The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
535. Is It Too Late for the UK? A Candid Talk with Winston Marshall
03 Apr 2025
Jordan Peterson sits down with writer, musician, and podcaster Winston Marshall. They discuss the nature of identity on the community and national levels, the relationship between a nation and its citizens, how the UK has a rich culture that is worth preserving, and the unifying question that has still yet to be answered. Winston Marshall is a writer, musician, and host of “The Winston Marshall Show.” In 2007 Winston co-founded folk-rock band Mumford & Sons. In their fourteen years together the band won 2 Grammy Awards, 2 Brit Awards, an Ivor Novello and performed with the likes of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Willie Nelson and Elton John. In 2017 he released the techno-fusion album ‘Silk’ in collaboration with HVOB. His remix work includes Maggie Rogers and Jack Garrett. His written work has been published by The Free Press, The Jewish Chronicle, The Spectator, The Daily Mail. Through 2022 and 2023 he hosted the podcast ‘Marshall Matters’ at The Spectator. This episode was filmed on February 22nd, 2025. | Links | For Winston Marshall: On X https://x.com/mrwinmarshall?lang=en Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@winston_marshall Substack https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
As you pointed out, after the horrors of World War II, there was a consensus around the world that we should never forget. The problem with never forget is that you can't remember what you don't understand.
That sort of, to me, explains everything. That's, by the way, what we're seeing crumbling now. That's why people are so upset about J.D. Vance's speech in Munich. Anything that goes against the open society ideology, if you're against that, you must be for the Holocaust.
Diversity without unity is indistinguishable from chaos. National identity is shared participation in the same stories. The story is everything. And this is why I think we're at the end of the Enlightenment.
The famous tolerance paradox buried within there was the seeds for a new type of totalitarianism. How can we work out what the correct relationship is with the nation where we can't even identify what the nation is?
We could ask ourselves, what's the essence of civilization? It seems to me that the proper story for free societies is... Hello, everybody. I'm here in Cambridge in the UK today at the end of the ARC convention. I have as my guest today Winston Marshall, and I have a long and storied history with Mr. Marshall.
I, in part, was in part responsible for the destruction of his musical career because he had the audacity to indicate to audiences the public at large that he didn't think I was entirely despicable and that didn't go so well for him or for the band and so that's on me.
However, the upshot of that has been that Winston has become a emerging star in the alternative media landscape in the UK, which is behind the curve in the alternative media department, but coming on quite strong with people like Constantine Kissin, for example. And Winston's become a very astute, or has shown his ability as a very astute political commentator and cultural analyst.
And we spent our discussion today talking about, well, partly about the conference, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, but more as a means of interrogating
the relationship between the story that sits at the base of a culture, that necessarily sits at the base of a culture and that provides people with psychological integrity and social unity, and the political structure that is nested within that. And we delved further into that and discussed the relationship between
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