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Understanding False Dichotomies · UK Column Radio

0:35
None, Kid Knightley, thank you for joining me in the trenches.
0:40
I was just saying, we spoke a few years ago and a lot, a lot
0:45
has happened. But I sometimes wonder if if we
0:49
just constantly say that if if a lot is constantly happening, you
0:53
know, are we just aware of it? Well, I don't know.
0:56
I mean, in some ways, a lot have happened in some ways, sort of
1:00
like it's been sort of just caught in like a, a lot has been
1:03
said to happen. Like certainly there's a lot of,
1:05
there's a lot of hyperactivity, a lot of like panic, a lot of
1:09
hysteria. A lot of this is the worst thing
1:11
ever kind of going on. But in terms of what's actually
1:14
happened, it's been, you know, relatively stable, you know,
1:18
compared to when we last talked. For my UK column audience who
1:22
might not know you just quickly, what is your background kit?
1:27
Background is an interesting question.
1:29
I don't really have much of a background.
1:31
My job is running the website off-guardian.org where I am the
1:36
editor and well, I'm a contributing editor there
1:39
basically by my my background isn't in journalism at all.
1:44
My background was in just just writing and then the world went
1:48
mad and that was what I had to write about so.
1:52
But you make an interesting point there.
1:54
You you say your background is not in journalism, but that I
1:57
mean that implies that you need to go and study at.
2:00
A yeah, exactly that. She's buying into the idea that
2:04
journalists are some sort of special class of people that
2:06
need to be trained. But they're not, obviously.
2:09
And indeed, it goes back to education and stuff where they
2:12
sort of try and funnel you into like specialities very early,
2:16
but the idea that your life is basically decided for you when
2:18
you choose what you're going to study at university, if not what
2:22
you choose to study A level or like.
2:25
The idea of of school, I mean you spend what, 1012 years
2:29
becoming equipped to what, become a waiter?
2:34
Well, depending, depending what you choose, your speciality.
2:36
I mean, yeah, if you're going to choose like APHD in like
2:41
gendered psychology, then yeah, you're probably going to end up
2:44
being a waiter. Well, no, no, no.
2:46
I mean actual school. Like like when you're a kid.
2:50
Oh yeah, well, there is that too.
2:51
I mean, like the, the whole, the whole education system is very
2:54
confusing and very become, it's become very, I don't want to say
3:02
slave campy, but I don't know what else to say.
3:04
It's it is very sort of, I mean, it's over here, for example.
3:08
I mean, we're going to rambling off on a tangent already, but
3:12
like in, in the UK now, it you can't take your kids out of
3:15
school without a doctor's note. And if you do, it can be, it can
3:19
technically be a criminal offence and they will find you
3:22
and stuff like that. And that is different from ours
3:24
at school just a few years ago, you could just phone in and say
3:29
we're going and there's nothing anybody could do about it.
3:32
What you just said there now made me realise, you know, with
3:34
all the chaos of living on the African continent, which I do,
3:39
there is a sometimes a sense of freedom.
3:41
I mean, you, a lot of kids here just simply don't go to school.
3:47
Well, yeah, I mean, I suppose like, yeah, no, there is a pay.
3:52
There's like a a joking act between like chaos and freedom.
3:57
That isn't it. That's that's the whole the
4:00
nature of anarchy versus government is like, what do you
4:04
need and what do you not need? Yeah.
4:07
But that whole idea of anarchy also, I mean, it's sort of, it's
4:10
very ideological also. Well, I mean, I yeah,
4:14
everything, everything has become that.
4:16
Everything has become like, I'm sure the social media is full of
4:22
anarchists arguing each other about who was a good anarchist
4:24
and who was a bad anarchist and how could you possibly endorse
4:26
that if you say you're an anarchist and that kind of
4:28
thing. It's all ridiculous.
4:31
Going back to Off Guardian. The name came about because you
4:36
and one or two others kept getting kicked Off Guardian.
4:39
The the actual The Guardian Newspapers website.
4:42
Is that right? Well, yeah, I mean, I, I can't
4:44
take any credit for the name or even the creation of the
4:46
website, honestly. I mean, that start that happened
4:49
before I got there. Like, yeah.
4:50
But the original founding editors, there were five or six
4:53
of them were all commenting on the on the Guardian in 2014.
4:58
Fifteen, mainly because of the situation in Ukraine at the
5:00
time. And they just kept getting
5:02
banned of keeping their comments edited.
5:04
So Off Guardians started out as a place where they, because if
5:06
we published the comments that the Guardian wouldn't publish.
5:10
And then that existed for a few months before I was asked to
5:14
come and help. And then we started publishing
5:16
articles. And then I wrote an article in
5:18
like May of 2015, which was the first one I've ever written for
5:21
Off Guardian. And then suddenly we stopped
5:23
being about comments and started being about articles.
5:25
And it just sort of it is now the only real connection to the
5:30
guardian is now the name, which I am fine with because it means
5:34
I don't have to read the guardian anymore.
5:37
I stumbled across Off Guardian, yes, around about that Ukraine
5:41
time and I was just speaking to some other guys earlier, the
5:47
whole idea of skin in the game. And one of one of the, the
5:51
things that really appealed to me about Off Guardian and I
5:54
suppose independent alternative media in general.
5:57
And I'll come back to that term also in a moment.
5:59
So I want your opinion on that. But what appealed to me about of
6:02
Guardian is the contributors had skin in the game, or they at
6:09
least appear to have skin in the game, which is a concept that I,
6:13
I, I read in Nassim Taleb's work, who weirdly got everything
6:18
wrong in the COVID era. But but the, the, the risk
6:24
analysis idea that he presented was take a look at the people
6:29
who are making claims and see how much they have to lose.
6:33
And it was quite obvious to me that those that off Guardian had
6:36
a lot more to lose than those at the BBC or CNN, for example.
6:40
And, and, and that that helped me kind of discern between who
6:45
to put more faith in. All right, because we're
6:48
thinking about what to lose because you say the wrong thing
6:51
at the BBC and you lose like 60,000 a year in a pension and
6:55
you just you say something we don't like an off guard and
6:57
there's nothing anybody can do about it.
