Rumble s CEO Chris Pavlovsky joins me in Sarasota, Florida to talk about freedom of speech and why it is so important to him and the company. We talk about how important it is to have a free and open internet, and why we should all be fighting to keep it that way. And we talk about why the First Amendment is a necessity for the future of the internet and why the government should not be able to control it. This episode is sponsored by Rumble, a platform that allows users to access the entire world's largest free speech network through a single click. To find a list of Rumble's sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to Rumble.fm/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code AWAKeningWonders at checkout to receive 10% off your first month with discount code: AWAKENINGWORD at checkout. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe to our new podcast You Wanna Help? Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices? Become a supporter of the podcast: bit.ly/support-and-support-freebie/awakeningwonderings Subscribe & Review this podcast! Learn more at my new podcast, Awakening Wonders. The Best Podcast Episodes are now available in Kindle, iBook, Paperback, Hardcover, and Hardcover. Use the Reviewed Books, and Paperback Books, including the Hardcover edition of The Audible Audio Book of the Audible, and Audio Book, and so you can help spread the word about the podcast. All Audible Books of the Podcasts of The Awakened Wonders Podcasts and more! You can get a copy of the Awakenings Wonders Subscribe and Share the podcast on all of the best new episodes of Awakenmentions? You'll get a chance to receive 20% off the book recommendations and more by searching for the podcast, and more personalized versions of the book, The Awakening Wonders by The Awakening Wondervest Podcasts Podcasts and much more! Subscribe to my newsletter, I'm listening to my book, The AwakeningWonderings Podcasts, I'll be spreading the word of the AwakeningWays at my newsletter? and so much more. I hope you enjoy the podcasting experience, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you!
00:00:02.000Thanks for joining me live on Rumble from Rumble.
00:00:07.000I'm in Sarasota right now at Rumble's headquarters talking to the CEO of Rumble, a man to whom I have a lot to be grateful for, Chris Pavlovsky.
00:00:17.000Chris, congratulations on your new premises.
00:00:20.000Glad to have you here in Sarasota, Longboat Key.
00:00:24.000And yes, I understand that it is a key, because it's a bridge between islands.
00:00:27.000A lot of people don't appreciate the complexity of what constitutes a key, and given that Rumble is a platform that's determined by, defined by, and who has, as its raison d'etre, freedom of speech, how do you feel today?
00:00:40.000This must be the sort of realisation, I suppose, of a long-held and long-cherished dream.
00:01:06.000So we'll be taking the internet from over here now.
00:01:11.000It's pretty interesting, because you did that thing where it's the freest country, freest state, it's that we're at the beating heart of freedom.
00:01:26.000And we're dropping the pole here and taking the battle from here now.
00:01:30.000We were in Canada for quite some time, but now we're here.
00:01:33.000Yeah, you have to ultimately cross the border, I think, in pursuit of freedom.
00:01:37.000Hey, like a minute ago when we were looking at Rumble's mission statement, you pointed out that the final sentence, join us, we are on a mission to protect a free and open internet, that a little while ago that was presumed to be the natural, if you can use such a word for an obviously constructed entity, the natural state of the internet.
00:01:59.000The rhetoric around freedom of speech has altered.
00:02:02.000Rumble had some success last week in a legal case.
00:02:07.000And can you tell us what you mean by freedom of speech?
00:02:10.000Because it seems increasingly these days that there's a connotation to freedom of speech where a lot of people are arguing, and I'm certainly not taking up this view, that freedom of speech is somehow equated with a particular type of politics, specifically right-wing politics.
00:02:25.000Yeah, it's, you know, the Internet, when the Internet came alive and all these social platforms came alive, you had every major CEO out there preaching the free and open Internet.
00:02:47.000And, you know, that's just been changing.
00:02:49.000And it's changed really rapidly in the last, I would say, five years to a point where, like, I didn't think I was going to be here defending freedom of expression, free speech.
00:02:59.000That just seemed like a natural thing.
00:03:00.000As a Canadian, you grew up in the schoolyards, you know, yelling and saying all kinds of things and saying, it's a free country, you can say whatever you want.
00:03:08.000I think that was probably the same in a lot of places in the world.
00:03:11.000But that's changed, and I don't quite understand why.
00:03:14.000It wasn't like the idea of Rumble that we would be defending the entire country for freedom of expression, but it's a necessity now.
00:03:54.000In a sense, once that you suggest that freedom of expression has to be or can be curated, regulated or controlled, implicit within that, of course, is that there is some regulatory authority that's in a position to make those judgments.
00:04:07.000As soon as you posit there's people that are able to regulate and control, you start to enter into a peculiarly equivocal space.
00:04:23.000You immediately lean into a kind of technocracy which means a governance by a cadre of experts.
