Michael Rectenwald returns to discuss the ESG Index or “woke capitalism” as a selection mechanism or demarcation device to delineate which businesses are onboard with The Great Reset and punish those who are not compliant. It is effectively a Social Credit System for companies, feeding investments toward the compliant while starving dissident firms, competition, and industries. This sets up the possibility for doing to companies what is being done to individuals in Canada right now, de-banking them and freezing their assets, and is totalitarian in nature. This global government combines the worst of both systems (capitalism and communism). We discuss the WEF Young Global Leaders program, the threat posed by the people who don’t see COVID1984 for what it is, resistance, and parallel structures.
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Show Notes
Woke Capitalism Is a Monopoly Game https://mises.org/wire/woke-capitalism-monopoly-game
Websites
Michael Rectenwald https://www.michaelrectenwald.com
Books https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/books
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TRANSCRIPT
Geopolitics & Empire:
Are you ready to get rekt? Because the Rectenwald returns to Geopolitics & Empire. Michael Rectenwald is former NYU professor and author of 11 books including Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom. You best get this book and read it because judging by events in Canada, the hunger games have officially commenced and we are now in thick of the Google Archipelago where you can have your bank account frozen for donating money to truckers. Michael, how are you doing? And how are you enjoying the Google Archipelago?
Michael Rectenwald:
I’m hanging in there very well. It’s great to be back. So yeah, I’m looking forward to our talk.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah. I think you were ill for a while now and you recovered?
Michael Rectenwald:
Oh, yes. I had COVID and went in twice to the hospital. The first time was for COVID itself, but then really, I left the hospital and then the medications they gave me made me sicker than anything. I was given some anticoagulants that ended up causing me to have intestinal bleeding, which almost killed me. So the second time I went into the hospital, I was under respiratory failure. I couldn’t breathe at all. So they had to put me on a ventilator. I was completely unconscious.
They put me on a ventilator and everybody that knew me thought this is a 50-50 chance to survive once you’re on the ventilator. I was on that for three days, but I didn’t know that. I woke up and I was in the ICU and just said, “Well, how long have I been here?” And they said, “Three days.” I was like, “What? I had lost them completely.” So I was in 12 days in the ICU in a couple more days in the regular hospital bed. And oh boy, I couldn’t walk when I got out. I couldn’t do anything. I mean, I was so weak. I lost 50 pounds. It was intense.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah. I was shocked when I saw you posting that on Facebook and Twitter and your social media. I was like I couldn’t believe it, but glad that you recovered.
Michael Rectenwald:
Thank you.
Geopolitics & Empire:
In our previous interview, I think it was eight, nine months ago, which people should go back and watch, you laid the foundation for the great reset, Google Marxism, as you call it. This one world monopoly of government or global socialism.
Today, will be maybe a bit more of like a graduate level course where we dig deeper into more of the technical aspect such as the Environmental, Social and Governance Index, ESG, which is a Chinese style, social credit score for rating corporations. Your latest piece on mises.org details this. Incredibly, there are still many people who have no idea what ESG means that they gave me blank faces. And even still some who don’t understand the social credit system. So maybe we can start with the ESG.
Michael Rectenwald:
Yeah. So the ESG, the Environmental, Social, and Governance Index is an index on the stock exchanges, of course. And it is a means by which corporations are rated along these criteria. So environmental of course has to do with their carbon footprint and their sustainability practices. Social really comes down to social justice precepts. How well are they abiding by social justice precepts in terms of how many… What’s the constitution identity wise of their board members of their management, of their staff, and so on and so forth.
So it’s kind of like the diversity, equity, and inclusion element. And then governance really refers to what’s their corporate governance like but also how well do they interact with the state? How well do they abide by state law and policy? So what it’s doing is I’ve been reading some people. Even a Marxist. I just read a Marxist who argues that wokeness in effect is a means for differentiating between the elite and the others.
It’s a selection mechanism. Similarly, the ESG, which is wokeness in capitalism, this is woke capitalism is a mechanism by which you differentiate between woke corporations and non-woke. It’s a selection mechanism. It’s a demarcation device in order to separate out the non-compliant from the compliant. And then it effectively feeds investments toward the compliant and away from the non-compliant. As I see it, it’s a way of starving off competition, starving off industries and starving off players within industries who are non-abiding, who are not compliant with the agenda.
