Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 2: Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible.
Speaker 2: So I'd like to welcome Robert Kerno. She's an award
Speaker 2: winning journalist, broadcaster, author, and is a charity ambassador for dyslexia,
Speaker 2: something that touches on a lot of families, including Robin's
Speaker 2: and my own. Robin is now an American, but she's
Speaker 2: also a global citizen who can say that she's from Australia,
Speaker 2: South Africa, Britain and the US. So you were a
Speaker 2: CNN journalist and anchor for over twenty years and had
Speaker 2: a ring sight seated at almost every defining event over
Speaker 2: the last twenty years, and you now have a great
Speaker 2: podcast I want to plug Searching for America, where you
Speaker 2: explain or try to explain America to the rest of
Speaker 2: the world. So if you ever find America, please let
Speaker 2: us know. I will.
Speaker 3: I think it is one of those odyssees that where
Speaker 3: the journey is more important than the destination.
Speaker 2: So it seems like everything with three letters these days
Speaker 2: is viewed with distrust, right, you know, the focus of
Speaker 2: popular conspiracy theories, the FBI, the CIA, and the MSM.
Speaker 2: Mainstream media something that you were a representative of and
Speaker 2: still are. And so it's one of me. If you
Speaker 2: wonder if you could start to take us down the
Speaker 2: rabbit hole of why there is now so much distrust
Speaker 2: of mainstream media. And that's a plural, not a singular, right,
Speaker 2: that's a wide spectrum.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's an easy answer, and I think
Speaker 3: if we had the answer, perhaps the media wouldn't be
Speaker 3: in the pickle it is in right now. But certainly,
Speaker 3: when I was ends Africa correspondent, which I was for
Speaker 3: a long time, and I was traveling, more often than
Speaker 3: not people would say to me, oh, so you're from
Speaker 3: the CIA, and I'd go, no, it's CNN. I'm from CNN,
Speaker 3: and then they go yeah. But sometimes it would be
Speaker 3: interchangeable for some people, And I don't know you guys
Speaker 3: obviously didn't announce yourself when you walked into places. But
Speaker 3: I'm sure the sort of sense that the media and
Speaker 3: spies or intelligence was sharing the same space wasn't a
Speaker 3: big leap for people, And I think particularly in those days.
Speaker 3: Now this is ten years ago, and this is outside America.
Speaker 3: I think in those days it wasn't a big leap
Speaker 3: because for a lot of particularly African nations, with public
Speaker 3: broad broadcasters and the way societies were set up, that
Speaker 3: actually there was an intersection between journalism and spying, and
Speaker 3: that journalists sometimes had to report back to the government,
Speaker 3: or sometimes journalism was used as a front for a
Speaker 3: ficial a kind of spying operations. You know, that wasn't
Speaker 3: a far leap. So I think I've always had to
Speaker 3: deny that I was there for the wrong reasons, and
Speaker 3: the way I dealt with it was just to be
Speaker 3: pretty open about the way I was asking questions and everything,
Speaker 3: and use humor, which I'm sure you guys would use
Speaker 3: a lot as well. The way it is now that
Speaker 3: the entire institution of sort of media is seen as
Speaker 3: some sort of suspicious puppet of some dark, nefarious, sort
Speaker 3: of secret organization, and that we are being being played
Speaker 3: and all playing the public. It's terrifying and it is worrying,
Speaker 3: and I don't know how it got so bad so quickly. Yes,
Speaker 3: social media. Yes, leaders using the sort of the opportunity
Speaker 3: to do this in order to get themselves credit. There's that,
Speaker 3: And I think there've also been a few owned goals
Speaker 3: by mainstream media that perhaps as the debate got more
Speaker 3: and more fractured and fragmented, we did all pull into
Speaker 3: different corners. And so what you see now, even from
Speaker 3: ten years ago when I moved to America, you do
Speaker 3: see more of a defined CNN is taking a position,
Speaker 3: or Fox taking a position, or MSNBC taking another position.
Speaker 3: And I think that sort of perhaps in trying to
Speaker 3: protect ourselves, we might have just played into some stereotypes
Speaker 3: and that hasn't been helpful and it'd been given some
Speaker 3: of the critics an easy win.
