Russell Brand is joined by Stella Bugbee to discuss the latest on Julian Assange, Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein scandal and much more! Stay Free With Russell Brand is a show where the movement is galvanised. This is where we come together, where the peripheral figures that loathe the establishment bind and unite against their tyranny. And we ve got a fantastic show for you today where we re talking about the latest in the Epstein and Julian Assange saga. In this episode, Russell and Stella talk about: - The Epstein scandal - Julian Assange's hearing - Jeffrey Epstein's new life in prison - Who are the most powerful people in the world? - What does it mean for the future of the world - Why is it so important to be a part of the awakened community - Do you want to be part of this movement? Do you think it s time for us to fight back against the state, against the corrupt systems that want to shut us down against these corrupt systems - Is it time to take up arms against the establishment? and join the awakened movement Join us in Rumble, where you re gonna see the future - Stay Free with Russell Brand. - Rumble - Where the Movement is Gonna See The Future - This is Where The Movement Is Gaining Ground - In this video, you re going to see the Future in this video you re GONE! - You re Gonna see The Future! You re gonna See the Future, You re GOING to See The Present, You're Gonna Have It, You'll Have It's Gotta Believe It? Stay free with me, Stay free, stay free, keep up with me in the future, keep safe, keep it real, keep free, be free, and keep up to date, keep fighting, stay strong, keep strong, stay woke, keep cool, stay connected, keep informed, stay informed, keep moving forward, keep y'know what I love you're gonna have it s gonna get there, keep believing in it, I'll see the real, I'm gonna see it, let me know what it's all gonna be good, keep me real, let's see it? , stay free with you know what I know what that s gonna happen, I love y'all? - - RUMBLE - stay free! & much love, bruise me, mate!
00:03:10.000What a victory that would be for freedom if Julian Assange was released.
00:03:14.000Tell me where you stand on Assange, because it don't matter if you're a Democrat Or a Republican, if you're a politician, you ain't no fan of Assange.
00:03:21.000Is he in Belmarsh prison right now because he's a threat to your safety or because he's a threat to their power?
00:03:28.000Press 1 if you think it's your safety or 2 if you think it's their power.
00:03:32.000Also, a judge has decreed that we're getting the Epstein names, baby.
00:03:54.000What a day to be alive, what a day to be challenging the establishment who got so much for you.
00:03:59.000If you're watching us on YouTube, it's all two, no one's pressing one.
00:04:03.000it's all it's all it's all it's all twos it's all two yep yep i see some of those names i agree with you excellent excellent excellent oh really you think so oh yeah there's a lot of people oh it's not going to be it's going to be rough oh god this is quite good the chat i'll tell you what the rumble chat's good also you could become an awakened one to become a member of our locals community do you want to support this movement do you want to be part of this a movement Do you think it's time for us to fight back against the state, against the government, against these corrupt systems that want to shut us down?
00:04:31.000We've got a great story today because, hey, if you thought Google were a problem when they were controlling your internet searches, imagine what they're going to be like when they own your home!
00:04:45.000If you're watching it on YouTube, prop Which are part of the Trusted News Initiative, where state and corporate media come together with big tech to oppose independent media figures, to shut down dissenting voices.
00:04:56.000If you're watching us on YouTube right now, remember you can join us in Rumble, where people, where you're seeing the word Clinton.
00:05:05.000But there's also some interesting celebrity ones as well on there.
00:06:16.000We're going to talk about the EU attacking Elon and we're going to be talking about the Biden administration attacking Elon.
00:06:22.000We're going to go into that in more depth later in the week but we've also got this amazing speech from Barack Obama when he talks about the need for censorship to censor you because apparently you can't determine truth from fiction.
00:06:33.000Apparently you need to be spoon-fed like baby food information to keep you nice and compliant and still in your cell.
00:06:41.000Let's have a look at the Epstein headline first of all.
00:06:44.000And also we'll get into that Senate sex tape.
00:06:58.000So it says 177 does who are Epstein's friends, recruiters and victims within coming weeks.
00:07:05.000The material related to defamation case brought by Prince Andrew's accuser Virginia Roberts in New York against Epstein's Madame Ghislaine Maxwell.
00:07:13.000The hundreds of files will shed new light on the late financier's sex trafficking operation and his network of Influence.
00:07:46.000And developing on Capitol Hill, a U.S.
00:07:48.000Senate staffer who worked in Maryland Senator Ben Cardin's office is out of a job after video allegedly shows him having sex inside of a Judiciary Committee hearing room.
00:07:58.000Aidan May Swarovski reportedly recorded I suppose you know that stuff goes on, right?
