Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 3: Could they be true?
Speaker 2: Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible.
Speaker 4: This is part two of our interview with Adam's friend
Speaker 4: Drew McCoy. Drew McCoy as a host of the podcast
Speaker 4: Genetically Modified Skeptic. Last week we were discussing the overlap
Speaker 4: between religion and conspiratorial thinking. So let's pick up where
Speaker 4: we left off for part two.
Speaker 2: I got a not a long PERI Rasia. I got
Speaker 2: a question for you. How do you view the conflation
Speaker 2: now between the Trumpest movement and evangelicals where Trump himself
Speaker 2: is fulfilling biblical prophecies according to some people, right, so
Speaker 2: this itself is a conspiracy theory that Trump is not
Speaker 2: if he plays in his own realizes this thing that
Speaker 2: the world is screwed up in God sent Trump. He
Speaker 2: plays this himself, and he plays into this. How do
Speaker 2: you view that the sort of the religiousification of trump Ism.
Speaker 5: Well, Trump is a populist, right, so he's saying that
Speaker 5: there's this big conspiracy against him, against the common man.
Speaker 5: They need to drain the swamp, they need to abolish
Speaker 5: the deep state, all of these things. And this just
Speaker 5: has a hand in hand relationship with pre existing pre
Speaker 5: Trump Evangelical Christian theology. We believe that the world was
Speaker 5: ruled by the prince of this world, Satan. That's something
Speaker 5: that I was raised to believe and is to be
Speaker 5: sold this idea that, oh, all of my political opponents,
Speaker 5: everyone that's against the Trump brand is just a part
Speaker 5: of the deep state, a part of a Satanic conspiracy theory.
Speaker 5: It's the most natural thing in the world. It's the
Speaker 5: easiest thing to possibly see coming if you grew up
Speaker 5: in the evangelical world.
Speaker 6: I think for those of us not in the world,
Speaker 6: it's one of the great puzzles of our age, Like,
Speaker 6: how is it possible that these people who got so
Speaker 6: outraged by Bill Clinton's now almost quaintctions a blowjob could
Speaker 6: embrace this theatrically libertine. I mean the only way he
Speaker 6: describes himself is as immoral, I mean literally playing with
Speaker 6: the ideas of incest and constant sexual immorality. So for
Speaker 6: I think, for us outside, it just seems utterly confounding.
Speaker 6: It just makes no sense. But you're saying, for you,
Speaker 6: it's there's no mystery, it's just obvious. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people from the outside see
Speaker 5: Christianity and religion in general is nothing more than a
Speaker 5: moral framework, and the moral framework of any given religion
Speaker 5: is usually very important and somewhat central. But people from
Speaker 5: the outside looking into something like evangelical as will not
Speaker 5: see the narrative framework, the interpretive framework for just everyday
Speaker 5: life that occurs in these circles. So while yes, evangelicals
Speaker 5: are very puritanical about sex and drugs and to a
Speaker 5: certain extent, alcohol, certainly they don't approve of making sexually
Speaker 5: suggestive comments about your own children, that's for sure. They
Speaker 5: do see a deeply dualistic reality in everything, and when
Speaker 5: someone comes along and says that they represent pure good
Speaker 5: fighting pure evil, that's a pretty strong selling point, especially
Speaker 5: when you are able to hit on points like bureaucracy
Speaker 5: itself is flooded with people who are fundamentally evil, which
Speaker 5: is like a subplot in the evangelical Christian narrative. So
Speaker 5: we really can't get hung up too much on just
Speaker 5: thinking of anything within religion, anything within evangelicalism, as just
Speaker 5: some kind of moral framework for people to follow. We
Speaker 5: have to look at the stories, the myths, the legends
Speaker 5: that they tell themselves in everyday life that they teach
Speaker 5: their children.
Speaker 1: But if someone like Biden had done the same myths
Speaker 1: and said, you know, I'm finding evil, would that have worked.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that it already fits into a
Speaker 1: narrative of right wing.
Speaker 5: It's really hard to say. I do think that Biden
Speaker 5: probably would have had a harder time going against somebody
Speaker 5: who does not have any prior affiliation with the Catholic Church.
