cover of episode RUSSIAGATE HOAX 2.0 BEGINS! Kamala's Russian Playbook Returns - Here We Go Again, Folks! SF447

RUSSIAGATE HOAX 2.0 BEGINS! Kamala's Russian Playbook Returns - Here We Go Again, Folks! SF447

2024/9/9
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Russell Brand: 本集讨论了所谓的"通俄门2.0",即美国政府指控俄罗斯干预2024年美国大选以及向独立媒体人士支付可疑款项。Brand认为这些指控难以置信,并指出普京公开表示更倾向于卡马拉·哈里斯当选总统,这与干预选举以支持特朗普的说法相矛盾。他还谈到了对独立媒体内容创作者的调查,以及对特朗普的持续迫害,并质疑司法机构是否已被操纵,不再服务于民主利益。Brand认为,人们对特朗普的支持或对哈里斯的反对,并非仅仅因为普京的欺骗,更是因为对民主制度、司法制度和媒体的普遍失望和腐败。他认为,持续不断的危机有利于世界上最有权势的利益集团,例如军工复合体和制药公司。他还强调,独立媒体人士不太可能因为金钱而积极宣传俄罗斯的利益,并认为如果特朗普在2024年赢得大选,那是因为政府的无能和腐败,以及选民的普遍失望,而不是普京的意志。最后,Brand呼吁支持像Rumble这样的支持言论自由的平台。 Jay Bhattacharyya: Bhattacharyya 讨论了美国政府对社交媒体进行审查,以及对不同意见的压制。他认为,言论自由原则在美国大选中面临威胁,拜登政府的审查行为受到了批评,并指出审查制度损害了公众利益,剥夺了公众听到不同意见的机会。他详细阐述了在大流行期间,他和其他科学家提出的观点(例如病毒难以阻止、儿童受病毒影响较小、封锁措施有害等)是如何被审查的。他认为,这些观点并非极端,而是基于科学证据的。他还谈到了最高法院的裁决,以及政府对科学研究的控制如何扼杀了科学的活力和发展。Bhattacharyya 认为,当前的全球主义体制是不人道的,它导致许多人被边缘化,并最终会引发反抗。他呼吁人们认识到审查制度的危害,并为言论自由而斗争。

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Russell Brand discusses the resurgence of Russiagate allegations, questioning their validity and purpose. He analyzes media reports, highlighting inconsistencies in the narrative and suggesting ulterior motives behind the accusations. Brand emphasizes the importance of independent media and critical thinking in navigating the complex information landscape.
  • The Biden administration accuses Russia of 2024 election interference.
  • Conservative influencers are accused of unwittingly working for the Kremlin.
  • Putin expresses preference for Kamala Harris presidency, raising questions about the logic of Russian interference.
  • Independent media figures deny accepting Russian funds.

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Hello you awakening wonders there on Spotify, Apple, Stink Whistle, Gurgle Dot or wherever you download your podcasts these days to remain at least peripherally connected to some tendril of truth in a bewildering miasma of

of lies and propaganda. We appreciate you and we love you. You're part of our community. So that's why we're very happy to give you an audio version of our live Rumble show five days a week. It's on Monday to Friday. We decipher the latest news stories. We break down current topics that the mainstream media should be covering and if they aren't,

then we critique why they're not and what they are covering. Every week as well, right, we do brilliant conversations with people like Jordan Peterson, RFK, Tucker, Carlson, Sam Harris, Vandana Shiva, Gabor Mate. These things are already up and you can listen to them now. So remember, this is an audio version of our daily live show. To tune in live, go to rumble.com forward slash Russell Brand. You'll find it easily and I hope that you will love it.

Now, please enjoy this episode of Stay Free with Russell Brand. Thanks.

Hello there you awakening wonders, thank you very much for joining me today on Stay Free with Russell Bryan. Just to start off, Putin, what a terrific guy. Russia, what a lovely bunch. We'll get to the details over the next hour, but I understand it's the way the space is going. If you're watching us on Rumble,

Be thankful for that fact because rumble is as yet still free like X Rumble is banned in Brazil rumble is banned in France. It's possible even that the rumble Honchos is the word I'm going to use could be under threat as so many independent media tech figures are these days

Hello, Gorilla Wagon. Hello, Van Halen. Hello, all of you Awaken Wonders watching us in locals. Listen, guys, we've got a lot to cover in the next few minutes. We're going to be talking about the reboot of Russiagate. We're being told once again that...

Russia has infiltrated independent media that sort of Russian carve outs are making shady payments to independent media figures. It just, I don't think that bird's gonna fly, you know?

And we're also going to look at, we're going to look for work. Some of this stuff's quite close to home. Let me get into this. If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be there for about 15 minutes. Then we're going to be exclusively on Rumble. And of course on Locals of our Awakened Wonder community, where if you are a member, you can come and see me live. Let me know if you were in attendance, by the way, in Phoenix, Arizona, from where I've just returned from doing Tucker Carlson's live show. Let me know if any of you were in the

audience for that. Let's cover some of the stuff that's directly affecting us. Is this legit? There are some people saying that an arrest warrant has been issued for Chris Pavlovsky, CEO of Rumble. And after we've seen Pavel Durov arrested in France, you have to entertain the idea that

figures that support free speech potentially could be under threat. Now that X and Rumble are banned in Brazil, now we're seeing more and more conversation about censorship and the normalization of censorship. We have to be sort of alert to these stories. My prayer is that it's not true and these prayers are becoming more effective. We might jump in for a moment and have a look at Trump. Trump is just doing an impromptu press conference

post his, one of his numerous trials. This one is an appeal for one of the cases with which I'm sure you're familiar. Have we got that? How would I, can we get the audio of that? - Utterly insane efforts to introduce propensity witnesses, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoyanov

most notably in an unfair and improper effort. Can you mute the audio for a second? Trump don't look good when someone else is talking, does he? When he brought Bobby out for that rally, I always feel like when he's sort of there watching Bobby, I feel like it didn't suit him that.

the role of the onlooker. We'll jump in and out of that story as the show goes on. There's a few posts and little clips from my appearance with Tucker. This is what Benny Johnson posted about that. He's just impressed, I think, by the sheer number of people. And here is a clip I've not watched yet about me talking about my baptism. What do you want, Benny?

grills. They sort of appeared in my existence, coming out of the shadows. And I said, "Would you like me to come and baptize you on the 28th of April?" And I sort of went, "Yeah." But I meant, "No." I would not like you to come. You know, you sort of make plans.

You know, I think if I'd known so many people there, I'd have been a little more anxious about it. It's an incredibly well-attended event. We gave away tickets to some members of our Awake and Wonder community. If you are an Awake and Wonder, you get the opportunity to see lots of

Live events and if you respond to the message in the chat now, you can just apply for tickets whenever we have them You never have to pay for them That's just one of the things we offer to our support a community as well as some forthcoming specials I think you're really gonna love this is this clip says that I'm gonna explain the world to Tucker in less than 60 seconds I can't imagine which 60 seconds that was

And I suppose that if you have that kind of polarity, a kind of tension where crisis is beneficial to the most powerful interests in the world, it's likely that you will see a perpetuation of crisis, endless crisis. If the military-industrial complex benefit from war, you will have war. If the pharmaceutical complex benefit from ill health, you will have the perpetuation of ill health. If they require you to eat food that's bad for you and take medicine that's bad for you, then you find that this great, wonderful nation, in which I'm a foreigner,

traipsing willy-nilly back and forth that border, almost at will, popping in them cages that Obama built, then I suppose that what you have instead of this wonderful nation, you have a kind of conveyor belt where we're sort of turned into larvae with parasitic tubes attached to us, one end being pumped full of sugar and seed oil, the other end being pumped full of needless pharmaceuticals. Actually, that...

