Russell Brand is back with a brand new episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand. This week, he's talking about the protests in France, Hillary Clinton's Broadway debut, and the TikTok trial. Plus, Joe Biden accidentally calls Canada a "neo-utopia" and we take a look at why he's no longer appropriate for modern democracy. Stay Free With Russell Brand is on all of the social medias, if you search for it, you'll find us. Stay Free, wherever you get your news and information, and don't forget to Like, Share and Subscribe to stay up to date with what's going on in the world and what's happening in your local community. Stay free, and spread the word to your friends about this show! It's going to be a fantastic show, you're not going to want to miss it. - The Awakening Wanderers And stay tuned for Part 2 of the Tik Tok trial, where we'll be talking about TikTok and TikTok, and why it's a good thing we're not allowed to be on YouTube. If you don't have a TikTok device, you can watch the whole thing on TikTok video on YouTube here. And if you do have one, use the hashtag and tag in the comments below to get a free copy of the entire thing. . Thanks for listening and sharing it on Insta-tweet us your thoughts about it! and your favourite TikTok videos! Thank you for listening! - Your support is so appreciated, we really helps us make this podcast a good listen to the podcast and it helps us grow. Love ya. Timestamps: - 5:00 - Thank you so much, it really does get better than the rest of the world does it? 6:30 - 7:40 - What's better than that? 8:15 - What do you think it's good? 9:00 11:30 12:10 - What does TikTok? 13:40 15:10 16: Is TikTok really? 17:20 - Is it possible to be better? 18:00? 19:00 Is there a global awakening possible? 21:20 22:30 Is there any such thing that could be better than this? 26:30 Does it really matter? 27:40 Does it matter? 27:30 What are we supposed to be the next level of humanity?
00:00:14.000We're going to be talking to Crystal Ball on the show about a variety of topics.
00:00:18.000And when we flip over to being exclusively on Rumble, we'll be talking about aspects of the TikTok trial that we wouldn't be able to speak about on YouTube.
00:00:26.000But first, did you know That Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton went to a Broadway show, and next to them in the aisle were a couple of stools.
00:00:35.000And I mean with the double O spelling.
00:00:38.000Do we don't know if those faecal deposits were as a result of their attendance, or if it's just a coincidence, do we, Gareth?
00:00:47.000No, we don't know if it was them who did it.
00:00:50.000It seems odd that it would be one each and look at them.
00:00:54.000They've been to see Some Like It Hot and they seem pretty pleased about something.
00:00:58.000I would say that's the kind of euphoria that often infects a face after a deposit, Gareth, because you can let me know in the chat in the comments, have you ever known bliss like it?
00:01:07.000Sometimes when I'm talking like this, you know what I remember is that people tune into this in parts of the mainstream media with the specific agenda of attacking our show.
00:01:16.000And they'll say things like, Brand did a poo joke at the beginning.
00:01:22.000Well, it's going to get pretty rebellious later because we're going to be talking about the French protest and how it relates to a new emergent globally populist movement where people en masse across the world are becoming so incensed by Institutional corruption and hypocrisy that they are taking to the streets.
00:01:41.000I wonder how these protests are going to play out.
00:01:44.000I wonder how they're going to affect leaders in your nation.
00:01:49.000Let's take a second to look at Joe Biden inadvertently tagging neoliberal utopia Canada as the place that it actually is.
00:01:58.000A sort of little brother, an emulator of the Chinese state.
00:02:03.000Get ready for a Freudian slip from dear Joe Biden.
00:02:16.000It's interesting that he did that in Canada and it's also odd that Joe Biden's slips and errors have now become almost soundtracked with canned laughter.
00:02:42.000So I'm only talking about Joe Biden as a symbol because when I say stuff like that, I feel mean because I know he's a human being and I know like he lost children and all that kind of stuff.
00:02:51.000So I'm not attacking him as a human being.
00:02:52.000I'm just talking about as a symbol of the level of corruption and ineptitude.
00:02:59.000Don't you think that sometimes when you just learn about more wars, more corruption, like aren't we supposed to be wearing aluminum foil suits by now?
00:03:07.000Aren't we meant to be evolving towards the next level of humanity by now?
00:03:11.000I get why you feel sorry for someone who's old, I understand that, but when you talk about wars and you talk about the situation in Yemen or Syria at the moment, there are a lot of other children dying, just to kind of sew up that point.
