True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 31: Brexiting the Vampire Castle
Aired: 2019-12-21
Duration: 01:06:33


=== I Wish You a Merry Impeachment (02:53) ===

[00:00:00]  Brace, I wish you a merry impeachment.
[00:00:02]  I wish you a merry impeachment.
[00:00:05]  I see, the thing is, my people, see them, we don't sing generally like carols.
[00:00:14]  We got this guy, Madis Yahoo, who like we generally do his songs around Hanukkah.
[00:00:21]  I forgot about that guy.
[00:00:23]  Yeah, you know, he died.
[00:00:24]  Did he?
[00:00:25]  Yeah, he got killed by a Hezbollah sniper.
[00:00:28]  Yeah.
[00:00:30]  Yeah, so here's where you're a fucking asshole.
[00:00:33]  Because like I was saying, all things that are bad are funny, and things that are funny are good.
[00:00:40]  But if that's good, then it kind of sucks because that sucks.
[00:00:45]  But that makes it bad, which makes it funny, which makes it good again.
[00:00:49]  And it's like an endless, it's a repeat over and over and over and over and over again.
[00:00:54]  Yeah.
[00:00:55]  See, women don't understand irony.
[00:00:57]  Fuck.
[00:00:57]  You know what?
[00:00:57]  So I slept for about three hours last night.
[00:01:00]  And in that, in my dream time, in my zone of restful slumber, I dreamt a dream, Liz.
[00:01:08]  What was your dream, right?
[00:01:08]  I dreamt a dream free with a world free of Russian interference.
[00:01:13]  I dreamt of a world where Venezuelans can go to the Cabana and purchase goods with a large variety of them to choose from.
[00:01:25]  Yes, I, in my dream, where there's no Russian interference, there's actually no Russia.
[00:01:31]  There's no Russia.
[00:01:32]  And actually, the United States is Russia.
[00:01:36]  Like, we switch geographically?
[00:01:38]  I guess it's a dream.
[00:01:39]  No, like, everywhere is the United States.
[00:01:41]  It would just make everything easier.
[00:01:43]  No two countries that have had a hustler club in them have gone to war.
[00:01:50]  That's a fact.
[00:01:51]  I have a question, Brace.
[00:01:53]  Late on me, sister.
[00:01:55]  Are you pro or anti-impeachment?
[00:01:59]  Impeachment of who?
[00:02:03]  Donald Trump.
[00:02:06]  I don't care.
[00:02:07]  Is that like, I don't care if he gets impeached?
[00:02:11]  They're not gonna.
[00:02:12]  Well, I mean, listen, here's the thing.
[00:02:14]  If Donald Trump was withholding weapons from Ukraine, like he wasn't giving the country of Ukraine military supplies, I don't care if he was holding that up because he wanted his dick sucked by, what's it, Zelensky?
[00:02:29]  It's, that's, they should withhold those weapons forever.
[00:02:32]  He should be impeached for giving the weapons to you.
[00:02:35]  That's part of the conversation.
[00:02:36]  Because I've been on the right.
[00:02:38]  I have no idea.
[00:02:39]  I've been to Ukraine, right?
[00:02:41]  We were talking about this earlier.
[00:02:42]  One day I was walking in Odessa and I saw about 40 pudgy youth wearing all black clothes and kind of marching in two lines.

=== Impeaching Trump? (05:08) ===

[00:02:53]  And I asked a friend of mine, I was like, what are these?
[00:02:55]  What's up with these guys?
[00:02:56]  He's like, what the fuck do you think is up to those guys?
[00:02:58]  Like, who do you think they are?
[00:03:01]  They were Nazis.
[00:03:02]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:03]  Oh, boy.
[00:03:03]  Marching just right down the street.
[00:03:05]  A lot of those in Ukraine.
[00:03:06]  Yeah, I saw many in Kiev.
[00:03:08]  A lot of just random guys in the subway with black sun tattoos, death's head, skull, shit.
[00:03:15]  Yeah.
[00:03:15]  And it was not, which it was not comforting.
[00:03:19]  No, I would not, I would not think it would be.
[00:03:22]  But Donald Trump should be impeached because he didn't give those guys AK-47s.
[00:03:26]  No, I mean, here's the thing.
[00:03:27]  He committed a crime.
[00:03:28]  I'm committing a crime right now.
[00:03:32]  What crime is that?
[00:03:33]  I'm not telling you.
[00:03:34]  You're fucking dark.
[00:03:36]  Also, listen, I'm glad I went to prison because right now I have pecs that are hard as a rock.
[00:03:43]  None of this is true.
[00:03:44]  My arms are several inches in diameter.
[00:03:47]  This is all a lie.
[00:03:48]  And I did not skip leg day.
[00:03:51]  No, this is fake news.
[00:03:54]  Oh my gosh.
[00:03:55]  Did you see Kumail?
[00:03:56]  Yeah, he's juicing.
[00:03:58]  I mean, obviously.
[00:03:59]  Yeah, we got to normalize juicing.
[00:04:01]  Well, I think that's what he's doing.
[00:04:03]  He's destigmatizing it.
[00:04:04]  Here's the thing, fellas.
[00:04:06]  If it's fucked up, it's not fucked up to be like, hey, what's up?
[00:04:10]  You got big, like, you got like a butt implant because that's like what people do now.
[00:04:15]  But the fellas can't take a little natural hormone called T and some other slightly less natural, but also related to hormonal processes and such.
[00:04:28]  You can't juice.
[00:04:29]  Juice is fine.
[00:04:30]  Liz, I got a confession to make.
[00:04:33]  Yes.
[00:04:33]  I've been juicing.
[00:04:36]  I can, funny enough, I can't really tell.
[00:04:39]  Young Chomsky gave me about a gallon of juice.
[00:04:42]  And you know what I'm talking about.
[00:04:44]  And I have been injecting it into my arteries about every seven hours.
[00:04:50]  And I, first of all, I am ripped.
[00:04:53]  I know this is a podcast, and we're not doing the Howard Stern thing where you can see me yelling at Liz.
[00:04:59]  But I have literally ripped through all of my shirts at this point.
[00:05:02]  Would you say the juice is loose?
[00:05:04]  Oh, the juice is absolutely loose.
[00:05:05]  Yeah.
[00:05:06]  No, it is white women.
[00:05:07]  Watch out.
[00:05:08]  I am, I am, I am huge right now.
[00:05:13]  I got to tell you, fellas, if you're listening to this, I know we haven't done sponsorships in the past, but you got to see.
[00:05:20]  Synthol USA.
[00:05:23]  It is a wonderful company.
[00:05:25]  They gave me a little.
[00:05:26]  I used it myself.
[00:05:27]  And I am a tank right now.
[00:05:30]  You know your favorite video game characters, Ken from Street Fight?
[00:05:38]  I am, I make Ken from Street Fight look like shit.
[00:05:42]  Young Chomsky and I have been have been have been injecting like leader and leader and leader and leader and leader after leader of synthol every single night.
[00:05:52]  We go down to Gold's gym.
[00:05:54]  We go straight in the locker room, balls out, dick out, ass out.
[00:05:58]  We go up to every little fucking nerd piece of shit there, slap them around with our massive hands.
[00:06:03]  My thumbs are like, are like Polish lynx.
[00:06:08]  We look at each other straight in the eyes, do it a little jiggle around, make the helicopter thing, and just get out there and pump and rip and everything that you would expect from us.
[00:06:20]  I haven't been home in eight days.
[00:06:55]  You like, I could for way longer than that.
[00:06:57]  We like that one, Liz?
[00:06:58]  I like that.
[00:06:59]  Can you do it longer?
[00:07:06]  I can go all day.
[00:07:08]  Wipe out.
[00:07:11]  So, Liz, big news.
[00:07:15]  Big news is: hello, Brace.
[00:07:17]  That was the news.
[00:07:18]  See, now you look like an asshole for interrupting me, even though I was about to say that.
[00:07:22]  Hello, Liz.
[00:07:23]  A little warning to whisteners out there.
[00:07:25]  With a warning to whisteners out there, I got three hours of sleep last night, and so I'm a little light in the loafers today.
[00:07:34]  Oh, that's you.
[00:07:35]  Yes.
[00:07:36]  I realize it has a double meaning.
[00:07:38]  What's the double meaning?
[00:07:39]  It means you're tired.
[00:07:40]  And so you're like kind of prancing.
[00:07:43]  It definitely means that.
[00:07:44]  It's like sometimes your old man means your husband, but it also means can mean your boyfriend.
[00:07:49]  No, I don't.
[00:07:50]  It's called a double meaning.
[00:07:52]  Linguistic thing.
[00:07:53]  I will keep telling people that you're light in the loafers if you're a co-I've been telling people that the whole all the time.
[00:07:59]  Okay.
[00:07:59]  Yeah.
[00:08:00]  So, anyways, my name is Brace.

