Stay Free - Russel Brand - Is Elon Musk Really An Enemy Of The State? - #041 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

00:00:00.000 I'm going to go ahead and do that.

00:01:07.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:01:20.000 Hello and welcome to Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:01:24.000 Do you like our new environment?

00:01:26.000 A new environment in which we can freely discuss the subjects that matter most.

00:01:30.000 Today in particular we're talking about Elon Musk, his Twitter takeover and the release of the Twitter files in conjunction with Matt Taibbi, friend of the show.

00:01:40.000 Is Musk really an enemy of the state?

00:01:43.000 Is he really at odds with establishment interests?

00:01:46.000 And is that why there are all these governmental and corporate takedowns from Apple to Biden?

00:01:51.000 Everyone seems to be against him.

00:01:53.000 Or do Musk's interests ultimately align with establishment interests when it comes to things like transhumanism?

00:02:00.000 Also later in the show, I'm going to be talking to Matt Kennard.

00:02:01.000 He's like me, an investigative journalist.

00:02:03.000 He just investigates things, then he journals about them.

00:02:05.000 He's going to be talking about and describing how corporate power has now become so insidious and entrenched that, broadly speaking, governments are little more than shallow marionettes.

00:02:17.000 I'm going to give examples of what are called corporate zones, where literal corporations run entire territories.

00:02:26.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:02:26.000 Here's the news.

00:02:28.000 We're going to be talking about the hypocrisy around the reporting of the protests in China and, in particular, the induced amnesia.

00:02:34.000 We're invited to forget the events of just a couple of months ago. 0.96

00:02:39.000 But, the good news is, Armageddon appears to have been averted right on the precipice of a nuclear apocalypse because Putin, as many people predicted, has shat himself.

00:02:50.000 Although, sadly, that appears to be just literally.

00:02:53.000 That's the kind of journalism, that's schoolyard reporting, I'd call that, Gareth.

00:02:58.000 Putin fell down the stairs, soiled himself.

00:03:01.000 He's not very well.

00:03:03.000 It's a sort of mean and spiteful way to report on international affairs.

00:03:07.000 Well, they've been saying for ages, haven't they?

00:03:08.000 He's got all sorts of things.

00:03:09.000 Parkinson's, then it was cancer, and now they've just had to resort to the one that we all want to hear. 0.98

00:03:15.000 He's now shitting himself. 1.00

00:03:16.000 You shit yourself, you did. 1.00

00:03:18.000 It's a very puerile way to diminish someone's standing. 1.00

00:03:22.000 Yeah.

00:03:23.000 Also, it doesn't make that much difference to whether he can launch nuclear weapons.

00:03:26.000 He might enjoy it more, knowing that he's got sort of a pouch of faeces.

00:03:30.000 It might make him do it more.

00:03:32.000 Well, it's all over for me.

00:03:34.000 Why should I suffer alone?

00:03:36.000 Yeah, you think sometimes that we've become incredibly sophisticated.

00:03:39.000 You look at the kind of propaganda that existed in the Second World War and it was all like, oh, Hitler's only got one ball.

00:03:45.000 But here we are, nearly a century later. 0.97

00:03:48.000 Putin, he shat himself on his one ball.

00:03:51.000 It's like, Nothing's really changed at all, except this is something I've been, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, say from the medieval period to let's call it the late renaissance girl, don't pin me down, I'm not a historian, like in that 500 year or 400 year period the amount of written documentation 0.96

00:04:10.000 that would have been on, I don't know, parchment and in the historical libraries of the world, would now be produced in half an hour of online activity.

00:04:18.000 There is such a deluge of information available.

00:04:21.000 Things are moving so quickly that I believe it contributes to this sense that we're not connected to anything real.

00:04:27.000 And this enables people, I think, to move beyond, without accountability, the events of just a month ago, with the protests in China being an obvious example.

00:04:38.000 The mainstream and legacy media can literally laud the protesters.

00:04:42.000 Look at them bravely standing up to the transgressive and totalitarian state.

00:04:48.000 And you're sort of invited to forget what's happening.

00:04:50.000 This story around Musk and the release of the Twitter files and what it pertains to, in particular regarding electoral manipulation, is another example of how we're being asked to forget events of just a couple of months ago.

00:05:04.000 It's not just the media, is it?

00:05:05.000 It's the state leaders as well, themselves.

00:05:07.000 I mean, we know that, like, Trudeau and Sunak have come out this week and have said, you know, it's authoritarianism, it's totalitarianism, this is not something that we believe in and we stand with protesters.

00:05:18.000 And it's like, okay, that's interesting.

00:05:20.000 I don't literally stand with protesters though, do you Trudeau?

00:05:22.000 Because when they protest in Ottawa, you stand in opposition to them, sometimes evoking emergency powers for the first time since the Second World War in order to shut down what many people regarded as legitimate and necessary protests.

00:05:36.000 And Rishi Sunak, he's the Prime Minister in our country at the moment, probably got another 20 minutes, half hour.

00:05:41.000 He has ushered through a bill that makes protesting even more difficult and less likely to take place, gives the police powers to arrest you on suspicion rather than evidence of wrongdoing.

00:05:52.000 They can tag you up, bag you up, restrict your internet access.

00:05:56.000 So totalitarianism, I suppose, comes in many forms is what we're saying.

00:06:00.000 So in here's the news.

00:06:01.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:06:02.000 A little bit later we'll be talking about that.

00:06:04.000 But We're going to focus first of all on the Twitter files.

00:06:07.000 Matt Taibbi, who comes on this show sometimes and who I like a lot and tormented a lot last time he came on here.

00:06:12.000 He was meant to come on today, wasn't he?

00:06:14.000 But do you think that he's been... I think there's probably a contract with Musk at the moment that means that maybe he can't go on and do interviews at the moment.

00:06:23.000 This is what I'm asking you, you lot watching now, to let us know in the chat.

00:06:27.000 Do you think that what's happening at Twitter right now is a kind of a propaganda campaign to distract attention away from the internal and financial troubles within Twitter?

00:06:38.000 Do you think these are legitimate and valuable releases of information?

00:06:42.000 Because it's hard to say her name, the press secretary of the White House, because it sounds too French.

00:06:48.000 Is it Jean-Pierre or is it Jean-Pierre?

00:06:51.000 If your surname is Pierre, it's difficult to know if the word in front of it is going to be Jean or not, isn't it?

00:06:58.000 In France, that'd be a bloke's name.

00:06:59.000 In America, it's this lady's name, who's the White House press secretary. 1.00

00:07:04.000 When she was talking about these Twitter case file revelations, and in particular, the revelations around Hunter Biden, they've gone from considering this information so sensitive and deplorable that it had to be censored at all costs.

00:07:16.000 There's now evidence of the amount of infiltration, control and manipulation that went into controlling that information.

00:07:23.000 They're sort of saying, oh, it's old news.

00:07:25.000 No one cares about it.

00:07:26.000 Have a look at this clip.

00:07:28.000 ...that these decisions were made appropriately in light of what has come out.

00:07:33.000 Which decisions?

00:07:34.000 By whom?

00:07:34.000 By Twitter.

00:07:35.000 By Twitter on... Okay.

00:07:37.000 So, look, we see this as an interesting or a coincidence, if I may, that he would so haphazardly, Twitter would so haphazardly push this distraction.

00:07:51.000 That is a full of old news, if you think about it.

00:07:57.000 Not old news, because when it was news, it was repressed and called fake news.

00:08:02.000 Yeah, do you think that's their version of fake news?

00:08:04.000 It's gone from fake news to old news.

00:08:06.000 It's never allowed to be new news.

00:08:08.000 It's never allowed to be the thing that it's meant to be.

00:08:11.000 And also the calling out of tactics such as distraction when that is straight out of the playbook of the mainstream and the alliance that exists between the mainstream media and the government seems a little disingenuous.

00:08:11.000 It's extraordinary.

00:08:25.000 Yeah, we know.

00:08:25.000 So we know the FBI, this is news this week, the FBI warned Twitter during weekly meetings before the 2020 election to expect hack and leak operations by state actors involving Hunter Biden.

00:08:36.000 So we know that they were warning members of Twitter.

00:08:38.000 And we also know from Alan McLeod, who we've had on the show before, that Twitter has hired a host of former FBI agents to work in fields of security trust.

00:08:46.000 Safety and content.

00:08:47.000 So this collusion and censorship is not, as they're saying, old news.

00:08:51.000 This is something that is very relevant because it may have even affected things such as elections.

00:08:56.000 Yeah, that's pretty significant.

00:08:58.000 And really this amnesia that's being induced, we're asked to accept that something goes from being fake news to old news almost overnight.

00:09:09.000 Have a look at this.

00:09:11.000 When Biden was campaigning in Iowa and was confronted about Hunter Biden's business interests, he sort of In a way, I've never seen I've never seen this clip before of Joe Biden and he was certainly got some vim and vitality about him here.

00:09:28.000 Look at how vehemently these business interests are denied, which we now concretely know are legitimate and the allegation at least is legitimate.

