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April 21, 2022 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:17:11
Zuby.
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Welcome to Best Delling Pod with me, James Dellingpole.
And I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest, but finally, finally, I've managed to land Zooby.
Zubi, you were going to be on my podcast like near the beginning.
I remember it was just after you'd broken the women's weightlifting or powerlifting was it record and I think you were based in Southampton at the time.
And one or other of us couldn't be asked to go on the journey because I tended to do the podcasts in person in those days.
That was before COVID and before the world changed.
Much has happened since then.
You've become kind of a global superstar.
Well, you have relative to me anyway.
Tell me what you've been up to in the last two years.
Wow.
Yeah, James, a lot has been going on.
I think, honestly, it's more like the last three years since things went pretty crazy.
So that viral tweet that you were referencing, the deadlift post, that was February 2019.
So that's actually over three years ago now.
At the time I tweeted that, I mean, to give an idea of overall growth, I had 18,000 followers on Twitter and about 50,000 across all the platforms.
When I posted that, I think today we're approaching 720,000 on Twitter and about 1.3 million.
Across the board.
So that's been the level of organic growth.
Lord knows how many more people have discovered me off of those social platforms.
But a lot has been going on.
So I started my podcast Real Talk with Zuby at the beginning of 2019 as well.
So that's continued to grow.
I wrote and released my first book, my fitness book, Strong Advice Zuby's Guide to Fitness for Everybody in 2019.
Been on the Joe Rogan podcast twice, The Rubin Report, The Ben Shapiro Show a couple of times.
I've been on Tucker Carlson a few times, connected with, been on BBC, Sky News, all over UK, USA.
My audience has grown.
Come on, you are a bastard, because actually, I was at the beginning of this period, I was like three years ago, I was more famous than you.
And now somehow you've, despite being a child virtually, I mean, how old are you?
You are.
You're very young.
Am I?
Okay.
How old are you?
Okay.
Twenty?
Thirty-five.
Okay, fair enough.
Thirty-five, but I can pass for most ages.
But you have done that thing.
You are a bit like, well, Joe Rogan, I suppose, is an obvious example, but there is a kind of aesthetic, isn't there, and a sort of ethos.
Whereby people take control of their lives, they go down to the gym a lot, they are committed to, they set themselves goals.
This is all slightly anathema to me because I'm not the kind of person, but you are, I suppose, living proof that it does actually work.
Because that's what you do, isn't it?
You set yourself all kinds of goals and you achieve them, like a proper man.
Of course.
Of course, Perseverance, man.
I mean, I released my first album in 2006.
So if we're even talking about 2019, by the time things really started to grow that much, I mean, I'd put out eight albums and EPs.
I'd sold tens of thousands of albums in the UK completely independently, DIY.
I'd been selling my music on the streets for years and then shopping centers around the UK.
And I'd been on all these social media platforms for over a decade.
That break came, you know, as they say, it takes 15 years to become an overnight success.
So that's really how things have played out for me.
So I just continue to persevere, always believe in my vision and yeah, things are paying off in a much bigger way now and will continue to.
So just trying to get that message out to as many people as possible.
Well tell me, I mean you're not going to, presumably, you're not going to be ever as big as Kanye West as a rapper are you?
Because in order to do that you've kind of got to make your Packed with the devil.
I mean, this is the vibe I'm getting from from my my research is down since I've gone down the rabbit hole.
I realized that look, I know, I know you're not very similar, but you can be more different.
But Katy Perry, for example, I know that I know that rap isn't hip hop isn't her genre.
But nevertheless, Katy Perry could not make it Big time, until she sold her soul to Satan, like they all do.
And I can't imagine that you would be prepared to make that step.
Whatever it is you have to do to become really big, you probably wouldn't do it.
Am I right?
You're very right.
Look, I mean, I've been independent from the beginning.
If my goal were to get deeply involved in the music industry and sign a record deal, I wouldn't have put out at this point Nine independent releases, and I wouldn't have grinded my butt off for the past 15 years to get to the position I do, which is why it's hilarious now that suddenly I've reached a certain level of success and notoriety that certain people would like to imagine that I signed some kind of pact with some kind of dirty deal or something like that, which hasn't been the case.
It's just been years of independent grind and a lot of genuine support from people all around the world for all the various things that I do.
Now, in terms of the music world, in terms of the music industry, I don't even consider myself part of it.
I'm a musician.
I consider myself part of the music business.
I don't consider myself part of the industry.
I've never dealt with labels.
Managers, agencies, all the nitty gritty contracts, all of that stuff from day one.
Even as a teenager, when I started, I was just like, you know what?
I don't want to do this.
I want to build it up myself.
I want to maintain creative control.
I want to maintain business control.
And there are certain lines, values, and principles that I have that I will not go past and I will not compromise.
And that goes for everything, even beyond music.
Have you ever come across the whiff of sulphur?
I mean, has anyone tried to buy you or to lure you in to the dark recesses of the industry?
I mean, not that directly.
Not that directly.
I've, you know, I've had offers in various ways that I don't, you know, I'm not talking about something like super dark here.
But you know, there have been offered things and ways to make money and things like that, which I don't Believe in and which I feel would cross certain lines for me and compromise my values.
But James, I think with a lot of these things, I think it's like a lot of things.
I think it's incremental, right?
I don't think it's necessarily the case that someone comes along one day and offers you, you know, sign here and you'll have riches and success and you know, we want this pound of flesh from you.
I think it's a series It's a series of compromises and a series of going against your values bit by bit.
I think this is how these things always happen.
It's this incremental creep.
We've very much seen this over the past couple years where there's this slow erosion of what people What people believe in people going along with things that they know are wrong people staying silent when they know know that they should speak up and so on.
So I think that you have to be very cautious.
I think every individual but I think especially if you are a public figure in any way you always have to know what your boundaries are know what your lines are.
And be willing to draw those and to say no.
And sometimes it means sometimes it means turning down money.
I mean, I've turned down tens of thousands of pounds just over the past two years from things where I was like, yeah, that doesn't.
You know, that doesn't vibe with me.
That goes against one of my principles or one of my values.
And sometimes you have to say no to money right now to maintain your integrity and to maintain your trust later down the line.
And people have different lines with that.
And I understand how and why people compromise sometimes, but it's something you always have to be cautious of.
Yeah, I think what you're saying is true, but I think it doesn't just apply to public figures.
I think it applies to us all.
Oh yeah, everybody.
Everybody.
And I think it's what I've found is since I've properly discovered Christianity, for example, is that it gives you a manual for how to behave.
And it teaches you to be always on the lookout for for traps, the snares of the devil, if you like.
I mean, you don't have to talk about it in a religious way, you can talk about a secular way.
But but once you start making little trade offs, You suddenly find yourself caught in bigger and bigger trade-offs, as you suggested, until you find that you are in a hole and it's going to be quite difficult to get out of.
With all of these things, it's easier to nip things in the bud.
It's possible that monsters can grow to a certain level and it becomes a lot harder to fight them or resist them once you've put yourself in a very compromised position.
By the way, this can also happen with your own audience, right?
