Interview with Dan Friesen from Knowledge Fight on Alex Jones, the Sandy Hook Trial, and conspiracy ecosystems
A special crossover episode (long anticipated- at least by us) with one-half of the Knowledge Fight podcast. Specifically, we have Dan Friesen on to enlighten us about all things Alex Jones, the recent trial with the Sandy Hook parents, and to compare notes regarding gurus and conspiracy theorists. Not to mention to give Chris the chance to demonstrate his inner fanboy!Dan is a guy with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Alex Jones and some very astute insights into conspiracy psychology. In fact, Matt and Chris think he might be most accurately considered as something of a rogue anthropologist doing deep ethnographic observation of the InfoWars ecosystem. Dan, meanwhile, maintains he's just a guy! Either way, Dan and the Knowledge Fight podcast are definitely our kind of bag. We hope you too enjoy the conversation and there is plenty of Knowledge Fight episodes (700+) if this leaves you wanting more.Also, in this episode, we discuss Sam Harris' recent online travails, Jordan Peterson's appearance on Lex, and at the end of the episode, Matt finally learns what the podcast is really about! LinksKnowledge Fight podcastJordan's live-tweeting of the trialAlex Jone's trial highlightKnowledge Fight's post-trial review episode (712) with the Sandy Hook parents' trial lawyersArticle on Knowledge Fight in the New York TimesDan & Jordan on CNNArticle on that Paul Joseph Watson audio recordingJordan Peterson: Life, Death, Power, Fame, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #313Sam Harris' appearance on Triggernometry
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, the podcast where an anthropologist and a psychologist listen to the greatest minds the world has to offer.
We try to understand what they're talking about.
I'm Professor Matt Brown.
With me is Associate Professor Chris Kavanagh.
He's the anthropologist.
I'm the psychologist.
And we are here.
We are not queer, but we're not going anywhere.
We're going to be talking about guru stuff.
Hey, Chris.
That's right.
You can't get rid of us.
Can't take us down that easily.
You tried.
You tried to cancel us.
Uncancellable.
Uncancellable.
Yeah, that's always a good thing to throw at people online.
Just to dare people.
They never respond to that.
No, no, we're fine.
We're fine.
We're above board.
We are not problematic in any way, shape or form.
Well, how are things in your neck of the woods, Chris?
Chris, what's been going on in the Guru's sphere from your vantage point?
Sam Harris had a kerfuffle because he...
He said it was fine if people didn't give a crap about the Hunter Biden thing.
And he also, he worded some things badly because he said, like, if there was a conspiracy to hide damaging information, that that would be fine as long as Trump didn't get elected.
So he said various things and he said it on trigonometry and they have a MAGA-inclined...
So the kind of MAGA-leaning side of the heterodox sphere got very upset.
And they kind of took it in a weird way as a vindication, like Sam Harris is revealing that the left admits they, you know...
They suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Yeah, it's like, Sam Harris...
He doesn't know?
He doesn't know.
He actually prefaced it by saying, I haven't done much research into the topic, I don't really know.
That's right.
They should believe him about that.
Yes, they should.
So, you know, one, it's his opinion, but two, he doesn't actually know.
Anything about what occurred there?
So, like, who cares?
You know, the one thing about it, Matt, as we've talked about offline, is that with the Hunter Biden laptop story, there's such an obvious double standard because all of these folks that get so righteously indignant about it, they would never expect the right-wing media to cover,
like on the front pages some story about trump jr in the week to the election right if the democrats were pushing hard some story about trump's second son or whatever yeah they wouldn't care yeah if
it wasn't covered in right-wing media and it would never be covered in right-wing media as a main story so yeah
It's an irritating thing, isn't it?
The differential standards.
And, you know, the left is guilty of this, too.
if you want to see differences of standards of academic rigor being applied, for instance, just try writing a paper with some sort of right wing messages to it, and it'll get subjected to some pretty rigorous methodological critiques.
Yeah, I just don't get it.
It's like the Hillary Clinton emails, like the amount of gnashing of teeth and hand wringing that will go on in these fears.
And then they just turn a blind eye to the blatant lying that...
That continues in the magosphere.
I mean, Trump was just...
His place was investigated, right, because of having...
Confidential information or whatever, or top secret information, apparently.
And the whole thing about the Clinton emails was supposed to be not properly handling.
Information.
Yeah, but now that's completely...
But you see, Chris, I mean, that raid on Mar-a-Lago was just an example of the deep state overreach, surely.
I mean, isn't that your take on it?
That's a heterodox for your take on that.
But hey, I gotta say I respect his willingness and ability to routinely piss people off across the spectrum.
I have to hand it to him, at least when we compare him to people like Eric Weinstein who...
Helpfully injects himself into these discourses with talk that is empty blather but designed to ingratiate himself with his perceived audience.
You know, to his credit, I'll hand it to him, Sam Harris and also Nassim Taleb.
They've got strong IDAF energy.
So, yeah, I don't mind that.
Yeah, to a certain extent, the caveat I would add, though, is, like, I think part of the reason...
Sam goes hard at Trump, but he also goes at pains to point out that it's not a partisan stance, that he just thinks Trump is uniquely harmful, and he actually indicated that he agreed probably with more than half of Trump's And I couldn't help but think that was,
you know, trying to signal to the trigonometry audience that, you know, I'm not just this by the books lefty.
I'm heterodox too.
But I, you know, over 50% of Trump's policy agenda.
Sam would find himself on board where the mind boggles.
Yeah, I don't actually think that's true.
I think it's got a lot to do with Sam's self-concept.
He definitely would like to think of himself as a pure beam of rational energy, as you've described him, and is way, way above having specific political...
The partisan frame.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he does.
He starts the interview by talking about that.
When the hosts are doing the IDW thing of, you know, saying, Sam, we admire your work so much.
You're so fantastic.
How is it that you were able to stake out these positions that are so controversial and you're willing to do that?
And Sam says, well, it's because of his...
The core value is intellectual honesty.
Me too.
Me too.
No, Matt, not you too.
No, not you or any of his critics.
And then moves on to the, he has no attachment to, not just tribalism, but also his identity.
I got heaps of that.
Yeah, no, I fall down on that.
Yeah.
So those things matter.
But yeah, so that's, you know, there's been that.
Sam Harris has, I think, been enjoying the fruits of his labor from that appearance.
And then on the other hand, Jordan Peterson went on with Lex Friedman for a three and a half hour conversation.
And as happens when he tends to do these things, there's been a lot of clips of him saying various silly things.
We might cover some of that conversation on a special, I didn't do a really good job of explaining that while I was ill because...
It appeared in some sense that the reason I was ill was because I was taking benzodiazepines.
But that isn't why.
I was ill and then I took them.
And very low dose and I took that for a long time and it helped whatever was wrong with me.
And it looks like it was an allergy or maybe multiple allergies.
And then that stopped working and so I took a little bit more for about a month and that made it way worse.
And so then I cut back a lot and then...
Then things really got out of hand.
So there was a deeper thing in the benzo.
Oh yeah, definitely.
What can you put words to?
Well, I had a lot of immune...
Well, my daughter, as everyone knows, has a very reactive immune system, and Tammy has three immunological conditions, each of them quite serious.
And I had psoriasis and peripheral uveitis, which is an autoimmune condition, and alopecia areata.
Chronic gum disease, all of which appeared to be allergy-related.
And so Michaela seems to have got all of that.
And so that, and that I think was at the bottom of, because I also had this proclivity to depression that was part of my family history.
But I think that was all immunological as far as I can tell.
And so the treatment for it is, you know, the all-meat diet.
That's what's got them back on an even keel.
That's an immunological response.
Allergic response, yeah.
So anyways, that was what seemed...
Now, I don't like to talk about this much because it's so bloody radical and I don't like to propagate it, but this diet seems to have stopped all of that.
I don't have psoriasis.
All of the patches have gone.
My gum disease, which is incurable, I had multiple surgeries to deal with it, is completely gone.
It took three years.
My right eye, which was quite cloudy, it's cleared up completely.
What else has changed?
Well, I lost 50 pounds.
Like instantly.
And interestingly, it turns out he also reports in that interview, his wife can only eat lamb.
Tammy seems to only be able to eat lamb, although she might be able to eat non-aged beef.
And that makes traveling complicated too.
You know, Michaela is off the ruminant meat back on the beach.
So, you know, it's interesting because that's not even...
Genetic, right?
You could say, oh, well, his daughter, you know, they've got inherited immune system, so there might be genetic conditions.
His wife doesn't have a biological connection, but yeah, also curing things with a single meat product diet.
So that's lucky.
Well, that's just because the all-meat diet is such a miracle cure.
Basically, it's good for what ails you.
They've stumbled upon it, this family.
That's why we're seeing this connection.
You can trust Jordan to report his medical symptoms accurately as well.
