 May 40 here finally saw the channel for dispatches documentary on Russell Brand. It looks like excellent journalism. I think they're probably on pretty solid ground that Russell Brand has behaved in unshivalrous fashion. But remember this was sex that he had with women who are consenting to have a sexual relationship with him. And then down the line from this ongoing, or at least they had a sexual relationship, then down the line the women complained that he started manipulating them physically and emotionally into sex that they didn't want. And I think it's pretty clear that none of the charges against Russell Brand in this channel for documentary would even bring about a criminal case, let alone a criminal conviction. But it just shits light on so many other issues. So what's on top of my mind right now is that in Orthodox Judaism, women are not valid witnesses. But women are not regarded in Orthodox Judaism as possessing the moral agency, emotional sobriety, intellectual sobriety, and inner strength and resolve to be valid and accurate witnesses. People who are mentally retarded are not valid witnesses either. People who are deaf and dumb have traditionally not been valid witnesses. Children have not been valid witnesses. And I think this reflects a traditional perspective on life. I think in traditional societies, by and large, women were not regarded as possessing the same qualities as men. They were regarded as possessing different qualities. All right? They were thought to have different gifts. And so too with children. So I think the more traditional you go, the more right wing you go, the more likely you are to encounter this attitude that certain groups are to be protected. They are to be nurtured. They are to be looked after, guided and directed. But you don't expect from them the same kind of moral agency that you do from grown adult men. And that's quite different from the modern perspective, but that is the traditional perspective. That's the A dominant, if not the dominant traditional perspective, which you will still find the further right you go in the political spectrum, the more you will find this perspective that women are like Laura and Forna who should be protected. They should be looked after. They should be guided and directed. But you should not expect that they are going to have all the same qualities, all the same ability to be a valid witness as men. There's just a very different perspective on male-female relationships from the traditional right-wing perspective. So the further right you go, the more likely you are to encounter attitudes that women and children and the mentally retarded and the deaf and the dumb, the disabled and the disadvantaged and the differently abled are to be regarded as Laura and Forna in that we don't expect them to live up to the same responsibilities that we respect from men. And we don't blame them for that, but we take them on as a responsibility. We are here to look after them, to nurture them, to guide them, to protect them, to direct them. Very different attitude than the modern attitude where men and women are expected to be after hookup, have recreational sporting athletic sex and do it athletically and ethically. This is not a traditional perspective. From a traditional perspective, if a woman goes alone to a man's home, it is expected that he's going to try to put the hard word on her and try to have sex with her. And if she goes alone to a man's home, where she's going to be alone with this man, she should expect that she is going to be expected to have sex. Otherwise, do not go to the man's home. That's the traditional perspective. That's the right-wing perspective. That's the medieval perspective. The modern liberal left understanding of the self is that we can exercise such extreme self-discipline that if a man is engaging in sexual intercourse with a woman and two minutes into the intercourse and he's just say 15 seconds from ejaculating, she should be able to say no, stop. And he withdraws and stops. From a traditional perspective, this is ludicrous. But from a modern liberal left perspective, people should be so reflexive, so disciplined. They should have such command of their basic impulses that they are able to engage ethically in promiscuous, athletic, sporting sex, S&M sex, same sex, orgy sex, monkey park sex. So long as you do it ethically, then it's illicit. But traditional societies do not regard women as having the same sense of agency. And I'm not arguing that they're right. I'm just pointing out that traditional societies have a very different attitude that you find on the right. And that is that women should be protected. That you don't relate to a woman the same way you do to a man. All right, we've got an article here from, I believe, Colin Liddell here on Neocrat, The Meat in the Russell Brand Scandal Sandwich. A lot of people are mouthing off their opinions about the motormouth middle ranking celeb and his previously shagged Alec lifestyle, what is all the fuss about Russell's been a naughty boy. We know friends of Russell Brand at Neocrat and his desperate conspirator attempts to stay relevant, but basically it sounds like a few women having anger and low self-esteem issues after getting pumped and dumped by a mentally unstable celeb that they had thrown themselves at. Yeah, that seems pretty accurate analysis. In the documentary, you learn that probably the number one reason why former sex partners of Russell Brand are mad at Russell Brand is because he stopped having sex with them, that he just pumped them and dumped them and moved on. So all sorts of women threw themselves at Russell Brand, had sex with Russell Brand, and then they got really mad that he didn't want to develop a relationship from that. Now, further details may come out. All right, this case may be far more horrible than what we know, but what we know right now on the Channel 4 documentary is we got a few women who were pumped and dumped by Russell Brand and they're now mad, and it's just striking how suggestible these women are. They had a tingle and wanted to have sex with Russell Brand, so they were very suggestible to his suggestions as long as his suggestions