=== Parties And The Revolt Against Neoliberalism (11:16) ===

[00:08:02]  That's Brace.
[00:08:03]  I'm the sweepy little guy.
[00:08:05]  That's Wiz.
[00:08:06]  And we also have Wong Womski, Young Chomsky here with a loaded Glock pointed at me.
[00:08:15]  Yes, welcome, Truan.
[00:08:16]  Hello.
[00:08:17]  Hello.
[00:08:18]  Welcome to Truinon.
[00:08:22]  So bad news for England over there.
[00:08:29]  Wait, what happened?
[00:08:30]  So Labor unfortunately won, and Jeremy Corbyn's devastating socialist program is going to ruin the economy.
[00:08:38]  Oh, wait.
[00:08:39]  No.
[00:08:40]  Sorry, the opposite of that happened.
[00:08:41]  Yeah.
[00:08:42]  Labor lost very badly.
[00:08:44]  Not just very badly.
[00:08:46]  Historically.
[00:08:47]  Yeah.
[00:08:48]  The worst result since what, 1935?
[00:08:50]  Something like that.
[00:08:51]  Yeah, when they ran against the only competitors in that race are the British Union of Fascists and the Australia First Party that were trying to make Australia a nation.
[00:09:00]  It did not work.
[00:09:01]  Yeah, they got fucked up.
[00:09:03]  Yeah.
[00:09:05]  Astute listeners, if you listen to our Patreon episode where we were discussing the upcoming election.
[00:09:12]  Where we had high profile insights.
[00:09:15]  Yes.
[00:09:16]  Bryce and I and Bryce and the guest discussed pretty much these exact results.
[00:09:24]  We had said that we were nervous, that we thought that Labor's coalition was quite tenuous.
[00:09:30]  Yes.
[00:09:32]  Unsustainable.
[00:09:34]  And that the position on Brexit was stupid doo-doo dumb.
[00:09:39]  They were going dumb on that Brexit shit.
[00:09:41]  Yeah.
[00:09:44]  So, yeah, someone commented on that episode that I had a mark.
[00:09:51]  Yes, that my opinion on the election was wide of the mark.
[00:09:54]  And to that, I say, it sounds like you're the mark and not me, the smart one, who was correct.
[00:10:00]  I think in British English, that means correct.
[00:10:03]  Yeah.
[00:10:03]  Oh, really?
[00:10:04]  No.
[00:10:06]  Yeah, you're banned, and I'm calling the police on you.
[00:10:11]  Because in Britain, you can somehow be arrested for like Facebook posts and stuff.
[00:10:15]  Yes.
[00:10:15]  And Patreon is a social network, technically, because it allows comments.
[00:10:18]  So, Buster, you're going to do that tonight.
[00:10:25]  No, so I don't feel comforted in being correct, by the way.
[00:10:32]  No, well, yeah, it sucks.
[00:10:34]  I mean, I think a lot of people saw this coming.
[00:10:36]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:10:37]  And it's, I mean, for those of you who have somehow ignored the news, the red wall in North North collapsed.
[00:10:44]  Labor lost a shit ton of seats.
[00:10:47]  And leave parties, parties that supported leaving the EU, won in a pretty resounding victory.
[00:10:55]  Yeah.
[00:10:55]  I think it was 400 out of 650.
[00:10:58]  Yeah, even the Brexit party got massive gains in former labor strongholds.
[00:11:03]  Synthol-level gains.
[00:11:07]  So it's not good.
[00:11:09]  Corbin has resigned.
[00:11:11]  Yeah, he's still staying on for the moment in order to get yelled at some more by insane people.
[00:11:16]  Yeah, I think if I'm remembering correctly, they're going to start new leader elections on the 7th.
[00:11:23]  Yeah.
[00:11:24]  I want to say.
[00:11:25]  So that should be interesting.
[00:11:26]  A lot of infighting happening within the Labour Party.
[00:11:29]  Again, unsurprising.
[00:11:30]  Yeah.
[00:11:31]  One, considering the outcome.
[00:11:33]  Two, considering what we've spoken about regarding the various coalitions within the Labour Party.
[00:11:41]  The cross-class thing, not exactly working out for him.
[00:11:45]  Yes.
[00:11:47]  So, Yeah, I don't know.
[00:11:51]  Is there, I mean, I don't know how much you want to get into this.
[00:11:55]  I think that there are many post-mortems to do.
[00:12:00]  And, you know, I'm not a scholar of UK politics, but.
[00:12:06]  But I do know a lot about incest, the national sport.
[00:12:12]  I do think that, you know, I don't know, there's been a lot of knee-jerk reactions and then ridiculous pushbacks to the knee-jerk reactions and a lot of, just a lot of, a lot of opinions, myself included.
[00:12:28]  I, you know, I've had zero opinions.
[00:12:32]  I voted for the Scottish National.
[00:12:33]  I'm a Scottish citizen.
[00:12:34]  No, you just keep your opinions locked down in a little little heart box near my heart.
[00:12:41]  Yeah, yeah it is.
[00:12:43]  I think the probably the most clear answer there is that a lot of people had voted in a referendum for Brexit right, and then they saw their direct democracy vote, whatever being sort of played around with by these parties in London and I don't think they appreciated that very much, because I don't think the people in these, these regions of the country, have had a huge voice in politics as of late and probably felt a little, let's say, alienated from these parties.
[00:13:13]  Yeah, this is from that blog, the full brexit, and I just want to read a little portion that I think gets to the left, misreading of Brexit yeah, he writes.
[00:13:29]  However, Corbyn notes that the communities hammered hardest by neoliberalism had quote regrettably voted against labor because quote, politics as a whole wasn't trusted, but Boris Johnson's promise to get Brexit done, sold as a blow to the system was.
[00:13:43]  Sadly, that slogan will soon be exposed for the falsehood.
[00:13:46]  It is shattering trust even further, despite our best efforts and our attempts to make this, to make clear.
[00:13:53]  This would be a turning point for the whole direction of our country.
[00:13:56]  The election became mainly about Brexit and he notes.
[00:13:59]  This exposes Corbyn's principal failure.
[00:14:01]  He could not see that Brexit was not a quote or not his emphasis a distraction from a revolt against neoliberalism, but the form that this revolt has taken in the British context From the beginning, most of the British left have only been able to understand the leave vote as a reactionary right-wing phenomenon and its supporters as either wicked supporters of or dupes of the right or even far-right.
[00:14:23]  For left liberals to make this error is one thing, but for lifelong left Euroskeptics to do so is inexcusable.
[00:14:31]  So, yeah, Brexit was not, quote, sold as a blow to the system.
[00:14:37]  It was a blow to the system, evidenced by the hysterical response of that system to the vote, its desperate attempts to prevent the enactment of the referendum result ever since, and the challenges to every aspect of Britain's political and constitutional order.
[00:14:50]  So I think that, sorry, that was a bit of a long passage, but that that gets to the heart of a failure in analysis on the part of the left and trying to understand what these that the revolt against neoliberalism, if we want to call it that, is taking a form that it hadn't anticipated.
[00:15:15]  No, yeah.
[00:15:16]  And it's like we were talking about earlier, sort of without like an actual party that is capable of guiding these movements or harnessing the energy from them and channeling them in a left-wing or socialistic direction.
[00:15:31]  Absent a party that is capable of that.
[00:15:34]  Yeah, you're fucked.
[00:15:36]  Yeah.
[00:15:36]  I mean, we're seeing that in pretty much every Western country.
[00:15:39]  Sure, and I think, you know, if...
[00:15:41]  Well, there are parties that can harness it.
[00:15:44]  Parties of the right.
[00:15:45]  Well, exactly.
[00:15:46]  Because they offer sort of the most simple and like crude, basically revenge for people, which I can't necessarily blame them for taking.
[00:15:56]  A Labor guy named Eddie Dempsey got in a lot of trouble before the election when he spoke at, I think, like some sort of like left Brexit rally or speech thing, where he said that like a lot of people hate the London liberals and the sort of labor, like, you know, like pro-EU type, you know, wearing the blue beret down in front of parliament.
[00:16:18]  And he's like, they're right to do so.
[00:16:20]  And a lot of people got mad at him for that.
[00:16:22]  But I agree.
[00:16:24]  They're right.
[00:16:25]  It's, it's, yeah, it's, and we're seeing that.
[00:16:28]  I'm not really sure what other takeaway it can be.
[00:16:30]  I did will say that it does seem pretty apparent that the media hammering on Corbyn, especially has sort of reached a fever pitch these past couple years, has looks like it did take a toll as well.
[00:16:42]  Absolutely.
[00:16:42]  And I want to get that to that in a second.
[00:16:44]  And that's going to get to the kind of bulk of what we're talking about today.
[00:16:48]  But I just want to say one last thing from this post, which gets into what you were saying about, you know, absent any kind of capable party.
[00:16:57]  This debacle has important lessons for the left everywhere.
[00:17:00]  In an era where traditional left and social democratic parties have dramatically weakened ties with their aristhile working class bases, they will very rarely, if ever, get to decide the terms on which people revolt against the neoliberal order precisely because they are not leading the people.
[00:17:17]  The people are, in fact, out in front of them.
[00:17:20]  If the left then reacts in horror and recoils from the people and the prospect of fundamental change, the leadership of anti-establishment revolts will fall merely by default to the right.
[00:17:33]  Kind of reminds me of the situation we're dealing with too.
[00:17:36]  In the United States?
[00:17:37]  Yeah, but like even literally with Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:17:40]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:17:41]  Like it's, I mean, you saw that rash of articles that came out like, oh, Jeffrey Epstein's becoming a right-wing thing, blah, blah, blah.
[00:17:47]  Because the Epstein sort of, and the Epstein didn't kill himself meme, which, you know, I have my own feelings about, that, that became this huge thing.
[00:17:56]  And the left was, I mean, basically absent like us and like the Chapo guys and some other people just was nowhere to be found.
[00:18:05]  No, actually, I haven't seen any left publication discuss Jeffrey Epstein in any capacity outside of using it as a way to talk about like prison conditions.
[00:18:16]  Yeah.
[00:18:18]  So that seems to be, again, you know, you got to meet people where they're at, especially when you're talking about a left that is attempting to reconstitute itself after being completely decimated for the last 30, 40 years of, you know, insane austerity, globalization, mass deindustrialization, et cetera.
[00:18:41]  Yeah.
[00:18:43]  You know, destruction of communities, you know, destruction of the bonds between people that they should, I mean, look at like sort of, especially like with regards to trade unionism in the U.S., like there were these big centers, these sort of social centers for working people.
[00:18:59]  Even like the fact that people were crowded into these giant factories where they had to be like elbow to elbow with other workers.
[00:19:04]  There's, I mean, that obviously still exists.
[00:19:06]  Like I work at a factory, but there is like, it is, it is great, like, especially in these de-industrialized zones in America and Britain and elsewhere, that like doesn't really exist anymore.
[00:19:17]  People lead these much more solitary lives.

