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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) previously tested weapons systems that would use inflatable balloons as weapons delivery systems to launch hypersonic missiles. The programs would allow the regime to deploy powerful missiles in high earth orbit, and then use gravity to accelerate the speed of the missiles to make them even more difficult to counter. The studies are again raising concerns, in light of the CCP flying a spy balloon over the United States. Meanwhile, doctors in Canada say they were coerced into practicing the country’s controversial programs for assisted suicide. The doctors are now speaking out against the practice of state-approved killing, saying that it’s unethical. Watch the Full Video:

I sit down with Lech Walesa, the former leader of Solidarity, Poland’s first communist-era independent trade union. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and played an instrumental role in Poland’s transition from communism to democracy, becoming the first post-communist president of Poland in 1990. We discuss the end of communism in Poland, the Russia-Ukraine War, and the continued fight for freedom in Cuba, China, and beyond. “Communism’s days are numbered wherever it exists,” Walesa says. Interview trailer: Watch the full interview:https://www.theepochtimes.com/lech-walesa-communisms-days-are-numbered-wherever-it-exists_4992555.html FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: President Lech Walesa, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. President Lech Walesa: It’s my pleasure, I look forward to speaking to your audience. My time here on earth is slowly coming to an end. I am 80 years old, and I want to share my experiences, pass on what’s interesting. Mr. Jekielek: Mr. President, I want to read you something you once wrote. In 2015, you said this: “Just like once God put me as head of a movement, which overthrew communism in Poland and Europe, the same today puts in front of me a task to support all those, whose fight is not yet finished.” Can you explain what you meant here? President Walesa: Well, I stand by that, of course. I tried to do well in this role. I [tried] to fulfill this role. And my trade union “Solidarity” helped end Soviet communism. Mr. Jekielek: OK. So I understand you’re motivated to help others who are in a similar situation to what Poland was in back in the day. Could you can tell me a little bit about that. President Walesa: That is, wherever I’m invited or asked, as soon as I have the opportunity, I respond, I get involved, because that’s what I am obliged to do by the [Nobel] prize. I participate in different events, in different places, at different times. Today I’m quite involved in Ukraine-Russia matters. Of course, I’m a little less engaged when it comes to Cuba. I used to work a lot more with Cuba but in Cuba the processes of fighting for freedom are moving forward at a slower pace. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about Cuba. We can talk about Ukraine a little bit later. Let’s start by talking about Cuba. Over a year ago, there were pretty large protests in Cuba. And actually these protests have continued. I saw a video from just two weeks ago. There was a pretty large protest in Cuba happening and frankly, a lot of our society isn’t aware that these protests have continued. And that they might be even happening as we speak. Mr. Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat who invited you [here], he’s told me that this might actually be one of the best moments for Cubans to affect change to the system. President Walesa: I think so, too. Communism’s days are numbered wherever it exists, because it is ineffective. Some of its ideas aren’t too bad, but they’re impossible to implement. And so it will fail everywhere. I’ve always told Cubans that to end it is one thing, but then to fill the void after its collapse with new solutions, that’s another. And so I asked them to prepare by thinking through how to privatize, how to resolve conflicts. There will be a lot of conflicts there because this is a generation raised under communism and it will be necessary to privatize quite a bit in order to implement capitalism. So the resistance will be great. If they are unprepared, they will have a lot more troubles. Mr. Jekielek: When people’s formative years happen in a communist society, what would you say is the overall impact on that society? President Walesa: First and foremost, [communism] kills personal initiative and promotes collectivism. It’s a fundamentally different philosophy from capitalism, where individuals are responsible for themselves and have to fend for themselves. In communism, the state controls everything, which makes it hard to change such people’s way of thinking and doing things. Mr. Jekielek: So you’re saying that initiative is the most important element? What about others? President Walesa: Of course, there are many factors at play, but initiative is the most important. Capitalism thrives on initiative, ingenuity, and wisdom. … [Communism] fails because it stifles initiative and tries to do everything collectively. As a result, it has lost and will continue to lose. The question is how much it costs us and how long we will have to wait for this system to end. Mr. Jekielek: In preparation for this interview, I looked up a letter that you published back in 2015. I’m gonna read the quote and I just want to get your reaction. “Communism as a system deprived of human values is incompatible with the progress of civilization and from the beginning was fated sooner or later to bankruptcy.” President Walesa: I had no doubt [about it]. And in that part of the world we made it happen. Cuba is a bit behind. But it will also prevail. The communist system has exhausted its capacity. Mr. Jekielek: This protest movement in Cuba is still ongoing. And in fact, it might even be increasing by some accounts. But at the same time, there is money coming in from overseas strengthening the regime and quite significant money. And that’s actually from free countries. I’m curious what you think about that. President Walesa: The essence of capitalism is a free market and the pursuit of profit. From this perspective, communism seems more equitable than capitalism, which is focused on making money everywhere. But while communism cannot be implemented in a practical and fair way, capitalism is always feasible and practical. Therefore, communism fails because it is not realistic and is too idealistic. Mr. Jekielek: OK just so I have this straight: in what way is communism a fairer system? President Walesa: Just look at its underlying principles. I have examined the works of Lenin, Marx, and Engels. They were highly intelligent individuals, but were primarily theorists. They devised a system that is appealing in theory, but unfeasible in practice. It is, as I have stated, simplistic, vague, and leads to abuse of power. There is a lack of oversight in it. Capitalism, on the other hand, is self-regulating and controlled by the market. Therefore, despite its less favorable principles, it is more practical and superior in practice. Mr. Jekielek: Mr. President, do you have a message for the Cuban people? President Walesa: You will certainly win, but you will face more challenges after victory than before. This is because a whole generation has been raised under a different [communist] ideology and holds those attitudes. They will initially dislike capitalism, so it is important to have effective solutions and have people in place who can quickly address these problems and prove the benefits of capitalism. I remember the challenges we faced in Poland after defeating communism. I was at a rally where there were about 50,000 people and despite my victory, they wanted to lynch me. Someone shouted from the crowd: “Things were better under communism than now.” Mr. Jekielek: Difficult to believe. President Walesa: Yeah, but my mind was working quickly, and I responded to him: “Are you a driver? Do you have a driver’s license?” He said yes. “That’s good because communism was like driving a car at 5 km/h and going backwards, while capitalism allows us to move forward at 100 km/h. If you are a driver, you know that you cannot go backward and forward at the same time. You have to stop first before driving in the opposite direction. And we are stopping Poland right now to go faster and better.” And so the crowd changed, they cheered for me instead of trying to lynch me. Mr. Jekielek: So this was in what year? In 1989? President Walesa: This was at the beginning in 1980. Mr. Jekielek: Oh in 1980, OK. President Walesa: Yes, at the beginning. But then it happened again in 1989. Therefore, people [in government managing the transition] must be prepared to respond quickly because once the crowd surges, it’s hard to stop it. But it must be stopped right away. So it’s important to have good and persuasive answers to prevent conflicts from escalating. Mr. Jekielek: So let’s talk for a moment about Mikhail Gorbachev who recently passed away. There are many media in the US and Canada and elsewhere that are giving him a lot of credit for ending communism. And I just wanted to hear what you think about that. President Walesa: Gorbachev was my friend. I admired him. One of the greatest intellects of the time. And that’s the conclusion he drew from that fight. When he rose to power as the First Secretary, the battle was already so intense that he couldn’t save the Soviet Union from collapse. It was impossible to stop. And that is why he did not try to stop the Soviet Union, but tried to save as much of Russia as possible. He used to say: perestroika, glasnost. He spoke amicably with various leaders and these leaders drew the following conclusion. “There was Stalin, a thug. There was also Brezhnev. But Gorbachev is quite a decent man. So let’s leave Russia to him.” Because after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia had to be held accountable for the whole thing. But Gorbachev’s behavior led us to leave Russia in peace. But he predicted Russia would rise again and a leader like Stalin or Putin would come and he would make up for those losses of the Soviet Union. And now it’s happening. [Putin] saved Russia. Russia has become strong and is trying to reassert its old influence. He worked it all out very effectively, he executed this mission very capably. Mr. Jekielek: Mr. President, just to be clear, you’re saying that you believe it was Mikhail Gorbachev plan all along to manifest this resurgence over time. President Walesa: It was a very clever and far-sighted concept for Russia’s defense. Namely, to wait for it to get stronger and for a leader like Stalin or Putin to emerge, who would try to regain lost ground. I respect Gorbachev, as he played a positive role, even though it was under duress. The situation was forced upon him, and as a result, he bet on a far-sighted concept. He aligned himself and the whole operation in such a way that he was able to save much of Russia. Afterward, Putin came in and is now trying to make up for the losses suffered by the Soviet Union. Mr. Jekielek: So there are a number of people in the West who don’t really understand why Poles have such a passion for helping Ukraine, for helping Ukrainians at this point in time. President Walesa: Simple reasons. We know that Russia has not come to terms with the loss of the Soviet Union. Poland was able to break away from the Soviet Union, but Ukraine remained. As president, I wanted Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus to enter NATO and the European Union together. Behind the scenes I fought for Ukraine and Belarus [to join the EU and NATO], and I planned to pursue it further in my second presidential term. Unfortunately, I lost the presidency and everything fell apart. It was a bad thing that this happened. But we must save Ukraine. However, this problem must be viewed in two ways. First, we must address the consequences of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which includes murder and starvation. We must help, fundraise, and supply weapons. But these are the consequences. The root cause is Russia and its bad political system. It is not Putin or Stalin who is to blame. It is the political system that is to blame. If Russia had a political system where the president could only serve two terms of five years each, he would never have been able to build up such a gang. And it’s not just him, he would not have had helpers. Every helper would have known that their influence would end after ten years and they would be held accountable. There would not be this banditry. We need to convince each and every Russian that they are also being murdered and will continue to be murdered, and that together we will help them change the system. Russia is a beautiful country with wonderful people, only they have a terrible political system. If this does not succeed, we should know that Russia consists of more than 60 Ukraine-like nations, which were conquered much like Ukraine was. Russia has forever been appropriating various nations, countries, and Russifying them. In fact, the whole world has operated in much the same way, building itself up in a similar way. And now, since Russia is too big and its system is too dangerous, we should encourage these nations to reclaim their sovereignty. And then Russia will be left with 50 million or so, and it will not be so dangerous. Russia will be grateful to us if we help them change their political system. It will be safe for the whole world. So we are fighting on two levels. First, we try to influence them to change the political system, where the president only serves two terms of five years each, and that’s it, no exceptions. And if that doesn’t work, then we should encourage its nations to reclaim their statehood and their sovereignty. Mr. Jekielek: That’s just fascinating. Now, do you think that all of these nationalities in Russia are actually ready to take on this kind of action? President Walesa: I tried to do this, but I was stopped by the powerful nations of the world because it turned out that the most dangerous weapons were not in Russia, but in these republics. These republics are unaware that they possess such weapons, just as Poland was unaware that it had a large number of nuclear weapons. Today we’ve discovered silos and seen how many nuclear weapons were in Poland. Therefore, if those nations had regained their freedom, it would have been dangerous because they would not have controlled or maintained those [weapons] storage facilities and it could have even led to an explosion. That’s why it was necessary to wait. Today, Putin made a terrible mistake, almost the entire world has rallied against him, and now we can do what I tried to do back then, but couldn’t. So, we can help them change their political system or encourage those nations to reclaim their freedom. Mr. Jekielek: OK, you mean just at one point it did? President Walesa: The world has always been divided, but as things progressed and intellect advanced, it ran up against the limitations [of nation-states]. When we invented bicycles and a few other technologies, we organized around the nation-state. This continued until the end of the 20th century. At that time, we invented the Internet, airplanes, and now we ran into the pandemic, among other things. These developments tell us that we need larger structures, as nation-states are no longer sufficient. Now, there are two concepts for expansion: the West is doing it through NATO, the European Union, and the UN, and we become part of these structures through the desire for democracy. This is one concept. But the Russian and Chinese concept is, as in the case of Ukraine, to resort to tyranny. To take away territory by force and increase their influence that way. Which concept will prevail? The peaceful one through NATO, the European Union, and democracy, where anyone can join, or the Russian-Chinese concept of annexation by force, and Russification? Mr. Jekielek: So would you say that this is what Poland is afraid of? Of being pulled into this Russian structure for lack of a better term? President Walesa: Of course. For nearly 50 years we had enough of it. And this system, as I said, has some interesting assumptions, but it is impossible to implement it. Nowhere in the world has communism been successfully implemented, because it is not possible. However, capitalism is worse in its assumptions because it’s based on competition. It is worse but it is practically feasible and it works, because people perform well when they’re free. Therefore, communism has to lose because it can’t keep up with the pace of development. Mr. Jekielek: So at this point in time, the US and some other countries are mobilizing huge amounts of money to support Ukraine. Do you feel there should be any limits on that? President Walesa: As I said earlier, here you have to consider two tracks of opposition. One is to help with weapons, food, etc. But remember that even if Ukraine wins, in a maximum of 10 years Russia will rise again and will do what it is doing now, because the system allows it to do so. That’s why one way we can help is by raising money and providing weapons. But at the same time, we need to fight to change the system so that Russia will not be a threat in 10 years, so that the next Stalin or Putin will not repeat this again when Russia rises. So, we have the dual task of counteracting the immediate impacts and also addressing the long-term cause. And that cause is a bad system that leads to the emergence of leaders like Stalin, Putin and others. Mr. Jekielek: OK, Mr. President, you were just speaking about Russia and China and that you see them as having a kind of similar outlook. President Walesa: China is doing it more cleverly. They are expanding their influence to Africa, other countries, they’re expanding their influence in other ways. And while this could be a good thing because they are growing stronger, but the problem is that their system is dangerous. It allows for actions similar to what Putin is now doing. If there were limits on the number of presidential terms, such as no more than two terms, and each term could not last longer than five years, then no one would be able to build a powerful political gang. The system itself encourages evil and is dangerous. It is not just Putin or Stalin, it is the system that allows them to act as they did. Mr. Jekielek: So I’m going to read you another quote from this letter that you wrote back in 2015. And you wrote this letter to a forum that was actually being held in Ukraine about 200 million people having quit the Communist Party. This was the Quit the CCP movement or the Tuidang movement [as it’s] also called. Today as it would happen or right around this time, it’s actually 400 million people that have quit the Chinese Communist Party. Here’s what you wrote. “This movement, this history’s tsunami as I deeply believe, nothing is able to stop it anymore. No one can stop a spirit of freedom and truth.” President Walesa: Yes, as the level of technical and intellectual development increases, individuals need more freedom and through that freedom, they become more creative. When the level of technology and development was low, there was widespread use of force, say a gun, to make people do something. For example, they could say “if you don’t dig out a 10 meter ditch, I’ll kill you.” And people complied. However, today, if someone were to stand beside me with a gun while I’m working on a computer, they can point it at the keyboard but it’s impossible to coerce creativity under the threat of violence. So, those methods might have been effective in the past, but they are not effective for today’s level of development. Therefore, those methods must not be used because they will fail. The only question is how long they will last and what price will we pay for their failure. Mr. Jekielek: So for people who are engaged themselves in this Quit the Chinese Communist Party movement, what is your message to them? President Walesa: Do it. But it won’t be easy. But do it also by showing people other solutions. Communism may even have been necessary at one point in history, when the first factories were established and factory owners were dishonest. Mass movements were needed to correct their behavior. However, today, with many capitalists and a free market in place, we have learned a lot and the system of communism is absolutely no longer suitable. There was a time in history when that system was suitable, but today it isn’t. It is not creative, it is utopian, and that is why we need to move away from it. Mr. Jekielek: OK, but at this moment, the Chinese President Xi Jinping, actually the dictator, he is actively promoting communism in China across society. He’s pushing the ideals of communism onto the populace as we speak. President Walesa: He doesn’t know how to do anything else. He was raised and spent his entire life under communism. Where can he go now? The only place he can go now is to the great beyond, so I don’t blame him. But the younger generation of Chinese, on the other hand, they see the world, they know there is the Internet. So, they will sooner or later reject it because it is utopian, it’s not realistic. It has to go away, but it will take some time. Mr. Jekielek: OK, so when it comes to contemporary Communist China, there’s a couple of things that are, I would say, foundationally different from what we saw back in the 80s and 90s in the Soviet Union. One is that there’s huge sums of money coming from the West and being funneled into China, supporting the regime. And the second thing is that there’s technocratic type technology, which is available the social credit system, I’ll give you an example. Right? On your phone, you have to have a green COVID badge, OK? If it’s a red COVID badge, you can’t take the train, you’re basically restricted from working, you’re restricted from all sorts of things and of course, this can and is being used for political purposes. This is rather different. President Walesa: That’s right. We are currently experiencing a shift in the way the world operates. Up until the end of the 20th century, the concept of the nation-state was prevalent, particularly in Europe. People worked for the state and country. However, now we have technology that requires a larger scope than just the nation-state. It is not enough to handle issues such as the current pandemic. This is why it is important for two major countries to come together and work on solutions for these problems. The United States should do it on a global scale, while Germany should do it on a European scale, with a few other countries to assist. They should gather a group of intelligent individuals and give them the task of developing a list of topics that need solutions on a larger level than just the national level, such as pandemics, airplanes, and the internet. Once the list is created, divide the topics into those that can be solved on the continental level and those that need to be solved globally. Then, consider what structures, programs, and funding are needed for these issues. For example, for global issues such as pandemics and migration, we are currently unprepared. If another pandemic were to occur, it could be devastating. As we open up to countries like China and India, migration will become a larger issue, and we are not prepared for it at all. The United States should work on developing global solutions, while Germany, with the help of a few other countries, should work on developing solutions for Europe. These are not difficult problems, but two possible solutions should always be prepared for such big issues. President Walesa: One solution is to reform existing structures. For example, if it is possible to reform the European Union or NATO, then let’s do it. If it is not possible, then let countries like Hungary or Czech Republic break up the European Union or its structures. Retain individual agencies or departments and propose new overarching bodies for a Union, new structures. Allow anyone who wants to join to do so, but make sure to place two boards at the entrance. On one board, write “If you come to join the union [or other organizations], you get certain rights.” On the second board, write “If you join the union, we welcome you, but you also have responsibilities.” Set laws and responsibilities so that issues like the ones we see today will not occur. It’s not that hard. Similarly, in economics. We should look at Europe or the world to see what resources each country has and let them focus on utilizing those resources. For example, France has beautiful grapes and should focus on making wine. Italy has beautiful historical objects and should focus on tourism. And Ukraine has beautiful croplands and should focus on feeding all of Europe. As for other countries, we should help them rearrange so that everyone has a place, but focusing on doing things that we all need. In the past, we used to build airports and other things based on strategic or political needs, but today we use economic criteria instead. For example, it is better to build an airport in Gdansk than in Berlin or vice versa, because it makes more economic sense from a continental or global perspective. We need these types of programs today. Currently, we have no leaders, neither Germany leads Europe nor the United States leads the world. Therefore, it is a very dangerous moment because there are no responsible leaders who are preparing solutions. Mr. Jekielek: Okay, so I have a question. So let’s talk about Germany. Germany for some reason believed that it could basically create a dependency for natural gas with Russia, right, but right now Nord Stream 2 is closed, has not been opened and Nord Stream 1, the taps have actually been closed and you know, there’s some discussion about why. They’re saying that there was some kind of accident or something like this. But this is a dire situation for Germany. Meanwhile, Poland I’ll just add, actually has provided for its energy needs from other sources. So what are your thoughts here? What was Germany thinking? President Walesa: I told you before that Gorbachev misled us. We left Russia alone, believing that Gorbachev and others would follow the right path because they had started on it. It was already going well under Yeltsin and under Gorbachev as well. However, what Gorbachev did was to save Russia and Russia rose again. Then Putin came and is ruining it all. So it’s important to understand the processes that have occurred and are still happening. We believed, and the Germans believed, that Russia would act logically and democratically because Gorbachev started on the right path. But it turned out that he waited, built up Russia, knowing that someone like Putin and like Stalin would come and make up for the Soviet Union’s losses. And that’s what happened. Mr. Jekielek: So there’s this phenomenon, I guess, throughout human history, when a small group of people amasses considerable power, they’re not often too eager to give it up. And, you know, I guess my question is, are you at all concerned as we have these even in free countries these power structures, like for example, the European Union, you know, increased concentration of power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, and especially augmented by these various new technologies that we’ve been discussing. Are you at all concerned that this could become a problem for the world? President Walesa: You are right, only you have to situate it a little differently. We have come to live in a new epoch. The prior epoch of states, countries, divisions, blocs has ended and a new epoch of intellect, information, globalization has begun. But these are empty concepts which we need to fill with content. So this one epoch has fallen during our lifetime. A new one has emerged, and we are in the middle. I call this middle [part] an epoch of words and an epoch of discussion on how this world is supposed to look. Pretty much nothing from the old epoch fits with the new one. Look, today left-wing parties are further to the right than right-wing ones and vice versa. See, Christian parties say they are Christian, but there is not a single believer there. In the past things might have looked like that, but today we need to start putting [things] in order. Today the situation is not bad only on one area: traffic regulations. Imagine what today’s world would look like if all traffic signs and traffic regulations were removed from the streets. Can you imagine what would happen if there were no traffic signs and regulation? But that’s the way the world is today. Because the old ones don’t fit, and there are no new ones. There cannot be any, because this is a new epoch and the previous one was dirty, with wars and deception, and where no one trusts anyone. So that’s why we call it the epoch of words. You have to convince me and I have to convince you and only then will the construction begin. Three big problems have emerged. The first problem is that you can see the new epoch but what foundation do you propose for this new era? Each country has a different foundation and even different religions and faiths. When you formulate the problem like this, then two issues emerge. Half the world wants to build a future based on all kinds of freedoms, in a free market, and rule of law. President Walesa: The other half says that’s not good. First, let’s agree on values such as the 10 secular commandments, and only then can we have the free market and rule of law. We cannot jump out of this division. If we can handle this, we will face a second problem. What economic system should we have? There are two big ideas: capitalism and communism. Communism didn’t work anywhere, so we can discard it. But capitalism was good when there were states and countries, when there was competition. However, capitalism led many to fail in this competition and go on unemployment. This new capitalism aims to find all the unemployed and put them to work. So the free market will be kept from capitalism, but we need to set up everything else not for nation-states, but for continents and globalization. This is the second problem. And there is the third problem of how to deal with the demagoguery, populism, and deception of politicians within these larger structures. We need to note that until the end of the twentieth century, we had God. Each country, quietly in the background, there was God operating somewhere in the back of peoples’ minds. But we have shifted away from that. At that time, we were afraid of communism and the Soviet Union, and we dealt with it. But how do we maintain nations today that have no restraints and no fears? Our generation faces three problems at the start of this new epoch. We have to discuss everything. You must convince me, and I must convince you, and then construction will begin. Many say we won’t make it, there have already been civilizations like ours a few times in this world, on this earth. They even built pyramids, which we are not able to build. And someone destroyed these civilizations. So we are in the moment that either we destroy our lives as they did, or we save ourselves. Mr. Jekielek: So a number of people that I’ve been speaking with are actually quite concerned that you know, if the world does go in this globalist direction or internationalist direction, that the end result will be something like a totalitarianism à la communist China. President Walesa: So throw away your phone, because first of all, globalism is smartphones all around the world, throw away satellite TV, airplanes – this is globalism. Globalism – it depends on what we put into it and how we arrange it. For now, these are empty or inaccurate concepts. And that’s where the concerns come from because it’s not refined. Globalization is needed to fight pandemics because without globalization, we can’t handle pandemics. So globalization is needed. Airplanes, internet, cell phones, all need it. This is globalization. People are afraid, because they don’t understand globalization. I find the anti-globalists the funniest. They hold big meetings at which they denounce us, and then take a cell phone and tell the press how they denounced us. But they should use carrier pigeons to communicate, not the phone, because the cell phone is globalization. Mr. Jekielek: So it’s perfectly within the realm of imagination that you could have nation-states based on or rooted in certain faiths and certain ideologies and then functioning together in this connected structure like you’re describing, having to negotiate, having to debate, having to trade. What do you think? President Walesa: Of course, let’s only do what is necessary. But for airplanes, there must be a global connection. Cell phones also have to be global, so let’s do what must be done, what is convenient, and what we need. And let’s keep what we want to keep. It’s just a matter of wisely determining what is required more and what isn’t. Mr. Jekielek: So what do you think the role of the United States should be in the world at this point in time? President Walesa: As I said, America should take responsibility for the world. And I don’t mean hand out dollars or fight for us, but organize us to meet the needs as they arise, to address the issues that appear. America should act as a great world organizer. After that, there should also be continental organizers. Since Germany has the greatest power in Europe, it should select 2 or 3 countries and prepare positive solutions for all relevant issues. And only then, as you reform these old structures and see how some things work and some don’t, you come up with new solutions and implement them. Germany is feared from the old era. But that epoch was a time of wars for nation-states. And today there is an era of continents and globalization. So, a different role for Germany, not one of rivalry or war. Mr. Jekielek: Of course, I guess this is what I’m trying to get at. The US at the moment has quite a few of its own problems that it has to deal with. Some pretty significant challenges. President Walesa: In that case the simplest thing is for America to entrust its capabilities to Poland, and we will take responsibility. Mr. Jekielek: So jumping back to China for a moment, right now, there’s a lot of military activity across the Taiwan Strait. There’s some people that believe that China is actually going to make a move on Taiwan imminently. What are your thoughts about this? President Walesa: Well, Taiwan is better off. People live better there than in China. Let them choose a China that is better and richer, not a China that is worse off. The key issue is whether mainland China can achieve the potential and output and wealth like Taiwan has. If it can, then go ahead, but it’s just not able to. China thinks it will take Taiwan to help the mainland out of poverty. But that’s not fair, it’s not honest. Furthermore, expansion of territory should be through freedom and democracy, on a voluntary basis, not through the forced annexation like with Russia and Ukraine. Mr. Jekielek: Okay, so what would you say is the biggest threat to the world as we speak? President Walesa: Lack of common ground, lack of understanding. In the old epoch, we respected rights without obligations, freedom without responsibility. We need to correct that now. You have a right, you have an obligation, freedom and responsibility, because this is a different epoch. Previously, there were nation-states, so there were different needs, and we set the world up differently. Today we have to do it differently. So, agreements, talks, discussions and in this way we should solve problems. The question for me, for revolutionaries, is how many hits we have to take, how much blood will be spilled in order to follow the right, wise path. Mr. Jekielek: Mr. President, it’s been a pleasure. Any final thoughts as we finish up? President Walesa: Our generation happens to live at a time when epochs are shifting. The era of nation-states and blocs is over and the age of intellect, information, and globalization has begun. We, who are in the middle, must figure out through discussions how this world should look, identify opportunities for development, and assess potential dangers. Through discussion, we will develop programs and structures to implement them. If we do not take action as I propose, we risk destroying our lives on this planet. Mr. Jekielek: Mr. President, Lech Walesa. I am very pleased to talk to you. President Walesa: It was nice talking with you. I always like to express my gratitude at the end, so thank you very much. - PRE-ORDER "The Shadow State" DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/the-shadow-state-dvd The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary BUY Jan 6 DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/dvd-the-real-story-of-january-6, Promo Code “Jan” for 20% off. - Follow American Thought Leaders on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeader Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeader Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleader Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeaders Gab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeader Telegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

Many in the vaccine-injured community have been told their symptoms—from piercing, constant ringing in their ears to paralysis in their lower body—is due to “anxiety.” Brianne Dressen, a former preschool teacher in Utah, was severely injured after participating in AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial in November 2020. She is the co-chair of React19, the leading non-profit organization aiding those injured by genetic vaccines. “This has happened to tens of thousands of Americans that I know of—it’s likely far more—where patients are met with physicians that are doubtful, unbelieving, and in many cases, just outright dismissive to their patient’s complaints. And that really puts the patient in a very vulnerable situation, especially if you have family members that are doubtful of what’s actually happening with you… There’s some people that have made the ultimate choice to end their suffering,” said Dressen. Dressen’s organization, run entirely by volunteers, is working with over 20,000 vaccine-injured Americans to help them get the treatment and support they need and connect them to doctors willing to help them. “We want the injured to be empowered to be able to make their decisions and take ownership of their healing when everything around them—their medical teams, their jobs, their government—has abandoned them and essentially stripped them of that power.” Dressen says the NIH knows a lot more than they let on. After Dressen and her husband repeatedly pled for help, the NIH flew her and others to the NIH to be evaluated, studied, and in some cases, treated. But to this day, the public and the medical community are not being informed about the major neurological injuries that can occur post-vaccination—even though the NIH knows early intervention is key for such autoimmune dysfunction. Interview trailer: Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/brianne-dressen-gaslit-by-doctors-and-loved-ones-some-vaccine-injured-are-making-the-ultimate-choice-to-end-their-suffering_4994340.html FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Brianne Dressen, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Brianne Dressen: Thanks for having me. Mr. Jekielek: It’s been about a year since you sat down here on American Thought Leaders with Maddie de Garay and Stephanie de Garay and helped introduce me to the realities facing vaccine injured in America, specifically related to these genetic vaccines. I’m really happy to have you back and to figure out what has happened in a year. I know a lot has. What I want is to get your personal story here for the record. What happened to you? Ms. Dressen: My personal story started a long time ago. It’s been over two years now. Before my vaccine, I was healthy. I was a mother of two young kids and a preschool teacher. I was definitely all in. It wasn’t a matter of if I was going to get the vaccine, but it was going to be when. As soon as I could get it, I was going to do that. And at the time, I firmly believed that if I got vaccinated, I would not spread the disease to others. I wanted to do everything I could to be part of the solution to take care of those around me. So, I signed up for a clinical trial with AstraZeneca here in the United States and got my shot on November 4th, 2020. Within an hour, I had tingling down the same arm of my shot. Later that night, my vision had become blurry and doubled. Within two-and-a-half weeks, I had landed in the hospital after four ER visits. Each visit had new symptoms that were very concerning, severe tachycardia, bradycardia, and limb weakness. The paresthesia moved from one arm to the other to all over my body. There was this horrific electric shock all over my body that I still deal with to this day. Severe tinnitus—I had a freight train sound in one ear, and a high in E in the other. When I landed in the hospital, my legs just gave out. They weren’t working anymore. I had become incontinent. My sensitivity to light and sound had become so severe that my kids couldn’t touch me. They couldn’t be in the same room as me. My husband had put towels over the windows to make the room darker. He would come in to check on me, and even just the swishing of his pants was too painful for my ears. The running of water was too painful for my ears. The dog panting was too much for my ears. It was bad enough that I had to be holed up in a room by myself 24/7. I was also removed from my family, and definitely removed from my career and everything else. Even my teeth were too sensitive. I couldn’t brush my teeth. Whatever the hypersensitivity was, it was beyond just a few of my sensory inputs. It was a body-wide, systems-wide dysfunction. When I was admitted to the hospital, they weren’t sure what it was. They didn’t run typical tests to rule out GBS or transverse myelitis or any of these other neurological issues that are typical with vaccines, although not common. Instead, they slapped me with the label of anxiety due to the COVID vaccine. And four days later, I was discharged with intensive in-home physical and occupational therapy to rehab my legs and my cognitive deficits due to anxiety due to the COVID vaccine. Mr. Jekielek: It might sound unbelievable to people that the collection of symptoms you describe would be diagnosed as anxiety by anybody. Ms. Dressen: Yes. It’s strange because I was the first at that point or one of the first, and so I gave the doctors a lot of leeway, because it was very clear that they had never seen anything like this before. I was like, “Well, I’m the first. They haven’t really understood it.” Maybe that’s why I was gaslit and treated the way I was. But the sad reality is now this has happened to tens of thousands of Americans that I know of. It’s most likely far more, where patients are met with physicians that are doubtful, unbelieving, and in many cases just outright dismissive to their patient’s complaints. That really puts the patient in a very vulnerable situation, especially if you have family members that are doubtful of what’s happening with you, or you have a family member that’s supportive who takes you to the doctor’s appointment and the doctor tells you’re crazy, and then your family member hears that you’re crazy. What you know inside your body is that this is not anxiety. This is not depression. This is not some psychosomatic issue, because your legs are failing, you’ve got electrical shocks going on, you’ve got severe tinnitus, you can’t see right, and you can’t think straight. This isn’t just a small moment in time where you’re having a mental breakdown. It’s an immune system dysfunction. There’s something wrong in the body. But the doctors are being told that it’s not something wrong with the body, that it’s all up here. And so, it isolates the people that are suffering with this, and it puts them in a very vulnerable situation. Mr. Jekielek: I want to get into the bigger picture with all these different people that you’ve been working with now for quite a while. But going back to that time, presumably you reached out to the people involved in the trial, and so how was that? Ms. Dressen: Yes. All the way up until this day, I have yet to speak to a real human at the drug company. I have talked to people at the clinical trial office. Back when we very quickly became financially ruined because of this, we reached out to the drug company and the clinical trial company begging them for help. We had to refinance our house, because they did not own up to their part of our contract. The contract says that they will pay for any and all expenses resulting from injury, and they have not owned up to that. At the beginning I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I was like, “Well, maybe they just haven’t heard me. There’s a breakdown in communication.” But looking back at all the emails and the phone calls and the repeated cries for help between my husband and I that we made to the drug company, it’s very obvious that it was intentional. As soon as I was injured, it’s very obvious that the effort on the side of the drug company to do nothing was in full effect. They weren’t going to do anything. There was no effort that was going to be made to help me. They literally left me for dead. The only time that I received compensation from them was because a news story ran locally, and they wired $590 to my account without my consent. We told them it was without our consent, and then we never heard from them again. And then six months later, another news story ran, and the reporter called asking for a statement. While they were on the phone with the reporter, they sent a settlement letter to my email, and they spelled my name wrong. The contract absolved them of any future payments, and we’re required to make a statement that AstraZeneca did nothing wrong and all kinds of things. We were signing our life away, essentially for $1,200. Mr. Jekielek: Wait, this was sent to you without any communication? Ms. Dressen: Correct. Mr. Jekielek: Like a form letter, what was it? Ms. Dressen: Yes. It was a form letter—regarding this matter, everything will be resolved and settled after this. And I’m not a person. According to the drug company I’m not a human being, I’m a number. And sadly, for them, I’m inconvenient to them. But they are a company worth ten of billions of dollars. And I’m not asking for a whole lot. I’m just asking for what my contract is due, for my medical expenses, so I wouldn’t have had to refinance my house, and so that my kids could still be in a stable situation financially. They’re not willing to lift a finger to make that happen. Mr. Jekielek: One thing that strikes me here is that the nature of this first diagnosis seems critical here. Ms. Dressen: Yes. That anxiety diagnosis plagued me for six, seven months until I went to the NIH. It didn’t matter how many doctors I saw, what tests I had run, what positive tests I had, it didn’t matter. If I showed up in a doctor’s office and if I cried even a little bit because my life was ruined, then yes, it was all up here. And I believed the doctors, I did. They told me it was anxiety so many times that I was like, “Well, they’re the professionals, so they would know.” I actually went to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist did a full neuropsychological evaluation. He said, “I’m not sure what this is, but this is not anxiety. There’s something going on in your body. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not anxiety.” He issued statements back to all of my doctors. Even with that, they still didn’t change their mind. The NIH reached out to them, and they still did not change their mind. After months of dealing with this, then the NIH finally took pity on me and flew me out to be treated there. Mr. Jekielek: Explain to me how this works. You said seven months down the road, the NIH gets involved. Please explain to me that whole piece of the puzzle. Ms. Dressen: My husband is a chemist, and he realized very early on that the doctors were not going to do anything. The drug company wasn’t going to do anything. If something were to be resolved, he was going to be the one to figure it out. He started digging into the studies and reaching out to researchers all over the globe. A lead researcher in Germany got my blood a month after my injury, and my test result came back that I was positive for anti-neuronal autoantibodies, which means that your immune system is attacking your nerves. It’s something nobody wants. And even with that, it was still labeled as anxiety. He reached out to Dr. Nath and Dr. Safavi at the NIH on January 11th of 2021 about a month-and-a-half into my injury. They reached out and replied right away. There was another person that was injured by AstraZeneca here in the United States that had a very similar cascade of symptoms after her COVID vaccine from AstraZeneca. We got them in touch with the NIH. So, there were two of us that were complaining about the same thing. We don’t know if it’s directly correlated or not, but 10 days later, AstraZeneca was pulled off the market after we filed those complaints. At that point, NIH started a study. It’s on record. They started a study January 11th of 2021 to investigate COVID vaccine injuries that are neurological in nature. From there, they started collecting samples from people all over the country. They started enrolling individuals. They started flying people out. And I’m patient number one in that study and my friend Dr. Denise Hertz, an injured gastroenterologist from California, she’s patient number two. It’s very strange to see chronologically who was in that study. Literally it’s the people I met in sequence, the full first row of the people that are in that study. So, they studied us. They went so far as to collect samples from someone who had died. The amount of knowledge that the NIH has on what’s going on with the COVID vaccine injuries is very intimate. It’s very detailed. Yet what the public is being told about this is that the vaccines are safe, period. There’s no asterisk, there’s no subtext to that. There’s no, “The vaccines are safe. But by the way, we’ve been flying people out for the last two years, and we’re finding clues that could probably help these people get better, but we’re not going to tell you guys what those are. We’re just going to keep it secret.” Mr. Jekielek: If I recall, Dr. Nath talked about how early intervention is the most valuable thing when these injuries occur. Ms. Dressen: He did. Yes. He said this to me privately, and then he also disclosed this in an article that was published by the American Academy of Neurology. They published this paper in the fall of 2021, six, seven months into the public rollout. But then they already knew that early intervention is key, as with any immune dysfunction in the body. Early intervention is key. But they also know that immunotherapy could be implemented and help stop the severe cascade of the disease. The NIH knows this, and the FDA also knows this. They know that there’s this very crucial piece to the puzzle to keeping people from becoming chronic, but they’re not telling or informing medical professionals of the necessity of early intervention. What’s happened is that instead of learning from my case in the clinical trial, learning from Maddie de Gary, learning from Olivia Teseniar who was injured in the Moderna clinical trial, this information has all been hidden, swept under the rug and minimized, instead of taking these cases, investigating them appropriately, collecting the data, and then using that information to help those that are like us and who came after us from becoming as chronic and severe as we are. Mr. Jekielek: There’s something really important here. The NIH treatment actually helped you profoundly as I understand it, right? Ms. Dressen: Yes. Yes. Mr. Jekielek: This treatment does exist. Ms. Dressen: Yes. That’s where it’s hard for me because, and I’ve told him this, he’s one of the main reasons why I’m still alive. Mr. Jekielek: Dr. Nath? Ms. Dressen: Yes, Dr. Nath. He was one of the very few that validated me and my condition. He was the guy at the NIH that was calling my doctors locally and saying, “Look, your patient isn’t crazy. There’s something wrong with her. You need to help her.” He was the only guy in the country doing that. But then on top of that, he’s the guy to do that. If you’re going to have someone talking about a novel neuro-infectious issue with your body, he’s the guy in the United States. He is the top mind in neuro-infectious disease. It’s not like we just had anyone pulling for us. But what blows my mind is that we funneled literally hundreds of patients to the NIH to be studied and evaluated and helped. But it wasn’t just for the hundreds. It wasn’t just for a select few. The whole reason we were doing that is because we were promised that they would take that information, they would process it, and then they would disclose it to the public. We didn’t go for ourselves. We went for the tens of thousands of others like us that needed similar care. So, I have almost a survivor’s guilt, I do. Because why was I selected? Why was I one of the very few selected to go to get that golden ticket to go to the NIH, to be able to have the opportunity to have my trajectory of recovery essentially changed, when I know tens of thousands of Americans that are really good people that deserve the same treatment? They deserve the same interventions, they deserve the same compassion, and they were not afforded that. They weren’t afforded that because the people that could do this stayed silent. Mr. Jekielek: Why? Ms. Dressen: That’s a good question. What’s the reason for that? Is it because they don’t want to perpetuate vaccine hesitancy? Is it because they’re getting millions of dollars in royalties from Moderna? Is it more nuanced than that? Is it really just because someone told them that they need to shut up? I’m not entirely sure why, but I understand that it was not right for the American public to not be informed. Everybody in this country deserves to know the full risks and benefits of the COVID vaccines. It’s that simple. Every single American should be able to make a full informed decision, not based on fear, not based on promises, but informed by data. Mr. Jekielek: And not based on information apparently designed to elicit a behavioral response, which is my observation and also of numerous people I’ve spoken with. There’s this feeling that you’re not being told the truth. You’re being told information that will get you to do something specific that is intended. Ms. Dressen: Right. Obviously, if there was an extreme issue with COVID vaccines it could shift policy. At the time the policy was you get your shot, you sit down, and you shut up. There was no middle ground for understanding what could increase the likelihood of having a severe adverse reaction. And who had to figure that out? We did. We had to figure that out on our own. We went through all of our injured individuals, and we asked them what pre-existing conditions they had. That’s something the government should be doing. That’s something that should be backed by pharmaceutical dollars. We shouldn’t be having to figure that out. The taxpayers shouldn’t have to be figuring this out. But it also blows my mind that the taxpayers financed the development of this product, taxpayers financed promoting this product, and the taxpayers ultimately are going to have to pay for the aftermath of the failure of this product, because the drug companies are liability free. It’s an amazing business model for them to just be able to print money. Mr. Jekielek: How many of the hundred-plus people that you recommended or introduced to the NIH got some help? Ms. Dressen: I want to say most of them did. It was very strange though, because some of the people that reached out to the NIH were told there’s nothing going on here. So there was a select few that they would just, I don’t know if they were overwhelmed or what, but during that time, they would just be like, “There’s nothing going on here. There’s no research going on here.” It was very strange. But then if you were one of the lucky ones to actually get them to respond and call your doctor at home, your entire case management with your local doctor would change. It would change everything just to have the NIH say, “Yes, this is happening. You need to help your patient.” Maddie de Garay was one of those whose doctor was called from the NIH saying, “Yes, this person’s having a reaction. You probably need to validate them and run testing and here’s some possible treatments.” Mr. Jekielek: Let’s look back at the Maddie de Garay case. It was amazing to have Maddie on a year ago. Again, she was a very brave young girl, let’s just say. I don’t know what has happened in the past year. I know there were many, many steps before she got validated. What is it about this case that is particularly close to your heart? Of course, it’s hard not to love Maddie, but there’s more to it than that. Ms. Dressen: Maddie’s a kid. Of all of the cases that we’ve had come through React 19, the tens of thousands, the treatment that Maddie has got has been by far the worst. She’s gotten the worst medical care. She’s gotten the worst treatment from the drug companies and the government. She’s been exploited to no end from people within her own sphere. That kid deserves better. She’s resilient. She’s incredibly bright. She is hilarious. I don’t think people realize the amount of just sheer grit and will that that kid has to make it through every day. And I’m going to do everything I can to get that kid out of that wheelchair. We’re going to do everything we can. I’m not going to stop until she’s better. Mr. Jekielek: Very briefly, we do have an interview about a year ago where we talked about her case, so what has shifted? And I’ll encourage our viewers to take a look at that. But just very briefly, if you could just summary what happened to her, and then where has things progressed in the past year? Ms. Dressen: She was coded as a stomachache, even though her legs stopped working. She has a form of gastroparesis where her throat muscles won’t let her swallow, so she has a feeding tube. She was having several seizures a day early on. She had cognitive issues. Her vision is still messed up. She’s got some fine motor things that are starting to get better. But I’m telling you, she’s finally able to start getting some of these treatments that it’s taken us over a year-and-a-half to get these treatment protocols finally in place for her, because all these doctors kept using the fact that she’s a minor as an excuse not to help her. “She’s a kid, so we’re not specialized in pediatrics.” Mr. Jekielek: But shouldn’t it be the opposite? Ms. Dressen: It should be the opposite. It should be. Look, this is a kid, she should be jumped to the front of the line. Clinical trial participants should be jumped to the front of the line. And in reality, what we’ve learned is that injured clinical trial participants and injured kids, they go to the bottom of the barrel. Her treatment is very expensive, and it’s very tenuous. They’ve cycled through numerous different trials and options. It’s been hard, but her neck is starting to stabilize and she’s starting to see a little bit of improvement. I’m confident that we’ll get her back to some measure of life. But in reality, that kid has been abandoned, and her case is not uncommon. That’s what’s happening to people all over this country. They’re being abandoned. They’re being ignored. I understand that people are tired of COVID. They’re so tired of COVID. It was toxic. It was hard on everybody, and people are ready to move on. They’re ready to move on to the next step and to put COVID behind us. But we can’t. Essentially, we’re trapped. We’re trapped in a COVID nightmare. And it’s never going to stop because we have permanent physical ailments. We have a government that still continues to insist that we don’t exist. Drug companies don’t want to admit that this is happening. And why would they? Because the government gave them the free ticket out for liability. They are not liable or obligated to help us in any way, so why would they? This comes back to everyday Americans, and actually everyday people all over the globe. Hopefully, they are going to have the compassion to step back and realize, “Look, we’ve left these people on the battlefield.” It’s a decision that everyone’s going to have to make. “Do we leave them there on the battlefield or do we pick them up? Do we try to bring them with us to move forward?” Mr. Jekielek: I want to explore that a little further. There’s one thing I want to touch on before we go there, which disturbed me quite a bit. You mentioned something about how Maddie was exploited by people. Ms. Dressen: All sides. Mr. Jekielek: Right. What happened? Ms. Dressen: It’s sad. This probably will ruffle some feathers but it needs to be said. The injured, largely, have been used for our stories. People come and they’re like, “Come tell us the worst part of your life.” I don’t think people realize it’s asking a rape victim to come and recount the most horrific experience of their life over and over and over. It’s not healing. It’s traumatizing. It’s like ripping off a band aid all the time, in the guise of trying to further and help people understand