All Episodes
Sept. 27, 2023 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:04:05
Bill Kristol’s New War Propaganda Reveals the Real Goal in Ukraine. PLUS: Trudeau, Hillary, & Fox Blame Russia, w/ Lev Golinkin; & Update on Govt/Media War on Rumble | SYSTEM UPDATE #151

Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET: https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald Become part of our Locals community: https://greenwald.locals.com/ - - -  Follow Glenn: Twitter: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glenn.11.greenwald/ Follow System Update:  Twitter: https://twitter.com/SystemUpdate_ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/systemupdate__/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@systemupdate__ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/systemupdate.tv/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/systemupdate/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good evening, it's Tuesday, September 26th.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, from the start of the massive U.S.
role in the war in Ukraine, the overarching and still unanswered question has been, why?
Why do U.S.
leaders see Ukraine as a country so vital to the security and prosperity of the United States that they are willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to keep that war going, willing to deplete its own weapons stockpiles, and even willing to risk escalation or nuclear exchanges with the country with the largest nuclear stockpile on the planet, which is Russia?
It has been clear from the start of the war that, as is always the case for American wars, the pretexts that were offered are just that, pretexts.
We are there because we are good and benevolent people who are deeply empathetic and believe in the virtues of democracy and the need to defend it when it is under attack.
Literally everything about U.S.
foreign policy for the last 70 years gives the lie to that propaganda.
You can just look at the U.S.
support for the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two of the most repressive regimes on the planet.
To see that that claim that we love democracy so much, we just want to spread and protect it, doesn't pass the laugh test.
Indeed, just like the excuse offered for the war on terror was a blatant fraud, remember that?
They hate us for our freedoms.
Along with the excuse offered for the invasion of Iraq, we must fight them over there so we don't fight them over here.
As though Saddam Hussein was going to invade the United States and launch some sort of huge war on the American homeland unless we struck first.
The claims about why the U.S.
is so deeply entrenched in the war in Ukraine have been more laughable than anything else.
This week, the longtime neocon warmonger Bill Kristol, who now understandably identifies as a pro-Biden Democrat, launched a new ad campaign designed to strengthen support for Biden's war policies in Ukraine as polls show overwhelmingly that Americans are turning against this war.
And in doing so, the remarkably candid ad sheds light on the real reasons the U.S.
sees this war as so vital.
It's not to save Ukraine and Ukrainians.
As we heard from the start, but rather to destroy Ukraine and sacrifice Ukrainians in order to achieve the only real goal the United States has had in this war from the beginning, which is sacrificing Ukraine at the altar of weakening Russia.
Now why we want to weaken Russia, why that's such an important goal of the United States, Is left unsaid.
I've always believed that a major factor is the serious anger that still endures over the belief in 2016 that Putin caused the defeat of Hillary Clinton rather than Hillary Clinton herself.
But whatever the reasons, that is clearly the goal.
And an accompanying report from 60 Minutes on Sunday night detailed that the U.S.
is not only spending tens of billions of dollars of its taxpayer money to prop up the Ukrainian military and keep this war going, But it's also spending tens of billions of dollars more to prop up Ukrainian businesses and Ukrainian industry and its internal infrastructure.
The kind of support that Americans could only dream of getting from their own government.
Now, all of this is happening as that small little problem, namely that Nazi ideology, continues to be quite dominant among large sectors of Ukraine, including the military.
The same military we are drowning in sophisticated offensive weapons continues to rear its little ugly head.
The Speaker of Canada's Parliament resigned today after he led a very unfortunate incident.
Canadian President Justin Trudeau, alongside Ukrainian President Zelensky and the entire Canadian Parliament, leading a standing ovation in honor of someone they called the Ukrainian hero who, it turns out, was an actual fighter for the Nazi SS during World War II, fighting against not only Russia, but also against Canada and all other enemies of Nazi Germany because the person they were applauding was a Nazi.
Prime Minister Trudeau, in order to explain this embarrassment, began babbling about how this was all the fault of the Kremlin and Russian disinformation somehow, a tactic used by multiple U.S.
political and media outlets just this week to explain away all sorts of other flaws, as we're going to show you, that still is their go-to excuse.
But we're going to speak tonight with the Ukrainian-American journalist Lavika Lincoln, who from the start of this war has been loudly objecting to the whitewashing of Ukraine's Nazi problem, about the broader meaning of this ovation, this standing ovation for an actual SS Ukrainian fighter, and why such embarrassing incidents continue to happen every time the West goes to praise Ukrainians and yet ends up instead applauding Actual Nazis.
Not the kind that wear MAGA hats in Oklahoma or in Texas, but the real deal kind found all throughout Ukraine.
Then, last night we documented in a two hour and highly watched episode, one of our most watched episodes, the multi-pronged war being waged on Rumble on this platform for the crime of refusing to follow orders from the West's censorship industrial complex, both in general and when it comes to their demands about cutting off the income of Russell Brand, even though he's not been charged with any crime, let alone convicted of one.
We'll have some updates on that war against Rumble tonight and the reasons that it matters.
A few programming notes, we are encouraging our audience to download the Rumble app on your phone and your smart TV, which will enable you to follow programs that you like watching, such as this one and others.
And if you turn on notifications, which we hope you will, the minute our program or other programs begin, you will immediately be notified in the way that you ask, so that you don't have to wait around waiting for us to go live or trying to remember the time.
You'll be notified.
As soon as we will go live, that will also enable you to simply click on the link and start watching our program and encourage friends to download the Rumble app as well, which really helps Rumble as a platform.
As another reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form.
You can find each episode 12 hours after they first broadcast live here on Rumble, and you can find them across all major podcasting platforms, including Spotify, Apple, and all others.
And if you follow, rate, and review the show, it really helps spread the visibility of this program.
As we do every Tuesday and Thursday night, as soon as we're done with our live show here on Rumble, we will move to Locals, which is part of the Rumble platform, where we will have our interactive after show that is also live.
It is for subscribers only, and we'll take your questions and comment on your feedback and hear your suggestions for topics we should cover and guests we should interview.
