Rebel News Podcast - Who was really running Twitter before Elon Musk bought it？

00:00:00.080 Hello, my Rebels. I only heard the name Yul Roth recently. I didn't know who he was until

00:00:05.260 just a few weeks ago, really. But he was the de facto CEO of Twitter. So who was he and

00:00:12.640 how did he get his important position as really the chief censor over there? Well, I'll go

00:00:16.900 through a lot of his own writings, including his PhD dissertation. You're not even going

00:00:22.560 to believe me. I won't give it away now. Okay, fine, I will. His PhD dissertation was about

00:00:28.000 the gay sex app called Grindr. He got a PhD in Grindr. I'm not making that up. I'll read 0.99

00:00:33.360 to you from his dissertation. That's ahead. But first, let me invite you to subscribe

00:00:37.380 to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com,

00:00:42.660 click subscribe, eight bucks a month, get all the video versions. And by the way, we rely

00:00:47.280 on that money to pay our bills because we don't take any money from Trudeau. All right, here's

00:00:51.220 today's podcast.

00:00:58.000 Tonight, who was really running Twitter until Elon Musk bought it? You'll be shocked but

00:01:12.660 not surprised. It's December 12th, and this is the S. Levant Show.

00:01:16.220 You're fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:01:28.000 Well, Elon Musk, I always thought he was a little bit creative and iconoclastic and a

00:01:37.600 little eccentric, but I always thought of him as the boss of Tesla, which in my mind was

00:01:43.940 sort of a lefty, cool, progressive company. At least everyone in Silicon Valley loved the

00:01:49.300 Teslas. It was green energy, even if it took a lot of rare earth minerals to make the batteries.

00:01:55.660 And of course, there were those government subsidies, but only recently have we sort

00:01:59.940 of discovered that no, he's actually a libertarian in many important ways. And of course, by buying

00:02:05.580 Twitter, he's demonstrated he's a believer in freedom of speech, which of course is the

00:02:09.260 most important of the civil liberties. It's the fundamental freedom, a strategic freedom

00:02:14.520 upon which other freedoms are based. It doesn't make much sense to be able to have an election,

00:02:19.400 say, if you don't have free speech to begin with. So Elon Musk has suddenly upended the

00:02:25.400 world. And everyone who thought he was cool now says he wasn't. 140,000 people on Twitter

00:02:32.180 said they're going to leave. They're disgusted with what he's doing to the platform. But studies

00:02:38.280 suggest that only 1.6% of those people actually did leave because they love it too much. Elton John

00:02:45.400 looks like he's one of the ones who left. He says, all my life, I've tried to use music

00:02:51.080 to bring people together. Yet it saddens me to see how misinformation is now being used to divide

00:02:57.160 our world. I've decided to no longer use Twitter, given the recent change in policy, which will allow

00:03:02.900 misinformation to flourish unchecked. Now, Elon Musk immediately wrote back in a very friendly way,

00:03:08.380 saying he liked his music and wanted to know what he was talking about, what information,

00:03:13.400 what misinformation. Well, we don't know if Elton John answered at all. Looks like he didn't,

00:03:19.660 or didn't at least publicly. I don't know if he actually has an answer. I think Elton John is

00:03:24.840 just repeating someone else's message track. Mark Ruffalo, one of the most cringe-inducing

00:03:30.920 progressives in Hollywood, he said something similar. He said, as Twitter grows more unpredictable

00:03:37.220 and harmful to marginalized groups. I'm exploring some other avenues for us to connect. I'm excited 1.00

00:03:44.620 to continue to foster and be in our great community. If you'd like to come along for the ride,

00:03:49.960 here's where to find me. And he has a list of other places. But you know what?

00:03:54.400 He couldn't even last a few hours. He's tweeting all the time. Why can't people leave Twitter?

00:04:01.240 Well, I think people actually like the conflict and the clash of ideas and the heterogeneity as

00:04:07.600 opposed to an echo chamber where everyone's saying the same thing. I mean, if you only wanted to hear

00:04:12.940 about Mark Ruffalo or Elton John, you would join their fan clubs. And I guess a lot of people did,

00:04:17.460 but some people like to see a clash of ideas. They love the network effect that everyone is there.

00:04:23.840 You know, you might have a superior technological system, but if you're the only one in it,

00:04:30.360 it doesn't really work. That's not how the internet works. I think Twitter, like so many apps, feels like

00:04:36.220 a game. Gets a little bit addictive, doesn't it? And you love seeing, at least I do, the fancy pants

00:04:44.400 getting de-fancied. Because, you know, there's always someone bigger and more important than you. And

00:04:50.400 you could say that a celebrity, entrepreneur, richest man in the world is bigger than any

00:04:55.880 other celebrity he's bantering with. It's sort of fun to watch and clash. And it's also fun to watch

00:05:01.860 Twitter itself figure things out in real time, including making mistakes in real time. That's

00:05:07.720 interesting to see, too. Over the weekend, Dave Chappelle, the politically incorrect comedian,

00:05:15.420 was in San Francisco, and he invited Elon Musk on the stage. Always risky. There were cheers,

00:05:22.600 but there were also boos. Take a listen.