Speaker 5: The evangelical vote used to be quite anti Catholic. Now
Speaker 5: it's getting a lot more ecumenical. In order to vote
Speaker 5: for someone like Trump, in order to support people like
Speaker 5: pundits like Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles who are Catholic,
Speaker 5: it's got to become more ecumenical. But I think that
Speaker 5: if you were to put two candidates in opposite opposition
Speaker 5: to each other, all things being equal, except for one
Speaker 5: having more of a Protestant background, like Trump, arguably versus
Speaker 5: Joe Biden, who's a long time Catholic. I would see
Speaker 5: the person with more of a Protestant background probably out.
Speaker 2: On the ecumenical part on gob Smith, that someone like
Speaker 2: Tulci Giebert, someone who belongs to a breakaway Hari Krishna
Speaker 2: sect that believes that this guy Chris Butler is the
Speaker 2: literal word of God on earth and must be obeyed.
Speaker 2: And someone like this running in charge of CIA and
Speaker 2: the US intelligence community. I'm shocked that the evangelical community
Speaker 2: is like fine with it, and it seems to me
Speaker 2: that almost the Great Man is more important than anything.
Speaker 2: I also want to ask how you escaped from that mindset.
Speaker 6: I mean, everything we talked about on this show. I
Speaker 6: was looking at some statistics. Twenty seven percent of evangelical
Speaker 6: Christians believe QAnon is mostly true, highest group by far,
Speaker 6: I think, double any other group. Over sixty percent believe
Speaker 6: that the election was stolen. In twenty twenty, fifty five
Speaker 6: percent believed that there's a deep state that you guys
Speaker 6: are representatives of that is controlling outcome. So that doesn't
Speaker 6: feel like a very practical political project that we just
Speaker 6: have to take fifty five percent of evangelical Christians and
Speaker 6: get them to no longer be evangelical Christians, which we
Speaker 6: don't want to do in and of itself. It's just
Speaker 6: how do you break the conspiracy theory?
Speaker 5: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that. I don't
Speaker 5: think that when it comes to evangelicals and conspiracy theories,
Speaker 5: that the call is only coming from inside the house
Speaker 5: at this point. I think that the evangelical conspiracy mill,
Speaker 5: the circling the wagons to protect religious identity infrastructure that's
Speaker 5: in place, is the only thing that is producing conspiracy theories.
Speaker 5: I think that the fact that evangelicals have harved a
Speaker 5: path in American society so strongly of working with governments
Speaker 5: ken Ham's Ark encounter, being able to work with local
Speaker 5: governments in Kentucky in order to get taxpayer dollars to
Speaker 5: support his mission of building a Noah's Ark based theme
Speaker 5: park for fundamentalist Christians, his project of getting DVDs that
Speaker 5: talk about creation quote science and sending them to schools
Speaker 5: to be actually used a science curriculum. That path having
Speaker 5: been carved in American society means that kind of morally
Speaker 5: flexible grifters who don't care about religion, they don't care
Speaker 5: about the Gospel or anything like this, can just jump
Speaker 5: directly in that path that's already been carved. They can
Speaker 5: copy it, and then they can also prey on an
Speaker 5: audience that has been psychologically primed to accept conspiracy theories
Speaker 5: when it comes to something like QAnon. I don't think
Speaker 5: that it is the most devout of evangelicals that are
Speaker 5: actually taking that up. I think it's people who identify
Speaker 5: as evangelical, yes, and maybe we're primed to accept things
Speaker 5: like conspiracy theories, But I don't think that it's people
Speaker 5: who are in church super regularly, who are really integrated
Speaker 5: into religious community and this sort of thing, you know,
Speaker 5: strong enmeshment in religious life, that are the strongest believers
Speaker 5: in q If you can indulge me in a little
Speaker 5: bit of analysis of some of the psychological components of
Speaker 5: a person who accepts conspiracy theories, if we look at
Speaker 5: the research that we've seen some psychologists do in the past,
Speaker 5: had to twenty years or so. This is I'm sourcing
Speaker 5: this from American studies scholar Peter Knight. He said that
Speaker 5: psychologists have developed an ever more detailed picture of what
Speaker 5: we call the conspiratorial mind. They found correlations between conspiracy
Speaker 5: thinking and personality traits such as paranoia, narcissism, suspiciousness, and cynicism,
Speaker 5: as well as feelings of alienation it's a really important one. Uncertainty, powerlessness,
Speaker 5: that's a really important one. Anxiety and loss of control
Speaker 5: another important one. If we look at the people who
Speaker 5: attend church and are the most enmeshed in evangelical communities,
Speaker 5: these are not poor lonely people. Actually people who go
Speaker 5: to evangelical church, which more often people that go weekly,
Speaker 5: are actually the folks that tend to have more money
Speaker 5: and more power and are just have more stable lives
Speaker 5: in general. So per Ryan Burge, as one becomes more educated,
Speaker 5: the less likely they are as an evangelical to be
Speaker 5: someone who rarely or seldom or never attends church. Now,
Speaker 5: the same is true of income. The richer you get,
Speaker 5: the more likely you are of being a regularly attending evangelical.