6:59
So like, yeah, there we have like, I suppose we are more like
7:03
emotionally and morally invested in doing the right thing, but we
7:07
we have a lot less to lose in terms of like social status and,
7:12
and, and monetary rewards and like that kind of thing.
7:15
No, no, what I meant was so for example, if if the BBC gets it
7:18
wrong, nothing happens to the BBC, but if you.
7:21
Yeah, I know. I know what you meant.
7:23
I was just, I was just joking. But yeah, well, I mean,
7:27
alternative media in general are held to much higher standards in
7:30
that kind of thing, especially with the passing of things like
7:32
the Online Safety Act, which means they will come after
7:35
websites like that. The term alternatively
7:39
independent media has also become quite fashionable in the
7:42
last few years and I wonder if it falls victim to the same the
7:48
same problems as mainstream media and and and.
7:52
How do we differentiate between between these different schools
7:55
of thinking? Well, increasingly you can't
8:00
honestly. And I think I mean, there's like
8:03
a greater thesis to be had about the COVID era, the COVID launch,
8:08
what it achieved, what it didn't achieve and the like impacts it
8:11
had on everything. But I think one of the greatest
8:13
impacts it had was on the media landscape in the the failures of
8:19
COVID as a as an agenda. We're entirely down to what we
8:23
would have called then the alternate media.
8:25
And I don't know what we it's now sort of the alternate
8:28
alternate media, because the the backlash of that has been a sort
8:31
of Co opting incolonisation of that idea and that term by
8:35
taking like mainstream voices and putting them in like made
8:39
up. Look at this homie studio.
8:42
He's just a guy doing a podcast from his living room and having
8:44
them broadcast on Twitter instead of on CNN.
8:47
But still, they are very much they are like Co opting the idea
8:51
of alternate. And that is that's the most
8:55
interesting thing going on in the alternative media sphere
8:57
really is like people like Lemon from CNN and Tucker Carlson
9:04
getting huge broadcast audiences.
9:07
And that notion is independent from their old studios.
9:09
When, you know, you can argue they're very definitely not.
9:14
Yeah. And I mean, quite obviously they
9:18
end up limiting access to certain information that they
9:22
could have but but don't want to distribute it.
9:26
Yes, and and taking up leadership positions against
9:28
people with people for people who have been alienated from the
9:33
old way of doing media. Like there is a whole just
9:36
masses, millions and millions of people who don't watch CNN and
9:40
don't read, you know, the Telegraph or the Guardian or New
9:42
York Times. Because why the hell should
9:45
they? And you know, more power to
9:47
them. But these are people who are
9:48
waiting for their an information vacuum.
9:51
And like, there has been a deliberate effort to sort of
9:54
install people at their head to make sure they don't go too far
9:58
the other way. I mean, you look at somebody
9:59
like Joe Rogan. I mean, would he be considered
10:02
mainstream? I almost want to say yes all.
10:05
Right, 250 million from Spotify. If $250 million doesn't get you
10:09
to mainstream, then nothing will.
10:14
But he does cover topics here and there that that the BBC or
10:18
CNN won't cover. Yeah, I mean, and there is a lot
10:20
of, I mean he has, he has contributed to the conversation.
10:23
That is that is the trick because it's not a question of
10:26
simply like these people are all Co opted, they all are knowing
10:29
the lies, spreading an agenda. It doesn't work like that.
10:32
You know, I mean, most people, even people who work for the New
10:35
York Times, they don't see themselves as like an owned
10:38
asset. And Joe Rogan has had good
10:41
guests on and he does say some interesting things.
10:44
But the very nature of accepting that kind of money and the very
10:47
nature of being in that position means you are liable to control.
10:50
You don't realise it's control. And that's the nature of like
10:53
institutions in general. You, you're sort of touching on
10:59
a theme that I spoke to you originally about a few years
11:02
ago, and that is sort of the, the fake binary, the false
11:05
dichotomy aspect. And it was so profound it it, it
11:08
really changed the way that I thought about things going
11:12
forward. And even the media itself, from
11:15
mainstream to alternative, faces that same issue of the fake
11:19
binary. Yeah, very much so.
11:21
I mean, this is something to give credit where credit is due.
11:24
This is something that my Co editor, Cat Black came up with
11:29
back in 20, late 2021, early 2022.
11:32
And it's it is. And it's not a brand new idea,
11:35
the idea of controlled opposition that you know, limits
11:38
the conversation. But there was very definitely a
11:41
violent and sudden push towards basically turning every issue
11:45
into a bipartisan issue. There is basically if you see
11:49
COVID as being the greatest act of media consensus that I have
11:53
ever seen, Like I think I don't think many people disagree with
11:55
that. Like every government, every
11:57
media out there basically agreed about COVID.
11:59
And there was a natural reaction to it that people pulled back
12:06
from it because certitude is sort of like, you know, that
12:09
kind of weight of opinion makes people like want to explore an
12:13
alternative. And I think there is a since
12:16
then regarding first vaccines, then Ukraine.
12:20
And so there was a, a bipartisan shift, a OK from from now on,
12:24
we're not going to do one voice saying one message.
12:26
We're going to do 2 voices saying 2 messages that share the
12:29
same underlying opinions and therefore limit what you can and
12:33
cannot think. Yeah.
12:36
And there the basically, unfortunately basically
12:39
everything can be drawn into that.
12:42
I think it was Noam Chomsky. Duiv is quite in front of me.
12:46
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to
12:51
strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow
12:54
very lively debate within that spectrum.
12:57
Nelson Chomsky. Chomsky was absolutely right,
13:00
which is a very confusing and like conflicting opinion
13:05
position to be in, because Chomsky was also wrong all the
13:07
time and in some ways and a very good example of that kind of
13:11
thing because he would shut down quite intellectually dishonesty
13:15
for such a smart man. He would shut down talk about
13:17
911. He would shut down talk about
13:18
JFKI. Don't actually remember.
13:21
I think he was pro COVID vaccines.
