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Dec. 20, 2022 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:05:50
Who’s The Real Enemy – Elon Or The CIA? With Bari Weiss - #050 - Stay Free with Russell Brand
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Time Text
The end.
In this video, you're going to see the future.
Let's go.
Alright, you ready?
Let's go.
We're going to go live back there.
That's what I say on Tuesday.
Happy Tuesday.
Saw it in the chat.
Liked it.
We've got a fantastic show for you today.
We're going to be asking Elon Musk.
He's done that Twitter poll.
Is it a manipulative technique?
Skullduggery and trickery?
And who's more dangerous?
With the revelations that the CIA were more involved than they've ever previously admitted in the assassination of JFK?
We'll be asking who is more of a threat to American democracy, Elon Musk or the CIA?
Let us know what you think right now in the chat.
In our presentation, here's the news.
No, here's the effing news.
We'll be talking about the Nord Stream pipeline explosion.
Did that involve the CIA?
Certainly when we spoke to Jocko Willink here on this show, he said it would not be beyond the remit of the Navy SEALs
and the American Deep State.
And remember when that pipeline happened, they said, oh, you know, it's just a coincidence.
Putin probably did it himself.
He's mad!
But guess what's happened since?
A load of gas deals have been done between the US and the UK, so it seems that it was expedient.
One of a series of coincidences that has been beneficial to the most powerful forces in the world.
On the show today, we've got Barry Weiss, whose Twitter files revelations have changed the narrative again around deep state involvement in social media, on social media platforms.
So if you're watching this on YouTube, you've got to stay with us, although After 10 minutes, we leave YouTube.
That's when it gets unexpurgated.
That's when it gets uncensored.
That's when we let the fire phoenix rise up and the truth be conveyed at a never-before-experienced level.
Hit Rumble if you're watching this on Rumble, because it helps me in ways that I can never, ever explain to you.
Let's have a look at the first story today.
Elon Musk.
Elon Musk is his own news, in a sense, isn't he?
He generates news.
Yeah, I would assume that.
I think he obviously knows what he's doing.
He's pretty smart.
voters vote to oust him. Now I personally, Gareth, can't imagine that Elon Musk has
been hoisted by his own batard to use a nautical Maxim there. Surely if
Musk did that, Musk knew that that would be the result and that's what Musk wants,
right? Do you assume that? Yeah I would assume that. I think he obviously knows
what he's doing, he's pretty smart, I think he's got quite a lot of money
hasn't he? I believe he's got as much money as anyone else on the entire
planet maybe even more.
Of course, one of the things that's interesting about this, if you're an Elon Musk supporter, and let us know if broadly you're sympathetic towards Musk owning Twitter and his agenda and objectives, is that he has now become somewhat sensorial.
Admittedly, his case would be towards people that are doxing or revealing personal information.
Have you ever heard that word before?
It's a common word around here.
In the old world of investigative journalism.
When you're like me, Gal, I'm not only investigating things.
What's going on?
What's going on?
I'm journaling them.
Got it.
A word like doxxing, that comes up day one.
It's me, Matt Taibbi, Barry Weiss, we're all sat around just investigating, just journaling.
Man, have you seen any stories about doxxing lately?
Yeah, I've seen a couple.
In a tweet on Wednesday evening, Musk said, real-time posting of another person's location violates Twitter's doxing policy, but delayed posting of locations are okay.
There's some bureaucracy in there.
And obviously the pushback he's getting is, I thought the whole point of you taking over Twitter was that it was going to become a free speech platform and people are now saying, if you're now banning people for Are you a free speech absolutist?
Are you an Elon Musk fan?
What is being revealed by this character, this avatar that is Elon Musk?
As Trump once did, he's able to make the cyclone of public discourse center around him.
but I guess free speech is free speech you would think.
Are you a free speech absolutist? Are you an Elon Musk fan?
What is being revealed by this character, this avatar that is Elon Musk?
As Trump once did, he's able to make the cyclone of public discourse center around him.
But let's not forget, my approach tends to be that if someone is my enemy's enemy,
they are my friend.
If the mainstream media don't like them, I'm like, okay, that's interesting.
That's led me to make some weird alliances.
They certainly don't.
In fact, here are CNN essentially giving a platform to someone extorting Elon Musk.
Have a look.
So, what is your current demand?
Relative to Musk, what will it make for you to go away and stop?
I don't like the phrase relative to Musk, because then I think of actual Musk as a pheromonal scent going up the snout hole, and I'm reminded of my one conversation with Elon Musk, live conversation, where he said, Russell Branding, and I went, Elon Musking, and that...
In a sense, I didn't know it then, that was the peak of our relationship.
We never attain those heights again.
No, well you don't know.
We may yet do it because obviously I want Elon Musk to come on here.
Of course we do.
So that he'll be a fantastic guest for us and we want to work out where the line lies.
Technological genius and billionaire.
With this clip here, Ross, is like, there's one element of it which is CNN are obviously not treating this guy in a kind of, they're not treating him as if he's doing something wrong.
They're almost building him up.
But the way, but also they're trying to build it up as a kind of narrative when he says, what is your demand?
Like this is someone who's like holding people hostage and things.
Just the guy posting tweets.
They're using the template of a hostage terrorist situation, but they cannot, Presently as that, because otherwise it would be reprehensible, giving a voice to the lad.
So they've got some nuanced work to do there over at CNN, which is not, as you know, their forte.
Yes.
Still a Tesla or $50,000.
I mean, I'm not going to up it.
There's no need to.
There's simply no need.
It's just a young man who wants a Tesla.
Isn't that young man all of us?
I don't think he's going to get it.
I don't, I don't know.
I mean, Elon Musk's a maverick.
He is, he might do it.
He might go have a Tesla.
Of course he might do it.
That's what you want, have a Tesla.
Maybe a reasonable discount on a Tesla.
Or maybe a discount on one of the blue ticks.
Or the flamethrowers.
Or some jet boots, or something like that.
Now, the reason we're interested in Elon Musk is he is a lightning rod for the mainstream media cyclone that's sent around, which he is continually lost in, deluged in.
We think that these CIA revelations around JFK are super interesting, not just because of their historic relevance.
There was a time where, if you said, I think JFK was assassinated by the CIA, that was a conspiracy theory.
Well, that's when the term conspiracy theories came about.
JFK is the inaugural.
That's the granddaddy of conspiracy theories.
Roswell, JFK.
These are the OG conspiracies and often we're called conspiracy theorists.
