Welcome to Keith Knight, Don't tread on Anyone in the Libertarian Institute Today I'm joined by James Corbett, independent journalist, founder of The Corbett Report, to discuss his new book, reportage Essays on the New World order. James, where is the best place for people to get a copy of this book? The place to go is reportagebook.com spelt like it sounds REPORTAGE book.com. That is the website where you can find the buy the paperback and buy the e-book links at the top.
But if those particular links aren't working for you or you don't like that that way, there's a bunch at the very bottom of the page, a bunch of different links to all sorts of booksellers. But the important thing, of course, this is a real deal book, so you can get it from any bookseller anywhere. You all you need is the ISBN number and that is on that page. Awesome, you mention. I want to get into a little of your background before proceeding. How long were you an English
teacher in Japan? All right. So I got here in 2004 and I went full time with the website in 2011. So I guess it was about seven years. OK, in those seven years, what were the biggest lessons you extracted when it comes to the concept of being a teacher? Someone communicating knowledge to someone else where you're more of an expert. Biggest lessons from being a teacher for seven years.
You know, it was one of my first and earliest and simplest but most humbling lessons was that I had to learn that just because I knew something and was didn't find it challenging, was bored by it does not mean the student is going to find it equally boring or easy to comprehend. And that for I don't. Of course that is the case. You are the teacher. You were teaching someone something they presumably don't
know. So, but my initial, when I first started teaching, my first reaction, it was always to try to make things, make things more interesting, make them more complicated because they'll get too bored too easily. But then I realized, no, the way to set people up for success is at a very base level to firmly establish a foundation of, of baseline knowledge and then build from there. And the students who excel at that point will can, you can start making it more complicated and challenging.
But it was always about establishing that baseline of knowledge, I think is an important part of that. And that's something that I don't consciously keep in mind with my work at the Corbett Report.
But I'd like to think it informs my work with the Corbett Report because I'm talking to not just a classroom, I'm talking to 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people all around the world, and different levels of comprehension and understanding and waking up different paths of life, different countries, different backgrounds.
So I can't possibly gauge where the students in my virtual classroom are, but I can hopefully establish that baseline that we can use to build and get more detailed with our analysis. The subtitle of the book is Essays on the New World Order. What is the New World Order? Well, I purposefully did not define that in the book itself because I wanted this book, in a sense, to inform people's understanding of that topic, to meet the New World Order.
In a sense, it's very simple. You could boil it down to a very simple definition. Essentially, when you hear a politician talking about the New World Order, they are talking about the fact that in any given time period there is a world order that governs international relations and that might be informed or delimited by various geopolitical events, historical events, economic ties, etcetera. All inform the concept of a
world order. And the last time we saw a new world order really firmly established was in the post World War 2 era. After literally Europe riot, lying in ruins, smoke holes and craters and just totally obliterated, it was time to build a new world order.
And the world order that was built on top of that was essentially the era of Pax Americana that we've been living through based on the Bretton Woods institution, United Nations. The concept of an international world reserve currency tied to the dollar, which was originally pegged to gold, which we know is no longer pegged to gold, etcetera, etcetera. That was the world order. Clearly we are transitioning into a new world order and we hear politicians talking about this a lot.
But, but I think it's deeper than that because I think ultimately what what these politicians are alluding to is the concept of a world order under a world governance system, not necessarily a world government. But clearly we are taking steps towards world governance of some sort. And I would liken that to post World War One. We saw the creation of the League of Nations and the that early attempt at trying to form some sort of parliament of the world.
After World War 2, we saw the creation of the United Nations and again some attempt to try to bring some sort of world governing system into place. So I imagine after World War Three we will see what the new new World Order really looks like. But it will probably not be pleasant for the average person because more and more of their power will be seated to a far distant authority.
And I think that is the crux of the New World order that I see coming into view that I I do not want to come into view, which is the centralization of more and more power in fewer and fewer hands in the hands of an oligarchy essentially. So in a sense, you could make the old observation that the new world order is just the old world order.
It's it's the same quest for world order that has been on the table since the very earliest tyrants tried to basically bring the world under their under their rule. We're still seeing the same thing in our current day and
age. Anyway, so this book of essays, which I am pointing to off screen, so I'll bring it on screen so people can see it. This book of essays hopefully shows various facets of how this new World order is being constructed, and also hopefully what we can do about that to stop it from coming coming about. So I can immediately see people, if you explain to them the concept of like a federal government, that you're seating a great deal of power to a very small number of people.
Some people might respond and say, well, actually it's very beneficial that we have a federal government that allows us to cooperate. It sort of keeps the peace. I could see that being some sort of justification for supporting the new world order, however people think that may come to
fruition. But the metric you're using to determine good world order from bad world order is the amount of centralization of power and people's inability to act independently from it. Or am I putting incorrect? Words in your well, I think that's that's one aspect of it. Another aspect that I would highlight and did highlight in the essays is the the difference between voluntary order and order that's being imposed from top down.
And I addressed that specifically in one of the essays on A brief Introduction to Spontaneous Order. Because certainly we have since our earliest childhood been instilled with the sense that law and order is the way to have a properly functioning society. You can't have a properly functioning society without law and order, and those concepts have always been linked together.