13:23
I don't remember. I'm going to have to check that,
13:29
but I'm pretty sure it was he was, you know, he was, he was
13:32
very definitely like a gatekeeper on certain positions.
13:37
But that but that quote still rings true.
13:41
I, I, I mean, if you think about it, right?
13:43
So let's, let's just look at the theatre of US politics, right?
13:47
So you under the Biden, under the Biden administration, you
13:52
had this, this, this is pandemic, this is deadly virus.
13:55
It's come from a bat from a wheat market and the Trump
13:58
administration. But there was a deadly pandemic,
14:01
but it comes from a lab leak. But both camps are arguing the
14:04
same thing, that there was a deadly pandemic.
14:06
Yes, exactly. That's, that's, that's it's the
14:09
best example we have because it's the most obvious example we
14:12
have. Is that like, OK, well, here's
14:13
the baseline. This is what is true.
14:15
And you can argue about the declaration on top of that if
14:17
you want. And it's, it's in some ways it
14:22
routes back to the US to the US is very tightly controlled,
14:25
controlled 2 party system in which both parties argue
14:29
vociferously about incredibly minute details of, of policies
14:34
when they basically support the same exact thing.
14:36
And that's been going on in America for a long time.
14:38
The Union Party idea. Yeah, they've and they exported
14:41
that to basically everything I. Suppose the same in the UK.
14:47
More or less, more or less. Except we're in a sort of a
14:51
moment of like change in the UK because I think as much as we
14:55
are going to do the two party thing that we always do, I
14:58
honestly think they might be preparing to dump the
15:01
Conservatives and have reform take over as the the other
15:04
party. What, how and why that happens?
15:08
I'm not sure what I think it might.
15:10
But there's another false dichotomy.
15:12
A liberal and a conservative, for example.
15:14
Like, what do these terms even mean?
15:16
You know what? What?
15:17
Literally. Almost nothing like it's just
15:20
basically it's the colour of the tie they're wearing and that's
15:22
it I. Mean what have conservatives
15:25
conserved? Absolutely, exactly.
15:28
And what, what what is. And people will say, and it's
15:31
very interesting. Oh, things are so much better in
15:33
our labour power, but things are exactly the same, like they
15:36
don't change. I used the COVID example with
15:42
the Trump and Biden administration.
15:44
I'm also reminded of under the Obama administration, we had
15:48
this, this big issue of climate change, global warming, and it's
15:51
coming from from your cars and your light bulbs.
15:54
Under the Trump administration, it's a little more nuanced, but
15:58
there's still global warming, but it's coming from
16:00
geoengineering and chemtrails. So both camps are arguing again,
16:04
the same thing. Again, yeah, that is
16:08
interesting. The global global warming agenda
16:11
in general is in a very interesting place at the moment
16:13
because it's almost sort of stalled, like there is no
16:18
momentum behind it. Like just a few years ago, there
16:21
was talk of climate lockdowns. There was talk of, you know, all
16:24
these terrible things, trying to relate climate change back to
16:28
COVID because it wasn't the climate change.
16:30
We wouldn't encounter bats or just crazy absolute nonsense
16:33
ideas. But they were there and there
16:35
was some energy behind them. And now, I mean, maybe it's
16:39
because Trump is in power now. So like they're going to take it
16:42
in a different direction. But I know the climate climate
16:46
change doesn't seem to be talked about anything like as much as
16:48
it was just a couple of years ago.
16:50
I mean, and there's a really, really pathetic headline on
16:54
British news a couple of days ago, like you must have seen,
16:57
you must have noticed everywhere, like every June is
17:00
the hottest June we've had since X.
17:01
Every, every summer is the hottest summer.
17:04
We've they can't even say at this time.
17:06
The one we got a couple of days ago was that April was the
17:09
sunniest April we've ever had, not the hottest.
17:14
It's the sunniest, yes. What's the movie?
17:17
5 minutes of sunlight. How do they measure that?
17:23
I don't know, because like you can't, like you can't even take
17:26
like with the absurd thing of average temperatures where they
17:29
have temperature stations everywhere and they measure them
17:31
and then they average them across the country or a nation
17:33
or a region. But with sun, how can you do
17:35
that? Who is counting the minutes of
17:37
sun? What counts as sun?
17:42
Those headlines Kit, I laugh at because I live in South Africa
17:45
and we generally have much higher temperatures on average
17:48
than than the UK. So.
17:49
So I'll see something and says really, really scorch of a day
17:53
in the UK, 25°, that's a normal day, yeah.
17:57
And again, they did that. They they warned of like a heat
18:00
wave in early April. That was, it went up to 24°.
18:04
And I have, you know, people that live in America and friends
18:06
that live in motherhood and they honestly thought it was a joke
18:10
24°, I mean, 20. And that wouldn't even have been
18:13
a, a heat wave here a few years ago.
18:15
Wouldn't like, it would have been like, it's a really nice
18:17
April day. It's one of the warmer table
18:19
days we've had in a while. And and also the the graphs,
18:24
what do you, what do you call those diagrams that they use now
18:26
they've they've become more red. Oh yeah, the weather maps.
18:29
Weather maps used to be just sort of just have bright little
18:31
Suns on them. Smiley faces are now like
18:35
covered in flames, like it's going to be 26°.
18:38
Basically, you can't go outside or you will die.
18:42
Why or is it is? Why is the media, it's a
18:45
singular, I guess. Why is the media, the mainstream
18:47
media, going down this road with everything that is clearly on
18:53
the wrong side of history? That's an interesting question.
19:06
I suppose the most cynical thing is you would say simply because,
19:10
and this is unfortunately the way the media works, because at
19:12
some point they've been told to. I mean, like there is, there is
19:19
a confusion of of message, a confusion of a gender, a
19:22
confusion of purpose, like all over what I would call like the
19:26
establishment, because I don't know what else to call it.
19:28
And I don't, you know, the powers that be, whatever you
19:30
want to call it, it's always difficult to like.
19:33
But there is the people in charge have are in a floundering
19:37
position, I believe, which is part of the reason there is this
19:41
chaotic, contradictory world that we see at the moment.
