R.I.P. RFK. Is he being smeared by the mainstream media? Is he a real threat to Biden and why won t he be on the show next week? Also, one of my friends, Daniel Chandler, is coming on to talk about his new book, 'Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like' and why we need to platform him. And why he's not on YouTube yet. Dr. John Campbell is on a strike from YouTube and we can't discuss that because we would then get a strike on YouTube, and we love you, you 6.4 million awakening wonders. We want you to join us over on Rumble, but we want to get this content wherever you can in order to support us. Ultimately, we need you, the awakening wonders, over at Rumble, even as the world in circles Rumble and other free speech platforms like the World in Circles are circling China, then claiming that China s the problem because there s a new spate of laws being bought in by the five eyes countries, and don t think of five guys burger franchises? And don't think of 5 Guys burger franchises every time I mention it as childish because what they're doing is childish? Because what they do is childish because they ve got like every single one of those 5 Guys Burger franchises? And don t forget to mention that 5 Guys Burgers is a five guy burger franchise. What s your problem, you don't have to have dinner because you're just surviving up to your own dinner because I won't see that? You don t have to survive up to that crush up your tablets because I'll be crushed up by them? You don't see me crushing them up because I don't get it? Or do you see me crush them up? I won t have dinner? Don t see me crushed up, I don t see you crushing up my tablets up? You can get crushed up up by my crush up by your own crush up, because I'm just sort of like that, you're not surviving up, you can't see up up to it, I'll see me up to my own crush, right? ? - that's why I actually don't even have to do the washing up, right?! Well, I'm not crushed up. - it's going to be a good one? - by me? - by the crush up. - by you? -
00:01:11.000Take a deeper dive to the very, very depths, right down in Locals.
00:01:16.000There's a red button on your screen if you're watching us now on Rumble, and you can join our community.
00:01:18.000Nature's Child, Claire, The Unicorn Plug, dirty name, this lot are here chatting away right now about The important issues that will define our time, our lives, our days.
00:01:29.000Because if you think that democracy is working, if you think you've got a free press, you'll be living in a dream world, baby!
00:01:35.000We're going to be telling you in depth about RFK.
00:02:41.000over at rumble even as the world in circles Rumble and other free speech platforms like the American
00:02:48.000military in circling China Then claiming that China's the problem because there's a
00:02:53.000new spate of laws being bought in by the five eyes Countries and don't think of five guys burger franchises
00:02:59.000every time I mention that it's childish Because what they're doing is they've got like every single
00:03:05.000one of those countries wherever it's canardia or New Zealand
00:03:09.000Or Inglaterra or the America or Australia?
00:03:12.000They've got eerily similar laws almost as if there's been some centrally agreed upon set of edicts that are now being
00:03:20.000Mandated and I don't remember voting for it They tend to have their congressional or parliamentary debates late, late, late, late at night, so you can't participate, right?
00:03:29.000But we bring the debate right to you, and here it is.
00:03:32.000Also, One of my friends is coming on the show, Daniel Chandler has written a fantastic book, here it is, Free and Equal, What Would a Fair Society Look Like?
00:03:40.000This is a brilliant attempt to revivify some liberal principles but in a way that's right, in a way that works and that isn't co-opted by corporate and financial forces using the philosophy of John Rawls.
00:03:52.000We'll be learning more about that and how we can get bloody money Out of politics.
00:03:56.000We're only going to be on YouTube for a minute because, you know, we've got to get Dr. John Campbell.
00:05:07.000Face, Meta has set out to settle Cambridge Analytica scandal case for $725 million.
00:05:13.000That's too close to the Fox settlement for the, uh, claims about the Dominion voting machines to not receive, I think, more coverage and to be more widely understood.
00:05:22.000Yeah, so this happened in December, but now what it is, is that Facebook users can apply for some of that $725 million money.
00:06:18.000There's the sort of people that are like... I guess we're sued by an insurance company.
00:06:21.000I don't want that added to your list of problems.
00:06:24.000Ireland could pass laws making it illegal to read non-mainstream news sources.
00:06:28.000Now when you look into this, in part what they're saying is they're making it illegal to have material that incites hatred based on gender and race.
00:06:39.000Let me know in the comments in the chat No one should be hating anybody on the basis of gender or race, or hating anybody at all, actually.
00:06:46.000I mean, if you have even good reason to hate someone, your job is to get over it in order to free yourself from the manacles of hatred that will ultimately destroy you.
00:06:55.000But hating people because of characteristics that are just part of who they are?
00:07:01.000But what will happen, I believe, and you know more about this stuff than I do, you do a lot of the heavy lifting, darling, I'm up the front.
00:07:08.000The problem with this, I guess, is who gets to decide.
00:07:14.000The issue that they're trying to get to is this idea of, like, thought crimes.
00:07:18.000And what people are saying about it is, if now you're starting to police people over thought crimes and lock people up over thought crimes, is that the way that we want to go?
00:07:27.000As in, somebody's done something wrong before they even do it?
00:07:31.000As in, if there's material on your computer, are you guilty by the fact of there's just material on your computer or not?
00:07:37.000And I guess the issue is, as exactly as you say, no one wants to see hatred, no one wants to see all those kind of things, but who gets to decide?
00:07:45.000And do the parameters for these kind of laws change according to whatever government's in, whatever the situation is at the time?
00:07:52.000It's a fascinating point from a handsome man.
