487: Moving Past Socialism to Pure Totalitarian State with G Edward Griffin

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Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skill necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats, and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you can about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome a returning guest back to the show, and that is none other than Mr. G. Edward Griffin. He is, of course, very well known for the excellent work in his book, his classic book, I guess I now could say the Creature from Jekyll Island. And he spoke at one of our Meet the Masters conferences a few years ago. Been on the show several times, and it's always a pleasure to have him on. Welcome. How are you, Edward?

Well, thank you for inviting me. And I'm doing just well.

Good to have you back. So, you know, you've written extensively and talked extensively about monetary policy and the way the banking cartel has been basically abusing the entire planet. And certainly people in the US because we have the largest central bank, the quote unquote Federal Reserve. Nothing federal about it. But, you know, today you've been thinking a lot lately, and I can't wait to talk to you about the way the powers that be, the big execs, the C class, the elite class, hide behind corporations and entity structures. And there's certainly a purpose for these vehicles. I mean, I believe they were created centuries ago to facilitate shipping and exploration around the world. When the great explorers in Portugal and Spain and Italy and so forth went out to settle the new world. And there was a lot of risk in doing that. You know, people might lose their fortunes. So these entities, my understanding is the history, they were created so that people could not be personally liable and they could put some capital at risk, and that would be all they risk, nothing more. But certainly, as we see today in the, in the corporatocracy, there are abuses. They're just absolutely pathetic and disgusting. One of the things I teach, as you probably know, in my ten commandments of successful investing, when I'm talking mostly to rich estate investors, is commandment number three. Which says thou shalt maintain control. And what I refer to here is when people invest money and they are not a direct investor in something where they don't possess the thing they invest in, they entrust their money to somebody else. You know, the executives with these corporations, the boards of directors, they're skimming the profits off the top. Even worse, they might be a crook or they just might be stupid and you'll lose your money because of their dishonesty, their stupidity, or just because they take a huge management fee off the top. And Lou Dobbs wrote a great book years ago called War on the Middle Class. And in it he talked about Oracle and how Larry Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle, in two short years took over $700 million out of Oracle, almost a billion dollars. And that would be fine with me if the shareholders were getting a great return. But the reality was the shareholders lost 61% of the value of their stock during that same two year period. And this is sadly perfectly legal. When these companies, Wells Fargo is the latest, they've got like a scam every month now, you know, they get fine, but the shareholders pay the fine, the executives don't pay the fine. It's just a complete separation and a misalignment of interests. There's a lot to go on there. What are your thoughts?

Well, those are my thoughts, Jason. It's been one of my pet peeves for many, many years. I got caught up in the trap, I would call it, or at least the trend of people saying, oh, those corporations are lousy, they ought to be punished. Those corporations should be. How do you punish a corporation? It's a non entity, it's an abstraction, it's an agreement. How do you punish an agreement? But anyway, I used to think that that's a good idea, that corporations needed to be punished and taxed and they were making too much money and so forth. And finally, as I matured and understood how the systems really work, it dawned on me that the corporations, there's nothing wrong with the corporations are perfectly logical structure. I mean the idea, not the structure, but the idea that people can join their investments together and have somebody to manage them for them and they assign responsibility and they share the profit. They have an agreement, they write it down, they call it a contract and that's what they agree to do. And they go to some state and okay, we'll register you as a corporation. It's just a name, it just means they're registering the legality of the agreement. And therefore the laws of the state will Enforce the agreement, if the agreement fits the rules and so forth. There's nothing wrong with that because you find corruption everywhere. Let's face it, the biggest banks in the world are partnerships. The biggest banks in the world are partnerships. They're not corporations. And we don't see any different operation there just because they're partnerships. You can have corruption in associations, in governments. Governments are. They say, oh, well, this government is a corporation. Well, so it's a corporation or it's a government. It's still an agreement. It's a piece of paper that's held legally binding by the rules of the state. It doesn't make any difference what you call it. And you identified the problem very well. It's the essence of the rules and the laws that allow these entities, whatever they are, whatever they're called, to hide responsibility of the individuals, the management, and the middle management. The people who make the decisions of these corporations are shielded by the corporate veil. This is the same true in partnerships to some extent. It's a little more legally complicated, but certainly true in governments. The mayors, the presidents, the congressmen, the policemen on the corner, they all, if they do something egregious, they take some measure. That's perfectly horrible. Ah, let's sue the city, sue the state, sue the federal government. And as you said, who are they suing? They're suing the taxpayers and the banks and the executives, whoever is making these decisions. I always think of the pharmaceutical industry because these guys sit around and say, oh, so this drug we're working on, it kills 8% of the people and it cripples about.

