Speaker 1: It it's another mass shooting.
Speaker 2: There's no I don't, I don't don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have a good way to start this episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but welcome toda can happened here a podcast that is
Speaker 1: also just about mass shootings now because.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great great world we live in with me is
Speaker 2: Gah and Robert Hello.
Speaker 3: Hello, Yeah, so a Nazi killed a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: people again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in case there's been another one, we are we
Speaker 4: are talking about the specific mass shooting in Alan, Texas
Speaker 4: with the guy who was covered in swastika tattoos that
Speaker 4: certain people are claiming as a fed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that happened on Sunday, May seventh. So I think
Speaker 3: I think Mia has some details about what actually happened
Speaker 3: to kind of put together, but for the majority that
Speaker 3: we're actually going to be talking about people's reaction to this,
Speaker 3: including some of the most influential people on the planet,
Speaker 3: and the level of reality denial that is, it has
Speaker 3: been bad before, it's just extra visible right now, and
Speaker 3: it's visible to a degree that is pretty worrying, And
Speaker 3: we felt it was worth talking about just because of
Speaker 3: you know, whenever a reality fracture is big enough to
Speaker 3: be like this noticeable that is always always an interesting
Speaker 3: sign of where we are at as a culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, so before we fully dive into that,
Speaker 1: there's something that I do want to talk about like
Speaker 1: briefly with this, which is that so like this is
Speaker 1: you know, in the sort of mold of like white
Speaker 1: premises killings. Is like, this is very very targeted and
Speaker 1: non white people. So he shot one white guy who
Speaker 1: was a security guard, and then he shot like three
Speaker 1: Latino people and then for Asian people.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I wanted to just sort of.
Speaker 1: Like remind people that anti Asian violence is still like
Speaker 1: a thing because everyone seems to have forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is like I mean, I think
Speaker 1: if you exclude the if you exclude the three in
Speaker 1: California that were like also committed by Asian people's is
Speaker 1: like the fourth mass shooting in two years that's been
Speaker 1: at least half the victims of an Asian It fucking sucks,
Speaker 1: I you know, I mean, we've talked about Antiasan violence
Speaker 1: a decent amount on this show. None of the things
Speaker 1: we've ever talked about have gotten any better. The only
Speaker 1: sort of actual instrumental results of any of this is
Speaker 1: that like violence against Asian people gets used as a
Speaker 1: rhetorical cudgel to justify killing black people, which is fucking abhorrent.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just I just wanted to get this
Speaker 1: in because the media has collectively forgotten that that was
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and no one really talks about the
Speaker 1: shooting in that framing, and I think it's important to
Speaker 1: do so at least for a little bit.
Speaker 2: I think the.
Speaker 3: Other thing to kind of just talk about it at
Speaker 3: the top here. Latino white supremacists and Latino Nazis are
Speaker 3: not They are not an uncommon thing. This is actually
Speaker 3: quite common. Two of the most famous fascists in the
Speaker 3: world right now, Nick Fuentes and Enrique Tario, are not white.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: I mean, just like, think about think about where I mean,
Speaker 4: think about the fact that prior to World War Two,
Speaker 4: Argentina spent a significant chunk of their defense budget bringing
Speaker 4: over Nazis to train their military, which is a big
Speaker 4: part of why so many Nazis escaped there via ratlines.
Speaker 4: You know, we just did a series of episodes on
Speaker 4: Alfredo Stressner, the fascist dictator of Paraguay who put up
Speaker 4: and hid Joseph Mengola along with a bunch of other Nazis.
Speaker 4: For a while, Mangola had citizenship in both Argentina and
Speaker 4: in Paraguay. Like this is it's not uncommon. This is
Speaker 4: not like a new thing. We're not It's not like
Speaker 4: some sudden shift in the way that fascism works.
Speaker 3: Even the shooter himself like posted memes about being a
Speaker 3: Latino white supremacist, like it is a subculture big enough
Speaker 3: that it has its own like meme of Vortex. So,
Speaker 3: and the shooter was actively engaged in in said like
Speaker 3: a medic culture.
Speaker 4: No. And it's also worth noting that a lot of
Speaker 4: the same things that we talk about when we talk
Speaker 4: about Nazi mass shooter culture in the United States, the
Speaker 4: fact that a lot of shootings are kind of incited
Speaker 4: on eight chan and four chan and similar boards, this
Speaker 4: happens in Latin America. Brazil in particular, has a website
Speaker 4: called degola Chan that has spawned at least a couple
Speaker 4: of shootings. In the last year, They've had several more
Speaker 4: mass shootings that are political in nature, that are kind
Speaker 4: of driven by online fascists. Like this is not the
Speaker 4: only place that this happened. Serbia just had a couple
Speaker 4: as well. But like what this guy's doing is very
Speaker 4: much just as the christ shooting was very much something
Speaker 4: that occurred within the broader envelope of a transnational accelerationist
Speaker 4: fascist movement, you know, the Allen shooting, as far as
Speaker 4: we can tell what the information we have available, seems
Speaker 4: to fit very well into that schema.
