In this episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, host Russell Brand is joined by comedian and writer Greg Gutfield ( ) to discuss the latest in the Trump administration, including his thoughts on China, Rand Paul's F.O.C. hearings, and much more! Stay free with Russell Brand wherever you get your news and views. Tweet me if you like the show and/or have any suggestions on how to improve it. Timestamps: 4:00 - Rand Paul on F-O-U-C 6:30 - Trump's thoughts on Wuhan 7:00 - The China Virus 8:30 - What's going on in the world? 9:20 - What s going on with China? 11:40 - Is it possible that the China virus came out of a lab? 12:40 - Does China have a nuclear weapon? 13:20 - Is China a good or bad country? 14:00- What s the deal with Putin? 15:10 - What are the chances of China having nuclear weapons? 16:30- What's the deal on Iran? 17:15 - What do we know about Russia? 18:20- What is the deal? 19:15- What are we to do about China's nuclear weapons and missiles? 21:40- What does it have to do with them? 22:15 27:00 -- What is China's relationship with Russia and North Korea? 26:30 -- What does China have in common with the US President Xi Jinping? 29:40 -- What are our relationship with North Korea and Russia's relationship? 35:00 | What are they all about? 36:00-- Is China s relationship with the U.S. relations with Russia? -- What do they have with the Chinese president? 37:30-- What is our relationship like? 39:00 // 39:10 -- Is China's role in the Middle East? 45:30 | What do you think about China s role in this? 46:00 + 47:00 & 45: What does this mean? 47:10 -- How does China get along with Russia's response to the US relations with the Russians? Theme music by Ian Dorsch Theme song by my main amigo, Evan Handyside Theme by Ian Somerland
00:02:31.000Thank you for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:02:34.000A very special show because we've got Greg Gutfield, the gut, the Feldman, joining us today.
00:02:40.000It's a fantastic conversation you're going to love.
00:02:42.000But before that, have you noticed that Donald Trump gets out of a car with a great deal of confidence?
00:02:47.000Do you want to hear Donald Trump's views on Wuhan?
00:02:50.000And do you want to hear a little more from Rand Paul on Fauci before you get Lost in the process of obfuscation and deception that this House subcommittee that provides, even though they've already admitted that six feet was arbitrary.
00:03:03.000If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be available for the first 15-20 minutes, then we will wade off with our heads held high into the stream of freedom that is Rumble.
00:03:13.000And if you want to support our work further, join Locals and become an Awakened Wonder.
00:03:18.000That means you get early access to our content.
00:03:20.000Indeed, the Greg Gutfield interview's been up there for about a week now.
00:03:24.000You get early access to it, plus we make additional content, like additional Here's the Newsies, like my Golden Globes take as a former Hollywood insider.
00:03:32.000That's got some interesting things to say about that, as well as early access to a bunch of content, as well as being part of our movement, vitally.
00:03:39.000Now, if you're watching this on YouTube, we'll be here for about another 10, 15 minutes.
00:03:42.000Those of you on Rumble, get involved on the stream.
00:04:30.000It's really interesting to watch Trump unpack pandemic information, because I remember at the time he was pretty proud of Operation Warp Speed, wasn't he?
00:04:38.000Let me know what you think about that in the chat.
00:04:40.000Also, uh, he was participating, obviously, as President of the United States in many of the measures made then, but it is something of, uh, I suppose that is due to Trump's rhetorical and communicative brilliance that somehow he sounds like a person who from the beginning has known that that thing come out of a lab.
00:04:58.000When we had just prior to the China virus coming in if you don't mind I'd like to be accurate as opposed to Covid it is the China virus.
00:05:06.000He took a lot of heat for that China stuff but now he's like he should always never have been even criticized for that is what he's basically saying.
00:06:15.000I suppose because you want the general feeling that these people are peers and people that you can have diplomatic relationships with.
00:06:21.000Obviously, as well, he's about to go on and say he imposed draconian, hard-arse measures on Xi, unlike Biden, who's in his thrall.
00:06:28.000And it's difficult to deny that now, when you see Biden's son marching in and out of Congressional hearings at will.
00:06:34.000But I took in four hundred billion dollars in tariffs and taxes from China and one of the reasons China's... It's funny that people cheer tariff.
00:06:52.000You know, he got paid off by China after all, so he wants to help the people that gave him a lot of money.
00:06:56.000But he, you know, Part of Trump's rhetorical brilliance
00:06:59.000is that it's such a sort of stream and storm of information.
00:07:02.000Biden is corrupt, I've been calling it the China virus for ages, I impose these tariffs, they won't impose tariffs.
