Nov. 13, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
23:15
4246 Stefan Molyneux Talks Fake News - "Hoaxed" Movie with Brian Engelman @ Politicon 2018
Stefan Molyneux talks about the personal costs of fake news, the power of social media ostracism, and the upcoming film he is in called "Hoaxed: Everything They Told You Was a Lie:www.hoaxedmovie.com▶️ Donate Now: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 1. Donate: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 2. Newsletter Sign-Up: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletter▶️ 3. On YouTube: Subscribe, Click Notification Bell▶️ 4. Subscribe to the Freedomain Podcast: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com▶️ 5. Follow Freedomain on Alternative Platforms🔴 Bitchute: http://bitchute.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Minds: http://minds.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Steemit: http://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux🔴 Gab: http://gab.ai/stefanmolyneux🔴 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Facebook: http://facebook.com/stefan.molyneux🔴 Instagram: http://instagram.com/stefanmolyneux
TheNewAmericanMedia.com Alright everybody, Brian Engelman here from The New American Media at the 2018 Politicon in Los Angeles, California.
I am pleased, I am honored to be joined with this man right here.
This is Stefan Molyneux.
Stefan, hello sir. Thank you very much for taking a moment to speak with me today.
Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for coming by.
Well, you have a booth set up.
You're at Politicon. Tell us a little bit about what is playing behind us here on the screen.
So, Mike Serinovich has come up with a fantastic movie called Hoaxed.
It's got Black Lives Matter advocates.
It's got Scott Adams.
It's got Jordan Peterson. It's got me.
It's got Cassie J. It's got Scaramucci.
Really great analysis of the Artificial world that the media builds up around us and how they pit us against each other and how they turn us against the truth and how they manipulate us like Geppetto.
It's a really great movie.
It's premiering tonight in Los Angeles.
It's going to be out very soon, so look for it.
I wanted to come out and support Mike.
I've never been to Politicon before.
Okay, yeah, this is our third time.
I couldn't make it last or we sent a crew out.
By the way, Scott Adams, that is a very interesting cerebral cat.
Have you had a chance to connect with him on any...
Yeah, so we've done a bunch of shows together, and I knew him.
It's so funny. I mean, the funny thing, so I used to be in the software field.
I was a chief technical officer and entrepreneur in the software world.
So we all loved...
Dilbert, right? Because it's like looking in the mirror of your crazy day, right?
Just reading a Dilbert. And my team used to love it.
We used to just pick the picture.
And so actually talking to the guy, like, years later, doing shows with him and realizing that Dilbert is like the tip of the iceberg of what he's capable of doing.
Like, he's a trained hypnotist.
He's really good at persuasion.
He's a deep philosophical thinker.
I mean, the... It's really cool to go from, hey, he's a funny guy, to like, this guy's a really serious thinker.
And his analysis, he's also been attacked by the media, as have I, as have other people.
So once you see that canon kind of facing you, and you realize what they're telling about you is not true, then you look at everything differently.
Then you say, oh, they don't like this guy.
And once it's happened to you, you say, well, if they don't like this guy, I bet you this guy's got something really cool to say.
It's almost like a negative world.
That's sort of me in the movie, and a lot of the people in the movie have actually been attacked by the media, and it gets you a whole different view of the power that they had.
They don't have it as much anymore.
I was in Australia, did a bunch of media interviews.
They all turned into hit pieces.
And I watched on YouTube, like, maybe 20,000 people watched the hit piece.
But with podcasts and videos, like, close to a million people watched our little iPhone recording of the whole interview.
So it's like 50 times more people are seeing the truth than are seeing the lie.
They don't have that power anymore.
That's what 2018 is, the Kathy Newman interview of Jordan Peterson.
Sure, she got her, she was trying to...
So what you're saying is, no, actually, I've thought this out.
And what I actually said was the words that I said, stop trying to do that.
The repercussions of the attempted hit piece, it boomeranged in a way that was maybe unimaginable to them, but it's the way that the oligarchs have operated for a couple hundred years now with media where we didn't have the same voice and we couldn't compete with them, but that's all changed.
Well, here's the funny thing, and for the people who are watching this or listening to this, think about this in your own personal life.
We've all had conflicts with someone, right?
And maybe we're a little bit more on the right there, a little bit more on the wrong, and we say, you know, this happened, this happened, and they say, hey man, look, I get where you're coming from, I'm sorry, and all that.
And then what happens is, the next day or two, they call you up and they say, you really did a number on me, man, I've been thinking about it since, and they've reframed the whole thing.
Right. To the point where they're completely in the right, and you are not only wrong for what happened originally, but you're wrong for convincing them that they were wrong.