Speaker 2: Okay, we should talk about the shooter a bit.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a sort of I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: like a after every mass shooting, there's this sort of
Speaker 1: like identification cycle thing that happens, where like a bunch
Speaker 1: of musations use an organizations still try to figure out
Speaker 1: who the shooter was. So I think, like the day after,
Speaker 1: very very very like pretty soon after the shooting, there's
Speaker 1: the New York Times runs an article that reveals that
Speaker 1: the shooter has this like has an account on like
Speaker 1: a kind of weird Russian social media site. And from
Speaker 1: from that information, uh, Eric Toler, who's a bell researcher
Speaker 1: at Belling Cat like tracks down the site and he
Speaker 1: finds a bunch of wild stuff. He finds like, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously the shooters, like he finds it the shooters a Nazi.
Speaker 1: He has like a swastika tattoo. He also has an
Speaker 1: SS tattoo from the shooting. He's wearing like a right
Speaker 1: wing Dusk squad patch like this, just like a whole
Speaker 1: thing that the Proud Boys also do. It's like a
Speaker 1: patch that says like rw D.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they sell RWDS patches. I mean, I think a
Speaker 4: lot of it kind of comes out of some of
Speaker 4: the discourse around Pinochet that goes back a few decades,
Speaker 4: but at this point it's a much broader thing than that.
Speaker 4: I've got a bunch of photos of Jeremy Berdarimo I
Speaker 4: think is his name, who was one of the Proud Boys.
Speaker 4: I believe he's the guy who got stabbed prior to
Speaker 4: January sixth during one of the big riots in DC
Speaker 4: after the twenty twenty election, but with the big RWDS
Speaker 4: patch on his chest. And you can find like Tasitala Tozy,
Speaker 4: who's an inveterate rioter with a Patriot prayer up in Portland,
Speaker 4: would wear them all the time. They're and piece of
Speaker 4: fascism merch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, and and this this and also
Speaker 1: you know the other thing that's kind of important that
Speaker 1: gets found on this like social media site which okay,
Speaker 1: I wish it's a kind of weird thing, like he
Speaker 1: doesn't I don't know. The social media site seems like
Speaker 1: he was basically using as like a journal, Like he
Speaker 1: doesn't like follow people or like have followers, so he's
Speaker 1: just sort of posting this stuff. He also finds a
Speaker 1: bunch of clips of like Tim Poole videos, and so
Speaker 1: this immediately sends the entire right into like, you know,
Speaker 1: full on defense mode, right. You know, it turns out
Speaker 1: it's it's not great for your brand with like the
Speaker 1: sort of general array of people if it's being associated
Speaker 1: with a guy who just did a mass shooting. So
Speaker 1: Tim Poole responds to the other thing is there's there's
Speaker 1: like a manifesto w on it, and Tim Poole responds
Speaker 1: to this by I think I think what actually, like
Speaker 1: legitimately what happened is he read the manifesto and there's
Speaker 1: a thing in the manifesto of like talking about the
Speaker 1: Nashville shooter being trans or like peifically about the Nasville shooter.
Speaker 1: And I think I think specifically he read that and
Speaker 1: was like, oh shit, this is my out. I can
Speaker 1: go back and talking about the Nashville shooter. Sure, And
Speaker 1: so he starts, he starts this, there's this whole sort
Speaker 1: of train of like right wing stuff about how all
Speaker 1: of this is fake. So he starts arguing that, like
Speaker 1: this isn't the guy's social media account. This this sort
Speaker 1: of very very rapidly morphs into i mean just like
Speaker 1: full on like Sandy hook shit. One of his employees
Speaker 1: like tweets, why is the corporate press so threatened by
Speaker 1: people questioning the authenticity of a Mexican neo Nazis Russian
Speaker 1: social media account uncovered by state funded media? And this
Speaker 1: because this immediately becomes the main line right state funded
Speaker 1: media things. They're talking about Bell and Cap which.
Speaker 3: They're they're hopping on all of the tanky conspiracy StuffYeah
Speaker 3: and running with it because Twitter is a is a
Speaker 3: cultic milieu of conspiracy, and you can latch onto one
Speaker 3: talking point to make you feel okay about denying an
Speaker 3: entire like facet of reality, and then it becomes an
Speaker 3: easy out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're gonna we're gonna circle back to like
Speaker 1: specifically tanking.
Speaker 2: People get involved in this because they do.
