Russell Brand is joined by Matt Taibbi to discuss the World Cup in Qatar and the return of the 4 Horsemen of the Apocaltwit. Also, Jordan Peterson is back on the show, and he's got a theory about what it means to be a white male on social media, and why it's not a good thing. And, of course, there's a new meme, and it's called 'Wu Han' by JP Morgan Chase, which is not a bad thing. And, as always, thank you for listening to Stay Free, and stay tuned for the next episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand. Stay Free! - The Late Show with Stephen King is out now. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code STAYFREE at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. If you like the show and want to support it, you can do so here: bit.ly/support-the-show and help us spread the word about it. And if you have any questions, then post them in the Rumble Chat or the Stay Free AF chat, and we'll get them on the Rumble chat. Thank you so much love and support the show. Stay free! - Stay free, stay free, keep safe, stay safe, and thank you. xoxo, bye! - EJ. EJ & JP Morgan, EJ, Ej and Ej, Eichner, and EJUICY, and the rest of the team at The Daily Mail. - Ejoe, and all the rest in the world. . Ej & EJE, and much love, EK, and a very special thanks to EJ&A, and EK. , EJ is & EK & AYO, and A.J. & Alyssa, and his team at the Daily Mail, for all the work done by EJ and EBS, and so much more! - Thank you for all your support and support and love & support, EYO. - A.M. and AYANCHE and A LOTS of love. - , and so on, E.A.B. & EYE. & A.K. & AJB.
00:02:02.000Should morality and spirituality and principles be about your own conduct in the world or should they be about, I don't like what you're doing?
00:02:13.000Well, like, you know, you've got to look at morality from a different perspective, and while we're on the subject of that, man, the four horsemen of the Apocaltwit?
00:02:32.000We're going to be talking about those things, of course, with Matt Taibbi a little later in the show.
00:02:36.000And if you have any questions for Matt Taibbi, then you can post them either in the Rumble chat or the Stay Free AF chat that you can find on Locals if you're a part of our membership community.
00:02:45.000I'm going to be asking Matt Taibbi some pretty searching questions based on my own research, like...
00:03:33.000How do we survive amidst these cultural forces that want you bludgeoned and blind, that don't want you to be able to think for yourself so that you're free and kind, connected inwardly, connected to other human beings and to nature, that want you to live in a synthetic reality?
00:03:47.000And I'm going to be demonstrating the nature of that symphatic reality a little bit later with what I can only describe as an intimate meme that amused me like a granddad, but also I think helps us to understand some pretty fundamental questions.
00:03:58.000We're going to start, I think, by talking about what's going on Twitter.
00:04:02.000A former guest on the show, and I would say friend of the show, because I'm certainly a friend of me personally, Jordan Peterson.
00:05:14.000Ye came back with a much more, sort of direct, I reckon Ye does his own tweets, because his first tweet back, testing, testing, seeing if my Twitter is unblocked.
00:05:24.000I like that because is that meta or is that just how he did that?
00:05:31.000Look, Ye is a great case study for the nature of genius because he's a great creator and he's brilliant and there's been so many times when he's sailed close to the wind.
00:05:40.000You can see that there's been times where they've gone, we don't like Kanye, shut him down, shut him down.
00:05:45.000But then of course he, you know, recently I think they've stepped it up a little bit.
00:05:49.000There's been cancellation of his deals and all stuff and that was, you know, and kicked off on Twitter.
00:06:46.000Racism, not liking people who say, well it's boring, it's a waste of time to be a racist.
00:06:50.000You can't galvanise a global revolution against significant centralised establishment power that has monopolised the media, big business and utilised global finance to tyrannise us all if you're going to divide people up into little races and little sex boxes.
00:07:06.000And sex box isn't an S&M device that I've ever seen literally used.
00:07:11.000I mean sort of boxes of gender and judgement.
00:07:14.000You have to, I believe, unify everyone, empower everyone to run their communities and their own lives however they want to, and that's right across the spectra.
00:07:21.000That's multiple spectrums, by the way, guys.
00:07:23.000Stadia, stadiums, I know all of the different languages and different words.
00:07:26.000Like, whether you live a traditional and orthodox life or a progressive life, allow people to be who they are.
00:07:32.000It immediately diffuses the entire Conversation.
00:07:37.000Unless it's necessary for municipality.
00:07:39.000But sometimes I wonder, is Kanye an absolute genius?
00:07:42.000And Kanye, if you're watching, and I know that he enjoys our content because he said in one of his interviews, I remember him saying, I like old Russ because he fears nothing.
00:08:03.000It's very difficult to relax in this crazy old thing called love.
00:08:05.000If you're watching us right now on YouTube, we're only on your platform for a couple more minutes and then, by jove, we'll be freeing our... there'll be free speech flying out of every orifice in a second, so simply pop over to Rumble and join us there.
00:08:17.000And be assured that we use this freedom of speech that we have been granted to create great love.
00:08:21.000Alchemists, spelling, using language, using signifiers and words to bring people together.
00:08:27.000Where will it come from, this new order?
