All Episodes
Previous Next
July 11, 2024 - On Brand
02:32:15
OB #64 - UK Election Results & Colonel Douglas MacGregor

We take a look at Russell's response to the UK election results before he interviews Colonel Douglas MacGregor, former Trump administration advisor and CEO of Our Country, Our Choice. Support us on Patreon! - patreon.com/OnBrand Buy a magnet! - buysomegolddagnabbit

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This is propaganda live.
I only suggest how to take him out of the boat.
Extraordinary cultural moment.
Already iconic.
Already iconic.
We love you.
You're welcome here.
Where did this guy come from?
It looks like he's been doing it for ages.
He's very confident.
Plainly, and this is a matter now of fact and record, I'm right wing.
I feel that Christ may have had a better vision.
Is this misinformation or is Vivek Ramaswamy in the lavatory?
That's sort of like a poem.
Is this Eminem?
Man, if we didn't come together in that stream.
I'm assuming it was just the Pete.
Now these are the kind of conversations I think that the legacy media can no longer compete with.
Win win win win win win win This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one, Russell Brand.
I'm Al Worth, and each week I go through an episode of Brand's Show with my co-host, Lauren B. That's me, I'm Lauren B., and I'm the host that has no idea what we're getting into today, but it's usually quite bad.
It's almost invariably bad, which is why we do the good thing before the bad thing.
Lauren, what is your good thing before the bad thing this week?
I'm gonna, there's a little bit of a callback to the human y'all have gotten to know, listening to me talk about my interests and who made me as a person, what made me as a human being.
It's not just Austin Powers, which is, I can't, I'm not gonna sign, I'm not gonna sign off on those, because I haven't seen them in a long time.
But we did revisit recently, Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, and I could probably recite that movie by heart.
It's one of my very favorites, and we watched it while we had, you know, we had a little bit of time to hang out with each other.
Mike and I did over the weekend because the holiday.
And man, it holds up.
It really holds up.
But it also set me up.
I don't think I've ever actually seen it, so clearly this one's got to go on my list, huh?
It's fucking great.
Well, what's funny, it's double-edged sword here because, you know, it came out at this like very, I am the target demo for like, Hulu's been really baiting me specifically with movies and this is one of them.
And I'm like, I'm not going to take the bait all the time, but this one, I was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't have my VHS anymore.
I wanted to, so, and I was like, oh wow, this is literally the like short, this tiny amount of VHS tapes that I had is like what Hulu has been showing me.
It's spooky, but also, I get it, fine.
Awesome.
But this movie made me expect and kind of like accept as normal because of my, you know, like I was in my formative like tween, teen years.
And it's like a story all about women, mostly women talking and it there's something I mean it's cartoonish but it also there's something very resonant with like Women's experiences in the world.
And so that was like, I got set up, dog.
I got set up to fail.
Because it's like, oh yeah, this is what movies are like.
No, they're not.
No, they're not.
And that's not so great.
To be hit in the face with as an adult.
But what's very cool is It kind of taught me how to stand up for myself.
Janine Garofalo.
It's also kind of the side quest of the Janine Garofalo Show, which I very much appreciate as an adult and understand a little more.
She's so funny and so mean.
So there's a lot of like, oh wow, braindead redneck asshole.
I didn't come up with that.
I'm convinced that that's in my head.
But as a really good It's like Cellar Door.
Like, it sounds great.
It feels good to say.
So we've, you know, I haven't had to use those in a long time, but it gave me armor as a teen.
But what I just forgot how much I absolutely loved, like, you know, the climax of the movie, like, Romy and Michelle are weirdos confronting the, like, popular girls who are being Outrageously cruel.
Also, I think as an adult, you can appreciate how good someone is at being a villain.
Christy.
Oh, she's, she's, it feels so good to hate her.
Oh, cause she's just so thoroughly terrible and mean.
And Romy, Mirror Servino says, she just like looks, looks her dead in the eye.
And she's like, you are bad person with an ugly heart.
And I don't give a fuck what you think.
And it's like, Calling someone a bad person with an ugly heart is, like, the most unavoidable... Like, there's no way you can dodge it.
There's, like... Because, also, that's... She is.
Like, she's awful.
Yeah.
Like, teaching me not to say, like, your shoes are ugly, like... Your opinion doesn't matter because you're...
Your behavior speaks to your character, which is poor.
They're like getting to the heart of the matter.
Ugly heart.
You can't come back from that.
It's so good.
No!
And she didn't.
And Alan Cummings in it.
Gene Graffo, Alan Cummings.
All the good old character actors are peppered throughout.
It's a visual feast.
It's great.
Revisiting an oldie but goodie.
And my memory was completely correct, and I had to stop myself from reciting every word next to Mike on the couch.
I'm like, oh, I can't.
Nice!
I'm terrible.
Yeah, so we're going back to light entertainment.
Sounds good.
Sounds very good.
Yeah!
So what's your good thing?
My good thing is, well, no other way to say it, the election results!
The Tories, they're fucking gone after 14 miserable years and about 300 Prime Ministers.
Plus, you know, there have been historic victories for Plaid Cymru, for the Greens, and And something I don't hear many people talking about is this is arguably the largest left-wing majority in parliamentary history, with 500 of the 650 seats going to left-wing parties.
This should theoretically bring about five years where Labour can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want, which could be a good thing.
There are problems with Keir Starmer and the Labour Party in that they're nowhere near as leftist as they were five years ago, and they've purposely ejected leftists from the party for being too far left, and also wanting to implement the findings of the CAS report to prevent trans healthcare for both kids and adults, which is...
A fight I think the entire LGBTQ community in the UK is currently gearing up for, myself very much included.
However, we've moved from one party that wants me dead to another party that wants me dead a little bit less.
So for this week at least, I'm going to celebrate.
It's a victory.
I'm very, very pleased that we've Finally seen some degree of sense, but we'll be getting into it a little bit more detail throughout this episode.
I was cautiously optimistic as well.
I can sign on to this and the the photo that's been going around of Maureen Le Pen crying.
It's still messy and frost.
Yes.
So I'm not trying to get my hopes up.
Yeah.
But it felt a little petty to make that my good thing.
Because also, again, it's asterisk, right?
I think that's good.
The schadenfreude is thick.
It's a terrific picture.
That was nice.
Yeah, it is good.
Especially as we've had, I don't know if you've seen many of them, but all the alt-right pundits in the week preceding it were like, Oh, it's going to be a right wing victory for Le Pen and all this and to see.
Oh, just delightful.
Delightful.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Very, very much enjoyed it.
Intensely jealous.
Everyone also go screw.
I'm so upset.
So what is happening in my country?
But I can also I have a whole other section of my emotional life that I can be really happy.
Everyone that has been able to bask in the good news.
Yes, yeah.
There is something positive to latch onto.
And don't worry, I'm quite sure we're going to have plenty of time for commiserations between now and November.
It's coming.
But for now, we can celebrate at least briefly.
Anyway, we have a show to do, but first we need to thank a new patron.
So, Cuban Outlaw, you are now an awakening wonder.
You are indeed an awakening wonder.
Thank you, Cuban Outlaw!
Thank you so much!
I'm not sure what law you're running from, but if I'm on board...
Many happy returns.
Yes, yes, indeed.
And thank you, thank you very much.
If you do enjoy the show, please leave us a five star review wherever you're listening, and please do share us with your friends, loved ones, or anyone you think might enjoy this project of ours.
It would be hugely appreciated and goes to great lengths in helping us continue.
And if anyone wants to support us financially in what we do, become an Awakening Wander, join the Invisible Hand, or donate on an elevated tier, head to patreon.com slash onbrand.
And you will have our eternal gratitude.
It's this which allows us to be editorially independent and ad-free.
As a patron, you will also get a shout-out on the show and access to our patron-only after-show, Offbrand.
And this week, Lauren led a deep dive into Tax Network USA, one of Russell's shady sponsors, who appear to be a scam.
It does not look good.
Oh, I would really love it.
Listen, and technically, they can say that they're not.
That's the thing.
And I would love to sink my grubby little teeth into more of those.
Man, oh man, there was a lot there.
And it was fun.
Yes.
Fun and cool.
Yeah, really interesting.
Fun and cool, and I want to do that as well.
And I will say, like, I have a certain set of skills that I did not know that I had.
And now I do!
Now I know.
Yes!
Yeah, so we may be feeding Lauren some more sponsors to chew up.
Yes, please!
But yeah, terrific fun, really interesting, and yeah, bleak picture of that company.
So yeah, head to patreon.com slash onbrand to check that out.
And please note that while you can easily listen to our audio version anywhere you can find podcasts, you can also watch us on YouTube.
Or if you're listening to Spotify app, the video will come up there too.
Reminder announcement!
We're doing a monthly livestream this Sunday, July 14th at 2 p.m.
CST, 8 p.m.
GMT.
It'll be up on the YouTube.
Anyone can join, so come and hang out with us, and the recording will be available for patrons after the fact.
And patrons, there should be a post up on the Patreon for any questions or suggestions for things for us to discuss on the day.
Topic suggestions would be so fun.
Yeah, yeah.
More of a discussion.
Oh, I love talking to the computer.
It keeps talking back to us.
Yeah, it's great.
In real time?
Yes.
Please.
Yeah, we'd love to see you all there.
That'd be, that'd be fantastic.
Okay, so, this week, one thing of note happening up top in Russell's sphere is that he's touring his new stand-up show.
That's a new thing.
He's workshopping it at intimate venues, including his very own pub in Piss Hill.
He's also somewhat inexplicably doing a couple of dates in Milwaukee next week.
That?
Yeah!
Cue me trying to figure out which alt-right shithead lives in Milwaukee for him to have on the show or vice versa, you know?
I couldn't figure it out.
There's gonna be a reason that he's there.
We'll see, I guess, because that felt random.
Real random.
Um, anyway, mercifully.
Someone lives in Milwaukee and they're not great, whoever it is.
Yeah, I wonder who's footing the bill.
That's what I'm like, I've still got to follow the money.
Why in the shit is he in Milwaukee?
Yeah, there's a reason.
There's a reason.
Man, Summerfest is great.
Like, I'm not mad, but also I don't know that I would be a famous movie person flying from the UK to go to Summerfest is what I'm saying.
Yeah, yeah, especially not this one.
So yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm looking forward to finding out anyway.
As for today's show, mercifully, we are back to having a guest today.
But there is some stuff to tackle before he gets to the interview, so let's let Russell introduce the show.
Awakening Wonders, thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
You don't need me to tell you that John Baudrillard wrote them free essays, there will not be a Gulf War, there was not a Gulf War, the Gulf War did not happen.
You remember anyway that he said that in this age it seems that the reporting on phenomena is so diverse and in a sense cliched That in the end, we don't have any connection to the events themselves, reporting on a war so thorough, so immersive, yet presented to us as entertainment, to the degree where we can't really connect ourselves to the tragedy any longer.
And perhaps that's gotten even worse with social media, where one minute you're looking at a gruelling and ghoulish image of a Dead child in rubble.
And then it's like an advert for the betting shop or some sort of gambling opportunity or a nutrition drink.
How are we supposed to take life seriously?
Even general elections or electoral cycles are presented to you like entertainment.
And we had an election in our country last night.
So today we'll be talking about the election.
Then we'll be talking about war and the business of war with Colonel Douglas MacGregor a little later.
Yeah, um, so, I mean, Russell, you're usually the one selling the nutrition drinks, so be quiet.
Um, but also, uh, yeah, that is correct.
The interview we'll be looking at in just a bit is with Colonel Douglas McGregor.
You ever heard of this guy?
No, no, but he's presented in a way that like, well, there's another Colonel Douglas, so he must be important.
Yeah, that's I mean, I can tell Russell's you just take life seriously and understand that the apps are meant to sell ads.
That's the purpose of the app.
Every ad should remind you.
That's why your eyeballs are there.
Yeah, pretty much.
And people can hold several ideas in their head at one time.
So that's how.
Are we done?
Bye!
Okay, cool.
Yeah, yeah.
I'll introduce Colonel Douglas MacGregor when we get to it.
In the meantime, yeah, we'll be taking a little look at Russell's immediate response to the election results, given that this is from Friday's show, so the day after the election was held.
Though the interview he's doing, I think, was up on Locals the week before, so that'll be a little bit of a time travel.
I will say it's very cute because like listening to all the reporting since y'all you keep your polls open till 10.
Yes.
Americans, did you hear me?
Their polls stay open till 10pm.
Yeah, so there's plenty of time off to work, you know?
That also means everybody has to stay up really late to do the reporting.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Hearing everyone like exhausted and I was like, well, we're going to talk about this.
It was very sweet.
There's nothing like seeing Jeremy Vine at 4am just like bedraggled trying to make his way through it.
Yeah, I did not stay up for this one.
I have on previous ones, but yeah, the coverage starts at 10pm and ends at like 6 in the morning.
I'm like, nah, I'm not sticking around.
Yeah, no, I'll get a synopsis.
Yeah, exactly.
I'll wait.
But everybody's still real worn out.
I love that.
It was very fun to listen.
It seems like a colloquial experience that's common that I got a window into and I enjoyed that.
It was very charming.
Just hearing everybody struggle and be a little less professional.
Yep, yeah, yeah, it's fun.
It's fun.
Also, the Jean Baudrillard essays that Russell is talking about, they aren't so much discussing wars being presented as entertainment, but actually arguing that the Gulf War was in fact not a war at all, and was actually a series of atrocities successfully marketed as a war to the public.
Of course, if Russell wanted to use the actual point of the essay in the case of the Ukraine war, he'd have to be using it against Russia, which is never going to happen.
Also, I'm not terribly convinced of his general reading comprehension skills, so there is that.
Anyway, let's have our first election reaction clip.
I mean does this seem to you a reasonable reaction even to a landslide election?
Meaning that Labour, which is our version of the Democrats, has a massive majority in Parliament,
which is our version of Congress, and here's our version of the news media doing their version of
what sounds like a kind of orgasm.
Oh my god.