went along with his tingles. Then, Russell Brand got tingles of his own and he wanted to do more athletic and somewhat, what's that, when you like inflicting pain versus when you like receiving pain, sadistic. Yeah, he wanted to be a little bit more sadistic. And guess what? We are all sadistic to varying degrees with people we love. Right, you may think, oh, 40, the great world leader, all he wants to do is spread light and love, but all of us in all our relationships with the people we love most, we are deliberately doing things to hurt them. And if you can't face that, if you can't look at that reality, then there's no hope for you. Right, how can I, all right, how can I develop a close friendship, say with a fellow writer? And let's say that person experiences 10 times as much success as me. How could I not have a night out, have a tiny weenie bit of resentment and joy when he, say, meets with his comeuppance. Right, when any of us have very successful friends, friends who far excel us, who among us experiences no joy, no sense of satisfaction when they experience trouble. Right, how many of us knowing that, you know, the people we love are very sensitive about this or that issue, just kind of intermittently when we feel like it, just kind of touch on it, just to deliver a little bit of pain to people that we love the most. It is impossible to only have mono emotions. Right, it's impossible to only love. Right, if you love someone, you will also feel some hatred. You will also feel perhaps some jealousy. Right, when I loved a woman who liked to ride her bike on busy Los Angeles streets, that made me feel deep pain because I became deeply worried and protective of her because the thought that a car would come along and damage this woman who I adored like ripped me up inside. I dated like ex porn stars. And the more I had sex with them, the deeper my affection for them grew. And then I couldn't handle that they used to be porn stars. So started out I was just finding that they were porn stars. But when I started developing strong feelings for them, I could not handle that they used to be porn stars. Looking at what posts here from Neocrat, YouTube's deep platforming of Russell Brand is reinforcing conspiracy theories and social paranoia. Look, there's absolutely no reason to believe that this very solid journalistic work on Russell Brand is motivated by Russell Brand's conspiracy theorizing. But it's understandable to me that YouTube has demonetized him. Right, you hear all the time, well, look, it's, you know, he's innocent until proven guilty. That's true legally, right? It's not true. It's not the only perspective that, you know, we should take, you know, in real life, right? In some cases, a court of law is the best forum and the best platform for deciding, you know, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. But in other cases, a journalistic platform is superior. In other cases, just the court of public opinion and social media is superior. No, one platform is inherently superior. O.J. Simpson murdered two people and got away with it in a criminal court of law, a criminal court of law. It's not inherently superior to other forums. And that these women making these sexual assault allegations in this channel forward documentary did not go to the police with their rape allegations. That does not dismiss them. It does reduce the rape allegation. And it seems fairly clear to me that this is not rape as it was traditionally known because these were ongoing sexual relationships that Russell Brand had with these women. And then he manipulated them into unwanted sex. But unwanted sex with someone you have an ongoing sexual relationship with is not the same as rape. Now, these women didn't go file police reports. And there's a lot of things that are done out there that are not criminal. That it's not worth trying to make a criminal case or even a civil case out of. And it can be perfectly honorable to make a journalistic case, to make a social media case against someone. This does not dismiss their allegations. It does diminish the rape, the criminal rape side of their allegations. But these women are doing a public service by coming forward, right? Women are highly suggestible, more so than men, because women take into greater account what people around them are thinking and feeling. And there are many advantages and many disadvantages to that. So the women who got with Russell Brand, they were suggestible to his suggestions when they're the tingle of getting with Russell, then they get pumped and dumped. And they become suggestive to the teachings of the Me Too movement and teachers of the anti grooming movement. And they start feeling some responsibility to their sisters and they want to speak out and do good. And they want to, you know, recapture a sense of some celebrity hood. And so there are all sorts of reasons why they would engage in the Channel 4 document. And I'm glad they did. I basically believe these women. I think that what these women said to me has the ring of truth. Now, some of the interpretation that they gave with grooming and wanting to change the age of consent, and I don't have a strong opinion one way or another on the, you know, whether it should be 16, 18, 21, I don't have a strong opinion on their political and social agenda. But on the facts of the case, yeah, it struck me as, you know, pretty solid. It doesn't bother me that YouTube demonetized Russell Brand, right? Doesn't bother me that attempts being made to demonetize his content on other platforms. I feel no desire to defend Russell Brand. I am glad that Rumble resisted. You know, I hope there are platforms out there that resist the call, but it only makes sense that people displaying this kind of behavior that Russell Brand has specialized in, you know, would have social pressure placed on those who put money in his pocket. So looking at Neocrat, Colin Dell says it looks like Russell Brand's content now is demonetization aids is a high possibility of channels that share Russell Brand's content being infected with a demonetization process. I don't care for Russell Brand's content, right? I don't agree with him about very much. I