Speaker 4: What they're doing is a little bit of like and uh,
Speaker 4: an evolution from what what's what folks kind of in
Speaker 4: the debating Christians about evolution and shit called the Gish gallop,
Speaker 4: where the the the original idea of the Gish gallop was,
Speaker 4: when you're arguing from a creationist perspective about stuff like,
Speaker 4: you know, the age of the world, you bring up
Speaker 4: so many different kind of topics, you know, from different
Speaker 4: very niche issues, you have a carbon dating to, you know,
Speaker 4: specific problems you have with like the way scientists are
Speaker 4: interpreting specific fossils, and it's just too much detail for
Speaker 4: somebody and like an ad hoc public argument to really
Speaker 4: like counter at once. And kind of the evolution of
Speaker 4: it is when you're dealing with something like this rather
Speaker 4: than deal with the broader picture, which is there's just
Speaker 4: a tremendous amount of evidence that this guy was a Nazi,
Speaker 4: that this guy was motivated and kind of brought into
Speaker 4: the community by a lot of content that guys like
Speaker 4: Tim Poole make. Instead you focus on you pull up
Speaker 4: one single thing that you can kind of like try
Speaker 4: to get people to latch onto, and if you can
Speaker 4: get them arguing about that thing, you can get them
Speaker 4: to ignore the bigger picture, Like at least you can
Speaker 4: distract attention from it, and it works. It works for
Speaker 4: a lot of people. It's especially effective on social media.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and unfortunately the social media platform that this is
Speaker 1: mainly happening on his Twitter, which Elon Musk owns, and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk immediately like decides that he's just fully in
Speaker 1: on this shit, and he is, I mean she is
Speaker 1: like like Elon Musk is is just actively promoting the
Speaker 1: sort of weird conspiracy that basically what the sort of
Speaker 1: right wing story about this becomes is that like, Okay,
Speaker 1: Belling Cat is.
Speaker 2: Is the CIA, and they're being paid.
Speaker 1: To create a like a false flag thing that Okay,
Speaker 1: they're they're being paid to create a false flag to
Speaker 1: make this guy look like a Nazi and a Timpoole
Speaker 1: fan to distract people from the Nashville shooting, which is
Speaker 1: just like the absolute nonsense. But you know, you you
Speaker 1: immediately get into like that that Timpool employee again like
Speaker 1: it like starts doing this whole like, uh, we are
Speaker 1: enshrined like with liberty to freely scrutinize every claim. Just
Speaker 1: this the sanctity of like every human being in America
Speaker 1: like has the right to question stuff. It's like this
Speaker 1: is like literally like literally word for word stuff Alex
Speaker 1: Jones was saying in the Sandy Hook trial. But we've
Speaker 1: gotten to the point where you just, you know, like
Speaker 1: the sort of mainstream of the right just does this
Speaker 1: about every time it's a writing mass shooting, and this
Speaker 1: this particular time, it's been just everywhere.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're we're, we're gonna. There's no no, no smooth
Speaker 4: way to break to ads in an episode about a
Speaker 4: mass shooting. But that's what we're doing. We are back.
Speaker 3: I want to talk now a little bit more about
Speaker 3: the actual exchanges that Musk was involved in and how
Speaker 3: this narrative of like a syop and this whole narrative
Speaker 3: around the shooting being a syeop, how that viewpoint got
Speaker 3: inflated on Twitter because Musk controls where all of the
Speaker 3: interactions go for tweets and actually like specifically get into
Speaker 3: how this specific conspiracy is is a demonstration of how
Speaker 3: much of just a separation from reality that people like
Speaker 3: Musk are like actively actively working towards. One of the
Speaker 3: main accounts that Musk was kind of like riffing off
Speaker 3: of in this and who was like trying to like
Speaker 3: feed Musk this type of stuff was the Redheaded libertarian
Speaker 3: who works for Timpoole. She created a bunch of memes
Speaker 3: about this shooting talking about how how this the guy
Speaker 3: can't can't be a Nazi and he because he's Latino.
Speaker 3: You know, why would someone use a Russian social media site?
Speaker 3: Even tho it's actually very common for American coperties to
Speaker 3: use Russian social media.
Speaker 4: We used to do an exercise at a trainings that
Speaker 4: I did for Bellancat where people would go through and
Speaker 4: use v Contacta, which is a Russian like kind of
Speaker 4: Facebook clone, and you would kind of use geographical search
Speaker 4: to find groups of like KKK members and shit in
Speaker 4: the American South because it was really common with them
Speaker 4: because it didn't have any kind of content moderation.