19:45
There is a, in short, to link it back to COVID.
19:50
We were never supposed to be at this point, but by now we're all
19:53
supposed to be like tagged and boosted and have our vaccines
19:57
and our global currency. And that just hasn't worked out.
20:01
So we're kind of stuck like like somebody rubbing an engine when
20:04
the wheels won't turn. Like there is, they are trying
20:08
to push forward with an agenda that has got no momentum
20:11
anymore. The Agenda 2030 idea does seem
20:15
to be less and less likely anytime soon.
20:20
Why do you think that is? Is it because of the complex
20:23
nature of humans? I'm not sure it's especially
20:28
complex means. I think they simply
20:30
underestimated how smart average people are and how resistant
20:33
they are to being told what to do and the nature of resistance.
20:37
I think a lot of a lot of the time we think of resistance and
20:41
we think of, you know, sci fi dystopias like The Hunger Games
20:44
and we think of like Rebels and Star Wars.
20:46
But there is a a more natural, more passive resistance that
20:50
basically is the people who see COVID in the headlines, see
20:55
assigned time to mask and just don't.
20:58
And it isn't a ground political statement.
21:00
They're just not interested. And I think in order to move
21:03
forward with big social change, you need at least some, some
21:09
public support, like you need a certain threshold of like people
21:12
who at least believe you a little bit.
21:15
And I think they underestimated how damning it is and how
21:19
halting it is to have people simply not believe them
21:23
passively and and independently. But it's it's interesting
21:27
because it does also seem to be linked to culture.
21:29
If I, if I look at my friends who are in, who live in
21:32
different countries, for example in Canada, they had a fairly
21:35
compliant, obedient culture during the COVID era.
21:42
Here in South Africa, for example, the vaccine uptake was
21:45
one of the lowest in the world. I think it was less than 2% or
21:47
something. And that that I think is linked
21:50
to culture. I don't think that's linked to
21:52
necessarily intelligence because of the people that I know who
21:55
did get the jab, they're pretty intelligent.
21:59
Yeah. And that is interesting.
22:01
And, and I, we were, I was having a conversation with
22:03
someone about this a little while ago who mentioned that the
22:05
three worst COVID countries in subways were Canada, Australia
22:07
and New Zealand. And they suggested it was
22:10
because they are like the former, well, not even former.
22:14
They are British colonies. So they have like a history of
22:17
like that kind of dictation. But I actually use South Africa
22:20
as a counterexample. I mean, South Africa was, was
22:23
never along with those three in that way, but was, is still like
22:26
a former British projectorate thing.
22:28
So like, it's not, it's not that simple.
22:31
I suppose you could argue like there is a certain amount of
22:34
like happy, like slightly chubby middle classness in, in Canada
22:40
and Australia, sort of like very comfortable soft people.
22:45
That doesn't really apply to a lot of other former British
22:48
places. It was very much a middle class
22:51
thing. It was, it's certainly true
22:54
here. It was like you get far more
22:57
resistant in the working class than than in the middle class.
23:01
I think the most important lesson to learn from COVID,
23:07
easily the most important and we could buy, and this spreads out
23:10
to other things I've written about since is never, ever let
23:16
the conversation be controlled from an assumption that you
23:18
haven't tested yourself. Like for example, and this is a,
23:25
this is not related to COVID, but it's a, it's a good example.
23:29
I recently was having a conversation with a panel of
23:32
people for the, the Independent Media Alliance.
23:36
And somebody flashed up a headline that said we were
23:39
talking about AI. And they said, and the headline
23:42
was in the future, AI will be used to write legislation.
23:46
And the conversation progressed slightly as to what that means.
23:49
What does AI written legislation mean?
23:52
But I would say the more important question and our and
23:56
our role as people who sit outside the mainstream would be
24:00
to say, is this headline real? Like this?
24:05
You have to question underlying assumptions.
24:07
They aren't. They might say AAI can write
24:10
legislation, but what that really means is they can say AI
24:13
can write legislation, which means they can write whatever
24:16
legislation they want claim and AI wrote it.
24:19
And that gives it a a veneer of like mechanical, non partisan
24:26
unbiasedness. You know, it's automatically
24:28
fair because the machine wrote it.
24:31
And I think COVID should have taught that to lots of people.
24:34
You never believe the statement of the headline.
24:36
You question the statement of the headline.
24:39
I also should teach people that people that like, and this is
24:45
something that we've been talking about.
24:46
I've got it for a long time. And COVID really should have
24:48
brought it home. The media can't just be made up
24:53
like they just they do make things up.
24:55
Like it isn't it isn't a question of like they're
24:57
publishing a real study. Studies can be made up.
25:00
It isn't a question of a real photograph.
25:02
Like there is a shocking amount of simply false information just
25:06
said. And if and and the machinery
25:09
relies on a certain amount of like resistance in people to
25:13
accept that a headline can simply be a lie, that a research
25:17
paper can be made up, that a photo can be AI generated and
25:20
that kind of thing. And I think that is the most
25:23
important lesson we all should learn is that the reality the
25:27
media presents is not reality potentially.
25:31
The South African president met with Donald Trump in the White
25:35
House and they spoke about white genocide.
25:37
Now. Now, I, as somebody who lives
25:39
here, just saw a whole pile of theatre happening there in the
25:43
Oval Office. All over the world, mainstream
25:45
media and independent alternative media are talking
25:48
about all these various aspects of genocide.
25:51
And now it all comes down to a distraction.
25:54
What does the word genocide means that mean?
25:57
And now suddenly any of those actual issues that might
26:00
actually be rooted in some reality are not being spoken
26:02
about because now we're now we're discussing genocide and
26:06
we're discussing other distractions.
26:08
And at the same time, you've now got Elon Musk now rolling out
26:13
more mass surveillance via Starling, which is now entering
26:16
South Africa as a result of that meeting.
26:19
So if you are quite cynical, you would immediately start joining
26:22
some dots there Which? Absolutely.
26:24
Yeah, people aren't aren't doing.