Speaker 1: If you looked at a heat map, I think in
Speaker 1: the United States of the media where it was on
Speaker 1: the political spectrum of where people thought it was. The
Speaker 1: term that's thrown at you mainstream media is mostly thrown
Speaker 1: from the right because they believe the media is as
Speaker 1: a leftist bias. But now when I see these sort
Speaker 1: of heat maps of what people are watching, listening to,
Speaker 1: and where they're getting their information. It is largely frankly
Speaker 1: right wing stuff. I think the places that we consider
Speaker 1: more left wing media seem much smaller and being able
Speaker 1: to reach far fewer people, Like how did that happen?
Speaker 1: Like if you had even asked me a few years ago,
Speaker 1: I'd said, well, you know, on the spectrum media overall
Speaker 1: maybe is a little bit more liberal than conservative. But
Speaker 1: now that's actually not true. I don't think a right No, I.
Speaker 3: Think you're right. And I used the words fractured and
Speaker 3: fragmented for a very good reason. Somebody also talked about
Speaker 3: broadcasting and the way I you know, I'm an old traditionalist.
Speaker 3: I mean I started off in the analog world, and
Speaker 3: I still believe in that sort of traditional, almost moral
Speaker 3: imperative of the journalist. Whereas the broadcasting, which tended to
Speaker 3: see a program or on CNN International what I used
Speaker 3: to do, would tend to be quite of a wide
Speaker 3: you'd be kind of throwing a few stories at the
Speaker 3: dartboard in one thirty minute bulletin. Whereas I think what
Speaker 3: you're talking about now is this fragmentation to this narrow
Speaker 3: casting where you're seeing these tiny little it's not even
Speaker 3: just echo chambers, it's echo chambers with an echo chambers
Speaker 3: with an echo chambers. It's this network of honeycomb of
Speaker 3: the these tiny, little fragmented pieces of media. And that's
Speaker 3: where I think the ecosystem for the right, which is
Speaker 3: the podcast which you talked about so much during the
Speaker 3: run up to this sort of recent US election, particularly
Speaker 3: the kind of bro podcasts which just seem to have
Speaker 3: so much more clout. Why are those so much more
Speaker 3: powerful now and why are they getting so much audience?
Speaker 3: And I think that's also the question, you know, is
Speaker 3: it a conspiracy? No, I think it's because people are
Speaker 3: looking for something else. They don't trust the bias as
Speaker 3: they see it, the liberal bias of the mainstream media.
Speaker 3: But I don't think there's an easy answer to this,
Speaker 3: and this is why I'm puffing and puffing when I'm
Speaker 3: saying this, and I think it's probably also probably why
Speaker 3: you're asking these questions. And I don't think the bosses
Speaker 3: in New York have the answer, because if they did,
Speaker 3: they also wouldn't be trying. They would have fixed the
Speaker 3: viewership problem at CNN. They would have fixed the viewership
Speaker 3: problem at MSNBC, at New York Times. I mean, look
Speaker 3: at Washington Post. Nobody reads it really, I know I do.
Speaker 3: They're losing audience and they're not gaining new audience. And
Speaker 3: if there was an answer to this question, then we
Speaker 3: would have the solution. And I think we're in this
Speaker 3: incredible space of transition technologically clearly, you know where you
Speaker 3: can call it the Third Industrial Revolution. You can talk
Speaker 3: about reformations or whatever. But the sort of media, the
Speaker 3: ugliness and the messiness of where we are in the
Speaker 3: media right now, it's like a stew It's a mess.
Speaker 3: We're not quite sure where it's going to all land up.
Speaker 3: So I'm sorry, I'm not even answering your question because
Speaker 3: I don't have an answer. And there's a reason I'm
Speaker 3: not working in the media anymore, because it did become
Speaker 3: quite toxic.
Speaker 2: There are conspiracies in the mainstream media, and I'll name
Speaker 2: you too, okay. One is Fox News got hit for
Speaker 2: seven hundred and eighty million dollars for reporting things that
Speaker 2: they knew not to be true, and we're basically feeding
Speaker 2: their audience something that they knew not to be true.
