WEBVTT 00:00.351 --> 00:08.622 "If these originals are no longer available, then ultimately real research is actually made impossible. 00:08.622 --> 00:11.743 If I no longer have old books, no old files. 00:11.743 --> 00:16.380 That opens the door to manipulation." 00:16.380 --> 00:22.998 Today I welcome to the Kla.TV studio a historian and Anglicist with a master's in business administration. 00:22.998 --> 00:29.575 As the author of numerous specialist articles and non-fiction books on social and cultural history, her book "The Conquest 00:29.575 --> 00:33.375 of the Old and New World" appeared, among others, in 2024. 00:33.375 --> 00:36.432 A warm welcome, Dr. Renate Reuther! 00:36.432 --> 00:38.725 Yes, thank you for the invitation! 00:38.725 --> 00:43.406 Yes, it's nice that you're here! I already had the pleasure with your husband. Today we have a history topic. 00:43.406 --> 00:50.469 Science lives on records, on manuscripts, on books and other sources, and without them a critical examination 00:50.469 --> 00:54.694 of history, of any topics at all, is simply not possible. 00:54.694 --> 00:58.292 Mrs. Reuther, how is access to such sources? 00:58.292 --> 01:04.845 It is being made increasingly difficult, especially when one is a free, independent 01:04.845 --> 01:10.678 journalist or historian or researcher of any kind. 01:10.678 --> 01:16.748 It starts with very simple things, namely that fees are charged for every visit, for example to an archive. 01:16.748 --> 01:25.513 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 01:25.513 --> 01:31.356 different: if the wrong person asks for things that they don't want to give them, then 01:31.356 --> 01:35.023 they are simply not there or not available. 01:35.023 --> 01:45.628 And in order not to make it so conspicuously obvious in detail, many archives that were stored in the cities, often in the town 01:45.628 --> 01:55.535 hall or in some old building, also in an old castle, have now been—supposedly for their own safety, these old holdings of 01:55.535 --> 02:01.865 old documents—relocated to faraway bunkers, archives, wherever. 02:01.865 --> 02:08.130 And then you have to register in advance that you would like to see this or that document. 02:08.130 --> 02:13.851 And then they drive there once or twice a week, and then it is brought back, and then you have to be on 02:13.851 --> 02:17.887 site again yourself in order to inspect this paper. 02:17.887 --> 02:23.385 For many years I worked in archives in order to write history that had not yet been written 02:23.385 --> 02:26.464 in this way. And it has always been laborious. 02:26.464 --> 02:31.225 But under these conditions it is, of course, almost impossible. 02:31.225 --> 02:37.442 Because in order to write a book that you research yourself, where you do not simply rely on AI, you 02:37.442 --> 02:42.064 read—well, I don't know—dozens, hundreds, thousands of pages. 02:42.064 --> 02:50.410 And when at first you do not even know exactly what you should request—because these catalogs of the archives are often 02:50.410 --> 02:58.465 very vague—and then you have to state precisely which paper you would like to have, all of this becomes very difficult. 02:58.465 --> 03:05.655 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 03:05.655 --> 03:09.827 help me"—then the whole visit to the archive was in vain. 03:09.827 --> 03:14.394 And you can wait again until next week, until something is fetched again. 03:14.394 --> 03:20.576 So, this has been a problem for years and is being made much worse. 03:20.576 --> 03:28.290 And so it really is not easy if you want to work with the sources. 03:28.290 --> 03:34.661 And if you say, a lot has been digitized, you will be astonished at how little has been digitized, on the one hand. 03:34.661 --> 03:40.270 And with digital things, of course, there's always a bit of doubt: 03:40.270 --> 03:45.317 Was that everything? Are pages missing? Are entire notebooks missing? 03:45.317 --> 03:51.292 Is that really what I would suspect under the heading? 03:51.292 --> 03:56.242 With digital things, it's so easy to click away and delete or make something disappear. 03:56.242 --> 04:02.922 That's something completely different from when you open an old document, an old file from the archive, 04:02.922 --> 04:08.070 and read through it and really have the old paper. 