In my way of thinking, it establishes kind of a woke cartel or a set of woke cartels. I mean, if you look at the major investment asset managers, all of them are totally down with this. All 10 of the top 10, especially BlackRock, and Vanguard, and State Street and UBS, they’re completely down with this. I mean, Larry Fink of BlackRock puts out these letters every year. He put one on in January 18th. And it’s basically, he throws down the stakeholder or the ESG gauntlet. If you do not abide by these precepts, you will be starved out of capital. You will not survive. Competitors will come and replace you.
He puts it exactly like that. You’ll be replaced. So it’s a kind of cancellation. Just as in the social realm, individuals are canceled. They’re canceling corporations in the same way. And interestingly, they’re differentially diverting funds to China, Chinese companies. So it’s a really unbelievable development. I was reading the UN. There’s a ton of UN programs that are all about this.
There’s the principles of banking, principles of asset management and principles of insurance. They have 4,700 investment firms, banks, and asset managers signed on to this. 4,700. And the World Economic Forum is a major player in pushing it. I’ve been looking into this for a while. I think that Klaus Schwab is actually the inventor of this idea of stakeholder capitalism, which is to benefit stakeholders as opposed to, or in addition to shareholders.
Stakeholder capitalism is the premise for the ESG. It’s the guiding principle for the ESG of which is the mechanism for enforcing stakeholder capitalism. It goes back to 1971 and Schwab’s first book, which title sort of eludes me, but it was published in ’71 when he founded the precursor to the World Economic Forum. He’s been pushing this stakeholder. He and the WEF have been pushing this stakeholder idea for decades.
So now it’s completely embedded and infiltrated. All corporate America and corporations broadly across the world, all the entire banking industry. So this is the premise that sets up the possibility for doing to companies what is being done to individuals in Canada right now, de-banking them, defunding them, freezing their assets. This is all part of the same campaign. It is wokeness writ large. And wokeness is not some sort of a funny, silly ideology that’s just for making fights on Twitter. This really a major demarcation device in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, the wheat being them. In their case, that’s how they think of it. The chaff being everybody who is not on board.
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Geopolitics & Empire:
The timing is interesting you mentioned where I’ve seen that as well, where Schwab came up with this in this ’70, ’71. The timing is interesting because some people say that our economic system, the Bretton Woods System from 1944 died because that’s when Nixon pulled gold away from the dollar. So some people say that’s when the Bretton Woods system died.
So it’s funny how he comes in at that moment. It’s like they were preparing the next economic system, which we’re now seeing go live. And what you just detailed sounds like classic totalitarianism. We’ve seen in the communist systems they’ve created the cultural revolutions, the communist class, the elite class, and then all of the rest who don’t comply are like the dissidents and off to the gulags or in the Nazi system, the Jews and gypsies and others were sent to ghettos. It’s just kind of like what you just detailed is you’re creating this two class society, this totalitarian in nature.
Michael Rectenwald:
Yes. It is totalitarianism, but there’s a few steps that you have to get to, to understand why it is totalitarian. And one of them is to realize that, first of all, they’re creating this stakeholder capitalism, which is Schwab’s brainchild, as far as I can tell, that his first book was the first place to introduce this idea. That stakeholders have to be served as well as stockholders. But it goes to the point that the governance of states are basically corporate entities in junction with states in order to enforce these precepts and to enforce this particular ideology that’s political through and through.
It’s a way of destroying opposition. It’s a way of destroying opposition. So this is why it’s totalitarian. It’s using a political mechanism in order to invade the economy, completely infiltrate the economy and make the economy utterly politicized. And that’s exactly what’s happening in Canada right now. Unbelievably, they’re seizing bank accounts. Not seizing, but freezing bank accounts in order to silence and destroy these protestors.
So this is a sign of things to come. And for those in the United States who think this wouldn’t happen here, if we had the same scenario going on here, which supposedly in the near future, we may with the truckers ready to go from, I think, Los Angeles to DC, then it’ll happen here as well. This is no question in my mind. These people are the same. Birds of the same feather. Both of them said that they admire dictatorships and dictatorships would be so much easier to run.
Of course, how much they admire China’s dictatorship. So Trudeau said that, Biden said it. They all say this. They’re on the same playbook. It’s unbelievable how much they’re on this playbook. And this is why I say it’s internationalist, because they’ve got all these players signed on to the same precepts, signed on to the same playbook. Basically, there’s regional elements of a global system really that’s what’s going on.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah. I just had a brief comment there in what you brought up. For years, people like ourselves have been discussing all of this. I was looking back through my archives. Way back in 2015, I was talking to Katherine Albrecht on this coming dystopia. In 2019, I spoke with technocracy expert, Patrick Wood precisely about the social credit system. In 2020, I spoke with Jewish historian, Edwin Black on the algorithm ghetto. In 2021 with yourself, and been waiting for the moment to arrive at some future point.
