MASSIVE Protest Erupt In China Over Covid Lockdown, Protesters DEMAND END To Xi Jinping Reign
MASSIVE Protest Erupt In China Over Covid Lockdown, Protesters DEMAND END To Xi Jinping Reign. Biden and The White House Condemned Chinese crackdown on protests.
Rare and shocking protests erupted in China after zero covid policy resulted in the deaths of people including, reportedly, children.
People across china are calling for the end of lockdowns and some even demanding Xi Jinping step down.
#china
#zerocovidpolicy
#chinaprotests
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Major protests are erupting in China over COVID lockdown after people got trapped in a building and firefighters struggled to save them because of their zero-COVID policy.
People are even calling for Xi Jinping to step down in an unprecedented sign.
In our next story, Elon Musk.
is gonna grant amnesty.
This week, maybe even today, we could see the return of Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, and boy, is the media losing it.
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Now, let's get into that first story.
Rare protests are spreading across China.
Why?
COVID lockdowns.
People are calling for Xi Jinping to resign, to leave power, because the zero COVID policy is not working.
And more importantly, there's a tragic story.
A tower caught fire.
People were trapped inside.
Because of the zero COVID policy, it was difficult for firefighters to get in and rescue them, and many died.
This, well, this inspired, triggered, whatever you want to call it, a large wave of protests, but people had already been fed up.
It's just another piece of an ongoing crisis.
China is reeling from this, and the people who are protesting are taking great risks, because this country is, it's a brutal dictatorship.
It's not the brutalest of brutal dictatorships, but it is.
I mean, you can certainly look back at history in the Soviet Union, you can look back at, say, Weimar Germany, and what it turned into as an encroaching power came to be, and realize the danger that comes with the consolidation of power in a country like China.
If the people don't stand up now, then they will forever hold their peace.
We've seen terrifying videos out of the COVID lockdowns.
Recently in Disney, I think it was Disneyland?
Or is it Disney World?
In China, they tested somebody, comes back with a fever, so they lock the place down and everyone's trapped inside.
That's how insane it is there.
Now, interestingly, there's an overlap with these United States, and of course, potential for war with China.
But when these protests started erupting, many people started cheering on the protesters for pushing back against the Chinese government.
And I'm glad they did.
And within minutes, so I hear, on Twitter, a spam campaign from Chinese state actors started to obfuscate information about the protests.
Because that's what bots and manipulation do.
That's what they're for.
Elon Musk has to deal with this, and it's one of the reasons he wants to get rid of the bots, to prevent manipulation, campaigns, psyops, etc.
The media is coming out and saying, oh, look at Twitter struggling to deal with this.
The funny thing is, the very people who are mad about Elon Musk taking over Twitter supported Chinese-style COVID lockdowns.
You being locked in your house.
You starving.
There are photos that came out of China for the past several years.
People pushing their refrigerator out of their balcony, opening the door and showing no food available.
That's how bad it's been.
And there are people in the U.S.
saying, well, China's doing something right.
You had those statements from Trudeau a while ago, where he was saying that he looks up to China and Xi Jinping and what they've accomplished.
And it's horrifying.
Then you take a look at why they're really mad at Elon Musk.
He can't deal with the Chinese spam campaign.
Part of it's pro-establishment.
There are American interests that don't want China to succeed.
But part of it is, they really like what China's accomplished.
You know, we were told on TimCast IRL that what happened was, a long time ago, some Democrats met with Chinese officials and said, how are you able to destroy a city block of residential areas and turn it into an industrial area with a snap of a finger?
We need to be able to do that.
Yes.
Trampling over an individual's human rights for political power and to expand.
There are many politicians in the U.S., and Canada especially, and Europe, who want that kind of style, but they don't want China to be the ones in charge.
So, they're at a crossroads.
Protests erupt in China.
They gotta support it.
At the same time, they can't allow Elon Musk to allow free speech, can they?
They'd have to shut it down.
Because if the people can speak freely, this is what you get.
And that's why China is trying to stop people from talking about what's happening there with the protests.
It will encourage more people to rise up and push back and say no to the extreme authoritarianism.
So, many of these people who like what China's doing have no choice but to condemn the bots and the manipulation, and support the protests, but at the same time agree with eliminating free speech.
An article from The Guardian, it's funny, they said, free speech at all costs is dangerous, and Elon Musk is proving it.
No.
The right of the people to protest and resist tyranny is paramount.
So let's read what's going on.
We got the story from CNN, my friends.
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Without further ado, what's going on?
Oh, CNN.
CNN's gonna tell us, here's what you need to know.
Now, I don't like CNN.
I don't find them trustworthy.
But I'll tell you this.
There is an interest among the establishment to see China fail.
Not all of them.
Some of them.
So let's start with CNN's perspective on what's happening.
They report.
From Shanghai to Beijing, protests have erupted across China in a rare show of dissent against the ruling Communist Party sparked by anger over the country's increasingly costly zero COVID policy.
As numbers swelled at demonstrations in multiple major cities over the weekend, so too have the range of grievances voiced, with some calling for greater democracy and freedom.
Among the thousands of protesters, hundreds have even called for the removal of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who for nearly three years has overseen a strategy of mass testing, brute force lockdowns, enforced quarantine, and digital tracking that has come at a devastating human and economic cost.
Here's what we know.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Now that's interesting to come from CNN.
The lockdowns came at a devastating human cost.
The digital tracking.
You mean all those things people like you were supporting?
Oh, spare me.
The people who work at CNN would jump at the opportunity to have digital passports, lockdowns, and enforced quarantine.
Sure.
But why are they protesting?
The protests were triggered by a deadly fire last Thursday at Urumqi, the capital of the far western region of Xinjiang.
The blaze killed at least 10 people and injured 9 in an apartment building, leading to public fury after videos of the incident appeared to show lockdown measures had delayed firefighters from reaching the victims.
The city had been under lockdown for more than 100 days, with residents unable to leave the region and many forced to stay home.
Videos showed Urumqi residents—I'm probably pronouncing that wrong, mind you—Urumqi residents marching to a government building and chanting for the end of lockdown on Friday.
The following morning, the local government said it would lift the lockdown in stages but did not provide a clear time frame or address the protests.
That failed to quell public anger, and the protests rapidly spread beyond Xinjiang.
Where Xinjiang, I'm pronouncing it wrong guys, I know, with residents in cities and universities across China also taking to the streets.
They say protests have been reported across the country.
So far, CNN has verified demonstrations in at least 16 locations nationwide, including two of China's biggest cities, the capital Beijing and financial center Shanghai.
In Shanghai on Saturday, hundreds gathered for a candlelight vigil on Yeromki Road, named after the Xinjiang city, to mourn the fire victims.
Many held up blank sheets of white paper, a symbolic protest against censorship, and chanted, need human rights, need freedom.
I'm right there with you, man.
Bravo.
Bravo.
These people who are protesting, the response from the Chinese government to protests is nothing like the U.S.
It is substantially worse.
We've seen videos of people who posted naughty words online.
Oh, they don't get censored.
They get renditioned.
They get dragged into police black sites, strapped to a chair and beaten, and then said, now, you don't want to say those things again, do you?
These people are taking tremendous risk.
But together, they're strong.
Some also shouted for Xi to step down and sang the Internationale, a socialist anthem used as a call to action in demonstrations worldwide for more than a century.
It was also used during pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing before a brutal crackdown by armed troops in 1989.
China's zero COVID policies have been felt particularly acutely in Shanghai, where a two-month-long lockdown earlier this year left many without access to food, medical care, or other basic supplies, sowing deep public resentment.