That's been edited. There's no way I could have done that in 60 seconds. There's one claim I simply won't make for myself and that is that I'm a man who leans heavily into brevity. Tucker now is, his most recent show, the night after that was with Vivek Ramaswamy and I think Bobby Kennedy made a surprise

I was very interested to see Vivek talking to Jordan Peterson and how he said that his personal contribution to the Republican movement would be to ensure that the Republican Party did not remain in the capture of the donor class. As this new movement continues to grow, it feels like...

It's important to me at least and tell me if you agree with this in the chat to continually reiterate that this cannot remain a partisan issue. We have to look at the problems that underlie our systems and to me it

It appears that the ability for a donor class to control both parties in your country, the industry of lobbying's endless ability to magnetize and direct policy in the trajectory of your nation, unless that's addressed, it's pretty unlikely that the world's going to change as significantly as is required. Let's have a look at Tucker and Vivek and Bobby Kennedy.

and so it's an honor to introduce robert f kennedy jr so

There you go. This seems to me that that will be beneficial in the ongoing framing of the counter movement to what seems like another four years.

of bureaucratic civilian management if Kamala Harris wins the election. We're going to be talking about the re-emergence of Russiagate, Russiagate rebooted. Can we buy that story a second time after last time? What is the function of the Department of Justice when it comes to the investigations into independent media content creators? What is the role of the Department of Justice when it comes to the ongoing persecution of Donald Trump? And have

Have these institutions become captured and are they being directed by interests that are no longer democratic? Before we get into that, our main story, here is a brief word from one of our partners. Stay with us. Fume is an award-winning flavored air device. It's not addictive as there's no nicotine to get addicted to. Fume continuously invests in third-party studies to ensure the safety of their products. It's actually backed by doctors in the US.

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Let's go back now to Donald Trump's impromptu press conference. Let's have a look at that. I had really good numbers, but they were very conservative, very much on the low side. And the judge knew that. And the judge ruled a fine against me, the likes of which has never even been heard of. Businesses will never come to this state as long as that is able to be held up. Because we won that trial so conclusively.

We had an expert witness said that President Trump's financial, this was an expert witness from the Stern School of Business, one of the most highly respected people in the country as an expert witness. He said, to the best of my remembering, it's a big statement, but he said, this is perhaps the best financial statement I've ever seen.

But the judge made me pay like a $400 million fine. This is a consumer fraud statement. Think of it. Consumer fraud case that they made it in. The judge refused to give it over to the commercial division where they could understand things. And they would have dismissed it immediately because this case had no merit whatsoever.

Hey, hey, hey, here! No you don't, you don't slip that advert in! Cut that stuff! Mind you, that did look like a pretty good game. He was, I think, 400 million. That's quite a fine. We'll go back to that eventually, but we can't be running their glary little commercials, can we? My word, we're pushing that foon, baby. Okay, so there, hey, shall we do our main story? Listen, if you're watching this on YouTube, you're going to have to click the link in the description.

And join us over on Rumble. I'll tell you why, because this story, Russiagate.20, start the countdown, this story, Russiagate.20, covers a variety of complex ideas. We're going to be starting with, well, how can the mainstream media be carrying once again the idea that...

Russia are interfering in elections. And does that seem plausible to you when Putin has already declared that his personal preference would be a Kamala Harris presidency? And what's happening with the leaked DOJ investigation into independent content creators? And we're going to touch upon Steven Crowder, Rumble creators investigation into the DOJ. We're going to have to work out what is it that this version of Russiagate is about?

Okay, guys, let's get into it. First of all, maybe we should start off with the, let's have a look at the mainstream media reporting on the subject, pushing the idea that it is indeed Russiagate 0.20. Breaking news. The Biden administration taking a series of actions to target what they allege are attempts by Russian-backed

to manipulate public opinion here in the U.S. ahead of the presidential election, according to two senior U.S. officials. Joining us now is NBC's Ken Delaney. Ken, what more have we learned?

Jose, this is being described by our sources as a whole of government action designed to target Russian propaganda and disinformation aimed at interfering in the 2024 election. It is said to include sanctions by the Treasury Department, law enforcement action by the Justice Department. And one of the focuses is on RT, formerly known as Russia Today, that network of Russian government-funded English language websites and television platforms

that was flagged all the way back in 2017 by the US intelligence community as a vehicle for Russian disinformation and election interference. And at that time, the Justice Department required RT to register as a foreign agent. It remains to be seen exactly what actions the US will take against RT today, but this does appear to represent

an escalation in the efforts to try to purge the system of Russian propaganda and disinformation. What's interesting is that, look, the U.S. has been saying all along that not only Russia, but Iran and China, but particularly Russia, has been consistently trying to manipulate American public opinion with disinformation on social media platforms, use of fake accounts, and through RT, through its state-sponsored platforms, as they did in 2016. The difference now is that

There are mechanisms in place, particularly on social media platforms, to try to stop and flag fake accounts before the influence operations spread too widely. So it remains to be seen what impact this Russian disinformation is having. But nonetheless, this is a stance by the Biden administration to say if you're violating U.S. laws and policies, we're going to come after you.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to chair a meeting of the government's election task force today, this afternoon, with FBI Director Chris Wray and other officials. And he may have public comments to make about this effort at that time. The first time Russiagate happened, my intuitive reaction was, there's some leaky audio on in here, guys. Yeah, can you come in? There's some audio on. Thanks. Something sort of looks like cans are on with...

Or it might change, it might be that microphone that you just spoke in was on.

Yeah, thank you. Like the first time they did that, Russiagate, it seemed like an inability to address the lack of their government's actual popularity, a disinterest or in fact uninterested electorate turning away from the kind of mainstream politics that had consistently failed to deliver the type of results that the electorate feel that they deserve. And in fact, you could argue that they do deserve this version of it. Don't you think that...

Don't you think that this is sort of an attempt to create absolute bewilderment? Yeah, it is. It's Russia. I'm messing with my audio right now. I'm telling you, that's what's happening. Don't you think that what we're living in now is a time of such sort of delirium that, like, do you think that Russian misinformation could...

genuinely impact the outcome of the 2024 election because there is so much bloody information to consume let me get let me firstly get into this morning joe certainly unhappy with the idea that we could potentially uh be dealing with putin supporting kamala harris so they consider it to be trolling

These are elections of the U.S. people.

