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May 10, 2021 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
30:12
Western Journal owner Floyd Brown interviewed by Mike Adams about press freedom
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Welcome, everyone, to Brighteon.com.
I'm the founder, Mike Adams, and today I have a very special guest joining me, Floyd Brown, the founder of Western Journal.
And he has been involved in years past in the Reagan administration and was the founder of Citizens United.
And he has a fascinating history and a vision for what it's going to take to bring America back to freedom, to freedom to speak, freedom to express faith, freedom to debate about the future of our country.
Floyd, it's an honor to speak with you today.
Thanks for joining me.
Well, Mike, it's great to be with you.
And I salute you for all of the work you've done for free speech.
So we're we're talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart.
But I know it's also near and dear to yours.
Well, all I do is I try to expand the boundaries of free speech.
That's my way of exercising it.
And that's important.
That's an important role because the truth is that one of the speakers, we're here at this lovely Health and Freedom Conference, one of the speakers today has, I think, put it very eloquently.
Free speech wasn't given to us by government.
It was given to us by God.
Yes.
And so we need to understand it's our birthright from our God that we have the right to stand up to government.
We have the right to assemble.
We have the right to peaceably air our grievances.
That's right.
And it's important, if we're going to maintain those freedoms, that we exercise those freedoms.
Yes.
Because things you don't exercise, you lose.
Yes.
Exactly right.
Now, you at the Western Journal, you exercise those freedoms, but also combined with a very high journalistic integrity standard.
You do outstanding reporting.
I'm often assigning my reporters to cover your stories, by the way.
Well, you're very kind to say that.
We work hard.
You know, the Bible teaches that the truth will set you free.
And, you know, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
And those are two things that we take very near and dear to our heart at Western Journal.
And so we want to reflect our Savior by telling the truth and making sure that our stories are accurate.
And, you know, from time to time, people, you know, ask me, well, why hasn't the Western Journal covered this?
Or why hasn't the Western Journal covered that?
And a lot of times, I have to admit, because we don't really have good documentation and backing.
And so you can be guaranteed the minute we can prove it, we'll be saying it.
Yes.
But if we can't prove it, we're not going to say it.
Well, I really respect that.
And I can't tell you how many times that I've seen a story break.
And even though we are more aggressive than the Western Journal ourselves, there are times where I will wait 48 hours because I know something's going to change in this story.
For example, a police shooting of somebody in an inner city somewhere.
You know that something is going to change dramatically in two days.
It's going to alter the story.
And that the first story coming out of CNN is probably a lie.
And it's also important to know...
That conservative media has been repeatedly set up by the left.
Yes.
Okay?
There are active agent provocateurs that feed stories that are false to conservative media in the hope that some excitable enterprising blogger will start saying things that are not true.
Yes.
And so you have to have a level of what I would call discernment.
And so we try to discern...
And figure out the story and the truth before we say it.
And, you know, we're not always first on the scene.
I wish we were.
But there's a cost with being first if you don't check your facts.
There is a cost.
And I really think it's important to our audience that they can always rely on what we say is truthful.
We stand for it.
We stand behind what we report.
And so it's worked for us.
I mean, we've still been under amazing tech suppression.
Yes.
Let's talk about that for a second.
But you've overcome it.
So, yes, you got hammered hard by Facebook and Google algorithm changes and so on.
You've come back from it, but what I want to point out to you is that I dare say a lot of the clicks that you used to get from Facebook and Google were transient clicks anyway.
They weren't the core people that you have now.
Probably true.
They were transient clicks.
And the Lord's been good.
We have a core audience of what we call super users.
Yes.
And they number 800,000.
That's amazing.
And they just read almost everything we write.
So that's very gratifying.
And if you think about it, that's bigger than most newspapers in the country.
Absolutely.
And...
The truth is, God's blessed us with a good audience, and we're very thankful for it.
Well, and you've earned it, and you've paid your dues.