That's why we are always very keen only to use very serious facts undergirded by professional journalists.
Yeah, obviously, just to jump in quickly, the other element to the CIA, obviously we're talking about JFK, but one of the revelations, and Barry Weiss who's coming on later will be talking about it, is CIA infiltration into big tech.
So we were talking earlier about this, is the big story about Elon Musk that he's banned a few people from Twitter, or is a bigger revelation that the mainstream media are not focusing on, the fact that The fact that the CIA are infiltrating big tech.
I suppose the assumption would be that they're not reporting on that because ultimately that's in alignment with their general and shared interests.
Let's have a look at this story about Lee Harvey Oswald and the newly classified, newly revealed or declassified information.
13,000 JFK assassination documents have been declassified and released.
But listen to this.
The key fact is, if you ask me, that 4,300 records remain redacted.
Including records connecting assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to CIA operatives months before the assassination.
What would Lee Harvey Oswald and CIA operatives be doing months before the assassination of John F. Kennedy?
We were just hanging out with Lee Harvey Oswald, just chewing the fat, shooting the breeze, having a little fun.
Then that guy just out of nowhere assassinated JFK.
We were hanging out with Lee Harvey Oswald for a surprise party in Dallas in a convertible vehicle.
We've got another page on this.
Hey listen, if you're watching us on YouTube right now, I'm going to have to tell you that we are going to get so conspiratorial, so revelatory, so open, honest and transparent That YouTube simply would not allow it.
Ultimately, YouTube, as you probably know, has been, to a degree, co-opted by mainstream media networks.
They promote their stories.
I'm not going to use the word shadow ban, but you'll have noticed.
Let me know in the comments if you've noticed it's harder to find our content now.
That's why, if you watch us there, always turn on notification bell and subscribe.
But more important than any of that, join us on Rumble, where we're now.
We're going to get deep into conspiracy now.
This is it.
This is where the true revelations are coming from.
See you in a second on Rumble.
We're going to carry on if you're on YouTube.
join us now. So the Biden administration said in a memo that keeping documents classified
will protect against an identifiable harm to the military, defense, intelligence operations,
law enforcement or the conduct of foreign relationships that is of such gravity that
outweighs the public interest in disclosure. How can that be true? It's simply, don't you think,
and let me know about this in the chat and the comments, do you think that the whole focus of
classification is preventing you get information that if you add it you go well I'm not going to
If this is their level of corruption, if this is how much they represent their own interests and the power of corporations against ours, then I refuse to participate in their systems.
It's not going to be that the revelations make you so happy that you giddily wander out in front of a carriage in Disney World, is it?
So, the White House added that the release of any remaining information will continue to be withheld from the public until June 30th, 2023.
Yeah, but they keep saying that.
Every time it's, we're going to need to put it back again.
Just need a little bit longer with this bit of information.
What is in there?
I suppose concrete evidence that deep state agencies were involved in the assassination of Jeff?
Yeah, I think they were talking about Lee Alvey Oswald being involved in the CIA in terms of an attempt on Fidel Castro.
And then they were saying that basically he was infiltrated into the CIA and had been for a number of years.
He's very much the Zelig of assassinations.
The Forrest Gump.
He's going around doing assassinations everywhere.
Prominent JFK expert Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and the author of numerous books on the intelligent community, told a press conference that Oswald had secretly been involved in operations to undermine U.S.
supporters of Fidel Castro in the summer of 1963.
Amazingly, Oliver Stone's movie incorporated a lot of these themes and ideas.
We should get Oliver Stone on, shouldn't we?
We absolutely should.
He'd be amazing.
I also was watching Tucker talk about this case in terms of the CIA connection with Jack Ruby, who was the guy, the supposed lone shooter and I think one of Tucker's points were... He wasn't very well.
Exactly that.
He wasn't very well and I think a psychiatrist went to visit him And I suppose the argument that we're ultimately presenting you with is, where does the real threat to democracy and your personal freedom come from?
are these multiple connections just happen to be CIA people involved.
And I suppose the argument that we're ultimately presenting you with is where does the real
threat to democracy and your personal freedom come from?
The nominated enemies of the state or the state itself and its corporatist interests? As a
former Hollywood, am I going to call myself a former Hollywood movie star?
Former?
As an actual live Hollywood movie star sat here right now, look at some notable films where the CIA are favorably presented.
And do you think that Hollywood gets co-opted into ideas like this?
Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.
Argo, where Ben Affleck played...
Ben who?
Ben Affleck.
Woody Harrelson.
I remember that, it's a good film actually.
It's a favourable CIA operative.
The man from Uncle, Henry Carville, plays a CIA operative, aka Superman.
Jack Ryan, he always comes across good.
Bridger Spies, Hunt for Red October.
They generally make CIA operatives come across as sort of I don't know what secretive swarthy clandestine heroes rather than right bastards ruining the lives of ordinary Americans and people all over the world and just try being in Latin America.
Here are just some real, like before you make your mind up about What the CIA infiltration into social media sites, which we believe should be the bigger story rather than Elon Musk's maverick character and undoubtable billionaire credentials as the world's richest man.
The more important power is the perennial power of the deep state, unchecked, unaccounted, undemocratic power that's embedded into our systems.
Here are some of the CIA's biggest Historic scandals, so you can get an idea of the breadth and depth of their infiltration and power across American cultural and indeed political life.
At number five, domestic wiretapping.
The CIA has spied on Americans since 1969, recently collecting Americans' private information in bulk.
At number four, coups.
The CIA successfully supported coups in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, the Dominican Republic, and South Vietnam.
At number three, the recruitment of Nazis.
Since World War II, the CIA and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants.
At number two, big tech infiltration.
The CIA has infiltrated big tech and social media platforms, including Facebook and Google, with the companies hiring dozens of agents and former agents.
But at number one, forced imprisonment.
In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit.
These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground.
Still, today, wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune.
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, then maybe you can hire the A-Team.
Righto.
That was actually just an A-Team joke that we were doing.
Can I use this?
You can use your pen.
Wayne, I love it when a plan comes together.
I actually do love it.
It did work really well.
I pity the fool that tries to get me on a plane, I tell you that!
You bloody sucker!
You're trying to get me on a plane, I pity you!
I bloody well pity you!
Hey, and now with further elegance, professionalism and brilliance, we're presenting our Here's the News item, which is about the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline.
Do you remember that in 2014, I think it was, Condoleezza Rice said, yeah, we need to get that business away from Russia and into US hands.