I said that if we can name a favorite candidate, it was, it used to be Joe Biden, but now he is not participating in

in the election campaign and he recommended to all his allies to support Ms. Harris. So that is what we are going to do. Yeah, that is some Olympic level trolling. Would they troll their own population on Russian media? So he would assume that they would get picked up in the U.S. and would...

play well. I don't understand how many levels to this game there are. Let's have a look at, let's have a look at other legacy media outlets dealing with the inconvenient news that Putin would prefer Kamala. And if they would prefer Kamala Harris, why would they be trying to manipulate and influence the election in favor of Trump? Well,

At what point do we how many levels to this simulacrum is there? President Putin said this morning that President Biden was his first choice for a second term, but that now he'd like Vice President Harris to become the next American president. Her laugh is so expressive and infectious, Putin said at an economic conference.

But is the former spy telling the truth? U.S. intelligence agencies believe Putin prefers Donald Trump over Harris, seeing him as less likely to continue supporting Ukraine. And Washington believes Putin is already trying to influence the election.

On Wednesday, the State Department said it would designate five Russian state-funded news organizations, including RT, formerly known as Russia Today, Ruptly and Sputnik, as foreign government missions and limit visas for their employees.

The Justice and Treasury Departments are acting as well, indicting two RT employees accused of funding an American right-wing media company to carry out the Kremlin's influence campaign. The Justice Department's message is clear.

We have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic system of government. A spokesman for RT told NBC News the group had several responses, including ha-ha-ha-ha and 2016 called and wants its clichés back.

Asked who could potentially mediate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, President Putin said he is open to negotiations and that China, Brazil or India could serve as a mediator. All right, Richard Engel for us there in Ukraine. Richard, thank you. It's getting deep, guys. The legacy media, of course, are claiming that.

numerous independent media content creators have accepted money from a Russian carve-out. The same way I suppose that CIA carve-outs often generate media in Ukraine. I know this because it's sort of happened to me. They're claiming that Benny Johnson and Tim Pool and Dave Rubin and others have accepted money from a Russian carve-out. Now, I know that all of them deny that.

And let's have a look at the legacy media's reporting on it. And this image, you can't, now that is Dave Rubin.

And that is dear Benny Johnson. But that fella in the middle, that's just a guy with a hat on. Do your research, Guardian. You can't get away with that. Tim Pool would not wear an oatmeal-coloured hat, would he? That's offensive misgendering of Tim Pool taking place there at the Guardian. Okay, let's have a look at Megyn Kelly explaining this story.

extraordinary story. So here's the deal. The DOJ is alleging that these two Russians who worked for RT, I mean, that does matter, but it's really the fact that they're in Russia and they're Russian and they're pushing Russian interests. What they did was they called their friend Lauren Chen. Now, she is a Canadian citizen who's living and working in America, I believe living here too, but definitely working in America for, among others, the Blaze. And she's

relatively well-known conservative personality online. I will say she's a troll. I unfollowed her a while ago because it was obvious this is not a person worth listening to on X. So they contacted Lauren Chen online

Because, unbeknownst to me, she had worked for RT for a year as a commentator. Apparently on the air, but at least writing articles for them. So openly affiliating with this channel. Now, it's not that RT, it's definitely state-run media. It is with Russia. I mean, good luck finding them doing anything critical of Vladimir Putin. Trust me.

uh they they try to get more and more influence in the united states they've had people reach out to me many times to try to get me to do something it's a no okay they know that by this point um but in this case they did reach out to lauren according to this indictment and said help us form a new independent media company and help us find influencers who will work for it

And according to the indictment, she did. She and her husband both did that and recruited guys like Dave and Tim Pool and Benny and three others I never heard of. And she, according to the indictment, knew that the Russians would be funding this and editing content

But the influencers, the conservative podcasters, did not. And that's according to the indictment. That's why none of them has been indicted. The feds are saying Rubin, Poole, Bennington, they didn't know. They were not told. In fact, they were given misinformation by Lauren because they allege she knew they would never do this if they understood it was being funded by the Russians. She told them that it was all being funded by some French businessman who

Edward Gregorian. And the indictment alleges that both Tim and Dave, I don't know about the others, tried to kick the tires a bit, obviously not enough, on who this is. Who's Edward Gregorian? And they wanted to see like a profile of the guy. All that was forwarded was a LinkedIn, which appears obviously to have been fake.

and then dave rubin is according to the indictment the guy who pushed more and said like this isn't enough and then they created this whole fake profile of this guy edward gregorian that's like pretty fancy i'm holding it up for the listening audience and you can see

Frankly, it looks a little obviously stock picture at the top of some vaguely attractive man looking out a window of a private jet. And then it's got all sorts of fawning descriptions about the guy.

And Dave apparently did push back even after that saying, I'm not sure about this guy. It says he's into social justice. Why is he looking for me? Anyway, there was some pushback. But here's the bottom line. They were offering eye-popping sums to these influencers and they took the deal.

Edward Gregorian, mystery man, looking out the window of a private jet. He cares about social justice and he cares about you and me. Let me tell you, they didn't offer us any money. It was you'd have just watched 25 minutes of me telling you that Edward Gregorian's a great fella and we should just follow along with it. Don't you just assume that

media is to some degree propaganda and there isn't in fact the charm of independent media is that the biases are sort of somewhat evident and declared explicitly declared I mean on this show I don't know what we would be capable of propagating is the whole things run on pure instinct intuition goodwill faithfulness so when you look at that's the story then

Russia gate is being rebooted. Now I keep putting the decimal point in the wrong place, don't I? It's Russia gate 0.20. That's what it is, not 2.0. You're quite right about that. But we can't simply continue to believe that the only reason people would vote for Donald Trump or vote against Kamala Harris and the remnants of the establishment that she represents because of Putin's ingenuity and deception is

plain that people are utterly disillusioned and on the precipice of despair with the institutions of democracy, the institutions of justice, the institutions of communication, primarily because they've all become so dreadfully corrupted. You can't have it that

that on one hand Putin is publicly endorsing Kamala Harris, then deceptively ensuring that people vote for Trump. I don't know how he thinks that he would benefit from a Kamala Harris presidency or a Trump presidency. It's pretty clear that the Democratic Party are more interested in continuing to fund Ukraine, for example. That would seem pretty likely.

I can't pretend to begin to understand it, not for a second, except for saying that the world of media, espionage, surveillance and censorship seems to be governed increasingly by authoritarian forces that benefit from all of us being goggle-eyed and bedazzled and distracted from the things that are truly important. And you know what they are, don't you? Personally, I know most of those influencers and I would say that

none of them are going to actively promote Russian interests for money. It's not how it works. Like Dave Rubin, double patriotic. Benny Johnson is patriotic to an outrageous degree. Tim Pool seems like a deeply critical thinker, trying his best. If America votes for Donald Trump,

in November 2024 is not going to be because of the will of Vladimir Putin, it's going to be because of the ineptitude and corruption of the government for the last four years and the general state of disillusionment, the fugue of despair induced by

centrist politics that claims that condemns ordinary americans rather than representing them continually but that's just why i think why don't you let me know what you think in the comments and the chat we've got a fantastic conversation coming up for you now it's with jay bacharia and rav auroria you should seriously consider subscribing to their uh sub stack

their consensus sub stack for in depth coverage of big pharma and free speech related issues and go to J and Rav's new rumble channel featuring their podcast with episodes twice a week. The links are in the description. Consider getting the rumble ad free version because if you get rumble premium, it supports all of us and rumble will need support because

banned in Brazil, banned in France, banned in Russia. And I feel that this organization, this platform is committed to free speech. And between now and the election, we're going to require that. When you see like Eric Weinstein, Brett Weinstein, basically Weinstein, when you see the whole Weinstein sibling fraternity suggesting that something eerie and peculiar is going to happen between now and the election, I think it's really important

that platforms like this one are kept open and supported. So yeah, consider that. Let us know guys.