don't think it's high value add. On the other hand, I do not believe that Russell Brand is just a bloke without no talent, right? He is funny, right? He, he is charismatic. He is entertaining. He is often brave. He does sometimes say brave truths, right? He's not a nobody. He is not a nothing, right? I don't get value from his, his YouTube videos, but I recognize that he has genuine comedic and TV comment for getting Sarah Marshall. He was a terrific actor. He has been an eight list Hollywood actor and he was terrific in forgetting Sarah Marshall. All right. Looking here, Colin Liddell, we live in increasingly conspiratorial times. Yeah, I have no sympathy. I have no truck with the anti-vax movement, the flat earth movement that 9-11 was an inside job by our government movement that John F. Kennedy was killed by someone or something other than Lee Harvey Oswald. I have no sympathy for any of the major conspiracy theories. I regard them as, as stupid, right? So it doesn't bother me that YouTube is demonetizing him, even if the language that they use to demonetize him seems kind of lame. So YouTube says it's demonetizing Russell Brand to protect his users, employees, or ecosystem. That kind of makes sense, right? You are making a stand that you're not going to financially support Russell Brand now that pretty convincingly he's been shown to be not a very nice person. And there's been a long stream of prestigious media in Britain that has subsidized his sexually predatory ways from the BBC to Channel 4 to the Guardian to the new statesman. So according to conspiracy theories, the real message YouTube is sending out to Brand's almost 7 million subscribers is that Rusty Rockett is supposed to be too close to the target because he's picking up a lot of plaque, right? And so YouTube's demonetization unwittingly validates all of these more outlandish conspiracy theories and makes our culture all the more toxic, right? That's a thoughtful perspective there coming from Colin Liddell. Man, there's just so much to say about this case. I mean, it just, there's just so many different perspectives that one can take. Well, let's see if we can play a little bit of Piers Morgan. Let's see if he's got something here. Good evening, your welcome to Piers Morgan on the set. So the allegations made against Russell Brand are shocking. And there was no question that the investors... They're not shocking. Alright, Russell Brand has essentially said just as bad things about himself. Even if he's a rapist, there's no reason to deplatform the dude. Just lock him up. If he is being shown to be a sex pest, right, it's understandable that various platforms would not want him on there. So on the one hand, yes, these accusations are not reason to deplatform him. I get that. On the other hand, I equally get why platforms would not want him on there. Hitler, when convicted in jail, was not deplatform. They let him ride his bookie walk. Yes, we hurt the ones we love, but with my friends, I only wish them success, just not so much success that they dropped me. Yeah, but we have all sorts of feelings. If Russell Brand is guilty, then I fear for luck. Yeah, I want to hurt people I love. I don't want to destroy them. I don't want to devastate them. I want to minimize the amount of hurt that I delivered to them. But you are lying to yourself if you don't ever experience the desire to hurt the ones you love. And if you're unable to face that you deliberately do things to hurt the ones you love, I'm not talking about beating people down, right? That's abnormal relationship sadism. But there is normal relationship sadism, where we're constantly doing things to niggle people who we love. I've got a good friend and every time I get together with him, I say a few things that are homophobic. And this guy has a brother who's gay, and this guy is not homophobic. But it's just a little bit of relationship sadism that I've been delivering to this guy for like 25 years. Like why would I stop now? Now, my honesty in this area may seem shocking. So I remember I was dating this woman, had a great relationship with her. She was smart. She was cute. She was Jewish. She came from an Orthodox background. And then we were going to yoga class together. And she was different this night that she walked into class. She was a dude. She was withdrawn. She was sullen, completely different from the girl I knew two nights ago. How are you? I asked her and she says, I'm very sad. She said she did not elaborate. So we did two hours of yoga together and we walked out together. And this is a woman with whom I'm in an intimate relationship. And she wants to know my deepest darkest thoughts and secrets. And so I had shared with her two days previous that I would like to hurt her a little bit, but not nearly as much as the hurt that she delivers to me when she punches me. Not nearly as much as the hurt she delivers to me when she does various forms of contempt towards me. But I don't only have loving, sweet feelings towards this woman. Now, some of my relationships have been more aggressive than others. With the sweet, I tend to act sweet. This woman was not sweet. This woman was a fireball. This woman was unbelievably cruel. She had many wonderful qualities. She was also unbelievably cruel to me and to others. In addition to a constellation of other values, many of them are wonderful. So we do two hours of yoga. We walk out together. She says, would you like a ride home? I go, yes, we drive silently to my place. Then I ask her, would you like to come in? And she says, I don't think so. My therapist says, I should break up with you. My heart starts pounding. Why? So the first time I went out with this girl, she didn't return my calls for like 10 days. And then when she did call back, said, oh, I got back together with my girlfriend. And then she said, because of the other night, you said you like to hurt women. So she wants to know my deepest darkest secrets. And yeah, I admit, there's a little bit of a sadist in me. Not to the degree of, you know, Russell Brand wanting to make women cry. And no, but I said, just a little bit of discomfort, right? Women say they want to know you, what you're