Stay Free - Russel Brand - Who’s The Real Enemy – Elon Or The CIA? With Bari Weiss - #050 - Stay Free with Russell Brand

00:00:00.000 The end.

00:01:59.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:02:03.000 Let's go.

00:02:05.000 Alright, you ready?

00:02:06.000 Let's go.

00:02:07.000 We're going to go live back there.

00:02:09.000 That's what I say on Tuesday.

00:02:20.000 Happy Tuesday.

00:02:21.000 Saw it in the chat.

00:02:22.000 Liked it.

00:02:23.000 We've got a fantastic show for you today.

00:02:24.000 We're going to be asking Elon Musk.

00:02:27.000 He's done that Twitter poll.

00:02:28.000 Is it a manipulative technique?

00:02:30.000 Skullduggery and trickery?

00:02:32.000 And who's more dangerous?

00:02:33.000 With the revelations that the CIA were more involved than they've ever previously admitted in the assassination of JFK?

00:02:41.000 We'll be asking who is more of a threat to American democracy, Elon Musk or the CIA?

00:02:48.000 Let us know what you think right now in the chat.

00:02:51.000 In our presentation, here's the news.

00:02:53.000 No, here's the effing news.

00:02:54.000 We'll be talking about the Nord Stream pipeline explosion.

00:02:57.000 Did that involve the CIA?

00:02:58.000 Certainly when we spoke to Jocko Willink here on this show, he said it would not be beyond the remit of the Navy SEALs

00:03:03.000 and the American Deep State.

00:03:05.000 And remember when that pipeline happened, they said, oh, you know, it's just a coincidence.

00:03:10.000 Putin probably did it himself. 0.56

00:03:11.000 He's mad!

00:03:12.000 But guess what's happened since?

00:03:14.000 A load of gas deals have been done between the US and the UK, so it seems that it was expedient.

00:03:20.000 One of a series of coincidences that has been beneficial to the most powerful forces in the world.

00:03:25.000 On the show today, we've got Barry Weiss, whose Twitter files revelations have changed the narrative again around deep state involvement in social media, on social media platforms.

00:03:37.000 So if you're watching this on YouTube, you've got to stay with us, although After 10 minutes, we leave YouTube.

00:03:42.000 That's when it gets unexpurgated.

00:03:44.000 That's when it gets uncensored.

00:03:45.000 That's when we let the fire phoenix rise up and the truth be conveyed at a never-before-experienced level.

00:03:52.000 Hit Rumble if you're watching this on Rumble, because it helps me in ways that I can never, ever explain to you.

00:03:56.000 Let's have a look at the first story today.

00:03:59.000 Elon Musk.

00:04:00.000 Elon Musk is his own news, in a sense, isn't he?

00:04:02.000 He generates news.

00:04:05.000 Yeah, I would assume that.

00:04:05.000 I think he obviously knows what he's doing.

00:04:07.000 voters vote to oust him. Now I personally, Gareth, can't imagine that Elon Musk has

00:04:07.000 He's pretty smart.

00:04:12.000 been hoisted by his own batard to use a nautical Maxim there. Surely if

00:04:19.000 Musk did that, Musk knew that that would be the result and that's what Musk wants,

00:04:23.000 right? Do you assume that? Yeah I would assume that. I think he obviously knows

00:04:26.000 what he's doing, he's pretty smart, I think he's got quite a lot of money

00:04:29.000 hasn't he? I believe he's got as much money as anyone else on the entire

00:04:34.000 planet maybe even more.

00:04:36.000 Of course, one of the things that's interesting about this, if you're an Elon Musk supporter, and let us know if broadly you're sympathetic towards Musk owning Twitter and his agenda and objectives, is that he has now become somewhat sensorial.

00:04:48.000 Admittedly, his case would be towards people that are doxing or revealing personal information.

00:04:53.000 Have you ever heard that word before?

00:04:55.000 It's a common word around here.

00:04:57.000 In the old world of investigative journalism.

00:04:59.000 When you're like me, Gal, I'm not only investigating things.

00:05:02.000 What's going on?

00:05:03.000 What's going on?

00:05:03.000 I'm journaling them.

00:05:04.000 Got it.

00:05:05.000 A word like doxxing, that comes up day one.

00:05:07.000 It's me, Matt Taibbi, Barry Weiss, we're all sat around just investigating, just journaling.

00:05:12.000 Man, have you seen any stories about doxxing lately?

00:05:14.000 Yeah, I've seen a couple.

00:05:16.000 In a tweet on Wednesday evening, Musk said, real-time posting of another person's location violates Twitter's doxing policy, but delayed posting of locations are okay.

00:05:25.000 There's some bureaucracy in there.

00:05:28.000 And obviously the pushback he's getting is, I thought the whole point of you taking over Twitter was that it was going to become a free speech platform and people are now saying, if you're now banning people for Are you a free speech absolutist?

00:05:40.000 Are you an Elon Musk fan?

00:05:41.000 What is being revealed by this character, this avatar that is Elon Musk?

00:05:43.000 As Trump once did, he's able to make the cyclone of public discourse center around him.

00:05:47.000 but I guess free speech is free speech you would think.

00:05:51.000 Are you a free speech absolutist? Are you an Elon Musk fan?

00:05:54.000 What is being revealed by this character, this avatar that is Elon Musk?

00:06:00.000 As Trump once did, he's able to make the cyclone of public discourse center around him.

00:06:07.000 But let's not forget, my approach tends to be that if someone is my enemy's enemy,

00:06:13.000 they are my friend.

00:06:14.000 If the mainstream media don't like them, I'm like, okay, that's interesting.

00:06:18.000 That's led me to make some weird alliances.

00:06:20.000 They certainly don't.

00:06:20.000 In fact, here are CNN essentially giving a platform to someone extorting Elon Musk.

00:06:26.000 Have a look.

00:06:27.000 So, what is your current demand?

00:06:30.000 Relative to Musk, what will it make for you to go away and stop?

00:06:33.000 I don't like the phrase relative to Musk, because then I think of actual Musk as a pheromonal scent going up the snout hole, and I'm reminded of my one conversation with Elon Musk, live conversation, where he said, Russell Branding, and I went, Elon Musking, and that...

00:06:47.000 In a sense, I didn't know it then, that was the peak of our relationship.

00:06:51.000 We never attain those heights again.

00:06:53.000 No, well you don't know.

00:06:54.000 We may yet do it because obviously I want Elon Musk to come on here.

00:06:57.000 Of course we do.

00:06:57.000 So that he'll be a fantastic guest for us and we want to work out where the line lies.

00:07:01.000 Technological genius and billionaire.

00:07:04.000 With this clip here, Ross, is like, there's one element of it which is CNN are obviously not treating this guy in a kind of, they're not treating him as if he's doing something wrong.

00:07:13.000 They're almost building him up.

00:07:14.000 But the way, but also they're trying to build it up as a kind of narrative when he says, what is your demand?

00:07:19.000 Like this is someone who's like holding people hostage and things.

00:07:22.000 Just the guy posting tweets.

00:07:24.000 They're using the template of a hostage terrorist situation, but they cannot, Presently as that, because otherwise it would be reprehensible, giving a voice to the lad.

00:07:34.000 So they've got some nuanced work to do there over at CNN, which is not, as you know, their forte.

00:07:39.000 Yes.

00:07:41.000 Still a Tesla or $50,000.

00:07:42.000 I mean, I'm not going to up it.

00:07:45.000 There's no need to.

00:07:46.000 There's simply no need.

00:07:48.000 It's just a young man who wants a Tesla.

00:07:50.000 Isn't that young man all of us?

00:07:52.000 I don't think he's going to get it.

00:07:54.000 I don't, I don't know.

00:07:55.000 I mean, Elon Musk's a maverick.

00:07:57.000 He might go have a Tesla.

00:07:57.000 He is, he might do it.

00:07:58.000 Of course he might do it.

00:07:59.000 That's what you want, have a Tesla. 0.71

00:08:00.000 Maybe a reasonable discount on a Tesla.

00:08:04.000 Or maybe a discount on one of the blue ticks.

00:08:06.000 Or the flamethrowers.

00:08:08.000 Or some jet boots, or something like that.

00:08:10.000 Now, the reason we're interested in Elon Musk is he is a lightning rod for the mainstream media cyclone that's sent around, which he is continually lost in, deluged in.

00:08:23.000 We think that these CIA revelations around JFK are super interesting, not just because of their historic relevance.