Speaker 2: And there's an other case coming with smart manic. And
Speaker 2: the second one is miss you've mentioned sinister forces behind
Speaker 2: one American news network is owned up to fifty percent,
Speaker 2: it's not clear by the Altani family, the Royal family
Speaker 2: and Cutter. So you've got a foreign influence. It's not
Speaker 2: a democracy that has must have some influence on these.
Speaker 2: And yet this is not the New York Times or
Speaker 2: the Washington Post, which are fact based and yes they've
Speaker 2: made mistakes, but they cop to those mistakes and they
Speaker 2: say we got this wrong, and they'll retract things. And
Speaker 2: so I my sense is that there are conspiracies within
Speaker 2: the media, but it's not the places where that generally
Speaker 2: are getting blamed for it. I don't think there's some
Speaker 2: cunning plan behind the Washington Post, right or maybe Jeff
Speaker 2: Bezos now, but yeah, no.
Speaker 3: But I think when I talk about self inflicted, because
Speaker 3: I mean trying to figure out, how do you get
Speaker 3: to this point where nobody trusts you, even if you've
Speaker 3: been doing the same thing the same way, same fact
Speaker 3: checking at CNN, even doubly so you know, in the
Speaker 3: last ten years, same and even more passionate dedication to
Speaker 3: actually saying to giving fact based news visually representing stuff
Speaker 3: that's happening. This is what's happening.
Speaker 2: You see it, we all watch it.
Speaker 3: We saw it happen. So then how does it get
Speaker 3: to the point that we are still not trusted, or
Speaker 3: that my colleagues are not trusted. My husband still works there.
Speaker 3: He runs all of CNN's operations in war zones, so
Speaker 3: he was running CNN's operations in Israel and then Ukraine beforehand,
Speaker 3: and sometimes people would come to me and say, well,
Speaker 3: just tell us, really what's happening, And I'm like, turn
Speaker 3: on the television. It's not like we my husband and
Speaker 3: I know something that's not making it onto air. There's
Speaker 3: not another story that we're hiding. And you can have
Speaker 3: a few glasses of wine and we'll tell you the
Speaker 3: real story when you come to our house. But what's
Speaker 3: going on air is something different. And the word always
Speaker 3: comes around, particularly if you grew up in a place
Speaker 3: like South Africa, that's the word that you used to
Speaker 3: describe sinister groups of whoever. And that surprises me still
Speaker 3: as if to say, you know, really what's going on,
Speaker 3: and it's got worse and worse, and the self inflicted
Speaker 3: stuff is it because we took ourselves too seriously, that
Speaker 3: we lost the sense of storytelling perhaps and joy and fun.
Speaker 3: Sometimes news would be kind of a little bit more
Speaker 3: less produced.
Speaker 1: Might it be more simple that the most powerful man
Speaker 1: in the world has been consistently, over and over saying
Speaker 1: that you're the enemy of the people, and the person
Speaker 1: who's the richest man in the world, who owns one
Speaker 1: of the biggest Twitter and acts, the biggest places for media,
Speaker 1: is saying the same thing. I mean, if you're pumping
Speaker 1: out to people over and over that the media can't
Speaker 1: be trusted, people are going to start to believe it.
Speaker 3: And that's absolutely that's an excellent point. That's the basis
Speaker 3: from which we're starting.
Speaker 2: That makes excellent points rarely, but when he does, and
Speaker 2: I mean I saw that.
Speaker 1: Even a squirrel finds a blind that's an excellent point.
Speaker 3: Sorry, And that's and that's the basis. Yet, but then
Speaker 3: why is this also being replicated in some parts of
Speaker 3: the world where Trump is not president or is not
Speaker 3: constantly on air. This sort of distrust of officialdom is
Speaker 3: something I think that is, you know, whether it's the
Speaker 3: whether it's intelligence or agencies, or whether it's government, or
Speaker 3: whether it's bureaucracies, or whether it's media. There's something about
Speaker 3: the distrust that we've seen, probably fueled maybe solely by
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, but then while people still not believing in
Speaker 3: sort of basic truths, and I don't have the answer
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 2: It's the end of the interview. You're gone, you're done.