00:08:04.000And I suppose what it shows you is that they try to distance themselves... Like, what this... Do you know what even this frivolous, uh, and somewhat, um, prurient story tells you is that people should, uh...
00:08:18.000Recognize that you don't, you don't, everyone's having sex.
00:08:24.000Why have you got this strata of society that are pretending that they're better than everybody else?
00:08:28.000Pretending they should censor information.
00:08:29.000Pretending they should be in a position of judgment.
00:08:31.000Pretending they should have access to information that appears to influence the way they invest in stocks and shares.
00:08:37.000Why should you have a person in British government Sitting on a, uh, the board that is able to sue social media companies proposing censorship, uh, legislation.
00:10:08.000We're reaching 21,000 already, baby, and the Rumble chat is crazy.
00:10:16.000We're getting a lot of Bongino people coming over here.
00:10:19.000Rumble is finally earning the views it deserves as a free speech platform that is absolute in our principles.
00:10:26.000You know, Dan Bongino and I are working out a time for next year for us to do, I'm going to say mash-up, although I prefer a better phrase, really, We're going to go on on Bongino's show.
00:12:21.000In the U.S., a bipartisan resolution co-sponsored by Representative Paul Gosar, Republican Arizona, expresses that regular journalistic activities are protected by the First Amendment.
00:12:40.000You can find, if you're watching this in the United States, and we know that most of you are, and we love you, because we want a unified, decentralized, anti-establishment movement, and we'll never get that without heroes like Assange, we're going to post a link in the description right now.
00:12:53.000Demand that your representative supports this Bill.
00:14:07.000It's gonna be a landslide, gal, because people will not be out of this.
00:14:10.000Resist Rusty Bong, is what we're saying.
00:14:13.000The EU's launching an investigation into Elon Musk, of course it is, because of X's breach, breaching its obligations to prevent the dissemination of illegal content.
00:14:24.000Meanwhile, Sticker Mule continue to be a grand organisation that send out stickers.
00:14:29.000And Black Forest, they're giving me all sorts of power, I'll be telling you more about that later in the show.
00:14:37.000The EU is investigating Elon Musk's ex, formerly known as Twitter, while the bloc's regulator is probing the social media platform for its suspected failure to counter illicit content and disinformation, a lack of advertising transparency, and what it calls a suspected deceptive design of the user interface.
00:14:54.000It's the first move in the EU's landmark Digital Services Act.
00:14:57.000So what the EU is going to do is they're going to do an investigation.
00:15:02.000I mean, they're going to find something.
00:16:42.000You find now that bureaucracies and state agencies act like gangsters, determining for themselves what can be regarded as truth and what ought be regarded as misinformation.
00:16:55.000At that AmericaFest thing, Charlie Kirk, and as you know what it is, it's an America First event, isn't it?
00:17:00.000And it's obviously like a conservative, libertarian, right-wing type of deal.
00:17:04.000I see that Tim Pool was there, a bunch of people.
00:17:05.000I was supposed to go myself, had a lot on lately.
00:17:09.000So have a look at what Charlie Kirk's analysis of the situation.
00:17:13.000The best thing is use X and Twitter because it's obviously a threat to them.
00:17:17.000They wouldn't want to shut it down or go after Elon if it wasn't working.
00:17:20.000The greatest hope we have in 2024 is we have a sliver of the public square back that we didn't have in 20.
00:17:25.000And that's why they're going to try to either indict Elon or they're just going to try to crash Twitter through a DDoS attack or some sort of DDOS attacks, that's a new thing, isn't it?
00:17:33.000That's happening a lot more frequently now.
00:17:38.000The fundamental question you have to ask yourself here is, are they attacking Elon because they think Elon's a threat to you, or because they think Elon's a threat?
00:18:40.000Yeah, when Trump does that, everyone's like, oh my god, this is so vulgar.
00:18:43.000Because they don't like you, and they don't like that kind of language.
00:18:47.000But Obama, he can go around the world, he's got movies here, he's got books there, it's all classy, it's all elegant, it's all too good for you.
00:18:53.000Now, Barack Obama's out there talking about Miss Information.
00:18:57.000You are going to love this because guess how they decide what constitutes misinformation?
00:19:01.000Information that damages state narratives.
00:19:04.000Information that discredits the legacy media.
00:19:07.000Information that empowers you to stand up against authoritarianism.
00:19:12.000This is fantastic because you could almost believe them if it hadn't been for 2008.
00:19:17.000If it wasn't for the incessant dronings during his administration.
00:19:20.000If it wasn't for the fact that a man elected on a tidal wave of hope and optimism crashed that into the rocks of state imperialism with the way that the banks were bailed out and with the way that people across the world were droned in the name of military industrial complex interest.
00:19:37.000Note the excellence of this piece of rhetoric.