And unfortunately, in the popular imagination here in the 21st century, in our lightened Liberal Democratic era, law means whatever is written down on a piece of paper by someone installed in a position of power.
As opposed to that concept of how law and order comes about in a society, there is a completely different conception called spontaneous order, which is to say that you do not need to govern from talk down in order for people to come together in community and start supporting and helping each other and adjudicating their own problems through, for example, common law
systems. I know this is a difficult concept for people to wrap their head around because they have been indoctrinated since the time they were born that the only way order can come about is from the top down South. In my brief introduction to spontaneous order essay, I try to show that there is another concept of order. In fact, yes, in a sense you could say the New world order could be the order that we bring about from bottom up, the spontaneous order of a real true people's revolution.
But I guess that's just a different way of of looking at the issue. What would you say are the best examples, the best empirical examples of spontaneous order taking place in the world around us, as opposed to some hypothetical that could potentially exist in the future? Right. Well, I I like to bring it down to the absolute most basic level. For me, it's just so obvious that we do not need a government to tell us to how to speak English.
We learn English because we are human beings embodied in this world who want to communicate with other human beings. And as a natural result of that, we start babbling and then emulating our parents and then we start to learn how to speak English. And if we say something silly or grammatically incorrect, people will correct us. There is no, there is no police that's going to blow the whistle and take you to jail if you don't speak in a, a certain way.
The entire, the entirety of linguistic communication arose without government. I think that's one pretty important example that we kind of just gloss over. Oh yeah, whatever. And there's, I think there's a million examples like that. And more recently and more to the point, I suppose we could point to things like the development of standards for for operating systems or what have you on your computer. There again, there's no government that had to come in and regulate.
Every computer has to be built with this type of operating system on this programming language that can run this type of software. No, those types of standards arise because people realize it would be a lot better if we had a common standard that we're working towards so that we can all just start creating software in that paradigm, right? Wouldn't that be easier? Wouldn't that be better?
You could look at that with railroad gauges and all sorts of the million other things that are not not governed by some sort of body that's going to come in and regulate that down to the letter of the law. It's just that business works and community works and people understand that it's better if we all agree on shared standards on certain things.
Why can't we continue to expand that idea out into more and more of our life and at the very, very, very least claw back some some of our power from the government bodies that try to regulate every aspect of our existence? I want to get through a few intellectual hurdles someone might be coming forth with if they are faced with a book like this with such a title. Here is a meme that I came across. It's a gentleman. This is for the audible only audience.
So a guy is sitting at his desk facing One Direction, and the opposite direction is a door that a woman is walking away from him just in clear disgust. He's trying to get her attention. He's in his socks, obviously. He says, honey, come look, I found some information all the world's top scientists and doctors missed.
So when you come across someone with the idea that, look, if there's such valuable information in this new book you have that the first thousand books that I've been introduced to didn't have, how is it that you're able to get all this information that all the top scientists and doctors and experts missed? It's a, it's a very funny joke, isn't it? And it works well in that comic
format. But of course, it doesn't really address reality because first of all, I mean, I could go into the articulation of, for example, when I talk about, although I don't really talk about it much in the book itself. But when I talk about issues like, for example, the scam demic and what have you, how do I address that sort of thing?
How, where does some English teacher in Japan get off addressing, you know, these things that these top scientists have not talked about or as I do address in the book, the environmental movement and the global warming hypothesis, etcetera. You know, how does, how does he
talk about things like this? And I could address it by saying, well, of course, if we're looking for example, specifically at the concept of anthropogenic global warming, we could talk about the equilibrium climate sensitivity that is an admitted factor in the IPCC calculations that they admit has a wide range of uncertainty that is in fact greater than the actual observed temperature average increase, etcetera.
We could get into those weeds. But I think that actually in a sense is giving too much credit to the other side of the argument. Because I think the bigger problem is the the fact that sort of any information that is not being told to you on the nightly news is all gathered together and all lumped into this category called conspiracy
theory. And if I haven't heard it from some expert on the Evening News, then it then then it is this other category of thing that deserves to be lumped in with literally everything else. So I would say I can't really address the sort of general blanket claim like how do you say you have information other people don't? What specific piece of information are you talking about? And we can talk about the details of that specific piece of information.
I can't, I can't possibly address all information in the world that isn't on the on the nightly news. You have a thesis titled I believe you titled it The News is a Social Construct. Can you walk us through a brief explanation of what that means? Well, it's again one of those things that's so simple and basic that we don't spend time actually thinking about it, but we probably should. And that question is what is the news?
Which seems, again, like a stupidly simple question, but becomes more complex when you start to think about it. OK, the news is, well, OK, let me go get the newspaper and I'll check or let me turn on the TV and I'll check what the news is today. But of course, that really just pushes the question. But off onto some other outside agency. These, these people, these editors in this office in New York or Washington or Tokyo or whatever have decided this is the news for you to consume
today. OK. How did they decide that? What, what have they put in here? What have they left out And then be even beyond that. The question is, how is that information being related? Is it being related as an isolated piece of information or is it being connected into a greater context? How is this information being contextualized for me, etcetera, etcetera. So the news is not some objective thing that is written
in the heavens. It is something that is created, constructed and necessarily so. I'm not saying that there is some sort of process by which we can scientifically determine the news, but they're keeping it from you, man. No, it is. It is just a collection of stories and observations about things that are happening in the world that are contextualized in a way that either explain the world to you or don't explain the world to you.