As you grow and as people discover you through different things, Everybody has a different interpretation or translation of who you are.
So for all intents and purposes, there's, you know, there's millions of caricatures of me out there.
There are millions of caricatures of you out there.
People think they know you and you, they, you know, and all your beliefs and what you're about and everything that your history, your experiences, everything.
And they, and they project this, you know, sometimes accurate, but often inaccurate vision of who you are.
And they really, really Believe this.
And this can be this can be positive or negative in terms of the way that they view you.
But I think people, especially if you get into the world of any type of social, cultural, political commentary or anything like that, I think people have to be cautious of not just kind of throwing raw meat to the crowd and people pleasing all the time.
Because this can happen whether someone's more on the left or more on the right, It's very easy to just become a one-trick pony that just bashes the so-called other side all of the time and always aligns 100% with what people on your supposed side are supposed to believe and it leads to audience capture.
And once you have that audience capture, you're not able to think freely or clearly because you're so afraid of whether it's losing followers or facing criticism or being seen as some kind of a trader or sellout or whatever it is.
And I've seen so many people get caught in this position.
And this is also how people end up getting canceled because they give up that authenticity.
And then as soon as, you know, they build their entire platform.
Off of not being truly authentic.
And then when they want to be authentic, When they want to say something that goes against the mainstream narrative or goes against the mob, then all of a sudden their own audience turns on them.
And this happens to people in all spheres.
I've seen it happen many, many times.
So you actually have to kind of be willing to take more flack and criticism in the short term in order to remain authentic.
Yeah, I think my problem actually is not audience capture, it's kind of audience release, because I'm totally with you.
I think authenticity is absolutely important.
And also the pursuit of truth at whatever cost is really important.
Like, for example, I know that my position on Ukraine and Russia is going to alienate a lot of my fan base.
Well, inevitably, because it's the issue that Everyone's been told what to think, and even people who have spent the last two years learning to distrust the government and the media are suddenly going, yeah, we must trust what they say about Ukraine.
And like you, I think it's really important that people know They're aware of all the skeletons in my closet.
Not that I've got any skeletons, really, but they know about who I am and my past.
You know, I like hunting foxes.
I used to love going to Glastonbury and smoking loads of weed.
And I was at the WAG, you know, a club night called the WAG in 1988, you know, at the beginning of the Acid House scene, you know, in my smiley T-shirt and my bandana.
Off my tits on MDMA.
I think people need to know that I do have hintland and that surely makes me more interesting than a kind of somebody who's got a brand.
And I think you're the same.
I mean, you've got quite an interesting past.
I mean, you went to Oxford, didn't you?
Yeah, that's right.
I studied computer science there.
Right, like my sister's partner.
How was it when you were there?
Because I mean, I was there in the 80s, the late 80s, and it was still recognizably just about a world-class university.
I think it's just gone complete to shit now.
I'd be embarrassed to go there now.
Was it majorly woke when you were there?
The word woke wasn't even in the lexicon when I was there.
I mean, I was in Oxford from 2004 to 2007 when the world was still pretty normal.
So when I was in Oxford, I mean, yeah, it was great.
There was none of the so-called progressive woke nonsense or crazy rhetoric and weird ideas Was remotely mainstream at that time.
So I had a totally normal and sane, both school and university experience.
I think that it was about seven or eight years later after I graduated, I, I normally attribute when things started to really get weird around 2014, 2015.
That's the point when I really started to see this shift, not just in the UK, but in the U S and Canada, I guess, across the entire Anglosphere and, uh, the West, I guess you could call it.
And so no, my experience at the time in Oxford was completely normal.
I think compared to many other universities, it's still relatively grounded and sane.
Although I've heard from current students that, of course, this ideology has crept its way into the institution as it has everywhere else.
But my experience there was positive.
Right.
What caught you in?
I was at Teddy Hall, St Edmund Hall.
Right, okay.
Yeah, there was a really disappointing thing I did the other day where I went to my favourite, my favourite museum in Oxford.
I don't know whether you've ever been there.
It was the Pitt Rivers Collection.
Did you ever go to the Pitt Rivers?
Pitt Rivers.
I don't think I've been in it but I know the name.
Okay, so Pitt Rivers.
There was, Pitt Rivers was named after an explorer, I think he was called Augustus Pitt Rivers, and he went around the world collecting all manner of really interesting shit, you know, like, like, I think he, there's another museum where he's collected all these old buildings, you know, from, you know, I don't know, a Malay longhouse or whatever and something like that.
But the Pitt Rivers had all this tribal stuff, including, this was just the best bit, it had shrunken heads captured by Dayak tribes or whatever, headhunting tribes.
Fascinating bit of cultural history.
Now you go to the Pitt Rivers Museum and all that stuff is gone because it's got these politically correct... I mean, the whole of the museums industry is completely woke, whatever you want to call it.
They're not interested in educating people about the past or about anything else, they're just interested in pushing this woke agenda.
But anyway, A few years ago I went to look at the heads, knowing that their days were numbered, and I was looking at these adverts for student events up on the walls, you know, handwritten things, and they were all about shit like transgenderism and just all these things that have been created
To divide us, to unsettle us, to... I mean, one of the most obvious things we know when we're born is that what girls look like and boys look like.
And, you know, babies are programmed to listen to female voices and male voices and respond in different ways.
It's the most natural thing in the world.
We've now been taught in this weird culture we live in to reject that.
And, you know, there's 57 varieties of gender now.
I don't want to go on about this for too long, because actually I find the culture wars a distraction from what's really going on.
What I wanted to ask you is, 2019, when I first wanted to get you onto the podcast, do you think you were basically a normie?
I mean, I was then.
I was wondering whether you were already down the rabbit hole?
I've been, people often ask me like when I got so-called red-pilled and I'm like early teens, pre-teens, like I've always been like this.
Oh really?
I just, I just, I just wasn't, I just wasn't publicly, I just wasn't public about it and I didn't have this size and scale of audience that I do now.
I've always been like this.
What was your entry point?
Because everyone's got an entry point.
Well, you know, I think some of it is from, I think some of it is simply personality based.
I have a really unique personality type.
And I think a lot of it is how I was raised and where I was raised.
So my family background is originally from Nigeria.
Ibo, specifically.
Both my parents are originally from Nigeria.
I grew up in the Middle East.
I was raised in Saudi Arabia.
I lived there from the age of one until the age of 20.
So I didn't really grow up, you know, just in the West.
I went to boarding school from the age of 11.
So from the age of 11, I was flying internationally by myself and I went to boarding school, went to university.
And when I was in school also in Saudi Arabia, I went to an American school.
So I had heavy influence from four different cultures, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, UK, USA, surrounded by a big range of people my entire life, true diversity, lots of different ideas, different ideologies, beliefs, religions, and just had the blessing to be able to travel and see a lot of the world from very early.
My perspective isn't just, you know, I'm not purely a Western, right?
I'm Western, but I'm also, you know, I'm also Nigerian.
I'm also someone who grew up in the Middle East, which has a very, you know, Saudi Arabia has a very, very different culture and way of doing things than the UK or the USA.