00:08:46.000While you're still with us over there on YouTube, let's have a look at how Kanye announced a potential bid to become president of the United States.
00:08:53.000I think that I don't like to use the word spunking it, but there being a bit previous.
00:09:44.000Tell them to delete it, send them old clips.
00:09:49.000Before I tell you exactly what I think of this, if you're watching this on YouTube, go right on over to Rumble Now, where you'll see our content in full, first, for free, right now.
00:10:13.000I've got these clothes, I've got this old alarm clock, I've got a sort of a lampless light Pinocchio, I've got a set of Scrabble, most of the letters are missing.
00:10:23.000I've got this globe, the light don't work anymore.
00:10:25.000But if you take this Scrabble board, look at that, if you spell out all the letters, yay!
00:10:35.000As some of you watching this right now, I'm thinking, I want Trump and Kanye to run as a dream ticket.
00:10:42.000And also, has politics become so sort of outrageous, ridiculous and almost defunct in a sort of a form of entertainment that, would it really matter?
00:12:35.000That's why it's interesting to watch Chappelle on SNL because he's like Jelignite and he's sort of like saying that you know you like introducing the subject of Kanye or Trump but then being sort of genuinely surprising on those subjects sort of inviting you to challenge your own prejudices and your preconditions for laughing you can hear that kind of nervousness and of course What's said about Twitter is, well look, if we are banning Trump and Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate and Kanye, either you have to be sort of like, I'm down for free speech, or you have to say, right, well what are the conditions?
00:13:09.000In which case you have to agree that Trump was integrally involved in what some call the insurrection and other call protests of January the 6th.
00:13:17.000To say that Tate is a misogynist, I guess you have to agree with certain aspects of that.
00:13:21.000And then sort of Kanye, I guess it's the anti-semitism, and with JP it was the stuff about Elliot Page, who when we had our conversation, I challenged him on that basis, not from a free speech angle, but just from a simple compassion one, and you can go and check that when you've checked this, and let me know in the chat in the comments what you think about free speech in general.
00:13:37.000Free speech surely means the freedom of speech for people that you disagree with, to express their opinions freely.
00:13:47.000Why haven't we got to talk about other people that are banned from Twitter?
00:13:51.000Sheiks and shakes and people that are like good old 2010 style terrorists.
00:13:56.000The comment has been made and it has been made a lot by say right-wing commentators around the time when Trump was being banned of, you know, leaders of repressive regimes who weren't necessarily banned.
00:14:09.000That you had, I don't know, Iranian leaders or Other examples are Venezuelan leaders who are committing atrocities in their own countries, and yet they were still allowed on Twitter.
00:14:20.000And I suppose the comment was, what's the rule then?
00:15:05.000So what we're just saying is, on the surface, we ban these people because of what they represent to us, because of how politically useful these people, rightly or wrongly.
00:15:13.000But then it's like, how far do you go with this?
00:15:15.000I suppose what you have to identify is what your own prejudices and biases are.
00:15:22.000I really hate Donald Trump, and I also think Donald Trump should be banned from Twitter.
00:15:27.000I hate Jordan Peterson, and I also think, like, where, I suppose where things become interesting is when you say, I completely disagree with the politics of Donald Trump and the philosophy of Jordan Peterson, but I believe in free speech, and therefore, like, it's, if there, Once those two things, if you can uncouple those ideas then I think there's a chance for reasonable debate.
00:15:48.000There are sort of two frozen blocks of dogma clashing against one another and I can't help but think that that is convenient for centralised power and a distraction.
00:16:04.000Similarly, who's in a position, whether it's the CIA infiltration of social media, if you accept that there has been CIA and FBI infiltration into Facebook and Twitter and all of the social media giants, as has been widely reported, and not into irrelevant positions, they are controlling the editorial policy.
00:16:24.000They are controlling who gets censored.
00:16:26.000So ultimately, Big tech and the state have a shared agenda.
00:16:31.000That's ultimately what's being... and certainly have convergent interest to the degree where they can control a narrative and assure that their agenda is met.
00:17:01.000We'll make these things slightly change and we'll tell you that we're going to do this and then we'll just get on with business as usual.
00:17:07.000I wonder, then, if what I believe, and let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments what you think, if what is ultimately important is your own personal integrity.
00:17:16.000I don't mean that you should individualise yourself and cut yourself off from society, but you know when you're operating from a position of judgement and hatred.
00:17:24.000And if you don't ever address that, if you're sort of approaching cancellation with a kind of gleeful venom, then kind of admit that.
00:17:32.000But if it's like, look, I'm so committed to the project of a better and fairer world and I just simply cannot bear all this bigotry and prejudice when it comes to LGBTQ issues or matters of race or matters of class and inequality.
00:17:45.000And when it comes to the Qatar World Cup, and we talk about colonialism, imperialism, workers' rights, the value of human life, corruption, sports washing, all really important subjects.
00:17:57.000But the World Cup has, in a sense, lost its way some time ago.
00:18:03.000In 2018, it was held in Russia, and probably every country it's been held in since its inauguration has questions unanswered about its regime.