00:08:29.000 There was a time where, if you said, I think JFK was assassinated by the CIA, that was a conspiracy theory.

00:08:37.000 Well, that's when the term conspiracy theories came about.

00:08:40.000 JFK is the inaugural. 0.62

00:08:42.000 That's the granddaddy of conspiracy theories.

00:08:45.000 Roswell, JFK.

00:08:47.000 These are the OG conspiracies and often we're called conspiracy theorists.

00:08:51.000 That's why we are always very keen only to use very serious facts undergirded by professional journalists.

00:08:57.000 Yeah, obviously, just to jump in quickly, the other element to the CIA, obviously we're talking about JFK, but one of the revelations, and Barry Weiss who's coming on later will be talking about it, is CIA infiltration into big tech.

00:09:09.000 So we were talking earlier about this, is the big story about Elon Musk that he's banned a few people from Twitter, or is a bigger revelation that the mainstream media are not focusing on, the fact that The fact that the CIA are infiltrating big tech.

00:09:21.000 I suppose the assumption would be that they're not reporting on that because ultimately that's in alignment with their general and shared interests.

00:09:29.000 Let's have a look at this story about Lee Harvey Oswald and the newly classified, newly revealed or declassified information.

00:09:36.000 13,000 JFK assassination documents have been declassified and released.

00:09:40.000 But listen to this.

00:09:41.000 The key fact is, if you ask me, that 4,300 records remain redacted.

00:09:47.000 Including records connecting assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to CIA operatives months before the assassination.

00:09:53.000 What would Lee Harvey Oswald and CIA operatives be doing months before the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

00:10:02.000 We were just hanging out with Lee Harvey Oswald, just chewing the fat, shooting the breeze, having a little fun.

00:10:10.000 Then that guy just out of nowhere assassinated JFK.

00:10:15.000 We were hanging out with Lee Harvey Oswald for a surprise party in Dallas in a convertible vehicle.

00:10:24.000 We've got another page on this.

00:10:25.000 Hey listen, if you're watching us on YouTube right now, I'm going to have to tell you that we are going to get so conspiratorial, so revelatory, so open, honest and transparent That YouTube simply would not allow it.

00:10:38.000 Ultimately, YouTube, as you probably know, has been, to a degree, co-opted by mainstream media networks.

00:10:43.000 They promote their stories.

00:10:45.000 I'm not going to use the word shadow ban, but you'll have noticed.

00:10:47.000 Let me know in the comments if you've noticed it's harder to find our content now.

00:10:51.000 That's why, if you watch us there, always turn on notification bell and subscribe.

00:10:55.000 But more important than any of that, join us on Rumble, where we're now.

00:10:58.000 We're going to get deep into conspiracy now.

00:11:00.000 This is it.

00:11:00.000 This is where the true revelations are coming from.

00:11:02.000 See you in a second on Rumble.

00:11:04.000 We're going to carry on if you're on YouTube.

00:11:05.000 join us now. So the Biden administration said in a memo that keeping documents classified

00:11:11.000 will protect against an identifiable harm to the military, defense, intelligence operations,

00:11:16.000 law enforcement or the conduct of foreign relationships that is of such gravity that

00:11:22.000 outweighs the public interest in disclosure. How can that be true? It's simply, don't you think,

00:11:28.000 and let me know about this in the chat and the comments, do you think that the whole focus of

00:11:32.000 classification is preventing you get information that if you add it you go well I'm not going to

00:11:38.000 If this is their level of corruption, if this is how much they represent their own interests and the power of corporations against ours, then I refuse to participate in their systems.

00:11:45.000 It's not going to be that the revelations make you so happy that you giddily wander out in front of a carriage in Disney World, is it?

00:11:53.000 So, the White House added that the release of any remaining information will continue to be withheld from the public until June 30th, 2023.

00:11:58.000 Yeah, but they keep saying that.

00:12:01.000 Every time it's, we're going to need to put it back again.

00:12:03.000 Just need a little bit longer with this bit of information.

00:12:07.000 What is in there?

00:12:08.000 I suppose concrete evidence that deep state agencies were involved in the assassination of Jeff?

00:12:13.000 Yeah, I think they were talking about Lee Alvey Oswald being involved in the CIA in terms of an attempt on Fidel Castro.

00:12:21.000 And then they were saying that basically he was infiltrated into the CIA and had been for a number of years.

00:12:26.000 He's very much the Zelig of assassinations. 1.00

00:12:28.000 The Forrest Gump.

00:12:29.000 He's going around doing assassinations everywhere.

00:12:31.000 Prominent JFK expert Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and the author of numerous books on the intelligent community, told a press conference that Oswald had secretly been involved in operations to undermine U.S.

00:12:40.000 supporters of Fidel Castro in the summer of 1963.

00:12:45.000 Amazingly, Oliver Stone's movie incorporated a lot of these themes and ideas.

00:12:50.000 We should get Oliver Stone on, shouldn't we?

00:12:51.000 We absolutely should.

00:12:51.000 He'd be amazing.

00:12:52.000 I also was watching Tucker talk about this case in terms of the CIA connection with Jack Ruby, who was the guy, the supposed lone shooter and I think one of Tucker's points were... He wasn't very well.

00:13:04.000 Exactly that.

00:13:05.000 He wasn't very well and I think a psychiatrist went to visit him And I suppose the argument that we're ultimately presenting you with is, where does the real threat to democracy and your personal freedom come from?

00:13:16.000 are these multiple connections just happen to be CIA people involved.

00:13:20.000 And I suppose the argument that we're ultimately presenting you with is where does the real

00:13:24.000 threat to democracy and your personal freedom come from?

00:13:28.000 The nominated enemies of the state or the state itself and its corporatist interests? As a

00:13:35.000 former Hollywood, am I going to call myself a former Hollywood movie star?

00:13:38.000 Former?

00:13:39.000 As an actual live Hollywood movie star sat here right now, look at some notable films where the CIA are favorably presented.

00:13:48.000 And do you think that Hollywood gets co-opted into ideas like this?

00:13:51.000 Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.

00:13:52.000 Argo, where Ben Affleck played...

00:13:56.000 Ben who?

00:13:57.000 Ben Affleck.

00:14:00.000 Woody Harrelson.

00:14:02.000 I remember that, it's a good film actually.

00:14:04.000 It's a favourable CIA operative.

00:14:06.000 The man from Uncle, Henry Carville, plays a CIA operative, aka Superman.

00:14:10.000 Jack Ryan, he always comes across good.

00:14:12.000 Bridger Spies, Hunt for Red October. 0.94

00:14:14.000 They generally make CIA operatives come across as sort of I don't know what secretive swarthy clandestine heroes rather than right bastards ruining the lives of ordinary Americans and people all over the world and just try being in Latin America. 0.99

00:14:29.000 Here are just some real, like before you make your mind up about What the CIA infiltration into social media sites, which we believe should be the bigger story rather than Elon Musk's maverick character and undoubtable billionaire credentials as the world's richest man.

00:14:45.000 The more important power is the perennial power of the deep state, unchecked, unaccounted, undemocratic power that's embedded into our systems.

00:14:54.000 Here are some of the CIA's biggest Historic scandals, so you can get an idea of the breadth and depth of their infiltration and power across American cultural and indeed political life.

00:15:06.000 At number five, domestic wiretapping.

00:15:08.000 The CIA has spied on Americans since 1969, recently collecting Americans' private information in bulk.

00:15:14.000 At number four, coups.

00:15:16.000 The CIA successfully supported coups in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, the Dominican Republic, and South Vietnam.

00:15:21.000 At number three, the recruitment of Nazis. 0.68

00:15:23.000 Since World War II, the CIA and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants.

00:15:30.000 At number two, big tech infiltration.

00:15:32.000 The CIA has infiltrated big tech and social media platforms, including Facebook and Google, with the companies hiring dozens of agents and former agents.

00:15:40.000 But at number one, forced imprisonment.

00:15:43.000 In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit.

00:15:48.000 These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground.

00:15:52.000 Still, today, wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.

00:15:56.000 If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, then maybe you can hire the A-Team.

00:16:02.000 Righto.

00:16:09.000 That was actually just an A-Team joke that we were doing.

00:16:21.000 Can I use this?

00:16:22.000 You can use your pen.

00:16:23.000 Wayne, I love it when a plan comes together.

00:16:25.000 I actually do love it.