You just kind of mentioned, it’s coming. We see now in Canada. I think it’s here and it’s global. It’s happening in China. It’s happening in other countries, as you mentioned in Canada. I think today, Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi suspended over half a million Italians over the age of 50 from their jobs, leaving them without salaries and declaring the unvaccinated are not part of society, which for me is also like the ESG, because they’re not complying with the social decrees of the state and so therefore their job is turned off. Their financial support is turned off.
Funny this weekend, I was talking to a low-level Mexican government functionary who was telling me to my face, “Yes, if the experts say vaccine passports aka social credit system are necessary, then I believe them.” And screw the people who don’t want to submit. Let them be unable to work or buy food or travel.” And also today fame economist, Richard Werner was tweeting that the ECB is getting ready to kill thousands of banks in the Eurozone in the coming five years.
So I feel like, “Wow, it’s starting now.” It’s just starting in Canada. It’s starting in the US and in other countries. It’s live now. I mean, what do you think?
Michael Rectenwald:
It’s live. I mean, it’s been in play in terms of setting it up for some time. I wrote about that in Google Archipelago. Now, this could maybe rub the wrong way with some viewers, but I’m going to say it anyway. I think it’s a leftist authoritarianism and the leftist totalitarianism. Now, that doesn’t mean all the left is on board with it. I’ve been reading some works from these so-called red pill Marxist who I find the frog Marxian element of the Twitterverse to be quite interesting.
They’re saying similar things that we are. They see what we’re talking about. They see the totalitarianism and they know it’s coming from the left generally. And they’re resisting it because these people don’t want what happened in the Soviet. They call this the Soviet Union in America, basically where we are in now in the United States. And that’s pretty apt to characterization.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah. It’s funny. I had someone reach out wanting to be on the podcast who’s written a few books. A young person who’s a hardcore Marxist, but he’s a Marxist against this COVID dictatorial regime. So I’ll see if he’ll come on. But it’s interesting what you said. I wanted to go back kind of… We may have talked about this before, but I think it’s important. The structure of this global government. You said that Klaus calls it… And I saw him recently come out and say, “It’s a public, private partnership.”
Michael Rectenwald:
Partnership.
Geopolitics & Empire:
In one way, it’s like the worst of both worlds. Monopoly, capitalism. The worst parts of extreme capitalism where it’s total private monopoly power and communism where it’s state monopoly put together and we get something like a bio fascist technocracy. My recent guest who’s also a leftist, Kees van der Pijl described how long ago the UN had been co-opted by these special interests as well as the national governments including China and Russia are all on board. I mean, what are your latest thoughts on the mechanisms of this global government structure.
Michael Rectenwald:
It’s a corporate state hybrid, which is completely unaccountable to constituents in national governments. There’s no voting on any of this. The public, private partnership motif, if you will, in order to establish this. So you have corporations effectively involved in governance. Of Course, none of these people were elected. So this is completely undemocratic. They’re infiltrating all the states, if they’re not already completely embedded in them.
They’re dictating policy through state apparatuses. So they’re effectively part of the state. So yes, it’s the worth of… This is exactly what Giorgio Agamben said. This is the worst of both systems. It’s communist capitalism, if you will. That state run communism with capitalist corporations embedded in the state. This is the worst scenario you can imagine. It takes the worst of both worlds.
Let’s face it, I’ve never said anything is perfect and certainly pure capitalism wouldn’t be perfect, but it’s what I aspire to. And I think what we should aspire to, because it’s the only state of freedom, but it took the worst elements of capitalism that is this tendency towards monopoly and combined it with the worst elements of communism, state communism, which is state dictatorship over the economy and everything else. And put them into one. And this is what we’ve got.
It’s so hard for people to get a handle on what’s happening. You can’t categorize it very easily and I’ve been working on this for months, if not years, at this point in characterizing it and giving it a name. It’s economic fascism, strictly speaking. It’s what I call corporate socialism. That’s corporate oligarchies in conjunction with the state on top and actually existing socialism for everybody else inclusive of the repressive and oppressive and discriminatory, and jack boot elements of socialism on the ground.
Geopolitics & Empire:
I would respectfully correct some of our leftist listeners with their view of, let’s say capitalism and conservatism. They kind of paint it automatically as this right wing fascism. Myself as a conservative and believer in basic capitalism is that we are… In general, conservatives are against concentration of power of any kind, whether it’s financial or political.