Speaker 5: So I think that we need to consider the idea
Speaker 5: that maybe people who are horror people who are not
Speaker 5: in Meshan religious communities that identify as evangelicals might be
Speaker 5: the people who are most up for grabs for like
Speaker 5: morally flexible grifters who pretend to be evangelicals, people like
Speaker 5: Q to gain power to manipulate people. I think that
Speaker 5: it's probably poor, not particularly and meshed lonely people who
Speaker 5: identify as evangelical, who are actually gravitating toward these conspiracies
Speaker 5: in the most extreme way.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back, Drew.
Speaker 1: I saw your video about becoming an atheist. I thought
Speaker 1: it was very interesting and very well argued. You've become
Speaker 1: an atheist, obviously there was a community that you were
Speaker 1: in before. What is it that you've kept from your
Speaker 1: past religious belief Have you totally broken from those sort
Speaker 1: of viewer? What is it you still keep even if
Speaker 1: it's not part of a specific religion.
Speaker 5: I do think that I've kept a certain amount of
Speaker 5: the Protestant Christian moral framework. I like to think that
Speaker 5: I'm not as prone to conspiracy theories, but I guess
Speaker 5: maybe that's not entirely for the individual to judge. Always,
Speaker 5: I still cite certain teachings of both the Apostle Paul
Speaker 5: and Jesus as not the moral foundations for my kind
Speaker 5: of moral ideology, but the catalysts or the impetus for
Speaker 5: the moral foundations that I do have. So if you
Speaker 5: look at the story of the Good Samaritan, you know
Speaker 5: found in the Gospel of Luke, there's this idea of
Speaker 5: that you should love and support your neighbor, that you
Speaker 5: should show them kindness, you should express altruism to people
Speaker 5: who are not in your in group, and in fact
Speaker 5: that the ability to do this maybe is the truest
Speaker 5: indication of moral righteousness, or at least centeredness. And that
Speaker 5: is something that I think that very parables focused Protestant
Speaker 5: Christians actually are pretty good at teaching their kids a
Speaker 5: lot of the time. I like to think that my
Speaker 5: parents did a good job of teaching me that kind
Speaker 5: of thing. I definitely credit them for that. I don't
Speaker 5: think that people like my parents, Evangelical Christians who are
Speaker 5: very conspiratorial, do a particularly good job of actually acting
Speaker 5: upon the things they've taught their children. I see myself
Speaker 5: as representative of kind of a generation of Evangelicals who
Speaker 5: took to the moral teachings of Jesus, and we ran
Speaker 5: with them so hard that we ran up against the
Speaker 5: church communities that we saw as betraying them. So in
Speaker 5: a way. I think that becoming an atheist morally speaking,
Speaker 5: was one of the most Christian decisions I have ever made.
Speaker 5: I was taught about discernment, about moral purity, and in
Speaker 5: order to abide by what I thought was right, both
Speaker 5: morally and philosophically and scientifically, I had to get out
Speaker 5: of the church community and be something else.
Speaker 2: Was there a damascene moment or cascade of events where
Speaker 2: you woke up one morning and like, yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: believe anymore.
Speaker 5: I describe my exodus from Christianity as a set of
Speaker 5: dominoes falling, and the first domino fell, and then after
Speaker 5: or maybe years, another domino fell, and with every domino
Speaker 5: there's an acceleration of these dominoes falling, and eventually, within
Speaker 5: a period of just a few months, which was right
Speaker 5: around the time when I was graduating from college, most
Speaker 5: of the dominoes started to fall. So it started with
Speaker 5: me really questioning the creation narrative that I was taught,
Speaker 5: and then eventually going into grad school and studying human sexuality.
