Welcome back, friends. James Corbett here. CorbettReports.com,
in case you couldn't tell from my T-shirt, which you can get at NewWorldNextWeek.com, by the way.
And I am here to let you know about a couple of things.
One is a very interesting, good conversation that I just had with Hakeem Anwar.
You know him from AbovePhone.com.
Hopefully, you also know him from Take Back Our Tech, which is a,
I believe, a weekly series that he is now doing on Substack.
Going deep dive into news and information, obviously largely surrounding technology
issues, but cultural issues and other issues besides.
And Hakeem is doing an excellent job of that. I do get genuinely interesting
information out of that series. I hope you're following it.
He just recently started the Take Back Our Tech interview series,
and I was, I believe, the very first recipient of that honor of being interviewed for Take Back Our Tech.
So he has kindly and graciously allowed me to share that interview with you
guys, so I'm going to be posting it here.
But there is an extra half hour of the conversation in which we talk about more
personal matters and other things that is behind the paywall on the Take Back Our Tech sub stack.
So obviously, I'll put the link in the show notes in case you want to follow
that and see that and hopefully support Hakeem's work and also find out more
and get more information.
And the other thing I wanted to inform you about today is there's a book that I've written.
I can't quite remember the name of it. I can't quite put my finger on it. Oh, that's right.
Reportage. Essays on the New World Order. You may have heard me mention it once or twice,
but I'd like to mention it again today because not only is Reportage still obviously
available at reportagebook.com and or wherever fine books are sold, until they're not.
But also you may be familiar
with the book in this format the good old paperback
format which of course it is still available and
i would hope that you would purchase multiple copies not just for
you and your family but your friends your co-workers and random strangers on
the street who need to know this information these essays that i have i've written
here but now there is also going to be a hardcover edition that is now as we
speak available for purchase it is not exactly this edition.
Unfortunately, I don't have the the print edition yet, but it is actually available for order now.
This is just a test copy, so it won't be exactly like this, but you get the idea.
It is a hardcover edition of Reportage.
People were asking for that, so it does exist.
The one caveat is it isn't signed, and unless and until you meet me in real
life, you're not going to get a signed copy.
There was the signed collector's edition that was for Corporate Report members
that I offered to two Corporate Report members earlier this year.
That's gone. So if you want a signed edition, you're going to have to come and
actually physically meet me.
But other than that, you can get the hardcover edition right now.
At any rate, I hope you do get an edition. There is also the e-book edition
that, again, is available right now.
And if you buy it right now, you can download it right away and load it into
your e-book reader and start reading it within seconds.
And there is an audiobook edition that is coming. It has actually been recorded.
It is now being edited. It will be out soon.
And I'm not going to put a precise date on that, but stay tuned if you are an
audiobook-only kind of person.
At any rate, however you choose to read this book, I hope you will read it.
And, of course, that was primarily what Hakeem was interviewing me about today.
Reportage, essays on the New World Order at reportagebook.com.
But now, enough of me blabbing. Let's get to the interview.
This is Hakeem Anwar of Take Back Our Tech interviewing me about Reportage.
Hey my friends welcome to one of
our first interviews for the t-bot show if you're
watching this we've just started doing this interview series and we're going
to be learning from technologists researchers and important thinkers understanding
their thought process and the hidden insights in the hopes that we can learn
and become better people in our own right now remember our Their interviews
will be more or less an hour long,
and the first half, we're going to be discussing their work.
The second half, we're going to get to know more about them as a person.
And the second half will only be available to paid members of the T-Bot Substack.
So if you haven't already, today is a great day to start, especially because
today's guest is James Corbett of the Corbett Report. Welcome, James.
Hello, Hakeem. Hello, all the fellow T-Botters out there. I hope everyone is
having a fantastic day, wherever you are. I've been really excited for this.
You probably all know James, if you don't already, because he's one of the first
objective fact-based alternative media.
You know his show, The Corbett Report, corbettereport.com, and he's produced
thousands of articles and important documentaries, such as Who Was Bill Gates?
The Secret History of Al-Qaeda, which I encourage you to check out.
And now he's released his first book, Reportage, Essays on the New World Order.
I've got my copy right here.
And I do think this book should belong in the home of every tootspeaker.
So, James, it is great to have you on. We're going to be talking about some
important issues today.
One, the surveillance state, as I know you've written about extensively,
and also issues like immigration.
James, reading reportage, I get the sense that you would like more people to
become what you call conspiracy realists.
Conspiracy theories are almost mainstream now, part of the social media life cycles.
Some of that happens, people react to it, they go viral, and it kind of feels
like it's keeping up with pop culture.
So I have to ask you, what does it really take to be a conspiracy realist?
You know, that's a good question, because I may have given a different answer
if you would ask even a few years ago.
But now, at this point, as you say, I think conspiracy realism is becoming mainstreamed.
And I think in the event of, well, pretty much every major event crossing through
the news wires, people are now at least prone to seeing, if not necessarily believing.
All manner of theories about everything that's happening right now.
Everyone has their opinion and their theory.
And that, to me, is, I guess, a form of progress, because I can remember back
when I was starting doing this work 18 years ago, just even people wrapping
their minds around the concept of, say, false flag terrorism was difficult.
Most people just had no idea, couldn't even fathom why, why would a government
attack itself as they would frame it?
And we have definitely made progress, I think, in informing the public about
the existence of false flag terrorism and other such underhanded techniques
for manipulating the public mind, et cetera.
And I think people are much more skeptical today of what they are seeing and
hearing, certainly from mainstream sources and hopefully also from alternative sources.
And I think that might be part of the definition of conspiracy realism today,
or at least the one that I think is worth trying to foster in the public is healthy skepticism,
not only of mainstream sources, but also of alternative sources.
Because obviously, as we know,
as anyone who has put two seconds of thought into it could easily ascertain,
yes, the dinosaur media is dying, but for precisely that reason,
the same forces that have been
manipulating public opinion for at least a century, probably centuries,
is still trying to manipulate public opinion.
Now, the way to do that is, of course, to.
Dress up as independent media. And so obviously people need to be skeptical
of what they're hearing from all sources.
Triangulate information to the extent that you can to keep the realism in the conspiracy realism.
There's nothing wrong about conspiracy theories or being a conspiracy theorist.
We all are to some extent because we don't all know all of the facts about everything
that's taking place in the world.