00:07:55.000What's interesting, also, is to look at these simultaneous online bills and how they align.
00:08:01.000Now, we're going to stay on YouTube and Twitter, and on Twitter, we're going to stay on Twitter.
00:09:15.000But this is one of the revelations of Edward Snowden, that these countries were sharing one another's data and spying on other countries' populations as a sort of loophole.
00:09:24.000Because it's illegal for America to spy on American citizens, but it's not legal for Australian secret services to spy on American citizens.
00:10:35.000The trial is a novel written by Franz Kafka but not published until 25 after... No, I'm just going to read my one.
00:10:41.000Joseph K is a bank worker accused of a crime but he is never told the nature of his crime and he must navigate a seemingly impossible legal system to save himself.
00:10:51.000It starts, I think, with a famous line, someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K because without warning he was arrested.
00:10:58.000What Kafkaesque has come to mean, the same way as Orwellian means you're being spied on and all that, Kafkaesque means that bureaucracies are untenable and mysterious, and you don't know what it is you're supposed to do and not supposed to do.
00:11:13.000It's certainly happening with YouTube.
00:11:14.000I mean, that's one of the things that wherever you are on YouTube in terms of politically, I think everyone can admit that the YouTube guidelines are so difficult to work your way around, to know what you're meant to say, what you're not meant to say, what you're meant to monetize, what you're not meant to monetize.
00:11:27.000And where people love naturally free speech and open communication, this will lead to the rise of other platforms like Rumble, but simultaneously bureaucratic entities and legislative entities, nation states are cooperating and the platforms rather are cooperating with them to ensure that free speech can be restricted.
00:11:47.000You already know that YouTube used the WHO's guidelines.
00:11:50.000Now that needn't be nefarious, but it is opaque and it is difficult to understand.
00:11:54.000And it did lead to, as you know, in the case of Twitter, true information being censored.
00:11:58.000And it's still impossible to talk about stuff that's empirically true on YouTube.
00:12:03.000And dear Dr. John Campbell, don't even know why he's banned.
00:12:05.000Have a quick glance at these various laws before going to that tweet.
00:12:09.000There's some EU thing, that's gonna basically mean that Rumble, you know, Rumble already can't broadcast in France and you'll see that the French people are very happy right now with the way they're being governed.
00:12:19.000France's democracy is working absolutely fine.
00:13:19.000Oh, by the way, we're spying on everyone now, and we decide what the word terrorist means.
00:13:23.000The restrict act is, well, you don't want people being hateful to people because of protected characteristics or characteristics that are just part of who they are, and they shouldn't receive bias, prejudice, bigotry or hatred.
00:13:43.000The Canada Online Streaming App, so this has been passed.
00:13:45.000The video platform says that the law would force it to recommend Canadian content on its homepage rather than videos tailored to a user's specific interests.
00:13:53.000This is literally tailoring what you should be... What you should be... Censorship!
00:14:07.000It was about individual content creators, independent media, people with specific interests from Mr Beast to PewDiePie to people doing makeup tutorials.
00:14:17.000Suddenly we were competing in an open market space.
00:14:19.000And what do they talk about all the time?
00:14:23.000It'll be censored in accordance with the will of the government and they will Obviously they'll say, well we like power, it's power for power's sake.
00:14:36.000But it's literally Kafkaesque because the laws are opaque and difficult to understand.
00:14:40.000Let's have a look at Dr John Campbell's tweet where he announced that he'd been given a strike for speaking to British MP Andrew Bridgen.
00:14:47.000So there you go, he's announced his strike, he's off for a week, he's bothering his wife, But it's taking a bit of time off from loafing around the house in what I imagine is definitely a fleece.
00:14:56.000If you're watching us on YouTube, join us on Rumble right now.
00:14:58.000There's a link in the description, because we're going to talk about this story openly and freedom, freely.
00:15:03.000When it comes to freedom, I'm like an American politician.
00:15:36.000How are you feeling the time since the ban?
00:15:38.000I've been assigned all sorts of jobs around the house and digging the allotment and cleaning the car and all sorts of things that I've been putting off for ages.
00:16:10.000It doesn't actually tell you what medical information there was.
00:16:14.000Of course on my channel I'm very careful to go back to the original sources and try and look at the evidence as much as I can.
00:16:21.000So there'll be an article in the Telegraph or the Guardian and I'll go back and look at the original papers or the original publications and try and get it right as far as I can.
00:16:31.000But when you're talking to people like politicians, in a sense they are the authority.
00:16:37.000So if Mr Bridgen says something or Rishi Sunak says something, then that is their opinion.
00:16:43.000And, you know, you would like to think that that was valid, but that's what I got the strike for, an interview with Mr Andrew Bridgen, Member of Parliament for North West Leicestershire, on Saturday the 29th of April.
00:16:58.000Dr John, Andrew Bridgen was in the news because he stood up in Parliament and started talking about vaccine injury and the way that people had lent into that particular policy in ways that in retrospect was not as watertight as was initially suggested, that lockdown policies were unreliable and he's Made some headway, but I think he's since been booted out of the Conservative Party, which is our equivalent of the Republican Party here in the UK, and there's an attempt to censor and shut down him.
00:17:26.000Now, me as a person that's more... I wouldn't really align myself with the Conservative Party in Great Britain.
00:17:32.000But I'm very interested, of course, in freedom of speech, and I'm particularly interested in this subject.
