Edward Snowden: “The Worst Conspiracies Are In Plain Sight”

the idea that the bad guys are at a pizza parlor you can kick in the door and flush them out right you just need to burn down that tower that's at the end of your block and everything will be better um that's a world that's more attractive audio's not great it's almost like his whole internet activity has to be conducted under incredible secrecy are the most frightening conspiracies those that are happening right before our very eyes in plain sight i spoke to edward snowden on my luminary podcast under the skin and edward snowden said that there are so many conspiracies that are demonstrably true that the term conspiracy theory isn't relevant let's see what edward had to say the greatest conspiracies are open and notorious uh they're they're not theories but practices practices expressed through law and policy and systems of government uh technology finance right what edward said there reminds me of an aphorism i heard elsewhere if you take every single policy in which the two main parties agree in that area you have no choice at all do you see if the democrats and the republicans or labor and the conservatives or whatever the appropriate parties are in your democracy although i recognize there are some distinctions in countries like italy or whatever but whatever's off the table you have no choice on that by by definition and when he talks about how legislation and institutional power can amend and adapt itself so that something is legal now well that shows you that is true power hey it's illegal to spy on your population oh is it it is now legal to spy on your population all those in favor say aye aye not illegal anymore conspirators more often than not they announce their intentions they're reported all over the place they're in our newspapers they're bannered on the covers of magazines we get updates on the their their progress uh you know bulletin on the bottom of chirons on news feeds right with so much regularity that we become a nerd to it power neutralizes opposition by presenting itself as ordinary and normal as opposed to dramatic or in any way draconian this leaves us sort of unable to relate the finality of the methods of their conspiracy to the rapacity of their ambitions that's an extraordinary piece of language isn't it the banality of how it seems and the reverse is the rapacity of their ambitions because obviously the ambition if you look at tech giants now and how states have always been you need dominance control as edward snowden says elsewhere government means control we sort of have panelised trivialized forgotten what that relationship is but a government needs to be in control perhaps this very basic principle that takes place a sort of a chromosome level of government is one that needs to be switched altered so that government becomes about service instead of control you switch to service and then all the institutions and manifestations of that power would have service stitched into them you know when you think of what does apple ultimately want what does google ultimately want what are these companies and countries that go to davos ultimately want well it's clear that what they want is total dominion uninterrupted uninterrupted ability to make decisions and to have power that's where it's heading that's where it's going and if you oppose that by saying i don't think that's responsible or healthy for individuals or for collectives or for communities or for the environment wherever you oppose that there will be challenges and so i suppose what they have as a raisin ditra and as a modus operandi is how do we achieve these as edward snowden says rapacious ends without seeming like we're pursuing them through banality not even through artful distraction but through bureaucracy this is something that david graver god rested soul talked about is that through bureaucracy you simply make it so tedious so boring and wasn't it always the accusation of the west and capitalism that communism and state communism was sort of bureaucratic and and no doubt it was but look at us in our private consumer corporatised culture so many signings of waivers look at that thing you sign when you use your apple phone or now if you notice that google you have to sort of go down and tap an arrow a couple of times that's him saying it's not like we're not going to stop doing this stuff it's we are going to continue doing this stuff but you've agreed to it they say you know you'll own nothing and you'll be happy uh and that's staggering at the time but 10 years from now 20 years from now when you own nothing and are unhappy right hey you said we was gonna own nothing and be happy i do own nothing well so we delivered on that part you own nothing yep i'm unhappy oh yeah no you should have read that really long contract you did sign that see but when you just scope out and look at the the concept of these everyday conspiracies the large impactful conspiracies the prime interest rate has changed you know a new free service has been created to host our personal files these conspiracies order and disorder our lives and yet they can't compete for attention with twitter and facebook i guess again what edward snowden is reiterating is that it's sort of boring there's just this incremental bureaucratic creep that's colonizing personal power i mean i don't even understand what he's saying about that file thing because it's too boring to understand and it's too buck what what about my files michael but presumably you're putting every order of information in some accessible cloud the truest conspiracies meet with the least uh or to to put it um in a different way a conspiracy practices the proven conspiracy the true conspiracy such as gerrymandering or the debt industry or mass surveillance are almost always usurped by conspiracy theories we need to be careful because some things that are termed as conspiracy theories are in fact true mass surveillance famously for the longest time was referred to as a conspiracy theory there was an assumption that mass surveillance was a tin hat eurolune type conspiracy of course then many of the other things that are deemed and termed conspiracies and you know you're watching this online so it ain't hard for you to access those things presumably then maybe waiting for verification waiting for a whistleblower to come forward and go actually we are doing this actually this has been going on of course there are other aspects in the realm of conspiracy that to me at least seem reductive vivid and dramatic and you know you believe whatever you want to believe and i'm open to a lot of things but for me i prefer to stay in the realm of the empirical that which can be proven and demonstrated not because i'm close-minded to further conspiracy but simply because when presenting an argument in an arena that is defined by empiricism science data and demonstration you're best not to go i find out on a peninsula of making claims that might be vivid and dramatic unless you can demonstrate their veracity simply because you want to win the argument you want to win the argument but win the argument i mean convince as many people as possible look this is happening now if you do that then that's a platform for further conversation and as i say i'm not close-minded to anything but personally i prefer to keep my focus on stuff that is they are driven because well then we can start to build change and create a different type of identity way of communicating uh way of understanding our world there is space for both conspiracy theory can be seen as a kind of parody conspiracy theory can be seen as a kind of gaming out where the public's vulnerabilities are a reflection of our fears when i was working for the nsa right i was involved in this system it was intended to access and track the communications of every man woman and child on earth to the maximum extent possible for that to happen in secret right is there anything more grand and conspiratorial all we're trying to do is track the movements every man woman and child on earth in secret oh nice that's a conspiracy is it oh well excuse me and it took me a really long time to extricate myself from that and the funny thing is because of the manner which i extricated myself from that i became the subject of conspiracy theories people say i'm a russian agent people say i'm a chinese agent right there are conspiracies all the way down this is what it's like to have been a person that's revealed information that could get you killed he has i think a sort of a gosh please don't take the wrong way so a christ-like sense of righteousness about him like someone that's acted with purity of heart he's very sort of determined to deny and reject any kind of charge or um plaudits as a hero but the fact is that the literal definition of heroism is if you're willing to sacrifice yourself in