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- [00:00]
Julian Walker
We've got a very different kind of sponsor for this episode, the Jordan Harbinger Show, a podcast you should definitely check out since you're a fan of high quality, fascinating podcasts hosted by interesting people. The show covers such a wide range of topics through weekly interviews with heavy hitting guests, and there are a ton of episodes you'll find interesting. Since you're a fan of this show, I'd recommend our listeners check out his skeptical Sunday episode on Hydrotherapy as well as Jordan's episode about Tarina Shaquille where he incidentally use and ISIS recruits journey and escape. There's an episode for everyone though, no matter what you're into. The show covers stories like how a professional art forger somehow made millions of dollars while being chased by the feds and the mafia. Jordan's also done an episode all about birth control and how it can alter the partners we pick, and how going on or off of the pill can change elements in our personalities. The podcast covers a lot, but one constant is his ability to pull useful pieces of advice from his guests. I promise you you'll find something useful that you can apply to your own life, whether that's an actionable routine change that boosts your productivity or just a slight mindset tweak that changes how you see the world. We really enjoy this show. We think you will as well. There's just so much there. Check out jordanharbinger.com start for some episode recommendations or search for the Jordan Harbinger Show. That's H A R B as in boy I n as in Nancy G E r on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [01:53]
Derek Barris
Hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.
- [02:04]
Matthew Remsky
I'm Matthew Remsky.
- [02:05]
Julian Walker
I'm Julian Walker.
- [02:06]
Derek Barris
You can find us on Instagram and threads. Conspiritualitypod. You can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes@patreon.com conspirituality you can also access just our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions if that is your platform of choice. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.
- [02:42]
Julian Walker
Conspirituality 232 Gaslighting the election Once upon a time, there was a golden age. A time when the news media was fair and balanced, unbiased and honest. But we've lost all that to the corrupting influence of big money, political correctness and woke censorship you see, it's the radical left that's deranged the discourse. But not to worry. The online charisma of heterodox new media figures like Barry Weiss and her plucky centrist truth telling little startup called the Free Press has come to make journalism great again. The problem is their supposed heterodoxy is neither neutral nor journalistically rigorous. It's pure culture war contrarian sensationalism that wastes little ink, if any, on critiquing the rise of right wing authoritarianism or Trump's criminality. Follow the money and the lie of being anti elite independent champions of truth and freedom very quickly wears thin. We trace these tangled threads on today's episode, as exemplified by the supposedly nonpartisan the Free Press election night live stream which giddily praised Trump for being the consummate bullshitter come to take an axe to democratic institutions.
- [04:10]
Derek Barris
This week in spirituality. Last week YouTuber turned boxer and always shit poster Jake Paul, who will hopefully get destroyed by Mike Tyson this weekend. I don't have my hopes up, but.
- [04:23]
Matthew Remsky
Hopefully I'm very concerned actually. I don't know if I can watch it.
- [04:27]
Derek Barris
I only say that because someone's paying for a longer fight. I just have to believe that given how boxing is. So I would rather just see Mike come out and put him down in the first round and just end all the nonsense. Anyway, Jake tweeted the following following to his 4.6 million followers. Trump 48 hours not even in office Call with Putin to end Russia, Ukraine war Ceasefire in Iran Hamas calls for immediate end to war China hopes for peaceful coexistence with America Kamala Harris, four years as vp yeah, that's he just ended it with that silence. And so I found that tweet via religion scholar Dan McClellan and he shared it his Instagram feed and then he replied, maybe somebody can help me find info that's closer to what Jake has claimed in this tweet. Because based on everything I can find as of today, these are the realities. And then he lists the four Trump only ends the Ukraine war by capitulating to Putin's demands Iran called on Israel to cease fire before the election and is awaiting the response. Hamas simply repeated the same call for Israel to cease fire that they have repeated many times. And then finally China only insisted the US and China have to find a way to get along. And I wanted to flag this as we transition to this week's main story because it really represents how low information propagandists are able to manipulate people's comprehension of the world. And I'm not sure. Would Jake source this information? I doubt he came up with it himself. He probably saw it on Twitter. But it's indicative of someone in a disinformation media bubble who perpetuates faulty news. And I'm guessing the source of these tidbits knew exactly what they were doing even if Jake did not. Now, I have a lot to say about the state of media now in today's episode, but also in the coming months. And I recognize that all of us are in our algorithmic bubbles, but it's still possible to not get it as wrong as Jake did. And one thing that's jumped out at me this week is how quickly news outlets outlets coalesced around the narrative that Dems just didn't speak to the working class and focus too much, for example on transgender issues when it's abundantly clear that the right wing media ecosystem is responsible for taking what's a predominantly non issue for most people and blowing it up to epic proportions. Of course, this has been noted that Trump spent $30 million creating an advertisement about how Kamala Harris posted a transgender in prison put forward policy to allow prisoners to get transgender surgeries. That actually came up during Trump's administration, but he never acknowledges that and that was a driving force behind his campaign. And to understand how all this works, we need to look at data. And Trump didn't win on policy or statistics or ideas. He won on affect. As Media Matter reports, Fox News aired at least 41 segments that mentioned trans athletes from the start of July through the end of August, at least 24 of which were aired over the course of just three days, July 31 through August 2, amid widespread anti trans attacks against Algerian Olympic boxer Amin Khalif. As they also point out, and it is well known, Khalif is not transgender. She was born female. There has been another recent, you know, test that supposedly came out in the last week, but I checked in the BBC and a few other news outlets have not been able to report on the validity of that test. So bigger picture when Fox News goes on these frenzies. There are a total of five transgender athletes competing on girls teams in K through 12 sports in the US right now. So there are credible debates about whether or not these athletes should compete in sports in the age of transitioning. But right wing media isn't actually concerned about that. Their goal has long been to dehumanize the very concept of gender identity, which they do by obscuring factual information. So that's the grim Reality of the media question we're dealing with today and for some time to come in America. Jake Paul can tweet out and most of his followers aren't going to fact check it. And as we know, it's harder to convince someone they're wrong after they've already accepted a fact than it is to give them good information in the first place. And that's a struggle we're going to have to deal with for some time to come.
