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