You've been in this business quite a long time, and you didn't just run and bail at the first round of censorship.
You found ways to solve problems.
Well, I know.
It is...
It is, as I was telling you earlier, you know, I came early to this.
2008, I started blogging and then I expanded it and became basically a multi-blog, which meant I was blogging and friends of mine were blogging.
And then about 2012, we started hiring reporters because we just, you know, through my blogging and the blogging of others, we just couldn't generate enough content.
Right.
And there was such demand for it.
So we started hiring reporters.
And after you get reporters, you get editors.
And then we put together a distribution team.
So it just kind of grew.
And now we have over 100 employees at the Western Journal.
And, you know, it's an amazing operation, an amazing blessing.
Well, and I'm glad you used the word blessing because you're a person of faith, and that's also apparent in some of the editorial coverage that Western Journal will approach.
For example, I believe you've covered the issue of aborted human fetal cells in vaccines.
And even though leftists or critics might say, well, that's a myth, but it isn't.
It's actually in the ingredients list and it is newsworthy.
Yes.
And, you know, there are a lot of stories like that that I know are going to get us censored.
But, you know, I've made a commitment that I'm going to cover those stories.
I don't care what the consequences are.
We have a responsibility to the unborn children that are being murdered in this country.
And the unborn children around the world that are being slaughtered.
And we cannot turn a blind eye to that.
Well, amen to that.
I feel exactly the same way.
And I've also, if you don't mind me mentioning some other publishers, LifeSite News, for example.
I've been really impressed with LifeSite News and their courage to tackle that issue, among many others.
So, LifeSite News is one of my favorite go-to websites.
Isn't it?
That's great.
It's one of my favorites, too.
Yeah.
And so they do a great job.
God bless them.
Yes.
And I know they've been under amazing tech suppression.
The truth is that We're called to speak out.
And it's wrong that these tech giants are silencing us and trying to take us out of the public square.
But we, like the town crier, have to continue to be there and occupy the space and call out the truth.
Irrespective of what they do to us.
And it gets difficult because it can be financially challenging.
I mean, when my traffic was taken down a full 90%, because we're an ad-driven, for-profit publication, we're not a 501c3 or a foundation or something like that.
My revenue went down 90%.
And through the grace of God, we were able to continue to move forward despite that.
But it was a very difficult challenge.
Well, yeah, I imagine it was, but your perseverance also speaks to an important factor here, which is that those of us who are heavily censored and unjustly attacked when we report factual information...
We are becoming very resilient and resourceful, whereas a lot of publications on the left, they get a free ride, so it's very easy for them to let everything slip.
A lot of them are losing money.
Most of them are losing money.
And they're used to just getting a free ride on big tech and not having to earn the attention that they get.
So guess who's going to be stronger in the end?
Yeah.
We earn every reader.
You know, one of the things is, as I told you, we had about 40 million followers on Facebook.
That's extraordinary.
And it was a real blessing.
It led to 11 billion times in 2016 we were in the Facebook news feed.
Wow.
And that led to a billion page views in 2016.
But they took that traffic down a full 90 percent.
And...
We fought back by going directly to people.
Now we use everything we can use.
We use email.
We use Telegram.
We use, you name it, MeWe.
Every little social network we can find.
And new ones launching all the time.
And new ones launching all the time.
We're always out there.
And because of that, Our people, actually, are more tech-savvy than some of the people that just rely on Facebook and Google.
I used to get massive amounts of traffic from Google Search, and then I was banned from Google News.
Google said we didn't ban you, but I get virtually no search traffic anymore.
And you can take a headline from Western Journal.
I like to do this.
And you take a headline and you Google that exact headline.
Yeah.
And you'll find other people that are scraping my content that'll come up in the search results, but you won't find Western Journal.
That's right.
And I know that Western Journal is getting many more page views and has much better page rank in the sense of what they originally said Google's search was going to do.
