Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Hey, it's Jaisi, lighted correspondent
Speaker 1: for The Daily Show. Up next is a preview of
Speaker 1: a new Daily Show podcast with my buddy contributor Jordan Clapper,
Speaker 1: Jordan Clepper Fingers The Conspiracy. Have to listen and be
Speaker 1: sure to look for the series to him more wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast. Blood It's everywhere on children at Halloween,
Speaker 1: in test tubes, at the doctor's office. In the very
Speaker 1: title of the two thousand seven drama, there will be blood,
Speaker 1: and it's even inside you right now, which means you're
Speaker 1: part of this story. So buffal up. This is Jordan
Speaker 1: Clapper Fingers The Conspiracy. If you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: you probably already know a little bit about Pizza Gate,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into that shortly. But this extremely weird
Speaker 1: idea that pedophiles are using secret symbols is rooted in
Speaker 1: the belief that eliteaus cabals it's always a cabal, are
Speaker 1: rounding up babies to steal their adrenaline by consuming their blood.
Speaker 1: Their Republicans in Congress who believe this. You might have
Speaker 1: also seen it in the Netflix show The Watcher. It's
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory that goes way back before Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: and come at Ping pong, and it goes back nine
Speaker 1: hundred years to when Joe Biden was born. Let's get
Speaker 1: into it. As Chris Cuomo would say, all right, let's
Speaker 1: bring in our own little blood cabal. I have two
Speaker 1: guests today. First, we have Dr Elise Wong, a professor
Speaker 1: at California State Fullerton who studies conspiracy narratives going back
Speaker 1: to medieval England. Alice, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Yes, And my next guest is Matt Gertz,
Speaker 1: a senior fellow at Media Manners for America and extensively
Speaker 1: covers the relationship between Fox News, Donald Trump, and Trump supporters. Matt,
Speaker 1: thank you for being here. Great to be here, guys.
Speaker 1: You guys ready to talk caballs. It's always an elite cabal.
Speaker 1: It's always elite. There's yeah, is there any lower level
Speaker 1: cabals of just like guys just trying to to get
Speaker 1: through it, who have like a high school education. It's
Speaker 1: always elite, right, Yes, that's the point. That's the point
Speaker 1: of cabals. You're in a couple, you have it's no
Speaker 1: fun to be in a in a like mediocre call
Speaker 1: state school. I mean, yeah, the state school thing. I
Speaker 1: think this podcast is going to start selling t shirts
Speaker 1: that says State School cabal on it. There really is,
Speaker 1: there's you know, it's always elite cabals and the illuminati
Speaker 1: also very elite. They need to be more encompassing. We
Speaker 1: need to have our state school Illuminati and cabals will
Speaker 1: sell the t shirts. Go to Daily show dot com, everybody.
Speaker 1: I will wear that at my state school at least.
Speaker 1: I want to start with you. Let's break down adren
Speaker 1: of chrome because it feels like the base for a
Speaker 1: lot of theories we're going to dive into in this podcast.
Speaker 1: First of all, is adrina chrome technically real? It is, Actually,
Speaker 1: that's a good place to start. It is actually a
Speaker 1: real thing. It's the oxidation of adrenaline and this can
Speaker 1: happen naturally in your body or in a lab. It's
Speaker 1: actually really easy to come by. You can just buy
Speaker 1: it on the internet, like not the dark Web and
Speaker 1: or not just the internet. Um. I think it's something
Speaker 1: like five milligrams for for fifty five bucks, fifties eight
Speaker 1: bucks something like that. I looked it up. Um, so
Speaker 1: it's not used for anything really there's nothing the FDA
Speaker 1: has approved it for. It's occasionally used for things like
Speaker 1: blood clotting. UM. There was some interest in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties for treating using it to treat schizophrenia, but it
Speaker 1: really showed no promise UM, so they dropped it. The
Speaker 1: history of the entepreneo girl we're talking about is sort
Speaker 1: of it goes back to I think Alvis Huxley was
Speaker 1: the first one to talk about it as a drug.
Speaker 1: He talked about it indoors of perception. And then Hunter
Speaker 1: as Tom Sin in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: is really the one who cemented the myth of adrena
Speaker 1: chrome as a drug because he turned it into this
Speaker 1: kind of immortality drug, um, this thing that you have
Speaker 1: to get from a live source. UM. I think the
Speaker 1: line is a corps is no good buddy um. And
Speaker 1: so that and then the subsequent movie they're like dramatized
Speaker 1: to the effects of adrenea chrome. What is the ship
Speaker 1: that stuff makes pure mescal and seemed like ginger beer
Speaker 1: man adrene of chrome, adren of chrome W. That's really
Speaker 1: where are modern perception of it as a drug comes from.
Speaker 1: So it's from these fictional sources. Are we saying it correctly?
Speaker 1: Adrina chrome? I mean that's how they say it in
Speaker 1: the video. Um. And if you go, I know you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to the video. Are we talking about the
Speaker 1: Terry Gilliam film, That's how Johnny pronounces it. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: that's where this This is where we're getting our information from. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: Well that's where they're getting their information from. Like I
Speaker 1: know you're not supposed to go to YouTube comments, but
Speaker 1: if you go to the YouTube comments on this scene, um,
Speaker 1: they are all about how how this is real? Yes,
Speaker 1: based on fair in LOLd in Las Vegas, which I
Speaker 1: will say I love that book, top ten book in
Speaker 1: my world. It's a great book. But that is sort
Speaker 1: of the central the beginning that in Huxley's book is
Speaker 1: where the first time we actually hear the term adrina chrome.
Speaker 1: He even said afterwards that he just wanted a quote
Speaker 1: unquote crazy drug and so he made it up. And
Speaker 1: so he's drawing on Huxley and then like adding his
Speaker 1: own little stuff and the drina chrome. The way it's
Speaker 1: become it is as you were saying, it's it connects
Speaker 1: to all of the different conspiracy theories because it's a
Speaker 1: grab bag of the greatest hits. Right. It's got pedophilia,
Speaker 1: it's got satanic rituals, it's got blood rituals, immortality like
Speaker 1: satanic panic and Hollywood elites. It's got everything. It's a
Speaker 1: good one. It is. Yeah, let's add some context to
Speaker 1: it in this world. The conspiracy theory is Hollywood liberal
Speaker 1: elites and Hillary Clinton are murdering children and ritual sacrifices,
Speaker 1: harvesting the chemical compound from human children, drinking their blood
Speaker 1: to ingest adrina chrome because it has some sort of
Speaker 1: elixir of life properties. Is that right? Yes? Yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: And you're telling me it may not be true. I
Speaker 1: mean you should. You should buy it on the internet
Speaker 1: and find out it's it's at least for at least
Speaker 1: for the dabble. Matt, When did you first become aware
Speaker 1: of adrina chrome? I think probably around As part of
Speaker 1: the pizza gate conspiracy theory. The pizza gate conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: posits that this uh cabal of global elites who is
Speaker 1: you know, are are draining this chemical compound from small
Speaker 1: children and sexually abusing them, is doing so in the
Speaker 1: basement of a Washington, d c. Pizza parlor called comt
Speaker 1: Ping pong Um. This idea spurred in some ways from
Speaker 1: emails from the John Podesta hack UH during the election cycle.