That is available exclusively to members of our Locals community, and if you want to join that community, that will give you access not only to those after shows, but to the daily transcripts that we produce for each show as well as the original journalism that we post there, and it really helps support the independent journalism that we do here.
We really rely on our subscribers as a way of keeping this show going, keeping it immune from the kind of advertiser campaigns that is currently being waged against Rumble.
To join our community, simply click the Join button right below the video on the Rumble page, and that will take you to our Locals community.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
Thank you.
Back in 2005, when I began writing about politics, there was no more hated enemy, more hated villain for liberal America than Bill Kristol.
He was the leader of what was frequently then referred to as the neocons, people who had no real partisan attachment.
They began as Democrats and they moved as part of the war on terror to the Republican Party.
Knowing that the Republican Party would be more eager under the War on Terror to fight the wars they wanted, to remove the governments of Iraq and Iran and Syria and their whole other warmongering list.
And they became leading advocates of the War on Terror, of the invasion of Iraq, of the invasion of Iran, of every regime change war that you could possibly imagine.
Ones that the U.S.
ended up fighting, ones that they wanted the U.S.
to fight but didn't.
They're notable for all kinds of things, including ensuring that it's always other people's families who fight in their wars and die in their wars, but never them themselves, nor their families.
We did an entire show on Bill Kristol, on the unique evil of this warmongering monster.
And what is so amazing is that, wow, 15 years ago, every liberal, every Democrat, every leftist agreed that Bill Kristol was essentially the embodiment of all evil, the root of all evil, a neocon monster, Bill Kristol has now completely resurrected his career.
He's never been more influential in Washington and in media than he is now, because he has now switched back again to being a Democrat.
He is a very popular liberal pundit.
He is funded by Pierre Omidyar, where he runs all sorts of anti-Trump news outlets like the Bulwark.
And he has all kinds of groups that are funded by Pierre Omidyar, designed to promote Joe Biden's world policies in Ukraine and elsewhere.
And Bill Kristol, who just this week gave an interview to the New Republic where he talked about his actual current party affiliation and the reasons for it.
There you see the New Republic article.
Are never Trump Republicans actually just Democrats now?
You may remember that these never Trump Republicans claimed that they were offended by Donald Trump, that they were still conservative, still Republicans.
They were just against Trump because they wanted to protect and resurrect American conservatism and the Republican Party and its honorable tradition of Dick Cheney and George Bush and Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney and John McCain.
I mean, And now they've given up that pretense entirely because the people who buy their books and who fund them and who constitute their social media fandom are almost entirely liberals and Democrats.
And no one wants to hear any pretenses that they're really still Republicans.
They don't want to ever hear any criticism of Joe Biden.
So they basically have turned themselves, as the New Republic headline suggests, into just ordinary Democrats now.
That's what they are.
They're Democratic Party pundits.
And you see the sub-headline there, some are already hardcore progressives.
And pollsters, politicians, and analysts from both parties say it may be a matter of time before the rest switch parties too.
So all the people that we were told were the real villains of international affairs and American politics, these wretched, deceitful, bloodthirsty neocons.
aren't just anti-Trump and haven't just been anti-Trump in the beginning and it's really worth asking why are they so anti-Trump and why have they been so anti-Trump?
But they've now become Democrats because they believe that the Democratic Party is the best vehicle to advance their ideology that has not changed at all.
What has changed is their perception, I think accurately, that they find a lot of hostility to their warmongering agenda and the Republican Party and a lot of A positive welcoming of it in the Democratic Party.
So here from the New Republic article, quote, when asked where he was politically, Bill Kristol told the New Republic, quote, I'm pretty comfortable with the current Democratic Party.
My fellow never Trumpers are not comfortable with the current Republican Party.
We don't think the hopes for its immediate reformation are very realistic.
We are okay with Biden.
We think, in fact, one thing we could do is strengthen the moderate Democratic Party.
So that's their mission, that they're being, I guess, credibly honest about, that they're no longer even pretending to try and salvage the Republican Party.
They are Democrats, pure and simple.
They're happy with the state of the Democratic Party.
They want to strengthen the Democratic Party.
And as part of that effort, Bill Kristol got $2 million from an undisclosed funder.
I can only guess who it is.
To launch an ad campaign designed to essentially increase the support for Biden's war policy in Ukraine, seeing that polls show Americans of all kinds, but especially conservatives and independents, are now turning against that war, believing we've already done too much for Ukraine, not wanting any more money to go to the war in Ukraine, not seeing the benefits of it.
And so Bill Kristol has produced an ad ostensibly aimed at Republicans to convince them that the war in Ukraine is actually not only a nice and benevolent thing to do, because everyone knows that's why we fight wars, why the CIA prioritizes wars, because we're good, benevolent, kind, nice, empathetic people who just want to help others in the world.
Not that the CIA is renowned for all throughout the world, but what Bill Kristol is saying is it's not just that we're so kind and benevolent and we believe so deeply in spreading democracy, it's also that the war happens to actually be quite good for American interest as well.
So I thought the ad was really worth watching because it's finally some candor about the real reasons we're in this war.
Let's watch this ad.
When America arms Ukraine, we get a lot for a little.
Putin is an enemy of America.
We've used 5% of our defense budget to arm Ukraine, and with it, they've destroyed 50% of Putin's army.
We've done all this by sending weapons from storage, not our troops.
The more Ukraine weakens Russia, the more it also weakens Russia's closest ally, China.
America needs to stand strong against our enemies.
That's why Republicans in Congress must continue to support Ukraine.
So there you have it.
It's essentially saying what has been clear from the beginning, which is the United States has no interest in protecting Ukraine.
This war has not protected Ukraine.
This war has destroyed Ukraine.
And the longer the war goes on, obviously, the more Ukraine will be destroyed.
And we're not protecting or defending Ukrainians.
The longer this war goes on, the more Ukrainians are dying.
Zelensky is fighting with an increasingly desperate, untrained army of conscripts who are desperately trying to flee the country but are being trapped there through a combination of military force and closing the borders and all kinds of steep punishments for those who try to flee.
People who don't want to be used as cannon fodder, who know that's what they're being sent to the front for, who are dying in gigantic numbers.
And the U.S.
wants this war to go on.