Speaker 3: So yeah, the types of like right wing content creators
Speaker 3: who are within Musk's Twitter orbits pumping out all of
Speaker 3: this stuff, right, and this is where muskeets all of
Speaker 3: his information from. So he starts he starts like just
Speaker 3: questioning the validity of this story, but then also specifically
Speaker 3: targeting belling Cat, saying that didn't didn't didn't this story
Speaker 3: come from Bellingat, which literally specializes in psychological operations, which
Speaker 3: first of all is just a wild thing to say
Speaker 3: when you're talking about it is specifically like an open
Speaker 3: source journalism website, Like it's the most the most honest
Speaker 3: way you could do journalism because it's given people the
Speaker 3: tools to literally check all of the work themselves.
Speaker 2: Like it's yeah, I mean this.
Speaker 1: Is kind of like a minor as side. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that happens here constantly with all these
Speaker 1: people is they're like absolutely astounded, like like how how
Speaker 1: how did Belling get possibly find this guy? It's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not that hard.
Speaker 2: It's really easy.
Speaker 1: The thing is right if if so, Like I am
Speaker 1: not a journalist, right, I learned everything I know about
Speaker 1: this from gare In like one night, and like I
Speaker 1: have tracked down like Matthews media accounts and like before
Speaker 1: the police got them. Like it's not that hard. But
Speaker 1: the thing is it requires you to, even like just
Speaker 1: a tiny tiny bit be a journalist. And not a
Speaker 1: single one of these writing people has ever like done
Speaker 1: journalism ever, and so like just like the tiniest bit
Speaker 1: of journalism just like destroys their brains and they're like
Speaker 1: they are physically incapable of comprehending how someone could have
Speaker 1: done a journalism, and then they use this to sort
Speaker 1: of feed their base because their base also just doesn't
Speaker 1: understand how someone could do a journalism and this this this,
Speaker 1: this lets you do this like cycle, Like, how could
Speaker 1: they possibly have found this? They must have been given
Speaker 1: it by the government. It's just like, No, all that.
Speaker 3: Really comes down to is is who has who is
Speaker 3: on their computer at the right time when this thing happens. Yeah,
Speaker 3: whenever I find out or whenever I can id people,
Speaker 3: it's always just like coincidence that the thing happens as
Speaker 3: I'm already at my computer, so now I can look
Speaker 3: into this thing, right, it is It is just who
Speaker 3: has access to internet at the right time is the
Speaker 3: way that we figure out, like who's gonna end up
Speaker 3: ideing somebody?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's a mix of that, and it's a
Speaker 4: mix of just who has the patience and the motivation
Speaker 4: to sit and comb through shit for hours and days,
Speaker 4: which is the same thing that like, it's the same
Speaker 4: thing at anti fascist activists have been doing for years,
Speaker 4: you know, especially since Charlottesville, where you're just like I'm
Speaker 4: going to watch the same videos of the same event
Speaker 4: and find new ones and I'm going to spend three
Speaker 4: years doing that and eventually I will catch a tattoo
Speaker 4: or a shirt with a logo, and that will let
Speaker 4: me id somebody, because you know, of the of the
Speaker 4: different social media shit that I've been pulling up, like
Speaker 4: it's it's it's not. It doesn't take like spice satellites.
Speaker 4: It just takes motivation, being in the right place at
Speaker 4: the right time and having nothing else to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So eventually they started just kind of harping on
Speaker 3: this term syop so pich obviously means psychological operation. But
Speaker 3: what they mean when they say syop is that they
Speaker 3: mean this was like a this is a false like
Speaker 3: a manufactured government planned operation. That's what they actually mean,
Speaker 3: right Like when in the conspiracy space, syop is is
Speaker 3: more like a loaded term they don't actually refer to
Speaker 3: like actual syops that get doning like against like you know,
Speaker 3: you can look at like Cointel pro right, you can
Speaker 3: look at you can look at various ways that the
Speaker 3: FBI of the Army has done syops. But what they
Speaker 3: mean when they say syop is this is like this
Speaker 3: is a government conspiracy theory and it's a false narrative
Speaker 3: that's been crafted to like change public opinions. So I
Speaker 3: guess I guess these people Mia you mentioned how they're
Speaker 3: making it sound like this was this was created to
Speaker 3: distract from the Nashville shooting or just just they have
Speaker 3: various like motivations for why they want to but it
Speaker 3: the important part is that they could use this word
Speaker 3: to just easily deny reality, and that is that is
Speaker 3: kind of beyond like whatever motivations they have. It's just
Speaker 3: easy for them and their ideology to just block off
Speaker 3: this section of reality so that they don't have to
Speaker 3: like people who are like, actually libertarians don't need to
Speaker 3: like confront what the extent of their ideology actually means. Right,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a there's certainly people who are like,
Speaker 3: okay with mass shootings happening, or you know, are totally
Speaker 3: fine with with with like non white people getting killed
Speaker 3: in mass shootings. But there probably are certain libertarians who
Speaker 3: don't actually like mass shootings. They don't actually like when
Speaker 3: fascists go kill tons of people, and it's easier for
Speaker 3: them sometimes just to block off this section and ignore
Speaker 3: it than actually confront what their ideology means. So some
Speaker 3: must kept saying this is either the weirdest story ever
Speaker 3: or a very bad sy op. The answer is neither.