They do a calculation, the same Ford Motor Company did with Ford Pinto in the early 70s. They knew that gas tank was dangerous. They knew it would explode. It did. People died. And, you know, we later found out that they could have used like a $2 part and it would have been much safer.

That's the point.

Mathematical calculation. And look at what happened with Volkswagen and the emissions scandal, you know, polluting the planet. The executives always get off the hook and they, they just make paying fines part of their business plan. Basically, yes.

It's the cost of doing business. That's how they look at it.

But the worst part is it's a cost to the shareholders, not the executives. Now, granted, the executives probably own some stock, sure. But there's a total disconnect between.

Well, there is a disconnect, yeah. They're not held personally responsible. And even though they're shareholders and maybe they have some reduced dividends because of it, they get Bonuses. I mean, these executives in the pharmaceutical industry will pass a drug into the market. They know it's going to kill 8% of the people. They know it's going to cripple 22% of the people. And then they bury the effort evidence and they lie about it. And then somebody finds out and said, well, you dirty dog, you knew about this. And we're going to sue the corporation. The corporation they sue, not the guy that made the decision or the team that made the decision. And so the corporation said, okay, we owe what, $20 million? Gee, that's a big chunk. But we made 180 million. I guess it's a good cost of business. And so they write it off. And the guys that made the decision get bonuses and promotions because they made smart business deals by killing people. It's blood money is what it is.

It is blood money. And you know, whether it's actual blood money or it's just financial blood, you know, you look at during the Great Recession, in the first year or two of the Great Recession, we saw Goldman Sachs, they bonus themselves, what, $630,000 each as they were collapsing the world economy. Right? This is absolutely ridiculous. What are we going to do? I mean, corporations basically, like they have all the advantages of a natural person without any of the cost of being a natural person. You know, natural people are flesh and blood. They have limited life. They can be injured, they can die, they can go to prison. Where's the accountability with the corporations?

Well, that's the point. It's not that it's a corporation. It's the fact that the way the rules are written, the way that the state legislatures have passed the rules and the administrators have created this system under which the corporation shields its management. All they've got to do is change that and say any individual who makes a conscious decision to commit a crime, it doesn't make any difference whether they're the executive, the CIO of a corporation or not. They are personally responsible for the consequences of that act. It would be a relatively simple piece of legislation that could be passed in all the state legislatures around the country and should be the day after that happens. I guarantee all of this abuse will come to a screeching halt. Because these guys know if they commit a wrong, they're going to pay for it themselves and that'll be the end of it.

Yeah, yeah, but that's very unlikely that we'll ever see any progress there, Right? Because look, we have Citizens United. The corporations own the politicians, don't they?

Well, yes, and I agree with you that we have a steep hill to climb, but I disagree that we'll never see it happen, because if we don't see it happen, I mean, we're really messed up. You just kiss goodbye to your future. I think it can happen. But first you have to talk about it. How many people do you meet in Walmart that are even aware of what we're talking about? And until that time comes when the public is aware of and becomes indignant over this great injustice, once that happens, then the legislators will fall right in line. But we have an educational job to do.

Where do we start? Okay, so educate people. Make people aware of it. What else?