Do you remember Joe Biden saying publicly, oh, you know, we'll find a way of shutting down that pipeline?
Do you remember that when the pipeline did blow up, we went, oh, Putin's done that himself.
And now, deals have been done between the UK and US energy companies that suggest that the Nord Stream Pipeline's failure is advantageous to the kind of energy interest that you always suspected it might be.
You knew something crazy was going on, and you were right.
You just needed us to help you tie together the facts.
Here's the news.
Nooooo, here's the effing news.
Thank you for choosing Fox News.
News to do.
No, here's the fucking news.
Remember the Nord Stream Pipeline?
No?
That was ages ago!
What's still going on about that for?
It's not as if, like, now that America and the UK have done a deal to replace the deals that might have existed between Russia and European partners and the whole reason it was blown up was to create the opportunity for these deals.
Stop thinking!
You think too much!
Just put on the normal news and shut up!
We have an amazing story for you today, particularly if you have a memory that expands beyond the last couple of months and you haven't been bludgeoned into amnesia by a media that wants you dumb, idiotic, spellbound, and hypnotized.
The Nord Stream Pipeline, which, you know, was blown up mysteriously, and Jocko Willink said on this show, Navy SEALs could easily do it.
Guess what's happened?
Since it's been blown up, the U.S.
has done a load of gas deals with European nations.
Wow, what an extraordinary coincidence.
And why is it not being reported on anywhere in the mainstream media?
They really cared about the Nord Stream Pipeline when they said, oh Putin, he probably did that himself.
Putin's blown up that pipeline because he's crazy.
He's got Parkinson's.
He can't go five minutes with shitting down his own trouser leg.
He probably shat that Nord Stream Pipeline to death by mistake, that poor fucker.
And yes, that does mean that in the future, the European nations will need to get their gas from somewhere else.
And yes, we have explicitly stated that we would prefer that European nations bought their gas from us.
But that still doesn't exempt that bloody Putin From the baleen.
The US is set to double its gas exports to the UK under plans to clamp down on rising living costs by weaning Britain of Russian energy.
Weaning?
Wasn't that coming out of Putin's breast?
He does have breasts, though.
I'm afraid he has titmanitis, one of his diseases.
Now, according to British media reports, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is poised to make a gas deal announcement with the United States after the COP27 climate summit.
Just pause for a moment to draw attention to the fact that you can only find this news on the Indian internet.
The United States has promised the whole of European Union of 15 billion cubic meters of LNG this spring and UK hopes for about 10 billion cubic meters of the supply.
After all the things they said about this war, about how it was a humanitarian war.
After all the things that happened in Iraq, about how they said that was a humanitarian war, how they were weapons of mass destruction, and how we now know that it was part of a plan called the New American Century.
After all of that, you would think that they would at least wait a minute before building a fucking pipeline to replace the one they blew up.
Allegedly.
This move would be considered as UK stepped towards independence from Russian-linked oil and gas imports amid Ukraine invasion.
That was always the intention, to just take over gas exports from Russia.
Brian Sullivan is live in Rotterdam as part of a week-long series he's doing on Europe's energy crisis.
We're going to talk about specifically liquefied natural gas and the U.S.' 's role in, and again, I don't think the word saving Europe or the phrase saving Europe is too strong, Becky, because without U.S.
imported natural gas, Europe would be in a far more dire situation.
Not only do they want to hide the true origins of this war, not only do they want to allegedly destroy this pipeline and sell us gas that we were previously buying from a competitor, they want to sort of be thanked for it, for all those saviors.
Well, you know, I don't think it's too strong to say that we are the new Jesus of gas provision, but instead of lasers, which I believe Jesus used to shoot from his hands, I think I'm right, I think it says that in the Bible, we shoot liquid gas into Europe, like Jesus' gas mill.
I don't think that's too much to say.
Rishi Sunak, WEF Goldman Sachs, has pledged that the new partnership to boost energy security, efficiency and affordability will cut prices for Britons and ensure the UK's national supply can never again be manipulated by the whims of a failing regime.
Have you seen Joe Biden lately?
As part of efforts to drive down the cost of living, the US will aim to export at least 9 to 10 billion cubic metres of liquefied natural gas to UK terminals over the next year, more than doubling the level in 2021.
Firstly, it's not appearing significantly in mainstream media.
That already tells you a lot.
No one is making the connection to the Nord Stream pipeline.
We are entering a phase of amnesia.
Well, you just have to forget what you saw like a month ago.
Like, oh, sorry about that during the pandemic.
We were wrong about that.
Sorry, wrong about what?
Hey, this war, don't ever say anything about Putin, Russia.
That's all the only thing to consider is Putin is an aggressor.
Don't think about anything else.
Otherwise, you're being disrespectful to Ukrainian people who are suffering.
Oh, right.
OK.
Hey, right.
That pipeline.
Hey, what happened to that pipeline?
Shut up!
Don't ask about that.
It's just like you're being continually bewildered, bombarded by information.
And then they have the gall to talk about misinformation and disinformation when they are the epicenter of this phenomenon.
Rishi Sunak said the partnership will help end Europe's dependence on Russian energy once and for all.
How can you sell this as this is a benefit?
How can you sell this as anything other than advantageous to the corporate interests that were always set to benefit and whose agenda was likely pursued from the outset?
The very fact that there's any energy deals being done at this time at all should tell you that there's more to this war than the mainstream media are reporting.
Let me know what you think in the chat.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Citing the war in Ukraine, Mr. Sunak and Mr. Biden said in a joint statement that it is more important than ever for allies to work together to build resilient international systems.
Who for?
Not for you!
You're going to be paying for the energy.
You're going to be paying over the odds for food.
You're not going to be participating in the profits.
Are energy companies profiting now?
Yes or no?
You tell me.
Let me know in the comments.
Let me know in the chat.
If they're profiting, that means that the scarcity is not the issue.
It means the extraction of profit is the issue.
President Joe Biden promised a White House press conference in early February that the US was able to shut down the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea if Russia invaded Ukraine.
But why take my word for it?
Here he is doing it!
If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again.
Then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.
We will bring an end to it.
But how will you do that, exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany's control?
We will, I promise you, we'll be able to do it.
Oh, you think because Joe Biden on the television said that they would blow up the Nord Stream pipeline, then it did blow up and then they did do a bunch of energy.
You thought that that That meant that the whole thing, and perhaps the war itself, was about war and profitability for powerful American corporate interests rather than the humanitarian effort to aid Ukrainian people.
Oh!
