WEBVTT - How to Stop the Far Right in Three Easy Steps 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.880 All Zone Media. 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:07.440 Welcome to it could Happen Here, a podcast about things 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:09.399 falling apart and how to put them back together again. 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:11.880 I'm your host bo Wog. With me is Robert Evans. 0:00:12.400 --> 0:00:14.000 Woo woo. 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.159 So we have spent a lot of time on this 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:20.400 show talking about the rise of the far right and 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:22.840 what that's looked like electorally, what that's looked like in 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:26.680 the streets, and the sort of you know, deleterious effects 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:30.040 that it has had on effectively everyone in the US. 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:32.360 This is going to be a little bit of a 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.440 different episode. We've talked about a lot of the responses 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:38.440 to the far right, sort of you know, in terms 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.040 of sort of direct actions and sort of confrontations. We 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:44.320 haven't really done is talked about what can be done electorally. 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.199 And I do think that a significant portion of the 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:53.760 far right can be defanged and eventually defeated through a 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.600 series of things that are not particularly complicated. But the 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:01.840 problem is that defeating feeding the far right means going 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:04.720 beyond simply trying to win every single election, which is 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.240 the current sort of democratic strategy. Right If you want 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:10.920 to actually defeat the far right, winning every election is 0:01:10.920 --> 0:01:13.360 not a viable strategy. We've seen this fail already with 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.440 Hillary Clinton. We cannot rely on simply winning every election 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.479 into the future. You have to go beyond mere electoral 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:24.880 victory towards using your electoral victory to actually defeat the 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:28.280 base of the far right. When the Republican Party held 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.120 power for twelve years following the ascension of Ronald Reagan, 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.760 they did it by destroying the political base the Democratic Party. 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:38.080 They shattered America's trade unions and rebuilt the economy to 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:40.560 ensure unions would no longer be able to provide the 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:44.559 ideological and financial support the Democrats had relied on. If 0:01:44.600 --> 0:01:46.720 we are going to defeat the far right, we need 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:50.480 to wage the same kind of campaign against them. Now. 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.640 Luckily for us, unlike Ronald Reagan, we do not need 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.640 to completely rebuild the American economy to knock the legs 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:58.880 of the far right out from under them. There is, 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:03.280 in fact, a pretty minimal program that we can implement 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:06.200 to defeat the far right that is very simple. It 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:10.200 has three components. First, a crack down on MLMs that 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:12.400 drives them effectively completely underground. 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:15.600 Yeah, by which we mean multi level marketing for these 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:19.320 appearance schemes right, which are a major source of funding 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:21.799 for the fire right. I mean, this is where Trump 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:23.680 comes out of right, this is why he did that 0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:27.280 fake university like, this is a big part of his base. 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:29.560 Yeah. Yeah, we're going to get more into that in 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:34.360 a seconds. The second, very important one is a regulatory 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.880 overhaul of how the FDA regulates supplements. Oh boy, which 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:40.720 sounds like it. Yeah, extremely technical and nerdy thing, but 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:44.079 supplements are another enormous cash spigot for the far right. 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:46.560 Yeah, this is where Alex Jones and Joe Rogan get 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:46.919 their shit. 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:51.400 Yeah, yep, yep. And the third is another kind of 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:55.800 wonky change that will be extremely important, which is making 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:59.320 sure to allow car companies to make sure rec sales 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:03.760 to customers, thus undercutting the enormous and extremely politically powerful 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:06.760 base of right wing American car dealership owners. 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:10.280 Yeah, who donate more money to political causes than any 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:12.160 other career field in this country. 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:15.200 Yeah. And you may not believe us yet just from 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.560 this sort of basic introduction, but these three simple reforms 0:03:18.680 --> 0:03:22.040 EML and regulation, regulation of dietary supplements, and the direct 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:25.120 sales of cars will destroy so much of the financial 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.120 and political base of the far right that they will 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.639 at least temporarily and in the sort of mid range term, 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:33.919 becomes significantly less of a threat than they are now. 