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The Current Transcript for March 8, 2017

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

We police girls, we praise girls for virginity but we don't trust boys for virginity. And it's always made me wonder how exactly this is supposed to work out because..

[Sound: crowd laughing]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will tell you that raising a feminist is not solely about raising girls. She will also tell you that to be a feminist need not mean to be confined to someone else's stereotype or expectations of female empowerment, which is why you'll find her novels on the bestseller lists, her face on cosmetic ads, and her ideas embraced in Beyoncé’s music. In a moment, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shares her ideas on feminists, femininity, and humanity. Also today, they have an app for everything but there was no app for this.

SOUNDCLIP

I saw so many children with crumpled up photographs or old birthday cards or listening repeatedly to answer machine messages. The biggest thing people wanted to hear was I love you, with their name on the end, from that parent.

AMT: Gaby Eirew’s personal moment of disruption revolves around conversations she had about death and the one thing few people leave behind, their voice. Hear her in half an hour. And when the British public voted for Brexit to exit the European Union, some saw it as a day of ecstasy.

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[Sound: audience clapping]

NIGEL FARAGE: Let June the 23rd go down in our history as our Independence Day.

[Sound: audience cheering]

AMT: But it was a day of infamy for then Prime Minister David Cameron, the abrupt end of his political career. In an hour, the former PM's chief strategist Craig Oliver, on the vote that is still changing everything. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

How to raise a feminist: a manifesto by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Guests: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

[Music: The Disruptors Theme]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is someone who doesn't like to be tied down in any one role. She gained fame as a writer from Nigeria with her novels Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah. She won a MacArthur Genius Fellowship and broke beyond the literary world with her ideas on feminism, race, and politics. And then there was this..

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CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. Feminist, a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.

[Song: Beyoncé]

AMT: The song is Flawless by Beyoncé and it features Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDx talk on feminism, making the Nigerian-American writer an instant pop icon. She's been getting on the best dressed list, she has now become the face of No 7, a cosmetics brand owned by the British pharmacy Boots. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a disruptor and a boundary breaker, and that's what she appears to want for her daughter's generation. She's just published a provocative new book in time for International Women's Day, a guide on how to raise a feminist which began as a letter to a friend. It's called Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. And Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joins me from Washington. Hello.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Hello.

AMT: What does it say that in 2017 we still need a guide on how to raise a feminist?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: It says that there's still a lot of work to be done. I think there has been some progress on gender, but I think the general idea that things are OK now with gender justice is simply not true. I think there's still a lot of work to be done.

AMT: How do you define what it is to be a feminist?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: For me, to be feminist is to acknowledge that there is a lot that is wrong with the construction of gender in every society in the world. That it means acknowledging that women, because they are women have been deprived of political, economic, social, not just rights, but opportunities. And that and most of all, that one wants to make it better. I think to be feminist is not only not to acknowledge that there's a problem but to want to make it better.

AMT: And what did feminism mean to you growing up in Nigeria?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: You know, I didn't know, I like to think now that I was a feminist, that I have been a feminist since I was old enough to think. [chuckles] But I didn't know whether, I didn't even know that the word feminist existed. And I got to know of it much, well, later, relatively later when I was a teenager, and a friend of mine said to me during an argument that, he said to me you know you're a feminist. And he didn't mean it in a good way, it was supposed to be one of those insults that people fling at you. And later when I looked it up I thought yes, that's exactly what I am. Because in the dictionary, feminist was a person who believes in the social, economic, and political equality of the sexes. And so growing up, I think to be feminist just simply meant that I was always aware, I was always alert to even the most nuanced differences in how maleness and femaleness was constructed. I was always sort of sensitive to it and I think part of it also came from being a storyteller, because that's what I think of myself primarily as really. And I think that to be a storyteller is to always kind of observe and to be slightly removed from things, so I always felt one step removed. And I always felt that I was a watcher, that I was watching. And watching means that you can't but notice that men and women and girls and boys, that the world treats them differently.

AMT: Mm. And so as you continued to watch, how did your ideas and your observations evolve from that teenage time when you weren't even sure, but then you realized you were a feminist, to the place that you've arrived at now?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: I think maybe I've read a little bit more now that [chuckles] I'm a bit older. I think my views have also become, one of the things I've come to believe is that there isn't a single answer to the problems of gender and justice. I think that for me feminism is always contextual. And also, I think I've become much more aware of how the solution has to be a conversation, an action plan, a change, but whatever it is it has to involve men and women.

AMT: And you know, it's one thing to think about what it takes to be a feminist today but how easy is it for you to exercise your feminism as a black woman in America?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: You know, I mean, it's interesting to me because I don't think feminism isn’t this sort of this cloak that I put on in the morning, you know, and take off at night. It's who I am. And so in some ways I supposed it then becomes how do I live my life? And there are things that I believe strongly in, there are certain things I just will not compromise on, there are things I refuse to laugh about, for example, there are things I will always take seriously. And being black, I also think that gender is very much shaped by race and also by class. And so I think my experience of gender is also shaped by my being black, and particularly living part time in the US where race is such an identity marker. And it's different in Nigeria because then race doesn't really come into play, Nigeria it's really just gender.

AMT: You write at one point though that there were times when you feel more isolated as a feminist than you do as a black woman.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes. Because I mean, it was in some ways, it's not so much that I was making a distinction between racism and sexism or even suggesting that one is worst because I don't believe that. But it's just that in my own personal experience with the people I love, with a small circle of family and friends, and people I love and trust and people who love me, I never feel with them and they are people of all races, I never feel with them that I have to justify or make a case or prove that something racist is racist, right? And I don't mean just my own experiences. So in observing the world, engaging with world events, it's always almost intuitively clear to the people I love that something racist is racist. But I find that when it comes to sexism that I'm often asked to prove it, for example. Or I'm often told, and this is something that black people are told in the wider world, that whatever happened wasn't really about gender or that you're being oversensitive or that you're overreacting or that you're reading things into a situation that aren't there. I find that that happens with me and the people I love when the subject is sexism and it doesn't happen with racism.

AMT: Interesting.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: And there's something about it that's lonely for me.