Well, now you're onto my favorite topic. We can't just sit around and say how bad things are and complain about it and say how we got the perfect solution. We have to make that solution happen. That means we have to join together. We have to form into coalitions, we have to seek political influence. We have to select candidates. We have to be the people who are just the opposite of the collectivist. Now, these people that we're talking about have all the big bucks and all the control of the media. I mean, they're in power and they all have a similar mindset, which is called collectivism. And we have to replace those people. It can be done, but it's not going to be easy. It'll be simple, but not easy. But that's what we'll. We'll have to replace those people. We can't just come up with a better idea because they know that we have a better idea. They don't care. They don't like our better idea because they have a better idea for them, you know, so, yeah, so we can't argue and reason with them. They understand what the deal is and they're just getting away with murder, literally, or theft. So they just look at us like we're kind of little gnats and ants in the way and they can step on us and crush us. But once we have a critical mass, and I'm beginning to see that wilming up right now in society because all of these wrongdoings that we're talking about are beginning to surface and you can't sweep them under the rug anymore. I mean, they're right in our face. And I think that people are beginning to want to know the truth and they're not so willing to take that blue pill and go back to sleep and go into their illusions anymore.

Well, where do we stand on the, the scorecard, the balance of the march towards socialism. You know, we've got Bernie Sanders and now we've got aoc, you know, the little darling of the Marxist movement.

My answer to that is that the march towards socialism was completed at the end of World War II. We have been in socialism since that time. It's just a question of degree, but I would say our socialist quotient right now is probably about 99%. It breaks me up when I hear people say, down with capitalism. Look at all these things that capitalism is doing. We're starving, we're out of work, our prices are going up. But down with capitalism. Capitalism was swept aside decades ago. We're living under socialism, folks. We just don't call it that. You just go to the dictionary and look up what the word means. The state of ownership or control. Well, control is more Nazism, but they're the same basically, that the state controls the means of production, they own all the property, and they're trying to take away all of our personal property right now. That's why I said we still have 1% left, but we've been living under this thing called socialism ever since World War II. Maybe before that.

Well, I mean. Define that. I don't know if people listening would agree with that. I mean, the state doesn't own the means of production on everything. Of course they have liens on it. I get that.

You get that? Well, what wouldn't you call that? Ownership? I mean, if you don't pay your. If you don't pay your taxes on your house, what happens? The owner takes it from you?

They take it.

Of course the state owns your property. Folks, wake up.

Well, that's what I say, you know, to our investor clients is almost everywhere on the planet. There are very few exceptions. Governments have a perpetual lien on your properties. So the idea of owning a property free and clear is an absolute myth. And you actually make yourself a foreclosure target if you have a lot of equity in your property. So I say the best thing to do is let the bank own or encumber as much of that property as possible and leverage it. Because of course the return is higher, the risk is lower. But you don't make yourself a target for foreclosure. If you forget to pay your tax bill or your HOA dues, the property can just be taken away from you. It's absolutely crazy.

Yeah, well, that's why I say that we haven't lived in a true free market capitalist system for a long, long time. So the march toward socialism was done long Time ago. Now we're going beyond socialism into a pure totalitarian state with no pretense even anymore of taking care of the people. It's just. That's the way it's going to be. Shut up and get in line.

Well, not to be particularly political here, but. But I have to ask, what do you think about Trump? I mean, he's a different kind of cat, for sure, in comparison to what we've had. Obama, and then, you know, the rise of the Bernie Sanders AOC class, I'll call it, or Kamala Harris or, you know, any of them. There's so many Democrats in the race. Who knows what to think? But where does this kind of fall with you? Curious.

Well, you know, if you ask me that question in the morning, I might have a different answer than in the afternoon.

Depends on what Twitter says, right?

Yeah, it depends on what's going on. I have very strong mixed emotions. Of course. There's a lot. There's a lot about Trump that I like, but when I sit back and look at it objectively, most of what I like about Trump is that the radical left hates him. You know, it's a funny thing.

Rhino Republicans hate him, too.

