Air Date 10/29/2024
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award winning Best of the Left podcast. Trump has only come close to perfecting the grift of the American conservative. He certainly didn't invent the strategy. Today, we look at some current and past grifts and explore why they work.
Sources providing our top takes in under 50 minutes today includes
Jesse Dollemore,
Bloomberg Technology,
Amanpour and Company,
The Dig,
Dummy, and
The Bunker.
Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections.
Section A: Grift,
Section B: Scams,
Section C: Conspiracy, and
Section D: Misinformation.
GRIFT-GOBLIN Donald Trump is Selling HILARIOUSLY CRAPPY Gold Watches Now!!! - Jesse Dollemore - Air Date 9-27-24
STEVE SHIVES - HOST, THE DOLLEMORE DAILY: Wanna buy a watch?
DONALD TRUMP: Hello everyone. It's your favorite president, Donald J. Trump, here to introduce something really special. I think you're going to love it. My new Trump watches. We're doing quite a number with watches and the quality to me is very important.
The Trump Victory Tourbillon. This isn't just any watch. It's one of the best [00:01:00] watches made. It's a tourbillon watch with almost 200 grams of gold and more than 100 real diamonds. That's a lot of diamonds. I love gold. I love diamonds. We all do. Only 147 of these extraordinary watches will ever exist in the world and owning one puts you in a very exclusive club.
I have watch number one and I'm gonna keep it. It's mine and that's the way I want to have it. Each watch is numbered and extremely rare, a true collector's item, and it includes a personal letter signed by me. Get your Trump watch right now. Go to gettrumpwatches. com. It's Trump time.
STEVE SHIVES - HOST, THE DOLLEMORE DAILY: Oh wow, what a neat watch! So much gold! So many diamonds! I can't wait to buy one to support my favorite president! Tourbillon, that's the one that he mentioned in the ad. Ooh, three extraordinary styles, which one do I want? I want the gold dial one, that's the one that my favorite president had. I'll just pre [00:02:00] order that now... A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS?!
[uncontrolled laughter] Okay, you know what? That's fine. I'm determined to support my favorite president. I can't spare a hundred thousand dollars right this moment for a Turbillon watch, a Turbi a Bull a Bullion watch, but there's this other one, the Fighter watch. Let me see, that's probably more affordable. Ooh, choose my style. Which one do I want? I want the onyx gold one. That's what I want. 799!
So let's recap the Trump grifts so far in this presidential campaign. In addition to his standard merch. the red hats and the flags and the t shirts and stuff like that, he's sold people sneakers, coins, crypto, digital trading cards, a book of photographs of him, a personally [00:03:00] branded God Bless the USA Bible, and now watches.
Hundred thousand dollar watches. He's telling his supporters. that eggs are too expensive, but he's also selling them a watch that costs a hundred thousand dollars. Or, if that's too steep, another watch that'll only set them back several hundred dollars. Just lay aside what you'd ordinarily send to Joel Osteen for a couple of months. You can afford it!
I've seen folks on Twitter sharing their suspicion that this ludicrously expensive watch is just Trump's way of trying to find a loophole to accept a bribe?: It isn't a bribe! Come on! It wasn't a bribe! He was just buying a watch! Yes, in the [00:04:00] Personalize Your Order box this customer did request that President Trump cut off all federal aid to Ukraine, but since when is it illegal to ask for shit? Ehhh?! Maybe that's it! Maybe it's trying to find an avenue for bribes, or maybe it's a money laundering scheme. But my assumption, as it always is with Trump, is that his motivations and his goals are a lot simpler and a lot easier to understand. This is just Trump making another cash grab.
Whether he gets re-elected in November or not, he's gonna wring as much money out of the rubes that support him as he possibly can. The thing that always surprises me is how bad Trump is at this. Even after all these years, his entire public life, probably his [00:05:00] entire life, period, he's essentially been nothing but a salesman. He pretends to be other things. He pretends that he was a builder, or a real estate tycoon. But what he's always been, at the bottom of everything, is a salesman. And he's terrible at it. Inarticulate. Unconvincing. 'We're doing quite a number with watches', he says in that video. That's how he introduces his product? 'Hi, it's me, your favorite president. We're doing quite a number with watches!' Like, what? What are you...who said...what? And then he says, 'I love gold. I love diamonds. We all do!' Yes, very astute. Definitely a pitch compelling enough to get me to wire him $100,000. And he ends it with 'It's Trump time!' [00:06:00] That's the tagline they're going with? 'It's Trump time!'
So, he's ripping off MC Hammer? Or possibly Big Van Vader? Either way, I do not approve. He's a bad salesman, and he offers nothing but bad products. He tried to sell us a bill of goods in 2016. He tried again in 2020, and he's trying it yet again now in 2024. And that's why we all have to turn out for this election and vote and tell Donald Trump in no uncertain terms that he's not going to get away with it this time. Not on our watch.
The ‘Dirtbag of the Internet’ and Trump's Crypto Project - Bloomberg Technology - Air Date 9-13-24
CAROLINE HYDE - HOST, BLOOMBERG TECHNOLOGY: You start your story focused on Chase Harrow. What can you tell about this guy?
ZEKE FAUX: Yeah, so Chase is unknown in the crypto world, but I dug into his career and he's been a marijuana dealer. He says [00:07:00] he went to prison for that. He sold weight loss colon cleanses online. He had $149/month Get Rich Quick class. And then now, he appears to be the main dealmaker behind World Liberty Financial, which is this DeFi startup the Trumps are promoting. And President Trump himself posted a video saying this is going to challenge the big banks. So it's really bizarre to see that this is the person they're partnering with.
CAROLINE HYDE - HOST, BLOOMBERG TECHNOLOGY: I'm sorry, the guy behind this DeFi project isn't even known in the crypto world.
ZEKE FAUX: No, and he calls himself, in videos, he likes to call himself the 'dirtbag of the internet'. I found in another video he said regulators should kick people like him out of the industry, and not in those words. He seems to have a very cynical, to say the least, attitude towards crypto. And, this project, World Liberty, it might sound impressive if you didn't know about crypto, but it appears to be a copy of [00:08:00] a existing project that didn't go anywhere and then lost a lot of money in a hack.
CAROLINE HYDE - HOST, BLOOMBERG TECHNOLOGY: Yeah, you're talking about the dough project, right? D O U G H. That seems to be what's got actually industry insiders, the crypto industry, a little worried, is ultimately that the people behind World Liberty Financial have come across from a much smaller project that didn't manage to raise that many funds and actually got hacked.
ZEKE FAUX: Yes. And we don't know the details of World Liberty. I obtained a white paper that lays out some of them, but I'm sure it's all subject to change. But this is supposed to be DeFi, like decentralized finance. The white paper says that 70 percent of the tokens will be reserved for insiders. So talking to people in crypto, they said this looks like it could be more of a cash grab than an innovative project.
CAROLINE HYDE - HOST, BLOOMBERG TECHNOLOGY: Okay, and therein lies the issue that this could be some sort of cash grab. Some of the details in your story, and that might hint that there's a slight [00:09:00] difference in how this DeFi project is run compared to others, is that the people behind the overall project keep, what, 70 percent of issued tokens? That's a lot.
ZEKE FAUX: Yeah, and I think we're talking about this even a little bit too seriously. Like, you should go read what this guy says about crypto. I can't repeat it. The language is too... this is a family TV channel, I guess, but the way he talks about it doesn't give you any confidence that this is a, serious project that's going to challenge big banks.
CAROLINE HYDE - HOST, BLOOMBERG TECHNOLOGY: He says, basically, you can sell utter rubbish and anyone will buy it in crypto. He happened to say that in a 2018 YouTube video recorded as he drove his Rolls Royce.
ZEKE FAUX: Yes, and I'm digging deep to try and find his crypto resume. And I found that he appeared on Influencer Logan Paul's [00:10:00] podcast and during the podcast the two of them promoted a token called Omi, which I had also never heard of before. Since they promoted it a couple years ago, it's down 96%. And another YouTuber, a scam busting YouTuber named CoffeeZilla, posted this expose that appeared to show the two of them coordinating ahead of the show their plan to talk about Omi.
CAROLINE HYDE - HOST, BLOOMBERG TECHNOLOGY: It seems that someone else listed in the white paper, who's responsible as operations lead, used to run a service called Date Hotter Girls, where he taught seminars on how to pick up women. All of this just feels like a real risk. ultimately, for the person who is running to be president of the United States again, to be associating himself with. Why do it?
ZEKE FAUX: It's pretty bizarre. and the crypto industry, the people I've spoke to from it are not happy about it. [00:11:00] They like that Trump has flip flopped, has endorsed crypto. He said that he's going to fire the head of the SEC and provide looser regulations that he says will make the US the crypto capital of the world. They're like, That all sounds great, but then why are you starting this pretty silly sounding new venture, a for-profit venture, just before the election? It almost raises questions about his motivations for deregulating the industry.
CAROLINE HYDE - HOST, BLOOMBERG TECHNOLOGY: What has, ultimately, the World Liberty Financial spokespeople said to you? Have you tried to get in touch? What have they said ultimately about the real underlying necessity of this project?
ZEKE FAUX: So, I did contact them and I received an email back from a man who said he was not a spokesperson, but then he could spoke [sic] for World Liberty and said that he could see where I was going with all these questions [00:12:00] and it was painting an inaccurate portrait of this company and that time will tell that this is a serious project that's doing cool stuff.
Controlling the Weather and Eating Pets: Expert Breaks Down Disinformation - Amanpour and Company - Air Date 10-18-24
HARI SREENIVASAN: If you are a fan of the former president, there's really no higher authority than him. And recently in the wake of these storms, he said, "They're offering them $750 to people whose homes have been washed away. And yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of. They're offering them 750. They've been destroyed. These people have been destroyed". But really, the 750 bucks that he's talking about is just a direct payment sent to people to cover their emergency supplies. It is not the value of their home or the sum total of what they're going to be getting from the federal government. But what did happen in the wake of that? How did that kind of misinformation take on a different life?
RENEÉ DIRESTA: Well, it's seen as, again, as you note, a very authoritative statement from a political leader and for many people, sort of a [00:13:00] hero. And so this is the statement that he puts out. He puts that out on Truth Social. It's often then screenshotted and moved over to Twitter, particularly by his supporters. Sometimes he posts directly to Twitter now, too.
But you see that dynamic of the person who they trust is conveying a certain type of information, in this case, very misleading. It's not that it's wrong. It's not that it's false. They are getting 750, but it's that it's completely decontextualized. $750 as you then apply for all of the other aid that you'll be eligible to receive. So it's a really challenging dynamic. And then explaining it then requires nuance.
There's a saying in politics. If you're explaining, you're losing, but what you see happen then is that the Harris campaign and others, the Biden administration, have to come out and say, No, no, no, he got it wrong. Here are the actual facts. And so you see, then this effort to get the facts out to explain to people who again, many of whom have lost their homes and they really, they have [00:14:00] lousy Internet, their power's out, their water is not working. They have many many other things to worry about. And so when they're hearing this kind of information, it does impact how they think about the response. And you see this in the context also of some of the very misleading claims that Trump spread about FEMA, right? And, they are not, they're not helping Trump supporters is a thing that he said at one point, right?
So you have this dynamic of a trusted official, a trusted leader, amplifying these claims for political advantage, just to be clear, right? That's one of the main motivating factors here.
HARI SREENIVASAN: There was a group that looked into some of this and they found that just 33 posts on X that were already debunked by various different sources had 160 million views.
And what was also interesting to me in some of their analysis was that about 30 percent of these posts, contained antisemitic hate. And that some of the people, the large accounts that, who [00:15:00] had multiple millions of followers that were sharing some of these lies about the storm were also people who were actively engaged in other forms of myths and disinformation.
It's almost like there's this sort of Venn diagram of people who like to do this, whether it's about Hurricane Milton or about the Great Replacement Theory.
RENEÉ DIRESTA: one of the things that's happening is they've built up an audience base that feels a certain way towards the government or towards authority figures, and one of the, events don't happen in a vacuum once you have built up your villain, whether that's FEMA or Jewish people or the government or Biden or Trump, whoever it is, you can refer back to them constantly.
So you can connect the dots, so to speak, for your audience. There's a phrase that I've really come to appreciate conspiracy without the theory, right? So there's no actual argument for what is happening here. There's no cohesive, you know, why are these people doing this thing, right? What is the incentive?
But there are [00:16:00] these, very complicated theories that they go viral because they're phrased in certain ways that connect the dots to a different conspiracy theory. So whether it's something like Great Replacement, new world order, you know, there's so many of these QAnon, these conspiracy theory communities have a very rich lore.
Then the other thing I want to quickly add is that now on X, you can monetize that engagement, right? So it's not just online clout or growing followers that maybe you can monetize on a different platform. It's that you can actually directly make money from your engagements.
The platform sets an incentive for the type of content that's created by.
Offering people an opportunity to make money on it. And this is one of the things that's happening. If you can be the first person out of the gate with a wild theory about a hurricane or a natural disaster or a mass shooting, unfortunately, the attention is going to go to you, whether you have the facts or not. And the financial perk is also then [00:17:00] going to go to you. And so it really creates a series of, misguided incentives in some ways.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The other major kind of crisis potentially looming when it comes to misinformation and disinformation is the election cycle. And given that the internet has evolved, there have been new platforms and new technologies that have emerged almost every four years. What are the threats that you're looking at when it comes to the next couple of weeks here?
RENEÉ DIRESTA: So since 2020, I'll say the internet has fragmented quite a bit, right? There's multiple new entrants, there's Truth Social, there's Blue Sky, there's Threads, there's Mastodon, people have left Twitter on the left, it is a little bit more of a right wing platform at this point, or seen that way by a lot of the people who are using it for political communication.
So there's a fragmenting of audiences. There is generative AI, right? And the question... I think generative AI is an enhancer. It's not that we didn't have propaganda before, right? [00:18:00] It's not that we can't be just as effective at spreading misleading information without generative AI. but it is a very interesting tool, unfortunately, when it comes to things like creating evidence to backstop a rumor or a claim, right?
So, you have some shifts, but ultimately I think it is going to be very much this process of rumors and election officials and and political leaders and political influencers in their communities really taking their responsibility seriously and taking the institution of democracy seriously, right?
And, being out there speaking the truth, correcting records as quickly as possible, rebutting rumors as soon as information is known, very proactively speaking, that's what I think that we need to see in this election as well.
Down the Rabbit Hole w/ Naomi Klein - The Dig - Air Date 10-8-24
DAN DENVIR - HOST, THE DIG: So, what happens with the pandemic and conspiracism? Because there is conspiracism, obviously, prior to the pandemic, but I used to listen to that AM radio show in college, Coast to [00:19:00] Coast, where people will call in and have recordings from hell that they would play or claim alien sightings or chemtrails, fake moon landing... it wasn't all harmless: 9/11 was an inside job, was a big thing in the aughts that sort of was always disrupting the, rest of the anti-war movement. But with the pandemic, there's, a shift from this less politically coherent conspiracist landscape to focused, systematic, politically far-right conspiracism. Anna Merlin calls it the "conspiracy singularity".
How and why does that happen when it does, this convergence and far-right systematization of conspiracism?
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, I think Trump plays a big role in this, right?, where he emerges with a conspiracy about Obama, and birtherism as a conspiracy. It's a racist conspiracy theory. And it's not new, [00:20:00] but he is a sort of internet troll come to life and, as you say, the conspiracy culture has existed for a long time. I've seen it in my reporting in disaster zones. I often hear of conspiracies about the disaster itself from people who don't have a lot of power and are being victimized by profiteering of different kinds. if they see that there is this disaster that is helping elites, and this is what the shock doctrine was about, right? And it wasn't a conspiracy. It was just disaster opportunism, really, and cynicism, and moving in very quickly in those moments with a pre-existing agenda. But, if you're the victim of that, it can feel like, Well, they must have caused the thing. I mean they must have blown up the levees in order to destroy public housing and public schooling in New Orleans.
But no one was getting rich off of that conspiracy theory, like, it was just a sort of a cry of the powerless. I remember [00:21:00] hearing when I was reporting on this huge tsunami in Asia, Christmas 2004, some people may remember this. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and then it became this land grab of the beachfront properties. And people who had been displaced internally to camps were told they couldn't come home to their small plots of land because hotel developers were now building. And I heard conspiracy theories then about how maybe it was an underwater nuclear weapon detonated by the United States in order to do this.
So, people's brains try to make sense of these sort of horrific events. I think what's different about the pandemic moment is that It was a combination of factors where we were dealing with a novel virus that science had not caught up to, and science is slow. And so there was a lag time between the event that was radically changing people's lives and was very unfair, [00:22:00] right?, people were being asked to make huge sacrifices. And what we know about other moments when people have been asked to make huge sacrifices, you know, thinking about the Second World War rationing or things like that, it's always incredibly important that it be seen as fair, that the system seemed to apply to the biggest industrialists as well as to working people. And there was no attempt to do that during COVID. It was so obvious that Jeff Bezos was having a field day with this. That, you mentioned the drug companies...