00:16:26.000 It did work really well. 0.98

00:16:27.000 I pity the fool that tries to get me on a plane, I tell you that! 1.00

00:16:31.000 You bloody sucker! 1.00

00:16:32.000 You're trying to get me on a plane, I pity you! 1.00

00:16:34.000 I bloody well pity you!

00:16:36.000 Hey, and now with further elegance, professionalism and brilliance, we're presenting our Here's the News item, which is about the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline.

00:16:46.000 Do you remember that in 2014, I think it was, Condoleezza Rice said, yeah, we need to get that business away from Russia and into US hands.

00:16:53.000 Do you remember Joe Biden saying publicly, oh, you know, we'll find a way of shutting down that pipeline?

00:16:59.000 Do you remember that when the pipeline did blow up, we went, oh, Putin's done that himself.

00:17:04.000 And now, deals have been done between the UK and US energy companies that suggest that the Nord Stream Pipeline's failure is advantageous to the kind of energy interest that you always suspected it might be.

00:17:16.000 You knew something crazy was going on, and you were right.

00:17:19.000 You just needed us to help you tie together the facts.

00:17:22.000 Here's the news.

00:17:23.000 Nooooo, here's the effing news.

00:17:25.000 Thank you for choosing Fox News.

00:17:27.000 News to do. 1.00

00:17:29.000 No, here's the fucking news. 0.99

00:17:31.000 Remember the Nord Stream Pipeline? 1.00

00:17:34.000 No?

00:17:34.000 That was ages ago!

00:17:35.000 What's still going on about that for?

00:17:36.000 It's not as if, like, now that America and the UK have done a deal to replace the deals that might have existed between Russia and European partners and the whole reason it was blown up was to create the opportunity for these deals.

00:17:47.000 Stop thinking!

00:17:48.000 You think too much! 1.00

00:17:48.000 Just put on the normal news and shut up! 1.00

00:17:53.000 We have an amazing story for you today, particularly if you have a memory that expands beyond the last couple of months and you haven't been bludgeoned into amnesia by a media that wants you dumb, idiotic, spellbound, and hypnotized. 1.00

00:18:04.000 The Nord Stream Pipeline, which, you know, was blown up mysteriously, and Jocko Willink said on this show, Navy SEALs could easily do it. 0.93

00:18:13.000 Guess what's happened?

00:18:13.000 Since it's been blown up, the U.S.

00:18:15.000 has done a load of gas deals with European nations.

00:18:17.000 Wow, what an extraordinary coincidence.

00:18:19.000 And why is it not being reported on anywhere in the mainstream media?

00:18:22.000 They really cared about the Nord Stream Pipeline when they said, oh Putin, he probably did that himself. 0.97

00:18:27.000 Putin's blown up that pipeline because he's crazy. 0.99

00:18:29.000 He's got Parkinson's. 1.00

00:18:30.000 He can't go five minutes with shitting down his own trouser leg. 1.00

00:18:33.000 He probably shat that Nord Stream Pipeline to death by mistake, that poor fucker. 1.00

00:18:38.000 And yes, that does mean that in the future, the European nations will need to get their gas from somewhere else. 0.99

00:18:43.000 And yes, we have explicitly stated that we would prefer that European nations bought their gas from us. 0.86

00:18:49.000 But that still doesn't exempt that bloody Putin From the baleen.

00:18:52.000 The US is set to double its gas exports to the UK under plans to clamp down on rising living costs by weaning Britain of Russian energy. 0.63

00:19:00.000 Weaning?

00:19:01.000 Wasn't that coming out of Putin's breast? 1.00

00:19:03.000 He does have breasts, though. 0.99

00:19:04.000 I'm afraid he has titmanitis, one of his diseases.

00:19:07.000 Now, according to British media reports, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is poised to make a gas deal announcement with the United States after the COP27 climate summit.

00:19:15.000 Just pause for a moment to draw attention to the fact that you can only find this news on the Indian internet.

00:19:19.000 The United States has promised the whole of European Union of 15 billion cubic meters of LNG this spring and UK hopes for about 10 billion cubic meters of the supply.

00:19:29.000 After all the things they said about this war, about how it was a humanitarian war.

00:19:33.000 After all the things that happened in Iraq, about how they said that was a humanitarian war, how they were weapons of mass destruction, and how we now know that it was part of a plan called the New American Century. 0.97

00:19:41.000 After all of that, you would think that they would at least wait a minute before building a fucking pipeline to replace the one they blew up. 0.96

00:19:49.000 Allegedly. 0.95

00:19:50.000 This move would be considered as UK stepped towards independence from Russian-linked oil and gas imports amid Ukraine invasion.

00:19:56.000 That was always the intention, to just take over gas exports from Russia.

00:20:01.000 Brian Sullivan is live in Rotterdam as part of a week-long series he's doing on Europe's energy crisis.

00:20:06.000 We're going to talk about specifically liquefied natural gas and the U.S.' 's role in, and again, I don't think the word saving Europe or the phrase saving Europe is too strong, Becky, because without U.S.

00:20:17.000 imported natural gas, Europe would be in a far more dire situation.

00:20:23.000 Not only do they want to hide the true origins of this war, not only do they want to allegedly destroy this pipeline and sell us gas that we were previously buying from a competitor, they want to sort of be thanked for it, for all those saviors.

00:20:37.000 Well, you know, I don't think it's too strong to say that we are the new Jesus of gas provision, but instead of lasers, which I believe Jesus used to shoot from his hands, I think I'm right, I think it says that in the Bible, we shoot liquid gas into Europe, like Jesus' gas mill. 0.71

00:20:51.000 I don't think that's too much to say.

00:20:52.000 Rishi Sunak, WEF Goldman Sachs, has pledged that the new partnership to boost energy security, efficiency and affordability will cut prices for Britons and ensure the UK's national supply can never again be manipulated by the whims of a failing regime.

00:21:06.000 Have you seen Joe Biden lately?

00:21:08.000 As part of efforts to drive down the cost of living, the US will aim to export at least 9 to 10 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas to UK terminals over the next year, more than doubling the level in 2021.

00:21:19.000 Firstly, it's not appearing significantly in mainstream media.

00:21:22.000 That already tells you a lot.

00:21:22.000 No one is making the connection to the Nord Stream pipeline.

00:21:26.000 We are entering a phase of amnesia.

00:21:28.000 Well, you just have to forget what you saw like a month ago.

00:21:30.000 Like, oh, sorry about that during the pandemic.

00:21:32.000 We were wrong about that.

00:21:32.000 Sorry, wrong about what?

00:21:33.000 Hey, this war, don't ever say anything about Putin, Russia.

00:21:35.000 That's all the only thing to consider is Putin is an aggressor.

00:21:38.000 Don't think about anything else.

00:21:39.000 Otherwise, you're being disrespectful to Ukrainian people who are suffering.

00:21:42.000 Oh, right.

00:21:42.000 OK.

00:21:42.000 Hey, right.

00:21:43.000 That pipeline.

00:21:43.000 Hey, what happened to that pipeline?

00:21:44.000 Shut up! 1.00

00:21:45.000 Don't ask about that. 1.00

00:21:46.000 It's just like you're being continually bewildered, bombarded by information.

00:21:49.000 And then they have the gall to talk about misinformation and disinformation when they are the epicenter of this phenomenon.

00:21:54.000 Rishi Sunak said the partnership will help end Europe's dependence on Russian energy once and for all.

00:21:59.000 How can you sell this as this is a benefit?

00:22:01.000 How can you sell this as anything other than advantageous to the corporate interests that were always set to benefit and whose agenda was likely pursued from the outset?

00:22:09.000 The very fact that there's any energy deals being done at this time at all should tell you that there's more to this war than the mainstream media are reporting.

00:22:17.000 Let me know what you think in the chat.

00:22:18.000 Let me know what you think in the comments.

00:22:20.000 Citing the war in Ukraine, Mr. Sunak and Mr. Biden said in a joint statement that it is more important than ever for allies to work together to build resilient international systems.

00:22:28.000 Who for?

00:22:29.000 Not for you!

00:22:30.000 You're going to be paying for the energy.

00:22:31.000 You're going to be paying over the odds for food.

00:22:33.000 You're not going to be participating in the profits.

00:22:35.000 Are energy companies profiting now?

00:22:37.000 Yes or no?

00:22:37.000 You tell me.

00:22:38.000 Let me know in the comments.

00:22:39.000 Let me know in the chat.

00:22:39.000 If they're profiting, that means that the scarcity is not the issue.