00:18:14.000What nation has a history unblemished?
00:18:19.000How do you create a centralized state without a degree of tyranny, oppression, control of a narrative, imprisonment of dissidents?
00:18:27.000And I think what's important right now is that the world appears to be moving in the direction of more centralized power.
00:18:32.000You have overt announcements from people like Macron about the dangers of a multipolar or even a bipolar world and I don't think it means No.
00:18:39.000bipolar in a sort of mental breakdown way. It means you don't want Chinese and US power,
00:18:44.000you want one solitary power. They explicitly and overtly say we want a global order where
00:18:49.000we have the ability to surveil a population. Now, you could forgive the people of Qatar
00:18:54.000for saying, well look, we've got our own narrative, we've got our own story, we've got our own
00:18:58.000history. What is it in particular about Qatar exploitation?
00:19:05.000Because if you think, well, let's just take one issue, LGBTQ plus issues, well, where were our Western societies 50 years ago or 60 years ago?
00:19:14.000Can you not envisage a society 5, 10, 20, 30 years more advanced than us?
00:19:20.000Come in and discerning and purveying our cultures and saying, hey, what's the story with the inequality?
00:19:26.000What's the story with the homelessness?
00:19:28.000So what I suppose this argument returns us to is a morality that is about what you are willing to sacrifice.
00:19:34.000What you are willing to change in yourself.
00:19:37.000How long and hard you're willing to point at other people saying, why don't you change this?
00:20:14.000But this has got some off-key components.
00:20:16.000It's Morgan, if you've seen it by now, let us know in the chat, but it's Morgan Freeman striding through a desert scape with crouched figures, with a fella who has an upper body only, having a chat with him, telling him that everyone's welcome in the Bedouin tent.
00:20:30.000Let's have a little look and see what it evokes in you.
00:20:35.000Not just music, but also this call to celebration.
00:22:09.000I think the values of wokeness, like tolerance of people's individual identity, the rights for people from all backgrounds, classes, cultures, creeds, races, to express themselves free.
00:22:21.000What we're querying here is the utilisation of those principles for, ultimately, for commercial outcomes and to create cultural division.
00:22:28.000So when I look, oh dear old Morgan Freeman, wandering through this sort of peculiar desert, which is actually the centre of a stadium, built by migrant labour, and I've not seen the death toll.
00:22:39.000There's a death toll, there's a toll, there's a death toll, but then, you know, I don't know how many people have died in accidents in the last couple of hundred years, building sites of commerce.
00:22:49.000How many people, how many US service people go to war and die in the name of What, lies?
00:22:56.000Yeah, you could answer that question for yourself.
00:23:03.000Any war, could it be argued, is ultimately the pursuit of commercial interests abroad?
00:23:08.000And I don't think the UK is close to that.
00:23:10.000It's just a few century or a century earlier that we were Conquering India on behalf of the East India Tea Company and various African nations, also on behalf of commercial and corporate interests.
00:23:24.000So unless it's like, no, like, it just seems so seldom, Gareth, that people are actually, I really believe in this, this is what I actually care about.
00:23:32.000Ultimately it's just a set of conflicting commercial interests, just attempts to gain power and create commercial opportunity.
00:23:38.000So I'll read you this by Nazrin Malik, this paragraph.
00:23:41.000Qatar only managed to maneuver itself into this prime position by soliciting the support of powerful states that
00:23:46.000have fast-tracked its passage into polite society.
00:23:49.000It is armed to the teeth by the UK, Europe and the US, and is a joint venture in monumental lucrative financial and
00:23:56.000real estate transactions on European soil.
00:23:58.000Can I ask you, before you go any further, about, in particular, arms transactions?
00:24:02.000I feel like the UK has sold billions of arms to Qatar and I can't imagine that the US would allow any market to remain dormant for too long.
00:24:12.000Yeah, the UK sold 3.4 billion pounds of weapons to Qatar recently.
00:24:18.000I know Trump, under his Stewardship in the States sold 12 billion to Qatar and it's an ongoing thing and you don't you can not just take Qatar you can say Saudi Arabia the same situation there with the United States these supposed you know repressive regimes that we're all so critical of well there doesn't make much difference when it comes to arms sales.
00:24:39.000In a sense, how you have to, in some way or another, extract the event from that kind of morality or accept its true complexity.
00:24:47.000It's almost impossible to think, England won 6-2 earlier today against Iran.
00:24:53.000How can you enjoy that if you're thinking about the true complexity?
00:24:57.000But also you have to incorporate how we got there, our own involvement, to think that this is Qatar.
00:25:03.000Particularly, uniquely and solely Qatar.
00:25:17.000Usually the answer is, there's a lot of room for improvement with myself before I start.
00:25:22.000I need to devote more time to helping and serving others and then perhaps I probably won't feel the need to go around judging everyone quite so harshly.
00:25:29.000Yeah I don't think it's obviously it's not about saying all the things that have gone on in Qatar are fine because we've done awful things as well but it is about who gets to control the narrative who gets to say who are the real like demons in this in this situation who is it who's really to blame here is it Qatar is it a lot more a lot other countries as well Well, it's a complicated issue.
