The Duran Podcast - The Failure of the Media - Jimmy Dore, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

The Failure of the Media - Jimmy Dore, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Hi everyone, my name is Glenn Dyson. And today I'm joined by Alexander Mercurice, as well as Jimmy Dore, the comedian and the host of the very popular Jimmy Dore show. Welcome. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And not just a comedian, but one of the most insightful and brilliant commentators around. And somebody who can see the absurdity behind all of these situations that we have to face today. just saying. Well, you know, the Greek comedy

in ancient Greece, it was renowned for its political significance as well. So the basic idea being that it's imperative to be able to satirize and mock our own leaders. And I think as comedians can often say what the rest of us will have to pay a very heavy

social cost for saying. Well, as a Greek, of course, I'm a fan of Ari Stefani, so I know all about that. Yeah, but also, I guess One of your favorite targets over the years, Jimmy, has been the news media. You covered very closely Russia Gate, also the way the elections have been covered, but also the news coverage of wars, of course.

I guess it's a very open-ended question, but do you see big changes with the media over the past few years? Or I guess, why has it become so awful, in your opinion? I think it's just been continuing to be awful, and we've just been noticing. it more and more because of social media. And that's why they need to control social media because they can't, because the establishment needs to control the narrative. And if they can't control the narrative, then they need to start disappearing people. And that's a lot harder, not that they don't do it.

But they're doing it right out in the open with Julian Assange, you know, Edward Snowden. I'm constantly surprised that the media. media is as horrible as it is. It's just we just had this young guy on Jackson Hinkle yesterday on my show because the New York Times that hit piece on him. He's become

kind of a sensation. He's always been very popular, but they keep kicking him off social media platforms. They kicked him off YouTube for telling the truth about Ukraine and Russia. And he's been kicked off Facebook and everywhere

and now he's just The only thing he has left is Twitter, and he's really taken up the cause of Gaza, and his counthead has blown up to over two and a half million's Twitter followers. And so the New York Times did try to do a hit piece on him because, you know, New York Times is run by Zionists. And so, but what's happened that what Israel has done in Gaza has been so beyond the pale that even the New York Times, Times has come around to Jackson Hinkle's point of view. So they were supposed to do a smear piece on him, but everything that they were writing about him out to be they agree with now, right? I mean, I was watching MSNBC the other day and I saw Condoleezza Rice advisors calling for sanctions against Israel. Like, that's how crazy it's gotten. So, I mean, I also did. I also did

see an interview with Cornell West on CNN just from the other day, and they kept wanting him to condemn Hamas. But you do condemn Hamas, right? And that's still the refrain. But it's, what's interesting to me is that now the media, the Wall Street Journal, and a couple other places have said that Israel has lost this war and that Hamas has won this war. And meaning that, yeah, they had the, Israel has slaughtered, you know, 30, 40, 50,000 Palestinians, but they've lost. And because they lost the propaganda war with the world and now the world is turned against them. And now there actually is a movement for a real Palestinian state.

And that's the exact opposite of what they wanted. And so it's interesting to see the, you know, That was kind of a shocker to me, actually. I just thought that Israel was going to get its way and it was going to keep going, and I didn't expect anybody to actually turn on them. And just, you know, with the Iran retaliation, how successful it was. I was, so now, the only wild card that, you know, makes me worry is Benjamin Netanyahu and the Zionists. and they've been shown to be as crazy as crazy can be.

They're the exact thing they accuse all their enemies of being, right? They're the terrorists. They're the maniacs. They're the people willing to start World War III. And if the United States was clear that not only will not help you in an offensive war with Iran, but we're not going to help you in a defensive war with Iran, then that would be the end of it. but they have promised to support Israel in a defensive war against Iran, which I guess

would maybe emboldened Netanyahu and the crazy Zionists to keep doing what they're doing. And I guess all you have to do is sit back and fingers crossed. But to your first question, I mean, to answer your question, the media has always been horrible, will always be horrible, because it's owned by, in America, we used to have 50 giant media companies when I was young and in college. And then in 1996, Bill Clinton came along and he consolidated the media from 50 giant media companies to only six. And they're all owned by a handful of billionaires. And so that's why journalism sucks so bad now because journalists used to come from blue-collar backgrounds like myself, but now they come from elite universities

and they're class loyal. And they are handpicked by these billionaires. And they all know like Chomsky taught us that they do their internal sensory and they wouldn't have the jobs if they thought like we do. They wouldn't have those jobs. So they have those jobs because they think along the lines of their class and of the billionaire class. They were there to do the bidding of them wittingly or unwittingly. And so that's why they're not journalists anymore.

They're not willing to make enemies of the powerful. They're there to serve the powerful. And that's why we have the world we have right now. Jimmy, I completely agree with your your points. I would just add to it that the other thing that I found with the media, I don't know whether you've noticed it, is that it's become unbearably pompous as well, certainly in Britain, in ways that once upon a time when it was a blue-collar operation, which it also was in Britain, it didn't used to be. There was always a kind of irreverent quality,

even when it was being very serious. Now it just become very, very pompous, I think, extremely boring. And what you said about, you know, it used to be a blue collar, as we would say in England, working class operations. That was true, the media in Britain as well. And it's completely changed. It just as in the United States, it's become centralized in strange ways. All the newspapers would come up with the same editorials in Britain, which are identical. They always look like they're being written by the same person. they say exactly the same things on any particular topic. It's become very dull. And of course, it's also losing circulation.

And I think traction, particularly amongst young people in Britain. And I wonder whether that's also the case in the United States. I still think that in the United States, because maybe you have a lingering remnant of the media of the old days, you still have more debate than we are allowed here. So a straightforward admission that Israel is losing the war in Gaza, that doesn't happen to the same extent, at least in Britain. And losing the war in Gaza in what sense?