00:05:24.240 Always the richest man in the world.

00:05:26.320 Whoo! 0.78

00:05:26.440 Bean! 0.83

00:05:56.300 pretty evenly split i think but think of any other billionaire how would it have been say if

00:06:07.900 that were bill gates on the stage well i know one woman who would have been booing his ex-wife you 1.00

00:06:14.660 know it was also widely reported that bill had a friendship or business or some kind of contact

00:06:20.600 with jeffrey epstein and that you were not uh that that was very upsetting to you did that play a

00:06:25.480 role in the in the divorce at all in this process yeah as i said it's not one thing it was many

00:06:32.100 things but i did not like uh that he'd had meetings with jeffrey epstein no and you made that clear to

00:06:39.700 him i made that clear to him i also met jeffrey epstein exactly one time did you yes because i

00:06:46.660 wanted to see who this man was and um i regretted it from the second i stepped in the door he was

00:06:53.920 abhorrent he was evil personified i had nightmares about it afterwards so you know my heart breaks

00:07:01.900 for these young women because that's how i felt and here i'm an older woman my god i feel terrible

00:07:07.340 for those young women it's awful you felt that the moment you walked in i didn't realize it yeah

00:07:11.700 and you shared that with bill and he still continued to spend time with him any of the questions

00:07:17.860 remaining about what bill's relationship there was those are for bill to answer okay but i made it very

00:07:23.880 clear how i felt about him yeah so elon musk that's the new ceo of twitter but who was the old ceo of

00:07:32.300 twitter well a lot of people know this person named jack dorsey he was the inspirer the creator of twitter

00:07:40.860 he always had his head in the clouds a bit i found it quite endearing he was a dreamy sort of founder

00:07:47.080 he would occasionally post things like this he said i did my meditation at dhamma mahima in pion

00:07:53.660 this is my room basic during the 10 days no devices reading writing physical exercise music intoxicants

00:08:06.500 meet talking or even eye contact with others it's free everything is given to meet meditators by

00:08:16.420 charity whoa okay then while he was on some vision quest though i don't know where that place was

00:08:26.540 um other more ambitious people were busy interfering in the u.s election you might recall that the story

00:08:34.300 of the year the hunter biden laptop was banned by twitter was broken by the new york post one of the

00:08:40.260 oldest and uh most reputable newspapers in america it's a tabloid but it gets its facts straight it did

00:08:45.860 get its facts straight there but twitter banned the story suspended the new york post account and actually

00:08:51.240 banned people from even privately sharing the story and direct messages now after the election jack took

00:08:57.620 the blame for that decision uh thanks for nothing after the election was already tipped here's what

00:09:04.240 jack said in a string of tweets he was in congress he said we were called here today because of an

00:09:10.080 enforcement decision we made against the new york post based on a policy we created in 2018 to prevent

00:09:17.420 twitter from being used to spread hacked materials this resulted in us blocking people from sharing a new

00:09:23.700 york post article publicly or privately he went on to say we made a quick interpretation using no other

00:09:31.500 evidence and the materials in the article were obtained through hacking and according to our policy

00:09:36.600 blocked them from being spread upon further consideration we admitted this action was wrong

00:09:40.860 and corrected it with 24 hours we informed the new york post of our error and policy update and how to unlock

00:09:47.460 their account by deleting the original violating tweet which freed them to tweet the exact same

00:09:53.380 content and news article again they chose not to instead insisting we reverse our enforcement action

00:09:58.900 yeah it was never a believable excuse i mean what's he saying there we were wrong

00:10:04.020 but we told them to delete it they wouldn't so it's their fault it stayed down it doesn't make any sense

00:10:09.660 it's almost like he was reading an excuse written for him by someone else while he was doing his vision

00:10:15.440 quest in a room with no window so who was the real ceo who was really making the decisions while jack was

00:10:24.320 finding himself donald trump knew early he always did the new york post knew they knew they had his

00:10:31.180 number in may of 2020 yoel roth was the ceo take a look at this uh here's one this is our this is the

00:10:40.500 arbiter this guy is the arbiter of what's supposed to go on twitter he's the one he thought that uh

00:10:48.840 he thought and if you cnn as a guide cnn which is fake news he uses cnn as a guide his name is

00:10:55.880 yoel roth and he's the one that said that uh mail-in balloting you look mail-in no fraud

00:11:03.320 no fraud really why don't you take a look all over the country there's cases all over the country

00:11:07.880 if we went to mail-in balloting our election all over the world would look as a total joke

00:11:14.340 it would be a total joke there's such fraud and abuse and you know about harvesting where they

00:11:21.880 harvest the ballots and they go and grab them and they go to people's houses and they say sign here

00:11:27.480 no it doesn't work out now an absentee ballot you can't be there or you're sick and you go in your

00:11:32.480 register and you do all sorts of things to get that ballot and there's good security measures but

00:11:37.580 where they send out like in california millions and millions of ballots to anybody that's breathing

00:11:43.040 anybody in california that's breathing gets a ballot but mr president that's not true so here

00:11:48.200 here excuse me wait a minute i'm not finished so here's your uh here's your man and that's on twitter

