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Nov. 21, 2022 - Stay Free - Russel Brand

01:13:51

THEY'RE BACK! Trump, Ye, Tate and Peterson Reinstated! - #039 - Stay Free with Russell Brand

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	I'm going to go ahead and do that.
	Bye! Bye!
	So I'm looking for the steel In this video, you're going to see the future.
	Because they're happy.
	Hello!
	Thanks for joining me, Russell Brand, on the show.
	Stay free with Russell Brand and what show we've got for you today.
	We're talking about the World Cup in Qatar.
	Is it a festival of injustice or who are we to judge?
	Who are we to judge anyone else?
	Should morality and spirituality and principles be about your own conduct in the world or should they be about, I don't like what you're doing?
	You think we're so innocent?
	Do you think we're so innocent?
	Well, like, you know, you've got to look at morality from a different perspective, and while we're on the subject of that, man, the four horsemen of the Apocaltwit?
	Can you do a pun on that?
	That was pretty good.
	The Twitter apocalypse?
	I don't know, Apocaltwit.
	They're back on, aren't they?
	Tate and Kanye and all of that, and what does it mean now?
	What is morality anymore?
	Who gets sanctioned?
	Who imposes sanctions?
	We're going to be talking about those things, of course, with Matt Taibbi a little later in the show.
	And if you have any questions for Matt Taibbi, then you can post them either in the Rumble chat or the Stay Free AF chat that you can find on Locals if you're a part of our membership community.
	I'm going to be asking Matt Taibbi some pretty searching questions based on my own research, like...
	Matt riddled me this.
	What about those missiles in Poland?
	And the way it was reported on, they suddenly jumped to conclusions.
	Also, what happens with me?
	This is what happens to me.
	I don't know what happens to you.
	I sometimes watch a bit of mainstream media, because I've got a house and a TV, you know?
	Maybe I'm watching some cartoons with my children or whatever.
	I put on some mainstream media and then I see they're reporting on, for example, war, and I think, oh no, God, what am I thinking?
	That war is terrible, the people of Ukraine, they're suffering so much, and Zelensky, he's a hero!
	And Putin is a monster!
	And those things can all be true.
	As well as NATO's infringement during 2014, the meddling in free elections and all the stuff that Jeffrey Sachs told us.
	What do we do?
	How do we hold ourselves together?
	How do we survive amidst these cultural forces that want you bludgeoned and blind, that don't want you to be able to think for yourself so that you're free and kind, connected inwardly, connected to other human beings and to nature, that want you to live in a synthetic reality?
	And I'm going to be demonstrating the nature of that symphatic reality a little bit later with what I can only describe as an intimate meme that amused me like a granddad, but also I think helps us to understand some pretty fundamental questions.
	We're going to start, I think, by talking about what's going on Twitter.
	A former guest on the show, and I would say friend of the show, because I'm certainly a friend of me personally, Jordan Peterson.
	He's back on Twitter.
	He's baiting them by using the famous shining image of Jack Nicholson there.
	Effective, isn't it?
	Yeah, because of the whites of the eyes and the teeth.
	That's menace.
	And also that he's glancing to the side.
	That's a lot of whites.
	That's a lot of whites.
	Do you think he does his own tweets, Jordan?
	Yeah, I do.
	JP does his own tweets.
	No question.
	No question.
	And what's the first tweet back from, say, Andrew Tate?
	I mean, we've not had Andrew Tate on, have we?
	A lot of people say misogynist, sexist.
	Some people say just a sexier JP.
	He says, mastery is a funny thing.
	It's almost as if on a long enough time scale, losing simply isn't an option.
	Such is the way of Wu Dan.
	Now, I will say, I don't know what Wu Dan is.
	That's probably something that he talks about in his content, I suppose, is it?
	It's not just misspelled Wuhan.
	Is it Wu Han?
	Such is the way of Wu Han.
	You're fine in the lab, stay away from the wet market.
	That lab, literally, clinical conditions, very safe in there, you don't need to worry.
	But that wet market, careful!
	You'll do a pandemic!
	Ye came back with a much more, sort of direct, I reckon Ye does his own tweets, because his first tweet back, testing, testing, seeing if my Twitter is unblocked.
	I like that because is that meta or is that just how he did that?
	Yeah.
	Look, Ye is a great case study for the nature of genius because he's a great creator and he's brilliant and there's been so many times when he's sailed close to the wind.
	You can see that there's been times where they've gone, we don't like Kanye, shut him down, shut him down.
	But then of course he, you know, recently I think they've stepped it up a little bit.
	There's been cancellation of his deals and all stuff and that was, you know, and kicked off on Twitter.
	Took a while though, didn't it?
	They had to grind him.
	Adidas took their time.
	Not sure.
	Can't make quite a lot from him.
	They've just got to do those calculations.
	Like Rogan.
	They wanted to cancel Rogan during all that Covid stuff, but someone's doing the maths over at Spotify.
	It's a Taylor Swift album a day.
	We can't cancel him.
	Shit, shit.
	But look, yay for the second tweet back.
	Shalom and a smiley face.
	That's absolute madness.
	Oh, Kanye.
	Kanye.
	There's so many meta-narratives around reality now.
	There's such a kind of appetite to judge.
	And so little appetite to discern.
	So little appetite for self-reflection.
	For example, if we are actually furiously angry about Kanye for antisemitism, and who wouldn't condemn antisemitism?
	Who wouldn't condemn any form of racism?
	Of course.
	Racism, not liking people who say, well it's boring, it's a waste of time to be a racist.
	You can't galvanise a global revolution against significant centralised establishment power that has monopolised the media, big business and utilised global finance to tyrannise us all if you're going to divide people up into little races and little sex boxes.
	And sex box isn't an S&M device that I've ever seen literally used.
	I mean sort of boxes of gender and judgement.
	You have to, I believe, unify everyone, empower everyone to run their communities and their own lives however they want to, and that's right across the spectra.
	That's multiple spectrums, by the way, guys.
	Stadia, stadiums, I know all of the different languages and different words.
	Like, whether you live a traditional and orthodox life or a progressive life, allow people to be who they are.
	It immediately diffuses the entire Conversation.
	Dissolve centralised power.
	Unless it's necessary for municipality.
	But sometimes I wonder, is Kanye an absolute genius?
	And Kanye, if you're watching, and I know that he enjoys our content because he said in one of his interviews, I remember him saying, I like old Russ because he fears nothing.
	Yeah, little did he know.
	I fear most things.
	I'm a very anxious person.
	That's your quivering wreck reading that tweet.
	What does he mean?
	What's that?
	Shall I say this?
	Oh, Kanye!
	It's very difficult to relax in this crazy old thing called love.
	If you're watching us right now on YouTube, we're only on your platform for a couple more minutes and then, by jove, we'll be freeing our... there'll be free speech flying out of every orifice in a second, so simply pop over to Rumble and join us there.
	And be assured that we use this freedom of speech that we have been granted to create great love.
	Alchemists, spelling, using language, using signifiers and words to bring people together.
	Where will it come from, this new order?
	It will come from the chaos.
	It will come from the chaos of our current time.
	A chaos that we are currently denying exists.
	We know that the old ideas have failed, but the new thing has yet to be born.
	But it will be born in our consciousness.
	That's just one thing.
	I'm going to ask Matt Tobey about that.
	He's going to love that.
	He's going to love that sort of question.
	All right.
	While you're still with us over there on YouTube, let's have a look at how Kanye announced a potential bid to become president of the United States.
	I think that I don't like to use the word spunking it, but there being a bit previous.
	Right.
	The term, the idiom, spunking it.
	I think they're being a bit previous, Kanye and Trump, in announcing their candidacy, don't you?
	I mean, it's very early for 2024.
	Yeah.
	Premature, isn't it?
	Hold back, relax, don't do it, in the words of Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
	Kanye's got a lot on his plate at the moment as well, hasn't he?
	Has he got a lot on his plate?
	Well, there's the stuff with Twitter, there's the deals collapsing.
	Are his deals collapsing?
	Well, I think they have.
	I mean, Adidas did, didn't it?
	Does he mind?
