Episode Details

So what they’re doing is — and I’m going to use this term “archetyping” because it’s very important to me and very important to what they are doing — this is a very old phenomenon. Some of our earliest writing in ancient Iran comes from an inscription by Darius, who founded the Achaemenid Empire around 550 to 330 BCE.

In one of his inscriptions — which I came across because I was trying to look into where the idea and the sound right, writ, rect came from, and if there were any insights we could get into what’s happening today from this sound — it appears in sovereignty. It’s hard to see it in sovereignty, but it’s there: the reign, the regula, the reine (the queen in French), the regent, régir. And it’s in security — this rite, integrity, and fertility, prosperity — these three aspects of Indo-European society.

I was trying to trace these sounds back through different Indo-European linguistic traditions. And Darius writes about how Arta, which is truth in the ancient Iranian and Avestan language — how truth is upended when usurpers claim to be king, claim to be the monarch, when they’re not the rightful monarch.

And this word ṛta — in the Indian tradition, the Vedic tradition, it’s ṛta — so the reversal, which is a phenomenon in linguistics where sometimes in different traditions the same meaning is attached, the signifier and the words change, but the sound is the same. Ṛta, Arta — truth, that which is not illusory, that which is. The truth — and the “tr” in “truth” is also from this. It survived in English, which is another phenomenon.

And so what Donald and Tulsi and all usurpers have always tried to do — and obviously before January 6th, many of us who saw what MAGA was up to and who didn’t like the aesthetics, or the family separation policy, or talking about migrants as rapists, Mexicans as rapists, from the very first moment at Trump Tower — what they do, and this is why it’s relevant to Russia as well, is they try to create a certain truth which we know is untrue.

And in a Disinfolklore galaxy, you don’t know what’s up and down. You don’t know whether the crowd was bigger for Obama or for Trump. And those 26,000 lies. And this idea of “right” belonging to the people who archetype themselves as the political right — sometimes that is true. But when they start promoting untruths, when they promoted a usurper, then the actual measure of what is right — which is the truth, that which is not illusory — and for those of us who are very clear-eyed and clear-minded about this, and James asked what can we do about this: this is what we have to do. We have to keep our eyes laser-focused on what is the truth.

And when we find ourselves wandering into that territory that Russian Disinfolklore promotes — that “I don’t know, I’m just a small person, I have no power, I don’t know what is truth” — we have to be that character at the end of 1984 who knows what is illusory and what is not, up until the final moment.

And it’s so obvious now since January 6th and since the insurrection — and I’m comfortable using that word because that’s what the January 6th Committee used, that’s what was used in the indictments. And this rect — insurrect — it’s the same sound, the same meaning. It’s about right, it’s about truth. Insurrect: those who are trying to usurp what is right.

Now we have this playing out in such obvious terms that when I speak these words to you and describe them, you can see it — you can match the reality we are seeing. We are seeing Donald, the usurper, who engaged in insurrection from the first moment he denied the results in November 2020 and thereafter.

And now those very people — including, I’ve seen those references as well, and I’m happy to believe them, Wendy — certainly the Proud Boys and such like are part of ICE. These so-called federal agents, because this was predicted. As many of us here do, I listened very carefully to Michael Cohen in the run-up and for