AMT: Mm. Do you see tension between being feminist and feminine?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: No, not at all. And one of the things that’s become important for me to talk about is how I do not believe at all and do not accept that femininity and feminism mutually exclusive. But at the same time, I know that the origin of this in Western feminism is in some ways understandable. I think that early Western feminism, and I keep saying Western, because it's also important to me to make clear that there are feminisms in different parts of the world, but often there's the assumption that somehow feminism started with white women demanding to vote. But, you know, my great grandmother in southeastern Nigeria, what will become Nigeria was feminist. But anyway, I think that the sort of early, the beginnings of Western feminism, I think it was understandable that these women who were starting to speak out about their rights felt that it was important to kind of disavow femininity because I think that if you're living in a world in which you're considered male property, and part of being that property is that, you know, the frills of it is sort of this overly feminized construction of who you are, which also goes into the idea of your being helpless and you not being able to think for yourself. So I can understand why to rise up against all of that also for them, meant seeing that traditional femininity was something they had to cast aside. So there's a certain kind of nuance that I don't think they could afford at the time but I think things have changed. And I also think that in many ways femininity, at least for me, really has nothing to do with the male gaze. I mean, my friends and I, my female friends and I who care about things like fashion and makeup, we like to joke and say that men don't even get it or care, right? So--

AMT: They're not looking at your shoes, you are. [chuckles]

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: They really don't care. They don't even know what the hell the shoes are about. I mean, I know how often, I mean sometimes I'll wear an outfit that I think is really interesting and my husband will look at me and burst into laughter.

AMT: Hm.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: You know, and that's fine, because he's just like I don't even know what the hell you’re doing but it makes me happy. [chuckles] I do it for myself.

AMT: It's interesting though, because you have chosen to be the face of a cosmetic line, a cosmetics line. You're probably, are you the very first bestselling novelist to do that? I think you might be.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: [chuckles]

AMT: Like, you're breaking the mold of who is supposed to model, who is supposed to write the beautiful novels.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: You know, that's interesting. I'm going to have to, I think I might have to add that in my bio for the next book.

AMT: [laughs]

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: No. You know, I suppose so, but I think though that I remember reading a piece about Susan Sontag, and somebody writing how shocking it was that she enjoyed going to Sephora, the sort of beauty and cosmetics shop. And how it wasn't something that kind of was publicly known. And I remember thinking it's not shocking to me at all. I think that there are many women who, like me, for whom sort of the real passion in life is ideas. I mean, I'm a person that what care most about is reading and writing and if I couldn't do either, then I really don't want to live. But at the same time, I also really like high heel shoes and lipstick and I think there are many women like me. But I think that because of the way society has constructed what it means to be a serious woman, so the idea that you like to put a bright colour on your lips means that you run the risk of somebody assuming you to be frivolous and therefore unserious or make assumptions about your intelligence, you're more likely to kind of, you know, temper it, because you don't want to be judged harshly by a world that tells you that if you're female and you care about your appearance then you can't possibly be intelligent, right?

AMT: It's interesting though because that still puts women in a category, like it puts women and judges them. And the whole idea of feminism is that women should be allowed to break out of all of those molds anyway.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes. Yeah. But I also I mean, but at the same time, I also really respect women who choose not to do the traditional femininity thing. I mean, as long as it's what they are happy with. So for me, it's not my, if I do have a campaign about femininity, the target isn't really the women who don't care about makeup. The target is the women who do care about makeup. It's my way of saying you know what, let's kind of, let's come out of our little self-made caves and thrive.

AMT: And, you know, and I'm asking too, because I spoke to Jessa Crispin a couple of weeks ago. She's the author of Why I'm Not a Feminist, and she criticizes women who embrace fashion but call themselves feminists and she calls it co-opted feminism. And obviously not everyone agrees with her, but it's the idea that women can't make all of those choices. You're saying they have to be able to.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Of course they have to be able to. I mean, for me the fundamental thing is that it’s a multiplicity, it's an existence that to be a woman is not one thing. And I also find myself just very wary about arguments like that, which is to say if you're interested in fashion you've somehow been co-opted into some sort of evil, I don't know, system. Because for me I think about the women in my ancestral home town, right? Strong women. And I often say that I learned a lot from just watching the market women in Osoka and in Abba, the small towns that I know in Nigeria. I learnt a lot about feminism from them, much more than I did from reading any sort of Western feminist texts. And so these are women who are holding their families together, they’re strong, they pushback at the constraints that the society puts on them. And you know what, every Sunday they want nothing more than to dress up in the shiniest of dresses and in their heels. And they don't have very much by the way. And so for me, when we start to make these arguments that often in theory I suppose can sound elegant, but when you really apply it to the real world, what is the harm? I've never quite understood that. What is the harm in a woman making a choice for herself that this is a thing that makes her happy.

AMT: You mentioned your great grandmother earlier, and the sort of the roots of feminism in other parts of the world and I'd like to hear more. Tell me about your great grandmother.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: My great grandmother, from stories my father tells me and I've been doing a lot of research on her lately, was a woman who her husband died when she was quite young and so she was left to raise her only child, my grandfather. And because Igbo society, like most societies is very patriarchal, her husband's people then wanted to take over her husband's property because they said, you know, we're his brothers, his property belongs to us not to you. Which really was the norm. But she refused and she fought back and she went and she made alliances with the powerful elders in my hometown, and she got them on her side and she pushed back and she took ownership of the property. And she was then known, and still is, people will often say oh your great grandmother was a troublemaker and she was headstrong. None of which are complements, obviously, in their opinion. But for me are huge compliments, because what it meant was that she was living in a world that didn't really give her room to be the things that she decided she wanted to be, so she pushed back. And sometimes my father tells me that I am her comeback because Igbo cosmology believes in reincarnation. And I take a kind of comfort in that. I like to sort of think that that her spirit is hovering over me. And I find that that's what I admire most in women now. And of course it depends on the woman's particular circumstances. But, you know, that our world doesn't often allow women to push back and that sometimes they just get to the point where they go you know what, I want to live the life I want to live.

AMT: It's especially powerful to find out women decades ago did it, for women today growing up.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes.

AMT: To know that there is a pattern that existed long ago.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes. Very much so. And I think for me, even more particularly, to know that there were many of the stories on the continent of Africa. Because I found myself becoming very interested in pre-colonial West African life and ideas and reading a lot about them. And I find it affirming because I'm realizing that there's a lot that changed with the advent of colonialism and with Christianity in particular. And so that Igbo culture before Christianity, even though it was patriarchal, that women had more roles and a bit more flexibility than they did when Christianity came with its very very rigid ideas of what male and female were supposed to be.