And also I'm British.
But I had that heavy dose of American influence, which people can even hear in my accent.
That's why I don't even necessarily sound English, because I didn't grow up in England.
I'm sorry, you sound like an American to me, Zuby.
In fact, if I didn't know otherwise, I would think you were a yank.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, you're not unique in that regard.
Yeah, that's, that's totally fine.
I've never had a British accent.
So even here in the, I'm in the USA right now, and everyone's always like, Oh, what happened to your English accent?
And it's like, I've never, I've never had one.
So all of those, I think, plus my personality and my natural curiosity and willingness to question things and not go along with the herd in any regard has always just given me a different view on A lot of things in the world.
I don't default.
I think to some of the patterns and assumptions that a lot of people do because my view is just more holistic and I guess more more curious and more questioning.
So from a very early age that I guess made me someone who Fit in, in a way, but wasn't afraid to not fit in, wasn't afraid to question and challenge things and just, like you said, seek the truth, constantly try to work out what is going on and try to understand the world.
So, you know, I'm here in Saudi Arabia, I'd be in Saudi Arabia, and then I go to the UK, and some things are very different.
And it's like, okay, why, why is that?
What's the history behind that?
What are the belief systems and the ideas and the values that make Life in Saudi Arabia and the rules and the laws and the society and the culture.
It's very, very different.
And then over here, it's like this.
And then I traveled to another country and I see it's like this.
Um, so I think it gives a more nuanced perspective rather than having this thing of just like, I don't know, like I'm in the USA right now.
And so many Americans will just think, you know, USA, number one, USA is the best country.
We do everything the best dah, dah, dah.
There's nothing we can learn from anybody else, this sort of American exceptionalism in a way.
And it's like, well, where else have you been?
Many people have never even...
Left the country, um, and don't know that much about anything outside the U S. So it's like, what are you, what are you basing that all on?
And it can lead to very sort of narrow and myopic thinking.
And that's not unique to people in the U S you know, most people don't really see that much of the world.
Um, it's relatively new that people have been able to travel widely and relatively easily.
So I fully understand that it's not even a, it's not supposed to be a harsh criticism, but it's just explaining, I guess, how and why I see the world the way I do.
Right.
Yeah, but I'm really well educated.
I'm really well, well traveled.
And for most of my life, I mean, really until the last two or three years, my Weltanschauung was something like the sort of version of events that we're encouraged to believe in and the outlook we were encouraged to have.
So for example, I thought the West.
Yes.
The West is the arbiter of civilized values.
And really, we need to impose these values on the rest of the world.
British Empire, great, you know, made a few mistakes here and there, but basically pretty good.
Look at the Indian railways, look at the Indian legal system, look at some of the railways in Africa, those that haven't decayed.
Look at the traditions that we imparted.
And then you think of America.
Yeah, America.
I was a bit like Team America, you know, fuck yeah.
And I thought, yeah.
And if you'd asked me what the big problems in the world, I'd say, yeah, well, one of them is fundamentalist Islam and all these crazy Muslims who want to just blow us up.
And what else?
Yeah.
And maybe China, but And you know, what we need is a government that's going to lower taxes and it'll all be sorted out.
And if we only vote in the right guy, everything's going to be good.
I don't believe any of this yet.
I mean, I'm much more close to Jeremy Corbyn and John Pilger, say.
Do you remember John Pilger?
Australian.
I used to think of him long hair.
He was, you know, he was he started reporting on the world in the Vietnam era, and he was very much about American imperialism and about You know, how wrong it was to impose these values and all the damage done by America bombing the world.
It never really occurred to me until the last two or three years when I suddenly thought, hang on a second.
We're the bad guys, or at least we are certainly not the good guys.
Everyone we elect is basically part of the problem.
They're all the bloody same.
And this isn't cynicism.
This is actually deliberate and true.
And my eyes have been opened.
So you're saying you've known this shit all this time anyway.
But that's quite a lonely place because most people aren't there.
Yeah, no, it is, you know, and don't get me wrong.
It's not like my level of knowledge now compared to when I was 25 years old, let alone 15 years old, is very different, but I've never fallen into the binary because it wasn't that simple.
So, I mean, with some of the examples you made, you know, for example, I mean, a lot of people in the West, let's be honest, a lot of people in the West, especially in the USA, had never really heard about Islam or Muslims until 9-11.
Right.
That's the truth.
That was a lot of people's introduction to this idea of Islam or Muslim people and so on.
And I do remember that time.
I do remember that period, you know, being in school at the time in the UK, being in boarding school and hearing, you know, some of the stuff that was going on, both in the media and on the ground in which people were saying.
And my experience, you know, I grew up in a Completely Islamic country and had many good friends who are Muslim and so on.
Yeah, exactly.
So my view was far more nuanced and honestly, I had more experience.
So I was like, look, these people are people who did this and people, you know, whether you're talking about the Taliban or Al Qaeda, what these are, these are fundamentalist extremists.
These people are not representative of your average, you know, Muslim person.
There's over a billion Muslims in the world and Also, these extremists are primarily targeting Other people of their own religion.
So my view was a lot more informed and nuanced in that regard.
So I didn't kind of fall into that trap of just like, oh, okay, we're the good guys.
They're the bad guys.
And I think one of the biggest problems we have, and by the way, this is on every single issue.
We have every single issue.
I think one of the huge problems and one of the things that leads to these so-called culture wars is simply binary thinking.
Everyone wants everything to be binary.
Just, you know, Black and white, left and right, red and blue, good and evil, and so on.
No relativity at all, no attempting at least to view things from the other side.
Now, this doesn't mean you have to agree with the other side.
This doesn't mean you have to be straight down the middle.
This doesn't mean you can't have strong views and ideas, but I think it's always worth at least contemplating How the perspective from the other side, even if you think the other side is, is wrong, or perhaps immoral or whatever, if you can sort of frame it in that view and think, okay, well, okay, say, say, for example, you were talking about, you were talking about the West, the US and the UK, during my lifetime,
They've, you know, there's been the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, there's been all these bombings in Syria and so on.
You know, the West has invaded other countries.
Right now, of course, the big talk is about Russia invading Ukraine, but the USA and UK have invaded other countries.
Maybe they'll call it a liberation.
Maybe they'll call it a what's the other word?
What's the other word that they use to avoid the term invasion?
There's a, gosh, there's another word they use.
Incursion?
Nope.
Maybe incursion.
Yeah, it's a little bit like when, when Westerners go to other countries, you know, they're expats.
But if other people come here, they're, they're migrants or immigrants.
You know, it's the way it's an enriching, we're going to enrich them with that.
Yeah, or to, you know, to liberate and install democracy and so on.
But you know, it's like these things are invasions.
There's thousands and thousands of innocent people who bombed, got hurt, got killed, families killed in these situations.
And the worst thing with all these issues, it's always just people caught in the crossfire.
And this is why, this is part of why Aileen More libertarian, because when I look at this, when I look at history, when I look at what's going on in the world, it's often it's governments, either domestically or foreign, that are causing problems for just normal, average, everyday citizens.