Won't make that much difference I don't imagine.
Perhaps it's all just playing out like a TV show.
Maybe even my sceptical reaction towards another centrist, globalist, authoritarian being elected is part of the general televisual or media, at least, spectacle.
Okay, okay, listen.
That's insane.
Al did not tell me that this was the clip.
I had no idea that it would be two different takes on the actual news reporter's reaction of relief and exhaustion.
Yes.
What in the shit?
So for those listening, the footage there was from Sky News and it showed the first exit poll done on the day of the UK election which showed a Labour landslide coming true.
Hence the UGH!
sounds.
Yeah, okay.
A little bit much, but you know.
Those are just for orgasms.
Women make those noises when they're tired sometimes.
Tired?
Just rustle?
Relieved?
Yeah, yeah.
Usually it's tired and relieved.
I sounded tired and relieved.
Tired and relieved.
I'm not convinced he's used to hearing those sounds in general, but there we are.
So that was low.
I should apologize.
If he hears exhaustion, he doesn't register it as his problem.
Yeah, right.
Anyway, his overall message here is, ah, it's all pointless.
Don't bother.
Don't vote.
Let me disenfranchise you from the entire system.
It's not going to make a difference.
Instead, come over to the Locals Channel.
Give me money and we can whine together about all politicians being the same, despite that very obviously not being the case in British politics specifically.
But, hey, they're all the same.
Okay.
Okay.
Oh, dear.
Now, Russell next raises a point that's been doing the rounds among the right wing this time around, and it's one I largely agree with.
Here's the results.
Look, Labour won loads and loads of seats, Conservatives lost loads and loads of seats, and a smattering of other parties won seats, including Nigel Farage's Reform Party, which in a sense still means that Nigel Farage will sort of perhaps become The most vocal opponent of the government, or perhaps he will just be a kind of dissenting voice within the parliamentary system.
This is a post that you might find interesting from Mahid Nawaz.
He says, the UK electoral system is not fit for purpose.
Reform, that's Nigel Farage's party, got four million votes and only four seats.
The Lib Dems, that's a kind of centrist party, Got 3.4 million votes and 69 seats.
Labour won two-thirds of the seats with only one-third of the national vote.
So, in a way, if we had proportional representation, if each vote meant something, then you'd probably have a very different parliamentary system.
Oh yes indeed we would.
Proportional representation is the gong I've been banging since at least 2015 and it's been a lot of fun seeing the right wing picking up the baton in the wake of their many many losses because obviously the system of proportional representation tends to actually you know improve their figures whereas first past the post it kind of just benefits whoever's in power.
Yeah, bear in mind also, you know, these are the same people who after the Brexit vote insisted it was the will of the people and anyone who disagreed should shut the fuck up and go away.
They're now talking about proportional representation because they don't like the results.
Funny.
It's funny how that works.
It's fun.
Yeah, and also U.S.
listeners, I remind you, First Past Post is basically winner take all.
That's our sport analogy version of it.
Pretty much.
I guess that applies in other stuff too.
It's not just sport.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I guess that's incorrect.
So the part of this tweet which Russell didn't read is that in 2010 David Cameron, Lord Pigfucker himself, got a higher share of the vote than Labour did yesterday.
Well, last week.
Yet there was a hung parliament in 2010.
This is true.
What's even more interesting is that this year Keir Starmer and Labour won 34% of the vote share nationally, gaining nine and a half million votes.
Landslide victory.
And yet in 2019, when Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party lost to Boris Johnson, they had 40% of the national vote share and nearly 13 million votes, and that was considered a disaster.
I imagine some of our listeners are probably thinking, That doesn't seem quite fair, does it?
And no, no it does not.
Labour have been elected this time around not through the strength of their platform, but through the weakness of the Conservatives.
Had proportional representation been a factor in both elections, things would have looked a little different.
So this time around, according to the Electoral Reform Society, under a system of proportional representation, Labour would have won 236 seats instead of the 411 that they got.
Crucially, not an outright majority in Parliament there.
The Lib Dems would have been up 5, going from 72 to 77, so they're slightly left of the Labour Party.
And the Green Party would go from 4 seats to 42 seats in Parliament, based on their national vote share.
So they should be doing way better.
The SNP would go from 9 to 18 seats.
Plaid Cymru would stay the same.
Come on, we can do better.
The Conservatives would go from 121 seats to 120.
We're going to vote Labour until, like, two weeks.
Come on.
Only as a tactical vote.
If I had that to vote for, I'd be really excited.
No, no, no.
I am excited.
We should be doing better.
We're better.
And Nigel Farage's Reform Party, under a system of proportional representation, would go from five seats to 94 seats, based on them getting 14% of the vote nationally.
So with that changed makeup of Parliament, under a system of PR, the right wing of the Parliament would be made up of 251 Conservative and Reform MPs, give or take about six from the DUP in Northern Ireland, Right, and then there would probably be a left-wing coalition government formed by Labour, the Lib Dems and the Green Party to get above the threshold of 325 seats.
Not only would this be substantially more democratic, with both Green and Reform votes being properly represented in Parliament as the voters deserve, but we could have gotten an actual left-wing
government being dragged leftwards by the Greens and to a degree the Lib Dems. Like
yeah, it'd be better for Nigel Farage for sure, but in other ways also better for the country
potentially. Yeah.
Now, those stats are bullshit and I'll tell you why.
You can't prove a negative, right?
We have no way of knowing how many more voters would be engaged, how different the landscape would be.
I'm not saying they're actually bullshit.
I was being, you know, I was being a grown up.
But the change in how the How it would affect the electorate and how it would affect campaigning.
Both.
Policy, everything.
It's literally a parallel world we don't live in, so there's no way of knowing how proportional representation would actually change the political structure.
We just fundamentally know it would be more fair.
Yeah, yeah.
That's it.
That's a completely valid point, absolutely.
And obviously everyone campaigning, more or less, was campaigning based on the first-past-the-post system and was very much specifically focusing in little areas.
That's very much what Ply did, for instance.
And so yeah, if they were campaigning on a national scale, that could go very differently for sure.
But the wisdom suggests that a lot more would go to kind of smaller parties, currently smaller parties at the very least, which, yeah, really, really interesting.
And yeah, more Democrats.
But no, your point is absolutely correct.
Yeah.
Our elections come down to like 100,000 votes in states I've never lived in.
It comes down to counties.
Yeah.
And PBS has been warning me since the 2000 election of the capabilities of, I would say, both Republicans and Democrats.
But one camp seems to utilize this information a lot more effectively than the other.
about how gerrymandering has so grossly impacted voter disenfranchisement across the country.
Like it shouldn't come down to a couple of counties, but how that changes the behavior
of politics entirely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because if it just comes down to those,
well those are the ones you need to worry about and everyone else can kind of fuck off.
Yeah, it gets very annoying and the first part of the post system, one of the main criticisms is that it actively disenfranchises a lot of people.
It does.
And, yeah, actively promotes apathy.
The Electoral College, again.
Yes, translating for the United States, Electoral College.
Yes, yes, yes. Also terrible. Nightmare.
Also terrible. I've seen a lot of concerned takes about Nigel Farage doing so well, by the way.
But to assuage some fears, Reform got four million votes nationally,
which is the same amount that UKIP, Farage's former party, got in 2015.
So it's about the same number as 10 years ago, and these people have been here the entire time, they've just not been represented in our parliament.
I wouldn't say there have been gains for Farage in terms of supporters or voter numbers, but he's just gotten better at playing the game in a first-past-the-post system, so they have five MPs this time around instead of just one.
And he would not be able to weaponize that particular aspect of his campaign against First Past the Post, right?
Like, that's a thing he would not be able to bitch about.
And that might be a very, like, it sounds like, at least, you know, we watched the, in the opera, we watched the debate, like, that's a big winner, big talking point.
And from what I heard about, like, Kind of unhinged, um, man on the street interviews that I got through, you know, through news coverage.
It's like, oh, people say like that was really that was a big topic on their minds and you would not have that as like a, you know, they're the fewer like wedge issues or like culture war issues that you give people to manipulate.
their kind of constituency, you know, you take that kind of power away by like adding, like,
plussing up the democracy. Yeah. Then you're going to have less, you know, less, less fodder for
reactionaries. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think it should be the way forward all around. But hey,
maybe, maybe we'll get there. Maybe we'll get there.
Anyway, from here Russell gets a little bit introspective about how his positions have changed over the last decade.
It'll be an interesting few years.
Last night I was trying to find in myself a kind of open-heartedness, a kind of good faith.
That's what I'm still trying to find in myself.
Certainly I can find a point in myself where it's none of my business, you know, no one really cares, do they? Is there anyone other than that person who
have literally climaxed? Does anyone believe this is meaningfully going to impact their
lives? Now, sometimes, previously at least, when I was involved in more partisan and
intricate conversations around politics, people would say stuff like, you know, the gap between the
two parties might only be small, but millions of people die in that gap.
You know, there'll be a 5% increase in this type of disability benefit or this party pledges that they will reform this tax in this manner.
But what's true?
Is it that we're facing some massive crisis?
And both sides of the aisle present new arguments of that nature.
If it's the left, they'll say in the form of climate crisis.
If it's the right, they'll say in the form of perhaps these escalating wars.
And so how can incremental responses be appropriate to what are meant to be catastrophic events?
It just doesn't really make sense.
So don't do anything.
Don't vote.
Don't engage with the system at all.
Let those millions of people die in that gap that he just mentioned.
Fantastic.
Thank you, Russell.
I would also like to point out that neither Ukraine nor Gaza played a pivotal role in this UK election, and the crisis the right-wing like to harp on about quite a lot more is migration.
That's their whole thing.
I mean, it's implied, it's connected, whatever, but I heard analysis that kind of said that George Galloway was Riding the wave of, you know, like advocating for Gaza and that did not work out in his favor.
So I think that as far as like, yeah, you can't just run on that single issue.
Yeah, pretty much.
And have it work.
Pretty much.
I will also say that what he said, yes, your conversations are certainly less intricate than they used to be, Russell.
That's, I agree completely.
Yeah, yeah, you used to talk about policies.
That used to be a thing ten years ago.
What happened?
Yeah, at least you were vibing on policies, not vibing for vibe's sake.
Yeah, there was something to discuss other than just question Mark Proffitt.
And also, you know, again, I have problems with the current iteration of the Labour Party, but some of their policies will make actual, real, meaningful change to this country for the better if carried out.
Particularly the working class of this country will be better off under Labour compared to the Tories, provided they follow through.
Um, of course, that's not the class that Russell is in.
You know, he's in the 0.01% of the richest people on the planet, so the only thing he's looking at is potentially paying more in taxes.
And suddenly his hatred of Keir Starmer appears to take on a more cynical, self-serving tone.
Um, particularly compared with his incredible lack of attacking the Tories over the last couple of years, who, um, have only given him tax breaks.
Like, ha!
That's, that's interesting.
That's, yeah.
Yeah, and I heard a statistic, and I mean, correct me, I mean, anyway, I heard this from, again, from reporting that I was following.
It's very interesting.
Of the last hundred years, like of the last century, 70 of those 100 conservatives have been in power in the UK.
That is nothing to be sneezed at.
You know what I mean?
And again, I'm not saying a party, but conservatives.
Interchangeable, right?
In a way that isn't necessarily interchangeable.
It's not exactly interchangeable for us, or it's different.
And because we have to pack all these different actual constituencies kind of under umbrellas of Dem and Republican, right?
Yes.
That doesn't sound like a I don't think that you can apply science just like how I don't think you can apply science to compare apples to apples when it comes to liberal versus conservative control when it's 70-30.
And I think that's like, these are all lenses we need to be looking through to judge the quality of reporting from Russell or from The Guardian, right?
And it's a similar point that's being made about the elections here is like, there's an argument, which is a little, okay, I'm going to say it.
Don't laugh.
Um, that Biden is the only person that can beat Trump because he did it already.
We've only had a smatter... I know, yep, yep, the face that you're making is correct.
Okay, okay.
Well, let's, let's, let's, let's, I'm gonna make a specific complaint that, um, and it's not my complaint, I'm repeating it over many times, um, we do, finally, and I've never, any previous, um, not never, I've never, um, heard a, a resounding, Call.
For this.
Very real statistical reality.
We have had a smattering of presidential elections in 200 plus years.
We cannot apply.
We can't say, well, that worked last time, so this is going to work this time.
Maybe in local elections, maybe in the midterms and a little bit more.
We have more of those.
We're electing one president in a heavily weighted contest with lots of bias and lots of problems.
Far too many variables to make a conclusion that is statistically sound.
Yeah, it's almost like politics, much like the rest of life, can be quite fluid, you know?
Things change, things develop.
Maybe the things that worked last time won't work this time because of X reason.
Sure.
Yeah.
So that, and I think that using that kind of, I don't know, I think that there's a lot of like shouting down or Poo-pooing that is kind of getting more pushback than I've ever heard in my life from people that are like, wait, you're trying to say that, like, you're trying to use this kind of like statistical justification of like, oh, he's the guy that did it last time, so you can do it this time.
Like, I think COVID.
Yes!
I think COVID decided the presidency and we don't have that this time.
So what do you think?
It's like, they're also old and things are so much like, it's this denial of all these
other elements that are involved.
And I mean, also, obviously, someone saying that, like, you're kind of making an argument
Like you want to, you're saying something over simple to stop a conversation and that's not pretty much positive.
Like you're not going to get anything good out of that in the long run.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Same thing.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
These elections are happening every five years.
It's very hard to like, you know, all the analysis in the world, like is only going to get you so far.
Yeah.
And just this, this, oh, they're all the same.
I'm like, No, they're not.
And also, you know, I think there is a problem where- Ours are all the same!
No!
I have witnessed!
I am here, I am telling you!
Yeah, you have that problem much more than we do.
But also, I think after 14 years of Tory rule, you know, and not that much happening the couple of years before that, to be honest, it feels difficult to even imagine what change looks like that isn't for the worse, you know?
70-30.
