Stay Free - Russel Brand - Laura Dodsworth (State of Fear)

00:00:00.000 Joining me now is Laura Doddsworth, journalist, photographer and filmmaker, author of A State of Fear, how the UK government weaponised fear during the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:00:09.000 Thanks very much for joining us to talk about this book, A State of Fear, which is a bestselling book, I understand, Laura.

00:00:15.000 It was.

00:00:16.000 It was on the Sunday Times bestseller list for four weeks.

00:00:19.000 Was it favourably reviewed by the mainstream media?

00:00:21.000 That's funny you should ask.

00:00:24.000 Well actually, it's had really great reviews.

00:00:26.000 Before I launch into some of the bad reviews, I shouldn't just start off with doing my own book down, should I?

00:00:30.000 It had great reviews.

00:00:31.000 You know, Lord Sumption called it an important book.

00:00:34.000 It had reviews in Telegraph and the European Journal of Psychotherapy, some great reviews, but the Sunday Times bestseller list didn't actually protect it from one of the worst book reviews known to man in the times.

00:00:50.000 Objectively, one of the worst ever won.

00:00:53.000 Well, maybe I'm not very objective as the author, but it wasn't a great review.

00:00:56.000 Much mention was made of my previous work. 0.76

00:01:00.000 There's one book where I photographed and interviewed 100 women about their vulvas, their vaginas, for an exploration of womanhood. 0.99

00:01:07.000 And you might have read the review and think that in real life, I'm followed around by a chorus of high-kicking vaginas. 1.00

00:01:12.000 I'm never without my vaginas. 1.00

00:01:14.000 It was a very kind of obvious attempt to demean me, to delegitimize my new book. 0.99

00:01:21.000 Mate, look here.

00:01:22.000 We've got a, this is a quote from the advisor on SPIB.

00:01:26.000 Do you know what that is advisor on SPIB?

00:01:28.000 Are we talking about like that nudge unit and all that type of stuff? 0.99

00:01:31.000 I know exactly what this is because this is somebody that I interviewed for my book.

00:01:36.000 SPI-B is the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviors.

00:01:41.000 They're a group of social Scientists, behavioral psychologists, various social scientists, and what they do is give the government advice in times of emergency, such as a pandemic.

00:01:54.000 And I interviewed several of them when I was researching my book, A State of Fear.

00:01:59.000 And this one here broke cover actually to speak to me because he was so concerned about the way the government was using fear and behavioural psychology.

00:02:09.000 I mean, to not to not mince our words, the government used fear to control you in lockdown.

00:02:14.000 That's fascinating.

00:02:15.000 And in a sense, perhaps it's something that we would have anticipated and something that we can appreciate.

00:02:20.000 Sometimes I try to approach the extraordinary events of the last couple of years In good faith, not to the denial of what is evident and plain that there have been regulations, legislations and advantages that have been accrued through that period that appear to point to an agenda, but at least not to lead to conclusions.

00:02:43.000 Perhaps you and I together through the course of our conversation can highlight a case for how the pandemic was a revealing period, how we learned about how power functions, How we learn about how propaganda operates and how we are manipulated, how our behavior is affected by messaging.

00:02:58.000 Starting with this quote, Laura, that we've just referred to, the way we've used fear is dystopian.

00:03:03.000 We have a totalitarian government in respect to propaganda, but all governments engage with propaganda.

00:03:08.000 The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable.

00:03:10.000 It's been like a weird experiment.

00:03:12.000 Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.

00:03:15.000 So there was an explicit intention To use fear, it's interesting to note that in the end, we're dealing with a basic palette of emotion, rage and fear and shame.

00:03:24.000 And even when something feels secular, mechanical and bureaucratic, its resources are quite emotional and deep.

00:03:31.000 And that obviously raises ethical questions.

00:03:33.000 Do you think that there was an ethical breach in the way that this pandemic was handled?

00:03:38.000 Do you think that they understood things that they didn't convey?

00:03:41.000 And do you think that they highlighted aspects of the pandemic, whether that's medically or socially?

00:03:49.000 Wow, there's so much to pick up on there.

00:03:52.000 But I'm going to go back to your first point that you approach this with good faith.

00:03:56.000 And I think that's really important because when I wrote the book, there were a lot of people that just said to me, well, why?

00:04:01.000 Why would the government use fear?

00:04:03.000 As though it had to indicate that there was some evil conspiracy theory or agenda.

00:04:08.000 You know, there may or may not be, but there's a very simple answer to the question.

00:04:14.000 And that is that governments use fear because it encourages compliance.

00:04:18.000 There is a gap between your rational thoughts and your suppressed emotions.

00:04:22.000 And it's that gap that allows governments or any would-be manipulator to control you, to manipulate you, to exert undue influence on you.

00:04:29.000 And fear is the steam in the emotional engine.

00:04:32.000 Fear is the big one.

00:04:34.000 Is it a breach of ethics to use fear?

00:04:36.000 I think this really depends on where you sit personally and ideologically.

00:04:41.000 I would probably put myself right at one end of the spectrum that says you should not use fear to control people.

00:04:47.000 It is unethical.

00:04:49.000 If this was a laboratory experiment, if a psychologist wanted to put their fingers in your brain, reach around and use fear to control you to see what happens, Then they would need to go through an ethics approval procedure.

00:05:03.000 You would sign a consent form.

00:05:05.000 None of us signed consent forms at the beginning of the lockdown, did we?

00:05:09.000 And what's more, at the end of the experiment, they would make sure that you left happy.

00:05:12.000 You know, you would probably watch a rom-com and have a slice of chocolate cake.

00:05:16.000 They wouldn't send you out a gibbering wreck with COVID anxiety syndrome.

00:05:21.000 There was never any end to this.

00:05:24.000 The advisors that I interviewed for A State of Fear, the ones who spoke to me on the record and those who spoke to me anonymously, I asked them all, what is the plan for de-escalating fear?

00:05:36.000 And there was no plan.

00:05:38.000 What really worried me and sent chills down my spine, actually, were a couple of advisors who were not only very content with the use of fear because they thought it was proportionate in a pandemic, Because pandemics are frightening.