You could be totally opposed to a certain regime, or a certain government, or a certain politician, but you have to remember that they are not Representative of the population.
If you look at the USA, if you look at the UK, I mean, I imagine most Americans, British people would not like to, uh, they wouldn't like people around the world to judge them based on their leaders.
Right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Right.
But, but you have to remember that that goes across everywhere else.
So the average Chinese citizen, you could have a major problem with the Chinese communist party.
But that doesn't mean that the average Chinese person, I mean, the average Chinese person probably has a huge problem with the Chinese Communist Party.
Same goes with all these other nations.
So I think people need to at least try to be a little more consistent with separating the people from the government and the policies.
Because as we know from our own countries, what the average person believes and supports is often strongly misaligned.
With the government and the people who are supposed to represent us on paper.
Totally.
Before we go further down the rabbit hole, which I think we're going to have to do, because I want to do some probing here.
I just want to give you one example, while simultaneously plugging a live event I've got coming up, as an example of how much I've changed.
There's a guy I'm doing a podcast live event with called Majid Nawaz.
Have you come across him?
Majid with LBC.
He's fantastic.
I mean, he's an absolute hero of mine.
And yet, beginning of the 2000s, 2001, I think, to 2005, he was in an Egyptian prison.
He belonged to an Islamist organization called Hizb ut-Tahrir, which I think was committed to creating the caliphate around the world.
So, you know, minarets everywhere.
I think back then, I would have been more than happy to see Majid stuck in that prison forever, because I would have thought, well, you're one of the bad guys, you're waging war on your own country, and you're evil, basically.
Plug almost finished.
We're doing a fantastic event, live event in London on the 29th of April in central London, so you can get your tickets from Eventbrite.
It's going to be really good, a gathering of the clans.
But plugging apart, I've changed so much that I now see Well, the two Gulf Wars, for example, as they weren't they weren't a natural response to that.
They weren't really about bringing peace and prosperity to a godforsaken country which had been ruled for too many years by an evil dictator who had to be deposed.
They were actually they really were.
Some of the activists told us about oil.
They were ultimately about sort of rewarding people investing in the arms industry and other sinister things besides.
I don't I don't view Western governments or the supranational organizations like the United Nations as in any way acting in the interests of the people that they supposedly represent.
I mean, democracy does not work.
Whatever we have in our own countries is not democracy, is it?
The governments, the intelligence services are serving a remote elite whose interests couldn't be more different from our own as ordinary people.
Yeah, well, there's a lot to say on that.
And, you know, it's not remotely popular to say anything critical about so-called democracy, but especially after these last two years, if you live in Australia, if you live in New Zealand, Canada, USA, UK, Western Europe, How can you believe that you are truly living in a liberal democracy?
I mean, we've essentially been living in a soft dictatorship, and people don't like to hear that because it sort of breaks this illusion, but that is the truth.
That is the truth, even in the USA, which is truly around the globe has always been the bastion of freedom.
I mean, They've still got places with discriminatory segregationist policies based on whether or not someone chooses to have a certain medical procedure, you're still having people enforcing I mean James I can't tell you as someone who grew up in Saudi Arabia, the way the West, Western countries, Mandated face coverings in public.
I can't get over the way that that continues to blow my mind because as someone who grew up in Saudi Arabia, one of the things that people always would jump on and criticize in the UK, across Europe, in the US, oh my gosh, I can't believe that the women have to cover their faces in public.
That is so, it's this, it's that, it's so illiberal, it's backwards, it's barbaric, it's medieval.
Every single thing.
And now...
I'm like, you did the same thing.
You went from France, France, you know, Belgium, you went from wanting to ban the burqa.
You wanted to ban face coverings in public.
Not so long ago.
I have a long memory.
And now you mandate it, even outside.
And people will say, oh, it's different.
This is about science.
This is about safety and so on.
And it's like, well, is it really?
Are people wearing those because they think scientifically it works and it protects them and other people?
Or are they wearing it because they fear punishment and they fear social judgment?
It turns out that This is something that you gain from traveling and I'm sure you've seen the same thing, which is that as different as people in societies and cultures are human beings are we have the same hardware, right?
We have the same hardware.
So wherever you go in the world or when you look at history.
From a biological standpoint, human beings are very similar.
We're prone to the same strengths and weaknesses, the same liability for groupthink, the same rationality and irrationality, the same possibility of falling victim to radicalization or extremes and ideologies.
It takes different names and it has different patterns.
But it's very similar.
So that hardwiring, and I think that people in politics and especially in the media, they know this.
They know this, which is why they can have a certain agenda or a certain narrative, which they want to install on a population.
I almost see it like installing software.
So it's like, okay, all these people have the same hardware.
So we can take this narrative and this propaganda and these words and these ideas, and we can install this into the population.
And suddenly, if you look at 2019, and then you look at, say, 2021, you've managed to fundamentally alter the way people behave, the way people speak, the way they're treating each other, who they view as good versus bad, and so on.
And that can happen very, very quickly.
We've seen this happen many times throughout history, often with catastrophic results.
And this is why we always need to be cautious about this, because our brains are not Perfectly rational.
And we, uh, you know, there's few things that humans being, I think perhaps death itself is the only thing that people fear more than any type of social judgment or ostracization.
And that's something that, um, it's hardwired within people and it makes it very difficult to go against the grain.
Very, very difficult in any way, shape or form.
And so, but, but you have to have, that's where the courage comes in.
That's where you have to have the ability to stand up even when you're outnumbered.
And if you see something that you don't think is right or something that you think is crossing our line or violates your principles, you have to be willing to stand up and say, wait, hang on.
I don't think this is right.
And here's why.
Or you have to be willing to be the one who asks the question when you're not supposed to ask questions.
I couldn't agree with you more.
If there's one thing you learn from meeting different people, different cultures around the world, or one of the things you learn is that we are herd animals.
We like to be part of the group.
We don't like to be ostracized.
We don't like to feel that we don't fit in.
And I see that so much in the way people have behaved in the last couple of years.
I mean, you mentioned masks.
There is zero tradition of wearing masks, unless you're Dick Turpin.
Nothing.
Unless you're maybe in the Crips or the Bloods.
I'm just trying to think what else.
Unless you're A bank robber or a robber?
Yeah, exactly.
Cowboy.
Nothing wholesome.
Otherwise, there is just no tradition of wearing a mask at all.
And yet suddenly, in the space of two years, the government's nudge units and their behavioral psychologists and so on have somehow persuaded us as a culture that actually you're naked without one of these face masks.
That is weird and sinister.
Very weird.
And frightening.
It's very weird.
I would say they'd managed to do this within the space of less than two months.
Yeah.
Not, not just in the UK, but in many, many countries, which as you said, had no tradition or precedent of doing this.
And a big, a big issue I have with everything that's happened in the past two years.
And I was talking about this since 2020 is precedent.
What concerns me a lot is so many bad precedents have been set over the past two years.
