Joe Atwill | The Hidden Hand of Power, Economic Upheaval, & Ruined Cultures

So say we all, Higher Side Chatters from the Sunshine State. I'm Greg Carlwood, and we've been around long enough to know that so many cultural movements and political shifts that are presented as organic, grassroots, and spontaneous are almost always the result of CIA engineering, media manipulation, or billionaire funding. It's to the point that the authenticity of anything needs to be thoroughly tested. And when everyone starts acting or thinking a certain way, whether COVID, tariffs, or geopolitical tensions, it's a good idea to wonder why that is and if the popular position is even the right one. There are complex forces at play involved in sophisticated manipulation with unadvertised motivation, so why let yourself get swept up in anything? And here to remind us of such things, coming back for a third time, is the great Joe Atwell. You know him as the author of Caesar's Messiah, a book that makes a great case that the New Testament was crafted as Roman state propaganda by the Flavian dynasty, as well as his follow-up, Shakespeare's Secret Messiah. You can hear him weekly on the Powers and Principalities episodes of the Our Interesting Times podcast with Tim Kelly. And with so much going on, it will be great to hear his takes. The Caesar's Messiah scribe, culture creation critic, and conspiracy guru, Joe, welcome back. Oh, thanks for having me, Greg. How are you? I can't complain. It is a real pleasure to have you here. It was one of your recent podcast episodes about tariffs that was the real catalyst for trying to get you back here. And I do want to get into that, but in the time since we set this up and started conversing about when to do an interview, the Pope died and a new Pope has been chosen. And I'm not super vested in that, but I'm curious what the Caesar's Messiah author thinks about this new Pope and what the agenda might be behind picking him and what it might signal for the Catholic Church, because these appointments are very political and calculated, I would think. I would say that the College of Cardinals, the body that Alexa Pope, was the number one priority for basically Freemasonry in terms of acquiring your kind of cryptic control over it for the last 500 years. Because the College of Cardinals, the Pope was really the most important political position, particularly in the Middle Ages, but even up to like the 17th century. So this has been a goal to control that, and I think they've been successful, and I think the Popes, the last 10 Popes have been crypto-Masons, basically. Hard to prove this, but they certainly have not opposed sort of the modern culture in any meaningful way, and that is suspicious. In terms of the new one, Leo XIV, the first thing is he's just astonishing in his sort of intellectual attributes, speaks seven languages, he has a degree in mathematics, he is a lawyer, and he has two advanced degrees in theology. I mean, this would make him, in my opinion, the most educated bureaucrat in the world. He also has a background in the third world as a missionary, and his mother is Haitian, so he has some African blood in him. I think this would be basically checking every relevant box, and so it's a little strange. I mean, such an individual seems a bit artificial to me. There is nothing in his background that gives me any kind of clarity as to what we can expect in the future. He's not profoundly Zionist, as some of the recent Popes have been. He hasn't really taken a position on that. He seems to, in his public statements, simply promote pacifism, and he has said that, you know, he's a little leery of gay marriages. However, in terms of, like, the United States, the thing that is most problematic, or at least the thing that will lead to the most emotion, is his position on immigration, which is, in general, I think, unrestrictive. He's not a strong border person, he's more someone who would look to the plight of refugees. And so that's how I think he would come across in terms of the current kerfuffle in the United States regarding immigrants. And then beyond this, time will tell, I would be astonished if eventually he doesn't become clearer in terms of Zionism, which has always been really the critical kind of defining point for Popes, in my opinion, as I judge them. Popes and presidents. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, Zionism is completely in opposition to the text of the New Testament, which talks about a new covenant, about ending the premise, the Deuteronomy premise, that Israel was given as a promised land to the Jews. So whenever a pope cuts across that basic tenet of the New Testament, I always assume it's because he is in some way under control of what I refer to as the Judeo-Masonic tribe that has so much political power. Well, the question of where the real power is, is always interesting. It seems like so many groups and empires and organizations and governments are set up with a figurehead and the real power is somewhere else. Maybe it's with the cardinals in this case. But I'm curious what you think about the claim that the head of the Jesuits, the black pope, is the real power behind the Vatican. I know you actually had a healthy chunk of education at St. Mary's Military Academy in Japan, a Jesuit-run school, which red flags go up, but you can't control where you're educated as a child. And I think you're pretty far from that now because you talk about it pretty regularly. But what do you think about that claim that the Jesuits are really the hidden hand that moves a lot of things that really people don't highlight very often? It's incorrect. Incidentally, St. Mary's, my elementary school in Tokyo, was run by the Christian brothers. I did have Jesuit teachers because of the post-war situation in Japan being somewhat chaotic. Many of my teachers were Jesuits, and so I'm guilty of that charge. But as far as the Jesuits being a kind of hidden hand, I mean, this goes to the fact that they were a secretive organization. And because of that, when you are a secret organization, wild conjecture can be applied. I mean, how can it be falsified when you are a secret organization? The Jesuits were really, it's very interesting. They were part of the power of the converso. They were a Jewish organization as they started, or at least they didn't clarify that. The organization was founded by people who had backgrounds in Judaism. They were Jewish and family members, but they had converted to Christianity, obviously. So this then was perceived as a problem by the Pope. There were secretive aspects of the organization that had come to light. And so the Pope put an end to this and tried to turn the organization into something that had more of a Gentile hierarchy. It's not clear if it ever really came to pass. No one really understands a Jesuit. It's very hard to actually know how do you vet the individuals who are its authority. It's just really not possible. The thing that really produced the rumor that, you know, you're referencing was the fact that Adam Weisskopf, who was the individual who founded what is known as the Illuminati, was a Jesuit trainee. They had captured him somehow as a child and trained him up, and then he produced the Illuminati. And so that combined with the fact that the Jesuits were a converso organization, there are actually books written about how they were a synagogue of Jews, that this was what the original Jesuit organization was. And this, of course, all goes into this period where you had the Inquisition, which was a critical period in European history, not well understood at the present time or even studied to any extent. But the idea was that Jews who were legally required to become Christians during this period, for example, Britain, you couldn't be in the country if you were Jewish. Ostensibly, you had to be a Christian, but you could convert to Christianity. The Inquisition was held because they were concerned that