And so he's got excellent enemies. And then I start thinking, you know, that's the game that's been played on the American people for decades. We don't vote for candidates anymore. We vote against candidates. That's how people get elected. It's negative. I don't like either of them, but I hate that one. So I'll vote for the lesser of two evils. Dealing with that. If I were a politician and I would say to how do I get elected? Well, I need to have somebody running against me. That's really, really bad.

Okay, now if you.

Opposition, right?

Yes, yes. Now, if you believe, as I do, that both political parties are essentially the same and have the same control behind them, and we're talking about the big banks, for example. I mean, they own the politicians, as you said, and that means both parties. So if they own both parties, do they really care which one gets elected? Not really. They might say, well, let's keep the charade going. So people think they're having a voice in their own political destiny. So we have to have this contest going on. The left versus the right, supposedly, or the Republicans versus the Democrats. A lot of debate and clash. And the more clash there is, the more anger there is, the more emotion there is, the less people think about what's really going on. You don't really think anymore what's going on now. Mr. Trump says all these good things, he's going to stop illegal immigration. Oh, hooray for Trump. And we find out later, well, he's not doing that at all. You know, when he was campaigning, we got to put an end to these. Put an end to these wars overseas. Oh, yeah, we'll vote for him. Well, now he's not doing that at all. You know, I remember this phrase when I was studying the works of communists, I wanted to find what made their brains tick. And I found that they, and the Nazis, the fascists, believed the same thing. But when I was doing that, I ran across a lot of writings by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And one of the things that stuck in my mind, Lenin said, well, a couple of things. He said, promises are like pie crusts made to be broken. And then in another essay, he said, words are one thing, actions another. And when I look at what's going on in the political arena today, I keep thinking of those Leninist phrases. And so now you ask me, how do I evaluate not just Mr. Trump, but any candidate, Any candidate or any office holder? I get a disruption between what they say and what they do. And I'm beginning to get very calloused about the whole thing. I think we're being taken for suckers.

Yeah, we are. The question is, how do we get this to turn around? You know, it is voting for the lesser of two evils. And there's kind of an interesting quote about that. You can always tell the quality of a person by the quality of their enemies. Or there's some quote along those lines, which I find to be an interesting quote.

Yeah, but I disagree with that. I disagree with that, because in this world, these people are professionals. And they know that if you're not so hot yourself, you better have an enemy that is so atrocious and so smelly that nobody even notices you. They would vote for anybody just to avoid having that guy. So I look at who is controlling these antifa groups, who's funding them and so forth. Where does that all come from?

The George Soros.

The George Soros'. And then we got the deep state, right? Supposedly, they're opposed to each other, but they're not really. And so we got what looks to me at least, like Soros. And this leftist crowd is all funding and promoting all this theater on the left, and I call it theater, because if those people weren't on the Soros payroll, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. They're not ideologues. They're being paid now. They might have it in their heart to say, yeah, we agree with this, but they wouldn't be there. And then we have these so called white supremacists. Where do they come from? Do you know any white supremacists with swastikas on there?

No, I don't know any.

No, I've never met one. It's theater that's all being funded by the deep state. And so you see basically at the top you've got some mastermind saying, okay, we need a clash. And so they fund and organize both sides and we are given the choice, which side do we want to vote for? That's how it works.

Sure, sure. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, people all hear the terms the deep state antifa. What are those? And then, you know, the George Soros backing, you know, what's the motivation of Soros of the deep state of antifa. I mean, I have a feeling you're just going to say control, but you know, maybe.

Well, the question is control for what? I see where your question is going, logically. Yeah. Why are they doing this? Yeah, it is control, of course. But in order to gain control over a world system, especially one that includes one like the United States and some parts of Europe, which traditionally had a lot of cultural affinity to liberty and freedom and justice in the courtroom and you know, freedom of speech and all of that, you have to change the thinking and the structure of these entities. You've got to break down the United States, for example. You've got to bring the United States on its knees so it stops worrying about such things as what kind of a judicial, what kind of a judicial system we have. Do we want freedom of speech? You want them worried about survival? Because that's why wars have always been organized by tyrants. They don't want their people complaining about how hard life is, so they scare them to death with wars. Machiavelli wrote about that in the Prince, the book called the Prince. He said, if the people are complaining about too much taxes and you're taking away their liberties, go get in a war prince. Now they have to be patriotic and so they'll support you no matter what. This is so simple when you think about it. And it's been going on for centuries. I see no reason to think it's not going on today. In fact, I'm convinced it is.

