Stay Free - Russel Brand - Israel Palestine Officially At WAR!!! Is THIS What’s Coming Next? - Stay Free #220

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

00:00:22.000 I'm going to go ahead and do that.

00:00:45.000 I'm going to go ahead and do that.

00:00:53.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:01:05.000 Hello there you Awakening Wanderers, thanks for joining me wherever you are.

00:01:08.000 For the first 15 minutes we'll be widely available, then we'll be exclusively available on Rumble.

00:01:14.000 Click the link in the description to join us there.

00:01:17.000 Whilst the world may appear to be in disarray, while there appears to be ubiquitous crisis, holy war, global war, deception, lies about turns, We have to continue to awaken together.

00:01:32.000 We have to find within ourselves the resources that are going to be required to face what potentially looks like an apocalypse.

00:01:38.000 Thank you for supporting us.

00:01:39.000 It's plain that you have to support independent media now because the institutions are broken and require either radical re-evaluation or total dismantling.

00:01:48.000 Are we on the brink of revolution?

00:01:49.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:01:51.000 And if you support us directly, thank you.

00:01:54.000 But we need your attention much more than we need your money.

00:01:57.000 Although we do have to keep going because now it's pretty plain that there are forces that want to shut down independent media.

00:02:03.000 We're going to be talking about Biden flipping on the wall.

00:02:07.000 Walls are good now.

00:02:08.000 Do you remember when walls were bad?

00:02:09.000 When Trump was racist for the wall?

00:02:11.000 Well now they're building the wall.

00:02:12.000 We're talking to Michael Schellenberger, an actual journalist who believes in freedom of speech, open debate.

00:02:19.000 We're going to be talking about the FBI targeting Trump supporters.

00:02:22.000 We're going to be talking about the censorship battle in Ireland and across the world.

00:02:25.000 So contribute to that.

00:02:27.000 For a while, we'll be widely available.

00:02:29.000 Then we're going to be exclusively available on Rumble, where we can speak freely.

00:02:32.000 And if you like and subscribe, it helps us.

00:02:35.000 And if you want to press that red button and become an Awakened Wonder, you get all sorts of additional content.

00:02:39.000 Plus, you support Our voice at a time where independent media news is going to be invaluable because of course it looks like, I don't know if you're a religious person or a spiritual person, but with escalating tensions in the Middle East, the Pentagon is saying they will support Israel, Netanyahu has declared war against Palestine or Palestinian militants at least,

00:03:00.000 And Mike Pence has used this as an opportunity to score points in the Republican primary battle, saying that this is a problem that's been exacerbated somehow by Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

00:03:13.000 I mean, I don't know how.

00:03:15.000 He also uses it to double down on the mainstream matrix legacy media propagandist establishment view that Russia v Ukraine doesn't have a history and isn't somehow beneficial to establishment interest.

00:03:29.000 Have a look at Mike Pence on the mainstream and look at how you are presented information without nuance, without complexity and in a very exploitative fashion.

00:03:41.000 But I also believe this is what happens when we have leading voices like Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis signalling retreat from America's role as leader of the free world.

00:03:52.000 I don't know that you can actually blame Donald Trump for the historic conflict between Israel and Palestine, an issue that has divided humanity for millennia.

00:04:02.000 that seems to be somehow at the root and the core of all of our global problems.

00:04:07.000 Something that we're going to somehow have to come together to collectively resolve.

00:04:11.000 To use an issue like that to point score against Ron DeSantis seems absurd.

00:04:16.000 To suggest that somehow domestic matters within the US have caused this, I think,

00:04:22.000 is preposterous because it is a historic conflict.

00:04:25.000 It is ongoing.

00:04:27.000 It's something that's going to require, I think, from each of us, and let me know if you agree with this in the chat, it's going to require that we all somehow re-evaluate and radically revise what we believe.

00:04:38.000 For me, I sometimes think Prayer is the only answer.

00:04:40.000 What is it we're going to have to call from ourselves to resolve this?

00:04:44.000 And over the course of the coming weeks, should we survive, this is something we're going to discuss and look into together to try and find ways that there could possibly be a resolution.

00:04:53.000 But given that it's hard to try and find ways for, within America, people to communicate peacefully and affably, this issue is one that I think is, let's face it, It's the big one, isn't it?

00:05:05.000 It's the most complex issue on the agenda.

00:05:07.000 So Mike Pence using it in this fashion is astonishing.

00:05:10.000 Look.

00:05:12.000 What happened in Ukraine was an unprovoked invasion by Russia.

00:05:16.000 What happened this weekend was an unprovoked invasion.

00:05:20.000 Why would you use this to reiterate a talking point that's plainly not true?

00:05:26.000 This is what happens if you get your information from mainstream media.

00:05:30.000 You're given reductive, simplistic takes.

00:05:32.000 Lee Fang, who comes on our show a lot, tweeted, this is a moment like January the 6th, September the 11th, or early moments of the pandemic and George Floyd, where mass fear and anger takes hold.

00:05:42.000 Politicians and media will use black and white thinking to polarise the issue, to manipulate you, to demonise dissent and shred nuance.

00:05:50.000 Don't let them.

00:05:51.000 So note this, whenever there's a crisis, look at how it's exploited by politicians and by media.

00:05:58.000 We know enough to know that this is an issue that's going to require incredible insight, delicacy, prayer, new forms of thought, new forms of diplomacy, plainly innovation, because it's an intransigent, ongoing issue that has defined global politics, religious politics, if there is such a term, and Has been divisive for, well, you know, for as long as there's been monotheism, almost.

00:06:24.000 So we'll be talking about it in more depth and consulting some interesting and important voices and relaying the truth as best we can to you over the coming weeks.

00:06:34.000 Obviously, Hillary Clinton is someone that has a very particular and specific view when it comes to complex and divisive issues.

00:06:42.000 Note the way that Mike Pence tried to use this to double down on on an existing policy and perspective.

00:06:49.000 Have a look at this conversation with Hillary Clinton, where she talks about Trump supporters as kind of terrorists, I guess. 0.63

00:06:56.000 She says extremists, which is adjacent to terrorists, and actually calls for reprogramming in the way that sort of wacky people used to demand gay folks were reprogrammed.

00:07:05.000 Check this out, because this is something I've not seen before.

00:07:09.000 It's an extraordinary use of language.

00:07:13.000 Hillary Clinton I think might be the symbol of what is wrong with politics. 1.00

00:07:19.000 More than Donald Trump.

00:07:20.000 I know loads of you absolutely adore Donald Trump and whatever you think about him, plainly the establishment do not want him in power.

00:07:27.000 I think that much can be said at this point.

00:07:29.000 I believe that Hillary Clinton is somehow the mouthpiece of neoliberal establishment power, of this perspective and position where you claim to care but your actions do not connect with the rhetoric.

00:07:42.000 She somehow manages to talk as if she's an anti-establishment figure while being an avatar of the establishment. 0.92

00:07:49.000 She condemns people that are, I would say, disadvantaged from a position of victimhood.

00:07:55.000 It's rhetorically extraordinary what happens here.

00:07:58.000 And we had very bitter battles over all kinds of things, gun control and climate change.

00:08:03.000 Do you think that using terms like basket of deplorables makes things more or less bitter?

00:08:10.000 Do you imagine that the role of the Clinton Foundation on the global stage makes tension more or less bitter?

00:08:19.000 Do you think that the ongoing condemnation of people that are basically conservative or republican makes things more or less bitter?

00:08:27.000 What is Hillary Clinton's role in bringing about world peace? 1.00

00:08:30.000 That's an extraordinary image and I think belies considerable ignorance. 0.76

00:08:33.000 Isn't this little tale of extremism waving, you know, wagging the dog of the Republican

00:08:39.000 Party as it is today?

00:08:42.000 And that's an extraordinary image and I think belies considerable ignorance.

00:08:48.000 There are so many times where the Democrats lost their moral authority.

00:08:53.000 Was it under Bill Clinton for a variety of reasons, some related to scandal, the deregulation

00:08:59.000 of the financial industry?

00:09:00.000 Or was it under Obama, where all of the optimism seeped away into 2008, a massive financial crisis, bank bailouts, which many people believe led to a new kind of nationalism, precisely because Globalism plainly isn't working.

00:09:16.000 A global economic crisis destroyed American financial life and no one was penalized, no one was punished for plainly criminal activity.

00:09:25.000 To not include that as a kind of tail wagging a dog or as a dark scene for American cultural life is interesting and an attempt to say that there are these others, there are these dark demonic forces, for me shows an incredible lack of awareness and I think is out and out deceptive.

00:09:43.000 Sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump who has no credibility left.

00:09:54.000 Do you think that's what she really means?

00:09:56.000 That they are MAGA extremists and that Donald Trump has no credibility left?

00:10:00.000 Or do you think what she means is Donald Trump does have credibility left and we are afraid to face Donald Trump in an election and we have to remove him from political life by any means necessary?

00:10:11.000 I don't know.

00:10:12.000 Let me know what you think.

00:10:13.000 But what I sense is, is when you hear discourse that nominates and others a group of people and claims that they are somehow demonic and dark, you have an inability to address the psychological truth of what it is to be a human.

00:10:26.000 That as Solzhenitsyn says, the line between good and evil runs not between nations, races or creeds, but through every human heart.

00:10:32.000 A willingness to acknowledge errors made.

00:10:34.000 I don't think I've ever seen Hillary Clinton on the TV say, we made mistakes when Bill was president. 0.98

00:10:40.000 Under Obama, the 2008 bailout was ridiculous.

00:10:42.000 It's outrageous that after everything we said in 2020, Joe Biden is continuing to build that wall.

00:10:49.000 We should acknowledge that even George Bush's historic and corrupt wars in Iraq were undergirded by support from Joe Biden.

00:10:57.000 Until someone starts talking like that, we can't trust any of them.

00:11:00.000 As long as they try to create some demonic other force that is creating the problem,

00:11:06.000 we can't rely on them.

00:11:07.000 Now you could say, well isn't that what you do Russell when you talk about the establishment?

00:11:09.000 In a sense what we're saying is there are sets of impenetrable systems that are dependent

00:11:14.000 on sets of allegiances, alliances and are intransigent.

00:11:19.000 Like if it wasn't Hillary Clinton it would be someone else. 0.97

00:11:21.000 It doesn't matter if you replace the Republican party with the Democrat party, the shifts

00:11:25.000 are insignificant.

00:11:26.000 What we believe is that power itself has to be devolved, that you have to have more power

00:11:32.000 You have to have more power in your own community.

00:11:34.000 That you have to break this parental relationship between yourself and the state and the media.

00:11:40.000 And if that doesn't happen, it seems to me that this sort of descent into dystopia will not be interrupted.

00:11:47.000 He's only in it for himself.

00:11:48.000 He's now defending himself in civil actions and criminal actions.

00:11:52.000 And when do they break with him?

00:11:53.000 You know, because at some point, you know, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members, but something needs to happen.

