The Problem with Jon Stewart (2021) s01e02 Episode Script
The Problem with Freedom
People do come to this country
'cause they think it's freer.
-[Stewart] It is freer.
-Right?
And so my family, you know,
fine, we were leaving India,
which is a democracy,
but still, when we came here,
you were looking for a better life.
No joke, last time I was in Iran,
I was in a café with my cousins
and I was being the loud fuck I am here,
and everyone was looking at me,
and my cousin's like, "Keep it down,
because those army guys walking over,
that's for you being loud."
Like they'll just--
You can't even talk loudly there without…
[Brinda] Oh, fuck.
-Terrible house parties.
-[laughing]
Can I tell you something?
Great house parties.
Just that's the only thing.
All in the basement.
-[Reza] Absolutely.
-It's all like this.
Piety on the street…
Party in the freaking basement.
And that's so true.
Yeah, that was my Tinder bio too.
[all laughing]
[audience cheering]
Hello, everybody! Welcome.
Good evening.
I am what remains of Jon Stewart.
Welcome…
[audience chuckles, cheers]
…to my humble home.
[singsongy]
They're excited to see live television.
Tonight we're gonna talk about America.
'Merica, land of boundless opportunity,
where the rights are inalienable,
buffets are all-you-can-eat.
A land so great
people escape their own countries
to come to a place
where people pay to escape a room.
[audience laughs]
Why don't you just fucking leave?
Why don't you just leave the room?
But one American treasure
towers above all others,
our most precious resource of them all,
freedom.
Freedom flows in American veins.
-Freedom.
-Freedom.
-Freedom!
-Freedom!
-Freedom!
-Freedom!
Freedom!
[audience laughs]
That last gentlemen seems very likable.
[chuckles]
But, you know,
freedom isn't just our greatest gift.
[woman] Freedom is delicious.
[man 1] Cars and freedom.
[man 2] Join your friends
for our Freedom Polka Cruise 2022.
By the way, "Freedom Polka Cruise"
was actually Ted Cruz's birth name.
He changed it.
Freedom is America's best trait.
It is smoked meat in a muscle car
on a cruise ship.
So, is there a catch?
Freedom is not free.
Oh, right.
It's not free.
Preserving freedom often takes
courage and sacrifice.
Or have you not spoken
to your grandparents lately?
They are known today
as America's greatest generation.
We had one purpose,
and that was to win the war.
Whether it was the rationing
of meat or gasoline,
or, uh, cigarettes or alcohol,
or whatever.
Women were asked
to give up their silk stockings
so they could be recycled
for war purposes.
Sure, it's a sacrifice.
Give away your best pots, you know.
But it's war. You just did it.
No pots…
[audience laughs]
…no pans. When I was your age,
I had to grill the cheese on the sidewalk…
all to defeat Hitler.
And now there's a new threat
to our freedom, COVID-19.
It has stolen our freedom
to send our kids to school,
to exhale in a Starbucks,
to kiss the chef on the lips
after a delicious meal.
Oh, Carmine…
your eggplant rollatini moves me.
And so once again, to protect freedom,
Americans must rise up together,
making the individual sacrifices
like wearing a mask
to preserve the greater good of this land
that God has granted…
I won't be wearing my mask.
[audience laughs]
I'm-- I'm s--
I'm sorry. Patriot says what?
I won't wear a mask.
Why?
I need you to tell me, how do I play
a saxophone and sing with a mask on?
I'll let you think about that.
[audience laughs]
[audience cheers, applauds]
Oh, yeah, I can see how that's, uh--
It's not gonna--
It's not gonna work. Oh, wait.
[saxophone playing]
[high-pitched notes playing]
[saxophone continues playing]
[audience cheers, applauds]
Yeah, I'm one of the few saxophonists
who does it without the keys.
It's all with the tongue and the airflow.
I don't even need to…
[imitates pressing keys]
…I just-- [grunts]
So freedom isn't free.
But apparently,
wearing a mask is too steep a price.
They want to haggle a little bit.
Well, that's all right.
We have a vaccine whose efficacy
will also preserve the foundation
of this great nation.
So as George Washington did
with smallpox, so shall we…
I will not be taking the vaccine.
I won't get myself vaccinated.
Yeah, I don't--
I'm not gonna get the COVID vaccine.
[shouts] What the fuck?
I thought we all agreed just a second ago
that freedom isn't free,
and patriots sacrifice
to preserve that freedom.
So, why not?
Uh, I'm an American.
I have the freedom to decide
if I'm gonna take a vaccine or not.
Freedom to choose.
'Cause I believe in freedom.
And forcing people to wear ma--
Uh, take vaccines is against freedom.
I think you were evicted
from your apartment as well.
I don't know if you saw the…
[sighs] All right.
So you won't do it for freedom
because your freedom… [sighs]
This country is great
because we have freedom.
But I warn you, freedom isn't free.
It requires sacrifice,
which I don't have to make
because of the freedom you sacrif--
Fuck!
[audience laughs]
These people's flag should be
a Gadsden snake sucking its own dick.
Well…
By the way, I do not know
if that is biologically accurate.
That's the kind of thing
that really wets my reed.
More saxophone humor.
And thus the problem with freedom.
Individual freedom requires
collective action.
And a collective is a group.
But if every sacrifice for the group
is viewed as oppression,
then we lose the ability
to preserve your individual freedom.
So I ask you again.
Masks? Vaccines?
Please?
The Hitler of the Golden State,
Gavin Newsom, gives the orders.
Wear a mask, stay inside, don't travel…
Socialist Democrat gestapo
going door-to-door, house by house,
uh, trying to stick syringes
in people's arms.
You're forcing people to wear masks?
They were forced to wear a star.
Using a Sharpie to brand students
with a number
to distinguish the unvaccinated
from the vaccinated.
A prom should never inspire images
in my mind of Auschwitz.
[audience laughs]
Agreed.
Auschwitz is a terrible prom theme.
Ah, a Kristallnacht to remember.
But I see the problem.
You think the government taking
public safety measures to combat COVID
is like Hitler.
And we think COVID is like Hitler.
And so, it looks like we got ourselves
a good old-fashioned Hitler-off!
So once and for all, let's find out…
what's more Hitler?
I-- No, wait.
I believe you were supposed
to chant that with me,
so we're gonna try that again.
[all] What's more Hitler?
Do you-- By the way,
do you think that's how Hitler started?
[audience laughs]
[in German accent] Oh, they really like
chanting the name "Hitler."
[normal voice, chuckling]
All right. Here's how--
Shit's getting dark fast, isn't it?
Here's how it's gonna go.
You got your Hitler on the left there,
and then you got your COVID
and your COVID prevention methods.
Which one will resemble Hitler more?
First up, let's deal with body count.
COVID's killed nearly five million people.
Masks?
Nobody.
Vaccines?
I don't know. Three?
Let's say a hundred. You know what?
I'll spot you a thousand.
Clearly, on the issue of body count,
COVID is the Hitler on this one.
Point for COVID!
All right.
Let's go to territorial ambition.
Hitler had tremendous
territorial ambition.
COVID is fucking everywhere.
Masks and vaccines
have barely made it to Florida.
Point, COVID.
COVID'S making it a runaway.
All right, here's one.
This is a little bit more fanciful.
Time machine.
They always ask,
"If you had a time machine,
would you go back in time,
and would you kill baby Hitler?"
And everybody's like,
"I don't know if I could kill a baby."
And I'm always like,
"Oh, I think I'm probably strong enough
to do that. I think…"
I'm not super strong,
but I could probably do that.
So… [chuckles]
[audience laughs]
I wouldn't…
but I could.
[chuckling] So…
That wasn't-- That wasn't right.
So if you could go back in time,
would you kill COVID?
-[woman in audience] Yes.
-[all] Yes!
Where would you go to kill it,
the wet market or the laboratory?
Oops, I stepped in it again.
What have I done? Hmm?
Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm?
And I'll tell you this. I would definitely
fucking kill COVID as a baby.
