Speaker 1: Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Phillips, an historian, the author of a book
Speaker 2: about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co
Speaker 2: author of an upcoming book about the eugenics movement in
Speaker 2: Texas called The Purifying Knife.
Speaker 3: And I'm Stephen Monchelli, an investigative reporter and columnist in
Speaker 3: Texas who covers political extremism and beyond.
Speaker 2: Since the late nineteen nineties, Alex Jones built an extensive
Speaker 2: media empire, spreading out landish conspiracy theories from his home
Speaker 2: base in Austin, Texas. A native of the Dallas suburb
Speaker 2: of Rockwall, over the years, Jones has claimed that the
Speaker 2: Apollo eleven moon landing was fake, so too, he said,
Speaker 2: was the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting. He claimed
Speaker 2: with stage to justify new gun control laws. According to Jones,
Speaker 2: the US government can control the weather has intentionally caused
Speaker 2: floods and other weather disasters to punish Texas and other
Speaker 2: concerns of the States. He has insisted that chemicals intentionally
Speaker 2: placed in American drinking water are turning frogs gay, part
Speaker 2: of an experiment by the American government seeking a way
Speaker 2: to undermine the nuclear family. While peddling dubious supplements with
Speaker 2: unproven health benefits. Jones began his broadcasting career with a
Speaker 2: call in public access cable TV show, before moving on
Speaker 2: to radio and then online. In spite of his outlandish claims,
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen, Jones was able to set off a
Speaker 2: panic in Texas that inspired action from Governor Greg Abbott.
Speaker 4: Now to a Texas sized conspiracy theory, sparking headlines across
Speaker 4: the country, including this week in The New York Times,
Speaker 4: the theory that an upcoming Pentagon training exercise is actually
Speaker 4: part of a plan to impose martial law. To many,
Speaker 4: it's far fetched, but not to some of the top
Speaker 4: politicians in the lone star state.
Speaker 3: The conspiracy theory Jones described on his Info War show
Speaker 3: spun in even wilder directions. The Army troops participating in
Speaker 3: the Jade Helm military exercise, panicked, right wingers said, would
Speaker 3: turn on the local population. Guns would be seized from
Speaker 3: private citizens, and local walmarts would be converted into vast
Speaker 3: holding cells where those opposing Obama's plan to seize dictatorial
Speaker 3: power would be imprisoned. According to these sorts of theories,
Speaker 3: these accusations went viral and a military spokesman got waylaid
Speaker 3: by angry questions at a Bastrup County Commissioner's Court meeting
Speaker 3: held near the Central Texas staging area for jade Helm.
Speaker 5: Armed men in.
Speaker 3: Trucks patrolled in Bastrup County and surrounding communities, and a
Speaker 3: private group called Counter jade Helm spied on the movement
Speaker 3: of troops and military vehicles while they quizzed residents for
Speaker 3: any intelligence they may have gathered on the impending alleged
Speaker 3: coup d'eta.
Speaker 2: The crazier the conspiracy theory got, the more Texas's far
Speaker 2: right political leaders were willing to pander toge Jones and Elk.
Speaker 2: Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas National Guard to
Speaker 2: monitor US Army troops near Austin.
Speaker 6: We're playing a pivotal role of government, and that is
Speaker 6: to provide information until people have questions.
Speaker 2: Texas Senator Ted Cruz pledged that he would demand answers
Speaker 2: from the Pentagon about the military's intentions and said he
Speaker 2: completely understood the widespread paranoia.
Speaker 7: You know, I understand the concern that's been raised by
Speaker 7: a lot of citizens about jade Hell.
Speaker 5: We have seen for six years.
Speaker 7: A federal government of disrespecting the liberty of the citizens
Speaker 7: and that produces fear.
Speaker 2: Suffice it to say, the Obama administration did not overthrow
Speaker 2: the state government. The intense outrage and fear generated over
Speaker 2: army combat preparations might have seen perplexing to those outside
Speaker 2: of Texas, a state that prides itself on being patriotic
Speaker 2: and pro military. However, seething distrust of liberal elites is
Speaker 2: a lucrative business in alex Jones built a fortune of
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy million with his internet show and
Speaker 2: sales of dubious health and survivalist products advertised on those broadcasts.
Speaker 2: This is nothing new south of the Red River. From
Speaker 2: the beginning of its history, the state has been an
Speaker 2: incubator for outlandish and occasionally not completely unreasonable conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: After Texas violently separated from Mexico in eighteen thirty six,
Speaker 3: white Texans spent the next decade fearing their southern neighbor,
Speaker 3: a nation that saw the Texas Revolution as illegitimate and
Speaker 3: wanted to regain control of the breakaway province. Meanwhile, those
Speaker 3: same white Texans viewed the African Americans they enslaved with
Speaker 3: suspicion bordering on dread, knowing that their black captives desperately
Speaker 3: wanted freedom and might use violence to liberate themselves. This
Speaker 3: created an atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust that fed conspiracy
Speaker 3: theories of all sorts. After their rebellion against Mexico, Texans
Speaker 3: wanted to become part of the United States, but they
Speaker 3: were forced to spend almost a full decade as an
Speaker 3: independent republic because of well founded suspicions held by American
Speaker 3: abolitionists that the Texas Revolution was a part of a
Speaker 3: plot to add a slave state to the Union.