I mean, like, he took a sip of cider.
He was awake for longer than the Guinness World Record of sleep deprivation.
So he never exaggerates and always reports these kind of things accurately.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Okay, so this week, Matt, we have an interview with Dan Friesen from...
The Knowledge Fortnite podcast, a podcast which is focused on critically dissecting Alex Jones, co-hosted with Jordan Holmes, who is not joining us because he is on holiday in Ireland at the time of recording.
So Dan hosts a podcast of which I think we are both big fans and which has now around about 700 episodes.
So there's a huge back catalogue if anybody wants to dig into.
But it's especially relevant because...
You know recently there has been the trial of Alex Jones the first of many with the Sandy Hook parents and I think it's good to have a discussion with Dan a kind of retrospective glance at the trial and what Alex is up to but also to compare notes about how the kind of gurus that we look at interact with or parallel the more obvious conspiratorial Gurus that you find
in the Infowars orbit.
It's timely because the trial has attracted a lot of discourse on Twitter, as you'd expect.
A surprising number of figures have gone into bat for Alex Jones, I think, on sort of free speech grounds and general kind of speaking truth to power.
We need to hear these kinds of out-of-left-field ideas.
Sure, he's wrong about a lot of stuff, but sometimes he's really got his finger.
On The Pulse.
And yeah, so we'll talk to him about how valid those points of view might be.
But I'll say this to you, Chris, and to our audience before he comes on, which is that you are a massive fanboy.
Like, we both respect Knowledge Fight, but you love it.
You love that podcast.
You listen to it all the time.
I do.
You're always talking to me about it.
And I told them.
Yeah, you hated it.
I hated being told that.
That's true.
Because I've told Dan on more than one occasion that, like, I think he's doing academic-level research into Alex Jones.
And, you know, if it was anthropology, he's done multiple years of immersion in a topic, and he knows it inside out.
And Jordan as well, although, you know, he doesn't do the same level of research that Dan does, but he also...
knows Alex Jones Inside Out now.
So their show is a great illustration of how having this ability to critically delve into something can be much more It's kind of self-serving.
But I think, you know, Dan is a great illustration of the benefits of looking critically at people.
Yeah, totally agree.
In fact, you just made me think how it is actually a great example of citizen research happening outside.
Of academia.
That work on knowledge fight in any just world, there'd be honorary PhDs being granted from multiple institutions in anthropology, right?
Because as you say, it is super, super well-researched and well-documented.
And he knows it inside out.
So it's funny.
It's actually an interesting example of what the heterodox Twitterati...
Often talk about, which is this alternative, you know, immediate ecosystem, like dealing with niche topics and doing a proper deep dive on them.
Yeah.
It is what they do.
That's what they, the heterodox, Matt TV, Glenn Greenwald and stuff, claim nobody has done with Alex Jones.
And we get into that with Dan in the interview.
And one other thing I will note is that I always listen to Knowledge Fight and everything I listen to at times two speed.
You know, usually when we interview someone, I have this part where I'm kind of like, they're speaking too slowly.
Have I, you know, are we boring them or that kind of thing?
Because I always hear them at double speed.
But I didn't have it with Dan.
So that's an interesting thing.
Just made him seem like he was more considered.
He was freaking, you know, pondering everything at 50% his normal speed.
So, yeah.
All right.
We'll add that little bit of information to our dossier on your psychology.
Psychological state.
Very good.
So let's get into it.
Let's go.
Let's do it.
So with us today, Matt, we have...
A guest.
We sometimes have guests.
We have one today.
And, you know, I rarely am starstruck by the people we're interviewing, even when I like them.
And I know that the guys at Knowledge Fight, Dan and Jordan, don't take well to praise about as well as we do.
But I will say, Dan, up front, that we have Dan Threason from Knowledge Fight, a podcast focused on...
Dissecting critically Alex Jones' content and other conspiracy theories from time to time.
And yeah, Dan, you are the closest from the guests we've had of a personal hero of sorts for me.
Because like for somebody neurotic who focuses on gurus and digging into their content.
You are a guru-like figure, I'm sorry to say.
Oh, no.
I have to go.
Thanks for having me, but I have to leave.
This was all a ploy just to make you as uncomfortable as possible from the get-go.
That's a great way to start things off.
I appreciate that, I think.
I don't want to be a guru, but I appreciate the praise, I guess, or the compliment.
Yeah, well, we actually have even stole small bits from your segments, like the way that we shout out our patrons was modeled on...
The policy wonk thing.
So there's lots of things that we have stolen that you don't know about.
We are revolutionaries in the shout-out game.
Yeah, that's it.
You've set the fire.
Sound effects.
It all just happened accidentally because Alex said he was a policy wonk on an episode and I thought it was so dumb.
I thought it was like, you are the least policy wonky person ever.
And it was around the time that everybody was using that term.
Like, you saw it in the media a lot.
Like, a lot of people saying about, like, Pete Buttigieg.
He's a policy wonk.
Like, he's really into the minutia and the details.
And I just thought it was so funny.
And I guess it just stuck.
And I'm glad that it's getting mileage elsewhere.
That's cool.
Oh, I hear from a lot of people, too.
Like, I got a message not too long ago from, like, a teacher.
Who uses the bright spots that we do at the beginning of our episodes with her class.
It's a total side thing from the conspiracy stuff, but that kind of stuff is really exciting to me.
These things that people take and bring into their lives.
Expressing and focusing on something that's positive at the beginning of a day or whatever.
You know, shouting people out with a funny sound effect.
Whatever it is, I'm thrilled that it's having an effect somewhere.
Yeah, there's an interesting dynamic that, you know, the content that you and Jordan cover each week is, you know, pretty vile, usually.
Even when you took the divergences into UFO figures and that kind of thing, often anti-Semitic conspiracies seem to just waft in the view.
But it is interesting that in covering that, there's been the creation of a community that was very visible during Alex Jones' trial, which is, you know, created around opposition to a hardcore right-wing conspiracy theorist,
but they are pushing a much more positive message.
So that's an odd dynamic that's occurred.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think as the podcast grew and more people started listening, I think I became a little bit aware of how bad it would be if the only thing that we did was be anti-someone.
I felt like the toxicity that would be possible from that would be like, well, how do I be a better part of this community?
I've got to be more against this person or more aggressively anti-Alex Jones or something.
Whether intentionally or not, or whatever pieces were intentional and weren't, I always tried to bake in little things that were not just about hating him.
Obviously, the debunking and deconstructing what he's about and his worldview is primary, but those other things I think are essential to being a listener and enjoying the show.
Not an entirely negative experience.
I think the bright spot thing is accidentally a very positive part of that.
I honestly am not entirely sure how.
The community that's formed around it is as positive as it is.
But I can only take credit for part of it.
Some of it is just like...
We've lucked out that a number of people have been really positive influences within the community and the community building itself.
I'm thrilled because if our listeners were just a bunch of assholes who wanted to attack Alex, I don't think I could do this.
I don't think I could keep going.
It wouldn't be motivating.
I get the same vibe.
I know what you're talking about.
With the gurus that we cover, Most of them have their coterie of dedicated haters, right?
And, you know, often they have good reasons to hate them, but there is a, you know, perhaps a personality type that is attracted to that pure negativity that isn't really what we want to be about.
So, yeah, it's a tough line to tread.
Yeah, and I think that a lot of folks who create aren't necessarily that interested in thinking about those kinds of issues, of what kind of thing you create or condone within a community and an audience.
I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I think that there's a certain amount of responsibility that a creator has among the people who enjoy what they create.
Yeah.
And Dan, illustrating our lack of professional interviewer skills, I probably should have asked you this at the start, but for anybody who is unfamiliar with Knowledge Fight, and we've recommended it several times, so if they are, they just don't take recommendations properly.
So if you were describing what you do from your point of view, how do you kind of nutshell?
Cover what Knowledge Fight is about and what you do.
Well, primarily, I think it's about tracking down curiosity that I have about Alex Jones.
At least, that's the beginning of it and where everything is sort of spiraled from, where the ball is rolled downhill.
And in function, how that works is I end up...
You know, certainly in the past, I used to listen to, like, every day of his show.
I had, like, a 9 to 5, and I would be listening to his show live, and then, like, old episodes once his show ended, and, like, really taking notes.
And, you know, I was very much, like, super consistent about it.
And now, as, you know, it's become far more repetitive, and, like, I can kind of, you know, the show is not as...
Much of a mystery to me.
I listen to the show and I'll find the information that he's putting out and try to track down what he's talking about, where the information comes from, and then I will present it to my friend Jordan, who's my co-host, and he has no idea.
He understands Alex Jones a lot now by this point, but he's done none of the preparation or anything, so he'll have more of a visceral reaction to Alex's And then we'll have a conversation about, you know,
where does this come from?