00:12:02.000 There you are, Hillary Clinton literally suggesting brainwashing and deprogramming for the supporters of her political opponents. 0.99

00:12:10.000 Our friend Glenn Greenwald tweeted, as she gets increasingly bitter about her 2016 defeat, even when you think there's no way she can, Hillary Clinton is more and more the liberal id.

00:12:19.000 She just spews out what liberals really think and feel, but know not to say. 0.70

00:12:23.000 That's where basket of deplorables came from.

00:12:26.000 That's an interesting take.

00:12:27.000 Let me know in the chat and the comments if you agree with it.

00:12:29.000 And once again, we see this othering mentality, the idea that there are demonic dark forces out there, which seem to me to be a displacement of US establishment's interests and own unipolar goals.

00:12:43.000 Here's Antony Blinken claiming that it is China that want a unipolar world, that it is China that are on the rise, becoming more aggressive and are attacking American interests.

00:12:54.000 It's an extraordinary reversal of what, to me, appears to be reality.

00:12:59.000 It is the one country in the world that has the military, economic, diplomatic capacity to undermine or challenge.

00:13:10.000 The point that China are powerful is legitimate and true. 0.96

00:13:16.000 But the idea that it's a rules-based, rational world, that's a very old system of analysis and attack.

00:13:22.000 That was applied to the Islamic world.

00:13:24.000 It's been applied to the opponents of the dominator class for a very long while.

00:13:29.000 We are reasonable.

00:13:30.000 We are rational. 0.95

00:13:31.000 They're crazy over there! 0.97

00:13:32.000 We have to stop them. 0.57

00:13:33.000 So, which country is surrounded by military bases of their enemy?

00:13:37.000 Uh, well, that's China with our military bases. 0.95

00:13:40.000 Okay, so, who is it that's attacking?

00:13:42.000 So, there is a tendency to demonize and attack and, I would say, displace Their own agenda onto not only other nations or their political opponents.

00:13:53.000 Hillary Clinton talks about Trump in the same way Antony Blinken talks about China.

00:13:57.000 Mike Pence talks about complex issues in the very same way.

00:14:01.000 Displacing it.

00:14:02.000 No ability to handle nuance.

00:14:04.000 This is what's happening now.

00:14:05.000 The world's breaking apart.

00:14:06.000 You can't have centralised authority in the way you once did.

00:14:10.000 The technology we have is a kind of instantiation of a more complex reality, where people return to a more anthropomorphic reality of self-organisation, local autonomy.

00:14:22.000 There's no reason for us to be corralled into populations of hundreds of millions, bombarded with propaganda, until we're absolutely subjugated and compliant.

00:14:31.000 It's not working anymore.

00:14:32.000 ...is falling apart.

00:14:33.000 They're unable to acknowledge that, so it seems that every crisis becomes an opportunity, and everything, the most ordinary media, has to be utterly propagandized.

00:14:43.000 We care so much about and are determined to defend.

00:14:46.000 But I want to be very clear about something, and this is important.

00:14:48.000 Whenever someone says, let's be clear about something, you know what's coming.

00:14:51.000 It's an absolute out-and-out lie.

00:14:53.000 Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. 0.89

00:14:58.000 Definitely is, then.

00:15:00.000 It is to uphold this rules-based order.

00:15:04.000 Well, it's definitely not.

00:15:04.000 They're not upholding a rules-based order.

00:15:07.000 Oh, no, the rules-based order.

00:15:08.000 What can we do?

00:15:09.000 That just means do what we tell you.

00:15:11.000 The rules-based order means authoritarianism.

00:15:13.000 Actually, that was sort of true.

00:15:15.000 That China is posing a challenge to. 0.99

00:15:19.000 Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we're going to stand up and defend it.

00:15:23.000 That is true, actually, isn't it? 0.89

00:15:25.000 Anyone who opposes our order, we will attack and destroy it. 0.98

00:15:28.000 And believe me, they will.

00:15:29.000 I know you say the goal is not to contain China, but have you ever seen China be so assertive or aggressive militarily?

00:15:39.000 I've been watching China, and have they ever been?

00:15:41.000 I mean, they're getting a bit too big for their little Chinese boots, aren't they? 0.97

00:15:45.000 Why don't you just mind your own bloody business about China? 0.97

00:15:48.000 We haven't. 0.84

00:15:49.000 I think what we've witnessed over the last several years is China acting more repressively at home. 0.68

00:15:56.000 Andy Blinken may have the wet eyes of a beautiful doe, but he has the menacing rhetoric Of a dystopian tyrant.

00:16:06.000 It's his own country where there has been more domestic control practiced.

00:16:10.000 It's America that are getting more aggressive aboard. 0.95

00:16:12.000 Do you see?

00:16:13.000 They're just reversing everything. 1.00

00:16:15.000 Donald Trump's crazy! 1.00

00:16:17.000 He's an extremist! 1.00

00:16:18.000 You're crazy! 1.00

00:16:19.000 You're an extremist! 1.00

00:16:20.000 China's crazy! 1.00

00:16:21.000 They're an extremist! 1.00

00:16:22.000 You're crazy! 1.00

00:16:23.000 You're an extremist! 1.00

00:16:24.000 Stop gaslighting the whole world! 0.94

00:16:27.000 No!

00:16:28.000 No!

00:16:29.000 I'll tell you a fact!

00:16:32.000 The United States is doing that!

00:16:34.000 Moving from Middle Eastern and North African wars to European wars for economic interest!

00:16:38.000 It's clear!

00:16:39.000 We can see it!

00:16:40.000 We're awakening!

00:16:41.000 For God's sake, awaken now!

00:16:42.000 Supporters, press the red button!

00:16:44.000 Keep us going!

00:16:45.000 Something crazy's happening!

00:16:47.000 What's China's goal? 0.90

00:16:50.000 I think that over time... Now look, this is almost like a psychological exercise.

00:16:53.000 If she had asked, what's America's goal, he never would have said it.

00:16:57.000 But if you say, what's China's goal, he'll tell you what America's goal is.

00:17:01.000 Look at this.

00:17:02.000 China believes that it can be and should be and will be the dominant country in the world.

00:17:09.000 Is that why they keep doing all these proxy wars and reversing the meaning of words?

00:17:13.000 So actually, Antony Blinken, if you change the word China for US imperialism and globalist interests, Tells you the absolute truth of the situation.

00:17:22.000 So whether it's Hillary Clinton demonising Trump and Trump's supporters, whether it's Mike Pence using an escalating holy war to score political points in the Republican primaries or Antony Blinken attributing China with the very qualities, tendencies, traits and agenda of America, you can see how the legacy media Amplifies the message of the powerful and disables our ability to communicate openly.

00:17:46.000 That's why it's so important that you support us.

00:17:49.000 And could there be a story that more clearly exemplified the hypocrisy of the establishment than this one?

00:17:57.000 Biden is building that wall. 0.98

00:17:59.000 That wall that made Trump racist?

00:17:59.000 What?

00:18:01.000 That wall that you didn't need?

00:18:03.000 That wall that was the visual instantiation and realization of all Trump's corruption?

00:18:07.000 Yeah, we're building that wall.

00:18:09.000 We like that wall now.

00:18:11.000 Now the wall is good.

00:18:12.000 But I thought that the wall was bad. 0.98

00:18:15.000 No, you've gone mad.

00:18:16.000 The wall is good. 0.55

00:18:17.000 Are you sure you're not gaslighting me?

00:18:19.000 We always said the wall was good.

00:18:21.000 We were always going to build a wall.

00:18:23.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:18:23.000 Here's the news.

00:18:25.000 No issue defined the difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump more than the wall. 0.99

00:18:37.000 Donald Trump was bad and mad and racist for building that wall. 0.93

00:18:42.000 So why is Joe Biden building that wall? 1.00

00:18:44.000 Was Trump right or is Biden a liar or both?

00:18:49.000 Today we're talking about one of the stories that's defined the last couple of years politically.

00:18:53.000 Donald Trump's wall.

00:18:54.000 There was no idea that demonstrated the distinction between Trump and Biden more clearly than the wall.

00:19:00.000 Trump was going to build a beautiful wall, a magnificent wall, and make Mexico pay for it.

00:19:04.000 Mexico's going to pay for the wall. 0.93

00:19:06.000 Biden and his supporters said it was disgusting that a wall was going to be built at all.

00:19:10.000 There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.

00:19:15.000 And yet Biden is continuing to build the wall.

00:19:19.000 So whether or not you think this wall is a good idea, you have to acknowledge that now Biden has said Saudi Arabia will be a pariah.

00:19:25.000 He won't lead us into a proxy war with Russia.

00:19:25.000 They are not.

00:19:27.000 He has done.

00:19:28.000 And now there is going to be a wall.

00:19:30.000 Let's have a look at how the legacy media report on this and see if we can make sense of this extraordinary story in this peculiar, divisive time.

00:19:38.000 A new effort to build a border wall tonight coming from an unexpected place, the White House.

00:19:44.000 In an official notice, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying there is an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers to prevent unlawful entries into the United States.

00:19:57.000 Well then, I suppose on that basis you have to say that Trump was somehow perspicacious and ahead of his time.

00:20:02.000 Because the current analysis sounds a lot like Trump's rhetoric, albeit without many of his flourishes. 0.78

00:20:07.000 And the counter position was, don't be disgusting, that's racist, you don't need to build a wall, we should welcome immigrants. 0.68

00:20:13.000 An extraordinary transition.

00:20:15.000 And in a way, I suppose what it demonstrates, in the same way that the transitioning of positions around vaccines did, that there are no clear values and principles.

00:20:23.000 When Trump was in charge of the vaccine program, you might not remember this because it's sort of been obscured by the tumbling months of deception, Kamala Harris said, I wouldn't take one of those vaccines and Joe Biden said, how do we know these vaccines are going to be any good?

00:20:34.000 And when their administration took the reins, oh, these vaccines are fantastic.

00:20:38.000 It shows you that the issues themselves are not important.

00:20:42.000 What matters is political expedience.

00:20:44.000 That war was a defining issue.

00:20:46.000 The opposition to Trump's position on immigration, and in particular the war, was one of the points of difference.

00:20:53.000 That was one of the things that people were waving flags for, marching for, feeling indulgent in their values about.

00:20:58.000 Well look, it's happening anyway.

00:21:00.000 So what does that tell us?

00:21:01.000 What does that tell us about the distinction between these two political groups?

00:21:04.000 And what does it tell us, importantly, about the honesty and our ability to trust Biden's administration?

00:21:10.000 Facing a growing influx of migrants illegally entering the country, the administration is waiving 26 federal laws in order to allow more wall construction.

00:21:19.000 What about those laws?

00:21:21.000 They're just being waived.

00:21:22.000 Do you start to feel that you live in a nihilistic space where the interests of the powerful will be pursued regardless of preconditions?

00:21:29.000 Remember the pandemic period.