	Can he mind?
	He's probably fine, isn't he?
	He could make his own trainers.
	Of course he can.
	Actually, does he even, like, fully commit to running at this point?
	Has he kind of said, I am definitely running?
	Let's see what he says.
	This is the announcement, but it seems to me like he's wandering around a warehouse looking at trousers.
	Right.
	Have a look.
	This is Milo right here.
	Right.
	We're doing a campaign.
	Oh, right on.
	Can we handle the out ourselves?
	Tell them to delete it, send them old clips.
	Before I tell you exactly what I think of this, if you're watching this on YouTube, go right on over to Rumble Now, where you'll see our content in full, first, for free, right now.
	See you in a second, YouTubers.
	Now, the rest of you watching me, stay free of Russell Pratt.
	Why is Kanye announcing his candidacy for President of the United States mostly through trousers?
	Also, why are all his clothes on the floor?
	Is that how he sells his clothes?
	He's doing it like it's a yard sale!
	I've got these clothes, I've got this old alarm clock, I've got a sort of a lampless light Pinocchio, I've got a set of Scrabble, most of the letters are missing.
	I've got this globe, the light don't work anymore.
	But if you take this Scrabble board, look at that, if you spell out all the letters, yay!
	2024!
	Yeah!
	Triple points!
	Triple points score!
	As some of you watching this right now, I'm thinking, I want Trump and Kanye to run as a dream ticket.
	And also, has politics become so sort of outrageous, ridiculous and almost defunct in a sort of a form of entertainment that, would it really matter?
	Would it really matter?
	Why not just have entertaining people?
	So what, they've just, they've laid them down there for us to have a look at?
	Look mate, I don't know what normal is anymore, do you?
	Do you know what Kanye should be doing right now?
	Is it like what he should be doing?
	I guess what that is, is he's at the place where he checks the jumpers and the trousers and it says yay 24.
	Because you wouldn't be surprised if you heard that this was Kanye's shop and that they just put things out on the floor.
	You'd be like, well, it's brilliant.
	What's another genius move?
	I heard that he puts everything in a bin bag in the shop.
	Like you just have to go and root round in a bin bag.
	What's going on?
	You genius Kanye.
	You bloody genius.
	Let's see what he does now.
	Oh yeah.
	So you are running.
	I think that is meant to mean yes.
	He's also stayed loyal to Adidas with his Adidas neck bag.
	Yeah, the old neck bag.
	Have you ever thought about one of those?
	You've worn some wacky garments in your time.
	No, I haven't, Gal.
	My dress sense has always been defined by a quiet dignity.
	I don't know about the neck bag.
	I think it's just impressive that they can cancel his contract.
	He says, I'm sticking with a neck bag.
	That's not going to come between me and a perfectly good neck bag.
	No.
	When a neck bag's comfy, you keep wearing it, don't you?
	If you find the neck bag that you like, stick with your neck bag.
	So Twitter have allowed back those four particular people, but like who... and I suppose there's a lot of outrage.
	Again, you can sort of... isn't it now?
	Are we at a time where your opinion is determined by a set of pre-agreed alliances and principles, is it?
	Like if you're a centre-left liberal person and it's like, No!
	It's outrageous!
	They should be banned!
	That's why it's interesting to watch Chappelle on SNL because he's like Jelignite and he's sort of like saying that you know you like introducing the subject of Kanye or Trump but then being sort of genuinely surprising on those subjects sort of inviting you to challenge your own prejudices and your preconditions for laughing you can hear that kind of nervousness and of course What's said about Twitter is, well look, if we are banning Trump and Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate and Kanye, either you have to be sort of like, I'm down for free speech, or you have to say, right, well what are the conditions?
	Is it inciting violence?
	In which case you have to agree that Trump was integrally involved in what some call the insurrection and other call protests of January the 6th.
	To say that Tate is a misogynist, I guess you have to agree with certain aspects of that.
	And then sort of Kanye, I guess it's the anti-semitism, and with JP it was the stuff about Elliot Page, who when we had our conversation, I challenged him on that basis, not from a free speech angle, but just from a simple compassion one, and you can go and check that when you've checked this, and let me know in the chat in the comments what you think about free speech in general.
	Free speech surely means the freedom of speech for people that you disagree with, to express their opinions freely.
	Here are some other people.
	Gareth, will you read this to us?
	This is about other people.
	This is about FIFA actually.
	Why haven't we got to talk about other people that are banned from Twitter?
	Sheiks and shakes and people that are like good old 2010 style terrorists.
	The comment has been made and it has been made a lot by say right-wing commentators around the time when Trump was being banned of, you know, leaders of repressive regimes who weren't necessarily banned.
	That you had, I don't know, Iranian leaders or Other examples are Venezuelan leaders who are committing atrocities in their own countries, and yet they were still allowed on Twitter.
	And I suppose the comment was, what's the rule then?
	What is the rule?
	Because if the rule is ban dictators, then you've got to ban all dictators.
	If it's advocates of violence, then you have to ban all advocates of violence.
	It has to be uniform, otherwise people will identify other patterns and say oh it's because of your
	personal political preferences.
	I guess also you know we had Alan Macleod on talking about how the infiltration of groups
	like the CIA into Twitter and when you look at I mean then it's like how far down do you
	Do you look at the CIA and say, well, what have the CIA been guilty of?
	What kind of things in relation to terrorist groups and things that the CIA have played their part in?
	And now where are we?
	So what we're just saying is, on the surface, we ban these people because of what they represent to us, because of how politically useful these people, rightly or wrongly.
	But then it's like, how far do you go with this?
	I suppose what you have to identify is what your own prejudices and biases are.
	Like, so if you, like, guess what?
	There's this weird coincidence.
	I really hate Donald Trump, and I also think Donald Trump should be banned from Twitter.
	I hate Jordan Peterson, and I also think, like, where, I suppose where things become interesting is when you say, I completely disagree with the politics of Donald Trump and the philosophy of Jordan Peterson, but I believe in free speech, and therefore, like, it's, if there, Once those two things, if you can uncouple those ideas then I think there's a chance for reasonable debate.
	But there is no debate.
	There are sort of two frozen blocks of dogma clashing against one another and I can't help but think that that is convenient for centralised power and a distraction.
	Now take this World Cup in Qatar.
	Qatar.
	Similarly, who's in a position, whether it's the CIA infiltration of social media, if you accept that there has been CIA and FBI infiltration into Facebook and Twitter and all of the social media giants, as has been widely reported, and not into irrelevant positions, they are controlling the editorial policy.
	They are controlling who gets censored.
	So ultimately, Big tech and the state have a shared agenda.
	That's ultimately what's being... and certainly have convergent interest to the degree where they can control a narrative and assure that their agenda is met.
	Exactly the same with the World Cup.
	I guess what you're getting to is it's okay to kind of criticise it at the very top.
	Get rid of some names and some people where we can just carry on doing exactly what we were doing anyway.
	It's exactly what was happening with Twitter.
	We'll get rid of Trump but we'll just carry on basically doing what we were.
	Same with Facebook.
	We'll make these things slightly change and we'll tell you that we're going to do this and then we'll just get on with business as usual.
	I wonder, then, if what I believe, and let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments what you think, if what is ultimately important is your own personal integrity.
	I don't mean that you should individualise yourself and cut yourself off from society, but you know when you're operating from a position of judgement and hatred.
	And if you don't ever address that, if you're sort of approaching cancellation with a kind of gleeful venom, then kind of admit that.
	But if it's like, look, I'm so committed to the project of a better and fairer world and I just simply cannot bear all this bigotry and prejudice when it comes to LGBTQ issues or matters of race or matters of class and inequality.
	And when it comes to the Qatar World Cup, and we talk about colonialism, imperialism, workers' rights, the value of human life, corruption, sports washing, all really important subjects.
	But the World Cup has, in a sense, lost its way some time ago.
	In 2018, it was held in Russia, and probably every country it's been held in since its inauguration has questions unanswered about its regime.
	What nation has a history unblemished?
	How do you build power?
	How do you create a centralized state without a degree of tyranny, oppression, control of a narrative, imprisonment of dissidents?