We have not only not pursued diplomatic solutions, but we have blocked the attempt to achieve diplomatic solutions, according to people like Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who said that he has tried to broker solutions at the start of the war, but was blocked by doing so from the Biden administration and Boris Johnson, who wanted this war to go on precisely because, as the ad shows, the real purpose of this war It has nothing to do with protecting Ukraine.
It's to advance America's geopolitical interests, as they see it, in weakening Russia by essentially saying, we're not dying for this war.
We're having the Ukrainians die in huge numbers for this war, and we're getting the benefits.
Now again, I still question in what conceivable way does the United States benefit from weakening Russia?
How is that a benefit to the United States, one that's worth tens of billions of dollars or hundreds of billions of dollars or sending huge numbers of young Ukrainian men to die for in a war?
Both President Obama and President Trump spoke about the ability to cooperate with Russia, the fact that they did cooperate with Russia.
On crucial anti-terrorism policies, including fighting ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq, which is a common goal of both Washington and Moscow.
They have cooperated in all sorts of other ways, and yet it was really only after 2016 when American elites needed a villain to blame, and they decided they were going to blame Vladimir Putin and Russia, and liberals started feeding on this non-stop anti-Russia Discourse to drum up their hatred and anger and contempt and desired revenge What they believed are the crimes of Vladimir Putin only then did Russia become this country who we were supposed to go and destroy
But this ad, at least, is a step forward to an honest debate, even though I don't think it really intended that.
I think what it's intending to do is to say to Americans, look, we know that you no longer are moved by the bullshit pretext that we're there in Ukraine because we're good, nice people protecting the Ukrainians.
You want to know what this war is doing for you.
And we're here to say this war is actually helping you, because for a very small price, In the context of the trillion dollar budget that our military consumes every year, even though it can't pass an audit, we are destroying Russia.
Now there's, again, no reason given why that benefits Americans.
It's just assumed that Americans will be happy about that fact.
Now in addition to this ad, there was a segment run on 60 Minutes, we're going to show you a clip of it, that makes clear that the US largesse for Ukraine extends far beyond what we've been focused on, which is the tens of billions of dollars in weaponry falling into the hands of all sorts of extremists in Ukraine.
But instead extends to all kinds of civilian aid that we're giving to small businesses in Ukraine and industries in Ukraine, the kind that American small businesses never get from the American government.
And I think this report, which I have to say was very well done from 60 Minutes, ought to be raising a lot of questions, and I think will be, about why it is, again, that the United States government seems to prioritize the interest of Ukraine and Ukrainians and their economy over the economic well-being of the United States.
Let's take a look at this segment.
American taxpayers are financing more than just weapons.
We discovered the US government's buying seeds and fertiliser for Ukrainian farmers.
And covering the salaries of Ukraine's first responders.
All 57,000 of them.
That includes the team that trains this rescue dog, named Joy, to comb through the wreckage of Russian strikes looking for survivors.
And the US also funds the divers, who we saw clearing unexploded ammunition from the country's rivers to make them safe again for swimming and fishing.
Russia's invasion shrank Ukraine's economy by about a third.
We were surprised to find that to keep it afloat, the US government is subsidising small businesses.
Did you know that the U.S.
is subsidizing industry and small businesses in Ukraine?
That the U.S.
is floating the Ukrainian economy, making sure that the middle class continues to thrive even though this war is being fought?
Even while Americans in every poll Say that they're angry and dissatisfied with their economic security and their economic future while the New York Times warns that we don't have enough money to pay seniors for Medicare and Social Security and they will have to prepare for cuts, severe cuts to the programs that keep them at subsistence levels or their quality of life at a reasonable level in their retirement years that
We continue to borrow billions and billions of dollars from China, not only to fuel the war in Ukraine, with no end in sight, killing huge numbers of Ukrainians, but at the same time, propping up their economy.
Let's look at one more segment from the 60 Minutes report, because I think it contained a lot of things that Americans did not know about, which is why even the 60 Minutes reporters seemed surprised, unpleasantly so, by what they were revealing.
Ask me, is it worth it?
Here's what we've gotten for our investment.
We haven't lost one soldier.
We reduced the combat power of the Russian army by 50%.
Not one of us has died in that endeavor.
This is a great... By the way, that is, in case you're wondering, That is Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut, the Democrat from Connecticut.
There's Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts, standing next to the Republican of South Carolina, Lindsey Graham.
They're all visiting Ukraine, standing in defense of Ukraine.
And Lindsey Graham obviously is justifying using the exact script that ended up in Bill Kristol's commercial.
About why it's worth transferring these hundreds of billions of dollars from the US Treasury to Kiev with barely any safeguards.
Let's listen to the rest.
It's a great deal for America.
You've previously said that it's the best money we've ever spent.
That's still true?
Since we helped Churchill stand up to the Nazis.
We have to have confidence that the dollar...
So there you see Elizabeth Warren, Lindsey Graham, Senator Blumenthal.
We always hear that there's no bipartisanship anymore in Washington, when in reality, as we show you every night practically, the reality is the exact opposite.
The establishment wings of both parties are fully in support of this war.
The only opposition is coming from the populist wing of the Republican Party that is growing in size because the opposition among the American voter Right, left, and center is also growing rapidly.
A majority of Americans now want there to be an end to the largesse we give to the war in Ukraine.
They no longer see the reason why it's in their interest for that war to continue.
And here you see these three senators.
So, so different in ideology.
Can't get along about anything.
On their nice little trip together to Kiev.
standing together justifying why it's in our interest to continue to fight.
Now, one of the people who has been resistant to this war from the beginning has been Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia.
And I noted in a thread today on social media the embarrassing incident that we're about to talk to the Ukrainian-American journalist Lev Golunkin about, which is the fact that the Canadian parliament, led by Justin Trudeau, the prime minister and President Zelensky led by Justin Trudeau, the prime minister and President Zelensky gave a standing ovation to a Nazi SS soldier who they heralded as a heroic Ukrainian fighter because he fought against Russia
And they assume that meant, because he fought against Russia, he must be somebody worth applauding.