00:09:39.000 The big guy got a bit angry, didn't he?

00:09:41.000 The big guy gets infuriated.

00:09:43.000 Also, it's very weird context.

00:09:44.000 Have a look at this clip.

00:09:45.000 I can't even work out where Joe Biden is.

00:09:47.000 Let me know in the comments.

00:09:48.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:09:50.000 But you wouldn't let him get a job and work for a gas company that he had no experience in.

00:10:03.000 In order to get access to the public.

00:10:08.000 You're selling hats to the residents just like he is. 1.00

00:10:11.000 So you got to- I'm a damn liar, man. 1.00

00:10:13.000 That's not true. 0.99

00:10:14.000 And no one's ever said that.

00:10:16.000 No one's ever said that.

00:10:17.000 I've seen it on the TV.

00:10:18.000 You've seen it on the TV.

00:10:19.000 I know it's not true.

00:10:20.000 No, I know you do.

00:10:21.000 By the way, that's why I'm not sitting there.

00:10:23.000 I don't like it.

00:10:24.000 And no, let them go.

00:10:27.000 Let them go.

00:10:28.000 Look, the reason I'm running is because I've been around a long time, and I know

00:10:32.000 who those people are.

00:10:33.000 And I get things done.

00:10:34.000 That's why I'm running.

00:10:35.000 And you want to check my shape, I'm Let's do push-ups together.

00:10:40.000 Probably not a good idea, Joe.

00:10:41.000 He often takes things into physical territory, doesn't he?

00:10:44.000 With that fella on the golf course that was inconveniently Russian. 1.00

00:10:48.000 He wanted to measure his biceps and the other fella's calves and all sorts of extraordinary comparisons were made.

00:10:56.000 There was a point where he was willing to get involved in a push-up competition to prove it, to prove our little Ukrainian business interest Hunter Biden had.

00:11:07.000 Now we just recognize that that's completely true.

00:11:09.000 And I suppose from our perspective, remember the context of this conversation is, is Elon Musk a unique actor on the global stage?

00:11:18.000 Is he genuinely representing anti-establishment interest or is he as a result of his

00:11:24.000 broad range of business relationships i.e.

00:11:28.000 Tesla and SpaceX ultimately another figure with such strong establishment ties that he

00:11:34.000 can't legitimately and really be an anti-establishment voice. I mean when you think

00:11:38.000 about him, would you compare not only Musk as a figure but also to Trump not only in the sense

00:11:49.000 of his rhetoric and his sort of peculiar appeal but also in the way that he's roused such ire.

00:11:57.000 When perhaps, ultimately, he can be regarded as someone that operates within a framework that's essentially, ultimately, well within the remit of conventional state and corporate interests.

00:12:12.000 Yeah, so when we're talking about a distraction tactic, you know, it might be not for the reasons that, like, Jean-Pierre is talking about.

00:12:18.000 You know, it might be not to kind of deflect away from the things that are going on with Twitter with him doing these firings and things.

00:12:24.000 What she's talking about with hate speech, it might be more to do with potentially ties to the government.

00:12:29.000 So Tesla and SpaceX have received more than $7 billion in government contracts alone, billions more in tax breaks, loans and other subsidies.

00:12:36.000 In recent years Tesla has sold at least $6 billion worth of government-backed electric vehicle credits.

00:12:43.000 These sales of twice in recent years made the difference between the company posting a profit instead of a loss.

00:12:48.000 So these like government, this money from the government, it's extremely important to Tesla.

00:12:52.000 In April, Musk was culminating a $300 million military contract to launch a classified American spy satellite.

00:12:58.000 SpaceX is doing billions of dollars business with NASA.

00:13:02.000 So these ties with government are very, very real.

00:13:05.000 Also, you know, when we're talking about Twitter being a free speech platform, the stuff with Kanye is very interesting at the moment, isn't it?

00:13:12.000 You know, Kanye originally, before Musk, Kanye was booted off from Twitter for anti-Semitic comments.

00:13:18.000 Now he's been booted off for similar-ish comments.

00:13:22.000 Whatever you kind of think about those comments, you could say, how big a difference is that?

00:13:26.000 Ultimately, they're being dealt with in the same way.

00:13:29.000 So in spite of the significant amount of noise and conflagration, perhaps things are ultimately being contained within a relatively limited space.

00:13:39.000 Let us know what you think.

00:13:40.000 I'd love to see your comments.

00:13:42.000 Is it true that Macron and Elon Musk had a meeting?

00:13:45.000 Is it true that Elon Musk met with Tim Cook?

00:13:47.000 And if you have those kind of relationships, how much of a radical outsider are you ultimately?

00:13:54.000 Yeah, so we know that Macron tweeted Musk online and talked about Twitter signing up to the Children Online Protection Laboratory.

00:14:02.000 Sounds quite weird, but essentially is like a censorship tool.

00:14:06.000 It's a state censorship tool to apparently make, remove harmful content on the Internet.

00:14:12.000 But as we all know, when the state gets involved in removing content from the Internet, essentially censorship We've got to debate how much control they should be allowed in those kind of areas.

00:14:22.000 And Moss kind of, absolument, he replied to Macron over Twitter.

00:14:28.000 Presumably that's French?

00:14:29.000 I think it is French, yeah.

00:14:31.000 So, you know, we know that they've met.

00:14:34.000 He also met Tim Cook recently and got showed around Apple HQ.

00:14:37.000 So we know that there's a kind of relationship there and Twitter won't remove They were moved from the App Store like it was kind of rumored a few weeks ago.

00:14:44.000 So we know that there are relationships.

00:14:46.000 We know that Musk has relationships with the government in terms of his contracts.

00:14:49.000 He's got a relationship with Macron.

00:14:51.000 He's got a relationship with Tim Cook.

00:14:53.000 And as we've also talked about, there are things that he's developing at the moment.

00:14:57.000 For example, his Neuralink, which is essentially like chips inside of brains, that are a million miles away from some of the things we've heard at the WEF.

00:15:06.000 In his way, he is, it seems at least, a technological visionary that envisages a reality beyond terrestrial life, that the human species may translocate to Mars, that technology is ultimately the solution to our problem.

00:15:23.000 I see things a little differently than that, that there are numerous at-depth spiritual problems that need to be resolved here on Earth before we start rocketing off to other literal planets.

00:15:38.000 His agenda around Neuralink You know, which is, I guess, one of the things for which he's most well known and something that seems like it's deeply important to him.

00:15:49.000 That's curiously in alignment with the interest and agenda even of the WEF.

00:15:55.000 And you wouldn't think of Musk as being like a globalist in that sense, particularly someone that's, as we've said before, They're a recipient of so much ire and condemnation so much so many overt attempts to it seems to control and manipulate what he's doing and condemn it so much again he's one of those figures who's getting so much condemnation in conventional media spaces it's odd to note that in some ways his agenda is comparable to uh you know Klaus Schwab who's like the transhuman agenda is super

00:16:25.000 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if you're a fan of Musk, and again, all of this isn't to say that, like, we're taking a side of either Musk or the government.

00:16:32.000 At the end of the day, what the government are saying is he's using this as distraction to deflect away from stuff that's going on at Twitter, and it's not relevant news.

00:16:41.000 Well, it's very, very relevant news.

00:16:44.000 The fact that there are FBI agents inside of, on CIA agents instead of big tech, and this collusion between government and big tech exists, is very very relevant to what's going on.

00:16:53.000 It's actually frightening.

00:16:55.000 But at the same time, as a fan, if you're a fan of Elon Musk, you can't separate, if you're saying what the WEF and Klaus Schwab are talking about with chips inside people's brains, are completely different from what Elon Musk is talking about with chips inside people's brains, that they are the same thing.

00:17:12.000 Whether or not there's any connection or not, they are talking about the same thing and there you have to be able to kind of see that there's, I don't know, that's not irrelevant, is it?

00:17:21.000 I can't see that human redemption lies in that direction, that the solution is for us to become technologized I keep trying to invent that word, don't I?

00:17:31.000 It's not bad.

00:17:32.000 It seems like the more immersive technology becomes, the more materialised our reality becomes, the more it becomes based on intelligence and data, the more we become surveilled and managed and manipulated.

00:17:46.000 It's difficult to envisage a future where ordinary people have access to this kind of technology, even though, like, initially, when I hear Elon Musk talk about it, like he's saying, that it's going to present solutions for people with visual impairment, physical impairment.

00:18:01.000 Loads of applications that could be incredible.

00:18:04.000 It's difficult to be optimistic when you know that 1,500 animals have died. 0.97

00:18:08.000 I mean, God, I guess if you're pursuing a technological utopia where people live on Mars and we're all tuned into some sort of literal matrix, then what's 1,500 fucking monkeys? 0.98

00:18:18.000 Who cares? 0.95

00:18:19.000 But when you see this poor little fella listlessly playing ping pong with his own mind for a banana milkshake, it's difficult to think that this is the solution to humankind's problems.

00:18:29.000 Let's have a look at that little guy.

00:18:30.000 This is Pager.