00:21:31.000 How many customs, rules just fell away.

00:21:34.000 The word science was used to mean just be obedient.

00:21:37.000 Everything is flipping, reversing, traversing.

00:21:40.000 I think many of us have a sense of impending and even present crisis.

00:21:44.000 And this is one of those stories that points to that.

00:21:45.000 Like, unless Biden's done a speech somewhere where he said something like this.

00:21:49.000 I know we vehemently opposed the building of Trump's wall during the election cycle. 0.99

00:21:53.000 In fact, we openly mocked it, ridiculed it, and used it to make Trump seem like a ridiculous racist. 0.98

00:21:59.000 Well, we're building that wall now and here's what... 0.92

00:22:02.000 As has been that kind of a speech, this is another one of those examples, like the laptop, like the evident involvement in the business dealings, allegedly, like botched Afghanistan, like not making Saudi Arabia a pariah but embracing them, that shows you, like the claims about the farmer, we beat Big Pharma this year, then a sort of mealy-mouthed, half-arsed bunch of legislation.

00:22:22.000 I suppose what we're offering you on this channel is they're not going to do anything to help you.

00:22:26.000 They're just going to say what they need to say, and the legacy media will amplify, mitigate their message, normalise their Meanwhile, we seem to be ignoring the fact that the world is falling apart around us, that there is a radical requirement for systemic change, decentralization, real democracy, a radical review of all of our institutions, probably the banishment and abandonment of many of those institutions, and we're sort of just watching this spectacle unfold.

00:22:49.000 Are you starting to feel that this is getting pretty serious?

00:22:52.000 Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.

00:22:54.000 Using money allocated before President Biden took office.

00:22:58.000 It's a sharp policy shift for a president who once called a wall spanning the southern border a waste of time.

00:23:04.000 Now, notice NBC's propagandist position in the phrase, sharp policy shift.

00:23:10.000 It's a sharp policy shift.

00:23:12.000 Oh, that's good.

00:23:13.000 He did a sharp policy shift because he's so sharp and quick.

00:23:16.000 Look at him, boom, boom, shifting policy sharply.

00:23:19.000 If that had been Trump, it would have been Trump lied.

00:23:21.000 He told a lie.

00:23:21.000 Trump lied.

00:23:22.000 He said he was going to do this, then he did that.

00:23:23.000 That's not a sharp policy shift.

00:23:25.000 That's a lie.

00:23:26.000 It exposes either ineptitude or total deception.

00:23:29.000 The new construction will be along a stretch of border in Starr County, Texas.

00:23:29.000 Which is it?

00:23:34.000 And tonight, former President Trump, who built his successful 2016 presidential campaign around a promise to build a border wall, is claiming vindication.

00:23:44.000 How can he not?

00:23:45.000 If your policy that was vilified in opposition, ridiculed in administration, is continued after an election loss, how can you go, well, hold on a minute, didn't you guys say that you would never do this under any circumstances, and now you're just doing it?

00:23:58.000 It astonishes me.

00:23:59.000 Tonight, a major reversal.

00:24:01.000 The Biden administration announcing it is waiving 26 federal laws to permit more border wall construction in southern Texas, amid a record 3 million migrants crossing the border in the past year.

00:24:12.000 The head of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, overnight declaring, there is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads to prevent illegal crossings in Starr County, Texas.

00:24:24.000 But President Biden today appeared to contradict his own DHS secretary.

00:24:29.000 Do you believe in border walkers? 0.95

00:24:31.000 No.

00:24:32.000 There's no actual cohesion, is there?

00:24:34.000 Is this it?

00:24:35.000 Is this the evidence of things falling apart?

00:24:37.000 Middle Eastern wars amplifying, European wars increasing, a sense of total detachment, absolute loss of trust in institutions, a president building a wall and saying, what wall?

00:24:49.000 It's extraordinary.

00:24:50.000 I feel that, in a way, we're just standing blithely on the shores of Armageddon, watching it unfold.

00:24:56.000 I don't know what it's going to take to activate us sometimes.

00:24:58.000 Insisting his administration is not building more wall because of the surge in migrants, but because they were required by law to spend money Congress allocated during the Trump administration.

00:25:09.000 There's no way through that that makes sense, because if he can't stop it, what was the point in all of the pledges?

00:25:17.000 Why bother having elections at all if you can't reverse, impede, alter the trajectory?

00:25:22.000 Isn't the campaign entirely based on change?

00:25:25.000 They're doing this.

00:25:25.000 We're going to do that.

00:25:26.000 He's building a wall.

00:25:27.000 We're not going to build a wall.

00:25:28.000 We're better than them.

00:25:29.000 Oh, I can't do anything about that.

00:25:30.000 Even the stance on Big Pharma.

00:25:33.000 Oh, we've managed to have this victory.

00:25:34.000 A victory that is minor and clearly based on agreements shows that the relationship between the government and actual ulterior or superior interest is one of service, sublimation, supplication.

00:25:45.000 They can't deliver on anything except for deception, management of decline, population control.

00:25:51.000 This government is not delivering on a mandate to the people.

00:25:55.000 Hi, you guys really wanted this and we're going to do that.

00:25:57.000 We need to have it.

00:25:58.000 What we're living in is it.

00:25:59.000 We can't continue to ignore our slide into dystopia.

00:26:07.000 The press secretary of the president says he doesn't believe it's effective.

00:26:14.000 So either they're building a wall that they don't think is effective, or they're lying, or they're building a wall they don't believe in.

00:26:20.000 There's nothing here except the revelation of total chaos.

00:26:23.000 We're seeing this continually in the reporting around the war, the escalation of the war, while denying that there is a war.

00:26:28.000 We're seeing it throughout the pandemic period, revelations of the efficacy and even injuries caused by certain medical products denied.

00:26:35.000 We're living in a kind of deliberate chaos.

00:26:38.000 I wonder sometimes if we're in a kind of snow globe of madness that prevents us finding just some route of veracity to guide us, some sort of principle of what is it we can rely on now.

00:26:49.000 And late today this from the DHS secretary traveling in Mexico City.

00:26:53.000 There is no new administration policy with respect to the border wall.

00:26:59.000 Still it comes after the president repeatedly slammed the wall and former president Trump during the campaign.

00:27:05.000 There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration.

00:27:10.000 Another thing, I never say this, but Joe Biden actually looked younger before the election, didn't he?

00:27:14.000 You know, that famous thing of, like, president's age in office.

00:27:17.000 Joe Biden, I didn't think, like, that guy was really sprightly when he was campaigning.

00:27:21.000 But look at him there.

00:27:22.000 He looks like Chris Hemsworth compared to how he looks now.

00:27:24.000 Tonight, Mr. Trump arguing he's been proven right, posting, there are only two things that have consistently worked, wheels and walls.

00:27:32.000 Will Joe Biden apologize to me and America for taking so long to get moving?

00:27:38.000 The latest NBC News poll shows Americans give Republicans an 18-point advantage when asked who would better handle immigration.

00:27:45.000 That wall was a symbol for Trump.

00:27:47.000 It was a symbol of a clear, vivid image of American interests prioritized over global interests, you could argue.

00:27:54.000 It was a symbol for Biden, his point of difference from Trump.

00:27:58.000 And now what is it a symbol of?

00:27:59.000 Deception?

00:28:00.000 Corruption?

00:28:01.000 Ineptitude?

00:28:02.000 Dishonesty?

00:28:03.000 All of them?

00:28:03.000 Let's get into it.

00:28:04.000 Joe Biden has changed course on building a border wall as the US struggles to cope with a surge in migrant arrivals.

00:28:10.000 Surge is a word we didn't used to hear much.

00:28:12.000 Surges in pandemic spikes, surges in migration.

00:28:15.000 Curious.

00:28:16.000 The United States has a right and a duty to secure its borders and protect its people against threats, President Joe Biden said in a proclamation the day he was inaugurated in 2021.

00:28:25.000 But building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.

00:28:30.000 It's a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.

00:28:34.000 The argument that's used when politicians change their mind, the only argument that could ever make sense, is that there's been an evolution in policy based on an altering and evolving reality.

00:28:44.000 But that only works if there's an ongoing dialogue, doesn't it?

00:28:47.000 Unless you see Joe Biden say, I know I said this, but now we're doing that because of this.

00:28:51.000 Unless you have that as a component.

00:28:52.000 Remember, during the pandemic, people said, yeah, but at the beginning, we thought lockdowns were effective.

00:28:56.000 Yeah, but at the beginning, it seemed that this medication would be effective.

00:29:00.000 But do you know how there was never a public addressing of the changing of the idea?

00:29:04.000 Just a gentle seeping out of facts.

00:29:07.000 Just a gentle dissipation of policy.

00:29:10.000 No one ever said we were wrong about that, did they?

00:29:12.000 Up to 20 miles of barrier will be built in Stark County, Texas, despite campaign pledges from the president not to erect another foot of war along the border with Mexico.

00:29:20.000 They say two things are inevitable in life, don't they?

00:29:22.000 Death and taxes and Biden's lies.

00:29:24.000 Taxes, though, are inevitable.

00:29:26.000 The IRS October the 15th deadline is just days away.

00:29:30.000 The attorneys at Tax Network USA have saved clients over, get this, $1 billion in tax debts.

00:29:36.000 So whether you're in the hole for $10,000 or $10 million in debt, they are ready to help you.

00:29:41.000 Even if you haven't filed in a year, five years, or a whole decade, they're ready to secure the best settlement for you.

00:29:49.000 So, go to taxnetworkusa.com forward slash brand before the clock runs out.

00:29:56.000 Give yourself a promise that's kept, unlike recurrent administration.

00:29:59.000 Okay.

00:30:00.000 Democrats have been fiercely critical of Donald Trump's use of executive powers to build a barrier on the southern border, but now Mr Biden is using the same powers to try to staunch the flow of migrants along a section of the frontier, which according to official data, has seen 245,000 illegal entries in the past year.

00:30:15.000 The move comes as officials in Democrat-controlled Chicago and New York have admitted they are unable to cope with the rising number of migrants arriving in their cities.

00:30:23.000 It seems like a rather divisive form of representation to wait until it's democrat controlled cities before making amendments.

00:30:31.000 Also the issue of migration appears to be spoken about on a number of different levels.

00:30:35.000 In some places you hear rhetoric that is based on compassion and unity and support and then The general policy shift seems to be towards accepting that you can't have limitless migration because it destabilizes nations.

00:30:49.000 So again, like with COVID, when are these shifts taking place and where is the conversation around it?

00:30:54.000 We used to say this, now we're doing that.

00:30:56.000 In the absence of that kind of open discourse, I think what you have is a kind of a bewilderment and a kind of chaos and an untethering of like, what is it we're supposed to believe now?

00:31:06.000 What is it we voted for?

00:31:06.000 What is it we're doing?

00:31:08.000 Because you're not doing what you said you were going to do.

