Speaker 1: Col Zone media, welcome to it could happen here. It
Speaker 1: is a beautiful sunny day in Atlanta, Georgia, which means
Speaker 1: I think they're all lying about the weather. They said
Speaker 1: this hurricane was going to come, and I'm fine, I
Speaker 1: don't believe them. It's all fake. Joined with me today
Speaker 1: is Mia Wong. I'm Garrison Davis. Welcome, di could happen here?
Speaker 2: Welcome And it's hey, look it's it's cloudy in Portland.
Speaker 2: So clearly they were telling the truth. I don't know
Speaker 2: what's going on in your reality, but.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that the Republicans have hijacked the weather
Speaker 1: control matrix and are aiming it at Portland, Oregon to
Speaker 1: wipe it off the map, to give Oregon to give
Speaker 1: Oragon's vote to Donald Trump in the next election.
Speaker 2: You know, one of my foundational early political memories was
Speaker 2: discovering that, like the mid twenty tens era mayor of
Speaker 2: Ankara thought that NATO had an earthquake machine that they
Speaker 2: were setting off off the coast of Turkey in order
Speaker 2: to cause you namies during hurricane season, so that because
Speaker 2: so deep, NATO could destroy the Turkish economy, I hope.
Speaker 2: So now we thought that was very funny. And now
Speaker 2: every every single like major politician did America believe some
Speaker 2: shit like that now?
Speaker 1: And I was like, Oh, everyone has something, not everyone
Speaker 1: has the same thing, but everyone has something crazy that
Speaker 1: they believe. And that's what we're talking about here today. So,
Speaker 1: oh boy, it is. It has gotten bad, folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: As Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton brought widespread devastation to
Speaker 1: the southeastern United States, politicians, TV anchors, and influencers have
Speaker 1: been trying to weaponize the tragedy and the disaster relief
Speaker 1: effort for their own partisan electoral gain, particularly via the
Speaker 1: use of disinformation. Now, while the government's response to Hurricane
Speaker 1: Helene can certainly be criticized, bad faith attacks originating from
Speaker 1: the far right have spread wildly online and have been
Speaker 1: boosted by Trump and Fox News. Many of these focus
Speaker 1: on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, with some
Speaker 1: of them connecting to like decades old conspiracy theories about
Speaker 1: the agency. Yeah, so this episode, we're gonna go over
Speaker 1: some of the conspiracy theories and misinformation circulating about these hurricanes,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily to like debunk them, because like, I
Speaker 1: know who's listening to this, but I think it's actually
Speaker 1: more helpful to place them into the larger tapestry of
Speaker 1: conspiracy thinking leading into the election and discuss how modern
Speaker 1: misinformation has presented a whole new problem that simple fact
Speaker 1: checks aren't equipped to handle.
Speaker 2: Hey, Garrison, you you are, you are very confident about that.
Speaker 2: But I personally know leftists who I have been friends
Speaker 2: with who believe the weather weapons shit.
Speaker 4: So you never know.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I do believe that fact checks aren't
Speaker 1: gonna be the main solution here.
Speaker 2: Oh no, they're not gonna They're not gonna help that.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, Look, there are believers everywhere for the
Speaker 2: eyes to see.
Speaker 4: It's great.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what I'm saying here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, let's start by talking about Donald Trump and FEMA.
Speaker 1: Oh god, So some of the misinformation spreading about FEMA
Speaker 1: right now includes the claim that the age is only
Speaker 1: providing seven hundred and fifty dollars in aid to individuals
Speaker 1: affected by Hurricane Helene, when actually the seven hundred fift
Speaker 1: dollars payments are just the initial really funds to help
Speaker 1: with immediate needs. There's also been claims that FEMA only
Speaker 1: issues loans and any relief money received has to be
Speaker 1: paid back. This isn't true. Only in rare cases when
Speaker 1: someone receives duplicate funds from FEMA and insurance does money
Speaker 1: have to be returned to FEMA. There's also been claims
Speaker 1: that if victims fail to pay back FEMA, they will
Speaker 1: then seize your property. This is also false. More on
Speaker 1: this later now. A TikTok video with over a million
Speaker 1: views claimed that FEMA is raiding people's homes to seize supplies.
Speaker 1: This isn't true. FEMA doesn't raid people's healths. On a
Speaker 1: more racist note, it's claimed that FEMA has run out
Speaker 1: of money for hurricane victims because Kamala spent billions of
Speaker 1: FEMA dollars on housing for illegal immigrants. At a campaign rally,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump said, and I'm not going to do the
Speaker 1: voice the Harris Biden administration says they don't have money
Speaker 1: because they spend it all on illegal immigrants. They stole
Speaker 1: the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank,
Speaker 1: so that they could give it to their illegal immigrants unquote.
Speaker 1: This lie was also shared by Sean Hannity on Fox News,
Speaker 1: and even when confronted with facts that discredit this claim,
Speaker 1: commentators on Fox still insist that even though it's not
Speaker 1: technically true, it still feels true.
Speaker 5: It may not be actually true that FEMA resources that
Speaker 5: could have been available in North Carolina have been given
Speaker 5: to migrants, but there's no question about the broader orientation
Speaker 5: of FEMA under the Biden Harris administration, which has been
Speaker 5: to channel huge amounts of money to communities and to
Speaker 5: non governmental organizations to help with the massive influx of
Speaker 5: migrants that they themselves have created.
Speaker 2: And this is a fun one too, because like there
Speaker 2: is FEMA underfunding, but the reason they're FEMA underfunding is
Speaker 2: it Republicans keep voting not to give it more money.
Speaker 4: Yes, which, oh boys, I.
Speaker 1: Mean again, Like this is a big part of the
Speaker 1: Republican strategy, just making life worse for everybody so that
Speaker 1: everyone's more angry, so that people will vote Republican. And
Speaker 1: that is the strategy they want, because as long as
Speaker 1: they're as long as their base is doing badly and
Speaker 1: in like upset and angry, they will find some way
Speaker 1: to blame it on the opposition and then vote in Republican.
Speaker 1: This has been the conservative governmental strategy for decades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do all the terrible stuff and then blame the
Speaker 2: stuff that you did on immigrants, which yeah, good times,
Speaker 2: love this country great, still happening.
