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237. The Man Behind Joe Camel Reveals How Propaganda Actually Works · Radically Genuine

• Dr. Roger McFillin (00:02.732) Welcome to the Radically Genuine Podcast. I am Dr. Roger McFillin. There's a man whose fingerprints are on some of the most recognizable images of the last 40 years, and most of you have probably never heard his name. He drew a cartoon camel that a federal agency later ruled was selling cigarettes to children. He illustrated the co-op page of the New York Times in the months that sold this country a war. He was good at it. He was Paid extraordinarily well for it. And then he stopped. He abandoned it. My guest today is Anthony Frieda, an artist, illustrator for decades inside the American persuasion industry. Started in advertising, built his own studio, worked for Fortune 500 companies, and then he left because he understood that the thing he was so talented at had a name. And the name is Engineering of Consent. And it did not start with him. can trace this back to some of the work that I did if you follow my substack was by on an a gentleman by the name of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew. Bernays took his uncle's theory of the unconscious mind and turned it into an instrument for moving product, moving opinion, and moving entire populations without their consent. He wrote the book. He literally titled it A Propaganda. And the people who run our institutions have been running this playbook ever since. And once you see it, you cannot unsee how much of your life was sold to you. The same applied psychology convinced America that sugary cereal was a nutritious breakfast, convinced generations that a diamond was love, told you that sugar was innocent and fat was the killer. Why the people funding the science were selling that sugar. It staged the babies pulled from incubators that helped sell the first Gulf War. A story that turned out to be theater. It swore to you that opioids were not addictive. And it sold you the chemical imbalance lies that push psychiatric drugs and antidepressants. We're going to get inside the mind of an advertiser today and the legacy of Edward Bernays, but more importantly, understand the puppet strings, the rules of the game, and even how you can exit. If we're lucky we get into the hidden spiritual war that often goes unseen. Dr. Roger McFillin (02:29.824) Anthony Frieda, I'd like to welcome you to the Radically Genuine Podcast. Anthony Freda (02:35.893) doctor McFillin, my pleasure and honor to be here, sir. Dr. Roger McFillin (02:39.96) So before we get anywhere near your story, and it is an interesting one, I do want to understand the work itself. When it when an advertiser sits down and is trying to persuade millions of people, how does that mind work? What is the model of the human being he is working with? Anthony Freda (02:58.507) Well, it really does, as you touched upon, the the work of Edward Bernays, and it's fascinating to me. I mean, he wrote that book propaganda a hundred years ago, and he didn't try to hide it. He was, you know, it's I don't know if you call it revelation of the method, but he was telling you where engineering your consent. Where I mean, he was openly stating that his methodology and his systems of how to mass use mass psychology to persuade people. Buy things and to support wars and to support whatever the institutions that hired him, from the military-industrial complex to advertising, wanted to persuade us to do and to buy and to support. So he openly said in this book, he I think he termed coined the term invisible government. He said there's an invisible government of influencers who are using mass psychological techniques of persuasion, like say he learned from his uncle. to manipulate you without your consent, and w even below the threshold of your perception, to to do things that are really probably not in your best interest. And he did it by a very simple idea that it's not the car people want to buy or the cigarette. Like one of his first advertising campaigns was in those days a hundred years ago, it was or more, it was Not considered polite for women to smoke cigarettes. So cigarette companies realize they they're missing half their market, right? So they went to Ed and he attached the cigarette industry and smoking cigarettes, called them liberty tortures or freedom tortures, he attached it to a deeper meaning, right? Now it was attached to the suffragette movement, it was attached to freedom. Don't let a man tell you not to smoke, right? So now when you attach a product to what people really desire, which is not the cigarette or the car. Like the car, you need to sell status. People want to feel important and they want to feel validated. They want that social status that's connected to the car, not the car. So you're not selling the car, you're selling something else. You're not selling the cigarette, you're selling something else that people, a deeper need people have. And once you understand that concept, advertising is pretty simple. Like what is what do people really want? It's not the car, it's not the cigarette. It's something else, right? So Anthony Freda (05:24.159) You tell them this thing's gonna make you healthy or strong or people are gonna respect you if you do this. And y you get to tap into or you're gonna be sexy or whatever people's primal needs are, if you can tap and connect and tie that product to those those needs, and you're halfway there. Dr. Roger McFillin (05:44.943) So you were great at this. At what point did you start questioning whether this was something that you were doing that was creating harm rather than something that was kind of just part of the you know, the American culture and that you were supporting your own your own development and your own lifestyle? Anthony Freda (06:02.048) Yes, I I mean I was a guy in my twenties and I was motivated by things most guys in their twenties are, right? Like I want money, I want success, I want women, you know. So I I went down this road of advertising. I tried to make it as a fine artist, an editorial artist, and I just wasn't mature enough artistically. So I kind of fell into advertising because I needed a job. And then I realized I'm pretty good at it, started my own studio, and I was just caught up in the to be honest, just the money and the success. I bought a condo in in New York City. I was in my twenties and I thought I was on top of the world. And I and I I was so, you know, you're so marinated in this culture of advertising that drives our entire society that as a young man I didn't even question it. It was just like, of course, like advertising sells the products, it gets the whole economy moving. And I didn't I didn't see the moral component to it that like, you know, we're we're trying to manipulate these people into buying stuff they don't need and sometimes even hurts them, right? I mean, obviously cigarettes is one of those things that I was working on this campaign for Joe Camel, as you mentioned. And I was drawing these cartoon camels, and man, in the eighties it was like they backed up the brake truck. Like, you know, you just they had they could not spend enough money. They were spending like fifty million dollars a year on this campaign, and it was massively successful. There's cartoon camels, you know, it's a cool camel. He's playing pool and he's got the hot camel girlfriend behind him. And then as you mentioned, the FTC said our our campaign was illegal because we're marketing cigarettes to children using cartoon imagery. And I just had this come to Jesus moment. Like I just it all just crashed down on me. I said, what you know, I didn't become an artist to sell cigarettes to kids. Like what am I doing with my life? I'm question so I started questioning my life choices. And at that time, I said, you know what, I'm gonna go work for the good guys. I'm gonna work for New York Times and Time Magazine and Wall Street Journal. Like I I really had faith in the mainstream media. Again, I was very naive as in my twenties. I've come a long way since then. But at the time, I I I truly believed that they were speaking truth to power, they were, you know, the fourth of