By Sunday evening, mass demonstrations had spread to Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Wuhan, where thousands of residents called for not only an end to COVID restrictions, but more remarkably, political freedoms.
Residents in some locked-down neighborhoods tore down barriers and took to the streets.
Protests also took place on campuses, including the prestigious institutions of Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing, and Communication University of China at Nanjing.
In recent days, vigils and demonstrations in solidarity with those on the mainland have also been held elsewhere around the world, including London and Sydney.
In Hong Kong, where a national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 had been used to stifle dissent, dozens of people gathered on Monday evening in the city's central district for a vigil.
Some held blank pieces of paper, while others left flowers and held signs commemorating those killed in the Urumqi fire.
It's probably, uh, it's probably Urumqi.
unidentified
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I read a story that really broke down why these protests are significant, but more importantly, why they happened.
And I do find it particularly interesting.
Now, CNN goes in to explain why they're significant, but I'll tell you the story that I read.
I don't have it pulled up.
It said that there was a building and they got word that they were being locked down
in this one particular building.
But no official paperwork was filed.
No enforcement actually happened.
They were just told, hey, you're on lockdown.
And people are like, there's nobody here.
So they left.
Went about their daily business, came to and fro.
Then one day they said, oh, wait, here we have the paperwork.
Now you understand why people don't trust us at this point.
They said, you told us we were locked down, you didn't file the proper paperwork, you didn't get it done in time, we were free to come and go as we please, and we did.
When you were claiming there was a problem with COVID, nothing significant happened with COVID, and now you're coming by and saying we can't leave?
If it was an emergency, they would have rushed in, locked the building down.
Instead, they were like, no, no, no, we'll get to it.
So imagine you have an actual pandemic.
And they're like, you're locked down, but we're not going to enforce it.
No one's going to believe you.
So then, when people actually die from this, they're like, we know you're playing games.
And that's exactly what they said.
They're saying lockdown's a game.
It's not real.
They wanted the same thing here in the US.
CNN says, Public protest is exceedingly rare in China, where the Communist Party has tightened its grip on all aspects of life, launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent, wiped out much of civil society and built a high-tech surveillance state.
The mass surveillance system is even more stringent on Xinjiang, where the Chinese government is accused of detaining up to two million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in camps.
Where former detainees have alleged they were physically and sexually assaulted.
This is a brutal dictatorship.
Don't you forget it.
A damning UN report in September described the region's invasive surveillance network with police databases containing hundreds of thousands of files of biometric data such as facial and eyeball scans.
China has repeatedly denied accusations of human rights abuses in the region.
Ah, yes, yes, I love it.
Allow me to introduce you all to The United States of America!
Remember when that dude went... Who was it?
Who was it?
He went before... I'm blanking on the name.
Congress and said, we do not have mass spying.
And then Edward Snowden leaked a bunch of files and proved the NSA was mass spying on Americans.
Because they're liars.
China does a lot of bad things.
A lot.
I think they are particularly bad.
Their government.
The Chinese people actually are really cool.
Inventing a whole lot of really awesome stuff.
But they're under a brutal dictatorship right now.
America does bad things as well.
I'm not here to play games, nor fall for the tricks where I would begin to loathe my own country.
There's problems with my country, but yo, the United States of America is effing amazing.
We don't get renditioned and brutally beaten for speaking out against the government.
I can say that Joe Biden is on the crack head and is abusing the DOJ to arrest his political enemies and torture them politically.
Ain't nobody's gonna kick my doorknob and arrest me.
Yeah, I know.
There are problems.
We are seeing the DOJ go after people.
But I'm not going to sit here and pretend that we're worse than China.
China is very, very bad.
But there are elements in the United States, establishment elements, that like the invasive surveillance network, that like eminent domain, that like the weaponization of law enforcement for political ends.
And if we don't stop them, we will end up exactly this way.
Which is why this story is so important.
Because maybe I should say it grants hope.
When even the people of China stand up and say no, it shows you that there is no world in which the brutal dictator can truly win.
They can't.
Because the people will eventually just say no.
Well, protests do occur in China.
They rarely happen on this scale, nor take such direct aim at the central government and the nation's leader, said Maria Repnikova, an associate professor at Georgia State University who studies Chinese politics and media.
This is a different type of protest from the more localized protests we have seen recurring over the past two decades that tend to focus their claims and demands on local officials and on very targeted societal and economic issues.
Instead, this time the protests have expanded to include the sharper expression of political grievances alongside with concerns about COVID-19 lockdowns.
There have been growing signs in recent months that the public has run out of patience with zero COVID after nearly three years of economic hardship and disruption to daily life.
Donald Trump had that quote from a while ago, where he said he met Xi and said, you're king.
And he said, no, no, I'm just a president.
No, no, you're not.
You're king.
You're president for life.
and in various Chinese cities, inspired by a banner hung by a lone protester on an overpass
in Beijing just days before Xi cemented a third term in power.
A third term that many say he's basically king for life.
Donald Trump had that quote from a while ago, where he said he met Xi and said, you're king.
And he said, no, no, I'm just a president.
No, no, you're not.
You're king.
You're president for life.
That's what you are.
We talked about this on IRL.
and I'll see you in the next one.
He's not a king because a king can transfer power.
He can't.
He's in charge, but when he dies, it's not going to his kid.
The parties, and this is a communist thing outright.
I mean, they don't believe in the family, but we'll see.
You do have North Korea where they do.
It's basically a monarchy, right?
They say earlier in November, larger protests took place in Guangzhou, with residents defying lockdown orders to topple barriers and cheer as they took to the streets.
While protests in several parts of China appear to have largely dispersed peacefully over the weekend, some met a stronger response from authorities.
The Shanghai protests on Saturday led to scuffles between demonstrators and police, with arrests made in the early hours of the morning.
Undeterred, protesters returned on Sunday, where they met a more aggressive response.
Videos show chaotic scenes of police pushing, dragging, and beating protesters.
At one point, hundreds of police officers formed a human wall to block off major roads, with a loudspeaker blaring a message for protesters to leave.
The videos have since been scrubbed from the Chinese internet by censors.
BBC journalist Edward Lawrence was arrested in Shanghai on Sunday night, with a BBC spokesperson claiming he was beaten and kicked by the police while covering the protests.
He has since been released.
Let me just pause there.
I love seeing these stories.
This stuff happens in the US all the time.
I don't trust these journalists.
Sorry.
There are many good journalists.
There are many bad ones.
I think there happen to be more bad ones in the U.S.
than good ones.
I don't know what this guy was doing.
But I gotta tell ya, having been on the ground in many places, I have been detained myself.
I was arrested along with the Trump protesters when he was being inaugurated, and I was released from the crowd without being processed.
Oh, were they spittin' and yellin' somethin' fierce, angry?
You weren't really arrested!
Arrested does not mean processed, but they don't know that.
And there are people saying, Tim, being detained is not being arrested.
No.
Arrested is when they say, you have committed a crime, you are not free to leave.
Detained is when, we're investigating a crime, you can't leave for 45 minutes.
No, I was arrested and held for a little while.
Showed my press card and they said, okay, fine, you can leave.
Arrest over.
It happens in the U.S., but again, I'll stress this.
These are the games they'd like to play.
China loves to say things like, but America's racist!
Look at the horrible things they do!
Latching onto wokeness and using it against us.
No, in fact, woke people take advantage of what is truly good about this country.
That we're willing to listen, we are willing to change, and that good faith gets exploited.
They say, on Monday, a spokesperson for China's foreign ministry acknowledged Lawrence's arrest, claiming he had not identified himself as a journalist before being detained.