And I think once we become aware and conscious of that fact, we can take greater agency in constructing our own news feed, as it were, whether literally or metaphorically and literally, if people are interested in that. I often talk about RSS and other ways that you can stop being algorithmically controlled by Twitter's suggestions or what what have you for your news feed. And you can start constructing a news feed based on sources that you're interested in following.
But the question is, what is news to you? Keith Knight sitting there, for example, in Arizona, you probably have a different set of issues and things that you're thinking about and dealing with on a daily basis than someone like me in Japan, etcetera, etcetera. There's a just different contexts and different ways of looking at the world that make certain stories important and certain stories not important. And that is what I mean by the
news is a social construct. Of course, following that out, the question then becomes, OK, so these editors in this particular editorial room have decided that this is today's news and this is the information they're presenting it to me and this is the form they're presenting it to me. And this is how they're contextualizing that information. The question becomes why? Why have they decided that this news is important?
And from that we can start expanding it out into the question of, well, OK, who sits on the board of the corporation that owns this organization, etcetera, and what affiliations do those people have and are they tied into the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group, etcetera, etcetera? What are the outside influences that are determining and shaping the way that they formulate and and then present the news? Excellent answer.
I always try to like look at the incentives because you could take the same source and based on the incentives they have, it really matters. So the old example that's frequently used is if OJ Simpson came out and said I didn't commit murder, that wouldn't be newsworthy. But what if he came out and said I did commit murder? Well, hold on, You just said he was an unreliable source a second ago. Now he's reliable.
It's like, well, no, it's in his incentive to say the first thing, not in the second thing, so. There is a legal term for that that's going to escape my mind. Admission against interest, is that it? Anyway, yes. Statement against interest, I think, and the reason that the news is a social construct was so important for me because to hear that the news, not just people on Twitter, but the news, big buildings, $1,000,000 corporations, that they're lying or bias was really hard to
believe. And then I realized I thought, you know, most heads of most religions were experts in something that was false. And hearing the concept that it's not about actively lying, telling you false versions of reality, but the concept of selective reporting, you get this all the time, especially with the rush Ukraine situation. Very seldom do they explicitly lie. Sometimes they do Hillary Clinton said 17 agencies confirmed that Putin hacked her emails.
OK, explicit lies. So often it's just them selecting to report on some things and not others. So few people knew until Trump tweeted it out that Vladimir Zielinski just cancelled his last selection that that wasn't too important. Not because the media ever came out and said no, no, that there were elections. They just didn't report on it. It's like the war for democracy is for unelected Zelensky and also Churchill wasn't elected that war for democracy. Stalin wasn't elected in his war
for what is going on here. It's just the selective reporting aspect. Anything else on the news being a social construct? I would just say that one thing that comes to mind is, yeah, the the question when people are looking at a big story, like for example, Russia, Ukraine is always where does the news start the clock? And generally speaking, the news will start the clock in 2014. Absolutely no history before 2014 exists or is worthy of your
time or attention. It's in 2014 that Russia invaded Crimea and that is what started the Russia Ukraine conflict, according to most news, mainstream news sources. Again, I I think we have to follow that back to the question of who is presenting this news to us and why are they presenting it in that way? Excellent point, Psychology Today says. Now really get humbled before you answer this because this is from Psychology Today.
At times like these, conspiracy theories are more appealing than the truth because they offer the possibility of control. Professor says we can thwart an evil problem, at least hypothetically, but we can't thwart the unseen forces of nature. Conspiracy theories make a very tempting promise. Just stop the villain and you get your life back. That's what we all want. He says it's a charming narrative that's very easy to
buy into. Just stop Bill Gates from polluting the airwaves with 5G and we can go out again and our kids can go back to school. Anything stand out to you if you were to do a propaganda analysis of this worldview? Yes, once again, I would say I can't address the blanket term conspiracy theories because there's a billion conspiracy theories. Which one are you specifically
addressing? So OK, if it has something to do with Bill Gates and 5G and school lockdowns, all right, we can at least start addressing that. And why don't we start by taking a look at Bill Gates, who he is, his business influences, his family and upbringing, etcetera, and how they inform who he is and ultimately what role he was playing over the past few years as some seemingly medical expert that the media kept turning to for advice.
Why were they doing that? He is not a medical expert of any sort. Why were they turning to Bill Gates? Oh, does it have something to do with the funding that Bill Gates and his eponymous institution we're sending to various media outlets to basically bankroll their entire coverage of the World Health space? Does that have something to do with it? And then we could start looking into specifics.