00:11:53.960 yeah that was from may 2020 and look at that front page look at those nutty tweets that this head

00:12:01.640 of censorship twitter head of trust and safety was writing yes that let me let me read one of his

00:12:08.240 tweets yes that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of feminism than actual 1.00

00:12:14.500 nazis in the white house oh were the were there actual nazis in the white house like who ivanka trump

00:12:21.600 or jared kushner so who is this yowel roth who donald trump knew was the problem back in may of

00:12:29.060 2020 he's the head of trust and safety i love that that's straight out of orwell's 1984

00:12:34.480 so to become the boss of censorship at twitter what's your background are you an expert in the

00:12:42.280 american first amendment that's what they call their guarantee or freedom of speech is he a legal expert

00:12:48.000 well he does have a phd and i'll tell you a little bit more about that in a moment but

00:12:53.000 here he is explaining why he made the decision to de-platform the sitting president of the united

00:13:00.700 states not the head of iran or russia or venezuela they've never been de-platformed but why he took down

00:13:07.600 the president of the united states here's yowel roth saying how terrified he was how it was about his

00:13:14.960 trauma his own trauma um but what are you worried about these twitter files coming out and what was

00:13:20.980 that experience like having kellyanne who's always in control of herself sticking this mega trolls on 1.00

00:13:27.520 you it's terrifying i thought i was going to be a college professor for a living i like i got a phd

00:13:35.280 and was doing research that nobody cared about and uh and then i was like oh you know like this

00:13:40.240 platform thing is cool like i can go and do research there and and then you know one thing

00:13:45.240 led to another and all of a sudden we apply a misinformation label to donald trump's account

00:13:50.660 and i'm on the cover of the new york post and that is a deeply terrifying experience and i say this from

00:13:57.100 a position of unquestioned privilege as a cis white male like the internet is much scarier and much worse 0.60

00:14:05.200 for lots of other people who aren't me but it was pretty fucking scary for a long time 0.87

00:14:10.140 what was as a result of that you know when you get targeted in some of these ways it's hard to

00:14:17.340 differentiate between what is somebody just online trying to rattle you and what's a real threat

00:14:23.840 you see in things like pizzagate that online conspiracies can mobilize very real and very direct

00:14:31.020 offline violence and i worry about that i had been doxed years before by teenagers actually they're

00:14:38.520 they're always behind it but you know um i saw those harms i experienced those harms and now it was

00:14:46.400 those harms through a mainstream news outlet being held up in in the oval office by the former president

00:14:52.780 of the united states and that is deeply terrifying he's the kind of guy who talks about trauma

00:14:58.700 online experienced those harms um i found the new york post and donald trump deeply

00:15:06.200 terrifying he's the kind of guy who talks about microaggression so obviously he had to use twitter

00:15:13.980 and his powers for his own therapy take a look at this video donald trump that one i don't think was

00:15:21.600 a mistake january 6th so it it starts on the 6th but it also starts prior to that that's correct in

00:15:28.040 the weeks leading up in the weeks between election day and january 6th twitter moderated hundreds i think

00:15:36.100 the the final number ended up was like 140 separate tweets from just at real donald trump that violated

00:15:43.140 various policies yes he was good at that integrity policy every morning it was a new tweet much of it

00:15:49.600 was recirculating some of the same narratives and all of it was focused on the ultimately false claim

00:15:56.420 that the 2020 election had been stolen and so we're going into the events of the 6th and there's that

00:16:03.920 context there's the centrality of his account and so you let him get away with it for a long time

00:16:08.920 in other words well we'd been enforcing on it right so we restricted the tweets we put warnings on them

00:16:14.500 you couldn't like them you couldn't retweet them um but we didn't ban him because it was a relevant

00:16:21.980 part of a moment in american politics right the events of the 6th happen and um if you talk to

00:16:30.160 content moderators who worked on january 6th myself included the word that nearly everybody uses is

00:16:35.920 trauma we we experienced those events not some of us as americans but not just as americans or as

00:16:42.700 citizens but as people working on sort of how to prevent harm on the internet we saw the clearest

00:16:48.380 possible example of what it looked like for things to move from online to off we saw what was we saw

00:16:55.900 the way that rhetoric about a stolen election was being mobilized on sites like the donald.win sure we

00:17:02.060 saw the trafficking of this content in the fringe parts of the internet and we saw people dead in the

00:17:08.380 capital well hang on just one second why can't you dispute whether an election was fair i mean are

00:17:15.960 venezuelans or russians or iranians or cubans allowed to dispute of course they are they should

00:17:21.400 are we not allowed to talk about that isn't that part of freedom of speech you can talk about whatever

00:17:26.020 you want to talk about i mean democrats dispute elections by republicans all the time they they never

00:17:31.880 in fact accepted george w bush saying he stole the election from al gore why can't you talk about

00:17:38.780 whether or not the 2020 election was was uh was rigged i mean is it because twitter had a role in

00:17:46.620 rigging it as we just showed you he talked about the january 6th trauma of course that was the

00:17:52.720 um i guess you could say riot at the capitol buildings uh you heard yul roth say that people died

