Protest and the Myth of Progress: the Opposite of Democracy

nothing could be more insufferable than the pretense that you and you alone represent the truth whether that is in contrast to a false religion ideology or mythology allow me to open this discussion allow me to begin this video by instead contrasting one myth to another let's suppose a 12 year old child asks you where does democracy come from how is it that new democracies are made in this world over say the last 100 years and looking ahead this child is getting old enough now that they're seeing and hearing things in the news looking at the next 100 years where where does democracy come from now you're talking to a child you can tell the truth but you can only tell so much of the truth perhaps to some extent no matter how honest you want to be you're going to engage in a bit of mythology a bit of mythological reasoning you're going to hint at or suggest some deeper truths but you're going to simplify the reality of what history is and what's going on in politics right here well you know son in japan democracy was created when they were conquered by the american army democracy is the system of government the japanese committed to in negotiating the end of american military occupation does anyone alive think that japan would have become a democracy if it had not been conquered by the american army does anyone think that japan would have become a democracy if instead they had been conquered by the russian army and in case you didn't know that was happening simultaneously and that's why several islands in the north of japan are russian territory to this day how did uh how did south korea become a democracy how did taiwan become a democracy why is why is germany a democracy how did any of these places become democracies what's the origin of democracy couldn't we present a very different myth of democracy that does indeed tell you some of the truth perhaps not all of it perhaps it simplifies perhaps it overly simplifies history but it picks and chooses certain facts from that history to tell you something that's really profound and important about politics in our own time that's that's where democracy comes from and that's why iraq has elections today do you think that if america had not conquered iraq or if they had allowed isis to conquer and rule iraq do you think there would be any pretense of democracy any elections any freedom of the press to criticize political leaders do you think that would exist in america and you know the strangest thing about the type of mythology i'm attacking in this video is that it simultaneously wants to ignore india and yet also very cynically employ selected anecdotes about the political history of india in order to you know support their own hands where does where does democracy come from the 12 year old kid asking if you have a 12 year old son let's just say to keep this protracted metaphor going where does where does democracy come from well you know son more than one billion people live in democracy in india today and you know why that is it's because they were conquered by the british empire democracy in india is the system of government they settled on in negotiations that would end the military occupation of india it was an agreement their constitution was worked out completely through elite level politics india is not a democracy because of street protests no [Laughter] are you kidding me oh and and i'm sorry do you think do you think if india had never been conquered by the british or if india had instead been conquered by the japanese and the japanese had never been conquered by the americans if it had been incorporated into the imperial you know japanese co-prosperity sphere japanese empire do you think do you think india would be a democracy today oh yeah and you know the hypothetical examples go much further than this so we have a positive example right a positive example of how imperialism creates democracy in india and sri lanka why why do you think taiwan is a democracy and china isn't mainland why do you think that is what kind of myth do you they just didn't have enough street protests is that what it is they didn't have enough people holding up placards they didn't have enough sexy women taking their clothes off and appearing on newspaper covers oh attractive women take off their clothes for political cause headline news tune in for the nightly news at six there just weren't enough attractive women willing to get naked in china there weren't enough young men chanting slogans and holding up is that is that what it is or are we willing to say that if one man in the united states of america the man who happened to be president of the united states america had committed to oppose mao zedong to oppose communism to send in troops if you know during world war ii or after world war ii during that period of history broadly speaking you can you can broaden out by ten years on either end frankly but if during this long period of internacing civil war and revolution in china if america had made the decision made the commitment then china would have democracy today china had the misfortune not to be conquered by the american army not to be conquered by the british empire imagine how much better off china could be today if they had a political system just as good as what india has imagine how much better off china would be today if they had the political system iraq has many of you will be saying or feeling wow what a tremendously bleak and dark picture of the world of just presenting with you is it is it bleak is it dark is it hopeless right now kazakhstan right now myanmar right now belarus what hope do they have to achieve democracy the only hope they have is that they're conquered by the united states of america that is it the only hope they have is that there is an american-led military intervention to create democracy period there is no other way for there to be democracy in myanmar there is no other way to have democracy in belarus there is no other way to have democracy in kazakhstan and there are marginal cases the ukraine will have as much or as little democracy as america is willing to buy oh yes our most cynical allies in the world the ukraine they got real interested in democracy precisely when the russian army started taking away more and more than not before that you know it's pretty much simultaneous with their need to elicit support from the american government they got real interested in democracy oh yeah yeah now all of a sudden the ukraine represents uh western ideals of democracy against and in contrast to the russians right that's that's the game we're playing at least on the level of propaganda and many others many other countries have tried to do this you know cynically you know well once we're in a civil war or once we're being invaded by some other country now we'll try to present ourselves to the americans and look you know america isn't the only country in the world that has an army it's just who's actually willing to show the initiative india could conquer myanmar india could conquer afghanistan they could right now 2022 i don't mean retrospect 2023 whatever looking at the future you know india could if you know anything about politics they will only do that if they're in lockstep with the united states of america it's impossible to imagine the the indian army uh taking that initiative uh without uh some kind of collusion with some kind of encouragement from the united states of everybody in india has an enormous army and they're willing to take the casualties that if huge numbers of people would die but that's that's worth oh you want oh you thought democracy didn't involve killing people is that what you thought did you think democracy was about peace do you think it was about equality what do you think democracy is where do these myths come from and what purpose do they serve so i'm asking you seriously um what are the consequences of even tolerating these myths about democracy in our times now guys i do see your comments from the audience coming in if you have a second hit the thumbs up button more people can uh more people can join the conversation and more people can disagree with me and i am interested in hearing your your uh your disagreements um okay so i'm just just gonna respond to one person sorry i have a lot more to say somebody called the galaxy lab who i've never seen in my audience before no big deal but welcome i haven't uh your name is not from me says quote lol american style democracy is an utter joke around the world have you been to south korea i have what do you think about the difference between south korea and north korea you think that's a joke you think people aren't willing to fight and die for the difference between south korea and north korea how about the difference between life in florida and life in cuba you think that's a joke you think american-style democracy's joke you're wrong have you been to south america have you been to countries like brazil and colombia and venezuela venezuela a horrifying example i think there are a whole lot of people all around the world whether they're in countries that are clinging to the fragments of democracy that are kind of just barely democratic or countries that are outright dictatorships who keenly feel and appreciate what the difference is between living in an american-style democracy and living in their current circumstances am i claiming american democracy is perfect no i'm telling you that if you were an intellectual born and raised in iran if you were an intellectual born and raised in communist china those these people travel you know they take vacations in the united states some of them have college programs exchange programs okay the difference between life in america and life under a despotic regime it is no joke it's deadly serious and oh i'm sorry so i don't know if you even watch the news you know there was this hopeless revolution in syria all right and even in syria do you know how many tens of thousands of people volunteered to fight and die for the possibility that their country could have american-style democracy instead of dictation for the dream of a syrian democracy now yes by the way i realized that wasn't the only dream there were also muslim fundamentalists who were fighting because their dream was to have a even more even more despotic even less democratic society ruled by sharia law there were many dreamers with many different dreams but all these people stood up ready to fight and die for a democratic future in syria given the level of education those people have the level of political sophistication the kind of repression they've been living under all right so if you um if you ever watched the footage of what happened in the tiananmen square protests in china they built a statue of liberty and those were all people born and raised under the most extreme communist dictatorship imaginable they're people who grew up seeing [Music] american imperialism vilified american democracy denounced constantly that's all they heard from their teachers it's all they read in textbooks it's a totally one-sided condemnation of american democracy okay and the tiananmen square protesters they were predominantly uh university educated people it's not worth getting all the details but they they were i mean they were not farmers and peasants and illiterate people from the countryside the vast majority of them were university educated people in the downtown part of beijing and that's where it was that's who those people were and they literally built a copy of somewhat artistic reinterpretation of the statue of liberty all right how easy for you to say lol american style democracy is a joke around the world those people stood up and fought and died for democracy in china they didn't they didn't hypothetically risk their lives they did risk their lives and they're dead now okay and and it wasn't just them that died most of them their parents were hunted down and killed their brothers and sisters were hunted down and killed and this is chinese style repression it's not all at once it's not overnight it's over a few years so that the ripples aren't as noticeable but step by step those people and their relatives were erased you think that's a joke all right now look i can sit here and uh from my privileged position i can talk about the advantages of swiss democracy over american democracy i can talk about the advantages of denmark over the united states of america okay and also as it happens in terms of education background i can point to taiwan as a very positive example of a well-functioning democracy and i've already mentioned japan there are advantages to the japanese system of democracy to the taiwanese system switzerland you know there are many models of democracy right now in kazakhstan right now in myanmar right now in belarus right now in ukraine is it swiss democracy they're crying out for is it support and intervention from switzerland is it denmark they're reaching out for is it israel is it taiwan is it japan is it india no it's american democracy okay it's not british democracy either it's not the british system parliament all right you could write a science fiction novel i mean you can imagine a different world where it's not american democracy that's the dominant model and you can imagine a different world where japan