In a political sense, in a military sense, or in a moral sense? You know, what's happened in Gaza? terrible that Israel's lost, not terrible that 30,000 people have died and died in the most horrible way because that was my immediate feeling when I read that article in the Wall Street Journal. So is this similar in the United States

where the media is becoming, is unpopular, people don't watch it. In fact, just like a month or just, like a month or just, ago, there was a series of layoffs of people working in the corporate media got let go because the viewership is down. No one cares. And I remember there's this woman, Taylor Lawrence. I don't know if you're familiar with her, but she's a scourge in the United States. and she's a 40-year-old, 12-year-old.

And she did a TikTok video that went viral where she was lamenting the layoffs of all her friends in corporate media. And she writes to the Washington Post now. And she said, I don't think people realize what the world will look like without these journalists. And I said, I think I know what it's going to look like about these journalists.

I'm going to wake up every morning and an animated bluebird's going to. to land on my shoulder, and we're all going to break out into song. Because you're not, they're not even journalists, right? They're not necessarily, they're, they're stenographers to power, and they're not, they think they're essential somehow, like they're a honeybee. You're not. You're, you, the world's going on long, just fine without you.

And the less of you, the better. So, I mean, and that's why there's such a, you know, the New York Times and the establishment media writes all these hit pieces and all these scaremongering pieces about people like us doing independent news on social media, on YouTube, and Twitter, Facebook, and how we are radicalizing people and how we're spreading misinformation. And even though the courts, we all know the biggest spreaders of misinformation is the government. Second is the corporate media. And a distant third are Randos on social media. And so they keep trying to scare advertisers away from social media. That's the game because we're competitors with them, right? And, you know, my show gets more viewers

than the average CNN show. And that's what all the, that's even with the suppressive algorithms and all the negative press that they've given me to try to discredit me. So, yeah, I would say here it's the same people are turned and that's why they're banning TikTok in the United States. So I saw a statistic that 100 million people watch TikTok for at least 20 minutes a day in the United States, which that's a third of the country. So that's why they're wanting to get away, get rid of it because they can't control that narrative. And people are getting their news through places like TikTok and Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, not so much Facebook, because Facebook is, they are really, they have a, I've been demonetized, suppressed, and, you know, a lot of my friends who I call shitlibs,

think that I'm some kind of crazy conspiracy theorist because every time I put a video up on Facebook, it gets flagged as misinformation. And so they think I'm out there doing the bidding of the devil instead of, they don't realize that Facebook is controlled by a handful of billionaires, just like everything. else. And people who call themselves back checkers, that's the, that's the funniest thing, these fact-checking organizations, if you follow the money, where are you, where's their money coming from? Their money coming from the Annenberg Foundation or Bill Gates. It's always tied back to a oligarch who's trying to control the narrative. And so, yeah, so I would, I'm not, you know, as clear as what's happening in, in Britain, but I just did a European tour where I was in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, and Oslo, and along with London,

and they all said the same thing, that their media is just as shit, and nobody can, nobody believes it. And I know in Norway, there's, again, somebody was telling me how much Jeff Bezos of their media he owns and controls, which I didn't realize that, that American billioners would branch out into Europe, of course. they would once I you know so um I think people are ready uh in the Western world I mean you see it with the farmers you saw it with the truckers uh people are ready to revolt uh whether it can happen or not for real I don't know but um you know it's we don't we live in I live in an oligarchy for sure I think everybody almost everybody in the Western world lives in an oligarchy. And that's why I'm starting to question everything. I started, you know, when I saw the

hoax that Russiagate was, which it was, a hundred percent hoax, which was instituted by the Clinton campaign and the FBI and the CIA. And that's where that all came from. And the media in conjunction, right? And it was to stop Donald Trump. And Donald Trump, which, again, the establishment loved Donald Trump my whole life. They gave him television shows. He was invited on every network late night talk show. He was on the cover of every magazine. They all golfed together. Their kids are all best friends. They all go to each other's third and fourth weddings. They all, you know, screwed kids on Jeffrey Epstein's Island. So all of a sudden they hated him and it makes you go, oh, okay, what is this about? And it's just because he wouldn't do war exactly the way they wanted to. And that's, he ran on an anti-interventionist

platform and you realize what a bugaboo that is for them, right? And Joe Biden came in and he immediately, you know, it was so funny to see people give Joe Biden credit for pulling out of Afghanistan. And, you know, a dumb guy like me who's a comedian and not a professional in this. And none of these people ask themselves the question. Well, why? Obviously, this isn't Joe Biden's idea to pull out of Afghanistan. He's being told to do this. And why is it? Why is this being allowed to happen? Why are they going to end a 20-year grift of trillions of dollars that it's an upward transfer of wealth on the U.S. Treasury to the international securities? Why would they end this? Well, of course, and my question was, which I want to ask on my show to all the other people in the

space on YouTube who were plotting him, I was saying, well, has he told you what he's going to do with the money that they were spending in Afghanistan? Has he decided to take that money to invest it back in the United States and give us high-speed rail or health care or make college free or fix the roads and bridges or have his tackle home. No, he, no, the reason why they had him do that, or he was allowed to pull out of Afghanistan, was because they had another war waiting for him, which was Ukraine. And so that was their next thing. And so it's a, and even I was stunned in how easily people went along with the Ukraine war. After we had just gone through Iraq, same people saw what they said about Iraq, saw what they said about Libya. Well, they never did get the

clue about Syria. People still think that Assad gas his own people. And my Wikipedia page still says that I'm a conspiracy theorist because I debunk that. And I said Assad didn't gas his own people, which he didn't. And but it was just amazing to me how the short memories that people had that the media and the government are going to lie you into a war. And everybody just believed in their, well, because of Russia gay, right, which is why I left the Young Turks, which was, I'm sure everybody's familiar with that news media organization on YouTube, the Young Turks. And I kept telling them, you know, if you keep repeating CIA and FBI talking points about