	And I think what's important right now is that the world appears to be moving in the direction of more centralized power.
	You have overt announcements from people like Macron about the dangers of a multipolar or even a bipolar world and I don't think it means No.
	bipolar in a sort of mental breakdown way. It means you don't want Chinese and US power,
	you want one solitary power. They explicitly and overtly say we want a global order where
	we have the ability to surveil a population. Now, you could forgive the people of Qatar
	for saying, well look, we've got our own narrative, we've got our own story, we've got our own
	history. What is it in particular about Qatar exploitation?
	Qatar exploitation of human rights?
	Because if you think, well, let's just take one issue, LGBTQ plus issues, well, where were our Western societies 50 years ago or 60 years ago?
	Can you not envisage a society 5, 10, 20, 30 years more advanced than us?
	Come in and discerning and purveying our cultures and saying, hey, what's the story with the inequality?
	What's the story with the homelessness?
	So what I suppose this argument returns us to is a morality that is about what you are willing to sacrifice.
	What you are willing to change in yourself.
	How long and hard you're willing to point at other people saying, why don't you change this?
	Why don't you change that?
	It has to ultimately be, I am going to practice these principles in my life.
	I am going to be fair.
	I am going to be just.
	I'm going to stand up for what I believe in and I'm going to oppose the things that I oppose vociferously and steadfastly.
	Now, the Qatar World Cup announced itself on the global stage with what I would call a peculiar festival.
	Opening ceremonies, Gail, can be strange anyway, can't they?
	Surely we're over the opening ceremony now, aren't we?
	I mean, once you've seen them one, you've seen them all.
	Well, I would have said so.
	Well, maybe not this one.
	But this has got some off-key components.
	It's Morgan, if you've seen it by now, let us know in the chat, but it's Morgan Freeman striding through a desert scape with crouched figures, with a fella who has an upper body only, having a chat with him, telling him that everyone's welcome in the Bedouin tent.
	Let's have a little look and see what it evokes in you.
	Not just music, but also this call to celebration.
	This is all so new.
	All that I have known before was a land that seemed to be in turmoil with families of the top and iced out.
	What is happening?
	I mean, it's very abstract, isn't it?
	Morgan Freeman is in the desert and he's in a state of real inquiry.
	I have known only turmoil.
	I'm wearing a golf glove, I think, because of an accident.
	I've got a lot of questions and inquiries.
	The World Cup now, like, even the most ardent football fans have to sort of, we have to sort of clench.
	And accept that it's a compromise.
	We go through, me and Gareth used to do a lovely little football podcast, Football is Nice, which by God should return.
	We're both very devoted football fans, in a kind of casual way.
	There's no need for unnecessary self-flagellation.
	Football can be painful enough.
	I love football.
	But it's pretty clear that the World Cup is primarily a commercial enterprise.
	If it wasn't, you'd say, let's not have anyone sponsor this World Cup whose products are adversarial to health.
	To playing football.
	Yeah, well, you know, how good will you be at football if you drink loads and loads of Coca-Cola and eat loads of McDonald's?
	Well, probably not very good.
	Well, let's cancel their sponsorship right away.
	So, in a sense, there's only morality where the morality doesn't cost you.
	That's what I'm starting to believe.
	It's only morality where it can be practiced through just saying stuff, rather than doing stuff.
	So, and I suppose that's sort of another way of describing virtue signalling.
	Now, I'm not an anti-woke person.
	I think the values of wokeness, like tolerance of people's individual identity, the rights for people from all backgrounds, classes, cultures, creeds, races, to express themselves free.
	I agree with all of those ideas.
	What we're querying here is the utilisation of those principles for, ultimately, for commercial outcomes and to create cultural division.
	So when I look, oh dear old Morgan Freeman, wandering through this sort of peculiar desert, which is actually the centre of a stadium, built by migrant labour, and I've not seen the death toll.
	Is there a death toll?
	I think that it's pretty high.
	There's a death toll, there's a toll, there's a death toll, but then, you know, I don't know how many people have died in accidents in the last couple of hundred years, building sites of commerce.
	How many people, how many US service people go to war and die in the name of What, lies?
	Yeah, you could answer that question for yourself.
	What was the last Iraq war for?
	What was the Afghanistan war for?
	Any war, could it be argued, is ultimately the pursuit of commercial interests abroad?
	And I don't think the UK is close to that.
	It's just a few century or a century earlier that we were Conquering India on behalf of the East India Tea Company and various African nations, also on behalf of commercial and corporate interests.
	So unless it's like, no, like, it just seems so seldom, Gareth, that people are actually, I really believe in this, this is what I actually care about.
	Ultimately it's just a set of conflicting commercial interests, just attempts to gain power and create commercial opportunity.
	So I'll read you this by Nazrin Malik, this paragraph.
	Qatar only managed to maneuver itself into this prime position by soliciting the support of powerful states that
	have fast-tracked its passage into polite society.
	It is armed to the teeth by the UK, Europe and the US, and is a joint venture in monumental lucrative financial and
	real estate transactions on European soil.
	Can I ask you, before you go any further, about, in particular, arms transactions?
	I feel like the UK has sold billions of arms to Qatar and I can't imagine that the US would allow any market to remain dormant for too long.
	Yeah, the UK sold 3.4 billion pounds of weapons to Qatar recently.
	I know Trump, under his Stewardship in the States sold 12 billion to Qatar and it's an ongoing thing and you don't you can not just take Qatar you can say Saudi Arabia the same situation there with the United States these supposed you know repressive regimes that we're all so critical of well there doesn't make much difference when it comes to arms sales.
	In a sense, how you have to, in some way or another, extract the event from that kind of morality or accept its true complexity.
	It's almost impossible to think, England won 6-2 earlier today against Iran.
	How can you enjoy that if you're thinking about the true complexity?
	But also you have to incorporate how we got there, our own involvement, to think that this is Qatar.
	Particularly, uniquely and solely Qatar.
	We're over here!
	We're fantastic!
	I think it's a shift of consciousness at the level of the individual and the entire culture.
	My focus should be, am I behaving well?
	Am I treating people properly?
	Usually the answer is, there's a lot of room for improvement with myself before I start.
	I need to devote more time to helping and serving others and then perhaps I probably won't feel the need to go around judging everyone quite so harshly.
	Yeah I don't think it's obviously it's not about saying all the things that have gone on in Qatar are fine because we've done awful things as well but it is about who gets to control the narrative who gets to say who are the real like demons in this in this situation who is it who's really to blame here is it Qatar is it a lot more a lot other countries as well Well, it's a complicated issue.
	I think I'll hand it over to Morgan Freeman, who seems to have worked it all out in his usual fashion.
	Morgan Freeman, who is sort of like the West's de facto voice of God, isn't he?
	He's been the voice of God several times, and here he is doing that once again.
	I'm not sure.
	Am I dreaming?
	We sent out the call because everyone is welcome.
	This is an invitation to the whole world.
	I remember even after hearing the call, I was still seeing another way.
	We dismissed it and demanded our own way.
	I suppose people will be cynical about the deployment of the gentleman there with the,
	I guess, how would you call it, with sort of like without legs or whatever.
	Like they could say they've just exploitively put them there because they know that Qatar are being criticised for many of their social policies.
	But there's a point, isn't there, where you have to Query the right of a country to have their own ideology?
	Are we saying that Islam... I know some people vocally do say that Islam shouldn't be used as a principle for governance.
	It should be like a private religion.
	They should have advanced private religions rather than Part of Islam's appeal and essence is that it's an organisational principle for government and for social and personal and religious life.
	It doesn't see those things as distinct.
	And secularism is a very particular and obviously modern argument.
	The idea that you should separate religious life from the life of governance.
	But also, that comes with bloody problems, because you don't find... How's secularism going in Western nations?
	Are you finding that... Was there another ideology that stepped into that vacuum to do with... Oh, wow!
	There is only one ideology.
	We don't care ultimately, really.
	Since it won the right to host the World Cup, it's been granted billions of pounds in weapons sales licences, including sophisticated surveillance equipment by Britain.