Speaker 1: And Uh, I've been to the pizza parlor and it
Speaker 1: doesn't have a basement that you can use to abuse
Speaker 1: children and take their bodily fluids. Um, did you ask?
Speaker 1: I mean it goes one step beyond asking for a
Speaker 1: bathroom key, because they'll happily give you a bathroom key,
Speaker 1: but you you have to be a little pushing and
Speaker 1: be like, I need to use the restroom. I also
Speaker 1: would love access to the basement where the children are
Speaker 1: tied up and I can get the adrede of chrome.
Speaker 1: Did you probably ask? I think there probably was a
Speaker 1: time that you you could have done that. But as
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theorists seized on this UH, the pizza parlor
Speaker 1: started getting bombarded with phone calls from people who wanted
Speaker 1: to know more about the the basement and the uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pizza gate conspiracy theory, and eventually one of
Speaker 1: the adherents to this conspiracy theory took a gun, went
Speaker 1: to the pizza parlor looking to save the children, fired
Speaker 1: it off inside UH, and was subsequently arrested and spent
Speaker 1: a couple of years in jail. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: at that point it becomes a little bit rude. I
Speaker 1: think to to ask the people who work at the
Speaker 1: pizza parlor. Um, it became they had real consequences. And
Speaker 1: for if if this is somewhat new to anybody listening,
Speaker 1: the Podesta emails get get hacked, Wiki leaks leaks and
Speaker 1: Podesta emails and emails between Podesta and Hillary Clinton referenced
Speaker 1: buying cheese pizza. Right. I don't think it's him and
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, but it's it's it's a some sort of
Speaker 1: email that references pizza that then became a sort of
Speaker 1: internet meme, uh and brought into the broader conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: uh that at least was talking about. Well, and cheese
Speaker 1: pizza becomes abbreviated to c P, which also stands for
Speaker 1: child pornography and common Pizza, and so they start to
Speaker 1: connect those links and common Pizza becomes the place to
Speaker 1: go in a nutshell. Right, Yeah, that's that's about it.
Speaker 1: I on the road, and I somewhat recently talked to
Speaker 1: somebody who was sort of discussing this um theory, and
Speaker 1: it is amazing the symbols they see not only in
Speaker 1: the common pizza background and the symbolism there, but I
Speaker 1: asked them like, what do you need to look at
Speaker 1: their like, well, in the pizza chain, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of symbols that you have to stay focused on. It
Speaker 1: was like, what do these symbols look like? And they're like, well,
Speaker 1: they're predominantly circles and triangles. There's a huge push for
Speaker 1: normalizing pedophilia. How do they normalize it? Are they making
Speaker 1: pedophiles look cool? If you go online, there's a whole
Speaker 1: list of pedophile symbols. Really, yes, they're they're like circular symbols.
Speaker 1: There's trying, there's a lot of triangles, there's colors. A
Speaker 1: lot of them are in pizza, which, if you're at
Speaker 1: all into purchasing pizza, that tends to be all of
Speaker 1: the symbols you see it any kind of pizza chaine.
Speaker 1: So from their perspective, they're holding a hammer and there's
Speaker 1: just nails everywhere. Well, I think I think watching pizza
Speaker 1: Gate happen, and then from my end, watching the um
Speaker 1: chat rooms and you know, message boards and all of
Speaker 1: these things, both before and afterwards, there's that aspect of it.
Speaker 1: Like the people who really get into the game of it,
Speaker 1: like let's let's find the numerology, and they all like
Speaker 1: the special symbols. And then there's the people who are
Speaker 1: actually mobilized around this. And that's what really struck me
Speaker 1: about Pizza Gate. It was the first time that I
Speaker 1: really saw this where you could see there was already
Speaker 1: this this theory about a pedophile ring being run by
Speaker 1: the Clintons, and it was kind of a theory in
Speaker 1: need of specifics, and so they went out seeking specifics
Speaker 1: and they decided, basically randomly, the comment Ping Pong was
Speaker 1: going to be the place. And then it started this
Speaker 1: sort of multi media propaganda campaign where people they got
Speaker 1: people to call and harass, as Matt was saying, um,
Speaker 1: they got people to flood the Yelp reviews and the
Speaker 1: Google reviews and people to go and harass the proprietor.
Speaker 1: And then this sort of culminated in the guy who
Speaker 1: drove up from North Carolina to self investigate um. But
Speaker 1: that wasn't really the the story. The story was that
Speaker 1: then people talked about it, that then it was in
Speaker 1: the national media for like forty eight hours, like a
Speaker 1: whole week, and it was not only in the media.
Speaker 1: Their theory was in the media. And I went back
Speaker 1: to the message boards afterwards and they were just beside
Speaker 1: themselves with joy over this, like it was not it
Speaker 1: was not a it's not at all about oh, our
Speaker 1: guy was arrested whoops or ha. He didn't really seem
Speaker 1: to find anything. Um, it was not about that. It
Speaker 1: was about the media exposure. And then there were sort
Speaker 1: of further suggestions, well, how can we get them to
Speaker 1: keep denying it, so they keep saying it, so people
Speaker 1: keep googling it. And when I was seeing that, I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, this is something else. This is this
Speaker 1: is a kind of savvy media campaign that I think
Speaker 1: most of us at that point we're not totally familiar with.
Speaker 1: Now we know if you mentioned something, you have to
Speaker 1: be very careful what what sort of buzzwords you mentioned,
Speaker 1: because it will sort of feed the conspiracy therry monster.
Speaker 1: I'm curious in hearing that, what do you think the
Speaker 1: end goal was? How was that a success? Was it?