order to achieve a higher good that that is literally heroic but i think edward snowden denies that idea because he wants us all to believe that we're capable of heroism and that perhaps is even more inspiring than what he's already done that you and me can be heroic in the choices that we make we can be willing to put aside our um natural and understandable yearning for comfort our natural and understandable fear of change and sacrifice and be willing to take off the blinkers and look at all reality to be exposed to reality like edelstone's face literally looks like someone who's been exposed to too much reality like you know in films when there's like a nuclear explosion and the sort of the whiteness of sort of the rush of epiphany i do ask myself what drives this where where does this urge come from you know is the existence of global mass surveillance not enough for you does there have to be another level to it right again i suppose that's further support for the idea that perhaps if our the focus from my perspective and i completely understand some of you see things differently is on working with what we can demonstrate the way that institutions of power and finance operate publicly and demonstrably if we focus on that then it's possible to build mandates oppositions and alternative ways of being that would discount whole slaves of the way that power operates now even if you did that and you believe that there are some more outlandish conspiracies and i'm sure there are at least some i think it's unlikely that everything about how power operates has already been revealed but by impeding and focusing on impeding the conspiracies that are demonstrably true you would certainly affect the ability to carry out other malpractice that might be in the more extreme realms for example um the banking industry is uh going to war on savers just sacrificing anybody who saved any money in order to avoid the debt collapse of all the governments that have over borrowed and all the companies that have over borrowed and basically indentured the current growing generation the youngest of the audience today that's watching this those people are intentionally knowingly willfully being screwed because of all the political cowardice and poor decisions that said we don't want to face any hardship today so we're going to put that on the shoulders tomorrow often we talk about conspiracy theories in order to avoid talking about proven conspiracies uh which are often too daunting too threatening and really too total that's something that i wasn't even aware of and still don't fully understand how the savings of ordinary people are under threat certainly though what i do understand and appreciate about what edward snowden's saying is this sense that there is something enormous that was my personal take home from speaking with edward snowden is this is a person that's been exposed to enormous behavior i had the image of standing before a tidal wave or standing before a glacier standing before some blank and pitiless sun burning down and any opposition to that can only be undertaken collaboratively it's too terrifying for any one person to consider thank god edward snowden had supporters and people around him that were willing to make take risks themselves in order to provide him with sanctuary and safety and i think any of you that are interested in confronting power must know it is real and you have to undertake it as a part of a collective individually no one has significant power not compared to the vastness the great behemoth the megalith the monolith that we are facing for example something like the uh war on terror in the united states which is the greatest mistake of my generation right we're still in afghanistan uh famously you know biden said in 2012 uh that we'll be out of uh afghanistan by 2014. well now it's 2021 and he's saying we need more time you know we need to think this through edward snowden has looked behind the machinery of power hasn't he he's seen oh this is power and you know biden trump obama clinton burst whoever they sort of perched like little birds of varying colors on the sort of mighty tree of power and like that you can't get distracted by the twitterings and movement of these ephemeral fleeting powers you have to look at what's actually happening he has seen he has seen oh it doesn't matter biden in 2012 is saying this biden in 2021 is now president and he's doing that there are still troops in afghanistan oh wow that's how power works it works over a time scale that's very diff difficult i think for ordinary people to appreciate this is a big creaking beast that we're dealing with that moves on a different timeline to us when you live in that kind of world the idea that the bad guys are at a pizza parlor you can kick in the door and flush them out right you just need to burn down that tower that's at the end of your block and everything will be better that's a world that's more attractive because you have identifiable figures who are responsible for your plight and you have the ability to uh sort of push them out of the way and correct things if only you guys would come together but the funny thing is if we do come together we can unwind all of these plights we face even the extraordinary ones but it takes focus and sustained attention on problems that are intentionally made abstract and boring by these people that are holding conferences at davos right it is exciting and visceral to think about satanic rituals nobody gets hot thinking about the interest rate satanic rituals interest rate [ __ ] off however snowden's ultimate message is an optimistic one it requires a kind of discipline from us that we need to be able to look at these problems in a calculated less emotional way but what's difficult is we do somehow need to resource the visceral power that's more easily evoked by some of the less easily proven areas of the conspiratorial territory our focus i suppose then has to be upon collectivizing not getting distracted by superficial differences remembering that the vast majority of people no matter where you're from no matter how you identify no matter how you see yourself as part of a culture have the same opposition centralized power is accumulating vastly quickly and without overlooking some of the yeah but you're from here and you're from here and you did this and you said that and you believe in this and you don't believe in that that stuff is a privilege important though those things might be in a certain context in a broader bigger context we must be willing to work collectively together and that requires discipline here i'm much more interested in mad exciting conspiracy theories than i am of like trying to understand the true nature of bureaucratic administrative power and the globalized power and what's really happening at davos and why there's the confidence to do these things in plain sight because actually if you were to look at it they're not doing anything illegal because the law is in collaboration with corporations it's just a mystery of words and legalese and endless numbers that's boring because edward snowden said but what is not boring is the idea that collectively we can confront power that that requires a certain emotional and spiritual discipline from all of us no matter where we're from no matter where we sit that we should be regarding the priority as overcoming our own problems giving over judgment on others and working together to solve this bigger problem how do we create a world for ourselves and our children to live in in which we are all empowered and respected is this possible is this possible at the moment when there is such powerful centralized forces would it become possible if not perfect if power was distributed more evenly if existing power was more accountable if we had a meaningful exchange with our institutions of governance all of these things are found to be hugely relevant and brought to the surface by this amazing conversation with edward snowden if you're interested in seeing the whole thing it's on luminary there's a small fee for it i'm sorry that i don't do it for free but um see these lights see this camera there's a person behind this camera see this video is edited by a human being i offered them a pat on the back and spirituality but guess what they've got bills too uh if you continue though to enjoy this free stuff that we continue to provide for you and will continue to provide for you like it if you like it subscribe if you want don't turn on the notification bell that's mental get over to russellbrand.com sign up for my mailing list in case we need to communicate directly one of these days you never ever know most importantly please do the individual work you need to do on yourself i'll do the individual work i need to do on myself and collectively who knows what we could create as edward snowden said thank you uh

