In this episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, we talk about the dangers of nuclear war, why we should be worried about a nuclear apocalypse, and why we need to embrace alternative systems in order to prevent one. Plus, we find out what's going on in the world outside of our little bubble, and we're joined by an Anarchist and writer, Darren Ward, to talk about his new book 'Anarchy Isn't Nihilism' and why he thinks new systems are needed to prevent nuclear war. Stay Free with Russell Brand is on all of the social medias, if you search for Stay Free, you'll find us. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsorships/Stay-Free-With-Russell-Brand and use the promo code: "ELISSA" to receive 10% off your first purchase when you buy a copy of Stay-Free with Russell's new book, "Anarchy Is Yours Truly: A Guide to Anarchy and the Future of the 21st Century". To find out more about Darren and his book, click here. To buy a signed copy of 'Anarchist: Anarchy Is My Name', go to bit.ly/AnarchyIsMyBook and use coupon code: RUMBLE at checkout at checkout to receive $10 off your purchase of $10 or more than $50, and receive a free copy of the book, and a discount of $50 or more! Stay Free! we hope you'll give it a listen and tell us what you think of it. We'll see you in the book and review it in the next time you're in your local bookshop or online. or join us on amazon.co.uk or subscribe to our podcast, and leave us a review! Thanks for listening to stay free with your favourite podcasting platform. . . . we'll be looking out for more like this! Thank you, you're listening to Stay Free: stay free: stay free, you can be free, I'm listening to this, I'll be spreading the word around the world. , and we'll send us your thoughts on what you're watching this podcast on social media: . and more like that, and I'll send you more like it on your favourite pod, right here: bit.co/keepfreewithrussellbrand.ee/keep-free
00:00:01.000Thanks for joining me on Stay Free with Russell Brand today.
00:00:05.000Wherever you are, the whole show will be exclusively available only on Rumble because we can literally speak freely and we use that freedom of speech to bring people together for even deeper experience.
00:00:14.000Click on that red button and join us on Locals.
00:00:16.000That's where I read the comments from, like this one from Orion Rain.
00:00:21.000We've got a fantastic show for you today, unless you're worried about dying in a nuclear apocalypse, in which case we should probably turn off now.
00:00:28.000Joe Biden, your president, if you're America, is in Poland right now giving some weird, crazy, simplistic, reductive, Fisher-Price-style speech for morons out there, simplifying a very complex situation.
00:00:41.000Putin has just suspended the only remaining nuclear arms treaty that they have with the US, although I think if actually you are going to have a nuclear war, The treaty!
00:00:57.000We'll be looking at Chinese balloons and the Ohio derailment.
00:01:01.000What's the real threat to you in your life?
00:01:02.000Let me know in the chat what you think.
00:01:04.000And after 10 minutes, we skip over to being exclusively on Rumble.
00:01:08.000Today, to discuss new data on the effects of lockdown on children.
00:01:14.000For a lot of you, it's going to be exactly what you expected, exactly what you discussed, but we can't discuss that kind of thing on YouTube because it's controversial, isn't it?
00:01:33.000We'll speak freely there about the stories that matter to you and your life and as well as presenting potential solutions and alternative systems.
00:03:16.000We're not going to ascend to the realm of angels.
00:03:18.000I just think it's an interesting response to, you know, potential nuclear Armageddon, is that maybe Spain is just going, all bets are off, we can all do what we want now.
00:04:21.000They've spent nearly $80 million since 98 on lobbying.
00:04:24.000Since 99, it's sent about $17 million directly to candidates' coffers, and it's given £5 to Ohio East Palestinians affected by toxic train explosions, which is enough for one bottle of water, roughly, and they're going to bloody well need it.
00:04:41.000Make it last, guys, because you're going to need it.
00:05:17.000No, he's actually in Poland, mate, simplifying the war.
00:05:20.000I remember when I was a lad, you didn't have anniversaries for wars, because they were considered terrible, terrible catastrophes, rather than like, you know, not world cups for the military-industrial complex.