Speaker 3: You can't make up anything. You've spent a life telling stories,
Speaker 3: and you're not going to give us some BS explanation.
Speaker 1: Well, we have the we have the answer, but we'd
Speaker 1: rather not put it out.
Speaker 3: When we've stopped recording. You can tell me why, the
Speaker 3: real truth. You can tell me what you really think.
Speaker 2: So let's take a break. We'll be back in a moment.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask. So your podcast is excellent, and
Speaker 1: you're trying to explain America to the world, and you
Speaker 1: obviously have a long career and international news, and you
Speaker 1: have a background a lot of different places. As you
Speaker 1: do that, and you get feedback from people, what are
Speaker 1: the biggest questions or concerns or misunderstandings about what's happening
Speaker 1: in America? What is it you're trying to address.
Speaker 3: Coming I live in the South. I'm sitting here in
Speaker 3: Atlanta talking to you. So we're in the Deep South.
Speaker 3: And we're in a conservative neighborhood or liberal neighborhood, and
Speaker 3: one of my children plays sport. So we've driven a
Speaker 3: lot around Georgia into sort of those rural areas of
Speaker 3: Georgia that are Marjorie Taylor Green Territory and even further in.
Speaker 3: And I've sat on the sports fields next to very
Speaker 3: vociferous Maga Trump supporters, people who are very Christian and
Speaker 3: fulfill that stereotype of red neck ignorant and as Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton would have said, deplorable. You know who are the
Speaker 3: people that voted for Trump? Well, it's these rednecks out
Speaker 3: here in Georgia. And you can kind of if you're
Speaker 3: not careful. And I think this was one of the mistakes,
Speaker 3: when I say South self inflected. One of the mistakes
Speaker 3: a lot of the media made, particularly with the run
Speaker 3: up to the first Trump election, was not listening to
Speaker 3: the anxieties coming from that chunk of America, the middle
Speaker 3: America or the lower middle class America, the white men,
Speaker 3: the non college educated people. It was sort of dismissed
Speaker 3: as sort of red neck deplorables who were being taken out,
Speaker 3: who were being fooled by this rich gold tapped a
Speaker 3: multi billionaire who was really just a really just bankruptost
Speaker 3: the time. But when I sat next to them on
Speaker 3: the sports field and you're in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 3: and they're good people, their sons, their dads, their wives,
Speaker 3: their sons and daughters. They're the first people in a
Speaker 3: pouring rainstorm that would pull over and help you change
Speaker 3: a car tire. And so that's the disconnect that I'm
Speaker 3: trying to find, because I think if I do what
Speaker 3: I was doing when I was at CNN, which was
Speaker 3: trying to have this sort of high brow analysis with
Speaker 3: Washington folks or whatever. And yes, I have a master's
Speaker 3: degree from Cambridge and international relations. I can talk foreign
Speaker 3: policy for hours, But does that really help me to
Speaker 3: understand the instincts and the patterns and the anxieties and
Speaker 3: the hopes that American voters are really feeling. And that's
Speaker 3: what I'm trying to do, And I think being an
Speaker 3: outsider helps. So I kind of try to listen to
Speaker 3: them with compassion, and I've found that fascinating, where you
Speaker 3: walk into a place and you're like, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to try and judge them. I might not vote for them.
Speaker 3: I maybe don't believe in the same things, but I'm
Speaker 3: not going to other them, and particularly coming politically is
Speaker 3: a white South African. I understand that very clear political,
Speaker 3: very easy way of othering somebody and maybe you fearful
Speaker 3: of somebody else. And I think a lot of American
Speaker 3: leaders Trump in particular, but then towards the end also
Speaker 3: a lot of very left progressive Americans have made the
Speaker 3: same mistake and have othered, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: So I think that the sort of So that's the
Speaker 3: very long version of what I'm trying to do, so
Speaker 3: to try and look past why don't they believe in vaccines?