=== Propaganda And Patriots (06:23) ===

[00:19:19]  No, yeah.
[00:19:20]  And, you know, like we've talked about before, you know, capital has completely fled rural communities.
[00:19:29]  There is, I mean, there's no social and political and economic infrastructure in these places.
[00:19:37]  Yeah.
[00:19:38]  So, you know, for labor to have assumed that it could hold that, what they call the red wall, you know, it's a, I don't know, it's, it's nothing short of a disaster.
[00:19:52]  Yeah.
[00:19:54]  So no good news there.
[00:19:57]  Whoops.
[00:19:58]  Yeah.
[00:19:59]  But you might think, oh, this is just like the, you know, it was poor choices by Jeremy Corbyn.
[00:20:05]  It was this whole disaster.
[00:20:06]  And of course, he did make some poor choices, like accepting the Romaniac's weird grand bargain.
[00:20:13]  But there's also some other forces at play here.
[00:20:16]  Yeah.
[00:20:17]  So I think I, you know, I don't think that you, again, I think that the results of the election are multi, you know, not monocausal, right?
[00:20:33]  It wasn't just Brexit.
[00:20:35]  It wasn't just Corbyn's leadership.
[00:20:37]  It wasn't just XYZ, whatever.
[00:20:39]  There's a lot of reasons.
[00:20:40]  And, you know, when they get more data, a lot of people that are smarter than I am will suss all that stuff out and lots of arguments will ensue.
[00:20:49]  But one thing you cannot deny, like you mentioned, is the onslaught of propaganda.
[00:20:56]  Absolutely.
[00:20:57]  And we've, you know, in the U.S., a lot of that that's been reported on has been the anti-Semitic angles.
[00:21:08]  They're going to try to sort of bootleg that for a weird Bernie version.
[00:21:13]  Yeah.
[00:21:13]  But they're still going to, if you think they won't do that because he's Jewish, you are a fool, my friend.
[00:21:18]  Yeah.
[00:21:20]  You know, yeah.
[00:21:22]  It might, I've, you know, yeah, the Sanders campaign should take note of that and perhaps, you know, yeah, get ready for that.
[00:21:32]  But it is like, think of all the things that Jeremy Corbyn has been called in the past, I mean, probably two months.
[00:21:38]  An IRA sympathizer, which actually respect.
[00:21:42]  A friend of Hamas and Hezbollah, which also respect.
[00:21:46]  I love when you say that.
[00:21:47]  Will you say it again?
[00:21:48]  Hezbollah.
[00:21:50]  That's good.
[00:21:51]  Yeah.
[00:21:51]  And then.
[00:21:52]  Hey, men out there.
[00:21:53]  Take note.
[00:21:54]  Say it like Brace.
[00:21:55]  Yeah.
[00:21:57]  A paid stooge of Iran.
[00:21:59]  That is my.
[00:22:00]  I say, I like Iran.
[00:22:02]  Well, I'm doing a Spanish guy.
[00:22:03]  Okay.
[00:22:04]  Iran.
[00:22:05]  Iran.
[00:22:06]  Or it's Italian, really.
[00:22:07]  Yeah.
[00:22:08]  A paid stoo of Iran.
[00:22:11]  What else is he?
[00:22:13]  Oh, he's Russian.
[00:22:13]  Isn't he a Russian asset?
[00:22:15]  Well, he's just unfortunately reporting on Russian assets in the NHS that's stolen NHS docs.
[00:22:20]  He is a spy for the former Czechoslovakia.
[00:22:26]  Well, for when it was Czechoslovakia, it was a spy for the communist, the SDB there, the secret security.
[00:22:31]  They just correctly call him a communist.
[00:22:34]  Yeah, well, I do think, yeah, that is my conspiracy there.
[00:22:36]  I think he is much more sympathetic towards the good old stuff than people think.
[00:22:42]  Yeah, I think so.
[00:22:43]  And they called him, of course, yeah, a stooge for the Kremlin in general.
[00:22:47]  Now, I think, and of course, how am I forgetting?
[00:22:51]  A notorious anti-Semite.
[00:22:52]  Oh, right, of course.
[00:22:53]  And the thing is, Jeremy Corbyn has withstood these attacks for years and years and years and years.
[00:23:00]  But if you understand how the nature of this works, it doesn't matter if someone reads an article about Jeremy Corbyn being an anti-Semite, they're like, oh, this doesn't really seem that, what did he say?
[00:23:10]  I don't understand it.
[00:23:11]  But if you are subject to that relentlessly over and over and over and over and over again, and it's everywhere from the television to parliament to newspapers to your Facebook feed, it's going to seep in there.
[00:23:26]  And I think the general sort of sense that's rather non-political people, but people who maybe vote in these general elections, I think a lot of them got was that Corbyn was a guy who did not care about Britain.
[00:23:39]  And Boris Johnson, for all of his faults, I mean, the man is like basically always in union jack body paint.
[00:23:47]  Yes.
[00:23:48]  And he's insanely racist.
[00:23:50]  Oh, sure.
[00:23:50]  Yeah, too.
[00:23:52]  Actually, he's like, for a Brit, just regular racist.
[00:23:56]  And it's like he has withstood all these, but they've chipped away.
[00:24:03]  And I think a lot of people genuinely think that Jeremy Corbyn is like at least a candidate member of the IRA, which everyone in America, we all think that's cool.
[00:24:14]  But not in Britain.
[00:24:15]  Not in Britain.
[00:24:16]  Not everyone does.
[00:24:18]  Still, unfortunately, they have not really understood the people's struggle.
[00:24:23]  And I think that was a big effect, too.
[00:24:25]  But you might be thinking, okay, well, how was this going to work in the first place?
[00:24:30]  So Jeremy Corbyn was going to recognize Palestine as a state.
[00:24:34]  He is, of course, very much anti-interventionist, but also a staunch supporter of third world liberation movements.
[00:24:45]  He was proud to call Hugo Chavez a friend.
[00:24:47]  And he did not ever call him a dead communist dictator, which is something that still sticks to my crawl.
[00:24:52]  But anyways, Bernie.
[00:24:55]  Oof.
[00:24:55]  Yeah.
[00:24:56]  But yeah.
[00:24:58]  Bernie's going to get that, you know.
[00:24:59]  Yeah.
[00:25:00]  It was fucking Mr. Ramos cornering him again.
[00:25:03]  By the way, Ramos is, I believe, a CIA spy.
[00:25:08]  But he, I mean, certainly Maduro believes that, and I trust Maduro.
[00:25:13]  But Corbyn was seen as like, as sort of an anti-patriot because he had this like great love for these for these liberation movements.
[00:25:23]  Or he was painted as an anti-patriot.
[00:25:25]  And you might think, would they ever allow, and by they, I mean like the British ruling classes, ever allow a man with such staunch convictions and dedication to the oppressed peoples of the world to become prime minister of the former British Empire?