All right, we're gonna speak to Jay Bhattacharyya now. This is a fantastic conversation. It's been up on locals for a little week now. You'll like it, baby. This is an interesting conversation when it comes to the deployment of lawfare, an interesting conversation about censorship, and it's interesting to see someone with such credibility and integrity addressing such important issues.

Have a look at it. See you in a few seconds. Jay, thank you for joining me today. So great to be here with you, Russell, as always. I always feel that when I'm talking with you, I have a confidence of communicating with an expert, but also I feel like I'm dealing with someone that is very spiritually open. And actually, I'll just start with this if I can, Jay.

But say with the changes that have happened in American politics recently, and it seems like a giddy carousel and we're adjusting to reality so swiftly. And I think almost now that our temporal measurements

are no longer as relevant, like a day, a week, an hour, a month. It seems like it's almost the same way that communications companies went from charging for minutes to charging for blocks of data. Perhaps our consciousness has been affected

by the sheer freight of data we interact with. You know, once you would have only seen, you know, prior to the printing press, how many words would people have read in a day? Now think of the number of words you read on advertising hoardings and endless scrolling and the amount of information you interface with, even if you're not a diligent academic like yourself.

Now, what strikes me as odd is that, you know, you're a Stanford academic, you're not white, and the idea that you would be seen as a kind of a MAGA person seems pretty absurd. But looking at the direction that the Kamala Harris Democrat Party is going in, and your very committed views

views on censorship and anti-censorship

it would seem that you are a person that would be a ostracized outcast when it comes to the purview of the Democrat Party, because they are a default pro-censorship party, even when it comes to just the results of your cases that went all the way to the Supreme Court were bounced down. Obviously, that was under Biden. But ultimately, this is a sort of a continuity. It's hardly a sort of a radical evolution represented by Kamala Harris's ascendancy. She was his VP. She's

they're using the same manifesto and prospectus. It's not going to be in any way significantly different. In fact, that's what most of us would argue. So do you find, while I recognize that you're going to talk to us about your case, your significant U.S. Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court

the request to remove misinformation on social media was subsequently granted after it looked like people, it was very high profile, they were saying, you know, we're not going to do that. I wonder how you feel this case and what the Democratic Party represents

It's where we find ourselves in 2024, where someone like you who wouldn't traditionally be regarded as a right wing fascist or a MAGA person or however that's conveyed, finds yourself as an opponent, an enemy of at least that aspect of the state.

I mean, I don't want to be too hyperbolic, Russell, but I think that the very principle of free speech is actually at stake in this election. I saw Tim Walz give an interview, the vice presidential candidate, give an interview where he defended the censorship activities of the Biden administration. And just to be abundantly clear, Russell, they censored me in particular. They censored anyone. It wasn't just me in particular. It was people with the kinds of ideas that I have.

You may agree or disagree with my ideas. I think that they were quite reasonable. For instance, if you look at what Sweden did and how well it did in the pandemic. But leave that aside. There's no cause for anybody

to say, look, I should be censored. But that's exactly what happened. And the Biden administration fully backed that all the way up to the Supreme Court, essentially arguing that unless they had the right to censor my ideas and people like, and ideas like people like mine, actually, and yours as well, Russell, that somehow the public was going to be harmed.

Well, I say the opposite. I think that, in fact, the public was harmed by that censorship effort by depriving the public of the opportunity to hear contrary ideas. They specifically censor ideas

that criticized policies that they were putting forward, policies that ended up harming children, ended up harming the working class. And, you know, I don't, I'm not, I mean, I'm not MAGA. I don't even, I mean, I tend to be allergic to policy. It makes me, it makes me, I just don't like any of it. I mean, I try to stick to data. But in here, I think the principle is still important to me.

Science can't work without free speech. And our polity is deprived of real heft if you have... You know, you're right, Russell, we have millions and millions of words that we can read. But if the powerful forces can say, look, you can only look at these kinds of words and not these kinds of words...

we're going to be misled by just the sheer volume. In fact, what we need is the capacity to be able to sample from all kinds of ideas. And this regime, actually not just the US, it's around the world, it's sort of emerging. I'm actually scared. I actually feel that if we don't

oppose it wherever it is, we will paint a civilization into a corner that can never get out of. I asked you a characteristically broad and corroming question that covered the view of the way that we consume data and what the modern center-left represents. And we've pulled up your Substack article, The Illusion of Consensus, with the headline, In its ruling on Murphy v. Missouri, the U.S. Supreme Court harmed free speech, an article that

that you have written. And to give us a sort of a basic framing of the conversation that we're commencing on, during the pandemic period, the kind of information you conveyed that you alluded to as being sort of pretty reasonable and not that extreme. Could you just

Give us three to five of the points that you suggested relatively early in the pandemic that were censored and that were rendered as being extreme, certainly censoring them suggests that they were regarded as extreme, just so that we can have some actual examples of what constitutes extremism in this new environment so we can actually see how extreme censorship has become.

So one idea was that the disease is very hard to stop. It spreads very easily. That was an idea, which meant then that the infection fatality rate was lower than people thought.

The second idea was that children were not particularly harmed by the disease, while older people really were by COVID. Third idea, the lockdowns themselves harmed every single person that was exposed to them, including children through the school closures, including poor people around the world causing starvation on a catastrophic scale from the earliest days of the pandemic.

Those were the ideas that were central to the Great Barrington Declaration that I wrote with Sinatra Gupta of Oxford and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard in October 2020. The idea was to lift lockdowns and focus protection of vulnerable older people.

That idea was too dangerous to allow. I mean, the federal government organized itself to try to suppress that idea. And then ideas around the immunity after COVID recovery. If you have had COVID and recovered, you have some degree of immunity. That idea was suppressed.

The idea that if you took the vaccine, there were some group of people, specifically young men who had myocarditis and other side effects. That idea was ruthlessly suppressed. Even patient groups that were talking to each other online were suppressed and labeled as misinformers just for telling people about their own experience.

The idea that there isn't robust evidence in favor of masking, and in fact, places that have had masks, mandates and other than that don't have very similar spread. That idea was suppressed. These were not radical ideas, Russell. These were scientific discussions to be had with honest looking at the data rather than having the government put their thumb on the scale and say, look, Jay is saying that there's such a thing as natural immunity. He's in a misinformer. You

obviously appear to have been hugely vindicated in the intervening years just to

run through that list again natural immunity their myocarditis the like you know the increased likelihood of myocarditis after vaccination to be more specific the impact of children of covid and the whether or not there's a need to shield them and likely that there wasn't a need the particular vulnerability of the elderly or people with comorbidities and the inefficacy of lockdown and the likely tangential

problems, whether they're financial or psychological or even pathological and their impact on other long-standing diseases like heart disease or cancer and the people that forewent treatments. All of those ideas you appear to have been significantly vindicated on. So let's now focus on the fact that those were the ideas that were censored. You went all the way to the Supreme Court to

contest the government's right to censor that information and it seemed for a while that you were to be publicly and legally vindicated and yet at their last the supreme court sided with the government meaning that the government will continue to have the right to censor information that given on the basis of the examples you've just cited is true true information can continue to be censored so what does that mean jay

I mean, it's I think the First Amendment, the US First Amendment, which is supposed to protect free speech in this country, is at this point an unenforceable dead letter. That's what it means.

