“Brazil Should TERRIFY YOU!” Michael Shellenberger On Worldwide Censorship Movement - Stay Free #351
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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. No, here's the fucking news.

You awakening wonders. Thank you for joining me for stay free with Russell Brand today, a day that will live large in the memory of all freedom lovers, because we've got fantastic news. Finally, Rumble and Elon seem to be finding ways to work together in the principality and continent nation of

Australia that are becoming peculiarly draconian and we'll be addressing that over the course of the next hour before introducing Michael Schellenberger, a significant voice in the censorship industrial complex space who has educated many of us as to the threat that we currently face quite in the gallery. If you don't mind guys bring the voices down if you don't mind so that I don't hear you just remember that I'm very very susceptible to distraction. Now the

The first part of the show will be available exclusively. Well, no, actually, the first part of it is ubiquitously available. We're broadcasting it across the planet. But after 15 minutes, we're going to be on Rumble. And aren't you starting to sense that that's the way the world is going? But in the end, we'll have to always be on Rumble if we're interested in freedom. Perhaps some alliance between Rumble and X might be a possibility. And happy St. George's Day.

to you all. Welcome in particular to you Awakened Wonders. Thank you so much for joining us there. You know, every single week we make an exclusive video for our community as well as galvanizing and mobilizing each other towards a spiritual revolution because we read...

books on spirituality, we meditate every single week together, we are getting ready, we're doomsday prepping baby, we're doomsday prepping and what better way to toast sweet Armageddon and the rapture that will likely follow than by using one of these mugs.

So get yourself one of these little darlings. Every single penny that we make from this stuff, by the way, we use to support people with addiction issues, alcohol and drug and mental health issues. Get them right into treatment centers. If you want to become an awakened one to use the code, I surrender. And for the next month, you can just decide whether or not you like it there. Get yourself in.

into a community in the holy name of St. George. Now we've got to slay the dragon, don't we? We've got to slay the limbic system, don't we? We've got to overcome the lizard mind, don't we? We've got to overcome the serpentine demonic forces that appear to be governing the world somehow, whether it's allegorical, metaphorical or literal, we do not yet know. But the British people and in particular the English people,

are at the very forefront. You can rely on the English to bring about sublime realms amidst the reptilian. Good morning, Glenn! Tell us something your mum doesn't know. Well, there you go. Happy St George's Day to you all. Do you know what I miss mostly about Michael Jackson? Not the music, not the movement, not the creation of the moonwalk, but...

Neverland, or as some people called it, Sometimesland. That theme park has been...

brought back to life. I mean, what's going on there? Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch has been rebuilt and refurbished. It's complicated, isn't it? The whole myth and magic of Michael Jackson, because there's a new film about him and they're going to have to resurrect the old play park, as we call it, in order to, you know, I suppose, provide sets. His nephew, Jafar Jackson, will be playing Michael Jackson. It's going to be an interesting one to narrativize. I love

Michael Jackson. That's basically my position, but it seems that there's some complicated matters to contend with. Whereas global politics and who should be the president of the United States is a simple one, young Skywalker. I think that's how I'm going to frame that.

Donald Trump is the worst president we've ever had. Joe Biden is the best president we've ever had. I've been thinking about that for a while. Is it a Cohen? Is there something we're missing? Now me on the rumble chances now Epstein ranch. Oh, dear. Oh, God. Dear Lord. Dear Lord above. There's no Epstein Island anymore. Right. So get the theme park going.

JG, the web guy, says it's going to be called pedoland. These are crazy times we are living in. The opening statements have been issued in the... Are you allowed to not say historic Trump trial? Are you able to say...

against potential lawfare against an opponent of the establishment. Are you allowed to call it that? In any event, you know, you're supposed to call it historic. When are we going to stop saying X, formerly known as Twitter? That's one of the things I'll be asking as well. Let's have a look at the...

The opening statements in the Trump trial that might not be particularly historic. You let me know in the chat. Day one of the Trump trial came to an abrupt end at 1230 p.m. And you'll never believe why an alternate juror got a toothache and had to go to the dentist. No judge is going to keep someone with a toothache listening to testimony. The trial began here at the criminal courthouse in downtown Manhattan with openers.

opening statements and Trump's attorney came out swinging. Todd Blanch branded porn star Stormy Daniels an opportunist and a liar, saying her false allegations she had an affair with Trump were sinister. Opening statements can be crucial. Studies show that 80% of jurors make their minds up on their verdict after hearing them. Stormzy! Why, Stormzy? Why?

I will get to some impartial perspective eventually. We've got some great stories coming up later in the week. We're looking at the contentious issue of abortion and how it relates to decentralization. You are going to love hearing that piece. Don't miss it. It will be first available on that sweet stream of...

freedom. Now, we're all looking at the Trump trial. We're trying to work out, is it lawfare? Is it that the judiciary is being deployed in order to bring down a political opponent of a leader that's becoming increasingly authoritarian? All the while, the world at large is becoming more sensorial. Thank God we've got Michael Schellenberger coming on the show to explain to us why Canada, Australia, Ireland, the UK, the EU are all imposing new extraordinary

ordinary laws that seem to be designed to control your freedom to speak and to shut down your free speech. But for us to get a perspective we can rely on, we need someone that always shoots from the hip, that's never afraid to lose their grip.

always relies on a little bit of lip. It's the clarion of truth. Ladies and gentlemen, Rachel Maddow. I was at the courthouse today in Manhattan. I was in the courtroom for opening statements for this first criminal trial of the former president. I can report firsthand that the courtroom smells like old soup and stale breath. I can report that the police officers who police the courtroom are working very hard and they appear to be very stressed.

