In this episode, Russell Brand takes on the question: Is Ukraine really a democracy? And if so, what role does Joe Biden play in perpetuating it? And why is it so important that he's the only one to vote for someone other than a younger person in order to keep it that way? And what does that mean for the future of American democracy? And is that a good thing or a bad thing? And why should you vote for anyone other than Joe Biden, unless you're a member of the old guard, like Bobby Kennedy Jr., Bobby Kennedy Sr., or Joe Biden's younger brother, Robert Kennedy Sr.? Russell Brand answers these questions and much more in a conversation with Russell Brand on the first episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand's new podcast, Stay Free: A Voyage to Truth. Stay Free! Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code "UPLEVEL" to receive 20% off your first month with discount code: UPLEVEL. at checkout. We'll be delivering a detailed breakdown of current topics that the mainstream media should be covering, and a special bonus episode every single day. Get ready for more in-depth conversations with guests like Jordan Peterson, R.R.K. Jr., Sam Harris, Gabor Mate, and many more! - stay free, and enjoy the ride to elevate your consciousness together! Stay free, wherever you are listening to this podcast. . - Stay free! Music: "Updates: Stay Free" by The Good Mythical Company - "Upward Boundless" - "Downward" by John Singleton, "Outward Bound" by Squeer, "Good Morning America" by James Gray, "Incomptech, "No More Than Us" by Joseph McDade, "Let's Talk About It?" - "Goodbye, Goodbye, My Dear Friend" by Shadydave, "Coming Soon" by Fergie, "Thank You, My Love & Good Morning" by Jeffree Stars, "The Good Life" by Gorms, "A Good Morning, I'll See You Soon?" -- "Outro" by Mr. , "Outtropeps, My Brother, I'm With You, I Love You, Mr. "Bye Bye Bye, My Old Friend, Good Luck, Good Night, Good Morning?" -- and "I'll See Me Soon" -- "I Can't Let You Know What I'm Working On It?" -- by John R. Brand, "I'm Working on It, My Friend, My Good Life, My Best Friend, And I'll Come Back Soon?"
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00:00:41.000Hello there you awakening wonders, thanks for joining us on our mutual voyage to truth
00:00:55.000You see how people now are saying we don't want to fund this war in Ukraine anymore, it's clearly not working, you lied to us from the beginning, you didn't tell us you started it in the first place and that Putin would stop the whole thing if you didn't allow Ukraine to join NATO.
00:01:06.000Well, now, because there's a bit more opposition and a recent attempt to get $108 billion failed, you'll see more and more media saying If we do not win this war against Russia, or if Ukraine don't, sorry I don't know why I said we, if Ukraine don't win, you Crane, not we Crane, don't win that war against Russia, Putin will start invading, I don't know, Finland and other NATO members, but is Ukraine really a democracy as we understand democracy anyway?
00:01:32.000And is there a set of other reasons for perpetuating this war?
00:01:35.000And now that people are opposing the war, whether that's within the institutions of American politics or in the public at large, are they escalating the threat?
00:01:58.000Senate Republicans blocking a bill that includes billions of dollars in aid for Israel and Ukraine, despite dire warnings from the administration that US funding for Ukraine will run out in a matter of weeks.
00:02:08.000President Biden tonight also warning, quote, we can't let Putin win.
00:02:18.000I believe that any member of Congress who does not support funding for Ukraine is voting for an outcome that will make it easier for Putin to prevail.
00:02:26.000Do you see what democracy is here now, in our countries?
00:02:30.000Democracy is, do as we tell you, otherwise you're not democratic.
00:02:33.000But isn't democracy the freedom to choose via the ballot or other means, That is, a vote against supporting Ukraine is a vote to improve Putin's strategic position.
00:03:26.000Or are we in some sort of weird crisis time where the word democracy just means centralised, homogenised administration that basically prohibits and limits your power in any way they can and is looking for new ways to limit it every day?
00:03:37.000A vote against supplemental funding for Ukraine Get ready for more of that rhetoric in the forthcoming election.
00:03:46.000If you vote for anyone, anyone other than Joe Biden, unless we can get someone younger, and let's face it, everyone's younger.