00:22:43.000 It means the extraction of profit is the issue.

00:22:45.000 President Joe Biden promised a White House press conference in early February that the US was able to shut down the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea if Russia invaded Ukraine.

00:22:54.000 But why take my word for it?

00:22:56.000 Here he is doing it!

00:22:57.000 If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again.

00:23:06.000 Then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.

00:23:12.000 We will bring an end to it.

00:23:16.000 But how will you do that, exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control?

00:23:26.000 We will, I promise you, we'll be able to do it.

00:23:30.000 Oh, you think because Joe Biden on the television said that they would blow up the Nord Stream pipeline, then it did blow up and then they did do a bunch of energy.

00:23:39.000 You thought that that That meant that the whole thing, and perhaps the war itself, was about war and profitability for powerful American corporate interests rather than the humanitarian effort to aid Ukrainian people.

00:23:51.000 Oh! 0.60

00:23:51.000 We set up that pipeline, then blew it up, then did those deals as a surprise for your birthday! 0.60

00:23:58.000 This is exactly what happened when we tried this in Iraq!

00:24:01.000 We pulled that statue down to cheer you up!

00:24:04.000 When Russia indeed invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Washington was able to get Berlin to suspend the pipeline project that was about to go online, even though it wasn't in Germany's interest.

00:24:13.000 The pipeline has remained closed ever since, and then was blown up by Putin.

00:24:18.000 But ending the war and lifting the sanctions would lead to the reopening of Nord Stream 2.

00:24:21.000 Prior to the Nord Stream explosion, President Vladimir Putin told a press conference that Russia was ready to resume supplying natural gas to Germany if Germany lifted its economic sanctions against Russia.

00:24:31.000 Putin said, after all, if they need gas urgently, if things are so bad, just go ahead and lift sanctions against Nord Stream 2 with its 55 billion cubic metres per year, all they have to do is press the button and it will get going.

00:24:41.000 A peace deal would mean Nord Stream 2 would reopen which would help Germany and Russia but crush US aims at regime change and making Europe dependent on US energy.

00:24:49.000 Don't you think that that is at least part of this, what's going on here?

00:24:53.000 Do you really believe that at the core of this issue is the tyranny of Putin and helping Ukrainian people?

00:24:58.000 Helping Ukrainian people is the right thing to do.

00:25:01.000 If indeed Putin is a tyrant, I imagine that he is, then of course that is a bad thing.

00:25:06.000 But do you not think that these pieces of information, him saying that, the pipeline, do you think that this is all irrelevant?

00:25:12.000 Do you think that all of these economic interests being advantaged, whether it's the military-industrial complex or energy companies, is sort of an inadvertent consequence of this conflict?

00:25:20.000 Oh wow, God, we were just doing the right thing, helping Ukrainian people, and look, all this stuff happened!

00:25:24.000 Who do you think is running this war?

00:25:26.000 Willy Wonka?

00:25:27.000 For decades, the US opposed European projects to receive energy from Russia.

00:25:31.000 It wants Europe to buy more expensive US oil and gas.

00:25:34.000 Here's Condoleezza Rice speaking in 2014.

00:25:36.000 I also understand that one of the complications is the Europeans who are very dependent on the Russians for energy supply and business relationships.

00:25:45.000 Now we need to have tougher sanctions and I'm afraid at some point this is going to probably have to involve oil and gas.

00:25:52.000 The Russian economy is vulnerable.

00:25:55.000 80% of Russian exports are in oil, gas and minerals.

00:25:58.000 Over the long run, you simply want to change the structure of energy dependence.

00:26:03.000 You want to change that structure by blowing it up.

00:26:05.000 You want to depend more on the North American energy platform, the tremendous bounty of oil and gas that we're finding in North America.

00:26:13.000 You want to have pipelines that don't go through Ukraine and Russia.

00:26:17.000 But there is a pipeline going through Ukraine and Russia.

00:26:21.000 Not anymore there isn't!

00:26:22.000 For years we've tried to get the Europeans to be interested in different pipeline routes.

00:26:26.000 It's time to do that.

00:26:28.000 And so some of this is simply acting.

00:26:30.000 Acting in a war kind of thing?

00:26:33.000 Oh god, no, no!

00:26:34.000 Is that what you thought?

00:26:35.000 Is that what it sounded like?

00:26:36.000 A 2019 Pentagon-funded study from the RAND Corporation on how best to exploit Russia's economic, political and military vulnerabilities and anxieties, which is a Nasty thing to have done anyway.

00:26:46.000 Included a recommendation to reduce Russian natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions.

00:26:51.000 The study noted that a first step would involve stopping Nord Stream 2 and that natural gas from the United States and Australia could provide a substitute.

00:26:58.000 This RAND study also prophetically recommended providing more US military equipment and advice to Ukraine in order to lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it.

00:27:08.000 Even though it acknowledged that Russia might respond by mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory.

00:27:13.000 Now, I don't know who participated in this round report in 2019, but isn't this just, like, exactly what's happened?

00:27:20.000 The Obama administration opposed the pipeline.

00:27:22.000 As part of the major sanctions package against Russia in 2017, the Trump administration began sanctioning any company doing work on the pipeline.

00:27:29.000 The move generated outrage in Germany, where many saw it as an attempt to meddle with the European market.

00:27:34.000 In 2019, the US implemented more sanctions on the project.

00:27:36.000 Upon coming into office, President Joe Biden made opposition to the pipeline one of his administration's top priorities.

00:27:42.000 Oh, on the news, it was all about helping people and making Saudi Arabia a pariah. 0.90

00:27:45.000 Well, at least that's one promise he has delivered on.

00:27:47.000 Well done, Joe.

00:27:49.000 During his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress he was determined to do whatever I can to prevent Nord Stream 2 being completed.

00:27:58.000 Months later, the State Department reiterated that any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks U.S.

00:28:03.000 sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline.

00:28:06.000 As Russia was gathering troops at Ukraine's border at the beginning of this year, US administration officials issued threats against the pipeline's operation in the event of a Russian invasion.

00:28:15.000 In January, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, one of the main players during the 2014 Maiden Coup in Ukraine, issued a stern warning against the pipeline.

00:28:24.000 If Russia invades one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.

00:28:30.000 So, there you are.

00:28:31.000 A simple, uncomplicated narrative that doesn't involve sabotage, espionage, long-term energy goals, and potentially a war that's being used to advance economic interests rather than humanitarian ones.

00:28:43.000 We know how our governments behave, right?

00:28:44.000 And we know how our media behaves.

00:28:46.000 Our government would never do that, and if they did, surely our media would report on it, right?

00:28:50.000 So, there's absolutely nothing to worry about in spite of this overwhelming, academically underwritten evidence and even people involved in the conflict directly saying they would do what eventually happened.

00:29:00.000 So, nothing to worry about.

00:29:01.000 But don't let it turn you into a cynic.

00:29:02.000 Let me know what you think in the comments and chat.

00:29:04.000 I'll see you in a minute.

00:29:05.000 Thank you for choosing Fox News.

00:29:07.000 I'm Oscar Malkin.

00:29:08.000 No. 0.99

00:29:08.000 Here's the fucking news. 0.99

00:29:11.000 We're joined now by journalist Barry Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, former 0.99

00:29:15.000 editor of the New York Times, who's obviously come to public notoriety lately because of

00:29:20.000 her work on the Twitter files.

00:29:21.000 Thanks for coming on, Barry.

00:29:23.000 Thanks for having me, Russell.

00:29:25.000 Were you astonished by the mainstream media's reaction to these revelations, or was it largely what you expected?

00:29:31.000 And do you feel vindicated having resigned, broadly speaking, from your position at the New York Times because of the new establishment liberal orthodoxy that was prevailing there?

00:29:41.000 How has this experience affected you and your opinion on mainstream media journalism broadly, mate?

00:29:47.000 It just confirmed what I experienced myself and it was vindication of exactly why I decided to walk away from the prestige and start my own thing that is trying to close the gap between reality, the reality that people can see with their own eyes and ears.

00:30:05.000 And the insistence on sort of putting the narrative, whatever it is that given day, over reality.

00:30:12.000 And that's exactly what I'm trying to do with The Free Press.

00:30:15.000 You asked if I was surprised at the kind of mainstream media blackout or then the insistence once they had to cover it that it was a nothing burger.

00:30:23.000 I wasn't surprised at all.

