WEBVTT - Episode 7: Body Snatchers 0:00:15.436 --> 0:00:23.436 Pushkin Tesla ceo Elon Musk offering to buy Twitter for 0:00:23.436 --> 0:00:27.076 forty three billion dollars. Muscu has accused the social media 0:00:27.156 --> 0:00:29.556 platform of limiting free speech analysis. 0:00:29.796 --> 0:00:33.236 In April of twenty twenty two, Elon Musk launched his 0:00:33.316 --> 0:00:36.836 takeover of Twitter, offering forty four billion dollars for it. 0:00:37.156 --> 0:00:39.556 Why make that offer? Well, I think it's very important 0:00:39.596 --> 0:00:44.796 for be it be an inclusive arena for free speech. 0:00:45.796 --> 0:00:46.076 Yeah. 0:00:46.156 --> 0:00:50.036 So, he'd also started talking a lot about something he 0:00:50.116 --> 0:00:54.756 called the woke mind virus. Must didn't coin the term, 0:00:54.996 --> 0:00:58.236 but he popularized it. Musk is a man of many 0:00:58.236 --> 0:01:02.036 interests and many masks. There's the batman mask and then 0:01:02.076 --> 0:01:05.156 there's the would be philosopher hat. And making his bid 0:01:05.196 --> 0:01:08.876 for Twitter, Musk wore both of these so online, he 0:01:09.956 --> 0:01:13.356 complaining that the science fiction on Netflix, for instance, had 0:01:13.356 --> 0:01:18.076 gotten too woke. But in conversations with serious people at 0:01:18.116 --> 0:01:21.636 a Ted Talks event in twenty twenty two, he talk 0:01:21.676 --> 0:01:24.476 about the stakes of buying Twitter in grander terms. 0:01:24.836 --> 0:01:28.596 It's important to the function of democracy. It's important to 0:01:28.596 --> 0:01:31.796 the function of the United States as a free country 0:01:31.916 --> 0:01:34.436 on many other countries, and help freedom in the world. 0:01:34.756 --> 0:01:39.156 Civilizational risk is decreased, the more we can increase the 0:01:39.196 --> 0:01:42.276 trust of Twitter as a public platform. 0:01:42.556 --> 0:01:44.996 People in the media talk about Twitter all the time, 0:01:45.596 --> 0:01:49.036 but that's because they're on it. Most other people aren't. 0:01:49.436 --> 0:01:52.076 In the US, only about one in five American adults 0:01:52.116 --> 0:01:56.196 even have accounts, and most posting about politics is done 0:01:56.236 --> 0:02:00.476 by fewer than ten percent of users. Twitter isn't, and 0:02:00.596 --> 0:02:05.596 never was, a town square. Musk buying it just put 0:02:05.596 --> 0:02:09.636 a private platform into different private hands. As his purchase 0:02:09.676 --> 0:02:12.276 went through in October of twenty twenty two. 0:02:12.396 --> 0:02:14.836 Twitter users are waking up to find that that little 0:02:14.916 --> 0:02:18.796 blue bird has flown. The coup owner Elon Musk, changed 0:02:18.836 --> 0:02:22.196 the iconic bird logo to the letter X. 0:02:23.716 --> 0:02:27.996 The way Musk talked about X got increasingly grandiose. He claimed, 0:02:28.356 --> 0:02:31.196 the woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else 0:02:31.276 --> 0:02:35.356 matters a mind virus, as best I can tell. The 0:02:35.436 --> 0:02:40.836 idea came from Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and prominent atheist, 0:02:41.316 --> 0:02:44.876 who wrote a tirade in nineteen ninety one, seemingly because 0:02:44.916 --> 0:02:47.716 he was furious that one of his ex wives was 0:02:47.756 --> 0:02:52.036 sending their six year old daughter to Catholic school. Dawkins 0:02:52.076 --> 0:02:57.916 considered religion a mind virus. Computers can get viruses, he explained, 0:02:58.196 --> 0:03:01.676 and so can the human mind. At the very least, 0:03:01.956 --> 0:03:06.156 Dawkins wrote, the mind is a plausible candidate for infection. 0:03:07.356 --> 0:03:09.996 But what even is the virus that Musk so worried about? 0:03:10.516 --> 0:03:12.476 Lork bind myrus is communism rebranded? 0:03:12.836 --> 0:03:16.556 Sometimes, though, must give a different definition using the expression 0:03:16.836 --> 0:03:20.076 woke mind virus for something that had been a truly 0:03:20.116 --> 0:03:23.956 horrible feature of Twitter and of much public discourse for years, 0:03:24.796 --> 0:03:28.636 the suppression, especially on the left of political dissent. 