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!
[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.
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.
-[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]