00:25:50.000I think I'll hand it over to Morgan Freeman, who seems to have worked it all out in his usual fashion.
00:25:56.000Morgan Freeman, who is sort of like the West's de facto voice of God, isn't he?
00:25:59.000He's been the voice of God several times, and here he is doing that once again.
00:26:06.000We sent out the call because everyone is welcome.
00:26:10.000This is an invitation to the whole world.
00:26:13.000I remember even after hearing the call, I was still seeing another way.
00:26:20.000We dismissed it and demanded our own way.
00:26:23.000I suppose people will be cynical about the deployment of the gentleman there with the,
00:26:28.000I guess, how would you call it, with sort of like without legs or whatever.
00:26:32.000Like they could say they've just exploitively put them there because they know that Qatar are being criticised for many of their social policies.
00:26:38.000But there's a point, isn't there, where you have to Query the right of a country to have their own ideology?
00:26:45.000Are we saying that Islam... I know some people vocally do say that Islam shouldn't be used as a principle for governance.
00:26:54.000They should have advanced private religions rather than Part of Islam's appeal and essence is that it's an organisational principle for government and for social and personal and religious life.
00:27:06.000It doesn't see those things as distinct.
00:27:08.000And secularism is a very particular and obviously modern argument.
00:27:12.000The idea that you should separate religious life from the life of governance.
00:27:17.000But also, that comes with bloody problems, because you don't find... How's secularism going in Western nations?
00:27:23.000Are you finding that... Was there another ideology that stepped into that vacuum to do with... Oh, wow!
00:27:33.000Since it won the right to host the World Cup, it's been granted billions of pounds in weapons sales licences, including sophisticated surveillance equipment by Britain.
00:27:40.000Qatar is not a prior state, it exists in a global political system of Western sponsors that have forged deep alliances with Gulf monarchies and extended immunity.
00:27:49.000The state of Qatar is actually the 10th largest landowner in Britain, did you know?
00:27:53.000They own... In our country, Britain, I don't want to get all nationalistic, I'm trying to get beyond these kind of ideas and slurs, but the Raul, Qatar own the 10th largest landowner.
00:28:04.000You know that I was recently involved in that protest against Thames Water dumping sewage into the River Thames, who think they'd have a vested interest in.
00:28:12.000And you find out that Qatar and Kuwait and Canada own significant parts of Thames Water.
00:28:18.000You are living already in an illusion.
00:28:35.000I'm saying that we're living in such an advanced state of corporatism that even the streets you walk in are already owned by foreign concerns as a result of deals done behind closed doors that were never voted for, that are never going to get anywhere near democracy.
00:28:50.000Of course that's why the limited areas that you are allowed to discuss as part of democracy, hot button topics like arms, abortion, civil rights issues, which are not unimportant issues, but compared to where real power lies, They are, if not secondary, they could be regarded as distractions.
00:29:08.000Certainly, the truly powerful are happy for us to kill each other over those ideas while they get on owning everything.
00:29:14.000Yeah, there's only one set of arms that you're allowed to debate, actually.
00:29:28.000Alright, is there anything else we want to say about this World Cup before we move on?
00:29:31.000Because I know I've got a lot of points.
00:29:34.000Oh man, if you're an England football fan, you will be aware of this lovely clip of England fans boasting that since they've been in Qatar, they've been hanging out With powerful members of the royal family and having a laugh and meeting lions and stuff like that, which really sounds like a blag and a mad lie, until you find out they actually have been doing that and they've got the footage to prove it.
00:31:23.000You've never liked an after party anyway.
00:31:26.000Even as a man who's participated in a closing ceremony of a major international tournament, the Olympics, where I brilliantly dressed as Willy Wonka.
00:31:34.000I mean, you should pull that up, young Putin.
00:31:37.000There I was, dressed as Willy Wonka, on top of a bus, at the closing ceremony of the Olympics, singing Come With Me into a World of Pure Imagination.
00:31:45.000And I felt like we were already in a world of imagination, because how can this actually be happening?
00:31:52.000Even then I didn't like an after party and the pressure of it and stuff.
00:31:56.000It doesn't suit my general personality to live with those kind of social pressures.
00:32:12.000My trousers split just before, just as I was clambering on top of that bus, my trousers split on the nut bag seam and I used sellotape, like a kind of scotch tape, to seal the hole and it sort of, you know like if you, you could use sellotape if you folded it enough times as a kind of prison weapon to sort of give someone a good jabbing.
00:32:32.000Well somehow it did that to itself and was giving me an upward jab in the nut bag.
00:32:36.000Yes, come with me and we'll be in the world of your imagination!
00:32:41.000It was hard to make sense of reality while all of that was happening.
00:32:46.000I don't know, what do you make of the Olympics in 2012?
00:32:49.000It's not like, yeah, it's reductive even to say all nations have blood on their hands, who are we to judge Qatar?
00:32:59.000It's not like saying that Qatar ...isn't mistaken in many of its social policies or that they wouldn't be scrutinized, evaluated and judged.
