it flatters me, it frustrates me when people say, “Well, you know, not everyone can be like you, Mehdi, you know? You came out of the womb, uh, ready for a argument.” And maybe that’s party true. You know, as with everything in life, we have to break down nature versus nurture, and I think, you know, maybe there is something natural to what I do. But I do argue overwhelmingly for the majority of people who do what I do, whether it’s, you know, host a podcast, uh, present a TV show, uh, run for public office, uh, you know? That stuff doesn’t necessarily come naturally. That stuff can be taught, is often taught. And, yes, I did learn a lot of stuff over the years.

Just what I do, for example, for a living right now, I do interviews. I interview politicians. I interview pundits. I try and grill them. I try and hold them to account. That’s not the… not something I came out of the womb knowing how to do, uh, uh, you know? Maybe I had the appetite for it from a very young age, but the… the structure, the form, the skills and, you know, my book is divided into three parts, John. The middle part is all about tricks and techniques, the kinda behind the scenes fun things you can learn to do to get yourself out of a hole or to put your opponent in a hole. That’s not stuff I was born with. That’s stuff that I picked up along the way, stuff I saw other people do. It’s stuff I kind of practiced myself ’til I got right. Um, it’s stuff I read about in, you know, ancient works.

So, you know, uh, it’s hard. I’m not gonna judge myself and say, “I was amazing from the age of four,” but clearly, uh-, clearly it’s some… it’s a skill I have. The reason I’m a journalist today is because I couldn’t do anything else, John. I have no other skills in life apart from a big mouth. Uh, so that’s why I decided to go into the-

John Donvan:

(laughs)

Mehdi Hasan:

… media to begin with. Um, so yeah-

John Donvan:

Well, that worked out.

Mehdi Hasan:

… you know, I don’t think it’s immodest of me-

John Donvan:

That worked out for you.

Mehdi Hasan:

… to say-

John Donvan:

(laughs)

Mehdi Hasan:

… I don’t think it’s immodest of me to say I’m good at this, because genuinely I’m not good at anything else.

John Donvan:

I want to talk to you about one of your earlier debates. It goes back to 2013, I believe, before the Oxford Union, where you were debating whether, uh, Islam is a religion of peace. In fact, we did a debate a year before that where the question we were debating was, uh, literally is Islam a religion of peace. So, we have some sense of what you were going into there. So set that moment up for us before we listen to the clip.

Mehdi Hasan:

It’s been so interesting to talk about that debate, both, uh, I write about it in the book.

John Donvan:

Yeah, that’s why I went to it. You talk about it a lot in the book. It seems to have meant a lot to you, yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

I talk a lot about it in the book. It’s, it… I mean, for me it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s an iconic moment for me within Muslim circles, like just on a side note, John. Wherever I go in the world, you know, Muslim restaurateurs give me free meals, Muslim taxi drivers give me free rides, because they… “You’re the guy from YouTube.” I mean, it’s had 10.5 million views just on YouTube alone, and it kind of went crazy viral within the Muslim world for obvious reasons.

Um, but, you know, I talk about it in the book a lot, because there’s a lot of different lessons from what I did that night, uh, I do believe it was, you know, uh, uh, let’s bang my own drum, one of my finer performances (laughs), something I’m deeply proud of and what we achieved. And just to give the context of that night, 10 years ago, this was 10 years ago (laughs), and I am invited to do this debate, and months in advance I agree, and then the night before, the day before, two Muslim terrorists, Al-Qaeda supporters run down and stab to death a British soldier on the streets of London in broad daylight, uh, Trooper Lee Rigby. It’s a huge story, obviously. This is at the height of the kind of f-fear and panic of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc. They kill a British soldier in broad daylight while screaming Islamic slogans.

And there’s a debate on email that night. Should the debate be canceled? Is it offensive to carry out this debate right now? Is it insensitive to do this debate right now? And I think at the end I can’t remember what… A bunch of us were kind of contributing from all sides, those of us who were in involved that no, it’s gotta go ahead, because if you cancel the debate, you’re implicitly saying Islam is a violent religion and that it can’t, you know, hold its own even after a terrorist attack. But having, having insisted on debate, go ahead. I went into it thinking, “But we’ve lost. There’s no scenario we win this debate the day after a terrorist attack in the UK.” And when I turn up there and there’s several hundred people in the chamber, um, I look around and see are there any Muslims in there (laughs). There’s a few Muslims here and there, um, and it’s a very big crowed, and I’m thinking, “Yeah, we’ll, we’ll give it our best,” but, uh, I don’t see how we win this given the kind of… the climate that week in the UK.

Uh, but we do win it. We do win it because the other side make arguments that are so offensive, so provocative, so sweeping, so bigoted, that actually I end up tearing up half my prepared 12-minute speech and just going on the offensive to rebut, rebut, rebut. And, you know, as I say in the book and as people know this, attack is the best form of defense.

… always true.

By the way. By the way.

But were always true.

By the way. By the way. Just on-

That were always true.

… a factual point, because we heard a lot about the second speaker, about how backward we Muslims are all. On a factual point, you said that Islam was born in Saudi Arabia. Islam was born in 610 AD. Saudi Arabia was born in 1932 AD, so you’re only 1322 years off. Not bad? Not a bad start there. Uh, talking of math, by the way, a man named Al-Khwarizmi was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, a Muslim, worked in the Golden Age of Islam. He’s the guy who came up with not just Algebra but algorithms. Without algorithms you wouldn’t have laptops. Without laptops Daniel Johnson tonight wouldn’t have been able to print out his speech, in which he came to berate us Muslims for holding back the advance and intellectual achievements of the West, which all happened without any contribution from anyone else other than the Judeo-Christian people of Europe. In fact, Daniel David Levering, the author of… the Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author of the Golden Crucible of Winter, that there would be no renaissance, there would be no reformation in Europe without the role played by Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, some of the great Muslim theologians, philosophers, scientists, in bringing [inaudible

].

