Guest: James Corbett – A Free Thinker’s Guide to Unplug from the Matrix & Break the Mind Trap

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Welcome to the Free Thought Project Podcast, a hub for free-thinking conversations about the promotion of liberty and the daunting task of government accountability. Here are your hosts, Jason Bassler, Matt Agarist, and Don Vyde Jr. Hello again, Freethinkers. Welcome back to the Freethought Project podcast.

My name is Jason Bassler and joining me is the Freethought Project Editor-in-Chief, Matt Agarist, and TFTP Editor and Writer, Don Vyde Jr. We have an exciting returning guest joining us once again today, a guest we're very excited to have back on the show but first as always guys i wanted to check in with matt and don after we unfortunately missed our podcast last week when our guest canceled, so uh yeah what's what's good matt and uh don i know you've been busy the past few days well our guest

was kind enough to reschedule after he got sick last week and then i uh i had to be the reason to cancel this week which kind of sucked i was uh sorry about that everybody we were gonna have a good guest on he's he's rescheduled for the future but i uh i got some kind of sinus issue in it and it was killer so i didn't want to talk on air with that.

Yeah you know i've been uh doing pretty good like you said jason uh pretty busy um i'm actually recording this show uh directly after just doing a two-hour podcast on my other show so busy night for me but you know i love it i'm a workaholic anyway so it's you know par for the Of course, I'm happy to be here. Yeah, if there's one thing we know about you, Don, is that you're a workaholic, man. And yeah, glad you could join us.

So I'm just going to go ahead and power through just a couple short announcements. And first and foremost is, you know, we had an excellent conversation with expert 9-11 researcher Xander Arena about the Pentagon on 9-11. The camera, the physics, the basically debunk the official narrative. And we even talked about how X's Grok AI was convinced that there's a 0.1% chance that a commercial airline jet actually crashed into the Pentagon that day.

Now, Xander also included a visual presentation to back his claims, which we posted on our YouTube channel. But it was definitely a fascinating conversation. And in my opinion, the nail in the coffin for the official narrative regarding what happened at the Pentagon that day. So check that one out, guys. Give it a download after this interview. And also, Freethinkers, just a quick reminder to please subscribe, rate and review this podcast on either Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It's easy.

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All right, so I don't want to speak for Matt or Don, but we have one of our favorite Freethinkers returning with us today. A man who's been dissecting official narratives and challenging the status quo for over two decades and only continues to refine his craft.

Our guest this week is one of the godfathers of the modern truth movement, Mr. James Corbett from The Corbett Report. Now, anyone who listens to this show should probably already know James' work, so an introduction isn't really necessary. But I did want to, first and foremost, thank James for not only including me in a recent video he made in early March, but for the kind words he said about our podcast in that episode.

It's definitely pretty motivating to know that you occasionally listen to the show. But James, welcome back to the Freethought Project podcast, my friend. Thanks for joining us. Hey, no problem. Thanks for having me on. And I wouldn't have said those words if they weren't true. In fact, not just an occasional listener to the show. I listen quite frequently.

And I do appreciate the fact that you guys, unlike a lot of the alternative media, do concentrate on solutions and things that people can do. And that's definitely what motivates me. So I appreciate that you guys are out there doing that, too. Well, thank you, sir. Yeah, that's that's amazing to hear. And yeah, that video was talking about the black pill phenomenon, guys. So I'm sure if you're familiar with James's website, go check it out and watch that video.

There was a number of us who kind of got together and shared our thoughts on about the black pilled phenomenon that's plaguing the internet right now. But James, last time you joined us was in October 2022 when we discussed your three-part documentary series about the war on terror entitled False Flags, The Secret History of Al-Qaeda, which was an episode I personally listened to several times because it was just so dense with eye-opening information.

And again, guys, definitely check that episode out after this one.

But today we want to talk about Trump's first 100 days, the encroaching police state, and the technocratic overlap, and maybe some 9-11 stuff where we have time. And of course, we'd like to spend a few minutes talking about your new book entitled Reportage, Essays on the New World Order, which I just published earlier this year. James, the Trump administration just rounded the 100-day mark, as I just mentioned.

Recently, I made a tweet listing some very troubling stats that have emerged recently. Now, I know people often make the claim that the U.S. is the last bastion of freedom in the world, but with Trump escalating the militarized police state and now surrounding himself with Zionists and these big tech power players, what is it right now that concerns you the most about the direction of the U.S. technocratic state?

I suppose what concerns me the most is that anybody would have even contemplated for a moment that the technocratic state would have been derailed by any selection process. I've said it before in the, I guess not, well, I guess the pre-technocratic era, you might term it. I've said it before that, do you really think that the powers that shouldn't be are gambling the, at the very least, trillions of dollars of capital that are represented by the behemoth that is the U.S.

Government on, oh, you know, they put their vote in the slave suggestion box. So I guess we better change course now. Hey, guys, they voted for less war. So sorry, military industrial complex. Better pack up and go home. Of course not. It was never about that. And that is precisely why they use the controlled two party paradigm where they give you two choices. You can have the the feces sandwich and the puke sandwich. And it's like, ah, that's disgusting. I'm not gonna eat a puke sandwich.