I can report that Judge Murshan is soft-spoken and has what I think would be universally... This is the news now, is it? This is the news, the sort of relaying of a subjective experience accompanied by a pastel drawing of what is apparently justice. This is the establishment we're supposed to be clinging to. This is the world that we're supposed to be supporting. This is the vision that they are giving us. Hearken to the inner voice within you that is telling you that new power

is on the rise. Hearken to the voice within you that tells you that they know their days have numbered, that we are on the precipice of rising up. This is the day. Surely this is the day. Surely Rachel Maddow is, she's off point on some of this stuff. Hey, did you see that RFK's candidacy is more likely to be deleterious to Donald Trump than Joe Biden? Let's have a look at that.

There you go. There's some pictures of how that works. And yeah, it's the big reason is that, you know, you're more likely to vote for RFK if you're sort of predisposed to Trump than, you know, than if you were sort of a Biden person, I guess. But I don't know if you were. I try and work this out using fast food joints.

Is KFC more damaging to Burger King or McDonald's? I don't know. I don't know how it all works. But what I will say is that every single Kennedy has been trotted out in order to condemn him. Have you seen this? Is this the one? Is it number 10? It's the Kennedys. RFK Jr. is, as you know, the most radical left candidate in the race.

He's... No, this is it. That's your man there. Nearly every single grandchild of Joe and Rose Kennedy supports Joe Biden.

It is that like grandchildren is I want to please want someone please tell me what did the grandchildren think on this? I don't care what grandchildren think about anything. Them little nitwits. And also look at the Kennedys. They're just all lined up there behind the establishment. Nice. Elsewhere, the endorsement appears to be somewhat positive.

Equivocal. Don't do it. Vote for Trump. Excuse me. Vote for Biden. No, sorry. Which one is it? Now, just don't vote for the person I'm actually related to. Vote for Trump. I mean, Biden. Biden. Biden's the one I like. Vote Biden, for heaven's sake. Now, if you are watching us on YouTube, we've got to leave you now because the sweet sound of freedom is about to rain down upon

you abundantly Michael Schellenberger is joining us on the show if you want to become start the clock if you want to become an awakened wonder use the code I surrender will give you one month free now the second we get over to rumble we are going to be talking about Australia going on the attack

bringing down your free speech. What is happening in the great nation of Australia, where it used to all be laissez-faire and koalas give you chlamydia and didn't you enjoy Crocodile Dundee? And now it's all about censorship. If you're watching us on YouTube, click the link in the description. Get on over to Rumble who are opposing this right now and we'll tell you how this works. Click the link.

Okay guys, now before we get into it, you are gonna need to stay well in this crazy world. This crazy world where a pandemic could be around the corner any moment. Who knows how they're gonna unleash the next assault

on your freedom. Well, you better get ready, baby. The Wellness Company is assisting you in your preparedness. Here they are. We can't continue to bring you this beautiful content without the support of our partners. The Wellness Company are some of my favorite partners. Will your doctor even prescribe you ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine? Hey, I did it. The Wellness Company's Prescription Contagion Emergency Kit is unique, providing carefully selected effective medications for COVID-19 and

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User 2491 in the Rumble chat asks an important question. If you were a kid in a pool, what would you play with? Would you play with Biden's leg here or Trump's head here? I offer this conversation, this dilemma.

to the chat. You can contemplate that and work it out among yourselves as we turn our attention immediately to censorship in Australia. When did Australia become so sensorial? We asked you a little earlier what you think's going on. Worldwide censorship is coming. Many Western countries are falling. But who's next? The United States, Europe or the entire globe dominated by a centralized global government but claim they're here to... Who claim they're here to help us? You...

with the happy refrain, "You'll owe nothing and be happy." Many of you went for the final option, but a significant number of you thought that the United States would be next to fall. It's interesting to see new alliances like this one emerging. Chris Pavlovsky from Rumble, Elon Musk from X, formerly known as Twitter, you have to say that, don't you, every single time it's ever mentioned, on the subject of increasing censorship in Australia.

Rumble has received censorship demands from Australia, New Zealand and other countries that infringe on everyone's human rights. We are noticing a dramatic increase in global censorship, unlike anything we've seen before. Elon Musk, of course, agrees. Elon Musk is being attacked, condemned.

decried across Australia. Let's have a look at some front pages. Look at that. Ex-Marx the loser. One of the things I do like about Australia is the informality of its institutions, its media. Look at that. Look at the font of that headline, the West Australian. They see themselves as a kind of New York Times or a Washington Post or a London Times. We're serious. This is the news. This is all the news that's fit to print. Mate,

Elon Musk, we're going to X him out. We're going to X him right out, you bastard. Look at him. He's a loser. He's forced to eat his words. Now, what's amazing is how to an Australian population, the legacy media, as it's always done, is selling them problems that pejoratively affect them as solutions.

This Elon Musk advocating for free speech. Someone should shut him down. It's your free speech that he's advocating for. Now, of course, there was the horrific attack of Bishop Mari recently that took place in Sydney. But I think you're an adult, right? Can we decide for ourselves whether we're too sensitive to watch the brutal reality of a religious leader being subject to a knife attack only subsequently?

Two, advise us that forgiveness is the solution. Where else do you hear such wisdom conveyed? Do you hear it in the legacy media? Do you hear it in international diplomacy? Oughtn't we be granted examples such as this? Let me know in the chat. I care about what you believe.