Speaker 1: You know a lot of that online culture, does you
Speaker 1: know traffic controlling and the successes of trolling often is
Speaker 1: a large react action? Is it is it that that
Speaker 1: made it the win? Is it the fact that their
Speaker 1: conversations became mainstream news that was the win. Is there
Speaker 1: still a connection to the veracity of this theory and
Speaker 1: that because it's being talked about that that adds some
Speaker 1: credibility to it, or is just we like shine and
Speaker 1: we got some shine. I think it's a lot of
Speaker 1: we like shine. But I do think that there there
Speaker 1: was the jubilation of being able to make the social
Speaker 1: media to mainstream media jump, and then um, I think
Speaker 1: it was a huge recruitment tool. I think people hearing
Speaker 1: the name would then go google it and then would
Speaker 1: find their way to these message for its. So I
Speaker 1: think for them the coup was really through recruitment. Matt,
Speaker 1: what did you notice the coverage of pizza Gate? What
Speaker 1: did you first remember seeing it and who was who
Speaker 1: was first to jump on that? You know, I think
Speaker 1: I want to bring in Alex Jones here because I
Speaker 1: think he play has played a key role in conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories uh for quite some time, but I think really
Speaker 1: made almost a sort of mainstream jump during this conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: He was one of the major propagators, one of the
Speaker 1: people with the biggest platforms who would talk about pizza
Speaker 1: Gate and try to encourage people to look into pizza gate.
Speaker 1: You know, we had been following Alex Jones at Media
Speaker 1: Matters for quite some time, but we always, i think,
Speaker 1: as at least was alluding to h were very hesitant
Speaker 1: to bring too much direct attention to his conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: for fear of just sort of bringing more attention to them.
Speaker 1: And so when we wrote about Alex Jones in UM,
Speaker 1: we were largely writing about how other people were giving him,
Speaker 1: uh their uh support. Fox News personalities who would go
Speaker 1: on his show, Rand Paul and Ron Paul, who would
Speaker 1: go on his show and use the platform of someone
Speaker 1: who you know, is one of the chief popularisers of
Speaker 1: the idea that nine eleven is an inside job, you know,
Speaker 1: of bringing him into political prominence and pizza gain, I
Speaker 1: think was really a turning point because we saw that
Speaker 1: someone could use those conspiracy theories, could inflate them, and
Speaker 1: that there could be a big real world impact when
Speaker 1: people who came to believe those conspiracy theories went too far.
Speaker 1: It was a a I think, pretty disturbing uh time
Speaker 1: for all of us. When when when we saw that
Speaker 1: come together, I mean, as as somebody both with the
Speaker 1: Daily Show and having done a TV show after that,
Speaker 1: you know, parroting the Alex Jones talking points and what
Speaker 1: was happening in that far right world. That was always
Speaker 1: a conversation about what point You don't want to amplify
Speaker 1: these wild ideas. But at the same time, turning a
Speaker 1: blind EyeT is something that's already having an effect on culture.
Speaker 1: It's already been ample fed by legitimate politicians, even the
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, uh, legitimizing the points of view They're like,
Speaker 1: you saw people taking what they would hear from info
Speaker 1: wars in the conversation around that, it was becoming very
Speaker 1: real world news. Um. I want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about how some of these things spread, but
Speaker 1: I want to focus one more time on the adrena
Speaker 1: chrome specifically. At least I want to know if we
Speaker 1: trace back this specific theory, even the origins of adrena chrome.
Speaker 1: Does it go back before Hunter Thomps says, does it
Speaker 1: go back before it becomes sort of pulp in modern culture?
Speaker 1: Is is there a history that dates back to even
Speaker 1: even earlier? It definitely does, And the way that it
Speaker 1: dates back is a little bit of um sort of
Speaker 1: associative thinking. Um. So, conspiracy theories often work this way,
Speaker 1: they kind of jump on to think they have a
Speaker 1: very lazy logic. They jump onto things that are already
Speaker 1: um fully formed. One of the conspiracy theories that is
Speaker 1: attached to adrena chrome, or that adrena Chrome is basically
Speaker 1: drawing on and modeling itself on, is blood libel, which
Speaker 1: is a conspiracy theory dating back to the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: that Jewish people um drink or use the blood of
Speaker 1: Christian children for their religious rituals, specifically a passover. And
Speaker 1: for the record, we don't do that. Yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: thank you, Matt, thank you for thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: for for for yeah specifying that, um it's and it's
Speaker 1: designed specifically to incite violence, like that is what blood
Speaker 1: libel is for. So there's that kind of thematic connection.
Speaker 1: But then there's also the fact that the main purveyors
Speaker 1: of adrena chrome, like Alex Jones, like Liz Croakin say
Speaker 1: that it's blood life. I'll say that it actually dates
Speaker 1: back to that. And if you look at these adrena
Speaker 1: chrome memes, one one sort of popular one that goes
Speaker 1: around has this very obviously medieval image of a baby
Speaker 1: being drained of blood with people standing around it and
Speaker 1: it says at the top, why does this image even exist?
Speaker 1: And the image is of Simon of Trent, which is
Speaker 1: the most famous and well documented blood libel, and it's
Speaker 1: the this particular blood libel started um passover. A father
Speaker 1: had come to the Bishop of Trent and said, my
Speaker 1: two year old son, Simon is missing. And this this
Speaker 1: bishop already had a story ready to go. Um. He
Speaker 1: decided it must be the Jewish community, the very small
Speaker 1: Jewish community in Trent. He had a couple of reasons
Speaker 1: for for wanting this story to be true. One, he
Speaker 1: felt like the pope was too soft on the Jewish
Speaker 1: people and that he was too cozy with them. So
Speaker 1: this was his little power grab in opposition to the pope.
Speaker 1: And then also if you had a saint, if if
Speaker 1: he could prove that Simon was martyred by the Jews. Um,
Speaker 1: if you had a saint in your town, that was
Speaker 1: a huge money making opportunity, Like you could get people
Speaker 1: from all around to make pilgrimages to your little alter,
Speaker 1: and then you would make money basically off of like brand,
Speaker 1: brand building. And so it was it was like the
Speaker 1: brand building opportunity. I was like, there, that's cheesecake. Factory
Speaker 1: if you had if you had a cheesecake factory in town,
Speaker 1: you know, you're gonna get people from the suburbs. We're
Speaker 1: gonna come in, they're gonna pay some money. It's gonna
Speaker 1: help the town, that's the thing. And he wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of put Trent on the map. And so even
Speaker 1: before they start any kind of trial or anything, they
Speaker 1: round up the Jewish community, the entire Jewish community, and
Speaker 1: imprisoned them. And he hires a physician to write this
Speaker 1: very inflammatory autopsy that talks less about Simon's body and
Speaker 1: more about the I think the phrase is dry throated
Speaker 1: Jews howling for Christian blood, Like this really over the
Speaker 1: top kind of autopsy. And then he takes this automy
Speaker 1: that was the doctor that was the that's a that's
Speaker 1: a really high end literary anti semitism yep. And well
Speaker 1: it gets more high end because then he takes this
Speaker 1: and he sends it around to poets and two artists
Speaker 1: and it's like make stuff from this, and they do.