Give me that feces sandwich. Yum. That is the controlling paradigm. That is how it works. Anyone who ever thought it was ever going to be any different, well, either is young enough to be that dumb or old enough to know better. And I would sincerely like to believe that people are learning their lesson from this. However...

Unfortunately, I think people are learning the exact opposite lesson as we see the political polarization increasing and people getting more and more rallying around their leader and doing whatever so that we now see the mental gymnastic pretzel knots that people are tying themselves in to try to justify their make America great again philosophy.

Even as we start to see the announcement of the $500 billion AI Stargate project and Larry Ellison, Trump's good friend up there, telling us how they're going to use AI technology to make better new mRNA vaccines that they're going to warp speed into your arm just as Trump did in the first administration and called it the best thing he's ever done. But, oh, you're a conspiracy. You're a weird, you must be a libtard if you think there's anything whatsoever to be concerned about with that.

Let alone what's going on, of course, with the Make Israel Great Again administration that so clearly is in power right now, let alone all of the other things. So, yes, they will throw bones to placate the people who vote in the slave suggestion ritual, which is meaningless. And everyone knows it's meaningless because every selection is rigged anyway. But anyway, they will throw bones and, oh, look, well, Doge, it cut whatever, $100 million out of the budget or whatever they say.

Meanwhile, the bajillions and bajillions of dollars, I guess it's probably close to a trillion now going to the military industrial complex every single year, and they're expanding that budget. These are the types of things that get me worked up. And really, it isn't even about the powers that shouldn't be and the technocrats, because they're going to do what they're going to do.

And we shouldn't be surprised by that. But to me, I am most disappointed in the public that falls for this self-evident nonsense every four years. Excellent point, James, and excellent points, I should say, because there's multiple points there. And for somebody who seemingly doesn't spend much time on Twitter, it seems like you're dialed in on exactly the culture war and the battleground that it's become over there.

And it really is just so disturbing to see how the MAGA 2.0 crowd is bending over backwards to justify the rampant authoritarianism and evisceration of our rights and not even really thinking twice about it. And I guess it really kind of boils down to that cult of personality that Trump really imbues, you know, and God, it's just, it's so toxic.

But if you're in those circles, if you're in that tribe, I guess it's just all kind of banging the drums, all kind of just rally cries for, you know, making America great again. And we've seen it time and time again. We saw it with Bush and Obama and Hillary, like you were saying, the two-party system. Yeah. It does beg the question, when are we going to learn? And yeah, you totally hit the nail on the head there. Elon said something about $2 billion that Doge would save back in November.

And now he's tapping out. I'm sure you guys saw that, but he's tapping out now in May. And he's going back to Tesla because the stock prices are crashing. And so I think what I've read is that it was $160 billion that was saved through Doge. And even that number is disputed because they're saying it's upwards to 130 billion that was allocated to all the other things that accompanied all the firing.

And I mean, it's just a big mess. So I guess a good follow up here along the lines of the police state here that, you know, is kind of pointing at a few days ago, Trump signed the strengthening and unleashing America's law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent civilians executive order. And of course, such an Orwellian name. But with all the, you know, bootlegging rhetoric that, you know.

Trump has basically said over the years supporting police, it really doesn't come as a big surprise that this bill is going to further increase legal immunity for police and even give some more excessive military equipment for the local police as if the DOD 1030 program didn't already do that. And this kind of comes at the crossroads of Trump's MS-13 fear mongering and these deportations and increased border security, including the biometric surveillance and all that stuff.

But with that said, you know, we're the Free Thought Project. We've been covering police accountability stuff forever. But it has been become more like slanted in the U.S. as more like a leftist issue. It's kind of couch is like a leftist issue. So, like, do you see any pushback by like these, quote, law and order right kind of regarding the giving police too much authority and immunity? Or is that just like a line that simply just doesn't exist for these people? What are your thoughts on that?

Well, if that line exists, I certainly haven't seen it being drawn. But then again, as you say, I am thankfully detached from the main line of the Twitter conversation. I get all of my social media fix from secondhand from people telling me about what they encounter there. So you'll be better armed to understand what the pulse of the people on that issue, if they are people at all. And I tend to think that there's more and more bots that are infested in these social media platforms anyway.

And specifically, why are they doing that? It is designed to get people to start changing, subtly changing their opinions, changing their habits, beliefs, and opinions. That is what the end game is always about. And I think that's what the manipulation is aimed at. So when it comes to, say, an issue like the police accountability issue, if they can frame it in a way that they know, okay, well, we can politically polarize it. So it's a left-wing issue.

So no one on the right can go anywhere near it. Then mission accomplished really for the divide and rulers who would seek to divide and conquer us on every single issue. Meanwhile, in reality, people who haven't abandoned their principles now find themselves cast out by the very same people who presumably were on their side over the last few years of the Biden administration.