instead of being this nominally pacifist nation is instead an incredibly hawkish militant country pushing for democracy everywhere from mongolia to cambodia but they're not okay i mean the the japanese are sitting down and pouring sake into a cup and drinking with all the corrupt dictators throughout asia that's their style they're not trying to make myanmar into a democracy they're not putting any pressure on cambodia or laos they're pouring money into those countries and supporting dictatorship and in case you hadn't heard the japanese also like to do business with iran now there are a lot of different reasons for that but one of them is racism you know i'll tell you something but the japanese attitude the japanese look at people like the iranians and people like the burmese and the cambodians and they just think oh well you're not you're not as advanced as us you're not as sophistic you couldn't possibly have our system going there's a really deep dehumanizing racism that separates the japanese uh from the rest of the world and you know obviously i'm not claiming the swiss aren't racist the swiss have their own form of racism people of denmark probably have their own kind of racism too uh so on and so forth you know but sure there are reasons why it is america and america alone these people look to it's america alone that's it's creating this model you know and yes it's taken incredibly seriously and there are incredibly serious consequences for the whole world for better for worse now look guys um i remember eight years ago and the world's changed a lot in eight years there was this wave of youtube channels and youtube videos saying that you yes you could lead a better life if you packed your bags and moved to japan and these are videos mostly aimed at white americans to some extent white western europeans like maybe there were some british people and germans and so on but predominantly it was white americans who had a university education and when they finished the university education they finished a ba they had no particular hope for a better life in the united states america no no particular employment prospects may be looking at getting a job as a waiter or a waitress some very humble employment after completing a bachelor's degree in university united states america and then there's this one path to money fame power respect and sex probably more sex than anything else and that is the route of relocating to japan the easiest at that time most abundant form of employment was being in english as a second language teacher so there's this huge kind of a political movement on youtube i mean it didn't perceive itself as political reaching out to pandering to catering to university educated people in america who wanted a better life to know how to get it and saying hey there's employment for you here in japan there's this much money it's not really spectacular wealth we can earn a good living as a teacher in japan you can have a new and better life so just that little bit of money i got to see how that inspired a whole ideology now why do i say ideology these people became consumed with it and you know start to fantasize maybe when they're in the middle of their university degree about this new and better life that can happen in japan and whether they are male or female that once they get to japan as a white american suddenly there'll be so much more sexual interest in them they'll be so much more handsome if they're a man they'll be perceived as so much more beautiful as a white woman if they move to japan if they make themselves exotic and they start studying the japanese language and they start watching the cartoons and if they weren't already playing the video games playing even more of the video games they start to admire the culture they start to take on certain political attitudes and i know people i mean most of these people became right-wing sometimes they became left-wing but they became politically you know japanophiles started adopting this japan-centric view of the world and a lot of people got on that train and didn't take the next step of actually moving to japan many did they went and they taught english in japan but they got it into their heads that a better life was possible for them personally there was money to motivate them personally on that small scale and then on a larger scale there was a better model of society japan a country with no unemployment japan a country with no crime uh uh and here's the right wing part japan a country with no immigration and ironically the people who subscribed to this view were themselves aspiring to be immigrants relocated to japan but yeah this is the japanese model and the explosion of popular interest in it what's happened in the social media era of political organization you know is that there's a lot more money in this way motivating people's thoughts people's feelings ultimately people's activism uh shall we say it's a very direct relationship between what you say what you do how you present yourself on camera and how much money comes in in donations now i have read the autobiography of benjamin franklin benjamin franklin represents the old model of politics he literally owned the newspaper he literally organized a salon saloon if you like um a gentleman's book reading club they would read a book and then come in and have a meeting and discuss what they've read this is the old methods of political you know organization and he would solicit donations by going in person he would walk up to the doors of wealth people's houses wealthy people's mansions and manners and he would speak to them face to face and the term used back then was a subscription he would ask them to take out a subscription in supporting a a political cause he was asking them for money and he raised money for an enormous array of things just to give a couple examples he opened a school he created and opened a library he created a street cleaning service um so there are donations that were used to employ people to sweep and wash the i think they didn't even have sidewalks but you know the streets such as they were at the time there's a long list and by the way quite a few wars came and went before you get to the american revolution and that was if you will pardon the non-vegan metaphor that was shoe leather politics walk up to someone's door knock on the door oh it's benjamin franklin it's benjamin franklin asking you to donate money now you know i'm not a big fan of benjamin franklin a certain kind of character a certain kind of personality was attracted and rewarded and there are certain barriers to entry in the politics of that era i would say it's one in the same era from benjamin franklin all the way through to dr martin luther king jr the skill set you needed was precisely being a christian preacher and it's no surprise that so many of the populist democratic and semi-democratic leaders they were in effect trained by the church what do you do as a as a church pastor well you have kind of two modes of communication one is getting up at a pulpit speaking to a crowd whether that's 30 people or 300 people and you practice that probably from childhood maybe from your teenage years you practice speaking to a crowd and the other is sitting down and either with sincere humility or phony humility talking to someone face to face about their problems or you call that counseling i suppose right somebody like martin luther king jr right this was the training he had that no offense most of you in the audience don't have there's one person in the audience who's done this let me know right and guys i have this training too why do you think i'm so much better at this than all these jackasses who try to be leaders in the vegan movement and ecology all right i'm not going to digress here into my whole autobiography you know i recognize that i'm someone who in some ways could have thrived on the old model yes it involved publications on paper but crucially i mean if if benjamin franklin just had a stutter if benjamin franklin had a speech impediment right none of us would be talking today about benjamin the ability to with confidence knock on someone's door and you know what that time would have been a servant who answered the door in many cases it would have been a slave to my story and you'd say tell your master that benjamin franklin is here to talk to you whether that was to ask for money for the war effort or to build a build a hospital or whatever his project at the time was and that was that was really his whole career leading up to he was already an old old man when the american revolution happened he had this long career as a major political figure uh before the revolution before the writing of the constitution that he was tangentially involved and he was slightly involved in the writing the american constitution but really his his book he was already in the post-retirement period he was in his old old age at that stage um certain kind of person a certain kind of profile for who can be a political leader who can succeed and who's going to be excluded by that old world of politics okay well now in the 21st century we have a different kind of incentive structure and a different kind of person who's going to succeed it's not benjamin franklin anymore all right wayne siong this man has no charisma none zero he has no personality he's not a good writer he has nothing interesting to say i've read his essays to my knowledge he hasn't written a book but i've read his writing it's not just his public speaking than ever all right there is absolutely nothing interesting about him wayne siong raised millions of dollars in donations by just studying and responding to what it was that the audience wanted to hear now you'll see why i'm mentioning this this directly prefigures what happened with extinction rebellion in many many ways whether you call it the marketing of wayne siong uh wayne young's organization is called dxe director network or you think of it as actually the political philosophy of wayne stone it is identical to the philosophy of extinction rebellion i think these are methods tactics tropes that we're now going to see exploited again and again because there are millions of dollars involved right the motivation for people to behave this way and for political movements to organize this way in a way that i feel is not just undemocratic but anti-democratic all right it is spelled out in dollars and cents as never before sorry let me just ask you real quick when benjamin franklin wanted to be taken seriously when he wanted political support and financial support wanted donations do you think he needed people to stand in the street holding placards and chanting is that where his base of political support came from the difference is subtle but it's not [ __ ] subtle at all once you let yourself see it you know what uh well oh we're dealing with a completely different all right okay so how does wayne style make money how does wayne siong have a multi-million dollar success story in the you know in some ways competitive world of putting out your shingle for your charity and saying hey hey don't donate to those other guys donate to me other people promise they're gonna make the world a better place first and foremost bedrock commitment is to pseudoscience he takes his political ideology and he misrepresents it to the audience as scientific fact he claims that if you study history of the world throughout the whole of history there's only one method of achieving progress that works this is established and proven by quote-unquote social science research some of you've been watching my channel for years so you've heard me drawing attention to this and criticizing it for years for some of you it's your first time uh thinking about this he says okay it is a proven scientific fact that this and this alone is the way to social progress and it's very telling what the examples are that he marshaled in support of that argument say in season one of uh direct action everywhere season one of his political movement season one of his finals mohandas gandhi meant known to many of you as mahatma gandhi martin luther king jr um if you want an example that directly prefigures dxe and wayne syong i would point to the cult group or cult-like group landmark so landmark and before it was called landmark it was called est est they changed their name for different reasons they were always hammering home to people don't you want to be like martin luther king don't you want to be like gandhi and it's quite possible wayne chung himself attended a landmark event that he got this from it's also possibly just got it from the zeitgeist shall we say what was floating around in our in pop culture at that time now i pointed out to wayne and i i have reason to believe it's not worth anyone wayne did hear my critique of his movement at that time be a long story see how i know that but one very simple example he did put a tweet on twitter that that mentioned me and provided a link to my videos so that was that's some evidence and i have other evidence i have no reason to think wayne is listening to this discussion we're having today or that he's become a fan of my channel all term but i know that early on he did listen to my critique and one of the fundamental questions to ask there is look how much do you really know about mohandas gandhi oh how much do