04:08.070 --> 04:09.878 Yes, you mentioned digitization. 04:09.878 --> 04:15.881 There are now more and more reports that AI companies buy up old books, then digitize them, feed 04:15.881 --> 04:19.553 their language models or other AI models with them. 04:19.553 --> 04:24.258 But in the end, they are not returned, but these books are destroyed. What do you think of that? 04:24.258 --> 04:27.122 A scandal. Well, I was shocked when I heard that. 04:27.122 --> 04:36.761 And with my background of doubt and systemic criticism, I of course immediately have to suspect something evil. 04:36.761 --> 04:40.720 There's no reason to see why the things are destroyed after scanning. 04:40.720 --> 04:46.247 Collections in archives and libraries have been scanned for decades. 04:46.247 --> 04:53.941 And now to say that afterward it will be destroyed, well, I can't find any real explanation 04:53.941 --> 04:57.855 for that that doesn't suspect something evil. 04:57.855 --> 05:05.968 Because these old books, which were bought up from the antiquarian bookshops , often exist only in a few individual copies. 05:05.968 --> 05:09.833 And once they are destroyed, you no longer have access to them. 05:09.833 --> 05:18.286 And that really sounds like in "1984," what Orwell described, that history is constantly changed retroactively so 05:18.286 --> 05:23.296 that it fits the present and the future can be controlled. 05:23.296 --> 05:34.475 And in my work – Gerd and Renate Reuther have drawn a lot from history – and for that you need many old books. 05:34.475 --> 05:40.536 We are not the first to doubt, or the first to uncover mistakes or question narratives. 05:40.536 --> 05:46.603 And we depend on the fact that people before us already answered these questions or came 05:46.603 --> 05:49.869 up with ideas themselves, and wrote them down. 05:49.869 --> 05:58.290 There we need their books. Or we simply need the original text. Shakespeare is translated again and again. 05:58.290 --> 06:02.001 There you can work with the modern text, or with the Bible you know it too. 06:02.001 --> 06:07.513 It is also constantly retranslated – and there are already variants now, where God is female. 06:07.513 --> 06:12.460 Then perhaps, to clarify something, one would like to say, I would now like to read the 06:12.460 --> 06:16.217 original translations by Luther or Zwingli, whatever. 06:16.217 --> 06:24.692 If these originals are no longer available, then ultimately genuine research is actually made impossible. 06:24.692 --> 06:30.662 And that applies not only to me as a historian, it also applies to all other fields, whether 06:30.662 --> 06:35.103 journalists or all other disciplines, whether medicine or law. 06:35.103 --> 06:40.330 One would like to look back again and say, how did it begin, how was it actually back then? 06:40.330 --> 06:48.649 And if I no longer have old books, no old files – whether they have actually disappeared or are merely locked away 06:48.649 --> 06:57.235 and stored somewhere, but are no longer accessible to me as a researcher – then it is almost the same. 06:57.235 --> 07:01.502 And that opens the door to manipulation. 07:01.502 --> 07:06.183 But now you have already read many books and also written about them. 07:06.183 --> 07:12.525 Could you perhaps give the viewers one or two examples where you encountered contradictions to what would be 07:12.525 --> 07:16.958 commonly accepted as opinion and what you yourself found? 07:16.958 --> 07:22.076 Well, since we're already on the subject of books, the most obvious thing is perhaps the Library of Alexandria. 07:22.076 --> 07:26.682 Everyone really knows about it by now. But it still hasn't been found. 07:26.682 --> 07:27.334 How? 07:27.334 --> 07:33.062 Not a single book that was there has been found. 07:33.062 --> 07:36.996 And actually one should say scrolls. But no scrolls have been found either. 07:36.996 --> 07:43.799 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. 07:43.799 --> 07:49.152 There is also no book catalog, let me put it that way, no inventory list of any kind. 07:49.152 --> 07:55.302 And excavations are taking place in Alexandria. There is an old buried city that is being excavated. 