00:07:09.000It's sort of like when you watch other politicians talking, like when you watch Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley communicates, oh god this is so dry.
00:07:16.000Or if you've been on the show, dear Rhonda Sannis, good job in Florida, good job.
00:07:21.000Or when you watch Biden as well, like when Biden and Jill Biden doing their New Year's Eve chat on that big screen in Times Square, you think, I like this bloke who's just casually slinging facts about stories and doing impressions.
00:07:35.000He's a Manchurian candidate, in a true sense.
00:07:37.000He got money from China, he got money from Russia.
00:07:40.000You remember the debate where Chris Wallace, how was he doing, I wonder, but Chris Wallace, when I said to Biden, I asked him a question, I said, how come you got $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow's wife?
00:07:53.000And Chris Wallace wouldn't let me ask me, I said, why are you stopping this?
00:07:57.000He got $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow's wife.
00:08:01.000I tell you this, we're going to have a success that's so great that I won't have, hopefully, I won't have time for retribution.
00:08:08.000There won't be retribution, there'll be success.
00:08:12.000In a way, Trump's personal and political success, as we said yesterday, means that politics itself has taken on a different timbre, a different tone, different vocabulary, different style.
00:08:23.000Political figures all now are post-Trump political figures.
00:08:26.000You've got Vivek, who sort of talks in that kind of hustler, millennial way.
00:08:32.000You've got now primary debates where people are turning on one another.
00:08:35.000You've got figures like RFK, who a couple of years ago, you just thought, oh no, RFK, the forbidden Kennedy.
00:08:41.000Let me know in the chat what you think it is.
00:09:42.000And it's really the same with gain of function.
00:09:43.000In private, he said, yes, we're suspicious that the virus was manipulated, looks manipulated, and we know they're doing gain of function in Wuhan.
00:10:02.000Elsewhere, we're analysing that House Committee story in some detail.
00:10:06.000It's on Rumble, available, and now the foxiest of foxes, the wiliest member of The Five, Greg Gutfeld, is joining us for an exclusive conversation.
00:10:17.000He's on The Five at 5pm ET, Eastern Time, excuse me, on weekdays, and Gutfeld is on at 10pm.
00:10:23.000It's being said in this way, I think, Gutfeld.
00:11:15.000We are, in a sense, I would say, very much the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of the world of punditry, shall we say.
00:11:27.000I remember the first time I was aware of you, you were saying, I knew this guy when I lived in the UK, I liked him then, and now he's become...
00:11:44.000Because I suppose you would have once been, given that I first saw you on Fox News, associated with, you know, we all know what we associate Fox News with.
00:11:54.000Is it sort of like right-wing Christianity?
00:11:56.000There's a sort of a whole That's a good question.
00:11:58.000of ideas around Fox News and then like um and I was a sort of uh exiled from Hollywood uh bratish
00:12:06.000show-off or you know online so um and yet somehow we found ourselves agreeing about a lot of issues.
00:12:13.000What do you think's changed in the culture Greg to for us to have found this alliance?
00:12:18.000That's a good question. I I mean I feel like I was always an oddball in any employment I was
00:12:28.000I mean, I was the editor of Men's Health and I was smoking and drinking.
00:12:32.000When I was at Maxim, I was engaging in mostly homoerotic humor to subvert the audience.
00:12:41.000And at Fox, I wasn't like the other anchors.
00:12:44.000And I was, I, I was always interested in you.
00:12:47.000I always found you interesting, and I knew there was something there that I identified with, and I think that's why I was so frustrated.
00:12:55.000I can't even remember why I was shitting on you.
00:13:01.000I can't remember why, but this is the flaw of doing 24-hour cable news.
00:13:06.000I probably saw a clip, and I needed to fill a bucket, And so I used that clip and then I go, this guy, who knows what you were talking about.
00:13:37.000And I'd like to take this opportunity to unreservedly apologize to you for being rude.
00:13:42.000And I think what the videos were, it was when Bill O'Reilly was the most prominent Fox News voice.
00:13:48.000And I used to, I think, do little videos commenting on Bill O'Reilly's content.
00:13:53.000But Also, the same way that I've always done with, let's call them Fox-style pundits, over time and while watching them, developing a kind of affection, because I'm old enough to recall that when a family would contain people that were of the left and of the right, and that wouldn't be cause for actual hatred and condemnation.
00:14:17.000You wouldn't refer to people who had different political views as a basket of deplorables.
00:14:22.000You wouldn't say that half of the population shouldn't be allowed to vote or should be debugged.
00:14:27.000You wouldn't escalate a kind of a populist demagogue to the sort of heights of a 20th century military dictator.
00:14:35.000Everything has become more incendiary, more conflagratory, I would say.