00:17:37.000What in particular did you find interesting What is the... Is there a particular substance or medication that you mentioned, and remember you're on Rumble now, John, so you're safe to talk freely, that you think may have led to the ban?
00:17:50.000And I'm presuming it's something that Andrew said, because we have things like that often with our guests.
00:17:54.000They come in here, shatting their mouths off, and we have to pay the bill.
00:17:56.000Yeah, I mean I've looked through what he said really quite carefully and everything that he has said, we've said on previous videos, he did mention hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin really only in passing.
00:18:12.000You sort of kind of get the impression that because it was Andrew Bridgen it was looked through perhaps more carefully than it would have been normally.
00:18:20.000But whether you agree with Andrew Bridgen or not, really Russell, I don't think that's the issue.
00:18:24.000The point is he's giving counter-argument.
00:18:27.000And the whole point of our democracy is we have the Houses of Commons, which is supposed to be a debating chamber.
00:18:33.000So if Andrew Bridgen wants to come on and say, well, I believe there's a Loch Ness monster, or I believe we've been visited by aliens, then as a Member of Parliament he's allowed to do that, and the other Members of Parliament should give counter-argument.
00:18:49.000He's consulted senior scientists around the world, and he's put forward these arguments, and he talks to an empty chamber, which our American viewers simply don't understand.
00:19:00.000So rather than giving counter-argument, he just seems to have been cold-shouldered, ignored, sent to Coventry, whatever you want to call it.
00:19:10.000Where is people saying, well, you've given that evidence, but let's look at this evidence, or you've cited that guideline, let's look at that guideline.
00:19:19.000Why has a sitting Member of Parliament been effectively silenced by his colleagues?
00:19:23.000I find that really quite concerning, Russell.
00:19:25.000I feel like one of the reasons that the parliamentary distancing was required is because he rhetorically referred to the Holocaust, which is broadly understood to be in bad taste.
00:19:36.000But I think generally speaking, that's how people use it, that the Holocaust is a great stain on humanity and a disgusting act of genocide and racism and a reminder of the dangers of fascism and tyranny.
00:19:49.000Even when he was speaking just about vaccines, it was an empty chamber.
00:19:53.000That's the reaction of the party in booting him out.
00:19:56.000But as Dr John says, even when he was speaking about vaccines from a scientific point of view, it was to no one.
00:20:01.000It's a weird political system that we have.
00:20:03.000They're either in there shouting like children, waving pieces of paper around, or they're in there on their own.
00:20:09.000Or in one case, one person was caught masturbating.
00:20:12.000And that is the best system of government we could possibly come up with.
00:20:15.000What troubles me, Dr. John, in the case of your YouTube strike, is I know how meticulous you are.
00:20:21.000I know that you are rigorous in the way that you research your content.
00:20:26.000I know that, you know, throughout the pandemic, the reason you attracted such a large audience on your YouTube channel is because you are Trustworthy and authentic and honest and as a medic you recognize the significance and importance of all medicines including and in some cases especially vaccines but that has to be underwritten by clinical trials, honest debate, transparency around the data and throughout this I think you've just walked a tightrope of authenticity, rigor and honesty.
00:20:55.000I think it's incredible how you've done it.
00:20:56.000I think it's absolutely Well, it doesn't appall me that you've been booted off for a week, but it informs me what's happening here.
00:21:03.000Particularly, did you check what we had there, Dr. John, about the spate of legislature being passed, even through the EU, over in Ireland, Canada, the Five Eyes countries?
00:21:16.000There does seem to be a worldwide movement at the moment, Russell, and of course we've got this new World Health Organization treaty, which there's been a debate in Parliament about.
00:21:24.000But the only reason there was a debate in Parliament about that was because there was 156,000 signatures from concerned members of the public, and that triggered this parliamentary debate because it reached 100,000 signatures.
00:21:37.000And it's not just Andrew Bridge, and we've had quite a few other MPs expressing really quite significant concern about this.
00:21:43.000The idea that information can be controlled and the idea that unelected bureaucrats, who happen to be in Geneva in this case, can pass laws or pass edicts which would be binding in the United Kingdom.
00:21:57.000And it does seem to be happening all around the world, so there seems to be like a what you might call an international zeitgeist at the moment, an international movement It's Canada.
00:22:08.000Canada and New Zealand are probably the worst.
00:22:11.000Ireland, as you've said, issues going on there.
00:22:13.000The United States, the United Kingdom, all seem to be moving in the same direction.
00:22:17.000It's almost like some sort of mass virus that's affecting people in different parts of the world.
00:22:23.000But the question in my mind is, Why is this affecting people in different parts of the world all at the same time?
00:22:36.000Because otherwise it just seems like one heck of a big coincidence to me.
00:22:40.000Conspiracy theorists would say that they're perhaps acting in concert because of the communication that takes place through organisations like the WFWHO because of their shared commercial interests and the evident necessity to crush counter-narratives as you seek to increase centralised authoritarianism at a time that it is plain that the opposite is what's required.
00:23:01.000Open debate, independent media, new political movements.
00:23:04.000We'll be talking to RFK, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
00:23:09.000Next week and our investigation in the show where we have a deeper look at one story from the news centres around RFK.
00:23:16.000Do you have any optimism, John, that this time of universal censorship, Kafkaist judiciary smearing and the crushing of dissent will lead to oppositional independent political movements as well as independent media voices of which you are now notably and plainly one?