07:55.302 --> 08:00.160 But the library cannot be found, even though excavations have really been going on for decades—to my knowledge. 08:00.160 --> 08:03.731 And there they have something that is defined as a palace complex. 08:03.731 --> 08:06.619 And it is said that it will be in the palace complex. 08:06.619 --> 08:12.520 But there is nothing that is somehow specifically …—there are foundation walls. But which room is then the library? 08:12.520 --> 08:17.671 And if it was as gigantic as is sometimes told, then there would surely have to be some traces. 08:17.671 --> 08:24.616 And that is then again the difference. If you read up on the Library of Alexandria, there are entire books and long articles. 08:24.616 --> 08:30.907 And there people rave about how large it was, that there was a laboratory there, a botanical garden, a zoological garden. 08:30.907 --> 08:35.037 The scholars, the philosophers, they wrote, they published. 08:35.037 --> 08:39.242 And then I cannot find a single crumb. I find that somewhat confusing. 08:39.242 --> 08:45.520 And this great destruction, when everything then disappeared without a trace, so to speak the 08:45.520 --> 08:49.624 knowledge of antiquity, that too is completely unclear. 08:49.624 --> 08:56.577 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… 08:56.577 --> 09:02.164 Well, the estimates differ by centuries as to when it finally disappeared for good. 09:02.164 --> 09:06.933 And if you ask yourself, well, who would have financed or organized such a mammoth project, how would that 09:06.933 --> 09:10.717 have even worked? That would have been insanely expensive. 09:10.717 --> 09:18.965 Then there is the simple explanation from antiquity that these people, these scribes or librarians, would always go 09:18.965 --> 09:27.816 down to the harbor of Alexandria, search the ships, and confiscate the books they could use for the library. 09:27.816 --> 09:37.222 Well, that is perhaps also a somewhat bold theory of how one can build up a library in the long term. 09:37.222 --> 09:42.072 But where does the knowledge about an existing or non-existing library even come from in the first place? 09:42.072 --> 09:46.108 It is listed among the wonders of the world, so someone must have written about it at some point. 09:46.108 --> 09:53.154 Exactly, there are stories, there are accounts, but unfortunately, and this is something we have now had to truly 09:53.154 --> 09:59.453 understand in full scope, both in "Tatort Vergangenheit" and in "Tatort Gelehrtenstube," that we have 09:59.453 --> 10:03.365 practically no original texts at all from antiquity. 10:03.365 --> 10:10.310 There is a huge gap in time in which nothing is there and we in Europe knew nothing about the fact 10:10.310 --> 10:14.635 that ancient texts, ancient writings, etc. existed. 10:14.635 --> 10:22.850 And then a certain chain is constructed from one monastery, that something would have been copied, and from another monastery, and 10:22.850 --> 10:29.233 somehow suddenly – starting around 1200 and then around the time of 1400, 1500 – one finds texts from 10:29.233 --> 10:34.858 antiquity in massive quantities. Suddenly they are there. 10:34.858 --> 10:44.960 Also a bit confusing, not always entirely credible, especially when one knows that he – a secret scribe of several popes, that 10:44.960 --> 10:52.657 is, a papal secretary who was very interested in this topic – he found about half of all ancient 10:52.657 --> 10:57.414 authors in his life, just as the interest in it arose. 10:57.414 --> 11:06.234 And the astonishing thing is that he found many of these texts in monasteries – allegedly – north of the Alps. 11:06.234 --> 11:11.512 Now one would think that something like that might be found again in Alexandria … 11:11.512 --> 11:12.270 Or Italy. 11:12.270 --> 11:16.948 … or in Sicily. So in monasteries north of the Alps. 11:16.948 --> 11:23.050 So, these are all things that then really strongly give rise to the thought that he wrote it himself 11:23.050 --> 11:26.248 or had it written – also earned good money with it. 11:26.248 --> 11:32.835 His son then also inherited, entire holdings of ancient writings, which he was then also able to publish later … 11:32.835 --> 11:39.571 So, there was production for the future – I would say – produced for the market that then 11:39.571 --> 11:44.274 emerged, one could also earn good money with it. 11:44.274 --> 11:45.835 Earning money is also a topic. 