Speaker 2: A decade later, the tide shifted and Texas was hurriedly
Speaker 2: annexed in eighteen forty five after widespread rumors gripped Washington,
Speaker 2: d C Of a British plot to a next Texas
Speaker 2: and converted to a haven for African Americans escaping slavery.
Speaker 2: In the eighteen fifties, even prominent Texans like Sam Houston
Speaker 2: flocked to the American Party, also known as the know Nothings,
Speaker 2: that claimed the Pope had ordered Catholics from Ireland Germany
Speaker 2: to immigrate to the United States in order to take
Speaker 2: the country over and hand power over to the Vatican
Speaker 2: Panics O were suspected rebellions by the enslaved, gripped Anglo
Speaker 2: Texans in eighteen thirty five, eighteen thirty eight, eighteen forty one,
Speaker 2: and in eighteen fifty six went perhaps as many as
Speaker 2: four hundred African Americans held in bondage in Colorado County
Speaker 2: in south central Texas apparently plotted to rise up against
Speaker 2: their white oppressors and battle their way to freedom in Mexico,
Speaker 2: where slavery had been abolished.
Speaker 3: Eighteen sixty, construction workers carelessly tossed matches into a pile
Speaker 3: of wood in Dallas during a hot, drought ridden summer.
Speaker 3: The blaze that resulted destroyed much of what was then
Speaker 3: only a village. Immediately, suspecting that enslaved arsonists had set
Speaker 3: the fire as part of a planned revolution, whites and
Speaker 3: Dallas tortured and whipped almost every enslaved person in the
Speaker 3: county in search of scapegoats. Eventually, they hanged three African
Speaker 3: Americans and set off what would become known as the
Speaker 3: Texas Troubles. Fires broke out across the state, and each
Speaker 3: got blamed on black suspects and their supposed white abolitionist instigators,
Speaker 3: often men from northern States. As one historian put it,
Speaker 3: white Texan enslavers decided it was better to quote hanging
Speaker 3: ninety nine innocent men than to let one guilty pass.
Speaker 3: Acting on little evidence, mobs lynched as many as eighty
Speaker 3: enslaved African American men and thirty seven accused white abolitionists.
Speaker 3: By the time the panic burned out in September.
Speaker 2: A wave of labor unrest, including the Great Southwest Railroad
Speaker 2: Strike of eighteen eighty six and the rise of the
Speaker 2: Populace movement, which called for the government seizure railroads and
Speaker 2: telegraph lines, in addition to a global panic amongst the
Speaker 2: well to do about anarchism after a series of bombings
Speaker 2: in Europe and even the United States from the eighteen
Speaker 2: eighties to just after World War One convinced economic elites
Speaker 2: in Texas that revolution was in the air. The ku
Speaker 2: Klux Klan, which in its original incarnation during reconstruction served
Speaker 2: as a goon squad to keep newly freed African American
Speaker 2: labor under tight control, came to dominate cities like Dallas
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties, where one and every three eligible
Speaker 2: men were members of the KKK at its peak, the
Speaker 2: KKK charged that both Jews and Catholics were conspiring to
Speaker 2: control the world. Texas politicians like Representative John Box of Texas,
Speaker 2: in a column in Henry Ford's anti Semitic newspaper The
Speaker 2: Dearborn Independent, charged that Jews had manipulated the Congress to
Speaker 2: add loopholes to American immigration laws passed in nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: one nineteen twenty four in order to let Jewish people
Speaker 2: escaping the Russian Empire into the United States as part
Speaker 2: of a scheme to undermine American society.
Speaker 3: As oil millionaires and billionaires built their wealth over the
Speaker 3: twentieth century, they became a force in conspiratorial faw right
Speaker 3: politics in Texas. Starting in the nineteen thirties, they mobilized
Speaker 3: against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which they insisted was a
Speaker 3: part of an international communist plan to overthrow capitalism around
Speaker 3: the planet. Anti communism, anti Semitism, and hostility. The post
Speaker 3: World War II African American civil rights movement blended seamlessly
Speaker 3: in the conspiratorial imaginations of the faw right in the
Speaker 3: lone Star state ideas that reached a national audience in
Speaker 3: large part because of oil money.