Now, would you, however,
kill the immunosuppressed deli owner,
who has made you put on a mask
for 30 seconds to get a bagel,
when he was a baby?
I don't think you would.
Point, COVID, for the time machine.
Finally, propaganda. Now, I'll admit…
COVID does not have a Riefenstahl-esque
team burnishing its image.
But COVID prevention doesn't really have
any chilling propaganda videos either.
Imagine there's no heaven ♪
[audience laughs]
Point, COVID prevention. Um…
But I don't have to imagine,
I'm living it.
Better propaganda videos?
All right, that goes there.
But clearly,
on the important measure, deaths,
COVID's more Hitler.
And so we find ourselves
in an absurd place,
where minor sacrifices to preserve freedom
now lead to violent backlash,
'cause they think it's leading to Hitler.
You got militias, in the name of freedom,
storming representative governments,
because those individuals were asked
to wear a mask.
And the absurdity doesn't stop
at masks and vaccines.
We're in a world where proud patriots
beat a cop with an American flag
to overturn a democratic election
in the name of freedom.
Is our democracy robust enough
to withstand a freedom without definition,
or a fear of a future Hitler that won't
allow us to take even minor steps
to stop a current slaughter?
I guess we'll find out
on next week's episode of…
[all] What's More Hitler?
We'll be right back.
[audience cheers, applauds]
Oh! [chuckles] Hello.
I hear wearing a mask
has made you oppressed.
[lively piano music plays]
You might be new to being oppressed.
Well, I have some advice to help you out.
Tip one.
[shouting]
Have y'all lost your goddamn minds?
Shut the fuck up.
Shut the fuck up.
Black people have been dealing
with oppression for 400 years.
And y'all couldn't last ten months.
They picked cotton.
You just have to wear it.
We're trying to sell you a mask,
not sell you.
You stupid motherfuckers,
you're not enslaved,
you're uncomfortable.
And I'm so sorry, assholes.
-[plays piano]
-You are not oppressed ♪
You better put that shit to rest, yeah?
-[piano music fades, stops]
-[audience cheers, applauds]
Freedom and democracy have been declining
around the world for 15 years in a row.
75% of people on Earth live in countries
where freedom is declining.
The United States has seen
a dramatic decline
in political rights and civil liberties
over the past ten years.
That's something that's accelerated
during the past four years.
Specifically, we saw declines
due to mass arrests and violence
against journalists at protests,
the dismissal of inspectors general,
as well as a general lack of transparency
around COVID-19 prevention
and the treatment of immigrants
and asylum seekers.
More countries are now trending
authoritarian than democratic,
and by the largest margin
that we've ever recorded.
Leaders like Orbán, Trump,
Duda, and even Putin,
were democratically elected at first,
and then don't wanna risk losing power
in the next election.
So they use division and fear tactics
to convince their people into giving up
more and more of their political rights
and civil liberties.
I left the country almost 11 years ago
when Viktor Orbán came to power
and decided to get rid of
the election committee,
including myself.
They dismantled many guarantees
of fundamental rights,
independent judiciary,
independent constitutional courts.
So this is not just changing
a constitutional system.
It's changing the entire society.
There's a slow erosion
of the principles of democracy.
The essence of democracy
is someone has to be willing to lose.
And if you look around the world today,
most democracies fall
not because of violent coups,
but at the ballot box.
[audience cheers]
Hey. Welcome back.
So, uh, so far, we're talking
about sacrifices, masks, Hitler,
freedom, the breakdown of democracy.
Uh, we have with us some folks
who have suffered the consequences
of when it all erodes.
Bassem Youssef was
a incredibly popular political comedian
and TV host in Egypt
forced to flee the country
after facing multiple threats
from the government.
Francisco Marquez
is a Venezuelan lawyer and activist
who spent time as a political prisoner
in Venezuela,
and has now been exiled
to the United States.
And Maria Ressa is a journalist
in the Philippines
currently facing multiple charges,
uh, that could put her in jail
for a very, very long time.
She's found guilty of one charge already,
and that verdict has been called
"one of the largest setbacks to democracy
ever in the Philippines."
She joins us from Manila,
uh, because she is not allowed presently
to leave that country.
Uh, thank you, guys,
so much for joining us.
Uh, Maria, I want to get to you first
because who knows
when they cut the feed off.
Uh, Maria,
you are currently in the Philippines,
and you are up against terrible charges.
Tell us your situation right now.
Well, first of all,
thank you for having me.
And you are absolutely hilarious.
Uh, first--
I guess in the last two years--
in less than two years,
the Philippine government has filed
ten arrest warrants against me.
The company I cofounded in 2012, Rappler,
has nine charges, so I have one more.
Um, I was convicted, as you said,
last year, uh, for cyber-libel
for a crime that didn't exist
when I allegedly committed it.
But you look in the context
of the Philippines,
uh, in 2016, Rappler stood up against
a brutal drug war
that human rights activists say
has killed tens of thousands of people
now in the last five years.
And, uh, we also exposed social media.
And the Philippines,
for the sixth year in a row--
We spend the most time online
and on social media globally.
In 2016, we tried to stop the impunity
of Duterte and Mark Zuckerberg,
and we have, so far, failed in both.
But we keep going!
Duterte is the one
who has brought the charges against you.
And what do you fa-- If you are convicted,
what do you face?
The rest of my life in jail, you know.
And-- And again,
we come to an existential moment,
just like you did
in your November elections.
President Duterte has one six-year term.
We have presidential elections
May next year.
If no guard rails are put in place
on those American social media companies,
then there's no way
we will have integrity of elections.
And there's no way I can see
as much attention being put on elections
outside the United States
as you guys put on the US elections.
And you barely squeak through.
And look at January 6th, right?
That wasn't a surprise.
The new propaganda
is a behavior modification system.
A lie told a million times becomes a fact.
And I think we all, sort of,
view social media as perhaps an annoyance
but still somewhat innocuous.
But I think you're saying,
"Man, the real world consequences of it."
Now, uh, Francisco,
you're coming from Venezuela.
Venezuela is, for the American right,
you're the model of where we're going
if we end up with, like,
a national health care.
So, you're the--
You're the government that we point to
to say, "Hey, man,
you don't wanna be Venezuela."
It's not socialism.
It's a dictatorship of Maduro.
It's not about the form
of government they have,
it's the way they're exercising it. Yes?
I mean, they're self-professed socialists,
-but there's more to it than that.
-Mm-hmm.
You know, there's Maduro who is--
Just today, came out a report on the UN
saying that he committed crimes
against humanity.
He's one of the few dictators
who is currently under investigation
in the International Criminal Court.
And just to explain,
crimes against humanity only occurs
when there's wide
and systematic persecution
and human rights violations.
So it's not just one person.
We're talking about thousands of people.
Uh, my case,
I was in prison for four months,
-but I'm only one out of thousands.
-And you were imprisoned for?
I helped organize a petition drive--
Just to get signatures, basically,
to do a recall election on Maduro.
In the process of doing that,
uh, I was put in prison.
Uh, you know, there were weeks at a time
that I couldn't see sunlight,
uh, had limited access to food or--
or even visitation.
Uh, you know, another person was
tortured in front of me for 30 minutes
just to send me a message.
And I still remember till this day,
the director of the prison,
he said, "Make sure that when you get out,
you say all the horrible things
that you lived through and that you saw
because that will give me good creds
with the people up top."
It's about intimidation.
And Maria's case, in the same way,
they're making an example of somebody
in the hopes that they can tamp down
the entire population.
Although, to be fair, you did try
and get people to sign a petition.
-[audience chuckles]
-Big crime.
-Big crime.
-[chuckles] How did you get out?
Uh-- I was lucky enough
that I was a dual citizen of the US…
-Okay.
-…and the government got involved.
There was also
a big international campaign to free--
done by my family
and other political people.
But I was fortunate.
I'm fortunate enough here
to be able to tell this story
so people understand what's going on
in Venezuela.
[Stewart] Bassem,
your case is a little bit different.
