WEBVTT - Part Two: Bill Cooper: The Man Who Killed Truth 0:00:03.360 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the show where we talk 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:08.000 about the worst people in all of history, and every 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:12.039 now and then, Jamie, we change ourselves for the better. Wow, 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:14.880 we learned something. I got a big file cabinet in 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.840 the background. I've been learning a lot of things. Yeah, 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:25.040 keep just lie about a file cabinet for decades, just like, really, 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:27.960 milk the most out of you could possibly can out 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:29.680 of the fact that you worked for a guy with 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:33.320 a file cabinet back in the sixties. Imagine if everyone 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:35.559 had that foresight to be like, no, no, no no, you 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.160 didn't understand. I used to work at a comptroller's office, 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:40.840 and I feel like a real missed opportunity. Yeah, it's 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:45.519 not too late. I hate that word, by the way, comptroller, 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:49.320 because it's supposed to be pronounced controller, not the way 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:53.640 the Massachusetts controller pronounced it. But funny. Yeah, I mean 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:56.200 we've been talking about Boston a lot, and that's just 0:00:56.240 --> 0:01:02.400 one more reason they're bad. Um anyway, outside of boss parties. Yeah, Jamie, 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:07.600 welcome back to the story of Bill Billiam Cooper. Are 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:09.840 you are you ready to can? I see you've got 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:13.080 your beanie baby. Um, I just got my e Babyanie 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:15.560 baby in the mail. I'm so excited. And that's a 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:18.440 death themed beanie baby, is it not? It's well, that's no, 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.679 that's this one. This is the the end. Yeah, you 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.000 do have a death themed beanie baby. Yeah yeah, that 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:26.560 theme is the death of beanie babies. Um yeah, I 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.320 got a you know mint condition the mail. And before 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:32.360 anyone bothers me about it, that they're like because there's 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:35.040 like this myth that beanie babies are expensive, They're not. 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:41.360 I got these two for eight dollars together. So I'm good. 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:44.640 I have a I have a I have an animal familiar, 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:50.920 and I'm ready to go. Alrighty, well, let's some do 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:58.680 some ships, all right. On July four, nineteen eighty nine, 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.120 Bill Cooper commit did marriage for the very last time. 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:07.000 Uh yeah. Yeah. This wife would be his most successful 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:11.640 adult relationship, and depending on who you believe, their relationship 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.160 may be evidence that he did grow as a person. Um, 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.960 although that may not be true either. Yeah. She was 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:20.760 a twenty year old Taiwanies a woman named Annie Mordhost. 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:25.480 Bill was forties six years old at the time. Um yeah. 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.480 In the grand tradition of all wonderful love stories, Annie 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:31.360 and Bill were married in a Las Vegas Boulevard wedding chapel, 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.720 and we know very little about their courtship. Bill would 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:37.480 claim that Annie was the daughter of a nationalist Chinese 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:39.560 official who had fled the country when Mao and his 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:43.160 Communists won the Civil War. Uh, but you know, who 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:45.840 knows what the funk happened really about her life? Annie 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:51.120 came into perhaps like everything Bill says. Yeah. Um, Annie 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:53.600 came into Bill's life just as his career and conspiracies 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:55.720 was really starting to take off. She defended her new 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:58.359 husband fiercely. At one point during a lecture at the 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:01.520 Showboat Hotel and Casino, fight broke out between two uf 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:03.959 O nerds, and he stepped in front of her husband 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:06.080 with a hand on the hilt of an enormous kitchen 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:09.280 knife she always kept in her purse. Um. Okay, actually 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:11.160 they maybe found each other. Yeah, she was kind of 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:13.959 right or die for a while there. Yeah, definitely seems 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.320 to have been willing to stab a man for for 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:20.640 this guy. Yeah. Bill had relatively few real innovations he 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:22.960 could claim to have brought to the world of ufology. 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:25.239 Most of what made him unique was his ability to 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:27.760 carve off chunks of other people's work and weave them 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.919 into explicitly political theories that tied directly into the contemporary world. 