0:03:31.716 --> 0:03:34.876 You can't question things. Even the questioning is bad. 0:03:35.556 --> 0:03:40.116 Questioning is good. Here we agree. So I've got some questions. 0:03:43.636 --> 0:03:46.796 Welcome to x Men, the Elon Musk origin story. I'm 0:03:46.876 --> 0:03:49.516 Jill Lapour. I'm a professor at Harvard. I'm a US 0:03:49.636 --> 0:03:52.676 political historian, and for a long time I've been studying 0:03:52.676 --> 0:03:57.836 the relationship between technological and political change. In this series, 0:03:58.116 --> 0:04:00.676 I've been looking into how Musk is in many ways 0:04:00.716 --> 0:04:05.796 an invention of science fiction, and so is Muskism, which 0:04:05.996 --> 0:04:09.676 I've been arguing is less a form of futurism than 0:04:09.716 --> 0:04:13.556 a throwback. I think that's true of Musk's concern about 0:04:13.556 --> 0:04:19.956 a woke mind virus, too. First of all, let me 0:04:20.036 --> 0:04:22.276 just say for the record that Musk has a point 0:04:22.316 --> 0:04:26.316 about the assault on free speech, including in higher education, 0:04:27.076 --> 0:04:28.916 and he has a point that there are indeed some 0:04:29.076 --> 0:04:34.116 malign consequences of wokeness. Fair enough. But what I'm interested 0:04:34.196 --> 0:04:37.516 in is the very idea of a mind virus. Where 0:04:37.516 --> 0:04:39.956 a Musk got that language, what he means by it, 0:04:40.476 --> 0:04:43.676 and what effect it has. Because other people might muse 0:04:43.716 --> 0:04:46.676 about this kind of thing, but Musk, he spent forty 0:04:46.716 --> 0:04:50.356 four billion dollars to buy Twitter to kill the virus. 0:04:53.836 --> 0:04:56.796 This story doesn't really start with Richard Dawkins in the 0:04:56.876 --> 0:05:00.556 nineteen nineties. It starts in the nineteen fifties. 0:05:01.076 --> 0:05:02.596 What is it? What's going on? 0:05:03.076 --> 0:05:03.556 I don't know. 0:05:03.676 --> 0:05:06.516 A strange neurosis, evidently contagious. 0:05:06.756 --> 0:05:09.916 In the nineteen fifties, a lot of people were very suddenly, 0:05:10.356 --> 0:05:12.676 very worried about mind control. 0:05:13.036 --> 0:05:15.356 It's an malignant disease spreading through the whole country. 0:05:15.916 --> 0:05:19.236 Fear of communism and at the same time, fear of 0:05:19.276 --> 0:05:23.636 anti communism in the form of McCarthyism. Both fears are 0:05:23.636 --> 0:05:27.036 the subject of the nineteen fifty six film Invasion of 0:05:27.076 --> 0:05:32.116 the Body Snatchers, where everyone seems suddenly not quite themselves anymore, 0:05:32.876 --> 0:05:33.716 and what causes it. 0:05:34.276 --> 0:05:35.756 Worry about what's going on in the world. 0:05:35.836 --> 0:05:41.636 Probably this actually. 0:05:41.436 --> 0:05:45.316 Was a panic of concern to the military in the 0:05:45.556 --> 0:05:48.796 early years of the Korean War that American troops seem 0:05:48.876 --> 0:05:52.916 to be succumbing to some sort of mysterious techniques. 0:05:53.156 --> 0:05:56.036 Rebecca Lamov is a historian of science at Harvard a 0:05:56.076 --> 0:05:59.396 colleague of mine. She's written a new book, The Instability 0:05:59.436 --> 0:06:04.516 of Truth, A History of brainwashing, mind control, and hyper persuasion. 0:06:05.196 --> 0:06:08.556 Beginning during the Korean War, when the Chinese government under 0:06:08.596 --> 0:06:12.796 Chairman now held Americans as prisoners, they were. 0:06:12.676 --> 0:06:16.236 Held in prison camps. Initially these camps were run by 0:06:16.236 --> 0:06:18.836 the Koreans and later by the Chinese. The troops were 0:06:18.876 --> 0:06:22.316 subjected to re education as a sort of experiment to 0:06:22.316 --> 0:06:24.836 see if it would apply to westerners. One of the 0:06:24.876 --> 0:06:27.156 soldiers had brought back his journal in which he had 0:06:27.196 --> 0:06:28.796 been forced to confess. 0:06:29.156 --> 0:06:31.556 Being an evil capitalist, basically. 