00:03:52.000If you vote for anyone other than Joe Biden, I mean Bobby Kennedy, I mean Cornel West, I mean Marianne Williamson, I certainly mean Trump or Vivek or any of those lunatics, then you are voting for Wait, Putin.
00:04:01.000It will hurt democracy and help dictators, and we think that that is not the right lesson of history, and that every member, Democrat and Republican, should vote to support this one.
00:04:10.000Okay, so democracy is do as I tell you, which essentially is what new technological dictatorships look like.
00:04:16.000You're sort of told you're in a democracy, but you don't seem to have very much freedom in it.
00:04:22.000If you ask that question, that is helping Putin to win.
00:04:26.000Here's Chris Murphy escalating the tension on your TV set.
00:04:29.000What I know is that the future of the world is at stake.
00:04:33.000If we fail, if Republicans don't get reasonable in the next 24 to 48 hours, Russia is going to march into Ukraine, China is going to be given a green light to invade Taiwan.
00:04:45.000The world for my children is fundamentally different under that scenario.
00:04:50.000The United States security is at risk.
00:04:52.000But other threats might include hyperbole, hysterical rhetoric designed to prevent you being able to think straight, and it seems also to continue to legitimize the funding of an unwinnable war.
00:05:03.000So I don't know why Antony Blinken is using phrases like win-win.
00:05:07.00090% of the security assistance we provided has actually been spent here in the United States with our manufacturers, with our production, and that's produced more American jobs, more growth in our own economy.
00:05:20.000So this has also been a win-win that we need to continue.
00:05:23.000What they mean by that is that it's economically been valuable.
00:05:27.000He's essentially there just admitted that the money for the military aid has remained in the US, generating jobs.
00:05:55.000We're all members of NATO, and there's no way of ever undoing that.
00:05:58.000There's no way of sort of saying that NATO might be a thing that we don't need anymore, seeing as how the whole thing was just set up to tackle the Soviet Union, which doesn't exist now.
00:06:06.000It's sort of given you all of these premises and promises, but actually we're a very narrow bandwidth of potential options.
00:07:11.000You know, like, what we're confronted with now is, we will deploy troops if you don't do what we tell you.
00:07:16.000They've gone from recognising around the time of Vietnam, oh no, American people don't like to see their sons and daughters come home in body bags, to, alright, we can still have wars though, just using technology and drones and foreign folks to fight our proxy wars for us, to, well, if they don't want to fund our wars because they're getting too many alternative perspectives now because of independent media and a vibrant social discourse around important issues, We'll just go back to threatening to kill their children again.
00:08:05.000Why do I keep slipping up around that?
00:08:06.000Now we're going to hear from Thomas Massey on Tucker, an alternative take and an alternative motivation, and you, using your consciousness, Biden's budget director, the head of the OMB, sent a letter yesterday to Speaker Mike Johnson, imploring him to spend more money in Ukraine.
00:08:17.000complex. They really, really want to help children in Ukraine and they believe in this thing called
00:08:21.000democracy. Or they like making money. You just yourself, just using your memory and that,
00:08:25.000decide for yourself. Biden's budget director, the head of the OMB, sent a letter yesterday
00:08:30.000to Speaker Mike Johnson imploring him to spend more money in Ukraine. And what they said is
00:08:36.000they want to revitalise our defence industrial base. That's the new acronym, DIB, for the MIC,
00:08:45.000And they sent a list of states that would get money when we spend money on deadly munitions, because they have to be manufactured in Alabama or Ohio or Texas.
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00:10:43.000And so, you know, they're saying the quiet part out loud, that congressmen tend to vote for this stuff because a lot of this federal spending that goes to Ukraine is actually laundered back to the military-industrial complex, and in some ways, not very efficiently, but in some ways it enriches people in their districts and the stockholders, some of whom are congressmen.
00:11:05.000Now you see why there is such a requirement for censorship.
00:11:09.000Because the way that the media functions now with figures like Tucker on X and other comparable voices, you could just say, do you reckon that these people in Congress owning stocks and shares is influencing them or their ability to say it's improving their local economies in their state?