Russia gate, they're going to use this for a war, which is exactly why people in the United States were ready to go along with the Ukraine worker. They saw it as a way to oppose Putin, who they were told, stole their illegal. election in 2016 and handed it to Donald Trump, who is now a racist, even though NBC gave him a network television show for over a decade and Emmy Awards, and everybody loved him. So it's, I was even shocked by that. And so here we are. And we have this new speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and his agenda, he tweeted out yesterday, here's my agenda. And everything was getting money for Ukraine, getting money for Israel, getting money for, it was nothing.

nothing to help the people of the United States. Now, one thing on there, it'd be amazing if people were as motivated in Congress to give people health care, education, living wage, infrastructure, as they were to fund the war machine. It's Eisenhower, there's a famous video of Eisenhower that people in the United States are familiar with, whereas he was on his way out of office, he gave a speech where he said, we must resist the undue influence of the military industrial complex. Well, he wasn't kidding because now our entire culture and our entire country and foreign policy are run by the military industrial complex. And we're poorer for it. We're becoming a third world nation ourselves. We're very much like Brazil in the United States now.

There's very little middle class. It's all rich and poor. And the media, which is the by the military industrial complex, keeps workers fighting and hating each other. That's the key. They know how to divide, and they use terms like white supremacy. They use racism. They use LGBTQ issues, trans issues, immigration, and they use all that. So workers are fighting amongst each other, and they take our eye off the ball, which is the oligarchy, which is what we live in, an oligarchy.

And your vote actually doesn't matter because your vote, there's no core. to how you vote in legislation. There's correlation between legislation and money, and that's all there is. So that's why we don't have nice things in the United States, and the place is falling apart, and we have people living under every bridge in every major city. I think it's interesting what you point out, because in the past, you know, a journalist would try to keep a whole power accountable these days. If you criticize foreign policy, as you mentioned, you have these magical words to make you go away.

propagandist, doing disinformation, conspiracy theories, all of this, effect, just a label, but they never explain what the propaganda is or exactly what is the conspiracy theory. But you're right, they do hire these people who are supposed to tell us what is the real truth, which is apparently this new fact checkers, which more often, I guess, check narratives. But it's quite strange because you mentioned Russiagate. And during those days, this was an actual conspiracy theory and it had huge consequences. But there's been no reflection. This is what surprised me so much.

And even during the current war in Ukraine, there's so much focus on what is the propaganda. We have to censor everything that's labeled propaganda. But it's been revealed. the main source of the media on the Ukraine war has been this institute for the study of war, which is run by the Kagan and the Victoria Newland family. This is the, and also completely funded by the arms industry. I mean, if you have the person who is at the center of the, you know, coup of 2014 and then running America's Ukraine policy over a decade,

and then this is also the person you're getting most of your information from, which you cite on what's happening in the war is quite extraordinary and no one picks up on the fact that this would be propaganda but sorry, where I was trying to go was how you see the media behaving in the upcoming election

because, but the past two election, I think, you know, Russia dominated the American elections very much in 2016. You know, you had a Russia gate hoax, which you pointed out has been focused around the steel dossier, which now been proved obviously to be a fake, all of it. And then the next election in 2020, the Hunter Biden laptop, which could then be dismissed as being a Russian disinformation campaign,

also was proven to be not the case. It was a real scandal and Russia had nothing to do with it. So I was just wondering, what should we expect from 2024? Will there be another Russia gate, or is the Ukraine war enough to cement unity among the Biden camp? Or what do you expect? Well, you know, the thing is the Russia gate conspiracy theory, which is what it was, and it was a hoax. It was so repeated in the media that people just accept it as true, even though they did the Mueller report,

and there's never been a charge against Donald Trump or anybody in his administration related to the core central core charges of Russiagate that he was working with Russia to help somehow overthrow the election or influence the elect. There's never been. But it's been so ingrained in their head that they just take it for granted that Donald Trump's a traitor to our country. He's been working with Vladimir Putin, these two evil guys. And so even though when I try to explain to people, no, it's actually been debunked to Robert Mueller's. said there was no evidence for this in the Mueller report. They're like, yeah, but there was a hundred indictments from Robert Mueller. Yeah, against, but that had nothing to do with anything. And so, but that's exactly why they had those indictments, right? So you can pretend that it was valid,

the Russia gate. So what I see, I mean, I'm not good at predictions, but the Russia gate is strong enough, but still, even with Russia gate, it looks like Donald Trump is poised to win this election, what I think is going to happen. And I don't even know if I'm allowed to say this, but I think the establishment will rig the election and they will install a puppet. Now, whether it's Joe Biden, now, a lot of people, there's a lot of speculation that they're going to, they're going to put Gavin Newsom in. Joe Biden's going to be forced to back out of the campaign because of health issues and then they'll have Gavin Newsom come in or I've heard people say Michelle Obama. But I think that's a very big possibility, by the way. And if that doesn't happen and if it is

Joe Biden, Joe Biden will lose an election, no problem. So if he comes out the winner, it will be because the establishment rigged it. And do you really think that the people who killed Kennedy did the Iraq war, did Libya, did Afghanistan, Syria, now Ukraine, are funding a genocide in Gaza are above rigging an election? Of course not. I mean, they blew up building seven for sure. And again, nobody, you're not allowed to ask questions about that. But so that that's my prediction as far as will there be a, there's already been, who was it who's predicted a black swan event? Well, how can you say there's going to be, that's, you're not supposed to be able to predict that. And so they've already, the establishment is already,

already had people in the establishment media saying predicting a black swan event. Well, that's, you know, so it was something that's supposed to be unpredictable. So the other thing, too, is COVID. Everything they said about COVID was a lie. They lied about where the virus came from. They lied about funding it. They lied about, and you were called a white supremacist, if you were right about that. They lied about herd immunity. They lied about natural immunity. They lied about transmission, contraction. They lied about social distancing. They lied about lockdowns. They lied about mass. There wasn't anything they didn't lie about, but it's like the majority of the population, because they're not told that we were lied to on big pharma-funded media in the United States.