And it's just that they have blocked us at the root.
And we know it's true because the Daily Caller was able to get his fingers on a Google internal document that shows that the Western Journal is blocked manually by the Google search algorithms.
There you go.
And so are we.
Manually blocked.
We're on that same list.
Right.
Now, in which state are you incorporated, by the way?
We are incorporated in Delaware.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
The reason I ask is because I'm wondering about state-level legislation coming that would allow individuals to sue big tech.
Texas has a law coming like that.
Yes.
If, in fact, there becomes a time where I need to move the jurisdiction where we're incorporated, we have a holding company, so it has a number of different Sure.
And so it, you know, for tax and liability reasons, they always recommend Delaware, so we're in Delaware.
Yeah, well, that makes perfect sense.
Now, if I could ask you maybe a controversial kind of question, if you don't mind.
I mean, you're okay?
I'm game.
Okay, all right, awesome.
Well, hopefully you'll like me after you ask it, but it's okay.
A lot of people don't like me, and I'm okay with that.
See, this is about being authentic, right?
But actually, this is not a question about you.
It's a question about, I've seen some conservative, what I would call mainstream conservative media, be unwilling to have the courage to talk about faith or to talk about I mean, the Johnson& Johnson vaccine was halted by the FDA. So in that context, can we not say that there are legitimate questions?
Right?
But I've seen some conservative media very afraid to go down those alleyways.
Why do you think that's happening?
Well, conservative is a big spectrum.
There's a lot of different types of conservatives.
And we have always, at Western Journal, been a social conservative website because our leadership are Christians.
And so, you know, we kind of start everything based on our faith in Jesus Christ.
The fact that, you know, he sent his son to earth, his son Jesus died.
Died for our sins.
And we're so very grateful and thankful for that.
So since it's important in our lives, it's something we want to talk about.
And so, you know, we have prayer every morning at the Western Journal.
Really?
Yes.
Our editor-in-chief, George Upper, leads prayer every morning.
And I wish I could be there every morning.
I can't because I do a lot of traveling.
But you can be guaranteed.
If it's a weekday at the Western Journal's main office, and you come in at 745, You're going to come into a prayer meeting.
And so it's important and significant to us.
That's not true for a lot of, quote, conservative media.
You know, they are started by a lot of different types of people.
Some are libertarians, and a lot of libertarians are also what I'd call libertine, which is socially liberal.
But they're free market, and they would call themselves conservatives.
There's also kind of some hawkish conservatives that are really concerned with defense issues and foreign policy issues that also don't subscribe to the social issues like I do.
And so they would be different parts of the I'm very happy with my voice.
I hope that they can go to sleep at night and sleep well like I do.
Some of them, maybe they can't because there are a lot of issues that they choose not to cover.
But that's really their own editorial decisions.
The only time I really take umbrage with them Is when they attack other conservatives, because we go out of our way to not attack other conservatives, and I've been the target of their slings and arrows on occasion, so I know that it's really low when conservatives attack other conservatives.
Well, and you mentioned you are a social conservative, which I think is the real core of conservatism.
And I think the late Rush Limbaugh always said, if you don't fight the social issues and win conservatism at the social level, you won't be able to win it economically and policy-wise and in other issues.
Because the social issues is where the morality is.
If you don't have morality, if you don't have a system of ethics and a system of getting along in a society, nothing else can possibly work long-term.
It's not sustainable.
The Western worldview, and I'm now talking about Western in the civilization sense, is a Christian worldview.
And if you don't share that worldview, That's right.
And because they saw order in the universe.
Why did they see order?
Because there was an orderly God that ordered the universe.
And so they went out to discover what that order was.
And so science in itself came from this Christian worldview.
And so it's really important.
If you don't share that Christian worldview, it's really kind of hard to be an American.
It's hard to understand our Constitution.
It's hard to understand the Declaration of Independence, which references these core Western civilization values that are essential, in my mind, to freedom.