00:14:42.000So it's like then, even 10 years ago, when we were first communicating, albeit through aggressive hit pieces on one another, the world was Less filled with invective and something has become concentrated and amplified, Greg, hasn't it?
00:15:01.000I mean, you could trace it back to the phrase political correctness, because that used to be a positive attribute in the sense that I'm morally superior to you and you have to reach this point, but then I keep getting higher and then that turned into Well, the political became so personal, and you were supposed to keep it separate.
00:15:21.000Like when you talk about family gatherings, you could have Bill O'Reilly as your uncle, and I could be your nephew, and it didn't really matter, and you would sit at the table, and your Uncle Bill would spout about immigrants, and you would be whatever, and then you would move on to sports.
00:15:38.000But in this case, now everything is a moral judgment, I can't sit at the same table with that person.
00:15:44.000And then that escalated to, this person is evil and I have to cut that person out of my life.
00:15:52.000And I think that's kind of what we're seeing now, especially in this hyper woke thing.
00:15:58.000It's like, we cannot have a discussion, period.
00:16:02.000And in fact, the discussion lends itself to oppression.
00:16:06.000Just merely questioning something is an attack.
00:16:11.000But the response, I think there's a really positive thing going on.
00:16:16.000The response of mockery and humor is taking that away because even Bill Maher noticed it.
00:16:23.000They're no longer funny because of this moral hysteria.
00:16:28.000And so all of their targets now, it's flipped.
00:16:32.000It's now like the radicals are, I wouldn't say on the right, but libertarian, free thinking, Yeah.
00:16:48.000I heard the brilliant comedian Duncan Trussell say once, people have gone from woo to cue.
00:16:54.000Like people that were previously kind of into meditation and psychedelics have become very anti-establishment now.
00:17:03.000There's this entirely new demographic.
00:17:05.000And the other aspect of this is this I would say it's a media construct and potentially a movement with academia.
00:17:21.000Certainly that would be the analysis of people who know more than me like Jordan Peterson or Weinstein or whatever.
00:17:32.000At least when it comes to the political and media class of this sort of neo-liberal, let's call it woke again just for simplicity's sake, it doesn't seem that authentic.
00:17:42.000What I question is how much they actually do care about the rights of people with different types of sexual identity or how much they actually do care about different races, cultural groups, It doesn't make sense because ultimately I think we all know that these kind of apparently neoliberal but self-regarding leftist thinkers and orators are ultimately undergirded by the same financial and corporate interests
00:18:14.000So whenever you see... That's why it becomes deeply hypocritical in times of war and health crisis.
00:18:18.000Because ultimately they will advocate for the interests of the pharmaceutical companies when in a health crisis, notably and obviously the pandemic.
00:18:25.000In a war, all of the peace and love language sort of melts away and is replaced by the kind of patriotic language that totally would have belonged to the Republicans in the Iraq war period.
00:18:38.000your Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld language of like, you know, it's not patriotic to talk like that.
00:18:43.000You're going to allow Putin, Putin will be marching on NATO countries. Like you say,
00:18:48.000Greg, everything has flipped. And the part of the reason it's flipped is because there was no
00:18:51.000moral, certain moral values there in the bloody first place.
00:18:55.000Yeah, you know, it's interesting to see, like, Ukraine's the best example, I think of this,
00:19:04.000is to see people that were so anti-war, accuse you of not being a patriot.
00:19:11.000If you aren't supporting Ukraine and it's like it's not even our country.
00:19:16.000I always look over there and see that it's a fight among relatives.
00:19:20.000These are these are countries very and we're and we somehow I think the United States is almost like a next door neighbor or a relative that's egging it on and and for our own reasons for the for to like.
00:20:02.000Well, there's 500,000 people dead, but I want to touch on something you said, and this is going to be a generalization, but I don't care.
00:20:10.000I do think the reason why it's, to me, it's inauthentic is I do think, and maybe this is like a Jordan Peterson-y thing, kind of, but there's an empty hole.
00:20:20.000When you see a lot of, The really strident voices.
00:20:24.000There is something missing in their lives and they fill that bucket up with this kind of purpose, which really isn't a purpose.
00:20:37.000It's just where they place their emotional meaning for attention, so they get the attention For whatever screaming they're doing, and I think at the end of the day, they're not really happy people.
00:20:56.000They haven't found peace in their lives, in their family life, and it might not even be their fault.
00:21:03.000It could be our society has created a weird environment where some people can't find meaning anymore and are lost.
00:21:14.000And so they put it in these, well, the false idols of politics.
00:21:17.000I mean, politics becomes their religion.
