In this episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, we talk about the crisis in the UK, and how it foreshadows a global reckoning, like the breakdown of cultural norms that have long bound us together, but not necessarily, but have supported existing power structures. We talk about how the current political crisis in our country, and the people standing after our disposable, throw-away, built-in, obsolescent Prime Minister for the day, Liz Truss, has been tossed onto the scrapheap, the people competing to take over are Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. We also talk about whether or not the Grand Old Party is a real party, and if it's really as bad as some people think it is, and why we should be worried about it. And, of course, we have a live shot of the future. Stay Free with Russell Brand! is a production of Gimlet Media. We are produced by Riley Braydon Karnacz and Alex Blumberg. Our theme song is Come Alone by Suneaters, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. Our ad music is by Haley Shaw. Additional music by PSOVOD and tyops. This episode was mixed by Ian Dorsch, and produced by Matthew Boll, and Matthew Boll. It was edited by Patrick Muldowney, and additional mixing and mastering by Will Witwer, and edited by Ben Kuchta, and Ben Koppel, and Bobby Lord, and Rachel Ward, and Emma Jacobs, and Annie-Rose Strasser, with additional assistance from Caitlin Durante, and Sarah-Jane Strasser and Rachel Jacobs. Thank you to Rachel Ward and Caitlin O'Brien, and our good friend, Caitlin Kenney. , and our producer, Rachel Ward. Thank you so much for your support and support, and to our sponsors, and thanks to our sponsor, Sarah-Anne-Jane Smith, for the use of the excellent sound design and editing and editing, and all of our sound design, and . and , and our thanks to for all the work done by by , , & , Jake, thank you, , Rachel, and Chris, Sarah- thanks to Sarah-Alyssa, Brian, Rachel and , Caitlyn, Jordan, & Rachel, and Emily, Jake, and David, .
00:12:04.000Today we're talking about, on Stay Free with Russell Brand, how the crisis in our country, the UK, foreshadows a global reckoning, like the breakdown of cultural norms that have long bound us.
00:12:20.000Well, not bound us together, but I suppose have supported existing power structures, because even though you might be American, Or you might be Canadian, or... I mean, who knows what you are?
00:12:29.000You could be anywhere, doing anything.
00:12:31.000But I suppose what's interesting is this is like a... You know, like how people say that, oh, there's these symbols and signals of empires in decline?
00:12:40.000There's an argument I've seen advanced that the Anglo-American empire viewed critically could be regarded as one movement.
00:12:49.000I'm not just saying that because I'm English and I'm trying to still go, we're still sort of in charge by proxy with America, but...
00:12:56.000I think we're beginning to see things really fall apart in significant ways.
00:13:01.000If you are interested in UK politics, and of course we are because we're British, you would know that the people that are standing after our disposable, throw-away, built-in, obsolescent Prime Minister for the day, bring your Prime Minister to work day, Liz Truss has been tossed onto the scrap heap, The people competing to take over are Boris Johnson.
00:13:23.000He was Prime Minister a couple of months ago and he had to leave because they were holding parties throughout lockdown while people were watching their grandparents' funerals on YouTube, while people were missing the birth of their children, while people were not able to say goodbye to dying relatives.
00:13:39.000They were living it up and living it large.
00:13:45.000The Avar person, Rishi Sunak, ran against the woman Liz trusts that they've just booted out.
00:13:51.000He refuses to comment on if he has profited from the hedge fund that he used to work for as investments in Moderna, who of course you know already made vaccines.
00:14:07.000And also he's married to a billionaire.
00:14:11.000So like, what are we being offered through democracy?
00:14:14.000Forget the fact that none of these people have ever been, well no, Boris was elected I suppose, but after he was elected he held parties during the lockdown that irritated people.
00:14:22.000So we're using that To sort of, in a sense, establish the context of the show.
00:14:27.000We're going to be talking about it a little bit.
00:14:29.000We're also going to invite you, if you're watching us now, let us know in the chat, do you want us to do a story about the New York rats?
00:14:36.000Real life Ratatouille, that's definitely what it is and how you should regard it.
00:15:39.000Haven't we got more things to say about the pharmaceutical thing?
00:15:42.000Well we were going to talk about potentially Gavin Newsom in California introducing a bill that basically punishes doctors for spreading how they deem misinformation.
00:17:16.000If you sort of, like, feel like you want to get some... Although, of course, in our country, Krishna Gurumurthy said the C word on normal news.