11:45.835 --> 11:49.982 You are an author yourself. You deal with publishers. 11:49.982 --> 11:53.637 What does it look like there? You do not exactly represent majority opinions. 11:53.637 --> 11:55.830 Then it probably does not seem to be quite so easy. 11:55.830 --> 12:02.742 Yes. So this is not only the case for journalists and bloggers, it is also the case for people like me who do not 12:02.742 --> 12:11.359 represent a majority opinion, who research openly, with an open mind toward results and in an evidence-oriented way . 12:11.359 --> 12:17.883 And when one then almost inevitably becomes critical of the system, because one simply doubts a lot and has to 12:17.883 --> 12:21.676 question a lot, then one does not have it easy, quite simply. 12:21.676 --> 12:26.694 The one thing is now the digital stuff, of course you have to fear that it will suddenly 12:26.694 --> 12:30.223 be gone. You will have experienced that too. 12:30.223 --> 12:37.240 There are videos, a few years ago that was very common, and you try to click on them and the screen stays gray. 12:37.240 --> 12:43.296 Or there are then lines, you can no longer see that or it can no longer be found, and so on. 12:43.296 --> 12:46.842 So with the digital stuff it is of course very difficult. 12:46.842 --> 12:53.462 Also these e-books that you download, you do pay for them, but you don't own them. 12:53.462 --> 13:00.463 The owners of the e-book rights can at any time delete this account that you build up and 13:00.463 --> 13:04.583 pay for there, or dispose of it or take it back. 13:04.583 --> 13:10.696 So, unlike with a book, you do not become the actual owner, where I can also keep the book for the future 13:10.696 --> 13:14.360 and for the next generation or donate it or whatever. 13:14.360 --> 13:24.653 So we decided that Gerd and Renate Reuther do not publish digitally, no e-books, but rather we make books on paper. 13:24.653 --> 13:31.615 And even before Corona we had the problem that if you don't work quite along the main opinion, but 13:31.615 --> 13:36.183 really do research, the big publishers quickly reject it. 13:36.183 --> 13:40.761 I have to say, it is always difficult to place a book with a big publisher. 13:40.761 --> 13:45.080 So, you shouldn't immediately think something bad of it. 13:45.080 --> 13:51.065 But it is the case that you are then dependent on small publishers. 13:51.065 --> 13:55.115 And the small publishers of course have higher costs again. 13:55.115 --> 13:58.534 After Corona, for example, they suddenly couldn't get paper. 13:58.534 --> 14:02.539 So that was a problem at first. How can I publish a book again? 14:02.539 --> 14:07.545 The printer doesn't get paper, the publisher can't publish it. 14:07.545 --> 14:11.180 And then of course the solution: Yes, you do get paper, but it costs a lot of money. 14:11.180 --> 14:15.513 And for a small publisher that only prints small runs, everything then becomes much more expensive. 14:15.513 --> 14:20.539 So the small books from the small publisher are more expensive than mass production. 14:20.539 --> 14:23.555 And for the other large publishers, it is then much easier. 14:23.555 --> 14:29.133 They are often cooperation partners or belong to a paper mill. 14:29.133 --> 14:35.431 That means they have wonderful access, don't need to worry about paper. 14:35.431 --> 14:41.436 And now the EU – which always has such wonderful ideas – has come up with the idea that 14:41.436 --> 14:44.640 one must prove where the paper comes from. 14:44.640 --> 14:52.948 Specifically, the publisher is held responsible for ensuring that the paper used in the printing house – over which it 14:52.948 --> 15:00.772 actually has no real control – was harvested in an environmentally friendly and ecologically correct way. 15:00.772 --> 15:10.374 For this, for every page of paper, it must be specified where the respective tree was felled, with GPS coordinates. 