Speaker 1: Like the poets start writing poems about Simon of Trent,
Speaker 1: and the woodcutters start making images and that's the image
Speaker 1: that shows up in that adrena chrome meme is this
Speaker 1: sort of propaganda campaign by this Italian bishop who decided
Speaker 1: he really wanted his own little ritual cult. Those woodcutters,
Speaker 1: they just will take money whoever puts it out. Where
Speaker 1: is the artistic integrity Cury woodcutters? They you know, I
Speaker 1: hold them in such high regard. I love them. I
Speaker 1: think it's the best century for woodcutters, and yet they
Speaker 1: are so will blind eye to the social responsibility of
Speaker 1: being a woodcutter in that time. They're taking dirty money
Speaker 1: to put out anti Semitic propaganda. Shame, shame on. I'm
Speaker 1: never I'm never buying fifteenth century woodcutter art again. Shame.
Speaker 1: I feel like the parts of this that are really useful, though,
Speaker 1: is kind of it's kind of that that, like, it
Speaker 1: was the propaganda campaign that really made this take off.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like this was kind of a grassroots rumor
Speaker 1: that was rooted in sort of general anti semitism. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's why it took off, was sort of latching onto
Speaker 1: generalized anti semitism. But the actual formation of the Blood
Speaker 1: libel was very intentionally crafted for a political end by
Speaker 1: someone who is powerful. I have never heard of that.
Speaker 1: I think it's so easy to to look at the
Speaker 1: um those in power, and also the the religious heresy
Speaker 1: at the time and the institutions at the time and
Speaker 1: the point of view they wanted to get out. But
Speaker 1: the fact that they were using artists to spread that
Speaker 1: mession message to affect culture. I mean, you see obvious
Speaker 1: comparisons to what happens today, but that even then it
Speaker 1: was still important. You want this thing to stick. Culture
Speaker 1: needs to stick. And the fact that we're using those
Speaker 1: images yet today as proof of what Hillary Clinton is
Speaker 1: doing is it is bonkers. Well, I want to take
Speaker 1: a short ad break. When we come back, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk more about how adrena of chrome spread as an
Speaker 1: idea even before the Internet was even around. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Welcome back to Jordon's upper fingers. The conspiracy
Speaker 1: I mean I never I didn't actually plan to work
Speaker 1: on conspiracy theories. Like I'm a medievalism like a huge nerd.
Speaker 1: I like books and this This was not the way
Speaker 1: I saw my studies going. But it just it just
Speaker 1: you basically stumbled on it. We're like, here we go. Also,
Speaker 1: is that something was in the ether, the modern ether
Speaker 1: that you saw a connection between the two. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was basically in I started, I mean, like like all
Speaker 1: of us, I think I was a little bit concerned
Speaker 1: and uneasy about the fake news phenomenon, and in particular
Speaker 1: this epistemology aspect, this you can't trust anything that you see. Um.
Speaker 1: And I started hearing echoes with the stuff that I
Speaker 1: study and speech patterns like that's what they want you
Speaker 1: to think, do your own research. Um, I've heard or
Speaker 1: or people are saying these kinds of gestures towards sources.
Speaker 1: I started seeing those things. I was like, Oh, that
Speaker 1: doesn't that doesn't sound that sounds familiar and not good.
Speaker 1: And I just sort of started following that. Um. And
Speaker 1: now my autocorrect nos adren of chrome so clear. We
Speaker 1: are in the tas of these historical conspiracy theories and
Speaker 1: the beginnings of blood libel. How do you see these
Speaker 1: theories spread before modern news and communication and memes and
Speaker 1: four chan and e chan and parlor and true social
Speaker 1: and should I keep going, I'm not going to keep going. Well,
Speaker 1: they spread remarkably well. UM. I think that the the
Speaker 1: essential shape of blood libel was a very compelling shape.
Speaker 1: It was, you know, there there are evil forces that
Speaker 1: are out to get Christian children, and there was also
Speaker 1: the fact that it was pretty common for medieval children
Speaker 1: to die in accidents or disappear or fall into a
Speaker 1: river like child death was was quite common, and so
Speaker 1: it became kind of a predictable thing that if a
Speaker 1: child died in a Christian community that pretty soon suspicion
Speaker 1: would fall on the Jewish community. And it did spread
Speaker 1: by word of mouth, but it also spread by all
Speaker 1: of these sort of cultural productions that it's spread by
Speaker 1: these woodcuts, it's spread by um, these poems that were
Speaker 1: written in honor of Simon, and it also spread because
Speaker 1: these stories got baked into the official histories. These historians
Speaker 1: think of themselves as you know, responsible, reliable UM, and
Speaker 1: they go back to the local histories and they just
Speaker 1: sort of draw from whatever the local history is, and
Speaker 1: so these blood libels get baked into sort of accepted
Speaker 1: history as fact, and then anyone who reads that will
Speaker 1: that will be their primary UM interaction, basically with the
Speaker 1: Jewish community for a lot of places, because these programs
Speaker 1: have already taken place. Mug Ditator has done a really
Speaker 1: great job. She studies blood libel and she's done a
Speaker 1: really great job of showing how actually before the printing press,
Speaker 1: word of mouth didn't work that great. It really needed
Speaker 1: to be written down. And that also shows that it
Speaker 1: was mostly educated people, mostly higher class people who were
Speaker 1: adding blood libel. It wasn't a low class theory. Um.
Speaker 1: It was a it was a kind of upper class theory.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting. And I mean, there's a great book
Speaker 1: by Neil Postman, I'm Using Ourselves to Death that talks
Speaker 1: a lot about how the mediums affect the message. The
Speaker 1: events of the printing press affected not only the way
Speaker 1: information was spread, but the way we think about information,
Speaker 1: the way we process information. And then you suddenly have
Speaker 1: television come out and out the way in which we
Speaker 1: communicate and the way we process and information is very
Speaker 1: different than the way we used to with the printing press.
Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating to think of that in terms
Speaker 1: of like who is spreading information and that it was
Speaker 1: a it was an elitist thing. You had to be
Speaker 1: able to uh speak that language then. But now that
Speaker 1: we see information changing, the technology changing, Matt, I want
Speaker 1: to bring you in here. How are you seeing conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories like Pizza gate, uh and other Q theories spread
Speaker 1: given the new technology that we have. Well. The the
Speaker 1: core benefit that social media companies will say that they
Speaker 1: provide to their customers and that Internet companies say they
Speaker 1: provided their customers is the idea of bringing the world together,
Speaker 1: giving people an opportunity to find communities, to communicate with
Speaker 1: people across the globe and just sort of find a
Speaker 1: common purpose together. And I mean there's a dark side
Speaker 1: to that. It also has made it much much easier
Speaker 1: to find a community of conspiracy theorists to share your
Speaker 1: ideas about the you know, dark hidden messages in the
Speaker 1: world's events. Uh, to share your views about the Illuminati
Speaker 1: or whoever else is manipulating what's going on around you.