Yeah, yeah.
I think we've kind of had a lot of the hope beaten out of us.
For the last couple of decades.
And I don't know, it's going to be strange kind of maybe feeling a bit of that, maybe.
The entire UK right now is very cynical.
Everyone is very, very cynical about the new Labour government because we've been burned.
But hey, let's Open hearts, as Russell said, open hearts, everyone!
That's the other thing about- I do want to say something about open hearts, because like, I, you know, and actually, like, you know, we talked to Dan a little bit after the Knowledge Fight episode about this, and like, I...
I don't just say shit to say shit.
I do genuinely have a lot of like empathy and I care a lot about the people that are being victimized by this specific type of rhetoric.
And you know, I've prayed on it.
I've meditated on it.
I thought about it a lot.
I don't think that's going to change.
It hasn't changed yet.
And I've been engaged in this kind of like, You know, I've been politically engaged for a very long time, and I still care about people that are being harmed.
And I think that that's, I think that's the correct, like, what he's saying, the words coming out of his mouth, Are again in these little bites.
Yes, you are less intricate.
Yes, compassion is good in these little sound bites.
Yeah, that's how we should be.
And the way that like that's not what you're doing, Russell.
That's not what you're doing.
No, no, it is not.
You're not being fair.
You're not being compassionate.
You're being very like maybe Joe Biden is in such a way that he knows it's icky.
To, like, come for this person who's obviously sick and being paraded around?
I don't know.
It's been long enough.
He's been getting the jabs back in this last week.
Well, there we go.
Okay.
Yeah, that went out the window.
That lasted maybe a day.
Report from the trenches.
Appreciate it.
Okay.
Oh, so I was writer.
Good.
Okay.
He's nothing but consistent.
Anyway, Russell's about to spend a good chunk of time attacking Keir Starmer because, of course, he doesn't want to pay more in taxes.
So let's have a little look at a supercut that Russell and his team made.
This, this is what Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the UK, stands for.
I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who's a friend as well as a colleague.
You wouldn't call Jeremy Corbyn a friend?
No.
We have to make the case for freedom of movement.
We don't want open borders.
Freedom of movement has gone and it's not coming back.
Cutting off power, cutting off water.
I think that Israel does have that right.
I was not saying that Israel had the right to cut off water, food, fuel or medicine.
Wounded by the media.
The sun in this city.
A hurt for this city.
And I certainly won't be giving interviews to the sun during the course of this campaign.
Would you write for them again, Sir Keir?
I would do, yeah.
Can you guarantee that under your leadership, the 2019 Labour commitments to nationalise water, energy, rail, the Royal Mail, they'll all be in Labour's next election manifesto?
I've made that commitment.
Will you nationalise the big six energy companies, yes or no?
No.
No, you will not?
The Home Secretary was the wrong decision and I think it was a rushed decision.
He must be a pretty accomplished individual.
He's achieved loads of things in his life and in a way that montage isn't An indictment of Keir Starmer as an individual, or at least if it is, that's not what's primarily interesting about it.
It shows us, I suppose, that we live in systems now that demand political figures that will just parrot the talking points that are required of them.
What that indicates is not a moral failing of Keir Starmer, but a deeper truth, the truth that real power is behind the facade of the political processes in which we participate.
The reason I'm saying that is because Otherwise, Keir Starmer would have an opinion and he would know what his opinion was because it's his opinion.
He would have a policy and he'd know what his policy was because the policy would make sense because it would be built on the basis of virtue or pragmatism, wouldn't it?
So he wouldn't just say, like, I'll never speak to the Sun newspaper.
I write for the Sun newspaper.
Israel shouldn't have done this.
They had every right to do that.
You would have a position.
Of course, all of us, including myself, continually grow and evolve.
But what we don't all do, I don't think, is alter our perspectives entirely on the basis of a pressing ulterior force that is the true governing power.
I mean, I mean.
One.
Russell, do you want one of those made of you?
Are we going to go tit for tat here?
Second.
Now, and the Daily Show has been doing this for a very long time.
If you want to be honest about what he's trying to like, he's trying to kind of mealy mouth around and say like, oh, people can change.
Well, the Daily Show puts the date.
Yeah!
Not a single date.
one of their clips. And if you're listening, there was no date, there was no clips and no date on the clips. And the
video quality varied wildly, which would lead me to believe that
some of those clips, the time expanse was very far apart.
And I'm not saying that like, I don't know, uh, I
And also some of them were cut very closely, we'll say.
Very, very closely, one might say.
Yes, yes.
Just to be skeptical.
Just to bring my skeptical analysis, right?
I think you can guess what's happened here.
So we're going to tackle them in order, because I've hunted each one of these down So the first clip of Starmer calling Jeremy Corbyn a friend and colleague was from 2020 during the Labour Leadership Contest after Corbyn had just stepped down.
The clip of Starmer then saying he wouldn't call Jeremy Corbyn a friend is from this year.
No, not in the sense that we went to visit each other or anything like that.
I worked with him as a colleague.
As I say, I haven't spoken to him now for two and a half years."
Um, which that is so okay.
I heard that and I was like, that no was like so fast and it hurt.
It occurred to me.
This is definitely a Midwestern thing and I'm not really sure if there's, you know, it's, I feel like it's because of my, you know, my sphere, it's, it's called the Midwestern thing, but it might be more common than this is that if you wanted to create a super cut of any of us having the opposite opinion, You fucking absolutely could, because we say, no, yeah, all the time.
And we say, yeah, no, all the time.
And only the second one counts.
Right.
Yeah.
In Starmer's case, I think it tracks, because he never wanted Corbyn to be leader of the Labour Party and voted against him in 2015 and 2016.
Um, but essentially in that first clip, uh, he was being nice and also trying to win leadership.
So didn't want to piss off the lefties of the party who liked Corbyn.
Um, that's, that's all that was.
Not talking to him in two and a half years though, I mean, eugh.
If you're, if you're, if you're the leader of the party and that's the formal, that's oof, oof.
Um, anyway.
I wouldn't ask if they were friends.
No, no.
That's a fucking weird question.
Yeah.
They're colleagues.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it's because he called him his friend in that campaign.
I think that was the reason that kept coming up.
Oh, but that's also like a colloquialism.
Yeah, I mean, come on, it's a nice thing to say, isn't it, right?
We're British, we're all about nice things to say.
Next is freedom of movement, with that first clip there being from 2020, before the Brexit deal was finalised, and Keir Starmer essentially saying, hey, we should keep this freedom of movement thing, because it's pretty cool.
Freedom of movement being the right to travel between, live and work in EU countries, of course, right, for everyone.
Within the EU, that's part of the deal.
And then the second clip is from 2022, after the Brexit deal had already been done, at which point it takes pretty enormous political and legislative capital to try and bring freedom of movement back.
It would require, well, one might say an enormous majority in Parliament.
But whether he believes in it or not now, the judgment has been that it's not politically expedient to pursue that at present.
I would argue at the moment he can kind of do whatever he wants, so I mean, maybe think about it.
It was wild to hear that he's like, no, we can't change Brexit.
I've heard a lot of arguments And that you can.
You definitely can.
And it's kind of a real good idea.
Maybe don't pander to the vehement xenophobic bigots.
Just a thought.
Yeah, I think there's a degree of that.
And I think there's also a degree of it being such a divisive topic, just kind of not wanting to touch it.
You know, just be like, I'm leaving that the fuck alone.
And I get it, but I'd prefer it if you picked that up and, you know, Made things better.
Because that's an option.
Yeah.
In my defense of any kind of political speech, like any politician saying anything, my defense is very limited.
Because, yeah, they lie.
Like, they lie all the time.
Yeah, they mealy mouth their way around things.
Like, yeah.
And we shouldn't accept it.
No!
Right?
Like, we shouldn't accept it.
We should hold them to the standard that they established for themselves.
Yeah, yeah.
Not even ours.
Just theirs.
Speaking of which, Israel cutting off water and power.
So an important thing to note in that first clip is that that interview in that first one was on the 11th of October 2023.
So the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack.
And you know, things were in a bit of a different place then.
But the full quote still doesn't come off as great.
The full question asked was, We're going to have a lot of those, aren't we?
Yes, yes we are, yes we are.
A siege is appropriate, cutting off power, cutting off water, Sir Keir.
And Starmer's full response was, I think that Israel does have that right.
It is an ongoing situation.
Obviously, everything should be done within international law, but I don't want to step away from core principles that Israel has a right to defend itself.
Now, given Keir Starmer's legal background, one could assume he probably knows that cutting off water and power in that situation is against international law.
But regardless, doesn't come off as great.
And then in that second clip, he clarified his position as, I agree with Israel, just not the illegal bits like the cutting off food, fuel, water or medicine.
And again, that's back in October 2023, right?
How do you know?
Because his legal analysis could just as easily be like, well, technically, Included in the right to defend themselves, they could rationalize or the argument could be made that, yeah, they are allowed because it could be considered, right?
A legal mind and legal analysis has no bearing on what's right or wrong.
And then also sharing his position, I think, is he's going to look a lot better than some people.
Indeed.
Not that it's hard.
In present day, this last week, Starmer has been talking to Netanyahu already, trying to achieve a ceasefire, and the Labour government are expected to drop a bid filed by Rishi Sunak's former government to delay the ICC in reaching a decision on whether to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.
the Tories were trying to prevent it and slow it down and Labour are just like,
"Yeah, let's let that happen and let Netanyahu be officially declared a war criminal because that
seems to be what's going to happen." - You'd think Russell would include that,
you know? - You'd think, you'd think.
Oh hey, here's the stuff he's actually done.
In fairness, this was on the Friday.
They hadn't done it yet, to be fair.
Because this was the Friday immediately after the election.
But still, still.
I don't know that it would be included.
I still don't think.
No, no, I agree with you.
But I appreciate the delineation, absolutely.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Uh, and then Keir Starmer and The Sun newspaper, um, again in his- in his 2020 leadership campaign.
Again, this is where it's all coming from.
Um, he said he wouldn't be interviewing with The Sun newspaper, which is loathed in the Northwest and around Liverpool specifically.
Football hooligans were blamed by The Sun, etc.
victims of the Hillsborough disaster, which was a fatal crowd crush at a football match in 1989, during which 97
people were killed and 766 were injured because of police negligence.
Football hooligans were blamed by the Sun, etc. Liverpool fans
particularly.
I bless that Liverpoolian man.
I could not hear.
I could not understand a word.
Very thick accent.
Very thick accent.
I lived around there a time and that one was thick even for me.
I appreciate the breakdown.
But Starmer said he wouldn't do interviews with The Sun, and he didn't during that campaign.
He did later write an opinion piece in The Sun in 2021, trying to draw attention to Tory government failures, you know, when he was already Labour leader, etc.
And the political reality is, like it or not, The Sun is an enormous Rupert Murdoch paper and has huge influence and sway over the working class in the United Kingdom.
So, you know, Stammer stuck to his word in not talking to The Sun during his leadership contest in 2020, but after that the guy had a country to try and get onside, and that's one of the ways to do it.
It sucks.
Yeah, it sounds like he did what he said.
Yeah, yeah.
Because it was... I would assume it was implied for that campaign.
Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But then again, if you want a nitpick about it... It's the joy of Supercuts.
And the last one, finally one that is more or less accurate, Keir Starmer said to Andrew Neil in his 2020 leadership campaign that nationalizing the energy companies, the rail and the Royal Mail, would be in his 2024 manifesto, as it was in Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 manifesto.
All policies I'm 1000% on board with, by the way.
Come 2024, and all of those notions have been dropped.
Labour do intend to set up a nationalised energy company to compete with big energy companies, which is definitely something.
But nowhere near the commitments he suggested he would make back in 2020.
But here we are.
Also, that's a thing to be reminded of.
Yes, that is handy.
Also, I would consider, given that Jeremy Corbyn got more votes back in 2019, maybe those policies were more popular than the current day ones.
Just a thought.
Anyway, we'll move on.
Next, Russell muses on another of Keir Starmer's gaffes before taking a little bit of a left turn.
What does it mean to be working class?
What does it mean?
Tell us, Prime Minister!
Working class is families that, you know, work for their living, earn their money through... Work for their living, they earn their money, like Dolly Parton in 9 to 5.
Like, look at his eyes while they're talking.
Like, look and see what's in there.
Oh look, he's really thinking.
How can you get to this position where you're at this point, you know, on the precipice of becoming Prime Minister?
This was, I don't know when this was, a year ago, six months, who knows?
But he doesn't look very certain about the world, does he?
Whatever he has gleaned by passing through academia and becoming a lawyer and heading up the CPS and becoming an MP and the leader of the Labour Party and now the Prime Minister of a country...
Has it worked?
In the same way as has it worked the remedies that you're applying in your own life for your own pursuits?
Is their system working even for them?
Is globalism working even for them?
Is it working for, I don't know, Klaus Schwab or Albert Baller or Bill Gates or George Soros?
Unless they do have some sort of demonic occultist worship of I don't see how it can be of any real benefit.
You look into their faces, they're just like us.
People that are going to expire, that only have a chance of living in eternity if they're willing to make certain personal changes.
What's it all been for?
We are in full Alex Jones territory here.
Globalism doesn't make sense unless the globalists do have demonic occultist worship of Moloch-style deities in exchange for eternal life.
That's what he's saying here.
He lost me up top.
He lost me up top and then we went on an adventure.
How dare a man think carefully before he speak, Russell?
I know that it's foreign for you to witness, certainly for you to participate in, but some people want to say things intentionally.
Coming for somebody for that is crazy.
But then he Got way crazier.
Yeah.
It's almost impressive.
It's kind of nuts.
Like, he doesn't usually dive into that kind of thing unprompted, and this was just kind of out of the blue.
And I'm quietly wondering whether we may be seeing yet more of a shift to Jonesian philosophies from Russell, but it's something I'll be keeping an eye on.
Well, he's an amalgamation monster, so that makes sense.
He's just absorbing Picking up the bits he likes.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's just, he's, he's the blob.
