WEBVTT - The Returns: Epiphany 0:00:16.115 --> 0:00:16.595 Pushkin. 0:00:22.795 --> 0:00:25.875 An election is meant to produce a fact. Who do 0:00:25.955 --> 0:00:28.955 the citizens of this country want to lead them? And 0:00:28.995 --> 0:00:31.355 the production of facts is sort of our meat and potatoes. 0:00:31.355 --> 0:00:34.675 Here at the last archive, we made our second season 0:00:34.795 --> 0:00:37.595 in twenty twenty one. We'd started working on it in 0:00:37.675 --> 0:00:40.915 late twenty twenty. I don't remember how Jill was planning 0:00:40.955 --> 0:00:43.315 on ending it back then, but I do know that 0:00:43.355 --> 0:00:46.675 on January sixth, twenty twenty one, whatever that plan was 0:00:46.795 --> 0:00:50.475 went out the window. On that day, rioders stormed the 0:00:50.555 --> 0:00:53.315 United States Capitol Building in an attempt to stop the 0:00:53.355 --> 0:00:57.195 certification of the twenty twenty election. They were denying a fact. 0:00:57.675 --> 0:01:00.595 This was an insurrection. The FBI saw it as an 0:01:00.635 --> 0:01:04.195 act of terrorism. Multiple deaths have been linked to that day, 0:01:04.555 --> 0:01:07.235 some in the chaos of it, some by suicide after. 0:01:08.275 --> 0:01:11.875 Since then, hundreds have been convicted of crimes, including the 0:01:11.915 --> 0:01:16.315 crime of seditious conspiracy. The aftermath of that day is 0:01:16.355 --> 0:01:20.075 still playing out, most recently in the Supreme Court. It 0:01:20.115 --> 0:01:22.875 has a deep influence on the twenty twenty four election, 0:01:23.395 --> 0:01:26.755 raising questions about whether Trump can even legally run for president. 0:01:27.635 --> 0:01:31.355 But today I want to revisit the inciting incident and 0:01:31.395 --> 0:01:34.275 play you. The finale of our second season, an episode 0:01:34.315 --> 0:01:37.835 called Epiphany, which is all about January sixth of twenty 0:01:37.875 --> 0:01:40.595 twenty one and the moment that an election which had 0:01:40.595 --> 0:01:43.915 produced a single fact, the fact of Joe Biden's presidency, 0:01:44.475 --> 0:01:49.955 instead split the country into two irreconcilable realities. Here's the episode. 0:01:58.635 --> 0:02:01.275 There's a place in our world where the known things go. 0:02:03.275 --> 0:02:07.435 A quarter of the mind lined with shelves cluttered with proof. 0:02:13.155 --> 0:02:17.515 I'm hiding in here. Who's out there? What do they want? 0:02:18.715 --> 0:02:22.075 They sounds so angry. I'm pretty sure they can get in. 0:02:22.955 --> 0:02:25.555 I don't see how I can get out. I think 0:02:25.595 --> 0:02:35.475 I might be trapped. Welcome to the Last Archive, the 0:02:35.555 --> 0:02:38.075 show about how we know what we know and why 0:02:38.115 --> 0:02:41.235 it sometimes seems lately as if we don't know anything 0:02:41.275 --> 0:02:47.275 at all. I'm Jill Lapour. This season, I've been trying 0:02:47.275 --> 0:02:49.715 to trace the history of doubt over the course of 0:02:49.755 --> 0:02:54.115 the last century, building that history block by block, a 0:02:54.315 --> 0:02:58.395 tower of doubt. Not too long ago, it all came 0:02:58.635 --> 0:03:02.155 crashing down. It was the beginning of the year twenty 0:03:02.235 --> 0:03:06.235 twenty one. Every archive of knowledge seemed to be under attack. 0:03:06.435 --> 0:03:16.235 Embattled universities, courthouses, press rooms, even Congress but I found 0:03:16.275 --> 0:03:21.955 it the last archives escape patch. Come through with me. 0:03:22.875 --> 0:03:25.195 We'll have to go through a war and of underground tunnels, 0:03:25.235 --> 0:03:29.315 but we'll get there. We're heading to a place called 0:03:29.475 --> 0:03:39.875 Iron Mountain. Something I love about history, all the surprises, 0:03:39.955 --> 0:03:43.795 the twists and turns. So I'm starting with a story 0:03:43.835 --> 0:03:47.675 that has so many turns. In the nineteen thirties, a 0:03:47.715 --> 0:03:51.915 German immigrant named Hermann Noust purchased an abandoned iron ore 0:03:51.995 --> 0:03:55.915 mine in New York State near the Hudson River. Inside 0:03:55.955 --> 0:04:00.635 its caves and old mining tunnels, Noust grew mushrooms. The 0:04:00.675 --> 0:04:04.955 place was perfect for it. The mushrooms mushroomed. Nousk began 0:04:05.035 --> 0:04:07.435 supplying the city with mushrooms, and he made a fortune. 