AMT: There's a theme in your writing called bottom power, what is that?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: So in Nigeria which a Nigerian will call bottom powa, is that idea that a woman has access to a man who is powerful because she uses her, I'm thinking of all the expressions I dislike, you know, her feminine wiles or that kind of thing. That she that she can get a man who's powerful to do whatever she wants because she, that idea of women as sort of the Jezebel, Eve woman who tempts a man and then has power over him and whatnot. So that's really, that’s the idea of bottom power in Nigeria. And so you'll hear people often talk about, even women in high positions, particularly in government, people often, there's always an ever so slight snicker and an ever so slight assumption that there's an elemental bottom power in how she got into her position. I find it offensive on so many levels but also because it's really not power at all. And sometimes people will say well here's a reason we don't need feminism, women have bottom power, right? And my thing is no, because it's not power at all. What you have is kind of blighted access to somebody else who is powerful and often it's men who say this, and I say to them I would like to have the power and I'd like you to have the bottom power.

AMT: And how do they react?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: They laugh. [chuckles]

AMT: Nervously I'm guessing, yeah.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yeah. The kind of laughter that ends the conversation. [chuckles]

AMT: Well is there a lesson for daughters in bottom power, in raising daughters as feminists?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes, I think the lesson is quite simple, which is bottom power is not power, do not ever think that, don't ever depend on it, and it's bullshit. I mean, if there’s a lesson that's what it is. I just really believe very strongly in the idea of teaching girls from very early on a certain kind of confidence, I still hear young women in Nigeria saying oh I want to get married to the manager of the big company. And, you know, I want a world where we raise girls to think I can be the manager of the big company. The idea of a woman's power being a consequence of sort of proximity to a man is just, it's so troubling to me on so many levels.

AMT: I'm going to stop you there because the CBC News is coming up. My guest, writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is going to stick around. We're discussing her new book, it is called Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. And we were talking to her on this International Women's Day. We've got more on the book, more on raising feminists, and what's happening in American politics in our next half hour, so stay with us. We'll also hear another one of your personal moments of disruption. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM and online on cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come, Craig Oliver was a chief strategist to the British Prime Minister David Cameron throughout the so-called Brexit campaign. They battled hard to convince Britons to remain in the European Union, but the surprising result has triggered Britain's exit from the EU. What happened and what's ahead for Britain outside of Europe. We will hear Craig Oliver’s view on that in half an hour. But first, raising the cause of feminism by raising feminists.

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AMT: If you are just joining us, my guest today is writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is the author of novels including Americana. She's also a celebrated public speaker whose inspiring words on feminism have made their way into a Beyoncé song. If you missed the first part of our conversation, you can find it on our web site, our podcast, or on the CBC Radio app. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is in Washington. And today we are discussing the ideas in her new book it is called Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. This book is actually based on a letter to a friend.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: It is. It's a letter to a friend who has had a baby girl. and I also want to say that I kind of wanted the subtitle to have a playfulness to it, you know, a feminist manifesto in 15 suggestions.

AMT: [chuckles]

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: I mean it's. [chuckles]

AMT: Do these 15 things and you'll be fine. [laughs]

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: [chuckles] I have the solution to all of the world's problems.

AMT: No, but there’s a little bit of thinking though, if you thought this way about the world it might actually open you up, some of those suggestions, right? It’s fair.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yeah, I think so. I do really think so. You know, I'm now the mother of a child and I intend to follow them as much as I can. And I think they’re just really things that, they're not that difficult but it's really in the end, it's about just being very alert. I think that's what it means. Because I think that there are people, I mean, obviously parents love their children and are well-meaning and they’ve daughters who are not feminists. And a lot of it is, you know, you do things that just seem ordinary and normal if something is done over and over, it just seems like it's the thing to do. And even language, I mean, I think even the language we use, I think it's important to be very alert to because it's so easy to perpetuate ideas that diminish women and girls without even meaning to or without necessarily knowing that you're doing it. You know, things like there's an Igbo saying when a young girl is being, so a girl is doing something that's considered childish. When I was growing up, people would often say to how well, you know, you have to stop that you know you're old enough to find a husband. And I used to say that and it's sort of playful, you know, so you'd say to her I can't believe you're still behaving like a child you're actually old enough to find a husband. But now I don't say that, because I think that it's language that is, so it can be a joke on the surface but what it's doing really is that it's sending signals to a girl about what she should aspire to. So now I say to girls, I say OK, you can't, you have to stop being childish, you are old enough to find a job.

AMT: Hm.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: And I think just that, just, you know, just simple things like that.

AMT: You say something else that I was struck by, you say reject the idea of likeability.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yeah, I think--

AMT: You don't have to be everyone's friend.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: No you don’t.

AMT: You can be yourself.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yeah. And I think it's women and girls who are raised to think that way. I mean, you know, just that idea where I know so many women who tie themselves in knots because they’re thinking am I likeable? You know, am I a good person? Was I nice enough? I know women who are in positions of power at work and they're in positions where they have to reprimand their subordinates for things that require reprimanding right? But they spend so much time thinking about have I done it in a way that will still make them like me, do they hate me? And many of the men I know in certain positions like that, they just do their job. You know, they reprimand who needs to be reprimanded. And not to say of course that I'm encouraging, that I'm suggesting sort of that we be unkind. I mean, I think kindness is a quality that both men and women should have. But there's a certain kind of likeability that we teach girls and that women sort of adopt that is very inauthentic, that often requires, you know, flattening their spirits, often requires pretending, often requires tolerating what they really don't want to tolerate. And even young girls who are abused, who are molested, who are put in positions of discomfort, they still find themselves thinking of ways to be likeable to the people who are hurting them.

AMT: You know, and arguably that likeability issue is one we saw play out in the last US election campaign.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Oh absolutely. I think Hillary Clinton's loss, and just even the way she was covered, I was struck by how much we were told about her being likeable or not. [chuckles] And at some point I thought if I hear one more time, I'm just going to pull my hair out of my head. Why do we care? And why are we not talking about likeability when it comes to her opponent? Who in my opinion actually, that might have been a more appropriate conversation to have.

AMT: But as you just pointed out, there's a different conversation for men and women.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes there is.

AMT: And that's what you're talking about and changing. I want to ask you though, you have said you experienced the US election in a deeply personal way. Tell me your reaction to what you saw play out then?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: I was stunned. I was just also just personally sad because I was I was a supporter of Hillary Clinton's. And, you know, a complete and unapologetic supporter. I thought she was competent, I kind of had a lot of empathy for what I could see. She was constantly having to try and juggle and balance and, you know, I could see that in debates she had been told well, you know, you have to be careful about this because, you know, you're a woman, if you come across as too aggressive or shrill they will not support you. So I could just see how difficult it was. But at the same time I just thought she would win because I thought surely the more competent person wins. And when she didn't, I don't know, and it wasn't just that she lost, it was that she lost to somebody who I just felt wasn't fit to be president. And it stunned me. And it also made me, it gave me a kind of strange kind of anxiety because it suddenly shook the foundation of what I thought America was about. And not to say that, because I grew up in Nigeria, so sort of political uncertainty is very familiar to me. But the reason I was so shaken is that I didn't expect that kind of political uncertainty to happen in the US.