We set up that pipeline, then blew it up, then did those deals as a surprise for your birthday!
This is exactly what happened when we tried this in Iraq!
We pulled that statue down to cheer you up!
When Russia indeed invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Washington was able to get Berlin to suspend the pipeline project that was about to go online, even though it wasn't in Germany's interest.
The pipeline has remained closed ever since, and then was blown up by Putin.
But ending the war and lifting the sanctions would lead to the reopening of Nord Stream 2.
Prior to the Nord Stream explosion, President Vladimir Putin told a press conference that Russia was ready to resume supplying natural gas to Germany if Germany lifted its economic sanctions against Russia.
Putin said, after all, if they need gas urgently, if things are so bad, just go ahead and lift sanctions against Nord Stream 2 with its 55 billion cubic metres per year, all they have to do is press the button and it will get going.
A peace deal would mean Nord Stream 2 would reopen which would help Germany and Russia but crush US aims at regime change and making Europe dependent on US energy.
Don't you think that that is at least part of this, what's going on here?
Do you really believe that at the core of this issue is the tyranny of Putin and helping Ukrainian people?
Helping Ukrainian people is the right thing to do.
If indeed Putin is a tyrant, I imagine that he is, then of course that is a bad thing.
But do you not think that these pieces of information, him saying that, the pipeline, do you think that this is all irrelevant?
Do you think that all of these economic interests being advantaged, whether it's the military-industrial complex or energy companies, is sort of an inadvertent consequence of this conflict?
Oh wow, God, we were just doing the right thing, helping Ukrainian people, and look, all this stuff happened!
Who do you think is running this war?
Willy Wonka?
For decades, the US opposed European projects to receive energy from Russia.
It wants Europe to buy more expensive US oil and gas.
Here's Condoleezza Rice speaking in 2014.
I also understand that one of the complications is the Europeans who are very dependent on the Russians for energy supply and business relationships.
Now we need to have tougher sanctions and I'm afraid at some point this is going to probably have to involve oil and gas.
The Russian economy is vulnerable.
80% of Russian exports are in oil, gas and minerals.
Over the long run, you simply want to change the structure of energy dependence.
You want to change that structure by blowing it up.
You want to depend more on the North American energy platform, the tremendous bounty of oil and gas that we're finding in North America.
You want to have pipelines that don't go through Ukraine and Russia.
But there is a pipeline going through Ukraine and Russia.
Not anymore there isn't!
For years we've tried to get the Europeans to be interested in different pipeline routes.
It's time to do that.
And so some of this is simply acting.
Acting in a war kind of thing?
Oh god, no, no!
Is that what you thought?
Is that what it sounded like?
A 2019 Pentagon-funded study from the RAND Corporation on how best to exploit Russia's economic, political and military vulnerabilities and anxieties, which is a Nasty thing to have done anyway.
Included a recommendation to reduce Russian natural gas exports and hinder pipeline expansions.
The study noted that a first step would involve stopping Nord Stream 2 and that natural gas from the United States and Australia could provide a substitute.
This RAND study also prophetically recommended providing more US military equipment and advice to Ukraine in order to lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it.
Even though it acknowledged that Russia might respond by mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory.
Now, I don't know who participated in this round report in 2019, but isn't this just, like, exactly what's happened?
The Obama administration opposed the pipeline.
As part of the major sanctions package against Russia in 2017, the Trump administration began sanctioning any company doing work on the pipeline.
The move generated outrage in Germany, where many saw it as an attempt to meddle with the European market.
In 2019, the US implemented more sanctions on the project.
Upon coming into office, President Joe Biden made opposition to the pipeline one of his administration's top priorities.
Oh, on the news, it was all about helping people and making Saudi Arabia a pariah.
Well, at least that's one promise he has delivered on.
Well done, Joe.
During his confirmation hearings in 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress he was determined to do whatever I can to prevent Nord Stream 2 being completed.
Months later, the State Department reiterated that any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks U.S.
sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline.
As Russia was gathering troops at Ukraine's border at the beginning of this year, US administration officials issued threats against the pipeline's operation in the event of a Russian invasion.
In January, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, one of the main players during the 2014 Maiden Coup in Ukraine, issued a stern warning against the pipeline.
If Russia invades one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.
So, there you are.
A simple, uncomplicated narrative that doesn't involve sabotage, espionage, long-term energy goals, and potentially a war that's being used to advance economic interests rather than humanitarian ones.
We know how our governments behave, right?
And we know how our media behaves.
Our government would never do that, and if they did, surely our media would report on it, right?
So, there's absolutely nothing to worry about in spite of this overwhelming, academically underwritten evidence and even people involved in the conflict directly saying they would do what eventually happened.
So, nothing to worry about.
But don't let it turn you into a cynic.
Let me know what you think in the comments and chat.
I'll see you in a minute.
Thank you for choosing Fox News.
I'm Oscar Malkin.
No.
Here's the fucking news.
We're joined now by journalist Barry Weiss, founder and editor of The Free Press, former
editor of the New York Times, who's obviously come to public notoriety lately because of
her work on the Twitter files.
Thanks for coming on, Barry.
Thanks for having me, Russell.
Were you astonished by the mainstream media's reaction to these revelations, or was it largely what you expected?
And do you feel vindicated having resigned, broadly speaking, from your position at the New York Times because of the new establishment liberal orthodoxy that was prevailing there?
How has this experience affected you and your opinion on mainstream media journalism broadly, mate?
It just confirmed what I experienced myself and it was vindication of exactly why I decided to walk away from the prestige and start my own thing that is trying to close the gap between reality, the reality that people can see with their own eyes and ears.
And the insistence on sort of putting the narrative, whatever it is that given day, over reality.
And that's exactly what I'm trying to do with The Free Press.
You asked if I was surprised at the kind of mainstream media blackout or then the insistence once they had to cover it that it was a nothing burger.
I wasn't surprised at all.
But you'd be hard-pressed to come up with sort of a cleaner example of one of the problems happening, not just in America, but, you know, around the world more broadly, which is this incredible gap between the things that the legacy press has decided are news and the things that actual living people in the world think are news and are important to them.
And I would venture to guess that most Americans, whether or not they have a Twitter account or have ever logged on to this, See that two stories here matter a great deal to them.
One, the fact of the incredibly cozy relationship between parts of the United States government, namely the FBI and Twitter.
And second, the unbelievable power that basically a handful of private companies have over the public discourse.
Those are the things that Matt Taibbi, me, Abigail Schreier, Michael Schellenberger and a team of incredible independent journalists have revealed.