thinking, what you're feeling. They say they want to know what's really going on with you. But when you confess that you like to feel powerful, right, that you like to role play a little bit, that you like to feel that you can inflict a little pain, kind of as compensation for the massive amount of pain that this woman has inflicted on me, that I want to play a little bit, then she gets freaked out. I'm talking a little discomfort, a tiny bit of pain, much less than you have routinely inflicted on me, right? I don't want to damage you. I just want to feel powerful in certain role playing games. You want to hurt women, she repeated. And you don't want to hurt men. You don't have contempt. This woman had so much loathing hatred and contempt for men. It was off the charts. Look, I don't want to get hurt again. My fiancee told me that several times he didn't like my body. I don't think anything could ever hurt so much. Never want to place myself in that position again. Do you want to hurt me? Okay. If you love someone, you're opening yourself up to be hurt, right? If you never want to be hurt so much again, then you can never love again, right? Your fiancee didn't hurt you because he told you he didn't like your body. Your own insecurity hurt you because you interpreted what he said as reinforcing your deepest darkest fears. So this is a woman who got 100% of her self-esteem from her looks, right? 100%. Look, do you want to hurt me? And I said, occasionally, I want to inflict a little discomfort with your permission, right? Much less discomfort than you routinely dish out to me. You routinely bite me. You routinely punch me. I should not need to justify myself here. I treat you beautifully. I am always considerate of you. I am, generally speaking, a doting considerate boyfriend. You are, she said, but you freaked me out the other night. I'm sorry, would you like to come in? Okay. I bought this new avocado body soap, right? So if you love your boss, right, and you're working, you know, in the same office as your boss, you're not only going to have loving feelings towards him. If you love your kids, you're not only going to act in a loving fashion towards them. You love your Alexander technique teacher. You're not only going to act in a loving fashion towards them. Like I love Elliot Blatt and Ricardo and Gleb Medley, right? But that doesn't mean that they don't, you know, nudge me. You know, they don't deliberately at times do things to inflict a little pain on me. Just like I, you know, sometimes deliberately do things to inflict a little bit of, you know, a pain on them. Luke is way more sadistic than average and more masochistic. Luke wants to believe everyone is as sadistic as him. If you can't admit that you are deliberately doing things to hurt the ones you love most in the world, you are unable to look at yourself. You are unable to deal with reality. You have an enormous blind spot about the pain that you are delivering. You cannot help but be delivering pain to people you love and you cannot help but have other emotions aside from love for those you love the most, right? You may love your kids, but they also annoy you. They also scare you. They also interfere with what you want to get done. They also get in your way. They let you down. They betray you and you're just going to only have loving feelings. You are in delusion land. You are completely disconnected from reality. If that's what you think is, you know, going on with you to get a journalism behind them on the Sunday Times and channel falls dispatches program was both meticulous and powerful. Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse by four women. I don't think you can have an intense intimate relationship where there isn't some element of deliberate infliction of pain. That's why you have a whole category called normal marital sadism. You think that normal marital sadism, obviously normal marital sadism only occurs in marriage, but you don't think normal levels of sadism then occur in every strong relationship that you have. You don't think that workers are constantly deliberately undermining bosses that they also have affection and love for. You don't think bosses are often undermining workers. You see the petty jealousies that run rife in a workplace where people often pretend to love and want to help each other, but then constantly undercut each other. You don't see the petty jealousies and forms of vengeance and deliberate infliction of pain that goes on in ordinary healthy families. Luke, do you honestly believe that Russell Brand's problems aren't rooted in politics? Absolutely. Elliot, I've given you this answer five times. The primary victims of the Me Too movement have been left-wing men like Harvey Weinstein. If politics was about the essence of Me Too movement, why are its primary victims left-wing, prominent left-wing, Hillary Clinton left-wing, gay rights supporting left-wing supporting men? It's absurd to believe that Russell Brand's negative press over the last 10 days is primarily coming from his politics. This is a bad answer, not satisfied. You know why it's a bad answer? You know why it's not satisfying because you have no answer to it. The Me Too movement primarily took down left-wing men. Now it's taken down another man who has a long history of being on the left. Russell Brand is no threat to the powers that be. He's a nutcase. Only losers adore, love Russell Brand's videos. They are low IQ. They are stupid. They only appeal to losers. Sadism isn't only having loving feelings. It's getting off on inflicting pain. Yeah, if you don't enjoy inflicting pain at times, then you're completely out of touch. You are deliberately doing things on a regular basis to inflict pain on other people. Someone who really needs things to be on time and neat, you will deliberately sabotage that at times. Someone who is very sensitive about their weight, you will occasionally give hints or say things directly to cause them pain about their weight. Someone who's very sensitive about their alcohol addiction or their sex addiction, you will undermine and mock them for it. The people that you love the most in the world. Your kids who you pretend to