Now, suddenly, they're evil leftists because they don't believe that jackbooted thugs on the street abducting people off of the street without any semblance of due process is a good idea. Well, anyway, I suppose nothing new. People who stick to their principles don't tend to be very popular with the people who are, quote unquote, in power because it's our team who is in power when our guy holds the Oval Office or whatever seat of power that people bow down to. Right.

Again, it's it's a psychological manipulation and it is designed to make people abandon their own principles. Unfortunately, it's doing very well at that. And I will just point people to Larkin Rose. Of course, I know, you know, Larkin Rose and his incredible work. He's been doing some great videos lately, really, really calling people out for abandoning their principles and basically telling us telling people, you know, shut up about the Constitution.

You can never talk about it again if you will abandon the most basic principles of, say, due process of law at the moment that you find it to be politically expedient. Yeah, right. And, you know, it really is a quite concerning trend that we're seeing. I know that John W. Whitehead, constitutional attorney and founder at the Rutherford Institute, I mean, his weekly commentaries have always been phenomenal.

But over the past couple of months, I mean, they've just been banger after banger of just calling out the unconstitutional nonsense and the rampant, blatant authoritarianism that's really getting shoved down our throats with this Trump 2.0 administration.

And, you know, sadly, you know, sort of to the point of, The the online bots, you know, we're seeing it being used as a means of continuing to whip people up in sort of the psychological frenzy, because, of course, I know you're quite aware of like, you know, during covid, for example, it was termed mass formation psychosis.

I kind of prefer a more broader, overarching term because I sort of think that sort of pigeonholing it into this one mass formation of psychosis on Joe Rogan sort of takes away from the broader aspect of the ways that people are psychologically manipulated in many other ways. And we're seeing that yet again. And I think a lot of it started really with that supposed alleged assassination attempts, but we don't even have time to go down that egregious rabbit hole.

No man it's true how short memories these trump supporters have especially when it comes to supporting this new legislation that that's or this new executive order that's gonna like bolster cops with military military power right like they don't remember trying to go to the gym during covid and getting slammed on the fucking ground and handcuffed and thrown in a cage they they don't remember that right they don't remember any of this shit being locked like locked up

in paddy wagons when they were trying to protest the lockdowns. They don't remember any of that shit, and here they are just cheering this shit on, right? It's crazy, the mind control system that the two-party power system has. And, But more on a positive note, James, we agged an article about that you wrote recently about them getting ready for the mother of all gaslighting.

And we've seen like we were just talking about people, how they are so quick to abandon their principles when they see it politically convenient for them or their party or their team is winning. But we're seeing the opposite with a couple of people. Right. In your latest article, you quote Tucker Carlson and Matt Taibbi and some other senators and how they were completely shut down anybody who questioned the official 9-11 story for years. And now they're kind of changing their tone a little bit.

And you, like us, for those years where they were on the team winning, we were silenced, smeared, labeled disinformation. I think we share some of the same list names like with Mother Jones and and proper not, you know, we we get to wear that badge of honor right alongside you. Right. So, you know, that it hits home that these people are now changing their stance like that. And what I wanted to ask you is, like, why do you think that the establishment

gatekeepers are letting this mask slip now? Like, what's what's their angle here? There are a number of possibilities, one of which is that if people go and listen to the recent Tucker Carlson conversation with former Congressman Kurt Weldon, which is definitely part of this change in the 9-11 zeitgeist, they will see subtle differences.

Hints of what might be part of a larger limited hangout propaganda operation that's designed to use 9-11 quote unquote truth in order to foster more yet more wars in the Middle East. Because as Weldon just kind of inserts in there, you know, bin Laden was actually hanging out in Tehran for a few years when he was on the run. And apparently the Iranians were sheltering him, right? And that was just kind of thrown in on a sideways way that they didn't go into

in much detail. But you can imagine where that kind of narrative would go. Yeah, it's the Shia Iranians who are protecting this Wahhabi Sunniist radical terror. Yeah, that makes absolutely no sense. But it certainly makes sense from a geopolitical point of view if you wanted, for example, to have a get into Iran free card. So there are there are potential ways that limited hangouts of 9-11 truth could be used for geopolitical purposes.

But even beyond that, I think there is a point in the story in which, you know, it doesn't even matter to a certain extent if certain pieces of that puzzle come out and certain things get revealed because we are now at enough of a political remove that it is not the central core beating political issue that it would have been if any of these things had even been mentioned during the Bush administration. Well, now we're 20 years on, we're in a totally different place.

There's an entire group of people who are now, what, a voting age who weren't even alive at the time of 9-11.

That's crazy to think about, but here we are. So I think. Like JFK, I mean, they can open the kimono and reveal a few facts about JFK that we didn't know for five, six decades, because it doesn't particularly matter. No one's going to jail over it at this point. So that might be part of it as well.