Spare me.
I don't believe the Chinese government on that one.
The spokesperson also deflected questions about the protests, telling a reporter who asked whether the widespread displays of public anger would make China consider ending zero COVID.
What you mentioned does not reflect what actually happened.
He also claimed that social media posts linking the Xinjiang fire with COVID policies had ulterior motives, and that authorities have been making adjustments based on the realities on the ground.
When asked about protesters calling on Xi to step down, he replied, I'm not aware of the situation you mentioned.
Ha ha ha.
In Xinjiang, top party officials convened a meeting on Saturday, a day after the protests broke out at Urumqi, maybe?
Where they called the authorities.
Normally, I gotta be honest, normally I do look up pronunciations.
I do the research and make sure I'm pronouncing the words right.
So, apologies.
I just want to point out that today has been a particularly stressful work day.
A lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that you will find out about later.
But good, good things.
Good, good things.
Meaning, I've been on the phone non-stop.
And so, I'm doing what I can.
But anyway, let's continue.
Without referring to the protests, Beijing's municipal government on Sunday banned blocking entrances to residential compounds under lockdown, saying they must remain clear for emergency services.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, let's talk about what's going on as it relates to more domestic policies.
This is funny.
Twitter grapples with Chinese spam obscuring news of protests.
For hours, links to adult content overwhelmed other posts from cities where dramatic rallies escalated.
Yeah, I'll say it outright.
Elon.
That's a problem.
You gotta stop the bots.
You gotta stop the manipulation campaigns.
And I know that's his goal.
So I'm chillin', hoping he does.
But Twitter being a vehicle for the people of China to spread the word and tell us what's going on in their country is good.
If it comes to the point where they seek to overthrow the Communist Party, I want to make sure that we, at the very least, can express messages of support in response and know what's happening.
Now, I'd be concerned about getting involved in foreign entanglements.
That's a fair point.
I don't want the U.S.
to get involved in China.
But what about an opportunity to end the Chinese Communist Party?
An opportunity to restore the Republic of China?
That would prevent World War III.
But not if it means risking war with China and starting World War III.
So you gotta wonder about what U.S.
intelligence interests are here.
The Washington Post reports, Twitter's radically reduced anti-propaganda team grappled on Sunday with a flood of nuisance content in China that researchers said was aimed at reducing the flow of news about stunning widespread protest against coronavirus restrictions.
Numerous Chinese-language accounts, some dormant for months or years, came to life early Sunday and started spamming the service with links to escort services and other adult offerings alongside city names.
Amazing.
The result, for hours, anyone searching for posts from those cities and using the Chinese names for the locations would see pages and pages of useless tweets instead of information about the daring protests as they escalated to include calls for Communist Party leaders to resign.
It's brilliant, honestly.
Because a lot of people don't want to see the graphic content and they won't want to search these terms.
And also it means that if you share those searches, people might inadvertently see nasty things.
That can get you banned.
They are exploiting Our good faith in this country.
Same as the woke.
It is not the first time that suspected government-connected accounts have used the technique, according to a recently departed Twitter employee.
But in the past, it was used to discredit a single account or a small group by naming them in the escort ads.
Amazing.
This is a known problem that our team was dealing with manually, aside from automations we put in place, said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution for disclosing internal processes.
In the mass layoffs and resignations, Twitter's overall staff has been slashed from about 7,500 to 2,000 surviving employees estimated.
Some groups, including those dealing with human rights issues, safety concerns, and deceptive foreign influence operations, have been reduced to a handful of people or no staff at all.
Sunday's campaign was another exhibit where there are now even larger holes to fill.
All the China influence operations and analysts at Twitter all resigned.
Stanford's the one that made up that list of- I think it was- Okay, I could be wrong.
Um, and so I apologize if that's the case.
Let me backtrack and say, my understanding is that it was Stanford who put together a list of people they said was spreading misinformation about the election.
If that's not the case, well, I apologize.
But I recall reading a report about it, and I'm pretty sure they're the ones who are smearing me.
And you know what?
Let me just double-check.
Let me make sure I have the details right.
Super Spreaders, I think they called it.
And I'm pretty sure it was Stanford.
And, um, bear with me for just one moment as I pull up this news story and... Was it Stanford?
EIP?
Yep, it was Stanford.
Okay, now that I'm confirmed, I can say they lie.
So I want to make sure I have the details correct because I don't normally like to say things unless I know for a fact they're true.
But they called me a super spreader and that's ridiculous.
I've repeatedly said Trump didn't win.
But I was talking about news related to things like in New Jersey, where there was, there were significant problems that resulted in a new election.
Uh oh.
So forgive me if I don't believe them now when they're saying, oh, the bots from China.
Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network.
Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.
There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election.
We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer.
Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts.
Free speech absolutists are like the cocky audience of a spectator sport.
They think they could do better than the players if they were just allowed a crack at it.
Oh, you are gonna love this one, I can tell.
To them, speech should be as free as possible, period.
Nowhere in their oversimplification of the issue more evident than on social media, where abuse and disinformation have created a new frontier of regulation, and with it a cohort of disingenuous free speech warriors.
These absolutists are so unaccustomed to facing consequence for their actions, that they have pushed the idea that censoring a woke orthodoxy now prevails, and is a threat to freedom of expression.
Huh?
Elon Musk is among them.
But since his takeover of Twitter, he is having to learn quickly that free speech is not simply about saying whatever you want, unchecked, but about negotiating complicated compromises.
No, free speech is about expressing yourself however you want.
And no one ever argued freedom of speech includes a freedom from consequence.
That's a lie.
They made it up.
They made it up because it's a buzz phrase.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, said literally no free speech advocate ever.
Quite in fact, they argue that free speech comes with responsibility and consequences.
They say, Musk arrived at Twitter with an approach that I am sure he thinks is pretty straightforward.
The side he believes is a left-wing bias that should be corrected by allowing suspended users back on the platform.
Trump, Kanye West, Jordan Peterson have been reinstated, along with nearly all those that were suspended for falling afoul of Twitter's rules.
No, that's not true.
That may be true this week, but we'll see.
This means that Twitter is about to turn into a far more unpleasant and potentially dangerous experience.
Let me correct the record.
Right now, You have articles claiming that China is operating psychological operations.
They're running psyops.
So, he certainly didn't stop people who are already there doing things they've already been doing.
Those accounts were there for months and years before Elon took over.
There was Antifa organizing violence, directing violence, and encouraging violence, and y'all never cared about that.
You said, but free speech.
Okay.
Well, now we want rules.
Because we don't want the violence.
But now they're claiming that free speech is violence!
Not the violence they were actually calling for.
Yeah.
Spare me.
Here we go.
Like Trump, Musk has become the tribune of fascists and racists by way of adolescent contrarianism, an insatiable need to flaunt his control and a radicalizing inability to cope with being told he's wrong on the internet.
For him, free speech seems merely a vehicle for his delusional plan to make Twitter into a fawning digital town square that he presides over.
I wish that we could get a Philosopher King to actually run things, but we can't.
And if we can't, then we want rules.
And rules must be fair and impartial so we understand the rules by which we play.
But not even the richest man in the world can pull that sort of free speech arena off.
Twitter isn't sustained by previously suspended users, but by the millions of people for whom the platform feels like a political and cultural slipstream.
Twitter has an odd social media profile.
It is both extremely influential and also quite trivial.
And the coexistence of the two is what make it the site viable.
Twitter is a window into the soul of politicians and opinion makers.
Its style of interactive, rolling commentary works well in drawing them out to post their views or engage with others, revealing personalities and politics that otherwise would be suppressed or closely edited.