=== Leaked Smear Campaign Details (15:39) ===

[00:25:42]  No.
[00:25:43]  No.
[00:25:44]  And so.
[00:25:45]  So wait, Brace, when you say they, who do you mean?
[00:25:49]  I'm talking, well, I said they, the British upper classes.
[00:25:51]  Oh, okay.
[00:25:52]  I'm talking about heads of industry, the state, and of course, intelligence services.
[00:25:58]  Yeah.
[00:25:59]  And there was a story that came out a while ago that did not get much play, right?
[00:26:06]  It really, like, it was a report.
[00:26:08]  If you were watching the internet, you would have seen it.
[00:26:11]  But if you were watching just the pages of any mainstream publication in the UK, you might have seen maybe one article, maybe two articles, and they would have been framed in ways that were rather vague.
[00:26:23]  And if you're in the United States, you would not have heard anything about it.
[00:26:26]  No, even though it has connections to many United States companies and, of course, our own State Department.
[00:26:35]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:26:35]  Now, Brace, do you want to reveal what you're talking about?
[00:26:38]  So we're talking about the Institute on Statecraft, in particularly something called the Integrity Initiative.
[00:26:45]  Yeah, so this was a tranche.
[00:26:47]  A tranche.
[00:26:49]  We love a tranche.
[00:26:50]  I love a tranche.
[00:26:51]  I love to, like, if you, pig and shit, that is me.
[00:26:55]  Will you say husband la tranche?
[00:26:56]  Has bouletranche.
[00:26:58]  Well, that sounds like I'm a, dude, I love, what was that French director who just died?
[00:27:03]  Some broad.
[00:27:04]  Are you talking about Anna Carina?
[00:27:05]  Anna Karina.
[00:27:06]  Cana Karina died.
[00:27:08]  Has Bouletranche.
[00:27:11]  What, you guys don't like that?
[00:27:12]  No, I liked it.
[00:27:13]  Okay, good.
[00:27:14]  Well, that's.
[00:27:14]  He has probably edit out one or two of those.
[00:27:18]  I did it several times there.
[00:27:20]  No, so a tranche of documents.
[00:27:23]  Wow, you found a way to pronounce that weird, Liz.
[00:27:27]  That was like an A-U-A. Tranche.
[00:27:30]  A tranche of documents were leaked by a friend of the show, Anonymous.
[00:27:36]  You guys love Guy Fox.
[00:27:38]  You love Guy Fox.
[00:27:39]  And actually, Liz writes for Guido Fox.
[00:27:42]  So a tranche of documents was leaked by Anonymous to the UK press, basically shedding light into this incredibly opaque organization called the Institute on Statecraft,
[00:28:00]  who is technically a registered charity in Scotland, but their activities are a bit more nefarious than that.
[00:28:12]  Yeah, it appears that the Institute for Statecraft is, you might call it a cutout, which is like what happens when an intelligence agency basically creates a company to do their shit behind.
[00:28:27]  It's certainly like, I think, a peddler of influence for the UK Foreign Office and for NATO intelligence or various intelligence agencies within NATO.
[00:28:36]  So let's start with the director of this fucking dump.
[00:28:40]  The man's name is Christopher Nigel Donnelly.
[00:28:44]  He's born in 46.
[00:28:46]  And he is, well, let's take a look at his career.
[00:28:50]  Instructor, Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.
[00:28:54]  Senior Lecturer, Soviet Studies Research Center, Territorial Army, Intelligence Corps, Adjunct Professor Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Special Advisor for Central and Eastern European Affairs to Secretary General of NATO, founder and head of advanced research and assessment group, Defense Academy of the UK, and currently director of the Institute for Statecraft in London.
[00:29:21]  So this is a colonel that directs this whole organization.
[00:29:26]  And they funded the Integrity Initiative.
[00:29:28]  The Institute for Statecraft funded this thing to fight Russian interference in NATO member states.
[00:29:36]  Now that might sound familiar to many of our.
[00:29:41]  What do we?
[00:29:41]  What do they call?
[00:29:42]  They call it, what do they call us?
[00:29:43]  The cousins that's just from John LaCari books.
[00:29:46]  What do they call Americans in Britain?
[00:29:49]  I don't know they?
[00:29:50]  Well, they've got to be calling us sir after this fucking trade treaty goes through.
[00:29:53]  It's true, and it it, it it basically how it works, is it?
[00:29:58]  It's, it's sort of an intelligence peddling or, excuse me, influence peddling, but uh, it it.
[00:30:04]  It mobilizes civil society, or rather mostly journalists and also politicians, to fight off Russian propaganda or Russian interference.
[00:30:14]  Yeah, so it's.
[00:30:15]  The Russia boogeyman should be familiar to our U.seners, right?
[00:30:22]  Yeah absolutely, we all know of Russia Gate.
[00:30:26]  Um, I have to say just if we can pause this for a second that uh, a lot of people got a lot of shit and we're gonna get into that as we move through this little history here.
[00:30:38]  But a lot of people got a lot of shit for questioning the official narrative on Russia Gate, which is now Ukraine Gate, because we're just gating all things.
[00:30:47]  Um, questioning the official narrative on Russia Gate, questioning uh this uh, narrative of Russian quote-unquote Russian influence in politics.
[00:30:58]  Yeah, and also, a lot of people got jumpstarts on their careers.
[00:31:04]  Yes, certainly it has been a boost to people like this.
[00:31:07]  Uh so, in their own words, the integrity initiative was conceived by the London-based Institute FOR Statecraft and launched in 2015.
[00:31:17]  Its aim is to track, expose, and counter the increasing current of Russian malign influence and disinformation throughout the West.
[00:31:24]  The Institute consists of independent experts and former government officials with a broad range of experience.
[00:31:30]  This is also what they say.
[00:31:31]  The Integrity Initiative works through setting up networks, quote-unquote, clusters, within European countries, which link individuals from all sectors, government, media, academia, who understood or who are concerned about this growing problem from Russia.
[00:31:47]  The clusters disseminate information on this problem to policymakers and opinion formers in their own countries and increasingly through social media to the general public.
[00:31:56]  The national clusters are linked together into a network of networks coordinated from London, which acts as a conduit for sharing knowledge, stimulating thinking, and focusing research on disinformation and other aspects of hybrid warfare waged by Russia.
[00:32:11]  Yeah, so this is an intelligence initiative to set up what they call clusters.
[00:32:18]  But it's really cells.
[00:32:19]  Basically, yeah, intelligence cells that are comprised of academics, journalists, and State Department officials, it sounds like.
[00:32:28]  Yeah, yeah, government officials.
[00:32:32]  Tasked with spreading propaganda about the Ruskies.
[00:32:38]  Yeah, but it's also, it's the way they do this is that they sort of present this like really intense terror threat from Russia.
[00:32:47]  And the only way to counter that threat, which threatens the very foundations of our democracy, is to actually do, well, unfortunately, the same thing.
[00:32:57]  And it basically provides them cover for spreading their own propaganda.
[00:33:01]  And it's, it's, I mean, if you listen to people like this, basically every Western nation is about to imminently fall to Russia sympathizers.
[00:33:12]  And the influence of Russian intelligence operations upon the general public and upon their perception of media and the news of the world is vast and almost unknowable.
[00:33:24]  And so these clusters have to operate as sort of a one-way conduit for sharing information.
[00:33:30]  You know, the London-based directorate or whatever they call it sends out a line, essentially, to all these clusters.
[00:33:38]  And then in their individual clusters, in their individual sort of languages or social networks, these people propagate that line.
[00:33:47]  And to the observer who doesn't understand that this is happening, because obviously this was not exactly above board.
[00:33:52]  Well, the public rather didn't know about it.
[00:33:55]  They just see all these varied voices from all over the world, from all these disparate countries, agreeing on something or countering this one piece of Russian propaganda, etc.
[00:34:03]  Right.
[00:34:04]  So the Integrity Initiative retweeted an article by The Times, which I can't read because you have to be a subscriber.
[00:34:11]  But part of the part that I can read starts like this.
[00:34:16]  I remember the STB clearly.
[00:34:18]  The STB was the Stotny Bezpenoknoks.
[00:34:22]  I can't fucking read it.
[00:34:24]  Or State Security, which was a pervasive part of my life in communist era Czechoslovakia.
[00:34:29]  As a lone Western newspaper man in Prague, I was a prime target.
[00:34:32]  The secret police followed me around, harassed my friends, bugged my flat, cut off my phone, tried to recruit me, shoved first girls, then boys into my path in the fruitless hope of entrapping me.
[00:34:44]  And Integrity Initiative in the tweet following them putting this article out says, his open visceral anti-Westernism helped the Kremlin cause as surely as if he had been secretly peddling Westminster tittle-tattle for money.
[00:34:59]  So they're essentially calling Jeremy Corbyn an unwitting spy or agent for Russia.
[00:35:06]  And this is, we didn't mention this earlier, but the Integrity Initiative has received £2 million from the British Foreign Office.
[00:35:14]  Yes.
[00:35:14]  That's not all they've received money from.
[00:35:18]  But we'll get into that in a second.
[00:35:20]  So they are essentially calling Jeremy Corbyn a traitor.
[00:35:25]  Yes.
[00:35:25]  And just weeks before the UK election, and I believe we mentioned this before, but there was a dossier that was leaked about NHS negotiations between the US and the UK over kind of privatizing the NHS in a kind of post-Brexit trade deal.
[00:35:52]  Yeah, it was about increasing, I think, prices for generics or who they were going to buy generics from America.
[00:35:58]  Right.
[00:35:59]  So Corbyn really pounced on that.
[00:36:03]  And he was called a Russian spy, a dupe.
[00:36:10]  Yep.
[00:36:10]  That it was fake news being peddled by Russian bots attempting to sow disinformation and polarization among the UK.
[00:36:24]  Of course, the dossier that he was showing people was legitimate.
[00:36:30]  Like it was a real dossier.
[00:36:32]  And that dossier newspapers had reported on it months ago.
[00:36:36]  Yeah, this is always the move from the fake news media is that they don't question whether or not the actual things that are being stated are true or not.
[00:36:50]  The move is to just say, to question where the information came from and use the kind of that quote-unquote trail of evidence to then assassinate the person peddling the information.
[00:37:04]  Yeah, and it's funny actually about the Czech spy shit I was talking about earlier, the state security stuff, is that Jeremy Corbyn was targeted by a very intense smear campaign from a variety of newspapers that were, in no uncertain terms, calling him a spy for the state security of Czechoslovakia.
[00:37:24]  They're saying that he had purposely leaked information in, I think, the 70s or no, it was the 80s to a Czech spy who was stationed in Britain, who was eventually kicked out of the country.
[00:37:35]  Now, this guy, of course, is a total fraud.
[00:37:38]  He had leaked documents from the, or he had rather handed over documents from the Czech State Security Bureau that basically were not doctored, but presented in a way that was less than truthful, which according to people like experts in Czech, in the Czechia, current Czechia, that it was total bullshit and that Corbyn was not a spy in any sense of the word.
[00:38:03]  And nevertheless, these newspapers knew this and they kept hammering him on it.
[00:38:07]  So I do think it's rather, let's say, telling that the Integrity Initiative tweeted about this article basically comparing Corbyn to the state security of Czechoslovakia.
[00:38:19]  Well, not only that, but the Integrity Initiative is also implicated in some of these Russian interference allegations with regarding the NHS.
[00:38:36]  They are weak.
[00:38:37]  Yes, every- My god.
[00:38:40]  What?
[00:38:41]  My God.
[00:38:42]  Every single media report that has, you know, repeating the line that the documents came from Russian bots.
[00:38:56]  That there was like a Russian hacker, right?
[00:38:57]  Yeah.
[00:38:58]  And Reddit came out and said that this was possibly the case.
[00:39:01]  Yeah.
[00:39:02]  They say it was possibly the case, that it was Russian-linked, and it tweeted, or excuse me, and it posted about topics that were like linked to Russian bots.
[00:39:11]  And every time the media used a single source to establish this link, which was a data consulting firm called Grafica, who had an information, who information expert, Ben Nemo, N-I-M-M-O.
[00:39:31]  He kept, he's quoted repeatedly by saying that this quote closely resembles a known Russian operation, while also saying, well, we don't actually have the data to do this.
[00:39:45]  Now, who's this person?
[00:39:47]  Well, he is actually not a data expert or a journalist, but a former NATO press officer who previously consulted for an integrity initiative propaganda farm.
[00:40:00]  My God.
[00:40:00]  See, it's all like, what we're seeing here is basically one of the electronic arms of the state.
[00:40:06]  I mean, this is what seems to be a British project with American help to essentially spread propaganda online to smear political opponents.
[00:40:15]  And it's just one of the many ways that the British government was not going to allow Corbett anywhere near the prime minister's office.
[00:40:24]  And if you think that this is just like, this was poo-pooed a lot, because these clusters of journalists, including one noted, famed anti-Corbinite, or excuse me, anti-socialist, anti-labor person, James Ball, one of the most despicable pieces of shit that has ever been dumped out of the Queen's ass.
[00:40:45]  He was, of course, one of the people that was a node on this.
[00:40:48]  And obviously, the things that he's tweeted, the information that he has disseminated basically closely follows the line hewn to by the Integrity Institute, or excuse me, the Integrity Initiative.
[00:41:01]  But he said, you know, this actually, you know, it's a whole bunch of hooey.
[00:41:05]  He poo-pooed it, played it down.
[00:41:07]  Of course, he had given a talk at the Integrity Initiative, but of course, still, it didn't really matter.
[00:41:12]  And the fact that it received $2 million, or excuse me, £2 million in foreign office money didn't really matter.
[00:41:18]  They've received money from some other places as well, though.