Speaker 5: It was the moral narrative that homosexuality was an abomination,
Speaker 5: even though, as far as I could tell, trying to
Speaker 5: suppress someone's sexual orientation is actually extremely harmful for them.
Speaker 5: And eventually, you know, that led me to just fundamentally
Speaker 5: questioning the nature of God in existence and of the supernatural.
Speaker 5: And I got to the point again over a matter
Speaker 5: of years of slow deliberation and contemplation into a period
Speaker 5: of a few months, I would say about four months
Speaker 5: of really extremely intense philosophical moral delay liberation that led
Speaker 5: me out of identifying as a Christian. The silver lining
Speaker 5: to the awful experience was that I didn't feel bad
Speaker 5: about finally reading all of the educational books that I
Speaker 5: knew existed but I thought were wrong somehow. So me
Speaker 5: actually being able to read something like the Origin of
Speaker 5: the Species rather than just hearing about it was an
Speaker 5: ecstatic experience for me. But there is only so much
Speaker 5: reading of old, stuffy science books that can distract you
Speaker 5: from social suicide. It was nearly complete social suicide in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways. The reason I started my YouTube
Speaker 5: channel was so that I could vent about all of
Speaker 5: the ideas that were going on in my head. But
Speaker 5: I just didn't have anybody to speak to in real
Speaker 5: life about this. My community around me was all evangelical,
Speaker 5: so I had to go online to talk about it,
Speaker 5: and through that venture things absolutely have gotten better. But
Speaker 5: leaving evangelical circles is, especially when you're going to become
Speaker 5: an atheist, is extremely difficult. It sucks for sure.
Speaker 2: There's a parallel in the intelligence community. So historically, some
Speaker 2: of our best agents, people who've spied for SAA were
Speaker 2: true believers in their own systems or their own ideologies
Speaker 2: and the union. They believed in communism. They were some
Speaker 2: of the stars, the best and brightest, and then, almost
Speaker 2: mirroring your own set of experiences, they realized that they
Speaker 2: had been either been had or that try as they might,
Speaker 2: they simply couldn't believe the force of logic and events
Speaker 2: and what they saw led them to break at least internally.
Speaker 2: But they couldn't open a YouTube channel to tell the truth. Instead,
Speaker 2: they would look up someone like John and say, I
Speaker 2: just can't live with myself. I need someone to talk
Speaker 2: to I need to say what I really think, And
Speaker 2: then that flipped off into espionage.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I started my channel as a way to help myself
Speaker 5: to vent when I was in a really difficult social situation,
Speaker 5: but eventually the channel became a way to try to
Speaker 5: help other people. I started getting a lot of messages
Speaker 5: a few months in that said things like I'm desperately alone,
Speaker 5: no one supports me. I've never heard anyone say the
Speaker 5: things that you're saying without being heavily criticized or punished, essentially,
Speaker 5: And I just want you to know how therapeutic it
Speaker 5: is for me to know that someone like you even
Speaker 5: exists at all. And these people, these are Americans, people
Speaker 5: in a country with freedom of religion, telling me that
Speaker 5: what I'm saying sounds like something that has been horribly
Speaker 5: suppressed and that you would suffer horrible consequences for saying. Eventually,
Speaker 5: I even started getting some messages where people were saying
Speaker 5: that just consuming my content and knowing that someone like
Speaker 5: me existed helped the person decide against ending their lives.
Speaker 5: And it's it's a honestly, it's a relatable experience.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: When I opened that up and read it, I wasn't
Speaker 5: actually very shocked that someone would say that. I was
Speaker 5: maybe surprised that my little YouTube videos made that kind
Speaker 5: of an impact, but I wasn't surprised the person was
Speaker 5: going through that not at all as.
Speaker 2: A CIA off. So one of the most moving episodes
Speaker 2: for me was in the third world country. I'm sitting
Speaker 2: at a bar. I have gotten to know this North
Speaker 2: Korean and he's had his third drink and we're building
Speaker 2: a genuine friendship and he like pulps hard and he
Speaker 2: looks at me. He looks, looks over both of his
Speaker 2: shoulders and he says, I don't really love the great leader.