00:11:39.000And believe me, they'll go to extraordinary lengths to shut down dissenting voices.
00:11:43.000One person who's probably pretty safe to speak in public is Nancy Pelosi.
00:11:48.000Here she is defending Ukrainian democracy.
00:11:50.000And now we're going to talk about what What democracy amounts to in the modern world and what's the real threat?
00:11:54.000Is it populism, demagoguery, the rise of the right and extremism?
00:11:59.000Or is it the fact that centralised authoritarian systems have become so corrupt and inept that something has to challenge them and if it's not going to be true democracy then the floodgates are open for all sorts of new opposition.
00:12:10.000If they think they're saving money, they're not.
00:12:14.000The Ukrainians have been champions fighting for their democracy and for democracy writ large.
00:12:21.000If they were ever to lose, which is unthinkable... Don't think it.
00:12:26.000How much control do you need, Nancy, for God's sake?
00:12:29.000And we must make sure it doesn't happen.
00:12:30.000But if they were ever to lose, can you imagine how expensive it would be to fight Putin in other countries?
00:12:40.000It's just something that is unaffordable in terms of democracy.
00:12:45.000But if you're just counting dollars, if you're just doing a green eye shade on it.
00:12:50.000It's interesting she knows all those phrases, because have you noticed how often Nancy Pelosi invests, shall we say, in tune with the times?
00:12:58.000Like, wow, Nancy, it's almost like you were at work regulating big tech companies, then Paul Pelosi made some investments that seem to benefit from some insider knowledge, or green shade dollar bill cute phrases that I've not even heard before.
00:13:09.000She got more cash colloquialisms than 50 cents.
00:13:12.000It's a false claim to say that you're going to save money.
00:13:16.000Is it uncomfortable to hear people talking in financial terms about war?
00:13:18.000And doesn't it show you how distracted and deracinated, how separated we've become from the realities of war?
00:13:24.000I'm not claiming to know anything about the realities of war, I've never been in one, but to hear the discourse spoken of only in financial terms makes me recognise, hold on a minute, you don't really understand what's going on.
00:13:33.000I bet if you sort of went round some of these Ukrainian districts or experienced the Russian lives that have been squandered pursuing what exactly, for whom exactly, So people can be members of NATO so that Raytheon and Lockheed Martin can perpetuate ideas that are beneficial to their bottom line?
00:13:46.000To me, if that's what democracy has come to, then we need to look for alternatives.
00:13:50.000There is transparency, there is accountability, there is values-based, as well as the dollars, the values-based courage of the Ukrainian people.
00:14:01.000There's Nancy Pelosi's perspective on the war, the financial cost-benefit analysis of human lives, Ukrainian human lives, American human lives, presumably there's some sort of exchange rate value there, but we're all outsiders talking about Ukrainian politics, making assumptions about Ukrainian democracy and what Ukrainian people want, based on essentially a propaganda machine headed up by Zelensky, and I've got no reason to suspect that Zelensky's doing anything other than his absolute best, but here's an alternative take from Batali, Klitschko, mayor of Kiev, former heavyweight champion of the world, he's a patriotic guy presumably, so he's here to tell us that Ukrainian democracy is working really well and we should keep funding everything and make sure we preserve this perfect unit of liberal democracy.
00:14:40.000Vitaly Klitschko, who's the mayor of Kiev, he's delivered an unprecedented critique of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
00:14:46.000who warned that Ukrainians are losing trust in Zelensky, who he says is becoming increasingly autocratic in his presidency,
00:14:55.000so much so that he warned that Ukraine could resemble Russia in the near future,
00:15:27.000But Zelensky is facing criticism from other high-ranking officials in Ukraine, really the first signs of a growing rift in Ukrainian leadership, particularly as the war sort of settles into a stalemate for the foreseeable future.
00:15:43.000Some have argued that perhaps striking some kind of peace deal accord or some kind of negotiation with Russia could end the war, but this is something that for the moment Zelensky is vehemently opposed to.
00:15:57.000So I'm sure Nancy Pelosi and all those other people that have vested financial interests in perpetuating a war know a lot more about Ukrainian politics and democracy than a Ukrainian politician who says it's not a democracy while he's mayor of Kyiv.