0:04:07.675 --> 0:04:10.875 People called him the mushroom King. At his house he 0:04:10.915 --> 0:04:13.875 had the only mushroom shaped swimming pool in the world. 0:04:14.595 --> 0:04:17.955 In nineteen fifty one, Noust adapted his caves and mines 0:04:17.995 --> 0:04:21.475 and tunnels for a new business. He founded the Iron 0:04:21.555 --> 0:04:27.195 Mountain Atomic Storage Corporation. Because at the time Americans were 0:04:27.235 --> 0:04:30.915 crazy for bomb shelters. School children were ducking and covering 0:04:30.955 --> 0:04:35.115 to prepare for a nuclear attack. Herman Noust outed them all. 0:04:35.835 --> 0:04:40.235 An atomic bomb expert called Nousts Vault, the safest place 0:04:40.235 --> 0:04:40.995 in the world. 0:04:42.395 --> 0:04:44.955 A thirty ton door equipped with a time lock will 0:04:44.955 --> 0:04:47.395 guard one of the main passages in which four hundred 0:04:47.435 --> 0:04:50.235 vaults are located. During the initial phase of the enterprise, 0:04:50.875 --> 0:04:53.955 already foreign banks have applied for storage space behind the 0:04:53.995 --> 0:04:57.875 massive door. Museums also are expected to seek protection for 0:04:57.955 --> 0:05:02.115 their priceless art treasures. In the atmosphere of international tension, 0:05:02.395 --> 0:05:05.035 bank files and records began to find their way into 0:05:05.075 --> 0:05:05.795 the sanctuary. 0:05:06.635 --> 0:05:09.755 You could put your most valuable documents there, wills, photograph, 0:05:09.835 --> 0:05:13.275 UF's legal papers. The company grew and grew a Cold 0:05:13.315 --> 0:05:18.475 War knowledge vault, a last archive along the Hudson. These days, 0:05:18.595 --> 0:05:21.475 Iron Mountain is still in business. It's a global records 0:05:21.515 --> 0:05:24.835 management company, the world's biggest, with a four billion dollar 0:05:24.915 --> 0:05:28.915 annual revenue and facilities in more than fifty countries. You 0:05:28.995 --> 0:05:31.595 might have seen their trucks with a blue triangular logo. 0:05:31.995 --> 0:05:34.475 I see those trucks all the time, rumbling up and 0:05:34.515 --> 0:05:39.155 down the road. Iron Mountain stores everything, including the records 0:05:39.195 --> 0:05:42.915 of nearly every fortune one thousand company. They've also got 0:05:43.075 --> 0:05:46.915 Frank Sinatra's original recordings and Charles Dickens's last will and 0:05:46.955 --> 0:05:50.315 testament back in the scariest years of the Cold War, 0:05:50.355 --> 0:05:54.715 though Iron Mountain Atomic Storage offered something more than storage. 0:05:55.115 --> 0:05:56.355 It offered secrecy. 0:05:57.595 --> 0:06:02.155 Iron Mountain under a blanket of iron ore alternate underground 0:06:02.195 --> 0:06:04.595 headquarters for corporations that. 0:06:04.595 --> 0:06:07.275 Ad ran in nineteen sixty two, the year of the 0:06:07.315 --> 0:06:10.555 Cuban Missile crisis. If you own a company and wanted 0:06:10.595 --> 0:06:13.315 to hold a top secret meeting, why not hold it 0:06:13.315 --> 0:06:17.795 in hidden conference rooms deep underground, Doctor evilstyle. Or you 0:06:17.875 --> 0:06:19.435 might want to hold your meetings down there if you 0:06:19.475 --> 0:06:25.395 were to say a super secret government agency. In nineteen 0:06:25.435 --> 0:06:28.675 sixty seven, a few years after Iron Mountain advertised its 0:06:28.675 --> 0:06:32.435 secret layer meeting service, a little book appeared in bookstores. 0:06:32.915 --> 0:06:36.755 It was called Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility 0:06:36.795 --> 0:06:41.235 and Desirability of Peace. The book described itself as the 0:06:41.235 --> 0:06:44.555 record of a fifteen man special study group that had 0:06:44.595 --> 0:06:48.555 gathered at Iron Mountain in those top secret underground meeting rooms. 