DAN DENVIR - HOST, THE DIG: Gavin Newsom dining in the French Laundry.
NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. Or, who was it? The David Geffen yacht shot. "I'm social isolating", right? It was just, there was a wildness to the fact that because of social media and people being on the same platforms, people were able to see these vastly different experiences of lockdown and no attempts to rein in the profiteering. So, people were looking for explanations. They were looking for social connection and science was taking its time as it [00:23:00] does. And grifters have no compunction to wait, right? So...
DAN DENVIR - HOST, THE DIG: The grifts are not peer reviewed,
NAOMI KLEIN: Right. So, it's like, Sign up for my seminar. You know, you had a lot of people working in that sort of health influencer space, which is already pretty grifty, right? They are losing a bunch of their revenue streams because they're not able to have in person seminars and things like that. Their yoga studios are locked down. And so they're looking for new revenue streams and it's both 'buy this tincture', but it's also, the whole thing is a scam. It's a scandemic. And one of the things that I trace in the book is the whole anti-vax world that predates COVID, right? And I do a bit of a deep dive into the autism parent community, which is a place I know something about, and all of the sort of dangerous pseudo-cures and conspiracy theories that swirl in parent communities, where they're looking for someone to blame for their child's neurodiversity.
So, that whole [00:24:00] infrastructure was ready to go. They just did a search and replace from MMR vaccines to COVID vaccines. And that's how you have a figure like RFK Jr. just bang ready to go with the documentaries and all of this literature. But the point is is that the attention economy allows conspiracies to be monetized in a way that was not true for these conspiracies that I'm describing, even the 9/11 conspiracy theories.
I mean, okay, the Loose Change guys. I don't know how much money they made, but it was nothing like the ability to monetize claims about some drug or other that you alone have figured out is going to cure COVID or, whatever it was.
DAN DENVIR - HOST, THE DIG: So, another important thing that happened during the pandemic was, you write, "the illusion of separateness fell away. We were not and never were self-made. We are made and unmade by one another." But then, suddenly, there's a giant reaction to this that you call a "revolt against connectedness". How did that happen, [00:25:00] the pandemic just dramatically running up against this profound deep-seated individualism, libertarian sensibility that's so pervasive in the U. S. and elsewhere? People are confronted with this harsh reality that their success and failure, their living or dying, is not determined by their own individual merit, that it depends on other people. How does that then lead to this reaction?
NAOMI KLEIN: Right. Not just other people. Not just any old people, right? Working class racialized people who are holding the world up, right? It's so weird to think about how much amnesia there is, like, about those early unveilings and the sort of people out there clapping for healthcare workers and thanking their delivery workers or the fact that we were learning more about what was going on inside Amazon warehouses or in prisons. I mean, there was [00:26:00] this moment of unveiling and who was dying most, again, at the highest rates, you know, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor called it a "Black plague". And that was intimately connected to who does the most dangerous work in our economy and who lives in the most polluted parts of our society and had some of the preexisting conditions that made COVID more lethal in those early days and who relied on public hospitals where the ratio of nurses to patient was like 30/1 compared to 2/1 in a private hospital, right? It unveiled so much that we've almost completely forgotten.
And I don't want to say, you know, the backlash, it's not the same people necessarily. There are some people who might have been out there clapping for health care workers who also joined the trucker convoy. But I think these are, for the most part, different groups of people. And a lot of the people who joined the anti-lockdown movements [00:27:00] or the movements against different kinds of health mandates were small entrepreneurs who played by the rules. Margaret Thatcher said there's no such thing as society and they took her at her word and they thought that their job was to take care of themselves and their families because that is what they were told their job was to do, that they did not owe things to people beyond that sort of inner circle. And then all of a sudden they were being asked to make sacrifices, do things they didn't want to do, like, get vaccinated in order to drive their truck across the border or close their yoga studio.
Media Literacy Can't Save Us Part 1 - Dummy - Air Date 10-7-24
IMNOTTHEDUMMY - HOST, DUMMY: Content warning here for White supremacy, mass violence, and death.
In the Southern Poverty Law Center's investigation into Dylan Roof's heinous hate crime of murdering nine African American citizens in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, the SPLC discovered traces of his radicalization through Google search results.
In his manifesto, Roof writes that he was prompted to "type in the words Black on White crime into Google, and I have never been [00:28:00] the same since that day". Simply clicking on the link permanently altered his media environment. As soon as the site loaded, the malicious site's cookies were downloaded on Roof's hard drive. The next time Dylan Roof made a Google search in a similar category, it used his previous search history to inform his results. As Roof sought out information to confirm his biases, the search results customized, displaying a unique media feed for Roof that persisted across various digital platforms.
This type of analysis is critical, not just because it's sobering, but because it reminds us of the influence of the medium. If we want to understand how the internet has uniquely radicalized the public and spread misinformation, we can't just look at individual pieces of content. No amount of PragerU debunkings can fix the internet's designed proclivity for misinformation.
What I'm advocating for here, then, is solutions that fit the medium. And in the modern day, that would look like... well, actually, what would that look like?
We can't rely solely on education to fix the problem of misinformation. We also have to look at our [00:29:00] current media ecology and advocate for things that would make it better. Before I talk about that, though, I want to make one final note on media literacy education. In this video, I've been mildly critical of media literacy education, but I want to make clear that this really isn't a takedown.
I continue to think that the teachers and advocates who push for media literacy education are doing something incredibly valuable. I think we ultimately want the same thing, but are talking about two different ways of getting at it that need to be able to complement each other and work together: an educational approach and an ecological approach.
And I also don't think it's quite as simple as me saying that their solution is individualistic and mine is systemic. There are plenty of ways to make systemic changes to education. For example, the national policy push for media literacy education in classrooms, which you can learn more about from the group Media Literacy Now, who has a map documenting where media literacy education exists in the United States and at what level.
But education can't fix everything on its own. Misinformation can't just be another problem that we ask teachers to solve for us. And given the [00:30:00] scale of the modern media's influence over all of us, I think we must analyze the technologies, regulations, and business models that create our media environment.
One thing I couldn't ignore when reviewing educational materials then was that a lot of them entirely avoid describing media ecology or being critical of media systems. I touched on this earlier, but I want to talk now about why I think that's actually doing a bit of a disservice to learners. And as an example, to make this clear, I want to talk about this resource that NAMLE has shared for parents, teaching them how to talk about media with their kids.
It takes an educational approach through and through, focused on guided inquiry to help students come to their own conclusions. They suggest that parents should ask questions and encourage their kids to think about the media products they're consuming. But why not also actively encourage skepticism about media products that are untrustworthy?
Take this example where a father and his son have a conversation about ads. The son really wants a new toy, but the dad asks questions until his son realizes that ads sometimes make things look cooler than [00:31:00] they actually are. It's educational best practice at its best, guided inquiry that helps the kid come to their own conclusion.
That's all well and good, but what if your son isn't capable of coming to this skeptical, literate conclusion on his own? Why not say at some point, Hey, by the way, advertisers exist and they want your money, they want to sell you things. I think we do a disservice when we don't come out and say that certain media are not designed with our best interests in mind.
Sometimes we must make our view on ecology explicit, even if it feels like telling people what to think as opposed to how to think. This is a point that Zoe and I went back and forth on a lot when talking about these educational and ecological approaches and their differences.
ZOE BEE: If you are going to pursue media literacy directly, it is easier to do that on an individual level. But I think that there are some systemic problems that, if you pursue them for the sake of helping to fix issues with media literacy, I don't think that's a very good reason to do them. [00:32:00] But I think that if you fix them for other reasons, like fixing the education system because it's dehumanizing to students, or fixing the regulations on media industries because they need them, I think that that's a good thing. I think that there are systemic things that we should fix because they need fixed, not necessarily as a media literacy solution, even though it would help fix some issues with media literacy downstream.
IMNOTTHEDUMMY - HOST, DUMMY: What do you think about teaching people about the operations of media industries, doing some of this critical media literacy education in the educational context in this more concrete way?
ZOE BEE: Yeah, that's definitely something that I think we need more of. Because there is a lot of talk of like, We need more media literacy classes. And it's like, Yeah, but what are you actually teaching them? How would those media literacy classes be any different than, say, an English class? And I think that that is what you're getting at, is like the first approach, which is [00:33:00] just asking your children or your students to ask questions, that's the English class approach to interacting with media; whereas, I think that critical media literacy angle is what would make that media literacy class actually important and relevant on its own, is that systemic view of things.
IMNOTTHEDUMMY - HOST, DUMMY: But even changing our education like this wouldn't be a true ecological solution. Ecological solutions require us to use technology or regulations to change the structure of a medium, to prevent it from repeating the harms that we know it's made before. My favorite version of this advocacy comes from Zeynep Tufekci, who, in a 2022 piece, argued for a right to general data privacy in the US as a means to combat misinformation.
Here's a quote. "Perhaps a starting point would be to make it harder and less lucrative to lie to huge audiences. Rather than pursuing legally dubious and inadvisable efforts to ban speech or define and target misinformation, regulations should target the incentives [00:34:00] for and the speed with which lies can be spread, amplified, and monetized. One part of the solution might be to target reckless data surveillance online by greatly limiting how much data can be collected, how long it can be retained, what it can be used for, and how it can be traded. Among other benefits, this could make chasing engagement less attractive as a business model".
I like this type of regulation because it specifically targets one of the novel harms of internet media, in this case, massive data targeting. If something like this were enacted, it could change our media environment for the better without having to pass a thousand rules about what you can and can't say online. If data were less plentiful, then online advertising would be less attractive for advertisers. This would divert some amount of advertising money back into local media, which would bolster that and diversify the media that we all consume. It would also change the media we see by changing our social media feeds, keeping us from being targeted by malicious actors or just normal advertisers.
A data privacy regulation would, in my opinion, be the holy grail of ecological solutions for [00:35:00] misinformation. But I also want to recognize that this type of regulation is probably entirely unpassable in the United States. I've talked before on this channel about how tech companies are perfectly designed for the modern regulatory apparatus. There's no chance in hell that something like this would get passed. There's simply way too much money on the line. So we probably need to focus on protecting each other more than hoping that someone else will come and save us.
One historical example I found of this came from a really excellent JSTOR blog piece by Alexandra Samuel. It documents the history of the first journalistic ethics codes in the United States as an effective means of curtailing misinformation, which was a huge problem in the era of yellow journalism.
The codes made formal definitions for things like advertisements, opinion pieces, and news, and required their signatories to cease the publication of false quotations in interviews. There's even evidence that this reduced misinformation at the time in the form of false publications. We're right now finding ourselves in a similar shift that was happening at the end of the 19th century, where new ad money is flooding in and supporting a generation of writers [00:36:00] that previously couldn't have done what they do.
The era of edutainment has brought some great writers and educators forward, but as their audiences grow and more and more people rely on them for information, they have an increased responsibility to produce that information responsibly. An ethics code for a new medium, ratified by content creators and internet publishers, might be a step in the right direction.
So, these would both be really helpful solutions that recognize ecology, that recognize the shift in the media landscape. But we also have to be careful that just because something sounds like it recognizes ecology doesn't mean that it's actually a good ecological solution. There are lots of things that use the language of ecological solutions when they are in fact just bad For example, fighting misinformation can often get dangerously close to censorship.
I'm generally not one to believe that the elites are gonna 1984 my brave new world or something, but I don't like regulations like COSA, the Proposed Kids Online Safety Act. COSA claims to protect children by giving State Attorneys General a mandate [00:37:00] to prevent and mitigate the harms of social media platforms, but this is not the type of regulation we should be going after to fight misinformation.
It gives too much power to too few people to control speech, codifying the problem I'm describing here, not fixing it. I am not content to replace Mark Zuckerberg with the United States government and call it a day. And I'm really especially not excited to do it when one of the bill's sponsors has referred to education on racial discrimination as "dangerous for kids."
How did grifters like Trump take over the GOP? - The Bunker - Air Date 9-25-24
JACOB JARVIS - HOST, THE BUNKER: Through the decades then you address three key groups: professional anti-communists, populist grifters like the Tea Party movement, and then religious charlatans.
Can you take me through a little bit, through these groups, their significance of when they emerged? And then also I want to ask, to your mind, which has been the most influential or shaping how the Conservative Party has changed?
JOE CONASON: The professional anti-communists were a phenomenon that emerged really early on in the 1950s and early 60s and formed the sort of core of the Goldwater [00:38:00] for President movement in 1964.
They came out of the red baiting investigations led by Senator McCarthy. And there were a number of people, all men or almost all men, who started businesses, basically, where they would go around the country and find ways to get gullible conservatives to give them money because of the worldwide communist conspiracy that, in their telling, had penetrated all of American society and was about to take over our country. And depending on which one you ask, they were either going to execute half the population, they were going to have the Chinese running everything from a hotel in San Francisco. Just crazy conspiracies, like some of the stuff on the internet today. And it was a way that they got people to send them wads of money. It was so absurd and crooked that even J. Edgar Hoover, who was then the FBI director and a famous [00:39:00] anti-communist in his own right, and not the most upright person in our history, even he was appalled by this, and he investigated these crooks and swindlers. And it was one of my favorite things in doing the research for the book that I found FBI files that tell all about Hoover's secret war against these people and what it was about them that upset him so much.
So I think they set a kind of tone of paranoia for the right, dating all the way back then, where it was okay to make up the wildest possible stories if they helped you to organize people around your movement and relieve them of big amounts of cash.
The populist conservatives, such as the Tea Party, come later, although there was that tone on the right for a long time, and it culminated in the Tea Party movement, which helped to give birth to Trump. Trump came in as a leading figure in the birther controversy to claim that Barack Obama was actually born in [00:40:00] Kenya and therefore not eligible to be president. It was a huge lie and a racist lie, and Trump was a leading figure in spreading that. And that made him a hero among the so-called populist conservatives. And they've had a important voice. I think that the Tea Party movement formed a core of MAGA, the Trump movement. It was a complete con and a grift. They were at war with each other over who was going to run the grift. There were several Tea Party organizations that were competing to get people's money and organize them and line them up eventually behind Trump.
And then the religious aspect of it, the sort of religious right, also has existed in different forms for a really long time. The professional anti-communists included some figures who used religious themes in their propaganda and their radio shows and other types of media. And we've seen it [00:41:00] mutate over the years from, at one point, the Moral Majority led by Jerry Falwell, which started out as a fundraising project led by the chief fundraiser, Richard Viguerie, who was behind it all and convinced Falwell to start the Moral Majority because he said there was a lot of money in it. And then has taken different forms since then. Very critical to Trump's rise and power, because the evangelical right is such a huge proportion of the Republican party vote now.
And those kinds of quote unquote religious leaders, many of whom promote something called the prosperity gospel, Jacob, which is just an unbelievable thing where they say -- and that envelopes millions of Americans -- where they tell people that they are prophets of God and you have to send them money in order to have the favor of a heaven, which will then make you rich in turn, cure your health [00:42:00] problems, make you happy. And it's incredible how many people fall for this. It was those grifters of the prosperity gospel who raised Trump up in 2015 as their candidate, at a time when evangelical Christians were skeptical, quite naturally, of a figure like Trump, who had been divorced and was clearly not particularly religious, and yet the prosperity gospel preachers rallied around Trump, helped him to defeat Ted Cruz, who actually was an evangelical Christian.
And the reason is, as I say in the book, they see in Trump a kindred spirit. They see in Trump somebody like them. A remorseless crook who rips off people by deceiving them, but does it with a level of charisma and talent for television and big audiences that reflects a lot of what [00:43:00] makes the prosperity gospel such a huge movement in this country.
JACOB JARVIS - HOST, THE BUNKER: It's not one of the most kind of intriguing thing about these grifters as well as not just that they fleece money from people, but who they fleece it from. It's like a such a fraud in plain sight. They take it straight from the people who support them. It's not like they're doing this to gain power to then get money more broadly. They are very much directly gaining support and then taking the money from their supporters entirely. It's just, it's all very almost open, but they still manage to dupe people.
JOE CONASON: Yes, that's an important point. They have almost a hermetic world that they exist in, and this is one of the reasons that they hate the mainstream media so much, because the mainstream media in America sees people grifting off of elderly, sort of defenseless conservatives, and the impulse of reporters like me, I'm an investigative journalist, is to [00:44:00] expose that kind of thing.
And so when it's exposed, the next thing that happens is government may tend to intervene, as it has occasionally against some of these prosperity gospel types, and they hate that too.
So there's a way in which right wing ideology really serves their purpose. It's anti government. It's hostile to media exploration and facts in general, and that's a great way for them to protect themselves from this kind of scrutiny that might put an end to what they're doing.
So yes, they're preying on conservatives. And one of the reasons, by the way, in this book, I tried very hard not to quote liberals very much. My orientation in writing this book and researching it was to show that there are some conservatives and to quote those people and their research who object to all of this swindling and scamming and who think it's a stain on their movement and who expect conservatism to live up [00:45:00] to the civic virtue and moral values that it's supposedly espouses. And to quote them, to say, look, real conservatives understand just how toxic this is and are exposing it.