0:06:31.116 --> 0:06:34.316 Being an evil capitalist or having had a hand in oppression, 0:06:34.436 --> 0:06:38.076 or in this case he was African Americans. So sometimes 0:06:38.076 --> 0:06:43.276 they would actually incorporate a racial sort of liberation analysis 0:06:43.316 --> 0:06:45.476 into it. But at any rate, ninety one percent of 0:06:45.516 --> 0:06:48.836 the prisoners reported that they were forced to journal. 0:06:48.796 --> 0:06:50.476 Because part of the re education is you have to 0:06:50.516 --> 0:06:52.196 retell the story of your own life. 0:06:52.356 --> 0:06:55.916 Exactly what the US military and then later the press 0:06:55.956 --> 0:07:00.116 were seeing when these prisoners were returned was something they 0:07:00.676 --> 0:07:04.676 felt was quite mysterious. They would appear vacant and sort 0:07:04.716 --> 0:07:10.236 of dissociated, and would be quoting Communist propaganda, which used 0:07:10.276 --> 0:07:13.956 that very formulaic language that their families wouldn't recognize. So 0:07:13.956 --> 0:07:17.796 they seemed to be not themselves. And there was evidence that, 0:07:18.116 --> 0:07:21.036 as a New Yorker reporter later put at, something new 0:07:21.076 --> 0:07:23.956 in history was happening, and they called in troops of 0:07:23.956 --> 0:07:27.956 psychiatrists and sociologists and any expert to see see if 0:07:27.956 --> 0:07:29.516 they could break the spell. 0:07:29.836 --> 0:07:33.396 I mean, it's terrifying. Is they're terrifying, terrifying prospect. 0:07:33.596 --> 0:07:33.796 Yeah. 0:07:33.796 --> 0:07:37.236 There were also American pilots who gave false confessions to 0:07:37.276 --> 0:07:40.716 having dropped biological weapons over China, and there were American 0:07:40.716 --> 0:07:44.396 businessmen who also seemed to be turning up having been brainwashed. 0:07:44.436 --> 0:07:47.636 So it was quite terrifying that the Communists had something 0:07:47.636 --> 0:07:49.596 that just was not understood. 0:07:52.596 --> 0:07:55.396 New York. Well, American executive Robert bogla Is home with 0:07:55.476 --> 0:07:58.236 his wife after confinement in a Hungarian Communist prison camp 0:07:58.276 --> 0:07:59.196 for seventeen months. 0:07:59.636 --> 0:08:03.116 So Robert Vogeler was an American businessman, an executive who 0:08:03.156 --> 0:08:07.316 was working in Hungary for IT and T, the International 0:08:07.356 --> 0:08:10.996 Telegraph and Telephone Company. He entered the headlines because he 0:08:11.316 --> 0:08:14.276 was returned after being imprisoned by the secret police. 0:08:15.116 --> 0:08:19.396 I was shoved into a sixth feet by nine feet cell, 0:08:20.676 --> 0:08:24.396 and the cold was unbearable. The worst of it, however, 0:08:24.956 --> 0:08:29.156 was the endless routine repeated every six minutes, of the 0:08:29.156 --> 0:08:33.596 steel people being opened and clang shut. 0:08:34.196 --> 0:08:37.076 He couldn't quite remember what had happened to him. He 0:08:37.156 --> 0:08:40.636 had been converted to communism initially. When he came back 0:08:41.036 --> 0:08:44.436 then he sort of decompressed and returned to himself. Later, 0:08:44.476 --> 0:08:46.796 when he reflected on it, he said, the very body 0:08:46.916 --> 0:08:49.436 is forced into league against one's personality. 0:08:50.076 --> 0:08:54.076 The important thing to be learned from my experience is 0:08:54.116 --> 0:08:59.756 that it can happen to anyone. It can happen to you. 0:09:00.996 --> 0:09:04.676 Lamov says that the public learned about brainwashing from a 0:09:04.676 --> 0:09:06.036 writer named Edward Hunter. 0:09:06.956 --> 0:09:10.756 He actually was quite an experienced OSA agent Office of 0:09:10.796 --> 0:09:14.356 Strategic Services, which was the precursor to the CIA essentially, 0:09:14.836 --> 0:09:17.476 and he had been working in China for several decades 0:09:17.756 --> 0:09:20.996 and had been an anti propaganda that was his beat, 0:09:21.116 --> 0:09:23.876 and he had also worked as a journalist. He had 0:09:23.876 --> 0:09:26.996 an extensive collection of propaganda. So he wrote an article 0:09:27.156 --> 0:09:30.556 in nineteen fifty announcing that the Communist had developed a 0:09:30.596 --> 0:09:33.156 new super weapon. He called it brainwashing. 