00:17:25.000Because a couple of weeks ago, this newscaster was like, Bollocks, we're not sure if bollocks is allowed, and was sort of, like, Googling it.
00:17:30.000I'm sorry if you've been offended by that.
00:17:32.000If you've been offended by the fact that this person said bollocks, oh this geezer's a c-word, they're c-words!
00:17:37.000It's a merry-go-round in the mainstream media.
00:17:39.000You could even say it if you wanted to.
00:17:41.000I know, I don't, look, c-word, because I spend a lot of time in America, c-word is a bit different now, and I think that that trend is being set.
00:17:48.000There used to be a time where c-word, like in Australia, we've got some Australians work here, c-word just is equivalent to hello.
00:18:00.000They don't care about c-word over there.
00:18:03.000In America it's like as if you're specifically and deliberately misogynistically attacking women and here it used to be just a bad swear word but it was all part and parcel of everyday British life.
00:18:15.000But isn't it weird that the language is getting sanitised while the politics is getting more filthy?
00:18:19.000Liz Trussell continues to be paid £115,000 for life, at least she'll have that option, just the result of being Prime Minister for 15 minutes.
00:18:27.000And we're going to talk about how she was kind of put there by think tanks, which are disguised, their name at least suggests that it's a tank with thinking in it.
00:18:34.000When really what it is, is a tank with corruption in it, exerting influence on media outlets to bias the outcomes of apparently democratic processes.
00:18:43.000We'll talk about that based somewhat on an article by a brilliant British journalist called George Monbiot.
00:18:48.000Do you want to know the odds for the new Prime Minister?
00:19:37.000Which corrupt billionaire-affiliated member of the establishment do you want to pretend to lead your country as you're ushered into decline and despair?
00:19:50.000There's actually still an inquiry going on into whether Boris lied to the commons after if he's found guilty he could be suspended which would be an amazing series of events if they voted him in and then they went right you're suspended now be amazing because then he's like he's just like bouncing in and out because the name Bojo that's what we call him it sounds like something that's sort of rubber and sort of spongy He's Bojo-ing all over the gaff.
00:20:16.000And of course in your country, America, if indeed that is your country, you are still led very competently by a man who wields real power and is definitely not a puppet of more deeply entrenched political and financial interests, as you can see from his ongoing ability to stride powerfully onto a stage and address a podium without any trouble at all.
00:21:03.000At this point, if I was working anywhere in the vicinity of Joe Biden, I would attach an invisible bit of piano wire to him, and I would physically yank him where he needed to go, if necessary, using a fishhook and a scrotum, just to sort of pull him right back Back this way now.
00:21:20.000Well, doesn't it depend how long that's going to be?
00:23:17.000When my nan first said something like that yeah I can still remember the feeling of it it was like my what it was was my mate Matt came around and like when it came out in the course of the conversation that Matt was a Jewish lad he went right oh was it hard for you during the war and like Matt said he like my like I was like Because I had to sort of like, what?
00:24:26.000Not safe to worship our ancestors now in our nihilistic culture where the elderly, unless they're running an entire country, are just quietly kept in corners and forgotten.
00:25:47.000And also some of those minor things like little sort of video messages that I've sent to people like, actually could you mind getting that done by Wednesday?
00:26:45.000Yeah, and like, you always think now, whenever you see him, you feel that the people around him are primarily concerned with gaff avoidance.
00:27:52.000We're gonna, like, talk about, you know, obviously the validity of 1984, the prophetic themes that are explored there, and I suppose we'll probably talk about how we always envisaged a Cold War, post-Cold War, communist version of tyranny, rather than this sort of numbing, anodyne, spellbound, consumerist version.
00:28:11.000Although it is declining so quickly into yawning horror that it could probably get a bit of both.
00:28:17.000Yeah, it's very relevant in terms of the move towards central bank digital currency as well, which is in the news at the moment.
00:28:32.000We're moving forward with a central bank digital currency.
00:28:34.000So again, we're at the point where the government wanted to co-opt cryptocurrencies, which for a brief moment was a potential alternative currency movement.
00:28:44.000They want to be able to tell your doctor what to tell you about COVID.
00:28:48.000The creeping fog of governmental power, government I argue, as many others do, is ultimately the representative of corporate interests.
00:28:57.000The merry-go-round of these British nitwits, all with their own affiliations to big business and think tanks.
00:29:06.000This is, I suppose, what makes 1984 relevant, all but for the aesthetic and the presumed central dictator figure.