They just, they just memory hole all that. And so now if you bring up anything about that, they say in the United States, people go, oh, COVID's over. Well, that's over. So that's it. Just stop thinking about it. Stop talking about it. You know, I had Cornell West on my show. And his whole gig is that he stands up in solidarity with workers and the oppressed. Well, and that he's going to fight fascism. Well, the time came. And he did it. He tucked his tail, and he defended the establishment during COVID. I had him on my show, and I pointed out that 41% of black-owned businesses were closed, forever because of the lockdowns during COVID.

And he couldn't give a shit about it. It was like water is off a duck's ass to him. It doesn't get never talks about it. It doesn't bring up. I told him, you know, there were 70,000 healthcare workers in New York State alone. Healthcare workers that got fired from their job for refusing to take an experimental medical treatment. And again, water off, didn't give a shit about it.

So his time to come, came to stand up for workers. And he did it. So it's all bullshit. Anything. Guys like that. people who you thought were the people who were going to stand up and scream the loudest for workers and students and the elderly and the infirmed and the homeless, they don't. It's all talk. And that's been a big eye-opener for me. And it falls on the shoulders of people like me

and Joe Rogan and you and Russell Brand. And thank God there's enough people waking up to that fact. Again, I just did a tour of Europe and every city I went to, you know, humble brag, every show was sold out in a foreign language for fuck's sake. I mean, I didn't think anybody was going to show up. And so I think there needs to be some sort of international movement to overthrow at least the media, for God's sake. I don't know how the media So answer me this The BBC is supposed to be public Right? Isn't it funded by the government?

Well, how is it so horrible? Well, in theory It is not funded by the government It is funded through a system A kind of tax That everybody who owns a television set Has to pay So we all have to pay this tax

and it goes to the BBC, which is a public foundation, and which is supposed to be independent of the government. But of course, the government controls it through the Board of Governors, who choose the Director General. And besides, it's the government anyway that ultimately decides what this tax, the license fee is its call, is going to be at any particular time, and which enforces it. So in a way, it looks like it's independently funded,

but in reality it no longer is. If I can say the moment, I mean, there was a time of the BBC had a kind of independence, which shouldn't overstate it. But the moment when it was clear that it all changed was when Margaret Thatcher was unhappy with some of the coverage the BBC was making and arranged through the board of governors to fire the Milne. who was its Director General. And from that moment on,

I think the fiction that the BBC was completely independent and the government has basically disappeared. And it certainly isn't that anymore. Anyway, that's a bit of a side, actually. But we do not have an independent media in Britain. In Europe, we used to have a massive, organized, working class-based, left-wigs. movement. I used to be a part of it once upon the time. Long, long ago, we had big social

democratic, Labour parties like the Labour Party in Britain, the SPD as it used to be in Germany, in Scandinavia, where Glenn is. It was very well-organised. I'm old enough, I can remember Taguer Landa in, and Olaf Palmer in Sweden, people like that. And of course, because they operated within their own organisations and within their own structures, they always provided a powerful alternative. They were the people who criticised wars. They were the people who organised the big protests against wars. They were the people who pointed out the facts and who were awkward

and who would vote into the British Parliament, working class MPs from coal mining areas and in factory areas who would speak out against these things. that's all disappeared. It just does not exist in Europe today. And it's one of the great mysteries to me, how it just vanished, how it was gone with the wind,

and how that came about. And I think the same thing has happened in the United States, though perhaps in a somewhat different way. Anyway, just say. Well, so, I would be,

I'm curious to how they control the media, because in the United States, so we have these elections and they go on for years, right? The election cycle, it never ends. People are constantly running for office. The presidential election started last year. And so what happens is the donor class can buy politicians, right, because you need money to run. And even if you don't take their money, then they're going to take their money to give it to somebody else, which will beat you, right? So the money always wins. And that's how they control our government and they control our media because they buy it. You know, I wish to make fun of why does meet the press have an ad for Boeing on there?

No one who's watching it is in the market to buy a jet. And it's because they're not funding the investigation of NBC News. They're funding the non-investigation. And so you don't want to investigate us. So you're going to lose our money. And that's exactly how they control everybody. that's the Wall Street, military industrial complex, big pharma oil companies. They buy the advertising on the media, and that's how they own them.

But in Britain, you have short election cycles, right? And are they publicly funded? Is the elections publicly funded? No, well, advertising for elections by political parties is not privately funded. political parties in Britain received donations. They receive some payments from their members, but of course, to increasing degree, they are funded by the same rich class of oligarchs

that you have in the United States. Now, I'm sure this pattern reproduces itself right across Europe. And if you're talking about the media in Europe, as you will very often find, always at the background, you know, owning some kind of media, any kind of media body, anywhere in Europe, there is always an American foundation lurking. And sometimes it's not even that invisible. I mean, you know, in Britain, large parts of the media, including television, are of course owned by the Murdoch family,

effectively. So it's the same people who control the media in the United States, basically run the media in Europe. It's and politics, the way politics works in Britain, I can't speak about other European countries, is becoming more like what you have in America

with every election cycle. Donors, the wealthy donor class, the days when the Labour Party used to get its funding from the trade unions, the conservatives used to get their funding for British businesses. Party members used to pay their dues.