you really know about dr martin luther king jr and how that example applies to your so you know there were there were these kinds of questions all right so the purpose of this video that critique is is irrelevant because i'm not pointing to the extent to which things are are true or false taking the truth and falsehood as a whole and i'm adam writing it as mythology this is a kind of mythology you know was presented it was an incredibly powerful myth the power of this myth is proven through its fundraising people donated millions of dollars to support this myth and sir so we've just gone over it scientific fact is asserted as a scientific fact there's only one way to achieve progress and and now they're going to show you what it is now they're going to tell you what it is it's it's the same i mean this is like the the cult belief and the power of possible pardon me the power of positive thinking you know oh oh don't you know the secret don't you know the secret that made dr martin luther king jr a success don't you know the secret that made behind us gandhian success it's the same secret we're gonna sell to you now sign up and donate it's the same secret of democratic progress don't you know the secret that accomplished civil rights equal rights for black people united states america don't you know the secret that put an end to the vietnam war can you guess what it is i'll let you in on a secret if you donate one million dollars to my phony ass political charity don't ask any questions about what's being done with that money but where it goes or what we need a million dollars for is that what ended the vietnam war was people donating millions dollars is that is that all that so there was this very um tightly defined set of cultural touchstones all of which were american i mean none of these have anything to do with the history of germany none of them have to do the history of japan south korea and india i mean that's the most absurd thing of all like they're they're invoking india especially just the name of mahatma gandhi i don't like to call him mahatma but i prefer to call him hondas but anyway he's gandhi in either case you know india is being kind of cynically employed this way but there's no interest in the political history of any other country or continent there's no interest in the political history of africa the caribbean south america these are all uniquely american cultural touchstones but they're put out there in this tantalizing way home the reason why martin luther king jr was successful the reason why the anti-vietnam war protests were successful it's it's the secret and that secret is a scientific fact it's a rule it's a law as inescapable as the laws of physics like gravity like friction like inertia millions of dollars all right thousands of people donated millions of dollars okay that was the formula you know wayne came up with and you know anyone who goes through the sources from that time you know uh you will see the extent to which his work was derivative of other people's writing and there's nothing wrong with that we can also see the ways in which it was original that he took particular bits and pieces put them together now it's important to recognize briefly the marketing ploy adapted and changed over time so in the beginning they claimed that they were not an organization they claimed that they were a completely horizontal network of activists that they had no leaders and no followers no constitution no organization but then what are you donating to all right you got a problem right i don't know if that lasted for one year or two years i mean i could get into the exact timeline when did they remove those claims from their website when was it replaced with a different you know philosophy they had a number of sex scandals that was the turning point and then they started to claim that they're not a fully horizontal organization they're actually a very vertical organization and there's you know there's one man in charge and then below that one man there's a council they started to explicitly claim that they were a hierarchical organization but my point is here i mean some elements of the mythology remain the same but other elements changed with time and they changed directly in response to what earned money and what didn't what elicited donation what solicited donations i should say and what didn't so you know what it turns out people hugging cute animals gets donations that wasn't part of their founding mission and mandate right their initial claim was that this one method of protest and disruption was the way to pursue social political change they were against going into factory farms and taking film footage that wasn't what their their mission was they were not initially an organization based on rescuing and adopting animals they were about disruption i don't have to get into what that means and they claim their method of disruption is the same thing that mama gandhi did and the same thing that martin luther king jr did which is again questionable beginners but that's the myth that's mythology okay well guess what not that many people want to donate money to a bunch of [ __ ] idiots standing in a restaurant holding placards holding signs and slogans chanting it's not food it's violence that wasn't what got the money rolling in breaking and entering going into a factory farm going into a slaughterhouse going to these types of facilities and rescuing an animal or photographing yourself petting an animal okay this got them the kind of attention from the press that wanted this gotham the kind of donations they wanted all right there were millions and millions of dollars involved here now as i already stated in the preview to this video so there's a just a six minute video that sets up this conversation and invited people to be here for the live stream uh a little more than an hour in advance it is true that a crucial prelude to the success of dxe direct action everywhere and and shaping this this changing notion we have of democracy changing notion of public protest changing notion of the pursuit of political change you know it was a very important prelude in the formation of the so-called effective altruism movement now if you google how much money did effective altruism manage to funnel manage to move around it is allegedly in excess of one billion dollars maybe you can find an estimate somewhere that it's above two billion dollars obviously there's a reason to lie or exaggerate that i have no reason to think one billion dollars is the correct number or two billion but it is many many many millions of dollars that have been collected in donations or donations that have been budged around and reallocated uh the amount of money involved with the so-called effective altruism movement is unbelievable so again this motivates this motivates people right just the prospect you can have a better life in japan motivates people as i said earlier that's you know for kind of a survival salary but a salary and a quality of life and a social position position of influence and power and respect in japan that's better than what you have if you stay in kansas better than being a waitress in kansas you know um this powerfully motivates people so when we're talking about millions of dollars when we're talking about tens of millions of dollars and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars right you can think about think about distorting these motivations guys i'm happy to have your your comments here i mean i obviously i'm i can choose what i do and don't respond to based on how interesting or salient or intelligent it is uh frankly so brendan williams asks quote in the past you've mentioned canada being a pseudo-democracy do you think our governance model is outdated someone said we have paleolithic emotions medieval governance but god-like technology it's an interesting comment from brandon so brendan i've written a whole book about that the book is called no more manifestos um buy it and read it but yes the book is a very harsh condemnation of the political systems we have both in the united states and canada but there's a kind of good news there too right like is this pessimism or is this optimism because the understanding i present of american democracy is basically that what is right with america is right despite its constitution not because of it and that's very good news you know um i think it's much much bleaker view of the world if you look at america and canada as being inhabited by terrible people but who have a wonderful constitution or a wonderful justice system wonderful criminal law system or wonderful electoral system but terrible people that's much more pessimistic than saying well look there's something really right about american culture there's something really right about the american people and um it's unfortunate that they have a bad system of laws a bad uh system of government generally and so on so i i regard that as as optimistic rather than pessimistic but obviously if you're a conventional jingoistic canadian nationalist or something all you want to hear is that canada is a great system of parliament i guess you could respond to that at least initially in a shallow way as as bad news or as kind of disillusioning so a manangoanka asks quote what are your thoughts on english democracy vis-a-vis american democracy so there's quite a lot of material on that in my book too in no more manifestos and what's paradoxical about american democracy is that it presents itself as the antithesis to british democracy right it was a revolution against a rebellion against the british right this is out so it presents itself um and in so many ways i mean almost in every single way instead the system of government the americans created was a continuation of the british parliamentary system so again i've written a whole book dealing with it there are several chapters talking about this exact issue and these paradoxes and what what's entailed by what's perhaps worth saying here briefly um americans at that time so during the revolution during the negotiations surrounding the constitution this gap between you first you have the revolution then you have the constitution um americans were presented with the myth that they were returning to the virtues of ancient rome and ancient sparta the ancient roman republic and specifically sparta not athens and what i try to show in the book in a powerful way is that that was a lie i was not even false it's really an intentional lie and there was no attempt whatsoever made by the americans we're talking about a small number of americans a small number of elite americans including benjamin franklin including thomas jefferson including john adams the people who directly participated in the creation of the american system of government at many states including my my favorite governor morris governor morris a fascinating historical figure um so it's not a huge number of people were generalized materials a few dozen people um they were aware of the model of government in ancient athens ancient rome and sparta they did know about these things and there was absolutely no interest in creating a republic on that model democracy in that model etc so yeah that's my my comment about that and again you get i think reflections on that that are really useful that really have pragmatic value pragmatic importance now in the year 2022 and moving forward i'm not just talking about history for what it adds to our understanding of history i'm talking about history for the way it can change politics now and in the future by the way so i'm not offended by these questions um wicked energy uh asks uh quote isil would you do a response to someone anti-democratic like nick frantisco is called so i just say very briefly um the critique of wayne siong is not popular on my channel nobody wants to hear me talk about the critique of roger hallam so roger hallam is the leader of um extinction rebellion thank you uh so this ecological movement to do with climate change extinction rebellion the no one wants to see my views about roger helen like people people watch my videos about roger helm and extension because they're interested in me i'm not drawing in any new viewers that way nobody's interested in that topic and most of my viewers they wish i was talking about something else okay i am engaged in the analysis of figures like wayne syong and roger hallman including right now in this in this video because i really genuinely think there's something for you and the audience to learn from it of tremendous importance and with no false humility there's something for me to learn from it too like i learn i benefit from the analysis of what's going on with those those political leaders so when you talk about someone like nick fuentes and another example would be in mendom um you know it might be more popular i might it might be more salacious and more entertaining for me to lay into for me to in an over-the-top way condem nick fuentes or criticize and condemn in momentum but i i really don't think there's uh anything much to to learn from it you know for me or for you so you know obviously i'm not saying this to then slam the door on it but you know i have if you look through my channel i have criticized many extreme political figures communists uh fascists all kinds of different people but you know think about