00:18:01.400 at the capitol it's true two people did die much less than died in the antifa and black lives matter

00:18:08.740 riots that were going on in america for a year before the elections now yul roth is almost certainly

00:18:14.020 talking about brian sicknick who was a capitol police officer who did die that day but here is a press

00:18:23.740 release from the u.s capitol police following uh a coroner's report on why brian sicknick died

00:18:31.260 let me read to you from their own website the u.s capitol police accepts the findings from the

00:18:37.980 district of columbia's office of the chief medical examiner that officer brian sicknick died of natural

00:18:46.360 causes this does not change the fact officer sicknick died in the line of duty courageously defending

00:18:52.920 congress in the capitol so the person who yul roth was talking about who was dead on january 6th did in

00:19:02.060 fact die he died of natural causes now there was someone who was shot dead that same day

00:19:08.900 her name was ashley babbitt and here's how the washington post describes her 0.84

00:19:15.300 two previously unreported video clips obtained by the washington post shed new light on the fatal

00:19:21.500 shooting by police of trump supporter and air force veteran ashley babbitt as she and other

00:19:27.820 rioters stormed the u.s capitol i'm not sure if she was storming anything the officer just slowly aimed

00:19:33.400 at her and shot her shot her dead he has not been charged with anything so there were two deaths that

00:19:38.500 day a death of natural causes of a policeman and the homicide whether or not it was in self-defense or in

00:19:46.600 the line of duty we don't know because no one's ever been tried for it so yes there was two people

00:19:51.640 killed on that fateful day i'm not saying i support people breaking windows or barging into the capitol

00:19:57.560 buildings i'm certainly not supporting undercover fbi agents provocateurs mobilizing and revving up a

00:20:05.120 crowd i'm not supporting officers opening doors and welcoming protesters in i don't think you should

00:20:10.200 trespass like that i don't think you should break windows or push your way into property like that i just

00:20:15.420 don't think you should but i don't think it was the insurrection that americans thought it was or at

00:20:20.340 least the american democrats or at least the democrat named yul roth thought it was can can we even talk

00:20:26.280 about all these things well now we can on twitter because yul roth is gone but a number of the things i was

00:20:34.520 just talking about you could not discuss for the last few years on twitter because of yul roth so who was he

00:20:43.960 well he's a guy who talks about trauma and fear and being a privileged cisgender male that's sort of a

00:20:52.700 tip-off to who he is isn't it as in you know ideologically he thinks speech is violence he's

00:20:59.740 one of those kind of guys he thinks seeing and hearing rough and tumble politics is trauma except

00:21:05.960 if it's antifa and black lives matter riots then it's only mildly violent but back to his job chief

00:21:12.340 sensor chief of trust and safety at twitter so what's his expertise like how to get the job well

00:21:17.960 this is his phd from the prestigious university of pennsylvania great school now let me read to you

00:21:23.820 the abstract of it this is a fancy way of saying a summary of the whole phd dissertation so i'm going

00:21:30.280 to read it for about a full minute you're going to go crazy before i'm actually i'm not even going

00:21:33.860 read the whole thing let me read what i can since its launch in 2009 the geo social networking service

00:21:42.380 grinder that's a gay sex app in case you don't know has become an increasingly mainstream and

00:21:49.700 prominent part of gay culture both in the united states and globally mobile applications like grinder

00:21:54.600 give users the ability to quickly and easily share information about themselves in the form of text

00:21:59.300 numbers and pictures and connect with each other in real time on the basis of geographic proximity

00:22:04.740 i argue that these services constitute an important site for examining how bodies identities and

00:22:11.040 communities are translated into data as well as how data becomes a tool for forming understanding

00:22:16.820 and managing personal relationships throughout this work i articulate a model of networked interactivity

00:22:23.160 that conceptualizes self-expression as an act determined by three sometimes overlapping

00:22:28.420 sometimes conflicting sets of affordances and constraints one techno commercial and structures

00:22:34.500 of software and business two cultural and subcultural norms mores histories and standards of acceptable and

00:22:40.660 expected conduct and three socio-political tendencies that appear to be but in fact are not fixed techno

00:22:47.140 commercial structures in these discussions grinder serves both as a model of processes that apply to social

00:22:53.140 networking more generally as well as particular study into how networked interactivity

00:22:57.860 is complicated by the histories and particularities of western gay culture i'm going to stop there i'm going to stop there

00:23:05.540 so he got a phd in the gay sex app grinder that's what he got his phd in i didn't know you could do that

00:23:14.820 here's a section of the dissertation that elon musk tweeted just the other day i think elon musk was sort of

00:23:20.340 startled who his trust and safety boss was looks like yoel is arguing in favor of children being

00:23:27.460 able to access adult internet services in his phd pieces it's worth considering how if at all the

00:23:33.060 current generation of sorry i'm just going to i'm just going to read from that the current generation of

00:23:38.660 popular sites of gay network social ability might fit into an overall queer social landscape that

00:23:44.820 increasingly includes individuals under the age of 18 even with the services extensive content

00:23:51.620 management grinder may well be too lewd or too hookup oriented to be a safe and age appropriate

00:23:58.340 resource for teenagers but the fact that people under 18 are on these services already indicates that we