JACOB JARVIS - HOST, THE BUNKER: There's a wider thing here as well. Obviously, your book focuses on the American conservative movement. And when we speak about Trump and we speak about this sort of shift, we look at the damage there.
But there's another quite depressing thing about this. The way that they are now so entrenched in this, it's not stopping. They want to also damage everyone else. So for example, the sort of smears they've used against people like Tim Walz and saying it's stolen valor and these sort of made up criticisms, they now, it's hit this peak for American conservatism.
And for it to keep working, they now feel like they have to drag everyone else down with them. Do you think they can be effective in that, in trying to make it look like, it's not just us, actually all of politics is like this now, we're all the same.
JOE CONASON: I think they'd [00:46:00] like to do that. I think that's exactly what the Harris campaign is fighting against.
The slogan, "We're not going back" is very specifically aimed at that attempt to scare everyone. And by the way, I would say it's worse than what you just described. They want to take the whole world down with them, okay? This is not just about our country. It's certainly about Europe and the UK, and it's really about the entire world.
They want to have a ethno nationalist world in which there are no guardrails against the very worst excesses that Trump represents, and it's a danger, I believe, to everybody.
Note from the Editor on the scam of political fundriasing
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Jessie Dollemore discussing an array of Trump's best grifts. Bloomberg Technology looked at Trump's turn to crypto. Amanpour and Company explained the political benefits of misinformation. The Dig spoke with Naomi Klein about the destructive fire of conspiracism. Dummy looked at the inadequacy of [00:47:00] media literacy to fight back against the structural forces of disinformation. And The Bunker discussed the deep history of grifters preying primarily on conservatives in the US.
And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section.
But first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here at discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often trying to make each other laugh in the process. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new, members-only podcast feeds that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support; there's a link in the show notes; through our Patreon page; or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. Members also get chapter markers in the show, but depending on the app you use to listen, you may be able to use the time codes in the show notes to jump around the show, similar to chapter markers, so check that out.
If regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't [00:48:00] let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.
Now, before we continue on to the Deeper Dives half of the show, I have a bit of news to share.
CNN did a report recently about one of the biggest, most blatant scams in politics, under the headline, "How elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political campaigns." And I couldn't help but be reminded of all of the references to elder abuse during the weeks following the debate between Biden and Trump as I read the story.
In short, the predatory and deceptive outreach techniques used by political campaigns, heightened by polarization and reinforced by a fundraising mechanism that subtly tricks people into unwittingly signing up for recurring donations, is bleeding elderly donors, many with various stages of dementia, completely dry. The article points out that it's a problem with both parties technically, but this is [00:49:00] definitely not a "both sides do it so they cancel each other out" sort of situation. Quote, "While studies show that older Americans tends to lean more Republican, both parties have continued to rake in donations from elderly voters. And mainstream Republican candidates have only doubled down on this strategy using more aggressive and predatory tactics than those used by Democrats, according to donor complaints, interviews with experts and a review of solicitations. The Republican fundraising machine has been subject to more than 800 complaints to the Federal Trade Commission since 2022, nearly seven times more than the number of complaints lodged against the other side." End quote.
And when you get into the individual stories, it is absolutely heartbreaking. Here's just the overview. "Donors identified by CNN were often in their eighties and nineties. They included [00:50:00] retired public workers, house cleaners, and veterans, widows living alone, nursing home residents and people who donated more money than they paid for their homes, according to records and interviews. The money they gave came from pensions, social security payments, and retirement savings accounts meant to last decades. Donors took out new credit cards and mortgages to pay for the contributions. In some cases, they gave away most of their life savings. Their cell phones and email inboxes were so full of pleas for money that they missed photos of their grandkids and other important messages." End quote.
Just a couple of the highlights of individual stories includes the Taiwanese immigrant who, quote, "had given away more than $180,000 to Trump's campaign and a litany of other Republican candidates, writing letters to candidates apologizing for not getting donations to them on time, because she was going into [00:51:00] heart surgery. In the end, she had only $250 in her bank account when she died, leaving her family scrambling to cover the cost of her funeral."
And another story. " An 81 year old from Arizona believed he had been in personal communication with former president Trump through all the messages he was receiving." Among other things, he thought that he was actually being invited to Mar-a-Lago as a VIP, but because he was a farmer his whole life, he wasn't sure he'd fit in at a place as classy as Mar-a-Lago. But it says, quote, "He would look forward to the emails and texts and especially the ones thanking him for being a true American Patriot when he donated his money. This eventually led him to give about $80,000, leaving him tens of thousands of dollars in debt." End quote.
Again, in terms of money raised compared between the Trump and Biden campaigns and the complaints filed with [00:52:00] the FTC, we are talking orders of magnitude for this being more of a problem with Republican campaign practices over Democrats. But Democrats are not immune. "While many mainstream Democratic candidates have backed away from the practice, both the Trump and Harris campaigns have recently been using donation pages with pre-checked recurring boxes to raise money, a CNN analysis of fundraising emails and Facebook and Instagram ads found." End quote.
And the article only goes as far as condemning those pre-check boxes, I would go further, but it says, quote, "Currently pre-checked boxes for recurring donations are allowed in almost every state, despite widespread condemnation of the practice from consumer advocates. Federal legislation introduced in recent years that would have prevented their use died in committee without gaining traction." End quote.
As I said, I would go farther. It's utterly predictable how our campaign financing systematically victimizes people in [00:53:00] effectively every way from the big picture disconnect between policy outcomes and the general public, all the way down to the individual horrors that this article is highlighting, draining the well-meaning elderly of their retirement savings. And it reminds me of the old saying about the lottery being basically a tax on those who can't do math. This style of campaign fundraising turns out to be a massive tax on those who care passionately about the country and politics, but are unable to read the fine print, track their donations, and in many cases, see through the rhetoric to understand fact from fiction. I mean, what more needs to happen before we see the benefits of publicly funding elections? Politicians are always going to gravitate towards doing the bidding of the people who provide the campaign cash. If those people were the general public, they would be indebted to us rather than corporations and billionaires. This style [00:54:00] of fundraising from the public clearly devolves into a scam, but does not translate at all to doing the bidding of the people.
The only fig leaf of an argument against banning private money in campaigns is to equate money with speech and file it under the First Amendment. But just as with the problem with social media platforms geared towards amplifying the most outrageous things through their networks, it's much less of a problem with which speech of the loud and much more about the degree of reach that's available. If corporations and billionaires want to use their speech, that's one thing. If they want to buy reach, that's a completely different category.
Meanwhile, the benefits of publicly funding campaigns continues to pile up.
SECTION A - GRIFT
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up, Section A: Grift, followed by Section B: Scams, Section C: Conspiracy, and Section D: Misinformation.
Russell Brand Has A New Grift - Novara Media - Air Date 10-16-24
AARON BASTANI - HOST, NOVARA MEDIA: Disgraced at former comedian and Hollywood star Russell Brand has spent years peddling conspiracy theories on YouTube, [00:55:00] and just last year, he was accused of rape, sexual assault, and emotional abuse by four women, one of whom was as young as 16 at the time. Those are accusations that Brand denies. And since then, he's been baptized by Bear Grylls in an attempt to rebrand himself as a born again Christian, although he might be Catholic because he's videos where he's praying the rosary.
Anyway, it now seems he might be struggling for cash these days.
RUSSEL BRAND: Hello, I'm just back from Narnia, where I had a holiday, Mr. Tumnus, Aslan, all those guys. And as you know, airports are places full of Wi Fi and all sorts of evil energies. Think all the phones out there, all of the signals, corruptible and corrupting.
Luckily, I wear this magical amulet from Airsteck that keeps me safe from all of the various signals out there. And also means, look at this, look how strong I am. I think this is making me more, more powerful as a matter of fact, look at that. This stuff is absolutely packed with Airsteck. I didn't even bring any socks, or toothbrush, or [00:56:00] dog meats, or anything like that.
Just completely full of Airsteck. You should get one as well, particularly if you're planning to go to an airport anytime soon, because the bloody things are full of lethal signals. Airsteck, a glorious amulet to protect you from corrupting signals.
AARON BASTANI - HOST, NOVARA MEDIA: Was this a satire? I don't think it was because, well, we know it wasn't a satire. He's flogging these amulets for, well, they cost 180, the amulets. I mean, they probably cost about 180p to make, probably not even that. Big markup on them, I'm sure. I'm sure a lot of markups going towards Russell Brand. Uh, just crazy.
You're calling yourself a Christian and then you've got a pagan amulet, which is fine. But to stop Wi Fi in airports specifically. Dalia, what do you make of this?
DALIA GEBRIAL: This is why financial literacy is so important because how are you, someone who was probably making millions and millions of pounds overnight [00:57:00] suddenly so, Strap for cash that you are flogging pagan amulets on the internet Like I just I don't understand where all your cash went, but I mean, it's just it's deeply embarrassing But I also think there's something to be said about this trend of men You know allegedly abusing their power doing all sorts of things and then when they get caught out Turning around and saying, well, I've seen the light, you know, I found God and it's like, look, I'm not gonna cast judgment on people's spiritual journeys.
I'm not going to say whether or not I believe something like that. It's deeply personal. But what I would say is that what I know of most, you know, spiritual journeys is that it involves some kind of accountability. And for me, it's like, if you've made this claim to suddenly seeing the light and being a better person, when that comes without any accountability, any recognition, any, you know, any kind of, like, just realization or self awareness of the harm that you've caused to, to other people in [00:58:00] the ways in which you've allegedly abused your power, then really, you've not really been on a That to me is a telltale sign that you've not been on a spiritual journey or just trying to be on a journey of saving your own ass.
AARON BASTANI - HOST, NOVARA MEDIA: I couldn't agree more. There's a tweet that he posted recently saying about how wonderful it is to be redeemed or whatever. I can't remember the exact formulation. Doesn't work like that, right? Um, uh, the Catholic church is about forgiveness, asking for forgiveness every day. Every day you've transgressed, somebody Forgive me.
And I forgive the people who transgress me. That's the point, right? It's meant to be about forgiveness. And of course in, in Islam, you know, submission. Uh, this is not the same as I'm redeemed. All the bad stuff I've done is all forgiven now. Great. I can sell amulets on Tik Tok. Uh, I don't think that's how it works anyway.
GRIFTER-CON Morons Did Not Disappoint - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 10-1-24
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: This is Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson. They are out in front of the, and they're talking about the crazy diversity, uh, of the, at the restore the Republic event.
I mean, the diversity went from like all the way from like Rubin [00:59:00] through Peterson to Incidentally, they were on tour together with each other like four years ago. Um, all the way to, um, let's see, uh, Brett Weinstein, uh, another member of the IDF and then all the way to Russell Brand. Who is now a, um, extremely religious person.
I'm, I think he's probably getting to the point where he probably wouldn't even show up with, uh, Dave Rubin around because of Dave Rubin is a sinner. Um They'd want to baptize him. Yeah, he'd get it. But also, to be fair, Matt Taibbi and, um, uh, Jimmy Dore were there. Also, uh, Tulsi Gabbard and, uh, wasn't like Jack Posobiak.
I actually took a screenshot of one of the posters because it was interesting to see who was written up in dark, like, letters. Like, you know, like on the cloud. It's like one of those, like, cloud, uh, you know, word clouds. And, um [01:00:00] And who got top billing is interesting to me as well. Yeah. I wonder how much his people got for showing up.
Can
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: we
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: hold that
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: up Bradley?
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: The, the poster. Can you find that here? I'm going to send it to Matt. Uh, Matt has it on as I am, but like I'll read off some of Rob Schneider. And
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: he got top billing.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: He got top billing, but here's the thing. Like I say, this poster, Matt, if you can pop this up, uh, it's at the, uh, join the resistance.
org, rescue the Republic, join the resistance. They said that twice on the poster. Cause it's that important. Um, Rob Schneider is on there, but he is in the lightest color font. You almost don't see it in skillet skillet. I think it's
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: posted twice. Who's skillet? I don't know.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's a band, Brett Weinstein. He's in dark, uh, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Tulsi Gabbard, Tennessee jet.
Is that a band? Yeah, here it is. Okay. And look at this. So, um, [01:01:00] you can see the big bold names are Brett Weinstein, Tennessee jet, Dr. Robert Malone, one of the, uh, uh, leading lights in, uh, COVID denialism. Yeah. Um, Senator Ron Johnson gets the same color font as Rob Schneider. Like there's three. Darknesses, right?
There's the Rob Schneider, there's the skillet, and there's Brett Weinstein on the top there, and, you know, the, the, the darkest ones. And there's no
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: rhyme or, I was skeptical of what you were saying, but there's no rhyme or reason to the, the color choice, like, It just rotates. It doesn't look aesthetically, but it's all bunched in the middle.
It goes light, medium, dark. Oh, they must be thinking
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: about who they want to, um, promote. I, I definitely think it could be,
MATT LECH: but it literally goes light, medium, dark, light, medium, dark, light, medium, dark. Yeah. Successively.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, it doesn't look like it's done alphabetically. I think they choose That's true. So Charlie Kirk is dark.
You want Rob Schneider and Skillet at the top of it.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Oh, and don't worry, Skillet's posted again as the last person, if you see there. Skillet twice!
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But wait a second. You know who I don't see on that list is, uh, what's his face? [01:02:00] Oh, oh yeah. Russell Brand. Russell Brand is, uh, is a lighter color. So isn't Robert Kennedy Jr.
Uh, Ty's up there. Tyler Fisher, I don't know. Eric Bowling. Brandon Straka gets a bold lettering,
MATT LECH: I'm gonna guess five times. August is also a band, although I've never heard of that in my Jack Pak. Uh, he is
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: a, um, uh,
MATT LECH: naval
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: intelligence, right. Winger guy. Yeah. Um, Tell
BRADLEY: Big Tree, who's a big anti vaxxer, who Brandon
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Strzok is on there twice!
So is Skillet, that's what I'm saying. This is d This is done so ha So sloppily.
MATT LECH: Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's a big tent of diversity. I mean, one way to characterize it Laura Logan? I mean,
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: it is awesome
MATT LECH: that they're letting her out on leave, uh, to go to this event. You got Zionists and you got people afraid of needles.
And a lot of both, um, so.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And you know how you, uh, make it seem like the event is even bigger than it is? You listen. Uh, two of the speakers twice, or two of [01:03:00] the performers slash speakers twice on your poster.
MATT LECH: It's Freak Cogello. I mean,
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: crowd that thing up.
MATT LECH: I, I don't want to give these freaks advice, but I would just say, like, usually when you make a post like this, you put the most notable names at the top.
And I don't, maybe Rob Schneider's that. Um, I guess, but like, I, I, I mean, maybe put Russell Brand and RFK up there, I, I don't know. But
BRADLEY: even Charlie Kirk's, like, the last, on the last, uh, you know, line there was just a little surprising.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Um, here is, uh, uh, Jordan Peterson. And, uh, Dave Rubin, uh, speaking to this crowd to restore the Republic.
DAVE RUBIN: And we should note, you know, just even relative to where we're standing right now with the Washington Memorial behind us and, and the Jefferson Memorial and, and the Lincoln Memorial that these, this country was founded on the idea that we were going to be different. We were going to be different and think different things.
And I guarantee you, if we polled every single one of you out here, this would probably be the widest tent of political [01:04:00] thought in America today. That is rare.
JORDAN PETERSON: The other thing that's, that's interesting about this team, you know, I, I think putting together a revolutionary team in a, in a political landscape is always a dangerous thing because mostly what, what you want from your political leaders when everything is working well is sort of calm and predictable stability so that you can ignore the political and you can get on with your own life and that'd be a lovely thing to see.
And now you have in front of you a relatively revolutionary cabal. L of potential leaders, and there's peril in that. But one of the things that constrains that and hems that in, in the most appropriate possible way, is the fact that all of the people who are putting themselves forward are patriots.
They're American patriots, they're pro-human, and, uh, you're, what
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: is he talking about?
JORDAN PETERSON: Strong advocates for free speech. And[01:05:00]
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: it doesn't seem like there's a ton of people there either. I gotta say. I mean, no, I'm looking for. You got a lot of people on that bill, and I don't know, maybe you can't hear it from the stage. So I feel like it's less than a typical Jordan Peterson show. I sort of feel like that now, just if you're listening at home, uh, uh, Jordan Peterson is wearing a.
Two toned suit that is divided right down the middle. Oh, blue, red and blue. I see. That's very clever.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: He raided Heath Ledger's closet from the Dark Knight or something. So strange. Um, He really is. It's like he's attempting to be a joker. Yeah. All right. Well, let's
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: listen to Brett Weinstein because here's the thing.
There is a wide range of political voices at this conference, but you should know That some of them are provocateurs. They are, of course, feds. And how will you know that they're feds? Because [01:06:00] at this, there's no way there's anybody at this, uh, Rescue the Republic, uh, um, meeting who are in any way racist or, uh, anti Semitic or fashy in any way.