love just unconditionally will get on your nerves and you will scream and you will yell at them and you will sabotage them. Oh, Frederick Cruz. Wow. Okay, Frederick Cruz, the great literary critic, he is examining the Jerry Sandusky case. Okay, if this is, wow, yeah, Frederick Cruz, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California Berkeley. I have so much respect for Frederick Cruz. So if he's doing something on the Jerry Sandusky case, then I would take that very seriously. There's this crazy idea in pickup that you should always leave women better than you find them. And it's absurd, right? Women are not improved by injections of your penis. Women are not improved by injections of my penis. You go out and have sex with women and do not marry them. You are not improving them. So yeah, if my daughter was like one of these women accusing Russell Brandt, my primary blame in the situation would be at her for putting herself in these situations against all advice from anyone who cared about her. Now it doesn't mean I would articulate that blame to her depending on circumstance and nature of my relationship with her. He's at the height of his fame. He's also accused of grooming a 16-year-old girl who says she was taken from school to his home in a car paid for by the BBC. He's grabbing at my underwear, pulling it to the side. I'm telling him to get off me. And he won't get off. Yeah. And did this woman ever do things to Russell Brandt? I'm just curious that he asked her to stop doing. Like, did he ever ask her to stop lying and she kept lying? Did he ever stop asking her to stop manipulating him? And did she stop manipulating? Did he ever ask her to stop sabotaging him and she stopped sabotaging him? There are so many ways we can hurt each other, you know, not just through unwanted sex, right? Women constantly lie to men, manipulate men, deceive men, you know, run all sorts of games on men that men would never even consider doing. So it's not that I think, you know, women are the bad guys here or men are the bad guys. We just have different strengths and weaknesses. This idea that an ongoing, intense, visceral relationship that is only Russell Brandt, who was doing anything to hurt the other person, is absurd. Like, you know, was she, you know, taking advantage of Russell Brandt's celebrity? Was she taking advantage of his money? Was she, you know, taking advantage of his various vulnerabilities, right? So yeah, I believe her that Russell Brandt, you know, did things to her that she did not like. I am highly skeptical that she did not do things to Russell Brandt that he did not like. He grabbed me and got me on the bed. I was fully clothed and he was naked at this point. Yeah, and you can be physically naked, right? But you can also be emotionally naked. You can be socially naked. You can be financially naked. There are many different ways of being naked. And at times people would rather have been physically, you know, violated than financially raped or socially raped. Dennis Prager makes the point that sometimes the rape of a name is worse than the rape of a body. Not always. Sometimes the rape of a body is worse than the rape of a name. But there are many ways of raping people. There are many ways of hurting people. There are many ways of manipulating people. There are many ways of taking advantage of people. And I have no doubt that Russell Brandt frequently acts like a pig. But I have no doubt that the quality of women who get with him are not the highest, right? Orthodox women, we're not going to bed with Russell Brandt. Traditional Christian women, we're not going to bed with Russell Brandt. Traditional Muslim women, we're not going to bed with Russell Brandt. Women with strong self-esteem, a strong sense of self. Women who have self-respect, right? We're not going to bed with Russell Brandt. Women who have a sense of the people who love them, such as their father and siblings and friends and relatives, we're not going to bed with Russell Brandt. The type of people who went to bed with Russell Brandt were as equally damaged, as equally toxic, like as equally fragile, as equally balmy as Russell Brandt. I know I've been promiscuous myself. The type of women who go to bed with me were equally balmy, equally toxic, equally messed up, equally lonely. We go to bed with people like us, like attracts like. It wasn't a good look for him and for his career. Well, these are obviously horrifying claims. And if they're all true, then Brandt will deserve every punishment, meet it out to him. But at this stage, they remain claims. And Russell Brandt has vehemently denied them. Whatever you think of him, he's entitled to due process. Everybody, as much as his accusers deserve to be taken. Yeah, in a court of law, you're entitled to due process. In the real world, you're not always entitled to due process. We're not entitled to anything. It's nice in a liberal democracy to have a court of law and a system of due process. I think it's great. I'm all for it. I think it's great when people try to integrate some sort of due process into how they interact and regard other people and how they deal with these sort of allegations. But we're not entitled to anything in the world. All that we get is what's given to us by our group, by our nation, by our nation state, by our society. And what's given to us is going to change, depending on circumstance. The circumstance of playing around and screwing around and having a lot of recreational sex with different people is quite different now than it was eight years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 30 years ago. Seasons change. Feelings change. Seasons change lyrics. Feelings change. It feels like it's forever. No reason for emptiness, but times just runs away. Seasons change. Feelings change. It's been so long since I found you that it seems like yesterday. Seasons change. People change. I'll sacrifice tomorrow just to have you here today. And I'm sure plenty of women said that, you know, when they went to bear with Russell Brand and then when tomorrow came, they regretted their decision. And seriously, these are grave criminal accusations, which now demand, they're not