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:36.280 And this is what builded best. Yeah, but also like 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:41.360 making UFOs political, like tying tying alien not just alien 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.480 conspiracies exists, but like tying them into things that are 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:47.960 fucked up in the modern world. Um. His work was 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.000 unique in the notoriously scatter brained and chaotic world of 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:54.160 uf O nerds. Uh Norio Hayakawa, one of the most 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.320 famous ufologists in this period, ran into build during a 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:01.240 UFO convention in West Hollywood. Vote. A lot of UFO 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.240 meetings can be dull, but on this night they had 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:05.240 Bill Cooper. I hadn't heard of him. He looked like 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:08.400 a normal middle aged guy, huge but paunchy, with receding hair. 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:10.480 He could have been anybody. He made a couple of 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:13.400 remarks and then read his secret government paper. He didn't 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:15.520 look up, just read for an hour and a half. 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:17.640 But what he was saying, the authority with which he 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.640 said it was very interesting. Most of upology avoids politics, 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.320 but with Bill Cooper everything was political. He was the 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.240 first person to really take the UFO phenomena and extended 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.120 out as a way to talk about global politics, history, religion, 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.200 and society. It sounded so fresh to me, so intriguing. 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:35.400 The most important thing I thought was to get Bill 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:37.760 bigger and better vinues so more people could hear what 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:40.960 he had to say. Again, it's like he's using that 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:47.080 military cloud and that military delivery tot. If you've ever 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:51.240 watched if you've ever spent hours watching UM lectures from 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:57.320 different UFO conventions in the nineteen nineties, and yeah, most 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:02.719 of them aren't great at talking. Uh. A lot of 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:04.880 people who never should have been in front of a 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:12.320 crowd to crowd public. Yeah, okay, Yeah, Bill does have 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:15.119 right like he presents himself in a way that people 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:17.440 take him more seriously than they do most people in 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:21.440 this world. Um. So, this Hayakawa guy was responsible for 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:23.920 booking Bill one of his first big speaking gigs at 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.800 Hollywood High Um. And after this Bill went through a 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:30.600 brief spell as one of UFOlogy's leading luminaries. He probably, 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:33.320 like in the world of UFOs, is like having a 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:36.520 talk at a high school a big deal. This one 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:39.720 was because it's a big high school. That's true, that's 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:46.599 Hollywood High School for crying child start exactly, UM, pat 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:51.800 them in basketball all the time in high school. Yeah, 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:54.960 you know what I didn't do just there, Sophie selfish. 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:58.120 I didn't selfishly plug yourself. No, I didn't make a 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:02.840 joke about the horrible pedophile ring that has existed in 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:07.680 Hollywood for decades. Um, you did bring it up right now, though, 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:09.480 I did bring it up right now. So we want 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.279 to throw in a show where it is like really 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:15.159 difficult to lower the mood further. We really did just 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.000 find a way to do it. Yeah, and that's evidence 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.159 that growth only goes so far, right. You know, we 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:24.520 we we can, we can make some movements towards progress, 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:30.080 but we always remain the people that we we were born. Um, anyway, 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.719 shout out to which one of the Corries is the 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.200 one who's been talking about Oh wait no, the Cory 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:37.840 is the one that killed him. Um, I'm just going 0:06:37.880 --> 0:06:42.960 to multiple corries. Yeah, this this, this shouldn't have happened. 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.520 I'm solving my beanie baby in a vice script. Yeah, 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:49.440 so Bill Bill becomes kind of like a big name 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:54.159 on the UFO circuit in like nineteen nine, uh, nineteen ninety, 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:56.840 and his speaking skills improved, and you know, during this 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.479 period he drew the attention of a pair of Hollywood managers, 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.600 Douglas Kane and Michael Callen. So, like, these guys are 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:06.080 going to record in license Bill's lectures, and there's kind 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:08.280 of talk about, like, oh, Bill might become kind of 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.120 like a major a major media figure, like something like 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:14.640 Alex Jones kind of Winda was briefly, um if you 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:18.360 remember what Alex Jones was in movies and stuff. Um, 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.960 So there there's talk about this happening. But Bill kind 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.360 of immediately gets into a giant fight with these guys 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:26.280 and proved himself very difficult to work with. And the 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:28.840 fight this, the dispute arises over the rights to the 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.360 master recordings of some of his lectures. Um. And rather 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:34.280 than like deal with this the way that an adult 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:38.720 in a professional context would, Bill calls Michael up drunk, 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.640 um just just absolutely hammered and threatens to murder both men. 