26:26
Like it, it changes the conversation to be about what
26:29
genocide means and suddenly everything that isn't genocide
26:32
is all right. Like, like I saw people
26:37
defending the, the situation in South Africa saying, well, it's
26:41
not genocide, it's just simply a reappropriation of colonised
26:44
land. And, and I was, I was quite
26:49
shocked, to be honest, because I don't believe that just because
26:53
something isn't genocide, it's all right.
26:55
And I certainly don't believe that we should be normalising
26:57
the idea that the government can, any government can simply
27:01
take your private property because they don't believe you
27:04
morally earned it. But it's incredibly dangerous
27:07
and it sets an awful precedent, but it normalises that idea.
27:12
And having Trump say something to make everybody think it's a
27:16
lie is a trick that's now 10 years old.
27:19
They always do it. Trump will endorse something,
27:22
and everybody will immediately believe the opposite.
27:24
When Biden was in quote in a quotation marks president, it
27:32
was very obvious that he had no idea what was going on and there
27:36
were other people pulling the strings.
27:39
With Trump being a populist, suddenly he can say, well, you
27:43
know, we're going to implement digital ID on the border and and
27:46
he and his entire support base will just roll with it.
27:49
Yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah, I mean, this is exactly
27:53
what we were talking about. They've they've changed the
27:55
conversation by putting quote unquote rebels in the White
27:58
House so that every position they take is automatically the
28:02
rebellious counter establishment position, even if it's the same
28:05
position as before. Like the digital ID is the
28:07
perfect example because digital ID is everywhere.
28:09
It's all over the world. Pretty much every major country
28:13
I can think of is rolling out their digital ID plan.
28:15
And they all claim it's for different reasons that Donald
28:18
Trump is doing it to secure the border and the EU was doing it
28:23
to facilitate like vaccine passes across borders.
28:27
And so that kind of thing. They're securing elections,
28:30
they're preventing foreign interference there.
28:34
But you know, it's, it's all that kind of thing.
28:37
But it's still digital ID. It's still digital ID across the
28:40
board and and it will be, of course it will be.
28:42
What's the word? I always use the word.
28:48
I've written this word down a million times and let it report
28:50
it is, but it will be. They will work together.
28:55
They will have different I digital ID systems will.
29:01
This is really they will be centralised, they'll be
29:02
synchronised. They will be, they'll be
29:04
synchronised. There will be one big system
29:07
like in 50 different names. Cross border compatibility is is
29:13
one way they put it. Kids intraoperable, that's the
29:19
word. Intraoperable.
29:21
As to what they always use for digital currencies is we're all
29:24
going to have our own digital currency, the digital #, the
29:26
digital dollar, the digital euro, but they'll be
29:28
intraoperable across borders. So if we were not one global
29:34
currency. During the COVID years, I felt
29:39
like there was also this you. I hate saying this word, but I
29:43
felt like there was an awakening of people around me.
29:47
Trump came in and I feel like that's just all gone.
29:51
Absolutely. Yeah.
29:53
They, they, they have worked to split and satiate and comfort
30:02
what was a massive sort of cross party, cross partisan left,
30:06
right up, down and against liberals, whatever.
30:10
There was a a massive, massive push back that they have
30:15
factionalized and split up and diverted with various topics
30:18
since Trump is one of the biggest I Ukraine's probably the
30:23
most effective because in in going back to a war that was,
30:28
you know, seven years out of date by by 2022.
30:34
They broke off an awful lot of of anti COVID, anti
30:38
establishment thinking to talk about to take up a pro Russia
30:41
position. But that's very awkward because
30:47
Russia is pro additional ideas, pro additional currency at its
30:50
own COVID, you know, vaccines. But if even supposing that
30:56
Russia's geopolitical clashes with the West are entirely
31:00
sincere and entirely ideological, they don't have the
31:04
best interests of their own people at heart.
31:07
That's been demonstrated and they have the best, the best
31:09
interests of other of the world in general at heart.
31:12
So why is that a position to take up?
31:15
And that but that's put an awful lot of people who, you know,
31:18
anti traditional, anti NATO, anti W people wanted a rallying
31:23
point and they used the the Russia Ukraine war as that and
31:25
that split the COVID movement that split it right down the
31:29
middle. I mean, and then Trump and Biden
31:32
split it again. It basically it did.
31:35
I mean, there are groups and email like chains of various
31:39
different people that just disappeared overnight.
31:41
I was in a lot of them and they're just gone.
31:44
Smart or dumb? I mean, what do you think it is?
31:47
I think it was the result of a very human and very
31:52
understandable want and need to return to a comfortable world
31:58
that isn't. By comfortable, I don't mean
32:01
like padded, I mean like one in which you understand what's
32:04
going on, a dynamic, you understand, you know, we we do
32:08
that, you know, people regress. You know, it's like when you go
32:10
back to your old childhood home and you suddenly you start
32:14
acting like a teenager again. You can't help it.
32:16
You, you meet children like you meet people you went to school
32:19
with and you start talking like when you're at school, you know,
32:22
And I think there was a pull of that.
32:24
There was OK, Russia, good guys, America bad guys.
32:27
I know how this works. This is something I don't have
32:30
to worry about. This isn't world changing.
32:32
We can get back into doing this the old fashioned way.
32:37
I think there was a mass appeal of that.
32:42
Yeah. I mean, Matthias Desmet spoke
32:44
about it. I used the term mass formation
32:47
or whatever. It doesn't really matter what
32:48
the terminology is, but he was effectively saying that around
32:51
30% of people at any given time will, will, will stay with their
32:56
eyes wide open and the rest will probably not.
33:00
And I kind of see that in my circles.
33:03
Yeah, yeah. So is that a critical mass
33:07
though 30%? I don't know.
33:10
It's some in some ways it's sort of the like the inverse.
33:18
Like, I think there's something I've always found very
33:22
interesting is there's an American research team that have
33:27
done, I forget what university it was that did nationwide polls
33:32
on the JFK assassination basically every year since it
33:35
happened on if they believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
33:39
And this is to get a tangent, but you'll see where I'm going.
