Speaker 1Hello, hello, gorgeous people. I hope you're all well. Thanks for tuning in. Man, have I got a good one for you today. I've been excited to have this conversation all week. We're living in dangerous, confusing, scary, worrying times. And it'd be great if we could have someone who could just cut through all the bullshit and give us some semblance of sense as to what is going on in reality. The propaganda machine has ramped into overdrive on all directions. And I don't know about you, but I haven't got a fucking clue what to make of any of it anymore. So I am so glad to have with me today, the one and only, the awesome, the talented, the funny, the clever, and the dangerous, with great hair, Mr. Lee Camp. How the hell are you, brother? Great. Thanks for that intro. Not at all, man. I mean, how are you, though, dude? Because you are going through some, shall we say, some interesting times right now. What's going on?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's weird. I guess, you know, when I really think about it, I never thought that my show, Redacted Tonight, the first eight minutes I was doing it, I was like, this is amazing. We can do this on television. And sure enough, we can't. Sure enough, it is. It did take eight years and 375 episodes. But sure enough, they shut it down, deleted all the videos from YouTube because, you know, anti-war, anti-imperialist voices are anathema to the. Well, they're okay if you're
Speaker 1criticizing the other side. You know what I mean? You can say what the hell you like then. But as soon as you start, you know, dropping some truth bombs on what's going on in your own fucking side of the fence, then the propaganda machine is going to stomp on you pretty damn quick.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think in times of war, the U.S. government, you know, combined with corporations, although they're really one and the same at this point in the U.S. Yeah. they do shut down those opposing viewpoints. And it's funny to say in times of war, because, of course, the U.S. has been at war over the past 20 years kind of endlessly. But when I say times of war, I mean the times when the U.S. propaganda machine is really ramping up to create something large. And I know that most people, and we can get into this more, I know that most people right now go, yeah, but the U.S. is trying to stop a war right now in Ukraine. But that's not actually the truth. If you actually look, what's going on, the U.S. is is using people's empathy to actually continue this as long as possible. Now, that doesn't mean Russia is not the perpetrator. I've come out against Putin's invasion and all the bombing. I've come out against it multiple times. But the U.S., as we know, one of the two big players in this proxy war, wants to make sure this goes on as long as possible because it is a great propaganda win for the United States and it justifies massive sanctions. And really what we're seeing is the manufacturing of propaganda. Consent for a new Cold War on the levels of which we had not seen before now.
Speaker 1We are entering into some dangerous times, man. I mean, when something like this happens to somebody like yourself, I think it really signals a move in a different direction, because like during the pandemic, you know, like like they shut down people like Alex Jones and David Icke, the conspiracy theorist guys. And I actually don't have any sympathy with those guys. You know, I actually defended them online because free speech is an absolute as far as I'm concerned. But at the same time, I kind of got it as well. You know, there were very difficult times. We were going through a global pandemic. People were scared. And these guys were fucking putting all this crazy pseudoscience up. And, you know, I kind of got it. I didn't support the decision to censor them and take them down. But I kind of understood the broader, perhaps, health need to do that. And I also, for the first time, I think many of us are going to be able to do that. And I think that these platforms like YouTube and Facebook are actually private companies, although we can access them for free. They're not ours, you know. And I think we recognized it for the first time, you know, that they can actually take down whatever the hell they want. But when they come after someone like yourself, I think that's a totally different thing, because you're not some kind of fringe guy ranting about shape shifting fucking lizard aliens or anything like that. I mean, you're on a very mainstream, network on a credible show is proper journalism. And you've been critical of power in all of its forms. So to have not just you or your show or your voice, but the entire fucking network taken down, as well as your podcast, and all of your co-hosts and everyone else has got their own shows there as well. To have the whole network taken down, we are entering into some dangerous, dangerous times. And where does this end?
Speaker 2And I actually did when Alex Jones, Alex Jones was kind of the test balloon for whether the big tech could just delete people from most of the internet. And I actually did come out against that, even though I despise Alex Jones. And I think he's a fucking moron. I mean, you know what, you know, what's great about Alex Jones is he is a literal snake oil salesman, like he sells snake oil pills or whatever, like, he is, you know, he's not just the analogy, he is the literal snake oil salesman. But, but, uh, so, I hate him, but at the time that his platforms were, were deleted, uh, I said, this won't stop with Alex Jones. This is not about Alex Jones. This will, this is used against certain right wingers, but it largely is, uh, designed almost more so to stop, uh, the, the anti-war left, the anti-imperialism left. Those are the ones that are truly dangerous. Those criticizing capitalism in a big way, a substantial way. And that, that is what we're seeing now. Um, I mean, and we saw, we saw it beginning years ago, there was heavy suppression. My Facebook's been kind of shadow banned, um, for the past four or five years. Uh, even though it used, it used to be a very big page, 330,000 subscribers, but starting in 2016, I basically couldn't gain any new subscribers and my posts were shown to something like 0.1% of my followers. So this, this has been going on for a while, but the full scale, like, uh, shutting down of RT America, other, uh, you know, great anti-war voices like Jesse Ventura and Chris Hedges. Um, and then the deletion of all of our back, you know, our back catalog of episodes, uh, eight years, 375 episodes I put out. And, and then on top of that, uh, one of my podcasts moment of clarity, uh, got deleted from Spotify at the same time. So this is really mass censorship on a, on a incredible level.