00:16:12.000He's obviously some sort of conspiracy theorist, Putin apologist, nutbag.
00:16:15.000So let's get into Ukrainian democracy.
00:16:18.000The Ukrainian democracy that your tax dollars are funding and will continue to fund, and if they don't fund them, well, they're coming for your children next.
00:17:13.000The fact that so many such parties ever existed says something about the level of opposition faced by the Ukrainian nationalist government that came to power after the 2014 revolution.
00:17:22.000Then, in May of 2022, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law formally banning all these parties.
00:17:28.000President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law.
00:17:31.000The list included the opposition platform For Life, which had held fully 10% of the seats in parliament.
00:17:37.000Among the 11 banned parties are the Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Progressive Socialist Party of the Ukraine, the Union of Left Forces and the Communist Party of Ukraine.
00:18:08.000But it has been repeatedly extended, most recently in July 2023.
00:18:12.000As a result of that vote in the Ukrainian parliament, where all opposition parties have been removed, the parliamentary elections scheduled for last month were cancelled.
00:18:19.000Presidential elections were scheduled for March 2024, but under current rules, they too will not be held, and Zelensky has stated that now is not the time for elections.
00:18:42.000Why are we escalating the threat of tyrants and dictators, perhaps to conceal the fact that what we're calling democracy is not exactly that, but a homogenized, somewhat banalized version of digital dictatorship?
00:18:56.000In February 2022, the Ukrainian government ordered the nine largest television networks in Ukraine to combine their news operations into a single state-controlled news program called Telemarathon.
00:19:14.000In April 2022, the National Security Council ordered three independent television channels associated with Zelensky's predecessor taken off the air.
00:19:23.000In December 2022, Zelensky signed a law which gave the National Broadcasting Council statutory authority to regulate all print broadcast and Digital media.
00:19:32.000That's a lot of authoritarian control for a democracy.
00:19:35.000Of course, if you are determined to support Ukraine, and I can understand that you would if you're Ukrainian, or you love anyone that's Ukrainian, or you just hate Russia or whatever, for so many reasons, you might think, yeah, but there's a war.
00:19:45.000And in wartime, you have to legitimise authoritarianism.
00:19:49.000And I would say, yes, isn't that interesting, the way we seem to live in this time of perennial crisis, because that does legitimise authoritarianism more broadly.
00:19:56.000But do countries that are in wars always ban democracy?
00:20:01.000Perhaps we'll learn more about that in a minute.
00:20:03.000This law gave the Ukrainian government the ability to censor and shut down independent platforms such as Google.
00:20:08.000It's been harshly criticized by the European Federation of Journalists, which stated that it's incompatible with European Union membership.
00:20:14.000Ukraine's own National Union of Journalists called the law the biggest threat to free speech in Ukraine's independent history.
00:21:00.000Democracies do not restrict religious freedom.
00:21:03.000In December 2022, Zelensky banned the activities of all religious organisations linked to Russia.
00:21:07.000This included Ukraine's largest denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which had been closely integrated with the Russian Orthodox Church for more than a thousand years.
00:21:16.000In May 2022, the church's synod of bishops, in a historic step, formally voted to sever all ties to Moscow and condemned the Russian Orthodox Church's support for the invasion of Ukraine.
00:21:26.000This was not enough for the Ukrainian government.
00:21:27.000It increased efforts to ban the Orthodox Oh man, this is not at all good, is it?
00:21:34.000Do you not wish you'd known this earlier before, like the last hundred billion dollars or whatever that was sent over?
00:21:39.000Like, what is it that we're fighting for here?
00:21:41.000Is it possible that the Ukrainian cause is being utilised in order to facilitate projects of dominion and profit within the United States military-industrial complex?
00:21:51.000Doesn't that seem a bit more likely now than... Democracy!
00:21:54.000After you've heard all of this, and I recognise you'd want a lot of this verified, but it's not good, is it?
00:21:59.000If people wish to join this new church, they should certainly be free to do so, but the government in Kiev has been forcing congregations to switch allegiance and seizing the property of those who resist.
