Stay Free - Russel Brand - EXPOSING THE DEI INDUSTRY – With Am I Racist?’s MATT WALSH - SF452

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00:02:12.000 In this video.

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00:02:30.000 Hello there, you Awakening Wanderers.

00:02:31.000 Thanks for joining me for a very special edition of Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:02:35.000 Today, my guest is Matt Walsh.

00:02:37.000 You know Matt Walsh from the Matt Walsh Show on Daily Wire.

00:02:40.000 He made Am I Racist?

00:02:42.000 That's out now.

00:02:43.000 Of course, he made What is a Woman? 0.98

00:02:45.000 Some consider him a right-wing provocateur or maybe an alt-right Borat character setting up scenarios in which, by their own unwitting participation, his dupes are Excuse me, exposed.

00:03:00.000 Now, Matt Walsh is also a Christian, so we talk about Christianity as well as racism and the subjects of his film, the history of slavery, DEI, Christianity and guilt.

00:03:08.000 A good number of subjects come up.

00:03:11.000 I would love to know what you guys think of this interesting conversation.

00:03:15.000 Of course, his movie, Am I Racist?, is out now.

00:03:18.000 Thanks for joining us.

00:03:19.000 Let me know what you think.

00:03:21.000 Matt Walsh, thank you so much for joining us today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:03:26.000 Hey Russell, thanks for having me.

00:03:27.000 I really appreciate it.

00:03:28.000 I watch a lot of your content and I wonder, I suppose that your films have been uniquely successful in this space.

00:03:39.000 First, what is a woman? 1.00

00:03:40.000 It really sort of broke out.

00:03:42.000 Imagine of the presumed demographic of, say, even Daily Wire, which is a sort of a growing demographic, let's face it, and perhaps did something successfully that had not been achieved up till then, presented arguments that had become taboo in a way that might be appealing to A wider audience.

00:04:04.000 Your new film, Am I Racist?, I understand is doing the same thing with regard to arguments around race.

00:04:16.000 The dynamics around all of these subjects seem to be shifting radically at the moment.

00:04:22.000 Do you consider your role, Matt, to be to pose questions, to offer conclusions and Yeah, I'll just stop there.

00:04:32.000 What do you consider to be the function of the films?

00:04:35.000 Yeah, I think that's a big part of it, is the post-question.

00:04:38.000 Especially the first film we did, What Is A Woman, as you mentioned.

00:04:41.000 And, I mean, the question's right there in the title.

00:04:43.000 The whole premise of the film is that in the world of gender ideology, there's Well, they really can't answer any questions at all about their ideology, because it's all really quite fundamentally nonsensical.

00:04:55.000 But they can answer this one basic foundational question, which is, what is a woman?

00:05:00.000 What is a man?

00:05:01.000 So if somebody says, identify as a woman, what do they mean by that?

00:05:03.000 What are they identifying as?

00:05:05.000 And they can't answer that question, and so really the whole movie is just me.

00:05:10.000 I ask a lot of other questions, but every interview comes down to that one question with the people that are... and talking to people that are, you know, not just... we talked to some people that are just walking across in the street, but we're also talking to the supposed experts in this field and kind of letting the house of cards fall apart.

00:05:28.000 In the new film, Am I Racist?, there's a question in the title, but it's not the same kind of question.

00:05:34.000 What is a woman is a question that the gender ideologues don't want to answer, they're afraid of. 1.00

00:05:38.000 Am I racist is a question that the racial ideologues, the race baiters and the DEI grifters, they love to answer that question.

00:05:45.000 They're not afraid of telling me that I'm racist.

00:05:48.000 So, it's a bit different in that that's kind of the question that starts me on this journey of self-discovery, shall we say, in the film, where I get into the world of anti-racism, race-grifting, DEI.

00:06:03.000 And one of the real differences between the two movies is that, in What Is A Woman?, I kind of maintain a skeptical attitude Sort of a blank slate through the whole movie.

00:06:11.000 I don't really have an opinion myself until the very end.

00:06:15.000 In this one, we decided we're flipping our side a little bit in that rather than being skeptical, I'm going to go into this and I'll just believe whatever they tell me.

00:06:24.000 And at least sort of I'll play as though I'm believing everything they tell me.

00:06:29.000 And we'll go down the rabbit hole.

00:06:30.000 We'll kind of let them guide me.

00:06:33.000 So we talk to the first person.

00:06:34.000 I ask them all the questions.

00:06:35.000 She gives us the answers.

00:06:36.000 I say, well, where do I go next?

00:06:38.000 If I believe it, I'm into it, what do I do next?

00:06:41.000 And she tells me.

00:06:41.000 And then we kind of just follow.

00:06:42.000 We let them drag us.

00:06:44.000 On this journey so that we can reveal by the end of it how like where it leads you if you take these ideas seriously.

00:06:51.000 That's a really interesting device and technique to use to drive you.

00:06:59.000 And I was, as you were describing that, Matt, I thought of the recent viral clip of that

00:07:05.000 guy. I don't know who he is, but he's doing a prank at the DNC where he's saying, "Oh,

00:07:09.000 it's so great that Kamala is running and I'm a white male." 0.86

00:07:13.000 And he jokes about his wife's lover and stuff like that.

00:07:16.000 And the reason that that viral clip seems so plausible is perhaps because all of a sense

00:07:22.000 that the culture is almost trying to generate the mindset that the protagonist in that clip

00:07:31.000 was representing.

00:07:32.000 So you've taken as your mode almost a kind of a Sacha Baron Cohen technique of a savant

00:07:41.000 like character who takes at face value the perspectives of the antagonists and people

00:07:48.000 that he or you in this instance encounter and see where that would naturally take us.

00:07:53.000 And although you sort of point out that there are distinctions certainly in the questions, and it's brilliant I suppose, I reckon, to have questions as the inciting incident for your movies, But both the why's a woman an unanswerable question and am I racist a definitively answerable question yes you are a racist you're racist unless you or if you have ever and almost I'm presuming there's no escape from the diagnosis of racist and that's one of the the ideas that you're examining.

00:08:23.000 Both of those areas, it seems to me, are designed or have culturally created conditions where there's a great deal of uncertainty about what constitutes the correct behaviour.

00:08:37.000 And there's also, I think, a real Offering a real opportunity, rather, for people to be condemned if they don't say the right thing or don't believe the right thing.

00:08:48.000 And I wonder, do you think that both of these... Let's talk about your current film that you're currently promoting, Am I Racist?

00:08:56.000 Do you think That this method and modality is peaked, and that we're going to come out the other side?

00:09:02.000 Or do you think there's further to go with that kind of divisiveness?

00:09:04.000 Because I'll tell you what, we'll tell you why I'm posing the question that way, because it seems to me that actually, and maybe your film contributed to this, the arguments around gender have altered.

00:09:13.000 For example, Keir Starmer, the UK Prime Minister, for a while, you know, wouldn't answer the question, what is a woman?

00:09:20.000 But, you know, say six months ago, now he would say, well no, if you have a You know, this chromosome, that chromosome, then you're... The culture has changed a little bit with regard to the issues around your former film.

00:09:33.000 Where do you think we are on that trajectory with the subject of race?

00:09:37.000 Yeah, well, I think, just to start with the former film, I think you're exactly right that I've noticed... Well, even in the US, for example, there's been big political changes, legislative changes.

00:09:46.000 There are actually laws against mutilating children in, you know...

00:09:53.000 I don't know how many states now, but many states.

00:09:56.000 But even more, it's the cultural change.

00:09:58.000 I mean, in What Is A Woman, we filmed this three years ago, and we did go and do kind of man-on-the-street interviews in several cities across the country, and we found at the time that No matter who we were talking to, demographic-wise, old, young, white, black, it didn't matter.

00:10:16.000 Most people were terrified to talk about the issue.