grave criminal accusations. These are not accusations that would stand up would not even be brought to a criminal court. A police investigation to determine if they meet the legal bar. Okay, if there's a police investigation, it's not focused on the accusations that made it to the channel for documentary. Now, maybe there are other accusations where there is criminal behavior evidenced charges, prosecution, and a possible trial. But some of the language we're seeing online, including from many. So Luke is saying that human rights do not come from Torah, but from a secular state. What human rights are there in Torah? Where does Torah say that we have rights? It may. I mean, there's a little bit about rights in the Torah tradition, but there's 10 times as much about obligations as compared to rights. But if you're a traditional Jew, you know, you know, far more about your obligations to the community than you do about your, your life. Once you reach one million subscribers, you become a, you become a political figure. You can become a political figure with 1000 subscribers. It all depends on who the subscribers are. Like not all subscribers are created equal. Journalists describing the accusers as victims and survivors implies that brands already been convicted of a crime when he hasn't. The court of public opinion is not an actual court, but I'm sure that these women are victims and survivors just like I'm a victim and a survivor. Right. I was raised on a vegetarian diet. I took up a granted that a vegetarian diet was the healthiest diet. As a result, I have had a lifetime crippled by poor health. Six years in bed in my twenties where normal people are getting launched into life, going through life at about 60% strength from age 27 until 55. I was crippled by my vegetarian upbringing. Right. You could make a case for how you've been crippled and victimized and you're a survivor. Right. We've all are survivors. We've all been crippled by this and that. Right. We can all make an eloquent case as to our own victimhood. These women can't. Russell Brand can. You can. People who need people are the luckiest people in the world. Seasons change. Feelings change. I'll sacrifice tomorrow to be with you today. It behaves like one and that's inherently dangerous as we saw with the likes of the cliff. Life is inherently dangerous. Yeah, it was every choice or failing to make a choice is inherently dangerous. Richard, who was wrongly accused of sexual assault, has exemplary public reputation destroyed in the process. Wait, Cliff Richard had his exemplary public reputation destroyed. Really? What planet does Cliff Richard have an exemplary public reputation? He's an highly promiscuous rocker. You really want a legal action against the BBC and cleared his name. The consequence just winning a legal action against the BBC does not clear your name. It clears your name with those who take a legal action as the definitive verdict on right and wrong. I do not automatically consider legal actions the definitive verdict on right and wrong. Sometimes the legal action is the definitive verdict on right and wrong just as often it is not. Sometimes a look forward video is the definitive word on right and wrong in a particular topic at a particular time. Many times it is not. Many times a look forward video is a slovenly mess, incoherent. It's just like taking other people's content instead of making some original content on his own. I've been going through the archives of my blog trying to pull out from the detritus. Now my best blog post. A lot of my blogging has been absolute crap. It's been lazy. It's been self-centered. It's been unnecessarily offensive. It's been unhinged. It's peddled misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theories. Some of my shows are good. Many of my shows suck. Some of my behavior is good. Some of my behavior sucks. Sometimes I'm honorable. Sometimes I'm dishonorable. Sometimes I tell the truth. Sometimes I lie. Come on, man. The accusations are already apparent. Bran's book deal has been shelved. His tour has been postponed. His management team has dropped him. Clips like this about him are going viral. Okay, then it's a bunch of clips, you know, with Russell Bran kind of imprisoned in his horny caricature. I've developed a caricature of my own. I think I accidentally slipped into the caricature of just an Aussie bloke. Here I am, mate. May 40 here. I'm just an Aussie bloke. When did I start doing this? It was during the pandemic. I started having all these feelings about Australia and reconnecting with my Australian heritage. I've slipped into an Aussie persona. This Aussie persona, it felt freeing. It felt strengthening. It felt enlivening. It felt amusing. It felt stimulating. It felt elevating. It was wonderful. But then, for all I know, I've created a prison. Help me. I am stuck inside of that retrograde, you know, sexual and racial and ethnic norms from my outdated, you know, Australian persona. So what started out as freedom has become a prison. I am a prisoner of my Bogan Aussie persona. I'm the victim here. It's easy to watch all that and be appalled by Russell Bran's apparent immorality. This is not a referendum on his moral compass. By his own regular admission, he was a... Oh, you know, I'm going to quote, you know, as a narcissist, I'm going to quote a chat that calls me a genius. Luke is a genius when he acts as a curator interrogating other people's ideas. Thank you. Outrageously promiscuous sex addict who reveled in his ancestral womanizing. Bran openly boasted about it. He was saluted for it by many in the media. He didn't stop BBC Newsnight using him as a political spangali. He didn't stop the Guardian giving him top billing on stage with Owen Jones and publishing his column for many years. He didn't stop Ed Miliband seeking his endorsement for Prime Minister. He didn't stop the new States from making him a guest editor nor... Yeah. So I don't know. You noticed that when you're in higher esteem in society that more people want things from you, more people want to get with you. So if you are not successful with women, it's primarily because you're not successful with men. Women flock to