and increase awareness. The step beyond just our stories is there’s more action that needs to be taken. There’s political action. There are policies that need to be changed to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. But what’s strange is when you have someone that’s in a wheelchair, she’s basically the icon for the vaccine failure, and she’s turned into that. You would think that we would have people flooding in to help her. But instead, what has happened is she’s being used to increase followings, increase notoriety, and line pockets with money. That money’s not coming back to them. It’s not. The support that they’ve received have been from a very select few of individuals in this sphere who have really seen what’s been happening to her and realized, “Yes, we can’t do this to a kid. We can’t just put her out on a stage and then send her home to be alone and suffering by herself.” “We need to lean in. We need to find her medical interventions. We need to provide some financial support.” It’s one thing to have a bunch of injured people telling their stories, but that’s not what the injured need. We’re more than happy to stand there and increase advocacy and raise our voices and push because it’s the right thing to do. It’s most definitely the most important thing we can do to help increase awareness, so people can understand what’s happening. But on the back end, there’s a whole lot that needs to be done beyond step one. And step one is recognition. But step two is to evaluate the issue and figure out what needs to be done to fix it. That’s where things get really hard and muddy. Mr. Jekielek: You’ve described now for all of us a number of the symptoms that you had, and then some of that was alleviated through the treatment you got through the NIH. There are some other people who have gotten this. In your organization, React 19 now, there’s 10,000-plus. I’d like to know more how that organization grew. Who are the people there? How does it fund itself? You mentioned there’s always this financial question hovering in the air. Please tell me where things are at. Ms. Dressen: Essentially, React 19 is a nonprofit that was organized because the government wasn’t doing their job. And because the government wasn’t doing their job, somebody had to. The injured realized, “We got to do it ourselves. If no one is coming to save us, we’ve got to do it ourselves.” So, we started a nonprofit. It was started by the injured for the injured. In one short year we have amassed over 21,000 COVID vaccine injured just here in the United States. That number could be up to 27,000, 30,000 easily. And then, with our international partners, we have close to two dozen international partners across the globe. Our numbers are big. But when it comes down to it, because of the censorship and the all-out oppression, our numbers are still small in comparison to who really is out there. But this organization was created by medical professionals, because they were the first ones that were injured. They are scientists and people that really want to make sure that there is financial, physical, and emotional support for those that are suffering from COVID vaccine adverse events. Our funding is 100 per cent grassroots. We don’t have any philanthropists supporting us. It’s all just everyday people that are compassionate and they see the issues and they want to help. 100 percent of the donations go to supporting the injured. We are 100 percent volunteers, which is something I’m very proud of. We want to make sure that we do that and keep it that way, because we see the importance of every single dollar that comes in, and we know that that will make a difference for somebody. Whether it’s through medical support or any other kind of support, resources need to be built. We have people literally living in cars that have to decide whether they’re going to be able to pay for their gas to go to the food bank to get their food or to go get their prescription. We’re able to help them get their prescription, help them get IVIG, and help them get red light therapy. We want the injured to be empowered to make their decisions and take ownership of their healing when everything around them, their medical teams, their jobs, their government has abandoned them and essentially stripped them of that power. Our job now is to give that power back to them, so they can take the initiative to figure out what is going to work in their case. But we have to put those pieces in place. We have to pave the path for them to get better. That takes money, and it takes a lot of effort, and a lot of different programs. We have an advocacy program where an injured is assigned an advocate. It’s like a buddy system. They listen to them and figure out what constellation of symptoms they have. They help them find local doctors that are compassionate and willing to stick with them and help them. We have a financial compensation program, and we issue grants for $6,000 to $10,000. That’s strictly for medical expenses for people in need, and that has made a huge difference. It’s been incredible to see how many doors can open for people through that program. But that money just doesn’t magically fall out of thin air. That money has to come from somewhere. It’s hard to keep those coffers full because as soon as that money comes in, there’s somebody right in line that needs it. And we know those people. We love those people. We know their names; we know their families. We want to do everything we can to make sure that we can get these people their lives back to stop the progression of their disease, because they have nobody. A lot of these people don’t have families that believe them. We all have friends that don’t believe us. Big Tech is definitely against us. Hopefully, what we’re able to build through React 19 is a refuge for these people. In turn, these people will be able to find their voice and find physical strength to come out and push and stand with us and share their voices against the injustice that has happened to help us enact change so this doesn’t happen again. And so we can make sure that the injustices that many, many people have faced through the COVID pandemic are not repeated. Mr. Jekielek: I really want to talk about this gaslighting and how that played out. Because for example, for people that chose not to get vaccinated, there was huge stigma associated with that. There was the pandemic of unvaccinated rhetoric. I know that we already heard from you today how people were treated saying, “It’s a hysteria that you have. It’s some sort of emotional thing. It’s a stomachache.” What was your reaction when you learned that these genetic vaccines, or at least in the Pfizer case, were never tested for transmission, with the knowledge that there’s this expectation in society that this was going to stop transmission? All the rhetoric was built around that, from what I could tell. Ms. Dressen: It didn’t surprise me, because by that point, I had gone from all-believing and part of the solution to my life is ruined. “Okay, wait, now I’m going to be part of the solution still, but it’s going to be in a way that I didn’t know needed to happen. And by that point, we already knew that it didn’t stop transmission. We knew that they weren’t looking for the things that they should have. They weren’t evaluating safety appropriately. They weren’t evaluating transmission appropriately. And the data that they have, they’re not disclosing it to the public. The only way you’re able to get that data is through FOIA requests, and mountains of lawyers going after them. It still blows my mind that Americans are okay with very simple data sets being held back, and the government requesting that they be restricted from our view for 75 years. That should be a red flag for anybody. Let’s be honest, transparency is so important. If we don’t have the raw data, then what do we have? All we have are promises, and that’s what we got, and those promises turned out to be lies. Nothing feeds conspiracy quite like having no transparency. And it’s not a conspiracy theory at this point. If you don’t have the data, you don’t have the data. Why are they holding onto the data if they have nothing to hide? Because what we heard early on in the pandemic was that the overwhelming data shows that the vaccines are safe and effective. Rochelle Walensky, Janet Woodcock, Fauci, that’s what they were saying on all the mainstream media channels about the overwhelming data. We said, “Okay, let’s see the data.” Zach Stieber with the Epoch Times has definitely landed a significant win in the quest for truth and transparency with the FOIA request that was awarded. And he was able to get a recent VAERS review done by the CDC. What they did is they reviewed all the adverse events through the VAERS system to look for safety signals. And what did they find? The CDC found that there are 500 safety signals that are more significant and higher than myocarditis. Mr. Jekielek: Which is one of the few that it has admitted to, or one of the few relationships that are admitted to. Ms. Dressen: Yes. The FDA takes great pride in identifying myocarditis based on six cases. And here we are with a dataset with 700-plus safety signals, and over 500 are stronger safety signals than myocarditis. Yet what about those 500 that are actually disclosed to the public? How many of those? How many people are struggling with those 500 issues, and they’re being told, “It’s nothing,” that it’s in their head. “Oh, it must be COVID. Maybe it’s too much stress at work.” When in actuality, it’s a pharmaceutical that they’re being told to inject into their arm over and over and over. And many of those diseases are literally landing people in their graves. Tinnitus, it’s a very simple word, but if you have tinnitus, your life is not lovely. Mr. Jekielek: That was one of the very strong safety signals in that report. Ms. Dressen: Yes. Robert Edmunds, he’s an injured scientist. He actually reached out to Tom Shimabukuro who’s basically the head of the vaccine program at the CDC. He reached out to him and identified tinnitus as a safety signal. He said, “Look, this is a problem. I found the data.” He was very objective, very calm and calculated with how he presented the information, and Tom brushed it aside. The CDC didn’t want to hear from this individual who was suffering from this issue firsthand and had identified the safety signal. Instead, what they did everything they could to hide him and hide the information that he was bringing. In addition, the CDC went and investigated for tinnitus itself, found a very strong signal, and hid that as well. And that’s just one example of the 500. Mr. Jekielek: I cut you off a little bit earlier about Tinnitus. It sounds like something that’s not a big deal to people that aren’t experiencing a severe version of it. But you were going to talk about what impact that can have on people. Ms. Dressen: Yes. Tinnitus is just one example of these life-altering injuries that are not clots. You can’t see tinnitus on a test. But it’s life altering. If you could imagine when you’re laying your head down at night to go to sleep and the room’s quiet, or you might hear the fan moving or some sound from outside, imagine instead if you hear screaming in your head all the time. It doesn’t go away, and it doesn’t wane. It’s always there. So, instead of being met with peace at night and being able to unwind, you’re instead met with a screaming, loud screeching in your head. Your peace is robbed of you for the rest of your life. On top of that, there’s no one to answer for that. If people cannot rest, if they cannot find peace, if they cannot find a reprieve, if their families have turned their backs on them, if their peers have turned their backs on them, as well as the medical community, it puts that person in a very vulnerable situation. At React, we’ve been doing everything we can to save lives. Everything. But the sad reality is we haven’t been able to save everyone. And there’s some people that have made the ultimate choice to end their suffering. Tinnitus is a big one. I want to say probably 30, 35 percent of the people that do end their lives, it’s because of tinnitus. Mr. Jekielek: This subject, I know we’ve talked a bit offline about this, it’s not academic for you. Ms. Dressen: No, it’s not. No. This one is hard and it’s personal. It’s one of those things nobody wants to talk about. I definitely don’t like to talk about it, but it’s personal. I suffered with the suicidal intention for months. With the vaccine reaction it’s not like it’s fleeting. It’s not like it’s a moment in time where you’ve had a couple of bad days and then it’s over. When I was in that situation, I hadn’t slept for months. I had the raging tinnitus, the electrical sensations all over my body, which I still have to this day, every moment of every day. My brain fog was off the charts. I couldn’t eat. You could see every single rib in my body. I’d lost so much weight because I just couldn’t eat. I was one step away from having a feeding tube. They put me on marijuana. They did everything to try to get me to be able to keep weight on and to be able to consume food. I was not in a good place. I remember waking up every single day, and still to this day, I wake up every single morning to this electrical surging through my body. That’s what greets me every morning. It was hard to cope with that. It was hard to learn to live with that. There was not a time where I could rest. There was no joy for even a minute in my day. That went on for months to the point where it was like, “What’s the point?” And so, I wanted to be done, and I had a plan. I wrote goodbye letters to my kids. Sorry. I’ll never forgive myself for that, for almost destroying their lives. But at the time, I couldn’t think it through. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking about them. But I hid it. I was ashamed. I didn’t tell people about it. I overcame that issue and I learned to accept it, but it was really, really, hard. It’s still something that I work on all the time. Look, I have a choice every day when I wake up. I have a choice to accept that my body sucks and it hurts, and all these weird things are going on. And I can accept that. It doesn’t mean that I’m okay with it, but it means that I can accept it and say, “Yes, this is part of my life, but my kids need X, Y, Z, and the injured need A, B, C.” And if I’m trapped, and if all I’m doing is being miserable and suffering inside my head, I’m not doing any of them any good. I’m also not doing myself any good, because then there goes all my healing energy for myself. It took a long time to evolve from my life is wrecked, it sucks, to what it is now, where I need to fight, I need to stick with it. It doesn’t matter how bad this gets, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that my life means something and that I’m there for my kids. But I hid that. I hid that whole process because I was so embarrassed. It’s humiliating to think that you are brought to your knees to the point where you want nothing more than to just be dead. Nobody wants to admit that they were that vulnerable and that their life was that bad, because it’s seen as a weakness. But that’s not what it is. I had a friend, and this is when I realized that I couldn’t hide it anymore. I had a really good friend who was injured. She was a COVID long hauler for a long time. Then, she got vaccinated hoping that would fix the long haul, because that was the promise and the lie that it would fix long haul. Instead, it made her dramatically worse. We talked every day. And she ended up ending her life. Her husband called and told me that she was on life support. I’ll never forget that call, because I had just barely come out of that place in my own head. The last words she told me were, “You’re so strong.” When she said that, I was taken back and embarrassed, because I knew where I just was in my head. I knew where I was, just almost about ready to check out. I didn’t say anything to her. I just said, “Thank you.” But in reality, what I should have told her is just how bad it was. I should have told her the journey that I had just been on myself. I should have told her just how hard it was. Because then maybe that would’ve given her the reason to hang on. Maybe that would’ve given her a little bit of the understanding that, “Look, I’m not strong. I’m just like you. I’m just like anyone else. I’m just doing my best and yes, it sucks.” Mr. Jekielek: Thank you for sharing that here. I can’t help but think that in your case, you actually have a very supportive family. And despite that, it was so horrible. I just can hardly imagine what it would be like for people whose family members may not believe them, because they’ve been told safe and effective. No chance of this. It’s just in your head. Ms. Dressen: When it comes down to it, literally, that’s the only reason I’m alive is because my husband believed me and validated me, and he stood by me every step of the way. Had I not had that support, I would have been done, no question. There’s no question. My kids would not have had a mom. Their lives would be ruined, the whole thing. We would not be sitting here today. The vast majority of the people that do complete suicide in the COVID vaccine injury world, they do not have a supportive family. I think we’re at 27, or 28 now, and could be upwards of 30. There are only two that I know of that were from families that were supportive and watching them. The rest were people that their family members had walked away. There was a woman who was a medical professional with a beautiful family, and adult children. Her husband left her because of the burden, because she was trapped in her bed. She wasn’t getting better. And so, he left her, and he told the adult kids, “You guys are going to be stuck here caring for your mom until she dies, so you better get out.” So, the kids left. She went and found a way to do it that was sanctioned by the Canadian government. She went through with it and ended her life. I know that people see that as just a number, but that’s a real human being. That’s someone that deserved better, and that’s someone that deserved to have some dignity and some respect. She didn’t have any choice into what happened to her. Just like a cancer patient. Cancer patients gets their diagnosis, they’re sat down with their family members and their medical teams, and they say, “Okay, here’s a plan. Family, this is how you can support this person.” The opposite is happening here. You get a reaction, and boom, you’re done. There’s no help for you. The help that you do get, it’s going to be from random people you find on the internet that just happen to have the secrets from the NIH. Mr. Jekielek: I hope it’s okay, but I want to explore this because you mentioned this woman was in Canada where it has one of the most liberal medically assisted suicide regimes, and getting more liberal this year coming up. I’m aware of at least one instance where someone was vaccine injured and was offered MAID, as it’s called, as a solution. It’s hard for me to describe the series of thoughts I had when I learned about this. I don’t know if you have any thoughts. Ms. Dressen: Obviously, it’s wrong and it’s corrupt and it’s evil. And that’s one thing that COVID has done. Really what COVID has done is it has exposed evil. It’s brought evil to the surface wherever it’s been hiding, and this is one of those cases. You have real people that are dealing with a real disease and instead of addressing the issue, because the people responsible, the drug companies, they’re absolved from being obligated to fix the problems with their drug. Then, the cheapest way to take care of the issue is to dispose of the people, to erase them and erase their voices. The sad thing is we’ve seen this time and time again with the suicides is once you’re gone, there’s no one there that’s going to step in and be your voice. Once you’re gone that’s it. No one’s going to stand out with a flag with your name on it and wave it to try to bring justice for you. Because most of these people that do this, their families are not on board. If people want justice for themselves, they’ve got to bring justice for themselves alive. There’s no one that’s going to save them more than themselves. That’s one of the things that the injured can do for each other is to help each other get through that, to get through those moments and get through that place, because you can. I know that because I’ve done it myself. There are times in my day where I can have joy now. My body is not a nightmare all the time every day. I’m able to spend time with my kids. I was able to go to my son’s little school parade, and I hadn’t been able to do that for two years. And he wasn’t expecting me to go. And I tell you, he was the only 10-year-old kid in the entire school that cared that his mom was there. He just kept looking back at me like, “Oh, it’s you.” When he got home, he came straight up and gave me the biggest hug. And the rest of my day sucked. It hurt and it was miserable. But that moment right there made the whole day worth it. Mr. Jekielek: I might endeavor to add here that there’s a few other people around who appreciate your work and advocacy. Ms. Dressen: Hopefully. Well, powerful people aren’t too happy about it. The people that get involved with React 19, whether they’re injured or not—we hear it over and over and we have 65 volunteers at this point—they say the most gratifying work that they’ve ever done in their life has actually been through what they’ve been able to do through React 19. These are people that have worked in ICUs. They’ve worked with marginalized populations in the past. They come from all corners of the globe, all shapes and sizes and professions. They’ve been able to find true satisfaction in being able to heal a population and help support a population that nobody else is helping. That’s been the same for me as well. These people are amazing. The injured community are amazing people. Most of them didn’t get vaccinated to prove to somebody that what they were doing was right. They were doing it to help other people. They were doing it to help their communities, support their family members or whatever it may be. It wasn’t to say, “We’re right. The vaccines are great.” That’s not what people were doing. Now, in their injuries, they’re doing the same. They really just want to help people and they want to help each other. They still want to help especially by providing the truth, so people don’t get forced to have these vaccines, especially with incomplete and flawed information. I’m going to do everything I can to support these people. They need the support. Mr. Jekielek: A lot of new information has come out, including this recent FOIA information. It’s still hard for me to fathom there are 500-plus safety signals. For the benefit of our viewers, that simply means if myocarditis warrants investigation, there’s 500-plus other things that warrant serious investigation. That’s what that means to me. There’s a whole plethora of further information which has come out, including the V-safe data that Aaron Siri was able to get. We could go on and on. With React 19 and this advocacy for the vaccine injured, it feels like you’re in a very different place in the beginning of 2023 than the beginning of 2022 when we first met. What’s on the horizon? Ms. Dressen: We’ve got to get these people better, and we’ve got to get the truth out. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that investigations happen, and that people are held accountable, and that policies are changed. Our goals are to open care clinics across the country in 2023. We actually have a research grant program that just launched, and it’s a research match program. Any donation is matched up to $100,000 right now. The reason why that’s so important is because, as you know, the federal research dollars are not going to evaluate the COVID vaccine issues. They’re not. For that research to happen, it’s going to have to be independently funded. If it’s not independently funded, it’s not going to happen. And just like everything else, the data is where the truth lies. Until we generate the data to show exactly what’s going on with the COVID vaccines and what adverse events are happening, and then also as a result to see how we can reverse some of these issues, we’re not going to have the truth. To find the truth, it takes money. But then also we’re going to continue to build this injured community to involve those that are not just injured, but those that see the injuries and to see if we can figure out how to expand that to more of—as Joel Wallskog, my co-chair at React 19 says—the moldable middle. These are the people that if you’re with them in family functions or whatever, most people don’t talk about politics, they don’t talk about religion, and they don’t talk about vaccines. But the thing is with most people, they know someone that’s been injured. I don’t think people realize that if you’re not supporting someone that you know that’s injured, most likely nobody else is either. The goal is to help people take that initiative to provide that support to someone that is injured, and that is suffering. Because sometimes they just need a phone call. Other times they need a little bit more. They may need a meal brought in or someone to come sit with them or take them to the doctor. But we can’t do it alone. It’s just like with everything else that needs to happen as we reflect on the COVID tyranny, there’s a lot of justice that needs to come many people’s way. But the only way that justice is going to happen is if we band together. Separated, we’re going to fail. But together, we’re going to succeed. Mr. Jekielek: It’s really interesting that you’re saying that there’s almost anyone out there that could actually provide a helping hand to someone who is suffering from some kind of injury or even a perception of an injury, even some of these people that are injured themselves. And because of this huge multi-billion-dollar information campaign that we’ve all been subject to, they might themselves not realize their own series of symptoms. They don’t realize that the doctors won’t diagnose it, yet they could be helped. How do we deal with that? Ms. Dressen: People are going to need to rise to the challenge. This is one of those opportunities for people to really realize that there’s some people that have been left behind and look around and see who those people are. It starts with a phone call to just listen and see what they need. Mr. Jekielek: We don’t even need to say vaccine injury. Ms. Dressen: Right. Mr. Jekielek: We don’t need to say, “I think you have that.” There’s a lot of people out there that didn’t have some really unfortunate collection of symptoms. Ms. Dressen: Checking in with somebody, this is how it goes with any disease. You just check in with them. Because out of sight, out of mind is a real thing. The government and Big Tech have been able to capitalize on that concept. All you have to do is make sure that people don’t see it, they don’t think about it, and therefore public pressure cannot be applied to get government to do their job. All they have to do is just eliminate that part of the equation and then the problem doesn’t exist. But now what’s happened is there are everyday people that they need that support. Mr. Jekielek: How is it that myocarditis was acknowledged, there’s maybe two or three things? Ms. Dressen: Yes. The FDA proudly acknowledges myocarditis based on six cases. With our meetings with Peter Marks, the head of biologics at the FDA, he’s the one that gives the rubber stamp on the licenses for the COVID vaccines, they take great pride in that number. We found myocarditis based on six cases. Well, what about all of these other signals? And just like we’ve said before, we pounded down those doors to gain access to those officials that were responsible for disclosing reactions to the public. They said, “We’ve looked and looked and looked. We’ve really looked for adverse events and we just can’t find them.” Then come to find out, Zack Stieber was able to show and access the records that showed that that’s not true and that we were all lied to. In fact, they found 500 more safety signals that they should have disclosed to the public, not just a few. In those 500 signals, there’s all of the issues that COVID vaccine injuries reflect. You’ve got dysautonomia, POTS [Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome], tinnitus, paresthesia, and facial and trigeminal issues. Who would have thought that this could be such a debilitating issue to have these nerves destroyed, but they’re debilitating. The government has not been transparent. They have not disclosed any of this to the public. In reality, in doing so, it has hidden us. It has kept us from public view. The media repeatedly has told us that they can’t report on COVID vaccine injuries. We have this on record. If the corporate media is controlled by whoever is controlling them, and the government’s controlling the information and the flow of information, and the drug companies can control the flow of information because they’re a private entity, how are we going to win? We’re going to win by we the people stepping up and not accepting this situation that we’re in. We the people have to step forward and demand better from our elected officials, from the pharmaceutical companies and from the media. Until we generate a public outcry from the ground up, policy will not shift. The pressure will not be applied, and they will come back and without question will do the same thing to people again under the sake of emergency. They’ll just wait for the next emergency to appear. Mr. Jekielek: It sounds like you have a lot of work ahead of you. Ms. Dressen: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Brianne Dressen, it’s such a pleasure to have you on again. Ms. Dressen: Thanks for having me. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Brianne Dressen and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. AstraZeneca and NIH did not immediately respond to our requests for comment. - PRE-ORDER "The Shadow State" DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/the-shadow-state-dvd The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary BUY Jan 6 DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/dvd-the-real-story-of-january-6, Promo Code “Jan” for 20% off. - Follow American Thought Leaders on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeader Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeader Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleader Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeaders Gab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeader Telegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

Today, I sit down with Esther Krakue, a Ghanaian-born writer and broadcaster based in the UK, to discuss the cultural ills she sees gripping the developed Western world, from postmodernist ideology to bureaucratic COVID dogma and the breakdown of the family. “We have a crisis of the soul and of identity … Many Western countries don’t know what they are, what they stand for. They can’t even answer basic questions about what it means to be a man or woman or an upstanding citizen anymore. And so we’re just teetering along and just kind of rolling down the hill of ultimate destruction,” Krakue says. Interview trailer: Watch the full interview:https://www.theepochtimes.com/we-have-a-crisis-of-the-soul-and-of-identity-esther-krakue-how-postmodernist-ideology-has-blinded-the-west_4987394.html FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Esther Krakue, it’s such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Esther Krakue: Thank you so much for having me. Mr. Jekielek: I’m really looking forward to chatting. I was thinking of having a lighter American Thought Leaders episode for a moment, and I’ve really been enjoying all of your commentary. You grew up in a couple of very different cultures from American and Canadian, my native country, and from Polish, which is also part of my culture. What I really want to get is an external view on what’s happening in North America, and the West in general. And of course, you’re Ghanaian. Tell me about your arrival on the scene as a political and cultural commentator in the UK. Ms. Krakue: Okay. I originally moved to the UK when I was 14. It was primarily just for an education, and my parents made that very clear. I was studying in the UK, but then every Christmas and summer holiday I spent back home in Ghana. I was effectively spending three months to a year back home. I was strictly here for an education. And then, I finished school and I went to university. I did that, then started working. At university I studied politics in French, so I was always quite engaged politically. I did debate and I did MUN [Model United Nations] and all the usual stuff that students do. When I graduated from university, I was working a normal job that I really did not like, as with most people when they leave university. I got involved with a student grassroots organization called Turning Point UK, which is actually the UK version of Turning Point US, which is the much bigger franchise. Obviously, Turning Point UK is much more focused on British issues and spreading conservative values among the youth here, because clearly that’s not a very fashionable thing to do. I had my own show and I used to interview MPs and prominent figures within mainstream politics here in the UK. From there I took on a few more broadcasting gigs. I started writing a bit more. That’s how I found my voice and how most people know of me, through my activism and my work with Turning Point UK. Mr. Jekielek: The part that I find most interesting, I’ve been watching some of your interviews both that you’ve done and where you’ve been interviewed, is that UK culture is quite different from U.S. culture, and Ghanaian culture is quite different from UK culture. That gives you this outside view even in the conservative sphere that you’re talking about. So, what’s going on in the West? Ms. Krakue: An identity crisis. I had this conversation with my friends that I met because I actually realized that even as a conservative, I was a bit of a minority. I was a minority within a minority if that makes sense. So, a bit about my background, I grew up in a standard two-parent home. My parents are Christian, Ghanaian, very traditional, very orthodox in their thinking and their values. For me, what was the norm and what I thought was normal conservative values, actually in the West it very much depends on where the Overton window is. I would have conversations with people about the benefits of a two-parent home and social conservatism, and they would agree so far as it was within the context of the normality where they are. I noticed in the West, for instance, if you say something like, “You probably want a mother and father at home living together with their kids,” the first thing I hear is, “But what if the father is like this? But what if the mother is like this?” It’s all sorts of excuses that they make as if these outliers negate the rule, as if that’s not what we should be aiming for, because there is a mother that’s like this or a father that’s like that. I find it very weird. One of my observations about conservatism in the West is that it’s very flexible. There’s not a point that it’s aiming towards. It really has just become a countercultural movement. It has become the backstop to stop progressive overreach, as opposed to actually aiming towards something. Another thing I’ve noticed about conservatism in the West is there’s not really much of an emphasis or value on the wisdom of the past. In my language, in Akan, which is what we speak in Ghana, we have this concept called Sankofa, which literally translates as go back and get it. So, go to the past and get it. The whole concept behind that is looking to the past and seeing what people did right and got right back then and carrying that on, carrying on that tradition, because there’s no need to fix it if it’s not broken. And I feel like that’s not really a concept useful to western progressives, but certainly not to western conservatives either. We’re always trying to find a new and different way to shake up things which have actually always been the bedrock of Western societies. I mostly talk about it in terms of the family, education, and social cohesion. I feel more of a synergy and understanding with people that come from other parts of the world like this Indian subcontinent or African countries or even Latin American countries. There’s a greater synergy in our understanding of conservatism than in the West, which seems to kind of move with the wind. It effectively serves as a backstop to progressive overreach, which is fascinating and almost counterproductive. Mr. Jekielek: What’s really interesting is there is this assumption of progress, and that progress is just good, period. Ms. Krakue: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Even when saying this, it seems like that’s true. Is it true? Ms. Krakue: It depends on your definition of progress. How people orient themselves really differs. For them, progress means no barriers and no sense of shame. There’s so many examples I can draw on. I’ll give you an example; The Body Positivity Movement, which is probably the most mind numbingly annoying development of our time. They see it as progress that people are free to be who they are, which is fine, and free to have their bodies with no consequences. All bodies are valid and beautiful. Anything that counters that, anything that tries to impose standards or a sense of reality or just normality is effectively body shaming. For instance, there’s this activism around having really overweight, objectively unattractive models on the cover of magazines, because they’re valid and because they’re just as beautiful as women that actually decided to eat healthily and go to the gym and work out and retain a healthy, objectively attractive body. And to some people, that’s a form of progress, because you’ve eliminated all forms of shame and barriers to someone’s identity and behavior. But that’s not really progress. For people in other parts of the world, it’s having things work as they should and work properly. Not subverting the norms just for the sake of it just because people feel bad or because you want to eliminate all sorts of negative emotions. I think that’s completely counterproductive. Negative emotions and feelings have their place in a society. Mr. Jekielek: I can’t help but think about whether this particular movement, I haven’t thought much about it before, but is there some sort of reaction here to the supermodel standard where people actually don’t eat a lot and there’s a lot of anorexia and this kind of thing? I’ve known people who have been in, maybe not super modeling, but modeling. And these were the things that were expected of them. And then, this vision of beauty was the correct vision of beauty. Ms. Krakue: It’s gone from one extreme to the other. That brings up a very valid point. But again, it depends on which part of the world you’re talking about. It’s the whole very stick thin ideal of a beauty model for instance. To an extent, that’s almost a western phenomenon. And that’s not to say that women of healthy weight and healthy physiques are not desirable. But for instance, growing up as a kid, I was always mocked because I didn’t fit the ideal beauty standards by Ghanaian standards or by African standards. I wasn’t curvy, I was shaped like a tooth. I was just skinny and long. Even when puberty hit, you couldn’t tell. For our standard of beauty for instance, you didn’t really see thin models in Ghanaian adverts or anything like that. They were always curvy, they were always of a healthy weight. And you can see this sort of in other parts of the world that are not the West. In parts of the Middle East, a curvy physique, a healthy physique is more desirable. I understand your point, but I think that’s probably more exclusive to the West depending on the beauty standards in the West at the time. The wider conversation is the pendulum has swung so far from one extreme to the other. It’s because of the influence of, I suppose, postmodernist thinking and this idea of how liberating it is to remove all barriers and all forms of self-control. And again, that’s a very alien concept. In other parts of the world, that’s not really our definition of progress. Our definition of progress is seeing how things should work and aiming towards that and aiming towards that properly, not trying to reinvent this whole different form of thinking, and this thinking that’s a form of progress. It’s completely backwards. Mr. Jekielek: You’re making me think of the harm reduction approach to helping people who are addicted to heavy drugs like heroin or fentanyl. The approach we have, San Francisco is one of the notable cities, the idea is simply the one thing you can’t do is impose your will and take those drugs away from that person, because that would be imposing on their individual freedom. But what you can do is you can help them take the drug as much as they want, which ultimately ends up killing them. There’s been people like Michael Shellenberger who have looked into this extensively. The people that he’s interviewed have actually made it off the street, which is very rare because most people actually die eventually and kill themselves through the drugs. They’re alive because someone intervened, because someone imposed themselves on their freedom to be addicted. This is another example of this idea you’re talking about. Ms. Krakue: It’s quite a paradox. The paradox I’ve noticed that the West is in the grips of this concentration on rights. You have the rights to not have something taken away from you or to have any controls imposing you. But we never talk about the counter to that, which is responsibility. I’ve noticed especially from a lot of Left-leaning politicians, they always talk about it’s your human rights to have access to good housing, it’s your human right to have access to this and that, but there’s never any conversations about what your responsibilities are. Because if you have the right, for instance, to not have any controls imposed on you, then you should be ultimately very responsible for yourself. And by not behaving in a responsible manner, by being a heroin addict as an example that I will use, you’re actually negatively imposing on the healthcare system in your country. That actually has a lot of external effects, which is unfair to the wider public. That’s really the kind of the paradigm I’m seeing, more rights but no responsibilities. That’s because it’s part of a wider cultural problem or a societal problem really, where people just don’t understand their place. If you ask someone what does it mean to be a good upstanding citizen, what does it mean to be a man, for instance, which is why you’ve had the Rise of the Manosphere and certain public figures like Jordan Peterson for instance, what does it mean to be a woman, all of these things, the direction that the West in particular is moving to is it doesn’t mean anything, or it means what you want it to mean. And we’re trying to make it sort of this fluid thing. The French have this phrase, dans le fluide, just this floating whatever, because people don’t want to impose their views on things. But at the end of the day, you have to have a vision. You have to have a vision towards something, because that’s what everyone should be aiming towards. Most non-Western countries understand this very well and are far more rooted in reality. Meanwhile, in the West, it’s just about deconstructing things for the sake of it, and then to hell with all the social consequences that come as a result of that. Mr. Jekielek: Is this a consequence of success? Because I’ve tended to call it wokeism, this critical social justice, this collection of ideologies that function in the way that you just described. Is that a consequence of just being successful and then somehow losing that vision along the way and then exporting this to places like the UK? I’m actually quite curious how far it’s been exported to Ghana and other countries. Ms. Krakue: I do think there’s definitely that element of success. I’ll give you an example. A lot of the kids that I went to school with in Ghana, they ended up going to finishing secondary school in Ghana and then going to university in the U.S. What you notice is when they go back home to Ghana to work, you notice that among the urban elites that are highly educated either in Ghana or abroad, they have a very atomized view of life and the cultural norms have shifted. It’s very much “Me and what I want to do,” and it’s not very family-centered or it’s not really about a matter of survival. It’s about a matter of kind of individual personal satisfaction, almost hedonism if you’d like. But if the further inland you go, the further you go into the more rural areas, you notice that people tend to get married younger and stay together because there’s this need to actually survive together as a couple or to exist within a framework that has always worked, because you don’t have plenty, and you don’t really have the choice. Your ultimate aim at that point in time is to try and survive and to make enough money to make ends meet, because you don’t have the luxury of a foreign education that affords you a high paying job. That’s what I’ve noticed, the urban/rural divide in Ghana, but it’s certainly in the UK as well. I obviously noticed it on a larger scale in the UK, because whenever the U.S. sneezes, the UK catches a cold as we say. The trends in the U.S. and in the West in general tend to proliferate rather quickly amongst other western countries. So yes, prosperity is an aspect of it. People have just become wealthier. The kind of things that preoccupy their minds are not the same as when they’re trying to keep body and soul together. But I also think it’s a wider conversation about the decline of religion, the breakup of the family. There’s a God-shaped hole in society as we say. There’s so many things. We have a crisis of the soul and of identity. That’s why you notice figures like Andrew Tate have become such prolific figures because the question, “What does it mean to be…” is just this big gap. There’s a big we don’t know. And we’re not allowed to answer that question because there’s always pushback. What is a man? If you say what it means to be a man is to be honorable, to protect, to provide, to be masculine, to be stoic, to have a stiff upper lip, and to lead, you get so much pushback from these women that exactly want those kinds of men, but feel like they shouldn’t. And if you say, “What does it mean to be a woman?” It’s to be a wife and a mother and to aspire, to nurture and care, which women naturally fall into as a role better than men in general. But we can’t say these things because you’ll have the feminist pushing back saying, “But I don’t want to do this, that, and the other.” So, it really is an identity crisis at the heart of it. What we’ve been talking about are symptoms, rather than the actual core of the issue. Mr. Jekielek: Now what you have is the transgender folk and their allies calling a lot of women or feminists that don’t subscribe to that ideology “terfs,”this very pejorative term, and similarly pushing back against the idea that women-only spaces have a place in society for example. I know of at least one instance in Canada, in British Columbia, where a women’s shelter was defunded because they refused to allow transwomen, i.e., biological men, into a battered women’s shelter. Ms. Krakue: This is another thing that makes the West absolutely ridiculous. It really compromises the West’s moral high ground on virtually any issue, right? If you have a situation where you can’t even protect women, actual biological women because you are in the grips of this identity crisis and you are so obsessed with political correctness, then what right does the West or any Western country have to say, “Stop this war here or stop doing that, or you must expand the rights of this community in this particular region”? It’s something that many non-Westerners are really struggling to come to grips with, because it’s just sheer hypocrisy on the face of it. I don’t know if you heard about the Rotherham grooming gangs in the UK, but for the audience, it was a horrifying situation where thousands of white British girls were sexually abused and tortured and kidnapped just in a horrific situation by gangs of mainly South Asian men who were living in the UK who hadn’t properly assimilated with this country’s cultures or values who believed that white women, particularly white young women, were at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of humanity and human dignity. They targeted these young women that came from broken homes, raped them, abused them, tortured them, and kidnapped them. It was a horrific situation. What made it even worse was the fact that this went on for well over a decade. Whenever these girls tried to report their situation to the police, because the police were so scared of disrupting the social fabric by being accused of racism, they literally turned a blind eye. It’s one of the biggest shames of the UK, because if you speak to people, especially non-Westerners, the first thing they’ll say is, “Where are these girls’ fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins? Where are the men in these girls’ lives to defend them?” But that was the situation that these girls were left in. We let them down. And it really does bring a question, “What right does any Western country have to criticize other countries when we can’t even protect our vulnerable, because we’re so obsessed with identity politics and gender ideology and all of this nonsense?” I generally think it’s very sad. I don’t know how much better it’s going to get to be perfectly honest. But I do think that everything we’re seeing is literally the cause of a complete identity crisis. I don’t think it’s one thing to blame a particular group of people for instance or immigration or anything like that. It’s really because many Western countries don’t know who they are, and what they stand for. They can’t even answer basic questions about what it means to be a man or woman or an outstanding citizen anymore. And so we’re just teetering along and rolling down the hill of ultimate destruction. Mr. Jekielek: Britain is on the forefront of this trend where the police are being used to physically police speech that was found in social media that is deemed to be not politically correct or not according to ideology. People are actually being picked up for this. Can you tell me more about this? Give me an example. I know bits and pieces, but I know this is something that is obviously quite significant to you given everything you’re saying to me here. Ms. Krakue: It’s an embarrassing situation, because at the moment the UK is in the grips of various strikes from nursing strikes to rail strikes to mill worker strikes. We’re literally on the brink of a general strike. Crime rates particularly in major cities like London have gone through the roof. Police forces are arguably underfunded, but they’re also very poorly trained. Again, it’s something that we’ve seen the decline of over the last decade or so. You would think that if you can’t find a police officer to report a robbery to or the fact that police are really solving crimes at a very, very low rate, that they wouldn’t have the resources to arrest people for mean tweets that they put out. But from a lot of the reports that are coming out of the UK, they are people that have tweeted things. There was a lady up north, I think it was in Newcastle, that tweeted something critical about a lady who took her son to Thailand to effectively be castrated in the name of him being a transgender woman. She was visited by the police and accused of harassment and. There’s the Online Safety Bill that’s coming in which various MPs, particularly conservative MPs, are opposing because of elements that would effectively criminalize speech online. It’s wrapped up as this bill to try and protect children, but it’s really more far reaching than that. It’s very sad, but also unsurprising, because again, in the UK, even though Britain is the origin of British common law and a lot of the kind of jurisprudence traditions that we enjoy in many Western countries, unlike the U.S., we don’t have a First Amendment. We don’t have a right to free speech codified in the way that the U.S. does. So obviously, we are the first people to fall culprit to what most of us feared, which is the overreach of the state with the use of the police. And it’s a very scary time. But again, it’s all comes down to an identity crisis. We don’t know what we are, and we don’t know what we’re about. Because if we did know what we are, we would know that free speech is one of the cornerstones of any open democratic society. Why we would have threatened that at the risk of a few mean tweets while our police force is barely functioning is completely mind boggling. Mr. Jekielek: We’ve been given a window into this what’s sometimes described as a public-private partnership in the U.S., where U.S. intelligence agencies were cooperating with some of the biggest tech companies in the world, notably Twitter where we have the current window because of Elon Musk’s purchase to be releasing some of these files. Now the impact here is a whole bunch of people are realizing that there is this ability to shape public perception, not just censor, but to basically shape a vision of reality for a significant portion of people through using these incredibly powerful tools of control. I’m very curious. It certainly seems for the free speech people here in the U.S. and in Canada, this seems like a huge deal and not even clear how far reaching the impact will be here. But what about in the UK? What about if a place as far flung as Ghana, is this impactful in any way? Ms. Krakue: Here in the UK we found the Twitter revelations absolutely shocking, albeit unsurprising, the extent to which effectively government agencies colluded with these social media platforms to try and silence voices. It is staggering. It is absolutely staggering that just an email from an agency or some high-flying politician saying “This person needs to come off,” leads to them being suspended two weeks later, and all of us just think it’s a coincidence. It’s absolutely shocking. The issue of free speech in places like Ghana is different, because obviously Ghana and many African countries handle this differently. I think Ghana is one of the few beacons of free speech in Africa. Our freedom of the press index is one of the highest in the world, which is why I often say you probably don’t want to go into politics in Ghana, because people don’t hold back. But obviously in many parts of the developing world that’s not the case. In countries like China for instance, that’s certainly not the case. But in the UK, again and many parts of the EU, we haven’t taken this as seriously as we should because we don’t really see any other solutions. The EU legislation, it means that in terms of free speech content and the issue of free speech online, there’s been a universal acceptance that if various governments believe it’s for the safety of the public, then there’s not really a lot of pushback to censoring that kind of content. Meanwhile, the U.S. has a far more rigorous system as it should be, and we really should be following the Americans’ lead. If you can shape public perception and paint Russian misinformation as the boogeyman, we don’t really have that culture that the Americans do, and you’re pushing back on that. And it really is sad. But at the end of the day, thankfully we still have the internet. So even if they don’t allow certain information to proliferate here in the UK and various EU countries, we still have access to the internet. We can still see what’s going on. We still know that there are freedom fighters in the U.S. that will try and stay on top of things. And obviously, if the pendulum swings too far, it will obviously have to swing far back. That’s the kind of backlash that we’re seeing amongst many EU countries regarding COVID legislation and COVID policy, which again, makes me so angry. When the time comes, the pendulum will eventually swing back. Mr. Jekielek: I do want to touch on that as well. But before we go there, I do know that Ghana has an unusual president, that’s for sure. Also, compared to many African countries, it has a lot more free speech and a lot more freedoms in general. I don’t think most of us know very much about what’s going on in there. Maybe you can just give me a thumbnail view here. Ms. Krakue: Culturally, it’s certainly more outward looking than other countries. It has always had a tradition of relative political stability. It’s one of the only few countries that’s never had a civil war. Obviously, it’s a commonwealth, so it was a British colony and it was known as Gold Coast. Then, it achieved independence in 1957, and became Ghana. One of the things to recognize about Ghana is this juxtaposition between political openness to the extent that corruption doesn’t completely overshadow everything, and corruption, which is still a very big issue in Ghana like in many other countries, with this economic turbulence. You wouldn’t think from all the social media clips you’ve been seeing online of many people all over the world going to Ghana for Christmas, which has become a popular destination in Africa for Christmas, you wouldn’t think that the country had defaulted on its loans just a few weeks ago. Mainly because of the pandemic, but also the war in Ukraine, up to 80 per cent of African countries are at risk of defaulting on their loans. Many countries are at risk of starving, because of the blockades of Ukrainian wheat. The price of wheat in Egypt, which is actually the largest consumer of wheat, went up by 250 per cent. To put that into context, imagine a staple food in your country going up by 250 per cent in price in the span of a few months. It’s really quite a horrifying prospect. Somalia is technically already on the brink of what we call a famine. It’s interesting to compare what’s going on between Ghana and the West, but also the African subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa and the African continent in general with the rest of the world, both economically and politically, where trends are leaning and all of that. Also, it serves as an interesting playground for geopolitical analysis, because just a couple of months ago you had Sergei Lavrov of Russia trying to go to many African countries to make sure they didn’t side with the West over their condemnation of Ukraine, because he knows that he can leverage cheap Russian oil and gas to these countries that are struggling to get by. And you see the same as with India taking a relatively neutral stance on the war in Ukraine as they shore up their reserves of oil and gas. It’s useful for people to at least just keep up with news in other parts of the world, particularly if you’re interested in Ghana, but also in Africa and many parts of the developing world. The many things the Western countries do relate to other countries and other parts of the world, because it’s usually in tandem. It does inform a lot of what happens in our politics and how absurd sometimes Western politicians look to the rest of the world. Mr. Jekielek: I want to jump into COVID because you said something incredibly disturbing. You said that the result of COVID policy is that you have a whole slew of African countries that are basically in danger of defaulting on their loans, and have skyrocketing food prices. We saw this massive wealth transfer to the rich, the biggest in history. And then it turns out that people that were deeply in-the-know were already talking about this, Dr. Atlas, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the advocates of the Great Barrington Declaration, that the policies that created this reality, the lockdown policies, the shelter-in-place policies started in China and went to the U.S. It seemed to be in a coordinated fashion, a lot of the world just adopted this, resulted in an incredible increase in poverty. Ms. Krakue: This is why I tell people to keep up with global politics on the whole, because what happens in other parts of the world does have consequences. I know people like to harp on about climate change, for instance. They made the point that there will be an influx of poor people in rural areas who effectively kind of take care of farmlands and food production and agriculture moving towards urban areas, more developed areas, and one of the reasons is to escape the effects of climate change. For something like COVID lockdowns, I’ve seen very little evidence of its effectiveness, but I have seen a lot of evidence of the damage it’s reached. Not just because the oil and gas prices have increased because they’re readjusting to the normalizing demands following lockdowns, but just in terms of what it did to global production and how it left people at the bottom of the scale even that much worse off. Now I still try and send money back home to friends that are struggling, because the inflation rate is through the roof. They really don’t know how they’re going to get by. It’s not just about the West and about what you do. We’re living in an incredibly globalized world. We