00:21:20.000But the only problem with their religion is that there's no forgiveness.
00:21:29.000If you violate the original sin of oppression, your ancestors are guilty.
00:21:37.000Whether it's Jews or it's whites in the United States, there's no forgiveness.
00:21:43.000So you constantly have to take on the role of oppressor.
00:21:47.000It is a religion without confession or without forgiveness.
00:21:52.000But I think people treat it as a religion until maybe I hope that like there's so many young people that are into this kind of phase and I can't help but think it's it's filling up something in their lives that isn't being uh filled by other things and I think it's also I think it's relationships I think a lot of these people do not have relationships in their lives people they can talk to because like a friend a friend would tell you
00:22:22.000You know, Greg, you shouldn't be sticking, you shouldn't be gluing your hands to a painting, or you shouldn't, why are you blocking traffic of people who are trying to get to work?
00:22:30.000Friends would actually say that to you, but it seems like that's missing in people's lives.
00:22:35.000You need somebody to tell you you're being an idiot, even though they say, I admire the cause, but you know that in Gaza, they don't care if you're blocking traffic.
00:22:47.000I have some thoughts on that, as you might imagine, Greg.
00:22:50.000Just because I don't know anything about a subject, that doesn't mean I won't have an opinion on it.
00:22:54.000And I think it's a kind of natural end point to obsessive individualism, the kind of culturally immersive narcissism that, of course, by its nature, we must all fall to a degree prey to.
00:23:06.000And I would say that part of my own journey is my own wrestling with That kind of locked-in solipsism, as if you're wearing an Oculus or some VR helmet, where you're just obsessed continually with self.
00:23:22.000If a culture stripped of God, stripped of community, stripped of patriotism, stripped of failure, of a family, offers you only as the only sort of the optimal experience is self-fulfillment, Fulfill your own sexual identity, your own gender identity, your own cultural or racial identity.
00:23:40.000These are all beautiful and noble ideas.
00:23:44.000I always take recourse to ethnographics and anthropology and think, well, how did we live for tens of thousands or possibly hundreds of thousands of years?
00:23:52.000Small groups of a hundred or two hundred people that You know, would have interacted with other tribal groups, perhaps through trade, perhaps sometimes through warfare.
00:24:02.000But there's nothing in our evolution that has prepared us to be confronted with a variety of cultures and being told that that culture is adverse to us.
00:24:10.000This is something that was written about extensively, notably by Edward Said, who in his book, what was that called?
00:24:17.000Orientalism, pointed out how the West was condemnatory of like eastern culture and the post-ottoman
00:24:24.000empire islamic culture that we assumed that our cultural trajectory was better and he as a sort of
00:24:29.000a muslim living in the west said well there's different perspectives we're not allowing people to
00:24:34.000have a different perspective on reality we've reached the point now where people are happy to say
00:24:39.000there's no such thing as god that that that that that that that ration the the ration to sort of mangle
00:24:45.000cs Lewis, the rationalism that we use to posit that there can be no God is itself evolved from a godless set of meaningless processes.
00:24:59.000A set of random processes led to a consciousness that is able to ascertain that there is no meaning and no purpose in the world.
00:25:07.000And I think that when you live in a world where all that matters is the fulfilment of your own desires, the avoidance of your own fears, you end up with these odd cultural movements and artefacts which, as you say, take on the practices, aesthetics and appearance of a religion.
00:25:26.000Zeal, evangelism, certainty, but without the important valves and checks that are embedded in religions to ensure that we don't regard one's individual identity as the summit and apex of all potential experience.
00:25:43.000All of us are temporal expressions of something greater, and that can be used to mobilize people to fight for a nation.
00:25:52.000That can be used to turn people into racists.
00:25:56.000That can be used for a whole variety of things.
00:25:58.000But what it could be better utilised for is our life should be dedicated to service, and when inevitably, because of biology and because of cultural conditioning, we start thinking the only thing that matters is what Russell wants, this is a time to start employing some principles to get myself out of that illusion.
00:26:15.000But no one will do that now, because galvanised I agree.
00:26:19.000evangelical, awakened people are a threat to the globalist establishment elites that
00:26:23.000are able to implement their goals and agenda because of this disparate and atomized population.
00:27:06.000I clinged on to things That as almost like as identity markers.
00:27:12.000And you can kind of see that now, because you can see it as a contagion, at least in the United States, where young women, they were doing studies where they now identify as non-binary, and it's like doubling every year.
00:27:26.000And it becomes like a costume because they are rejecting whatever was there before.
00:27:39.000Chesterton, I think it's called The Fence, Uh, theory.
00:27:42.000It's like don't tear down a fence until you know why it was there in the first place.
