Summary: <br> Rowan Croft runs the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/maginty38" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">YouTube political channel Grand Torino</a>. He says that he’s politically centre-right, not extreme right or alt-right, though his channel heavily features figures such as Justin Barrett of the National Party and formerly of Youth Defence, Herrmann Kelly of Irexit, Jim Dowson, the former BNP and Orange Order member who has been involved in supplying equipment to paramilitary vigilanties hunting asylum-seekers crossing the Turkish-Bulgarian border. <br> <br> <br> <br> During the interview, we talked about Rowan’s faith in <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/qanon-4chan-the-storm-conspiracy-explained.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Qanon</a>, a bizarre online conspiracy theory which holds that there exists no investigation into Donald Trump conspiring with Russian intelligence, and that the Mueller investigation is, in fact, a cover for investigating how Hillary Clinton and many of her top associates are pedophiles who have abused and murdered dozens of children. Both Rowan and the anonymous online source ‘<a href="http://qanon.wikia.com/wiki/Q_Posts_by_Date" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Q</a>‘ have <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/08/failed-prophecies-wont-stop-trumps-true-believers/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">made many predictions to prove their access</a> to inside knowledge. <a href="https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/qanon-failed-predictions/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">No substantial prediction has come true</a>.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Several people got in touch with me on twitter to say that they didn’t want me to play it at all. The guest is controversial for reasons you will understand when you hear it, but I don’t dismiss lightly the people who don’t think it should be included at all. The guest, by the way, is Rowan Croft, the YouTube political commentator who says that he is ‘centre-right’. Decide on that for yourself.<br> <br> <br> <br> I’m not a fan of no-platforming, but I think that it is<br> important take care who you give attention to. It’s all too easy for media to<br> get clicks by featuring the most outrageous speakers, without caring that, in<br> doing so, they shift the centre ground of debate, and make people who are only<br> a little less extremist seem reasonable by comparison.<br> <br> <br> <br> But that’s not the only consideration, and it’s not the only<br> mechanism at work here. Whether they are religious cults or political<br> extremists, it is a well-worn tactic to select for promotion the most mild and<br> reasonable-sounding of their beliefs. They wait to reveal the most extreme of<br> their views until the new recruit has already bought in to their worldview via<br> its more palatable elements. <br> <br> <br> <br> Once someone is on that escalator, they rely on groupthink and motivated reasoning to deliver their new adherent towards a position where they also accept the most extreme views of the group. I’m fully aware of the dangers of giving oxygen to extremism; but sometimes that’s not the only consideration. <br> <br> <br> <br> One thing that Rowan said during the interview was that he would supply a source for his claim that quote, ‘Sweden has become the rape capital of the world’. <br> <br> <br> <br> If you Google those words, ‘Sweden rape capital’, you will find literally millions of hits, mostly for alt-right blogs that circulate and recycle that phrase. It has become almost an article of faith for the far right or alt-right or whatever you want to call them. It’s clearly incredibly important for their belief system, and you can see why.<br> <br> <br> <br> Firstly, Sweden is the type of Nordic welfare state that is the antithesis of the far-right’s world view, so it’s important to them to find evidence that it is having problems. Secondly, in the migrant crisis that peaked in 2015,