	Qatar is not a prior state, it exists in a global political system of Western sponsors that have forged deep alliances with Gulf monarchies and extended immunity.
	The state of Qatar is actually the 10th largest landowner in Britain, did you know?
	Did you know that?
	They own... In our country, Britain, I don't want to get all nationalistic, I'm trying to get beyond these kind of ideas and slurs, but the Raul, Qatar own the 10th largest landowner.
	You know that I was recently involved in that protest against Thames Water dumping sewage into the River Thames, who think they'd have a vested interest in.
	And you find out that Qatar and Kuwait and Canada own significant parts of Thames Water.
	You are living already in an illusion.
	You look at nature.
	You look at the world around you.
	You think that you're in the United States of America.
	Or you think you're in the United Kingdom.
	You are already in a land colonized by capital.
	I'm not anti-capitalist in some reductive way.
	Like, the state should control everything!
	That's not what I'm offering you.
	I'm saying that we're living in such an advanced state of corporatism that even the streets you walk in are already owned by foreign concerns as a result of deals done behind closed doors that were never voted for, that are never going to get anywhere near democracy.
	Of course that's why the limited areas that you are allowed to discuss as part of democracy, hot button topics like arms, abortion, civil rights issues, which are not unimportant issues, but compared to where real power lies, They are, if not secondary, they could be regarded as distractions.
	Certainly, the truly powerful are happy for us to kill each other over those ideas while they get on owning everything.
	Yeah, there's only one set of arms that you're allowed to debate, actually.
	It's those right to bear.
	It's not the ones that we sell to Saudi Arabia.
	What about Saudi Arabia's arms?
	What about the submerged narratives that we could mention on Rumble?
	You know what went on that day!
	Alright, is there anything else we want to say about this World Cup before we move on?
	Because I know I've got a lot of points.
	Oh man, if you're an England football fan, you will be aware of this lovely clip of England fans boasting that since they've been in Qatar, they've been hanging out With powerful members of the royal family and having a laugh and meeting lions and stuff like that, which really sounds like a blag and a mad lie, until you find out they actually have been doing that and they've got the footage to prove it.
	Have a look.
	If you're not English, hearing that said in a Scouse accent is a real... We met one of the Sheikh's sons!
	We're over there!
	We've fucking been cracking on!
	I met a fucking lion earlier!
	Come on mate, you're pissed in some weird temporal dwelling.
	Last night we met one of the Sheikh's sons and he...
	If you're not English, hearing that said in a Scouse accent is a real...
	We met one of the Sheikh's sons!
	We're over there! We've fucking been cracking on!
	I met a fucking lion earlier!
	I'm like... Come on mate, you're pissed in some weird temporal dwelling.
	Especially because they say we're out on a beer run.
	We want to get beers!
	Well, you didn't get them, did you?
	You didn't.
	We know the rules.
	How can you have got beers?
	Beers are banned!
	Last-minute ban on the beers, baby!
	He took us back to the palace and he showed us he had lions and everything.
	They made us so welcome!
	They made us so welcome!
	Here, meet some lions and stuff.
	Let's have a look at the actual video now where they... We're telling the truth, these geezers.
	Like, the next time you see them.
	There you go.
	Oh, yeah.
	Let's have a look.
	Let's have a look at it, young Putin.
	It's fantastic.
	And Abdulaziz.
	And we've just rocked them.
	Again!
	I mean, are you going to approach that as joyful hospitality or should you have a lion in your roof terrace there?
	I'm not sure about that after show party they're attending where you've got Simba on a dog's lead near a swimming pool.
	Is that the answer for any of us?
	No.
	You've never liked an after party anyway.
	Even as a man who's participated in a closing ceremony of a major international tournament, the Olympics, where I brilliantly dressed as Willy Wonka.
	I mean, you should pull that up, young Putin.
	Brilliant bit of performance by me.
	On top of a bus.
	There I was, dressed as Willy Wonka, on top of a bus, at the closing ceremony of the Olympics, singing Come With Me into a World of Pure Imagination.
	And I felt like we were already in a world of imagination, because how can this actually be happening?
	Even then I didn't like an after party and the pressure of it and stuff.
	It doesn't suit my general personality to live with those kind of social pressures.
	There I am.
	That's me there.
	I've still got that top hat in my house and my daughters don't treat it with any real regard.
	It has been used as a potty on occasion.
	Didn't your trousers split?
	My trousers split just before, just as I was clambering on top of that bus, my trousers split on the nut bag seam and I used sellotape, like a kind of scotch tape, to seal the hole and it sort of, you know like if you, you could use sellotape if you folded it enough times as a kind of prison weapon to sort of give someone a good jabbing.
	Well somehow it did that to itself and was giving me an upward jab in the nut bag.
	In the nut bag was it?
	Yes, come with me and we'll be in the world of your imagination!
	It was hard to make sense of reality while all of that was happening.
	I don't know, what do you make of the Olympics in 2012?
	It's not like, yeah, it's reductive even to say all nations have blood on their hands, who are we to judge Qatar?
	It's not like saying that Qatar ...isn't mistaken in many of its social policies or that they wouldn't be scrutinized, evaluated and judged.
	It's simply saying, look, the real rule is we'll do whatever we want as long as it makes money.
	We'll make excuses afterwards.
	There is a submerged ideology that's governing all of this.
	It's not outright nihilism.
	It's the pursuit of profit, of more centralized power.
	It's not something that can be continually ignored.
	In tomorrow's show, in fact, we're having a look at that.
	The re-emergence of digital IDs is the solution to all the world's problems, not just future pandemics, but also immigration.
	So wherever you are on the political spectrum, we've got a policy for you and to keep you surveilled.
	Don't like immigration?
	Yeah, no, actually, I don't like immigration.
	Oh, no, I think you should be allowed immigration.
	But I bet you think people should be vaccinated up to the eyeballs.
	Yes, I do.
	Well, both of you guys could be united by our common tyranny!
	Get yourself digitized.
	You know, like, I was down the supermarket the other day.
	I just live a regular life.
	Wow.
	I just live a regular life.
	Is it the posh one, or...?
	Very posh.
	Way posh.
	And, like, it's got a camera.
	It's observing you right up your face.
	And I was thinking, why is that necessary?
	Why is it necessary for me to be filmed in the face?
	Why are they trying to phase out money?
	What's going on?
	And what is going on is, ultimately, powers are coalescing around a few central ideologies.
	We're being distracted by cultural argument, but those powers are several steps ahead of us.
	Now, there may be many questions, Gal, that a man might have about the Qatar World Cup.
	Like, is it right?
	Is it ethical?
	Which nation is in a position to judge?
	But one thing I think we can agree on, is if you're thinking of attending that World Cup in a culturally sensitive outfit, Do not dress as a Crusade era knight, which is surely the absolute climax of conflict between Christendom and the Islamic world was the Crusades.
	Look at this geezer.
	I'm here for the football.
	It is what it is, you know.
	When you've been following England as long as I have all around the world and every World Cup, it's a passion.
	For hundreds of years.
	I've been following England for about 500 years.
	We went to Jerusalem with broadswords and that and Robin Hood was there.
	Smashed the shit out of the place we did.
	We got it back for a while.
	It's complicated.
	That's an insensitive outfit.
	Do you think that's a coincidence?
	Or do you think he's like, we'll show them.
	Maybe that's just his costume.
	I'll just wear this.
	That's what he does.
	I will not take off my chain mail.
	Not for nobody.
	Isn't he meant to be really hot?
	Isn't one of the issues they're saying is that the players are going to have to play in these really hot conditions?
	That is going to be like wearing a headscarf of hot pennies.
	Each one burning into his patriotic... He's got a kindly eye.
	I'm not judging that man.
	He does.
	He looks a little bit like... Yeah.
	Captain Birdseye.
	Meets Father Christmas.
	Yeah!
	It's the Father Christmas of Christendom.
	Finally those Christmas ideas are unified.
	It's Father Christmas on the crusade.
	It's coming home.
	It's coming home.
	The Middle East is coming home.
	Well, it's actually not coming home.
	Capital is staying exactly where it is, centralising around resources and international finance agreements that are submerged and way, way outside of ordinary democracy.