Here is the legacy media condemning with considerable force, and as is always the case in Australian legacy media, a sort of peculiar dance track, Elon Musk, Rumble, and all freedom-loving, free speech supporting platforms. Because remember, your free speech, your ability to think and communicate is a problem for the globalists. And whether it's Ireland, Australia, Canada, Brazil, India,

It's happening everywhere. That's why I'm so grateful Michael Schellenberger is coming up very soon. Let's have a look at this piece of legacy media propaganda. Let's have a look.

I think the public's had a gutful of these narcissistic billionaires. They see themselves above the law, and the Australian law here should apply equally in the real world as it does online. Both sides of politics united against a common enemy, Elon Musk. This is exactly as I'd expect from ex-addictory... Both sides united! We're always told that, aren't we? Do you notice that whenever it's censorship...

and war that both sides unite. Both sides were united today to pass C-702, meaning you'll be surveilled to within an inch of your life. Both sides of the house were united today and voted that $95 billion of your taxes will go on to perpetuate

Both sides of the house were united today. This is Australia, actually, this one. Both sides of the house were united today against that bastard Elon Musk, who believes that you should be able to decide for yourself whether you're offended by something. You don't want to decide for yourself, do you? Wouldn't you like to pay a bunch of taxes and we'll decide for you what you're too stupid to understand?

for the information that they pump into our communities. The social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, clapping back at demands from Australia's online watchdog, which instructed X to pull down violent and distressing videos and imagery of this week's Sydney church stabbing. X has now received a demand from the eSafety Commissioner that X globally withhold these posts or face a daily fine of $785,000. The eSafety Commissioner does not have the authority to dictate what content X's users can see globally. This is XFM.

Absolutely what I expect Elon Musk to do. He doesn't shy away from challenging governments or people he doesn't agree with. X will remove the content for now, but plans to challenge the order in court, saying it threatens free speech. Musk himself labelling the e-safety commissioner...

the Australian censorship commissar. The coalition now prepared to back Labor's proposed misinformation laws to toughen social media compliance. But as the tech giants rail against Australia's attempts to protect users, do we stand a chance in this David versus Goliath battle?

We've got to protect the users. It's David versus Goliath. Are they saying that Elon Musk is Goliath and the censorship industrial complex is David, the plucky boy king up against an ogre? Is that what they're literally saying? Now, Elon Musk may not be perfect.

I'm sure being a billionaire comes with a whole set of priorities and challenges and biases. But the principle of free speech is an important one. And people that stand up for free speech, in particular people with power and platforms like Elon Musk, like Chris Pavlovsky, have to be applauded. You know, a lot of people went down. Remember how fast YouTube demonetized me?

at the behest of the centralized government forces that demanded it that day. Remember, well, Chris Pavlovsky and Rumble, they stood firm. And here, Elon Musk on this issue is an ally. It is important for us to recognize that if we are not gonna find ourselves corralled into technological feudal serfdom where we have no power, no ability to communicate, we have to recognize what's happening around these issues.

Here is the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, rather casually and colloquially condemning Elon Musk. Now, what I will say I enjoy about this is Australians like people from where I'm from, Essex,

to the east of London, use the word bloke. And I do like seeing the leader of a country using that term, even if he plainly is supporting a globalist agenda that legitimizes censorship and the foreclosure of free speech in order to operate at the service and behest

of shadowy global organisations that I don't fully understand. Let me know if you guys understand what's going on. Where is the power really? Where is it? Let's work it out together, guys. Well, this is a bloke who's chosen ego and showing violence over common sense. I think that Australians will shake their head when they think that this billionaire is prepared to go to court

fighting for the right to sow division and to show violent videos which are very distressing. He is in social media.

But he has a social responsibility in order. I like that one. Social media, social responsibility. You use the word social twice there. This bloke, that's amazing. I know Australians use that word, bloke, mate. Indeed, it's one of the great legacies of the British working class this fine St. George's Day. But for an American, that's like if Joe Biden was saying, motherfucker,

this you know this he's got to support he's got to stop so in division the to have that social license and what has occurred here is that the e-safety commissioner has made very sensible suggestions other social media companies have complied without complaint but this bloke thinks he's above the australian law

that he's above common decency. And I tell you... Above common decency? I don't think Elon Musk has ever claimed that. Like, for all of his extraordinary neurological diversity, I don't think Elon Musk has ever said, pfft, common decency. To hell with it. What I say to Elon Musk, that he is so out of touch with what the Australian public want. This has been a distressing time. What?

What the Australian public want is to be censored. What the Australian public want, what all of the people want of the world, is less freedom, less free speech, more bureaucratic bodies deciding what we can believe in and what we can see and how to raise our children and how to live our lives and what wars to fund.

and how to organise and when to stay in our house for six months or maybe even several years and how to deploy climate change measures to ensure that no globalist corporations are ever penalised but ordinary individuals everywhere are locked in their homes. That's what we want in Australia, is it? Let me know because the Sydney Police...

are telling you that they will literally be the source of truth. And if you're not terrified by that declaration, then well, well, I mean, I'm going to make you terrified by explaining it to you. And then we're going to go right to Michael Schellenberger.

So this is from Reclaim The Net. I want to stress that there is misinformation being communicated across social media. It was 18 part of it. Offering a fresh perspective on the fallout of a recent Sydney stabbing attack and a speedy recovery to Bishop Murray.

And of course, the other victims of the various other mad attacks have expressed their anger and mistrust toward the police, who have insisted they alone should be the arbiter of truth for this incident. These sentiments stem from a press briefing given by New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb last Thursday. Webb, who was sharing information about a 16-year-old male being accused of terrorism following the stabbing of

of Bishop Marmari Emanuel of Christ the Good Shepherd Church asserted that the police will be the utterly reliable source of updates. She warned against misinformation, but decided not to elaborate on what she was alluding to. That's very rare, isn't it? For people to just use terms like misinformation, disinformation and malinformation, and then not describe what they mean, almost as if they want to keep their options open so that they can then determine what information to censor based on their own agenda. Astonishing.