men who other men respect and adore and adulate and look up to. If other men regard you as a loser, women are not going to be interested in you. So when your social status rises, more people are going to want to, you know, include you. I've had long, lonely sections of my life because my social status was quite low. And people just pick up on it immediately. I remember as this woman I had an on and off, you know, sexual relationship with for about a year. She came to my synagogue and she immediately picked up that I was low status at my synagogue. And when she was walking out, I got up to walk her out. She said, you know, don't walk me out because she didn't want to be contaminated by being publicly associated with me. This is the same woman who wanted to publicly show me off like earlier in the relationship when she, you know, thought I was higher status. She thought, you know, I was good looking, charming man. A lot of women initially when they meet me thought, oh, here's a good looking, charming man. Then they get to know me and realize, you know, how deeply damaged I am and my low social status and they want, you know, nothing more to do with me. So this woman went to bed with me, you know, repeatedly over the course of a year, but she no longer wanted to be publicly associated with me because she picked up the vibe at my synagogue at the time. This is about 24 years ago that I was low status. I remember a guy there who had a master's degree from Stanford, he said, you know, I'm terribly amused by your Lukeford.com blog. You know, I don't respect it, but you know, I'm amused and titillated by it. I suspect magazine naming him the fourth most influential thinker in the world. Channel four, the BBC and a few of media executives were serious questions to answer. Sometimes is Luke's favorite word. Yes, everything is situational. The situation decides the ethic. Ethics are both absolute and situational because the situation decides what's the primary ethical imperative that should govern that situation. If it turns out that Russell Brown has indeed been the ruthless predatory criminal, these new allegations suggest. So with all those righteous publications who made him a demigod, what we cannot do is preemptively convict a man of heinous crimes like this without any legal due process. Oh, we can't convict him in our heads of Luke without legal due process. Well, guess what? Russell Brand's reputation does not belong to Russell Brand. My reputation does not belong to me. My reputation resides in your head. You own it. I have no rights over it. Russell Brand has no right over his reputation. This idea that society in all right thinking people just going to pause and wait for legal due process is not how the real world works. We operate by heuristics such as when there are a lot of rapey allegations against someone made by reputable journalistic outlets and their reports seem highly credible. We all tend to think that the target of their investigation probably is quite rapey. We adjust accordingly because that's how evolution has made us. We evolved to use basic heuristics about whether or not we want to get close or further away from people. If a bunch of stories came out that Elliot Blatt is quite rapey, then I would want to distance from him. Various stories came out that Ricardo was committing rampant amounts of financial fraud. I'd want to distance from him even if he had not enjoyed legal due process and faces accusers in a court of law. In the real world, you see 40 people running as fast as they can in one direction and all the running, all the tumult is going in one direction. You're going to in all likelihood follow the crowd. You're not going to wait around for legal due process to see if people are making the right decision. We have to constantly make decisions based on imperfect information. Think about the difficult times that the establishment of the ruling elites had when COVID came along. Initially, they said, don't get face masks. Then they changed, everyone should wear a face mask in public. With imperfect information, we have to constantly make decisions. Do we want to get vaccinated or are vaccinated? Wear a face mask. Not wear a face mask. Socially isolated. You have to make these decisions based on imperfect information. Usually, the way we operate is that we take our cues from those people we regard as being highest in status to establish the cold hard facts. Joining me to discuss all this is comedian Samantha Presti, political journalist Eva Santina, and talk to be contributor Esther Kraku. I've seen both of you two all over social media since the story broke. Let me start with you, Esther. You've been pretty strong. You said there's nothing stunning and brave about choosing to sit down with a journalist instead of going to the police and someone who does that. All right. This notion that it's only stunning and brave if you go to the police with a rape allegation, not everything needs to end up in a criminal court. If someone has raped you, there's a time and a place and a reason to go to court and go to the police and make it a criminal matter. But these Russell Brand allegations do not seem like a traditional definition of rape. They seem more like unwanted sex. It makes perfect sense that these women would talk to a journalist rather than the police. Not everything has to be adjudicated in a court of law, either a criminal court or a civil court. Sometimes you just want them adjudicated in a prestigious media. Sometimes you just want to have them talked about on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. Look, there is a season and a time and a place for the BBC. There's a season and a time and a place for the New York Times. There's a season and time and a place for criminal court. There's a season time and a place for civil court. There's a season time and a place for Luke Ford's YouTube channel. There's a season time and a place for Twitter discussions. There's a season time and a place for just sharing something with a very close friend or with a therapist or with an accountant. It's definitely not interested in justice, only public sympathy. I was quite shocked when I read