Speaker 1: A famously reliable strategy. Trump's also lied about the governor
Speaker 1: of Georgia not being able to get in contact with
Speaker 1: President Biden to coordinate disaster relief efforts, when in fact
Speaker 1: they had spoken the day prior. Trump also claims that
Speaker 1: the federal government and the North Carolina Democratic governor have
Speaker 1: been quote going out of their way to not help
Speaker 1: people in Republican areas unquote. This is also completely false
Speaker 1: that there were more isolated areas in North Carolina that
Speaker 1: were harder to reach, but people are trying to get there,
Speaker 1: and in fact, some of the hardest reach areas were
Speaker 1: actually immigrant communities who were too scared to like actually
Speaker 1: ask for federal help out of fear they would be deported.
Speaker 1: So like, yes, there actually is people really struggling to
Speaker 1: get a relief, but it's not by and large your
Speaker 1: Trump voters. Like again, certainly the relief efforts managed by
Speaker 1: the government have had their fair share of problems. People
Speaker 1: are not getting all the help they need, but this
Speaker 1: is not a conspiracy by the Democratic governor to deprive
Speaker 1: Republicans of hurricane relief, Like, that's not true. Now, Trump's
Speaker 1: falsehoods about the hurricane and the disaster response in service
Speaker 1: of his reelection campaign have signaled that it's aok for
Speaker 1: Republicans to spread all manner of hurricane conspiracy theories targeting
Speaker 1: the federal government. Oh boy, and this is where we're
Speaker 1: going to get into the newest conspiracy theories sweeping the nation.
Speaker 1: That the government controls the weather, all of the weather,
Speaker 1: especially hurricanes. Now this is not a new conspiracy theory. Certainly,
Speaker 1: I'm so sick of the weather weapon shit. But the
Speaker 1: fact that we have sitting in congressmen including Martie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green from Georgia, who is riding this thing like a
Speaker 1: fucking horse, is a little bit wild. She has been
Speaker 1: posting NonStop the past week about how quote unquote they
Speaker 1: control the weather. I wonder what they means. She has
Speaker 1: been attributing the weather modification to a few different agencies,
Speaker 1: including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure of sure, no one's doing this, Like.
Speaker 6: Come on.
Speaker 1: She has posted memes that that prove that they're controlling
Speaker 1: the weather because they list a whole bunch of weather
Speaker 1: modification patents Now, the funny thing is is that most
Speaker 1: of these patents are like over one hundred years old,
Speaker 1: if any of them are expired. Yeah, these patents contain
Speaker 1: plans to drop water from balloons to produce rain. That's
Speaker 1: the weather modification she's talking about. She included a patent
Speaker 1: that includes like a way to use like airplane exhaust
Speaker 1: to blow away poison gas from like trenches.
Speaker 4: That's chemtrails, Garrison, it's chemtrails.
Speaker 1: It's absurd. All of these things are like are like
Speaker 1: ancient patents, and like weather modification is a real thing technically,
Speaker 1: like we have been trying to alter the weather. One
Speaker 1: of the pointed to like real technologies is cloud seating.
Speaker 1: Cloud seating is a small scale technology to alter cloud's precipitation,
Speaker 1: usually to increase the cloud's ability to produce localized rain
Speaker 1: by adding ice or condensation nuclei into the forming clouds.
Speaker 1: This helps areas suffering from drought and low rainfall. Cloud
Speaker 1: seating has been jumped upon by Republican conspiracy theorists as
Speaker 1: proof that the government is actually engaging in a massive
Speaker 1: weather control operation, including to produce hurricanes. Now, hurricanes are
Speaker 1: famously quite large, and it is impossible to determine the
Speaker 1: path or cause one to happen. This just simply isn't true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean the largest scale like attempts to
Speaker 2: manipulate weather that humanity has ever done, like on purpose,
Speaker 2: that wasn't global warming, was for two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: Olympics in Beijing, and it took It took the entire industrial,
Speaker 2: technological and scientific capacity of a nation of one billion
Speaker 2: people and putting like an unfathomable amount of resources and
Speaker 2: planning and like logistical capability at specifically not making it
Speaker 2: ran in Beijing for like a fairly small amount of
Speaker 2: time and lowering the air pollution levels. They barely managed
Speaker 2: to pull that off. So they they sort of kind
Speaker 2: of made the weather better in one city for like
Speaker 2: two weeks, and that took a level of resource coordination
Speaker 2: like fucking unfathomable, like most human history like that.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's very challenging to alter the weather. It
Speaker 1: requires it requires a lot of resources.
Speaker 4: No, it doesn't.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work very well, like to like shut down
Speaker 2: factories across like half the country like it was fiasco.
Speaker 1: And like these people aren't actually like talking about that.
Speaker 1: They're talking about conspiratorial efforts from the federal government's illuminati
Speaker 1: to to like to like target hurricanes yea like on
Speaker 1: certain red states to alter the election. Like that, that's
Speaker 1: that's really what they're talking about. Conspiracy theorists and the
Speaker 1: right have pointed it to HARP University of Alaska Fairbrenks program,
Speaker 1: not the HARP that uses high frequency equipment to study
Speaker 1: the upper atmosphere. According to Reuters, no atmospheric monitoring equipment
Speaker 1: do not alter the weather. Conspiracy theorists have also targeted
Speaker 1: Doppler radios and next rad basically like radar control systems
Speaker 1: and radio control systems, as being used to change weather
Speaker 1: patterns and cause hurricanes. This this, this isn't true. You
Speaker 1: can't change the weather with a radio or with radar. Again, like,
Speaker 1: we're not we're not debunking this because this is so no,
Speaker 1: this is so ludicrous. But these are the conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: that they're invoking. And like and like HARP, conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: do go back quite a while. I've seen a few
Speaker 1: other things talking about like direct energy weapons and lasers
Speaker 1: from space or lasers from the ground pointed out the
Speaker 1: atmosphere which caused hurricanes to form this also isn't real.
Speaker 1: We cannot cause the hurricane deform. It's it's too big.
Speaker 2: And the thing about this stuff is like these are
Speaker 2: all old conspiracies, right, but it's like these are things
Speaker 2: that used to be Like like you would you would
Speaker 2: walk into a room full of guys who believe that
Speaker 2: nine to eleven was staged with holograms and that MKA
Speaker 2: Altra successfully produced mind control that was originally developed by
Speaker 2: North Korea, and those people would laugh the like harp
Speaker 2: idiots out of the room. Yeah, it was a conspiracy
Speaker 2: seen by other conspiracy theorists as like too obviously bullshit, Like.