And I noted here, quote, the most bizarre and surreal event in the last decade of U.S.
politics, and it's obviously a hefty competition, is watching U.S.
liberals who see Nazis and Hitler under every MAGA hat finally encounter real deal Nazis in Ukraine, and they are eager to arm, fund, and revere them.
And in response, Congresswoman Greene said, quote, Not only do they fund and arm the real Nazis in Ukraine, they are also paying $1 billion a month to prop up their government, paying their small business owners and farmers and for 57,000 of their first responders, while Bidenomics hurts our small businesses and farmers.
And what many people in Congress are pointing out is that there is an earmarked $24 billion for Ukraine that the Biden administration is willing to shut down the government In order to prioritize.
In other words, they're willing to shut down the U.S.
government, cut off all services to American citizens because their priority continues to be sending billions and billions more for Ukrainians.
We've actually showed you before a Democratic Congresswoman who introduced a bill that would have prioritized expenditures to Ukraine above any other expenditures for American citizens in the United States.
Now, the excuse that continues to be given for this war, and we're just going to run through this quickly before we get to Lev, is that the reason this war is necessary is Russia.
And Russia continues to be the all-purpose villain that Western elites now use whenever they get caught in any sort of scandal, any kind of failure, they immediately point to Russia.
They say, it's not our fault, look over there at the Kremlin.
So we have several amazing examples just from this week to show you how prevalent this tactic continues to be, how central this narrative is to all kinds of American propaganda.
So here is Prime Minister Trudeau sort of apologizing for participating in this standing ovation for a member of the Nazi SS.
We have pictures of this person in his Nazi SS uniform during World War II fighting for the German Nazis.
And earlier this week, President Trudeau was looking at him and standing and applauding along with the rest of the Canadian Parliament and President Zelensky.
President Zelensky has yet to speak about this incident.
Like, hey, I'm sorry that I led your country to stand and applaud a Ukrainian Nazi because in Ukraine, it's a very common event.
And he seems unwilling, Zelensky does, to be able to criticize Ukrainian Nazis since they constitute such an important part of his fighting base.
But in Canada, the politics are a little bit different.
Jewish groups are infuriated, as you might imagine.
And here is Justin Trudeau apologizing, sort of.
Obviously, it's extremely upsetting that this happened.
The speaker has acknowledged his mistake and has apologized.
But this is something that is deeply embarrassing to the Parliament of Canada and, by extension, to all Canadians.
I think particularly of Jewish MPs and all members of the Jewish community across the country who are celebrating Yom Kippur today.
I think it's going to be really important that all of us push back against Russian propaganda, Russian disinformation, and continue our steadfast and unequivocal support for Ukraine, as we did last week with announcing further measures to stand with Ukraine in Russia's illegal war against it.
How did he go from apologizing profusely for having stood and honored a Nazi soldier to leaping to how important it is that we not allow Russian propaganda and Russian disinformation to grow?
What did one have to do with the other?
They just instinctively point to Moscow anytime they get caught in any sort of embarrassment or any sort of failure.
Here was Hillary Clinton.
Remember her?
She's the pioneer of this tactic.
She had a whole list of people she wanted to blame for her 2016 defeat.
Everyone besides herself and the people she paid to win the election and settled eventually on Putin and Moscow.
Here she is with former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, now essentially doing the same job but for MSNBC.
They were asking, they were talking about the 2024 election and you'll never guess what Hillary Clinton decided to babble about as well.
Vladimir Putin has obviously, your friend, your friend and mine, he has intervened in our election in the past.
It's not something, as you experienced firsthand, it's not something we talk about a lot.
Do you fear that that is something that could be happening for 2024 and do you think we should be talking about it more?
Well, I think we should be talking about it more because I don't think, despite all of I mean they're still talking about Russian interference and they're never going to stop because it serves this purpose.
ways in the internal affairs of other countries, funding political parties, funding political candidates, buying off government officials in different places.
I mean, they're still talking about Russian interference, and they're never going to stop because it serves its purpose.
Everything she just accused Putin of having done, funding oppositional parties, funding candidates, is something the United States State Department did in Russia under Hillary Clinton.
It's all public knowledge.
You can go on the National Endowment of Democracy website and find the financing by the State Department of Russian opposition groups, of Russian candidates.
We interfere in every country in exactly those ways.
But again, pointing to Russia as the reason to explain everything is their go-to instinct.
Here, amazingly, on Fox News, now that they have Tucker Carlson, the most important dissident on the war in Ukraine, off the air, they presented Trey Gowdy, the former congressman from South Carolina,
Talking about how he cannot understand how anybody could be opposed to Biden's war policy in Ukraine, and then listen to what they had the national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin, who's notorious for reading Pentagon press releases as truth, listen to what her explanation is for how somebody might be questioning Biden's Ukraine war policy.
This is Fox News in the post-Tucker era.
Lawyer, I do try to understand the other side.
I do not understand the hostility toward Ukraine.
Belittling Zelensky, calling it Ukraine's war against Russia.
Have I missed something?
Trey, I think the only way to understand that is that Russian disinformation has been able to mold some aspects of the information flow into our country as well as into some European countries.
Alright, there you have it.
I can't understand, said Trey Gowdy, how anybody could possibly be opposed to President Biden and the EU's obsession with this war in Ukraine and Jennifer Griffin said the only explanation The only way anybody might be opposed to it or might question it, even though it's the majority of Americans now doing so, is that we're all victims of Russian disinformation.
The vast majority of the world has stayed out of this war.
Apparently we're all just victims of Russian disinformation.
The excuse for everything.
Just to give you one final example before we talk to Lev.
We had Richie Medhurst on a couple of weeks ago talking about the situation in Niger and the coup in Niger and how the government, the new government, has demanded that France leave Niger, saying you have no more permission to remain on our soil.
And they had protests outside of the French embassy and the French military installation every day from angry people in Niger demanding that France finally leave.
And even though Emmanuel Macron vowed that he would never leave until the prior government asked him to, they reversed course in this very humiliating way and they decided, you know what, I guess we have to leave.
And he called back the Russian and the French ambassador and the French troops and they're all leaving Niger.
And The Economist went to explain why it is that people in Niger are tired of French colonialism and want the French gone from their country.