00:23:34.000The independent media voice is yes for the time being, although as we both know we're being controlled in that respect, Russell.
00:23:42.000I did talk to Andrew Bridgen about this and it's interesting because we've got these people making decisions externally to us and I said have you not got any doctors in northwest Leicestershire that you can ask about things because they're much more likely to know what the requirement is locally rather than someone externally.
00:23:59.000This principle of subsidiarity which we're making decisions More locally, whether there's going to be any coordinated international opposition to this is really quite hard to see.
00:24:14.000So people aren't realizing the dramatic shift that there's been.
00:24:18.000But it's so concerning because you were talking about hate before, Russell, and we know that in totalitarian regimes, which have arrived on the far right and the far left, we don't need to give examples.
00:24:28.000But hate has been defined by what the next door neighbor doesn't like about you.
00:24:33.000They use this as a way of reporting you.
00:24:35.000They use this as a way of getting at you.
00:24:45.000But if people, if someone is interpreting that as being offensive, and at the moment, the key word is hate, that we're hating if we breach these guidelines.
00:24:56.000In the past, it's been loyalty to the party.
00:24:59.000We have no... Who's going to define that as the key issue?
00:25:40.000The other problem in the United Kingdom is that it's very hard to have independent voices of opposition because of the political party system that we have in this country.
00:25:49.000So basically it's impossible, virtually impossible, to become a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom unless you're in a particular party.
00:25:58.000So the Conservative Party have got maybe half a dozen MPs that have spoke out against the Covid narrative.
00:26:03.000And they've been largely silenced by the party.
00:26:07.000Labour, Scottish Nationalists, Lib Dems, hard to think of any MPs there that have really spoken out against it because there's this party narrative.
00:26:15.000Now, if I wanted to stand for Parliament, which I don't particularly, or you wanted to stand for Parliament and we stood as an independent, then in a particular constituency with our first past the post system, you would be going up against the party system.
00:26:30.000It's got a lot of history and a lot of strength.
00:26:33.000So our democracy is only mediated through the political party system, and it's virtually impossible for independent voices to be heard, at least in government.
00:26:43.000The House of Lords is an exception to that to some degree, but even there, the party system holds an awful lot of sway.
00:26:50.000So I am somewhat pessimistic about independent voices pointing out this international trend to collectivization, to data control.
00:26:59.000Our in-studio guest in a moment, Daniel Chandler, has written a book, Free and Equal.
00:27:03.000He'll be talking a lot about how the systems and institutions of democracy are prohibitive.
00:27:09.000He talks a lot about the first-past-the-post system rather than proportional representation that we have in this country.
00:27:15.000You scarcely need look at the systemic abuses within American politics to understand that
00:27:21.000it's always a result of expenditure, donations, lobbying.
00:27:26.000When I say it's always a result of, I mean, the sort of the movements of power and what
00:27:30.000gets legislated, what gets maligned and what gets ignored.
00:27:33.000There are so many ways of shutting down debate.
00:27:36.000Just anecdotally, Dr. John, we very much enjoyed the bit of footage where Anthony Fauci spoke
00:27:42.000to an African-American family and tried to tell them, like, these are the reasons why
00:27:48.000you should be taking these medications.
00:27:53.000They really understood the issues well.
00:27:56.000They really understood the challenges.
00:27:58.000They really understood the anomalies that were likely in place and subsequently revealed to be problems, like the lack of clinical trials around transmission.
00:28:06.000A lot of people intuited that, and of course it's conversationally and statistically understood that certain communities, i.e.
00:28:12.000the economically poor, uh the people of color were uh vaccine hesitant as the term was then and we learned the other day from our guest who was it was it schellenberger told us this or was it uh that told us that they spent a lot of money infiltrating civil rights movements in order to persuade people
00:28:32.000It's just been so lovely to walk this path with you.
00:28:43.000You're going to have to be careful about who you have on as a guest in future, Dr. John, because when we had Jimmy Dore on, it was Jimmy Dore got us in trouble, wasn't it?
00:28:58.000I mean, we're on Rumble now, so we can repeat it.
00:29:00.000There was again something about the Was it bloody vaccines or ivermectin or something?
00:29:04.000It's usually things that are kind of reasonable or marginal at worst.
00:29:09.000When you think of the kind of egregious propaganda that's been allowed to endure when it comes to the other side of that, and particularly when you start to couple it with the evident and obvious attempt to legitimize control at a time when control is breaking down.
00:29:25.000His point was about the profiteering of the pharmaceutical companies.
00:29:31.000They reduce it to, oh, well, you said this and therefore you're off.
00:29:34.000People are asking here, Firegirl 2020, I missed the Jimmy Dore segment.
00:29:37.000It wasn't on this show, but it's obviously accessible to Rumble, our whole library, as well as much of Dr. John's content is available on Rumble for fun and for free right now.
00:29:46.000I think we have to move forward because we've got a We've got a beautiful investigation and presentation on RFK and his recent success in the American polls.
00:29:56.000Got any thoughts on RFK and these kind of independent political voices, Dr. John?
00:30:01.000Well, independent political voices are always good.
00:30:03.000I don't have to claim to have any great knowledge about Robert Kennedy's political position.
00:30:13.000I certainly don't like the converse, which is the paternalism we've had.
00:30:17.000They sit down there and we'll tell you what to do and we know best and your job is to obey and say thank you.