00:27:47.000And I think what we're seeing with this kind of regressive progressivism is we're tearing down all these fences without ever understanding why they were necessary.
00:27:57.000So it was easy as a 17 year old to make fun of religion.
00:28:01.000To make fun of your relatives or any kind of traditional stuff was a joke.
00:29:34.000And I think the melting pot idea is under threat.
00:29:38.000And it kind of scares me, because that's the only thing that really holds us together, is the idea of communication, cooperation, the idea of helping others.
00:29:47.000And what you were talking about, too, is kind of like The most dangerous thing is one's ego, feeding that ego.
00:29:57.000And I mean, I was one of those people.
00:30:00.000And the moment you let go of that, it's probably the most freeing thing anybody can do in their lives, is to let go of that ego and look outward.
00:30:11.000And all of a sudden, these identity markers kind of float away.
00:30:15.000And you suddenly see that everybody is basically in the same boat.
00:30:37.000I suppose that only a maniac would deny that there was not a vast project of colonialism and imperialism that exploited, killed, enslaved hundreds of thousands, millions, millions of people.
00:30:53.000But similarly, only a lunatic or a fool would believe that the best way to navigate and placate the legacy of that would be through globalist conglomerates and global organizations and corporations.
00:31:13.000The utilization That's quite enough out of you, Greg.
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00:34:28.000One of the sort of great cultural moments of the last few years, which I think has shown us how legacy media and independent media are rubbing against one another And affecting one another has been Tucker Carlson's departure from the Fox network and his establishment of his own news network, or his own channel certainly, and his own relationship with X and social media.
00:34:56.000As a person that works within Fox, I saw and we talked about the bit, and that's when I called you in fact Greg, When you said about like, you know, I have two words for you, Tucker Carlson, you know, like when, you know, like the corporate interests will censor voices that are anti-war or anti-pharma or, you know, like antithetical to their interests.
00:35:17.000Tell me now what you think Tucker Carlson's time at Fox exemplifies and what his departure from Fox means without getting yourself in trouble because I realize you've got a job.
00:35:29.000What I was referring to, and it's common knowledge and he's talked about it, is that galvanizing advertisers against you over time is meant to destroy you.
00:35:44.000And I think that there was This was building and building and it was, you know, Media Matters and other groups had targeted him.
00:35:53.000And that's where I said, like, you know, I think when I was talking about two words, I was talking about that's what happened to Tucker.
00:35:59.000Over time, you know, they just wore it down and for him to survive and everybody who is, I would say, interesting, Has a an original point of view for them to survive.
00:36:18.000It has to be untethered from advertising.
00:36:21.000It has to be because advertisers are now the sensors and they're not they're not they're not brave.
00:36:30.000I think this goes back to what we were talking about, this kind of the woke-ism.
00:36:34.000They embraced the woke-ism kind of as a Trojan horse to protect themselves from their profit-making, their rent-seeking.
00:36:42.000They can point to the fact that, look, we have DEI, we have equity hires, we're good, we have these special days in our company.
00:36:52.000But meanwhile, they're doing exactly what a corporation does, which is the bottom line, to grow.
00:37:09.000Fox never told him what he couldn't say.
00:37:13.000But you could tell from the advertising and the pressure on him that that was, in my opinion, The leading pressure on on his exit but I don't have proof that they you know there was a meeting I just like he to this day still doesn't know and but I do think that like Fox never told him he couldn't say anything no one's ever told me I can't say anything for example when I said his name people thought oh my god oh my god I never
00:37:42.000They were like, whatever, that's what you can do.
00:38:05.000They don't want to be near the editorial that the customer likes because somehow we're Neanderthals.
00:38:13.000And that was true in when I was at Maxim.
00:38:15.000It was true when I was at Men's Health.
00:38:17.000The stuff that sold the magazine Advertisers hated.
00:38:21.000So you ended up with magazines like GQ or Esquire, which nobody read, but were this thick, filled with advertising, because that's what it was.
00:38:30.000And I think you see that in broadcasting, that those with the most advertising tend to have the emptiest editorial.
00:38:41.000There's nothing that like interests you.
00:38:43.000And once you get interesting or you dare to get outside this circle, then it flips on you and then they come after you.
00:38:52.000And I think that's why, so Russell, Tucker going and creating his own network, what you are doing on Rumble, what Dave Rubin is doing, what Joe Rogan is doing, what the Weinsteins are doing, that's like creating this whole new world where people can go and create their own thing, get their own subscriber base and make a living in a career without having to think about upsetting a soap company, you know, or a shoe company.