But to be a realist, I think we have to at least be able to hammer down the
facts that we can hammer down.
And the way to do that is by triangulating information, finding it from different
sources, and seeing the ways that we can hone in on what might be the truth.
The other aspect to what I think is incredibly important for conspiracy realists
in this day and age is also,
okay, great, now you are skeptical, rightfully so, of institutional sources of authority and truth.
Good. But what are you going to do with that?
To my mind, that might even be the more important question. Okay,
great. Now you are skeptical.
Now you are questioning. Now you are thinking about these things.
But what are you going to do with that knowledge?
And to the extent that people just simply get caught up in following the 24-7
news cycle, or as I have called it recently, the 60-24 news cycle,
because now it's basically every minute. There is some new breaking news.
If you get caught up in that so that it is just a form of popcorn entertainment
that you're just watching, conspiratainment, as it were, then it's almost as
bad as just simply believing whatever you see on TV.
It's just another form of narcotization of the public.
So I would like to think that people are actively working toward building something
up that they want to see in the world.
Okay, great. Yes, we know about the problems with the authority structure as
it exists today. So what are we doing about it? What are we creating?
What institutions are we hoping to bring about or community projects or what
have you? What are we doing with this information?
That to me is, I think.
If I could foster something today rather than simply skepticism,
it would also be that that that sense that we need to be working towards something.
And I think you do a great job at that with your Solutions Watch show where
you are bringing solutions.
I mean, it seems like you're just spending as much time researching solutions
as you are the problem, which is a really good first start.
It seems like it's only the viral false flag events that get all the coverage,
whereas good things are happening across the entire planet, just in small little
pockets and you never hear about it.
And on that specific note, can I just commend you for the work that you're doing
at T-Bot? I talked about it on our recent IMA panel.
For example, I got that news about the free phone idea from T-Bot.
And hats off to you for concentrating on stories like that.
That's something that i would never have even known about if it wasn't for you so thank you,
you're very welcome and i thank you and other
writers like you like derek brose whitney webb for even making me realize that
this was a solution i think i was in my hometown when the covid lockdown started
happening and i literally thought they would kick at my door and come get me
and derek had released a video of him on the beach and he's like yeah i'm in
mexico they're not doing this,
And it opened my mind right there. So, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that.
So there are a lot of burgeoning content creators coming out of the woodwork.
And it's something to be celebrated, like you mentioned, because there are a lot of smart people.
I know your your background is in literature and studying literature and Anglo-Irish
literature specifically. but do you feel like we should have our chip on the
shoulder if we didn't go to school for studying writing?
And also, it's kind of a struggle to write well. Do you have any suggestions on that front?
You know, good questions. And obviously, I certainly don't, I wouldn't cast
aspersions on anyone for not being an Anglo-Irish literature major.
Oh, you didn't go to Trinity for Anglo-Irish literature?
Who's going to listen to you? No, the real question is, yeah,
so what are my qualifications for talking about geopolitics,
or economics or science or all of these different subjects that I'm in.
And of course, I would say that the point is that I would like to think that
the people who are questioning and skeptical of those institutions of authority
are also equally skeptical of academia.
And rightfully so, obviously, because just because you have a piece of paper,
you know, a credential does not necessarily mean that you are truly knowledgeable about something.
It doesn't mean you are not truly knowledgeable about something,
and I think we would discredit actual expertise to our own detriment.
I mean, there are people who have spent their lives studying various areas who
probably do have some insight into those areas, but obviously academia can bring
with it a lot of indoctrination, and so it is someone should not be credited or discredited,
I would say, just because of the letters after their name. Having said that, yeah what.
I have gone back and forth on this, but I am ultimately I am grateful for the
the way that I arrived in this independent media space, having zero,
zero training along the lines of broadcasting or anything to do with any of this.
I never studied anything related to this.
So everything that I've done in terms of building the website and you name it,
recording and editing and coding an RSS feed and absolutely everything that
I've done has been completely self-taught.
Well, you know, even what does self-taught mean in the online age?
It means you go and you watch tutorials or you read, you know,
read someone who's got a blog or you look at help forums or things like that.
So what does self-taught even mean.
But at any rate, all of that has been learned on my own time, by myself.
The question is, what did my qualification of Anglo-Irish literature really get me?
And I think it is the ability to write, by which I mean the ability to think.
And I think of my podcast and the video reports that I do essentially as video essays of a sort.
And I try to structure them that way. There is a thesis statement,
and I try to provide evidence for that thesis and hopefully bring it together
in a way that will explain it to the audience in the end.
So that's the way I see my work and what I'm doing.
And I think ultimately, weirdly enough, my English training has actually paid off for that.
The question of how to improve your writing or anyone else who's watching is
an incredibly important one. And I would say practice is probably the most important part of it.
If you are not writing on a regular basis, start it.
And not necessarily, you know, writing essays or what have you, just writing.
Getting into the habit and practice of doing that is probably a good thing.
But secondarily, I would say that, yeah.
Until you are capable of explaining something to someone else,
you are not really, truly fluent in that subject.
You're not really an expert in a subject until you can explain it to someone else.
And that is something I wouldn't have necessarily understood from the inside
out if I wasn't a podcaster.
But having done this for long enough, I realized that, oh, OK,
when I, you know, I may be deeply researched on a subject, but until I start
articulating what it is, I believe sometimes I don't even necessarily know what
it is I believe or why I believe it until I start articulating it.
So it is a great exercise, even if you don't have a podcast,
even if you don't have a sub stack, even if you're not writing for anyone in
particular, even just writing as if you are trying to explain what you know
to someone else can really and truly help you to order your thoughts on a given subject.
And I would say that is, to some extent, the importance of writing.
And writing, I guess, in this day and age doesn't necessarily mean actual physical writing.
It could just mean, you know, it could mean recording a podcast or something
along those lines. But in a way, trying to articulate what it is you know.
And as I say, if you want to get better at it, practice is obviously the best way to do that.
But if people are interested in really exploring that subject in more detail,
I had a Solutions Watch earlier this year with an MIT student who was asking
me questions along those very
lines. I want to get better at writing and communicating. What can I do?
I thought it was an interesting conversation. I don't have that type of conversation
very often, so I was very grateful to have it.
Beautiful. And I will get the name of that interview and make sure to post it
in the description. Yeah, I forget it. Sorry.
