WEBVTT - Epiphany 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:23.916 Pushkin. There's a place in our world where the known 0:00:24.036 --> 0:00:29.116 things go, a corridor of the mind, lined with shelves, 0:00:29.756 --> 0:00:39.236 cluttered with proof. I'm hiding in here. Who's out there? 0:00:39.356 --> 0:00:43.116 What do they what do they want? It sounds so angry. 0:00:44.156 --> 0:00:46.716 I'm pretty sure they can get in. I don't see 0:00:46.756 --> 0:00:50.076 how I can get out. I think I might be trapped. 0:00:56.996 --> 0:00:59.596 Welcome to the Last Archive, the show about how we 0:00:59.676 --> 0:01:02.756 know what we know and why it sometimes seems lately 0:01:03.236 --> 0:01:07.356 as if we don't know anything at all. I'm Jill Lapoor. 0:01:09.156 --> 0:01:11.596 This season, I've been trying to trace the history of 0:01:11.636 --> 0:01:15.116 doubt over the course of the last century, building that 0:01:15.276 --> 0:01:19.876 history block by block, a tower of doubt. Not too 0:01:19.876 --> 0:01:24.356 long ago, it all came crashing down. It was the 0:01:24.356 --> 0:01:27.676 beginning of the year twenty twenty one. Every archive of 0:01:27.756 --> 0:01:33.876 knowledge seemed to be under attack, embattled universities, courthouses, press rooms, 0:01:34.756 --> 0:01:42.596 even Congress. But I found it the last Archives. Escape hatch. 0:01:44.516 --> 0:01:47.076 Come through with me. We'll have to go through a 0:01:47.116 --> 0:01:50.956 war and of underground tunnels. We'll get there. We're heading 0:01:50.956 --> 0:02:01.076 to a place called Iron Mountain. Something I love about history, 0:02:02.156 --> 0:02:06.516 all the surprises, the twists and turns. So I'm starting 0:02:06.516 --> 0:02:09.916 with a story that has so many turns. In the 0:02:09.996 --> 0:02:14.036 nineteen thirties, a German immigrant named Hermann Naust purchased an 0:02:14.036 --> 0:02:17.436 abandoned iron ore mine in New York State near the 0:02:17.516 --> 0:02:22.316 Hudson River. Inside its caves and old mining tunnels, Naust 0:02:22.596 --> 0:02:26.356 grew mushrooms. The voice was perfect for it. The mushrooms 0:02:26.596 --> 0:02:30.196 Mushroomednust began supplying the city with mushrooms, and he made 0:02:30.196 --> 0:02:33.756 a fortune. People called him the mushroom King. At his 0:02:33.836 --> 0:02:36.716 house he had the only mushroom shaped swimming pool in 0:02:36.756 --> 0:02:40.756 the world. In nineteen fifty one, Neust adapted his caves 0:02:40.756 --> 0:02:44.036 and mines and tunnels for a new business. He founded 0:02:44.196 --> 0:02:49.636 the Iron Mountain Atomic Storage Corporation. Because at the time 0:02:49.756 --> 0:02:53.596 Americans were crazy for bomb shelters. School children were ducking 0:02:53.596 --> 0:02:57.356 and covering to prepare for a nuclear attack. Herman Naust 0:02:57.596 --> 0:03:01.836 outed them all. An atomic bomb expert called Neust's vault 0:03:02.396 --> 0:03:06.716 the safest place in the world. A thirty ton door 0:03:06.796 --> 0:03:08.836 equipped with a time lock will guard one of the 0:03:08.876 --> 0:03:11.636 main passages in which four one hundred vaults are located. 0:03:11.716 --> 0:03:15.356 During the initial phase of the enterprise, already foreign banks 0:03:15.356 --> 0:03:19.036 have applied for storage space behind the massive door. Museums 0:03:19.116 --> 0:03:22.836 also are expected to seek protection for their placeless art treasures. 0:03:23.396 --> 0:03:27.116 In the atmosphere of international tension, banked files and records 0:03:27.196 --> 0:03:30.276 begin to find their way into the sanctuary. You could 0:03:30.276 --> 0:03:34.196 put your most valuable documents there, wills, photographs, legal papers. 0:03:34.476 --> 0:03:37.836 The company grew and grew a Cold War knowledge vault, 0:03:38.116 --> 0:03:42.556 a last archive along the Hudson. These days, Iron Mountain 0:03:42.636 --> 0:03:45.716 is still in business. It's a global records management company, 0:03:45.756 --> 0:03:49.076 the world's biggest, with a four billion dollar annual revenue 0:03:49.356 --> 0:03:52.516 and facilities in more than fifty countries. You might have 0:03:52.556 --> 0:03:55.596 seen their trucks with a blue triangular logo. I see 0:03:55.596 --> 0:03:58.396 those trucks all the time, rumbling up and down the road. 0:03:59.356 --> 0:04:03.356 Iron Mountain stores everything, including the records of nearly every 0:04:03.396 --> 0:04:07.716 fortune one thousand company. They've also got Frank Sinatra's original 0:04:07.756 --> 0:04:11.876 recordings and Charles Dickens's last will and testament. Back in 0:04:11.956 --> 0:04:15.156 the scariest years of the Cold War, though Iron Mountain 0:04:15.196 --> 0:04:19.716 Atomic Storage offered something more than storage. It offered secrecy. 