00:05:51.000 But they said, well, hang on a minute.

00:05:53.000 Why would we de-escalate fear?

00:05:54.000 We will move from this to the next crisis, which is climate.

00:05:58.000 And I think that, you know, there is a risk here that governments lean on fear and nudge, which is a form of behavioural psychology and propaganda, to shut down debate, legislation, disagreement, in fact, because these covert ways to influence you are successful and they bypass all that kind of procedure.

00:06:16.000 So if you, you know, the The COVID pandemic and the lockdown created what academics have called a window of malleability.

00:06:25.000 Our habits changed and that meant we were ripe for more change.

00:06:30.000 You know, it's a great time then to push the idea of changing habits towards, say, net zero goals.

00:06:37.000 When you say covert, what covert modes were utilised?

00:06:45.000 Do you think that the entire Endeavor is to a degree covert because they were not explicit about their operation.

00:06:54.000 It's obviously incredibly convenient that many of the things that were used to mobilize fear and compliance have subsequently been demonstrably untrue, whether that's the efficacy of the medication.

00:07:08.000 Allegedly!

00:07:11.000 Or the origins of the virus.

00:07:16.000 Allegedly.

00:07:18.000 Or many of the subsequent measures.

00:07:23.000 So what was covert, Laura?

00:07:26.000 I think a lot of it is covert.

00:07:28.000 A pandemic is an emergency.

00:07:33.000 But back in February 2020, World Health Organization documents showed that at that point it was very well understood that COVID risk was stratified according to your age and your clinical status.

00:07:46.000 So the elderly or people with particular comorbidities were more at risk.

00:07:51.000 By March 2020, we locked down and the government's obviously asked this panel spy be a question.

00:07:58.000 Crikey.

00:07:58.000 What are we going to do?

00:07:59.000 We're going to lock down.

00:07:59.000 We're going to mass quarantine the healthy.

00:08:02.000 How are we going to make sure people follow this rule?

00:08:04.000 Because it's unprecedented.

00:08:05.000 I know from talking to these advisors.

00:08:06.000 They were worried about things like You know, the poor old working class chap missing football in the pub, you know, it's kind of classist assumptions going on here.

00:08:14.000 And so Spy B advisors reply with this whole gamut of suggestions.

00:08:18.000 One is that people's sense of personal threat needed to be increased because they were complacent, because they understood the risk to their demographic group.

00:08:28.000 Another way of looking at that is that people understood very well what the risk was.

00:08:33.000 They understood the risk to their age.

00:08:35.000 If I think back to that time my mum started shielding long before they were supposed to.

00:08:39.000 She's in her 70s, she's got terminal lung condition, she's poorly, her and her husband hold themselves up.

00:08:45.000 I on the other hand was trying to finish a big photography project and I thought right okay You know, my work might be thrown off the table for a while.

00:08:53.000 I'm off.

00:08:53.000 I'm taking some hand sanitizer.

00:08:54.000 I'm going to be careful.

00:08:55.000 I'm not going to go into services.

00:08:56.000 You know, we understood our risk.

00:09:00.000 The Spybee advisors never explained how they would only target the complacent or those at risk.

00:09:06.000 No, what happened was the government operationalised a campaign to make everybody frightened.

00:09:11.000 This isn't unheard of in public health problems.

00:09:14.000 If you think back to AIDS in the 1980s, we were told that everybody would know someone that died of AIDS within 10 years.

00:09:21.000 And that didn't happen, you know, that never came to pass.

00:09:23.000 I don't know anyone, luckily, who died of AIDS.

00:09:25.000 So there's a kind of a trend in public health to increase the sense of risk, to democratise the sense of risk, if you like.

00:09:32.000 So, to stop people being complacent, to increase their sense of risk, they did things like ads.

00:09:37.000 You know, nearly a billion pounds was spent across 11 government departments in the UK over three years, most of it on Covid.

00:09:44.000 So many ads, some of them taking quite a horror film aesthetic.

00:09:47.000 They were designed to make you feel that, you know, if your loved one died, it was your fault.

00:09:51.000 You didn't follow the rules.

00:09:52.000 Thank you, Laura.

00:09:53.000 Sorry to interrupt you.

00:09:54.000 Let's have a look at some of those ads.

00:09:57.000 Let's look at the steals first, guys.

00:09:58.000 And in the event where it becomes steals first, when it becomes when in the event that the people have correctly deduced that they are not at risk.

00:10:10.000 Then in order to elicit fear, you have to mislead them.

00:10:16.000 So it's not only covert, it's duplicitous at that point.

00:10:19.000 If people have correctly deduced, oh, I'm not really at risk, so I should go out.

00:10:22.000 In order to make those people afraid, you have to deceive them.

00:10:27.000 Let's have a look at some of these assets.

00:10:29.000 These are obviously assets that are derived from the UK.

00:10:31.000 Why don't you post in the chat some of the assets from your country?

00:10:35.000 They won't regard them as assets, they will.

00:10:37.000 we all regard them as propaganda, quite rightly.

00:10:38.000 So if you're in America or if you're in Canada, why don't you tell us the most egregious examples

00:10:42.000 in your country?

00:10:43.000 Show me what they were using in the US.

00:10:45.000 Show me what they were using all around the world.

00:10:47.000 'Cause that indicates that there was a degree of cohesion and collaboration transcendent of national sovereignty,

00:10:52.000 which one might argue is appropriate during a pandemic, but possibly had more nefarious ends

00:10:58.000 than the preservation of human life.

00:11:00.000 In fact, Laura, one of the things that I continually queried is,

00:11:03.000 This seems at odds with how we organize society in other areas.

00:11:07.000 It doesn't seem to me that, broadly speaking, the way we organise society is, all life is sacred.

00:11:13.000 We must protect everyone.

00:11:14.000 That's why our economic systems, social justice systems, are all reflecting this sanctity of human life.

00:11:20.000 Elsewhere, it looks like elitism, control, opportunity for regulation, opportunity for profit, are the mandates that drive the way the culture functions.

00:11:30.000 So look at these.

00:11:31.000 It's good that you mentioned the horror aspect.