Speaker 1It's fucking so scary, man. You know, and like I said to just before we came on, we had a quick chat, you know, my heart breaks for you as a content creator, because I know just how much passion and thousands of hours and research and energy went into creating all of that content over the years, you know, I mean, that's your legacy, you know, and there's a lot of fucking truth bombs and information in there. That's a fucking snapshot of time, you know, and to have all of that taken down, it's just my heart breaks, man. Like, I mean, it happened to me on a very small scale. I mean, I'm making no, no equivalence here at all. In our stories, but I released an album, um, during the pandemic called make anger great again, which is kind of like a hard rock political protest album. At the time it was all about, you know, Brexit and Trump and John Boris Johnson, all that sort of shit. And, um, but it came out about a month before the Trump election. And the first song was called the power. And we just had, you know, me fucking dancing around or whatever with, with a bunch of protest footage. And the whole song was just kind of inciting people to take to the streets and rise up and do something about all this shit. And YouTube took it down after one day, they said the content was shocking. And we went through and we were, we were, we were fucking so careful not to put anything that mildly looked like it was inciting violence. Cause it wasn't, that's not what I'm about. It was just protest footage, most of which came from YouTube and they took it down. And, uh, as you were saying about being shadow banned, I've had the same problem. Every time I hashtagged, you know, make anger great again, it just wouldn't get seen by anybody. Facebook wouldn't let me advertise or boost the album or anything like that. I couldn't do any sponsored posts. And my whole platform was just became, fucking redundant really, you know? So, I mean that, I mean, if they can do that to just a guy writing a fucking song, you know what I mean? I mean, somebody like yourself has way more clout and way more reach, you know, I get that you could be seen as a more of a threat to them, but you know, when you're deleting fucking songs, come on.
Speaker 2Yeah. And part of this is, is just algorithms, uh, which, which they know are kind of suffocating, but they seem fine with it. So you create an algorithm that, you know, uh, gives you a negative strike for, let's say, having the word terrorism in the title or, uh, you know, having the word Nazi in the title or whatever. But what that also does, yeah, sure. It might take down the guy who says we need to start doing terrorism all over the world, but it's also going to take down anybody who's criticizing America for funding terrorists or, uh, criticizing Nazis, like literal Nazis for, for, you know, violence or killing or whatever. Um, we, uh, I have a podcast called government secrets where we go through all of America's dirty secrets. And, uh, because we were talking about the, the Nazis in Ukraine, uh, the TikTok stream shut off. Now I don't think it was, and they, and they forbid us from maybe live streaming ever again, or at least soon or something. And I don't think it's because it was us. I think it's because they just saw, they just, the, the auto bot, you know, reads the transcript. We were saying the word Nazi several times and they deleted the stream. But what that also does now that's nice that Nazis can't be like, Hey, everybody joined the Nazis. But what that also does, is it means you can't speak about the crimes of nazis anymore like yeah how fucked up is that
Speaker 1yeah yeah that's a fucking i mean you'd think they'd be advanced beyond that point by now it's just to frame things in a context you know yeah
Speaker 2well context is dead i mean yeah part of the reason that part of the reason my videos in rt america got deleted was just because we some of us i mean we had very different voices if anyone ever watched rt america there were right-wing shows on there that i didn't agree with a goddamn word they said so people thinking we had one viewpoint or anything are incredibly mistaken but um but part of the reason we got shut down we were just giving context for the war in ukraine uh for russia's invasion now that doesn't mean that i'm for it i've already said on this on this uh platform and many others that i'm opposed to the invasion i'm opposed to bombing i'm opposed to war i'm opposed to killing of innocent civilians but that doesn't mean you can't know the context like uh you know i'm opposed to how our cia murdered uh john f kennedy but that doesn't mean i can't sit down and and give you the reasons why they did it you know john kennedy was was talked about crushing the cia he fired the head of the cia he was cutting their funding etc um that doesn't mean i support the murder of jfk so but we live in such a sad suppressive time that just giving context is more than the american empire which is a late-stage empire with uh you know late-stage capitalism it's more than they can handle they they are afraid that if people learn the context of our reality they will stop supporting this egregious uh exploitation because and it is exploitation because the people who suffer in our cold war our proxy wars are are are endless uh toxic nationalism those who suffer the most are average people in each of these countries it's not the ruling elite that really suffer it's going to be in sanctions sanctions on russia who's going to really suffer the average people the average workers people we should align with you and me and anyone else who's not uh you know the the lizard people at the top just kidding but anyone else who's not those people should align with each other but of course that can't happen instead you need to believe in this uh toxic nationalism anyone born on the other side of a little line in the sand is a bad guy it's just egregious and it
Speaker 1seems to be this uh this culture which has been creeping for a few years and it's there's there's goodies and baddies there's right and wrong there's us and them and it's fucking nothing in the middle anymore there as you said context is dead there's no room for nuance there's no gray areas there's no complexity it's just like if if like if you give context on what's happening in ukraine and you're critical of america's involvement in that suddenly you're pro-russia or you're pro-putin it's fucking ridiculous
