The Plight of a Whistleblower
Zowe Smith vs Big Brother
If you held a key to flushing the scamdemic propaganda down the toilet, would you use it? Accepting that my path is to share my knowledge and skills was a decision that changed my life forever. When I began writing the book in 2022, I knew the odds were stacked against me. After J6, anyone questioning the Covid narrative was labeled a domestic terrorist. Yet, I have been compelled to speak the truth despite that fact. The journey that followed that momentous decision has been nothing short of miraculous. Read on to learn what it really takes to be a whistleblower in the Covid era.
How it feels to be a whistle blower, in 20 seconds. Read on for the gritty details. Or grab a cup of your favorite beverage and listen to the tale of my struggle with Big Brother. I’m not about to tell you how to live your life;)
The Run-Up to the Launch
Just writing the book itself was a daunting experience. It is the culmination of a decade of experience in the medical coding industry, including two years of witnessing the Covid scandal behind hospital doors. Add another two years spent intensely researching every claim I wrote down. The hard part was behind me; now all I needed was a publisher. If only it were that easy.
A well-connected friend in the truth podcast community suggested I try Trineday Publishing. It seemed like a perfect fit. An established truth publisher in my home state. Much to my surprise, Kris Millegan, the owner of Trineday Publishing himself, returned my call! We had a long talk that ended with Kris asking me to call back. After many phone calls about the manuscript, I paid for Trineday Publishing to edit and publish my book. The manuscript was scheduled to be done approximately at the end of June 2023. The original version of ThrillKillMedicalCult.com was freshly revealed, podcast interviews were lined up, and a summary article would soon make its debut in The Last American Vagabond’s publication. I was on top of the world for a moment.
The elation I felt at my book being published quickly turned to anxiety when I didn’t receive any feedback from the editor. Was my manuscript a flop? Did I not cite my facts well enough? Shouldn’t the editor have occasional questions? By the 4th of July, I still hadn’t heard anything. I sent emails asking for progress reports, and I called the main office to no avail. Finally Kris called to say his editor had lost the manuscript; he couldn’t explain what happened. He kindly offered to give me a refund on my deposit but sternly told me Trineday would not be able to publish my book. Claiming they couldn’t work me in due to a backlog of manuscripts in the pipeline.
Something was off. No professional writer would take a paid job containing over 100,000 words and forget to save their work. It was an excuse to get out of publishing my book. Just like when you get dumped and desperately want to know why the other person rejected you, I needed to know what exactly caused Trineday to reject my book. Getting some constructive criticism would be valuable information that would inform my next move. If my work could be improved, then I would make it happen. Of course, I would have to know which areas to improve first. Finally the editor at Trineday called me back to offer an explanation. Ultimately, it was the Covid content he disagreed with. I was devastated. It seemed the sacrifices I made to write the book would be for nothing. If a truth publisher wouldn’t publish it, who would?
Clip from The COVID Code movie trailer filmed, written and directed by Mark Johnson
Time to lick my wounds was not in the cards. Soon after I received the notification from Trineday, my apartment began flooding. Opening the walls to fix the plumbing would spread cancerous spores of black mold. I told the apartment manager that they could not subject me and all of my possessions to cancerous black mold without providing me with adequate notice to vacate. Twelve hours is not sufficient notice! I had a letter from the apartment’s corporate attorney in my inbox the next day. I was told that I could terminate my lease as long as I agreed not to sue them and left by the end of the month. Two weeks was not enough time to secure alternative housing. By the end of July 2023, I was homeless and living out of my car. Again.
To add insult to injury, I had to sell my Van Down by the River (part 2 link here) to pay for publishing. Some of that money had also been invested in a trip to the Liberty Awards in Austin, TX. It was supposed to be the first public appearance after publishing and the perfect event to promote the book. Tickets were non-refundable. The Jackalope Freedom Festival happened to start on move-out day. It is a 2-week-long, off-grid campout. Guess who was about to be semi-permanently camping? So began what I’m calling my very first “rejected-censored manuscript tour.”