00:04:29.000That means there's a certain set of people who know what should be said and what can be said and what has to be censored and in the end they determine what is free speech and what isn't free speech and what is truth.
00:04:41.000Increasingly we're seeing sort of Kafka-esque and Orwellian terms enter the public discourse around controlling freedom of speech just to be ultimately I'm starting to think that I'm somewhere between a libertarian anarchist, is where I'm starting to find myself.
00:04:58.000I believe in everybody's right to freely be who they are, to express themselves however they want to.
00:05:04.000I find myself astonished at some of the alliances I'm forming politically, as a matter of fact, because I resolutely believe in individual and collective freedom.
00:05:13.000Of course that means the freedom to identify however you want to, worship however you want to, to have a progressive identity.
00:05:19.000And is everybody welcome on Rumble, even within that itinerary?
00:05:43.000You were just talking about governments infringing on this right to free speech.
00:05:47.000The New York Attorney General imposed a law in New York, which we ended up challenging and we successfully won an injunction against this law.
00:05:59.000This law is now dead because of Rumble's position against this law in the state of New York.
00:06:06.000And these are the type of infringements by governments that we just can't allow to happen.
00:06:10.000And one of the things I've learned in the last couple of years is that that fight needs to be, it needs to be here.
00:06:43.000Can you unpack that story a little bit for us, Chris?
00:06:45.000So yeah, the EU, well particularly France, it hasn't been the EU per se, it's just been France.
00:06:54.000France came to us, they sent us a letter, they said, we are going to turn you off at the telco level.
00:07:00.000And obviously we have a cloud that we're building, the Rumble cloud.
00:07:04.000We have partners on that cloud like Truth Social, like Tim Pool.
00:07:09.000We had to make the decision like we can't be cut off at the telco level in France, otherwise there's going to be a lot of collateral damages with our partners.
00:07:16.000So we made the decision to just turn off France entirely ourselves and make sure that our partners like Tim Pool are not affected by it.
00:07:25.000And typically I'd just let them turn us off, but because of those partners, we made the decision to turn off France and tell them to go pound sand.
00:07:34.000We're not going to get dictated by whether it's China or whether it's France or whether it's North Korea.
00:07:50.000Am I right in thinking that the complexity or the conflagration at least began with your refusal to take down Russia Today content, which I understand has been censored on YouTube.
00:08:03.000We speak pretty regularly to Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who broadcasts a lot from Russia Today and reminded, when he came on our show, Stay Free, which of course is available exclusively on Rumble.
00:08:16.000Remind us that that included interviews with such hard right fascist dissidents as Edward Snowden and Slavoj Žižek, the literal Marxist critic and philosopher.
00:08:31.000So, you know, censorship of that degree is the beginning of a form of totalitarianism.
00:08:38.000It seems to me, Chris, that as the information age gathers pace, it's irresistible for centralised... the centralised authority cannot resist the urge to impose more authority, more censorship, more control, because the means of communication is becoming so immediate, so immersive, that Without authority, without the ability to censor, to smear dissenters, you are going to get, by default, a kind of liberty, an open conversation that they don't seem to be willing to have.
00:09:30.000I thought we learned this lesson many times.
00:09:32.000I feel the same thing about the war in a sense.
00:09:34.000I feel like there are so many markers of evident progress, technology, medicine, there are so many ways where you can see that there's been incredible progress, but the fact that there is a war in Europe, the fact that there are fundamental philosophical debates taking place, Suggest, in addition to the progress, a kind of atrophy, simultaneously, that there are some areas where there's clear progress, but others where there is decline.
00:09:58.000And I feel that when you have this, you know, let's face it, it seems that because of the way that commerce has changed, the way that information has changed and technology has changed, there is a movement towards globalism.
00:10:07.000I think many of us felt that 30, 40 years ago when high streets started to change, When favourable tax arrangements were made for international brands, we started to feel the erosion of community.
00:10:20.000And now we've reached the point where centralised authority, through organisations like the WHO, can introduce regulation that will affect us democratically.
00:10:28.000You'll look at the new pandemic treaty that they're proposing.
00:10:32.000The IMF, through leveraging loans, are able to dictate the post-war policy of a country like Ukraine in the way that they did with various other countries that they've made loans to.
00:10:42.000Globalization, in the form of these unelected organizations, is a threat to national democracy, is a threat to individual freedom.
00:10:49.000So, however you might read about or learn about what Rumble is doing and what Rumble represents, you have to recognize that the people speaking against it have a very particular set of interests.
00:11:22.000We're going to have to give up our phones.
00:11:24.000If we'd have listened to our own guest, we'd have literally had to have shut down the show that we were making there and then, which I thought was counterproductive, ultimately.
00:11:32.000But what we're trying to use our show for is a living demonstration that all of these views can harmonise together.