that. Oh, yes, because the thing is... Okay, so why is this woman making such strong, tough statements? Because that's how you get attention. That's the incentives when you do a live stream like this. You make strong, tough statements. You trigger people. You get people emotionally involved. The more emotionally involved you get people, the more loyal they are going to be, the more interested they are in consuming your content because it becomes compelling when their emotions flow and they get adrenaline rush. But you do that usually at the price of wisdom and profundity and accuracy and fairness and decency and kindness and goodness. Ultimately, what are the public supposed to do? We cannot have this man hung, drawn and courted. We are not a court. We are not... The legal process is invested in us. These claims, which are outrageous and they sound very serious, obviously you should go to the police. The legal process is invested in us. This is Esther Krakow, TalkTV contributor. Really, the police are invested in our well-being. I'm not anti-police. I'm not inherently knee-jerk pro-police either. Sometimes the police are invested in your well-being and sometimes they're not. Sometimes the police are corrupt and sometimes they're fair dinkum. Sometimes going to the police will just put you in the Vegemite and other times will make you dinky dye in true blue. Sometimes a journalist will let you down. Sometimes police will let you down. Sometimes a lawyer will let you down. There's no group of people. There's no institution that is inherently going to always treat you righteously and fight on your side. And it's not just about these victims, but it's also protecting other women as well. I hate this binary where we have that, oh, we're supposed to believe all women are strong and empowered. But on the other hand, when you don't go to the police, you get to have it both ways where you can have someone not convicted in a court, but you can have them convicted. But what about the argument that only 1% of rape cases need to condition? That's more of a reason to try and improve the system. Well, it might be more of a reason why a lot of women choose actually a different avenue. Okay, this idea that only 1% of rape cases go to the police. To me, that suggests that it's not really rape. It's not exactly a strong case for these absurd rape statistics. In every court of law, the accused should be after face their accusers, and you should be after investigate the accuser to find out how credible they are. Justice, and I mentioned the two campaigns Me Too and Time's Up. Of course, it was down to journalists that people like Harvey Weinstein ended up in prison. They were the ones that investigated them. This is the difference between a journalist and a lawyer or someone who works in the criminal justice system. They are looking for facts. A journalist. Oh, a lawyer working in the criminal justice system or a policeman. He's only looking for facts while journalists has no interest in facts. Some journalists are interested in facts. Some journalists are not. Some police are interested in facts. Some police are not. Some lawyers are interested in facts. And some lawyers are not. There's not, you know, one profession here that is primarily interested in facts that you could just always rely on. Now, people in institutions are complicated and they vary depending on time or place and personnel. No, no, no. I'm sorry. There have been many, sorry. There have been many journalists who have failed at their job because they're looking for a story. They're looking for a scoop. At the end of the day, I have far more trust in the legal system, as slow and clunky as it may be, and in legal professionals than I do in a journalist that's looking for their later. Ava, I mean, I read the... Okay, so just having inherent trust in the criminal justice system is naive. Having just inherent blank check trust in the public health system is naive, or in politicians, or in bankers, or in lawyers, or in priests, or rabbis, right? Just as many rabbis are sexual predators as plumbers, or priests, or ministers, right? Just because someone's a clergyman doesn't mean that they're not going to try to screw you. Some clergymen are honorable and plenty of them are absolute scumbags. Some lawyers are honorable and plenty of scumbags. Some police are honorable and plenty of scumbags. Some live streamers are honorable in certain circumstances, and in other circumstances, they are the scum of the earth. I read, you know, I think with all these things, the best thing to do is sit down and read every word, and then I watched the whole of dispatches. And I thought it was extremely thorough journalism, meticulous, obviously very carefully legal. I felt as a former newspaper editor myself, I know how complicated these things can be. So I thought that from a journalistic point of view, there wasn't much more they could have done to present the cases of four different women, none of whom apparently knew each other, all making very serious allegations. But my issue with the waste played out on social media, when people talk regularly on Twitter or whatever about victims. If you yearn to be famous, like celebrities do, like people like Russell Brand do, like I do, okay? I'm not immune from yearning for an audience, for fame, for success, for adulation. This sets you up for all sorts of downsides, sets you up for all sorts of vulnerabilities, because nobody becomes famous, nobody receives adulation without receiving an equal amount of disapprobation. This is just the nature of the life that we chose. I chose this life. I chose to stand before you this day. No one put a gun to my head and forced me to do this live stream. I mean, here I stand. I can do no other. So help me God. This is the life I chose. There are advantages to this life. There are considerable downsides. I probably am not even conscious of the tremendous price I've paid, because all sorts of people who I might otherwise have friendships, relationships with, would just not consider me due to this or that thing that I've said publicly. And I have no idea what losses I've suffered from, you know, the outrageous things I've said on