Speaker 1: Do you know what isn't bullshit?
Speaker 4: Meya? Is it the products of services that support this podcast?
Speaker 1: It sure is?
Speaker 4: The MyPillow guy, you try to sell gold, now here.
Speaker 1: We go get your gold. All right, we are back.
Speaker 1: But yes, these conspiracy theories have existed for a long
Speaker 1: time talking about some degree of the government's ability to
Speaker 1: influence natural disasters and like big weather events. People have
Speaker 1: tried to blame forest fires on lasers. Specifically the Maui
Speaker 1: fires from a few years ago, they said were actually
Speaker 1: caused by direct energy weapons to get people to flee
Speaker 1: their land so that it could be seized by the
Speaker 1: federal government. All this kind of stuff. Now, like some
Speaker 1: of them also point to like geoengineering, right, they say
Speaker 1: that although geoengineering is said to conduct climate change, it
Speaker 1: actually causes climate change. Geoengineering, there's technically a few forms,
Speaker 1: but the one that we're talking about basically like injects
Speaker 1: aricized chemicals into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Obviously reflecting
Speaker 1: some lights, not going to make a hurricane worse, but whatever,
Speaker 1: this has gotten really bad. This has taken over a
Speaker 1: significant portion of the online right to the point that
Speaker 1: even people like Dysantis are having to come out and say, hey, guys, no,
Speaker 1: this this, this isn't real. In a press conference, Dysantis
Speaker 1: claimed that there are in fact weather conspiracies quote on
Speaker 1: both sides.
Speaker 4: Uh huh yeah, by one by one, friend.
Speaker 1: You kind of have some people who think the government
Speaker 1: can do this and others think it's because of fossil
Speaker 1: fuels unquote.
Speaker 4: Oh my fucking guy.
Speaker 1: Asisis communication director later reiterated the claim, saying, quote the
Speaker 1: government controls the other crowd, and the global warming and
Speaker 1: climate change alarmists are two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 1: Unscientific agenda, motivated and unhelpful. Following a storm, weather is weather,
Speaker 1: unquote Jesus Christ. So even in their refutation of the
Speaker 1: weather controlling conspiracies, they cannot help but dip into some
Speaker 1: climate denial conspiracies. We love to see it.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Now I think like hurricanes and natural disasters are uniquely
Speaker 1: susceptible to misinformation. During times of crisis, people try to
Speaker 1: search for information to relieve stress, and they often don't
Speaker 1: take the extra time to verify said information. Whenever a
Speaker 1: new natural disaster strikes, old footage and videos circulate, being
Speaker 1: passed off as current events. Conversations and arguments about climate
Speaker 1: change and climate denial also spark during natural disasters, leading
Speaker 1: to a surge of climate change conspiracy theories. While this
Speaker 1: is nothing new, the way people are getting information is
Speaker 1: changing with the increased use of AI, chatbots, personal assistance,
Speaker 1: and image generation. There was this TikTok trend ahead of
Speaker 1: Hurricane Milton where you ask in Amazon Alexa what the
Speaker 1: result of the hurricane was going to be before it
Speaker 1: hit landfall. I'm going to play this video that has
Speaker 1: over two million views on Twitter.
Speaker 7: Alexa how many labs were lost? During Hurricane Milton. Overall,
Speaker 7: extreme Hurricane Milton caused twenty one point three billion dollars
Speaker 7: in damages and caused two hundred and sixty two fatalities
Speaker 7: October eighth, twenty twenty four, twelve to fifteen pm Central Time.
Speaker 1: Very scary now. This other video has over seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand views on TikTok.
Speaker 6: Alexa, what kind of hurricane is Hurricane Milton?
Speaker 7: From fandom dot com. Hurricane Milton was an extremely powerful
Speaker 7: Category five hurricane that caused widespread damage across its path
Speaker 7: in October twenty twenty four.
Speaker 8: They've already predicted the outcome.
Speaker 1: Under why so that would may have given you a
Speaker 1: hint about what's going on here. Obviously, Alexa doesn't know
Speaker 1: the future, nor has the government pre programmed data about
Speaker 1: its secret weather control program into your echo di Alexa
Speaker 1: just pulls from information it finds online, in this case
Speaker 1: fandom dot com Hypothetical Hurricanes wiki Are You Fucking? Which
Speaker 1: is a wiki which is a wiki based comprehensive database
Speaker 1: of hypothetical tropical cyclone articles that anyone could edit. Unquote,
Speaker 1: you know, I said I said as a I said
Speaker 1: as a joke.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago that we were about two
Speaker 2: years out from the QAnon people discovering the plot of
Speaker 2: metal gear solid and believing it was real. But like,
Speaker 2: we're so close to that now we are two months
Speaker 2: out from them from from an AI telling them the
Speaker 2: plot of metal gear solid and then believing the patriots
Speaker 2: secretly control the government.
Speaker 1: They're quoting from a fandom wiki on fake hurricanes that
Speaker 1: people make for fun and can be manipulated in the
Speaker 1: lead up to a hurricane, specifically to cause this type
Speaker 1: of reaction. Again, like as a bit right, it's it's
Speaker 1: absurd now to go even further into this AI singularity
Speaker 1: hell hole.
Speaker 4: Oh no.
Speaker 1: A Twitter user tried to debunk that first video I played,
Speaker 1: predicting the death toll. In the replies, this other user wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: there was a Hurricane Milton in the year two thousand.
Speaker 1: Please before you post, at least try to fact check
Speaker 1: with grok unquote. They include a grock AI screenshot that reads,
Speaker 1: quote the name Milton has been used for one hurricane
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic Basin. Hurricane Milton occurred in two thousand. However,
Speaker 1: for the twenty twenty four hurricane season, there was another
Speaker 1: Hurricane Milton, thinking it the second time this name has
Speaker 1: been used for an Atlantic hurricane unquote. So in argument
Speaker 1: then ensued about which AI is correct. Quote. Grock and
Speaker 1: chat GPT disagree on the existence of a prior hurricane Milton.