00:03:22.000Thanks, Gal, because I don't like to be mean to people, but you're right.
00:03:25.000Due to the ongoing involvement of the US military-industrial complex in the war in Yemen, children probably have been killed today.
00:03:34.000They probably died today, whose names we will never know due to a geographical quirk.
00:03:39.000One of the things though that encourages me that global change is possible, that there is a global awakening, that new systems could be brought into being that allow us to bypass the entrenchment corruption that all of us live within, even if we're people that are doing okay or if we're people that Suffering terribly is this conflagration in Paris.
00:03:59.000Now, we are English, so we've got a long-standing antipathy towards France.
00:04:27.000Even now I'll be making a Chelsea Clinton style package to let you know that some may like it hot.
00:04:34.000Others like it lukewarm, others like it almost semi-liquid.
00:04:38.000One of the things before we get into the details, such as they are about these protests across France, which are essentially the French people are protesting against having to work an additional two years for no extra return.
00:04:50.000A bill that was passed in the National Assembly, that's their equivalent of Congress or Parliament, without being put to a vote.
00:04:56.000And it caused amazing scenes of disruption in France and leads me to believe that generally speaking, French politics, like French everything, is a little bit sexier.
00:05:06.000One of the things though, on the ground, on the streets, in the restaurants, that's fascinating, is just how French people have immediately adjusted to living in the middle of a riot.
00:05:16.000It's like it's not bothering them anymore.
00:05:19.000Like me, if I was in a restaurant and outside was on fire, I feel like I would, like that, I wouldn't be able to just go and say, oh please, excuse me, I'll have the soup.
00:06:56.000If you want to come, you might not want to.
00:06:57.000You might be a sort of a radical French person, happy to bring down the state because you're not being pensioned properly and democracy is being ignored like everywhere because your country is being led by a neoliberal stooge that went to the right school, made the right connections, organizes the right tax breaks for the powerful, attends Davos conferences, may pretend to care about cultural issues, may pretend to care about inequality, as they would call it in France, but actually cares It's about, I don't know, corruption.
00:09:30.000As a metaphor, you could argue that maybe we all have to get on with life and ignore all the awful atrocities that are going on just because here it's literally happening right next to them.
00:09:39.000We're ignoring something that's happening not that far away in foreign countries.
00:10:05.000These are the kind of comments that allow us to seamlessly move into a conversation with a very important voice in our cultural space of independent media and free thinking.
00:10:45.000We wanted to start by talking about the French protests and what can be drawn when talking about the, I don't know, is it the downfall, the demise of neoliberalism?
00:10:57.000And we wanted to look at whether or not you personally feel that it's too late to reform centre-left Parties, but to accept that with the ongoing militarization of the police force, this tendency for centralizing authority and crushing dissent, whether change from outside of the system is going to be required.
00:11:16.000In fact, isn't that what protests and riots ultimately are?
00:11:19.000So I just wanted you to see, to contextualize the protests in France alongside what's happening in your country for us.
00:11:30.000Well, I think of neoliberalism as a sort of zombie ideology, which has clearly failed and been rejected by all sorts of people all around the world as failing to really serve the interests of the people.
00:11:45.000So you end up with governments and economies which should be there to serve society, to serve the people, and instead are serving a group of elites and, you know, sort of corporate, multinational corporations.
00:11:59.000But I call it a zombie ideology because even as the failings of it have been exposed and rejected, it still holds a lot of power, as we see, obviously, in the U.K., as we see in the U.S.
00:12:11.000with Joe Biden, as we see in France with Macron.
00:12:14.000Being able to win re-election with, you know, he had like a 30% approval rating when he won re-election.
00:12:20.000And by the way, Joe Biden's chief of staff pointed that out as a model for how Joe Biden himself could get re-elected, even as he is tremendously unpopular.
00:12:30.000So that's how I sort of see the ideology of neoliberalism.
00:12:35.000As far as whether it can be reformed within the system or what sort of tactics might work, I think you need a whole of body politic approach.
00:12:45.000So the sort of protest movement that you see right now in France, and incidentally, that's being very successful right now in Israel as well, that's not just people marching the street with placards, but is people shutting down airports, shutting down commerce, shutting down transit and really hurting neoliberalism in the capital where it really hurts.
00:13:08.000I think another essential piece, and all of these are about basically, you know, small d democratic weapons.
00:13:15.000Another piece is in building out the power of labor and labor unions.