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:49.240 Um uh, he tells them, quote, I'd suggest you be 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:52.160 real careful, don't write no bucking broncos, don't do nothing 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:54.400 you haven't done before, because I guarantee you no one 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:56.280 is going to hurt me and get away with it. 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:58.800 Take care, Mike, love you, and we're gonna make sure 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:00.920 you amount to something, even if it's a pile of dogshit. 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:02.840 We miss you, we really do. And the next time 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:04.320 we see you, we're going to get you a real 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:08.800 good present. Like god, yeah, it sounds like he's on 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:11.800 an eight chan board. Yeah. And the next morning Diana 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:14.080 wa wakes up to find out that his tires have 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:17.600 been slashed. And since Bill lived nearby, like, it's kind 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:22.640 of not a grid not a mystery, No, Bill, I 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:26.640 mean not not a subtle man, not a subtleman. So 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:33.000 um yeah. Dean reported Cooper to the sheriff, and Bill 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:34.720 later wrote that this was all part of a scheme 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:37.040 to disrupt his work and stop him from educating the 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:40.880 American people. Um. Yeah, and that's you know, kind of 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:45.240 what Bill. Bill is big into the UFO scene until 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.040 like the early nineties, really ninete is when he starts 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:51.200 to undergo a change of heart around the whole issue 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:55.400 of UFOs and extraterrestrials. Um, so, what that makes it 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.120 like less than ten years that he's heavy into that. 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:00.360 Oh wait, it's only it's only really a couple of 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.959 years that he's so it's just really a passing interest 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:06.920 for him. Yeah, he's always partly in it. So basically, 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.720 he claims that he starts to become like convinced in 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:13.920 the early nineteen nineties that like, rather than uh UFOs 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:15.920 being like the hoax being around the government trying to 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.560 cover up UFOs, the existence of UFOs is itself a hoax. 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:21.800 He calls it the greatest hoax in history, and it's 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:24.880 being perpetrated by the government to give people something to 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.679 focus on while they ignore the real conspiracies that are 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:32.000 going on. Um, which there's actually some evidence that stuff 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:34.160 like that was going on that like the CIA and 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:38.839 ship we're um, we're kind of pushing conspiracy theorists to 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:44.040 discredit in general, like anti government sentiments and stuff anyway. Um. 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:47.080 But Bill becomes convinced that like there's this grand conspiracy 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:51.319 and and pushing fake UFO beliefs to sort of confuse 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:53.760 and discredit people who are going to speak out against 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:56.839 the new World Order. Um, it's like that's that's really 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.800 what's going on. Um. And the root of his new 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.920 theory came from a nineteen seventeen speech given by John Dewey, 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:07.360 the famous educator and psychologist the Dewey Decimal System. Guy. 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.160 Bill became convinced that the Dewey decimal system guy is 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:12.280 kind of at the heart of the coming New World Order. 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:17.080 Um So, in this nineteen seventeen speech, Dewey had made 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.840 the historic error of idly speculating that an alien invasion 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:23.040 might be the only thing that could force humanity to 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:27.560 unite and like save itself from you know, wiping itself 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:29.840 out in horrible war. And since this was coming at 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:31.640 the end of World War One, you get where Dewey's 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:33.680 coming from. Like, it's a pretty hopeless time to be 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:37.080 a human being. He's like, uh, if only aliens would 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.440 invade and we could all unite against something that like 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:43.800 wasn't murdering each other. Um But Bill Cooper was convinced 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.360 that Dewey's words weren't just like the idol and somewhat 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.800 desperate hope of an intelligent man staring out at the 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:51.040 devastation of war and hoping for a way to prevent 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:54.000 more death. Instead, he became convinced that those words were 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:57.040 a flagrantly clear signal of the secret plans of the 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:00.000 New World Order. Oh see, I guess that that's where 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:04.000 we we divert in our in our thought. Yeah, yeah, 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:06.800 and it is kind of like I think Dewey you 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:08.720 could probably argues kind of like the root of where 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.400 like that whole theory, that whole part of The Watchman 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:13.560 comes from. Like I think Dewey's kind of the first 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.600 guy to really be like, it'd be nice if aliens came, 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.440 Like maybe we'd stop murdering each other for a single second. 