I also want to stress there is misinformation being communicated across social media and people should not share that information. Don't share it! You're all idiots! None of you can decide anything for yourselves! The source of information should be the police. Of course! No one's ever heard of the police being corrupt or corrupted and law enforcement authorities. And if people have concerns, they should check our websites. And if you're really scared, just sit down in your house. Do not

move a muscle, put your hands on your thighs and stare at the wall. Eventually you will die and then you will maybe know freedom.

If we have current credible information about any risk or threat to the community, we will let them know that's the relationship I want with the organizations that I fund. We will share that with the community. But please be assured the police will be the source of truth and not social media, which, of course, social media, when the FBI and the CIA have infiltrated it, means it's a proxy of the state. And you better believe there are laws being passed right now all across the law to ensure that that's exactly how social media is deployed. But

But social media is also where you speak. They are trying to protect you from you when they are the biggest threat. This attempt by the Australian police to monopolise control over the narrative of the incident has raised concerns among the online community. Hello, we're the online community about censorship, especially as the government has been pressuring online platforms to censor in recent days. You better believe it, baby. The government has gone so far as telling people to report their fellow citizens speech to the country's chief minister.

censor. Now, you know that C702 just passed in the United States of America and they amplified that power. You know what's going on in Brazil. You know what's already happened in Canada and the UK and what's being proposed in Ireland. All across the world, censorship is

is on the rise and Australia is about to fall. That is why it's so important that you join us here on Rumble. That is why it's so important that you remain informed, that you remain disobedient, that you remain willing to form alliances from behind

with other people from the periphery that you are not malleable, that you've not been lifed off, that you've not been neutralized, that you've not been controlled. You must remain awake. You must look for new alliances. Thank God that you have joined us here. Thank God that you are present today. Thanks for joining us. And you are going to love this because I'm moving

from this rant into a wonderful conversation with a man who must have been sat here chewing on his knuckles because he knows a lot more about this subject than I do. Considerably more. I mean, many of you know more. But Michael Schellenberger, the investigative journalist...

and editor of Public on Substack, which you should follow, worked, as you know, with Elon Musk to expose censorship on the Twitter files. He's the author of San Francisco, which is a good name for his book, Why Progressives Ruin Cities. I can see him now. He's wearing a turtleneck. He looks sexy. But by God, do I miss his beard? It's Michael Schellenberger. Thank you for joining us, Michael.

Hey, great to be with you, Russell. Michael, what do you feel is happening in Australia? How are countries as disparate and distant as Brazil and Australia operating in such extraordinary concord?

I find myself disoriented again. I mean, we felt like in Brazil, you know, I was supposed to be in Brazil for five days. I stayed for 12 because after we released the Twitter files, Brazil, I had to stick around and do a lot of interviews. And I mean, we became, you know, I was traveling with a member of Congress who's also been fighting for free speech and we'd be stopped in the airport, stopped on the streets. People want to take selfies. It was a huge story in Brazil. The media beat up on me for like five days, but

And then the Sunday, last Sunday, I guess a week ago Sunday that I was leaving, finally the media came out and said, hey, censorship, bad. So I kind of left Brazil thinking, all right, we can make progress against censorship when we expose it and we make the case for free speech, allowing people to be wrong on the internet,

And then I come back and it's like, here we go into Australia, you know, you get, and now we see Ireland is back demanding more censorship laws. The EU is continuing to press ahead. You know, obviously Scotland had happened. So, I mean, honestly, Russell, I am continue to be surprised by the relentlessness with which the pro-censorship politicians continue to press this agenda. Yeah.

I don't think it's, I can't believe it's that popular. I really don't. I think that actually in Brazil we saw the president start to sort of back away from it. They've had an uneasy relationship with it. I don't think people like censorship. I don't think the public wants censorship. So yeah, I start to wonder who is pushing these politicians to continue to demand this.

It appears as though the censorship industrial complex is very powerful, has huge hidden influence.

Is it all coordinated at some level internationally? I don't know. I mean, literally, like last week, you may have seen they shut down a conservative gathering in Brussels. They sent the police in to shut a gathering in Brussels. Is that all sort of coordinated by at some level? I don't know. But it's amazing to me how relentless these guys are in demanding censorship. Dude.

Do you feel that different nations require different tactics, nudges and contextualisation to become obedient to measures that are clearly antithetical to their interests? In Brazil, are there cultural techniques that would not work in Australia? Of course, the pandemic period granted ubiquity of tactics.

To keep all of you safe wherever you are, we're going to have to censor misinformation. We now know that a good deal of that misinformation was, well, just flat out true. Do you think that anything can be gleaned or discerned from the different methods to elicit the conditions for censorship in Ireland, Brazil, Australia, for example?

Yeah, it's a great question. So I think we have a lot more understanding of the tactics that the censorship industrial complex uses around the world. So one thing we saw, you know, we saw in research really coming from 2017, right after the revolutions of 20, the populist revolution.

uprisings 2016 2017 they started hiding censorship initiatives as cyber security so they'd be like well we're doing cyber security and of course that involves fighting misinformation and you're like wait what like those two things actually have nothing to do with each other

We're now seeing them do that with child exploitation, which is really gross because in the same way that like you want to fight cyber crime, like you want to fight, you know, hackers and people invading your Internet and you want to also fight child exploitation. Everybody's in favor of that. They then go and say, well, we're also then going to start to fight extremism.