- [09:14]
Julian Walker
I just want to add here, Derek, that you said that their goal has been right wing media's goal has been to dehumanize the very concept of gender identity. My sense is that their goal is to identify culture war issues that will have enough hooks in them to speak to their base. Right. They're looking for the red meat for their base. And if in the process dehumanizing the concept of gender identity happens to be the outcome, they're like, okay, that's fine, as long as we get what we want, right?
- [09:44]
Derek Barris
Oh, I'd agree with that. In terms of bigger picture, yes, they're always looking for those hooks. But on this specific issue, they are playing very much to a Christian national base that only believes in the binaries of gender identity. Not biological sex, but gender identity. And they are trying to push forward a very heterosexual narrative about marriage because we know there's a lot of laws coming in states that are going to try to ban gay marriages and try to stop contraception. So I think. I think with this specific issue, it's a little more pointed but bigger picture. Absolutely.
- [10:19]
Bari Weiss
Once upon a time, a time when newspapers covered both sides of an issue, editorial endorsements may have moved a voter in Michigan or persuaded some undecided soul like my mom in Pennsylvania. But those days are long gone. Were continually told that America is divided into reds and blues, into MAGA and the resistance. The staff of the Free Press is split almost exactly three ways in this election between Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and, well, neither. Some think democracy is on the ballot and are profoundly fearful of Trump. Others are far more sanguine, making the case that we endured four years of Trump and four years of Biden Harris and the Republic survived. My point is that at the Free Press, it's okay to be liberal or conservative or politically non binary. And though it shouldn't be, having a newsroom that reflects the politics of America has become extraordinarily unusual. At the New York Times, every last columnist, even those who were supposed to be the conservatives, opposed Trump's election. At the Washington Post, journalists Furor over Bezos squashing of the Harris endorsement isn't because their independent journalism is being harmed. It's because, like most of their brethren in the mainstream media, they think it's imperative for Kamala Harris to win. So isn't it just a little bit strange that the institutions that talk the most about diversity and inclusion can't stomach anyone whose views align with half of Americans at the Free Press? We flipped this dynamic on its head. The fundamental value we share here with each other and with our readers and listeners is a commitment to seeking and telling the truth.
- [12:10]
Julian Walker
Sounds really good. Notice how she got her jabs in there on being politically non binary and how these hypocrites who claim to be about diversity and inclusion are so censorious and single minded. Right? Yeah. So that's Bari Weiss. She's previewing The Free Press's 2024 live stream coverage of election night. Her invitation, which we just heard parts of, is a pitch perfect summary of the new media. Both sides, false equivalency stance which is touted as heterodox free speech. As you can hear, this claims to be a corrective to biased and censorious left leaning media by adopting a neutral commitment to covering all perspectives and encouraging voters to think for themselves. But who is Bari Wise? Barry has an interesting arc. She rose to prominence after her transition from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times when In October of 2018, the synagogue she grew up attending in Pittsburgh was the target of an anti Semitic attack in which 11 were killed and seven were injured. She appeared within days of that shooting on Bill Maher's show, where together they criticized Trump's repetition of conspiracy theories that trended towards scapegoating Jews and referenced his appeal to the Charlottesville Tiki torch bearers. Jews will not replace us. She was also quick on the other side to praise Trump for moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, but then also scolded some of her fellow Jews for the bargain they had made with Trump, saying, and I'm quoting here, they have traded policies that they like for the values that have sustained the Jewish people. Welcoming the stranger, dignity for all human beings, equality under the law, respect for dissent, love of truth. These are the things we're losing under this president and no policy is worth that price, as we will find out later. In a perhaps shocking twist, Barry appears now to have found a price for which abandoning those values is acceptable.
- [14:24]
Matthew Remsky
You know the thing for me that's most important to know about Weiss, because I think this is at the heart of the Free Press's independent and objective commentariat movement, or so they say, is that she finds her center of gravity and moral core, which rings out in her voice in something very specific, which is American Zionism. That's where her real spine is, but also I think her Achilles heel. It's a quasi religious sense that she possesses the truth of history. And at the heart of that truth is the claim that criticism of Israel can never really be free of anti Semitism. So in 2004, it begins when she's at a student at Columbia and, you know, she really sharpened her free speech teeth on a campaign to get several Arab scholars of Middle Eastern history and politics investigated for claims of anti Israel bias that her student group described as being anti Semitic. Now these were profs who offered pretty standard postcolonial theory views on Israel as a colonial project with racist outcomes. Weiss targeted a Jordanian born scholar whose alleged bias she claimed felt intimidating. But Columbia investigated the Prof. And ultimately found no evidence of anti Semitic statements. But I think this is the original source of this polestar feeling that the academy fosters antisemitism and that it's coming from the left. It's a kind of strained idea that is foundational for her heterodox Future. In her 2019 book, how to Fight Antisemitism, she explains that this version is worse than the right wing versions that, that, you know, we're familiar with from our reporting the overt varieties, because it is hateful while concealing itself in a devious cloak of progressive care. And I think this is really important to understanding Weiss's sense of wounded authority, because it's like the wokeness of postcolonial theory determined that the heroes of Israel she knows, are suddenly more complicated. Maybe they're not heroes at all. And this vision of the institutional left as devious and hypocritical becomes a keynote in what we're going to hear from many guests on this live stream. Because Ventras are always, oh, you only say you care about people of color, trans people, the working class, but you're all really just performing.
- [16:48]
Julian Walker
Thanks for that. Matthew Barry has, since her appearance that I referenced, been back on Bill Maher several times so that in fact she and Bill could commiserate over the outrage machine of the woke left. And at times she had a point, I thought. But the dynamic presaged an increasingly contrarian slide. Weiss would go on to publish a string of articles at the New York Times, which led to her becoming a lightning rod for controversy. She wrote critically about everything from Metoo to the Women's March to in a piece titled We Are All Fascists now the Puritanical Intolerance of Some on the Left as she saw it, that last article required a later correction by the Times because she used the name an antifa account on Twitter as an example of this woke overreach. The problem was the account had been debunked a year previous as a fake account set up to discredit the protest movement against Trump. Next, when the George Floyd riots happened in the summer of 2020, GOP Senator Tom Cotton was published in the Times calling for Trump to send in soldiers because protesters had plunged this is him speaking Plunged many American cities into anarchy. End quote. And over a thousand New York Times staffers signed a letter condemning this piece, and the editor who was responsible for publishing it resigned after saying he hadn't really read it before he published it. Now, Weiss characterized this as a woke civil war within the New York Times and made a big show of publicly resigning with a post on her own website about how the paper had caved to the Twitter mob, had failed to protect her from internal bullying, thereby creating a hostile work environment, and had betrayed the ethos of free speech. This move made Weiss the darling of a then emerging centrist podcast and YouTube set, whom she actually had profiled before her resignation in a now much parodied article titled Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web. Some will remember the photo shoot. She also drew a lot of support from more overtly right leaning outlets and commentators while being further critiqued by the left, which you know, didn't do us any favors in terms of her continuing slide. Striking out on her own. She would go on to create a podcast called Honestly and then a substack that would evolve into what is now this media company called the Free Press, which as of this year brings in around 8 million in paid subscriptions.