Speaker 2: Owen Beatty, the longtime chairman of the English Department's Southern
Speaker 2: Methodist University in Dallas, in nineteen fifty one, authored one
Speaker 2: of the first and perhaps the best selling of all time,
Speaker 2: book promoting Holocaust denial, Iron Curtain over America. Beatty claimed
Speaker 2: that the Jews of today were not the Hebrew heroes
Speaker 2: of what Christians called the Old Testament. Instead, they were
Speaker 2: descended from a sinister Asian trot called the Kazars. They
Speaker 2: converted to Judaism around the year eight hundred. Too arrogant
Speaker 2: to assimilate with Christian Europe, Baty wrote, Kazar's undermined society
Speaker 2: under their stolen identities and caused the Communist Revolution in
Speaker 2: Russian nineteen eighteen. After immigrating to the United States in
Speaker 2: large numbers, they took over the Democratic Party, Batty said,
Speaker 2: and moved it to the radical left. Beatty also claimed
Speaker 2: that Jews controlled Franklin Roosevelt's administration and pushed it into
Speaker 2: war against Hitler's Germany, which Beatty described in his book
Speaker 2: as quote the historic bulwark of Christian Europe. A mere
Speaker 2: six years after Soviet and American troops that liberated Nazi
Speaker 2: concentration camps. Betty claimed that most of the victims there
Speaker 2: died from disease and the Holocaust was a fraud used
Speaker 2: after nineteen forty eight to blackmail the West into political
Speaker 2: and financial support of Israel. The SMU professor urged the
Speaker 2: United States to expel Jews from the United States.
Speaker 3: Rather than earning him scorn, Bad's virulently hateful anti Jewish
Speaker 3: rants won him a large following. His book, Iron Curtain
Speaker 3: Over America, went through nine printings. By nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 3: The Public Affairs Luncheon Club, a women's organization, adopted a
Speaker 3: unanimous resolution backing Bad and requesting that SMU investigate alleged
Speaker 3: Communist influence on the university's faculty politics and values. Beady
Speaker 3: taught at SMU until his retirement in nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 3: two years after a panic over allegedly read art during
Speaker 3: which the conservative Dallas Patriotic Council accused the Dallas Musi
Speaker 3: of Art of intentionally promoting quote subversive artists who were
Speaker 3: ostensibly part of communist front groups connected to the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union after.
Speaker 2: World War Two in the establishment of communist regimes in
Speaker 2: Eastern Europe and in China. The uber wealthy giants of
Speaker 2: the Texas oil industry, to a large degree, funded what
Speaker 2: came to be known as McCarthyism. Clinton Murchison, whose son
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty became owner of the Dallas Cowboys National
Speaker 2: Football League team, became one of the largest financial contributors
Speaker 2: the red baiting Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. In Houston,
Speaker 2: hard right organizations like the Minute Women Fought against school
Speaker 2: integration took over the school board, firing the assistant superintendent,
Speaker 2: George eBay because he previously lived in California and Oregon,
Speaker 2: where he had nice things to say about Roosevelt's new
Speaker 2: deal in the African American freedom struggle. A math instructor
Speaker 2: got fired after he carelessly common in a teacher's lounge.
Speaker 2: They supported Adelie Stevenson, the Liberal Democratic part Party nominee
Speaker 2: for president. In nineteen fifty two and nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 2: the Easton School Board yanked books from campus libraries that
Speaker 2: said positive things about the United Nations, while right wingers
Speaker 2: in Dallas force the City Library and the Museum of
Speaker 2: Fine Arts. The demand artists like Diego Rivera and Pablo
Speaker 2: Picasso because of their supposed communist sympathies.
Speaker 5: But before we get into that, a quick ad break
Speaker 5: one Dallas oil.
Speaker 3: Magnate who built a mansion intentionally designed to be a
Speaker 3: bigger duplicate of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. He used
Speaker 3: his wealth to broadcast extremist fever dreams in the nineteen
Speaker 3: fifties and nineteen sixties. His name was hl Hunt, and
Speaker 3: he was profiled by the BBC in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 8: But as well as being perhaps the most apprugal, the
Speaker 8: most stingy plutocrat of Texas, hl Hunt is probably the
Speaker 8: most controversial. He is a fervent advocate of right wing,
Speaker 8: some would say reactionary causes. He is against the UN,
Speaker 8: against the War On Party, against Medicare, against central government
Speaker 8: aid of any sort. He would rather Washington didn't rule
Speaker 8: the United States at all, and in his ideal LAMB
Speaker 8: votes would be distributed according to the amount of taxes
Speaker 8: who paid more than most Texans. Even he is inclined
Speaker 8: to see communists under every couch and behind every curtain.
Speaker 8: To Hunt, mankind is divided into communists and constructives. His
Speaker 8: private word for anti communists, you are either for him
Speaker 8: or aganim. He brooks no halfway position.
Speaker 3: A health faddist who avoided whitebread and sugar, Hunt believed
Speaker 3: his diet of largely raw vegetables might actually allow him
Speaker 3: to achieve immortality. He also thought he had psychic abilities,
Speaker 3: lived as a secret bigamist, and published pamphlets such as
Speaker 3: Hitler was a Liberal, an early prototype of Rupert Murdoch
Speaker 3: and Elon Musk. Hunt tried to create an alternative right
Speaker 3: wing media infrastructure, ding a nationwide radio program and pamphlet
Speaker 3: subscription called Lifeline that promoted conspiracy theories from coast to coast.