Well, wait a second. What's extremism? What's extremism is a matter of opinion. So they start to kind of – they basically abuse their authority and they move the line. So that's one of the first things they do. The second thing they do – and we saw this with the EU already and then also in Ireland, but now we see in Australia –

These governments are not just demanding that you be censored in their country. They're demanding, according to Elon's, what he wrote on X about this, they want to see the stuff censored everywhere. So they want X to take it down from everywhere. Well, why is that? Well, one reason might be that, you know, you can evade your own country's censorship through what's called a VPN or virtual private network.

And that's what millions of Chinese do to get around their firewall. But so just imagine a world where you have all these governments demanding stuff gets taken down globally. The VPNs don't work anymore. So you literally are in a totalitarian system at that point where it's being completely controlled by

So, you know, I see those as two big tactics that these guys are using. It's really trying to control the whole Internet, not just your own country, so you can prevent the VPN so people really aren't getting any information. And then also hiding censorship activities as either cyber or fighting child exploitation.

Brilliant. So they find hot button topics in much the same manner that in domestic politics you may deploy arguments in the United States, for example, around abortion or gun control to create polarisation. Now, I will mention, sir, I've incredibly patronised when you unpacked to me what a VPN was when I work in the online media space.

have to do a VPN advert about every 15 seconds you have to mention one of those things. What's that Michael? What is this wizardry? I always think of, look, not for you, I always think of like the people that I know in my life that don't know what a VPN is. So maybe some of your audience don't know, but yes, you've probably been since we've been advertising VPNs. It's a great advertisement for VPNs, but of course they won't work if these guys are able to censor the whole internet.

Yes, it's extraordinary the degree of overreach that's implied by that measure. Now, I wonder, Michael, about the challenges that or otherwise be surmounted through an alliance between figures like Elon Musk and Chris Pavlovsky that might otherwise be seen as competitors in some in some in some regards. I mean, one of the challenges, the obvious challenges is that

X want people to stay on that platform in order to service advertisers. Of course, we on Rumble want people to be on Rumble. You have an allegiance to Substack. So how do we put aside perhaps economic and commercial interests in order to address these significant free speech issues?

Yeah, I mean, it's a really important question. I mean, I think that, yeah, you start to, I mean, I think one of the things that when they overreach, obviously, it creates a broader alliance of people that have an interest in protecting free speech. So obviously those two do. Rumble had to leave Brazil, you know, so I mean, what happened with Brazil was, and by the way, I mean, so I mean, there's a lot to unpack with Brazil, but I mean, I show up in Brazil for a free speech conference. My Brazilian friends said, hey, can you see if there's any Twitter files that

We found this crazy stuff. We published it.

And I think the most important thing for people to realize about the Brazil case is that what the – so first of all, one thing is that the censorship industrial complex is located in the judiciary. That's different. Most other countries, it's in the executive branch. It's in the executive branch in Britain, in the United States. And then, of course, it's trying to move it. They're trying to kind of outsource it, do censorship laundering through NGOs. But the other thing that was important about it, Russell, was that –

These guys would, they'd be like, they'd go, I'll give one example. This congressman who I was traveling with, who I had met as a free speech advocate in London,

He said, you know, they went to the government said, oh, here's these posts which are election misinformation. Well, first of all, they weren't about the elections at all. It was actually had to do with the Labor Department. It wasn't misinformation. It was also they said, oh, he's misrepresenting election results. It was the day before the election. So first of all, the government was using misinformation to try to censor him.

He never put it on Twitter. They went to Twitter and said, take it down. Twitter said, we don't have... Like, he never published this on Twitter. And they basically said, go ahead and remove his profile anyway. So basically, the whole thing was just pretextual to just...

De-personifying this member of Congress. And it wasn't just him. It was multiple members of Congress, multiple journalists, where the Supreme Court just went to all of the social media companies, not just one. They go to all of them and they go take their profiles down.

I mean, that's basically you're destroying. You can't be a journalist or a politician if you don't have social media accounts. Like it's literally impossible. Like, forget about it. Like, this is just I mean, everybody knows this. So you're basically the judiciary in a dictatorial move is deciding who can be a journalist, who can be a politician. There was all secret proceedings, no right of appeal whatsoever.

And, you know, when you look back, we had done something else on an early censorship program called the CTIL League or the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, which was a government U.S. government program created by the U.S. government.

That was one of the things they put in there, was that they were going to basically demonize individuals. So this, in fact, there's an article in today's New York Times about Nina Jankowicz, the woman that was behind the so-called disinformation governance board, how she's now created an NGO basically to demonize people. I mean, literally, that's what they say in there. She's going to go get her revenge and attack people she doesn't like. And the New York Times is going to obviously promote this. So you've seen it's a very creepy, dark story.

I mean, it's really dark. Like these guys are basically identifying individuals. Obviously, you've been there, you know, and they're just going to carry engaging character assassination with the idea that they're going to deplatform you, you know, and that they're now kind of their gloves are off and they're now openly saying that that's what they're going to do.