- [19:37]
Derek Barris
So a little less than us.
- [19:39]
Julian Walker
Yeah, a little less than us. And certainly like many other people who have done this, Matt Taibi comes to mind and there are quite a few others. Glenn Greenwald she's making a lot more money than she did before she took the censorship martyr track into heterodox free speech Champion. The posture amongst these folks is one of fearlessly asking the questions on which the mainstream media is too partisan or totally avoids because they are ideologically inconvenient. So some examples in the Free Press include these. The Kindergarten Intifada is an article by Abigail Schreier in which she reported now on after transitioning from talking about you know trans girls. Actually trans boys is her main focus here. She reported on the anti Israel indoctrination from teachers in LA schools. And then Douglas Murray, noted anti immigrant right winger from England, recently wrote about the UK government's cover up of the Muslim identity of a mass killer, supposedly because they are dishonest about the problems with immigration. And then Nellie Bowles penned a quite jokey piece, which is her style, about democracy dying in darkness and election day being the end of the world and Biden calling all Trump supporters garbage. So what I'm describing here is not exactly a broad ideological spread. We're going to talk about their election night coverage specifically today, but I'm just going to round off the examples I've been given by sharing that last Thursday, Madeleine Kearns titled a Free Press article, Democrats picked the wrong women's rights issue. And this dovetails with what you talked about, Derek, because it turns out boring old reproductive freedom fell flat in the election in comparison to the culture war excitement of biological men in women's sports.
- [21:35]
Derek Barris
Yeah, and I've heard some criticisms that Harris didn't respond to Trump's fake information in that $30 million ad spread. And we could debate that or not, but we're really talking about the bifurcation of the media ecosystem right now. And in a sense it's always been that way. And if you want a deeper dive on this topic, you can go Back to episode 165 where I interviewed media sch Tobias Rose Stockwell. But for now, before we get to the clips, I just want to point out that Tobias turned me on to a few books on media history that have been extremely valuable in my understanding how the work that we do today has evolved over time. And what we call journalism is roughly 500 years old. And then as now, early reporters had to figure out how to make a living doing it. Now, initially it was guys collecting information at the docks from boatmen who had just come over from foreign lands, and then they would charge landlords for a written summary of that information. Now, as that practice evolved, broadsheets eventually included advertisements. So the funny thing is the two ways that journalism is monetized now are the same as then you can support it by paying for it or you get advertising, or sometimes both. Now, in fact, the only real new development you're going to get to in a bit, Julian, which is partisan venture capital funding it. Yeah, but that's not even actually that different from state media media, which is a very old concept because it serves the same function, which is controlling A narrative. Now, it was Barry's old boss, the New York Times, launched in 191851 as the new York Daily Times, that really set the tone for modern journalism. This objective journalism that Weiss is pretending to really care about and champion. It was started by two New York Tribune journalists who are tired of the misinformation and propaganda and all the other outlets like the New York sun, who constantly published Bat Boy on the moon front page stories for like 20 years leading up to the founding of the Times. Now, the Times really did try to be objective, but it's never been a reality for them or anyone. Now that said, there is still really good investigative journalism happening right now. But Barry claiming that the Free Press was born from that tradition is laughable, as you'll hear as this episode evolves. I'll offer an example when we get to her wife, who you flagged a moment ago, Nellie Bowles. But make no mistake, the Free press has a very specific slant and pretend they're to pretend that they're doing objective journalism is a farce. Now I'll go one step further here and quote Jon Stewart because in his interview last week with Heather Cox Richardson, he said journalists need to accept their role as activists, both sidesing policy issues and trying to be objective is fine, but when it comes down to fighting to save democracy, the media has tilted very heavily towards centrism in their pre and post election coverage and that has distracted from the very real existential threat that we face as Americans. So my feeling is that we'll be better off being objective with facts like for example, something I cover, offer often clinical vaccine studies, but also admitting that we have our own objectives. And I just wish that Weiss and her crew would want to own up to their own.
- [25:12]
Julian Walker
So this all brings us to election night 2024 and the free Press live stream. I'll set the scene. Head honcho Barry Weiss was flanked by former Vice and Daily Beast journalist Michael Moynihan and New Free Press regular Batya Ungar Sargon. They hosted some 50 guests over four hours and these included some mainstream political commentators like journalist Frank Bruni and polling expert Frank Luntz, as well as Congressman Richie Torres and Dan Crenshaw from different sites, sides of the aisle, former New York Times opinion writer Moynihan, who's also been an editor at flagship libertarian magazine Reason and is the co host alongside another election night guest, Camille Foster, of the popular Fifth Column podcast. Now Batya Angar Sirgon, who was the other host, is the current Newsweek opinion writer and she identifies as an anti woke left wing socialist.
- [26:11]
Matthew Remsky
Well, we'll see.
- [26:13]
Julian Walker
On hand as panel guests were climate denialist and Free Press columnist Michael Schellenberger of Twitter Files fame, prominent black anti woke authors Coleman Hughes and John McWhorter and others included former Democratic senator Tina Not Tina Turner. Tina Turner. Turner was not there. Nina Turner, as well as Course in Miracles, Cole's presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson and transgender video game developer and culture war commentator Bianna Wu, as well as high profile recently why I Left the Left Young Turks co host Anna Kasparian. Dr. Phil also zoomed in to give his folksy tough love self help takes and the proceedings were seasoned with the transgressive droll irony of Anna Katyan and Dasha Nekrasova of the infamous Red Scare podcast. True to the both sides ethos, there was a moment in which one of the few Democrat guests, Richie Torres, was asked about how hyperbolic Democrats and Republicans were all saying that the other side wanted to end democracy. This is how he responded.