00:19:40.000How Obama paints a brilliant picture of why censorship is a good thing with Out ever addressing why people don't trust the state.
00:20:34.000He says that Because now they can legitimately start censoring information, not because you're stupid and you can't discern for yourself, but because it muddies the water.
00:20:43.000Now, he stands there at a pulpit at Stanford.
00:20:45.000You'll remember the Barrington Declaration that was shut down, where Jay Bhattacharya and a number of other brilliant epidemiologists and academics pointed out that lockdown measures might not be successful, that you don't vaccinate at the height of a pandemic.
00:21:04.000So even Stanford University espouses misinformation when it's not convenient to the interests of the powerful.
00:21:12.000And note how across this address never is the subject raised of the culpability and responsibility that the state bears for the lack of trust that most of us feel for the state, for the legacy media.
00:21:57.000When people were offering valuable, important information, that was faeces.
00:22:02.000What was in the ceramic enshrinement of sanitised information was the shaming of people that were vaccine-hesitant, was the mad propaganda and musical numbers promoting that medication.
00:22:16.000So when we're talking about misinformation, malinformation, disinformation, what we're fundamentally talking about is information that is antithetical to the interests of the powerful, right?
00:22:27.000You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe.
00:22:42.000Once they lose trust in their leaders, In mainstream media, in political institutions.
00:22:49.000But why have you lost trust in your leaders?
00:22:51.000Is it because in 2008, when Barack Obama could have supported the American people and ensured that there weren't en masse foreclosures of homes?
00:23:22.000And why do people not trust the legacy media?
00:23:24.000Because the legacy media has spent the last three years propagandizing and We're advocating for measures, whether they were social measures or medical measures, that have proven subsequently to be worthy of a lot more exploration, discussion and analysis.
00:23:38.000And those of us that wanted those conversations were smeared and attacked and called dissenters and shamed.
00:23:52.000Look at the insignia of the Obama Foundation.
00:23:54.000The name Stanford suddenly Respectable in this context, not respectable when it's Jay Bhattacharya saying that these measures are unreliable, that these measures should be subject to more scrutiny.
00:24:04.000Then Stanford is an institution full of crackpots.
00:25:00.000She talks about Hunter Biden right and sort of about like you know it's a bit tricky the Hunter Biden situation but she spins it live like Joe Biden he's a good dad though isn't he?
00:25:08.000Now can you imagine them saying that about Trump if he was sticking up for Eric or Don Jr or any of the Trump kids?
00:27:33.000Who do they interrogate and investigate?
00:27:34.000At the moment, Elon Musk is being, like, if you saw, and we're doing a piece on this later this week, you're gonna love it, the number of agencies that you fund that are currently attacking Elon Musk is like, you know, the people that are in charge of aeronautics, the people that are in charge of employment law, even the people that are in charge of the fisheries.
00:27:53.000That's not even a joke, like the fisheries.
00:27:56.000I don't even know what Elon Musk does that's connected to fish, but they're investigating Elon Musk.
00:28:02.000Government is weaponized against those that threaten its existence.
00:28:06.000They will use those state agencies to destroy, and the legacy media of course will amplify those narratives, if ever you become a threat to them.
00:28:14.000Can I name them and you just wink if I... Go ahead!
00:28:39.000Dan is owing $180,000 worth of rent right now on his $45,000 monthly rent, which is
00:28:48.000what most Americans f***ing make a year.
00:28:53.000So hey, did you see Trump at that rally used some pretty powerful rhetoric and of course the MSNBC machine rolled into action.
00:29:03.000Have you noticed how often they compare Trump to various historic dictators, never noting that all of those historical dictators were in charge of either the military or paramilitary.
00:29:22.000What we live under now are technological dictatorships that are anodyne, that are somehow pristine.
00:29:28.000Dictatorship now is the censorship industrial complex.
00:29:31.000Dictatorship now is you can vote for any party as long as it's this one.
00:29:36.000Dictatorship now is groups like the Trusted News Initiative ensuring that independent media are the enemy and all trusted news organizations parrot the same information.
00:29:47.000Have a look at the legacy media and how they report on Elon Musk.
00:29:50.000All of them will say stuff like Misinformation is a real threat.
00:30:07.000It's the alliance of new technology with old school state regulation.
00:30:13.000Funded by corporatism and you all remember that what Mussolini said of course is that fascism is the alliance of the corporate world and the state world and we've already got fascism fundamentally if that by that analysis.
00:30:24.000Let's have a look at MSNBC comparing Trump to Hitler and even claiming to know what Donald Trump has on his bedside table.
00:30:32.000Let me know in the chat what you think it is.