Having said that, I don't want to disparage people for coming out and talking about, At least, at the very least, I will give, for example, Tucker Carlson, I will give him credit for coming out and flat out saying I was a child and an idiot. And I was totally wrong about that. So he at least will admit that. And I think he's right. He was a child and an idiot in the way that he acted towards 9-11 truthers back in the day.

But unfortunately, some people have misinterpreted my article as if it's some sort of egotistical thing on my part. Well, I was here talking about it. So, you know, poo-poo to you. It's not intended in that manner. It is intended for people to at least have the chance to reflect on, okay, here is a man who admits he was a child and an idiot and got it wrong for decades. And yes, he is now admitting that he got it wrong. Okay, that's good.

That's a good step. But doesn't that say something about, at the very least, this person's judgment? If not, well, why? Why were they so vehemently opposed to this truth 20 years ago? And why did they not even countenance the thought of questioning the 9-11 story? Doesn't that say something about, at the very least, this person's ability to tell you what's going on in the world today in an unbiased manner?

Shouldn't we look at people, and I'm not saying myself, I'm saying all of the people who did get it right for those couple of decades. Shouldn't we be paying more attention to those people than to the people who are now admitting they were stupid, childish idiots for not looking at that truth? But that that seems to me to be the core of this issue, because the question is, OK, well, then what do you what do you do now? Who do you listen to now?

What are you going to do with your time and energy and attention? Are you going to direct it to, oh, wow, he was on MSNBC slash CNN slash Fox News. Therefore, he's a big deal and an important guy, even though he admits he was a stupid, childish idiot.

Right. And I think it really points towards what many of us, myself, Derek Brose, David Icke, I think I probably was the one that coined the term, this rise of this mainstream alternative media, which are essentially a couple of like former news personalities like Tucker Carlson, who, you know, obviously we know, you know, mainstream corporate mouthpiece for his entire career intern for the CIA.

You know deliberately pop propped up on fox news to be like the the young hip guy that the the kids should listen to type stuff and then you know of course we have these these other sort of compromised you know indie media guys that used to have some integrity of course at the tip of that spear using his own terminology would be guys like alex jones or luke radowski tim pool you know These guys that are really being propped up in a way to push an official, quote-unquote.

Alternative narrative that just ever so conveniently keeps people stuck inside of the fake left-right two-party sort of paradigm, creating this dichotomy outside of a dichotomy to sort of keep people in this psychological panopticon in a way. And it's really creating an interesting, in a way, sort of battleground within this existing information war that we've all been caught up in so long.

And I actually did want to get your thoughts on that, that sort of mainstream alternative media phenomenon that we're seeing sort of encroach upon an actual truth movement that strives for truth and accountability and actual solutions outside of statism. Well, you raise a number of important points there, one of which is, yes, the sort of release valve that clearly exists as part of the quote unquote alternative independent media.

And I think I would liken it to, let's use the Hollywood analogy here, in The Matrix, perhaps the, I mean, obviously that was predictive programming in a number of ways. And I'll just throw on the table, of course. Did anyone notice Neo's passport expiry date in The Matrix? Yes. 9-11-2001. So weird. Fantastic coincidence. Anyway. But that was predictive programming in a number of ways.

But perhaps the most interesting part of that predictive programming was that ultimately what that series taught people was, well, OK, there is there is the real world that you can wake up into and you'll be fighting with the people in Zion and you'll kill the machines and win the day. But what if what if that whole narrative, the whole Zion humans resisting the machines thing, what if that narrative was part of another Matrix program? What if it was still in the simulation?

And that's, I think, the sort of idea that we could turn to when we look at the mainstream alternative media or whatever you want to call it. Yes. Don't worry, guys. These guys are independent now. So now you can trust them. And the people who actually have been independent and been doing this and been censored and all everything else been knocked off of platforms, et cetera, for decades, Whatever. Who cares about them? These are big mainstream stars that are now independent, quote unquote.

There's a number of factors behind that, one of which is just the fact that is just a fact that the comet struck on the mainstream media around the turn of the 21st century.

And they are only now starting to notice this. So there are a number of news anchors and reporters and what have you who are suddenly realizing, oh, you know, this bread and butter paycheck that I was getting for my soft, cushy media company job is not going to maybe not going to be the stable income I need for the rest of my life. I better get on Substack or whatever, wherever people can make money these days.

So we are seeing some element of that. But yes, it would be naive not to think that there has been some concerted attempt to control the quote unquote independent media narrative by inserting agents into that narrative. And one example, something that we can put our finger on is the writings of Cass Sunstein, who was the Harvard lawyer who went on, sorry, Harvard professor, who went on to become Obama's quote unquote information czar.

Which I had to look up. Apparently, it is the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. I've only ever heard it called the information czar, which is that weird Soviet-era rhetoric that they've slapped onto the U.S. system. But anyway, he became Obama's info czar. And what was he writing about when he was at Harvard? Oh, right. He was writing about how the Internet, one of the big problems of the Internet,

is that it has uncorked the bottle, so to speak. And now you have all these people who can talk directly to each other and we don't have the gatekeepers like we used to. Of course, this is a problem because of misinformation, of course, or whatever they were calling it back in the early 2000s. And so one of his suggestions, infamously, was, well, we might need to send people in sort of undercover.