0:04:20.876 --> 0:04:25.516 Iron Mountain, under a blanket of iron ore alternate underground 0:04:25.516 --> 0:04:29.836 headquarters for corporations that ad ran in nineteen sixty two, 0:04:30.076 --> 0:04:32.956 the year of the Cuban missile crisis. If you own 0:04:32.956 --> 0:04:35.596 a company and wanted to hold a top secret meeting, 0:04:35.836 --> 0:04:39.076 why not hold it in hidden conference room's deep underground 0:04:39.236 --> 0:04:41.876 Doctor Evil style. Or you might want to hold your 0:04:41.916 --> 0:04:44.156 meetings down there if you were to say a super 0:04:44.236 --> 0:04:50.236 secret government agency. In nineteen sixty seven, a few years 0:04:50.276 --> 0:04:54.036 after Iron Mountain advertised its secret Layer meeting service, a 0:04:54.116 --> 0:04:58.156 little book appeared in bookstores. It was called Report from 0:04:58.196 --> 0:05:03.236 Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace. The 0:05:03.276 --> 0:05:05.796 book described itself as the record of a fifteen man 0:05:06.036 --> 0:05:09.196 special study group that had gathered at Iron Mountain in 0:05:09.516 --> 0:05:12.996 those top secret underground meeting rooms. And here was the 0:05:12.996 --> 0:05:18.036 book's bombshell. It was never supposed to be published, but 0:05:18.196 --> 0:05:21.356 someone had leaked it. A member of the secret group 0:05:21.596 --> 0:05:24.556 identified only as a professor of social science from a 0:05:24.636 --> 0:05:30.396 large middlewestern university. The report itself was totally wonky wonky 0:05:30.756 --> 0:05:35.716 but shocking. The permanent possibility of war is the foundation 0:05:35.796 --> 0:05:39.716 for stable government. It supplies the basis for general acceptance 0:05:39.756 --> 0:05:45.596 of political authority. The special study group had been convened, 0:05:45.716 --> 0:05:50.036 it was said, in response to a peace scare. Members 0:05:50.036 --> 0:05:52.396 of the group talked about how devastating it would be 0:05:52.436 --> 0:05:55.116 if the United States were ever for any length of 0:05:55.156 --> 0:05:58.476 time at peace. As if the only thing that kept 0:05:58.476 --> 0:06:01.036 the American people from shaking off the chains of their 0:06:01.076 --> 0:06:07.516 submission was war. Endless war, it has ensured the subordination 0:06:07.556 --> 0:06:11.156 of the citizen to the state. No modern political ruling 0:06:11.156 --> 0:06:15.356 group has successfully controlled its constituency. After failing to sustain 0:06:15.436 --> 0:06:20.956 the continuing credibility of an external threat of war, report 0:06:21.036 --> 0:06:23.876 from Iron Mountain concluded that the US needed to keep 0:06:23.916 --> 0:06:28.116 those wars coming. But if, given the growing anti war movement, 0:06:28.156 --> 0:06:31.356 a dreaded peace did descend upon the land, there were 0:06:31.396 --> 0:06:34.876 still ways for the US government to find substitutes for 0:06:34.996 --> 0:06:37.636 functions of war. This is so crazy, I'm going to 0:06:37.676 --> 0:06:41.476 explain it again. According to this report, the US government 0:06:41.596 --> 0:06:44.596 was trying desperately to keep the nation at war, but 0:06:44.676 --> 0:06:48.356 if their worst fears were realized and peace came, they 0:06:48.396 --> 0:06:54.956 had other options other ways to stifle discontent. A comprehensive 0:06:54.996 --> 0:06:59.636 social welfare program, a giant open end space research program 0:06:59.756 --> 0:07:05.236 aimed at unreachable targets and established and recognized extra terrestrial menace, 0:07:05.796 --> 0:07:13.916 massive global environmental pollution, fictitious alternate enemies, bully moonshot Batman. 