what is the educational value of critique or what's the what's the political value of it sure sometimes you know so so another example i i think nobody has ever asked me to criticize sargon of akkad i think his real name is carl benjamin i i'm sorry approximately uh and nobody's ever asked me to criticize certain people i know i've had a couple videos uh at least kind of mentioning him it's come up a couple of times right you know i'm not gonna say there's zero value to that but sure one i'm engaged in the in the critique of uh you know that's all i'm saying well how much how much value is there in engaging in a particular kind of uh political criticism you know and by the way my time is limited my money is limited it is you know i think there would be tremendous value right now about uh delving into a critique of the politics of kazakhstan all of syndicate i think it's tremendously important and i feel i can't do it i feel i can't take the time and you know no offense i'm not like blaming you in the audience but i don't have the audience to support me in doing that either you know i mean you can imagine if i had one million viewers and 10 000 of them were really willing to support me financially as well as just with viewing numbers in in digging in deeper and deeper into the current politics of kazakhstan i'd love to do it myanmar i would love to make more videos talking about myanmar right but uh so so yeah these are you know in pragmatic terms this is what you this is what you get into now as unpopular as it may be for me to talk about in this video as my examples uh roger hallam and um waynes young i can mention here also peter singer no nobody wants to hear me talk about peter center okay nobody not even vegans who've been watching my channel for eight years nobody wants to hear me talk about peterson but those at least are faces people in my audience can immediately relate to and you care about to some extent and you know political leaders in laos in kazakhstan and myanmar even thailand nobody is you can't even really imagine who i'm talking about or why you can't relate to it uh and yet by the way peter singer is another figure who's going to come up in in today's discussion uh so those of you who don't know who peter singer is you can google it now if you've never heard of peter singer um yeah so you know there's something said for that but sure i really sincerely believe that what i'm doing here is important and again it has pragmatic real world value and real consequences so just say this also at this point uh by the way guys if you have a second hit the thumbs up button it helps more people discover the video while it's going and it'll help more people discover it later too but it'll help more people actually join this this conversation you know um talent is scarce there is absolutely no jealousy in my heart whatsoever but if you think about over a 10-year period how much money was there going into non-communist non-socialist utopian projects you know what sorry let's let's flesh all about also non-fascist uh non-christian non-muslim right if you think about the political spectrum the area i'm interested in is in the middle like it doesn't go too far left and doesn't go too far right there's a certain number of millions of dollars that are going to be donated to someone wayne siong took a couple million of those dollars james aspie i don't know how much but you know certain amount of that money was taken up by by james axby you know uh black lives matter so i've seen the number 90 million i i good luck finding responsible serious accounting of how much money in total went to to black lives matter many many millions of dollars in this period of time let's say 10 years went to black lives matter peta people of the ethical treatment of animals i'm saying like within that middle range like obviously we could include christian fanatics christian fundamentalists mormons uh muslim extremists we could include the far right wing fascists and so on and if you wanted to on the left you could include communist utopian projects right but within if we exclude them say okay so how much money is there right and then how many talented people are chasing after or soliciting that money there is a very real sense in which the success of peter singer necessarily entails someone else's failure the fact that direct action everywhere got that money the fact that wayne's young got that money the fact that anonymous for the voiceless got that money again they're in the multi-million dollar camp the fact that even [ __ ] dr greger got those millions of dollars right that means those millions of dollars didn't go somewhere else and yeah i can say straight up it didn't go to me and it didn't go to anyone i support right now again within the middle spectrum i wasn't sure uh dr greger it was a really boring movement like pcrm physicians committee for responsive medicine like we talked about some really non-radical political movements that are there in the in the in the middle of the spectrum tussling for that money how much money was donated to jank wieger the leader of the young turks of young turks and american news slash baltimore you know there are only so many millions of dollars going around and even if you didn't think there was any harm being done by wayne young if you thought this was kind of harmless and pointless even if you didn't think there was any harm being done by peter singer and the causes that people are actively are donating to right there is a different kind of harm just because of the finitude of uh i know we could call it the ecosystem of charity here right there there's competition and it's not survival of the fittest so i'll just come back to this briefly i've already outlined this so i can say this briefly if you've just joined us now you might not know what i'm talking about okay as i already said it right a certain kind of person was able to raise money 100 years ago 200 years ago 300 years ago someone like benjamin franklin could stand and by the way benjamin franklin dressed like an aristocrat he presented himself where his his best clothes and so on by designer clothing imported from paris and he presented himself as a scientist at that time scientists dressed like aristocrats they didn't wear a lab coat they wore i mean you can look it up they wore irmine and they wore sandculat they wore uh oh i'm sorry they were culotte not sankalot they were kulat they wore silk stockings and short pants and frilly uh i can't even say neckties they had frills around their necks this was how benjamin franklin presented himself a a self-made aristocrat a self-made gentleman and a scientist and so on right certain kind of person uh could raise money and build up a political movement and benjamin franklin was incredibly successful as i say long before the american revolution really the american revolution is kind of the end of his career and then he's a very old man in the writing constitution so you know what he said but that's that's at the end of his uh his his period of of greatness and power and evidence you know but it's a tremendously powerful man for many many many many decades okay um so if you talk about this as a kind of ecology right who wins what's a certain kind of dishonesty that wins it's a certain kind of myth and as i was trying to get into briefly i don't need to talk about a greater death when you look at the success of direct action effort when you look at the success of wayne steele from my perspective everything they're saying is a lie it's all totally dishonest but the lie changes over time it adapts they're adapting their marketing strategy they're adapting their mythology as they're making more and more money and they see what's what's successful and what what's not right so now again i do not think today benjamin franklin and his methods would be successful i wouldn't say that be totally unsuccessful um but you know i just i don't think that's the winning formula today how well would benjamin franklin do on instagram you know really you know you know certain type of personality is going to succeed in the era of political political donation hunting whatever you want to call it here political fundraising uh uh the post-social media hero now if you guys have been watching my channel for more than five years you've heard me say this before it's not all bad news when my father was a kid when my father was a teenager whether you were looking at the vietnam anti-war movement or the the black lives matter movement of its day groups like the black panthers people had very little information at their disposal when they made their commitment to supporting a group or joining a group one charismatic guy would stand up and give a speech and hand out pamphlets and that was it people really gambled with their life people ended up joining black radical movements and not realizing what they were joining you know they didn't they didn't have any ability to google it and hear multiple perspectives and they didn't just be honest so this is one hour i don't think they really got to learn they got to ask questions and have an in-depth nuanced nuanced relationship with the leader of their movement the way people do today so you know my father told me different anecdotes about when he was a young man he was he was fascinated by this very different character for me my father you know um but he was he was fascinated by this but he himself and all these idealistic people in the 1960s they were committing to and supporting radical political movements uh not just with their money but with their lives you know you're risking your professional reputation you're risking whether or not you're ever going to be employed again joining you know often extremist and really stupid political movements so by the way going back to that era look at what the left wing was doing in relation to israel and palestine they're still crazy now i mean the left wing is still crazy about israel-palestine but the level of ignorance in the 1960s and the extent to which people were making these decisions based on a one-sided lecture a one-sided a demagogue standing up and giving you a fiery lecture and a pamphlet and then people were really gambling their lives and sometimes sadly they actually killed other people too they were radicalized and engaged in you know violent action that should change their own lives and change everyone else's lives forever it wasn't just money being gambled and people were making those decisions on the basis of you know what we now call in politics a stump speech and a pamphlet so fundamentally things have gotten better just because any of you now if anyone is in this audience for the first time give me a shout out if you say hey this is the first time i've ever seen you on youtube welcome welcome to the audience any of you can say oh well who is this guy and you can read essays i wrote 10 years ago now in some ways that tells you who i am now in some ways it does it tells me what was 10 years ago you can read essays i wrote about democracy and communism and history and politics and at the minimum you can say oh this guy really cares about them and you can watch youtube videos i did you can watch youtube videos talking about star wars and batman but also talking about socrates and aristotle and the books i've read and you can learn a lot about me and you can decide how much you want to trust me it's not all or nothing like the old model these were really serious commitments they were binary they were black and white commitments you know seriously everyone forgets how violent the american revolution was everyone forgets okay people came to your door and asked which side are you on and if you chose the wrong side you were dead and if you chose the right side you might get killed anyway you know being a so-called loyalist was a death penalty offense in the streets of new york people were killed and people were even more commonly they were beaten up and all their property taken away from them because the revolutionaries were money hungry but you know if you didn't say the right thing governor morris himself come to your door and shake you down and steal your money and possessions and your horses or whatever you had to be stolen it was it was really gruesome uh door-to-door you know coercive bloodthirsty you know it was terrible this the american revolution even you know so to say in the earlier period of history very high level of commitment very simple binary decision in front of you you know and today you can choose to trust me to some extent you know you you can you can say you know what this guy is i believe he knows what he's talking about on these topics but then when he's talking about this other stuff i think he doesn't know what he's talking about and i don't i don't know totally fine you know i mean totally you you can choose to believe that i know what i'm talking about when i talk about democracy but you know when i talk about um sexual politics gender politics there's an example you think i'm totally wrong or i'm just ignorant that i don't know what i'm talking about we're all we're all infinitely ignorant you know sure you know by the way i'm not suggesting that i'm wrong about juniper no no i'm saying that you might think that i'm you know there's kind of a whole spectrum of levels of commitment and of course you can take all