00:33:07.000It's simply saying, look, the real rule is we'll do whatever we want as long as it makes money.
00:34:30.000Which nation is in a position to judge?
00:34:32.000But one thing I think we can agree on, is if you're thinking of attending that World Cup in a culturally sensitive outfit, Do not dress as a Crusade era knight, which is surely the absolute climax of conflict between Christendom and the Islamic world was the Crusades.
00:36:00.000Capital is staying exactly where it is, centralising around resources and international finance agreements that are submerged and way, way outside of ordinary democracy.
00:36:11.000When you know that thing about Qatar owning, being the 10th largest landowner in the UK, you have the kind of support for England that he has and it's actually so complex.
00:36:29.000Like, no wonder people reach for certainty.
00:36:31.000Whether it's the certainty of a set of codes, of like, you can never use this word, you can never say that, all men are bad, all people this colour are bad, or this dictator or demagogic figure is attractive.
00:36:45.000Because everything is a blur and a mess, because real power is concealed and congealed beyond reach.
00:36:51.000You're walking down the street of what you think is England, marching about in your chainmail, and it's all been purchased by Qatar. Our best football teams are owned by
00:36:59.000Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabian interests and like if what if ultimately yield to it
00:37:04.000I don't know like is that better than sort of an American corporate interest owning it like and there will be people
00:37:10.000watching this saying yes Absolutely is because of women's rights because of gay
00:37:13.000rights But like you know these are like important issues and they're
00:37:16.000certainly not things that I'm trying to subvert or prevent progressing to the point where everybody's happy, but
00:37:21.000ultimately Where is real power? Ultimately, who is determining
00:37:45.000Are we watching any more of this, Gal?
00:37:47.000Because, you know, we were going to play a fantastic Here's the News Now, Here's the Effing News, where we talked about that wonderful moment where Eli, where someone got themselves a blue tick, posed as Eli Lilly, said that they were going to give away...
00:38:02.000Insulin for free and it crashed Eli Lilly the pharmaceutical company's stock prices
00:38:07.000But with Matt Taibbi coming on the show, I don't know if we have time
00:38:11.000We'll post that video in full on rumble you'll be the first to see it if you're members of our
00:38:15.000little community over here because Matt Taibbi will be joining us very shortly and Matt Taibbi
00:38:21.000is one of those people that if you get the chance to speak to him
00:38:23.000You've got to enjoy every single second of it But before we introduce Matt Taibbi, have you got any more
00:38:28.000points to make about Qatari finance gal?
00:39:14.000Why don't we need separate, independent communities, perhaps a central set of principles and values that we all adhere to, but don't concentrate and consolidate power?
00:39:24.000When in history has that ever been the answer?
00:39:28.000I think that, you know, Graham Hancock's coming on the show tomorrow, and one of the reasons I think Graham Hancock's work is important is because he suggests that even our narrative of human history is erroneous and perhaps even duplicitous.
00:39:41.000As long as we see our current civilization as the pinnacle of humankind, you can't query...
00:39:47.000There are aspects of what happens culturally that you can never query.
00:40:48.000I go, Tybee, I'm probably, you know, dog...
00:40:50.000You know, I'm looking at Digital Power Dog, and I'm looking at the bloody Pulitzer Prize that New York Times awarded Matt, like it's an outrage.
00:40:59.000And he said, you know, I've recently done a tweet on that, and I said, well, I did encounter that in the course of my research, but I've also been looking a bit more deeply than you have, Matt.
00:41:34.000So if you're reading the word Green Needle, you will hear the audio as Green Needle.
00:41:38.000If you are reading the word Brainstorm, you will hear the word Brainstorm.
00:41:42.000But after you've done it a couple of times, if you shut your eyes and then think Green Needle or Brainstorm or Green Storm or Brain Needle, you will hear that!
00:41:53.000Reality is a discourse between the apparently external and the apparently internal.
00:41:58.000Run it a couple of times, young Putin.
00:42:00.000Prove my brilliant point and then we'll bring it up to tape!
00:42:46.000So what I'm telling you, and what this meme is telling you perhaps, because I can't take all the credit, after all I'm not that man sitting there vaguely hungover.
00:42:58.000According to what you think inside your mind, the reality that you apparently perceive externally will alter.
00:43:05.000If that is evident in a measurable capacity, is it not likely that it's also true in areas that are less easy to measure when it comes to your judgment of moral, ethical issues, individuals, politics?
00:43:47.000You're left to focus on the cult properly.
00:43:50.000And I don't want to be in charge of it.
00:43:52.000I think it should be completely decentralised and we should create different political parties and movements in every country around the world.
00:43:57.000Usurp and overthrow the various governments and unelected globalist bodies.
00:44:00.000What could be fairer or better than that?
00:44:03.000I think Matt Taibbi should be in charge.
00:44:05.000Oh, Taby, Taby, how was I supposed to know?
00:46:10.000Because that's not what we've got you on here for.
00:46:11.000But you can... We'll listen to you on anything.
00:46:14.000As a sports fan and a former athlete myself a little bit, I guess if it's going to be propaganda, I want it really simplistic so that I can understand it, you know what I mean?