Speaker 2man right absolutely and that is what they also used to even before rt america was shut down it was it was useful to america and also the uk and many other countries to make people think that anything that even mildly was connected to russia was evil or dastardly or nefarious and wanted to get you you know russian salad dressing was spying on you and that that succeeded in in uh you know harming our our ability to reach audience and everything um and in case anyone hasn't really been following this so rt america and back when there was a rt um it's funded by the russian government but i was never told to say anything i was never censored i wrote all my own words i researched all my own words no one ever censored a word i said and that's why i was on that network it was literally the only television network in the united states where you could do that where you could be anti-war anti-imperialist and not be censored and that is also why it was dangerous it also until they started suppressing it became the number one international news channel in america uh quickly because it was willing to allow these voices that had been purged from other networks you know chris hedges was a pulitzer prize winning war correspondent for the new york times and when he came out against the iraq war they basically booted him out uh jesse ventura even though he's a former governor in minnesota uh was kicked out of msnbc even though he was going to be the face of msnbc they paid him upwards of 10 million dollars just to get out of his contract because he was anti the invasion of iraq and they could not have that anywhere near their airwaves that's that's the supposedly liberal network in the united states yeah so um those are the type of people that ended up at rt america people that wanted freedom of speech and that's what made it dangerous and that's why it's now been shut down
Speaker 1well we've got a state-sponsored tv broadcaster in the uk the bbc you know and um the only shit you get on there is is the stuff that conforms to the mainstream narrative right there's there's nothing outside of the mainstream narrative the establishment viewpoint is what the bbc represented so i've been told you know back in the 60s and 70s apparently it was way better and it got you know we took a fucking nose dive in the 80s like everything did but i mean ever since then it's just basically been an establishment mouthpiece so am i right in guessing the rt is probably functions very similar within russia and that the reason it provided a platform for dissenting voices in other countries is because those voices weren't critiquing necessarily russia as a priority they were critiquing you know their own governments uh i
Speaker 2mean in a sense yes i mean yeah it was not my priority and i think they i've stood for the same things before i joined rt after i joined rt so they knew what they were getting but yeah if you're if you're an american like me if you're an american in america covering american news uh and actually i'm an american comedian but if you're in america covering american news uh a yeah i'm america was what i wanted to focus on because i knew it it's who i am it's me born in america and so i understood it i knew it it's what i wanted to talk about but beyond that america let's be honest far more powerful than russia america owns the globe in many respects in terms of uh both wealth although china is starting to compete but both wealth and military might uh you know most powerful military in the way in the world trillion dollars spent a year which is an unfathomable amount of money uh on military and death and destruction uh 800 to 900 military bases around the world uh you know how many russia has outside of russia something like 18 and they're all almost all in soviet bloc former soviet bloc countries and you know how many china has outside of china one so compare that to 800 900 around the world so there's a reason to critique america because america is the force america is the imperialist entity uh russia doesn't even uh light a candle to compare it to american empire so yes i i've been in russia for a long time and i've been in russia for a long time and i've been in russia for a long time and i've been in russia for a long time and i've been in russia for a long time and i've been in russia for a long time and i've been in russia for a long time i do think that that's why you know rt america uh was willing to pick up certain voices but you know if they're if they're willing to give me a platform where i'm not censored at all then
Speaker 1i'll take it fucking right yeah no hell yeah and the fact that that's now gone what's the situation with that then is it just in america and europe um and and how does that affect your personal podcast because that was separate wasn't it so that was a decision made by spotify or was it because you were connected to rt i mean
Speaker 2so spotify gave me no reason uh my my my podcast called moment of clarity and it's it's been it's been going for years before i started redacted tonight and uh i assume they deleted it because i used some of the audio from redacted tonight uh my own words basically i used some of that audio but it has no connection no funding no no nothing uh to rt america other than me using a little of that audio but so i guess they used some some bot but found rt america audio and just deleted it right um anyway still egregious and in terms of uh where rt america stands now uh it it's as far as i know it's completely shuttered completely done uh it had been going i've been there eight years but it had been going for something like close to 15 or maybe more and and uh there was no hint you know some some of the mainstream media so the media sort of got a little bit more into it but i think that's what i'm trying to get at i think that's what i'm trying to get at i think that's what i'm trying to get at i think that's what i'm trying to get at i think that's what i'm trying to get at i think that's what i'm trying to get at but there are a couple of articles about it shutting down and they seem to just say oh it lost some of its platforms and it shut down but to me that doesn't that's a load of shit uh because america doesn't want to admit that they just shut down a foreign press outlet um but they didn't tell us anything however how quickly it happened and how and how and how fully it happened uh leads me to believe it was absolutely u.s sanctions in one degree or another uh rt america likely had enough funding to go for months if not a year they had enough staff even if they needed to cut back some of the shows they had plenty of staff uh and yet there was no mumblings we might be back in two weeks we might be back in a month it was over and done in the span of a day and i i say it had to be u.s sanctions wow well the
Speaker 1timing is very convenient isn't it i mean in a hot war you would expect to see this kind of shit but i mean in a kind of far away proxy war this seems like a very extreme move to just completely fucking close down an entire network and and all of people's you know content as well from free from previous work that that's a massive