	It's mad isn't it?
	When you know that thing about Qatar owning, being the 10th largest landowner in the UK, you have the kind of support for England that he has and it's actually so complex.
	What is he supporting?
	What is this country that he's supporting?
	It's such a mad muddle now, isn't it?
	Like, no wonder people reach for certainty.
	Whether it's the certainty of a set of codes, of like, you can never use this word, you can never say that, all men are bad, all people this colour are bad, or this dictator or demagogic figure is attractive.
	Because everything is a blur and a mess, because real power is concealed and congealed beyond reach.
	You're right.
	You're walking down the street of what you think is England, marching about in your chainmail, and it's all been purchased by Qatar. Our best football teams are owned by
	Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabian interests and like if what if ultimately yield to it
	I don't know like is that better than sort of an American corporate interest owning it like and there will be people
	watching this saying yes Absolutely is because of women's rights because of gay
	rights But like you know these are like important issues and they're
	certainly not things that I'm trying to subvert or prevent progressing to the point where everybody's happy, but
	ultimately Where is real power? Ultimately, who is determining
	outcomes?
	Yeah, well when it comes to the money, that's really what matters, isn't it?
	That's where they draw the line.
	Yeah, that's what we've heard again and again.
	There will be yield around civil rights issues, but when it comes to the control of finance, where real
	power dwells, there's true, true resistance.
	Are we watching any more of this, Gal?
	Because, you know, we were going to play a fantastic Here's the News Now, Here's the Effing News, where we talked about that wonderful moment where Eli, where someone got themselves a blue tick, posed as Eli Lilly, said that they were going to give away...
	Insulin for free and it crashed Eli Lilly the pharmaceutical company's stock prices
	But with Matt Taibbi coming on the show, I don't know if we have time
	We'll post that video in full on rumble you'll be the first to see it if you're members of our
	little community over here because Matt Taibbi will be joining us very shortly and Matt Taibbi
	is one of those people that if you get the chance to speak to him
	You've got to enjoy every single second of it But before we introduce Matt Taibbi, have you got any more
	points to make about Qatari finance gal?
	because I've got things to say.
	Have you mate?
	Yeah, quite important things to say.
	Well, firstly, right, let's shoot through this and give you an idea.
	You come to us for truth.
	Here is the truth.
	Macron, he's saying that a single global order, unipolar power, is desirable.
	Here he is saying just that.
	Let's have a look at him.
	Are you on the US or the Chinese side?
	Because now, progressively, a lot of people would like to see there are two orders in this world.
	This is a huge mistake, even for both the US and China.
	We need a single global order.
	Why?
	Why do we need a single global order?
	Why don't we need separate, independent communities, perhaps a central set of principles and values that we all adhere to, but don't concentrate and consolidate power?
	When in history has that ever been the answer?
	I think that, you know, Graham Hancock's coming on the show tomorrow, and one of the reasons I think Graham Hancock's work is important is because he suggests that even our narrative of human history is erroneous and perhaps even duplicitous.
	As long as we see our current civilization as the pinnacle of humankind, you can't query...
	There are aspects of what happens culturally that you can never query.
	Medicine is better than ever.
	Technology is better than ever.
	But once you start saying, hold on, perhaps civilization has been going for a lot longer.
	Maybe there have been apocalypse before.
	Maybe there have been previous civilizations far advanced of this one.
	Maybe there are entirely different ways of viewing reality.
	And I'm going to invite you to look at reality in a different way using that Most blunt of instruments, a TikTok meme.
	I saw this myself in, as you know, all the time between shows.
	I'm just doing research, Gal.
	I know.
	I'm an investigative journalist.
	I can barely get a meeting with you.
	Because of the investigative journalism I'm doing.
	Is Russell available for a bit?
	I'm investigating, I'm journaling.
	Sorry, I'll come back later.
	I'm investigating and journaling.
	That's why me and Tayibi get on so well.
	That's why Tayibi sees me as a kindred spirit.
	I'm out there in the ice bath most of the time.
	I'll go, yeah, you're out there dicking around in the ice bath pretending to be Wim Hof, not me.
	I'm investigating with Matt.
	Matt will go to me, what are you investigating, bro?
	And I'll go, man... Get your own ideas, Tybee!
	I collaborate with Tybee!
	I go, Tybee, I'm probably, you know, dog...
	You know, I'm looking at Digital Power Dog, and I'm looking at the bloody Pulitzer Prize that New York Times awarded Matt, like it's an outrage.
	And he said, you know, I've recently done a tweet on that, and I said, well, I did encounter that in the course of my research, but I've also been looking a bit more deeply than you have, Matt.
	I don't just dwell on the internet.
	Now this little meme though shows you that reality itself can be called into question.
	Now as this meme tells you in itself, you'll only hear the words you're reading.
	So have a look, it's only a six minute clip, a six second clip, we'll run it a couple of times, have a look.
	Can my audio stay live during this?
	Right, check this out everyone.
	You will only hear the words you are reading.
	Do.
	Play along.
	Play along with us.
	Play along with us.
	So if you're reading the word Green Needle, you will hear the audio as Green Needle.
	If you are reading the word Brainstorm, you will hear the word Brainstorm.
	But after you've done it a couple of times, if you shut your eyes and then think Green Needle or Brainstorm or Green Storm or Brain Needle, you will hear that!
	Reality is a discourse between the apparently external and the apparently internal.
	Run it a couple of times, young Putin.
	Prove my brilliant point and then we'll bring it up to tape!
	Oh no.
	You will only hear the word you are reading.
	Was you reading Green Needle that one or was you reading Brainstorm?
	I heard Green Needle.
	What did you hear?
	This time, you guys at home, shut your eyes during it and think something like Brain Needle or Green Storm.
	Go on.
	Shut your eyes for this one and just hear the audio.
	Try it!
	Go!
	You will only hear the word you are reading.
	Right, now I closed my eyes and I thought Brain Needle.
	I thought you were going to jazz with Technicolor Dreamcoat.
	I closed my eyes, pulled back the curtain, ah, to see for certain.
	You think you can get this shit for free?
	That's only for me and Taby.
	So isn't that weird?
	So what I'm telling you, and what this meme is telling you perhaps, because I can't take all the credit, after all I'm not that man sitting there vaguely hungover.
	No, you've done most of it.
	I put it together.
	I create metanarratives, baby.
	I create metanarratives.
	According to what you think inside your mind, the reality that you apparently perceive externally will alter.
	If that is evident in a measurable capacity, is it not likely that it's also true in areas that are less easy to measure when it comes to your judgment of moral, ethical issues, individuals, politics?
	Of course it is.
	We can create new realities.
	Now, look, do you think we're doing this bloody show on Rumble just to make a couple of pounds and to say the F word with impunity?
	Yes, we are.
	Yeah, that's part of it.
	But also, we're trying to create new communities.
	I'm trying to start a global cult.
	And all I need is a few million followers to really get this thing going.
	I don't want your money and I won't be having it off with anyone.
	I've ruled out the two biggest problems of any cult.
	Don't take everyone's money.
	Don't have it off with anyone.
	You're away then.
	You're left to focus on the cult properly.
	And I don't want to be in charge of it.
	I think it should be completely decentralised and we should create different political parties and movements in every country around the world.
	Usurp and overthrow the various governments and unelected globalist bodies.
	What could be fairer or better than that?
	I think Matt Taibbi should be in charge.
	Oh, Taby, Taby, how was I supposed to know?
	Something wasn't right, yeah.
	Oh, little Taby, I shouldn't have let you go.
	He's listening to this, isn't he?
	Of course he is.
	Taby will be joining us.
	Oh, Taby, Taby.
	He's a journalist on Substack.
	If you don't follow him there already and subscribe to his thing, you should.
	He's also one of the hosts of the Useful Idiots podcast, which I've never, ever been invited to join.
	He's author of Hate Inc.
	Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another.
	And he's also our friend Otebi Tebi.
	How was we supposed to know?
	Put your cans on, Gal, because Tebi will not be available otherwise.
	How's it going, Matt?
	You alright?
	I'm doing great, Russell.