00:30:24.000 But you'd be hard-pressed to come up with sort of a cleaner example of one of the problems happening, not just in America, but, you know, around the world more broadly, which is this incredible gap between the things that the legacy press has decided are news and the things that actual living people in the world think are news and are important to them.

00:30:44.000 And I would venture to guess that most Americans, whether or not they have a Twitter account or have ever logged on to this, See that two stories here matter a great deal to them.

00:30:54.000 One, the fact of the incredibly cozy relationship between parts of the United States government, namely the FBI and Twitter.

00:31:03.000 And second, the unbelievable power that basically a handful of private companies have over the public discourse.

00:31:11.000 Those are the things that Matt Taibbi, me, Abigail Schreier, Michael Schellenberger and a team of incredible independent journalists have revealed.

00:31:19.000 And I think the fact that Elon Musk decided to come to a bunch of people essentially

00:31:24.000 with newsletters rather than the Washington Post and the New York Times tells you a lot

00:31:29.000 about, you know, where real trust in the media these days actually lies. And it's just no longer

00:31:35.000 with those legacy institutions.

00:31:36.000 I think it's astonishing in and of itself. And I would imagine in a sane world,

00:31:42.000 they will not be able to recover from the depth of these revelations.

00:31:47.000 how...

00:31:48.000 How thoroughly those social media organizations have been infiltrated by state interest and as you say how much power is wielded by those very social media organizations.

00:31:58.000 It's unprecedented.

00:32:00.000 The previous incarnation of monopolizing power was in Energy resources of course and the fact that attention, consciousness itself can be controlled in the way that it has been.

00:32:10.000 Our community here on our channel are astonished.

00:32:13.000 It's sort of like Foucaultian biopolitics.

00:32:16.000 It's controlling reality itself, huh?

00:32:19.000 Yeah, I think one of the things that is so strange to me about this is that somehow caring about outsized corporate power, caring about the amount of power that a number of extraordinarily wealthy individuals or political cliques within companies have over the entire world, the idea that that's now coded as a right-wing or conservative issue is absolutely bizarre to me.

00:32:46.000 I do not understand how we've gotten to a place where that is not in the interests of everybody, and specifically not in the interests of the left, that historically has cared deeply about outsized corporate power, has cared deeply about the voices of everyday individuals being censored by big tech, in this case, and the government.

00:33:09.000 All of which I know is exactly what you talk about on this show, which is why I'm really excited to be here.

00:33:13.000 The emblematic issue that has initially defined this arc, even prior to the revelations that you and your colleagues,

00:33:20.000 if that's the correct term, have made, was the Hunter Biden story,

00:33:25.000 which when I first learned of it and started hearing about it,

00:33:29.000 it was with the tinge of publications like the New York Post,

00:33:33.000 and because of the hue of sexual and drug-related orientations,

00:33:37.000 I felt that perhaps it was a sleaze story rather than a power story,

00:33:41.000 and as was commonly understood, something that, you know, needn't or oughtn't be reported.

00:33:46.000 But the fact that this has become, in a sense, a litmus test of the level of censorship is extraordinary

00:33:51.000 and also a way of marking and measuring the way that what we call the left,

00:33:55.000 establishment neoliberalism, the new conservatism of our age,

00:33:59.000 because it certainly doesn't have any interest in sharing power, generating new power bases,

00:34:03.000 telling the truth, holding corporate power to account.

00:34:07.000 It shows you now that this has become, in a sense, the centre of true establishment power in the way that their interests align with big tech, the way that their interests align with the military-industrial complex.

00:34:19.000 So we're, in a sense, facing at least a new understanding.

00:34:23.000 We finally understood that power isn't what it was when it was Dick Cheney and Wolfowitz and Bush.

00:34:30.000 That's not it anymore.

00:34:32.000 The Democrat Party is the representative.

00:34:34.000 I'm not saying that the Republicans are a great party.

00:34:35.000 Far from it.

00:34:36.000 That's not where I'm heading at all.

00:34:38.000 What I'm saying is, doesn't this suggest a completely hollowed out, nullified, corporatised Democrat Party that's no longer fit for purpose?

00:34:45.000 I can't fit that many words into a sentence the way you just did, but what I can say is I think one of the things that our reporting has revealed, and one of the reasons that I became so uncomfortable at the New York Times as a journalist whose vocation is to pursue my curiosity and to look into dark corners, even when what those dark corners reveal is inconvenient to the powers that be, is the way that there has become a kind of hive mind, let's call it, between Parts of the government, big tech, legacy press, and they're all sort of speaking in unison.

00:35:19.000 And whenever a huge group of powerful institutions are speaking in unison and censoring anyone that deviates, even in the smallest way, we should be skeptical.

00:35:29.000 The fact that the New York Post was locked out of Twitter for reporting on the news, regardless of how tawdry and frankly tragic a lot of the things on that laptop were, Anyone who had any principle should have opposed it.

00:35:45.000 The fact that so many people under this fig leaf of hacked documents, as if that's not what the New York Times and the Washington Post do every single day, what are the Pentagon Papers?

00:35:54.000 I mean, come on.

00:35:55.000 The idea that that was the fig leaf that they hid behind Told you just about everything you needed to know about what was actually happening there.

00:36:04.000 And I think the reporting that Taibbi has done, the reporting that my colleague, and that's definitely the right word, Michael Schellenberger has done, have revealed the fact that essentially what the FBI did in the case of the Hunter Biden story was pre-bunked an inconvenient In other words, they preyed on, I think, the well-intentioned inclinations of people at these tech companies and essentially told them, there's something coming down the pike.

00:36:33.000 It is Russian disinformation.

00:36:35.000 And you should just be aware that, you know, the Russians are trying to steal the election or sway the election. 0.84

00:36:40.000 So that when the story of the Hunter Biden laptop came out, they were already primed to understand it in a particular way.

00:36:48.000 But for me, the reason that story was an important moment is I just couldn't understand, even if you think the New York Post is a right-wing rag, I think it's the paper of record in New York, but even if you think that, and even if you think what's in the Hunter Biden laptop was tragic and embarrassing and shouldn't have been relevant to who you voted for in the election, go with all of that.

00:37:10.000 Shouldn't it chill you, the idea that one of the most powerful amplification systems in the world, in all of humanity, in all of human history, was locking out a newspaper from sharing information?

00:37:24.000 It really shouldn't matter what party you vote for.

00:37:27.000 It shouldn't matter what you think of Hunter Biden or Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

00:37:31.000 To oppose that on the very—on the most basic principles, principles that are enshrined in our Bill of Rights, in our Constitution.

00:37:39.000 I mean, these are like—it doesn't get more fundamental than that.

00:37:44.000 And it really was shocking to me to watch the way that people fell around this particular story.

00:37:48.000 And I think the reporting that we've done over the past few weeks have vindicated, frankly, the reporting of The New York Post.

00:37:55.000 What it seems to me, like Barry, is that these principles are a veil that masks a real appetite for tyranny, a kind of tyrannical impulse that will be exercised when necessary.

00:38:09.000 Perhaps what concerns me most is the set of assumptions that Ordinary people are unable to discern the validity of information for themselves, are unable to calculate what information to pay attention to. 0.95

00:38:24.000 For me, this suggests that the principles that are pushed to the forefront are not relevant, not rooted, grounded or relevant.

00:38:32.000 I also feel that what we're beginning to see is nominated public villains that, again, that I wouldn't typically particularly support or laud.

00:38:42.000 For example, Trump, somewhat uniquely banned from that platform, and then curiously, currently, Musk himself.

00:38:50.000 I wonder if you can talk to us about what appears to be veiled by sort of liberal aesthetics, a kind of new form of technological tyranny and what you think about the

00:39:01.000 movements within media and the kind of figures that are presented as new avatars for vilification? Okay

00:39:10.000 let's unpack that.

00:39:12.000 I think, first of all, having been the villain of the day more than once on a platform like Twitter, I definitely think that when you're trying to redraw the bounds of what is in and what is out, what is morally acceptable and what is not, you have to make public examples.

00:39:30.000 You have to scapegoat particular people in order to signal to everyone else watching, look what we just did to that person.

00:39:38.000 You could be next.

00:39:39.000 Step out of line and we'll do the same to you.

00:39:41.000 And the scapegoating mechanism is unbelievably powerful for all of human history.

00:39:46.000 And I think we're watching it play out.

00:39:48.000 And all of us can see it on a place like Twitter.

00:39:51.000 So to take an example, and I'm very happy to talk about Elon or Trump, take the example of Jay Bhattacharya.