so many people who were taking political positions of power, even though they presented themselves as Christians, were in fact Jewish in their background, and that they retained their Judaism as a kind of a political or even a religious perspective, and therefore were dangerous to non-Jewish Europeans to let such an organization, a secret organization, then have political power. So the Inquisition was held. It went on for quite a while. And this was what led to a lot of the rumors concerning the Jesuits, because they had been clearly identified as having this background, as being founded by converted Christian Jews. So I think that the skepticism in terms of the Jesuits is well-founded. I think they're probably, as an organization, even today, there's controls of forces that they can't really make public. The way to understand our world is really to look at Freemasonry, which I'm not sure is really an organization that they use with that much focus any longer, but for hundreds of years it was. And during that time, you know, you have the outer circle where you look into it, and it doesn't seem beneficial, they're relatives and whatnot, but there is secrecy in its hierarchy. And the only reason you would need secrecy is this, there's malevolence. I mean, why else would you have it? Particularly as powerful as the secrecy of Freemasonry has been. It's just been incredible that they've been able to keep the inner sanctum something the public doesn't have any understanding over. You could suspect malevolence, and the same is true with the Jesuits, who I think in many ways are kind of related to the Freemason secrecy. Our world is dominated by these secret societies. You know, you look at the power that, just for example, Bohemian Grove has. Look at the individuals who would be inside it. Skull and bones. High-level Freemasonry. They all have something that the public is not permitted to understand. Every one of them. So, when you look at all the political power that comes from their members, you have to assume that the purpose of the secrecy is not beneficial. That when we try to understand our world, you know, as an example, World War I or World War II, that these are behaviors of the political class. The public doesn't go out and vote to invade Germany. I mean, the political class creates these dialectics. They publicize them. Propaganda is generated so the public is swayed. And then the next thing you know, armies are basically slaughtering one another. But this is a failure or an achievement of the political class. Our political class, particularly for Europeans over the last 150 years, has been a catastrophic failure, leading to the depopulation of the European. I mean, we are well on the way to going out of existence. And so, we need to look at our political class, frankly, as evil. And what would the evil be? Well, if you look into the secret societies, I mean, American presidents, over half of them are just outed Freemasons. And these are just the ones that are identified. They're obviously some of the ones who aren't are involved in that organization. But then they also have, look at all the presidents who are linked into skull and bones, are Demolay, are the Bohemian Grove. I mean, suddenly you're into this large fraction of the presidents. You've like 90% of them have connections into secret societies. Well, what kind of a democracy is this? Right. That's what makes it so hard to assess Trump, because he seems like a wild card. He seems like an asterisk in that lineage. But yet, I've grown so cynical, I have to assume that it's just an appearance of change, because that's how they pull this off time and time again. It's just the appearance of change with the same old ties that bind. But I could be wrong. There's got to be some exception to some rule somewhere. It would seem to be the case. However, I doubt very much that Trump would be such a thing. I think he is from a converso family, and I think that it's just very sophisticated propaganda. The political personalities are, in general, propaganda. You know, they are there to create certain powers and structures. And in the public, Trump represents kind of an oscillation back to a powerful white male. I mean, he has dyed blonde hair, for example. So, he's an actor, in my opinion. The hard thing is to figure out, well, what is actually going on? Because it is such a, you know, the move into, like, the promotion of transgenderism was very understandable. It was coherent, right? I mean, they were trying to move into the brave new world, and they were going to create, you know, stratified humanity. And so, when you saw the production of the autistic and the way they were promoting integration of the ethnicities and the normalization of homosexuality and the transgender, this all made perfect sense. They were moving us into the brave new world, where you have strict ossification in terms of intellectual and sex was basically a narcotic. The production of families or children would be controlled by the state, you know? So, all of that made sense when you saw Obama and Biden. This made perfect sense. But then suddenly, Trump comes along, and he's in opposition to that. Well, what actually is going on? I mean, it doesn't link into a completely logical process by which humanity can be transformed. Trump seems to be reverting to, like, an older, healthier form of biology, in a way. But I doubt very much if that will last long. As I've said many times, the one thing you can't give to the political class is trust. If you give them that, then you are going to be easily victimized by their propaganda, and you'll be led right off a cliff. And we have been led off a cliff, you know, so many times. Europeans may think about Marxism and Bolsheviks, you know, where they were talking about a worker's paradise. And then, you know, 30 years later, 40 years later, you had 60 million fatalities. The world wars are obviously in this milieu. They're just structured for depopulation. World War I was a battle between the grandchildren of Queen Victoria. They're all Freemasons. And these wars, therefore, could have easily been prevented or ended very quickly. But the fact that they went to these catastrophic ends of depopulation, I think is just clear evidence that the political class is controlled and evil. And, I mean, I've written about World War II as being basically a continuation of World War I. When Hitler was put into power by, I forget his name, it's shocking that I would forget his name, but it was Ludendorff. Excuse me, Ludendorff, he was the one who actually put Lenin into place. He literally put him on the train and gave him the money and sent him into Russia to, you know, bring about the transformation, you know, from a Christian empire to a Bolshevik situation. And then he was also the one who inserted Hitler between World War I and World War II. So, you can see that there's this hidden hand that's just unmistakable, you know, once you get into these little details of how power is assembled and how these people are moved into place. So, Trump, I am sure that eventually we'll come to see what the purpose was of this oscillation. The thing that is the most obvious when you look at where the U.S. is heading is a race war. All of these changes that Trump is making really most negatively affect African-Americans. When they talk about meritocracy, what does that actually mean? Harvard has 20% of its class of its freshman class last year was black. If you went to a strict meritocracy using, like, SAT scores, you wouldn't have even one-tenth of one percent. So, meritocracy is actually kind of a code word for resegregation. Hmm. I never heard it put that way, but... Well, it's just what's going to happen. The civil service jobs are the foundation of the African-American middle class, or one of the foundations. So, there, when you reduce civil service jobs, you impact them most negatively. And so, all of these things are going to really, not at