- [27:28]
Bari Weiss
It's not just the past 24 hours, although it's ratcheted up over the past 24 hours is like this is the end of the Republic. Elon Musk and Joe Rogan are saying this is going to be the last American vote if Donald Trump doesn't win. But equally, you had Oprah at Kamala Harris's closing rally in Pittsburgh I think yesterday, along with Katy Perry and others, a lot of other celebrities saying this might be the last time that you get to vote. And that's why it's essential that Kamala Harris wins. Do you share that view? Like, let's say we wake up tomorrow morning and your disfavored candidate Donald Trump has won. Is it the end of the world as we know it, or do you feel fine?
- [28:05]
Richie Torres
The world will survive. And I'm confident that the American republic is strong enough to survive even a demagogue like Donald Trump. But I, but I do believe that Donald Trump has shown nothing but contempt for the norms of liberal democracy. Like I sometimes wonder, you know, what if Donald Trump had an attorney general that was willing to open a sham investigation into those false claims of Election 4 fraud? Or what if he had a vice president who was willing to delay or block the certification of the Electoral College? And so I do have faith in the American system. But at the same time, I do worry about Donald Trump's temperament. I do think he's temperamentally unqualified to be president.
- [28:43]
Anna Khachiyan
Congressman, you are a credit to your office. And I know that many in our community really, really admire you as a hero, including myself. And I know Barry as well. Thank you so much.
- [28:53]
Richie Torres
The bar for heroism is low, but I appreciate it.
- [28:55]
Julian Walker
Yeah. So Tars actually gives the correct answer here by disambiguating baseless propaganda on one side from Trump's openly anti Democratic actions and statements on the other. There's no response, though, from Bacha and Barry to this substantive distinction. They just kind of deflect into fangirling on him as a hero, not because he dares to speak truth about Trump, as he just did five seconds previous, but because he's also been very pro Israel.
- [29:24]
Derek Barris
Well, I'll say that the end of the world did happen the evening that they're flagging, which was when Katy Perry tried to cover Whitney Houston.
- [29:31]
Julian Walker
I missed that.
- [29:32]
Derek Barris
Oh, go find it. It is a treat. It is an absolute pleasure. Which will make you hate Katy Perry's music even more.
- [29:42]
Julian Walker
All right, moving on. Here's Nellie Bowles. She's Barry's wife and co founder of the Free Press. She's a former journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, Vice, Guardian, New York Times. And this is a choice moment that she has about the phenomenon of new media and the fall of the old institutions.
- [30:02]
Derek Barris
How do podcasts play in this?
- [30:03]
Nellie Bowles
Well, that's. I was going to say, one way to look at, like, the fall of the old institutions is to see how silly it was when the Washington Post decided they weren't going to endorse a candidate. And they act as though. I mean, the reporters acted as though. That's like the fall of democracy.
- [30:18]
Matthew Remsky
It's a huge ordeal.
- [30:19]
Nellie Bowles
And it's like, guys, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And it matters, actually, a lot more when Joe Rogan endorses a candidate.
- [30:27]
Derek Barris
Yeah.
- [30:28]
Nellie Bowles
And that is the realignment. That's sort of the. The mess of the old world and the rise of the strange new. And, and, and I think we're just at the beginning of it.
- [30:37]
Derek Barris
I have to say, Nellie Bowles hits me at a different level anytime I hear her speak. But you know her, her wife, Barry Weiss, is a very polished speaker and a decent writer, honestly. But Nelly is neither of those things. And it's funny how often both women lambast the New York times when Nelly's 2017 article for that paper, which is about tech workers finding spiritual spirituality, and it's actually called Where Silicon Valley Is Going to Get in Touch with His Soul, was basically a laughable propaganda piece for the elite. And she's writing about Esalen, which we covered on episode one. Hundred and seventeen with our friend Natalia Pretorzella. And Nelly positions herself as an investigative reporter. But she ended up writing a puff piece about the spiritual ambitions of a small group of elite techies that read as being completely detached from the social calamities their technologies produce. I don't disagree with her that at this phase of our society, Rogan's endorsement is more important than the Washington Post. But the fact that she's trying to cosplay play as some media expert is really laughable.
- [31:46]
Julian Walker
Yeah, and Joe Rogan makes a lot more money than most of the the biggest anchors at the legacy media institutions that you're calling elite. Right?
- [31:56]
Derek Barris
Oh, probably makes more than the staff of reporters by on himself. Absolutely. Now, earlier I flagged that the Free Press is not objective journalism, and it isn't. And that falls as much on the editorial decisions as the columnists themselves. So in April, Nelly announced a new column called Free Press Health. I haven't any further columns on this, but it's still up on the site. And it was filled with pseudoscience and health misinformation under the guise of objectivity. She opens by criticizing Time magazine's coverage of, ironically, Petro's last book, which, like our book, looks at the white supremacy that sits at the origins of physical fitness culture. Now, Nelly actually uses that idea as the reason she's launching this column. So thank you or you're welcome, I.
- [32:47]
Matthew Remsky
Guess, like as in. As in Petrozela's argument is. Is reason enough to begin an entire investigation of wellness journalism.
- [32:56]
Derek Barris
Yes, Correct.
- [32:57]
Matthew Remsky
Okay. All right.
- [32:58]
Derek Barris
Now, Nelly's column is a bullet pointed list of health stories. Some credible, really, but others not. And I'll just give one example that rehashes the long idea, long debunked idea that Covid vaccines cause high levels of myocarditis. And I just want to flag these three sentences, Julian.
- [33:20]
Julian Walker
The argument is basically that while the vaccine triggers some amount of inflammation that causes myocarditis, Covid itself triggers even more. I wanted this one to be true. But for all these topics, I turn to Dr. Vinay Prasad, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. Unfortunately, he gives it a thorough debunking.
- [33:46]
Derek Barris
Yeah, so the idea that she's starting this very, very serious health column and then she cites Prasad. We've covered him so many times. He is one of the worst anti vax contrarians. In October 2021, he compared America's Covid response to the Third Reich. And he's been at peak trolling levels since Trump won last week. So the idea that Prasad is a go to expert on Covid is absolutely ludicrous. And it you how unserious of a writer and a thinker that Nelly Bowles.