After recharging for a short time, I gave finding an editor another go. Highest on my list of concerns was how to find an editor that wouldn’t censor the content. The advice I received was that editors aren’t hard to find, and they won’t censor because they are just happy to have paid work. Feeling reassured, I began trying traditional routes to find an editor. Almost immediately, I found the advice that editors don’t censor to be incorrect. Most of my inquiries went unanswered on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork. The few responses I did receive made it clear these editors were scared to read the truth, let alone publish it. Some ghostwriters sent me quotes and samples, but none of them would do.
One of the samples did stand out from the crowd eventually. I vetted him by sending Chapter 1 to get a sense of how he would react to the content. He agreed to proceed, we signed a contract, and I paid a deposit. Each day I received feedback and a progress report. All was well. Then one day the progress reports stopped. Next, I received an email that confirmed my suspicion that he had read something he didn’t agree with. Beyond doubt, I was correct. He sent me a reference book to reshape my unfounded conspiratorial beliefs. Furthermore, I had to promise never to associate him with my work or content in any way.
By this point in the game, I was in warrior mode. Nothing was going to stop me from publishing this book. All my life, when someone told me I couldn’t do something, I worked hard to prove them wrong. Publishing my book would be no different. Some friends offered to help edit the book, for which I am eternally grateful. Then Mark, the producer of the trailer movie, suggested a rewrite and a self-edit. I tore my hair out for another few months, essentially doing surgery on the manuscript. When it was done, it still needed a final edit. A friend sent me the name of another publisher. Shockingly, they did agree to publish, but it was not meant to be. Too much had already been invested into self-publishing to redo all that work and delay publishing that long. People needed to learn the contents of this book before the 2024 selection.
Ultimately, I leaned on agorism and my freedom network. I found someone who was not a professional editor by trade, but he is a professional conspiracy theorist, Scott Armstrong (of Rebunked News and Grand Theft World). Then I secured a print company that wouldn’t censor the content for distribution. It took over a year, but The COVID Code: My Life in the Thrill Kill Medical Cult was going into print!
An additional roadblock presented itself when I tried to upload my book for global distribution on self-publishing platforms. Once again, I did my homework and learned all the self-publishing platforms do, in fact, censor. They use an AI program to scan the manuscript for flagged content. Each one of the distributors gets a crack at this process, and each one can block the manuscript from distribution. The process takes up to 6 weeks to clear each distributor. Draft2Digital’s AI tried to tell me they couldn’t publish my book because it was already being sold on Amazon. It would violate their non-compete clause in the Amazon contract. AI is notoriously terrible at deciphering context, this being an example. The flag was coming from a citation from AWS about their AI listening software in medical records programs. An appeal was filed with D2D support, and I was given the green light to publish, at last!
Book Launch, Crash and Burn
An enormous amount of planning and prep went into the launch. Weeks of troubleshooting the newly installed payment system on the website. Months of filming a promo video. Launch day was Friday the 13th, September 2024, and the anticipation was killing me! I was overcome with gratitude that all my friends from the truth and freedom community were rallying around me in support. More than supporting the cause, releasing the book meant a chance at achieving financial security again. Something that had been elusive since I quit my healthcare job in 2021. Years of not being able to work take a toll.
I didn’t get off the ground before I crashed and burned. In the middle of the launch party, Mark checked thrillkillmedicalcult.com and found it was down already! Further investigation revealed the website had instantly been flagged as a dangerous website. It was being blocked by certain browsers and anti-virus software as a result. For the remaining people who could access the website, sales were now open!
It didn’t take long for the banksters to hit me where it hurts, the wallet. The next morning I received an email from Stripe informing me that I was a “restricted business.” Stripe is the money-changer for GiveSendGo, a crowdfunding platform. Obviously GiveSendGo could not exist as a crowdfunding platform if they couldn’t facilitate payments for their users. If Stripe honors some of GiveSendGo’s user transactions but not others, how is that not financial censorship? After I confirmed the de-banking censorship tactic was coming from Stripe, I called them out for it. As you can read for yourself in the clip from my email response to Stripe. No further evidence is required to confirm Stripe was falsely claiming I was a restricted business to avoid allowing donations to flow to me via their platform.