first, but over time, you're going to see they're really going to expose the fact that the African-American was not prepared for a meritocracy. If you look at, like, for example, Chicago school districts, 55 schools have zero students who are proficient at either reading or math. Well, we all know inner-city schools are worse, but, I mean, the quality of education combined with the lack of opportunity, it seems to be affecting everybody. Oh, sure it does. And we're all getting, I mean, obviously, inflation is destructive to everyone, but I think that you're also having a promotion of a violent culture in African-Americans. You know, the rap culture, they use the N-word endlessly, and they're celebrating the behavior. The violent, uneducated behavior is celebrated. Well, that's in the kind of world that Biden created where you have a lot of financial subsidy of the inner city. When that gets taken away, all that's going to be left is the violence. And I think that could be what Trump is over the long term and wanting to see happen. But, I mean, the thing is, Greg, you know, even though this is kind of a paranoid idea, it is logical in terms of our history. They set up these dialectics. The dialectic is how they manipulate. You know, you get German versus the allies, communism versus capitalism. The dialectics are set up so that the public accepts some method of depopulation. I mean, look at October the 7th in Israel, right? You have Hamas. They somehow breach the L-bit automated technology. Well, how is this possible? It's inexplicable. How could a bunch of Hamas fighters with pickup trucks and automatic weapon breach the most sophisticated border technology ever developed, which is sold as a product to other nations? And I saw a video in 2017 showing how automated it was, completely automated. They had automated Gatling guns, automated visual observation, every square inch of the border. And yet we're led to believe that in 15 cases, you know, a couple hundred of these guys in pickup trucks breached this and then went out into Israel slaughtering bikini-clad people at a rave event and beheading babies. Well, gee, that makes a lot of sense. There's a military strategy that's going to give you public advantage in public opinion. I mean, it's just ridiculous. It's like a very bad Chuck Norris movie. Yes, and we did talk about that last time. It was right after the event. But I'm curious what you think now, because I don't think it really had the effect that it was designed to have. A lot of false flags are done to drum up support for a certain thing. And it started to feel like that. But I don't know. It doesn't seem like it took off like they would have wanted it to. The rationale was just to provide cover for genocide. I mean, really, they just want to depopulate, reduce the population of the Palestinians in every way possible. And in that sense, it was a tremendous success. There were some protests in the U.S., but it didn't reach any kind of fever pitch. And in the meantime, the Israelis have been able to do a massive depopulation maneuver. I don't know what the actual casualty count and the count of those who've been driven out of the country. I don't know what that is. I don't trust their statistics. Well, another interesting thing that's happening now, and yes, I don't want to downplay all the death and tragedy that has happened, but I guess it just doesn't seem like people have gotten on board with it. But of course, if bombs are dropping, what is the opinion of someone on the other side of the planet really matter? Well, and also, what is our data? I mean, I've talked to Palestinians who've talked about half of the population has been either removed from the area or killed. I don't have any way of vetting this. What do you think of this claim that Trump—now, this is going to happen between recording and airing, because Trump just landed in Saudi Arabia today. But there's this claim that he might recognize a Palestinian state, and that's getting a lot of people excited. I think that there's a thing where you could say, deals get made all the time where you just install a puppet government, and it's like, who cares what you say on the surface if there's a hidden hand controlling it the way you want it controlled? So I could see that happening, but he does like to troll liberals, and that would just make their heads explode for the guy they hate so much to recognize the Palestinian state. Do you think that's a rumor? I mean, hard to say, but what's your assessment on how Trump might approach this situation? Nah, it won't happen. The rumor of the Palestinian state has been in existence since 1919, you know, with the Balfour. I mean, they're committed to Eretz Israel, and it's been a long process, 2,000 years. I mean, read Caesar's Messiah, see what they really were dealing with back in the first century. But they will never permit a Palestinian state. And for one thing, I mean, these people are pure Deuteronomy, biblical individuals. I mean, if you read Deuteronomy and you read God's instruction to the Israelites in terms of genociding ethnicities to purify the land, this is their perspective. So, no, they'll never accept a Palestinian state. They'll always talk about it. But again, it's just a cover story, and it's not going to happen. What I've been telling people, if you're inside of Eretz Israel, which is basically from the Euphrates to the Nile, you should evacuate. If you're not inside the tribe of Israelis that are in power, you should evacuate, because there is no force, really, that is organized against the Israelis at this point, and they are absolutely murderous. I mean, if you look at October the 7th as a false flag, as a justification, right, which I do, incidentally, I think it's just self-evident, I think you see a revelation of a kind of mindset that is absolutely murderous, racial, and determined. And at the moment, there's no real counterbalance in any political structure in the world against it. So, the only thing to do, if you have a family and you're in Lebanon or, you know, serious leave, I can show you letters from, well, quotes of letters from Rothschild, even before the Balfour Declaration, where he was telling people not to put Arabs into Syria or Lebanon because eventually that was going to be part of the land of Israel. And I can cite Churchill, his interaction with Hussein, who was really the plenipotentiary of the Arab people, and he told him, he said, look, if you do not accept Zionism, I will launch an attack against you using Saudi Arabia, the armies of the Saudi Arabia. So, you're talking immediately after the Balfour Declaration, this is like 1920, at that point, they had that kind of control. Churchill had that kind of control over the armies of supposedly a Islamic brotherhood state like Saudi Arabia, but he had enough control that he could actually state flat out that he would level Hussein and his army if he resisted the Zionism, which was a cold cock. Remember, well, again, you get into the details, but Hussein had negotiated all of this before World War I. He said, look, we'll support the allies, we will fight against the Ottomans, but you have to give us an Arab area of political control. And this was from Egypt through Saudi Arabia. As soon as the objective had been achieved, the Balfour Declaration came out. The timing of the Balfour was basically because that was when they didn't need any military support from the Arabs because they had defeated the Ottomans, and so they could now make their intentions clear. And they came out with the Balfour Declaration, which was a complete cold clock. It was a complete violation of the agreement that they had, but didn't matter. So this is the mindset that is, when you think about Trump, subterfuge, lying, lifetime actors, I mean, this is just their modus operandi. It's what they just do. So I am sure Trump is going to play up the idea that they're going to make nice with the Muslims, but it isn't going