Michael Rectenwald:
Right.
Geopolitics & Empire:
So we’re skeptical that power corrupts. Absolutely. We’re not in favor of financial capital concentrating this private capital concentrating nor for the state whereas leftists have this great faith in the state and they’re okay with having this power concentrated in public institutions which is a huge danger. Now, we’re seeing this run roughshod and some of them are doubling down. We’ve seen some of the extreme leftists are doubling down like there’s people like CJ Hopkins, who’s a more reasonable leftist, I think has been calling out other leftists such as Ben Norton who was writing for gray zone with Max Blumenthal and Max Blumenthal woke up to the COVID1984 and started talking about it. And Ben Norton had to leave because he’s still totally pro big pharma. It’s also confusing.
Michael Rectenwald:
Well, it’s very messed up, but here’s the one I understand why leftist have less of a problem with corporate monopolies than we think they would, because it has something very much in common with socialism. And that is to say what is socialism, if not a monopoly? So it’s a state monopoly over everything. So they actually end up favoring monopolies over other things. I mean, Jacobin, I think we talked about this before ran an article about how small business is overrated and really big corporations treat us much better. They give us benefits and they allow unionization and so forth.
So we shouldn’t be fighting for small business rights and so forth. So really they actually tip their hats to the corporate monopolies. So they have less problem with corporate monopolies. Also, they don’t understand that the state enables all this. If it weren’t for the state, there wouldn’t be this kind of concentration of power because that’s their enablers. That’s how monopolies gets established through state power.
In particular, I don’t agree with Marx that monopolization is an inevitable part of capitalism. It’s really inevitable when the state is involved which they are. They have become the state now at this point. That’s what’s happened.
Geopolitics & Empire:
I wanted to go back for a second to what we were talking about the ESGs. And maybe if you could just go a step further and detail viscerally more what this would look like for a company to be run out by ESG or even individuals. I guess we may have seen some examples now of Mike Lindell, the pillow guy. So banks are now un-banking him. And just the businesses in general opposing mandates being shut down here in Mexico now. In some parts of Mexico in the city where I live, businesses who are not complying with the vaccine certificates. Government agents like the Stasi are going out and somehow… I mean, it’s illegal, but somehow the government is just… They call it clausurado. Just shutting down the business.
They shut it down. They put a big sign that says shut down and you can’t do your business. People like me, I’ve been kicked off of Patreon. Others like Ryan Christian of the Last American Vagabond has been taken off of PayPal. I mean, how do you envision this actually looking like?
Michael Rectenwald:
Yeah, with the ESG. So we already see cancellation of companies based on political affiliation, like My Pillow or in the case of big tech firms. Of course, various firms being canceling and canceled themselves for that matter. But this is different. The ESG is different in that it institutionalizes this mechanism. It’s not just going out and targeting people in some sort of haphazard fashion, finding somebody who says something wrong and de-banking them and so forth.
It is an institutionalized mechanism for destroying companies. So through the ESG, what happens is you just have investments flowing away from these companies. And Fink has made this very clear. Basically he said… Here, let me just give you a quote. He says, “At the foundation of capitalism is the process of constant reinvention. How companies must continually evolve as the world around them changes. Or the risk of being replaced by new competitors.”
So corporations that are to be replaced are those that don’t abide by the ESG score. This is very, very much on the table. And it’s happening. It’s well underway.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Do you think it would still be possible if there was a company, maybe a smaller company, not a big corporation that was running its business well, didn’t have a lot of debt, had a lot of cash savings that they would be able to withstand the ESG?
Michael Rectenwald:
Yes. I think some companies will be able to withstand it. But with their doing is loading them up with a tremendous amount of bureaucratic red tape and reporting, which is extremely difficult. Now, the one way these companies like that could survive is by other people becoming aware of them and investing in them, frankly. In fact, there are non or anti ESG indexes out there, or funds already established. One of them is MAGA, but there are others. Now, one is called Bad because they in alcohol and gambling. And they’re not woke at all. And there’s others out there as well. There is these funds that you can invest in that are explicitly anti-woke.
This is not an investment show and I’m certainly not an advisor. So I don’t mean to do that. And I know that investments and companies is a very, shall we say, privileged position to be in the first place. But if you do have any money in the stock market, by chance, by virtue of a 401k or whatever, try to get it out of there and get it away from the ESG abiding and ESG reporting companies and managers certainly. But this is almost impossible for many state employees because BlackRock manages the investment portfolios of numerous states, their pension funds and all the seeds got enormous pension funds under its belt.