00:30:34.000If you're watching us on YouTube remember you're going to have to come over to the citadel of free speech itself that is Rumble.
00:31:23.000President Biden and the White House are comparing this to the words of Adolf Hitler and specifically the words that were written in Mein Kampf.
00:31:31.000As a historian, Doug, what did you hear in the former president's remarks?
00:31:38.000I heard a former president who is jiving on fascism.
00:31:42.000There's no question about that being the line from Mein Kampf.
00:32:23.000I agree that we should be bound together, that we should find unity with one another.
00:32:29.000That all of us, regardless of our culture, or our religion, or our nationality, should find ways to unify.
00:32:36.000Not just because it's what I believe Jesus Christ and our Lord and Savior would want, but because without that, without that, we will be destroyed.
00:32:45.000In a 50-50 fight, we're going to get destroyed by the establishment.
00:32:49.000We must be unified, but decentralized against true tyranny.
00:32:53.000And when we're not making an anti-Trump comment when we're saying, he is a fascist, guys, that really we're dealing with a fight in our country between democracy and fascism, and Trump's telling you that.
00:33:07.000He doesn't really mind the Hitler comparison because, at heart, he admires Hitler.
00:33:13.000Don't Bible thump, Russell Somerset, but I do love the Bible.
00:33:43.000Google and Facebook are buying up real estate and creating new cities and if you think they crossed the line with some of their practices of spying on you when it comes to their online cyber life, imagine what they're gonna do when they own actual reality.
00:33:58.000How come Bill Gates is buying up farmland?
00:34:02.000How come they're buying up our Are they trying to conquer reality itself?
00:34:09.000Do you think Google and Facebook getting into the real estate business could facilitate Klaus Schwab's glorious vision?
00:34:17.000You will own nothing and you will be happy.
00:34:49.000With housing becoming unaffordable to all but the richest of elites and big tech becoming insurmountable powerhouses across the globe, we've got some tremendous news.
00:35:11.000The same way that cyberspace has been monopolized by vast big tech powers, actual space will be and is being Monopolised by comparable, or in some cases literally, the same powers.
00:35:23.000You're probably interested in why Bill Gates is buying up agricultural space across the United States.
00:35:28.000Some of you will assume that if you can control food sources, you could create scarcity, you can control whole populations, and these are certainly theories I'm interested in even while they currently remain unproven.
00:35:38.000Although farmers across the world seem Pretty angry about something, don't they?
00:35:41.000Now, Google and Meta and big tech spaces, having conquered all of cyberspace, like digital Alexander the Great, have turned to the real world to find new kingdoms to conquer.
00:35:54.000Is it possible that you, unable to afford literal real estate, will have to have Mark Zuckerberg Or the Alphabet Corporation as your landlord.
00:36:03.000Let's first of all see how the legacy media report on this and how this is being presented by the propaganda of these organizations that are acquiring vast tracts of San Francisco and stuff.
00:36:13.000Tonight Google is revealing its plans for a big development in Mountain View that includes affordable housing.
00:36:18.000What that should say is it's planned for world domination, isn't it?
00:36:33.000Why have the United States of America, the UK, when you could have Facebook land, metacountry?
00:36:38.000Alan Martin is here with the details, Alan.
00:36:40.000Liz, Ken, the tech giant says its goal is to help solve the Bay Area housing crisis.
00:36:45.000That'll be its goal, because one thing I've noticed about big tech giants is they care mostly about poor people and the concerns of ordinary people.
00:36:53.000There's never been an undercurrent of tyrannical centralisation, authoritarianism and making deals with the state that make ordinary democracy and individual freedom a near impossibility.
00:37:03.000So hopefully we'll all be in lovely little Google homes by, I don't know, end of the month?
00:37:07.000And tonight, we're learning more about its new plan to redevelop parts of Mountain View.
00:37:12.000Here is the bird's eye view of North Bay Shore in Mountain View.
00:37:16.000One of the clues is they're using Google's logo while still doing the report.
00:37:20.000Is there going to be any discernment, analysis, scrutiny, investigation, attack from the legacy media?
00:37:26.000Remember, we're continually telling you now about the Trusted News Initiative.
00:37:29.000A group that includes state media organisations as well as big tech companies.
00:37:34.000You will notice how often their interests absolutely align.
00:37:38.000You will notice now that the legacy media is part of the establishment.
00:37:41.000It's one of the things that Donald Trump noticed and exploited brilliantly.
00:38:01.000Aren't corporations like Google, by their nature, globalist?
00:38:04.000And haven't we heard rhetoric from the WEF saying that you will own nothing and be happy?
00:38:08.000Is it possible that administrative bodies like the WF are kind of the ideological front for corporations like Google?