00:47:01.000Is support of free speech now ultimately a right-wing issue?
00:47:06.000Do you have to morally align with the four people in question, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Trump and Kanye, in order to support their right of free speech?
00:47:15.000And what kind of language should be censored?
00:47:20.000I don't think it means that free speech is a right-wing issue.
00:47:27.000One of the things that the core tenets of the law around speech in America is always that Yes, we sue people for things like libel and defamation, but the lawsuits are always about the speech, not the person.
00:47:44.000We don't ban people for saying bad things.
00:47:48.000And we got in the habit, I think, in the internet of just saying, this person is bad, we're never going to have that person on again.
00:47:54.000As opposed to saying, this thing you said crosses a line, we're going to delete that.
00:48:02.000It doesn't encourage people to modify their behavior and behave better and create better communities.
00:48:09.000It just means that you're gonna stay inside this very, very narrow boundary, and I think that's bad.
00:48:14.000Like, you know, no matter who's being banned permanently.
00:48:17.000Okay, so there are usually legal principles or ethical principles that precede these kind of judgments.
00:48:25.000In this case, if you say something that's incendiary or, like, incentivizing violence, and of course what tends to happen Matt, once you broadly agree what you've said that you shouldn't ban an individual, you should ban that type of speech, is people conflate sometimes a series of events or narratives with that individual.
00:48:44.000I know this is something you know more about and ultimately all roads lead to Trump when it comes to this conversation.
00:48:49.000I suppose what people... I read one of Rob Reiner's tweets and you know like these are kind of people that in a sort of a showbiz capacity I would love.
00:48:57.000I was friends with Carl Reiner or at least I met him a couple of times and really loved him.
00:49:01.000And I feel like Rob Reiner said, like, Trump should be banned from Twitter because he provoked the insurrection of the Capitol on July 6th.
00:49:13.000Now, if you believe that, then should you believe, is it legit to believe that Trump should be banned?
00:49:19.000And then now we're trying to discern a whole variety of issues.
00:49:34.000There are some people who always hear things one way and always hear them the other way.
00:49:39.000He's got a very specific set of beliefs politically.
00:49:42.000I think, again, in the United States we have a very high bar, legally, in terms of what kind of speech we don't allow.
00:49:52.000For a very specific reason, it has to be imminent incitement to unlawful conduct.
00:50:01.000It's a very difficult case, but it's very hard to argue that he's in a general Like, constant way inciting violence.
00:50:12.000You could maybe argue that he maybe did that on January 5th and January 6th, but I think that's a difficult argument to hold up forever, and then you have to apply it to everybody.
00:50:23.000That's the big problem with all this, is how do you remove one person but not 5,000 other people who've committed the same kinds of offenses?
00:50:34.000People are always going to see bias in those decisions.
00:50:38.000Yeah, I think you're right about that, certainly.
00:50:42.000Do you think that Trump, is the era of Trump over?
00:50:45.000In his announcement at Mar-a-Lago, he said that he would dismantle the deep state.
00:50:52.000He still seems to incentivise the, let's call it the neoliberal left, in the same way he always did.
00:50:59.000Do you think that we're seeing the decline of the Trump era, even if it is the Trump narrative, rather than him as a political figure?
00:51:07.000So I made the mistake once in October of 2016 of saying Donald Trump was finished.
00:51:14.000This was after the Access Hollywood thing.
00:51:16.000I put that in print in Rolling Stone, and I'm not going to make that mistake ever again.
00:51:28.000You should never turn your back on Donald Trump.
00:51:31.000And what he feeds off is the way that sort of mainstream media and politicians treat him.
00:51:41.000There's a narrative that he creates that he's being treated unfairly and in many cases he's right.
00:51:47.000And the more they do that, the more they try to clamp down and use force to prevent him from speaking or whatever it is, he draws energy from that.
00:51:57.000I always think that his best friends are his enemies actually because they give him All this momentum through the media by trying to cut off your ability to hear what he has to say.
00:52:09.000So if you were trying to handle Trump strategically, you would say, let Trump be on Twitter, let Trump access media like any other political orator or ideologue, and focus the argument, if you are an opponent of Trump, on how you are going to address the issues that Trump successfully has brought to the forefront, the belief that they are deep state operatives that control the political space Beyond the reach of ordinary democratic process that you will limit and control corporate power and finance and create a fairer world for ordinary Americans of all colors and persuasions?
00:52:56.000I think Trump understood this on some level in 2016, which is that, yeah, the way that you defeat Donald Trump, if you're thinking strategically, is to kind of ignore him as much as you can and then offer your own Positive, believable, honest way forward for people.
00:53:17.000And what happened, I think, in 2016 especially, was we had this country that had experienced tremendous difficulty after 2008.
00:53:25.000There was this growing wealth gap that was caused in large part by corruption that went totally unpunished.
00:53:34.000Uh, during the Obama years and Donald Trump got up there and said, look, I come from this world.
00:53:41.000I'm one of these people who lives, who lives up on that corrupt Olympus.