And I think the fact that Elon Musk decided to come to a bunch of people essentially
with newsletters rather than the Washington Post and the New York Times tells you a lot
about, you know, where real trust in the media these days actually lies. And it's just no longer
with those legacy institutions.
I think it's astonishing in and of itself. And I would imagine in a sane world,
they will not be able to recover from the depth of these revelations.
how...
How thoroughly those social media organizations have been infiltrated by state interest and as you say how much power is wielded by those very social media organizations.
It's unprecedented.
The previous incarnation of monopolizing power was in Energy resources of course and the fact that attention, consciousness itself can be controlled in the way that it has been.
Our community here on our channel are astonished.
It's sort of like Foucaultian biopolitics.
It's controlling reality itself, huh?
Yeah, I think one of the things that is so strange to me about this is that somehow caring about outsized corporate power, caring about the amount of power that a number of extraordinarily wealthy individuals or political cliques within companies have over the entire world, the idea that that's now coded as a right-wing or conservative issue is absolutely bizarre to me.
I do not understand how we've gotten to a place where that is not in the interests of everybody, and specifically not in the interests of the left, that historically has cared deeply about outsized corporate power, has cared deeply about the voices of everyday individuals being censored by big tech, in this case, and the government.
All of which I know is exactly what you talk about on this show, which is why I'm really excited to be here.
The emblematic issue that has initially defined this arc, even prior to the revelations that you and your colleagues,
if that's the correct term, have made, was the Hunter Biden story,
which when I first learned of it and started hearing about it,
it was with the tinge of publications like the New York Post,
and because of the hue of sexual and drug-related orientations,
I felt that perhaps it was a sleaze story rather than a power story,
and as was commonly understood, something that, you know, needn't or oughtn't be reported.
But the fact that this has become, in a sense, a litmus test of the level of censorship is extraordinary
and also a way of marking and measuring the way that what we call the left,
establishment neoliberalism, the new conservatism of our age,
because it certainly doesn't have any interest in sharing power, generating new power bases,
telling the truth, holding corporate power to account.
It shows you now that this has become, in a sense, the centre of true establishment power in the way that their interests align with big tech, the way that their interests align with the military-industrial complex.
So we're, in a sense, facing at least a new understanding.
We finally understood that power isn't what it was when it was Dick Cheney and Wolfowitz and Bush.
That's not it anymore.
The Democrat Party is the representative.
I'm not saying that the Republicans are a great party.
Far from it.
That's not where I'm heading at all.
What I'm saying is, doesn't this suggest a completely hollowed out, nullified, corporatised Democrat Party that's no longer fit for purpose?
I can't fit that many words into a sentence the way you just did, but what I can say is I think one of the things that our reporting has revealed, and one of the reasons that I became so uncomfortable at the New York Times as a journalist whose vocation is to pursue my curiosity and to look into dark corners, even when what those dark corners reveal is inconvenient to the powers that be, is the way that there has become a kind of hive mind, let's call it, between Parts of the government, big tech, legacy press, and they're all sort of speaking in unison.
And whenever a huge group of powerful institutions are speaking in unison and censoring anyone that deviates, even in the smallest way, we should be skeptical.
The fact that the New York Post was locked out of Twitter for reporting on the news, regardless of how tawdry and frankly tragic a lot of the things on that laptop were, Anyone who had any principle should have opposed it.
The fact that so many people under this fig leaf of hacked documents, as if that's not what the New York Times and the Washington Post do every single day, what are the Pentagon Papers?
I mean, come on.
The idea that that was the fig leaf that they hid behind Told you just about everything you needed to know about what was actually happening there.
And I think the reporting that Taibbi has done, the reporting that my colleague, and that's definitely the right word, Michael Schellenberger has done, have revealed the fact that essentially what the FBI did in the case of the Hunter Biden story was pre-bunked an inconvenient In other words, they preyed on, I think, the well-intentioned inclinations of people at these tech companies and essentially told them, there's something coming down the pike.
It is Russian disinformation.
And you should just be aware that, you know, the Russians are trying to steal the election or sway the election.
So that when the story of the Hunter Biden laptop came out, they were already primed to understand it in a particular way.
But for me, the reason that story was an important moment is I just couldn't understand, even if you think the New York Post is a right-wing rag, I think it's the paper of record in New York, but even if you think that, and even if you think what's in the Hunter Biden laptop was tragic and embarrassing and shouldn't have been relevant to who you voted for in the election, go with all of that.
Shouldn't it chill you, the idea that one of the most powerful amplification systems in the world, in all of humanity, in all of human history, was locking out a newspaper from sharing information?
It really shouldn't matter what party you vote for.
It shouldn't matter what you think of Hunter Biden or Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
To oppose that on the very—on the most basic principles, principles that are enshrined in our Bill of Rights, in our Constitution.
I mean, these are like—it doesn't get more fundamental than that.
And it really was shocking to me to watch the way that people fell around this particular story.
And I think the reporting that we've done over the past few weeks have vindicated, frankly, the reporting of The New York Post.
What it seems to me, like Barry, is that these principles are a veil that masks a real appetite for tyranny, a kind of tyrannical impulse that will be exercised when necessary.
Perhaps what concerns me most is the set of assumptions that Ordinary people are unable to discern the validity of information for themselves, are unable to calculate what information to pay attention to.
For me, this suggests that the principles that are pushed to the forefront are not relevant, not rooted, grounded or relevant.
I also feel that what we're beginning to see is nominated public villains that, again, that I wouldn't typically particularly support or laud.
For example, Trump, somewhat uniquely banned from that platform, and then curiously, currently, Musk himself.
I wonder if you can talk to us about what appears to be veiled by sort of liberal aesthetics, a kind of new form of technological tyranny and what you think about the
movements within media and the kind of figures that are presented as new avatars for vilification? Okay
let's unpack that.
I think, first of all, having been the villain of the day more than once on a platform like Twitter, I definitely think that when you're trying to redraw the bounds of what is in and what is out, what is morally acceptable and what is not, you have to make public examples.
You have to scapegoat particular people in order to signal to everyone else watching, look what we just did to that person.
You could be next.
Step out of line and we'll do the same to you.
And the scapegoating mechanism is unbelievably powerful for all of human history.
And I think we're watching it play out.
And all of us can see it on a place like Twitter.
So to take an example, and I'm very happy to talk about Elon or Trump, take the example of Jay Bhattacharya.
Jay Bhattacharya He's a doctor at Stanford.