0:09:33.756 --> 0:09:36.676 But it's a very evocative phrase. So that becomes the 0:09:36.796 --> 0:09:40.276 language with which Americans talk about this process of malist 0:09:40.316 --> 0:09:41.836 indoctrination exactly. 0:09:41.876 --> 0:09:44.516 It takes off, and he publishes a book. He goes 0:09:44.516 --> 0:09:47.436 on a lecture circuit. He explains more deeply, and he 0:09:47.436 --> 0:09:53.116 connects this brainwashing to Communist techniques and hypnosis, and also 0:09:53.236 --> 0:09:57.636 to Soviet programs to build new types of human beings. 0:09:58.196 --> 0:10:01.156 The US government was concerned enough that in nineteen fifty 0:10:01.156 --> 0:10:05.716 three it started its own brainwashing program MK Ultra, led 0:10:05.716 --> 0:10:10.676 by the CIA, horrifying human experiments. The public didn't know 0:10:10.716 --> 0:10:13.636 about it for decades, but you can see the fear 0:10:13.676 --> 0:10:16.676 of brainwashing reaching a kind of apex with the film 0:10:16.796 --> 0:10:21.236 adaptation of the nineteen fifty nine novel Manchurian Candidate. 0:10:21.676 --> 0:10:25.596 I have conditioned them or brainwashed them, which I understand 0:10:25.676 --> 0:10:26.916 is the new American work. 0:10:27.476 --> 0:10:30.596 It was as if these men had been made into machines. 0:10:30.956 --> 0:10:33.956 His brain has not only been washed as they say, 0:10:34.236 --> 0:10:35.836 it has been dry clean. 0:10:38.956 --> 0:10:42.076 In the midst of all this, one man in Pretoria, 0:10:42.116 --> 0:10:44.396 South Africa, was frantic. 0:10:45.156 --> 0:10:49.276 Every day the brainwashers repeat and emphasize the things they 0:10:49.436 --> 0:10:50.636 want us to believe. 0:10:51.396 --> 0:10:55.756 Remember Elon Musk's maternal grandfather, J. N. Haldeman. I talked 0:10:55.756 --> 0:10:59.196 about him in an earlier episode. That's an actor, reading 0:10:59.196 --> 0:11:03.356 from a tract Haldeman published in South Africa in nineteen sixty. 0:11:03.476 --> 0:11:07.276 In it, Haldeman described himself as having been a student 0:11:07.436 --> 0:11:12.476 of social engineering who had directed a number of scientific, social, economic, 0:11:12.516 --> 0:11:16.356 and political organizations. In the nineteen thirties, He'd been a 0:11:16.436 --> 0:11:20.196 leader of the technocracy movement in Canada. Then he joined 0:11:20.236 --> 0:11:24.636 the anti Semitic Social Credit Party, becoming its national chairman. 0:11:25.436 --> 0:11:28.076 In nineteen forty nine, he began thinking about moving to 0:11:28.116 --> 0:11:32.836 South Africa, attracted by its newly announced policy of apartheid. 0:11:33.196 --> 0:11:37.596 He moved there in nineteen fifty. In May of nineteen sixty, 0:11:37.876 --> 0:11:42.596 Haldeman wrote the International Conspiracy to establish a World Dictatorship 0:11:42.636 --> 0:11:46.236 and its Menace to South Africa. The tract was a 0:11:46.276 --> 0:11:49.276 response to a speech by the British Prime Minister. 0:11:50.196 --> 0:11:53.396 The window Chaine is blowing through this continent. 0:11:54.716 --> 0:11:55.916 Whether we like it or not. 0:11:56.516 --> 0:12:00.836 This growth national consciousness is a political fact. 0:12:02.676 --> 0:12:06.956 In February nineteen sixty, Harold McMillan, the PM, had addressed 0:12:06.996 --> 0:12:12.236 the South African Parliament disc countenancing apartheid and urging acceptance 0:12:12.316 --> 0:12:14.516 of the inevitability of independence. 0:12:15.316 --> 0:12:17.036 We was all accepted as a fair. 0:12:18.396 --> 0:12:21.636 Only weeks later, South African police opened fire on a 0:12:21.676 --> 0:12:25.316 crowd of thousands of black South Africans protesting outside the 0:12:25.356 --> 0:12:30.196 Sharpville police station. Police killed sixty nine people, including children, 0:12:30.596 --> 0:12:32.436 and wounded nearly two hundred. 0:12:34.556 --> 0:12:38.516 There was a rattle of machine gun and people started running. 