	How are you doing?
	That Morgan Freeman thing is the weirdest video I've maybe ever seen.
	What is it trying to say to us?
	I have no idea.
	It's like the inverse March of the Penguins.
	Right?
	It's really hard.
	Right!
	Before he was in an Arctic world trying to understand penguins, now he's in a sort of a desert world trying to understand Arabian folks.
	What is this place?
	They say that the male sits on the egg for up to six weeks.
	No, Morgan, wrong video.
	Oh, sorry, sorry.
	And who's this guy?
	Yeah, it's insane.
	What's going on, Matt?
	That's a really strange piece of propaganda.
	I don't know why sports just by themselves isn't enough.
	Why have we got to add all this other stuff to it now for people?
	That's just very odd.
	Is that what you'd like to see?
	The way that secularism proposes a separation of church and state, you'd like to see a separation of sport and propaganda.
	That just for this World Cup period it's just going to be about football, We're not going to try and politicise it.
	We're not going to use it to advance any causes.
	But in this country, we have the traditional wearing of poppies, which is a sort of a remembrance issue.
	In a sense, how can you have a national tournament, an international tournament, that is not politicised?
	Because the state is a political idea, ultimately.
	So is it impossible, Matt?
	Is that what you want to say?
	Because that's not what we've got you on here for.
	But you can... We'll listen to you on anything.
	As a sports fan and a former athlete myself a little bit, I guess if it's going to be propaganda, I want it really simplistic so that I can understand it, you know what I mean?
	America!
	America!
	USA!
	USA!
	Don't complicate it with like Morgan Freeman in a desert chatting to this geezer.
	Where are you trying to take us on this Bedouin journey through the unknown?
	It is somewhat extraordinary.
	Matt, we want to talk to you about a variety of things.
	Yes, sport washing.
	Yes, propaganda.
	Yes, the circus that is global media.
	Yes, this intersection of convergent interests that prevent ordinary people from discerning the true nature Of reality.
	But perhaps we should start with the return of what we're calling the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to Twitter.
	What does it mean, really?
	Is support of free speech now ultimately a right-wing issue?
	Do you have to morally align with the four people in question, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Trump and Kanye, in order to support their right of free speech?
	And what kind of language should be censored?
	I don't think it means that free speech is a right-wing issue.
	I think it's kind of the opposite.
	One of the things that the core tenets of the law around speech in America is always that Yes, we sue people for things like libel and defamation, but the lawsuits are always about the speech, not the person.
	We don't ban people for saying bad things.
	And we got in the habit, I think, in the internet of just saying, this person is bad, we're never going to have that person on again.
	As opposed to saying, this thing you said crosses a line, we're going to delete that.
	It doesn't encourage people to modify their behavior and behave better and create better communities.
	It just means that you're gonna stay inside this very, very narrow boundary, and I think that's bad.
	Like, you know, no matter who's being banned permanently.
	Okay, so there are usually legal principles or ethical principles that precede these kind of judgments.
	In this case, if you say something that's incendiary or, like, incentivizing violence, and of course what tends to happen Matt, once you broadly agree what you've said that you shouldn't ban an individual, you should ban that type of speech, is people conflate sometimes a series of events or narratives with that individual.
	Let's take the case of Trump.
	I know this is something you know more about and ultimately all roads lead to Trump when it comes to this conversation.
	I suppose what people... I read one of Rob Reiner's tweets and you know like these are kind of people that in a sort of a showbiz capacity I would love.
	I love the films Rob Reiner's made.
	I was friends with Carl Reiner or at least I met him a couple of times and really loved him.
	And I feel like Rob Reiner said, like, Trump should be banned from Twitter because he provoked the insurrection of the Capitol on July 6th.
	Now, if you believe that, then should you believe, is it legit to believe that Trump should be banned?
	And then now we're trying to discern a whole variety of issues.
	Was that an insurrection?
	Did Trump cause it?
	You know, where do we end up with that matter, mate?
	Well, first of all, Rob Rutner is one of these people who always hears green needle.
	You know what I mean?
	There are some people who always hear things one way and always hear them the other way.
	He's got a very specific set of beliefs politically.
	I think, again, in the United States we have a very high bar, legally, in terms of what kind of speech we don't allow.
	For a very specific reason, it has to be imminent incitement to unlawful conduct.
	It's a very difficult case, but it's very hard to argue that he's in a general Like, constant way inciting violence.
	You could maybe argue that he maybe did that on January 5th and January 6th, but I think that's a difficult argument to hold up forever, and then you have to apply it to everybody.
	That's the big problem with all this, is how do you remove one person but not 5,000 other people who've committed the same kinds of offenses?
	People are always going to see bias in those decisions.
	Yeah, I think you're right about that, certainly.
	Do you think that Trump, is the era of Trump over?
	In his announcement at Mar-a-Lago, he said that he would dismantle the deep state.
	He still seems to incentivise the, let's call it the neoliberal left, in the same way he always did.
	Do you think that we're seeing the decline of the Trump era, even if it is the Trump narrative, rather than him as a political figure?
	So I made the mistake once in October of 2016 of saying Donald Trump was finished.
	This was after the Access Hollywood thing.
	I put that in print in Rolling Stone, and I'm not going to make that mistake ever again.
	The guy is never finished.
	He's like Jason in the Friday the 13th movies.
	He's never actually dead.
	You should never turn your back on Donald Trump.
	And what he feeds off is the way that sort of mainstream media and politicians treat him.
	There's a narrative that he creates that he's being treated unfairly and in many cases he's right.
	And the more they do that, the more they try to clamp down and use force to prevent him from speaking or whatever it is, he draws energy from that.
	So I never count him out.
	I always think that his best friends are his enemies actually because they give him All this momentum through the media by trying to cut off your ability to hear what he has to say.
	So if you were trying to handle Trump strategically, you would say, let Trump be on Twitter, let Trump access media like any other political orator or ideologue, and focus the argument, if you are an opponent of Trump, on how you are going to address the issues that Trump successfully has brought to the forefront, the belief that they are deep state operatives that control the political space Beyond the reach of ordinary democratic process that you will limit and control corporate power and finance and create a fairer world for ordinary Americans of all colors and persuasions?
	Would that be a way of doing it?
	And is that impossible for Trump's opponents because of their entrenched relationships?
	Well, I think that's the key.
	I think Trump understood this on some level in 2016, which is that, yeah, the way that you defeat Donald Trump, if you're thinking strategically, is to kind of ignore him as much as you can and then offer your own Positive, believable, honest way forward for people.
	And what happened, I think, in 2016 especially, was we had this country that had experienced tremendous difficulty after 2008.
	There was this growing wealth gap that was caused in large part by corruption that went totally unpunished.
	Uh, during the Obama years and Donald Trump got up there and said, look, I come from this world.
	I'm one of these people who lives, who lives up on that corrupt Olympus.
	And I know how things work and they're lying to you and they're lying about me.
	And rather than address that directly, they just kept talking about him, you know, being, you know, this or that and highlighting his negatives instead of addressing the issues, which is what they've never done.
	They've never understood that they have to reckon with their own unpopularity before they can get rid of the guy.
	I feel that if you had less Democrat politicians that owned stocks and shares in the companies that they're meant to regulate, if there was less lobbying money behind the Democrat party and Republican money, if there was more willingness to stand up for ordinary Americans against corporate interests on both sides of the aisle, There would not be a position for a figure like Trump who many many people I know watching this channel just adore and see as the kind of blessed anomaly that politics has been crying out for.
	I'm more cynical about that.
	I see him as a member of the billionaire class with the same general interests as the billionaire class but I can certainly see that if you're gonna stop Trump you have to address the causes of Trump and those causes are very very real and are not being addressed.
	Mate, after the G20 leaders summit, your man Biden returned from Bali, and I'm calling him your man, with the G20 leaders declaration that has a clause in it that says that signatories have agreed to facilitate seamless international travel under the condition that Digital IDs be implemented, ultimately a new, in a sense, is the revival of the vaccine passport idea.
	What do you think about this idea?
	And what do you think about the way that the pandemic was used to sort of normalise these kind of notions?