Bassem is a very old friend of mine.
Uh, Bassem was the biggest thing in Egypt.
Come on.
-[audience cheers, applauds]
-Don't-- Bassem!
-Ah, yeah.
-It was the--
-Pyramids and Bassem. Pyramids and Bassem.
-[audience member shouts]
[audience member shouts]
And I was fortunate enough
to come to Cairo and do your show
right before the overthrow of Morsi.
And it really--
Just a wonderful, safe environment.
-[audience laughs]
-The, um…
But tell a little bit about your story,
because you were a hero
when Mubarak and Morsi were in charge.
[stammers] When the Muslim Brotherhood--
And then I was kind of like
the national hero.
I was the one
who stood against the Islamists
and then the military came in,
and kind of like--
I turned from a national hero into a--
the number-one enemy of state.
Uh, and people who were pro-military,
which is very popular,
they kind of didn't like my jokes.
And it's kind of like-- It was a very
hard lesson for me to understand
-that when it comes to satire…
-Mm-hmm.
…authoritarian figures
are pretty much thin-skinned.
You know, I wanna borrow your, uh,
the title of your show,
which is The Problem with…
The problem with freedom is that,
more often than not,
people who call for freedom,
they actually call for
a tailor-made version
that actually works for them
with a total disregard
of other people's freedom.
They use freedom
as a cudgel to get what they want.
-Yeah.
-Right.
Uh, you know, whether it's just like
a right-wing here that's saying, like,
"Oh, we-- we like freedom,
but not women's freedom
to have her own choice over her body."
-[Stewart] Right.
-Or back in Egypt.
No, so in the Middle East in general,
in Muslim countries, it's like,
"Oh, my God.
You're banning burkas and hijabs."
But they have absolutely no regard
for women who want to take off their hijab
in the Muslim countries, right?
So this is kind of the hypocrisy.
It's like,
"The freedom that works for me." You know?
Right.
And it was interesting too, because…
And I'm looking at, for Americans,
if this were the Three Bears
and Goldilocks,
you know, "That's too military."
"That's too socialist."
-Philippines is just right.
-[Youssef] Yeah.
-[audience chuckles]
-Duterte really is--
He's a model, I think,
of an authoritarian figure in the West.
He was democratically elected.
He's probably still very popular
in the Philippines.
And what he's done is,
he's consolidated what you would think
are the democratic guard rails,
and he's taken them over.
And does that make removing him
democratically an impossibility?
How can you actually have integrity
of elections
if your information ecosystem pushes lies,
laced with anger and hate,
faster and further than facts, one.
When your truth tellers, your journalists,
your human rights activists
are being jailed, killed, or,
well, like you, intimidated to silence.
Although I guess I'm not silent yet.
Um, and then the third one is,
you know, you have to lift
that environment of violence and fear
both in the real world
and in the virtual world
so that people will even
stick their necks out to actually vote.
There are always consequences
to standing up.
That's an incredible point
about information.
And it, in some ways,
goes back to what you were saying.
Freedom, right? We all look at it as,
"Well, I get to say what I want."
But if you were on the other side saying,
"This is misinformation,
and it's polluting our democracy,"
how do you censor that
or how do you manage that
or use any kind of editorial authority
on that
without being seen
as somewhat autocratic in your own right?
-Who makes the decision?
-Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, it's like,
"Who draws the lines?"
And, "How far is the line?"
And, "Who decides about the line?"
-Right.
-You had an election,
and people kind of like didn't accept it,
and went and wanted to take things
in their own hand.
But what happened in January 6th--
I mean, the worst thing
that happened on there is the comparisons.
Like people, like the pundit
on the news, were saying,
"Oh, my God. This looks like
a coup from the Middle East."
And this kind of hurt my feeling,
because--
-[laughing]
-No, seriously.
You know-- [stammers]
Like, first of all, first of all,
when we have a coup in the Middle East,
it works.
-[Stewart laughing]
-[audience laughing]
-You guys suck.
-[applause]
-You guys--
-We're new. This is new.
-You are--
-We're trying.
Keep-- Keep to what you do best,
toppling democracy in the other countries.
-But, like, when you come to your country…
-Son of a bitch.
-…you suck.
-[applause continues]
And the thing is, every time it's like,
"Oh, coup in the Middle East."
"Oh, white Isis."
"Uh, Texas Taliban."
Get your own references.
I mean, it's-- Why are we being dragged
into this every time?
You know we're hyperbolic.
That's who we are.
You think I have you guys on here
because I wanna know
what your lives are like?
-I wanna know what's gonna happen to us.
-[giggles]
You're the canaries in the coal mine.
I just wanna find out
what the fuck's gonna happen to us.
We're gonna take a break.
We're gonna come back.
We're gonna talk about
the democratic guard rails
that keep a democracy
from dissolving into dictatorship
and chaos.
We'll be right back.
[audience applauds, cheers]
Maria!
[Brinda] There are people who are saying
they've never been so worried about
American democracy than in this moment.
The ultimate problem may be, like,
it's fucking messier than an autocrat.
And it's kind of--
Look, if there was someone
who agreed with me on everything,
and, like, used executive action to do it.
-[Reza] Yeah.
-I'm sure I'd be like, "You go, boy."
[all laughing]
Everybody wants to ban shit
that they don't agree with.
-Yep.
-And how do you square that?
-Good night.
-[all laughing]
[applause]
Uh, welcome back.
We're speaking with Bassem Youssef,
Francisco Marquez and Maria Ressa.
Guys, I wanna-- Let's connect some dots.
We start out-- We're just talking about
sort of something simple,
which is a population being asked
to take some simple measures
like wearing a mask or getting a vaccine
to stem a virus
that's killing so many people
so that we can all get back to, uh,
a more free life.
But we really are on--
Which slippery slope are we on?
And how close are we
to this kind of autocracy
that you all speak about?
And are Americans
hyperventilating needlessly?
I understand that people are scared
and worried about
where this is going to go,
is it gonna get worse?
I mean, so far--
I mean, America has proven
it's still a good democracy.
It still works. You still have elections.
You can have the power
to change people you don't like.
But the problem is, I think--
If there's ever--
I hope not because I live here now.
-Uh, if there's ever--
-[chuckles]
Like, the death of democracy
and everything.
The death of democracy in America could
only be summarized in one word: money.
Look, it is about power and money
all across the board.
Power and money.
So think of-- The phases are this, right?
Someone seeds a metanarrative
that is kind of half-true,
it infects, it becomes a virus of lies
and infects real people,
then those real people spread it.
That is a diseased system,
and that is what we're living in.
Our dystopia is your dystopia.
Frankly, partly your creation.
-It's like we're fighting two pandemics.
-[audience applauds]
And two viral things.
It's interesting, I originally said,
"Oh, this is like
the fable of the Three Bears."
It's really Scarface.
It's about-- It's first you get the money,
then you get the power.
And January 6,
the people who went to Capitol Hill,
they're not gonna change
what they think overnight.
They're not going--
It's gonna take years
because it plays to their cognitive bias.
We keep bringing up January 6
as though that's the seminal moment,
and in my mind, it's really not.
-It was the TV show moment.
-Mm-hmm.
But I think what's more dangerous
is what's happening afterwards.
You know, Trump is targeting states
that have Republican legislatures.
And in some ways,
he's like a white hat hacker.
He exposed
where the democracies are vulnerable.
"Oh, there's certain areas of elections
that are generally--
They're held by partisans,
but they're generally administrative.
And if I replace them with idealogues
and the country is so closely divided
that it all comes down to these states,
I've just removed any margin of error
from having to win an election."
I don't think this country's--
The danger isn't necessarily dictatorship,
it's permanent minority rule.
This is the challenge that we have.
And look, I mean, Duterte was Trump
before Trump was Trump.
Right? [chuckles] And--
When Trump was elected
in the United States,
the diplomatic community here was going,
"Why are they so similar?"
And part of the reason
they're so similar is
because of the way they communicate,
the "us" against "them."
