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"If these originals are no longer available, then
ultimately real research is actually made impossible.

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If I no longer have old books, no old files.

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That opens the door to manipulation."

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Today I welcome to the Kla.TV studio a historian and
Anglicist with a master's in business administration.

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As the author of numerous specialist articles and non-fiction
books on social and cultural history, her book "The Conquest

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of the Old and New World" appeared, among others, in 2024.

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A warm welcome, Dr. Renate Reuther!

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Yes, thank you for the invitation!

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Yes, it's nice that you're here! I already had the
pleasure with your husband. Today we have a history topic.

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Science lives on records, on manuscripts, on books and
other sources, and without them a critical examination

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of history, of any topics at all, is simply not possible.

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Mrs. Reuther, how is access to such sources?

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It is being made increasingly difficult,
especially when one is a free, independent

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journalist or historian or researcher of any kind.

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It starts with very simple things, namely that fees
are charged for every visit, for example to an archive.

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They look very carefully at who actually wants something there,
and as it has been for many hundreds of years, today is not a bit

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different: if the wrong person asks for
things that they don't want to give them, then

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they are simply not there or not available.

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And in order not to make it so conspicuously obvious in detail,
many archives that were stored in the cities, often in the town

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hall or in some old building, also in an old castle, have now
been—supposedly for their own safety, these old holdings of

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old documents—relocated to faraway bunkers, archives, wherever.

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And then you have to register in advance that
you would like to see this or that document.

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And then they drive there once or twice a week, and
then it is brought back, and then you have to be on

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site again yourself in order to inspect this paper.

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For many years I worked in archives in order
to write history that had not yet been written

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in this way. And it has always been laborious.

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But under these conditions it is, of course, almost impossible.

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Because in order to write a book that you research
yourself, where you do not simply rely on AI, you

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read—well, I don't know—dozens, hundreds, thousands of pages.

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And when at first you do not even know exactly what you should
request—because these catalogs of the archives are often

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very vague—and then you have to state precisely which paper
you would like to have, all of this becomes very difficult.

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Because when you then get it and find, open it—"Oh, this
isn't what I needed after all, it doesn't contain what would

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help me"—then the whole visit to the archive was in vain.

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And you can wait again until next
week, until something is fetched again.

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So, this has been a problem for
years and is being made much worse.

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And so it really is not easy if
you want to work with the sources.

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And if you say, a lot has been digitized, you will be
astonished at how little has been digitized, on the one hand.

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And with digital things, of
course, there's always a bit of doubt:

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Was that everything? Are pages
missing? Are entire notebooks missing?

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Is that really what I would suspect under the heading?

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With digital things, it's so easy to click
away and delete or make something disappear.

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That's something completely different from when you
open an old document, an old file from the archive,

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and read through it and really have the old paper.

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Yes, you mentioned digitization.

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There are now more and more reports that AI
companies buy up old books, then digitize them, feed

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their language models or other AI models with them.

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But in the end, they are not returned, but these
books are destroyed. What do you think of that?

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A scandal. Well, I was shocked when I heard that.

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And with my background of doubt and systemic criticism,
I of course immediately have to suspect something evil.

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There's no reason to see why the
things are destroyed after scanning.

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Collections in archives and
libraries have been scanned for decades.

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And now to say that afterward it will be
destroyed, well, I can't find any real explanation

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for that that doesn't suspect something evil.

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Because these old books, which were bought up from the antiquarian
bookshops , often exist only in a few individual copies.

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And once they are destroyed, you no longer have access to them.

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And that really sounds like in "1984," what Orwell
described, that history is constantly changed retroactively so

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that it fits the present and the future can be controlled.

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And in my work – Gerd and Renate Reuther have drawn a
lot from history – and for that you need many old books.

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We are not the first to doubt, or the first
to uncover mistakes or question narratives.

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And we depend on the fact that people before
us already answered these questions or came

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up with ideas themselves, and wrote them down.

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There we need their books. Or we simply need the
original text. Shakespeare is translated again and again.