33:42
And in every single one of those polls, at least at least 60% of
33:49
the people said they didn't believe the official story.
33:53
The people that the people that believed the official story
33:56
topped out at about 3637%. And yet that is sort of
34:02
officially true. It's I think that it's
34:05
interesting that an opinion held by 2/3 of the population is
34:08
considered a minority opinion would be be.
34:12
So in some ways, the 30% I think is the critical mass they
34:15
require in order to sell. They need like about a 30% of
34:18
people to believe them. And I don't know why that would
34:23
be the number, but it does seem to be because that number holds
34:25
up the 9/11 as well and lots of other things.
34:29
I I wonder if it's supposed to be like that, because imagine if
34:32
it was 100%. I think we'd have a very strange
34:35
society. Yeah, yeah.
34:42
It's like. A type of glue.
34:43
It's like a type of glue that just keeps things in in some
34:46
degree of order. Yeah.
34:47
I mean, yeah, unfortunately, unfortunately that's just baked
34:52
in. That's people.
34:53
That's people going back thousands and thousands of
34:55
years. That's, you know, the people
34:57
that wept when Julius Caesar died and that kind of thing.
35:00
You know, there's that's just the nature of things.
35:02
People like to have their leaders and their kings and and
35:05
they weaponize that. Definitely like the media likes
35:07
to try and anoint 1. They're doing it in Canada right
35:12
now with Mark Carney. Mark Carney's perhaps amazing
35:14
political like rise out of nowhere.
35:18
He was just the guy that ran the central bank and now suddenly
35:20
he's this nerdy dad that's going to just stand up to Trump and
35:25
make Canada amazing. And I'm seeing you work which is
35:30
dispiriting but like. Somebody listening to this right
35:34
now might say, yeah, but Kit, you sound very black pulled,
35:39
ultra cynical, you know? Do you see any light at the end
35:43
of the tunnel? Is there a way out?
35:51
I suppose I don't know, I feel like I've answered this question
35:54
a lot. I, I, I suppose I am, I am very
35:56
cynical, but I'm not black billed because I'm cynical about
36:00
the mechanisms of institutions, but I'm not cynical about
36:03
people. And I think what we already
36:05
talked about with regards to that, there was a massive
36:07
awakening with COVID and it wasn't because anybody got up on
36:11
a soapbox and started preaching. It was just a massive, it was a
36:15
revolution of a million people all happening inside a million
36:19
heads individually at the same time.
36:22
And I think that is the safeguard of society in general.
36:27
I think there will there will come a point at at any given
36:31
time where people simply don't go as far as they need to to
36:35
make the world an unstable place.
36:39
I think it was it could have happened in COVID and it didn't.
36:43
And as much as alternate media people, and I would love to take
36:46
credit for that, I don't think that we served a bit of a
36:51
function. But I think generally speaking,
36:55
people are going to do the right thing eventually that is.
37:00
And I don't believe that to be a cynical or blackpilled thing.
37:02
I mean, I, I will cop to being blackpilled about lots, but I
37:05
think generally speaking, most people are all right most of the
37:08
time. And so society can't get too bad
37:11
without that just automatically pushing back.
37:14
I would also say I take more optimism from what I would call
37:20
a, a general feeling in power circles that their eyes are
37:24
always bigger than their stomachs.
37:26
They want more than they can possibly have.
37:29
Their reach exceeds their grasp. You know, how would we want to
37:32
say it? They try for things they can't
37:35
get. They have a natural limitation
37:38
of psychopathic detachment, a natural limitation of
37:40
overarching ambition. That means they fall like an
37:44
example I go back to all the time.
37:45
You're probably familiar with it.
37:47
It's the general Wesley Clark, the memo, he said we're going to
37:50
invade 7 countries in five years.
37:53
And everybody talks about that. But what very few people talk
37:56
about is the fact that they didn't, they tried to and they
37:59
invaded eventually six countries in 12 years and, and three of
38:04
them didn't work out very well. So I think that's what where you
38:10
take optimism from. Yeah, things will work out, just
38:12
naturally. Do you think that the machine,
38:16
the establishment is well oiled or do you think it's fairly
38:20
broken and and has many competing parts within it?
38:24
It has competing parts. It has climbing parts.
38:26
You know, like, it's like a swarm of rats.
38:30
You know, they're all running in the same direction.
38:32
And it gives the illusion of like unity of purpose, but
38:35
they're just rats and they're climbing over each other to get
38:38
to the front. Unfortunately, this is the
38:42
limitation. Well, unfortunately,
38:43
fortunately, this is the limitation of, of dystopian and,
38:47
and authoritarian and tyrannical governments is that they employ
38:52
people who are not good people and therefore they are not
38:55
ideologically loyal. They are loyal to themselves.
38:58
And and that creates factions, it creates cracks.
39:03
There is a, as we talked, as I was just talking about with the
39:06
like the Ukraine thing, there was a general feeling and lots
39:08
of people, I think millions of and millions of people are sort
39:10
of like they want to get back to normal.
39:13
And that has aided in a sort of general like amnesia about what
39:16
COVID was like. I suppose you it's like, I mean,
39:20
to use a pretty bleak metaphor, it's like a, it's like a, an
39:23
abusive relationship, like. What do you think it is the most
39:27
optimal way to look at the world around us?
39:38
Embracing, I suppose, two things, really embracing the
39:45
idea of what Edmund Burke called the little platoons, which is
39:50
like your direct connections, your families, you know, the
39:53
reverent basically, essentially essentially the the units of
39:57
your life should be things you directly interact with your
39:59
community. He he uses church, but that's
40:02
obviously slightly out of date in our kind of secular world.
40:04
But. Churches, communities, families,
40:09
and focusing on the fact that those are real things and
40:12
everything you see outside that. And this is I think the most
40:16
important thing anybody can think at the current time.