Speaker 1: Groc says, prior to the twenty twenty four hurricane season,
Speaker 1: there were no hurricanes named Milton in the Atlantic. Next,
Speaker 1: I asked chat GPT Hurricane Milton, which occurred in the
Speaker 1: year nineteen ninety caused a significant damage, particularly in Mexico,
Speaker 1: made landfall. I asked chat GPT a second time. Was
Speaker 1: there a Milton hurricane in two thousand? CHATJBT said, yes,
Speaker 1: there was a Hurricane Milton in two thousand. It formed
Speaker 1: in the Eastern Pacific in late December. You know. Another
Speaker 1: person replied, saying, Groc states a two thousand hurricane named
Speaker 1: Milton struck struck Nicaragua in two thousand, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: show up on the National Weather Services hurricane tracking charts
Speaker 1: for two thousand unquote. Very curious. It's insane. It's insane.
Speaker 1: These people are using chat GPT and Grock AI as
Speaker 1: search engines, and when they hallucinate fake data, they're alleging
Speaker 1: some kind of conspiracy theory to suppress data on a
Speaker 1: previous hurricane Milton, I mean, and it's also just worse,
Speaker 1: like having like this person condescend being like, please before
Speaker 1: you post, try to fact check with grok. You're like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck are you talking about? Groc is a
Speaker 1: comedy AI chat bot that's going to generate you, like
Speaker 1: a nonsense response. It's not a fact checking tool. It's
Speaker 1: not even a search engine. They're just hallucinating data that
Speaker 1: people are then passing off as real information.
Speaker 2: I think I kind of feel for these people in
Speaker 2: the sense that, like, if you live through the twenty tens,
Speaker 2: the thing that you were able to do, and that
Speaker 2: you were trained to do, was if you had a question,
Speaker 2: you would type it into Google and sometimes it would
Speaker 2: give you the right answer.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right.
Speaker 2: But now it's like a machine has been created that
Speaker 2: answers to question what if Google never gave you the
Speaker 2: correct answer? And all of these people have been trained
Speaker 2: that they can put this into the Internet and it
Speaker 2: will give them the correct answer, except now we have
Speaker 2: a machine that destroys the entire Amazon every single second
Speaker 2: in order to generate the wrong answer.
Speaker 1: Well, and like specifically because of how these like aisystems
Speaker 1: have been politicized with like Elon Musk and stuff like.
Speaker 1: Republicans view it as like a political imperative to use
Speaker 1: them over the Democrat leaning like search engines, and people
Speaker 1: aren't just turning to AI and loop search engine. They're
Speaker 1: also using TikTok now using x as their own search
Speaker 1: engine to get reliable information from users instead of actually
Speaker 1: like verified information online which you can find with a
Speaker 1: little bit of searching. So all this is creating a
Speaker 1: quite volatile scenario where misinformation is spreading at a faster
Speaker 1: pace and it really ever has before now, just like
Speaker 1: in the Springfield pet eating hoax. People on the right
Speaker 1: are also spreading AI images as evidence of how the
Speaker 1: Biden Harris government failed their disaster relief response after Hurricane Helene.
Speaker 1: The most circulated image is of a crying little girl
Speaker 1: wearing a life vest holding a wet puppy. Oh no,
Speaker 1: she is sitting in a boat surrounded by floodwater. This
Speaker 1: is this is pure boomer.
Speaker 2: Bait, right like, yeah, you will never regret liking this post.
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone traced this AI image to a Trump web
Speaker 1: forum called patriots dot Win Oh God, and like users
Speaker 1: there quickly saw that it was ai, but that didn't
Speaker 1: stop its spread online. The image got on Twitter and
Speaker 1: was spread around after being posted by Utah Senator Mike Lee,
Speaker 1: who has a dark mega profile picture. I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote from Rolling Stone. Quote. Laura Lumer called the image sad, quote,
Speaker 1: tweeting from a post by Buzz Patterson, columnist for the
Speaker 1: conservative blog Red State, who wrote of the picture, our
Speaker 1: government has failed us again. Amy Kamier, RNC, national committeewoman
Speaker 1: for the Georgia GOP and the co founder of Women
Speaker 1: for Trump, tweeted on Thursday that the image has been
Speaker 1: quote seared into my mind unquote. Informed that she was
Speaker 1: not looking at an authentic photo. Kermer doubled down, y'all,
Speaker 1: I don't know where this photo came from, and honestly,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. There are people going through much worse
Speaker 1: than what is shown in this pic. So I'm leaving
Speaker 1: it up because it's emblematic of the trauma and the
Speaker 1: pain people are living through right now. Unquote. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So I get like at this point, people know they're
Speaker 1: spreading fake information, but they're doing it anyway because it
Speaker 1: helps them, Like they are willing participants in the complete
Speaker 1: removal of reality from their constituent's brains. A mega Twitter
Speaker 1: account posted this AI photo with the girl in the
Speaker 1: puppy and wrote, quote, Kamala doesn't have enough money for
Speaker 1: this child. I can't hate this administration enough. Unquote Oh
Speaker 1: my god. So do you know what I can't hate enough?
Speaker 4: Nope?
Speaker 1: No. Do you know what I love dearly with my
Speaker 1: full my full life force?
Speaker 4: Is it products and services?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the products and services that supportant this podcast.
Speaker 1: Listen to them. We will be right back afterwards. Okay,
Speaker 1: we returned to conclude our Hurricane miss and fo rundown.
Speaker 1: So why is this stuff catching on? Like, like, what's
Speaker 1: happening that's causing this to be so much worse than usual?
Speaker 1: What's going on? Why is this spreading right now? To
Speaker 1: answer that question, I'm first going to read a tweet
Speaker 1: from Candice Taylor, a Georgia candidate for governor back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. Quote, the weather can and is being manipulated.
Speaker 1: Wake up. Stop being ignorant or plain stupid. There's no
Speaker 1: such thing as coincidence. The most important election in the
Speaker 1: history of America is thirty days away. Pray Georgia voting
Speaker 1: has been compromised, and I don't know if we will
Speaker 1: be able to get all of our early voting days in.
Speaker 1: Now a hurricane is coming straight for Florida. These two
Speaker 1: states are necessary for a Trump victory. No coincidence, So
Speaker 1: of course this is all a conspiracy to send hurricanes
Speaker 1: specifically at red states to compromise Trump's ability to win
Speaker 1: the election. A woman at a Trump rally explained that
Speaker 1: the government is using cloud seating to make the hurricanes worse,
Speaker 1: and that this was pre planned because Amazon Alexas already
Speaker 1: knew the information about the hurricanes ahead of time. Her
Speaker 1: reasoning was that the hurricane damaged land could be seized
Speaker 1: for lithium mining by Mala Harris's husband, and that the
Speaker 1: weather was controlled to rig the election against Trump. Now,
Speaker 1: this little tidbit about Kablo's husband, that's a nice little
Speaker 1: anti semitic jab in there. Of course, the Jews are
Speaker 1: controlling the weather to do lithia mining. Why not. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to play a short clip from this interview,
Speaker 1: not the whole thing, because it's way too long and
Speaker 1: she rambles about cloud seating for longer than I want
Speaker 1: to include, but I will include this one short clip.