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There you can work with the modern
text, or with the Bible you know it too.

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It is also constantly retranslated – and there
are already variants now, where God is female.

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Then perhaps, to clarify something, one would
like to say, I would now like to read the

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original translations by Luther or Zwingli, whatever.

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If these originals are no longer available, then
ultimately genuine research is actually made impossible.

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And that applies not only to me as a historian, it
also applies to all other fields, whether

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journalists or all other disciplines, whether medicine or law.

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One would like to look back again and say, how
did it begin, how was it actually back then?

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And if I no longer have old books, no old files – whether they
have actually disappeared or are merely locked away

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and stored somewhere, but are no longer accessible
to me as a researcher – then it is almost the same.

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And that opens the door to manipulation.

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But now you have already read many
books and also written about them.

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Could you perhaps give the viewers one or two examples
where you encountered contradictions to what would be

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commonly accepted as opinion and what you yourself found?

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Well, since we're already on the subject of books, the
most obvious thing is perhaps the Library of Alexandria.

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Everyone really knows about it by
now. But it still hasn't been found.

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How?

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Not a single book that was there has been found.

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And actually one should say scrolls.
But no scrolls have been found either.

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So there is not a single book, no manuscript, no scroll of
which one could say it was there in the library at that time.

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There is also no book catalog, let me put
it that way, no inventory list of any kind.

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And excavations are taking place in Alexandria.
There is an old buried city that is being excavated.

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But the library cannot be found, even though excavations
have really been going on for decades—to my knowledge.

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And there they have something
that is defined as a palace complex.

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And it is said that it will be in the palace complex.

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But there is nothing that is somehow specifically …—there
are foundation walls. But which room is then the library?

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And if it was as gigantic as is sometimes told,
then there would surely have to be some traces.

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And that is then again the difference. If you read up on the
Library of Alexandria, there are entire books and long articles.

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And there people rave about how large it was, that there was
a laboratory there, a botanical garden, a zoological garden.

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The scholars, the philosophers, they wrote, they published.

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And then I cannot find a single
crumb. I find that somewhat confusing.

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And this great destruction, when everything then
disappeared without a trace, so to speak the

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knowledge of antiquity, that too is completely unclear.

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Well, that surprised me the most. Then I thought, well, everyone
knows that. There was some war or a fire. And then it was just…

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Well, the estimates differ by centuries as
to when it finally disappeared for good.

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And if you ask yourself, well, who would have financed
or organized such a mammoth project, how would that

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have even worked? That would have been insanely expensive.

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Then there is the simple explanation from antiquity that these
people, these scribes or librarians, would always go

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down to the harbor of Alexandria, search the ships,
and confiscate the books they could use for the library.

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Well, that is perhaps also a somewhat bold theory
of how one can build up a library in the long term.

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But where does the knowledge about an existing or
non-existing library even come from in the first place?

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It is listed among the wonders of the world, so
someone must have written about it at some point.

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Exactly, there are stories, there are accounts, but
unfortunately, and this is something we have now had to truly

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understand in full scope, both in "Tatort
Vergangenheit" and in "Tatort Gelehrtenstube," that we have

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practically no original texts at all from antiquity.

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There is a huge gap in time in which nothing is
there and we in Europe knew nothing about the fact

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that ancient texts, ancient writings, etc. existed.

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And then a certain chain is constructed from one monastery, that
something would have been copied, and from another monastery, and

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somehow suddenly – starting around 1200 and then
around the time of 1400, 1500 – one finds texts from

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antiquity in massive quantities. Suddenly they are there.

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Also a bit confusing, not always entirely credible, especially
when one knows that he – a secret scribe of several popes, that

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is, a papal secretary who was very interested in
this topic – he found about half of all ancient

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authors in his life, just as the interest in it arose.

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And the astonishing thing is that he found many of
these texts in monasteries – allegedly – north of the Alps.

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Now one would think that something like
that might be found again in Alexandria …

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Or Italy.

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… or in Sicily. So in monasteries north of the Alps.