So it makes sense.
Oh, not that blob!
Not that blob!
The movie one!
Mike Benz is going to come for us.
Yeah.
And that clip, that's from that October 2023 interview and features Keir Starmer, you know, fussing over what working class means.
It's very frustrating, the full clip, with him ultimately completely failing to point out that it's an economic class first and foremost.
Quite infuriating, but nonetheless.
He's trying to push values forward rather than, like, there's mostly people who earn below this, because that's kind of how that works.
But, eh, okay, fine.
Now, Russell spent a good chunk of time shitting on Keir Starmer and the left, so when it comes to him covering Farage, he's gonna do the same thing, right?
He's outside the parameters of left and right, as he's fond of saying at the moment.
Let's take a look!
Nigel Farage won his seat, even though reform, as we saw earlier, didn't win as many seats as was anticipated or was possible or plausible or even fair, actually, given that they won or got four million votes.
They got four million.
They got four seats.
One of them was Nigel Farage's.
Here's Nigel Farage sort of enjoying himself and making you realise that Britain doesn't do cool that well.
With his champagne and everything.
Amazing.
Just amazing.
I think it's adorable how bad at cool they are.
Yes!
With his champagne and everything. Amazing.
[laughter]
I think it's adorable how bad the cool- like how bad at cool they are.
Yes!
It's adorable.
Yeah, yeah, um, yeah.
Amazing that Nigel Farage with his champagne glass.
Not cool, but he is amazing.
And you know what?
Maybe I'm not being generous here.
That was a pretty soft clip.
He's got another one here.
Maybe he comes for Farage elsewhere.
Let's have a look.
Also, Nigel Farage, I suppose he's somewhat styled after Donald Trump.
I said to you before, he's the closest Britain has to a Donald Trump figure.
Although, of course, Donald Trump is rather unique.
But you know how people like Donald Trump's mad, giddying, diagonal, zigzag signature?
Well, Nigel Farage's signature was used somewhat in his campaigns.
But it looks like he's When approaching the end of his name about to draw a penis and I don't know if it's something they should be branding around.
This is a revolt against the political establishment.
So on July the 4th, do different.
Vote for real change.
Vote for a voice in Parliament that will give real opposition.
I mean, that does look like a penis.
For those listening, the F in Farage's signature looks a lot like a penis, and for some reason the camera lingers on it for quite some time.
It's a little bit alarming.
Fs don't go that direction.
No, no, this has got to be intentional, surely.
I've made bills on hand lettering, okay?
I literally am an expert at this thing.
I've paid rent many times over by having to draw words in any number of forms.
That ain't an F, son.
That's not an F. It's the wrong direction, and whatever.
I just love that he stops writing there, like the camera just holds on the F for quite some time.
You know, you get Nigel F, and then it just stops.
I'm like, oh, why are we focused?
Why?
It's very rockety.
It's more rockety than penisy, in my opinion.
Okay, okay.
But, that being said, the shapes are so similar.
I was gonna say, rocket's a little phallic.
Zan, especially a child is drawing of a rocket.
We know what that can be mistaken for.
So I'm trying to temper the kind of like really bat shit.
Like, like, like Russell finding a reason to make this happen.
Also, it looks like it doesn't look like a signature.
It looks like if you ever try to draw on Instagram, like Yes, yeah, it looks like you're drawing with your finger.
It's that big fat, yeah, it's the big fat, like, lines.
That's probably what it was, let's be honest, that's probably how they did it.
Are not flattering.
It doesn't make you... That's an e-signature, that's what that is.
Yeah, e-signatures are finer!
Like, that's the thing, it's like, I've done this a lot, and I still, like, if I try to write in, you know, like an MS Paint type situation that looks like a child, I just don't think that's the best choice.
But also these, again, these are so, so superficial.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Complaints.
Absolutely.
Like, we've got biting criticism of Farage and his racist, xenophobic policies.
Even his PR notes.
Yeah, yeah.
Basically, it's, oh, here's how you do it better, mate.
And of course, it's all packaged in a, well, he's the closest thing we have to Trump, and Russell's audience famously fucking loved Donald Trump, so the idea is that they should also love Nigel Farage.
Yeah, Russell is truly a man outside the concepts of left and right.
This is horrifying to see that like, this is what, because we know, and I proved yet again on Sunday, that the target audience, as advertisers understand it, of Russell's content, who we are reaching almost entirely, are U.S.
Citizens, right?
We're going to the U.S.
and not in the U.K.
So this is probably the only exposure because even, you know, like being interested in it and having I have a reason this year to like get into the nuts and bolts and I had to I had to actively replace I'm trying to put that caveat in there, but I had to actively seek it out, you know what I mean?
more or at least, no, it's different. This is different. Um, cause I also really enjoyed
it, but I'm also a weird freak, uh, about news and stuff.
So, you know, well that's, I'm trying to put that caveat in there, but like I had to
actively seek it out, you know what I mean? And so, um, it's not easy to find robust
coverage.
coverage that is easily accessible. So this is going to be some, if not only of the coverage
that Americans that listen to Russell and watches content will see for the UK government
everything. Yeah, pretty much. They're going to forget.
They like, they like contests.
No, absolutely.
And the message that they're going to get is Keir Starmer bad, Nigel Farage at the very least entertaining, you know, and like Trump.
Hey, we like Trump.
That means he's good.
Yeah.
And that's that's going to be the takeaway.
Yeah, it's great.
The next clip I'm going to play pretty much purely for my own enjoyment.
Another independent voice, George Galloway, friend of the show, lost his seat just a couple of months after winning it in rather spectacular fashion.
The Labour Party candidate won in that constituency.
George Galloway is not popular with the establishment He's also not popular among voters, it would seem, eh?
Yeah, George Galloway lost his seat, for anyone who missed that.
And good fucking riddance!
Within weeks of him coming on Russell's show and my saying, well, at least he was nice about the gays once, Galloway said something to the effect of, I don't want my children being taught that homosexuality is normal.
So alongside his various other shitty views, like the ardent transphobia, et cetera, he can get to fuck, as they say in Scotland.
Yeah.
Pretty pleased.
That statement, that coverage made it to me over here.
So maybe that's where I'm looking and what I'm listening to.
But I was encouraged by that.
Yes, yes, I'm pleased.
And I did think that's what would happen, because he won the last election because Labour weren't running a candidate, and because of the Gaza situation that he was primarily platforming on, whereas this time Labour ran a candidate and they beat him.
And good!
Well fortunately he can still be an activist for this subject if he's so passionate and wants to maybe prove that he wasn't just using this like dire constant human tragedy as a political prop.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I've no doubt we'll probably see him back on the show sometime soon, so we'll see!
We shall see.
Excited.
Very, very excited.
Now, one of the other electoral quirks that we have in the UK is the existence of political parties that are quite small, like the Monster Raving Loony Party, which leads to delightful moments like this.
Jacob Rees-Mogg was one of the sort of more loathed political figures of our former establishment occupants of the, you know, number 10 and stuff.
Here he is being defeated by a man who's got like baked beans on his face.
We do stuff like this.
I don't know if you do stuff like this in America.
We have like candidates who call things like bean face.
That's part of politics over here.
I don't know.
Except we don't take it fully seriously.
Fair.
So for those listening, the picture being shown is of a man announcing election results and then former Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is just an outstanding piece of shit by the way, and stood next to him is the candidate for the monster raving loony party in that constituency, Barney Brunch, who is a man wearing a balaclava painted with a picture of baked beans covering the entire thing.
He's a baked bean man.
Thank you for explaining this picture to me.
The listeners need to know.
It's crucial.
I saw it and I was like, I don't have time for this right now.
I just, it was in the moment.
I was like, I can't, but I'm so glad now I know.
And it's a balaclava and not actual baked beans.
Yes, not actual baked beans.
Yeah.
Cause that would be a whole mess.
I mean, it's difficult to keep them on there and everything.
The monster-raving loony party have been around since the 80s, and effectively exist to satirise British politics while providing an amusing protest vote option, should you be so inclined.
They got about 6,000 votes nationally this time around, and it's just a pleasure to see them there, I'm always happy.
They ran in Keir Starmer's constituency, which led to an excellent video of the new Prime Minister shaking hands with a man in an Elmo costume.
It's just delightful.
The fucking rules, dude.
That's tight.
That's tight.
I think that we did used to have more of this.
I genuinely, like that's another one of like the homogenization that like the disenfranchisement kind of provides.
And maybe it's still happening and I just don't see it.
But even like the rent is too damn high guy.
Like, it was fucking cool that there was an elderly black man on stage yelling, the rent is too damn high.
That's a necessary element of a democracy, okay?
And I celebrate him.
Don't tell me about his other views.
I haven't seen him in a long time.
He's not a figure anymore.
You know what I mean?
We don't really get this kind of color.
In a previous episode, I don't remember which party it was for.
Maybe it was Lib Dems?
The leader was doing stunts.
Was that right?
Yes, yeah, yeah.
No, he's a stunt machine, Ed Davey.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Just constantly just, I don't know, serving ice cream or jumping off a bridge, you know, or doing something.
Giant Jenga sets.
It's rational.
Right.
It's rational for you to complain.
And that's entirely rational.
But I was just like, I live for that.
Like, yes, stunts.
Yes.
I mean, like, understanding and I think understanding that That politics, political elections, they do have dire consequences, but our PR stunt, like it is PR, it's a PR contest, and it's all fucking marketing, so I think that calling attention to that, maybe even expressly saying that a little more clearly, saying like, this is all absurd, so I need to get attention for this thing that I care about, I mean, stunts, like,
Publicity stunts, like it or not, have worked.
A lot.
And so it's not necessarily like, I'm not gonna call it valid.
I'm not gonna go that far.
But I thought about that several times since, you know, we talked about it when confronted with what our politics looks like.
Man, that kind of sounds... somebody bungee jumping.
Yeah, yeah, it'd be more interesting.
More interesting.
I will say it worked for a Davey.
They had massive gains in this election, so maybe he's on to something, you know?
Maybe, maybe that's... That's also kind of, maybe... Yeah, maybe, maybe.
Maybe it's not the worst plan.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not thrilled at that reality, But I mean also like pointing out that here's where we're like kind of whoever whoever's styling him because we also have to accept yes these people have I don't know that the baked bean guy has one but the big wigs have stylists they have they have help yeah they've hired and
He's styled like Barry Boswick in Just Shoot Me, and that resonates!
As a person who, no matter what, our brains make those connections, and they are subconscious.
That was a good move!
It's a time-tested, proven look!
Brad, from Rocky Horror Picture Show!
That's gonna count for something, you know?
Agreed.
Agreed.
I just think we can point out both.
I think that we can point out both.
Yes.
Yeah, I think more of that, I think, and you need more baked bean men in American politics and Count Binface and, you know, people like that.
I think we've got Lily the Pink was in our constituency, or the one over, which just, you need all these people.
That's what you need.
The thing is, is what we do have, and I'm realizing this now, is like the crazy ones that we're all like, are like gun-toting psychopaths.
They're all the ones that are like killing their dog and like blowing shit up and like shooting AOC's face on a tree.
Yeah.
That's... I mean... It's a different kind of crazy.
The less fun, you know?
It's a nervous laugh.
Yeah.
It's not a, it's not a joyous laugh.
It's a nervous laugh through clenched teeth and backing up against a wall.
Yes.
And that's not really, it's not the same delight as Big Mean Bollock Club.
No, not the same vibe.
Not the same vibe at all.
Not the same vibe.
All right.
Um, now the next clip, um, I, I initially wasn't going to play, but you'll see why I did in just a minute.
And also stuff like this happens as well, where, like, where they're waiting for the new Prime Minister to emerge, and then, like, a cat attacks a pigeon.
This is what Britain is!
This is what we can't escape!
We shouldn't emulate America, actually.
We should accept our Britishness.
Look!
Yeah, agree a hundred percent.
I'm actually quite into it.
It was quite good actually.
It's probably the most exciting, meaningful, organic, natural thing that happened in the evening.
Although the pigeon does get away.
Begrudgingly?
Are we that happy the pigeon got away?
I was gonna say, I'm happy.
Russell, the predator, appears not to be.
Now, Lauren, this is being portrayed by Russell as a cat attacking a pigeon in front of 10 Downing Street, specifically while waiting for the new Prime Minister to come out or whatever.
You know, to do with the election.
I see you, Christmas tree!
Yeah, right?
I was gonna say, is there anything in this picture which suggests to you this footage is perhaps not from July the 4th?
Yeah, Christmas tree and a wreath on the door.
Yes!
It's right there!
Oh, this is from yesterday.
Because this footage is from December 24th, 2020.
Depicting Larry the Cat, Chief Mouser of 10 Downing Street, his official title, attacking a pigeon who then thankfully escapes.
Listen, I know this show is full of misinformation, but this is taking the piss.
It's an official cat!
Oh yeah, did you not know we have one of those?
That is also very tight!
Yeah, we've got Larry the Cat as the official chief mouser and when he gets old there'll be a new cat and there's like a handover period.
Is he a chief over other mousers?
Does he have a brigade?
I don't know.
I don't know of any other 10 Downing Street cats, but possibly.
I don't know.
I don't know.
We can't have anything nice.
Yeah.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
That's... Oh, I love Larry the cat.
Good old Larry.
Larry's great.
Larry's great.
I mean, pigeon attacking aside.
I bet he's on Instagram.
Yeah, I think so.
He has an official portrait, if you look it up on Wikipedia as well, there's an official portrait of Larry the Cat, which is just delightful.
The only problem I see is lying about the date that this happened.
I know!
I'm just like, I know, I was like, I'm fine with this coverage, except why?
Why did you, why, what was the need to bring this clip from 2020 in and pretend it happened during the election?
Why?
There's a Christmas tree in the video!
Why?
I don't understand it.
And the pigeon got away!
Yes, good.
Good, Russell.
That's great!
For God's sake.
It also wasn't, I mean it was in front of like a, it wasn't like, it didn't like beat him in the face, it wasn't the fly on Mike Pence's head, it wasn't in the shot, it was adjacent and someone caught it.