Speaker 1: And that's just an incredibly powerful force. The barrier to
Speaker 1: entry for producing one of these conspiracy theories is much lower.
Speaker 1: You don't you don't you know, um, the JFK conspiracy theories. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know you had to like write letters to people
Speaker 1: later on as xerox is and what faxes and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. Um, it's just very easy. Now,
Speaker 1: how lazy conspiracy theorists are. Now, can you imagine if
Speaker 1: you had to write letters to spread just some bs
Speaker 1: you read on Twitter? You're like, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: put that out Elon Musk, he would not be pushing
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories if he had to write a letter to
Speaker 1: get that thing going. Do you also look at places
Speaker 1: like Fox like what you know, we look at what's
Speaker 1: happened to with social media, but more of the mainstream
Speaker 1: media outlets. How are you seeing that effect this conversation
Speaker 1: conversation specifically with something like pizza Gate. Sure? So, I
Speaker 1: mean the reality is that we live in a bifurcated
Speaker 1: news environment. There is one set of sources of information
Speaker 1: that is generally used by people in the left on
Speaker 1: the center, just sort of mainstream news outlets, and then
Speaker 1: you have this entirely separate realm of right wing media
Speaker 1: outlets um that speak very clearly and directly to a
Speaker 1: right wing audience. Um. You know, the the way we
Speaker 1: see conspiracy theories moving these days is they'll start at
Speaker 1: this sort of you know, message board and social media
Speaker 1: platform level, with a sort of army of individuals who
Speaker 1: are are coming up with their own spin on what's
Speaker 1: happening on a particular event. Um. It will spread from
Speaker 1: there through a network of hyperpartisan news sites, places like
Speaker 1: Gateway Pundit that do not have standards of any sort
Speaker 1: that are not interested in the basic rules of journalism,
Speaker 1: but that want to have political impact and make money
Speaker 1: off of advertising. Um and and from there you can
Speaker 1: see them sort of uh, we get woven into the
Speaker 1: broader debate. You know. The reality is that the writing
Speaker 1: media figures at the higher level your Fox News is uh,
Speaker 1: are not interested in batting down those sorts of conspiracies.
Speaker 1: They're not interested in challenging uh their audiences and telling
Speaker 1: them that what they might have heard is incorrect. Instead,
Speaker 1: you'll see either them ignoring it all together, or providing
Speaker 1: a sort of wink and a nod at the conspiracy theory,
Speaker 1: or telling their viewers that it's okay more or less
Speaker 1: that like that there are reasons to be skeptical of
Speaker 1: things that are happening around you, that they're the elites
Speaker 1: want to keep you from talking about Q and on
Speaker 1: or what have you. Um and that Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: whether or not that's true, it's not a danger the
Speaker 1: way uh, you know, other other people will tell you.
Speaker 1: I mean, if this is an issue with right wing media,
Speaker 1: they have this weird rhetoric that is politicizing children in
Speaker 1: the name of protecting them anything from the serving conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories to don't say gay bills, anti trans bills, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Do you see a connection there? Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think a lot of these conspiracy theories get rolled up together.
Speaker 1: There was a big push over the last year and
Speaker 1: a half or so on the right, you know, throughout
Speaker 1: the entire ecosystem to talk about the idea of groomers
Speaker 1: of save the children, save the children absolutely basically that
Speaker 1: that teachers are trying to turn your kids gay, turn
Speaker 1: your kids trans, possibly blest them, and it all kind
Speaker 1: of gets wound up together. There aren't really firm barriers
Speaker 1: to a lot of these conspiracy theories. People who start
Speaker 1: to believe one of them, uh tend to start adopting
Speaker 1: others as well. At least historically, has there ever been
Speaker 1: away to get people to stop believe mean conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a complicated question, right, It depends on
Speaker 1: who you're talking about. Like, I don't Johannes smint Hinderback,
Speaker 1: the Bishop of Trent. I don't know that he actually
Speaker 1: believed that Simon was killed by the Jews. That was
Speaker 1: that was sort of beside the point. I think he
Speaker 1: believe that Jewish people are evil and he wanted to
Speaker 1: drive them out, and this was a convenient way to
Speaker 1: do it, plus a bunch of other political benefits. I
Speaker 1: don't know that he actually believed it. Um. So if
Speaker 1: you're talking about these sort of cynical purveyors of it
Speaker 1: who use it for radicalization and use it for their
Speaker 1: own sort of economic and political gain, um, I think
Speaker 1: you just have to take away the gain and then
Speaker 1: like that will that will kind of kill it for
Speaker 1: everybody else. I think it is a complicated question because
Speaker 1: the thing about conspiracy theories is they're not about the
Speaker 1: details that are not about the story there. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like your segments short and of really shown
Speaker 1: this well. As soon as you ask them a question
Speaker 1: like that's the end, like there's it doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: You can't actually have a conversation about conspiracy theories. I
Speaker 1: don't even think that conspiracy theorists could have a conversation
Speaker 1: with each other about it, because it's fundamentally not discursive.
Speaker 1: It's not something you can have a discussion about. It
Speaker 1: is just an attempt to make this sort of core
Speaker 1: story about yourself match up with the world, and every
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory has the same core story and that's why
Speaker 1: it's so powerful. Um it's it's the story that the
Speaker 1: theorist holds onto and then sort of tries to match
Speaker 1: up with the world in a kind of messy way.
Speaker 1: The story is basically, once upon a time, we were
Speaker 1: happy and everything was good, and we were in charge
Speaker 1: and we were safe, and then the monsters took hold,
Speaker 1: but no one knew that they had. And these monsters
Speaker 1: are not of the sort of vaguely threatening right, they
Speaker 1: have to be absolutely gigantic, demonic, sort of the the
Speaker 1: most hyperbolic thing you can think of. Go another steps,
Speaker 1: so it's always children satan mutilation and torture or pedophilia,
Speaker 1: and the story goes that everything seemed fine because the
Speaker 1: monster has made sure this was all kept secret, so
Speaker 1: the monsters control what you know, and only the heroes
Speaker 1: of the story knew the truth, and then they arrived
Speaker 1: to save the world. And that's the benefit that you
Speaker 1: get from it. You get that world view about yourself
Speaker 1: that you are a continuously just sort of horrifically embattled
Speaker 1: hero of the story and you can't really give up
Speaker 1: on this self like the self image and embattled heroism.