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:39.160 So we are going to start with MLMs. Yeah, as 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:41.760 Robert has sort of alluded to, MLMs are a very 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.120 very important political base for the far rights. I'm probably 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:47.360 the most famous and the one that Robert has done 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:49.240 an entire show on. So go listen to that if 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:52.200 you want to really actually in detailed thing on the 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:57.080 history of Amway, Mway and the sort of political family 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:00.320 the devices that they've generated are an incredibly important part 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:03.880 of the emerging far right. I mean, obviously, most famously, 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:07.320 Betsy de Vos, who married into the Klan, was our 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:10.080 Secretary of Education under Trump. You know, the sort of 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:16.279 prince family is embedded into this. And Amway famously used 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:20.600 its own internal communications to stump for Republican Party candidates 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:24.240 and also uses its base and also directly its own 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.240 funds to fund the Republican Party and a bunch of 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:32.039 Republican congressional candidates. Now, obviously, and this is something that 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:34.360 is true of all of these reforms, is that everything 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.600 we're doing here, they're morally and politically good in their 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:41.560 own right, right, MLMs are scams. They're extremely exploitative, and 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:43.919 their rule, I think in the far right is a 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:48.560 lot more important than people understand. Even if you just 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:51.120 look at the money, you're sort of missing part of 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:55.800 what's going on with MLMs. MLMs aren't just a cash spigot. 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:58.760 They're part of how the far right builds his ideological base. 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:03.120 Teach you to convert all of your personal relations into 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:07.400 potential assets for sales. This is obviously evil on a 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:11.200 moral level, but it's also insidious on an ideological level. 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:14.719 The MLM logic of turning all of your most precious 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:17.920 relationships into sales vectors changes how you see the world, 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:21.880 and this is why Republican recruiting inside Amway works so well. 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:24.400 Once you've been trained that literally everything, even in your 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.160 sort of closest friends, and you know your dearest relationships 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.680 with your family, are just business opportunities, it's extremely easy 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:33.160 to convince you of the rest of the Republican Party platform. 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.000 In the same way the experience of being in a 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:39.320 union and organizing with your coworkers once reliably turned out 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.839 the ideological base of the left. MLMs have generated enormous 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:46.760 political basis for the right and Unfortunately, this sort of 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:50.440 ideological threat doesn't just go away if people are able 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.880 to get out of MLMs, or especially if they're sort 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:56.080 of cast out of mlems because they've simply are broken 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.960 brand of money and are in debt. The isolation and 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:02.320 alienation that comes from pushing away, you know, every single 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.120 relation that's close to you, from attempting to sell them 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:09.400 soap or whatever, makes people isolated and alienated and makes 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:13.560 them more vulnerable to far right radicalization. And this is 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:20.120 why driving these MLMs under isn't just a way to 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.640 sort of cost Republican party money, because that's not enough 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:26.800 to defeat the Republicans. They can find other sources of money. 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:29.520 What you need to do is systematically remove parts of 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.000 their political base. And when I say your roofports to 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:33.760 their political base, what I mean is you have to 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:38.040 go after the systems that are creating more members of 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:41.520 the far right. Going after MLMs is a way to 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:45.120 do that. Now. The FTC has gone after m lms before. 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:47.600 They sort of famously, as you talked about in that 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:50.400 episode an mway, they went after a bunch of MLMs 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:53.760 in the eighties, but this sort of caused MLMs to 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:57.360 get smarter and has you know, has been pretty effective 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.719 in in sort of warding the FTC off from really 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:02.640 going after MLM since then. 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:06.000 Yeah, which is by the way, like another you were 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:09.359 just talking about how the way MLMs impact like the 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.440 minds of the people participating in them, like prepares them, 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:15.600 you know, for the far right. Yeah, the way in 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:19.560 which this sense of impunity has developed among the people 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:22.440 who run and participate in these things due to their 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:27.480 capture of the legal system is also a part of 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:29.640 like why the far right works the way it does, 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:31.480 that sense of impunity. 