Nancy Pelosi and her husband took a break from insider trading and participated in a public debate at the Oxford Union in Oxford, England. The Oxford Union is a respected debating society and one of the oldest university unions in the UK, founded in 1823.
On April 25, Nancy participated in an Oxford Union debate on populism with Robert Pelosi, and hours later she was interrupted by pro-Gaza protesters from Youth Demand, who supported Gaza militants and Want an end to fossil fuels.
It was during this debate that Pelosi finally received the scathing public criticism she deserved from one of Britain’s rising stars, Winston Marshall.
Winston Marshall is a popular author, musician, and podcaster. Marshall is the lead guitarist of the British folk rock band Mumford and Sons, and has won a Grammy Award and two Brit Awards. Marshall was forced to quit the band after he tweeted that journalist Andy Ngo was “brave” for his book, which claimed far-left activists had “radical plans to destroy democracy.”
Winston Marshall weighs in on the debate about populism and its perceived threat by global elites.
Pelosi rudely interrupted the brilliant young man’s thoughts during his speech, arguing that Portland’s month-long violent and costly protests and attacks were not as violent as the January 6 protests and Riots are that destructive.
We now know that Nancy Pelosi was primarily responsible for the violence that day. Days before the protests, she refused to sign President Trump’s order to send the National Guard to Washington, D.C. Pelosi and military leaders subsequently refused to send in the National Guard until 5 p.m. on January 6. Instead, Pelosi bizarrely organized a camera crew to come in and follow her that day.
Pelosi’s rude interruption did not prevent Winston Marshall from giving her a proper public beating.
This will be the best video you watch this week!
This is a transcript.
introduce: Populism is not a threat to democracy. Populism is democracy. I now look forward to Mr. Winston Marshall closing the case for the opposition.
Winston Marshall: Ladies and gentlemen, words have a tendency to change their meaning. When I was a boy, a woman meant someone without a dick. Populism has become synonymous with racism, we hear nationalism, we hear bigots, rednecks, rednecks, deplorables. Elites use it to express contempt for ordinary people. It’s a recent change, not long after Barack Obama, while still president, chafed at suggestions Trump was being called a populist at a North American leaders’ summit in June 2016. How can Trump be called a populist? He doesn’t care about working people. If anything, Obama thinks he’s a populist. If anything, Obama thinks Bernie is a populist. Bernie spent five years fighting for working people.
But with Trump…something weird happened. If you watch Obama’s subsequent speeches, you will find that he has increasingly used the word populism interchangeably with strongman and authoritarianism recently. The meaning of this word has changed, becoming denial, derogation, and slander. To me, populism is not a dirty word.
Since the 2008 financial crisis, and especially the trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, we have entered an era of populism. Elites fail for good reason. Let me talk about some common myths, some of which have come up tonight. If the motion considered sedition to be a threat to democracy, I would be on that side of the House.
Someone mentioned that January 6th was indeed a dark day for the United States. I’m sure Congresswoman Pelosi would agree that the entire month of June 2020, when the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, was besieged and insurrectionary by radical progressives, those two days were dark for America days. Yes?
Nancy Pelosi: It is not. There is no equivalent there. It’s not like the insurrection that happened on January 6th…
Winston Marshall: So you disagree. It doesn’t matter. You don’t agree…
Winston Marshall: So you disagree. But you will condemn those days. My point, though, is that all political movements are susceptible to violence and even rebellion. If we believed fascism was a threat to democracy, I would be on this side of the house. In fact, the current populist era is an anti-fascist movement. I still have a lot to go through. As you know, populism is the politics of ordinary people against elites.
Populism is not a threat to democracy. Populism is democracy. Why implement universal suffrage if not to control the elite? Ladies and gentlemen, you would be forgiven for thinking that this is an era of right-wing populism, given Trump’s success and, more recently, Javier Mallet’s chainsawing of the Argentine bureaucratic monster, the national behemoth. But this would ignore the Occupy Wall Street movement. That would ignore Jeremy Corbin’s “For the many, not the few”. This would ignore Bernie against billionaires, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. against Big Pharma, and most recently, George Galloway against his better judgment. Now, everyone, including Galloway, recognizes the real concerns of ordinary people that would otherwise be ignored by those in power.