00:18:32.000 He's a nine-year-old macaque who had a Neuralink placed in each side of his brain about six weeks ago.

00:18:38.000 If you look carefully, you can see that the fur on his head hasn't quite fully grown back yet.

00:18:43.000 He's learnt to interact with a computer for a tasty banana smoothie delivered through a straw.

00:18:48.000 One of the things the Neuralinks allow Pager to do is to play his favourite video game, Pong. 0.97

00:18:55.000 To control his paddle, on the right side of the screen, Pager simply thinks about moving his hand up or down.

00:19:02.000 We've removed the joystick altogether.

00:19:04.000 As you can see, Pager is amazingly good at MindPong.

00:19:09.000 The future, just a macaque monkey sucking away on a metal straw playing ping pong with himself.

00:19:14.000 I mean, I wouldn't mind it.

00:19:16.000 We resolve a lot of problems with a simply play ping pong while drinking banana milkshake.

00:19:21.000 Again, to sort of reiterate the potential alignment between the apparently radical Musk, who we're still very hopeful of getting on our show, and we're certainly not condemning him as a visionary, an entrepreneur, a brilliant man, a radical thinker, a person who seems to find solutions for numerous problems.

00:19:36.000 I don't want to find myself on the same side as the mainstream media in just reflexively condemning this person.

00:19:42.000 I certainly don't think him as a billionaire owning a social media site is any different than any of the other billionaires that own social media sites.

00:19:49.000 I reckon it's really interesting that he's releasing information that's detrimental to the Democrat government.

00:19:53.000 But as you know, We're not like a pro-Republican or right-wing organisation, neither a left-wing one, and begin to think those terms are absolutely outdated, outmoded and irrelevant, and certainly won't play a meaningful part in any planetary solutions that we find here on this planet, because I don't have the skill set to envisage a solution on another planet.

00:20:10.000 I'm struggling to cope with what trousers to wear, frankly, if you see the ones I'm in.

00:20:14.000 But it's interesting to see that Musk's apparently radical and alternative ideas align so neatly with your friend and mine, Klaus Schwab's.

00:20:22.000 Have a look.

00:20:23.000 Can you imagine that in 10 years when we are sitting here, we have an implant in our brains?

00:20:30.000 And... Occasionally just a sip on the metal straw, a little drink of banana shake.

00:20:39.000 While I try and envisage where everyone's got an implant, instead of just being kind, I'm trying to imagine what people feel.

00:20:49.000 Did you like it when I said that?

00:20:51.000 Why is technology assumed to be the solution?

00:20:54.000 I'm not anti-technology.

00:20:55.000 Who would be?

00:20:56.000 The advances in medicines and communications is pretty self-evident.

00:21:01.000 But the idea that it's an exclusive telos that ought to foreclose on spiritual evolution at a time when it seems that what's being lost is a sense of connection to who we really are, a connection to one another, a connection to nature.

00:21:17.000 When you look at the annihilation and nihilism all around, the solution to this is not going to be put a chip in your brain, suck up some banana milkshake, brew a straw, we'll be right as rain in no time.

00:21:29.000 Also, it's like, isn't the World Economic Forum, it's meant to be finding solutions, isn't it?

00:21:33.000 Isn't that the whole premise of the World Economic Forum?

00:21:35.000 Finding solutions, and yet, what he's using this forum to, like, go on about putting brains inside of people's heads, it just doesn't seem like... I think there's plenty of other things that we could be doing, isn't there?

00:21:45.000 He's getting ahead of himself, dear old Klaus Schwab.

00:21:49.000 And I can immediately tell you how the people react, or I can feel how the people react to your answers.

00:21:58.000 Is it imaginable?

00:22:02.000 I think that is imaginable.

00:22:04.000 I think... If it's imaginable, that's what art is.

00:22:06.000 You start imagining things.

00:22:08.000 It's also just because you can imagine it, it doesn't mean you should do it, Klaus.

00:22:17.000 I think, you know, you can... What's he done to that bloke, Patrick?

00:22:20.000 Oh, he's staring upwards.

00:22:21.000 He's turned him into... He's a nervous wreck, isn't he?

00:22:23.000 Oh, I can't take this conversation anymore.

00:22:25.000 I think he's thinking, well, it is imaginable, but we probably shouldn't do it, Klaus.

00:22:29.000 We're meant to find business solutions here.

00:22:31.000 Let's just focus on having a stooge run every country in the Western world and being able to bypass democratic process with a set of edicts that are generally introduced around a pandemic.

00:22:42.000 You can imagine that.

00:22:43.000 You can imagine, well, you're going to be sort of transplanted into, you know, the internet, so to speak, to live forever in a digital realm.

00:22:52.000 You know, you can imagine that, you know, you just in your biological incarnation are going to live to be some, you know, very long age.

00:23:01.000 We had before technology the idea that we could communicate with one another, perhaps through means that are difficult to discern and track materially.

00:23:10.000 We had the idea of unity through Gaia, the idea that we live on one planet together.

00:23:15.000 We had ideas that we might Connect with one another or even transcend our physical form through spiritual practice.

00:23:22.000 Now all of these things are being rationalized and materialized and I don't think you can map what I believe are kind of spiritual notions onto a material model.

00:23:31.000 The idea that you can become immortal by downloading your consciousness into a machine Whether or not it's plausible or not, technologically, of course, I'm not qualified to even postulate, but it certainly, I don't believe, is desirable, because part of the point of being alive is to recognize limitation, is to recognize that the self is, to a degree, a construct.

00:23:59.000 If you can forego that realization by sustaining yourself as a perennial machine, An unending and eternal set of memories.

00:24:10.000 You're sort of bypassing, I believe, one of the most fundamental ideas of what it is to be human, what it is to be spiritual, what it is to be alive.

00:24:16.000 I've got news for you.

00:24:17.000 Human trials are starting in six months.

00:24:19.000 There you go.

00:24:19.000 I was wrong, actually.

00:24:20.000 It might work.

00:24:20.000 Give it a go.

00:24:21.000 Now, in this state of amnesia, you may have forgotten that just a couple of years ago, people that protested about lockdowns were vilified, called anti-vaxxers, nutters, lunatics.

00:24:30.000 They were condemned.

00:24:32.000 And denied their most basic freedoms, the freedom to protest.

00:24:36.000 Meanwhile, in China, they are lauded by our amnesiac media.

00:24:41.000 Well done, bold Chinese protesters, protesting against something that we're not involved in.

00:24:47.000 People protesting in Canada? 0.87

00:24:48.000 Hate them.

00:24:49.000 People protesting in America? 0.99

00:24:50.000 Loathe them.

00:24:51.000 People protesting in England? 1.00

00:24:52.000 God damn them. 0.99

00:24:53.000 But in China? 1.00

00:24:54.000 You carry on.

00:24:55.000 Have a look at the WEF stooges like Trudeau and Rishi Sunak.

00:24:59.000 applauding actions in China while simultaneously denying their own draconian actions against

00:25:07.000 protests in their own countries and denying, not even denying actually, celebrating peculiar

00:25:13.000 anti-protest laws that they're introducing in the case of Sunak in their own countries.

00:25:17.000 Here's the news, no here's the effing news.

00:25:19.000 Thanks for refusing Fox News. 0.98

00:25:21.000 No, here's the f***ing news. 0.79

00:25:23.000 Hey, have you noticed that neoliberal globalists like Justin Trudeau and Rishi Sunak are applauding 0.95

00:25:30.000 Chinese protesters?

00:25:31.000 Well done!

00:25:32.000 Stand up for freedom!

00:25:33.000 Yet when there were protesters in their country, oh, you anti-vaxxers, you caused all these problems.

00:25:39.000 And if they love protests so much, why are they quietly and slyly passing anti-protest laws?

00:25:45.000 What have they got planned for your future?

00:25:49.000 You've noticed, of course, that in China there are continual protests against the draconian lockdown measures.

00:25:56.000 What you may be surprised by is that the Western media are now calling it a new Tiananmen Square.

00:26:01.000 Look at them bravely standing up against authoritarianism.

00:26:05.000 Hold on a minute. 0.98

00:26:06.000 Don't you remember, like literally a couple of months ago, that when we protested in Canada or Britain or the United States, we were condemned as lunatics, as anti-vaxxers, as fools and maniacs. 0.96

00:26:20.000 What exactly is going on here? 0.87

00:26:22.000 Now, at best, I suppose they could advance the argument that the science has changed, would they say that?

00:26:27.000 We know more now about Covid. 0.67

00:26:29.000 Then protesting was very dangerous and very foolish, although some protests were okay.

00:26:35.000 Now though protests are good again.

00:26:37.000 Oh it seems almost like you just use these stories to advance a narrative that you're using to increase your ability to control the population regardless of what values might underscore Or underlie them?

00:26:51.000 It seems we're living at a point where history is being immolated, ameliorated, entirely lost.

00:26:57.000 Information is coming out so thick and fast we've got a collective amnesia.