By the way, BlackRock only started in 1997. And in that short time, they have taken over and become the number one asset manager in the world controlling $10 trillion worth of assets.
Geopolitics & Empire:
So before we started the interview, you mentioned Ron Unz. So I recently interviewed Ron Unz and that interview got a bit of play. No Agenda. The Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak podcast actually played like 20 minutes of it and they were discussing it. So Ron Unz has this idea that COVID was a bio warfare attack from the west against the east. I think he laid out a great history of where we… It’s clear that we see Robert Kennedy has laid it out as well. The CIA is involved. The DARPA, CIA intelligence operation.
They’ve been simulating the pandemics for 20 years, but I don’t quite go on board with Unz’s idea that because we’re seeing China tacitly go along as well, and we’ve seen China’s involvement with it as well with their cooperation in the Wuhan and receiving funding from Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance and all of this stuff. So I mean what are your thoughts on some of these topics?
Michael Rectenwald:
Yeah. Well, let me premise it by saying that Ron Unz is a great guy and the Unz site is just fabulous for the diversity of opinion that he allows. And the writing is very, very good mostly. One thing that bothers me about certain sites like LewRockwell.com. I love the arguments, but some of the writing its just dreadful. But the only problem I have with Unz’s characterization of the origin story, and the way it developed is that it doesn’t take into account the unanimity of responses by states across the world to the pandemic so called.
It doesn’t take into account the fact that there’s obviously a coordinated campaign to impose these mandates and sanctions and the mask mandates, but also the travel mandates, the vaccine passport mandates, the green pass in Europe and so on and so forth.
It’s too coordinated to be just an accident like that in the sense that… I mean it’s possible indeed that the virus did start from a lab in the United States under the direction of the person who was responsible for bio weapons development in the United States and then it went to China. But why then did all of these countries act in the same way? How is it possible? So there, I think, you have to look at the way this has been coordinated.
I think the WEF is actually a pretty big player here because they actually trained a lot of these leaders in the young world leaders forum, or whatever they call it, this young world leaders group where they have brought all these people over there and basically trained them up on these principles of stakeholder capitalism and really state corporate fascism. And then the responses by all these states to the same issue have almost been identical, although staggered somewhat. And there is some difference in an application, but in principle, it’s all the same. So it’s possible that’s how the thing originated, but it doesn’t account for the total picture at all.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah. I-
Michael Rectenwald:
And he sort of said, “Well, they all imitated each other.” I don’t think so. I think there’s too much coordination. It would be quick imitation. This was really lockstep really.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah. I would totally agree with you and a lot of people are seeing. It’s an anomaly that you can’t dismiss and what we see Russia and China are going hard… China just announced they’re not doing away with their zero COVID policy where everything is locked down. I just spoke to someone who I know who speaks Mandarin who’s in touch with China. He was pointing out how in Xi’an they locked down the city of 13 million. And then people in China are starting to now… The youth in China are starting to get irritated and talking about rising up where in Xi’an when they locked people down, there was a guy having a heart attack and they wouldn’t like let him leave the lockdown area.
He couldn’t go to the hospital because it was a COVID hospital. I mean, they just let him die from a heart attack. I’ve been talking to Riley Waggaman who’s in Russia. He’s going to be contributing to Geopolitics & Empire articles, but he’s been demonstrating how Russia is full on implementing vaccine passports, QR codes like crazy. So you mentioned the young… What do you call them? The young WEF leaders.
Michael Rectenwald:
Young Global Leaders.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah. So we’ve had people, shockingly, like even Viktor Orban of Hungary and Putin were leaders. And I think it’s important to point out that just because someone has attended a meeting or been the leader doesn’t necessarily mean they are with it. I attended a globalist institution, my university alma mater, but I’m not a globalist and we’ve seen JFK came out of the aristocracy, but then he turned.
Michael Rectenwald:
Yeah, that’s true. I don’t mean to afford a genetic fallacy here. I taught in a global liberal studies program that was training people to be NGO managers in effect. That’s really what it came down to. We know what the role of NGOs are. That’s true. It doesn’t mean much that necessarily, but it just so happens that all the major lock downers are… Put it this way. Not all the people that attended Young Global Leaders are part of this, but all the people that are part of it did attend the Young Global Leaders Forum. So Macron and Trudeau, and what’s her name? The New Zealand-
Geopolitics & Empire:
Jacinda Ardern.