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.680 Is it is so? For it is so like you 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:28.440 can understand where it comes from and where the desire 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.520 to want it to you know, deflect the blame on 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:33.680 what's going wrong in the world and in the country 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:37.040 onto literally anything except the people that are already there 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:41.280 and running it. Yeah. Yeah, so Bill gets you know, 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:46.320 increasingly starting in like really into the New World Order 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.680 conspiracy theory. And the New World Order conspiracy theory was 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.240 like you'd call it a super theory. It was really 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:55.200 more of a whole conspiracist mindset rather than like a 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:58.120 discreet conspiracy theory. So we're well outside of like the 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:01.719 realm of you know, JFK was murdered by the c 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:04.520 I A. Right, that's a simple conspiracy theory. You can 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.560 explain it to every anyone who's curious in a sect. Yeah, 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:10.360 the New World Order conspiracy theory is a mindset, and 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:13.360 every new thing that happens in the world, you like 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:15.800 a believer is going to kind of filter like file 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.920 in somewhere in that conspiracy theory. It kind of takes 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:22.160 it's one of it. Yeah, and you could see the 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:24.920 n w O as kind of an evolution of Majestic twelve. 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.520 You know, Majestic twelve starting in like the late eighties. 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.400 Is this theory about this, you know, secret government that 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.319 gets set up after Roswell and the New World Orders 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:36.640 just kind of really an evolution of this, and it 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.400 it comes at the end of the Cold War for 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:43.120 a good reason. Michael Barkun writes that the theory came 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:46.520 to quote constitute a common ground for religious and secular 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:49.920 conspiracy theorists, um, because you could tie in these kind 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:54.160 of apocalyptic Christian millenarian conspiracy theories, but you could also 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:58.160 tie in like completely a religious conspiracy theories, like you know, 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:01.079 the jfk assassination, like it all fit underneath the New 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:03.720 World Order, just kind of depending on your own personal 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:07.280 beliefs um. And Bill Cooper was kind of the guy 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:11.679 who very first plugs Majestic twelve and Roswell Alien nonsense 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.760 into the n w oh UM And depending on the 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:16.679 point in his career, he either did it to claim 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:20.000 that like the New World Order um existed to kind 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:22.319 of hide the existence of aliens from people, and then 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:24.640 later that like, oh, the n w oh is is 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:29.360 his pushing fake UFO conspiracy theories to distract people whatever. 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:31.200 Like he takes both tax over the course of his 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:36.120 career um very like large umbrella of conspiracies to yeah, 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.040 it's all about bringing people together. Really, well, that's the 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:41.240 thing Bill and all these other Bill is one of 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.079 these guys who's just talking constantly for like fifteen years, 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:47.360 and everything he says is adding something to the conspiracy theories. 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:50.840 So if you actually really try to like to map 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:53.800 out everything Bill believes and pushes in his life, like 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:56.280 we would be here for days. Um, we're going to 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:58.720 gloss over too much of this stuff to be honest, 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:02.000 Like he invent to He not invented, but he's the 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.200 reason people know about the FEMA death camp conspiracy theory. 0:14:05.240 --> 0:14:07.720 Like he's the origin point for that one. Yeah, we're 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:09.319 not even really going to talk about it because it's 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:11.600 just one of a billion different things. He's the origin 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:15.160 point for Yeah, he's the first guy to published that. Yeah, 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:19.640 so fucking Bill Cooper. Um. Yeah, the n w O 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:22.200 really took off after nineteen ninety and Bill was its 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.560 most influential profit. His pivot away from aliens didn't isolate 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:27.800 him from his fans. Instead, it opened up a whole 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:31.600 new segment of the population to conspiratorial beliefs. Vast swaths 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:33.360 of the country who would never have been caught dead 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.000 at a UFO convention start, but it started to feel 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:38.040 like something was wrong with the way the country was going. 