00:13:19.000That's obviously an instrumental part in having power when you go to protest and when you go to have a general strike, that you have people who are working together in solidarity to have that kind of an impact.
00:13:29.000But then I think another piece is electoral politics.
00:13:33.000You know, in the American context, we take for granted that the Democratic Party is what it is and the Republican Party is what it is.
00:13:39.000But these parties are just collections of people.
00:13:42.000And the Democratic Party of the past, when it was the FDR New Deal party, meant something very different and stood for things that are very different from what the party does today.
00:13:54.000So, you know, I think the people who run the DNC are a bunch of posers who could, you know, be supplanted by a real movement of the people and sort of hijack that party to restore it to its roots of serving the interests of the people rather than the interests of the donor class.
00:14:13.000But in recent, even in recent electoral cycles, we've seen that party.
00:14:21.000It feels like from within SCAPA, the attempt of a more populist leader in the form of Bernie Sanders, who I figure you were well into.
00:14:30.000And it makes me feel like that, in a sense, the part of the function of these institutions is their ongoing preservation and the ability to stymie any serious reform.
00:14:42.000So I recognize what you're saying is that without populist uprising outside of political systems such as we are seeing in France, and as you added, Israel, Well, I'll give you a perfect example of that.
00:15:16.000And he has a progressive primary opponent who was announced in Marianne Williamson.
00:15:21.000And Democrats, for all their talk about democracy during January 6th, et cetera.
00:15:27.000Now that it's time to actually put to a vote among Democratic primary voters, OK, who do you want to be your nominee?
00:15:33.000And we know from the polls that an overwhelming majority would like Joe Biden to step aside and they would like to have options in this primary.
00:15:40.000They've already switched around the order of the states to try to rig the primary election for Biden.
00:15:46.000And they're also already saying, we're not even going to have a debate.
00:15:49.000So you don't even get to hear on a stage what the various platforms are.
00:15:54.000So there is no doubt that when it comes down to it, they have zero commitment to democracy.
00:15:58.000They will use any authoritarian tactics, just as Macron did in France.
00:16:04.000The only thing that can shift them from that stance is a populist uprising that forces their hand, that demands a debate, that demands a real primary, that demands a real democracy.
00:16:15.000And I think those are the only sort of choices.
00:16:17.000You know, neoliberalism, it's no accident that it's being forced.
00:16:21.000leaders like Macron and Biden are being forced to use increasingly
00:16:24.000authoritarian tactics in service of maintaining their power because it has sort of been revealed as this rotten
00:16:32.000ideology that doesn't deliver on its promises.
00:16:35.000The only response to that is a truly populist response, which really means
00:16:40.000handing power and people reclaiming power both in their workplace, through
00:16:44.000labor unions, both in the streets, through protest, and also by taking back
00:16:48.000electoral politics. So you have to have all three of those pieces, in my opinion.
00:16:53.000I feel like the professional neoliberal centre-left kind of hates working people and that kind of contempt comes through continually in their rhetoric.
00:17:03.000Marianne Williamson's coming on this show next week.
00:17:06.000I love what you said there about the institutional and centralised authoritarianism that would corruptly rejig the order of those sort of state elections in order to prevent any momentum or even Debate and that makes me feel like why would I grant any airtime to that kind of political body with that kind of mechanic?
00:17:28.000A slightly more trivial question before moving on to things that are a bit more intense.
00:17:31.000It just occurred to me then, Crystal, like, do you see now when Joe Biden
00:17:37.000makes one of those errors where he sort of accidentally says,
00:17:39.000you know, that's why I love China when he's in Canada or whatever,
00:17:43.000that people laugh straight away with that and do not product placement that drink.
00:17:48.000You should be drinking kombucha or something healthy rather than that evil brew, stinking Coca-Cola.
00:18:10.000When Joe Biden does that, when Joe Biden does that stuff and he makes a mistake, have you noticed they started laughing now?
00:18:16.000Do you think that that's something that's happened as a result of a spontaneous cultural movement or do you think someone goes out and briefs before Joe Biden appears on stage and goes, if he makes one of those errors, just chuckle along with beloved old Uncle Joe to sort of soften the evident ineptitude and the horrible metaphor that that ineptitude represents Yeah, true, true.
00:18:44.000He's like the sort of living embodiment, semi-living embodiment of exactly that.