15:10.374 --> 15:16.041 And one can imagine that these printing houses or, first of all, the paper factories, which are upstream in the process, 15:16.041 --> 15:21.697 are often corporations operating throughout Europe or internationally, and they source the trees internationally. 15:21.697 --> 15:28.960 And then a small publisher must prove from which little piece of forest each part of the book originates. 15:28.960 --> 15:34.782 So that is an insane burden. The penalties are existence-destroying, as we know. 15:34.782 --> 15:39.458 But that is absurd, because if I buy honey at Lidl, it says "from EU and non-EU countries" 15:39.458 --> 15:41.925 – so, it was produced somewhere in this world. 15:41.925 --> 15:42.605 Exactly. 15:42.605 --> 15:44.406 And I do eat that, and the book, I don't even eat it. 15:44.406 --> 15:50.430 Yes. Yes, but it is such a dangerous product that one must track very precisely where the paper comes from. 15:50.430 --> 15:55.872 And there, of course, one can very easily tighten the screw again and say: "You already used paper where the 15:55.872 --> 16:00.726 wood was illegally felled..." – what do you know, after all, when you're sitting here. 16:00.726 --> 16:05.663 And then it just doesn't work anymore, then you get ostracized or receive a punishment that destroys your livelihood. 16:05.663 --> 16:14.376 And the whole thing goes even further, because the book is such a dangerous thing, it must be disposed of correctly. 16:14.376 --> 16:21.983 There is also an EU regulation for that, as a publisher you now have to prove it, and for a small publisher 16:21.983 --> 16:28.905 that is of course linked to much more bureaucracy and costs than for a giant publisher. 16:28.905 --> 16:33.794 You have to prove that it is properly packaged in an ecologically correct way and then 16:33.794 --> 16:37.336 disposed of in an ecologically correct way. 16:37.336 --> 16:46.783 And that is particularly difficult when a German publisher, let's say for example, sends books to France or England or 16:46.783 --> 16:56.663 anywhere, then he has to pay an agent in that country who checks and certifies on site that the book is correctly labeled. 16:56.663 --> 17:03.114 So, it must state very precisely who the manufacturer is, and he must vouch and be liable with his name, and the 17:03.114 --> 17:09.076 agent must vouch and be liable that the book is disposed of correctly under certain circumstances. 17:09.076 --> 17:14.109 Although, of course, one really cannot check what a possible customer does with the book. 17:14.109 --> 17:21.443 But since now for every country, if such a small publisher perhaps has five inquiries a year, say two from Paris and 17:21.443 --> 17:25.898 one from Stockholm, then he has to pay an agent everywhere. 17:25.898 --> 17:32.201 So, the bureaucracy is overflowing and that also applies to other products. 17:32.201 --> 17:42.301 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 17:42.301 --> 17:47.450 that everything here runs in an ecologically correct way. 17:47.450 --> 17:52.347 And then it once again plays into the hands of the big corporations and companies and financial backers. 17:52.347 --> 17:57.584 Exactly. And then, of course, many people will say, well, then I just won't publish a paper 17:57.584 --> 18:00.428 book anymore, then it will only be an e-book. 18:00.428 --> 18:07.470 But then I have the book in the total availability of the tech giants or whatever you want to 18:07.470 --> 18:11.683 call them, who are behind all these digital systems. 18:11.683 --> 18:16.618 And in the past, people really considered the book dangerous and set it on fire, burned it at 18:16.618 --> 18:20.345 the stake, sometimes the authors along with it. 18:20.345 --> 18:25.385 And now we have the blazing stakes in the digital world. 18:25.385 --> 18:33.592 The books can disappear, they are confiscated, and the author often also disappears; if a book 18:33.592 --> 18:38.711 is not listed in a catalog, then it is invisible. 18:38.711 --> 18:46.069 And then no one can find it, and then no one can read it. Even if the book exists somewhere as a physical copy. 18:46.069 --> 18:52.034 And unfortunately, I have to note that Gerd and Renate Reuther are not listed in all catalogs. 