00:27:02.000 Just a couple of years ago we were all locked These figures such as Trudeau and Rishi Sunak, if you ask me, are the new faces of totalitarianism, masquerading as advanced, socially diverse, open and inclusive figures, when in truth and in fact, the authoritarianism that they demonstrate in their policies is more advanced than anything we've seen for 50, 60 years.

00:27:27.000 And you know what I'm referring to back there.

00:27:29.000 Let's have a look at this story in more detail.

00:27:31.000 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday that everyone in China should be allowed to protest and express themselves.

00:27:37.000 What about in Ottawa though?

00:27:39.000 No, not in Ottawa.

00:27:40.000 Oh, truck horns?

00:27:41.000 That's noisy.

00:27:42.000 No one needs to hear a truck horn near bedtime.

00:27:45.000 That's when I'm applying my makeup for my latest parties.

00:27:48.000 Canadians are watching very closely.

00:27:52.000 Obviously everyone in China should be allowed to express themselves, should be allowed to share their perspectives and indeed protest.

00:28:02.000 Do you think, for a moment there, it crossed his mind, oh no, what about when I tried to introduce the Emergency Act so that I could arrest those truckers and shut down those protests, freezing bank accounts and shutting down donation sites?

00:28:12.000 How are we supposed to live with this hypocrisy?

00:28:15.000 We're going to continue to ensure that China knows we'll stand up for human rights, we'll stand with people who are expressing themselves.

00:28:22.000 Do you think that maybe they stand up for human rights and the ability for people to express themselves if there are no political consequences for them?

00:28:29.000 Are you beginning to think that that's what this movement is?

00:28:32.000 We stand up for rights as long as all you have to do is wear a badge or something.

00:28:36.000 But if you have to change policies, if you have to interrupt the process, progress and agenda of powerful interests, we're not so interested.

00:28:44.000 Is there a way we could just wear a badge?

00:28:47.000 Anything beyond badges, they're not willing to do.

00:28:50.000 Uh, we also need to make sure that China and places around the world are respecting journalists and their ability to do their job.

00:28:55.000 Uh, we'll continue to make that very clear.

00:28:57.000 You'll have seen in the mainstream press how much coverage there's been of Elon Musk's Twitter clear-out, for example.

00:29:03.000 How plainly and explicitly they explain to you the Hunter Biden stuff.

00:29:06.000 And, of course, the accountability of the media.

00:29:09.000 We made so many mistakes during lockdown, we perhaps should have been a bit more circumspect We were too willing to not hold Pfizer to account.

00:29:15.000 It's weird, isn't it, in this cost-of-living crisis, that energy companies are making billions.

00:29:19.000 Weird that in a health crisis, pharmaceutical companies are making billions.

00:29:22.000 It's almost like, what's a crisis for ordinary people is an opportunity for the most powerful interests in the world.

00:29:22.000 Wow!

00:29:27.000 And like, the government, instead of sticking up for ordinary people, actually support those interests.

00:29:32.000 Where's those articles?

00:29:33.000 Why are the mainstream media not writing them?

00:29:35.000 Trudeau on Friday defended invoking emergency powers to end anti-government protests that paralysed the capital earlier this year, citing the threat of violence and lack of a credible plan by police.

00:29:46.000 The threat of violence is another way of saying there could be violence, which is another way of saying There isn't any violence, which is another way of saying we're already in minority report.

00:29:55.000 We're already in Orwellian territory.

00:29:57.000 You looks to me like the kind of person that might do something violent, or worse than that, be a Nazi. 0.58

00:30:03.000 Oh, really?

00:30:04.000 Based on what criteria? 1.00

00:30:05.000 Shut up! 1.00

00:30:06.000 Lock down! 1.00

00:30:06.000 Shut down! 1.00

00:30:07.000 You cannot legislate on the basis of suspicion.

00:30:09.000 That's a challenge to the most fundamental judicial principles of civilization.

00:30:13.000 It's unraveling before our eyes.

00:30:15.000 Trudeau portrayed the move to use emergency powers as unavoidable, saying it was not possible to negotiate with the protesters.

00:30:22.000 So what's going on in China?

00:30:23.000 Either both things are wrong or both things are right.

00:30:26.000 Oh, China will support their rights.

00:30:27.000 You know, the press, they should be reporting on it.

00:30:29.000 What about the protests in Canada?

00:30:31.000 No, I've got to shut that down.

00:30:32.000 Can't report on those.

00:30:33.000 Can't negotiate with them.

00:30:34.000 They're too violent.

00:30:35.000 Do you notice the algebra now?

00:30:37.000 What you have to do is to say the people you oppose are impossible to negotiate with.

00:30:43.000 They're either terrorists or they're anti-vaxx nutters.

00:30:46.000 If you can legitimise their condemnation then you simultaneously legitimise your own authoritarianism.

00:30:52.000 Notice how often that happens. 0.87

00:30:54.000 Normally we wouldn't do this but these people are racists. 0.99

00:30:58.000 Normally we wouldn't do this but these people are terrorists.

00:31:00.000 What would we need to do in order to justify emergency powers?

00:31:04.000 I don't know, say they're Nazis?

00:31:05.000 Oh, but they're not Nazis.

00:31:06.000 Yeah, it doesn't matter though, does it?

00:31:07.000 Because if we say they're Nazis, that's the same as them being Nazis. 0.66

00:31:11.000 It wasn't that they just wanted to be heard, they wanted to be obeyed, Trudeau told the Independent Public Commission looking into the government's use of the powers.

00:31:18.000 I'm absolutely, absolutely serene and confident that I made the right choice in agreeing with the invocation.

00:31:24.000 In attempting to sound like sort of a new age wise politician, he's actually sounding like a psychopath, because many people felt serene and confident while they committed some of the worst atrocities in living memory.

00:31:36.000 A state of personal serenity doesn't mean you're doing the right thing.

00:31:40.000 Sometimes it's uncomfortable to deal with people you disagree with, to get in a conversation and say, look I don't actually agree with anything you're saying, But given that this is a democracy and that that idea transcends any individual and our hunches and our serenity and feelings we might have in our bones and our waters, I'm going to have to deal with you.

00:31:58.000 I'm going to have to listen to you.

00:32:00.000 Otherwise, when this stuff happens in China, I won't be able to say, oh, look at the Chinese authoritarianism there and people bravely standing up to it. 0.98

00:32:06.000 So I'd sound like the worst kind of hypocrite. 0.95

00:32:09.000 It wasn't a usual political protest. 0.96

00:32:13.000 From the intimidation and harassment of people for wearing masks to a very concerning story

00:32:21.000 about folks disrupting the nearby homeless shelter What petty vilification of the truckers!

00:32:31.000 Right, okay, so we're here because we don't want to lose our jobs as truckers primarily, but also let's stick it to that soup kitchen, man!

00:32:38.000 Why have we got so many soup kitchens? 0.96

00:32:40.000 Oh, because we impoverished everybody by closing down major industries, shaming people, insisting they had to have vaccines otherwise they'd lose their jobs?

00:32:46.000 There were indications.

00:32:48.000 Indications?

00:32:49.000 Oh, not evidence then?

00:32:51.000 Yeah, just an indication, a suggestion, a whiff, an aroma, a scent.

00:32:55.000 That there was a level of...

00:33:00.000 An indication of disregard for others is not sufficient to mobilize emergency laws.

00:33:08.000 Wake up!

00:33:09.000 What?

00:33:09.000 What is it?

00:33:10.000 Is the house on fire?

00:33:11.000 Is there a merger in here?

00:33:13.000 There was an indication that some people might be showing a disregard for others.

00:33:13.000 No!

00:33:19.000 Unfortunately, we had seen examples of during the election campaign, and it emphasized for me that this was the same kind of thing.

00:33:30.000 Same kind of thing?

00:33:31.000 It's like a poem!

00:33:32.000 It's not like proper legislation, law, order, all the institutions that have been established in Western civilization, which some people decry as patriarchy and some people celebrate as the proud foundations of a nation.

00:33:45.000 But you can't just suddenly go, we've got indications and hunches and I felt not serene and that.

00:33:50.000 These are not ways to run a country.

00:33:52.000 Emergency!

00:33:53.000 Emergency!

00:33:54.000 What is it?

00:33:55.000 Oh, my knee's swelling up.

00:33:56.000 It often does this when I need to evoke emergency powers.

00:33:59.000 Trudeau cited the threat of serious violence and local police not having a credible plan to restore order as reasons that prompted him to invoke the Emergencies Act, which has not been used in its current form since it was created in the 1980s.

00:34:09.000 Like his haircut.

00:34:11.000 Civil liberties advocates argued police could have cleared the blockades using existing powers.

00:34:16.000 Under Mr. Trudeau's decree, police have the authority to push back crowds on foot or with horses, use pepper spray, enter trucks and other vehicles by whatever means necessary, and make arrests en masse.

00:34:26.000 Thank God though, because there was an indication that there could or might be some hateful rhetoric.

00:34:32.000 Also, a whole tin of soup was nearly spilled when a truck parked nearby.

00:34:36.000 Of course you'll be aware of the blossoming neoliberalist bromance between our leader in the UK, Rishi Sunak, and Trudeau over there.