0:06:49.115 --> 0:06:52.235 And here was the book's bombshell. It was never supposed 0:06:52.275 --> 0:06:57.075 to be published, but someone had leaked it. A member 0:06:57.115 --> 0:06:59.995 of the secret group identified only as a professor of 0:06:59.995 --> 0:07:04.875 social science from a large Middlewestern university. The report itself 0:07:04.955 --> 0:07:08.195 was totally wonky wonky, but shocking. 0:07:09.875 --> 0:07:13.595 The permanent possibility of war is the foundation for stable government. 0:07:14.035 --> 0:07:19.155 It supplies the basis for general acceptance of political authority. 0:07:20.035 --> 0:07:23.035 The Special Study Group had been convened, it was said, 0:07:23.315 --> 0:07:27.195 in response to a peace scare. Members of the group 0:07:27.355 --> 0:07:29.795 talked about how devastating it would be if the United 0:07:29.795 --> 0:07:33.115 States were ever for any length of time at peace, 0:07:33.795 --> 0:07:36.035 as if the only thing that kept the American people 0:07:36.075 --> 0:07:39.275 from shaking off the chains of their submission was war. 0:07:40.035 --> 0:07:44.995 Endless war, it has ensured the subordination of the citizen 0:07:45.075 --> 0:07:48.995 to the state. No modern political ruling group has successfully 0:07:49.035 --> 0:07:53.835 controlled its constituency after failing to sustain the continuing credibility 0:07:53.955 --> 0:07:55.715 of an external threat of war. 0:07:57.315 --> 0:08:00.315 Report from Iron Mountain concluded that the US needed to 0:08:00.395 --> 0:08:04.155 keep those wars coming, but if, given the growing anti 0:08:04.195 --> 0:08:07.275 war movement, a dreaded peace did descend upon the land, 0:08:07.755 --> 0:08:10.275 there were still ways for the US government to find 0:08:10.435 --> 0:08:14.115 substitutes for functions of war. This is so crazy, I'm 0:08:14.115 --> 0:08:17.315 going to explain it again. According to this report, the 0:08:17.435 --> 0:08:20.675 US government was trying desperately to keep the nation at war, 0:08:21.195 --> 0:08:24.355 but if their worst fears were realized and peace came, 0:08:24.915 --> 0:08:30.195 they had other options other ways to stifle discontent. 0:08:30.755 --> 0:08:35.195 A comprehensive social welfare program, a giant, open end space 0:08:35.275 --> 0:08:40.355 research program aimed at unreachable targets, an established and recognized 0:08:40.435 --> 0:08:47.315 extra terrestrial menace, massive global environmental pollution, fictitious alternate enemies. 0:08:49.235 --> 0:08:53.235 Fully moonshot Batman. This leaked report was hot, hot, hot. 0:08:54.035 --> 0:08:56.475 It became a best seller on the New York Times list, 0:08:56.835 --> 0:09:01.155 was translated into fifteen languages. Esquire published an excerpt. Of course. 0:09:01.315 --> 0:09:04.515 People tried to find that Midwestern social science professor who 0:09:04.595 --> 0:09:07.435 leaked it, and they wanted to know which government department 0:09:07.475 --> 0:09:10.315 had commissioned it. A reporter from the New York Times 0:09:10.355 --> 0:09:12.595 called around to the White House and the State Department, 0:09:12.835 --> 0:09:16.395 and then noted, no advanced reviewer has flatly labeled the 0:09:16.395 --> 0:09:20.315 book fiction. People who read it were incensed, but report 0:09:20.355 --> 0:09:23.875 from Iron Mountain proved very difficult to verify, even though 0:09:23.875 --> 0:09:25.955 some people thought the whole thing was just a hoax. 0:09:26.715 --> 0:09:30.115 If it's authentic, it's an enormous, roaring scandal, one scholar 0:09:30.155 --> 0:09:33.635 told The New York Times. If it's caricature, it's a 0:09:33.635 --> 0:09:38.955 brilliant job. Eventually most people forgot about it, but then 0:09:39.155 --> 0:09:42.995 in nineteen seventy one, another government report was leaked to 0:09:43.035 --> 0:09:43.515 the press. 0:09:44.275 --> 0:09:48.155 This weekend, portions of a highly classified Pentagon document came 0:09:48.195 --> 0:09:50.395 the light for all the world to see and brought 0:09:50.475 --> 0:09:53.795 cries of outrage from Washington. The New York Times began 0:09:53.915 --> 0:09:57.195 publishing parts of a voluminous report that the Pentagon had 0:09:57.275 --> 0:10:00.675 drawn up on the causes and conduct of American involvement 0:10:00.715 --> 0:10:02.275 in Vietnam. 