=== Crazy Twitter Accusations Raised Hackles (15:02) ===

[00:41:22]  The headquarters for NATO Public Diplomacy, given £12,000 for each inaugural workshop, which totaled £168,000.
[00:41:31]  Partner Institutes paid £5,000 for each inaugural workshop, £70,000.
[00:41:36]  The Lithuanian Ministry of Defense provided free all costs for their Stratcom teams, a monthly trip to support a new hub slash cluster creation and to educate cluster leaders and key people in Vilnius on info war techniques that cost £20,000.
[00:41:53]  Well, look at who's the next person.
[00:41:55]  Well, that's the U.S. State Department for research and dissemination activities for $500,000 about or £250,000.
[00:42:06]  Yeah, and that says it's excluding any activity in the USA.
[00:42:11]  Of course, the thing about that is that Twitter, Facebook, et cetera, it doesn't like not show you it if the person's not doing it in the USA.
[00:42:20]  So that really means absolutely nothing.
[00:42:22]  The Smith Richardson Foundation, £45,000 for cluster activities in Europe and USA.
[00:42:27]  And look at that, Liz.
[00:42:28]  Who's next?
[00:42:29]  Hey, that's our good friends at Facebook.
[00:42:31]  Wow, Facebook donating £100,000 for research and education activities.
[00:42:39]  Now, we got some stuff on Facebook later and sort of their outsourcing of what's real news and what's fake news to some of the other sort of partners of the Integrity Initiative, Institute for Statecraft, like the Atlantic Council.
[00:42:51]  But this is a pretty big operation.
[00:42:54]  And this is happening not in plain sight, but it has been exposed.
[00:42:58]  And it has really been sort of suppressed and ignored by the mainstream media.
[00:43:04]  The lamestream media.
[00:43:05]  Exactly.
[00:43:07]  And here's the thing, though.
[00:43:09]  If you think that you are safe just because you live in the United States, well, I've got bad news for you, brother.
[00:43:15]  The Integrity Initiative was developing or still is developing, because it's not like they've closed, a U.S. arm of its program.
[00:43:23]  They say we have, in the light of today's new awareness, we have evolved our program over the last six months, understanding what is needed to create a network across Europe of active clusters of people in each country, bringing together academics, think takers, journalists, civil servants, politicians, and business people.
[00:43:39]  The West is badly in need of a reassertion of U.S. leadership.
[00:43:44]  The EU has been unable to generate any strategic thinking or to exercise convincing leadership.
[00:43:49]  Russia and China are successfully driving wedges between EU member states and between allies within NATO.
[00:43:56]  Brexit has added to the confusion.
[00:43:58]  The UK needs reminding how to play its key role of encouraging, enabling U.S. leadership in Europe and NATO.
[00:44:04]  It's weird that a group that was based in the UK and it was funded by the Foreign Office is saying that U.S. leadership is needed, but I digress.
[00:44:12]  The U.S. also needs to rebuild its understanding of Russia and how to deal with it so as to A, improve its own governance at a time of transition and B, rebuild its leading role in Europe via NATO and via encouragement to the EU and to enable them to deal effectively with the new challenge to our democratic structures and processes posed by Russia and China and ISIS.
[00:44:32]  Is ISIS really a threat to our democratic structures, Liz?
[00:44:35]  No.
[00:44:37]  It is, this is spook shit.
[00:44:40]  It's all spook.
[00:44:41]  It's all spook shit.
[00:44:43]  And we all know about it.
[00:44:46]  Like if you read these documents, you can take it seriously and understand like sort of the gravity of what this is and realize that this is just one organization among many.
[00:44:54]  But there's nothing we can do about it.
[00:44:55]  I mean, this is not exactly being like harped upon by the British press.
[00:45:00]  No, I mean, it's like you said, basically no one is talking about it.
[00:45:04]  No, and it's funny.
[00:45:06]  In America, we have really, like, not we or listeners to this podcast, but sort of the American electorate, or at least a certain section of it, would absolutely be thrilled if they found out about something like this because it's combating Russian interference.
[00:45:21]  Exactly.
[00:45:21]  And that allows, under the guise of this, this combating Russian interference, which of course we as normal people have no way to track or trace, they can basically spread their own propaganda, which is like why they are doing this.
[00:45:37]  So just to like pause for a second, because we were just kind of going over a big wall of information.
[00:45:44]  But we're doing that because I think it's important that we talk about this Russia stuff, which a lot of people I think have kind of clung to as explanations for certain political events.
[00:45:57]  Yep.
[00:45:58]  To point out that there are, you know, there are reasons why these are mainstream media narratives.
[00:46:08]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:46:09]  And that the reasons are not maybe what they seem.
[00:46:13]  No, I think that people don't understand that this is like literally a CIA plot.
[00:46:18]  Like it's, it's, if, and if, if you don't see that, you are a fucking fool.
[00:46:22]  This is like what better way to make people sort of, first of all, cling to institutions, but also sort of distrust them at the same time, creating this sort of schizophrenic mindset within people.
[00:46:36]  But also this, this latent sense of nationalism that a lot of liberals feel around this stuff, where they feel like the evil Russian is coming in here and pissing all over our beautiful democracy and making people racist.
[00:46:50]  Right.
[00:46:51]  Which is right.
[00:46:52]  Russia invented racism.
[00:46:54]  Well, it also has the added plus of shoring up certain companies' power.
[00:47:01]  Absolutely.
[00:47:02]  I mean, it makes so what Facebook does, for example, is they outsource their fact checking to a variety of companies.
[00:47:10]  And one the Atlantic Council.
[00:47:13]  Yeah, and Prop or Not ID service, which is, I believe, just one guy.
[00:47:18]  But one of the many blogs that they basically took offline, took off Facebook, is like Naked Capitalism, your favorite blog.
[00:47:25]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:47:26]  Saying that it was like Russian influence peddling.
[00:47:29]  I mean, this totally nebulous.
[00:47:31]  If you could get that out of Naked Capitalism, then my God.
[00:47:35]  Yeah, a lot of people basically in the kind of like 2016, 2017 Russian bot hysteria, social panic, sex panic, but for Russian bots, basically.
[00:47:48]  Naked Capitalism, which I think I've mentioned, we've mentioned on the pod before, was definitely a website that basically got blacklisted.
[00:47:56]  And I believe that they ended up suing.
[00:47:59]  I know, I'm trying to remember from their coverage of it.
[00:48:02]  I feel like Yeves wrote a pretty strong letter because the Washington Post actually reported on this.
[00:48:08]  Yeah, the Washington Post reported Prop or Not ID service as being like a reputable source.
[00:48:14]  Yes, and it listed a bunch of basically left-wing websites that were skeptical of the Russian election narrative as being stooges for the Ruskis.
[00:48:26]  Yeah.
[00:48:27]  And it took them a really long time to redact the article, actually.
[00:48:32]  I mean, it's pretty astounding that that, it's not astounding actually at all that that happened in the first place, but it's wild that that happened sort of in plain sight.
[00:48:39]  And there was basically no outcry because they could just say, well, they're Russian influence peddling websites.