00:18:51.000Look, I think when people are uncomfortable, they tend to laugh because they don't know what else to do.
00:18:57.000And so when you have incidents like, you know, I don't know if you remember the one where there was a congresswoman who died in a car accident and he had sent out a letter of condolences to the family and then he's at this event and he's calling for her, Jackie, Jackie, where are you?
00:19:13.000In any case, there are clear signs that he's not the politician that he used to be.
00:19:21.000Now, listen, if people are able to see him on a debate stage and hear his ideas for the country and defend the areas where he's made clear promises and completely failed on and in a completely open democratic fashion, that's what the American people decide to go in the direction of?
00:19:38.000But what they are trying to do, because they know that he's in an incredibly precarious and fragile position, is they're trying to shut down any ability for people to hear an alternative whatsoever.
00:19:50.000So, you know, it really reveals their hand of how weak they think that he is.
00:19:55.000And then they also have the issue of Kamala Harris as vice president.
00:19:59.000She's even less popular than Joe Biden is.
00:20:02.000And not only is she a heartbeat away from the presidency, she's the heartbeat away from a president who, you know, would end the next term at 86 years old.
00:20:11.000So this is a series of really compounding problems for them that they don't quite know how to deal with other than through authoritarian, anti-democratic tactics.
00:20:20.000The only choice is for us to reject them and say, listen, whatever you think about the issues, whatever you think about Marianne Williamson or Joe Biden, The American people at least deserve to have an open forum and an open debate because we're at a critical juncture in our nation's history and in world history where it's incredible.
00:20:36.000It's never been more important to have that open discussion and debate of ideas and visions for the future.
00:20:42.000I am really encouraged by what you say, Crystal, about how populism can advance existing political structures, because I tend, sometimes out of despair, to feel like, oh, there's no point, there's no point, it's so corrupt, it's so broken, the only thing it's worth doing is protest, the only thing it's worth doing is establish alternative systems.
00:21:06.000I see how, as you describe, it could influence existing political structures.
00:21:11.000Were we to be more vocal and aggressive, and I don't mean that obviously in a violent sense, in our protest and opposition and non-compliance to the corruption within these systems.
00:21:20.000And I wanted to ask you... Well, if I could just insert in that, you know, I'm talking a lot about the Democratic Party, but there's a similar process that's playing out in the Republican Party right now.
00:21:29.000I mean, there are some real schisms that have emerged in the Republican Party that are a real, you know, potential source of democracy and reform as well.
00:21:39.000So, you know, I don't see this as a sort of one-sided opportunity to change the tenor of our country or the world or change the landscape.
00:21:48.000But it's not going to come without a fight.
00:21:51.000I mean, the people who have power are not going to just willingly give it up to a group of renegades, whether it's operating within this party system or within a third party.
00:22:02.000political system, you know, as much as Bernie Sanders was shut out in 2016 and again in 2020, he still came a lot closer than a third party is able to come just because of the, you know, fundamental structure of first-past-the-post voting and how this ultimately works.
00:22:18.000So I just think from a pragmatic standpoint, you're likely to have a better shot of success going for hijacking one of the existing political parties than coming from the outside.
00:22:30.000You're quite right that that pressure should be bipartisan.
00:22:32.000I wanted to ask you, do the current TikTok congressional hearings demonstrate the evident and ongoing hypocrisy that exists in American politics, in so much as almost every facet of attack that's being explored, whether it's the surveillance, the data capture, the apparent collaboration with the state, could be levelled at American.
00:22:58.000Social media companies or global social media companies.
00:23:01.000And I want to tie this to the subject we were just discussing, meaningful change within the system or even beyond the system.
00:23:09.000Do you feel that if either the Republican Party or the Democrat Party or an independent
00:23:14.000party stood on a platform that included banning politicians from having a second job, banning
00:23:19.000politicians to trade in stocks and shares full stop or having any dependent child or
00:23:24.000spouse own stocks and shares and making it illegal for either party to receive corporate
00:23:30.000donations, only individual funders and even then in a very regulated way, do you think
00:23:34.000that that, you know, essentially get in money out of politics, ending lobbying, ending congressional
00:23:39.000stock trading, ending the sort of funding of the parties by finance and big business?
00:23:44.000Would all the landscape of American politics so radically that, you know, that it would
00:23:50.000actually bloody well work and be meaningful?