0:07:14.076 --> 0:07:17.876 This leaked report was hot, hot hot. It became a 0:07:17.916 --> 0:07:20.836 best seller on the New York Times list was translated 0:07:20.876 --> 0:07:24.956 into fifteen languages. Esquire published an excerpt. Of course. People 0:07:24.956 --> 0:07:28.356 tried to find that Midwestern social science professor who leaked it, 0:07:28.596 --> 0:07:31.636 and they wanted to know which government department had commissioned it. 0:07:32.196 --> 0:07:34.196 A reporter from The New York Times called around to 0:07:34.196 --> 0:07:36.796 the White House under the State Department and then noted, 0:07:37.316 --> 0:07:41.316 no advanced reviewer has flatly labeled the book fiction. People 0:07:41.316 --> 0:07:44.476 who read it were incensed, but report from Iron Mountain 0:07:44.516 --> 0:07:47.876 proved very difficult to verify, even though some people thought 0:07:47.876 --> 0:07:50.876 the whole thing was just a hoax. If it's authentic, 0:07:50.916 --> 0:07:53.876 it's an enormous, roaring scandal, one scholar told The New 0:07:53.956 --> 0:08:00.196 York Times. If it's caricature, it's a brilliant job. Eventually, 0:08:00.276 --> 0:08:03.756 most people forgot about it, but then in nineteen seventy one, 0:08:04.116 --> 0:08:08.276 another government report was leaked to the press. This weekend, 0:08:08.436 --> 0:08:11.996 portions of a classified Pentagon document came the light for 0:08:12.036 --> 0:08:15.516 all the world to see, brought cries of outrage from Washington. 0:08:15.796 --> 0:08:19.116 The New York Times began publishing parts of a voluminous 0:08:19.156 --> 0:08:21.876 report that the Pentagon had drawn up on the causes 0:08:21.916 --> 0:08:27.236 and conduct of American involvement in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers 0:08:27.276 --> 0:08:29.956 revealed decades of lying by the federal government to the 0:08:29.996 --> 0:08:32.476 public about what had really been going on in the 0:08:32.516 --> 0:08:36.116 war in Vietnam. Senator George McGovern, a leading critic of 0:08:36.156 --> 0:08:39.316 the war, called the report and we quote, a story 0:08:39.396 --> 0:08:44.676 of almost incredible deception. This is where this history gets twisty, Tourney. 0:08:45.196 --> 0:08:48.276 The publication of the Pentagon Papers brought the authors of 0:08:48.316 --> 0:08:51.396 the Report from Iron Mountain out into the open, because, 0:08:51.756 --> 0:08:55.796 unlike the Pentagon Papers, which were entirely real, the Report 0:08:55.836 --> 0:09:01.516 from Iron Mountain was in fact entirely made up. So 0:09:02.076 --> 0:09:05.236 just to be extra extra clear here, there never was 0:09:05.316 --> 0:09:08.636 any special study group, had never met at Iron Mountain, 0:09:09.156 --> 0:09:13.276 and this recording, no modern political ruling group has successfully 0:09:13.276 --> 0:09:17.596 controlled its constituency after failing to sustain the continuing credit. 0:09:17.636 --> 0:09:20.036 That's one of our actors reading a document that is 0:09:20.116 --> 0:09:24.036 in fact a fake. In nineteen seventy two, in the 0:09:24.076 --> 0:09:27.036 New York Times Book Review, a writer named Leonard Lewin 0:09:27.276 --> 0:09:30.236 revealed that the Report from Iron Mountain had been a 0:09:30.356 --> 0:09:34.556 hoax intended as a satire. It involved some pretty high 0:09:34.596 --> 0:09:38.396 level people. Even the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith was 0:09:38.396 --> 0:09:42.396 in on it. But Lewin confessed I wrote the report, 0:09:42.596 --> 0:09:46.796 all of it. The charade is over. The idea had 0:09:46.836 --> 0:09:50.076 come from Victor Navasky, a leftist writer who later became 0:09:50.156 --> 0:09:53.156 Editor of the Nation, who was all a lark, an 0:09:53.196 --> 0:09:56.956 angry one. As Navasky told NPRS Fresh Air in nineteen 0:09:57.036 --> 0:10:00.356 ninety six, the idea for a report from Iron Mountain 0:10:00.436 --> 0:10:04.156 came to me one day when I saw a little 0:10:04.156 --> 0:10:07.436 headline in the newspaper saying that the stock market had 0:10:07.596 --> 0:10:10.996 fallen abruptly because of a peace scare. And we got 0:10:10.996 --> 0:10:16.596 an idea to do a book about the quashing of 0:10:16.716 --> 0:10:19.916 a report which was commissioned by the White House to 0:10:19.956 --> 0:10:24.396 plan the transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy. 0:10:24.996 --> 0:10:27.476 And we would do a kind of hoax book about 0:10:28.596 --> 0:10:32.636 