00:29:14.000I mean and at the time where this like in our country this media circus is going on where like they act about they act about you know all this chaos that's going on in Westminster but at the same time they're not covering stories that are actually important so like We were talking earlier on about an anti-protest law that's going on at the moment, which is literally going to shut down the ability to not just protest, but if people think you're going to protest, they're going to be able to tag you up, surveil you 24-7.
00:29:43.000It's just been slipped under the radar.
00:29:45.000It's stunning to me that while we've all been caught up in the drama, the soap opera of these transitioning political figures, none of whom are going to do anything that helps you, they sneakily and on the sly introduced legislation where you could be preemptively busted for looking like you might protest.
00:30:37.000So like you know I've got friends that are in the police force and I don't sort of yield to the idea that it's an entirely corrupt institution without good people with like you know core values of service but certainly it is possible for the police to make errors and mistakes and given that the power and increasing power that they will have and given that they'll ultimately be operating at the behest of corrupt forces it seems to me that that's the kind of legislation that in a democracy You don't want passed, and it wouldn't be passed if we were informed, wouldn't be passed if we were involved.
00:31:09.000That's why those kind of things seem to be unallowed.
00:31:11.000It's also interesting that this does get passed at a time of, you know, this, as I said, this kind of circus that's going on, you know, with the truckers protests in Canada.
00:31:20.000That happened when he introduced emergency laws to be able to shut down a lot of their abilities to protest.
00:31:26.000That was happening in a way that wasn't really covered much by the general media, but was out there in social media.
00:31:32.000In this country, this is happening and no one's talking about it.
00:31:35.000Anyway, that's the point of this show, I suppose, is to, to a degree, report on mainstream news from a different perspective, but to inform you what is not being reported on and how what is being reported on is masking more important narratives.
00:31:50.000The most famous case of burying was that leaked memo around 9-11 might be a good day to bury bad news.
00:31:59.000The only problem they have in the political world is getting caught, isn't it?
00:33:07.000As we become more and more detached from meaning, as we lose our faith in God and one another, as we lose hope that the world could be saved, hope that I would like to Restore you to, because I believe that this apocalyptic vision that we teeter on the precipice of is the dark moment before the dawn.
00:34:01.000Before we get there, a GOP candidate quits after cop catches him masturbating outside preschool.
00:34:07.000A Republican running for an Arizona college district's governing board suspended his campaign on Tuesday, two weeks after he was arrested for allegedly masturbating outside a preschool at one of the colleges he was hoping to represent.
00:34:18.000Randy Kaufman, oh dear that is unfortunate isn't it, once said he wanted to protect children from the progressive left.
00:35:13.000Police found him fondling himself in his car while parked in the lot in Rio Salado College, one of the colleges he was running to represent.
00:35:21.000In full view of the preschool, a police report notes that several children were playing on the playground outside the school.
00:35:27.000It could have been the prospect of representing that college.
00:35:54.000Officers found Kaufman seated in his car with his pants around his thighs, manipulating his genitals in a masturbatory manner, according to police report.
00:36:02.000When the officer on the scene approached Kaufman, he said, seriously?
00:36:06.000To which the hopeful politician began his explanation.
00:36:09.000I'm sorry, he allegedly said to the officer.
00:37:31.000Yeah, he's concerned about it, confused, and the idea that they've created... The ones that are doing the gardening don't look as advanced, I suppose.
00:37:39.000Have a look at these little guys, God love them.
00:37:41.000Yeah, no, they look like people that have been made out of Meccano, haven't they?
00:37:45.000Yeah, they're rubbish, and they've called them Tom, Dick and Harry.
00:37:48.000The one on the left is basically a toboggan that you get from a gas station.
00:37:53.000The one on the right, that's sort of been half-arsed put together from things from Home Depot, and Harry's the best one, I suppose, but that's still bike made by the A-team hastily to escape from a tight spot, isn't it?
00:38:19.000Listen, I'd like to see some things from the chat, some comments from people in the chat, so as I feel connected to you, because you know I love you.
00:38:33.000And uh I suppose should we show on Monday we're gonna this is the story we're doing on on Monday is about Gavin Newsom, Governor of California.
00:38:42.000Boris Johnson, former British Prime Minister, held endless parties throughout the lockdown.
00:38:48.000Gavin Newsom, he had a little bit of party in doing your American lockdown over there.
00:38:53.000But now he wants to tell your doctor whether or not your doctor can advise you just freely and openly or whether your doctor is presumed corrupt.