And if you see them, I have an explanation as to why you see them. They
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: just want to mar
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: her.
BRETT WEINSTEIN: Now, as long as we're on the topic of fears, let's confront one directly. If, as the event proceeds, you find yourself faced with someone displaying Nazi symbols, inciting violence or lawlessness, or you encounter a group of people dressed in paramilitary garb, those are assuredly federal agents.
Thank them for their service and move on.
BRADLEY: Crap's abound.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Thank you for your service.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: That's not what That's a
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: very, very tight crowd shot. Some of you are no doubt
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: thinking there's It really is. Let's
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: listen to a little bit more. The weather didn't do
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: them any favors.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, I mean, [01:07:00] it's, that is like, they're just like, that's a tight crowd shot, which is
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Also, is it a big tent?
Because I'm seeing a MAGA hat, not a ton of diversity in the crowd.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: They all have a different, uh, they have different political ideas. Like some people think that, uh, COVID was, um, uh, planned and other people think that it was a, um, Uh, a bioweapon. And other people think that it never really even happened.
It was a hoax, yeah. So the full range of beliefs about COVID are there. This is a moron parade.
BRETT WEINSTEIN: Now some of you are no doubt thinking there's something odd about a mission to rescue the republic that includes many speakers from abroad. Yeah. But this is actually a testament to the achievements of the founding generation. Our founding fathers almost accidentally invented the modern west. That's right.
They did it because they had to balance the tensions between the various [01:08:00] colonies in order to persuade them to confederate. The careful job that they did, balancing the various concerns, created a prototype for a world that was not rigged in anybody's direction.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Hey guys, I wanted this to be a fun event.
Uh, what's going
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: on? Not rigged in anybody's direction? Uh, I think slaves would have to differ. I guess we
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: should have gotten that, um, I guess we should have gotten that teleprompter. How do we get South Carolina? We got to do what
MATT LECH: the, we're the founders. We need to be, we need to do what's best for equality in the future.
How do we get South Carolina to join us?
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, we're going to play in a sec, Russell Brand praying on stage or whatever, but do you know this, how they use this kind of religious language about the founding fathers as if they are our date, like deities in and of themselves. I mean, they bestowed upon us this nation, this it's, it's like religious, um, A religious view of what a nation state is, as opposed to what America actually was, which was, it was forged by conquest and genocide.[01:09:00]
Actually, it was a big gift from our daddies. Oh, right.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Our sky God, George Washington. Thank
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: you.
SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: All right. So Russell Brand showed up, um, as well. Um, and, uh, I don't think he took Diddy's plane, but honestly, like, not this time. Uh, like I look at this and I honestly think like, is this the. Rescue the Republic, or is this like an SNL parody of it, which is, and I want to make it clear, like, I don't think the SNL parody would be that much more entertaining than this either, uh, but this does not look real to me.
It looks like we, it's like, it's, it's so bizarre. What they have done here, and you know everybody thought they were going to make a lot of cash, and they didn't, and they're
MATT LECH: pissed. As somebody who's been following Russell Brand for about 15 years, uh, not always as a fan, um, Uh, he is not sincere about this at all.
Russell Brand And The Conspiracy Grift - Media Matters - Air Date 1-2-24
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: Brand views keep climbing. And as they do, his video titles get more and more ridiculous. At the start of this transformation, it's, Was Trump right? [01:10:00] Trump was right. Trump is right. But pretty quickly, Bran's channel goes full clickbait. It's starting! Here we go! It begins! Why is no one stopping?
It just happened. This will destroy us. This will end us. It's over. The end. All this gloom and doom paranoia brings brand a new financial opportunity. Sponsorships. In 2021, brand's videos start including advertisements for supplements, groceries, The
RUSSEL BRAND: world's first probiotic to support gut, brain, and immune health.
And God knows you need good natural immunity these days! Right, kids? Greens powders. Field of Greens is a science backed formula of specific fruits and vegetables you won't find in any other product. Then There is a way to secure your hard earned nest egg. American Heart for Gold make it easy to protect your savings and retirement accounts with
physical gold.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: And Brand isn't doing this alone. He starts inviting more and more right wing guests onto his show. In 2021, he interviews Ben Shapiro and it becomes one of his most viewed videos of all [01:11:00] time. Shapiro invites Brand on his show, you know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
RUSSEL BRAND: Russell, thanks so much for joining the show.
It's great to talk to you. Wow man, you do a good job of this. Thanks Ben.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: His new shtick gets him invited on other shows too. He goes on Joe Rogan to complain about the Democrats.
RUSSEL BRAND: I don't think that they are creating an agenda to advance the interests of vulnerable people.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: He goes on Bill Maher to complain about MSNBC.
I've been on that MSNBC mate, it was propaganda. And then in 2023 he goes on Fox News, the network he has spent his career criticizing. Not as a critic, but as a fan.
TUCKER CARLSON: Russell Brand has been an actor, a comedian, a podcast host for decades. All of a sudden, he's one of the most forceful voices for the truth in the English speaking world.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: So what happened here? Is it possible that Russell Brand genuinely had a radical change of heart and mind in less than a year? Maybe? I mean, I'm not in his brain. Thank God. But there's a simpler explanation for what's happening here. Call it Rift Drift. See, the problem with the kind of free thinking that Russell was doing in his lefty era is that it's hard to sell.
[01:12:00] Sure, Rand can complain about Fox News and talk about how the media sensationalizes things to keep us watching, but like, then what? How many times can you tell people they need to focus on more serious issues, like environmental justice or antitrust laws or possible alternatives to capitalism? Like, oh my god, it's so hard.
So boring. There's no story arc. There's no heroes and villains. There's no sex. And more importantly, there's no reason to keep coming back. If the problem is that corporate media sensationalizes things, then why not turn it off? You could just stop watching Vox. Go outside. Touch grass. Call your mom, tell her you love her, find a stranger, give him a kiss consensually, start a religion, I don't know.
What's the point in watching Brand make the same argument over and over and over again? In his self proclaimed last episode of The Trues, even Brand admitted that he was bored of making these same free thinking arguments about the media.
RUSSEL BRAND: How far can you go with this cyclical, uh, [01:13:00] reporting on cyclical news.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: So then what is brand really selling? What's brand's brand? Do people really want to watch a washed up comedian explain how money corrupts us or how we need a global revolution against corporate power? Obviously not. Turns out free thinking is hard to monetize.
RUSSEL BRAND: It can't be good, can it, to spend all this time, our eyes, Resting on screens, people on the other side of the screen, hiding, trying to sell us something.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: The more people can actually think for themselves, the less they need carnival barkers like Brand to tell them what's what. And that's bad for engagement. Conspiracy theories give grifters like Brand a way to keep making money. First, you scare your audience.
RUSSEL BRAND: Globalist agenda, the relationship between governments, big business, and a corrupt media are able to crush any dissent.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: Then, you keep them loyal. Only I can be trusted, because everyone else is lying to you.
RUSSEL BRAND: You have to find figures, like me, that you
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: trust in media, and get your information from them. Brands videos will often hammer this message home with [01:14:00] titles like, We predicted this, and we saw this coming, and we knew it.
And then, once you've got them loyal to you, you charge them. Give me money so I can keep exposing the truth. All those other sources, they'll lie to you. I would never do that because
RUSSEL BRAND: I love you. I love you, and so, if you believe in free speech, standing up to power, refusing to believe their lies, and finding new truths together, Then join my AwakendWonders community.
Money please!
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: In 2022, Bran launched a locals community where fans could pay 60 a year to talk to each other and see some extra videos of him.
RUSSEL BRAND: Click that red button now and join our movement. Bathe in the rapture. Become an AwakendWonder. And people say this is like a
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: cult. They sure do. And to be fair, he's not the first cult leader to do this.
In fact, Brand's conspiracy schtick is almost identical to what another conspiracy theorist has been doing for the last 20 years. Alex [01:15:00] Jones.
ALEX JONES: I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin frogs gay!
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: Like Brand, Jones billed himself as an anti establishment free thinker.
ALEX JONES: They just want to extinguish thinkers.
Because it's like a big bright light in a room of vampires, they don't like it.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: Like Brand, he used conspiracy theories to keep his viewers loyal to him.
ALEX JONES: Folks, I've been told this by high up folks, they say, listen, Obama and Hillary both smell like sulfur.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: And like Brand, he used that loyalty to make money, selling everything from nutritional supplements to doomsday prep supplies.
ALEX JONES: To investment in freedom. And fighting the global said we need the funds desperately.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: At one point in 2018, Jones's show was making $800,000 a day. Do you have any idea how much $800,000 a day is? I don't like. What is that number? As the New York Times reported Jones's fundamental insight was that his audience is also a nearly captive market for the goods.
He pedals products intended to assuage the same fear as he stokes.
ALEX JONES: This is do or die time. If you want to keep us on [01:16:00] air, they are trying to silence you. They're trying to take down the leading voice of resistance.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: But while Jones and Brand may be using the same shtick, there's one big difference between them.
See, Alex Jones had to build his conspiracy empire from the ground up.
ALEX JONES: Well, I can assure you, I don't make any money off public access.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: In 1999, Jones got fired from his local radio station for being a wacko. And he had to start broadcasting his radio show independently from his own house. Anytime he dabbled in conspiracy theories, he'd get yeeted by a bunch of radio stations, making it harder to reach new audiences.
He was a fringe outlier, and it took him decades in obscurity before he got enough attention to break into the mainstream. But now, we're in the golden age of grifters, baby! Thanks to YouTube, Bran was making an estimated 2, 000 to 4, Per video posting every day. That's up to $1.46 million a year in YouTube alone.
At the end of 2022, brand used his YouTube channel to announce he was moving to Rumble, a right-wing video platform that's riddled with Q Anon and anti-vax [01:17:00] conspiracy theorists.
RUSSEL BRAND: We have had to move to Rumble. to assure that we are not censored fervor. We would prefer you joined us on Rumble.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: He got an exclusive deal with Rumble producing a show called Stay Free, which is ironic considering how often he uses it to beg for money.
RUSSEL BRAND: We need you with us now more than ever.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: Rand is airing his comedy special, Randemic, directly on Locals, which is a crowdfunding site for free speech proponents who've been banned from Patreon that's owned by, oh would you look at that, Rumble. And while he still posts on YouTube, he mainly uses it to Steer fans towards platforms where he can charge them money.
If conspiracy theorists can keep some form of presence on a mainstream platform, they will because they understand that the purpose of that is to reach new audiences. They will use Altech platforms for more extreme content, speaking to a harder audience. Join us on Rumble every single day. This is the new reality of the.
free thinking grift economy. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones used to have to worry about going too far and losing access to mainstream platforms, but now they [01:18:00] don't need them. Like, Bran Jones is now broadcasting a show on Rumble, Joe Rogan has the biggest podcast on Spotify, Tucker Carlson gets millions of views on Twitter, and there are dozens of popular conspiracy theory channels on YouTube.
These grifters are constantly cross pollinating. Tucker goes on Bran's show, then Bran goes on Rogan, then Rogan goes on Jones, and Jones uses his show to direct his viewers back to Tucker.
ALEX JONES: We're very, very proud of you, Tucker, and your team.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: It's a circuit of conspiracy grifters all going on each other's platforms so they can sell their viewers merch and subscriptions.
RUSSEL BRAND: So many of Alex Jones ideas have entered into the mainstream. He's a brilliant person to talk to. He's an extraordinary man.
ABBIE RICHARDS - HOST, MEDIA MATTERS: Brand isn't a free thinker. He's a performer who is adapting his act to whatever he thinks will make him the most money. And now that there's an entire conspiracy economy to profit off, he won't be the last.
Some Grifters Who Finally Faced Consequences – SOME MORE NEWS -Air Date 9-25-24
CODY JOHNSTON - SOME MORE NEWS: Here's some news. George Santos is probably going to jail. That's neat. Remember him? He's that former messy US representative and weird liar who lied about everything and was part of the [01:19:00] stop the steal movement, a famous weird lie.
Well, it turns out that when you lie a lot and do fraudulent things and just. Say stuff about people, you can get in trouble for that. I know that sounds outlandish, especially if you've watched this show. Especially, especially if you've watched this show talking about the many right wing grifters that can apparently just openly lie about stuff and continue to be supported by enablers and rubes.
But it turns out that actions can have consequences. Just ask the transphobic and Nazi adjacent super friends, Elon Musk and JK Rowling, currently being named in a lawsuit for saying a bunch of lies online. And boy, these guys are not alone. Literally, as we were writing this, Tim Poole and Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson were exposed as.
Unwitting Russian assets making millions of dollars and maybe pushing propaganda for what they thought was a Belgian investor. Despite that person having no online record and their name being misspelled multiple times on documents. And they still did it. They saw [01:20:00] somebody offer 100, 000 for a video garnering like 5, 000 views and they didn't stop to think, Um, Who's benefiting from this besides me and this ridiculous amount of money I suddenly have?
They willingly repeated the propaganda for money because it turns out that grifters tend to be very stupid and willing to say anything if you pay them. And that's all to say that it's very nice to see these liars facing real consequences for their many, many lies. And so we thought it would be fun. For a change to actually check in with these weird lying freak liars and see how that's going for them, you know, to laugh and point and perhaps some combination of the two.
The internet age, people have forgotten that you can't just. say things online, even people who own entire social media sites. We've far evolved past the days of anonymous usernames on forums and chat zones, spelled with three Z's, but I won't tell you where, as the internet has pretty much taken over reality as we [01:21:00] know it.
And while that sucks and blows, the one silver lining is that very stupid liars seem completely comfortable saying very incriminating things in writing for everyone to see and scrutinize and litigate. So let's look at those dips. Think of it like a, like a, where are they now for red hot spite? And speaking of red things, Alex Jones, a lifetime of pain and pain.
No better appetizer than InfoWars founder, host and cherry flavored baked potato, Alex Jones. Yummers. Well, you know, Jones, he's that conspiracy theorist and brain pill spokesman known for making such brave and bold claims like the Boston bombing was staged or that the Obama administration tested weapons that controlled the weather or that aliens were making cybernetic slaves to serve the devil.
Actually, that last one. Kind of wish that was real. Or at least a movie. You know, give Ron Perlman and Peter Stormare some work for crying out loud! Anyway, speaking [01:22:00] of crying out loud, Jones kind of got away with being a conspiracy party clown until he decided to profit off of the actual death of children, which, for a party clown, is generally frowned upon.
MEGYN KELLY: Alex Jones repeatedly claimed that the shooting never happened. Here he is on InfoWars in December 2014. Uh, but it took me about a year with Sandy Hook to come to grips with the fact that the whole thing was fake. You said, The whole thing is a giant hoax. How do you deal with a total hoax? It took me about a year with Sandy Hook to come to grips with the fact that the whole thing was fake.
I did deep research and my gosh, it just pretty much didn't happen.
CODY JOHNSTON - SOME MORE NEWS: Stumped by Megyn Kelly! All you have to do is say Santa is white, bro, she will hug you! Calling the Sandy Hook tragedy fake naturally upset the surviving parents and families of those real, actual, factually dead children, especially when InfoWars fans kept harassing and accusing them [01:23:00] of being crisis actors.
So they successfully sued Jones for real, actual, factual defamation and won a whopping 1. 5 billion with a big O. B. Dollars in damages. Jones had to file for bankruptcy because, you know, that's what should happen if you lose a billion bucks, especially a billion and a half. Not that anyone should have a billion dollars to begin with, of course, but we're not talking about that today.
Not only did Jones lose his stake in InfoWars and his media company, which is apparently called Free Speech Systems, but he has to cash out his personal assets in order to pay off the lawsuit. Neat! InfoWars is still able to exist and remain in operation. Neat rescinded, but the families involved in the suit can make individual claims to obtain any revenue InfoWars creates.
Neat reinstated! While it's unlikely that those families will be able to fully collect 1. 5 billion dollars, they essentially can claim any revenue that Jones makes going forward for the rest of his goddamn life. [01:24:00] Now, while Jones is trying to shift his money through the supplement company of his dentist father in order to avoid paying them via loophole, these families can still legally pursue him and likely win.
And even though Jones still has a groundswell of fans that will support him beyond all logic and decency, and Jones will bark, bray, and say he won't pay, he is significantly in the sh and is treading water, treading sh water. And unfortunately for him and the frogs, this water won't make him gay. For the foreseeable future, Jones will be bleeding money and on the brink of losing everything at all times.
I wouldn't wish that stress on anybody, except Alex Jones. All that said, while I'm glad for the outcome and have no sympathy for Alex Jones specifically, the whole thing is still just Sad. Sad for the families who lost their kids and then were harassed for years, obviously. But also, like, Jones has kids.
Four of them. One with a new wife, and three with his ex wife, who very [01:25:00] understandably fought for custody many years back. And it's sad to see this very weird and toxic dude double and triple down on this deranged legacy of slavery. Scummy conspiracy grifting, and pass that burden on to other people. Like, one of his kids apparently did an InfoWars video that's since been taken down.