What's he actually talking about?
And especially, like, in the last couple years or so, it's become far more overt that what he's talking about is just made up.
Like, he'll have a headline, and it'll be something that sounds weird, but then if you actually read the story, it's kind of a click-baity headline on CNN or on some other...
Even less reputable website.
And he'll just make up what the story is.
And so, like, it's become much less work-intensive, for sure, in terms of the, like, what is he talking about?
Oh, like, in the past, I would have to read books and stuff to understand what he was talking about.
Now it's just like, oh, he's lying about a headline.
This is kind of deflating.
But yeah, that's what the show is, basically.
I do that preparation and then Jordan yells about it.
It is interesting because typically you stay in the modern era, but you do jump back in time for like you did investigations into...
The original coverage of the Sandy Hook and recently the 9-11 coverage, which was very interesting.
That was fun.
Joe Rogan called in and also a kind of surprising interaction with Joe because he seems to have actually been more skeptical in the past, which was unexpected.
He had not hosted the Man Show yet at that point, I think.
That's what broke him.
I don't know.
That's my theory.
So, there was a couple of thoughts I had from the things that you mentioned there.
And one was that, so Alex's habit, which I think you've documented really clearly, of just going off headlines, of just kind of reacting without reading things.
And this was documented quite nicely in the trial depositions that you covered when they talked about the inner workings of Infowars and how they...
I think I know the reaction, so I just said you have to talk about it, but you know when you see figures like Joe Rogan or Glenn Greenwald present Alex as Somebody who gets things wrong, makes mistakes, but he's often prescient.
He was talking about Jeffrey Epstein long before anyone else, and he was skeptical about the weapons of mass destruction and so on.
So that narrative, when you see that being presented commonly as a talking point on kind of the right all the time and in certain segments of the left, I'm wondering how you How do you respond to that?
Is there any way to get the message through why that isn't accurate?
Or was he talking about those things long in advance?
Well, I think that the way to get through to people is to push for specifics.
Because those people will never be able to provide those specifics.
There's a feeling that Alex Jones was right about a bunch of stuff.
And that's a fun feeling.
Because it's kind of roguish and it's...
I think it's more an illusion than anything else.
Like, sure, he was skeptical about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
That's fine.
But, like, I was part of a hippie sort of community.
Not really.
I mean, my parents volunteered at, like, a hippie bookstore when I was younger.
And, like, in 2002, 2003, you know, we were protesting the Iraq War, and no one in these communities believed that there was weapons of mass destruction either.
So, like, it's not like Alex was the sole arbiter and only voice saying this thing.
It's great that he was right on that note, you know, possibly.
But what does it mean?
Does it mean anything?
Maybe.
Maybe not that much.
I'm not going to consider my dad a prophet because he didn't believe that there were weapons of mass destruction.
You know, like, great.
And then, in terms of the Jeffrey Epstein thing, I think that you should push back on people and say, demonstrate that he was talking about Jeffrey Epstein at this period of time.
Because I've gone back and tried to find evidence that he was, and all I can find is that in the past, he believed that the satanic panic of the McMartin school period was real.
And he had that guy, Ted Gunderson, that he would do interviews with.
And, you know, he was yelling about satanic ritual abuse during that period when it was a really hot topic in America and everyone was freaked out about that.
And then, you know, calmed down because everyone realized a lot of this was hoax shit.
But Alex did not believe that was hoax stuff.
And so you had him yelling about that stuff in the past.
Then later, Epstein becomes a hot topic and everyone's talking about Epstein.
My sense of it is that everyone believes that Alex was talking about Epstein back then because he was talking about ritualistic child abuse and sex trafficking of children and these things.
And he's applied it, the Epstein label, to the past stuff that he was talking about.
And I don't really believe that people, when pushed on it, could provide evidence that he was talking about Epstein by name, as he claimed under oath back at a period when other people weren't talking about him.
I think that's a way maybe to get through to people is to be like, yes, I know that you have this perception that he was talking about these things, but can you show me where he was?
And I don't think most people would be able to...
I don't think people would respond well to that.
And then I don't think past that they would be able to give you that information.
So I'm open to having my mind changed, but I haven't seen any proof that that is the case.
So, I mean, I bet it wouldn't help, though.
I bet people would still just be like, he talked about it somewhere else.
I just can't find the video, you know, or whatever.
Yeah, that's probably true, depending on how bought in they are.
But I did my own, like, amateur search, you know, looking for infowards and kind of restricting the time frame.
I find just tons of mainstream media coverage about Jeffrey Epstein because he had court cases and whatnot about the events and nothing about Infowars until after that, which makes sense because they're not doing investigative reports about real things.
So why would they know?
And it struck me as similar to when at the trial recently, he talked about how In the past, he was discussing The Great Reset and Klaus Schwab, who's a figure that nobody mentioned until a couple of years ago.
Yeah, if you do a search on Infowars.com of all their past articles, Klaus Schwab's name doesn't appear until the last few years.
Granted, I will admit that he would talk about like...
The World Economic Forum as, like, a boogeyman kind of thing.
But Klaus Schwab wasn't a character, wasn't a name that came up ever.
Yeah, and same with Epstein.
It's just, yeah, it's weird.
I don't know.
I think people give him a lot of mileage because they want this mysterious thing to be, like, true.
They want this person who's shouting nonsense to actually be onto something because it's more interesting than reality.
Yeah, definitely.
Dan, one of the things that struck me when I was listening to the Knowledge Fight coverage of the court case was just how he kept lying, obviously, and kept operating in his alternative reality.
In a way that was just clearly detrimental to his case and to him personally.
And it sort of goes back to one of these perennial questions, which is, you know, are these characters, like, pretending?
Like, are they bad or are they crazy, right?
Is it all a scam?
Is it all a grift?
And they're very consciously, in a Machiavellian way, being deceptive.
Or are they absolutely nuts and living in their alternative reality?
And I know there's a hell of a lot of evidence for the former.
One of the things that struck me in the trial is just how his level of lying was just almost reflexive, and he couldn't help himself even when it continued to damage him in a very material way.
So I just wonder if you could square that circle at all.
Well, I have two thoughts, I guess.
One is that I think that the way his brain works, I am not sure that he would be able to understand that his actions could materially hurt him.
You know, like, I think that he probably, on some level, is able to talk himself into being like, well, we'll appeal this, this will never stand up to whatever, or this bankruptcy thing will work and I'll be able to, you know, coast or whatever.
You know, like, I feel like he probably would be of the mind, if he had a rational thought about this, would think that acting like a normal person on the stand would materially hurt him more.
With the people who believe the alternative reality that he lives in.
So that's possible.
And then the second thought that I had is, you know, with pro wrestlers back in the day, there's a famous story that the wrestler Cody Rhodes talks about, about his dad, Dusty Rhodes.
And he had had a fake injury.
He had broken his leg or something in the wrestling storyline.
And in order to keep the kayfabe going, he would walk around the house in a cast.
Like, he pretended with his family that he was actually injured.
And there was, like, a great respect for the business that people had.
That they didn't want to give up the illusion of it.
And there's a part of me that thinks that maybe Alex is just, like, deeply committed to that kayfabe of the alternative reality that he lives in.
That it would all be destroyed if he were to get on the stand and recognize, like...
Yeah, alright, here's what happened.
Here's what I did.
And there's a part of me that thinks that maybe that's more important to him.
Yeah, interesting.
When I heard him explaining, you know, discussing with his lawyer or ex-lawyer, occasional co-host Barnes, about the way the trial was being controlled by the lawyer or the judge and that they were turning on and off the stream.
And these things which are demonstrably False, right?
Like you said, you could just go and look at the stream and see that that is not accurate.
But the interesting thing for me when he was saying all of that is like, and I know it is, it's very hard to parse this as to how much is genuine versus not, but it sounds like he really believes,
you know, like, well or not, he knows that the reality matches that.
But like, he says things and then afterwards, Is so convinced that, like, what he said is right, that he can just kind of say it with complete conviction.
And it felt like that at the trial as well when he tried to defend his actions.
A couple of times, like, Mark would catch him up on contradictions or whatever, and he looks uncomfortable and unhappy at those moments.
But the parts where he just gets the monologue about what he's doing and stuff, it feels like he gets into a groove of rationalizing everything.
I don't know.
I might be giving him too much credit, but it feels like he is embodying the alternative reality that he's telling everyone is there.
Sure.
I think as someone who's watched as much of him as I have, I think those moments when he's on the stand and he's kind of in that zone that you're describing, That to me just feels more like autopilot.
That to me almost is like, that's muscle memory.
I don't even know if he knows what he's saying when he's in that kind of a role.
But then, to your point about the stream, saying this thing that's demonstrably false, to me, that's no different than him and I think so many other figures like him.
They'll say things that are clearly not true, but then say like...
You can look it up.