00:11:39.000If you're willing to respect other people's individual freedom, collective freedom, right to run their own communities, then you ought yourself be afforded that right.
00:11:48.000I just have noticed the change in morality and public discourse lately where people's spirituality appears to be about not their own conduct and their own standards that they're going to hold themselves to, but what they want other people to do, how they want other people to live.
00:12:11.000While people, you know, we've all got our connection to the divine, there's a saying, God has no grandchildren, that all of us have our own connection to the limitless, and all of us have enough spiritual work to do for ourselves, and that's one of the things.
00:12:23.000Does this interest you, you know, like on Stay Free?
00:12:25.000I don't know if you're concentrating when you're watching it, Chris, but we're trying very much to seed spiritual ideas, because I believe that that's a way that people can connect with one another.
00:12:35.000When I'm talking to someone like Ben Shapiro or Tucker Carlson, people who I assume I'm at odds with in a lot of ways politically, I know that I probably share spiritual faith with them, so I use that as a way of connecting, recognising that in the end we've got a set of values, in the end we're governed or guided by love.
00:12:54.000What are your personal views on spirituality and the significance of spirituality in the political space?
00:13:03.000No, I never really thought about it too deeply.
00:14:33.000You know, we're all, we all, we are all looking for the most positive thing for us and for our families and for the world and we can all connect on that, on that wavelength, that's for sure.
00:15:20.000If you want to come and see me on the 2nd in Los Angeles, I'll be at the Vermont Theatre and I'll be here in Florida, in Tampa specifically, on the 6th.
00:15:28.000There should be a link in the chat now, so you can click on that and get tickets if you want to come.
00:15:39.000Yeah, I'm expecting to see a little rumble crew, perhaps still dressed in green, taking up a little row in that Clearwater Theatre that I'm performing at.
00:15:55.000That is the integrity that we're witnessing with Chris.
00:15:57.000It would be much easier to say, of course, I'll absolutely be there, then deal with the problem later.
00:16:00.000You could just send a text, I'm not able to do that, found out I'm busy.
00:16:03.000But Chris believes in free speech, integrity and authenticity so much that he would rather have an awkward moment where he appears to, on air, refuse a polite invitation from a visiting Englishman who's made a long, arduous trip to Florida.
00:16:17.000Difficult, challenging times, but, you know, I respect your integrity.
00:16:34.000I want to read out some more comments before we, in a minute, we're going to the rumble, what are we calling it, the launch party for this building?
00:16:41.000Yeah, it's the launch of our headquarters in Longboat Key in Sarasota and Florida in America.
00:16:50.000The shovel's been, I guess this place is done now.
00:16:58.000If you're a member of our locals community, like I mean my one, we're going to stream straight after this conversation with Chris.
00:17:04.000I'm going to walk around, show you little things that are going on at the party, show you some of the people I've met here.
00:17:09.000Michael, the lawyer, there's all sorts of interesting characters who I'm dying to get in their face and ask them some pretty probing questions about their religious lives.
00:18:12.000We're for the people with something to say and something to share, who believe in authentic expression and want to control the value of their own creations.
00:18:20.000We create technologies that are immune to cancel culture.
00:18:23.000Because everyone benefits when we have access to more ideas, diverse opinions.
00:18:54.000Like you were just saying then, rather sweetly, when I pressured you to start telling us all your private business about religion, that you fundamentally believe that people are good.
00:19:02.000And if you have that belief, like, people are good, that means we'll get somewhere.
00:19:06.000I had a great conversation once with Brene Brown.
00:19:08.000You can see it, hopefully you can see that chat on Rumble.
00:19:35.000And certainly when I find myself in alignment with that, I feel better.
00:19:37.000And if you believe in that, if you believe in humans, then you've got to believe in the right for other people to say stuff you disagree with.
00:19:47.000It's not easy sometimes, like as you can see with other platforms, they can't handle it.
00:19:54.000You know, it's something that's changed a lot in the last five years and, you know, there's tons of stuff I disagree with on Rumble.
00:20:02.000Tons of stuff I agree with and, like, it's funny because, like, you get the... we were just talking about how, like, the Washington Post would write an article about Rumble and say it's full of misinformation.
00:20:13.000There's creators on Rumble that are saying the COVID vaccine is not durable.
00:20:18.000And then you have to take two, three, four, five.
00:20:47.000That's a homogenising and banalising influence.
00:20:51.000I don't think that anyone believes that a more empowered and authoritative state, or if particularly not a corporatised state, like, you know, if I may say, as a visitor in your country, the United States, appears to be reaching its zenith and its pinnacle in American corporatist politics, where it's a kind of front for a globalist and financially led agenda.
00:21:16.000No longer represents the right for ordinary people to be free and have a variety of beliefs and faith.
00:21:21.000You know, the thing that's made this country, and I'm speaking about America, great has been the diversity, all of the various communities that have come together from around the world.