00:34:44.000 All of these Davos graduates come together to celebrate in how kind and sharing and inclusive they are, particularly when imposing authoritarianism and condemning the authoritarianism of other nations who they openly emulate.

00:34:57.000 Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the so-called Golden Era of relations with China was over, warning that Beijing's move toward even greater authoritarianism posed a systemic challenge to Britain's values and interests.

00:35:09.000 Ah, the old values and interests.

00:35:11.000 What are your values and interests?

00:35:12.000 Dunno, depends what's convenient that day.

00:35:14.000 Let's be clear, the so-called Golden Era is over.

00:35:17.000 That's literally the first time I've ever heard of that golden era, have you?

00:35:20.000 I'm really enjoying this golden era with China, ain't you? 0.99

00:35:23.000 When we can't pay for our fuel, when we can't afford food, I just bask in the golden light of the relationship with China.

00:35:30.000 We recognise China poses a systemic challenge to our values and interests, a challenge that grows more acute as it moves towards even greater authoritarianism, Sunak said in his speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in Lombard.

00:35:44.000 Is that a banquet?

00:35:46.000 Here at the Lord Mayor's banquet we absolutely deplore inequality and elites lording it over an oppressed class the way we did a couple of years ago plainly openly where everyone could see it.

00:36:00.000 Here at this lovely banquet We believe that everyone should have rights and access to food. 0.99

00:36:07.000 Get the fuck out there! 1.00

00:36:08.000 Warmth! 0.99

00:36:09.000 That we shouldn't have energy companies earning billions at a time of crisis.

00:36:12.000 Can you turn the temperature?

00:36:13.000 It's a bit hot in here.

00:36:14.000 I can't enjoy my next turkey leg.

00:36:16.000 You can't be at a law mayor's banquet condemning authoritarianism.

00:36:20.000 All they have is the garnish and accoutrement of democracy.

00:36:24.000 The rhetoric of democracy.

00:36:26.000 Our authoritarianism is just a different flavour.

00:36:30.000 That's all.

00:36:31.000 Oh, well, you wouldn't be able to do this video in China.

00:36:32.000 Oh, well, thanks very much for pointing that out.

00:36:35.000 That's it, is it?

00:36:36.000 Well, you're allowed to complain about it here while we do nothing about it.

00:36:40.000 In China, they might pepper spray you.

00:36:42.000 They also do that in Canada.

00:36:44.000 Listen, it's complicated, isn't it, politics?

00:36:45.000 Instead of listening to their people's protests, the Chinese government has chosen to crack down further.

00:36:50.000 How many lockdowns did we endure?

00:36:52.000 How much condemnation?

00:36:53.000 Where was the real science?

00:36:55.000 Where was the truth?

00:36:56.000 Where was the restriction of the profiteering of pharmaceutical companies, big tech giants?

00:37:00.000 Where's the responsibility and culpability of the media?

00:37:02.000 You better forget about China.

00:37:04.000 You've got work to do at home.

00:37:06.000 A spokesperson for China's embassy in London said the UK was in no position to pass judgment on China's COVID policy or other internal affairs.

00:37:15.000 Brilliant efficiency of language from China.

00:37:17.000 What have you got to say about our condemnation?

00:37:19.000 Doesn't seem really that it's any of your business or that you're any better.

00:37:25.000 Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak pledged that police will have whatever powers were required to crack down on disruptive protests.

00:37:31.000 Well, that's amazing, isn't it?

00:37:32.000 While condemning China, they are introducing new legislation to prevent protest here.

00:37:37.000 Those people protesting in China, they're very, very brave and Chinese and irrelevant. 1.00

00:37:42.000 These people protesting here don't think they're Chinese, but what they are is a plate in the ass. 1.00

00:37:46.000 That's why we're introducing new powers. 1.00

00:37:49.000 Go on, China! 1.00

00:37:50.000 Keep protesting!

00:37:51.000 Oi! 0.98

00:37:52.000 You're under arrest!

00:37:53.000 This afternoon I sat down with all the police chiefs to make it clear that they have my full support in acting decisively to clamp down on illegal protests.

00:38:02.000 Gotta clamp down on the illegal ones.

00:38:03.000 Illegal protests, ones that don't do anything, that are irrelevant and are in China.

00:38:07.000 Carry on with those, I'll support them.

00:38:09.000 Illegal ones, ones that are here and are against my interests.

00:38:11.000 Check my bank account, check my marriage, check what my father-in-law does for a living and the connections to the WF.

00:38:16.000 We don't want any of those protests.

00:38:18.000 It is completely unacceptable Yeah, it's the ordinary members of the public.

00:38:28.000 Like, when I was running a hedge fund, me and the old ordinary members of the public were saying, like, right, this Moderna thing that we're starting is going to profit hugely over the next couple of years.

00:38:36.000 How are we going to benefit most of all ordinary members of the public?

00:38:40.000 Or when I got fined during lockdown for being part of those parties.

00:38:43.000 Do you remember that?

00:38:44.000 All the way through lockdown when they were having parties while you were doing funerals on YouTube and stuff.

00:38:48.000 It was me and the old ordinary members of the public.

00:38:51.000 Other members of the government.

00:38:52.000 Come on! 0.61

00:38:53.000 Use ordinary members of the public.

00:38:55.000 My view is that those who break the law should feel the full force of it, and that's what I'm determined to deliver.

00:39:01.000 It gets to a point where people like Justin Trudeau and Rishi Sunak should simply put themselves in prison and shut up, and that would have made the world a better and more effective place in alignment with the principles that they're continually espousing.

00:39:12.000 We are currently giving the police new powers so that they can clamp down on these illegal protests.

00:39:17.000 Giving the police new powers?

00:39:19.000 There it is.

00:39:19.000 That's moving towards a police state.

00:39:21.000 Advancing the powers of the police force.

00:39:23.000 Do you remember voting?

00:39:23.000 Do you remember being asked?

00:39:24.000 No, me neither.

00:39:25.000 They will have my full support in acting decisively and rapidly to end the misery and the disruption that's being caused to ordinary families up and down the country who are trying just to go about their day-to-day lives.

00:39:38.000 The misery and disruption is not as a result of illegal protests.

00:39:42.000 The misery and disruption is as a result of a lack of protests against the cost of living crisis, the corruption in government, the inability to clamp down and control, the profiteering from globalist entities such as Big Pharma, Big Tech, protests against a media that will not report the truth to ordinary people.

00:40:01.000 Can you not see that what we're witnessing now is a globalist agenda being asserted via national institutions such as the police force without democratic due process?

00:40:11.000 And I've said to the police, but whatever they need from government, they will have in terms of new powers.

00:40:15.000 We're already giving them some, and I want to back them to use them.

00:40:18.000 Well, if you weren't terrified before, you should be terrified now.

00:40:20.000 And allow that terror to spur you into action and activism.

00:40:24.000 Allow it to push you beyond any sense of division between your fellow citizens.

00:40:29.000 Recognise that they are your allies.

00:40:31.000 Put the culture war to one side because there is a real war taking place.

00:40:35.000 In October, a last-minute amendment to the Public Order Bill lets Home Secretary Suella Braverman apply for injunctions against anyone she deems likely to carry out protests.

00:40:44.000 So during that time of chaos in British politics, where there was a new Prime Minister about every half hour, they put through a bill going, oh, do you mind if the police arrest people for looking funny?

00:40:52.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, do that.

00:40:53.000 We're too busy watching the soap opera.

00:40:55.000 The proposal would give police the power to arrest anyone they suspect to be breaching such an injunction.

00:41:00.000 According to Liberty, the amendment will effectively give the Home Secretary the power to clamp down on protests as and when the government chooses.

00:41:06.000 Oh, so next time there's a lockdown and you protest and they don't lord it like they do foreign protests, they will be able to arrest you there and then on the spot just on the basis of suspicion.

00:41:17.000 Other measures proposed in the bill include giving courts the power to issue Serious Disruption Prevention Orders, SDPOs, which can ban individuals from attending protests.

00:41:25.000 Amnesty International said the proposed law would go further than similar legislation in Russia by giving courts the power to issue them without conviction.

00:41:32.000 Without conviction.

00:41:34.000 In this country, that we used to do stuff like that to suspected Irish terrorists, it led to the false imprisonment of numerous people and it was one of the things we look back as a kind of dark ages policy.

00:41:43.000 Internment without conviction or without trial.

00:41:46.000 It's being reintroduced with politicians like, well obviously we just want to help everyone, we just want to be all kind and cosy.

00:41:51.000 This is new authoritarianism.

00:41:53.000 Worse than Russia, which we all know is the worst country that there's ever been. 1.00

00:41:56.000 The range of conditions that can be imposed on individuals under the orders include 24-7 GPS monitoring and restricted internet usage.

00:42:03.000 Already we're moving into the era of social credit scoring and totalitarian control.

00:42:08.000 Police would be given powers to stop and search people or vehicles, even if they have no reasonable grounds to do so, if a senior officer believes protest offences are likely to take place in an area.