00:10:19.000 They were terrified to even admit that they could define the word woman, even though all of them, of course, knew the answer, but they didn't want to answer it.

00:10:26.000 Ask them a question like, should men be allowed in the women's room? 1.00

00:10:31.000 And most people at that time didn't want to say no, even though we know that their answer is no.

00:10:36.000 Now I think it'd be very different.

00:10:37.000 I think if I went out and did those manless street interviews in the exact same places again, three, four years later, I think the vast majority of people that I stop on the street would say, yeah, a woman's an adult human female.

00:10:47.000 No, men don't belong in the women's room. 1.00

00:10:48.000 That's ridiculous. 0.99

00:10:49.000 So I do think there's been a cultural change on race.

00:10:53.000 I think that, I don't know if the DEI stuff has peaked.

00:10:56.000 I think it's, I think it will peak.

00:10:57.000 I think it's reaching a peak.

00:10:59.000 I think one of the things that indicates that it's getting to a peak is the fact that everybody knows the term DEI.

00:11:07.000 And not only do they know it, but it's been branded in a negative light so that, you know, I don't have a study showing this.

00:11:16.000 Maybe they've been done.

00:11:17.000 But I think that if you get 100 people in the room and you say the phrase DEI to them, like 98 of them will have heard of it.

00:11:25.000 And almost all of that 98 will kind of roll their eyes.

00:11:29.000 Like, they'll have heard of it that has a negative connotation for them.

00:11:32.000 Kind of similar to what's happened with CRT a couple years before that, where, you know, nobody had heard of critical race theory, and then all of a sudden everyone had heard of it, and most people recognized it as a bad thing.

00:11:43.000 And I think a similar thing's happening with DEI.

00:11:45.000 Now, the only problem, of course, is that when we get to the point where DEI is roundly condemned by almost everybody, Does it just go away?

00:11:56.000 Does the ideology go away?

00:11:57.000 No, any more than, you know, CRT didn't go away.

00:11:59.000 Now they look for a way to rebrand it.

00:12:01.000 They take these same ideas and they look for new packaging.

00:12:05.000 And so you always have to be on the lookout for that.

00:12:08.000 What's the new packaging for these same ideas that these race grifters have really been pushing for decades? 1.00

00:12:15.000 There's nothing wrong with helping vulnerable people, but I suppose you, like me, are cynical as to whether or not helping vulnerable people is really the motivating idea behind many of these initiatives, in a kind of a literal Christian way, if you take the...

00:12:33.000 Uh, adage by their fruits shall you know them.

00:12:37.000 These kind of ideas seem to create opposition, division, concern, confusion, and doubt.

00:12:46.000 I wonder on the subject of race, say if you were to take the, um, Easily vilified and frequently condemned cultural group of, like, even if you were to say it's such a thing as the most extreme MAGA voter existed, like a white male from the South, hunting, maybe been in the military or whatever.

00:13:07.000 Like, I might imagine that those people would have quite an easy relationship around the subject of race.

00:13:13.000 If you take people that work in the services, accept it and assume that you're going to work with people that are from diverse racial backgrounds.

00:13:23.000 If you come from the kind of communities that I sense have been, from which a lot of MAGA grassroots support are drawn, it's likely that it's necessary for you to form relationships with people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, because it just seems that blue-collar backgrounds and people from low income, forgive the sort of, you know, the reductiveness of this inquiry, tend to have to live tooth by cheek by jowl and have to get along together.

00:13:52.000 So I wonder, I wonder from where the legitimacy of these initiatives is drawn.

00:14:01.000 To give you a very sort of broad sketch of a set of ideas I'd love to hear your thoughts on, when you pass through some normal country town in Britain and see it adorned with rainbow flags, and I bet similar things happen in your country too, you wonder, who is this for?

00:14:20.000 Who is this serving?

00:14:21.000 If we were to approach this, Matt, in good faith, would you say that it's comparable even to seeing the stars and stripes in your National Union Jack in mine?

00:14:31.000 Do you think that what's being offered is that if you live under what would be commonly termed the patriarchy, And under a sort of presumed nationalist rubric, you are having imposed upon you a set of ideas that are somehow marginalising, are somehow repressive, and that there is some requirement for a pushback.

00:14:54.000 I suppose now I'm starting to understand my question is, is there legitimacy at all to DEI arguments or conversations around gender? Or is

00:15:05.000 there some legitimacy and if so, what is it and how could it be brought into the culture in

00:15:10.000 a way that didn't feel so propagandist and exploitative and untrustworthy?

00:15:16.000 From the rest of the show, cannot be on YouTube because Matt Walsh and I are going to speak a

00:15:22.000 little more freely now, so click the link in the description and join us over on Rumble.

00:15:28.000 No, I don't think, yeah, it's an interesting thought.

00:15:31.000 So, a few things.

00:15:33.000 Well, to answer your question most directly, I don't think the kind of DEI ideology, DEI policies that are pushed through, you know, in corporate America and in government and in academia, I don't think there's any legitimacy to those at all.

00:15:48.000 I think they're just like, they're fundamentally poisonous and toxic because they're all based in an idea of You know, racism, the way that they would define racism, if they were to define it honestly, what they actually think, they would say that white people are inherently racist, and that only white people can be racist, because racism is a white construct.

00:16:11.000 This is what they believe.

00:16:12.000 This is what DEI is grounded in.

00:16:14.000 And everything kind of revolves around that idea.

00:16:17.000 And so I say that there's no legitimacy to it.

00:16:19.000 Could there be legitimacy and could it be worthwhile to talk about race broadly and the experiences of people of different races?

00:16:27.000 Sure.

00:16:27.000 I mean, but as you point out, I think if you go to a lot of these communities that would be condemned as being bastions of bigotry, You'll find there that they talk about race.

00:16:37.000 They have no problem with it.

00:16:39.000 They just don't have the hang-ups about it.

00:16:40.000 In fact, in the movie, I don't want to give any spoilers away, but one of the places that I go in the film is in the south to a biker bar that has confederate flags hanging on the walls.

00:16:51.000 And it's just nothing but a bunch of, you know, blue-collar, white bikers with confederate flag, you know, on the wall and tattoos, some of them.

00:17:01.000 And of course, we're playing it for laughs a little bit, because I'm throwing all these far-left ideas at them just to see how they react to it.

00:17:10.000 But then when we get down to actually talking about race issues, they have really normal things to say.

00:17:17.000 They say, hey, look, we all believe the same, and I don't care if you're black or white, doesn't matter.

00:17:22.000 It's fine.

00:17:22.000 That's basically their idea.

00:17:24.000 You have to go into these kind of White liberal urban areas to find the places where when you bring up race, it's just there's this like silence that falls over the room and everybody gets really tense and awkward about it.

00:17:39.000 And then one of the first things we do in the film is I go to a support group.

00:17:44.000 It's a real thing.

00:17:44.000 Everything's real.

00:17:45.000 It's a support group, and you're all sitting around.

00:17:47.000 It's like AA style.

00:17:48.000 You're all sitting around in a circle, and it's all a bunch of white people. 0.72

00:17:53.000 And the support group is for white people who are experiencing grief over their whiteness, essentially.

00:17:59.000 And the group is led by this black woman, kind of this DEI expert.

00:18:06.000 Just sitting in the room with these people again for the film we're trying to play for laughs but these are real people and they're all and I was there for like two hours in you know in real time as they're all talking about All these feelings they have about being white.

00:18:21.000 And I'm sitting there, as I think a normal person myself, and in my mind I'm thinking, I've never had any of these thoughts.

00:18:29.000 I can't believe that you're walking around every day actually feeling this burden of guilt.

00:18:37.000 Just because of the color of your skin.

00:18:38.000 And I've thought a lot about that, this kind of white guilt that these people seem to actually feel.

00:18:45.000 Might be some virtue signaling involved, but I think that there's something real underneath it.

00:18:48.000 I think they do feel the guilt, and I think that there's kind of a spiritual explanation.