Hey, wait a minute!
You mean like Alex Jones?
Milo?
Laura Loomer?
Donald Trump?
Jordan Peterson?
Carl Benjamin?
How about Carpe D'Antem and others who have not yet been reinstated?
These are people who would otherwise be suppressed, and you're advocating they are.
The hypocrisy, in their own words, the article is a paradox itself.
So when US interests come out and claim that China does wrong, I simply say, spare me your agenda.
Sure, you want China silenced, but you also want your political opponents here silenced as well.
I won't believe it.
Here we go.
If you're not on Twitter, chances are that you have come across stories that started out or were precipitated there.
Whether it's a debate on trans rights that swirls around J.K.
Rowling's tweets, or calls to organize street protests against dictators in the Arab world.
Or in China.
For all these things to be possible on the same site, robust content moderation is necessary.
To ensure conversations don't descend into doxxing.
And hateful contact.
Conduct.
Which the left does, has always done, and they don't get banned for.
I had someone post my address a long time ago.
They didn't take it down.
I moved from that address, and now the left is doxing that address, where I don't live.
They started taking many of these things down, some of them they don't take down.
They're now trying to say... Look what they're taking advantage of.
If you're not on Twitter, chances are you've come across stories.
They're going after people who don't use a social platform and they're lying to them.
So that these people live in this world, where they have absolute control.
They say when a place is not fun or hospitable or truthful, it becomes commercially pointless for advertisers.
Since Musk took over, half of Twitter's top 100 advertisers have reported to have left the site.
If things continue as they are, it's hard to see a future for the company.
No.
Not at all.
It's actually easy.
Twitter is not a complicated machine.
It's very, very simple, actually.
Elon's gutting core systems that are unnecessary, pulling out bloatware, and firing unnecessary staff.
Like a human rights team?
Dude!
You post text and it goes on the internet!
We need a human rights team for that!
Advertisers will want to be on the platform.
And here's how I explain it.
In the town square there's a billboard for Planned Parenthood.
Some guy shows up with a big ol' sign and he protests.
Is Planned Parenthood gonna take their sign down because someone protested?
No, of course not.
But now their sign is next to a guy with a nasty picture of a baby.
Yeah, they're going to keep advertising.
Coca-Cola puts up a big old billboard in the city.
And Times Square, how about that?
A guy showed up and slashed him with a knife in Times Square.
Do you want to advertise next to all that content?
They are.
They never stopped.
They still want to.
No one ever says, why is that Eminem's ad appearing next to that man slashing that woman?
Because they recognize that's nothing to do with the ad or where it is.
But for some reason on Twitter it is?
Because activists have begun targeting it.
These woke activists may as well be the Chinese Communist Party as far as I'm concerned.
Psychological operations and manipulation.
Someone tweets a naughty word.
An advertisement appears, a tweet later.
And they say, look, you're next to it, that means you.
No, I didn't advertise on that, and I don't care.
Some person said something dumb, it has nothing to do with me.
My tweet is my tweet.
This is the game they want to play.
They want the authority to control the narrative.
And that means stopping China from trying to control the narrative, but retaining the power for themselves.
I don't want to live in that world.
Y'all are insane.
So, we push back.
We support the people of China.
We call out the psychological operations from China.
But we also call out the psyops and sock puppetry from the U.S.
itself as well.
I can't say what will happen in China because, as you know, I am no psychic and I'm only reading the news.
There's probably a lot I don't know.
There's probably a lot you need to know as the story develops.
There is a potential that there will be a war between the U.S.
and China.
China's preparing for war.
They've been.
If the people of China can rise up and tear down the Chinese Communist Party, It may mean no war.
It may mean the relations between the U.S.
and China improve.
But it's possible it means they sour as well.
I don't know.
But I support freedom, individuality, and meritocracy.
And that means the people protesting are right.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment will be tonight at 8 p.m.
over at youtube.com slash TimCastIRL.
You don't want to miss it.
Welcome back, my friends, from this amazing holiday week.
I hope you spent time with family and just generally relaxed and cleared your mind and got away from the craziness, because, boy, is it getting crazy.
We got big news!
So much news over the past week, and some very important news that may be a bit esoteric, but you need to hear.
First, Elon Musk has announced Twitter amnesty, and there are reports that it will begin today.
Now, I don't know for sure, but I'm seeing on Twitter people saying things like, we're going to see the return of many prominent Trump world individuals, notably a man who is in the news dominating headlines right now, Milo Yiannopoulos.
Now, he came on TimCastIRL, he said he did Twitter, he accomplished what he wanted to accomplish, he basically beat the platform.
Like, he did it, you know?
And he doesn't need to come back, but... I don't know, man.
I gotta say, there's a lot of news around Milo right now.
And if Elon Musk is granting general amnesty, then Alex Jones returns, Milo Yiannopoulos returns, Laura Loomer returns.
Not like they're on good terms or anything like that.
Now, Elon Musk said he won't do it, but if he does general amnesty, I mean, that means Alex Jones is back.
Unless he carves out that he will not bring him back.
But I will say one thing.
You know, I didn't hear from Milo for a long time.
No, I didn't know him.
I met him once at an event, passively.
You know, I knew people who knew him.
But the first real conversation I ever had with the guy was on Timcast IRL.
And he got cancelled.
He got banned.
He got smeared, he got defamed, and he said controversial things.
But the right really came for him.
Not so much as the left did.
I mean, I don't know.
To be honest, I don't know everything about his history.
But I will say, upon learning about what's going on now, which maybe we'll get into later, I'm just like, cancelling this guy was probably the worst thing you could have done.
Because what he ended up doing is becoming, like, working in the background.
He ends up working for Marjorie Taylor Greene, now you've got this news about him working with Ye, And other stuff like that, so... I don't think suspending people and shutting them out is a good thing.
Obviously, for the people who want to speak and be heard.
But I also think that if you silence and shut people down, their only option is... is to work in the shadows.
And then you don't know who they are, you don't know where they are, you don't know what they're doing.
And in many ways, it's beneficial.
So Elon Musk is going to be granting general amnesty, and the media is losing their minds!
I love this.
Let me tell you why what Elon Musk is doing is so important.
For one, I believe in free speech, even for those with abhorrent views.
We had Milo on Tim Kast's IRO.
Say what he's gotta say.
Then we did the Uncensored Show with him.
Say more about what you gotta say.
And we argued about tact and strategy and stuff like that.
We disagreed.
But I think he's a smart guy.
You know, having actually listened to him for the first time, like, it was very, very interesting to hear these thoughts after so many years.
Shutting people down doesn't work.
They keep working.
That was the point I'm trying to make.
Bringing them back into the public light allows the public to better understand who they are and what they think, and lo, you will find that many of these people who are silenced find ways to accumulate power, but when you let them speak, people say, I don't really want to associate with that guy.
I'm not referring to Milo specifically.
But maybe.
I mean, some people are criticizing him right now.
But there's a lot of people who have abhorrent views that you probably didn't realize.
And when they're silenced, you might be like, ah, this is just a guy who programs video games.
You get him on Twitter and you're like, yo, that dude's crazy!
Stuff like that.
Well, here's Axios saying that they're scared of hate online.
Oh, grow up, dude.
Seriously.
There's a bigger and more important reason.
I'm a big fan of Elon Musk right now, baby.
And it's this tweet from Noam Blum.
It's amazing.
Blip blop, kinda weird that Elon Musk gets to decide how like half a billion people communicate.
Blip, way too much power for one erratic individual to wield, don't you think?