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:33.360 Yeah, And part of the reason why they have that 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:36.120 impunity is is just the way the FTC goes after 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:38.240 these companies, right, I mean there was in the in 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.040 the mid twenty tens, the FTC went after neutral Light, 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:44.000 which is one of the biggest and oldest MLMs. But 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:46.040 the way they went after them was they issued them 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.160 a two hundred million dollar fine and that's a lot 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:51.040 of money, but it didn't drive Neutralight out of business. 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:55.280 And as the anthropologist David Graeber pointed out, if government 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:59.640 regulation just means setting fines and if the finds still 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:01.880 all the business to make more money than they lost 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:05.480 from the fines, then that's just the government taking a cut. 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:09.120 It's not actual regulation. And if you're one of these 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:11.560 businesses and the worst that could happen to you is 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:13.680 the government takes a cut, you end up with, you know, 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:16.800 two thousand and eight right where all these banks know 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:18.240 they're going to get bailed out and they know the 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:20.240 worst punishment that's going to happen to them is just 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:22.480 the government taking a small cut and they can go 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:26.280 back to just making all their money. So in order 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:30.160 to actually go after MLMs, we can't simply rely on 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:32.559 the FTC. You know, even if if you were to 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.079 sort of put in charge a more militant FTC that 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:37.559 was were willing to go after stuff. There needs to 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:43.120 be actual regulatory change here, and that is possible but difficult. 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.960 But if we actually want, if we're actually deeply serious 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:49.960 about wielding political power to defeat the far right and 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:51.920 to keep them from re emerging and to keep them 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:55.200 out of power generationally, then this is the start of 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:58.360 what we have to do. So we mentioned neutral Light, 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.559 which is you know, a very very power. NEUTRALI is 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:05.400 important because it is actually two kinds of business that 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:08.160 are extremely important to the far right at the same time, 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.800 it is part MLM, but is an MLM that also 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:17.000 sells dietary supplements. And when we come back from these ads, 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.840 we will be considering the role of the virtually unregulated 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:23.600 dietary supplement markets in the rise of the far right 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:38.320 more broadly, and we are back. Oh boy, Yeah, the 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:41.040 supplement market. There is a lot less that has been 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:45.320 written about this than there should be. So dietary supplements 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:50.120 are barely regulated by the FDA. People are getting scammed 0:09:50.160 --> 0:09:52.319 all over the place. Enormous numbers. I mean, I've seen 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:55.040 numbers that we're suggesting. I mean two hundred million people 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:57.680 take some kind of dietary supplement if you include things 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:00.640 like sort of vitamin gummies, et cetera, etc. This is 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:03.960 an enormous This is an enormous business. I'm going to 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:07.760 read from Johnny R. Starr, who wrote an article about 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:10.960 supplement regulation in the American Journal of Public Health. If 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:12.240 you're going to read this, By the way, this is 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:14.480 slightly out of date because the next year, I don't 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:16.080 know if this is part of this. The next year 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:20.520 at FDC a little bit overhauled their supplement regulations. But 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:25.640 here is star quote. The dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:28.280 which is the big thing that sort of deregulated supplements, 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:33.120 prohibits supplements that pose a substantial risk of injury, allows 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:35.880 the Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue immediate 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.040 bands on substances that are imminent hazards, and authorizes the 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:44.200 FDA to implement current good Manufacturing Practice guidelines. The law 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:48.120 also requires pre market notification for new dietary supplements, defines 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:52.040 supplements that were not marketed in the US before October fifteenth, 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:54.640 nineteen forty four, which is when the Dietary Supplement Health 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.280 Education Act went into effect. Products violating these regulations are 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:01.360 deemed dangerous, adulterated, and miss it, or otherwise unlawful. And 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:03.080 that all sounds well and good until you get to 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:06.640 the next sentence, which is quote, However, supplements need not 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:11.440 be evaluated for efficiency, and only limited data on safety 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:14.199 are required for new supplement ingredients. 