00:39:22.000Meanwhile, the shoe company is having shoes made by, you know, 12 year olds, but they're lecturing you on diversity and equity, but who's making their, their shoes, you know, or drug companies.
00:39:37.000You know, the drug companies, you know, why are they advertising?
00:39:41.000They're advertising to exert some kind of pressure.
00:41:01.000You know, that's no longer about utility.
00:41:04.000It's become somehow more immersive than that.
00:41:06.000We were just doing a piece on Google buying up real estate and creating company towns now, a project that's been tried before with Disney and, curiously, chocolate companies.
00:41:17.000The power of the corporation is becoming deeply immersive.
00:41:20.000Greg, within that, you touched upon something while talking about Tucker and talking about the relationship between advertisers and broadcasters, which is fundamentally the dynamic that is shifting with the emergence of independent media, that I think is significant, that both the marketing class and the professional journalist class, I might say, hate ordinary people.
00:41:42.000And I feel this antipathy, and I spoke to Greenwald about it, that other great GG in the public space, Glenn Greenwald.
00:41:49.000And he said that, you know, that the establishment now is no longer sort of masking its disdain for ordinary people.
00:41:57.000That they sense that through media control, through censorship laws, through increasing authoritarianism justified by crisis, they don't need to be like a Rockefeller tossing dollar bills out of a passing limo to maintain some plutocrat mystique and affability with ordinary people.
00:42:16.000Now they're just like we are going to have so much power you know after the next set of wars or the next pandemic or whatever the next thing's going to be that legitimizes more authoritarianism that there's no need for to maintain good public relations.
00:42:30.000I think too that You know, as a person that's been, like, with what's happened to me recently and sort of over the past few years, as you sort of gently migrate out of, like, oh, you know, like, you know, like, there comes a point where I feel, oh, I ain't going on those talk shows no more.
00:42:45.000I'm not going, I'm not gonna be doing movies anymore.
00:42:49.000And like you gain, I gained in confidence and started to criticise war, started to criticise pharma, started to attack more and more, recognising I have direct access to an audience.
00:42:59.000And one of the things I've noticed, having been the subject to incredible attacks and what seemed to me to be a kawaii, coordinated media attack, where separate media companies explicitly work together over several years to Generate anonymized complaints and allegations and then there was a sort of a global two-week period where like it was very very concentrated and it seemed to me at least very deliberate to like to be able to observe oh wow there's a point where they will just attack you and shut you down that there is that there's an attempt to do that and one of the things I also have noticed is that the media is not the public.
00:43:38.000That's one of the things they're terrified of, is that they can create this sort of layer of hate and bombast and attack, and then you go out and everyone's like, Hey, how's it going?
00:43:50.000Like people like that's not, yeah, it's not, they don't have the control that they once had.
00:43:54.000And I think that's what's terrifying them.
00:43:57.000You could be in a news cycle for 48 hours.
00:44:00.000And in your brain think, I can't go outside.
00:44:04.000And then you go outside, and maybe you might casually mention it to somebody, and they have no idea what you're talking about.
00:44:11.000Like, don't, I will say something on the five, and it will explode, and then I, and then, you know, my people at work will be like, oh my god, you see what's, and then, but if you go anywhere, nobody knows what you're talking about.
00:44:24.000Think about what happened to you, but think about I hate to use the word weaponization because it's overused, but the weaponization of wokeism has become journalism.
00:44:34.000So it's like, so-and-so said this, so-and-so did this in the past becomes investigative journalism.
00:44:42.000Whereas before, like you had the Woodwards and the Bernsteins.
00:44:46.000There are a few people now, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Michael Schellenberger.
00:44:51.000These are guys that are actually doing real journalism.
00:44:53.000But they're being ignored by the conventional mainstream media, which has decided that the weaponized woke angle, so-and-so said this about immigration, ergo racist, or any, pick any, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and that, and it's such an easy story to write.
00:45:15.000It's like, you can, you can take a dartboard, Or actually you could take a grid and on one side you can go climate, economics, politics, fashion, food, comedy, and then on this other grid you could have race, racism, homophobia, feminism, and then you could throw a dart.
00:45:35.000And this is what journalists do and they find a cross-section clothing, is transphobic and they had that story for that day and then they'll go they'll do a little search they'll find some stuff and then they write it they don't have to call anybody they don't have to do any like they don't have to be like a reporter and go out and actually talk to somebody with a notebook this is now what journalism has become and so what happens is how does that end up being
00:46:05.000They focus it not on just like people like you, but just regular people, the people they hate.
00:46:10.000So if somebody on Twitter, some nobody, a plumber decides he's pro-Trump, Then somebody will pick up that tweet, go, does American plumbing supply realize that Joe Stevens actually said, make America great again, and they CC the company.