My prepper brain anticipated a possible snag with Stripe; they are known for pulling tricks exactly like what I just described. I’m far from alone. Crypto, however, promises to be an uncensorable international currency. Any self respecting freedom lover should have a crypto payment option, right? Leaving money on the table didn’t seem smart, so I installed one. Day one, it looked like crypto to the rescue. Sales started pouring in the night of the book launch. The crypto buyers were the big spenders. They were buying multiple signed copies and adding extra copies of ebooks to their carts.
I was so excited to have sales coming in that I forgot to check my crypto wallet before processing all the orders. Not a single person who paid with crypto actually sent a payment! The website allowed people to automatically check out digital items without verifying payment. At least with Venmo, there was a flag stopping me from processing an order until I verified payment. An unknown number of ebooks were given away for free, and some physical copies of print books were also mailed out before the error was discovered. Approximately $300 worth of merchandise. Payment processing was feverishly tested before launch with my web host, who was also a crypto enthusiast. How could this kind of oversight happen?! I couldn’t get an explanation or any help resolving the remaining issues with website functionality. To protect myself from further losses, I had to turn crypto payments off.
Publicity You Can’t Buy Couldn’t Save Me
The movie VAXXED 3: Authorized to Kill premiered the week after I launched my book. Much to my surprise, clips from my vaxxed bus interview were featured throughout the film. I’m still stunned there weren’t hundreds of healthcare workers all lined up to tell the same story as I did. It was an honor to do a behind-the-scenes special exclusively for CHD’s highest-tier donors with Polly Tommey, Mary Holland, and Dr. Brian Hooker. A pre-recorded special aired the morning of the movie premiere with Michael Nevradakis PhD of CHD’s The Defender. When it aired, I was on a live morning show, AM Wake Up. Putting me on air in two places at once! You can’t buy publicity like that.
Instead of driving sales up, the publicity served only to increase censorship. CHD took every opportunity to remind people how censored VAXXED 3 would be. Theaters had extra stipulations this time around. Viewers had to pre-register for tickets, then the theater would decide if there were enough sales to be worth showing the film. It was up to us, the people, to promote the movie. The priority to get the word out about VAXXED 3 was quickly overshadowed by the fact that RFK Jr. was running for president, his joining with the Trump Administration, and the selection.
As a consequence of being associated with CHD, or not, censorship was inescapable. YouTube and Spotify got on board too. My interviews were flagged for “medical misinformation” for speaking the truth about Covid. The violation notifications are intentionally vague, leaving the creator to deduce which statements violated the policy. The goal appears to be to make the content creator remove the entire episode. Once the offending content is removed, the creator can have access to their channel again. If creators get enough strikes, the account could be permanently closed and all content lost.
I would like to thank the brave podcast hosts for putting me on despite the risk of getting a strike: Hrvoje Morić host of Geopolitics and Empire, and Charles Wright editor and producer of C’s Newsletter. Thank you for taking the strike on my behalf; it was not intentional. To be honest, if I knew what Big Brother didn’t want me to say, I’d still say it. Anyone that puts me on their show understands that is the game we are playing, and I commend them for their courage. Please check out their work and support them.
When you can’t post on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram without getting shadow banned or suspended, you realize how important podcast marketing is for a censored author. Posts on Twitter are seen by a fraction of followers. Gaining traction on platforms like Gab and Telegram (join the telegram channel here) has proven difficult. Even Google’s search engine wouldn’t find my website or bring up any of my interviews for the longest time.
Despite the overwhelming odds, sales were still coming in. Reviews of the book were all positive. People wanted to read The COVID Code, it was in demand. The challenge was getting it in front of people and showing them where to find it. Marketing is admittedly one of my weaker skills, so I had a little coaching. Anyone in book marketing would tell you social media presence is key, but how do you stay present when all your posts go directly in the virtual toilet? The answer to this riddle is twofold. Be on a podcast regularly, or create your own. Second, convince people who have bigger accounts to share your work.