00:11:35.000 I know you did some work, mate, on the red and yellow thing there,

00:11:39.000 like the sort of colors that were used.

00:11:42.000 And we'll break down, like, sort of tell, this one, see, telling the risk isn't real.

00:11:45.000 What's extraordinary here is all of these require us to accept, and we might have to

00:11:52.000 leave YouTube now, guys.

00:11:53.000 We might have to leave YouTube So there's a link in the description join us exclusively on rumble right now because I'm going to say things that still because the who's power still extends to the domain of YouTube where on rumble we can speak freely to convey love not to convey hate to convey unity not yet more division like when you so let's just go we're going to rumble now, um like The vaccines don't prevent transmission and we're not trialled to prevent transmission.

00:12:23.000 And asymptomatic people could not... 96% of asymptomatic people tested did not spread the virus and there was a type of PCR test available as early as March 2020 that could demonstrate that.

00:12:36.000 So any propaganda predicated on that idea was false.

00:12:41.000 Whether they knew it at the time or not can be contested and can't be proved, but it was false.

00:12:47.000 So anything like tell him I always keep a safe distance, irrelevant in most cases.

00:12:51.000 Tell him you never bend the rules, irrelevant in most cases.

00:12:53.000 Tell him the risk isn't real, irrelevant in most cases.

00:12:55.000 What's your view of this propaganda?

00:12:57.000 And we'll spin through some of the stills that we have available, guys.

00:13:00.000 Yeah, well, I mean, You make a really good point.

00:13:03.000 We were told that one in three people didn't know they had it, and that was presented as something that was really scary.

00:13:07.000 Wow, you know, you may come across your grandchild, or your lover, or someone you work with, or your neighbour, and they're a biohazard.

00:13:14.000 They could infect you.

00:13:14.000 They won't know they've got it.

00:13:16.000 Another way of looking at that is, one in three people experience it so mildly, they don't know they've got it.

00:13:21.000 But it was twisted around always to be frightening.

00:13:23.000 I mean, those stills we just looked at, they're really grainy, the eyes are looking at you.

00:13:28.000 It's supposed to make you feel like if you've killed, you know, if someone's died, it's your fault.

00:13:32.000 Don't look at what the government might be doing wrong, which is maybe care homes or lack of PPE or hospitals being built like, you know, cities for infection.

00:13:40.000 No, no, no, no.

00:13:41.000 Don't look at all of that over there.

00:13:43.000 Are you bending the rules?

00:13:44.000 Is it your fault?

00:13:46.000 You're a risk to your neighbor.

00:13:47.000 You're a risk to your loved ones.

00:13:49.000 So it's a responsibilization.

00:13:51.000 You've got those chevrons at the bottom.

00:13:52.000 You pointed out the yellow and the red and the black.

00:13:55.000 You know, what does that remind you of?

00:13:56.000 Well, it reminds you of disaster cordons.

00:13:58.000 Do not cross. 0.99

00:13:58.000 Danger. 0.99

00:13:59.000 But also a wasp.

00:14:00.000 A wasp sting.

00:14:01.000 This could hurt.

00:14:02.000 You know, everything about the visual is designed to create alarm, to hold you back.

00:14:07.000 Is that what you mean by... Sorry to interrupt you again, Laura.

00:14:09.000 Is this what is meant by nudges?

00:14:12.000 That isn't a nudge.

00:14:13.000 What is a nudge?

00:14:14.000 A nudge is a form of behavioural psychology which is supposed to nudge you into a form of behaviour that is better for you.

00:14:22.000 Because luckily, Russell, there are lots of people that know better than you what's good for you.

00:14:25.000 It's what's called choice architecture.

00:14:27.000 It's supposed to encourage you to make a better choice.

00:14:29.000 An example would be if you're in a shop putting fruit at eye level and putting chocolate out of reach.

00:14:35.000 Um, an example of a nudge would not be taxing chocolate and making fruit cheaper.

00:14:41.000 So it's not about mandates.

00:14:42.000 It's not about price.

00:14:44.000 It's about encouraging you to make the so-called best choice.

00:14:47.000 But that's all predicated on somebody knowing what's best for you.

00:14:50.000 It's covert manipulation with the assumption that the person making those nudges has the moral authority that I would require before trusting them with making that choice on my behalf, which I bloody well wouldn't.

00:15:04.000 And so this is just good use of propaganda, good use of semiotics rather than nudging.

00:15:10.000 I'd say so, but I think it is, you know, it's incredibly well staged.

00:15:13.000 Look at that.

00:15:13.000 They did these briefings in Downing Street.

00:15:16.000 They'd be well spaced out.

00:15:17.000 They gave it a kind of a military feel.

00:15:19.000 You've got the chevrons.

00:15:20.000 See, when the messages stay home, the chevrons are red.

00:15:23.000 As soon as it's stay alert, which is you can sort of get back to normal life a little bit.

00:15:26.000 It's green, green for go.

00:15:28.000 They'd have these experts, they'd use very martial language.

00:15:31.000 The whole thing was incredibly well staged.

00:15:34.000 And don't forget it was daily.

00:15:35.000 You know, we were bombarded daily with messages about death.

00:15:40.000 We were always told how many people died but never recovered.

00:15:42.000 We were told how many people were admitted to hospital but never left hospital.

00:15:46.000 And do you remember the COVID dashboard that the UK government ran?

00:15:50.000 It was probably the same in lots of other countries.

00:15:52.000 It showed you all these stats.

00:15:54.000 But it didn't show you other key performance indicators.

00:15:57.000 So you know how many people died, went to hospital, didn't say how many children had dropped off the register at school, or how many people have missed their cancer appointments, or what had happened to mental health stats.

00:16:08.000 The focus was always on these very deathly COVID stats, to the exclusion of everything else.

00:16:13.000 It took over the mind.

00:16:14.000 Laura, what I feel is that a helpful analytic tool with the pandemic and perhaps anything really is to remove the subject and then observe the behavior around it without the biases that the subject induces.

00:16:27.000 And what you can see here is how power functions when it comes to organizing our reality.

00:16:34.000 You highlight this information, you eliminate this information.