No, all good. And I think James is giving you permission to start bothering
your closest circles of friends, maybe first, before family.
And, you know, pick a subject. I really like what you said to have a thesis
when you feel like you have an understanding of what you're covering and then
find the simplest way to tell someone about it.
And there's there's an infinite ways to convince people about subjects.
That brings me to an interesting point.
I wasn't an early subscriber of the Corvette Reporter Solutions Watch,
but do you feel like it was harder in the beginning or did you feel like you
had to find the style that you have today to be more effective?
I definitely grew into the idea of being a podcaster, if that's what I am.
I don't think that's the way I define myself, but that is what I do.
And as I say, I had no training whatsoever in any of this.
So I, I recognize that when people find out about me, there are the completionists
in the crowd who will want to go back and start listening from episode one and
listen all the way through.
And I cringe at that idea because it was technically not a great podcast at first.
And certainly I didn't know how to even begin talking in front of a microphone.
It was, you know, it was a mess and I learned along the way.
So I definitely grew into the role and I think I'm better at it now than I was
18 years ago. out of 18 years of practice.
Having said that, specifically on the idea of Solutions Watch,
I think the way that that came about was interesting and hopefully instructive
for other people because as people may or may not know,
I, back in 2000, I wanna say 17, I saw a Kia commercial,
online that was for like the driverless future.
And it was about, it was this ridiculous, like three minute propaganda ad thing.
And it was about Peter Pan versus Captain Hook.
And ultimately, you know, Peter Pan traps Captain Hook in this driverless car
that drives into the police station.
It was just the most bizarre piece of propaganda I'd seen in a while.
So I'm like, I got to do something about this.
I got to, I got to make a video about this. And at the time I thought to myself, you know what?
Maybe I could do this as a regular series.
Like there's a lot of propaganda out there. I can, I can show it to people,
dissect it, talk about the way that it's working and hopefully thereby disarm
it in the minds of the people.
And so I started a regular weekly show called Propaganda Watch.
And at first I genuinely thought like, will I be able to do this every single week?
Like, will I have something to talk about? And as soon as I started that series,
suddenly I'm seeing propaganda absolutely everywhere. I'm like,
oh, I could talk about that. Oh, I could do that. I could do that.
And so it not only became easy, it became trivial to find something to talk about every week.
In fact, I probably could have done that on a daily basis and still had more
and more propaganda to dissect.
But after a few years of that, I think three, three years or something like
that into the propaganda watch, I started to realize, okay, great.
This is wonderful. And I know it has helped, I think, people start to discern
and understand propaganda.
But at a certain point, if all you're doing is watching the propaganda and looking
for propaganda to dissect, then all you're doing is subjecting yourself to more and more propaganda.
At a certain point, you got to move on to the next step. And I thought to myself,
okay, I did that. I kind of leapt.
It was a leap of faith that I would be able to talk about propaganda every week.
So why don't I orient this towards something that's more productive than that?
Why don't I stop doing propaganda watch and start doing solutions watch?
Can I find something to talk about every week, week in and week out,
solutions oriented, solutions based things?
And again, it was another leap of faith. I'm like, well, I'm just going to do it.
And I'm going to see if I can start finding solutions everywhere that I look
now that I'm doing this series.
And now we're into the fourth year, I think, of Solutions Watch.
And yep, I still have plenty to talk about. And I think that that is instructive.
Because again, just like what I was saying with conspiracy realism,
great, you're skeptical, you're questioning, great.
But if you're not orienting that toward something, if you don't have a goal,
if you're not creating something or trying to bring something into existence,
then what are you doing? You're just conspiratainment.
You're just sitting back as if it's a spectator sport or something.
No, you have to be aimed towards something. So I'm aiming towards solutions,
finding people who are bringing solutions and bringing them to the attention
of my audience or looking at different solutions, analyzing them.
And I think that is the way forward. And I think that's probably true in everyone's
life, even just for the average person out there going about their day-to-day business.
If you are thinking along the lines of things that you can do to improve the
world or make your life better, then you will start to see that everywhere.
If you're thinking along the lines of problems and things you're fighting against,
then that's all you get caught up with.
I would agree that's one of the biggest problems that freedom lovers are facing
today, getting all of their loosh harvested by the news cycle.
And that's literally the biggest decision of their day is figuring out who is
behind the Charlie Kirk assassination, when in reality, there is not much that
an individual can do about it.
It was really cool to, I didn't know about Propaganda Watch,
but it's really beautiful to see the evolution of your work through then.
And I think it ties it back down to when we do have these solutions,
how to get them out there into the world with above phone and take back our tech.
Sometimes when I go up on public speaking and talking about it,
there's different people at different stages of awareness and you kind of have to sell it.
Right. And there's this interesting reversal where it's like, all right.
Now, when we're fighting for these values of liberty, truth.
Individual responsibility, you also have to have your own form of propaganda.
Do you think that people in our space who are putting forward solutions would
be more effective if they focused in a little bit on the messaging?
Is a little bit of propaganda a good thing in the hands of good people?
Yeah, well, you know, that's a good point to bring up because,
of course, the original initial meaning of propaganda was not what we think of it as today.
The word propaganda really got tainted, in a sense, by the ministry of propaganda,
as I believe it was actually called in the British government during the First World War.
And if people are interested in that,
as part of my World War I conspiracy documentary, I talk about the early,
the development of what we think of as propaganda in the First World War,
specifically the kinds of atrocity propaganda that the Brits were putting out about those evil,
dastardly Huns, you know, bayoneting babies and things like this,
which, of course, was not only...
Exaggerated, but largely untrue. And so we think of propaganda along those lines.
It's governments saying lies about their enemies and what have you,
spreading lies and misinformation.
But propaganda in its real purest meaning is just trying to convince someone of something.
You put it into a message that you hope will convince someone about something.
And yes, that is what I'm doing.
That is what anyone who is attempting to communicate is presumably doing.
Unless, I guess, maybe if you're just citing just plain facts,
just, you know, this happened on this date and this happened on this date.
I suppose that might not be propaganda. But even then, actually,
I would argue the way that you order such a list of events will itself kind
of direct people in the direction of a certain narrative. So I'm not sure you
can actually escape that.
So yes, we should probably avoid that word because the word has obviously become
so associated with that concept of just lying, misinformation, manipulation.
But the idea of messaging, yes, obviously, I think people should think about their messaging.
Now, here's, I kind of have two minds on this.