Four years ago?
Over four years ago?
Why?
Okay!
All right, Russell!
Okay, well, I think we've... I do not understand at all.
So anyway, that's enough about British politics for now.
We've had some uniquely British things, and now we're going to get to some uniquely American things, because Russell is going to introduce Colonel Douglas MacGregor, and it does feel a little bit weird right off the bat.
I'm joined by Colonel Douglas MacGregor, the man that I turn to when I want the truth about the complexities of geopolitics.
Let's start with the news.
Well, let's start by welcoming you.
Welcome, Colonel.
It's so lovely to see you.
Great to see you too.
I sense that even though you're a vital and I'd even venture rather macho man, there is estrogen in the air around you.
I just sense it.
Well, we've just cleared the room of the estrogen.
It's too distracting.
Clear.
Clear.
Cool.
Yeah, that's gross.
Okay.
Weird start, but fine.
Okay.
So, this vaguely Chevy Chasing Community looking fella is Colonel Douglas McGregor.
He's a retired colonel, of course, having retired from the military in 2004.
Prior to that, McGregor was a leader in an early tank battle in the Gulf War and was a top planner in the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
He also wrote a book in 97 called Breaking the Phalanx, in which he called for military reform, specifically wanting the army restructure itself into modularly organized, highly mobile, self-contained, combined arms teams that look extraordinarily like the Marine Corps Air-Ground Task Forces.
Donald Rumsfeld was a big, big fan of that book.
Another of his books, Transformation Under Fire, was required reading for high-ranking officers in the IDF.
So we're building up a great readership here.
In recent years, McGregor has appeared as a regular guest on Fox News with at least 60 Fox Weekday appearances from August 2017 to early 2022, 48 of which were on Tucker Carlson's show.
And according to... Yep.
According to Media Matters, it was this which put McGregor on the radar of Donald Trump, then President Donald Trump.
So Trump tried to get Colonel McGregor here appointed as U.S.
Ambassador to Germany, but couldn't get it through.
So McGregor was instead hired as Senior Advisor to the new Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller in November 2020.
His appointment was welcomed by Rand Paul, who described McGregor as a friend.
How sweet.
He was there for less than three months before Trump appointed McGregor to a three-year term on the advisory board of the United States Military Academy at West Point, his alma mater.
His appointment was then terminated by Joe Biden in September 2021.
We'll be getting into a host of this guy's interesting views, but just a little taster up top.
In a 2013 radio appearance, McGregor spoke of an entitled underclass of people that were concentrated in large urban areas, and the threat he said they posed, quote, And when the food stamps stop, when the free services end, when the heating bills aren't paid and the heating doesn't come through in many of these large cities, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, Baltimore, St.
Louis, Detroit, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, this underclass that resides in these places I think could become very violent."
I wonder what those cities have in common?
Other than that you've lived in a couple of them.
Yeah, I was gonna say like, oh, got both!
Ding ding!
St.
Louis rarely gets a mention when, honestly, there's a lot of fodder that they're just leaving on the table.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
St.
Louis and Baltimore specifically, I'm like, I think I hear what you're saying.
I think I hear what you're throwing down here, Colonel.
Well, yeah.
Whenever you asked if I recognized him and his name, I was like, well, I don't know off the top of my head.
I know another Douglas Mack.
Nope.
Oh, OK.
We're almost there.
there. And, um, but I bet I'm going to recognize I was like, I'm going to wait.
I don't know his name.
I bet I heard of him before.
I bet I heard of this person before.
There'll be something.
So let's see.
I'm interested.
Also in 2019, he argued for the myth that there were actually more white, mostly Irish slaves than African slaves in America in the late 1700s.
Oh, so he's just dumb and wrong.
Yeah!
And Trump likes this guy?
I'm shocked.
I'm shocked, I tell you.
All right, let's look at the first question of the interview.
Who is it that's really putting the American military at risk?
Julian Assange or the policies of the neoliberal establishment?
But first, perhaps if you could start with whether or not Wikileaks ever put American service personnel at risk.
Yeah, I know.
I listened to that too, Russell.
I was never convinced that there was any danger involved in most of the information that was released.
But the biggest problem for Julian Assange was that he embarrassed people in power, revealed all sorts of things that we now know to be true that no one wanted released to the public.
That's his biggest problem.
And as far as danger is concerned, there's more danger of being vaccinated with the wrong vaccine than there is from anything that Assange ever released.
Yes, I have the same sense.
So that Julian Assange was really always a political prisoner held without trial, humiliated, tortured.
By his own volition.
And now his release suggests what?
A kind of mea culpa?
A change in attitudes?
A return to free speech?
New obligations among the press to report openly and honestly, even if their reporting places the establishment in an embarrassing position?
You know, how many Rs are there in fat chance?
I don't think any of that is in the offing, unfortunately, although we strongly believe that free speech is the antidote to tyranny.
And for that reason, we have always supported Julian Assange, and we're very glad that he's out.
God bless him.
I'm glad he survived.
And I hope that he will continue to speak the truth.
The truth is what will ultimately save us if we can get it out to people, and people have to want it.
That's another problem.
Every time I talk to audiences, they're looking for threats.
Americans are conditioned to believe that there are threats all over the world.
And in reality, you know, there really aren't.
The biggest threat to America right now, I think, is incompetence and corruption in Washington, D.C.
Yes.
Thank you, Colonel.
All right.
Yep.
So that last part sounded kind of reasonable.
But otherwise, yeah, we have Covid vaccines being apparently more dangerous than Julian Assange.
Which, hey, I've never seen anyone try and arrest a COVID vaccine for rape charges.
Just saying.
And just in case we need to say it for YouTube's... Give it time.
I don't know.
I mean... You're right.
Some of the lawsuits coming out are getting a little nuts.
Just in case we need to say it for YouTube's clarification, the vaccines are safe, everybody.
And you should probably be much more concerned with what appears to be a ring of sexual predators publicly supporting one another.
But hey.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also, I don't know if anyone spotted, you know, there's a thing among neurodivergent folks where, you know, we tend to have at least three drinks on the go.
So you'll have like one hot, like one kind of flavored and some water.
Russell just went for all three during that.
I hadn't actually noticed that before.
I always had two.
Yeah, no, he had a coffee, he had a green drink and then he had some water.
Which I'm like, ah, I see you.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, one thing MacGregor keeps doing throughout this interview and did a little bit there was talking in the collective sense.
You know, he says, we support Julian Assange.
I was like, ha, that's weird.
And what he means by we, in this case, is that Douglas MacGregor is the CEO of something called Our Country, Our Choice.
They self-describe as a call-to-action media platform and people's movement, providing unbiased support of conservative Christian values in America.
And I'm quite sure they don't know what unbiased means.
Anyway, that sounds very specifically heavily biased in one direction, but okay, fine.
Anyway, there's a list of things they seem to be for, which are listed as protect our children, defend us from globalism, defend our right to bear arms, defend our border, defend our elections, defend us from endless wars, and defend our religious freedom.
There's a video from Colonel McGregor on the main page, which is honestly so badly lit he looks like he's dying on camera, but the more concerning video is slightly further... Well, I certainly can't come for that.
I feel attacked.
He would be jealous, I promise, of your look.
Yeah, the more concerning video is further down from the Christian leader of Our Country, Our Choice, Pastor Casey Butner.
He says in this video, quote, Our hearts ache as we witness the erosion of morality, the degradation of our values, and the marginalization of our faith.
We see God and godliness being pushed to the sidelines, forgotten, and even blasphemed.
Now is the time to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, and reclaim our nation for God, unquote.
Now, to you Lauren, this probably sounds just like a Tuesday, but to me that sounds like, huh, a little bit of religious war kind of connotations.
Anyway, I rooted around on the Our Country Our Choice website to find what the actual actions being offered were, other than give us money, because that's the main one that's, you know, there's a button for that on every page, right?
And for the Defending Religious Freedom section, there was a four-point plan.
One is establishing the largest prayer group in U.S.
history.
Can I guess?
Can I guess one?
Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, sure.
Can I guess four?
Yes, yeah, yeah, go for it.
I don't even know if I have four, but I want to guess.
I'm trying to just, like, I'm trying to call it.
I've already spoiled the prayer group one, but there we are.
Honestly, that one's a gimme.
I wouldn't have guessed that because that's so... Largest prayer group in US history.
All right.
All right.
What else you got?
It also, it feels like it's softening the blow for the other three because the same list that you just said was like vague, vague.
Oh, immigration.
Okay.
Like, you know, they, they, they soft pedal in and then hit ya.
So, um, something about religious school, like, uh, school choice.
Nope.
And...
No?
Nope, nothing about school choice.
Okay, you know what?
Maybe it's... you know what?
I'm not even gonna... all right, okay.
Maybe this is a different thing.
Okay, they're gonna be even less specific?
Like school choice and guns, I'm assuming, would be kind of bread and butter.
They have a different section for defending their right to bear arms, to armbears.
That's in a different section of the words.
This is just the religious freedom bit because I was curious about what this pastor wanted to do.
Um, they have, they have other, they have other kind of sections with more info.
Most of it's just information on stuff.
A lot of it doesn't actually involve doing anything other than giving money.
Um, how strange.
Um, but, uh, but in the, in the freedom, um, yeah, the defending religious freedom section.
Is there freedom of speech kind of stuff?
Or maybe that's more what it is?
Yeah, I think.
And thinly veiled Islamophobia probably?
Uh, not even thinly.
It's pretty outright, yeah.
The migration stuff gets interesting.
So the four point plan was, yeah, establishing the largest prayer group in US history, which, fine.
Second, setting aside our differences and coming together in unity.
Talk about vague.
This is so, okay.
No, no, not only vague, but what?
Three, holding elected officials accountable through voting and demanding transparency.
So voting, okay.
All right.
And four is supporting Christian candidates who solely accept donations from individual citizens.
Okay.
Okay.
Y'all don't want that.
Fuck off.
No, they don't.
That's their four point plan of how to defend religious freedom.
And it's just nowhere near as fun as the rhetoric of reclaim our country.
I was hoping for like, right, we're going to form a militia.
We're going to do all this crazy shit.
Nah, we're going to come together in unity.
Yeah, that was way more milquetoast.
That's also like puts me on edge because like that just was you just spreading mayonnaise on a piece of white bread.
I don't even know what you're trying to like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What's what's going on?
In any case.
Is it a stock website and you didn't change it?
Like is it is there like a Christian?
Christian setting on Squarespace and y'all just didn't get to it.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Yeah, this either seems to be something to keep an eye on or just a way to learn to line Colonel McGregor's pockets with funds of the alt-right.
It's one or the other.
Maybe both.
Maybe both.
Anyway, next we get to some of Colonel McGregor's perspectives on Ukraine.
Both Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister Assumptive of our sort of centralist, globalist Labour Party.
Authoritarian, I should add to that.
And Rishi Sunak.
You love authoritarians.
Former hedge fund investor.
part of a hedge fund that invested $500 million in Moderna.
Both of them condemned Farage's comments saying that it's outrageous to claim that Putin was in any
way provoked.
What is your opinion on that condemnation and on what Farage asserts?
Well, I think brother Farage has stated a self-evident truth. It's something we call
a tautology for those who are interested out there. It's absolutely true.
And we knew back in the 1990s, early on, that if we expanded NATO to incorporate more and more countries closer and closer to Russia, eventually there would be confrontation and conflict.
George Kennan pointed to it.
Virtually everyone with experience in the region and anyone with any knowledge at all of history knows that.
I think the worst part of it is that President Bush, and I'm talking about the senior Bush, Uh, made it very clear that we would not exploit the vacuum created by the withdrawal of Russian military power from Central East Europe.
And of course, we turned around and that's exactly what we did.
So, I don't, I don't know what, uh, Starmer thinks.
Of course, he may not be thinking at all.
He seems to be reading from the same playbook as Sunak and the rest.
Uh, it's all nonsense.
If we want this Want this crisis that could lead to a real war between us and Russia to end?
It's very simple.
You simply suspend all aid to Ukraine until further notice, although you should send humanitarian assistance and make it clear that we're withdrawing all personnel from all NATO countries from Ukraine and get down to some sort of negotiated outcome.
Who wants enemies on their border?
If the Russians or the Chinese or the Iranians or anybody else came into Mexico and set up missile batteries aimed at the United States, what would we do?
Well, I can tell you what we would do.
We'd send the Air Force in right away, and then the Army would invade.
There would be no question of it.
You know, so the Russians exercised extraordinary patience and put up with a lot of nonsense.
Their cause has always been just.
That's the truth, Russell.
Now, the thing is, yeah, again, yeah, okay, great point.
To a point.
Because we need to have diplomatic solutions so we don't get to the setting up the missiles part.
That's not the start of the story.
The story has been getting told for a long time up until that point.
So that's just, again, like I mentioned this, it's one element that is, what did I say?
It's a talking point that is used to oversimplify.
And I made it very clear, like, yes, this is oversimple because this is what they're using as a talking point.
Yeah.
And not getting into, because I was like, wait, and it was like, Oh, and what should we do?
Oh, retaliate with force?
No, that's not what I'm saying at all.
And that's not the like, it's it's this kind of Assuming that you have to retaliate with violence or even just like, listen, you can you can trap people diplomatically if you want to be you want to still be sneaky and mean you can but it doesn't you don't have to like the answer of just blowing people up.
I'm sorry, Colonel Anybody is going to think that's the best idea.
And it's literally the worst possible solution.
It should be the end, not the start.
Then you're just using that as a rationalization.
You're not actually looking at the complexity of the problem and trying to find a solution.
You're going to try to outspend and outgun the other person, which leaves the whole world blind, I believe.
Yeah, he's a hammer, all he sees is nails, right?
That's the situation.
And he's coming through with some pretty full-throated support for Russia here.
And I do think now is a good time to reiterate the point that only 11% of Russia's border has ever been shared with NATO countries.