John Donvan:

There was so much going on there, including, it sounds like, a lot of improvisation in the moment, I believe. This was… you did not script the 610/1932-

Mehdi Hasan:

No.

John Donvan:

Issue. But it came out very, very (laughs), very fluidly.

Mehdi Hasan:

Well, it’s, it’s, it’s something I say in the book. So, a couple of chapters in the book, for those people who haven’t read the book and are listening to this, the book is divided into three sections, and the third section is about preparation and homework and building up confidence. And in that clip, what you see is a mixture of different things. You see the preparation that I turn up with my references. I have my names to drop. I have my books to quote. I’ve done my homework, uh, and I have a whole chapter on the importance of homework. But also, as you say, she, Anne Marie Waters, who is this right-wing anti-Muslim activist, she does a speech, which is just a long rant where she just throws one nonsensical, um, accusation after another at Islam and Muslims, and it’s what I call in the book, and it’s what’s known in debate circles as the Gish gallop, overwhelming your opponent with so much nonsense, so much BS, so many lies that you’re unable to rebut all of them in one go.

And I couldn’t rebut everything she’d said. I think dozens of claims she made in, in a two-minute, uh, rant. So, I picked on one of them. I picked on one where she claimed that everything was to b-, everything that happened in Saudi Arabia was the fault of Islam because Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, and I’m, and you heard me kind of mock that point. And that’s one of the things that I say in the book. When you’re confronted with someone who is Gish galloping at you, don’t try and rebut everything. Pick on their weakest point and make an example of it. Use humor, as I say in the book. Have a one-liner, a zinger, a mic-drop, which you have there with the “you were only 1000-whatever it is,” which I calculated on the back of a piece of paper as she was speaking. So, it’s a mixture of different things going on there in that clip.

John Donvan:

It was also personal for you.

Mehdi Hasan:

Yes. Very personal. Um, and, you know, I say in the book, “Storytelling is the best way to connect with an audience and persuade people.” There is no better way. You could… there are hundreds of different w-ways to persuade a crowd. There is no better way than telling a story, and there is no better story than a personal story. So, later in that debate I make the point that if the crowd were to vote for their side of the motion, if they were to vote that Islam isn’t a religion of peace, what are they saying to my elderly parents who have lived in the UK for decades, paid their taxes, lived their lives, brought up their children to be good British citizens? What are they saying to my kid, you know, my six-year-old kid at the time, who’s learning about Islam and learning to pray, uh, and is growing up in a society which tells her that her religion is a violent religion and that she’s a kind of, uh, proto-terrorist?

And I did make it very personal, A, because it works from a cynical point of view, and, B, because I genuinely felt that way. I genuinely felt under attack. I felt like my identity was being questioned. Uh, and I made that very clear, and you can see that in my kind of anger that night. And I say in the book, you know, sometimes a little bit of moral outrage, a little bit of, “How dare you, sir,” goes a long way.

John Donvan:

We’ve seen debaters on our stage lose it, and it becomes a negative for them. They get, the get truly angry and they lose the audience at an emotional level.

Mehdi Hasan:

It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a really difficult balancing act.

John Donvan:

Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

And I say in the book you’ve got to balance between, you know, showing a bit of righteous outrage, which can be very, very useful, uh, especially on a topic of personal importance, but, of course, not losing it. And I have a whole chapter in the book about keep calm and carry on, the importance of staying calm when you’re under fire, which, again, is something I struggle with, because I, I see red very quickly. But once you do see red, you lose an argument, because you’re unable to present coherent thoughts and you’re able to pay attention to what’s going on around you. So, it is a very fine, uh, balancing act, but it requires preparation.

John Donvan:

So what else went on in that debate that night that, uh, th-that you can share, in terms of lessons learned. So, you, you, you were using humor right there. Um, you were using, uh, you say h-, you-

Mehdi Hasan:

I used a lot of humor in that debate in particular, because, as I say in the book, those of us who are Muslim men tend to suffer from this problem, which is RAMF, which I call resting angry Muslim face-

John Donvan:

(Laughs)

Mehdi Hasan:

… which is when we’re paying attention or serious, it looks like we’re very angry, and I suffer from it a great deal. You know, I’ve had producers tell me in my ear when the camera cuts to me listening to an interviewee, it looks like I want to kill them. And I’m like, “I’m not. I’m just paying attention.” My very serious face, uh, is… my concentration face can be angry.

John Donvan:

Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

So, yes, I do use humor to d-, to try and diffuse the situation to show that, A, I’m not trying to kill you. Uh, in particular in debate about Islam and violence, humor was a very valuable tool to use, and I’ve used it in multiple places. So, yes, uh, humor is going on. I have a chapter in the book on the importance of listening. Uh, and, you know, I wouldn’t have been able to do that rebuttal to Anne Marie Waters, or to Daniel Johnson, uh, or to Peter Atkins, the three opponents I had that night-

John Donvan:

Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

… had I not been paying very close attention to what they were saying, looking for any place where I can rebut, where I can call out, where I correct, where I can fact-check. Uh, so listening is very important. As I say in the book, you… we think we’re listening during debates and arguments, but we’re not. We’re just waiting for our turn to speak, and that, that way lies defeat.

John Donvan:

And, and you also, uh, a large part of the book talks about bringing receipts, and-

Mehdi Hasan:

Yes.

John Donvan:

… Mehdi, for people who don’t know that meme, um, bring the receipts-

Mehdi Hasan:

Yes.

John Donvan:

… tell the story of where that begins.

Mehdi Hasan:

So, so a lot of people don’t know this (laughs), and I, I had a… I had some familiarity with it, but, uh, the beauty of writing a book is you get to go down lots of rabbit holes and, and fact-check yourself. Uh, and it’s, it comes from a, uh, an interview several decades ago with the late Whitney Houston, uh, that Diane Sawyer, a legendary American interviewer, was doing a sit-down with this pop icon who’s been accused at the time in the tabloids and the media of having spent, I can’t remember what it was, like tens of thousands of dollars on drugs, she’s paid for drugs. And Whitney laughs this off, and she said, “I paid that much money for drugs? I don’t believe it. Show me the receipts. I want to see the receipts.” And it becomes an instant internet meme, uh, which is, you know, show the receipts, bring your receipts.