So that reframing, normally there's a gap between it, between you having some conflict you think you've resolved, and then a couple of days.
But with the Newman thing and seeing what happened with Lauren Southern and I in New Zealand and Australia, you can see that reframing happening in real time.
You know, you can see Cathy Newman with Jordan Peterson saying, so what you're saying is, and you can see this reframing happening in real time, normally there's a lag.
Yeah, normally there's a lag where something happens, like there's some divorce and then someone says like three years later, you know, it was all you, you know, or you break up with some girl, she says, it's not you, it's me.
And then, you know, like a month later, it's like, no, it was you, you know, but seeing this reframing happening in real time, it's really wild.
And it really does help deconstruct what Scott Adams says, like there's two movies playing, right?
Like one person seeing Trump the hero, the other person is seeing Trump the Nazi.
And how do these worlds meet?
Well, they have to meet in truth, in reality, in philosophy, in reason, in evidence.
And that's why the media just keeps polarizing and dividing us and reframing everything to cause as much trouble as possible.
You know, the real war is not Othello, who's the warrior.
It's Iago, the guy who whispers into his ear and turns him against his wife.
It's the poison chalice, right?
There's a great thing in Shakespeare with With Hamlet, where Hamlet's father is killed, he's having a sleep, and someone pours poison into his ear.
That's the media to me. They're causing poison into the ear.
They started in sustaining these huge wars, and it's incredible.
So being able to deconstruct what the media is doing, I think, is essential, not just for becoming aware about the world, but for actual survival as a culture.
So in the movie, then, with fake news kind of being at the center of it, what did...
What did you think going into this project and what did you learn now that it's complete and you're getting to show it to the world?
Your preconceptions and then anything you learned.
Well, I knew that Mike was going to do some interviews with some cool people.
And so I wanted, I mean, I was honored to be asked, happy to go out.
So I flew out and we did a day's filming of interviews.
And there's actually a book.
I got like 30 or 40 pages of interview material there.
It's obviously sliced and diced quite a bit.
I think they're going to release some stuff later.
But I just wanted to have the opportunity to talk to people about...
Most people are never going to be directly attacked by the media.
Like maybe you, maybe me, some other people.
Most people are going about their lives, you know, have their jobs, right?
And maybe they might get attacked by their friends or their family, you know.
Like, you know, I can see where Trump's coming from with regards to X, Y, or Z or whatever.
You could be out for happy hour with your friends and then you get attacked.
But it's different from being a...
Deciding to step up on top of the soapbox and let people throw the tomatoes at you.
It's a big difference. So I really wanted to help people to understand what it's like when you're more prominent.
Because the attacks, not only are they kind of...
The first, you know, after a while it's okay.
You know, the first couple are like, oh, I can feel that, you know.
But after a while you're like, okay, you survive.
And the people who love you, they know you.
And the people who respect you, they still respect you.
And other people, you know, it's a shame.
So I want people to get a sense of what happens when you're attacked by the media.
And also, I really wanted people to understand that if you are being attacked by the media or if you're afraid of the media, because I think this is why the Republicans cock so much, because they're afraid the media is going to write about them in some horrible way.
The media has this huge sway. I had this conversation on the, we took the metro line over here to the convention center.
I was with the lefty.
She didn't know I was a righty. She's like, well, I just assumed you were a lefty.
I go, no, I'm not a Republican, but I'm anti-lefty.
But we were talking about it, and The concept of what is right and what is wrong and what is fair and what is unfair, it's something that has been morphed in 2018, where even reality is being attacked these days, and that's something that it's hard to wake up and deal with it another day.
When it feels like we're in the Superman bizarro world.
Like, everything is upside down, right?
So, imagine this. You know, there's...
I'm sorry to all these literary references, but Cyrano de Bergerac...
Keep him going. Yeah, Cyrano de Bergerac is the story of some guy.
He's really good-looking, but he's not too bright.
And then there's a guy who's got a big, funny nose, but he's beautifully eloquent.
You know, speaks in iambic pentameter.
I think Gerard Depadieu played him in a movie some years ago.
And so, the guy who's pretty but not smart wants to win the girl, and so he gets the guy who's...
Smart but not pretty to write all of his letters, right?
And eventually, of course, she falls in love with the wrong guy.
It's a great story. You should read it.
But imagine this. Imagine you're trying to win some girl.
But for some reason, you have to, maybe she's another language, or there's some reason you have to go through someone else.
But the person you're going through actually wants to get the girl, not you.
So how are they going to portray you?
Well, it's going to be subtle, right?
Now with the media, sometimes it's not so subtle.