00:39:58.000 Jay Bhattacharya He's a doctor at Stanford.

00:40:01.000 He's one of the people that I reported on who was slapped with essentially a trends blacklist.

00:40:06.000 In other words, even if him or his work was being talked about on the platform, you wouldn't see it if you were a typical user.

00:40:13.000 And people were slapped with all kinds of labels.

00:40:15.000 Do not amplify, you know, tombstone.

00:40:18.000 There were many different kinds of categories.

00:40:21.000 Jay Bhattacharya is a celebrated doctor at one of the best universities in America.

00:40:27.000 He happened to have a view that I think has largely been vindicated by the way over the past few years, that blanket lockdowns during COVID would on balance be detrimental to us.

00:40:39.000 In other words, him and other people who signed onto this thing called the Great Barrington

00:40:43.000 Declaration took the view that the vulnerable should be protected and locked down and resources

00:40:50.000 should go to them, but for other ordinary healthy people, that it might not be the best

00:40:56.000 things and that the after effects economically, psychologically, emotionally, might be worse,

00:41:03.000 that the prescription might be worse than the cure, whatever that phrase is.

00:41:06.000 So in other words, Jay Bhattacharya was turned in, not just on Twitter, but in the culture

00:41:12.000 more generally by these legacy institutions as a kind of boogeyman.

00:41:17.000 Why did they do that?

00:41:19.000 They did that in order to enforce the view that that idea is dangerous.

00:41:25.000 And that if you touch that idea, if you question the logic that, you know, cloth masks don't prevent the spread of COVID, obviously true.

00:41:34.000 If you question the idea that, I don't know, this virus came from Wuhan, and 10 miles down the road, there's this crazy lab where they're doing gain-of-function research.

00:41:43.000 Don't touch that.

00:41:44.000 You know, you're a xenophobe and a conspiracy theorist.

00:41:46.000 It's all about ring-fencing ideas that are—it's about intentionally coding people and ideas that are considered third-rail, dangerous, outside-of-the-line, isms, phobias, whatever.

00:42:01.000 What any kind of baggage that they can be larded with in order to say, if you want to be on the right side of history, don't go there.

00:42:08.000 If you don't want your reputation destroyed or your career ruined, don't go there.

00:42:13.000 And it has been an unbelievably effective tool.

00:42:17.000 And that is the thing that I am unbelievably interested in because I think you see it in all parts of, it's not just American life, although I'm in New York right now, it's all over the world.

00:42:29.000 And so this deeply human impulse in us, right, which is to be with the good people, to not be cast out of our tribe, is almost on steroids right now because of platforms like Twitter and Facebook and all of the rest.

00:42:44.000 Because we don't need to go to a public square and watch someone get stoned.

00:42:47.000 We can watch it happen digitally all day, every day.

00:42:51.000 And we are social animals and we learn to sort of prevent ourselves from being vulnerable or putting ourselves into harm's way.

00:43:00.000 Does that make sense?

00:43:01.000 Barry, yeah, not only does it make sense, it's terrifying that these tools of ostracisation have been mobilised to a fully immersive and omniscient degree.

00:43:13.000 When I hear you describe that, and it's interesting the example you chose, it seems that Something unique took place during the pandemic in how much power was unquestionably granted to already potent institutions and organisations.

00:43:31.000 And it appears to have, what do I want to say, gilded or gird a new era Of unquestioning compliance, where you find, for example, with criticism of the war between Ukraine and Russia is incredibly censored now and people just accept that, that you can pull up an article from 2014 in the Guardian where they were posing the very questions that would now be considered apostasy, the NATO infringement, the coup in 2014.

00:44:03.000 And we've just seen this with the pandemic.

00:44:08.000 Do you feel that something is being engineered on a massive scale or do you just feel that the exponential growth of these tools happens to be in the hands of the current regime and therefore we're experiencing what appears like a unique and egregious tyranny but it's actually just the tools have emerged rather than a new ideology?

00:44:28.000 For me, it's the latter.

00:44:29.000 I don't think there's some kind of grand conspiracy.

00:44:31.000 I don't think the heads of all of these places are sitting in a room coming up with a strategy.

00:44:37.000 No, I think it's a much more human story than that.

00:44:40.000 I think that institutions are people.

00:44:42.000 That people are social animals.

00:44:46.000 Let's just take the example of Twitter, right?

00:44:48.000 Everyone has been asking me and Matt and others, where are the stories of Twitter shadow banning people on the left?

00:44:53.000 They probably exist, right?

00:44:56.000 But you have to think about who created, at old Twitter at least, who was the institution?

00:45:02.000 The institution was 98 to 99% progressive or Democrats.

00:45:07.000 If Twitter was a social media platform that was located in Western Junction, Colorado, The story would be a totally different story, but it's as if people are surprised that, you know, if you live in San Francisco, if you're working at a place like Twitter with t-shirts that say stay woke, you know, if you, you know, your entire world

00:45:31.000 is that world.

00:45:32.000 So should it be surprising that they regard certain kinds of speeches beyond the pale?

00:45:37.000 Should it be surprising that they view what I see as, in some of these cases, just heterodox ideas or just typical conservative ideas as something more like hate speech?

00:45:48.000 It shouldn't surprise us at all.

00:45:49.000 Anyone that's ever been in a very homogenous, whether politically or religiously, environment knows that that's the case.

00:45:58.000 Yeah, so you think that the ideology is an appendage rather than the essence?

00:46:02.000 Now I know a lot of people that watch this... No, I think the ideology is deeply rooted.

00:46:08.000 I'm just saying that when... I'm not ascribing Ill-intent to many of these people.

00:46:17.000 I think many of these people genuinely thought, let's just take the case of Trump and you watch the way they were talking back and forth to each other.

00:46:24.000 And it in many ways reminds me of the times.

00:46:26.000 There were true believers, right?

00:46:28.000 There were true believers who said Trump is basically akin to a terrorist leader or the Christchurch murderer.

00:46:35.000 And those people are driven by ideology.

00:46:37.000 You see people saying, Including you all, Rob.

00:46:40.000 I basically I left academia because I could affect more change in the world from joining Twitter.

00:46:45.000 But then there are other people who are looking out at what was happening in Washington and saying this is an unprecedented situation.

00:46:52.000 It calls for unprecedented decision making.

00:46:54.000 There's gradations, as there are in any groups, and I think that that's an important aspect of what was happening at Twitter in the period we were reporting on, old Twitter.

00:47:05.000 It's frankly what happened at the New York Times during the very hot summer of 2020, where some people at the New York Times genuinely believed that running an op-ed by a sitting Republican senator literally put their lives in danger.

00:47:19.000 But the vast majority of people who signed on to an idea like that were doing it because of social pressure and because they believed that if they didn't, they would be on the wrong side of history.

00:47:28.000 And I think that dynamic was playing out at old Twitter.

00:47:31.000 It was playing out at The New York Times.

00:47:32.000 It's playing out in book publishing.

00:47:35.000 It's playing out in...

00:47:36.000 Basically, all of the sense-making elite institutions in American life right now.

00:47:41.000 And that is one of the great stories of our time.

00:47:43.000 And the reason it's not being reported on by places like The New York Times or The Washington Post is because they are implicated in it.

00:47:49.000 It's because they are the story.

00:47:51.000 Yes, you're quite right.

00:47:52.000 And in a sense, those social dynamics and the homogeneity that you're describing, though, it has been arrived at.

00:48:01.000 There is a process that has generated that.

00:48:04.000 And we also are talking about state collusion and intervention and censorship and an astonishing degree of infiltration by, in particular, The FBI.

00:48:16.000 And what I've found more broadly in my conversations with, like, Adam Curtis or Glenn Greenwald,

00:48:22.000 and now in conversations in-house here, is that much of the ideology around civil rights

00:48:28.000 and what has come to be known as identity politics is a convenient way of distracting

00:48:32.000 us from the fact that when it comes to the crunch, Democrat interests ultimately align

00:48:36.000 significantly with establishment interests elsewhere, the military-industrial complex,

00:48:41.000 the financial industry, and big tech, and in order to create a diversion, not because

00:48:45.000 there is a genuine ideological yearning at the heart of the establishment, i.e. its financial

00:48:50.000 heart, but because it is a convenient way of dividing people, these ideas are promoted.

00:48:55.000 And to your point earlier, it used to be accepted and ordinary that we would just sit and chat

00:48:59.000 to people that, what, could be the best?