Elon Musk tweeted that he's gonna force the PsyOps.
Actually, let me, I got, here we go.
Elon Musk tweeted this meme.
It says, I don't care about this particular PsyOp, honestly.
And it's a Pepe.
No, it's not a Pepe.
That's the other one.
I can't remember the name of the frog.
Apu?
Is that what it is?
I don't know.
I don't know the frog meme.
Sorry, guys.
I think it's Apu something.
And he's smoking a cigar, saying, I don't care about the psyop.
Elon Musk said, well, at the very least, I'll make him pay $8.
I said that before, didn't I?
You remember it.
That these government manipulations, these bots that try and manipulate the public, they're not going to spend $8.
Elon Musk is trying to create a space where verified users, that they prove that they're human, and they can remain anonymous, speak.
And that means the bots are gone.
And I think this has a lot to do with Elon Musk saying, we should not have World War 3.
And then all the bots being like, no, we should.
And he was like, okay, hey, wait a minute.
Nobody wants that.
Nobody wants World War 3.
Bots, presumably, were voting in his poll to manipulate it.
Here's what's funny.
Elon Musk tweets, should Donald Trump be returned to the platform?
52% say yes.
Elon then says it was funny to see the bots in action, the bot attack.
Some people suggested the poll he did was a honey trap to track all of the bot IPs and then nuke them in a single sweep.
Something interesting happened then.
Elon Musk put up a new poll.
General Amnesty.
Do they have the tweet here on Axios?
They don't.
But this time, when he tweeted a poll saying, should he provide General Amnesty, it was like 72 million saying yes.
Now hold on there a minute there, partner.
How is it that when he was saying, should I unban Trump, it was almost 50-50, but then when he says, should I unban everyone, even the worst of the worst, it's 75% of people. 72.
Maybe.
Because Elon Musk purged the bots after the first poll, because it was a honey trap.
There you go.
Well, now the corporate press is losing their minds!
Axios reports, Elon Musk is promising to reinstate more banned Twitter accounts, even as a coalition of groups is out with a fresh warning that online hate is on the rise.
It's another risky bet by Twitter's Free Speech espousing owner that he can dial back enforcement of content rules without releasing a torrent of racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-LGBTQ speech that could further erode the service's already shaky advertising base.
Driving the news, Elon Musk said in a tweet on Thursday that he would offer amnesty starting this week to previously banned accounts provided they hadn't broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.
The move followed an unscientific poll of his Twitter followers showing support for such a move.
After a similar poll, Musk earlier reinstated the accounts of President Trump, who was previously suspended from Twitter, after his tweets helped incite January 6th.
Incredible.
What did Trump tweet on January 6th?
Please be peaceful.
We're the party of peace.
We respect law enforcement.
They're lying, but they can't control the narrative anymore.
And so they're falling, they're spiraling, and they're doing whatever they can in desperation to stop him.
Uh-oh!
The stupid ignorant masses are going to have access to information again.
It'll be as bad as when Prometheus stole fire from Mount Olympus.
Oh heavens me.
At the same time, a wave of layoffs and resignations of Twitter staff and contractors have decimated the teams responsible for monitoring and taking action against rule-breaking accounts.
Oh heavens.
Meanwhile, civil rights groups say that women, people of color, and LGBTQ folk are experiencing both harassment and threats of real-world violence when they go online, according to the findings of a new poll the groups commissioned from YouGov and shared first with Axios.
I don't believe them.
I believe they're liars.
I'm sorry.
I don't believe these polls.
I certainly believe there's bad things being said by bad people.
Don't get me wrong.
Elon Musk says those are those are bannable.
Well, hold on.
Elon says he's going to ban the people doing this.
He's banning people who are doing it.
And they're saying that they're experiencing it still?
I think they're lying.
Or exaggerating.
There's something the leftists are doing right now where they're creating fake suspension tweets.
They're trying everything in their power to pull off PSYOPs to get people to leave Twitter.
One thing they're doing is they'll create a fake tweet where it's like, Elon Musk is ugly.
And then it'll be like, you've been suspended for saying this thing.
And they'll go, I can't believe someone got suspended for saying Elon was ugly.
It's fake.
Not a real tweet.
People fall for it.
Because the left is the ignorant voter.
They believe this stuff.
Take a look at this.
Here's a story from the hill.
Vindman rips Musk as a purveyor of hate and division.
I was browsing Reddit, which is a den of psy-ops, by the way, and I saw this tweet where they were like, Vindman is a hero and Elon Musk is bad.
And Vindman was saying like, I will stand up against you, Elon.
And it was like number one on the subreddit or whatever.
It was like top of all.
And the funny thing is, if you actually looked at the tweet in question, you would not be saying Vindman is a hero, you'd be saying like, yo, this is really weird, what's going on?
Why are all of these people tweeting verbatim, identically, exactly what Vindman tweeted?
Isn't that weird?
And so Elon Musk didn't insult Vindman, he said, he's puppet and puppeteer, question is who pulls his strings.
He didn't say F you, he didn't say you're dumb, he wasn't being uncivil.
He was saying like, what's this?
What are you doing?
Who's organizing this?
When you go to the media, all you get is this.
Musk called out Vindman after a Twitter user noted he had shared the same message as a dozen other accounts.
The copy-pasted message shared by Vindman and others said, kinda weird blah blah blah.
Musk knocked Vindman in reply, If you don't see it, you don't really understand.
And so people only see this headline, Vindman rips Musk.
Well there's also this headline from the Jerusalem Post, Elon Musk calls Jewish US Army officer puppet and puppeteer.
Holy, are you kidding me?
Now I get it.
This is the Jerusalem Post.
Their worldview is based on Israel, I'd imagine.
And their heritage.
So they see Vindman.
They see him.
He's Jewish.
They see Elon call him out, and so what do they take note of?
Notably, him being Jewish.
But, uh, I don't think it's appropriate, and I think anybody can understand that, uh, I don't see how being Jewish has anything to do with what Elon Musk is talking about.
They say Elon Musk called Jewish American retired U.S.
Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman both a puppet and puppeteer.
Vindman is both, blah blah blah.
Musk's tweet was in response to another one by Tablet Magazine chief technology officer
Noam Blum, mocking the copypasta.
Okay well hold on there a minute.
Noam Blum works for Tablet?
Tablet's a Jewish magazine, isn't it?
Which said it's kind of weird that, you know, they repeat.
We get it.
We get it.
Musk's tweet deliberately or not evoked an anti-Semitic trope that Jews are puppeteers who secretly wield power over various institutions, that they are puppets of the Israeli government.
Yo, that's insane.
I'm sorry.
Anti-Semitism is awful and it's stupid and I really don't like it.
I get particularly annoyed by the people who... It's this Jewish privilege trope, where they're like, oh, you know, Jewish people do that or whatever, and I'm like, dude, that has nothing to do with who they are, the individuals, the power they wield.
It's just really, really dumb.
When they come out and they're like, white people disproportionately have power, and I'm like, that has nothing to do with it.
Certainly, you can understand that there's tribalism.
There's ethnic tribalism, racial tribalism, religious tribalism, political tribalism.
That I get.
But it's just stupid when these people come out and they try to claim that being Jewish has something to do with, you know, like the media or the power they wield.
When it's specifically like, I love bringing this up, I'm like, yes, right, Shane Smith, the Irish-Canadian guy who became a billionaire and created a woke media empire.
Yeah, he, what?
It's incidental that someone happens to be Jewish, like Dave Chappelle pointed out.
A lot of black people in Ferguson, they don't run the place.
I don't like people using identity as an excuse.