state. They were they were something that was sacred in American culture. And Anthony Freda (08:24.556) quickly became disillusioned with that as well. Dr. Roger McFillin (08:29.199) So what happened? What did you end up realizing from working through the with the New York Times and mainstream media? Anthony Freda (08:36.012) Well, I was working for the op I did a lot of work for the op-ed page of the New York Times, which is s like the premier platform where I didn't know at the time, but that's kind of where the elite message each other which war they're gonna do and how they're gonna do it. And you know, it was before the internet was really taking off. So it was it was a very important platform for and it was written the people who were writing these op ed pieces were really important, powerful people. And I did this piece by Condoleezza Rice, then Secretary of State. Promoting the Iraq war. And again, I had a this moral crisis, this dark night of the soul, where I said, you know, my God, I went from selling cigarettes to kids to selling war to everyone. And I knew enough at the time to know that those Cassius Belli and those pretexts for this war were fraudulent, because it were people trying to tell us, like Scott Ritter, Hans Blick, and and I and I realized like the mainstream media is not only not. Supporting these guys who are trying to tell us the truth, they're demonizing them. And I just had this epiphany where I said, my God, this is like and and they told me when I worked at the op-ed page of the New York Times that every word we print here has to be vetted by the State Department. So that was sort of another when you see your other inside, you see how the the sausages are made and it's not pretty. So I then left, I said, I can't do this anymore. And I wanted to bite I wanted to bite the hand that feed me, that fed me by working for people who were countering the mainstream lies and propaganda. And then it was this sort of seminal days of the the internet news aggregator sites and alternative news and alternative media and in the health freedom movement and the liberty movement and in the anti-war movement. So I just reached out to all these people and I started They all needed imagery, right? They need book covers, they needed posters for their documentaries, they needed content for their websites. So it was sort of a natural fit. And I finally felt like I found my home, right? I was with people who are I'm ideologically aligned with and I think who are doing God's work. They're do and they're doing it at great personal cost. And they're not getting paid a lot of money and they're Anthony Freda (10:56.694) But th they know they're doing the right thing with their life and they can sleep at night and so can I now. Dr. Roger McFillin (11:04.217) So you were you bore witness to the unholy alliance between US government and the Un New York Times, for example. Now, reflecting back, how did they sell that war? We're talking about post-9 eleven, correct? When Condoleezza Ri Rice was the secretary of state and they're trying to make the case to enter into Iraq or trying to kind of connect in some way. the nine eleven attacks from Al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. What did you observe during that time? Anthony Freda (11:41.86) Well, it was sort of like the wag the dog thing where they were I mean, obviously Saddam had nothing to do with nine eleven, even from the official story. So I was like, Why are you going war with Iraq? Like it's because they already they were just going according to this script that they were you know, Dick Cheney and the neocons wrote a paper in the nineties called The Project for the New American Century, where they laid out this idea that we need a a Pearl Harbor type event because what we want to do is two things. One domestically, which is severely curtail individual liberties, which they w later enshrined into the Patriot Act. Get rid of the Fourth Amendment, get rid of the Fifth Amendment, severely limit the First Amendment. And they also wanted to abroad, they had a series of seven wars that they wanted to start in the Middle East. And They just went down the checklist. Like Iraq was the first one on checklist. It w it had nothing he had nothing to do with that war. So they had to. And at that time, I remember watching the History Channel, which is also completely controlled. It was 24 hours a day of nonstop anti-Saddam propaganda on the run up to that war. Because I used to watch the History Channel, I'm fascinated by history. And it was so ham fisted the propaganda. And I realized, it's all in concert. Like the news, not only are they promoting this war, they're demonizing Saddam and the demonizing The anti-war movement and calling them calling us unpatriotic. And we need revenge for 9-11, of course. And I saw 9-11 happen. So I had I was right there downtown when it happened. And it so I had this visceral reaction that they wanted me to have. Like I wanted my first reaction was, I want revenge because I saw the towers fall. I saw people falling. I saw, I walked, I waded through the dust and I breathed it for months. The acrid air and I had to s go through a checkpoint to get into my building. And and I wanted revenge. And like whoever did this, I I want revenge. This is a like it was a personal attack on my neighborhood. And and I saw thousands of people die that day with my own eyes. So I sort of fell into the trap at first. And then I pulled myself back and and I and I started doing more research. And Anthony Freda (14:04.139) is actually it's so interesting how my professional life informs my personal life. I got a job from the Village Voice and they wanted me to watch these 911 conspiracy theory documentaries and sort of make fun of them, right? And I watched stayed up all night watching these documentaries. It was loose change and there was a bunch of them. And I went in thinking, these guys are nuts. Like of course, you know, bin Laden did it and Sal Qaeda. watched it and it's just like these physicists and scientists and architects and engineers and ex-military and intelligence officers. Like these weren't crazy tinfoil hat people. These were really smart professional people. And I had another epiphany. My God, the whole thing is a lie. And I got caught up in it emotionally because I, you know, I experienced it literally. And I had an I keep having these series of epiphanies and like I say, it's interesting that my personal life and sp and my professional life are sort of intertwined and they they inform one another. And it's all I'm all I'm on God's path. And i it it you know, I'm kind of a slow learner. It takes me a while. but I think I I'm finally like starting to understand, at least that in some ways, like everything I've gone through, advertising and working for mainstream media, has helped me understand the world. from the insider's point of view and the outsiders, and now I can sign up sort of make sense of it better. Dr. Roger McFillin (15:36.538) think a lot of people can empathize with this awakening that you slowly went through. You might have awakened much earlier than many of the the United States population. But how disorienting was it for you and how did you find your equilibrium? Anthony Freda (15:53.133) It was very disorienting because you have to s you know, when you're confronted with lies this big, I mean, all the lies, you you realize you start to become cynical because then you s then you don't believe anything. And which is where I'm at now. Not only do I not believe the mainstream media, I use them as a inverted compass. They're not just lying, right? They're they're they're telling you the inversion. It's the inversion principle, the law of reversal, which is is I believe a satanic. guiding principle to invert the cross, to invert reality. So they're not just lying, they're telling you the opposite of the truth. And that's what I've, that's what I've come to to understand. And when you see things through that lens, because before that to me, nothing made sense. Like why is everything nothing makes sense? But once you see that, that's they're telling you the opposite of the truth, then it all makes sense. You know, it's like