So even though, you know, The UK is now mostly back to quote-unquote normal and most of the USA, not all of it, is coming back to normal and many countries are starting to go back to normal.
They've set this precedent now.
They've set this precedent for mask mandates, that the government has the power to do that.
They've set the precedent for lockdowns, that the government has the power and should maintain this ability to completely shut down your life, stop you from seeing your friends, your family, shut down your business, stop you from going outside your own house if there stop you from going outside your own house if there is a quote unquote crisis or emergency, right?
And I've said this before, how can an emergency go on for two years?
If it goes on for two years, by definition, it's not an emergency, but there are still countries and cities and counties, which are still behaving like it's March, 2020.
And they've still got these emergency powers and they don't want to let it go.
And they don't want to remove the restrictions and the mandates and so on.
And the longer it goes on for number one, the more The population get used to it and can even grow to like it, which is really disturbing.
Yeah.
But also the more, you know, when you give certain people power, they don't want to relinquish it.
They don't want to get rid of it now.
And I fear, I have concerns about, I don't fear much, but I have big concerns about the precedent that has been set now because They can now manufacture any emergency.
And people have accepted this idea that lockdowns are acceptable.
Yeah, you know, oh, what if there's a, you know, we could we could have climate lockdowns, that could be another disease that gets out there.
And it's time to, it's time to lock down again, and shut everything down again.
And we have the right to You know, set the police on you for going outside.
We have the right to set the police on you for showing your face and you're smiling in public or not standing a certain distance away from other people.
And it's all really anti-human.
People have been trained to fear each other.
People have been trained to fear each other.
We've always had diseases.
There's always been risks in our society.
We've gotten colds, we've gotten flus.
We always understand, we accept that there are risks in life.
And now they've created or exposed this group of people who are not willing to accept any form of risk at all.
Right?
Nothing at all.
It could be a 0.0001%.
That's still too high for them.
Right?
Look, that's your right.
If you don't want to ever get in a car or ever go on an airplane or cross a street because you're afraid there could be an accident, I support your right to do that, but you are limiting your own life.
The issue would be if you then tried to ban cars, you try to ban trains, ban planes, et cetera, because you know, there can be accidents and no one should be allowed to assume that risk.
Then that's where I have the issue.
So my problem has always been, um, With with the mandates and the use of the state force than the behaviors themselves.
I think it's a shame if people want to live their entire lives in fear.
I think it's a shame that there have been people who for the past two years straight now are unwilling to go outside and interact with people and live their lives normally and not be in total fear.
I think that's a huge shame.
I don't think they're really living but if that's What they want to do, then that is their choice, but I have a major issue with people like that trying to force it on everybody else.
Well yeah, I was thinking one of the scariest developments I read about recently was that in Australia they are now saying, the authorities are saying that it is legitimate for, say you go into hospital for some sort of routine procedure, nothing to do with Covid, they are now giving themselves permission
to inject you surreptitiously with the so-called vaccine against your wishes.
Now, I'm old enough to remember, and I'm sure you are too, we were brought up being taught about the concentration camps and about Dr Mengele and we were talked about all these, well the Nuremberg Code,
Which explicitly said you are not allowed to force medical procedures on people because of what we learned, well, we're reminded of by the appalling experiments done by Dr Mengele in the concentration camps on these captive victims.
And now suddenly we've got Australia, I imagine everyone in Australia who's responsible for this policy was also taught this at school when they were growing up, are suddenly going, yeah, well, we can now just jab you whether you like it or not.
That's extraordinary.
It's extraordinary, and it's an extremely dangerous precedent.
And I think a big problem, James, is that a lot of people, and I've really noticed this, is I think a lot of people don't really think in terms of principles.
They think in terms of short term, what feels or sounds right or appropriate at the time.
And I think this is how you get people who, for example, Who are okay with political violence sometimes when it's on their side and they kind of believe in the cause, but then they're opposed to it on the other side.
When you get these people who are very, very hypocritical because they're not actually acting on principles, their only principle is what at this moment in time furthers my agenda or my side or My beliefs.
You see the same thing with free speech, right?
So they're happy to censor, de-platform, get rid of, even physically attack people whom they disagree with.
They don't believe in free speech for them at all.
But then even if someone who they agree with or who's on their side says something extremely egregious or does something that, you know, violates certain ideas, they'll back them up.
They'll support them because they don't believe in They don't believe in the principle.
And that's, I think, what we're seeing here.
It's this sort of greater good mentality.
It's like, well, you know, normally I'd agree with you, but COVID is really dangerous and I'm afraid of it.
So it's okay to mandate medical procedures on people now because I'm afraid of COVID or because people on my side are aligned with this thing.
Whereas we stand on that principle of saying, no, it is wrong to force Or coerce someone into a medical procedure, period.
I don't care if it's giving them an aspirin.
I don't care if it's giving them an aspirin, an injection, a surgery, anything.
You should not be forced to take a hay fever tablet.
You should not be forced to take a paracetamol.
It should be up to you.
It should be your choice.
The state, the government should not be mandating that or taking away your rights and telling you that you now need to do this thing to get it back.
And this is where people get lost, right?
So you started getting people being called anti-vaxxers or anti-science or even pro-COVID or whatever, because they disagreed with mandates, right?
They're They're not even saying, look, I don't think anyone should take this.
I don't think anyone should take this.
I don't think anyone should be.
No, that's not the argument.
The argument was against the use of force, but it seems like some people are not able to delineate that.
They think that if they think it's good or they agree with it, then it must be mandatory.
And on the flip side, you also have people who think that just because they don't like or they disagree with something, that it must be banned.
They see the state always has to be involved in this.
And I think over the course of the decades, we've seen this on both sides of the political aisle.
And I think that's an issue, and I always have concerns when you give the state, when you give the government certain powers.
Number one, they're unlikely to relinquish them, but people also need to remember that they can be used against you.
So maybe right now you support the authoritarianism because it's kind of on your side.
It's conducive to your current political goals.
Maybe you, you know, someone, oh, you know, someone who's, you know, someone who's say on the left side of the aisle and, you know, they're And they don't, you know, they don't fully support Antifa, but it's like, ah, well, you know, maybe you got to crack some heads and crack some eggs to kind of get your way.
So they won't be out in the street fighting, but they sort of implicitly condone what they're doing.
Or you might have someone on the right and there could be some violent far right groups and, you know, they're pushing a certain thing and, you know, and they're like, ah, well, we'll sort of give that a pass because it's on our side.
And I think that's a very dangerous game to play.
There's something I've said before, which is Don't bring weapons to the party that you don't want used against you.
So if you don't think that that principle is a good idea, if you're against political violence, then be against political violence and be willing to condemn it regardless of which side is conducting it.
Otherwise, you're kind of giving this green light that, you know what, political violence is OK.
You've had people over the past couple of years saying rioting is OK, looting, looting is OK because it's it's on our side.
And it's like, well, are you cool if the other side does that then?
I don't think so.
Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.
The normalization, the sudden acceptability of political violence is, I think, certainly in the West, an unpleasant development in our lifetime.
It used to be the case that we deplored political violence.