Speaker 2move man yeah and it shows the connection between these corporations big tech and the american government i mean for sure i i have no doubt that if youtube were actually youtube owned by google so let's let's be honest it's google uh if google were actually free of the american government which we know it's not then it wouldn't have much of a benefit in shutting out whole viewpoints but because the american government and congress could break it up could break up facebook etc then they are bending over backwards to try and make the government happy and when the government says hey it's time to shut down these platforms they just they do it with a with gusto uh so yeah to have to have eight years of uh of videos if you count my interview show over 500 episodes thousands of clips uh all just banned worldwide um and and i've heard people trying to use vpns to get around it and going through various other countries and they say it's it's basically banned everywhere fuck uh literally you go you go to the redacted that youtube page it just says banned in your country which is i mean it's it's beyond orwellian it's so incredible to just see yeah banned in your country well why is it your country can't learn these things you
Speaker 1know fucking hell you yeah well i mean like i want to i want to get into all the this stuff and all the content that you'll be talking about on your show if you still had one i want to get into on here and we'll see how long we last before they take mine down yeah yeah i'll be banned by association yeah seriously okay so for the three douchebags who don't know who you are um how would you describe yourself um i i'm i would say like would you say satirist a political commentator journalist um and i know that you've been with rt you've had the show for a long time i've been with rt for a long time for eight years but you've been doing this you know for a lot longer haven't
Speaker 2you oh i've been i've been a full-time stand-up comic and commentator for 22 years or so um i was a touring stand-up comedian and also doing youtube videos etc uh before i got the rt america show yeah and i'm
Speaker 1guessing that took up a lot of your time as well um so to have that suddenly snatched away from you like overnight after devoting you know because because you've been doing this for a long time it's not just the screen time is it it's you know it's the uh the research and the recording and the editing and you know all that stuff that goes into to suddenly have something that you've invested so much of your your the last eight years of your life to suddenly gone overnight i mean and what are you what are you doing to stay afloat what are you doing with your time now
Speaker 2yeah i've been doing about roughly nine billion interviews and uh i'm trying to i'm trying to get the word out about this censorship but i'm also trying to build up patreon.com slash lee camp i'm hoping if i can get enough small dollar uh members over there that i could create something that at least has the feel of redacted tonight i mean it will never be the same but it hopefully would have that that feel and that sensibility and uh can you know bring that back as it were so if people want to check out patreon but you know i had a lot of other things uh that i would that i was doing outside of redacted tonight and i will keep doing those um working on another book and uh i have the the youtube videos moment of clarity that i continue and uh i have three podcasts as well government secrets common censored and moment of clarity so all of that continues
Speaker 1brilliant glad to hear it and your patreon link is patreon.com slash lee camp yeah that's right awesome so everyone get over there right away and show the brother some fucking love man right so i want to grill you on a few things because i've been looking forward to picking your brains for the past week and i know you've got a gazillion of these lined up and you're probably sick and tired of answering the same fucking questions because i know what it's like um but i want to jump straight into the deep end and i want to get your take on what is happening in ukraine right now so yeah
Speaker 2i think people have to understand that in most conflicts especially geopolitical conflicts there's kind of multiple levels of reality and it doesn't make any level false uh it just means that you should also look at what's going on deeper so the surface level is putin invaded ukraine russia is bombing uh you know the the propaganda would have you believe they're just indiscriminately bombing hospitals the uh you know reality is probably far less of that it's probably actually that russia is going after the ukrainian troops ukrainian military um but either way the surface level is russia's bombing ukraine what is it russia wants well they want ukraine to say they're neutral on nato they want the donbass region to be independent which many people in the donbass region uh are uh uh consider themselves russian uh not ukrainian and there's been an ongoing war for eight years in that region of neo-nazi troops uh you know some of them with swastikas on their helmets um killing uh murdering maiming uh many people who are native russian or consider themselves culturally russian 15 000 have died over that eight years the u.s and cia uh and you can read some of this at yahoo news you know this is not hidden truth um it has been funding and arming uh some of these nazi battalions like the azar battalion and uh pbs the other day the the u.s uh uh government uh partially government funded uh outlet here in the u.s did it did a fawning interview with a mayor in a city in ukraine about how tough things are right now and they blurred out the framed painting behind him of a nazi a famed nazi collaborator wow so that shows you how bad this is but anyway that's kind of the the the surface level uh you russia does not want nato expansion and they want that region independent and they want their uh their own of crimea acknowledged uh that's what they're putting forward is their demands so that's kind of the surface level now you get to a deeper level and you you look at the reality of the situation uh even deeper and russia has been surrounded by nato a military alliance and nato sounds kind of nice and fluffy to a lot of people that only watch you know bbc and cnn but nato is a military alliance they have been behind uh gut-wrenching wars and bombings like libya destroying all of libya turning it into warring warlords and open slave markets uh that's what that's the type of thing nato does so don't kid yourself that nato is friendly and happy and unicorns uh nato is brutal war mongering and a military alliance so nato has expanded over the years closer and closer to russia it now involves 30 nations uh 17 of them i believe encircle russia basically and there are discussions of bringing ukraine to nato or at the very least having them have some kind of agreement with nato to russia that is a national security red line uh they say they can i'm just giving their