from from the drug companies, yeah, these drugs are gonna make you healthy. And wait a minute, wait, we're the most prescribed nation in the world. And we're the sickest. So if these drugs make us healthy, why are we the sickest? We should be the healthiest according to your own logic. So it's this inversion principle. And once you get that, man, everything just makes sense. Dr. Roger McFillin (17:05.84) How did they use Bernays research to sell these ideas, this inverse logic? what did you see throughout the two thousands? I wanna go pre COVID because I think we're gonna get into a fle inflection point at COVID where so many people started to wake up, but what were you observing? Anthony Freda (17:25.23) Well, he goes back to, you know, World War One, where he they employed him to run this and this is a shameful period from my profession. He in those days, like the most influential influencers, you could call them, were illustrators, right? You had the famous, you know, James Montgomery flag, I want you. You had Christy, you had all these really super talented illustrators that he brought in and they volunteered to work on these making these pro war posters. So they tapped into this sense of your manhood and your patriotism, and you're a slacker, you're a bad person if you don't go along with this. So it's tapping into again connecting this to something deeper, like your sense of patriotism, your sense of your man, your duty as a man to protect your tribe and your family taps into tribal feelings of tribalism, which is an easy one to do, right? It's us or them. So you demonize the enemy with this series of archetypes. The enemy is subhuman, the enemy is a rapist, he's a barbarian, he's a demon. And they all did posters along these lines. And of course, our side is where we have perfect moral virtue and we have a a moral right given to us by God to wage this war. So it's tapping into these archetypes, and as an artist, I understand how archetypes work. And Bernays understood it too, because he was a student not only of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, but also of of Jung. And Jung and by combining those two sort of methodologies of understanding human psychology, I think you can get a pretty good sense of how to influence people. People respond, people it was so predictable, you know, people respond positively to certain stimuli and negatively to others. And the people at the top who run these games and shows, they understand that. And and you have to understand it's all theater designed to manipulate you. And I just wish people were more conscious of it 'cause I but I I don't judge them because I wasn't when I was, you know, twenty years old, but once you're conscious, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And it's so obvious. And then even today I try to point out, you know, these psyops and they just can't see it. You know, it's that idea that, Anthony Freda (19:49.955) It's easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled. I think Mark Twain said that, but anyway, it's a great quote. And it's true. especially with the COVID narrative. I mean, that was that was an easy one because in that one, they tapped into people's fear of death, people's fear of illness and sickness. And as we know, it was extremely effective. And that was also fear-based mind control. So you can influence people with fear. That's the most, I think the most cynical use of advertising and propaganda, but it works. And COVID is a perfect example of how well it works. It was extremely effective. People were willing to give up all of their rights, rat on their neighbors, you know, become hysterical, and because you're in a state of fear, you no longer, you know, possess your higher functioning capabilities of your Prefrontal cortex sort of shuts them down. You go to the limbic system, and it's a fight or flight mentality. And you're also looking, it it infantilizes you. So now you're looking for a father figure, right? And enter Bill Gates and Fauci. They're your daddy, right? And they're gonna make everything okay. They have the solution. Don't worry, you're not gonna die. We're gonna save you. So it's again this and that's one of the things Brene has talked about. Like when you have when you want to sell something, you have to tie it to authority, right? So they when he was selling cigarettes, he said, four out of five doctors smoke camel. You it's like, a doctor likes camo, so that must be a good one. so tying it to authority, using authority, repetition, using slogans, like we're all in this together, or whatever the slogan is, slogans, symbols, use of authority. And repetition are the four main components and tying whatever you're trying to sell to a deeper meaning that people are really desiring. Dr. Roger McFillin (21:50.94) They really do tap into these ancestral scripts because it's like we're genetically encoded to survive. And if you if you deviate too far from the the tribe, then you're certainly you're at risk, right? You we survive through tribalism. And boy, they're they're great at creating the us versus them narrative, the in-group, outgroup. You see this in political life. Like that's basically how the US government continues to survive, the uniparty that I call it of the I don't really see much of a difference between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party. All it is is theater, but they use these social issues to create such a divide that you believe you're on the right team in some way. But they go in and they pass the same bills. They are they're the same warmongerers. They continue to put the American people in the depths of of debt. And this is all through again, it's it's the theater of this, but human beings seem to love the drama. It just captivates our attention. And the stronger the emotional provocation, the more addicted we become to it. Anthony Freda (22:53.645) Yeah. Well that's another part of you gotta have a good story. People love good well, we're wired to understand the world through stories. So cinema is a great way. I mean, there's a lot of propaganda in cinema and they work in tandem with the government. I mean, all these military movies, you know, there's government agencies involved with writing the scripts. Now I've worked in the film industry a bit, so I've seen some stuff on that end too, which is hardcore social conditioning propaganda. But Yeah, the us or them thing is fascinating to me because it's not so much that we want to hate the other, it's that our desire to want to belong to a close-knit group is so strong that it it it's like a paradox where it us wanting to be close to people and be part of a group is what creates this us or them mentality. And obviously when we were tribes originally it was it was survival. You ha if you were didn't protect your tribe, another tribe might you know, take over or or or whatever. So it was it was an existential sort of primal impulse. So but now these things are being used and they're being framed as existential, but they're really not. And it's a cynical manipulation of this basic human need to belong to a close knit group. Dr. Roger McFillin (24:12.901) You brought up something fascinating, which is the authority figure and the use of the authority figure to influence. And in my field, I've become more and more aware of the pushing of the expert class, the expert professional class, whether that is the physicians, the the public health authorities through government. and what I'm outspoken against is the illegitimate authority of the psychiatrist, because the psychiatrist Has the ability to take away your freedom, not based on any sound objectified science. They can do it by opinion. So this has happened throughout tyrannical regimes in countries, some that we have identified as our enemies, such as the Soviet Union, is that all you have to do is criminalize or delegitimize your political enemy. And you can use terms like mental illness or schizophrenia or something like that in order to delegitimize a person's opinion. But in the United States, a psychiatrist has that power to lock you up and to force drug you. Like that is part of our system. And I'm curious to know about what you've observed