00:16:38.000 We had RFK on the show recently.

00:16:40.000 He had a Terrifying array of information to share with us, including that a significant amount of the funding for the vaccine rollout, excuse me, came from the military.

00:16:53.000 But when it came to the response, the military were involved to a sort of like a staggering degree, like that.

00:17:01.000 My first response to this was, oh, really, this is an inadvertent crisis to which authority is responding by capitalizing on it.

00:17:12.000 Like, oh wow, we've got the opportunity to regulate now, we've got the opportunity to shut down the censor, create protest law, introduce surveillance.

00:17:19.000 But it seems like everything that happened was beneficial when it came to centralized state power and was detrimental to individual freedom and the ability to have an open discourse about the various potential Another bit of information, the Cabinet Office spent £586 million in the last three years with a vast majority going on public health awareness campaigns during lockdown.

00:17:42.000 Let's have a look at that bit of propaganda from Scotland and please post your favourite propaganda in the chat.

00:17:49.000 This is what you mentioned earlier using images from horror.

00:17:52.000 Can you talk us through this Laura?

00:17:53.000 Yeah, so the images on the left are from a Scottish health Scottish Government health ad showing how COVID can spread.

00:18:02.000 Of course it's all, well, most loosely a metaphor.

00:18:06.000 COVID is not green slime.

00:18:08.000 It doesn't spread around like this.

00:18:09.000 And I remember when I saw it, I thought, God, this is horrific.

00:18:11.000 It's frightening.

00:18:12.000 If I'd seen this as a kid, I know this would have given me nightmares.

00:18:14.000 I would not want a child to see it.

00:18:16.000 What we have on the right is what it reminded me of when I racked my brains, which is a scene from The Exorcist, which has an age rating of 18.

00:18:23.000 So, you know, they said these ads were to target 18 and above, but there was no way to stop children from seeing it.

00:18:28.000 And what an ad like that has the potential to do is to disrupt intergenerational relationships long term.

00:18:35.000 I think it's really created a lot of suspicion between people.

00:18:38.000 You know, are we safe?

00:18:40.000 Um, what might we what might we give each other?

00:18:42.000 Can we hurt each other?

00:18:43.000 It's really changed how we go about families, but also waiting for cues from the government.

00:18:48.000 You just mentioned authority before.

00:18:50.000 And I think that takes me back to the existential crisis, this whiplash of shock I felt when we when we locked down because before that I'd had this idea that we were free.

00:19:01.000 You know that I had agency that I could choose pretty much what I did in my life and that we were part of a democracy and then an emergency hits and you find out that the most basic of freedoms you took for granted are not real at all.

00:19:16.000 You can be told you can't work.

00:19:18.000 I mean, I'm a freelancer.

00:19:19.000 Lockdown was okay for the laptop middle classes.

00:19:23.000 You know, if you've got a safe job and a nice home and a garden, you might have even quite enjoyed lockdown.

00:19:28.000 In fact, there was an article in the Times this week saying that somebody had lockdown nostalgia.

00:19:32.000 I mean, are you kidding me?

00:19:34.000 Lockdown nostalgia.

00:19:35.000 Lots of people were baking soda bread and forest schooling their kids and it was okay.

00:19:39.000 But for some people, lockdown was a nightmare.

00:19:41.000 They don't have a nice home.

00:19:42.000 They don't have a garden.

00:19:44.000 Maybe people were abused at home.

00:19:46.000 You know, people missed school.

00:19:48.000 You couldn't go and worship.

00:19:49.000 You couldn't date somebody.

00:19:50.000 You couldn't go and see your lover.

00:19:52.000 You couldn't go and see your family.

00:19:54.000 And so these things that we've taken for absolutely granted were gone.

00:19:59.000 Dominic Cummings didn't see his lover.

00:20:03.000 Matt Hancock clearly was breaking lockdown rules.

00:20:06.000 I think I saw him adjust something that could have been a subject for one of your photographs, as a matter of fact. 0.99

00:20:12.000 A hundred of those penises, 'cause some of your portraiture has involved genitalia. 0.97

00:20:17.000 Not yet Matt Hancock's, but it certainly seems like it could be a subject. 0.99

00:20:21.000 There was incredible revelations about the mechanations within government.

00:20:27.000 There were the ongoing parties in our country, in America Gavin Newsom was alleged to have had a gathering.

00:20:34.000 There are enough examples of people wearing masks for photo ops and then removing them.

00:20:39.000 It's pretty plain that big tech profited.

00:20:41.000 It was the biggest wealth transfer in history.

00:20:43.000 And I still think we're unpacking and I sense this intuitively

00:20:46.000 as well as like in more verifiable ways.

00:20:49.000 And let me know in the chat and the comments now.

00:20:51.000 How do you think society and culture more broadly continue to be affected by the events of lockdown?

00:20:57.000 How have your children been affected?

00:21:00.000 Have you known people that have taken their own lives as a result of the psychological impact of being placed on lockdown?

00:21:06.000 What about the fissures that it has put between people from different cultures with different values?

00:21:11.000 It's interesting to note, Laura, that there's a class impact here,

00:21:17.000 and that particular effort was made to manage what you might call in our country working class people in America,

00:21:23.000 blue collar Americans, people that do necessary work.

00:21:26.000 They were temporarily, what do I want to say, deified or at least celebrated before being damned once again when it was convenient to do so.

00:21:34.000 In our country, a lot of key workers and health workers were celebrated primarily through the medium of rainbows and meaningless platitudes.

00:21:41.000 But when it came to paying them more, those pay rises were not offered.

00:21:47.000 34,000 key workers in New York City, of course, lost their jobs because of a refusal to undertake certain medical procedures.

00:21:55.000 So it seems to me that, taken as a whole, this period of time created a world transfer.

00:22:01.000 It created psychological instability.

00:22:03.000 It created opportunities for enormous profit.

00:22:06.000 Created opportunities for surveillance.

00:22:07.000 Created opportunities to introduce protest laws.

00:22:10.000 Let's not forget what happened in Canada.

00:22:12.000 The trucker protest was used as an opportunity.