Speaker 3: I sat next to the field and I'm like, what's
Speaker 3: with the anti vaxin shit going on here?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: But I that's when I realized, oh, RFK has got
Speaker 3: a real chance, do you know what I mean? It's interesting,
Speaker 3: I'm curious, and so I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: and as you know, a lot of conspiracy theories are
Speaker 3: bred from a fear of the unknown, and if you
Speaker 3: play into that, whether on the left or the right,
Speaker 3: you can create fear and anxiety which then gets amplified
Speaker 3: unfortunately by news because it's good for ratings, and it
Speaker 3: creates this as I remember, John, I think you called
Speaker 3: it this angertainment industry, and that's unfortunately where maybe again
Speaker 3: one of these self inflicted aspects of mainstream media, which
Speaker 3: is really I hate the term, but is that the
Speaker 3: more we catered towards ratings, the more we amplified our
Speaker 3: own part in the division. And people have just got
Speaker 3: sick and tired of it, or they just like, I
Speaker 3: don't want to be scared and angry, or you're making
Speaker 3: me too scared. You're making me too angry today and
Speaker 3: there's a weird little calibration that goes on in people's brains,
Speaker 3: and yeah, that's where I am.
Speaker 2: So Robin is a South African, Australian, brit Americans.
Speaker 3: Exactly with Southern Children.
Speaker 2: Southern Children is America. Are Americans uniquely vulnerable to a
Speaker 2: conspiratorial mindset. And let me set this by saying, we've
Speaker 2: all lived in other parts of the world, and I've
Speaker 2: lived in Southern Africa. It's still one of my favorite
Speaker 2: places in the whole world. But aside from the Middle East,
Speaker 2: Southern Africa was completely full of wild conspiracy theories. And
Speaker 2: I remember foolishly thinking in the US, we don't at
Speaker 2: least have that we don't believe in, like secret military
Speaker 2: bases or witchcraft, or you know, because we have modern
Speaker 2: medicine we believe in. So you've lived around the world
Speaker 2: as well, and are we any different than anybody else
Speaker 2: now or were we?
Speaker 3: You know what an interests me. I actually stole one
Speaker 3: of your guests, Drew McCoy, because I'm fascinated by the
Speaker 3: American religiosity, and I think a lot of the conspiratorial
Speaker 3: stuff is amplified by the way Americans view the spiritual
Speaker 3: or the supernatural, and there's I don't know if it
Speaker 3: goes back to the Pilgrims. I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: in your DNA. I don't know what it is about Americans.
Speaker 3: But the Jesus stuff, the personification of Jesus as somebody
Speaker 3: who is walking with you, goes fishing with you, drinks
Speaker 3: a beer with you. Jesus is right there. That kind
Speaker 3: of personification of Jesus is very American. And it's not
Speaker 3: just evangelical, and it's not just Trumpian either. There's something
Speaker 3: baked in and obviously I'm in the South here, so
Speaker 3: I see it within my daily life, and so it's
Speaker 3: not just a Catholicism. I'm a very lapsed Catholic, but
Speaker 3: that sort of high Church stuff that I grew up with,
Speaker 3: where you talk about God as some sort of supernatural
Speaker 3: being and Heaven is something that is esoteric here in America.
Speaker 3: People believe you will go to Hell, and that plays
Speaker 3: into the politics in a way that I've not seen
Speaker 3: in any other nation. I think that if you talk
Speaker 3: about conspiracy theories, a lot of conspiracy theories here talk
Speaker 3: about the devil or the demon or Satan or you know,
Speaker 3: even with you know, even when Trump was shot, there
Speaker 3: was this meme going around and with the sort of
Speaker 3: a Jesus who looked like a white bearded Jesus sort
Speaker 3: of saving him as if he was his own personal,
Speaker 3: you know, secret service agent, sort of deflecting the bullet.
Speaker 3: And I found that interesting because I think if you
Speaker 3: believe that Hell and Heaven exists literally, and that Adam
Speaker 3: and Eve is a literal story, then I think it's
Speaker 3: a quicker leap to saying there's child trafficking and a
Speaker 3: pizza parlor in Washington, or all these CIA agents want babies,
Speaker 3: And so I think the American conspiracy stuff is somehow
Speaker 3: wrapped up in a very particular version of America's Americans
Speaker 3: idea of Hell and Earth and Jesus and the devil.