It just has that Westboro Baptist Church stink to it, where this one dude has started this weird little toxic cult, and dragged everyone around him down with him. Because it is a cult, albeit a one person cult. Jones can claim to be a performance artist in court, and that his life is while never actually seeking any kind of change or atonement, even when it's no longer even financially lucrative for him to spread his lies.
So this is just his life now. There's no going back from this. There's no way to rehabilitate, not even in a media landscape that will absolve unflushable turds like Glenn Beck. Jones will just Keep spiraling forever and take as many people as he can [01:26:00] with him. And that's kind of sad. Not as sad as your child dying and then being harassed for it.
So, you know, saying that out loud, I guess I'm not sad for Jones anymore.
SECTION B - SCAMS
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Scams.
Why Everything Is A Scam (Except For Scams) - How Money Works - Air Date 12-16-23
@HOWMONEYWORKS - HOST, HOW MONEY WORKS: People suspecting everything of being a scam, apart from scams, the paradox of the grift if you will, does a lot more harm to normal people who don't have the time or resources to thoroughly vet every offer they are given. The people being hurt the most by these smaller scale frauds are not who you would expect. The most common victim of financial fraud is not elderly people with deteriorating mental capacity getting targeted by scam callers claiming to be the IRS. According to data by the FTC, these scams do fool millions of people every year, and more should be done about that to educate and protect people at risk.
It sucks that every single email, text message, and phone call needs to be analyzed for sketchy links and it can be exhausting, but at least it's possible with a bit of attention to stay on the right side of these scams. But the fastest growing category of financial fraud is much harder to protect yourself [01:27:00] against.
And to show you why, we need to talk about influencers. Seeking fame and fortune is nothing new, and people running get rich quick schemes on late night cable are nothing new either. But technological and cultural changes have allowed these people to merge into one. I don't want to reveal my age here too much, but back in my day, celebrities were afraid of being labeled as sellouts.
They had to be very tactful about promoting their merch or their fans would turn on them. Today, selling out is the goal. Modern celebrities and influencers are celebrated for launching a new product line and go on interviews where they talk extensively about how much money they make. There is nothing wrong with celebrities making money, and some influencer businesses sell great products, but a lot don't, and a lot get much worse.
According to a 2021 survey conducted by the FTC on consumer losses through scams, 61 percent of all fraud contacts initiated on social media and websites. Email, online ads, phone calls, and text messages were all fighting for whatever was left. The people you watch and trust online are by [01:28:00] far the most likely to scam you.
Influencers know that their influence won't last forever. Tastes change, their audience will outgrow their content, or they could be caught up in controversies that gets them kicked out of their respective platform. That's show business. But the problem for the new age of celebrity is that the antics that they self publish onto the internet would make it impossible for a lot of them to get a real job afterwards, so they need to make enough money in their few years of fame to fund their lavish lifestyle forever.
It's not impossible to do legitimately. But it's much easier to do by jumping on the latest trends. If you are an influencer and you know your audience is eventually going to get bored of you anyway, it's very tempting to make as much money as possible off them on the way out. And that's the second reason why people think everything is a scam, apart from scams.
Fraud is exciting. Reality is depressing. Imagine you had 10, 000 to spare, and you are deciding where to put it. A BlackRock broad market exchange traded fund, or a crypto token from a YouTuber. I really hope you all watching know what the right choice is. On a different corner of [01:29:00] the internet, you will see people hyping up very risky plays to an impressionable audience while making laser eyed video thumbnails about how BlackRock secretly rules the world.
One of the biggest business and finance influencers in the world, Patrick Bet David, has made countless videos talking about the dangers of Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street while defending multi level and network marketing, including his own multi level marketing life insurance company. BlackRock is not a faultless business, but your money will be safer with them than it will be with the average influencer.
My friend Richard over on The Plain Bagel made a great video about why investing won't make you rich. It can only build wealth by accelerating diligent savings. But that's boring, and that kind of content doesn't make as much money or perform as well with the algorithm as flashy displays of material wealth and non compliant claims about making money.
Even influencers not peddling get rich quick schemes need to over sensationalize everything to maximize engagement. Influencers are an easy target for ridicule, and I understand as a now full time YouTuber myself, it's tempting to use the flames and laser eyes.
But it all builds a culture [01:30:00] of getting as much attention as possible, as quickly as possible, and then trading that influence for cash. The biggest problem is that there appears to be very few consequences for doing this. People like Logan Paul, who at the height of the cryptocurrency mania promoted several pump and dump schemes, has to date had no problems with regulators who are struggling to keep up in this area as well.
He also hasn't even taken that much reputational damage and still has millions of fans watching his videos and buying prime energy drinks. Another friend of the channel, Patrick Boyle, in an interview with Zeke Fox, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg, and author of Number Go Up, said that the grift is not something to be embarrassed about anymore.
It's now seen as high status, because the most visibly high status people are all doing it. Fox also claimed that investigations into this matter almost don't make sense anymore, because the perpetrators of this kind of fraud are so unashamed and open about it that an investigative journalist doing an exposé on Dink Doink would be like a food critic writing a review on Taco Bell.
And that's the third reason why we think everything is a scam apart from [01:31:00] scams. Fraud moves faster than we do. New technologies like cryptocurrencies, AI, and the internet all may have legitimate marketable uses, but it can take years for people to figure out what those use cases are and years more to build businesses around them.
It's little wonder, then, that the new technologies are a golden opportunity for fraud. By promising to know the secrets to using something new to make lots of money, grifters can leverage the natural hype of barely understood tech to sell a guide on how to use it for a profit. The Hustle Bros that were selling crypto trading guides when Bitcoin was entering the mainstream are now telling you how to use ChatGPT to make millions by automating some vaguely legitimate sounding online business.
This problem hits every level of finance, not just course gamers. The venture capital funds that were throwing investor money at blockchain companies are now throwing investor money at anything that claims to use AI. And the influencers that were crypto experts now know how to use ChatGPT to make 300 a day.
The rapid pace of new technologies that people are desperate to understand is [01:32:00] behind the rapid pace of new frauds pretending to know the answers.
Trump's Pro-Crypto Policies Explained - TLDR News - Air Date 10-7-24
So, as we see it, Trump has three crypto adjacent policies. First he wants to replace Gensler, the current head of the Security and Exchange Commission, or SEC, which is the body responsible for regulating financial assets in the US.
Now Gensler has cracked down on crypto assets over the past year or so, making him deeply unpopular with the crypto community, and Trump is presumably planning to get rid of him so that he can loosen some of these new regulations. Secondly, he wants to create a new strategic Bitcoin reserve, essentially requiring the Fed to hold Bitcoin as a reserve asset in the same way that it holds gold.
And thirdly, he wants to stop the Treasury Department from creating a central bank digital currency, which is something that decentralized crypto advocates worry could usurp decentralized cryptocurrencies. So let's run through each of these plans one by one, starting with reforming the SEC. Now this seems to be the root of Trump's recent [01:33:00] crypto enthusiasm, because a couple of months ago he took the stage at the 2024 Bitcoin conference in Nashville, where after a few minutes of his usual meandering, he suddenly got a standing ovation for announcing his intention to fire Gary Gensler on day one.
Now Trump probably won't actually get the chance to do this. Every SEC chair since the agency was set up in 1934 has resigned when the presidency changed party, allowing the new administration to get their own pick. Nonetheless, Trump's anti Gensler rhetoric strongly suggests that he would probably pick a more crypto friendly chair as Gensler's successor.
For context, Gensler has led a sharp crackdown on crypto assets under his term, making him deeply unpopular with the crypto community. At the heart of this debate, or dispute, is the question of whether or not cryptocurrencies should be considered a security, and therefore subject to SEC regulations. The relevant test here is the so called Howey test, which comes from the famous 1946 Supreme Court ruling which found that the Howey Company, [01:34:00] which was selling tracts of citrus groves to buyers in Florida, who would then in turn lease the land back to Howey, was indeed selling securities.
In that ruling, the court provided three key criteria for what counts as a security. Namely, securities involve the investment of money in a common enterprise, and with profits derived solely from the efforts of others. Broadly speaking, Gensler's SEC thinks that at least some cryptoassets meet these criteria, while crypto bros disagree, and argue that cryptoassets are less like stocks and bonds, and more like a new technology or digital commodity.
Anyway, a more pro crypto SEC chair would probably reduce the scope of which crypto assets the SEC would consider to be securities, making it easier to trade them and probably boosting the value of crypto assets like Bitcoin. It's also worth saying that Trump personally stands to gain from this too, via his new crypto company, World Liberty Financial.
Now, to be clear, Trump doesn't actually own this [01:35:00] company. It's actually technically registered to two guys previously involved with Doe Finance, a recently hacked blockchain app, and one of them is also a former YouTube pick up artist called Zach Folkman, who used to run a company called Date Hotter Girls LLC.
However, 70 percent of the non transferable crypto tokens that World Liberty plans to sell are allocated to insiders, including Trump and his sons. These tokens are non transferable because that makes them less likely to be considered securities by the SEC, but if Trump defangs the SEC, then him and his sons will be able to sell their tokens without worrying about SEC regulation.
Making millions, if not billions of dollars. So, let's get into Trump's second crypto policy, a strategic bitcoin reserve. Here, Trump is basically endorsing an idea put forward by pro crypto senator Cynthia Loomis, via her new Bitcoin Act. According to the draft bill, the act would require the US [01:36:00] to buy and hold a million bitcoin over five years.
and hold them for at least 20 years. Now the treasury is already sitting on a stash of about 200, 000 bitcoin, mostly confiscated from illegal operations. So buying the remaining 800, 000 would cost about 50 billion dollars at current prices. Although obviously the price of bitcoin would skyrocket once the US announced that it had started buying them up at scale.
The idea here is to use Bitcoin as another reserve asset, like gold or foreign currencies. Now this would be unorthodox, because Bitcoin isn't really considered a reserve asset, largely because of its price volatility. However, in simply treating it as a reserve asset, the federal government could essentially transform it into one.
After all, once financial institutions and other states know that the U. S. government wants to buy a million bitcoin, they're going to be far more likely to hold it in reserve, because they know that the U. S. government will act as a buyer. The U. S. could also turn a tidy profit, given that bitcoin would almost [01:37:00] definitely skyrocket if this policy was enacted.
However, there's some anxiety that this could chip away at the dollar's reserve currency status. Whether or not you think this is a real concern will depend on whether or not you think the dollar is at risk and whether bitcoin is a suitable alternative, but it's at least true to say that it would be a bit weird to see a sovereign state with the world's reserve currency tacitly endorsing a technology explicitly meant to replace it.
But let's move on to Trump's third policy, stopping the US from creating its own digital currency. For context, the Federal Reserve is currently exploring the creation of a digital dollar, technically known as a Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC. In theory, CBDCs will be far easier to track, which means that states will be better equipped to tackle stuff like tax evasion, money laundering, and terrorist financing, and could also provide states with a near total knowledge of their economy, allowing them to craft more effective economic policy.
However, crypto enthusiasts [01:38:00] don't like CBDCs, because they imagine crypto as a decentralized alternative to national money, and worry that a digital dollar would squeeze out other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. All in all, these are some pretty wild policies that will probably send Bitcoin to the proverbial moon, but they'd require Trump to both win in November and convince Congressional Republicans to give up their more orthodox positions on monetary policy.
Pig-Butchering: A Texting Scam With a Crypto Twist - The Journal. - Air Date 11-2-22
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: Pig butchering starts with A seemingly innocent text message and once the scammers catch a victim, they convince them to start investing in crypto. They have the victim set up an account on a fake crypto exchange and over the course of months, they steal more and more of the victim's money. And why is this called pig butchering?
ROBERT MCMILLAN: It's a reference to the idea that you're fattening up this fake online account. You think you're making money, so that's the fattening of the pig, and [01:39:00] then at the point when you actually realize you have been scammed, you're dead to them, you're butchered.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: And who is behind it? Where are these scammers based?
ROBERT MCMILLAN: There are a lot of people doing it, but the group that I interviewed for my story, the Global Anti Scam Organization has identified some Asian based scammers. So they're thought to be run by Chinese individuals who bring scammers into compounds in Laos or other Asian countries where they sort of work like office jobs scamming people. It initially, a few years ago, these scams were concentrated on victims in China, but they've, in the last two years, they've expanded and they're hitting the United States right now.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: How long has it been around?
ROBERT MCMILLAN: Well, pig butchering, I mean, the name is new. Yes, it was first coined in Asia and China about four years ago, I think, this scam was happening there, but it moved to the United States last [01:40:00] year and it's really taken off this year.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: Bob says these scamming operations target people who are educated and wealthy. They also look for someone who might be a little lonely.
ROBERT MCMILLAN: The thing that really got me about it is it just preys on this fundamental human decency of you get a wrong number and you tell somebody, "Hey, I'm sorry you made a mistake," and that... I'd like to live in a society where you could have serendipitous interactions with strangers and they can lead to friendships, that's something that I think is a mark of a healthy society and that's being abused with this scam.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: These kinds of scams, where the scammers gain the trust of the victim by building a relationship with them, they have a name, they're called confidence scams.
ROBERT MCMILLAN: Pig butchering is from that family, but it has sort of a crypto twist to it. You believe that you're making a lot of money, you believe you're fattening your account, but you're making all this money on a fake crypto [01:41:00] exchange, on a website that looks like it's a crypto exchange, but it's just a website run by the scammers. So they give you a little account there and you make some initial trades and you look like you're making a lot of money.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: You're feeling actually smart because you're like, "Oh, I'm doing the thing that the cool kids do, I'm making money on crypto."
ROBERT MCMILLAN: That's right, "I have this friend who I've met online who understands crypto and I'd heard about it and finally, I'm doing what everyone else is doing, making big money."
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: Right and it feels like it preys on this... the fact that many people don't understand crypto and they think, "Oh, some people became billionaires, and maybe I could."
ROBERT MCMILLAN: Right. And the fact is that cryptocurrency is really an amazing rail for moving money very quickly across borders. It's really good at that. And if you're a scammer in China or in Asia and you want to get money from people in America, the old techniques were slow and painful. You'd have to get somebody to... You'd [01:42:00] have convince them to go to a Western Union and wire the money. Now you don't have to leave your house, you could do it in your pajamas. You can be swindled for a million dollars in your PJs.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: So crypto is sort of an essential piece of this new scam?
ROBERT MCMILLAN: Of the pig butchering, yeah.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: Yeah.
ROBERT MCMILLAN: Yeah. So it's that unknown, the fact that if you're going to be involved in cryptocurrency, it's not that weird that you would go to a website that you've never seen before. People aren't buying it at Bank of America or Wells Fargo. So already you're dealing with this world where the names aren't so well known to everybody and who's legit and who's not legit it's just not common knowledge at this point.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: FBI officials told Bob that in the US last year, pig butchering cost victims more than 400 million dollars.
ROBERT MCMILLAN: It's kind of remarkable how far they will go to convince you that they are real [01:43:00] people. You may have heard of the Nigerian prince scam where you get these clumsily written email messages that you're supposed to respond to in order to make millions of dollars. This is far beyond that. So I think the amount of effort that they're willing to make to sort of convince you that they're real is greater than what a lot of people have been expecting.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: Jane Yan is in her fifties. She was born in China and now lives in Delaware with her husband. She works as a business analyst at a software company, and in January she got a text.
JANE: The first text message was saying, "Are we going to the salon tonight?"
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: And what did you think when you got that?
JANE: I think that person got the wrong person, so that I respond, "I think you got the wrong person. I don't know who you are."
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: But this random number kept the conversation going. He told her his name was Eric, that he was in Seattle for business and was on his way back to [01:44:00] China. He told Jane he had a daughter there and that his parents were helping take care of her. Jane thought he sounded like just a regular person and they moved their conversation over to WeChat, a Chinese social media app.
JANE: After the first day... actually he greet me daily, "Good morning. How you doing?" Even at the beginning, I wasn't really desire to engage the conversation, but I thought he was someone very consider, very kind. Then the conversation getting to talk about the family, talk about food, talk about travels and then eventually got to the investment, obviously.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: And do you remember when he brought up this investment?
JANE: If I remember [01:45:00] correctly, it was January the 28th, a week into the conversation, and at the beginning I just brushed him off because I didn't understand those stuff. I said, "Oh, I don't understand this," and I didn't want to get into detail, talk about it.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: Did you have interest in crypto?
JANE: Not particularly because I don't really.... I don't do lots of investment myself. Yeah, I have some stocks, but I don't understand crypto that well. So I didn't really have any desire to invest in there. But he say to me, "Oh, don't worry. I will teach you. I walk you every step the way."
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: And he did. Eric helped Jane open an account on a legitimate crypto exchange, Coinbase, and then he [01:46:00] helped her set up another account on what appeared to be a different crypto exchange, but this exchange was actually fake.
JANE: I had my log in, I can go and check my account, so I mean, now I notice how shady these platforms are, but back then I thought, "Well, yeah I have my own log in. How wrong can it be? It just like another bank account."