to happen. Right. It seems to be just the same old script. So let me ask you about more like the domestic issues and the economic stuff, because it does seem like there's a big pivot going on. And I've heard you talk about tariffs at great length and also say that it seems like the goal is to de-financialize the country, but there's really no precedent for successfully doing that. Financialization is a gradual corruption where once it sets in politically, it's very difficult to reverse. Well, elaborate on that. What even is financialization really? And what is this current administration doing to try to right the ship, if that's even a good way to describe it? I mean, it's an oscillation. And so the things that have been destructive are being addressed. That is, I would say, how Trump would present himself. One could argue some of this stuff, but in general, that would be a characterization. Trump is there to right things which are completely opposed to the interests of the general American public. Tariffs are an extremely good idea in theory because, well, the situation has been unfair since the end of World War II, wherein we accepted basically restrictions on our goods to other countries and did not tariff in any meaningful way goods coming into our country. There's always been some niggling on the edges of this thing, but that's the general thrust of it, is that they tariff our goods, we don't tariff theirs. So Trump is here, and he's going to fix all of this, and it is an extremely good idea, but it would have to be done with great precision. You know, you have to do it to not wipe out such a fragile economy as we have. With Trump's first tranche of tariffs, if he had actually implemented them, we would have brought the economy to a stop, right, because so much of it is integrated at this point. I mean, just as an example, computer chips, which come from Taiwan, some come from China, and a lot of the finished goods come from China, the computers and things. I mean, how are you going to bring an end to that trade into the United States? You would cause a depression. So Trump has walked back from most of his major claims in the last three weeks. You know, like with China now, he's walking back from the, you know, draconian tariff position, and you can actually praise Trump, and I would for this, and that what he has done is he's threatened a huge blow, which would be devastating to the opponent in the tariff war, and then was able to get concessions because he's a dealmaker. He went with the idea of 100%, but he's willing to take 30%. I can't imagine that Trump will not end up with more popularity because of it, even though the tariffs in the short term might produce some issues. I think if he keeps up this approach, you would have some renaissance in terms of American jobs. If you think about getting rid of the civil service, and I've had a lot, I had companies that have dealt with American civil service people, like the Department of Agriculture is an organization I had some dealing with, and I can tell you that, you know, this would be my opinion, that most of the jobs are make work. They don't really do anything. They're not necessary. You couldn't, as Trump was saying, talk about getting rid of half of civil service if, in fact, they did meaningful and absolutely necessary things. They don't. They are kind of make work, and you could easily get rid of them and save the taxpayer quite a bit of money. But, you know, who are these individuals? What is the preparation for their employment if you get rid of the civil service? What are you going to do with them? You can put them on welfare for a while, but then beyond that, I mean, I don't think many of the people in civil service really have skills that could transfer into private enterprise. I mean, I don't think they could be entrepreneurs. I don't think they could start businesses. They don't have those kinds of skills. And they don't have sort of skills that, you know, would give them sort of middle management positions and technical companies. You know, they just don't have that. So what are you going to do with them? Well, it's a formula, in my opinion, for disaster, and since so many of them are African-American, there's definitely going to get some pushback. And I'm sad to say this, you know, because for one thing, I think because I'm right, but I also think it's just a sad situation, is that I think the tensions between inner city and suburbs and white and black are going to be intensified. And I think that's kind of the dialectic that Trump will most naturally and logically is in place to create and to make it intense. Well, right now it seems like there's an immigrant citizen thing going on. And obviously that's a dialectic at play, too. Sure. But that also is racial. Now, you know, you can see how, well, to use an expression, black and white, this is all going to be. Because Trump is permitting the Boers to immigrate. Right. There's six million Boers in South Africa. For people who don't know, the Boers are South African white people who are being persecuted. This is the story. I don't know much about it, but this is the headline I read. Well, they actually brought in like a hundred of them a couple of days ago. It's a symbolic move, but there are six million of them. And if they immigrated the entire cohort, you'd actually change the presidential race, you know, because these people would all, I guarantee you, be Republicans. I also think that you're going to eventually see a lot of the Ukrainian expats will be offered asylum in the United States or some kind of path to immigration. Because I think that they want to intensify the dialectic between white and black. It's too kind of early in this process to have a clearer understanding. But I think that's kind of the dialectic that they're going to use. If you want to take a paranoid approach, I mean, think of the inner cities in a complete state of riot and now, you know, a political response, a federal response has to occur. Imagine if George Floyd riots had been contested by the federal government, you'd basically be in a civil war kind of situation. And I think then you'd have to give up political power. Trump would have to run for president for another term. I mean, these kinds of things are suddenly believable and will be accepted if you get the dialectic intense enough. And see, this is one of the good things, Greg, about, you know, having a both clear and paranoid understanding of history is that you can see the future pretty well. And I don't think Trump is going to take us to any place good. And if he's taking us someplace bad, this would be just a natural concern. Right, right. And when it comes to the economic stuff, I've heard you say that you really can't do this plan because the debt is too high. There's just no good answer for it. You know, today, some inflation data came out that inflation dropped to 2.3% in April, the lowest level since 2021. That might surprise people who are going just on the news headlines about what's happening economically. You know, that's a silver lining, I suppose. But what would you say to people who are listening who are like just concerned about the instability or the uncertainty in the general economy right now? Good luck to you. I would tell them they're right. And it's a lot worse than they can even imagine. Here's the situation. Our economy is a dream world. I mean, the thing that is most parallel to it would be an evangelical's faith in Jesus. This is the degree of reality that the American citizens possess in terms of our economy. We cannot audit the Federal Reserve. We have no idea how much black money is in existence. Who knows? And we know that money could come out of thin air. They can create any kind of credit they want. So the dollar only has a psychological value. It's only a religious device. That's all it is. It has value because we believe in it. Jesus is powerful because we believe in him. If you don't