00:31:10.000 Mr Biden is also under pressure from voters to act with a Washington Post-ABC poll last week showing that 62% of Americans disapprove of his handling of the crisis at the US-Mexico border.

00:31:20.000 The President has insisted that his position hasn't changed and that his hands were tied by Congress.

00:31:25.000 We had no choice, Homeland Security Alejandro Mallorca said at a press conference Thursday.

00:31:30.000 It was mandated by law.

00:31:31.000 But in defying over two dozen laws, including environmental rules to resume the war, a stark reversal of his definitive campaign and presidential promise, the president has opened himself up to withering criticism from allies and gloating from the MAGA crowd.

00:31:44.000 If it was mandated by law and they have no choice, how come they're able to overturn those other laws, particularly environmental rules that they campaign around and claim to care about?

00:31:54.000 In a sense, I'm not even offering you an evaluation on whether or not there needs to be a wall.

00:32:00.000 It doesn't seem to be something I'm particularly qualified to offer you.

00:32:02.000 What I feel that we are able to discuss on our channel is the evident deception, lying, gerrymandering, manipulative language that is accompanying this issue, and a lack of discourse and conversation.

00:32:15.000 If it's mandated by law, then how come you can break the other laws?

00:32:17.000 What are your priorities around the environment?

00:32:19.000 Do you remember the East Palestine rail crash?

00:32:21.000 It was an environmental disaster.

00:32:22.000 No one did anything about it.

00:32:23.000 Remember Hawaii when it was clear that there needed to be emergency funding?

00:32:27.000 They didn't do anything about it.

00:32:29.000 How could anyone continue to ignore the obvious fact that there's just an exercise in deception, manipulation, propaganda, lying.

00:32:36.000 In fact, that's almost all it is.

00:32:37.000 What else is it other than that?

00:32:39.000 The Democrats who demonised President Trump for his focus on stopping illegal immigration and characterised his quest to build such a barrier as racism have been mugged by reality.

00:32:48.000 That's a very good phrase because now you have to shift all of the rhetoric and perception around what the wall represents.

00:32:55.000 Now it represents something that's mandated by law, something that's absolutely necessary.

00:32:58.000 So what did that mean then?

00:33:00.000 This was actually the symbolic issue of the campaign. 0.96

00:33:03.000 Those that wanted that wall were racists, or lunatics, or extremists.

00:33:07.000 Those that didn't want it were said to be, by the legacy media, compassionate, tolerant, progressive.

00:33:12.000 So now the wall is happening anyway, how do we make this shift?

00:33:16.000 How do we adjust?

00:33:17.000 Oh, so what, a wall is needed!

00:33:19.000 Yeah, because it's mandated.

00:33:21.000 But what about the laws you're ignoring?

00:33:22.000 Oh yeah, they're sort of a different type of law.

00:33:24.000 So what did it mean when you were saying those people were racist?

00:33:26.000 What this tells us, with stark clarity as lurid and as obvious as a 50-foot wall dividing a country, is that you can't trust anything But there's no meaning, no truth, no honesty, no goodwill behind the words of the government and those that amplify them in legacy media.

00:33:43.000 We're sort of participating in a chaotic and deceptive game where it seems that part of the function of media and government is to maintain a state of disorientation and deception.

00:33:53.000 So it's very difficult to know what's real and what's not real, what's right and what's not right anymore.

00:33:58.000 If an administration that would have rather done anything than complete construction of Trump's wall is now going ahead with a project, that tells us all we need to know about their hypocrisy and the bankruptcy of their policies.

00:34:09.000 Even if they won't admit they were lying when they called Trump a racist for wanting a wall, their actions speak louder than their words.

00:34:15.000 This is a story that demonstrates the inevitability of deception when what you have instead of a government for the people is a government that simply operates in order to instantiate the interests of the powerful.

00:34:26.000 It's almost impossible to put yourself back into 2016 or 2020 and say, The wall was meant to represent this.

00:34:33.000 The wall was bad.

00:34:34.000 Now is the wall good or is the wall necessary?

00:34:36.000 What reality are we being invited to live in?

00:34:39.000 Let alone what vision of a future are we being offered?

00:34:42.000 What solutions are we really being offered for many of the apparent catastrophes, whether they are geopolitical and military or ecological or economic?

00:34:51.000 What visions are we being given by them?

00:34:53.000 All that's happening is the deck chairs are being shifted on the Titanic, the chess pieces arbitrarily move around the chessboard with no relation to reality, because there is no vision.

00:35:02.000 All that there is is the maintenance of establishment interests, the amplification of the message, whatever message they're putting in front of you.

00:35:09.000 The war is humanitarian!

00:35:10.000 Two weeks to stop the spread.

00:35:12.000 This war is to help people.

00:35:13.000 This is necessary now.

00:35:14.000 The wall is mandated.

00:35:16.000 The wall's racist.

00:35:17.000 In a sense, the only option we have is to somehow detach from the reality that they're offering us and start to begin to think about, well, how do we organize reality differently?

00:35:25.000 On this channel, I feel that, really, we have to move from media reporting to the overt discussion of how do we organize society differently?

00:35:33.000 What kind of reality do you want to live in?

00:35:34.000 It seems like an Extraordinary problem.

00:35:37.000 The global wars, the religious wars, the despair, the lying, the ecologic, economic, ideological fractures all around our culture.

00:35:44.000 It seems insurmountable and I think it's meant to.

00:35:46.000 And then you walk out into the world and everything seems okay and people seem alright.

00:35:50.000 It seems that there is a solution available to us in that vision.

00:35:54.000 Individually and communally, human beings have a chance.

00:35:57.000 But as a part of this globalist nightmare of deception and ongoing lies, we are doomed.

00:36:03.000 A war can mean one thing one day and another thing the next day and no one tells you that the meaning has altered.

00:36:09.000 That is because they don't live in a grounded reality guided by principles.

00:36:12.000 They live in a kind of deceptive, dystopic matrix of total consciousness control.

00:36:18.000 But that's just what I think.

00:36:19.000 Let me know what you think in the chat.

00:36:19.000 I'll see you in a second.

00:36:20.000 So let me know in the chat if the emblem of the Trump Biden election was indeed that wall

00:36:33.000 and they can prevaricate and change the meaning of the wall.

00:36:36.000 If the wall was good then either Trump was right all along or they're more wrong than ever.

00:36:42.000 Beyond trust.

00:36:44.000 As our institutions fall apart, as our legacy media becomes more corrupt, as your trust in the government erodes to the point where it's barely even measurable, we need to communicate with reliable journalists.

00:36:57.000 And as you know, there are still a few left in independent spaces.

00:37:01.000 We've seized one of them from the morass.

00:37:05.000 It's so-called journalist Michael Schellenberger, founder of Public on Substack, the Twitterphile inaugur, author of Apocalypse Never, Thank you for joining us, Michael.

00:37:16.000 Great to see you, Russell.

00:37:18.000 Those viewers watching this will be aware that Michael is doing this in front of what you might call a strobing image, which I'm sure is part of your mind games mentality, presenting to us in the middle of a visual cyclone.

00:37:33.000 If you're watching this anywhere other than Rumble, we'll only be available for a brief while.

00:37:37.000 Press the red button to support independent journalism and Michael, can you tell us a little bit of what you've been doing recently in Ireland and how that impacts what's happening with legislation globally around online safety and hate speech?

00:37:54.000 Yeah, well, I mean, you and your listeners may remember that Ireland proposed one of the most draconian crackdowns on free speech.

00:38:01.000 It was legislation that would literally allow the police to go into people's homes and confiscate their cell phones and laptops and read what was on them.

00:38:11.000 And then if people refused to do it, they could be carted off to jail.

00:38:15.000 I mean, it was shocking to think that this was something that was being proposed You know, in a country like Ireland, which has long been a place really committed to free speech, you know, land of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde.

00:38:28.000 And so we, you know, so we were there in, you know, in September.

00:38:34.000 And it was incredible.

00:38:35.000 I mean, I went and interviewed people on the street.

00:38:37.000 Most people had no idea this was going on.

00:38:38.000 But when people learned about it, most people were against it.

00:38:42.000 We found out really upon arriving that the Justice Minister, who's also a member of Parliament who had sponsored the legislation, that really her career is in trouble because this legislation is so unpopular.

00:38:53.000 So we're feeling pretty good about this.

00:38:56.000 The event itself was amazing.

00:38:57.000 I mean, there was 800 people in this huge lecture hall.

00:39:00.000 The spirits were very high.

00:39:02.000 I think that the folks on the ground in Ireland, the free speech advocates, Our feeling like the wind is in our back and that there's a good chance to defeat this thing.

00:39:11.000 You know, it's very unpopular.

00:39:13.000 People love their freedoms around the world.

00:39:16.000 And even though I think people in Britain, I mean, sorry, people in Ireland are very, they're very, you know, concerned, obviously, about intolerance.

00:39:24.000 But when I asked people on the street, we recorded videos of me interviewing people on the street.

00:39:29.000 You know, has there been an increase in hatred and intolerance in Ireland that would necessitate such a thing?

00:39:35.000 And basically everybody said, no, the Irish are more tolerant than ever.

00:39:38.000 So I think it helps.

00:39:40.000 I wrote a piece over the weekend where I talked about, I think it helps to remind people just how much more progressive everybody is, how much more sensitive and tolerant everybody is.

00:39:49.000 I think it also helped when I would ask people, I'd be like, what would James Joyce and Oscar Wilde think about this legislation?

00:39:55.000 And most people, I think, said they don't think they would like it very much.

00:39:59.000 And also, you know, it's helpful to remind people because it's funny, people don't think that they'll be victims of censorship.

00:40:07.000 Most people tend to think they go, oh, there's these hateful people that are out there and there's none of that in me.

00:40:12.000 You know, it's kind of a classic.

00:40:14.000 You know, I'm, you know, a good person.

00:40:15.000 Everybody thinks they're a good person.

00:40:17.000 They never think that they would be subject to such censorship.

00:40:19.000 But when you kind of remind them about how subjective hate speech supposedly is, and how many people will think, some people will think some things are hateful and other people won't, I think it really did help to turn people's minds around.

00:40:30.000 So I wrote a piece this weekend that just said, just make people think about it for a minute, and I think people will end up siding on the side of free speech.

00:40:37.000 Yeah, what you wrote in your piece, because obviously I read your journalism on Substack, on Public, which you founded, you said that you offer an alternative framing.

00:40:47.000 It's pretty easy to see how, if you ask people the question, and wow, censor takers for time immemorial have known, If you've said, do you think hate speech is good?

00:41:00.000 Do you like child pornography?

00:41:03.000 Generally speaking, people say, no, no.

00:41:06.000 Would you like to stop child pornography and hate speech?

00:41:09.000 Yes, yes.

00:41:10.000 But it's interesting that the framing of the argument is, of course, designed to ease us into censorship.