Speaker 1: It's it's very difficult to give up on UM. It's
Speaker 1: not just the high of thinking of yourself as a hero.
Speaker 1: It's also that you convince yourself that you are in
Speaker 1: this battle of absolute good and absolut little evil. And
Speaker 1: so then you get two issues of like, if you
Speaker 1: ask about democracy or fair play, what are you not slating?
Speaker 1: This is about This is about the end of the world.
Speaker 1: So it makes it impossible to sort of dial back
Speaker 1: to UM issues of fairness or accuracy. It's actually not
Speaker 1: about that. And I feel like you can kind of
Speaker 1: hear that when you're talking to these Q and ON followers,
Speaker 1: when they try to answer your questions, they aren't actually
Speaker 1: trying to to say, like you say, so, what did
Speaker 1: actually happen in January six? They'll say, fbi ci A.
Speaker 1: Clinton's just sort of a grab bag. But what they're
Speaker 1: actually trying to tell you is this story that the
Speaker 1: monsters are out to get us, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: save us. There's kind of no other point to it.
Speaker 1: That's that's the whole ball game. And when the monsters,
Speaker 1: when there's a partisan overlay on that, when monsters are
Speaker 1: one party and the people who are trying to save
Speaker 1: you are are Donald Trump, I mean, there's no room
Speaker 1: for debate at that point, right, Like there's no room
Speaker 1: to talk about it's important to respect electoral defeats, right
Speaker 1: because if the people who you are losing elections to
Speaker 1: are monsters who are abusing children, then you have a
Speaker 1: moral responsibility to go try to subvert those election results.
Speaker 1: And the resistance is kind of like baked into the story,
Speaker 1: because the story is that the monsters came and took over,
Speaker 1: and they kept it, they covered it up, they kept
Speaker 1: everybody from knowing. So any information that you get in
Speaker 1: from the outside is suspect, even even information that you
Speaker 1: might get from sympathetic sources. So the only thing that
Speaker 1: you're left with is kind of like going with your
Speaker 1: gut and what feels true. It feels true that I
Speaker 1: am a victim, and it feels true that I'm the
Speaker 1: hero of the story, and so let's just go with that.
Speaker 1: So you're telling me I shouldn't read this story to
Speaker 1: my son every night before going to He loves it.
Speaker 1: It's it's the it's a dark Eric Carl story. But
Speaker 1: I like it so much better than that hungry caterpillar.
Speaker 1: You might be, you might be unhappy with the results.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you all of his peers are reading it.
Speaker 1: They seem to really be into it. That hero's journey.
Speaker 1: Uh Um. After the break, we're gonna talk about how
Speaker 1: the Adrena chrome conspiracy theory is related to the attack
Speaker 1: in Nancy Pelosi's house. It seriously is this is Jordan
Speaker 1: Clapper figures the conspiracy will be right back, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Jordan Clapper figures the conspiracy. I'm here with Dr
Speaker 1: Alice Wong and Matt Gert's, two experts who follow conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about Adrina chrome Democrats are drinking babies
Speaker 1: blood allegedly, allegedly, and what that means for American politics. Now, recently,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi's house was broken into by a right wing
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist. He was looking for Pelosi and ended up
Speaker 1: attacking her husband with a hammer. But Matt, you've written
Speaker 1: about how the conspiracy theories this attacker specifically believed, and
Speaker 1: how he was radicalized in the ecosystem of right wing misinformation.
Speaker 1: How does this all connect Well, The alleged assailant had
Speaker 1: a substantial internet uh paper trail. He had a couple
Speaker 1: of blogs, various other social media platforms, and what he
Speaker 1: posted on those UH sites was very much the kind
Speaker 1: of textbook online right wing conspiracy theory radicalization pattern that
Speaker 1: we've been seeing for years now. His social media and
Speaker 1: blogs are filled with references to q and On, to
Speaker 1: Adrina Chrome, to pizza Gate, to gamer Gate, as well
Speaker 1: as a sort of grab bag of bigotries are related
Speaker 1: to black people and women and choose UH and gay
Speaker 1: people and trans people. Um, yeah, no, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's the it's it's the it's the greatest hits. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I spent some time looking through these websites on Friday,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Oh, it's just it's it's all
Speaker 1: of it from there. And this happened very very quickly.
Speaker 1: You did not see people on the right saying, oh
Speaker 1: my god, the things that people on the writers saying
Speaker 1: are leading to political violence. Instead, a story about political
Speaker 1: violence committed by someone who believed righting conspiracy theories about
Speaker 1: how democrats are are depraved. It was turned into another
Speaker 1: writing conspiracy theory about how democrats are depraved. H The
Speaker 1: story that developed over the following hours was that the
Speaker 1: assailant had not broken into the house, but in fact
Speaker 1: he had been invited in by Paul Pelosi because they
Speaker 1: were gay lovers, uh, and that the violent attack on
Speaker 1: Pelosi was in fact some sort of gay lovers spat.
Speaker 1: That's what they came up with, and that spread remarkably quickly,
Speaker 1: as as it tends to do through this right wing
Speaker 1: information ecosystem, until you had Elon Musk tweeting out a
Speaker 1: link to a sort of hyperpartisan fake news website on
Speaker 1: Sunday morning. So it was, you know, seventy two hours,
Speaker 1: forty eight hours from the assault becoming known to the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory reaching the wealthiest man on earth at least
Speaker 1: something like this pops up. Is this how you imagine
Speaker 1: it playing out this quickly and evolving or devolving in
Speaker 1: this similar manner? Unfortunately it doesn't surprise me. Um. I
Speaker 1: do think the speed is different from sort of the
Speaker 1: history that I study, but the manner in which things
Speaker 1: spread is really not. And if I think a few
Speaker 1: things are key that the platform matters, it depends on
Speaker 1: who is picking this up and who is who is
Speaker 1: running with it. And then there's also a durability to
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories that because they have this sort of epistemological
Speaker 1: challenge built into them by that by that, I mean
Speaker 1: they they challenge how you know what you know, and
Speaker 1: they say these things that you think you know, you
Speaker 1: don't know, but it doesn't replace it with anything. So
Speaker 1: it's just sort of epistemic destabilization. So you just don't
Speaker 1: have anything to stand on, and that creates an environment
Speaker 1: in which conspiracy theories really thrive because once you it,
Speaker 1: once you can't trust anything, then the only thing you
Speaker 1: can trust is your own sense of the story that
Speaker 1: you like or the one that sounds good to you.