Speaker 1: That's take a break.
Speaker 4: A friend of mine when I was in Africa, and
Speaker 4: I don't want to be sued by the wrong African country,
Speaker 4: but I think it was Equatorial Guinea. In World War Two,
Speaker 4: an aircraft crashed in Equatorial Guinea and it had all
Speaker 4: these British soldiers on this, like thirty British dead. And
Speaker 4: Britain doesn't have an embassy in Equatorial Guinea, in Malabo
Speaker 4: and whatever the capital is, and so the American said, well,
Speaker 4: we will tend the war graves. So every couple of
Speaker 4: months the American embassy would send out and the ambassador
Speaker 4: and the deputy ambassador, the DCM would go out and
Speaker 4: they would tend to the war graves. And the number
Speaker 4: two in the embassy was kicked out of the country
Speaker 4: and accused of political witchcraft. It was like he got PNG,
Speaker 4: And I thought that could never happen in the United States.
Speaker 4: And now I hear Marjorie Taylor Green talking about demonic
Speaker 4: forces are behind the Democrats and Jesus is protecting one
Speaker 4: particular thing, and I think, note, we're not actually too
Speaker 4: much equatorial Guinea.
Speaker 1: We got to start using Jesus as a weapon, like
Speaker 1: we ought to just pretend that we're like that. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're wrong. I thought to Jesus and he said.
Speaker 2: I think Jesus was Cia Sours. Yeah, I have a
Speaker 2: specific question for you, so something I'm fascinated about it,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure you can talk about it. But
Speaker 2: Anderson Cooper on CNN loved the guy.
Speaker 3: He was at the farm, yes, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: I wasn't going there. But he actually interviewed and talked
Speaker 2: to someone who believed in the Q ANDN theory who
Speaker 2: told him that he was going to go like they
Speaker 2: were going to send him to prison. And I'm not
Speaker 2: quite sure what there was this q Andon conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2: And do you have anything more on this? What when
Speaker 2: you confront a wacky conspiracy theory like head on like that?
Speaker 2: How did that go?
Speaker 1: I have not.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming he did the interview very well and probably
Speaker 3: didn't believe a word that he said. But what is
Speaker 3: interesting about Q and on and I was going to
Speaker 3: and it refers to the South African stuff, is that
Speaker 3: I think many people believe that Q is South African
Speaker 3: right got a guy, and they got a guy who's
Speaker 3: apparently a guy and who's whatever. But that doesn't surprise
Speaker 3: me because South Africans, as you know, whether white or black,
Speaker 3: have this extraordinary ability to believe all sorts of things
Speaker 3: that still kind of amazes me and infuriates me on
Speaker 3: many levels. So yes, being in America, I sometimes hear
Speaker 3: some of the stuff and I'm like, you can't make
Speaker 3: this stuff up. But then I think back to some
Speaker 3: of the stories I had to cover when I was
Speaker 3: in Africa, and You're like, yeah, no, there's been it's
Speaker 3: been crazier. That's why I can never quite put my
Speaker 3: finger on what it is that makes somebody, often highly
Speaker 3: intelligent people, sometimes in your own family, believe stuff that
Speaker 3: you think, yeah, no nah. But also the presidents, and
Speaker 3: I think the use of conspiracy theories in Africa by
Speaker 3: African leaders can be quite Trumpian or I think that
Speaker 3: sense of referencing forces out to get you, nefarious secret
Speaker 3: people who are trying to bring you down and stop
Speaker 3: you is a very African leader kind of way of
Speaker 3: dealing with power and keeping it and making sure that
Speaker 3: you are you keep people around you in check as well.
Speaker 3: Adam about you. Jerry used to all this over and
Speaker 3: over again, probably and mcgarbi was pretty good at it.