Speaker 9: Didn't time for a lifetime.
Speaker 5: Is around the world.
Speaker 10: Every leftist phrase and cliche of the past half century
Speaker 10: now has the hollow.
Speaker 6: Ring of mythology.
Speaker 10: This is freedom Talk number fifty three Brendan cupp is
Speaker 10: all available at the rate of three for twenty five
Speaker 10: cents from Lifeline, Dallas, Texas seven five two o six.
Speaker 6: I'll be back after this message from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: The Lifeline show was hosted by a former FBI agent
Speaker 2: named Dan Smoot and broadcasts on more than eighty television
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty radio stations. Hunt believed that democracy
Speaker 2: was the instrument through which wealth would be seized from
Speaker 2: billionaires such himself and redistributed to the lazy and the worthless.
Speaker 2: Hunt once rage at Smoot when the Lifeline hosts claimed
Speaker 2: on air that democracy was a political outgrowth of the
Speaker 2: teachings of Jesus Christ. Hunt corrected smooth, condemning democracy is
Speaker 2: the handwork of the devil. In a phony liberal form
Speaker 2: of watered down communism. Hunt innovated in number of ways
Speaker 2: to alarm audiences about far left plots.
Speaker 8: During the last two years, hl Hunt has added another
Speaker 8: emotive missile to his armory, his league of so called
Speaker 8: youth freedom speakers, engaging young teenagers drilled to deliver three
Speaker 8: minute burst of his propaganda to rotary clubs and Bible classes.
Speaker 11: Many people in the United States really don't believe that
Speaker 11: communism is a serious threat. Well, these people are in
Speaker 11: for a big shock, because the communists have every intention
Speaker 11: of doing exactly what they've said they'll do, and they
Speaker 11: do not hesitate to use force and violence anytime they
Speaker 11: think that it will further their cause. Now, I don't
Speaker 11: pretend to know all the answers, but I do know
Speaker 11: that it is our duty to get out and warn
Speaker 11: others of the serious threat that we are facing. We
Speaker 11: have got to get out and tell others of the
Speaker 11: subversive movements that are going on right here under our
Speaker 11: very own noses. It's time to do away with this attitude. Oh,
Speaker 11: it can't happen here. Will communists bury us? Will we
Speaker 11: face fine squads as in Cuba? And will our little
Speaker 11: bitty children become slaves? Ladies and gentlemen. The answer rests
Speaker 11: in the hands of you and others like you.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: For much of the twentieth century, Dallas had built up
Speaker 3: a reputation as a clean, dull, modern, and efficiently run city.
Speaker 3: By the nineteen fifties, however, it had also acquired a
Speaker 3: reputation as the capital of crackpots and conspiracy theorists, a
Speaker 3: development that historian Edward H. Miller would describe in his
Speaker 3: book Not the Country. In nineteen fifty four, Dallas elected
Speaker 3: a far right House representative, Republican Bruce Alger. Less than
Speaker 3: a week prior to the nineteen sixty presidential election between
Speaker 3: John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, a pro Alger mob assaulted
Speaker 3: in spat on the Democratic vice presidential nominee and then
Speaker 3: Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson and his wife Ladybird as they
Speaker 3: left the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas, alger joined the
Speaker 3: protesters who held signs with slogans that said LBJ sold
Speaker 3: out to Yankee Socialists. Soon thereafter, Major General Edwin Walker,
Speaker 3: who inspired the deranged fictional character General Jack d Ripper,
Speaker 3: the person responsible for global nuclear holocaust, in the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty four film at Doctor Strangelove called Dallas Home.
Speaker 12: I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration,
Speaker 12: communist in doctrination, communists subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy
Speaker 12: to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Speaker 3: Before filmmaker Stanley Kubrick turned Walker into an unforgettable caricature.
Speaker 3: The real life Walker achieved infamy commanding an infantry division
Speaker 3: in what was then Western Germany. President Kennedy pressured Walker
Speaker 3: to resign because he repeatedly lectured soldiers under his command
Speaker 3: to vote for far right wing political candidates. He also
Speaker 3: distributed among the troops literature from the conspiracy theory promoting
Speaker 3: far right John Birch Society, and he encouraged them to
Speaker 3: join the John Birch Society, formed in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 3: opposed American membership in the United Nations, which it claimed
Speaker 3: was part of a global communist conspiracy to enslave free
Speaker 3: peoples around the world. The fringe organization, established by former
Speaker 3: candy manufacturer Robert Welsh, accused all American presidents from Franklin
Speaker 3: Roosevelt to Kennedy of being secret communists under the command
Speaker 3: of the Soviet government.