Channel: Russell Brand

Views: 2,499,406

Keywords: Russell Brand, Brand Russell, BrandThe, Russell Brand video, Russell Brand news, Russell Brand politics, News, Brand, politics, Russell, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, theory, snowden, edward, edward snowden, spy, spying, surveillance, government, NSA, GCHQ, prism, five eyes, phone tapping, data capture, mass, phone records, phone, iphone, app, agent, russian agent, russia, china, chinese agent, 5G tower, Davos, davos, you will own nothing, you will own nothing and you will be happy

Id: e0zAJfbP3gg

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/fieldy409]

Fake conspiracies get people going crazy. The real shit that's easily proven nobody cares about that when you tell them or worse if it's associated with their favoured side of politics somehow they'll actively ignore it and get pissed off at you....

[u/aydenlh89]

Russel Brand looks like he is sitting on the Jedi Council.

[u/BillNyeCreampieGuy]

Man, for anyone who hasn’t heard it, check out Russell Brand’s Under the Skin podcast. Especially the episodes with Jordan Peterson.

A lot of the conversations are deeply profound, civil, and refreshing to hear in a world where things are often taken out of context to support a political ideology. The conversations make JRE’s discussions feel like microwavable TV dinner in comparison.

[u/orincoro]

Snowdie looks like he’s been living in a bunker stocked with snackie cakes.

[u/bmac00866]

Snowden looking rough

[u/UNCTarheels90]

Russell Brand is twice the man of Joe Rogan.

[u/Vaniakkkkkk]

Snowden for presidency. No jokes. Really.

[u/MuuaadDib]

Laws are arbitrary human constructs, and are subject to change. Hitler didn't break any laws, slavery was legal. We even make heroes out of horrible people if they kill enough people. I have a no problem adhering to a simple law of humanity over all others, wrong is always wrong regardless of whom is doing it. Bottom line is this, if your moral compass is based on what the government tells you what is right and wrong you are a fool.

[u/steveslim]

Russell looks like a slightly eccentric grandma with a beard