00:22:09.000The Ukrainian Parliament is now preparing to formally outlaw the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
00:22:14.000Democracies do not seek to ban a nation's oldest and largest denomination.
00:22:18.000No, in fact, that's a clear sign of tyranny, I think, when you start coming for organisations like that and just banning them wholesale.
00:22:24.000If this was taking place, imagine, In a country where it's convenient for United States military interests to be bombing it, this would be the list of things that they would give you, innit?
00:22:34.000We've got to bomb this lot because of this list of things.
00:22:47.000Finally, we've been hesitant to focus on the far-right complexion of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.
00:22:52.000Terms like fascist and neo-Nazi are thrown about far too glibly.
00:22:56.000For a deep into dictator month over on Legacy Media in America, you can barely watch the news without them saying, Trump's like Mao, Trump's like Mussolini, Trump's like Hitler, Trump's like Putin.
00:23:04.000This doesn't look that democratic, does it?
00:23:06.000I want to start using the word fascist.
00:23:12.000Yet perhaps we should have been more forthcoming, for there are undeniably authoritarian overtones to the Ukrainian nationalist movement.
00:23:18.000You need not take our word for it, simply look up Stefan Bandera or the Azov Brigade and draw your own conclusions about where nationalism ends and racism begins.
00:23:28.000To be fair, governments do frequently limit civil liberties in times of crisis.
00:23:33.000President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for Southern sympathisers during the American Civil War, but never cancelled elections.
00:23:40.000Neither did Winston Churchill, to whom Zelensky is sometimes compared.
00:23:44.000Churchill actually lost the 1945 British election and had to watch Clement Attlee take the final victory lap for World War II.
00:23:50.000The catalogue of authoritarian abuses is growing in Ukraine and shows little sign of slowing under the guidance of the West's favourite autocrat, Zelensky.
00:24:00.000It has created a state-controlled church, taken control of all television news and banned major opposition parties.
00:24:05.000This far exceeds anything that occurred in recent American or British history.
00:24:08.000Both of those nations remained fundamentally democratic during war, even a civil war.
00:24:13.000This latest cancellation of presidential elections in Ukraine just shows any pretense that we are supporting a functioning democracy.
00:24:19.000It also illustrates to me the important fact that we tend to organize information in a way that's convenient to our agenda.
00:24:25.000There'll be people that just will go, no, but he's having to do that because of this and because of that because of the other.
00:24:30.000Now, this is the side I'm firmly down on.
00:24:32.000Whatever is publicly being said by the establishment about the perpetuation of this conflict between Ukraine and Russia, it is ultimately because of US financial interests and globalist interests.
00:24:44.000And actually, I'm I'm kind of sick of the type of politics where anyone, from the left or right or anywhere, stands up and says, this is what we should be doing.
00:24:51.000I think now, democracy, just say to people, look, there's sort of some justification, it seems, for supporting Ukraine because there's this war in Russia.
00:25:04.000We've got a bunch of biolabs over in Ukraine.
00:25:07.000There's some complexity in some of the regions around Don Basque as demonstrated by the allegiances between their
00:25:13.000two orthodox churches But anyway, do you want to get involved in that or would
00:25:16.000you rather see some money spent on schools and hospitals and generation of jobs
00:25:19.000Maybe some sort of new deal for the American people Yeah
00:25:22.000Some people might go we want to fund Ukraine and some people might go we want to fund hospitals and schools
00:25:26.000And I think we're at this point We can't maintain the idea that there is one
00:25:30.000hegemonic space that one party or the uni party of America because I think they're both
00:25:35.000Fundamentally the same just moves around the resources of the American people while your standard of life continually
00:25:40.000deteriorates Well, our culture becomes more and more nihilistic hollowed
00:25:43.000out and empty and we're pretending that these globalist projects are somehow humanitarian
00:25:48.000I think that what's needed, not only in Ukraine, but in the United Kingdom, and in the United States of America, is democracy.
00:25:53.000Democracy means the people decide the direction of the nation's resources, and the people can make mistakes for themselves, rather than continuing to financially support the mistakes of the elite, particularly when it's evident they're lying to us, and whatever the reasons for their support of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, it doesn't seem to be the support of democracy, because there isn't one.