0:12:38.556 --> 0:12:44.036 Pocerta children were screaming around the street crying for the amadas, 0:12:44.396 --> 0:12:48.116 and some other policemen's were busy shooting those children. 0:12:49.036 --> 0:12:52.676 The killings were captured on television and the coverage reached 0:12:52.716 --> 0:12:57.116 around the world. In the ensuing protests and state of emergency, 0:12:57.676 --> 0:13:02.276 Nelson Mandela was among eighteen thousand people arrested and jailed. 0:13:03.156 --> 0:13:07.836 Haldeman wrote this tract that spring, suggesting that the uprising 0:13:08.076 --> 0:13:09.036 had been staged. 0:13:09.556 --> 0:13:12.836 Questions to be asked who were the white leaders in 0:13:12.876 --> 0:13:16.956 the Shopville Native riot? Who escaped. Who were the ones 0:13:16.996 --> 0:13:20.276 who fired the shots at the police that would guarantee 0:13:20.276 --> 0:13:22.836 that a major event would take place at that time? 0:13:23.436 --> 0:13:24.596 What are their connections? 0:13:25.316 --> 0:13:28.796 He believed apartheid had come under attack due to an 0:13:28.836 --> 0:13:33.076 international conspiracy spreading dangerous ideas like these. 0:13:33.516 --> 0:13:42.476 The natives are ill treated, underpaid, underprivileged. Separate development is wrong, 0:13:43.396 --> 0:13:46.356 apartheid is un Christian. 0:13:46.436 --> 0:13:50.836 And Heldemann believed that the media itself was doing the brainwashing. 0:13:51.516 --> 0:13:59.196 Every day newspapers, magazines, commercial radio newscasters drip this into 0:13:59.236 --> 0:14:02.836 the conscious and subconscious minds of the public. 0:14:03.396 --> 0:14:05.756 He pledged to stop the spread of the virus. 0:14:06.196 --> 0:14:09.516 People who know it is ninety nine percent un true, 0:14:09.956 --> 0:14:15.716 repeat these lies emphatically and emotionally. The facts of history 0:14:15.796 --> 0:14:19.556 show that the white man has always developed the country 0:14:19.676 --> 0:14:24.396 he inhabits to the benefit of all concerned. The black 0:14:24.476 --> 0:14:28.396 people of Africa have been in close contact with civilization 0:14:28.836 --> 0:14:35.356 from the earliest times, but on their own built nothing, discovered, nothing, 0:14:35.956 --> 0:14:37.196 not even the will. 0:14:39.116 --> 0:14:42.236 Now, let me state again what I've said before. Elon 0:14:42.356 --> 0:14:45.716 Musk is not responsible for the ideas or actions of 0:14:45.756 --> 0:14:49.036 his grandfather, who died when Musk was only two years old. 0:14:49.996 --> 0:14:53.676 I mentioned him here because he's an excellent illustration of 0:14:53.756 --> 0:14:56.796 the persistence of fears of mind control. 0:14:57.396 --> 0:15:01.556 People have become misled on the proven traditional attitudes of 0:15:01.636 --> 0:15:03.916 what is right and wrong and what is good and 0:15:04.036 --> 0:15:07.836 bad for themselves and for their country by an intensive 0:15:07.996 --> 0:15:14.476 psycho political warfare which has been conducted to change people's minds. 0:15:13.636 --> 0:15:16.796 For everything Heldeman blamed brainwashing. 0:15:17.436 --> 0:15:22.436 Psychopolitics is now one of the chief weapons of the internationalists, 0:15:22.836 --> 0:15:25.276 and it is in this field that they are having 0:15:25.396 --> 0:15:31.676 so much success and practically no opposition. An intensive mass 0:15:31.876 --> 0:15:35.636 mind conditioning has been going on for a century. 0:15:36.236 --> 0:15:39.436 This was being done, he alleged, not only by the media, 0:15:39.516 --> 0:15:41.036 but also by universities. 0:15:41.396 --> 0:15:45.196 It is no wonder that so many university professors come 0:15:45.236 --> 0:15:50.276 out with liberalistic, anti nationalist statements, although they may be 0:15:50.436 --> 0:15:56.676 professing Christians and sincerely feel they are patriots. Throughout university 0:15:56.756 --> 0:16:00.436 courses to get their degrees, they were subjected to a 0:16:00.516 --> 0:16:02.756 materialistic inductrination. 0:16:03.556 --> 0:16:06.516 While we're at it, it's curious that another of Heldeman's 0:16:06.556 --> 0:16:09.196 big evils was government waste. 