So, just to, again, I hope I'm not being hyperbolic unnecessarily, but I just want to justify that. If you look at what the Supreme Court actually did, Russell, they said that I and my co-plaintiffs, many of whom were arguing ideas similar to what I was arguing, do not have standing to sue.

right so the lower courts what they said is they ordered the administration to stop censoring by stop coercing social media companies to put labels and to censor and to suppress and and de-boost and and you know sort of toss people off of the platform for spreading those saying those ideas um the the lower courts actually called it an orwellian ministry of truth that's how they label the activity

the supreme court said that that because there is not a email that specifically says from some some functionary in the government to social media sensor j instead what you have is emails that say censor these kinds of ideas or else if you don't censor these ideas we're going to go after your company in effect um they have lots of emails like that but nothing that says from government functionary to the social media company sensor j

Therefore, I don't have a standing to sue. And in fact, only if you have that email chain that specifically says, you know, censor RFK Jr. or something, then you have standing to sue. Otherwise, you do not.

And so on that basis, they invalidated the preliminary injunction that told the Biden administration that they're not allowed to censor anymore. There can be no objectivity. Currently, I'm in the process of acquiring Freedom of Information Act documents

uh related data and it's so plain that the obstacles and roadblocks that can be thrown down are so favorable to the set of interests that constitute modern power that the entire ex exercises all but few are except here and there as with

quantum physics, you can sort of trace the outline of what may be inferred from the movements that you see elsewhere. You can see that, well, if a particular department says we haven't got any correspondence relating to Russell Brand, because I know that, you know, in addition to the censorship you experienced, you experienced vilification, condemnation, problems at the university, Stanford University, where you work, personal attacks. Now,

So back to my point about Freedom of Information Act requests. If you ask a particular government department or member of parliament, me being a UK citizen, give us the information you have on Russell Brand, which is mine, that you haven't got the right as a tax funded organization to keep that information. And they say, we don't have any. When it's a matter of public record that they communicated with X, Rumble, YouTube, then you know they're lying.

You know they're lying. And I know that you were subject to similar measures, although, of course, there was a very particular flavor to the attacks that I was the recipient of. And certainly I have to bear responsibility for the lifestyle that I indulged for a long while, even though I, of course, strongly deny the allegations that arose from those attacks and those media reports.

activities, the long standing and long practice media activities. So what I'd like to say is that when you get a Supreme Court ruling that says that the government can continue acting that way,

And when you have like, you know, I'm asking you the questions, I suppose, with this particular huge because it is the Democratic Party National Convention. And we've seen Joe Biden given an exceptional send off. We've seen the sort of hypocrisy of the Obama's, the sort of incredible kind of silver.

grandstanding of Hillary Clinton. And it makes me wonder, say at the beginning of the COVID crisis, Trump was in office, they were in opposition. And in my country, Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party were in office. Now Keir Starmer's in office. There's been a transition of government in both nations. But neither party are able to say...

Now that we're in power, we're going to have an honest inquiry as to what went on during that period when it came to censorship, when it came to malpractice and pharmaceutical deception, perhaps on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies, the obvious problems of the regulatory bodies. None of these inquiries are going to take place. They always sort of seem like phatic

exercises or they come to early secession. So what does that tell us about these kind of self congratulatory parliamentary or congressional figures and parties that they are unable to address this? What does it tell us about the systems themselves, Jay?

They're fragile, Russell. So if you have a set of ideas, as nice as they sound, as important as they may be, if they cannot stand the challenge of people freely discussing them online and elsewhere,

then what good are they? Like you don't, they haven't stood the test. So if you have a party, and actually, by the way, I agree with you, it's not just one party. I mean, this is actually, I think, a function of our government, which is not just who's in office, but the sort of the bureaucracies that underlie them. The instincts of the bureaucracy is that the bureaucracy is right, and anyone that challenges the bureaucracy must be intentionally misinforming the public or trying to harm the public.

Well, that can't work in a democratic society because the ideas on which the bureaucracy functions require challenge and they require sharpening. And it's free speech that allows that to happen in the first place. Free speech will certainly allow lots and lots of people to say wrong things here and there, but the danger from the bureaucracy itself embracing the wrong ideas

putting policies in place without the challenge of having to justify themselves, essentially using their vast, almost totalitarian power to suppress challenge. What that says is that our societies are fundamentally at their core irrational, Russell. They can't work. It can't possibly work. And they're fragile. Any idea that doesn't allow itself to be challenged

even with false ideas, that they can't respond to those challenges, they almost certainly are not going to work. They're going to end up worse than that, Russell. They're going to end up harming people.

I mean, by the way, just on the, you mentioned something just in the question, I wanted to make sure I got it in. Our society is also quite unforgiving. Like, I think the idea of grace, which ought to be at the center of how we think about other people, every single one of us is a sinner. I think it ought to be at a core function of our society, a core sort of mechanism of our society. And it seems like

It's actually connected to this misinformation thing. The idea of misinformation regime is not even to actually suppress it so that people can't hear my ideas. It's to label me with a scarlet M for misinformer, right? To make me seen as saying false things, even when I'm not necessarily saying false things. In fact, I'm not saying false things. We are a more judgmental society than when Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the scarlet letter.

in the 19th century. What you, I suppose, are illustrating there, Jay, and what your case in particular demonstrates is that what the state has assumed is a kind of moral and spiritual power that is akin

to a god ultimately, if they have the power to say this person now is marked, you cannot trust that person, they've kind of ultimately socially executed you. And if they have such omnipotent control, forgive the tautology, of various systems of censorship, government and adjudication, that amounts to a kind of deist power.

I wonder sometimes, given that you've alluded to the extraction of grace from that purview, if that is what we are ultimately facing. A set of systems that have annihilated the role of God, the meaning of God, the purpose of God, the principles that one might consider to be godly, that they made themselves now

in an extraordinarily Luciferian move, appoint themselves as a comparable and enthroned adjudicator that can, you know, and I would love to use these assets, like this is, you know, in 2023, acknowledge that what happened in particular with your case and the other Great Barrington Declaration contributors, they censored you illegally.

and impeded your first amendment rights. And then we'll have a look at having, you know, once we have a look at that, we'll have a look at the subsequent Supreme Court reversal, really, from, you know, from 2024. So let's firstly just have a look at what happened in the first place. The U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing a federal

judge's injunction that could have major implications for First Amendment rights. The order from the judge appointed by former President Trump puts restrictions on when Biden administration officials can contact social media companies as a legal challenge moves through the court system. Republican attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit claiming that the White House went

too far in pressuring social media companies to remove misinformation about America's election security and the COVID-19 pandemic from their platforms. They're killing people.