And here's what they had to say in explaining that.
There you see the headline, While Emmanuel Macron is pulling French troops out of Niger, France's decision to quit leaves its African policy in disarray.
And this is the explanation, quote, yet the French decision to quit Niger is about much more than this.
It is partly a pragmatic recognition that the Junta was not going to budge and that regional countries, despite their threats, were unlikely to try to dislodge it from power.
The decision also marks a reluctant and painful realization in Paris that its influence on the continent has taken a severe knock.
In the eyes of a generation of younger Nigerians, and partly thanks to the efficiency of Russian disinformation campaigns, France is now regarded as the problem, not the solution.
Yet again, it's Russian disinformation that has caused the people of Niger not to be grateful any longer for France exploiting their country, but instead it's that dastardly Russian disinformation.
That's to blame for everything that is the excuse for everything from why the French got expelled to the failures of the Democratic Party to why people are turning against the war in Ukraine to the fact that Justin Trudeau stood up and applauded a neo-Nazi in the Canadian Parliament.
To get the real Explanation for all of this.
We're going to talk to someone we recently had on our show who is a fantastic journalist.
His name is Lev Golonkin.
He was born in Ukraine.
He's an American journalist and he has been a very important voice on the war in Ukraine.
Most recently, he broke the story of how Canada's parliament offered official praise and a standing ovation to This Ukrainian World War II veteran who turned out to be a Nazi collaborator, it was his reporting that unleashed this scandal.
He frequently writes for The Forward, The Nation, and is the author of the book, A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka.
Lev, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.
We're always happy to have you on our show.
Thank you, my pleasure.
So let's start with this unbelievable episode of the entire Canadian Parliament standing in unison with President Zelensky there to give a standing ovation, a very passionate, enthusiastic, gleeful one, to a Ukrainian hero who happens so often, turns out, to have fought for the German Nazi SS during World War II.
It was you who kind of first reported on this, brought this to the attention of the public, What is it that you make of the scandal?
Is this something that's just kind of a one-off, or is there greater meaning here?
Well, the first person to mention this on Twitter was Ivan Kachanovsky, who's a terrific political scientist from Ottawa.
I was the first to report in the media on it, and this was not an accident.
This person didn't just appear in the Canadian Parliament like some Nazi Mary Poppins out of nowhere, okay?
He was part of the thousands of Nazis and Nazi collaborators that were purposefully brought into Canada, knowingly, consciously, purposefully.
And unlike the Nazis who were hiding in South America and keeping a low profile, the ones in Canada and America, these Ukrainian Waffen SS men, they celebrated their past.
They built monuments to themselves.
They built entire monuments with SS insignia in the middle on American soil and Canadian soil.
And they had entire blogs which celebrate their pastimes.
So this is not exactly an accident, and this is not atypical.
He is, in many ways, the hero that should represent Canada in World War II, if you look at the dark side of Canada.
Then there were also 45,000 men who were killed fighting against the Nazis in Canada, who I imagine this is a spit in the face for.
So I think the historical context here is so important.
Obviously, the historical context is crucial in defining a lot of these countries' national identity, the role that World War II plays, continues to shape relations between them in very complex ways.
And like I said, we've had so many examples of people inadvertently praising Nazis along the way to trying to stand in support of Ukraine.
Just recently, the actor Mark Hamill so proudly presented this chat over Zoom that he had with Azov drone operators, and it just turned out that the whole time they happened to be standing in front of the Nazi flag that they planted behind themselves.
He obviously didn't realize it.
People were quite upset that he was promoting people who had allegiance to a Nazi flag.
There have been incidents between Germany and Ukraine, Poland and Ukraine, Israel and Ukraine, over the ongoing reverence for this Stepan Bandera figure, who was a Nazi collaborator, who's become a Ukrainian national hero.
And you've talked a lot, and we've talked a lot when I had you on my show as well, about how you can go back over the last decade, pretty much right up until February of 2022 when the war started, or this phase of the war, where the Western media talked openly and all the time About the dominance of this Banderite or Naziite faction in Ukraine and the dominant role it was playing, particularly in its military and other political sectors.
Talk about that kind of unspoken relationship, this historical context that continues to shape Ukraine, its relationship with its neighbors that really has gotten kind of buried ever since the war began.
Yeah, it's limited to Western, the very tip of Western Ukraine, SS Galicia, which is where the SS Galicia, the Waffen SS unit was formed.
And it's in many ways the tail wagging the dog, because one of the most insulting things that people say is, you know, these people are heroes to Ukraine, you know, they're viewed as heroes.
Ukraine lost two million people fighting the Nazis.
The overwhelming majority of Ukraine fought against the Nazis.
The country is covered with mass graves of people who died fighting against the Nazis.
Why on earth would Ukraine celebrate these people?
The vast majority of Ukrainians were against the Nazis.
The only people who say that these people are heroes for the Nazis is Russian propaganda, as well as the people who are excusing it in the Western media.
I do want to ask about that, though, because it is a historical fact.
That the majority of Ukrainians, the vast majority of Ukraine, fought on the side of the Allies or of Russia as part of the Red Army in warding off Nazis.
There was a component of Ukrainian nationalists who ended up aligning with and collaborating with the Nazis and the SS, including Stepan Bandera and that whole crew.
So why is it that given that they were a minority in Ukraine and that the majority in Ukraine had always been anti-Nazi, deeply anti-Nazi, is now seemingly a mainstream part of Ukrainian political culture to turn Stepan Bandera into a national hero to the point where no one will criticize him and everybody seems obliged to praise him?
Well, they wiggled their way into the Maidan uprising in 2013-2014.
So you had a lot of people who were just anti-corruption, who wanted to be part of the EU, just regular people.
Then nationalist, ultranationalist leaders started showing up on the stage.
They started, and they started ending every speech, for example, with glory to Ukraine, to the hero's glory.
Okay?
Which was an expression that gained popularity under Stepan Bandera.
That was Bandera's version of Zekail.
Okay?
So the ultranationalists started shouting it from the stage.
And pretty soon, other politicians who didn't want to seem like they didn't want glory to Ukraine started shouting it from the stands as well.