what happened when the commission concluded that the economy would 0:10:32.636 --> 0:10:36.036 collapse if peace really broke out. The Report from Iron 0:10:36.076 --> 0:10:39.996 Mountain hoax brought the storage company Iron Mountain, the real place, 0:10:40.516 --> 0:10:43.636 a lot of grief, and it wasn't fair because, let 0:10:43.636 --> 0:10:46.516 me be clear, the storage company had nothing to do 0:10:46.596 --> 0:10:51.796 with this hoax. But meanwhile the Hoax Report had acquired 0:10:51.836 --> 0:10:55.756 a huge following among conspiracy theorists. They read it as 0:10:55.756 --> 0:10:59.036 incriminating evidence. They put it on their bookshelves, and when 0:10:59.076 --> 0:11:03.236 the authors revealed themselves to be pranksters, it didn't change anything. 0:11:04.076 --> 0:11:06.876 A lot of conspiracy minded fans of the book simply 0:11:06.916 --> 0:11:09.476 refused to believe this new turn of events. They just 0:11:09.476 --> 0:11:11.516 couldn't take that book out of the mental box that 0:11:11.596 --> 0:11:15.196 said government report written in secret underground bunker and put 0:11:15.236 --> 0:11:18.316 it in the box that said hooks. They were still 0:11:18.316 --> 0:11:21.396 talking about it decades later, like in this nineteen ninety 0:11:21.396 --> 0:11:26.476 three video cassette Blueprint for Tyranny. Welcome to the Report 0:11:27.316 --> 0:11:33.916 from Iron Mountain. This report is something you would never 0:11:33.956 --> 0:11:39.996 believe unless you read it. Peace in reality equals world socialism, 0:11:39.996 --> 0:11:43.436 as we will find out as we journey through this report. 0:11:44.676 --> 0:11:48.676 If anything, conspiracy theorists cherish the fake book more as 0:11:48.716 --> 0:11:51.556 the years passed. They read it avidly, passed it around, 0:11:51.756 --> 0:11:54.436 kept it close to their vests, used it even as 0:11:54.436 --> 0:11:58.436 a manual a manifesto for opposition to the federal government. 0:11:59.116 --> 0:12:02.756 And then in nineteen ninety five and Oklahoma City, some 0:12:02.836 --> 0:12:08.116 of those right wing conspiracy theorists staged and insurrection. The 0:12:08.236 --> 0:12:11.236 exploded off around nine am, and we can feel the 0:12:11.236 --> 0:12:16.876 explosion mimmy newsroom of our channel nine ELW Holy Cow. 0:12:17.716 --> 0:12:20.196 About a third of the building has been blown away. 0:12:21.516 --> 0:12:24.916 On April nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, a truck packed with 0:12:24.996 --> 0:12:28.556 nearly five thousand pounds of explosives detonated outside the nine 0:12:28.596 --> 0:12:33.516 story Alfred Pmor Federal Building, killing one hundred and sixty 0:12:33.596 --> 0:12:37.796 eight people, including nineteen very little children at a daycare center. 0:12:38.996 --> 0:12:42.876 The explosion injured hundreds more. And we can also give 0:12:42.876 --> 0:12:44.916 you a bit of a hint now as to where 0:12:44.956 --> 0:12:48.956 the government appears to be focusing its investigation on some 0:12:49.036 --> 0:12:52.676 of the what are called right wing white supremacist groups 0:12:52.676 --> 0:12:56.556 in various parts of the country. Eventually, two men were 0:12:56.636 --> 0:13:00.076 charged with eleven federal crimes. They were the sort of 0:13:00.116 --> 0:13:03.836 guys who believed that the report from Iron Mountain was real. 0:13:05.876 --> 0:13:09.436 The indictment charges that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, former 0:13:09.556 --> 0:13:12.516 Army buddies with a grudge against the government, planned the bombing, 0:13:12.636 --> 0:13:15.756 selected the Mura Federal Building in Oklahoma City as their target, 0:13:16.036 --> 0:13:19.236 bought and stole materials for the bomb and build it 0:13:22.836 --> 0:13:26.716 After the Oklahoma City bombing, Americans suddenly started paying attention 0:13:26.796 --> 0:13:30.396 to right wing insurrectionists. Who were these people? Where did 0:13:30.396 --> 0:13:34.076 they get their ideas? Those ideas mainly came from books. 