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:40.120 Like these kind of people would listen to Bill Cooper. 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.000 They never would have shown up to a mouf On convention, 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.240 but they listen to this stuff because it rang true 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.320 to them, because they were looking for an explanation as 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.480 to why things were wrong. Um that didn't involve like 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:57.200 reading left wing political theory. Well that's just a waste 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:00.880 of time, as we both know. Yeah, the left wing 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:02.920 guys get into this too, Like this is really That's 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:04.720 one of the things that's interesting about the New World 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.760 Order conspiracy theory is that it's very influential in a 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:11.400 number of sides. Um and Michael Barkin writes, quote, New 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:13.880 World Order theories seem to provide a graceful way of 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:18.280 exiting the domain of international relations and refocusing upon domestic politics. 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:19.960 This is in the wake of the Cold War ending. 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:22.520 Although the forces of the New World Order are international, 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:25.720 they are assumed to be concentrating on domestic agendas, particularly 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.960 the alleged destruction of American liberties. So Bill was savvy 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:34.080 enough to see that, like, as you know, part of 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.240 what's happening here. Why the New World Order conspiracy theory 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:38.520 gets so popular is that there's a lot of people 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:41.360 like Bill who are will permanently be anxious for the 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:43.760 rest of their lives because of the Cold War. We 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:46.240 call these people baby boomers, and they cause a lot 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:49.360 of problems. Um, and when the Cold War ends, a 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:52.960 lot of these guys needed something else to justify the 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:55.520 fact that they were always paranoid because they've grown up 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:58.960 under the shade of constant imminent nuclear annihilation and the 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:03.400 New World or they're troubled. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:06.440 are having a tough time. And this is what Bill 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:08.720 taps into is the fact that all of these guys 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:13.160 know that everything, like I can't not expect the end 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:16.080 to come at any moment. And once the Soviet Union ends. 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:20.200 They can't just lose that anxiety, right like they and 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:22.360 and then they need an explanation for like, why don't 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:24.600 I feel better now that the Soviets are gone? Could 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:27.280 it be that up? Most of the problems that people 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:29.960 were blaming on the Soviets were actually just like the 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:31.840 fact that my own culture is fucked up and we 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:33.960 need to deal with No, no, no, there's a different conspiracy. 0:16:34.080 --> 0:16:37.560 It's not the communist conspiracy. It's another one. Yeah. So 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:40.280 Bill was savvy enough to see that he was watching 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.640 the birth of a new movement in American culture, and 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:45.080 he knew that movement was going to need a bible, 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:48.240 and so in nineteen ninety he sat down to write 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:52.040 One Behold a Pale Horse, would be published in nineteen 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:55.520 one through bizarre little new age occult press called Light 0:16:55.600 --> 0:16:59.080 Technology Publishing. The book itself was four hundred and thirty 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:02.120 four pages of documents and memos, all purported to be 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:05.199 top secret missives from inside the secret Government working to 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:08.640 bring about the new World Order. The centerpiece of it all, 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.760 the primary document upon which Bill hung his ideology, was 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:17.359 called Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, which is another great title. 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:19.719 Say both of these kicked the ship out of the 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:24.840 title of Bible. Yeah, fuck the Bible, I mean behold 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:30.920 of pale horses from the Bible kind of but yeah, 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:35.720 so uh yeah. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars Bill claimed 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:39.359 it was an introductory programming model for new employees of 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:44.040 Operations Research, a secret military intelligence organization tasked with preparing 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:47.359 the country for authoritarian rule. And the document opens with 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:50.120 welcome aboard and informs its reader that they are will 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:52.600 be taking part in the Third World War, which has 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.280 been going on for decades and involves the use of 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.760 silent weapons on an unsuspecting public. I'm gonna quote now 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.679 from pale horse writer written at the level of an 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:05.359 undergrad paper and electrical engineering. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:08.520 defines a silent weapon as differing from a conventional weapon 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:12.280 in that it shoots situations instead of bullets, originating from 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:15.360 bits of data instead of grains of gunpowder, and attacks 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:17.840 under the orders of a banking magnate instead of a 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:22.000 military general. Because the silent weapon causes no obvious physical 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:25.280 or mental injuries and does not obviously interfere with anyone's 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:28.679 daily social life, the public cannot comprehend this weapon and 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:31.480 therefore cannot believe that they are being attacked and subdued. 0:18:31.920 --> 0:18:35.240 The public might instinctively feel that something is wrong, but 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:37.879 because of the technical nature of the silent weapon, they 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.840 cannot express their feeling in a rational way. They do 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:43.040 not know how to cry for help, and do not 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:49.480 know how to associate with others to defend themselves against it. Huh, yeah, 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:52.760 you can see why this, um, this is attractive to 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:56.960 some people. Yeah, yeah, and it's I mean, now, it 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.520 sounds vaguely familiar, but if I had heard this at 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:04.240 the time, would have been like, yeah. Interesting. For a 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:07.280 very long time, almost everyone assumed that silent weapons had 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.280 been created the creation of Bill Cooper himself. He opened 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:12.960 the very first episode of his radio series, The Hour 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:16.280 of the Time by reading from this, and his favorite 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:18.639 line to repeat was a lightened from the papers stating 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:22.480 that uninformed Americans were beasts of burden and steaks on 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:25.360 the table by choice and consent. Um. He would say 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:29.000 it in nearly every episode. Okay, so he's got he's 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:33.000 got that branding. The reality, though, is that Bill was 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:36.240 something of a middleman for bringing silent weapons into mass awareness. 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:38.480 The whole paper had actually been cooked up by Hartford 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.480 Van Dyke, a convicted counterfeitter who would essentially cobbled the 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:45.520 thing together himself from bits written by other paranoid libertarian thinkers. 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:55.080 Um M, paranoid libertarian thinkers are, Yeah, it's it's it's 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:59.640 it's interesting. So Bill, you know, silent weapons for quiet 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:01.880 Wars is kind of like that that line, and in 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.840 particular is kind of why Bill adopts the phrase, you know, 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:07.760 wake up sheeple um, because like that he was he 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:10.480 was referring to a specific thing. Is that like these 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:13.000 New World Order people in their own documents, because Bill 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:16.600 believes this thing is real. Um, like think that you're 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:19.560 your beasts of burden, like they that's how they treat you, 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:21.359 and like that's what you are if you're not willing 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:23.560 to like wake up and realize that you're being played. 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:25.880 Bill was very abusive to his audience, so he would 0:20:25.920 --> 0:20:28.760 regularly like insult and attack the people listening to him 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.760 for not sure. It's like if his if his whole 0:20:31.800 --> 0:20:33.960 thing is if you're not participating in what I'm saying, 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:36.399 you're a fucking idiot and you're and you're going to 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:43.600 be hurt. Like that's a that's a place to start. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Um. So, 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:47.960 through his book Behold of Pale Behold of Pale Horse, 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:51.040 Bill injected a lot of a whole host of now 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:54.160 common conspiracy theories into the mainstream, not just his theory 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.480 about JFK, but postulations that AIDS was one of many 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.520 secret weapons designed by the US government for use against 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:03.720 its own people, actually to wipe out black people in Africa. 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:07.000 Um and this, yeah, we'll talk more about that in 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:09.399 a little bit. As it turns out, very little in 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:12.359 behalor Behold a Pale Horse was original. Bill had just 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.400 taken a variety of different pamphlets and like hoax papers 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:18.400 that had been circulating, you know, over the conspiracy community, 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:21.359 and bound them together in a handsome volume with really 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:23.160 good cover art. You you should look up the cop 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:24.880 book right now to see the cover art. Like it's 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:31.680 it's good. Behold the Pale Horse, Yeah cover okay, okay, 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:35.040 So all this stuff has been like circulating in sort 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.160 of conspiracy nut communities, but you'd get it as like 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:43.719 you know, somebody handling up Yes, yeah, yeah, it's pretty, 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:47.919 and it's it's it's it's well organized, and you know, 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:50.240