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So, these are all things that then really strongly
give rise to the thought that he wrote it himself

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or had it written – also earned good money with it.

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His son then also inherited, entire holdings of ancient
writings, which he was then also able to publish later …

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So, there was production for the future – I
would say – produced for the market that then

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emerged, one could also earn good money with it.

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Earning money is also a topic.

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You are an author yourself. You deal with publishers.

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What does it look like there? You do
not exactly represent majority opinions.

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Then it probably does not seem to be quite so easy.

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Yes. So this is not only the case for journalists and bloggers,
it is also the case for people like me who do not

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represent a majority opinion, who research openly, with an
open mind toward results and in an evidence-oriented way .

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And when one then almost inevitably becomes critical of
the system, because one simply doubts a lot and has to

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question a lot, then one does not have it easy, quite simply.

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The one thing is now the digital stuff, of
course you have to fear that it will suddenly

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be gone. You will have experienced that too.

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There are videos, a few years ago that was very common,
and you try to click on them and the screen stays gray.

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Or there are then lines, you can no longer see
that or it can no longer be found, and so on.

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So with the digital stuff it is of course very difficult.

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Also these e-books that you download, you
do pay for them, but you don't own them.

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The owners of the e-book rights can at any
time delete this account that you build up and

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pay for there, or dispose of it or take it back.

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So, unlike with a book, you do not become the actual
owner, where I can also keep the book for the future

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and for the next generation or donate it or whatever.

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So we decided that Gerd and Renate Reuther do not publish
digitally, no e-books, but rather we make books on paper.

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And even before Corona we had the problem that if
you don't work quite along the main opinion, but

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really do research, the big publishers quickly reject it.

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I have to say, it is always difficult
to place a book with a big publisher.

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So, you shouldn't immediately think something bad of it.

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But it is the case that you are
then dependent on small publishers.

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And the small publishers of course have higher costs again.

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After Corona, for example, they suddenly couldn't get paper.

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So that was a problem at first. How can I publish a book again?

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The printer doesn't get paper, the publisher can't publish it.

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And then of course the solution: Yes, you
do get paper, but it costs a lot of money.

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And for a small publisher that only prints small
runs, everything then becomes much more expensive.

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So the small books from the small
publisher are more expensive than mass production.

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And for the other large publishers, it is then much easier.

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They are often cooperation partners or belong to a paper mill.

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That means they have wonderful
access, don't need to worry about paper.

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And now the EU – which always has such
wonderful ideas – has come up with the idea that

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one must prove where the paper comes from.

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Specifically, the publisher is held responsible for ensuring that
the paper used in the printing house – over which it

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actually has no real control – was harvested in an
environmentally friendly and ecologically correct way.

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For this, for every page of paper, it must be specified
where the respective tree was felled, with GPS coordinates.

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And one can imagine that these printing houses or, first of all,
the paper factories, which are upstream in the process,

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are often corporations operating throughout Europe or
internationally, and they source the trees internationally.

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And then a small publisher must prove from which
little piece of forest each part of the book originates.

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So that is an insane burden. The
penalties are existence-destroying, as we know.

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But that is absurd, because if I buy honey at
Lidl, it says "from EU and non-EU countries"

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– so, it was produced somewhere in this world.

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Exactly.

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And I do eat that, and the book, I don't even eat it.

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Yes. Yes, but it is such a dangerous product that one
must track very precisely where the paper comes from.

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And there, of course, one can very easily tighten the screw again
and say: "You already used paper where the

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wood was illegally felled..." – what do you
know, after all, when you're sitting here.

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And then it just doesn't work anymore, then you get ostracized
or receive a punishment that destroys your livelihood.

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And the whole thing goes even further, because the book is
such a dangerous thing, it must be disposed of correctly.

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There is also an EU regulation for that, as a publisher you now
have to prove it, and for a small publisher

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that is of course linked to much more
bureaucracy and costs than for a giant publisher.

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You have to prove that it is properly
packaged in an ecologically correct way and then

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disposed of in an ecologically correct way.