have global supply chains. These decisions, I really don’t think it was even fair for them to be left in the hands of such ideologically possessed, incompetent half-wits. This is all very much an incompetent, done in bad faith collective action by a bunch of elitists that didn’t really think of the wide reaching consequences. Look at what it did to children, especially children with developmental issues. I have young, young family members that are autistic. The lockdown period really broke my heart. Someone is as young as six years old and having to learn by computer 24/7, not having any sort of interaction with people of their own age. Young students in the UK, their GCC and A level results were completely upended, because they couldn’t actually sit for exams. They literally could only get in into university by the predicted grades of their teachers. It was a complete shambles and it really makes me angry thinking about it. But I just don’t think people realize the far-reaching consequences of this global restructuring or immigration. Mr. Jekielek: I read recently the way a society treats its children is a reflection of its character or a reflection of its true values. We knew very early on in the pandemic that there is negligible risk to children from this virus, unquestionably to healthy children. Negligible risk, and yet we did these terrible things that you described earlier. I’m very curious. In a society which is more traditional like Ghana for example, did they employ the same policies for this lockdown across the board, or was it different? Ms. Krakue: It’s funny you should mention that. I went home December 2020, which was the last time I went home. I was surprised no one was wearing a mask. I asked my dad, “The people on public transport, they’re walking around. What’s going on? Why aren’t people wearing a mask?” And he was like, “We don’t have government benefits here. We don’t have this idea that if you don’t work, someone’s going to give you money. You work or you die.” It really is that simple. It just made me think of many Western countries have been cushioned by this lie that if they don’t work, if they smash their economies into a brick wall, they’ll just be fine because they can just get government handouts and all of that. But that’s based on fake money. It’s based on money that isn’t there. In Ghana, people were like, “We just need to get on with life. We just need to get on with things.” And I think they were a bit less spooked. Mr. Jekielek: Esther, I’m just going to jump in because not only was that lie a lie, but also in these western societies you had the so-called laptop class that stayed at home and felt good about itself sheltering-in-place. There were a whole lot of people that had to be out there making society work in the hospitals and delivering things. Ms. Krakue: Construction workers, plumbers. Mr. Jekielek: 100 percent. So, that itself was an illusion, right? Ms. Krakue: Yes, exactly. That was one of the things that really, really did my head in. I used to work in construction, so trust me, I’m the advocate for the forgotten class as I like to call them. But yes, so I went home and I noticed no one was really wearing a mask. They just had this very much, “We just need to get on with it” sort of attitude. It was the fact that when news of the virus’s actual death rate or survival rate more of like 99 point something percent depending on your age stratification, people naturally behaved more sensibly. So you had kind of older people just saying, “Oh, I’m just not going to go out that much. Or if I do, I’ll still just mask up.” But the young, for instance, we said, “It’s not an option for us to not work and not to get on with things.” The attitude in general and just in terms of healthcare and our approach to our bodies is completely different. We have this idea of balance and having balanced healthy diet, trying to move around, trying to take care of your body and stuff like that. I found it so comical that the UK for instance where over 1/3 of adults are very overweight in this country, there was no real conversation about public health and the sustainability of having to fund a public health system where the population is unhealthy and is getting unhealthier, where it’s not the same thing in Ghana. There was more of an approach of, “Just try and eat right. Just have your veggies and drink your coconut water.” It was such a paradox to me because I just thought we were more in tune with basic realities of life than here in the West, or in the U.S. for instance where they were giving you a Krispy Kreme donut if you got the bloody vaccine, which again did my head in. The approach is just a completely different approach to life and to health and to priorities. Mr. Jekielek: The Twitter files that we were discussing a little earlier, one of the things they’ve exposed has been the influx of post-modernism as part of this woke ideology, plus our movement more and more into the virtual world, certainly the laptop class, people who spend incredible amounts of time using screens, that’s like me and you I think and many others. There’s much more of a propensity to start believing things which people that are forced to deal with reality by virtue of their job or their outlook just do very naturally. Like for example the truckers in Canada. One of the analyses was that this was one of the bifurcations in societies, virtual versus physical, people who are faced with the physical realities, which it sounds like in Ghana there’s a lot more of that going on, to people that somehow can get through life without noticing that someone’s delivering their food, and that they’re basically playing their part by not going outside and everything’s great. Ms. Krakue: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: And of course, many other things stem from this. Ms. Krakue: Yes, exactly. I called it the laptop elite. Because they just don’t understand. They don’t know. How many people, especially in Ghana, can just say they work from a laptop every single day and that’s their life, and they have access to internet and consistent electricity and constant access to water and all of that? These are still things we’re still getting right. But people here, particularly in London for instance, they didn’t bat an eye when they needed someone to fix their toilet. And the plumber that came in, he had his mask on and he had these wellies and all of that, but he still came and did the job. But in their head, they just don’t pay any mind to it, and they’re still advocating for longer lockdowns and more working from home. But the person who just came to fix your toilet isn’t working from home, is he? I found it incredibly frustrating. I found it incredibly naive. I felt like the people that were clearly in charge of the narrative were just not really mature enough to have a sensible conversation about what they’re doing to people’s lives with these measures and these lockdowns. It was very infuriating. Mr. Jekielek: I want to go back to your comments at the very beginning about family in general. Given you’re Ghanaian-British, what are your expectations from your family about what your life is supposed to be like, and how do you envision the role of the family in society? Ms. Krakue: I often say that a family is a small kingdom and I say a man’s house is his castle, and I genuinely believe it. Margaret Thatcher said, “There’s no such thing as society. There’s only people and their families, only individuals and their families,” which was a very controversial statement. But it’s true. The bedrock of any society is the family. When you break up the family, that’s when you notice that you have to rely more and more on the state. This concept of police your children before the police do is a perfect example of this. The role of family and my family in particular is to almost create kind of a barrier and a backstop against the worst impulses of man. There are so many ways that they do this; having communication, having companionship, and having that bond where blood is thicker than water. All of these things matter, but on a societal level, if I’m talking about man, woman, kids, grandparents, aunties, uncles, and all of that, it’s a community. It’s a small community. That community helps to keep each other in check because we all have our roles in that community that we play. It’s not just based on petty politics, it’s based on competence and identity and on progress and a solid vision towards something, a goal that’s aiming towards something very specific. If you have kids, you don’t want them to grow up and to always be living off of you and in your house. You want to raise your kids, yes, for the benefit and joy of having family and having an increase in your tribe and the joy of raising kids and producing productive members of society, but you also want them to grow up and have their own kids and be capable of having their own kids and be capable of having long, healthy, flourishing relationships and be capable of proliferating the values that you were taught and were passed on to you, that are good and healthy and giving them the ability to proliferate that onto their children and to their offspring. You notice that when a society doesn’t have that or when a society doesn’t prioritize that, this is when you have the need to increase the police, because you have all these young youth violence and gang culture and all of these things. The role of the family has really been undermined. You can see that even in the way, and this is where we move into the culture wars, in the way that intersexual dynamics has kind of proliferated as a topic of discussion online. You have all these kinds of manosphere guys and feminists talking about dating and things to expect from men and women. We’re not even having a conversation about what is a man, what is expected of you as a man, what is a woman, what has expected of you as a woman, what shouldn’t you do, what should you be aiming for, why should you tell young women to not sleep around and to aim towards a family and to running a home, and why should you tell men to aim towards provision and protection and being a leader and all of these things. For me, family is the bedrock of any society. Once you break that up or you remove any incentives or you muddy the vision for what they should be aiming towards, that’s when you unleash complete chaos. And that’s when a society becomes very unstable. Mr. Jekielek: You seem like a quite emancipated woman. Are your parents happy with how things have worked out for you? Are you fulfilling their expectations? Ms. Krakue: Yes, obviously the typical African parents are like, “When are you getting married?” which is a conversation that I suppose will eventually happen more and more frequently. But they understand that the values that they passed on to me are values that I still very much hold dear. I’m still very close to my family. I talk about my observation of the West from the perspective of someone who didn’t necessarily grow up here up until later on in life. But it’s also my experience seeing how sort of dating culture works and this one-night stand business. People have all sorts of interactions before they even put a label on what they’re doing. I think it’s very interesting. It’s also a clash of values because I notice a clash of values in the expectations that people should have for themselves and their relationships and how that actually plays out in real life. It’s very fascinating. That’s something I could have a different conversation about, but yes, my generation is very lost. Mr. Jekielek: Esther, it seems like a theme in our chat today is people being very lost, not just the young people. As we finish up here, I know you are a very, very upbeat, positive, kind of visionary person. How do you see us moving forward? Ms. Krakue: On the youth being lost and where do I see them regaining a soul, it very much comes down to changing the culture. And that happens slowly, right? Rome wasn’t built in a day. But I do have a lot of sympathy for younger people because I feel like they’re on the backend of generations of damage. So this isn’t just like today with the pronouns and the whole sort of gender ideology nonsense. It started in the ’60s and ’70s when you had phenomenon like “No-fault” divorce or effectively the destruction of the church and traditional family setups and very radical forms of feminism. I do feel sympathy for the current generation because they were raised by people that weren’t really rooted in the bedrock of a stable family unit and society at large. A big part of that is just changing the culture, changing the kind of content that we consume, but also making people feel comfortable with actually aspiring for traditional values in general and for a particular kind of lifestyle that may not be very popular amongst major cultural figures like rappers and sports personalities. On the larger front society wise, where do I see things going? I personally see an almost split. I feel like there’s going to be a divide between people that effectively move towards the established wisdom and have a more traditional minded approach towards their life and have traditional aims and all of that, and then people that really don’t, which I feel like is among our middle classes and the progressives that you see online. Conservatism now has become a bit of a counterculture, but it’s a counterculture that’s gaining steam. There are people that are going to assert their desire to live a particular kind of lifestyle, and then people that are going to continue to try and push progressive agenda. It also helps that many progressives don’t have children, so there are fewer of them to proliferate their toxic ideas. But overall, I do think there will be a split which is difficult. But you can find your own niche within a culture that helps people try, and makes people more comfortable to move towards it, as opposed to being a lone ranger and trying to move through the world with a certain set of ideas when everything is against you, if that makes sense. Mr. Jekielek: Yes. Esther, you’re certainly one of these young people that’s pushing towards a more traditional view. I have to say, I certainly have appreciated following your voice online and commentary. It’s such a pleasure to have had you on. Ms. Krakue: Thank you so much for having me. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Esther Krakue and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. - PRE-ORDER "The Shadow State" DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/the-shadow-state-dvd The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary BUY Jan 6 DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/dvd-the-real-story-of-january-6, Promo Code “Jan” for 20% off. - Follow American Thought Leaders on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeader Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeader Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleader Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeaders Gab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeader Telegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

In this episode, we sit down with Sebastian Gorka, host of America First, former strategist for President Donald Trump, and author of “The War for America’s Soul,” to discuss narratives surrounding the Russia-Ukraine War, the fog of disinformation, the Twitter Files, and the politicization of America’s intelligence agencies. “Sending unaccountable pallets of cash to any country is dumb. I don’t care whether it’s Afghanistan, Ukraine, or whether it’s Iraq. A, it’s not good geopolitics, and B, it smacks of corruption,” says Gorka. “[But] this argument I get from ‘conservatives,’ ‘well, Ukraine is so corrupt.’ Yeah, so is Washington, D.C. Should Chinese tanks be rolling up Constitution Avenue because we have a corrupt administration? Of course not. We are a country made up of people, not politicians.” Both neocons and neo-Buchananites have taken extreme positions on the Russia-Ukraine War, Gorka argues. “The sad thing is we don’t have these discussions even on the right—forget about left and right. We don’t have a slightly nuanced discussion about countries invading each other in Europe,” Gorka says. According to Gorka, the United States must bear part of the moral burden for what has unfolded in Ukraine. “We, the Americans, convinced post-communist Ukraine to give up all its nuclear weapons. To give them to who? To Moscow.” Interview trailer: Watch the full interview:https://www.theepochtimes.com/sebastian-gorka-on-russia-ukraine-war-narratives-political-prisoners-in-america-and-the-politicization-of-the-intel-community_4984918.html FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Sebastian Gorka, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Sebastian Gorka: Thank you, Jan. It’s been a while. It’s great to be back. Mr. Jekielek: It really has been too long. You’ve been frequenting a lot of these Twitter spaces. Mr. Gorka: It’s not good for my insomnia. Mr. Jekielek: It’s unbelievable the long hours that some people have put into this whole thing. Of course, part of the reason is you’ve been following these Twitter File releases exposing the weaponization of these agencies who manufacture and create perception. Mr. Gorka: Right. Mr. Jekielek: Aside from the censorship, there’s another other side. I want to talk about all this. Before we go there, though, something I don’t cover a lot is the Russia-Ukraine War. Part of the reason is this fog of information war that covers all of this, and it’s very hard to understand what’s going on. The propaganda is dominant all over the place. Why don’t we just start with this, and why don’t you tell me what is going on. Mr. Gorka: Yes. I would say propaganda, absolutely, but also rank ignorance and dogmatic ideology. Many moons ago before I joined the Trump Administration, I was a professor at the Marine Corps University. Someone called Steve Bannon heard me give a speech about Russia at a conference. Then, he called me to his office and said, “I’d like you to be the National Security Editor for Breitbart.” I didn’t need another job. I threw out a stupid number. Unfortunately, he said, “Yes.” So, I became the National Security Editor for Breitbart. One of the reasons I actually accepted his offer was because of the paucity of sophisticated, and I don’t even mean sophisticated, just slightly more than Neanderthal thinking when it comes to national security on the Right. For about 20 years now, if you’re a conservative and the issue of national security comes up, you have two options. You can either be in the Neocon camp, with the Wolf Blitzers of the world, the Doug Feiths of the world, and the Cheneys and say, “We’re going to invade other countries and turn them into democracies at the end of a gun barrel,” which is, of course, absurd. Or, you’re a neo-Buchananite, Tucker Carlson adherent, who says, “Forget the rest of the world. They can go to hell in a handbasket. It’s irrelevant to us.” My argument is, “It’s a little bit more complicated than that.” There is a whole panoply of options between telling everyone to go to hell, or invading those countries. I would like to see that level of slightly more sophisticated thinking when it comes to geopolitical issues. It is being reflected once again when it comes to Ukraine. There are either the insane people like Lindsey Graham who say, “Send them U.S. battle tanks and deploy everything possible. It’s the ultimate test of Western civilization.” There are others like Tucker Carlson who say, “This is irrelevant. You are funding a neo-Nazi regime that’s fully corrupt. We should not give a damn about Ukraine, and they can just go up in flames.” No. Absolutely wrong. This war, which is now past its 300th day, is very important to America. Why? Because former KGB colonels who are thugs and murderers invading any country, be they corrupt or not, is bad, especially a KGB colonel like Vladimir Putin, who for the last 20 years as president has been saying, “Not only Ukraine, but Poland and the Baltic States are illegitimate, fake nations that have no right to exist.” That’s not a good thing to even countenance, let alone allow to happen. On the flip side, sending tens of billions of dollars to Kiev with zero accountability in praxis is also not strategic. I’ve said this from the beginning, and I wrote this in Breitbart. I wrote a piece saying, right at the get-go after the invasion, “America should be involved, not with troops, not with massive military involvement, but to provide, or to help to provide Warsaw Pact-era equipment from those NATO nations that have it, like Poland and Hungary.” Remember the MIG deal that was on the table, and then shot down by the White House. That makes sense because Ukraine needs weapons it knows how to use. It doesn’t need Patriot missile batteries that nobody in Ukraine knows how to handle. Give them Soviet-era equipment so they can fight for themselves. Give them ammunition because they need ammunition, especially artillery ammunition. Then lastly, in terms of military involvement, let’s have zero real military involvement for the U.S. or NATO. Because we dominate the ISR domain, the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance domain, with our satellites, provide Kiev with those intelligence target sets that allow them to extract the most damage on the invading forces by targeting them effectively. That’s what we should have been doing 300 days ago. That’s what we should be doing today. But, the idea that we ignore it or we deploy the 82nd Airborne, neither of those is good geopolitics. Mr. Jekielek: Well… Mr. Gorka: The sad thing is we don’t have these discussions, even on the Right, forget about the Left and Right. We don’t have a slightly nuanced discussion about, “Yes, countries are invading each other in Europe, what does that mean for America?” Mr. Jekielek: You know, of course, I’m Polish. Mr. Gorka: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Most of my viewers know very well. One of the narratives that you hear is, “Supporting Ukraine, that’s a globalist position, and that this is what Russia is against.” What I say is, “ Poland is deeply committed to helping Ukraine, and Poland is definitely not a globalist country. Why?” Maybe the question we should ask is, “Why is Poland so committed to helping in this situation? Why is it worried about its border?” You suggested something a bit earlier. What is Russia’s history in the region? That’s also very important. Mr. Gorka: You know my story, as a child of those who suffered under communism. My father was an anti-communist after World War II, and was betrayed by Kim Philby, the British double agent, arrested, tortured, and at the age of 20, given a life sentence in a communist prison. He was liberated in the revolution of 1956. I bring a certain perspective to this as a Hungarian, or a descendant of a Hungarian family. Of course, the Poles are supporting Ukraine to the nth degree because they understand that they’re next. This isn’t necessarily the recreation of the Soviet Union. We know the Russian Federation today has a GDP equivalent to Italy. But let’s remember what Vladimir Putin said about the 20th century. He made the great quote, “The greatest geopolitical tragedy of the last century was the loss of the Soviet Union.” So, if it’s not the recreation of the Soviet Union, it’s the recreation of a quasi-imperial Russia. That’s the history of Russia. Whether it’s 21,000 Poles murdered in the Katyn Forest in World War II, whether it’s the children that were killed in Afghanistan by mines disguised as plastic toys, or whether it’s a maternity ward in Ukraine being shelled by the Russians today, this is the history of the Kremlin. It may no longer be a czarist regime, but it is an empire because this man acts as an emperor. I’m not surprised the Poles understand, because they’ve been the victims of history for centuries, whether it’s the Germans or the Russians. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s pick up some of the narratives that are out there. One of them is, “This is NATO aggression, pure and simple.” NATO picked up Poland and a whole bunch of other states right on the periphery of Russia. There must be some truth to that. Mr. Gorka: Did they pick them up? Let’s dismantle this. Let’s dissect this. This is where the moral equivalency argument comes back. This is Michael Moore and Chomsky saying, “The West is just the East. There’s no difference between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Everybody’s evil.” Garbage, garbage. It may have been the Warsaw Pact for friendship and cooperation, but what was it? These were satrapies. These were captive nations. Hungary did not have an option to join the Warsaw Pact in 1955, and neither did Poland. The Baltic States were swallowed up by Stalin in World War II. What is NATO? It’s a voluntary association. It’s like joining a club. You can apply for NATO membership, but any nation that applies must demonstrate to the North Atlantic Council, to the extant members, that they bring something of value to the collective defense of the club. They have to contribute to the collective defense. Since when is it our job to say, “Nations like Hungary or Poland should not have been allowed?” If they want to join, they get to join. That’s not the encirclement of the Russian Federation. Let’s be clear, the whole argument collapses like a house of cards when you say, “Sorry. We’re talking about Russia, a nation with 11 time zones and four-and-a-half thousand nuclear warheads. Is Lilliputian Lithuania joining NATO a threat to the 4,000 nuclear warheads of this nation with 11 time zones that span from Kaliningrad to the Chinese border? Again, it’s ignorance, a woeful ignorance of geopolitics. Then lastly, there’s a moral aspect. Of course, geopolitics should be something done with cold calculation, but America has always been that shining city on the hill. You know, we are the only nation in the world that is founded on the principle of individual liberty and freedom. No other nation has that. What did we say to Ukraine in the 1990s? Let’s remind everybody. With the Budapest memorandum that was signed by the U.S. government and vouchsafed by the British government, we, the Americans, convinced post-Communist Ukraine to give up all its nuclear weapons to give them to who? To Moscow. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ukraine was the second-largest nuclear nation in the world. It had more nukes than China. It was only second to the Soviet Union. Oh, no, sorry, the third after us. The Soviet Union, America, and Ukraine. We didn’t want them to have nukes. We wanted to control the club of nuclear forces. So, we said, “Give them to the Kremlin, give them back to Russia, and we will vouchsafe your security. We will protect Ukraine.” What did they do? The idiots believed us. They trusted us, a democratic administration. So, our reputation is on the line because we told them, “Don’t keep the nuclear weapons.” Here’s this tragic reality. There never would’ve been a Russian invasion if Ukraine still had those nuclear missiles. We told them to get rid of them, so we bear a moral burden, as well. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk about further narratives. Mr. Gorka: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: “America has lost its moral high ground.” Look at what has happened. We’re actually going to talk about this later in more detail. There’s a lot of questions about the goodwill of various key American intelligence agencies and law enforcement. “Isn’t all of this just part of this corruption that’s being unearthed?” This is what a lot of people are saying and are concerned with. This is also what the Kremlin is saying. Mr. Gorka: Of course, good information operations and good propaganda only works if it is based upon a kernel of truth. If it’s fully fabricated, then it’s easy to shoot down. But yes, we have a very serious problem in this country. For example, as the son of a political prisoner in a communist regime I never believed that I could sit here in America as an American citizen and say, “We have political prisoners.” We have political prisoners less than two miles from where we are sitting right now, Jan. People who were targeted by the FBI after January 6 and charged with misdemeanors like parading in Congress were kept incarcerated, often in solitary, for more than two years without an arraignment. Now, the U.S. Constitution is clear. Every American, Republican, or Democrat, or Independent, has the right to rapid justice. Two years behind bars before you see a judge is political persecution. So yes, we have a mighty problem today. We have this weaponization of the most powerful intelligence and law enforcement architecture in the world, whether it’s the FBI, the CIA, or DHS, if we look at the Twitter Files. For me, this is personal. The viewers of your show may not know this. Before I joined the administration, my wife and I ran a company. It was the only company that had an external contract with the FBI for counterterrorism training on ISIS and Al Qaeda. I would travel 10, 15,000 miles a month going from one FBI field office to another FBI field office. My specialty was Jihadi ideology, and lecturing FBI agents, intelligence analysts, and SOS support staff. I’ve lectured probably more than 6,000 FBI agents and analysts before I joined the White House. For me, every time I arrived at a new field office, the ASAC, the senior agent, would meet me, give me a nice challenge coin for that office, and a little pin for my lapel. I was proud to help the preeminent law enforcement agency in the world. If the FBI knocked on my door tonight, Jan, I would say, “Go to hell. Talk to my attorneys.” If they lose me, if they lose Sebastian Gorka, who worked in the White House, and who still has a top secret clearance, then we have trouble at the Hoover building. We now have the evidence. We have an FBI that deploys 20 armed agents in body armor to serve a warrant against a pro-life father of seven, who has had his misdemeanor assault charge, outside an abortion clinic, dropped months previously, but they raid his home as his children are screaming, “Don’t take our daddy away.” That’s fine in North Korea. That’s fine in Venezuela. It is not okay in America. Sadly, that’s what the FBI has become. Mr. Jekielek: This is the question that a lot of people have. You mentioned that these are some of the discussions that people are having on the Right. “Was Ukraine a place for laundering American money?” I think right now the tally is $110 billion put towards supporting Ukraine. It’s not clear what the oversight is. These are very real questions. Mr. Gorka: Yes, these are. Absolutely. I stand by what I wrote more than 300 days ago when the war started. “Sending unaccountable pallets of cash to any country is dumb. I don’t care whether it’s Afghanistan, the Ukraine, or whether it’s Iraq. A; it’s not good geopolitics, and B; it’s smacks of corruption.” I don’t want to make excuses for anyone. I think Zelensky is a great leader. I think his regime is very problematic. This is the same country where Hunter Biden received $83,000 from one of the biggest Ukrainian energy companies that was eminently corrupt for a no-show job in a sector he had no experience in. This is the country where Joe Biden extorted the government saying, “I’m going to hold back a billion dollars worth of trade credits if you don’t fire the chief prosecutor, who by the way, is investigating the company that gave my son $83,000 a month for a no-show job.” This isn’t Switzerland. This isn’t Vanuatu. This isn’t Belgium. This is a problematic country, but it is still a geopolitical country, which by the way, has also suffered greatly. People ask me, “What is the end state of this conflict?” I’ll tell you what the end state is. Ukraine will fight, not to the last man, Ukraine will fight to the last 12-year-old who can lift an AK-47, after the Holodomor in which Stalin killed upwards of six, seven million Ukrainians, and literally starved them to death. Ukraine is not going to negotiate a peace. They will fight forever. Ultimately, irrespective of the levels of corruption and how stupid, or corrupt, the Biden administration is, there’s one argument I like to make. If 1776 matters to you as an American, as a conservative, guess what? Ukraine is fighting their 1776 by getting rid of despotic influence and invading forces. Be they either red coats or the troops of the Russian Federation, there is an analogy here. And yes, they’re corrupt, but so is Washington. Washington DC under the current administration is a swamp that is putrid. Does that mean I’m fine with China invading? This is the argument I get from conservatives, “Well, Ukraine is so corrupt.” Yes, so is Washington DC. Should Chinese tanks be rolling up Constitution Avenue, because we have a corrupt administration? Of course not. We’re a country made up of people, not politicians. If Kiev is corrupt, okay, but there are tens of millions of people. There are children. There are refugees. There is a moral content, as well, which shouldn’t drive everything we do geopolitically. But it is also an aspect that should inform our response. But tens of billions of dollars with no accountability, no, that’s not so smart. Mr. Jekielek: There is another narrative, which also has truth to it. In the east of Ukraine, many of those people are primarily Russian speakers. In many cases, they’re Russian. In many cases they’re amenable to some kind of Russian rule. Why not just let those regions be taken, and call it a day? Mr. Gorka: On that issue, I will defer to somebody who actually has knowledge on the ground. One of my favorite international podcasts are two former men of the Left. The podcast is called TRIGGERnometry, and it’s co-hosted by Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin. Konstantin was born in the Soviet Union. He’s an ethnic Jew who has married a Ukrainian who visits Ukraine regularly. I had him on my show recently, America First, where he said even those members of his family who are Russian-speaking, ethnic Russians from the East, after the first three months of this invasion have totally turned on the Kremlin. They are for pro-Ukrainian sovereignty. Now, if that’s what I’m hearing from somebody who actually has family in the region, who’s been there since the war erupted, I tend to give that credence. The idea is that there are ethnic minorities and there are referendums being held. Yes. Referendums run by who? By the Kremlin. Are we seriously going to take at face value a referendum taken by Kremlin forces? Then lastly, we’ve had a taboo in Europe for 70 years, since the cessation of hostilities in 1945. We said, “Aggrandizement of a nation’s territory through the use of force is illegal.” You can’t just expand territory by invading it and taking it, which is what they did in Crimea, which is what they did in South Ossetia, which is what they did in Abkhazia, which is what they’ve done with the frozen conflict in Moldova. This is the SOP, standard operating procedure. It’s self determination, yes. But the use of force by a greater nation, militarily, to territorially expand, we were supposed to put that to bed after 1945. I don’t care what ethnicity certain individual groups are, taking them by force is never correct. Mr. Jekielek: It’s often framed as a U.S. proxy war. They’ll say during the Orange Revolution there was a pro-American government installed. There is definitely a significant American influence. Mr. Gorka: Absolutely. Mr. Jekielek: I don’t think anyone would doubt that. Mr. Gorka: Absolutely. I am aware of the idea that it was inorganic, that it was all engineered. Yes, there were problems with U.S. government involvement. Beyond that, there are problems with George Soros and the Orange Revolution kind of NGO activity. At the end of the day, I don’t think you can argue that Zelensky was put in place by external forces that were fully artificial. Again, even if the regime is corrupt, it doesn’t justify a nuclear power invading them. It doesn’t justify the shelling of maternity clinics. It doesn’t justify what we heard of in Mariupol where families were found in mass graves, tied together with wire, the father, the mother, the children, we’ve seen this all before. We’ve seen this all before. Whether it’s Katyn, or whether it’s Yekaterinburg and what happened to the czar’s family, this is what they do. Irrespective of the entanglements and involvements of others, none of it can ever be used to justify the acts of the Kremlin. Mr. Jekielek: Another common thing that I hear from people is, “It’s the threat of the biolabs.” Mr. Gorka: Right. The biolabs, which are built by who? It drives me insane that people don’t take a second to do just a little bit of homework. You don’t have to use Google, use another search engine of your choice. Why are there bioweapon labs in Ukraine? Because the Soviet Union built them. We may have helped maintain them, to do research on defense against bioweapons. They were a legacy of what? The Soviet Union. Is it wise to find out what the Soviet Union was doing? Let’s be clear. The Bioweapons Treaty of 1973 was brought between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Before the ink was dry on those signatures, the Soviet Union built a massive, illicit biological weapons empire. Read the autobiography of Ken Alibekov, who ran Biopreparat. Biopreparat was making anthrax, and was making biological weapons all through the ’70s and ’80s, with leaks and accidents. They were using the territory of other countries like Ukraine. Back in the 1990s, the U.S. had an idea, “Okay, if Ukraine is now an independent country, and if they have these legacy capacities, why don’t we find out what the Soviets were doing in these labs? Perhaps it will help us create defensive technologies against further attacks, because who knows what’s going to happen with the proliferation of these technologies? Are they going to end up in the hands of Al-Qaeda or other actors? Let’s just find out what they were doing.” Are we really positing that the United States was building biological weapons in Ukraine to deploy against Russia? This hearkens back to the propaganda of the Cold War. Remember, this is now unclassified. What were we told by a certain newspaper in India in the 1980s? “AIDS. Oh, that’s artificial. That was made at Fort Dietrich by the U.S. Army. That was a U.S. government bioweapon to be used against ethnic minorities in America.” That theory, that absurd conspiracy, still circulates today despite the fact it is now demonstrable that was planted in an Indian newspaper that was actually founded by the Kremlin in India as a propaganda tool. This is classic Russian disinformation. The fact that conservatives are picking it up and running with it, again, stop with the moral equivalency. Did a murderous regime invade another country and take its territory? Yes. Does that regime have 5,000 nuclear weapons? Yes. Have they done this before? Yes. Is it a threat to all decent nations? Absolutely. Should we be involved with boots on the ground? No. But, just like with the French, remember, the United States would not be a free nation today if it weren’t for other nations. We may have issues with the French, but if the French hadn’t got involved with their naval forces after 1776, this would still be a colony. There would be no United States. This land mass would be part of the Commonwealth of Great Britain. The French helped the founding fathers establish independence. Just like the French helped us, it is incumbent upon us to help those who are fighting for their freedom to win it for themselves, not to do it for them. The French didn’t fight for us, we did it for ourselves. Likewise, it’s up to the Ukrainians. Mr. Jekielek: I want to jump to talking about some of the things that were revealed through the Twitter Files. Before I go there, what has been described as United States imperialism, for example, the 20 years in Afghanistan seems to have not yielded much, aside from an incredible amount of spending, and frankly lives. Mr. Gorka: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: There is this sense that the U.S. turns out to not be this shining city on the hill that you and I want it to be, and need it to be, and maybe even is compared to other nations. That’s just the reality that a lot of people are facing through these disclosures. They may be asking themselves, “Hey, wait a second.” I’ll just use Russian disinformation as an example. Russian disinformation, as far as we can tell, has basically been a code word for Trump for the last however many years. When you say that, when you use those words, they almost lose their meaning. This is the reality we’re in right now. What do you think? Mr. Gorka: I would say to those who call us an empire, “Can you give me an example of an empire that uses force in other countries, and then voluntarily leaves and hands those countries over to nationals of that nation?” It’s a very strange empire, isn’t it? I understand that we can have fatigue with military adventurism in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, but who runs those countries now? Is it some kind of proconsul from America or is it an Afghan president? Is it an Iraqi president? I would never justify the neo-conservatism of the 1990s. The idea that you can create democracy at the end of a gun barrel is insane. Nations have to want a representative government. You can’t force a representative government on anybody. If they want to live in a tribal system with 36 different languages, let them do that. Let them fight amongst themselves. What did America do? It perceived a threat. It responded to a threat after 9/11 in Afghanistan and in Iraq. It made some fallacious statements about the connections between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. There were connections. But the idea that a Bathist, secular, Marxist regime would give weapons of mass destruction to a theocratic, Jihadi organization that hated Saddam as much as they hated us, again, is ignorant. It’s ignorant. A threat was perceived. A faulty threat analysis was used to justify the use of force in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the end of the day, when it didn’t work out, what did we do? Are we still there? Did we say, “This is the 51st and the 52nd state of the United States,” which is what Russia does, which is all the Soviet Union does, which is what real empires do, whether it’s the Roman Empire or the Persian Empire? No. We said, “Okay, guys. We’ve been here long enough. We’ve killed enough of Al-Qaeda. We’ve destroyed their training camps. We’ve tried to build civil society, with education for women, and stuff like that. It’s not going too well. Why don’t you choose your president, and we’re out of here?” They chose their own government. Empires don’t do that. So again, we need a little bit of sophistication when it comes to analysis that empires don’t invade other countries. Then, let the people of those countries choose their own governments. Mr. Jekielek: Just to be clear with Afghanistan, I don’t think the people chose the Taliban. Mr. Gorka: No, no, no. I’m talking about when they had their own president, like Karzai. No, I’m not talking about the disasters that happened with Biden’s removal. I’m talking about when we allowed them to elect their own president, Hamid Karzai. The same in Iraq. When that happens, empires don’t do that. Empires don’t allow you to have your own election. What happened with the Taliban, yes, sadly, was not an election. The routing of U.S. forces and the cost of 13 U.S. war fighters murdered in that terrorist bombing was appalling. I’m specifically talking in reference to what happened to the sovereignty of those nations after our military action. Mr. Jekielek: This is how we can segue into this part, talking about the realities of our agencies. What people would say is that the Afghani government couldn’t exist without the U.S. support. Effectively, it was a part of the U.S. empire. They would say that about any other scenario, of which there are more than one, that exists in that kind of a structure. This is looking at some of the activities of some of our agencies that are being unearthed with the Twitter Files, not just through Russiagate. Mr. Gorka: Right. Mr. Jekielek: You know? Mr. Gorka: Right. Mr. Jekielek: Then the same playbook seemingly applied to COVID, and subsequently other things. This does actually create very real questions for people. What I’m saying is, if there is this Russian and Chinese disinformation, it seems it’s a lot easier for them to do that now. Mr. Gorka: Oh, absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. Let’s look at what we’ve lived through in the last six years—Russian, Chinese, Iranian information operations. They just need to point at what’s happened in the last six years, and maybe embroidered to a minuscule extent. What has happened? I did a short list on my weekly show on Newsmax of what we, as Americans, have witnessed in six years. A man who was elected by 64 million Americans once, then received more votes than any other incumbent president in history, my former boss, President Trump, was accused of colluding with Russia, was accused of tax fraud, was accused of misogyny, was accused of being Islamophobe, was impeached, not once, was impeached twice after he left office, and was targeted by the Southern District of New York’s prosecutor for tax fraud. Then, he had his home, which is under 24-hour Secret Service protection, raided by armed agents of the FBI on some spurious classified document charge. By the way, for those who aren’t familiar with it, every president maintains the highest security clearance till they die. Jimmy Carter still has TS/SCI clearance. It’s weird, but he does. What is this idea that the president can’t have classified information, even after he leaves office, especially when he declares the documents related to the Russia collusion hoax are declassified? There’s only one person in the world who can declassify by fiat, and that is the President of the United States, which he did before he left office. So, if you just look at this string of events, and then the January 6 committee, and then the leaking of his IRS tax records, you can’t say the deep state is now a tinfoil hat conspiracy. It’s real. Now, God bless Elon Musk, thanks to what we’re seeing in the Twitter File drops. Beyond even the FBI, when the Department of Homeland Security is literally telling the biggest news platform- social media app to delete these accounts, and to delete these tweets, you don’t need a lot of propaganda to say America is in a state of rank corruption. Of course, the conspiracy theories will flourish in this environment. Don’t get me wrong, we have real problems that have to be looked at in this new Congress that a new Republican president has to get to the bottom of. But that still doesn’t mean that there is moral equivalency between us and a KGB murdering Kremlin, or theocratic murderers in Tehran, or a little rocket man in North Korea. That does not mean there are moral equivalencies between our regimes. That’s the important point. Mr. Jekielek: I cover the Chinese Communist Party, as you well know, on the show. We’ve talked about it extensively. Mr. Gorka: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: I cover the social credit system development. Mr. Gorka: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: “Hey, this is what we have in America.” What I usually say is, “Well, think of it this way. If we allow this course to continue, yes. That is where we’ll be, but we’re not there yet.” Mr. Gorka: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: What do you think about that? Mr. Gorka: Well, this is a real challenge for me. This is something I’ve been grappling with, especially as a child of those who lived under both fascism as children, and then communism. What is the word for what we are experiencing here in America? Here in America, it’s not the scenario of 1917, in St. Petersburg. It’s not 1948 in China, with the Kuomintang versus Mao. It’s not even North Korea with a cessation of hostilities, and then a DMZ. It’s very different. This is very much like the frog in the pot of boiling water. We don’t have Laogai. We don’t have gulags here, but we do have cancel culture. You say the wrong thing and you will be canceled, but not by the state. This is important. It’s more of a fascistic model. It’s more like Mussolini with the co-optation of the corporate estate—that Twitter, that Facebook, that Bank of America will acquiesce behind closed doors to the demands of the regime. Look at General Flynn, 32 years in uniform, director of Defense Intelligence, a combat veteran, American hero, his wife’s credit cards are canceled by her bank because she’s married to Mike Flynn. Now, that’s not George Orwell’s 1984. It’s some kind of composite. It’s some kind of hybrid where a private actor de-persons and deletes an individual for their political identity, not because they received the email from the White House, but because Mike Flynn’s wife deserves it. So, I don’t know. Maybe, together we can struggle to find out what the new taxonomy is, what the new label is. This is communism or fascism, by osmosis, by transmogrification. It’s not revolutionary. It’s not by use of overt military force. It’s by the co-optation of power voluntarily in the private sector, in the party, and in the government. Mr. Jekielek: And, held together by what? By ideology in part and I suppose by financial interests as well. Mr. Gorka: It’s a very good question. Ideology on behalf of the political actors who are overtly political, whether it’s the DNC, whether it’s the Biden administration, or whether it’s the embedded ideologues at places like DHS or the FBI. On the flip side for the private sector is fear. Why does Coca-Cola, why does IBM, why does Microsoft give money to BLM? I really don’t believe the CEOs of these companies are hardcore Marxists. It’s a protection racket. “We give you money, and you won’t come after us. You won’t accuse us of being misogynist members of the white patriarchy.” It’s fear on behalf of the corporations. “Here’s $5 million for BLM, for CRT training. Leave us alone.” So, it’s all of these things combined. Mr. Jekielek: And, it’s not universally applied. There’s millions upon millions, upon millions of people in this country that have no idea. They would listen to what you just said and say to themselves, “This man is crazy.” Mr. Gorka: “It’s not true.” Right. They say, “It’s not true.” Mr. Jekielek: We live in a free country, a land of great opportunity. Mr. Gorka: Right. Mr. Jekielek: I’ve had these opportunities. I’m an immigrant, and look what I’ve been able to accomplish. Mr. Gorka: Bootstraps. Mr. Jekielek: They’d actually be right, to some extent. Mr. Gorka: Until their daughter comes home from school and tells them, “A man was naked in the girls’ changing room, and he says he’s a girl.” You’re right, most people are normal. They’re not like you and me, Jan. They don’t eat, drink, and sleep politics. They’re sane. We are mired in this. We’re addicted to it, or what have you. We see what’s going on. If you’re an average American, what’s your biggest concern? Making the car payment at the end of the month and making sure your kids have got a new pair of shoes for the next semester at school, which is as it should be. I’m convinced of the fact that the transgender extremism, which is again actually a Neo-Marxist, Frankfurt School evolution of Left wing politics, is the denial of truth. If you read George Kennan’s, “The Long Telegram,” he said, “What is truth for the Soviet Union? It’s whatever the party deems to be useful as truth.” Again, these are all connected. Mr. Jekielek: Correct. Mr. Gorka: The transgender extremism saying, “Chromosomes don’t matter. A 14-year-old girl can have her breasts removed and become a boy. If you dare call her a girl, we will cancel you,” is going to be the red pilling of America. Tens of millions of people are going to say, “Excuse me?” Boston Children’s Hospital is doing hormone replacement therapy to transition young boys as young as 14. This is nuts. Mr. Jekielek: Here’s another one of these red pills. Millions of readers of The Epoch Times were people who realized one day after 2020 that the government had these powers of coercion telling you where you can go and what you can do, and then making sure what gets put in your body. Mr. Gorka: Right, and copied from China. Let’s be clear. If you look at Fauci, and if you look at the CDC, there was a template for what they were doing. They were saying, “China’s doing it right, locking down millions of people, closing businesses.” They willfully chose the CCP’s inhuman, dictatorial measures for response to a virus, which by the way, came from China, from that biodefense lab in Wuhan. I think you’re right. These two moments, these two damascene moments that will red pill tens of millions, are the transgender extremism that denies reality, and people saying, “Oh, my gosh. What happened in America? A nation built on freedom, rugged individualism, the pioneer spirit, they forced people to close their businesses down so they couldn’t feed their children.” God willing, that will be the moment, or will be the blue touch paper on the fireworks, that makes people wake up to say, “Yes. That Gorka guy, or that Jekielek guy, not too crazy.” And, subscribe to Epoch Times. God bless you guys for doing what you do. Seriously, you and your colleagues at Epoch, Kash and everybody else, you are the epicenter of helping to wake up millions. Mr. Jekielek: So, very, very much appreciated. At this point, we’re going to finish up here. The only route I know to help try to make things better is truth telling. Mr. Gorka: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: I don’t know other ways. I’m not a very political person as much as I feel like I’m forced to imbibe all this stuff. Mr. Gorka: They’ve made everything political. Can I be clear here? People who say, “I’m not political,” “Tough.” When they’re putting masks on your children in school, that’s a political reality. The Left made everything political. You have no choice. You can’t separate yourself from politics. This is a very important thing to understand, for the viewers. Mr. Jekielek: In this kind of a reality where many Americans are actually very much demoralized, have lost faith in their governing bodies. Thereby much more susceptible to this actual disinformation from foreign actors who are doing it in overdrive. I know this for a fact, because I see the China stuff coming out all the time. How do we face this? Mr. Gorka: Three things. Number one, recommit yourself to the truth. Only the truth matters. Which means number two, never ever censor yourself. This is one of the biggest things you can do. Whether it’s on Facebook, whether it’s the water cooler at work, whether it’s the local barbecue, if you find yourself with the urge to not say something because you think it might get you in trouble, but it’s the truth, you must say it even louder. You don’t have to get aggressive, but never ever censor yourself. I think it was Vaclav Havel who said, or Solzhenitsyn, “One truth told by one man can collapse a whole empire of lies.” That’s true. That’s true. Then lastly, whether you like it or not, you must get politically engaged. Everyone has a role to play, and most importantly, locally. Look, I worked in the White House. It’s cool to work in the White House. It’s cool to be a senator or congressman, but really those things don’t matter. Our founding fathers understood, de Tocqueville understood, politics is really local. It’s about community. My wife, Jan, detests politics, detests it to her marrow. But, when our local library, which has an $8 million budget started running drag queen story hours for children, she said, “What? On my tax dollars, not happening.” She ran for local office to stop the grooming of young children. If my wife, who detests politics, can stand up to the plate, I don’t care where you live. You can live in California, Massachusetts, I don’t care. You have a role to play. Get politically engaged. Don’t just listen to my radio show. Don’t just watch Jan’s show. Don’t just read Epoch Times. Use it as fuel to get engaged, because it is up to us. We can be the shining city on the hill again, but only if every single one of your viewers and The Epoch Times readers gets engaged. That’s the lesson of the 20th century. Mr. Jekielek: Seb Gorka, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show again. Mr. Gorka: Thank you, and happy New Year to all of your viewers and listeners. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Sebastian Gorka and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. - PRE-ORDER "The Shadow State" DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/the-shadow-state-dvd The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary BUY Jan 6 DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/dvd-the-real-story-of-january-6, Promo Code “Jan” for 20% off. - Follow American Thought Leaders on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeader Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeader Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleader Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeaders Gab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeader Telegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