00:23:51.000And what kind of opposition would those kind of ideas face and how would they stop it happening and sort of loophole their way out of it?
00:23:59.000Well, I think it'd be dramatically popular with the American people.
00:24:05.000You know, leaders, congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle were sort of forced to pretend like they cared about banning stock trading in Congress.
00:24:14.000And both Nancy Pelosi, back when she was Speaker, and also Kevin McCarthy, when he was running to be Speaker of the House, pretended like they wanted to take action on this issue because they knew it was so popular and so politically powerful.
00:24:26.000And then now that Kevin McCarthy is actually Speaker of the House, you haven't heard anything about it anymore.
00:24:55.000I think it would absolutely, you know, transform the landscape of American politics because we ask ourselves so many times, why when you have things that are so incredibly popular, you know, things like making sure people have paid sick leave or that union membership is available to people or that people have a living wage?
00:25:13.000I mean, these are massively popular issues.
00:25:18.000And frequently, corruption is a core part of the story.
00:25:22.000And if we go even one level deeper than that, this is really going back to France, this really is the core of the rot of neoliberalism, which says profits and money above all else.
00:25:33.000So of course, if that is your system, and that's the altar that you worship at, then you're going to end up with a system that is rife with corruption.
00:25:43.000So I think that you know, kind of the root of the problem and they'll do
00:25:47.000everything they can to protect the status quo that exists because the people in power, they
00:25:51.000got there because things work well for them the way that they stand right now. It means to me
00:25:56.000that that's an interesting edifice to focus attack on because it exposes the areas in which
00:26:04.000both parties plainly agree and will use rhetoric around it but won't implement legislation around
00:26:11.000it and it exposes that as Chomsky says where both parties agree you have no choice at all and to
00:26:16.000sort of introduce that and popularize those ideas I feel like it'll be a really interesting way
00:26:21.000of radicalizing political debate in a meaningful way. Crystal, thank you so much for
00:26:26.000joining us, thank you for endorsing that soft drink which I think has links to Alzheimer's, I don't
00:27:12.000I think we advanced the debate somewhat, didn't we?
00:27:14.000And we also promoted a deadly soft drink.
00:27:18.000No, I think I mean, I think, you know, all the points about Biden.
00:27:20.000I mean, I wasn't aware of what Crystal was talking about in terms of ways in which the Democrat Party are going about making ensuring that, you know, Biden gets reelected over, for example, someone like Marianne Williamson, who we'll speak to.
00:27:50.000Listen, when I went over to Rumble and met this, I already knew the CEO, Chris Pavlovsky, but like I went over there and sort of there was, you know, I met Donald J. Trump.
00:28:02.000His wife, that little girlfriend, that lady, Kim, off of Fox.
00:28:05.000box who really aggressively attacked me saying I was like a scumbag and a
00:28:10.000stinkhole and a scuzz bucket and then she was an absolute joy to me and like
00:28:15.000just laughed away through all of those things it sort of felt like it didn't
00:28:18.000matter at all to me we had like our photo done me and Chris Pavlovsky over
00:28:22.000by the Rumble logo right and I just as we were taking our photo like he sort of
00:28:28.000intuitively put his hands clasped his hands across his midriff right like or
00:28:32.000lower midriff your torso let's call it and I just went at the moment in that
00:28:37.000moment I went don't cover your genitals like as if I was an expert in body
00:28:40.000language or something like that and like it was the person that took a photo that
00:28:44.000works with us Lauren I think she had a photo a camera on live so it's got the
00:28:49.000audio of it and with you know to celebrate Rumble's recent controversies being banned in France, or at least taking themselves off of the French system.
00:28:59.000Here is me and Chris Pavlovsky, and me advising him to not cover his genitals, which I'd say is an entertaining moment.
00:29:51.000And then sort of the observation that perhaps in Biden, we have the perfect zombie president, a cadaverous undead figure lurching his way forwards into new conflicts in Syria, weaponizing and mobilizing and monetizing the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
00:30:28.000We'll be looking at that in even more depth, if such a thing were possible, in our Here's the News tomorrow.
00:30:32.000And if you sign up to Locals, you'll get my stand-up special Brandemic available As part of your package, or you can buy it for a one-off price of $20, you get access to Stay Connected, me and Gareth's little show, where we're really intimate with one another, and we respond directly to your questions, as well as weekly meditations, and the opportunity to attend live podcast recordings, like the latest one with Graham Hancock.