- [34:16]
Julian Walker
Really is, fearlessly asking the difficult questions and being open to heterodox opinions really always translates into let's have the biggest crank possible show up as long as they have some sort of claim to expertise and we'll just take their word for it.
- [34:30]
Derek Barris
It seems to always go that way, doesn't it?
- [34:33]
Julian Walker
So next up in our clips we have from election night, Peter Savodnik. Now, he's written for Harper's, New York Times and Atlantic Monthly. He was also based in Moscow for years where he wrote a book on Lee Harvey Oswald. Here he is talking about Trump's secret sauce.
- [34:50]
Peter Savodnik
The secret sauce that the Trump sort of like, you know, sort of like thing is, is, is this fundamental. I know this is going to like shock all like our colleagues in kind of legacy media, but it's fundamental honesty. Sort of like seeing things as they are and talking about that. Right. Lake had this brilliant podcast app just recently, last week about the difference between lying and, and he completely nailed it. Trump bullshits constantly. But when it comes to sort of saying what, what he is thinking and what he means and what he is kind of aiming for, what the vision he has in mind, I think he's been consistent and, and he's gone about it unabashed, bashedly. People love that. And remarkably, at the same time that he's kind of gone on and kind of hammered away at that, the Democrats have become kind of less honest. Like they like culminating with the, you know, as like Barry was talking about earlier, like sort of the whole lie around Joe Biden and how he's sharper than ever and then the switcheroo. Right. Like, so that the contrast is, is, is, is crystal clear. And you can't govern, you can't, like there's no governing. If, you know, if you're telling the people that two plus two is five over and over, you can say it over and over and it doesn't make it true. And I think there's so much disdain for the deplorables that it never seemed to occur to the Democrats that, you know, like, maybe people would realize that they're being lied to and they hate that.
- [36:24]
Matthew Remsky
I think there's all kinds of things to say on another episode about dissembling and Democrats speaking out of both sides of their mouths. But he's referencing Eli Lake, another Free Press contributor, giving a podcast that I listened to the first 10 minutes of, because I was wondering, oh, in this distinction between lies and bullshit, is he going to reference the philosopher Harry Frankfurt? And yes, he does, because that's the expert. But, but, you know, and he unrolls Frankfurt's distinction that, you know, the bullshitter is the person who doesn't have to care about the truth because he's speaking for affect to have some sort of impact. That's their only concern is attention, whereas the liar has to pay some attention to what is true and what is false.
- [37:06]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And Harry Frankfurt is making that distinction by way of saying bullshitters are worse.
- [37:10]
Matthew Remsky
Well, yes. So Lake completely misses the moral dimension of Frankfurt's argument. The bullshitter is the worst person in the world because he destroys the possibility for truth. And the first example that Lake gives of, ha, ha, ha, you know, Trump is a bullshitter who's actually secretly telling the truth is the lie about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats. And his actual argument, Lake's argument is this is total bullshit, but it revealed a secret truth that Americans weren't paying attention to, which is that we have a big problem with, with, you know, illegal migrants, blah, blah, blah, which of course also is a lie. But, yeah, completely intellectually, morally bankrupt. Yeah. I don't know who Savodnik is, but get better sources, dude.
- [37:56]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And he, he, at one point, he says it's crystal clear, but he himself, crystal clear. He's really stumbling to make this argument.
- [38:04]
Matthew Remsky
Oh, yeah. Because I think he's probably only heard it for the first time. He's never heard of Harry Frankfurt. He doesn't know what the moral dimensions mention of the argument is because you only listen to Eli Lake about it. It's just like. It's just nothing. It's nothing all the way around.
- [38:17]
Julian Walker
Yeah. On this podcast, this was kind of totemic. Several Free Press staffers on the live stream actually referred back to this particular podcast episode. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's brilliant. It's like the most amazing thing that's happened at the Free Press.
- [38:31]
Matthew Remsky
Okay, so it's a brilliant thing, and the guy just totally got it wrong and they're all citing him. Isn't that perfect?
- [38:36]
Julian Walker
Perfect.
- [38:36]
Matthew Remsky
Perfect. It's like the Wakefield study.
- [38:38]
Julian Walker
Totally, totally, totally. And the article of faith here is that the art of the bullshitter transcends the distinction between truth and lies. It's not that it erases it in some ominous way. It's that it's able to transcend it just absolutely Brilliantly, Eli Lake says that this propensity for bullshit is not Trump's liability, it's actually his superpower. His supporters all know it's fake, you see, because all politicians lie anyway. He's just the greatest to ever play the game. Don't hate the player here. I'll just point out that these are the same people who for years have referred to legacy media as Orwellian.
- [39:18]
Matthew Remsky
I want to, I want to know whether Lake was also an ex Sanders voter because then something would be going on with the perception of who's actually telling the truth or whether it actually matters or whether bullshit is just ubiquitous. I just find this, I find it incredible this, this argument he makes.
- [39:36]
Julian Walker
So included on this live stream in the hard hitting journalism was an appearance by Eliana Johnson. She's formerly a journalist at Politico, but she now works for the, the Free Beacon. She's an editor in chief for that conservative publication. She discussed how the mainstream media ignored things like Kamala Harris's plagiarism scandal and about her potentially having lied when she said she had worked at McDonald's.
- [40:04]
Eliana Johnson
The sort of intensive scrutiny that you would typically see of a presidential nominee, we simply didn't see from the mainstream media. And so you basically ended up with the most well known and covered nominee in maybe in history and Donald Trump and one of the least known, because Harris, not only was she not covered, but she simply didn't tell us a lot of what she would do. She made a calculated risk to remain a blank slate. And so some of the coverage we did at the Beacon, I think was filling that white space left by the mainstream media in terms of investigating her, not taking claims from her campaign at face value. One of them was the story of her plagiarizing congressional testimony that she delivered in her capacity, capacity as the District Attorney of San Francisco. And some of the other reporting we did was just scrutinizing claims she made, like to have worked a summer job at McDonald's and trying to examine why the campaign's stories around claims like that shifted and things that, you know, ended up becoming major storylines in the race. And this is because like the mainstream media left, you know, outlets like the Free Press and the Free Beacon, a lot of room to operate.