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: In February, Jane put $5,000 into her account and made her first transaction. In three minutes, her investment rose 20%, to $6,000.
JANE: After first trade, I was shocked. I was like, "Wow, you can make money that way, really?" And of course he has an uncle that was giving us the inside information and I was so [01:47:00] appreciative. I was like, "Wow, I see you share this inside information with me." And I say, "Thank you."
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: Right.
JANE: Yeah.
KATE LINEBAUGH - HOST, THE JOURNAL.: Did you talk to your family about it?
JANE: No, I didn't. Also, he told me not to tell anybody. He said, "Don't tell anybody about investment. People think that's lies." And he said this inside information, I cannot tell anybody else.
SECTION C - CONSPIRACY
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next, Section C: Conspiracy.
⚠️Why Does The Right Always Fall For Conspiracy Theories?⚠️ - Dark Brandon - Air Date 9-12-24
DARKESTBRANDON - HOST, DARK BRANDON: It's interesting that all these conspiracy theories are embraced from those on the right or the MAGA cult.
And the question really remains is, why are those on the left? susceptible to misinformation like those on the right, right? And maybe that has to do with critical thinking. And I think it also has to do with, you know, when a person has been conned or been led to believe or has a foundation of falsehoods, right?
Um, of reality based on falsehoods, they're going to be more inclined to, to believe or embrace [01:48:00] other falsehoods. But let's dive in. Let's start with the classic, shall we? Uh, remember when the right was convinced Obama was secretly a Kenyan Muslim plotting to destroy America from within? I mean, Who hasn't accidentally become president while hiding their true identity and affairs plans?
It happens. To the best of us. And, you know, this one was, you know, the best part is Donald Trump played a role in that conspiracy theory, right, where, you know, you could really point some conspiracies to Alex Jones, but there are some that you could point to Donald Trump as the creator or the birther of this birther conspiracy.
But wait, there's more. Let's dive deeper into the rabbit hole of QAnon. But be warned, this conspiracy is like a turducken of crazy layers upon layers of wild claims stuffed inside of each other. At its core, QAnon believers think there's a secret war going on between Donald Trump and the cabal of the satanic pedophiles who run a global sex [01:49:00] trafficking ring because apparently running the world's economies and governments just isn't exciting enough for the elite.
They needed a hobby. It all started in 2017 when someone called themselves Q began posting cryptic messages on 4chan. Because nothing says top secret government insider like using an anonymous image board known for memes and trolling, right? Oh man, uh, now these Q drops are supposedly coded messages about Trump's master plan to take down a deep state.
It's like, you have James Bond communicated exclusively through fortune cookies, right? I mean, followers spend countless hours trying to decipher these vague posts, convinced they're uncovering earth shattering truths. Spoiler alert, they're not. None of Q's predictions ever came true. None of these decrypted things that they uncoded, you know, uh, came to be true, right?
But let's dive deeper. Let's break down some of QAnon's greatest hits, right? First, there's the belief that many Hollywood celebrities [01:50:00] and Democratic politicians are secretly pedophiles who drink the blood of children to extend their lives. Forget about kale, smoothies, and yoga. Apparently, the fountain of youth was child blood all along.
I guess nobody told them about the existence of, you know, regular blood donations. And then we had this idea that JFK Jr. faked his death in 1999, and then is secretly working with Donald Trump. Some believers even thought he'd 2019. Spoiler alert, again, he didn't. But don't worry, they just moved the goalpost and said it would happen later.
QAnon also claimed that Trump was secretly working with Robert Mueller to uncover Democrat crimes, not the other way around. Because nothing says undercover cooperation like publicly insulting each other for two straight years. Oh my god, during the COVID 19 pandemic, QAnon really outdated stuff. They claimed that the virus was a hoax created by the deep state to control the [01:51:00] population.
But wait. It's also a real bioweapon created by China. Oh, and it's spread by 5g networks and the vaccine. That's bill Gates trying to implant us all with microchips, because obviously the guy who couldn't even get rid of computer viruses is now an expert on his human ones. But I mean, come on. Let's not also forget the time QAnon followers thought furniture company Wayfair was trafficking children through their website.
How? By selling suspiciously expensive cabinets with human names. Never mind that custom furniture is often pricey, or that many products have human names. Nope. Must be trafficking. Oh. What about the time when Trump got COVID? QAnon believers said it was a genius ploy to avoid assassination attempts and secretly arrest his enemies.
Because faking a life threatening illness is totally what you do when you're the most powerful person in the country. Most recently, some QAnoners have started believing that vaccines will make you magnetic. [01:52:00] Yes, you heard that right. Forget Iron Man, we're all magneto, I guess. Nobody told them that syringes are made of non magnetic materials.
But why let facts get in the way of a good story? And just when you think it couldn't get any wilder, some QAnon followers have started incorporating flat earth beliefs into their ideology. Because why stop at one debunked conspiracy theory when you could have two? And that's the really mind bending part.
Countless failed predictions, zero evidence. QAnon believers just keep doubling down. It's like they're watching someone play the world's longest game of Jenga, constantly rearranging their beliefs to keep the tower from toppling. In the end though, QAnon isn't just a harmless internet joke, it's torn apart families, radicalized individuals, and even led to real world violence.
It's a stark reminder of how powerful and dangerous conspiracy theories can be when critical thinking goes out the window. And so now you might be wondering, how do people fall for this stuff? Well that brings us to an important part of [01:53:00] critical thinking, understanding the burden of proof and recognizing biases.
See, in the world of rational thinking, the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim. If I tell you I have an invisible dragon in my garage, it's not your job to prove me wrong. It's my job to provide evidence to demonstrate that there is an invisible dragon in my garage. And, you know, this claim, do your own research, that doesn't count as evidence, right?
That is what's going to be required to meet that burden of proof. When we start talking about bias, we all have biases, but the key is recognizing them. Confirmation bias, for example, is when we seek out information that confirms what we already believe. It's like going to a flat earth convention to prove the earth is flat.
You're only going to find exactly what you're looking for. That doesn't make it true. Another tool in our creative thinking toolkit is Occam's razor. And this is a principle that suggests that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. So what's more [01:54:00] likely? A vast shadowy cabal controlling world events in secret, or a bunch of humans muddling through and sometimes messing up?
And let's not forget about the importance of reliable sources. A YouTube video made by some guy who makes cartoons isn't on the same level as a peer reviewed scientific study. I know, shocking, right? So the next time you come across a wild claim, ask yourself, who has the burn of proof here? What biases might be at play?
What is the simplest explanation? And where is this information coming from, right? You talk about immigrants eating pets, right? Who has the burn of proof there? The person making the claim that somebody's kidnapping pets and eating them, right? What biases might be at play? Well, the people who are against immigrants .
People who want to put immigrants in a bad light. Making a claim like that, right? That really does that, right? And what's the simplest explanation, right? Maybe some dogs are getting lost, right? Maybe cats are running away from home. But this idea that immigrants are stealing them and they're going to eat them?
This is the fear [01:55:00] monbringameth they do on the right. So remember folks, critical thinking isn't just for debunking conspiracy theories. It's a vital skill for navigating our complex world.
How to Argue with Conspiracy Theorists (And Win) Part 1 - Zoe Bee - Airs 12-23-20
ZOE BEE - HOST, ZOE BEE: Who is a conspiracy theorist? Well, that depends on how you define conspiracy. Conspiracy theory, and yes, conspiracy theorist.
Conspiracy theory, at least the way that we usually use it, is kind of an umbrella term that can cover everything from 9 11 truthers and the JFK assassination to Bigfoot and aliens to the Illuminati and our government being run by lizard people. The study of conspiracy theories is relatively new, even though conspiracy theories themselves have been around for literally centuries.
But scholars have mostly come to agreement on what conspiracies and conspiracy theories are. We define a conspiracy as a secret arrangement between two or [01:56:00] more actors, to usurp political or economic power, violate established rights, hoard vital secrets or unlawfully alter government institutions to benefit themselves at the expense of the common good.
Conspiracy theory refers to an explanation of past, ongoing, or future events or circumstances that cites as a main causal factor. A small group of powerful persons, the conspirators, acting in secret for their own benefit and against the common good. So what does this mean? Well, basically, a conspiracy is when a group of powerful people does something in secret that is good for them, but bad for the public.
And a conspiracy theory is when people think that some event or circumstance is caused by a conspiracy, even if the official story doesn't agree. This definition is still a little broad, but it does narrow things down a little bit. For instance, with this [01:57:00] definition, the mere belief in aliens doesn't make someone a conspiracy theorist.
A person only becomes a conspiracy theorist if they believe that aliens exist and the government is hiding their existence from the public for some nefarious reason. This definition also shows the difference between conspiracies and conspiracy theories. Basically, conspiracies are true. They are events where people in power covered up something or hid something from the public, and there is enough evidence of it that a majority of experts agree that the conspiracy happened.
Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are just that, they're theories.
They are, as yet, unproven suspicions that about the facts of a particular event or group, usually going against the establishment story. From this, we can now get a definition of conspiracy theorist. A conspiracy theorist is a person [01:58:00] who believes that some event has been caused by a group of powerful people for reasons that benefit them to the detriment of the public.
Now, again, this is a little broad. Statistically, almost two thirds of Americans are, using this definition. conspiracy theorists. Does that number sound a little high to you? Well, consider that the JFK assassination is a conspiracy theory. Do you really believe the official story on that? If not, you're a conspiracy theorist.
You could also consider some more mainstream economic views to be conspiracy theories. Take, for instance, the platform of Bernie Sanders, who believes that the top 1 percent are conspiring against the working class to hoard wealth. Now, , I am not saying that this is right or wrong, but if you believe this, you're [01:59:00] a conspiracy theorist.
Does this make all of us conspiracy theorists? Even if you believe a couple of conspiracies, you probably don't consider yourself a conspiracy theorist, right? It's okay. Most people don't. The term is pretty loaded and not in a good way. It's come to be synonymous with crazy or paranoid, and it even carries some political baggage.
Most of us think of conspiracy theorists as right wing nuts. But most of this negative connotation associated with conspiracy theories is actually unwarranted. Conspiracy theorists aren't crazy or irrational or stupid. People usually think of conspiracy theorists as out of touch with reality or that they have some sort of clinical paranoia disorder.
That's not true. Statistically, conspiracy theorists have mental illnesses at the exact same rate as everyone else. And, [02:00:00] from an evolutionary perspective, it just makes sense. Think about it. If you are a cave person and you see some rustling in the bushes, you should assume that there is something dangerous behind it, because then you will be prepared for the worst case scenario, which is how you survive.
And that is what conspiracy theorists are doing. Conspiracy thinking is simply choosing to believe that there are dangerous people behind the rustling all around us. Conspiracy theories are as old as civilization. They are not a new phenomenon by any means.
They are ancient, and they span generations and religious affiliations and political parties. No one group has the sole rights to conspiracy thinking. But knowing this, it can be hard to pinpoint what exactly draws people in. I mean, if conspiracy theories are universal, there must also be some universal human [02:01:00] trait that predisposes people to conspiracy thinking.
So, if we know that conspiracy theorists aren't crazy, then what are they? I mean, why do some people believe conspiracies and others don't? Well, it's complicated. People don't believe conspiracy theories because they have better facts. Because they don't. That's why they're conspiracy theories, and not accepted journalistic truth.
People believe conspiracy theories because they give them comfortable answers to uncomfortable questions. The big question that conspiracy theory scholars are trying to answer is what makes a person more or less likely to be drawn into conspiracy theories? What makes someone reject the accepted truth and instead find their answers in conspiracies?
Well, there are a few theories here. The most popular theory, probably because [02:02:00] it's so inflammatory, is the loser theory, which posits that people are more likely to believe conspiracy theories when they are on the losing side of an election. People don't like to feel powerless, so they look for answers for why their powerlessness isn't actually valid.
If they lose, it's not because they were actually wrong, it's because the other side cheated. This is where a lot of political conspiracies come from, because politics is inherently win or lose, at least the way that our current electoral system is set up. Take the Obama birther conspiracy. Those on the losing side of that election, Republicans, were more likely to believe the idea that Obama was illegitimate because it would mean that he was a liar and a cheater.
The Republicans were honest. They were the real winners. Or, consider the Russiagate conspiracy. Democrats wanted to believe that Trump colluded with Russia, whether [02:03:00] or not there was actually enough evidence to back this up, because it would mean that he wasn't fit to be president. It would mean that they still deserved to be in power.
That they were still in the right.
This Is Why People Love Conspiracy Theories - ABC Science - Air Date 9-29-24
DR MARK WILLIAMS: Basically our perception of the world isn't what we actually see. We're making up what's actually out there based on basically predictions. We're predicting what we're actually saying, and then we're creating this visual world. And so we need patterns so that we can do that quickly. A really good example of that is the, No stopping sign just down the end here.
And the no stopping sign is red. And the reason that captures your attention is that we learnt that red signs or red things are potentially dangerous. Red in itself, of course, isn't dangerous, but we've learnt or we have a pattern in our brain.
ROBYN WILLIAMS - HOST, ABC SCIENCE: Right, so it's a bit of a shortcut.
DR MARK WILLIAMS: It is a shortcut, yeah.
Pattern recognition gives us these really simple ways of actually perceiving the world. But of course, because the world's not simple and people aren't simple, we then make a lot of mistakes when we're actually doing things, and especially when we're doing things [02:04:00] quickly.
ROBYN WILLIAMS - HOST, ABC SCIENCE: And is that what conspiracy theorists are doing?
DR MARK WILLIAMS: Absolutely, yes.
ROBYN WILLIAMS - HOST, ABC SCIENCE: Like when I show somebody a photo of random noise and they see a picture in it, does that mean that they're making a pattern that actually doesn't exist?
DR MARK WILLIAMS: Yeah, illusory pattern perception is a really cool experiment where we show people these patterns and people perceive things that aren't there often.
But those patterns, they're illusions. They're not actually there.
ROBYN WILLIAMS - HOST, ABC SCIENCE: And are some people more prone to seeing these patterns than other people?
DR MARK WILLIAMS: We're more prone if we're in a state of stress. So we all saw the awful things that happened at the end of Donald Trump's reign in power in the US and how dedicated the MAGA.
people were to Donald Trump. And that has a lot to do with the fact that they felt as though they were in danger, right? They're going to hear what Donald Trump says completely differently to someone who actually isn't keen on Donald Trump. We're always perceiving things differently based on what we actually want to hear and what we don't want to hear.
ROBYN WILLIAMS - HOST, ABC SCIENCE: So a [02:05:00] conspiracy theory starts as pattern recognition gone wrong, and that gets amplified by a lack of control over events happening around us. But a person's conspiracy belief can be locked in when they find other people that confirm what they think. Is that what confirmation bias is? Yeah,
DR MARK WILLIAMS: absolutely.
We like to be right as humans, and so we notice when things actually confirm our biases, and we don't notice when things don't confirm our biases, and all of us do that constantly.
ROBYN WILLIAMS - HOST, ABC SCIENCE: I'd love to believe that I don't have these biases.
DR MARK WILLIAMS: not true. , I'm gonna show you right now how susceptible you are to all of this.
ROBYN WILLIAMS - HOST, ABC SCIENCE: Great. Oh God.
DR MARK WILLIAMS: So we have four cards here with letters and numbers, and we have a rule, and you've gotta work out whether the rule is actually correct, and the rule is that if there is a vow, then there is an even number underneath. Yeah, okay, but you're only allowed to turn over two cards to confirm or disprove that [02:06:00] theory So which two cards would you actually turn over right?
ROBYN WILLIAMS - HOST, ABC SCIENCE: Sure So I'm trying to prove or disprove the rule that under every vowel there is an even number. That's correct Okay, so I would choose A and four. You are susceptible to confirmation biases. Great, good. Alright, so I just fell into your trap, is what you're saying? You did, but 90 percent of people would actually choose those two cards, which is to go with the A and the four.
DR MARK WILLIAMS: The rule is, is that if it's a vowel, then there's an even number underneath. But not if it's an even number, there's a vowel underneath. Oh, okay, right. So using this one isn't actually ideal. Confirmation bias is about always trying to be right. What you're trying to do, which most of us are trying to do, is confirm, yeah, that the hypothesis is correct, rather than actually trying to disprove that it's correct.
What you actually need to look at is under nine, it's not okay, yeah, to have a bow underneath the nine. Right. So that's the one you should actually look at. [02:07:00] Yeah, A was correct though, so well done. You got 50 percent of it right. I got 50%, that's a pass! It is a pass. It is a pass. So, is there any way of preventing people from falling into conspiracy beliefs?
So, all Depends on how many of those rules or patterns you actually have in your brain. And so actually increasing the number of patterns you have by actually learning and experience in the world, traveling, for example, having lots of different friends that you actually interact with, all of those things are actually going to increase the number of options that you have in your brain that you're comparing with others.