00:06:17.000Let us know in the chat and the comments if you've got one of them sort of car key hoodies and you're trying to bust that stuff and capitalise on Zelensky glamour.
00:09:00.000But when you talk about Complex geopolitical situations that definitely have transgressions on both sides.
00:09:08.000If you're a regular viewer of our channel, and I hope you are, you know we've spoken to people like Jeffrey Sachs who explained to us about the 2014 coup, how people that are in the Cheney-Bush administration are operating on behalf of the U.S.
00:09:21.000government, Right now advocating for more aggressive measures.
00:09:26.000You know how much military support the US are giving to Ukraine.
00:09:31.000You know that Russia feel aggrieved about the impeachment of their initial, not treaty, but agreement with America after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
00:09:39.000This is a sort of a complicated story, but you wouldn't Autocrats only understand one word.
00:11:26.000Obviously we have an obligation to protect Ukrainian people, but we have said that Ukraine won't join NATO and now NATO are operating on behalf of Ukraine.
00:11:53.000A dictator hell-bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease people's... I mean, I think the fact that you can't remember it... It's not catchy enough, is it?
00:12:02.000It's not like Just Say No or something like that.
00:12:06.000Brutality will never grind down the will of the free, and Ukraine Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia.
00:12:17.000That's called jingoism, it's called bombast and reductivism.
00:12:20.000We'll be talking more about the complexity and potential threat over the course of the show.
00:12:24.000We're going to talk about Putin tearing up the nuclear treaty and the obvious potential risk that that poses.
00:12:30.000If you're my age you grew up under the threat of the Cold War and potential nuclear plight but we thought that sort of stuff was behind us and America Up until very recently had a much more favourable and amenable relationship with Russia.
00:12:44.000If you're watching us on YouTube or anywhere else, we're going to click over exclusively onto Rumble right now, because we're going to be talking in a few minutes about the pandemic and several myths that are being busted.
00:12:54.000We'll also be talking to Darren Allen.
00:12:56.000Anarchist and critic of our current social system about his new novel and some of his observation about many of the myths that hold our culture together.
00:13:04.000So do join us right now because I'm hankering after free speech, Gareth.
00:13:25.000Dear Mother Earth, please do not hold the actions of 1% of our population against all of humanity.
00:13:30.000A plea there to Gaia, to the deep systems that underwrite our terrestrial existence.
00:13:35.000If you want to join us in the chat, you can.
00:13:37.000Click on that locals button and become a member.
00:13:40.000of our community. Joining us now is Darren Allen, anarchist and author of Fired and Ad
00:13:46.000Radicum and 33 Myths of the System, sharing his analysis on how we might propose, discuss
00:13:53.000and bring about alternative systems. Right, Darren, thanks for joining us. We met because
00:13:57.000I like that book, 33 Myths of the System that you wrote, where you talked about a lot of
00:14:02.000presumed ideas around our culture, the myth of education, the myth of science, the myth
00:14:07.000I think a lot of your writing came to people's attention during the pandemic when your analysis was that the crisis was being used to implement further surveillance and there was a lot of
00:14:18.000observable duplicity. Can you talk us through how you came to some of those conclusions and broadly
00:14:24.000speaking what you think the significance of the pandemic was and what we can learn from it when it
00:14:29.000comes to how power operates and the convergence of interests that coalesce around an event like
00:14:34.000that? Well, first of all, do you think it was a pandemic? What do you mean by that? What would...
00:14:40.000I suppose when I'm using that name, I mean, you know, there was coronavirus, SARS, people had symptoms, it was traveling between China, Italy.
00:15:50.000Plandemic is what they'll be saying down there in the chat.
00:15:54.000So, given that you even refute the definition, pandemic, what do you think about the broader response and some of the manifestations around it, mate?
00:16:04.000Well, I mean, it takes a while before you can discover what really is behind vast crimes.
00:16:09.000I mean, when they're actually happening, No one really knows.