00:24:04.500 can't readily dismiss these platforms out of hand as loci for queer youth culture rather than merely trying

00:24:10.740 to absolve themselves of legal responsibility or worse trying to drive out teenagers entirely

00:24:15.780 service providers should instead focus on crafting safety strategies that can accommodate a wide variety

00:24:20.660 of use cases for platforms like grinder including possibly their role in safely connecting queer young

00:24:26.100 adults really uh yeah he talks a lot about children and sex um here's another tweet that he just did on

00:24:37.060 his work account he said can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers

00:24:43.780 uh no brother that's called statutory rape um just like we have that old phrase taking candy from a baby

00:24:50.740 that's because the baby is not strong and does not have capacity and doesn't have the ability to deal

00:24:57.140 with someone more powerful that's why we call it statutory rape if you are having sex with an adult and

00:25:03.060 you're a child you cannot consent because you were just a child it may look like consent but it is rape 0.72

00:25:10.020 that's yole roth the head of trust and safety here here's another crazy tweet he did he said

00:25:16.260 i enjoy having the kinds of meetings where googling gay bareback porn is considered academic work

00:25:24.100 i'm just going to read another one here he says um that awkward moment when you can't tell

00:25:30.260 whether your neighbor has a really loud infant or it's just watching really loud porn

00:25:35.460 what the hell he talks a lot about listening to his neighbors having sex like repeatedly 0.62

00:25:41.620 he talks about having a secret dirty twitter account as in what i've just been reading to you is

00:25:47.700 from his clean account here's another one he says twitter will live to porn another day this

00:25:53.780 is the head of trust and safety at twitter he's saying thing i just yelled loudly at work so he's

00:26:01.060 trust and safety boss at twitter fighting to keep pornography in twitter he's got a hundred of these

00:26:08.900 he hasn't taken them down which i find baffling and like i say these are from his public twitter

00:26:14.980 account his work account they're not from his dirty account now i'm not anti-sex i'm not anti-gay 0.80

00:26:22.900 i would be just as grossed out if someone in a professional setting literally would never stop

00:26:28.420 talking about sex and pornography gay or straight if they did their phd on gay dating in the place of

00:26:38.420 teens using gay sex apps i might say you know that's not just a fake academic discipline it's sort of

00:26:45.620 gross and time for you to grow up and do something real with your life instead of just go on dates and

00:26:51.220 calling it scholarship but that would be a microaggression aggression against them but back to my

00:26:56.580 main point what is this guy's qualification for being the chief censor twitter i remember when i was

00:27:04.420 young in canada uh there were a lot of free speech battles over gay pornography i don't know if you

00:27:10.580 remember the case the litter's little sisters bookshop was a lesbian bookstore and they would bring in 1.00

00:27:17.140 lesbian pornography you've just written works and they were always stopped at customs and it was a huge 0.83

00:27:23.780 civil liberties case back then sexual obscenity was the front line of free speech as in there was

00:27:31.860 general agreement that we had freedom of speech about politics and all other matters it was just did

00:27:38.340 obscene gay sex count as free speech that was the battle back then so he was an oversharer of porn 0.97

00:27:47.700 and talked a lot about teens and even kids and even babies but he had no patience for actual free

00:27:57.300 speech he felt traumatized by donald trump criticizing him so so the libertarians in the 80s who fought for

00:28:03.700 lesbian porn they were saying we're going to fight the battle for lesbian porn that shows how dedicated 0.92

00:28:10.100 for free speech we are of course we're for every other kind of speech too look at how far we're willing

00:28:15.060 to go for gay sex joel roth was the opposite he valued gay sex as free speech he didn't value free

00:28:24.980 speech as free speech no wonder child pornography and child sexual exploitation was never eradicated on

00:28:33.380 twitter despite countless victims begging for that to be done no no wonder misgendering

00:28:39.860 someone would get you banned no wonder calling drag queen story time grooming would get you banned

00:28:47.780 that was yoel roth's hobby talking about kids and sex and he hated anyone to the right of him he felt

00:28:55.380 traumatized by them but that's 90 percent of america he was so out there he was the real ceo of twitter

00:29:05.620 you know he met weekly with the fbi he gave government agencies direct access to twitter their own portal

00:29:13.060 right into the system the u.s government but what other governments too who are these masters of the

00:29:21.780 universe these tech bro millionaires not the billionaires the billionaires are the builders

00:29:28.420 they're usually math guys who built the thing the millionaires those are the liberals who came in and

00:29:33.940 colonized what the math geniuses build yoel roth is gone but we still haven't rooted out all the yoel

00:29:41.780 roths from twitter i hope that elon musk continues to do so and more importantly that he shows us what

00:29:48.580 they've been doing all these years stay with us for more

00:30:04.020 well elon musk has everyone's attention he's one of the world's most interesting man he's a man he's a

00:30:08.660 troublemaker he's obviously smart a builder and of course he's rich and he has been using the platform

00:30:14.580 that he bought uh to sow his bald oats and say what he wants to say he criticized dr anthony fauci

00:30:21.860 in a tough way suggesting not only that he's a critic of fauci but that he might have information