40:19
Most important thing, anything, the most important thing you can
40:22
think is that anything you see on ATV, anything you read on a
40:25
newspaper, anything you see on the Internet could and possibly
40:28
will be entirely made up. And as long as you always
40:32
analyse things from that point of view, as long as you keep in
40:34
the back of your head that voice saying yeah, but that might not
40:37
be true, I think you'll be all right.
40:40
It's when you start accepting the idea that anything on a
40:42
screen is real, that they'll have you like in the palm of the
40:46
hand. Basically they can just show you
40:48
stuff and your reaction is. I think that's quite a a
40:54
pragmatic approach also because you're setting the bar quite
40:57
low. Yeah, yes, exactly.
41:04
You know, I was, I was thinking about how one philtres through
41:08
all these things and another another way of looking at it is
41:11
also simply not to look at it. Yeah.
41:15
I mean, unfortunately my livelihood depends on it.
41:18
But if it didn't, I would, I would.
41:20
I would consume much, much less of the whole news media cycle
41:24
than than I do. I think it's far healthier.
41:30
That's another interesting point though, because people tend to
41:34
be consumers of sensation and hysteria.
41:39
Yeah, although I mean, there are questions about that even now,
41:46
like how much of the Internet is even real people anymore?
41:49
I mean fast, what do they call the the empty Internet theory?
41:53
Vast amounts of it is just bots and AI profiles and an awful lot
42:01
of reactions of bots and AI profile.
42:03
Like you don't really know a lot.
42:04
I think more people than you'd think simply disengage.
42:09
And the other thing also is, and it's a trap that people
42:12
constantly fall into, and we were alluding to this earlier,
42:15
but it's the invisible boogeyman, you know, idea that
42:18
the things you things you can't see are the worst threats like
42:23
AI, pandemics, global warming. What's another one?
42:28
Nuclear war. And these are really, really
42:31
strong control mechanisms. Yeah, they are the the big
42:37
things to be afraid of. But in some ways, and I think
42:40
COVID and everything, the the more worthy things to be afraid
42:44
of. All the smaller things, the
42:46
rules about owning chickens and the licencing for weapons or
42:52
cars or anything, just the sheer amount of regulation being
42:55
poured into people's lives in small ways.
42:59
Like, I think that's a far more far more appropriate thing to
43:03
worry about. Would you go back to 2019?
43:13
Would I go back to 2019? That isn't interesting, right?
43:16
Would I? I don't think that would achieve
43:19
anything, no. If any, if I actually prize a
43:23
lot of the, the new ideas and increased cynicism I've acquired
43:29
since then, Like I think, I think COVID was actually in some
43:34
ways not a bad thing. And I, I, I, you won't hear many
43:39
people say that, but I think it was beautifully ironically, it
43:45
was a mask off moment for, for the way the world works.
43:49
And I think a lot of people realise that and there's some
43:52
denial. There's some people that want to
43:54
go back, people pretend it didn't happen, but generally
43:56
speaking, more people now understand the way the world
43:59
works than they did before, and I would even include myself in
44:02
that. I wonder what will happen 100
44:05
years from now. Kit are are are people going to
44:07
look back at us and go you, you bunch of utter idiots?
44:12
I don't know, because 100 years from now they're like, we look
44:17
back for example, the JFK things and we say, man, those people
44:22
fell for it. They did the JFK thing and
44:24
people just fell for it because the official record says they
44:27
did. But if you look at the opinion
44:28
polls, then they didn't. So like who's to say exactly how
44:31
we all look? Because the records will be the
44:35
records will show, for example, 88% vaccine uptake in in the UK
44:42
and. And even even I think that.
44:44
Numbers made up. Yeah.
44:45
So I mean, obviously like just as they question, just as they
44:49
like say, oh, there's this many cases because a case is anyway
44:52
that tests positive, probably vaccine uptake.
44:55
Is anybody that like put their name down on a form that haven't
44:58
been vaccinated or expressed interest in a vaccine or that
45:01
kind of thing. But you know, they, they work
45:02
statistics to get the the result they want.
45:05
But the official thing will say 88% vaccine uptake.
45:10
So who's to say how people, I mean, and that would make us
45:13
look silly, but I think the real number is much lower than that.
45:16
So who say how people will see us?
45:18
Here we have quite literally millions of people from the
45:22
apartheid era living in squalor. They live in tightly packed 10
45:27
homes with maybe 6-8 people in one of them, all right next to
45:33
each other and on top of each other, right?
45:37
Our headlines were running experts baffled as to why COVID
45:41
doesn't seem to be spreading because now a deadly contagion
45:45
should be wiping them out, you know, and it, it wasn't
45:50
happening. And so then you have these
45:51
billboards going up saying that there's a deadly pandemic
45:54
because if you don't see it, you need to see it on a billboard.
45:58
And the and the airports are telling you, but you're not
46:01
seeing it. Exactly.
46:03
I mean, that was that was one of the most interesting things is
46:05
that Africa is like the in general is one of the greatest
46:09
like and there was no pandemic argument because Africa
46:11
supposedly has like was it 3050 million AIDS patients on it?
46:16
And you'd think if you'd think a deadly pandemic would have
46:21
simply worked the place out, it would be done.
46:23
But no, they had to do that everywhere.
46:24
They had to basically prove, show, tell people it was there
46:27
and show people it was there without it ever being there.
46:29
It was very, very interesting that part of the reason that
46:32
masks were so important psychologically is if you would
46:35
see people walking around with masks, immediately your brain
46:38
start thinking, well, there must be a reason they're doing that.
46:41
Just the reason they really did push the masks hard is that it
46:44
makes it look like something's happening when it isn't.
46:47
They, they built and in this country, they built a whole
46:49
bunch of emergency hospitals and Nightingale hospitals that were
46:52
never used. We need them desperately.
46:54
They are, in fact, I mean, this is one of the most perverse
46:58
things and it's very interesting.
47:01
They had to spread on COVID wards.
47:03
They had to make space, obviously, because you need more
47:05
space because of, you know, social distancing.
47:07
So they had to take beds out. They took beds out so they could
47:10
put beds further apart. And still the hospitals didn't
47:14
get full. They reduced, like they actually
47:19
unironically reduced hospital capacity during a deadly
47:22
pandemic. And they said this was for a
47:24
good reason. And not only does that mad, but
47:26
they still didn't end up with four hospitals.