He's one of the people that I reported on who was slapped with essentially a trends blacklist.
In other words, even if him or his work was being talked about on the platform, you wouldn't see it if you were a typical user.
And people were slapped with all kinds of labels.
Do not amplify, you know, tombstone.
There were many different kinds of categories.
Jay Bhattacharya is a celebrated doctor at one of the best universities in America.
He happened to have a view that I think has largely been vindicated by the way over the past few years, that blanket lockdowns during COVID would on balance be detrimental to us.
In other words, him and other people who signed onto this thing called the Great Barrington
Declaration took the view that the vulnerable should be protected and locked down and resources
should go to them, but for other ordinary healthy people, that it might not be the best
things and that the after effects economically, psychologically, emotionally, might be worse,
that the prescription might be worse than the cure, whatever that phrase is.
So in other words, Jay Bhattacharya was turned in, not just on Twitter, but in the culture
more generally by these legacy institutions as a kind of boogeyman.
Why did they do that?
They did that in order to enforce the view that that idea is dangerous.
And that if you touch that idea, if you question the logic that, you know, cloth masks don't prevent the spread of COVID, obviously true.
If you question the idea that, I don't know, this virus came from Wuhan, and 10 miles down the road, there's this crazy lab where they're doing gain-of-function research.
Don't touch that.
You know, you're a xenophobe and a conspiracy theorist.
It's all about ring-fencing ideas that are—it's about intentionally coding people and ideas that are considered third-rail, dangerous, outside-of-the-line, isms, phobias, whatever.
What any kind of baggage that they can be larded with in order to say, if you want to be on the right side of history, don't go there.
If you don't want your reputation destroyed or your career ruined, don't go there.
And it has been an unbelievably effective tool.
And that is the thing that I am unbelievably interested in because I think you see it in all parts of, it's not just American life, although I'm in New York right now, it's all over the world.
And so this deeply human impulse in us, right, which is to be with the good people, to not be cast out of our tribe, is almost on steroids right now because of platforms like Twitter and Facebook and all of the rest.
Because we don't need to go to a public square and watch someone get stoned.
We can watch it happen digitally all day, every day.
And we are social animals and we learn to sort of prevent ourselves from being vulnerable or putting ourselves into harm's way.
Does that make sense?
Barry, yeah, not only does it make sense, it's terrifying that these tools of ostracisation have been mobilised to a fully immersive and omniscient degree.
When I hear you describe that, and it's interesting the example you chose, it seems that Something unique took place during the pandemic in how much power was unquestionably granted to already potent institutions and organisations.
And it appears to have, what do I want to say, gilded or gird a new era Of unquestioning compliance, where you find, for example, with criticism of the war between Ukraine and Russia is incredibly censored now and people just accept that, that you can pull up an article from 2014 in the Guardian where they were posing the very questions that would now be considered apostasy, the NATO infringement, the coup in 2014.
And we've just seen this with the pandemic.
Do you feel that something is being engineered on a massive scale or do you just feel that the exponential growth of these tools happens to be in the hands of the current regime and therefore we're experiencing what appears like a unique and egregious tyranny but it's actually just the tools have emerged rather than a new ideology?
For me, it's the latter.
I don't think there's some kind of grand conspiracy.
I don't think the heads of all of these places are sitting in a room coming up with a strategy.
No, I think it's a much more human story than that.
I think that institutions are people.
That people are social animals.
Let's just take the example of Twitter, right?
Everyone has been asking me and Matt and others, where are the stories of Twitter shadow banning people on the left?
They probably exist, right?
But you have to think about who created, at old Twitter at least, who was the institution?
The institution was 98 to 99% progressive or Democrats.
If Twitter was a social media platform that was located in Western Junction, Colorado, The story would be a totally different story, but it's as if people are surprised that, you know, if you live in San Francisco, if you're working at a place like Twitter with t-shirts that say stay woke, you know, if you, you know, your entire world
is that world.
So should it be surprising that they regard certain kinds of speeches beyond the pale?
Should it be surprising that they view what I see as, in some of these cases, just heterodox ideas or just typical conservative ideas as something more like hate speech?
It shouldn't surprise us at all.
Anyone that's ever been in a very homogenous, whether politically or religiously, environment knows that that's the case.
Yeah, so you think that the ideology is an appendage rather than the essence?
Now I know a lot of people that watch this... No, I think the ideology is deeply rooted.
I'm just saying that when... I'm not ascribing Ill-intent to many of these people.
I think many of these people genuinely thought, let's just take the case of Trump and you watch the way they were talking back and forth to each other.
And it in many ways reminds me of the times.
There were true believers, right?
There were true believers who said Trump is basically akin to a terrorist leader or the Christchurch murderer.
And those people are driven by ideology.
You see people saying, Including you all, Rob.
I basically I left academia because I could affect more change in the world from joining Twitter.
But then there are other people who are looking out at what was happening in Washington and saying this is an unprecedented situation.
It calls for unprecedented decision making.
There's gradations, as there are in any groups, and I think that that's an important aspect of what was happening at Twitter in the period we were reporting on, old Twitter.
It's frankly what happened at the New York Times during the very hot summer of 2020, where some people at the New York Times genuinely believed that running an op-ed by a sitting Republican senator literally put their lives in danger.
But the vast majority of people who signed on to an idea like that were doing it because of social pressure and because they believed that if they didn't, they would be on the wrong side of history.
And I think that dynamic was playing out at old Twitter.
It was playing out at The New York Times.
It's playing out in book publishing.
It's playing out in...
Basically, all of the sense-making elite institutions in American life right now.
And that is one of the great stories of our time.
And the reason it's not being reported on by places like The New York Times or The Washington Post is because they are implicated in it.
It's because they are the story.
Yes, you're quite right.
And in a sense, those social dynamics and the homogeneity that you're describing, though, it has been arrived at.
There is a process that has generated that.
And we also are talking about state collusion and intervention and censorship and an astonishing degree of infiltration by, in particular, The FBI.
And what I've found more broadly in my conversations with, like, Adam Curtis or Glenn Greenwald,
and now in conversations in-house here, is that much of the ideology around civil rights
and what has come to be known as identity politics is a convenient way of distracting
us from the fact that when it comes to the crunch, Democrat interests ultimately align
significantly with establishment interests elsewhere, the military-industrial complex,
the financial industry, and big tech, and in order to create a diversion, not because
there is a genuine ideological yearning at the heart of the establishment, i.e. its financial
heart, but because it is a convenient way of dividing people, these ideas are promoted.