this stuff in your own in your own direction so anyway there are ways in which the current model of political activism and fundraising it's better than anything that happened before all right but most of what we're talking about here today are precisely the ways in which it's worse within this ecosystem who wins whoever lies the most whoever fashions a lie whoever fashions the mythology that solicits donations right and now we get to do this on this social media platform where you get feedback from the audience i mean you know someone like wayne siong someone like peter singer someone like paul beshear um for getting another example one two three but anyway uh uh someone like roger hallam they get to see in real time what's getting donations and what isn't they get to see what kind of publicity stunts yeah get them into the newspapers but what makes them money they get a feeling for the pulse of what's profitable in politics like never before and they get to change their message they get to change their myth until they have just the right mix to bring in millions of dollars that's what's going on now look sorry i just want to say again very briefly it requires a certain kind of personality and the old system of politics did too not everyone in this audience can stand in front of a church and say well you know not everyone has what it takes to be an emcee and move the crown and i say this to someone i do have what it takes but morally and ethically i never would right i can't bring myself to become a presbyterian who performs funeral ceremonies not even if it makes people feel better you know and it's so easy to put yourself in the religious mindset where you tell brokenhearted people what they're going to find uplifting where you just sit there and you tell someone i'm sorry i'm sorry for your loss but i want you to know he's in a better place i would never do that just that little bit of mis dishonesty just that little bit of uh manipulation and i mean it may not directly bring money into your church it may not directly bring money into your political movement but the fact that you took the time to sit down and talk to a widow about the death of her husband and and tell her what she wanted to hear about god or jesus or the afterlife or whatever even communists do this [ __ ] it's just a different mythology you know that widow will now donate money to you month after month year after year for a decade like you can you can secure long-term financial support just by lying to people just by medical policy okay it takes a certain kind of character you know yeah you can talk about charisma or talk yeah it takes a certain kind of ethical commitment and a certain kind of propensity for evil a certain kind of pliancy a certain kind of pliability a willingness to do things that are really blatantly dishonest bad evil and wrong to succeed in the old political system and in the new era of social media right it's a different kind of character it's a different kind of dishonesty it's a different kind of evil but i'm saying you it's the same sort of thing i could never lie to my audience i could never manipulate my audience just as much as james assby does right to me that's unacceptable right and james asked me he's way more honest than than wayne's young he's way more honest than roger hallum right and look at what roger helm does you can you don't have to go to his youtube channel you look at my youtube channel look at my own youtube videos but roger helm the way he stands in front of an audience of teenagers and tells them millions of people are dying right now even that's not true even that's a lot like every single thing he's telling them from my perspective it's a lie it's either a lie or a half truth right it's a lie lie lie lie he's he stands there and what is he trying to sell them on he's telling them that the only way to pursue social and political change is to put yourself in jail is to serve a jail sentence and i've quoted him on this he said the only place for any christian to be any means here of a good christian a true believing christian so the only place for a christian to be in our society today in the 21st century is in jail every good christian should be putting themselves in in prison he wants to motivate his teenage followers to go to jail all right i will not lie to my audience even as much as durianrider does i will not lie to my audience all the diet gurus i know fully raw christina whatever i won't lie about weight loss i won't lie about exercise right i'm not willing to tell people what it is they want to hear for money all right and what i'm saying to you is the ecosystem we have now yes in some ways similar to but in some ways different from the ecosystem of soliciting political donations we had before right it is actively recruiting and encouraging and arming and funding a certain kind of myth a certain kind of myth maker a certain kind of a lie a certain kind of liar and it's excluding other kinds of people sorry various uh interesting comments here although i can't i can't ask them all so um a good question although it's not particularly the top of this video uh someone asked quote did you do est landmark yourself so this is this cult-like group whether or not it's technically a cult uh and he says quote it reminds me a bit of eckhart tolle in that it regurgitates ancient texts his idea and ideas as you mentioned um so you're correct that it resembles uh cartola it also regurgitates ideas from kind of sigmund freud and pop psychology um you can make a comparison to scientology also in this in this respect scientology and dianetics so the short answer question no i've never i've never i'm not stupid enough to do that um you know okay an example like landmark it's partly relevant to this discussion and partly irrelevant it's relevant because they have the same kind of fundraising point it's it's that it's a very money motivated organization it's about pay sign up now and then once you've paid you've got to pay for the advanced course you know it's kind of pay more and more but the difference is they're only promising to transform you and your life right they're not promising to transform society as a whole they're not promising political goals on a grand scale it's just your salvation that they're offering so that's yeah that that's that's the difference um but sure it's relevant to this discussion partly even if it's only that fundraising element and the totally dishonest use of history the the you know cherry-picking from history and misrepresenting and lying about history to support their own ideology that's how it came up here what they say about mahatma gandhi what they say about the buddha what they say about okay so it's it is it is very similar to what seong has done and then as they say wayne syong he seems to directly prefigure he seems to be the template for roger hallam and extension rebellion and look my point is not that these are finite examples all all of these uh roger hallum and and and winston they directly follow in the pattern created by the so-called effective altruism movement that involves and includes uh peter singer and again many many millions of dollars involved there perhaps more than one billion dollars huge huge amounts of money so-called effectiveness effective activism movement my point is not that these are unique stars in the sky my point is that this is a vast constellation and more and more people are going to imitate and reproduce these same strategies not because it's effective in creating political change no because it makes money because it makes the demagogue it makes the person on youtube the person on instagram rich now my thesis is that it's a complete failure in terms of what what you want is democracy or what you want is uh political change or social change i don't think it's effective in that sense at all the problem is precisely that it makes you into somebody like eccartolo you're someone who can live forever on donations and publishing your next book and just you know just sitting around and lazily giving interviews you know and i think that's fair to say like i think it is fair to say roger hallam is becoming a new eckhart tolle i think that's a great comparison i think wayne xiong tried to become a new ecuador i mean briefly he was you know maybe he'll succeed that way again he's he's had some problems partly because of sex scandals and what have you he hasn't been as successful that way but i think that is completely fair to say that that's kind of the next step of the pattern for those for those people and you can remain perpetually on the interview circuit on the book promotion tour for the rest of your life that money and fame can last forever for that individual you know now again even even petta the founder of peta people with the ethical treatment of animals you know what is in what sense are they successful they're successful in making her one woman uh rich and famous you know that's that's the way in which she succeeds they're totally unsuccessful in terms of the pursuit of actual political outcomes social change uh et cetera okay a number of a number of uh a number of questions here uh quote do you think the decline of america has to do with constant leftist propaganda so sorry i'll say that again quote do you think the decline of america has to do with constant leftist propaganda close quote okay what decline i don't regard america as in decline when was it better the 1980s the 1960s the 1940s you've got to be kidding i don't regard americans and decline so i don't agree with that that part of the assessment again you heard me if you were here an hour ago or something you know do you think from the perspective of myanmar from the perspective of south korea you think america democracy is a joke it's not now you know you know again i'd be happy if switzerland were competing with america if swiss democracy were really something we could compare to it as an option um but we can't you've already heard what i have to say about that so i don't actually agree with the assessment that america is in a period of of decline and again very simply okay hollywood hollywood movies do you think they're in decline do you think the cultural dominance worldwide of america's in decline do you think american culture has less influence in china today in africa today in south america today than it had 50 years ago i don't even know what 50 years ago 100 years what i'm going to say no america is more influential it's more powerful in every way like militarily culturally in terms of its system of the market in terms of everything else so i mean this is this is the reality now by contrast how influential is russia are you kidding me there's no when was the last time you watched a russian movie you know like you know russia they punch above their weight they're they're you know they're more influential than more influential than some other countries i get it you know if you're gonna put on a spectrum they're not at a zero but no the so i don't actually agree with the the assumption that america is in decline you know secondly what is the effect of leftist propaganda the main effect of leftist propaganda is passivity all right it's not revolution it's not riots it's not militating for social change the main effect of leftist propaganda shall we say the last 30 years has been to encourage thoughtless conformity right so this is my honest answer to you the the problem with leftist propaganda isn't any particular change they did accomplish it's the changes that that never were accomplished you know it's what it's what didn't happen it's what hasn't happened it's the um the propensity for the pursuit of change that that never that never came so you know i feel for my generation i've lived in a in an unspeakably um passive society you know um i could digress you know i mean the very basic assumption that if you want change you got to go and get it if you want a better life if you want a better society you've got to make it you know that's absent from the left again i don't want to make this into a lengthy critique of what left-wing attitudes are or even left-of-center attitudes are but you know i'm old enough to remember bill clinton you know i do think it's fair to say that bill bill clinton's wealth and xiaolong bill clinton's view of the world you know not a philosophy not an ideology but a set of assumptions about what the world is how it works you know bill clinton's left of center view of the world it has been dominant and it continues to be dominant um bill clinton went to church do any of you believe bill clinton was a christian bill clinton prayed on camera and laughed and clapped i can't remember him weeping in church but he sometimes looked sad and serious in church bill clinton pretended to be a christian you know this is just one example but it's a tremendous important one how much progress have we made towards having an atheist society a truly secular society an anti-clerical society during the reign of bill clinton and in the decades since zero you know have you ever heard anyone on the left attacking bill clinton for being christian for being pro-church do you know anyone left who's engaged in an anti-clerical struggle like sincerely not on the level of [ __ ] uh comments on instagram or twitter but someone who really sees that as part of the political struggle here