That was how elections were funded. All that's gone. Today, as I said, it's the same donor class that you get in the United States, and they're getting more powerful with every election cycle. And, you know, it used to be, you were a crazy conspiracy theorist

if you talked about the global elite who ran things, but now they do it right on the open. We know where the Bilderberg meetings are. They have Davos, to W-E-F. They're very cocky, and they talk about their crimes right out in public. But it doesn't seem like there's anything that can stop them, right? I don't, you know, they crush the truckers.

They froze their assets. That's why digital currency is such an evil that needs to be resisted. So, and the only guy in the United States who's talking about this stuff is RFK Jr. RFK Jr. gave a great speech at a Bitcoin convention where he talked about how that's essential to have Bitcoin because then the powers that B can't control it, it's blockchain, and you can't cut up somebody's money. Unfortunately, he's a raging Zionists, which wrecks his chances to be even considered an anti-war. He's also the only one telling the truth about. the CIA, Black, Blackstone and the Ukraine War.

And he's the only one saying those things. And then he goes and just parrots the worst, most odious talking points when it comes to, you know, Iran and Israel and Gaza and the whole deal. And so there's very little hope there. But anyway, it's, I've just come to the conclusion that, you know, that the countries and the Western world is just run by a handful of billionaires. And there's a deep state. And they don't work for the president of the United States.

You know, Chuck Schumer, who was the head Democrat in the Senate in the United States, still is. But when Donald Trump got elected, he went on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow. and he said, which I've shown this clip a million times on my show, but most people haven't seen it. He said, you know, Donald Trump is being really dumb to mess with the intelligence community, meaning the CIA and the FBI. He's like, you know, for a smart guy, he's being very dumb if you don't want to mess with them because they have six ways this Sunday to mess back with you. And so what he just, he gave the game away.

What he admitted is that the CIA and the FBI and the NSA don't work for the president of the United States. They're supposed to. So who do, if they don't, if they don't work for him, who do they work for? Well, they certainly don't work for Congress. They've spied on Congress and nothing happened to them. And so they work for, I guess, I guess the W.E.F and the same handful of donors and billionaires that actually do run everything. And so I hate to be pessimistic, but I really don't see people coming together. As soon as somebody does stand up, They co-opped them immediately or they get them demonetized or they put him in Belmarsh or something like that. And people go along with them.

And they, people in the United States think that Julian Assange's in prison because he helped Russia overthrow the 2016 election. And that's not why he's in prison. He's in prison because he revealed war crimes of the United States military through Chelsea Manning in Iraq. That's why he's in prison, right? And another big reason was he, you know, was it Vault 7? It was good when he revealed all the tricks that the CIA was using to spy on people. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for them, I think. I think especially on Europe, we see that the international institutions become a corrupting force.

So, of course, when we talk about globalists, it's almost considered to be well treated as being some kind of a conspiracy theory, as if global capital wouldn't have influence on its own. I mean, this was the case of the 19th century, and it's the same today. But with international institutions, it happens quite open. For example, you have failed politicians, but if they fail for the right reasons, there's always a place for them in the EU bureaucracy, or in the case of NATO, we have in Netherlands, the prime minister, he has been forced to step down. And of course, he wanted to be the next NATO Secretary General to take over, you know, leading NATO, or speak for Washington, at least. And in order to get those positions and for the Dutch to get some of the top positions,

the Dutch media was very open. Well, you know, what is it doing to achieve this? Well, you know, he joins in on the bombing of the Houthis in Yemen. He's extra supportive of Israel. He sent some extra weapons to Ukraine. So effectively, he made the masters in Washington happy. this is how you have a career afterwards. And again, it's not a conspiracy theory anymore. If you just see where do the interest lie, what are the calculations being made? But I think it's also the issue of morality, because one would hope that politics would be more moral. But the way morality is framed is always this good versus evil.

And I think the problem with many journalists is they get convinced that they're fighting the good fight. And if they're fighting the good fight, you know, you make excuses for one side and you exaggerate the other. And I think that's why that's a good way of manipulating. And as Jimli just said, this repetition over and over again in Russiagate. This is a very common propaganda tool. This is the human mind, the way it learns. It confuses the familiar with truth, what is known. And this is something that they use.

You say something over and over again, and people will assume it's correct. that is true. This is, again, how we learn. But it's, no, it's, it's, it just becomes very overt after while. It's very obvious what's being done. But, you know, you talk about international institutions being corrupted. I was shocked during the Syrian war to see the OPCW completely become a tool of the international billionaire class and the, in the intelligence community. And of course, Hollywood always has been, right? They just gave an Academy Award to that propaganda film about Ukraine, which was all bullshit. And they previously gave the Academy Award to the Oscar to the White Helmets movie,

which we all now know the White Helmets is intelligence. So it seemed, I mean, I don't, I don't, again, I hate to be a pessimist, but I'm also a realist. and it seems like whenever somebody, I mean, let's say the truckers rose up in the United States. They would just freeze their bank accounts and they would control them that way. They'd have the media call them white supremacists and Nazis as they are actually, as the establishment funds Nazis and salutes Nazis in the Canadian Parliament. So that, again, I hate to be about how, I'm curious what your outlook is. What you think, I mean, all I can do is give information to people.