Or let's say that you had someone go and do a job interview for you, but they actually wanted the job, not you.
Well, they would go for the job interview with you, and they'd make it kind of negative for you, and then they'd go in with themselves.
Or imagine you had to negotiate with someone, and your worst enemy was sending your message across to the other person.
Like you had a translator, you had to negotiate for something important, and your translator just hated you.
That's the meaning. They're just mistranslating things all the time.
And it's a mistranslation, an intentional mistranslation.
Absolutely, absolutely. The Black Lives Matter guys have really powerful stuff in here about what they experience, why they experience it, and how the media just misrepresents things so that we're set against each other.
And so if you understand that the media is translating everything to cause as much trouble as possible, to cause as much division, as much hostility as possible, because if they can divide us into warring teams, you know how we are.
We're tribal. If you look at the media, some horrible guy got killed in the Saudi Embassy.
This guy who was praising terrorist organizations got basically disassembled and sold for parts in the Saudi Embassy.
It's like, okay, some horrible theocracy killed some terrorist-worshipping...
He wasn't even a journalist.
He was a columnist. Right?
And it's like, I, you know, so the mafia kills off one of their guys, you know, what do I care, right?
But there was a very connected guy.
That goes back to Osama Bin Laden, CIA deep state.
Like, this guy that disappeared, this is three decades of deep state with this guy.
I'm learning more about him every day.
But the media is like, well, he's a journalist, he's one of ours, so now we care.
You know, and Trump's pushing an arms deal, so Trump's behind this.
Well, yeah, I don't like the arms deal, but don't deal with the Saudis, man.
But it's like... If they bomb a whole bunch of weddings in Yemen, they don't care.
Because that's not their team.
So the media love it when they can get you on, it's them versus us, because when you're us, you're not as critical.
So you're not critical of the media when they've polarized you into warring tribes, right?
It's like my team right or wrong, my country right or wrong.
So they can pull all kinds of crap and lie and change the story, misdirect and publish these absurd corrections that seem to be very soft online.
And because they polarize people, it's like, well, that's our team.
They're the media, they're our team, so we'll give them all these passes, right?
And so they get to get a lot of ratings, they get to create a lot of conflict, and they get to lower people's standards for holding them accountable, because the media is their team, right?
For the leftists, a lot of times, the Democrats, it's their team, so it's like they can do whatever they want.
The free passes that the American media gave Barack Obama for eight years in a row, it's pretty exciting.
Free presidency, right? Scandal-free.
You know, if you turn off the cameras, apparently there's no footage of the robbery.
There's no robbery. Exactly.
So I guess, you know, putting this together with fake news and really, I mean, you've been attacked a lot.
And what is your thoughts on the...
The demonetization, the deplatforming, the shadow banning, you know, any way you want to describe it.
There's only a few social media giants that have any relevance as far as reach.
And we, you and I, to different levels, have spent a lot of time trying to get our message out to the people.
And now you're seeing person after person depersoned.
What is your take on this?
Because you've survived to an extent.
First they came for Alex and I said nothing because he's kind of wacky.
And then they're coming for them.
We know where we're headed.
The reason you and I have, not to put words in your mouth, but I've followed your work for the past couple years and I've liked a lot of it.
We've seen this coming.
What do you see coming from today forward with the social media giants and with fake news and the convergence of they no longer have their talons into the grips of power and control over the message?
How do you see this playing out?
Will this be a net positive or a net negative in your opinion?
I hate to predict trends because I want to be in control of them.
It's sort of like saying, hey man, do you think you're going to gain weight or lose weight over the next 10 years?
It's like, well, I hope that at least I'm going to stay somewhat stable because I'm going to have control over what I eat.
So where does it go? Well, it goes where good and willful people want it to go.
But I'll tell you this. There's an old Oscar Wilde quote that says, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
So the whole point is that social media is very powerful.
Social media determined Brexit.
Social media determined Trump.
Social media has determined a lot that is going on culturally at the moment.
So of course we were going to get attacked.
Because the only thing worse than getting attacked is being irrelevant.
Right? So it's because social media, the alternative media, whatever you want to call it, we have such influence, of course we're going to get attacked.
And nobody ever talks about this. Like, if they're watching my show, they're not watching CSNBC. They're not reading the Washington Post, which is right over there, ironically, but staring straight into the belly of the beast.
They have a very nice set, by the way, very nice lights.
I don't know. If you're ripping off Star Trek, it doesn't seem to me to be that nice.
But anyway, it's like... I'll have to turn the camera around after this.