Speaker 3: Jacob Zumer constantly was bringing up threats. Even the current
Speaker 3: set of leaders in South Africa are constantly saying they're
Speaker 3: about to be poisoned or they were nearly poisoned. And
Speaker 3: I think that sort of sense of a leader constantly
Speaker 3: under attack is a very easy way out and it's
Speaker 3: very effective.
Speaker 2: Zuma said he took a shower so he couldn't get AIDS, right, Yes.
Speaker 3: And that's another one that I When stuff is happening
Speaker 3: in a country that you can't control, particularly as a leader,
Speaker 3: you then have to also blame some nefarious force. And
Speaker 3: with when I was there, Tarbon Berkey the president, there
Speaker 3: was the ade epidemic in those sort of early two
Speaker 3: thousands of people were dying a day, and Tarboon Berkey
Speaker 3: as a sort of intellectual. He thought of himself as
Speaker 3: an intellectual. He had a university education, so in many
Speaker 3: ways it wasn't coming from a place of sort of ignorance.
Speaker 3: And he did his own research and he came up
Speaker 3: with the concept that HIV did not cause AIDS, and
Speaker 3: then his cabinet around him started also being kind of
Speaker 3: fueling into that, and it became a yes man cabinet,
Speaker 3: Yes women, there were quite a few of them too,
Speaker 3: and so it became this sort of AIDS denialism. But
Speaker 3: right from the top that was sort of had a
Speaker 3: veneer of intellectualism around it, and you know, it was like,
Speaker 3: we have to question, we have to question everything. We
Speaker 3: also don't want the imperilous American Western pharmaceutic companies to
Speaker 3: take advantage of US Africans. Therefore, this is also an
Speaker 3: exercise in US standing up for our rights. So it
Speaker 3: was shrouded this whole conversation about what caused HIV AIDS,
Speaker 3: and hundreds of thousands died because of the denihalism around
Speaker 3: HIV and the slow roll out of antiretroviral drugs, but
Speaker 3: that played down. So the sort of the questioning of
Speaker 3: basic facts in order to support the leader's inability to
Speaker 3: control this massive death rate then played into all sorts
Speaker 3: of other conspiracy theories, which one of them was if
Speaker 3: you have sex with a virgin, you'll be cured of AIDS.
Speaker 3: And so South Africa has this incredibly high child rape
Speaker 3: rate and at first nobody could understand what was going
Speaker 3: on until it became evident that there was this rumor
Speaker 3: that HIV you could be cleaned you could be cleansed
Speaker 3: by somebody who was fresh. I suppose thirty forty percent
Speaker 3: of people believe that. But you know, how do you
Speaker 3: fight that and how do you then try and convince
Speaker 3: people that this isn't the truth when from the top
Speaker 3: it's been said, you've got a question that that you've
Speaker 3: got to look at alternative therapies was the line from
Speaker 3: from the top for many people who were ignorant about
Speaker 3: basic medical facts that then became justified. But what was
Speaker 3: so interesting about the sort of sleep with a virgin
Speaker 3: is that that trope actually started in sixteenth century England
Speaker 3: and it's a you know, it's an old Victorian trope
Speaker 3: about when people got syphilis, and it probably goes back
Speaker 3: also to sort these ideas of these Christian martyrs who
Speaker 3: would be would would be cleansing to a society because
Speaker 3: they would they would remove a society's access to the
Speaker 3: demons or devil or Satan or whatever. So the whole
Speaker 3: concept of that, you know, rape of virginary to be
Speaker 3: cleared of it goes back to some sort of Western idea.
Speaker 3: So I think a lot of these conspiracy theories, these
Speaker 3: tropes of power or of explanation that are behind the
Speaker 3: conspiration theories often quite similar in overlapping. You know, if
Speaker 3: it's not the aliens who are controlling us, maybe it's
Speaker 3: the Jews. You know, that's an old one, And so
Speaker 3: I think there's often an overlap and often culturally surprisingly
Speaker 3: close in ways that you wouldn't think.
Speaker 5: We'll be back next week with more of our conversation
Speaker 5: with Robin Kerno. Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson,
Speaker 5: Jerry O'Shea, John Ceipher, and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer
Speaker 5: is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible it's a production of honorable
Speaker 5: mention and abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.