Speaker 3: The story is not super weird. It's actually very very
Speaker 3: explainable if you understand the mechanisms at play here, and
Speaker 3: even just not a bad syo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's not even like it's not on
Speaker 4: it's like on the whole. It's not a particularly complicated
Speaker 4: story like there are. It is not an uncommon thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, the biggest, most recent one before this was
Speaker 4: that shooting in New York at the grocery store that
Speaker 4: was like a directly inspired Nazi attack. Like, this kind
Speaker 4: of shit happens constantly in the United States. It doesn't choir,
Speaker 4: nobody has to be secretly armed by the Feds. There's
Speaker 4: an AR fifteen behind every bush in this country. It's
Speaker 4: not hard for this kind of this kind of shit.
Speaker 4: It's not hard to see where this like originates from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's I mean, Muska just kept kept replying
Speaker 3: to both Timpoole employee tweets tweets from the very blatantly
Speaker 3: fascist account to end Wokeness, which Musk has been replying
Speaker 3: to quite a quite often recently. So this and I
Speaker 3: think the reason why we wanted to just talk about
Speaker 3: this specifically, is just because of you, Like all of
Speaker 3: these Musk tweets are getting like millions and millions of views,
Speaker 3: if the view counter is any is anything to go by,
Speaker 3: At the very least, he's in the top three accounts
Speaker 3: with the highest engagement on Twitter. So these these types
Speaker 3: of conspiracy theories are getting inflated to extremely high degrees
Speaker 3: at least online, and the separation of reality online is
Speaker 3: inflated for these mass shootings in a way that I
Speaker 3: have not seen in quite a I have not seen
Speaker 3: this much just denial of like information regarding mass shootings
Speaker 3: in quite a long time. And it just the combination
Speaker 3: of the stuff like the stuff with Belling Cat coming
Speaker 3: from the tankies and how those conspiracies have now mashed
Speaker 3: with all of these like neo fascist shit. It's a
Speaker 3: combination of reality denial that is absolutely worrying for like
Speaker 3: future mass shootings as well.
Speaker 4: It's a pivot in the kind of reality that's being denied.
Speaker 4: You know, not, we have nothing to do with these
Speaker 4: Nazis who are parroting some of the things that we
Speaker 4: say about immigration. It's this is fundamentally not the attack
Speaker 4: that you think it is. This is our enemies creating
Speaker 4: an attack to try to make us look bad. Like
Speaker 4: the fact that that you've always seen bits and pieces
Speaker 4: of that, the fact that it's being parroted by the
Speaker 4: wealthiest man on the planet using one of the biggest
Speaker 4: information fire hoses that exists is completely novel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I mean a lot of these things, conspiracy
Speaker 3: theories that specifically about like Eric Toler, we saw we
Speaker 3: saw leftists and tankies bringing up the same stuff during
Speaker 3: the UH, during the stuff with the Nazi National guardsmen
Speaker 3: a month ago, So we have a lot of this
Speaker 3: stuff has kind of been writing on the back of
Speaker 3: that and just continued and accelerating, UH since then. It
Speaker 3: appears there's a few outlets like Business Insider and blank
Speaker 3: at themselves reporting that they are they are receiving basically
Speaker 3: shadow bands on Twitter right now with their with their
Speaker 3: with their account and their posts having a very limited reach.
Speaker 4: An interesting shadow band too, because it's not like it.
Speaker 4: It appears, at least from what I've seen, that what
Speaker 4: they're doing is they're making it so that when people
Speaker 4: type Bellancat into the search bar nothing comes up, as
Speaker 4: opposed to like throttling the reach of the actual posts
Speaker 4: themselves trying to make it deliberately difficult for people to
Speaker 4: actually look up information, which is interesting to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess it. I guess it's worth saying
Speaker 3: that the police and Texas have confirmed everything about about
Speaker 3: the shooters political beliefs and his new Nazi ties. And
Speaker 3: he has a neo Nazi shit in his apartment. Obviously
Speaker 3: his body is covered with neo Nazi tattoos. One of
Speaker 3: the things that some of the kind of right wing
Speaker 3: content creators were trying to do is that they were
Speaker 3: trying to say that the specific pictures of the individual
Speaker 3: that Belling Cat found online, that that these pictures were
Speaker 3: not this person. They in fact that they were saying
Speaker 3: they were saying that the shooter is just somebody else,
Speaker 3: which was also proven wrong.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they also they also they did another classic
Speaker 1: right wing thing, which is that they misidentified the shooter, yes,
Speaker 1: and thought it was another guy with the same name because.
