My Katie Hopkins Disaster: The Post-Mortem

I've Been "Katio'd" - But Here's What Really Happened...

"That's a vacuous question," seethed Katie.

And just like that, the tone flipped.

When Katie Hopkins had arrived at my studio, she was a world away from the ‘evil’ media portrayal. Like a tornado of positivity and magnanimity, she swept through the doors with a beaming smile and all the time in the world for the staff and other creators in our building.

She even made a promise - that she fulfilled - to check out a student’s project after the podcast. Katie had travelled for hours and stayed nearby overnight to do this interview.

So, in my first minutes of meeting her, I knew this: she is committed, dedicated and passionate. She is invested in helping ambitious individuals to realise their potential.

At this, I let down my guard.

Well, perhaps I didn't have a guard in the first place.

A minority of viewers have criticised me for a style they consider 'weak' or 'non-committal'. I refute this.

The truth is that I am so passionate about my beliefs that I find myself arguing at 4 am in my head - sometimes out-loud in a whisper quiet enough not to wake my wife but still strong enough to show ‘em who’s boss - with imaginary adversaries.

Most of my regular viewers recognise my conviction, which I channel through humour and bonhomie.

What I hope makes Heretics an interesting watch is that I am less interested in 'owning' or 'destroying' my interviewees and more taken by the opportunity to understand and empathise with them.

I can still have a heated and impassioned debate.

Watch the episode with Katie - or my interviews with Eni Aluko or Katy Jon Went - to see what that looks like. But this is why I asked Katie - early in the interview - if being cancelled "makes her sad".

My debate with Eni Aluko about DEI

I knew I risked her wrath with such an innocuous question, but in her attempt to prove to me how insufficient my question was, she revealed more about her journey than most viewers had ever heard. For minutes, she spoke with emotion about how the press’s treatment of her led her to the brink.

I saw it as something of a journalistic coup. If that leads some viewers to question my question, so be it.

Our fiery dynamic led to what many viewers have called both my best episode and Katie's best performance. Next time, if she’ll come back on, we’ll get into wider issues.

But our back-and-forth hit on something of a recurring question that plagues me during those angry sleepless nights!

To what extent should we 'hold the line', as Katie and my former guest Posie Parker insist?

Kellie-Jay Keen (Posie Parker) on Heretics

They are right:

Appeasing lunatics and authoritarian ideologues has not worked.

This is as true of the doctors who don't seem to know their own sex as it is of our own multicultural authorities who hold open the gates for the barbarians (Patreon banned one of my interviews for using this Christopher Hitchens and JM Coetzee analogy!).

Appeasement is the tactic long employed by the UN, which allows its 50+ Muslim states to block-vote for innumerable anti-Western, illiberal policies. Appeasement has led to around 100 Sharia courts in the UK and grooming - or raping - gangs getting away with worse than murder.

Let us appease no longer.

But:

We also know from history that regimes and authorities who show zero flexibility; who refuse to leave space for doubt; who speak in divisive language and metaphor; have often turned putrid.

This is of course true of many such Islamist regimes today. They comprise ideologues who think they know best, and refuse to debate.

Let us not be zealots.

A middle ground?

Forget 'middle'.

That in itself sounds like appeasement.

Is there a way to ensure we hold the very line that Katie Hopkins and Posie Parker support (no more experiments on kids, no more kowtowing to religious extremists and an insistence that those who move to this country embrace its values and not the other way round) without employing language that equates human beings to animals?

Or, in Katie's case - on a different point - is there a way to point out discrepancies in the official COVID narrative and call into question what might seem like exploitative PR around the death of a TV presenter's husband without resorting to laughing at her loss?

Can we hold the line without with-holding our humanity?

Let me know in the comments, but now I'd like to make a point about the criticism Katie and some viewers labeled at me:

Halfway through our interview,

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