And to your point earlier, it used to be accepted and ordinary that we would just sit and chat
to people that, what, could be the best?
Conservative?
Or Republican?
Or had really wacky outlandish conspiratorial views?
Or, you know, take for example something like as evidently frivolous as Graham Hancock's documentaries about the origin of our species.
Although, in a sense, what could be more important?
In a way, the idea that that should be censored or dangerous feels like there's a climate of amplification and an appetite for censorship.
And while the principles appear to be somewhat fluid, i.e.
you could find yourself on the wrong side of the argument tomorrow if the wind changes once this precedent has been set and these powers have been granted, it does seem that at the moment there are a set of ideals that are being represented one way or another.
Yeah, but the list, the strength, when you, I get letters from people, maybe you too, you also do Russell, like every single day that feel like they were written in the Soviet Union.
In other words, it's people saying to me, thank you for saying this out loud.
I have a job as a lawyer.
I have a job as an accountant.
I have a job as a doctor.
I agree with you.
But if I said those things out loud, you know, I don't know what would happen to me or my career.
How did we arrive at that in the West?
I mean, and I think one of the dynamics of it that is particularly insidious is as you watch, right, as a ordinary person, the list of things grow longer and longer that you have to say or that you don't have to say or that you have to avoid.
You're thinking to yourself, what are they going to add tomorrow?
What are they going to add next week?
What are they going to add three months from now?
I better just shut up entirely. And I think that that the effect of that kind of pre like that
self-censorship and self-censorship and anticipation that the list can grow longer is just terrible for
our democracy and it's terrible for our friendships and our relationships and frankly I think it leads
to political extremism because when the bounds of what are politically acceptable narrow to such a
degree that people with even normal views like there are differences between men and women
fall outside of it.
Then they're thinking, well, where can I actually speak the truth?
Where can I actually not walk on eggshells?
Where can I actually be my full selves?
And they will run into the open arms of political extremism.
One of the reasons I think it's so important to resist the censorious impulses that I think both of us, for various reasons or from various directions, want to resist is because of that, is because of where this kind of Ideology ultimately leads to, and it leads to a place where there's no political center, where people cannot talk to each other, where there's polarization, and where you have half the country thinking the other half are Nazis depending on which side you're on.
That is a recipe for violence and disaster, and it's not a country I want to live in which is You know, a lot of the reason why I decided to say bye bye to the New York Times and to try and start something that lives up to those kind of values, to have honest conversations, transparently, out loud and fearlessly.
And I think, you know, frankly, like any journalist who believes in in the old school values of journalism needs to be doing the same thing right now.
My personal perspective is one of optimism about humanity, that actually people that are different can get along and you don't need authoritarianism at the center of all of our institutions, systems and society in order for people to behave correctly.
It's not born of naivety, it's born of true optimism.
I also think that what's being masked is the birth of genuinely new political visions,
that we have a heterogeneous political space now where there are no real alternatives,
where there are no real voices that are interested in advancing ordinary people's lives, and
that we're being invited to bicker and squabble and even kill amongst ourselves and against
one another, rather than identify where real power is.
To some degree, I think it's just an aesthetic sheen that masks the telos of true power heading
in the direction that it always has done.
I'm concerned about advancing globalism, I'm concerned about technological dictatorship,
advancing surveillance, the ability of the state and private interest to collaborate
in exactly the way this story has demonstrated.
For me, we ought be moving towards a time where there is less centralised power, small amounts of government, And a kind of agreements among ourselves of how we're going to treat one another and the kind of freedoms that we're going to grant one another.
Also, sort of anecdotally, Barry, my feeling is that most people sort of just want to be left alone.
I don't mean in a sort of a narcissistic, libertarian way, that people just want to run their own, like people don't want to focus on hatred the whole time.
I think we're being stoked into an unnatural state by these kind of movements and this type of agenda.
And that's sort of what's fueling it in me, seeing as how you sort of almost asked.
I mean, I agree with you, and I'll tell you just from, you know, having been on the other side of it, in other words, having been the person that commissioned, you know, the 2000th op-ed about how Donald Trump is a unique danger to society, the incentive in it is, It's unspoken, but it's so obvious, right?
It's that, you know, like, we know from all of these amazing documentary studies and also just our personal experience that outrage keeps us engaged, right?
The entire mechanics of these platforms are based on outrage.
They're not based on kindness or empathy or love.
And I think that, like, one of the great challenges of our time is how do you use these platforms as the kind of incredible tools that they
are. And they are. I mean, I've commissioned amazing pieces because on Twitter I was able to connect to
an underground pastor in Hong Kong.
Like, people that I just otherwise wouldn't find have become available to me because of these tools.
But, you know, they also can kind of overtake us.
us. Um, and.
And I think that it's, yeah, just one of the challenges I find in my own life, forget even as a journalist, just as a civilian, is how do you use what's good about them without becoming subsumed by them?
And I think I have found when I'm basically living online, and a lot of my life is online because of my work, you know, you start to sort of see people not as three-dimensional and complicated and, you know, working from Good intentions and hearing them in good faith, you sort of start to see people as two-dimensional caricatures.
And that's just not a—that's not how I want to live.
And that's certainly not a way to do good journalism, because good journalism requires you to put yourself in other people's shoes, to be curious about what motivated them to vote a particular way.
You know, and a lot of journalism right now is basically just derivative of Twitter, where Twitter is the ultimate editor.
And I think, you know, At least one of my big takeaways having spent much of the past two weeks there is the necessity to sort of get back on the road interviewing people in real life and not just looking at kind of the Twitter conversation.
It's extraordinary to me that the culture has become as divisive as it has done.
Half of the voting population can be sort of condemned as fascists or terrorists or unacceptable and that's normalized when I sort of take it.
Deplorable.
deplorable being the defining word when you take a glimpse at this late-night TV culture
I've sort of because I don't watch too much me when I see I'm sort of
startled by the easy and casual way those narratives are carried and it what it tells me is that there are no
viewers in conveying a balanced perspective so there must be
ossification and bifurcation of the culture They know that there's no one who likes
Trump or libertarianism or even perhaps republicanism is watching TV between 10 and 12 at night in the United States
So it does suggest a degree of division that in a way don't seem positive
And Barry come no, but no, but the thing to be optimistic about is listen these though
the companies that we're referring to still have the sort of
mechanics of distribution right They're able to be beamed into tens of millions of homes across the country.
But the thing is, look at where the actual audience is.
They're not there.
They're with you.