Speaker 4: Like and they misidentified the shooter, and they misidentified the
Speaker 4: non Nazi tattoo that he had, Yes, because he had
Speaker 4: a he had weirdly enough, like the city of Dallas's
Speaker 4: seal tattooed on his hands. Yeah, I got a Texas tattoo.
Speaker 2: On his shoulder.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they like definitely, Like there were a lot of
Speaker 4: conspiracy theories about that, and a lot of them related
Speaker 4: to the fact that, like, the first photos we got
Speaker 4: of the guy were like the kind of photos you
Speaker 4: get of a dead man at a mass shooting that
Speaker 4: someone takes through a window while sheltering, So it wasn't clear.
Speaker 4: So they would take a picture of like a social
Speaker 4: media picture of the tattoo on his hand, and then
Speaker 4: a picture of him dead, and like the tattoo on
Speaker 4: his hand in the picture of him dead was like blurrier,
Speaker 4: and they were like, look, the lines aren't straight. They're
Speaker 4: straight in the picture on his social media And it's like,
Speaker 4: well yeah, because those were taken by very different cameras
Speaker 4: in very different situations. Like you know how cameras work,
Speaker 4: you know how this This is one.
Speaker 3: Of the funnier ones that one of these content creators
Speaker 3: was doing, was they were they were posting the photos
Speaker 3: of the Nazi tattoos that the shooter himself posted online,
Speaker 3: being like, look how fresh these tattoos are.
Speaker 2: How can.
Speaker 3: If he had these tattoos for years, why do they
Speaker 3: look so fresh at these photos? Because there right after.
Speaker 4: Him, Like you do when you get a tattoo. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's like I have tattoos pictures of me getting tattoos
Speaker 4: from like fifteen years ago somewhere on my Facebook. Like
Speaker 4: you could do the same thing, suspicious, Robert.
Speaker 3: One of the interesting things is that, like we see
Speaker 3: the same thing with all of like all of the
Speaker 3: worries around like deep faking stuff, like all of all
Speaker 3: of the like weaponized on reality stuff. It doesn't need
Speaker 3: to actually be convincing it. It doesn't need to be
Speaker 3: good like like deep fakes don't need to be good quality.
Speaker 3: You can you can post a meme of like a
Speaker 3: picture of Biden's face and some text on it with
Speaker 3: a quotation mark post on Facebook and millions of people
Speaker 3: will believe that's just true. Like it doesn't need to
Speaker 3: be real or convincing in order for it to have
Speaker 3: it like an effect.
Speaker 4: And it's also it's not just about I think it's
Speaker 4: it's thinking, like it's not just about convincing people. It's
Speaker 4: not about making them believe it. This is like, this
Speaker 4: is the thing that I tried to talk about years
Speaker 4: ago during the eight Chance shooting. Shit posting. Part of
Speaker 4: the goal is just to disrupt conversation. It's to make
Speaker 4: people engage with the fake stuff. It's to make people
Speaker 4: break kind of the lines of reasoning that they are
Speaker 4: going in with, Like, it's to make people distract people
Speaker 4: from the stuff that is really clear and obvious and
Speaker 4: just kind of fracture the conversation, because the more that
Speaker 4: you do that kind of the weaker you make the
Speaker 4: response to what's happened, and the more kind of that
Speaker 4: you can distract people from the degree of complicity that
Speaker 4: the people in kind of the media sphere on the
Speaker 4: right have for all of this shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's why it's like specifically going
Speaker 1: after the Billing Cat stuff has been really effective with
Speaker 1: UP because like, like there are like people who I
Speaker 1: am friends with in real life who like are convinced
Speaker 1: that Billing Cat is a ciasiop like this is like
Speaker 1: a like like really not insignificant portions of the left
Speaker 1: believe this, yep. And that means that it's you know,
Speaker 1: unbelievably difficult to form any kind of coherent response when
Speaker 1: like half of the people who would only be.
Speaker 2: Doing this stuff for like, oh, well they are actually CIA.
Speaker 2: So like.
Speaker 3: Yes, the the Netherlands based CIA unit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, yeah, the I mean, like, at least
Speaker 4: in the time I was there, the primary people funding
Speaker 4: us was the Dutch post code lottery, like it's it's
Speaker 4: it's I don't know, like.