00:18:53.000 If I was to look at it through a Christian lens as a Christian, you know, everybody has guilt.

00:19:00.000 We all feel guilt because we are all sinners, and we all are members of a fallen species, the human race.

00:19:07.000 And so we all have guilt, but if you're a member of, let's say, a traditional religion, the religion comes to you and gives you a way to understand that guilt, gives you a framework for understanding it, and also something to do with it and about it.

00:19:26.000 But if you don't have religion, you still experience the guilt because you're still a person.

00:19:31.000 You're still a fallen human being.

00:19:32.000 But you don't know what to do with it.

00:19:33.000 You don't know what it means.

00:19:34.000 You don't know where it's coming from.

00:19:36.000 And then you have these race grifters who come along and they say, OK, well, I'll tell you, whitey, why you're feeling all that guilt. 0.99

00:19:43.000 It's because you're white. 0.99

00:19:44.000 And here's what you can do about it. 0.98

00:19:45.000 But by the way, even after you do those things, you'll still be white. 0.90

00:19:48.000 So you'll still be just as guilty.

00:19:50.000 And so you will never actually be free of the guilt.

00:19:54.000 Atonement, there's none of that in the end for these people.

00:19:57.000 That's the great tragedy of it, I think.

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00:21:21.000 All right, let's get back to this content.

00:21:23.000 I think that's an excellent framing looking at it from a spiritual perspective where the function of spirituality becomes prevalent and it is of course easy to dismiss a spiritual purview as being somehow Impractical and not connected to reality but in your example you demonstrate that it's precisely its pragmatism that makes it valuable.

00:21:47.000 The acknowledgement that there is indeed an inhered feeling of sin but the possibility of redemption not through moral action but through the salvation offered through Jesus Christ.

00:21:57.000 I've got a bunch of points to make Matt.

00:21:59.000 I think you might, I hope you find interesting.

00:22:01.000 When you said early in your answer that there's the idea that racism is inherent If racism is inherent, it would warrant being regarded almost as a protected characteristic.

00:22:14.000 If there's nothing that you can do about it, if it is inhered, then it would qualify under the same terms as some of these other identity aspects that we're currently debating.

00:22:27.000 To the point of a sense of racial awareness, racial identity, assimilation,

00:22:35.000 and how that could be handled differently. In my country, there was a wind rush, famously

00:22:39.000 in the 40s and 50s, where former Commonwealth countries, or in fact current Commonwealth

00:22:44.000 countries, were invited to live in the UK because it was like a labour crisis, at

00:22:48.000 least that's the, you know, narrative. I've not looked into it too deeply, but there was a requirement for

00:22:52.000 nurses, doctors, labour, teachers, etc. So people came from British colonial countries in

00:22:58.000 Africa and elsewhere and lived in the UK.

00:23:02.000 And it's anecdotally understood and to somewhat academically supported that early Windrush migrants integrated very well into the working class white cultures that they were living amidst.

00:23:15.000 And like, for example, ska music came out of that, that there was a cohesion.

00:23:21.000 There was a subsequent politicization, in this instance from what would have been called then the right, That kind of mobilised and polarised those communities and led to sort of like, you know, the race riots that happened 10, 20, 30 years later, along with I'm sure other contributory factors, the increasing migration, other things I'm sure that we could discuss.

00:23:42.000 Then more sort of personally, I was thinking about my own feelings around racial identity growing up in a blue collar community and when I'm growing up like it's the beginning of gangster rap and that and my feelings about um racial difference you know and and forms of cultural identity that come out of black say black forms of identity it was really cool like I loved NWA and of course the character of uh Ali G a precursor to Borat to whom uh perhaps your films owe at least a um

00:24:17.000 Technical debt in terms of the idea of this savant entering into sort of territories where they might create, you know, the sort of provocateur dynamic.

00:24:29.000 I feel like that idea that there are cultural differences, there are racial differences, but they might align rather nicely if there aren't external agents used to motivate it.

00:24:43.000 And I think those agents can come from the right or left.

00:24:46.000 You can have Nationalist movements that galvanise disdain, I'm talking more about the 70s and 80s here rather than what's happening currently that seems perhaps more complex, that galvanise disdain or dislike or agitation against migrant communities and indeed you can have from inverted commas the left

00:25:03.000 movements of provocation entering into the community.

00:25:06.000 What I feel like it will be interesting is to, you must have a sense of who the audience for your film to

00:25:13.000 be, because I know Daily Wire is excellent at understanding

00:25:17.000 those things.

00:25:17.000 And I wonder, I wonder,

00:25:20.000 I wonder, indeed, given the spiritual aspect of the answer to the last question,

00:25:26.000 what you consider might be a point of reconciliation and reunion that might come from

00:25:33.000 the areas that your films are examining and highlighting?

00:25:39.000 I think, and I was listening to what you said about the external agents that come in and create a lot of this interracial strife and all that, and I firmly believe that that is what's happening and and without that well we certainly we wouldn't live in a utopia that's not going to happen in this life anyway and you're always going to have a an element of tribalism with human beings that's that's natural for humans but i do think that at least in the west racially speaking things could be okay things could be basically fine 0.96

00:26:12.000 If you didn't have these people that were invested in making sure that it's not fine I mean I think back even I can't speak to the UK but at least in the US in the 90s now the 90s we know we had, you know, we had some race riots we had OJ we had, you know, racial strife in the 90s by no means was it perfect but.

00:26:32.000 At least I can talk about being a kid going to public school in a liberal area in the 90s.

00:26:39.000 Very racially diverse, we would say now.

00:26:42.000 A lot of diversity and inclusion.

00:26:44.000 We didn't use those terms, but there was a lot of it.

00:26:47.000 But we didn't spend, and it was basically fine, we didn't spend a lot of time talking about the fact that we were different.

00:26:54.000 We didn't spend a lot of time talking about racism anyway.

00:26:57.000 Now, you acknowledge race, but we don't need to focus on and talk about racism incessantly.

00:27:02.000 I think about, it's a famous clip, I believe it was Morgan Freeman, a pretty famous clip from a 60 Minutes interview he did maybe 25 years ago.

00:27:10.000 Or he was asked about Black History Month, and he said that he doesn't like it, because, let's just talk about American history, and black history is American history, white history is American history.

00:27:21.000 And then he was asked, well, what do we do about racism?

00:27:23.000 He said, stop talking about it.

00:27:25.000 And now, I don't know, if you ask Morgan Freeman that same question today, would he give the same answer?

00:27:29.000 I hope so.

00:27:30.000 I'm not sure.

00:27:31.000 But I think that is sort of the answer.

00:27:36.000 If you don't focus on it incessantly and talk about racism and tell everybody all the time to look back.

00:27:44.000 That's so much of these diversity, equity, and inclusion grifters.

00:27:46.000 This is all of their game.

00:27:47.000 It's like they're always telling you, well, look back within yourself.

00:27:50.000 What are you thinking about race?

00:27:52.000 What do you really feel?

00:27:53.000 Oh, you think you're not feeling any racism.

00:27:55.000 You only think that, but look deeper because it's really in there.

00:27:58.000 It's always there.

00:27:59.000 And it's like they have to constantly convince you that you're actually racist and you're insisting to them, but I'm not.

00:28:06.000 I don't hate people of other races.

00:28:09.000 But no, but you are, you really are.

00:28:11.000 So they're very blatantly and I think plainly invested in making sure that people either are racist and if they're not racist, at least perceive themselves to be racist so that they can keep the grift going.

00:28:26.000 Did you see that moment when Tucker got, you know, when they were talking about replacement theory to Tucker in Australia and the woman said, you know, you say that migrant workers are costing white jobs and he said, I didn't say white jobs, it's black and white jobs.

00:28:45.000 So like there are subtle Either unconscious or deliberate assumptions that are made that presume a more pejorative perspective on the subject of race.