So I would direct people to corporatereport.com/gates and ask them to tell me what is factually untrue about anything that I report in that documentary. I'm interested to hear that. And when they stumble and stutter and don't even want to address it and start talking vaguely about conspiracy theories, you will know that they do not have an actual argument because they're not looking at facts in the real world.
They're trying to simply package everything up into a nice neat little package called conspiracy theories that they can then throw out and then tell you, well, whatever. Whatever is not a conspiracy theory must be real and true. And if you see it on the nightly news, it must be real and true. So Bill Gates must be a medical expert. That is how we can start addressing a vague non argument
like that. I will make this the last general question, but I'm curious about how we go about determining truth from falsehood when there's so many potential sources we could have there. So many angles there, so many different points in the timeline we could start.
The thing that comes to mind is if you look at the news in general, they're like a bunch of conspiracy theorists always telling us Putin's going to take over the world, China's going to take over the world, Iran's going to take over the world. We got to watch out for the robber barons. There's racism everywhere, there's sexism everywhere. Islam is going to kill us all. If they take Saigon, they're going to take America next. I mean, they are big conspiracy
theorists. So if we really see it not as only one of us are conspiracy theorists, we just believe in different conspiracies. If we have that worldview, how can we go about specifically determining I? I get that I would need to mention a specific one, but are there any general checklist? Any good rules of thumb you can give us to determine true from false conspiracies or stories in general? Yeah, you, you make a point that I often like to make, which is, for example, the official story
of 911 is a conspiracy theory. It is. So you are simply choosing between conspiracy theories. You just don't label the one that you like as a conspiracy theory. It is a theory about a conspiracy that was committed by 19 MMM of box cutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave halfway around the world. Sure. OK, that's a story. Now, where do you get the details of that story?
Well, you get it from things like the 9/11 Commission Report, which is sitting on the bookshelf behind me that I have read, that most people who talk about about 911 have not read. And I know that the vast, I won't say the vast majority, but something like 1/3 of the sources and footnotes that were used in the creation of that report was derived from torture testimony, which is inadmissible under any court, any reasonable court in the world, shall we say.
And I know that there are flat out contradictions and lies in that story that I've documented before. So yes, it is frustrating to be called some sort of conspiracy theorist when of course you are talking to people who are absolutely conspiracy theorists themselves. They just don't even want to admit that. Having said that, yes, how do you then go about actually finding real, true, verifiable information? Well, there are a number of methods you can use.
One that I think is important is triangulation. If you hear something from one source and only one source, then it could be true. But how do you how do you really know? Can you gauge that if you can find it from a number of independent sources, preferably from sources that aren't necessarily ideologically related or they're not necessarily on the same team? As you say, statements against interest can be incredibly
important pieces of information. So if we can triangulate information from different sources and it's more likely that we can rely on that, although of course it's no guarantee that of the veracity of, of what is being said another. But perhaps, I guess the this is going to be the less satisfying answer because it will be open to interpretation and does sort of write a blank check for people to already confirm what they already believe.
But does the information that you are discovering, does it actually, A, really makes sense of the world to you? Does it really have explanatory power? And then B, does it have predictive power? Can you actually use that information to help shape your
life in a better direction? And I would say, again, that's going to be very nebulous and open to interpretation, but I would say that truth really does correspond with reality in a way that helps situate yourself in the world in a way that you're more prepared for. And I'll give a specific example
of that. For example, back in 2020, I was not at all surprised by the the way in which the scandemic unfolded, precisely because I had a more accurate map of reality than the vast majority of the public. Not because I'm a special human being, but simply because I actually bothered to look at the setup for the infrastructure for medical martial law that had taken place at the very least since the time of the anthrax scare in 2001. Remember that that most people don't.
But since that point, I I followed the the construction of the medical Marshall law complex and infrastructure, the the judicial and legislative framework for it, the international agreements like the International Health Regulations and the public Health Emergency of International concern AKA fake that they brought into existence in the under the World Health Organization.
I saw the swine flu scam scam demic develop and I followed that and I looked at the Council of Europe's subsequent follow up report reporting that the Advisory Council that had advised The Who Director General Margaret Chan to declare that swine flu pandemic were themselves sitting on boards of big pharma corporations or otherwise tied to the pharma
industry. That then directly benefited from the millions upon millions upon billions of dollars in vaccine contracts and other such pharmaceutical interventions that took place as a result of the swine flu. I saw the development of the Zika and Ebola scares. I saw people like Bill Gates writing in the New England Journal of Medicine talking about the the new sorts of techniques that we're going to need to confront pandemics in
the future, etcetera, etcetera. So when all of this happened in 2020, I wasn't surprised in the least. The only thing I was surprised at really was how quickly the public got on board with the agenda and two weeks to flatten the curve and policing each other into the lockdown state
that that was disappointing. But the fact that they did it was not disappointing to me because I had a more accurate map of reality than most people who were just casually following the news through the news what was being told to them on the nightly news. So that is one way to to really gauge whether or not the information that you were getting truly actually is real or not.
Can you actually form a map of reality that corresponds to what you're seeing and then helps you understand things as they are unfolding, or even before they start to unfold? Were you surprised that 20 years after the War on Terror against Islamic extremism, the US and Israel were celebrating Al Qaeda taking over Damascus like earlier this year? I gotta say, I try to not have too high or too low standards.