00:41:18.000 Like that when you think that the end point is police storming your home and grabbing your laptop the only thing that would legitimize that would be oh well it's there's child pornography on that laptop but of course the law doesn't say exclusively and specifically in cases of child pornography which is already illegal and doesn't require additional legislation so in a sense those points are Redundant, and they are sort of in a sense using, I don't know, neuro-linguistic programming, cyber warfare, hypnosis, to create conditions where we, like we the turkeys, vote once again enthusiastically for Christmas.

00:41:55.000 Yeah, I think that's right.

00:41:56.000 I mean, there's this famous distinction between fast thinking and slow thinking, which comes from the, you know, the great psychologist Daniel Kahneman, a contributor to something called behavioral economics.

00:42:07.000 But look, it's a very ancient idea.

00:42:09.000 I mean, this goes back to the Greeks and this idea that It's easy to manipulate people when you can short-circuit their thinking and make them think quickly and emotionally, whereas this kind of dialogue, it's essential.

00:42:22.000 It's essential to being free.

00:42:24.000 It's essential to democracy.

00:42:27.000 And so that was sort of, I was joking, I was teasing my readers.

00:42:31.000 I just said this one simple trick.

00:42:32.000 And the trick, of course, is to get people to think slowly about these things and to have that conversation because Irrationality lives in fast thinking, and reason and liberalism, in the best sense of the term, and democracy depend on slow thinking.

00:42:49.000 Yes, and dialogue, it might be assumed, would lead to consensus.

00:42:55.000 And whilst there's offered, whilst the framing we're offered is this is to protect you, it seems that actually what's really being lain are a set of traps that prevent people realising, wait a minute, we could organise society radically differently.

00:43:11.000 We don't need to centralise power in the same way that we once did.

00:43:14.000 There are opportunities for communication, discourse, consensus, autonomy that just simply didn't exist

00:43:21.000 even 20, 30 years ago.

00:43:23.000 And to prevent that sort of momentum and tendency from naturally unfurling,

00:43:28.000 a sort of what you might consider an ordinary evolution of the way that technology and communications has evolved,

00:43:34.000 you have to use atavistic, reductive, and to use your phrase, fast thinking models

00:43:40.000 to prevent people rationally moving in the direction of our shared interests.

00:43:47.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:43:48.000 I think the other thing you said that's so important is this idea that we're doing this to protect you.

00:43:53.000 In fact, these measures would make ordinary people more vulnerable to abuses of state power.

00:43:59.000 And that also, that was part of the subjectivity I was pointing to, which was that You kind of get people thinking a little bit about it and you kind of go, you know, these are these are, you know, human beings that are going to be making decisions about what's hateful and what's not.

00:44:12.000 And could you see how people might abuse that or start to manipulate that or that even just innocent mistakes might be made and get people entrapped in them.

00:44:20.000 And so I think that it helps to get people to slow down on it and it helps to do it in person.

00:44:25.000 And it was a delightful thing because I think sometimes, you know, even myself, I was sort of imagining that that That I think you want you think you tend to think that one person holds a particular point of view and what you're reminded of is that when you talk to somebody that we hold a whole jumble of opinions and that actually the people will change their mind or they have different views in different circumstances.

00:44:48.000 So I think for me the watchword right now is just rehumanizing the conversation and there is just so dehumanizing the ways in which the media culture work.

00:45:01.000 And the way that I think when people get afraid and they get into this panic and particularly the elites and this desire to control, it leads them to engage in really dehumanizing forms of rhetoric and of manipulations.

00:45:14.000 And I think that there's just something so powerful to coming back to just the simple Recognition of our shared humanity and of our flawedness.

00:45:24.000 And this is why one of the it's made me more appreciate the American system more, but the enlightenment and sort of the sense in which we're flawed.

00:45:32.000 And so we have to create systems that that check that create checks and balances against these abuses of power.

00:45:38.000 This dehumanisation is perhaps exacerbated and amplified and weaponised by a polarising political space.

00:45:47.000 I think it was in your article that you pointed out at least that the Democrats that favour increased censorship has itself gone up from 40% to 70%.

00:45:58.000 In the last five years and I suppose what undergirds that is not an appetite for censorship but the assumption that who's going to be censored are your opponents.

00:46:07.000 That's what's going to be shut down is things that you generally disagree with and take in that democrat case you might say oh they think it's good to censor pro-life arguments or pro-gun arguments or libertarianism or MAGA extremism and in a way that's a call for Humanitarianism and humanism as you've just mentioned and that perhaps that even if you're not a spiritual or religious person and you know I feel that both you and I are Michael that that's an appeal to a set of values that transcend self-interest that hold on a minute that might you know and even if from a self-interested perspective you might

00:46:46.000 deduce that in the future, hold on, the same this legislation

00:46:51.000 could be used by an opposing ideology that sees me with the enmity that currently I regard the MAGA hat wearers or

00:46:59.000 whatever it might be in this instance. So do you think that this

00:47:04.000 oppositionism and this polarizing culture is creating a environment where people are more susceptible to

00:47:12.000 authoritarianism, because I think that they're going to benefit or their side is going to benefit from it.

00:47:18.000 Yeah, I mean, I was trying to, you know, it's one of the things that we talked about before with your producers before the show was this declining trust in the government.

00:47:27.000 I mean, of course, we're watching this horrible dehumanization occur in the Hamas attack on Israel, but then we see a lot of dehumanization.

00:47:37.000 And people hate it when you say it, but there's people that are engaging in dehumanizing rhetoric on both sides.

00:47:43.000 You know, is it worse now than it was a hundred years ago?

00:47:46.000 I don't know.

00:47:47.000 I mean, it was obviously pretty horrible a hundred years ago.

00:47:49.000 I mean, you start to look back at periods, I find myself looking back on periods like the 90s and being like we were all, we were in a much better way back then.

00:47:59.000 There was much less this dehumanizing rhetoric.

00:48:02.000 I definitely think that social media Has contributed to it.

00:48:06.000 You know, there's the experience that we have and I'm having it right now with several people where, you know, you're being attacked online and you feel like everybody's watching and it makes you very scared and paranoid and small and then you can kind of go in one of two directions.

00:48:23.000 You can try to you can be smaller and hide and be quiet and not say not take any risks or you can reaffirm.

00:48:31.000 I think what we would call more spiritual values, which is The value of embracing all of humanity, of viewing ourselves as children of God, at least that's how I talk about it.

00:48:43.000 I mean, I struggle with it, because as a Christian, for me, the hardest thing is the most essential part of Christianity, which is to love thy enemy.

00:48:52.000 And it's not the easiest thing to do when people are attacking you and trying to destroy you, to be like, I love you.

00:48:59.000 You know, having that as the goal and holding that up as a really as the highest value, I think makes us better.

00:49:05.000 And so for me, that's something to strive for.

00:49:08.000 Yeah, as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ says, if you just love people that love you, well that's expedient and ordinary.

00:49:15.000 So it's only in loving your enemy, on bestowing blessings upon your enemy, that you are able to transcend this material state and this material paradigm.

00:49:24.000 And often when we talk, and like indeed you're one of the journalists that I'd most cite as being a symbol of this, I need to talk to people that I recognise are credible, but I usually mean by that intellectually credible, like yourself or Glenn Greenwald, and I think, oh no, God, I've not gone mad.

00:49:40.000 I have just remained anti-authoritarian, and the system has shifted around me, and the rules have all changed.

00:49:47.000 It's gone all mad and dark.

00:49:49.000 And unless we're able to derive our values from somewhere outside of rationalism, that in a way can always make an argument for ultimately self-interest.

00:49:57.000 There is no meaning.

00:49:58.000 We're just like rushing towards nothingness.

00:50:02.000 Billiard ball universe.

00:50:04.000 Consciousness is random.

00:50:05.000 Love is simply reciprocal.

00:50:08.000 Altruism, just a sort of a rational set.

00:50:10.000 It's a pretty despairing model that we're offered.

00:50:14.000 And indeed, when you feel that you are Under attack, when you feel that you're living in a system that doesn't have values, it's pretty easy to yield.

00:50:24.000 And in a way, I suppose, yeah, a greater demand is made that you find within yourself a depth and a beyond faith, I think, Michael, even trust like that.

00:50:35.000 Well, I believe in God, so God's got to have a plan.

00:50:39.000 I'm looking forward to see how this one unfolds.

00:50:43.000 It's extraordinary, isn't it?

00:50:44.000 But our systems, Whether they are media, judicial, like, yeah, they are not organized on that basis.

00:50:53.000 We can say even values that are advocated for and declared as, you know, just accepted values, innocent until proven guilty, that doesn't seem to hold a great deal of sway.

00:51:06.000 Where from where Do we derive these values?

00:51:08.000 And I've, you know, like, I hope you don't feel, gosh, shortchanged by me.

00:51:14.000 I would never have assumed that you were a person who's primarily, because if you are a spiritual person at all, you have to be primarily spiritual.

00:51:22.000 Otherwise, what is it?

00:51:23.000 A sort of a safety net, I guess.

00:51:25.000 So it's fascinating to hear someone who's so well-researched, thorough, direct and astute, relying on religious principles.

00:51:33.000 It helps me, man.

00:51:35.000 Yeah, I was going to say something.

00:51:36.000 I mean, I came back to my faith in a dark time when I needed it.

00:51:41.000 And at first, there was something rational about it, which is that I knew that there's a lot of evidence that having faith is good for you.

00:51:53.000 But there was also a leap of faith, and this is something that comes out of the existential tradition too, particularly out of Soren Kierkegaard, who was a brilliant Christian existentialist, but it's also in Friedrich Nietzsche, who was a very famous atheist.

00:52:08.000 And it's a view that I hold very strongly, which is that faith is not something ultimately that you can reason towards.

00:52:14.000 Faith is something that you must leap towards.

00:52:17.000 It's an act of faith.

00:52:18.000 And I think it's disparaged quite a bit, including by many people who I love and agree with on many issues in the secular community that really think that faith is irrational and that we should get rid of it.

00:52:31.000 For me, it's absolutely essential.

00:52:34.000 And so, I think that we can get unity and agreement beyond people with different faiths, but there is some leap of faith that says we have a faith in humankind and in humanizing rather than dehumanizing.

00:52:52.000 And I can make a bunch of reasonable arguments about it, But I do think that ultimately it's hard to get your way there through logic, that you're making a leap of faith to believe in God or to believe that we have a soul or to believe that humanity is basically good.

00:53:13.000 And I think even for things like liberal democracy, I just think that those numbers that your colleague sent me showing the declining trust in government, I mean, it's really scary.

00:53:24.000 Particularly at a time of so much trouble in the world, and I think we have to affirm it.

00:53:28.000 We can argue for it, but I do think if you are pro-human, you must be pro-civilization.

00:53:35.000 And if you're pro-human and pro-civilization, you must be in favor of liberal democracy, and of free speech, and of innocence until proven guilty, and of all of the other foundations of civilization, because You can't be pro-human and against civilization because if you don't have civilization or you don't have these rules of liberal democracy, then the outcomes for humankind as a whole are far worse.