And I’ve made it a kind of motto of mine, because I’m kinda known for the guy who says, you know, when I’m in an interview, for example, with a guest who says, “I never said that,” I’m the guy who says, “You did say it. You said it in 1998, January the 5th, at this conference with these people.” Um, so I’m the guy, you know, and, uh, and that’s something I honed during my Al-Jazeera year. Uh, when we did head-to-head at the Oxford Union, which was, uh, a one-hour interview show, I had a team of researchers who we would pour over everything. We would make sure that anything we were about to throw at a guess, any charge we were gonna make, we had fact-checked it three different ways. We had multiple sources. And you know, that, that for me, you know, other people, you know, people loved to watch their favorite team score a goal, people love to eat their favorite dessert, that for me is my… that for me is my simple pleasure.

John Donvan:

I want to go back to, uh, another excerpt of your public debate or n-not necessarily strictly speaking debate, but being in, uh, confrontational conversations. Uh, this one, again, I just want to revisit one more time the issue of you being in the position of, um, having to defend Islam.

Video

… Christian Formity. In view of the fact that in Australia Muslim couples have a much higher birthrate than the rest of us, is it not possible that in a couple of generations, Australia could have a Muslim majority who vote in Sharia law? Further, if so, is it not possible that sects could develop, sects, uh, Sunnis and Shias, who begin bombing and shooting each other and turning currently the best country into the world like another war-torn Middle Eastern country?

John Donvan:

Uh, I want to continue the clip, but we just heard the question. I just want to know your thought process as you’re hearing this question.

Mehdi Hasan:

So, as I’m hearing this question, I’m thinking two things. Number one, how am I gonna address it, obviously. Um, and number two, how… what tone am I gonna deploy here? I’m in, I’m in a foreign country, I was visiting Australia. I was on a kind of, uh, election tour. I was invited onto this big audience live TV show, and this guy is clearly, you know, he’s your caricature old, white, right-wing, kind of rural dude, who’s come… doesn’t really know anything about Islam apart from kind of knee-jerk, you know, um, bigotry, but not kind of an intentional bigotry, if that, if that makes sense. Doesn’t know any better, I think I can say without sounding too patronizing. But how do I do that, how do I respond with-

John Donvan:

Yeah. It’s, uh, because he, he’s playing with an exceedingly strong caricature that, that, th-, that there’s gonna… number one, there’s gonna be-

Mehdi Hasan:

Yeah.

John Donvan:

… an out, uh, an explosion of population, and, number two, that that population is gonna spend it’s time bombing each other.

Mehdi Hasan:

That’s sectarian. And also, uh, what about Sharia law. Come on, that still cracks me up when I hear that. Like even, even the pronunciation of Sharia law made me laugh. But I’m thinking to myself, how do I respond to this factually, but also how do I respond to it tonally.

John Donvan:

Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

Right? And I s-, I talk a lot in the book about what is your… your tone varies from place to place. There are different tones for the Oxford Union against Anne Marie Waters, is not the same tone that you deploy against, uh, an innocent elderly audience member, um, in a, in a, in a… on a live TV show.

John Donvan:

And so there’s also a question of, of who’s going to hear your, your tone. It’s not just that guy, and it’s not even just the people in that room, but it’s a whole nation of Australians potentially-

Mehdi Hasan:

Yes.

John Donvan:

… that’s watching. And presumably y-you want them on your side. So-

Mehdi Hasan:

Exactly.

John Donvan:

… there’s a question of, you know, if you mock that guy, you could lose them. If you’re harsh, you could lose them. I’m, I’m curious to know what decision you made. So, I’d like to go back and h-hear the rest of the clip.

Video

… to begin bombing and shooting each other and turning currently the best country into the world like another war-torn middle Eastern country. Um, this is not Islamophobia, this is Sharia law phobia (laughs).

Mehdi Hasan:

Okay. Um, I think there was a lot more than, uh, Sharia law in there. Um, let me just try and unpack your point. First off, uh, I know Malcolm Turnbull said over the weekend that Australian law takes precedence over the laws of mathematics in this country, but I’m no mathematician. No, there’s no way that the Muslims are gonna form a majority in Australia in the next generation or two. I believe it’s 600,000 or something in the recent census out of 24 million Australians, so you don’t have to worry about Muslims coming in, uh, taking over Australia, although Australian Muslims are doing a very good job-

John Donvan:

So, I heard you, um, just rebutting the facts very, very, um, kind of in a very somber fashion. You, you did not get worked up over that, and you did not mock him.

Mehdi Hasan:

No. There was no way you can do that. I mean, as I say in the book, if you want to mock your opponent… You know, that night you know who I did mock? I mocked the conservative politician on the panel.

John Donvan:

Uh-huh.

Mehdi Hasan:

Oh, I went after him. And I took him apart on some of his climate change views, etc. But you don’t mock audience members. The audience are your force amplifier.

John Donvan:

Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

Force multiplier. They’re the people who give you strength. If you have the audience at your back, it’s like having the wind at your back. You want to always have the audience on your side, even the skeptics, even the people who turn up not liking you, you want to try and win them over. You do not want to attack the audience, unless… I mean, look, there’s an exception to every rule. If there’s some crazy person in the audience shouting, heckling you, abusing you, yeah, take him down, rhetorically. Uh, but, you know, somebody who’s asking an innocent question, even if one based on ignorance, even if one that sounds bigoted, it, um, the best way to do it is help them to find some common ground. In, in, in the rest of that answer I do go on to point out the common ground. I do try and reach… I do try and make a connection with the audience member, because, again, as, as good as those statistics are that I raised, you don’t win people over with statistics. You don’t win arguments with a bunch of stats. You’ve got to make the personal connection, especially with an audience member in a room full of strangers. So that’s what I tried to do with the rest of my answer.