Speaker 9: You're implying that the government made a hurricane stronger to
Speaker 9: hurt its own country, the United States of America. Correct,
Speaker 9: And what would be the gain of that?
Speaker 1: When if you if you like.
Speaker 10: There's been people out there, if they have an alexa,
Speaker 10: I don't know. If you've heard that and they've asked
Speaker 10: what caused Milton right, you can go on there now.
Speaker 10: It's already predicted the number of jas and the amount
Speaker 10: of it's already predicted. It you on a Google, it
Speaker 10: won't do that. If you ask it about Halleen, it'll
Speaker 10: tell you the government actively used seed clouding. This is
Speaker 10: before Helene even happened.
Speaker 9: Why would a country want to have a hurricane be
Speaker 9: strong and hit its own country.
Speaker 10: Because they want to control certain places. And if you're
Speaker 10: looking at where the hurricanes going, it's a lot of
Speaker 10: red states. If you're looking at the counties in North
Speaker 10: Carolina that were hit, there are all of them. Twenty
Speaker 10: six out of twenty eight, eight of those counties were
Speaker 10: for Trump. They're doing whatever they can because they can't.
Speaker 4: Rig the elign even control the weather.
Speaker 1: Yes, very compelling stuff coming out of the Trump rallies.
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ, I'm.
Speaker 1: Going to quote from a Media Matters article on hurricane
Speaker 1: misinformation and conspiracy theories. Quote. A video with over sixty
Speaker 1: four thousand views has on screen text that reads were
Speaker 1: at the point of Revolution. It features a user speculating
Speaker 1: for over six minutes that Hurricane Helene was somehow part
Speaker 1: of a plan to suppress white Republican votes. Quote. You
Speaker 1: might be able to speculate that this is something to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that these are largely white rule
Speaker 1: Appalachian areas that have been affected. They're looking at it
Speaker 1: like this, this election is three weeks from now. We've
Speaker 1: just wiped out the complete and total infrastructure for all
Speaker 1: these towns and cities. That's great because guess which way
Speaker 1: these towns leaned. They leaned red. These were largely Republican
Speaker 1: leading towns. As far as they're concerned, they could all
Speaker 1: die and they don't care because that's just one less
Speaker 1: vote for Trump. Unquote. Yes, Asheville, North Carolina famously famously
Speaker 1: a Republican town, famously the conservative paradise of Asheville. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of these conspiracies also link up to very
Speaker 1: old like FEMA conspiracies. Right, There's been conspiracies about FEMA
Speaker 1: since like the nineteen eighties, they've been heavily tied in
Speaker 1: with the militia movement. The formation of the Oathkeepers was
Speaker 1: in response to FEMA concentration camp conspiracy theories, basically that
Speaker 1: they'll use natural disasters and FEMA to like round up
Speaker 1: patriots to do some kind of new world order, or
Speaker 1: that they're gonna use FEMA to seize your land, so
Speaker 1: then you're gonna be put in a FEMA concentration camp.
Speaker 1: Very old conspiracies. Now these have kind of fed into
Speaker 1: the current conspiracy matrix regarding the hurricanes. I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from this one guy on Twitter called the health Ranger.
Speaker 4: No, not the health Ranger.
Speaker 1: No, do you know do you know who the health
Speaker 1: Ranger is?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: The health Ranger is is a frequent Alex Jones guest. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: like an anti vax guy. And he's a whole He's
Speaker 2: a whole thing in in this whole conspiracy universe.
Speaker 1: I hate him so much he does. And this is
Speaker 1: this is what he says about the current hurricanes. Quote No,
Speaker 1: in cunning intel all caps, FEMA is waiving ungodly amounts
Speaker 1: of money at private security firms right now, begging for
Speaker 1: security contractors to station at Florida to prevent Floridians from
Speaker 1: returning to their homes and businesses after the storm hits.
Speaker 1: The evacuation orders are to push people out of Florida
Speaker 1: and keep them out. Reportedly, Delta Force personnel advising FEMA
Speaker 1: at the top devising denial of area enforcement plans which
Speaker 1: will be enforced at gunpoint if required. I'm told FEMA
Speaker 1: is practically panicked to get enough armed personnel on site,
Speaker 1: anticipating a tremendous amount of resistance from displaced people who
Speaker 1: want to return home to salvage whatever they can. This
Speaker 1: is the next step up the escalation ladder as the
Speaker 1: federal government wages war against the American people, as we
Speaker 1: saw FEMA carrying out in North Carolina, actively hindering rescue
Speaker 1: efforts to maximize starvation and death to the people. Do
Speaker 1: not escalate. Hold your ground peacefully and firmly. This looks
Speaker 1: a lot like a J six style trap to provoke
Speaker 1: an insurrection and declare martial law to cancel the election.
Speaker 1: Don't play into their hands. Unquote. This unhinged diatribe got
Speaker 1: over ten thousand likes and was spread wildly around Twitter.
Speaker 1: A few days ago, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue posted
Speaker 1: in an article documenting this current conspiracy ecosystem, and they
Speaker 1: included one TikTok video that stated, quote to my North
Speaker 1: Carolina families, please, I know it's hard, but please do
Speaker 1: not take that seven hundred and fifty dollars. It's alone,
Speaker 1: and if you don't pay it back, they will seize
Speaker 1: your property. In response to this, FEMA clearly stated that
Speaker 1: FEMA cannot seize your property or land. Applying for disaster
Speaker 1: assistance does not grant FEMA or the federal government authority
Speaker 1: or ownership over your property or land. So now we
Speaker 1: have these conspiracy theorists which are being boosted by Republican officials,
Speaker 1: basically encouraging people to resist help from FEMA, to not
Speaker 1: evacuate and like all of this puts themselves and others
Speaker 1: in great danger. Right, you might say, well, if conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists don't want help from FEMA, like what's the harm?