“My search for black identity was something that I actually enjoyed, until I started noticing that there was a level of animosity that comes with it that’s being preached. It is a celebration of being black and also is a rejection of ‘white.’” Adam Coleman is the founder of WrongSpeak Publishing and author of “Black Victim to Black Victor: Identifying the Ideologies, Behavioral Patterns, and Cultural Norms that Encourage a Victimhood Complex.” “Human existence is filled with struggle. It’s just a matter of do you take that struggle and hold on to it as some sort of weapon to levy at the rest of society? Or do you use that struggle as a reason to overcome it?” says Coleman. Coleman believes the American public education system has failed its students and that a policy of school choice is the solution. He says that growing up without a father made it especially challenging for him to cultivate an identity, and that single parenthood is devastating to the black community. Coleman says that family planning is of utmost importance in order to improve society. “The home is the first government we should be worried about,” says Coleman. “The problem is that for a lot of people, it’s highly dysfunctional, and then they look elsewhere for the solution.” Interview trailer: Watch the full interview:https://www.theepochtimes.com/adam-coleman-overcoming-a-poisonous-society-of-victims-and-saviors_4972128.html FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Adam Coleman, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Adam Coleman: Thank you for having me. Mr. Jekielek: Adam, I’ve been reading your book, and I have to tell you, there are many, many places where I find myself thinking about some of my own childhood, although not in the exact same terms. This is a book that’s clearly not just for black Americans. I actually learned a lot here. Mr. Coleman: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Just tell me a little bit about the background of why you came up with this. Mr. Coleman: The book idea basically started after George Floyd. The concept of the book originally was just a way for me to talk about race, obviously, because it was during the 2020 riots and the discussion about race in America and what it’s like to be a black man in America as well. I just didn’t like the narratives that were coming out. Also, I didn’t like the narratives from people I generally agreed with, their approach to explaining things, and being completely dismissive about certain things. The book was a way for me to express myself in a time where I felt like I couldn’t express myself. I was just a regular guy working an IT job and I didn’t even feel like I could go on social media and talk about it in a way that I really wanted to talk about it, which is a way of compassion ultimately. There was obviously frustration for me, but the way the book turned out was very compassionate and understanding, but being critical as well. I wanted to start writing the book years prior, because I wanted to leave a legacy for my son. That was really important for me. Mr. Jekielek: It’s interesting that you focus on family, because it seems like family is really the bedrock of society. When you look at the various studies that have been done on families with a father and a mother in the household, basically kids tend to do really well. That’s across race, across social strata, across everything. This is the one thing that almost everybody agrees on, and you highlight this. Mr. Coleman: Yes. These are obvious statistics that I think a lot of people know. But often what happens is, especially from the political Right, they use numbers and stats, but there’s no human element to it. I wanted to use my story; growing up in a single parent home, what it was like to not be around my father, and how I felt inadequate as a man, because I didn’t grow up around a man. And then, I’m left to raise my son and teach him how to be what I wasn’t. All of that impacts so many people. Like you said, the book uses black Americans as a way to start the conversation, but we have so much more in common and it goes across race, and across cultures. Family is extremely important. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s talk a little bit about your upbringing. I’d love to hear more. Mr. Coleman: There are so many different places to start from, because my life has been all over the place. Before the age of 18, I lived in four states. We moved around a lot within those areas. I was homeless a couple times as a kid. One of the times we were staying with a family member, things weren’t working out, and we left. We were looking for a place to stay and going from hotel to hotel. At one point, a woman who was basically a stranger had a trailer with a room and she let us stay there for about a month or so, if I remember correctly. So, there were a lot of struggles and that was the first time we were homeless. The second time we were homeless, we ended up staying at a homeless shelter, and my mother was left to basically do it by herself and take care of us. I had my personal struggles as well as a kid that stemmed into my adulthood; depression, feeling inadequate, lacking self-esteem, just not fully believing in myself, and at times, taking that victim mentality along with me. I wondered how my life would have changed in a different direction if my father were there for me and what things did I actually miss out on. A lot of those answers came later in my life with my son, because I didn’t want to be my father. I started to tap into what felt natural, and saw how beneficial I was for my son, and saw how much more well-adjusted he is compared to how I was. Mr. Jekielek: Why did you have to seek shelter in the ways you did? Mr. Coleman: The first time was because my mother and I didn’t get along with my aunt, who later on passed away. We just simply didn’t get along with her. My mother was going to school for nursing, and she would rather figure something else out than leave her kids in that environment, and I don’t blame her. So, we were kind of left to our own devices. My father was always in a different state. My father was always married, just never to my mother. He paid child support and that was the extent of it. I would see him randomly throughout my life. I would get maybe one or two phone calls a year, if that. He was basically a stranger in my life, to be honest with you. Mr. Jekielek: Let me just read this quote you’re making me think of. You were talking about this victim mentality. You wrote, “Like many lost children,” and I wanted you to talk about what you mean by that, “I spent decades feeling sorry for myself and wearing victimhood for a societal warmth. Pity becomes the lost child’s currency, and we can never collect enough of it.” That struck me right in the heart. What do you mean here? Mr. Coleman: The concept of a lost child is related to me seeing the father as the purpose compass for the children, especially for boys. It’s incredibly important for men to have some sort of purpose. Without purpose, we’re lost. The father figure provides something a little bit different for their daughters as well, especially around relationships and things of that nature. But for young men, we become lost without a purpose. We become lost without direction, and we grab hold of anything that we can, feeling like we’re heading in that right area, but we’re just guessing, and we’re lost. We need some guidance from someone who actually knows, and that’s what our father is supposed to be. I barely graduated high school not because I’m stupid, but because I just didn’t know what I was doing. I struggled. I just struggled in almost every area of my life, and it just translated into my adulthood. I started pitying myself, because of all the failures and it looks like everybody else is doing much better than I am, and I’m wondering why is that the case. Mr. Jekielek: It’s very interesting. We’re getting into this concept of victim mentality. It’s surprising how easily someone could get into that mindset. In the book you cover that this is something that is being encouraged in our society, and that this creates huge problems for people. Mr. Coleman: Right. It is being encouraged. It shows itself in different ways, depending on what topic. Even in politics, it doesn’t matter which side you’re on, there’s a little bit of victim mentality that is being preached. If you’re on the Left, you’re being told that there’s a system of oppression and it’s stopping you from excelling. On the Right, they tell you that the government is suppressing you, and maybe in some cases they’re right. Actually, both sides are right to some degree, but I think it’s the exaggeration. Even if it’s true, what’s the solution? That’s part of the problem, because they don’t provide solutions. The purpose is to give you one, other than to put it onto somebody else, and that’s where the savior comes in. For the Right, Donald Trump is the savior of society. He’s going to help us, and they’re always going to be disappointed because he’s not. Nobody is, and that’s his whole point. On the Left, they say everybody is the savior of the poor and disenfranchised and we have to be allies with them. Well, your ally is not going to help you either. In many cases, your ally is just using you to prop themselves up to take credit for things that they shouldn’t take credit for. So, I just see a society of victims and saviors, and it’s this relationship that’s poisonous and generally benefits one side. Sometimes people with good intentions think that the savior approach is the right approach, and it isn’t. Mr. Jekielek: You say something pretty controversial, that if you’re a black American, you have already won. That’s absolutely not what we ever hear. Mr. Coleman: I say they’ve won in the greatest scheme of the world. Actually, the Americans are the 1 per cent of the world, to be honest with you. We have great opportunities here. Even for someone like myself, it was a struggle, but I feel like I found some success, and I think everybody has different measurements of success. For me, success is sustainability, not having to rely on someone giving me a helping hand or anything like that. That’s an achievable mark for most people and especially black Americans in this country. I do believe that if black Americans want to uplift themselves, they’re more than capable of doing so. Black Wall Street is a perfect example of economic success. Even during times of racist laws like Jim Crow, you had bus companies in the Jim Crow south that were the primary bus companies. You had black Americans who were being hired by other white Americans over everybody else to do skilled labor, and they were able to provide for their families. You had all different types of economic means that were happening for black Americans. They weren’t all living in shacks in the deep south. For a lot of them, they owned property. They were farmers in agriculture. There was a ton of different ways that they were showing progress and success, and many of them migrated to different parts of the country. Hence, you had a lot of black Americans who had moved to Chicago for certain industry, and Los Angeles and other parts of California for other types of industries. Brooklyn, New York is another example. There have been all different types of signs to show that when there are opportunities for black Americans to take advantage of, they’ve gone for it. They’ve picked up and traveled to different areas to take advantage of these things, and that shows to me that black Americans have a whole history of overcoming obstacles and looking for success elsewhere. Let’s say they’re right, that there is systemic oppression and all these things. But we should be able to do things despite that. Or let’s say that they’re right, there is systemic oppression. It doesn’t help if you have multiple children with multiple women and your family isn’t intact. If you look at the economics of things, and look at household income, 70 per cent of children are growing up in single parent homes, or I should say they’re being born in into single parent homes. Two incomes are better than one. There’s your math right there. I think that helps a lot for black Americans. There are so many different ways that we can actually improve by doing things on our own and taking control of what we can actually take control of. There’s a so much big picture, idealistic things that we’re being told to reach up for and grab a hold of. It’s just unrealistic when we can easily say that proper family planning is half of the solution to success in life. Anybody can do that. It doesn’t matter what your skin color is. To kind of go back to what you were originally saying, why are we the 1 per cent? We’re the 1 per cent because we have far more opportunities in America than just about any other country, including other western countries as well. And so, it’s just a matter of do you believe that you can achieve those things or not. Mr. Jekielek: Some people have much better opportunities. This is what’s always said, right? Some people are just offered everything. Everything is easy, and everything is offered on a silver platter. What do you mean everyone has this great 1 per cent opportunity? Mr. Coleman: Everybody has a struggle. Even wealthy people have a struggle. There are wealthy people who overdose on drugs because they have a struggle. Human existence is filled with struggle. It’s just a matter of do you take that struggle and hold onto it as some sort of weapon to levy at the rest of society, or do you use that struggle as a reason to overcome it? For me, all those things I was saying that I went through in my childhood, I used those things to look how far I’ve come, instead of saying look what was done to me. We need to preach more victorhood. If we’re talking about black Americans, historically speaking, look what we were able to overcome. Look at all the achievements that we were able to move past. That’s something that’s worth celebrating. It doesn’t mean that’s it. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t bad things, and there aren’t things that we should fight for. You’ll never have a perfect society. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t fight for those things. But to pretend that things are exactly the same, and nothing has ever changed, that’s what comes from a lot of the radical Left activists. They assimilate any sort of atrocity, any sort of bad outcome as being the same as what has happened long ago. There are dishonest people, and many times there are people who are just trying to take advantage. They’re trying to gain popularity, gain money, and they’re just dishonest actors who don’t care about other people. That’s one thing that became glaringly obvious during 2020. Even Black Lives Matter, the top-level organization wasn’t even supporting its own organization below, who were complaining about not receiving new funding to actually do some activism. I don’t like to use the word grift, but I find that there’s a lot of people who take advantage of moments and opportunities that arise, and they’re disingenuous, dishonest people. They actually really don’t care about people. The number one way you can tell that someone doesn’t care about them is they’re unwilling to tell the truth. When new information comes out, you levy that truth and still progress forward. What I find is that they ignore the truth, they dismiss it, they excuse other things, and they keep moving forward towards their objective—and their objective tends to be make more money. Mr. Jekielek: I remember you talking about succumbing to some kind of, “pro-black rhetoric.” Mr. Coleman: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Right? Mr. Coleman: I’m searching for myself and trying to figure out myself, I was not always growing up around black people, I was in mixed neighborhoods. I was the only black kid. I’ve been in a whole bunch of different areas. But you’re searching for identity, and there’s a plethora of people who want to help you to find your black identity. On its surface, it’s not a bad thing. I think finding identity can be fine. My search for black identity was something that I actually enjoyed until I started noticing that there is a level of animosity that comes with it that’s being preached. It is a celebration of being black and also a rejection of white or whiteness or things of that nature. This is years ago. I came across that racism is power plus privilege, and not just the hatred against someone else because of their race. I started coming across these different areas of pro-black in a loose way, because it’s hard to define. I started coming across those things and I started to believe it, the animosity part, but it was very short lived. I looked around me and said, “Wait a minute, I know this person and all these people who don’t look like me who’ve done tremendous things for my life, not because I was black, but because they just like me. And I’ve done the same for other people. My son is mixed-race. How does this jive with the reality of things? Are things that simple that it’s just this dichotomy of good versus evil, black versus white?” And it had just seemed oversimplified. When you start asking questions, typically you start realizing that it’s all manipulative. It’s a way to gain power for a lot of these people. There’s small segment of notable people and they thrive on that. They really do thrive on it. I don’t believe that they believe all the things that they’re saying, because they contradict themselves all the time. When it comes to certain ideologies, when they have a framework and they’re constantly contradictive, there’s a lot of hypocrisy that’s involved. You start saying, “This doesn’t make any sense for me.” Some people just keep going forward with it and just turn a blind eye, because they think that the bigger picture of being pro-black and all these things is much more beneficial. I decided to go my own way and just be myself. I have no shame about being black. I know who I am. I know where I’m from. There’s no hatred of self. These are all shaming tactics that people try to levy against you when you don’t conform. Being black can come in different ways, and it’s a shame that we try to tell people that there’s only one way to be. Mr. Jekielek: It’s interesting, I’ve been following you for a while, and I hadn’t fully put together that you view yourself as a black conservative, because you’re alluding to this as you’re speaking here. You have this piece recently, “I hate being in the black conservative box,” and what you were just saying made me think of that. One of the people that’s been most influential in my life over the last five years has been Thomas Sowell, who’s written so many books in such an incredibly helpful way for anybody to understand the world. I didn’t know about him until 5, 6, 7 years ago, if you can believe that, but that’s because he was in the box. That’s what I think. What are your thoughts here? Mr. Coleman: I agree with you. I don’t think it’s a conservative idea to say that boys should be with their fathers or that fathers should be in the home with both their children or that marriage is a good institution to raise a family. Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals, they all get married. When I advocate for these things, that’s my primary advocacy. I don’t see it as a conservative idea, but unfortunately that’s what it is. But to add on top of that, I have melanin in my skin, so now it’s a black conservative idea, because I must be always talking about the black family. Granted, I wrote a book called Black Victim to Black Victor, so at times I do talk about race when it’s necessary. But most of the time I try not to, because it’s a human issue and it’s an American issue. The United States is the number one single parenthood country in the world, and it’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem that’s affecting our society in different ways. Those things just get categorized into black conservative thought or black conservative this or that. Even when I meet other conservatives, black or white, they see I wrote a book and they say, “Thomas Sowell, or do you know this person? You must like Candace Owens.” I had one person who gave me a genuine compliment about my book after he read it, and he compared me to someone who wasn’t black. He compared me to a white author that he knew, and he said he really enjoyed the book. It’s not to say I want to be compared to white people. It’s just that I want to be compared to the best. I don’t take being compared to Thomas Sowell, if someone wants to compare it to Thomas Sowell, as an insult. I enjoy him, and I think he’s a really good author and really good thinker, but it’s when I’m not being compared to everybody. Thomas Sowell is one of the greats, regardless of skin color, not just because he’s black, and I think there’s that box that gets constructed for us. Also, it was a little bit of a complaint, because there are other conservatives who are black who are more known than I am who speak recklessly. They say things that I agree with in general, but I don’t like their approach. I don’t always think that they’re being genuine. But yet when they say it, I’m also in that box, so I must believe what they’re saying, because their voice always gets heard. My voice isn’t as big. My voice is always competing with theirs and their thoughts. Now, I have to defend myself against what they say because the box is small. I like to joke and say there’s only 10 of us. It’s a small box with a limited amount of people, and especially when it comes to people who are trying to speak out like myself, there’s not a lot of us. It always seems to be that we are having to measure ourselves against each other within this box. When I’m advocating for meritocracy, I can’t get meritocracy because I’m in that black conservative box. I can’t have my idea seen as just a good idea, not that is a good conservative idea or that is a good black conservative idea. It’s just a good idea. Does it make sense? There are a lot of boxes. I’m kind of complaining. There are a lot of boxes that exist in our society, and I even stated I don’t like any of these boxes. Things can show up in different ways and we don’t need all these boxes all the time. Sometimes it’s good to categorize things in generalities when it needs to be, but at times it really doesn’t. I would hate to think that my successes that have come in the past couple years have only been because I am black or that I’m a black conservative. I would hope that’s because I measure up against other people as well as black conservatives, that I have what it takes to write for the New York Post and other publications because I’m a good writer, not that I’m a good black writer or black conservative writer. Mr. Jekielek: Yes. these are boxes, and this one specifically. I can think of other boxes like the, “I’m virulently against Trump box,” for example. This was a huge one that was used to label and discredit and just dismiss a whole suite of people or ideas. It’s very convenient. I’ll go back to Thomas Sowell because I keep thinking about this. His idea was that you should look at incentive structures instead of goals, it’s just such a beautiful, sublime idea. The moment you grasp it, you view the world differently. This is one of the things I learned. What a beautiful idea. Why couldn’t I have gotten that idea as a kid, because of this beautiful realm of thought? No, it was put in a box, and it was isolated. That’s how I see it. I feel like we have to break through these boxes. Mr. Coleman: Absolutely. Twitter spaces has been a profound place to have conversations with people and have people come in and listen to what you have to say. I’ve had tough conversations with people who would be within my box, and we just don’t agree on certain things and other things we do. There’s been plenty of times that I’ve learned a lot from other people that I thought that I knew the answer and they gave a different perspective and it made me question myself. The Twitter files show the suppression of voices and all the censorship. I just imagine how much information was withheld, along with many very intelligent people. Even if they’re people I don’t necessarily agree with, they gave a different voice to it, a different narrative. We shouldn’t be afraid to hear a different voice. If they’re so wrong, then we should be able to use that information and challenge what we believe and then we can discard the bad information. But if we only get one viewpoint or one side or however you want to say it, how do we actually grow? For example, I am wholly pro-life, and I don’t think it’ll be right for me to ban pro-choice discussion or advocating for abortions if I had that power, because if I lose that power then they can come after me. Mostly why I’m free speech is because there’s a lot of power in speech and there’s even more power in controlling speech. To level the playing field, we all get to talk. Just because Jack Dorsey leaves and Elon eventually comes in doesn’t mean that we should now favor a different side and start banning them and get revenge. Mr. Jekielek: I keep hearing Bob Woodson speaking in my ear, “When white people were at their worst, black people were at their best.” It was such a powerful line. I’ve never forgotten it. But this speaks to what you were talking about, about Black Wall Street during Jim Crow and some of these realities. I just think that this is something not enough people know. I certainly didn’t prior to learning this from Bob, but it also speaks to some of this potential that you’re talking about that is unrealized. Mr. Coleman: Right. Mr. Jekielek: Yes. Mr. Coleman: Yes, absolutely. There are no guarantees when it comes to anything. This is why school choice is incredibly important to me as well. If you’re in that much of a bad situation educationally for your children, you should have the opportunity to go elsewhere. We have choice in just about everything else in life, but for many people, they don’t have the choice to go to a different school. The people who do have the choice to go to a different school, they have the economic means to do it. Why should your education be wholly dependent on your economics? The whole point of the public school system was to give a proper education no matter what economic status you’re in. That is a failure of the educational system. How can you have progress if kids aren’t being educated properly? We live in very specific areas. 60 per cent of Black Americans live in 10 states, and you can name those states based on the cities. We can go through the list of those cities and how well are those cities actually doing. They like to say they’re not getting enough money. That’s actually not true for most of them. Detroit, for example, gets more money per pupil than any other city within the state. It’s not a financial problem as far as receiving money. It’s a corruption issue, and you can’t blame this on race, because with the entire city, the people in power at every level are all black. What does that actually mean then? They’re corrupt. There’s just so much corruption that’s happening. The children who are able to get some sort of education, they’re getting educated through school choice. They’re getting educated through bussing into other areas, because that’s how bad things are. Mr. Jekielek: This is potentially ideological as well, “We’re going to use this specific method of education.” I’ve been hearing a lot about this as well. Mr. Coleman: Yes. That’s definitely part of it, for sure. There’s the teacher’s union. There is that aspect to it. There’s just so much bureaucracy at play, and all it does is hurt the kids in the end. They leave school, and can’t read. Even though they have a high school diploma, they’re not prepared to go to college. I might be butchering this, but I remember hearing a report talking about historically black colleges, how they have to catch kids up in order to be at a certain level when they come into college. That’s because they’re being undereducated in the areas that they’re growing up in. Like I’m saying, kids graduate from high school all the time, and they can’t read. It happens all the time in this country, and much of the problems will only be exacerbated by the government. What I’m trying to tell people is that they can change things themselves. If they need government, they need to look at local government more, and less at the federal level. I don’t think it’s just black Americans or black community that this is happening to. It’s happening all over the country where they turn on CNN for solutions, rather than going to their local boards, rather than going to their school board to figure out how we can improve things in our school or city council meetings. They’re turning on the television to find out who to vote for for the Senate. That guy’s not going to fix your problem locally, and locally is how you address a lot of the issues that are going on. I think there is power when it comes to resolving issues. There’s power in acknowledging your issues too. If I’m the one who caused the problem, that means I’m the one who can fix it. Why not grab a hold of that? Everything for me starts at home with the family planning aspect. I didn’t follow these things when I was younger. I had my son out of wedlock, and so I’m in a constant struggle to catch up, and to always be on top of my son. I’ll never be on top of my son because he doesn’t live with me. No matter how much I care, it’s always going to be be a difficult situation to be in. What I’m advocating for people is to not put yourself in that situation. There are lots of good men out there who care about their children, but maybe they’re approaching family in a different way, and the same thing with women. They’re approaching family in a different way. They’re not planning properly. They’re going off of their feelings, and oops, we have a kid now. But I really wish people would look at the person they’re about to have sex with as the person who could potentially be the mother or the father of their children, and that would change how they view their relationships moving forward. The problem is that we don’t. It becomes all about us and all about the parent, and how we feel. We can change those things. We can change our mindset. We can change our approach, and we can do all that without the government. The home is the first government we should be worried about. The problem is that for a lot of people it’s highly dysfunctional, and then they look elsewhere for the solution. Mr. Jekielek: You talk about the hypersexualization of women in the black community. It’s almost like, are you even allowed to talk about that, I’m kind of asking myself. Explain to me what that is, what do you mean is happening there. You also talk about women in the black community almost looking at men as enemies. The juxtaposition of this seems like a very difficult set of hurdles to overcome. Mr. Coleman: Yes, it’s very complicated. Obviously, when I’m saying these things, I’m saying it in general, and not necessarily for every black woman or anything like that, but it exists. It is a mindset that looks at men as optional and sees them basically as ways to get pleasure and ways to procreate. Anything after that is a bonus, and if he doesn’t fulfill those things, they can discard him. It’s a very misandric way of approaching things. The reality is that most black people date black people. They procreate with black people. Interracial relationships are actually relatively rare. That means that from a black male perspective, we have to date a lot of women who don’t like us. It sounds strange to say that, but they don’t actually like us. They might need us for something in particular, but do they actually like us? Do they actually love us? For a lot of black men, they pedestalize women. They pedestalize women in a sexual way as well, where it’s an achievement to have sex with as many as you can. They don’t actually appreciate what women have to offer besides that. It’s a weird dynamic of putting women up top, but it’s only up top for a moment and then they move on to the next. It’s that kind of cycle that happens in between, and it’s actually a culture of acceptability that lets this exists. “I don’t need a man. I could do it all by myself. Men are trash.” It’s a celebration of singlehood, a celebration of women first. “We’re smarter and better,” this whole thing, and then disparaging men along the way. In general, that’s my issue when it comes to modern feminism. It’s female empowerment by means of discarding men or slandering men, and I don’t think that’s real empowerment. That exists a lot within the black community in general because it’s promoted, and it’s perfectly fine. What makes it worse is that we’re not allowed to shame it, and that’s the component of kind of like regulating what’s actually going on. And so, if we can’t shame it when things are wrong, we could barely even talk about it. We’re over here, I don’t even know if I can talk about this. We can’t even really talk about it and discuss it, like, “Hey, does it seem right that we say men are trash? Does it seem right that in public we’re talking so negatively about men?” Not even in a critical way, of course, you can criticize anybody, but in a way where you dismiss them. Are we helping things? We’re not allowed to ask these questions without repercussions. Because then it becomes, “If I’m completely honest with you, I am black and you’re white and I’m not allowed to talk about these things outside the group.” It’s a form of an ideology that has infected the culture. Mr. Jekielek: You’re just reminding me of something else you wrote. You said that a kind of Marxist ideology has created a frontline offense right within the home, if I recall. Tell me, how does this fit in to what you’re talking about? Mr. Coleman: It’s interesting when we talk about the destruction of family, it’s a harsh term to use, but the destruction of the black family. They always talk about the Moynihan Report in the 1960s, the welfare programs. But for me, I like to talk about the aspect of feminism and the popularity of it. Because around that time, you have the women’s movement. Women want to enter the workforce, things of that nature. To me, it just feels like this clash of the two things, the welfare programs versus how do you excel. It’s like a weird kind of dynamic with more black women who are entering college, and the feminist ideology becoming more and more normalized. And for me, the feminism aspect became the rationality for single parenthood, because if she’s a single mother raising two kids by herself, she’s strong and independent. No one asks the question, “How did she end up this way?” I use my mother as an example because I love my mother and you criticize people you love. My mother’s a single mother with two kids, not because the man left her to suffer or anything of that nature. My mother never wanted to get married, and she had two kids with a married man. That’s the reality of the situation, and that happens far more often than people think. Am I only allowed to say, “Deadbeat father,” or am I allowed to ask questions of my own mother who I love to ask, “Why would you bring us up in that situation? Why would you do that?” The concepts of feminism prevent us from asking these questions because then it’s misogyny. She can do whatever she wants with her body. She can have as many children as she wants. She can have as many abortions as she wants. She can do whatever she wants. That’s the part of the feminism that exists within the black communities. You’re not allowed to criticize black women, even if it’s coming from a place of love and care. Let’s say from a dating aspect, if you’re a black man and you’re dating a black woman, you say, “Hey, I like it when you do this, or I don’t like it when you do this.” If the response is, “Don’t tell me what to do,” then how do we progress forward from here? Mr. Jekielek: I can tell you love your mother and you respect her decisions, and at the same time, you don’t necessarily have to agree with them. This is a completely acceptable package to have. You have a element, again, and I’m going to go back to the book, talking about forgiveness. You have this great MLK quote about forgiveness in the book, but you make a point of explaining that it’s forgiveness and accountability. This is something I’ve been thinking about lately a lot, because everything that we’ve gone through in our society, even the last few years with COVID, we’re going to need a lot of forgiveness to get through it. And at the same time, we’re going to need a lot of accountability too. You need both, and they’re not actually mutually exclusive, but some people think they are, and you address this in the book. Mr. Coleman: You’re absolutely right. It actually reminds me of that article that went out, I forget the publication, that was talking about amnesty. Mr. Jekielek: Yes, The Atlantic. Mr. Coleman: Oh, was it The Atlantic. Yes, of course, it was The Atlantic. But they were talking about amnesty, and I understand where they were coming from. But at the same time, it made my blood boil, because I know of all the things that the pandemic affected for me personally, for the people I care about, and for many more people in even worse ways. When you advocate for amnesty or forgiveness and there’s no accountability, to me that’s just a shortcut so you don’t feel guilty. To me that’s an insult. That’s like your get out of jail free card. That’s how you anger a lot of people. And for sure, that angered me. I even wrote an article about it. You get no amnesty. These are the same people who advocated for my father-in-law to get the booster a second time and he died two weeks later. I’m supposed to just forgive them and move on, and they never apologized for it. Not even saying, “Hey, we were wrong about this.” Or even worse, they might say, “Hey, we were wrong about this, but we were all wrong. Weren’t we all just wrong about this?” No, we weren’t. A good amount of people were saying, “Hey, we should ask some questions about these things. How does this make sense?” When my wife is forced to get a shot because of her employer or she loses her job and she didn’t want to get it, I have a problem with that. That affects me. When I’m sitting in my job and waiting for OSHA, the OSHA decision to come down from the Supreme Court, that affects me, right? That was stressful because if they did accept it, what about all the aggravation I would have to go through for no reason. Mr. Jekielek: You offer a number of prescriptions. Mr. Coleman: Yes, there’s a bunch of solution chapters at the end of my book, because I didn’t want it to be a book of just complaining and moving on. I wanted to offer some sort of idea of what we can do. Proper family planning, that’s part of it. But the other thing for a general good strategy moving forward is just finding commonality with people. In the book, I talk about a white, 70-year-old man who’s a veteran. On the surface, we have nothing in common. But when I started talking to him, we share a similar type of trauma as kids. He doesn’t even know who his father is. My father neglected us. He was lost as well, traveled from different countries, entered the military because he had no idea what to do with himself. He was that lost boy. Main difference between us is that he self-medicated with drinking, and he wasn’t as good of a father as he wanted to be. We found commonality between us and we would discuss these things. I actually advocated for him to try to reconnect with his children, because he had given up. He said they hate him, and some of them don’t want to talk to him. The last time I spoke with him, he was able to reconnect with one of his kids and he’s trying. Unfortunately, he’s dealing with cancer right now as well. That friendship meant a lot to me. I met him on the internet, and by coincidence, I was able to meet him in person as well. That was a cool day. But I have a deep connection with him, because he’s one of the rare people in my life that believed in me. This is before my book even came out. I would share excerpts from the book with him and he says, “This book is going to be a game-changer.” That was very hard to come by. There’s very few people in my life that I felt truly believe in me. My wife is one of those people. He’s one of people as well. But if I didn’t look for commonality with him, I wouldn’t have had that relationship with him and that support from him. Spending nine months writing a book, you need all the motivation you can get, especially when you’ve never done it before. He’s one of the people that I really thank for it. But because we’re a different age range and look different and come from different places, that’s supposed to be the thing that stops us, when it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re on the Right, find commonality somewhere with someone on the Left, because they’re not all evil. Some of them you might not agree with certain things, but maybe they’re just good people and they just have different value sets than you. It doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing. It’s just different. We’re all human. We all have issues. We all have a story. We all have a struggle. We have to lose our ego when it comes to that. There’s too much ego in believing that me being black, I am the only one who’s had some sort of struggle and issues. Everybody has a struggle and issues. It just looks different. That’s all. Mr. Jekielek: As we finish, you’re not just the author of a book, you’ve got a Substack, and you write prolifically for various publications. Wrong Speak is your trade name, I believe. Just let me know what people will find and where they can find it. Mr. Coleman: Yes, definitely they can find me on Twitter. I’m very active on there, @wrong_speak, but I also have Wrong Speak Publishing where we’re advocating for free speech, what I like to call free speech with intellectual thought, and just getting people who are just regular people to speak freely. We respect anonymity, but we’re encouraging them to use their name and their face. I’ve been able to successfully convert some people over to that side and be, I don’t even want to say be brave, but just not be scared and put themselves out there. Definitely, the people can follow me and what I’m trying to do with Wrong Speak, the blog. We’re also trying to go more into the book publishing. I’m working on a book for a first-time author to help him grow as well. So, I’m all over the place and I’m constantly busy in a great way. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you for this. Adam Coleman, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Mr. Coleman: My pleasure. Thank you so much. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Adam Coleman and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. Again, his book is Black Victim to Black Victor. - PRE-ORDER "The Shadow State" DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/the-shadow-state-dvd The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary BUY Jan 6 DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/dvd-the-real-story-of-january-6, Promo Code “Jan” for 20% off. - Follow American Thought Leaders on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeader Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeader Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleader Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeaders Gab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeader Telegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

Is Omicron the COVID-19 variant spreading in China? Or is it something else? And what does the explosion of the virus—and the associated real death toll in China—mean for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the author of China’s draconian “zero-COVID” policies? We sit down again with China analyst Gordon Chang to discuss the complicated realities the Chinese regime is facing. “I don’t know what’s going on in Xi Jinping’s head, but I do know that he’s engaged in the most rapid military buildup since the Second World War,” Chang says. Why is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) collecting DNA profiles of Americans? Why are CCP-linked companies buying up land next to U.S. military bases? And is an attack on Taiwan imminent? Interview trailer: Watch the full interview:https://www.theepochtimes.com/gordon-chang-on-virus-explosion-in-china-xi-jinping-losing-control-and-ccp-gearing-up-for-war_4967549.html FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Gordon Chang, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Gordon Chang: Thank you Jan and Happy New Year. Mr. Jekielek: Happy New Year to you too, Gordon. It’s a very strange new year in communist China right now. CCP virus or SARS-CoV-2 is running rampant through China. I want to get your take on how we got here, because we didn’t really know about this until about a month ago. Mr. Chang: If we go all the way back, this does look like it was an engineered pathogen. But that is a long conversation. But we do know something, and it does set a context for where we are today, and that is whether this was an engineered pathogen or not, China turned it into a biological weapon. They lied about contagiousness. They knew that it was highly transmissible human to human. But for three weeks in January 2020 and maybe even the last week of December of 2019, they told the world it was not. And then, while they were locking down their own country later in January, they were pressuring other countries to take arrivals from China without travel restrictions or quarantines. You put those two things together and it means they deliberately spread this disease beyond its borders. The reason why we need that context is because we’re seeing something similar today. As this disease is ripping through China, they are now opening up the doors to Chinese leaving the country for tourism, and they are not sharing sequencing. They’re not telling the world what’s actually going on in China right now. Yes, we think it’s some sort of Omicron variant, but what we are reduced to doing is taking the wastewater out of planes that arrive in our country and in others, and then trying to get the genetic material out of that. That’s entirely wrong. If China is doing this again, and it’s clear that they are, then we should not be allowing arrivals in from China until we know what the devil is going on. Mr. Jekielek: That makes a lot of sense. But again, it would seem so odd to the typical lay person when we know this virus is ripping through. There was this long, long period of various forms of lockdown policies. We saw Australia try to do it. We saw New Zealand try to do it, but as they say, virus is going to virus, and the virus basically has to go through the population. From what we understood this, the virus was already starting to really build and start going through the population before the CCP officially lifted the lockdowns, and then also there were these protests. There are multiple things going on. Maybe you can shed light on how these things interact. Mr. Chang: From about the last week in October and especially after the November 24th fire in Urumqi, the Chinese people participated in these extraordinary protests. It was in the central part of China in Zhengzhou at what is known as iPhone City, a factory which builds more than half the world’s iPhones. Workers just wouldn’t put up with it. They were scrambling over fences, and they were escaping through fields. What was really important was that the people who lived around there helped the workers flee. And by helping the workers flee, they put themselves at great risk. But what was really fascinating was after the November 24th fire, it was clear from the videos that fire trucks couldn’t get to the scene of the apartment building, because of barriers that had been put in the streets because of COVID. Also, people couldn’t get out of their apartments in the burning building, because they had been shut in from the outside for quarantine purposes. And then, you had those protests across China—north, south, east, west—these were spontaneous. There was no organization, no coordination, and no leadership. What really frightened the Communist Party was that people were of course saying they didn’t like the COVID lockdowns. But they were also saying, “Down with Xi Jinping, down with the CCP.” That means that the mood was revolutionary. In the face of that, it was one of four reasons that the Chinese leadership on December 7th just abandoned zero-COVID, which was the most draconian set of lockdowns in the world. Suddenly, just like that, they disappeared. That’s because the Chinese people wouldn’t put up with it. But there were other reasons. Mr. Jekielek: A second reason is that the virus was already getting out of control despite these lockdowns, as many epidemiologists that I’ve spoken with have said. It’s something inevitable, especially with a respiratory virus, a coronavirus. It’s almost like they had no choice. But tell me what you think. Mr. Chang: The World Health Organization said that the virus was surging through China before the lockdowns were lifted on December 7th. They were saying the lifting of the lockdowns didn’t cause the surge, because it was already there. When you start looking at the data, which we’re starting to get, we’re seeing that they really were infections. Now, it is just completely out of control. On December 20 from those leaked minutes of China’s National Health Commission, almost 37 million people were infected in one day. That’s 2.6 per cent of the Chinese population, in one day. People estimate somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 fatalities a day. And this has not peaked, because the modeling suggests it will peak sometime in the third week of this month, and then there’ll be another wave in March. Just as you say, a virus has got to virus. The Communist Party’s draconian lockdown just could not stop this. Mr. Jekielek: I want to mention one thing. Because the virus has gone through many populations in the West, in the U.S. the estimate is there’s about 90 per cent natural immunity. People have already been exposed, and that provides some level of protection. You might get the virus again, but it’s not going to be nearly as severe. But in China I don’t for a second believe the official numbers that they had. Of course, there’s a lot more death. But at some level, they actually did stop it. But that created this huge immune deficit now. We are seeing again and again, and this is for the last three weeks, a steady pace of these huge lineups at crematorium. There’s significant death happening and there’s a lot of debate about whether this is real. Mr. Chang: Yes, it is real. We can see from those videos that in city after city, at the crematoria the lines are backed out a kilometer or so. In Shanghai, people were burning the corpses of their relatives on the street. That doesn’t happen unless this is absolutely real. This means when you look at it, Communist Party policy was a failure. There’s this notion that goes back to Mao, and Xi Jinping shares it, that communism can do anything. Mao talked about conquering nature. Xi Jinping obviously thought he could conquer the disease and eventually the disease conquered communism. We saw the Communist Party, despite its great efforts, was not able to stop this. That’s why we’re having this unfolding tragedy in China right now. Mr. Jekielek: And not only that, but Xi put his personal seal of approval behind these lockdown policies. That is very significant. Please tell me about that. Mr. Chang: Yes. Xi Jinping is known to be the author of zero-COVID. When he gave his work report, that nearly two-hour speech on October 16th which opened the Communist Party’s 20th National Congress, he doubled down on zero-COVID. But he failed, because starting November 11th, you had that one announcement which people took to be a minor adjustment in zero-COVID, but it really wasn’t really implemented. It wasn’t until December 7th when there was a complete repudiation of Xi Jinping’s policies. But what’s fascinating is that this occurs while we’re seeing his other domestic policies are now being repudiated. The Communist Party and the state council held its central economic work conference and they didn’t mention common prosperity, which is Xi Jinping’s signature program for the economy. It’s not just COVID, and it’s not just the economy, we are seeing the Communist Party move in a different direction from Xi Jinping. This is striking, because remember at the 20th National Congress in the middle of October, Xi Jinping gets his precedent-breaking third term as general secretary, and everybody says, “He’s going to be president for life.” I don’t think so, or his life’s going to be pretty short, one or the other. The problem is that even in the middle of October, we could see that as Xi Jinping was cementing his control over at the top of the Communist Party, the Communist Party was losing control over Chinese society. Now, Xi Jinping is losing his control over the party, and you have to conclude that the country looks a little volatile and looks unstable. Mr. Jekielek: I want to catch up a bit. You mentioned there were four reasons. We have, of course, the lockdown policies themselves and the virus basically surging despite that. And you also have these protests. What were the other two? Mr. Chang: Okay. The other two were that municipalities were financially responsible for zero-COVID, which was extremely expensive to implement, because we have these lockdowns, we have the contract tracing, we have daily testing, and sometimes more than once a day testing for COVID-19. Municipalities had to pay for it. Even Beijing as rich as it was running out of money to implement zero-COVID. They just didn’t have the cash. But you also have the Chinese economy starting to contract or going deeper into contraction. There you have those two other reasons. It was just not possible anymore for the party. They just didn’t have the resources to do it, and they could see the country’s economy was failing. When you add the policy wasn’t working, as we talked about and the protests were occurring, as we talked about, those are essentially the four reasons. The Communist Party didn’t change its policies on December 7th. It just capitulated to the disease. This is the collapse of Communist Party policy. Mr. Jekielek: I really want to talk more about the economy. We’ve certainly seen in the West the devastating consequences of these types of policies. We know that even communist China, who has all sorts of tricks up its sleeves, can’t escape this. I want to talk about these. You were talking about the bureau, the top cadres. There seems to be a significant number. Let me qualify this. In case anyone isn’t aware, COVID has this huge gradient. The greatest risk by far from COVID is for people of older age or immunosuppressed situations. Mr. Chang: People like me. Mr. Jekielek: No, hardly. But to make a long story short, even knowing this, there’s a disproportionate number of high level cadres who have just simply passed away. We’ve actually been covering this, because we’re very interested in all those people here at Epoch Times. What are you seeing there? Mr. Chang: Yes, it’s true. You have a lot of senior officials succumbing to COVID and we don’t know. I have heard a lot of rumors. The rumor that makes most sense to me is that senior cadres get preferential access to organ transplants. When you have an organ transplant, you have all sorts of drugs to suppress the immune system of the body. These people are immune-compromised, and we know that COVID attacks the immune-compromised. I can’t say this for sure, but it makes sense to me that this is what’s going on. But whatever it is, it does look like senior Chinese leaders are disproportionately dying from the disease. Mr. Jekielek: It’s very interesting. I’ll frame this a bit. I’m remembering some of the first reporting I did on the organ industry in China back in 2006, when I realized there was this whole murder for organs reality happening which was unfathomable. Mr. Chang: Horrific. Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely horrific. I had interviewed David Kilgour, who had been doing research on this. He had interviewed a Taiwanese national who had gone to China, and had a rare antibody condition. The guy had gone on two trips and had been fitted with a total of eight kidneys across something like six months, because of this rare condition. They kept being rejected. Finally the eighth one held. But you can just imagine the reality there. So, when you were talking about these cadres getting preferential treatment, this is the kind of stuff we’re talking about. Mr. Chang: Yes. We first heard about this going back 15 years or so, people were saying, “Oh no, no. It can’t be right.” But since that time, we’ve got more and more evidence that there is murder, people are being murdered for organs. China has set up the infrastructure for that with mobile organ units and all the rest of it. It’s in China that you can get an organ on demand, whereas you have to wait years in the United States to get a match for a kidney. Yes, it’s happening, and it is one of the crimes against humanity that the Communist Party is committing. Mr. Jekielek: I want to highlight that, this on-demand idea. If you’re a high level cadre in the Communist Party of China, there’s nothing that is off the table for you on this. Mr. Chang: Yes. The question is, why do they do all this DNA testing of everybody, especially Uyghurs and Kazakhs and other Turkic minorities? Why do they do this on prisoners? It is because people are being killed on demand for organs. Mr. Jekielek: And matched. I think that’s what you’re suggesting. Mr. Chang: And matched. Mr. Jekielek: Yes, exactly. It’s just an unbelievable reality. About two weeks ago we had the head of Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting on the show. I’ll recommend that our viewers check out that episode if you want to know more about this harsh reality. Let’s jump to this. There’s been multiple reports from doctors that we have verified that show that some of these people are dying from white lung, which is reminiscent of the original or Delta strains of COVID. It’s interesting. But as you pointed out earlier, there’s no good data coming out of China. We can’t trust any of it. You’re watching these patterns. Multiple doctors that we have verified are saying that people have died of what seems to be an earlier version of the virus. But we don’t know, of course. Mr. Chang: Because China’s health authorities are not sharing information. We don’t even know if COVID is the only disease that is going through China right now. We just do not know. We make assumptions, but we don’t know. That’s why the world needs to close its borders to China until they start sharing data. Because without sharing data, we can’t protect ourselves. Mr. Jekielek: And isn’t it so bizarre? I need you to speak on this, but they’re demanding that Chinese be let out to any country possible. They’re enforcing this reciprocity where if you don’t do that, we won’t let you in either. With this reality of COVID surging through China, what’s going on in their minds? Mr. Chang: This is just Chinese arrogance. What they’re saying is that they object to these testing requirements where Chinese travelers need to get a negative test before they board a plane. Do you need that to go to China? Yes. But nonetheless, just Tuesday the foreign ministry said, “We’re going to impose countermeasures on countries that impose travel restrictions on China arrivals.” It’s just Chinese arrogance that they get to set what they want to do. You can’t defend yourselves. That’s why China is too dangerous to deal with. Whether we’re talking about COVID or talking about something else, we cannot have relations with China, as long as it’s ruled by the Communist Party. Because the Communist Party, just by its inherent nature, is malicious. We’ve got to defend ourselves and we’re not doing that. Mr. Jekielek: I had Dr. Aseem Malhotra on this program not too long ago and he had a phrase, and I immediately thought of the Communist Party when he said it. He was talking about a psychopathic entity. And I think I know the original psychopathic entity. Or maybe not the original, but one that’s been around for quite a while, and I don’t think people grasp this. Mr. Chang: Yes. Look, the Communist Party is responsible for more deaths than any other organization in history. Mao Zedong, people don’t know exactly how many people he killed, but the minimum is 20 million. Most people say the minimum is 30 million. Other people say, “On the upside you’re talking 50, 60, or 70 million people.” Unnatural deaths. That’s from the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and other assorted murderous activities. Take a look at Xi Jinping. Right now, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, you have 6.7 million deaths from COVID, worldwide. China counts for only 5,000 of those, because that’s their number. Obviously, it’s more, but what goes into the Johns Hopkins number is what China tells them. Xi Jinping’s toll from Coronavirus alone, 6.669999 million deaths. Those are the deaths outside of China. This disease should have never left Central China. But Xi Jinping made sure that he would do it. So, each of those deaths is a murder. This is more than just COVID, it’s fentanyl, and it’s all the other stuff that they’ve been doing. This is murderous activity. This is a psychopath. It’s a psychopathic regime. That’s the nature of the regime. You take a good person, you put them into it, and he becomes a psychopath or she becomes a psychopath. Mr. Jekielek: In this vein, there is this huge age gradient in risk in COVID. I’m not actually sure of the reality, because I’ve heard different numbers and I don’t know what to trust exactly. But it’s either that the elderly people in China have a much lower level of vaccination, or the Sinovac vaccine isn’t particularly effective. If they had it, it would have waned by now, because there’s been quite a bit of time. There’s going to be a disproportionate number for a lot of assumptions. But there’s going to be a disproportionate number and there isn’t natural immunity nearly to the extent. So, there’s going to be a lot of older people dying. This is the terrible conclusion that I came to, and I’m curious what you think about this. Because of the one child policy, and because of this huge demographic hole that the CCP has created for itself and its psychopathic nature, it’s almost convenient for the CCP to lose some of the older population. This is the kind of thing that they would be thinking. Mr. Chang: Now that you mention it, the most conspiratorial theories of what China did in 2019 and 2020 come from the Chinese themselves. One of those theories was that Xi Jinping wanted to test out his biological weapon. The other theory that you’ll hear is that they wanted to kill off old people, because it would be good for the age distribution in Chinese society. I don’t agree with either of those. Those are too far along, but that’s what the Chinese people say. We have to be mindful that this is a society where obviously there’s no trust of the regime and that’s what people think. As I said, I don’t think so. I think this was an accidental leak from a biological weapons lab. The circumstantial evidence points to that. The other theory is zoonotic transfer. No one’s been able to document the links from bat to intermediary mammal to humans, even after all this time. You can go back to the Black Death in Europe and see what happened after it. You have this flourishing of European society, because it killed off so many people. Chinese leaders, they look at our histories, and who knows what they’re thinking. These guys are malicious in the extreme. I don’t think that they’re capable of that. But the point is, we know that they murdered a lot of people, almost 6.7 million people. Mr. Jekielek: Okay. So, you’re talking to this very high level CCP planner and he says, “Isn’t it interesting that this is killing all sorts of older people and we have this huge demographic problem.” My point is that in this view of the world, human beings are kind of protoplasm. They’re not seen as individual valuable beings. Mr. Chang: Communism believes that there is a dynamic to history, that there is an overarching purpose and that societies have to get there. Humans are not important in that, because it’s history, it’s determinism. Also, in order to enforce equality, you have to kill people. It’s no coincidence that the Chinese flag is blood red. It is specifically meant to signify blood. That’s in the nature of the regime. Whether these crazy conspiratorial theories from the Chinese are right, which I don’t think they are, the point is communism kills a lot of people, and often kills intentionally. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s pivot to the economy. We were talking about the terrible impact of these rolling lockdowns for these last few years. The Chinese Communist Party is saying that there’s still significantly less than normal growth. You mentioned you think there’s a contraction happening. Please explain to me the reality around the Chinese economy right now. Mr. Chang: That’s certain from the numbers we’ve seen in the fourth quarter of last year. There’s no reasonable basis to say that the economy expanded. That’s largely COVID. But you need to put some context in this. Go back to 2008, and you have the great downturn. You have the United States and a lot of free market economies take their medicine. They don’t take as much medicine as they should, but they take medicine. They go through the cycle. China decided it wasn’t going to do that. So, it went through the biggest stimulus program in history, just pouring money into all sorts of projects. To give you the dimension of it, in 2008, Chinese economy was less than the third the size of America’s. But from 2009 to the following four years, they created an amount of debt which was basically equal to the amount of debt in the United States, the credit running through the banking systems. They blew up their banking system. Of course, they created growth. But eventually it creates a point where economies become exhausted. They start to get a debt crisis and they worry about it. Then, you get to September 2020 where the Chinese leadership puts the breaks on the property sector. The property sector is important. It’s somewhere between 25-30 per cent of gross domestic product depending on how you count it. And it’s really important, because about 70 per cent of the wealth of the Chinese middle class is in property. It’s a critical sector. Then you have Evergreen, which was once the largest property developer in China, then the second largest, and then it defaults. And then, you have rolling defaults to the property sector. That is obviously going to cause not only a diminution in growth, it’s going to cause a contraction in the economy. Now, we’re starting to see it. Trade is being hit because of demand around the world is down because of supply chain disruptions in China, making China less desirable as a factory floor. The trade numbers for November were disastrous. Exports were down 8.7 per cent, or something like that. But more importantly, imports show domestic demand down 10 point something. At the same time, retail sales are down. Then, they’re starting to get December numbers, and the December numbers are negative as well. This is an economy that is getting smaller. It had gotten smaller, if you look at all of 2022. A couple of days Xi Jinping ago says, “It grew at least 4.4 per cent.” That’s crap. China’s economic numbers are becoming as unreliable as their COVID numbers. Mr. Jekielek: This unreliability of numbers seems to be a theme. But we have to remind ourselves of that, because even institutions like John Hopkins give them credibility. Mr. Chang: Everybody does. All the news organizations report, “China grew 5.4 per cent last year.” They’re just basing it on what Beijing is saying, and that number gets fed in. But these numbers don’t make sense. They do all sorts of statistical tricks and then they just out and out lie. Especially with the COVID fatalities. They were reporting like 12, 13, 14 fatalities for the entire month of December, something ridiculous like that. Even China’s friends can’t justify this anymore. Mr. Jekielek: The reason this is important for people here is that when you hear, “Oh, China is still growing despite all these challenges and lockdowns. But look, we’ve still got 4.4 per cent growth.” There are still huge amounts of cash flows from huge investment coming from the West into China. Even given all the realities that you just described, it’s still this amazing place that you must invest in. How is that? Mr. Chang: It mystifies me. Part of it is the foreign money that goes into China’s equity markets is hot money. It flows in, it flows out. The money actually going into direct foreign investment, I think is down. China says its numbers are up. But that doesn’t seem right, because we have witnessed, especially since about the middle of 2021, companies starting to diversify their supply chains which means they’re not investing in China as they once did. Or in some cases they are just out and out disinvesting from China. With the supply chains issues, I think companies are not fooled. There’s always a quick buck that people in the financial markets want to make. But then again, that money comes right out again. I get distressed by it, but I realize that eventually, the market reality will prevail. Mr. Jekielek: You have a recent piece, and I can’t believe we’re still talking about this, because we first talked found out about this in 2019 and I was just shocked. The military Thrift Savings Plan is investing not only in Chinese state companies, but in Chinese military companies. If that isn’t, I don’t know, ironic maybe is the term. It’s worse than ironic, but this is still happening. Mr. Chang: The Thrift Savings Plan is the federal government’s 401(k) plan for federal employees. Since 2001, it’s been opened up to members of the military, which means they can invest in the various units that the Thrift Saving Plan sponsors, like their mutual fund window. If you look through all of the investments of the Thrift Savings Plan, TSP, you’ll find companies that are on the Commerce department’s entity list. In other words, Americans can’t do business with these companies without getting a license from the Commerce Department, but you can invest in them. That’s nuts. But the thing here is that we have to remember that the communist system is very different from ours. President Trump banned investment into 31 Chinese military-linked companies and that’s a good start. But we’ve got to remember that all Chinese companies are military-linked, because of the nature of the Communist Party system. Communist Party gets to do whatever it wants. That’s why they have this doctrine of military-civil fusion, which means that everything that a nominally civilian institution has is available to the Chinese military. We should be banning investment into all Chinese companies, because it is one system. It is a very different system from ours. We tend to think that China is just like us, except they’ve got better food. No, it’s not. They’ve got a Communist Party system, which is top down. Mr. Jekielek: To go back to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, given what you’ve said, it’s obvious that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had military applications going on there. There’s no scenario where that would not have been the case. Mr. Chang: Just after the problems there in February 2020, what does China do? It sends in its top biological weapons expert, Major General Chen Wei, to clean up the place. Her task is to clean up the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Whether it’s nominally military or not, it is military. And so, we can see it from everything. We can also see what the Chinese themselves are saying about their own military research into pathogens. They call them specific ethnic genetic attacks. In other words, they’re developing pathogens that will leave the Chinese immune and sicken and kill everybody else. Mr. Jekielek: Yes. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Mr. Chang: No, this comes from the science and military strategy, which is the authoritative publication of the National Defense University of China. You go back to the 2017 edition of Science and Military Strategy, there it is. They’re talking about specific ethnic genetic attacks. So, these guys are doing it. That’s why they’re hoovering up the world’s DNA. You want to find the biggest collection of DNA profiles of Americans? You’re not going to find it in this country. It’s in China. We’ve allowed the Chinese to buy it up, steal it, whatever. So, this is on us. Mr. Jekielek: The military-civil fusion doctrine that you’re talking about becomes very relevant. I was just reading your recent piece about that. Actually, it was one of the most popular opinion pieces on the Epoch Times website for a little while. Mr. Chang: Oh, thank you. Mr. Jekielek: There’s yet another example. A large Chinese company is setting up right beside a U.S. military base, which has some incredibly sensitive operations. And CFIUS (The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States), the body that’s supposed to prevent things like this from happening, has nothing to say about it. Please tell me about this. Mr. Chang: Fufeng, which is the U.S. subsidiary of a Xiangdong-based agribusiness giant bought 370 acres within 12 miles of Grand Forks Air Force Base. At the Grand Forks Air Force Base, they’ve got two primary functions. They maintain links to drones, and they have uplinks to satellites. Fufeng wants to build this $700 million corn milling facility. That’s the perfect place to hide passive listening devices so they can steal signals. But it goes beyond that. That’s a perfect place to be able to put devices to disrupt our drone and satellite communication links. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is a Treasury Department-led interagency task force, decided it did not have the authority to block the purchase of 370 acres. What they did was they looked at the Defense Production Act of 1950, which is where they get their statutory authority. Land purchases are not covered. It gets even worse than this. Actually, their statutory reading is correct. In 2018, they amend CFIUS’s enabling legislation to be able to block land purchases for national security reasons. And then, they have a list of military facilities that people can’t buy land nearby. Guess what? They did not include Grand Forks Air Force Base. How could they let this happen? This is, as a friend of mine says, just regulatory and legislative malpractice. But there’s a solution here and this is where the American people come in. I agree that CFIUS does not have the legislative authority to block that purchase of land, but the President of the United States has the authority. He has enormous authority under two pieces of legislation. There’s the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 or for an alternative, there’s the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917. President Biden can use his authority under either of those two pieces of legislation to block the sale of land. And by the way, he hasn’t done it. I know that it’s just so incomprehensible that it leaves you speechless. Mr. Jekielek: The rhetoric around the Chinese Communist Party or the understanding to some extent of the foreign policy establishment around the China threat has changed over the last five, seven years. It’s been very stark to me. But looking at all this, I can’t help but think that we haven’t really shifted in our approach and the threat of the Chinese Communist Party. We just had Cleo Pascal on the show recently talking about comprehensive national power and how the CCP is hellbent on beating the U.S. in every measure. But we don’t seem to be doing too much to prevent this from happening. Mr. Chang: We’re taking little steps which are obviously inadequate, and which are not being taken with the sense of urgency that the situation demands. We have an Oval Office, we’ve got a Pentagon, and both senior civilian officials like Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the three and four stars that don’t have a sense of urgency. They do not comprehend the nature of China’s system and they’re getting it wrong. What they’re doing is making our military now less able to confront China. Because they believe if there’s a war with China, the reasoning goes, it won’t happen until 2027 at the earliest. Or it probably won’t happen until the middle of next decade. What they’re doing is retiring cruisers. They’re retiring America’s most capable plane, the F-22, because they want to pay for the modernization of the fleet and the modernization of our air wings. Yes, I can understand that. But the threat of China, I believe, is now. Whatever it is, there is a lack of a fundamental appreciation of what China is doing. I don’t know what’s going on in Xi Jinping’s head, but I do know that he’s engaged in the most rapid military buildup since the World War II. We know that he’s trying to sanction-proof the Chinese regime. We know, and this is the most ominous, he’s mobilizing China’s civilians for war. He’s preparing for war. Mr. Jekielek: Tell me more about how he’s doing that, the mobilizing of civilians. Mr. Chang: At the beginning of 2021, amendments to the national defense law went into effect, which took powers away from the State Council, which is a civilian unit and gave it to the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party, which runs the military. These were powers for mobilizing China’s civilians for war. But it’s not just giving themselves legal authorization to do this stuff. A Chinese entrepreneur told me last July, and this guy has factories. He makes medical products for the civilian sector. He told me that Chinese Communist Party cadres came to him and demanded that he convert his production lines to make stuff for the Chinese military. He said that he was not the only one who got these demands. In fact, there were so many factories now that were under these demands that factory owners just fled. The Communist Party is operating factories that once were owned by private entrepreneurs because the owners said, “We’re not sticking around for Xi Jinping’s war.” That’s what they’re doing and they’re doing other things of course. But the point is, these guys are ready to go to battle. I can give you a lot of good reasons why China won’t go to war, but they are from the perspective of the American mentality. When you start putting yourself in their position, you have to understand that they are prepared to go to war for reasons which make a lot of sense if you’re a Communist Party senior official. They make no sense to us. But then again, that doesn’t matter. Mr. Jekielek: I want to touch on one thing. As you’re describing mobilizing the civilian population for war, I can’t help but think of the commercial fishing fleet of- Mr. Chang: The little blue men. Mr. Jekielek: The little blue men. I didn’t even realize that that’s what they were called. It makes perfect sense. This is a great example of military-civil fusion. And they’ve actually been employed and this is a huge population. You can imagine what role these commercial fishing boats would play, for example, in a Taiwan invasion. Mr. Chang: They’re called little blue men because their fishing trawlers are painted with blue hulls and they are given additional money for fuel by the military. They are given military radios and they act in coordinated fashion. We have seen this, and their actions have actually taken the lives of South Koreans, for instance. They move into a country’s exclusive economic zone, which under the UN Conventional Law of Sea, of which China is a party, is that band of territory or water between 12 and 200 nautical miles, where only the coastal country can exploit the economic resources. In other words, the fish. The Chinese just move in there and they do it in coordination and they get support from the white hulls, which are the Coast Guard and from the gray hulls, which are the Chinese Navy. So yes, that’s effectively part of the military. Mr. Jekielek: So again, this paints this picture of this kind of coordination. This is the thing that I suppose some people in the West are envious of, this unbelievable ability to coordinate and affect desired outcomes. There’s a trap here obviously, but you can imagine why people are thinking this. Mr. Chang: Communist states can be incredibly effective. This is true of any hard-line state. China right now is totalitarian. People say, “Oh, authoritarian.” No, it’s not. It’s totalitarian. And so, totalitarian states can mobilize very effectively and to number of purposes. They can take the national resources, and buy diesel for the fishermen. They can do all sorts of stuff like this. Their weakness is that they do stupid stuff. President Obama once said, “We’re not going to do the stupid stuff.” Well, China does a lot of stupid stuff. That is occurring, and we’re seeing that with Xi Jinping and his policies. Remember, he came into power at the end of 2012 when he became general secretary. It was a consensual system. No Chinese leader got too much power and too much blame or too much credit, because every decision was shared across the spectrum of political thought at the Politburo standing committee and the Politburo. You make a big mistake and it doesn’t really matter. Xi Jinping grabs power from everybody else. He also grabs accountability, and that has all sorts of consequences. One of them is that nobody’s telling him, “You’re doing something which is really stupid.” He’s been doing zero-COVID for instance, and that has led China off the cliff. That’s where it’s heading really, really, fast right now. The other thing that makes China a little bit dangerous, even more so, is that Deng Xiaoping, who was generally considered to be Mao Zedong’s successor, lowered the cost of losing political struggles. In the Mao era, if you lost a political struggle, you often lost your life. Deng said, “We’re done with that. You know, lose a political struggle. You’re getting a nice house in Beijing. You have no incentive to destabilize the Communist Party, because we’re going to take care of you.” Xi Jinping, by jailing his opponents, has raised the cost of losing political struggles. Xi Jinping knows this. He’s now got total accountability, which means he can be blamed, plus he knows that he can lose everything. He can lose not only power, he can lose wealth. His family can be jailed, and he can be killed. You’ve got a guy who has a different set of calculus. That is really, really dangerous, and we’re not taking that into account. As I said, I can give you a lot of reasons why it makes no sense at all for China to invade Taiwan. It doesn’t. But it doesn’t matter because if you are in a political system where one guy gets to say and do everything, then you’re in trouble. If you’re in a political system where that one once powerful, all powerful guy is losing power, he knows he’s got very little risk, because he knows he’s going to be offed anyway. So, he might as well roll the dice, which means he can take us by surprise. That is what makes China extremely dangerous right now. This is not theoretical, Jan. In December, as China was falling apart internally, what did Xi Jinping do? He had the incursion into Arunachal Pradesh in India. We see the increased pressure against Japan in the East China Sea around the Senkakus. We see increased pressure on the Philippines in the South China Sea on certain shoals. And of course, they doubled their incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. By the way, they take on our Air Force reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea. So, this is a system that’s going off the rails. Mr. Jekielek: You mentioned that there’s all sorts of reasons why they wouldn’t, according to the Western calculus. But there is one piece that strikes me as fitting in the Western calculus, and that’s when your economy is failing. That’s often when people are ready for war, isn’t it? Mr. Chang: That’s why China can take us by surprise. We know what they’re preparing to do, which means they’re developing the capability to do it. You can fully never know intentions a hundred percent, but you can see capabilities and we can see where they’re doing this. As I said, it’s not just building up their military, it’s trying to sanction-proof their regime and it’s mobilizing China’s civilians for war. That means we need to prepare for war ourselves. I know that that sounds drastic, but that’s what they’re doing. We’re American, so we think we’re entitled to be oblivious about what our enemies say about us. Osama bin Laden in 1993 killed six people by detonating a bomb under the North Tower of the World Trade Center. We couldn’t care less. We couldn’t care less until 9/11 when Osama bin Laden killed 2,977 Americans in one incident. China is so much more powerful than Al-Qaeda. We can lose our country. Mr. Jekielek: Gordon, these are very strong words. At the moment, we are very, very focused on a very different part of the world, on Ukraine specifically. Is the CCP taking advantage of this? Mr. Chang: It certainly is. Here, we need some context. In August of 2021, there was the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Communist Party propaganda was very clear that the United States could no longer deter China. This is something that we heard in the preceding March when China sent its then top two diplomats, Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, to Anchorage to meet Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan. Yang’s opening statement was a rant saying that you Americans can no longer talk to us from a position of strength. Then it was just words. But in the following August with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, we saw propaganda come out from Beijing. This was actually the day that Kabul fell, they said, “When we invade Taiwan.” They said when, not if. They said, “When we invade Taiwan, two things will happen.” They said, “Taiwan will fall in hours, and the United States will not come to help.” This is their mentality. What happened is that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin believed that the United States was not in a position to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We’ve got to remember that in 2021, the coalition that was arrayed against Vladimir Putin, that was the United States, the 27 nations of the European Union and Great Britain had an economy that was collectively 25.1 times larger than Russia’s. And yet we failed to stop the invasion. We failed to stop the invasion because they felt that the United States was done, and that there was no deterrence. The Chinese were looking at this and taking away a couple of lessons. Since we’re Americans, we take away the optimistic lesson that because of the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people, that China won’t invade Taiwan, because the Taiwanese people will also be heroic in their resisting Chinese invaders. That’s not what China thinks about the people of Taiwan for one thing, but I’ll put that aside. But what they’re seeing is the initial failure of deterrence. They’re also seeing the failure to impose sanctions, which are strong enough to stop Putin in his tracks. We have sanctions that have hurt Putin, but the war is still continuing. Here we are basically 11 months into it. That’s what the Chinese see. And the Chinese are arrogant. They’re thinking, “Yes, maybe the West will impose sanctions on Putin, but they won’t do it to us because we’re Chinese.” The lessons they’re taking away are the wrong ones. But nonetheless, those are the lessons that you see in Chinese propaganda, which is the best window into the mind of the Communist Party right now. Mr. Jekielek: With America projecting weakness, we know that when that happens, all sorts of bad actors come out to play to take advantage of this. This is what we’ve been seeing. Mr. Chang: Yes, we see this for instance. When Putin was making these threats to use his nuclear arsenal, what happened? China started making threats as well. And North Korea for the first time. There’s a decade worth of comments from the Kim family saying, “We’ll nuke you.” But they’ve always been in the context of, “If you attack us, we will destroy your cities.” After Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for the first time ever, North Korea said, “We have the right to preemptively use our most destructive weapons.” They’re all taking clues from each other. People say, “Oh, Gordon, you’re just walking around with a cloud over your head, which is raining just like the cartoon characters.” And my wife says that too, of course. But the point is, you look at the facts right now and it really looks extremely dangerous. It looks like the period just before the second World War. Mr. Jekielek: To talk about North Korea, it’s astounding how many missiles North Korea has been testing even just in the last year. It’s more in the last year than I don’t know however many more than the past. Mr. Chang: Than they’ve ever tested. Mr. Jekielek: Than they’ve ever tested, perhaps. I don’t fully understand the implication of that, but it’s bad. Mr. Chang: It’s basically saying that they think the Biden administration can’t stop them. And let’s look at that. North Korea can only test ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, all violations of UN security council sanctions, by the way, only with money. They have money because they launder it through China’s banks. Most of those transactions are dollars and every single dollar transaction in the world other than with paper currency, every single banking transaction involving dollars clears in the city where we are now. As a matter of fact, just a few blocks south of us. They clear through New York. We know exactly what’s happening. We can see all these transactions, and we can stop this. We can starve Kim Jong-un and we’re not doing it. And the Chinese look at this and they say, “Well, look, we are openly money laundering, committing violation of federal law after federal law. And this federal government won’t do anything about it.” Trump, in 2017, he had the Treasury Secretary in post Section 311 of the Patriot Act on the Bank of Dandong, a small Chinese bank laundering money for the North Koreans. We disconnected it. We basically put it out of business. But then Trump did not use his Section 311 powers on three of the four big four Chinese banks, which were also clearly laundering money for the North Koreans. The Chinese look at that and says, “You’re not enforcing your own law. You’re a weak country.” By the metrics, the United States is so strong, but we’re feeble. We are one of the weakest countries in the world, because we will not use our powers to protect the American people from known dangers. The North Koreans have a missile called the Hwasong-17 that can hit any part of the United States. They tested that thing, and we can stop it, but we’re not doing it. And the American people, they should be upset at North Korea and the Chinese sponsors of North Korea. But they should really be upset at American presidents who had the means to stop this, and who chose not to do so. By the way, their last names are Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Mr. Jekielek: How much of an influence does this multi-billion-dollar DC Chinese Communist Party lobby have on this type of decision-making? Mr. Chang: I have never been in the federal government myself. I can’t tell you from firsthand experience, but I can tell you that China is a known danger. We’re not doing anything about it. They’re pouring tons of money into Washington. What does that lead you to believe? Yes, it’s a very effective lobby. Mr. Jekielek: One of the things that concerns me deeply is how much influence the Chinese Communist Party is able to wield, for example, through the TikTok app, but also through in other communicators. WhatsApp, for example, is being censored ostensibly at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party. But there does seem to be some sort of reaction, especially in state governments to block the TikTok there. But ultimately, there’s millions upon millions of millions of young American kids who are on this app, which frankly, we know is terrible for them and is controlled by the CCP, which is going to use any means at its disposal to subvert America. Mr. Chang: Yes. There are two primary threats that TikTok poses to the United States. There’s the one that we talk about most of the time, which is surreptitiously and illegally taking data. There was the BuzzFeed revelations of last year and then revelations in December about TikTok using location data on journalists who were involved in the BuzzFeed leaks. Buzzfeed reported that there were 80 tape recordings from September to January 2022. Basically, these recordings showed that all the data in TikTok was being shipped off to Beijing and that the people who worked for TikTok in the U.S. had no access to that data. And so TikTok, being a powerful app, they just tracked the location of journalists. That’s all illegal and we focus in on that. But the other thing is even a more serious threat, and it’s only recently been talked about, and that is the algorithm. The TikTok algorithm is the most sophisticated algorithm of its type. It knows what you like, it knows what you don’t like and so it can feed you stuff. And it has been feeding Russian disinformation on the war in Ukraine this last year. It has been glorifying drug use, and pushing critical race theory. And in 2020, according to Radio Free Asia, an intelligence unit of the Chinese military based themselves in the Houston consulate. From there they were using artificial intelligence and big data to identify Americans likely to participate in violent protests. And then, through TikTok videos, it was sending them instructions on how to riot, which is more than subversion. That’s an act of war. TikTok has been able to do that, and President Trump wisely banned it. Biden not to his credit, reversed the ban. Now, they’re talking about Oracle controlling the data from TikTok, but still TikTok would be owned by ByteDance, which is a Chinese private company. But the problem there is that it gives the federal government so much control over TikTok. That’s a potential First Amendment violation. The best thing to do is there’s only two acceptable solutions to TikTok. One of them is that you ban the app in the US. India banned it in India, so we could ban it as well. Or force a sale to a U.S. company which controls the algorithm. Trump tried to force a sale. The sale cratered, not over price or anything that normally would end up undermining a deal. The deal cratered because of the algorithm. China would not give up control of the algorithm, which shows you how important that is to Beijing. Not only does TikTok have to be sold to a U.S. company, that U.S. company has to control the algorithm. China has to be completely cut out of TikTok for that to be an acceptable solution. Mr. Jekielek: It seems like one option is that we could just follow what the Chinese Communist Party does in China. Mr. Chang: That’s the issue of reciprocity. They don’t allow American apps into China. Mr. Jekielek: They don’t allow TikTok into China. Mr. Chang: They don’t allow TikTok. So, why do we allow China’s apps to our country? It’s a basic issue of reciprocity. Even if they weren’t trying to promote drug use, even if they weren’t stealing our data, we have every reason in the world to ban them. And the fact that we don’t do it shows you the influence of China’s lobbying, which is what you just talked about a little while ago. Mr. Jekielek: Gordon, as we finish, we’re at the beginning of a new year here. There’s all sorts of people who have all sorts of conjecture. Will China try to invade Taiwan? What will happen? Will the Chinese economy collapse? What are your thoughts here? Mr. Chang: I wrote the book, The Coming Collapse of China, in 2001. I said, “These guys are going to be gone in 10 years.” So, maybe I’m not a good person to talk about predictions. But what we are seeing is the international systems erode and fall apart and thank God, we made it through 2022 without even greater disasters. But we’re going to that place as the Chinese become more aggressive. And when we have conflicts on both ends of the Eurasian landmass, then it starts to look like global war. We’re just not prepared for that. Mr. Jekielek: I just want to comment quickly on the coming collapse of China. People have often asked me, “You like having Gordon on your show. Gordon was so wrong with the coming collapse of China.” But I actually think you were right on a lot of the fundamentals. One area where you were wrong is you didn’t anticipate how much money the West was going to put into Communist China. It’s one of the few. This is the thing that keeps that very compromised economy alive. Mr. Chang: And I didn’t anticipate the 2008 downturn, which I think changed a lot of thinking about China, and which allowed more money to come in. It gave the Chinese leaders confidence that they didn’t have before. For a lot of reasons, I was wrong, but we can see what’s happening inside of China right now. The trends show a weaker and weaker state. It’s not the mighty Communist Party. It’s trying to cling to power. When a hard-line group like that tries clinging to power, nothing good ever happens. Mr. Jekielek: Gordon Chang, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Mr. Chang: Well, thank you so much, Jan, and have a safe 2023. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you. Thank you all for joining Gordon Chang and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. - PRE-ORDER "The Shadow State" DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/the-shadow-state-dvd The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary BUY Jan 6 DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/dvd-the-real-story-of-january-6, Promo Code “Jan” for 20% off. - Follow American Thought Leaders on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeader Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeader Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleader Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeaders Gab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeader Telegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

I sit down with January Littlejohn, a parental rights advocate and mental health professional. In 2021, she filed a lawsuit against her daughter’s Florida school district after school officials met with her 13-year-old daughter—without Littlejohn’s consent—to discuss a six-page “gender support” plan. “It wasn’t just changing names and pronouns. They asked her which restroom she preferred to use. They asked her which sex she preferred to room with on overnight field trips. And then they did something particularly egregious. They said, ‘How should we refer to you when we speak to your parents? Should we use your birth name and pronouns?’ to effectively deceive us that the meeting had ever taken place,” Littlejohn says. Gender activism has overtaken schools, popular culture, psychological associations, and pediatric medicine, and many vulnerable teenagers—often with complex mental health issues—are being misdiagnosed and given hormones and surgeries that cause permanent, irreversible changes to their bodies, Littlejohn argues. “They say that these puberty blockers are reversible. That is a lie,” Littlejohn says. “We are seeing the negative side effects…This is not a pause button. This is a fast train toward becoming a medical patient for life.” In this episode, Littlejohn breaks down the red flags parents should be on the lookout for, how parents can protect their children, and what they can do if their child comes home one day and says they want to change their name and pronouns. “How are these children going to feel when they reach the age of adulthood, their brains finally mature, and they realize what’s been done to their bodies? And they realize the people that were supposed to protect them and love them the most allowed this to happen?” Interview trailer: Watch the full interview:https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-school-officials-secretly-transitioned-my-daughter-january-littlejohn-on-the-gender-contagion-gripping-our-teens_4963235.html FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: January Littlejohn, it’s such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. January Littlejohn: Thank you for having me. Mr. Jekielek: January, we’re going to talk about this incredible journey you’ve been on. Before we go there, you actually have a background in mental health and I want to get you to tell me about that. How is it that you came to be in this position today? Ms. Littlejohn: Sure. I’m actually a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Florida. I’m not currently practicing. But when I was practicing I had started out as a substance abuse counselor working with adolescents. And then I moved to a university position where I created and ran a program for college students with ADHD. So, I’ve always worked with adolescent populations. I’ve been very interested in brain-based behavior, and how the brain impacts learning. All of those types of things really interested me when I was practicing. Mr. Jekielek: Why don’t you tell me the story of what happened to your daughter and your interactions with her? Ms. Littlejohn: Ironically, I was specialized in ADHD, and my daughter was also diagnosed with ADHD. It was a struggle for her to fit in in school, especially. When she went to middle school, she found this friend group that she matriculated to that accepted her and we were thrilled initially. Then, we started to see some warning signs that maybe this wasn’t a healthy place for her to be. Fast forward to the spring of 2020, our daughter out of the blue expressed to us that she was confused about her sex. This was after three of her friends in her in-person friend group at school had also started identifying as transgender. When a child makes this pronouncement, especially out of the blue back in 2020, there wasn’t a lot of information. So, we were really struggling, especially since she had never expressed any kind of gender confusion leading up to this announcement. We were soliciting help from a mental health professional and really just trying to get to the root of her issue, because like so many other of these kids that fall into this ideology, she also had co-occurring mental health issues like anxiety, plus she’s ADHD. She’s also gifted which kind of brings into this situation where her giftedness puts her intelligence really high, but with her ADHD keeps her emotional intelligence and maturity low. For some of these kids, until their brain matures, it almost reads like spectrum behavior, like children with autism. This is not uncommon when you have co-occurring giftedness and ADHD. And with my background, I knew all of this. And so, we embraced her quirkiness, and we allowed her to dress how she wanted. She’s very artistic as many of these kids are. When this happened, she immediately, like many of these kids, wanted a name change, a change in pronouns. At the time, she was identifying as non-binary. We were still trying to grasp what that even was, because in my clinical training, of course I knew what transgender was. I knew what gender dysphoria was, which is a mental health diagnosis, but it is very rare. And you certainly weren’t hearing about these clusters of friends. For me, when she would come home and say these things, in my mind I was thinking, “Statistically, this is impossible.” The other thing that I saw as a precursor and a lot of parents that I’ve spoken to see as well is you’ve got 10 and 11-year-olds coming out as bisexual and pansexual when they’ve had zero experience in terms of dating, relationships, never even held someone’s hand, and much less been kissed. But yet, they are identifying in these sexualities that they don’t fully understand. And that really becomes a gateway into these identities. We told our daughter with the help of the therapist and the suggestion of the therapist that we’re not going to affirm this identity, because this was happening very quickly. It was escalating very quickly and we were concerned, because her mental health was getting worse. We told the school that we were not affirming at home, but we felt like we couldn’t stop her from going by a nickname. Honestly, that’s what I thought it would be treated as—John goes to school and wants to be called Johnny. Several weeks later my daughter got into the car after school and said, “Mom, I had a meeting today with school officials and they asked me which restroom I wanted to use.” I was immediately taken aback. First of all, I didn’t know why they would be having a meeting with my child without telling me, because my daughter with her ADHD has a 504 plan on file. I had been present and involved at every 504 plan meeting. I knew by law they could not even implement a 504 plan without my signature and being there, because she’s a minor. Mr. Jekielek: Very briefly for those that might not know, what is a 504 plan? Ms. Littlejohn: A 504 plan is that by law children that have learning disabilities or diagnosis, and they are afforded accommodations under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). That dictated what accommodations she was privy to, to help her be successful in school. I immediately emailed the guidance counselor whom I knew and said, “I have great concerns that my daughter’s telling me she had a meeting that I wasn’t aware of, and you asked her which restroom she wanted to use.” It did not even occur to me why would they be asking her that. There are no non-binary bathrooms. There are male bathrooms, female bathrooms, and then unisex bathrooms. This didn’t even register in my brain. I was called back by both the guidance counselor and the assistant principal and was told that by law my daughter was now protected from me, her parent, under a non-discrimination law, and they could not give me any information about the meeting that had taken place with my 13-year-old child. Mr. Jekielek: How did you respond to that? Ms. Littlejohn: I was irate. I was confused because I’m a very involved parent. I was Volunteer of the Year at this middle school. I wasn’t a stranger parent where they weren’t really sure about the dynamic of our family or our relationship. I was up at this school running their coffee room. I ran their Red, White and Blue day. There was no reason for them to have not contacted me and included me in this meeting. They told me that my only recourse at this point was to go speak with the assistant superintendent at the district, which I did immediately. You have to remember this was fall of 2020. This is at the height of COVID. A lot of schools didn’t even reopen in other states. And so, we were grateful on the one hand that our children were able to go back to school in person, but we were not allowed on campus. All of this communication was done either via email or by phone. Just to give you an idea of how long this took, the violation occurred when school had started, but we did not get a meeting with the principal until the end of October. We were shown the transgender or gender non-conforming support plan that they had completed with our 13-year-old daughter behind closed doors without our notification or consent. It was done with a school counselor, the assistant principal, and a social worker I had never met. You have three adults in a room with a 13-year-old child. And then, they put the burden of whether or not my parental rights would be respected and whether or not my husband and I would be invited to attend this meeting on our child. She was the sole determiner. In this support plan, it wasn’t just changing names and pronouns. They asked her which restroom she preferred to use. They asked her which sex she preferred to room with on overnight field trips. And then, they did something particularly egregious. They said, “How should we refer to you when we speak to your parents? Should we use your birth name and pronouns?” to effectively deceive us that the meeting had ever taken place. Our situation is by far not an isolated case, where parents may have not even known their child was experiencing confusion. Everybody at the school, staff, teachers, students, counselors, would know this child has assumed a different identity, may be using opposite sex facilities, putting that child’s safety and the safety of others at risk, and the parents would be the only ones not in the know. Mr. Jekielek: I also want to clarify, when you say the violation, what do you exactly mean by that? Ms. Littlejohn: It was a violation of our parental rights. It is our constitutional right to direct the upbringing of our child, which includes mental health and medical decisions. This process was them sitting down and going through these questions with our child, which is called social transitioning. This is actually a psychosocial medical intervention that schools are grossly unqualified to be doing, especially without parental involvement. Because many of these children have co-occurring issues like previous trauma, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, ADHD, and autism. When they are meeting with these children, a lot of those co-occurring issues are going unexplored and unresolved, because the parents are unaware that their child is struggling. Mr. Jekielek: What do you think about the fact that you have this very unique background, compared to the general population, which would allow you to assess this in a way that a lot of parents simply could not? Ms. Littlejohn: I don’t really have an answer to that other than I’m grateful. I’m grateful that I have this background, because I know how mental health counseling works. I know what ethical treatment looks like. I know that when you provide counseling to a minor child, the parents are still in charge of that child. They are to direct the upbringing. It is not my job to take that child and keep secrets from their parents. That is not in the best interest of a child or the parent-child relationship. Activism has infiltrated the schools. When they socially transition these children, they are putting them along a pathway. Social transition is the first step toward medical transition. When parents really discover what gender affirming care is, that we are essentially giving children experimental puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones which will eventually sterilize them, parents are horrified that schools would be taking them along this pathway. And this is not a neutral intervention they’re doing. They are celebrating these kids. My daughter had a lot of positive reinforcement for this identity. She wasn’t celebrated in this manner when she was identifying as a girl. It was only when she came out with this false identity that she was told she was brave, getting all kinds of attention, getting a private meeting where she gets to decide whether or not mom or dad are included. That’s an incredible amount of power and a burden to be putting on a child. But what it really is doing is it’s creating a huge wedge between the parent and child relationship. There is no other circumstance in school where they are doing this. There really is not, because research has shown us that parental involvement is one of the best significant factors in successful student outcomes. Why would we suddenly forget this knowledge and assume all parents to be the enemy or a danger to their child, but only in this one area? Mr. Jekielek: You just blew my mind earlier, because I didn’t fully grasp that social transitioning or this affirming behavior is actually a medical intervention in itself. I’m even getting shivers just thinking about that, because this is clearly being applied all over the place by people who have no idea what they’re doing. Ms. Littlejohn: Right. What it is really doing is concretizing this idea in a child’s mind. “Yes, I was born in the wrong body. This is the right path forward.” What it is really doing, which is very tragic for me as a mental health professional to see, is that many of these kids have a deep self-loathing. And so, when you are affirming this transgender identity, what you’re really affirming and confirming in the child’s mind is this self-hatred. It’s causing a lot of these children to look at their bodies as just parts, and it’s encouraging them to disassociate from their body parts. For instance, a lot of these teenage girls are at the cusp of puberty and already feeling uncomfortable in their bodies, which we all went through. This is a normal process of going through adolescence. But instead of being told that, they’re being told, “If you’re uncomfortable with your breasts it’s because you’re probably transgender and you can just cut them off.” They use euphemisms like top surgery, which is really a double mastectomy. They’re glossing over what these severe, very serious surgical interventions are, and treating them as if they are just very simple procedures that you can have done if you don’t like a specific body part. Mr. Jekielek: I’ve looked at the data and there is an explosion of children going to these pediatric gender clinics. What do you make of that? Ms. Littlejohn: It’s really frightening because we have ignored a mental health issue. These children and adults struggling with confusion over their sex, they deserve compassion, but they also deserve ethical evidence-based treatment. What we have seen is activism infiltrate not just our schools but our psychological associations and our medicine. We’re going to see a huge population of people who have been affirmed, medicalized, and then come to the realization when their brains fully develop that this did not fix their pain, and that this was not the root cause of their issue. This is why you are seeing the UK, Finland, Sweden actually do a proper assessment of the evidence being used to justify these radical interventions. They are reversing course, and they are saying, “The risk outweighs the benefit. We don’t have all the data to be affirming all of these individuals and putting them on a pathway to being a patient for life.” Think about that. A child who is 9 or 10 years old, you are putting on this medical pathway. Because they start the child on puberty blockers around 10 or stage 2 of puberty, when the secondary sex characteristics are just starting. But stopping that process has never been done before on this scale. What we’re finding in just the preliminary research being done is you’re also stopping bone development. We’re seeing bone density loss in these children and adolescents. We may be stopping brain development, because there’s all kinds of things that happen during adolescence with our brain going through puberty. That process itself is not fully understood. Why would we think that we would understand the process of completely halting it and then automatically putting these children on cross-sex hormones? They call it a pause button. That is a lie. They say that these puberty blockers are reversible. That is a lie. The reason we know these are lies is because we are now seeing the negative side effects. This is not a pause button; this is a fast train toward become a medical patient for life. How can you claim that children can consent to this? It’s all based on self-ID. We don’t have a test like in diabetes or any other kind of medical diagnosis where we are given medication. There is no blood test to determine which child will desist and which will persist in their gender dysphoria. We’re basing this on a feeling the child has. We’re taking a mental health diagnosis and we are trying to alter their body before their brain is even fully developed to fix what’s in their mind. Mr. Jekielek: This is all being done in the context of being in a time where a lot of people are actually confused about identity. I don’t want to call it an epidemic, but there’s a lot of that from what I understand. Ms. Littlejohn: Absolutely. And this is nothing new. Adolescents are known for having an identity crisis and not knowing who they are and exploring and trying on different hobbies and clothing styles and personas and rebelling against their parents. They’re trying to find who they are and where they fit into society. That is nothing new. What’s new is we have taken a mental health diagnosis, we’ve normalized it, and we’re medicalizing children. How can you say that a child can consent to their sterilization at age 11? How can you say that a child can consent to the loss of future sexual function? What’s going to happen? This is what keeps me up at night, how are these children going to feel when they reach the age of adulthood, their brains finally mature and they realize what’s been done to their bodies and they realize that people that were supposed to protect them and loved them the most allowed this to happen? Honestly, I don’t put the blame on the parents. A lot of these parents are being told that if you don’t affirm your child in this transgender identity, regardless of how long they have felt this way, how old they are, or of other comorbid issues such as trauma, if you don’t affirm your child, they will commit suicide. Not that it’s a risk factor, because it is. That is a concern, but how do we not know that the suicidal ideation comes from the root causes and the co-occurring issues versus not affirming? Parents are not being given all the treatment options available. How can you really give informed consent to an experimental treatment when you’re not being given the whole picture? They are not told that the majority of these children will desist if you give them a loving, supportive, neutral environment. Without socially or medically transitioning your child, most of them will desist. They will outgrow and resolve their distress with or without psychotherapy. It really depends upon the child. I’m not oversimplifying this, because a lot of these kids really are in true distress, but they have misdiagnosed their pain. They think gender identity is the answer, and in fact, many times they are being led to believe that gender identity is the solution. What child or teen who’s in real distress wouldn’t grab a hold of that? A solution is being offered to them that says, “That person that you hate, that was bullied, that was sexually assaulted or molested, you can leave that all behind. Now, you’re this new person.” They’re being given a solution that’s not real. No matter what these children or teens or adults do to their physical bodies, you cannot change your sex. Your DNA will stay the same. Many of these kids are spiraling because it puts these kids at war with their bodies. It’s a war they’re never going to win. You can’t outrun biological truth. That’s what a lot of people that are detransitioning are saying. They’re saying, “We were pushed along a path, a medical pathway. Our underlying issues were not explored. No one tried to stop me. No one said, ‘Wait a second, let’s explore why you are rejecting your femaleness. Let’s explore why you think becoming a boy is going to solve your distress.'” No one stopped them and they have to come to that realization on their own that it did not fix their internal pain. Many of them are now detransitioning and left with permanent, irreversible changes to their bodies like hair loss, vaginal atrophy, and permanent voice changes. Many of them through breast binding have deformed breasts or they went through with the double mastectomy, so they no longer have breasts. We’re going to see real people that have gone through these pathways and you’re going to see the scars of it. It’s going to be very evident. Mr. Jekielek: And it already is. In Europe this is being addressed. There’s multiple lawsuits against the Tavistock clinic in the UK that was shut down because of doing very similar things to what you’re describing. Ms. Littlejohn: That’s exactly right. Keira Bell was an incredibly brave detransitioned woman who took it upon herself to sue Tavistock. What they did that the U.S. had not done, until Florida just started to take these steps, was to do a proper evaluation of the medical evidence and research being used to justify these treatments. People that were raising the alarm bells here in the U.S. like Dr. Michael Laidlaw, Dr. William Malone, even Dr. Paul McHugh who shut down the first transgender clinic at Johns Hopkins, were all silenced, called transphobic, and told to go away. SEGM tried to have just a table of information. SEGM is the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine who believe that watchful waiting is the path, and a treatment option. They were told by American Academy of Pediatrics that they were not allowed to have a table. When you are not even allowing this conversation and this debate to happen for something as significant as sterilizing children, chemically castrating them and taking away their future sexual function, that is no longer medicine, that is ideology. Mr. Jekielek: There is this other element you mentioned earlier in our discussion that it was statistically impossible to have this cluster of gender dysphoric girls in your school, extremely unlikely. There is this element of social contagion that’s been discussed, which I know you’ve been thinking about a lot. Ms. Littlejohn: Absolutely. What you have happening is the normalization of transgender identities, and again, I firmly believe that these people struggling deserve compassion. They should never be discriminated against for any reason. Nobody should. But when you normalize a mental health issue, then you introduce ideology into the school system. It’s really been infiltrating our culture now for a very long time. The year 2015 was really a tipping point where the activism that had been focused on getting gay marriage legalized switched to transgender activism. What you started to see in the school systems are activist groups implementing guides into public schools, and private schools in some circumstances all over our country, under the guise of how to best supporting your LGBTQ youth. They would throw around the suicide statistics, they would talk about the homeless population, and how these children are at risk. They would put these guides into place in the schools. They called them guides in the state of Florida for a very specific reason. If it’s a policy, it has to go through the school board. When it goes through the school board, it goes through the light of day where parents then are made aware and can comment and give their input into that policy. If it’s a guide, it doesn’t have to go through the school board, but you can still treat it as policy. You can still train all of the teachers, the staff, and everybody from the guidance counselor to the cafeteria worker. What we saw in Florida was these guides were in place that were directing the schools to cut parents out of these gender support plans being done. In fact, it is so bad that the American School Counselor Association, if you look at any of their conferences, they over and over direct them to cut parents out, that parent permission is not necessary, and that it’s very damaging to a child to not affirm, which I would argue the opposite. Not only that, these activist organizations were instructing school counselors to not put the gender support plans in the student’s cumulative file. Put them somewhere else so that if a parent asked for the child’s records, like through FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), that gender support plan would not be in that child’s file, so the parent would still be in the dark. Mr. Jekielek: As you’re discussing this, it just strikes me that there are situations where children need to be removed from parents or parents might not be notified initially when children are moved away. And that’s in a situation where there is abuse, right? Ms. Littlejohn: Absolutely. Mr. Jekielek: Is this that parents who disagree and have a different perspective or are looking at other information are basically being treated as abusers? Ms. Littlejohn: They’re being treated that way, aren’t they? Because if you are stating in these guides or as your policy that outing a child to their parents may lead to abuse, you can’t assume that before you have that evidence. All teachers and even myself as a counselor in the state of Florida and in most states are mandatory reporters. If you have any suspicion that there is abuse or neglect happening with a child, you are mandated to report that to DCF, Department of Children and Families, or you will lose your license. This is no different. We already had that law in place. Why did they still feel the need to cut parents out? Going back to the social transition, this is so critically important, because even though we now have further protections in the state of Florida, there are many states that don’t. Look at Virginia. Look at what is happening in Virginia. Thank God we have a surgeon general here in Florida who understands this issue, and has looked at the evidence and looked at the research. He came out last March or April of 2022 and said to not socially transition these children, and to not medically transition these children, because the majority of them will desist. And when you socially transition a child, you make it then statistically less likely that they will desist. Isn’t that what we would want? It’s what we wanted 20 years ago when I was doing my clinical work. You wanted that child to reintegrate with their body as they are. Let’s take eating disorders for instance. We don’t affirm an anorexic in her distorted view of her body. Even if she says, “If you don’t let me take diet pills, I’m going to kill myself.” We don’t say, “Okay, you’re right. Anything to prevent suicide, here you go.” That would be completely unethical. It is impossible for a clinician to affirm everything a client says, otherwise why would you even need a therapist at that point? To talk about exploratory therapy as something negative in this one area of gender dysphoria is not only wrong, it’s unethical. One of the biggest issues is how these policies are developed, and we’re starting to see some dissension within the LGBT community about this. The LGB is vastly different than the T. When you group sexual orientation and gender identity together, it’s not the right thing to do. They’re very different. Sexual orientation does not involve