John Donvan:

I share your insight about the, the role of the audience as a moderator even, um, and my, my ability. And when we’re doing live events, to keep some control has a lot to do with making it clear that I’m speaking for a roomful of people-

Mehdi Hasan:

Yes.

John Donvan:

… who wants that debater to either stay on point, to shut up, to stop being a jerk, to answer the question. Um, and, and it’s, it’s a subtle thing, but for me it starts when I do an audience warmup before the debate actually begins, and I start by making fun of myself. It’s the very, very first thing I do is some self-deprecating humor.

Mehdi Hasan:

Yes. So-

John Donvan:

Uh-

Mehdi Hasan:

Well, in, and interesting you mention humor. Again, humor is so crucial. The reason that clip, the longer version of that clip went viral in Australia at the time was because I then go on to make the point that actually why don’t you come make friends with Shias and Sunnis, get to know us. I made the point that my childhood best friend was Sunni and I’m Shia. There is no, uh, kind of ancient hatred that the media likes to pretend between Shias and Sunnis. In fact, Shias and Sunnis get married and have Sushi children, which got a big laugh in the crowd and became a kind of meme.

John Donvan:

Douglas Murray has debated with us in the past, so I find it interesting that you’ve had, uh, you’ve had, you’ve gone head-to-head with Douglas Murray. Um-

Mehdi Hasan:

Hmm.

John Donvan:

And this was on, uh, BBC2 Daily Politics, again about 12 years ago, talking about multiculturalism. Can you set up that conversation for us?

Mehdi Hasan:

Um, this was around the time, uh, we, we actually ended up having two debates almost in the same week, I think, or the same month. I went on Question Time, which is the main BBC panel show, weekly show, and we argued about multiculturalism, and then there was, uh, the Daily Politic Show, which was kind of a magazine daily live political roundup show. And that was a time when I, uh, I point out in the book I was invited to a lot of debates with Douglas Murray, because I was a kind of prominent Muslim in the media who enjoyed an argument, and he was a prominent, uh, you know, critic or Islam, many would say Islamophobe. He would deny that charge. Um, and we ended up having a lot of debates. We ended up attacking each other on social media, so when we turned up in the TV studios, it was always very awkward, because we were very polite to one another. We were actually at Oxford together, but didn’t know each other.

John Donvan:

Wow.

Mehdi Hasan:

We overlapped the Oxford. Um, and, you know, uh, we were always very polite and personable. We didn’t, you know, get into fights in the Green Room. Uh, but on air it always became very vicious and very personal, because we’re both, uh, very, uh, uh, combative debaters, and we both feel very strongly about the issue, um, you know? I love Islam and Muslims as much as he seems to hate both.

John Donvan:

So let’s listen to that clip.

Video

I mean, there’s a lot of straw men in this debate. No one says Douglas is not allowed to express his view; in fact, the dominant narrative right now is anti-multiculturalism. In fact, I’m the minority in, in a different sense, uh, not Douglas in terms of the, in terms of the debate. And, of course, no one says it’s racist to be a person of multi-cultures. Of course not. What I would say, on that specific issue that you raised, for example forced marriages, is it’s just not true. The state doesn’t look the other way. The foreign office and the home office have a unit that goes out to Pakistan to rescue British girls who have been sent out there, and no, no supporter of multi-culturalism, and I would count myself as one, defends forced marriages on multi-cultural grounds. So it’s the whole thing is a-

Okay.

… a straw man argument.

John Donvan:

Uh, any comment on what you were doing there? Do you… did you feel that you were winning?

Mehdi Hasan:

It’s a good question, because as I pointed out there, I said, “I am a kind of minority,” and I’m referring to the fact that the two interviewers and Douglas are all kind of of one view. One thing you should know about me when I debate is I actually enjoy being in the minority. I enjoy being in the underdog position, uh, you know? I’ve often done debates where pe-, you know, there’s three people against me, and I’m like, well, I like those odds. I’ll do it. Three against one? Bring it on. Um, because… and it’s, it’s also part of my journalistic style. I love doing myth-busting, you know? The day we’re taping this conversation, John, I’ve just done my show, and I just did a whole segment where I take apart a myth in the news, you know? A conventional wisdom. Uh, and I’ve always enjoyed doing that. I’ve always, you know, the, the rebuttal, the fact-check, the reality check.

So, debates like that I did en-… as frustrating as I found them, because for me I have skin in the game, right? I’m not talking about these subjects in abstract. This is not a debate about the minimum wage, whether it should go up or down, which doesn’t directly affect me. I’m not a minimum wage employee. But this is about multi-culturalism. This is about something that affects my family, the ability of my own kids to get by in society. Um, you know, my father was an immigrant to the UK. Um, I’m now an immigrant in the United States. And these are very, very personal issues. So, for me, I think in that clip, that’s me again trying to stay very calm, trying to stay focused on the facts, not allow emotion to get in the way too much. Uh, not, you know, not… emotion is good, but not in a way that allows me to kind of lose my cool, uh, not allow Douglas to get under my skin. He’s very good. He’s a genius at getting under peoples’ skins in debates, both online and in real life. And, it… that, that’s what I’m doing there. I’m trying to kind of keep the argument focused on what I want to do. And what I want to do is I want to say the whole premise is a straw man.

And it’s… I have a chapter in the book, John, called Judo Moves, and the importance of judo moves. And questioning the premise of the entire debate is something I do very often. I’ve done at Intelligence Squared. It’s a very useful judo move. It’s a, it’s a way to be flexible. To use your opponent’s energy against them and to get yourself out of a hole. And there, in that clip you’re hearing, I’m saying I don’t even accept the premise of your question about multi-culteralism being something that people used, you know, to justify forced marriages, but that the government turns a blind eye to. And too often our debates that we have these days, they are based on false premises, and I encourage people just question the entire debate. Turn the whole thing on its head. If somebody says to you, “Why do you do this,” uh, sometimes the best way of responding is to way, “What are you talking about? I don’t even accept the premise of your question.”