The way they use the digital landscape.
So this is what we're battling.
Um, Venezuela, though,
is still a bit different
because Egypt and the Philippines
are still working on
sort of a strange alt-world democracy
as its foundation.
Venezuela looks much more like
when we mythologize a dictatorship.
If Duterte and Sisi were up for election,
I think they would
probably win the popular vote.
I don't think Maduro would.
No, Maduro is completely rejected
by the majority of the people.
And I would like to signal-- We were
talking about slow erosion of democracy.
You know,
Venezuela wasn't always a dictatorship.
We were the beacon of democracy
for 40-50 years in South America.
And look at Venezuela
because of that dictatorship,
six million Venezuelans have fled
in the last five years.
We are the largest refugee crisis
in the history of the western hemisphere.
We're only after Syria worldwide,
and we don't have a decade-long war.
All we have is a dictatorship
that through his policy
has created hunger, inequality.
This supposedly "socialist" dictatorship
who really just targets the people.
So that's one of the things I think is
very dangerous about losing democracy,
that there are real-life consequences
and sometimes people sort of
lose that insight in the day-to-day.
There's a large swath
that views the default setting on America,
the factory setting as
white, male and Christian.
They're not oppressed,
but any erosion of their absolute power
feels like persecution.
And you guys are experiencing
real persecution.
And how do you tell somebody,
a persecution or a victimhood
that they feel
that's not based on anything foundational?
That's the whole thing
about irrational fear
and that's why people,
for example, in the Middle East
would kind of choose the strong man
because they feel threatened.
We don't like to be like
what's happening in Syria.
We don't like to have this thing
that's happening in Iraq.
So the alternative is so bloody.
So here they will come to you about,
like, issues that are very vague.
Identity, your religion, patriotism,
America, freedom.
Things, like, big ideas that--
It's just like, these are all abstracts.
The thing is you rile those people,
making them think all the time
that they are threatened,
that their identity, whatever that means,
is gonna be taken away from them.
Their freedom, whatever the definition
of that, is gonna be taken away from them.
Right.
When you put people
under that kind of constant fear,
people will always choose security
over everything else.
What's the cudgel that somebody like
Maduro would use in Venezuela?
The typical, you know, oligarchs,
traitors. That's a type of, like, epithet.
One thing about dictators,
they do two things.
They always have these colorful epithets
about their opponents.
Uh, you know,
you see it here in the US as well.
Sleepy Joe.
-However you wanna characterize it.
-[Stewart] Right.
And another thing
that is just very worrisome is that
they have this really great way of
telling people that, "I'm your avenger."
Whether it's drain the swamp
or it's going against corrupt individuals.
And that's how Chávez got in power.
And Maduro,
right now his greatest thing is
it's against the US,
anti-imperialist, or whatever,
but it's all BS at the end of the day.
Right. And do you think at some point,
their ability to wield that is being
watched by all these other countries?
Philippines is a test kitchen
for so many other wannabe autocrats.
Would you say that's true, Maria?
So it is death by a thousand cuts of
our identity, I think, more than anything.
And if-- What this has shown globally,
is that the technology
that has been allowed to manipulate us
is actually showing how much more
we have in common as human beings,
because the very same technology
in use in the United States
is what is being used to manipulate us
in the Philippines.
And it's very simple, huh?
You know, like, just one algorithmic
choice of recommending friends of friends
to grow your social media platform.
In the Philippines, we watch Duterte,
if you're pro-Duterte in 2016,
you would move further right.
So you can substitute Trump here.
If you're anti-Duterte,
you would move further left.
That's 2016, 2017, 2018.
You know, and the chasm grows.
That's on societal level,
but individual level, your beliefs,
it's like, um, Inception.
Leonardo DiCaprio's Inception,
that movie, right?
If you remember that?
They go into the dreamworld--
I still don't understand it, Maria,
so you're gonna have to go back
and explain Inception to me
'cause I've seen it, like, five times
and as far as I'm concerned,
it's just a movie
about buildings that fold.
-I don't know.
-[audience laughs]
-[chuckles] But you know how they--
-Here's the glimmer of hope.
Go.
If they're able to engineer something
to a negative effect,
then it has to be able
to be reverse engineered.
And that gets us, I think,
to the final part of this, which is,
what are the guardrails
that you thought were the most vulnerable,
and the ones that seemed
most necessary to reinforce?
Uh, here in America, it's a civil society.
People who really believe
in liberal values.
The problem with people here who vote,
usually Democratic or whatever,
they are a little bit demotivated
to go and vote.
They think it's in the bag.
They have to be sold 100%
on their candidate.
-We're complacent.
-Yeah, very.
But the thing, on the other side,
they will go every single time.
They don't care about who represents them.
I think democracy dies with apathy.
The active participation of citizens.
In Venezuela, we were at our best
when we had millions of people mobilized
on the streets, demanding their rights.
And I think the biggest challenge
is to sustain that.
You, Jon, you've had experiences with this
in different causes,
I remember your march,
I think it was against insanity
or something along those lines.
Yeah, we won.
-[chuckles] Well, for me--
-[Youssef laughs]
-Everything's worked out pretty good.
-It's a great example.
In that single moment, you mobilized
hundreds of thousands of people.
-Right.
-At the end of the day…
-Yeah, to get high in a field. I mean…
-Well, yeah.
But-- Exactly. So how do you sustain that
so people understand that
being present makes a difference,
it actually creates an impact,
when the other things--
It's energy at the local level.
That's what I learned in the 9/11 fight.
It's energy at the local level.
Maria, I'm gonna give you the last word.
Uh, you know, in your mind,
how do you turn this thing around
and what's the most important thing
to protect?
To revive democracy, right?
To fight this
death by a thousand cuts of democracy,
to pull the terrorists' line.
We have three pillars,
and this is active for us.
Technology.
Put guardrails around the technology.
Please, please, please,
you in the-- you have that power.
The second is journalism.
Support independent journalism, right?
Fight for the facts.
And third, community.
Community is incredibly important.
Um, the facts will help a community
become civic engagement.
This-- These are
the lifeblood of democracy.
So, that's what we're fighting for
in the Philippines.
Those are Rappler's three pillars,
and we need them all.
Community has helped us stay alive
in this five-year, forever-long battle,
and I hope to see the dawn, you know?
I'm optimistic.
Maria, you know,
if there is anything that can be done
for your cause and the personal cause
of not having to go to jail,
please let us know
because it seems to me that sometimes
when you shine a light on something,
even a dictator doesn't want the hassle.
And as we saw in your case
and maybe yours,
maybe you can't get everybody,
but if you chip away at it,
you can save a few more people.
Uh, thank you--
That's exactly how we stay alive.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Maria.
Bassem, love you, baby.
Francisco.
We'll be right back after this. Thank you.
-[audience cheers, applauds]
-Uh, boy, that was great.
[audience laughing]
[imitates bass playing]
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Uh, coming up next, the show where, uh,
no one can tell Jason Momoa's hot.
They're blind, and he's hot,
but no one knows,
except one guy,
and then they throw spears.
[audience laughs]
I love it.
To support tonight's guests
and their fight to preserve democracies,
please check out these resources.
And if you wanna continue
this conversation, check out our podcast.
It's, uh, sort of like
if someone read you a blog.
That's our kind of podcast.
We'll see you next time. Thanks.
Against my better judgment,
I've been following the rules
the government says, "Put on a mask,"
I got called a sheep in the street.
Do you take off to show
you are an independent, free American
-or do you keep it on?
-No.
This is in March of 2020.
I'm terrified of the virus.
It's so interesting seeing people
who are having, like, these major fights
on planes, like, on flights,
but 30 minutes before, if you just rewind,
how many freedoms you actually
had to give up just to get on a plane.
You have to perform
a voluntary robbery on yourself
-just to get on the plane.
-That! That!
You have to rob yourself.
They have a scan of your inner organs
and you're like, "Go for it."
"I'm not wearing a mask 'cause of freedom
and, yes, it is three ounces."