	Well, first of all, I think that was scary.
	I'm always worried when there are major declarations or major things done and there is no press about it.
	They came to a pretty heavy decision but didn't really propagandize it much.
	I saw it through a tweet from the actor Tim Robbins and then I looked into it.
	But look, I think there's no secret to the fact that when governments want to do something in an authoritarian direction, it's always an emergency.
	They always have some kind of reason.
	Oh, we have to do it just this once because it's an extraordinary situation.
	We need censorship.
	We need to be able to limit people's travel.
	We need to be able to have a digital passport system that, you know, lets us know where you are at all times because of the pandemic.
	And people fall for that.
	And that's the thing is you have to fight against that precisely in that moment when it is an emergency.
	And I think that's what people don't understand is that they get convinced.
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, this is the kind of moment where we have to like give up our rights about this or that because It's too important to to squawk about but you know you really have to worry about this stuff.
	Is there any sense that since that post Snowden and Assange that the American deep state has begun to self-regulate meaningfully or do you think that there is infiltration of big tech platforms that suggest that the CIA and FBI have significant Operatives within those platforms that mean that there is already a kind of porous membrane between the deep state and big tech platforms.
	So this kind of digital surveillance is already underway and any further implementation, let alone mandates around it, would ultimately mean the kind of the delivery of a social credit score system.
	Well, we know for a fact, we don't have to speculate, that the intelligence agencies have very profound relationships with all of these platforms.
	They have since 9-11, really.
	They've been accessing your personal information through a variety of means, including through the use of things called national security letters, where the FBI can send a letter to, let's just say, your email carrier, and the carrier will be barred by law from telling you
	that they've gotten the subpoena and they will have to turn over all of your information
	to the FBI.
	They send tens of thousands of those letters out every year.
	They've been doing that for 20 years now.
	And we know now that, you know, thanks to some new reporting that the DHS
	has a permanent standing committee that advises all of these platforms
	on what kind of content is and is not appropriate, We know they've intervened in high-profile cases like the Hunter Biden email story.
	So, yes, essentially they're intertwined at this point.
	I was shocked Last year I was doing a story randomly about some guy who got kicked off YouTube for something having to do with the vaccine.
	And they told me, flat out, that they got their instructions about what to ban and not to ban from the CDC and the NIH.
	So they're not even embarrassed about it at this point.
	So, yes, clearly that's where that relationship exists.
	So the idea that there is a moral barometer at the centre of these policies is ridiculous.
	The idea that, you know, even the four people that have just been reinstated on Twitter can somehow be regarded as harbingers for good or bad, really, is not irrelevant, but it's difficult to discern.
	When these social media sites have been deeply infiltrated by government interests.
	Unelected government interests at that, or state interests certainly I should say rather.
	And what if you're a person like me that just deeply deeply distrusts the state and in fact most institutions?
	I feel like kind of at a loss when I hear that they can just subpoena me and get all my emails and all that kind of... I don't like it Matt!
	What are we going to do?
	Well, yeah, no, exactly.
	I mean, you shouldn't, like, you should hate it.
	You should, you should fight against it.
	It's, I think it's illegal.
	You know, they've, they've done a lot of things that they were, once upon a time, they were caught for this stuff back in the Hoover era for, you know, illegal surveillance, opening investigations on people who hadn't done anything wrong.
	collecting data on them. They're doing all the same stuff now.
	They've given themselves permission to do it and you know Americans never voted for this.
	Nobody in the world voted for this. That's why I think the significance of
	that four horsemen story that you're talking about, it has nothing to do with those people personally. It has
	to do with the fact that the
	Twitter right now is defying probably a government order.
	Me personally, I cheer that no matter who those people are, it's evidence to me that somewhere somebody is alive and
	fighting which is important.
	You know, I think you can get disheartened by the inability to oppose this kind of a thing and I think that's why You know, there's been a lot of enthusiasm about this new regime of Elon Musk for, you know, whatever other faults you might find in him.
	God, isn't it extraordinary to find yourself as a person that generally is regarded as progressive and by that I mean that my personal and spiritual views would ultimately always be and have been let human beings be who they are, let people as much as possible be free in their lives as individuals, allow people to run their own communities without the intervention of the state or corporate interests, find forms of a monopoly, And tyranny, wherever they are, in whatever form, whether they're state or corporate, and oppose them.
	People should come together to find yourself ultimately at odds with your former allies in that, at least in that conversation, like people that were sort of woolly liberals and wringing hands, bleeding hearts types.
	Those are the people now that say, no!
	Censorship!
	Authoritarianism!
	I don't want to decide!
	Let the state decide for me!
	That's a sort of extraordinary thing and I think it's important to acknowledge that, you know, Twitter, Facebook, Big Tech and the state are in no position to be moral arbiters of free speech or other people's conduct in a variety of ways.
	And it hurts me spiritually, the idea.
	It's against my personal liberty and my personal relationship with freedom is affected by that.
	I suppose that's why you need some real values and real principles and I say the hallmark of a real principle is at some point it might involve sacrifice.
	Letting go of something that you believe in or something or doing something that's not bloody convenient and at some point and sometimes extremely painful.
	This is the part of the show, Matt Tabey, Tabey, how was I supposed to know?
	Where we allow Gareth Roy to ask a question because you know, let's face it, he's an important creative voice.
	He's a handsome man also, of course.
	Well, you know, it's a matter of opinion, really, something like that, Matt, but let's just focus.
	Matt, this is not some sort of sex club.
	It's not some two-bit nipple peep show you've wandered into.
	I, in particular, I'm an investigative journalist.
	I don't know about you, Matt.
	I don't know what you do, dicking around on the internet, coming up with half-assed ideas.
	I'm investigative journalism, innit?
	Well, you and Gareth... We always talk about that.
	What are you investigating?
	That's right.
	The bloody deep state, man.
	It's getting on my wick.
	He does the hard work so we don't have to, Matt.
	That's right.
	You need me.
	You need men with guns.
	You need men with nice haircuts and badges to stand near a wall.
	Not on top of it.
	You could hurt yourself on a wall.
	You need me.
	That's essentially what I'm saying.
	So, go on then, Gareth Roy.
	Why don't you hit Matt with one of the longest questions ever to have been asked by anyone ever.
	I'll try to keep it short.
	Matt, we were really interested, Russell and I were talking earlier about the obviously the missile strikes in Poland last week and the whole mess and furore that occurred as a result and mainly around the kind of reporting of it.
	Obviously that could have been a very costly mistake is what we're being now told is exactly what it was.
	How much does this tell you about how lax the kind of printing of that mistake was, as in we're always told about misinformation,
	how deadly misinformation is, and how we should be censored,
	because misinformation, and then you get wall to wall press coverage of this being Russian missiles. And how much do
	you think it also was a mistake? Is I mean, is there? Could you
	read into it that this would have been very useful thing to have
	happened in terms of NATO infringement?
	Well, first of all, there's a massively insignificant amount
	of coverage of near nuclear catastrophes.
	I bet most people in the world don't know that last March, March 12th I think it was, India accidentally launched a missile that could have been a nuclear missile, it was nuclear capable, that went into Pakistani territory, And could have triggered a nuclear exchange, except that Pakistan elected not to fire back.
	That's a story that just wasn't covered around the world.
	It nearly caused Armageddon.
	And this is another instance where something like that happened.
	Now, the amazing part of this story was the decision by the Associated Press.
	The Associated Press ran a story at 2 p.m., which is considerably after the events happened, Where they quoted a senior intelligence official, meaning one anonymous person in the American government, as saying that nuclear missiles had landed in Poland.
	Now, if you're a reporter and you understand the import of that story, I'm going to do more than one source on that, and it's going to have to be someone who's not anonymous, because essentially you're saying that Russia attacked a NATO country, which would be the predicate automatically for world war.
	And the fact that so many people ran with that story without checking it tells you the state of near total irresponsibility of the media when it comes to this kind of thing.
	Yeah, it really does, Matt.
	Thank you so much for coming on our show.
	Effortlessly handsome, as far as we know, brilliantly insightful, well-informed and an inspiration when it comes to looking at information without it being sort of pre-chewed and spat down your neck hole like you're a dumb baby bird.