One is that my message has always been that every single person has their own way of talking,
their own way of expressing things, their own way of thinking,
and their own way of articulating the information that they have. And that's good.
I certainly wouldn't want to say that everyone should be like James Corbett
and put it in this way or whatever, because I know, yes, my message and the
way that I talk and the way I relate this information certainly does resonate with some people.
And I'm glad that I've managed to find an audience of people who are willing
to support me in doing the work that I do.
But I know there are people who hate the way I talk and hate the way I think,
who don't like the way I put the messaging. And that's fine too.
There is a certain amount of personal preference in this and people coming from
different perspectives.
So my message has always been, everyone should be out there trying to put this
information out in whatever way they can, whatever comes naturally to them.
And the people who don't like the way I put it will love the way Hakeem does
it. Or the people who don't love the way Hakeem does it will love the way Derek Brose does it.
Or, you know, name, name the million different people who could be out there doing this.
And there will be a million different or millions of people who might be interested
in that particular form of the message.
So that's one thing that I think everyone should just naturally articulate it
in the way that comes to them. And there will be people out there who resonate with that.
Having said that, I think it does pay to be mindful of the audience that you
are attempting to talk to and the.
Context in which you are attempting to,
um, convey information. And obviously everyone knows this in their everyday
life. You talk differently to your parents than you do to your siblings.
You talk differently to those people than you do to your friends.
You talk differently to those people than you do to acquaintances.
You talk differently to those people than you do to your boss,
because we all understand that everything is bedded in a social context and
we have different ways of articulating things depending who we're speaking to. Right.
And similarly, if you were putting out a podcast for the, you know,
for the general world, I think you should be thinking about,
okay, so what kind of audience am I talking to? Who do I want this to resonate with?
And maybe tailoring your message that way. But as I say, there should be some
element of your natural personality in it, because I think people are pretty
good at detecting fakeness.
If I was up here playing some sort of character, I think people would discover it eventually.
After 18 years of talking and talking and talking and talking in front of a
microphone, I think people have a sense of who I am and at least the way I think about the world.
I think so, too. I think that, yeah, you've definitely created,
not even created, it is just your brand. It's your presence as we know it on the Internet.
And it's interesting to think about if the burgeoning number of content creators
continues to grow, how they'll go out in the world and have their own flavors,
which one of the things that I see, I don't know if you've if you've recognized this in your audience,
but I see it all the time when I go out to events and even interact with
people is it's an interesting question it's uh it's the general age of the people
who are alternative thinkers and who spend a lot of time working with this stuff
and are also working on solutions they tend to trend older i don't know if you've
ever done any analysis but this is just just of my own.
My own like observations from from
going to many different places i think trend people trend
older than 50 years old and i was at this event recently
and there was kind of this self-awareness of hey where are
all the kids at and uh then um yeah and then we started to go down that that
path so what i hope is that um the younger people which there are there are
numbers of people on tick tock who are starting to do this reporting can can
bring in uh more people to the freedom movement But there's almost like this disconnect,
whereas maybe there are younger free thinkers, but they simply decide to spend
all their time on the phone and online instead of in the real world.
I will simply just back you up on your observation. From my own experience,
I would say that the median age of the people, at least to contact me and give
some sort of indication of their age, is probably 70 plus years old or something.
My audience is skewed, not just older, but way older.
I think that might just be because I certainly don't resonate with young people.
I get kids don't want to watch James Corbett.
So there may be some aspect of that going on. But yeah, I think generally it
is interesting that, well, there's a couple of ways of examining that.
One is that I think older people, our age and up, who, well,
actually, Hakim, I don't know your age.
So you're probably actually significantly younger than myself.
But I think of myself as perhaps the last generation that grew up without the
Internet, that my childhood was spent completely offline.
And I know what that experience was like.
And so I know the very, very different way that children are growing up today.
And I can see the negative aspects of that in ways that they can't see.
They may be able to feel it. They may intuit it. They may hear stories about it.
But I experienced it. So I have that dual experience that I think informs my
way of looking at certain developments, which is to say, as every generation,
you know, the older you get, the more it's like, I don't recognize this world
anymore, you know, that kind of feeling. And that's starting to definitely hit home with me.
So anyway, yeah, there is, I think there is the older audience.
And I think you're right.
I have thought about it myself. Like if I was James Corbett of 2007,
in 2025, if I was that young podcaster just starting out today.
How would I have done this? Would it look anything like what I'm doing today?
What platform would I even be on? And that's not a trivial question because
the YouTube of 2007 is very different than the YouTube of 2025,
let alone the TikTok or whatever the kids are on these days.
And certainly I don't think you could do sort of the long form explorations
that I do on TikTok, obviously. People don't have the attention span for it.
One. This is the thing. I don't want to be the old man yelling at clouds,
but I think there is genuinely something going on with these platforms that
are dumbing down the conversation in ways that I'm not sure you could articulate
the type of information that I'm trying to bring, at least not in its full context.
I have yet to have seen what I think to be a profound and amazing and deeply
informative TikTok video.
I've seen some that bring up some interesting points, usually with a hip hop
beat underneath and random screenshots and things that then I have to go and sort of look up myself.
So it's not without use, but I think there is a difference to what's going on
today. But but then again, I get that the kids these days have to work with whatever is popular.
And that's exactly what I did back in 2007, back when the older generation would
have looked at YouTube and gone, you know, you get your information online.
So just a quick joke. This is what I was laughing at earlier.
But I was like, okay, if you wanted to gain a younger audience,
James Corbett, the Corbett report for kids. And you could have like a stuffed
animal on your hand. And there could be like explosions and stuff.
Whatever they do in the TikTok.
Have you ever seen my Johnny YouTuber persona? I have. The backwards hat.
It's like, hey, kids. Yeah. No, that's great.
That's me making fun of the TikTok generation. But more seriously,
I do have a website called opensourceeducation.online.
And that idea comes from Ernie Hancock of Freedom's Phoenix.
He encouraged me to start that because he made the point, and it's an excellent point.
The time, if you really want to shape the next generation, the time to start
getting to that generation is probably junior high, maybe into high school.
The time when, of course, young people are becoming young adults and starting
to truly question and starting to really think about things.
And it is, of course, at that time that the institution, the educational institution,
which of course is an indoctrination institution, is trying to shape children
into rebel against your parents, those old fuddy-duddies. They don't know what
they're doing. Trust the state.
