Bonus Sample: RUSSELL BRAND: RUSSIAN PSY-OP OR MISINFORMED RESEARCHER?
Ok, the title is a bit outlandish, but for a reason: many of Russell Brand's Rumble videos feature titles like "HERE WE GO" and "THE FALL OF FAUCI." When everything is at volume 11, nothing seems to make sense—which is a bit how Derek and Julian feel after listening to his recent interview with Bari Weiss.
Not that Bari isn't a solid presenter—she is, even if we don't agree with everything she says. We'll pick apart her portion of the Twitter Files, while also continuing our investigation into Russell's always-on and always-loud tactics that disorient as much as obscure.
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Now, speaking of brand, I have to point out that in the prelude to the interview with Barry Weiss, he covers a story in the Evening Standard.
Now, at least this time he cites his source.
You listeners might remember I was showing how he wasn't citing sources in his Matt Taibbi lead-up, but at least it's from a credible news organization, right?
Yay!
Yeah!
No, it's a tabloid, again.
But then I went further and I'm like, okay, you had given some backstory on the tabloids last time, Julian.
And I wanted to be like, okay, what's this tabloid about?
And it's owned by Alexander Lebedev, who is infamously known as one of the Russian oligarchs.
That's an exclusive club.
Oh, yes, it is.
Now, Lebedev bought the paper in 2009 when he was the 39th richest Russian.
Now he's no longer considered a billionaire due to sanctions, mostly dealing with Ukraine,
but this former KGB operative owns a significant portion of Aeroflot, which is Russia's national
airline, and Gazprom, the state-owned energy company, through a Russian bank that he created
in 1995 called the National Reserve Bank.
Well, hold on a second.
So this means that surely the next episode from Rumble that Russell Brand is going to do will be a deep dive on the KGB roots of the Russian oligarch who owns the Evening Standard, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
We can definitely expect that from Russell because he follows up on things like this.
Now, up until this point in the episode, Russell has been criticizing the CIA's potential involvement in sabotaging the Nordstrom pipeline, which Gazprom uses to pipe natural gas into Europe.
And now he's using a story from The Evening Standard Owned by a significant stakeholder in Gazprom to create a story around US involvement in European gas exports.
I'm sorry, I just have to interrupt again to say these people love to reference George Orwell.
They love to talk about how all of the mainstream narrative is generated as propaganda.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Yeah, yeah.
Now, he also cites Consortium News, which was founded in 1995 by the late Robert Perry, who cut his teeth as an investigative journalist during the Iran-Contra days.
Now, what started out as what appears to be a truly independent journalistic website—they kind of claim that they were the first independent online, I don't know if that's true or not—but it seems to have veered into what we can now consider an expectable direction.
When you look at the site's Russia section, you're going to find plenty of stories about how Russiagate was a hoax, Caitlin Johnstone stories, right?
Now, this continual trend of the US bashing by Russell Brand, who keeps citing sources either owned by Russian oligarchs, and let me point out that Lebedev also owns the UK's Independent along with his son, and Russell has cited them before, or these organizations are sympathetic to Russia.
And it just seems really strange.
I mean, I'm just asking questions, of course.
Yeah, well, we wouldn't want to curtail your free speech.
Yeah, but we're really here for the Barry Weiss Twitter Files expose, right?
Yeah, we are.
I just want to say, you know, really quickly to reiterate, I'm constantly struck with Russell especially, but also many of his fellow, I call them opportunist contrarians, I'm struck by how he'll make these wild leaps and contortions to insinuate conspiracies and cover-ups and secret malign influence everywhere, you know, with very little evidence or by citing sources that he maybe tries to hide or when you look, when you look at the sources he's actually revealed there, You know, suspect in the way that you were just discussing.
And the rest of us are all obviously hypnotized by the mainstream narrative, yet there are these suspect details like right in front of his face about the stuff that he is recycling.
And a middle schooler could point out like, this doesn't seem legit and he seems to miss it.
And so do they.
I mean, Brett Weinstein is another excellent example.
Joe Rogan is an excellent example.
Yeah, it's just the whole of mirror's effect is incredible.
Yeah, and I want to point out that I'm not claiming that he's in cahoots with these people, to be clear.
It's kind of set it up that way because that's how Russell sets things up.
But to be honest, it's probably laziness, and he probably doesn't check the sources.
The only reason I did is because I've just noticed this trend where he either doesn't cite the source, or when I look into the sources, it's usually media organizations with agendas Which is so ironic, considering that he's always talking about the mainstream media organizations having agendas.
And every time we cover a video, it just keeps happening over and over again.
So the fact that the Gazprom Nord Stream Pipeline, USCIA, it probably is all coincidental, but dude, do your research and look at who you're citing when you're putting forward these narratives, because it's pretty fucking shady.