18:52.034 --> 18:59.635 They are still listed in the National Library, we always check there too, it is obliged to do so, it still 18:59.635 --> 19:06.043 does, but other libraries, city libraries, state libraries, by no means do so anymore. 19:06.043 --> 19:12.365 We have also already seen what used to be a matter of course, that various state libraries bought our non-fiction books, that 19:12.365 --> 19:16.543 now and then one or another library perhaps doesn't quite catch on, it then has the book 19:16.543 --> 19:19.783 perhaps for half a year and then it disappears. 19:19.783 --> 19:26.551 Or I have also already looked in a state library; until now, when I enter my name or a book title, it says: 19:26.551 --> 19:30.340 "Yes indeed, under the call number you can order it." 19:30.340 --> 19:36.316 For some time now, however, when I want to look something up in this catalog of the state library, I have to 19:36.316 --> 19:42.944 register, so I have to disclose that I might be interested in one or another highly dangerous book. 19:42.944 --> 19:50.181 And as far as my name is concerned, it then happens under certain circumstances, not in all cases, but I have 19:50.181 --> 19:54.192 seen it, that a flood of results comes up, 500 results. 19:54.192 --> 20:01.633 Possibly my only book that I searched for is among these 500 results, but who would ever sift through them? 20:01.633 --> 20:10.277 So it may only be unofficial, but it is made impossible to find my book or to order my book. 20:10.277 --> 20:16.305 And unfortunately, it must be said, the libraries are also cooperating in this, that 20:16.305 --> 20:19.658 is, the librarians and also the bookstores. 20:19.658 --> 20:27.810 One would think that the bookstores stand on the side of the authors, they want to sell books, one would think. 20:27.810 --> 20:36.044 But unfortunately, I have already received feedback from readers who, for some reason, at a lecture or whatever, heard about books 20:36.044 --> 20:43.709 by Gerd and Renate Reuther, who then go to their trusted bookstore, so to speak, and come back, I hear this in individual 20:43.709 --> 20:50.106 cases – of course not that often – but that they say in the bookstore that the book does not exist or 20:50.106 --> 20:53.776 that the book is not available, which is not true. 20:53.776 --> 21:00.669 The books are available, our publishing house is very much on top of that, it constantly reprints. 21:00.669 --> 21:07.122 So, the books are there, but sometimes it is made to appear as if they are not there. 21:07.122 --> 21:13.293 And by the way, there is another small matter that I would like to mention in the context of digital. 21:13.293 --> 21:18.095 VG WORT – I don't know whether you've already heard of it, it's an organization that is supposed to represent 21:18.095 --> 21:22.816 the rights of authors, similar to GEMA , which people may be more familiar with for musical works. 21:22.816 --> 21:29.560 So, VG WORT has now, I believe, introduced a new rule two years ago, which one can still object to, but 21:29.560 --> 21:32.925 how long that will hold, I don't know. I objected. 21:32.925 --> 21:42.843 The new rule is as follows: All books produced by an author in Germany, all works, and 21:42.843 --> 21:50.755 reported to VG WORT, can be automatically scanned. 21:50.755 --> 22:01.323 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 22:01.323 --> 22:11.642 property, texts, facts, information that I worked on for weeks and months, which I then worked on again in order to write it 22:11.642 --> 22:20.545 nicely or in such a way that a reader would want to read it – these texts are simply appropriated by the AI 22:20.545 --> 22:30.060 and can, and here it comes, be passed on to third parties – and for that it is 'indemnified'. 22:30.060 --> 22:41.029 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 22:41.029 --> 22:46.084 else they want with them, and I can't do anything about it. 22:46.084 --> 22:54.334 Because firstly, liability-free – the third parties as always, who go around handling my intellectual property… 22:54.334 --> 23:01.336 And the worst part is that the whole thing is supported and authorized by VG WORT, an organization to which, by the way, 23:01.336 --> 23:05.669 I have to pay money and which should represent my interests. 