making medical changes to your body, and gender identity does. And so, when you’re combining these issues together under one policy, it doesn’t make sense, because they are nowhere near the same. Mr. Jekielek: Another thing that strikes me is this use of guidelines as policy. It’s not just in this area that I’ve seen that play out, but in fact in multiple areas. I’m just curious if you’ve thought about that. Ms. Littlejohn: As we continue to go deeper and deeper into this issue, I just became more and more horrified not only with what the schools were doing, but also the normalization through movies, through anime, comics, and children’s programming. You start to see this gender ideology being injected into all aspects of our culture, including our government. What we are doing and seeing is that schools really have become ground zero for this gender ideology. It’s really important for people to understand that when we think of a transgender identity, people often assume it means someone who is expressing distress over their gender that doesn’t align with their biological sex and they want to present as the opposite sex. That is no longer what this ideology states. Now, children and teens are being taught that you can be a boy, you can be a girl, you can be neither, or you can be both. They are being taught that gender identity is completely separate from biological sex and that sex is a spectrum. That is a lie. You are born male or female with the rare exception of intersex or disorders of sexual development. Lie number two; children are being told that you can be born in the wrong body. You can be born a girl, but have a boy brain or vice versa. And this type of education is being interjected into sex-ed curriculum in many states. In some states like New Jersey, it is embedded into every subject from K through 12. Children are very impressionable. Mary Hasson has brilliantly stated that children look to the adults in their life to make sense of their world. It is not hard to get a child to believe a lie, because they trust the adults in their life to tell them the truth. And we are not telling these children the truth. If you Google gender identities and how many there are, we’re now up to 73. Each one of these identities comes with its own colors, and its own flags. That is very enticing to young children who are looking for an identity, and looking for a place to belong and fit in. Initially, they can find that within these GSA (Genders & Sexualities Alliance) clubs in middle school and high school campuses. But the number one rule of this group is that you can’t ask questions and you cannot have a differing opinion about any of it, otherwise you are immediately ostracized and kicked out of the group. Mr. Jekielek: You know a lot about this whole realm. I want you to tell me a little bit about your process, because at the beginning you said, “We were very confused. We trusted that the school had my daughter’s best interest in mind.” Please tell me about how that process happened. Ms. Littlejohn: It was hard. As a mental health therapist, initially I experienced my own cognitive dissonance because I was trained to affirm, and I didn’t have any clients that were having confusion over their sex. I didn’t have much experience with that. I had clients that identified as gay and bisexual, but that wasn’t the reason why they were in therapy, so it wasn’t relevant. It took me some time to figure out what was happening. Luckily, Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage, had come out based on Dr. Lisa Littman’s research. These are not Right-wing conservative people that were studying this and writing this, by the way. Dr. Littman describes herself as a very liberal Democrat who happened to be curious about what she was seeing, which was clusters of girls becoming confused over their sex and coming out as transgender in friend groups. She thought, “That’s interesting.” That’s what really stood out to me the most when I started to really look deeper into this, was the lack of curiosity. Why was no one asking questions? Where was the curiosity from legacy media as to why we were seeing an increase? I don’t even mean a sign and a value as to whether it’s good or bad, but just why is it happening? Is this a good thing that we’re seeing young girls being confused over their sex at a rapid pace and getting medicalized and getting double mastectomies? Walt Heyer said it best when he said, “When you inject gender ideology into the schools and you destabilize these children’s identity and you confuse them over something as simple as biological sex, we are now manufacturing children who think they are transgender.” They are creating confusion in children where no previous confusion existed. That is wrong and that is evil. And that word, transgender, no longer has a coherent meaning. It means whatever that person wants it to mean. That is not scientific. But yet we are making very serious medical changes to children’s and teen’s bodies based on a non-scientific feeling. Mr. Jekielek: You’re in the Leon County School system. When did you first come across this LCS, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender, nonconforming and questioning support guide? Ms. Littlejohn: When we continued to ask for legal justification that was allowing Leon County School, the school where she attended to meet not just with my child but any child, finally we were showed this guide. Now this guide has been rescinded, and they have revised and created a new guide. But this was the guide that was in place when they met with my daughter. It very clearly states in this guide in one of the Q & As, it says, “A student exhibits LGBTQ behavior or identity. Should parents be notified? No. Outing a student, especially to parents can be very dangerous to the student’s health and wellbeing. Outing students to their parents can literally make them homeless.” Mr. Jekielek: Whoa. Ms. Littlejohn: So, it’s very clear. Even though this guide has been rescinded, this same narrative, these same policies and guides are being used all over our country in schools around this nation. Mr. Jekielek: Two things strike me here. The first one is that it’s not just the parents that are being made fearful. “What if I do the wrong thing? What if I cause my child to commit suicide?” It seems like it’s the counselors or even therapists that are being made fearful. It was the most dangerous thing through these guidelines. The second thing is just that perhaps it was rescinded in part due to your work. Ms. Littlejohn: I’m grateful that it was rescinded, but I am not confident that children are still not being socially transitioned in the state of Florida, even with these new protections in place. Because there are activists, school counselors and some teachers that firmly believe that not affirming a child is extremely harmful. In some cases I believe that parents are not being told about watchful waiting, which is the treatment approach that we took with my child, where you give your child the space to dress how he or she wishes, wear their hair how he or she wishes, but anything that’s going to harm them or cause irreversible changes to their bodies, it’s a no. You set these healthy boundaries. You give the child counseling when appropriate to work on other root causes or comorbid issues. You give that child time to mature and resolve the other issues. One thing that’s really important about that is this Dutch protocol that Dr. Spack brought over to Boston Children’s Hospital to start the use of puberty blockers here in the U.S. The Dutch were very clear and they had very, very specific strict criteria for utilizing the puberty blockers in this manner. One of the criteria was the child could not have co-occurring mental health issues. That should blow everybody’s mind because the majority of the detransitioners and the kids that are being seen at these clinics and being fast tracked on this path to lifelong medicalization and sterilization have co-occurring mental health issues, some significant. And you’ve got places like Planned Parenthood and apps like Plume where you can go into Planned Parenthood and get testosterone on your first visit. They treat it as if it’s birth control. They’re saying it’s discriminatory to not give equal easy access to cross-sex hormones the same way you would birth control. Plume is an app where you can log on, pay $100 a month, have a telehealth visit with someone and they ship the hormones directly to your door with the video showing you how to inject the hormones. There is no safeguarding anymore. This is the wild west of gender medicine. Mr. Jekielek: Yes, I guess it comes back to ideology trumping reality. Ms. Littlejohn: Yes, it does. All parents should be very concerned about this because even if you have your child in what you think is a safe school, like let’s say it’s a private Christian school, or you’re homeschooling, your child will be exposed to this ideology at some point. If parents keep their children in public school, you’ve got to ask questions. You’ve got to know what protocols are in place. Ask and get it in writing. Ask your school guidance counselor, ask the principal, “What is your policy? What does your guidance tell you as a school? If my child becomes confused about their sex and they want to change their name and pronouns and use the opposite sex facilities, are you going to notify me as a parent and get it in writing?” If your child becomes confused over their sex, make it crystal clear that you do not want the school affirming your child, that you will handle it as a family, that you think affirming a child and a false identity is harmful and that you only consent to giving that school permission to using your child’s birth name and pronouns. The third thing that parents absolutely have to be doing, especially parents with young children, you need to be inoculating your children from this. You need to be teaching them the truth that there are two sexes, male and female. And no matter what you do, you can’t change it. That way, when they hear this noise, when they hear the lies, they will recognize them for what they are, lies. This is a mental health issue and it needs to be dealt with psychotherapy first. That is what all the other European countries are doing where this issue is not politicized like it is here. I can tell you very clearly that the parents I speak with, the families that are falling prey, it is not only tearing them apart, these children are not thriving. Their mental health is spiraling, and many of them are in and out of psychiatric facilities. And this is even when the parents are affirming. Think about that. If affirming is the best treatment, then why are we still seeing these same children in and out of psychiatric facilities? We still see, and this is a statistic that nobody talks about. Some of the best research that we have tells us that post-transition, people that have already gone through the medical transitions, the suicide rate is 19 times that of the normal population. And this comes out of Sweden where they are very compassionate and accepting of LGBTQ people. If this is the end-all, be-all solution, and this is the only thing that we should be doing, why are we still seeing the suicide rate skyrocket post-transition? Why are we not able to have this debate in the United States? The medical associations and profession have lost their way on this issue and it is past time for us to be able to have this debate out in the open. And these doctors who are doing these procedures, cutting the breasts off of 13, 14, and 15-year-old girls, they need to justify these radical interventions they are giving these children. WPATH, is the main organization that came out with these “standards of care.” WPATH, for your audience, is World Professional Association of Transgender Health. This is where this affirmation-only protocol came from. It was derived from these standards of care. But then when you look at what WPATH says, they say, first of all, “There is no medical consensus on the best way to treat children with gender dysphoria.” Then, they also say, “These aren’t really standards of care. These are guidelines.” But then you have all the major medical associations adopting these guidelines as if they are actually standards of care. Mr. Jekielek: I understand there’s some people from WPATH that also dissent from these guidelines and have been vocal recently. Ms. Littlejohn: Yes, there have been several that have made some statements that really shocked even people within WPATH. Dr. Edwards-Leeper, Dr. Erica Anderson, and even Marci Bowers who was one of Jazz Jenning’s surgeons. They have all expressed concern over the amount of teens that they are seeing with no prior history of confusion coming into the clinic wanting hormones and surgical procedures. Even they are stating, “Maybe we need to pause and see what is going on and take a more comprehensive approach to assessment.” Mr. Jekielek: For parents that might be watching this and wondering, “What’s going on in my school,” are there any red flags you can point out? Ms. Littlejohn: Yes. Many of these children spend a great deal of time alone on their phones, and on the internet. There are a number of trans-influencers on YouTube and TikTok. Abigail Shrier in her book Irreversible Damage dedicated an entire chapter to the trans-influencers, because they’re so powerful, they’re so intriguing, and they’re very convincing. And so, it’s really important that parents monitor what their kids are seeing and consuming. I am not a proponent of children under the age of 16 having a smartphone. And even then, parents, your number one job is to protect your child. You need to know what your children are being exposed to. A kid with smartphone is a recipe for disaster. Obviously I’m very passionate about this issue. We’re also seeing other significant mental health epidemics coming from too much phone use, too much time on TikTok, and too much time on other social media platforms where eating disorders are perpetuated on Pinterest boards. Self harm is big, cutting. There are other mental health issues. There was an epidemic recently of children thinking they have Tourettes after watching hours and hours of YouTubers that also think that they have Tourettes. We’re seeing other types of social contagions occurring aside from this one. Parents absolutely need to know not just what the policies are at school, but what their children are being exposed to. And they need to be present in their children’s lives, their day-to-day lives. For the parents who have been able to get their children to desist, in some ways, it took very radical steps. This is a radical ideology that grabs hold of these girls and boys. We’re seeing boys as well, I don’t want to just say it’s an issue with vulnerable girls. But the bottom line is these children were already vulnerable in some way. They were already feeling like they didn’t belong, they didn’t fit in, and this is the answer. If it hadn’t been this that they fell into, it may have been something else that they used as an escape. But many of these girls in particular, they’re uncomfortable with their developing body. They have an intense fear of being sexualized, which we all know is an issue in our society. Unfortunately, many of them have had negative sexual experiences, whether it’s assault, incest, trauma, or even just unwanted advances that made them feel uncomfortable in their bodies. Some of the warning signs that you would see would be a drastic change in mood, being withdrawn, and wanting to change and alter their appearance overnight. The red flags, are they coming home with propaganda, the pronoun pens and flags? What clubs are they in at school? Some of these clubs, these GSA clubs that are really indoctrination machines for this kind of ideology are being held at lunchtime. So, for the parents, you don’t need to drop them off early or know that they’re staying after school. It’s being done within the school day, so parents are unaware that their children are even involved in these clubs. Parents, especially of young children, need to be having these conversations. Even if you have an older teenager, ask them, “What are you learning about gender at school? What are some of your ideas of gender?” And that’s going to tell you a lot as to how exposed they have been to this ideology. Ask them, “I’ve been hearing the word non-binary, what is that? Let’s explore that together because I want to make sure you’re getting accurate information.” It is getting a sense of what their kids have already been exposed to, what they believe, and then making sure that they have actual accurate information based on science and not ideology. The other thing that I tell parents, especially parents who find themselves in our position where their child does become confused over their sex, you have to parent this issue like any other issue. When this happens, a lot of parents see such a radical change in their child seemingly overnight. It escalates very quickly from just wanting some different clothes, to “I want to change my name and pronouns” to, “I want a binder” to, I need hormones and puberty blockers,” or “I can’t be my authentic self.” But again, these children don’t have the cognitive maturity to understand what they are asking for. They just don’t. This is why we have laws in place to protect minors. They can’t drink, they can’t vote, they can’t get tattoos. There’s a whole plethora of things that minors cannot do, because we know that they’re not capable of fully understanding the consequences, especially the long term consequences. Many of these kids, they don’t have the ability to know how they’re going to feel about not having breasts in 10 years, 20 years. They need their parents to set these healthy boundaries to teach them, “What are the consequences of this? Let’s have a conversation. You’re stating that you want this.” But you know, a lot of these kids, they’ll ask for puberty blockers like it’s a nose ring. They don’t understand the scope or the scale of what they’re asking, of what that those puberty blocking drugs would do to their body. They’re just in emotional pain and they want that pain to stop and they’re being told, “This is the answer.” So, you must affirm their pain, but not this false identity. I just tell parents, “Don’t be afraid to parent this. You can’t freeze. They need you. Your child needs you to help them through this confusion.” Because again, to believe that a child can change their sex, it’s a lie. This entire ideology is built on quicksand and it is sinking fast. You cannot claim that gender identity is innate and that you’re born this way, but then also claim that it’s fluid and it changes. If it is fluid and changes, then why are we making irreversible changes to children’s bodies when we know their brains are not fully developed. We know that feelings are not facts, and we know that adolescents are notorious for rapidly changing moods, feelings, thoughts, wishes, and behaviors. None of this makes sense with any kind of scrutiny. Mr. Jekielek: When you launched this lawsuit, what was the reaction of the world? Ms. Littlejohn: I really didn’t know what to expect. There’s so much fear around this subject, because it is so controversial, and because it is sensitive. Once we started to really shed a light on what was truly happening, people were grateful. I have received a handful of messages that were negative. But for every one of those messages, I have received 20 messages of thanks and gratitude. Mr. Jekielek: It’s amazing to hear that you’ve gotten so much positive feedback, because very often you only hear about these attempts at so-called cancellation or attacks on your person. This seems like one of the ways in which people are prevented or maybe are afraid to speak up, because they’re worried that there will be this kind of reaction. Ms. Littlejohn: I had so many people tell me that exact thing. If you’re going to go forward, you need to use a pseudonym. You can’t use your real name, you need a VPN, you need all these things to protect yourself. At the end of the day, I was not going to be intimidated. In the long term, mental and physical health of children is too important. If children are not worth fighting for, what is? I would not have been able to sleep at night or look myself in the mirror if I did not fight this with my mental health background, knowing how unethical and harmful this truly is. Silence was not an option. What’s happening now is that courage begets courage. Parents are standing up, they’re realizing, “Call me whatever name you want, we’re going to have this debate. It’s time.” How many kids’ lives are going to be ruined because they were not given all of the information? And that’s my biggest concern, not only the amount of children that are going to come to regret these decisions, but would those parents have made a different choice if they were told “I know this seems scary and I know that suicide is absolutely a risk factor, but if you love and support your child and we try to get to the underlying root of this gender distress and confusion, statistically your child will probably outgrow this. They will probably resolve it and it’s going to be okay.” Mr. Jekielek: I’m going to give you a couple of scenarios. In America today there are many parents that are experiencing what you experienced where their kid comes to them and says, “I’m of a different gender than my sex.” So as a parent, what is the reaction? What is your advice about a reaction? Ms. Littlejohn: I would say research. Do not freak out on your child. Stay calm. Ask questions. Be curious. Work on your relationship with your child, because one of the biggest indicators of children desisting is having a strong parent-child relationship. The child is being told by friends and influencers that if your parents don’t immediately affirm you, they don’t love you, they don’t accept you and your real family, your glitter family waits. They’re not only a promised a new identity to fix all of their pain and distress, they’re promised a new family. And there are trans-influencers out there, some that are super explicit in what they say like a Jeffrey Marsh. And then, there are some that are more subdued that kind of look like you and me that aren’t as flamboyant. They tell your children things like, “I know it’s hard. I know it’s hard to know that your parents don’t love and accept you, but I love you. I accept you and your glitter family awaits. You can DM me anytime and I’ll be there for you.” It’s really nefarious what’s happening in terms of trying to put that wedge further and further between a child and a parent. And these are parents that love their children more than anything. What to me is very scary right now, and what we’re seeing is in some states is to not affirm a child is seen as abuse. Take the state of Virginia for instance. There is a lawmaker there that wanted to put forward a bill that would criminalize parents who did not affirm. She would criminalize parents like me and take my child from me for not affirming to my daughter that she can and should become my son. It’s not possible. It’s all a lie. That is what all the detransitioners are saying. “I did all these things to my body and I looked in the mirror and I knew it was a lie,” because a lot of their time and anxiety is spent trying to pass. You’ll hear that phrase over and over. “I was afraid I wouldn’t pass.” What they’re referring to is, “I wouldn’t pass as the opposite sex,” because biology doesn’t lie. You can grow facial hair, you can cut your hair, you can change your clothes, but your body type and your biology doesn’t change. These young individuals become obsessed in trying to pass as this lie. Many times it becomes too much or they start experiencing severe negative consequences of the cross-sex hormones like testosterone. Female bodies are not meant to have testosterone in their systems. And so, they detransition for a number of reasons. It’s different for every individual. I would say to parents that you have to do research. You have to educate yourself. There are many parent organizations out there now that are willing to help you, to help you truly understand all the treatment options. Genspect is a nonpartisan organization that does just that. But there are lot of really great places that have popped up in the last five to seven years since this has become so prevalent, where parents can get accurate information and understand all of their treatment options. When a child falls into this confusion and a parent seeks help, that can be very tricky because if the therapist and the doctors who we are looking to for advice are telling the parents sometimes in front of the child, “If you don’t affirm your child and this transgender identity, they are going to commit suicide.” Not, “They may,” not “It’s a risk factor.” They will say this in front of a vulnerable child. You are introducing this idea that, “Oh my gosh, if my parents don’t affirm me, I’m going to kill myself. This is a guaranteed outcome.” What parent then is going to say to the doctor in front of their child, “I think, we’ll wait”? What message does that send to the child? What options does that really leave them? I don’t blame the parents. I blame the doctors. I blame the doctors that pretend that this isn’t happening and pretend that they don’t have a duty to stand up. Pediatricians know this is happening, but think, “Well, I’m not referring them or I’m not prescribing puberty blockers, so I’m not complicit in this.” They absolutely are complicit. Any doctor who knows this is happening and is not writing the American Academy Pediatrics or their professional association and governing medical board is complicit in what is happening to these children. Mr. Jekielek: The other scenario, and this probably is also quite common. You’re a family member or you’re a close friend of parents that are facing this situation and you’re just watching this a little bit from the outside, but you’re concerned. How can you react in this sort of situation? Ms. Littlejohn: I would encourage the person to support their friends and to ask questions. There never should be any harm or threat of asking questions in terms of, “What do you think about this? What kind of research have you done? Have you heard about what the UK, Sweden and Finland are doing or what they’re doing down in Florida? Ask them, “Have you heard of the detransitioners speaking out?” It is sensitive because clearly I’m a parental rights advocate. Ultimately, it really is up to the parents. But at the same time, I have great concerns that parents are not being given all of the information. As a friend or a bystander, just sharing information in a compassionate, loving way, should never be a threat of harm. Mr. Jekielek: I know this is a bit of a sensitive question, but how is your daughter and how’s the family doing now? Ms. Littlejohn: Thank you for asking. I am fiercely protective over my daughter’s privacy now. No child should ever be put in the situation that she was put in by the school. And after several years, now she is on a path to self-love. But that is all I will say. This is her story to tell one day if she ever chooses to do so. But it is not an easy road and we are still dealing with the aftermath and the effects of everything that happened with the school. Mr. Jekielek: In just a few words, what is the core of your message to parents in America right now? Ms. Littlejohn: Parents need to stand up. They need to fight for their parental rights. They need to know what’s happening in their child’s school, and we need to eradicate gender ideology out of the school system. This is a non-scientific idea that has taken root in our society, but especially in our schools, and we need to get it out of there. Mr. Jekielek: January Littlejohn, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Ms. Littlejohn: Thank you so much for having me. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining January Littlejohn and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. - PRE-ORDER "The Shadow State" DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/the-shadow-state-dvd The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary BUY Jan 6 DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/dvd-the-real-story-of-january-6, Promo Code “Jan” for 20% off. - Follow American Thought Leaders on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeader Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeader Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleader Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeaders Gab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeader Telegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

“This is part of a broader proposal of potentially bypassing the informed consent process by putting mRNA gene-based technology in foods… You could have a salad and get vaccinated against potential biological threats.” Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is a psychiatrist, medical ethicist, and author of “The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State.” He has filed several lawsuits against American institutions and the government challenging vaccine mandates and COVID-pandemic policy. “It’s a level of control over people’s freedoms that this kind of technology and this kind of system will make possible, that the totalitarian dictators of the past could only have dreamed of,” warns Dr. Kheriaty. We discuss the frightening transition from core ethical principles of medicine to a transhumanist, neo-Gnostic, technocratic medical paradigm, in which informed consent is inevitably replaced with an ideology of scientism and even self-spreading vaccines. “The concept is almost sort-of treating the human being like a piece of hardware that requires genetic-based coding—mRNA or DNA software updates—every few months to sort-of stay current and stay functional, as though the human body were like an iPhone,” says Dr. Kheriaty. Interview trailer: Watch the full interview:https://www.theepochtimes.com/dr-aaron-kheriaty-self-spreading-vaccines-transhumanist-ideology-and-government-gag-orders-the-new-technocracy-threatening-hippocratic-medicine-and-the-nuremberg-code_4943584.html FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Dr. Aaron Kheriaty: Always good to be with you, Jan. Mr. Jekielek: Today we’re going to talk about your book The New Abnormal. Congratulations on publishing it. Dr. Kheriaty: Thank you. Mr. Jekielek: We’re going to start at the end of the book where you have this absolutely fascinating epilogue that talks about what Seattle might look like in 2030. Why don’t you give me a bit of a picture? I think that will give us a starting point. Dr. Kheriaty: Yes. The book is a work of nonfiction, but the epilogue is a bit of a fictional imagination exercise trying to project not too far into the future. 2030 is seven years away now, so it’s a future date that most people can imagine coming before too long. What the epilogue is attempting to do is to show where things are going in the next few years if the trends that I describe in The New Abnormal continue. What I did in this epilogue was imagine a software engineer living in Seattle and I tell a story of some things that happened to him, and I also paint a picture of how society in this new smart city is looking. I try to present some of the new technologies and some of the new surveillance and safety mechanisms in a way that can illustrate to the reader why people would want to buy into these things. They are a kind of frictionless, very convenient way of engaging in financial transactions and travel and the gathering of information. What looks appealing at first in the story that I tell in the epilogue unfolds, you then start to see there’s some flies in the ointment. There’s certainly some downsides, at least for certain sectors of society in this new technocratic paradigm. But by the end, hopefully the reader understands what the true dangers and the true downsides of this future would look like. What I did in Seattle 2030 is I didn’t imagine any new technologies that have not yet been invented. I took things that are already available, and just haven’t been rolled out or accepted or embraced on a widespread, society-wide scale yet. I said, “Okay, if these things which are already with us are successfully rolled out and embraced on a large scale, what are they going to do to us as a society? How are they going to impact our freedoms and our fundamental rights?” The epilogue is an attempt to spell out very clearly at the end of the book that if what I’m describing in the book is correct, and of course, I believe it is, and if we continue on our current path without some serious course corrections, this is what life is going to look like in just a few years. Is this a future that you want for yourself or your children or your grandchildren? Mr. Jekielek: I really like how you wrote this part because as you’re reading you think, “Wow, there seems to be a lot of upsides here.” The question should be, is it a worthy trade-off for the downsides? You’re a prominent opponent of mandates of any sort, and you’re an opponent of mandates on ethical grounds. Explain to me why that is. Dr. Kheriaty: Right. My fight against vaccine mandates started with an attempt to defend the principle of informed consent, the principle that says any adult of sound mind should be able to make healthcare decisions about what care they receive, and what medications or injections they accept or decline. Adults of sound mind should be able to make those decisions on behalf of their children who are too young to consent. Those are not decisions that should be made by the state or by other private entities like employers. What I saw with vaccine mandates was a kind of steamrolling of this principle of informed consent, which has been a bulwark of 20th-century medical ethics that was articulated in the Nuremberg Code back in 1947. Following the atrocities that we saw in German medicine during World War II under the Nazi regime, the world responded with the Nuremberg trials. In the wake of the Nuremberg trials, we developed the Nuremberg Code, which doesn’t have the binding force of law, but certainly has informed the laws of most civilized nations around the world. What happened during COVID is that those normal protections were suspended under the legal mechanism of a declared state of emergency. It’s precisely during wartime, and it’s precisely during crises, with things like pandemics or natural disasters, it’s most important for us to maintain our core ethical principles. Because in ordinary times, we’re typically not tempted to abandon those principles. When society and our lives are functioning well, we don’t think much about breaching these time-tested and well-grounded ethical principles. It’s precisely when we’re under pressure, and it’s precisely when we’re in a state of fear or panic that we’re most strongly tempted to abandon those principles. But that’s precisely why they exist. That’s precisely why during those times, it’s especially important to hold fast to those principles and not toss them overboard for the sake of convenience or for the sake of a supposed present or future greater good that may or may not actually come about. I would venture to say in every case, historically, when we abandon core ethical and core legal principles, inevitably disaster follows. I was an opponent of mandates during the pandemic, because I was an opponent of mandates prior to the pandemic on what I believe are solid, time-tested grounds of the ethical treatment of people when they are subjects of human research, and the ethical treatment of people when it comes to clinical or medical interventions. Mr. Jekielek: I want to highlight to our viewers in case they’re not aware that this is in a professional capacity, as you were the head of the Medical Ethics Program at UC Irvine, and this is the centerpiece of what you were teaching young medical practitioners. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right, exactly. When I was at the university and before I made the decision to legally challenge their vaccine mandate in court, I was trying to project ahead to the required ethics course that I teach all the medical students, looking over the curricular materials and the themes that I cover every year, beginning with things like informed consent, and a conversation about Nuremberg. I was also talking to them about things like moral courage. You may be at the bottom of the hospital hierarchy as a medical student, and so there’s a power differential, and it can be really intimidating to step out and raise a red flag if you see something unethical going on, if you spot something that’s going to harm patients, or something that’s running afoul of sound ethical policy or the law. But you still have an obligation to do that for the sake of protecting patients. Our duty and our fidelity always has to be to the patients who place their trust in us. Our primary duty and our primary fidelity is not to the institution or the hospital that we work for. It’s certainly not to the state. We are not the long arm of state policies. We are there to treat the sick, and the sick are vulnerable. We are there, first of all, to protect them, and to make sure that they’re not harmed, and then to do everything in our power to heal them, and to help them medically. I was imagining having those kinds of conversations with medical students if I hadn’t tried to behave in that way in my own professional life. So, I believed it was important not just to stand up in the lecture hall and talk about those principles and talk about moral courage and ethical integrity, but actually to try to live them in my own actions. That was the final piece that I needed to convince me that in my position, I couldn’t just let this policy go unchallenged. Mr. Jekielek: Prior to reading The New Abnormal, I hadn’t fully grasped how important Nuremberg was to public health approaches, medicine in general, and also human rights. Obviously, this whole class of crimes against humanity was created, as you outlined, to deal with the fact that people were saying, “What I was doing was just perfectly legal.” Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. Whenever you draw a historical analogy to the Nazis people instinctively recoil and say, “That kind of thing could never happen here.” The first thing is it’s important for Americans to understand that Nazi medicine in the 1930s was the best in the world. The medical institutions, the medical institutions of education, and the schools there were considered the best in the world. This was a civilized country, not a backwards nation that just turned barbaric all of a sudden. It’s also important when you look at Nuremberg to examine the defenses that these doctors mounted, the arguments that they made during the Nuremberg trials. As uncomfortable as this might be, we’re tempted to dismiss all of them simply as sociopathic or psychopathic individuals that were just opportunists using the death camps and using the Nazi regime as a chance to willfully torture patients for the sake of inflicting pain. Perhaps Josef Mengele and a few others were in that category, but many of them were considered distinguished men of science and very distinguished physicians. What happened to them that they went so radically off the rails? In their defense, they made two fundamental arguments that, quite frankly, in some sense, are difficult to answer. The first argument is “Everything that we did was legal, so under what law are you prosecuting us? Because the laws of Germany when we performed these acts permitted them.” That’s a very good legal question. Under what laws was the international tribunal at Nuremberg attempting to prosecute these Nazi physicians? To deal with that difficulty, we had to come up with this natural law-based argument and this legal concept of crimes against humanity, the idea that even if the laws of a particular state would permit egregious violations like this, nonetheless, as a human being, and as a member of the human family, there are certain things that you must know. There are certain ethical norms that are inscribed in the human heart that should never be violated, and you have clearly violated those things. The second argument that the doctors made was one of convenience, and even one of compassion, as strange as that may sound. Many of them were experimenting on prisoners who were in the concentration camps, in the death camps, and they argued that the conditions on the medical ward where these experiments were done were more humane than the conditions in the regular barracks where all the other prisoners were housed. There was better shelter, there was better food, there was more rest from the literally deathly level of work and working conditions in the death camps. Those things also were probably true. Nevertheless, that did not exonerate these physicians from the egregious crimes and the egregious ethical violations that they committed against these patients by violating their informed consent and by doing experiments on prisoners who were in no condition to freely consent or decline participation in these experiments. The world collectively gave a resounding no to both of those justifications. People can wonder, “How did a democratically-elected chancellor of Germany become a totalitarian dictator?” People forget that Hitler was democratically elected. He also never overturned the Weimar Constitution. What happened was the Nazis governed for virtually the entirety of their time in power, 12 years under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which allowed for the suspension of German laws during a time of emergency, so there was this declared state of emergency. There was this sense of urgency that we should be allowed to do things that otherwise would not be permissible. The doctors again argued, “What we did was legal.” They argued, “What we did was even humane,” in some twisted sense of that word, “and it was expedient.” They actually gained useful medical knowledge. That’s another misconception that people have about the Nazi doctors is that they were just total quacks who were doing completely scientifically useless experiments and killing people for the fun of it. Some of the experiments certainly had no scientific justification, but many of them yielded scientific and medical information that is still found in medical textbooks today. It’s a very difficult ethical question, “What do we do with this information that’s already known? How do we put that genie back in the bottle? Should we at least try to acknowledge that this scientific information was gotten by experiments that should never ever be repeated again?” During the pandemic, we started to see some of these same kinds of justifications being put forward as to why we should abandon core ethical principles like informed consent, which is the very first principle articulated in the Nuremberg Code. You saw, “We’re in a state of emergency, so the normal ways of doing things can be suspended legally and ethically.” “We need to do this for the sake of efficiency or for the sake of convenience, a needle in every arm, even if it’s going to harm some people, a one-size-fits-all public health policy is necessary for the sake of efficiency.” That was a very common argument that you heard from our public health agencies. When these arguments started to resurface, it worried me a lot because history doesn’t repeat itself. But as Mark Twain said, “While history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes.” Historical analogies are useful, not because a Nazi regime is going to rise up in the United States, but because if some of the principles and some of the arguments that were advanced in Germany in the 1930s that led to very bad places are starting to be deployed again, that is cause for serious concern. Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely. There’s the question of why was natural immunity ignored? Dr. Kheriaty: There are several reasons. I quipped on Twitter a year or two ago that the CDC will recognize natural immunity when someone figures out how to monetize it. When I filed my lawsuit on behalf of people with natural immunity, about 50 per cent of the American population at that time had natural immunity, which would’ve cut a $100 billion industry, the vaccine industry, in half. Those profits would’ve been cut in half if half the population no longer needs your product. That number is closer to 90 per cent today. There were financial interests at work pushing us in the direction of a needle in every arm, even for people who didn’t need the vaccine, because they had superior immunity from a prior infection. There has also been a re-imagination of health and illness that’s been developing for many years, but I think we fully saw it manifested during the pandemic. What I mean by that is we saw some strange reversals during the pandemic. We saw that prior to the pandemic, a person was presumed healthy, and you had to establish or prove that you were sick. So, if you wanted to miss work, you needed a note from a doctor saying that you were sick. But during the pandemic with mass testing of asymptomatic individuals and mass surveillance of the population, we saw that reverse. People were presumed sick, rather, and had to prove by some medical means that they were, in fact, healthy. During the pandemic, if you wanted to go to work, you needed a negative COVID test. What was behind that? There has been a shift in how we imagine the human person and how we imagine the human body and how we conceptualize health and illness that is very, very consequential. The mRNA vaccine paradigm has a lot to do with that because the mRNA vaccines can be scaled up very quickly, and they can be retooled, or reprogrammed, if you will, to try to deal with new variants. That project hasn’t actually worked out very well in terms of producing more efficacious vaccines, but the concept is almost treating the human being like a piece of hardware that requires genetic-based coding, mRNA or DNA software updates every few months to stay current and stay functional, as though the human body were like an iPhone. Again, that’s the same kind of assumption behind that. You’re presumed to be suboptimally functional until you get this intervention. Rather than having your normal, flourishing, healthy human body until you get sick, then medicine can intervene to try to bring you back to that natural healthy state. That’s the Hippocratic paradigm for medicine. But the technocratic paradigm for medicine sees you as just a collection of physiological processes that we can tinker with and that we can upgrade and that we can improve and that we can potentially enhance indefinitely. That’s a very profitable enterprise if people buy into it. It’s also a very concerning enterprise, because it has the potential to do enormous harm by trying to make people through science and technology and medicine more than human, this enhancement project of biotechnology. We’re going to end up, I fear, dehumanizing people. We’re going to end up with not just a two-tiered society, the sort of Gattaca problem that’s outlined in that movie that a lot of ethicists have talked about, but we’re going to have a complete reversal about how we understand ourselves and our bodies and the natural processes of health and healing. I don’t think that’s going to take us as individuals and us as a society to places that most of us want to go. You’re not a piece of hardware that requires a software update every few months that the government or you should have to pay for. You are presumably a healthy, functioning human being. If you’re not, if you’re impaired by sickness or disability, let’s look at how we can restore that function. But let’s not treat the entire population as though they need ongoing biological interventions just to bring them up to date or up to speed in terms of health and human flourishing. Mr. Jekielek: What’s really interesting is that you take this even deeper when you talk about how you believe that this neo-gnostic religious view or quasi-religious worldview is upon us. It’s a profoundly different way of envisioning the human relationship with reality. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. Mr. Jekielek: I’ll just add one more thing. As I was reading in the early chapters, I was thinking, “There’s so many commonalities.” I have this instinctive sense that there’s something about this system that reminds me of woke ideology. I’ve been very deep into trying to understand this, and then you reveal that in the later chapters through this meditation. Please tell me about this. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. I argue in the book that the transhumanist movement, which we can talk a little more about later, and I would also argue the woke ideology are, if you look at them through the lens of these being novel religions, they both would be classified as what I call “neo-gnostic religions.” Gnosticism was a collection of different religious sects in the early centuries of Christianity that were the main competitors to Christianity. These different gnostic sects had differences between them, but they had a few things in common. One of the things that they had in common was, first of all, they were elitist. It’s only a few that had access to the secret knowledge, gnosis, where we get the word Gnosticism, that really knew what’s going on underneath it all. And those are the people that should be running the show. That’s an elitist proposition in contrast to its main competitor in the early centuries of the church, orthodox Christianity, that said, in principle, that salvation is available to everyone, not just to an elite class of people. That was the doctrine of grace that was proposed by Christianity. The second feature that the Gnostics had in common was a desire to overcome the material world. They had that desire because in their cosmology, the good principle or the good God created only the spiritual world, created the soul, created the angels, and created the unseen realm. But the material realm was created by an evil principle that was working against that good principle. So, they saw material reality as fundamentally something that they needed to escape from or overcome. Now again, in contrast to Christianity, Christianity had certain aesthetical tendencies in relation to the body because of the doctrine of Christ’s suffering in his crucifixion. But Christianity never rejected the material world. Christianity acknowledges that the material world and the spiritual world are both created by the same God and that God is good, therefore the material world is good. It’s affected by sin and the fall and so forth. But we can’t reject it, and we certainly can’t reject the human body, because in the Christian conception Jesus Christ took on a human body and became a man, the second person of the Trinity. So these two competing theologies had different approaches to the material world and the human body. The Gnostics recognized that the material world was ordered by lawful processes, what today we would call the laws of science. But that order was something to be overcome. The material world was the raw material that they could do whatever they wanted with. So, they took two fundamentally different approaches to the human body. Some of the Gnostic sects rejected eating, drinking, and sex altogether. They would fast very, very rigorously, and they would sometimes forbid all sexual relations because reproduction was bodily and therefore was bad. Those sects died out fairly quickly. You can imagine why. It’s hard to reproduce your ideas if you don’t reproduce people. But other sects took a very libertine approach to the human body. It doesn’t matter anyway, so you could do whatever you want with it. The idea was to escape this world into a higher spiritual realm, either through these extreme aesthetical modes or through a total desecration of the material world and the human body. But in both cases, the human body was what I described before. It was just this collection of hardware, this collection of physiological processes that I can do whatever I want with. It wasn’t an organic whole that was naturally oriented toward health and human flourishing. It was just stuff. Mr. Jekielek: Or made in God’s image, that’s what I’m thinking. Dr. Kheriaty: Made in God’s image and likeness, and therefore worthy of some regard and respect. Nature can give us a norm of health. Disease is defined in relation to the natural healthy, normal, human functioning, not in relation to some cyborg that we need to enhance the human body to become bigger, faster, stronger, smarter. This transhumanist project of trying to do just those things, melding the human and the technological, making healthy people better, bigger, faster, stronger, smarter through gene editing, through cybernetics, through nanotechnology. This is just a microwaved version of a very, very old ideology. It’s a new form of the ancient Gnostic attitude toward human beings, toward human nature and the human body, that goes beyond just this or that technological application of science, to actually creating an entirely new worldview. As I argue in The New Abnormal, I think that conception of science and medicine, the technocratic neo-Gnostic conception of science and medicine really began to overtake the traditional Hippocratic view of science and medicine that has dominated science and medical progress in the West since the time of Hippocrates. Mr. Jekielek: What you’re talking about is very, very profound. Dr. Kheriaty: One of the other uncanny analogies, or the history beginning to rhyme, that occurred during the pandemic is precisely this very subtle shift that I described in the prologue of the book that happened with German medicine in the 1920s and the 1930s, and led them down a very dark path. And again, caveat, I’m not comparing the current or the previous administration or our own leaders in this country to Hitler’s Nazi regime. But nevertheless, there are these parallels that are very concerning in terms of the underlying mentality and the underlying arguments that are being advanced today. What happened to the German physicians in the 1920s and 1930s is that they became convinced that their primary allegiance or loyalty or fidelity was not to the sick, individual patient in front of them, but to the social organism as a whole. You had this metaphor being advanced in Germany of the Volk, the people as a whole, being healthy or sick. If the people as a whole are healthy or sick, there are some members of the body politic or the population as a whole that are cancers because they’re disabled, because they’re a drain on resources, or because they’re criminalistic. And what does a physician do with a cancer but carve it out in order to enhance the health of the organism as a whole. This is a very powerful metaphor that took hold in the minds of physicians in organized medicine in Germany and led very readily to the eugenics programs in Germany—forced sterilization followed by forced euthanasia, followed ultimately by the horrors of the experiments conducted in the death camps. I fear this kind of subtle shift is beginning to happen in American medicine as well. We’re starting to hear people talk in these very same terms. Just the other day in a New York Times piece that was published about another lawsuit that I’m filing in California, challenging Assembly Bill 2098, which would be a gag order on physicians and allow the medical board to discipline any physician who contradicts the government’s preferred COVID policies. We’re challenging this in federal court. The New York Times ran a piece about our case just a day or two ago, and the very closing paragraph, the head of the American Board of Internal Medicine, a very powerful entity of organized medicine in the United States, said that physicians in California who are challenging this law need to understand that they have some loyalty or fidelity to basically organized medicine, and to the “experts” that are making decisions about what doctors should be doing. And I immediately recoiled from that proposal because it’s just not true. Our loyalty is to the sick patient in front of us, the patient who has to put their trust in us. If our loyalty shifts towards organized medicine, if our loyalty shifts to some social program or some state program, however worthy it might appear, then doctors have lost their way. They’ve lost their way because patients need to be able to trust us, otherwise nothing in medicine is going to work. With the sick patient who’s lying there on a gurney in pain, if I walk up and introduce myself for the first time and say, “How can I help you? I’m here to help,” that person needs to know I can trust this man that I’ve never met before because he’s a doctor. I can trust doctors because their loyalty is always to do the best for me as their patient. They will not become agents of any other social program or any other program, even one developed by these institutions of organized medicine in the United States. And let’s be frank, these institutions of organized medicine have become and can easily become very politicized. When politics intervenes in the doctor-patient relationship, then we’re in trouble. Mr. Jekielek: Essentially, most of the policy that was implemented over the last several years was catastrophically bad. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. Mr. Jekielek: There’s people that debate this model of having a policy set on high by a group of experts. If we ever needed evidence that this is a bad idea, we have the experiment that’s right in front of us. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. If people would only look at the evidence. The subtitle of The New Abnormal is The Rise of the Biomedical Security State. The biomedical security state is the militarization of public health welded to digital technologies of surveillance and control that things like smartphones now make possible. Both of those two apparatuses are backed up by the police powers of the state—militarized public health, digital surveillance, and state power. This militarized response to a pandemic threat did enormous collateral harms, and yet even after those harms became manifest, our agencies were not walking back misguided policies like the lockdowns or the school closures or the vaccine mandates or the vaccine passports which did not advance public health, and which did not slow or stop the spread of COVID. It’s natural to ask the question, why did those policies continue even after the harms, which greatly outweighed any benefits, became clearly manifest? Maybe the answer has something to do with the fact that COVID was an opportunity for our agencies of intelligence and military to do things and to test things out that otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to test—to treat COVID as though it were a foreign bioweapon threat, which is possible. We still have not proven that’s not the case. But in terms of a threat to people’s health, we totally ignored two fundamental facts about COVID, the two most basic epidemiological facts about COVID. First of all, the infection fatality rate, as Jay Bhattacharya, John Ioannidis and others have shown, was 0.2 per cent, not the three or four per cent that was initially touted by the WHO. And there’s a large age gradient in terms of who dies of COVID. The vast majority of deaths were people over the age of 70. People under the age of 50 were not at significant risk of mortality from COVID, with or without the vaccine. Those two basic epidemiological facts were ignored with our one-size-fits-all policies, and that did enormous damage. It damaged the trust of so many Americans in public health, and in our government agencies where trust was already fairly low, but also in organized medicine and in medical institutions. It’s very concerning that I have very accomplished, very educated people, CEOs, high powered lawyers, telling me prior to the pandemic, “I always trusted doctors and I always trusted hospitals, and I always trusted medicine as a whole.” Now they’re saying things like, “I never want to see a physician again. I never want to go to a hospital again.” I understand why their trust has been undermined, and I don’t blame them for thinking that. At the same time, this is not a good situation for us to find ourselves in. There’s been a lot of damage over the last three years, and The New Abnormal is not primarily a retrospective on what went wrong with the pandemic. I talk about that in the book. There’s a lot of other excellent books out there that do a post-hoc analysis or post-mortem on the pandemic. The book is about why these things happen during the pandemic? What’s the 20-year history behind this? But more importantly, what’s coming next? What does the future look like? What are the next steps in the rollout of this biosecurity paradigm that I describe in the book? I talk about this so that people can be aware that even though some of these policies have been rolled back, the whole infrastructure at work is still in place just waiting for the next declared public health crisis to advance even further and to steamroll our rights and freedoms even more than what we saw during COVID. Mr. Jekielek: One of the things that is being developed is transgenic lettuce that will be able to produce mRNA, one head of lettuce per person. This is apparently what some people think is reasonable to be working on after seeing how these genetic vaccines have been deployed. What do you think? Dr. Kheriaty: Yes, the idea is to genetically engineer lettuce and spinach, and then you could have a salad and get vaccinated against potential biological threats. There are some serious scientific problems with this proposal, like oral tolerance, and other issues that we probably don’t have time to get into. But there’s very serious reasons to believe one, this will not work for its intended purpose, and two, it’s going to potentially cause some serious health harms. More important for our conversation is this is part of a broader proposal of potentially bypassing the informed consent process by putting mRNA gene-based technology in foods. There’s also research that I described at the very end of the prologue on self-spreading vaccines, vaccines that are themselves carried by respiratory viruses, viruses that supposedly are not supposed to make you very sick. 