Do your own research.
Because there's a gambit there that is like, I know most people will not look this up.
I know that most people will not look for the stream and see that it was fully there.
And they weren't turning it off for the Atlas's lawyers.
Because, I don't know, part of it I think is like, people who have bought in and the audience, it's a dangerous proposition to do your own research.
Like, subconsciously, there may be a block that is like, well, if I do this, and Alex's lawyer is talking freely, and the judge is not turning this stuff off, what then?
What do we do then?
I think that Alex knows that, and I think there's a part of him that is willing to exploit that unwillingness to open the mystery box, or whatever you want to call it.
There was a thing whenever, you know, like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi were promoting the documentary Alex's War recently.
And the framing of that was so much presented around that especially leftists and progressives are afraid to look at the real Alex Jones like they...
They just want to deal with a caricature villain, and they will never put in the effort to try and understand them as a human.
And the thing that was so greedy about that was that, you know, it's not hard to find your podcast.
There's 700 episodes, and you guys...
We've been in the New York Times.
We were on CNN last week.
Like, I know that we started in my bedroom, and we're still recording in basically my bedroom, but we're not...
Like, we had...
Ten listeners originally.
It's not the same now.
It's offensive to me, this premise.
No one looks at it.
Even more so, you and Jordan, I think maybe you more so than Jordan.
There's no subterfuge about your politics.
You're both progressive guys.
The notion that progressives particularly would be afraid to look at Alex Jones, it's so easily contradicted, but it's kind of what you say, that in that case, some people think I'm being naive if I think that Greenwald and Taibbi are unaware that you guys exist,
but I genuinely think they don't do any effort.
I think based on Jordan's tweeting after the fact, they definitely do.
He was tweeting at them a little too much, and mysteriously they didn't block him, which they seemed to block everybody who say mean things.
A bunch of people who were responding to Jordan's tweet got blocked, and then he didn't block...
I don't know.
I think it's not naive to think that they don't know who we were going in, necessarily.
I think the lack of preparation is probably pretty strong.
After the fact, there's really no excuse.
Yeah.
I think most of the people in our audience will be aware that there was the recent court case with Alex Jones against two of the Sandy Hook parents and that there was a default judgment against him.
So the televised stuff was really to establish the amount of damages that he would be held accountable for.
And you guys were at the...
Court case and have been covering the deposition.
I wanted to ask you, Dan, about that.
You were, before this, from my point of view, you were kind of an anthropologist, not in name, of the Alex Jones ecosystem and world.
But, you know, you took pains on the podcast to discourage your listeners to, like, call into the show or directly interfere with Infowars.
And I think with good instincts on that.
With this court case, your expertise was useful for the defense?
The plaintiffs.
The prosecutors.
The plaintiffs, the opposite.
I called it prosecutors one time and I got scolded, so I don't want you to fall into that trap.
Thank you.
I'm glad Mark is not here.
So your research was useful.
You were there.
It became clear, you know, in some of the discussions you've had afterwards that at least Alex's lawyers were aware of who you were.
And I wondered about, like, for you and Jordan becoming, you know, intentionally or not, and I know that you took pains to try and focus your output on the parents and their bravery and also just, you know, the very real...
Suffering they had and them having their chance to have their moment in court.
I don't want to diminish that at all, but I do want to ask how it is for you coming into that part of the story and being covered in media and getting the attention reflected back on you, given that you guys are quite private type guys.
It's a little bit weird for sure, but not...
That hasn't been that bad or anything.
I think we've been pretty controlled about it.
Like, we got a request for, like I said, CNN.
I would have turned that down if it wasn't Brian Stelter because he's Alex's archenemy in the media.
And so I thought, like, well, this is going to be funny.
Let's do this.
And it's kind of been strange to have, like, interview requests from places.
But I think that it's a...
Kind of a blessing of a position to be in because I'm able to say what I think, my sort of learned experience about Alex and my perspective, and be able to focus a lot of these things on what the real story is,
which is the parents.
And so being in that position, I feel like not behaving in the way that I have and accepting these things would be a little bit irresponsible.
That kind of brings me back to the point you were bringing up about the pseudo-anthropologist transitioning into whatever this is now.
I think that my hands-off approach to Alex and with encouraging the listeners to behave that way was partially based in that I think if people get in their minds that it's a good idea to prank call Alex, this will lead to negative Vibes in the audience.
Again, the community, the toxicity of that could be a really bad thing for people, and I don't want to be a part of that.
And then second, I felt like it would really change the content that I was covering.
I felt like people would call in, hopefully trying to get onto our podcast by having a prank call on Alex, and I thought that that circularness would be really diminishing of what I was trying to do.
And so that, I thought, was really important to keep very clear.
But now, I think there's less of that.
I think there's less to learn from watching his actual show.
The roots of his ideology and his philosophy and his politics, you're not going to learn about that now.
He's going to be yelling about the devil and riffing off headlines that he didn't read.
And so, I still don't want people to harass him and all that.
That hands-offness, I think I have a little bit of a softer approach to now.
And I think the breaking point is the court case.
And that is because I was approached by the plaintiff's lawyers and they had a proposal of helping with their case and being an expert consultant.
And I really did wrestle with it for a good while because of that long-standing We're just observing.
We're not getting involved kind of thing.
And I felt like that was something very important to our show and the character of it.
But I couldn't escape the two ideas.
One being that I have all this information and if I'm not using it, why do I have it?
Like, it's a waste if I just have this and don't put it to some positive use.
And then the second thing, I think this is something either my therapist or Jordan or both said.
They're not the same person.
It's different people.
But if I didn't do it, it would be an act of withholding something from the plaintiffs.
It is an expertise that I have, and not doing it is a choice in and of itself.
And I found that to be a really difficult thought to...
Counter at all.
And so it just, I think it was a sort of an abandonment of that strict line and the need to like, okay, we'll be now, we're not going to clout chase off this or anything, but we will exist in this place because the alternative is something I'm not comfortable with.
So I don't know, but it hasn't been like...
It's weird.
I really thought there would be a lot more harassment or InfoWars fans, but so far it's been pretty mild or non-existent even.
It's very minimal.
I see fights that you have on Twitter, Chris, and I think that people are much meaner to you than to us.
I agree.
Well, Dan, I'll just say, by the way, that your approach there is completely consistent with the sort of academic.
To be a standoff-ish, non-activist observer, an anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist, whatever, but still appear as an expert witness in relevant legal actions.
And I've done that myself in the field of gambling regulation, gambling studies.
Totally.
Nobody's asked for my expertise.
Not yet, Chris.
Not yet.
Your day will come.
I wonder if some of that comes from just like, you know, my dad's a professor and I grew up around a lot of, like, academia.
So I wonder if that just, like, subconsciously rubbed off or something.
Yeah, I'm sure.
Hey, like, I'm curious, like, how do you see the future playing out for us?
Because I have...
Fond hopes when Chris tells me about the numerous legal actions and how Alex Jones just keeps digging himself deeper with his behaviour, perhaps spawning new ones.
And I've kind of, I would love to see a future in which he is just mired in inexpensive, time-consuming legal battles for the rest of his life.
Is that wishful thinking on my part or how do you see it?
Well, it's interesting.
I think actually the answer to that question is, I mean, it's a little bit up in the air, obviously.
I think that these cases are going to be really tough for him to thread the needle on.
And so I think, I mean, the Connecticut case is moving forward.
There's the Marcel Fontaine case and the Posner De La Rosa case that's still in Texas.
And so those are still like, and they're coming up.
Alex has declared bankruptcy on Free Speech Systems, his main company, and I'm not sure exactly what the impact that will have on those cases, but they're not going to disappear through the bankruptcy.
There's still going to be implications.
And so we'll see.
But, interestingly, I think that his future success kind of dovetails with some of...
This stuff that you guys look at.
I think some of these Greenwald Taibbi types are the sort of lifelines that Alex has to staying relevant and finding some way to have an audience or some kind of a renaissance for himself through this stretch.
And I know that some of these folks, like the Jordan Peterson-y types, are fairly in a self-help vein.
And I could see Alex trying to tap into some of that as a next chapter.
But it relies a lot on folks like Greenwald and Taibbi, as they have with this documentary, kind of being gullible enough to play along with it.
Gullible or, I guess, craven.
Because I guess you could look at it negatively.
Yeah, and lazy that they don't seem to pay attention.
Yeah, no, I mean, I think you could be right.
Chris and I have observed like a doubling and tripling down on that, you know, free speech forever type attitude amongst these types and an increased willingness to endorse pretty extreme examples of that to own the libs or whatever it is.
And it seems so unawares, too.
It seems like they just are not...
They don't know what they're talking about.
It would be one thing if you actually studied Alex Jones.
You knew what he was about.
You knew the kind of things he did.
And then we're still like, he has the right to say it.