Absolutely, they are.
Yeah.
Now, and I want to ask you about where Western Journal is going next in order to defend those freedoms.
But first, just to mention, we have a news aggregation site that just spiders headlines and links to sites.
It's called censored.news.
And you may not know this, but Western Journal has been featured on censored.news for quite a while, along with the Epoch Times and LifeSite News and many other sites.
It's about 40-something sites.
And, you know, it's just headlines that click to your articles.
Um...
What we're starting to see now, even at this event, is people like you and I are talking here today.
And this is happening with many other people here, a coalescing of like-minded people who are realizing that we need to communicate with each other in order to defend these freedoms that we hold so dear that also define our nation, our heritage, our culture, and our entire belief system.
Because America hangs by a thread.
And that thread is frayed.
And I've had unbelievable freedom in my lifetime.
I just had my 60th birthday.
I've lived the American dream.
When I was born, my father was pumping gas at a gas station.
He would say he didn't have two pennies to rub together.
I would say he probably didn't have two nickels to rub together.
But the truth is that he was poor.
My family was poor.
And we've lived the American dream.
We've been successful.
We've worked hard.
We've experienced what's great about America because of that.
And the thought that my grandchildren, and I have four grandchildren now, and Gideon, Nehemiah, Thaddeus, and Ezekiel.
Really?
Well, no one's going...
I mean, anybody who knows the Bible knows where this comes from.
But no mistaking that.
Those grandsons of mine, I want them to have that same freedom.
I want them to experience the American dream.
And they won't if we adopt this wrongheaded socialist worldview that...
It's dominating the Democratic Party.
It's dominating the elites.
It's dominating all of the colleges and universities.
That worldview and this whole idea of the Great Reset will destroy the America that we know and love.
But isn't that their plan?
That's their plan.
But my plan is to not let them do it.
Yes, exactly.
And my plan is to fight against it until they put me in a little pine box.
Well, and you're doing a great job fighting against it.
And the thing is, we don't have to accept defeat, right?
Because you're fighting every day.
I'm fighting.
Everybody else here is fighting.
And the truth is more powerful than lies.
God is more powerful than Lucifer.
People are so...
I talk about this a lot with the staff.
I say, you know, people intuitively sense the truth.
They know when they're getting a line of BS. Yeah.
And they sense the truth.
They know the truth.
And so if you give them the truth, we're going to have an audience.
Yeah.
Don't worry about audience.
Worry about the truth.
Yeah.
And you'll get the audience, because people want the truth.
I like that.
That's a great editorial philosophy to follow, yes.
Well, you're doing a fantastic job.
I mean, I'm really honored to meet you.
Well, the feeling is mutual.
I love your video site, and I want to work with you to strengthen these alternative platforms.
I was talking to Mike Lindell.
I want to get behind his new platform as much as I can.
I want to work with you.
There's strength in unity.
And so we've got to come together.
We have at least 74 million, maybe as many as 80 to 100 million Americans that are with us.
And we've just got to get them on our platforms where they can get the truth and freedom and great ideas.
And then we'll take this country back.
Well, I completely agree with you.
Mike Lindell, frankspeech.com, looks like a game changer could make Facebook obsolete over time here.
Facebook's already obsolete.
So one of the things I do, I wrote a book called Big Tech Tyrants.
It came out about two years ago.
And I encourage everybody.
Delete the Facebook app off of your phone.
It is a piece of spyware.
It's listening to you.
It's listening to you.
It's following you.
It's doing everything bad to you.
So get rid of it.
If you have an Android device, get rid of it.
You know, Apple is evil.
Google is twice as evil.
But there are new alternatives coming that are not Google and not Apple, too.
Well, when we get those, I'm first in line.
Let me know when I can buy that phone.
Me too.
So, the...
We've got to de-platform ourselves and get ourselves out of their infrastructure because we are the product.
They're making money off of us.
Every time we turn, go left or right, they're making money off of us.