I Was Delayed
I should have been scheduling podcast interviews and running special promotions when the holidays came around. The book had only been out for two months. Priorities quickly shifted when I realized my dad’s time on this earth was coming to a close. This was the only notification I could muster in the moment. It kept me largely out of circulation and out of public view for about 3 months (Nov-Jan).
Throwing myself back into work is what kept me going then. Friends were telling me I didn’t look well. They were right. I hadn’t been taking good care of myself, but I picked myself up by the bootstraps and kept going. Finally, I took the advice to create my own podcast. Actually, it was more like I was nudged into it, and I got worn down enough to stop fighting it. The first episode of Escaping the Cult aired in Jan. 2025 and ran for about six months before the pace became unsustainable.
It was a full-time job scheduling guests, reading the guests research, and coordinating video editing and art production for each one. That is on top of spending a few hours each day maintaining social media posts. Before long, I was juggling multiple episodes at once. Unlike other authors, my business model was to do the payment, shipping, and processing for my own books. Cutting out the middleman puts more money in my pocket and significantly reduces the need to be a New York Times bestseller to turn a profit. Taking on the role of publisher and distributor takes time too. All this would have been the cost of doing business, but to consider it a business, it needs to pay the bills.
Money was trickling in, but it wasn’t enough to pay the rent. A reasonable person would get a day job to pay the bills. Finding a day job wasn’t going to be easy. I was a college grad in a town full of high school dropouts. People were intimidated by the fact I had the word manager on my resume. They said I was over- or underqualified for everything. Even if I could find someone to hire me, there was the problem of time. The way I was going, I had one day off before starting the podcast production cycle for the next week. How would I find time to work? Hats off to all the podcast hosts that work a full-time job and still manage to put out quality content regularly. I have a whole new appreciation for you!
False-Positives for Viruses
Whilst I was going through the motions trying to keep up with podcast production, I was fighting another battle. Website building is something I learned on the fly as a means to an end. Security was something I knew little about. My website was being blocked at the browser level by multiple antivirus software companies. Programs like Norton and McAfee antivirus had falsely flagged my website as “suspicious” or “dangerous.” Some people received messages warning them ThrillKillMedicalCult.com was infected with dangerous viruses. If you click the link, your computer might be infected too.
I had to file false-positive reports with each antivirus software program individually. A false-positive report, just like the false-positive Covid PCR tests that were weaponized during the scamdemic. Website security is typically handled by the web host. My web host helped find the problem and submit tickets to Norton and McAfee. I paid a service to scan the website to make sure there was no malware. It came back all clear. Norton eventually removed the false-positive. McAfee never responded to follow-up emails.
Summer of 2024, another momentous publicity event happened, I was interviewed by James Corbett. To be fair, I connected with James out of desire to share my research on AI kill chain programs used in healthcare, not for the publicity. Nevertheless, it is hard for a censored and shadow banned author like myself to deny the potential of the “Corbett Bump” that past guests have reported. My complaints about these “false-positives” had reached his attention and he gave me some valuable advice. My website needed an SSL certificate.
For eight months sales were negatively affected by the fact many people couldn’t access the website. The one place to buy The COVID Code in print. Adding this one feature could have been the reason the website wouldn’t come up in a Google search. It impacted my ability to get a payment processor installed because the bank couldn’t get to my website. This was kindergarten-level website security stuff that my web host should have handled before I launched 8 months earlier. Anyone who had lost that much money in missed sales, not to mention the mistake that cost me hundreds in merchandise, would have cut their losses. It was honestly difficult to think I hadn’t just been victimized because of my lack of internet security knowledge.
The following month was spent trying to find a suitable new web host and get an SSL certificate installed. HostGator was the first place I tried. Getting the SSL cert wasn’t a problem; the servers syncing the website was. For the next few weeks my website went down because their servers wouldn’t recognize the website. I submitted ticket after ticket to try to get it resolved while The Corbett Report episode was still in circulation. My efforts were useless; each incident kept the website down for longer. This big corporate web host wasn’t working out because of all the bureaucracy I had to fight through to get support. It was time to find another web host.