0:10:02.795 --> 0:10:05.995 The Pentagon Papers revealed decades of lying by the federal 0:10:06.035 --> 0:10:08.715 government to the public about what had really been going 0:10:08.755 --> 0:10:10.155 on in the war in Vietnam. 0:10:10.555 --> 0:10:13.755 Senator George McGovern, a leading critic of the war, called 0:10:13.755 --> 0:10:17.835 the report and we quote, a story of almost incredible deception. 0:10:19.395 --> 0:10:22.595 This is where this history gets twisty, Tourney. The publication 0:10:22.715 --> 0:10:25.435 of the Pentagon Papers brought the authors of the Report 0:10:25.475 --> 0:10:28.875 from Iron Mountain out into the open, because unlike the 0:10:28.915 --> 0:10:32.955 Pentagon Papers, which were entirely real, the Report from Iron 0:10:32.995 --> 0:10:39.075 Mountain was in fact entirely made up. So just to 0:10:39.075 --> 0:10:42.595 be extra extra clear here, there never was any special 0:10:42.675 --> 0:10:46.755 study group, had never met at Iron Mountain, and this recording. 0:10:47.275 --> 0:10:51.595 No modern political ruling group has successfully controlled its constituency. 0:10:51.635 --> 0:10:54.595 After failing to sustain the continuing credit. 0:10:54.355 --> 0:10:56.675 That's one of our actors reading a document that is 0:10:56.795 --> 0:11:00.715 in fact a fake. In nineteen seventy two, in the 0:11:00.755 --> 0:11:03.715 New York Times Book Review, a writer named Leonard Lewin 0:11:03.995 --> 0:11:07.395 revealed that the report from Iron Mountain had been a hoax, 0:11:08.195 --> 0:11:11.875 intended as a satire. He'd involved some pretty high level people. 0:11:12.235 --> 0:11:15.555 Even the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith was in on it, 0:11:16.355 --> 0:11:19.755 But Lewin confessed, I wrote the report, all of it. 0:11:20.355 --> 0:11:24.875 The charade is over. The idea had come from Victor Navaski, 0:11:25.075 --> 0:11:27.635 a leftist writer who later became Editor of the Nation. 0:11:28.235 --> 0:11:31.395 It was all a lark, an angry one. As Navaski 0:11:31.475 --> 0:11:35.595 told NPR's Fresh Air in nineteen ninety six, the. 0:11:35.435 --> 0:11:39.635 Idea for reports Maron Mountain came to me one day 0:11:39.715 --> 0:11:42.755 when I saw a little headline in the newspaper saying 0:11:42.835 --> 0:11:45.875 that the stock market had fallen abruptly because of a 0:11:45.915 --> 0:11:49.355 peace scare. And we got an idea to do a 0:11:49.355 --> 0:11:55.675 book about the quashing of a report which was commissioned 0:11:55.675 --> 0:11:59.075 by the White House to plan the transition from a 0:11:59.275 --> 0:12:02.635 wartime to a peacetime economy. And we would do a 0:12:02.755 --> 0:12:06.875 kind of hoax book about what happened when the Commission 0:12:06.955 --> 0:12:11.035 concluded that the economy would collapse. Peace really broke out. 0:12:11.755 --> 0:12:15.235 The Report from Iron Mountain hoax brought the storage company 0:12:15.275 --> 0:12:18.675 Iron Mountain, the real Place a lot of grief, And 0:12:18.755 --> 0:12:21.755 it wasn't fair because, let me be clear, the storage 0:12:21.795 --> 0:12:26.755 company had nothing to do with this hoax. But meanwhile, 0:12:26.755 --> 0:12:31.275 the Hoax report had acquired a huge following among conspiracy theorists. 0:12:31.795 --> 0:12:34.155 They read it as incriminating evidence. They put it on 0:12:34.195 --> 0:12:38.235 their bookshelves, and when the authors revealed themselves to be pranksters, 0:12:38.795 --> 0:12:42.395 it didn't change anything. A lot of conspiracy minded fans 0:12:42.435 --> 0:12:45.115 of the book simply refused to believe this new turn 0:12:45.155 --> 0:12:47.395 of events. They just couldn't take that book out of 0:12:47.435 --> 0:12:50.235 the mental box that said government report written in secret 0:12:50.315 --> 0:12:53.395 underground bunker and put it in the box that said hoax. 0:12:54.475 --> 0:12:56.915 They were still talking about it decades later, like in 0:12:56.995 --> 0:13:00.835 this nineteen ninety three video cassette Blueprint for Tyranny. 0:13:01.835 --> 0:13:05.115 Welcome to the Report from Iron Mountain. 