More people in our in group is also going to help. So we want an in group that has lots and lots of people from different experiences so that they can tell us, or talk to us, about whether or not their conspiracy theories make sense or don't make sense.
ROBYN WILLIAMS - HOST, ABC SCIENCE: So I guess what I've learned overall is that pattern recognition is actually a pretty essential skill. And when people are seeing patterns or shapes in that random noise, they're kind of [02:08:00] showing off that skill. It's just that when you combine that with confirmation bias, it can tend to lead people astray in some situations.
And the fact is, we're all susceptible to that.
How to Argue with Conspiracy Theorists (And Win) Part 2 - Zoe Bee - Airs 12-23-20
ZOE BEE - HOST, ZOE BEE: Some people just make fun of conspiracy theorists and mock them.
And, yeah, I get it. It's fun. We all want to dunk on people who we think are stupid. It feels good to feel smarter than someone else. But, like, maybe don't. Like we just discussed, conspiracy theorists aren't unintelligent or paranoid or mentally ill. They just happen to have the right concoction of uncertainty or fear or loneliness at the right time for a conspiracy theory to look like an attractive solution to their problems.
Mocking someone will literally never get them to change their minds. Others try the info dump method, where they just throw every single piece of information, every math formula and science paper and famous person quote that they can get their [02:09:00] hands on at their conspiracy theorist friend. This also doesn't work.
People aren't really receptive to mountains of math and science. And this isn't just specific to conspiracy theorists. This is kind of just how humans are. We have a hard time conceptualizing things as abstract as math and science concepts. So, this method is also a no go. Now, some people are aware that they need to provide facts, and so they turn to experts.
But, these so called educators aren't actually very good at changing people's minds. Neil deGrasse Tyson, for example, is notorious for being passive aggressive and pompous on social media, or consider the popular I fucking love science page. Media like this is only convincing for one group, the people who already believe it.
It does no good for people who need scientific [02:10:00] information the most. Now, this isn't exclusive to the side of facts. Conspiracy theorists also have their own echo chamber media outlets. But what we do about those is a subject for another video. So what are we supposed to do? I mean, if we can't use facts and logic to change people's minds, how are we supposed to save our loved ones from the grasp of the rabbit hole?
Well, there are a couple of answers. One answer is to just not. To just avoid debating conspiracy theorists. Because in the age of the internet, good ideas often get drowned out by theatrics. Memes that sound good will always be more convincing than well reasoned but boring or heavy handed arguments. So what is even the point in arguing?
If you're trying to change the mind of a loved one, though, this answer isn't really viable. You can't just [02:11:00] ignore them forever. In fact, ignoring them could end up alienating them further and pushing them even further down that rabbit hole. So what do you do? How exactly do you change the mind of a conspiracy theorist?
Well, first, you approach them with respect. People love talking about themselves, and conspiracy theorists also, generally speaking, will jump at any opportunity to potentially convert you to their side.
So, if you engage with them respectfully, give them a chance to make their case, it will open up a great pathway for communication. Now, this isn't to say that your ideas are actually equal. One side does actually have facts to back them up. I'm not a conspiracy theory apologist here, and I don't believe in giving platforms to misinformation or hate speech, but if you're trying to change someone's mind, you have to start with [02:12:00] respect.
This does not apply to actively harmful beliefs that fall under the conspiracy theory umbrella. If your loved one's beliefs are predicated on the assumption that some people aren't people, respectful disagreement will not change their mind. If they hold beliefs like this, you must challenge them. Now, not all conspiracy theorists believe the most extreme versions of whatever conspiracy theory they believe.
So, second, you need to determine where exactly your loved one lies on the conspiracy theory spectrum. What, exactly, do they believe? As you're listening, don't go into it assuming that they are wrong. After all, they assume that you are the incorrect one, and they could be right. When they're explaining their beliefs, be sure to engage with them.
Repeat their ideas back to them periodically, because this helps you to understand what they're saying, [02:13:00] and it helps build trust and rapport. The third step is where you actually start the debunking.
If you have facts and figures on hand, you can use those. Show them where they might be incorrect, but also acknowledge where your own weaknesses lie. The best thing to do, though, is to use physical examples. Something that they can see with their own eyes or touch with their own hands. Math and science are really abstract and hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around, maybe even you yourself, so don't lean too hard on those if you don't have to.
One other great tactic is to look at the extreme versions of their conspiracy beliefs. One great tactic is to look at the more extreme versions of their conspiracy beliefs. If they can see the errors in those more extreme arguments, they could start to turn that reflective eye onto themselves in time.
It also gives you the chance to show that you don't think your friend is crazy. You trust them and are willing to work [02:14:00] with them against a common enemy. In the course of your discussion, they will probably come back at you with some arguments and facts of their own, and while you can debunk those if you want, arguing about the details.
isn't actually super productive. Pointing out their logical fallacies is something that a lot of internet debaters do, but it's not always productive either. Ultimately, if you want to debunk their arguments, you need to go to the root of the issue. Look at the why behind their beliefs. Start at the most basic facts and premises of their position, and then get to the details.
If you can show them flaws at their base, then everything built on top of that base is productive. We'll start to crumble. Pro tip time! Conspiracy theories often rest on several assumptions. 1. There is, somewhere, a sometimes quite large group of powerful people. 2. All of the people [02:15:00] are working together. 3.
All of the people are keeping their work a secret. 4. All of the people are willing to go against the public good. 5. All of the people are somehow doing all of this while keeping up the veneer normalcy. Now, think about every single group project that you have ever done in your life. Yeah. A lot of conspiracy theorists have a warped view of how the government and businesses and even just human nature work.
It's all a lot less streamlined and efficient and organized than they imagine. Remind them of that. Generally speaking, though, the best thing to do is to give them physical evidence, examples they can see with their eyes, feel with their hands, and to point out hypocrisies in the messages from their side's experts.
If you can prove to them that they've been lied to by the people they thought they could [02:16:00] trust, then they may lose faith in their conspiracy theory experts, and begin to trust the real experts again. However, you need to be pretty careful with this, so that it doesn't feel too much like an outright attack.
Remember, respect is key.
SECTION D - MISINFORMATION
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D: Misinformation.
Media Literacy Can't Save Us Part 2 - Dummy - Air Date 10-7-24
IMNOTTHEDUMMY - HOST, DUMMY: In the summer of 2021, my friend and I were stopped at a gas station in Arizona by a man named Larry. Who asked if he could interview us for his YouTube channel. My friend didn't notice the Don't Tread on Me style t shirt he was wearing, and so cheerily agreed on our behalf to do the interview. I, however, suspected that Larry had asked us in particular, because we were two young people wearing masks in an otherwise maskless part of the country at this time.
Two young libs that he could own on camera. Curiosity got the better of me though, so we talked with Larry and he recorded. Larry told us that we were potentially foolish to have taken the vaccine, that it could be dangerous. I pointed out that vaccination rates correlated with less COVID by county at the time, [02:17:00] demonstrating their efficacy to me.
But Larry waved those numbers away by just saying, Oh, no, no, no, no, Those numbers are made up. You know, I could tell you about more details of the conversation here, but the whole thing basically went like that, where Larry's fears became problems that society needed to answer for, and even when the answer was relatively clear, that didn't mean that he accepted it.
This moment stands out in my memory whenever I think about misinformation, because it's In that conversation with Larry, it felt like I was talking to the personification of misinformation. Someone who distrusted all available evidence and believed what he wanted to. I think we all know a Larry in one form or another.
Misinformation became something of a household concern around 2016 with The Trump campaign, you are fake news and Brexit. I think the people in this country have had enough of experts with, uh, organizations from acronyms mutating during covid.
DONALD TRUMP: Looks like by April. You know, in theory when it gets a little warmer it.
Miraculously goes away. [02:18:00] Hope that's true.
IMNOTTHEDUMMY - HOST, DUMMY: And eventually just kind of existing in every conflict now.
DONALD TRUMP: They're eating the pets of the people that live there.
IMNOTTHEDUMMY - HOST, DUMMY: I think that a lot of people are uncomfortable with what misinformation does, both to people and society, for good reason. So solutions have been something of a hot topic in the last decade.
And the most popular answer, by far, is media literacy. Media literacy has been championed by educators, activists, video essayists, and Random people online who claim to care about the truth. The prevailing discussion centers media literacy as an antidote for a post truth world. Sure, the rich and powerful may tell lies to everybody, but if they don't believe them, then who cares?
The National Association for Media Literacy Education, or NAMLY, defines media literacy as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication. My friend Zoe, who you'll see throughout this video, recently made a video of her own on this topic, where she stress tested this definition in various ways.[02:19:00]
ZOE BEE: The Zoe B take is that media literacy is having intellectual humility and curiosity for, or about, I'm not sure which preposition to use here. So it's having intellectual curiosity and intellectual humility for the things that you are consuming. Acknowledging that your perspective is not the only one, that there is a multitude, Perhaps even, like, an infinite amount of perspectives that one can have in media or have about media.
And curiosity, meaning wanting to actually figure out what those different perspectives are. And so that's why I think those two things are, like, I'm just going
IMNOTTHEDUMMY - HOST, DUMMY: to accept the definition from Namely for the purposes of this video, mostly because I read a lot of work from them and definitions aren't my main focus right now, as long as we have a working one that is broadly agreed upon.
Oh, also, um, I'm almost exclusively talking about news and informational media literacy in this video, so if you came here to see me dunk on random [02:20:00] Attack on Titan takes, Sorry, wrong video. The popular understanding of media literacy that you might find on Twitter or YouTube is pretty optimistic, and I think that that's for good enough reason.
But the popular conception often leaves out a lot of the actual history. Media literacy didn't simply spring into existence in 2016, when we realized that people don't trust the news. In 2009, writing for the first volume of Namely's Journal of Media Literacy Education, I was Scholars Renee Hobbs and Amy Jensen describe the complex, evolving history of media literacy education as a highly contextualized activity that takes many forms.
It's easy to see media literacy as an extension of the practice of rhetoric developed during the 5th century B. C. to teach the art of politics. It's also possible to see its roots in the emergence of film as a tool for teaching and learning, particularly in the development of language, critical analysis, and literacy skills.
They also recognize that the field is incredibly diverse in its opinion on the purpose of media literacy, often described through the tension between protection and [02:21:00] empowerment. Two opposing, or sometimes complementary, Goals that media literacy education can work towards. Early 20th century media literacy study arose from the analysis of propaganda, wondering if education could protect readers from undue influence.
More recent conceptions have focused on civic engagement and empowering students with the technical ability to participate in an increasingly complex communication environment. The history that leads up to modern media literacy is broad and far reaching, drawing from many disciplines like technology, communication studies, media studies, education, political science, rhetoric, and the broader humanities.
A real beast of a sub discipline, which kind of drove Zoe and I both insane this summer.
ZOE BEE: Not to like make it maybe a bigger deal than it is, but it sort of like affects everything. Media is, one could argue like all things, all things are media, or at least all things are communication in some form.
IMNOTTHEDUMMY - HOST, DUMMY: My mind is currently dominated by confusion.
I, I, I, I think that this topic is Yeah.
ZOE BEE: It [02:22:00] is quite a quagmire.
IMNOTTHEDUMMY - HOST, DUMMY: From the late 90s up into the 2010s, however, the field had begun to focus on what I'll refer to in this video as an educational approach to media literacy, governed by that definition from Namely I read just a minute ago. In this conception, media literacy is something that we can teach people, a kind of modern critical thinking toolkit.
To clarify this a little further, I think it's helpful to look at Hobbes and Jensen's analysis of Namely's core principles, which help them to define media literacy not just by what it is, But also by what it isn't. Though they don't want to excuse media makers of their broader responsibilities to society, they also are clear to point out that media literacy is not a place for media bashing or a leftist ideological perspective on media systems.
Instead, they view their role as teaching students how they can arrive at informed decisions. that are most consistent with their own values. More on this later. This educational approach is the media literacy that I grew up with, and based on my viewer demographics, if, uh, you got any media literacy [02:23:00] education when you were growing up, it probably looked like this, too.
You probably had an emphasis on research skills and finding trusted sources. For me, once a semester, we would have one English or History class where we'd go down to the library and be told that Wikipedia is bad, actually. The focus is on students thinking critically about media they consume, rather than being critical of media.
And though I'm teeing us up for a criticism of this in a second here, it's not because I hate it or because I think it's ineffective, even. I respect Renee Hobbs and the other scholars whose work I have cited in this video, A lot. And it's clear to me that media literacy education has made massive advances in the last 30 years, proving that, when done right, this stuff really works.
In one study in 2017, over 2, 000 youth, ages 15 to 27, were shown a sample of evidence based social media posts, mixed in with posts with misinformation. The study found that those with media literacy education were better at identifying misinformation and at avoiding ideological bias. And it seems that [02:24:00] this effect wasn't just a product of education, but media literacy education specifically.
They found in this same study that other education, like prior political knowledge, didn't have the same protective effect as media literacy education. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this study also indicates that political knowledge is an insufficient support for accurate judgments of partisan claims.
In contrast to these findings regarding political knowledge, we were heartened that media literacy learning experiences that aim to promote accurate judgment of truth claims appear to be helpful. Individuals who reported high levels of media literacy learning opportunities were considerably more likely to rate evidence based posts as accurate than to rate posts containing misinformation as accurate, even when both posts aligned with their prior policy perspectives.
And similar studies have shown that news media literacy can help adults to identify conspiracy theories. Another study from that same year of 400 adults found that greater knowledge about the news media predicted a lower likelihood of conspiracy theory endorsement. Even for conspiracy theories that aligned with their political ideology.
There [02:25:00] are many such studies that show this type of efficacy for media literacy, that when it's done right, it helps people believe lies less often, which is really great.
Across The Grifterverse - Pillar of Garbage - Air Date 5-25-24
PILLAR OF GARBAGE - HOST, PILLAR OF GARBAGE: It's nigh impossible to exist online without being aware of the alt right, at least in vague terms. Even if you've not personally delved into the weeds of what trends and practices distinguish the alt right from traditional conservatism or whatever else, you know there's a bunch of mostly youngish white guys very concerned about the plight of the young white male, centred on message boards, folding in formerly fringe conspiracies, weirdly an outgrowth of new atheism, Pepe the Frog, blah blah blah.
You can't not know that. But it wasn't always this way. So let's start to bring in some of the figures most responsible for changing that, for unifying and codifying the alt right and their tactics. This is Steve Bannon. He's done a lot of things in his life, but probably the two most noteworthy ones were being a founding board member and later chairman of Breitbart News, so, you know, [02:26:00] and becoming President Trump's chief strategist in 2017.
And the latter was a fairly direct consequence of the former. See, Bannon's big idea was that to change politics, you had to change culture. As a report from Buzzfeed seven years back made clear, this was his goal with Breitbart. At first covertly, as seen in a whole cache of secretive, now leaked emails dictating editorial focus guerrilla style around the early sights of the culture war, and then not covertly.
A watershed moment was the development and publication of Breitbart's so called Establishment Conservatives Guide to the Old Right. This piece was spearheaded by one of Bannon's protégés, Milo Yiannopoulos. Maybe you've heard of him. You know, he's the definitely not a nazi whose leaked passwords included longknives1290 and awordbeginningwithcrystal.
This is him here, singing karaoke to a [02:27:00] room full of people, saluting with one arm? Don't worry though, he later clarified he couldn't see what they were doing. They were too far away! He couldn't make any of it out with his poor little weak eyes! No story here, wait, what's this photo doing here? Anyway, Yiannopoulos manifesto broke down the alt right into various categories.
The intellectuals, like noted white nationalist Richard Spencer and various manosphere thinkers, the natural conservatives, you know, guys who don't like foreigners or minorities for sensible reasons, the meme team, and the 1488ers. Yiannopoulos had developed the piece in conjunction with feedback from guys like the Daily Stormers admin and Theodore Beale, aka Vox Dei.
Breitbart's editors did their best to sand down the rougher edges of the overtly racist figures the article knowingly incorporated, and Bannon even helped out, circulating the draft to gain some establishment conservatives perspectives. Upon publication, the manifesto was influential, and raucously received by the alt right.
After this [02:28:00] point, there was little need for the mask to stay on at all. A few months later, in July 2016, Bannon declared the website THE platform for the alt right. A month later, he was officially unveiled as the chief executive of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. And we all know what happened next.
This was The Goal, from Minute One. As that Reddit post I showed a while back alluded to, even before Breitbart, Bannon had seen the radical potential of the nascent alt right space while involved in a World of Warcraft gold farming company 20 years back. An article in USA Today quotes Bannon as saying, These guys, these rootless white males, had monster power.
Reflecting on his mentoring of Yiannopoulos through Gamergate to that codifying manifesto, Bannon continues, I realized Milo could connect with these kids right away. You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned on to politics and Trump. This is the central truth [02:29:00] of the alt right, the natural conservatives, meme teamers, and so on.
Before they were assets, they were marks. Why am I telling you all this though? Is there some clip I'm about to show you of these jabronis just hanging out with Nerdrotic or Brian Kinnell or something? Well, no, nothing like that, but there is a connection worth making here, if a more conceptual one.