00:53:46.000And I know how things work and they're lying to you and they're lying about me.
00:53:50.000And rather than address that directly, they just kept talking about him, you know, being, you know, this or that and highlighting his negatives instead of addressing the issues, which is what they've never done.
00:54:04.000They've never understood that they have to reckon with their own unpopularity before they can get rid of the guy.
00:54:11.000I feel that if you had less Democrat politicians that owned stocks and shares in the companies that they're meant to regulate, if there was less lobbying money behind the Democrat party and Republican money, if there was more willingness to stand up for ordinary Americans against corporate interests on both sides of the aisle, There would not be a position for a figure like Trump who many many people I know watching this channel just adore and see as the kind of blessed anomaly that politics has been crying out for.
00:54:41.000I see him as a member of the billionaire class with the same general interests as the billionaire class but I can certainly see that if you're gonna stop Trump you have to address the causes of Trump and those causes are very very real and are not being addressed.
00:54:55.000Mate, after the G20 leaders summit, your man Biden returned from Bali, and I'm calling him your man, with the G20 leaders declaration that has a clause in it that says that signatories have agreed to facilitate seamless international travel under the condition that Digital IDs be implemented, ultimately a new, in a sense, is the revival of the vaccine passport idea.
00:55:27.000And what do you think about the way that the pandemic was used to sort of normalise these kind of notions?
00:55:35.000Well, first of all, I think that was scary.
00:55:38.000I'm always worried when there are major declarations or major things done and there is no press about it.
00:55:47.000They came to a pretty heavy decision but didn't really propagandize it much.
00:55:52.000I saw it through a tweet from the actor Tim Robbins and then I looked into it.
00:55:57.000But look, I think there's no secret to the fact that when governments want to do something in an authoritarian direction, it's always an emergency.
00:56:43.000Well, this is the kind of moment where we have to like give up our rights about this or that because It's too important to to squawk about but you know you really have to worry about this stuff.
00:56:53.000Is there any sense that since that post Snowden and Assange that the American deep state has begun to self-regulate meaningfully or do you think that there is infiltration of big tech platforms that suggest that the CIA and FBI have significant Operatives within those platforms that mean that there is already a kind of porous membrane between the deep state and big tech platforms.
00:57:21.000So this kind of digital surveillance is already underway and any further implementation, let alone mandates around it, would ultimately mean the kind of the delivery of a social credit score system.
00:57:34.000Well, we know for a fact, we don't have to speculate, that the intelligence agencies have very profound relationships with all of these platforms.
00:57:47.000They've been accessing your personal information through a variety of means, including through the use of things called national security letters, where the FBI can send a letter to, let's just say, your email carrier, and the carrier will be barred by law from telling you
00:58:08.000that they've gotten the subpoena and they will have to turn over all of your information
00:58:14.000They send tens of thousands of those letters out every year.
00:58:18.000They've been doing that for 20 years now.
00:58:21.000And we know now that, you know, thanks to some new reporting that the DHS
00:58:25.000has a permanent standing committee that advises all of these platforms
00:58:30.000on what kind of content is and is not appropriate, We know they've intervened in high-profile cases like the Hunter Biden email story.
00:58:39.000So, yes, essentially they're intertwined at this point.
00:58:44.000I was shocked Last year I was doing a story randomly about some guy who got kicked off YouTube for something having to do with the vaccine.
00:58:57.000And they told me, flat out, that they got their instructions about what to ban and not to ban from the CDC and the NIH.
00:59:06.000So they're not even embarrassed about it at this point.
00:59:09.000So, yes, clearly that's where that relationship exists.
00:59:13.000So the idea that there is a moral barometer at the centre of these policies is ridiculous.
00:59:17.000The idea that, you know, even the four people that have just been reinstated on Twitter can somehow be regarded as harbingers for good or bad, really, is not irrelevant, but it's difficult to discern.
00:59:30.000When these social media sites have been deeply infiltrated by government interests.
00:59:35.000Unelected government interests at that, or state interests certainly I should say rather.
00:59:40.000And what if you're a person like me that just deeply deeply distrusts the state and in fact most institutions?
00:59:48.000I feel like kind of at a loss when I hear that they can just subpoena me and get all my emails and all that kind of... I don't like it Matt!
01:00:04.000You know, they've, they've done a lot of things that they were, once upon a time, they were caught for this stuff back in the Hoover era for, you know, illegal surveillance, opening investigations on people who hadn't done anything wrong.
01:00:18.000collecting data on them. They're doing all the same stuff now.
01:00:22.000They've given themselves permission to do it and you know Americans never voted for this.
01:00:30.000Nobody in the world voted for this. That's why I think the significance of
01:00:34.000that four horsemen story that you're talking about, it has nothing to do with those people personally. It has
01:01:02.000You know, I think you can get disheartened by the inability to oppose this kind of a thing and I think that's why You know, there's been a lot of enthusiasm about this new regime of Elon Musk for, you know, whatever other faults you might find in him.