I mean, I've been an activist around health care in the United States. We've got roundly trashed for it and discredited. But I'm curious as to what your outlook is on the future. Well, my own outlook is that this is an unsustainable situation, straightforwardly. One of the consequences of this closing down of public debate is the decisions are made, are wrong and they can't be corrected. In fact, they're compounded. And we've been seeing this steadily happening in area after area of policy, making, we see it in economic policy disastrously. I mean, I first started to notice that there was a closing of debate in Britain at least since the

1980s. And I think this is probably true in most places as well. In the 1980s, since the 1980s, every single decade that's passed, not just in Britain, but in Europe generally, we have seen a reduction in economic growth. Economic growth has become more distorted, imbalances have increased, things are going obviously more and more wrong. And living standards for many people have been increasingly under pressure and have now started to fall. I think it's not that different in United States also. And it's certainly true in much of Europe. And of course, in foreign policy, we are going from one bad outcome to another. One war off another. You talked about Afghanistan and how people went straight from Afghanistan into the war in Ukraine. But each defeat is cumulative.

And its effect, its bad outcome is even greater. And we are looking at, in my opinion, biggest, most disastrous defeat of all, which is the one that's coming in Ukraine. I mean, I think that this is going to be a real debacle on the scale that nothing we have seen up to now can possibly match, especially in Europe. And eventually, this accumulation of problems of policy mistakes, it's unsustainable in part because the rest of the world is changing around us. You go to China, you go to India, you go to Russia, Russia as well, you see the things are not the way they were. And I think that this isn't something we fully understand. We are starting to be left behind because we can't debate things or discuss things properly as we should do. And eventually,

as I said, this is going to have an impact. And when it does have an impact, it'll be very troubling, very difficult, very disturbing for all of us who have to live through it. But it'll probably also be in the end a liberating moment. So, yes, I don't give up. I don't believe in despair. I always say despair is a bad counsellor. But that is my outlook of things. This is an unsustainable approach.

And if you look at what's happening, Ukraine, in my opinion, it encapsulates it all. Everything, everything that we've discussed that has gone wrong, foreign policy, economic policy, the fact that the Russians are now out producing us, every kind of weapons. People can't quite get their heads around that, but it's a fact, the fact that we're being outfought on the battlefronts, that the politics, the global politics haven't worked. All of this is an illustration of why this can't be sustained for very much longer.

I agree. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, I think I agree that the, the, Ukraine thing appears to be on a much, it will be more significant due to the scale because it was lied to how about how the war began, how it's going, but also how it will end. So I think that it might not be comparable to the other fiascos. As, you know, Jimmy, you mentioned before the OPCW. I mean, for me, this was also quite shocking because, you know, the WikiLeaks actually revealed that that its inspectors had written a different report and then it had been manipulated.

before being released. So it was already proven. And then you had this investigator. Was it, Wieland and Henderson, who came out? They said, listen, this is not the findings. We were the one there. We're the one who did investigations. This is not our report.

We're not the one who actually wrote this. And even the first director general of the OPCW, which is, I'll say, Bustani, he even came out in support of them, you know, saying, we need to support the integrity of these inspectors. Why are, you know, this is corruption of a key institution. It's all wrong. So all the evidence is there. All the main people are there.

And still, in the media, they come with this magic word again. Oh, conspiracy theory. Where's the conspiracy? This is absurd. And then he goes away. And nobody wants to be associated with this. Because, you know, it's like being a propagandist, a conspiracy theory. The people just shy away and we don't talk about it anymore.

So I think, you know, they can make these things go away. but I agree. I think the Ukraine war is because it will have such a huge effect, such a disastrous defeat for us, that it will demand some questions, which will reveal some of these horrible lies which have been told, which can be proven to be lies. I'm here for interrupting you, Jimmy.

No, the thing that I don't understand is how Europe, how they get Europe to go along with it. When we blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, and it was obvious that it was NATO in the United States that did that. And now Germany's paying a much higher price for energy, and it's hurting all of Europe. Why do they, I don't get why they accept this. I mean, I guess that's just the grip of NATO.

I guess that's why, you know, having a thousand military bases around the world. Is that really the intimidating factor? Because even with our thousand military bases around the world, world. We still can't defeat Russia in Ukraine. We couldn't defeat Assad in Syria. Now it appears that what is what is happening in Gaza, it looks like Hamas has had a better strategy is going to come out on top. So what, why does Europe bend the knee so much to NATO and the West in the United States? I mean, I see what they did. You know, the new game is to criminalize anybody who stands up to NATO.

Look what they did at Imran Khan. He said that the people of Pakistan don't want to go along with NATO in these NATO wars anymore. And immediately, he's a criminal. And the same thing they did in Brazil is they put Lula in prison at first because he was too far left for the international billionaire class. And they thought the center right guy was going to win. And then Bolsonaro won. And so they were like, oh, how do we fix this? Well, the only way they could fix is they had to let Lula back out of

because he's the only one who could beat Bolsonaro, so they beat Bolsonaro, and now they just made it illegal for Bolsonaro to run for president again. And so they're doing the same thing in the United States with Donald Trump. And, you know, again, this is another thing I pointed out to Cornell West when he came on my show, that the same grand jury, the same RICO statutes that they're using to indict Donald Trump, they use the exact same grand jury, same RICO statutes, to indict the protesters who are protesting the expansion of the police state in the United States, which is called Stop Cop City. And when I presented that to him, and I said, now you see the game that's being played.