I try to find myself in between. I couldn't believe that when Al Jilani just started calling the shots, they were like, oh good, Assad is gone. Then again, Obama basically called for Assad and Gaddafi to be removed. So I guess I shouldn't have, but I just couldn't believe that was the guy. I continue to go back to that article that was written in, I want to say 2012 by a CFR fellow that was talking about, well, we need Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda are the good guys. Accepting al Qaeda.
Yeah, accepting Al Qaeda exactly right. So, yeah. So no, it wasn't surprising. But again, it is, it is galling. It is just galling how the reality inversion takes place and how the public is just expected to swallow it. And if they don't, well, let's bring out the editorials from Psychology Today about how
you're a conspiracy theorist. When it comes to things that first started opening your mind to seeing the world in a potentially different light, the creature from Jekyll Island and Operation Northwoods, those were the two that stood out to me, that you and I had a great deal of overlap and some of these I was not familiar with. When it comes to either of those. What was it about the Creature from Jekyll Island or reading about Operation Northwoods that
really caught your attention? And how did you begin to go down a rabbit hole after hearing about pick either one of those to expand on well. I will, I will take them in the order in which they, they occurred to me, or that they
that I found them, at any rate. Operation Northwoods was really one of those Nuggets that really lodged in my brain as I was starting to inquire into 911 a little bit and starting to find information that seemed to go against what I'd been told about it. But still, I don't, you know, OK, what? I don't know, it sounds like there's a lot of hooey in here as well about floating orbs and things and whatever. What, what's this?
It was Operation Northwoods that really started me looking into the actual deep history of the structure of what what Peter Dale Scott would call deep political events, false flag events, etcetera. Staging attacks to blame on enemies. To actually read the actual documents themselves that demonstrate that that was in fact, yes, a plan that was tabled by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was sitting there waiting to be approved by President Kennedy is, is an eye opening moment.
And so I think that's what sent me down the 9/11 rabbit hole specifically. And I started to cover more and more information that questioned the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. But then there was a point at which I thought, OK, I'm clearly at at at a certain point, I was clear that that we had been lied to about 911. And that was absolutely not as presented to us. But still, I mean, a big overarching conspiracy in back rooms with guys smoking cigars over a, you know, a map of the
world, carving up the world. Oh, that seemed a bit cartoonish. How does that really function? How does this really work? And in fact, it was something that I didn't mention. You're, you're referencing the first essay in here, Reportage Adventures in the New Medium, which I talk about my experience of falling down the rabbit hole.
But something that I didn't specifically reference in here, which was I think another penny drop moment, was the Money Masters documentary, which I encountered in that crazy time in 2006 when I was finding all this information. I saw the Money Masters documentary and it was the first time I, well, not necessarily the first time, but one of the first times I'd ever seriously considered the concept of the underlying structure of the monetary system.
Not finance, not economics, but literally the monetary base. What is money? How is it created? By whom? Who has that power? From where did they, where did they get that authority from? And how do how do they use that? That was a documentary that really started me thinking along those lines. And of course, the Creature from Jekyll Island informed that
study of mine. And once I started to learn about the Federal Reserve and its history, where it came from, how it was literally conceived as is baseline economic history at this point, literally conceived into conspiracy on Jekyll Island. Yes. I mean, it's a crazy story and fascinating and obviously drew me in towards the bigger understanding because 911 is one specific Ave. of research that I was on.
But once you start to realize, oh, the entire monetary paradigm is being controlled by certain forces for certain reasons, that's that becomes an explanatory factor that helps to make sense of more and more of the other deep political events that we see unfolding around us. In the notes section, I believe it's in the first essay, you also mentioned Carol Quigley and Edward Bernays. Do you want to go into those, please and let me know what were either things that really stood
out to you and humbled you when you came across their research, or why you think Edward Bernays and Carol Quigley are important sources to use in this research? Well, I think in both cases it's because they are so frank about what I had been told all my life and still continue to hear to this very day from Psychology Today and other such wonderful sources, is conspiracy theory.
No, this was admission by people who, yes, were 100% knowledgeable of and approving of the conspiracy that exists. And I think that was the startling thing. So with Bernice in particular, I found him through Adam Curtis's documentary The Century of the Self. Part 1, I think was a particularly interesting piece of documentary film making. And it introduced me to Edward Bernays, who I had never learnt about in school, never heard about him. But oh, you know, he's the guy
who came up with that campaign. Oh, and that campaign and the torches for liberty and oh, you know, you know, invading South American countries and etcetera, etcetera, all coordinated by the same guy who was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. What, what is this? And oh, by the way, he's related to the guy who started Netflix. What? That's crazy. Anyway, so once I I found that and then I followed that line back to Edward Bernese's 1928 book on propaganda called Propaganda.