00:30:23.000Anything that is a counterbalance to that I would welcome and certainly welcome the open debate and let's hope it is open debate and that we're not curtailed by outside influences.
00:30:36.000I'd like people from the left, people from the right that are interested in independence standing up to centralised authority.
00:30:43.000And as you say, people should have the right to be wrong.
00:30:46.000Like all this misinformation, disinformation stuff, all of this hate speech stuff, no one should be indulging in hateful rhetoric, but we should be trusted to discern for ourselves what is misinformation, what is hateful rhetoric, which authority are you going to yield to.
00:31:00.000Which corrupted big tech or governmental body do you trust to decide on how your moral compass should be set?
00:31:38.000Start sharpening those guillotines, baby, because there's a dark, dark dawn coming soon!
00:31:43.000No, we're not advocating for that type of revolution or violence on the streets.
00:31:46.000In fact, we're doing quite the opposite.
00:31:47.000What we want is collaboration, democracy, localized assembly, control over our budgets.
00:31:53.000Many ideas of this nature will be discussed by our guest, my friend Daniel Chandler, taken from his book Free and Equal, where he explores the philosophy of John Rawls.
00:32:03.000Before we get into our guest, This is a wonderful presentation.
00:36:03.000Is this just a fringe 1% sort of a guy?
00:36:06.000Well no, he's polling nearly 20% in the primary against Joe Biden according to the Fox News poll that came out yesterday.
00:36:12.000Here's some good balanced reporting on a democratic process from the Democrats supporting mainstream media.
00:36:18.000I'll point out that that's not the only poll that shows him up in double digits, right?
00:36:22.000In the Kennedy, you have part of the American establishment historically, and in Marianne Williamson, you have a woman who advocates for civil rights, who advocates for identity politics, but who is also anti-establishment.
00:36:33.000How will the mainstream media support these diverse voices?
00:37:12.000I don't see any evidence that the government and big business are colluding.
00:37:16.000That's why we have a fair democracy where all of the things that you need in your life are simply voted for and then... Hey!
00:37:23.000He blames this alliance for the rigging of the system that has destroyed the middle class over the last 40 years.
00:37:29.000He points to the nefarious collusion between big government and big corporations and the transfer of enormous wealth and power over the last 40 years to an American oligarchy.
00:37:37.000An elite that does not take the needs of the majority into account.
00:37:54.000All these problems, transfer of enormous wealth and power, I think can be traced to people not wanting to immediately take new medicines.
00:38:01.000Kennedy has been marginalized by the mainstream media for 18 years due to his skepticism of vaccines and for questioning the collusion between pharmaceutical companies and the CDC and FDA.
00:38:12.000Oh, just because I give them their funding or receive royalties from them, I suppose that... No, that sort of makes sense, actually.
00:38:37.000You've got plenty of money sloshing about.
00:38:38.000Tell us now how you're spending all your excess wealth, probably on cheap fuel, delicious, lovely, nutritious food, and fantastic, wholesome entertainment.
00:38:47.000But multiple recent polls show Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
00:38:50.000pulling double-digit support in the primary, including a Fox News survey on Wednesday that showed him at 90%.
00:38:56.000Almost as if, like, a lot of people believe that big business, the government and the media and Big Pharma and a powerful war machine are pushing their agenda into your face and down your throat at the expense of truth and honesty.
00:39:07.000It's weird, it's like some territories opened up where people are willing to listen to ideas that would have once been regarded as radical.
00:39:13.000Strange, really, but mostly the problem with this guy is he's nuts.
00:39:16.000The National Review last week published an article suggesting that such a double digit performance from Kennedy could prove costly for Biden.
00:39:23.000No incumbent president in the past 50 years has ceded that much of the vote to a primary challenger and one re-election is noted.
00:39:40.000They are working round the clock to ensure that voices that are genuinely in support of the issues you care about are shut down.
00:39:47.000Because if you hear any alternative ideas, if you feel that there's a hope for you, if you see a vision, an alternative to the drudgery they impose upon you, you'll obviously vote for it, right?
00:39:59.000Let me know in the chat and the comments.
00:40:12.000I've been fighting corporate corruption my entire life, but I understand that today the problem is much larger than a few crooked individuals.
00:40:22.000The problem is a system that no longer serves the people and a people who are so divided and so fearful that they are easily ruled.
00:41:35.000There's nothing crazy about every American tax dollar giving over a thousand dollars a year to the military-industrial complex while they suffer at home.
00:41:57.000Modernize our railroads and clean up our environment.
00:42:00.000Who's to say the railroads need modernizing?
00:42:03.000And can you think of even one example where an unmodern railroad and an environmental damage ever come together in a terrible, terrible collision in East Palestine?
00:42:11.000I can't think of... No, no, there is a good example of that.
00:42:14.000We will also clean up government and earn back the people's trust.
00:42:45.000We will end the secrecy, the censorship, and the surveillance.
00:42:49.000No, no, the secrecy, the surveillance, these are our proudest traditions!
00:42:53.000We will face honestly the darker parts of our history, the genocide, the racism, not to shame or blame or punish, but to repair as best we can in a spirit of compassion and kindness toward all.
00:43:08.000Compassion, kindness, no shaming and blaming, but an honest appraisal of things that have gone wrong and a new way to search forward while simultaneously challenging elite interests.