- [41:19]
Derek Barris
Michael Hobbs on Blue sky posted. You know, Kamala Harris's website is still up. You know that, right? And he shared a screenshot about. It was about the whole working class. Like we don't know what Harris stands for. Like, you just read the first couple. Cut taxes for working people Lower food and grocery costs, lower health care costs, lower prescription drug costs, lower energy costs, lower costs by protecting consumers from fees and frauds. It goes on. It keeps going. And the idea that she didn't let us know what she was going to do is absolute garbage. She also did in her rallies. The problem is that was not clipped and shared by all of these influencers and most media outlets, unfortunately. And the idea that they missed her summer job at McDonald's, that's basically the type of Fox News non story that whips their base into a frenzy. And here she's treating it like the Free Press did a waterg.
- [42:14]
Julian Walker
Yeah. The Free Beacon uncovered the most crucial aspect of this election season, which is that Kamala Harris copied and pasted some text, you know, with within like legal documents in her department from people who were working for her in preparation for a case. And this is called plagiarism. And we think that she lied when she said she worked at McDonald's. You know, meanwhile, it's not as if you had to dig through, you know, page after page or, you know, a stump speech, several, like long minutes in some speeches talking about transgender issues. I don't think Kamala or Biden before him in this campaign.
- [42:52]
Matthew Remsky
Nope. They didn't. Nope. No pronouns, nothing. It wasn't there. It just wasn't there.
- [42:57]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And yet this is the, this is the reason in the exit polls that a lot of people said, well, I thought that, you know, Kamala focused too much on cultural war topics like transgenderism as opposed to helping working people.
- [43:08]
Matthew Remsky
No, she ran to the right of all of that. She didn't do that at all. Yeah.
- [43:11]
Derek Barris
And, and again, it just gets to the bigger point of this issue. They were all there. Like, there's going to be a lot of postmortems. There's a lot of well deserved criticisms about the campaign and the Democratic Party were covered. A lot of intelligent people will cover it. Rebecca Solnit wrote an absolutely amazing piece in the Guardian about it. But the idea that she didn't speak to the issues that matter to the working class most is just bullshit. And it is, it lines up squarely with the propaganda that the Free Press and other outlets to try to deflect.
- [43:44]
Julian Walker
Yes. In fact, that was the entire central plank of the case they tried to make to the electorate in the, in those two months. So as I mentioned earlier, the hosts of Red Scare showed up and they had this kind of typical moment for them while discussing their shift from being all in on Bernie Sanders to coming to see. And I'M quoting here, that all reasonable people could tell that Trump was a better candidate than Hillary, that Trump was a better candidate than Biden, Trump was a better candidate than Kamala. So here's what they say after that.
- [44:20]
Eliana Johnson
In 2016, Bernie was running on a.
- [44:22]
Anna Khachiyan
Very different platform than.
- [44:24]
Derek Barris
But there's a lot of that overlap, like tariff stuff, working class stuff. I mean, I interviewed Bernie Sanders and I said this to him and he was offended and he's like, well, and he didn't say that policies were different. He said, but no, but he's lying. That was the only thing that's, that's.
- [44:38]
Anna Khachiyan
My other big thing. When people take umbrage with Trump on a character or personality level, when they're like, I'm undecided and I like some of his policies, but I just can't go there because he's so vulgar and chaotic and he's such a liar. There is a very meaningful difference between how Trump lies and the Democrats lie. When Trump lies, he's speaking in hyperbole. So superlative or otherwise, he's sort of speaking in service of his record or reputation. When the Democrats lie, it's a very coordinated collective blob where no one has responsibility, no one is liable. And they're not only lying about the issues themselves, but they're lying about which issues are important.
- [45:24]
Julian Walker
Yeah, I mean, this particular argument combined with some of the stuff we've talked about with regard to bullshitting, it's one of the reasons why this term gaslighting jumped out at me for the title of the episode and for what I think is somewhat what's going on with this election coverage from the Free Press. That is the characteristic slow and eloquent voice of Anacach. And she's the co host of the hugely popular Red Scare podcast, which pulls down $50,000 a month on Patreon. She and Dasha Nekrasova, who we heard briefly at the beginning of the clip, are the transgressive red pilled former lefty darlings of the heterodox scene who somehow managed to blend anti intellectualism with graduate level vocabulary.
- [46:17]
Matthew Remsky
No, no, they, they, no, they make fun of people. They call people retards. They make fun of autistic people. I don't hear anything highbrow and what they say at all.
- [46:28]
Julian Walker
When I hear Anna talk, I very often hear some pretty well crafted sentences that have various points of intellectual academic reference. But yeah, they do all that other stuff too.
- [46:39]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, I think that's part of the gig.
- [46:42]
Julian Walker
That's part of the shtick. Yeah. So Michael Moynihan here, when he's talking to them, reports accurately that Bernie and Trump both deploy populist messaging, but that when he asked Bernie about that similarity, Bernie pointed out essentially that Trump was lying about being a champion of the common man.
- [47:03]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, absolutely.
- [47:04]
Julian Walker
And we don't have to focus on this too much, but the. The tariff reference that Moynihan makes here underlines his superficial grasp, like Trump, of how tariffs work. But Kachan goes right to the same talking point of the set, which is like, obviously, Trump lies, but not in a bad way. Not like the Democrats do.