0:13:06.675 --> 0:13:07.995 This report. 0:13:09.115 --> 0:13:12.875 Is some thing you would never believe unless you read it. 0:13:13.395 --> 0:13:17.555 Peace in reality equals world socialism, as we will find 0:13:17.555 --> 0:13:20.635 out as we journey through this report. 0:13:21.395 --> 0:13:25.355 If anything, conspiracy theorists cherished the fake book. More as 0:13:25.395 --> 0:13:28.235 the years passed, they read it avidly, passed it around, 0:13:28.435 --> 0:13:31.115 kept it close to their vests, used it even as 0:13:31.155 --> 0:13:35.075 a manual, a manifesto for opposition to the federal government. 0:13:35.835 --> 0:13:39.435 And then in nineteen ninety five in Oklahoma City, some 0:13:39.515 --> 0:13:44.035 of those right wing conspiracy theorists staged in insurrection. 0:13:44.755 --> 0:13:47.195 The explosion that went off around nine am, and we 0:13:47.315 --> 0:13:49.235 could feel the explosion in the news. 0:13:49.115 --> 0:13:51.035 Room of Channel nine A. 0:13:51.515 --> 0:13:55.755 Now Holy Cow, about a third of the building has 0:13:55.795 --> 0:13:56.835 been blown away. 0:13:58.235 --> 0:14:01.595 On April nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, a truck packed with 0:14:01.675 --> 0:14:05.235 nearly five thousand pounds of explosives detonated outside the nine 0:14:05.275 --> 0:14:10.235 story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing one hundred sixty 0:14:10.275 --> 0:14:13.875 eight people, including nineteen very little children at a day 0:14:13.875 --> 0:14:17.875 care center. The explosion injured hundreds more. 0:14:18.675 --> 0:14:20.235 And we can also give you a bit of a 0:14:20.315 --> 0:14:22.915 hint now as to where the government appears to be 0:14:23.195 --> 0:14:27.195 focusing its investigation on some of the what are called 0:14:27.355 --> 0:14:30.675 right wing white supremacist groups in various parts of the country. 0:14:31.875 --> 0:14:36.195 Eventually, two men were charged with eleven federal crimes. They 0:14:36.195 --> 0:14:38.915 were the sort of guys who believed that the report 0:14:38.915 --> 0:14:40.515 from Iron Mountain was real. 0:14:42.555 --> 0:14:46.075 The indictment charges that Timothy McVay and Terry Nichols, former 0:14:46.195 --> 0:14:49.195 Army buddies with a grudge against the government, planned the bombing, 0:14:49.355 --> 0:14:52.395 selected the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City as their target, 0:14:52.715 --> 0:14:55.915 bought and stole materials for the bomb, and built it. 0:14:59.555 --> 0:15:03.315 After the Oklahoma City bombing, Americans suddenly started paying attention 0:15:03.475 --> 0:15:07.075 to right wing insurrectionists. Who were these people? Where did 0:15:07.075 --> 0:15:10.915 they get their ideas? Those ideas made They came from books. 0:15:11.195 --> 0:15:13.395 I don't know if Timothy McVeigh read the report from 0:15:13.435 --> 0:15:17.115 Iron Mountain or watched those video cassettes about it, but 0:15:17.235 --> 0:15:19.395 he did have a book that's usually right next to 0:15:19.435 --> 0:15:22.315 it on every right wing extremist's bookshelf. 0:15:23.275 --> 0:15:28.435 Inside mcveigh's Yellow Mercury Sedan, investigators discovered a sealed envelope. 0:15:27.955 --> 0:15:32.275 Containing evidence that would prove crucial to analyzing mcveag's motivations. 0:15:32.595 --> 0:15:36.275 Highlighted passages from the anti government novel That Turner Diaries. 0:15:37.075 --> 0:15:39.915 The Turner Diaries is a nineteen seventy eight novel by 0:15:39.915 --> 0:15:43.955 an avowed American neo Nazi. It includes a detailed account 0:15:44.035 --> 0:15:47.195 of somebody building an explosive device, putting it into a 0:15:47.235 --> 0:15:52.995 truck and driving it up to a federal building. McVeigh 0:15:52.995 --> 0:15:56.675 seemed to have treated the Turner Diaries as an instruction manual. 