And as I always, always cite the opening, just the opening paragraphs of that book. And I really, really, I really need to commit those words to memory because they are so powerful. But I will allow people to on their own time. Go and go and research it for yourself. Just go read the opening page of Propaganda. The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
Our invisible governors are in many cases unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet. In which he talks about the hidden forces that control society by manipulating people's habits and opinions. That is the real controlling force of our society. Wow, that's a pretty amazing admission that again, if you said that, if I said that, I would be crazy conspiracy
theorizing. But here's Edward Bernays, who was in a position to know a thing or two about that, talking about it. Similarly with Carol Quigley, again as I think has become conspiracy lore that is often passed around in the conspiracy space, broad broadly speaking, etcetera. The tragedy and hope for example, and contains a number of admissions that are
startling. For example, the Bank for International Settlements and its creation as the apex of the the banking powers specifically to create a system of international financial capital controlled by a very few people in a Byzantine system that very few people can understand. Let alone the other historical aspects that that Quigley was
bringing to light. That there is a conspiracy that has that at least at that time that he was writing in the mid 20th century was responsible for much of the preceding 50 years of history. And it was a an acknowledged secret society started by Cecil Rhodes, but expanded out from his death and that was controlling world events and manipulating things like World War 2 and World War One and
other such things. Again, a startling admission that if any anyone else were to make it would be crazy conspiracy theorizing. But this is Carol Quigley, Georgetown professor who was the admitted name checked mentor of Bill Clinton. So it's a lot harder to dismiss Carol Quigley as some wide eyed conspiracy theorist, which is why I think it's important to reference reference things like that at once. Again, coming back to that idea
of statements against interest. One of the earliest times I was really surprised looking into alternative research guy named Michael Collins. Piper was just sort of like ranting and it wasn't a great look. He's looking into the sun, the news reporting on him. It's trying to make him look like a complete buffoon. He goes, why is it that three of the, you know, Kardashians can't get together without tons of media reports going on about it?
Yet here we are at the Bilderberg conference and the media could not be less interested if you put a gun to their head. And I said, I don't know what the Bilderberg conference is. What is he talking about? I'm curious what you think are the big groups, who the big groups are to focus on? Is it CFR Bilderberg who are the ones that come to mind that really piqued your interest?
As far as seems like there's a quite a great deal of power in these organizations and they don't get a lot of media attention. What groups come to mind? CFR Bilderberg and Trilateral organization are the three first that would spring to mind for me, but I would hesitate to simply limit it to to that. In fact, I think anytime you put your finger on a particular group, the center of power has probably already slipped somewhere else.
The fact that Bilderberg is now an openly not only openly acknowledged, but they even have their own website. They they publish their guest list, however accurate it may not, may or may not be. And you know, they're, they're meeting agenda items. They it's openly published on the on the Internet these days. So it clearly isn't what it was even just a couple of decades ago when it was still literally you're a crazy, wild, wide, wide eyed conspiracy.
There is if you so much believe the Bilderberg Group exists, you crazy weirdo. Well, OK, they exist. We've established that. And Oh yeah, they really have been meeting since every year since 1950 for whatever it was. However, having said that, at this point, what is the function of a Bilderberg Group meeting? I have made the point before. Yes, OK, we may, we may even have an accurate list of all the attendees who were physically there at the latest Bilderberg
meeting. But does that mean that was everyone who attended? I mean, we do live in an age where you and I are not in the same room, Keith, but we're talking imagine that. So how do we know who is really talking to who in what context in what Fora? And does is it as important that they they literally convene together in a physical space in a meeting room?
Or are there all sorts of things happening that we don't even have a twinkling of a clue that they're happening because they're not happening in the physical world? They're happening in virtual online spaces or what have you. So it's, it's really difficult to I, I think, identify things like that. And I would also caution against the idea that there is a certain group or even just a a few cliques of groups that really truly control all events in the
world. I think that is the sort of cartoon version of conspiracy theorizing that they Psychology Today's and Harpers magazines and whatever would love to denigrate and laugh at because it is too simplistic a worldview. I think that there are there are individuals who are coming to the grander conspiracy to the extent that that exists as an identifiable thing for different
reasons. And they have their own motivations and they have their own interests and they have their own associations and they may form cliques and groups, but they may those groups may be amorphous. And someone, as has often been pointed out, just because someone, for example, is ACFR member does not mean that they are part of the global conspiracy controlling world
events. As the rings with Rings within Rings concept identified by Carol Quigley and expanded on by G Edward Griffin talks about, yes, you can have inner members of organizations that are directing that organization towards a certain goal that the outer members of the organization don't even know exists. They have no idea that that inner organization even exists, the rings within rings idea, etcetera, etcetera. And it isn't necessarily that there is a singular organization
or a singular group. There are different groups that may have interests converge. And it is my theory, I don't know if I can really articulate this in a scientific way, but it is my theory that when we see the grand, deep political events like JFK assassination and 9/11, these truly spectacular events generally I think happened because there is a convergence of interests among many different factions of the oligarchical governing bodies, the powers that shouldn't be.