00:42:17.000 So there you have it.

00:42:18.000 When there were protests in this country, they were condemned.

00:42:20.000 Protests in China are applauded.

00:42:23.000 Protest laws are being introduced in countries across the West in order to prevent us ever protesting again, even though they applauded in China, yet we're supposed to forget we took on a Chinese model of authoritarianism to introduce and implement the lockdowns that we've only just gone through.

00:42:40.000 Do not succumb to this amnesia.

00:42:43.000 Keep your memory alive.

00:42:44.000 Remember what's going on.

00:42:46.000 Stay awake.

00:42:47.000 Stay present.

00:42:48.000 Stay free.

00:42:49.000 I'll see you in the comments.

00:42:50.000 I'll see you in the chat in a minute.

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00:43:56.000 Hello, look, you've just seen what we think of the hypocrisy that's going on in the reporting on the Chinese protests.

00:44:04.000 You've heard what I believe when it comes to WEF stooges like Sunak and Trudeau. 0.91

00:44:10.000 I know that there's more to them than stooges.

00:44:12.000 I mean, in a sense, I mean that they have a particular mindset and I don't know, code that seems to have been inculcated somewhere along the way by these globalists.

00:44:22.000 We've seen that now.

00:44:23.000 Let us know in the comments, let us know in the chat what you think.

00:44:25.000 Reptilians destroy cultivation!

00:44:27.000 Straight in there!

00:44:29.000 Don't race straight to that!

00:44:30.000 Just because we're on Rumble, you think you can get away with that madness?

00:44:34.000 With us now is our first guest in our new studio space.

00:44:38.000 Matt Kennard is a journalist and author, founder of Declassified UK, and we now know subject of GCHQ investigations because of the amount of clarity and truth.

00:44:49.000 Matt, thanks for joining us on the show.

00:44:51.000 Thanks for having me.

00:44:52.000 Your book, How Corporations Overthrew Democracy, is coming out next year and I suppose the title suggests, mate, that you're talking about how the influence of corporations through lobbying and the funding of the political process has reached the sort of saturation point.

00:45:06.000 Am I right?

00:45:06.000 Can you give us some good examples of that?

00:45:08.000 Well, I mean, it's a bigger kind of time period that I look at.

00:45:12.000 We basically go back to the 1950s when Decolonization was happening and empires were losing their formal control of poor countries and corporations and private capital were very concerned about this.

00:45:25.000 How do we maintain control when we haven't got formal garrisons of troops to kind of, I don't know, take out a leader that nationalizes something?

00:45:32.000 And they erected all sorts of systems whereby they could make sure that their power and their interests were protected.

00:45:40.000 One of them that the book starts with is this shadow legal system, I don't know if you've ever heard of it, called Investor State Dispute Settlement, ISDS.

00:45:48.000 Make it sound boring so people don't...

00:45:51.000 Who cares about something that's in the shadows and has got a long name like that?

00:45:54.000 Exactly, but actually it's majorly important and it's a system that allows corporations to sue states all over the world who enact policies that they don't like.

00:46:03.000 So for example, this is a real case.

00:46:06.000 Egypt raises the minimum wage.

00:46:07.000 A French water company doesn't like that.

00:46:09.000 I don't like it.

00:46:10.000 Exactly, I don't like it.

00:46:11.000 You can't do that.

00:46:11.000 That's pricey, we've got to pay them that now!

00:46:13.000 Exactly, so they take them to these courts and say you're impacting our profits, you can't do that.

00:46:20.000 So there's a judicial system already in place that's transcendent of national sovereignty?

00:46:25.000 By design.

00:46:27.000 They wanted to have a new system in place when decolonisation happened whereby they could bypass local resistance, bypass local revolutionary movements, whatever it was, there was a lot of tumult in that period.

00:46:38.000 This is one of them, there's others.

00:46:40.000 I like that example.

00:46:41.000 I was just thinking, mate, that prior to the colonisation model or at the advent of certain aspects of British colonialism, there was already corporatism sort of baked in when it made through, like the East India Tea Company, the army went in to support their interests.

00:46:56.000 So in a sense, is it we're seeing a return to a model that preceded national colonisation?

00:47:03.000 Was corporatism in a sense the foundation of colonisation?

00:47:08.000 It was, but it was much easier to enforce when you had a formal empire.

00:47:11.000 Because, as I said, you could just take out leaders you didn't like. 0.99

00:47:13.000 Shoot them. 1.00

00:47:13.000 Exactly. 1.00

00:47:14.000 Well, literally.

00:47:16.000 In Egypt, the president nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, and Britain, France and Israel invaded.

00:47:23.000 You said you can't do that.

00:47:24.000 In 1953, That's the other element of this, is that states are acting for corporate interests and always have.

00:47:29.000 Iran, Moselle, nationalized the oil company, the Anglo-Persian oil company, MI6, CIA took

00:47:35.000 him out.

00:47:36.000 Iran's never been a democracy again. 0.83

00:47:38.000 So that's the other element of this, is that states are acting for corporate interests

00:47:43.000 and always have.

00:47:44.000 When you look at declassified documents and stuff, all the stuff you hear on the TV about

00:47:48.000 the government is there to protect national security and we're protecting you.

00:47:53.000 In fact, what they're talking about on the inside is how do we project corporate power and how do we protect big business interests globally?

00:48:01.000 And in the UK, we have BAE Systems and BP, two examples.

00:48:06.000 Large parts of the British state are set up to export their interests and to maintain their interests.

00:48:13.000 Tax, for example, BAE Systems is an interesting one.

00:48:15.000 There's a whole department So what, it was meant to be British Airways, right?

00:48:19.000 No, BAE Systems is the arms company.

00:48:21.000 Oh, BAE, yeah.

00:48:22.000 Yeah, it was privatised by Thatcher.

00:48:24.000 But it's a huge, it sells billions of pounds of weaponry around the world.

00:48:28.000 Is it our biggest and best weapons?

00:48:30.000 It's completely dominated by BAE Systems, the UK weapons industry.

00:48:34.000 And a lot of it goes to the Saudis.

00:48:36.000 And they've given, or sold, 17.6 billion at least since the war in Yemen.

00:48:41.000 But anyway, I'll just finish, like, There's a large part of the Department for International Trade which is set up.

00:48:48.000 The taxpayer's department is funded by the taxpayer, which is set up to promote BAE Systems' interests.

00:48:54.000 So there's no differentiation between the state and the corporation on many of these issues.

00:49:00.000 It's extraordinary to discover that in various ways we think that there is a kind of secularism, that there is a separation between these interests.

00:49:10.000 But we've discovered now from the degree of infiltration in social media companies that CIA and FBI agenda can be met within apparently neutral or at least private social media sites.

00:49:21.000 And you're saying that corporatism has had tendrils and tentacles into all manner of governmental agencies for, in fact, It's not a bug, it's a feature, it's part of the way the system is established.

00:49:33.000 Yeah, it's like a Frankenstein effect because governments initially created corporations,

00:49:37.000 chartered corporations, that's what they started as in the 17th century in England, where the

00:49:42.000 government would need to build a bridge, for example, so they create a chartered company

00:49:46.000 which would be dissolved at the end of building that bridge.

00:49:49.000 But gradually they became more exotic, the structure, joint stockholder companies, so

00:49:54.000 you could invest in companies and they would last longer than the project.

00:49:59.000 And then, over the last, the thesis in the book is that since the Second World War, the

00:50:04.000 corporation has completely eaten the state that created it.

00:50:07.000 And in fact it's wrong to think of the state acting in our interest, we don't live in a

00:50:10.000 democracy because, I mean, you see a lot of conspiracy theories these days.

00:50:17.000 And I think a large part of the reason is people look at the politicians on TV and say, These aren't the people making the decisions.

00:50:24.000 There's something happening off screen.

00:50:25.000 So without a kind of analysis, which is based in the real world, you can easily say it's this person or it's some conspiracy theory.

00:50:33.000 But in fact, what it is, is corporate power.

00:50:35.000 Politicians are working for corporations.

00:50:37.000 And you see that even in countries which have elected liberation leaders.

00:50:41.000 For example, for the book, we went to El Salvador, which was the victim of a case from a mining company, a legal case, because it didn't give an environmental permit to a Canadian mining company.

00:50:51.000 They said, well, you can't do that.

00:50:52.000 We're going to sue you for $300 million.

00:50:54.000 So we went to El Salvador to look at this case.

00:50:57.000 And we were talking to ministers who were part of the FMLN government, which came out of the Marxist guerrillas in the 80s.

00:51:05.000 They're not part of the system in that way.

00:51:06.000 But we said to him, why are you doing so little to change things in El Salvador?

00:51:11.000 And they said, we can't move.

00:51:13.000 When we lost a civil war in El Salvador and Capital One, the US Empire One, we were integrated into the system.

00:51:21.000 We signed bilateral investment treaties, we signed aid packs, we signed all these different things which mean 20 years later, we still can't move.

00:51:28.000 So we want to make, we want to, I don't know, we want to nationalize the water company.