00:16:13.000The best analysis I've found is by a guy called Fabio Vigi, I think it is, and he has a pretty convincing case for the fact that it was just a means of pumping in trillions of dollars into the economy and switching off Main Street.
00:16:29.000That is basically the modus operandi of the economic system since, well, since forever really.
00:16:48.000I see, so you think it's economically driven.
00:16:50.000When you say something like that... And technologically, I mean, it was another, it was an excuse to expand the techno-sphere as well.
00:16:58.000Certainly both of those things happened, but ultimately now we're in the terrain of what the mainstream media would call conspiracy theory.
00:17:06.000And I suppose the area of that that's always challenging to discuss is how something of that nature would be coordinated.
00:17:14.000We can see there was a massive wealth transfer We can see it facilitated greater surveillance.
00:17:18.000You can see that it was a soft sell for social credit scoring and introduced ideas that previously would have been unconscionable.
00:17:25.000But when we talk about the execution of a global conspiracy, it always leads to the necessity for collaboration.
00:17:35.000Whilst there are sort of propagandist and sort of greenwashing organisations like WEF hidden in plain sight, While there are bodies like the IMF that leverage debt and their actions around this war and previous wars, you can certainly apply a comparable analysis to the one you just applied there.
00:17:54.000When you say something at that scale is a way of flooding the system with money, do you feel that it requires actual conspiracy or do you see that the convergence of interest can just bring about those kind of states?
00:18:16.000And that's something that's often missed in radical analysis, that we are living in a machine.
00:18:24.000And you've got the people on the right who own the machine, what you call capitalists, and then you've got people on the left, who manage the machine, the professional class.
00:18:34.000But it's the machine that is the problem.
00:18:37.000We are all suckling at this vast, vast robotic world now.
00:18:47.000And it has its own priorities, its own way of working.
00:18:52.000It forces us to think and live in certain ways.
00:19:00.000Something as immersive and inherently totalitarian as that will require, do you agree, something quite cataclysmic and seismic to bring about its overthrow.
00:19:13.000Isn't that sometimes a disheartening paradigm?
00:19:36.000I used to enjoy Mark Fisher's analysis, in particular his book, Late Capitalism, where he suggested that part of the mastery of this system, and he used a comparable Deleuze and Guterres analysis of it being a machine-like system that generated other machines and created that kind of mentality and that kind of lens, he said is that part of what he had achieved Is that it meant it's impossible for us to envisage new systems that we see as reality.
00:20:04.000He said it's easier to envisage the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
00:20:08.000Famous phrase, I think Mark coined, God rest his soul, though he was an anarchist and probably a socialist and an atheist, certainly.
00:20:17.000So, when you're saying that there's some optimism in this, because we're all yearning to be free, we're all yearning for a deeper connection to one another, to ourselves, and to nature more broadly, what is it that you propose?
00:20:29.000Obviously, I know that you're an anarchist, so I'm assuming that what you propose as an alternative system is anarchy.
00:20:35.000Can you talk us through it, bearing in mind that a lot of people watching this and a lot of people asking this question may have only a rudimentary understanding of anarchy, and even a misunderstanding of anarchy, because a lot of people Related to nihilism and punkishness and smash the state, smash the system.
00:20:49.000So can you talk us through what you mean by anarchy and indeed what anarchy means more broadly?
00:21:07.000There's kings, there's governments, states, corporations, there's the technocratic system, there's the professional institutional system, there's the mass, the democratic mass, and there's the human ego.
00:21:22.000The degree to which we can be free of all of those things is the degree to which we can be joyous and free.
00:21:29.000Just cutting out one or two of those things, which tends to happen with socialist thinking, for example, okay, let's get rid of capitalism.
00:21:38.000Or, okay, let's attack, you know, the elite doesn't do anything.
00:21:42.000The whole thing has to be identified, first of all, for what it is, and then naturally, by itself, spontaneously organic social forms emerge, as they do when anybody is free.
00:21:58.000I mean, ordinary people are anarchists when they're at their very best.
00:22:03.000So when you are in love, for example, when you have a loving family and everything's going okay, when you have a group of friends, or even when you're at work and the boss isn't there, things work well.