23:05.669 --> 23:16.009 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 23:16.009 --> 23:26.269 imagine it, but if that happens en masse and it continues daily with the tech giants and the digitalized world, I actually don't 23:26.269 --> 23:35.566 even know, yes, you actually can't compete against the cheap AI-generated books, which are then just as great as the 23:35.566 --> 23:42.780 laboriously produced, so to speak self-researched, scientific work or journalistic work or 23:42.780 --> 23:47.283 historical work or however one wants to see it. 23:47.283 --> 23:49.830 Yes, that is really crazy. 23:49.830 --> 23:55.621 In an article you also, it goes a bit further, spoke about "self-censorship," that you can even land with the 23:55.621 --> 23:59.123 publishers at all, that you can even publish books at all. 23:59.123 --> 24:06.540 You called it "subtle techniques of hidden criticism," and my question: Why is that even necessary? 24:06.540 --> 24:09.196 We are in a free society, supposedly. 24:09.196 --> 24:12.897 That is also such a fairy tale that we must slowly get past. 24:12.897 --> 24:20.475 I also experienced all these shocks in recent years, especially of course in the last five, six years, where one sees everything 24:20.475 --> 24:27.758 around one collapsing, where one believed these are the pillars of our society, that elections are not manipulated, that we 24:27.758 --> 24:31.631 have freedom of speech, freedom of science, freedom of opinion. 24:31.631 --> 24:37.393 But we see in every corner and at every end, things are being twisted. And it is no longer as we 24:37.393 --> 24:41.380 quite naturally expected ten or twenty years ago. 24:41.380 --> 24:49.567 And if you then still want to work at all as an independent journalist, freelance researcher, or whatever, you will—and I 24:49.567 --> 24:56.943 have now actually told enough examples of where attempts are made everywhere to slow things down, to control, 24:56.943 --> 25:03.538 to exercise censorship—that ultimately you yourself practice censorship, quite clearly. 25:03.538 --> 25:09.083 You already think about it: can I even still address such a topic? 25:09.083 --> 25:14.781 Or you think about it: can I openly say everything I found in the process? 25:14.781 --> 25:23.067 So I will just mention the topic of vaccination. There, on all sides, the fences have been raised high. 25:23.067 --> 25:26.236 And you have to consider which titles you use. 25:26.236 --> 25:31.514 And of course you also cannot ride the publisher into the Bredouille , or the publisher itself. 25:31.514 --> 25:33.941 Be a bit careful with what you do. 25:33.941 --> 25:38.542 So it is, from all sides it is getting more and more difficult. 25:38.542 --> 25:44.284 And the hurdles are getting higher. But of course we must remain with the truth. 25:44.284 --> 25:48.903 We must seek truth. They do that, we do that. 25:48.903 --> 25:57.239 And I think the more people still dare to point out this discrepancy between the claimed freedom and the 25:57.239 --> 26:05.601 actual remnants of freedom and the mania for control that surrounds us, the more awareness there is. 26:05.601 --> 26:08.278 And awareness is the foundation of everything. 26:08.278 --> 26:19.490 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. 26:19.490 --> 26:30.081 For a life that is surrounded and paved by lies cannot really be a successful life. I cannot imagine that. 26:30.081 --> 26:34.710 There is also this thing: there is no right life in the wrong one. 26:34.710 --> 26:40.750 And even if you are not sure that what you do will prevail, you still have to try. 26:40.750 --> 26:49.529 And so now we, Gerd and Renate Reuther, stand for eternal doubt, that one simply doubts and also expresses this doubt and then 26:49.529 --> 26:58.377 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 26:58.377 --> 27:04.296 experience, or what I am researching, what I find as results." 27:04.296 --> 27:12.029 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, 27:12.029 --> 27:20.014 because whoever doubts—that was, after all, our very latest book: "Whoever Doubts Has Already Won." 27:20.014 --> 27:27.136 Because every doubt opens a door. As soon as I doubt something, I see two things. 27:27.136 --> 27:35.082 I see what is officially said or what I have always believed, and with doubt I see an alternative. 