00:49:01.000 Conservative?

00:49:02.000 Or Republican?

00:49:02.000 Or had really wacky outlandish conspiratorial views?

00:49:06.000 Or, you know, take for example something like as evidently frivolous as Graham Hancock's documentaries about the origin of our species.

00:49:15.000 Although, in a sense, what could be more important?

00:49:17.000 In a way, the idea that that should be censored or dangerous feels like there's a climate of amplification and an appetite for censorship.

00:49:26.000 And while the principles appear to be somewhat fluid, i.e.

00:49:30.000 you could find yourself on the wrong side of the argument tomorrow if the wind changes once this precedent has been set and these powers have been granted, it does seem that at the moment there are a set of ideals that are being represented one way or another.

00:49:46.000 Yeah, but the list, the strength, when you, I get letters from people, maybe you too, you also do Russell, like every single day that feel like they were written in the Soviet Union.

00:49:57.000 In other words, it's people saying to me, thank you for saying this out loud.

00:50:01.000 I have a job as a lawyer.

00:50:03.000 I have a job as an accountant.

00:50:04.000 I have a job as a doctor.

00:50:06.000 I agree with you.

00:50:07.000 But if I said those things out loud, you know, I don't know what would happen to me or my career.

00:50:12.000 How did we arrive at that in the West?

00:50:15.000 I mean, and I think one of the dynamics of it that is particularly insidious is as you watch, right, as a ordinary person, the list of things grow longer and longer that you have to say or that you don't have to say or that you have to avoid.

00:50:32.000 You're thinking to yourself, what are they going to add tomorrow?

00:50:35.000 What are they going to add next week?

00:50:36.000 What are they going to add three months from now? 0.93

00:50:38.000 I better just shut up entirely. And I think that that the effect of that kind of pre like that

00:50:44.000 self-censorship and self-censorship and anticipation that the list can grow longer is just terrible for

00:50:52.000 our democracy and it's terrible for our friendships and our relationships and frankly I think it leads

00:50:57.000 to political extremism because when the bounds of what are politically acceptable narrow to such a

00:51:04.000 degree that people with even normal views like there are differences between men and women

00:51:09.000 fall outside of it.

00:51:11.000 Then they're thinking, well, where can I actually speak the truth?

00:51:15.000 Where can I actually not walk on eggshells?

00:51:18.000 Where can I actually be my full selves?

00:51:20.000 And they will run into the open arms of political extremism.

00:51:24.000 One of the reasons I think it's so important to resist the censorious impulses that I think both of us, for various reasons or from various directions, want to resist is because of that, is because of where this kind of Ideology ultimately leads to, and it leads to a place where there's no political center, where people cannot talk to each other, where there's polarization, and where you have half the country thinking the other half are Nazis depending on which side you're on.

00:51:55.000 That is a recipe for violence and disaster, and it's not a country I want to live in which is You know, a lot of the reason why I decided to say bye bye to the New York Times and to try and start something that lives up to those kind of values, to have honest conversations, transparently, out loud and fearlessly.

00:52:14.000 And I think, you know, frankly, like any journalist who believes in in the old school values of journalism needs to be doing the same thing right now.

00:52:24.000 My personal perspective is one of optimism about humanity, that actually people that are different can get along and you don't need authoritarianism at the center of all of our institutions, systems and society in order for people to behave correctly.

00:52:43.000 It's not born of naivety, it's born of true optimism.

00:52:47.000 I also think that what's being masked is the birth of genuinely new political visions,

00:52:54.000 that we have a heterogeneous political space now where there are no real alternatives,

00:52:59.000 where there are no real voices that are interested in advancing ordinary people's lives, and

00:53:06.000 that we're being invited to bicker and squabble and even kill amongst ourselves and against

00:53:12.000 one another, rather than identify where real power is.

00:53:16.000 To some degree, I think it's just an aesthetic sheen that masks the telos of true power heading

00:53:23.000 in the direction that it always has done.

00:53:25.000 I'm concerned about advancing globalism, I'm concerned about technological dictatorship,

00:53:31.000 advancing surveillance, the ability of the state and private interest to collaborate

00:53:35.000 in exactly the way this story has demonstrated.

00:53:38.000 For me, we ought be moving towards a time where there is less centralised power, small amounts of government, And a kind of agreements among ourselves of how we're going to treat one another and the kind of freedoms that we're going to grant one another.

00:53:52.000 Also, sort of anecdotally, Barry, my feeling is that most people sort of just want to be left alone.

00:53:57.000 I don't mean in a sort of a narcissistic, libertarian way, that people just want to run their own, like people don't want to focus on hatred the whole time.

00:54:04.000 I think we're being stoked into an unnatural state by these kind of movements and this type of agenda.

00:54:09.000 And that's sort of what's fueling it in me, seeing as how you sort of almost asked.

00:54:16.000 I mean, I agree with you, and I'll tell you just from, you know, having been on the other side of it, in other words, having been the person that commissioned, you know, the 2000th op-ed about how Donald Trump is a unique danger to society, the incentive in it is, It's unspoken, but it's so obvious, right?

00:54:33.000 It's that, you know, like, we know from all of these amazing documentary studies and also just our personal experience that outrage keeps us engaged, right?

00:54:43.000 The entire mechanics of these platforms are based on outrage.

00:54:48.000 They're not based on kindness or empathy or love.

00:54:50.000 And I think that, like, one of the great challenges of our time is how do you use these platforms as the kind of incredible tools that they

00:54:59.000 are. And they are. I mean, I've commissioned amazing pieces because on Twitter I was able to connect to

00:55:05.000 an underground pastor in Hong Kong.

00:55:07.000 Like, people that I just otherwise wouldn't find have become available to me because of these tools.

00:55:12.000 But, you know, they also can kind of overtake us.

00:55:16.000 us. Um, and.

00:55:18.000 And I think that it's, yeah, just one of the challenges I find in my own life, forget even as a journalist, just as a civilian, is how do you use what's good about them without becoming subsumed by them?

00:55:30.000 And I think I have found when I'm basically living online, and a lot of my life is online because of my work, you know, you start to sort of see people not as three-dimensional and complicated and, you know, working from Good intentions and hearing them in good faith, you sort of start to see people as two-dimensional caricatures.

00:55:50.000 And that's just not a—that's not how I want to live.

00:55:54.000 And that's certainly not a way to do good journalism, because good journalism requires you to put yourself in other people's shoes, to be curious about what motivated them to vote a particular way.

00:56:05.000 You know, and a lot of journalism right now is basically just derivative of Twitter, where Twitter is the ultimate editor.

00:56:11.000 And I think, you know, At least one of my big takeaways having spent much of the past two weeks there is the necessity to sort of get back on the road interviewing people in real life and not just looking at kind of the Twitter conversation.

00:56:26.000 It's extraordinary to me that the culture has become as divisive as it has done.

00:56:30.000 Half of the voting population can be sort of condemned as fascists or terrorists or unacceptable and that's normalized when I sort of take it.

00:56:40.000 Deplorable.

00:56:41.000 deplorable being the defining word when you take a glimpse at this late-night TV culture

00:56:46.000 I've sort of because I don't watch too much me when I see I'm sort of

00:56:48.000 startled by the easy and casual way those narratives are carried and it what it tells me is that there are no

00:56:55.000 viewers in conveying a balanced perspective so there must be

00:57:00.000 ossification and bifurcation of the culture They know that there's no one who likes

00:57:05.000 Trump or libertarianism or even perhaps republicanism is watching TV between 10 and 12 at night in the United States

00:57:12.000 So it does suggest a degree of division that in a way don't seem positive

00:57:17.000 And Barry come no, but no, but the thing to be optimistic about is listen these though

00:57:22.000 the companies that we're referring to still have the sort of

00:57:27.000 mechanics of distribution right They're able to be beamed into tens of millions of homes across the country.

00:57:35.000 But the thing is, look at where the actual audience is.

00:57:38.000 They're not there.

00:57:40.000 They're with you.

00:57:41.000 They're with Joe Rogan.

00:57:42.000 They're with Tayibi. 1.00

00:57:43.000 They're with all of these new things that are part of this Cambrian explosion of independent media.

00:57:49.000 That is what to be optimistic about.

00:57:52.000 People are voting with their feet, and I think a lot of people still stuck in the old world do not understand that that is over.

00:57:59.000 It's over.