00:22:33.000I like the way, mate, that you suggest that there's a deep spiritual component to it, that the human ego, that the first system that we must overcome is the system of self.
00:22:41.000And that there's a, I suppose what you say, there's a kind of, if not uniformity, there's a, a, uh, that there is a sort of, uh, kind of a linear expression of freedom right through to self, to the systems that we create.
00:22:53.000In your book, 33 Myths About The System, I liked how you took on sort of broad topics like science and fun.
00:23:01.000and the professional class, and sort of broke down how these things sort of come together.
00:23:09.000You said a minute ago that anarchy breaks out, you know, wherever it gets its chance.
00:23:15.000And I suppose you don't mean like in sort of experimental communities, you mean sort of almost naturally and organically.
00:23:21.000Can you talk us through a few examples of it?
00:23:22.000Because I think I'd like our viewers to appreciate the possibility that it's something that could, I mean, you know, we talk all the time About how are we going to change the world?
00:23:32.000This channel is a lot about critiquing establishment power, establishment thinking.
00:23:37.000Similarly, we talk about individual awakening and personal and spiritual awakening not being a subset that is ultimately about how you can operate better within the system, like how many traditionless or hybrid forms of spirituality tend to be applied.
00:23:53.000Learn to meditate and be better at your job.
00:23:56.000Do yoga and be more attractive to potential mates.
00:23:59.000Spirituality that is at its core challenging to these interwoven machines.
00:24:07.000Can you talk to us about a few examples of where we see anarchism at play and how we might in our own lives apply anarchism?
00:24:15.000Well, the Postal Service, for example, is anarchistic.
00:24:20.000Essentially, I mean they have bosses and they have fat cats screaming it off, but the way that the Postal Service works, no one's in charge of it.
00:24:41.000For example, although that was anarcho-syndicalism, but that, yeah, that worked pretty well, but the supreme example Which we should all look towards for all manner of inspiration in our lives is primal, hunter-gatherer, simple human beings before civilization.
00:25:02.000For 99% of our history, we have been anarchists.
00:25:08.000Essentially, there has been no democracy.
00:25:37.000Daniel Pinchbeck, who brought me to your attention, is like a mate of mine, a brilliant writer on many of these topics.
00:25:44.000He's talked about Oscar Wilde's famous essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism.
00:25:52.000And it's pretty clear that you're not a pro-socialism person.
00:25:55.000I know a lot of people at home will have, as soon as they hear that word, will think about the great 20th century expressions and Maoism and Stalinism and all of those kind of expressions of post-Marxist ideology.
00:26:08.000What Wilde talked about, it's interesting that we're talking about a romantic genius rather than an avowed philosopher or theologian.
00:26:16.000He talked about the idea that technology could be utilized to generate leisure and freedom and an aesthetic culture.
00:26:24.000Are you fundamentally anti-technology?
00:26:27.000Do you think that it's a kind of utility of power?
00:26:30.000Or do you think that we could use technology to create a more liberated and free society?
00:27:05.000Can't just wander face first into Armageddon safe in the knowledge that immediately afterwards we're going to all be able to eat vegetables at our own pace.
00:27:18.000There has to be an interventionist component to this.
00:27:20.000There has to be a revolutionary component.
00:27:23.000Is anarchism fundamentally anti-revolutionary because that would require a degree of organisation?
00:27:29.000I, first of all, I don't talk for anarchist, anarchism as it is today.
00:27:33.000I mean, I'm talking about a very, very extreme form, anarcho-primitivism, basically, what I call primalism.
00:27:41.000So there might be anarchists listening to this just frothing at the mouth.
00:27:45.000But as far as I'm concerned, technology itself is a dominating force in our lives and that it's not neutral.
00:27:53.000It's connected with a vast system that is subordinating.
00:27:57.000You know, if I, when I start criticizing technology, people often say, oh, you've got a smart, well, I don't actually have a smart, but you've got a phone.