[all laughing]
'cause they think it's freer.
-[Stewart] It is freer.
-Right?
And so my family, you know,
fine, we were leaving India,
which is a democracy,
but still, when we came here,
you were looking for a better life.
No joke, last time I was in Iran,
I was in a café with my cousins
and I was being the loud fuck I am here,
and everyone was looking at me,
and my cousin's like, "Keep it down,
because those army guys walking over,
that's for you being loud."
Like they'll just--
You can't even talk loudly there without…
[Brinda] Oh, fuck.
-Terrible house parties.
-[laughing]
Can I tell you something?
Great house parties.
Just that's the only thing.
All in the basement.
-[Reza] Absolutely.
-It's all like this.
Piety on the street…
Party in the freaking basement.
And that's so true.
Yeah, that was my Tinder bio too.
[all laughing]
[audience cheering]
Hello, everybody! Welcome.
Good evening.
I am what remains of Jon Stewart.
Welcome…
[audience chuckles, cheers]
…to my humble home.
[singsongy]
They're excited to see live television.
Tonight we're gonna talk about America.
'Merica, land of boundless opportunity,
where the rights are inalienable,
buffets are all-you-can-eat.
A land so great
people escape their own countries
to come to a place
where people pay to escape a room.
[audience laughs]
Why don't you just fucking leave?
Why don't you just leave the room?
But one American treasure
towers above all others,
our most precious resource of them all,
freedom.
Freedom flows in American veins.
-Freedom.
-Freedom.
-Freedom!
-Freedom!
-Freedom!
-Freedom!
Freedom!
[audience laughs]
That last gentlemen seems very likable.
[chuckles]
But, you know,
freedom isn't just our greatest gift.
[woman] Freedom is delicious.
[man 1] Cars and freedom.
[man 2] Join your friends
for our Freedom Polka Cruise 2022.
By the way, "Freedom Polka Cruise"
was actually Ted Cruz's birth name.
He changed it.
Freedom is America's best trait.
It is smoked meat in a muscle car
on a cruise ship.
So, is there a catch?
Freedom is not free.
Oh, right.
It's not free.
Preserving freedom often takes
courage and sacrifice.
Or have you not spoken
to your grandparents lately?
They are known today
as America's greatest generation.
We had one purpose,
and that was to win the war.
Whether it was the rationing
of meat or gasoline,
or, uh, cigarettes or alcohol,
or whatever.
Women were asked
to give up their silk stockings
so they could be recycled
for war purposes.
Sure, it's a sacrifice.
Give away your best pots, you know.
But it's war. You just did it.
No pots…
[audience laughs]
…no pans. When I was your age,
I had to grill the cheese on the sidewalk…
all to defeat Hitler.
And now there's a new threat
to our freedom, COVID-19.
It has stolen our freedom
to send our kids to school,
to exhale in a Starbucks,
to kiss the chef on the lips
after a delicious meal.
Oh, Carmine…
your eggplant rollatini moves me.
And so once again, to protect freedom,
Americans must rise up together,
making the individual sacrifices
like wearing a mask
to preserve the greater good of this land
that God has granted…
I won't be wearing my mask.
[audience laughs]
I'm-- I'm s--
I'm sorry. Patriot says what?
I won't wear a mask.
Why?
I need you to tell me, how do I play
a saxophone and sing with a mask on?
I'll let you think about that.
[audience laughs]
[audience cheers, applauds]
Oh, yeah, I can see how that's, uh--
It's not gonna--
It's not gonna work. Oh, wait.
[saxophone playing]
[high-pitched notes playing]
[saxophone continues playing]
[audience cheers, applauds]
Yeah, I'm one of the few saxophonists
who does it without the keys.
It's all with the tongue and the airflow.
I don't even need to…
[imitates pressing keys]
…I just-- [grunts]
So freedom isn't free.
But apparently,
wearing a mask is too steep a price.
They want to haggle a little bit.
Well, that's all right.
We have a vaccine whose efficacy
will also preserve the foundation
of this great nation.
So as George Washington did
with smallpox, so shall we…
I will not be taking the vaccine.
I won't get myself vaccinated.
Yeah, I don't--
I'm not gonna get the COVID vaccine.
[shouts] What the fuck?
I thought we all agreed just a second ago
that freedom isn't free,
and patriots sacrifice
to preserve that freedom.
So, why not?
Uh, I'm an American.
I have the freedom to decide
if I'm gonna take a vaccine or not.
Freedom to choose.
'Cause I believe in freedom.
And forcing people to wear ma--
Uh, take vaccines is against freedom.
I think you were evicted
from your apartment as well.
I don't know if you saw the…
[sighs] All right.
So you won't do it for freedom
because your freedom… [sighs]
This country is great
because we have freedom.
But I warn you, freedom isn't free.
It requires sacrifice,
which I don't have to make
because of the freedom you sacrif--
Fuck!
[audience laughs]
These people's flag should be
a Gadsden snake sucking its own dick.
Well…
By the way, I do not know
if that is biologically accurate.
That's the kind of thing
that really wets my reed.
More saxophone humor.
And thus the problem with freedom.
Individual freedom requires
collective action.
And a collective is a group.
But if every sacrifice for the group
is viewed as oppression,
then we lose the ability
to preserve your individual freedom.
So I ask you again.
Masks? Vaccines?
Please?
The Hitler of the Golden State,
Gavin Newsom, gives the orders.
Wear a mask, stay inside, don't travel…
Socialist Democrat gestapo
going door-to-door, house by house,
uh, trying to stick syringes
in people's arms.
You're forcing people to wear masks?
They were forced to wear a star.
Using a Sharpie to brand students
with a number
to distinguish the unvaccinated
from the vaccinated.
A prom should never inspire images
in my mind of Auschwitz.
[audience laughs]
Agreed.
Auschwitz is a terrible prom theme.
Ah, a Kristallnacht to remember.
But I see the problem.
You think the government taking
public safety measures to combat COVID
is like Hitler.
And we think COVID is like Hitler.
And so, it looks like we got ourselves
a good old-fashioned Hitler-off!
So once and for all, let's find out…
what's more Hitler?
I-- No, wait.
I believe you were supposed
to chant that with me,
so we're gonna try that again.
[all] What's more Hitler?
Do you-- By the way,
do you think that's how Hitler started?
[audience laughs]
[in German accent] Oh, they really like
chanting the name "Hitler."
[normal voice, chuckling]
All right. Here's how--
Shit's getting dark fast, isn't it?
Here's how it's gonna go.
You got your Hitler on the left there,
and then you got your COVID
and your COVID prevention methods.
Which one will resemble Hitler more?
First up, let's deal with body count.
COVID's killed nearly five million people.
Masks?
Nobody.
Vaccines?
I don't know. Three?
Let's say a hundred. You know what?
I'll spot you a thousand.
Clearly, on the issue of body count,
COVID is the Hitler on this one.
Point for COVID!
All right.
Let's go to territorial ambition.
Hitler had tremendous
territorial ambition.
COVID is fucking everywhere.
Masks and vaccines
have barely made it to Florida.
Point, COVID.
COVID'S making it a runaway.
All right, here's one.
This is a little bit more fanciful.
Time machine.
They always ask,
"If you had a time machine,
would you go back in time,
and would you kill baby Hitler?"
And everybody's like,
"I don't know if I could kill a baby."
And I'm always like,
"Oh, I think I'm probably strong enough
to do that. I think…"
I'm not super strong,
but I could probably do that.
So… [chuckles]
[audience laughs]
I wouldn't…
but I could.
[chuckling] So…
That wasn't-- That wasn't right.
So if you could go back in time,
would you kill COVID?
-[woman in audience] Yes.
-[all] Yes!
Where would you go to kill it,
the wet market or the laboratory?
Oops, I stepped in it again.
What have I done? Hmm?
Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? Hmm?
And I'll tell you this. I would definitely
fucking kill COVID as a baby.