0:16:09.356 --> 0:16:12.116 Most of this waste is a result of following the 0:16:12.276 --> 0:16:15.996 tax and debt system of the Internationalists. 0:16:16.356 --> 0:16:20.076 He wanted to set up a finance committee to combat inefficiency. 0:16:20.436 --> 0:16:24.356 A watchdog financial agency is needed. 0:16:24.396 --> 0:16:26.676 And he wanted one to combat brainwashing too. 0:16:27.196 --> 0:16:31.116 Another watchdog committee must have power to counter erect the 0:16:31.156 --> 0:16:35.876 psycho political warfare that is being directed against South Africa. 0:16:36.836 --> 0:16:40.476 This must be done or the Finance Committee, which soon 0:16:40.556 --> 0:16:43.636 find they had no public support for their efforts to 0:16:43.716 --> 0:16:47.996 save the country. People must be warned and become fully 0:16:48.076 --> 0:16:52.476 aware that when they read the international English language newspapers, 0:16:52.956 --> 0:16:56.756 these are not really British or American. They are more 0:16:56.876 --> 0:17:01.076 likely to be psychopolitical organs of Moscow and Wall Street. 0:17:01.916 --> 0:17:04.916 Heldeman was writing in nineteen sixty just as the public 0:17:04.956 --> 0:17:09.036 panic about brainwashing was beginning to wind down. After that, 0:17:09.236 --> 0:17:13.196 people stopped talking about it so much. Rebecca Lamov says 0:17:13.316 --> 0:17:16.276 the public fear about mind control didn't really start up 0:17:16.316 --> 0:17:19.476 again until the nineteen nineties, the end of the Cold War, 0:17:19.916 --> 0:17:23.316 the beginning of the Internet. That's when Richard Dawkins started 0:17:23.316 --> 0:17:27.996 writing about viruses of the mind spreading like computer viruses, 0:17:28.916 --> 0:17:34.356 and then the worry became those viruses are spreading by computer. 0:17:38.516 --> 0:17:41.796 Full disclosure. I hate Twitter. I hated it when it 0:17:41.876 --> 0:17:45.116 was leftier, and I still hate it now that it's rightier. 0:17:46.116 --> 0:17:48.516 I hate all social media. I've never had an account 0:17:48.556 --> 0:17:50.676 on any of these things. I think social media is 0:17:50.676 --> 0:17:55.276 a disaster for democracy, for fairness, for decency, for humanity. 0:17:56.076 --> 0:17:59.276 On the other hand, Musk's plan for fixing Twitter. It 0:17:59.276 --> 0:18:01.596 brings to mind the adage that the cure is sometimes 0:18:01.636 --> 0:18:05.236 worse than the disease. If history is any guide to 0:18:05.316 --> 0:18:08.556 the fear of mind control, it is the backlash that 0:18:08.636 --> 0:18:11.316 you have to work watch out for, which brings me 0:18:11.356 --> 0:18:16.196 to Mosque's admiration for the writings of a Canadian marketing professor. 0:18:17.116 --> 0:18:19.676 The Parasitic Mind Stray good book. It recommended to everyone. 0:18:19.676 --> 0:18:21.716 In fact, I did recommend it to everyone. It really 0:18:21.756 --> 0:18:24.116 does hit the nail on the head with respect to 0:18:24.916 --> 0:18:28.516 the sort of ork mind virus that is damaging civilization. 0:18:29.116 --> 0:18:32.036 That's Musk in twenty twenty four talking to the author 0:18:32.116 --> 0:18:36.716 of The Parasitic Mind, how infectious ideas are killing common sense? 0:18:37.276 --> 0:18:40.796 A man who's described his book as the mind vaccine 0:18:40.836 --> 0:18:44.396 against all of the idea pathogens that have been destroying 0:18:44.596 --> 0:18:49.236 the West. Name of Gad Sad. He's got a big 0:18:49.236 --> 0:18:53.236 following on x and a YouTube show called The Sad Truth. 