now this is only one example but the unspeakable passivity of our political culture it has everything to do with the phony radicalism of the left wing you know now i won't say who this was but i i'm tempted i heard an anecdote from a professor and she is left-wing and her students are left-wing and she dared to complain that students were coming to class wearing pajamas they weren't really wearing proper clothes that nobody was making it for their parents couldn't we have a dress code couldn't we have some minimum standards for how well-dressed the students were and you can imagine all the left-wing people reviled this professor and insulted her for not being left-wing enough now you know this is this is very telling so and by the way this she's she's a she's a communist she's not just she's not a bernie sanders left-wing person she's not a joe biden level person she's an outright communist she's extreme left-wing but that's still not left-wing enough now why is that why is it on a deep level that leftism represents lassitude self-indulgence lack of motivation lack of self-discipline and of course smoking marijuana decriminalizing drugs encouraging a life of doing nothing but getting high and playing video games quote unquote doing your own thing man why is it that the left is associated with you know fat acceptance all these all these things that fundamentally and integrally have to do with self-indulgence right well that is what the left has become and i don't think uh bill clinton produced this tendency you know i think he exemplifies the tendency i think he's a useful focal point in moment history say look this is the left not just the far left wing not just the communists and socialists the mainstream left they created bill clinton they accepted bill clinton and they still are bill clinton the people in political power today they're bill clinton's age and maybe 10 years younger that's the political culture that created them and that they in part created and i think bill clinton is totally comfortable with marijuana decriminalizing drugs sleeping with prostitutes fat acceptance maybe that's a stretch i don't know where he stands with the fat except you know the the you know bill clinton's he's not a communist he's not far left he's he's center left he almost defines the center of the political spectrum today right um so no that's what i have to say one i don't believe america is in decline i don't believe it has declined um and i don't even believe america has hit its pinnacle yet i don't if you guys haven't watched my earlier videos haven't you heard america is now finally in an alliance with india against china it's a huge turning point in the history of the world america finally ended its alliance with saudi arabia it's a huge turning point in history of the world it really matters um america's influence in india is now going to grow um again we'll have to see what happens it's possible joe biden will retire and everything will fall apart but america has now gotten on a track that's very powerful um in relation to india in relation to africa in relation to south america um even though america has spent this enormous amount of money uh you know they do have a huge debt crisis no i i think on the contrary if you're looking at the next 20 years who do you think is going to be more influential in south america in africa in india in southeast asia you think it's russia again even if it's some country we like like switzerland you think there's going to be a wave of swiss influence uh around the world so no i think actually we are looking ahead to a period of much more intense much more powerful and more muscular american influence partly because america's political agenda has fundamentally become more coherent um [Music] and look you know i i i'd love it if there were other voices competing with america this way but japan isn't going to do it taiwan isn't going to do it you know like i like i like taiwan and something like politically taiwan is also a democracy they also have healthcare and you know i mean there were good things about taiwan but taiwan is totally in this kind of defensive position of just trying to follow america's lead and write in america's coattails and most of the other voices for democracy what sorry finally finally angela merkel has retired i hate angela merkel okay um what do you think's happening next for germany do you think germany is gonna lead a [ __ ] crusade for democracy in belarus do you think germany is going to carry the banner of democracy to myanmar anywhere any of these examples no what do you think germany's going to do for mexico mexico needs help too it's falling apart you know sorry mexico germany isn't going to do [ __ ] for anyone but germany right so you know yeah sure maybe the world would be a better place if there were other powerful pro-democratic voices in the world um but it's not gonna be brazil it's not gonna be colombia i remember now so 20 years ago people used to be building up to say oh it's brazil's decade brazil is finally going to become this major power in the world really really [Laughter] you know i'm sorry i i'm incredibly pessimistic the next 10 years for brazil any venezuela you know what happened so no i mean looking at the next 10 years um you know again i'm not saying this because i hate australia what the [ __ ] do you think australia is going to do in the next 10 years you know in australia they're in a very defensive position in relation to china and so anyway i i'm going on but i'm sorry i think given what i said earlier in this video i think it was worth really staying on that for a moment and just taking seriously this assumption of american decline and you know and again now that america is no longer in a paradoxical completely self-defeating alliance with saudi arabia and pakistan the amount and by the way it looks like america is going to end its alliance with turkey that's not 100 clear yet but it looks like they're also making an enemy out of turkey that's 80 20 it's like 80 certain 20 percent uncertain what america's position is going to be so you think america's influence in iraq is going to be more or less i think it's going to be more or less in uh in iran and in everything in relation to israel it's just say we're going to an era where where america's agenda is actually more coherent um and le as i say it's very simply less less self-defeating yeah so sorry some things are going to say very briefly i have written about and research the political history of mongolia someone was interested in what i said just just reading your comments guys questions about uh when the book is coming out so i'm doing the final edits on the book now so you know um uh and you know i am unhappy that i'm apparently going to have to self-publish if you guys check my blog obviously you can see this through patreon but i also have a blog that's free um you could see my communications with one publisher but it really would be better for me if i could publish with somebody so part of me wants to get the book out into the world as soon as possible but some part of me thinks well maybe i should maybe i should try to actually publish if we're moving permanently to los angeles maybe i can get a real publisher to do it and by the way the book is also being translated into spanish so if i now learn spanish as a language that'll be nice i'll get to improve my spanish by reading my own work in translation um but yeah the book is mostly done and the the revisions are really clarifying what's there like i'm not changing it but it is i'm just the argument it is clearer uh the final text is clearer than the earlier draft uh maybe it loses some of its uh wistful quality and being a little bit too clear but no i mean if you compare them it's the c in every chapter it's the same point being made but the revisions have made things clearer extra examples are added things like that in the process okay it's a great comment from long time viewer and supporter of the channel do you quote do you want to give me lucas that's the name he uses um he said quote maybe what influenced the public's expectations of pr stunts so public relations stunts of this kind by ngos and political groups doing fundraising is greenpeace raising banners and nuclear power plants and covering coloring rivers green et cetera okay so at the beginning of my channel i talked about this and i made this same point i met and spoke to the founder of greenpeace in toronto and that's not that surprising because he was hanging around in toronto if you know who that guy was with nothing better to do um he was an idiot never became vegan never quit drinking alcohol never quit smoking cigarettes to my knowledge if he did it was late in life it's possible it's possibly quite smoking cigarettes towards the end i shouldn't say that but anyway he smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol most of his life real no-nothing [Music] pathetic excuse for a human being um i i would completely agree that greenpeace is an important precedent and they have inspired a certain kind of activism both on the right wing and the left wing so if you look at what the right-wing anti-immigration activists did they're straight at a greenpeace's playbook right now however you know how relevant is greenpeace to our discussion today i i think it's fair to say they're more irrelevant than relevant all right so let's say the part that's relevant is greenpeace like roger hallam greenpeace like wayne seong greenpeace like the social media movements that we have today it's based on a competition for newspaper coverage it's based on a very fundamental misconception misperception or intentional lie that the pursuit of political progress and the pursuit of self-promotion to the mainstream media are one and the same they're not all right so greenpeace would do things sometimes ridiculous over-the-top things um you know classic examples having their boat ram into another boat and destroy a boat climbing on board a boat you know these kinds of acts of sabotage i suppose against other other boats you know actually colliding with a whaling vessel this kind of thing you know um outrageous life-risking stunts that would get them into the newspaper when i met and spoke to the founder of greenpeace we had a long time to talk i was standing at the bottom of the cn towers you know it's one of the highest buildings in the world and the stunt greenpeace were doing was that they climbed up the tower to hang a big flag saying their slogan on the tower so life risking and that that barely got covered by the press nobody was interested in that case it's actually a good counter example you know okay you climbed up a tower and hung up better okay so that's what they have in common uh with with the type of social media activism we're talking about i think everything else though is different so greenpeace's philosophy is not based on any notion that what they're doing is proven um as a scientific truth to work through social science research uh they are not claiming that if you read history that the facts of history that prior precedents of history prove that their method is effective there's none of the verbiage of like neither in philosophy neither in principle nor in practice um [Music] there's none of the verbiage of the effective activism movement right so again the effective activist movement to my knowledge got rolling in 2006 uh and then it got bigger and bigger like 2012 was maybe its peak i'd say it's just from memory something like that effective activism they really proved that it was fundraising dynamite to say hey we have scientific facts we have statistics that show if you donate a million dollars to us and if you donate just one thousand dollars to us here are the outcomes here are the effects you know guess what like i can't even say ninety percent of the time it's a lie i don't think i've ever seen a single instance where it wasn't a lie so it's not just tempting to mislead the people who are donating to you donating to you but this is really a pseudo science rather than a science so that was the big shift the shift was the effective altruism movement sorry i've said effective activism before it's because both terms are used but anyway the effective altruism movement the single most famous proponent of which is peter singer but there were there were many others he wasn't the only voice and he wasn't the first voice peter singer actually jumped on that bandwagon having already been on other bandwagons before but he was a famous prominent figure of that and um you know so by the way there were no outcomes how was i'm sorry i don't want to i have made other videos critiquing but i mean the the fact is none of these ideologies work you know the protest movements don't work the pro democracy movements don't work the arab spring doesn't work they all end in disaster and failure again and again and again what works is just the fundraising component it's just the promise making component and that's what everyone's imitating and reacting to now on the other hand you could also make the argument that the the green peace element pulling a crazy stunt and getting yourself into the newspapers that that works and that that brings about some some fundraising and sure that's part of what direct action everywhere does that's part of what uh roger hallam uh does sure you know