Now, would you, however,
kill the immunosuppressed deli owner,
who has made you put on a mask
for 30 seconds to get a bagel,
when he was a baby?
I don't think you would.
Point, COVID, for the time machine.
Finally, propaganda. Now, I'll admit…
COVID does not have a Riefenstahl-esque
team burnishing its image.
But COVID prevention doesn't really have
any chilling propaganda videos either.
Imagine there's no heaven ♪
[audience laughs]
Point, COVID prevention. Um…
But I don't have to imagine,
I'm living it.
Better propaganda videos?
All right, that goes there.
But clearly,
on the important measure, deaths,
COVID's more Hitler.
And so we find ourselves
in an absurd place,
where minor sacrifices to preserve freedom
now lead to violent backlash,
'cause they think it's leading to Hitler.
You got militias, in the name of freedom,
storming representative governments,
because those individuals were asked
to wear a mask.
And the absurdity doesn't stop
at masks and vaccines.
We're in a world where proud patriots
beat a cop with an American flag
to overturn a democratic election
in the name of freedom.
Is our democracy robust enough
to withstand a freedom without definition,
or a fear of a future Hitler that won't
allow us to take even minor steps
to stop a current slaughter?
I guess we'll find out
on next week's episode of…
[all] What's More Hitler?
We'll be right back.
[audience cheers, applauds]
Oh! [chuckles] Hello.
I hear wearing a mask
has made you oppressed.
[lively piano music plays]
You might be new to being oppressed.
Well, I have some advice to help you out.
Tip one.
[shouting]
Have y'all lost your goddamn minds?
Shut the fuck up.
Shut the fuck up.
Black people have been dealing
with oppression for 400 years.
And y'all couldn't last ten months.
They picked cotton.
You just have to wear it.
We're trying to sell you a mask,
not sell you.
You stupid motherfuckers,
you're not enslaved,
you're uncomfortable.
And I'm so sorry, assholes.
-[plays piano]
-You are not oppressed ♪
You better put that shit to rest, yeah?
-[piano music fades, stops]
-[audience cheers, applauds]
Freedom and democracy have been declining
around the world for 15 years in a row.
75% of people on Earth live in countries
where freedom is declining.
The United States has seen
a dramatic decline
in political rights and civil liberties
over the past ten years.
That's something that's accelerated
during the past four years.
Specifically, we saw declines
due to mass arrests and violence
against journalists at protests,
the dismissal of inspectors general,
as well as a general lack of transparency
around COVID-19 prevention
and the treatment of immigrants
and asylum seekers.
More countries are now trending
authoritarian than democratic,
and by the largest margin
that we've ever recorded.
Leaders like Orbán, Trump,
Duda, and even Putin,
were democratically elected at first,
and then don't wanna risk losing power
in the next election.
So they use division and fear tactics
to convince their people into giving up
more and more of their political rights
and civil liberties.
I left the country almost 11 years ago
when Viktor Orbán came to power
and decided to get rid of
the election committee,
including myself.
They dismantled many guarantees
of fundamental rights,
independent judiciary,
independent constitutional courts.
So this is not just changing
a constitutional system.
It's changing the entire society.
There's a slow erosion
of the principles of democracy.
The essence of democracy
is someone has to be willing to lose.
And if you look around the world today,
most democracies fall
not because of violent coups,
but at the ballot box.
[audience cheers]
Hey. Welcome back.
So, uh, so far, we're talking
about sacrifices, masks, Hitler,
freedom, the breakdown of democracy.
Uh, we have with us some folks
who have suffered the consequences
of when it all erodes.
Bassem Youssef was
a incredibly popular political comedian
and TV host in Egypt
forced to flee the country
after facing multiple threats
from the government.
Francisco Marquez
is a Venezuelan lawyer and activist
who spent time as a political prisoner
in Venezuela,
and has now been exiled
to the United States.
And Maria Ressa is a journalist
in the Philippines
currently facing multiple charges,
uh, that could put her in jail
for a very, very long time.
She's found guilty of one charge already,
and that verdict has been called
"one of the largest setbacks to democracy
ever in the Philippines."
She joins us from Manila,
uh, because she is not allowed presently
to leave that country.
Uh, thank you, guys,
so much for joining us.
Uh, Maria, I want to get to you first
because who knows
when they cut the feed off.
Uh, Maria,
you are currently in the Philippines,
and you are up against terrible charges.
Tell us your situation right now.
Well, first of all,
thank you for having me.
And you are absolutely hilarious.
Uh, first--
I guess in the last two years--
in less than two years,
the Philippine government has filed
ten arrest warrants against me.
The company I cofounded in 2012, Rappler,
has nine charges, so I have one more.
Um, I was convicted, as you said,
last year, uh, for cyber-libel
for a crime that didn't exist
when I allegedly committed it.
But you look in the context
of the Philippines,
uh, in 2016, Rappler stood up against
a brutal drug war
that human rights activists say
has killed tens of thousands of people
now in the last five years.
And, uh, we also exposed social media.
And the Philippines,
for the sixth year in a row--
We spend the most time online
and on social media globally.
In 2016, we tried to stop the impunity
of Duterte and Mark Zuckerberg,
and we have, so far, failed in both.
But we keep going!
Duterte is the one
who has brought the charges against you.
And what do you fa-- If you are convicted,
what do you face?
The rest of my life in jail, you know.
And-- And again,
we come to an existential moment,
just like you did
in your November elections.
President Duterte has one six-year term.
We have presidential elections
May next year.
If no guard rails are put in place
on those American social media companies,
then there's no way
we will have integrity of elections.
And there's no way I can see
as much attention being put on elections
outside the United States
as you guys put on the US elections.
And you barely squeak through.
And look at January 6th, right?
That wasn't a surprise.
The new propaganda
is a behavior modification system.
A lie told a million times becomes a fact.
And I think we all, sort of,
view social media as perhaps an annoyance
but still somewhat innocuous.
But I think you're saying,
"Man, the real world consequences of it."
Now, uh, Francisco,
you're coming from Venezuela.
Venezuela is, for the American right,
you're the model of where we're going
if we end up with, like,
a national health care.
So, you're the--
You're the government that we point to
to say, "Hey, man,
you don't wanna be Venezuela."
It's not socialism.
It's a dictatorship of Maduro.
It's not about the form
of government they have,
it's the way they're exercising it. Yes?
I mean, they're self-professed socialists,
-but there's more to it than that.
-Mm-hmm.
You know, there's Maduro who is--
Just today, came out a report on the UN
saying that he committed crimes
against humanity.
He's one of the few dictators
who is currently under investigation
in the International Criminal Court.
And just to explain,
crimes against humanity only occurs
when there's wide
and systematic persecution
and human rights violations.
So it's not just one person.
We're talking about thousands of people.
Uh, my case,
I was in prison for four months,
-but I'm only one out of thousands.
-And you were imprisoned for?
I helped organize a petition drive--
Just to get signatures, basically,
to do a recall election on Maduro.
In the process of doing that,
uh, I was put in prison.
Uh, you know, there were weeks at a time
that I couldn't see sunlight,
uh, had limited access to food or--
or even visitation.
Uh, you know, another person was
tortured in front of me for 30 minutes
just to send me a message.
And I still remember till this day,
the director of the prison,
he said, "Make sure that when you get out,
you say all the horrible things
that you lived through and that you saw
because that will give me good creds
with the people up top."
It's about intimidation.
And Maria's case, in the same way,
they're making an example of somebody
in the hopes that they can tamp down
the entire population.
Although, to be fair, you did try
and get people to sign a petition.
-[audience chuckles]
-Big crime.
-Big crime.
-[chuckles] How did you get out?
Uh-- I was lucky enough
that I was a dual citizen of the US…
-Okay.
-…and the government got involved.
There was also
a big international campaign to free--
done by my family
and other political people.
But I was fortunate.
I'm fortunate enough here
to be able to tell this story
so people understand what's going on
in Venezuela.
[Stewart] Bassem,
your case is a little bit different.
Bassem is a very old friend of mine.