0:18:53.796 --> 0:18:56.476 He was educated in the nineteen nineties interestingly in a 0:18:56.476 --> 0:19:00.956 PhD program. He's an evolutionary behavioral scientist, but he's a 0:19:00.956 --> 0:19:05.276 professor of marketing. So he basically spent the first twenty 0:19:05.476 --> 0:19:07.916 or thirty years of his career applying the insights of 0:19:07.956 --> 0:19:11.796 evolutionary behavioral science, or he would say, evolutionary science to 0:19:12.756 --> 0:19:16.876 commerce and to marketing, and so basically, how do you 0:19:17.476 --> 0:19:20.596 best sell you know, high heels to women when they're 0:19:20.796 --> 0:19:23.516 its best when they're menstruating, or can you target these 0:19:23.556 --> 0:19:27.076 particular moments because there's evidence that women are more receptive 0:19:27.116 --> 0:19:29.556 to certain messages at certain times, or things like that. 0:19:29.956 --> 0:19:32.716 And then he ran into a wall. Here's how Sad 0:19:32.836 --> 0:19:36.156 tells it in a conversation with Musk last year on X. 0:19:36.676 --> 0:19:40.516 I first noticed all of these mind viruses in my 0:19:40.676 --> 0:19:44.156 academic work when I was trying to introduce, you know, 0:19:44.196 --> 0:19:48.276 evolutionary psychology evolutionary biology in the business schools, and most 0:19:48.316 --> 0:19:51.516 of my social science colleagues were so that set against 0:19:51.596 --> 0:19:54.516 using biology to explain human phenomena. So that was my 0:19:54.756 --> 0:19:57.556 original sort of at ha moment, we have a problem. 0:19:57.796 --> 0:19:59.636 I think he had trouble in academia, and this is 0:19:59.636 --> 0:20:01.676 what caused him to sort of move in the direction 0:20:01.756 --> 0:20:04.436 he has is that people were resistant to listening to 0:20:04.476 --> 0:20:08.436 his ideas at any moment. He identified sex differences between 0:20:08.476 --> 0:20:12.396 men and women. If it happened to reflect poorly on women, 0:20:12.436 --> 0:20:14.556 he said that people were just unwilling to listen to 0:20:14.556 --> 0:20:18.036 his ideas, especially the smart people who are actually dumb. 0:20:18.156 --> 0:20:21.796 Yeah, and he's not wrong that there's a tremendous rejection 0:20:21.956 --> 0:20:25.676 of those ideas without inspection. And that's a common part 0:20:25.716 --> 0:20:27.836 of academic life, Like I don't think in terms of 0:20:27.876 --> 0:20:32.556 diagnosing the closed mindedness of a lot of academics, they're 0:20:32.556 --> 0:20:33.596 not wrong about that. 0:20:33.796 --> 0:20:36.716 Yeah, exactly. So then you could maybe say that because 0:20:36.796 --> 0:20:39.516 these things are associated with what they would say the 0:20:39.516 --> 0:20:42.036 far left, it is a form of communism be branded 0:20:42.036 --> 0:20:44.716 and the way that we I suppose we can both 0:20:44.996 --> 0:20:47.996 identify moments in academia where it does feel like there's 0:20:48.036 --> 0:20:49.036 a kind of lockstep. 0:20:49.156 --> 0:20:52.276 Absolutely, Yeah, I get it right. 0:20:52.476 --> 0:20:56.836 I agree it's uncomfortable because I think I wouldn't want 0:20:56.876 --> 0:20:58.276 to just say this is absurd. 0:20:58.756 --> 0:21:01.356 Where I get off the train. Where I leap off 0:21:01.396 --> 0:21:05.916 that train is when Sad's argument, Musk's argument runs this way. 0:21:06.476 --> 0:21:10.356 I don't like these ideas. Therefore, these ideas are bad ideas. Therefore, 0:21:10.356 --> 0:21:13.276 these ideas are mind viruses, and therefore I will kill 0:21:13.316 --> 0:21:14.996 them in the name of free speech. 0:21:15.716 --> 0:21:20.396 All of these parasitic ideas originated from the university ecosystem. 0:21:20.476 --> 0:21:24.396 The parasitic mind is an argument against a collection of 0:21:24.476 --> 0:21:28.916 bad ideas spawned on university campuses what Sad describes as 0:21:29.036 --> 0:21:34.836 anti science, anti reason, and illiberal idea pathogens, including postmodernism, 0:21:35.156 --> 0:21:40.156 radical feminism, and transgender activism. Musk read the book, loved it, 0:21:40.596 --> 0:21:43.596 and started tweeting about it, said it gave him nightmares. 0:21:44.116 --> 0:21:46.356 When was it for you that you noticed that something 0:21:46.476 --> 0:21:46.796 was wrong? 