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the population gets a vaccine, and the rest of the population catches the vaccine contagiously, because the vaccine itself is being carried by a virus. To my mind, these are not just dangerous, but downright ludicrous proposals. They’re entirely reckless, ethically and scientifically and medically. Mr. Jekielek: You offer some profoundly interesting explanations for this, aside from simply the financial motive, which I certainly believe is real and strong, when we know this technology has not been successful, at least by any measure that you and I would consider valid. Yet there’s this bizarre lettuce research going on, and the research you described is something that is actively being researched as well. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. The mRNA technology was attractive because it fits perfectly into that technocratic paradigm that I described, where it can be scaled up very, very quickly. It can be retooled and reprogrammed and updated very, very quickly. There is this whole coterie of people who believe that viruses that infect humans are like computer viruses, and humans are like really complicated computers. When computer viruses and biological viruses are nothing alike, and human beings and computers are nothing alike. Nevertheless, this kind of paradigm makes the mRNA platform very, very attractive to people who want to get into the business of constantly upgrading human beings through essentially what amounts to either gene editing or commandeering our own cellular machinery to express new proteins that are coded for by mRNA that’s given or administered through various means. This is gene therapy, something that would make most Americans pretty nervous if they knew that it was going on, but that’s what it is. Proposals for gene therapy certainly hold promise for curing diseases. We have to steer through various ethical difficulties and potential pitfalls. But they also hold a lot of promise for people who want to attempt to enhance human beings, not just cure illness, but change your eye color and your height and your weight and your strength and your intelligence. If these things are being introduced during this state of emergency and Americans are accepting and getting used to them under a state of emergency, it’s not allowing for the kind of public debate, careful deliberation, rational reflection that the use of these technologies really should require. Mr. Jekielek: As we’re speaking here, I’m thinking back through the years and remembering all sorts of examples of the celebration of this transhumanist vision of reality. I’m thinking about Hollywood, and I’m thinking about textbooks. I’m thinking that this way of viewing the world was much more deeply embedded than I had really comprehended. Why is this such a big problem? Dr. Kheriaty: People need to understand the transhumanist ideology that I describe in chapter three of the book. I argue that ultimately, it’s a religious ideology. The ultimate aim of the transhumanist movement is literally immortality. They want to make people live forever, either staying alive in our biological organic form forever, or this transhumanist dream of uploading the contents of our consciousness and our brains onto some cloud or mainframe in the sky and living forever in a cyber world. So, this is a religious proposal. When you start talking about immortality and eternal life, you’re talking about tapping into deep religious aspirations. One of the reasons that it’s attractive is that nihilistic atheism is very, very hard for most people to live. Those who have abandoned religious faith or who no longer find the traditional western religions credible still have these innate human longings that revealed religion taps into. The religious dimension is ineradicable. The religious dimension involves the ability to ask questions like, “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the meaning of my life? Do I have a specific vocation or calling? What is good and what is evil, and where do good and evil come from? What happens after I die?” These kinds of questions are questions that I think most human beings naturally ask at some point in their life. Whether that leads them to a particular religious faith or not, they’re still asking and wrestling with those questions. Transhumanism taps into that and says, “We can offer you salvation, not through grace or not through some kind of religious practice. We can offer you salvation through technology. If only we had more money, if only we could advance our technological agenda more quickly, we can eventually get you to the point where we can fulfill these religious longings by technological means and by technological enhancements.” People buy into this to the point where they will cryogenically freeze their bodies. There’s a couple of for-profit companies in the United States that will cryogenically freeze your entire body. Mr. Jekielek: Or just your head I’ve learned. Dr. Kheriaty: Or just your head. Yes, there’s a discounted version where you could just freeze your head. Because presumably once they figure out how to upload the contents of your brain into the mainframe, you won’t need the rest of your body anymore. That’s a pretty serious commitment to an idea if you’re going to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to cryogenically freeze your dead body after your demise. What is the answer to this? The answer to this, first of all, is we need to stop suppressing those religious questions. Because they’re going to pop out anyways, and people are going to seek answers in the only places that society allows them to seek answers. Which right now is, “Let’s put all of our faith, all of our trust in science and technology.” We need to be able to ask those questions and wrestle with those answers, and allow people the freedom to pursue the paths that their conscience discerns are best for them in that regard. This is something that the Chinese Communist Party is loath to do, and it’s something that we’re seeing more and more of in the United States with encroachments, not just on freedom of speech, but encroachments on religious liberty and the free expression of religion, particularly in ways that are more publicly visible. We need to allow people to pursue human good and human flourishing in a way that allows them to follow their own conscience rather than having answers dictated to them by the state. Americans need to understand that scientism, this ideology that I’m describing, is totally different from science. Science is an open-ended inquiry that requires intellectual humility and the openness to new information and revising ideas on an ongoing basis. But having scientific conclusions dictated to me from the top and not being able to question them is not science, it’s authoritarian and ultimately a totalitarian ideology. If people don’t want to live in what will look more and more like a totalitarian society, they need to wake up and push back against this. With totalitarianism, it’s important to understand what I mean by that term too. Totalitarianism can exist without secret police and without concentration camps, and even without mass surveillance, as horrifying as all of those things are. The central feature of all totalitarian systems, according to Eric Voegelin, the great theorist of 20th century totalitarianism, is the inability to ask certain questions, the forbidding of questions, and the cancellation of people for asking the wrong questions or posing the wrong ideas. That’s what all the totalitarian systems of the 20th century had in common. That was the core, and that was the essence of their ideology. Mattias Desmond draws a distinction between a totalitarian regime and a dictatorship. He says in a dictatorship, the dictator rules through external fear. You’re afraid to say what you think because you might get canceled for it or you might get put in jail or you may be punished in some way. You’re afraid to do certain things because of external punishments. But in a totalitarian system, ultimately, the secret police and the punishments can decline over time because people themselves have absorbed the ideology, and the population does the cancellation for the state or the regime or the party. They do the work of informing on dissidents. When a significant portion of the population internalizes the ideology, the really terrifying thing is that those questions that would challenge the regime simply no longer occur to people. It’s internalized to such an extent that people’s entire thought process and their perceptions are shaped by the totalitarian system, such that ideas of freedom or dissent just simply don’t occur to people anymore. They’re entirely foreign, and people are compliant, because that’s the only thing that they know, and they don’t have the rational capacity or the imagination to conceive of anything that might be different. That, in my mind, is the worst form of imprisonment. A dictatorship gives you these external pressures to behave in a certain way. That’s horrifying, right? Nobody wants that. But this interior prison that a totalitarian system eventually induces in a large portion of the population is an even worse form of enslavement. Because if you’re not anteriorly free to have certain thoughts or to ask certain questions, you truly are a slave in the deepest sense of that term. Mr. Jekielek: It’s absolutely something that must be pushed back against. The obvious thing that comes to my mind at this point is really that it’s fear that gets people to inhale this totalitarian or mass formed way of thinking. Fear, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, was prevalent everywhere. In fact, there were these so-called nudge units in the UK, and I’m sure there were analogous modes of operation in the U.S., Canada, and other places. How is this connected? Dr. Kheriaty: Fear bewilders us, it makes us lose our heads. I can put on my clinical psychiatrist hat for a moment and say treating people that are under a chronic state of fear or an overwhelming state of fear, as happens with anxiety disorders, that level of chronic sustained fear or acute fear impairs their ability to think clearly and to reason well and to sift information carefully. Fear and the fight or flight response is adaptive and helpful in very short term situations where there’s an immediate threat. But if fear is sustained for a long period of time, for hours, days, weeks, or in the case of the pandemic, literally for years, and as you pointed out, the fear in the population was not just because we had this novel virus, but it was from the way in which information was presented to the public, and involved very exquisite levels of, for lack of a better word, military-grade propaganda designed to elevate and intensify people’s fears. The reason for that is people who are afraid are much easier to control. If you want a passive compliant population that’s going to do whatever the authorities are telling them to do, fear, as has been known by dictators for centuries, is a good way to do that to a population. Mr. Jekielek: I just want to jump in briefly. We know from Laura Dodsworth’s work in the UK that this was an active thing the government did, this behavioral unit in the UK government. Do we know as a fact that other governments were deliberately using the same sort of tools? Dr. Kheriaty: Yes. It’s clear, for example, in Canada that people involved in the military and intelligence sectors of the Canadian government were central in terms of crafting public health messaging and the Canadian government’s communications response. We have considerable evidence that not only was this happening in Great Britain, but also in Canada and in the United States. Fear was sustained even after we had a lot of robust scientific information at hand that could have been communicated to the public that would have allayed many of our fears. We chose not to present that information to the public or to downplay it or to sideline it. I believe all of that was deliberate as well. It’s a very concerning development that the government would employ this kind of psychological technique against its own population in order to control population level behavior. Mr. Jekielek: One of the things about Dr. Fauci’s pronouncements, for example, at one point he’s on record saying that the reason he talked about masks the way he did was to elicit a particular behavioral outcome. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. Mr. Jekielek: I remember when he said that, I looked at almost everything he said through that kind of lens, and it almost looked like everything he said… Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. Mr. Jekielek: … had that in mind. It was fascinating. I don’t know if I’m right about it. Dr. Kheriaty: Our entire public health apparatus operated in that way. A well-functioning, healthy, responsible public health system would say, “Let’s take constantly evolving and complicated scientific information and simplify it so that the public can understand it,” which will inevitably involve losing some nuance and oversimplifying in some cases, but still trying to communicate that information as accurately as possible in a way that people can digest and understand it, so that individuals can make reasonable decisions for themselves and their families about COVID mitigation measures. That’s not what we did. What we did instead is the public health authorities decided in advance what behavioral outcome they wanted. Everyone wears a mask or two masks. Everyone stays at home. All the schools should close. Everyone should get a needle in every arm. They said, “What do we need to present to the public in order to get them to do that thing that we’ve already predetermined in advance is the best or the right or the good thing for them to do?” Now, presenting information only to get people to behave in a certain way is a perfect definition for propaganda. So, this was not a responsible communication of science, of epidemiological data, or of public health information. This was propaganda. This was highlighting, exaggerating, spin-doctoring information that we think will move people in this particular behavioral direction and squashing, sidelining, silencing, canceling, downplaying, or attacking information, even if it’s true information, that might lead people in a different direction. Mr. Jekielek: What you’re describing basically encapsulates this new collective way of looking at health. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. “We know what’s best for everyone,” said this elite clerisy who had access to the right way that we should be moving. They can discern the direction of history and what the future should look like. “We’re the ones who have to call the shots because ordinary people don’t have the wherewithal to make the right decisions on their own behalf. Look where democracy got us. We got messy things like Brexit or Trump. “So ordinary people can’t be trusted. Ordinary people’s judgment and common sense cannot be trusted. Basically, our job is to tell people what to think and to make people believe that they’re coming to their own conclusions. Whereas in fact, they’re just being led along in the direction that we would like to move them.” This is condescending. This is arrogant. And politically, this is very, very dangerous in my view. Mr. Jekielek: You reference Orwell in the book repeatedly, especially with this concept of newspeak, changing language. You also reference Huxley, the other kind of dystopian model. Dr. Kheriaty: Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 presented a dystopian society in which there was a very high level of top-down authoritarian control over people’s lives. This was done through newspeak, through manipulation of language. If you can manipulate the words that people are allowed to use and the way in which people are allowed to talk, you can actually change the way that people think. Orwell talked about this in a terrific essay called, “Politics and the English Language.” Orwell understood that the control of language and also the control of the flow of information was necessary for a regime like this to take hold. You had the main character in 1984 working for the euphemistically-termed Ministry of Truth, and he was responsible for taking last week’s newspaper and dropping it down what was called the memory hole, literally an incinerator. History, even history as recent as last week, was rewritten in order to advance what the party wanted to do today. Last week, the newspaper said that Oceania was allied with Eurasia, but this week, the newspaper says Oceania is at war with Eurasia. In fact, we have always been at war with Eurasia. The thing that you think you read or you think you heard last week has been shoved down the memory hole. We pretend that it was never said. We pretend that it was never done. In the censorship regime that we saw manifesting in a new way and in a very powerful way during the COVID pandemic, you see many of those same practices. A public health authority can stand up and say something that’s 180 degrees different from what he said last month. Which is fine if the information has developed or if there’s new information, but there’s never an acknowledgement that they have actually changed their minds and that what they said last month they now believe to be wrong. “We’re sorry for giving you advice based on that information that we now believe is wrong. But here’s why we’re going to change that and rectify that.” That’s not what happened. People just came up and said something new every week or every month and pretended like what they had said or what they had done in the past just simply never existed. There was never any acknowledgement of the primacy of truth. It was always the primacy of authority that was at work, and that’s very Orwellian, if you will. Huxley’s dystopia was a little different. It was a more soft totalitarianism where you didn’t have secret police and men in jackboots and this heavy-handed police state level of authoritarianism keeping everyone in line and inducing fear in the population. You had a complacent, lethargic population that was kept more or less content, but in a very dehumanized way by drugs. You had this fictional drug soma that everyone was taking. Every time they felt any angst or started wondering about the meaning of their life or something like that, they could medicate away these questions or these difficulties. And then you had a society that was just filled with all kinds of diversions, where people were engaged in this superficial hedonistic type of a society that kept them more or less placid and contented in a superficial way and took away people’s drive to actually step back and look at their society and ask how they were living individually and collectively and decide to say, “No, this is not how I want to be as a human being.” The other thing that Huxley understood very clearly was the role of biotechnology. Much of Brave New World is about advances in biotechnology and the ways in which that can become dehumanizing. All new human beings are bred in these artificial wombs using in vitro methods. The old-fashioned messy means of reproduction are now used only for the purposes of pleasure and have nothing to do with the generation of new life. There are quality control measures. One of the main characters works at the state hatchery where they run the embryos and the fetuses through the test tube process into birth. There’s behavioral conditioning involved in the Brave New World where these subliminal messages are fed to people while they sleep to shape their thinking. Huxley, in terms of his technocratic, biologically-driven shaping of the human mass of passive people and drugging people to keep them placid, like the way we do with marijuana these days, was really prescient in terms of seeing that aspect of social development. Huxley saw the importance of language, the importance of controlling the flow of information and censorship in terms of controlling populations, and the importance of backing up some of these measures with the police powers of the state. What we had before COVID was a little more Huxley, a little more soft biotechnology-based forms of dehumanization. But what we saw during COVID is that the Orwellian aspect of the dystopian regime also rose up to the point where now we have both of them working hand in glove. Both of those writers, sad to say, are really prophets for our own day. Most people have heard of these books. They may believe that they’ve read them, because they’ve read about them. But it’s a good time for folks to go back and read them for the first time or reread them if they read them way back in high school. Look at our contemporary world through these works of brilliant prophetic fiction and see what you see. Mr. Jekielek: They aren’t supposed to be instruction manuals. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. Mr. Jekielek: They are supposed to be warnings. Dr. Kheriaty: They are supposed to be warnings about where not to go. Yes, that’s right. Mr. Jekielek: That’s right. Apparently, we didn’t heed the warnings very well, so we’re sitting here and we’re smiling at each other a bit, because the reality is deeply troubling. One of the things that I loved about your book is the fact that you offer some really thoughtful directions for people to take in their lives at this point to actually do something meaningful in the face of this potential radical shift in society. Dr. Kheriaty: In the last chapter of the book, I do try to offer the reader some hope. It’s sincere hope, because there are some things that I fundamentally believe. First of all, I believe human beings are very resilient. I also believe that regimes built upon lies ultimately will collapse. They can continue as Soviet communism showed us, they can continue for an unbearably long period of time, and enormous human damage can be done in the meantime, but eventually they will collapse. The question for us is how to avoid getting to the point where we find ourselves in a dehumanizing society or dehumanizing regime. And if we’re already in one, how do we help to manifest the lies and the contradictions of that regime sooner, so that it collapses sooner rather than later. But ultimately, I do believe that the truth will prevail. I like to say that nature itself, but human nature also, always comes to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning, meaning you can cheat things for a certain period of time, you can establish a society or a regime that’s built upon lies about what it means to be a human being or what it means to be a human being in relation to others, but ultimately that’s not going to be sustainable. So, that’s one source of hope. The second is that human beings are very resilient. In our hearts we can sense when we are not living in a way that is conducive to health and human flourishing. People are extremely creative at finding ways to resist, to build alternative institutions, to create and begin new things when the old institutions have become sclerotic or too corrupt to be reformed or redeemed in any meaningful way. We can begin again. We can begin with a new Hannah Arendt, the great writer who talked about 20th century totalitarianism and the banality of evil. In her philosophy, she talks about the gift of what she calls natality, the fact that a new generation is born and comes into the world frequently, all the time. That new beginning is always a source of hope for the human race. Our generation may have messed things up, but the next generation comes into the world, and that’s a source of perennial renewal for human beings. In the last chapter of the book, I do offer some policy proposals in my areas of expertise which have to do with public health. I talk about ways that we can meaningfully reform some of our public health agencies like the CDC, the FDA, and the NIH, which failed us during the pandemic. I also try to offer some broader suggestions that have to do with, first of all, overcoming our fear. Mr. Jekielek: I want to touch on that because I remember you talking very specifically about this being the first thing. Dr. Kheriaty: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: But easier said than done. Dr. Kheriaty: There are small ways where we can begin to develop the ability to push back against our fears. As a psychiatrist I know the way to overcome fear and anxiety is not avoidance, it’s exposure. It’s step by step, graded small scale level building to a medium scale level, building to a larger scale level of literally facing our fears. The therapist becomes a coach to help you do that in a stepwise process so that you don’t get overwhelmed. We have retreated, we have shrunken back from these external threats, stopped living as human beings, stopped being together, stopped relating to what another, and stopped taking risks. Safety is a fundamental need of the human person, but risk is also a fundamental need of the human person. Those two things have to be kept in balance. A society where no one ever takes any risks is not a society, it’s a collection of corpses. We need to be learning once again to be daring, learning once again to take risks, not reckless risks, but sensible, reasonable, rational ways of moving forward and of pressing forward in spite of dangers and in spite of difficulties. Collectively, each and every one of us has to relearn that after we engaged in this massive experiment of essentially what amounted to radical avoidance for almost three years. We need to get back to this process of actually facing our fears and being willing to live life again on its own terms, despite our frailty and our mortality and our vulnerability. We’re always going to be vulnerable to illness, to disability, and ultimately to death. But as Montaigne said, “He who has learned to overcome the fear of death has learned how to live.” Socrates said the same thing. He said, “All philosophy, “filosofia,” the love of wisdom, is a preparation for death.” And Socrates faced his own death without fear, because he had learned to put his life under the banner of truth, “I’m going to serve the truth. I’m going to pursue the truth wherever it can be found. I’m going to be humble and acknowledge that I don’t know everything.” He was the wisest man in Athens, because he asked questions. As a society, we need to capture that kind of daring spirit again, to be willing to ask questions, to be willing to take risks, to humbly acknowledge that we don’t know everything and that we can’t completely control nature, we can’t completely control pandemics, but we can still live together. We can still support one another. We can still care for the sick when they get sick. It is really important for us to overcome our fear, because if we’re still living in a state of fear, we’re paralyzed. With severe fear, anyone who’s ever experienced a panic attack knows that fear will literally paralyze you, not just physically, but also mentally. You can’t move. You can’t think when you are terrified. You can’t do anything. So, this issue of fear is very important. And you may say, “I’m not a public health official. I’m not a person with political power. I’m not a person in the media. What can I do to fix the kind of problems that you’ve sketched out?” There’s a lot you can do. You could start by working on whatever fear you’ve absorbed, and working on overcoming that. Work on starting at a small scale, meeting and gathering and talking and thinking with people face to face at the neighborhood level, at the school level, and at the community level. Start a book club, reading great works of literature. You could start a dystopian book club and maybe mix in some comedies so everyone doesn’t get too depressed. There’s a lot that ordinary people can do. People are not powerless. They were made to feel powerless during the pandemic, but they’re not. They’re not powerless. Mr. Jekielek: That’s fantastic advice. That’s advice I could take myself, so thank you for that. There’s at least a couple of instances where I’ve been thinking about the things that you’ve written, just general concepts and the new abnormal that we are seeing manifest. One of them is in China right now. Dr. Kheriaty: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: There could be whole swaths of cities, where suddenly everyone’s code turns red and they can’t move. They can’t transport. Dr. Kheriaty: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: This is the society that you’re describing. Dr. Kheriaty: All part of the plan. This is the first time that we’ve seen these kinds of mass gatherings in China, pushing back against the regime since the Tiananmen Square. It’s horrifying to see companies like Apple supporting the regime by removing Airdrop from the iPhones, which was the only way that many of these protestors could communicate with one another during the protests, because that was an app that didn’t go through the network, the cellular network there in China that the state could control. And rather than celebrating the fact that they had that technological mechanism that permitted communication and freedom for the Chinese protestors, Apple, probably for their own financial reasons, went ahead and sided with the regime and took away that thing that all of us in the West enjoy on our iPhones. But these Chinese protests are also heartening because they illustrate what I said in regards to human nature, that human nature always comes to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning. Regimes that are built upon lies eventually will fall. I don’t know when the tyranny in China will end. I hope that it’s sooner rather than later. But I know that a regime that operates the way the Chinese Communist Party operates cannot sustain itself forever, because it’s built upon lies. It’s built upon a house of cards. Under the right social conditions and with sufficient pushback from the citizens, the party is going to lose control and things are going to have to change. I hope these are signs that something like that may be happening, or at least an initial stage in a movement in that direction. But we have to take heart that there are people there who have been pushed beyond their limit, which is horrifying. And now, they are manifesting what all of us know to be true, which is that the human person’s ability to discern, “In spite of all the propaganda that I’ve been fed my entire life, in spite of all the control of education and the flow of information and what I can access, I still know in my heart that I should have the ability to move around in my own country freely. I should have the ability to speak freely. I should have the ability to earn a living for my family and to support my children.” Those are basic, fundamental human truths that are inscribed on the human heart, and no tyrannical regime can ever fully eradicate them. Mr. Jekielek: And all of this, despite the deployment of a lot of these technologies. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. Mr. Jekielek: You argue that in The New Abnormal that this really needs to be stopped. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. I talk about the next stages in the biosecurity surveillance regime. What’s coming next? Because COVID, in a sense, was just the beginning. My book is more about the future than it is about the past three years. The first step is digital IDs tied to biometric data, face IDs, retinal scans, and fingerprints. We see this with the Clear system at the airports. Now, we see this in many other sectors and in private corporations utilizing these things more and more. But ultimately, this is a system in which your passport is now stored in the Cloud and it’s tied to information about your health. Eventually, with wearable and implantable devices, it stores your moment-to-moment health, your vital signs, and your emotional state. This is going to give governments and their private corporations that partner with governments unprecedented access and intrusive access to moment-to-moment information about you that most people should be very, very reluctant to relinquish. Those will be tied to a financial system that centers around central bank digital currencies. This will also be a step that will be rolled out in the near future. And central bank digital currencies need to be distinguished from decentralized digital currencies like Bitcoin. A CBDC will allow the government to track each and every one of your financial transactions. This has already been done in China with the digital e-Yuan, which was rolled out during the Beijing Olympics. They showed during the Olympics that they could induce their entire population to use this, which is not surprising given the level of control the regime has. But they also required any of the participants from the other countries, any of the visitors from the other countries to download that app and utilize that centrally controlled digital currency during the games. That app is still on their phone, tracking their financial transactions and lots of other information that can be gleaned from your smartphone. They were able to export this internationally using that event as a kind of fulcrum or leverage. The Feds have already publicly acknowledged that they want to issue a digital dollar. They’re going to pitch it as being a frictionless ease of use, “If you forget your wallet at home or your passport at home and you’re at the airport, no problem. We’ll just scan your iris and you can still get on the plane. You can still make transactions on the other end using your digital wallet tied into your digital ID.” And this all sounds very- Mr. Jekielek: Convenient. Dr. Kheriaty: … convenient and effective. And yet, it’s important for people to understand that what you have in your digital wallet is not actually money, because these digital currencies are programmable and they can have conditions attached to them. For example, let’s say the federal government gives you a tax credit. You get a thousand dollars back from the federal government because you have a child. That thousand dollars in your digital wallet is not the same thing as a thousand dollars cash or a thousand dollars in your bank account, because the government can also say, “You need to spend that thousand dollars some time in the next nine months, or it’s going to disappear,” or, “You need to spend that thousand dollars only on these favored industries,” and, “You’re not allowed to spend it on these certain disfavored industries. You cannot give that money to the Epoch Times, because they’re not a state approved media organization.” What you have in your digital wallet is actually not a dollar like a dollar bill. It’s a sort of temporary voucher to nudge your economic and transactional behavior in particular directions. The push is going to be toward a cashless society, where the digital dollar or other forms of centrally controlled digital currencies are the only way to spend money and the only way to engage in financial transactions. The government will know all of your financial transactions. It can tax them on the spot. If you’re buying too much meat, an algorithm in the sky can turn off your ability to buy meat or to buy gasoline or cigarettes or whatever the disfavored behavior that you’re engaged in. Mr. Jekielek: Or travel to a protest. Dr. Kheriaty: Exactly. Or travel to a protest. And the real problem with this system is that it will be such a pervasive and complete level of control that the system itself will become impossible to resist once it’s fully put in place. Why? Because if you try to mount resistance, a person or an algorithm in the sky will simply push a button and you can’t travel, your car won’t turn on, you cannot buy or sell anything. It can basically lock you out of the markets. It’s a form of exile that regimes of the past could never have actually instantiated. It’s a level of control over people’s freedoms that this kind of technology and this kind of system will make possible, that the totalitarian dictators of the past could only have dreamed of. Mr. Jekielek: We saw a little bit of what that might look like with how the Canadian government dealt with the truckers. Dr. Kheriaty: That’s right. Mr. Jekielek: You’re seeing some of the things that you’ve written about in The New Abnormal come true. And this is even in this court case that you’re involved with, Missouri vs. Biden. Some of the discovery materials that have come out, some of the emails of the close communication and collaboration between the government and Big Tech are astounding. Dr. Kheriaty: They are astounding. This will turn out to be the biggest First Amendment free speech case in decades. I don’t want to sound too grandiose, but what we found on discovery suggests that this public-private partnership regime of censorship was even more pervasive and widespread in the various federal agencies than we initially suspected when we filed the lawsuit. This is a lawsuit that the state Attorney Generals of Missouri and Louisiana have filed against many senior officials in the administration, along with four private plaintiffs, myself, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff, co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Health Freedom Louisiana, which is a nonprofit medical freedom group in that state. We are alleging that the government has been colluding with Big Tech companies, particularly social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google to censor any information that contradicts the government’s preferred pandemic policies. In fact, we’re seeing now that this was being done to censor other forms of information related to election integrity and the Hunter Biden laptop story. But we’re focused on the censorship of people who challenged COVID policies during the pandemic. What we’re finding is that many, many federal agencies, not just the HHS agencies responsible for public health, but also DHS agencies responsible for security and intelligence were engaged in this operation. Now, arguably, and I say arguably, because there’s legal debate about this, but arguably, private social media companies can censor. They can decide who to kick off their platform and who to allow on their platform. Inarguably, no one doubts that the federal government cannot do that. That’s a clear violation of Americans’ First Amendment free speech rights. The federal government can also not suborn private entities to do its bidding. It cannot be under the threat of, “If you don’t do our bidding, we’re going to make life difficult through more regulation.” They cannot basically lean on the social media companies to become the long arm of their censorship regime. But this is exactly what was happening over the last three years. The communications and emails that we’ve received so far on discovery suggest that this was happening at a very finely granular level, down to senior government officials saying, “Why hasn’t so and so, this high profile account, been removed from your platform yet? We don’t like him.” And then 10 minutes later, the text message came back from the senior executive at Facebook or Twitter saying, “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll take care of it right away.” And boom, the person is gone. The companies, under fear of regulation or running into difficulties with the government, which can make life very difficult for them if it wants to, are saying, “Okay, how high should we jump, and where should we go, and what should we do?” This is absolutely egregious, which seems like a soft word for it. People in the administration did it so casually, without any afterthought, which suggests to me that at a certain point it became so normalized in the federal government to do this, that it probably didn’t occur to many of the people involved that they were doing something illegal. And not just something illegal, but something that violated the highest laws of the land, which is the laws articulated in the Constitution of the United States. This is a very serious issue. Science cannot progress without freedom of speech. Science cannot progress without deliberation and debate and conjecture and refutation. If you try to lock in a scientific consensus and make it unassailable, then scientific progress will halt immediately on that issue, because we make progress when you’re allowed to challenge a consensus or to challenge what people thought that they knew. If you just read the history of science, that’s how science proceeds. This is detrimental to science. It’s obviously detrimental to the people who do not get a chance to offer their perspectives or their opinions. But the First Amendment cases in the United States also say that freedom of speech is important. The Supreme Court has articulated this, not just for the person who’s speaking. If my free speech rights are violated, that’s bad, because I’m not allowed to say what I want to say. Or my ideas can’t gain any purchase in the public square because I’m silenced. So, that’s bad. But I’m not the only one harmed by that. The Supreme Court has said, “No. Free speech also exists for the receiver of the speech.” People have a right to hear both sides of a debated question, so that they can make a reasoned judgment based on all the available evidence and all of the available opinions. Whichever side makes their case more compellingly should gain more adherence. It’s the American people as a whole that are harmed by the free speech violations, even if it’s the free speech violations of a few. That’s among the many reasons why this Missouri vs. Biden case is so important and so consequential. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration, Jan, to say that never in our history have we seen this level of free speech violation by the federal government that we’ve seen over the last three years. This absolutely has to stop, or our little experiment in this ordered democratic republic is going to come to a grinding halt. Mr. Jekielek: There’s so much more we could talk about here today. Any final thoughts as we finish? Dr. Kheriaty: Yes. I want to end on a note of hope. If you stand up and challenge this emerging regime, you may lose some friends. You may be called names. You may be accused of being this or that, a conspiracy theorist or a COVID denier or any of the other terms of abuse that have been hurled at people that are trying to ask questions and trying to challenge the public health narrative that’s emerged over the last three years. But as someone who’s had the experience of actually doing this, I will say, first of all, there’s nothing better than waking up with a clear conscience every day. And also, you’re going to meet new friends, genuine friends, people who really care not only about you, but about the pursuit of truth. There will be people that you have all kinds of interesting disagreements with, which is good. We should disagree with the people that we’re hanging around with and talking with and not exist just in a bubble. But you will meet a genuine group of, now I would say millions of Americans and others around the world who are recognizing that, “Hey, something is not right. What happened to us over the last three years is not right.” They are very concerned about the future that we’re going to hand on to our children and grandchildren. It’s never too late to reconsider assumptions that you thought were valid back in 2020. It’s never too late to admit that, ” Yes, maybe I endorsed something or maybe I did something that now I regret.” That’s okay. In fact, that’s a good thing. I think it takes tremendous moral courage to admit that you’ve changed your mind or to admit that you regret saying or doing something in the past. I would invite people from across the spectrum of opinions on the themes that we’ve talked about today, just to try to remain open-minded and try to listen to people on both sides of this debate and not be afraid of where the evidence or the truth might lead you. Mr. Jekielek: Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Dr. Kheriaty: Thank you, Jan. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Dr. Aaron Kheriaty and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host Jan Jekielek. - PRE-ORDER "The Shadow State" DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/the-shadow-state-dvd The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary BUY Jan 6 DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/dvd-the-real-story-of-january-6, Promo Code “Jan” for 20% off. - Follow American Thought Leaders on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmThoughtLeader Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmThoughtLeader Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/amthoughtleader Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmericanThoughtLeaders Gab: https://gab.com/AmThoughtLeader Telegram: https://t.me/AmThoughtLeader

For 35 years, ivermectin was hailed as a miracle drug. It had an incredible impact on millions of people’s lives around the world who suffered from diseases like river blindness, scabies, and elephantiasis, without side effects and at an affordable price. The scientists who discovered it even won a Nobel prize. Some doctors tried to use it on patients with COVID-19—and the effect was profound. Not perfect, but in Peru, there was a 14-fold decrease in excess death during the pandemic while Ivermectin was used. But many governments are not allowing doctors to use this cheap, generic drug to treat COVID-19. And today, we’re going to try to answer: why? 👉 Watch our Cured Series: Episode 2: UNVAXXED Patient: How I Was Rescued From Hospital Death Episode 1: Band of Doctors Defy CDC’s Protocols to Save Americans ———– Medical Disclaimer: Frontline Health (the “Show”), its guests, and contributors provide the latest news on health and medical discoveries, and it is meant for informational purposes only. The Show does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, cures, mitigation, or prevention for any type of disease or medical condition. Similarly, it is not intended for self-diagnosis or self-treating of any health-related condition. The information on the Show is gathered from reputable sources; however, neither Frontline Health nor The Epoch Times Association Inc. are responsible for errors or omissions in reporting or explanation and will not be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential, special, exemplary, or other damages arising therefrom. Patients should always consult with a doctor or other health care professional for medical advice or information about diagnosis and treatment. Interview trailer: Watch the full interview:https://www theepochtimes.com/the-untold-story-of-a-miracle-drug_4952578.html FULL TRANSCRIPT Dan Skorbach: For 35 years, ivermectin was hailed as a miracle drug. It had an incredible impact on millions of people’s lives around the world who suffered from diseases like river blindness, scabies, and elephantiasis. Without side effects and at an affordable price. The scientists who discovered it even won a Nobel prize. Some doctors tried it during COVID, and the effect was profound. Not perfect, but look what happened in Peru: a 14-fold decrease in excess death during the pandemic. But many governments are not allowing people to use it. And today, we’re going to try to answer: Why? Welcome to Frontline Health, I’m Dan Skorbach. Dr. Pierre Kory: There is a drug that is proving to be a miraculous impact … Mountains of data from many centers of countries throughout the world showing the miraculous effect of ivermectin. It basically obliterates transmission of this virus. If you take it you will not get sick … Dan Skorbach: This statement was made by Dr. Pierre Kory at the beginning of 2020. Dr. Kory and a group of other prominent doctors were among the first to develop an effective way to treat COVID-19 early into the pandemic using a cheap, FDA-approved, generic drug called ivermectin. And this was at a time when the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) advised doctors not to treat COVID patients until the disease got serious. But these doctors found that in countries where ivermectin was used, death rates dropped dramatically. This was in clear contrast to the data coming from the U.S. The number of deaths here from COVID was one of the highest. And when these doctors shared their miraculous results of patients recovering from COVID with this simple medicine, the legacy media stigmatized and accused them of medical misinformation. And this cheap, FDA-approved drug went from being ‘a miracle’ to a dangerous horse dewormer. Dr. Pierre Kory: I had a front-row seat to endless pervasive disinformation around ivermectin. And I will tell you, they largely succeeded. In most of the advanced health economies around the world, it’s not recommended. Dan Skorbach: So what is it about ivermectin that makes it so controversial? Let’s look at its history. Ivermectin was discovered in Tokyo by two scientists: Satoshi Omura and William C. Campbell. Dr. Omura was a golfer, and on one of his golf trips he picked up a sample of soil around here, like any scientist would, on the east coast of the Izu Peninsula. And in this sample of soil was this bacteria. When they took it to the lab, they found it was able to kill roundworms in mice. So they isolated the bacteria’s active compounds, slightly changed its structure, and called this new compound ivermectin. This new drug was a big deal. And both Dr. Omura and Dr. Campbell won the Nobel Prize for discovering it. What was so special about ivermectin? Well, scientists are still puzzled by how exactly it works. But it seems to penetrate the nervous system of parasites. It disables their neurons, and that would basically make the parasite dysfunctional until it dies. So in 1988, this drug was used in Africa en masse to treat river blindness. This is a very unpleasant disease caused by a worm. Back in those days, the WHO had reported that because of river blindness, some 270,000 people had lost their eyesight. But thanks to ivermectin, this disease is now on the brink of elimination. Ivermectin is also instrumental in managing another disease transmitted by parasitic worms. This one is called elephantiasis. People infected with this bug experience swelling that causes their legs to balloon to incredible sizes. Some 120 million people are infected with this worldwide. It’s so important in these parts of the world that the World Health Organization recognizes ivermectin as an essential medicine. In fact, ivermectin was so great at killing off parasites, it was recognized as being second to penicillin in terms of having the greatest impact on human health. And over the past 30 years, some 3.7 billion doses of Ivermectin were taken by humans. But the story doesn’t stop there. Ivermectin wasn’t just good at killing parasites. By the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a growing body of evidence that ivermectin could be effective at treating viruses and inflammation. The inflammation part was very important because, in severe cases, COVID can cause dangerous hyperinflammation in the body. And having an anti-inflammatory drug on hand was crucial. So a good number of doctors and researchers around the world began connecting the dots. The first study that mentioned ivermectin as a potential treatment for COVID-19 was conducted in Australia in April, 2020. Researchers there injected ivermectin into infected kidney cells of monkeys. And they found that the drug was effective in very high doses. And a month after that, the government of Peru approved ivermectin to treat COVID-19 for the entire country. After about a year, a nationwide study was conducted. It concluded that ivermectin, in Peru, led to a dramatic drop in excess deaths across a population of 33 million. Within five months, from August to about December, deaths had a 14-fold decrease. Then a new president came to power and heavily restricted the use of ivermectin. And guess what happened? The excess death rate went right back up. So that’s what happened in Peru. Over in Brazil, there was a similar story. An international team of researchers examined 88,000 patient records in this southern city. And their study concluded that Brazilians who regularly used ivermectin as a precautionary measure had a 92 percent lower mortality rate. One of the authors of this study is a prominent intensive care unit (ICU) lung doctor from the U.S.: Dr. Pierre Kory. We showed you him earlier. Back in the day, Dr. Kory was part of a team of doctors who pioneered the use of ultrasounds in the ICUs across U.S. hospitals. Before that, critically ill patients had to be wheeled to an ultrasound exam. And that wasted a lot of time in a life-and-death situation. Instead, Dr. Kory traveled around the country, teaching doctors how to use ultrasound by the patient’s bedside. That meant doctors could immediately determine what was wrong inside the patient. The guessing game was gone. And more lives were saved. This doctor literally redefined what the standard of care was in the ICUs. And Dr. Kory is doing the same for treating COVID. He is one of the founders of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). The doctors here are dedicated to advancing COVID-19 treatment using ivermectin as the foundation. And the physicians who use their protocols allege incredible success in the thousands of patients that they treated. Dr. Benjamin Marble, for example, is an emergency medicine specialist in Florida. He alleges that his team has treated about 150,000 acute COVID-19 patients with treatment that involved ivermectin. Only six of those patients died. So if you put all of this together, you can see that there’s strong evidence that Ivermectin is effective in the early stage of COVID. It’s effective in the late stage where there’s pneumonia. And it’s even effective in long haulers who continue to experience lingering symptoms after the infection. And if it really is that effective, why isn’t it being prescribed on a large scale? Well, like any drug, it must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration or FDA. And while ivermectin is on the list of approved drugs, the FDA has not approved it to treat COVID. The reason? Health officials cite a lack of data in favor of ivermectin. And that’s confusing because we just showed you a lot of data that shows a strong signal that ivermectin is effective in treating COVID. So why are U.S. health officials not convinced? In their case, they want to wait for big clinical trials. And these randomized clinical trials have to be published in big journals. And that’s exactly what happened here. This, for example, is the latest government-run trial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It involved just over 1,500 people in the U.S., and what they found was that ivermectin did not significantly improve the time to recovery in patients with mild to moderate COVID. And if you take it as face value, you’d probably just end up agreeing with this headline: “Study finds ivermectin has little effect.” But if you actually dig into it, these big trials have a lot of problems. Dr. Pierre Kory: The other side will argue, ah, but these are the best trials … every single one of these has massive pharma ties and funding conflicts, they are all highly conflicted researchers who essentially make their living by working for or getting funding from pharma. And these are the people chosen to study a generic off-patent drug. I almost want to leave my argument there because it’s unassailable. You’re literally using pharmaceutical industry-employed investigators to study a competitor, which would destroy the entire business model in COVID. For these companies, how you can possibly trust in the design or conduct of the trial in that setting. You would need to be extremely naive at this point. A naivete that I had a few years ago, after my journey through COVID. My first question of any trial is looking at the investigators and their conflicts, and it will tell you everything about the result that was achieved. Dan Skorbach: As far as conflict of interest goes, this particular study had a lot to declare. The researchers were receiving funding from Gilead, which manufactures one of the few approved drugs for COVID treatment. They also received funding from Pfizer, which also has an FDA-approved COVID pill on the market. Merck and Regeneron were there too. These companies also have FDA-approved products for treating COVID. So basically, at the time of this clinical trial, these researchers were paid by pharmaceutical companies who are directly competing against ivermectin. To Dr. Kory this was immediately a red flag. So he took a closer look at the data in the report. Dr. Pierre Kory: At every turn, [they] tried to use the lowest dose for the shortest duration, completely in departure compared to their favorite drugs. So when you look at drugs like Paxlovid and molnupiravir, they are given to the patients early, they give them for prolonged durations, you know, that’s how they try to show efficacy. With these drugs, they do the exact opposite. It is so brazen, the manipulations that they’re doing to try to mitigate any evidence of efficacy. And despite all of those efforts, and this is where it gets really crazy. They make all of these manipulations to the trials, and yet ivermectin still has good data behind it. Like even in the trials, you’ll see high probabilities that it was effective, it doesn’t cross their statistical significance threshold. Some of the time it comes just under, which is on purpose. But I mean, you just have to do a little bit more than a casual look at these trials to see the brazen manipulations. Dan Skorbach: In terms of good data, the government trial on ivermectin showed that the drug was statistically effective in treating COVID on day seven and day 14. But on day 28, it was ineffective. And the researchers decided to make this day as the day that measures whether ivermectin was effective or not. But Dr. Kory said it is absurd to focus on day 28. Think about it, a viral infection lasts about two weeks at most. So by the fourth week, there’s usually no viral symptoms for ivermectin to improve because the person has recovered. So, yes, in that case, you can say that ivermectin is ineffective at day 28. But that would be the case for any other drug that helped the patient recover. But, regardless, this clinical trial is a federal verdict. It gives the FDA and the NIH the grounds to recommend against the use of ivermectin to treat COVID. And because these federal agencies are against it, so are the medical boards across the country. And this puts some doctors at risk of losing their medical license if they do go against the system’s consensus. Dr. Pierre Kory: It’s one of the great sadnesses of my life. As I’m watching pharmaceutical industry corruption play out in front of my eyes every day now for a year and a half. I consider myself an expert now at looking at how big pharma manipulates the body of science. And because I’ve been forced to observe it, I didn’t know this. I didn’t know this. When I gave my testimony. I had no idea it would launch me on this journey over the next two years of endless censorship and false narratives, and propaganda manipulations of science. And it’s a sad state of affairs what public health is today. I see it as deeply and almost completely controlled by big pharma. Dan Skorbach: To give you another perspective. Here’s an infographic The Epoch Times put together on COVID-19 treatments in the U.S. All the treatments that have been approved by the FDA come with an expensive price tag: $3,000 for remdesivir. Up to $10,000 for plasma. $4,000, $2,000. And the medication that is not authorized on average costs under $60. Bottom line is that FDA-approved treatment is seventeen times more expensive than what’s already available. And what’s more, ivermectin is a safe drug with a 35-year track record. Whereas many of these new drugs come with a big list of dangerous side effects. So please, share this video with a friend. Because regular folks are being deprived of simple, effective, and safe medication that is saving lives. This is Frontline Health. I’m Dan Skorbach. Stay healthy America. - PRE-ORDER "The Shadow State" DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/the-shadow-state-dvd The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary BUY Jan 6 DVD: https://www.epochtv.shop/product-page/dvd-the-real-story-of-january-6, Promo Code “EpochTV” for 20% off.