And that the missile defense systems, that is, systems to shoot down any missiles coming over NATO territories, were only put in place after Putin annexed Crimea back in 2014.
And the interceptor missiles deployed there literally could not be used for offensive purposes, and they contain no explosives.
They also can only hit airborne targets.
They were never, ever a threat to Russian sovereignty or security.
So...
That's that.
Just done.
Done.
You got nothing.
Well, even as the skeptic for whether NATO's motives are pure or not, obviously I don't think they are, but It didn't start in 2014 either.
No.
Do you know what I mean?
No, no.
We're not talking about the greater kind of like challenge of diplomacy.
We threw away diplomacy a long time ago.
I would argue maybe America post-World War II kind of never won it.
No, no.
But the NATO-Russia thing has been going on a long fucking time, and Russia have not wanted to come to the table any of the times that NATO have tried to make that happen.
And yeah, there is kind of, some might say a willful not wanting to do that from Putin, et cetera.
So, you know, it's-- - Well, I also think that the exposure of the like outsized,
some would say power, some would say bias, some would say both, for the United States
in what we're seeing in the UN and with the ICC, ICJ, like the outsized influence that the United States
has imposed on the rest of the world.
No one is innocent here, and we need to be realistic.
I think it's tough, especially when You know, especially the kind of like the line in America, the kind of like party line is, and this is on both sides of the aisle, whatever, it's just kind of like the understanding is that America is right and America is allowed to go blow anybody up that they want.
And that's, I think that there's a And we need to push back on both of these problems, like not just the one.
And it's extremely hypocritical for the United States to tell anyone else, like it is hypocritical, but that just that doesn't give anyone else a pass.
I agree.
I do agree.
But I don't think I don't think that applies as much to NATO.
And I don't think that that's the reason that Russia haven't come to the table for the entire time either.
Sure, I'm speaking to the US, but there are other countries that are also obviously there are other countries that are involved, but I know like I mean it's to ignore the financial kind of element to ignore the like.
The international financial manipulation element I think is really, they benefit from obscuring how all these things are connected.
And this guy, that's the thing, is like this guy using just this talking point, it sounds very incendiary in a vacuum and they're talking in a vacuum.
It's not helpful.
Like, yeah, you make it great, but obviously, you know, annexing Crimea, like, yes, that's a massive problem.
And I don't think our solutions have been working, and there is no will, there is no impetus to change these solutions that aren't solutions.
Because they're still pumping money into the military-industrial complex.
There's the answer is not what any of these people are talking about.
And it's fucking wildly frustrating.
Yes.
Yeah, that's fair.
That's fair.
And all he wants is for Russia to win.
That's that's.
Yeah, it does bear mentioning as well.
McGregor has been on Russell's show before back in April, at which point he was asserting that Ukraine had already lost the war and it would be over in a matter of days due to Russia's overwhelming force.
Though he has been saying that for a while.
In July 2022, on Real America's Voice, he told Charlie Kirk that, quote, The war, with the exception of Kharkiv and Odessa, as far as the Russians are concerned, is largely over.
There is no intention to do anything else because the Russians don't have a very large army.
This nonsense that Putin wants to conquer all of Ukraine was never true, unquote.
Of course, Putin later pretty explicitly said otherwise to Tucker Carlson, but hey, what do I know?
Colonel McGregor has also appeared on Russian state media many, many times, particularly RT.
He supported Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and called for the annexation of the Donbass, saying people in the region are in fact Russians, not Ukrainians were the words he used.
Oh, and though he actually does have one criticism of Russia, he said that they were too gentle
on the Ukrainians at the start of the war and that Putin had taken great care with civilians
and this was delaying his victory.
So...
Well, I think that tells you again, yeah, hammer, hammer, finding nails.
Left, right, and center.
I don't need this man's opinion.
I already know what it is.
And it's blow up bad guy, bad guy being whoever I deem a bad guy, because we're looking at imperial powers.
Possibly civilians.
Yeah, getting themselves into quagmires that they think you're gonna They're going to be able to execute in a number of days, and we're here months or years later, and it's still an absolute fucking mess that is not going to get solved without some kind of fucking diplomacy!
Like, an adult!
It just keeps happening.
Yeah.
And adults making a point that violence is just going to beget more violence.
Yeah.
Yeah, and listen, I know that, like, I'm not feeling fucking, I'm not coming from a Pollyanna place of, like, kumbaya every get along.
I'm talking about, like, this is how adults have to operate in the world, is negotiate and compromise and being like this, being like, general whoever.
General Blow Em Up.
On any side, you're being a child.
Yeah.
Either deciding to like, throwing, stomping your feet, taking your ball and going home, or saying, I'm gonna hit you till this stops.
Both of those are Adolescent, at best, solutions.
That's not what adults do.
That's not what societies can do in a sustainable way.
It's not, and I don't mean sustainable like the greenwashing thing.
I mean, sustainable isn't, you can't sustain this.
This is going to cause problems and we're living in the middle of it and it's gonna keep happening.
That's what is so fucking frustrating to me and I especially don't want to like I'm not coming from
this and like I and I I mean listen this is a podcast and I I'm I can't sit here and fucking
bitch for an hour that's totally unrelated it's just it's so I have to truncate my ideas in a way
that is digestible.
What I'm saying is there are diplomatic solutions every time, and we don't take them when it's in any way possible or just feasible.
Because if there is a stalemate and there is a quagmire, Not doing the diplomatic thing and making the decision to keep feeding the military beast and keep putting people through a fucking meat grinder is causing so many more problems than it needs to.
And even if, listen, even if the compromise is not great for either side, if that makes the thing stop, Because listen, no matter what, letting everything keep going is going to be worse than the solution that nobody really wants, but you have to settle on and agree to, and agree in good faith.
Because I know that my country does not have a good track record of keeping any of their fucking promises, so I would be a little skeptical, and maybe these guys that are all trying the same playbook Are all just gonna keep having these very consequential, dire, humanitarian, genocide-level dick-measuring contests, and it's fucking crazy!
It's crazy!
Don't defend Putin!
Don't defend him!
You don't have to!
And you do, because the other thing is, I do not want to be understood in any way that that's what I'm doing.
I'm absolutely fucking not.
But they are!
They're also wrong!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nope, they're completely wrong.
They're completely, completely wrong.
You know, and it's it's so difficult when you have people, you know, you have Putin trying to be a conqueror.
And it's like, how do you try to get to a diplomatic solution with a conqueror?
Or attempted conqueror.
But no, I'm with you 100%.
None of this should be happening.
And we shouldn't be advocating for more of it, which seems to be the solution.
All the conquerors are wrong.
They're all wrong.
Including the ones that I have to fucking pay for.
And I'm mad about it every goddamn day on this earth.
Because I have to stand in this fucking country that is...
Been this like, I just had to sit through, okay, listen, I love fireworks and I get that people are like, I don't have a dog anymore.
Also, my dog loved fireworks.
I don't understand it.
Okay.
Like I get that it was weird, but like, he thought Roman candles are the coolest thing in the world.
I don't know.
Okay.
He's just like, never really like, so I, I, there's a lot of problems with fireworks, especially in the city.
We heard one last week, right?
But.
If we can just say it's fireworks appreciation day, which is what I've been considering July 4th for, I think, since
I was 21 for myself.
And not like the mythos around our country is so toxic and is so wrong.
And I don't see the point in pulling this wool over our eyes, thinking that we're this kind of like saving grace.
No, we're not.
And I'm paying, I'm fucking paying for it.
Everyone I know, love, and care about is paying for it.
Good people that do not want to be a party to it are forced.
Again, we talked about taxes on Sunday.
You are forced.
By dint of, like, you will go to jail if you do not pay for part of this war.
If that's freedom, I'm a ham sandwich.
It just doesn't make any, it's crazy.
And this, like, that's the thing that really fucking grinds my gears about this kind of cover.
Obviously the vaccine stuff is like, what the fuck?
But there is also a problem with this kind of rhetoric is rationalizing, turning anyone into a good guy or a bad guy.
Yeah.
Because if you're doing colonizing, I don't care who you are, you're wrong!
Odds are- You're in the wrong!
If you're one of the quote-unquote superpowers, probably not great.
That tends to- You shouldn't have superpowers!
It tends to be how you got there, you know?
It's like billionaires, you know?
There's no such thing as an ethical billionaire.
There just isn't.
No!
No!
It's the same thing.
Anyway, from here we get a bramble of a question, which shuts MacGregor off on a familiar subject.
I've cut the bramble from five minutes to two, but still, let's hear the question so the response makes some kind of sense.
But I feel that in a way, you can't have a nation without isolationism.
In a sense, one needs harmony.
But the whole point of a nation is this is a territory that governs itself.
And it's, of course, obvious that over time and due to circumstance could lead to conflicts.
But historically, other than the Spanish, you know, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Spanish war that you described, America doesn't face any threat.
There are not Chinese military bases encircling the United States.
There are not, you know, Russian powers on the border of America.
The United States of America, at least in terms of this sort of resurgent, what is usually referred to as populism or sometimes referred to as the alt-right or I don't know, the nation first politics or Trumpism, the hundreds of different things, seems to be a kind of a reawakening to the idea that America could just get on with being America Protecting America, American manufacturing, American jobs, allowing constitutional rights to flourish religiously and ontologically and not be continually distracted by these crazed and destructive wars that benefit interests that can't even really be called American with a moment's scrutiny.
They're kind of Global interests, and perhaps always have been, is that what we're experiencing?
A kind of an awakening to the impossibility of ongoing expansionism given America's current economic position and condition.
So, advocating for isolationism while decrying any intervention in Ukraine and shitting on globalism in general is his definition of it.
Okay, not entirely unsurprising.
Do take small issue with the idea that Trumpism is anti-war because I don't think it is.
It's absolutely not.
It's absolutely not.
But okay.
And also in terms of, you know, oh, America don't have, you know, Russian missiles on their border or whatever.
I'm like, well, no, but also nuclear powers.
Those are a thing.
You know, people can, people can attack you from halfway across the world.
Exactly.
It's not, it's not a problem.
Anyway.
It's a gigantic problem.
Yes.
A lot of my taxes go way more than you think.
I meant it's not a problem where you have to go right up to someone before you punch them in the nose.
You know, you can do it from halfway across the world now.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, but even starting at isolationism, like he's like, well, you have to just, oh, yeah, it tends to like isolationism is inevitable.
I don't care about the rest of what you have to say.
No, it's not.
It's a bad start.
It's absolutely not.
It's a bad start.
Again, tiny theocratic ethnostates where everyone just does their own little thing.
That's what he wants.
Which he's now admitting will perhaps inevitably lead to conflict.
Yeah, no shit.
No shit.
Thank you for pointing that out.
Right, but again, it's like having authoritarian governmental structure of any kind and having, like, relying on military policy first and foremost.
Both of those forces, government power and military power, fundamentally will not acknowledge and misunderstand that their wins or losses, in reality, are so much more contingent on luck and cheating than anything else.
And somebody who's going to graduate West Point And go teach at West Point will do everything in their power to either make that a footnote or not talk about it at all.
And if you actually listen to like, what's really great is like military, you know, like military analysis from the people that are actually in it and got to read documents are like, oh, guess what?
This didn't happen like how you think.
Understanding that like, oh, okay, what kills soldiers the most up until very recently in warfare is disease.
This, like, there's such a fundamental misunderstanding that is being perpetuated by people like these fucking, oh my god, I mean.
Disease this dude. I'm I'm hot. Yes hot. Yes. Yes. Yes Hammer and I are gonna take a breath. How about that? This
is obviously a thing I'm concerned about I Think
Hammer might be seeing Shortly because so so the question was is this alt right
alt right movement a waking up to ongoing Expansionism that was the question
He eventually landed on broad plenty of places for McGregor to take it especially after what was a full five minutes
He takes to he takes to a favorite talking point of his Well, it's important to understand that something else has
happened over the last several years years.
That we have not directly confronted over the previous decades, and that is this process of denationalization.
The same people who are anxious to keep us engaged in conflict and crises all over the globe are also apparently committed to erasing our national identity.
And this is a very strange phenomenon.
And again, I go back to 1918, 1919, 1920 with the Bolsheviks.
When they founded this thing called the Soviet Union, it was an internationalist state.
In other words, they were going to create a new identity.
They called the new identity Soviet.
They would erase the identities of Russians and Ukrainians and Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Mongols, Tartars, whatever.
And everyone would become the new Soviet man.
Well, that failed miserably, as we all know.
The joke in Moscow was suddenly overnight, everything fell apart.
Everyone looked around and said, well, where is the Soviet man?
There were no Soviet men anywhere.
What did you find?
You found Ukrainians and Russians and everyone else.
So we're going through something like that here in the United States.
We have people in Washington who've decided that all people are just fungible commodities.
They're just material to be exploited, to be utilized.
Human capital, per se, has no value in and of itself.
Of course, everyone in the private sector knows that's not true.
And when you talk about immigration, the first question that comes up is, well, why do we have so much immigration?
Why is it unrestricted?
Why aren't we asking whether or not the person that wants to come into the country and live here doesn't already speak English, doesn't already have an education, doesn't already have skills that they can contribute?
Why are we taking in vast numbers of people who don't fall into that category?
Now, the sound ringing in the back of your head might be, uh, the people he's talking about are probably predominantly refugees, huh?
Um, and we will- Why are they refugees, Al?
Why are they refugees?
Refugees from what?
From where?
We will get to his feelings on refugees properly in just a moment, and I promise you're going to love it.
As to his other points, obviously migration is restricted and does have rules, as we've covered I don't know how many fucking times, and I'm also going to set aside his gross oversimplification and misunderstanding of the Russian Revolution, because that's a whole other podcast that we would be launching into.
They're available.
Yes, they are there.
Recommend.
But as for denationalization, well, that has a familiar ring to it because McGregor here is a big Great Replacement Theory guy.
Oh, that's what that means?
That's what that means.
So a CNN report in 2020 said McGregor had repeatedly advocated instituting martial law at the US-Mexico border and to shoot people if necessary.