27:35.082 --> 27:41.049 That frightens many people, it makes them afraid, because it takes away their security and 27:41.049 --> 27:44.467 certainty, but it also opens a door. I have two options. 27:44.467 --> 27:54.346 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 27:54.346 --> 28:02.951 through doubt—not only as something that shakes my security and makes me afraid, but as something that frees 28:02.951 --> 28:10.698 me from burdens, from lies and untruths and from all the things that have been foisted on me. 28:10.698 --> 28:19.499 And every doubt is a step toward liberation, if one wants to put it very grandly, toward truth. 28:19.499 --> 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 28:29.321 --> 28:35.570 now, I won't just do it that way, I'll think about it first. 28:35.570 --> 28:40.703 So that really opens up a whole new world. 28:40.703 --> 28:45.930 Interesting statement, yes. You also spoke about this destruction of books. 28:45.930 --> 28:49.530 Do you have any further hint for the viewers on that? 28:49.530 --> 28:53.274 Hardly anyone will have the money to build their own library. 28:53.274 --> 28:59.780 They say the digital is insecure, you don't really own it, which also corresponds to this 28:59.780 --> 29:04.223 whole WEF agenda, that one should own nothing. 29:04.223 --> 29:08.040 What can one do? How can knowledge be preserved for the next generation? 29:08.040 --> 29:19.865 Yes. There was this film, "Fahrenheit 451" , where people memorized books because the authorities destroyed the books. 29:19.865 --> 29:22.203 That was a state that no longer wanted to see any books. 29:22.203 --> 29:28.366 And then some people said, but we must save the books for the next generations, and they memorized them. 29:28.366 --> 29:33.136 That is a very extreme utopia. I'm not saying it like that now. 29:33.136 --> 29:39.727 But first of all, it certainly helps when you talk with others about books you have read yourself. 29:39.727 --> 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 29:47.303 --> 29:51.403 author, is then passed on. So I think that is very important. 29:51.403 --> 29:57.473 Reading books yourself—you can still partly get them from libraries, or also in bookshops, or what you can of 29:57.473 --> 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. 30:03.345 --> 30:07.490 There are companies that do that, offering used books at a low price. 30:07.490 --> 30:13.010 That still works now. Buying, yes, I have to say something: buying and keeping the very best. 30:13.010 --> 30:19.803 So that is certainly an important way. Or also putting something down on paper yourself and filing it away. 30:19.803 --> 30:23.438 You don't remember everything anyway, especially as you get older, you forget more and more. 30:23.438 --> 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 30:29.631 --> 30:34.263 past – you marked them with a pen and then wrote out what you needed and only kept that. 30:34.263 --> 30:41.780 And then of course I can recommend your own system at Kla.TV, where you say, we have to somehow preserve 30:41.780 --> 30:45.115 this in a decentralized way so that it doesn't get lost. 30:45.115 --> 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 30:52.312 --> 30:55.622 contribution if you have 80 million times five books. 30:55.622 --> 30:58.823 You have to think big and start small, then it will work out. 30:58.823 --> 31:00.120 A very good statement. 31:00.120 --> 31:03.679 Thank you very much, Dr. Renate Reuther, for this interesting interview. 31:03.679 --> 31:05.958 I thank you. 31:09.794 --> 31:17.913 Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Gaza, USA, Iran – are we on the brink of a third world war? 31:17.913 --> 31:23.381 In a war, the first thing to die is the truth, and with it true historiography. 31:23.381 --> 31:30.154 While Europe's governments invest unlimited amounts in weapons and armaments, Kla.TV has exposed warmongers 31:30.154 --> 31:34.261 and their perfidious methods in over 25,000 broadcasts. 31:34.261 --> 31:39.041 Secure true historiography before it is falsified once again. 31:39.041 --> 31:45.611 How? 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