Thrill Killed Website
It’s flat-lining, get the paddles, STAT!
As soon as a new web host materialized, the website was hacked. Someone got in with an admin invite. It was one of the more nefarious kinds of hacks, a man-in-the-middle attack! The aim was to capture as much data from the website as possible, including my users, their names, addresses, and bank accounts. Fortunately, the bank application separated itself the moment the attack started, and no bank info was captured. The only data that was stolen was my content and some personal data from my de-googled phone! How they got access to that, I will never know. It’s a privacy phone. All the apps are de-googled, and I don’t upload photos to any cloud. The damage was so severe that I asked my new web host to upload my website to a private server and download my sales reports. It was so riddled with viruses he couldn’t find any sales reports.
You may be noticing a pattern that every time I clear one rung on the ladder, the rung breaks beneath my feet and I fall another level. I’ve described it metaphorically as falling down the stairs. Big Brother may have succeeded in taking me out this time, I thought. The website was down for the count, never to be revived.
This was quite a predicament. The one and only way to purchase the book was out of order, and I had no time to rebuild it. I was in the middle of recording The COVID Code audiobook edition myself. Recording would take weeks, and editing could take even longer. When you are running a business and find yourself unable to keep up with the demand, it’s time to delegate tasks. How do you decide what to delegate? Some of it comes down to budget and how much you can afford. My budget was near non-existent, but I managed to get the buy-in from my mom (thanks for your undying support mom!) to invest in having a website built. Selling the audiobook I just invested in producing wasn’t going to work without a viable website.
Having a website built was supposed to free up my time to work on audiobook production. The company I paid to build my website was a professional company. Apparently it is common in the web building industry for a company to produce a product that looks flashy relatively quickly, but the site isn’t functional. Things went from bad to worse when I tried to hold the company accountable for not delivering on their promise to provide me a website that performed all the tasks I gave them within a week. I demanded my money back, but they refused. Instead, they insisted on finishing the website. They promised a website that would not only work, but I would also receive personalized training on how to use it. What I got was a non-functional website that I couldn’t use because I had no training. It took a month, not a week. I lost $800 in the failed project, and I’m considering taking them to civil court for not delivering the product as advertised.
Production came to a screeching halt, and all my focus went into salvaging the website. Most of August was devoted to patching and repairing glitches. Progress was slow but steady. Getting another payment processor set up was fairly easy this time around. Everything was ready for go-live. Miraculously, I had one more major podcast appearance coming up. Grand Theft World, hosted by Richard Grove, a highly intelligent researcher whose work I respect.
De-Banked Again
Grand Theft World aired, and just like that, payment processing was down again. Thrill Kill Medical Cult had been declared a restricted business (again). Selling the newly released audiobook edition of The COVID Code would be impossible without payment processing working. The thousands I invested in the audiobook and print book were going to waste. Digital sales of all kinds had been blocked. The only sales avenue left was cash pay. Few in the US will use a mail-in cash payment option, and it excludes international sales entirely.
Interestingly, that same week I was due to pay the sound production company for the audio edit. I noticed the payment processor was Square Pay. They would let me send money to other Square Pay users, but they wouldn’t allow money to flow to me. Telling the truth and showing your work is a crime. Having donations set up is extra super dangerous to Big Brother. It means I might stand a fighting chance at recovering my return on investment.
Big Brother can’t allow a thought criminal to make a living. Freedom of speech, not freedom of reach, is the official policy. Social media platforms are just following orders when they downregulate and shadow ban. It’s one thing to get censored or shadow banned on social media. When it affects your wallet and your livelihood, you know you are over the mark. That is why the banksters are working so hard to shut down sales flowing to me.
The relentless bombardment of unexpected attacks is enough to drive anyone mad. It has a way of keeping you in fight-or-flight mode. Always watching your back for the next attack. Feeling like the rug will be pulled from under your feet at any moment. The justified paranoia I feel about being censored every time I go live or post anything online will be used against me to make me look like a crazy conspiracy theorist.