Speaker 2: The John Birch Society also saw the African American civil
Speaker 2: rights movement as part of a Bolshevik conspiracy to divide
Speaker 2: the country, and argued that efforts of towns and cities
Speaker 2: after World War II to add fluoride to public water
Speaker 2: supplies was part of a sinister scheme to weaken men
Speaker 2: physically and make them less able to resist the radical
Speaker 2: takeover the United States. That particular Bircher conspiracy theory made
Speaker 2: a long lasting impact on the American psyche. Cities across
Speaker 2: the United States banned fluoridated water today. That John Birch
Speaker 2: Society is still active in North Texas, where recent gubernatorial
Speaker 2: candidate and car dealer Don Huffines has published anti fluoridation
Speaker 2: essays on the Dallas Express, a right wing website that
Speaker 2: repurposed the name of the historic black newspaper that went
Speaker 2: defunct in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: Edwin Walker's devotion to the John Birch movement cost him
Speaker 3: his military career. Under pressure from Defense Secretary Robert mcmara,
Speaker 3: Walker retired and moved to Dallas, where he found a
Speaker 3: friendly political environment. The national far right saw him as
Speaker 3: a martyr to Kennedy's supposedly out of control leftism, and
Speaker 3: he received financial support from fellow devotee of the John
Speaker 3: Birch Society hl Hunt. In nineteen sixty one, Walker made
Speaker 3: the cover of Newsweek as a leader of the New Right,
Speaker 3: and in nineteen sixty two he entered the race for
Speaker 3: Texas Governor.
Speaker 6: To all victims of communist tyranny throughout the world, I
Speaker 6: send this word the hour of your deliverance is approaching.
Speaker 6: To patriots in every land Korea, China, the Ukraine, the
Speaker 6: Baltic Nations, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, the Congo, Cuba, and
Speaker 6: every other land strickened by the monster of communism. I say,
Speaker 6: for the time lie low, preparing your hearts for liberation.
Speaker 6: Do not expose yourselves to the brutal requital of a
Speaker 6: monster temporarily in power.
Speaker 2: Walker was a painfully dull public speaker. In the end,
Speaker 2: he couldn't bring his version of deliverance to his own state,
Speaker 2: finishing a distant sixth in the nineteen sixty two gubinatorial race.
Speaker 2: That would not prevent him and his allies from creating
Speaker 2: Mayhem over the following months, he got arrested and was
Speaker 2: ordered to be psychiatrically evaluated by Attorney General Robert Kennedy
Speaker 2: after he incited racial violence during the integration of the
Speaker 2: University of Mississippi in September nineteen sixty two. Adelaide Stevenson,
Speaker 2: John Kennedy's ambassador of the United Nations, would confront Walker
Speaker 2: and a model of his followers when the diplomat visited
Speaker 2: Big d on October twenty sixth, nineteen sixty three. Stevenson
Speaker 2: was shouted down as he attempted to deliver a un
Speaker 2: day's speech to Dallas Council on World Affairs.
Speaker 6: Shall we get on with the business.
Speaker 2: Of the meeting? Surely, surely, my dear friend, I don't
Speaker 2: have to come here from Illinois to teach Texas.
Speaker 8: Manors, do I?
Speaker 3: Outside Memorial Auditorium Theater, where Stevenson delivered his speech, Walker
Speaker 3: had gathered a furious gang of middle and upper classmen
Speaker 3: and women who rocked his limousine back and forth while
Speaker 3: it waited to whisk him away to safety, and surrounded
Speaker 3: the ambassador when he stepped outside. When he finally returned
Speaker 3: to Washington, D C. Stevenson warned the administration about the
Speaker 3: intense and extremist atmosphere in Dallas, where President Kennedy was
Speaker 3: planning a visit meant to heal a rift between the
Speaker 3: conservative and liberal wings of the Democratic Party in Texas.
Speaker 2: On the morning in November twenty second, nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: Kennedy and his entourage felt for voting as they prepared
Speaker 2: for a short airplane draft from Fort Worth to Dallas.
Speaker 2: The president just examined a full page ad in the
Speaker 2: far right Dallas Morning News that featured a bold face
Speaker 2: headline welcome mister Kennedy to Dallas. The advertisement, paid for
Speaker 2: in part by H. L. Hunt's son, Nelson bunker Hunt
Speaker 2: and the future owner of the Dallas Cowboys, HR bum Bright,
Speaker 2: featured accusations that Kennedy was soft on communism around the
Speaker 2: world and radicals at home, while persecuting conservatives who criticized them.
Speaker 2: The same morning, a group distributed leaflets designed like a
Speaker 2: wanted poster with front and side photos of the President
Speaker 2: with the caption wanted for treason. How can people say
Speaker 2: such things? The President said to First Lady Jackie Kennedy,
Speaker 2: We're heading into nut Country. Soon. The Kennedys would make
Speaker 2: their faithful flight to Dallas, and the President would die
Speaker 2: from an assassin's bullet shortly after noon.
Speaker 3: The President's murder spawned a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists.
