Russell Brand on the Veil Being Lifted on the Corporate Political Establishment

When we talk about what are the ideologies that drive us, the ideology of progress, this is why I have sometimes, I'm sceptical, not about technology, the mastery and the geniuses that work in that field, but how technology and science as a subset of our economic ideology can create exactly the conditions that you are describing and that that journalist has exposed. That if your ideology permits that, then what kind of ideology is that? What kind of unconsciousness are we living in? It's not an awakened culture and all of the discourse around, like, you know, how we treat one another as individuals and progressivism culturally in domestic territories, hey, people should be allowed to do this and that, it's all, it's nonsense. If that is permitted, not only permitted, required, it's a requirement. You cannot have that economic model without that price being paid. And as a culture, whether it's me as an individual or our entire culture, we've accepted that contract, we've accepted those terms. Well, we have in some areas of our life for sure. You know, hopefully people haven't done that in their interpersonal, intimate relationships, but we certainly have in the way we communicate with others. We've certainly accepted, like, very bizarre ways of communicating online. And sometimes that bleeds out into real life, like where someone talks to people in the real world as if they're on Twitter and they get bashed. Like, you see that sometimes. I think it's a very strange time where we, I don't think people have a lot of faith right now in institutions. And I don't think they have a lot of faith in authority. I don't think they really believe that there is someone who is wiser than them that has a grand plan that's logical, that's workable, where they're looking out for all of us. So I think there's like a feeling of chaos that exists today that I don't think has ever existed in my life like this before. Even back during, like, the Bush administration when they thought, you know, everybody thought Bush was a moron, they still thought there's a good cabinet and they're following all the checks and balances, even though they're probably extracting too much money and there's probably a lot of cronyism and a lot of undercover deals and a lot of like no-bid contracts with Halliburton and that kind of nonsense. He still thought they have things pretty under control. It's a very solid institution. Nobody believes that now. You see Pete Buttigieg and fucking Kamala Harris and Biden can't get a sentence out. You're like, this is madness. These people are utter fools and these are the people that are running everything and these are the people that are getting us on the brink of war with Russia. And I don't have any faith in them and I think most people don't. I think you're right. And with that era of the Cheney, Bush, Wolf of its Rumsfeld, you feel like, oh, these are the Death Star Bods. What's happened is there's this Risen Up Military Industrial Complex Rand Foundation ideologues from the Republican right who were the sanctioned baddies back in those days are trying to, yeah, profit from the colonization of the Middle East. It's part of a new American project. We could sort of understood it, but for where I'm coming from, it was somehow recognizable and a million people went on a march to prevent that war taking place because they knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, which we now know to be the truth. And as you say now, the figures that are in that place are sort of posing as the good guys, like affable and avuncular presidents and sort of friendly people of, you know, across the identitarian spectrum that's meant to feel inclusive and progressive. Yeah, they're wrapping themselves up with progressive identity politics and then promoting a war. Yes. At the same time, it's very wild. Yeah, it feels like a mask and a veil. Like, this is what's interesting for me is, as we navigate this new and emergent space of being able to prevent present counter narratives and continually, like all of us now have like experience, oh, you're right wing conspiracy theorist, you've joined the alt right, you're a gateway to this, the dark, all of that language that grows up around it, like this, and I've heard you speak about this obviously a lot, but the truth is that who isn't sympathetic, who anyone that's got a family or love someone is sympathetic to the idea that people are going to have various types of identity around culture and religious expression and racial expression and this is a conversation that the whole culture has to be involved in together. What my issue is, I don't think they believe in that stuff. I don't think they care. I don't think that they are creating an agenda to advance the interests of vulnerable people. I think they are using it as a distraction and a veil in order to carry on with the same kind of corporate and financial interests that have always determined what the establishment is. And if there's one thing we can point to in our lifetime, is that the liberal establishment has become co-opted by the same forces that traditionally we regarded the right to have been co-opted by military complex, financial industry. And there's now, there's palpable evidence for that and in order to not acknowledge that that transition has taken place, they're able to keep the cultural conversation going. We care about your right to express yourself and your identity. That's a way of not acknowledging we're just the same. We're pro-war and now when there's that war, you know, like Jimmy Dore and all those guys did that anti-war march in Washington or whatever, it's like 5,000 people go. Now, I don't know if that's because of the last few years and what the pandemic's done to people who are accumulating and gathering crowds or whether people have lost their belief and faith that people can have any impact on politics anymore. There's just now this immersive sense of apathy, this, as you say, loss of trust in institutions and authority. But something extraordinary has happened when people that say that they're, you know, we're the peace and love party or the party that are advocating for war won't include some of the complex conditions that have led to this current crisis, which this is clearly a case for like NATO's infringement on Russian territory, the 2014 coup. And I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but like it's extraordinary that those conversations don't happen. It's like actually like the post-Trump and post-pandemic, everything sort of enters into that template. There are certain things you're not allowed to say now. If you sort of say, were Russia in any way provoked? Is there any legitimacy to their military actions from their perspective? That's the same as saying, oh, I don't think you should take certain medications or maybe masks aren't necessary. And people aren't, it doesn't seem that the culture is learning. It doesn't seem that the, as the evidence is evolving, that people are saying, oh, wow, look, the stuff you were being told two years ago now, the things you couldn't say online two or three years ago, now there's evidence for that. In fact, I've bought documentation in case the conversation went in this direction, Joe, in my new position as a legitimate investigative journalist, I've got actual papers that I can show you from conspiracy to fact.