You know, I don't think he cited this directly, but like FBI, for example, back in the COINTELPRO days, they would insert people. Agents into groups in order to report on those groups and disrupt those groups. And, for example, start calling everybody in the group, that guy's an agent, that guy's an agent. And, of course, the person who's doing that is actually the agent.

So Sunstein was suggesting something like this to infiltrate, cognitively infiltrate, online discussions so that you can disrupt the narrative of these conspiracy theorists who are threatening democracy, blah, blah, blah. Well, anyway, that's an example of exactly how this can be implemented. And I think we would be naive to think that it hasn't been implemented to some extent. Having said that, there is another side of almost like a trap that has been sprung by people like Sunstein.

In that, simply implanting the idea, okay, maybe we should have some agents go undercover and infiltrate these groups and start spreading, you know, government-friendly information. Just implanting that idea then makes everybody start looking around and start going, oh, that guy's an agent, that guy's an agent. It implants the idea. Oh, everyone's a cognitive infiltrator, and it gives everyone an easy out. If that person doesn't agree with me, then they're a cognitive infiltrator.

And that becomes part of another divide and rule tactic. So in addition to the sort of waking up to reality, which is actually just another level of the matrix, you also have this inserted narrative that basically enacts the divide and conquer strategy within the independent media space. So what is the solution? What is the answer to this conundrum? You see, the problem is nobody's going to like the answer, but it is the answer.

And the answer is that we have to take cognitive sovereignty back into our own hands, declare our own sovereignty. We are free individuals who are capable of looking at information for ourselves and coming to our own conclusions. And then that's what we have to do. And that means you're going to have to listen to people that you agree with and people you disagree with and people all over the place and try to triangulate the best information you can.

And that's a lot of work, which is precisely why no one wants to hear it. Everyone wants to hear, listen to these guys. They know everything. They know the truth, just listen to them and you'll be fine. But that is exactly the wrong way to go. If we are putting our faith in people and individuals and following people, then we have lost it. But if we are looking at information and what we can prove, then we are on the right track.

It's like most people want, and I've said this for a while, they want simple answers for profoundly complex problems. And that's simply not the way that the world works. I mean, I've always said for a while now, you know, if people want to understand something, they have to put in the time and the effort to actually learn things.

And, and, and sadly, you know, a lot of our society now has been just sort of like mentally castrated in a way with like this short form content and just dumbing down the attention span of, of, you know, just. You know, give it to me simple, you know, when, when life itself, the very nature of life is a very beautifully complex thing, but it's something that you have to delve into so much.

And I talk about this a lot, especially when I'm talking about like the philosophy of religion and history, because I love studying theology and ancient history and things of that nature. And I was actually just having a conversation about this the other day where I was saying, if somebody actually wants to understand something, they have to put aside their dogmas and their preconceived notions. And no matter what you think of something, there is no such thing as too much education.

Even if you're like, oh, I believe in this thing, so I can't even contemplate the possibility of that thing potentially being true, still go and learn about that thing. Because even if you are correct and your belief is the right one, it still empowers you mentally to have more information about a thing. There's no such thing as too much education. And sadly, that is just not in the forefront of a lot of people's mindsets nowadays.

Mentally castrated ourselves with short form content. I really like that, Donna. I think that really hits the nail on the head because yeah, from, you know, what I see on Twitter, a lot of times it isn't the kind of the more long form posts that really get the engagement, right? It's the sound bites at the hot, it's the hot takes. And to James's point, I mean, that COINTEL pro label that gets thrown around way too much. And yeah, it does a disservice. Absolutely.

And in fact, there's too many people who get some type of clout or street cred ability for, you know, accusing everybody of being the COINTELPRO agent that's infiltrating the group or, you know, the space or whatever. So it's interesting to watch that. You know, I'm not going to lie. This definitely has become much more difficult work over the years as time has gone on. And there's just not a lot of money in the middle, right?

I mean, for people like ourselves who are philosophically consistent, who are principled, it has been, as you were saying earlier, James, it's never really been easy because we are the people asking the counterintuitive questions, making the counterintuitive points that doesn't always align with what's popular at the moment.

And out on top of the fact checkers and algorithms that are against us and are already kind of fractured and splintered movement, it's really difficult to get any type of engagement and steady progress moving forward on social media these days, let alone actually being funded to do it.

And, you know, I mean, speaking about all this too, we could definitely go down that rabbit hole, but there are things that are happening right now that I wanted to get your take on because obviously this whole free speech thing on campuses has become like a big focal point for the First Amendment. And I think, you know, most of us probably remember back in 2021 when Trump was banned from social media for essentially saying these mean these mean words. Right.