00:21:31.000Significantly, one country stands out, though, as the best one that's contributed.
00:21:35.000You know the language we're speaking right now?
00:22:20.000You're starting to see that I think we're in the majority now, whereas like maybe a couple years ago we were probably, I think we're always in the majority, but they just kind of made the perception a little bit different.
00:22:32.000But now you're seeing people wake up to everything and you're seeing platforms like Rumble really start to succeed and really attract like, you know, it's not just politics anymore.
00:22:42.000You got people from All different verticals coming onto the platform.
00:22:46.000Sports leagues, like an indoor soccer league just recently joined.
00:23:20.000Censorship means that you're going to conform to a predetermined set of ideals.
00:23:24.000I think when people talk about virtue signaling, that's perhaps what is meant, that these are not beliefs that you deeply hold.
00:23:31.000They're beliefs that you recognize have to be conveyed.
00:23:34.000So that means everybody on YouTube is programmed to say one specific thing about any specific topic that they dictate about?
00:23:41.000What I've noticed is that in this with this corporatist agenda you find a lot of things that I believe in freedom of expression for the right to be who you are these are the kind of things that they actually advocate for ironically while simultaneously advocating for more censorship and I recognize that in times of great fear people are willing to yield to authority more so I hope that this is a time where there's less fear more confidence and a more awakening now Chris do you want to take this opportunity to say some nice things about me before we wrap this interview up some nice things maybe about the channel the work we've done Well, I don't know if you've noticed, I've definitely noticed, but your videos are really starting to, I think for the last week, at least two or three of your shows have been ranking number one on Rumble.
00:24:54.000These are things that will get discussed.
00:24:56.000We're going to be talking about Rumble, obviously.
00:24:57.000We're going to be talking about a lot of these ideas.
00:24:59.000When I've been on previously, sometimes I've had something to promote, like, you know, maybe a book on recovery or, I don't know, maybe the first time it might even have been a movie or something.
00:25:07.000And it's hard to get those conversations to the forefront and you always feel like there's someone that's sort of paid for you to go there and sent you, you know, like if you're promoting a book or whatever.
00:25:15.000And I think, oh no, I can't get the conversation around in a book.
00:25:17.000But I feel like, you know, I've heard him talk about me being on Rumble a couple of times just in conversation.
00:25:22.000I've heard him talk about our channel.
00:25:24.000A few times and like I think I see him once playing a clip when I did a Brian Stelter CNN thing once he played it out on the show.
00:25:30.000So I think we're going to be talking about our content.
00:25:32.000We're going to be talking about the necessity for ongoing communication.
00:25:34.000We're also going to be talking about the like, you know, like I'm still bloody vegan.
00:25:39.000Like, you know, he hunts and shoots and all that kind of stuff.
00:25:41.000And I feel like you've got to be able to be convivial and congenial with people that you Yeah, so I just want to say, Russell, thank you.
00:25:48.000How are we ever going to get anywhere as a species, as a planet?
00:25:51.000Like, you know, so I reckon we'll probably go into them areas.
00:26:09.000So I just want to say, Russell, thank you for, you were actually, you came onto this
00:26:13.000platform and we didn't even know at rumble back in 2021, you signed up all on your
00:26:18.000own without anybody soliciting rumble.
00:26:22.000You came just literally for the, the principle of freedom of expression, seeing
00:26:27.000that other people were able to express themselves authentically.
00:26:30.000And, uh, there's a huge thank you for doing that a couple of years ago.
00:26:34.000I remember it was two weeks after you signed up when we figured it out, that it
00:26:37.000was real and we're like, holy shit, Russell Brand is on rumble.
00:26:41.000It's not like, you know, that was the beginning of the expansion outside of just like a single idea of politics and more ideas and just thank you for taking the risk and coming and then eventually, you know, doing your show daily on Rumble.
00:27:00.000And now being one of the top shows on the platform, it's been a huge success and super excited to see where that goes in the next few years.
00:27:12.000Because of my love of freedom of expression.
00:27:13.000And then my integrity was rewarded financially with a fantastic deal here at Rumble to build this to the most significant platform in the world.
00:27:24.000Have authenticity, be integral, remain true to your beliefs, have a little bit of fun, be willing to accept other people's views, be willing to get into complex conversations with people.
00:27:32.000What else are we going to do while we're here?
00:27:34.000Chris, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation.
00:28:19.000Thanks to all of you that are watching this.
00:28:21.000It's been a great joy to be on this journey with you so far, and we're excited to bring you loads more content, loads more conversation.
00:28:28.000Be willing to open your mind and your heart.
00:28:30.000Be willing to fight for your personal freedom, but be willing to yield to form new connections, because that's going to be absolutely necessary to take on elite establishment institutions, organizations, whether they be state or corporate.