0:13:34.516 --> 0:13:36.716 I don't know if Timothy McVeigh read the Report from 0:13:36.756 --> 0:13:40.396 Iron Mountain or watched those video cassettes about it, but 0:13:40.556 --> 0:13:42.716 he did have a book that's usually right next to 0:13:42.756 --> 0:13:47.956 it on every right wing extremist's bookshelf. Inside mcveagh's Yellow 0:13:47.956 --> 0:13:52.316 Mercury Sedan, investigators discovered a sealed envelope containing evidence that 0:13:52.356 --> 0:13:57.276 would prove crucial to analyzing mcvay's motivations, highlighted passages from 0:13:57.276 --> 0:14:01.396 the anti government novel The Turner Diaries. The Turner Diaries 0:14:01.556 --> 0:14:04.196 is a nineteen seventy eight novel by an avowed American 0:14:04.276 --> 0:14:08.156 neo Nazi. It includes a detailed account of somebody building 0:14:08.156 --> 0:14:11.956 an explosive device, putting it into a truck, and driving 0:14:11.996 --> 0:14:16.796 it up to a federal building. McVeigh seemed to have 0:14:16.836 --> 0:14:20.916 treated The Turner Diaries as an instruction manual in a 0:14:20.956 --> 0:14:24.356 similar way, a lot of his fellow extremists considered Report 0:14:24.396 --> 0:14:27.716 from Iron Mountain as some kind of decoder ring. When 0:14:27.756 --> 0:14:32.396 Magazine reported it has become required reading for militias, Nazi sympathizers, 0:14:32.436 --> 0:14:34.476 and other right wing types who deny that it's a 0:14:34.476 --> 0:14:37.516 hoax and cited as evidence of plans for a new 0:14:37.516 --> 0:14:42.556 world order. The instigator of the hoax, Victor Navasky, was horrified, 0:14:43.276 --> 0:14:45.516 as he explained on Fresh Air, he had found out 0:14:45.516 --> 0:14:49.156 that Liberty Lobby, a white supremacist group, had reprinted the 0:14:49.236 --> 0:14:53.516 report and was to them a kind of bible. They 0:14:53.516 --> 0:14:56.676 were so persuaded that the report was the real thing 0:14:56.756 --> 0:15:01.076 that they didn't bother to get copyright permission to reprint it, 0:15:01.116 --> 0:15:03.436 and had reprinted it as if it were a government 0:15:03.476 --> 0:15:07.796 document and we're selling it. Navasky's original partner in crime, 0:15:07.916 --> 0:15:11.836 Leonard Lewin, sued Liberty Lobby and reached a settlement. In 0:15:11.916 --> 0:15:14.356 the end, they had to surrender to him their copies 0:15:14.356 --> 0:15:17.676 of report from Iron Mountain, who unstashed them in his basement. 0:15:18.636 --> 0:15:20.796 But it was too late to stop this left wing 0:15:20.836 --> 0:15:24.876 hoax turned right wing conspiracy. Navasky wrote in the Nation 0:15:24.956 --> 0:15:28.756 about its acceptance by superpatriots and conspiracy theorists of the 0:15:28.796 --> 0:15:31.796 far right. He said that they're taking it seriously was 0:15:31.836 --> 0:15:38.116 the scariest proposition of all. It has since gotten even scarier. 0:15:38.716 --> 0:15:41.596 Since the nineteen nineties, the Report from Iron Mountain has 0:15:41.596 --> 0:15:44.956 passed from generation to generation like some kind of scripture. 0:15:45.916 --> 0:15:48.116 On the sixth of January twenty twenty one, the day 0:15:48.156 --> 0:15:52.276 insurrectionists attacked the US capital, some creep on four Chan 0:15:52.396 --> 0:15:56.636 posted in the cavalierly ugly language in this hideous corner 0:15:56.636 --> 0:15:59.796 of the Internet, read the Report from Iron Mountain, you 0:15:59.876 --> 0:16:04.516 brainless retard. These days you'll still find Report from Iron 0:16:04.516 --> 0:16:07.956 Mountain on far right white supremacist reading lists with no 0:16:08.076 --> 0:16:11.956 mention that it was a left wing hoax. And now 0:16:12.356 --> 0:16:15.276 it has a new reading list companion, the writings of 0:16:15.356 --> 0:16:19.156 Q the anonymous alleged insider who drops clues about all 0:16:19.156 --> 0:16:24.436 the evil goings on inside the government. Just recently I 0:16:24.476 --> 0:16:28.516 called up Victor Navasky. He's nearly ninety. It was really 0:16:28.516 --> 0:16:30.796 good of him to talk to me. We both found 0:16:30.836 --> 0:16:33.316 like we're under Iron Mountain. Though, because the phone line 0:16:33.356 --> 0:16:37.276 is pretty bad. It's a fantasy to believe that it's true. 0:16:37.836 --> 0:16:41.436 And I think qan On is guilty of its own fantasies. 