00:39:02.000We've got a little clip of that video.
00:39:05.000California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation that would allow the state medical board to discipline physicians and surgeons who spread coronavirus misinformation during direct patient care.
00:39:16.000So law would designate spreading false or misleading medical information to patients as unprofessional conduct, subject to punishment by the agency that licenses doctors, the Medical Board of California.
00:39:25.000That could include suspending or revoking a doctor's license to practice medicine in the state.
00:39:29.000So maybe I'll boot doctors out, suspend and strike off doctors that disagree with them.
00:39:35.000But already during the pandemic period, we've seen key workers, medical professionals, nurses, doctors lose their jobs.
00:39:42.000...for refusing to undertake certain procedures which YouTube guidelines prevent me from elaborating on, but I suppose might relate to the recent admission by Jane Small, the Pfizer executive, who said... Did we know about stopping immunisation before it's entered the market?
00:40:26.000I suppose an apology is a relatively sensible thing, or maybe something like a bee, or maybe say that I was connecting my own scrotum to Joe Biden's to ensure that he could never stray too far from the mic.
00:40:37.000This story about Gavin Newsom, I suppose, again, is another example of government overreach and a sort of What spaces are going to remain in your life where you are at liberty to have some kind of privacy, where you do not feel surveilled, curtailed and controlled?
00:40:58.000Yeah, so this bill is catchily titled AB2098.
00:41:02.000I can see why people aren't talking about it.
00:41:07.000Which means that a licensed physician or surgeon could be committing unprofessional conduct if they disseminate misinformation or disinformation.
00:41:17.000About the nature and risks of the virus, the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 and the development, safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.
00:41:24.000So any kind of advice against people taking vaccines, whether that be now that we know that they're recommended for children also, and it could result in them being struck off or reprimanded in some way.
00:41:37.000They're not allowed to recommend hydroclo... I'm never gonna be able to say it.
00:41:40.000Who in the chat can confidently say hydroclo... Wait a sec.
00:42:21.000Is there new legislation required to prevent your doctor lying to you and telling you stuff that they've made up on the spot?
00:42:27.000I think, like, as people have pointed out, and someone who wrote in the Washington Times, Leanna S. Nguyen, she made the point that, you know, the science has changed.
00:42:37.000That's been one of the you know, narratives around this pandemic is that the
00:42:42.000science does change. Hence, at the beginning, saying that it couldn't stop, that it stops the spread and
00:42:47.000then the acknowledgement now that it doesn't. So, you know, making a law that punishes
00:42:52.000people for science being an unmovable thing, you know, is unfair. What I imagine it means is that
00:43:02.000science has become a subset of a dominant ideology, that science is no longer free to be
00:43:08.000objective, discursive or part of an ongoing and evolving discourse, that it has to toe a
00:43:16.000Sometimes I query whether or not there is a deliberate conspiracy, a centralized force offering dictates from on high.
00:43:23.000But it's clear to see that the legislation or recommendations passed by the WHO tend to become regulation, even with our own situation.
00:43:32.000On YouTube, YouTube's community guidelines are informed by the WHO.
00:43:37.000So a body like the WHO, which you think of, oh, well, maybe they're just kindly folks doing stuff to help out recommendations.
00:43:44.000Ultimately, the stuff they say and their funding, you know, and you know that their second biggest funder is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
00:43:51.000Ends up being implemented in a way that affects, like, actually our lives.
00:43:54.000It informs YouTube community guidelines.
00:43:57.000Like, when we do, like, videos on this subject, like, when we try to talk about Jane Smalls' admission that they didn't trial it for transmission, the sort of pushback on that was, oh, well, they never said that they were trialing it for transmission.
00:44:10.000But there was clearly a massive campaign to get people vaccinated in order to protect other people.
00:44:17.000There's so many people that did it for precisely that reason.
00:44:22.000I think the issue with this, again, like we have kind of talked about with censorship as well, it's almost you have to take the issue out of it.
00:44:29.000The fact is, that if you're it becomes a political matter ultimately if a different government gets in and says that science is this is one thing and they you know mandate that doctors have to adhere to their version of science and then another political party says you i'd have to adhere to our version of science you can't make health political you or you shouldn't
00:44:51.000There's another argument for decentralisation.
00:44:54.000Decentralised boards that are not accountable to a particular political agenda or funded by the pharmaceutical companies that they're supposed to regulate.