Speaker 1: This was definitely true and sort of the medieval and
Speaker 1: early modern period of blood libel, there were often people
Speaker 1: who are powerful people who opposed blood libel. For Simon
Speaker 1: of tenth, the reason why we have so many documents
Speaker 1: on it is the Pope tried to intervene in this,
Speaker 1: he tried to put a stop to it. Then then
Speaker 1: the very first blood libel in Um the twelfth century.
Speaker 1: This was a boy named William of Norwich, the Norwich Sheriff,
Speaker 1: actually got involved and protected the Jewish community. So there's
Speaker 1: always been pushedback um from kind of mainstream sources, and
Speaker 1: yet these conspiracy theories just thrive if there's already a
Speaker 1: kind of destabilized trust in the regular sources of knowledge.
Speaker 1: So I think I think the modern speed that is new,
Speaker 1: Um how quickly that happens. But you would have a
Speaker 1: blood libel come out and the next week all of
Speaker 1: the Jews in town would be arrested and tortured. And
Speaker 1: it it was pretty fast. It happened pretty fast. Well,
Speaker 1: we mentioned the platform here, and Matt you brought up
Speaker 1: Elon Musk and the tweet that he had adding to
Speaker 1: this confusion. He referenced a website that claimed Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: died in and was replaced with a clone. So what
Speaker 1: does this say now, in this new era of Elon's Twitter,
Speaker 1: what is that going to do to these conversations. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to continue to accelerate them. I
Speaker 1: think there has been uh some effort by the social
Speaker 1: media platforms some of the time to try to rain
Speaker 1: in the most extreme and dangerous forms of misinformation. It's
Speaker 1: been haphazard, it's been imperfect. But Elon Musk's Twitter is
Speaker 1: going to do is kind of cost that aside. He
Speaker 1: himself is quite obviously a bit of a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 1: someone who has uh you know, accused people of being
Speaker 1: Pettos that that's just sort of, uh, sort of his
Speaker 1: wheelhouse to speak. Uh. And it's it's difficult to imagine
Speaker 1: Twitter being interested in throttling conspiracy theories that its own
Speaker 1: owner is spreading. Um, that's just not going to happen. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I think that platform is going
Speaker 1: to become less stable, It's going to become a less
Speaker 1: valuable source for credible information because of that. At least,
Speaker 1: I'm curious. Can you talk about the progression of belief
Speaker 1: into action, like what takes somebody from pizza Gate to
Speaker 1: an actual act of political violence? I mean, this is
Speaker 1: what scholars of radicalization study, right, how do you how
Speaker 1: do you come from an idea into actual action? Radicalization
Speaker 1: online is part of the story. It's not the whole story,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly Um directs your any sort of anger
Speaker 1: satisfaction you already have, It validates it, and it amps
Speaker 1: it up, and it focuses it on a target. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit like pointing a loaded gun
Speaker 1: at a specific target. And can I go back to
Speaker 1: the elon thing for just a second. Um, The whole
Speaker 1: verification thing really struck me because I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's clear, the money of it doesn't actually matter. Like
Speaker 1: he's like twenty eight dollars whatever to sell sell verification, Right,
Speaker 1: that's his new thing. He's going to sell verification on Twitter.
Speaker 1: What really struck me is that this is not an
Speaker 1: attempt to get the money. It's an attempt to devalue
Speaker 1: verification in general, because verification is meant to show you
Speaker 1: which sources are trustworthy, right. It was meant to sort
Speaker 1: of identify members of the media and corporations and so
Speaker 1: that you knew that it was actually coming from that
Speaker 1: source and you knew that you could trust it. It
Speaker 1: was not a sort of celebrity thing. Originally that was
Speaker 1: that was not the purpose of verification, And by turning
Speaker 1: it into something that you can buy, it just completely
Speaker 1: devalues verification and it gets rid of that layer of
Speaker 1: validation so that you you know what you can trust,
Speaker 1: which sources you can trust it. It gets rid of
Speaker 1: that sort of you know, it's it's destabilizing the way
Speaker 1: we know what we know, and that seems to me
Speaker 1: to be the point of the whole verification thing. In fact,
Speaker 1: because Musk is so polarizing, we can see a situation
Speaker 1: where his supporters who are largely on the right, are
Speaker 1: much more willing to actually shell out the money than
Speaker 1: you know, more credible mainstream journalists are. Um, those less
Speaker 1: credible sources will get sort of algorithmically accelerated more than
Speaker 1: everybody else and become a bigger part of the conversation.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what advice you would have to consumers specifically
Speaker 1: of Twitter. I think a lot of people are looking
Speaker 1: at this, They see these issues, see the problem, uh,
Speaker 1: and are asking themselves the question, do I divorce myself
Speaker 1: from this platform? I don't know if the answer is
Speaker 1: to step away from it and not being part of
Speaker 1: the conversation or understand the conversation, but are you complicit
Speaker 1: in what is becoming a less and less trustworthy place.
Speaker 1: So I think part of the issue here is I
Speaker 1: don't really view it as a place for conversation. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean I I A lot of interesting things come
Speaker 1: at me. We'll go back and forth. It's fun, we playful.
Speaker 1: I got some gifts I'll send your way. It's a
Speaker 1: really fun chat. The way I use Twitter, I use
Speaker 1: it as a broadcast medium. Right. It's a way for
Speaker 1: me to get my views and my work out into
Speaker 1: the public. It's a way for me to hear views
Speaker 1: from people who might have interesting ideas or thoughts. Um.
Speaker 1: But I don't do that much interaction with it because
Speaker 1: I think it's a actually a really bad medium for
Speaker 1: having uh debates of any kind. If I want to
Speaker 1: have a conversation with someone, I will try to follow
Speaker 1: up with them in a certain email, conversation or phone
Speaker 1: or what have you. It's it's hard to have a
Speaker 1: substantive discussion with the rest of the world trying to
Speaker 1: involve itself in that. I will use Twitter less if
Speaker 1: that becomes less feasible. If I think that uh my
Speaker 1: tweets aren't getting read, or if I think that I
Speaker 1: am not able to easily find credible information that I
Speaker 1: want to be reading. Um, that's when the value proposition
Speaker 1: will fall to basically nothing. I feel like this is
Speaker 1: where our disciplines come into play. Because you're in media.
Speaker 1: I'm in medieval studies, so I have a vary my
Speaker 1: my following will you will be shocked to hear is tiny? Um.