This is free speech stuff.
Because then you could actually engage with it.
You could actually talk about why do you think that this is protected by free speech.
But as it is, it's just a knee-jerk kind of defensiveness.
Kind of disappointing.
Yeah, I get frustrated.
I heard exactly the same arguments in support of, say, Joe Rogan, as we've heard in favour of Alex Jones, which is this whole big thing about how it's terrible, you know, they shouldn't be silenced and they're totally fine and it's people getting their knickers in a twist about nothing.
And then they'll say, oh, but I don't actually listen to it.
I don't know anything about it.
So these characters are kind of acting as like cardboard.
Two-dimensional stand-ins, right?
A broader argument.
Alex Jones, in the content that we look at, tends to serve as a totemic figure that is just referenced as he's the first step in the creeping authoritarianism of the social media companies.
And it is exactly like you say, Dan.
The people never see, like, they never actually grapple with what he's done.
It's just like a vague, they've got a vague cloud idea.
They might reference something about the Sandy Hook kids, but they typically have no idea that, like, his content is, like, Christian.
Aggressively fundamentalist Christian.
Yeah, not...
Violently Christian.
Yeah, violently Christian nationalist and, like, you know, it is not nonpartisan conspiracism.
It's...
John Bircher, right-wing militia conspiracism.
And that's the thing that is often...
Yeah, it's very hard to get the grips with because the same thing happens.
I'm always amazed by how Joe Rogan talks about Alex Jones fairly frequently.
But he never...
He's a fun guy!
Yeah, yeah.
I think, you know, my analysis with Joe is like, because of the type of person he is, he likes to say that he's friends with somebody who's so out there.
That's what Alex is, you know, as a valuable guy.
It's like somebody that you can invite when you're in Austin, Texas, to go get a drink with.
And what a cookie experience.
But like, he doesn't want the actual grapple.
With what Alex's content is day in and day out.
I think even though Rogan is a right-wing partisan, I think if he was forced to watch Infowars, he wouldn't like it.
Yeah, I fully agree.
I think you'd be like, what is this?
Alex, you're calling everyone the devil and everyone you don't like is a pedophile now.
This is aggressive.
This is dangerous, Alex.
Maybe.
You'd hope that would be his response.
Yeah, there's a kind of outsider cred that it's so false, but I guess some people buy into it that he's like, I'm friends with Alex Jones.
I think you have the Rogans, you have the Red Scare folks.
A lot of folks maybe have not bought into it, but yeah, I guess there's also a lot of Rogans friends.
Eddie Bravo, but Eddie Bravo might actually just believe the same stuff Alex does.
That Flagrant 2 podcast, Andrew Schultz, he'll have Alex on.
It's almost like you give yourself a pat on the back for being cool enough to hang out with him or something.
It's just, you guys...
I don't know.
Have fun.
I'm not impressed.
We have noticed as well, and I know, Dan, you've looked or considered doing some episodes on Russell Brand, and you looked at Stefan Molyneux before.
We did one on him, one on Molyneux.
It was the Poland one.
I think we just did an episode about him.
I was gonna do a series on Molyneux, but I think we ended up just doing the...
The Poland documentary.
Maybe I'm conflating one of the Alex Jones documentaries you did.
I thought it was a multi-part episode on Steph Molyneux.
Oh, no, I don't think so.
I think each of Alex's documentaries were five-parters.
Those were way too long.
But yeah, I think Molyneux we covered in one because he just said, I'm a white nationalist, and we're like, hello!
Yeah, I have a question about that, but I know that Matt has a meeting he will at least temporarily disappear for.
Before you descend into the academic puff of smoke, Matt, what's the ask?
He's threatened by this conversation about Molyneux.
Yeah, don't expose my guru.
Yeah, I had this meeting.
I normally shift my meetings around to accommodate Chris's meetings, but this one's with the department head, and I just can't.
But this is an easy one.
I want to sneak in before I go, and hopefully I'll come back.
Sure.
Yeah, so Dan, I just wanted to ask you.
What your personality diagnosis of Alex Jones would be?
We've seen with the gurus that we look at, there seems to be this underlying thread of grandiose narcissism, which feels like the key to the puzzle.
It explains why they can operate in this alternative reality and why they can so confidently and consistently keep lying and also why they kind of can't help themselves.
And also why, in a similar vein to Donald Trump, how it's kind of like a superpower.
It has a lot of advantages.
It allows them to operate in a way that normal people can't.
But at times, like this court case, it also shows there are some vulnerabilities too.
I want to check with you.
What's your diagnosis though?
You know, I've only been in a room with him a couple times and not actually talked to him.
So, you know, caveat.
I think it's impossible to look at his body of work and not come away with that.
That's basically exactly what you're saying.
Grandiose narcissism to a T. But I also think, this is a little bit irresponsible on my part, so take this with a grain of salt, but I also think that there's a strain of victimhood that he has.
He thinks that everyone is against him, and I don't know if that's a sincere full feature of his narcissism.
But it becomes so present in so many of the things that he, the way he acts.
And I think that's part of the way that, you know, him and a lot of other folks in his milieu can experience everything that they do as self-defense, like even when it's a completely hostile act towards other people.
That underlying feeling of being aggrieved at all points and everything is an attack on some part of yourself.
So I think a mixture of that and narcissism is mostly what underrides him.
And I think he just doesn't read well.
I think that there's a comprehension problem that he has that goes through a lot of his...
I don't know if that's a character trait as much as it is just a...
A cognitive deficiency.
Yeah.
Something that makes him a bad guru.
Not like him to read.
It's kind of satisfying to me and Chris that you hit upon a couple of dimensions of our Garometer framework there.
So that's very satisfying.
I'll leave you guys to it temporarily, hopefully.
I'll hopefully see you soon.
Awesome.
Go tell that department head who's boss, Matt.
That's right.
So I actually was curious to ask you a question a little bit.
Not like that.
I'm forbidden.
This is one way.
Yeah, go ahead.
I was curious about your take on Alex in terms of the sort of character of guru that you focus on and you cover.
How does Alex fit into the...
I know you're saying that he's totemic for folks that you look at, but him as a person, does he qualify for what you think of as a guru?
Yeah, so...
We obviously had lots of people suggest we cover Alex Jones as a guru, right?
Because he's an obvious case study.
But two things that prevented us were, one, that you guys do a better job of it.
And it's not blowing smoke.
It's just like, you know...
What are we going to say?
You're doing multiple hours per week on him breaking down his content.
So us taking one selected piece of content, it felt like we were kind of regurgitating what you're saying.
But setting aside that logistic issue, the other reason we were a little bit hesitant is our initial scope for the podcast was we want to look at this new crop.
of kind of online guru figures who don't fall into the traditional alternative spirituality guru or the kind of outright conspiracy talk radio guru type conspiracy guru.
That makes sense.
Those kind of fit into other molds.
Yeah, like they're kind of documented and, you know, there are even direct Connections with Alex and cult figures, right?
Like the branch of Davidians?
Yeah, he rebuilt their church.
Yeah, so that was one of the things.
It feels like a lot of the academic literature and psychology literature looking at cult and guru figures, it does cover those people pretty well.
But Alex Jones is actually, I think, a little bit more...
Interesting in that space because he is, in many ways, a kind of paradigmatic example of a modern guru because of the way that he operates with the kind of audience that he's built.
And I used to think that when I made parallels to Alex Jones and some of the figures that we can't...
I got lots of pushback.
I had people block me on Twitter and say, how rude, you know, you compared Brett Weinstein to Alex Jones.
You're just trying, you know, you're discrediting.
But as it's gone on, I have to say that there's so many direct parallels.
And it kind of goes such that as the gurus that we cover become more and more conspiratorial and more partisan.
They become more like Alex.
And actually, we see guests like, you know, Brett Weinstein and Robert Malone and Peter McCulloch.
Sure.
Like, Brett Weinstein hasn't appeared on Infowars, I don't believe yet.
He's been discussed on it.
He's been mentioned.
Yeah.
Not a guest.
Robert Malone and Peter McCulloch have.
And I don't know about Pierre Corey, but these kind of overlaps tend to be happening.
And one of the things Matt and I noticed with, like, Brett is...
It's very parallel to what you're saying with Alex, that like Brett Weinstein basically doesn't seem to read studies very well.
He sometimes reads abstracts, but often not even that correctly.
And he, unlike Alex, one of the things that he sometimes does is issue corrections, but it actually, it's not even, now I'm saying that, it's not even really light, unlike Alex, because the correction is usually...
We got the small detail wrong, but the fundamental point was completely correct, and people are focused on this small detail, which is completely irrelevant.
I'm sorry that I was actually more right than I said.
Yeah, that's what they often do.
We have been threatening to do this episode for quite a while where we want to take clips from Infowars and juxtapose them with Brett Weinstein's Dark Horse.