0:21:46.916 --> 0:21:50.476 I'd say about five years ago, come in in the climate, 0:21:50.596 --> 0:21:54.556 just before COVID. The degree of panic over COVID was 0:21:54.596 --> 0:21:58.316 exacerbated by this unwillingness to question science or question the 0:21:58.356 --> 0:21:59.076 accepted view. 0:21:59.836 --> 0:22:03.276 In his book, Sad argues that Google, YouTube, Facebook, and 0:22:03.316 --> 0:22:06.356 Twitter have more global control over us than all other 0:22:06.436 --> 0:22:10.436 companies combined. He writes, it is an hyperbole to say 0:22:10.636 --> 0:22:13.356 that they have more collective power in terms of the 0:22:13.356 --> 0:22:17.036 information they control than all of the rulers, priests, and 0:22:17.156 --> 0:22:22.956 politicians in all of history. Hence, Musk is saving civilization. 0:22:23.716 --> 0:22:27.796 In my view, your purchase of Twitter will go down 0:22:28.236 --> 0:22:31.996 historically as the most important of all of your great initiatives. 0:22:32.156 --> 0:22:33.036 Do you feel that. 0:22:33.316 --> 0:22:35.756 Was that a right calculation on my part? Or was 0:22:35.836 --> 0:22:36.956 I overstating the case? 0:22:37.076 --> 0:22:40.316 Well, you might be right. It's possible. It's possible that 0:22:40.316 --> 0:22:42.876 you're right. I mean, I didn't do the purchase because 0:22:42.916 --> 0:22:44.996 I thought it was a great way to make money, 0:22:45.196 --> 0:22:47.836 or because I thought it would improve by quality of living. 0:22:47.876 --> 0:22:51.636 But it really felt like if it was a civilizational danger, 0:22:51.796 --> 0:22:53.996 it was just no place to actually get the truth. 0:22:54.476 --> 0:22:57.236 There ought to be some kind of watchdog committee, right, 0:22:57.476 --> 0:23:00.476 And so Musk bought Twitter to stop the spread of 0:23:00.516 --> 0:23:04.036 the woke mind virus. Musk, by no means shares all 0:23:04.076 --> 0:23:06.716 of his grandfather's views, and in fact, many of his 0:23:06.836 --> 0:23:08.196 views are of course very different. 0:23:09.196 --> 0:23:12.236 Rice maybe the work bind virus. It consists of creating 0:23:12.396 --> 0:23:19.676 very divisive identity politics. So it actually amplifies racism, amplifies sexism, 0:23:19.716 --> 0:23:23.076 and only isms, and while claiming to do the opposite, 0:23:23.676 --> 0:23:28.076 it actually divides people and makes them sort of hate 0:23:28.076 --> 0:23:30.516 each other, and it makes people hate themselves. 0:23:31.356 --> 0:23:34.276 Still, Musk also does echo a lot of his grandfather's 0:23:34.276 --> 0:23:38.916 fears from decades ago. Last year, Musk warned that Christianity 0:23:39.156 --> 0:23:40.396 might soon perish. 0:23:41.196 --> 0:23:44.556 Also, the work Bindvirus is communism rebranded, and. 0:23:44.596 --> 0:23:47.476 Musk has said he wanted to correct for Twitter's long 0:23:47.516 --> 0:23:49.236 time leftward tilt. 0:23:49.276 --> 0:23:51.796 And on the past Twitter was controlled by fall left 0:23:51.836 --> 0:23:56.116 activists objectively, they would describe themselves as that, though what. 0:23:56.076 --> 0:23:59.356 Musk actually did when he bought X was to limit 0:23:59.436 --> 0:24:02.916 content moderation and restore the accounts of people who'd been 0:24:02.956 --> 0:24:08.156 banned for extremism or for spreading misinformation. Musk also gave 0:24:08.196 --> 0:24:12.156 another reason for by Twitter, a personal one. It involves 0:24:12.196 --> 0:24:15.516 one of his kids, one of J. N. Haldeman's great grandchildren. 0:24:16.356 --> 0:24:19.676 Musk spoke with Anguish about what he called child mutilation 0:24:20.036 --> 0:24:21.436 and child sterilization. 0:24:22.196 --> 0:24:24.996 It happened to one of my older boys. Where I was, 0:24:25.916 --> 0:24:30.036 I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of 0:24:30.076 --> 0:24:32.756 my older boys, Xavier. This is before I had really 0:24:32.756 --> 0:24:34.596 any understanding what was going on and that we had 0:24:34.636 --> 0:24:37.756 COVID gone on, and so there was a lot of confusion, 0:24:38.676 --> 0:24:40.876 you know. I was told, oh, you know, Savior might 0:24:40.876 --> 0:24:41.876 commit suicide. 0:24:42.356 --> 0:24:45.116 That was in twenty twenty, the year Musk and Grimes 0:24:45.156 --> 0:24:48.156 had a son they named x. It was another child, 0:24:48.196 --> 0:24:51.676 an older child from Musk's first marriage and now sixteen, 0:24:52.116 --> 0:24:55.956