I mean, it really, look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. It's pretty astonishing, isn't it, to see Biden make that claim in the context of controlling misinformation. So that seems like 100 years ago. It's actually from July 2023. That person is no longer president, not going to be president anymore, almost as if they never were president.

And so that was the moment where it seemed like there had been government overreach that the judicial institutions of America would address. But that's not how it played out, of course, is it, Jay?

Well, so first that you see in that clip demonization of a vast class of people, right? You see based on a false claim about the scientific basis of that claim is that somehow the vaccine stops you from getting and spreading COVID. On that basis, you can then move to say that that vast class of people is somehow inferior

They're killing people, right? They're somehow a danger to society. It's an incredibly dangerous thing that essentially the othering of a vast number of people, a creation of a class of unclean people, a new caste system, if you will. Yes, it's a kind of, I would say, the foundational argument for a new rationalist eugenics.

The idea that these unvaccinated people, inverted commas, well, let's have a look at those demographics and see where those people, what kind of races and economic classes those people are primarily drawn from, are, as you say, inferior and therefore in a kind of sort of Foucaultian idea, killable, excludable.

Exactly. It just absolutely shocked me to hear a president of the United States speak in those kinds of ways, speak in those kinds of terms. The other thing about that is that this one, okay, in July 2023, the judge that

made that order. Yeah, he was Trump appointed, but he was following the First Amendment. He was saying, look, the Supreme Court, I'm sorry, the administration, the government should not be allowed to go to tell social media companies, essentially coerce them, force them to take down people, label them with a scarlet letter.

if they just just for the crime of disagreeing with the Biden administration. That's essentially what was happening. And I mean, that's a very, very American idea that the government there are limits to what the government ought to be able to do. This goes back to what you were just what you were saying earlier, Russell, that the idea that somehow the

the the government the bureaucracy the deep state science itself is somehow a replacement for true truth i mean it's not that they don't have some truth in them but they are not the truth

Any human entity that claims that status is automatically suspect in my eyes. And that's essentially what they're saying. They say that they have the hold of the truth to such a degree that they can dehumanize vast populations that disagree with them. That is not...

That's not the basis for a healthy society. No, one can almost sense beneath the rational rhetoric a far more primal loathing waiting to be expressed. Just give me the reason to be able to condemn and hate these people. Just give me it. Is it that they're racist? Is it that they're stupid? Is it that they won't take their medicine?

hate is ready to go. Just give me the portal to squeeze that hatred through. Let's have a look at the subsequent video. This is from June 2024, which amounts to sort of a reversal of the contemplated measures that we saw in the last video.

So the Supreme Court has ruled that the White House can pressure social media companies to remove content that may contain disinformation. The case in question dealt with the Biden administration's decision to do that during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a six to three decision, the justices said the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit didn't have legal standing. So with respect to the private people who sued and said I was kicked off of Facebook or other social media platforms or the states that sued and said the Biden administration pressured me into or excuse me, impermissibly pressured these social media platforms into making certain decisions.

content moderation decisions. What the court said here with Justice Barrett and the majority is you can't link any alleged injury to government action. And so you're not the right people to bring this claim. So it's really interesting in the sense that this case was supposed to be a fairly big First Amendment case, but I'm not going to teach it in my First Amendment class. I'll teach it in my constitutional law

class about what you need to show in order to prove standing. So in terms of precedent, it doesn't answer that big question of how much can a government entity, in this case, a presidential administration, say to, for instance, Facebook during a pandemic, I really want you to take these steps when it comes to content on your platform. What does it tell us about the direction your country is heading in, Jay?

Okay, so a couple of things. I've been saying a lot of pessimistic things. Let me just say one optimistic thing here because it's worth saying. So the case actually, because it was ruled on standing, which says that I need to show an email from some functionary to social media company.

and that says censor me particular that that we didn't have that. So the majority of the court didn't rule that it's OK for the by for any administration to censor. What they ruled was that I didn't have the right to sue to stop them from censoring. Right. So the distinction there, the court is going to the case is going to go back down to a lower court and we'll fight over whether we actually did have standing. But but the case is going to be joined by the RFK Jr.

And there there's emails directly ordering social media companies to censor him. We have those emails. I see. So you're going to become co-plaintiffs, then you'll have standing. And it was thanks for explaining that distinction that it's not about whether or not the government has the right to censor is whether you have the right to sue when they do censor. So it's sort of not as dreadful as it might sound. But Russell.

The problem is that that usually a lot of courts will sort of use standing as an excuse not to rule on the fundamental substance of the thing. And the substance of the thing is just is black and evil, right? It basically says the government ought to have the right to censor anyone it wants, any idea it wants. And so, in fact, the standing ruling has substance.

What it means is that the government, in order to get around this ruling, can essentially say to social media companies, censor these ideas. They won't say censor Russell Brand. What they'll say is censor interesting discussions about spirituality and politics. And I mean, they'll say specific ideas that

that you say, and then you'll get censored, and you will not have the right to sue to stop them. Even with the demonetization on YouTube, where it was a matter of public record, the Department of Culture, that ultimately are the regulatory body that have the right to fine and sue social media companies, publicly demanded that my content be demonetized and effectively taken down

without there being any judicial process, there was, do you know that we have information that suggests that the phrase innocent until proven guilty was being censored. So it's, and you know, obviously prior to the extraordinary allegations, there was a period of he's a conspiracy theorist, he's right wing. And I'm very sensitive to what you're saying about the sort of scarlet letter, because once there's been a ferrari of that magnitude, you know, people,

people like there's gonna be a lot of people like, well, I can't sit and watch this guy on the basis. And the fact is, is that YouTube did de monetize, thankfully, rumble, you know, with their CEO, Chris Pavlovsky took a stand. And thankfully, X under Elon Musk took a stand. Obviously, these are two men that understand the way the wind is blowing. But but it's as you are pointing out,

We are, I suppose it's just a rising tide and what COVID offered us, it was an opportunity to see, and forgive me for the kind of glee in this, but I'm glad that there's people like you that are like, hold on, this guy's a Stanford University scientist who's only saying, oh, excuse me, it's not even extreme. You don't,

it's not that you're saying that there should be no such thing as vaccines it's not these everything you're saying is perfectly reasonable and referring again to the list from the beginning of the show natural immunity is effective well that's been proven children are not subject to the same uh fatality or even effects of covid proven masks don't work proven lockdowns don't work basically proven although again you know on to the more fundamental

of science's objectivity. Who is going to conduct the clinical trials to show that lockdowns are not effective? Who's going to conduct the clinical trials into increased myocarditis, turbo cancers, all of the new neurological conditions? Are Pfizer going to pay for those trials? Are the universities that take significant funding from pharmaceutical companies going to fund those trials?

Is the nation going to fund those trials? Are the WHO going to fund those trials? Those trials ain't going to get funded. Those clinical trials will never be funded, won't take place. The empirical evidence will never be provided. And that will remain as misinformation because they control reality more than just the judiciary and these institutions. I mean, you know, what you just said, the last point is so important, Russell. It's more insidious than money.

Essentially, it's like you have a map of the world and you've marked off a vast chunk of it and says, no one can go here.