00:53:59.000 Plainly they don't believe in these principles except when it's in their service, I say they, and I'm, you know, in a way I'm just doubling down on the point I made about the increase in Democrat support for censorship.

00:54:13.000 They obviously don't believe in free speech because it has no value unless you believe in free speech that you don't agree with, in much the same way that you and I are just talking about spirituality, unless you are willing to Love thine enemy then all you're talking about is rationalism and logic.

00:54:27.000 Now logic and rationalism are by their nature based on measurement and discernment and faith in a sense is an invitation to hurl yourself into the mysterious abyss and pray that it's not made of nothing but of something that there is some telos other than just blind expansionism and I mean that in the cosmological sense rather than the imperial sense. Now, what do we do, mate, when you have

00:54:53.000 figures whose primary pose appears to be around morality and ethics?

00:54:57.000 Say, take Justin Trudeau, please.

00:55:00.000 And like, take him!

00:55:02.000 Like, he seems to be all about kindness.

00:55:04.000 Yeah.

00:55:04.000 kindness and sweetness and I see him joshing along with the leader of the opposition, taking

00:55:09.000 the speaker to the seat, but that speaker had just before condemned the trucker protests,

00:55:14.000 or last year at least, as Nazis on the flimsiest of evidence, no evidence actually to suggest

00:55:18.000 that Nazism is what they're interested in. 0.90

00:55:20.000 Meanwhile, they applaud an actual Nazi and then sort of ask us to sort of forget it and

00:55:25.000 consider it as potential Russian disinformation as usual.

00:55:29.000 And also that they are similarly introducing new streaming laws and the ability to regulate

00:55:35.000 podcasts.

00:55:37.000 How is it that the new aesthetic of authoritarianism is so couched in this floppy-haired liberalism?

00:55:46.000 How have we found ourselves here?

00:55:47.000 Yeah, great question.

00:55:49.000 There's, we're working on a new, we've really planned a lot of this.

00:55:53.000 I mean, obviously there's two things going on.

00:55:55.000 There's the, there's a censorship industrial complex, which we've seen funded by governments, both in the UK and the United States, the Five Eyes nations as well.

00:56:05.000 We see the involvement in intelligence and security organizations.

00:56:08.000 But there's also this cultural desire, and I think that some of that is coming just from a place of privilege.

00:56:16.000 And just to put a point on it, I think some coddling, where there's this idea that I shouldn't have to hear disconfirmatory information.

00:56:26.000 You know, I think that hearing people that disagree with you or that are debunking your views or challenging your views is uncomfortable.

00:56:34.000 And so there's some extent to which I just think there's a lot of privileged people in the society that are saying, I shouldn't have to hear those views.

00:56:42.000 So it's gotten, in some ways, it's a magnification of the filter bubbles that get created from social media platforms.

00:56:49.000 The intolerance is coming from privileged elites.

00:56:52.000 I always point out that the people demanding censorship are not, you know, bagging your groceries or filling up your car with gasoline.

00:56:59.000 They're not making products to the factory floor.

00:57:02.000 They're working at universities like Stanford, like Harvard.

00:57:05.000 You know, that's where Jacinda Ardern, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, went to.

00:57:10.000 And so it's coming from the elites.

00:57:12.000 It's a kind of demand for privilege.

00:57:14.000 It's absolutely oppressive, obviously.

00:57:17.000 No movement for human liberation has ever demanded censorship.

00:57:21.000 They've always demanded the right to speak.

00:57:23.000 That's been the first thing that's been part of movements for human liberation.

00:57:27.000 So I think what you see with Trudeau is somebody that really believes there's a fanaticism in it.

00:57:35.000 You know, that he is absolutely, he's pure.

00:57:39.000 There's no, he's never wrong.

00:57:42.000 He's never mal-intentioned.

00:57:46.000 This is not the view that our civilization is based on.

00:57:50.000 Our civilization is based on this idea that we are all flawed, that we are all wrong at one point or another, that we have very mixed motives, that we all behave in ways that we regret later.

00:58:03.000 Like all of us.

00:58:04.000 Literally, there's not a single one of us that doesn't have that.

00:58:07.000 And that we're better off when we are in an environment where we have people that can challenge us and criticize us and I mean, I find myself whenever I have to make these little soliloquies about the importance of free speech, I go, God, I can't believe I have to justify free speech, but we do.

00:58:23.000 We have to make the case.

00:58:25.000 In particular, I think we have to make it towards younger folks.

00:58:28.000 I think those of us.

00:58:29.000 that were not raised on social media and that weren't raised in this culture of fear tend to be more open to free speech.

00:58:37.000 I think older generations tend to be more favoring free speech.

00:58:39.000 But setting that aside, I think that we do have to find ways to make this case to folks about the importance of free speech, particularly younger folks, and how wonderful it is to be wrong.

00:58:52.000 I mean, I wrote two whole books About that explore the ways in which I was wrong and and you know, you can use your narcissism against your narcissism in the sense that you can it's very fascinating the ways that I've been wrong.

00:59:04.000 Let's talk more about how I've been wrong in the thing that I regret because I do think that I think it inspires something from people that's not defensive that will actually allows us to kind of be like, yeah, I was wrong about that too, or I have those regrets too and You know, let him that's never sinned be the first to throw the stone.

00:59:22.000 And it's just such a simple basic lesson.

00:59:25.000 I mean, that lesson of Of humility.

00:59:28.000 I mean, it's in every wisdom tradition on earth.

00:59:34.000 It's in the Constitution of the United States government.

00:59:37.000 It should be really fundamental, this sense of humility and the potential to be wrong and the potential to be bad.

00:59:44.000 And I think some of that has traditionally existed on the left in terms of the support for free speech.

00:59:51.000 Some of it's existed on the right.

00:59:53.000 In the sense of having a darker view of human nature, but it's in all the wisdom traditions.

00:59:58.000 And I think we have to elevate it once again is the sense of humility and the chance that we might be wrong.

01:00:02.000 And and for that reason, especially that's why we want to have a fair and equal justice system.

01:00:07.000 And that's why we want to have freedom of speech.

01:00:11.000 Nick Cave, the Australian singer-songwriter, said that we are experiencing in this new culture all of the piety of religion just extracted of important ideas like redemption and salvation.

01:00:26.000 And I again feel like there's this kind of, you know, I've written books in which I talk about, you know, doing things wrong, but there's this sort of subsequent metastasization into sort of ethical failings, into something far more monstrous And it seems to me that this has a kind of cultural context that's curious.

01:00:48.000 For example, you know, obviously, free speech equates to hate speech is an interesting idea.

01:00:55.000 Your opponents must be demonized.

01:00:58.000 You don't need to hear their ideas.

01:01:00.000 You shouldn't hear their ideas.

01:01:02.000 What do you feel about this?

01:01:04.000 The FBI targeting Trump supporters for 2024 and the kind of equation of opposition With terrorism, the use of language, you know, from Hillary Clinton specifically like, you know, extremists if not terrorists.

01:01:20.000 What do you feel about that?

01:01:22.000 Yeah, I mean, so this is a very important investigative piece that ran in Newsweek by a journalist named Bill Arkin, who's a very well-known and respected journalist in the United States.

01:01:35.000 He quoted many FBI officials anonymously, confirming that indeed this was what was going on, and the FBI has been Focused on exaggerating the threat of domestic extremism and domestic terrorism.

01:01:52.000 We have also written about this extensively.

01:01:55.000 We think that there is clearly an effort by a politicized FBI.

01:02:01.000 To spread disinformation that basically frames Trump supporters as wanting to overthrow the government.

01:02:09.000 I think there's reasons to suspect that a significant number of federal agents undercover were instigating violence on January 6th.

01:02:18.000 We now know because in the fake FBI entrapment that led to the kidnapping plot

01:02:27.000 against the governor of Michigan, those defendants have now been acquitted

01:02:33.000 because the government was involved in entrapment.

01:02:35.000 So this is really scary because what we're talking about here is basically a disinformation campaign

01:02:42.000 by the federal government to frame political, people expressing their free speech rights,

01:02:49.000 to frame them as terrorists.

01:02:51.000 This is basically secret police information operations.

01:02:56.000 This is all illegal.

01:02:57.000 It's unconstitutional.

01:02:59.000 It's extremely disturbing.

01:03:00.000 It has to be rooted out.

01:03:03.000 You know, I think that, you know, there's another thing here, which is the ways in which the intelligence and security agencies that are involved in this, they're manipulating the confusion that people have in their own minds.

01:03:18.000 And I discovered it when I was interviewing people in Ireland, and I keep finding it, where on the one hand, people kind of are saying we should not allow incitement to violence.

01:03:28.000 And everybody basically agrees with that.

01:03:30.000 We have a lot of legal cases where you can't immediately incite violence.

01:03:36.000 But you can see it's already, it's a little subjective. 0.84

01:03:39.000 In other words, it's easy to be like, we have to go kill that person because they're part of this religious group. 1.00

01:03:44.000 That's immediate incitement to violence. 0.58

01:03:46.000 Well, you start to then get into it's not immediate or how immediate is it?

01:03:50.000 And so in that sort of subjective gray zone, you start to see the expansion or what psychologists call concept creep, where the idea of harm and what's categorized as harm grows, grows, grows.

01:04:05.000 And then other thing I was mentioning where people are more intolerant of different views

01:04:09.000 than justifies itself by saying, oh, well, we have to protect people from that harmful speech.

01:04:15.000 So again, it's one of those things where it's like it takes some time to sort of explain what's going on and to help

01:04:20.000 people to see that.

01:04:21.000 You know, I mean, there's this has come up with with Twitter now, X, where Elon has allowed, you know, more so-called

01:04:29.000 hate speech on the platform.

01:04:31.000 I mean, in other words, you know, hate speech is subjective, but certainly, you know, you can find, and it's, you know, I think Elon, there's some questions around whether there's really been an increase, but certainly you can find people saying horrible anti-Semitic things online.

01:04:44.000 We just saw over the last several days, people saying really terrible dehumanizing things.

01:04:48.000 The question is, is it better to be able to argue back against that and say, look, that's really gross.

01:04:55.000 You're justifying this horrible violence against people.

01:04:59.000 Is it better to be able to have that conversation, or is it better to just have a small committee of experts decide to censor it?

01:05:07.000 I obviously, and you and our friend Matt Taibbi and others, we obviously side with the idea of allow that debate to occur.

01:05:14.000 Allow people to say terrible things.

01:05:16.000 They will regret it later, I believe.

01:05:18.000 Most of them will regret it later.

01:05:20.000 But allow in that moment to say, hey, that's horrible.

01:05:23.000 How would you feel if that was your daughter?

01:05:25.000 How would you feel if that was your child that that happened to?

01:05:28.000 You're justifying something that's really inhumane.

01:05:31.000 And I think being able to allow that exchange to occur, you know, online is wonderful.