believe, then there is no power. If you don't believe in the dollar, well, the dollar is continuing to work. And as long as it works, then it does have power. But it doesn't have any intrinsic power. And the problem is, is that we can't see in back of the shield. And so we don't know how much fake money is out there. Catherine Austin Fitz, who I think is clear-minded, she said that her analysis of our debt market is that there has to be another planet that we are unaware of that is occupied by people that want to buy our debt. She used to think it was the secret space program. Yeah, because the arithmetic doesn't make any sense in terms of who actually is buying the debt. Why would they be buying it? What happens to the old debt? Who is keeping track of all this? So the thing is, when you get into the current situation, as it's been explained to us, where you've got $30 trillion in debt and they have to keep the interest rates reasonably low, otherwise the federal government would have to create more debt than could be absorbed. And you'd be in this kind of doom loop, you know, where more debt being created would require more debt to pay for it. And then, you know, the next thing you know, the dollar would stop working. Well, I would say that it is a faith system. It's a religion. The reason why in the Weimar Republic, the inflation basically ended, people would stop using, you know, the Deutschmark at that time is because they could physically see that the money was in great abundance. People had Deutschmarks in wheelbarrows to buy loaves of bread. But they fixed that problem. It is now the dark money moves electronically. The people cannot see the dark money being moved around. And so we don't have a clue. Economic people will talk about this or that, inflation going up and down. This is all just, I mean, it's pleasant conjecture, but it doesn't have any connection to reality whatsoever because no one knows. The only thing we know is, is that the people who are running the economic situation are malevolent. Yes. So in that conversation you were having, you said to truly definancialize the country, which is just a tall order, almost impossible. We would have to transition out of the currency and void it and then have a new one. And that sounds pretty intense. Some people think that's what's going on with crypto, that they're trying to on ramp that if they can make the switch. You know, it's kind of like Indiana Jones trying to put the bag down and take the idol. It's like, can you make that switch when everything's moving the way it is? But that's pretty intense. Anything can be achieved if the propaganda is effective. This is just a faith-based system. And if they switch to crypto, as long as movie stars came out saying that they were acquiring crypto, a vast number of the public would also want the crypto. And then if they want the crypto, then their desire becomes the basis for transactions. And the next thing you know, crypto is replace the dollar. I mean, this is kind of a cartoon-like description of it, but that's kind of what has happened. There's, look, we could never have anything more absurd than the dollar. It's almost impossible, really. I mean, what could you have that'd be more ridiculous? But we believe in it. People work their whole lives to acquire it. And if it all just suddenly goes away overnight, well, that was just too bad. But to actually have a real financial system, you'd have to get control over the political class. You'd have to have absolute control over it. You would have to have complete audit. You'd have to be able to audit every single penny and have this public. My father did accounting, and I asked him, I said, well, how does this all work? And he said, here's the great principle. If you don't know where the money is, it's been stolen. This is the great principle. And so in the United States, we don't know where any of the money is. So we know that the wealth has been stolen. Certainly, someone is stealing it. And they have this very clever thing where now that they have the index, you have the dollar relative to other currencies that are the exact same illusionary nature, like the yen and the euro and, you know, the yuan. So since all of the currencies are ludicrous and are all basically have debt attached to them that the economies that they are attached to cannot repay, none of them have any sort of reality. But as a clump, they are a more powerful force of illusion because the dollar is strengthening against the yen. I mean, that's just a very mentally powerful thing. It makes the dollar seem like it's real because, look, it's better today than it was two weeks ago against the yen. Well, this is wonderful. But what is the yen? I mean, how does the yen link it? None of these things can be audited. And to the extent they can, they're just ridiculous. There is no relationship any longer between the currency and the economy. There is just no longer. I mean, really, Austin Fitz is correct. There is another planet out there. And that's the only way you can make any sense out of the numbers. So what to do? Well, you know, I mean, precious metals, probably a good idea. It certainly has been recently, but there's no guarantee they could easily pull the plug on that. These are tiny markets, easy to manipulate. Crypto, I mean, I'm wealthy and I have investments in all of these things. I have dollars and crypto and metal and things. And by diversification, you know, you have this idea, well, I'm protected. But this is ridiculous. None of these sources of wealth have any real, you know, I mean, food and the ability to protect yourself is actual wealth. You know, the thing is, look, we are constantly given an illusion in terms of the nature of reality. You know, every major event is a theatrical production. I mean, read Caesar's Messiah if you want to see how cynical I am. Read Shakespeare. My book on Shakespeare. I mean, everything that we have been told about our history, about our literature, it's all nonsense. These are elements in social control. The old architect class has developed techniques to control you and me. And that's what we see as history. That's what we see as economic reality. We see their control methods. So we need a revolution. And thank heavens there are people like you who are, you know, have the really righteous and historically important role of getting out the skepticism to the public. I mean, this is the most critical thing. The stuff you do, like I was listening to some of your shows the other day, you know, because I was going to come on. I was thinking, you know, someone should be like supporting you in like a lot of money because you're really doing good stuff. And bringing out the alternative thinkers and the questions that you pose to them, you're helping to generate skepticism. Now, I've said this a hundred times, look, propaganda is what rules our world. However, it is very vulnerable because if a citizen is skeptical, just to the extent of he's going to not believe what the media is telling, he's just going to be skeptical. Propaganda doesn't work. It just flat out doesn't work. And then look at how many people, you know, start out as like normally half conscious, but go through some kind of process where they end up and you make sense to them. Your conversations, they understand it. Now, look at this. How many of that group ever go back to believing the October 7th Hamas invasion is a real thing? No one. I have never met a single person that returns to go, you know, I was wrong. I now understand 9-1-1 as that's what happened. Excellent point. Yeah, it really only goes one direction in that regard. As hard as it is to break through when you do break through, it's usually for life. You're done. So we only need really, if you want to look at the numbers, we only need like around my estimates about 10% of the public that is really kind of clear minded. The political process they create and run isn't going to work if there's just 10%. That's all we need. We're up to like maybe four or five already. And if it goes forward, it'll definitely, because again, it's only one-way traffic. It never goes back. So given this, you know, I think they could actually calculate 20 years, 15 years, it's over for them because the political system they run won't function. If there's 10% that can actually have an adult conversation with you, it's over. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. They cannot function if there is 10% of the public that just goes, you know, I don't believe it. That was the great thing about COVID is you could just see when everything is kind of a monothink injection into the culture. You're like, well, hold on a second. I've seen this game before. I don't know much about medicine or what this could be, but I know that you're lying to me. So then you start sifting through the alternative takes and you say, that sounds good. This guy seems to have a good piece of it. Here's an expert who doesn't agree with everything. Oh, and then a picture starts to form. And by the time you get to the shot, well, I think you should have done your research by then. But we were talking before this started that maybe those people who didn't get the shot could actually end up being an organized voting block at least or more. And the fact is there has been a lasting impact from the stupidity of the vaccine and the mandates, which I think were ham-handed and I suspect were actually done in a kind of desperation relative to what we had just discussed, that they really could see that they just couldn't continue with the independent media rolling along because they could see in a couple of decades there would be too many people who would be skeptical. So they experimented with, you know, mechanical dictatorship where they lock everyone down and, but it really didn't work. The skepticism was too high. Now they got a lot of people to take the vaccine, but I don't think a lot of people would have supported the lockdowns for much longer. I think they would have had a large scale kind of rebellion, which is one of the things that they've tried to avoid. So anyway, we now oscillate to Trump and suddenly the vaccines are, he's saying that, you know, he's skeptical of the vaccine. We have RFK Jr. What the heck? You know, suddenly this is just a complete oscillation. You have Fauci and now you have RFK Jr. Who wrote the book about Fauci being one of the most heinous criminals in the history of mankind. Well, wait a second. I know it's truly insane to see him in a position of power. I read that book and interviewed him about that book and I was just shocked what's in it. And he's an interesting character because I've followed him for many years when he was unpopular fighting an uphill battle. And now he's saying things like the MMR vaccine is the best defense for children. And I don't know if he's just being strategic and fighting one battle at a time, but people are so quick to say he's compromised and it's all over. I get it being cynical and all that, but it was just announced that all childhood vaccines will finally have placebo controlled trials. And my hope is that he's kind of trying to do things methodically, setting up the proper trials and studies and then letting the data speak for itself rather than, you know, acting the way people expect him to act and the way he's been painted as just strictly anti-vax. I like to think that he's like, oh, I'm not anti-vax. I just want to go with the data. Let's get the good data. And then we'll see how that all rolls out, I suppose. Yeah, well, your statement is very significant and very clear behind it. I mean, he can't simply make proclamations that would be the opposite of the ones that like Peter Hotez and Fauci were making. And so this would be, I think, disorienting, you know, but what he can do is let the data speak for itself. And he actually referenced what I think is the most significant piece of statistical analysis. I'm not sure we ever discussed it, but it's a study that was done on the Harvard Pilgrim medical system, and it was done by statisticians working for the U.S. government. And if you Google Harvard Pilgrim study, you know, you'll see it. And what they determined was, what they were really trying to do was to see if the VAERS system was catching the side effects. This is too complicated to go into for your viewers, but they wanted to see if the government was actually picking up the side effects. Because when they gave the pharmaceutical companies the dispensation from lawsuits, this was the tradeoff. They had to have an accurate way of monitoring side effects. Well, anyway, so these guys go in and they just took a medical system of like 800,000 people and went back in time and took all the data. So it was kind of a, I wouldn't call it a true double blind, but it was a blind study. They just said, okay, well, let's look what the data tells us. And they said, you know what? It's only picking up one in a hundred of the side effects. What in a hundred? Well, that's no good. So they went to the CDC with the information and the CDC, this is in the study. And so now you can just go online and read it. The CDC, their response was, well, we're never going to pick up the telephone again when you guys call. That was their response. They just said, we are shutting it down. And they realized that any kind of discussion would just foul the water all the more. So they wanted to just stop the study, but the study exists. But RFK has referenced the study. I know people who know him and I know that that study has been presented to him. He talks about the study and what I think is going to happen. This would be the best case. But I think he's going to take all the medical data in the United States and do basically a Harvard Pilgrim study. He's just going to say, okay, we've got hundreds of millions of hospital records and we can now, using AI and computer technology, we can correlate everything. We can see that Medicine X is given to this cohort and then we can trace them through time and compare them to some group that didn't get Medicine X. And now we can see, did it work? Was it effective? What are the increases in side effects? The data will provide all of the reality. The data. Because we have the capacity with all of the hospital records. I mean, we've got hospital records going back into the 1940s for God's sakes. We don't have to wonder. I mean, it's just ludicrous that people would say, well, we don't really know what causes autism. Well, how can we not know? We have data. We can actually run the data and see who takes different medicines and who has these results or who doesn't. I think, as you said, and I wish that I'm going to review this when you post it and try to quote you, because that was a really good way of describing it. And that's really what he should do, is he should just let the data speak for itself. When he comes forward, he should just not even have his personality. He just goes, here, this is the report to the nation. Here is the data. This is what happens when your kid gets the MNR vaccine. And this is what happens when your kid gets 70 vaccines, right? There are some other kids that don't have this, so we can see what the different results are. And just let the data tell the public what is real and what isn't. This is critical because we are becoming so stupid and sick, you know, as a people. And our sperm count is going to zero. We have less than 40% of the sperm that we had in males in the United States in the 1950s. We have 40%. This is insane. Nothing is being done about it. And the 40% that are in existence, the sperm obviously are damaged. You know, here where I live, they say that one kid in 10 has autism. One in 10 boys. Well, I can point over my shoulder to where autistic children are living right now. They're 200 yards from me. There was no such thing in the 1950s when I was growing up. So this really gets me upset that the public has