	Thanks for keeping us inquiring and intelligent.
	Thanks for always doing these interviews in front of a drum kit.
	Thank you for participating in the general spirit of the show.
	I hope we get to hang out.
	We're going to come to America in spring next year, and I hope we get to hang out then.
	Absolutely.
	You're always welcome here.
	We do this show in a barn.
	You'll always be welcome with us whenever you want to come.
	Thanks, Matt.
	Would love to.
	Take care, gentlemen.
	Lots of love.
	Take care.
	There we go.
	It's Matt Taibbi.
	Why can't all of our guests be like Matt Taibbi?
	Why is that?
	I think he's very cool.
	I think exactly what you said there is he explains things in a way that appeal to us all in terms of we can understand it.
	I know, because otherwise I get scared.
	I think, oh no, what's happened?
	Have I gone mad?
	Because I've started to question all of the sort of received narratives and I think I'm going insane.
	And because of the way I dress and because I am also actually insane, it worries me that, oh no, this is that thing again.
	By the way, I wasn't signalling for you to let me ask that question.
	I just meant I asked that question.
	I thought, let Gareth ask it.
	I've been talking for ages and I didn't misunderstand you.
	I thought, let Gareth ask a question.
	And then I thought, I'll sit and watch and see how I feel.
	Okay, yeah.
	During it.
	How did you feel?
	Angry!
	I felt very angry during that question.
	No, I enjoyed it.
	I was sort of pleased.
	I thought, I can watch this bit now.
	I can just relax.
	I don't have to think at this moment.
	It's nice.
	Alright, listen, I'm wrapping up this show now before we go to Stay Free AF, but before I do, did you know I'm doing a whole day-long event in the town I'm from, Greys, to save the theatre there and to raise attention.
	Is it raise attention?
	Awareness.
	I'm going to raise it.
	I'm going to stir attention and raise... I'm going to stand right up straight like a little soldier.
	I'm going to be such a little busybody.
	Do you know what?
	I'm going to dip myself right in that yolk.
	Now, I'm sorry to say that you may develop a sort of an ulcer on your scalp.
	Now what might that be in there?
	A sort of a yolky... what is that?
	A yolky pus.
	Now you could dip your egg bread in that yolk, couldn't you?
	You could have a dip in there.
	I play this game with my children, where I go, like, I'm a person that's got this ulcer on their head, and out of it comes this sort of egg yolk stuff, and then it goes into bottles, and canisters, and urns, and stuff like that, and then they sell it, and they have to work at the shop.
	The kids do?
	Yeah.
	Hello, would you like to come and look at my show?
	We've got a lot of eggnog.
	I'm selling it out of my head.
	I'm an egg fontanella.
	I'm an ulcer in my head.
	The children are concerned.
	Then I play another lady.
	They're actually based on, sadly, some people who are recently deceased and some of these events are sort of based on reality.
	Except you can't start a shop selling hedge.
	Listen, I've been sidetracked.
	Look, come and see me in Grey's on the 5th of December all day long.
	There's still some tickets left.
	They're about 20 quid.
	But I'll be there doing a live stand-up comedy show to save the theatre that I first performed in.
	Now, if you just saw me going on about eggnog, you might want that place to be razed to the ground and see it as a sort of...
	Ground zero for a problem that really needs to be eradicated, i.e.
	me having a public forum of any description.
	But if you're a fan of Ol' Russ, come that day, support me and see my poet friend Mr. G, my philosopher friend Brad Evans, the great Paul Foot, one of the most underappreciated and extraordinarily strange comedic voices that we have, creating a day of activism and fun and education.
	My wife will be there reading her book that she's just read.
	It's gonna be a fantastic day.
	It's about 20 quid.
	There's a link in the description.
	Will the kids be there selling that little yolk stuff?
	There will be my kids selling little canisters of head pus out the back.
	Who doesn't want that?
	That actually looks like something you could have made yourself.
	Those bits of sticky tape.
	She'll be angry because my wife made that.
	I don't know if they made those bits of sticky tape.
	I don't know about that.
	They made those images.
	In-house, the sticky tape.
	She'll be angry about that, then, in that case.
	About the sticky tape.
	She'll be angry.
	We didn't license you to use them bits of sticky tape, she might say.
	Sticky tape is... I'm not going to go into that.
	Listen, if you're part of... So anyway, join us on that day.
	Join us on that day and sign up to Stay Free AF, where you'll get to see things like our film on Community, and you'll get access.
	Today, me and Gareth had lunch while we prepared the show on Stay Free AF, our locals' platform, didn't we, Gael?
	Yeah.
	We watched England win 6-2.
	Yeah, you weren't happy with the... Ratios of rice to curry.
	I like... I don't like too much what I call peasant food.
	That's rice, potatoes, pasta.
	These are the peasant foods that have been... They're carbohydrate-based foods for peasant class, aren't they, young Putin?
	Yeah, I suppose.
	Very little nutrition, so... Yeah, might as well eat air, or like just earth, or the soil.
	Now I love potatoes, I'm not against them, I'm just saying they are peasant food, they have been bred for the peasants.
	What you should be eating is high-density protein or something, should you?
	Well, yeah, but not try to ostracise the peasants at the same time.
	I'm part of the peasant community.
	I mean, we don't have to stick to the diet.
	All right.
	So anyway, also look at all this merchandise.
	Have a quick look at it.
	That's all available.
	That all goes to drug addicts, not the merchandise.
	They've no need for that.
	They'd sell it for drugs.
	But if you buy that stuff, all of the money we give to gorgeous little organizations that help drug addicts and mentally ill people get well.
	And if you're a mentally ill person or a drug addict watching this right now and you say, well, I need your help, Russell.
	Well, come get it.
	Come get our help.
	If you need to go to treatment, if you're nutty as a fruitcake, we, by God, will help you if we can.
	That's the Stay Free Foundation.
	Send an email to us there, help at RussellBrand.com.
	Join us in a minute for Stay Free F. I'm not going to do a meditation.
	I'm not in the right mood.
	So you can ask us questions over there and we'll do that green needle thing.
	This person here, Sweeney, says, I need drugs, please.
	That is exactly what we don't want at the Stay Free Foundation.
	We're not drug mules.
	You think I'm a drug mule?
	You think I look like a drug mule?
	I'm not one.
	Stand out a mile in those trousers.
	And I'd look straight up them.
	Once someone comes in and cat-trouts us, they say, hello, look up his back pipe.
	He's plugged to the kidneys with all sorts of magic powders.
	All right, we'll see you in a minute on Stay Free AF.
	Oh, hold on a minute, who's on the show tomorrow?
	Graham Hancock!
	If you're a member of the Stay Free AF community, I'm going to be talking to Graham Hancock.
	You can join us live.
	And you can ask your own questions via Subi.
	And Annie Mashon will be on the show tomorrow, MI5 Spy.
	We're going to talk about Twitter infiltration and how much control do they really have.
	We'll talk more about digital passports as well.
	We're going to be talking more about digital passports.
	Do you want a digital passport?
	Do you like being told what to do?
	But do you trust the state or do you just want to be free?
	Be free.
	I like that we came up with that story ourselves, which we've done today.
	And then also Matt Taibbi was on it.
	Which one, mate?
	I thought we're really truly doing our investigations.
	Well, some of us are.
	You know who did the passports?
	Me.
	Sorry, I mean, you really are doing your investigations.
	I'm carrying this team.
	I'm carrying them.
	You got your leaflet?
	Got my leaflet.
	Found that.
	It was on the ground.
	That's where it was.
	People have been looking for me leaflet.
	This leaflet will be part of the Stay Free AF.
	This is where you get real access to us.
	Me and Gareth, we take our tops off.
	Young Putin will have no trousers or pants on.
	That is the very minimum we offer you on Stay Free AF in a minute.
	See you over there if you're part of that community.
	Otherwise, see you tomorrow with Graham Hancock.
	And Annie Mastron at five.
	So much great content.
	Stay free.
	No, no, not more of the same, more of the different.
	Stay free.

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