Being knocked down so many times takes a toll. It’s left me feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. In case you haven’t noticed, we are at war. It’s a 5th generation war; it doesn’t look like any other war in history. There is no military gathered at the gates of the enemy. We are all soldiers, and our battles are fought individually each day. Our enemy works at a marathon pace; they play the long game. Sprinting along isn’t going to get you ahead; to win, you must be prepared to outlast them.
Taking a break to rest and recover was long overdue. I haven’t been as active on social media so I can focus my energy on meditation and reading again. If this whistleblower is to carry on, I must find a balance between getting the truth out and living my life.
Part of finding that balance is allowing myself to go on podcasts, even when my website is down and there is no way to donate or promote my book. The days of holding off until all the stars are aligned are over. Publishing The COVID Code was never about money; it was about getting the truth out to as many people as possible. If I quit or undergo another extended hiatus, all the momentum and progress I’ve worked toward will dissolve. There is a reason marketing experts advise authors to post on social media constantly; truth podcasters will tell you this also. Staying in the public consciousness relies on frequent communication to fuel the relationship.
Slowly but surely, I am returning to the podcast circuit. I was thrilled when I got the invite to participate in The Union of the Unwanted show. It’s a freeform talk show that features many recognizable names in the freedom community. Ricky Varandas of The Ripple Effect and Charlie Robinson of the Macroaggressions podcast host it. They live-stream the show to YouTube. My nemesis. The only interview to pass YouTube’s censorship was my interview with James Corbett. Censorship has evolved over the year or so since I published the book. It appeared to be less strict, and many content creators are still trying to reach the larger and more mainstream audience that YouTube can deliver. We braced for it but hit the stream button anyway.
Whoops, was it something I said? YouTube censored the episode. The next morning, Ricky posted the notification that he received a strike on the YouTube channel. Censored for medical misinformation. We don’t know for sure what was said that got the episode censored, but lots of fingers are pointing at yours truly. I would hope all the screenshots I’ve presented here have sufficiently convinced you it wasn’t the first time.
Living to Fight Another Day
It’s been a little over a year since I published The COVID Code. Book sales failed to reach the magic number of 1000 copies in a year. It’s the number that publishers look for because it means they will see a return on their investment. The website is down; global distribution through Amazon and other digital forms has been turned off. The audiobook has been available for 4 months, and only a few copies have been sold. By any standard measure, the book sales business is a failure.
Standard business metrics don’t account for wealth in other forms. When I started writing the book, I imagined that one day, I might be able to consider people like Whitney Webb friends of mine. I wanted to surround myself with others who I viewed as thought leaders and mentors. Fantasies like that have become my new reality. More than 10 years ago, when I saw James Corbett’s documentary on 9/11, I never could have imagined I would one day be on his show explaining something to his audience. People like Ryan Cristián of The Last American Vagabond are now my friends and colleagues.
Even better than that are the responses I have received from subscribers and readers all over the world! Copies have been sold overseas in Australia, the UK, Canada, and Germany. One man in Germany tried six different times to get the book. When his attempts failed on the website, he tried eBay. A similar situation happened in Canada. People would not be beating down my door to get a book that was a failure. I must be doing something right if Big Brother is working this hard to shut me down. As grim as it may appear, the people who have brought valuable information to the table have all had their livelihoods cut off. David Rasnick, a previous guest, detailed the many ways his biotech companies were sabotaged. Another example is how Dr. Mercola was debanked recently.
At last, we come to the paradox I must solve. How to activate digital and international sales channels that Big Brother cannot interfere with. Those who know me well will tell you one thing. I can be incredibly stubborn. Rest assured, I won’t stop until I’ve solved that problem. These have been battles in a larger war, and it’s not over. You haven’t seen the last of me. Yet.
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You were meant to be free, but you have to claim it!
-Zowe Smith
Thank you so much for this, and for being so incredibly brave that your (and our) message could get out! I've watched you from the beginning, I think, and am still in awe. What you say IS tough to stomach; it's also completely real and we need to fight back. Thank you for all you have done and do -- what a ridiculous fight, and what valor you've shown!
Every time I listen to you it freaks me out so bad. Such a total war zone we live in, and no one talks about it.