AMT: So what does that tell you about the United States and about the role that women play in the climate that we're in now?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: I think, well, the first thing is that I realized America has democracy has never been tested and now it's being tested. And maybe it's not quite, you know, as some people say, all that. It's not, there's so many things that people talked about during the campaigns and they said oh it's not going to happen because this is America, right? Oh of course nobody can just decide to arbitrarily decide that certain people can't come into the country, America is not like that, but I suppose it turns out that it is. But also I think for me, I'm very interested in the idea that, you know, that a majority of white women did not vote for Hillary Clinton. And I don't think of course that women should vote for women because they're women. You know, I think somebody has to you know appeal to your ideas and convince you and whatnot. But I just find it interesting because particularly because she was running against somebody who had shown misogyny in its most crude form. And to me that seemed reason enough to just completely reject him. And so it's been interesting to me and it's also made me wonder about gender and race, right? Because a lot of the conversation has been that people who did not like the personality of Donald Trump but they kind of liked what he was preaching about the economic future of the US which, you know, I think is fair enough. But then I also think that there are many black women, 98 per cent of whom voted for Hillary Clinton, there are many black women who also want economic changes in their lives. But I suppose for them it's a question of at what price? You know, at what cost? What are you willing to endorse in order to get that? And so I've just found myself thinking a lot about, you know, the intersections of gender and race.

AMT: Mm. Tell me a little bit more because I've heard some of this, the criticism and the thought around this and obviously we can't know what every woman who voted for Donald Trump was thinking but there is something there about how white women registered what was going on versus women of colour.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yeah. I think women of colour, because they are living their lives not just as women but as people of colour. And for whom Donald Trump's rhetoric meant a kind of dehumanization of people of colour. And so for them it's intolerable. So, you know, you're saying to me you're not fully human but hey I'm going to cut your taxes. And I'm sitting here thinking I really would like to pay less in taxes but I also kind of want to be seen as a full complex human being who is worthy of dignity. And then you sort of think well what do I choose? I think that, and I have to say really honestly, I was kind of taken aback at the number, just looking at the numbers of white women who voted for Donald Trump. I was surprised. I think there's also a level of misogyny because I don't think misogyny is the sole preserve of men. I think that many women deal with misogyny, because I just think our society is misogynistic. And so both men and women absorb ideas of misogyny. I think that there are people who just, the same people who just talked about how they just didn't like Hillary Clinton. I think it had a lot to do with misogyny. And I think it's that there are people who don't like the idea of a woman seeking power. There are people who don't like the idea of a woman doing. So I think she was very harshly criticized for doing things that really I think politicians do and male politicians do all the time. I mean, are these things necessarily endearing? No, but that's how politics works. And I think there were many women who were very harsh in their criticism of Hillary Clinton and saying oh we can't stand her, we don't like her. And I think the root of that was misogyny.

AMT: It's interesting because there are Trump supporters, very prominent women who would argue that they are feminists, that they totally reject that.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Hm.

AMT: I didn't invite anyone on for you to debate on that one. But is there a place to have that conversation?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: You know, I mean, I'm very much in support and actually quite enthusiastic about having conversations with people who see the world differently from the way that I see the world, because I'm always looking to learn. And also, I really like a good argument. [chuckles] So dinner parties at my house, I have friends from, you know, I have a friend, a very close friend who is an avowed libertarian. I have another close friend who works in investment banking and who's, you know, Republican. But the thing about what Donald Trump represents for me is that it's not even about conservative principles, some of which I think are worth engaging with. I think there's something very ugly about his rhetoric. I think, and that for me is why the idea of quote unquote, a conversation makes no sense. So here's an example. I don't see why I would have to be in a position of saying to somebody, you know, you can't just say that Mexican immigrants are criminals, rapists, blah blah blah. I mean, you cannot dehumanize an entire group of people like that. You have no basis for that. It's also just untrue. I mean, it's factually incorrect. But to have that conversation I think is, I suppose my point is I don't want to be the person who is debating the full humanity of other human beings. I just don't want to be that person.

AMT: Mm. We are in a point where there are people who are doing that--

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes.

AMT: Because of the political climate. That's the tough world in which you are now raising a daughter, in which you've written this.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes, I think, yes it is. And if my child were old enough to be sort of be part of this conversation, hopefully by the time she's old enough, I'm hoping that we will not have to because hopefully the American administration would be different. But if she were, I think what I would start off with telling her is it's not even I mean, there's no debating this right? In some ways it's also similar to conversations about, for example, black people genetically inferior. Let's have that debate. And I just feel like no, let's have debates about, you know, GDP, let's have debates about school choice, let's have debates about welfare states, let's have debates about taxes, but no, not about the humanity of people. No.

AMT: You write on how to raise a daughter to be a feminist. What about the sons?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes actually, that's also very important. I was thinking I should probably do a second letter, no I’m kidding.

AMT: [laughs]

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: I'm just waiting for a chat with a friend of mine to have a son. You know, I was very, I'm an aunt who's very present, I’m actually the aunt who my nephews and nieces are just tired of because I'm always in their lives and I helped raise my nephew. So I actually know what to do with baby boys. [chuckles] And before I had my child, I remember thinking I want a girl, really for purely for vanity reasons. But I remember thinking I don’t really know what to do with a baby girl because the babies that I have helped raise have been boys. I think if anything, what I would seeing in general, is that there are certain things we teach girls that we need to teach boys. And there's certain things we teach boys, the idea of sort of facing the world to a certain kind of confidence that we need to teach girls. I think we need to teach boys that vulnerability is a good thing. We need to teach boys that it's OK to cry. And we also need to teach girls that it's OK for boys to cry because I think that's often a problem as well. Because girls too have absorbed all of these ideas so that when boys cry the girls are thinking wait, you’re not supposed to cry.

AMT: It's all about the expectations huh?

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes.

AMT: The false expectations that we begin early.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Yes.

AMT: it's really important to hear your voice. Thank you for talking to me today.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Thank you. Thanks very much.

AMT: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joined us from Washington. Her latest book is Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. It is out this week. As you listen to her, what are you thinking? Let us know. Very different view and ideas than those put forward by Jessa Crispin just a few weeks ago on this program. How do you raise a feminist in 2017? Email us cbc.ca/thecurrent. You can find us @TheCurrentCBC on Twitter or find us on Facebook.