Yeah. So motivations of the deep state. So war, you know, I mean, the central bankers profit from war. War is a distraction. It instills this patriotism that, you know, wag the dog. Right. It's all wagging the dog, like the old movie. But, you know, just a little more like a little deeper on that subject, you know. I agree with you. Couldn't agree more. But just anything more you can.

Well, okay, yeah, I could go a little deeper because it's interesting the deeper you go. In my research for the book on the Federal Reserve, I came across the roots of some of these ideological movements. And I came across the Fabian Socialist Society, which was founded in England a little over 100 years ago. Most people have never heard of it, but it's very powerful in England. And several of the prime ministers of England have been members of the Fabian Socialist. And that goes way back. Its origins had some very well known intellectuals, writers and so forth. But the point is, they had a headquarters in a house. I've forgotten what part of England it was. It was the Webb House, called. Beatrice Webb owned the house and it was the headquarters she donated. A very wealthy woman. In fact, all these Fabian Socialists were upper class, very wealthy people. It had a stained window in it and somebody had captured a photograph of it. And I ran across the photograph. When you blow it up and you look at it. I'm getting to the point. Believe it or not.

The Fabian Socialists, they believed that gradualism was the way to take over the world. This is their goal. They're socialists and they want to take over the world. And they said, you don't do it with guns and bayonets.

You can do it slowly.

You boil the frog slowly. And you go into the institutions of your target nature. You go into the school system and the media, financial centers. Yes. And then you just gradually change it. But now in the center of this montage, in this colored glass, they have a couple other members. And the earth is represented on an anvil. Okay? The earth is on an anvil. And these guys are standing there with hammers and they're smashing the earth. And then the line across the top comes from Omar Khayyam. And I once had it memorized. I see how good I am. Everybody's heard this line, and it's something like this. How sorry the things are in the world. Wouldst not thou and I conspire to break the things entire and mold it closer to our heart's desire? Those are the lines. So in other words, if you don't like things, shatter them, Break them completely, Destroy them. And then there's nothing left to resist you. Now you can rebuild out of the rubble exactly what you want.

So what are they shattering then?

They're shattering the world. All of the political systems of the world must be broken, destroyed and forgotten, buried forevermore, so they can build their new socialist system, international socialist system, without opposition. So the first step for these people is to destroy. That's it. To destroy. When people are on their knees, when people are worried about food and water.

Worried about the basics, they can't get on.

They don't worry about freedom of speech, they don't worry about taxes. You know, as long as they have food, they have no money for taxes anyway. It's just survival.

And there's kind of like another thing going on, like another track, right? They've got that track that you mentioned, but they've got the other track, which is the bread and circuses track, right? You've got millennials that want avocado toast, okay, instead of buying a house. I mean, there's that other track of the, you know, making people kind of passive and docile. In fact, one of the conspiracy theories that I'm certainly willing to entertain, and I'm quite conflicted on this issue, you know, you look at this trend toward legalization of marijuana, you know, I certainly think it should be legal. I have libertarian beliefs. I think if someone wants to alter their state of mind, as long as they're not driving a car car or hurting anybody else, what businesses of the government to tell them they can't do that. However, at the same time, you know, that particular substance makes people very docile. It makes them very passive. And maybe this move toward that, you know, if you got a bunch of potheads, a bunch of millennial potheads, hippie smoking like the hippies did in the 60s, you know, they're not going to rise up, they're not going to do much, right? They're going to just go with the flow. You know.

Thoughts about that. I don't know. Nobody talks about that one but me, it seems. I.