00:22:16.000 When working people tried to stand up against the use of emergency regulations, you saw

00:22:22.000 what happened.

00:22:23.000 You saw how they were smeared and criticized and condemned, how technology was used to

00:22:27.000 shut down donations.

00:22:29.000 Many egregious steps were taken to shut down our freedom.

00:22:32.000 And to your point, Laura, it shows you actually that freedom is temporal and illusory and

00:22:38.000 takes place within such boundaries that it can scarcely be called freedom at all.

00:22:44.000 I wonder if you have concerns about what the next steps will be?

00:22:47.000 Like when you said a minute ago, all of the measures came down to individuals.

00:22:51.000 You as an individual, you killed granny. 1.00

00:22:53.000 I think we've got a headline there. 0.97

00:22:54.000 That was our former health minister, now reality TV star, Matt Hancock, was offering up that you're killing your granny.

00:23:00.000 Don't know how you could possibly Kill your granny, given some of the revelations that have since come out about the lack of clinical trialing for transmission and that asymptomatic people were scarcely infectious. 0.98

00:23:13.000 But nevertheless, the propaganda has been spread and the damage has been done.

00:23:17.000 I know elsewhere when it comes to matters like climate change, which let me know in the chat where you stand on that, it's normally 15 minute cities, taxes on ordinary people.

00:23:26.000 It's seldom This is why we are going to control corporations in this way.

00:23:31.000 It's interesting that many of the measures suggested amount to ways of controlling and prohibiting the freedoms of individuals.

00:23:39.000 What do you feel like is the next wave and how do you think it will continue to be utilised Laura?

00:23:47.000 You said so much I want to bottle it and drink it very slowly but you know There's plenty more than that came from, mate.

00:23:54.000 I'm sloshing about in this stuff.

00:23:56.000 I feel like I've been sprayed with a champagne bottle.

00:23:58.000 Slow down with that.

00:23:59.000 OK, so hang on.

00:24:00.000 Do you want a kombucha?

00:24:01.000 No, I don't, thank you.

00:24:02.000 I like it, but I'm all right.

00:24:04.000 I'm all right.

00:24:04.000 OK, so it make you burp or something?

00:24:05.000 No, I'm all right.

00:24:06.000 I drank a Diet Coke before I came on.

00:24:07.000 It's a lot less healthy than kombucha, but I'm still battling the burps.

00:24:10.000 Well, I've got to say something about the Matt Hancock thing.

00:24:13.000 Yeah, whatever you want.

00:24:13.000 Because that's evil.

00:24:14.000 I think what he said was nothing less than evil.

00:24:16.000 It's one of the most egregious things that was said. 0.93

00:24:19.000 The idea that a child should feel responsible for their grandparent dying is disgusting.

00:24:23.000 Because a lot of grandparents died.

00:24:25.000 And it wasn't the grandchildren's fault.

00:24:27.000 It's because COVID is particularly dangerous for elderly people.

00:24:31.000 What a terrible thing to say to kids.

00:24:34.000 Just terrible.

00:24:35.000 Just to control them.

00:24:37.000 You're right because actually mate, we're all quite susceptible to propaganda as discerning adults, but children, who knows?

00:24:45.000 And also, I think the contract between us and those that govern us has been irrevocably altered, broken, I might argue. I can never trust centralised

00:24:56.000 authority again in any form.

00:24:58.000 This is why I think judiciary will always be questioned, the media will always be questioned,

00:25:02.000 the results of elections will always be questioned, because we've just seen again and again and again 0.92

00:25:06.000 that there is literally no reason to trust them unless you're absolutely fucking terrified.

00:25:12.000 Unless you're terrified to the point where you're like, oh... 0.82

00:25:14.000 Oh god.

00:25:14.000 Just look after me daddy.

00:25:15.000 You know, there's no point in Lots of people are like that.

00:25:19.000 But I mean if you look at us right you've got your kombucha.

00:25:20.000 I've got some bottled water We're in a very lovely studio in a beautiful part of the country.

00:25:25.000 Things are okay.

00:25:26.000 We're not on sale Yeah.

00:25:29.000 And and yeah, we are in this really strange time of an unveiling where we're understanding a lot about what goes on around us.

00:25:36.000 And for me, this has been nothing short of an existential crisis.

00:25:40.000 You know, it really hit me that March 2020.

00:25:43.000 And so when you say, well, what's next?

00:25:45.000 Well, what's next is the story of humanity.

00:25:48.000 It always has been.

00:25:48.000 It always will be the same.

00:25:51.000 People can be manipulated You know, in our time, in our time and who'd have thought that we'd see it?

00:25:56.000 We've seen the mass evocation of fear and propaganda to gain compliance for something which nearly all of us were not at risk from.

00:26:05.000 I'm not saying COVID wasn't a serious disease for some people, but I think we've only just swerved terrible times and we see what can happen.

00:26:14.000 You know, you talked about the vaccine before.

00:26:16.000 There were people that were told no jab, no job.

00:26:18.000 They lost their jobs if they didn't want to be vaccinated.

00:26:20.000 And there are many reasons an individual might not want to be vaccinated.

00:26:24.000 You know, there are still countries, I think the US has only just lifted its its ban on federal like federal workers were sacked if they weren't vaccinated and you couldn't visit the country unless you were vaccinated.

00:26:36.000 They've only just lifted that.

00:26:38.000 Think about Canada, like you said, you know, the truckers who don't want to be vaccinated.

00:26:42.000 They had their accounts frozen and people who supported the GoFundMe had their accounts frozen.

00:26:47.000 So we've seen how unvaccinated people can become a minority, which is scapegoated and harmed.

00:26:57.000 And that was deliberately leveraged as well.

00:26:59.000 You know, you had the Covid hero versus the Covidia.

00:27:03.000 And how can that be done?

00:27:04.000 Well, That's done because once upon a time the enemy was a country that would drop a bomb on you from another country, right?

00:27:11.000 A red button over there in some snowy country.

00:27:15.000 Then the enemy was somebody who might strap bombs to their chest, a terrorist.

00:27:19.000 But in the case of a virus, you know, we're all the enemy, we're biohazards.