00:51:31.000 Oh no, you can't do that.

00:51:32.000 Then were the glory days of utility when a corporation would just form, build a bridge, and then disband after the bridge has been built.

00:51:38.000 That must have been such a lovely, simple time to have lived in.

00:51:41.000 We need a bridge.

00:51:41.000 We've built a bridge.

00:51:42.000 We shall now disband, gentlemen.

00:51:44.000 But ultimately, this thing has mutated into some nefarious and untenable monster.

00:51:50.000 If in a country like El Salvador, in that region, with its strong ties to socialism and revolutionary politics and radicalism and its deeply entrenched opposition to Northern American style corporatism, you can track examples like that, God alone knows what it must be like in companies where there are deep roots of corporatism.

00:52:09.000 Mate, what kind of power are organisations like Amazon able to exert over American politics?

00:52:16.000 And where do you see this dynamic playing out in big tech in countries like the United States and ours?

00:52:23.000 I was thinking for a minute, say that you did have a Bernie Saunders style Democrat party or a Jeremy Corbyn style Labour party and you would have got nationalisation of utilities and railways and water and all that. 0.97

00:52:34.000 They'd have shut that shit down double fast, wouldn't they? 0.82

00:52:36.000 Like, you don't really get those kind of options explored. 0.99

00:52:39.000 So, in countries where it's all stitched up and sewn up, like ours and the United States of America, where many of our adored viewers will be right now, what level of power have Amazon got, and how do they assert it, and do they need to resort to sort of like skullduggery and trickery, or is it legalized and systemized to such a degree that they can just do it, you know, legit?

00:52:59.000 Yeah, it's systemised and it's very conscious, you know.

00:53:02.000 As I say, they set this up in the 1950s globally, but in the US particularly in the 60s, they were freaking out because of the tumult that was happening in terms of the left worker movements, union movements, social movements, civil rights, feminism, all these different things.

00:53:20.000 There was actual real panic in Washington.

00:53:22.000 There was a thing called the Powell Memorandum, which was written by Lewis Powell, who became a Supreme Court judge, where he's basically just like, look, we're losing.

00:53:30.000 Corporations are really losing now.

00:53:32.000 We've lost the narrative.

00:53:34.000 We need to fight back.

00:53:35.000 And they did fight back and they won.

00:53:37.000 So from the 60s onwards, they pumped huge amounts of money into think tanks like Heritage, Cato, Chamber of Commerce, you know, there was a real conscious effort to make, to wrest back control of the narrative, to wrest back control of society, and they won.

00:53:50.000 And there's that phrase that like, The left won the cultural war of the 60s but lost the right one, the economic war, and I think there's some truth to that because they put tons of resources, that's domestically.

00:54:01.000 In terms of these companies, social media companies are interesting ones because you mentioned Sanders and Corbyn.

00:54:07.000 I don't think we could have had them in the way we did without Twitter and Facebook because They have democratised the media.

00:54:12.000 They've taken power out of the hands of legacy media.

00:54:16.000 Before that, it was the businessmen who controlled the printing presses and the newspapers.

00:54:22.000 They had a complete hold on the mind of the population.

00:54:25.000 Then you had social media allowed us to circumvent that and to get our stuff out without needing to be part of that.

00:54:33.000 And that's why you see Corbyn and Sanders.

00:54:35.000 Of course, The difficulty is then, we rely on them so much and they're owned by these oligarchs who can just pull the plug whenever they want.

00:54:43.000 Plus they've found ways of infiltrating it and ultimately their interests will align because they ultimately will be beholden to the same groups of shareholders and submerged interests.

00:54:53.000 Bloody Vanguard and BlackRock and all that gear.

00:54:55.000 That'll start cropping up sooner or later won't it if you investigate long enough and evidently you have done investigations.

00:55:01.000 I am myself I'm an investigative journalist, so we're going to have a lot in common when it comes to that.

00:55:07.000 From your book, I know a few things you talk about in depth that I reckon our lot will be into, mate, are things like corporate zones.

00:55:13.000 My understanding of that is there's literal territories that have been sort of lifed off by corporations.

00:55:18.000 Can you tell us what that is?

00:55:20.000 Yeah, so they've got lots of different names.

00:55:22.000 They're called Special Economic Zones, Export Processing Zones.

00:55:25.000 They've got all these different acronyms.

00:55:26.000 Again, I think they do.

00:55:27.000 They call them all these sort of long and difficult acronyms so people switch off.

00:55:32.000 But in fact, they're really important.

00:55:33.000 And what it is, is corporations have basically said, look, we can't change a national government policy.

00:55:38.000 We're going to create these little zones.

00:55:40.000 basically corporate utopias where they can exist outside the national laws so

00:55:44.000 for example you don't want to pay the minimum wage to your workers okay well

00:55:48.000 you don't have to this is a special economic zone yeah exactly and there's

00:55:51.000 there's cases like oh you don't want unions that's fine come here you can

00:55:55.000 invest here and they're all over the world and they're all promoted by...

00:56:00.000 Where is a good one? I don't mean good as in benevolent.

00:56:04.000 I went to one in Cambodia.

00:56:05.000 There was a couple that I got into in Cambodia.

00:56:08.000 Whose zones were they?

00:56:10.000 They were owned by corporations that you wouldn't know but they made within it products that everyone here wears like Gap t-shirts and Nike shoes and stuff like that and I went in and talked to workers actually who were trying to unionize within this Not in the zone?

00:56:26.000 No, and they were fired. And it was really like kind of a wake-up call. It was like,

00:56:31.000 damn, because if you read the papers and you read the World Bank documents, these are things 0.99

00:56:36.000 they promote. You know, they say that this is, you'll get economic growth out of this. 1.00

00:56:40.000 Matt, I'm getting a realisation.

00:56:41.000 There's them judicial systems that you told us about at the beginning of this conversation that

00:56:47.000 can subvert national law.

00:56:49.000 Then there are these internal geographic zones within nations that can ignore the law and set up their own things.

00:56:55.000 And then when Nick Hayes came on here, he wrote this book about trespass.

00:56:58.000 He explained to us that, you know, you might go on a lovely walk in a British countryside and look at all these green downs and valleys and that and marvel at its beauty and its connection to the history of this country.

00:57:08.000 That bit, that's owned by this United Arab Emirates Corporation, it's registered offshore.

00:57:13.000 This dude is English but he don't pay no tax and his business is registered offshore.

00:57:17.000 So, in a sense, we're already living in that dystopia, in that corporatised world.

00:57:22.000 Democracy now is, would you say, could you go so far as to say, Matt, That democracy is just like a performance and real power has already been corporatized and if you would agree with that, would you say that what passes as leftist politics now has become a kind of demonstrative charade that is somewhat deracinated from making real economic and political change and is exchanged instead for performative politics?

00:57:45.000 I think it's definitely democracy is a hollow shell now and corporations run the game and a good way of seeing that, in terms of the left movement that you're talking about, is the obsession with identity politics, which corporations love.

00:57:59.000 Why do they love it?

00:58:00.000 Because then we're not talking about nationalisations, we're not talking about class issues, we're not talking about the economy, we're all arguing about... I'm not saying that gay rights, trans issues aren't important, of course they are, but if you look at the discourse now, here and in the US, it's the proportion.

00:58:15.000 We talk about these social issues all the time and I don't think that's a coincidence.

00:58:20.000 I think that it suits certain rich people and rich corporations and the economic establishment very well that we argue about that because we don't talk about things like nationalisation.

00:58:28.000 They've shepherded us into a little enclave.

00:58:31.000 Of course, like, you know, we are transcendent of ordinary political boundaries here on this channel and supportive of the individual and collective rights of all groups.

00:58:38.000 Racially, religiously, sexually, I feel like that's within individual liberty.

00:58:44.000 And if you're a libertarian, for example, you should support the rights of people to express themselves sexually, you know, within the bounds of consent, however they want to.

00:58:51.000 But I feel that Matt is making a very interesting and important point, that they're very happy that when we're sort of locked off into these oppositionist enclaves, because it stops us talking about where real power dwells.

00:59:01.000 I chatted ages ago when I was much younger to Peter Tatchell, the famous gay rights activist, And he said that his personal experience stretched over 20 years.

00:59:08.000 He said that when you're talking about civil rights stuff, and of course, as a gay man, he was super interested in that stuff and getting as much equality as possible for that community. 0.99

00:59:16.000 He said he noticed that there was traction and there was progress, but he said when you move towards financial power and economic power, they shut that shit down fast. 0.99

00:59:23.000 Totally. 0.99

00:59:23.000 And that's how it works. 0.99

00:59:26.000 And I even noticed it in the media.

00:59:28.000 If you're talking about social issues, you'll get invited on all sorts of mainstream media shows and stuff.

00:59:33.000 You're promoted.

00:59:34.000 Whereas if you start talking about the other issues...

00:59:38.000 Nah.

00:59:38.000 We're going to have to take control of ourselves in, aren't we?

00:59:41.000 In government at the moment, it's exactly what's going on with Twitter.