Speaker 1: I Also I'm also locked, so I I really just
Speaker 1: use it for conversation, Like I really just use it
Speaker 1: to connect with other other people in my field or
Speaker 1: who study the same things that I do. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the really one of the reasons a
Speaker 1: lot of people are mourning this is it has been
Speaker 1: an incredible tool for people to connect um within their
Speaker 1: own tiny little sub field, Like I feel more connected
Speaker 1: to other medievalists of color on Twitter because we have
Speaker 1: kind of created our own little ecosystem than anywhere else.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't get that anywhere else. I would miss
Speaker 1: it for that. And obviously, if again, if like you said,
Speaker 1: if if that becomes impossible, then then like I'm not
Speaker 1: going to use it anymore. But I also think this
Speaker 1: whole question of so do you stay, do you go?
Speaker 1: Do you pay the eight dollars, twenty dollars whatever it
Speaker 1: ends up being, I feel like it it's a very
Speaker 1: American question, Like how can we make this the individual
Speaker 1: responsibility to decide what to do? Um? This is the
Speaker 1: the robber baron has screwed up the system, and now
Speaker 1: we are responsible for fixing it. And you know, my
Speaker 1: recycling or not recycling my water bottle is really what's
Speaker 1: leading to climate change. Like that's that's really that's really
Speaker 1: the thing, um, the sort of individual responsibility for these things.
Speaker 1: And I think that's kind of what gets us into
Speaker 1: trouble with conspiracy theories to begin with. Right, do your
Speaker 1: own research, find out for yourself. The thing is, with
Speaker 1: huge platforms and huge areas of knowledge, you just can't
Speaker 1: do it yourself. I mean, as we all discovered in
Speaker 1: the pandemic when we all became amateur epidemiologists, right, we're
Speaker 1: not very good at this. I don't remember high school
Speaker 1: biology very well. I'm not I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: good at making choices, personal choices about my own level
Speaker 1: of risk, can my kids level of risk? And you know,
Speaker 1: I am not a good person to put that decision on.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of how we've offloaded it. And so
Speaker 1: I feel like that's maybe not I know that it's
Speaker 1: sort of going to be personally difficult for a lot
Speaker 1: of people to figure out what to do about Twitter, um,
Speaker 1: but I don't really feel like that's that's where the
Speaker 1: change comes from. UM. I want to wrap this up
Speaker 1: kind of looking specifically at what happened with Nancy Pelosi's
Speaker 1: husband and what we've sort of been discussing here, but
Speaker 1: sort of to zoom out as well, how do politicians
Speaker 1: like Nancy Pelosi try and convince people that they don't
Speaker 1: partake in ritual children sacrifices. At a rally weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and a man was convinced the Nancy Pelosi is a
Speaker 1: vampire and drinks children's blood. It was convinced. I followed
Speaker 1: up and I asked, you said literally? Did you mean literally?
Speaker 1: He said literally? You see Republicans on one side, and
Speaker 1: are we talking metaphorical devil like, oh, they do bad stuff? Literally?
Speaker 1: You vampires like a blood. I don't want to nitpick here,
Speaker 1: but vampires tend to be eternally youthful. And I look
Speaker 1: at Nancy Pelosi and she's a lot of things, but
Speaker 1: I guess I don't think vampire somebody in her party.
Speaker 1: How does someone like that attempt to knock down this issue?
Speaker 1: And and with those difficulties, what does that say about
Speaker 1: where we're at politically if we struggle to even do that, Matt,
Speaker 1: I don't know, honestly. I mean, it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: reach someone who believes that you drink the blood of children.
Speaker 1: Um at d d uh. You know. I think that
Speaker 1: it's just a hard problem, and so we end up
Speaker 1: talking around it, right, We end up talking about what
Speaker 1: are the ways that policy can weaken the structures that
Speaker 1: are in place that allow these conspiracy theories to flourish. Um, Because,
Speaker 1: as Atlie says, these conspiracy theories have always been with us,
Speaker 1: but it has become easier for them to propagate and
Speaker 1: easier for people to come to accept them. And I
Speaker 1: think that's really uh, the the available chattel mhm, Alice,
Speaker 1: is there is there any advice you have for Nancy
Speaker 1: Pelosi or anybody else who looks at this is pulling
Speaker 1: out their hair, just attempting to to try to knock
Speaker 1: down what seems like to be the inconceivable. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there's sort of the media answer, and then
Speaker 1: there's the personal answer about approaching this person personally. UM,
Speaker 1: So the media answer like, I don't I'm not a
Speaker 1: media expert and so I wouldn't know exactly how to
Speaker 1: do this. But I think that platforms really are the key,
Speaker 1: the platforms that we give people to propagate these ideas. UM.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, when Alex Jones got involved,
Speaker 1: things really took off. And when Alex Jones was taken
Speaker 1: off of Twitter and sort of d platform from a
Speaker 1: bunch of places, his his influence really did die down.
Speaker 1: For a little while, like it actually had an influence.
Speaker 1: And I think d platforming and treating social media as
Speaker 1: the sort of communities that they are and the news
Speaker 1: sites that they are, and having even stricter standards for
Speaker 1: them than we do for sort of in person conduct,
Speaker 1: I think is it's not going to happen. But that
Speaker 1: would be my suggestion for for the media side of things.
Speaker 1: I think you have to control the the amplification of
Speaker 1: these conspiracy theories. And there's also just sort of the
Speaker 1: larger problem of society wide radicalization and um that is
Speaker 1: a that's a bigger question than just conspiracy theories. The
Speaker 1: only people who can really get to people who are
Speaker 1: deep into it are those who are already intimate with
Speaker 1: these people, who are already friends with these people who
Speaker 1: already have some other form of connection with them. You're
Speaker 1: not going to get through to them. That's not sorry,
Speaker 1: I know. And there talk to those you love, I
Speaker 1: mean you also speak to to something there. There's the
Speaker 1: intimate relationship people have with their computers when they're alone
Speaker 1: in their room, and that person interesting like the paras
Speaker 1: social relationship. Yet, yeah, exactly, And I see going to
Speaker 1: these rallies this myth of American exceptionalism. We talk with
Speaker 1: such rhetoric of everybody their own hero's journey, and I
Speaker 1: will say a lot of those Maga rallies you talk
Speaker 1: about all the problems in the world, and then somebody
Speaker 1: gets on stage and he says, you're a patriot, you
Speaker 1: can be a hero, you can do this. Yeah. Well, guys, uh,
Speaker 1: this has been lovely at least Wang Matt gertz U.
Speaker 1: I leave this conversation energized as if I've sucked on
Speaker 1: the blood of a child. Thank you. That's all I
Speaker 1: could ask for. Um. I appreciate your insight and your thoughts.
Speaker 1: Thank you, guys, thanks for having you listen to Jordan's
Speaker 1: Clupper figures the Conspiracy from The Daily Show on Apple podcast,
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