- [47:30]
Matthew Remsky
Okay, so as we cruise towards the end here, I just want to take a moment to clarify some terms or at least start to do that, because there's a kind of imprecision that we've danced around in previous episodes. We haven't taken the time to address it. But now, post election, I think it's really crucial to get clear on the difference between the left and liberalism, because there's a sloppiness in American political discourse and journalism that's a huge part of the problem and really kind of like it degrades our ability to tell one thing from another. I think, like one case in point, when you noted, Derek, that some mainstream pundits criticized Harris for not speaking to the working class, I mean, what they're missing is that Trump only speaks to them with lies about tariffs. And, you know, they're also ignoring this history of class de alignment that's happened over the past decades of neoliberalism and which Trump simply exploits, like, he's not speaking to working class issues either. But if we don't know what we're talking about when we're talking about leftism and liberalism, I don't think we can really say what people are responding to, why they are mad, what they're not being offered, what they think they're being cheated of. Now, we've noted that a lot of these Free Press guests will describe themselves as being on or formerly being on the left, and they'll also accuse legacy media of being on the left, of this and that, and it's generally gibberish, because what they're usually inveighing against is the wishy washy centrism and sometimes hypocrisy of liberalism. It's not a mistake that many of them were former Bernie supporters and now they feel homeless because he had a point of view. But I don't even think they seem clear on what that point of view was and what the Left means, I think they liked his vibe. So on the left originally means, you know, the absolute bare bones of it is that during the French revolutionary period in 1789, you were on one side or the other. You were a representative in the national assembly. And if you wanted to severely limit the power of the monarchy, you sat on the left side of the chamber during debates. And specifically that meant that you demanded that the King not have veto power over democratic legislation. That is, you would not be in favor of unitary executive theory ever. It would mean that you favored strong revolutionary structural change unencumbered by religion, aristocracy and the clergy. So you don't want J.D. vance blessed by traditional Catholic freaks and bankrolled by Peter Thiel like, fuck off. That's not who you would want. If you are on the left now, as this division inspires, the political theory that follows on the left becomes associated with like proto Marxist, then Marxist, then socialist and communist theories of organization and change, which are always opposed to the right side of that assembly configuration and the people who inherit it, where the apologists for the old order sat and they advocated for incremental changes through limits on government, but also a perpetuation of the kind of liberalized kingship ideal that everybody could have now access to through an emphasis on individual and property rights. Now, we might think of that right side as conservative, but the real conservatives back then were trying to hang on to even more of the old powers. So the right side of the national assembly was really a mixture of liberal and conservative elements. But the thing we should keep in mind about how this gets confused in American discourse in US history is that during FDR's New Deal, there was this blending of leftist nationalization redistribution projects with liberal reforms. And then during the Cold War, it was both increasingly dangerous to identify as a leftist, and so reactionaries found these new targets in liberals who they claimed were secretly leftist. And now we have this 50 odd year policy, or legacy rather, of right wingers in the US using the terms interchangeably. And legacy media, for the most part accepts that phrasing, so that now the Democratic Party can be said to be on the left by news anchors in legacy media with a straight face, while the actual party is doing what liberalism does, which is facilitating capitalism with not much resistance. So when Bari Weiss and this whole crew gets together to support Trump and complain about Democrats on the left, this is bullshit, because they are not complaining about ideas like wealth redistribution, nationalized energy grids, full socialized medicine, guaranteed employment, because those are things that would require considering giving up or Reorganizing all kinds of social and economic privileges. They're not even on the table, especially in a Democratic campaign that is running to the right to try to capture moderates. So not naming liberalism for what it is is a way of taking left ideas just totally out of circulation, off the table. And so if they say this is the craziest one to me, if they say they are Trump leftists, what can that possibly mean? I mean, what they are complaining about are the identitarian and culture war issues that social media and legacy outlets keep churning up to the surface of the discourse, with the result being that the more basic issues of political philosophy are obscured, such as, is capitalism working? Are social hierarchies inherently unjust? Are imperial projects okay with us? Should we keep funding them and things like that?
- [53:05]
Derek Barris
You give a good succinct distinction there explaining left and right, which I think, you know, we can discuss, perhaps left and liberal.
- [53:13]
Matthew Remsky
Left and liberal.
- [53:14]
Derek Barris
The evolution of language and meaning, which I think is also an important component, because something that I come across often is I cite the original meaning of allopathy, for example, which was, you know, opposite cures like. Whereas homeopathy is like cures like. But it has evolved to mean something else. Like it's generally used as a slur against evidence based medicine. So I think there's, you know, we could have a separate discussion about why that matters in terms of defining terms in this moment as compared to hundreds of years ago. But I also think you're flattening capitalism here a little bit. It because you, when you criticize the conflation of left and liberal above, you do that very well. But capitalism is a spectrum, if not definitionally than in practice, because there's more small businesses that were started in America in 2023 than ever before. And I just read that there's expected to be 5.4 million new small businesses started in America this year. I mean, we're a small business. We operate within the market, market forces of podcasts and media. Entrepreneurship is a hallmark of American society and a lot of other cultures. So in that respect, whether or not capitalism is working, it's an important question. But if it wasn't working, we wouldn't have a career right now. So separating entrepreneurship from unfettered capitalism, which results in billionaires paying lower tax rates than the three of us as small business owners, and governmental regulations being so lax that corporations can pollute without fear of retribution, I think that's an important distinction to make. Just as you were kind of separating.
- [54:52]
Matthew Remsky
Terms there as well, yeah, I think this is good. And, and I'll just go on for a bit because I think the point that you're making is, is, is actually demonstrating a liberal left distinction as well. Like, I understand what you're saying, but when you say that capitalism is working for us, for example, the, the trio on our platform, you know, I guess what's true is that we're making a living wage for now. We're delivering value to a market that we have found but also created. We're not corporate assholes, we're not polluting stuff. But to me, those things are cold comfort because all I can think about really is what sheer precarious luck is holding all of this together. And there's no political party in the US that's even trying to speak to that precarity.
- [55:36]
Derek Barris
Well, that's a really good point. I appreciate that. I guess what asking in that and the way that I'm framing that, and it might be a binary, but it's one that I think is just important to hammer out because the argument. What's the other argument? That all of our salaries are paid by the state and they have control over everything.
- [55:57]
Matthew Remsky
If you want to jump right to that, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a big bridge. But, but here's. I just want to describe the conditions that make me a leftist instead of a liberal. I am one blood clot away from having to quit this job and my family being vulnerable to the point of destitution. Like in Canada with socialized medicine. There's still nothing that would keep me in housing should I lose this job, keep us in housing? I'm thinking about, like, what has Apple just done to our Patreon? What is it that they've tacked on 30% or something like that? That. How did that work?
- [56:34]
Derek Barris
Irrelevant to this. I mean, irrelevant. But yes, Apple is trying to suck money out of Patreon because apparently a trillion dollar market cap isn't enough. That's correct.