Speaker 2: And it was like what he said is a death
Speaker 2: sentence if he'd sent this to his mother, anybody he loved.
Speaker 2: And yet sitting across from someone, it was like, I
Speaker 2: can say this, I'm gonna I'm safe here, And it
Speaker 2: was like extraordinarily difficult and dangerous for him to even
Speaker 2: entertain this idea.
Speaker 3: And because you were drunk, you gave him up.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and demon in the sport. But that was something
Speaker 6: I experienced in Iraq, talking to Iraqis who knew in
Speaker 6: their minds they always hated Saddam. Often they would have
Speaker 6: people in their life they could whisper too, but only
Speaker 6: a small number. But still confronting the post Saddam world
Speaker 6: was really disorienting and figuring out how to talk about
Speaker 6: this kind of defining structure of their lives. I mean,
Speaker 6: I remember I was in Baghdad the day Saddam was caught,
Speaker 6: and then if you remember, they had those videos of
Speaker 6: him looking all disheveled and poking around in his mouth.
Speaker 6: I think that was a huge mistake for the US
Speaker 6: to release those videos because it really I think it
Speaker 6: humiliated iraqis. Like I remember sitting with my translator and
Speaker 6: him just sharing like I hated him, but I had
Speaker 6: a lot of pride that I'm from his country. That
Speaker 6: the core narrative of my life was that this all
Speaker 6: powerful genius with superpowers, like we believed on some level
Speaker 6: that he could see you through the TV and knew
Speaker 6: what you were thinking. And to see him that he's
Speaker 6: just this old foolish man who's being pushed around and humiliated,
Speaker 6: that was unbearable. Even though he hated this guy hated Saddam.
Speaker 6: It sure feels like a more muscular evangelicalism is on
Speaker 6: the upswing right now, and that conspiracy theory belief is
Speaker 6: on the upswing right now. Weirdly, the thing you said
Speaker 6: about how it's lonely isolated folks, it's actually somewhat optimistic
Speaker 6: in that maybe that's an avenue that if people have
Speaker 6: more connection more and again, I don't think we have
Speaker 6: an agenda. We want people to have a different religion,
Speaker 6: but we're not for conspiracy theories like we see them
Speaker 6: as a corrosive part of our political system, and if
Speaker 6: fewer people believe to them, it feels like it would
Speaker 6: be better. So are there things we can do other
Speaker 6: than having a kind of podcast where we mock each
Speaker 6: other a lot and occasionally talk about conspiracy theories.
Speaker 5: From my perspective, a thing that combats radicalization, whether it's
Speaker 5: ideological or believing in conspiracy theories, whatever, is mostly human connection.
Speaker 5: It's a bit counterintuitive to say, but the evangelicals that
Speaker 5: I think are peddling conspiracy theories the most are the
Speaker 5: people who are actually not very involved in the kind
Speaker 5: of religious community in real life. They're just spending time
Speaker 5: in online circles and trying to defend their identities while
Speaker 5: being extremely lonely and cut off from anyone through waxing
Speaker 5: poetic about conspiracy theories on four Chan or something like this.
Speaker 5: I think it'd be better for if those people just
Speaker 5: went to church. To be honest, as an atheist, I
Speaker 5: don't agree with the epistemology within evangelical church or in
Speaker 5: any kind of tradition that affirms supernaturalist ideas. But I think,
Speaker 5: just on a practical level, if people are integrated into
Speaker 5: communities in real life more often than I think that
Speaker 5: the underlying factors that predispose you to conspiracy belief start
Speaker 5: to be eroded away. If people are not in their basements,
Speaker 5: or they're den or something, or on their phones just
Speaker 5: peddling conspiracy theories just to feel something. If instead they're
Speaker 5: in the pew and they're singing about something that makes
Speaker 5: them happy and hanging out with people who like them,
Speaker 5: I think they're less of a danger to people like me.
Speaker 6: You've talked to me about it, I know a bit.
Speaker 6: But what is it like with your family now, Like
Speaker 6: they still have the same beliefs right.
Speaker 5: To a certain degree, My family has the same beliefs.
Speaker 5: My parents raise me independent fundamental Baptist, although they go
Speaker 5: to a Southern Baptist church now, which is really similar.