Now, in the last decade or so, it's suddenly become okay if you can declare the person you're attacking a Nazi.
I mean, it doesn't matter whether they are a Nazi or not.
If they're a Nazi, you can enact any kind of violence on them and it's really okay.
And yet, weirdly, when it's Ukraine and there are genuine committed Nazis, Suddenly you can un-Nazi them simply by fiat.
You can say, yeah, I know that the Azov battalion has certain Nazi associations, but actually they're not Nazis.
If you look at them, there's maybe one or two, but mostly they're not.
All this excuse making.
I wanted to ask you, by the way, but did you not recently interview Gonzalo Lira?
I did, yeah.
He was on my podcast a couple weeks ago.
I'm very worried about him.
I mean, how did he come across to you when you talked to him?
Did you think he was genuine?
Yeah, so I mean, I'll be honest, the whole Ukrainian-Russia conflict, it's not something I have followed closely or spent a huge amount of time researching.
He got in touch with me.
He really wanted to be on the podcast and I thought, okay, you know, my podcast is called Real Talk with Zuby.
Let's get a different perspective.
If he says something that sounds weird or out there or totally different from what I'm hearing, of course, you know, I'll question it.
I'll challenge it.
I believe in conversation, right?
Some people would say, oh, don't even have that conversation.
Don't platform him because he's X, Y, and Zed.
He's pro-pute and he's pro-rush and so on.
He's an interesting guy.
Let's have this conversation.
During the course of the podcast, I was checking online.
I don't actually normally do this during podcasts, but certain claims he was making and I was checking them online as I go and also encouraging the listeners to do the same.
I was able to verify many of the things he was talking about and some of the names he was putting out there.
I don't know.
This conflict has been strange because, I guess it's not unique to this, but it's so hard to really understand What is going on and what the truth is.
I've heard so many different things from different people and I recognize everyone has their biases and people have different agendas.
And I think that's part of why I've been a little bit detached from it.
But his perspective was very interesting to hear.
I've heard as we record this that he hasn't been heard from for about two days.
Yeah.
I did have some questions on the podcast about his own safety, especially towards the end of it.
And he said something, you know, a little bit harrowing about, you know, he kind of wants to see where, see where things go and he wants to stay.
Cause I asked, you know, why, why are you?
Why are you still there?
Why are you still in the city?
Especially given all these things you've told me.
And he said something along the lines of he wants to kind of see it through.
He wants to be there and see where it all goes, even from a point of curiosity.
So what the situation is right now with him or the wider thing, I don't know.
And I'm not hesitant to say I don't know.
I hope he's okay, but I don't know.
Yeah, well, the reason I mentioned him is that I listened to one of his podcasts from Kharkov, and it seemed to me that, okay, he was probably favoring the Russian position, but he was doing his best to report objectively.
He was saying, look, I'm not a Putin fan.
I think the Russians have made mistakes, but this is the situation.
He outlined it, and what I heard him say has been supported by other sources, like the There's a Swiss ex-intelligence guy who's given a similar report.
But what I found extraordinary and really shocking is that when the news... well, taking a step back, there are certain bloggers who have been actively campaigning for this guy to get picked up by some of these hard-right paramilitaries in Ukraine.
And when these people get you, it's never a happy ending.
So there were sort of bloggers and people like that who were actually Wishing extreme violence on this guy who was really trying to get some perspective on a war, which we need perspective on, because at the moment, I think, in the West, certainly those of us who take our news from the MSN, not me, but most people still, are being given Western propaganda on the war.
They're not being presented the other side.
And I think, as you said at the beginning, we have a duty to find out what the truth is, regardless of which side it favours.
Because otherwise, where are you?
I mean, you're just a kind of victim of propaganda.
You're not informed.
Yeah, exactly.
And it's such a problem.
It's been the problem for many years.
Maybe it's always been like this.
Maybe it's always been like this and we are now able to see it more because of the internet.
But every big issue, whether it's Brexit, let's just go the last six, seven years, whether it's Brexit, it's Trump, It's BLM, it's COVID and all of the policies that follow it.
It's this Ukraine-Russia conflict now.
There is one acceptable narrative on all of these.
There's one narrative that if you are a quote-unquote good person, quote-unquote smart person, you are supposed to be completely down the line on.
If you're a good person, you are supposed to be anti-Trump, Anti-Brexit, pro every COVID measure and mandatory policy.
You're supposed to be pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine, just straight down the line with no questions or thinking.
No other way around.
You're supposed to be pro BLM.
Yeah, no other way around.
And it's like, you know, nuance and conversation and dissent is important.
Because otherwise there's no thinking going on.
It's just this herd mentality that you alluded to earlier.
And it's very rigid.
And how can you ever get to the truth if no conversation, debate, dissent is tolerated at all?
I just care about the truth.
I'm just trying to get to the truth.
I'm not I mean, like I said earlier, right, I think, as I said earlier, like my, I hate seeing innocent, decent people suffer at the hands of other individuals or governmental policies, whether they are, my heart goes out to Ukrainians whether they are, my heart goes out to Ukrainians who have lost their homes or been displaced in the exact same way.
My heart goes out to people in Myanmar or Yemen or Ethiopia, all these other conflicts that, you know, interestingly are also ignored.
Even if there's been more casualties, people don't even talk about them.
And I'm just like, look, what, what is going on?
What is the truth here?
Why exactly is this happening?
Don't sugarcoat it for me.
Don't leave out important details.
What is going on, right?
Some people, it's supposed to be just, I don't know, Putin went crazy one day and decided to invade Russia and that's it.
And I'm like, is it, that sounds oversimplified.
Right.
I'm not saying this is not me saying, and I'll say this as well.
Oh, so you're pro Putin.
You're pro Russia.
You're just, it's like, bro, like.
Why are people always trying to make it a hard binary?
You are either pro or you are anti everything.
And it's like, look, can there not be, is there no middle ground here?
Is there not like, okay, let's try, whether or not you agree with the supposed motive, whether you agree, like what, why, why is he doing this?
What's the history?
What's the history with NATO?
What's the history between these two countries, given that, you know, they used to be one, the Soviet Union.
What's the history with this?
What's going on with all this person?
But it's just like, nope.
Zelensky is a hero.
Putin is the bad guy.
Don't even...
Accept this.
Don't even ask any questions.
Don't inquire about anything.
And it's just exhausting.
That's why I stepped away with this thing.
We saw the exact same thing for two years with the COVID thing.
Anybody who questioned it, if you question lockdowns, if you questions mandatory vaccinations, if you question mask mandates, if you question, if you even talked about some of the downstream repercussions that were going to happen, which funnily enough, now you're allowed to talk about.
Now you can talk about the physical and mental health ramifications.
Now you can talk about the childhood development issues.
Now you can talk about inflation.
Now you can talk about the damage to the economy and so on.
It's okay to talk about that now, but in 2020, In 2021, if you spoke about it, you were the bad guy.
You were marginalized.
And you know, people don't like to, people don't want to listen.
And oftentimes what I'm trying to do is just give people that space.
It's part of the reason why I do what I do on social media and on podcasting.