0:16:42.076 --> 0:16:45.196 Do you think if someone presented himself to the world 0:16:45.236 --> 0:16:47.996 tomorrow and said, I am que and I can prove 0:16:48.076 --> 0:16:51.396 that I am QUE and I was just joking the 0:16:51.476 --> 0:16:54.156 whole time, and it got out of hand. None of 0:16:54.156 --> 0:16:57.116 this is true. Would there be any way I'm doing 0:16:57.116 --> 0:17:01.716 what had been done? I don't think so myself. I 0:17:01.876 --> 0:17:06.436 think that's where we are as a culture. And unfortunately, 0:17:08.596 --> 0:17:11.516 the Q and On report goes something like this. An 0:17:11.556 --> 0:17:14.876 insider decides to spill the beans about a secret government 0:17:14.956 --> 0:17:20.276 run conspiracy, something to do with Satan and pedophiles. He 0:17:20.396 --> 0:17:24.316 leaks some clues in a report, and then report after report, 0:17:24.836 --> 0:17:27.556 and the people who read those reports, those postings by 0:17:27.556 --> 0:17:32.156 this anonymous QUE become passionately attached to the idea of 0:17:32.196 --> 0:17:36.116 a conspiracy, and within the logic of that conspiracy, they're 0:17:36.116 --> 0:17:39.196 being denied access to knowledge, some secret body of knowledge 0:17:39.236 --> 0:17:41.996 hidden away that only the people in power have access to, 0:17:42.796 --> 0:17:45.236 and that the followers of Q have to hunt down 0:17:45.636 --> 0:17:58.876 and piece together clue by clue, Q by Q. Q 0:17:59.436 --> 0:18:03.116 isn't true. Also, I don't buy either of the two 0:18:03.116 --> 0:18:06.316 big headlines about Q and On that it's new or 0:18:06.356 --> 0:18:09.436 that it's uniquely powerful. That's what I've been trying to 0:18:09.516 --> 0:18:11.996 argue by going over the story of the report from 0:18:11.996 --> 0:18:15.916 Iron Mountain. This stuff isn't new, it's not all powerful, 0:18:16.596 --> 0:18:20.316 and it has never ever been a secret. This election 0:18:20.396 --> 0:18:23.276 will be the most rigged election in history. That is 0:18:23.276 --> 0:18:26.316 a lie, an old fashioned lie, but it's also a 0:18:26.356 --> 0:18:29.916 complex lie. The sort of lie that brings together every 0:18:29.996 --> 0:18:33.476 kind of doubt whose rise I've been chronicling all season long, 0:18:34.076 --> 0:18:37.676 has little boats of doubt, rowboats, canoes. They become a 0:18:37.716 --> 0:18:41.796 fleet of flotilla in Armada. They're sending millions of ballots 0:18:41.796 --> 0:18:45.396 all over the country. There's fraud. They found him in creeks. 0:18:45.596 --> 0:18:47.796 They found some with the name Trump. Just happened to 0:18:47.796 --> 0:18:49.756 have the name Trump just the other day in a 0:18:49.796 --> 0:18:52.796 waste paper basket. This is going to be a fraud 0:18:52.916 --> 0:18:55.716 like you've never seen. It was awful to watch this 0:18:55.876 --> 0:18:58.316 unfold in the months leading up to the twenty twenty 0:18:58.356 --> 0:19:02.196 election and in the months afterward, to watch it spread 0:19:02.236 --> 0:19:04.996 on the internet and hear it from the mouth of 0:19:05.076 --> 0:19:09.716 the US President. He said it again and again and again. 0:19:11.276 --> 0:19:13.876 If enough people in public and in positions of authority 0:19:13.996 --> 0:19:17.116 lie about something for long enough, people will believe it. 0:19:18.196 --> 0:19:22.596 Watching it all, I felt as if my brain was unrewind. Specifically, 0:19:22.876 --> 0:19:25.716 my head kept rewinding back to a brilliant book published 0:19:25.796 --> 0:19:29.596 in nineteen ninety four called A Social History of Truth 0:19:29.996 --> 0:19:33.116 by Stephen Chapin, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science 0:19:33.156 --> 0:19:37.316 at Harvard. Chapin was writing about gentleman philosophers in the 0:19:37.356 --> 0:19:40.716 seventeenth century in England. But I find his book so 0:19:40.836 --> 0:19:43.636 wholly applies to the President that I asked him to 0:19:43.676 --> 0:19:48.556 read my favorite lines. Knowledge is a collective good. In 0:19:48.636 --> 0:19:53.276 securing our knowledge, we rely upon others, and we cannot 0:19:53.316 --> 0:19:57.556 dispense without reliance. That means that the relations in which 0:19:57.596 --> 0:20:00.836 we have and hold our knowledge have a moral character. 0:20:01.516 --> 0:20:04.076 And the word I used to indicate that moral relation 0:20:04.476 --> 0:20:09.356 is trust. He argues that you can't actually you know 0:20:09.396 --> 0:20:12.596 anything alone. You can only know things with other people. 