Speaker 5: But they're not white as dogmatic about kind of the
Speaker 5: literalist younger creationism bit. They're a little bit more interested
Speaker 5: in integrating into American society than fundamentalists, who are basically separatists.
Speaker 5: But through the influence of alternative medicine and anti vax
Speaker 5: conspiracy theories. Some people in my immediate family, on my side,
Speaker 5: not on my wife's side, are anti vaxxers who believe
Speaker 5: in re incarnation. They believe in chakras.
Speaker 3: As fundamentalist Christians well.
Speaker 5: As Evangelical Christians sevangelical Christians. The funny thing is that
Speaker 5: I think because of the priming to accept pseudoscience, they
Speaker 5: actually see things like reincarnation and the chakras and essential
Speaker 5: oils and quantum mysticism as all having a scientific basis,
Speaker 5: so they're not in conflict with Christianity. This is how
Speaker 5: God made the world. He made us having a root
Speaker 5: chakra and the heart chakra and things like this. But
Speaker 5: if you want to receive salvation, the plan is basically
Speaker 5: the same that I grew up with, and the moral
Speaker 5: values that I grew up with are basically the same
Speaker 5: for them as well as the whole We need to
Speaker 5: drain the swamp spiritually speak.
Speaker 1: Since you've moved away from and you become an atheist,
Speaker 1: and you said earlier if following the values is not enough,
Speaker 1: you're going to go to hell. How do you deal
Speaker 1: when you deal with your family, who obviously loves you,
Speaker 1: that they think you're going to hell? Or you would
Speaker 1: think you're going to.
Speaker 5: Hell, I should say. The first thing that I was
Speaker 5: concerned about when I came out to my family as
Speaker 5: an atheist was that my parents were going to think
Speaker 5: I was going to Hell. And I couldn't imagine personally
Speaker 5: having a family member, especially a child, that I thought
Speaker 5: was going to burn in hell for all eternity. We
Speaker 5: believed in a literal lake of fire. Its pretty gnarly stuff,
Speaker 5: and so I didn't want to burden them with that.
Speaker 5: Even if I didn't think that it was true, they
Speaker 5: would think it's true, and that's enough. When I came
Speaker 5: out to them, I asked them straight away. I was like, guys,
Speaker 5: I'm an atheist. Do you think I'm going to Hell?
Speaker 5: And they pretty immediately said no. Because there is this
Speaker 5: doctrine within a subset of evangelic Christians of Once Saved,
Speaker 5: Always Saved a lot of people say that if you
Speaker 5: ever become an atheist or another religion when you were
Speaker 5: a practicing Christian, then you never really were a true Christian.
Speaker 5: But my family could not accept the idea that I
Speaker 5: was never a true Christian. They raised me to be
Speaker 5: a Christian. They saw me act on my Christian values.
Speaker 5: They saw the evidence of the fruits of the spirit
Speaker 5: in me, and their faith in my faith could not
Speaker 5: be shaken, So that actually did smooth things over a bit.
Speaker 1: But you think you're going to hell.
Speaker 5: I think I'm going to hell. They don't think I'm
Speaker 5: going to hell.
Speaker 6: And that's how you don't believe in hell, which makes
Speaker 6: it a little easier.
Speaker 2: But I've got good news for you, guys. If you
Speaker 2: go seek, they don't believe that you're going to go
Speaker 2: to hell. If you live a good life, if you're
Speaker 2: a good Christian, a good Jew, a good Muslim, a
Speaker 2: good Hindu, you're gonna make it.
Speaker 1: Hold on just a second, Well we take a quick break.
Speaker 6: We've been talking about the connection between conspiracy theories and
Speaker 6: evangelical Certain evangelical faith almost get an organic phenomenon. But
Speaker 6: to what extent is this industrialized? You talked about morally questionable,
Speaker 6: morally flexible grifters. If what we wanted to do is
Speaker 6: make a lot of money, there's a really clear path
Speaker 6: to spout these theories. So how organized is this? How
Speaker 6: much dare I say, how much of a real conspira
Speaker 6: is the conspiracy theory pedaling to evangelical audiences.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about someone who I'm sure you guys have
Speaker 5: spoken about more times than you would like. Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 5: Marjorie Taylor Green obviously Jewish space laser's lady, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she We looked into it.