Like, and ironically, it's happening again. But now the roles are reversed where Trump is illegally deporting these students who criticize Israel, which is absolutely insane. And even more insane, you know, these limited government conservatives who used to champion the First Amendment and the Constitution, right? Who are also painting themselves as victims of censorship during the Biden years are the people that are, you know, the biggest cheerleaders cheering it on.

I was going to get your take about like Trump's recent war on the college campuses and dismantling free speech, you know, to protect Israel from these mean words. Like, do you think this is going to have bigger implications cracking down on independent journalism for like, you know, this quote, anti-Semitism speech moving forward? Is this something that you're kind of worried about as far as like, you know, across the board with free speech?

Well, that is obviously the intended effect of this, even just announcing it, let alone actually following through on it. Once again, I would say that the ire should really be directed at those people who will go along with this.

It's again, I expect this from people at the top of this corrupt pathological system, but it's the people who support it tacitly or full throatedly who need to really understand that they can never, ever talk about censorship or free speech issues ever again because they are hypocrites. If they will go along with, oh, but it's okay. It's okay in this case. I mean, that person saying the bad thing about that I disagree with. So, okay, the censorship is okay.

No, and it goes back to a point that Matt was making earlier about the people who are supporting the police state are the same people who were.

Obviously not supporting it during the Corona time, but they cannot, I guess it's the lack of political imagination or the lack of historical thinking, or I don't know what it is that makes people not be able to understand that somehow, at some point, these principles that I am supporting or advocating for will be used against me by my worst political enemy, because that is the way the system has been structured.

Any power that you gladly bestow on your political savior is the exact power that your political enemy will use against you. Four years from now, eight years from now, whenever it happens, and oh my God, the pendulum swings again. How could it possibly be that they have all these powers to censor people? It's unbelievable. I never would have thought this would have occurred.

And again, I think that the real point of this is that it is always about the people and the general public opinion is what really drives this system. If it were not the case that what we thought and what we advocated for and what we believed mattered, they would not spend so much time and effort and energy propagandizing the public. The fact that they do shows that it really does matter what the public are thinking. So, yes, absolutely.

The crackdown on free speech that is already taking place and is really exacerbate being exacerbated right now is, as I say, to be expected from the would be controllers and social engineers. But it is the people who are supporting that who need to understand that they are now excluding themselves from this conversation going forward and they will not be taken seriously. That's a profound mission of Cass Sunstein, who would, he wrote a book called Nudge, right?

That literally did that to people like they thought of people as these just. Animals who act on Darwinian impulses and they just mix with the rational animal instincts and they were so easy to control. But there's some of us, they're outliers like us right here on this podcast that are able to resist that. And I don't know how we get to that. I don't know how we propagate that resistance or that desire to resist, right?

You made a powerful point in that article we were talking about earlier about how how gaslighting works right and and it's a gaslighting is powerful it's a powerful drug that people love it's it's fucking crazy right they people like love being told they're crazy for decades and then watching their positions get validated and then and and watching the people take off with those positions and and then never doing anything about it right

like that's why trump was elected with so many people supporting the release of the Epstein files, which never happened, the very limited hangout of JFK files, you know, that never really go anywhere. No one's ever held accountable. No one, nothing ever happens to anybody. Right. But so like, how do we as independent media and researchers and shit, like just the consumers of this independent media and research, right?

How do we seize the moment without falling, falling back into that trap of letting the liars redefine the narrative like once again? I think the only thing we can realistically do is to model our behavior so that others will see it. And we have to have faith that people, when they see people who are principled and are following their principles and will stick to them, they may not understand it today.

They may not understand it tomorrow. But five years down the road, 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, when someone has built up a track record of being consistent on principled issues, suddenly people will start to be able to consider it in its bigger context. And as an example of that, why don't we look at Ron Paul, who was quietly and silently for decades and decades being Dr. No and being known as the sort of stubborn guy in Congress.

He's a bit of a weird fringe guy. But after decades and decades and decades, finally, it started to dawn on the public. Oh, I get what this guy's doing. Oh, OK. And the Fed. Oh, that makes sense. That is truly an example of how somebody can be quietly and simply sticking to their principles for decades and will be vindicated in the end, whether that ultimately changes the world or not. Again, that's up to the people out there. It was never about Ron Paul as an individual.

It's about the ideas that he was spreading and what people do with those ideas. And clearly, I would say a lot, there is a lot more people who are at least liberty minded as a result of what happened there in the 2000s, 2010s. And that is to the good. And we have to, to the extent that every individual listening to us right now can do that, has to be that model of consistency and has to stick to their guns, even when it's politically unpopular to do so. No, I'm still against censorship.

I'm still against the police state. I'm still against the things that I was against in the last administration. I'm against them in this administration, and I will call them out equally. And I think once people build up a track record of that, I think the model itself is what people will be looking at. Yeah, I think it really just can be very easily and quickly summed up with, you know, people have to be the change that they want to see in the world.

You know, that's it's if you want the world to change, then you have to first do the thing that you want to see happen. It's that simple. Unfortunately, it is so cliche that it's true, though. Well, this seems like it might be a good opportunity to talk about your book a little bit, James, because I know you've obviously been doing this for a long time now. You spent years producing these deep dive reports and numerous documentaries. I can't even count them all in one hand.