They're with Joe Rogan.
They're with Tayibi.
They're with all of these new things that are part of this Cambrian explosion of independent media.
That is what to be optimistic about.
People are voting with their feet, and I think a lot of people still stuck in the old world do not understand that that is over.
It's over.
You know, audiences are just in a radically different place, and they're seeking voices and journalism that reflects the world as they actually see it, not the world as a few people in midtown Manhattan wish it were.
Barry, undoubtedly Elon Musk's actions in making these revelations available to you has been beneficial and has advanced the conversation.
It's difficult to know anybody's motivations, let alone a complex figure like Elon Musk.
What's your general sense around him stepping down as CEO and that poll?
Is that something you would care to comment on, mate?
I think that the The small glimpse that I had from my time reporting on this story has left me very grateful that I did not have $44 billion to spend and that I did not spend it acquiring Twitter.
I mean, it is just an absolutely thankless job trying to moderate the public square.
And the question is, you know, does he want to stick to his stated aim, which is to keep it that way, or is it going to transform into something else?
And I think that is the big question hanging over this entire project is the goal to try and, you know, was was the reason that he opened the archive in order to embarrass the former regime?
For sure.
But I think, you know, at at his best and That his intention was to win back trust, right?
Everyone saw that certain subjects were getting suppressed.
Everyone saw that the gap between, you know, Twitter was essentially gaslighting the public.
Our job was to sort of look into it and see whether or not it was true.
And it was true, right?
And if you're taking over a company that has lost trust with at least half of the American public, yeah, you should probably clean house, clear the decks, and all the things that he said to me on the record about what his intentions were.
But then to turn around and start to boot people off of Twitter, to tell people that they can't share a link from a competitor, they can't share a link to Linktree to promote their work, or, you know, and there are many other examples, you know, some of the policies, for example, on doxing seem absolutely sensible to me.
Of course you shouldn't be able to stalk people on the internet.
You shouldn't be able to say, Barry Weiss is in this place right now, go get her.
Obviously.
But I think what people are objecting to is the kind of chaotic nature of the way that these new rules are coming down, the sense that they're basically being implemented and then backfilled with a reason.
And I think, you know, if Elon Musk or, you know, I don't know if he's going to pay attention to the poll and actually step down, if Elon Musk or whoever the next CEO of Twitter is, wants to genuinely win back trust, It needs to be transparent.
It needs to be consistent.
There needs to be a level playing field.
And it just needs to be clearly communicated to the hundreds of millions of users on Twitter.
That is where you do need genuine values and principles, because I suppose values and principles are what remains when it's inconvenient to have them, when it's at odds with your own interests, when it involves sacrifice, and that's why I continually take recourse to what have to be called spiritual ideals in so much as they're not material, and sometimes they transcend rationalism, humanism, and even reason.
It's sometimes unreasonable to have principles.
Barry, it's an extraordinary privilege to talk to you.
You're very, very intense And I really like communicating with you.
Am I?
Yeah, you're really, really an intense person.
It's good to deal with you.
I don't know if that's bad or good.
Yeah, I mean as a compliment.
That's not like something, that's not a criticism.
Intensity is a good experience.
It's good to have people that communicate.
Like that, I was captivated the entire time, and it's not easy to talk about.
And I can see the appeal sometimes, um, you know, we're talking about the role taken on by Musk and whoever is pre-, uh, succeeds him, if indeed he does step down, but the attraction of dogma, because sometimes dealing with complexity is so hard, you know, God, I'm just going to call myself this, I'm just going to be this, and whatever they think, I'll do that.
I think there are two things that I sort of walk away with after these two weeks.
Thanks for calling me intense.
people are just, well, let's just accept what we're bloody told. It's getting confusing
out there. I think there are two things that I sort of walk away with after these two weeks.
Thanks for calling me intense. One is that I think that these tools may be too powerful
for any individual or group.
And I don't know if that means that the solution is to treat things like Twitter like a common carrier in the way that the railroad is or the electric company.
Power is, this is an incredible power.
And the power can be really, really corrupting.
And that the roar of the crowd in the ears of Elon Musk, positive or negative, is just maybe too much for any individual.
Like, I don't know if we human beings are built for that kind of roar.
And I have to tell you, I mean, I was just I gained a lot of Twitter followers in this, but the thing I'm looking most forward to over the Christmas holiday is just logging offline and getting back to real life and stepping away from the sort of, like, gladiatorial arena that some of these platforms have become, and touching grass, being with my baby and my wife, and getting back a little bit to reality, because I think that that roar can be, for anyone of whatever political valence
Just a lot to take in.
It seems and sounds extraordinarily overwhelming and the idea of connecting with actual reality and frankly love must be very appealing after enduring that.
When you said that about the roar of the crowd and that much accrued and centralized power, it seems like a broad critique of monopolisation, capitalism more generally,
because once you start looking at the principle of municipality, once anybody owns energy,
resources, communicative tools, it starts to present situations that are somewhat inhumane
and at odds with what I would dare to call our nature.
Barry, thank you so much for sharing that information and for the personal sacrifices
you must have made in order to bring about this story and to get to a position to even
be afforded that right.
No, no sacrifices.
No sacrifices.
It's my job and I'm happy to do it.
And thanks for having me on.
Barry, thanks for your time.
Thanks for your devotion.
Thanks a lot.
Cheers.
There we go.
Barry Weiss there.
I think that was a pretty amazing interview.
Intense, dense, lots of like, oh, fuck, we're right.
Oh, my God, this is terrifying.
Lots of stuff going on there.
Hey, guess what we're doing tomorrow?
We're calling it a Christmas special.
We're going to be joined by journalist Ken Kippenstein and Professor Brad Evans for a very special book club, Gareth.
Did you know this?
I didn't know about the book club.
We have to have some secrets, darling.
Right.
I'm looking forward to it.
Have you read the book this time?
No.
It's A Christmas Carol, but I believe that was written by Scrooge.
McDuck?
I believe Scrooge McDuck is actually the star, Gareth.
You made a bit of a mistake there and you obviously don't know as much about books as I do but that's why I got a book club and you do not.
I do not.
Hey, we are going to continue what we consider to be the best online news broadcast show in the history of our species over on locals.
Stay Free AF is our membership community.
You can join us there right now where we're going to be talking about Robots, technologization.
We're going to be reviewing the Barry Weiss conversation, and we'll be taking your questions right now on Locals.
We'll be back in one minute.
if not see you tomorrow but I urge you to stay with us and more important than any of that stay free
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