[00:48:46]  So what can we do?
[00:48:47]  Yeah.
[00:48:47]  And any critic was either called, I mean, people, it was, I don't know, it was really bad.
[00:48:55]  And a lot of people have somehow like washed this memory from their brain or whatever the saying is and forget that they too fell under the spell of the Russian bot narrative.
[00:49:11]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:49:12]  And one thing that has really been pushed since then is this whole concept of the red-brown alliance.
[00:49:19]  Oh, God, here we go.
[00:49:20]  Liz, you're red.
[00:49:22]  I'm brown.
[00:49:23]  Well, I'm all skinned.
[00:49:25]  What is the red-brown alliance?
[00:49:27]  Oh, the mythic red-brown.
[00:49:29]  I believe that there are some crazy Twitter accounts that have accused me of such things.
[00:49:36]  This is the sort of mythic boogeyman of the left, which is the big fear that the left will team up with the right in an alliance that I haven't totally understood to what ends.
[00:49:52]  I think they think that Bernie Sanders is going to go on Tucker Carlson, announce Tucker as his vice president.
[00:49:57]  And then with a mix of populist economics and right-wing, I guess, other stuff, like, I guess, being against gay, I don't know, being against gay marriage.
[00:50:09]  I'm not really sure.
[00:50:09]  I don't know.
[00:50:10]  But like racist, like racist right mixed with like populist economics left.
[00:50:15]  This would be the Sanders-Carlson pact of the market.
[00:50:19]  It's pretty ridiculous, but it gets deployed a lot.
[00:50:21]  You see it when people are...
[00:50:23]  It's absurd.
[00:50:24]  It's absolutely absurd.
[00:50:25]  This is not.
[00:50:25]  It's not a real thing.
[00:50:27]  No.
[00:50:27]  Unless you're talking about anarchists or antennazis, which happened once or twice.
[00:50:32]  But it is pushed by this select group of people.
[00:50:35]  And it's funny.
[00:50:35]  One of these guys has always really raised my hackles.
[00:50:40]  And you know how I hate my hackles raised list.
[00:50:43]  You hate it.
[00:50:44]  I hate it.
[00:50:45]  And his name is Alexander Reed Ross.
[00:50:50]  And he wrote a book called Against the Fascist Creep, which is about basically, I think it's about fascism sort of influencing all parts of society or something like that.
[00:50:58]  I'm not going to fucking read that crap.
[00:51:01]  But he is a researcher at some fucking university in the Pacific Northwest.
[00:51:07]  I don't even give a fuck which one.
[00:51:09]  But his whole thing is he pushes this red-brown narrative.
[00:51:13]  And in particular, he accuses people of being like Duganists and of being.
[00:51:20]  This is not a thing, by the way.
[00:51:21]  Yeah, Alexander Dugan, by the way, who is like a national Bolshevik or whatever you want to call it, but basically a Nazi who lives in Russia, who some people think has like an insane amount of influence over literally like 15 people have read him.
[00:51:37]  Yeah, it's like, I knew who he was before all this started, but like I didn't care who he was.
[00:51:42]  Like nobody, it's not like he's not a major player behind the scenes, but they sort of treat him like a Rasputin type.
[00:51:50]  But Alexander Reed Ross has done, Let's say some events with members of the Integrity Initiative.
[00:51:59]  Some big events, actually.
[00:52:01]  So from some reporting on this, before the Integrity Initiative was exposed as a military intelligence front operation, Ross was among a small coterie of pundits and self-styled disinformation experts that followed the group's Twitter account.
[00:52:15]  Okay, well, that's not a big idea.
[00:52:16]  Yeah, that's not a big Twitter account.
[00:52:18]  That's not a big deal.
[00:52:19]  No.
[00:52:20]  In a series of articles for the Southern Poverty Law Center last year, Ross attempted to bring his warmed over Cold War theories to the broader public.
[00:52:28]  He wound up trashing everyone from the co-author of this piece, Max Blumenthal, to Nation magazine publisher Katrina van den Huval to Harvard University professor of international relations Stephen Vault as hidden shadow fascists secretly controlled by the Kremlin.
[00:52:44]  The articles ultimately generated an embarrassing scandal and a series of public retractions by the editor-in-chief of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
[00:52:54]  I remember that.
[00:52:55]  It was really funny because this guy put out these deranged articles essentially calling people Russian agents for a variety of reasons.
[00:53:03]  But basically, I think Katrina van Huva was like some friends of Russia group, which had existed for quite a while to like, you know, it's peoples of Russia and peoples of America getting together.
[00:53:15]  And essentially, any contact with Russia or the Russian people is treated as if you're getting some sort of disease, right?
[00:53:22]  Yeah, he says, this is his quote from sort of how these red-brown alliances are forming.
[00:53:32]  The alt-right takes from both this red-brown, it's called, or like left-right, syncretic, highly international national of nationalisms, and from the United States' own paleoconservative movement.
[00:53:44]  And it's sort of percolated down through college organizing and anti-interventionism meets anti-imperialism, right?
[00:53:53]  Now that makes sense to you, right, Brace?
[00:53:54]  Yeah, the guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
[00:53:56]  It really is like the main, the main way that this has come out is in people, is against people who have taken a line other than the State Department's on the Syrian civil war.
[00:54:06]  And you're immediately, if you sort of question the U.S. government on certain, let's say, ideas that they have about Syrian civil society or Syrian political society, you are an Assadist or a Putinist or something like that.
[00:54:21]  And Alexander Reed Ross is like the king of this.
[00:54:23]  If you're familiar with a certain sphere on Twitter, the Wusbappin sphere, let's say Alexander Reed Ross baps.
[00:54:33]  So just to be clear, it wasn't just that he was following this Twitter account or anything like that.
[00:54:37]  No, he was on stage at the Integrity Initiative Seattle event alongside A contributor to the Center for a Stateless Society, C4SS, the think tank, the left market anarchist think tank.
[00:54:55]  That is, so the point of the C4SS is basically like they are for markets, not states.
[00:55:02]  I'm not sure what makes them left.
[00:55:06]  And really, like they are, they call themselves anarchists, but every time I look at them and I like click on the author's like bio or whatever, they are 100% just like a weird lib dem guy or just like an actual libertarian.
[00:55:18]  And the C4SS have quite a lot of, let's say, involvement in like national libertarian activities.
[00:55:26]  Yes.
[00:55:27]  They say their core aim is uniting far-left anarchists with free market right libertarians.
[00:55:33]  So sort of like a red-brown thing, right?
[00:55:35]  It's like the left, the far-left, and the far right.
[00:55:37]  Absolutely.
[00:55:38]  And hey, guess what?
[00:55:39]  Those are actually, you know, those two tendencies can go quite hand in hand.
[00:55:47]  If you look at the C4SS website, there is literally no difference between the two.
[00:55:52]  The C4SS is one of the most obnoxious institutions, I think, that I've ever dealt with in my entire life.
[00:56:03]  Because I have had some, let's say, less than pleasant experiences with one William Gillis there, who when I was overseas, tried to spread a rumor, which is, by the way, like absolutely, literally made up, not even based on like a rumor or anything, that I was a rapist and had been kicked out of the punk scene in San Francisco for being a rapist.

