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