Oftentimes it's, the goal is to give people space and to create conversation.
It's not even always me putting out my ideas.
It's just asking certain questions.
And allowing people to hash it out and to at least think about it, because I don't know all the answers, far from it.
I'm just trying to understand what's going on.
I was going to ask you, that was going to be my question after next, you know, what's really happening, but we'll come to that.
You were saying about, you know, Is this a new thing?
Or have they always lied to us?
You remember Churchill's quote, in wartime, truth is so precious, she has to be protected by a bodyguard of lies.
So even then, Churchill was completely upfront about the fact that they were lying to us all the time about pretty much everything for our own good.
So Given that this is so, given that the elites have always shafted us in one way or another, because they have, I mean, you know, you only got to look at history to realize that, and present times are no exception.
What do you think is really going on?
I mean, how, you say you're red-pilled.
How red-pilled are you?
This is my Zuby test.
Because you, for example, you mentioned earlier, what has been imposed on us in the last two years, is not, is anti-human.
Do you think that ultimately somewhere up there we are actually being controlled by forces which are not like us, that are not human?
Because I'm beginning to think that.
Well, I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say not human, but I believe that, you know, I'm a, I'm a Christian.
I believe in, I believe in God.
I believe in the devil too.
And I believe that humanity, mankind has always been in a spiritual battle.
I think that so many things that we deal with socially, culturally, politically, it's to me, a lot of them are, we're almost looking at them in the wrong, wrong realm.
Um, and I've said before that you can't find, but there's, there are no political solutions to spiritual realm problems.
And the truth is, you know, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that the, you know, the line dividing good and evil runs down, you know, the runs a line between each individual human heart.
And that's very true.
Human beings are not, it's not as simple as there are good guys and bad guys, right?
Like we all have good and evil.
Within us, and there's this constant battle between them, and good people decent people can do bad things sometimes out of malice sometimes because they believe they're doing a good thing.
People can become very very tribal and very very divided and I think, as I said before, this has always been known by people in power divide and conquer.
Is a very, very old trick.
And when you divide and conquer and you have the population, you have the citizens fighting against each other, whether it's on racial grounds or ethnic grounds or political grounds or religious grounds, number one, it's a huge distraction from the people who are actually screwing over and exploiting you.
Right.
If people could get away from this for a moment and just, I mean, look, look again, look at, look, just look at the last two years.
We're not even talking decades.
Look at the last two years.
Who has profited?
Where has the wealth been transferred from who?
To whom?
Who's buying up all the land?
Who's buying up all the real estate?
Who got richer?
Who got richer through all this?
Meanwhile, who lost their jobs?
Who got poor?
Who's getting battered by inflation?
Right?
And as long as people are fighting each other, their vaccinated neighbor fighting their unvaccinated neighbor, The black guy fighting the white guy, the man fighting the woman, whatever.
It's all a distraction from people who are really, really screwing you over.
Screwing you over, screwing your family over, messing up the future of your children and so on.
So I think it's a huge distraction, number one.
And I think number two, it solidifies power and control, right?
It centralizes it.
Because when people are angry and they're in their feelings and they're fighting their neighbor and they're fearful, very easy to control them.
Very, very easy to control them.
You can tell them, go this way, attack that person, believe this, say this, repeat this phrase, whatever it is.
And people will do it because they're in a very emotional, irrational state.
And I think that's why to this day, you were still seeing so much visible, bizarre behavior.
From individuals, because...
They've totally swallowed it, right?
They've totally swallowed it, whether it's information, you know, in the US, it might be coming from, you know, the federal government and the state government and the CDC and, you know, the Fauci's of the world.
In the UK, it's coming also from, you know, government and coming from SAGE and coming from these nudge units and whatever.
And people are being told literally what to say, what to believe, where to walk, what direction to walk in, you know, exactly what to do.
And oh, also, and this is who your enemy is.
Um, you saw the same thing with the divisive BLM narrative in 2020 and in prior times where all of a sudden things got racialized again and okay, these are the bad guys and these are the good guys and this is what you're supposed to say and what you're supposed to believe and it happens again and again and again.
Um, and it's happened multiple times over the centuries and unfortunately the majority of people fall for it every single time.
Um, and it can be across different lines, as I said before, but I think those are the main things.
I think it's a distraction first of all, and I think it solidifies and centralizes power and control.
And I think what's very powerful about this technique is that once you set the ball in motion.
It keeps rolling.
It gets propagated by the general population.
So it's not like, you know, if there are evil manipulators at the top, they just need to kind of give it a push and get the ball rolling.
And then it keeps on going.
Well, you're talking my language now.
I mean, do you think that we are experiencing an epic struggle between good and evil?
What's what's been happening recently?
It seems to have accelerated that.
Yeah, I think we are.
I think we are.
And I think, like I said, I think we always have been.
I think this is genuinely the story of humanity since Cain slew Abel.
I think this is the story of humanity.
And the forces of good and evil are not always as clear as we would like to believe.
Sometimes it's pretty black and white and I think it's more clear-cut.
Oftentimes it's very blurry.
Perhaps sometimes evil is fighting against evil.
Perhaps sometimes good is fighting against good.
But, you know, it's complex and I think that in any era, I think every generation gets its own different type of battle, right?
It gets its own culture war.
It gets its own spiritual battle.
It manifests in different ways.
You know, if you go back to the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, you know, very, very different situation, you know, different factions, different groups.
What we're dealing with now is not as directly violent or genocidal, of course.
But there's still a lot of, you know, especially if you live in the West, you can see these weird socio-cultural ideas taking root and taking over institutions.
And you're seeing this division and this polarization taking place.
I think it's an overcorrection in many ways.
And I think that what happens is that people's innate good nature, I think the good nature of many people has been hijacked over the past few years.
I think people who are naturally compassionate and naturally who care about others, that mechanism in them has actually been hijacked by Powerful entities.
Yeah, and it's allowing them to direct them against use that actual compassion and proclivity for kindness use it against their fellow neighbor.
Well Satan, I mean, I agree with you the devil is real, but what form do you think he takes?
I mean, do you think that he can manifest himself as a kind of goat headed creature that appears when you?
Sacrifice children over a pentacle or whatever?
I mean do you or do you think he's more of a kind of a sort of nebulous presence which who seduces men to he lays snares for them and how does it work?
Yeah look I think these are age-old questions and I don't have the answer.
My personal Believe and vision idea is more of the latter.
It's less of a physical embodiment that looks a certain way and it's more of a you know, I view Satan more as a spiritual.
More as an invisible spiritual force that can exist in the mind and in the brain of people to different degrees and leads to temptation and desire for malice and other evil inclinations.
I think it's something that you constantly have to fight.
I think that Satan is very present.
In our real world.
I think that Satan, you know, tempts and pushes all of us in different ways and in different directions.
So that's the way that I personally view it.
That's how I think of it.
I don't think of it so much as something that you can visually see.
But perhaps you can visually see the influence in individuals at times.
I mean, do you think that I think there's a sort of biblical case that that New Testament case, certainly that the world is essentially the realm of the devil, that it's our testing ground?