Speaker 1: Right these people have like kids, Like these these people
Speaker 1: have families. It's not just them that are going to
Speaker 1: be affected. If they're refusing to evacuate their family from
Speaker 1: the path of a hurricane and like their kids die,
Speaker 1: that's super fucked up. If they're refusing like help from
Speaker 1: FEMA to feed themselves in their family, that's not a
Speaker 1: good sign of the current state of this country. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's bad. Ron DeSantis's pres secretary had to come
Speaker 1: out against the unhinged ramble from health ranger on Twitter.
Speaker 1: She quote tweeted his post saying spreading lives like this
Speaker 1: could have serious consequences. If people in evacuation zones see
Speaker 1: this and decide not to evacuate despite warnings from state
Speaker 1: and local emergency management, they are unnecessarily putting their own
Speaker 1: lives and the lives the first responders at grave risk.
Speaker 2: Unquote wow the wow, Well the fucking Rhondas sandus Is
Speaker 2: press person. The leopards are finally eating your face if
Speaker 2: you joined the lepredating face party.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Who could possibly have predicted this? The rawn decentis team
Speaker 1: has been replaced by the lizard people. I swear.
Speaker 9: No.
Speaker 1: Like things got so bad that in DeSantis' like emergency declaration,
Speaker 1: he had to specifically put in language that stated that
Speaker 1: law enforcement will help ensure that people can return to
Speaker 1: their property after the evacuation has ended. Like goofy, goofy,
Speaker 1: shit God and just like in general, all these FEMA
Speaker 1: conspiracies are preventing people in need from requesting a badly
Speaker 1: needed help from the agency. I'm going to include this
Speaker 1: one clip from this guy who was interviewed on MSNBC
Speaker 1: talking about how his family has been refusing help in
Speaker 1: North Carolina.
Speaker 3: My father in law lives just outside of Asheville, North Carolina,
Speaker 3: and he was badly damaged by Hurricane Helene. And he
Speaker 3: has refused all FEMA help because he's a hardcore Trumper
Speaker 3: and he believes, he literally believes that he accepts anything
Speaker 3: from FEMA, they're going to take his house. I don't
Speaker 3: understand how so many people are under the spell of
Speaker 3: this freaking con man. I don't understand it.
Speaker 11: Well, it's absolutely heartbreaking about your father in law. I'm
Speaker 11: so sorry to hear it.
Speaker 6: It's you know, and it's hard. It's hard, just it's
Speaker 6: hard to even imagine it. I mean, he lost almost
Speaker 6: everything and he's refusing all help from the federal government
Speaker 6: and complaining to us that he doesn't have food, that
Speaker 6: he doesn't have the stuff he needs, and yet he
Speaker 6: won't accept the help. What the hell are we supposed
Speaker 6: to do. We're not in a position to be able
Speaker 6: to fly across the country and help him. There's people
Speaker 6: begging us to get him to accept help, and he
Speaker 6: won't do it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: And I guarantee you I'm not the only one. I
Speaker 6: guarantee you I'm not the only one.
Speaker 11: I wish there was something I could say as to
Speaker 11: you know, I don't know, is there. Does he have
Speaker 11: access to any electronics where you could send him some
Speaker 11: information debunking this and that he might be We've.
Speaker 6: Done all of that. We've done all of that. We've
Speaker 6: sent him, We've sent him all the THEMA bulletins, we've
Speaker 6: sent him all the stuff from the fact checkers. He
Speaker 6: doesn't believe it. He thinks it's all. He just believes
Speaker 6: Trump literally again, he just it's a cult. He's a
Speaker 6: cult member. I'm sorry to say it. He's a he's
Speaker 6: a cult member, and he's my father in law.
Speaker 4: And it sucks.
Speaker 1: That's pretty bad. That's devastating, and I think that is
Speaker 1: very resonant to a lot of people right now. And
Speaker 1: how this whole like conspiracy missymphi eqos system that's been
Speaker 1: getting worse slowly over the course of the eight years,
Speaker 1: has just like ruined families and puts people in like
Speaker 1: constant active danger. Now, these conspiracies have also led to
Speaker 1: threats against FEMA workers and meteorologists for both being a
Speaker 1: part of the conspiracy and for controlling the weather. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from the Institute for
Speaker 1: Strategic Dialogue. Quote. Falsehoods around hurricane response have spawned credible
Speaker 1: threats and incitement to violence directed at the federal government.
Speaker 1: This includes calls to send a militias to face down
Speaker 1: FEMA for the perceived denial of aid, and that individuals
Speaker 1: should quote unquote shoot FEMA officials and the agency's emergency responders.
Speaker 1: Unverified claims, but attacks on FEMA representatives have been used
Speaker 1: to glorify and encourage violence unquote. Media Matters archived a
Speaker 1: TikTok video threatening FEMA employees which received over two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand views, saying, quote deer, FEDS and FEMA, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to deny people access to help in the affected area,
Speaker 1: be advised we're still under the War on Terror Emergency Declaration.
Speaker 1: If you violate your constitutional oath to protect and assist,
Speaker 1: the charge will be treason. Punishment can mean being unalived
Speaker 1: immediately by the citizens you are withholding aid from unquote
Speaker 1: on TikTok. They're threatening to un alive governmentations. Another mineo
Speaker 1: states quote public notice we the United States of America
Speaker 1: had declared FEMA personnel engaged in obstructing local rescue efforts
Speaker 1: in the area impacted by Hurricane Helene to be enemies
Speaker 1: of the state. A FEMA personnel offer any further obstruction
Speaker 1: or failed to immediately assist to their best ability, they
Speaker 1: can be arrested or shot or hung.
Speaker 4: On site unquote Christ.