00:30:27.540 as the new owner of twitter and every message sent uh therein about dr fauci that who knows may lead to

00:30:34.100 his prosecution but in reaction to that john brennan who i think is really the poster boy for the deep

00:30:40.180 state i think he's a former cia director if i'm not mistaken wrote back dr fauci is a national hero

00:30:46.660 who will be remembered for generations to come for his innate goodness and many contributions to public

00:30:52.020 health despite your business success you will be remembered most for fueling public hate and divisions

00:30:58.420 you may have money but you have no class snap ah well the fun thing about twitter is that everyone gets to

00:31:06.820 weigh in on everything at any time i think that's the fun of it i think it's why it's more fun than if

00:31:12.740 we had a conservatives only twitter or a liberals only twitter which some camps on both sides try to

00:31:18.980 do conservatives have gab let's say liberals are trying to make mastodon their hangout but our friend

00:31:25.140 gordon g chang a close china watcher said this in reply to john brennan yes fauci is a national hero

00:31:34.180 he's a national hero in china boom and joining us now is the author that tweet who's really mastered

00:31:41.140 the forum is our friend gordon g chang who i follow on twitter and i think that might even have been

00:31:46.900 how i discovered him it really is a wonderful platform which may be one reason why it's banned

00:31:52.260 in china right if you don't have a vpn a kind of way to get around the great firewall of china you can't

00:31:58.260 access twitter in that country can you no twitter is unavailable in china except of course for a

00:32:05.220 virtual private network as you point out but that's actually violating china's laws so yes it's available

00:32:12.580 only if you make yourself a pirate of course the chinese government uses twitter to broadcast

00:32:18.500 its message outside the country there are many chinese diplomats who i think marshal uh the internet

00:32:24.900 fairly effectively i i note that none of them to my knowledge have been deplatformed in the way that

00:32:30.740 donald trump was deplatformed but let's get back to your tweet because i think it was a good quip

00:32:35.460 i mean it it was a great zinger but in a way it's true isn't it having forcible lockdowns having the power

00:32:44.580 to override any opposition there's no supreme court in china that's going to strike down xi jinping there's no

00:32:52.020 opposition party there's no you know new york times that's going to be skeptical of a president

00:32:57.300 it really is a one party state all the way through so it really is the kind of i mean look justin trudeau

00:33:03.940 said he would love to have that kind of power he most admires it that is the kind of world that anthony

00:33:08.900 fauci seemed to suggest he would like to i mean i i think that's a fair comment to say what you said

00:33:15.460 yes um to put some context on this ezra in 2014 the obama administration put a moratorium on federal

00:33:25.220 funding of gain of function research because it was so dangerous so what did fauci do well he went

00:33:31.780 around the moratorium by funding gain of function in china and that's why the wuhan institute of

00:33:38.260 virology was actually engaged in dangerous gain of function research and we know that fauci was

00:33:45.140 responsible for it because there are two published papers 2016 2017 which were by wuhan researchers

00:33:55.700 which clearly described gain of function experimentation and both of those published papers

00:34:01.620 explicitly acknowledged funding from the national institutes of allergy and infectious diseases

00:34:07.060 which fauci headed the reason why this is important is because last year twice in direct responses

00:34:14.740 to uh senator ran paul fauci under oath said that he did not fund gain of function in the wuhan institute

00:34:22.820 of virology so that leads to a conclusion either fauci did not know what his institute was doing which

00:34:31.380 is really unlikely because these papers were high profile or he committed perjury but the department of

00:34:38.740 justice is not investigating him and uh you know we have john brennan saying he's a national hero and the

00:34:45.620 reason why i said he was a national hero in china is because fauci funded china's biological weapons 0.81

00:34:52.100 research in the wuhan institute of virology on gain of function yeah i can't think of anything more

00:34:58.260 dangerous i mean doing gain of function research and of course that's that's just like what it sounds like

00:35:04.020 it's giving viruses more functions give it's altering viruses to to weaponize them that's a terrifying

00:35:11.940 almost dystopian fantasy that you might have a horror movie about it's a terrifying thing but the

00:35:18.100 only thing to make it more terrifying is to do it in china you know under the power and authority of 1.00

00:35:25.700 of the chinese government it would be terrible enough to do it in america but to do it in china is nuts 0.99

00:35:29.700 hey i got a question for you do we know if anthony fauci ever visited physically visited the wuhan

00:35:37.620 institute of virology i don't know of any such instance um and um i suspect he hasn't um but

00:35:47.540 that's not really the issue here for right i just want that would be quite something if he actually had

00:35:52.180 been i mean the key is the money and the direction oh well his money went there and echo health alliance which

00:35:59.140 he directly funded they sent their people to the wuhan institute of virology and they were all over

00:36:04.820 china on bat coronaviruses so that's the relevant thing in this is that um he actually funded americans

00:36:12.500 to go to the wuhan institute of virology just just nutty i think you're right and that may be i mean

00:36:18.580 elon musk sometimes speaks in riddles and puns he's a clever fella and that may be what when he says

00:36:24.420 his pronouns are fauci prosecute that may be what he was talking about but let's get back to um fauci's