Speaker 3: Like almost every news organization they take grants where yeah,
Speaker 3: where they can get them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I want to specifically talk about the
Speaker 1: ny D a tiny bit because people like, so the
Speaker 1: main conspiracy is about like they like, at one point
Speaker 1: they took they took a grant for the National Talent
Speaker 1: for Democracy and like, yeah, those people do weird shit sometimes,
Speaker 1: but they also for example, like if okay, so if
Speaker 1: you're gonna have the line that every single person who's
Speaker 1: taking money for the n D is a CIA thing,
Speaker 1: like you have to accept that. For example, like the
Speaker 1: pro Beijing Electoral Party in Hong Kong is a is
Speaker 1: a cia op because they also got a ship ton
Speaker 1: of any D money, right like they they like anyg
Speaker 1: just gives money to a shit ton of people.
Speaker 3: It's definitely worth emphasizing that, like the initial groups that
Speaker 3: are pushing the Bellankat conspiracies were all gray zone people
Speaker 3: that are specifically specifically paid by the Russian government, like
Speaker 3: because Russia was mad at Bellinkat for exposing their war crimes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and like that's where all of this stuff starts.
Speaker 4: There's I don't know how much point there is in
Speaker 4: like laying into this specific thing too much. Would I
Speaker 4: would remind you at all times when you are like
Speaker 4: dealing with breaking news like this and there's a bunch
Speaker 4: of different and there's a bunch of different kind of
Speaker 4: like conflicting arguments about what's actually happening. Okham's raisor isn't
Speaker 4: one hundred percent of the time the way to go.
Speaker 4: But in a situation like this, you have two possibilities.
Speaker 4: One is that a Nazi went on a killing spree,
Speaker 4: as happens constantly, as has been happening since the Nazis
Speaker 4: became a thing. The other possibility is that the federal
Speaker 4: government for unclear reason and convinced a man to cover
Speaker 4: his body in swastika tattoos and shoot random people at
Speaker 4: a mall for gun control. That's not going to get
Speaker 4: passed in the state of Texas. I don't know like
Speaker 4: which of those seems likely to you.
Speaker 1: I did this thing like very deliberately to myself, like
Speaker 1: about a year ago, where I was like I was
Speaker 1: very deliberate like I'm going to like un conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: my brain because you know, like there is a lot
Speaker 1: of like like the kind of reasoning you get in
Speaker 1: this stuff, which is like, hey, here's a thing that like,
Speaker 1: quote unquote looks weird, so this whole thing must be suspect,
Speaker 1: so it must be an op is like a really
Speaker 1: really kind of like it's a really common kind of
Speaker 1: reasoning now that just like a lot of people across
Speaker 1: the entire politic conpectrum have and it's not actually a
Speaker 1: good way to understand the world, like it's it simply
Speaker 1: is not.
Speaker 3: We we live in an increasingly absurd world where every
Speaker 3: single weird thing is more and more visible because of
Speaker 3: the Internet, so we're more aware of how much weird
Speaker 3: shit happens all the time, and stuff that and stuff
Speaker 3: that may not not necessarily be weird because like everything,
Speaker 3: there is an expert in every field who can who
Speaker 3: can explain to you why this thing actually makes perfect sense,
Speaker 3: and it's just people being exposed to things that they're
Speaker 3: not usually that they're not used to. I think one
Speaker 3: of the interesting one of the last things I think
Speaker 3: we should like mention about this is just the influx
Speaker 3: of how militant like neo Nazism or like visible ne Nazism,
Speaker 3: has just been People have just been saying it's Feds
Speaker 3: in an increasingly concerning way, like like I think, like
Speaker 3: a last month, there was this viral video of a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of Nazis stressed in red and black, I think,
Speaker 3: protesting something. I forget the exact circumstances at the moment.
Speaker 2: I think it was.
Speaker 3: I think it was some drag related protest, But there
Speaker 3: was this group of Nazis dressed in red and black
Speaker 3: doing Nazi shit, And when you looked at any of
Speaker 3: the videos on Twitter, you saw hundreds of replies from
Speaker 3: people with blue check marks just calling them FEDS, saying,
Speaker 3: oh wow, look at all these Feds. Well, oh, I
Speaker 3: can't believe the FEDS are so busy today. Blah blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah. You know, it's it's like the one
Speaker 3: hundred person NPC meme with them all wearing the blue
Speaker 3: check work on the forehead saying it's the FEDS, just
Speaker 3: because it's once we get to the point where we
Speaker 3: have more Nazis doing mass shootings again the same way,
Speaker 3: like there was an influx between like twenty seventeen to
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen than twenty twenty, there was kind of a
Speaker 3: dip because all all crime kind of had a dip.