00:38:13.000And what will happen is that governments will just start passing legislation that facilitates this kind of stuff and no one's asking any questions.
00:38:19.000And when you do ask questions, for example if you're part of an independent media movement, then you will be shut down.
00:38:45.000If you go to modern, developed places now, it's like they've fallen from the sky.
00:38:49.000Even a city like London, which, when you walk through it, used to have layer after layer of rich, historic buildings.
00:38:55.000A bit of an old Roman wall, and Elizabethan blocks, and Tudor housing, Georgian, Victorian, then a skyscraper, all meshed together like something that had grown, like fungus, like an architectural fungi that was an expression of a collective.
00:39:09.000Now, what you get is things that, like, drop from above.
00:39:30.000This is now the bureaucratising and delivery of those sci-fi dystopias.
00:39:36.000Whether you approach this with centre-left narratives like climate change or centre-right narratives like the deterioration of society, this ain't helping anyone.
00:39:43.000And look how they're repeating the word affordable, affordable.
00:39:46.000Would you like a house that's affordable?
00:39:47.000I would like to be able to afford a house, yeah.
00:40:09.000The legacy media just sort of casts people, trots us out to advocate for their perspective.
00:40:14.000Just get someone, like, that you feel represents that community and get them to say something that's positive about it.
00:40:20.000So the reality we interact with is not Actual reality.
00:40:24.000You're not interacting with whatever maneuvers have been made with the state or with local authorities to get some special deal to build this.
00:40:31.000All of the things that will have happened behind the scenes to make this profitable and unownable and to ensure that power migrates further upwards.
00:40:39.000As happened in the pandemic period, as has been happening in the last 20-50 years, you tell me in the chat.
00:40:44.000The legacy media presents this story as entirely positive, doesn't offer any questions, any interrogation, any doubt, any discernment.
00:40:53.000It's possible that you would have a legacy media that would go Listen, we're a bit concerned about this.
00:40:56.000This Google housing project looks a bit worrying.
00:41:10.000If we're ever going to have the America proposed in the Constitution, these are the very kind of projects that we're going to have to oppose.
00:41:15.000Giving more housing opportunities to people, that's important.
00:41:17.000a second and see that you are facing a Titan.
00:41:20.000And if you don't bind together and face that Titan, you will be, some might argue quite rightly,
00:41:25.000crushed by it because we weren't able to awaken.
00:41:28.000Giving more housing opportunities to people, that's important.
00:41:31.000There's no doubt that the need is immediate for affordable housing.
00:41:35.000The city says it's working with Google on the new plan.
00:41:38.000Better believe the local authorities are working with Google.
00:41:41.000They're not going to oppose them, are they?
00:41:42.000How that is implemented is really going to be something that we as a council are going to be discussing next month in March and really digging into what those details are.
00:41:52.000Really just finding ways to present this so there can be no opposition.
00:41:55.000Back in 2019, Google announced a $1 billion investment in housing across the Bay Area by repurposing its own land.
00:42:04.000That's not investing in housing, is it?
00:43:27.000You have an aspect of consciousness within you that's sort of still some sort of weird miracle or mystery and it's possible to imagine new realities if you're willing to overcome your own obstacles to progress.
00:43:38.000It's extraordinary that we're willing and satisfied to live in some pixelated version of reality that doesn't allow us to be free.
00:43:44.000That was all very complicated and existential.
00:43:46.000Why don't we trust Google to give us a version of reality that's got a lot less questions in it?
00:44:18.000Side effects of its actual function, which is to control you, sell you stuff, prevent you gaining access to information that might activate you, further centralise already centralised authority structures, advance globalist projects, create dissent, disruption and opposition amongst ordinary populations.
00:44:36.000Big tech is not working towards solutions at all.
00:44:40.000You know when they say, we decided to repurpose this land to help poor people.
00:44:44.000If you want to help poor people, society wouldn't look like If you wanted fairness and equality and freedom of expression, society wouldn't look like this.
00:44:50.000Look, my first suspicions in the pandemic period were not based on data.
00:44:54.000They were based on, hold on a minute, do we care about the sanctity of human life though?
00:44:58.000Do we always put the most vulnerable people to the forefront of our minds?
00:45:00.000That doesn't seem like the world that we've been living in.
00:45:02.000That was just a quiet question at the beginning, but that question grew louder and louder and in the end became just a statement of fact as things progressed.
00:45:09.000And using that attitude, that perspective, you can sort of analyse all news.
00:45:13.000In fact, that is what we do on this channel.
00:46:53.000I know that there are no right angles in nature.
00:46:55.000I'm aware of intuitive, natural, biological design.
00:46:58.000I'm aware that we could be living in a different world.