See him not saying any of that shit though right now?
See him not saying this shit?
he had described Muslim migrants in Europe as unwanted invaders arriving with the goal
of eventually turning Europe into an Islamic state.
They're learning.
They're all figuring it out.
It's true.
It's true.
In 2019 on the Conservative Commandos radio show, what a show that must be, McGregor alleged that George Soros was financing the transportation of foreigners to the United States purportedly to destroy American culture.
And he made the same claim on Lou Dobbs' show as well.
Well, even what he said about like, I guess, because he was talking about the powers that be, so he's talking about like, when you say the powers that be, I'm thinking, you know, Apple, Bezos, like, right?
Like, I'm thinking Google.
That's what I'm thinking of.
And he's referring to the government, who I think has relatively little power compared to corporations in this country, which is a problem in and of itself.
But that's the thing.
So he's saying that the government sees cogs in a machine, whereas The private sector doesn't?
The private sector knows that humans have inherent value.
The private sector values the autonomy of each individual person?
Get!
Bent!
I have no reason to listen to what you're saying, because you're a liar!
I don't think he misunderstands any definition of a word.
I don't think he misunderstands anything he's fucking saying.
He looks like a calculated, fucking rich, white piece of shit, and we got a million of him, and he knows exactly what he's talking about.
And he's just, that's a lie, sir.
You know you're fucking lying.
Yeah, pretty much.
If you convince yourself enough to pass a fucking polygraph, well, then you're a fucking sociopath.
And I believe that that can... I'm not going to call him that.
I mean... But that can certainly be the case.
And he'd be blowing people up.
Possibly civilians.
It makes you crazy.
You know, he wants to shoot people at the US-Mexico border.
So, I mean, you know, there's an argument that could be made.
Well, he's a murderer.
So that, listen, like, I don't care about where the theater is.
Like, I don't care.
Like, yeah, if he was in any way involved in an action that caused death, he's implicated in murder.
That'll change your point of view.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, that's, that's the role.
Yeah.
But yeah, big, big, great replacement theory guy who believes the Jews are replacing the whites with brown people for nefarious reasons.
Good God.
Good God.
We don't get enough of those on Russell's show.
It's not every week, right?
Fuck me.
It's getting ridiculous.
Now, I mentioned we'd get to his feelings on refugees, and here we go.
Tight.
In other words, this is not 1815 or 1900 or 1925.
1915 or 1900 or 1925. This is today, 2024. We're no longer obliged just to take in whomever
wants to come in.
But this is part of the denationalization.
If you can flood the country with enough people who are fundamentally different from you, then your identity is at risk.
The core population is overwhelmed.
And if you can overwhelm that core population, the theory here I think in Washington is, then you just have this vast I think that's where we are right now, and we're fighting against it here, because we really believe there is such an animal called an American.
They're just materiel to be shaped and exploited.
I think that's where we are right now, and we're fighting against it here because we
really believe there is such an animal called an American.
We think there is a core American population, people that actually believe and love this
country.
So I don't know what the answer is, but I think we have to continue to fight against
this tendency to treat us as though we're nothing, as though we're fungible.
And so they tear down monuments, they destroy traditions, they destroy customs.
Anything that reawakens a sense of identity has to be removed.
I think you've gone through something similar over in Great Britain, have you not?
No, no, we have not.
Despite the alt-right's assertion that there are portions of the UK where only Muslims are allowed to go, that are all subject to Sharia law, no, we've not gone through that at all.
A couple of statues were taken down, but obviously, like...
The only monuments I'm aware of that have been torn down, both in the UK and the US, are pro-slavery monuments in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
So I am deeply curious to know what traditions he thinks have been infringed upon and whether they involve wearing pointy white hats and calling yourself a wizard.
I'm not even gonna go that far.
I'm deeply curious as to know which monuments you're fucking talking about, or if it's just a thing that, a meme you heard.
Because most, it's just like defund the police.
It didn't fucking happen.
Most monuments that were in danger, quote unquote, were gonna be replaced, because guess what?
If somebody wanted to put in a parking lot, no one would complain, or very few, about eight million year old assholes would complain.
That, like, that's, oh my God.
Yeah, tell me which monuments.
Tell me more than fucking five.
Tell me more than five.
I can think of more than five.
Can you think of more than five?
Because renaming schools, renaming streets, three of those five I can think of went right back after the whole kerfuff around 2020 and the George Floyd protests went away.
So maybe these monuments that you're so concerned about, rather than people, Oh my god, even just, again, saying these, like, fundamentally, like, I have to work so hard to keep my brain from fucking shutting off and just going Kill Bill, fucking Beatrix's kiddo brain, because, like, saying that...
Immigrants are fundamentally different from us?
How?
Are they fernet?
None of them could ever possibly love the country at all.
No migrants have ever loved living in the immigrant country.
No one should love the fucking country.
That's another baby brain thing.
Don't love the country.
That's a childish notion to love a country.
A country should function.
A society should function for its people.
Loving a country is xenophobic.
That's crazy to think that that's a virtue.
First of all, sorry.
Listen, if you're upset about it, I feel for you.
And that's a conversation that we could have, but you're not gonna change my fucking mind, I'll tell you that right now, but I can respect your right to have your opinion.
But the notion that, like, the point is for every, like, it's called human rights.
They're human rights.
There are so much, like, that's...
Should be broadly applied to all humans, one would think.
Again, tell me what fundamental differences that we have that are not entirely superficial and arbitrary and racist and bigoted.
Because we have so many more fundamental similarities with all other human beings than we don't.
Even this guy.
I have way more in common with this person who honestly I can say is probably the most polar opposite fucking Piece of shit.
And he can think I'm a piece of shit, but don't fucking blow my house up because you think I'm a piece of shit.
That makes you worse.
Sorry, that makes you worse.
Thinking that I don't deserve to live or deserve to exist with dignity.
And that my vote doesn't count?
That I don't count in this country?
Because that's also what he, what's crazy?
That's fucking crazy!
That he's saying that he's accusing the government of seeing individual, like Americans, as cogs in a machine, but, oh, but Mexicans are?
But Americans aren't.
Yes.
Tell me why.
Actually fucking tell me why.
Especially when your wife needs a fucking kidney.
Tell me what's different about human beings.
Four fucking real, man.
Oh my God.
Yep.
And next, he crosses the line a little bit.
He crosses the line.
Now?
Well, it gets personal.
It gets personal because he brings me into the conversation and I take issue with it.
What we decided to do, starting in the 1960s and 65, when I say we, people in the Senate, was to open the doors to others from various parts of the world that had never come to the United States previously.
Now, some of that has been successful, but some of it hasn't.
And I think what was discovered on the left first, and now collectively in Washington, is that if you can bring in enough people who are fundamentally different from the core American population that speaks English, that shares in these values and traditions and history, then you can destroy it.
And literally, I think they've set out to destroy us, destroy our national consciousness.
In the same way that I saw when I was in Great Britain ten years ago, I remember talking to Englishmen who were upset over the fact that they were told to take down the St.
George cross, the flag, the old original flag, white background, red cross.
And I said, why?
They said, oh, well, we're not supposed to celebrate the fact that we're Englishmen.
And I thought that was a very odd thing.
In Scotland, you know, you always had the St.
Andrew's Cross and so forth.
You have the red dragon on the Welsh flag.
These things were symbols of identity.
They were never seen as evil or as propagating bad things.
They were seen as something around which people could unite and celebrate.
Heritage, not hate, huh?
Yeah, you get my dragon flag out of your mouth, Douglas.
That's not for you.
Yeah, the reason the English flag, which is St.
George's Cross, as he said, a red cross on a white background, has undergone a bit of PR trouble in recent years is, well, It originated from the Crusades, which involved a bunch of white guys embarking on a holy war in the Middle East and slaughtering brown people for their religious beliefs.
It was used for a time as the imperial war flag of the Holy Roman Empire, and that's without even touching on the modern day associations with football hooligans and Nigel Farage types.
Of course, plenty, and I mean plenty, of people still wear the flag.
And I say this as there are tons of them about currently because England haven't lost in the football yet.
They're going to, just not yet.
And plenty of people still fly it outside their houses, right?
Not especially offensive.
Fine, whatever.
I've no idea who he was talking to that was supposedly told to take down the English flag, but that's not a common thing.
But particularly belligerent Tommy Robinson types like to hoist the English flag outside of mosques.
You know, to just make a really great point about wanting to inflict violence upon Muslims.
So, it is possible someone was told to take it down for such a reason.
It's possible that happened, but who knows?
And who knows if this story even actually happened, because who can tell?
Did they pay a fine?
Did they go to jail?
Was there any kind of actual repercussions, or did they just have to move down the street?
Oh, you're not going to tell me, are you?
I wouldn't tell you, Robinson.
I don't fucking remember anyway, if it ever happened.
Yeah, right.
And among the broader population, there is sometimes a consideration that, hey, "Hey, this flag seems to have some kind of negative
associations, huh?"
Unlike, I might add, the Scottish or the Welsh flags.
Bit different, unless you particularly dislike Billy Connolly or dragons.
But those you can pretty much put anywhere and they're quite inoffensive, you know.
It's almost like context matters.
Almost! Almost like context matters!
So are we going to talk about whatever happened in 1965, whatever immigration thing that he's talking about?
I think I have a vague idea.
I just, I'm always entertained by dudes like this coming for fucking LBJ, like the LBJ administration.
Cause again, that's, you know, that civil rights is all this kind of stuff.
The way he talks about it is so much more rational and like, Understanding that we live in a society.
And he still is on board with all the bad stuff.
Not all the bad stuff, probably, but a number of the bad things that y'all also feel.
Yeah.
But he could still figure out how to make a country fucking function.
Yeah.
Function.
Yeah.
Yeah, because it wasn't.
So it's like, hey, we've got to do something about this.
63 to 69, by the way.
If anybody wants to just prick their ears up for the LBJ time, whenever they're coming for it, because a lot of really great, important things that are being actively rolled back on the fucking daily here happened during that time.
And it's just far enough away to where people don't understand where those, like, just where those policies came from.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Something to think about.
Yeah.
Just something to think about.
Yeah, it's been long enough where it feels like a lot of the context is missing and so they get rolled back and it feels, yeah, almost like people don't fully understand the consequences yet.
But they will.
Now, McGregor!
Actively ignoring it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's not about understanding.
There is an active, robust propaganda machine, this guy included, that is keeping people ignorant actively and playing on the most basic fears that we have.
Also that.
To manipulate people.
Absolutely.
That's what's happening.
Absolutely.
People like this.
That's why they're here.
Now, McGregor puts the capstone on his Great Replacement Theory tirade and takes it possibly a step further than I've heard on this show before.
What's happened to us is without consulting us, without discussing it, we have been signed on for all of these expansionist overseas military operations.
And they've been destructive.
They've harmed us.
They've ruined our armed forces.
People are exhausted and people no longer want to serve.
And at the same time, the decision to open our borders, to just let millions of people come into the country.
You know, right now we estimate that there are at least 52 million people inside the United States who were not born here.
Now, does that mean they're bad?
No, but it says something about our society.
How strong are we as a society?
If we have 340 million people or 50 million people in the country, that's an enormous amount of human beings that have no connection to us whatsoever.
They never were here before.
Now they're here.
And they came here, frankly, illegally, because once again, no one asked us.
There was never a referendum.
No one went to the voting booth and said, yes, I vote for open borders.
Bring tens of millions of people into the country.
This is the problem.
It's not going to work.
And that's why people are talking about this pot boiling over, you know, the old boiling frog analogy.
Well, the frog is cooked and the frog is not going to sit in the hot water anymore.
The frog is coming out.
I don't think the frog is dead, but I think the hope in Washington was that the frog would simply die.
None of the white people are from here.
Period.
None of the white people are from here.
Also that.
Oh my god!
So yeah, mixed metaphor.
Pot boiling over, frog in the thing.
But yeah, he said literally all migrants in the US, every single one, is there illegally because there was no referendum nationally on whether to take them in.
So then are you going back to Poland or wherever you're fucking from, dude?
'cause you're not from here!
Yeah, also that.
Um, so, firstly, fucking Christ, this man is a horror show.
Um, secondly, I don't think he understands how democracy works.
Um, because like, each party has a plan for dealing with migration
in one way or another, and you vote them in based on their platform.
You putting them in power is the referendum on that.
That is how that's supposed to work.
Oh sure.
It's not perfect, but that's the system.
Oh sure.
Otherwise, we end up in Russell's universe where we have a referendum every five fucking
minutes.
Well, and the thing is, he understands exactly how everything works and he is actively...
he's lying.
He's a liar!
I mean, you know what?
Movie for what it is, Gangs of New York, man, at least part of what I took away from it, which I thoroughly enjoyed as a critique, was how fucking absurd Bill the Butcher was talking about original real Americans.
I know he was railing against immigrants.
Yes.
Yes. - And how the second that anybody that's got a fucking screw loose,
they come over here and they think that we own it.
And that other, like, to me, this is what I got from it.
It was a caricature of how absurd that kind of American xenophobia is.
Because, you know, from a lens of several hundred years in the future, it is lunacy to see this guy who's like, I'm an original American and by dint of you being here after me, After me, and my clan, and my kind, who's actually also not fucking from here, the entitlement to America from another immigrant, which all the white people are for sure, for sure, guaranteed,
Yep.
We are all transplants.
Yes.
I got that and I got Daniel Day-Lewis is a great fucking actor.
Those are the two things I took from that film.
That's not really serving my point.
No, no, that's fair.
There's a lot of things about the movie and I'm talking about this one.
But also I think the interpretation can be made that glorifying his You know, like, talking about how great Bill the Butcher is and thinking he's a hero.
Wow!
What movie did you watch?
It's a caricature!
The draping of the flag over him in the, like...
That was, hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm sorry if it wasn't obvious to other people, but to me, or maybe I'm reading into it, fucking I don't know.
I do know how Martin Scorsese feels about jazz.