I think it would be pretty simple to do.
I haven't watched as much of that Dark Horse, but I've seen a bit.
It's a less entertaining version, for sure.
There's not yelling and stuff, but there's a lot of thematic overlap.
There's a lot, and there was even the case that Brett was...
Anti-mandate march, the anti-vax march that was, you know, framed as an anti-mandate one.
So I'd listened to your show about a week before and Alex was waffling on about, you know, that they're going to stage false flags to discredit us and like cover in case there's a violence at a rally.
I was talking with Heller and basically saying he couldn't go to this anti-mandate march because the movement needs someone outside.
Who's not present.
Oh, shit.
Designated survivor.
Yeah.
When they launch, in case they launch the kind of discrediting attack and try to make it look like the group.
And it was to me like, whoa, that's not just, you know, like, oh, there's a thematic parallel.
It's like the exact same stuff.
And yeah, so I probably got lost in the dark horse Weinstein weeds there, but it happens.
I see a lot of.
I don't think it's intentional borrowing.
I think it's just that if you're doing what they do, that's the kind of stuff that works.
I don't think they're making notes on InfoWars or whatever.
It's just that they have a parallel evolution of the same rhetorical techniques.
I could see that.
I could see getting positive reinforcement in some way from using some sort of a trick or whatever, and then it just sort of...
You know, cascading.
Actually, it's interesting.
Me and Jordan have, in the past, talked about how that kind of idea of preemptive framing of things as possible false flags is kind of like a line of demarcation.
To us, that kind of feels like when you've lost it entirely.
It's one thing to talk about how agent provocateurs do exist and have existed in the past.
You know, that's fine.
But the way that Alex preemptively declares everything that could possibly happen as a false flag is completely detached from any reckoning with reality.
And the idea that Weinstein is engaging in that same kind of trick is really disappointing because it's so addictive.
When you frame things that are potentially negative for you and the people you want to look good as false flags, all you're doing is preemptively justifying other people doing negative things.
So, like, if some anti-vaxxer had done something, let's say, at that march, all you're doing is creating a pretext wherein you don't have to take responsibility for that kind of action.
And that is really, really potent, I think.
Engage in what you might call stochastic terrorism.
It's really helpful when you whip up kind of an extremist crowd.
And I think that it's a choice to engage in rhetoric like that.
And I find that to be really sad.
You hope that that kind of thing would stay cloistered in a really disreputable bubble like Alex.
And not to say that Weinstein's reputable or anything, but...
He appears to be to a wider audience.
I'm wary of, like, just then telling you about gurus, but I do want to point out one other parallel that I...
I've observed, particularly with Weinstein, which was that he got a negative review of his book, The Hunter Galler's Guide to the 21st Century, and it was in The Guardian.
It's got to be an SGW or something.
Well, oh, look, you've re-empted it.
On the podcast, him and his wife basically said exactly that.
They said, this is a postmodern person who doesn't understand science.
They've got it all wrong.
And the author...
Of the review is this guy called Stuart Ritchie.
He's an academic who has written books criticizing modern science practices, you know, predatory publishing and all of the things that led to the replication crisis.
And Stuart Ritchie is also like a heterodox figure.
He's published at Quillette.
He's published Born Heart.
So him critiquing them is absolutely not a social justice postmodern figure.
And yet...
It would be easy for their audience to find that out by just Googling his name.
I was amazed that they had the brazenness to present him as someone who doesn't understand science, who doesn't do experiments, and he's the exact opposite of that.
So, you know, when you were talking about Alex saying, you know, check the feed or whatever, that's kind of what they did to their audience as well.
And I was like, but how can they do that?
Because just one Google.
And it will be evident that they're lying.
Well, think about it this way.
You can bring this up on Twitter.
I did.
And it doesn't erode his fan base.
You know, like, clearly this being pointed out that, like, this is wrong.
What are you talking about?
It's not a negative.
Or if it is, like, what, maybe 1% or 2% of the audience will care?
If you have a 98% retention rate by dismissing criticism.
Seems like most people who are, you know, maybe not the sincerest actors might take that option.
That seems like a good way to not have to, like, I don't know, wrestle with, like, I was wrong.
For our listeners who don't...
Have visual feedback.
Matt has re-emerged from the academic puff of smoke.
It was the most efficient meeting in history.
I was very impressed.
Yeah, that's very efficient.
That's why he's a full professor.
You just got on that other meeting.
No!
Yeah, that was basically it.
I said, later.
And I said, okay.
Matt, there's a question Dan asked that I think is good and I'd like to get your answer to about how we would perceive Alex as a guru and what he does.
One of the things There's lots of things that we see that Alex is, you know, narcissistic, persecution complex, presenting himself as galaxy-brained about a whole range of subjects.
But one thing that strikes me that he's good at, and that a lot of our gurus are good at, is when he gets on a roll, like kind of citing events, historical events and documents and so on.
It's, you know, kind of gish galloping, but it's also the way that he delivers it is rhetorically powerful.
And I think it's the kind of thing that people underestimate that they think, you know, it would be quite easy to have a debate with Alex Jones and make him look stupid by just pointing out.
But in that kind of steamroller, like power of oratory, he strikes me as like a good...
And as you cover on your show, when you have the other Infowars characters, they're not as good at that.
Like, they try to ape it, but they can't deliver it.
So that's a skill.
They don't have the years.
Like, one of the things, they don't have the philosophical background that Alex had from his childhood of the John Birch shit and stuff.
And I think that gives him a conviction that someone like Owen Troyer doesn't have.
And then also, just like years and years of repeating things like Operation Northwoods.
And stuff like that.
They don't have that, like I said, muscle memory of just like, boom, boom, boom, A, B, C, D, E. Now you have to respond to all of it.
And that's, yeah, it tricks people.
But yeah, it would be hard to debate for sure.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I mean, his style is obviously very different from someone like Jordan Peterson in the presentation.
But I've been watching Jordan Peterson's recent.
Barrage of video.
It's getting closer.
It's getting closer.
That's right.
And there's just a lot of similarities in the strong emotional projection.
That's something they have in common.
And, you know, as you're saying, the gish galop of one point after the next, things don't need to cohere in an analytical sense.
It can be a scattergun.
That's the definition of effective rhetoric.
The grievance that you mentioned, Dan, as being just underlying to him, I mean, that's one of our big dings on the ground because they all have that to one degree or another.
And the other thing that Dan mentioned at the beginning of the interview, which was that this appeal, even amongst relatively normal types who are just a bit heterodox or a bit, whatever, government sceptical, It's that anti-establishment feeling and the sense that everything is going to hell in a handbasket super damn quick unless we act now.
So that call to action.
And the act that we do will be restorative and sort of in response, there's a nobility.
A righteousness to the response that we give.
Absolutely, yes.
So the audience is, in being a fan, you're becoming part of something that is bigger than you, that is super important and has this holy crusade to embark on.
So, you know, I think it's easy to get distracted by the tone.
I mean, we've avoided Alex and people of his ilk because...
They're so extreme and we sort of tend to focus more on the moderate and also not least for the fact that a certain podcast has already covered pretty damn well.
Now I think about it, it's getting harder and harder for me to make a qualitative difference in kind between them.
I think we were talking to Becca Lewis recently and she did the network influence map and a couple of those.
And I was thinking about that after our interview and I think that probably in the last few years, and unfortunately it appears to be moving more and more that direction, the connections between Alex and some of the figures that you cover and have talked about,
I think are probably growing.
I think it's something where the connections are coming much closer, and I worry about what that portends.
That leads to something I wanted to ask you about, Dan, because In our neck of the woods, appearing on Infowars is kind of a watershed about your credibility.
You know, I think it still has stigma attached, hopefully more so after this trial.
But I remember back in 2019, whatever, when, like, James Lindsay first retweeted whatever her name is, Starbrite.
Millie Weaver?
Millie Weaver, yeah.
Rainbow Snatch.
Yeah.
That's her alias.
Ex Infowars employee.
And I remember being like, oh, wow, look at that.
That's the world's overlapping.
I'm being surprised at it.
And obviously, as anybody online will know, James Lindsay retweeting something from that sphere became a much less notable factor.
And that was represented as him kind of spiraling into the more conspiratorial.
Karl Schwab wanting you to eat bugs, and so on.
And he actually had...
We've looked into his content, and he has a Christian nationalist mentor who's involved with his content.
And there's nice parallels where you can actually hear them talking, and James starts ranting about how it's actually the Globus, and he's like, yes, James, that's right.
I'm just imagining...
Some Star Wars-y and Sith kind of stuff here.
Yeah, it's hard not to see those parallels.
But the thing that was kind of striking for me is that that whole ecosystem, the Bircher Society and so on, and talk radio on the right, that like conspiracism on the right has always been a thing.