00:45:05.000Thank you Pride Faults for saying just call it HCQ and IV.
00:45:09.000Thank you mostly Firegirl 2020 for giving me a pneumonic device, hydroxychloroquine.
00:45:36.000Once I met this woman, she sort of spoke to me like she was someone that had been either released from a mental asylum, Or as if she had this cherished piece of information.
00:46:46.000She says Sweet Lady Nature's the best way to do your doctoring.
00:46:49.000So she took us out, me, my wife, my dad, Ron Brand, and our littlens, for a walk in the woods.
00:46:55.000And she gave us this colour chart, and her whole Ethos is about helping mentally ill people without the use of psychotherapeutic drugs.
00:47:01.000Sorry, I shouldn't have laughed at that point.
00:47:03.000So she gave us this lovely colour chart where it's all these different greens.
00:47:07.000Sage green, mint green, peppermint green, bottle green.
00:47:10.000But then pinks and yellows and autumnal tones and reds and stuff.
00:47:13.000And she goes, just go for a walk with your little colour chart.
00:47:16.000And it was sort of mainly for the kids and for mentally ill people.
00:47:18.000Go and have a look around the woods and find all those colours and find something and see them little pegs, just peg it onto your colour chart.
00:47:23.000It was a wheel and you could move it and it was extremely satisfactory.
00:47:26.000And I thought, well, I was just humouring it at first, but then I got so into it, I couldn't think about anything else.
00:47:30.000And then I discovered a deep sense of peace.
00:47:31.000So at the end of it, I go, it's funny this, because, like, I know it's meant for mentally ill people, isn't it?
00:47:36.000But actually, I found it very effective.
00:47:41.000Like when I was talking to that autistic man down at the climbing place, and he describes his sit, he goes, he goes, he goes, I've got autism.
00:48:05.000And I sort of wanted to say, are you the type of autistic where you've emotionally don't care about no one else and human life has no value to you?
00:48:12.000Because I believe that's one type I've seen depicted in the film.
00:48:15.000Or is it that you're really fastidious and really care?
00:48:18.000Or could you be distracted by sort of a buzzing noise?
00:48:20.000Like it goes like, all it is is right now, even when I'm talking to you, I'm aware of a lot of ambient noises and there's sort of a variety of influences.
00:48:26.000For example, I'm aware of that person over there and I'm saying, yeah, I'm aware of that person.
00:48:28.000And then I can hear that sort of subtle noise over there.
00:48:31.000Sometimes I have trouble expressing myself.
00:48:35.000So, I've been doing those quizzes to see if you are autistic, but my wife says don't try and bias it so that, you know, that you come out as autistic soon as you've got a new thing that you can use to justify behaving like a dickhead!
00:48:48.000Like, oh, what are you supposed to say for this one?
00:49:36.000I literally just saw a headline now that came up about Boris Johnson and it said the Tories are returning like a dog to its own vomit and we're all going to have to eat it.
00:49:46.000Well, the dog wouldn't make you do that.
00:49:48.000The dog wouldn't return... The dog... The part of the deal is that the dog eats its own vomit.
00:49:52.000The dog doesn't return and then sort of try to... Well... I'll show you into it.
00:51:09.000But, once more, let's just see New York and how seriously they're taking it.
00:51:13.000And also, look at the problem they think they're tackling in New York.
00:51:17.000From this, you can assume that New York think that rats are listening to this, and that the people of New York are opposed to the idea of getting rid of those rats, because they think it's ratatouille.
00:51:39.000That's clear because they don't understand democracy, they don't understand municipality, facilitation, mass transport, finance, vaccination programs, propaganda.
00:52:21.000It's like people are reveling in the rats.
00:52:25.000Ah, now, rats, get ready for a link, baby, that's gonna knock your socks off, because what does he find, Winston, in room 101, in Orwell's classic, 1984, His worst fear.
00:52:38.000Sooner or later we will all be confronted with our worst fear.
00:54:40.000But when we've reviewed, oh, it's stuck to the wall.
00:54:43.000But when it's, when we've done it, quite rightly really, because you should have pictures stuck to the wall, when we've, um, when we've reviewed Night Night 4, we're going to give this away as a prize, aren't we?
00:55:11.000Can you, first of all, Brad, you're a philosopher.
00:55:13.000Why don't you set out the significance of this book culturally and philosophically right now so as we can all get into this book club?
00:55:19.000Because remember, you lot are going to have to read it and Let's be honest, so am I, which I will have done by the next time we do the final.