00:47:00.000In fact, as with politics, what's most offensive is that there is so much that's spoken that's actually true.
00:47:05.000It's not that we need new ideas, it's just that we need to use the ones we already have.
00:47:09.000The Magna Carta in this country, enshrining the rights of the individual.
00:47:12.000Constitution in your country, full of amazing ideas like, Can we get round that in some way?
00:47:16.000Yeah, you could get round it this way.
00:47:18.000And what they're doing now is like, can we use the kind of general aesthetic of, let's call it wokeness for want of a better term, to present Google moving into the acquisition of land and the development of real estate and make it look like we're doing everyone a massive favour.
00:48:17.000Who's to say you even need food or healthcare?
00:48:20.000Ultimately, the dream of home ownership or an affordable rental is becoming unreachable for more and more Americans.
00:48:25.000We can't continue to make this glorious content without your support and the support of our sponsors.
00:48:30.000You will be aware that there are clusters of respiratory illness in northern China and what has been referred to as White Lung Syndrome in the United States.
00:48:39.000Drawing attention, I would say, to the importance of being prepared for a medical emergency at any time.
00:48:44.000Do you know that 90% of pharmaceuticals in the US are produced outside of your country?
00:48:49.000What happens when the next global crisis strikes?
00:49:30.000Other truth-telling doctors will empower you to take control of your own health.
00:49:35.00040% of Americans say they would avoid a doctor or hospital unless it was a catastrophic situation.
00:49:39.000The Wellness Company's Medical Emergency Kit provides a solution.
00:49:43.000This kit includes eight potentially life-saving medications, along with, of course, a guidebook for safe use.
00:49:48.000You don't want to be guessing, do you?
00:49:49.000You get emergency antibiotics, antivirals, and antiparasitics to keep you and your loved ones safe in the face of natural disasters, supply chain shortages, Medical emergencies like white lung or COVID.
00:50:02.000Go to TWC.health forward slash brand and get your own medical emergency kit right now.
00:50:18.000Take control of your health right now with the Wellness Company's Medical Emergency Kit.
00:50:21.000Now let's get back into this, shall we?
00:50:24.000The digital renderings of North Bayshore, a massive proposed development in Mountain View, California, are crowded with glistening buildings and cheerful animated pedestrians.
00:50:32.000There's a lot to show off, including 7,000 new homes, three distinct neighborhoods, and nearly 300,000 square feet of retail and community space.
00:50:39.000Notably though, the gleaming images don't bear any hints of the company behind the whole endeavour.
00:50:51.000Companies like Google and Facebook's parent, Meta, conquered the digital realm a long time ago, setting the ground rules for how we search, interact and shop online.
00:50:59.000Not content to stop there, however, these firms are now making huge bids to expand their reach.
00:51:16.000Across the country, corporations are using their considerable sway and resources to build modern company towns, mini-cities that will feature all the trappings of traditional civic life, including housing, shops and and public spaces. These new projects won't have corporate
00:51:27.000logos on every building and many of the units will be available for the general public, not just
00:51:32.000employees. But in the grand scheme of real estate, they're distinct. After years of running up
00:51:37.000against housing shortages in their backyards, companies like Google, Meta and Disney, not
00:51:41.000exactly known for building new homes, are taking matters into their own hands. Their creations have
00:51:46.000boring names like Middlefield Park and Willow Village, but they might as well be called Zooktown
00:51:52.000And while the developments promise thousands of new homes, the plans are also a tacit acknowledgement of the bleak state of the American housing market and the roles these companies have played in driving up home prices near their sprawling HQs.
00:52:05.000I like the way it's sort of masked in banality, words that don't cause you to sort of stop and ponder, mount in view, willow this.
00:52:12.000Everything now is meant to sort of pass by your eyes, unquestioned, that you're only disrupted when the media disrupts you.
00:53:07.000But it's fair to approach the plans with a healthy degree of scepticism.
00:53:10.000America's single-employer company towns have a long, bloody history of exploitation and labour strife.
00:53:15.000While the current plans hardly represent a return to those dark days of the 19th and early 20th centuries, they probably won't usher in a new era of futuristic techno-utopias either.
00:53:25.000Judging by the plans that have been publicly unveiled so far, The Googles and Metas of the world aren't aiming nearly that high.
00:53:31.000Instead, their visions of city living spaces look a lot like what we're already used to seeing from the modern real estate developers.
00:53:37.000Glassy office buildings, verdant parks and walkable main streets with coffee shops, salad bars and alluring apartment buildings.
00:53:44.000It's nice, but not exactly groundbreaking stuff.
00:53:46.000In a sense, the new conservatism now is this kind of neoliberalist corporatism.