It's ideology behind it.
But anyway, the Jerusalem Post is invoking this.
Elon didn't.
Elon's like, this guy is spamming.
You know, they're bots.
He didn't say spamming necessarily, but he's like, they're all just repeating each other.
They're human bots.
And then they come out and they're like, aha, he's trying to invoke.
No, he's not.
And this is an inversion of that.
Stop trying to act like any criticism ever is anti-Semitism.
Actual antisemitism is actual antisemitism.
Coming out and blaming Jewish people for stuff?
Okay, that I get.
Ilhan Omar?
She did what I refer to as crop-dusting antisemitism.
When she actually said things like, it's all about the Benjamins, and, you know, she made a tweet about dual loyalties and stuff like that.
Like, that I get.
Elon Musk criticizing a single dude for spam tweeting?
Come on.
It's so dumb.
I'll tell you why they're freaking out, though.
Take a look at this.
We have Andy Ngo.
A violent extremist propaganda site that makes printable radicalization texts for Antifa has been suspended under Elon Musk's Twitter.
CrimeThink wrote materials brainwashing readers into violent hatred of the state, police, and property.
And Elon Musk said, I don't know if I have this, he said, I don't know.
In response to this, he basically said, violence will be banned.
I have a couple more tweets I want to show you.
Liz Wheeler says, if Apple and Google boot Twitter from their app stores, Elon Musk could produce his own smartphone.
Half the country would happily ditch their biased snooping iPhone and Android.
The man builds rockets to Mars.
A silly little smartphone should be easy, right?
And Musk said, I certainly hope it does not come to that, but yes, if there's no other choice, I will make an alternative phone.
Shout out to our good friend from Eve 6 who responded, My guy.
You are killing it and I know I speak for all your fans when I say you do not sound dumb at all and this isn't
hilarious because it's so dumb.
Ignore the haters, also you dropped this crown.
My guy.
Um, Max.
This kind of tweet breaks my heart, you know?
Because I think Eve 6 actually is really good.
I grew up listening to that pop punk stuff.
You may know them from Inside Out.
I would swallow my pride, you know that song?
And they also have Promise, they have Here's to the Night.
They actually have a bunch of songs.
And people are like, they're wondering, I'm like, oh they're not, remember this song?
And they go, oh yeah, wow.
It's like, no, they had a handful, man.
But why do you want to be a reply guy to Elon Musk?
Saying something that's meaningless and not an argument.
Whatever, man.
If that's who you want to be.
Far be it from me.
I don't.
Elon Musk saying he wants to make smartphones.
It actually is not that difficult.
I mean, it's not like it's super easy for the average person, but you can do it.
There are factories that can mass-produce Android phones.
Elon can take the open-source Android or Linux software, put it on a phone, and create an app store.
It's not the hardest thing in the world.
Liz Wheeler's right.
He's building a rocket to go to Mars.
Why be a reply guy?
If that's what you want to be, that's what you want to be, but this is why they're scared of Elon.
He has the power.
Ah yes, this woman whose name I won't say, but you can see on the screen.
She says, multiple sources have reached out to me with one name.
Kaz Nejatian, the COO of Shopify, who keeps stepping in personally to protect Shopify accounts linked to terror and violence.
This is not a principled decision, it's a political one.
Toby Lutke, the CEO of Shopify, said, And Elon says, good for you.
published acceptable use policy and a principled process to apply it.
Pressure groups on all sides try to influence it sometimes, and CBC needs to see through
that not amplify bad faith narrative."
And Elon says, good for you.
Changes are coming, my friends.
Cancel culture is dying.
We started building a parallel economy.
And there is nothing they can do to stop it.
And boy are they getting so sad.
Shopify said no.
Because the cancel culture people don't wield the power anymore.
It's thanks in part to people like Elon Musk, with the power move of buying Twitter, and they're out for him now.
But the media's dying, CNN's dwindling, staffers getting laid off.
We're winning the culture war.
And along with it, it does mean that some bad people are going to re-emerge with nasty opinions.
So be it.
I am an adult human being who understands that at any moment I could be attacked by a bear, or a mountain lion, or even kicked by a deer.
Look, I live out in, you know, we live in the mountains.
And not the craziest mountains, but you know, we're in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and they call it the mountains.
And there are wild animals.
There are raccoons, sometimes there are rabbits, they're dangerous.
There's dangers out there.
The least of my worries is naughty words.
Yeah, I have like nine deer on my property every day I come out.
And, you know, they run away.
They're not scary.
I'm not really worried about the deer.
I'm worried about them jumping in front of my car and me slamming into it.
I am infinitely more concerned about driving 35 miles an hour down the road and then a deer jumps out and boom!
Because it's happened to our guests before.
I'm not so worried about your mean words, dude.
I think good ideas will win.
And I think hate loses.
Now hate does drive a lot on the internet, and there are things we can do about that, but I think ultimately people don't want to feel that way.
Anger drives a lot, so there is a lot we have to do to push back.
But I'm glad to see the amnesty is here.
Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer.
I look forward to welcoming all of them back to the platform.
It's gonna be fun.
And there's gonna be some bad with it.
But we'll deal with it, because we're adults.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up at 1pm on this channel.
Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you well then.
We got another one, boys!
Get Woke, Go Broke, from Deadline.
Strange world to lose $147 million dollars.
Why theatrical was best decision for Doomed Toon, not Disney+, as Bob Iger takes over CEO from Bob Chapek.
This is a film that, I'll just say, the trailer is as woke as woke can be.
But it's not the worst kind of wokeness, it's just an overtly, I don't know, diverse-pushing film, and maybe the issue is they did it too much.
Now, I haven't seen this movie, and I don't really want to.
It just looks generic and bad.
But there's a reason why it may have bombed.
Because the film is overtly being talked about in terms of its same-sex main character, I guess.
It's not just that.
The trailer for the film shows a Mexican woman, there's a prominent black female character, Indian character, the son of the main character is mixed-race, and I have no issue with any of these things at all.
It's kind of sad when you think about it.
If the only thing the movie did was have a diverse cast of characters, then it sucks that it bombed.
And I have to wonder, why can't they make it work?
Seriously, why can't they make it work?
It could be that people are inherently racist, whether they realize it or not.
It could be that shoehorning in identity-based issues is not good storytelling.
But you decide.
Because I think it's fine, in my opinion.
You do a movie, and you have, like, a female lead, a black female lead, whatever.
Like, you know, that's fine.
In fact, I think it's actually really good if they're doing legitimate diversity.
But that's not what we usually get from wokeness.
We get this weird cult-like behavior that demonizes, insults white people for the sake of trying to lift up someone who they view as marginalized.
So, like, here's the way I'll put it.
Typically these movies what they'll do is instead of having like a white man who is a good dude and a black man who is a good dude and a you know black and latina women who are also good people and a villain of any racial or ethnic background or whatever.
They make characters where it's like there will be a black lady who is very strong and then there will be like a white guy who is doofy and ignorant or villainous.
Now I can't speak for this movie.
I can't.
But, fans are apparently slamming Disney for trying to teach kids about sexual preferences.
There's an interesting thought here, but I wonder if this is one of the reasons why they outed the CEO of Disney, because he wasn't playing it.
I don't know.
This went theatrical, and a lot of people are saying it wasn't performing well, so it should have gone Disney+.
Maybe that's why they get rid of the guy.
But here's the news!
Let's read, and I'll show you what people are saying.
The Daily Mail says, Disney has another flop on its hands.
As the animated adventure Strange World proves a dud at the box office, and moviegoers criticize it for what they see as forcing progressive ideology in a children's movie.