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:16.960 Yeah. So, like, you're not supposed to let people sell 0:11:17.040 --> 0:11:19.680 dangerous supplements, but we're all also not supposed to check 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:21.959 to make sure the supplements are safe or work. 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:26.280 Yeah, yeah it as the FDA itself admits that even 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:30.120 the little tiny notifications for things like new ingredients that 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:32.840 the FAA in posts of twenty sixteen, you're supposed to 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:34.800 like notify the FDA if you put new ingredients. 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.760 But like even that just isn't happening. These companies just 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:40.240 don't care. They're just not either' not even like doing 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:42.560 the little tiny legal mandate stuffy're required to. 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:46.920 I should also note a large part of the blame 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.120 for particularly the supplements, but also I mean MLM's actually 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:51.800 they play a role in it too. It's the state 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:52.320 of Utah. 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:52.960 Yeah. 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:55.240 By the way, the political power of the State of 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:59.120 Utah is a huge part of why, because supplements are 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:03.160 a massive fuck industry in Utah. So are MLMs. So, 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.640 by the way, our team treatment facilities, the ones where 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:09.280 they like kidnap your children and torture them, these are 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:12.400 all things that the State of Utah and specific will 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:15.080 fight like hell to stop from being fixed in any 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:15.800 way shape or for. 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:18.640 Yeah, and that bill I keep talking about the Dietary 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.800 Supplement Health Education Act, that is the baby of Utah 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:26.360 Senator or In Hatch, who is a terrible right wing 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.640 force in American politics. And the fact that orin Hatch 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.239 has been this effective, and the fact that Utah serves 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.480 as such a powerful base. Here demonstrate something that's important 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:37.560 about this political strategy, which is that it has to 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:41.080 be a federal level political strategy because there are a 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:44.040 lot of seats the Republicans effectively have strangleholds. You need 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.800 to use the federal government to bypass the unbelievable block 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:51.200 of sort of political power in these states. I want 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:53.480 to read a little bit more from that article by 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:57.280 Star about what kind of regulations are required for supplements 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:01.240 because I think it's extremely dire in and of itself. Quote, 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:05.360 manufacturers are not required to confirm the identity of all 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:07.040 ingredients supply to them. 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:08.280 Sure why they need to do that? 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.400 Unbelievable, And they're not required to followup river how I 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:18.560 talked about. There's current good manufacturing practices guidelines. Following those 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:23.000 guidelines does not guarantee the absence of all contabinants. Moreover, 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:27.480 unlike drugs, which are considered unadulterated or misbranded, if they 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:30.800 do not achieve compliance with national standards set by US 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:37.640 pharmacopia and national formulary, dietary supplements may choose to be compliant. 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:42.800 Only six brands of dietary supplements are currently verified by 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:45.439 US pharmacopia, so they don't have to work. They can 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:48.880 choose whether or not they want to be submitted to 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:52.400 see if any of this stuff works now in theory, also, 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:55.520 the marketing of dietary settlements is supposed to be regulated 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:59.040 by the FDC, But like, is the FDC regulating all 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:01.960 of these false class people are making with their dietary elements? No, 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:05.040 of course they're not doing that. So why do we 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.560 care about supplement market Robert has kind of has talked 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:10.400 about this at the very beginning of the episode. The 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:13.040 easiest answer for why we should care about supplement markets 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:16.760 is simply the figure of Alex Jones, who, you know, 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:19.400 we have talked about extensively on this show. It's been 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.160 behind the Bastards. If you want to really, really in depth, 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:25.160 look at who Alex Jones is. The podcast and Knowledge 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:27.400 Fight is the single best resource I think anyone has 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:31.680 ever created. Yeah, it would be hard to beat. Yeah, 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:36.080 