Speaker 3: Some said the President had been murdered by the mafia,
Speaker 3: angered because they had been investigated by the President's brother,
Speaker 3: Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Others blamed Teamster's president Jimmy Hoffa,
Speaker 3: who also had been the subject of criminal probes by
Speaker 3: the Justice Department. Others suspected assassination plotters included Cuban leader
Speaker 3: Fidel Castro, who had himself been targeted for assassination attempts
Speaker 3: by the Kennedy administration, exiled Cubans in Florida, angered because
Speaker 3: the President had not fully supported the attempted overthrow of
Speaker 3: Castro during the nineteen sixty one Bay of Pigs invasion,
Speaker 3: and even the Soviets. One of the more elaborate theories
Speaker 3: involved an alleged plot hatched by American military leaders and
Speaker 3: CIA agents, angered that Kennedy supposedly wanted to end American
Speaker 3: involvement in Vietnam. Finally, others, said Lyndon Johnson, order to
Speaker 3: hit on the chief executive because he wanted to grab power.
Speaker 3: Or maybe others said, Kennedy die because of combination of
Speaker 3: some or all of the above, having made enemies with
Speaker 3: the intelligence agencies under his command, who he had said
Speaker 3: he would dash to the wins if they continued to
Speaker 3: do things that were against what he saws in the
Speaker 3: best interests of the United States. Quote President shot one
Speaker 3: hundred twenty nine times from forty three different angles. A
Speaker 3: satirical headline from The Onion later.
Speaker 2: Asserted sometimes conspiracy theories have deadly consequences. William L. Pierre
Speaker 2: spent his teen years attending a military academy in Dallas
Speaker 2: as a city student, anti communist dread and any Semitic hatred.
Speaker 2: As a young adult, he had joined the John Birch Society,
Speaker 2: but grew frustrated because there wasn't racist enough it. Became
Speaker 2: a leading figure in the American Nazi Party at the
Speaker 2: age of forty one formed the Neo Nazi National Alliance.
Speaker 2: Beginning in nineteen seventy five, he published in serial form
Speaker 2: one of the most influential examples of white supreme literature,
Speaker 2: The Turner Diaries, a novel which told the story of
Speaker 2: white nationalist revolution in the United States in the near future.
Speaker 2: This revolt is sparked by a Jewish authored law outlying
Speaker 2: private ownership of guns. The hero, Earl Turner, joins an
Speaker 2: underground terrorist army, the organization which battles a Jewish plot
Speaker 2: to destroy America not just through gun control, but also
Speaker 2: through uncontrolled non white immigration and by using rock music
Speaker 2: and drugs to encourage interracial sects. At one point, to
Speaker 2: save the white race, Turner blows up the FBI National
Speaker 2: headquarters in Washington, d C. With a truck bomb.
Speaker 3: In the novel, racist revolutionaries then take over Vandenberg Air
Speaker 3: Force Base in southern California and sees its nuclear missiles,
Speaker 3: which they later use on cities across the nation. While
Speaker 3: ethnically cleansing California of non whites. They hang sixty thousand
Speaker 3: so called race traders during the Day of the Rope,
Speaker 3: a phrase you may find familiar if you've ever looked
Speaker 3: at white supremacist posts online. In the end the books,
Speaker 3: heer Earl Turner finally defeats the system by flying a
Speaker 3: crop duster armed with a small nuclear weapon into the Pentagon.
Speaker 2: White nationalists have since seen the Turner Diaries as both
Speaker 2: an accurate description of the modern world and as a
Speaker 2: manual on how to win a race war. From nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three to nineteen eighty four, The Order, a white
Speaker 2: supremacist terrorist group that took its name from the Secret Circle.
Speaker 2: The fictional Earl Turner joins, robbed a pornography shop, banks,
Speaker 2: and armored cars, hoisting more than eight million dollars. They
Speaker 2: later distributed to several white supremacist groups with the intent
Speaker 2: of funding a white revolution. Along the way, they assassinated
Speaker 2: Jewish radio talk show hosts Alan Berg. The Turner Diary
Speaker 2: became the favorite novel of Timothy McVeigh, a bitter, disgruntled
Speaker 2: veteran in the nineteen ninety one Gulf War who saw
Speaker 2: the deadly confrontation between the FBI and the Bureau of
Speaker 2: Alcohol to back firearms and the gun totting branch Davidian
Speaker 2: religious sect in Waco, Texas. On April nineteenth, nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: three as a major step and a government plan to
Speaker 2: seize firearms from law abiding Americans.