And it's just like that.
They took the emotions of the time and they injected themselves to the point where, again it's a tail wagging the dog, where they are the ones who promote this myth and they force this myth onto the entire country.
And then you have people, the other thing they have is people in key positions.
The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, okay, As was Poland and Israel, right?
And Poland and Israel kind of got involved as well.
started talking about how Pandera was not responsible for the Holocaust or was not responsible for killing Poles.
It got to the point where Germany was just flipping out about it.
As of Poland and Israel, right?
And Poland and Israel kind of got involved as well.
The comments were so extreme.
Yeah.
I mean, what these people did to Poland, like not exaggerating, Hannibal Lecter would find it excessive.
They spent two years learning how to perform genocide on Jews, and then later they just went ballistic.
And they were just, you know, they say that these people, by the way, they fought for Ukrainian independence.
They lost every battle that they actually fought against an army.
The only thing that they were good at fighting at is committing war crimes.
Every time they actually fought an actual engagement, they lost.
So they really didn't fight for Ukrainian independence.
So anyway, so this ambassador, Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, okay, just goes overboard to the point where Poland is furious, Israel is furious, okay?
He gets recalled, and everybody says, you know, Zelensky took care of business.
Zelensky got this guy, this guy's toxic, Zelensky took care of him.
Do you know what he does now, this man?
He's the deputy foreign minister of Ukraine.
Right, he got promoted, basically.
He got promoted.
Yeah, he was promoted.
And who's responsible for promoting these people?
Zelensky.
The buck stops with him.
So let me interject there because obviously one of the arguments that is often made And it seems intuitively appealing or persuasive is that, look, how much can Nazism really be a problem in Ukraine when the elected president of Ukraine and the person behind whom Ukrainians are marching is, for himself, Jewish?
They have a Jewish president, Zelensky.
Now, if you go and try that in the United States, where if somebody says white supremacy is a really big problem in the United States, And you say, what do you mean?
How can that be?
The president of the United States in 2008 to 2016 was Barack Obama, and he's black.
And right now the vice president who got elected is named Kamala Harris, and she's also black.
How can it be that white supremacy is anything other than a trivial problem in the United States when we have two black leaders that we are elected?
So usually this doesn't work.
This is not a persuasive argument.
As to why a country doesn't have a problem, but it's often used in Ukraine.
But I think it stands to reason that President Zelensky is unlikely to have a lot of sympathy for hardcore actual neo-Nazis, the kind who wear SS insignia and who swear allegiance to SS units.
And yet it seems like he's at least politically boxed in enough That he can't really speak out against them.
He can't denounce them.
He promoted this deputy, this ambassador to Germany, after he very aggressively heralded Stepan Bandera as warranting his national hero status.
So what is Zelensky's relationship to this sector of Nazis sympathizing Ukrainians?
It's hard to say because on one side he lost family members in the Holocaust, he talks about that, and he's obviously living proof that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians are not Nazis and are not anti-Semites because they elected him as a Jew.
Yeah.
But at the same time, he talks about both sides of his mouth here and there.
And I think it's rather telling that so far there's been complete silence from Zelensky on this.
He was just cheering this man.
OK, he didn't know who he was.
Understandable.
OK.
But we got Trudeau apologizing.
We got the Speaker of Parliament resigning.
Zelensky's just silence.
OK.
Which, again, it's like you think a tweet would suffice.
So I think he's just kind of between a rock and a hard place because if he starts denouncing this, I mean, these ultra-nationalists, they're the most rabid fighters for Ukraine, you know?
And honestly, he starts denouncing this.
The commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces is a Bandera fan.
He's fond of taking photos in front of posters of Bandera.
So, you know, and I think I think he's just in a position where I don't know what can be expected of him, but it's just hard because he talks about how the Holocaust impacted him, and he compares Russia to the Nazis and everything, and yet at the same time he also, you know, he condemned SS Galichina once.
There was a marching cave and he did it after Israel condemned it, after Germany condemned it, after the UK condemned it, he finally condemned it himself.
But it's just very difficult to see So let me just ask you this final question, and we could talk about this for so long because it's such an interesting topic unto itself, but also such an important one given the U.S.
you know, people in the government who very much are fans of Holocaust perpetrators.
So let me just ask you this final question, and we could talk about this for so long because it's such an interesting topic unto itself, but also such an important one given the U.S. role there.
The question of flooding this country with very sophisticated arms and huge amounts of money, For years, the warnings were issuing from Western capitals and Western media outlets that the Azov battalion and other far-right groups inside Ukraine were increasingly dominant.
There were laws passed by Congress to prevent any weapons from falling into their hands.
That was a priority of the U.S.
government.
Facebook had an official policy where it put Azov on the list of hate groups that you were not allowed to praise and only when Russia invaded they lift that Prohibition and say oh you're allowed to praise Azov at least for now until the war ends The argument is, yes, Azov has long been a neo-Nazi battalion.
It has long had this kind of allegiance to not just Bandera, but these more extremist elements that proudly proclaim their allegiance to Nazi ideology.
Oh, but don't worry.
As of February 2022, they are now under control.
They're integrated into the military.
They've been turned into these moderate forces.
You know, it seems like if you look at how wars evolve, and if you look at Syria for example that began as a drop rising with a lot of ordinary people against Assad, but by the end the war gets so brutal that the only people who are really still fighting and can fight are the really hardened fighters from ISIS and Al Qaeda.
And those are the people you're now supporting.
There are no more ordinary people on the battlefield.
What happens as the war goes on is that the more extremist elements, the hardcore fighters, end up more and more dominant.
The president ends up more and more dependent on them.
How dangerous is it, do you think, that some of the most sophisticated weapons that the West has is flowing into Ukraine, into the hands of these people who seem to have very dangerous ideological leanings still?
I mean, I think it's the same that we do in so many countries.
I mean, we walk into a country and we say, all we want to do is partner with somebody who loves peace and democracy, and every time we wind up partnering with psychopaths.
But it makes sense because, you know, they're the ones who are the most well-organized, they're the ones who are willing to kill, they're the ones who are willing to die.
And there's no question that they're terrific fighters and they're committed.