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And that is particularly difficult when a German publisher, let's
say for example, sends books to France or England or

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anywhere, then he has to pay an agent in that country who checks
and certifies on site that the book is correctly labeled.

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So, it must state very precisely who the manufacturer is, and he
must vouch and be liable with his name, and the

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agent must vouch and be liable that the book is
disposed of correctly under certain circumstances.

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Although, of course, one really cannot check
what a possible customer does with the book.

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But since now for every country, if such a small publisher
perhaps has five inquiries a year, say two from Paris and

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one from Stockholm, then he has to pay an agent everywhere.

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So, the bureaucracy is overflowing and
that also applies to other products.

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But for me it is now the book, and to me it seems rather to be
aiming once again in a different direction than merely ensuring

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that everything here runs in an ecologically correct way.

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And then it once again plays into the hands of the
big corporations and companies and financial backers.

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Exactly. And then, of course, many people will
say, well, then I just won't publish a paper

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book anymore, then it will only be an e-book.

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But then I have the book in the total
availability of the tech giants or whatever you want to

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call them, who are behind all these digital systems.

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And in the past, people really considered the
book dangerous and set it on fire, burned it at

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the stake, sometimes the authors along with it.

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And now we have the blazing stakes in the digital world.

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The books can disappear, they are confiscated,
and the author often also disappears; if a book

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is not listed in a catalog, then it is invisible.

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And then no one can find it, and then no one can read
it. Even if the book exists somewhere as a physical copy.

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And unfortunately, I have to note that Gerd and
Renate Reuther are not listed in all catalogs.

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They are still listed in the National Library, we always check
there too, it is obliged to do so, it still

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does, but other libraries, city libraries,
state libraries, by no means do so anymore.

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We have also already seen what used to be a matter of course,
that various state libraries bought our non-fiction books, that

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now and then one or another library perhaps
doesn't quite catch on, it then has the book

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perhaps for half a year and then it disappears.

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Or I have also already looked in a state library;
until now, when I enter my name or a book title, it says:

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"Yes indeed, under the call number you can order it."

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For some time now, however, when I want to look something up in
this catalog of the state library, I have to

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register, so I have to disclose that I might be
interested in one or another highly dangerous book.

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And as far as my name is concerned, it then happens
under certain circumstances, not in all cases, but I have

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seen it, that a flood of results comes up, 500 results.

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Possibly my only book that I searched for is among
these 500 results, but who would ever sift through them?

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So it may only be unofficial, but it is made
impossible to find my book or to order my book.

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And unfortunately, it must be said, the
libraries are also cooperating in this, that

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is, the librarians and also the bookstores.

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One would think that the bookstores stand on the side of
the authors, they want to sell books, one would think.

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But unfortunately, I have already received feedback from readers
who, for some reason, at a lecture or whatever, heard about books

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by Gerd and Renate Reuther, who then go to their trusted
bookstore, so to speak, and come back, I hear this in individual

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cases – of course not that often – but that they
say in the bookstore that the book does not exist or

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that the book is not available, which is not true.

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00:20:53,776 --> 00:21:00,669
The books are available, our publishing house is
very much on top of that, it constantly reprints.

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00:21:00,669 --> 00:21:07,122
So, the books are there, but sometimes it
is made to appear as if they are not there.

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And by the way, there is another small matter that
I would like to mention in the context of digital.

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VG WORT – I don't know whether you've already heard of it, it's
an organization that is supposed to represent

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00:21:18,095 --> 00:21:22,816
the rights of authors, similar to GEMA , which
people may be more familiar with for musical works.

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So, VG WORT has now, I believe, introduced a new
rule two years ago, which one can still object to, but

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how long that will hold, I don't know. I objected.

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The new rule is as follows: All books produced
by an author in Germany, all works, and

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reported to VG WORT, can be automatically scanned.

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The scanned texts can be used by the AI at any time in any form,
and the scanned material, the texts – that is, my intellectual

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property, texts, facts, information that I worked on for weeks
and months, which I then worked on again in order to write it

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nicely or in such a way that a reader would want to read it –
these texts are simply appropriated by the AI

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and can, and here it comes, be passed on to
third parties – and for that it is 'indemnified'.