00:54:02.000Rather than from the floating cities or domed villages once dreamed up by science fiction writers, these watered-down plans show that what these companies have been after all along is a way to one-up their competitors.
00:54:12.000They want to attract and retain top employees and ideally get them back into the office too.
00:54:17.000hurt that right now residential real estate looks like a pretty good bet. It's interesting
00:54:21.000that a couple of years ago it was considered ingenious that Facebook and these kind of
00:54:24.000companies would have nice bars where you could get breakfast and stuff and little pods to
00:54:28.000sleep in. When I used to visit them when I was working more in legacy media I used to
00:54:32.000think, God, this is so ingenious. Look, there's a bowl of Skittles. They're free!
00:54:35.000The idea behind them is, you never leave here, you eat those Skittles and then you sleep in that pod.
00:54:39.000Then you can play foosball for a couple of hours and it's back to coding!
00:54:43.000Now what they're doing is, they just want to own all of reality.
00:54:45.000And in a sense, they kind of already do.
00:54:47.000It's just, we're just waiting for the timeline to edge along with us to the point where they own your mind, they own your attention, they own your screen, they own your opinions, they own your office space, they own your home.
00:54:58.000No one is going to prevent this happening, except for you.
00:55:00.000It's literally only you that can do it.
00:55:01.000The noble aim of building more housing, including affordably priced units, is the cherry on top.
00:55:05.000But make no mistake, these companies will only pursue these plans as long as they fit their business goals.
00:55:09.000In June, Mountain View City Council approved the master plan for Google's North Bayshore project,
00:55:15.000a partnership between the tech giant and the Australian real estate firm Lendlease.
00:55:18.000The new community will replace a suburban office park with a sprawling new neighbourhood in the heart of Silicon
00:55:49.000And look, they've not established any income threshold that would determine who can apply for the unit.
00:55:53.000That means that, essentially, they could sell below market rate properties to people that it's expedient to sell those properties to, perhaps because they work at Google or whatever.
00:56:02.000So, while it's using the kind of Face off.
00:56:34.000Mountain View also greenlight the master plan for Middlefield Park, another Google development that proposes to tear down existing office and industrial buildings and construct nearly 2,000 new housing units as well as more office and retail spaces.
00:56:46.000How can any local authority body oppose a Goliath, a gargantuan company of this nature?
00:56:50.000Think of the type of relationships that exist.
00:56:52.000Remember that content we did where Fauci did an interview with the BBC?
00:57:20.000Google wasn't a word, but you better believe it is now, you little Googler you.
00:57:24.000Other household names are getting in on the action.
00:57:26.000Last year, Menlo Park City Council voted unanimously in favour of the plans for Willow Village, Facebook's 59-acre project that's affectionately, or cynically, referred to as Zooktown.
00:57:36.000It promises more than 1,700 homes, as well as office, hotel and retail, right next to Meta's headquarters at one hack away.
00:57:43.000Walt Disney World also plans to break ground next year on 1,400 affordable housing units across 80 acres, a few miles from its flagship theme park in Florida, the company said in the spring.
00:57:54.000Remember once more that philosophical point that we make sometimes?
00:57:56.000I think it was Baudrillard that said the fact that Disneyland is in America distracts you from the fact that America is Disneyland, that the whole thing is in fact a corporate project, that it's not visible.
00:58:05.000Remember how in the pandemic things became visible to you, or us I suppose, that we hadn't seen before?
00:58:10.000Hang on a minute, the media is just supporting this ban.
00:58:12.000Wait a minute, they're censoring true information.
00:58:14.000Hey, the deep state are involved in this.
00:58:28.000This just provides you with some context.
00:58:30.000Nearby, the competing resort company Universal is also building a thousand affordable apartments.
00:58:34.000It's interesting actually because what we're seeing is a type of decentralisation like Universal Land, Disney Land, Google World and Metapark or whatever.
00:58:43.000And I sort of think this is the corporatised version of what might work nicely actually.
00:58:48.000Imagine if it wasn't owned by oligarchs but your community was owned by you and you democratically vote on Oh, we want migrants or we don't want migrants.
00:58:56.000We want our schools to teach this or we don't want our schools to teach this.
00:58:59.000We want to send this much money to the Pentagon or we don't want to send this money to the Pentagon.
00:59:23.000That's interesting, you lucky little Googler.
00:59:25.000It's no surprise that the largest of the new developments are the brainchildren of Silicon Valley giants.
00:59:30.000The modern tech industry was built on a California-tinted brand of utopianism and the belief that connecting people is the answer to many of the world's problems.
00:59:38.000After all the digital ad dollars have been hoovered up and all the attention squeezed out of our screen-addled eyeballs, the next logical step is building a new city where the founding principles of the tech world can be put into practice.