So Ernie Hancock made the point, no, what they need is this type of corporate
report information, but hopefully in a way that will convey this in an educational
context that will make sense to them.
So I organized a bunch of my reports in that sort of educational context in a curriculum.
There's an economics course, history, literature, et cetera.
As we are speaking, I am currently uploading, which might be why we're not having
a great connection, currently uploading the next course.
It's a psychology course, which is based on my brand new documentary,
which is about to drop in a couple of hours here from when we're talking.
And so I have attempted to sort of sort things out into a curriculum like that.
And, you know, is it going to be the smash hit that's going to take over the world?
Maybe not. But it is it is something that I think people in the independent
media should be thinking about.
Maybe tailoring some of this information and putting it in that educational
context for young people so that those people who are curious and are starting
to fall through the cracks of the system and question the institutions can start
finding some real information.
And that might be one way of shaping the message in a way that hopefully will
reach younger audiences.
I really appreciate that. And I think I've seen this once before,
but it's great to review it. I will put the link in there in the description,
opensourceeducation.online.
I'd also like to do more of my part. We're thinking about doing devices that
are more tailored towards kids.
And I'm just thinking in my head, how cool would it be if some of this content
was on there already as an educational resource? Yes.
It's a very impressionable age going into high school. And so...
Yeah, this this is all stuff we really need to learn. Amazing.
So my last question on the first part of the interview, which I think is very
interesting and very top of mind these days, is you covered in your book,
Madison Grant, the conservationist who was also a white supremacist.
And he was talking about the idea.
He was really calling out white Americans saying, if you're not having children, it's white suicide.
And it's kind of like history is repeating itself today as we're seeing underground
groups, mostly on the Internet, that are gathering around this nationalism and making it a race issue.
Because ultimately they do feel threatened from the issue of mass immigration.
And you can look at the protests in England recently to see this happening.
And of course, there's been events which make people feel like they are under attack.
And so your family having immigrated to Canada from the UK and then again to
Japan is, you know, you've experienced immigration firsthand.
The good the good parts about it, kind of the bad parts about it, too.
Do you how is the immigration issue like what do you personally feel about it?
And do you think today's immigration issue is purposely engineered to divide and conquer?
Well, there are documentable ways that people can put their finger on the idea
of weaponization of immigration,
the Calergi plan and things that people will point to that I think rightly do
indicate that certainly mass migration,
all at once of large numbers of people flooding into an area where there's clearly
a difference in cultures, is going to create problems.
And it is going to create frictions and tensions that can then be exacerbated
and then used by political grandstanders to manipulate the public in various ways.
And so I wouldn't dismiss the idea that at the very least people are rightfully
concerned about immigration, etc.
What I do find disturbing is the.
The gradual, but I definitely see it coming, the re-legitimization of eugenics,
which is something that I've been talking about for a couple of decades now. It really struck me.
I remember back when I was just beginning this work, and I was just starting
to find out, for example, about the history of eugenics.
For people who don't know, this is the 19th century idea.
The term was coined by Francis Galton, the first cousin of Charles Darwin.
And people who don't know, the Darwin and Galton and Wedgwood line were inbred
and interbred to the point where, for example, Charles Darwin himself was actually
worried about the problems of inbreeding.
And he himself was hooked up with his first cousin, et cetera.
And they had a number of children, only a few of which were able to actually
reproduce themselves, et cetera, et cetera.
So the question of inbreeding and interbreeding was top of mind for these types
of gentleman scientists of the 19th century British gentry who were interested
in this question of eugenics.
Because the general idea is, hey, we breed horses for certain traits.
We breed dogs for certain traits.
We've been doing this for thousands of years. Why don't we breed humans for certain traits?
Certainly some stock is better than others. And that, of course,
very quickly became the sort of pseudoscientific idea that, well,
if you're poor, if you're unsuccessful,
if you're not, you know, a gentleman scientist of the British gentry,
that's because you're poor stock.
And if you are one of these, you know, elite people.
People in the British gentry, well, that's because you're a superior stock. End of story.
So what we need to do is eugenics. We need to encourage these people to breed
with each other and have big families.
With that, of course, comes the dark shadow of disgenics, which is really what
eugenics was really aiming at as a political idea as it caught on,
for example, in America in the early 20th century, which is to get rid of those
undesirable parts of the gene pool.
And we saw that taking place in many ways.
Most obviously the sterilization laws, which happened in the United States,
in Canada, in Japan, in many places around the world, they're in the early 20th century.
Some of those laws, for example, in my home province of Alberta in Canada,
up until the 1980s, they had the involuntary sterilization eugenics laws on the books.
So it's this whole fascinating history that I remember when I was first starting
to talk about this and think about this almost two decades ago.
I remember talking to someone over here in Japan who had studied genetics at the university level.
He had his, I think his master's degree in genetics. I was talking to him about
this and I brought up eugenics. He had never even heard of the word.
Like he didn't even know what that meant. He didn't never heard of the concept.
So this has been completely occluded from people's attention, but it is coming back.
And I can see how the immigration issue and other issues are starting to flip
people around back to the idea that, yes, well, of course, it just makes sense.
The best needs to breed with the best. And well, I guess we know what we can do with the rest, right?
And the worst part of that is that, of course, everyone who is an adherent to
this ideology thinks, well, of course, that means me, I'm one of the good stock, right?
And so my family should thrive. And it's the other people who shouldn't thrive. But guess what?
To the people who are controlling the system, the billionaires and the Bill
Gateses and whoever else is manipulating this at higher levels,
you are the bad stock. You are the people who need to be eliminated.
And that's, I think, what people don't understand. So yes, you're right.
In reportage, I have a few essays that touch on this subject,
but one in particular about who controls the environmental movement,
talking about people like Madison Grant and other people who were very formative,
important people in the conservation movement, in the early environmental movement,
who also were card-carrying eugenicists.
And that isn't just some sort of coincidence or, you know, what an interesting connection.
I wonder why. It's because precisely the same mindset that leads people to think,
well, of course, the superior,
the few people with the superior genes need to conquer the world and basically
spread their genes around the world, have that same mindset that nature,
the natural kingdom is for us.
It's our preserve, and we need to preserve it for ourselves and our family.
It also, of course, leads to the conservation movement having this inherent
bias towards, as Teddy Roosevelt and other eugenicists, Madison Grant and others wrote about.