it's it's unbelievably detailed. But Alex Jones has, you know, 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.000 as an individual figure, has done more to sort of 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.120 spread the ideology the far right and turn this country 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:45.240 into what it is now than maybe almost any other 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:48.160 single person other than someone like Trump. Right, he is 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:52.640 probably most well known now as quote the Sandy Hook guy, 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:54.960 which he's extremely mad at all people calling him, but 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:58.400 he's why everyone thinks that not everyone, but a bunch 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:00.000 of people think that Sandy Hook was a false flat 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:06.120 And importantly, here's from NPR quote most of Free Speech Systems, 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:09.120 which is Alex Jones, the corporate name for Alex Jones' company. 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.880 Most of Free Speech System's revenue to this day, about 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:17.920 eighty percent comes from dietary supplements, according to court records. Now, 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.200 these court records come from one of a number of 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:25.240 lawsuits against Alex Jones for defaming the families of the 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:29.240 victims of the Alex Jones shooting. Are serty for defaming 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:33.560 the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. Sorry, yeah, yeah. 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:36.840 And you know, in the process of discovery, we got 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:40.720 a bunch of information about how Alex Jones's internal media 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:44.920 empire actually works. Now, if you followed Alex Jones over 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:48.160 the years, you know that he's hawked everything from silver 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:51.760 to satellite phones. But it is the dietary supplements that 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:56.320 actually sell. Right, As an MPR article said, about eighty 0:15:56.360 --> 0:16:00.480 percent of his revenue comes from dietary supplements. This is 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.800 not a sort of small independent media outlet right free 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:07.160 speech systems. Again, as Alex Jones' company was worth hundreds 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:10.280 of millions of dollars, this is an enormous far right 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:14.760 media empire, and supplement sales allow right wing figures like 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.440 Alex Jones to bypass the reliance on ads, which removes 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:22.160 a lot of potential leverage from activist groups who wage 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:24.840 pressure campaigns against you know, dated this against Tucker Carlson 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.120 for example, where people went after their advertisers and showed 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:29.920 them the stuff Tucker Carlson was saying on Fox before 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:31.560 he got kicked off, and what do you want to 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:35.600 fund this? And you know that was actually a sort 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:38.920 of effective strategy. But you know, the funny part about 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:40.640 this is if you look at the end of Tucker 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:44.120 Carlson's show, right, the ads on that show were ads 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:46.880 from the my Pillow guy who was a far right 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.120 extremist in his own right and a very important election denier, 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:57.000 and a bunch of supplement companies. Supplement sales are a 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:00.960 durable and renewable grift because there's a ready an extensive 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.480 network of suppliers and distributors right wing brands who want 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:07.000 to make a bunch of money can just sort of 0:17:07.040 --> 0:17:10.280 slap their name onto existing supplements that they buy wholesale, 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:12.040 and then they can market them to their viewers, and 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:16.720 this gives them an extremely profitable and lucrative source of funding. 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:19.000 And this is used all over the place. 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:23.120 Right Again, it impacts what they say and like how 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:26.480 they like the obsession they have with like seed oils 0:17:26.520 --> 0:17:30.920 and what's destroying your ability, like your testosterone and all 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:34.959 of these like different far right conspiracy theories about you know, 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:37.520 what kind of stuff you shouldn't be eating, Like all 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:40.200 of this stuff is related to the supplement business, right, 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:43.919 Like they are trying to drum up and destroy trust 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:47.200 and public health and drum up conspiracy theories for their 0:17:47.200 --> 0:17:49.080 own profit. And so it's not just a matter of 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:51.399 like this is how they get money, but this also 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:53.879 is why they do some of the things that are 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:54.600 so harmful. 