I mean, I think the fact that we're unleashing so much weapons without without checking us off, and the other neo-Nazi paramilitaries there, we never know where they're going to end up.
And the other thing, too, is that we almost never keep track.
If you think we keep track of jihadists, we don't keep track of white supremacists really.
Somebody named Tom and Mike who looks white and who travels to Ukraine or who works for them flies under the radar more often than not.
So we're just opening ourselves up to people who can just take these weapons.
And Europe is flooded with them.
And it's just, and again, it's like, is it really difficult to say, you know what, we can support Ukraine, but without supporting these groups, we should not.
And, you know, so far, and this is the super important message here, is that we are giving a green light to any white supremacists in the world.
We are saying, you know what, if you work with us, We're going to arm you.
We're going to train you.
We're going to give you money.
We're going to totally look the other way on anything else you're doing.
Okay.
That is the message that the United States is sending the world.
Okay.
And I mean, I just, it's, it's heartbreaking that this even has to be said, you know, especially considering that at the same time as we're doing this, we're also treating Marjorie Taylor Greene and everybody else is worse than Hitler.
Well, actual people who are, you know, like, Legitimate neo-Nazis are getting to go to Congress and giving meet-and-greet phone sessions of members of Congress and getting sophisticated weapons.
So, I mean, unfortunately, it's going to be one of those things where, you know what?
Ten years from now, five years from now, at some point, something's going to happen and then the people who are responsible for this are going to shake are gonna shake their heads and say, what happened?
Who was possibly responsible for it? - You know, it is really bizarre that we have a US security state and an entire party, the Democratic Party, that is fixated on the threat of white supremacy.
Here at home in the United States, they see white supremacy under the hood of every MAGA sticker or Trump supporter.
They wanna take all sorts of extra legal action against them, devote the intelligence agencies and unleash them on them.
And then they encounter the real deal Nazis, people with like actual SS tattoos who are SS fighters.
And they want to arm and fund and glorify and venerate them for years to come.
And I do think it's only a matter of time until we hear we have to go to some other war because now there's some dangerous group who got their hands on the weapons we sent to Syria and ten years from now we're going to hear that because of these weapons that we sent to Ukraine that were sold on the black market, we have to go to war in Africa or in some other part of Europe.
There's never any thought given once that war propaganda takes hold, and you've done among the best jobs, I think, in the media of keeping the focus on these important issues, and we really appreciate you coming on and talking to us about them.
Keep up the great work.
Thank you.
I appreciate it very much, Glenn.
Take care.
All right.
Have a great night.
So last night, as part of the war on Rumble that we talked about, we spoke of the importance of supporting the programs on Rumble, especially in light of the attempt to scare corporate we spoke of the importance of supporting the programs on Rumble, especially in light of the attempt to scare corporate advertisers away from Rumble using the Russell Brand incident and others to keep corporate advertisers off Rumble as an attack on this
We talked about how one important way is to support the programs that you appreciate and like, The locals subscription program is a really important way that these shows can survive and insulate ourselves from those kind of pressures.
Another is patronizing our subscribers and our actual sponsors who have remained loyal to us and one of them is CB2Story.
We're going to show you a short message from them and then come back with a special offer and then get to our last segment right after this.
We have a new sponsor for our program system update, and I am very excited about it.
As I've explained before, our program does and will rely on sponsorships, but I have full autonomy to only speak for the products in which I genuinely believe and to reject any that I don't.
And our newest sponsor, which is CB Distillery, is one about which I'm genuinely excited.
It pertains to some of the most important developments right now In the West, there are all kinds of data showing that the indices for mental health problems, for anxiety disorders, for depression, for addiction, for suicide, for alcoholism are off the chart, growing every year.
And for people who are diagnosed with those problems or who simply know that they're experiencing them, they typically get one of two equally poor options.
Either they're given hardcore prescription drugs by psychiatrists or other doctors that are far more, that are far heavier and just more intense than people need for this level of pathology, or they end up treating themselves through or they end up treating themselves through narcotics, through illegal narcotics on the market that also causes all kinds of problems.
And what CBD distillery offers is something that's really right in the sweet spot for exactly what people need.
It is CBD, which is a derivative of the hemp plant.
So it's completely organic, completely natural.
There's no psychoactive ingredient to it.
It doesn't make you high.
To the contrary, what it does is it treats people who are suffering from kind of the daily grind of insomnia or stress or various kinds of anxiety by bringing tranquility, bringing relaxation, bringing peace.
It can treat pain.
It can treat insomnia and make it much easier to sleep, make the sleep much more satisfying.
And it can even help with people who have become addicted to pharmaceutical products or to narcotics.
And they really have made an incredible offer that is I'm not just saying that to get you active and then come back next week and repeat it.
It is genuinely for tonight only for their debut appearance on our program, which is 50% off for every product they offer, which you get by using the code RUMBLE.
So you can choose from a range of very carefully formulated CBD products that are plant-based solutions designed to treat stress or sleep disorders or pain or addiction or problems with focus.
I have used several of these products.
A lot of my friends have as well.
And the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.
I really encourage you to try it, especially for people who are suffering from these kinds of daily problems and finding the two options I outlined earlier, either inadequate or just way more intense and harmful than the problems really require.
The only states in which the offer is not available are Idaho, Iowa, and South Dakota, where the legality is less than clear.
But in every other state, I really hope you will go to CBDistillery.com.
They're a new sponsor for our program.
Patronizing them helps our program.
And I really think it will help you as well.
I'll just go there, use the promo code RUMBLE.
And for tonight only, you will have 50% off of every product that will be promptly delivered I really feel good about this product and I think the results will be very positive for those who decide to buy them.
So I do love CBDistillery.com in part because it is a sponsor of our show.
They are sticking by Rumble.
They are not immune to, or they are immune apparently to these pressures to not associate themselves with Rumble that a lot of other advertisers have been successfully bullied out of.
In terms of media pressure and pressure from governments to not associate itself with Rumble, so we love them for that, but I also really love the product for the reasons that I just said.