00:27:23.000 There was a doctor on TV, Dr Sarah Jarvis, in 2021 who said breathing is an offensive weapon.

00:27:30.000 I was scouring the newspapers at the time for examples of this.

00:27:34.000 There was an Israeli newspaper that called ultra-Orthodox Jews who were breaking the rules, Covid insurgents and bioterrorists.

00:27:43.000 You know, the language that was used to describe human beings for breathing, for moving about or choosing not to accept a medical intervention was stunning.

00:27:53.000 It was extraordinary to watch how they managed their previous demonization of ordinary people by using perhaps and having not yet caught up with some of the lexical changes that have taken place in recent years to and to recognizing oh no we're condemning people now like of course notably in the United States of America there had to be a great deal of work done In communities of color, because there's a natural, what do you know, suspicion of centralized authority.

00:28:25.000 And it was interesting to watch that.

00:28:27.000 There's some other comments in our locals chat.

00:28:30.000 If you're not a member of our locals community yet, press the red button on your screen.

00:28:33.000 Join us on locals, like Seabuck77 who says, in my experience, our local blue collar community refused to wear masks and was skeptical of this whole thing.

00:28:41.000 The middle class went along until it split.

00:28:42.000 Half have woken up, And the woke far left white collar are the ones we see driving around wearing masks in their car.

00:28:48.000 Now certainly it became politicized even prior to the sort of condemnation around Trump.

00:28:54.000 I remember initially Joe Biden being like, openly we can pull up the clip if we want to, Joe Biden saying that he wouldn't take a vaccine until it was verified.

00:29:03.000 And of course people say that they didn't participate in the politicization of the medications or the responses.

00:29:08.000 It was the other side's fault that that happened. 0.97

00:29:11.000 But that's the kind of sort of tribalized chit-chat that don't Get us nowhere.

00:29:15.000 It seems to me that it was a great opportunity to control, to demonize, to divide, to censor, to smear.

00:29:23.000 Like the Twitter file revelations about true information that was shut down and controlled.

00:29:29.000 The number of highly credible scientists whose contributions to the conversation was shut down, smeared, because it didn't go along with this information.

00:29:40.000 It seems in retrospect, correctly, many people were smeared as being anti-vax.

00:29:44.000 By the way, they changed the meaning of the word anti-vax in the dictionary during that period.

00:29:48.000 So again, as I say, the subject itself is of limited interest

00:29:53.000 because we live in a fast-moving time defined by an ever-shifting news cycle.

00:29:59.000 But the behavior that it revealed is fascinating.

00:30:02.000 We can see how powerful interests will collaborate.

00:30:05.000 We can see how apparently innocuous, free, global organizations like the WHO are able to assert

00:30:11.000 and continue to assert incredible control over the way that information is promulgated.

00:30:18.000 And many of that ain't been rolled back yet.

00:30:21.000 Can I ask you, please, Laura, about forthcoming potential ways

00:30:25.000 to terrify and control the population?

00:30:28.000 I feel like-- what's this Time magazine?

00:30:30.000 WHO, "This emergency's over, get ready for the next one."

00:30:34.000 New pandemics are always being rehearsed all over the gaff.

00:30:38.000 They're always spending money doing sort of like weird games

00:30:41.000 to prepare for new pandemics.

00:30:44.000 Some of the anomalies I'd like to point out is when you have the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

00:30:49.000 significantly donating to the WHO, I think behind only the nation of Germany

00:30:54.000 in their level of donations, I would prefer that elsewhere,

00:30:57.000 that organization hadn't invested heavily in vaccines.

00:31:00.000 Now, you might say, well, that's a cohesive response.

00:31:02.000 They believe in this type of regulation and this type of medical response.

00:31:05.000 But when it is profitable and when it affords that degree of influence, it seems to me like there's a great opportunity for democracy.

00:31:12.000 It seems that what we're being offered in lieu of democracy now is limited debate within tiny tiny cubes of discourse while a centralised authority continues to assert its agenda.

00:31:27.000 What do you reckon is going to happen mate with like forthcoming pandemics and forthcoming like climate change type stuff?

00:31:33.000 Well you know sometimes I tune out of the specifics because the thing is the principles are always the same.

00:31:40.000 What people won't want to hear, but it's the truth, is that your brain is a battlefield.

00:31:45.000 And it's not just the terrain, it's the target.

00:31:47.000 You are the target.

00:31:49.000 It's governments, it's corporations, would-be manipulators, they all want to influence you.

00:31:53.000 You know, you're subjected to millions of pieces of information every day, and your brain's basically got bouncers on the door.

00:31:59.000 It lets some information in and others, so they're competing the whole time for your attention.

00:32:04.000 and they will compete using emotion. Sometimes it's hope.

00:32:08.000 Do you remember the Obama posters, just his face with hope underneath? Quite often it's fear.

00:32:13.000 You know, like I said before, fear is the steam in the engine. So avian flu, monkey pox, climate,

00:32:20.000 blah, blah, blah.

00:32:22.000 They're all the same.

00:32:23.000 They're using the same techniques to grab you.

00:32:26.000 Think about climate.

00:32:27.000 I mean, here's a few examples.

00:32:29.000 Whatever you think of climate change and whether it's man-made or not, and what the response is, do you know how they're trying to influence you and manipulate you?

00:32:38.000 You know, scriptwriters for films and series, they're invited to workshops For instance, there was a workshop for scriptwriters about how to increase vaccination uptake.

00:32:50.000 No way.

00:32:50.000 Did that really happen?

00:32:51.000 I mean, I know people talked about it because on soap operas in the UK, and let us know if this happened in your country, there was just sort of like casual bits of chat about, have you had your booster shot yet?

00:33:00.000 I ain't getting a booster shot.

00:33:01.000 There's no proof that it works.

00:33:03.000 That's a conspiracy theorist.

00:33:04.000 That literally was a scene from EastEnders.

00:33:07.000 Russell, 100%.

00:33:08.000 And it's not new.

00:33:10.000 This kind of thing's been going on for decades.

00:33:11.000 It's the history of the BBC and governments have had hotlines to soap opera managers and broadcasters forever.