And there's also the parallel left wing kind of crunchy anti-vax, anti-GMO side, which has existed for a long time.
And those movements, like when I was interested in them in the 90s and early 2000s, you know, they were relatively fringe.
They did have influence.
They came up in political campaigns and stuff, but they weren't main.
And now, after Trump and a lot of the figures in Trump land...
It feels like Alex and figures like him, and including our guru figures, Jordan Peterson and stuff, that they're not so marginal anymore.
And I wondered how you feel about that.
It sucks.
Yeah, because there are people in Alex's orbit who seem like, you know...
They can't be becoming mainstream, like the guy who claimed that he did 9 /11.
Oh, Leo Zagami?
Yeah, Leo Zagami and also the other one who was saying he was in Korea, but was not in...
Oh, Steve Pachanek?
Yeah, like those figures, it does feel like they can't become mainstream, but I'm wondering, you know, how do you perceive it?
Do you think those worlds are like...
The far-right side is becoming more influential, or is there still this division where Alex Jones is kind of tied to Trump world, but he's still a relatively marginal figure?
Just from your perception, what direction is it going?
I would have said for sure a while back that there's no way Leo or Pachanek could ever be on Tucker.
I don't know if I believe that necessarily anymore, but I think it's unlikely.
Yeah, there is an erosion of sort of standards, I think, that people have that has happened.
And I think that it's easy to say that it's since Trump and stuff, but I think it probably predates a little bit.
You know, you could look at a hundred different influences of that.
There's people who are putting out bullshit, becoming slicker about it.
The internet making everything so easy to put out and disseminate.
And there's the media itself hurting itself by, you know, certain high-profile failures, things that Alex brings up even.
The Iraq war coverage and the New York Times certainly is something that's easy to point to as like, well, how much better are you than this idiot who has a webcam or whatever, you know, who's putting out nonsense.
And so, yeah, I think a lot of those influences do combine, and it's coming to a head a little bit.
And I think the one thing about Trump that is a large factor in it, I heard somebody, I think it was on some PBS documentary, was saying that every president has probably had the ability to use conspiracy as a weapon and as a tool,
and that they just didn't.
And Trump did.
The way that we need to get back to normal is have leaders who are not willing to use this bullshit that's always there and always is a tool.
It's a very powerful tool, but it's unhealthy.
And I think because Trump did, it kind of eroded a little bit of those standards that people have that they use to judge the information that they're taking in.
It's like, well, the president is saying this.
I don't know.
Anything goes.
At the same time, the proof of, like, Tucker's success is something that obviously probably would be a motivating factor for a lot of people to give more credibility to stuff.
Tucker platforms all kinds of nonsense.
You know, he's stepped to the bat for Alex, and in his Patriot Purge documentary, he had Ali Alexander in it, and Elijah Schaefer, I believe, right?
Is that right?
Or the guy from Revolver.
You know, a lot of folks that are Not necessarily folks that you would expect to be like, oh, this is something that's on Fox News.
This is somewhat mainstream.
So yeah, I'm worried that Leo Zagami will show up on Tucker.
I think.
It'll crack 9-11 wide open, which is the good news.
I think about that, too, with Rogan having Alex on and being like, this guy is so interesting and he's right about a lot of stuff, and then why won't you have Steve Pachenik on then?
Why won't you have these other complete weirdos who everyone knows are off the deep end?
Obviously, it's because Alex is famous and close enough to respectable, whereas all those other people are way off to the side.
I don't know.
It's a bummer of a question, but I hope there's a limit.
I hope and pray.
It's like, you know, when you look at Becca Lewis's alternative influencer network stuff, it's super depressing, but sometimes when I go back and look at conspiracy theories from 50 years or whatever ago,
it's not consoling, but it's kind of like, oh, things were always...
The internet has definitely done a number, but like the partisan and hard right conspiracism is not like something invented in the past 20 years.
But the worrying thing is kind of like the John Bircher Society was at one point seen as disqualifying.
Yeah, it was like if you were into that stuff, you were a joke.
And that has eroded.
I think because people are taking the ideas and not accepting the label.
Not accepting the label of I'm a John Bircher or something.
And they just believe all the same stuff.
Communists secretly have been engineering everything behind the scenes.
All this stuff is okay for people to bandy about.
And not think like, oh, I'm just...
This generation's Gary Allen or whatever.
Yeah.
I think, Dan, it was related to that and the trial coverage about coverage of Alex Jones in the mainstream media, including with us, because there are times whenever some compilation of Alex doing something stupid goes viral.
I know I've heard you and Jordan kind of lament those clips being shared.
And so I wanted to ask, in regards to the trial or broader, when it comes to dealing with Alex, do you have any advice about what not to do?
And on the positive side, what is a good way to dig into his world if you do want to cover his stuff?
That's a hard...
Hard question.
I mean, I think the only thing that I can say is that I only have an answer to this because of five years of doing this.
Like, I don't think I could have had any perspective earlier on, and I think I would probably have advice that I would give myself four years ago that I didn't do the things that I would have done, necessarily.
But one big thing is there's that Twitter account, that Ron Flipkowski guy who, like, posts videos of...
A lot of the Alex stuff that ends up going viral ends up being from his account.
And one of the things that I would caution people about is to assume that everyone has the same mentality they do.
And so if you're posting a video of Alex or Marjorie Taylor Greene or somebody saying something patently absurd and offensive, You are posting it, and you're assuming that everybody else is going to see it and be shocked and horrified by it.
When the reality is that there's a lot of people who will just see it and be like, yeah, alright.
And essentially what you're doing is promoting them.
You are doing a service of platforming is such a dirty word now, but you're basically giving a wider audience to this thing with the assumption that everyone's going to respond to it with shock and horror.
And really, no, that's not the case.
Alex loves it when people do that stuff because, again, it's like, okay, 98% of the people that see that, maybe.
I'm sure that number is way too high.
I'm sure it's closer to like 60 or 70% see this and they're like, fuck this stuff.
You know, like, oh, this is awful.
And then maybe 4-5% are like, I gotta learn more about this guy.
And then end up getting into his revenue stream.
End up buying products or...
Just viewing his content and maybe becoming InfoWarriors.
There is a pickup artist-y vibe.
You want to hit on 100 women because then maybe one will have sex with you.
That kind of mentality of the content that goes out for someone like Alex.
There's 99 no's, but there's going to be one yes.
And that one yes is worth the 99 no's because those 99 people were never going to like him in the first place.
When people cover Alex, I think it's important to be aware of that dynamic and not put out stuff that feeds into the possibility of that 4-5% walking away thinking he's somebody that is worth checking out more.
Now, the sort of other edge of that sword is if you be like, no one look at this guy!
Oh, he's so scary!
Then you run the risk of being like...
Well, why is he so scary?
Maybe I should.
Maybe that's what they want me to think is that he's so bad.
So there's a middle ground of covering him.
And yeah, as far as the actual media goes, I don't know.
I don't think they should.
I don't know.
I mean, with cases like the Sandy Hook case, I know it's impossible not to.
Yeah, but generally, I don't know.
I think most people should just stay away from it.
Everyone just walks into traps, and he ends up doing these things for attention, and then people give him the attention.
I don't know.
He's someone who's hard to dunk on, necessarily, and I think people want to.
Yeah, I can see that.
There were similar dilemmas that the press had in dealing with Trump in the early days, you remember?
Definitely.
All publicity is good publicity.
Even when the flagrant content Arouses justifiable backlash from other people, from other sources.
Sometimes the backlash is overblown, overheated, or expressed in a way that generates more sympathy for the person involved.
And there's one case that pops into my mind of, I believe it was after George Floyd.
And there were some protests.
And if I recall correctly, the circumstance was that Infowars cameras...
Captured an unhoused person.
Their bed was on fire.
Someone had to set fire to their mattress.
And a lot of the coverage that people had of it ended up being that Infowars reporters set this person's mattress on fire.
That was such an unforced error that people made because then Alex got to be like, we did not do that.
This is the media lying about us like they always do.
And it reinforces this notion that everyone lies about Alex and you can't trust the media and the things that you see online because everyone's out to get him.
And it's just a spiral that people often end up falling into if they don't know the sort of content they're covering.
I think that's a challenge.
Yeah, now I'm seeing resonances of that with a lot of our other gurus too.
They inspire strong emotions, right?
They inspire reactivity.
And it's almost inevitable that some of it will be overblown, unfair, mistaken in some way, shape or form.
And then that, I can think of half a dozen examples off the top of my head.
So yeah, it's a general problem, isn't it?
Yeah, it sucks because I don't know if there's a...
Like, an underlying problem, necessarily, that gets solved, and people like Alex go away, or whatever.
You know, like, this problem is solved.
But because it's metastasized to the state that it's in, I think that dealing with and covering the actual individuals requires, like, really special attention and, like, unique awareness.