00:28:57.000 I feel that one of the driving ideas is that the professional liberal class hates working class people.

00:29:02.000 I think that came to the forefront in Brexit in my country, the beginning of the MAGA movement in yours.

00:29:09.000 Culturally, I'm a person that sort of, my background, you would be of the left, sort of, because of the axis that might exist between the trade union movement, where you'd think like that men that had working class jobs in sort of manufacturing industries, say, and although those jobs have largely disappeared from countries like yours and mine, And then what the culture would have regarded as maybe champagne socialism but the kind of socialism that comes out of civil rights of like great figures like Maloofah King and Malcolm X etc.

00:29:43.000 But with my more recent analysis such as it is of those times I point out that those are generally religious figures as much as they are social or political figures and indeed owe their debt and legacy to religious figures e.g.

00:29:56.000 Gandhi.

00:29:58.000 I wonder Matt, earlier you mentioned that people will all feel a degree of guilt because of our fallen condition of sin.

00:30:12.000 Do you wonder ever how, as a Christian, we tackle these subjects and how we would apply that commonly used idea of how Christ might or how Christ would address these ideas.

00:30:30.000 When you were talking a minute ago, I note how explicitly the letters of Paul are open to all Christians.

00:30:37.000 Paul being primarily entrusted with taking Christianity from being a Jewish sect To, you know, at least providing the liturgy, infrastructure and writing that afforded Christianity to become a global or universal phenomenon.

00:30:57.000 I wonder, like, it's clear in Christianity that race is irrelevant, everything is irrelevant, Christ died for you, Christ don't care about any of that.

00:31:06.000 I've asked people, you know, Christians specifically about What do you reckon Christ would think about homosexuality?

00:31:11.000 What would Christ think about trans issues?

00:31:13.000 And I've had some great answers including like, there ain't no separate compartments in hell.

00:31:19.000 All of us are sinners.

00:31:20.000 It doesn't matter what the type of your sin is.

00:31:22.000 If you're a sinner, you're a sinner. 1.00

00:31:24.000 Non-judgment is a sort of an important facet.

00:31:27.000 It's for all of us to individually find our relationship with Christ and to invite him into our life through personal relationship.

00:31:35.000 I wonder how much your Christianity affects your perspective when it comes to filmmaking, and whether or not, like me, you find it hard not to get sucked into the polemicism that defines the political space that you work in as a journalist and as a presenter when it comes to having a Christian perspective also.

00:31:55.000 Are there odds?

00:31:56.000 Because we sort of know that Christianity would always demand non-judgment, forgiveness, Hardness, love, etc.

00:32:04.000 I wonder what you face in that area?

00:32:07.000 Yeah, I think, well, so two things on that.

00:32:11.000 In terms of being difficult as a kind of polemicist, normally a pundit, and then even doing films like this, where it's not as simple as just looking at the camera and giving my opinion, that can be a challenge.

00:32:21.000 I mean, that's one of the, in making both of the films, People often ask me, well, how do you, when you're in these rooms making films like this with these kinds of people, how do you stop yourself from laughing?

00:32:31.000 And for me, it's not really a problem of stopping myself from laughing.

00:32:34.000 It's actually more stopping myself from screaming at them and telling them that they're wrong and that they're full of it.

00:32:41.000 And then just turning to the camera and saying, here's the real lesson, folks.

00:32:45.000 Because that's what I do every day, you know, on a podcast.

00:32:47.000 That's the business that we're in.

00:32:48.000 We look at a camera, we give our opinion.

00:32:51.000 And there's a place for that.

00:32:53.000 I certainly hope there's a value in that, because it's what I do every day.

00:32:57.000 But I think it can also be powerful to expose these ideas in ways where it's not...

00:33:04.000 Where it's not me just explaining to the audience, here's what these people think, here's why they're wrong.

00:33:10.000 And I think that entertainment, filmmaking, can be a great tool for exposing the fallaciousness of a lot of their ideas in, I think, a kind of a deeper way.

00:33:23.000 In terms of the faith aspect of it, I think Well, as you kind of pointed out, as Christians, we have a really elegant and beautiful answer to all the racial strife, which is that we're all human beings, and we're all descended from Adam and Eve, and we are all part of that same fallen human condition.

00:33:45.000 We all need Christ in exactly the same degree.

00:33:50.000 Now, I think that, you know, you pointed out that There are some Christians who will say that, hey, all sin is the same.

00:33:56.000 I don't actually believe that.

00:33:57.000 I think that all sin is sin, but there are degrees of sin, and there are some sin that is worse than others.

00:34:03.000 There's some sin that separates you from the light of God more than other sin does.

00:34:07.000 You know, for example, telling a white lie, a child saying, I didn't take a cookie from the cookie jar, is not as severe a sin as First-degree murder, but to use extreme examples, but even so we are all still sinners And if we're all committing sin that takes us farther and farther away from God the answer for all of us is exactly the same and it does not matter what your race is and And there's a real true unity in that it's like it's a real.

00:34:34.000 It's a real unity too.

00:34:35.000 It's not Because when you start talking about this I always feel there's always the risk of lapsing into cliche where you say hey We're all it's all one race.

00:34:43.000 We're the human race and Race is just a social construct that doesn't matter.

00:34:48.000 I wouldn't go that far.

00:34:49.000 Race is a real thing.

00:34:50.000 It's part of your identity.

00:34:52.000 It matters.

00:34:55.000 Just like I'm a man, it doesn't not matter that I'm a man.

00:35:00.000 But from a spiritual perspective, Whether you, whatever your race is, whatever your sex is, we're all children of God.

00:35:10.000 And whatever guilt we're feeling, the answer for all of us is the same.

00:35:13.000 And I think that's quite a beautiful thought, and that really is the answer.

00:35:18.000 And maybe it's why I feel, I'm not going to say impervious, but I've never felt even tempted to fall into this Our partners are absolutely vital.

00:35:30.000 that so many white liberals seem to fall into in the West.

00:35:34.000 I look at it and like I said, I can't even, it's hard for me to even relate to it.

00:35:38.000 I don't understand how you could fall into this and maybe it's because I have a spiritual grounding

00:35:43.000 and I know where to put that guilt.

00:35:45.000 I know where it's coming from and they're more confused on that point.

00:35:49.000 Our partners are absolutely vital.

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00:36:49.000 One time I was at Pesa when I was 16 with my friends who were Jews, obviously, and during the various incantations and ceremonies that accompanied the event, I had this idea that had I been in Germany in the 30s as a non-Jew, I would presumably have been a participant in the circumstances and social obligations that drove some, most Germans to either tolerate or

00:37:29.000 Participate in the active persecution of Jews and I did cry a bit But I will say I was only 16 and I had taken LSD and was trying to hold myself together at a family dinner with my friend Matt Hirsch and his family while also dealing with the sort of incantations and stuff that was going on at the only PESA that I've ever attended so perhaps You know, if I was to think a lot about racial dynamics and the history of slavery, I could conjure a kind of... But what I would also probably feel is something that's founded to a degree on George Orwell's famous quote, the British, you know, when asked about the problems of the British working class, he said the British working class

00:38:19.000 Is in India.

00:38:21.000 Taking that as a starting point, I think that first, most imperial powers conquer the serf class around them, and then subsequently they might go off and dominate other territories. 0.95

00:38:34.000 I'm talking mostly, I suppose, about European history.

00:38:37.000 So it's not like every single white person was a benefactor of slavery.

00:38:44.000 Although white people would have participated in slavery and the various forms of racism that have followed it.

00:38:52.000 And as has been pointed out in America, that it's not a very long time ago that those things happened.

00:38:59.000 But the idea that there is individual culpability becomes complicated.

00:39:06.000 In our country, for example, Matt, after the George Floyd murder and the subsequent BLM movement, took on ceremonial demonstrations, say, at sporting events, which continues, you know, but our footballers in my country take the knee still before football matches.