In fact, I’m quite surprised that our esteemed opposition member Pelosi is on the side of this motion. I think the left is supposed to be anti-elite. I think the left is supposed to be anti-establishment. Today, especially in the United States, the globalist left has become the establishment. I think if Ms. Pelosi had taken this motion, she would have argued that she was unemployed. But it is here in the UK that right-wing and left-wing populists have united behind the supreme democratic bill – Brexit. Polls show the top reasons people voted for Brexit were sovereignty and more democracy. Thanks. How did the Brussels elite react? They are doing everything they can to undermine the democratic will of the British people, and the Westminster elite is equally disgraceful. As we know, David Cameron calls voters “fruitcakes”, “lunatics” and “closet racists”. The Lib Dems did everything they could to overturn the democratic vote. Keir Stama(?) calls for second referendum. The elites will make us vote, vote, vote until we vote for them. In fact, this is what happened in Ireland and Denmark. Let’s look at some other populist movements. Hong Kong’s populist uprising literally means a pro-democracy movement. From the Netherlands to Germany, France, Greece to Sri Lanka, the pharmaceutical uprising is taking to the road with their tractors to protest the ESG policies being fed to us by the all-knowing, infallible elites in Davos.
When petty tyrant Prime Minister Justin Trudeau froze the bank accounts of Canadian Teamsters, Canada’s Teamsters movement became anti-elitist rather than the behavior of a democratic head of state. The Yellow Vests in France, the Oulez in London, working people, protesting against policies that harm them. How are they treated? They are called conspiracy theorists. They have also been labeled by the mayor as far-right elements. Ladies and gentlemen, populism is the voice of the voiceless. The real threat to democracy comes from the elite. Now, don’t get me wrong, we need elites.
If President Biden has shown us anything, we need someone to run the country. When the president suffers from severe dementia, it’s not just the United States that crumbles; the entire world burns. But let’s look at the elites. European businesses spend more than 1 billion euros a year lobbying Brussels. American companies spend more than 2 billion euros on lobbying in Washington every year. Two-thirds of Congress’ funding comes from pharmaceutical companies. Pfizer alone spent 11 million euros in 2021. It’s no wonder that 66% of Americans believe the economy is rigged against the rich and powerful. By the way, we once had a term to describe situations where big business and big government colluded.
Let me read you some headlines from the mainstream media.
The New Yorker, the day before the 2016 election, “The Case Against Democracy.”
The day after the election, the Washington Post declared, “The problem in our government is democracy.”
Los Angeles Times, June 2017, “British election a reminder of the dangers of too much democracy.”
Vox, June 2017.
The New York Times, June 2017. “The problem with participatory democracy is the participants.”
Mainstream media elites not only despise populism but also the people. If the Democratic Party spends half of its energy on doing things for the people, Trump will not even have a chance in 2024.
You’ve been in power for four years. From the fabricated Steele dossier to trying to knock him off the ballot in Maine and Colorado, Democrats are the anti-Democrats. All we need now is for the Republican Party to show up as Promonicists.
Ladies and gentlemen, populism is not a threat to democracy, but I will tell you what is. This is elites ordering social media to censor political opponents. It’s the police crackdown on dissent, whether it’s anti-monetary activists in this country, or gender-critical voices here, or the national conservative movement in Brussels last week.
I’ll tell you what a threat to democracy is. This is Brussels, Westminster, mainstream media, Big Tech, Big Pharma, corporate collusion and Davos cronies.
The threat to democracy comes from those who believe that ordinary people are pathetic.
The threat to democracy comes from those who smear working people as racists.
The threat to democracy comes from those who view working people as populists.
I have one last thing to say. This era of populism can end at the snap of a finger. All the elites need to do is start listening, respecting, honoring, and, God forbid, working for the common man. Thanks.
Nancy Pelosi didn’t like what I said…
Populism is not a threat to democracy.
That’s what Democratic elites like her are like.
Watch the full Oxford Union speech from My Debate with Her: pic.twitter.com/ZNm8maNZjy
— Winston Marshall (@MrWinMarshall) May 10, 2024