He talks a lot about a melting pot that makes this, that is like a thing that would make a country great if it worked.
It's like a thing to be proud of.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If we were melting together and not being this guy's, like, even allowing this guy's notions Yeah.
He has a right to do it, but it fucking sucks.
Like, it's just so goddamn absurd.
Because yeah, you should be then straight up like so much of what he just said is in defense of Native Americans, is in defense of indigenous people.
Could be.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not him.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
If you want to make that argument, let's take it the whole way, you know?
Let's take it to the various tribes and see what they say about you staying there.
Learn to share, you fucking child!
It's crazy!
Oh dear.
And now we have a prediction of what's to come from Colonel McGregor.
All of this is falling apart, Russell.
It's going down hard.
We are Already over the cliff, headed down into the abyss.
We're going to hit rock bottom at some point, and then we're going to turn around and we're going to go into a new world.
A new world in which we are one of many great powers.
A world in which we are not THE superpower, but we are still going to remain powerful.
But I think what's most important is that we're going to emerge from all of this with the understanding that we have to live with the rest of the world.
And that we have to have a sense of mutual respect with the rest of the world.
Instead of showing up and saying, here, I have the answer.
Here's the unborn truth.
You need to do the following.
We're going to show up and say, we really want to do business, but how you govern yourselves, how you treat each other in your country is ultimately your affair.
I think we're headed to that point.
But it's still going to be a fight, because the people that are in Washington right now will not change.
They will not adapt.
That's the simple truth.
So they've got to be thrown out of office.
I would prefer that that happen peacefully.
*Sigh* *Laughter*
I'm sorry, did that man just insinuate the violent overthrow of the US government?
That's very explicit to me.
Yeah, I feel like that was attempted recently and didn't go very well, but I think he wants round two.
Okay.
Okay.
Sir, what do you think that you're gonna do?
I don't know.
Prayer.
I think that was the biggest prayer group.
I think prayer is cover.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
A little bit.
For the fucking Koch brother and family.
A little bit.
A little bit.
So yeah, he's anti-intervention in any kind of atrocity, obviously, which is just delightful.
But also, absolutely not!
Oh my god, the contradictions are screaming at me.
And like, These motherfuckers right here.
Yes, I'm generalizing.
If you see a person who looks like this and talks like this, yeah, what I'm gonna say, listen, if I'm wrong, that's delightful.
Good for them.
What I'm gonna say probably fucking applies.
That if you are insistent, first of all, saying that people from other countries that are trying to come here are fundamentally different.
No.
But then saying all this xenophobic shit, demonizing just people that live elsewhere.
That's it.
That's the only element.
They don't speak English.
They speak a different language, which guess what?
They probably speak a fucking couple, and you don't.
Yeah, a lot of these people are educated. Maybe they do speak more than one, right? But I'm just saying,
I don't want to make any generalizations that would undermine my motherfucking point,
because these are the motherfuckers that are going to say mutual respect. You know
how mutual respect works? These people say you first.
I demand respect, you first.
That's not, and then I'll respect you, that's not how it works.
That's not how integrity works.
Integrity is, you decide how you behave and you show people respect and then they can make a decision whether it is reciprocated.
You act first, You don't react to how someone behaves and then use that as a justification for you to be shitty.
That speaks poorly of your own character and that extrapolates up until, like, that goes up to, like, it's really tough to, like, I think that people have a fundamental misunderstanding and disconnect because of conditioning and miseducation, genuinely, is that you can't act the same way between people that you can from a government to people.
It absolutely scales up.
The micro and the macro scales up.
And if you act in a way that is morally consistent, it's not a problem.
It might be difficult.
It's not a problem.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's not even you first.
I think it's you respect me and I will tolerate you and not punish you.
You know, I think we've all had, you know, teachers or, I don't know, met cops or whatever that have had that perspective, like, no, no, no, you respect me and I will not inflict some form of violence upon you.
That's this deal.
If you disrespect me... Well, it's like my definition.
Yeah, yeah.
If you disrespect me, then I am going to punish you, you know, and rather than it being a two-way street in any way.
Yeah, the respect is like my definition of respect, depending on how I feel this day.
Not a consistent code, but how I'm feeling, how I'm feeling in the moment, and how you make me feel is what dictates my definition of respect.
Yes!
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Dissing?
Disrespect?
Respect?
Those definitions are completely out the fucking window.
So yeah, you're right, that like, okay, well then your definition of respect could be very different from my definition of respect.
Yeah.
That includes autonomy and dignity.
Yes, exactly.
That every person deserves.
Whereas people like this can see any amount of autonomy as disrespecting their authoritar, because it is like a fucking South Park caricature, it just is.
And a lot of people feel that way, and it should be, it should reflect in your individual life, and like, government could also do that, because it is actually made up of people.
Yeah, I'm so fucking lootly.
I'm so fucking lootly.
This person, when they say respect, They mean deference.
That's what they mean.
Yeah.
Right?
Like they mean deference and they get to do whatever they want because God told them to or fucking whatever.
Yes.
It's, it's, it's, it's not.
It's their holy land.
Yeah.
Um, all right.
We're using the wrong word.
Yeah.
And he knows he's doing that.
Oh yeah.
I can't imagine how his kids feel about him.
Maybe they like it.
I don't know.
I don't know their incentive structure.
I don't even know if he has kids.
He probably does.
Anyway, the final clip of the show is something for us to potentially look forward to.
I'm very much looking forward to joining you on OurCountryOurChoice.com, which is where your content can be found, and I'm looking forward to... I'm sure there were points when I was all listening to you.
Yes, I was listening to you, but I was also thinking, what on earth will Colonel Douglas MacGregor ask me when I'm on his show?
I can't imagine how you're going to wrestle your attention into... So, when you were making Forgetting Sarah Marshall, what did you think about Jason?
Hey, that's one of my favorite films.
I love that.
So you can bet 100% I will definitely ask you about that film, especially some of your unusual physical moves that you made during that film.
Well, I'll be able to.
I'll be happy to talk you through some of my pincer movements and various flanking motions.
Thank you very much, Colonel.
It's a pleasure to be in your company as always.
I feel like he just completely lacks awareness of how often he sounds like a violent sexual predator.
Anyway, we have something- Which one?
I meant Russell, but yeah, good point.
Violent insert word or whatever.
We have something to look forward to in that Russell will be on Colonel McGregor's show to apparently discuss forgetting Sarah Marshall, one of McGregor's favorite movies, and Mila Kunis's Dynamite performance or something.
I don't know.
Also, Russell was definitely not listening to McGregor during that interview.
Literally not at all.
No.
I didn't want to make an assumption because I didn't see the whole thing, but you did.
I could see him checking out, but it's like anytime he says, I was listening, it's like the lies of a toddler, only less adorable.
It's like, no, okay, yes, of course you were.
Yes, of course.
Oh boy, oh boy, so we just it was two two babies playing pretend, except there are like dire generational and international consequences to this little play act that just it makes me so fucking mad.
Yeah, I think obviously.
I think that came out a little in this particular episode.
I'm especially heated about these things.
I mean, you know what?
And I'm gonna take a turn to, oh, another thing that'll make me mad.
Great.
Giving Russell neurodivergent cover.
Right.
I think, like, I think we have several drinks because we need caffeine and water when we're recording a podcast.
Because I don't want to give him any credit, and let me tell you why.
So, Tucker Carlson, whenever he was talking to Alex Jones with these previous interviews, and I wanted to address this on the show, and I might as well, and it's a great opportunity now, because Tucker called himself autistic.
My autistic tendencies.
Right!
Yes, yes, yes.
In the show.
Yeah, yeah.
I didn't burst into flames in anger, and I'm glad you all are proud of me.
I'm just gonna assume I didn't actually set alight and combust.
I'm really relieved.
Because then later in the same interview, and I don't know what else that he could have said, but I know that this really fucking stuck out, because Tucker was talking about, oh yeah, I'm real middle of the road, I'm low-key, and I just kinda, like, he was talking about how neutral he is.
Yes, famous neutral man Tucker Carlson, yes.
Well, or even just like, if he sees himself that way and that's how he's saying that?
Sorry!
No, that's not- there's no black and white thinking.
This guy is the wishy-washiest, mealy-mouthiest.
I think that specifically, and I know there are listeners that can hear it in my speech every week, and what I say every week, and they relate to the type of brains that we have, which are actually, I think, far more common than- Oh yeah.
Versions of her are far more common.
I do not want to give Russell that credit, and I do not want to give Tucker that credit, because they can tolerate things that have made us lose jobs, lose relationships, have to lose our family.
There are those of us out there, and I'm speaking for myself, but I know other people have these experiences.
I'm speaking for myself.
I have lost so much because I can see The hypocrisy.
I can't look away from hypocrisy.
I can't look away from unjust, unfair, because I can extrapolate the cruelty.
I can extrapolate the result.
Tucker is the most neurotypical motherfucker I could possibly fucking think of, if that's the kind of metric that we're using.
I don't get to choose what I remember.
Yeah, yeah.
All I know is it's in there.
Yeah.
And it's way more like what a zombie would actually be, or what Frankenstein would actually be, which is when they wake up, they're not like brains.
They'd be like, oh no, I was dead, and now I'm in a crisis, and I desperately want this to stop.
That's where I don't get to choose These constructions in my brain, they're just there.
Yeah, yeah.
And for, like, there's a lot of overlap with narcissism and neurodivergence.
On the outside, it's the inside that makes it very different.
Yeah.
It's the functions on the inside.
And if this is going to start fucking happening with Tucker, and Tucker is the avant-garde in asshole-ism, right?
If they're gonna start using this kind of like, you know, self-diagnosis, and that's like a whole other fucking thing, but like, they're gonna start calling themselves autistic to excuse their asshole behaviors?
Yeah, it's offensive on a whole number of levels.
Oh yeah!
Don't make me explode.
I've not heard Russell self-describe as anything neurodivergent yet.
But yeah, the only thing that springs to mind is him calling Richard Dawkins as possibly being autistic, and very much painting that in a negative kind of light.
That's why I don't think he will.
I don't think he would do that.
Tucker says it because it's convenient for him in the moment.
And I think that Russell, with all the anti-vax, because that's a whole other thing about like, Vaccines causing autism and that being like, like, listen, it's not a superpower.
It's not.
It's being really good at some stuff does not make the society more friendly to how you are made and ignoring that thing.
Like, if it makes you feel better to say that.
Cool.
I don't.
So that's just that's my personal opinion.
That's how I feel.
I don't think that that's.
I think that that is toxic positivity, in my opinion.
And very often causes far more problems than it solves.
And so that's why I think it's toxic positivity, right?
But still being a valuable human is exactly what you are.
And having value in how society was structured for like most of human history and like being valuable was a thing that we were that we are not anymore.
I just don't...
I don't think that Russell, again, because of all the anti-vax talk and the part of the problem with anti-vax people being like treating autism as the same as like a cancer diagnosis.
Yes.
Or like, you know, these kind of like, like pathologizing.
Like, I'm not going to say it's a super power.
I'm not going to say it's this like, Yeah, exactly.
dire disease that is a pox on your family.
Yes, yeah, yeah, which is the way the antidepressants treat it. - When your child is autistic.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
Exactly, and I think that that's where, I think that's where Russell's bread is buttered,
and I think that those are values that have served him extremely well,
so there's no reason for him to then identify with the thing that he has, I don't think overtly,
I think covertly, put massive amounts of time and resources into demonizing.
So he's not gonna, I don't think he's going to sign on to that necessarily, unless it behooves him to do so.
Yes, exactly.
Unless it becomes expedient in the moment, which it might.
Right.
At the end of the day, you know what I mean?
Like I was trying to kind of like bring down the extremes versus superpower versus like you're a social pariah, you know, like there can be a thing in the middle that I think that's actually true.
But he has gone to like he has spent so much political his own capital in the pariah side.
Yes.
And the, you know, the disease and the inconvenience and, you know, like, um yeah he just it's the ethnostate thing too he just wants to get rid of people that um are not convenient for him yeah yeah pretty much um and uh apparently so does Colonel McGregor um just a just a swell guy um i'm i'm happy we had the election stuff at the start so we didn't have to deal with like
A full thing of Colonel McGregor, because it was terrible.
No shit.
Really, really terrible.
No, he probably wants to put everyone autistic in a camp.
He's extreme.
That guy's a fucking problem.
Yeah.
Problem.
Yeah, I'm not thrilled about his success in these spheres, because he's not going away anytime soon.
But hey, we'll keep an eye.
We'll keep an eye.
I mean, it looks like a barnacle, I buy it.
Right.
All right.
That's our show, everybody.
If you want to support us in what we do, head to patreon.com slash OnBrand.
We would love to have you.
If you want to get in touch, drop us an email.
It's theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
We'll get back to you.
Facebook group.
If you're on Facebook, go to OnBrand Awakening Wonders.
There's a group of like minded individuals there.
And if you prefer more anonymous browsing, go over to Reddit.
It's OnBrand underscore pod.
And there are some lovely humans there, too.
Uh, on socials with the on-brand pod everywhere except for where we're not.
Um, look for the logo.
And, uh, personal socials, I'm at alworthofficial and Lauren is at may.buy.lauren.b.
And if you click the link in the description, you will be able to purchase a magnet like that one with gold on it.
Actual real life gold.
You can get it sent wherever you like.
Um, send it to yourself, to a loved one, to something.
Uh, something metallic preferably to attach it to.
And yeah, I hope we see everyone Sunday for the live stream.
That'll be really, really good fun.
Really, really good fun.
This immediate Sunday at 2 p.m.
CST, 8 p.m.
GMT.
That'd be really cool to hang out.
Really cool to hang out.
But for anyone who can't make it, then patrons, it'll be up on Patreon for you.
But for everyone else, we'll see you next week for the main show.
So thanks for sticking with us.
We love you very much.
Take care of yourselves and each other.
Bye!
Henry Kissinger's still dead.
Bye!
Yay!
Bye!
That's not win-win-win.
That's lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie.
▲
Export Selection