00:46:30.000And then that guy gets swarmed or this bakery had a, you know, a menorah.
00:46:36.000They were like, they, they like focus on these things.
00:47:19.000These are companies where they That's all they do all day, is they watch TV, or they watch podcasts, and then they clip, and they put it out there, and they act as though that is journalism.
00:47:31.000And media analysis is a form of journalism, but at least you should do the work.
00:47:38.000It's not just clipping, but it's weaponized wokeism to shut people up.
00:47:45.000And it's disguised, however, as journalism when it's not.
00:47:50.000I heard the phrase vendetta journalism recently applied to I think it might have been the case between the the royal family and the tabloids of 10 years ago or so in my country here and it's also clear that You know, you sort of talked about Bernstein and Woodward, that there's very little journalism where, for example, you can watch the reporting in the pandemic, the propaganda that accompanied the advent and release of the vaccines, the censorship around legitimate questions, the shaming of people from whatever community.
00:48:28.000Because there are no values at the core of it, You have to watch them adjust as they go.
00:48:48.000you know, like, you know, various conflicts around the world that don't align entirely
00:48:52.000with this sort of odd, sort of ultra-anti-nature. This, I guess, what part of it is, part of this
00:49:00.000kind of curious death cult that's built, which is not a new thing, apocaly... you know, in a,
00:49:05.000you know, what is an apocalyptic, like, apocalyptic preaching? The end is nigh,
00:49:10.000the world is coming to an end, the end is nigh.
00:49:12.000That is a sort of a pretty common trope, certainly in the last couple of thousand years.
00:49:17.000Indeed, one could argue that even within, you know, Christianity has the apocalypse, the rapture, or many religions appear to have this sort of end time as part of their, you know, part of the paradigm.
00:49:29.000But when there is, like, all of those things tend to point, A journey of self-evaluation, a recognition that the pursuit of animalism and animal desires cannot of itself form your way of life.
00:49:46.000And I would say that that is precisely at the core of modern neoliberalism.
00:49:51.000The fulfillment of your desires, the avoidance of your fears and the potential to be threatened is your raison d'etre.
00:49:59.000You are worth it if you want to Be this type of person, you should be that type of person.
00:50:03.000And these are things that I can easily agree to with a wave of a hand.
00:50:07.000Of course, I agree with individual liberty, whether it's the issues that define the right or the issues that define the left, because I agree with individual liberty.
00:50:16.000But I don't think that that is the apex of the human experience, because I've tried it.
00:50:30.000And indeed, when part of the message becomes, these things won't work for you, find a higher purpose, knowing that you will never be able to live it perfectly because you are still subject to the same kind of shackles that any human being is, that's when you start to become a threat.
00:50:48.000Yeah, and not to get too... Well, I've noticed when people go through that journey and come out of it, they're much less judgmental politically, and they're more resistant to getting involved in this prison of two ideas, whether it's about climate or Any kind of like issue where you think there are two sides and you have to get into one pocket or this one and that's it.
00:51:26.000For some, you know, it's kind of a superpower.
00:51:29.000I've noticed, like I noticed this with Tucker, I noticed it with you and there are other people, it's kind of like the floating above this or to the outside of it and can see, What this is, what this actually is, which is a diversion from actually solving the bigger problem.
00:51:53.000And I mean, I was in that prison of two ideas.
00:51:56.000A good example would be you're talking about apocalypse, the apocalyptic ideologies, like Climate change, because of the apocalyptic warnings, created the prison of two ideas.
00:52:13.000I was on the other side, that this was all bogus and a hoax.
00:52:17.000But that's not necessarily the best place to be, because you should care about the environment.
00:53:28.000Like there were people that used to say that if you were skeptic, if you were a climate skeptic, remember that you would use that phrase, a climate skeptic, You should be imprisoned.
00:53:38.000Or a climate denier, which would put you in the same realm as a Holocaust denier.
00:53:43.000Those were the phrases they used, and that would just create a complete negative reaction.
00:53:49.000But I think now we're getting to a place where I mean, there's a healthy meeting of the minds, where on the right, people are talking about the environment seriously, and on the left, there are people, hopefully, saying, you're right.
00:54:06.000These climate models have been wrong, but there's still something going on here.
00:54:11.000But I think that that's that, you know, that has always been the problem.
00:54:14.000But the superpower is stepping out of that.
00:54:17.000And I think that's what you were getting at.
00:54:19.000It's like you somehow got out of that and you can look down at it or look, I don't want to say down at it, but look at it from a side and see how wasteful this prison is, this prison of two ideas is.