0:15:57.395 --> 0:15:59.955 In a similar way, a lot of his fellow extremists 0:16:00.195 --> 0:16:03.555 considered Report from Iron Mountain as some kind of decoder ring. 0:16:04.235 --> 0:16:07.835 When Magazine reported it has become required reading for militias, 0:16:07.955 --> 0:16:11.035 Nazi sympathizers, and other righting types who deny that it's 0:16:11.075 --> 0:16:13.955 a hoax and cited as evidence of plans for a 0:16:13.995 --> 0:16:17.995 new world order. The instigator of the hoax, Victor Navaski, 0:16:18.555 --> 0:16:21.755 was horrified, as he explained on Fresh Air, he had 0:16:21.755 --> 0:16:25.195 found out that Liberty Lobby, a white supremacist group, had 0:16:25.235 --> 0:16:29.515 reprinted the report and was to them a kind of bible. 0:16:30.035 --> 0:16:33.035 They were so persuaded that the report was the real 0:16:33.115 --> 0:16:37.075 thing that they didn't bother to get copyright permission to 0:16:37.155 --> 0:16:39.555 reprint it, and had reprinted it as if it were 0:16:39.595 --> 0:16:41.515 a government document and we're selling it. 0:16:42.675 --> 0:16:46.835 Navaski's original partner in crime, Leonard Lewin, sued Liberty Lobby 0:16:46.955 --> 0:16:49.515 and reached a settlement. In the end, they had to 0:16:49.515 --> 0:16:52.355 surrender to him their copies of Report from Iron Mountain. 0:16:52.835 --> 0:16:55.915 Lewin stashed them in his basement but it was too 0:16:55.995 --> 0:16:59.475 late to stop this left wing hoax turned right wing conspiracy. 0:17:00.155 --> 0:17:03.355 Navaski wrote in the Nation about its acceptance by super 0:17:03.395 --> 0:17:06.675 patriots and conspiracy theorists of the far right. He said 0:17:06.675 --> 0:17:10.515 that they're taking it seriously was the scariest proposition of all. 0:17:12.955 --> 0:17:16.675 It has since gotten even scarier. Since the nineteen nineties, 0:17:16.755 --> 0:17:19.595 the Report from Iron Mountain has passed from generation to 0:17:19.675 --> 0:17:23.195 generation like some kind of scripture. On the sixth of 0:17:23.275 --> 0:17:27.035 January twenty twenty one, the day insurrectionists attacked the US capital, 0:17:27.835 --> 0:17:31.595 some creep on four Chan posted in the cavalierly ugly 0:17:31.675 --> 0:17:35.235 language in this hideous corner of the Internet, read the 0:17:35.235 --> 0:17:39.835 Report from Iron Mountain, you brainless retard. These days you'll 0:17:39.875 --> 0:17:42.515 still find Report from Iron Mountain on far right white 0:17:42.555 --> 0:17:45.955 supremacist reading lists with no mention that it was a 0:17:46.035 --> 0:17:49.875 left wing hoax. And now it has a new reading 0:17:49.915 --> 0:17:54.075 list companion, the writings of Q, the anonymous alleged insider 0:17:54.075 --> 0:17:57.195 who drops clues about all the evil goings on inside 0:17:57.195 --> 0:18:03.395 the government. Just recently I called up Victor Navaski. He's 0:18:03.395 --> 0:18:05.835 nearly ninety. It was really good of him to talk 0:18:05.875 --> 0:18:08.955 to me. We both sound like we're under Iron Mountain, though, 0:18:08.995 --> 0:18:10.635 because the phone is pretty bad. 0:18:10.995 --> 0:18:14.955 It's a fantasy to believe that it's true. And I 0:18:14.995 --> 0:18:17.995 think Q andon is guilty of its own fantasy. 0:18:18.755 --> 0:18:21.875 Do you think if anyone presented himself to the world 0:18:21.915 --> 0:18:24.715 tomorrow and said I am Q and I can prove 0:18:24.755 --> 0:18:28.075 that I am Q, and I was just joking the 0:18:28.115 --> 0:18:30.835 whole time, and it got out of hand none of 0:18:30.875 --> 0:18:33.755 this is true. Would there be any way I'm doing 0:18:33.795 --> 0:18:34.555 what had been done? 0:18:35.915 --> 0:18:39.915 I don't think so myself. I think that's where we 0:18:39.955 --> 0:18:41.115 are as a culture. 0:18:41.355 --> 0:18:47.395 And unfortunately, the Q and On report goes something like this. 0:18:48.035 --> 0:18:51.075 An insider decides to spill the beans about a secret 0:18:51.115 --> 0:18:56.075 government run conspiracy, something to do with Satan and pedophiles. 