00:33:18.000 I think what's different is how out in the open it is.

00:33:20.000 Now I've got documentation about the scriptwriters being invited to talk about vaccination uptake.

00:33:25.000 And there was a scriptwriter who spoke to me anonymously, again, so he doesn't destroy his Hollywood career, for my new book, Free Your Mind, because the stories are just fascinating.

00:33:34.000 You know, when you watch your soap opera for a bit of light entertainment in the evening, well, I bet you don't, I don't, but millions of people do, you know, switch off, enjoy it, fine, but be mindful.

00:33:44.000 They are constantly trying to socially engineer you.

00:33:47.000 There's a big, big soap opera here in the UK.

00:33:49.000 They had Just the kind of cheesy vaccination scene you're talking about.

00:33:53.000 Is that Corrie?

00:33:54.000 The other one?

00:33:55.000 Coronation Street?

00:33:56.000 Coronation Street's another one.

00:33:57.000 I was on my EastEnders though.

00:33:58.000 So, you know, they had one.

00:33:59.000 There was a couple of ethnic minority characters talking quite virtuously about how they'd had their vaccine.

00:34:04.000 And then a white woman comes onto the scene, ironically called Karen, and she hasn't had it and they call her one of them anti-vaxxers and make fun of her because she's buying cigarettes but she won't get the vaccine.

00:34:14.000 There's loads of that.

00:34:15.000 And when you watch it, it actually feels quite artificial.

00:34:18.000 But in COP26, All of the UK soap opera storylines converged.

00:34:24.000 They crossed over.

00:34:25.000 They mentioned each other.

00:34:27.000 This does not happen without coordination.

00:34:28.000 It was all deliberately to nudge people into being more worried about climate change.

00:34:34.000 And the reason for that is to soften people up for net zero goals.

00:34:37.000 It's a very contentious political policy, which involves a lot of hair shirts.

00:34:41.000 And by the time you get to wear the hair shirt, you'll be glad of it because you'd be cold.

00:34:44.000 You won't be able to afford your heating anymore.

00:34:46.000 The closing credits of EastEnders, this iconic British soap opera, on one episode showed London if sea levels rise by two meters.

00:34:57.000 Now, even the IPCC does not say this is a plausible scenario.

00:35:03.000 But the point about using a graphic, you know, we're not in an observable climate crisis in London.

00:35:09.000 We're not wading through water.

00:35:10.000 We're wading through woke, but we're not wading through water.

00:35:13.000 The point of the graphic is to trick you into thinking that this climate crisis is there on your doorstep.

00:35:20.000 One day you might walk out on the cities underwater.

00:35:22.000 Although the Netherlands have managed to hold back rising sea levels with medieval technology, and we've got Thames barriers, you know, it's to frighten you.

00:35:31.000 Think about insects.

00:35:32.000 You know, there's no great clamour among the world's people to eat more insects.

00:35:36.000 You know, we're not all going, oh yes, give me mealworms and crickets.

00:35:40.000 But have you seen how many programs are talking about using insects, like in cookery programs or celebrities eating insects from Angelina Jolie barbecuing tarantulas, which was truly horrific to Robert Downey Jr.

00:35:54.000 talking about a protein drink that's made from insects.

00:35:56.000 You know, there is some kind of technocratic public policy do-gooders, academics and politicians that really want you to eat insects.

00:36:05.000 So you'll see it everywhere in the media.

00:36:07.000 Many of these have been regarded as and dubbed right-wing talking points.

00:36:13.000 Let me know in the chat and the comments if you're aware of that.

00:36:17.000 And let me know also how you identify in terms of your political persuasion.

00:36:21.000 My personal belief, of course, is that neither right-wing nor left-wing party organizations

00:36:26.000 are going to deliver to you the individual freedom that you will come to require.

00:36:31.000 I'd love to have a look at that.

00:36:32.000 If you can find that EastEnders scene of the vaccines, that would be fantastic if you can 1.00

00:36:37.000 pull that up and queue it up, have a little look at it before we play it out.

00:36:40.000 That would be fantastic.

00:36:41.000 When you said earlier about the brain, or perhaps more obtusely, but maybe more accurately

00:36:48.000 is difficult to say.

00:36:50.000 Consciousness being the battlefield of our current war of information,

00:36:55.000 having moved from the wars against nations, the Cold War already becoming an abstraction,

00:37:01.000 to the war against terror, to the war against germs, now the war against ideas and the war against consciousness

00:37:06.000 itself.

00:37:07.000 It seems to me that it is necessary that we undertake a kind of individual spiritual awakening,

00:37:13.000 where we take personal responsibility for our consciousness, where we become aware of when we are responding to fear

00:37:20.000 and when we are responding to desire.

00:37:22.000 This is something, of course, I know a good deal about as a recovering alcoholic and drug addict.

00:37:28.000 I'm well aware of the role of compulsion and the role of stimulation in organising my behaviour.

00:37:34.000 Similarly, though, and blessedly, I'm aware that none of the issues that I seek to resolve

00:37:41.000 externally through material means can ever be resolved in that

00:37:45.000 direction that without a spiritual awakening, without a willingness...

00:37:49.000 to surrender the inner domain to a greater power, I am doomed to be subject to the stimulations,

00:37:57.000 the coordinated stimulations it seems, that are externally being operated upon us.

00:38:03.000 Now me, I feel like that the climate change conversation for me is bypassed by reverence and love

00:38:11.000 for the environment that I evolved in harmony with.

00:38:14.000 That I can see that we ought to behave respectfully towards our planet and that regulation and control when it comes to the protection and love of our planet and the species that we share it with should target first and foremost the most powerful corporate entities that currently enjoy significant subsidies from us.

00:38:33.000 Wealth transfer and redistribution of wealth are already taking place.

00:38:36.000 It's just in the upward direction.

00:38:39.000 Stay free with Russell Brand.

00:38:41.000 See it first on Rumble.

00:38:42.000 Now, as Laura was saying earlier, it's individual freedom that is the issue.

00:38:48.000 Forget for a moment what your views are on medication.