Today, we sit down with filmmaker Jennifer Sharp. After being injured by a COVID-19 vaccine shot and meeting others in the same boat, she made the documentary film, “Anecdotals.” “I was told specifically by somebody: Your story is just an anecdote… So it’s really irresponsible for you to talk about it because you could stop people from being vaccinated, and you could be responsible for their death,” Sharp says. Her film “Anecdotals” tells the stories of the vaccine-injured, many of whom are being gaslighted and ostracized by friends, family, and the medical community for associating their symptoms with the vaccine. “A lot of people learned that when they went to the doctor that they could not even tell the doctor that it was a vaccine reaction. And they’ll get better care,” Sharp says. Interview trailer: Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/jennifer-sharp-society-abandoned-and-gaslit-the-vaccine-injured-now-im-telling-their-stories_4979379.html?utm_source=epochtv FULL TRANSCRIPT Jan Jekielek: Jennifer Sharp, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Jennifer Sharp: Thank you. It is so great to be here. Mr. Jekielek: Let’s start with this. When I read the words safe and effective, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Ms. Sharp: The vaccine, the Covid vaccine. Obviously, it’s like the manipulation of it. Mr. Jekielek: Okay, the manipulation of the vaccine or of the messaging? Ms. Sharp: The messaging. Catchphrase messaging. It’s funny because when I first heard safe and effective, at the beginning of the pandemic I didn’t put it with any catchphrase or anything. I’m like, “Of course they’re saying safe and effective because they have to be.” But then more and more as I’m hearing more and more people and they’re all saying the exact same thing, safe and effective, safe and effective, celebrities, television hosts, just tons of people, and then I’m like, “Wait, this is actually a manipulation, because that’s what they’re told to say.” Mr. Jekielek: Did you know at the time that there was a lot of money behind that, and that it was a marketing campaign? Ms. Sharp: I didn’t know that there was. No, honestly, I feel like if somebody would have really had a conversation with me, I probably would have figured it out in that conversation, but I just wasn’t even trying to put two and two together like that. I never thought like, “Oh, there’s this huge campaign for safe and effective.” However, this is a tiny bit of a jump, but I just saw the documentary on Hulu, Dopesick with Michael Keaton, and it’s about the Oxycontin crisis. It talks about how when they were trying to up the dosage of Oxycontin, they would call something breakthrough pain. And if you have a patient that has breakthrough pain, that’s a reason to give them a higher amount of Oxycontin, instead of realizing that the Oxycontin wasn’t actually working or it was becoming addictive. There was a whole campaign. I saw this in the Hulu series, and I was like, “Breakthrough pain.” And it was like, “Breakthrough infection.” Like in the Covid we have this breakthrough infection, therefore you need a booster. Now, I’m more aware and I’m seeing that all these words are marketing campaigns, and now right away I’m like, “Oh, that’s what it is.” But at the beginning I was not. Mr. Jekielek: Well, here we are. You’ve made this wonderful, wonderful, and sometimes heartbreaking film, Anecdotals. You went on quite a journey from, like you said, not really thinking about it to these days really thinking about it quite a lot and talking to a lot of people who’ve been forced to think about it. How did you get here? Ms. Sharp: It was a slow and fast process. I’ve always been somebody who asks questions. When I was a kid, I always had a hard time on true/false tests because I’d be like, “Well, true if this, but false if this.” That was me in second grade. I’ve always wanted to look at different sides and had a hard time with black and white. But it was my vaccine injury, basically. I got vaccinated, and I had a vaccine injury. I couldn’t get my second shot, and that put me on the outside of society, it put me not in the mainstream. The mainstream was saying, “Safe and effective.” The mainstream was saying, “Get vaccinated. It’s the only way to live, otherwise you’re going to die.” And then, I was like, “Wait, they’re not talking about me. I can’t get vaccinated.” I started to really question everything when I was told I wasn’t allowed to speak about my reaction. I was told it was irresponsible and unethical. I was specifically told by somebody, “Your story is just an anecdote. It’s just anecdotal. It’s really irresponsible for you to talk about it, because you could stop people from being vaccinated and you could be responsible for their death.” That was the first time I asked, “When is it ever not okay to tell the truth? When is it ever okay? When is your truth not okay?” And then from that, everything was a question, everything. The whole pandemic has been a lot of questions. What about natural immunity? Why is getting the vaccine better than natural immunity? Why am I in a support group with thousands of people who have been vaccine injured, whose lives have been ruined, and yet it’s safe and effective? It’s safe, it’s safe. I just started seeing more and more wrong things being said, and I started questioning more and more. Yes, now I question every single thing that anybody says to me, regardless. Mr. Jekielek: Something that strikes me about what you just said is there was this total loss of a risk-benefit analysis. Someone told you that if you even make a suggestion that there could be harm from this vaccine, maybe someone won’t be vaccinated. It’s like everybody should be vaccinated. That’s the a priori assumption. There’s no conception that there could be another side, that there is a risk, as with any vaccine. It just completely got lost. Was there a moment when you realized this? Ms. Sharp: Yes. When I started telling people about my reaction, and it really was from the start of my reaction, I would say, “Oh, I had a reaction from the vaccine.” And they would say, “Oh, well, it’s rare. Oh wow, sorry you had that. It’s going to happen to a few people, it definitely happens. We know vaccine reactions happen. We know they’re rare.” And then it’s like, “How do you know they’re rare?” Because nobody’s following me, my data is nowhere. I entered it on VAERS, but once enough knowledge and enough facts came up on VAERS, they started discounting VAERS. No one is studying me, no one’s calling me, no one’s calling anybody in my group. So, how do we know it’s rare? I would just see these mechanical reactions from people. “Oh, it’s rare.” Mr. Jekielek: Can you tell me a little more about what specifically happened to you? Ms. Sharp: Yes. So, I got vaccinated. The night of the vaccine I had a reaction. It was the left side of my face, left arm, left leg, pins and needles buzzing, left ankle, left knee swollen, and it hurt to walk. I woke up in the middle of the night, the bed was dripping in sweat. Then when I woke up, I was just drenched in sweat on my left side, but my right side was totally dry, and my left side had a fever. It was hot to touch. My right side was cool. There is this weird reaction happening all on the left side. I couldn’t feel my face. It was pretty bad. I called my mom. I’m like, “I can’t feel my face. This is weird. You can’t really feel it.” But then I just thought, “Well, maybe it’s a reaction that will go away, but it never went away.” It definitely got a lot better, but by the time it was my third week to get the second shot, I was just like, “I can’t get the second shot.” And it never got worse than that. It was the worst during the first six weeks, and then it slowly got better. So, I’m really lucky, but what that did was it allowed me to be a part of a support group and be a part of this community and seeing people who were way worse, who’ve lost their houses, people who are homeless, people who cannot work anymore, and they’re getting no help and no acknowledgement. I was just blown away. On the support group, every day there’s somebody who’s like, “How do I deal with my life? How do I deal with my new life? Everything is broken down. Since I got the shot, it’s been horrible.” And these are true stories, people talking, and nobody knows about it. So anyway, I was in the group and mine were not nearly as bad as most of the people. But I think that happened to inspire me as a filmmaker, and also to have this access to this group, and to have the energy to make a movie. Because if I was as bad as a lot of these people, I wouldn’t have had the energy to put this together. It’s been almost two years this March, and I actually had a flare up the last week. I don’t know if it’s because I’m so stressed out with this movie. I don’t know what has made it happen, but the last three nights I couldn’t go to sleep, I was in so much pain. My whole left arm, my whole left leg, it was electric. Like when you fall asleep and your leg falls asleep and then it’s waking up. When it’s waking up it has that super buzzing and it’s like, “Ah, this really hurts.” I was like that on my whole left arm, my whole left leg for five hours and I couldn’t sleep. That was four nights ago. Then the next night I had the same thing, but a different pain. It was more pins and needles, like stabbing, and sometimes I just have to get the stabbing away. I’m like, “Oh, there’s a pin, or there’ll be a prick right here, and if I don’t do this it won’t go away.” I still have this, and this was the last four days. Also, my palms itch a lot. I say mine wasn’t that bad, and I say it’s not that bad because I’ve seen way worse, but still to live like this, I wonder, am I going to develop multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson’s, or what’s going on with my nerves? I don’t know, and this is still two years later. I’m totally functional though. I was able to make a movie. I was able to do all this stuff, so I feel lucky. I downplay what happened to me. But the thing is there’s actually a lot of people like me who have this random neurological stuff, and a lot of people who don’t even know it, they don’t even realize it’s a vaccine reaction. There’s a lot of people just on the milder side walking around with this stuff that we don’t know what it is. And then there’s the people we’re really trying to highlight, which are the really horribly hurt people who can’t walk and all that stuff, but there’s levels. So, that’s my reaction, but still, the fact that it’s two years later and I’m still having symptoms. These last few days have been worse than it’s been in a really long time. All I can think of is either the stress of the movie or it was raining in California. The rain. Mr. Jekielek: It’s amazing to be able to laugh about these things. I have a friend who reached out at one point who I haven’t talked to in ages and told me, “Thanks for what you’ve been doing. By the way, I have tinnitus, and I’m pretty sure it just started immediately after I was vaccinated.” This is one of these common signals, it’s strong in the safety signals. It’s one of these common reactions, but it can be incredibly bad. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: In the movie, I remember you have at least one person who describes this. Ms. Sharp: Debilitating. Mr. Jekielek: An inability to think almost or hear anything, it’s that bad. Speaker 3: Immediately after dose one, I developed paraesthesias in my right arm. The numbness and tingling traveled to my right side of my face, my eye, and my ear. I saw a neurologist, one of the top neurologists in New York City. He said, “Oh, if it subsides, get the second shot. We just don’t know. It’s all new.” Those two sent me into a tailspin. Within four days, I developed debilitating tinnitus. The month of February, I curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, wondering, how will I ever live with this? Ms. Sharp: Yes, the tinnitus, really it’s debilitating. I also have had it since I got the vaccine. It never happened before, but I hear this ringing in my ears. But for me, it never lasted longer than 30 seconds. I’ll have a wave of a sound, long enough that I can say, “What’s going on?” And then it goes away. So, I’ve experienced it a tiny bit. But for the people who have it in a debilitating way, that’s one of the things that drives people close to suicide. It’s hard to imagine if you don’t have it. You can’t hear, you can’t hear conversations, and for your whole day and your whole life there is this ringing. Yes, it’s weird. It’s weird things that are hard for people to imagine and from the outside look normal. People are like, “Oh, okay. It’s a reaction. Oh, it’s tinnitus.” Or tinnitus, however we want to pronounce it. Yes, it sounds really bad, but you can’t really relate. Now, if I’m limping along in a wheelchair with a bag, then suddenly people can get a little more empathetic. Tinnitus is actually a really, really horrible side effect. Mr. Jekielek: I can’t help but remember right now there’s one medical practitioner in the film who describes this sort of sense of abandonment. There’s this whole social element, and I really want to talk about that, because basically anybody who’s been affected by these vaccines, either through injury or even simply deciding they’re not going to get it, there is this bizarre social reality that they have to face. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Abandonment is a really important word, and I have gotten so many messages from other vaccine injured people after watching my movie. A lot of them echo the word abandonment, and they’re like, “I have felt so abandoned as well.” And they say, “Thank you for helping me not feel so alone.” But that’s a key word for them as well. And for me, and for us, that’s a key word, abandoned. A society you thought you were a part of, you’re now abandoned from. It’s exactly like you said, even if your choice was just not to get vaccinated when the mandates came, it’s like everybody in the mainstream was like, “Oh yeah.” Even Don Lemon says, and it’s in the movie, you should be left behind. If you don’t go with it, you should be left behind. Speaker 4: The people who are not getting vaccines, who are believing the lies on the internet instead of science, it’s time to start shaming them. What else? Or leave them behind. Ms. Sharp: And then, I would tell people, “I actually got vaccinated, but I can’t get my second vaccine.” I didn’t choose not to be vaccinated, which I actually don’t have a problem with either. I don’t like separating myself from the people who chose not to. But just in terms of talking to the people that are so pro-vax, I can say to them, “Hey, I actually got vaccinated. You should have compassion for me.” And their compassion lasted about 10 seconds with, “Oh, I’m so sorry, you’re one of the rare ones. Can you come to my birthday party next week? Oh, that’s right. You’re not allowed. You don’t have a card. You can’t go to the restaurant. Sorry.” I’d be invited to things, and I’m like, “I’m not allowed to go to that restaurant. I live in Los Angeles.” There were a couple things I was invited to, and I was like, “I’m not allowed.” They’d be like, “Really?” And I’m like, “Do you realize there’s a lot of people right now that are not allowed to participate in society?” And they were like, “Oh, I never really thought of it like that. Well, that sucks.” And then they go on with their life. They care at that moment, or they’re interested, but they don’t care enough to be like, “Hey, this is wrong,” and make a stand. Mr. Jekielek: I have to ask the most stereotypical question about film. Why did you make this film? The reason I’m asking is because it didn’t occur to me. I can see you’re making this film to raise awareness about the reality of people who have been vaccine injured and have been left behind by the system. I want you to tell me later a bit more about how that plays out. But it seems like you also made it for people who have been vaccinated and realized, “Oh wow, there’s others like me out there, and there’s a whole community of people.” You show that community in the film as well. Ms. Sharp: Yes. When I started editing it together and showing cuts, Josh Stylman, who is one of the producers, was really great about watching the cuts. The first cut is dangerous to show people, because they change first cuts. He asked me, “Who’s your audience? What is your point?” You have to really formulate that when you’re editing it and when you’re creating it—what exactly is my point? There’s three reasons I’ve made this film. One is to open the eyes of people whose eyes could still be opened. For people who are very pro-vax who don’t believe there are injuries, it’s really because of the stuff they haven’t seen. If they’re willing to watch it, I think that I can open eyes with this movie. I think I can bring us together. Some people just won’t watch it, but the people who don’t believe there are reactions, the people who are still very pro-vaccine, it’s just to kind of see the nuance. That was one. The other one was because if nothing else as an artist, in 100 years, I want somebody to watch this movie and feel a slice of what life was like in this time period. I want this to be a historical piece. This is what it was like for a lot of us. And then three, obviously, for the vaccine reaction people I wanted to make something for those of us who have been outcasts. I heard a story of this woman who joined our group who actually had already planned her suicide, and it was in Switzerland or somewhere, and she already had it planned. She was going there to do the medically assisted suicide, because she couldn’t take it anymore. She had her plane ticket, she had it all. Then somehow, she found our support group on Facebook. She thought she was alone, and she thought she didn’t know there was anybody else who had been going through what she had been going through. This was only like seven months ago. If she hadn’t found the support group on the day she found it, she would’ve been on a plane a week later. So, I want people who are injured to not feel alone and to not get to that point and know that there’s a lot of us, and hang in there. If we all speak up enough, we’ll get help, and you’re not so alone. Mr. Jekielek: I want to highlight this because I recently had a conversation with Brie Dressen who features prominently in your film. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: She is one of the co-chairs of React 19. She mentioned to me that she’s aware of a number of these types of situations where people can’t take it or are looking to take their life. The thing that stops them is the family support, or some kind of support system. It’s the people that somehow are gaslit or don’t have that support that often go through with this. It’s a horrible reality to contemplate. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Especially when you’re so bad, like those people who have committed suicide. A few of them had specifically noted, “I had no support from my family, nobody believes me, and I just can’t do this anymore.” I understand that. My family is great, and on the spectrum of family they care and they made it clear they believe me. But they don’t believe me enough to ask me before they get their booster. Or they say, “Oh, sorry this happened to you, we hear you, but I’m still going to vaccinate my children.” I’m not saying anybody should not be vaccinated either. I’m not here to preach, I’m just here to show things. But it’s kind of like at least ask me. Ask me what I know. Listen to the anecdotes. You don’t have to full heartedly believe them, but there’s a lot of truth in there. Mr. Jekielek: For the record, in speaking with Dr. Martin Kulldorff very early in the pandemic, he was aware of this risk-benefit analysis that you always have to do around any medical intervention. There’s always a cost and nothing is cost-free. For children, the risk of Covid was always so small for healthy children that there was never any credible reason for an intervention that had a non-zero risk. It’s one of these things that was a casualty, this kind of nuanced thinking. It was a casualty in the pandemic, and that also comes through in your documentary. Ms. Sharp: Yes. I’m trying to bring the nuance back to this conversation, so that things aren’t so polarized, left and right, anti and pro. There is a lot of nuance in the center, and I’m hoping to just bring that up. Nuance comes from asking questions, and nuance comes from questioning yourself, and that’s everybody in this whole thing. But nuance also in the vaccine. How does this vaccine program spread? Like you talked about children. And it’s like, does a child need to get vaccinated? Does an 80-year-old need to get vaccinated? They are different groups and they have different risk factors. Maybe it really makes a lot of sense that college kids don’t need to be vaccinated if myocarditis is a high thing, but there was none of that. There was none of that nuance. A lot of the answers were, “We were afraid that people wouldn’t get vaccinated. If we said kids don’t need to be vaccinated, then that might make other people think they don’t need to.” As soon as you admit there’s an adverse reaction, as soon as you admit there’s a signal, as soon as you admit that children aren’t dying of Covid and might not need to get vaccinated, then you suddenly are making people afraid to get vaccinated, and that’s the worst thing ever. So, let’s just get everybody vaccinated across the board.” And it makes total sense that not everybody should be vaccinated. There is a risk. There is a risk, and maybe some people should, but these are conversations that should be had, instead of blanket statements. Mr. Jekielek: You were a filmmaker before you made this film. Ms. Sharp: Yes. I was a filmmaker. I am a filmmaker. And that was scary too. I had just finished right at the end of Covid my last feature film, it’s fiction. It was actually my life goal as a filmmaker. It’s like my own story. So before I made this current film I made Una Great Movie. Una Great was my great life’s work as a filmmaker. It was very personal to me. I shot it in Mexico in a town that I’ve been going to for 20 years that I love, and I used a lot of local Mexicans. As a filmmaker, I was just really excited and it took me six years to make it. I went through my life savings. This is the movie that I want to make that no producer will jump on and make and I’m going to just do it. I had just finished it and then Covid happened. When I started making Anecdotals, I had just released Una Great Movie on Amazon. It was released in July of last year. I actually was like, “Is this going to hurt my filmmaking career, doing a film about vaccines?” I thought about that a lot, because I don’t want my filmmaking career to be this political thing, and Una Great Movie is a comedy. I tell people if you’re sick of all the craziness, and you want to just laugh, watch it. It’s a very smart comedy. So, that’s what I do. And then suddenly, I’m making this movie that I know is going to make some people hate me, and make some people think I’m killing people. I actually tried not to make this movie for a long time. I was like I don’t want to get in these crosshairs. Who knows? Somebody might want to hire me as a director on their movie and then be like, “Oh, that’s that anti-vax director. Let’s not hire her.” It could totally be career suicide. I was trying not to, but in the end, I knew it was right to make this movie. I had a clear vision, I had a clear situation, and I had to do it. I did just finish my last feature. I do want to do another feature. I want to do comedies. I’m an all around filmmaker, and I think it shows in Anecdotals too, because I pretty much did the whole movie by myself. I was the editor, and the writer, and the director. In our shoots when I interviewed people it was me and two other people. For the shoot where I interviewed the woman, Katie, who had to vaccinate her children, we literally had five cameras. I have extra cameras just in case I make a mistake because there’s so few of us , and I’m the one interviewing her. But we set up the cameras and we had one person doing a two shot, and then we had tripods set up, and then we had one microphone here and then a microphone down there, and we set it all up and then started the interview. It’s really just me and two other crew people. And I’d be like, “Oh wait, okay, stop.” That’s why when I do interviews still, I’m always kind of extra aware of everything because you’re doing it without money. But the fact that I was a filmmaker and I know what I’m doing, and I had actually just made this very great international movie, gave me the confidence also do Anecdotals. I can do it for not a lot of money and I can tell this story. Mr. Jekielek: You’re not just the director, you star in the film. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Which would be obvious because you’re vaccine injured yourself. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: How was that experience? Ms. Sharp: When I decided to make the movie, I was like, how am I going to make a documentary that’s interesting? Especially if I’m trying to get people who don’t want to hear the message. Who’s going to listen to an hour of vaccine injured people, an hour-and-a-half of vaccine injured people? Vaccine injured people will, maybe people who are very anti-vax will, but maybe they won’t. They’ve seen the stories, right? What’s going to make Anecdotals interesting and keep people’s attention? And the answer was that I had to make it personal. When I thought about it as a filmmaker, how I’m going to do it, it has to be personal, it has to be my story, it has to be me telling everything I went through. Also politically, I felt like politically it was a very interesting journey that I went through as well. I was someone who was very mainstream media and believed the CDC and the FDA. And then, slowly and slowly I was finding myself at anti-mandate rallies and being in this whole other world. I felt like that was a really interesting thing to cover as well. I cover in the documentary my journey as a vaccine reaction person, but also as a human being in the United States during this time. I also knew it had to happen quickly. Once I started doing interviews and putting it together, it was like six months and I’m done. I was like it has to come out soon. I’m not even thinking, I’m just being creative and I can edit myself and not think it’s me. I don’t get all caught up in stuff, so I do it. When the movie was done and I finally watched the whole movie through, I panicked because I was like, “Oh my God, what did I do?” I’m in this movie, I don’t want my face in this movie. I don’t want to be the one talking. There’s no escaping. I had kind of a panic attack because it wasn’t until the movie was done that I actually realized how crazy it was that I’m in this movie. Mr. Jekielek: And what an important part of it you are, obviously. Ms. Sharp: That I am, yes. Mr. Jekielek: That’s fascinating. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: How easy was it for people? Among the vaccine injured, are they ready to go, “Yes, I want to be on camera,” or is it difficult? Ms. Sharp: It’s difficult. It’s difficult. I had some really great stories. Some people I approached wouldn’t be on it, and I understand. I wanted to also keep it balanced as far as racially and sex, men and women and different races, and I wanted to show that. And so, I would reach out to some people specifically, because I needed another man at a certain point. I was like, “I think I have enough women.” I talked to this guy and it was just devastating. He said, “My life has been ruined. I’ve lost my job. I don’t know how I’m paying my bills.” And he said, “I support what you’re doing, but I’m trying to get work anywhere at this point, and I can’t do my normal jobs, I’m too sick. So I’m out here trying to get work and figure out how to survive and I can’t have this. I can’t be anti-vax, I can’t be part of it.” He wasn’t the only one. I have another woman who is actually a friend of mine and she couldn’t get out of bed. She was paralyzed for three weeks. She was traumatized. She hasn’t told anybody in her world about it. I called her and said, “Can I get you to talk about this?” And she was just like, “No.” She was like, “I’m not telling people. We have fights, we have arguments, and people still doubt me. So, I’ve just shut up about my injury. I don’t talk about it and I won’t.” I got a lot of that, people who were afraid to talk about it. Mr. Jekielek: One person that jumps to mind that’s in the film is actually one of the doctors. She’s a naturopath and one of these people. She’s explaining how she gives informed consent. It was just a fascinating moment because I’ve had a number of people on the show where we discuss this issue. They have this whole foundational concept of any medical intervention, of informed consent, as being something that has to happen. Nevermind with an emergency use authorization drug, but with anything, you need to know if you take this, there’s always some risks people need to know. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: She’s explaining this and as I was watching, it seems reasonable. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: But this is so far, as we’ve discussed, from the reality. There’s this push out there, as Peter McCullough says in the film, “A jab in every arm, whatever it takes.” Ms. Sharp: Yes. It was interesting because the day we shot that interview, I had two camera operators. Me and two camera operators, we all did everything. This is kind of a funny story, actually. I’m sidetracking a little, but I think it’s funny. There were four of us, me, the doctor, and my two camera operators, and I hadn’t discussed Covid protocol for the shoot. One of the guys showed up in a double mask. I’ve just been in this world where it’s like mask, not mask, and I respect people who want a mask, but I’m also like, “Am I going to mask all day?” I’m kind of in this weird world of I get both sides, but you don’t have to mask. But then he’s working for me. I hired him. I think I need to respect him. I went to him and I was like, “Do you want us all to wear masks?” And he goes, “No, no, I’m good.” He goes, “I just protect myself. I do a lot of shooting.” And I was like, “Are you sure, because I want you to feel comfortable?” And he’s like, “No, you guys can do what you want.” So the other camera operator just went ahead anyway and wore a mask all day too. The two camera operators were wearing masks the whole day, and I just liked the situation, there’s no judgment on anybody. They wore masks the whole day and then me and the doctor didn’t wear masks the whole day. I found that really interesting. I don’t know, maybe because I’m the injured one and she’s the doctor and we’re kind of not as afraid. I don’t even know what that means. I just think it was a funny situation. But the point was we had such a great discussion when I interviewed her and there was so much knowledge. There was so much stuff that didn’t make the movie. At the end of the day, one of the camera operators came to me and he said, they both were like, “That was so interesting. We learned stuff.” And he said, “What is that thing that you talked about? What is that? I forget, but it was really interesting, the heart thing.” And I was like, “Myocarditis.” And he was like, “Yes.” He’s like, “I hadn’t even heard of that.” And I was like, “And you’ve gotten vaccinated.” He’s fully vaxxed and I think he was boosted. He’s a man who’s maybe 32 years old, double vaxxed and boosted, and had never heard of myocarditis until he filmed the interview. That is the point, informed consent, especially for men who seem to get it more, but everybody and anybody, period. But if you know that there’s a signal of myocarditis in men, younger men, before you get vaccinated, you should be told about myocarditis. That’s informed consent. But not only for consent, but so that if you go home or in a few days you feel a weird thing in your chest, you know, “Oh my gosh, this might be myocarditis. Let me take care of it before it kills me or before it scars.” Or there may be other things that you can do. If you knew that myocarditis was a signal, you could get vaccinated anyway and just be really aware of your heart. Are you exercising? Is it it feeling weird? That could save your life. But these people are getting vaccinated and they don’t even know what myocarditis is. At this point everybody should know very well what myocarditis is before you put that vaccine in your body, and that’s informed consent. Mr. Jekielek: The thing as you talk about masks now, with every one of these interventions, there was always a kind of moral imperative assigned to it. There’s the correct way to behave, get the vaccine, wear a mask, stay indoors and shelter in place, whatever it is. Or you’re a bad person, you’re bad, you’re antisocial, you’re against society. The moment where you’re on the other side of it, either forced into it or you see that thing that you can’t unsee, which is a common phrase that people use, suddenly you notice the thing that everyone is supposed to do isn’t just the obvious thing that everyone’s supposed to do. There’s actually something that needs to be questioned here, like you’ve been saying, and in some cases with terrible consequences if it’s not looked at with nuance and with questioning. To me, this has kind of been the theme of the pandemic in a sense, is this kind of realization and this trying to get out of this moral imperative thinking. Ms. Sharp: Yes. That’s what we could all learn. I’m trying to think more, it’s not just a pandemic thing, but I think it really crystallized when we got more polarized. Maybe it started with Trump or started with Obama, or it got more extreme with Obama and people being against that, and then Trump and people being against that. Now we have this thing that allows us to put all of our anger and our moral imperatives into the vaccine. The vaccine actually became a symbol for your politics, because there has been so much anger on both sides. It’s really important that on both sides we realize that it’s not helpful to hate each other, to be so extreme, and that there’s things that were fed to hate each other. Mr. Jekielek: One of the things I have noticed is that there’s been these people like Dr. Aseem Malhotra who’s been on the show who was at some point almost like vaccine evangelists because he was such a prominent doctor in the UK. And through a difficult personal journey, he realized, “Okay, this is not right.” He started coming out saying these things need to be halted until further study is done. That’s my conclusion, that’s my scientific opinion based on this very compelling evidence in the papers he wrote. But some folks are still really mad at him, and I also understand that, especially if it’s someone that from the beginning was saying, “No, I’m not going to take this medical intervention. This is emergency use. This is unreasonable, it’s untested.” This was an extremely reasonable position to take, but at the beginning you know yourself the kind of vile things that were said about such people and the social stigma, and you’re a bad person. You were told you were a bad person. This is our milieu. It’s almost like there’s this need to label people in this saint or sinner way. Ms. Sharp: Yes. I remember hearing this, and reading this study about these lab rats that were tortured or that had trauma, and I won’t tell you the whole study. But what the study ended up showing was that a rat that was under pain, the first instinct would be to go and cause pain to another rat. They did this whole series of shocking the rat. What does it do? They’re going to do this. What does it do? Now they’re going to put another rat in the cage and shock him. What does it do? It runs over and bites the other rat, and they keep doing that. It’s like the perfect example of a hurt person wanting to hurt somebody else. I understand that people were really hurt. Especially the people who would not get vaccinated were really hurt by the people who were calling them names, who were acting like they were murderers, and who were okay with them losing their jobs. “Yes, you don’t deserve to be part of society, lose your job, don’t feed your kids. You don’t deserve that. That’s what your kids get for having stupid parents.” The worst things were said about people who wouldn’t get vaccinated, they were hurt. I get it. I get that they were hurt, but how is it helpful to hurt people back? It goes both ways. What is our main goal right now? Is our main goal to open eyes and make a change, or is our main goal to be like, “I was right, you guys are evil.” Malhotra, who has changed his vision, a lot of people still have issues with him, because he was very pro-vax in the beginning and telling people to get it. You can hate him for encouraging the pain that you were caused, but that doesn’t help the situation. We do need to come to a place where we do not take things as personally and look at the overall goal that there were a lot of reasons that people believed what they did. Just because they believed, just because they hate you and they fell into that, you can choose to be a bigger person and not fall into that, because you end up being as bad. It just becomes this war, and then they can explain why they thought of it. And it doesn’t mean you have to totally forgive. What was that recent article about? Mr. Jekielek: Amnesty. Ms. Sharp: Amnesty, that was ridiculous. Amnesty, people need to be held accountable, and people should apologize. Malhotra is doing that. He’s just like, “I’m sorry I was wrong.” And that’s the best thing you can do, is realize you were wrong and apologize. Mr. Jekielek: And I might add, there’s significant accountability with what he is doing, because he has made it a mission to use his position to explain how he sees things. That’s a good example of someone who’s actually trying to make good on this. That’s not necessarily going to be everybody. Ms. Sharp: Right, and he is trying and he still gets kind of reamed by some people who are like, “Oh, he was part of the system.” Also, my point is that I understand that people were hurt and I understand that people are angry, but I don’t believe it’s going to help our cause. The cause is let’s open eyes and change policies and let’s help people who are hurting. We have to get above our own egos and our own pain and look at what the overall goal is. When we do that, we come together and we don’t blame and we don’t call people names. Nice to meet you, nice to meet you in the middle, like nice to meet you. It’s a new thing, it’s a new day. Mr. Jekielek: Do you have any sense of how many people are known to have been vaccine injured and their lives altered in some significant way, and now are trying to figure out what to do? Ms. Sharp: I don’t have a sense, but I can’t tell you since making this movie, and also in my support groups, people from Australia, people from Italy, I’ve been reached out to from people all over the world. There are so many people in my support group. I also have shown this movie. I’ve shown this movie to a couple people who after they saw the movie realized they had been vaccine injured and didn’t know it. Somebody who had a heart attack two days after his vaccination went to the hospital and they didn’t ever say anything. I was like, “So, the hospital didn’t ask you when you were vaccinated?” They replied, “No, no.” My cousin had a stroke. It wasn’t until he heard my story, which was three months after his stroke. He heard my story from his sister who said, “You know what happened to Jennifer? Read this.” Because I’d written something, and so he read it and they were like, “That’s what happened to you.” And he had a stroke and ended up in the hospital. He didn’t know he was vaccine injured until I told my story. They’re not the only ones. There are people who have realized they’re vaccine injured by watching Anecdotals. So you ask, how many people have been injured? Really a lot. That’s a very scientific number, a lot. There’s also a whole portion of people who are injured and don’t know it, that have the buzzing. Like the buzzing I have all the time. They might just think their foot’s asleep more often, and you might just be like, “Oh, my foot falls asleep a lot.” Well, did that happen before the vaccine? It might just be that mild or it might even be bigger and they’re just not thinking of it. Then there’s also the question of who’s vaccine injured that we’ll find out about 20 years from now. What will we know in the future? Mr. Jekielek: Absolutely. As we’re talking here, I can’t help but think one of the really terrible side effects of this sort of ideological adherence to the idea that the vaccines are safe and effective, and doctors not being trained to recognize things which are vaccine injury, like people going into the hospital with a heart attack. And I’ve talked to a number of people, even on this show, about this type of phenomenon, but the doctors don’t know to look for that when it’s something that is probably obvious to look for. In fact, with any vaccine you have, if there’s some kind of event that happens within a few days after it, that should always be considered. There’s always that possibility, even if it’s remote. But there’s this kind of situation where with vaccine injury, as I understand it, the early intervention is the way that people can be helped the most to overcome this, and there are treatments for these things, some of them. But in this situation, it just makes it very hard for people to get that early treatment. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Not only are there doctors who are not trained or know how to ask, there’s another thing that people go in there and say, “I think this was the vaccine,” and they’re argued with. There are a lot of doctors, especially early on and in my group, where we would go to the doctors. When we would go to the doctors, when people in my group would go to the doctor, you don’t mention vaccine reaction. You don’t say, “I had a vaccine reaction.” Very quickly people started realizing you get better care if you go and just say, “I’m numb. I’m having shocks, I’m having this and that.” If you say, “I think it was the vaccine.” You get counted as crazy. They don’t want to talk to you. “Oh no, it’s not.” So, a lot of people learned that when they went to the doctor that they cannot even tell the doctor that it was a vaccine reaction and they’ll get better care. Mr. Jekielek: What a terrible reality. Ms. Sharp: It is. Mr. Jekielek: In a sense, you have to lie to get better care. Ms. Sharp: Yes, and that’s the truth. Actually, I see whole health doctors and naturopaths. I have new health insurance, so I’ll be having a new doctor as soon as I make an appointment. And I wonder, should I tell this doctor that I had a vaccine reaction? I wonder. I don’t think they’ll believe me. Mr. Jekielek: This is another question. If doctors aren’t aware of the entire reality, available at any given point around these vaccines, how can they recommend them and uphold their hippocratic oath? I’ve been struggling with this question. Could you trust a doctor that didn’t make the effort to try to figure this out? Especially since there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that should be considered. Ms. Sharp: Yes, exactly. I don’t know. Mr. Jekielek: Let me qualify this, a lot more than anecdotal evidence. But even with the anecdotal evidence, that’s grounds for looking at and taking something seriously. And that’s one of the messages, right? I’m sorry, I’m kind of- Ms. Sharp: No, please do. Mr. Jekielek: I’m jumping in here, but this is actually very important. These signals, like for example their signals, come from anecdotes. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Right? Ms. Sharp: Let’s talk about that word, anecdotes, because it’s just become this weaponized word. If you are telling your reaction, it’s just an anecdote. It’s just an anecdote. When we’re talking about if the vaccines work, people are like, “I know somebody who got vaccinated and their Covid was really easy, so thank God they were vaccinated.” It’s funny because people will shut me down because my story’s anecdotal, but then they’ll turn around and tell an anecdote on their side, but it’s okay. Anecdote is a good word. An anecdote is someone’s personal story. No, it’s not scientific. It’s not the science. However, it’s true to that person and it’s worth being listened to. I love that word, and I think I made up the word Anecdotals. I don’t think that word actually exists. I made it up for the movie, the pluralization of it. But it’s a really important word because people like to dismiss anecdotes and they say, “Oh, it’s an anecdote.” But actually an anecdote is the best thing. It’s what starts you needing to study, and that’s the whole point. Dr. Ryan Cole says that in the movie. He’s like, “I’m seeing patients coming with these reactions. I’m seeing more sickness. Yes, what I’m seeing are anecdotes, but that’s what science is. It starts with anecdotes.” You start seeing something that is like, “Okay, I’m hearing that again and again. I’m hearing it, now we need to do a study, now we need to make it scientific.” The problem with the Covid vaccine is that we are not going from anecdote to study. We’re going from anecdote to censor. What do we do when there’s a lot of anecdotes and no studies? Why aren’t we studying them? Mr. Jekielek: Yes. This was the case, even in other realms of inquiry related to Covid. Now there are quite a few studies, for example, on some of these early treatment options like Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and other, I think at least 18, and there’s also at least 20 drugs which are used in combination to treat early. But again, that research was somehow really suffocated in lots of ways. In some cases, there were even studies where there’s evidence they were just simply done wrong, almost with an effort to show that these things don’t work when they’re done wrong. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Just bizarre stuff like this. Ms. Sharp: Yes, really bizarre. I realized this early on, as I said, as I started questioning more and more things, There were so many strong reactions about it. People I knew were calling Ivermectin a horse dewormer and making fun of people who took it. These are people who I know for a fact don’t know what Ivermectin is. They just are hearing the headlines. You know, you don’t have to have an opinion just because you’re hearing headlines. I actually read the Ivermectin studies and I saw how they could be swayed either way, and that was my point. Yes, I see studies that show it doesn’t work. But also a lot of those studies took place in the hospital when it was too late, and the point about Ivermectin is it’s a protease inhibitor. It inhibits the duplication of the replication of the protein, which is why you need to stop it right away before the protein keeps replicating and goes to your lungs in Covid. That’s the point. You want to stop it before the replication gets really bad. So, for some kind of protease inhibitor, it makes sense that if the first few days, something that will help stop the replication of the protein is a good thing to do. These were the studies I was reading where it was really good, but then I saw the studies where it was bad, and all I knew was like I don’t know, but I think I have a right to talk to my doctor and decide something. It’s also something that I believe is over the counter in Mexico. It’s not something that’s totally going to kill you. And with both of the sides, no matter what I want to believe, I could pick a study, but people were so sure that doctors were getting penalized for prescribing Ivermectin. Like drugstore pharmacists were reporting doctors who were prescribing Ivermectin because it would suddenly be this criminalized thing, and you might be a doctor who needs to be investigated, who’s spreading misinformation. Mr. Jekielek: Or refusing to fill prescriptions that doctors wrote. It’s just everything seems to have been turned on its head, this whole profession, this whole system. Ms. Sharp: Yes. If there’s nothing else that’s clear, isn’t it clearer that whatever you want to believe you could find a study that backs it up. Just understand that people were so clear about Ivermectin doesn’t work because of this study, but I could show you one where it does. I’m not saying what’s right, but maybe don’t be so sure about your side. Maybe don’t, just maybe. That’s all I’m asking too with Anecdotals. If you think it’s just anecdotes and you think the vaccine is the best thing ever, you don’t have to agree with me, but maybe just don’t be so sure about what you think you believe in. Mr. Jekielek: We talked about how people were kind of abandoned in various ways. That was a very, very powerful testimony to me in the film. Speaker 5: That is one word that describes how I felt in the first few months after my diagnosis, abandoned. Mr. Jekielek: What support exists for people that have these anecdotes? Ms. Sharp: Definitely React 19, which was started by vaccine injured. React19.org is an organization that Brianne and a few other people started, and they are collecting resources, they’re collecting things that work. There’s a lot where you can look at a symptom and see other people with the same symptoms. So, there’s that. That’s our own resource that we’ve created. Mr. Jekielek: And by the way, just to answer a question I asked earlier, it’s about 21,000 people that are involved in React 19 now. That’s the last number I heard. Ms. Sharp: Okay, 21,000. Mr. Jekielek: Yes. Ms. Sharp: I can’t even dare to think of a number because I would be wrong, so I just say a lot. But yes, React 19. FLCCC, Frontline Critical Covid Care doctors have protocols on their website, and they’re actually helping some vaccine injured people. These are all people though who have been ostracized and are doing it from the outside. There’s also the Facebook support groups, which get censored, which is really a shame, but there’s a lot of sharing of information there. My Facebook support group has a lot of, “Has anybody tried this drug, what did it do? How many times did you do it? Did you get better?” There’s a lot of that. There’s a lot of helping people not feel abandoned. And then suddenly Facebook shuts down the group. So, in the group, we have to speak in code. We’re not allowed to use the word Pfizer, Moderna, or Covid. There are words that we can’t say in our support group, because otherwise it gets flagged and we could be taken down. I feel like your bigger question is, what support is there governmentally? Shouldn’t there be some sort of support from the government, from the companies? Is there any support system? The answer is no. I’m talking slowly and thinking, but there is no support for anybody who’s injured. There’s no support. We are supporting ourselves. We are our own doctors. There are doctors that are great who are helping and joining our groups, but as far as a systemic organization that studies us and is helping us and is making us feel like we’ll be okay, and investing money, no. And you can’t sue the pharmaceutical companies. There’s one program that you can apply to for money if you’ve been injured, but you have to really prove this and that, and then in the end, they don’t give you that much money if they do give you money, and it’ll take a couple years. So no, there’s no fund to help us. There’s nobody dedicated to helping us. There’s nobody telling us what to do. I called the NIH when I had my reaction and when it was time to get my second shot, and everybody was still on television saying, “Get both shots. It’s safe and effective. You should do it. You should do it.” And I’m like, “If I don’t get my second shot, am I going to die of Covid?” I was always a little skeptical of that and saw that it wasn’t as bad as they were saying for some people. But the NIH replied back to me because I said, “This is what’s happened. Tell me, am I supposed to not get the second shot?” Somebody at the NIH replied back to me and she said, “We cannot give medical advice. Ask your primary care physician.” That’s an official stance of one of the official agencies. At that point I didn’t have insurance and I didn’t have a primary care physician, and I can guarantee you that most primary care physicians aren’t in a place to understand the reactions. They need to be led by the agencies. Mr. Jekielek: I just saw a graphic from somewhere in New Jersey where they were offering children ice cream for getting Covid vaccinated. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: What’s your reaction to that? Ms. Sharp: Wow, there’s so many things wrong with that. But wasn’t there a Sesame Street program about the vaccine as well? Mr. Jekielek: I think so. Ms. Sharp: I also saw the Marvel Comic characters. I feel like there was a whole campaign with the Marvel Comic characters saying, “Be a hero.” It was something like be a hero, save people, get vaccinated. The ice cream is horrible, then I think about these other things that are really playing on kids’ emotions. But ice cream is bad because ice cream is sugar and it’s actually not good for you. The whole point of the way to beat Covid is being healthy. The people who died, not all, but a majority had comorbidities and they had a lot of comorbidities. It’s very clear that the healthier you are, the better chance you have. Let’s stop these young kids from getting obese and eating sugar and not being healthy, in order to fight these diseases. Mr. Jekielek: What comes to my mind is, and this is something I discussed with Dr. Robert Malone early in the pandemic, just there’s this idea of the noble lie. With vaccines in general, over years there’s been this idea, every vaccine has harms associated with it. I don’t even know if most people realize that now or then. There’s systems created to help those people, at least in theory, that do get injured because ostensibly it’s for the better of the populace. But the idea was we’re not going to tell people that. We’re going to tell people they’re completely safe, because what if they know that there’s even a small chance, then maybe they won’t be as eager to do it. This is the idea. That’s the idea of the noble lie. We’re not going to tell people the entire truth. And then, that can metastasize into telling people things to elicit a very specific behavioral response, irrespective of the reality of those things. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Right? Ms. Sharp: Yes. When I would get into discussions with people who were super pro-vax about what I was going through and about the mandates, and I would bring up things that were blatant lies that the government and the CDC had said. I’m like, “We can go to their website right now and I’ll show you.” Because I knew where to go. I’d pull up the CDC website and I’d show them something the CDC was touting about the vaccine and touting about natural immunity. I’m like, “Now I can show you that even in Israel, even here, they’re all saying this works.” I would be really systematic about it, and I would get met with, “You can’t tell people all of this stuff because then they’ll take it and run and they’re not capable.’ People literally said this to me when I’m trying to say this is why we’re not being told the truth. I got met with, “Some people can’t handle the truth. They’re not smart enough to think on their own. If you tell them things, then they’re going to take it another way, think it’s bad, and use it for their agenda, and they’re going to make it this big propaganda that, ‘Oh, vaccines are bad and nobody should get vaccinated because of this,’ when those people aren’t able to see the nuance, so they can’t handle the truth.” I heard that a few times from people that are really smart and who I really respect, and when I saw that happening, I was just astounded. Mr. Jekielek: What a bizarre irony. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Because you already know the answer has to be very specific. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: As long as you choose that, you’re smart. As long as you choose that one thing that I have already decided, and don’t think about it too much, then you’re smart. Interesting. Ms. Sharp: Really interesting. And that to me is one of the things that woke me up. There was a whole process of being woken up. People would say things so blatantly. People would say all over and they’d love to post on Facebook, “You’re a preschool teacher, don’t try to do science. Listen to the scientists. You’re a trucker. Don’t try to do science, listen to the scientists.” These are smart people saying that, who aren’t scientists. And it’s just like, “Wait a second, so are you telling me not to think? Are you telling me I don’t have a right to think, because I’m not qualified, so I just need to listen to the people who do?” It made no sense. Mr. Jekielek: You have this moment in the film where you pull up Dr. Anthony Fauci and everyone knows he said, “I am the science.” But I somehow didn’t know until I watched your film that after that he says, “Everybody knows that.” Anthony Fauci: I represent science, and if you’re attacking me, you’re really attacking science. I mean, everybody knows that. Mr. Jekielek: Really? Everybody knows that? That is amazing. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: The reason I mentioned this is that it encapsulates the idea that you already know someone has told you what the science is. This person who’s taking this position with the sciences, they know because they’ve had the expert guidance. They’re kind of an expert themselves, and everybody else is obviously wrong. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Right before I have him in the film, I have Joy Behar from The View, and The View was very opinionated. The ladies in The View were very opinionated, and that always got me too. It got me when I would watch things like that and they’d be hating on the people who weren’t getting vaccinated. And I’m just like, that’s a really opinionated stance to take and a really hateful stance to take. It’s okay to have an opinion and think they should, but there was so much hate. Then I also knew that I wasn’t vaccinated, so they’re hating on me. I’m just like there’s so much they’re not looking at. But Joy Behar said, “Well, I just listen to Fauci. That’s all I do. I don’t need to listen to anybody else. I listen to Fauci. That’s good enough.” She said that on national TV and it was really crazy to me. I’m just like you don’t just listen to one person. Fauci became more and more arrogant about things and said that he’s the science, when that’s the opposite of science. Science is debate, and talking, and it evolves. Mr. Jekielek: I kept thinking about this noble lie. In the film, there’s multiple times where this idea comes up. You quote Dr. Vinay Prasad saying, “You cannot do science differently because you want people to do something.” He’s obviously against the idea of the noble lie here. Where do you stand on the noble lie? Ms. Sharp: 100 per cent against it. You have to tell the truth. You have to tell. Is there ever a reason to lie to somebody? Maybe to your two-year-old who’s having an attack and you have to have them put on their shoes, and you know it’s better for them to put on their shoes. I don’t know, maybe. But yes, you’re talking about a two-year-old. No, I think you always have to tell the truth. You always have to lead with the truth, and then it’s your job to figure out how to make people see it. Mr. Jekielek: That’s one of the lessons of the last few years, something in this vein. It’s not that I felt you should go around lying to people, not at all, but I was much more open in my mind. I could understand why you wouldn’t have unfettered free speech. Why should you allow for Holocaust denial speech? We can get rid of that. Why would we want to have to deal with that? These days I’m still thinking about it a lot more, because once you allow for certain types of censorship or certain types of lies, what happens? Apparently, people who don’t know what they’re doing or have ill intent will take advantage of that. The social cost of that, as we’ve learned, is massive. So, I’m becoming this kind of absolutist in these areas. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: But also, that has its own problems too. Ms. Sharp: It does. It’s hard, but you can’t trust people that have agendas. You start lying and you don’t know what’s the truth. And I’ll tell you, I can give you handfuls of people I know now who were pro-vax at the beginning and are now not only anti-Covid vax, they’re anti-all vaccines, because now they have seen so many lies that are maybe noble lies. But because of that you start getting the spiral of, “If I can’t believe that, what else can I believe? That’s the thing. You get caught in the lie and then suddenly nothing you say is credible and that’s the danger. Mr. Jekielek: And then maybe you have a case on top of that. Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: When I say that I mean we’re always learning. For example, we have a headline today in The Epoch Times that FDA normal safety protocols were not adhered to when looking at this vaccine. When else was this the case? What is the likelihood that this is the first time? Ms. Sharp: Yes. Mr. Jekielek: Now, these are real questions that need to be asked. You talk about accountability, it’s like throughout society, right? Ms. Sharp: Right. Yes. One line, exactly, and you spiral into it. The problem is who can say that they know what is misinformation. Anecdotals was taken off YouTube a day-and-a-half after I put it on for misinformation, and it’s been taken off of Vimeo. It can’t be on any platforms, any mainstream platforms, or it couldn’t. However, I fought this with YouTube and I have to say, “I’m seeing that I’m being censored for misinformation.” But then I reach out to them and I’m like, “Will you please tell me what in this movie is misinformation?” Because I’ve spent a lot of money and three months with a lawyer to fact-check everything in the movie. I paid the extra money to make sure. If you go to the website, anecdotalsmovie.com, there’s a reference tab where for every single study mentioned in the movie, and every single news clip in the movie, there’s a link. You can watch the entire news clip. If you think I pulled out a sound bite to serve my agenda, go to the reference page, and find that part. It’s in chronological order, and you can watch the whole interview, you can walk through the whole thing. Also, every study is there. I’m very clear about it. I wanted to make this as bulletproof as I could. I knew it would be skeptical for a lot of people. I ask YouTube and I ask Vimeo, and I’m like, “Can you please just tell me one thing in this movie that’s misinformation?” And they won’t tell me. They’re just like, “It’s misinformation.” So, that’s the censorship. When you’re suddenly censored, there was a time I might have been like, “Oh yeah, some stuff is a little crazy and shouldn’t be out in the mainstream.” Because it’s true, some people can’t handle it and it’ll start making people really radicalized. But it’s like, no. Because then you realize somebody gets to decide what is misinformation. And with the Covid, the people who are saying it’s misinformation a lot of times are giving the most misinformation. Mr. Jekielek: In a lot of cases, these are people that we trusted. Ms Sharp: Yes, totally. And then, I have to also say that YouTube has actually put the movie back up, which is huge. Mr Jekielek: Wait, with an apology, as I understand it, right? Ms. Sharp: With an apology, yes. And good for them, so I want to give them props at the same time. For whatever reason they did it. They’ve rejected my appeal, and this is what they all do. They reject your appeal. But we’ve been causing a lot of problems, tagging them on YouTube, misinformation. Because of the Twitter files and Twitter being a little under the microscope for their censoring that the other ones are starting to be like, “Okay, let’s make sure.” Then Senator Ron Johnson tweeted about YouTube and the movie’s censorship. I think it took all of that. He got like 60,000 views on that tweet in two hours, and it was that afternoon that I got a letter from YouTube saying they mistakenly took down the movie and they apologized and they put it back up. So that’s huge, and I’m thankful to YouTube for that, but also it should have never been taken down. There’s many things on YouTube, there’s other things that should be put back up as well, but it’s a start. It’s a start. Mr. Jekielek: I’m glad to know that the film is back on YouTube and available. Please tell me where they can watch the film Anecdotals and also where they can watch Una Great Movie. Probably everyone is ready for a comedy right now. Ms. Sharp: Thank you. Yes, so for Anecdotals, it’s on the web. It’s free, so we have it free, no ads. We talked about should we have ads, how do we make our money back? All that, but the most important thing is that this movie is free. We want this movie to be shared, especially with the skeptics in your life. We all have somebody in our life that since the whole pandemic we’ve been trying to get them to see what’s going on and they won’t, and I made this movie for them on a large level. The people who kind of don’t want to believe but still might, have them watch the movie. Pass it along to people in your life who are skeptical. It’s free on the website, www.anecdotalsmovie.com, which is actually the YouTube link too. It’s on YouTube, Anecdotals movie. On YouTube is @Anecdotalsmovie, Instagram, Twitter, we’re all there. You can watch the movie for free on YouTube. We also have Rumble and Odysee, and so it should be easy to find, and easy to share. Then for those of you who could really use some levity in this hard dark time, I have made a fiction comedy that’s really awesome and also very cerebral. It’s not a typical comedy. It’s called Una Great Movie and it’s on Amazon Prime. You can watch it free on Amazon Prime, or you can rent it on Amazon. You can also rent it on YouTube, there’s a YouTube channel, just Google Una Great Movie. Or you can watch it for free on YouTube with ads or free on Tubi with ads. So, you have many options for Una Great Movie. I suggest not watching it with commercials, but if you want it for free, then that’s also fine. Those are my movies. Mr. Jekielek: Jennifer Sharp, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show. Ms. Sharp: Thank you for having me. It’s been great. Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Jennifer Sharp and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek. 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Commentary There’s a prevalent misconception in America that hunger and homelessness are primarily third-world problems. When I was younger and first saw the numerous advertisements encouraging Americans to donate money for children and families in developing countries (such as India and the Philippines), they’d show the most heart-wrenching images. Images of unwashed children wearing mere scraps of clothing will forever be seared into my mind. However, after watching “Hunger in America” (available to watch on Epoch Cinema), an eye-opening 2014 documentary by Nashville-based filmmaker Zac Adams, I have a new perspective on what the face of hunger and poverty looks like. If people think about hunger in America, they often assume (as I used to) that it only exists in the squalid environs of inner cities and ghettos (such as Skid Row in Los Angeles or Kensington Park in Philadelphia). However, hunger and food insecurity—simply put, not knowing where one’s next meal is coming from—are not limited to these areas. Adams attempts to dispel common misconceptions about food insecurity. Tom Henry, Executive Director of hunger-relief organization Feed America First, talks about the misconceptions of hunger in “Hunger in America” (Skydive Films) The documentary consists of interviews with people who run non-profit organizations that help feed the food insecure, pastors who are actively helping those in need, and people who have been directly affected by hunger. Tom Henry is the Executive Director of the faith-based hunger relief organization Feed America First. Interviewed in the film, Henry points out that Americans who are experiencing food insecurity often don’t look impoverished. They could be middle-class folks going through hard times. They could be your next-door neighbors who seem to have everything under control. There are three major groups where food insecurity is prevalent—the disabled, senior citizens, and children. Unlike many, these groups of people can’t do much to improve their financial situation. Thus, they can fall into food insecurity and be unable to get themselves out. The disabled may not be able to handle the physical or mental requirements for employment. Senior citizens rely on a fixed income from whatever retirement and/or social security income they have. And while children may have the desire to work so that they can help out their families, they are too young to legally be employed in America. Americans visit a food bank in “Hunger in America.” (Skydive Films) Couple those circumstances with the current financial hardships that America is going through due to out-of-control inflation (tellingly, many people call it “Bidenflation”) and subsequent supply chain breakdowns unfolding before our collective eyes, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. And although a record number of Americans are trying to make ends meet by working multiple jobs (an increase of 596,000 over the past year, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics), the aforementioned three groups are not able to do this, since they can’t work in the first place. Not only are drastic price increases for food (and fuel) severely negatively impacting at-risk groups, but they are also impacting the charitable organizations that seek to feed them. As one interviewee says, “Someone you know is hungry today.” Before the current financial crisis hit America, many Americans were already living paycheck to paycheck. They were just one minor complication (such as a minor illness, home or car repairs) away from incurring a financial setback. A major crisis (major illnesses, car accidents, natural disasters, serious crimes) could leave them homeless. And now that the American economy has gone into a tailspin, hunger and poverty have drastically accelerated, with no end in sight. Certain groups are especially vulnerable to food insecurity. “Hunger in America” (Skydive Films) One of the more interesting (and unexpected) things I learned from watching this revealing documentary is that even when people have the resources and access to food, they often lack the knowledge of how to properly prepare and store it. There are many other things one can learn about hunger from this film, but I’ll leave those up to viewers to discover. As it stands, “Hunger in America” is a prescient and timely documentary that holds more weight now than ever before. It’s available to watch on Epoch Cinema. Watch “Hunger in America” on Epoch Cinema here. ‘Hunger in America’ Director: Zac Adams Running Time: 1 hour MPAA Rating: Not Rated Release Date: May 7, 2014 Rated: 3.5 stars out of 5 Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Watch the trailer: Watch the full video: https://www.theepochtimes.com/hunger-in-america-documentary_4833358.html