There are many different people who have an interest in that particular event taking place, which is why that event happens and is so easily covered up, because there are a lot of people who have some sort of skin in that game. But perhaps that also explains why I don't think everything that happens in the world is part of some sort of grand
conspiracy. The real, the real power that I identify is not the power of someone literally controlling or writing the script of world events, but writing the narrative through which people understand those events so that anything that happens can be used towards the furtherance of a certain goal. For example, some sort of spectacular intelligence failure like a 9/11, a huge shot in the arm for the the NSA and other intelligence agencies. They need more funding. They need more power.
You see how horrible it was? It's because was they didn't have enough funding or power. So there's really no conceivable circumstance in which you could from that framework argue that no, actually we need to reduce the size of the NSA, we need to get rid of the NSA. We don't need this intelligence agency apparatus over everything. No, they've already set the narrative so that anything that happens, good or bad, is justification for an expansion
of those powers. So I think the real power is the narrative framing. And that goes back to that question that we started out with really about the news, who is constructing the news and for what purpose. Clearly, I think the news, to the extent that it is a construction that is being deliberately constructed in boardrooms and editorial rooms, etcetera, is being constructed to frame those types of narratives.
So that, for example, a 9/11 will be a giant gigantic boost in the arms of the the surveillance state. Or so that we never, ever, ever talk about the cancel elections in Ukraine. We will just never talk about it because this is a fight for democracy. We that is the narrative. So anything that questions that narrative line just won't get reported on etcetera.
Excellent answer. The 9/11 1 is very good because you could have totally seen a scenario where the government's number one job is just keep you safe and they failed to do that in a spectacular way. So what happens? Bush's approval rating goes to 91% and they get more money and power than they ever could have imagined. Same thing of course happened after December 7th of 1941. It's like, how could the biggest failure? It's like my business got robbed and the security guards were
just off to lunch that day. I need to start paying them triple. Why wouldn't you fire them? How could they're not? Why didn't that movement happen? So controlling the narrative is so great. The preface to this book is written by Whitney Webb. Why did you choose her to work with on this project? What do you think are some of her greatest contributions to this field? Whitney Webb, I don't. I don't. Well, I was going to say, I don't imagine I have to explain to people, but I I should
anyway. Whitney Webb is an incredible researcher and I think anyone who has listened to her speak, let alone read her writing knows that she has an encyclopedic knowledge of people and places and connections and events that is truly, I would say second to none in the independent media space. So I was absolutely happy and honored that she would write the the forward to this book.
I think it's, it's a testament to the fact that she truly is one of those people who I, I don't want to put words out there that people can read the forward for result. But the fact that she credits me as someone that she has looked up to is truly really some of the the greatest feedback that I
can ever receive. Because what I am trying to do with this information is simply get other people energized to start working on it. I know I am not the world's smartest man or the world's greatest person and I'm not going to solve all the world's problems.
I don't believe that's how this works, but I know there are 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people out there who if they had some of this information, would be able to use their own skills, experience their own world view to construct something different out of it and to move it forward
down the field. And that is really why I do what I do. I, I know that once we get people energized and thinking along the right lines, set the right narrative so that for example, in the event of the next 911 people don't give more power and approval to the government, but instead say, no, you just broke the social contract, we're not going to listen to you anymore. If we can start setting narratives along those lines,
great. So when I hear from someone like a Whitney Webb that I helped inspire them or in any way and contributed to their development, that that's amazing and that's wonderful. And so anyway, for people who don't know Whitney Webb, please check out unlimited hangout.com. She has talked about so many different things. And yes, for example, she is, she was talking about Peter Thiel and Palantir and their connection to the the CIA and, and nefarious activities at DARPA etcetera.
Years ago. She was talking, she did a series on the Dark Winter and the various players around that and how they contributed and hung around and then contributed to the scam demic of the past few years, etcetera, etcetera. She's done such incredibly pioneering work on issues like that and she has the receipts. Anything you read of hers is incredibly thoroughly documented. And as people might notice, I like to document my, my work as
well. So again, if I can contribute absolutely nothing else to the entire world other than the fact that people expect documentation and citation of sources in their work, I would say that's, that would be a, a, a win. That's a huge one. Like, it so often doesn't even occur to you. You hear Barack Obama say there was an attack at the Pulse nightclub. This man was out because of his hatred of homosexuals and that's
why he killed people. It took years before I ever stopped to say, can you cite your source? I mean, that's what would be expected of me if I was in 6th grade and I made a falsifiable claim like that. What is your evidence? You just gave me a very big falsifiable claim. What's your source, Mr. Harvard graduate, president of America? Certainly, Certainly. It's going to be so impressive. Let me strap myself in. So good documentation. That is very important.
What is the real meaning of independence? I think people will need to read the essay to appreciate that in its full context. But essentially independence, Yes, there are a number of documents or flowery language that we can point to that has been made in the past about freedom, about independence. We can celebrate Independence Day by eating hot dogs and fireworks.
I don't do that in Japan, but anyway, I understand that that happens in America. But real independence, the actual independence is something that is innate to you. You are born a free, sovereign human being, a an individual who can and presumably will work with other people in community. But you are a free and sovereign individual. And no, no pen of any would be authoritarian. A ruler can ever take that away from you.