00:39:26.000 But, say, at a final, like an FA Cup final or a European final a major final you

00:39:31.000 may have the Event of young footballers taking the knee and one of my

00:39:36.000 friends said yeah, but think of like young black footballers It's obviously going to be meaningful to them and to their

00:39:41.000 white teammates is going to be Important to show solidarity and I can understand that but

00:39:46.000 when they're doing it in front of the royal family then you have to acknowledge that

00:39:52.000 Colonialism and imperialism has it is as its ultimate zenith the aristocratic and exploitative

00:39:58.000 oligarchical class that has as its living symbol royalty

00:40:03.000 And I felt at the beginning of the statue pulling down time, oh, how are you going to pursue this?

00:40:08.000 Because in the end, you'll have to pull down everything.

00:40:12.000 In the end, you won't be able to have a nation.

00:40:15.000 Now, I'm not for, as a, you know, particularly now as a committed Christian, I'm not, um, I don't have a view on that.

00:40:24.000 Whether or not there has to always be a United Kingdom, there has to always be an America. 0.70

00:40:29.000 Perhaps as there was something that preceded the UK and preceded America, perhaps there will be something that follows it.

00:40:38.000 Certainly if Christ returns and there is a rapture, there certainly will be.

00:40:41.000 But maybe even socially it's possible to evolve beyond these states.

00:40:45.000 I wonder if you see the Obviously I'm imagining you do.

00:40:49.000 The complexity of choosing to pursue some of the narrative assumptions that emerge from exploitation and the presumption of white supremacy and not all of them and where it leaves the idea of a nation full stop if you start to pull those threads too hard.

00:41:09.000 Yeah, I think you're right.

00:41:10.000 Well, once you start pulling it, then you might as well pull it all down.

00:41:12.000 And some of us pointed that out even before George Floyd.

00:41:17.000 In the U.S., a few years before that, there was kind of a mini movement that cropped up to start pulling down, particularly in the South, the monuments to Confederate generals or mentions of Confederate generals, Confederate flags and that sort of thing.

00:41:36.000 And the reason that was given is that these were white racist slave owners, or at least people who supported slavery.

00:41:44.000 And some of us pointed out back then, this was back in, I don't know, 2016, 17, And even Trump made this point at the time that, well, okay, but you do realize that our founding fathers were white and racist by our standards today, and they owned slaves. 0.60

00:42:01.000 So if that's the reason for tearing down a monument, then I guess theirs is going to come down soon too. 0.95

00:42:07.000 And at the time we were told, oh, that's ridiculous.

00:42:09.000 We're not going to do that.

00:42:10.000 And then what do you know, fast forward a few years and they're tearing down The Founding Fathers, too.

00:42:15.000 But it goes beyond that, because the truth is, I mean, you brought up slavery.

00:42:19.000 One of my many problems with this idea that I, as a white person, carry guilt for slavery, or that there should be reparations for it, you touched on one of the reasons, which is, like, that doesn't mean that I have individual culpability for things that I... mistakes that were made, or I won't say mistakes, that's...

00:42:37.000 The evil that was committed by people who were not me generations ago, the fact that I have individual culpability for that, is absurd.

00:42:48.000 But one of the reasons why it's absurd is that slavery in particular, if we're going back in time and we're assessing the terrible things that were done by our ancestors, Well, slavery is a great example of the kind of thing that, actually, if anyone carries guilt for that, we all carry guilt for it.

00:43:07.000 If you can inherit guilt for slavery, we all have that inherited guilt, because slavery was a universal, global institution for literally thousands and thousands of years.

00:43:21.000 I think it's a shame that the discussion about slavery has turned into this ridiculous, like, white versus black thing, because if we could be more intelligent about it, there's an actually interesting question here, which is, that I think about often.

00:43:33.000 Which is, how could it be that for thousands of years, everyone in the world either practiced slavery or was okay with it, and it never occurred to anyone, even the greatest minds of history, it seemed to never even occur to them that there might be something just inherently wrong with owning a person?

00:43:52.000 And I think that the history of the world shows us that, again, for thousands of years, that really didn't occur to anyone.

00:43:57.000 Now, there were some people that were a little bit more progressive for their time, and so they said things like, well, treat your slaves well, or, you know, there should be rules for when you're allowed to take slaves and that sort of thing.

00:44:09.000 There really wasn't anyone who said that, hey, look, all humans have inherent human rights and dignity because they're human beings, and you cannot own anyone ever under any circumstances.

00:44:19.000 Nobody said that for thousands of years, anywhere in the world.

00:44:23.000 And certainly nobody said it in Africa, which was a willing and eager participant in the slave trade, and held on to it. 0.98

00:44:32.000 In Africa, they held on to the slave trade for longer than the white Western European powers did. 0.50

00:44:38.000 And then in what is now the United States, in the Americas, in this entire hemisphere, Slavery was an institution for hundreds of years before any white man stepped foot on its shores.

00:44:51.000 You had the Mesoamerican tribes, the Aztecs and the Incans and the Mayans, that were ransacking the tribes all around them, taking slaves both for labor and also to rip their hearts out of their chests as human sacrifices. 0.87

00:45:06.000 And the same thing was happening in tribes to the north, less advanced tribes, but still the same thing of sending war parties in, killing almost everybody, taking slaves, taking children and women as sex slaves, taking men as slaves.

00:45:19.000 So the point is, this is just everybody was doing it.

00:45:24.000 That doesn't make it okay.

00:45:26.000 But that does mean that it's absurd to point to one particular group who engaged in slavery and put all the guilt on them and then act as though everybody else in the world was more enlightened than that when they clearly weren't.

00:45:42.000 And it also means, finally, and I'll stop babbling, but it means that really we can't, it's incoherent.

00:45:50.000 To hold our ancestors to these modern standards and to condemn them. 0.55

00:45:54.000 At a certain point, it's sort of incoherent to condemn them for owning slaves because apparently it just never occurred to anyone in the world for thousands of years. 1.00

00:46:04.000 And so we can sit here now in the year 2024 and say, well, they were ignorant and stupid and foolish. 1.00

00:46:11.000 You know, all of humanity was ignorant, stupid and foolish for thousands of years. 1.00

00:46:14.000 We can say that. 1.00

00:46:15.000 That strikes me as really arrogant.

00:46:17.000 And at the least, it's not a productive use of our time.

00:46:24.000 It's not like you and I or anyone else in this country or in the world today, we didn't have the epiphany that slavery is bad.

00:46:35.000 We didn't earn that knowledge, right?

00:46:37.000 That was given to us.

00:46:38.000 We happened to be born into a time when it was already understood that slavery was wrong.

00:46:44.000 We were told that from birth.

00:46:50.000 So we don't know, I guess is the point, that if you or I, if we happen to be born in the year 1300 anywhere in the world, we would almost certainly either own slaves or think that owning slaves is okay, because that's what everybody around us thought.

00:47:05.000 And I think it's just the height of arrogance to not admit that.

00:47:08.000 Yes, it's a kind of giddy hubrism that assumes that you might be a person that realised, back then, the very apex of moral thought.

00:47:21.000 Now, it's an absurd part of the narcissism that seems to, curiously and paradoxically, be spread across populations these days.

00:47:31.000 One of the things I've noticed in a very general way, Matt, is it appears that there's a project of bewilderment that benefits centralised power to create a sort of a nihilism and uncertainty about ways of categorising, ways of behaving, what history is, what correct behaviour is.

00:47:51.000 And the only certainty appears to be posited in the hands, oddly, of the state.

00:47:57.000 When I first heard people on the right talk about communism, I thought, no, it's not communism, because it's so sort of corporatized.