over the course of the of your lifetime in elevating the physician to a authority status. Anthony Freda (25:36.612) Well, I think it's even more than authority. I think it's become a religion. Western medicine has become I mean, they have the priest class, they have their holy sacred texts and books that they go by, you know, the DSM, whatever the their Bibles are. It's become a religion. And you can't question religion, right? They use the word science, but it's really not, because it's if you look at the real scientific studies, these drugs are poison. And I'm starting think about everything as a religion now, tribalism as a religion, you know, patriotism as a religion, nationalism. But I've been stu you know, I'm a Christian, so I I see things through the Christian lens and through through Christ's the model of Christ's suffering as a path to redemption. And then if you look at like Buddhism, for example, Buddhism says. We have to sort of eschew suffering. And there's these are the ways that like you know, desire leads to suffering, and suffering obviously causes people pain. So let's just think of ways to avoid that. And and then Western medicine says suffering is a pathology, right? Like pain and suffering is something that we can we can prescribe your way out of. but Christianity says something totally different. It says that suffering is not a mistake or an error that needs to be corrected or eschewed. Suffering is a central core of life. And that Christ's suffering and ultimate suffering is the path to redemption. And that in pain, pain is an initiation and pain is telling you something important. Pain is telling you that something's wrong. Or if you're grieving, it's like you should grieve for that person. You don't want to medicate that grief away. That that's there for a reason because you need to remember that person. You love them. And they deserve to be remembered. And it's also your body is signaling you that you're under attack, either physically, obviously physical pain, or spiritually. Like there's a spiritual dimension to suffering that, in my view, you know, the cross is the price of truth. The cross is a symbol, ideal in symbols, right? The cross is truth made visible through symbology. And Anthony Freda (27:53.595) This whole idea where we have to avoid suffering is leading to a lot of this crisis of meaning, I think. Because it you have to do the opposite. Instead of avoiding suffering, you have to attach meaning to it, but real, deep meaning, not like Bernays would do. But when you can attach suffering to meaning and purpose, then you can endure anything. And it makes you stronger. And it it's and it's like Christ going down the Via Dolorosa, like the more pain. He didn't he didn't hide or run away from his pain. He walked knowingly into it, knowing he was unjustly being convicted of these crimes. And he fully embraced his suffering as a path to redemption and salvation. And he gave us the motto, right? We all have our crosses to bear. And that cross is symbolic of bearing our suffering nobly like Christ did. Dr. Roger McFillin (28:50.566) There's something really nefarious about the attempts of Western medicine to try to pathologize the dark night of the soul, which I believe that this is, is that part of the human experience is I do see this as a spiritual learning school, right? Earth as a learning school that we go through to ultimately, I think it's finding unconscious. Determining understanding unconditional love. It's the expansion of our our soul to become Christ like. And when you prevent somebody th to move through their dark periods, what you do is you also prevent them from finding their light. You know, they say often that you find God on the jailhouse floor. I I I think that's quite that's quite wise because it has depth to the meaning is that when we're in our darkest places in our lives, who do we turn to? We often kind of retreat inward and inward we find this connection to something that is much greater than us. We're seeking out meaning for what we're going through, whether that's the worst loss of our of our lives, which we're all gonna face, right? You you can't get through this life without experiencing the polarity of it. Like to love is also to experience the deep pain related to that loss. And There is a death over the course of a lifetime of the ego to this sense of self of who we believed we were when we're separate. And then as you get older, which I'm sure you experience as well, as you start to reflect more deeply on what is all this and why are we here and who am I? And what begins to disintegrate is this version of you. Built in separation in ego, because it doesn't matter how much money you make or what you achieve. We all end up at the same place, right? Which is dust in in the earth. You know, generations from now, no one remembers who we are as that individual. The last person who dies, whoever remembers you, is the death of your memory in that regard, too, of who you are. So life has a greater meaning. There's something very spiritual to it. There's something that is transcendental. Dr. Roger McFillin (31:05.341) But it's interesting the American culture in a lot of ways has almost intentionally and purposefully distracted us from that question, that larger question. Do you believe there has been a war on God and they've really worked to make the government and the entertainment industry our demigods? Anthony Freda (31:24.976) Absolutely. Anthony Freda (31:30.54) Absolutely. There's a war on humanity. There's Malthusian Eugenes Club of Rome type ideologies that guide a lot of the policy in education and in entertainment and in media and in publishing and I mean I'm in these worlds. I know it's this is a design and in government, obviously, a designed agenda that's an anti-human, transhumanist agenda. They don't believe in God, but they believe they can become God through this merger of man and AI. And there's another thing that you've touched on, which I want to thank you for. this is my copy of Lord of the Flies from when I was in high school. Required reading, right? So this taps into two things because not only so I think. is also an agenda to sort of paint the world and humanity in this misanthropic way, right? We're just bad. And that's what this book says. We're bad. If we're just if we're if without authority, this is what we're gonna do, right? We're all gonna turn on each other and kill each other. So this is not only a rejection of humanity and the goodness of humanity and the divinity in humanity. This is celebration and a justification for authority because without authority we're in a lot of trouble. So you better listen to authority. So I this book, I didn't see it. I I and I'm embarrassed to say I didn't see it until you pointed it out that what this book is the kind of thing we're talking about. Like, no, no, this is not by accident they chose this book to put in every child's mind. And I was one of them. It's not an accident. It's by design. And it's an anti-human, anti-god, anti-Christian philosophy, this postmodernist system that started in academia and has trickled down to all society. I mean, you can tie it to politics, the long march through history, the long march through the institutions. And ultimately it's this self-loathing hatred of humanity that's projected onto everyone by the ruling class. Anthony Freda (33:42.79) Because in the Jungian sense, they hate these parts of themselves, they project the shadow onto us, and then they can kill us all. And they want to kill us all. Let's just be honest. They they they openly talk about depopulation through various means, indoctrination, inoculation. I mean, it goes back a hundred years to the Fabian socialists. And they looked at the long the long term, right? Like how do we influence and and and and and become the people who take over all the institutions. And they've done a great job. They've taken over every institution with this ideology is infected like a virus. And then what do they do? They they they focus on the the colleges and universities because now you're training the next generation to be safe, self-loathing and hate humanity and hate yourself. So they they'll become the leaders