Name: Russell Brand on the Veil Being Lifted on the Corporate Political Establishment
Uploaded: 2023-03-02T19:19:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Russell Brand on the Veil Being Lifted on the Corporate Political Establishment' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Russell Brand on the Veil Being Lifted on the Corporate Political Establishment' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-03-02. Transcript available.

When we talk about what are the ideologies that drive us, the ideology of
progress, this is why I have sometimes am skeptical 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 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 are, 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, 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, that's workable, where they're looking out for all of us. So I think
there's like a,
a, 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, they still thought there's a good cabinet and they, they, they're
following all the
checks and balances, even though they're probably extracting too much money.
And they probably,
it'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, 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, 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 the, um,
that era of the Cheney,
Bush, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, it felt like, oh, these are the Death Star bods.
What's happening 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, uh,
yeah, profit from
the colonization of the Middle East. It's part of a new American project. We
sort of understood it,
but from 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 like,
you know, that 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 experienced, Oh, you're a right wing conspiracy theorist.
You've joined it.
All 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, industrial 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 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 are 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,
you know, 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.
Right. It's like,
actually, like, that 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.