01:01:18.000God, isn't it extraordinary to find yourself as a person that generally is regarded as progressive and by that I mean that my personal and spiritual views would ultimately always be and have been let human beings be who they are, let people as much as possible be free in their lives as individuals, allow people to run their own communities without the intervention of the state or corporate interests, find forms of a monopoly, And tyranny, wherever they are, in whatever form, whether they're state or corporate, and oppose them.
01:01:42.000People should come together to find yourself ultimately at odds with your former allies in that, at least in that conversation, like people that were sort of woolly liberals and wringing hands, bleeding hearts types.
01:01:55.000Those are the people now that say, no!
01:02:01.000That's a sort of extraordinary thing and I think it's important to acknowledge that, you know, Twitter, Facebook, Big Tech and the state are in no position to be moral arbiters of free speech or other people's conduct in a variety of ways.
01:02:15.000And it hurts me spiritually, the idea.
01:02:18.000It's against my personal liberty and my personal relationship with freedom is affected by that.
01:02:23.000I suppose that's why you need some real values and real principles and I say the hallmark of a real principle is at some point it might involve sacrifice.
01:02:32.000Letting go of something that you believe in or something or doing something that's not bloody convenient and at some point and sometimes extremely painful.
01:02:39.000This is the part of the show, Matt Tabey, Tabey, how was I supposed to know?
01:02:44.000Where we allow Gareth Roy to ask a question because you know, let's face it, he's an important creative voice.
01:03:43.000Matt, we were really interested, Russell and I were talking earlier about the obviously the missile strikes in Poland last week and the whole mess and furore that occurred as a result and mainly around the kind of reporting of it.
01:03:57.000Obviously that could have been a very costly mistake is what we're being now told is exactly what it was.
01:04:04.000How much does this tell you about how lax the kind of printing of that mistake was, as in we're always told about misinformation,
01:04:13.000how deadly misinformation is, and how we should be censored,
01:04:15.000because misinformation, and then you get wall to wall press coverage of this being Russian missiles. And how much do
01:04:21.000you think it also was a mistake? Is I mean, is there? Could you
01:04:25.000read into it that this would have been very useful thing to have
01:04:28.000happened in terms of NATO infringement?
01:04:30.000Well, first of all, there's a massively insignificant amount
01:04:38.000of coverage of near nuclear catastrophes.
01:04:42.000I bet most people in the world don't know that last March, March 12th I think it was, India accidentally launched a missile that could have been a nuclear missile, it was nuclear capable, that went into Pakistani territory, And could have triggered a nuclear exchange, except that Pakistan elected not to fire back.
01:05:05.000That's a story that just wasn't covered around the world.
01:05:10.000And this is another instance where something like that happened.
01:05:14.000Now, the amazing part of this story was the decision by the Associated Press.
01:05:19.000The Associated Press ran a story at 2 p.m., which is considerably after the events happened, Where they quoted a senior intelligence official, meaning one anonymous person in the American government, as saying that nuclear missiles had landed in Poland.
01:05:38.000Now, if you're a reporter and you understand the import of that story, I'm going to do more than one source on that, and it's going to have to be someone who's not anonymous, because essentially you're saying that Russia attacked a NATO country, which would be the predicate automatically for world war.
01:05:59.000And the fact that so many people ran with that story without checking it tells you the state of near total irresponsibility of the media when it comes to this kind of thing.
01:06:15.000Thank you so much for coming on our show.
01:06:17.000Effortlessly handsome, as far as we know, brilliantly insightful, well-informed and an inspiration when it comes to looking at information without it being sort of pre-chewed and spat down your neck hole like you're a dumb baby bird.
01:06:31.000Thanks for keeping us inquiring and intelligent.
01:06:34.000Thanks for always doing these interviews in front of a drum kit.
01:06:37.000Thank you for participating in the general spirit of the show.
01:07:54.000Alright, listen, I'm wrapping up this show now before we go to Stay Free AF, but before I do, did you know I'm doing a whole day-long event in the town I'm from, Greys, to save the theatre there and to raise attention.
01:08:42.000I play this game with my children, where I go, like, I'm a person that's got this ulcer on their head, and out of it comes this sort of egg yolk stuff, and then it goes into bottles, and canisters, and urns, and stuff like that, and then they sell it, and they have to work at the shop.
01:09:31.000But I'll be there doing a live stand-up comedy show to save the theatre that I first performed in.
01:09:36.000Now, if you just saw me going on about eggnog, you might want that place to be razed to the ground and see it as a sort of...
01:09:42.000Ground zero for a problem that really needs to be eradicated, i.e.
01:09:46.000me having a public forum of any description.
01:09:48.000But if you're a fan of Ol' Russ, come that day, support me and see my poet friend Mr. G, my philosopher friend Brad Evans, the great Paul Foot, one of the most underappreciated and extraordinarily strange comedic voices that we have, creating a day of activism and fun and education.
01:10:04.000My wife will be there reading her book that she's just read.
01:11:46.000But if you buy that stuff, all of the money we give to gorgeous little organizations that help drug addicts and mentally ill people get well.
01:11:53.000And if you're a mentally ill person or a drug addict watching this right now and you say, well, I need your help, Russell.