00:43:17.000This is exactly the kind of person that you don't want.
00:43:20.000Hopefully the mainstream media and the government will spend a lot of time convincing you to never vote for anyone like this, who plainly is some sort of selfish, mad pig.
00:43:30.000I'm inviting all of you to join me to create an America that we can believe in and be proud of again.
00:43:38.000and I'm running for President of the United States.
00:43:41.000Do you know what I was thinking the whole time during that?
00:43:45.000Anti-vaxxer, anti-vaxxer, anti-vaxxer, like the mainstream.
00:43:48.000When he was talking about an honest appraisal of America's past, curtailing the interests of the powerful, having a cleaner, clearer, more transparent and reliable democracy, I was thinking, all these things are not as important as vaccines.
00:44:02.000It is not in America's national interest Yes it is!
00:45:07.000That is why we are going to witness an unprecedented smearing of RFK.
00:45:11.000Primarily, I would contest from the left, not from the right, From the left, the people that are supposed to be supporting those values, the people that say they care about equality, the people that say they care about healing America's past, care about genocide, that care about slavery, that apparently are supposed to care about ordinary working Americans and ensuring that a discourse is created that doesn't needlessly generate shame and division.
00:45:31.000So if they really care about those issues, why is it that in the next few weeks all you're gonna hear them talk about is anti-vax, anti-vax, anti-vax crackpot?
00:45:40.000Because they don't really care about that stuff.
00:46:30.000We'll never forget those guys from the good old days, who it's impossible to say who they are and who they aren't, depending on what day it is.
00:46:51.000And the record of the United States in coddling dictators and torturers, violating international law and invading other countries mock the claim that we are fighting for universal human values.
00:47:28.000So long as these forever wars were limited to distant places most Americans couldn't find on a map, and Pentagon contracts were deftly allocated among congressional districts, it was all politically manageable.
00:47:38.000Protected by distance and dollars, Americans could root for Team America on their infotainment channels.
00:47:43.000Insulated from their constituents, politicians could play and profit from the great game of global geopolitics.
00:47:49.000But this new Cold War is rapidly raising the stakes.
00:47:52.000The adversaries are formidable, and the conflicts will be much harder to exit.
00:47:57.000Yeah, almost like what RFK is saying about driving China and Russia closer together.
00:49:40.000The new Cold War will further feed the militarism that has pervaded our political culture with increased government surveillance and weapons of war for local police departments.
00:49:56.000The main opposition to Biden's Ukraine policy is the radical right, and will disappear if the GOP wins in 2024.
00:50:02.000Left Democrats talk wistfully of diplomacy.
00:50:05.000It would be nice if there was some diplomacy, but it's just not possible.
00:50:09.000But since Biden is currently their only prospect for 2024, Democrats who disagree with him have to shut up.
00:50:14.000Or what they could do is support a genuine candidate if they are interested in change.
00:50:20.000I don't believe that this system can deliver real change.
00:50:23.000I don't believe that a candidate like RFK will be allowed to flourish by the political system, by the eternal mechanics of the Democratic Party.
00:50:30.000We saw a much less radical version of this in Bernie Sanders, a former independent that ran for a while and then was crushed by the Democratic Party.
00:50:37.000I don't believe the mainstream media We'll give air time to these ideas.
00:50:40.000But I believe that we, the actual people, can support this kind of language, this kind of ideology, and this kind of change.
00:50:49.000The one thing they don't want is change.
00:50:50.000The one thing that's likely to bring about change is an informed populace.
00:50:54.000If we inform one another, if we support radicals from across the political spectrum, then this institutionalized, concretized corruption will be blown apart.
00:51:02.000That is the only war we should be interested in.
00:51:09.000We should be about supporting important ideas like not having an Armageddon, supporting ordinary Americans, finding new alliances, ending the cultural war, ending the actual wars, finding new ways to move forward together before we destroy ourselves.
00:51:32.000That's some information that you're going to have to contend with.
00:51:35.000Could RFK be a necessary voice in the political landscape, coming as he does from the Democrat left?
00:51:41.000Could he align with other independent voices?
00:51:44.000Is this the challenge that Joe Biden needs?
00:51:46.000Certainly what we require It's a solution-oriented conversation about politics at a time when we're left with little but despair.
00:51:53.000That's why I'm excited to introduce our next guest, my friend Daniel Chandler, talking about his book Free and Equal, which is based on the philosophy of John Rawls.
00:52:03.000Welcome Daniel, thanks for joining us here.
00:52:06.000Daniel, mate, one of the areas where I know that we have a lot in common and one of the areas that I think that we should focus in order to begin our conversation is the problem of money in politics.
00:52:17.000In your book, you cover this subject and potential solutions both in the UK and in the US.
00:52:22.000We talk continually on our show, Stay Free, about the influence of money, this sort of overwhelming influence through donations in American politics, through the lobbying system, Through people in Congress owning stocks and shares in companies that they're supposed to regulate as an economist and as an author.
00:52:39.000What do you think the role of finance is in politics both in our country, the UK, we're English did you know, and in the United States of America?
00:52:46.000Can you unpack some of that for us and indeed direct us towards some of the solutions that you lead towards in your book?
00:52:52.000Yeah, so you know, I think money in politics is a huge problem, both in the UK and in the USA.
00:52:57.000And I think tackling that is really the first place I would start.