How death in Gaby Eirew's life inspired a legacy app

Guests: Gaby Eirew

[Music: The Disruptors Theme]

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Well, this season as part of our project The Disruptors, we have been hearing some of your own personal moments of disruption, stories of upheaval. Moments that changed everything. Today's story comes from listener Gaby Eirew in Vancouver.

[Music: upright bass plucking]

GABY EIREW: We had come to Canada and we were finding our feet, and I had two children that I'd brought over, Pepe and Milo. And soon after, I had David. And then my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he died quite soon after. And I went to phone my friend Emma and I found that she had died, and she had committed suicide. And she had three children the same age as ours, and really I was plunged into huge grief. Without having anybody here who knew either my dad or me or Emma, and that was very very difficult. I was trying to establish things to be normal and healthy and good for our children here. And I really couldn't catch my breath. I had this strong feeling I didn't know which way was up, and it was a very very strange landscape that I did not enjoy and was really alien to me.

[Music: upright bass plucking]

GABY EIREW: When I wasn't breastfeeding or looking after someone or packing sandwiches or going to play things, I started wondering around and asking people I could find about their experiences of death. And then I realized I needed to do it more properly. And so I started looking for people who had experienced the death of one or both of their parents before they were 16. And I started reading up about death and I found that one in 29 or one in 30 children will experience the death of their sibling or their parent before they're 16. And I found that quite shocking. Because as an adult I was struggling with the death of my parent and I was imagining how hard that must be for a child.

[Music: piano]

GABY EIREW: And I really wanted to know for my friend's children, what would be useful to tell them. So I really was asking people if you lost a parent, if you experienced the death of your parent, what would have helped you at the time or later into the future? Many of them, most of them, the vast majority of them said they were left nothing, absolutely nothing apart from money or a will. Many of them felt guilt in not remembering, if they expense the death of their parent early, they had huge guilt not remembering their parents face or voice. And the biggest thing people wanted to hear was I love you with their name on the end from that parent. The other thing that was interesting is that people said at the funeral I was told how amazing my mom or my dad was. But as I was growing up I needed to feel whole and I needed to feel I didn't just have to be amazing. So being told stories of anger or work life balance or conflict or romance or things going wrong or naughty jokes, those were the things that these children and then going into adulthood really yearned for. Initially, I was doing it for me. I was doing it kind of selfishly. I wanted to know, I wanted to understand, I wanted to help my friend’s children. But I realized quite quickly I would need to disseminate this information. And first I thought that I would write just a newspaper article or something. But so many people said they wanted to see and hear their parent. I made a list of questions that I thought if somebody answers these they will cover pretty much everything. And maybe, you know, about romance, about education, about life before the person got sick, about how they feel about their children, about names they'd like for their children's children. And we took the questions and we made it into an app. The app is video recording and question prompting. And as soon as you got the question you want, you can click on why the research says it's important and then you can record yourself. And you can add or delete or edit any questions and you can go back and look at the recordings you've already made. And what it does, it gives a audio visual legacy for the next generation or even the person someone else that you love. If they want to hear their parents say the naughtiest thing they did at school, they can get just that. And if they want to hear the recipe or the thing that they whispered to them at night, they can get just that too. We call it Record Me Now. And my dream is that every parent leaves something for their children that's emotional and supportive and that's why I made it free, because, you know, I would just like anyone to leave something with their will for their child. And I saw so many children when I was volunteering with crumpled up photographs or old birthday cards or listening repeatedly to answer machine messages that we made it free, we made it private. And we also made it question by question. So if you want to talk about your death you can, but if you want to talk about your hobby or, you know, your gardening or a particular memory of your child, you can just do that and leave that as a memory.

[Music: guitar picking]

GABY EIREW: One lady said it's not when her dad set the specific questions, it’s at the end when he said where do you turn the bloody thing off? She said that brought him home to her.

[Music: guitar plucking]

AMT: Well that is Gaby Eirew, sharing her moment of disruption, talking about her free app Record Me Now. The story was produced by The Current’s Ines Calabrese and Josh Bloch is our documentary producer. We'll have a link to Gaby Eirew’s app and information about it on our website. If you'd like to share your own moment of disruption, an event that changed your life. Contact us through that same website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. Want to hear what we've got coming up tomorrow on The Current. Dr. Brian Goldman, the host of CBC Radio's White Coat, Black Art will join me to talk about his trip to Fukushima Prefecture in Japan. That was the site in 2011 of the tragic earthquake and tsunami that disabled the Daiichi nuclear power plant. Brian Goldman will bring us the voices of people still suffering the fallout from radiation exposure that has led to cancer. And one of the voices is Ryoji Okoshi who is a survivor, whose exposure has now led to thyroid cancer.

SOUNDCLIP

RYOJI OKOSHI: [Japanese speaking language] [through translator] I reflect a lot. What troubled me was that during construction of the power plant, there was numerous oversights, putting the auxiliary power supply seaward, installing machines imported from the US as is. This was utter nonsense. So why on earth was this nuclear power plant built on the sea coast in this day and age of technical advancements? And based on a prediction that a tsunami would not exceed ten metres. This truly ignored the human factor. It's something that I think is unacceptable. I have five grandchildren, the oldest is 15, one is two. When we look at our grandchildren's faces, we all think about a future. What kind of crime was this?

AMT: One of the people Dr. Brian Goldman met in Japan as he tracked the medical fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Hear him tomorrow on The Current. Stay with us in our next half hour. Behind the scenes of the Brexit campaign. One of former British PM's closest aides tracked it all. He's waiting in the wings to talk to us about it all. This is The Current.

[Music: Extro]

Inside Brexit: Craig Oliver recounts battle for the soul of Britain

Guests: Craig Oliver

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID CAMERON: I held nothing back. I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain is stronger, safer, and better off inside the European Union. And I made clear the referendum was about this and this alone, not the future of any single politician, including myself. But the British people have made a very clear decision to take a different path. And as such, I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction. I will do everything I can as prime minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months. But I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.

AMT: Well, that was David Cameron, some of his final words as British prime minister last June. His resignation speech came the morning after the so-called Brexit referendum, when British voters narrowly chose to leave the European Union. David Cameron, who had championed the losing remain side felt he had to step aside. But even with a new prime minister, Theresa May at the helm, Britain's path to leaving the EU remains rocky and contentious. Just yesterday, the House of Lords passed an amendment that may put up new obstacles, even as prime minister May prepares for important negotiations with the EU set to begin later this month. Today a new British budget comes down, one that is expected to try to mitigate the effects of so much uncertainty. This tumult all started with that Brexit vote and throughout the campaign, one of David Cameron's most loyal and active team members was his director of politics and communications Craig Oliver. He has now recounted that battle for the soul of Britain in a new book, it is called Unleashing Demons: The Inside Story of Brexit. And Craig Oliver joins us from London. Hello.