The cartoon, starring a voice cast including Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Gabrielle Union, and Lucy Liu, features Daily Show contributor Jaboukie Young-White as the voice of what's been heralded as Disney's first openly gay character.
Strange World looks set to not even clear $20 million as the Thanksgiving weekend box office
on a gargantuan budget of $120-130 million, and they never include marketing in that.
It may even finish below the studio's 2002 flop Treasure Planet, which grossed just $16.6 million.
The film also appears to have tanked with audiences despite mildly positive critical reactions.
Now I want to point this out, my friends.
Treasure Island collapsed.
It wasn't Wokeness back then.
So I have to wonder.
Is it reality that you make a movie where you try and inject this diversity and progressivism, not even necessarily overtly, like having a character who said, you know, I'll pause, I'm really, I'll give you an example, I'm really sad about R.I.P.D.
2.
Not super sad, I'm a little disappointed.
Rest in Peace Department, you may have seen the movie, I actually really liked it.
I thought it could have been done way better, but I liked the lore of what they had created, I thought it was cool.
R.I.P.D.
2 came out on Netflix and it's a top 10 movie.
It did really, really well.
And I think that's great because Jeffrey Donovan plays Roy.
It's a prequel.
And you may know Jeffrey Donovan from Burn Notice.
I'm a huge fan of Burn Notice.
Awesome show.
And Donovan nails it.
But they have this... Okay, so here's how it works.
In R.I.P.D.
You die, and then you go to the Rest in Peace Department, and they're like, would you like to be basically law enforcement for the afterlife?
We'll send you back to Earth.
And they go, yes, I will.
And they go back to Earth, and they're like, I got my life back.
And no, you don't, because now you're actually somebody else.
So, in the movie with Ryan Reynolds and, uh, was it Jeff Bridges?
They go back to Earth, and Ryan Reynolds, to everyone else, looks like a short, old Asian man, and Bridges looks like a busty, middle-aged woman or something.
In R.I.P.D.
2, they go back to the American Southwest as black women, and they do this little speech where they're like, maybe the Lord thought you should experience life as a disadvantaged person, and it's like, huh?
Yo, they're trying to stop demons from invading the world.
What lesson does an individual need to learn when they're trying to solve a serious problem that will destroy all of humanity?
So I like rolled my eyes at it.
It's hard to watch.
Does not work.
Bad storytelling.
I don't want to watch it.
If they just made a passive joke about it, it would have been funny!
So I watched Glass Onion, and Glass Onion was actually really good, despite the fact you can kinda see what Rian Johnson is doing.
A little bit of wokeness in there, but they didn't beat you over the head with it.
So, here's what I will say for Strange World.
Probably just bad marketing with a stupid movie idea.
Also, it may just be completely unrelatable and not work.
That's the sad reality of diversity stuff they're trying to do.
So with Strange World, you have, this is, it's like three generations of explorers.
You have an old white man, then you have his son, who's a dad, to a mixed-race child.
I have no issue with it.
Like, you know, I, I, I, I... Look.
Let me tell you, my friends.
You know this.
Mixed-race family.
It's in pool.
Second generation, no less.
I don't relate to that experience.
I have no issues with it, obviously.
In fact, in a lot of ways, I kind of like it better.
I respect it.
I can understand the difficulties other people may have gone through, similar to mine.
But what I can't relate to is this particular experience they give based on the particular racial background they try to claim is intrinsic.
What I mean is, when they come out and say that black Americans experience the world in a unique way that's different from white Americans, and then they say that a black mixed-race person has a different experience from a black person or even an Asian mixed-race person, I'm like, I have no idea.
I am not black.
So, the issue is, they try to create, they do these commercials, where, it's like, you'll notice a lot in advertising, a mixed race family.
Some people think it's a conspiracy theory to promote race mixing.
That's stupid.
I don't think anybody really cares.
What there is, is a, I wouldn't even call it a conspiracy, an advertising plan trying to maximize and capitalize their market.
It's cheaper for an ad agency to make one commercial as opposed to two, and one marketing budget as opposed to two.
So, they'll be like, let's have a white guy and a black woman, because then we'll try and get the black market with the black woman, the white market with the white guy, and then they realize something.
Both communities do not view their families this way.
Maybe because everyone's inherently racist, I guess.
And therein lies the big problem that I think may be unfortunate.
Hey man, I'd love a world where everybody of every background just gets along and there's no biases or anything like that.
Maybe the reason Strange World fails is because people, when they look at three generations of explorers, and they see that it's a white man, a white man, and then a mixed-race kid, it may be the case that people are just like, I don't get it.
Maybe that's the inherent racism.
I'll be honest though, it really could just be that they didn't market the movie and the movie's dumb.
It could be that.
I watched Glass Onion, as I mentioned.
I thought Glass Onion was great.
I don't want to spoil too much of Glass Onion, because I think you should see it, but Knives Out, a little woke in there, but it was really good.
And Glass Onion, a little woke in there, but pretty good.
Have you guys seen Knives Out?
If you haven't, you should.
Because they do this great scene where there's the woke aunt and the based uncle, and they're arguing politics, and it was real.
You know, what you'd expect from a woke movie is the woke character to be like, I'm just tired of poor, marginalized people being victimized.
And then the MAGA person being like, so what?
You know, our race, but that's not what they do.
Actually, Rian Johnson did a good job of this, and I'm impressed because I thought he brutalized Star Wars, but maybe on purpose.
With, uh, Knives Out, you have this woke student who actually turns out to be self-interested and ruthless.
It's an older movie, so I don't mind spoiling it, but, like, you've got this illegal immigrant, um, housekeeper or whatever, this rich WASPy family, half, like, the, the, half, you know, one part of the family is woke, the other side is, like, MAGA, alt-right, or whatever you want to call it.
Not really alt-right, but maybe.
Maybe more like Graper or something.
And, uh, you have this young college girl be the friend of the illegal immigrant, but then of course betray her for money and say, it's my money, I want it, it's too bad.
Like, all of that virtue signaling in the end was just like, sorry, I'm more important.
And then you have, like, so there's a scene where the aunt and the uncle are arguing and the argument was like, it's fair.
Maybe not a perfect representation of, like, the most intelligent of people who argue these points, but I thought that was great.
And I'm like, I think he actually does wokeness right.
Don't demonize the other side.
Explain the other side and let people figure out what they think makes more sense.
Now, of course, these movies are trying to influence.
So be it.
That's what happens.
But with Glass Onion, I don't want to spoil too much, but if you've seen the trailers, then I'll give you the gist of it.
Murder mystery, billionaire, a group of friends on an island, and it's like... Spoiler alert a little bit, so you're being warned if you want to see Glass Onion, here's a spoiler alert a little bit.
There's a little bit of wokeness in there, but I'm only gonna lightly touch upon it.
There's a white man and a black woman who co-founded a company, and there's animosity.
I'll just put it that way.
And there's an element of wokeness, but it doesn't matter what the race is.
I'll try and be vague, and I'll just say it this way.
If you do a movie where it just so happens that a character is a black woman, but the story makes sense and works, That's great.
And Glass Onion works really well.
And it's really funny.
I think Rian Johnson did a great job with this movie.
And there are some eye-rolly things, but, you know, it works.
And Daniel Craig is awesome.
I hope they do more of these.
Because, um... I can't remember the name of the detective.
But, um, it's like this southern New Orleans French detective, and it's just, it's a whodunit.
It's really well done.
A great cast of characters.
He's done it with Knives Out and with Glass Onion.
You can put woke stuff, and I'll put it this way.
I don't like using the word woke.