0:20:13.516 --> 0:20:15.676 He doesn't think the United States or the world is 0:20:15.716 --> 0:20:18.756 experiencing a crisis of truth. He thinks it would be 0:20:18.756 --> 0:20:23.196 better called a crisis of social knowledge. For example, and 0:20:23.316 --> 0:20:27.676 in particular around climate change. I know something about the 0:20:27.756 --> 0:20:31.516 loss of biodiversity and species, about melting icebergs, about sea 0:20:31.636 --> 0:20:35.756 level rise. Okay, now someone puts pressure on me and say, 0:20:35.796 --> 0:20:38.516 how do I know these things? I don't think any 0:20:38.516 --> 0:20:42.916 of us know these things directly. So the knowledge that 0:20:43.076 --> 0:20:46.396 I need to know these things is to know who 0:20:46.436 --> 0:20:50.236 to believe, who has credibility, who has authority to trust 0:20:52.716 --> 0:20:55.596 to know anything, Then you have to know who to trust. 0:20:56.276 --> 0:20:58.756 If you doubt everything, it's because you trust no one. 0:21:00.036 --> 0:21:03.596 I find this framework really helpful. No one has killed truth. 0:21:04.396 --> 0:21:07.716 Instead we have this crisis of trust. But how did 0:21:07.716 --> 0:21:10.796 people stop knowing who to trust? One answer to that 0:21:10.876 --> 0:21:14.916 question involves the unintended consequences of new technologies of communication. 0:21:15.396 --> 0:21:18.476 We've been hearing about those all season. How radio, for example, 0:21:18.596 --> 0:21:23.436 amplified all kinds of extremism, but broadcasts only reached so far. 0:21:24.316 --> 0:21:26.956 Then came the Internet, starting with bolton boards and chat 0:21:27.036 --> 0:21:29.996 rooms in the nineteen nineties, but we still think of 0:21:30.036 --> 0:21:32.636 it the way we thought about radio in the nineteen thirties. 0:21:33.236 --> 0:21:37.996 The phrase echo chamber comes up a lot, an acoustic metaphor. 0:21:38.676 --> 0:21:42.796 So there's a million voices they're screaming out there, but 0:21:43.476 --> 0:21:48.156 any any body or any group of like mind that 0:21:48.196 --> 0:21:51.996 people are listening to some and not to others. So 0:21:52.036 --> 0:21:56.836 there's another kind of question about what for us is 0:21:56.876 --> 0:22:00.396 audible and what for them is audible? Right, But then 0:22:00.476 --> 0:22:05.916 that metaphor of audibility and voice voice also meaning vote 0:22:06.116 --> 0:22:08.236 you know has the implications for democracy, which is to 0:22:08.276 --> 0:22:10.196 say we will hear all the voices, and that we 0:22:10.316 --> 0:22:14.516 will we will automate a system wherein we hear everyone 0:22:14.556 --> 0:22:18.476 who's enfranchised. But then now we're in a crisis of 0:22:18.556 --> 0:22:21.996 democracy around people not feeling heard. Right. I mean, if 0:22:21.996 --> 0:22:23.636 we just think about the siege of the capital and 0:22:23.716 --> 0:22:26.156 if you listen to interviews with those people, we're here 0:22:26.156 --> 0:22:29.596 to have our voices heard. A democratic project. Everyone has 0:22:29.596 --> 0:22:36.116 a voice, Well, we've heard them now. Still, the argument 0:22:36.116 --> 0:22:38.916 that technology allows fakers and haters to find each other 0:22:38.956 --> 0:22:43.596 more easily, Stephen Shapin thinks that's just too glib. It's 0:22:43.596 --> 0:22:45.516 one of the reasons I love talking with him. He 0:22:45.556 --> 0:22:48.396 got me thinking harder about another argument to explain what 0:22:48.436 --> 0:22:51.636 has happened to Americans and trust over the past century. 0:22:52.116 --> 0:22:55.516 That argument is political. It involves what one set of 0:22:55.556 --> 0:22:58.956 political actors have done to institutions over time in order 0:22:58.956 --> 0:23:02.796 to shift the balance of power in their favor. Do 0:23:02.836 --> 0:23:05.076 you mean to say the Supreme Court decision is null 0:23:05.156 --> 0:23:08.716 and void? No, it Supreme Court decision is not necessarily 0:23:08.756 --> 0:23:12.476 the law all the land. The Constitution still is. That's 0:23:12.516 --> 0:23:16.796 Republican Senator Barry Goldwater making a conservative argument that the 0:23:16.876 --> 0:23:20.836 Supreme Court had overstepped in its decision to abolish segregation 0:23:21.156 --> 0:23:24.156 in Brown versus Board of Education in nineteen fifty four. 0:23:25.476 --> 0:23:28.076 Conservatives at the time were very much out of power. 