Because Bannon, Unopolis and friends, at least, In large part, they built the playbook our YouTube chud cluster has perfected. Nearly all of those classic crypto fascist narratives and tricks have direct precedent here. Pre release woke spotting of geekdom properties, Breitbart did it. Blaming everything on Amy Pascal or Kathleen Kennedy?
Breitbart did it. Emphasizing some essential whiteness under catastrophic attack? Breitbart did it. Breitbart helped mainstream it. If you've ever wondered how stuff like The Great Replacement or cultural Marxism conspiracy theories went from the fringe to the heart of popular discourse, [02:30:00] these guys are a large part of that answer.
Theirs are the hands at the center of that 2014 16 era Overton window yanking. So, it isn't that our current crop of alt right firebrands, the fandom menace, or that are Bannon's protégés themselves, are Breitbart's sleeper agents, or anything like that. No, they are the results of that shift. They were the marks.
They are the fruits of that changed culture. The first generation of pundits to grow to prominence from the fields. Bannon, Yiannopoulos, and Breitbart watered, now mature enough to begin linking up with, if not the Breitbart crew themselves, their allies, furthering the alt right Culture Change Project.
Because it isn't simply legacy, the links here aren't just conceptual ones after all. Bannon's had Alex Jones on his war room, has praised the latter's political thinking,
STEVE BANNON: if you look at the evidence to that effect, You are one of the great thinkers of [02:31:00] this. That is very rare. You've got to go back almost to the revolutionary generation and see that.
In this new book, I gotta tell you, when Tony Lyons first approached me, I read this thing, I go, this is it.
PILLAR OF GARBAGE - HOST, PILLAR OF GARBAGE: He's also been on the Blaze Network, for what that's worth. Jeanopolis worked with Proud Boys founder and, again, Friday Night Tights guest Gavin McInnes on the latter's censored. tv platform, and Theodore Beale, aka Vox Dei, one of the guys Yiannopoulos checked his alt right manifesto with, yes, viewer, you have heard that name before.
He is the same white nationalist that ol buddy John De La Rose, remember him, used bounding into comics to cape for, and whose company, Castalia House, published De La Rose. Oh, and he's also published books by the Info Wars linked Mike Cernovich and by Pesobic. Again, a turning point man, and also a signal booster for bounding into comics.
Gee, it's funny how little distance separates our YouTube fanbase, Grifter Gang, from the out and out white supremacists, isn't it?
The Future of Truth: Journalist Steven Brill - The Takeout - Air Date 6-30-24
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: Section 230 and programmatic advertising. They're completely different, but they are [02:32:00] very, very important to this conversation.
STEVEN BRILL: Right. So, Section 230, which some of our listeners and viewers have heard of. Right. Most may not have, and they certainly didn't hear of it when it was passed in 1996. If you go back and do a, uh, do a search, there wasn't a news article written about Section 230 for, for like four delightful opening to the book, by the way.
It really is great. You just, you know, when I first did a search, I said, what's going on? The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, they don't have Section 230? What's wrong with them? But the reason is, it was passed in 1996 as three paragraphs in a multi hundred page telecommunications reform bill.
meant to regulate the nascent cell phone and cable television industries, right? Had nothing to do with social media platforms. Social media platforms didn't exist.
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: They weren't in anyone's mind's eye. There
STEVEN BRILL: were however, these three dial up [02:33:00] services. Yes. People of a certain age, you and me raised my hand.
Yes. Remember called AOL. Prodigy and CompuServe. Yes. And for 5 a month, you could sign up for them. You've had to pay. So you weren't anonymous. You were paying and they had, you know, half a million people, each million people, each, um, not the billion people that the platform set. And as part of your, your payment, you not only could use email a new thing, you could also join.
chat rooms where you could talk about, you know, the New York Yankees or the Yankees or bridge or dolphins or food or whatever you wanted to talk about. And as those communities of interconnected people would sign on, they type some comment in and a couple of people in a couple of these chat rooms, uh, wrote stuff that was defamatory about somebody else or some other business.
One of the [02:34:00] platforms, I think it was prodigy. I get it mixed up. said, and, and this person sued the platform because the platform had published this bad thing, publisher and prodigy. I think I'm getting this right. So we're actually not a publisher. We just let anybody write anything. We don't look at it. We don't screen it.
Right. Uh, so we're not
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: accountable.
STEVEN BRILL: We're like the phone company. If I call you on the phone and say something bad about him, phone company is not responsible. You know, anybody can call and say anything they want. I'm not. You know, censoring your phone conversation or a mailman doesn't get sued for something.
The other company, maybe it was AOL said, had advertised that we do screen things. We take this seriously. We don't want, uh, pornography on our chat sites. We don't want defamatory language because they said they do screen, they were held liable.
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: So various members of Congress. The good actor [02:35:00] penalized, the bad actor or the indifferent one got free.
STEVEN BRILL: Let off. So a few members of Congress, some Democrats, some Republicans, not controversial at all, um, inserted at the last minute on a Friday afternoon. Nobody paid attention because it was a Friday afternoon in August. They all wanted, you know. To get off and at, and at the airport for the summer recess, they put in this three paragraph, uh, section called the good Samaritan act, good Samaritans to protect the good Samaritans at one of the platforms that was attempting to clean up their stuff.
So at age 11, Mark Zuckerberg became a good Samaritan. And that has the social media platforms grew. They have used that liability protection. It's the only business you and I know of where Where the companies are completely immune from any [02:36:00] harm that their products cost And that's section 230 and that allowed Mark Zuckerberg famously to move fast and break things Which was the you know, the motto at Facebook and it still is today So instead of doing anything about it, they would just go to Congress and apologize and say, you know, we really, really care.
We really try hard. We're sorry.
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: And programmatic advertising, what is that? And how does that fuel in ways? I don't think anyone in my audience, cause I never understood it. Fuels, monetizes and makes, if not permanent, near permanent. The spread of disinformation. You've said
STEVEN BRILL: it probably better than I can.
It's It's the other hidden technological evil that was originally considered yet another marvelous technology breakthrough. So, it used to be, if you watch the, you know, [02:37:00] the cable series Mad Men, That people at ad agencies would go out for long lunches and create creative campaigns and they decide Let's advertise on CBS instead of NBC or let's do Time instead of Newsweek Right or the Journal instead of the New York Times or
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: get these
STEVEN BRILL: seven regional newspapers But not those seven over there.
Now 80 percent of advertising is done by An algorithmic auction process. So what the advertiser is looking for is someone with a particular set of demographics. I want to reach, I'm BMW. I want to reach everybody who went to a Jaguar website in the Acela corridor who's between 30 and 60 years old and who also has an income of X or I want to reach everyone who went to a website looking for fertility treatments and [02:38:00] who, and who's in the Northwest region or who's in France, whatever it is, you don't care where the ad appears.
They would, the, the product is the person, not the space on the website of the advertiser. It sounds perfectly logical. It sounds perfectly efficient. It's not efficient
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: and the surface benign, but it's not.
STEVEN BRILL: So here's how unbenign it is. Um, In, a couple years ago, guess who the biggest single advertiser was on the premier Russian propaganda news site?
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: I know the answer because I read the book. You tell them. The
STEVEN BRILL: icon of American capitalism, Warren Buffett.
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: Warren Buffett. Yeah.
STEVEN BRILL: So how did that happen? Warren Buffett owns Geico. Not because Warren Buffett signed up for it. Not because anybody signed up for it. Their marketing people have no idea until we brought it to their attention.
Nobody does. So Warren Buffett owns GEICO. There's an extra irony here because GEICO, whose headquarters is [02:39:00] just, you know, a few blocks down, um, is the Government Employees Insurance Corporation, founded to serve the armed forces during World War II and in the Cold War. Who probably were more interested in serving America's armed forces than in funding Vladimir Putin.
And yet there you go. Um, another example,
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: we're not talking about Trump change. Oh,
STEVEN BRILL: no, there's a lot of money. There's, there's billions of dollars that is going now. Now Putin doesn't particularly need the money, but I'll give you an example of where people are in it for the money. Remember when Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked at their home?
Yep. Um. That night, a website called the Santa Monica Observer, which is a website posing as a local news website. Not a local news website. Not close. Not remotely. No, it's a total hoax site. We had identified it a couple years before at NewsGuard for running stories, for example, that [02:40:00] Hillary Clinton had died in 2015 and a body double had substituted for her during the debates with President Trump in 2016.
So that's the kind of website it is. They ran this story saying that Paul Pelosi had actually been in an encounter with a gay prostitute. Now, they put it on their website, then they then they put it on their Twitter account uh, with the headline, and the headline links back to the website. That's the game here.
Uh, Elon Musk saw fit to retweet it. Mhm. Donald Jr. saw fit to retweet it. It became viral. Hundreds of thousands of people visited the Santa Monica Observer website. The Santa Monica Observer website therefore got all that programmatic advertising from Hertz Renicar, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Comcast, you name it.
You know, every brand name you know. All
MAJOR GARRETT - HOST, THE TAKEOUT: [02:41:00] finding themselves suddenly, algorithmically in bed with a hoax website Paying to produce, paying them to produce something that is manifestly false and has been proven in court to be false, and the perpetrator has admitted guilt and been sentenced all of this.
That's where we are.
Brief: Trump Temple Playlist - Conspirituality - Air Date 10-19-22
MATTHEW REMSKI - HOST, CONSPIRITUALITY: Amidst an endless parade of absurd and disorienting moments in Trump's cursed political arc, this one seemed to stump the political journo class.
At the New York Times, Michael Gold called the episode odd. Surreal, said the New Republic. NPR and the Washington Post and the Huffington Post called it bizarre. And Twitter users captioned clips of the event as weird and insane. And a lot of this commentary, I think, failed to connect this moment to the typical Thursday night dinner party at Mar a Lago.
where Trump is his own DJ, spinning Broadway tunes and Celine Dion from Spotify [02:42:00] on an iPad patched to a sound system so loud it prevents conversation, except for sycophants yelling out compliments on his taste. In that sense, Trump This session simply merged his stump life with his home life, but here at Conspirituality Podcast, we see something else recognizable in this improvised ritual, because the world we cover is strewn with the wreckage of charismatic patriarchs who bleed their followers dry in the closed loop system of cultic dynamics.
When leaders like Trump get to the end of the line, their world is stripped down to pure affect. They have exhausted themselves in the efforts of self aggrandizement. And they may have nothing left to say because they've said it a thousand times. They're all out of stories. They might even be bored of their own bullshit.
They might be underslept or dysregulated by chaotic schedules. They're [02:43:00] not sure where they are. They feel beset by enemies. They feel ill and in cognitive decline, but they can't admit it. But most importantly, when they start to feel overwhelmed by their followers pathetic, in their view, neediness, they will reach for any help they can get in maintaining their emotional dominance.
And what October 14th showed us is that in these moments, Trump's go to resource is canned music and, without his own iPad at the ready, A DJ handler who can spin the tracks.
DONALD TRUMP: But we'll listen to a couple of songs if you want, and that's okay with me, I like it. So we'll do that, uh, we'll do those songs that we had mentioned.
Justin. And if Justin doesn't get it right, he gets fired.
MATTHEW REMSKI - HOST, CONSPIRITUALITY: But at this point, I think it'll take a lot for Trump to fire Justin Caporale, his event manager, not just because he's been a faithful servant since 2016 and was pivotal in organizing the January 6th [02:44:00] riot. And he also provided some of the muscle for Trump's Arlington Cemetery stunt.
Trump has plenty of feckless goons, but by having his fingertips on the rally music iPad, Justin may have the keys to the last remaining inner sanctum where Trump can maintain a sense of safety and dominance. This feeling of being at home. Justin's special skill is that he can keep the trance state of Trump's self regard Transcribed and the devotion of his followers going.
Now, obviously, this usage of music is not unique. Music is used always and everywhere for affect conditioning to prime audiences for receptivity. Kamala Harris rallies are wall to wall music as well, and so are church services. Many of the gurus and cult leaders we study use music during their sermons and liturgies to generate contagious feelings of ecstasy and possibility.
And in the self help world, just [02:45:00] think of any Tony Robbins event. Music diminishes cynicism and irony, it tones down the reasoning brain, it encourages right hemisphere wonder and awe, and it gives that relief that comes from a sense of timelessness. And maybe you've noticed that Trump often defaults to a grammar and intonation that suggests that he's always looking back on things that are yet to happen, but will, of course, turn out his way.
We're going to win, we're going to win, it'll be so beautiful, he'll say things like that. It's the sound of nostalgic prophecy. Or consider that opening clip I played when he pinged the moment of silence during his triumphant return to Butler, Pennsylvania, where he survived that attempt on his life. It's as if he's speaking of his own resurrection in the far distant past and how it restored the world.
The music is always at hand to facilitate his [02:46:00] bounce into eternity. When Trump gapped out on Monday night, all Justin Caporale had to do was to pull tracks from the existing campaign playlist that followers will hear while waiting for him to arrive at events, often hours late. But at the town hall, in a stump context, Trump crossed a threshold.
Usually, when he drifts into the maudlin portion of his rallies, he has to catch himself and remind followers that it's not all over yet, that they still have to get out and vote. But not so much this time. He really did simply fade to music, using the playlist not just as a priming device for his speech or an outro after delivering the goods, but as a surrogate for his presence, and, in what I would argue, is a sign of his weakness.
Narcissistic exhaustion, he allowed the music to stand in for the effort of the raw emotional dominance that is his sole product. It was like a [02:47:00] Jesus take the wheel moment for the guy who thinks he's Jesus.
So, in my journalism and research on cultic groups, I've studied a lot of charismatic leaders who step right up to this line of full musical abandonment. Kundalini Yoga founder and serial rapist and fraudster Yogi Bhajan was a huge fan of using hypnotic music to heighten the impact of his BS teaching.
Jim Jones was a huge music guy. He promoted the People's Temple Choir as a recruitment arm. The Hare Krishna movement famously used chanting to generate altered states that could facilitate compliance with the demands for mindless labor. And some breakaway sects of the Krishna movement, including the one that Tulsi Gabbard grew up in, in Hawaii, which was called The Science of Identity, led by the ex Hare Krishna adept Chris Butler, who was basically Famous for his homophobic and [02:48:00] Islamophobic views, they remained faithful to the Krishna reliance on chanting.
Sogyal Lhakar, formerly known as Sogyal Rinpoche, the famed author of the Tibetan book of Living and Dying, who was later found by an independent investigation to have been abusing and defrauding his students, would often close out an all day and night ritual with a long and weird DJ set, often with his girlfriends singing or dancing near him, and while of course the whole group was exhausted.
Amma, the hugging saint of India who was alleged to abuse her inner circle while cozying up to Hindu nationalists, rakes in millions with all night chanting festivals in airport hotels around the world. And at Rajnishpuram in Oregon, music was integral to generating the trance states that bonded Osho's followers to him.
A former musician for the group wrote, quote, It is [02:49:00] impossible for me to separate playing music for Osho from being with Osho. And that's really important because what music does in these situations is that it collapses the space between the leader and the follower in scenes that look unbearably awkward from the outside but feel altogether different from within.
That collapsed space is how we get the following testimony collected by NBC reporters who asked the Oakes Town Hall attendees what they thought of the unique evening. I loved it, said Jay Bauer, who was in attendance from Montgomery County. I felt like I was sitting in a room with him. Just him. I could have been there another hour, another two hours.
I was just great spending time with the president. But he wasn't spending time with the president, was he? He was spending time getting his emotional cavities filled up with Pavarotti, Sinead O'Connor, Axel Rose, Leonard [02:50:00] Cohen, and the village people. For Jay, Trump accomplished what all charismatics aspire to.
He created a dyadic, intimate feeling. He became the sound, the voice in the follower's head. Now, I've heard countless members of Charismatic Group say just exactly this, he was speaking directly and only to me. It's a really common experience in these scenarios, and it's perfectly depicted if you saw this film, Jane Campion's great 1999 movie, Holy Smoke, with Kate Winslet as Ruth, the young spiritual seeker off to India.
And then Harvey Keitel as this macho cult deprogrammer that is hired by her family to get her out of the yoga group that she's been recruited into. During the recruitment scene, you see how a moment of eye contact between Ruth and the guru sends her into a tunnel vision hallucination of rapture. But with Jay, [02:51:00] Trump is able to accomplish something that every exhausted charismatic would envy.
Because of the music, he doesn't even have to really be there or paying attention. He can disappear into his own pleasure. And he can do that because he assumes that that pleasure will make his power and soul transparent to and accessible to his followers.
Credits
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991 or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from:
Novara Media,
The Majority Report,
Media Matters,
Some More News,
How Money Works,
TLDR News,
The Journal,
Dark Brandon,
Zoe B,
ABC Science,
Dummy,
Pillar of Garbage,
The Takeout, and
Conspiratuality.
Further details are in the [02:52:00] show notes. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Quartet—Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also, coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from bestoftheleft.com.