0:18:56.915 --> 0:19:00.115 He leakes some clues in a report and then report 0:19:00.235 --> 0:19:03.435 after report, and the people who read those reports, those 0:19:03.475 --> 0:19:08.275 postings by this anonymous que become passionately attached to the 0:19:08.315 --> 0:19:12.155 idea of a conspiracy, and within the logic of that conspiracy, 0:19:12.515 --> 0:19:15.435 they are being denied access to knowledge, some secret body 0:19:15.435 --> 0:19:17.955 of knowledge hidden away that only the people in power 0:19:17.995 --> 0:19:21.115 have access to, and that the followers of Q have 0:19:21.195 --> 0:19:25.235 to hunt down and piece together clue by clue, Q 0:19:26.355 --> 0:19:39.355 by Q Q isn't true. Also, I don't buy either 0:19:39.395 --> 0:19:42.075 of the two big headlines about Q and On that 0:19:42.155 --> 0:19:45.635 it's new or that it's uniquely powerful. That's what I've 0:19:45.675 --> 0:19:47.835 been trying to argue by going over the story of 0:19:47.875 --> 0:19:51.515 the report from Iron Mountain. This stuff isn't new, it's 0:19:51.555 --> 0:19:55.955 not all powerful, and it has never ever been a secret. 0:19:56.395 --> 0:19:59.035 This election will be the most rigged election in history. 0:19:59.515 --> 0:20:02.555 That is a lie, an old fashioned lie, but it's 0:20:02.595 --> 0:20:05.755 also a complex lie, the sort of lie that brings 0:20:05.795 --> 0:20:09.155 together every kind of doubt whose rise I've been chronicling 0:20:09.195 --> 0:20:13.355 all seasons long as little boats of doubt rowboats canoes. 0:20:13.835 --> 0:20:16.235 They become a fleet of flotilla in Armada. 0:20:16.795 --> 0:20:19.435 They're sending millions of ballots all over the country. 0:20:19.715 --> 0:20:22.915 There's fraud. They found them in creeks. They found some 0:20:23.075 --> 0:20:23.875 with the name Trump. 0:20:23.995 --> 0:20:25.995 Just happened to have the name Trump just the other 0:20:26.075 --> 0:20:27.635 day in a waste paper basket. 0:20:27.915 --> 0:20:30.475 This is going to be a fraud like you've never seen. 0:20:31.195 --> 0:20:33.635 It was awful to watch this unfold in the months 0:20:33.755 --> 0:20:36.395 leading up to the twenty twenty election, and in the 0:20:36.395 --> 0:20:39.755 months afterward, to watch it spread on the Internet and 0:20:39.875 --> 0:20:43.395 hear it from the mouth of the US President. He 0:20:43.475 --> 0:20:48.715 said it again and again and again. If enough people 0:20:48.755 --> 0:20:51.475 in public and in positions of authority lie about something 0:20:51.515 --> 0:20:55.675 for long enough, people will believe it. Watching it all, 0:20:55.795 --> 0:20:59.235 I felt as if my brain was on rewind. Specifically, 0:20:59.555 --> 0:21:02.395 my head kept rewinding back to a brilliant book published 0:21:02.475 --> 0:21:06.315 in nineteen ninety four called A Social History of Truth 0:21:06.715 --> 0:21:09.795 by Stephen Shapin, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science 0:21:09.835 --> 0:21:13.995 at Harvard. Shapin was writing about gentleman philosophers in the 0:21:13.995 --> 0:21:17.355 seventeenth century in England. But I find his book so 0:21:17.515 --> 0:21:20.315 wholly applies to the President that I ask him to 0:21:20.355 --> 0:21:21.435 read my favorite lines. 0:21:22.075 --> 0:21:26.955 Knowledge is a collective good. In securing our knowledge, we 0:21:27.115 --> 0:21:31.675 rely upon others, and we cannot dispense with that reliance. 0:21:32.195 --> 0:21:34.875 That means that the relations in which we have and 0:21:34.955 --> 0:21:38.675 hold our knowledge have a moral character. And the word 0:21:38.715 --> 0:21:42.275 I use to indicate that moral relation is trust. 0:21:44.395 --> 0:21:47.235 He argues that you can't actually know anything alone, You 0:21:47.235 --> 0:21:50.795 can only know things with other people. He doesn't think 0:21:50.795 --> 0:21:53.595 the United States or the world is experiencing a crisis 0:21:53.635 --> 0:21:56.315 of truth. He thinks it would be better called a 0:21:56.355 --> 0:22:01.475 crisis of social knowledge. For example, and in particular around 0:22:01.475 --> 0:22:02.395 climate change. 0:22:02.995 --> 0:22:06.555 I know something about the loss of biodiversity, species, about 0:22:06.555 --> 0:22:11.875 melting icebergs, about sea level rise. Now someone puts pressure 0:22:11.875 --> 0:22:13.795 in me and say, how do I know these things? 0:22:14.475 --> 0:22:16.675 I don't think any of us know these things directly. 