And no one will go there, right? No scientist will want to cross what the government has told them they're not allowed to think about. Like they're not allowed to cross into the boundaries of places they're not allowed to say. It is the death of science. It essentially says that you have a set of functionaries that control what scientists can or cannot ask. And even if you gave the scientists all the money in the world, they still would never go there because they don't want to be labeled a misinformer. They don't want to be labeled as the kind of person that thinks these

these forbidden thoughts. It is the death of science, it's the death of reason. Oh wow, it's so incredible isn't it? Because as a Christian, I'm sympathetic to the idea that the Enlightenment

era for all of its near miracles was, I heard this recently from Father Julian of the Brompton Oratory, it could be regarded as an amplification of the false light of Lucifer enthroning as it did a kind of materialistic, rationalistic, individualistic, satanic energy rather than

facilitating reason, i.e. look at where it's led, look at where it has led. It's led to science being appointed and curated in order to reach conclusions that are favourable to the powerful. So it's very good to see illustrated the positive aspects of the Enlightenment, the positive qualities of reason, and to recognise that as long as science is subordinate to a moral authority that we

all agree to, or to some degree at least recognize as being divine, sublime, or true, rather than a kind of utile weapon of the powerful, that there may yet be hope for us. I mean, I think that, well, I mean, the Enlightenment is, I'm actually kind of a fan of the Enlightenment myself, but I do, I agree with you that it is the idea that the Enlightenment can, if it's functioning well, reveal every single truth.

Well, that itself becomes a total-- in fact, you might even say that the whole censorship idea, that the idea that there is a single man who knows all of science, you know, like someone like Tony Fauci can ironically say, "If you question me, you're not simply questioning a man, you're questioning science itself." I mean, that itself is a product of the Enlightenment, if we're honest.

And the idea that the Enlightenment can produce all truths, even truths that it doesn't have any capacity to reach,

truths about my relationship with God and my sort of fundamental, for instance, can science explain why I love my kids so much? I mean, even to the point where I'm willing to give up my own life for them, can science explain why I'm willing to sacrifice my career because I see the harm that's done to other people's children?

from the policies that were followed. I mean, I just, I don't see a scientific reason for that. What I see is a

I'm responding to a calling because of the purpose here on earth is beyond what can be explained by simple reason. The Tony Fauci claim is sort of deist and messianic and their counter argument would be no because science is based on sort of empiricism and clinical trial. Well, we've just rather undone that tapestry of deceit and whoppers because

Who's clinical trials funded by whom in what areas? And are you censoring counter arguments and legitimate voices in the space? So in a sense, yes, it's functionally a religion anyway, in terms of it's who has power.

power who has the right to kill, control, jail, censor, shut down. And why I find that so striking is if you were to watch any random five minutes of the DNC, you would think that you're in some sort of

candy land of sort of spectral joy and glory because people seem so pretty upbeat and there's a terrible lack of policy and a galling lack of introspection throughout the entire affair. Jay, just to touch on a few things before I sort of

pivot a little bit to censorship elsewhere and specifically my country the united kingdom i just want to mention that um while we're still on your cases and the cases you've been a participant in um like the fact and

and some of the facts that emerged from your various interactions employees of a dozen federal government agencies in the biden white house directly pressured social media companies to censor viewpoints contrary to official narratives emails from the white house to facebook show government officials threatening to use regulatory power to harm social media companies that did not comply with censorship demands just like it's just when you sort of

look at the brass tacks is pretty authoritarian and pretty frightening. I mean, there's a federal judge looking at the case that call it what the federal media did or what the government did. They made an analogy to Al Capone, the gangster.

the i mean the you know al capone will go to chicago businesses and say well that's a nice business uh it would be shame if something were to happen to it and then gain protection money from them right that's essentially what the government did with social media companies they essentially said look you know russell's saying terrible things jay's saying terrible things uh you really need to censor them

and and the social media companies if they were to say you know or else or else they uh the or else would be you know we have regulatory power of you we can do nasty things to you you better listen it's a lovely social media company you got there be a shame if someone came along and demon monopolized it broke that up balkanized it into several assembly-run social media companies that responded to the communities that would be a terrible thing a terrible thing

Hey, Jay, I wanted to talk about what happened in the UK. There was a kind of obviously the inciting incident was the murder of three children in Southport and this sort of attack on several others. And it kind of exploded into chaos.

race riots and anti-race riots and a kind of despair around migration and death and detachment and loss of meaning and purpose. There were so many things that were wrapped up in it. And my personal opinion is that

even from a strategic perspective, nonviolence is a non-negotiable, that we have to be nonviolent. And the targeting of different communities is kind of dumb and doesn't help, although I understand why people felt so enraged that their response was irrational and erratic. But whilst it would be claimed in my country, in the media, that the far right exploited the tragic death of those children,

It seems to me perhaps more significant that the government exploited the subsequent conflagrations in order to introduce legislation, again connected to censorship and the ability of the government to punish those

who step outside of its preferences, its narratives, its purview. Now again, just to clarify, because I am in the UK, that this is certainly not an endorsement of any acts of violence or hostility. I believe in peace above all else.

And love, perhaps, is the sort of primary duty of any Christian or any person of spirit, maybe even humanists, of anybody. But I'd like to get your thoughts, having experienced censorship firsthand, having such a unique insight into it. Do you feel that, like, while... Is it...

overly simplistic to say any crisis can be exploited to legitimize further regulatory authority being granted to the government, whether it's a riot or a health crisis. And are we likely to see more things like that? And what are your personal views as an American on the kind of censorship that we have seen suggested and in some cases implemented in the UK?

I mean, Russell, it breaks my heart to watch that violence. I mean, because as I share with you a commitment utterly to nonviolence, I think that's the way you make real social change. But I think there's a real irony here, Russell. Think about this. The reason why these riots are happening is because there's a vast class of people in the UK that feel like they have no voice.

that they vote and their people don't get elected or there's a disproportion in the number of votes that they give versus how many representatives they end up having in the parliament. And they're quite upset. How could it possibly be that silencing their voice further is the solution to that problem?

You don't solve the problem of voicelessness by taking away the voices of the people that want to speak. And violence, I think, erupts from that. So I think the idea that censorship will somehow suppress the violence, no, what it'll suppress is the ability for people to talk about what their ideas are in public. Those ideas are not going away. Those ideas are not going to be

removed from the earth because of this censorship what it'll do is it'll radicalize it further um i think it's a extremely short-sighted approach to a fundamental social problem that the uk is undergoing i thought the eu more generally um is is undergoing i mean actually including the after the us is undergoing it too in the sim and very similar they're all very similar kinds of uh kinds of underlying social forces at play the uh whatever the answer is it's again a complicated set of social problems it cannot possibly be censorship

The only way we go forward, if you really do commit to nonviolence, is to allow people to speak to each other openly. Yes, that's why I suppose the foundational idea of nonviolence is non-negotiable and absolutely necessary. It strikes me that when discussing globalism, which by its nature is government,

going to be a diffuse, nebulous and difficult to tackle term. It's helpful to have the kind of examples that we've been circling. What did we experience during the pandemic, which of course required a global response to some degree as a result of literally what a pandemic means. We sort of learned how regulatory

power was asserted, how censorship thrived, how profit was granted to some interesting institutions and bodies and organizations.