They can direct their thugs and enforcers to come and put you in a cage if you don't do what they say, etcetera, etcetera. And that has and can and will and happen. But they cannot take away your true independent nature. And until people really reclaim that sovereignty, not necessarily by making some grandiose statement or signing some document, but simply create claim their own cognitive
sovereignty and individuality. Well then they won't truly understand that the freedom that they already possess and that that it isn't it isn't some sort of thing. Yeah, OK. We can celebrate it in some way with some platitudes, but no independence on in this most real state is something that in here's to you simply by the fact that you are a free human being. You are and you were born into this world that way and that is who you are.
And when you claim that in your mind, in your soul, when you go forward in the world that way, that will affect who you are and what you do in the world. Final question, thank you so much for your time. You and I had a conversation about this topic like I think 7 years ago. I want to ask you about it one once again to see, you know what's changed because I know we've been, we've both been through a lot. What is the most important take away from the documentary Children Full of Life?
Yeah, it's been several years since I've seen it, so let me think, what is my perspective on it these days? I I remember at the time. So for people who don't know, this is a documentary film that I believe was put together in Japan. It was a Japanese documentary,
but then it was taken. The 5th estate of the CBC takes foreign documentaries and will essentially put their own speaker on top of it. And that that's the way that it is been propagated in English. And I made a video back in 2012, something like that, where I was just out at the park having a picnic with my wife at that day. And I thought, you know what? I just saw this great documentary. I'll make a little video just telling people to watch this
documentary. It was a little literally too in the video, just saying, hey, here's a really good documentary. I'll put the link in the description. Please go watch it. And for whatever reason, this was back when YouTube had a homepage that everybody in the world would see. And for whatever reason, that particular video of all the videos I've done, that particular video landed on the YouTube homepage and got hundreds of thousands of views
overnight. And most of the comments were like, why am I getting this on the homepage? But anyway, I was delighted to see that that that documentary got hundreds of thousands of views as a result of that. And I'm glad because it was a profoundly affecting a documentary. And if you can watch that without tearing up a little, you're probably not human
inside. It's, it's just a profoundly moving document of what is possible when we are talking about the development of, see, the development of children's minds and the development of their hearts and souls and who they are and shaping them for the world that they're growing up into is such a foundationally important part of our civilization. But most people don't even give
it a second thought for them. For most people, school is just at best, it's a place where you go to learn, you know, 2 + 2 = 4. But even more cynically, it's just, well, it's kind of babysitting, you know, let let the state take care of it while I go out to work. However, that that documentary presents a different conception of what education is and how it can work and what kind of effect
it can have on people's lives. And I have no doubt that every single member of that class remembers that teacher. Mr. Kanamuri, if I remember correctly, remembers his teaching and remembers what they learnt from that class. Not the 2 + 2 = 4 stuff, but the stuff about human connection and what it means and why it's important. It's just a profoundly moving experience. And it's, it's probably the best way to talk about different
conceptions of education. Because you can talk about that in this high, highfalutin kind of way in abstract terms and talk about the importance of education. But when you see when you see how a classroom can be run or not even run in the traditional sense, but the way that children's can can learn how to interact with each other in a completely different way. When you see it happening, it is a profoundly different and moving experience.
So I think it teaches us something about the the real true path forward for us as a species, as a civilization. It is, you know, there's a lot of jockeying and wrestling back and forth about political ideas and what have you. But I think foundationally it comes to the way that we raise our children. What kind of children are we raising and in what way? And are we raising them to be caring, responsible, thoughtful, engaging and engaged human
beings? Or are we simply using school as a babysitting sort of center that we can offload our children and our responsibility for developing children's minds onto? And if it's the latter, then that's that's the reason why if you feel that society is collapsing and civilization is going to hell in a handbasket, that's the reason more so than anything else. It's not about woke transgender bathrooms or what have you. It's about the way that we raise our children.
And anyway, I think people should watch that documentary and cogitate on that. I love that answer, The importance of human connection, because that is not obvious. If you look at curriculum in general, they will. I just remember being bashed over the head with the the vital importance of homework and homework, by the way, you're either doing it in isolation or you're cheating. So necessarily for constantly getting people isolated. Did you just talk in class? That's not allowed.
It's like really? No wonder every kid says, oh, recess is the best part of the day. What do you? Of course, that's what you would expect. So it's not an obvious answer that people don't appreciate. But this documentary gets across the importance of human connection. I even meet adults who are just obsessed with, they're like on the sort of hedonic treadmill. I'll, I'll really be happy once
I buy this next thing. I'm like, I swear to God, you've said that about like 30 things in the past. Do you think having a wider range of people in your social circles might improve your life a little bit more? And so that is really something that changed in my world view.
And I think this documentary perfectly illustrates the importance of human connection and how so often it's overseen in place of, you know, people being isolated, people being alone or finding happiness through material products and services. James Corbett, Any final words before we end? Nothing other than to say thank you for having me on you. You always have the most interesting questions and you always take things from a different angle, so I appreciate that.
And yes, anytime you want me on just let me know. I appreciate it very much, James. The book is reportage essays on the New World Order. Thanks to everyone for watching Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone in the Libertarian Institute. James Corbett, thank you for your time. Thank you for having me on.