And a number of articles, numerous articles as well, examining how the global power really works. And when I first got into all this 13 years ago, you were definitely one of my biggest inspirations. And we've already noted you're an OG in all this. So it does make me curious, like what made you decide to write reportage essays on the New World Order now?

And was there like a certain event or a certain, I don't know, false flag or PSYHOP or something that kind of triggered it? Or was it just kind of like the weight of all the endless war and chaos kind of around us? Yeah. Why do you feel like this book needed to exist now? Well, first of all, Jason, fact check. It's reportage essays on the New World Order. You have to get that fancy pronunciation right. I guess you're right. My apologies.

But beyond that, yes, why? Why in 2025 is this book coming out? That is a good question, because as I talk about it in the forward to the book, as a matter of fact, this book started in 2009. And I suppose the kernel of it probably started before then. For background and sort of as explanation, back in the early 2000s, I was a graduate of the University of Calgary with my first class honors degree in English literature. And then I went to Trinity College to take a master's degree in Anglo-Irish

literature. So I have been a literary inclined person all my life. I've always wanted to be a writer. So it was, in fact, the most logical thing that I could possibly do with the information that I was gathering in the early 2000s. As my paradigm started to break and I started to think about spreading this information, it would have been most obvious to me to try to write a book about it.

But this being the Internet age, of course, I started with the podcast and interviews and videos and what have you, and that started to take off. And the idea of writing a book, well, yeah, it's a good idea, but we'll see.

So I did first literally put pen to paper in 2009 and started crafting essays and specifically essays because this book, for people who don't know, it's a collection of 20 essays on the types of subjects that you would, I think, equate with the Corbett Report, if you're familiar with my work, talking about the controlled environmental movement and who's really behind it and talking about various aspects of geopolitics, talking about the monetary system, etc., etc.

9-11, of course, features heavily in there. So those types of subjects, but Me being me, I like to take a broad look at things, and I don't like to concentrate on one tiny little detail for years at a time. So I wanted to have the freedom to write a bunch of different essays so that I could inform people on all the issues that I'm interested in and not for myself by getting too bogged down in one topic. So I decided to write essays.

And so there's at least two or three of the essays that have made it through the gauntlet of the past 15 years to actually make it through into this finished book, obviously in a very, very different form than what I was writing in 2009. But that was the idea. That was the genesis. And I always knew I was going to write a book. So it certainly didn't come as a surprise. The only surprising thing is why did it take so long? And yes, why now?

I guess the simple answer to why now is because, well, I finally finished it. So that was why it came out. But actually, I mean, isn't it interesting? Subtitle, Essays on the New World Order. And boy, is 2025 clearly a big alarm bell for the coming of a new world order. It's certainly happening right now. So that was an interesting coincidence or synchronicity?

Take your pick. No kidding. Yeah, well, we've long noted, you know, we've seen the decline of written journalism and written word for years now at the Free Thought Project. And obviously, video has taken kind of the front seat, you know, and so I guess it kind of makes sense, James, you know, you've done everything else, you've really established yourself. And if this was something that you're writing over a course of time, then, you know, it makes sense that it's finally out now.

But unfortunately, I haven't. I know you sent me the PDF, very kind of you. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I'm still kind of finishing a few other things. things. But I do look forward to reading it. I appreciate you sending that over. And bonus points for having Whitney Webb do the foreword. What was the thought behind that? I mean, obviously, she's brilliant. But like, why did you choose Whitney?

Yeah, that was about the extent of the thinking behind it. Obviously, anyone who knows Whitney and her work knows how incredibly detailed and thorough and what a great researcher and writer she is. So I reached out to a number of people and Whitney was very kind to supply the forward that she did. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it. Obviously, it's very embarrassing for me. She says very nice things about my

work. And some of the gratifying, most gratifying feedback that I can get is that I help inspire other people and to get them involved in this space. And so to the extent that that has happened with Whitney or anyone else, it's the most humbling and gratifying feedback I can ever receive. Hey, Freethinkers, this is Matt Agorist, and I'm going to take a quick pause to remind you of something really important.

First off, apologies for the interruption. But if you're still here, that means you're resonating with what we're doing and we need your help to keep it alive.

Independent platforms like ours don't survive on corporate sponsorships or mainstream media funding. We survive because of you. If you're finding value in these unfiltered conversations and real solutions, the best way to support us is by liking, subscribing, and sharing this podcast with your friends and fellow freethinkers. It's a small act, but it's a powerful one. It helps us break through the censorship and algorithms designed to silence voices like ours.

This isn't just about supporting a podcast. It's about standing for freedom, exposing corruption, and building a movement that inspires real change. And if you want to go beyond liking and sharing, we'd love for you to become a member of the Freethought Project. Just head over to thefreethoughtproject.com and click on the TFTP membership link at the top of the page. As a member, you'll be directly supporting our mission and helping us to stay independent.