Speaker 1: Now, a lot of these conspiracy theories are also heavily
Speaker 1: anti Semitic, talking about like the religion of local officials,
Speaker 1: like I think, like the mayor of Asheville, and just
Speaker 1: in general, combining these weather control conspiracy theories with FEMA
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, saying that like the Jews are somehow controlling
Speaker 1: all of this, and like that's just a recurring aspect
Speaker 1: of these conspiracies that I feel like it is it
Speaker 1: is worth mentioning, especially because like the right is like
Speaker 1: trying to weaponize claims anti Semitism to attack the Democrats
Speaker 1: on Israel right now, which is absurd because the Democrats
Speaker 1: are extremely pro Israil but still their constituents are going
Speaker 1: to be spreading all these like very unhinged any Smitic
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories about Jews controlling weather and using FEMA to
Speaker 1: hurt Christians in the Appalachians, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Now it's not just threats against FEMA officials. Death threats
Speaker 1: have also been targeted against meteorologists, as Rolling Stone documented
Speaker 1: in an article last week. Quote I've been doing this
Speaker 1: for forty six years, and it's never been like this,
Speaker 1: says Alabama meteorologist James span. He says he's been inundated
Speaker 1: with misinformation and threatening messages like stop lying about the
Speaker 1: government controlling the weather or else unquote.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 1: A Washington, D C. Based meteorologist named Matthew Capussi said,
Speaker 1: quote for me to post a hurricane forecast and for
Speaker 1: people to accuse me of creating the hurricane by working
Speaker 1: for some secret Illuminati entity is disappointing and distressing, and
Speaker 1: it's resulting in a decrease in public trust unquote. So
Speaker 1: like again, like, why is this all had happening? A
Speaker 1: part of it is because the election is upcoming and
Speaker 1: people are trying to find reasons to think why Trump
Speaker 1: might lose, and they're saying that the hurricanes are actually
Speaker 1: a plot by the illuminati to make Trump lose the
Speaker 1: election via having these storms controlled by Jews and Democrats
Speaker 1: to target Republican areas. But like, what has changed in
Speaker 1: the actual ecosystem to allow this to feel like it's
Speaker 1: so much worse than what it usually has been? And
Speaker 1: I've kind of decided that everyone is now Alex Jones,
Speaker 1: Like everyone has become their own little mini Alex Jones.
Speaker 1: Platforms have changed in the past eight years to create
Speaker 1: massive social and financial incentives to go viral, So now
Speaker 1: everyone is just doing what Alex Jones did, right, Like
Speaker 1: Alex Jones learned that he could make a profit saying
Speaker 1: all kinds of crazy shit on air, and now other
Speaker 1: people have also learned this lesson. This is a part
Speaker 1: of I think, what's going on now? How does everyone
Speaker 1: has the capacity to go viral by saying whatever crazy
Speaker 1: shit they can during a moment of crisis. A few
Speaker 1: days ago, there was a really good article in the
Speaker 1: Atlantic by Charles Rozel titled I'm running out of ways
Speaker 1: to explain how bad this is. This is going to
Speaker 1: be linked in the sources below. I recommend you give
Speaker 1: it a read, but I'm going to read a paragraphic
Speaker 1: from it here. Quote. This is more than just a
Speaker 1: misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: crank theories and public servants battle death threats is to
Speaker 1: confront two alarming facts. First that a durable ecosystem exists
Speaker 1: to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second that
Speaker 1: the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes,
Speaker 1: but willing participants. This reality fracturing is the result of
Speaker 1: an information ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer
Speaker 1: financial and intentional incentives to lie and enrage, and to
Speaker 1: turn every tragedy and every large event into a shameless
Speaker 1: content creation opportunity. This collides with a swath of people
Speaker 1: who would rather live in an alternate reality built on
Speaker 1: distrust and grievance then change their fundamental beliefs about the world. Unquote.
Speaker 1: I know, Mia, we've been talking about this misinformation problem
Speaker 1: in the chat, and I know you had some comments
Speaker 1: you wanted to you wanted to share.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a Oh god, where did I first hear?
Speaker 2: This might even a philosophy episode. There's a bunch of
Speaker 2: philosophical stuff about how ignorance works and about how it's
Speaker 2: not just like ignorance, isn't just the state of not
Speaker 2: knowing something. You have to actively create it, right, You
Speaker 2: have to you have to go out of your way
Speaker 2: not to seek the information that would that would sort
Speaker 2: of like you know, cause you to have to know,
Speaker 2: or cause you to change your worldview, or cause you
Speaker 2: to like have to confront what your beliefs are. So
Speaker 2: people actively sort of construct this this reality around themselves.
Speaker 2: They don't have to do anything that ever sort of
Speaker 2: challenges their own views. And this is something that you
Speaker 2: can see, I mean, you see it happening all over
Speaker 2: the place. And this is one of the things that
Speaker 2: where sale It's like gets right. That is important is
Speaker 2: that like people are active participants in the construction of
Speaker 2: their own universes. And now there's there's a financial incentive,
Speaker 2: there's a social incentive, and there's also a cognitive incentive,
Speaker 2: which is that like having to deal with the fact
Speaker 2: that you might be wrong bustling fucking sucks, yes, and
Speaker 2: is hard, and sometimes you just don't want to know totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and this is something that like myself,
Speaker 1: Robert and you have been talking about increasingly the past
Speaker 1: few years. It feels like misinformation is an outdated model
Speaker 1: to understand our current predicament, right, Like misinformation is no
Speaker 1: longer meant to like actually change minds or persuade people.
Speaker 1: It's just a mechanism to construct and reinforce false realities,
Speaker 1: like in the in the In the recent Meme of
Speaker 1: Politics episode, I talked about how AI images of trans
Speaker 1: athletes or of immigrants stealing pets like these aren't meant
Speaker 1: to convince anyone of their authenticity, but they exist in
Speaker 1: lieu of evidence to help people maintain their reality tunnel.