Diversity.
Real diversity.
Good thing.
And what I mean by that is, like, characters that represent different groups of people and are honest and true to their characters without disparaging them or making them look stupid.
I haven't seen Strange World, and I'm not gonna.
But, uh, maybe this is why it doesn't work.
Maybe this is why it doesn't work.
People are saying, get woke, go broke.
I mean, this is crazy because it's going to be a $200 million plus loss.
Here, uh, End Wokeness says, get woke.
Brianna Wu tweets, if you, if you though conservatives, what does that mean?
If you thought conservatives freaked out over Lightyear, they're gonna ish the bed over Strange World, which is great.
Main protagonist is gay.
Older people don't find it remarkable.
Biracial marriage.
Almost no one is white.
Climate change metaphor.
Even the dog is disabled.
The Broke.
Strange world Disney $180 million movie featuring gay teen romance flops at the box office and is lowest rated house of mouse flick in 31 years.
Lightyear Tanked.
I gotta wonder if there's a conspiracy to actually promote wokeness, but then, like, destroy it or something.
Because Ghostbusters, the all-female reboot, sucked!
And then when you come out and you're like, hey, this movie's bad, they're like, you just hate women.
I bet nobody just wanted to see it because it wasn't marketed properly.
So then I played it, and it was, like, nightmarishly bad.
It was dystopian, nightmare movie bad.
It was, like, walk out of the theater bad.
And there is a lesbian romance in the film that's passively in it.
Whatever.
It doesn't really mean anything to the story, but I don't think that's the reason nobody saw it.
I think people didn't want to see it because, well, some people went to see it and said, holy crap, this is terrible, and then didn't want to see it.
It's kind of crazy, I think, though.
Lightyear should have done better, even if the movie was bad.
I bet they assumed, like, it's Buzz Lightyear, it's gonna do well no matter what.
Maybe it really was the press about a lesbian relationship.
Maybe this country, which is predominantly white and Christian, was just like, well, you know, I don't want my kids seeing that.
Nobody wanted to see it.
Maybe.
People ain't having kids no more, and that's the real issue.
Honestly, man, I don't know.
I can't see the future, nor read people's minds.
But I can tell you this.
It may be that when you market a movie specifically on its wokeness, nobody wants to see it.
And I think the terrible thing for the woke people, and I think it's honestly a bad thing, is that it may be that you have a white family.
And that's why I don't like saying all people are racist.
I think it, you know, it implies like a negative and like a mean thing.
I think all people are biased.
And I think what may happen is your average WASPy white Christian family, which makes up the majority of this country, sees this image and says, in no way do I relate to this at all nor want to experience this story.
Could just be a bad movie.
That's fair.
Could just be bad marketing.
Fair as well.
And it could possibly be that, like, having a Mexican female president or, I don't even know, whatever, saying there's, like, no white characters in it, people don't see themselves in the characters and then don't want to watch.
Which brings me to the point of wokeness.
Some people think it's a grand conspiracy with the Great Reset, ESG, and all that stuff, and in a certain element, that is true.
Environmental, social governance, climate change, all that stuff.
There's a group of people that want control, and they will use this vehicle to get it.
But I do think a lot of it is capital marketing.
Disney says, we want to make a movie that gets as much money as possible.
How do you do it?
Well, let me tell you something, dudes.
Weirdly, Black Panther makes a billion dollars.
And it was a nearly all-black cast.
Right?
Avengers movies have an eclectic bunch, even Aliens.
And it makes a bunch of money.
Black Panther 2, Wakanda Forever, was a diverse cast, and particularly racist, and it's not doing well.
Let me put it this way, it's making a lot of money, but the projections are down, and they're surprised it should have made more.
And I wonder what it is.
Seriously, what is the component?
I think these businesses are thinking, we do a mixed-race kid and white family, and then what you'll end up with is white people come and see it for the white characters, black people see it for the black characters, mixed people for the mixed characters, and then we'll have this diverse utopia.
But then you realize, when you look at the data, white liberals are the only group of people with an out-group preference.
Latinos would prefer to be around Latinos, black people would prefer to be around black people, Asians would prefer to be around Asians, white conservatives prefer to be around white conservatives, and white liberals prefer to not be around white people.
Well, how does that manifest when it comes to movies?
Woke people do not make up the majority of this country.
It's probably 8 to 12 percent, depending on what year they did the data.
Those people may go see this movie.
Congratulations, they made like 17 million.
There was that movie Bros, with Billy Eichner, is that his name?
It was a gay romantic comedy.
And it bombed.
And he went out and said, please go see this movie to prove that you can have gay movies.
And it bombed.
Why?
I'll tell you this, if you want to tell jokes about doing a gay orgy, I don't care dude.
Do the jokes.
I don't get it.
It doesn't, it's not funny to me.
Some jokes are funny to a lot of people.
You know puns used to be like the epitome of humor?
Like pun jokes.
Amazing!
Just a play on words and people would just laugh hysterically like, you used a word that meant something different to mean this and then ah!
You know?
The easiest one is, um, the word right.
Like, this movie clearly didn't make it because it wasn't right enough.
You know, that's a terrible one, but you get the point.
Like, it's not right to do this.
I'm not good at puns.
I'm not gonna pretend to be.
But you get the point.
Used to be the epitome of humor.
So, when, uh, Bros comes out, they have this scene where the dude is, like, with another guy, and then it zooms out and it's a gay orgy.
And I'm like, bro, that is off-putting to me.
Not funny to me.
I don't care if you go and do that, but who wants to go see that?
Do women want to see this, on average?
Probably not.
Do men want to go with their wives?
Probably not.
Women aren't going to relate to dudes hooking up, and dudes aren't either.
So why did the movie bomb?
Because no one can laugh at something they don't understand.
Which brings me to the forced diversity stuff.
It's like forcing a meme.
It's like trying to make something into a meme.
You can't go to the culture and say, this is your culture now!
Because people say, what are you talking about?
Over time, the pressure may have an impact, especially in the younger generation.
But I don't think they even find this stuff funny.
There are stories, there are legends, and there are things we relate to.
But let me tell you who understood this.
Christians.
Why?
Well, there's pictures of Jesus as a Japanese man.
There's pictures of Jesus as a black man.
There's pictures of Jesus as a dark-skinned Arabic man.
And, of course, as a white man.
In the lore, they always made Jesus look like them.
And I typically don't find Christians that really care that much about it.
Like, there's people who post the image.
I love posting Japanese Jesus, and I think Seamus talked about it.
He was like, yes, yes, people depict the Lord as what they are.
It makes sense.
They want it to be relatable.
They want people to look at it and feel like it's them.
But if you look at a picture and you see something that doesn't look like you at all, and none of it represents anything having to do with you, you don't understand it, you're just not interested in it.
Maybe that's a bad thing.
Whatever.
But this may be one of the big reasons these companies are imploding and going under and firing people.
Because, get woke, go broke, man.
It's real.
Look, I understand these businesses want to maximize their market.
They know that the white population is decreasing, the Latino population is increasing, so they're trying to create this diversity stuff.
They're trying to market it.
I don't think it'll work.
That's what they probably tried doing with Namor in Black Panther, having like Central American characters.
His name is Namor.
It's Spanish.
Despite the fact he's Mayan, we get what they're doing.
They made a lot of money because it's a Marvel movie.
And so there's a vehicle for this.
You know, they can do that kind of stuff.
But it was so cringe in Endgame when you had Captain Marvel grab Thanos' hand and be like, smirk, and push him down.
And then he grabs the Power Stone and punches her like, we get it, women are strong.