of tomorrow. They know that they took the long view. And this is a still Again, this is spiritual for me. This is a satanic inversion principle. We we have souls. We are inherently good. We choose for whatever reason to do bad things. That doesn't mean every person is inherently bad. We have the soul. We have a soul and we we have the divinity of God within us. The sacred feminine, the sacred masculine together are something that's holy. It's not evil. It's not something that needs to be stamped out and aborted and deformed and castrated it's it's something that needs to be preserved and protected and and celebrated in the most sacred way. Dr. Roger McFillin (35:21.268) So when I been begin to venture into some of these topics with people who are in my circle or family, eventually their eyes start to glaze over and they kind of roll their eyes at at me. And you you seem to have done some investigation and had exposure to a s a certain world that if you dig deep enough, you're ultimately going to Anthony Freda (35:32.838) I know. Dr. Roger McFillin (35:47.711) find and that's this transhumanist ideology, this coordination of anti-human elites that have been quite patient in the way that they've been able to manipulate world governments and be able to slowly indoctrinate the world into various states of fear and to be able to inject ourselves with mass poisons. I mean it's it It started with you know, when you look at what is put in a vaccine, get away from the vaccine science, just like what is put in a vaccine as an adjuvant, what they've done to our food source, right? The degree of pesticides and toxins, fake food, industrialized food that acts on the brain, that creates sickness, continued fear propagation and putting the body at disease, bioweapons. When you start talking about something like this to be a coordinated intentional effort, so many people just cannot fathom that that's humanly possible. So the next step is always for all of us to think beyond just the physical, the material world as it as it exists. And now we're into the unseen. And when it comes to spirituality and it comes to faith and it comes to religion, that's been a targeted attack from a materialist and scientism over the course of our lifetimes and our parents' lifetimes. I'm interested to really know and explore a little further on some of the things that you've been able to identify as far as a more of a coordinated effort. And in in what way do you think it's spiritual? Anthony Freda (37:32.295) Wow. Well, I had an experience two years ago where my partner had a hemorrhagic stroke and she almost died. I thought she was dying in my arms and she was went into a coma and she was had nonconvulsion seizures and at one point she she came out of this state of catatonic state and started laughing. And she went from a state of total tension and and fear and terror really, like I've never seen before, to a state of complete relaxation and peace. And I realized that moment that she was on the other side. She was with God. And at that moment I it was proof to me that this is there's a better world waiting for us. There's something that the infinite Is right there. There's a veil. It's a new dimension. Like death is nothing to be afraid of. Death is something that everybody has to go through. And and I think that when you die, you you're at one with God. And I think you finally have this sort of connection to the infinite that's always been there, but we have a hard time accessing. But I've seen in in my life, I've seen And in my professional life, I've seen numerous examples of there's good journalists trying to get the truth out there. Like I did a piece, I was hired to do a piece in the nineties for Time magazine that was exposing Dr. Wayfield's work about how there's a connection between the vaccines and autism. And I did the illustration, they were gonna they had the whole thing ready to go. And at the last minute, the the editor said, Why not printing that? Dr. Roger McFillin (39:21.053) Mm. Anthony Freda (39:21.282) And they just killed the story. So and I talked to the writer and they were very upset because they did a lot of homework to make sure this was accurate information. And they just got killed. Then you look through Time Magazine and half the ads are for the drug companies and you realize, this is conflict of interest, obviously. And there's also, I mean, there's so many examples of this coordinated effort to to debase and defame Christianity like I mean, it it's it's disgraceful and it's it's singled out for s for a good reason. Like if you you can attack Christianity all day long in the most vile and disgusting ways, and it they'll get as an artist, you know, the famous Piss Christ sculpture, like you'll become a superstar. But try to do that to Islam. You will be destroyed. Because Islam, in my view, is a plagiarized parity of Christianity and the Holy Scripture. If you read it, that's what it is. So again, it's this inversion principle where they want to promote the anti-Christian inversion of Christianity and they want to debase and defame and defile true Christianity. Because I I think on some level spiritually they know that this is the path. This is Christ gave us the real path to transcendence. And they don't want that. They want us broken and humiliated and self-loathing and sick and even dead. I mean, like we're doing with the maids program in Canada. Like they're literally just mass murdering people for the bottom line. They're gonna save trillions of dollars with entitlements. They they actuated it out. And so, you what? It's a lot cheaper to kill all these people than to pay for their medical care. So it's entirely cynical. Mouthdoozyan worldview that's demonic in my view. And I know people don't like that, but I can't I haven't thought of a better term for it. You know, when you when you're defiling nature and when you're defiling children and like the Epstein stuff is just symbolic of this dark priest class that was actively engaged in these rituals physically, but that expression or that that ideology informs Anthony Freda (41:35.632) all the institutions. It just infected it like a like a possession. I mean, these institutions are possessed. And I'm praying that there's an awakening and we can have a mass exorcism. And really, but we have to talk we have we can't be afraid to talk about on spiritual terms because this is a spiritual war. This is a crisis of meaning. And God gives your life meaning. That's why they want to negate God, because without God, you just look around, what am I? I'm just a bag of meat. And I can Nothing matters. So of course they have to defile God. It's like no with the Soviets, the first thing they said is there is no God. so a totalitarian state wants to be God. So they have to first destroy the church. And it's a it's part of the system that's happening now, more covertly than the Soviets did, but it's it's ideologically driven, it's very malevolent, and we're seeing the fruits of it right now. We see this moral. degeneracy and this hopelessness. You know, my I I teach college and most kids like we ask them, like, they're not optimistic about the future. They feel purposeless and they feel like their life is meaningless and they feel hopeless. And it's just then big pharma, their religion has cure, right? Just medicate you for the rest of your life. So you're numb and you don't care that your life is meaningless. They're not giving your life meaning. They're saying you don't need meaning. You need this drug. So it's very insidious and very dark. And I I think ultimately you can only explain it on spiritual terms. This is a spiritual war. Dr. Roger McFillin (43:13.277) It's very dark. And they say the it's always darkest before the dawn. And there seems to be something that's going on right now where there is a mass awakening, things that would have been clearly identified as conspiracy theory in the past is is simply fact. we understand that just the Epstein files itself and its role in f in our government, and decisions that our government makes. It's a captured political class that does no longer in any way serves the American people. And it helps us better understand perpetual wars and