=== Rumor and Confession (02:39) ===

[00:56:25]  And I asked him about this.
[00:56:26]  I was like, what are you talking about?
[00:56:28]  He's like, a mutual friend told me.
[00:56:30]  And I looked, and I have no mutual friends to this person.
[00:56:32]  He's just some random guy in the Pacific Northwest.
[00:56:35]  I asked my friends at home.
[00:56:36]  I was like, is there some rumor about me?
[00:56:37]  What's going on?
[00:56:38]  Of course not.
[00:56:39]  And I actually go to an anarchist book fair where he's at.
[00:56:43]  And he is a dump truck.
[00:56:46]  He is a piece of shit.
[00:56:48]  He is a ponytail, slumped shoulders, soybeard, just terrible, terrible, terrible.
[00:56:55]  His whole style is whack.
[00:56:57]  And I go up to him and I was like, hey, man, like, what's going on?
[00:56:59]  He tries to shake my hand.
[00:57:00]  I'm like, why would you shake a rapist hand?
[00:57:02]  And I asked him, I was like, well, what's up with that?
[00:57:05]  Like, why did you say that?
[00:57:06]  Like, you didn't answer me on Twitter.
[00:57:08]  You know, I think it's kind of not cool to say that kind of stuff.
[00:57:11]  And he's like, oh, yeah, I guess that might not have been true.
[00:57:15]  And yeah, I told him I was going to bleep him.
[00:57:19]  You can bleep that, Mr. Young Chomsky.
[00:57:22]  And then pushed some stuff off his table and walked out.
[00:57:24]  And he started screaming at me, you're a tanky.
[00:57:27]  I was like, this is insane.
[00:57:28]  These people are deranged.
[00:57:30]  You know what's actually what's not fake news about the C4SS is that they have a little problem with pedophilia.
[00:57:41]  They do, do they?
[00:57:43]  Yes.
[00:57:43]  Now, isn't that strange?
[00:57:44]  Libertarian organization would have a problem with pedophilia.
[00:57:52]  In fact, I think that the person who started C4SS was a uh, let's say what does it say here?
[00:57:59]  Confessed child rapist and libertarian activist named Brad Spangler, who set the group up to promote quote-unquote market annot anarchism to quote unquote, replace Marxism on the left.
[00:58:10]  Yeah, funny how those child rapists and libertarian activists just again those two things just go together, two peas in a pod.
[00:58:18]  Yeah, so I guess he had confessed in a facebook post to molesting his young daughter.
[00:58:24]  Says, during a particularly bad period in 2004, I molested my young daughter.
[00:58:28]  I did not do so forcibly, but the betrayal of trust and resulting potential emotional fallout for her has weighed heavily on my conscience ever since.
[00:58:35]  Here's a real cute tweet of his, if your quote baby is old enough to go see an r-rated movie by herself, i'll show her things in bed you probably don't even know about yet.
[00:58:48]  He also said this with the laptop going in for warranty exchange.
[00:58:51]  Worries about the discovery of which websites I had visited and further questions that might raise that might raise, convinced me that facing the currently dominant accountability process, regardless of what's right or wrong with it, is the best thing I can do for my daughter.