Michael Rectenwald:
Yes, Ardern. All these people were involved. They were all brought over there and trained up. And Gates as well. It’s interesting how Gates when he talks about vaccines and what we need, he keeps putting, “We are going to do this and we’re going to do that.” Like he’s implicitly part of the ruling establishment and he’s doing the ruling. I mean, where did he get off? He’s not elected to anything. And yet he acts like he’s in charge.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah. But also, I mean, given what we just said Putin was a leader and he is not stopping what’s being done in Russia.
Michael Rectenwald:
True.
Geopolitics & Empire:
So he’s implementing it. And even Viktor Orban who’s good on some issues, anti-globalists, he’s also low level tacitly, not stopping going along with some of these COVID1984 measures. So again, the actions are telling you a lot. I mean, if I were in power, I would be a JFK. I’d be willing to die trying trying to stop this system. And it was recently reported that Belarus now, Lukashenko who’s one of the few holding out. So I think in Belarus now they’re introducing the QR code system. Maybe to get back on the social level, I had a question.
I mentioned earlier that this Mexican government functionary who I spoke with loves the great reset. In an Epoch Times interview you said there is this laptop class or people who work in the government who basically earnestly believe the great reset propaganda. They agree with it. They support it. I’ve seen people sitting in parks, or cafes, or restaurants, and gatherings, gleefully discussing which biologicals, as they call them here in Mexico, vaccines or injections, they’re going to take next, their third, their fourth, their fifth.
And in one sense, they have actually now become our enemies because they have declared us as enemies. They’re cheering for us to be thrown in the algorithm ghetto, like the Germans cheering on the Jews being thrown into the physical ghettos. So I’m still in disbelief, the number that has been done on these people, our neighbors, friends, coworkers, and families. How do you treat or deal now with this laptop class? Because it’s getting more dangerous now because there’s this guy telling me to my face, “I don’t care about the people who don’t comply.” “Well, do you understand for me that means I can’t travel. I won’t be able to work. I can’t feed my kids.” And they don’t care.
Michael Rectenwald:
Yeah. Well, when the so-called pandemic began, I said to my son, I said, what scares me about this is not this virus or COVID-19, “What scares me about this is the state and what they’re going to do. And this was before they started doing it.” And he’s like, “What? They’re going to be our savior.” I said, “Hardly.” So the way I look at these people is they’re dangerous. They’re state agents. They have been enlisted into the state.
They’re actually state functionaries, if you will. So I find them to be very dangerous and to be avoided and to be feared, to be treated very cautiously. None of these people are going to be trusted. These people will turn you over in a heartbeat. These are like the Nazi foot soldiers in effect. And the population that went along with all this in Nazi Germany, they’re the same types of people or the people in the Soviet Union that spied on and reported their neighbors for making some sort of a deviation for being devious of some sort.
So I find these people to be dangerous. I think they’re state agents. I don’t trust them at all. Everybody out there that is not… Well, how should I say? Who doesn’t see through and see COVID1984 for what it is, is very dangerous person.
Geopolitics & Empire:
I would agree, and I’ve started to think about this. Even some of our friends who have bought into the narrative and yet haven’t gone gotten stopped talking to us or anything where we still get along. We’re still able to get along. They haven’t shunned us. What you just said, I still fear that at some point, if the government continues, makes these measures and they put crazy new laws where if you don’t inject your kid, or if adults aren’t injected, then they will be fined. They should be reported. I’m afraid that some of my neighbors or even some of our current fair weather friends would turn on us. As you said, that’s a danger.
Michael Rectenwald:
Yeah, absolutely.
Geopolitics & Empire:
How do we resist and fight back at this point?
Michael Rectenwald:
Well, we have to keep doing this and keep doing what we’re doing. I have said this before, what we’re doing right now is resistance. It is part of the solution. But furthermore, I think it’s going to come to mass action, frankly, at some point like it has in Canada. And I think this is going to spread. There has to be a massive pushback against these state mandates, these state dictatorial policies, this whole coordinated state fascist overlord situation. Defiance has got to be the key.
There’s a couple ways to defy. One is to become a Waldgänger that is to effectively inject this from yourself. Don’t let it be part of you. And to have a sort of inner rebellion first. You have to have an inner rebellion in order to be able to withstand the pressure and have an external rebellion as well.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Also, I’m a bit of a fan of game theory. I’m also that kind of person that I just like to prepare things in advance, for everything in life. I like to have things done in advance in case something happens. I’ve already got that issue solved as much as I can instead of waiting for something to break and then you’re kind of screwed. I’m just that kind of person. So people tell me to be more optimistic and have more hopium. I’m not a defeatist by any means, otherwise I would’ve been already long gone in the woods or the Mexican jungle.