CRAIG OLIVER: Good morning.

AMT: Well we just heard David Cameron. What was that moment like? Watching a man you clearly respect and admire resigning after such a devastating loss.

CRAIG OLIVER: There was a whole mix of emotions that were going on. Obviously we felt desperately sorry that we'd lost. I thought it was a wrong decision for the country. But it'd also had been a very bitter and bloody, divisive fight. And so there was a sense in which relief of it being over as well I think. So very mixed emotions.

AMT: And what was that night like for you once it was clear that Britain had voted to leave the European Union?

CRAIG OLIVER: Well it was extraordinary, at 10:00PM when the polls closed on June the 23rd, you couldn't find anybody who thought that the leave side had won, which is quite an extraordinary situation. So hedge funds were betting on it, the currency markets were set for a level that we would remain, all the pollsters were saying that the remain side was going to win probably by about eight points. But it slowly became clear as the votes were being counted, the leave was doing dramatically better than expected and remain doing less well. So the way that I describe it in the book is it's a bit like walking on a path to safety, only to suddenly to drop into quicksand and realize that nobody is going to pull you out of it.

AMT: Nigel Farage had actually conceded had he not at one point?

CRAIG OLIVER: He did, he did an interview which was actually recorded but embargoed until 10:00, and it went out saying that he felt that he had lost and that it was over.

AMT: Hm. Why did David Cameron even call the referendum on staying or leaving the European Union?

CRAIG OLIVER: It's funny, I've done a lot of events and interviews and a lot of people think that it was as if he woke up one morning and said I’ll tell you what, I'm just going to risk my entire political future and Britain's role in the world on a referendum. In fact, the reality was for many many years this had been like a slow train coming and it arrived in the station on David Cameron's watch. We were in a situation where scores of Conservative MPs were rebelling on anything and everything to do with Europe, and they were also trying to amend legislation that was only tangentially linked to Europe so that it could actually get another day in the sun. We also had a popular press that were campaigning very hard for it and we also had a situation where the so-called democratic deficit. You had to have been 60 to have voted the last time on the EU issue. So there was a huge amount of pressure. And David Cameron felt that it was necessary to actually try and get this boulder out of the road of British politics in order that we could move on.

AMT: How strong were the arguments he used to try to convince Britain to stay in the EU?

CRAIG OLIVER: Very strong. The focus of our argument was based around the economy. And if you think back to James Carville in Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, he used the phrase, “it's the economy, stupid”. And that's the closest thing to an iron law in politics, certainly in the UK and lots of the Western world. It’s very hard to point to an election or a referendum where the side that hasn't focused on being the most competent in terms in looking after the economy and the risk of not voting for them has lost. Actually this time, the issue that took over that was immigration. And about 30 days before the actual vote, we got figures on immigration to the country that were more than three times the level that the government wanted it set at. And when you are in a situation where we were recommending that people remain part of an institution, the European Union, which says that there needs to be no limit to immigration into the country regardless of circumstances. That's a pretty tough thing to have to argue about.

AMT: So you actually had statistics that showed greater numbers of immigration than you expected? At the same time, the Leave side was really arguing that they were arguing immigration over economy anyway, were they not?

CRAIG OLIVER: Well when they started, it was very much to do with sovereignty, the ability to run your own affairs. And there was a lot of focus on that and also focusing being a kind of swashbuckling, free trading nation, a bit like Singapore. That didn't get much traction but immigration really did as an issue. And so towards the end of the campaign, we found that there was an absolutely relentless focus on immigration as an issue. And one of the arguments that they used was that Turkey would be joining the European Union in the next two or three years and as a result of that, millions of people would enter our country. Now anybody who knows anything about Turkey and the European Union knows that there's actually very little chance of Turkey joining soon, if at all ever. But this was propagated as an argument consistently and was very hard to refute.

AMT: And of course millions of Turks, that is millions of Muslims, right?

CRAIG OLIVER: Well a lot of people said that there was an undercurrent and tone and hint in that. Some of the campaigning, so there were two sort of Leave organizations. One was the official Leave campaign and the other one was run by Nigel Farage, which was called Leave.EU. And towards the end of their campaign, he launched a poster which had the words breaking point on it. And it had a whole load of people swarming across the border and was suggesting that somehow that this was what was going on in the European Union. In fact, it was people on the Croatia-Slovenia border, and actually some of the faces in that poster which were originally white were changed to brown. So it was an incredibly controversial poster because it was a lot of people felt that there were real hints of racism in it.

AMT: At the same time, there's a lot going on amongst conservative MPs, Theresa May, the current prime minister played an interesting role in the lead up to the referendum. How did Conservatives on the Stay side view her in those months?

CRAIG OLIVER: Well, David Cameron became quite frustrated with her in the run up to the referendum. He was saying, you know, it's the biggest political decision I've had to take. It's the biggest issue facing the country and we don't know where the home secretary stands on this issue. And one morning, he was on the way to a speech and I suddenly was aware that he picked up his mobile phone and he was calling and speaking in quite animated terms to somebody, and I realized it was Theresa May. And he was basically saying to her look, you need to come down off the fence and you need to make clear what your position is. Now later that day, she made an announcement that was interpreted as her supporting the Remain campaign. But she was always very equivocal. She was 51 per cent, 49 per cent for Leave in a lot of her statements. And that was tended to be reported as well look, people who are even supposed to be supporting you aren’t that favourable about it. So whenever she was in the news around it it was always difficult. And she also made a number of statements around immigration that again, were used by the other side to say look, even your own supporters aren't very confident about this.

AMT: You talk about her submarine strategy.

CRAIG OLIVER: Yeah. So in number ten, it was felt that basically for long periods that she would disappear from view and not surface in order to fight the cause. And I think David Cameron found that quite surprising because actually previously a lot of her statements have been remarkably pro-European Union.

AMT: And she wasn't the only one, there were things going on with very key ministers were there not? They were turning on him at some point.

CRAIG OLIVER: Yeah. So I think David Cameron knew that there were certain ministers that were well-known but not that famous who would automatically go for Leave, because they had always campaigned on it and they've made speeches on it. I think he felt very surprised at some people who came forward and almost he felt I think were using it as a bit of a career opportunity. And he found that very difficult.

AMT: Boris Johnson for one, turned out to be he was polling on leadership.