opinion even though i'm opposed to putin's invasion they say they cannot have nato on their border their national security will be shot they will have uh nato missiles pointed at them from miles outside their border and if you imagine the united states well hold on i'll get to that in a second i'll get to the one more note is the u.s has helped fund this neo-nazi coup that basically neo-nazi empowered so it doesn't mean that the entire ukrainian government's neo-nazis the president is in fact jewish uh but the neo-nazis are the basically the powerhouse of the ukrainian government and their military right now in that they're just so violent and they're so willing to kill that many of the politicians are are have to answer to them many of the people have to answer to them because they're willing to kill people uh and so they have an immense amount of power even if they don't have the presidency etc so in 2014 the u.s helps create a coup in in ukraine uh that doesn't mean that there wasn't a popular discontent there was a corrupt president in power in ukraine but the u.s helps do it they put in place uh kind of a u.s uh a favorable government and in order to create that coup the maidan coup they empower nazis they give them money training arms and that that government continues to this day largely uh and during this time in the donbass region there is an ongoing war that's killed 15 000 people and these nazis will grab russian speakers and sometimes murder them sometimes uh uh just uh beat them severely that type of stuff has been going on if you talk to refugees in the donbass region they say we've been at war for eight years russia has viewed this as completely uh unacceptable and something else i mean not that you need to be explained to people why they should dislike nazis but russia lost 27 million people in the war in world war ii two nazis invading their country 27 million the u.s lost 500 000 so let's just say that russia is not very favorable to nazis on their border the so the analogy uh just kind of the concluding point the analogy that works is that russia is not very favorable to nazis on their border the so the analogy that works is that russia is not very favorable to nazis on their border mostly for right now would be if the u.s were surrounded by a russian uh military alliance uh is similar to nato uh 30 countries 17 of them around the united states encircling the united states and then russia created a a coup in mexico put in a nazi-backed russian favorable government and on the border of mexico and texas these nazis were running around killing anyone who spoke english and and was american and you know how would and there were missiles the russia was russia was sending missiles etc to mexico to point in the direction of the united states how would the u.s respond Do you think we'd respond favorable?
Speaker 1I think the world would be on fire if that was the case right now.
Speaker 2Yeah. So, again, it is not that I endorse Russia's invasion, which is seeming increasingly brutal, even though a lot of it, a lot of what we're hearing is propaganda and bullshit. It still doesn't, you know, war is never nice or polite. There are never wars or never bombings that just go perfectly and no one that's innocent dies. So that's why I'm opposed to it, because I'm anti-war. But you can also be anti-war and understand why Russia is behaving this way and not just be kind of a child and go, oh, it's because Putin's a maniac and he's Hitler. I mean, that is just incorrect and ill-informed.
Speaker 1Wow, fucking hell. I mean, as you were talking there, I saw similarities between the sponsorship of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and how that turned into the whole fucking mess. So that turned into. But am I right in thinking that America's interest in this is to have Ukraine as basically a NATO satellite right on the border of Russia, controlling the resources and the infrastructure that happens there in America's interest and in the interest of the empire? Of course, you know, not the interest of Ukrainians. But is that the extent of their interest here or is there more? Am I right in thinking that this is just a standard imperialist move where they, they want to have as much land mass under their control as possible?
Speaker 2Yeah, you're right in that. But it is larger in that the U.S. is a, like I said earlier, we're a waning empire. We're waning economically. China's on the rise. China has far more people and far more industrial base. The U.S. is also a late stage capitalist society in that we've exploited, you know, the vast majority of our resources. And in order to keep our dominance over the world, it's almost purely military based. So we have to use or fund others to kind of use militaries to try to undermine the Russia-China alliance and this proxy war right now and keeping it running, making sure it doesn't stop with some nice peace agreement that says Ukraine is neutral. It also serves the purpose that the U.S. can put gut-wrenching sanctions on Russia. As I covered this on one of my videos on Patreon, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter said that the U.S. has not really gamed this out far enough and that these sanctions on Russia, yes, they will hurt the Russian people, but they will have crazy ripple effects that will hurt all of Europe immensely. And, you know, the gas prices in the U.S. are already going up a great deal. And, you know, I'm opposed to fossil fuels, but that doesn't mean I like to see your average worker who's scraping by not be able to feed his kids because we need to have a proxy war in Ukraine. So it is, you know, the ramifications are tough to know. We've also, because we've supported this and made sure this happened, we've put the whole world on the brink of nuclear war. I mean, this is about as close to nuclear war as you can get. And this is also the United States can maintain our growth. Global dominance. You know, we don't care how many people die in Ukraine in order to maintain that dominance. We have no there's no real concern of that. They are cannon fodder. And our goal is to undermine Russia to such a degree that obviously, ideally, Putin would fall and we'd be able to put in a U.S.-backed government of some sort, which is kind of ironic because Putin is also the result of U.S.-backed government in the Soviet Union. You know, we. We considered Yeltsin our guy. There's covers of Time magazine or one of the magazines where it says our guy in Russia. And so we put Yeltsin in there and Russia became capitalist. And we figured, well, that's great. So now that they're capitalists, they're on our side. And for a while, there was a bit of a bromance there. But Putin ultimately comes to power. And despite being a very strong capitalist and hating communism, Putin does not want to be a pawn, a subservient feudal state. Of the United States.