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In principle, this means that anyone who has access to this AI can
copy my texts, publish them under their own name, or do whatever

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else they want with them, and I can't do anything about it.

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Because firstly, liability-free – the third parties as
always, who go around handling my intellectual property…

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And the worst part is that the whole thing is supported and
authorized by VG WORT, an organization to which, by the way,

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I have to pay money and which should represent my interests.

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As I said, at the moment one can still object, but I have already
heard that the authors take that very lightly and cannot really

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imagine it, but if that happens en masse and it continues daily
with the tech giants and the digitalized world, I actually don't

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even know, yes, you actually can't compete against the cheap
AI-generated books, which are then just as great as the

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laboriously produced, so to speak
self-researched, scientific work or journalistic work or

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historical work or however one wants to see it.

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Yes, that is really crazy.

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In an article you also, it goes a bit further, spoke
about "self-censorship," that you can even land with the

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publishers at all, that you can even publish books at all.

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00:23:59,123 --> 00:24:06,540
You called it "subtle techniques of hidden
criticism," and my question: Why is that even necessary?

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We are in a free society, supposedly.

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That is also such a fairy tale that we must slowly get past.

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I also experienced all these shocks in recent years, especially
of course in the last five, six years, where one sees everything

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around one collapsing, where one believed these are the pillars
of our society, that elections are not manipulated, that we

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have freedom of speech, freedom of science, freedom of opinion.

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But we see in every corner and at every end,
things are being twisted. And it is no longer as we

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quite naturally expected ten or twenty years ago.

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And if you then still want to work at all as an independent
journalist, freelance researcher, or whatever, you will—and I

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have now actually told enough examples of where attempts are made
everywhere to slow things down, to control,

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to exercise censorship—that ultimately you
yourself practice censorship, quite clearly.

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00:25:03,538 --> 00:25:09,083
You already think about it: can I
even still address such a topic?

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Or you think about it: can I openly
say everything I found in the process?

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So I will just mention the topic of vaccination.
There, on all sides, the fences have been raised high.

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And you have to consider which titles you use.

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And of course you also cannot ride the publisher
into the Bredouille , or the publisher itself.

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Be a bit careful with what you do.

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00:25:33,941 --> 00:25:38,542
So it is, from all sides it is getting more and more difficult.

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And the hurdles are getting higher. But
of course we must remain with the truth.

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We must seek truth. They do that, we do that.

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And I think the more people still dare to point out this
discrepancy between the claimed freedom and the

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actual remnants of freedom and the mania for
control that surrounds us, the more awareness there is.

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And awareness is the foundation of everything.

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And one cannot really live calmly in a world of lies with a
good conscience, or even with any hope for the future at all.

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For a life that is surrounded and paved by lies
cannot really be a successful life. I cannot imagine that.

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There is also this thing: there
is no right life in the wrong one.

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And even if you are not sure that what
you do will prevail, you still have to try.

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And so now we, Gerd and Renate Reuther, stand for eternal doubt,
that one simply doubts and also expresses this doubt and then

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says: "Well, this seems to me to be a fairy tale that is being
told to me, doesn't fit with my experience of the world, my life

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experience, or what I am researching, what I find as results."

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And I can only do that, you do it, and I can only call on
everyone else not to have too much fear too early,

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because whoever doubts—that was, after all, our
very latest book: "Whoever Doubts Has Already Won."

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Because every doubt opens a door. As soon
as I doubt something, I see two things.

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00:27:27,136 --> 00:27:35,082
I see what is officially said or what I have
always believed, and with doubt I see an alternative.

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00:27:35,082 --> 00:27:41,049
That frightens many people, it makes them afraid,
because it takes away their security and

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certainty, but it also opens a door. I have two options.

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I can decide in favor of one or I see somewhere a compromise in
the middle, but I think one should see this opening of doors

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00:27:54,346 --> 00:28:02,951
through doubt—not only as something that shakes my security and
makes me afraid, but as something that frees

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00:28:02,951 --> 00:28:10,698
me from burdens, from lies and untruths and
from all the things that have been foisted on me.