47:30
You said social distancing, and there's something that also kind
47:33
of broke my brain a little bit. I'd never heard the term social
47:36
distancing before the year 2020. It's it's not a because they
47:41
made it up. That term doesn't What does it
47:43
even mean social distancing? You just mean stand further
47:46
apart. But they they drilled it into
47:48
people's heads now, I think. But it's just a coincidence kit
47:51
that every country in the world was using the same wording.
47:54
Yeah, there was probably some some memo from The Who back in
48:00
2018, the first used it or something.
48:03
Interestingly, you said that the term was made up.
48:06
There's a movie that I stumbled across during the COVID era
48:09
called Contagion. It came out in 2012.
48:12
Yeah, and that. And they used the term social
48:16
distancing in it. Yeah, I mean, there's, I mean,
48:20
you can talk for hours about the weird predictive things in
48:24
Hollywood movies and TV series in general.
48:26
And whether I mean to get into a weird area, whether that just
48:31
sort of happens by accident because of like the weight of an
48:33
idea or something it sort of echoes or whether it it it is
48:38
deliberately put there, what they call predictive
48:39
programming, you can never know. But in the pilot episode of ATV
48:45
series called the, the lone gunman was in a spin off of The
48:49
X Files. The government hijacked a
48:52
passenger plane to try and crash it into the to the World Trade
48:55
Centre. In.
48:56
Order to start that was that aired in I believe late 2000,
49:01
early 2001. It aired just a few months
49:03
before 9/11. It's crazy that that happened.
49:08
I mean, it's so it's so crazy that people that think about it
49:12
just have to stop thinking about it because what does it mean?
49:14
It potentially means nothing and it also potentially means
49:17
everything. Why would they do that?
49:20
Or did it happen just organically?
49:23
Like it poses all sorts of weird questions.
49:28
Fellow cartoonist and friend Bob Moran, who I think you might
49:31
know, he yeah, he made a great comment a while back.
49:36
He said he approaches everything as if it's satire.
49:40
You know, you know, law first at it because it it certainly helps
49:46
one sanity. But he added that the problem,
49:51
the problem with that is that most people don't see it as
49:56
laughable. And, and, and that's, that feeds
49:59
into now what you were saying earlier that the gullibility
50:02
aspect is, is, or the asleep aspect becomes quite evident
50:06
again. And so it's almost as though we
50:08
need these cycles of big events to snap people out of their
50:12
slumbers. Yeah.
50:16
And honestly, we're sort of overdue for one.
50:19
But I think there is a reluctance to have one because I
50:23
think in some ways, as we've talked about the COVID thing
50:26
sort of did more harm than good. I think we, like they have
50:31
floated like the next pandemic 50 times since the last
50:35
pandemic. Monkey pox.
50:38
I forget what the others have been.
50:40
It doesn't matter. But they're always floating the
50:42
next pandemic. But I think there is a
50:45
reluctance to launch something like that because they're afraid
50:49
of reigniting what they just spent years putting down.
50:54
But yeah, the cycles of big events has always been the way
50:57
things have gone. Who's they?
51:00
Well, yeah, unfortunately, yeah, there's no simple answer to that
51:04
question. Like there is a it's almost,
51:11
almost a set of machinery rather than a set of people.
51:13
Like Klaus Schwab is retiring, for example.
51:16
And he was a, he was like a boogeyman for like.
51:18
But I never believed that Klaus Schwab was in charge.
51:21
I never believed they would have a big meeting and sit around and
51:23
Klaus Schwab would bang his gavel on the table and talk
51:25
about how they're going to try and take over the world.
51:27
It doesn't work that way. There's a sort of interconnected
51:29
network of like institutions really machinery wheels turning
51:36
that like push some people up to the top briefly, but then
51:39
swallow them back up again where they're no longer useful.
51:41
There is a a constructed Organism, factory, whatever,
51:47
whose simple aim is to acquire control and power in whatever
51:51
form. And it does that the only way it
51:54
knows how. It can't do anything else.
51:58
So I don't maybe they isn't the right term, but I you've
52:02
struggled to think of synonyms the establishment.
52:10
Give me a nugget of wisdom. The most useful nugget of wisdom
52:27
I've acquired in the Off Guardian would be the simple,
52:32
simple assertion that whenever you see anything in the news,
52:37
you say to yourself, why this and why now?
52:40
And that encompasses questions of fakeness or forgery or
52:45
reality or otherwise. But it also makes that not
52:49
important because like, something can be true but only
52:53
presented because it is serving an agenda.
52:56
So why this? Why now?
52:58
It's just a good mindset to get into.
52:59
Why this? Why now?
53:00
Whenever you see anything, I think it's the most important
53:05
thing. I like that kit, How can I
53:09
follow you? Well, you can follow Off
53:13
Guardian on Twitter or X Off Guardian 0 because there was
53:21
already an off guardian. It's complicated and you can you
53:24
can read all our output at off guardian, off hyphen,
53:28
guardian.org and that's basically it.
53:35
Are you yourself? Are you on?
53:36
Are you on Twitter X? Oh, I am, yeah, yeah, I, I, I
53:40
get off guardians to subsume my identity.
53:42
I never going to think about it. Yeah, I'm I'm on I'm on Twitter
53:45
at at kid nightly. Yeah, I'm about.
53:48
I get published of out of Guardian, but other places pick
53:52
me up sometimes. So you might see me in the
53:54
light, or you might see me on my other places.
53:58
Just just quickly, I don't know about you, but I struggle to say
54:03
X. Nope, can't.
54:06
I will say Twitter every single time, probably until day I die.
54:09
I. Mean how can you call something
54:13
a letter? Just a single letter.
54:15
Yeah, ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense, and
54:18
it's also kind of presumptuous because X can mean so many other
54:21
things, like he's taken the unknown quantity and branded it,
54:24
which isn't fair. Kid Knightley, thank you for
54:26
joining me in the trenches.