00:53:00.000Because, you know, reforming the political system is a precondition for almost anything else, you know, that my book Free and Equal is trying to set out, I guess, a much broader vision for how we could change our society, not just about reforming the political system, but also ideas for how we can You know, transform capitalism as we know it.
00:53:17.000Create an economy that's not only more equal but more humane.
00:53:20.000So there's like a whole big agenda that we need, I think, to sort of take on and think about.
00:53:26.000But the starting place before you can do any of that is to get money out of politics.
00:53:30.000I think, you know, in America the problem is at its most epic.
00:53:34.000I think in the last election, something like $14 billion were spent across all the different campaigns, which was twice as much as the previous biggest spending election, which was the previous one and is like more than the total GDP of Rwanda.
00:53:48.000I mean, it's a completely insane scale of money that's involved.
00:53:51.000And I think the real problem is that inevitably because the numbers are so big, most of that money is coming from an incredibly rich and seriously unrepresentative donor class.
00:54:03.000So I think in that 2020 election, More than just over $2 billion of that money.
00:54:09.000So about one in six of every dollar that was spent across that election came from just 20 billionaires.
00:54:14.000So 20 individuals controlling just such a huge proportion of the overall spending.
00:54:20.000And that, you know, just distorts the political system in such an obvious way.
00:54:24.000I think if the principle that underpins democracy is one of political equality, And if you allow the rich to have influence, you know, to buy influence over politics with their money, then that just goes against that principle in a really obvious way.
00:54:39.000But I think, you know, what I sort of try to do in my book with all of these problems is to move as, you know, almost as quickly as I can towards solutions, because I think particularly in a moment when People are so angry and dissatisfied and rightly so with politics as we know it.
00:54:53.000It's really important to harness that energy behind something constructive and I can see you want to... Do you want to come in or should I jump straight to my solution which I'm taking too long to get to?
00:55:05.000The problem, of course, with money in politics is it bypasses that primary democratic principle that it is a representative system where all of us have a voice to some degree or another.
00:55:14.000Because this book centres on the philosophy and ideas of John Rawls, would you explain, perhaps even using the sort of simple allegory that Rawls is somewhat famous for, what It is roles, it's philosophy about like, once you told me when we were chatting about how it's like, oh, if you didn't know what role you were going to have in a society, you would be cool with it.
00:55:38.000So let's, but remind me, let's come back to my idea for how to solve money in politics.
00:55:42.000We're going to crescendo towards how to get money out of politics.
00:55:45.000That's where we're going to head to, both in the UK and the US, Dan, by the way.
00:55:48.000So Rawls is the really the towering figure of 20th century political philosophy.
00:55:52.000That's I mean, maybe the place to start is that this is someone who's routinely compared to the greatest thinkers in the history of Western thought, like thinkers like Plato, Hobbes, Kant, John Stuart Mill.
00:56:02.000He's kind of up there with that level.
00:56:05.000And at the heart of his philosophy is I guess a strikingly simple idea that society should be fair, but obviously Rawls recognizes that different people have different ideas about what fairness means.
00:56:16.000And he has this thought experiment to help us sort of think through that question.
00:56:22.000And his idea is that if we want to know what a fair society would look like, we should imagine how we would choose to organize it if we didn't know which person we would be within that society.
00:56:31.000So whether we would be rich or poor, gay or straight, Christian, Muslim, You know, whatever.
00:56:38.000And that's, you know, I think an incredibly intuitive and compelling thought experiment.
00:56:44.000I think it's obvious that if we were to think about society that way, we wouldn't organize it how it is today.
00:56:49.000We wouldn't have a society where some people have to rely on food banks in order to feed themselves or where your class, race or gender continue to shape people's life chances in such a big way.
00:57:00.000But what Rawls does with that thought experiment is Not just point to the problems with our society, but give us a way of thinking about what a better, fairer society would actually look like.
00:57:10.000And in particular, he uses that thought experiment, he says that we would choose three principles that we could use to help us think through how to organize our society.
00:57:19.000A principle of freedom, that there are certain fundamental personal and political freedoms that we need, and that the first priority of the state is to protect those freedoms.
00:57:28.000Second, a principle of equality that's there to help us think through how much equality we should tolerate as a society.
00:57:37.000One is basically a commitment to genuine equality of opportunity, which I think is not what we have today.
00:57:44.000And then a principle called the difference principle which is the idea that we should organize our economy in a way that's as good as possible for the least well-off.
00:57:53.000And then there's a final principle of sustainability and basically those three principles together I think what's exciting is that they give sort of each of us a kind of toolkit for thinking through for ourselves all of the kinds of problems that you know that you're discussing day after day on this program and that all of us are reading about in the news whether it's Culture wars or money in politics, but also how to think about the climate crisis or how we might achieve more equality.
00:58:19.000It's also an invitation to put yourself in the perspective of other individuals and to recognise that there isn't something that definitively separates us from one another.
00:58:29.000This to me seems like a very good faith idea even of itself.
00:58:34.000I'm quite excited about Yeah, it's a very unifying kind of thing.
00:58:38.000It's a thing that can help each of us step out of our own sort of blinkered perspective and look at things from other people's point of view.
00:58:45.000And I think that to me, what's so exciting about Rawls' philosophy is it, I think it offers a genuinely unifying political vision.
00:58:53.000It's an alternative to the divisiveness of some identity politics.
00:58:57.000And also, I think a way through, you know, through the culture wars.