Uh, Bassem was the biggest thing in Egypt.
Come on.
-[audience cheers, applauds]
-Don't-- Bassem!
-Ah, yeah.
-It was the--
-Pyramids and Bassem. Pyramids and Bassem.
-[audience member shouts]
[audience member shouts]
And I was fortunate enough
to come to Cairo and do your show
right before the overthrow of Morsi.
And it really--
Just a wonderful, safe environment.
-[audience laughs]
-The, um…
But tell a little bit about your story,
because you were a hero
when Mubarak and Morsi were in charge.
[stammers] When the Muslim Brotherhood--
And then I was kind of like
the national hero.
I was the one
who stood against the Islamists
and then the military came in,
and kind of like--
I turned from a national hero into a--
the number-one enemy of state.
Uh, and people who were pro-military,
which is very popular,
they kind of didn't like my jokes.
And it's kind of like-- It was a very
hard lesson for me to understand
-that when it comes to satire…
-Mm-hmm.
…authoritarian figures
are pretty much thin-skinned.
You know, I wanna borrow your, uh,
the title of your show,
which is The Problem with…
The problem with freedom is that,
more often than not,
people who call for freedom,
they actually call for
a tailor-made version
that actually works for them
with a total disregard
of other people's freedom.
They use freedom
as a cudgel to get what they want.
-Yeah.
-Right.
Uh, you know, whether it's just like
a right-wing here that's saying, like,
"Oh, we-- we like freedom,
but not women's freedom
to have her own choice over her body."
-[Stewart] Right.
-Or back in Egypt.
No, so in the Middle East in general,
in Muslim countries, it's like,
"Oh, my God.
You're banning burkas and hijabs."
But they have absolutely no regard
for women who want to take off their hijab
in the Muslim countries, right?
So this is kind of the hypocrisy.
It's like,
"The freedom that works for me." You know?
Right.
And it was interesting too, because…
And I'm looking at, for Americans,
if this were the Three Bears
and Goldilocks,
you know, "That's too military."
"That's too socialist."
-Philippines is just right.
-[Youssef] Yeah.
-[audience chuckles]
-Duterte really is--
He's a model, I think,
of an authoritarian figure in the West.
He was democratically elected.
He's probably still very popular
in the Philippines.
And what he's done is,
he's consolidated what you would think
are the democratic guard rails,
and he's taken them over.
And does that make removing him
democratically an impossibility?
How can you actually have integrity
of elections
if your information ecosystem pushes lies,
laced with anger and hate,
faster and further than facts, one.
When your truth tellers, your journalists,
your human rights activists
are being jailed, killed, or,
well, like you, intimidated to silence.
Although I guess I'm not silent yet.
Um, and then the third one is,
you know, you have to lift
that environment of violence and fear
both in the real world
and in the virtual world
so that people will even
stick their necks out to actually vote.
There are always consequences
to standing up.
That's an incredible point
about information.
And it, in some ways,
goes back to what you were saying.
Freedom, right? We all look at it as,
"Well, I get to say what I want."
But if you were on the other side saying,
"This is misinformation,
and it's polluting our democracy,"
how do you censor that
or how do you manage that
or use any kind of editorial authority
on that
without being seen
as somewhat autocratic in your own right?
-Who makes the decision?
-Yeah.
Yeah. Uh, it's like,
"Who draws the lines?"
And, "How far is the line?"
And, "Who decides about the line?"
-Right.
-You had an election,
and people kind of like didn't accept it,
and went and wanted to take things
in their own hand.
But what happened in January 6th--
I mean, the worst thing
that happened on there is the comparisons.
Like people, like the pundit
on the news, were saying,
"Oh, my God. This looks like
a coup from the Middle East."
And this kind of hurt my feeling,
because--
-[laughing]
-No, seriously.
You know-- [stammers]
Like, first of all, first of all,
when we have a coup in the Middle East,
it works.
-[Stewart laughing]
-[audience laughing]
-You guys suck.
-[applause]
-You guys--
-We're new. This is new.
-You are--
-We're trying.
Keep-- Keep to what you do best,
toppling democracy in the other countries.
-But, like, when you come to your country…
-Son of a bitch.
-…you suck.
-[applause continues]
And the thing is, every time it's like,
"Oh, coup in the Middle East."
"Oh, white Isis."
"Uh, Texas Taliban."
Get your own references.
I mean, it's-- Why are we being dragged
into this every time?
You know we're hyperbolic.
That's who we are.
You think I have you guys on here
because I wanna know
what your lives are like?
-I wanna know what's gonna happen to us.
-[giggles]
You're the canaries in the coal mine.
I just wanna find out
what the fuck's gonna happen to us.
We're gonna take a break.
We're gonna come back.
We're gonna talk about
the democratic guard rails
that keep a democracy
from dissolving into dictatorship
and chaos.
We'll be right back.
[audience applauds, cheers]
Maria!
[Brinda] There are people who are saying
they've never been so worried about
American democracy than in this moment.
The ultimate problem may be, like,
it's fucking messier than an autocrat.
And it's kind of--
Look, if there was someone
who agreed with me on everything,
and, like, used executive action to do it.
-[Reza] Yeah.
-I'm sure I'd be like, "You go, boy."
[all laughing]
Everybody wants to ban shit
that they don't agree with.
-Yep.
-And how do you square that?
-Good night.
-[all laughing]
[applause]
Uh, welcome back.
We're speaking with Bassem Youssef,
Francisco Marquez and Maria Ressa.
Guys, I wanna-- Let's connect some dots.
We start out-- We're just talking about
sort of something simple,
which is a population being asked
to take some simple measures
like wearing a mask or getting a vaccine
to stem a virus
that's killing so many people
so that we can all get back to, uh,
a more free life.
But we really are on--
Which slippery slope are we on?
And how close are we
to this kind of autocracy
that you all speak about?
And are Americans
hyperventilating needlessly?
I understand that people are scared
and worried about
where this is going to go,
is it gonna get worse?
I mean, so far--
I mean, America has proven
it's still a good democracy.
It still works. You still have elections.
You can have the power
to change people you don't like.
But the problem is, I think--
If there's ever--
I hope not because I live here now.
-Uh, if there's ever--
-[chuckles]
Like, the death of democracy
and everything.
The death of democracy in America could
only be summarized in one word: money.
Look, it is about power and money
all across the board.
Power and money.
So think of-- The phases are this, right?
Someone seeds a metanarrative
that is kind of half-true,
it infects, it becomes a virus of lies
and infects real people,
then those real people spread it.
That is a diseased system,
and that is what we're living in.
Our dystopia is your dystopia.
Frankly, partly your creation.
-It's like we're fighting two pandemics.
-[audience applauds]
And two viral things.
It's interesting, I originally said,
"Oh, this is like
the fable of the Three Bears."
It's really Scarface.
It's about-- It's first you get the money,
then you get the power.
And January 6,
the people who went to Capitol Hill,
they're not gonna change
what they think overnight.
They're not going--
It's gonna take years
because it plays to their cognitive bias.
We keep bringing up January 6
as though that's the seminal moment,
and in my mind, it's really not.
-It was the TV show moment.
-Mm-hmm.
But I think what's more dangerous
is what's happening afterwards.
You know, Trump is targeting states
that have Republican legislatures.
And in some ways,
he's like a white hat hacker.
He exposed
where the democracies are vulnerable.
"Oh, there's certain areas of elections
that are generally--
They're held by partisans,
but they're generally administrative.
And if I replace them with idealogues
and the country is so closely divided
that it all comes down to these states,
I've just removed any margin of error
from having to win an election."
I don't think this country's--
The danger isn't necessarily dictatorship,
it's permanent minority rule.
This is the challenge that we have.
And look, I mean, Duterte was Trump
before Trump was Trump.
Right? [chuckles] And--
When Trump was elected
in the United States,
the diplomatic community here was going,
"Why are they so similar?"
And part of the reason
they're so similar is
because of the way they communicate,
the "us" against "them."
The way they use the digital landscape.