00:55:28.000Brad, so tell us, why is 1984 such a significant, ongoing, and ongoingly relevant piece of work?
00:55:34.000Yeah, I think it's an ideal book to start this book club, first of all, because I think it's the one book which really, you know, captures the imagination.
00:55:41.000It's a book which The more, the older I get and the more you read it, the more you feel the gravity of the book because the more you become aware, you know, Umberto Eco said this book is 75% real and 25% dystopian fiction, right?
00:55:57.000And I think it's a book also, which I think the brilliance of Orwell is he manages to traverse time.
00:56:03.000We're not sure when the past is, when the present is, and when the future is.
00:56:07.000That's a recurring theme throughout the book around the oppression of the system.
00:56:11.000But also it's a book which has this timeless appeal because it is so mutable, like power is so mutable.
00:56:17.000And the fundamental themes which he's dealing with in terms of oppression, in terms of love, in terms of torture, in terms of hatred, in terms of the obedience to power, they are profound questions which still affect us today.
00:56:29.000This dislocation After an assumed apocalyptic event, you suppose this does something to us when we approach this book, that it somehow invites us to enter into the fiction with a sense of anticipation or even dread?
00:56:49.000It's anticipatory, but it's also a, you know, a sense in which we know this has already happened in some capacity.
00:56:55.000We've been always teetering on the point of this annihilation.
00:56:58.000Now, you talked about, for instance, in the earlier part about, you know, the Cold War.
00:57:02.000Orwell is actually accredited for inventing the very phrase, the Cold War.
00:57:28.000And the catastrophe which can tear society apart in such a way that we will give ourselves over to power and not question it because we think it's right for us or we fear power so much.
00:57:38.000Brad, as a sort of passionate socialist, how did Orwell end up using a kind of communist dystopia as the general palette for 1984?
00:57:54.000Yeah, well Orwell is obviously, he's a self-professed democratic socialist.
00:57:58.000And I think we have to kind of remember the history of Orwell's life.
00:58:01.000You know, as a writer, you know, he kind of, when he was 33 years old, he went to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
00:58:08.000He went as a journalist, but then ended up getting caught up.
00:58:10.000And then Busquem part of the fighting, which became the basis of his book, Homage to Catalonia.
00:58:15.000He was avowedly anti-fascist in his politics.
00:58:19.000Now, I think it becomes very clear for him as well that the ideal of socialism, like, you know, Orwell's book is about the corruption of language, but he's also very much interested in the corruption of political systems.
00:58:30.000And I think it's very apparent to most people by 1945 that what professed to be a kind of a socialist ideal was very corrupted.
00:58:38.000And then if you read, for instance, many years later, you know, what Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in a very famous book, The Gulag Archipelago, of a system where everybody is watching one another.
00:58:48.000You know, you can't even trust your brother because they might kind of, you know, dob you in and you end up in a gulag.
00:58:54.000This is the narrative which Orwell is really talking about.
00:58:56.000You know, it's not just the surveillance cameras.
00:58:59.000It's a system in which we survey one another.
00:59:01.000We are constantly the watch persons of one another.
00:59:04.000And we can say that is so prescient today as well, you know.
00:59:06.000Where in particular do we see the realization of this dystopic vision?
00:59:12.000What are the most obvious comparisons to draw and what are the most evident distinctions?
00:59:19.000Well, first of all, I think the book works on multiple levels.
00:59:23.000So the book starts as a narrative of war.
00:59:26.000And what Orwell makes very clear is if you invoke a condition of war, now we could argue, for instance, what became of the pandemic was kind of very much wrapped up in war mentalities.
00:59:35.000If you invoke a war, you instantly naturalize hierarchy.
00:59:41.000So if you and the idea of the war in 1984, nobody really knows what the war is.
00:59:45.000You don't really know who the enemy is.
00:59:46.000The enemy keeps changing, but war structures hierarchy.
00:59:50.000And then through that, you have this normalization of hierarchy, which gives rise then to the normalization of surveillance technologies, because it's for your own security.
00:59:59.000And you kind of embrace those technologies, even though you know they're fundamentally wrong.
01:00:03.000And I think those are the two start points for Orwell, which then gives rise and the ways in which then there's a kind of people are told evident falsehoods, but they have to accept them as true.
01:00:14.000And evident, you know, the evident contradictions, for instance, in Orwell's 84, you have, you know, the Ministry of Plenty, which is in charge of economics.