CRAIG OLIVER: Well there was a whole idea. I mean look, you'd have to ask Boris Johnson yourself and I don't want to accuse him. But there was a very great drama in the lead up to Boris making a decision about which way he was going to go. And so, you know, he wrote two newspaper articles, only one of which was published. One was for Remain, one was for Leave. He was publicly clear that he hadn't really made up his mind and was finding it all very difficult. And when we did a renegotiation with the EU, David Cameron was in his office in number 10, talking about how he was going to speak to the cabinet about it and also how he was going to go out into the street and tell the British public about it. And suddenly there was a ping on his BlackBerry and he sort of put his elbows on his knees and glasses on the end of his nose and spent a long time scrolling through an email and he looked up and said well it looks like out. And he didn't use Boris' name but I knew at that moment, that's exactly what he was talking about because it had become such a huge issue. Then four hours later, I got a call from David Cameron after we'd done all the stuff with the cabinet and the media and he said you haven't told anybody that Boris is for out yet have you? And I said no. And he said well good, because I've had another text from him which is suggesting that he could still go for Remain. We then didn't hear from him for 24 hours. In fact, until about nine minutes before he did a rather chaotic press conference outside his house and he sent David Cameron another email, which was saying that he felt he did in fact have to go for Leave. And he used quite an unusual phrase in there, he said he thought Brexit would be crushed like the toad beneath the harrow. Which is a quote from a Kipling poem, which is about how small things can be crushed by great objects. And what he was suggesting was that he thought actually he was going to back the Leave campaign and that it wouldn't win. In fact, the Brexit strategy would work, so the Remain strategy would work and that he would lose. So it was quite interesting that even when he was making that decision, he didn't actually think they were going to win.

AMT: Hm. And of course, you’re the Prime Minister's loyal strategist, you're watching this kind of thing going. What are you thinking? How much is your blood boiling?

CRAIG OLIVER: I don't know if it was necessarily blood boiling. I think that the reality was that we felt that it had just very quickly gone completely out of control, and became very very bitter and very divisive. And I think David Cameron was genuinely shocked when people who had not only been working with him very closely professionally, but who he counted as friends were really questioning his personality and his morality on issues. So one Saturday afternoon, it became clear to us that Michael Gove and Boris Johnson had written an open letter to the press that was basically questioning David Cameron's integrity on immigration, and was saying that he was corroding public trust on the issue. And I think David Cameron was very surprised, shocked, and actually hurt that somebody would actually question, you know, his intentions and his motivations on this, particularly people who he regularly had at his house for dinner and spent time with their children and that kind of thing.

AMT: Michael Gove of course was the Canadian equivalent of the justice minister, I think, at the time, am I right?

CRAIG OLIVER: He was and he'd been very close to David Cameron for a number of years. He'd been education secretary, he'd been his chief whip. And actually he spent a lot of time with him and his family personally. So I think he found that the hardest of all, was quite how hard that Michael Gove was prepared to fight and the way in which he was behaving. I don't think he expected him to pull his punches intellectually but I think he didn't expect him to make it quite so personal.

AMT: You know, it's interesting, I remember reading an analysis in The New York Times, I do believe, not long after this vote, where the it was characterized as a fight among former Etonian school boys Michael Gove, David Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne, the Chancellor, almost like an internal spat amongst the elite that caused this great chasm.

CRAIG OLIVER: Well two of those four didn’t actually go to Eton, so I think we can sort of dismiss that. I mean, I think there's a danger in these things as people try and hook onto an easy explanation and then try and make that everything. The reality is for 40 years, the EU in Britain had had very little good PR. It had become a massive issue inside the Conservative Party, a defining issue inside the Conservative Party and it had become a seismic event. And I think just to reduce it to a kind of the playground politics of private schools just seems to me, just quite wide of the mark really.

AMT: You quoted Kipling, and at the very beginning of your book you actually quote King Lear. So there's a Shakespearean quality to this fight amongst leaders though.

CRAIG OLIVER: I think there was a sense in a lot of what happens in Shakespeare is that ordinary people, or sometimes not ordinary people but people in big positions suddenly in circumstances that are outside their control. And the quote that I used was that “if a big wheel is rolling down a hill, you need to let go your grip lest it break your neck”. And that's what I think it sometimes felt like, was that suddenly there was this thing that was just out of control. Nobody expected it to take off in the way that it did or to become as personal and as difficult as it is. And that's the great issue, a lot of people feel that a referendum is no way to decide an issue of this magnitude because it is binary and it is very complicated issue. And asking people to say yes or no on something that big and allowing them to attach their concerns about the government or people they don't like or issues that are tangential but they want to bring to the fore is a quite a difficult thing.

AMT: And then there was another event. I want to take you back to what was the darkest moment

of the referendum campaign. This is a clip from June 16th of 2016.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm Dee Collins. I'm the temporary chief constable here at West Yorkshire police. Just before 1:00 today, Jo Cox MP for Batley and Spenborough was attacked in Market Street Birstall. I am now very sad to have to report that she has died as a result of her injuries. Before going into further detail, I would like to express our deepest sympathies to her family and friends at this tragic time.

AMT: And Jo Cox was a Labour MP, a strong advocate of Britain staying in the EU. Craig Oliver, how did you and the prime minister react to her killing?

CRAIG OLIVER: Deep shock. The fact that somebody who actually clearly wasn't actually part of the Conservative Party, as you say, was a Labour Party MP, but was somebody who actually we had huge respect for and had met on the international aid circuit before, you know, she became an MP. And she was an incredibly decent person who clearly represented her constituency extremely well, was very well liked, she was a young mother. And hearing that she'd been shot and kicked and stabbed to death on the streets of Britain, it was clearly deeply shocking. I was in London, sort of working on the campaign. But David Cameron had actually flown to Malta that day, or sorry Gibraltar that day in order to rally because they could vote as well. And he landed and heard the news and had to basically fly back home. And then what happened after that was that campaigning was suspended. And I think that there was a real sense of shock and disbelief that this had happened and that somebody who shouted Britain first had done this. But what's interesting is actually Jo Cox's constituency voted to leave the EU.

AMT: Mm. In hindsight, a proponent of the Remain side is murdered and that's a moment in time, and obviously it's one person, but did that that signal the volatility of that issue on another level?