John Donvan:

So, I, I’d like to turn the conversation now to the question of… as you say in your book, your, your book is to help people win every time, and-

Mehdi Hasan:

If they should choose, so choose to, just adding a little caveat there.

John Donvan:

Oh, go for that. I, I want to understand what you mean by that qualification.

Mehdi Hasan:

So, people say to me, “Well, why would you want to,” well, when the first book first came out, the cover image released and the title had a bit of snark from some people on social media. “Why would you want to win every argument? Sometimes debate is about losing and learning from the other side.”

John Donvan:

Hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:

And, of course, that’s true, and of course I’m not that naive or cynical not to know that. My point of writing the book is not to say, “Go out and win every argument. Never accept defeat, never compromise.” I’m saying, “I want to give you the skills to be able to win any argument you find yourself in or do need to win.” But, of course, you don’t want to actually win every argument. I say at the very beginning of my book I don’t try and win every argument with my wife. That’s madness.

John Donvan:

Well, I think what I’m, I want to get at, okay, take off the table win every argument, but to win to what end?

Mehdi Hasan:

Yeah.

John Donvan:

And I want to share the context in which I’m bringing this question is that we’ve changed our name to Open to Debate, and to some degree our, our maturing, we feel, and to a different purpose for the program that we put on. And initially it was very, very much modeled on the Oxford Union, and there would be a winner and the loser and the audience would choose, and the debaters would get up there and they would kind of do everything they could to crush their opponents, including, as you say, using judo tricks and ad hominem attacks and humor and all of the skills and all of the tricks. Um, but we’ve, we’ve, we, we kind of learned from our audience that they were not listening to us for the entertainment value of watching a gladiatorial battle of rhetoric, but a lot of them were actually listening to us to learn. And they were, they were, they were listening to the gaps between the two sides, and they were listening for information from the two sides.

And for me when we were… whenever we do a live debate, I always go to the lobby afterwards, and I tell this story (laughs) every time we do one of these conversations about debates, so my apologies to the audience, but it’s such a, for me such an embracing experience. I go out and I talk to the… to people in the lobby, and they’re buzzing with this excitement of this thing that they’ve just come through, including the people who were dragged along by their dates to this night of debate. They’ve had a great time. And a lot of them say, “I’ve changed my mind, and I never thought I could do that, but I heard an argument that I’d never heard before, and that’s really something.” And, uh, or, or at a minimum, “I’m gonna think about this whole thing differently now.”

And we’re looking across the landscape of people not listening to each other and not talking to each other. And, and, and are questioning the proposition that winning a debate is really the, the driving thing, as opposed to getting two people who… or two sides that disagree with each other fundamentally, and in good faith, and exploring their differences and exploring their reasons that they have these differences. And maybe they might happen to find common ground, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to explore the differences and to, to recognize that very often there can be valid thoughts and thinking on, on, on different sides.

And so, I’m bringing that back to the question to you, to win to what end? I can see, you know, if, if you can use debate, you know, in a boardroom, maybe, uh, you, you can win an argument in that sense to, to, to get, to get what you think is the best move forward for your company or something like that. But I’m not sure that in that setting you would want to employ the, the, the various tricks and things, because, uh, you know, you want… again, you want to have good faith with your colleagues.

So, I’m just kind of asking, to win to what end?

Mehdi Hasan:

So, for me context matters.

John Donvan:

Mm-hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:

Not everyone is in the same place, same time, same situation. I’ve tried to write a book for a general audience, uh, from different backgrounds. And it’s a hard thing to do when you’re from my background.

John Donvan:

Sure.

Mehdi Hasan:

I’m in a very particular place. I’m in the US media in 2023 dealing with the, the crazy challenges that US politics and media are dealing with in 2023. So that’s a very specific place I’m coming from. But I understand not everyone is coming from that position, so I tried to write a very general book that would help people in different situations, whether you’re in the boardroom, whether you’re in a job interview, uh, whether you’re, you know, doing model UN in high school, um, you know, whether you’re in the courtroom as a lawyer trying to convince a jury. Um, or whether you’re just a teacher in school trying to convince a class, or you’re at the Thanksgiving table with crazy Uncle Tom. And I try to give lessons in different parts of the book that will help you in different situations. But, you’re right. To what end depends on… well, it depends on you, really, John, because it depends on what situation you’ve put yourself in.

So, I will give you an example. I understand your point about good faith discussion, and we try and host them on our show all the time. Just today we hosted a very interesting discussion about CHATGPT and the limits of artificial intelligence with two actual scientists, experts on the issue, but from two opposing camps, one saying, “Let’s have a pause,” one saying, “No, this is very exciting. Let’s keep going.” They weren’t trying to beat each other up personally, but they clearly disagreed, um, and they clearly didn’t agree with each other. And we had that very interesting discussion. I learned a lot as someone who doesn’t really have a view on this. It’s not really my wheelhouse, uh, AI. So, um, it depends what you are trying to achieve. And I think, you know, if you are… if you’re running for office, John, and you’re in a debate on stage with your opponent, what do you do then? There’s no ra-, there’s no room for compromise or middle ground.

John Donvan:

No, that is zero sum.

Mehdi Hasan:

It’s you or the other person.

John Donvan:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s zero sum.

Mehdi Hasan:

It’s you or the other person. There’s… it is a zero sum game in that situation. And I would come back, you know, I, I’d come back and say two things in addition. Number one, it’s a lot of fun. The reason I wrote the book is because I enjoy this stuff, and I think the people who say they don’t enjoy it’s because they don’t win enough. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but, you know, winning is fun. And number two, the serious point is this, I don’t accept that if you have a gladiatorial debate it’s somehow undermines the idea of learning or changing minds. Something, you know, you gave the story of going out into the lobby after one of your discussions. One of the things I’ve enjoyed doing most in my career was doing the Head-To-Head TV series at the Oxford Union for Al-Jazeera English.