Well, yeah, that is the. That's almost an ongoing debate for as long as I can remember. At what point is it proper for the state to intervene? And I think I know the answer to that. It's a harsh answer because it means a lot of times you have to stand by and let the state just ignore these problems and try and, you know, leave it up to the citizens to handle rather than bring the power of the state in. And I agree with you that the state has no business in telling us what we can do as long as we're not threatening the life, liberty or property of somebody else. But that means we have to have a principle and follow it all the way down. And that gets pretty hard because now, well, what do you think about this poor person over there? Don't we have an obligation to take care of that person? And my answer is, well, if we do, and I think we do, then let's dig into our pockets and do it voluntarily. Let's not do it through this coercion processes of the state, because now it gets corrupted because people have to administer that. And then they want to rake something off of the top, and then they'll reward their friends and punish their enemies. And we're back to where we started because our intentions were good. So when you get a principle, you have to stick with it.

Yeah, they'll dole out the favors to their cronies. And that's the way it always goes. You know, you see that at the. The government level, at every level of government. You see it in the United nations and the oil for food program. You see it in the world of charities and foundations. It's just everywhere you look, you know, it's just a human thing. And we have to understand that humans are fallen creatures. They're gonna do that stuff. It's terrible. But the way to reduce the amount of that corruption is to simply reduce the size and power of the institutions. Because then there just wants it.

That's it. Exactly. We're talking about that famous letter from Jefferson to a doct friend of his right after the constitution was enacted and adopted. Why he got this letter from a friend and he said, Mr. Jefferson, now that we have this new constitution, how can we be sure that only good men are elected to office? And Jefferson's reply was classic. It was just almost on the edge of irate. He said, speak to me not of good men. Rather, let us bind men down with the chains of the constitution. And boy, there it is. I mean, he was saying basically, hey, dummy, do you think good men are going to go into office? Wake up. Bad men are going to go into office because it's tempting. And the more power and money that's there, the more tempting it is, the stronger magnet it is for the predator class. He said, of course evil men are going to go into office. So don't count on it. Don't count on those good men. They're not going to be there. So what we need to do is build a system so that it's not attractive to the crooks.

Right, exactly. Exactly. I mean, if you know, why, why is it that people will spend $25 million to win a job that pays 180 grand a year. That's absolutely insane. You obviously know that's not just an ego trip, okay? It's way more than that there. It's a power trip. And somehow they always become incredibly wealthy when they're in Congress. I just really happens.

I know. Interesting. That's amazing. Must be an act of God.

Must be. It must be. Please give out your website and tell people where they can find out more.

Well, thank you, Jason. The main thing on my agenda right now is the Red Pill Expo that we're going to have in June 7 through 9 in Hartford, Connecticut.

And by the way, depending on. Because this is like evergreen content depending on here. This. This is something you do every year, right?

We do it every year, yes. So this year it's 2019. It'll be in Hartford, Connecticut. This is number three. So we're on the road. It's a smashingly successful event. In a nutshell. It's a place where people go to break the illusions in their lives and discover truths that are being withheld from them. And there are plenty of those to go around. Anybody who's interested in that, just look it up on the Internet. You'll find it under Red Pill Expo. And so Redpill Expo.org probably will be it forevermore. So that's very much in my life. But now, if people want to know what we think, what I think about how we can turn this around, I would invite you to what I like to think of as our think tank, which is freedomforce international.org we have nothing to sell there except ideas. We talk about the kind of things we've been discussing today with an emphasis on finding practical solutions. And as I said before, the main solution is that we've got to recapture control of the system. We can't just write letters to our corrupt congressmen. We have to replace those guys with people like ourselves who have no axe to grind and are willing to make sacrifices to keep the system pure and second. Okay, and then if anybody wants to read some books and watch some documentary films and lectures which back up all of these ideas, I invite them to come to our bookstore, which is realityzone.com good stuff.

Realityzone.com, g. Edward Griffin. Thanks again for joining us.

All right, thanks for the invitation.

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