Speaker 3: McVeigh had spent years selling copies of The Turner Diaries
Speaker 3: at gun shows. He retaliated against what he saw as
Speaker 3: his government oppressors by blowing up the Alfred Murrah Federal
Speaker 3: Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the
Speaker 3: Waco configuration. He used a truck bomb, facing his attack
Speaker 3: in part on the fictitious bombings of the FBI headquarters
Speaker 3: in William Pierce's novel The Turner Diaries also depicted a
Speaker 3: deadly attack on the US Capitol. Some of the pro
Speaker 3: Trump rioters who assaulted the Capitol on January sixth erected
Speaker 3: gallows and livestreamed their crimes as they joked about hanging politicians,
Speaker 3: comparing it to the day of rope, Pierce described in
Speaker 3: his pro Nazi work of fiction, Stay.
Speaker 5: With Us through This ad Break to learn more.
Speaker 2: Kennedy was a classic Cold War liberal in support of
Speaker 2: an aggressive military intervention to stop Communist expansion abroad, and
Speaker 2: with varying degrees, a commitment economic and civil rights reforms
Speaker 2: at home. But because of his assassination by the twenty
Speaker 2: first century, many on the far right saw as a
Speaker 2: martyr to the liberal deep state. Beginning in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: a very online far right conspiracy theory arose that centered
Speaker 2: on cryptic messages first posted on the four chan message
Speaker 2: board and then on eight chan by an anonymous person
Speaker 2: who identified themselves as Q. The pseudonym was a reference
Speaker 2: to the Q Clearance, which gives government officials access to
Speaker 2: high level security secrets. Kennedy would be central in the
Speaker 2: imagination of what came to be known as the QAnon movement.
Speaker 3: Q or Q and on developed a huge following that
Speaker 3: interpreted these confusing and often contradictory posts as actually revealing
Speaker 3: a secret global cabal that included top Democrats like Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton and liberal celebrities like Tom Hanks. These people were
Speaker 3: all accused of being a part of a child sex
Speaker 3: trafficking ring in which the young victims were molested and tortured, and,
Speaker 3: in some interpretations of the theories, had their precious bodily
Speaker 3: fluids harvested to manufacture a drug known as adrenochrome, a
Speaker 3: drug that produces hallucinations and supposedly grants eternal youth. These
Speaker 3: stories resembled anti Semitic legends about Jews kidnapping Christian children
Speaker 3: before passover in order to use their blood in Monza bread,
Speaker 3: a trope or canard really that has become known as
Speaker 3: blood libel in the QAnon mythology. Donald Trump plans to
Speaker 3: conduct mass arrests and executions of these Satanic child molesters
Speaker 3: in an event called the Storm. Trump has wing and
Speaker 3: nodded to the q and On movement, encouraged believers, and
Speaker 3: even incorporated some of its key slogans in imagery in
Speaker 3: speeches and posts online, such as where we go on,
Speaker 3: we go All and as I've reported for Rolling Stone,
Speaker 3: a cult like spinoff group of q and On believers
Speaker 3: have repeatedly gathered at Daley Plaza, the site of JFK's murder,
Speaker 3: to wait for the prophesied return of JFK and his son,
Speaker 3: JFK Junior, who both are dead but these believers think
Speaker 3: were either miraculously resurrected or never actually dined, and have
Speaker 3: been secretly working with Trump to take down the aforementioned
Speaker 3: global Satanic pedophile cabal. Some believe that when JFK and
Speaker 3: JFK Junior finally reveal themselves, a sort of Kingdom of
Speaker 3: Righteousness will reign and good will ultimately prevail over evil.
Speaker 2: Q and On believers were a heavy presence during the
Speaker 2: Capitol Insurrection in January sixth, twenty twenty one, and banners
Speaker 2: competed with Trump and Confederate battle flags for attention. And
Speaker 2: November that first year, we saw the first of series
Speaker 2: rallies that Steve just referred to. They went to a
Speaker 2: Daley plaza where President Kennedy had been murdered fifty eight
Speaker 2: years earlier. Over the course of many months, QAnon disciples
Speaker 2: kept returning to the site of JFK's death, some staying
Speaker 2: at a local hotel so they could be nearby when
Speaker 2: the Kennedy return happened. This was covered by Dallas ABC
Speaker 2: affiliate WFAA in November twenty twenty one. Reporter Kevin Reese
Speaker 2: interviewed some of the ones gathered at the Kennedy assassination site.
Speaker 9: Word on the street is that Junior JFK Junior will
Speaker 9: show up and introduce his parents.
Speaker 5: You're expecting JFK Junior.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, Okay, how is that going to happen?
Speaker 6: It never does. Are we going to see him today?
Speaker 5: JFK Junior?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's whatever, we're hell of me.
Speaker 5: We're hope and to hope and pray, and then after
Speaker 5: that he'll probably be the vice president with Trump.
Speaker 2: Conspiracy theorists often pay a high personal price for beliefs
Speaker 2: that marginalize them from family, friends, and mainstream society.
Speaker 7: There was one real truth several of these people agreed
Speaker 7: to talk about. But you got to understand that most
Speaker 7: of the world is going to think that's just crazy.
Speaker 9: That's why half my family won't talk to me anymore.
Speaker 9: Then one my girlfriend thinks I've lost my mind.