This is extraordinary. I imagine perhaps that you are referring in part to some of the investigative work by Li Fang, in which he discovered that a CIA carve-out are funding organizations within Ukraine to condemn many online voices, whether it's Jeffrey Sachs, but I was in the mix too, as pro-Putin and pro-Russian propagandists. It's extraordinary to hear that, as you say, Nino Yankovic has

found herself in this extraordinary position, having failed to set up a sort of censorship-friendly misinformation kind of entity in the United States of America. Now, it was a government official, of course, that demanded I be demonetized in the wake of significant media attacks. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the organization, the Trusted News Initiative, that includes not only legacy media outlets like the BBC and CNN and New York Times, but also BNP,

tech giants like Alphabet, Google are seemingly now regarding independent media as their true opponents rather than one another. The days of competing for scoops is over for a whole host of reasons that you understand better than I do as a journalist. Certainly it doesn't matter who breaks a story now in particular unless they're able to control that information and serialize it significantly. What

What's terrifying to me, Michael, is precisely what you described, the ability to demonize, destroy and smear individuals. Now, I wonder if we take a few high profile examples of that. Like, you know, most liberals were excited and celebratory when Trump was booted off of Twitter. Most people were kind of happy when Alex Jones was the victim of

of lawfare and shutdown across the internet and figures like David Icke are routinely censored. Now, do you think it's common practice to attack individuals

and that might be sort of soft targets or attractive targets to certain demographics or certainly to demographics that are broadly in alignment with their agenda in order to establish a principle and then to sort of roll that out more aggressively and more immersively. Yeah, I mean, without a doubt, I mean, we're seeing that happening right now. I mean, with Brazil,

You know, and this is what, you know, after we did the Twitter files, I think three days later, Elon came out and was like, they're asking us to de-platform people. They're asking us to basically de-personify people, delete people from X permanently. And then according to Elon, he was saying the government was wanting X to suggest that it was because they had violated X's terms of service. Right.

And this is one of the strategies that we saw them use, is that they lobby to change the terms of service, adding all these particular things, and then they go and create these elaborate censorship organizations. The most famous was the Stanford Internet Observatory, which had two initiatives, one in 2020 on elections, the Election Integrity Partnership, another one on 2021, the Virality Project about COVID, where they were engaged in mass censorship,

And that was the whole premise of it was to basically start to build – and they also have this thing called the Dirty Dozen where they basically – the demonization is in service of permanent deplatforming. They want to – the ultimate goal is to just remove people they don't like from the internet. I mean it's so shocking when you say it like that because it's such an obvious violation of free speech, but that's where they're headed right now.

Obviously, like Elon is amazing because in Brazil he was like, we're not going to go along with this. You can't just tell us to remove a bunch of journalists and politicians from the Internet. That's just madness and it violates Brazilian law. If you read the Brazilian Constitution, it specifically protects against any censorship on political, ideological or artistic grounds.

But yeah, I mean, it's the really dark side of this is that it's so like it's really about destroying lives. Like this is not I think sometimes we go, oh, well, they're just taking down some content. No, they're actually looking to just ruin people, like literally ruin their careers by getting them off the Internet. That's sort of the that's kind of the solution that this has all been driving towards. I think people need to know that that's not a paranoid thing.

view anymore. That is the reality of what they're doing. And you're absolutely right. Of course, they start with Alex Jones. They start with people that they think are low-hanging fruit. And then once they establish that predicate, then they kind of just kind of go, well, and this person is similar in these ways. Is part of the aim of this agenda to censor not only certain types of speech, but plainly

individuals and perhaps ultimately organizations likely to influence and indeed control the outcome of some of the elections that are coming up across the world over the course of the year. Now, before you answer that question, I want to let you guys know on Rumble that we're going to be here for another 20 minutes, but then we're going to continue on Rumble.

our Awakened Wonder platform. And if you post your questions for Michael on Locals, I will put them to him with his kind permission, of course. Now, remember, if you use the code ISURRENDER, you can get a month free. So you could simply cancel at any time, but you get a lot of great content over on Locals, like we're reading Mere Christianity,

There it is, look. We're interviewing fantastic guests and we're meditating and we're trying to grow together. So we're posting that link along with the discount code right now in the Rumble chat. So join us additionally. But I'm going to continue to talk to Michael for a while on Rumble, one of the few places where we can speak freely. So do you think that these ideas will be used over the course of the year to influence elections? Yeah, 100%. I mean, there's a way in which...

That is in some ways the main event. I mean, it's one of the big goals. I mean, I think they're trying to do mind control, as crazy as that sounds. They're really trying to control how people think about things by controlling the information they're allowed to have access to and also how people make judgments about that information. So it's both censorship on the one hand, and it's also judgmental.

disinformation, or you can call it information operations on the other. We have this new journalist that we've been working with who's the daughter of a very well-known Czech. She's a Czech Republic journalist. She's the daughter of a well-known Czech Republic dissident, an artist, not as famous as Václav Havel, but sort of a colleague of his. And she discovered that basically the Polish and Czech intelligence services were

working with EU politicians, had claimed to have discovered this Russian disinformation operation that was aiming to bribe European politicians. Well, she went and interviewed all the people, reached out to everybody that was accused. They all denied that they had been bribed by the Russians. The governments have presented no evidence of this conspiracy theory. We reached out to one of the accused, a website called Voice of Europe, as being part of this conspiracy.

There's no evidence. There's no arrests. It appears to be a completely invented disinformation campaign by the European Union officials, including the head of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, none of whom we've emailed them many times asking about this.

Well, what's the purpose of it? Well, the whole point was to basically create the idea that right-wing populist parties in Europe, whatever your view is on these parties, again, but they were trying to create the view that these parties were controlled by Russia. So,

So it's like we keep, I mean, the mess, what's so amazing, Russell, is that the tactics might differ from Ireland to Scotland to Czech Republic to European Union to Brazil to Canada, the United States, but the messages are the same, which is that if you're a populist, you're actually a COVID denier, you're full of hate, you're spreading misinformation, and you somehow are working for the Russians. So all of the Russia hoax stuff that they did against Trump

It's not like they were like, oh, I guess we've got to move on from that. They just keep doing it. And they're doing it again in Europe. So, yeah, to answer your question, then you're kind of like, why are they doing it? Well, because Europe's having elections on June 9th, right? And they're worried in particular about this conservative party in Germany called AFD, which is like, if you read their information, like this is a Nazi party. But actually, the party has a policy agenda that's very similar to the Republican Party, at least under Trump.