00:59:50.000But companies are also ruthlessly pragmatic profit-making machines beholden to shareholders who closely watch their every move.
00:59:56.000High-minded ideals aside, the modern company towns also make for sound business propositions.
01:00:00.000I think that's how you end up with that peculiar mix of idealistic language and visionary rhetoric, but actually just sort of That doesn't sound very profitable.
01:00:08.000Okay, what if we just say we're going to do that?
01:00:10.000they are all owned in quite a conventional way where you can't go,
01:00:13.000we're just going to build a bunch of affordable housing.
01:00:15.000Well, that doesn't sound very profitable.
01:00:16.000OK, what if we just say we're going to do that?
01:00:26.000Building houses near their HQs checks off both those boxes.
01:00:29.000Commuting is the top reason employees don't want to go back to the office full-time, according to Gallup.
01:00:34.000In a recent piece for Harvard Business Review, the economist Edward Glazer and the consultant Atataki argued that companies should think of housing assistance as just one part of a broader benefits package next to on-site chefs or an office gym that encourages employees to stick around and be more productive.
01:00:50.000Like, people always talk about cults as if, like, cults are, like, a terrifying and a bad thing, but this is a type of cult.
01:00:55.000It's just a cult that's so sort of mundane and banal and called such boring things, and it's based on materialism and rationalism, so you don't notice that you're in a cult already.
01:01:04.000If a cult goes, hey, why don't we detach from all this?
01:01:06.000Because we're gonna die anyway, and love's the most important thing in all our lives.
01:01:14.000What about love, you crazy little Googler?
01:01:16.000The company towns of the 19th and 20th centuries also bore some of that utopian flavour, at least in theory.
01:01:22.000In many cases, company towns were a practical response to the need for housing near factories or lumber mills, which were typically located in barren locations without the kind of amenities that would keep workers happy, like churches or libraries.
01:01:33.000But the idea of a place dominated by a single corporation where your boss not only owns your home but also runs your church and your kids' schools and sells you everything you need at the company's store was always a fraught proposition.
01:01:43.000In many company towns, the corporations used the setup to maintain their social control, threatening disgruntled workers with eviction from company housing if they went on strike.
01:01:51.000When your company is your entire world, the stakes are infinitely higher.
01:02:30.000If Hitler had gone, I'm gonna do Hitler housing, he would have gone, well, hopefully this time he's learned his lesson.
01:02:35.000You know, you'd know what the move was gonna be.
01:02:37.000Well, can we just see what they've done in cyberspace?
01:02:38.000Well, they've monopolized it, they've done deals with the state, they're controlling people, they're censoring true information, they're stockpiling our data, their business model isn't even what they tell us it is, they tell us what they No.
01:02:47.000doing is like say in the case of Google providing searches but what they're actually doing is
01:02:51.000capturing all of our data and selling it to advertisers. So if we start letting them control
01:02:54.000reality and I'm not saying that reality is more important than the cyber world and certainly not
01:02:58.000any metaphysical prima materia of consciousness itself which by the way they're probably trying
01:03:02.000to own right now I would say is a fair bet that the dystopian trajectory is the one that they will
01:03:08.000be pursuing. But that's just what I think let me know what you think in the chat see you in a second.
01:03:14.000Now here's the f*****g news. There won't be pets in Google Town.
01:03:38.000You're living in Zuckerberg's world right now.
01:03:43.000Hey, my kid asked me, is the government baddies?
01:03:47.000And I said, I suppose I'm going to have to say that they are.
01:03:50.000There are good people in government, there are great leaders, there are great idealists, and there are people in government that want the best.
01:03:56.000But in terms of just a simple narrative, my darling daughter, I'm going to have to tell you that the government are baddies.
01:06:14.000Mr. Mayor, we've come to the end of what was a very eventful 2023, right?
01:06:18.000So when you look at the totality of the year, if you had to describe it, and it's tough to do, in one word, what would that word be and tell me why?
01:06:27.000I mean, I know New York, New York, so good we named it twice, but you do have to acknowledge they're different words.
01:06:33.000This is a place where every day you wake up, you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our trade center to a That's not... That's not like a tour... point of a tour... That's a terrible point!
01:07:09.000I mean, I'd say sort of the culture, the bars, the people themselves, the rich history of the five boroughs, the sort of feeling that, you know, CBGBs and the Ramones at any moment, you could Punk or Jay-Z and there's so many magnificent things.
01:07:26.000Well, no, it could be a terror attack any minute of dubious origins that won't be correctly investigated.
01:08:05.000Well done for being a firewalker, for awakening the divinity within you, for being willing to overcome your own prejudices, for being willing to find great forces and great resources within you.