I'll sit in that chair with my Picard hairdo and just say, you know, make it so, or Earl Grey tea, or, you know, cover myself in Borg goop or something like that, which is probably what I'll feel when I sit in that chair.
So, I mean, I knew that this was coming many years ago because I aimed to have relevance.
I aimed to have as much power as possible in affecting cultural narratives.
So I never took advertising.
I never monetized my videos.
I always relied on donations because that's a distributed network, right?
There's no central point of attack if you rely on donations from a lot of anonymous people.
If you've got advertising, they can hit your advertisers.
If you've got YouTube monetization, they can try and hit you on YouTube.
You had a plan for the funding of your enterprise from back in the middle of success.
Always plan for success. So I said, I'm going to have the biggest philosophy show.
I'm going to work as hard as I can.
I'm going to be as honest.
I'm not going to shy away from topics.
I'm going to dig in. I'm going to dig deep.
And I'm going to do the best work I possibly could.
And then the next year, I'm going to do even better work.
That was sort of my goal. So you aim for success.
And I thought, okay, well, what's going to happen if I'm really successful and I achieve what it is that I want to achieve?
Well, they're going to try and de-platform me, right?
Now, I can't control whether YouTube keeps me on or not.
I have some influence. They tried recently to get me off.
But... Knowing that the weak point is going to be your income.
What does the left do? They try to attack your source of income and your reputation.
So try and get you fired and cut you off from the financial world, right?
And your family. They'll hit your family and get the pressure going while you're...
You can't even go out and have dinner anymore without being attacked, per the Democrats' message.
So for me, I was like, okay, the weak point is going to be the source of income.
So if I have advertisers, that's a problem.
If I rely on monetization, that's because I have a single point of attack to cut me off from income.
So decentralization I love with Bitcoin, decentralization I love with the internet, decentralization I love.
So I wanted a decentralized source of income, and that has worked out really well to the point where I have ridden through this demonetization and the suppression relatively.
I mean, there's a couple of flesh wounds, but nothing too major.
It's merely a flesh wound.
So the only option that you have is to fail.
You fail or you're attacked.
Those are the only two options you have when you try to change the world, right?
You either completely vanish or they put you on trial for the usual stuff, not believing in the gods of the city, diversity and all that, and corrupting the young, telling them the truth about the world they live in.
So, I would rather be attacked than be powerless and ignored and so on.
And there's really no choice.
Unless you're towing the line and repeating the same sophistry as the left, you're either going to fade into obscurity or you're going to be attacked.
I'd much rather be attacked because the alternative is to not have relevance in a very essential fight for the freedoms of the future.
And over the years, I've interviewed, I don't know if you know John B. Wells, but he's on Caravan to Midnight.
He used to be on Coast to Coast AM. And he has a phrase, he says, if you're taking flack, it's because you're over the target.
You know, you're getting the gunfire because you're flying over the target.
They're going after you because you're really close.
You're on to something, you know?
So it's like the moment where you feel like, oh, I can't do this.
It's like, no, no, no. You are on...
You're under their skin for a reason.
What would you say to people that have maybe watched your shows, have watched your commentary, your analysis, your interpretations of the world events, and maybe they're feeling a little down, a little beat up, a little tired of what's going on.
What would you say to that person that's getting a little tired of this and maybe they aren't as strong as you have grown into yourself?
I don't think it's a matter of strength.
Repetition then. First of all, you know what it's like?
So, movie stars have abs, right?
Like, the movie stars have abs. Underwear models have abs.
I don't have... I think I have abs.
Like, if you go elbow deep...
I have them in there somewhere.
They're in there somewhere. I played football.
They're in there. No, but here's the thing. So, movie stars and models, they get paid to have these abs, right?
Like, I mean, they get paid to...
If you're going to play a boxer, you work out for four hours a day for six months.
You know, if you're Keanu Reeves and The Matrix, you do all...
I'm not going to do it because I get paid for this.
So if you're not getting paid for this, it's not a strength or weakness.
I happen to be good at it.
I'm comfortable asking for things on the internet, what they call e-begging, which is just asking for what you want.
So I'll take that.
I'm getting paid for it. You're not.
So, you know, don't put yourself under the same pressure and same hostility and same difficulty because I make money from telling the truth and you might get fired and broke, become broke from telling the truth.
So, the division of labor is fine.
Sometimes it's better to donate to someone like me or someone that you think is telling the truth.
Let them take the hits, right?
Outsource the abuse. I don't do my own dentistry.
I mean, I'm not going to do it.
I like that. Division of labor is really important.
I'm getting paid, you're not. So don't sacrifice your own income and your own life because for me, there's money coming in.
For you, it could be a complete disaster.