00:54:35.000Yes, and there's a lot of things I'd love to respond to.
00:54:38.000One is like where you said that there was sort of an attempt to criminalise climate denying and there was an attempt to criminalise not taking the vaccine.
00:54:49.000There are ongoing attempts to criminalise Uh, speech, you know, through the ideas of hate speech.
00:54:55.000In some territories, these are extremely amorphous and oddly util laws.
00:54:59.000Like in Ireland, if they suspect you have hate speech material on your phone, the police will be able to come into your house and take your devices.
00:55:09.000Now, whether it's, you know, vaccines, in the event that vaccines were stopping transmission and were effective, of course, the strong advocacy for those medications would be legitimate.
00:55:21.000But what one starts to see is the reason behind the reason they're giving you.
00:55:27.000They might be giving you, we have to do something to protect the planet.
00:55:30.000And as you say, that is not a partisan issue, whether or not we love the Earth that we live on.
00:55:37.000If you are the most MAGA cap wearing, let's shoot some deer and some ducks and some go crazy honey. You love the
00:55:46.000planet or if you are a vegan Birkenstock wearing individual you'd still love the
00:55:52.000planet. The idea of this being politicized and partisan is extraordinary and
00:55:57.000what's happening because I think of the quick response time and rapid
00:56:03.000reaction of independent In real time, you're starting to see people say, hold on a minute, this Ukrainian war, it doesn't make sense because in 2014 there was a coup and NATO did renege on certainly verbal deals
00:56:17.000Between the Soviet Union and US or in climate change.
00:56:19.000How come all of these laws are penalizing ordinary people and seem designed to create 15-minute cities and restrictions on people's movement?
00:56:28.000How come these vaccines seem to be tied to ID cards and being able to like to normalize the idea the vaccinated should be unvaccinated should be shamed.
00:56:36.000They shouldn't be allowed into hospitals.
00:56:40.000They should like they're starting to normalize the criminalization of sections of the population.
00:56:45.000You marry that to the idea But the MAGA movement, which at the last election was pretty near 50% one side or the other of the entire electorate, was like a criminalized class or a demonized class.
00:56:58.000You're starting to use the kind of language that we all like, you know, which was reprehensible in my view around like, you know, all these people are all terrorists when talking about like entire nations of people.
00:57:10.000You're seeing it applied to domestic classes.
00:57:12.000Now, that's not a coincidence because we now know that agencies that were dedicated to legitimizing the pursuit of certain foreign interests that didn't go well, for example, in Iraq, are now turned in on domestic populations.
00:57:27.000That's not just in your country, but in mine.
00:57:29.000There are units, like Counter-Terror became Counter-Covid.
00:58:57.000But, you know, it's like I had Greenwald on my show in which I apologized to him for what you were getting at, which was he was warning That the kind of focusing on the entire groups of people being terrorists was going to one day be turned on Americans themselves.
00:59:18.000And I remember laughing at that, and I was obviously wrong.
00:59:22.000And I had to go like, Jesus Christ, this just came true in my lifetime.
00:59:27.000The criminalization of people for supporting a politician, for not getting a vaccine, People like rooting for the death of people, or when they die, they say, ha, ha, ha, he didn't get the vax, you know.
00:59:43.000However, if anybody had done that about a different behavior that caused their death, oh, you'd be like, if you happen to be a criminal who died, that, and you said, well, you know, you live the life, you would be attacked, but, but if you didn't get the vax, you know, and also the, you talked about speech.
01:00:03.000I've noticed the description of hate speech got so big and then it kind of changed into misinformation.
01:00:13.000Now it's misinformation and I love how they say misinformation and disinformation and then they like to go on what the difference is and it's just like basically what they're saying is if you disagree with us, That's misinformation.
01:00:27.000If your counterpoint is disinformation, so that's actually now the same as hate speech.
01:01:34.000It should be, if you're a victim of crime, that should be basically the primary focus.
01:01:40.000But when you talk about a victim of crime, and it could be a woman, it could be an Asian woman, they go, well, yeah, but you look at the criminal, look at society, we have to deal with this, the prisons are oppressive, bail, the guy, you know, well, the guy was out on bail when he pushed the woman in front of the subway, and they go, well, that, Suddenly that becomes a political thing.
01:02:00.000And now when you have crime going up in specific cities, that suddenly becomes a political issue.
01:02:07.000And you have to defy your own common sense.
01:02:10.000You have politicians that know it's unsafe in DC, but they can't talk about it because now it's a political issue.
01:02:17.000Thank you so much for joining us today on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
01:02:21.000You can watch Greg on The Five at 5pm ET on weekdays, and for Gutfeld, you can join him at 10pm ET.
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