But as we both discussed last time, I think that things are going to get still extremely dark. And that’s my kind of sober assessment. In terms of contingency plans in the meanwhile, what’s constantly on my mind is how to best survive this social credit or beast system, and I think of things like… And other people on the podcast have brought these things up like limiting use of smartphones, de-Googling your phone using cash as much as possible, getting funds out of the banks as we’re seeing now in Canada.
I think there were some rumors on social media of bank runs in Canada. Putting your wealth into physical stores of wealth, local banks, alternative stores of wealth, creating local networks where you were talking about the anti-ESG funds.
Michael Rectenwald:
Parallel structure in effect.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah, getting a farm if you can. One good news, I read recently that Nick Vujicic, the Serbian-Australian Christian evangelist born with no limbs, he’s creating the pro-life bank, which is going to be have one physical location in Texas, but it’s going to be an international bank that I think everyone will be able to use without being the platform. Have you thought about how to live day to day life if this social credit system advances?
Michael Rectenwald:
Yeah, I mean, I’ve been trying to live like it’s already here by virtue of being uncancellable, and that I think most importantly is to get independent from institution that are part of the system. I mean, this is not possible for many people who are working as salaried employees of these organizations, whether corporate or state. But I think the entrepreneurial independence is key to get away from these institutions who are really going to crackdown on everybody. Enough crackdown on so many already.
So that’s the primary thing, I think, trying to have viability outside of the system so that I think speaks to parallel structures, parallel communications, parallel media, parallel money, parallel production, parallel exchange, and so forth. So we are way behind the eight ball here in what we should have done by now in establishing these parallel structures.
We should have these networks much more established. Networks of people that are willing to exchange with each other that are producing and selling things. For example, the Frontline Doctors are beginning to set up, I think a hospital. So all the defects from the COVID1984 regime in the medical field should have been, and are in fact beginning to establish parallel medical institutions because it’s come to the point where we might not get medical attention if you haven’t been vaccinated.
And these people will not do that to you. So those kind of things. I do what I can on a daily basis, but I’m pretty busy with writing and trying to get my message and ideas out there in order to try to forestall, and avert, and defeat this development, this totalitarianism, this global totalitarianism that we’re under.
I still see people that don’t get it. I mean, I’m so surprised that people don’t get it. They go, “Why are they doing that to the Canadians?” I’m like, “That’s not very smart or that’s not… What? Do you realize what we’re dealing with here? Don’t you see what we’re…” And once you understand that we’re dealing with so totalitarianism, everything makes sense. But they haven’t read about this. They don’t know any history. They just don’t get it.
So they’re still thinking that we’re living in some democratic society. They’re still living in probably have a nostalgia for probably a past that never existed really. And they’re still trying to live off of ether, memories and beliefs that don’t apply. Yeah. That’s one thing I would say is you have to expel these false beliefs because they’re deadly.
Geopolitics & Empire:
This is the thing that’s getting me. I still can’t believe how people don’t get it. I was telling this guy… Again, this guy who was telling me, he loves the great reset.
Michael Rectenwald:
He loves the great reset.
Geopolitics & Empire:
I mean, that my words. I mean he was just saying, “If you don’t play along, I don’t care. Screw you.” But I’m just losing my train of thought. But I was posting on Facebook. We saw recently France like they had these convoys in France and Paris and the cops just smashing windows of people and gassing restaurants where families are enjoying meals in Canada with the shock troops coming in and in tanks. I post, like, “Look at this. Are you going to double down on your Stockholm Syndrome or are you going to finally wake up?” I mean, it’s like, hello, it’s right in your face.
Michael Rectenwald:
Even people that are on effect punitively outside of that aren’t Branch Covidians still don’t get what we’re dealing with. As long as they don’t get that, they’re going to continue to have the wrong responses and that’s very dangerous for them. It’s dangerous for us too.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Because they’re the useful idiots pushing all of this along. And you just go to your previous thought on parallel economies. It is getting tough. Well, there’s a lot of people as you say, who are salaried employees. I think one thing that holds them back is mental where they’re just afraid to leave that job, that corporate job that they’ve been working in. And I think they could succeed if they just had more courage and take risk. [crosstalk 00:47:15]
Yeah. They could be successful. But on the other hand, the university where I used to work here in Mexico, I just discovered… I mean, I knew they were a globalist institution. They’ve had Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates speak at the graduation ceremonies, and Al Gore. But someone just showed me officially how that the school where I used to work, Tec de Monterrey today is owned by this corporate conglomerate called Femsa, which is officially connected to the World Economic Forum.