=== Read This, Read Up! (02:49) ===

[00:59:05]  Um, what does that mean?
[00:59:08]  What kind of websites was mr Spangler visiting?
[00:59:11]  If libertarianism has taught us anything, it was, of course, child pornography.
[00:59:16]  So these are our enemies folks, and and here's, here's what we're saying that the point of all this is that the red brown smear is literally a CIA plot, like i'm not even fucking kidding, because it's being thought up in these think, takes by and spread out to these nodes and put out by dupes like Alexander Reed Ross, unless he's, you know, doing it knowingly.
[00:59:38]  And then suddenly it becomes.
[00:59:40]  Suddenly you have uh, celebrities calling people tankies for not wanting uh, you know us to invade such and such country.
[00:59:48]  Uh and, and they, they always, they're always balancing out.
[00:59:50]  It's like well, you know what are you for?
[00:59:52]  Russian imperialism.
[00:59:53]  It's, like Russia is the GDP of like La, it is not, it is not my main concern, right?
[01:00:00]  Yeah, and i'd say that you know, what's really worrisome is not the celebrities and the liberals, because they haven't attached themselves yet to these sort of red-brown smears, but they will if the left keeps banging on about it.
[01:00:14]  And it's very strange how the left has uh, attached itself to a big, big boogeyman here.
[01:00:21]  Yeah um, a lot of talk about quote-unquote, Not Bulls yeah, which is short for national Bolshevism, which is like barely a tendency.
[01:00:32]  By the way, it's funny, I think a lot of people just mix up social Democrats for being nas balls, which should tell you something about social democracy, but you don't realize like yeah, there's just racist social democrats, like you don't have to be.
[01:00:43]  I don't know, it's not like study history, I mean, have you heard of the French?
[01:00:48]  This is also like not a scourge, like this is just not.
[01:00:52]  This is so blown out of proportion and so insane.
[01:00:55]  And you're, you're really feeding into, like you said um, a lot of convenient State Department narratives.
[01:01:04]  Um, and it's a shame I, you know, I saw a lot of uh pushback just on twitter from just in consort, even anticipating um, you know, criticisms of Labor's strategy, of Corbin's leadership, of everything that we talked about on the podcast saying well, anyone who criticized that, you know, watch out,
[01:01:32]  they're gonna start advocating for a red brown alliance.
[01:01:35]  It's like these are not, this is not a thing, that's happening no, but you're making it a thing and other people are gonna attach themselves to that narrative and it's gonna get out of control and suddenly you're agreeing with the right that the actual Nazis are socialists.
[01:01:51]  Yeah yeah yeah yeah, I guess that's true.

=== Read Up On This Stuff (04:38) ===

[01:01:54]  Uh yeah it's it's it's, I mean, just remember when you're reading about, I mean and read, read this, read up on this stuff if you don't believe me.
[01:02:01]  But like, literally, this is a CIA plot.
[01:02:04]  And if you're falling for it, you're a fucking mark and you're a chump and you're a sucker.
[01:02:07]  Hey guys,
[01:02:42]  we fucked up and we forgot to mention where we called all this reporting from, which is from the gray zone and the great reporters, Max Blumenthal, Ben Norton, and Mohamed Elmazi.
[01:02:55]  All their work documenting the Integrity Initiative, their ties to NATO, and the Atlantic Council.
[01:03:04]  We are linking in the episode.
[01:03:06]  So be sure to check all of those guys out.
[01:03:08]  Hey, this is Streetwear Talk with, you call, you know me, Bricky Brace.
[01:03:14]  And I'm here with Lizzo and young Chomsky, but with a U, not a OU.
[01:03:21]  Please don't call me that.
[01:03:22]  It already is that way.
[01:03:24]  Oh, well, with a, that's the British way, OU.
[01:03:28]  So, hey, we are out here in front of the Supreme Store on Market Street in San Francisco.
[01:03:34]  Lizzo, what are you getting today?
[01:03:36]  We're not doing this bit?
[01:03:38]  Okay.
[01:03:39]  Thank you so much.
[01:03:40]  Sorry.
[01:03:42]  I know that was a reading-heavy episode, right?
[01:03:45]  And that was a big knowledge.
[01:03:47]  We dropped the knowledge bomb on you.
[01:03:49]  Knowledge atomic bomb, which is don't trust anyone except for me and Brace.
[01:03:54]  Yeah.
[01:03:56]  Because you'll get radiation poisoning and die if you don't.
[01:04:00]  It's just like we know it's not necessarily our funniest episode, but it is important to learn this shit.
[01:04:10]  Yes, it is.
[01:04:11]  And to that note, I actually am going to include a ton of reading material in the notes this time.
[01:04:18]  So fucking click that shit, Dorks.
[01:04:21]  I'm going to do a recipe for a creatine shake that Young Chomsky and I have been cooking up.
[01:04:27]  And you are, boy, if you haven't gotten onto the bodybuilding forums, which is www.bodybuilder.com slash forums slash local stuff slash fucking around, you will flip after you drink this recipe.
[01:04:41]  I mean, it is one of the greatest, it is a mixture of grape and vanilla.
[01:04:46]  And the way that we combine it, I mean, he and I spent probably four days on this recipe.
[01:04:53]  And it is one of the most delicious, delectable drinks I've ever had in my life.
[01:04:57]  Do you call it granola or vape?
[01:04:59]  We call it vape.
[01:05:01]  Yeah, we call it vape.
[01:05:03]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:05:04]  It's vape juice.
[01:05:05]  And let me tell you, fellas, if you've been stuck inside listening to us talk about the integrity initiative all day, nothing will get you more pumped, more ready to go out there, more ready to meet women than a gallon of vape juice.
[01:05:21]  And if you can't find creatine in your local shelves, you can actually drink actual vape juice.
[01:05:26]  What you got to do is buy a four-pack of jewels, split open the cartridges, put them in a shot glass, and just bottoms up.
[01:05:32]  It's really good for you.
[01:05:34]  All right.
[01:05:35]  That was some straight Russian propaganda, if I've ever heard of it.
[01:05:39]  Am I telling the truth or am I lying?
[01:05:41]  Ooh, total your mustache.
[01:05:44]  Thank you so much.
[01:05:46]  Spasibo for joining us.
[01:05:50]  I'm Liz.
[01:05:52]  I am Grigory Modlenko Babachenko Grigoryevich.
[01:06:00]  And I am laying on my back on a, one of those things, like a sofa, but they got no sides to them.
[01:06:06]  Bench press.
[01:06:07]  No, well, I am on the bench.
[01:06:10]  And I am being fed.
[01:06:11]  I stopped doing the accent.
[01:06:12]  I got tired.
[01:06:13]  I am being fed little fishies by my catamite.
[01:06:17]  Little pickled herrings.
[01:06:20]  Little pickled herrings.
[01:06:22]  And little pickled earrings.
[01:06:24]  And I am, of course, we are joined by producer Young Chopsky.
[01:06:31]  All right.
[01:06:32]  We'll see you next time.