Speaker 3: As we're gonna go into the next next election cycle,
Speaker 3: as things are gonna start looping again, when more and
Speaker 3: more Nazis start doing shit, just how there's gonna be
Speaker 3: a bigger swath of the population who just denies that's
Speaker 3: what's happening, and that is gonna make make the problem
Speaker 3: of Nazis probably a bit harder to deal with. I mean,
Speaker 3: there will still be anti fascists doing their work to
Speaker 3: like docs and IDP and and all that stuff, but
Speaker 3: the amount of like visibility and the amount of traction
Speaker 3: that that this level of reality denial is getting around
Speaker 3: like militant neo Nazism and around Nazi killings will be
Speaker 3: a kind of a new thing to navigate, or not
Speaker 3: a new thing, but like it's a the problem will
Speaker 3: be bigger than what it used to be.
Speaker 4: I wanted to kind of note one thing on on
Speaker 4: the other side of the ideological spectrum and not to
Speaker 4: equate the two. But there has been something kind of
Speaker 4: concerning that I've been seeing crop up in liberal circles.
Speaker 4: You may have noticed, kind of as a response to
Speaker 4: all of the mass shootings and the generally consistent Republican
Speaker 4: line that there's nothing to do except for be shittier
Speaker 4: to marginalize people, that there's been kind of this like
Speaker 4: focus in a lot of mainstream liberal media on articles
Speaker 4: and the idea that you should spread pictures of victims
Speaker 4: of shootings, and a focus on the amount of damage
Speaker 4: that like a weapon like an AR fifteen does to
Speaker 4: a human body. People can have their own opinion on
Speaker 4: whether or not this is a helpful idea, but I
Speaker 4: have noticed in sort of arguments I've been having with
Speaker 4: people a troubling trend, which is when I talk about
Speaker 4: the importance of doing stuff like taking stop the bleed training,
Speaker 4: carrying things like tourniquets, I've gotten responses from a couple
Speaker 4: of people that are like AR fifteens are so powerful
Speaker 4: the wounds are not survivable, there's no point in doing this.
Speaker 4: That is not the case. I have known dozens of
Speaker 4: people who have been shot by AR fifteens, in some
Speaker 4: cases in AR style weapons in some cases multiple times,
Speaker 4: and larger weapons, and lived it is always worthwhile to
Speaker 4: have stopped the bleed training and to carry equipment. If
Speaker 4: you hear anyone saying that, please please correct them, because
Speaker 4: whatever you think about gun control, it is very important
Speaker 4: for people to know how to deal with those kind
Speaker 4: of injuries, and it is important in the immediate wake
Speaker 4: of an attack. One of the things that was really
Speaker 4: unsettling is in the immediate wake of the Allen attack,
Speaker 4: after the shooter was down, there was a couple of
Speaker 4: people who ran in to try to provide life saving aid,
Speaker 4: and a bunch more who took photos of the people
Speaker 4: who had been wounded and killed. And it's possible that
Speaker 4: if more of the people taking photos had gotten in
Speaker 4: an attempted to provide aid, some of the people who
Speaker 4: were injured might have survived. No way to know, but
Speaker 4: always worth having that training. That's just something I've noticed.
Speaker 4: Not to put it in the same moral universe as
Speaker 4: trying to pretend your calls for violence aren't calls for violence,
Speaker 4: but it is something that concerned me and that people
Speaker 4: should maybe keep an eye on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I that was the case with the
Speaker 3: Rittenhouse shootings. There was someone who basically had most of
Speaker 3: their arm, yeah, blown off, but they did not die. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So yeah, that is that is not true. And I've
Speaker 3: watched a lot of the Rittenhouse footage and yeah, it is,
Speaker 3: it is. It is nasty. Yeah, but no, that is that.
Speaker 3: That is a good thing to note.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also like.
Speaker 1: On just a fundamental human level, like do not let
Speaker 1: yourself be consumed by the algorithm so much that your
Speaker 1: first reaction to seeing someone get shot is you try
Speaker 1: to film them, Like, yeah, we we need to be
Speaker 1: better than this, Like we have watched people die because
Speaker 1: of this, Like like this, this is not a thing
Speaker 1: as society that we can continue to be doing. Like
Speaker 1: we simply cannot. We simply have to act and not
Speaker 1: like become part of a sort of like mass media
Speaker 1: spectacle instead of doing something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the footage of things is not going to change it,
Speaker 3: especially with mass shootings. Footage and mass shootings usually actually
Speaker 3: makes the problem worse, and it's mostly used by people
Speaker 3: who want to be mass shooters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm I that may be a conversation we should, uh,
Speaker 4: we should expand on it a later date. But you know,
Speaker 4: don't don't let the bastards grind you down. Take a
Speaker 4: stop the bleed course, you know, bring a tourniquet with
Speaker 4: you out in the world. These are these are action
Speaker 4: items that that that you can do that might in
Speaker 4: fact help. So that's going to be it for us today.
Speaker 4: It could happen here Until next time, you know, keep
Speaker 4: your head on this swivel.
Speaker 2: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 3: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.