And that shouldn't be.
And they're doing it.
One of the things that a lot of people don't realize, I'll say in my talks, Facebook tracks everybody.
And they'll say, what do you mean?
If you don't have a Facebook account, Facebook still tracks you!
Yes, through the ad server system and website.
Yes, and they're tracking you all over the internet.
It doesn't matter if you have a Facebook account.
And when people say to me, well, I don't have Facebook, they don't track me.
Yes, Facebook tracks everybody.
And Facebook became really profitable when it started sucking in data about everyone from everywhere and then layering that with the Facebook data.
Yes.
And one of the stories I tell, which just, it really frosts people.
So I'll tell it if I've got a minute here to tell it.
Sure, go ahead.
We had an argument in one of our meetings.
One of the gentlemen that works for me, Ford Jordan, he said to me, came in and said, I can tell when a woman's going to get pregnant based on Facebook data.
And I looked at him and I said, yeah, that's got to be...
You're joshing me.
You're kidding me.
No, he says, I can predict when a woman's going to get pregnant based on Facebook data.
And I said, that can't be.
And guess what happened?
About three months after Ford and I had had that conversation, A report came out that Facebook had been buying all the data from ovulation apps.
Ovulation apps, women were putting in their temperature, and each day they would track their ovulation cycles.
And they didn't realize that a number of those apps, which had the most Private of information about them.
What their temperature was.
When are they ovulating?
When are they having sex with their husbands?
They had no idea Facebook had that data.
And Facebook was serving them ads based on their ovulation cycle.
That's crazy.
But it's true.
Now, Facebook has since said, well, we've decided to no longer buy ovulation data.
But I can tell you, they're buying every bit of data they can find because they want to own your soul.
So get yourself off that Facebook app.
Well, and plus, they can also tell by what sites you're visiting or searching or shopping because statistically, I mean, they're building a pattern for each individual to try to predict what they want to do and then to try to shape their future behavior.
And I don't know if you know this.
To sell that influence.
is trying to go deep into health data.
Yes.
And they're trying to work with the data of major hospital companies.
And don't believe for a second that there's some kind of Chinese wall between your surgery data and the Google databases, because they'll figure out a way around it.
And they'll be marketing to you based on your diabetes, the fact that you just had an appendicitis, you name it.
Whatever condition you have, Google will be marketing using that Facebook data, and it's unbelievably invasive and wrong.
Well, you saw the Pentagon developed a chip that's implantable that scans your blood in real time for so-called COVID particles.
Now, just take this one step further.
What happens when Google owns the microchip company that's scanning your biometrics constantly, monitoring your blood sugar, your pulse, heart rate, body temperature, hormone cycles?
All kinds of things like that, right?
So Google would know more about your blood than you know.
And you start seeing an ad for insulin, you're like, I don't need insulin.
And then a week later, you get diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
No, that is so true.
It really is evil, the amount of data that they collect.
And you're right, as government allows them to expand into these other areas, making chips, They already control so much of our tech infrastructure, it's wrong for anyone to allow them to expand.
Well, I completely agree.
And Floyd, I just want to be respectful of your time and thank you for sitting down with me here.
We've just scratched the surface of some very important topics.
I hope we get a chance to talk again.
And next time we talk, if it's okay with you, let's make a date to talk about, is the government using big tech as a surrogate to carry out types of fascism that the government itself is banned from committing against the people because of the Bill of Rights?
Is it a stand-in?
You want to talk about it later, but I'll give you the answer.
Okay.
Yes.
All right.
Then we'll talk more later in detail about that.
Folks, I hope you enjoyed this interview.
Floyd Brown from Western Journal.
And I hope we get a chance to talk again.
And best to you and your publication.
Thank you for what you're doing.
Thank you, Mike.
And I really appreciate the time together.
I appreciate this as well.
It's wonderful to talk with you.
Keep up the great work.
Thank you.
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