So this is what we're battling.
Um, Venezuela, though,
is still a bit different
because Egypt and the Philippines
are still working on
sort of a strange alt-world democracy
as its foundation.
Venezuela looks much more like
when we mythologize a dictatorship.
If Duterte and Sisi were up for election,
I think they would
probably win the popular vote.
I don't think Maduro would.
No, Maduro is completely rejected
by the majority of the people.
And I would like to signal-- We were
talking about slow erosion of democracy.
You know,
Venezuela wasn't always a dictatorship.
We were the beacon of democracy
for 40-50 years in South America.
And look at Venezuela
because of that dictatorship,
six million Venezuelans have fled
in the last five years.
We are the largest refugee crisis
in the history of the western hemisphere.
We're only after Syria worldwide,
and we don't have a decade-long war.
All we have is a dictatorship
that through his policy
has created hunger, inequality.
This supposedly "socialist" dictatorship
who really just targets the people.
So that's one of the things I think is
very dangerous about losing democracy,
that there are real-life consequences
and sometimes people sort of
lose that insight in the day-to-day.
There's a large swath
that views the default setting on America,
the factory setting as
white, male and Christian.
They're not oppressed,
but any erosion of their absolute power
feels like persecution.
And you guys are experiencing
real persecution.
And how do you tell somebody,
a persecution or a victimhood
that they feel
that's not based on anything foundational?
That's the whole thing
about irrational fear
and that's why people,
for example, in the Middle East
would kind of choose the strong man
because they feel threatened.
We don't like to be like
what's happening in Syria.
We don't like to have this thing
that's happening in Iraq.
So the alternative is so bloody.
So here they will come to you about,
like, issues that are very vague.
Identity, your religion, patriotism,
America, freedom.
Things, like, big ideas that--
It's just like, these are all abstracts.
The thing is you rile those people,
making them think all the time
that they are threatened,
that their identity, whatever that means,
is gonna be taken away from them.
Their freedom, whatever the definition
of that, is gonna be taken away from them.
Right.
When you put people
under that kind of constant fear,
people will always choose security
over everything else.
What's the cudgel that somebody like
Maduro would use in Venezuela?
The typical, you know, oligarchs,
traitors. That's a type of, like, epithet.
One thing about dictators,
they do two things.
They always have these colorful epithets
about their opponents.
Uh, you know,
you see it here in the US as well.
Sleepy Joe.
-However you wanna characterize it.
-[Stewart] Right.
And another thing
that is just very worrisome is that
they have this really great way of
telling people that, "I'm your avenger."
Whether it's drain the swamp
or it's going against corrupt individuals.
And that's how Chávez got in power.
And Maduro,
right now his greatest thing is
it's against the US,
anti-imperialist, or whatever,
but it's all BS at the end of the day.
Right. And do you think at some point,
their ability to wield that is being
watched by all these other countries?
Philippines is a test kitchen
for so many other wannabe autocrats.
Would you say that's true, Maria?
So it is death by a thousand cuts of
our identity, I think, more than anything.
And if-- What this has shown globally,
is that the technology
that has been allowed to manipulate us
is actually showing how much more
we have in common as human beings,
because the very same technology
in use in the United States
is what is being used to manipulate us
in the Philippines.
And it's very simple, huh?
You know, like, just one algorithmic
choice of recommending friends of friends
to grow your social media platform.
In the Philippines, we watch Duterte,
if you're pro-Duterte in 2016,
you would move further right.
So you can substitute Trump here.
If you're anti-Duterte,
you would move further left.
That's 2016, 2017, 2018.
You know, and the chasm grows.
That's on societal level,
but individual level, your beliefs,
it's like, um, Inception.
Leonardo DiCaprio's Inception,
that movie, right?
If you remember that?
They go into the dreamworld--
I still don't understand it, Maria,
so you're gonna have to go back
and explain Inception to me
'cause I've seen it, like, five times
and as far as I'm concerned,
it's just a movie
about buildings that fold.
-I don't know.
-[audience laughs]
-[chuckles] But you know how they--
-Here's the glimmer of hope.
Go.
If they're able to engineer something
to a negative effect,
then it has to be able
to be reverse engineered.
And that gets us, I think,
to the final part of this, which is,
what are the guardrails
that you thought were the most vulnerable,
and the ones that seemed
most necessary to reinforce?
Uh, here in America, it's a civil society.
People who really believe
in liberal values.
The problem with people here who vote,
usually Democratic or whatever,
they are a little bit demotivated
to go and vote.
They think it's in the bag.
They have to be sold 100%
on their candidate.
-We're complacent.
-Yeah, very.
But the thing, on the other side,
they will go every single time.
They don't care about who represents them.
I think democracy dies with apathy.
The active participation of citizens.
In Venezuela, we were at our best
when we had millions of people mobilized
on the streets, demanding their rights.
And I think the biggest challenge
is to sustain that.
You, Jon, you've had experiences with this
in different causes,
I remember your march,
I think it was against insanity
or something along those lines.
Yeah, we won.
-[chuckles] Well, for me--
-[Youssef laughs]
-Everything's worked out pretty good.
-It's a great example.
In that single moment, you mobilized
hundreds of thousands of people.
-Right.
-At the end of the day…
-Yeah, to get high in a field. I mean…
-Well, yeah.
But-- Exactly. So how do you sustain that
so people understand that
being present makes a difference,
it actually creates an impact,
when the other things--
It's energy at the local level.
That's what I learned in the 9/11 fight.
It's energy at the local level.
Maria, I'm gonna give you the last word.
Uh, you know, in your mind,
how do you turn this thing around
and what's the most important thing
to protect?
To revive democracy, right?
To fight this
death by a thousand cuts of democracy,
to pull the terrorists' line.
We have three pillars,
and this is active for us.
Technology.
Put guardrails around the technology.
Please, please, please,
you in the-- you have that power.
The second is journalism.
Support independent journalism, right?
Fight for the facts.
And third, community.
Community is incredibly important.
Um, the facts will help a community
become civic engagement.
This-- These are
the lifeblood of democracy.
So, that's what we're fighting for
in the Philippines.
Those are Rappler's three pillars,
and we need them all.
Community has helped us stay alive
in this five-year, forever-long battle,
and I hope to see the dawn, you know?
I'm optimistic.
Maria, you know,
if there is anything that can be done
for your cause and the personal cause
of not having to go to jail,
please let us know
because it seems to me that sometimes
when you shine a light on something,
even a dictator doesn't want the hassle.
And as we saw in your case
and maybe yours,
maybe you can't get everybody,
but if you chip away at it,
you can save a few more people.
Uh, thank you--
That's exactly how we stay alive.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Maria.
Bassem, love you, baby.
Francisco.
We'll be right back after this. Thank you.
-[audience cheers, applauds]
-Uh, boy, that was great.
[audience laughing]
[imitates bass playing]
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Uh, coming up next, the show where, uh,
no one can tell Jason Momoa's hot.
They're blind, and he's hot,
but no one knows,
except one guy,
and then they throw spears.
[audience laughs]
I love it.
To support tonight's guests
and their fight to preserve democracies,
please check out these resources.
And if you wanna continue
this conversation, check out our podcast.
It's, uh, sort of like
if someone read you a blog.
That's our kind of podcast.
We'll see you next time. Thanks.
Against my better judgment,
I've been following the rules
the government says, "Put on a mask,"
I got called a sheep in the street.
Do you take off to show
you are an independent, free American
-or do you keep it on?
-No.
This is in March of 2020.
I'm terrified of the virus.
It's so interesting seeing people
who are having, like, these major fights
on planes, like, on flights,
but 30 minutes before, if you just rewind,
how many freedoms you actually
had to give up just to get on a plane.
You have to perform
a voluntary robbery on yourself
-just to get on the plane.
-That! That!
You have to rob yourself.
They have a scan of your inner organs
and you're like, "Go for it."
"I'm not wearing a mask 'cause of freedom
and, yes, it is three ounces."
[all laughing]