00:48:04.000 How can Jordan Peterson say, oh, well, this is Marxist, of what he observed in academia, when, from my perspective at least, what's happening in terms of global power is plainly built upon an alliance between global corporate interest state power. State power that's becoming increasingly

00:48:23.000 globalized and transcendent of a national purview, whether that's French or British or

00:48:29.000 American. It seems that there is a kind of a top-down ideology being planted

00:48:34.000 on whole nations and their populations and the visible, one of the visible

00:48:39.000 symptoms of that will be the homogenization of each nation. The appearance of 0.96

00:48:43.000 every high street or main street in your language looking the same, having the same 0.87

00:48:48.000 shops, having the same favorable tax arrangements, having the same sort of sense

00:48:53.000 of dislocation everywhere in the world. And I have this curious sense that

00:49:00.000 the advancing of the idea that somehow vulnerable groups are being served

00:49:05.000 and protected is a veil by which the opposite is happening.

00:49:09.000 Very, very powerful interests are accruing more power while claiming to be protecting the most vulnerable.

00:49:18.000 And indeed, that's precisely the paradigm we saw play out in the pandemic.

00:49:22.000 Stay in your home, follow these measures because we have to protect the vulnerable.

00:49:27.000 And during that period of time, there was an astonishing transfer of not only wealth, but also of power and a kind of restriction of civil freedom that will likely never return to its previous level.

00:49:38.000 And indeed, my assumption will be it awaits the next crisis when comparable measures will be asserted and they will likely never be fully relinquished.

00:49:48.000 either. So I now do see that there's a tendency towards something that has similarities to

00:49:54.000 communism even if it's not the same kind of economic communism espoused by early, you

00:50:00.000 know, Marxists, Communists, whatever you want to call them.

00:50:02.000 It's a kind of odd elitist oligarchal state that's already in your country and mine and does

00:50:10.000 afford certain sets and groups incredible power and a professional class, you, carries the water for

00:50:18.000 them and carries the propaganda for them saying we have to help this maligned or vulnerable 1.00

00:50:23.000 group or this maligned or vulnerable In order that XYZ and it normally has the result of making the majority population regardless of race I would say because it's more of an economic class or economic taxonomy that I would refer to here feel bewildered and lost and uncertain and whether it's sort of gender ideology or racial dynamics it has the odd effect of offering instead of a all-powerful

00:50:51.000 A deity, an all-loving trinity, at the centre of all power, prescribing all knowledge.

00:50:59.000 This state, this centralised, globalist set of institutes.

00:51:04.000 Do you see that?

00:51:06.000 And if you do, what do you imagine might be part of the solution?

00:51:11.000 Although I recognise that's a very big question.

00:51:14.000 I do see that.

00:51:15.000 I think you're right to point to the kind of, well, I guess we call it class warfare, but it's not really warfare because it's a rather one-sided war being waged by the elites on all the classes below them.

00:51:28.000 And I would think, I don't know that there's a solution to it or what it would be, but it does begin with kind of an awakening of people realizing what's actually happening.

00:51:38.000 And the thing that I guess the black pill here for me is that you pointed out the pandemic, and that was a perfect example of how this dynamic plays out, where they locked us all in our homes.

00:51:52.000 They took, for many people, their livelihood away.

00:51:55.000 And even while there's so many examples of the people that are imposing these restrictions on us, they would go out and they'd have their parties and they'd still be out living their lives and doing quite well, while we had to stay home, muzzled in our masks and so on.

00:52:12.000 And you would hope that that experience would be an awakening moment for the public, that they would see this and see what's actually happening.

00:52:21.000 And I think for a while, to the extent, you know, it's...

00:52:25.000 Even worse than that, I mean, think about the fact that everyone locked in the home, you can't leave.

00:52:31.000 And then, of course, infamously, the BLM riots happened.

00:52:35.000 And the elites say, well, that's OK.

00:52:38.000 Somehow the virus doesn't spread if you're rioting for racial justice.

00:52:42.000 And they were OK with that.

00:52:43.000 And why were they OK with it?

00:52:43.000 Well, because these rioters were tearing down poor, lower-class neighborhoods and destroying the businesses, small businesses and destroying businesses where You know, lower class people worked.

00:52:57.000 And then you had a riot at the Capitol, and this is where the elites work.

00:53:01.000 And all of a sudden, now this is not OK.

00:53:03.000 We can't allow it.

00:53:05.000 So again, it's that same dynamic.

00:53:07.000 But it seems like, tragically, over the years since then, many people have forgotten those lessons.

00:53:16.000 And it feels like, look, we're in the US.

00:53:20.000 We're in the middle, of course, of an election.

00:53:25.000 Our experiences during COVID are apparently not politically relevant at all.

00:53:30.000 It never comes up.

00:53:31.000 It's not even polled.

00:53:32.000 Nobody talks about it.

00:53:34.000 I think a lot of us imagined back when we were going through this in 2020 and 2021 that the next election would be a real reckoning for all of this and everybody involved in it, you know, they're going to pay the price politically.

00:53:46.000 And that just hasn't happened.

00:53:48.000 People have forgotten about it.

00:53:49.000 We've moved on.

00:53:50.000 And I think that There's a lot of reasons for that.

00:53:53.000 The number one reason is just that we live in this age of Being bombarded with information, you know, a billion bits of information every day just constantly beaming at us.

00:54:09.000 And the effect is that we can't focus on anything for very long.

00:54:12.000 No matter how significant the event is, it is destined to be forgotten 30 seconds after it's over.

00:54:20.000 I mean, Donald Trump was shot in the head A presidential candidate was shot.

00:54:26.000 We all saw it live on TV.

00:54:28.000 He stood up, blood dripping down his face.

00:54:30.000 He put his fist up.

00:54:31.000 He said, fight, fight, fight.

00:54:33.000 It's a historic moment.

00:54:34.000 It's one of the most incredible things that's ever happened in the history of American politics.

00:54:38.000 And that was a month ago, and it might as well have never happened anymore.

00:54:43.000 It's not even talked about.

00:54:44.000 It's not discussed.

00:54:45.000 There's no interest in it.

00:54:47.000 It's had no political impact at all in the polls.

00:54:50.000 Which is amazing in only terrible ways, frankly.

00:54:55.000 And I think, again, it just shows that we can't stay focused on one thing for very long, and the elites that you're talking about, they take advantage of that.

00:55:02.000 They're very happy about that, because it means that nothing matters, and they can always distract us.

00:55:09.000 And it's always the shiny object that we're staring at.

00:55:12.000 Given that a better measure for velocity might now be the rate with which we're hit with information, rather than any previously presumed metrics around calendar or clock time, Do you feel that the Kamala campaign and the anointing of Kamala at the point that it happened was a pre-planned event in order for there to be a kind of honeymoon towards November?

00:55:45.000 Or do you feel that the Biden debate performance was a genuine shock?

00:55:51.000 And how do you see this new perception of time, this billion bits bombardment perspective, Playing out up to November.

00:56:00.000 Do you think that means it's impossible to predict?

00:56:02.000 Do you have fears around the integrity of the election?

00:56:06.000 And do you, mostly, do you think that these events are somehow orchestrated?

00:56:14.000 I do have plenty of fears about the integrity of the election, but it also makes it very difficult to predict.

00:56:21.000 I myself readily admit that I'm a terrible political prognosticator, so my predictions are always sure to not come to fruition.

00:56:31.000 So I'll admit that I really have no idea what's going to happen in November.

00:56:33.000 But as far as whether it was planned, there's a theory out there that The people really in charge of the Democrat Party, the people pulling the strings.

00:56:47.000 They asked for this debate before the convention, and as we all know, doing the earliest presidential debate I think that we've ever had, they never do them before the convention.

00:56:57.000 And so the kind of conspiracy theory is that the Democrats did this on purpose because they knew that Biden would fall apart on stage, which is what happened, and then they would have the ability to finally get rid of him, which is what they always wanted, and to install somebody else.

00:57:12.000 I don't know if that's the case.

