Murray v. Smith

Assessing the debate

I've been following the developing arguments between British author Douglas Murray and American comedian Dave Smith with interest. They appeared together last week on the Joe Rogan Experience, ostensibly to debate the Israel-Hamas War. The conversation pretty rapidly devolved into an argument about authority and authenticity, which got a bit heated at times. Since the podcast aired there have been no lack of comments with partisans on both sides claiming that their champion "smoked" the challenger. And there have been no end of additional videos, where just about everybody has done post-mortems and given their feedback. Often one or the other of the antagonists appears in these videos -- generally the one the commentator is more closely aligned with. I'm not going to pick a winner. I listened to the JRE episode (#2303, 4-10-2025), and I think there are several ways one could "pick a winner", and they wouldn't necessarily yield the same results.

From the perspective of who was the more successful debater in the format of the event, I'd probably give it to Dave Smith on points. Not so much because he did a stellar job (he did fine), but because he held his own against a series of attacks from Murray that damaged Murray's position more than Smiths responses, in my opinion. The main tactic Murray used that caused him problems was an appeal to authority. He complained (somewhat incessantly) about people without expertise in a subject, who nevertheless make careers out of opining online but when challenged retreat to excuses such as "I'm just a comedian" or "I'm just asking questions". Partly the subject of this complaint was a comment a third party made recently, attacking Winston Churchill's role in the Second World War. But Murray also feigned incredulity when Smith admitted he has never been to Israel. Ironically, a video circulated for a day or two (it seems to have disappeared now -- couldn't find it to link to) that ran clips of Murray from a previous appearance, contradicting all the points he was making against Smith. The upshot is that it seemed Murray was demonstrating the problem by using appeals to authority as a club to attack his opponent and win the argument, rather than talking about standards of evidence or argument.

I think this was a bad look for Murray, especially on the Joe Rogan podcast, which is known for "platforming" people with heterodox (and sometimes kooky) views. Murray's critique is valid, I think. But it came off as special pleading for Israel: "Why haven't you had as many supporters of Israel's actions on as you've had critics, Joe?" And, although he has a bachelors in English from Oxford, Murray (because of his posh accent?) seems to be claiming the position of defending Western Civilization against the barbarians at the gates, and invoking nonexistent credentials as a historian to support his arguments. I'm a historian with credentials, so I feel I'm on solid ground saying Murray isn't. In that case, it's a case of a journalist/author without expertise attacking a comedian without expertise.

Yes, it's true that Murray has been to Israel many times and has embedded himself in the cause of supporting the people of that nation. This seems to have translated into a support of the government of the nation too; although that may be due to the nearly complete lack of nuance in the debate. He may feel that he needs to support the Israeli government, when he experiences rallies for Hamas in New York City the day after the October 7th attack. But this is the point, I think. Murray can't be objective on this issue. Nor is he in his book, I think. I've only listened to the first several chapters, and I'll update this if I find out otherwise further in, but based on the graphic and visceral ways he depicts the atrocities of October 7th, I don't think his objective is to spark an objective assessment. These acts were barbarous, and I think the automatic and natural (and intended) reaction to them is, bomb those bastards out of the world, so humans can live in it.

Murray effectively exposes and focuses on the moral issues in a way that I think is very similar to what Smith is trying to do from the other direction. Both are basically saying, "Look what these people are doing to noncombatant women and children! How can you support that?" And of course, they're both right.

From a historian perspective, this is similar to what Howard Zinn did in A People's History of the United States a generation ago. He focused on people whose story had not been a part of American history and asked, "What about them?" Zinn got all screechy and obnoxious about it, in the opinion of his detractors. But didn't he have to? Similarly, I think both Murray and Smith "have to", because neither side in this war can be really seen. Israel does seem to be held to a different standard, by many, in its response to terrorism, but it's also let off the hook by some for decades or generations of practices that people supporting them should at least look at and understand the reasons they happened and processes that produced them. And Israel's enemies may have valid complaints, but their actions or aims can't be ignored or justified by lies.

Returning to the debate that's been going on this week, I wonder if it's possible to conclude that yes, expertise is valuable. But that expertise can cause a person to take a side and cling to positions that maybe ought to be challenged. And also that it's valid to critique an entrenched position from the outside (in this example Murray occupies the entrenched position because he has slightly more expertise than Smith on the issue despite not being an expert), but that doesn't mean the entrenched position is completely wrong. Although Rogan claims that long-form podcasting helps us get closer to a nuanced truth because it's longer than the seven minutes people would get to argue on Piers Morgan (although the section of this one with Dave Smith and Eric Weinstein was a bit longer and more interesting than some of the other post-mortems, the focus on "winning" the debate may have pushed people even further into their alternate realities. That would be unfortunate.