- [56:42]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah. Okay. Well, my point is, is that, is that it's, that's, to me, that's precarity, right? Like, what other switch can they throw? Interest rates go up by one more point and hundreds of thousands of families default on mortgages. So I like what makes me a leftist is that I have a conviction. Conviction that when things seem to be working for regular people like us under capitalism, it's just luck, right? And we don't deserve luck any more than anyone else. It's like a mirage in a Casino. And what makes Harris's campaign a liberal campaign, even though Bari Weiss and everyone at the Free Press thinks she's on the left, is that the best pitch, right, is the opportunity economy. And that means, like, small attempts at economic reform that you listed in her program, increasing bits and pieces of loans and the growth of small businesses that have to start up in an overall system that crushes everybody to dust. Right? Like, I don't want an opportunity economy. I want, like, you know, a. I want a guaranteed employment economy or a basic dignity and income economy. Like, I. So that's what makes the sort of distinction really important to me because we don't actually get to talk about the possibility for fundamental change. And the liberal sort of answer for things is that they can't really offer fundamental change because they don't want to give up on the individualism that collective action requires. And moreover, usually they spend a lot of time thinking about how capitalism can be tweaked this way and that way. And it's actually really not that bad. And meanwhile, you know, it's a bus driving off of a cliff in terms of climate and other things. Right?
- [58:27]
Derek Barris
Well, you bring up something. You bring up something there. Las Vegas has a guaranteed employment, you know, in the city code. So anyone who wants a job can have it. But there's still a homeless problem there.
- [58:37]
Matthew Remsky
Sure. There's got to be, there's got to be full holistic solutions, right? It's not going to like one policy at a time, you know, patchwork stuff, right?
- [58:44]
Derek Barris
Well, yeah, but they, I mean, you know, I have many problems with Vegas, but they actually do have better systems than most other cities in America. And they still have a lot of, a lot of issues there.
- [58:55]
Matthew Remsky
Vegas got. I just heard. Did you guys hear that the Harris campaign spent $450,000 a day to put the logo up on the sphere?
- [59:05]
Derek Barris
Oh, yeah, the sphere, yeah.
- [59:07]
Julian Walker
Yeah. I just want to say that in terms of the types of reforms and transformations set your time talking about, you know, Matthew, I resonate with that to the extent that actual countries that exist today in Scandinavia have been able to do the closest that I have seen to having a really well functioning social safety net. But they've done it within the context of, you know, still having a robust free market economy. I can't think of anywhere else that.
- [59:38]
Matthew Remsky
Depends on global inequalities, actually. I mean, it's. They're, they're not great examples. They're examples isolation. If you don't take all of the outsourcing into consideration, but the Reason I.
- [59:48]
Julian Walker
Use them as examples is because they exist. I can't think of another country in the world that exists.
- [59:56]
Matthew Remsky
I know the quiet little leftists in the corner have been talking for 100 years about what can work, what might work, why things don't work in a very self critical way. Too right?
- [60:06]
Julian Walker
Well, yeah, the quiet ones have been doing that, the loud ones have been staging revolution and those have not gone well.
- [60:11]
Matthew Remsky
Yes, moving on. So is there any leftism in the free press? I took a scan through the entire live stream and I wanted to ask a couple of questions. So just to underline this point, did any panelist mention wealth redistribution? Nobody. Term didn't come up. Was there any conversation about wealth inequality? Not much in any solution sense because most of it was sublimated into these vague things about the alienation between the elites and the working class. Any talk of universal health care? Yes, Marianne Williamson brought it up and so did Nina Turner. Ohio Democratic State Senator, Former. I think I'm very interested in why somebody like she is there. And also Brianna Joy Gray and what they add to that kind of scene. Was there any talk about labor unions? Not much, except to gloat a little that Trump was up in labor support. So what did they say about the working class? Well, not really much because they were really just talking about young men who were alienated by Wokeness. How well will Trump help the working class? Is another question I had for the transcript, which they're not sure about. But mainly they talked about tax cuts and border security and getting rid of Wokeness. And then was there any mention of public works programming? No, but tax cuts and border security and getting rid of Wokeness will help. Was there any talk of the green economy, manufacturing?
- [61:44]
Julian Walker
No, that's wokeness.
- [61:45]
Matthew Remsky
Right. Did any panelists advocate for raising the minimum wage? Yes. Ding ding, ding. Nina Turner, you know Bernie, organizer, standout, guest. Must have been a very lonely night.
- [61:58]
Julian Walker
Yeah. Window dressing in my opinion.
- [61:59]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah. With the exception of Turner and a few bits from Williamson, I think this is really a bunch of liberals and conservatives who tend towards libertarianism, complaining about liberal policies that are not deregulated enough, complaining about being silenced when they have millions of followers complaining about being judged and browbeaten by political correctness. There's plenty of vague mentions of the working class, but no substantial discussion of leftist solutions like you would think. These ideas didn't exist and they don't need them because they've found their media market and I think they'll just be fine.
- [62:35]
Julian Walker
My closing comments here are about two things so far from their much vaunted heterodox balance. As we've heard in Matthew's rundown, the tone of the Free Press's post election coverage, their post election coverage has largely been mocking. Essentially, this is the line. Everyone in the legacy media who sees Trump's victory as an indictment of the electorate or what lies ahead as ominous and un American is just an out of touch and condescending elite. Bari Weiss wrote that there was better analysis from the nine year old daughter of their senior editor and they clipped this to put in the article after the election. She's being asked on the live stream why Kamala lost and the nine year old girl replies, maybe it was the border, maybe it was her personality. She did a terrible job as Vice president. So this is the the analysis, the scintillating analysis from Barry Weiss. You can get better stuff there than you're going to get on, say, cnn. But the more important topic is this. The Free Press presents itself as a plucky little independent startup and they're against the elites. But it doesn't take too much journalistic digging to expose some quite different facts. Financial Times reported for example, that in September the Free Press were valued at $100 million. And from the beginning the funding for the Free Press has come from the same group of billionaires who have supported the campaigns of RFK Jr and JD Vance and other more ultra right wing political candidates. These investors are the red pilled Silicon Valley bros who along with Elon Musk Musk have trended very heavily towards maga. One significant investor in the Free Press also owns several conservative anti woke outlets in England. There's more, but the names and the relationships would all be too dizzying a list for this short conclusion. Call me the blue pilled corkboard guy if you like, but to me what's noteworthy in all of this is how much of the time those presenting themselves as nonpartisan, heterodox and independent and as the trustworthy and brave digital alternatives to corrupt mainstream media and government are actually bought and paid for to just ask questions on right wing culture war talking points.
- [65:01]
Derek Barris
Thank you for listening to another episode of conspirituality and in this precarious time, if you are someone who is able to support independent media, we are on Patreon and Apple subscriptions. We'll see you soon.