01:05:35.000 Now, of course, I'll say I think there are There's always exceptions.

01:05:39.000 There's limits to that.

01:05:40.000 But I do think we need to get back to allowing more of that conversation to occur because, you know, I think down the road of we just have to have more censorship decided by unelected people and by special secret committees.

01:05:53.000 That's a very that's a road to totalitarianism.

01:05:56.000 It's a road that we appear to be travelling down at pace in a variety of areas.

01:06:01.000 Yes, with the censorship industrial complex.

01:06:03.000 Yes, with matters regarding world health.

01:06:06.000 Yes, with matters regarding war, increasing ongoing war, without, it seems, due democratic

01:06:12.000 process, without the ability to debate or discuss it, without a vision for peace in

01:06:18.000 sight or even really discussed in some instances.

01:06:22.000 This thing you said about the concept creep and the increase in what constitutes harm,

01:06:29.000 I suppose by its nature legitimizes authoritarianism.

01:06:34.000 And it seems that that is the trend.

01:06:37.000 Because of X, we must increase authoritarianism.

01:06:40.000 We must have these new regulatory powers.

01:06:42.000 And these regulatory powers are seldom deployed or even designed to be deployed against other

01:06:48.000 powerful entities that you might imagine have considerable influence in global outcomes.

01:06:53.000 It's usually the ability to restrict, impede, control the actions of individuals.

01:06:58.000 That's usually where it ends up.

01:07:02.000 So I suppose on that basis, it's clear to see why trust in institutions is in decline.

01:07:11.000 Only 4% of Americans say the political system is working well.

01:07:15.000 The vast majority say that it isn't.

01:07:18.000 And when we're talking about this, Michael, I know that at least from the way you present,

01:07:22.000 it seems that you have some faith or hope at least that these institutions can improve.

01:07:29.000 Now for the first time, it seems in this sort of cycle leading to 2024, people are saying

01:07:34.000 we would disband the CIA, we would disband the FBI.

01:07:37.000 This institutional mistrust appears to be reaching levels where people are at least

01:07:43.000 just, you know, rhetorically I suppose.

01:07:47.000 Discussing, suggesting the possibility of what might have been regarded as revolutionary change.

01:07:52.000 Is that what is required?

01:07:54.000 Or do you believe that reform can be effective, even in the areas we've discussed, where I know a lot of people think, oh my god, this is seismic.

01:08:01.000 We are on the edge of something absolutely terrifying, not just because of the loathing and distrust of the media and the government and many of our institutions, but because it appears That there is a trajectory towards centralisation in many, many areas of public life and it's beyond national.

01:08:15.000 It seems to be a global and somewhat coordinated issue.

01:08:20.000 Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question.

01:08:22.000 I mean, I think there's a lot of ways in which I and many others, I think, see the current moment as very similar to the 1970s.

01:08:30.000 The 1970s, though, we had a reaction to Watergate in the form of something called the Church Committee hearing of 1975.

01:08:38.000 But it was the Democrats that were running that hearing, and it had the support of Republicans.

01:08:44.000 And they really put it, this is where they exposed MKUltra, You know, the drug, the drugging of people without their permission. 0.68

01:08:51.000 I mean, shocking experiments were done by the CIA.

01:08:56.000 But we also saw abuses of power by FBI, of course.

01:08:59.000 And there's still things from that era that we, that we don't know.

01:09:02.000 But you saw sort of reform of institutions.

01:09:05.000 And I think this is what America's founding fathers meant when they said we need a revolution every, every few decades.

01:09:11.000 You need to clean out these institutions.

01:09:14.000 I personally think it would be going too far to completely shut down the FBI, you know, the CIA.

01:09:21.000 I mean, every government has spies.

01:09:23.000 It's hard to believe if you got rid of the CIA that you wouldn't have spies operating through State Department or something else.

01:09:29.000 On the FBI question, do you need a national police force?

01:09:33.000 I mean, there's ways in which a lot of the positive improvement of policing occurs when there's some standards being put to it.

01:09:42.000 For example, we've seen a decline in the use of violence by police forces since the 1970s.

01:09:48.000 So I think that just abolishing these institutions is just too radical.

01:09:52.000 I think it goes too far.

01:09:54.000 But you definitely need new heads of these agencies who are psychologically healthy and apolitical.

01:10:02.000 I think that one of the things that I've been very interested in is the ways in which Totalitarianism is characterized by psychopaths and narcissists taking over important societal institutions.

01:10:15.000 And that means people that use their charisma to mesmerize and hypnotize people basically with this

01:10:22.000 line that we have been talking about, oh, I'm here to protect you and protect you from all of this

01:10:27.000 hatred and domestic extremism and the psychopaths who will basically destroy people's lives.

01:10:32.000 The entrapment that the FBI has been engaged in is often entrapment of people that are mentally 0.93

01:10:37.000 disabled or mentally ill. 0.92

01:10:39.000 That's pretty gross. 0.94

01:10:41.000 It's pretty uncaring person to be able to destroy somebody's life in order to achieve a broader

01:10:49.000 So you need to be able to take over.

01:10:50.000 Now, the problem is, and I pointed this out in this piece I wrote about Jim Jordan, who's the head of this subcommittee investigating the weaponization.

01:10:58.000 He's a lot like.

01:11:01.000 Frank Church, the member of Congress, was in the mid-70s.

01:11:04.000 The difference is that the Democrats are against Jim Jordan.

01:11:06.000 In fact, they demonize Jim Jordan as sort of anti-democratic, even though Jim Jordan has done the most to sort of surface the abuses of power, both by Department of Homeland Security in terms of censorship, also by FBI.

01:11:21.000 But I will say, you know, the United States, we're still we still have a constitution.

01:11:26.000 We have a really strong First Amendment that protects free speech and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in considering Missouri versus Biden, which is the lawsuit around censorship.

01:11:37.000 Recently came back and actually expanded the injunction preventing this Department of Homeland Security agency from talking to social media companies.

01:11:45.000 And I do think the Supreme Court will decide to hear this case.

01:11:49.000 I do think the Supreme Court will side with us.

01:11:51.000 So when I look, you know, it's like a knife by the phone booth.

01:11:54.000 You know, it's like we're definitely in having some setbacks all around the world and the demonetization

01:12:01.000 including people, including you and others is really disturbing, really scary.

01:12:05.000 That's YouTube is out of control.

01:12:08.000 I mean, Facebook and YouTube and Google are absolutely out of control.

01:12:13.000 Happily, we have X, you know, Elon has made it much freer.

01:12:17.000 We have Supreme Court in the United States.

01:12:19.000 We have the pushback in Ireland that appears to be working.

01:12:23.000 Similarly, our friends in Brazil say that as soon as they said, as soon as they explained to people that what you're proposing is censorship, it did start to change the conversation in Brazil.

01:12:33.000 So I do think that, I mean, what I, you know, it's cliche, but I will just say really fighting for free speech does matter.

01:12:41.000 I think the event that we did in London had a big impact.

01:12:44.000 I think the event that we did in Ireland is important.

01:12:47.000 It's quite lovely, I will say, just at a human level to be able to have these conversations and have these exchanges.

01:12:54.000 I've made some really lovely friends around the world.

01:12:57.000 Almost everybody has been cancelled.

01:12:59.000 Everybody has been sort of personally hurt.

01:13:03.000 Um, including quite badly.

01:13:04.000 And so to be able to find each other and build a community has been one of the most satisfying and rewarding parts of building this free speech movement.

01:13:11.000 Right.

01:13:12.000 Yeah.

01:13:12.000 You're right to have done that, man.

01:13:14.000 I guess one of the, I feel like I've got no choice now, you know, like I can't have one foot in each camp anymore.

01:13:21.000 This is real, you know?

01:13:24.000 Um, I want to add Rumble to that list of people advocating for free speech, obviously for some reasons that are pretty bloody obvious.

01:13:30.000 Also, I want to talk about the, Our idea of transparency, whilst the population from various nations have less and less ability to live privately, privacy is being equated with criminality, another one of those peculiar conjunctions that we've been discussing throughout this chat.

01:13:51.000 There is no transparency in government, or perhaps insufficient transparency in government.

01:13:55.000 A conversation I had recently with Scott Adams, we discussed the possibility of absolute transparency at the level of government.

01:14:01.000 What would happen there?

01:14:02.000 If you were able to witness all expenditure, if you were able to plainly witness all funding, if it was open source and accessible, is that possible?

01:14:10.000 Would they?

01:14:12.000 Would it ever be possible?

01:14:14.000 I feel like even with the subject, when we talk about, oh, you know, well, there are many Republicans that are pretty anti-war, but those, generally speaking, they're anti the war between Ukraine and Russia, and they're pro Yeah, intensifying hostilities between the US and China.

01:14:31.000 What does that mean then?

01:14:32.000 You can't vote for anybody that doesn't want to have a war against an opposing superpower.

01:14:39.000 That seems kind of crazy now, pending RFK's announcement in Philadelphia, which will have happened by the time we broadcast this, so subsequent to that you could vote for Bobby Kennedy there.

01:14:49.000 But I wonder if, when it comes to free speech, this issue of transparency, I wonder, do you think that's possible?

01:14:56.000 Do you think that would ever happen?

01:14:58.000 Is it feasible?

01:14:59.000 And also, do you think that in the same way, after your point about Brazil, that we could end up with free speech kind of exiles in the same way that you might have once had tax exiles, that there might be principalities and regions where free speech is tolerated outside of the kind of Five Eyes countries, for want of a better phrase?

01:15:16.000 Yeah, great question.

01:15:18.000 I mean, I think it's, you know, right before the recent war and attacks in Israel, everybody was focusing on the United States on the border.

01:15:28.000 And I mean, here we have in the United States and so, but it's also similar in Europe.

01:15:31.000 I mean, here we have people around the world fleeing To free countries.

01:15:36.000 People want to come to the United States and Europe because they want to be free.

01:15:41.000 They want to be able to speak their minds.

01:15:43.000 They don't want to be victims of censorship and state oppression.

01:15:47.000 So at the end of the day, I do think that what we have going for us is that most people do want to be free.

01:15:52.000 I have arguments with some people about this because obviously there are some people that do want totalitarianism and you are people that want censorship.

01:15:59.000 But I think that's often that fast thinking you get into slow thinking you make people start to make you require people to slow down and think about it.

01:16:06.000 I do need a side with free speech similarly with transparency boy.

01:16:10.000 Are you right about this?

01:16:11.000 I just had I just was reminded.

01:16:15.000 How frequently the U.S.

01:16:16.000 government is moving money around to hide various projects.

01:16:19.000 Now, sometimes if you're making a new secret weapon, a defensive weapon, it might be justified.

01:16:26.000 But even then, you're supposed to have congressional oversight.

01:16:29.000 There's been far too much secrecy on these issues.

01:16:32.000 We do need a whole new era of transparency.