But they basically used all the exact same playbook, saying it's Russian, it's fascist, it's full of hatred. They have a whole fake fact-checking website called Corrective, which has spread misinformation that we've documented. So, I mean, I will say, you know, we were talking about this a year ago. So how have we done? I feel like we're catching up to them now.

With this particular story, this Czech Republic, Polish, European Union, Russian disinfo story, I feel like we were able to – we've done, I think, three stories on it now, and they've just been quiet about it. And they kind of sometimes go, well, we're looking into it, and we're going to have this investigation. But I just get the sense that they got called out by it on it from us, and they're going to kind of try to move on. But it is just striking. These guys are –

They're relentless. I mean, I feel like it's Terminator 2, and you feel like you just knock the guy out, and then he comes back up, and he's chasing after you again. They are not giving this up. They're really relentless in their demands to censor the entire internet everywhere in the world.

Are they working together? Hard to know. I can't say that they are, but it's so suspicious all these things popping up at exactly the same time. Yes, it's difficult to corroborate, but given the way that they reconstitute with a seemingly comparable aim, there appears at least the silhouette of

of conspiracy it seems to me Michael and it's difficult to imagine that there aren't conversations taking place along the lines of if we are not able to curtail and control online information we are going to lose control.

The previous control that was asserted through centralized media that it appears has always had a favorable relationship with the state. Other than anomalous events and stories, it appears that a group like the New York Times are broadly supportive of the government agenda. Even if you take a couple of recent examples like their apparent involvement in the arrest of that lad,

Teixeira, Jack Teixeira. They seem to be involved in his arrest. And of course, the CIA bases in Ukraine. The CIA granted the New York Times that extraordinary access. And we're starting to see sort of key players, names that ought not

be known by people in spaces like this. Not necessarily you, Michael, you're a proper journalist, but I know the names of people like Victoria Nuland cropping up like some antichrist zealot throughout history or Ursula von der Leyen, who it seems was in text communication with Albert Baller at the height of the pandemic or

ordering vaccines by the million. On that point, it seems that the WHO treaty has been to a degree opposed by the level of coordination that has been achieved precisely because of the success of independent media, that in real time people are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, this clause would enable them to, in the event of what would be deemed a climate emergency, to override your nation's government and impose lockdowns and lockdowns.

vaccines and control information. It's odd how frequently information is at the heart of these arguments, but to a degree it is encouraging, like with your example about the EU or certainly the organisation around Ursula von der Leyen, that there appears to be some fear

Yeah, I think so. I think that, I mean, look, we're just, it is what it is. I mean, it's like, I feel like we're just hanging by a thread on some ways, but it's like as long as X can remain a free platform, as long as Elon Musk remains the owner of X and remains strong, I think we have a good shot at surviving this. I mean, you kind of look back and you go, they weren't able to stop television, radio, TV,

telegraphs, the printing press. I mean, the printing press, when Gutenberg's printing press shows up and he's able to, you're able to have, I mean, it's basically the exact same thing that's happening now. It's peer-to-peer communication or what the New York Times calls peer-to-peer misinformation. You know, it was like the printing press allowed for ordinary people to talk to each other, interpret the Bible, interpret Christianity the ways they wanted to. It led to

And it led to, I mean, we look back now and we go, it was inevitable that the printing press was going to change things. But, I mean, it had huge impacts. I mean, governments fell. There were wars and revolutions. So I think that this early Internet that we had pre-Musk, I mean, we know from the Twitter files, Twitter was a controlled media.

It was controlled by the deep state. I mean, that's just proof. I mean, the former deputy director of the FBI, the former chief counsel of the FBI, they were there. They were there to run an information operation, and they did against the Hunter Biden laptop and probably much more.

And now you've got a situation where you've got a guy that's powerful enough and Elon Musk who's saying, no, we're going to allow free speech. And that's so like revolutionary. I mean, it's so radical. And you can see the media is just going crazy because they felt like they controlled X for the longest time. And now they don't. And so, I mean, it really, though, I did it.

There's some mornings, Russell, I wake up and I'm like, oh, no, free speech is going to win out. I mean, it's come on, guys. We've been doing this for hundreds of years. People want free speech. Other mornings I wake up and I go, the state is so powerful. I mean, the governments around the world are so powerful.

And all the stuff that people have said, oh, it's a conspiracy theory, like the World Economic Forum declaring misinformation to be the biggest problem in the world. And you see the same cast of characters that go to those meetings then saying, oh, we have to censor the entire internet, not just here in Australia. And Little Ireland saying, oh, we have to be able to go into your home. And Scotland saying, we're going to monitor comedians. I mean,

You know, there's... They're just so relentless and so, you know, out to kind of control the internet that sometimes I just go, it's terrifying. You know, if you lose X...