Speaker 1Oh, my God. It makes your fucking head boggle, doesn't it, man? I mean, what can we do about this? I mean, the sad fact is that whilst we're talking, people are being bombed. People are being killed. People are losing their lives. They're having their whole cities are being destroyed. You know, within Russia, people are being imprisoned for fucking years and years for protesting against this. I mean, the sad fact of the matter is, is that this only ever really affects the people on the ground, the ordinary working people just going about their own business. They're going about their daily lives. You know, power isn't affected by this. The oligarchs aren't affected by it. And even the likes of ourselves, you know, who are privileged enough to have these conversations aren't affected by it. So it's fucking real for millions of people in the most brutal way possible. So it's urgent and it needs to be stopped. I mean, what can we do about it? What can we actually do about it?
Speaker 2I mean, one thing is just to not fall for the propaganda. I mean, people need to be demanding that. The two sides, Ukraine and Russia, sit down at a peace table and hammer it out and don't walk out of the room till it's done. And then this the murdering at least will be over. But the U.S. doesn't want that. And Zelensky and the Ukraine are sorry, Ukraine are basically answering to America. So I think like that's what people should demand. They should demand peace talks, endless peace talks until this is over. Instead, you have people demanding more. More sanctions on Russia, which is economic war, which economic war kills people, too. And it often results in hot war. So economic war is not some it's not like it like a nose, no fly zone. It sounds friendlier and it's really largely not. But people should not be demanding more sanctions. They should not be demanding no fly zone. They should not be demanding missiles and guns be sent to Ukraine. They should not be demanding that guns be put in the hands of grandmas in the street of Ukraine, streets of Ukraine. They should not be demanding that guns be put in the hands of grandmas in the streets of Ukraine. Because all that does is it's just going to get more Ukrainians killed. And the idea and by the way, there are policy papers from like, you know, the undersecretary of defense here in the U.S. from several years ago saying that we should keep funding and arming Ukraine, even though they have no hope of defeating Russia in a firefight in any kind of hot war. So the U.S. knows it's hopeless for Ukraine to defeat Russia. And basically at any time longer it goes, it's just more people. Dead. So the idea that because you care about Ukrainians and you've changed your Facebook thumbnail colors to blue and yellow, that therefore you should send guns to Ukrainians and that's going to make things better. No, it won't. It'll just be a lot more death and it'll just keep everyone at the foot of nuclear war, which is obviously death for essentially everyone. Yeah. And so it's insanity. It what people need to be demanding is. Just peace talks.
Speaker 1And what's your take on Zelensky?
Speaker 2So I can't claim to know all that much about him. I know that he's so he was a comedian and he starred in a very popular Ukrainian comedy series where he was the Ukrainian president in the comedy series. And then they have an election and he wins the election by like a landslide. So the comedian becomes the president, which I'm a fan of that idea. They should put me in. The United States should should put me in as the president. But I have heard and I haven't verified this, but again, Scott Ritter and some others have said that basically he's he's funded by a Ukrainian billionaire and there's not much difference between Zelensky and your your kind of standard U.S. favorable Ukrainian president, all this propaganda of him being this bold warrior trying to defend his people. See? It seems to be largely bullshit to me, because if he wanted Ukrainians to live and have their, you know, have their their peace, then he wouldn't be running in the streets with guns. That's not the answer. Also, hilariously, many of the photos that were circulating of him in military garb out on the front lines or whatever were actually from like two years earlier when he was in a training exercise or something.
Speaker 1So, you know, this is this is like the propaganda on all sides. It's just an all time fucking fever pitch right now. And it's just impossible for people to decipher what's bullshit, what's real, especially when they're pressing all the emotional hot buttons and stuff like that. You know, it's it's really over the top at the moment.
Speaker 2But my favorite my favorite one of that of this propaganda, my favorite propaganda piece that's been flying around, you know, thousands of retweets and all that stuff. It's a short little video of a blonde, you know, mostly like. Essentially white looking little girl screaming at a soldier to get out of her home, get out of her homeland. And people have been handing is passing around saying little Ukrainian girl tells Russia to get out of her out of her country. And it's actually a video of Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian girl who was telling the IDF to get out of her home.