01:16:35.000 You know, on COVID, to give one example, you may remember there's this moment where one of Anthony Fauci's aides said, I'm going to use my private Gmail to avoid future Freedom of Information Act requests.

01:16:48.000 And they ended up getting those emails anyway.

01:16:50.000 There is this sense in which the people that are in charge, they know, obviously, that what they're doing doesn't look good and is probably bad.

01:16:59.000 And they really don't trust the public.

01:17:02.000 I think in some sense, they really don't like the public.

01:17:04.000 They don't really think the public has a right to know.

01:17:07.000 And yet that's been so foundational.

01:17:09.000 It's, I think, one of these other reforms.

01:17:12.000 So, I mean, I do sometimes, like you, I think you kind of go, man, I mean, if there's really a crackdown here, do we have to go somewhere else?

01:17:21.000 But it's like, where else do you go?

01:17:22.000 I mean, if the United States can't remain steadfast in its commitment to free speech, Equal justice under the law.

01:17:30.000 Innocent until proven guilty.

01:17:32.000 Transparency into how our tax money is being spent.

01:17:36.000 Then I just think Western civilization is over.

01:17:38.000 You know, I think you can start to lose some liberal societies in the Western alliance, but you start to lose the United States and I think it's game over.

01:17:47.000 And so I do think I think we are going to get a victory on Missouri versus Biden.

01:17:52.000 I will say America has been in some pretty dark moments before.

01:17:55.000 You know, most recently was sort of the 70s and the abuses of power that we saw in the in the late 60s, early 70s.

01:18:02.000 But we really do have an amazing system here.

01:18:05.000 And I think that culture is still here, but people forget it when they get caught up in the emotions of social media and fast thinking.

01:18:13.000 And I wonder if that culture is being diluted by this, simply by almost technological advancement, in a sense, the same way that the industrialization of war made, you know, the First and Second World War much worse than their predecessors.

01:18:27.000 And perhaps that doesn't, that doesn't tell the whole story of the preceding appetites.

01:18:31.000 I read something about the brutality of the early days of the French Revolution that was

01:18:36.000 sort of an indicator that the sort of venom was still present.

01:18:40.000 It's just they didn't have the mechanization that would facilitate murder on the scale

01:18:45.000 of, you know, 50, 60 years later.

01:18:48.000 Sorry, 200.

01:18:50.000 Anyway, my point is that what concerns me is now the machinery is in place for dystopia,

01:18:59.000 and it appears sometimes that legislatively moves are being made that suggest that the

01:19:07.000 idea of a consensus between those that are governed and the governing is breaking down.

01:19:13.000 I spoke with Glenn Greenwald a little while ago and he says, you know, anti-protest laws, pro-surveillance, pro-censorship, It seems that now, once there was a kind of necessity for billionaire philanthropists to toss dollar bills from the window of a passing limo in a gesture of appeasement, whereas now it's just like, well, we're just going to have robots on the streets of New York that, at the flick of a switch, can be utilised to absolutely control you in the militarisation of the police forces.

01:19:46.000 But one of the components.

01:19:47.000 So obviously you have to be, if not optimistic, you have to be hopeful to live in the space that we live in.

01:19:53.000 Otherwise our plan would have to become, we better get some land off Nicaragua and get the hell out of here and start thinking about communes that are off grid or whatever.

01:20:02.000 And I do think about those things.

01:20:04.000 But you also have to think, no, hold on, there is a battle here, there is a war, and it's significant what's happened in the last 5-10 years, and the capacity that we have now to regulate and control, if that is undergirded by new legislation, like the safety bills that we've talked about in both the UK, Ireland, Canada, then that is a significant step towards the end of America, in a way.

01:20:32.000 Yeah, and I will say I don't hold those apocalyptic views of AI.

01:20:38.000 I just testified to Senator Paul inviting me to testify in front of the Senate about AI.

01:20:45.000 In fact, I worry that that discourse around AI actually suggests that humans aren't making these big decisions when they are.

01:20:55.000 You know, everyone, there's a big thing you always see people do online where they're like, oh, I asked Chad GPT this question and they answered with this, you know, super politically correct response.

01:21:04.000 Well, somebody's making that decision for Chad GPT.

01:21:07.000 I mean, I just think I'm a little, I worry a little bit about that conversation on AI because I also think I see people that sort of say, oh, it's this big threat and that means I have to control it.

01:21:16.000 Often the people hyping that threat are often people that want the control.

01:21:20.000 It definitely needs to be regulated.

01:21:22.000 It definitely needs governance.

01:21:24.000 But I do think at the end of the day, for example, in the case of the censorship, of course they were using these tools to be able to do mass censorship on Facebook and on Twitter, but on the issues of what they were censoring, it was people making those decisions.

01:21:40.000 It's Mark Zuckerberg that's going to decide, and it's Elon Musk who's going to decide.

01:21:47.000 You know, I think, um, I mean, you know, the thing that really freaks me out is I'm like, what would have happened if Elon hadn't taken over Twitter?

01:21:54.000 I mean, that's, I, that is really scary because I don't think we really knew how bad it was.

01:21:59.000 There was, there was some legislation already on the censorship of Facebook, so hopefully it would have come out.

01:22:04.000 But I do think, no, I think that we can't escape the West.

01:22:09.000 If you move to Nicaragua and start your commune, of course I'll come and visit.

01:22:13.000 But you're not, I mean, these are peripheral countries.

01:22:17.000 I mean, it wouldn't be safe if there was some global totalitarian crackdown.

01:22:21.000 And I just think, yeah, I mean, I just think, look, humankind is, you know, we've come up from really, you know, authoritarian rule over time and really violent rule.

01:22:33.000 You know, the long sweep is pretty clear that we've evolved towards greater democracy and less violence.

01:22:41.000 And there's been some backsliding for sure over the last few decades.

01:22:45.000 And these recent trends are alarming.

01:22:49.000 But to some extent, that distrust of government Some of that's healthy, right?

01:22:55.000 We don't want too much trust in government.

01:22:57.000 We should not want the government to decide who can be paid for their YouTube videos or who should be censored online.

01:23:04.000 I think it's a very, very dark moment right now, but I think we should You know, remind ourselves that this too shall pass and that nothing is permanent and that reality swerves, that trends tend to be non-linear, in many cases not linear.

01:23:23.000 I like that.

01:23:24.000 Do you, though, as a Christian, ever concern yourself with the idea that there might be some terrible apocalyptic showdown on the horizon that we're all going to be invited to participate in?

01:23:38.000 I mean, obviously nuclear war is just the most realistic possibility for apocalypse, and I think everybody should be scared about it.

01:23:50.000 I mean, that's how nuclear weapons sort of work, is by scaring people.

01:23:55.000 It's deterrence.

01:23:57.000 You know, I'll say, though, that my understanding of it and I've done some amount of research and writing on this is that the most dangerous moments around nuclear were when we first got them when the Russians and Americans first got them and we were sort of.

01:24:12.000 Not sure, you know, how to handle them.

01:24:15.000 So we had the worst scares, you know, the Cuban Missile Crisis being the closest that we came.

01:24:20.000 Since then, we've created much better communications.

01:24:24.000 You know, I think there was a recent instance, as you may know, between, you know, the Ukrainians asked Elon to expand Starlink support up into new areas, and he declined out of concern for nuclear war.

01:24:39.000 So I do think that, you know, we also saw India and Pakistan.

01:24:42.000 Everybody thought that if India and Pakistan got nuclear weapons that they would have nuclear war, but it actually ended up helping them to de-escalate the situation.

01:24:51.000 The most dangerous moment is when people first get the nuclear weapons.

01:24:54.000 So I think You know, I've been misunderstood on this issue before.

01:24:58.000 We should be scared of nuclear weapons.

01:25:02.000 At the same time, we have put in place some means to prevent their being used.

01:25:07.000 But this is all the reason why we have to negotiate a peace in Ukraine.

01:25:11.000 I mean, at this point, I think most people want to see something negotiated.

01:25:14.000 And there are nuclear weapons that protect all NATO countries.

01:25:18.000 And so there's going to be some negotiation over Whether that protection is going to be extended to Ukraine, whether it's not, or whether partly or whatnot, but ultimately, yeah, it is scary, but I do think there's also risks of becoming too apocalyptic and too hopeless.

01:25:37.000 I do think we need to keep our eyes on the prize.

01:25:40.000 Which is for, you know, peace and freedom and prosperity and the older values, including humility, especially humility, especially the balance of power, because without those things, I think you tend towards a totalitarian mentality.

01:25:55.000 Yeah, that's good.

01:25:56.000 Like an arcane honouring of principles like humility and an acknowledgement that technology appears to be moving in the direction of allowing less centralisation, more communication, more dialogue.

01:26:12.000 And it feels to me that what's being cultivated is a mindset that's like, no, no, no, we should use all this centralised power and Create a centralized global entity that can regulate above them, whether it's the WHO pandemic treaty or these eerily similar set of legislations across anglophonic countries to increase surveillance, or whether it's we have to rely on the largesse of Elon Musk to prevent escalating wars, you know, between proxy, or at least between superpowers.

01:26:42.000 Michael, thank you so much.

01:26:44.000 Thank you for covering so much territory in such Good faith.

01:26:47.000 That's what I feel is perhaps lacking in the conversation around social, cultural, and political issues at the moment is a sort of an open-hearted intention towards resolution rather than a further validation of a polarizing position.

01:27:02.000 Yeah, I feel that you're doing a lot of good, mate.

01:27:05.000 Thank you so much.

01:27:06.000 Thank you, Russell.

01:27:06.000 I appreciate you too.

01:27:08.000 Back at you.

01:27:08.000 I appreciate the love and the faith that you're bringing this.

01:27:12.000 Cheers, mate.

01:27:13.000 Thank you.

01:27:13.000 What choice do we have now?

01:27:15.000 Thanks, man.

01:27:17.000 It's the right choice.

01:27:18.000 Thank you, Michael.

01:27:19.000 You can follow Michael's work by going to public.substack.com and follow him on X by searching at Schellenberger, which is well worth doing because as you just witnessed, his contributions to the conversation are always enlightening.

01:27:33.000 He has become, I think, an example of what he espouses.

01:27:36.000 He indeed is the change that we would like to see in the world.

01:27:40.000 On the show tomorrow, Kim Iverson is joining us.

01:27:47.000 We'll be talking about RFK's announcement.

01:27:50.000 Can an independent win in this new America?

01:27:54.000 Is that the only option we really have?

01:27:56.000 Who's going to be most hurt by it?

01:27:58.000 Trump or Biden?

01:27:59.000 Does it mean that Trump or Biden may not run?

01:28:02.000 What will it mean?

01:28:03.000 And of course we're going to be talking about events in Gaza.

01:28:06.000 Click the red button to become an Awakened Wonder to support us.

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Stay Free - Russel Brand - October 10, 2023

Israel Palestine Officially At WAR!!! Is THIS What’s Coming Next? - Stay Free #220

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