decisions that we've made over the course of of decades and decades that have put us in just perpetual debt and you know kept the American people in just states of division. It has to be something that's spiritual. And even right now where we we stand is that there was a lot of people that were hopeful the second time around with Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and aligning with Maha and Bobby Kennedy, that there was going to be just a an anti-war, America first, return towards health and safety at the government level. And in turn, we could see a reversal of economic fortunes where more money could flow back into our country. we would be aware of the forces outside that are trying to influence American culture. So just being more ethical at the at the border. a number of things that we expected to to happen did not happen. In fact, it's very difficult to discern much of a difference between the Obama administration, the Obama, the Obama, the Trump, the Biden. The Bush Cheney administration. It's very difficult to discern in any major way, any policy way, any impact on America life that could be much different at all. And we're I think we're aware that just this one large political professional class that doesn't seem to have autonomy. It's as if they are be the there's puppet strings. They're they're kind of the actors that are in front of us and they're they're playing out the drama, but somebody else is running the show. Anthony Freda (45:36.774) Absolutely. I mean, I think Trump proved that because yeah, he was saying a lot of great things. You know, he said, No more wars, I don't start wars, I stop them, I'll never start a new war. And then what does he do? He starts this idiotic war with Iran. And it's it he's reversed himself on so many policies. I I I always worked for third party candidates. I worked for Ron Paul, I worked for RFK for a year, and because I wanted him to be president, not to be, you know, HSS secretary, but I I believe he's a good man, but I believe that listen, they they killed, he knows damn well they killed his father, they killed his uncle. Like it's amazing they haven't killed him yet. But so he's going up. I think he means well, but he's going up against these forces that are just like you said, they're behind the scenes, they're way more powerful. Either they compromise these guys or they threaten their families, or they they have so many ways they can do it. or I it it may again be spiritual. This might be possessions, or there might be some sort of high-tech version of a possession where, you know, we're we're in 2026 now, right? There are mind control techniques. There are ways to have voice to skull messaging directly into the brain and influence it, right? Our brain is subject to electrochemical interference and and radio waves. And there's something going on because he's doing the opposite of what he promised on on every front. So Again, it's an inversion of what he said he was gonna do. And it's very disheartening, but it also proves to me what I always thought is that, you know, we're not gonna fix this in an election booth, right? We have a better chance of fixing it in a confession booth. And what I mean by that is that if we can all atone for our sins personally and be better people and listen to our better angels and live like saints, we'd lift the whole world up. Imagine there'd be no crime, there'd be no murder, there'd be there'd be no war. So it sounds simplistic, but it it's it's profound because we're here. God gave us free will, and we're not using it. And we've been taught to not listen to our better angels and and to degrade ourselves and to believe we don't have a soul, so nothing matters. And it's dragged humanity into this precipice we're at right now. Anthony Freda (48:01.087) But I d but it's but listen, the the fight for human liberty is eternal, right? The eternal animating contest of liberty. So we're engaged in this battle. You're on the front lines. I am. A lot of great people are. And but they have this incredible tool called censorship, which they're using and they're trying to enshrine into law. So that's our greatest adversary right now, I think, because there's so much great information, so much truth that is starting to come to the fore. Like you saw the Epstein thing. I was talking about Espin 20 years ago. Everybody said I was crazy, right? They're not saying I'm crazy anymore. But so these things have been leaking out for decades, but now they're finally, you know, they're finally there's so much of it that they can't suppress it anymore. so that does give me hope that I do we just keep doing our job, doing God's work, exposing the truth, exposing the lies, and hopefully, we can break through into the mainstream. but people have been trained to trust the mainstream and trust the government and trust authority and on every front and that though that message just keeps getting pounded. Dr. Roger McFillin (49:14.25) Let me throw some alternative ideas at you. Have you ever heard of the the channeled work called A Way or A Way of Mastery? It's believed to be the channel text of Jesus, and it comes on the heels of a large volume called A Course in Miracles that was that was channeled in the 1970s. Yeah. A Way of Mastery is a simpler version of this. And when you listen to it, there's a there's wisdom there that is of the highest order, that is certainly love. Anthony Freda (49:36.552) yes. That I'm aware of, yeah. Dr. Roger McFillin (49:54.05) But it ought is also Jesus, if it is Jesus, which I believe it is, correcting the record on some things that can get misinterpreted and do get misinterpreted in mainstream Christianity. One is the nature of reality. And you were mentioning some things that I think are quite interesting because it provides hope for what humanity can do. Because I think we're so Brainwashed to believe that there's nothing we can do. Even though there's just there's a small amount of them. And when we say them, those that power elite that is involved in all these nefarious things that we've discussed, there's only a small amount of them. The large aspect of humanity is most people. And the power that is provided over us is based on our own compliance. And compliance is driven by fear, and fear is an energy. So one of the things that Jesus was talks about in this book is that the universe ultimately is energetic and we're on an energetic plane in itself. Now we're in three-dimensional reality, so we only see dense physical objects, including the body. But at other levels of like dimension there and frequency, then the there's more exposure to everything that is. In turn though, really Even in the physical reality, although we see ourselves as separate, everything is interconnected. So plants and animals and the air and everything is of God. So we are all one. There is no real true disconnection. And that's when you see some of these phrases in the Bible, like do onto others as as you would do unto you, is really like a coded aspect of reality that when you when you treat somebody in terms of love. When you treat somebody in the way you want to be treated, that's returned to you in this energetic realm. Now, this is where it gets quite challenging, I think, for the average person. Have you ever heard of the Monroe Institute? Bob Munro? And but and Bob Munro worked with the US government, the intelligence agencies, Army intelligence, because what they were doing there was around consciousness research. And Anthony Freda (51:56.786) Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Roger McFillin (52:12.107) being able to project consciousness and even use that in our cold war with the Soviets for spy purposes. So that's a very documented, evidence based concept, phenomenon that consciousness can leave the body and remote viewing is is something that occurs, right? And Bob Munro, who left his body, was able to engage with the spiritual realm and return and document. Anthony Freda (52:30.398) Remote appealing, yeah. Dr. Roger McFillin (52:40.715) And one of the things, and the reason I bring this up because you piqued my curiosity when you talked about what would be an energy weapon, where thoughts there where we could