Yeah, I think it is.
I think it is.
And, you know, for people who are very atheistic, who are listening to this, who this might sound all weird for, I mean, I think there are times I can certainly understand times where it might be easier to believe in the devil than to believe in God, right?
I think when there are very dark times in history and it seems like the forces of evil are very present and are winning, and the forces of good seem... Yeah, and the forces of good are, you know, you're not really seeing them.
I can understand that temptation or that belief.
But to me, yeah, it remains a spiritual battle on an individual level and also on a collective level.
What you say there rings true.
I've watched my friends from university who've gone into politics, and I don't think that they were... Well, maybe I was wrong.
Maybe they were born that way.
But the impression I got was that they were not bad people.
And I can't think of one of them Who has not chosen the dark side since they've gone into politics.
They have all been seduced by, well, I mean, they've chosen the dark path.
It's as simple as that.
And I think, to pick up one point you made, you say it's not simple, but I'm not sure that that's true, that actually we know what's good.
We know what good looks like.
We know what, truth, beauty, good, God, they're all the same thing.
We know what we know what evil looks like and it's evil is seductive obviously it's it's it's superficially attractive, gets you power, gets you sex, gets you drugs, gets you rock and roll.
But I think we do know don't we?
Instinctively we I think that you know if you are connected to it.
I think that people can be so disconnected from their, let's call it soul or spirituality, that they no longer know that up is up and down is down and left is left and right is right.
I mean, look, if you want to talk at a level, and I mean, it might sound weird to certain people to connect these things, but look, we're living in an era where people are debating what a man is and what a woman is.
You can't get more objective than male and female.
I mean, this is...
Whether you're talking from a hard scientific perspective or you're talking from a spiritual religious perspective, there's nothing that is more obvious and self-evident.
Yet, in the West for many years now, this is a raging debate.
Can men menstruate?
Can men get pregnant?
Should our males and females?
It's a fake debate.
I mean, it's not real.
No one is really.
Yeah, it's fake.
Well, Most people are not, but this is what I'm talking about.
People being so disconnected from their basic level of maybe like a compass, right?
It's like having a broken compass.
So if you have, you know, your compass is aligned, you know, okay, north is north.
And so if this is North, then this is East, this is West, and so on.
But it's like, I think the compass can be, at least temporarily, it can be broken to the point that people are so disoriented and so confused that you can kind of install anything into them.
And they'll either go with it because they believe it, or if not, even more people will go with it because they are afraid.
Because they do not have the courage and the fortitude to say, actually, you know what?
I know that this way is North, but those people are saying that that way is North.
So I'm going to pretend.
I think that way is North.
And the more people who do that and accept that level of corruption, then the more, the more it can spread.
As we talked about very early on, people want to fit in.
People want to be in the majority.
People don't want to be called names.
People don't want to be criticized.
They don't want to be called a phobe.
They don't want to be called an IST.
And so if that means that I know the North is this way, but I say it's that way and that's going to protect me, a lot of people are going to fall in line and say that.
And the more people who do it, it's this domino effect.
The more people who do it, the more people will.
And then those who know that what true North is, They start to look like the crazy ones.
They start to feel isolated.
They now feel alone because they're saying, wait, no, North is here.
Everyone used to say that North is here.
Everyone used to say it, right?
I've been around for a few decades.
Everyone said that North was here.
10 years ago, you all agreed with me.
And now you're saying it's here?
And it makes you wonder, hmm, do they know something I don't?
Maybe, maybe North is that way.
Maybe I'm the one who's wrong.
This is a really hard question to ask you and you probably won't have the answer.
Do you reckon that Kanye is a Christian still?
I think he is, yes.
I think Kanye is a Christian.
I think he's going through a lot of battles and a lot of A lot of difficulties.
And I think, you know, he's, uh, I think a lot of times when he does something that certain people don't like, they like to play the mental health card, but I do think, you know, he does have some mental health issues diagnosed.
Yeah, for sure.
So I think, and then of course, you know, we've got lots of things.
I mean, the death of his mother way back really affected him.
He's obviously gone through a divorce recently.
Um, you know, he's dealing with a lot of inner demons.
He's D he's dealing with a lot of stuff now.
I don't know him personally.
I'm not going to talk like I know him personally.
No, but I've seen a documentary about it and they seem to be all friends.
I saw the one about his life and they all come from Chi Town, apparently.
Yeah, no, I do.
I do think from what I've gathered and I know people who know him.
I haven't met him personally.
Um, you know, I think he's a, I think he's a believer, but I think even as a believer, you have lapses, you have lapses in faith and you have lapses in judgment just because someone is a, a religious person.
It doesn't mean that they are.
never have any doubts or any questions or never stray away from the faith or have their own sort of crises with the whole thing.
And I think he's going through that in a public fashion.
Not a lot of people are as famous as that.
So most people's battles are not out there visual for everybody to see and to comment on and to judge.
But I think in his case, that's the situation where you've got hundreds of millions of people who are watching and you're kind of able to see this sort of transpire in real life.
And I think that's something that makes him very interesting and compelling as an artist and a human being, that you can kind of see these battles playing out and the way that his positions and things change.
But in the long term, you know, I think, you know, I think, you know, I think, I think he won.
I get the notion that he is a good-hearted individual for all of his flaws.
I do believe that he does believe in God and he has his faith.
I just think he's going through this battle right now, but hopefully we'll pray that he gets through it.
I feel that there's like, we could have a whole hour or two hours or three hours of conversation and perhaps when you invite me on the Zoobie Show, As I'm sure you will at some stage.
We can talk about more stuff.
I really love talking to you.
Feel free at this point to plug whatever produce that you wish.
Tell us where we can find you and stuff.
Yeah, sure thing.
So you can find me on all social media, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Minds.com, at Zubymusic, Z-U-B-Y music.
And if you go to my website, Zubymusic.com, then you can find links to my music, podcast, merchandise, and everything else that I do.
So those are the best starting points.
Thank you, Zuby.
And now I remind my beloved listeners and viewers, I'm just going to stick to my live event, which Make the next thing you do, the moment this podcast ends, go to Eventbrite, I think it is, and book for my live event with Majid Nawaz in London on the 29th of April, starts at 6pm.
It's going to be fantastic.
Everyone's going to be there, and if you're not there, you're going to miss out.
Zuby would be there, Were it not for the fact that he lives in America, trapped by the Biden regime, he can't escape.
What state are you in, Zubin?
I'm in Texas right now, the great state of Texas.
Yeah, Texas is great, apart from the frigging wind turbines everywhere.
Yeah, lots of barbecued meat, which is nice, and rodeos, which are nice, and Texans are nice.
Yeah, so well done.
Well, you're not in Austin, are you?
I appreciate it.
I am right now.
I am right now.
Isn't that kind of the anti-Texas?
People say that, but in reality, no.
Okay, well done.
I'll take your word for it.
I really enjoyed talking to you, and yes, I look forward, should you so desire it, to when I appear on your show.
Excellent, James.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Bye-bye.
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