And when we look at what happened around protests in that period, I'm thinking particularly about what happened in Canada and the trucker protests and the protests in this country as well, that those things were maligned and shut down. The demonization of people that were suspicious of vaccines. Well, that was even alluded to in that short clip we watched relating to your case when Joe Biden says it was a pandemic outbreak.

of the unvaccinated. I think that the pandemic was an interesting period to show us what globalism looks like and what its intentions and what its means and measures are. The case that we've just discussed of the UK riots and the sort of

response to it and the likelihood that that response will exacerbate the conditions that it was supposed to address seems curious. And I think too, the area of agriculture and food production is another indicator because if you're seeing, for example, around the subject of migration, you need to be good to not be cryptic,

riots in Dublin, then riots in London and across the UK, one has to at least consider the possibility that there are some grievances that have to be addressed. And if when it comes to agriculture, the control of land, the patenting of seeds, top-down edicts around controls of fertilizers and other farm practices, and that you're seeing protests for everywhere from Sri Lanka to the Netherlands, it's likely that what we're beginning to be able to observe

are the consequences of centralized global authority and it appears that if the problem is globalism that the solution might be forms of localism which actually is only a sort of novel term for democracy an applicable democracy not democracy as a notion as a gesture as a shindig as a

party but democracy as the will of the people as locally as possible asserted and carried by majority rule established by assembly and ongoing discourse and conversation and again we're at the point where we have to recognize how um problematic censorship is if you believe in democracy it

Even notionally, you know Russell it's interesting to watch the the disparate reaction to The George Floyd protests for instance right there essentially there you had riots Worldwide even in places that outside the United States, although the George Floyd murder took place in the US There was a set if you think about it. What's happening is is there's a disjunction between

between some protests where it has the social stamp of approval, the authorities say these kinds of protests, these kinds of riots, this kind of violence is okay. Whereas like the

Vast chunks of the working class, when they protest, the truckers protest, for instance, in Canada, with Sikh truckers saying, look, I don't want this vaccine mandate. It's undermining my ability to do my job. Those protests are met with Emergency Powers Act, essentially martial law to suppress them.

So you have a social sanction for some kinds of protests and not social sanctions for others. Social sanctions for one kind of violence and not social sanctions for others. And the question is, what's the dividing line that decides when is violence okay and when it's not? Rather than the basic principle that violence is not okay, that in fact what has to be is an open marketplace of ideas where people can speak their minds honestly and so that we can reason with one another.

I view this as the fundamental to how our civilizations ought to function. What you have now in this globalist order, as you're talking about, Russell, is that it uses certain groups and the monopoly it has over violence in order to perpetuate itself while suppressing other groups and even the violence which I abhor of those other groups

in order to challenge it. Even peaceful protests, like the fundamentally peaceful protests of the Canadian truckers is suppressed. And the censorship is aimed in one direction. It's not aimed at everybody. It's only aimed at the people that are challenging the order.

So what you have then is essentially something that is very different than the traditional notion of democracy that I thought we lived under very naively before the pandemic. I mean, I think what you see is essentially a worldwide totalizing kind of approach

approach to governance um and so so you know so for instance doesn't it make complete sense that the EU uh the theory breton oh I don't know what role he plays some some high functionary the EU will write a letter ordering Elon Musk to not speak with Donald Trump on his own platform that he owns

I mean, it makes no sense unless you think about it is like these people think they have the right to order all of us, whether we live in their country or not, whether we voted for them or not, it makes no matter. They know what's right and what's good for us, and they control the ability to sanction violence. They control the ability to sanction speech. It's the kind of order that I really think that if people understood, they would rebel against it. And to facilitate

The imposition of order, it seems that you have to instantiate the condition of chaos. So the kind of events that might be facilitated or exploited, if not facilitated, are likely events that suggest or indeed are chaotic.

I have noted, and it's sort of plain and almost emphatic to announce that war benefits the military industrial complex, disease benefits the pharmaceutical industry, that censorship seems to benefit communication interests and the state. And what the observable trend is the centralization of power to

For us to consent to the centralization of power when the technology exists for power to be uniquely aggregated through new networks requires the constant induction of crisis. I've been reflecting a lot lately that we've seen in the commercial sector, excuse me, the advent of, I'm going to take two examples, Uber that aggregates vehicles in order to facilitate rides or Airbnb,

that aggregates empty rooms to facilitate hospitality, seems to me that already the technology exists to create consensus and connection. And the reason we're not seeing it applied to democracy or to governmental institutions at least is because it would be a deminopolizing, destabilizing, power sharing, decentralizing technology.

that cannot be allowed to happen because otherwise the game is up. That's why there can be no reckoning around COVID. There can be no reckoning around 9/11. There can be no reckoning because any sensible reckoning would reveal that the institutions themselves are

not fit for purpose. That's why it can't ever be truly addressed. It can only be performatively addressed because otherwise we would all conclude, oh, well, you just have to get rid of these institutions. No point replacing the various aparatiques and bureaucrats that occupy the roles within the system. That's irrelevant and redundant. It's the systems themselves that have to be changed and the technology exists now to change them. And once people realize that en masse, it's game over. I mean, Russell, the thing is, is, uh,

I'll tell you why. I mean, I have lots of reasons for hope. But one of the reasons for hope is that this system that you're talking about is inhumane. It's fundamentally inhuman. And it alienates people one by one from it. I mean, I was a pretty conventional professor at Stanford University doing scientific work quietly.

And all of a sudden, I'm on your show. You were a fantastic, successful performer, comedian, a thinker, and then suddenly you're on the outside. They push to the margin vast numbers of people. The system does.

Vast numbers of very interesting people are pushed to the margin. Vast numbers of working class people are pushed to the margin. Vast numbers of children have been harmed by the system during the lockdowns and so on. It's a system that breeds resistance

Because what it does is it concentrates power and authority in the hands of so few, and it can't possibly last. Fundamentally, it's an alienating system that doesn't allow us to be fully human. Yes, writing that down. That was really good. Thanks.

Thanks, Jay. Thanks very much. We've run out of time, at least for this portion of our ongoing dialogue. I hope that we'll be together again soon and that we'll speak soon. I'm in America a bunch over the next few months. I'd love to catch up with you for a conversation in real life. I guess you're in Stanford, wherever that is. California, is that? Where is it? It's California. Uh-oh. I'm not going there anytime soon.

I can, I can, I have a, I'm very good at showing people around Stanford and showing the best parts of it. So if you're ever in town, I'll show you around. I'll get myself a mask. It's the only time you ever need one. Thanks, Jay. It's good to speak with you, man. Good to see you too. Lots of love. Bye-bye. God bless. God bless you. Thank you.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation between me and Jay Bhattacharya. We will be back next week, not with more of the same, but with more of the different. Remember, come see me for this Rescue the Republic event if you want to come. Look at that, Jimmy Dore, Matt Taibbi, Robert Malone, Pierre Corrin, some good people there, Bobby Kennedy, they're all participating in this event. Let me know if you want to attend, and indeed, if you are an awakened wonder.

It's just one of those things you can come to. We'll provide a VIP experience for you. Respond to the tickets at Russell Brand email and we'll see you there. Thank you very much for joining us. See you next week. Not for more of the same, but for more of the different. Until then, if you can, stay free.