00:57:13.000 Sometimes I think that we... I don't know if these people are smart enough to think that far ahead and to do something like that.

00:57:21.000 Because although that would be very dishonest and devious, it would be pretty brilliant strategically.

00:57:27.000 And I'm not sure if they're that smart.

00:57:29.000 I guess maybe... I hope they're not that smart.

00:57:31.000 So I kind of fall more on the side of...

00:57:36.000 You know, they were going to ride with this guy, they were going to try to ride with him until the election, just wheel him through it, get him another four years, and then, you know, they knew that there's no way he would probably survive another four years.

00:57:48.000 And that's fine with them, because then they would take over and they'd be pulled, you know, they were really in charge the whole time anyway.

00:57:56.000 So, I'm not sure, but I do know that it has worked out, the timing has worked out tremendously well for Kamala, because Look, she's a total empty vessel. 1.00

00:58:08.000 They don't trust her to speak off the script at all.

00:58:11.000 She hasn't answered any questions.

00:58:12.000 She hasn't done an interview.

00:58:15.000 They've got this...

00:58:18.000 generated this hype around her.

00:58:20.000 They've turned her into this political phenomenon in the most fraudulent way we've ever seen.

00:58:26.000 Yeah, we've seen them do this before.

00:58:29.000 They did this with Obama.

00:58:30.000 But at least with Obama, number one, he actually was and is a talented orator.

00:58:35.000 So I won't say a lot else good about him, but he is that at least.

00:58:39.000 He's a talented speaker, and so you can see how somebody... I mean, all throughout history, there have been charismatic orators who have generated a lot of excitement and led political movements just on that alone, so that's not all that surprising.

00:58:53.000 So the media had something to work with when they were kind of turning Obama into this messianic figure.

00:58:59.000 Also, Obama didn't have much of a history before that.

00:59:03.000 Right?

00:59:03.000 He was a state senator.

00:59:04.000 He wasn't in politics very long before.

00:59:06.000 They came out of nowhere.

00:59:07.000 And so they were able to just kind of like take this guy and make him into what they wanted him to be.

00:59:11.000 With Kamala, it's just so fascinating because she's been on the political scene, even on the national scene for years.

00:59:18.000 And she was vice president for almost four years and was roundly kind of dismissed as sort of a joke.

00:59:30.000 And this bland nothing of a figure, and yet they've taken that person.

00:59:33.000 We know who she is.

00:59:34.000 We've seen her for years.

00:59:36.000 She ran for the presidency in 2020. 0.98

00:59:38.000 She was in the primary.

00:59:40.000 She got like 1% of the vote.

00:59:41.000 Nobody liked her.

00:59:42.000 Nobody wanted her.

00:59:43.000 And they've taken her and they've turned her into this person that is supposedly filling up arenas.

00:59:50.000 And the way that they're able to do that is because, look, the media, it turns out, they can do that with anyone.

00:59:55.000 They can take anyone and turn them into a star.

00:59:59.000 The trick, though, is that if they're doing that with someone who's a total empty vessel, they can make them into a star, but it won't last long.

01:00:09.000 It'll burn hot and bright and quickly, and then it'll burn out.

01:00:13.000 But they don't need for it to last long.

01:00:14.000 They only need for it to last for three months.

01:00:17.000 And that's the question.

01:00:18.000 Will it last for three months?

01:00:19.000 I don't know.

01:00:21.000 Perhaps the phenomena of talent shows that began in the 1990s was an indicator that new media had the power to create figures from naught and generate a kind of hysteria and sustain it, certainly temporarily.

01:00:38.000 And it seems to some degree, at least in the Trump and, you know, sort of post-Trump or Trump era, however you see that.

01:00:46.000 The Democrats have campaigned, particularly I suppose after the failure of Hillary, by having kind of ghost candidates keeping their candidate out of the way and allowing the sort of demonization or legitimate suspicion or disgust or disdain, however you want to call it, for Trump to do the carrying of that water and do that work for him.

01:01:08.000 On your point on Obama, I think I believe, I saw a PBS documentary that was made before he was president and maybe even before his candidature as a president, you know, maybe while he was a senator.

01:01:19.000 It was like some sort of 10-minute on X PBS clip and it was really interesting to sort of see an appraisal of Obama prior to the subsequent hagiographies and bifurcation and what he came across as is a really interesting and unusual person with a really unusual past and With his unusual ethnic history, growing up in Hawaii, spending a lot of time in Indonesia, then marrying Michelle and sort of perhaps understanding his identity through his educational an-identity as an African-American, a particular identity.

01:01:52.000 And it was sort of encouraging him doing pro bono work as a lawyer.

01:01:57.000 I thought, wow, this is an interesting character.

01:02:01.000 And I wonder, perhaps Matt, if any of us have a certain use to a kind... that anyone can be used by a culture for as long as they're valuable.

01:02:10.000 You know the commonly understood idea that Epstein's function in the culture was to have dirt on people that could be utilised whenever necessary, so that a person with a particular set of characteristics traits could be put in a position of political power or of

01:02:25.000 influence and then should they ever become recalcitrant The button gets pushed and they are told hey comply or else,

01:02:32.000 you know, and even if there's no need for that, you know and no

01:02:36.000 No skeletons in the closet Most people are pretty happy to take the material and

01:02:40.000 worldly rewards that come with those sort of positions of privilege

01:02:44.000 Notably both Vivek Ramaswamy and Dave Rubin did say Biden won't see a 2024 campaign

01:02:50.000 you know, I saw old video of in a Rubin saying that and Vivek will tell anyone who will listen won't he that you

01:02:58.000 know that Biden weren't gonna run but I like you do sometimes

01:03:02.000 Wonder whether or not that level of ingenuity is going on behind the scenes, but it's going to be interesting to see

01:03:08.000 how a Figure like Kamala is managed. I look a lot of the 1.00

01:03:12.000 aesthetics of propaganda the propaganda at the right You know, I was at the RNC and I saw that you were at the

01:03:17.000 DNC and their propaganda You know like people coming out and talking about

01:03:22.000 pro-life stories, bringing out a pop star or whatever and some pop stars not showing

01:03:27.000 up and I'm wondering about what is substantive in the DNC now.

01:03:32.000 I know they have announced some policies, I think it's mad that Kamala's talking about

01:03:36.000 spending hundreds of millions on the wall now and that too shows you that it makes you

01:03:40.000 wonder what's really there.

01:03:42.000 What do you feel about the addition of both Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi to the Trump campaign?

01:03:49.000 What kind of impact do you imagine that will have on sort of marginal swing voters?

01:03:54.000 And what do you think that does to address and order the flavor Of what the Republican stroke MAGA Trump movement is about when quite popular and in the case of Tulsi Gabbard in particular a very sort of dignified traditional politician and in the case of Bobby a very radical and quite brilliant politician are added into the fold of this movement.

01:04:15.000 What kind of impact do you see that having?

01:04:19.000 I think it's obviously a positive development for Trump.

01:04:22.000 The extent that there's any kind of real impact for him, I'm not sure.

01:04:25.000 Now, if you'd asked me this question, if this had happened a month and a half ago and you'd asked me, I would say, well, this is going to have a massive impact, particularly RFK Jr., because he does have a very devoted and large following, not large enough to actually win the presidency himself, obviously, but large enough, you would think, in a really tight election, To put Trump over the top.

01:04:46.000 And I would have said that a month and a half ago.

01:04:47.000 Tulsi Gabbard's another one.

01:04:48.000 Doesn't have the same level of, like, devotion, but she's a very talented politician. 1.00

01:04:53.000 She's also, you know, I think, you know, an honest person.

01:04:57.000 There's not a lot of those in politics.

01:05:00.000 And does have crossover appeal.

01:05:03.000 So I would say, yeah, this could be even decisive.

01:05:06.000 Now, the only thing that gives me pause is what I said a few minutes ago, that Also, if you had asked me a month and a half ago, would it have a major impact on the election if the presidential candidate gets shot in the head and survives it?