this is uh this is one factor but yeah the issue of the what i'm making what i'm presenting to you is the central issue the myth the myth that we know what's going to happen next we know the future because of our analysis of history the history proves there's only one way forward and this is it donate now right this is you know in karl popper's terms historicism it's exactly a repetition of the the historicism that was criticized and debunked by karl popper i don't want to digress into making this a video about karl popper's philosophy of falsification and so on but of course it's not entirely a coincidence that they reinvented the wheel if the wheel you're talking about is the way marxists would selectively interpret and misrepresent history to present their own cause as the one and only path to social progress donate now and um to claim that they knew the future that they had uncovered the pattern of history or something or the laws of physics if you like and thus they could see the trajectory of history they could see what was what was going to happen next and they knew the only strategy that would work now one of the differences is that marxism is actually outrageous and very difficult to believe the myth they're presenting you with is it's obviously incompatible with reality in so many different ways so again i don't want to make this into a video that's about marxism i don't want to make a new video that's about karl popper and his philosophy of science and his critique of marxism be too long a video but to give a brief example the marxist claim with absolutely no sense of humor i assure you um the marxist claim that the poor are constantly getting poorer under capitalism in countries like england america germany that's not true now it's not true if you're looking at the period between 1880 and 1930 it's not true if you're looking at 1930 to 1960 and it's not true if you're looking at 1960 to 2020. this is a very simple elemental thing is that their idea is that with the progress of capitalism the workers get paid less and less they get oppressed more and more and then they have this privilege that didn't happen at none of the periods of time like even during karl marx's life that wasn't what was happening that didn't happen so i'm just pointing out it's marxism is an outrageous set of predictions of the future it's an outrageous interpretation of history what they say about the french revolution is a lie what they say about uh the paris commune in 1848 is a lie what they say about napoleon the third is a lie like everything they're saying about his life then of course when you move forward they lie even more what they say about lenin and stalin is a lie and what they say what's done but even the kind of foundational period it's all lies about history okay well yeah the new lies the new mythology right at least right now it's not so outrageous people the vast majority of people they don't see that it's a myth at all they can't see that they're being lied to or misled and i've talked to plenty of those people face to face people who really believe these are the facts of history established by social science research now again of course it's passion over reason of course it's an emotional rather than intellectual appeal don't you want to be like mahatma gandhi don't you want to be like martin luther king jr don't you want to be on the right side of history don't let yourself think about those other possibilities you know i started this video by saying boldly where does democracy come from these people want to believe that hippies dancing in the streets naked are where democracy comes from they want to believe that topless protesters for women's rights or transsexual rights or whatever the the cause of the day is topless protesters against climate change topless protesters against fur that this kind of street activism you know again proven by this very selective one-sided reading of history proven by the kind of pseudo-scientific quantitative research pioneered by the effective altruism movement and i think effectively harnessed by people like wayne's young at dxe people like roger hallam they took that rhetoric and they took even those arguments and those peer-reviewed published papers they didn't they took the actual resources the citations and the books and so on they presented that and they said hey here's the way politics works here's the way history works in the past and the present and the future you know uh donate now it's this very powerful mythology that's being presented to the world and yes fundamentally and integrally it has to do with the question of where democracy comes from how democracy works now how it will work and how it how it should work in the future i am going to wrap things up babe if you want to if you want to jump in feel free to disagree with me melissa and i talk for so many hours a day um we spend a lot of time together but you know i'll go through the comments that are here um i'll put a bow on it but you know i mean it's funny because there are some things that there's some things i've talked about on youtube 100 times and it's interesting every so often i reflect there are things that i've only ever talked about with melissa you know but i mean if anyone in the world was prepared for this spontaneous and unexpected youtube video i mean it's you now because so so many well melissa's also read the book already she read the first draft of the book she found many typos in it too but i mean i just say it'd be if there's no pressure on you but if you have anything to say certainly nobody's better prepared nobody could be less surprised by this live stream than you are now so what i was thinking just now is one of the first the first video i ever saw on your channel was about this exact topic about protests and how protesting won't save the planet and that appealed to me at the time because i had been a vegan for about two years and uh i was starting to get more involved in vegan activism where i was i was thinking about it i was thinking if i really want to make a difference in the world if i want more people to go vegan you know i've i've tried my best to reach out to my family and none of them seem receptive so i need to take this publicly i need to do something you know this was this was my thought process at the time and then seeing your video made me rethink things when i was just like thinking to myself maybe i shouldn't do protests um maybe maybe i shouldn't get involved this way and uh i think what's so attractive about it is that you don't have to have any kind of expertise you don't have to build up political it's a good point sorry go you don't have to have the experience you don't have to have some the resources that to offer help to people or talent or intelligence yeah or a degree as a medical doctor where you can actually help people yeah yeah just standing there yeah anybody can do it yeah yeah yeah so that's what's so appealing about it yeah you're right and you know also yelling on the street it's something everybody can do back and forth that you know just repeat back what somebody else is saying and so in this way yeah sorry so i do want to hear more if you have more to say but we're just going to jump in with a with a contrast one of my longtime viewers you know someone is a big fan of the channel wrote to me and simple question but i took it seriously and said look can you give me an example of someone who changed the world without any violence whatsoever so but that's not to say i'm someone who's completely opposed to the use of violence to change the world all kinds of conflicts the use of violence is inevitable but a totally good question don't believe me and i gave him several examples but the main one was walt disney the founder of the walt disney company any of these political figures we talked about in this video none of them have been as influential as autistic walt disney changed the world and he still is like after the grave you know like i think walt disney has been more influential than karl marx in the last 100 years walt disney really is one of the most influential people in the history of the world it takes talent it takes hard work like even just learning to draw as well as walt disney he personally did do illustrations and so on he was also obviously a creative writer and came with these plots and storylines and i know it's mostly a butt of jokes but there was a time when there was a huge conflict in america because all kinds of children turned to their father and said how can you eat deer how can you kill and eat a deer because they'd seen bambi it's a long time ago and we mostly think of this as a joke it's no joke i mean as bad as walt disney films may be they raised fundamental ethical questions for generation you may not know this but walt disney was anticlerical he was anti-christian and anti-religious and that's why there were no christian elements in any of the walt disney theme parks walt disney land walt disney world etc and actually the morality in the films made during his lifetime you could say it's a kind of pagan morality but he intentionally unconsciously rejected christian obviously for me personally i don't really look up to walt disney okay there's a point whether you think of a medical doctor who goes to myanmar and now starts to become an important influential person in burmese politics because they're actually saving people's lives you know or you think of walt disney who begins with a blank sheet of paper and a pen drawing cartoons and then gets into movies and so on and so forth there's a lot of hard work a lot of talent a lot of dedication a lot of suffering and a lot of potential for failure there and melissa has raised a very interesting point which i i don't think i've ever made in any of my videos like i didn't make it today which is one of the things that's so fundamentally appealing about the protest centered model and even this donation seeking model all these these aspects of the model have been talking about but the currently dominant model of of activism is that it doesn't demand talent from anyone yeah so that's that's that's a good point babe did you want to go through that wasn't it i jumped in just to put a human face on it there but yeah but how much more intimidating to say to someone oh yeah you want to change the world you want to make a difference go to med school and become a surgeon do that first then we'll talk about everything say oh oh yeah you want to want to become like walt disney become you know become you know well that's intimidating you know yeah right i guess i could just expand more like this of activism even going into a factory farm and taking one of the injured pigs or injured chickens it not only brings you a sense of friendship with other people that are participating in this but you don't have to have any of the oratory skills that you would have to build up for this example that you use at the start of the video like benjamin franklin uh the the process of real political action at least the old school style of either presenting information to a large group or going door-to-door uh actually knocking on people's doors and handing out a pamphlet or something like that yes is time consuming you don't get kind of you don't get a lot of attention you don't uh yeah right it's it's it's a slow grind and that's that's part of the short term thinking about protests about getting involved in protests the idea that just just yelling on the street um doing this simple thing once will make changes that last for the rest of the world you know the rest of world history uh this is the idea with extinction rebellion that's that's getting uh preached by roger howland yeah so um oh my thanks it was a good uh a good addition to the discussion the video that i i didn't uh i didn't see coming um yeah so all of our comments there's a real emotional appeal to historicism that carl parker talks about at the end of his book the poverty of historicism so i just say not making this into a video about the philosophy called popper however one element of historicism is the sense of certainty people have in the future now it wouldn't be fair to say that marxists actually think they have like a magical vision of the future but marxists and many left-wingers they believe they know in broad outline they know what the future is and they're making progress toward it and how they know that what it is they think they know about it now you know again if you actually talk to people face to face what if we just use a culturally unfamiliar example okay how certain are you in the future of saudi arabia is that you know you really think gay rights is coming for saudi arabia in terms of my model presented in this video i can tell you exactly how you'd get gay rights in saudi arabia if saudi arabia is conquered by the united states of america or if it's conquered by england or a consortium of european powers if it is conquered the power of the house of assad is broken you know it's you know okay you know like certain certainly take us a degree of song flaw to think about how you could have gay rights in saudi arabia within the next 20 years or the next 50 years it would come about through through force right and even through colonization you could say you know that would be how gay rights be accomplished in saudi arabia but you know um you