And as an encouragement for people who support this platform and the fight that they are currently engaged in, CB Distillery has a huge liquidation sale exclusively for Rumble viewers, where right now you get everything on the site for 60% off of all products if you just use the Rumble code, Rumble, it's 60% off using the code Rumble.
If you go to the site, there's the code right on the screen.
And if you go to CBDecillery.com, you will see all their products there, including the ones I just talked about.
And you get this huge discount.
And it's a way to support this program and reward sponsors who are willing to stand by Rumble and its programs as well.
So for those of you who didn't see it, last night we spent roughly two hours, because I thought it was so important, documenting at length and putting into its critical political and documenting at length and putting into its critical political and cultural context
this war on Rumble that has erupted over the last week ever since they decided to be very flamboyantly and publicly defiant.
In the face of demands from the British government and this particularly preposterous aristocrat, this baroness who runs this committee, who decided she was going to write to every media outlet and social media platform that has anything to do with Russell Brand and demand that they cut off all of his income and provide the information to her, proving that they've complied with her orders.
And while YouTube announced, Google announced, that they were doing so before she even demanded it, namely demonetizing Russell Brand based on allegations that have yet to be even brought by any legal body, let alone proven to be true, Rumble not only refused, but made clear how much contempt they have for this demand, making clear how dangerous
This was on the part of this British official to use the power of the state to try and dictate to media companies and to social media platforms what they can and can't say about the Russell Brand case, who they can and can not monetize.
And it was accompanied by threats to ban Rumble from the UK or to even subject their executives to arrest if they tried to enter the UK.
And, of course, we also got the standard sort of hit pieces that liberal corporate outlets do.
You just wind them up and they start spouting the same meaningless phrases that rumble as a vector for hate speech and disinformation and conspiracy theories.
I mean, isn't it amazing?
Let me just show you, first of all, the letter that Rumble got today.
Instead of answering it, they just posted it online.
There you see the tweet from Chris Pawlowski, who's the founder and CEO of Rumble.
And he said, they hate competition, they hate free expression, and they all take cues from one another.
Exhibit A.
So last night, we told you about this article that got published in the AP.
Here's the letter from NBC News that was sent to Rumble today, referencing that AP article.
And the AP article essentially did nothing other than say Rumble is a vector for hate speech and disinformation.
And it's a problem because the Republican Party has an exclusive agreement for them to broadcast the debate.
And at the same time, they're allowing all kinds of disinformation to be flowing over the air.
The fact that NBC News or the Associated Press has the audacity to believe they have any credibility to accuse others of allowing the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories when these are the media outlets that told Americans Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, that he was in an alliance with Al Qaeda,
That the Russians had taken control of American levers of power because they had secret sex tapes that Putin was using to blackmail Donald Trump to do the bidding of the Kremlin?
Telling Americans before the 2020 election that the Hunter Biden laptop materials should be ignored because they were Russian disinformation.
Just absolute lies that these corporate outlets spread on purpose over and over.
Classic conspiracy theories.
And they think they can then turn around and accuse others of needing to be banned or controlled or regulated because they allow the flow of conspiracy theories online, by which they mean there's not enough censorship.
We showed you this AP article, and then NBC News does nothing other than write to Rumble and say, good afternoon, I hope this finds you well.
My name is Jake Lubehusen, and I am reaching out from NBC News booking, checking to see if Rumble has a comment or a statement on claims that the app spreads misinformation.
And then it does nothing but cite to that AP article.
This is for a segment for our 5 to 7 p.m.
Haley Jackson Now program, and we're working on this evening around Rumble being used as the official live stream platform of the debate.
Our deadline for a comment statement is 3.30.
So, you just see how they work.
The Associated Press appears with one of those Mad Lib, liberal, accusatory articles, using these phrases that they've invented overnight, practically disinformation and hate speech that have no meaning other than what they give them.
And then NBC News picks it up and decides to do a segment as though it's an important television report that the partner for the Republican debate, Rumble, has been accused, meaning by a similar organization, news outlet, of being a vector for hate speech and disinformation.
Do you see how this all works?
How they are nothing more than blatant activists for the same liberal agenda, and they work in concert with one another.
And what they're particularly scared by and upset by and angered by are sites like Rumble that allow people who are dissidents and have dissenting views from the ideology and orthodoxies they spread in servitude to the institutions that they work to serve.
That Rumble is not controlled by the same demands for censorship, the same dynamics of power that they're constrained by and therefore they want to destroy Rumble or any other outlet like Twitter or any other person like Russell Brand or Elon Musk who says, I'm not going to bow to your censorship demands.
These are the tactics they use.
And I just thought it was worth updating that story because I said last night that I guarantee you this war on Rumble is going to unfold, as is the one against Russell Brand, that we're only at the beginning, not the end of it.
And the fact that just today NBC News announces that based on this AP story we covered last night, that they're going to start doing TV segments on how Rumble is a
Sewer of disinformation and conspiracy theories without obviously accounting for the endlessly destructive conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns NBC News has spread is highly illustrative of how these media outlets work and the reason why, as I always say, however much contempt you have for them, it's nowhere near enough.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
As a reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form.
Each episode posts to Spotify, Apple, and all other major podcasting platforms 12 hours after their first broadcast live here on Rumble.
And if you follow, rate, and review the show, it really helps spread the visibility of the program.
Being that tonight is Tuesday night on every Tuesday and Thursday night, once we're done with our live show here on Rumble, we are about to move to Locals, which is part of the Rumble platform where we have our live interactive after show exclusively for subscribers to our Locals community where we take your questions and respond to your feedback.
If you want to join our Locals community and get access to that after show, it also gives you access to the daily transcripts that we post and the original journalism we produce there.
As well as supporting the independent journalism that we try and do every night on this platform, it really helps support the work that we do.
You can simply click the Join button.
It will take you to the Locals community where you can join and get access to our After Show as well as the other content that we produce there.
For those of you who've been watching our show, we are very appreciative.
The audience size last night, for example, shows the capacity of this program to reach very large numbers of people, particularly when we have what we think are very important reports to provide you and we are very grateful to those who have been watching and making the show a success.
We hope to see you back tomorrow night and every night at 7 o'clock p.m.
Eastern exclusively here on Rumble.
Export Selection