00:38:51.000 I reckon I'm intelligent enough to recognise that people have a variety of personal conditions, some that might warrant an enthusiastic response to a pharmaceutical intervention.

00:39:02.000 And others that may be more cynical and skeptical.

00:39:05.000 And this is not a reason to be cynical or let alone hateful to other people.

00:39:10.000 Let me know in the chat and the comments.

00:39:11.000 One of the things that offended me most was the way we were invited to be condemnatory, judgmental, and hateful to one another.

00:39:17.000 And it was encouraged.

00:39:19.000 You can see that even with a couple of years of hindsight, that screams propaganda.

00:39:24.000 There's no way that that would sort of automatically unfurl.

00:39:27.000 And from the keyboard of a staff writer over there, No, it's painfully artificial.

00:39:36.000 It's embarrassing.

00:39:37.000 And you wonder why the ratings are going down for soap operas.

00:39:41.000 It's because they're shameless propagandists for government public health messaging.

00:39:46.000 And in fact, there was a report that came out, I think last year, from the government's nudge unit.

00:39:52.000 And Sky, the broadcaster, and it's called The Power of TV.

00:39:55.000 And it's about nudging people towards net zero.

00:39:57.000 And this is what I mean about it being more in the open.

00:40:01.000 They talk about using the whole gamut of programming from news, which you'd like to think is impartial,

00:40:06.000 to children's programming and cookery, travel, documentaries, product placement, everything in between,

00:40:12.000 in order to make people compliant for net zero policies.

00:40:16.000 It's quite astonishing that it's just out there in the open.

00:40:19.000 And they talk about the historical use of TV for social engineering.

00:40:23.000 So I would never tell people to turn off the TV, although there is a chapter of my new book with that title.

00:40:30.000 But if you don't want to turn off the TV, you have to watch it mindfully.

00:40:34.000 You have to understand that it's not a one-way process.

00:40:38.000 They're trying to influence you as much as entertain you.

00:40:42.000 And actually, you know, you were asking before what the dangers coming up are.

00:40:46.000 I think people don't understand what a pivotal time we're at with artificial intelligence.

00:40:52.000 So, at the moment there's a lot of buzz about generative AI, so ChatGPT, BARD, these really fun tools where you can ask it to write you some copy, ask you to write it some text, use it for research.

00:41:08.000 That has the potential not only to be used to generate copy, but to manipulate you and nudge you.

00:41:15.000 And I think people don't realize how far we're already in that world.

00:41:19.000 I'll give you one example.

00:41:21.000 Anti-knife crime ads.

00:41:22.000 Now this sounds like, hello doggy, this sounds like a really worthy, it sounds like a really

00:41:27.000 worthy idea that you want to reduce knife crime.

00:41:33.000 But what's happened is the UK government has identified the sort of people that might be

00:41:39.000 at risk of being perpetrators and gets ad served to them online.

00:41:44.000 So let's say young people that like drill they've been identified as potential knife crime perpetrators.

00:41:49.000 So they search for drill and they get they get anti knife crime ads.

00:41:53.000 Now this sounds great but what if that person was never going to pick up a knife was never going to commit a knife crime.

00:41:59.000 They're being followed around the Internet by knife crime ads.

00:42:03.000 The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

00:42:06.000 And for all we know, people are getting the idea about knife crime that they never would have had.

00:42:10.000 If I search for knives, I'm probably going to get some really cool Swiss Army knife ads.

00:42:14.000 You know, I'm going to really enjoy it.

00:42:15.000 I'm going to go on some great websites.

00:42:17.000 But somebody who's... You're not a fan of drill.

00:42:20.000 No, but I do listen to quite a lot of cool music thanks to my sons, but not Drill.

00:42:25.000 But you know, if I was in a city, black, listen to Drill, I'm going to get totally different search results to me.

00:42:30.000 We're in that world now.

00:42:31.000 We're already in that.

00:42:33.000 And what that is reminiscent of is the kind of futuristic surveillance society, you know, that pre-crime, thought-crime territory of films like Minority Report.

00:42:42.000 We're already there.

00:42:43.000 You add in nudge, behavioural psychology, with Artificial intelligence and algorithms.

00:42:50.000 And people don't understand what kind of personalized, manipulated digital environment they will be in.

00:42:55.000 You and I will be in different digital environments.

00:42:58.000 Like I say, that inner city black youth will be in a completely different digital environment again. 1.00

00:43:02.000 It may all be with worthy, public, you know, worthy goals on behalf of politicians.

00:43:09.000 But we don't know yet how that's going to work out.

00:43:11.000 And it's quite insidious because people aren't aware of it.

00:43:13.000 This is why I'm inclined to agree with Vandana Shiva.

00:43:15.000 This is why I'm inclined to agree with Vandana Shiva.

00:43:19.000 Regular guest on this show.

00:43:21.000 Star of Community 2023.

00:43:23.000 There's a link in the description if you want to join us there.

00:43:26.000 July the 14th to July the 17th.

00:43:28.000 We must re-sacralise our planet.

00:43:30.000 I'll plan it.

00:43:31.000 We've only got one, I think, at the moment.

00:43:32.000 Re-sacralise it though.

00:43:33.000 Re-sacralise our relationships.

00:43:35.000 Have an individual relationship with your own consciousness and also pay attention to how you interrelate to the divine.

00:43:44.000 Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking with me today.

00:43:48.000 Laura's new book is available to pre-order now, Free Your Mind, The New World of Manipulation and How to Resist It.

00:43:52.000 There's a link in the description to learn about it now if it's not out yet.

00:43:56.000 Is it out?

00:43:56.000 Is that in July?

00:43:58.000 We'll put a preview link out.

00:44:01.000 Laura, thanks so much for joining me.

00:44:02.000 Thank you.

00:44:02.000 Thanks for having me.

00:44:03.000 Well done.

00:44:04.000 We're not here next week, so we'll post some of our... We're not here next week, but we'll post some of our best guest interviews every single day.

00:44:10.000 Join us next time, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

00:44:13.000 Until then, ta-ta. 0.70

Stay Free - Russel Brand - May 26, 2023

Laura Dodsworth (State of Fear)

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