00:36:33.060 prescription i mean the thing about public health is it's different than a doctor seeing one patient

00:36:40.260 where your interest is the patient what's best for the patient the patient has to consent the patient can

00:36:45.300 get a second opinion and it's very much particular you may have five patients and each one of them has a

00:36:51.380 a particularly different solution that's a fit for them public health is different public health is

00:36:57.460 by nature socialistic it's uh community oriented and you can look at that in a positive way but at

00:37:04.580 the end of the day you're compelling the community to do certain things as opposed to convincing them

00:37:09.940 it's like if a doctor says look you really got to cut back on the sweets that's a doctor's advice

00:37:15.380 putting a tax on you know uh sweet drinks is a community health enforcement approach my point is

00:37:23.780 i think dr fauci really liked the power of making orders that millions of people had to obey and that

00:37:31.300 really is the chinese communist party way it is the vast public health laboratory because there's no

00:37:38.740 dissent there's no court that's going to stop it that really was fauci's playground in a way

00:37:43.140 in terms of public health did they follow the fauci model in fighting covid well yes everyone's been

00:37:50.500 locking down um you know and and to your broader comment ezra which is really on point you know if

00:37:56.580 a doctor commits malpractice or just makes a mistake or whatever you know on a on a patient that's one

00:38:03.860 death but what fauci did has resulted in according to the johns hopkins coronavirus resource center

00:38:10.820 six million six hundred and fifty three thousand deaths as of today and the number is actually

00:38:17.060 larger because china has been underreporting deaths so you know this is a decision that has had

00:38:23.460 far-reaching global consequences and of course it's not just the deaths it's others um that other

00:38:29.940 medical problems people couldn't go to hospitals um and also all the social disorders that have resulted

00:38:36.740 from the lockdowns which fauci has has ordered so um the the disadvantage disadvantageous effects

00:38:43.860 across the world have have just been incalculable yeah i was thinking more of the public health response

00:38:50.100 to the virus rather than its creation and i and i think you know it's funny how in the early days you

00:38:56.100 were not allowed to speculate that the that the virus was man-made and they they came up with alternative

00:39:01.940 explanations and that was one of the issues that many tech companies would de-platform you if you

00:39:07.860 even mused about its origin it's funny how that worked now let me ask you about zero covid and which

00:39:13.620 is the idea that you don't allow a single case you lock down so hard you stop that thing at first i

00:39:20.740 thought that was just a western overreaction but actually china really embraced that deeply zero

00:39:27.860 killed covid they locked down millions of people actually longer than we ever did tell me a little

00:39:32.660 bit about how zero covid um went to the limit in china and how i think maybe it finally broke the

00:39:39.380 patience of the chinese people who started fighting back in the streets which is something i thought i'd

00:39:43.940 never live to see tell me a little bit about zero covid and how if at all the people rose up to meet it

00:39:50.260 zero covid is um was developed by xi jinping the chinese ruler and he did it for a number of reasons

00:39:58.580 and one of them was he wanted to weaponize the disease in a propaganda sense so from the very very

00:40:05.300 first months of this um the communist party made the case that chinese communism was superior to

00:40:10.500 democracy and american democracy in particular because the chinese communist party had been better able to

00:40:16.660 control the disease and had been better able to control the disease the argument went because of

00:40:22.580 this xi jinping's zero covid policy which as you said is meant to design is designed to prevent any

00:40:28.420 transmission of the disease at all so you would have for instance entire districts of cities locked down

00:40:35.220 if there was one positive case in one building or you had you know you had uh excessive contact tracing

00:40:43.460 you had uh multiple testing of people every day um this really was something that the chinese people 0.99

00:40:50.260 just could not stand and we saw this starting at the end of october at those extraordinary worker

00:40:57.060 protests in jungzhou at the foxconn factory the apple iphone place which makes more which makes more than

00:41:04.180 one half the world's iphones and then um following the november 24th fire in urumchi protests broke out

00:41:11.940 across china and this was north south east west there was no coordination no leadership no organization

00:41:19.860 just people had enough of it now zero covid was the uh the motivating factor because there were all

00:41:26.020 sorts of videos that showed that the fire trucks couldn't get to the burning building because of

00:41:30.420 covid barricades on the streets and also people were locked into their apartments from the outside to

00:41:35.540 prevent them from leaving quarantine and that just sparked outrage but soon that outrage was more

00:41:41.460 than just covet it was down with xi jinping people were chanting people were chanting down with the

00:41:47.060 communist party and so the party for the protests they had to relent but also because the zero covid

00:41:53.540 rules were just so expensive to administer local governments were running out of money and it was

00:41:58.660 destroying the chinese economy so for a lot of reasons beijing last wednesday national health commission

00:42:05.140 issued its 10-point plan which was essentially the repeal of zero covid wow so i i hate

00:42:11.380 to give the government any credit over there because they're they're authoritarian and they're abusive

00:42:15.700 and and and and i think they're they're immoral to their towards their own people but it looks like

00:42:22.020 the democratic democratic the the people's uprising which was unarmed i mean uh worked