use or any energy weapons could be used to instill thoughts into somebody else. And I believe that's actually true because according to Bob Munro and his interaction with spiritual entities and beings of higher order, is that the fourth dimension is a thought world, it's a collective field. And it's a collective field of all thought. We believe that thoughts arise from within us. We never accept the concept that thoughts can come also from the outside and in that collective field. And he says it's an energetic field. And who runs or the keepers of the energetic field are lower frequency darker entities, which is also biblical, right? This is run by principles and principalities of darkness. And They feed off of low frequency energy. So basically, only God can create. But on this plane, whether we're going to call it Satan or fallen angels or dark entities, sometimes they're called archons, they run the fought the thought field. And that's the demonic force that can embody human beings and affect human beings through outside thought. And that's why there's so much in the Bible about resisting that material. the material aspects of this world and why there's like seven deadly sins and lust and envy and greed and all these things, because they're the down, they're they're really what takes human nature down into the depths of hell is you seek out the short term pleasure of this world, and it ultimately leads to emptiness and darkness, and you sell your soul. But the Bob Monroe aspect of this is to see this as an energetic realm. And it's really a battle between love and fear. So love being, that's why you see most of Jesus' stories about love and forgiveness, right? When you just take the narrative, that's what it is. But if you see it and decode it as energy, and then I think the most common stated phrase in the in the New Testament is fear not, or I think maybe the entire Bible is fear not, because fear is the lower. Dr. Roger McFillin (55:06.604) Frequency energy. So a lot of what these institutions and these power players are doing is, including the mainstream media, is constant fear provocation, nonstop fear provocation. And when and that's energy. And when you no longer fear these institutions and these authorities, and instead you see yourself as an internal being of God, with God being on the ultimate authority. And you see yourself beyond just this incarnation, just this life, just this identity, then you're going to make decisions in your life that are about the higher moral purpose and who you're developing to be. You're separating yourself from the ego. And that's why I think so much of the hope for this shift in humanity away from these harmful institutions is very simply a love frequency, a love energy. And not seeing yourself as separate from your brothers and your sisters, not falling into the psyop of division, not falling into those in ancestral scripts that we spoke about earlier. And one way to do that is to be able to disconnect from all the interference. That's why I think meditation and prayer is so important because you're almost setting up a spiritual protection. From those outside forces, including those thoughts and any energy weapons that exist, and you go into silence and be still and you will know God. That is where you connect with Christ, Christ as a consciousness, as an identity. So I want to throw that at you if you've gone down that realm at all. Anthony Freda (56:48.277) Amen. Anthony Freda (56:52.913) Absolutely. I mean, I I I think technology is being used to amplify the ideas of Edward Bernays. He would love this. I mean, the phones, I mean, there's something going on. People don't have their own minds, they don't have critical independent thinking, because they're being these messages are being implanted in them through technology. I really believe that. I know it sounds a little out there, but we're in a sci-fi movie. Okay. This is they have technology that's so advanced that it it would appear to be sci-fi, but it's happening, it's being employed, it's being used against us. And you're right about fear. I mean, Carl Jung said fear is a negation of the life force. What does that mean? It means that God gave us life. God gave us the life force. So the the the goal of the devil is to destroy life, is to destroy our joy of life. And you do that with fear. And they're they're masters of manipulating and harnessing and and using the energetic frequency of fear to keep us impotent and to keep us on our knees and to keep us begging for help from the authorities and to keep us in a submissive posture. And it works. And they're just gonna get better and better at it unless we build these firewalls around our own consciousness, like you're talking about. Dr. Roger McFillin (58:11.671) Yeah. It's fascinating because I think I'm in a stage in my career is that I've gotten so caught up at some points, with just the anger towards the manipul manipulation, the pharmaceutical industries, the harm that's being done, because it's almost like how is it possible that man can be so inhumane? And you become more than cynical. You kind of embody some of that lower frequency just resentment and distrust and that can turn into hopelessness and depression. And I think the answer to that is a first an understanding of what the playbook has been. And we've discussed some of the playbook here today on this podcast. shining that light on the darkness, revealing the war on humanity and the movement That exists right now, which is the next war ahead of us, is to the transhumanist, big tech, and everything that they're trying to do to harvest our data and to put us in a technocratic state in which we no longer have sovereignty, and they'll be using that technology for mass surveillance. What are your thoughts on currently AI, the surveillance state? Where do you think we're walking ourselves down? path if we don't actually veer off and create something that is separate from this controlled agencies. Anthony Freda (59:51.245) Well, I think that's gotta be a whole other podcast, Doctor, because I could talk about AI for hours. But I I look at AI as a we're the ones giving it life, right? Without us, it's nothing. It it it it gleans all of our information, all our data, everything ever created by humanity and spits it back into this, you know, parody of it. without our input, it literally is nothing. So to me, it's like we've unleashed this this is a spiritual. Interpretation of it. We have the Holy Spirit, which is God's spirit that imbues everything that's natural and good and life-affirming. And then we've unleashed this dark counterpart, which is this unholy spirit of AI that's waiting to be filled with our data and our input. And we're giving it life. We're giving it incarnation. And we're we're we're we're creating the means for our own obsolescence. which is madness. And and we never voted for this, right? We didn't say, Yeah, I want AI. It was just sprung upon us. without our consent, without even a without even asking. It just there it is. Like it or not, you're you're you're all gonna lose your jobs. Like get over it, you know? So this is again a spiritual battle and and the AI is a just another example and expression of that that spiritual Battle between light and dark, between good and evil. And it is binary, in my view, and it's some something that is gonna be this one's this one's a tough one because they're putting AI in charge of all of our systems. They believe they're gonna become God through this omnipotence that the computers will enable them to have with quantum computing, basically using the universe as a computer to be. to simulate the mind of God in this counterfeit version of omnipotence. So we're at a threshold of enormous proportions in human history. There's nothing like it. We've never seen anything at the to this degree, I don't think. And, you know, may you live in interesting times because we're there. Anthony Freda (01:02:04.553) And where it all shakes out, I don't know. But I think there is an awakening again, like you said, and there is peop there are a lot of people that are starting to realize that, we gotta fight this thing. Dr. Roger McFillin (01:02:15.469) I don't think I asked