Speaker 2: With the return of Donald Trump to the White House
Speaker 2: on January twentieth, conspiracy theories will move from the fringe
Speaker 2: to the seat of power. JFK Junior won't emerge and
Speaker 2: grab the reins, but a different Kennedy will. Bobby Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 2: Bobby Kennedy Junior has insisted that Wi FI causes cancer
Speaker 2: and that AIDS might not be caused by HIV vaccines.
Speaker 2: He claims against overwhelming evidence, cause autism, antidepressants caused school shootings,
Speaker 2: and micals and water lead to gender dysphoria. One of
Speaker 2: these chemicals, RFK Junior insist might be an old obsession
Speaker 2: of the conspiratorial right.
Speaker 6: I think fluoride is a poison becauses loss IQ in
Speaker 6: our developmental injuries. I think florid is.
Speaker 3: On the way up. RFK Junior mind You is the
Speaker 3: nominee for the head of the Department of Health and
Speaker 3: Human Services and in a recent interview claimed that he
Speaker 3: was aided in his schoolwork through the recreational self medication
Speaker 3: of heroin. Trump has himself obsessively promoted his own sinister
Speaker 3: tales of the deep state that supposedly stole the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty election from him, and as we have said, has
Speaker 3: co opted some of the slogans of the QAnon movement.
Speaker 3: None of this, obviously, was disqualifying to a plurality of
Speaker 3: voters this past November. So why are people drawn to
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories? First off, they provide convenient explanations that can
Speaker 3: be broken down into sort of simple logics for people
Speaker 3: who may not have frameworks for understanding a complex world.
Speaker 3: And they also provide believers sort of new family and
Speaker 3: friends as they become increasingly alienated from their original family
Speaker 3: and friends, regardless of whatever plots they believe they have revealed.
Speaker 3: It's clear that conspiracy theorists of this sort. They don't
Speaker 3: believe that history is a product of class conflict, or
Speaker 3: imperialism or the global scramble for natural resources, not ahing
Speaker 3: like that. It's not shaped by political and economic alliances
Speaker 3: between elites, or irreversible transformations and technology that render old
Speaker 3: job skills irrelevant. There's no material analysis. All of this loss,
Speaker 3: all this fear, all this terrifying disruption of what is
Speaker 3: comfortably routine, they view, stems from a sinister plot, a
Speaker 3: plan that is hidden tightly by a small circle of elites,
Speaker 3: sort of cartoon villains with near superpowers that control the world.
Speaker 3: And if only the right people, the sort of heroes
Speaker 3: of the story of the movie that they think that
Speaker 3: they're watching, if only those people would step forward and
Speaker 3: pull off the mask of the villains, then everything would
Speaker 3: be set right.
Speaker 2: These enemies of freedom somehow pull all the strings in
Speaker 2: sight unseen, manipulate every aspect of the world's politics, culture,
Speaker 2: and finance, manipulate elections, engineer depressions, urban riots, and even hurricanes.
Speaker 2: Yet for all their cleverness, they leave just enough clues
Speaker 2: so that amateur sleuths, if they are just smart enough,
Speaker 2: can crack the code. Conspiracy theories make history and understandable
Speaker 2: contests between ruthless bad guys and intrepid heroes, who then
Speaker 2: feel superior because they've unveiled the master plan. As they
Speaker 2: discover kindred spirits, they find community otherwise lacking in their lives. Perhaps,
Speaker 2: if just enough people know about the conspiracy, they hope
Speaker 2: the bad guys will fall and the millennium will follow.
Speaker 2: That fantasy offers a simpler, more emotionally satisfying vision of
Speaker 2: the future than planning on how to dismantle capitalism or
Speaker 2: figuring out how to persuade white people, for instance, surrender
Speaker 2: their privileges that come with skin color. Conspiracy theories are
Speaker 2: mostly a distraction, but unfortunately they are often from Oklahoma
Speaker 2: City to the US capital, a call for deadly action.
Speaker 3: And while figures like hl hunt and their operations like
Speaker 3: Lifeline may be in the past, we have our own
Speaker 3: contemporary versions of this with roots in Texas. We now
Speaker 3: have Elon Musk who controls x formerly known as Twitter,
Speaker 3: in which he has used his platform with millions of
Speaker 3: followers to promote dangerous conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement theory,
Speaker 3: which we recorded a previous episode of this podcast about.
Speaker 3: Ultimately we are living in a culture that swims with
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories, and for us to make our way out
Speaker 3: of the rabbit hole, we're going to need some sort
Speaker 3: of framework for understanding the world, something that can help
Speaker 3: us better understand how we got here and where we're going.
Speaker 3: And no matter what that is, it certainly won't be
Speaker 3: something as simple as believing that we just have to
Speaker 3: pull off the mask of some villain and then everything
Speaker 3: will be set straight from there.
Speaker 2: This is Michael Phillips and.
Speaker 3: This is Stephen Monticelli.
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.
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