been slowly like a frog being boiled. We just got used to being ill and used to having so much diabetes and obesity. And we don't understand that this is an attack upon us by the oligarchs, that they are creating the epsilon and delta class with us right now. We are being transformed into a more stupid, weaker, less ambitious group of people for their purposes. So, you know, when you look at tariffs and economic oscillation, it all links into the creation of an impotent populace where we just don't have the capacity to rebel. Right. And one of the things that really bothers me about the autism thing is just it's a debilitating condition, yet it's promoted as a feature, not a bug. And now I see people that I've known my whole life saying, well, I talked to a therapist and we found out that I'm neurodivergent and there's this celebration of neurodivergent, which is really a term to say damaged or insufficient in some way. And it's because so many people are going to experience this. So many people are going to have kids that experience this because vaccines are kind of mandatory. It's so ubiquitous now in culture that you have to kind of market it as a positive. And I think that's one of the craziest things. You have to market it as a positive because the marketing is part of the overall plan of creating the epsilon and delta class. You give them the idea that there's something positive about this or that the criticism of it is insensitive. Right. This is literally insane. They have a movie, The Accountant, where the hero is autistic and it gives him an advantage in his certain kinds of work. I mean, this is completely insane. Literally, it's insane. It's not real. The autistic don't have mathematical genius as one of their attributes. Their brains are damaged. And the spectrum, they show as the neurodivergent, you know, Ben Atfleck with a girlfriend is the edge of the spectrum. Well, what they should show is the bottom 50%, wherein you have, like, children who, when they reach puberty, are dangerous to their mothers, you know? I mean, this is the reality of it, is that they are profoundly retarded and they are not safe to be around. And that half of the spectrum is dangerous. Yes, you can train a certain fraction of them to be marginal humans, but they're all damaged. And we should never accept any damage. We should not accept an iota of damage to the children. You know, the idea that, well, we're just going to make them neurodiverse by definition and then go to sensitivity and be a happy world. I mean, I just get absolutely furious about this. And, you know, I'll tell you, this is in my draconian moments, you know, it's like you look at the people who, and I have argued with them, and I spent 20 years trying to get people to think better about these subjects and myself. But in some cases, there's success, and in other cases, there's not. When there's not success, when you have people that took six mRNA vaccines and now have prostate cancer or something, what can you do other than, say, farewell? And so you were talking about the unvaccinated. We have the basis of skepticism for a healthier culture. We really should try to segregate ourselves from those individuals. This is something I've been advocating for some time. We're not, there's not enough of us. We're not dense enough to really do it properly yet. But this would be the basis for a political party, but also for social life. I mean, we should have dance parties for people who are, you know, never-minded, you know? I have a meetup calendar that I maintain for the show, that anybody who's a listener can make an event and find local people based on a mutual love of strange topics that we talk about here. Brilliant. That is such a good idea, you know, to start connecting ourselves to one another. Is there any promotional stuff you want to throw out before we go? You know, I mean, the same old stuff. Caesar's Messiah, Shakespeare's Secret Messiah. You can buy the books if you're interested. I have a lot of stuff that's online. If you Google my name, you can see I have analysis of a lot of things in the modern world, like I Am the Walrus, the Salinger books, and even like Shakespearean analysis like The Tempest, which is incredibly important. That play is where the expression brave new world comes from. If you just Google my name in The Tempest, you can see my take on it. And I really do have, I think, critical insights into the play that haven't been seen before, which will enable people to understand why the expression became so popular with the oligarchs. So I would say in terms of promoting me, I would promote your stuff, actually. This is where if you want to help me, try to help Greg. And I'm a public person. You can reach me on email at joeatwell at gmail.com. I do what I can to get back to most of them. Heck, yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. Lots of stuff to think about. Take care. Brother, thank you so much. Well, well, well. I had Joe here to talk tariffs, and we clearly went into a lot of other stuff. He's a knowledgeable guy with lots of thoughts and ideas on all sorts of things. He offers perspectives that I definitely don't hear every day, and backs them up with a lot of historical detail. And unique takes is kind of part of the THC recipe. And the fact that he's very complimentary to me doesn't hurt either. Hard to know what to say here, though. I don't think I got a kid glove you guys too much. I think anyone who's gone deep into the depths of the conspiratorial internet has crossed paths with uncomfortable perspectives, like some of this was. And like on a lot of things, as a host, I try to stay pretty neutral. I'm just listening as you are listening a lot of times. I'm also wearing the host and producer hat at the same time through these interviews, and even I'm sometimes shocked at the things I heard Joe say. But there's something about his tone and demeanor that I find really interesting to listen to. This, if you don't like my position, then let's pull it apart and really look at it from all angles and not be afraid to discuss it sort of attitude. And the first hour was pretty tame. Obviously, the plus show less so, but nothing makes me appear to be a stumbling, awkward, tongue-tied idiot, like an impromptu and unexpected conversation about racial differences, genetics, and cultural degradation of racial groups. But I tried to put on my big boy pants, and maybe it's just entertaining to watch me squirm. I don't know. I'm willing to risk putting my foot in my mouth, I guess, to talk about these things. I just hope everyone understands that it's only in the spirit of curiosity, exploring certain ideas for truth. Maybe they have all of it, half of it, not so much of it, but just wanting to explore all ideas, and ultimately, problem-solving and generating some sort of hope or motivation for improvement. We got to get raw about the problems to get honest about the solutions, and it's not about judgment or being dismissive of any type of person as inferior or a lost cause. Again, this was plus show stuff, but I feel like I still need to throw that out there. At the risk of putting my foot in my mouth again, I think the cognitive and emotional difference between men and women is bigger than the difference between white men and black men. I don't know what Joe would say about that. Yet we have marriages and families and share the same households. So we can obviously be very different and think differently and have different logical processes and still make a strong team. And when Joe talks about segregation, man, it's thorny. I see it as an unnecessary thing to advocate for, but if I was going to back up his position, I have black friends that have been raised basically white who say it really sucks going into every single social situation or even restaurant as the only black guy around or one of a couple peppered throughout. So yeah, it's not a big deal to say people like to be around their tribe. They