You know, they're concerned about the noble, the majestic elk and these other,
you know, noble, the eagle and these types of majestic animals.
They don't care about most of the animals, right? They don't care about rabbits or whatever.
It's just the majestic sort of it's the same mindset of elitism and it's horrible
to watch as more and more people are starting to adopt that elitist mindset
thinking that they themselves are part of this elite that's going to go and rule this world.
If you're just a regular person listening to this conversation,
chances are the people who are manipulating society don't think of you as part of their club.
That's a really good point Right.
And I do I do agree that mass immigration, it's now it's now it's coming to
a head because they're becoming a little bit more desperate.
But it does seem like it's being played up a lot more than it normally is.
And it's unfortunately one of those problems which we just can't go and take it all back.
You know, there are there there have been people from war tour countries,
not the best people, criminals.
And I think there's enough evidence out there to show that they are actually doing harm to society.
But now that we are in this place where the natives of one country and dealing
with this outside group of people,
do you think there is a way to actually repair race relations and work alongside
these different populations, even though that country is not their home?
Yeah. Well, let me solve this problem in the next few minutes here. No. Yeah, no.
There is no easy solution to this because the problem has been brought to this spot.
And yeah, undoing the problems that have already happened is difficult enough.
But then how do we prevent it in the future? That might actually even be the
more the easier part of this, because what I go back to with regards to this
issue is fundamentally,
as people who read the book will know, I am a voluntarist and I think free human
beings are should be free to move across this earth as they see fit.
And people will congregate in communities of like-minded people.
And yes, often people will have a preference for people of their own kind in
whatever way they see that or define that.
And as a voluntarist, I'm fine with that. If you only want to live with,
you know, other white people, great, you know, go do that. I'm not going to
stop you from doing that.
But equally, I don't think that having this system of nation states where there
are these lines on the map where you have to provide proof.
For me, for example, I have to carry around my passport, which is literally
the king of England at this point, saying, you know, let this person through this imaginary line.
I don't think that that is the way that we should be organizing the world in and of itself.
So I think we need to dismantle the very concept of the nation state system that we live under.
And that isn't some sort of one world government sort of solution,
which is the way that that is generally framed.
It's the precise opposite. It's no world government solution.
As in, we need to get rid of the concept of centralized authority.
And where does the legitimacy of that political authority come from?
Some magical ritual where you put a piece of paper in a box and enough people
put enough pieces of paper and suddenly this person rules over you.
I think we live in extremely...
I don't want to even say antiquated, I think carefully manipulated systems of
control that is difficult for us to think outside of.
And once we escape that, that idea, that mindset, that there are centralized
positions of authority, which govern over these vast geographical areas and
can tell anyone in that geographical area what to do, we have to start interrogating those concepts.
And I think the cultural concepts will sort themselves out, not to say that
there will be some sort of, you know, peace, harmony, and unity between all
people, as long as humans are humans, I'm sure there will be enmity and problems and strife.
But at the very least, it can be human beings sorting that out in a human way,
rather than this inhuman system of top-down control where vast stretches of
the globe are governed by a few elitists at the top who think of themselves
as superior to everyone else.
So I know that's not really a fundamental answer to what you're talking about.
There are real obvious problems that people are dealing with right now in this world.
But it's difficult to imagine how to extricate ourselves from those problems,
as long as we still live in this top-down system of centralized hierarchical control.
That's right. And once we start seeing past that illusion, we can at least start
working with each other together to do something about it.
Maybe take the resources that might have been going to prop up the forever wars,
the subsidies for these harmful immigration programs, welfare states,
and then putting them towards better use.
Here's another interesting observation I got by reading Reportage,
which, again, guys, if you haven't already went to the website and started looking
for this book, it is an e-book version, which, by the way, James,
I love you for doing that. Thank you for having an e-book version.
Get this book. Can I also say that you have a hardcover edition.
That's the collector's edition, actually.
Very special edition run. Signed by the author.
In fact, as we're speaking, there is now a hardcover edition available for purchase
through Amazon and all the places that you buy books.
Don't buy it through Amazon if you can help it, but it is there.
It's distributed to all the booksellers. So you can buy a hardcover edition of it now.
And the audiobook edition is coming in the not too distant future.
I'm not going to give it time precisely, but let's just say if you wait a bit,
there will be an audiobook as well.
So many different ways to read the book, and it's wonderfully written.
I love that you can kind of just flip around to any of the essays and start wherever.
And it really gives you a deep understanding of one subject.
So I really, I hope you guys check out the book.
There's this um by reading the
book you kind of get to understand that the global elite although
they seem like this shadowy group it's not as big
of a group as you might think it's kind of the same people
that are showing up coming up over and over and it's a kind of a small club
which gives you some hope in that one person could even understand this power
structure so there's um i'm just paraphrasing here but they this global elite
works by coordinating their power and effort and there's a lot of relationships.
They know how to work together to come to an agreed upon vision and amplify
their own power through each other.
James, I've been thinking about how voluntarious people who believe in freedom, what do you think?
Of course, we can't really force our ideas onto each other, but do you think
there are more effective ways we can work with our relationships to amplify
our own visions in the opposite direction than theirs?
You know, Hakeem, that is such an insightful, such a good question,
because I think that point goes over so many people's heads.
People, I understand why people naturally tend to assume there is a monolithic
conspiracy, and it's all headed by,
you know, one person, or the Council of 13, or, you know, whatever it is,
there's just this one group, and they're all reading from the same script,
and following along, and Putin,
you know, okay, oh, today I'll invade Ukraine, okay, then I better invade Ukraine.
I don't believe in that cartoon level monolithic conspiracy.
I think there are different people coming from different backgrounds and perspectives,
maybe with their own agendas, that are all part of this group,
which we can broadly identify. I don't use the term elite.
I use elitist because they think of themselves as elites. But I don't I don't think they're elites.
Global elitists. So the global elitists. Yes. The clique, the club that we're not in.
These people, I think there is a lot of backstabbing and jockeying for power
because essentially what they are attempting to do is what every dictator throughout
all of human history has done.
It's nothing strange to understand.
They're trying to accrue as much power as possible into as few hands as possible.
Me and my friends, we're going to rule the world. Essentially. What's...
Every ruthless dictator in history has desired. So every person at this table
is going to define me and my friends a little bit differently.