00:28:03.000What did you write that would, you know, of course I use individual items of technology because I live in this crummy world that forces me to.
00:28:12.000The system as a whole, the massive interlocking technological system It's not neutral.
00:28:19.000It reduces us to machines and it forces a bureaucratic management system that also coerces and subordinates.
00:28:28.000But that doesn't mean that imagination couldn't be applied to these technologies and ideals.
00:28:35.000Certainly, I recognize the value of what you're saying and honoring our nature, but I also feel that we have to start from where we are, that there are such things as electoral democracy that have to be overcome.
00:28:50.000And I see that there's a sort of, in a sense, a kind of...
00:28:53.000Acceptance that we may be carried by a cosmic flow, by where we are, a kind of Gnosticism, a kind of ease.
00:28:59.000But me, I've always been a bit more of a conflagratory, let's get stuck in there and bring about a revolution type.
00:29:15.000I mean, you've taken us on an incredible journey to anarcho-primitivism, a rare And esoteric sect within anarchism.
00:29:22.000I suppose what I mostly take from this is that when we are told that the system is the way it is, nothing can change, it's fundamentally benign, and the best that we can hope for is reform and incremental improvement, when you listen to ideas around anarchism, it bears that, it exposes that as fundamentally untrue.
00:29:41.000Hey, look at this, a quote from Russell Brand on the back, as well as Irving Welch, and Terry Gilliam, Chris Morris, Alan de Botton.
00:29:47.000Check out all of Darren Allen's work and follow him on Substack, where he writes and where I read many of his essays.
00:29:55.000And sometimes in the comments, I say, well, you got a bit too far there, Darren.
00:29:58.000Thank you very much for joining us, mate.
00:30:02.000And now, as if to trivialise the entirety of Darren Allen's contribution and life's work, here is a singing sex robot mouth that makes you feel that perhaps technology is fundamentally bad.
00:32:00.000It's more of a soundtrack to a potential Armageddon because that's probably the only sounds that will be existing after that.
00:32:07.000When Orwell offers us the vision of the future that can be reduced to a boot stamping on a human face, I think I visited a future as a robot mouth singing a terrifying sort of just multi-tonal song that you can't extract from the To sex industry objects that have already emerged.
00:32:27.000I'm thinking in particular of the fleshlight, which I've never, you know, I'm going to say this, I've never used one of those things, but I've seen them and I've seen them and I don't like them, gal.
00:33:15.000Look, a Chinese company says its automatic sperm extractor is helping clients collect semen from donors reluctant to masturbate in a hospital setting.
00:43:03.000Right, well, hey, maybe we'll cover the rest of this in our special show behind the show, Stay Connected, which me and Gareth make on a weekly basis for the members of our community.
00:43:13.000And also, I read out your comments much more often.
00:43:32.000My stand-up special drops there pretty soon.
00:43:35.000Tomorrow, and I can't believe I'm saying this after such a giddying array of pure old jokes, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges joins us tomorrow.
00:43:46.000On Friday, Jeremy Corbell, UFO expert, will be talking to us about spy balloons, the deep state, the recent spate of UFO sightings and whether or not it's being used as a distraction and what the deep state, deep truths are around the phenomena of non-terrestrial life.
00:44:03.000For a couple of weeks, guys, we are going to be off Protection!
00:44:08.000We are going to be off, I imagine, until March the 13th.
00:44:13.000There'll still be fresh presentations regularly dropping, meditations and more.
00:44:19.000My pre-sale of my stand-up special goes live next week.
00:44:22.000If you're a member on Locals, you'll get it for nothing, just as part of your yearly package, but if you want to buy it as a one-off, there'll be some information published soon about how you can do that.
00:44:31.000And if you want to come see me live and you're in the United States, on March the 2nd, I'm going to be in Los Angeles at the Vermont Theatre.
00:44:37.000On March the 6th, I'm going to be at the Clearwater Theatre in Bilheimer.
00:44:41.000No, I'm going to be in Clearwater at the Capitol Theatre, Bilheimer.