John Donvan:

Mm-hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:
:
A one hour as live set piece interview/debate between me and someone I disagree with, with a panel of experts and a live audience of three, four, five hundred people. And it’s intense. It’s both kind of an adrenaline rush doing that, but also talking to that audience, what they enjoyed so much and why that show was so successful was because you are having a rigorous examination of all possible arguments on both sides, with someone who is really good on both sides of it. So I, I do think it depends on the context when you say “win.” In those situations, what is a win? I think a win there is accountability.

John Donvan:

Hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:

As a journalist, winning for me is holding someone to account. Um-

John Donvan:

Mm-hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:

If you’re a politician, winning is obviously, you know, winning-

John Donvan:

The votes, yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

… and winning the votes. Uh, it all depends on the situation and context that you’re in to define what your victory is.

John Donvan:

I, I once, uh, hosted a debate for, um, a different organization with Charles Krauthammer and Robert Reich, two very, very intelligent men. One from-

Mehdi Hasan:

Yeah.

John Donvan:

… one from the left and one from the right. And what they wanted to deliver to their audience was a very, very thoughtful, meaningful debate on core principles that separated the left and the right, and the question was something like, you know, the, the f-, the founding fathers had it right, something like that. And in the conversations beforehand that I was part of, we emphasized with both of them that we really, really wanted to hear their deep thoughts. We… and we wanted them to engage with one another’s points of view in a, in a meaningful way, take them seriously, not to agree with them. Again, not… the point is not finding middle ground, but to challenge one another and examine one another and shed, shed the light of the left on the right and the right on the left. And they agreed to do that, and then the day of the event Krauthammer found out that it was gonna be recorded. And when he found out that, he, he got up, he was a-, he was annoyed, and he, he flipped his whole approach, and he took out a book of zingers and one liners. And Reich came in with all sincerity to argue the principle, and he made a very, very impassioned opening remark. And Krauthammer’s opening line was, “So many mistakes, so little time.”

Mehdi Hasan:

(Laughs)

John Donvan:

And the audience, which was mostly conservative, like fell down laughing, loving it. Now, you can say maybe Krauthammer won that debate because he got the audience’s applause and they stayed with him through most of it, but, uh, and, again, I don’t mean to be like so idealistic about this, and I believe in a good show, but it, it really wasn’t what was promised.

Mehdi Hasan:

I think you can do both.

John Donvan:

Mm-hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:

I mean, it’s not, it’s not one or the other.

John Donvan:

Mm-hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:

You can have… like I have a TV show. I’ve been doing a TV show for a decade now, and I think you can do both. You can have really, really interesting substantive, good faith discussions between two people who disagree, experts in their field, and I, and I hosted one today, or you can have gladiatorial combat, rhetorical combat between two people who don’t like each other and are gonna tear chunks out of each other. I’m not someone so arrogant to say one is better than the other. I think they both have their roles and their merits and different points. I think what you wanted from Reich, or what the organizers wanted from Reich and Krauthammer was a discussion of kind of deep, you know, ideas about politics. Maybe that’s not a debate. Maybe we’re just, you know, we’re throwing around terms that aren’t appropriate. Maybe it shouldn’t have been framed as a debate, because for me a debate is something where you have a contention, you have a motion, you have an argument that you’re trying to make. Uh, if it’s just let’s have a talk about what you both believe and why you believe it, that’s not a debate.

John Donvan:

We were looking to them to challenge one another. We were looking to them to, to, uh, again, not necessarily best one another, but to, but to seriously challenge one another’s thoughts. Maybe, I don’t know, maybe you’re right that it could be called a discussion as in that-

Mehdi Hasan:

It’s a, it’s a good question, and I, I had this problem when I was writing the book. Like when does a discussion become a debate, when does a debate-

John Donvan:

Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

… become an argument? I would say that it all depends on how we define our terms. And it’s something I say in a book, even when you have an argument, define your terms. There are genuine philosophical ideological, you know, definitional differences between are you in a discussion, are you in a debate, are you in an argument. Well, I find what’s interesting is to have, uh, sometimes I will have friends of the show, guests on my show, who I don’t agree with, but I get along with them personally, and that can sometimes diffuse some of that tension.

John Donvan:

Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

Uh, because you’re not gonna tear chunks out of someone who you consider a friend. I’m never gonna… I’m, I’m not friends with John Bolton, nor do I think I’ll ever both if John Bolton never comes on my show again, so I have no problem, you know, unleashing on John Bolton, and I didn’t care the fact that he didn’t like me and was angered by my questions.

John Donvan:

Mm-hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:

So, again, again it depends on the context. Who it is, where you are, what is the purpose of what you are trying to achieve? Context is everything.

John Donvan:

So, you make another point in the book that I want to talk about, because I half agree with you about it, and I, and I think I know what you’re getting at, which is that the, the, the reflexive point, the re-, the reflexive position that, uh, ad hominem attack is a bad thing needs to be challenged.

Mehdi Hasan:

(Laughs)

John Donvan:

And for those who don’t know, an ad hominem attack is, is… an ad hominem argument, and it’s called a fallacy, is when in an argument rather than deal wit the facts of the individual’s argument, you deal with the individual, and you, you question the person’s motives, you question their credibility, you question their expertise, and the idea is that rather than… if, if somebody’s coming in here arguing that, uh, you know, Swiss is the best cheese there is, rather than counter the argument about how good Swiss cheese is or not, you talk about this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And I struggle with that on stage in, in moderating debates because I do very, very often feel that, and it happens a lot, that our debaters come in and they start to challenge one another’s credentials, sincerity, honesty, and it, in fact, it’s not what the debate is about. The, the debate is not about the person. And a second aspect of that, and it, it’s a struggle as a moderator, as soon as an individual, particularly an academic, is challenged for the quality of their work, the next 10 minutes turn into a conversation-

Mehdi Hasan:

(Laughs)

John Donvan:

… about, “No, that’s not true. That’s not what my study said. And I did use-”

Mehdi Hasan:

Yeah.

John Donvan:

And, and, and we lose time getting to the argument. So I have very, very big challenges with the idea of accepting that the ad hominem argument is okay, except to the degree that sometimes it is about credentials. Should you believe this person or not?