01:05:18.000 Could that have a decisive impact?

01:05:19.000 I would have also said, yes, definitely.

01:05:22.000 And that hasn't proved to be the case.

01:05:24.000 So, you know, I guess the question is always, when voting really starts, well, voting unfortunately starts like a month ahead of time, but let's just say on election day, will anything that happened Before the 48 hours, before that, does anything older than 48 hours matter at all when people are actually voting?

01:05:53.000 That's kind of the fundamental question.

01:05:55.000 And if the answer is no, nothing matters if it's more than 48 hours old.

01:06:01.000 If that's the answer, then it's just You know, political campaigns, you can't even campaign anymore.

01:06:07.000 Political campaigns basically don't exist because nothing matters if it's not front of mind when people go to vote.

01:06:14.000 And so I guess, yeah, that's a long way of saying I don't know.

01:06:19.000 But by all rights, it should have a decisive impact.

01:06:24.000 Do you think that something more epistemologically profound is happening than, Matt, if we can't rely on a cycle longer than 48 hours?

01:06:32.000 Two things I think of are the famous Warholian edict about 15 minutes and then the writer

01:06:38.000 Martin Goury in his book The Revolt of the Public that I refer to a lot that talks about

01:06:42.000 that tsunami of information that began in 2001.

01:06:47.000 Every year since 2001 the amount of available information has doubled and therefore we're

01:06:52.000 kind of deluged in continual perpetual information without absorbing any knowledge.

01:06:58.000 And if there is no ability to create sort of narratives with any mythic tenacity or

01:07:04.000 any meaningful influence, don't that suggest we are existing in a kind of nihilistic fugue

01:07:11.000 where almost any idea might take hold of us.

01:07:14.000 And in that kind of environment, what sort of, you know, what sort of things matter?

01:07:18.000 And does there need to be a more ardent return to, you know, the kind of what we've touched upon, but not explored in any great depth throughout this interview, Christianity, and the importance of recognizing that actually we've just created little things here.

01:07:34.000 We're here to serve and follow some very particular instructions.

01:07:38.000 And do you sense that that might return to the forefront?

01:07:46.000 Yeah, I think, well, nihilistic fugue is a great way of putting it.

01:07:48.000 And that's what I sense anyway.

01:07:52.000 If I were to summarize culture, maybe I would use that term.

01:07:56.000 And yeah, that's the problem.

01:08:00.000 Campaigning is really...

01:08:03.000 A political campaign is really storytelling.

01:08:05.000 It's, at least traditionally, that's what it has been.

01:08:07.000 Who has the more compelling story?

01:08:10.000 Trump won in 2016, in large part, because it was such a compelling, fascinating story that was just so remarkable.

01:08:17.000 Whether you hated him or loved him, it was a remarkable story.

01:08:20.000 And the story was so powerful that it was just, looking back on it now, it just seemed obvious.

01:08:26.000 Like, of course this guy's gonna win.

01:08:27.000 His story is so incredible.

01:08:31.000 But, That storytelling requires people to follow it and get invested, kind of, in the narrative and to care about it for more than 48 hours.

01:08:39.000 And if they don't, then it just becomes hard to do that anymore.

01:08:43.000 Christianity is that.

01:08:44.000 I mean, Christianity, it's easy for me because that's, in my opinion, the answer to all of our cultural problems, ultimately. 1.00

01:08:50.000 But it's, I think, obviously the answer here because you have to have a sense of... Christianity gives you a sense of You know, there's a sense of the eternal, that actually things do matter for a lot longer than 48 hours.

01:09:08.000 In fact, what we're experiencing now and what we're living through, that all of this will matter in some way, even beyond the extent of our own physical lifetimes.

01:09:20.000 And it'll matter, you know, into eternity.

01:09:23.000 And I think if you take away that sense of the eternal and replace it only with the sense of, only with the idea that we are temporal beings, we came out of nothingness, into nothingness we will return.

01:09:35.000 We're here for the blink of an eye.

01:09:36.000 And then on top of that, there's this billions of bits of information every second beaming at us.

01:09:42.000 You combine those two things and it's just, there's no hope.

01:09:44.000 There's no way for you to live a life where anything matters at all.

01:09:50.000 And the only antidote to that is, again, a sense of the eternal and also, to the extent that's possible, to quiet some of that noise in your own life.

01:10:03.000 You know, give yourself a sense of quiet and solitude in your life to focus on these things.

01:10:09.000 Yeah, I'm trying to do that.

01:10:10.000 Finally, I wondered what you thought of Zuckerberg's mea culpa around censorship.

01:10:18.000 Again, I would have assumed like at the height of pandemic censorship that such a subsequent admission would amount to

01:10:26.000 an acknowledgement of culpability so deep that all of those

01:10:29.000 institutions would face the reckoning that you referred to and imagined that

01:10:33.000 the forthcoming election might be a referenda upon, though that is so far

01:10:38.000 lost in the annals and myths it's barely remarked upon. Do you think it is a

01:10:44.000 significant moment when Zuckerberg says that?

01:10:47.000 Does it, to you, indicate that he is picking sides politically?

01:10:51.000 What do you glean from it, Matt?

01:10:56.000 Yeah, I think it's certainly a major admission.

01:11:00.000 Should be treated as such.

01:11:03.000 It seems like Zuckerberg... I don't follow him that closely, but based on what I've seen, it seems like he got into MMA and mixed martial arts, and ever since then, he seems to be becoming more right-wing by the day.

01:11:19.000 Still wouldn't call him right-wing, but he's traveling closer and closer in that direction.

01:11:24.000 I don't know if there's a...

01:11:26.000 If there's a connection there between those two things, there probably is.

01:11:30.000 And I would like to think that he's not alone in that, that maybe there'll be a general shift in big tech towards free speech and less censorship, but I don't think that's the case.

01:11:45.000 But hey, if we get to a point where we know that Elon Musk is a proponent of free speech, And if Zuckerberg is at least traveling ever so gradually in that direction, even though we still won't have free speech on many of these other platforms, I think that's still a great development for us.

01:12:06.000 Well, Matt, thanks very much for this conversation.

01:12:09.000 It's available first on Locals for our paid subscribers, and then we're going to stream it on Rumble and to a degree on YouTube in a couple of weeks, by which time you and I might as well have been discussing John Steinbeck and clogs and the music of Billie Holiday.

01:12:25.000 Because with the rapid news cycle spinning like a comet past our planet, probably our clothes will make us look like just two Amish men discussing Irrelevant events of yesteryear. 0.78

01:12:38.000 Nevertheless, thank you, man.

01:12:40.000 Thank you for your time and good luck with your movie.

01:12:43.000 Really appreciate it.

01:12:43.000 Thanks for having me.

01:12:44.000 We'll speak again soon, hopefully in Nashville when I'm over there.

01:12:47.000 Awesome.

01:12:49.000 Take care, man.

01:12:52.000 Magid Nawaz is on Locals right now.

01:12:55.000 This conversation you will love and enjoy.

01:12:58.000 If you find it interesting to see me talking to someone like Matt Walsh on the subject of race, you're going to love my conversation with Magid Nawaz.

01:13:06.000 We talk about how Islam, migration, nationalism all fit together and how all of us are being exploited by globalism and turned against one another in ways that are of course extremely advantageous to the systems of power that benefit from ongoing conflict among ordinary people of all cultures and races.

01:13:25.000 Surely we must find a way to unify and oppose them.

01:13:30.000 You can also see my Russell Brand stand-up breakdown on Locals right now.

01:13:35.000 I'm talking about Billy Connolly, one of my favourite comedians.

01:13:39.000 Thank you so much for joining us today.

01:13:40.000 See you next week, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - September 16, 2024

EXPOSING THE DEI INDUSTRY – With Am I Racist?’s MATT WALSH - SF452

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