Speaker 1People have been sending me loads of shit like that on WhatsApp. Like, look at this. You know, they fucking they had a fistfight with a tank and one. And it's like, really, though? Who sent you that, man? Oh, one of the boys sent it to me on WhatsApp. like oh so it must be fucking true then
Speaker 2you know yeah yeah you're like that's a clip from brad pitt movie the brad pitt movie fury
Speaker 1it's so true uh so where can people go man to get some clarity and some sense in these mad mad times that we're living in i mean even the left-leaning usually critical of the government type of papers have just gone straight into war propaganda mode um where can we get what sources can you recommend anything where do you
Speaker 2go well i could list i could give a long list of uh great outlets that i love but i actually did create a website uh along with eleanor goldfield uh intended to be kind of the the accurate um independent journalists on the web kind of all in one place it's called rad indie media.com like rad like radical um rad indie media.com and it's just a small site it's not anything grand it's also not a money maker there's no ads there's no sponsors or anything and it just links you directly through to a lot of great outlets that are out there that are struggling because they're suppressed as well but the idea of it was kind of twofold one was to create a great uh left-wing digital independent media uh newspaper that people could check every morning you know this is your morning news that's not corporate garbage and the second reason was if any of these journalists or outlets get uh deleted from their platforms you know if uh one outlet gets their facebook page deleted that you'll if people are headed there you'll still have a place where you can go and get all their content and know where it is and and not have to run around trying to find them um of course i when we created it i wasn't thinking it would be me that had been deleted but
Speaker 1here we are literally redacted
Speaker 2yeah it is an appropriate end for redacted tonight
Speaker 1i know the irony of that and and when you when you said about you know it'd be uh maybe you should be the next um president of america but i thought well we have actually got a comedian in power in our country at the moment i don't know if you've seen him a guy called boris johnson he's fucking hilarious he's like a kind of clown type of character oh he's
Speaker 2brilliant i was i was living over there in england when when he had kind of just become uh mayor of london and i think he'd just become or maybe he'd been for a few years but i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know uh and everyone was like oh my god this is atrocious can you believe this idiot is the mayor of london and here we are these
Speaker 1are the times we're living in man you know for for a while we had the comedy duo you had trump over on your side we have boris over here you know what i mean it was like fuck me if like that just sums up times we're living in and and and if you thought it couldn't get any worse here we are you know
Speaker 2yeah it's the best comedy duo since i'd say thatcher
Speaker 1yeah yeah yeah except except except literal fucking comedians like these guys don't even have to try and pretend they're not lying you know they don't give a shit like like the brakes are
Speaker 2off now you know yeah yeah and i and i of course was one of these people trying to get trying to get everyone to understand that yes trump is atrocious he is fucking garbage however biden is no better biden helped create the prison industrial complex that now is the largest in the world and phenomenally racist uh he helped he stood behind and supported all of the wars that we've been in he helped create the the patriot act that gutted everyone's rights across the united states uh so i i was one of these people that was like this isn't any better it's just equal garbage and here we are under biden actually seeing in many ways more war more death like well
Speaker 1yeah the democrats do love a good war though don't
Speaker 2they endless war now endless war
Speaker 1oh man how the fuck did we get here you know i think for that reason the work that you're doing and others are doing it just makes it so much more vital and so much more urgent that we don't let this attempt at censorship stop this information coming out and it's so important that we don't all get caught up in the spin and that we actually work as one movement that to effect change because we are heading off a cliff if we don't so you can start by following lee on patreon.com slash lee camp check out rad in indymedia.com i'll be doing so straight after this for some great new sources start searing through the bullshit get involved and we've got to get our hand back on the steering wheel because we are fucking losing it so thank you lee you are truly a light in a time of darkness and we appreciate you and i know that this is going to be short-lived and you'll be back louder brighter and stronger than ever before yeah
Speaker 2yeah and i really appreciate that and uh you know i love your work so i'm going to keep doing it and i'm going to keep doing it and i'm going to keep doing it so keep at it well look i
Speaker 1know you've got another pile of these lined up and thanks so much for your time but before you go quickly i just want to ask you what's it going to take to get you to kiss and make up with alex jones luckily i've
Speaker 2never actually met him i i've i've met many of these other guys i've been on you know joe rogan's podcast and things like that but i never met never met alex jones and hoping i don't have to i mean i think the smell alone probably peels the paint on the walls it's not good because i've never met alex jones and hoping i don't have to i mean i think
Speaker 1i have met him i can i can concur that you're right about the smell i mean apart from a quick hey how you doing he basically spent the rest of the conversation barking up at his selfie stick so um and continue to do that for the entire weekend from what i could gather i met him um i was a full-on conspiracy theorist for about eight years i basically lost a decade of my life with this shit really luckily i came out the other side you know but i got quite deep into it i was supposed to be performing at a bilderberg meeting protest in london david ike was there giving a speech and alex jones was going to be talking and they they actually decided the music wasn't going to be allowed on the day because of the the volume and stuff like that which i just took as confirmation that they're trying to shut us down man you know i mean and um so i was because i was performing i was in the press area so i got to meet all these guys and everything like that and yeah that whole world is as fucking mental as you think it is yeah no it
Speaker 2sounds as mental as you think it is but it's not mental it's not mental it's not mental it's not mental as i think of it but uh yeah my my favorite uh david ike moment was so jesse ventura before he had a an rt show he had another show i can't remember the name but he had another show where he would go and interview people so he sits down with david ike and he goes jesse ventura basically just goes look man i'm i'm i'm willing to i'm suspend disbelief i want to believe you i really do i want to i want to i'm down to believe this but just uh show me the proof of the lizard people just show me show me the the the photo i want to see the photos the video or whatever and he just kept asking until david ike took off the mic and walked out really oh god it's
Speaker 1fucking mad i was big into david ike for a long time i never really even when i was full conspiracy theorist i never really resonated with alex jones i think it was just because he was a kind of shouting at the screen kind of sensationalist whereas ike was always a bit more like that friendly uncle you know what i mean he was uh he was a lot more calm articulate and i and i became good friends with his son actually gareth because he's a musician as