Mehdi Hasan:

And not just credentials, as I point out in the book, there is the circumstantial ad hominem as well. There is the idea of a conflict of interest-

John Donvan:

Mm-hmm.

Mehdi Hasan:

… a personal benefit. Um, there is also, um, the [inaudible

] ad hominem, which is the argument that, “Well, you’re only making the argument because it’s of benefit to you.” So to take your analogy, if I’m debating Swiss cheese with a guy who is paid by the Swiss cheese industry, I’m certainly gonna point that out to the audience and say, “Well, how can we trust his taste in cheese when he’s paid by the people he’s advocating for? I’m not. I’m not paid by any of the cheeses, so you can trust my taste when I say Havarti cheese is far superior to Swiss cheese.”

John Donvan:

I mean, in most cases, I think the smartest move for a debater in that position to make is to self-disclose from the first place. We, we did a debate about GMO food, and we had a, an official of the former company of Monsanto on stage, who was making the case that GMO food had been proven safe. His… b-by, by definition we knew that he worked for Monsanto and had a conflict of interest-

Mehdi Hasan:

Hmm.

John Donvan:

… to the degree that-

Mehdi Hasan:

Yeah, much better to do that, obviously.

John Donvan:

Um, but he won the debate.

Mehdi Hasan:

I mean [inaudible

].

John Donvan:

He won, he won the audience over, remarkably, though.

Mehdi Hasan:

Let’s just take a step back, John, and big picture, big picture here. You go back to Aristotle, 2000 years ago he writes in rhetoric that there are three pillars of argument. There’s pathos, which we’ve talked about, the emotional appeal. There’s logos, the rational appeal, bring your receipts. And then there is ethos, your personal credibility. Aristotle identified two millennia ago that we don’t live in some utopia where people just weigh the merits and demerits of each argument in abstract like some, you know, rational calculator. That’s not how human beings operate. In fact, the personal credibility, the ethos, of the person making the argument weighs upon the audience listening to that argument. That is human nature. That is real life. That is the world as it is, not as we want it to be. So, yes, I would love to do debates. I would love to watch debates where everyone just says, “Well, here are the arguments. One, two, three. Consider the on their own merits and cast your vote.”

John Donvan:

Yeah, yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

But that is not the world we inhabit.

John Donvan:

That is irrefutably true. That is not the world we inhabit. But what we’re trying to do at this organization is push back against it a little bit, because we-

Mehdi Hasan:

Yes, you, you can. I mean, you can.

John Donvan:

… you know, we, we, we, we’ve seen it-

Mehdi Hasan:

You can safeguard against it, John. As you said, you can get people to disclose. You can ask people not to be verbally… you as a moderator can shutdown… I’ve, uh, despite writing a chapter defending ad hominem attacks, on my show many a time as a moderator I have said, “Guys, you can argue-”

John Donvan:

Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

“… about that later. You can attack each other on Twitter. Right now, stick to the subject.” You can, you can build in safeguards. All I’m saying is you can’t expect the debater to want to play along with your safeguards.

John Donvan:

So, I, I, I, again, I totally can see (laughs) that point. Um, but what we’re also pushing back against is our awareness that we’re in a culture now where a lot of the tricks of the trade, win the, win the public over, win your audience over, play to their strengths, play to their sympathies, be funny, be witting, be challenging, be daring. Um, you know, at one point you say in the book, “If somebody’s being inaccurate, don’t say they’re inaccurate. Call it a lie. Call it a lie,” because it’s dramatic and, and powerful. That we’re seeing those tricks of trade being used for demagoguery out there.

Mehdi Hasan:

Yes.

John Donvan:

And, and we, we, we kinda want to establish… y-you can strip all of that stuff away and return to a good faith ex-

Mehdi Hasan:

Okay.

John Donvan:

… d-, c-

Mehdi Hasan:

John, let me, let me challenge your premise here.

John Donvan:

Sure.

Mehdi Hasan:

Okay.

John Donvan:

Please do.

Mehdi Hasan:

I’m glad you brought up demagoguery. One of the reasons I wrote this book, and we haven’t talked politics for obvious reasons in this chat, but if… there is a political angle to this book, which is I see democracy being challenged right now. I see the free press being challenged right now. I do see demagogues and gaslighters and Gish gallopers and authoritarians and proto fascists everywhere and the US, in the UK, in France, in Israel, in India, in Turkey, in Russia, in Hungary, and I wrote the book partly because as someone who’s on the left side of the political spectrum and someone who is a small D democrat, I want to equip people with the ability to push back against these authoritarians and gaslighters, who are multiplying by the day, John. I mean, spend a little time on social media. Spend time on college campuses. The, the, the Trump, the… Trump is no longer just Trump. There are thousands of mini-Trumps borrowing his cadence, his tone, his style, his lies, his bullying tendencies. And I, I get frustrated when I see people who have the facts and the right arguments get beaten because they don’t have the rhetorical skill to deal with these demagogues.

So, actually, one of the reasons I wrote the book and say stuff like we should do ad hominem argument and you should have a zinger is because, again, live in the world as it is, not as we want it to be. We now live in a world today in 2023 where if there was a time for good faith debate, if that golden age ever existed of Socratic method, it certainly doesn’t exist right now, and, therefore, with the greatest of respect to you guys, I admire what you’re trying to do, but there are limits to that in the real world. You can’t have a good faith debate about the election of 2020 and whether it was stolen. Good luck to you, John, casting that. Good luck finding two Reich/Krauthammer guest who are gonna come on and debate that in good faith.

John Donvan:

Can you have any-

Mehdi Hasan:

Because person on one side of it is either a liar or a grifter.