want to be around people that are like them. American isn't a thick enough bond, apparently. And I don't really see a problem with it being framed that way. We put so much emphasis on race, I think, just because it's so easy to see. But if the goal is to be around people that are like you, why not choose on a basis of astrology or personality type or generation? We know there's differences amongst the different generations. Most differences in groups used to be tied to geography, of course, and by extension, culture, but not so much anymore. So it's just a thought. You could live and be amongst all different types of people and make distinctions between differences on all kinds of different bases besides race. Whatever. I don't like going off and qualifying so much when a guest is gone, specifically when it's a plus show topic anyway. And free listeners are wondering why I'm so fired up on racial topics when they didn't even hear that subject matter at all. But it is what it is. Become a plus member and hear all the juicy, thorny stuff. I don't usually think of plus as a filtering mechanism, but like the legends go, sometimes I lay the breadcrumbs in the first hour and then it's up to you to really invite me in and see where it goes. This might be one of those episodes. We should also always be open to discussing anything from the perspective of was something sold as a positive by people who meant to do harm? Anything should be explorable through the lens of were we lied to about this. Did X, Y, or Z happen naturally or was it engineered? It's a confusing world. Those conversations are needed. But again, I don't want anyone to take it like a personal attack. Do what you want to do as an individual. I don't judge if I think you're being genuine, but so many people are not being authentic. There's so much parroting and mimicry, whether it's the rappers or influencers or celebrities or whatever. There's just so much mimicry that it's kind of sad. I did use a personal example in the plus show because I was kind of scrambling to explain myself and I wish I hadn't. I usually like to keep personal stuff off the show, but Joe is explaining some things that I do see coming up in regular life. So sometimes I can't help but go to an example. But like I was trying to say, when I see deeply personal things becoming somewhat trendy, I just wonder how genuine or authentic it is, even if it's really not my business. But the Jesuit history in the first hour was interesting. Didn't think we'd go that deep on that, but I brought it up and he knows a lot about it. The economic insights were great. Tariff talk in the mainstream sounds a lot like COVID talk to me. There's only one way to think. It's a disaster. It's a self-inflicted wound and an unforced error. Yet, as Joe pointed out, there's been an imbalance since World War II. What's wrong with resetting that table? The younger generations kind of just hate America and don't think we deserve anything or any fairness. And maybe out of guilt, they're like, yeah, just take everything. It doesn't have to be fair. I don't know, really, what that's all about. Sure, a lot of other countries are bitching and even framing it as an attack because they don't want to lose the advantage. Because for the most part, we are just largely talking about a reciprocal situation. Why can't I buy a Toyota cheaply, yet they don't sell Fords in Japan or Germany or whatever? We know about these examples, but American manufacturing is already so limited. And then you add on not even having access to global markets? Of course, we're in trouble. And these are markets that have gotten more valuable over the decades, too. And if we're going to even give lip service to reigniting manufacturing here, then you also got to open up new places to sell. I don't even think that's really what's going on, but just to play devil's advocate for the general idea, you know. So I really liked this interview without being so sure how I think about every point. It's fun when a guest takes things further than me, and I'm left not even knowing what to say, and Joe does that often. I appreciate his boldness. Few will go as hard as he will. I kind of touched on the Plus Show already, but it's probably best just to say sign up. If you like what I do, want to support truly independent media without any corporate sponsors, and if you want to hear twice as much show, you know the deal. But let's do what we do and check the rating of the last episode. This is the one with Aaron Murakami about the happenings in the free energy alternative science ether physics realm. Personally, I think a small fraction of people will love it, and for a lot of people, it will have been too technical. I'm a little worried it might even be below a four, though I like that Aaron can dispense his knowledge and be that technical, showing that he knows what he's talking about, but I just don't think it's everyone's cup of tea, so let me guess 4.2. And looking at it, we got a 4.3. Okay, right around what I expected. I could feel it at times, but it's hard to interrupt a person mid-explanation. Still, I like going there every so often it feels important to do. We will see what Plus members think of this one with Joe. So, pretty hard to predict, actually, but let's do the other thing, the meetup calendar. On June 1st, we got Hot Dogs and Hope at Heartland Harbor in Huntington, Indiana. Also, Tacos and Truth at Elm Creek Brewing in Champlin, Minnesota. June 8th, Truth or Discussion in L.A. at the Trails Cafe. And June 14th, a Raw Milk Party in Lanesboro, Massachusetts. There's a handful of events to get you through the first half of June. And remember, anyone can make an event very low pressure. Just pick a place you like and tell the people and see how it goes. Building networks the old-fashioned way while we can. That's pretty much it. Before we go, I guess I would say I got a new song for this one. Now that we're back on YouTube, I can't really use the covers because on top of all the content strikes, I would also get copyright strikes because these covers would be stupidly interpreted as the original song. Very annoying, but these are original songs and they'll always be safe, so I'm going back to writing them. But I'm going to be a little less specific. I'm going to write ones that I can reuse rather than them all being one-to-one show specific. That's just too hard to keep up with. But this one is just a series of goofy thoughts I had, but if there was a sense to it, I would say the major theme is that there's always an exception to the rule or some caveat or one more thing. But that doesn't mean the basic premise or logic isn't sound when it comes to this, that, or the other. If the burden of proof is going to be higher than what can be publicly available, well, that's very convenient for the conspirators, you know? That's the point, I guess. But either way, check in with Joe if you like what you heard. I've done my part. Your move, economic upheavers, crypto-masonic deceivers, and directors of the reality theater. Your fucking move. Once I found a smoking gun, you saw it. Once someone returned my money, but it's stolen my wife. Twice I was big, but I didn't get shy. A cup that's always bone dry. You can still make out this what goes deeper than greed. Broke a mirror right before the best seven years of my life. I cross the street and look both ways, and I'm still gonna die. Flags fly at half-mast whenever it's my birthday. I notice when you leave, you can still make out. Alice, what goes deeper than greed? Your head, how can it be too deep? I don't like to cause confusion, if you know what I mean. I've seen the sun shine brightest on the darkest of days. A rich man once told me that's when the best deals are made. You can still make out the web, when the spider's not seen. You can connect the dots, just draw some lines in between. When you can smell the dots, just draw higher side chats. Verse the machine. Friendship play.