01:00:22.000And even though people's, you know, lived realities of everyday life is deteriorating, they're constantly celebrating an increase in GDP or an increase in living standards.
01:00:31.000Or the Ministry of Love is responsible for torture, you know, or the Ministry of Peace is responsible for war.
01:00:37.000And all these kind of, you know, evident displays with language is very kind of clever with Orwell.
01:00:42.000Yes, an induction of a kind of continual bewilderment and an inability to find a locus that you can situate yourself in, as you said, with the book's entire premise.
01:00:56.000Where do you live in the spectra of language when meaning itself is being stripped away?
01:01:02.000It's curious that these terms misinformation and disinformation are becoming the parables de le jour, if I can mix a couple of Latin languages in an attempt to come up with a pithy phrase.
01:01:14.000And Adam Curtis is always keen to point out That we began with identifiable wars that were geographically defined and could even, it seems in retrospect, at least be seen.
01:01:52.000Firstly, his father, of course, Gabor Mate, is a Holocaust survivor, and he said that that was plainly a war that could be identified both as morally and territorially, even though, of course, there's good and bad in everyone, etc.
01:02:06.000So we've gone from the Second World War to the Cold War that was played out in peculiar proxy wars, and it seemed that that's birthed this continuum of war ever since then.
01:02:16.000Furthermore, the idea of the war against terror is beginning now to become abstracted, an enemy that is diffuse and difficult to identify.
01:02:23.000Until, as you've already noted, you end up with the war against germs, a kind of microbial conflict that can't ever be won, that breath and each other are the enemy.
01:02:34.000And with this mentality of condemnation, for example, of Trump voters in the United States, you land at a point where you other 75 million sort of ordinary Americans, now I'm not saying that that's More egregious than other Muslims, or people of colour, or women, or people as a result of their sexual orientation or gender orientation.
01:02:54.000But it's more likely, given the proportionality, to create a state of near constant conflict.
01:03:01.000But to move now, Brad, to the distinction, there's an evident aesthetic...
01:03:05.000Disjunct between Orwell's prophecy, if you want to call it that, and the peculiar sheen of progression, the progressiveness of our age.
01:03:18.000For me, in 984, having seen a bit of it and read a bit of it and not read the fucking thing yet, but I bloody well will, I promise you, by next time.
01:03:27.000It's clear that this is a kind of a penitentiary, a place of stasis, rather than what we all live with, is this myth of progressivism expressed through things like GDP, but also through our infatuation with technology.
01:03:42.000What do you reckon about that, though?
01:03:44.000Yeah, well, the... There's so much in there to unpack, mate.
01:03:51.000First of all, your points about... Unpack it!
01:03:54.000Your points about war and the brilliance about Orwell in the context of war.
01:03:57.000It's based around this society called Oceania, and they're at war with Eurasia.
01:04:02.000But then, very quickly, the war shifts to East Asia, and they have to rewrite the history and say, we were never at war with Eurasia, right?
01:04:08.000It's kind of a bit like the approach Blair used to have with Libya.
01:04:12.000You know, it's like, Gaddafi's the enemy, he's not the enemy.
01:04:14.000He is the enemy, he's not the enemy, right?
01:04:17.000But even then, as you say, it was fixed enemies.
01:04:20.000Now, first of all, we're in a very different terrain of war to what Orwell envisaged.
01:04:24.000Because at least they were still geopolitically kind of set, right?
01:04:28.000Whereas we know with the advent of Al Qaeda, for instance, you know, the war on terror was declared.
01:04:33.000I've got no idea whether we're still in a war on terror.
01:04:35.000Nobody's declared it over, you know, but it's kind of slipped into, as you say, the war on germs.
01:04:40.000Now, what's very interesting about the war on terror and, you know, the response to COVID was, First of all, the hyper militarization of the early narratives, the narratives around heroes, you know, we had this kind of constant heroism, you know, heroes normally die, so it's okay for, you know, medical people to die because it's heroic.
01:04:56.000But then you have that kind of shift between an amorphous enemy, which nobody really can put their finger on.
01:05:01.000What it does do is normalized preemptive governance.
01:05:05.000And I think that's, you know, because the war on terror was the idea was, you know, you can't wait.
01:05:09.000So you have to attack before and you actually create the very threat that you want to kind of kind of bringing it out of hiding.
01:05:15.000And I think that's the other point then about, you know.
01:05:18.000The relevance today, I think Orwell got it wrong on two counts.