But you make the excellent point. Yes, there are a disparate number of people.
I cite David Rothkopf in the book, for example, who wrote the book Superclass
in which he identified 6,000 people that he said are able to institute their
agenda across international boundaries and what have you.
So whatever, however big this club is, several thousand, even if it's tens of
thousands, it's still a tiny, tiny percentage of the overall global population, right?
And these people are able, with their diverse ideas and ideologies and backgrounds
and ultimate goals, are able to come together and cooperate on issues that they think are important.
For example, the Great Reset Agenda, which I always point out is really just
the latest rebranding of a very, very longstanding agenda, which is towards
that centralization of control, technocracy, et cetera.
But why do all of these different players at the global elitist table,
why do they get to get on board with something like the Great Reset?
Why does build back better become this term that every politician suddenly starts using?
Why is the idea of the 15 minute city now being introduced and implemented in
various places, smart cities, those sorts of things.
It's because fundamentally, I think the ultimate ideology that is driving these
people is the same, towards centralization of power and control.
And so everything that happens in the world, every event, whether manipulated
and staged and fake or totally organic, can be used as an.
Oh, my God, look at this horrible terror attack that happened on 9-11.
We need to give more power and control to intelligence agencies.
We need to give them more money.
We need to get them, you know, more centralized in talking to each other.
That's the problem. They failed, so we need to give them more power.
So no matter what happens, you can always just frame it in the way that you
want, given your underlying ideology.
Whereas from a freedom perspective, you might look at something like,
I don't know, a 9-11 and say, hey, look, I don't care.
Well, I do care. But you can say, I don't care what happened,
you know, whether it was the government or whatever it was.
The point is, you failed us. You're supposed to keep us safe,
but you didn't keep us safe. Therefore, we should give you less money.
We should give you less power.
We should dismantle you because you are clearly not doing what you're supposed to be doing.
That is an equally, I would say, even more valid response to something like that, right?
But it's never framed in that way. It's always like, oh, this was a terrible
failure. Let's give them more power.
Because the people who are driving this agenda have their ideology.
They have their goal in mind.
So absolutely everything becomes just another excuse for them to go towards their goal.
Why don't why don't freedom-minded people
work in that way why don't we understand yes
i hakeem i might disagree with you on this or
that but i know that fundamentally if we
are working towards the same fundamental underlying goal we'll have lots of
things and places where we can work together and we can leverage our individual
actions towards that greater goal that we're seeking and everything that happens
could be an excuse for more freedom you know oh this horrible terror attack,
we should do freedom instead of, you know, more tyranny.
And that is the way forward. I think if we are, and again, that doesn't mean
we have to be wedded at the hip or we have to be on the same page,
you know, reading the same script.
It just means that we work together on items of interest that we agree on.
I couldn't have said it better. Yeah. It makes me think that the first step,
just reframing the news cycle, this thing has happened.
So here's from a voluntarist perspective, you can't say, I think things should
be like this, but you can't say, here's how I'm changing my own life to reflect these values better.
Cause now I know that there, it's even more important to care about them and act on them.
And here are the ways that I would like to engage with others,
whether that is, um, watching over our own community or becoming more self-reliant on food.
And I guess if, if there are enough of us, because it's like,
it's not like We have the benefit of billions of dollars on our backs and companies
that we can put towards these visions.
But we do have our own individual choices. And if enough people speak up,
it does turn into something greater.
So I really like the way you put that. And I hope that more people could be
more vocal about their personal pledges and how they live their life.
So, James, and think about things in advance. Sorry, let me just make that point, because,
again, we know in the event of, say, a nuclear incident, nuclear terrorist strike
or a nuclear war or whatever, whatever they gin up, you know what the government
response is going to be overnight.
Night, they're going to crack down on absolutely everything.
Okay, the end of any sort of free communication on the internet,
we're going to take over and we're going to have boots on the ground,
you know, total homeland security state, whatever, whatever we need to do to solve this problem.
Whereas if we in advance consciously and vocally talk about no, no, no, no, no,
the point is that to whatever extent there's this imaginary social contract
and we're all, you know, beholden to your political authority because you keep us safe.
No, the exact point is, no, as soon as we see that mushroom cloud going off
anywhere, you have broken the social contract.
We serve you no more. Nuclear war, we serve you no more.
Something like that. We need some snappy slogan that we put in bed in the public
consciousness in advance so that
we will already be oriented in the right direction in the event of that,
you know, whatever cataclysmic event they're going to try to use to rally us all under their flag.
No, we should be in advance already saying, no, anything that happens like that,
you've shown that you have no authority, you have no legitimacy.
We totally, utterly eschew you. And if we do that in advance and commit ourselves
to that, then I think we are better positioned for the next cataclysmic event, whatever it may be.
Very well said. Yes. If they can plan generations in advance,
I think we could plan at least five years, and we know exactly what's coming.
So James, this is a question we try to ask everyone who gets interviewed on
Take Back Our Tech, and it's a pretty simple one.
What is your most favorite open source technology and why? Could be an app, could be a service.
Yeah, okay, I'm thinking about it. You know what?
Okay, I think you know what I'm going to say. I think I know.
Yeah. What do you think I'm going to say?
Three letters starts with an R. Yeah. That's the one that immediately occurs
to me. And I don't know, do I want to be that predictable?
But I will. You know what? I'm here. I might as well make the case.
You know, for people who don't know about really simple syndication,
and I don't know in detail. I really should, like, really look at the history of this.
But I know Aaron Schwartz was part of the codification of this.
Right? So rest in peace, Aaron Schwartz. I should really look into how the RSS
concept came out, the protocol, right?
Because it is essentially, it's a protocol. And that's the thing that's beautiful
about it. It is not controlled by anyone.
And depending on what feed reader you use, they'll all, you know,
accept different inputs and parameters.
And, you know, and you can call on different XMLNS.
Is that what it is? So you can call different things in order to put different
things in your feed. You can tailor it the way you want.
Different people can use whatever, whatever.
They could even make their own open source reader.
And to me, this is absolutely, this is the way, this is the true promise of the internet.
This is what the decentralization of information was all about, was no middleman.
Why do we need a middleman? I guess you could argue the ISPs that we're using
to connect to the internet are middlemen, but you don't even necessarily need
them, depending how we, you know, get our information.
But at any rate, there's no middleman between me and the person who wants to hear what I'm saying.