Speaker 6: It seems unlikely that there are Jewish space lazers. It
Speaker 6: also seems impractical, just so you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but Marjorie Taylor Green was raised Catholic, but around
Speaker 5: the time she started running for public office, she started
Speaker 5: getting involved in an evangelical community called North Point Church.
Speaker 5: It's a non denominational megachurch in northern Atlanta, I believe,
Speaker 5: and she was publicly baptized there. She started getting integrated
Speaker 5: into that church. And while her brand, while her own
Speaker 5: autobiographical blurbs about herself make it sound like she's extremely
Speaker 5: heavily involved in North Point in religious community, in real life,
Speaker 5: I'm not so sure that's the case. So I came
Speaker 5: across this really great article from Elena plot calabro And
Speaker 5: that was published in the Atlantic, and she says that
Speaker 5: Green's involvement per a source that Elena spoke to in
Speaker 5: north Point Church, her involvement tapered off after several years
Speaker 5: and Elena also noted that Brad Raffensberger, the Georgia Secretary
Speaker 5: of State who defied Donald Trump, he's very long been
Speaker 5: involved with North Point, and apparently no one ever really
Speaker 5: asks about him. So this guy who's strongly integrated into
Speaker 5: this evangelical community is someone who I most certainly remiss
Speaker 5: a little bit for partisan reasons saying this about a
Speaker 5: strong Republican, But he seems like a guy with a
Speaker 5: pretty stable moral center, with real principles, who's willing to
Speaker 5: stand up against basically attempted fascism, Whereas Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 5: gets involved in religious communities from the outside in order
Speaker 5: to gain a base that is psychologically primed to accept
Speaker 5: the kind of bullshit that she spews for cash.
Speaker 6: Although also I think the human brain can allow you
Speaker 6: to not confront these obvious contradictions inside your head. I've
Speaker 6: met enough people to feel like she has some stories
Speaker 6: she tells herself where she's the hero and it's not
Speaker 6: a contradiction, and she really believes something, and it's just
Speaker 6: quite malleable what she believes.
Speaker 5: I actually have another example that I think is interesting. Here,
Speaker 5: are you guys familiar with this hundant that works for
Speaker 5: the Blaze Media named alib Stucky. Sure, Okay, imagine a
Speaker 5: thirty one year old, very blonde, very white woman who
Speaker 5: was raised Southern Baptist and now works for the Blaze Media. Okay,
Speaker 5: it's very generic image, right, that is alib Stucky.
Speaker 3: You got it.
Speaker 5: Alib Stucky mostly promotes conspiracy theories that are very Christian
Speaker 5: identitarian focused on her show Relatable Again, produced by The Blaze.
Speaker 5: It's pretty clear to me a side note here that
Speaker 5: her viewership would not actually make enough money to support
Speaker 5: the kind of infrastructure that she has were it not
Speaker 5: for Glenn Beck's massive connections. So there's obviously serious funding
Speaker 5: behind this show. I do better than alib Stucky, and
Speaker 5: I am not wealthy like she is. But Ali grew
Speaker 5: up in Prestonwood Baptist Church, which is actually a church
Speaker 5: in Plano, Texas, where I know multiple people who go
Speaker 5: every week. I have an inn at this church. Essentially,
Speaker 5: I've been to this church, I've met the pastor, I
Speaker 5: know people who are there all the time. When I
Speaker 5: go visit family, people from the church are at their
Speaker 5: house hanging out. Sometimes I happen to know from those
Speaker 5: people that Alibi Stucky does not actually attend that church.
Speaker 5: She goes for Christmas and Easter and basically acts like
Speaker 5: a Baptist would say, like a good Catholic. Disparagingly here,
Speaker 5: but in September of this year, twenty twenty four, Ali
Speaker 5: was able to host a conference for four thousand attendees
Speaker 5: off of her YouTube channel that's much smaller than mine
Speaker 5: at Preston Wood Baptist Church. She was able to use
Speaker 5: the literal physical infrastructure that exists in the evangelical community
Speaker 5: to peddle right wing conspiracy theories and enrich herself even
Speaker 5: though she's not actually integrated into these communities very well.
Speaker 5: And unfortunately people at Preston Wood kind of let it happen.