01:05:21.000And I think this is also important to recognize, you know, it's not a manifesto.
01:05:25.000There's a lot of errors in the book as well.
01:05:27.000And I think the first thing is kind of interesting.
01:05:29.000If we think, you know, Orwell writes this book and it's based in 1984.
01:05:32.000People date the 1st of January 1983 to the invention of the Internet.
01:05:38.000So the Internet starts to arrive at this cusp in history and Orwell's world is still very industrial.
01:05:48.000Orwell could never have imagined the types of technology we have today.
01:05:52.000The second point, I think, where Orwell was wrong and perhaps Aldous Huxley was right, is that, you know, Huxley was, Orwell's narrative is about how do you get people to, you know, there's this famous line in the book where, you know, if you want to understand history, it's a man stamping on somebody's head eternally.
01:06:22.000And I think that is a different, you know, we've learned to basically be seduced by our own surveillance and because it makes it easier for us to access, you know, airports quicker and so on.
01:06:33.000This convenience, the lubrication of convenience, one of the things we talk about a lot on our show.
01:06:39.000Just from today's show, the stories that we covered like Gavin Newsom's new California legislation that means that what doctors say to patients will be subject to the government or tenure and also Yeah, the protest bill that, you know, that this was just slyly put through during the carnival of trust, no trust, trust Bojo, no trust bus, this bizarre sort of interchange of, you know, comparable political figures.
01:07:11.000Meanwhile, you know, so yes, you're right, this The banalisation is like that sort of gently banal, the easy exchange of autonomy for convenience.
01:07:27.000What for me that I can infer from that is the sort of the gentle Nihilism.
01:07:34.000And I can see how something that obviously precedes Orwell, the rational materialism, the idea that we are into post-enlightenment values of, well, this is what life is.
01:07:49.000And again, Curtis pointed out that through the access to data, we've entered this phase of managerialism, like it's your job to sort of manage yourself.
01:08:22.000And it's a book that's really just about surveillance.
01:08:24.000And I think it's a book that's so much more than that.
01:08:27.000In many ways it represents the best of the old kind of Greek tragedy tradition.
01:08:31.000Because it's a book which is in three parts.
01:08:32.000The first part kind of sets the scene.
01:08:34.000The second part is basically a love story.
01:08:37.000Where, you know, this character Winston falls in love with this protagonist and he's kind of, he hates her to begin with because he has these feelings for her and nobody's meant to have any feelings unless it's for the state.
01:08:47.000And then he falls in love with this woman and then of course he becomes tortured and there's a great act of betrayal.
01:08:52.000It's an ultimate tragic story because at the heart of it... Spoiler alert!
01:08:57.000Yeah, but at the heart of the book is basically the idea that love is revolutionary.
01:09:02.000And the final part of the book is basically how do you break a human down in such a way that the only thing they can love is the party or the big other or the big state.
01:09:13.000And the intimate bonds between humans are literally reduced, as you say, to mathematical criteria.
01:09:19.000Oh man, I feel like by reading this book and studying the news, we'll be able to see what the trajectory is going to do next.
01:09:27.000So that's why we are going to read it together.
01:09:28.000Are you going to read it as well, Gareth?
01:09:31.000Now, in a minute we're going to slip over to Stay Free AF, our members community, where Brad's going to read a little bit of the book and we're going to analyse it in more depth.
01:09:40.000Those of you that are in our community can tell me if you want to do anything else, like a little bit of meditation or you just want to lark about a little bit, but I can see the real value in using our understanding of literature, and obviously in this case in particular this book, to advance our understanding of the news. In fact my mate Jamie Bing who's the publisher
01:09:58.000of Canon Books, you know, Canon Gate, that's what it is, like on the subject of self-help
01:10:03.000books he said, all books are self-help books. That is the point of a book. And another
01:10:08.000good thing I've said about books one, so when I went to a literary agent, I goes, like
01:10:12.000people say don't judge a book by its cover but I do. And he goes, everyone does. Like that's,
01:11:29.000And can there be any greater crime than patenting seeds and Bill Gates using his foundation to potentially avoid tax, allegedly, allegedly, and also potentially to exert undue influence on the planet.
01:11:41.000Me and Brad and Gareth and everyone are going to stay around for Stay Free AF.
01:11:45.000Remember, you can join for I think it's like $33 and stay with us all the time.
01:11:49.000Plus there's a whole bunch of other stuff.
01:11:50.000You can join us live with Eckhart Tolle.