00:59:01.000It's a sort of genuinely unifying alternative to those ways of thinking about politics.
00:59:05.000It's exciting to hear those ideas outlined because I feel that one of the things that comes up again and again on our show, Gareth, and let me know if you in the chat agree with us, is there's this loss of hope and optimism.
00:59:17.000There's a lack of trust in our institutions, whether that's government or media, and I would say that this lack of trust is legitimate.
00:59:25.000For a long time, beginning in the 90s, perhaps there was this idea of Apathy among voters, which, you know, the philosopher Mark Fisher offered us, was not really apathy, but a kind of deduction that we were not represented, that democracy didn't function precisely because, as you just outlined, it has been co-opted by corporatized interests.
00:59:45.000Daniel, before I interrupted you, or at least invited you to give us a sort of a simple perspective on the philosophy of roles, about to talk us through how money could be taken out of politics.
00:59:56.000Would you mind talking us through some of that now, mate?
00:59:58.000And I mean, I should say that's the the aim of the book is not just to take sort of set out rules as ideas, but to use them to bring together practical solutions to lots of problems, starting with money and politics.
01:00:09.000So I think, you know, I think the solution, the ideal solution is pretty straightforward.
01:00:13.000The starting point would be to limit private donations to a very low level, a level that would be affordable To everyone in society and then to replace private donations with what I call a democracy voucher system.
01:00:27.000So the idea would be that every citizen would get an equal amount per year or per election cycle.
01:00:33.000So that could be $50 or $100 and they could choose to give that money to the party of their choice.
01:00:40.000And that would just in a stroke completely transform the incentives of our political system.
01:00:46.000It would mean that politicians, rather than having to go cap in hand to, you know, a tiny group of super rich donors, would have to appeal to everyone equally.
01:00:55.000And it's also something that Already exists in one place.
01:00:58.000So in Seattle in 2017, for local elections, they adopted this system.
01:01:04.000And so in Seattle citizens get $100 per election cycle.
01:01:07.000And it's like it's worked incredibly well.
01:01:09.000It's had all the had all the consequences that you would expect, like more people giving money to more people getting involved in politics, those people being from groups that are often underrepresented, More competitive elections, incumbents being more likely to lose.
01:01:23.000It sort of generally reinvigorated the health of democracy in Seattle and I think we should extend that to a national level.
01:01:29.000It excites me because one of the problems that we're facing in media spaces is that many of the old models are collapsing.
01:01:37.000There has been so much centralisation of resources and power.
01:01:41.000If all of the resources and the donations are coming from one class of person, it's
01:01:45.000plain that they're doing that for a reason.
01:01:46.000It's plain that the regulation and legislature that comes from organizations funded in that
01:01:51.000manner are going to be a reflection of that funding.
01:01:53.000So you're essentially saying no super PACs, no large donations, that'll be the end of
01:01:59.000So, and also would the campaigns become a little more modest, perhaps a little less
01:02:02.000bombastic and perhaps also a little broader because they wouldn't be appealing to particular
01:02:08.000silos whether that's an economic class or particular sides of the culture war.
01:02:13.000Presumably, it might do something to dilute the escalating tensions that are sort of, obviously, even in physics, a result of polarization.
01:02:25.000So that's a lovely idea, and it has already been used.
01:02:29.000If you're ready to move on, mate, so like my mate and everything, so I want to look after you, make sure you feel taken care of.
01:02:34.000I love, we'll do this on locals, because I love that example of that place in Brazil, somewhere in Brazil, where they give the budget for the community and the people in the community vote for it.
01:02:43.000Because one of the things we seem to be talking about, you know, on the platform of rolls, as espoused by you and extemporized on by you, of course, I'm not giving rolls all the credit, Screw that guy!
01:02:53.000Like, we're talking a lot about decentralisation, localisation and empowerment for existing systems.
01:02:58.000Sometimes I think, you know, when people are saying, oh, there are no ideas.
01:03:00.000Of course the ideas, the institutions and the potential are already among us, but these ideas are foreclosed, continually censored against, smeared, so of course they don't become popularised and emerge.
01:03:10.000Me, Daniel and Gareth, and I'm going to expect you to participate, young man, are going to continue our conversation exclusively on Locals.
01:03:18.000Join the conversation over there with Illuminated Soul now and Zashex3133, where people sometimes, by the way, they start talking about other stuff.
01:03:24.000We're going to talk about political lobbying.
01:03:26.000We're going to talk about the $263 million that the pharmaceutical industry spent in 2021.
01:03:29.000We're going to talk about money in politics and we're going to talk about solutions.
01:03:38.000So if you're not a member of our Locals community yet, join us now as well as gaining access to the weekly guided meditations that I do there.
01:03:44.000And of course, you can come and join us live at Community in mid-July.
01:03:52.000Satish Kumar's gonna be there, Vandana Shiva, Eddie Stern, Callie Means, Wim Hof, and now Daniel Chandler with his fantastic book, Free and Equal.
01:04:01.000Get your copy now, we'll post a link to that in the chat.
01:04:03.000If you're not with us on Locals yet, join us there now.
01:04:07.000Tomorrow we're looking at having an in-depth look at the Military-Industrial Complex and how much it costs every single American $1,000 each to the Military-Industrial Complex, Dan.
01:04:16.000Not even to the military, to Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, all those guys.
01:04:20.000So join us tomorrow to learn a little more