Speaker 6: I mean, you could obviously see the shared interest, and
Speaker 6: it sounds like there may be some third party that
Speaker 6: we don't know that's funding this and making this possible.
Speaker 5: I would say, I know about it. It's mostly the
Speaker 5: Wilkes brothers, but it's mostly Ferris Wilkes, actually the co
Speaker 5: founder of The Daily Wire. But that's a bit of
Speaker 5: an aside. Obviously, legacy media does have a big role here.
Speaker 5: If we look at things like Fox News and the
Speaker 5: want to be future of American conservative TV news Max
Speaker 5: and Oan and things like this. That plays a role.
Speaker 5: But I actually think that new media is probably a
Speaker 5: bigger part of this than something like Fox News. We
Speaker 5: have to realize that the Daily Wire, which is this
Speaker 5: conservative media group, actually as far as I know, has
Speaker 5: a larger viewer base than CNN. It has a larger
Speaker 5: viewer base than Fox News. And that's just this one
Speaker 5: media group with basically a handful of influencers who create
Speaker 5: you know, new media, create tiktoks, create YouTube videos, create podcasts,
Speaker 5: this sort of thing. But there are there's a whole litany.
Speaker 5: There are dozens hundreds thousands of essentially brand new, totally
Speaker 5: unconnected political pundits for the right that are able to
Speaker 5: receive money from similar sources to something like the Daily Wire. Yeah, Russians,
Speaker 5: so like Timpoole, this very popular new media, really big
Speaker 5: name conservative podcaster, was revealed to have been receiving something
Speaker 5: like four hundred thousand dollars a month from the Russian state.
Speaker 5: And he's not the only one. It seems like Dave Rubin,
Speaker 5: who has worked with the Daily Wire but isn't a
Speaker 5: part of the Daily Wire, also was receiving money regularly Osco.
Speaker 3: We'll do it for half that. I'm just saying, I
Speaker 3: swear Moscow if you're listening.
Speaker 5: And I think that if we consider the fact that
Speaker 5: new media might be driving this, maybe even more so
Speaker 5: than legacy media, we have to consider what happened when
Speaker 5: the printing press and the Protestant Revolution went hand in hand.
Speaker 5: There was a much more free market approach to religiosity,
Speaker 5: to ideology, and the things that won out, at least
Speaker 5: in the short term, were inflammatory ideas. It was moral panics,
Speaker 5: things that drove people to burn witches. The second most
Speaker 5: printed book as far as I know, after the Bible,
Speaker 5: after the printing press was invented, was actually the I
Speaker 5: think it's called the Malice Malificarum, which is basically a
Speaker 5: witch hunting and burning book. So I think what we're
Speaker 5: seeing now is a resurgence of what we might have
Speaker 5: called the Satanic panic back in the nineteen eighties, where
Speaker 5: there are a ton of new voices who are all
Speaker 5: competing in this extremely free market, in this kind of
Speaker 5: hyper capitalist ecosystem on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and
Speaker 5: things like this, and they're all vying for the spotlight,
Speaker 5: which means that, Okay, we have to go with what
Speaker 5: works if we want to keep our careers. What works
Speaker 5: moral panic, inflammatory rhetoric. I see it in my own audience.
Speaker 5: When I have an inflammatory video where I am shitting
Speaker 5: on someone's ideas, even in the way that I think
Speaker 5: is not particularly overly inflammatory, I see that my audience
Speaker 5: responds more strongly to that than just an educational video.
Speaker 5: And I do think that just the fact that we
Speaker 5: have the new platforms that we have is enough of
Speaker 5: a factor to explain why we are having a new
Speaker 5: satanic panic which is much bigger, much more influential, and
Speaker 5: much more dangerous than the one we had in the
Speaker 5: nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: All Right, Drew, this was amazing. Thank you for spending
Speaker 3: so much time.
Speaker 1: Really, thank you for what you're doing. It's important work.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I appreciate the conversation. Guys.
Speaker 3: I think that the work that you.
Speaker 5: Guys do is really valuable, and I've enjoyed listening and
Speaker 5: I'm happy to be a part of it.
Speaker 4: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
Speaker 4: and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 4: Implausible it is a production of honorable mention and abominable
Speaker 4: pictures for iHeart podcasts.