0:23:28.556 --> 0:23:31.716 Goldwater was an upstart, but his wing wanted to take 0:23:31.756 --> 0:23:34.676 over the GOP, and then they wanted to take over 0:23:34.716 --> 0:23:38.876 the country. And so, beginning in the nineteen fifties, conservatives 0:23:38.876 --> 0:23:42.236 engaged in a sustained assault on trust and institutions that 0:23:42.316 --> 0:23:49.116 produce and diffuse knowledge. Three institutions, especially the courts, the press, 0:23:49.516 --> 0:23:54.236 and the university. These institutions, they said, were all dominated 0:23:54.276 --> 0:23:59.596 by liberals, first, the courts and the supposed liberal bias 0:23:59.596 --> 0:24:03.196 of the judiciary. Whatever you do, Goldwater said, don't trust 0:24:03.196 --> 0:24:07.956 the courts. They interpreted by that action that it was 0:24:07.996 --> 0:24:12.716 wrong to have segregation. Now, they didn't spell out what 0:24:12.876 --> 0:24:16.636 was to be done. Other Conservatives went after institutions of 0:24:16.716 --> 0:24:20.436 higher learning. William F. Buckley led the assault against the Academy, 0:24:20.756 --> 0:24:23.916 beginning with this nineteen fifty one book, God and Man 0:24:24.036 --> 0:24:26.556 at Yale. I would well have be governed by the 0:24:26.596 --> 0:24:29.716 first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory and 0:24:29.916 --> 0:24:32.076 by the two thousand people on the faculty of all 0:24:32.156 --> 0:24:37.796 the university. Buckley said, whatever you do, don't trust the professors. 0:24:38.916 --> 0:24:41.636 The third front in this war on institutions of knowledge 0:24:41.836 --> 0:24:44.116 was an attack on the press. This began with the 0:24:44.236 --> 0:24:47.956 Nixon administration, and most famously with a speech given by 0:24:47.996 --> 0:24:52.796 his vice president, Spiro Agnew in nineteen sixty nine. Whatever 0:24:52.836 --> 0:24:56.636 you do, Agnew said, don't trust the press. These men 0:24:56.756 --> 0:25:00.996 can create national issues overnight. They can elevate men from 0:25:00.996 --> 0:25:05.076 obscurity to national prominence within a week. They can reward 0:25:05.196 --> 0:25:11.156 some politicians with national exposure and ignore others. The courts, 0:25:11.436 --> 0:25:16.436 the universities, the press. Conservatives believed that to defeat liberalism 0:25:16.556 --> 0:25:19.356 they needed to conquer these institutions of knowledge to story 0:25:19.436 --> 0:25:23.116 trust in them. The left has contributed a whole lot 0:25:23.156 --> 0:25:27.436 to this epistemological unraveling, too, but conservatives have been playing 0:25:27.436 --> 0:25:30.956 a long game. This, ever, took years and years, and 0:25:31.036 --> 0:25:35.236 eventually they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They took over 0:25:35.276 --> 0:25:38.596 the courts, or at least the federal judiciary. I'm honored 0:25:38.676 --> 0:25:42.116 and humbled to appear before you today as a nominee 0:25:42.116 --> 0:25:45.476 for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. They built their 0:25:45.516 --> 0:25:49.516 own press. Your mask is making me uncomfortable, and they 0:25:49.596 --> 0:25:55.116 undermined the university, especially scientific inquiry. So here we are, 0:25:55.276 --> 0:25:58.796 decades later, on the other side of this slow rolling revolution, 0:25:59.316 --> 0:26:01.356 a world where there is very little left of what 0:26:01.436 --> 0:26:05.596 used to be called common knowledge. This brings us to 0:26:05.676 --> 0:26:09.436 the twenty twenty presidential election. Those mail and bat could 0:26:09.436 --> 0:26:12.716 have been written the day before by the Democratic Party 0:26:12.716 --> 0:26:16.756 hatch that will roll over the Convention Center. Sure are 0:26:16.836 --> 0:26:19.556 lots of people in positions of power and authority said 0:26:19.596 --> 0:26:22.316 the election of Joe Biden was free and fair, the 0:26:22.316 --> 0:26:25.996 most secure election in American history. The Court said that 0:26:26.676 --> 0:26:32.556 every reputable news outlet said that political scientists, election observers, scholars, 0:26:33.276 --> 0:26:37.036 they all said that, But could you trust them. For 0:26:37.076 --> 0:26:41.156 a lot of Americans, the answer remained no, not anymore 0:26:41.676 --> 0:27:03.996