My family, my friends, everyone, they're all on board with what I'm doing.
They all support it. They can't drive any wedges there.
Whereas you may be in a very vulnerable position compared to me.
So don't... Don't go into battle with a pea shooter if I've got a tank.
And say, well, I'm just not as brave as that guy.
It's like, no, I've got a tank. It's different.
So I would say that.
Another thing I would say is thank you enormously for the support that you have.
I mean, the financial donations.
If people want to donate at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
People who buy the books. People who just like, share the video.
Subscribe. Talk about the ideas.
It doesn't have to be money. You're the reason that I'm able to do what I do.
So I really thank you for that. We have the best chance of winning ever in history.
This fight was going to happen sooner or later between individualism and collectivism, between mysticism and reason, between violence and philosophy.
All of history was coming together for this fight.
We've never had a better chance to get the message out, simply because I'm having a conversation with you and the world about this kind of stuff.
We have the best talent.
We have the best arguments.
We have the best research. We have the best communicators.
And we have the internet. And where the future goes, not up to me, it's not up to you.
It's up to you out there who's going to talk about ideas, who's going to share ideas, who's, you know, not to the point where you're throwing yourself off a cliff, but to the point where you're, you know, taking a few uncomfortable silences at the dinner table.
That way, we have the best chance of winning.
It is a collective battle against collectivism, and everyone's a part of it.
I like to say, what would Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Paine be doing right now with social media?
What would they be rocking on social media right now?
And it gives me some hope.
It gives me some encouragement. I mean, are you surprised that you get to live through this?
I'm feeling it too. It's a convergence of the time is now.
We're either headed toward tyranny or we're headed toward a beautiful world.
There really is no gray area.
It's becoming more defined one way or the other.
Not left and right necessarily, but correct or incorrect.
Have you wrapped your head around this intellectually, philosophically, that out of all of the times that humans in recorded history, disregarding Mew, Lemuria, Atlantis, you know, the fictional slash, aka, fictional creations where we had technology before, that you get to live in this moment where you can talk to the entire planet?
Have you given a lot of thought to the fact that we are here right now?
I want to hear your thoughts on that.
It's a wild thing, I've got to tell you, because it's tough to see the battle when you're in the battle.
Right. So, I have to do this dualistic thing.
Like, I'm in the battle, and I've got to zoom up way out, way history, way satellite, way tunnels of time going back thousands of years.
At the same time, it's like left hook, right hook.
So, it is tough to be in the battle.
Short-term, long-term. The infantryman and the general.
Because you can concentrate everything into one person now.
Like what I do used to be a whole team of people, right?
And so to be in the battle and to plan and oversee the battle at the same time is pretty wild.
And it requires a pretty interesting split focus.
And those who go into the battle without seeing the big battle kind of burn out.
Those who see the big battle without investing, like the think tanks, they always talk in these big things, but they don't actually engage to win.
So, having that split focus, I don't know if this is kind of technical behind-the-scenes stuff, but knowing where to hit in the moment, rhetorically, and also knowing where the big picture stuff is, is a real challenge, and it's a pretty unique skill set to have, and I think it's because I do enjoy personal debates and always have, and because my history and training is in philosophy, I get the big picture and the detailed stuff, and I've always believed that philosophy...
The last place you leave it to rot is in the ivory tower and in academia and in esoteric books written by people who only seem to speak broken German.
So you've got to take it out of the ivory tower into the marketplace of ideas.
Philosophy should help people.
It should be available for everyone to process thoughts, to give you courage against evil, which is why evil wants to banish it to the ivory tower and render it inconsequential.
Where, you know, they're arguing about whether nouns really exist rather than how do you fight growing evil within your own environment.
And so, because I've always had that commitment to bring philosophy to the people, Socrates style, it gives me a level of engagement that I think a lot of philosophers are less interested in.
Excellent. Well then, let's wrap this up.
I appreciate your time, by the way.
So, let's just, you know, for people that haven't seen your movie with Cernovich, with yourself, with your book, just give us the whole one more roundabout.
Yeah, so hoaxmovie.com.
It's premiering tonight, and it's going to be out over the next couple of weeks.
And yeah, go support the film.
Go share it. It's not a left-right thing.
It's not a Trump-Hillary thing.
It's a truth thing, which is mainly the reason I got involved in it.
Mike's done a wonderful job.
They put a lot of money. It's a very professional, amazing-looking movie.
And just check it out.
It'll be well worth your time.
I guarantee it. Excellent.
Best place to find you online?
Freedomainradio.com. Excellent.
Stefan Molyneux. Thanks, man.
Privileged meeting you. Thanks for the conversation.