00:42:31.540 they made the tyrant blink that that's incredible to me um

00:42:36.420 um what what do you take from that i mean if they managed to get xi jinping to blink on something that

00:42:43.780 was sort of a signature policy of his what what does that uh portend for the future well a couple

00:42:50.500 things first of all xi jinping is not as strong as he appears um you know xi jinping is sort of a

00:42:56.420 malice and and malice believe that humans can do anything they want they can conquer nature and in this case

00:43:03.220 can conquer a pathogen which um is not true in either case but that's that's the way xi jinping

00:43:09.700 views the world um but we've seen the chinese people have had enough um and now the real problem 1.00

00:43:16.100 for china and and this is apart from xi jinping you know once you remove the zero covet rules right away

00:43:23.300 the disease is ripping through the chinese population across the country but especially in beijing and the

00:43:29.940 government which has spent two more than two years uh on isolation um has now hasn't built icu beds

00:43:38.260 they haven't done all the work that is necessary to deal with an outbreak and now they've got an

00:43:43.140 outbreak um pharmacies have run out of ibuprofen um they don't have drugs the hospitals are overcrowded

00:43:50.580 and this just shows you the failure of zero covet um and it shows you communism doesn't work you know

00:43:57.060 ezra we may not have gotten it right here or any place else but at least in democratic societies you

00:44:03.460 have changed faster because people can actually protest people can say things people can write

00:44:09.140 things um twitter notwithstanding yeah but the point here is that uh in a totalitarian society which xi

00:44:16.420 jinping is putting together in china because he's moving back to full totalitarianism the government held 0.98

00:44:22.660 on for the very last moment it capitulated and now the country is a complete mess um and we should be

00:44:29.540 praying for the chinese people because they're suffering from the policies of the communist party

00:44:34.980 wow well i hope this is the beginning of a further liberation of them it sounds like they managed to

00:44:40.340 get the zero covet off of them i hope this is the first of many uh i don't want to call it a democratic

00:44:46.500 success because it wasn't really through the mechanisms of democracy but it's incredible that an unarmed 1.00

00:44:51.780 uh disorganized censored uh uprising managed to achieve change i i'm very excited by gordon it's

00:44:59.780 great to catch up with you i follow you on twitter at gordon g chang i love it i love your banter

00:45:05.060 there and i learned so much we're always grateful when you stop by thanks for being here today

00:45:09.460 oh well thank you so much ezra because we're going to see some really consequential change in china 0.55

00:45:14.260 as the chinese people feel emboldened and i think the word that i would use for these protests

00:45:19.460 is popular popular popular protests right that's the word for sure all right well we'll keep our

00:45:25.060 hopefully 2023 will be the year where popular protests can peacefully move china towards more

00:45:31.140 freedom that would be the most important uh event of the year if that massive country with so much promise

00:45:39.460 and move towards liberty it's had a form of economic liberty but to have personal liberty follow it

00:45:45.860 would be the greatest uh event of our of our generation i think so let's hope for the best

00:45:51.380 amen to that thank you so much ezra thanks gordon there you have it stay with us more ahead

00:45:59.860 hey welcome back your letters to me annalisa vida says well i live on vancouver island and media is

00:46:14.740 isolated here lots of protesters regarding fairy creek get arrested and assaulted by police here even

00:46:21.060 after an injunction was lifted and the protest was legal and they are vilified and called violent when

00:46:26.740 they are not well i'm i'm not familiar with that story but uh you know what it's funny the police

00:46:34.260 can have an extremely light touch and sometimes it can be absolutely brutal sometimes it depends on

00:46:42.340 the facts on the ground but i think so often it depends on the political ideology of the criminals

00:46:49.060 and the government i i have to say i never saw riot horses deployed against greenpeace protesters but i saw

00:46:55.860 them deployed against the peaceful protesters the trucker convoy and if you remember even adamson's

00:47:01.860 barbecue adam skelly's barbecue in toronto just for selling barbecue brisket miss it tom says

00:47:10.660 of course they were treated differently talking about the protesters the anti-pipeline protest was

00:47:16.420 something to fit with trudeau's no energy policies so only government approved protests will be allowed

00:47:22.580 yeah you know what there are uh fake protests in dictatorships around the world if you read 1984

00:47:32.420 by george orwell they had political protests against this enemy emmanuel goldstein this enemy who was to

00:47:41.060 blame for everything they had something called two minutes of hate where you would all scream at the

00:47:46.580 external enemy and then go back to your drudgery and if there was anything wrong it was that goldstein

00:47:52.260 i think that there are some approved protesters in canada where people blow off some steam and

00:47:58.020 pretend that they have some opposition in this country but it's nothing that truly challenges

00:48:02.500 trudeau we saw during the trucker commission of inquiry that what really scared trudeau is that

00:48:06.820 he was losing face including overseas that's our show for today until tomorrow on behalf of all

00:48:12.980 of us here at rebel world headquarters to you at home good night and keep fighting for freedom

00:48:25.460 will try to action sulan-wide and of systems at home good night and do with that

00:48:33.700 to you

00:48:35.140 to help us to ourselves

Rebel News Podcast - December 13, 2022

Who was really running Twitter before Elon Musk bought it？

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