enough follow up questions about the the near death experience event with your partner. would you be able to tell us kind of what she experienced during that time? Anthony Freda (01:02:26.775) She had well, first of all, she's I want to thank her, Dr. Christine Mara. She's a clinical psychologist. And she's the one who introduced me to you. So I want to thank her for that. because she said I I finally found somebody that like, you know, I mean, in your profession, as you know, you're sort of out of the out of sync with the mainstream thinking. And so is she. So she was happy to see somebody who was ideologically aligned with her because it's so rare. Dr. Roger McFillin (01:02:36.473) Well, thank you. Anthony Freda (01:02:53.169) And the people who are are afraid to even say they are because they know they could lose their career, they could lose their position, they'll be ostracized and shamed and ridiculed. So it takes a lot of courage to do what you do, and and I admire you for it. But that night, this is okay, this is where it gets really weird. That night, she's a super healthy woman, right? She would work out two hours a day, no physical ailments, nothing wrong with her, incredibly impeccably fit, like an Olympian. And we're sitting down watching, it was a cold winter night, and we're watching, which was a big mistake, Netflix to begin with, but this Obama movie comes out, produced by the Obamas, called Leave the World Behind. Turns out it'll be a foreboding title. So, and it's about this apocalyptic end of the world. And in it, there's this unexplained noise, which is probably an energy acoustic weapon, right? And it would make people cover their ears and blood would come out of their nose and their teeth would fall out. And it would happen periodically. They called it the noise in the film. And I subsequently learned that in that in that movie, most movies have one audio and one soundtrack. This had four audio, I mean one audio and one visual soundtrack. This had four audio channels and one visual. And the audio One of the audio frequencies was infrasonic, which means you hear you don't hear it. It's it it it's sound waves, but it's below the threshold of your capacity to hear with the human ear. But you experience it nonetheless. It goes directly into your brain through your optic nerve. And I believe that that night, because she never had any problem with her brain her whole life, 55 years, until that night where we're watching this movie. And something triggered this event. And all the doctors that we saw, all the surgeons and neurosurgeons and brain surgeons, they all said it's idiopathic, right? We can't explain what happened. I think we can, because I don't think it's a coincidence that's happening while that sound is going off in this movie, broadcast with an infrasonic frequency directly into her brain. And it she had a a cavernous malformation in her brain that bled, that never did for 55 years until that moment. Anthony Freda (01:05:18.611) So I can never prove this, but you know, there are people that suing the government for you know the Havana syndrome. Dr. Zayd is an expert on this. People have been damaged by these weapons. They're real, they're being used, and I think Obama's sort of beta testing this as a as some sort of way to influence people through infrasonic sound in a broadcast. That's speculation, but that soundtrack is there. That's verifiable. Now, why they put it there, that's up to debate. But she went through a spiritual transformation that night as well. I mean, we were both raised Christian, but we we sort of didn't really lean into our faith until after that night we both become, we go and we really leaned into our faith and our connection to Christ. And we know it's real, and we want to. And are getting more involved with the church, the local church, and our connection to God, but prayer and meditation, and just living living with Christ and really understanding that Christ is with us and He's giving us this model that the path to redemption is by attaching meaning to your suffering and that. The answer to everything we've talked about today is very simple. It's love. The answer to fear is love. The answer to hate is love. The answer to everything is love of self first. So you got to get yourself right before you can love yourself. So just be the best person you can. Connect with God. Connect with the holy divine spirit within you. Connect to what's good and right. And you know what's good and right. We all do. Then you can love yourself. Just be a good person. And once you love yourself, then it's so easy to love other people. Because that self-love, just like self-loathing, becomes a loathing of the misanthropic loathing of humanity, because you figure, I'm I'm bad, they must all be bad. Self-love is the opposite, it's the inversion of that. So Anthony Freda (01:07:34.963) starts with love of Christ, it starts with love of yourself and connecting those things in this holy union of spirit and body and mind that helps us transcend this temporal plane and and live in a place of joy and peace and communion with God. Dr. Roger McFillin (01:07:55.054) What's next for you, Anthony? Anthony Freda (01:07:58.869) well, I started a podcast, Tony Frieda Show, eponymous, and I wanna just keep I mean, my joy in life is meeting and connecting with people like you, people doing good work, people doing God's work, and people I mean, first we have to shine the light in the dark places before we can even come up with solutions because a lot of people don't even know these they're just like they're in Plato's cave, you know, which is where they want us, where they're seeing the shadows projected on the wall by CNN and by governments and by drug companies. And We have to get them out of the cave to see there's a bigger, brighter world first. So everything we can do to enlighten people and edify people and to get them to to start to work on loving themselves, any work we can do in that arena. i is this doing God's work. It's the best thing we can do with our lives. And then together we can start to form solutions. Okay, now we know what the problems are. What are we going to do about it? And like you said, there's way more of us than them. So we're letting these degenerate, evil demons control and ruin and degrade our lives. Like I mean, at some point, you know, it's incumbent upon us to say, no, we're done. You're not doing this. We are not going to let you destroy humanity and desecrate What's good and holy, and to take away our birthright to live as free, sovereign, divine human beings. And you're not going to get away with it. And you're going to be held accountable. So you don't do it again, because you know they will. So this is my joy in life. This is my purpose. Working with good people to help humanity transcend the slavery that they're in. Dr. Roger McFillin (01:09:45.613) And Tony, do you have a book coming out or do you have a book that recently came out? Anthony Freda (01:09:49.6) I'm working on a book. It's taking longer than I thought, but The Thought Crimes of Anthony Frieda. Yes. It's I keep adding new chapters. So it's it's a compendium of my 40 years of of work, visual work with some of my ramblings about these things. So it should be good. It but I as you know, writing a book is quite a feat. So I admire the fact that you've done it. But yeah, it I think it'll be out this year. Dr. Roger McFillin (01:10:18.171) Great. Tony, it feels like I could talk to you for hours and I get a sense that I'm gonna take some topics that we kind of just did broad stroke work with today and get you on the podcast again for more in-depth discussion if you're willing. And I just in my last show announced to my audience that we're gonna be transitioning to a full studio show with a co-host, Tracy Her Thurman. And so I think the opportunity exists for us to get in two to three hours of in depth on some of the things we touched on today. Would you be willing? Anthony Freda (01:10:50.046) Absolutely. Dr. Roger McFillin (01:10:51.291) Yeah, love to continue to have that conversation. Anthony Frieda, I want to thank you for a radically genuine conversation. Anthony Freda (01:10:59.459) Thank you, Doctor.