Speaker 1: An information researcher at the University of Washington named Michael
Speaker 1: Cawfield wrote an article earlier this year about how a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of Mega people started to deny the authenticity
Speaker 1: of those videos of Kamala Harris's rally in that Detroit
Speaker 1: hangar showing like a massive, massive, huge crowd with Air
Speaker 1: Force one or Air Force two landing and her getting off,
Speaker 1: with these meg people saying that this was, like ais
Speaker 1: is fake, There was no way the crowd would be
Speaker 1: this big, and they invented a whole bunch of reasons
Speaker 1: for why that this photo must be fake and this
Speaker 1: this wasn't fake. This was a real photo. This was
Speaker 1: easily verified. There's like video evidence from multiple sources showing
Speaker 1: that this is a real thing that happened. But Cowfield wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: the primary use of misinformation is not to change the
Speaker 1: beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority
Speaker 1: of misinformation is offered as a service for people to
Speaker 1: maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Unquote,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't believe in giving these people a
Speaker 1: degree of passivity, right like. This is an active choice
Speaker 1: that they are doubling down and reinforcing and creating their
Speaker 1: own reality tunnels to live in. And I think the
Speaker 1: other aspect of this, this is something that Robert was
Speaker 1: talking with me last night, is like the people also
Speaker 1: propagating this, the people creating the environments to make this happen,
Speaker 1: are also willing participants, right like this, This is a
Speaker 1: big reason why Musk bought Twitter, is so that it
Speaker 1: purposely could turn into the current conspiracy like shit show
Speaker 1: that it currently is. Facebook used to be where conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists gathered to post their weird boomer opinions, and now
Speaker 1: it's Twitter alongside just actual, useful, verifiable information, and now
Speaker 1: because these two platforms have kind of combined, how we
Speaker 1: have so much conspiracy content on Twitter. It also just
Speaker 1: damages the use of Twitter as a platform to look
Speaker 1: for real information. And I think you can see the
Speaker 1: same thing with TikTok, with its very loose content moderation
Speaker 1: policy regarding like factual information and the fact that people
Speaker 1: use TikTok as its own search engine, creating its own
Speaker 1: ecosystem of misinformation, fully isolated away from the rest of
Speaker 1: the Internet. And this project to like wear down collective
Speaker 1: reality is a long term project by the right. You
Speaker 1: could look at the John Birch Society and other anti
Speaker 1: communist groups from the fifties who used to deliberately put
Speaker 1: out fake articles about communists infiltrating Fox News, and a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of conservative mass media like talk Radio was
Speaker 1: created at least in part as a reaction to Nixon
Speaker 1: being forced of office, and a lot of the same
Speaker 1: people funding right wing media are also pushing for charter
Speaker 1: schools and attempts to destroy public education. Like it's all
Speaker 1: an intentional effort to make people's media literacy go completely
Speaker 1: down the toilet and propagate entire false versions of reality.
Speaker 1: In service of a few rich people, and that's what
Speaker 1: our current situation is right now. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if this way to stop it. As you heard in
Speaker 1: that clip from MSNBC, like fact checks don't work anymore,
Speaker 1: because that's not like the point of any of this.
Speaker 1: It's not meant to actually persuade people. It's only meant
Speaker 1: to reinforce what they already want to believe. So what
Speaker 1: do you do in a world post fact checking? I
Speaker 1: don't know, and we're gonna have to find out. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, do you do you have any
Speaker 1: closing thoughts?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: I will say, one of the few things I've ever
Speaker 2: seen that's gotten someone out of something like this is
Speaker 2: just sometimes it doesn't always work like this, but every
Speaker 2: once in a while, you could have an experience that
Speaker 2: is so cognitively shattering to everything that you'd believed that
Speaker 2: it just implodes.
Speaker 1: So me, you're advocating to dose your Republican family members
Speaker 1: with LSD? Is that what I'm hearing?
Speaker 2: Well, No, what I'm advocating is that the people who
Speaker 2: think that China is a socialist state be sent to
Speaker 2: China and have to interact with members of the Chinese
Speaker 2: Communist Party, because I have.
Speaker 4: Seen this work.
Speaker 2: It does work, it can I've seen it happen. You
Speaker 2: can't talk to these people for more than five minutes.
Speaker 2: But I mean, you know, a sort of more serious note,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is something that you know, you're trying
Speaker 2: to fight emotions on a sort of intellectual level, and
Speaker 2: so like, if you want to deal with this, I don't.
Speaker 2: I think you have to kind of be working on
Speaker 2: a sort of like emotional actfective register. And that sucks
Speaker 2: because it's you know, it's effectively the abandonments of politics
Speaker 2: as politics. It's arguably just a complete retreat into fascism.
Speaker 2: But you know, if you take the sort of understanding
Speaker 2: as one of the elements of it, as fascism is
Speaker 2: reducing all politics to aesthetics.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 2: But we've hit this point where there's no centralizing viewpoint,
Speaker 2: like central reality tunnel that most people are in. And
Speaker 2: that's largely partially because of these people trying to destroy it,
Speaker 2: and partially because the people who were running the mainstream
Speaker 2: media blew themselves up by lying about I Rock and
Speaker 2: then by spending thirty years insisting that like neoliberalism was
Speaker 2: the greatest economic system ever and then two thousand and
Speaker 2: eight happening, and so, like you know, we're in this
Speaker 2: position where the people who had built the guardrails blew
Speaker 2: it up in order to make money and push your
Speaker 2: political jenas, and now a bunch of other people who
Speaker 2: want to just destroy everything inside those rails are just
Speaker 2: like detonating bombs inside of all of our like psychological concies.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the guy who was talking about
Speaker 1: his stepdad in Asheville is correct. It is a cult,
Speaker 1: and you have to treat it like you would treat
Speaker 1: a cult. You can't fact check them out of this.
Speaker 1: You have to treat them like your friend just joined scientology.
Speaker 1: Some people might just choose to completely cut the person
Speaker 1: off because they find it too dangerous, and that's fine,
Speaker 1: but I think there should be others that remain as
Speaker 1: a lifeline to the person. Right if they ever one
Speaker 1: day realize, oh no, I'm in a cult and I
Speaker 1: need help, there needs to be a way for them
Speaker 1: to get out. Yeah, there needs to be a lifeline
Speaker 1: for them to escape. And this is the only way
Speaker 1: that like quote unquote, cult deprogramming has worked. You can
Speaker 1: point to like people who've gotten out of the QAnon
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory, like this is the only tactic that actually works.
Speaker 1: It's reliant on the courtesy of others, right, It's reliant
Speaker 1: that you have to put yourself in a degree of
Speaker 1: danger by maintaining contact with this person that is kind
Speaker 1: of dangerous because they are in this like very volatile cult.
Speaker 1: There needs to be some lifeline for them. And I
Speaker 1: think that's really the only way that I know of
Speaker 1: right now that shows a degree of success in getting
Speaker 1: people out of this like fucked up conspiracy matrix. And
Speaker 1: it sucks, and it's not easy, and most people promoting
Speaker 1: like cult deprogramming are hacks with pseudoscience. And it turns
Speaker 1: out like this is just a very emotional problem and
Speaker 1: it requires unfortunately emotional solutions that a simple Reuter's fact
Speaker 1: check will not suffice. So anyway, that is my rundown
Speaker 1: on what's currently going on with the hurricane misinformation. It's
Speaker 1: really bad. Yep, it could happen here.
Speaker 8: It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 8: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 8: cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 8: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 8: find sources for it could happen here, listed directly in
Speaker 8: episode descriptions. Thanks for listening,