Your support is what keeps this platform alive and fighting. So thank you for being part of this journey, for sharing these ideas, and for standing with us. So, James, as you know, we're getting to the end of the show here. And so, as you know, we always like to end with a solutions-based white pill question, if you will. And just hearing you just now, man, talking about reportage, reportage, right? That's a sound of the word over. Make sure I say that correctly as not to get fact-checked.

The fact that you've been writing in that book since 2009, man, that's amazing. It really drives home, you know, how long you've been doing this work, dude. And, you know, while so many others have have bent to fit into whatever new cult happens to be at the helm, you've stayed grounded and consistent and principled. And that's rare and important, man.

Like you said, this is the only things that will change society is people sticking by their principles, even when society is turning to shit and they get ridiculed and even killed for it. You know, but what's even more powerful, you know, is how your work continues to resonate and evolve without, uh, without ever compromising the truth, man. And, you know, you are in the same boat as us, how we spent years being labeled as fringe for the questions we ask, ask in the truths that we explore.

But now, you know, as you pointed out that Overton window is starting to shift.

So as we wrap up, you know, I want to ask, do you think that there's like a genuine opportunity here for more people to wake up? Or are we just being baited into the next trap? Like what gives you hope right now? Yes. Hope, not hopium. And if there, yeah, if there was ever a time for real opportunity, I would say this is it. As opposed to those doom and gloomers who would, then the black pillars who would say, oh, all hope is lost.

And oh, there's not, there's no possibility from here, I would go the exact opposite direction. I could not think of a time in human history. I would rather be doing this type of work, precisely because who the hell am I? I'm just some nobody random English teacher in Japan who started a podcast. And here we are, and I've reached millions of people around the world. What an incredible time to be alive.

And during these world-shaking historical events that will no doubt shape the course of human history, and we are not spectators in that. We are active participants writing the history books of tomorrow with our actions today. So who would not want that opportunity? And you know what? That Chinese. Crisis, opportunity, same word thing. That's mostly BS. But the idea is right.

Crisis-tunity. We are in a moment of profound crisis, but in those moments are precisely the opportunity to really change the narrative. And so, yes, whatever, 9-11 truth, limited hangouters are going to limited hangout and do whatever they're going to do with their psychological operations. What we can do is, hey, yes, yes, that's true. WTC7 did collapse in a very strange way. And you should look into that. And oh, by the way, while you're at it, hey, here's a documentary on 9-11 war

games. Here's a documentary on 9-11 trillions. Here's a documentary on 9-11 suspects. Here's a five and a half hour documentary on Al Qaeda. You're welcome. And we can use this opportunity of the shifting of the Overton window, which they need to do. They need to break this system so that they can reorder it in the way that they want. Well, when they're breaking the system, that is our opportunity to inject this truth out there. And yeah, it might be a long uphill struggle. And who knows?

I certainly can't say how it'll all turn out. But I know that if we don't use this opportunity, it's certainly not going to turn out for the good of humanity. So let's all just get out there and do what we can in this incredible moment of change. Thank you. Right. And like you said, it was difficult. It really is difficult to seek those truths and stick by your principles. But in the long run, it's so much more easier to do that because you can live with yourself. You can sleep at night.

You don't have to worry about thinking all the contradictions through your head every time you try to put your head on the pillow, man. And James, dude, thank you. Thank you again for everything you do. Man, your voice is one of the most essential ones out there. And it's certainly unwavering in this fight, man. Before we go, let's let our listeners know where they can find your work, follow your updates, get their hands on reportage or anything else you got coming

up, man. Where should people go to get stay plugged in? Yes, thank you for that. Well, I'm on a number of platforms, but the best place to go is CorbettReport.com, C-O-R-B-E-T-T Report.com. That is, of course, the one-stop shop for all my audio, video, articles, etc. You will find it there, and you will find links to all the platforms I'm on, Rumble and Bitshoot and Odyssey and Substack and all of that.

Having said that, the other place to go would be reportagebook.com, R-E-P-O-R-T-A-G-E book.com, which is the official website for the book itself. And from there, you can order it in all sorts of different ways from all sorts of different places. Or more importantly, it has the ISBN number that you can use to order it from literally any bookstore in the world. You should just be able to give them the ISBN and they'll be able to order it for you.

So you don't have to give your money to Bezos, Amazon or anything like that if you don't want to. And I certainly wouldn't encourage you to do so. Having said that, there is currently a paperback. There is currently an e-book available. and in the near future, there will be an audiobook available, read by yours truly. It's coming. I've just got to finish reading. That's going to be a good one, man. I might have to put the paper back on hold and wait for your audiobook.

No homo. I absolutely love your voice and it's great to hear it. I love listening to your podcast. You're really well spoken. Well, this took an unexpected turn. I'm just glad jason said reportage before i said it so, i'm still kicking myself on that one but for real james thank you very much for enlightening us this was a great podcast and uh hope to do it again soon brother thank you guys for doing what you do thanks james. Music.