0:22:18.395 --> 0:22:22.195 So the knowledge that I need to know these things 0:22:22.275 --> 0:22:24.835 is to know who to believe, who has credibility, who 0:22:24.875 --> 0:22:26.915 is author to who to trust? 0:22:29.435 --> 0:22:32.315 To know anything, then you have to know who to trust. 0:22:32.955 --> 0:22:36.515 If you doubt everything, it's because you trust no one. 0:22:36.755 --> 0:22:41.515 I find this framework really helpful. No one is killed truth. Instead, 0:22:41.795 --> 0:22:44.635 we have this crisis of trust. But how did people 0:22:44.675 --> 0:22:47.835 stop knowing who to trust? One answer to that question 0:22:47.875 --> 0:22:52.235 involves the unintended consequences of new technologies of communication. We've 0:22:52.275 --> 0:22:55.195 been hearing about those all season. How radio, for example, 0:22:55.315 --> 0:23:00.155 amplified all kinds of extremism, but broadcasts only reached so far. 0:23:00.995 --> 0:23:03.675 Then came the Internet, starting with bulletin boards and chat 0:23:03.715 --> 0:23:06.675 rooms in the nineteen nineties, but we still think of 0:23:06.715 --> 0:23:09.275 it the way we thought about radio in the nineteen thirties. 0:23:09.955 --> 0:23:14.595 The phrase echo chamber comes up a lot an acoustic metaphor. 0:23:15.355 --> 0:23:19.475 So there's a million voices are screaming out there, but 0:23:20.155 --> 0:23:24.755 any any body or any any group of like mind 0:23:24.755 --> 0:23:27.995 that people are listening to some and not to others. 0:23:28.555 --> 0:23:33.275 So there's another kind of question about what for us 0:23:33.435 --> 0:23:35.715 is audible and what for them is audible. 0:23:36.275 --> 0:23:41.155 Right, But then that metaphor of audibility and voice voice 0:23:41.515 --> 0:23:44.715 also meaning vote, you know, has implications for democracy, which 0:23:44.755 --> 0:23:46.475 is to say we will hear all the voices, and 0:23:46.715 --> 0:23:50.195 that we will we will automate a system wherein we 0:23:50.235 --> 0:23:54.595 hear everyone who's enfranchised. But then now we're in a 0:23:54.635 --> 0:23:58.515 crisis of democracy around people not feeling heard, right, I mean, 0:23:58.555 --> 0:24:00.235 if we just think about the siege of the Capitol 0:24:00.275 --> 0:24:02.595 and if you listen to interviews with those people, we're 0:24:02.635 --> 0:24:04.035 here to have our voices heard. 0:24:04.475 --> 0:24:09.475 A democratic project, everyone has a voice. I mean, well 0:24:10.035 --> 0:24:10.875 we've heard them now. 0:24:11.835 --> 0:24:14.995 Still, the argument that technology allows fakers and haters to 0:24:15.035 --> 0:24:18.635 find each other more easily, Stephen Shapin thinks that's just 0:24:18.755 --> 0:24:21.595 too glib. It's one of the reasons I loved talking 0:24:21.595 --> 0:24:24.355 with him. He got me thinking harder about another argument 0:24:24.435 --> 0:24:27.395 to explain what has happened to Americans and trust over 0:24:27.435 --> 0:24:31.675 the past century. That argument is political. It involves what 0:24:31.715 --> 0:24:34.395 one set of political actors have done to institutions over 0:24:34.435 --> 0:24:37.995 time in order to shift the balance of power in 0:24:38.035 --> 0:24:38.635 their favor. 0:24:39.395 --> 0:24:41.515 Do you mean to say the Supreme Court decision is 0:24:41.595 --> 0:24:42.235 not void? 0:24:42.555 --> 0:24:45.835 No, a Supreme Court decision is not necessarily the law 0:24:45.835 --> 0:24:47.835 of the land. The Constitution still is. 0:24:48.875 --> 0:24:53.355 That's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater making a Conservative argument that 0:24:53.435 --> 0:24:56.835 the Supreme Court had overstepped in its decision to abolish 0:24:56.835 --> 0:25:00.835 segregation in Brown versus Board of Education in nineteen fifty four. 0:25:02.195 --> 0:25:04.795 Conservatives at the time were very much out of power. 0:25:05.235 --> 0:25:08.395 Goldwater was an upstart, but his wing wanted to take 0:25:08.435 --> 0:25:11.355 over the GOP, and then they wanted to take over 0:25:11.395 --> 0:25:15.555 the country. And so, beginning in the nineteen fifties, Conservatives 0:25:15.555 --> 0:25:18.915