Whereas, of course, as everyone knows, when you're following someone on YouTube,
if you subscribe to, you know, if you're subscribed to someone on YouTube,
YouTube is allowing you to connect to that person through their control platform,
which means that, yeah, they'll know there's a connection there and they may
show you some of their videos sometimes when they feel like it.
Unless you click the bell and spin the hoop and whatever else they're asking you to do these days.
And then they might show you a few more of those person's videos.
But it's a stupid, stupid, stupid system because,
And exactly as happened to me a few years ago, they just flipped the switch, your channel's gone.
And those half a million people who's hit that subscribe button,
suddenly, I don't know, he's gone, whatever.
And for a lot of them, they probably don't even recognize that you're gone because
they just don't see you in their algorithmic feed anymore. So they don't even think about you.
Other people might think, yeah, I wonder what happened to that James guy.
I know some people thought I retired. Some people thought I died.
And now that I got my YouTube channel back, people are like,
hey, you're back. No, I didn't go anywhere, guys. I've been here the whole time.
It's just YouTube didn't allow you to see me. So RSS.
I mean, I can't imagine there's anyone in the T-Bot audience who doesn't know
about RSS. But if not, look into it.
We could make them maybe go a little bit deeper. And if you don't have your
categorized RSS feed of the journalists, you like to listen to the software,
you'd like to keep up to date to the geopolitical events, maybe it's time to start.
There is software I use called Fresh RSS, which you can host yourself,
which allows you to do that.
Then, like James was saying, you could take that and make another feed of it
from it and choose to subscribe.
That's actually what I do to stay on top of the T-Bot show. I honestly don't
know how you could do that without an RSS feed. how you could have like a weekly
show that RSS feed without without a feed, because there's just so much coming out there.
On that note, I mean, do you have any? I'm sure you have your own RSS feeds.
Do you have any tips about how to use them? And then follow up question.
You restarted. You didn't restart. You got back your YouTube channel.
How's that going? Does it even matter?
It does not matter. And I can say that now because after the initial,
there was some, I guess, excitement amongst people who are like,
oh, hey, I remember you, hey, welcome back, and all that.
Now it's at the point where I think I'm getting like 5K views of video or something.
Like, it's just, it's ridiculous. I have 550,000 subscribers and I get like 5K views.
I'm just, whatever secret sauce you have to put into whatever in order to be
promoted by the algorithm, clearly not me anymore.
And that, you know, whatever. James, you gotta make your thumbnail face like this.
Yeah. And then and then.
Yeah. Amongst other things. Right. Anyway, I don't care.
I never studied the algorithm or how to manipulate it. And I'm certainly not going to start now.
So whatever. It is what it is. Is it I mean, it's whatever.
It's just another platform where maybe someone will stumble across me. I hope.
Um sorry what was the other part of that question the other
part was there so i'll expand the question to any tips
for um maintaining your rss feeds like
how do you like to organize your stuff and then
the two-parter if you have something more is there any other decentralized
content platform that you want
to promote to other people but part one rss feed
organization okay part one um yes rss
feed organization i guess it really depends what you are doing what
your purpose is as you say doing a weekly show you how
can you do it without an rss feed i mean you have to have access
to information and for me too absolutely if i didn't have
rss i guess i could
be on twitter and like using that as a
way to try to keep up with the news or something but oh my
god my mind boggles because there's so much garbage
on twitter and once again you're letting the twitter
algorithm decide what you see so it's not
the way to go um rss you get to decide i like
this guy i like this site i like this podcast tbot i'm
subscribed not through substack itself i'm subscribed
to the rss oh the substack rss so that
i know when you post a new video i get to see it that way
because it's in my rss feed so that's the way and so
for me personally the way i do it i have i don't.
Know how many dozens and dozens and dozens of feeds i'm subscribed to which
means i get hundreds and hundreds of articles and videos and things every single
day and every single day or at least every couple days I just go through the
list I see the headlines I see which ones I am interested in I click through
to them and I get rid of the other ones out of my feed and that's the way I do it and oh um.
You delete them. That's what I was laughing about. I'm the guy who maybe sees
it and just leaves it in there.
So there's like a million red things. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. If I if I didn't, my God, no, I have to because otherwise it would be just a mess.
But but here's what I do. So when I click into and actually go to like,
oh, this article looks good. And I go click into it.
If it is indeed good and something that I need to know, I physically save it,
save as HTML file to my hard drive.
That's the way that I actually keep track. And you know what I do certainly.
So I have an entire directory. I showed it once in a solutions watch,
I think on the highlighter is mightier than the sword or something like that.
I showed how I save files in the directory that I've, I've created for,
you know, categorizing different articles and things.
And I do use that. So like, if I ever need to know, you know,
what do I know about Nigeria or something?
I can go into my directory and find all the articles I've
ever saved about my shirt but um i don't
do that a lot but i find that the
concept just the idea of saving those articles
and remembering i have that helps me to remember that
that exists so that later on when i'm doing something
on palantir or whatever it is i will remember oh yeah i saved an article about
that predictive pre-crime thing a couple years ago and then i can go and find
it so for me it's just a mnemonic thing i guess but it certainly helps me the
highlighter is mightier than the sword check that out on Solutions Watch. Would that be?
On Solutions Watch. Also, James, to share this with you in the audience,
there's also a Wallabag, which it can integrate with some RSS software.
And basically, there's just a button and it'll kind of do the manual process
James is talking about and save it to another application. You can tag it, all that kind of stuff.
Can you save it locally or does it have to be in the cloud?
It is on software running either on your machine or in the cloud.
I think it can run on your desktop, though. Just kind of cool.
Wallabag for those who want to try it out. Beautiful.
Well, thanks, James. I got something new out of this. I need to delete my articles.
And that's probably why my hard drives are all crashing.
James, I want to thank you for giving us so much insight. And I just want to
say again how special it was to read your book and how insightful it was.
And I hope that you guys who are watching this go and pick up a copy of it,
whether it's the hard copy, which it's nice having a copy in your hands or purchasing it online.
Make sure you get this. Share it with one friend who maybe hasn't come around to some of this stuff.
But the way this is written, the way it's cited, the way that you can go to
the end of each chapter and actually research it for yourself.
This is the conspiracy realist book everyone needs to be reading.
So thank you again, James. This wraps up the first half of the interview with
James. Now we will go into the personal half for those of you that are paid subscribers.