00:58:00.000 You know, audiences are just in a radically different place, and they're seeking voices and journalism that reflects the world as they actually see it, not the world as a few people in midtown Manhattan wish it were.

00:58:16.000 Barry, undoubtedly Elon Musk's actions in making these revelations available to you has been beneficial and has advanced the conversation.

00:58:24.000 It's difficult to know anybody's motivations, let alone a complex figure like Elon Musk.

00:58:30.000 What's your general sense around him stepping down as CEO and that poll?

00:58:34.000 Is that something you would care to comment on, mate?

00:58:38.000 I think that the The small glimpse that I had from my time reporting on this story has left me very grateful that I did not have $44 billion to spend and that I did not spend it acquiring Twitter.

00:58:54.000 I mean, it is just an absolutely thankless job trying to moderate the public square.

00:59:01.000 And the question is, you know, does he want to stick to his stated aim, which is to keep it that way, or is it going to transform into something else?

00:59:10.000 And I think that is the big question hanging over this entire project is the goal to try and, you know, was was the reason that he opened the archive in order to embarrass the former regime?

00:59:21.000 For sure.

00:59:22.000 But I think, you know, at at his best and That his intention was to win back trust, right?

00:59:30.000 Everyone saw that certain subjects were getting suppressed.

00:59:34.000 Everyone saw that the gap between, you know, Twitter was essentially gaslighting the public.

00:59:39.000 Our job was to sort of look into it and see whether or not it was true.

00:59:42.000 And it was true, right?

00:59:44.000 And if you're taking over a company that has lost trust with at least half of the American public, yeah, you should probably clean house, clear the decks, and all the things that he said to me on the record about what his intentions were.

00:59:55.000 But then to turn around and start to boot people off of Twitter, to tell people that they can't share a link from a competitor, they can't share a link to Linktree to promote their work, or, you know, and there are many other examples, you know, some of the policies, for example, on doxing seem absolutely sensible to me.

01:00:14.000 Of course you shouldn't be able to stalk people on the internet.

01:00:17.000 You shouldn't be able to say, Barry Weiss is in this place right now, go get her.

01:00:20.000 Obviously.

01:00:21.000 But I think what people are objecting to is the kind of chaotic nature of the way that these new rules are coming down, the sense that they're basically being implemented and then backfilled with a reason.

01:00:32.000 And I think, you know, if Elon Musk or, you know, I don't know if he's going to pay attention to the poll and actually step down, if Elon Musk or whoever the next CEO of Twitter is, wants to genuinely win back trust, It needs to be transparent.

01:00:44.000 It needs to be consistent.

01:00:46.000 There needs to be a level playing field.

01:00:47.000 And it just needs to be clearly communicated to the hundreds of millions of users on Twitter.

01:00:52.000 That is where you do need genuine values and principles, because I suppose values and principles are what remains when it's inconvenient to have them, when it's at odds with your own interests, when it involves sacrifice, and that's why I continually take recourse to what have to be called spiritual ideals in so much as they're not material, and sometimes they transcend rationalism, humanism, and even reason.

01:01:13.000 It's sometimes unreasonable to have principles.

01:01:16.000 Barry, it's an extraordinary privilege to talk to you.

01:01:18.000 You're very, very intense And I really like communicating with you.

01:01:22.000 Am I?

01:01:22.000 Yeah, you're really, really an intense person.

01:01:25.000 It's good to deal with you.

01:01:27.000 I don't know if that's bad or good.

01:01:29.000 Yeah, I mean as a compliment.

01:01:29.000 That's not like something, that's not a criticism.

01:01:32.000 Intensity is a good experience.

01:01:34.000 It's good to have people that communicate.

01:01:37.000 Like that, I was captivated the entire time, and it's not easy to talk about.

01:01:41.000 And I can see the appeal sometimes, um, you know, we're talking about the role taken on by Musk and whoever is pre-, uh, succeeds him, if indeed he does step down, but the attraction of dogma, because sometimes dealing with complexity is so hard, you know, God, I'm just going to call myself this, I'm just going to be this, and whatever they think, I'll do that.

01:01:59.000 I think there are two things that I sort of walk away with after these two weeks.

01:02:02.000 Thanks for calling me intense.

01:02:03.000 people are just, well, let's just accept what we're bloody told. It's getting confusing

01:02:06.000 out there. I think there are two things that I sort of walk away with after these two weeks.

01:02:10.000 Thanks for calling me intense. One is that I think that these tools may be too powerful

01:02:16.000 for any individual or group.

01:02:18.000 And I don't know if that means that the solution is to treat things like Twitter like a common carrier in the way that the railroad is or the electric company.

01:02:30.000 Power is, this is an incredible power.

01:02:33.000 And the power can be really, really corrupting.

01:02:37.000 And that the roar of the crowd in the ears of Elon Musk, positive or negative, is just maybe too much for any individual.

01:02:47.000 Like, I don't know if we human beings are built for that kind of roar.

01:02:51.000 And I have to tell you, I mean, I was just I gained a lot of Twitter followers in this, but the thing I'm looking most forward to over the Christmas holiday is just logging offline and getting back to real life and stepping away from the sort of, like, gladiatorial arena that some of these platforms have become, and touching grass, being with my baby and my wife, and getting back a little bit to reality, because I think that that roar can be, for anyone of whatever political valence

01:03:24.000 Just a lot to take in.

01:03:27.000 It seems and sounds extraordinarily overwhelming and the idea of connecting with actual reality and frankly love must be very appealing after enduring that.

01:03:41.000 When you said that about the roar of the crowd and that much accrued and centralized power, it seems like a broad critique of monopolisation, capitalism more generally,

01:03:51.000 because once you start looking at the principle of municipality, once anybody owns energy,

01:03:56.000 resources, communicative tools, it starts to present situations that are somewhat inhumane

01:04:02.000 and at odds with what I would dare to call our nature.

01:04:05.000 Barry, thank you so much for sharing that information and for the personal sacrifices

01:04:10.000 you must have made in order to bring about this story and to get to a position to even

01:04:14.000 be afforded that right.

01:04:15.000 No, no sacrifices.

01:04:16.000 No sacrifices.

01:04:17.000 It's my job and I'm happy to do it.

01:04:18.000 And thanks for having me on.

01:04:20.000 Barry, thanks for your time.

01:04:21.000 Thanks for your devotion.

01:04:22.000 Thanks a lot.

01:04:23.000 Cheers.

01:04:24.000 There we go.

01:04:24.000 Barry Weiss there.

01:04:25.000 I think that was a pretty amazing interview. 0.99

01:04:27.000 Intense, dense, lots of like, oh, fuck, we're right. 0.99

01:04:31.000 Oh, my God, this is terrifying. 1.00

01:04:33.000 Lots of stuff going on there.

01:04:35.000 Hey, guess what we're doing tomorrow?

01:04:36.000 We're calling it a Christmas special.

01:04:37.000 We're going to be joined by journalist Ken Kippenstein and Professor Brad Evans for a very special book club, Gareth.

01:04:43.000 Did you know this?

01:04:44.000 I didn't know about the book club.

01:04:45.000 We have to have some secrets, darling.

01:04:47.000 Right.

01:04:48.000 I'm looking forward to it.

01:04:49.000 Have you read the book this time?

01:04:50.000 No.

01:04:51.000 It's A Christmas Carol, but I believe that was written by Scrooge.

01:04:56.000 McDuck?

01:04:56.000 I believe Scrooge McDuck is actually the star, Gareth.

01:05:00.000 You made a bit of a mistake there and you obviously don't know as much about books as I do but that's why I got a book club and you do not.

01:05:05.000 I do not.

01:05:06.000 Hey, we are going to continue what we consider to be the best online news broadcast show in the history of our species over on locals.

01:05:15.000 Stay Free AF is our membership community.

01:05:17.000 You can join us there right now where we're going to be talking about Robots, technologization.

01:05:23.000 We're going to be reviewing the Barry Weiss conversation, and we'll be taking your questions right now on Locals.

01:05:29.000 We'll be back in one minute.

01:05:31.000 if not see you tomorrow but I urge you to stay with us and more important than any of that stay free

01:05:36.000 Many switches switch on switch off many switches switch on switch off

01:05:41.000 Many switches Switch on.

01:05:47.000 Switch off.

01:05:48.000 Man, he's switching.

01:05:49.000 Switch on.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - December 20, 2022

Who’s The Real Enemy – Elon Or The CIA? With Bari Weiss - #050 - Stay Free with Russell Brand

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