00:59:43.000 I mean, it suits everyone's interests that the government, that you've got press secretaries for Biden talking about what's going on with this hate rhetoric at Twitter, that Twitter's able to, all the media is able to talk about it.

00:59:53.000 I think the amount of things that are going on under the surface whilst this is dominating the headlines and now onto social media as well.

01:00:01.000 I also think you guys were talking about Elon Musk earlier.

01:00:04.000 And raising the question of, is he a threat to the establishment?

01:00:07.000 And it's an interesting question.

01:00:08.000 My take is he's a maverick in the sense that he's not part of the democratic establishment, which most of these social media oligarchs are.

01:00:17.000 But he's not a threat to the establishment, to the real deep.

01:00:21.000 establishment because he's part of it and and that whole system is the reason he he's where he is and a good a good litmus test I always think is people's position on Snowden and Assange who are two people who really took on deep-seated interests and what was Elon Musk this week was saying he thinks Snowden should be punished and he said I don't have an opinion on Assange now it's quite interesting that when it went when real people who are really taking on the powers that be He's asked their opinion on that.

01:00:48.000 He kind of clams up a little bit.

01:00:50.000 So my take is that he's a bit of a... He's definitely a maverick, but he's firmly within that system.

01:00:56.000 He's a maverick within a realm where it's still framed economically in a way that's ultimately favourable.

01:01:02.000 We even said stuff like this, and many of our audience will be outraged by this, from various polls, that even a figure like Trump, divisive though he was, rhetorical mastermind though he may be, Ultimately you can now look at this was the Obama administration, this was the Trump administration, this is the Biden administration.

01:01:20.000 Do you notice an ascent for some particular economic interest?

01:01:23.000 Did anyone lose out?

01:01:24.000 Did centralised power or deep state power ultimately get affected by any of those apparent fluctuations? 0.99

01:01:30.000 So that means the system itself can sustain that kind of variation while we're all killing ourselves on late night TV about what a bastard he is or lording him again as a maverick. 0.98

01:01:30.000 No. 0.98

01:01:40.000 In the sort of right-wing spaces, ultimately the same interests stay the same.

01:01:44.000 So we have to find new forms of alliance.

01:01:47.000 This is what interests me, Matt, is finding ways that what you would regard as the traditional left and what is being now called the populist right, how we can come into alignment and create new alliances to challenge this establishment power.

01:02:00.000 So we have to get beyond this oppositionism and constant condemnation of people on these cultural issues, progressivism versus traditionalism.

01:02:08.000 That stuff's got to go, I think.

01:02:09.000 Yeah, pantomime politics is a gift to the establishment and blue team, red team politics.

01:02:14.000 It's all an illusion because, as you say, the real fundamental issues stay the same.

01:02:19.000 They're bipartisan.

01:02:20.000 It's the same in this country as well.

01:02:21.000 Starmer wins the next election.

01:02:23.000 You won't notice much difference.

01:02:24.000 No.

01:02:25.000 And that's why the press is so nice to him.

01:02:27.000 Because they know that they're safe now.

01:02:28.000 They weren't like that with Corbyn.

01:02:30.000 I actually think Corbyn was an interesting case because he genuinely was a threat to the establishment.

01:02:34.000 And you saw what happened to him.

01:02:35.000 He was a threat to the financial establishment, the economic establishment.

01:02:39.000 Many, many parts of the establishment were threatened by him.

01:02:41.000 He was destroyed.

01:02:42.000 Now, they give Starmer an easy time because they know soon next, Starmer, who cares?

01:02:47.000 Yeah, he wins awards.

01:02:48.000 We're safe.

01:02:48.000 We're always safe.

01:02:49.000 And that's the thing for the corporations as well.

01:02:51.000 They've set up a system whereby they are always safe.

01:02:53.000 As you say, no matter what face is on TV at the podium, their interests are protected.

01:02:58.000 You have to do that.

01:02:59.000 If you're interested in the preservation of the system, the first thing you have to do is...

01:03:04.000 ameliorate any possibility for real change and so sewing up the the parent two sides argument is uh in a necessity it might seem a bit tangential mate but when we were talking about zones just then i was thinking about the city of london and how hasn't the city of london always been its own little deal like it's got dragons at the gate and all sorts of things that get ike going like you know sort of and like the queen can't go there certainly not now god rest your eternal soul mom like you know like isn't it like its own little unique setup with different tax rules and the Our government, as we might call it, the British government, can't just go in there and go, right, you lot, bedtime.

01:03:36.000 And I did a story actually last year about how it's got its own, completely own foreign policy as well.

01:03:36.000 Yeah, it is.

01:03:41.000 The Lord Mayor of London, who's elected by the aldermen of the City of London.

01:03:45.000 It's like the mafia.

01:03:46.000 It's all these mad words, aldermens and Lord Mayors. 0.97

01:03:48.000 I've been to one of their meetings.

01:03:50.000 It's like stepping into some kind of mafia program.

01:03:53.000 Everyone's got these funny names and they have funny suits.

01:03:56.000 But he basically promotes what's called neoliberalism, like privatization, deregulation all around the world.

01:04:07.000 With a foreign policy that we can't even get access to.

01:04:10.000 I tried to get access to any of the documents related to his foreign policy and I couldn't because it's not public.

01:04:17.000 Although they act in our name, it's not a public institution, it's a corporation.

01:04:22.000 So they're outside the transparency laws and a large percentage of the tax havens around the world ...operated out of the City of London, so they're draining money from the developing world, draining money from the poor world.

01:04:37.000 No wonder they all want to be Mayor of London.

01:04:39.000 Exactly, yeah.

01:04:40.000 They're called the Lord Mayor.

01:04:43.000 They have a show every year.

01:04:45.000 They wear that outfit, they wear proper Mayor outfits.

01:04:47.000 In fact, that's what Rishi Sunak was addressing the other day, wasn't it, Gal?

01:04:50.000 Like he was addressing that Lord Mayor.

01:04:51.000 The banquet.

01:04:52.000 He was at a banquet.

01:04:53.000 He was at a banquet saying...

01:04:55.000 We deplore the authoritarianism in China.

01:04:58.000 Now, for God's sake, give me another turkey leg! 1.00

01:05:01.000 Listen, we're going to be talking more about that Lord Mayor gear in a minute in our after show thing on Stay Free AF.

01:05:08.000 If you're a member of our community, which is easy enough to do, you can join us.

01:05:10.000 I can see there's hundreds of people there right now watching us.

01:05:13.000 Tomorrow, will you stay with us and have a bit of a chat?

01:05:15.000 I'll tell you about this brilliant activism that I've been doing in the town where I'm from, supporting the Save Our Thameside campaign run by Sam and me.

01:05:22.000 We want to save a library and theatre in Thurrock, the council I'm from.

01:05:25.000 We've done away with 1.5 billion quid somehow in all sorts of nefarious, peculiar schemes.

01:05:31.000 Allegedly, allegedly, because it might not be true that it's nefarious.

01:05:34.000 I can't prove that.

01:05:35.000 Allegedly!

01:05:36.000 But they've lost the money somehow.

01:05:38.000 The money's not there at the moment for solar panels that apparently don't even exist.

01:05:41.000 It's double confusing.

01:05:43.000 Tomorrow on the show we've got Annie Mash on and we'll be talking about the vilification of nurses who are being dubbed allies of Putin as they take industrial action for, you know, better Working conditions.

01:05:56.000 On the show on Friday we've got M.I.A.

01:05:58.000 or Maya as like you call her when you're actually talking to her because you can't say like initials can you when you're talking to a person.

01:06:05.000 In fact I think people shouldn't be allowed to do that.

01:06:07.000 Like you know that actor that's called something like T... he's in that drumming film he's called something like... well look T.S.

01:06:14.000 Eliot I would allow it.

01:06:15.000 J.K.

01:06:15.000 Rowling fair enough but what about he's called something like T.K.

01:06:19.000 Max, T.K.

01:06:20.000 Simmons or something like that.

01:06:21.000 Oh yeah.

01:06:22.000 Joker.

01:06:22.000 Call yourself an investigative journalist.

01:06:24.000 You know nothing, mate.

01:06:27.000 Stay with us and chat a little bit longer.

01:06:28.000 We've got Tim Robbins coming on the show next week to talk about... TK Robbins.

01:06:32.000 He's going to be talking about TK Maxx, TK Robbins.

01:06:34.000 A lot of things are going to go down.

01:06:36.000 Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed our first episode back on this season.

01:06:41.000 It's pre-recorded.

01:06:42.000 Look, stay with us.

01:06:43.000 I'll answer all your questions in a minute.

01:06:45.000 Thanks very much for watching us on Rumble.

01:06:46.000 Can you bring my stuff in on Graze so I can talk about it?

01:06:50.000 And remember, join our Stay Free AF community for a little bit of a Q&A and a chat.

01:06:55.000 Talk to you tomorrow.

01:06:55.000 See you at the same time.

01:06:56.000 Bye.

01:06:56.000 Stay Free.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - December 07, 2022

Is Elon Musk Really An Enemy Of The State? - #041 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

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