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:58.879 Yeah, And as you're saying, this is cyclical, right, the 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.960 incentive structure for going further and further into these conspiracies 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:05.600 and selling more and more of the supplement things. It's 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:08.320 a spiral. It keeps on just increasing in size and 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:11.280 increasing in size due to the feedback loop from the 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:15.480 incentive structure that's selling these supplements creates. Now, this is 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:20.359 actually not an enormously difficult sort of feel to just 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:22.800 completely shut down the next branch we're going to talk about, 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:24.439 I think is actually a much harder political fight, But 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.000 a lot of the market for this can be defeated 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:33.040 by just having the FTC actually regulate supplements the way 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:36.280 they do drugs because, and this is really important, these 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:41.119 supplements are being marketed as drugs, right The advertisements that 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.360 these people are already doing are already illegal. The FTC 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:46.800 is not supposed to allow people to sell supplements like this. 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:49.239 They shouldn't be able to be manufactured like this. And 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:52.800 this is again, as with banning MLMs, this is something 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:56.800 that helps the consumer because it'll mean that whatever supplement 0:18:56.840 --> 0:19:00.840 market exists after sort of a massive regulatory even crackdown 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.320 will be much safer, it will be much more effective, 0:19:04.880 --> 0:19:08.400 and it will also destroy the base of far right media. 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:11.160 If you can cut the knees out of this sort 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.160 of far right media ecosystem, you can go an enormous 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:16.639 way towards solving the crisis of the far right that 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:20.760 has been brought upon this country. Speaking of crisis, Yeah, 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:22.440 we're gonna let the ads talk about the ads, and 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:24.920 then we're going to come back and close by talking 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.440 about car manufacturers in the American gentry. 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:40.560 Yeah, we're back, and this is a fun one. This 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:43.280 is also like one of my particular favorite things to 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:44.720 hit because I don't think a lot of people know 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:49.159 how much the Republican Party is just a party of 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:51.120 used car dealers YEP. 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:55.680 Probably the most famous piece that talks it's not really 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:59.159 fully about car dealerships, but it mentions the sort of 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:01.800 political effect and the kind of class that they belong to. 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:05.080 Is maybe the best thing The Atlantic has published in 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:07.359 the last decade, at least one of the best things 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:11.240 they've published, and it's an article on the American gentry 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:15.520 by the journalist Patrick Wyman. Wyman argues that huge swaths 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.440 of America are ruled by what he calls the local gentry. 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:21.359 These are millionaires, and notably, these are not billionaires. These 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:26.800 are multi multimillionaires whose wealth derives from immediate wealth extraction 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:30.040 from the surrounding communities. In places like Wyman's childhood home 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:35.159 of Yakima, Washington, these elites have enormous local power over 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:37.680 the territory. They rule like the landed gentry of old. 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:43.040 Here's Wyman quote. The conspicuously consuming celebrities and jet setting 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:46.800 cause of politans, if popular imagination exists, but they are 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:50.240 far outnumbered by a less exalted and less discussed league group, 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.200 one that sits at the pinnacle of the local hierarchies 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:56.879 that govern life for tens of millions of people. Donald 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:00.760 Trump grasped this group's existence and its importance, acting as 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:04.639 he often does, on unthinking but effective instinct, when he 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:08.920 crowed about his quote beautiful boaters, lauding the flotilla of 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:12.520 his supporters trailing MAGA flags from their watercraft in his honor, 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:16.520 or addressed his devoted followers among a rioting January sixth 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:19.119 crowd that included people who had flown to the event 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:22.640 on private jets. He knew what he was doing. Trump 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:26.320 was courting the support of the American gentry, the salts 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:29.119 of the earth, multimillionaires. You see them as local leaders 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:33.000 in business and politics, the underappreciated backbone of a once 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:33.600 great nation. 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:34.560 Now. 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:38.480 Wyman is largely focused on the agricultural gentry because that's 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:41.520 you know, the sort of the sort of agrobarons who 0:21:41.560 --> 0:21:44.280 are very important to this story, but are are kind 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:47.119 of are are kind of auxiliary to this and that 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:50.160 you know that that's largely because he's talking a lot 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:52.040 about the places where he grew up, which are which 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:56.159 are agricultural pubs. But a very critical component of this 0:21:56.240 --> 0:22:00.760 American gentry, of this local elite class are card dealership owners, 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:04.440 and their wealth and influence literally cannot be overstated. The 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:07.880 journalist Alexander Salmon wrote this in an article in Slate 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:11.159