Then he called me a trumper. And that's, again, it's just another heartbreak over the people who I thought were the leaders in the United States who would stand up and who are just establishment shills on purpose and who have lived in ivory towers their whole life. And that's the new game. They criminalized their opponents. But maybe they've always done that. and I just didn't notice, right? And, you know, Barack Obama used the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists more often than all the presidents combined previous to him. And people still walk around saying Barack Obama is the best president of my lifetime. Barack Obama was not a departure

from George Bush, which people don't realize. He was in a continuation of George Bush's policies, right? He didn't give us single payer health care. He gave us a right wing, give us a health care policy that's a giveaway to big insurance and big pharma. that was cooked up at the Heritage Foundation, which is a right-wing think tank. And he just implemented it, right? And so just like Bill Clinton got stuff done that George Bush and Ronald Reagan couldn't get done, like NAFTA, which cut the legs out from underneath unions in the United States. He got, he gutted welfare while he exploded the prison population, and he deregulated Wall Street when he got rid of Glass Eagle.

That stuff Republicans couldn't do. But if you make it out to be a lefty like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, well, then all of a sudden it can get done. because people, there's no opposition. The natural opposition to that is taken away. And that's the key thing, right? So the natural opposition to Wall Street, the natural opposition to the military industrial complex was quieted because if you were on the left

and you criticized Barack Obama, you were a traitor, and you were helping Trump or you're helping a right winger or you're sold up. So it's, I see it, I do agree with you. When you say it's not sustainable, I think it's sustainable in a sense that, you know, I try to tell people on my show that, you know, they accuse Donald Trump and his Maga political movement of fomenting a civil war when the exact opposite is true, right? The establishment who opposes him are the people who would like to have a civil war because they want us fighting amongst each other so we don't come together along class lines to oppose the oligarchy, which is the only thing that scares them. And if there's a, and I try to remind people, if there's a civil war, the billionaire class.

is convinced that they'll be insulated from it. And chaos always favors the establishment. And so, and they're going to, they're, you know, it's just like what the Nazis did, you blame your opponent for the things that you're guilty of. And that's exactly what they're doing. They're saying that MAGA and Donald Trump wants a civil war. Maga and Donald Trump are the people who want destabilize us internationally for, but that's all the stuff that they're doing.

And they're going to pro rast. They say Donald Trump, we got to save democracy. We got to vote against Donald Trump. save democracy because Donald Trump is going to, he's going to prosecute his political opponents. Well, that's exactly what they're doing when they're doing it right out in the open. And the media goes along with it because it's all bought by the same people. So I think it's sustainable in a sense that things can get worse and things will just keep getting worse.

And the United States will just be getting more like Brazil every day. And there's no one to stand up and stop it. So I would like to think it's not sustainable. Meaning that something will come along to stop it, but I don't think there's anything that's going to come along to stop it. We'll see, you know, maybe, you know, the human life is a failed experiment, maybe. I think it's making clear when I say it's not sustainable. I don't mean that he's not going to be sustained for a very long time. In fact, I think that, as you correctly say, the pressures are going to grow and intensify all the time, especially as those who are.

lead the system, feel increasingly insecure, which they already do, by the way. I mean, if they're going to go to the extraordinary lengths that they've gone to keep a man in Belmarsh, it's a sign of how insecure they are. That's, I think, one important thing to remember. Now, you asked a question, why did the Europeans go along with all of this? I think, I should say, first of all, that Glenn has written an extremely interesting and very good book, which answers many of these questions. and goes into them in enormous detail. But I could have just come up with one particular thought, which is, I think, that what happened in Europe at the end of the Cold War

is they said that America has won. America has won. It's the winning side. They're the future. We want to be with the winning side. And we're going to link up completely to the Americans because we want to be on the winning side also. And I think this has become very, very hardwired within the European political class now.

I discussed the fact that, you know, we saw the left, the old left basically collapsed across Europe. And I think this is partly a product of that because the old left had been suspicious of free markets, somewhat suspicious of American-style capitalism, all of those things. All those criticisms suddenly seem to be discredited. The Americans were the people who knew how to do things right. And I think what you have is a political class in Europe today, which is to a great extent internalized what it thinks are the lessons of the Cold War and of the period immediately after the Cold War. And they still say to themselves, let's stick with the Americans,

because one, they're the only, they're the big show in town. Two, in the end, they will prevail because they're still the war. winners. And if it looks as if things are not going quite the way that we expect it, if things are not going right, well, of course, we can't change now. We can't turn on the Americans. What we do, what we must do is clamp down because otherwise criticisms of us will grow. But anyway, I think to answer that, going back to the point, I think it goes back to the events that took place at the end of the Cold War, a belief that history had really ended, that the Americans had won, and that anybody who wanted to be anybody in Europe had to be like them.

Okay. Wow. That's kind of amazing. Do you think the Europe will ever stand up against NATO and the United States? I mean, even when their energy prices is quadruple? I think Glenn is, better qualify to answer that. He actually in his book says that eventually the contradictions will come. But Glenn, over to you. Yeah, I was also careful not to make too bold predictions, but no, but I agree with what Alexander said as well. I think this was the end of the Cold War. We saw, yeah, the idea of liberal hegemony has been very attractive to all European leaders. We saw one center of power in the world, the United States, which was benign. which could essentially temper all the great power rivalry. It will elevate the liberal values of democracy, human rights,

and it create an overall different world. As many critics said in the 90s, over time, this will drain America of resources. It will alienate rising powers as they will need to clamp down on them. And after a while, if you run an empire, it's a bit like an ambolt around your neck. the legitimacy will start to drain away as well. So I think that's what we've seen over the past 30 years. Slowly, power is being more dispersed around the world,

having multipolarism coming along. Whenever NATO screams human rights, democracy, it's usually when we're loading bombs on our planes. So, you know, the whole legitimacy around this ideology is also collapsing a bit. So I think it will come slowly, but I think we're going down with the ship. definitely, but the new game is also everything in the name of climate change, which is control, right? So again, the international billionaire class uses the threat of climate change to

take away rights and control you. And I don't think it matters. I'm actually doubting the whole science behind climate change and if it's carbon-based and if there's anything we can do about it. But that doesn't matter if you agree with what they say is the mainstream science on climate change. It's clear that the answers to dealing with climate change are all manufactured by the billionaire class to control us, and none of them are there to actually do it. I just covered that recycling plastic has been a scam for the last 40 years, which I've known that for at least a decade too, and people don't seem to catch on. They still separate their garbage like it's doing something.