know so historicism there it's very really there are two aspects to it one is one aspect is that you know the meaning of history right of course there's all this mythology and self-discipline now again it's not just that you know the facts of history you know the facts that matter you know what to ignore in history right you know so again the way left-wing people remember the year 1848 running this other stuff you know the way they remember the french revolution uh french revolution's plural i guess i should say you know the way you know they know not what happened but what matters about what happened what it really means and what it really foretells right and then the other side is the belief that you that you know the future now many people of course say that this creates radicalism because they feel reassured that they're going to win i have asserted in this video instead it creates passivity it creates unspeakable passivity the belief that progress is inevitable as opposed to living with the fear of that look there's nothing inevitable about the culture in texas becoming more and more like the culture in downtown new york city you know the opposite can happen the so you know conservative christian culture that we associate with texas that can be the future of the united states of america and there's no reason to assume that saudi arabia is going to become more and more like america america can become more and more like saudi arabia when you really live the type of uncertainty the type of doubt i would encourage you to live with goes far beyond this but living with doubt and uncertainty even at that level um that inspires a certain kind of engagement inquiry open-mindedness and even political activism very different from the commitment to to historicism um so i have a question here that comes back to the original thesis of the video and what i proposed in my my six minute prologue or preview to this live stream not show right then quote isil what did you mean by talking about the mythology created out of our personal lives and politics being in parallel so i said that before the start of this this live stream and i'm gonna say it again now i was outlining for you at length the way in which one model of fundraising and one model of political activism basically favored someone like a christian preacher and many of the most successful political leaders they were christian periods you know now this is not the only source of uh i don't know bias that creeps into who gets to become a successful politician who was jfk john kennedy he was the son of a multi-millionaire and that's it he had no other preparation or qualifications he had no interest in politics he had no motivations his early elections he wasn't proposing any goals there was nothing he wanted to accomplish he he was simply born incredibly rich and this put into politics so you know the the the christian preacher model is not the only model that has mattered historically and still uh matters now being both a multi-millionaire and a christian preacher and i really got advantages you know we talked about the type of character the type of manipulation and the type of dishonesty uh that really centrally is about fundraising you know fundraising as the engine for political organization you know it's what makes everything possible in politics sorry i have all kinds of interests i have all kinds of things i'd like to do you know i mentioned recently i would like to make a documentary film it could also be a book talking about why are police in the united states of america so overweight and unhealthy now that may sound shallow but i don't want to make a shallow film or shallow book i think it'd be really interesting to move further with a kind of constructive critique of what's going on in american policing to look at the lives that cops actually live i'm not one of these defund the police people i'm not and abolish the police people to look at how miserable it is being a cop and to eat your lunch sitting in the front seat of your car every day and their struggles just to feed themselves and their struggles to be healthy and so like what life is like for police and what the extent to which there are people who are falling apart physically and falling apart emotionally and they feel despised and unappreciated by the society they're a part of and another huge issue i've been interested in there is um police and their relationship to psychiatry to what extent are police people who are relying on antidepressant drugs you know how they fit into the science and pseudoscience of the mind in our times so you know get into the really it's not a critique of policing or police officers but a humanization of police officers that includes the fact that you know despite the fact these men they do put their lives in harm's way there's a lot of professional pressure on them and social pressure on them to be lean and muscular and they're not i mean the huge percentage of them whenever i see the police on the news the vast majority of them they're falling apart physically and i think many of them i don't know how many i think they're falling apart emotionally and to question who the police are physically emotionally intellectually what kind everyone said during 2020 that we should improve the education of the police well what education do they have who are they and how are they educating the police that exist today to really inquire and that i would love to do that as a project again it could be a book it could be a movie it could be both the research that goes in the movie you spin off as a book you know put them on i'd need money i need support i need donations from people like you not a lot it's not a lot of money so this ridiculous claim from roger hallam that he needed uh anyway they got more than 1 million pounds sterling but the original target was 850 000 british pounds so let's call it 1 million dollars in round numbers and they got over a million british pounds they needed this for this one protest look at the protest where did the money go what did you what were you did you have solid gold placards did you get a you know gold-plated megaphone what did you do with a million dollars so this protest you know so you just say to make that film or to do that research i wouldn't need a million of anything but sure you know like your ability to do fundraising and that is a kind of political protest that is a kind of pro sergeant that's a type of really legitimate democratic political activism and i can present it both negatively and positively because i'm partly saying hey i'm trying to make the lives of police officers better but of course it's partly going to be a critique of what's wrong with the policing system we have now and by the way i mean have you ever seen anyone getting into how much sleep police officers get how many hours they work i care about that even for pilots you know pilots who are expected to sleep on this terrible schedule well how safe is it to for them to fly the plane you know but i mean you know sleep deprivation for cops and the hours they work and and all these other elements i think that's tremendously meaningful my ability to act on that idea there's a it completely relies on my ability to do fundraising right now by the way contrast me to people who were successful the guys who made the film cowspiracy they know so that was i don't know if you guys know that started a straight up crowdfunding that was a straight-up kickstarter you know uh donation drive so they asked for donations they say hey we have this idea for the film and [Music] compare uh compare you know what the promises they made at the beginning ward what the final film was like you know i think that's a kind of crappy film it was successful i'm happy for them because they're successful but it's really kind of a crappy film and again i'm not willing to be dishonest even to the extent to which the creators of cow spirits are dishonest neither in the fundraising or in the filmmaking nor nor anything else okay so so the question was bringing me back to something that was in the the preview or promo video for this what am i saying about the relationship between the mythology we make out of our personal lives and politics being in parallel okay so there's this young woman telling you she's not that young actually she's a middle-aged woman um she's telling you that she doesn't lie to her audience she doesn't lie but uh she only shows you the good parts as you can see she's emotionally cracking up she's indicating that she can't do this anymore can't do it at the moment she's telling you how terrible okay you know it's so easy to talk about learning the lessons of history but what we have right now is a political culture completely based on concealment and deception where people like me come on camera and they talk about history but they only show you the good parts they only show you the facets of the story that support the propaganda case they're making sorry this is flagrantly true with wayne style and roger hallum and their quote-unquote interpretation of history their understanding of public protest their understanding of democracy itself etc etc you know um simultaneously they're constructing and conveying to you an image of who they are now there were many parallels these people durianrider boasted about how he went to jail wayne siong boasted about how he went to jail roger hallum every lecture boasting about how he went to jail why is that right there were other aspects to these people's lives right it's not like that's the only thing you didn't know you're making a sort of selective biased reading of your own personal history you're doing it all the time on social media right so in parallel we have we have a generation of people who are growing up learning to present their political views as proven by the anecdotes of history all right proven by very careful very prejudicial selection of anecdotes from history and even those anecdotes may be built on a lie maybe built on active misrepresentations of what really happened or why it happened oh hey guys why did the vietnam war end when it ended oh hey guys how do we abolish slavery again so you know an anecdote that's told about the vietnam war an anecdote that's told about the evolution of slavery an anecdote that's told about dr martin luther king jr it may already be a total lie and a total misrepresentation but the careful selection of these anecdotes and then stringing them together with the wire to indicate a trajectory to indicate the inevitable progress of history at the same time that's what people are doing in the examination of their own lives in the exploitation of their own ongoing autobiography whether that is to present themselves as a hero or as a victim right fundamentally in this way um fundraising is leading us into a new and different era in which politics at every level is dominated by dishonest self-promoting self-centered fame [ __ ] and their short-term goals of becoming rich becoming famous becoming powerful sex fame money power respect there their short-term goals are presented as if they're a necessary stepping stone to the long-term goals as if they're prerequisite for those eventual outcomes but my claim is consistently again and again the long-term outcomes never happen never materialize they're never even pursued there's no progress made toward them whatsoever i would say this about the left and the right i think that the only lasting effect is the creation of the cult of personality for the individual doing the fundraising how did jordan peterson become so rich and so powerful he asked for donations so he could start his own university that's what the donations were for look it up you can find screenshots it's unbelievable it's mind-blowing he began as someone offering a radical critique of what's wrong with the university system there's a lot wrong with the university system the united states and canada and that he was going to gather these donations he poured out his heart it was kind of chapter one of his famous period about everything that was wrong about these universities that he was going to take your money and create a better and brighter university where he would obviously be a professor and to some extent he would be the president or what have you and yet mysteriously that never happened okay whether it is peta or direct action everywhere or green peace none of them ever achieve their goals none of them even move a single step closer to their goals and my claim is extinction rebellion won't either what's presented to you as a stepping stone as a means to them to an end the fundraising stage becomes simply an end in itself you're reassured at the beginning that all this fame whoring all this lying about the individual and their history and all this lying about the world's history the manufacturing and marketing of this myth you're reassured that even if you can see some cracks in the facade even if you could see something wrong with it you're reassured that you should set that aside for the greater good of the goal you're moving towards but the only thing that's ever accomplished is the wealth and fame of the one man or one woman who stands at the top of the organization and their wealth and fame and power will continue even if the organization itself withers away and fails once this process of fundraising is done