Speaker 2well oh yeah well well it's well it's interesting because those those type of movements they do a good job of taking people who naturally question what they're being told and then taking them too far to a place where it's like well now you just don't believe anything that is reality so you know you start off going oh we were lied into the iraq war there were no wmd they knew there was no wmd and they just use that and so you start off there and then you start off there and then you start off going oh we were lied into the iraq war there before you know it you're like maybe the earth is flat yeah like at some point you have to stop and and and and recognize a reality and not just say okay nothing is true well
Speaker 1it made me very apathetic because i went in i know a hardcore political activist you know and i got within a few years i was just completely pacified because it's like okay so all sides are evil they're all connected and you just have to keep going deeper and deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole you know you've you've not learned it all yet and even if you think okay i'm going to pursue this course of action no because they're they're bought out by these guys and it just it's fucking endless right and you just end up caught up in a web of bullshit that you can't prove and all they do is that they just bombard you with high speed high frequency kind of stuff that kind of sounds like okay that that's a fact that's a date that's a name how the fuck does any of this fit together i haven't got a clue and i feel like that's where we're at now just to sort of loop it back around i feel like that's where we're at now with with what's happening in the mainstream media is we're just getting bombarded with actual conspiracy theory type stuff you know with what you what you're describing with the fake footage of zielinski and stuff like that i mean you know this is the sort of stuff david ike would have been saying years ago and we would have thought he was a crackpot but now it's actually fucking
Speaker 2happening yeah absolutely uh out of curiosity what because you don't see a lot of people who succeed in coming out the other side of the uh of the lizard people flat earth uh area what what got
Speaker 1you out i think it's a good question i think it's a good question i think it's a good question i think it was just i think i got so immersed in it i got to see how it was just built up basically you have to buy the whole thing you know if you start if you slow it down and you're like okay let's just look at this one element that they're talking about a second and try and analyze that none of it stacks up unless you buy the whole package and and i wasn't prepared to go as far as the lizard people and stuff like that you know i mean conspiracies do exist you know the governments lie there are covert operations and i think that i kind of got in that way, that's the door that I went in through. and then the deeper i went i was willing to buy a bit and buy this much and buy that much and then it kind of got a bit weird where i took a step back and thought okay well let's look at this and form my own opinions and then it just became apparent to me that like it is like a bit of a cult you know like you've got to become a fully signed up member of the cult or you're an unbeliever and you're a sheep you know and i thought oh fuck this man you know like i i was i was prepared to go as far as i needed to you know because i'm a truth seeker and then once i realized that i was being led down a fucking endless tunnel of pointlessness i just thought now i've got it i've got it i've got to really back out of this fast and regain my own fucking my own grasp on reality i mean like i could see how tempting it is and i can see how some people never get out again you
Speaker 2know well and just to pick one one area uh you know alex jones for years his big one of his big focuses has been climate change isn't real and that it it almost seems comfortable to believe that it seems you know nice it's like it's like oh thank goodness this thing that is like an existential threat to the entire globe is not real they're just telling us that uh so at least i don't have to worry about that you know well there's
Speaker 1there's a lot of comfort to be gained from thinking that they're all cunts as well you know like it's pointless because they're all bad guys it's all fucked so what's the point so it's nice to have an answer it's nice to know who the bad guy is put a face to it and there we go that's that figured out there's a kind of comfort in that you know in a strange way um to to accept that the world is actually messy and complicated you know and and there aren't clear divisions between right and wrong and goodies and baddies that's a lot more work and some people aren't very comfortable with uncertainty they much prefer the certainty of it's all shit and they're all bad guys so at this point that's doing anything about it i think then the true reality of the world is you know unfair and difficult and complicated
Speaker 2yeah yeah and and i think rather than it's just like oh this group owns everything and so you know there's no chance outside of that i think we we've created and i'll just speak for the united states because i know that better but we've created a system that largely makes it just incredibly difficult for kind of non-sociopaths to get any level of of power in on throats and collect all the money that you need in order to run etc then you're not going to get there um and so it's not that you know the rothschilds just own everything and there's never been anything outside of that it's that you have a system that makes it just incredibly difficult to achieve almost anything unless you're a sociopath yeah i
Speaker 1think of it like the propaganda model that noam chomsky talked about in uh manufacturing consent where it doesn't really what goes into the system because the system is set up in such a way that you're always going to get the same thing out of it and i totally agree with you that what's coming out of our system is sociopathic but i know you've got to go and i've managed to keep you for a whole hour and i'm so thankful for you staying this long everybody please do continue to check out lee's ongoing work at patreon.com slash lee camp you can also follow him on twitter at lee camp and his website is lee camp.com that's c-a-m for mother p for piss off lee it's been an absolute pleasure and an honor to speak to you today and get your insight and your wisdom i'm a big fan of what you do and i wish you the best of luck my friend with everything moving forward thanks so much james keep fighting there it is man lee camp let's hear it for him man how awesome is that dude you know what i mean just fucking laying it down with no prep he didn't yet you didn't have a clue what i was going to ask him and it's such a shame that all of his content has been taken down from youtube and spotify because man those shows were a fucking gold mine of info and he's fucking hilarious as well you know so if he's if he's doing some stand-up shows near your hometown go and check him out and buy the guy a drink i really hope you enjoyed listening to that guys and i'm sure you found it way more entertaining than the last episode which was just me rambling for about an hour about myself i've got tons of awesome guests already lined up to come on the podcast so please do subscribe click follow or whatever it is on spotify and leave some comments and somebody you'd like me to speak to put them in the comments or tag us in on twitter and we'll see if we can make it happen until next time behave yourselves
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