John Donvan:

But can you have any kind of debate including the, the, the debate of the nature you’re talking about and being able to push back strongly that’s actually gonna persuade anybody? Again, it goes back to what is winning? I mean, uh-

Mehdi Hasan:

Yeah. So, so in that case, no. My… when I’m… when I’m debating John Bolton on the Iraq war, or if I’m debating some Republican on election denial, and I don’t, I don’t have election deniers on my show for precisely that point, uh, the aim is not… This is where people misunderstand. The aim is not to change your opponent’s mind. The aim is to change the audience’s mind. The third person. The independent. The person who is winnable. And that is absolutely important to remember. So when I’m debating election lies, I’m not trying to change the person’s mind. I’m trying to remind the audience at home that this is nonsense. In fact, I believe there is intrinsic value in standing up for the truth regardless of whether anyone’s mind is changed. Uh, you know, that, it comes back to this idea of, you know, reality. Uh, I think reality is under assault right now, and one of the reasons I’m encouraging people to take to the public square and debate and argue and public speak and not back down is because there are far too many people who are bullying everyone else into silence with absolute nonsense.

And to come back to your point, again, I would love good faith debates. I love watching good faith debates. I enjoy watching old YouTube clips of people arguing. But in the current climate, there’s a whole cast of people, John, I don’t know about your organization, but my show, we can’t have them on. I won’t have climate change deniers on. I won’t have election deniers on. What’s the point? I’m not gonna argue up is down, black is white, hot is cold. I’m not gonna argue reality.

John Donvan:

Would you, would you now still do a debate about whether Islam is a religion of peace? I know you’re not being asked. I know you’ve done it or… my, my point is not is it out of your system-

Mehdi Hasan:

Uh, yeah. In th-, uh-

John Donvan:

… my point is-

Mehdi Hasan:

… hypothetically?

John Donvan:

Yeah.

Mehdi Hasan:

Yes. I don’t think that is a reality-inducing debate. I think that’s a legitimate argument to have. I think in an age where people do believe that there is a link between Islam and terrorism, where Muslims themselves argue about the role of violence within the faith, I think that is a legitimate debate to be had if it’s framed correctly, if it’s not framed in a bigoted fashion, if the people who are invited to argue are not all bigots, then, yes, it is the kind of debate and discussion you can have. But would I take part in a debate… for example, I’ve done a debate on climate change denial. I wouldn’t do that today. I did it 10 years ago. I would never do it today.

John Donvan:

How do we figure out whom to trust? And I know that’s a really big (laughs) question to put to you, but how do we figure out… how does the audience figure out whom to trust?

Mehdi Hasan:

I wish I had the answer to that question. It’s something that we grapple with right now. I mean, after the 2016 election, I turned to my executive producer at Al-Jazeera English, that was where I was working at the time, and I said, “Should we just chuck it all in and go be accountants?” Not that there’s anything wrong with being an accountant, but should we go do something else? What is the point of working in this industry, doing what we do, fact-checking, reality-checking, tough interviews, if a portion of the public are just living in denial or reality, or just believing conspiracies or going down the Q-Anon rabbit hole, or believing election denial? What do we do in that scenario? And it has deeply depressed me in recent years, the move of so many people away from factual reality, from truth, down the misinformation rabbit hole.

I haven’t given up on it. I wouldn’t have written this book, I wouldn’t do the job I do if I had given up on it. I still think people persuadable, the majority of people. Not all people, but the majority of people are persuadable, are still open to factual evidence. I talk about some of the evidence in my chapter on receipts in the book. But it’s not easy. It’s not easy to work out what is gonna actually convince this person in this place at this time. And, again, you have to be flexible. You have to look at context. And an argument that works in one place won’t work in another. That’s something I learned the hard way. Um, and I, you know, an appeal to authority depends which authority, and an appeal to a certain authority will work in one place, but not in another place. So there is no universal, um, you know, way of winning the argument, or, or exact same toolkit to winning every argument. You’ve got to judge it on where you are in terms of, you know, how do you get people to believe.

Something I stress a great deal is good faith. I’ve been it a lot when I talk about the book. Good faith argument versus bad faith argument. People say, “What is good faith? How do you define it?” And, you know, you can take the Supreme Court pornography decision. You know it when you see it. Or you can say (laughs) good faith argument is when people are open to factual evidence, they’re open to, uh, common definitions, and they’re not gonna either move the goalpost, something that happens a lot in our political and media culture right now. You’re arguing one thing, and suddenly you’re over here. Stick to what we’re talking about. Don’t change the subject or move the goalpost. That’s always a telltale sign that the person’s not actually arguing in good faith. And, of course, finally, you know, ad hominem is fine, but bullying, intimidation, threats, abuse, that’s to be avoided as well. So I think try and keep… I would urge people to try and just keep those things in their mind when they’re watching a debate on cable news or they’re in a university hall or they’re hearing someone, you know, uh, uh, speak, give a, give a lecture or speech, is it meeting those criteria? Is this good faith, or is this just bad faith? Is this a grift. Is this a Gish gallop?

John Donvan:

You’re singing our song. Mehdi Hasan, this has been really, really very, very helpful, useful, interesting, and fun. I want to thank you so much for joining us on Open to Debate.

Mehdi Hasan:

It’s been a great discussion. I enjoyed doing it with you, John.

John Donvan:

And that concludes our conversation, and I want to thank you for tuning in to this episode of Open to Debate. You know, as a nonprofit, our work to combat extreme polarization through civil and respectful debate is generously funded by listeners like you, by the Rosenkranz Foundation, and by supporters of Open to Debate. Open to Debate is also made possible by a generous grant from the Laura and Gary Lauder Venture Philanthropy Fund. Robert Rosenkranz is our Chairman, Clea Conner is CEO, Lia Matthow is our Chief Content Officer, Julia Melfi is our Senior Producer, Marlette Sandovol is our Producer, and Gabriella Mayer is our Editorial and Research Manager. Gabrielle Iannucelli is our Social Medial and Digital Platforms Coordinator, Andrew Lipson is Head of Production, Max Fulton is our Production Coordinator, Damon Whitamore is our Engineer, Rachel Kemp is our Chief of Staff. Our theme music is by Alex Clement, and Raven Baker is our Events and Operations Manager. And I’m your host, John Donvan. We’ll see you next time.