CRAIG OLIVER: I think it's really difficult, I mean, to actually try and attribute everything down to, you know, to say that it was just simply because we were having this campaign I think is wrong. And that clearly the person who murdered her was a deeply confused person with some very very twisted views that had been there for a very long time. But what it did I think, was bring everybody up short and make everybody think that there are things that are more important than politics and arguing and the bitterness and divisiveness of the campaign. I think it made people think quite hard about that. But what is interesting is that the book is called Unleashing Demons. And the reason it's called that is that we could come up with many many reasons for having the referendum and why we thought it was inevitable, and on a way to a speech with David Cameron and I said well can you think of one reason why we shouldn't have a referendum? And he said because you could unleash demons of which ye know not. And I thought that might be a quote from Shakespeare or the Bible but when I looked it up it turned out it wasn’t. And actually he sort of made it up himself. But those words were prophetic. And in the campaign there was a huge amount of bitterness and divisiveness and personal animosity. And what's actually sad is that actually since then, there is still a lot of bitterness and divisiveness and this campaign was or this referendum was held partly to try and clear the air a bit or drain the poison from the system, and in reality the country feels very divided in many ways still.

AMT: We're seeing a polarization in a lot of places right now. And Nigel Farage, the former head of UKIP, the United Kingdom Independent Party, and one of the leaders of the Leave side of course, has become a kind of a confidant of Donald Trump. What do you make of that relationship?

CRAIG OLIVER: Well they're sort of peas in a pod really. Because they are basically, I heard before that you were doing a series on disruptors.

AMT: Yes.

CRAIG OLIVER: They are sort of political disruptors. And their view is to try and get in there and cause as much disruption and, you know, in order to, you know, build what they see is a positive. So they are very very similar. They're very similar in terms of the devices they use. Quite a lot of both of them say is extremely questionable in terms of its factual accuracy. They're quite willing to make assertions that are not backed up by evidence. So what's going on in America at the moment about whether or not President Obama tapped Trump Tower, there doesn't seem to be any evidence and yet you see representatives of Donald Trump out there every day saying if this were to be true it would be terrible. Now, a lot of for me what I found very difficult was a lot of the claims of the Leave campaign were actually not true. So what we said about Turkey, that was not true. On the side of their battle bus, it said that Britain spent 350 million pounds a week on the EU, and that money can be taken back and given to the NHS. Again, not true. They said that there would be an EU army and Britain would be forced to join it. Not true. And they also claimed that the bulk of our laws were decided in foreign countries, which is just certainly not true. So that was all--

AMT: You blame the media for some of that ongoing misunderstanding though, of those untruths that just kept being repeated.

CRAIG OLIVER: Well I don't know that I would use the word blame. I think the reality is we have a very robust printed press here, which has, you know, the ability to express its political view and does so very robustly and that's the way things are. The thing that I found more difficult was actually the BBC, who I used to work for, I was the editor of their sort of main evening television programs. They seemed to me to struggle with how do you deal with a campaign that is binary and where people are making claims that are highly questionable. So it seemed to me that quite often on the news, they felt a duty to report each campaign because they were saying something. And there was very little particularly in short news bulletins or online, the places where most people get their news, are just saying by the way this actually is not true or there actually is no evidence to back this up.

AMT: We're seeing a real change certainly in the United States right now on that front. Everyday you see a basically a fact check on President Trump.

CRAIG OLIVER: Yes.

AMT: Because of concerns, the same things you raise the concerns in the US.

CRAIG OLIVER: Exactly. And I thought it was interesting that their newspapers, the headlines of the LA Times and The New York Times around this whether or not Obama did bug Trump Tower. That their headline started with no evidence for Trump's claim. And I actually thought that was a healthy development because what had been happening it felt to me in the Brexit campaign and to an extent other campaigns around the world, is that often the fact that somebody had said something was just simply reported and it wasn’t given from the off the clear context that this isn't true or is unlikely to be true or there is no evidence to back it up.

AMT: It's interesting too though that we now live in a world where people just decide to pick and choose who they're going to believe. And that is the journalistic challenge.

CRAIG OLIVER: Yeah. Certainly. And we are also seeing a feeling where people believe things in their heart or their gut and are prepared to, as we know, have filter bubbles where they have their worldview underlined, magnified, and amplified, and take out other the worldviews. And that's obviously a concerning thing. I know you're obviously a journalist, who I was a journalist, I think anybody who's a journalist, this is deeply concerning.

AMT: Before I let you go, we just have a little bit of time left. You're working now as a consultant at a firm working on the transition?

CRAIG OLIVER: No, I'm working for a company which is called Teneo, which advises chief executives around the world. And basically one of the issues that we often find ourselves talking about is Brexit, but it's among many others.

AMT: OK. And so we know that there will be negotiations. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has said he will set aside something like 60 billion pounds over three years to mitigate the effects of leaving the EU. That suggests a bleak future.

CRAIG OLIVER: It does. I mean, if you look at it in terms of the scale of British economy, that is not actually a dramatic sum of money. I think more concerning is what are the opportunities that we would have lost? Will we grow more slowly because of this? And I think that one other thing that is happening is a lot of people because nothing has been negotiated yet, and nothing's been decided, people are very blithe about saying oh it'll all be fine and everything will be OK. And the reality of negotiating Brexit is going to be the most complex issue the British government has ever faced in peacetime. It is mind bogglingly complicated. And what's concerning is that when people raise questions about it, they are often accused of being enemies of democracy or trying to overturn the result. I certainly wouldn't want to overturn the result. We lost, I respect the result. I think that Britain has made its decision. But I also want to live in a country where people feel able to raise questions and say this is difficult, and have a grown up debate where you're not questioning people's personalities and motivations just because they have a difference of opinion.

AMT: Craig Oliver, lots to learn from what you have to say. Thank you.

CRAIG OLIVER: Thank you very much.

AMT: Craig Oliver, former British prime minister's Director of politics and communications. He had that role for British PM David Cameron. His new book is called Unleashing Demons: The Inside Story of Brexit. And he joined us from London, England. That is our program for today. Remember you can always take The Current with you on the CBC Radio app, free from the App Store or Google Play. We’ll end things off where we started today with a little more from novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This is an anecdote she shares in her popular TED talk, entitled The Danger of a Single Story. And it sheds a little light on her development as a writer at a young age. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thank you for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think four is probably close to the truth. So I was an early reader. And what I read were British and American children's books. I was also an early writer. And when I began to write about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read. I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading. All my characters were white and blue eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples. And they talked a lot about the weather. How lovely it was that the sun had come out.

[Sound: crowd laughing]

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE: Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria, I had never been outside Nigeria. We didn't have snow. We ate mangoes. And we never talked about the weather because there was no need to. Now, things changed when I discovered African books. There weren't many of them available and they weren't quite as easy to find as the foreign books. But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a mental shift in my perception of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the colour of chocolate, who's kinky hair could not form ponytails could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized.

[Music: Extro]

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March 8, 2017 full episode transcript

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