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And every doubt is a step toward liberation, if
one wants to put it very grandly, toward truth.

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00:28:19,499 --> 00:28:29,321
And that may be in many small things, very small everyday
things, but simply to say, I don't believe it that way

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00:28:29,321 --> 00:28:35,570
now, I won't just do it that way, I'll think about it first.

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00:28:35,570 --> 00:28:40,703
So that really opens up a whole new world.

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00:28:40,703 --> 00:28:45,930
Interesting statement, yes. You also
spoke about this destruction of books.

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00:28:45,930 --> 00:28:49,530
Do you have any further hint for the viewers on that?

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00:28:49,530 --> 00:28:53,274
Hardly anyone will have the money to build their own library.

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00:28:53,274 --> 00:28:59,780
They say the digital is insecure, you don't
really own it, which also corresponds to this

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00:28:59,780 --> 00:29:04,223
whole WEF agenda, that one should own nothing.

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00:29:04,223 --> 00:29:08,040
What can one do? How can knowledge
be preserved for the next generation?

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00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:19,865
Yes. There was this film, "Fahrenheit 451" , where people
memorized books because the authorities destroyed the books.

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00:29:19,865 --> 00:29:22,203
That was a state that no longer wanted to see any books.

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00:29:22,203 --> 00:29:28,366
And then some people said, but we must save the
books for the next generations, and they memorized them.

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00:29:28,366 --> 00:29:33,136
That is a very extreme utopia. I'm not saying it like that now.

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00:29:33,136 --> 00:29:39,727
But first of all, it certainly helps when you
talk with others about books you have read yourself.

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00:29:39,727 --> 00:29:47,303
And then at least the thought—it doesn't have to be word for word,
but the thought, the idea, the basic essence of this book, this

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00:29:47,303 --> 00:29:51,403
author, is then passed on. So I think that is very important.

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00:29:51,403 --> 00:29:57,473
Reading books yourself—you can still partly get them from
libraries, or also in bookshops, or what you can of

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00:29:57,473 --> 00:30:03,345
course always do if you want to save money—we do
that too, because we need so many books—buy used books.

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00:30:03,345 --> 00:30:07,490
There are companies that do that,
offering used books at a low price.

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00:30:07,490 --> 00:30:13,010
That still works now. Buying, yes, I have to
say something: buying and keeping the very best.

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00:30:13,010 --> 00:30:19,803
So that is certainly an important way. Or also putting
something down on paper yourself and filing it away.

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00:30:19,803 --> 00:30:23,438
You don't remember everything anyway,
especially as you get older, you forget more and more.

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00:30:23,438 --> 00:30:29,631
And that is also quite interesting, you don't have to keep all
the books – that was done very often in the

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00:30:29,631 --> 00:30:34,263
past – you marked them with a pen and then
wrote out what you needed and only kept that.

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00:30:34,263 --> 00:30:41,780
And then of course I can recommend your own system at
Kla.TV, where you say, we have to somehow preserve

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00:30:41,780 --> 00:30:45,115
this in a decentralized way so that it doesn't get lost.

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00:30:45,115 --> 00:30:52,312
And anyone who, oh I don't know, only has five books
at home, doesn't have to have 5,000, has already made a

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00:30:52,312 --> 00:30:55,622
contribution if you have 80 million times five books.

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00:30:55,622 --> 00:30:58,823
You have to think big and start small, then it will work out.

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00:30:58,823 --> 00:31:00,120
A very good statement.

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00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:03,679
Thank you very much, Dr. Renate
Reuther, for this interesting interview.

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00:31:03,679 --> 00:31:05,958
I thank you.

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00:31:09,794 --> 00:31:17,913
Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Gaza, USA, Iran –
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323
00:31:17,913 --> 00:31:23,381
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324
00:31:23,381 --> 00:31:30,154
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325
00:31:30,154 --> 00:31:34,261
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