Michael Rectenwald:
Wow.
Geopolitics & Empire:
It’s incredible. The work you’ve been doing, if you dig deep enough, you will find all of these things. Is there any other issue that I haven’t brought up that you wanted to comment on?
Michael Rectenwald:
I think that’s very interesting what you said about courage. It took, I got to say, and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, but it took courage to leave NYU, a globalist institution of the first order. In fact, I worked and taught in a global liberal studies program that was basically training people to be globalist leaders and middle managers and upper managers and stuff like that.
I mean, they gave a deanship to Chelsea Clinton and paid her $600,000 a year for doing nothing. That was kind of like one of the tipping points that started driving me crazy about what was going on there. It takes great courage and I think people need to buck up and find that courage within. Maybe some reading will help. I think it helps to read how people in, for example, under communism in Czechoslovakia and other regions survived totalitarian communism because we’re under it.
I don’t know if it’s not necessarily communism per se. We’re dealing with, as I said, communist capitalism or corporate socialism, but we’re under totalitarian. So you need to find out how people survive those things. And one way to do it is to look at the past. Now, they’re not going to be the same. Not all the certain situations have distinctions that can’t be reproduced, but nevertheless, there’s many parallels that you can draw and they give you resources and sustain inner sustenance in order to resist and survive.
Geopolitics & Empire:
All right. And any then last word, final thought for us?
Michael Rectenwald:
Let’s see. I mean, if you want to find out what I’m thinking in general, go to my website, MichaelRectenwald.com where all my essays are. You can find all my books connected there. My media appearances like this one will be up on the media or interview page, things like that. There I talk about what I think is going on and what to do about it. I am not the solution man, so to speak. I am an analyst of what’s happening.
So I do look to others too, in terms of what to do. And I think there are some movements out there that are interesting to look at like the greater reset, the Freedom Cells movement and so on and so forth. So keep your eye on those.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Yeah. I’m also more of an observer of the state of things and dabbling more in solutions. But I think we’re all going to by force, by necessity need to start looking more at…
Michael Rectenwald:
At solutions. Yeah.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Solutions, yeah. And again, I have your website bookmarked, MichaelRectenwald.com. I follow you on Twitter. So again, people should follow you wherever you are online. And it’s always great to chat with the Rectenwald and good to see that you got your health back.
Michael Rectenwald:
Thank you.
Geopolitics & Empire:
Again, thanks for being back on Geopolitics & Empire.
Michael Rectenwald:
My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
Outro:
I hope you enjoyed this Geopolitics & Empire Podcast. The website is geopoliticsandempire.com. I encourage you to sign up for the free email list that goes out with each podcast and every weekend with a collection of news headlines. The newsletter and website are our last lines of defense. We’re being censored and de-platformed. It’s nearly impossible to find Geopolitics & Empire on the Google search engine. We’ve been blacklisted. YouTube frequently takes down our videos with strikes. Facebook restricts our page. Reddit and Twitter take down posts. And after the Associated Press mentioned Geopolitics & Empire in a 2021 article, co-written with NATO, our Patreon account was terminated. Vimeo also terminated our pro account.
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About Michael Rectenwald
Dr. Michael Rectenwald is the author of eleven books, including Thought Criminal (2020); Beyond Woke (May 2020); Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom (2019); Springtime for Snowflakes: “Social Justice” and Its Postmodern Parentage (an academic’s memoir, 2018); Nineteenth-Century British Secularism: Science, Religion and Literature (2016); Academic Writing, Real World Topics (2015, Concise Edition 2016); Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age (2015); Breach (Collected Poems, 2013); The Thief and Other Stories (2013); and The Eros of the Baby-Boom Eras (1991).
Michael was a Professor of Liberal Studies and Global Liberal Studies at NYU from 2008 to 2019. He also taught at Duke University, North Carolina Central University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Case Western Reserve University. He holds a Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University, a Master’s in English Literature from Case Western Reserve University, and a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh.
Professor Rectenwald is a pundit and champion of free speech and opposes all forms of authoritarianism and totalitarianism, including socialism-communism, “social justice,” fascism, political correctness, and “woke” ideology. The notorious @antipcnyuprof (now @TheAntiPCProf), he has appeared on numerous major network political talk shows (Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox & Friends, Fox & Friends First, Varney & Company, The Glenn Beck Show), on syndicated radio shows (Coast to Coast AM, Glenn Beck and many others), on The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders, among numerous podcasts and online shows.
*Podcast intro music is from the song “The Queens Jig” by “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)