Greta Dundberg will never protest outside the construction of a new military base by NATO, even though the number one emitter of carbon in the world is the United States military. She's on board with the Ukraine war. I mean, so it's obvious that these are siops and that climate change is being used to control us. Do you think people will wake up to that, or do you even agree with that assessment? Well, I'm just going to make one observation. When I remember the Greens, when they first appeared in the late 70s and early 80s, the Greens in Germany, led by people like Petra Kelly and her partner, General Bastion, they were first and foremost, and above all else,

certainly an ecological movement, but also an anti-war movement, an anti-NATO movement, all of those things. Now, today, they are the most belligerent, the most confrontational, the most Atlantis, the most supportive of all the things we've been talking about movement that you can absolutely find. I mean, they're the people who are the furbos, fervid advocates of sanctions against Russia. You're talking about, you know, the energy problems in Europe. I mean, they've, they have come, I mean, they've reversed. themselves so completely and so incomprehensibly that, again, for someone like myself who remembers them as they were, who used to know some of them, you know, the old Greens, it is completely

bewildering. It is absolutely seeing that something turned completely on its head. But of course, what has happened with the Greens is that they were always able to get a lot of young people, especially, to support them. And they always presented themselves as being countercum. cultural, anti-establishment in a way that young people found attractive. They still have some of that there. And that does mean that young people, who are very often the people, who are the ones who are most exposed to the kind of economic pressures that we've been talking about, the people who have trouble getting housing, who most problems finding good places of work, who have all the problems that we talk about education, all of that,

you know, they still focus very much on the talking points that the Greens give to them rather than think about these other things. So just saying. Yeah, the Green Party has been bewildering, to say the least. Yeah, they were in the United States. They were the biggest pushers of Russiagate. which led me to call their last presidential nominee a CIA infiltrator, which there's no doubt he is. And they also were the most ardent, the agreeers or pushers of the authoritarian policy surrounding COVID, which is just mind-blowing.

So there's not an anti-establishment bone in their body anymore. And that's why, I mean, that's why it's hard for me to stay optimistic. It really is. I think often they do have, they can present good causes. Of course, preserving the environment is a good cause, but it's always this extracting power from it. It's like all these policies now about fighting hate, which sounds wonderful. We should all stop hating each other. But it's a little bit like legislating that we all have to love each other.

I mean, it sounds wonderful, but it would demand a huge amount of government power in order to, well, define what hate means. and then to make sure no one hates. And then I guess, yeah, you see this also when, well, when I see the US military hang the LGBT flag in front of military bases, you know, is it really a conspiracy theory to suggest that maybe the military is not solely motivated by altruism? Perhaps this could be used for something else. I mean, I feel if this is going to be thrown with the conspiracy theory stamp,

it's become pointless. But anyways, before we wrap up, we hope for some positive final words from here, Jimmy. I don't really have any. Positive. You know, the positive is that wherever I go, I meet more and more people who are waking up, who are rejecting the media.

That's a positive. And they're seeing through it. And they know they lied, whether it was about Russiagate, whether it was about COVID, whether it was about Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and now Ukraine and Gaza, as they see, people are seeing through it. And all I can do is hope that that does lead to some kind of revolution. But we need a real revolution. I know for sure in the United States, we need a real revolution because when there's a session of Congress, you know, when there's a

session of Congress, it's people, do you really think that those people are doing the bidding of workers or students or the elderly or anybody except the handful of billionaires that run everything. Of course, that's what they're doing. And we need to somehow find a way to get rid of them or scare them enough. And in the United States, I think if we had, you know, publicly funded elections, that would go a long way. But there's a revolving door of the, you know, there's corporate capture of a regulatory agencies. So the people who are supposed to be regulating, big pharma, big oil, big tech, Wall Street, they leave the regulatory agency. They go immediately into the industry that they were just regulating. So, of course, there's no regulation. And that really got kicked off with Ronald Reagan.

They figured that out. So, again, I think people are ready. I think if there was a right leader that came along, I was hoping it was going to be RFK, but of course it's not. But I think if the right leader came along, and it's got to come from the working class, and, you know, that would be great. We just had, they claim they had big wins for the auto workers in Detroit recently, but it's obvious that the guy who's running that is also compromised. So I think that that was like they had already had those wins for the union baked into the cake. So anyway, yeah, my big hope, my big positive thing is that more, everywhere I go from Europe to the United States, people are seeing through it.

And hopefully that sparked some kind of a real revolution and not a fake insurrection like that happened on January 6th. I agree. I wanted to just say thank you, Jimmy, to coming on our program. I just, I will end in a positive narrative because, you know, before I became anything else, I studied history. And one of the I think of truism about history is that when change looks impossible, after it's happened, you realize that change was actually inevitable. And I think that is probably true about our times as well, perhaps precisely because change looks impossible or at least very difficult. That's probably a guarantee at some point, maybe not immediately, not next.

year or the year after or in 10 years, but eventually it will come. And we'll be there to see it. Okay. Well, I would, fingers crossed. Thanks, Jimmy. Hey, thanks for having me on. It's been a plaps. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I love your show. You guys do great work. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jim. So do you.