And they kind of, I mean, Rumble had to leave Brazil. It couldn't afford, I mean, an ex may still be banned in Brazil. I also wanted to say, because I've done a lot on Brazil, I feel like I buried the lid a little bit. I am under investigation in Brazil. I am in a police investigative report in Brazil, along with the idea that I'm part of some international conspiracy. It's so bonkers and ludicrous. But literally, there I am in a federal police report, which is basically Brazil's equivalent of their FBI investigation.

suggesting some nefarious activity because I tweeted out the Twitter files. You know, and this is literally the thought police of Brazil

There's even a shot of my profile on X, which says defund the thought police. I thought that was a moment of humor there, that actually the thought police had the defund the thought police in their report. But I mean, this is how crazy it is, that literally the police are actually monitoring our communications and trying to figure out whether I'm going to be prosecuted, which could still happen along with the prosecution of Elon Musk.

Yeah, it's extraordinary. We've put that asset up now, Michael. You might not know because you don't understand much about technology and Zoom and VPNs and the internet, but we're actually able to put that up. So what precisely are you being accused of? I mean, it's the craziest. This is the one I will say. I mean, they often... So first of all, they...

Like there's just no sense of humor, you know, among the totalitarians, you know, it's like, you can kind of go all the, all the fun is in the free speech movement. The totalitarians are very serious people. They're also like, like, I think one thing we forget is how they're not very bright and that might reassure you, but it shouldn't because they will be, they'll do something dumb and then they'll, but yeah, I mean, they basically, they basically have got this crazy conspiracy theory that,

I made it very clear, I never have asked Elon Musk either for permission. I've never even told him in advance before we publish a Twitter files. He had no idea that I was publishing the Brazil Twitter files. Elon and I have more interaction publicly on X than we do behind the scenes. So there's just no there there. But the implication is that there was sort of a

This conspiracy to spread hatred and misinformation in Brazil to help the right wing of Brazil, it's just absurd. There's no evidence for it, but nonetheless, they created this report to create a sense of suspicion.

and potentially justification for prosecution, which, you know, again, we could find out about any day now. Yes, it's pretty staggering the confidence with which these attacks are conducted. It is redolent of how old media used to behave when creating division in domestic populations through print and getting, as they say, turkeys to vote for Christmas, whether it was pro-war measures or

or create tension among different ethnicities of ultimately economically united communities. I wonder, Michael, if you believe that these kind of spaces are going to survive the division that has ensued from the new fractures around the subject of free speech, emergent from, in particular,

the conflicts in the Middle East. What was starting to happen was a consolidation around the principles of free speech and to a degree anti-war in what are now known as independent media or all right communities. But even that has become fraught and rife with decision. And before you answer, Michael, remember guys, we're going to wrap the show up now on Rumble and we are going to take our conversation over to locals where our awakened wonders like Chico Kid and...

And Sensitive Hearts 2525 are waiting to pose their questions to Michael Schellenberger. Remember, you can join us live on Friday's show for Dr. Colonel Douglas McGregor, where we're talking about the military industrial complex. And if you want to join us over there, we're posting the link right now with the code ISURRENDER. You get a month free. You can join us for book clubs.

because if we don't find God, we are in a lot of trouble. Surely you would agree with that, Michael, that there has to be a spiritual component to such an extraordinary problem. After all, we witnessing through online technology a kind of new type of omnipotence and who harvests and colonizes this new prima materia that is as close to consciousness as any previous technological advance as us.

I can speculate is the very fight that we're involved in. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I view the movement for free speech as a spiritual pursuit. I think it's for universal human betterment.

I respect Brazil and its borders and its constitution. I respect all countries and their sovereignty. I also think all human beings have a right to speak their minds and to have access to information. So I do view this as a universal movement. And I think that this effort by a small, very small group of deeply uptight people

and neurotic and power-mad individuals to control the whole internet, it's really dark. It's really sinister. Their willingness to destroy people. I think there's something psychopathological in that. I think that this idea that somebody says something that you don't agree with, whether it's about the war in Ukraine or about COVID or about climate change or trans or whatever it would be,

The healthy response from a healthy individual is to say, I don't agree with that. I'm going to disagree with that publicly and make my views known. That's not what they're doing. They're saying, I can't stand that so much. I'm full of so much hatred. I'm going to shut that person down. I think if that's your instinct, there's something wrong with you. Like literally, I believe that there's something wrong with you in the head if your impulse is to shut other people up.

Now, you could say, well, that's the national security state. It controlled the conversation between 1945 and 2016, and that's a rational response from the state.

Maybe, but I don't think so. I kind of think like we're going to allow for there to be security and there's going to be intelligence and there's going to be some amount of protection and militaries and states and all that's going to continue to exist along with free speech, along with allowing Russell Brand and Michael Schellenberger to speak and not be censored and not be on a hit list or a blacklist.

of these pretty awful censorship, you know, industrial complex people and leaders. So I do think that we have to appeal to people's higher selves and appeal to free speech. I found myself in Brazil after we exposed the censorship industrial complex, just making the case for free speech. I mean, I'm always surprised that you have to do it, but I do think that is a bunch of the work that we have done.

have to do in front of us. Thank you so much, Michael Schellenberger. We will continue our conversation. In particular, I'm planning to ask, is it psychopathic and sociopathic in terms of its mentality? Or is there something even darker, something almost occultist, some demonic force at work? Sometimes I query that and sometimes I wonder if that might lead us

to the solution. I want to welcome our new members, our new Awakened Wonders like Grim21 and Charlie Cutler and M Means and Red Dickless, disgusting, and Living the Light. All of you are welcome, you glorious Awakened Wonders. And if you're watching us now in the Rumble chat, click the link in the description, get over to Locals and watch me and Michael. You know, we might take our tops off. We're going to express ourselves very, very freely. Indeed, we've got a fantastic week coming up

for you so join us tomorrow not for more of the same but for more of the different until then if you can stay free no here's the fucking news