And I just don't think a lot of folks have it.
I'm not saying that as like, everyone shut up, leave this to me.
Because I think there are a lot of other folks who have, whether it's intuitive or researched opinions that are pretty solid and an approach that works really well and treats the content like it deserves to be treated.
But most of what I see is unfortunately maybe well-intentioned mistakes.
Yeah.
I think the emphasis that both you and Jordan put on the trial, that as far as possible, centering coverage, not just on Alex, but on what he's actually done and what the parents are talking about and how they're responding to it,
that that was good.
And I did see some coverage that took that form.
And it felt like it will be much harder for people.
As more of these cases continue to roll down, to ignore that it wasn't just a mistake.
It wasn't like Alex accidentally said in one or two shows that maybe it was a false flag, but rather it was giving support to figures who were doing direct harassment of family members.
So yeah, that at least is possibly a positive.
Sure, but I think that if the coverage Is centered on Alex so much, then it's much easier for him to deflect, too.
Centering things on the reality of the circumstances and what this is actually about makes it more difficult for him to wiggle out of.
Because he can't really wholesale handwave reality, I think.
He can sidestep some things, especially when they're about himself.
It's pretty easy to control the narrative and change things.
But when reality is just like a train barreling down on him, it's just...
There's nothing to do, you know?
And I think that that's something to be aware of.
With the trials that are forthcoming as well, I guess they're going to crop up over the next couple of years.
I think within the next year.
Well, it depends on the bankruptcy thing.
But yeah, I think they're...
They're more impending than the few years.
So there's two questions I have for you there.
One is, are you and Jordan going to, you know, like, because it's obviously very draining, like, attending those events.
Are you planning to cover the trials like you did this one?
And secondly, my kind of broader question is, I'm sure you've thought about this, Dan.
If Infowars...
Did stop functioning or if Alex Jones, you know, left and other hosts took over.
I can't see that happening, but just that kind of thing.
Never.
Yeah.
These losers can't cut it.
But I'm wondering in your case, like you and Jordan have made really in-depth analysis of Alex Jones and you.
Your shows where you look at other figures indicate quite clearly that you can branch out and a lot of the same rhetorical techniques are cropping up.
But I guess I'm wondering, I'm terrible at long-term planning, so I'm sorry to do this to you, but what do you see the knowledge fights future?
Continue to cover Alex Jones indefinitely or at some point move on from him?
To that point, there's a lot of the past left to explore.
I have all of his episodes going back to 2003, so they're on a hard drive, and even if his website goes down, it's fine.
So there is plenty of other content we can explore there.
But yeah, I do think about the possibility of other folks, but it's kind of hard, because Alex is very unique in the bombasticness, The fact that he doesn't have a boss, that no one can stop him from just being drunk on air and saying complete nonsense and crying about the devil.
I don't know if anybody else has that high of a profile and that much freedom.
And that's something very special.
But yeah, we'd find somebody else, I'm sure.
I'm not worried about the notion of him going away.
And I honestly don't think even if he goes broke, he's necessarily going to go away.
Flagrant narcissist that I could see him negotiating some major contract at the Blaze or something.
I think that would be really humiliating for him on some level, but I could see him ending up on OAN or I don't know.
Or just doing his own podcast.
God damn it.
The rock bottom.
Yeah, come join us in the podcast game.
So I could see that.
I'm not worried about that in terms of long-term stuff.
And if he ends up going away and it ends up hurting our bottom line or whatever with donors or audience, I don't care at all.
I'm not interested in him for the sake of preserving any kind of job that I have found.
To your other question, not a chance.
I'm not going to another one of these trials.
It was an emotional and psychological and physical drain that I don't want to It's so hard to be away from home for a couple weeks and going to the trial day in and day out.
It was a lot.
Also, the other consideration, too, is that I've assisted with the Texas plaintiff's attorneys, but not with the Connecticut folks.
The lawyers on that end, I don't think I would be invited.
To the Connecticut case, necessarily.
And then the other ones that are going to go on in Texas, they're in the same courthouse, so they should be live-streamed just as well as the other ones.
So I think that one of the things that I learned from this experience was there are a few things that you get from being in the courthouse in terms of the vibe and seeing Alex kind of be depressing in breaks and stuff.
But you can see most of it on the stream.
It really does provide a great amount of access and transparency to what is actually happening there.
And I think that I would rather just do that for the other cases.
It'd certainly be cheaper.
There was something you said there, Dan, that just reminded me I wanted to ask you this.
When I listened to the earlier episodes of Knowledge Fight at the beginning, you're much more trying to be overly charitable, Alex, than you are now, for good reason.
I entirely understand that.
But you've mentioned a couple of times that previously you were interested in conspiracy theories and that kind of thing.
I was kind of curious about that, like, how much of that was, you know, just your kind of, you know, UFOs are kind of interesting, or alternatively like Eddie Bravo style, like lecturing people in bars.
Depends on how long I've been at that bar.
No, I don't, it's hard to say.
I was very fascinated by a lot of stuff.
I may, you know, it's a little embarrassing to look back on a little, but I certainly dabbled around with 9-11 conspiracy theories, for sure.
I don't know if I was ever convinced of anything, but I certainly entertained them more than I would today when I was younger.
And I think part of that was just because I was 18, 17 when it happened, and it's deeply traumatic, and processing it in the context of where my life was at 17 didn't necessarily go all that smoothly.
But yeah, I had more like the Atlantis-y kind of vibe.
That's the healthier.
It's aspirational.
There's a fun world where everyone's equal and we have magic technology.
That kind of stuff was more fun for me.
But now, doing this and seeing some of these folks who are in maybe Atlantis' real camp, you start to realize that behind that is unfortunately maybe some neo-Nazi ideas.
You know, it dovetails into like Hollow Earth stuff and like, oh, nothing's fun anymore.
Yeah, it is unfortunate how often that there seems to be anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi connections.
The things like, you know, people joke about it on the internet, about people over documenting it, but it does come up an awful lot when you dig into things.
Yeah.
I saw a clip where Joe Rogan's partner for Onnit, Aubrey Marcus, had some weird guy on who was talking about Atlantis and then began singing a song in Atlantean that he remembered from a past life.
Awesome.
Yeah, and I was watching it going...
Okay, like, this is the bit that I wish we could keep, where there are people, you know, singing in the Atlantean language of their past lives.
Yeah, that's fun!
Yeah, but the unfortunate thing is, like you say, Aubrey Marcus the previous week had Brett Weinstein on talking about COVID, and you're just like, why?
And I think you guys face this problem when...
You know why Atlantis was so healthy?
Ivermectin.
Yeah, natural deworming.
When you guys go into the UFO stuff, that's similar, right?
There's lots of crazy stuff and people talking about raptor aliens and spider aliens.
Yeah.
And then there's the, like...
Did the Holocaust happen?
We don't know.
It's an open question.
Like, oh no.
Yeah, we cover this thing, Project Camelot, and the host of it, it was just so much fun and, like, wide-eyed wonder at these aliens that exist out there and, like, secrets that are being kept from us and...
You know, the Vietnam War was really about fighting giant beetles in Vietnam and like, oh, this is fanciful and weird.
And then, yeah, it becomes out of nowhere like Jews are aliens possibly and maybe the Holocaust didn't happen.
It's so disappointing.
Yeah.
There's just not the fun of that pure...
I don't know, childlike wonder at what could be out there in the universe.
And I think one of the problems with it is, especially with the alien stuff, is once you start getting too granular with it, you have to start giving characterizations to all the different races of aliens because you can't think of them as individual alien people.
You have to be like, these ones are mean and these ones are...
I think that that kind of thinking ends up being applied to people a little bit too...
Too easily.
That's something that I've noticed among the UFO folks that I've looked at.
It's like, oh, you look at alien races as just like human races of people.
And that's unhealthy.
There's obviously so much literature on the psychological components of the appeal of this kind of fantastical conspiracism.
There's so many moving parts.
One of them is just that they're fun and they're interesting and they're complex and they're rich.
And this is a similar appeal to complementary and alternative medicine compared to your typical hospital medicine.
There's a backstory, you know, there's colours, there's diagrams.
You can get into it.
It's Baroque.
And that's just cognitively appealing.
I've always loved speculative fiction, science fiction and fantastical.
And also like crazy art, you know, really abstract expressionism and so on.
But then another part of my life, I'm lacking science and research and evidence and objectivity and so on.
It's just my very personal opinion is that it's just, these are all great things, but these worlds need to be kept apart.
Or at least know where the distinction is.
You can enjoy both in the same day.
It's just not the same thing.
Not the same thing, and don't conflate them.
That's a big part of Alex that I think is also really central to his personality, along with the narcissism and persecution complex, is inability to recognize that science fiction isn't reality.
He constantly thinks that books like Childhood's End are like, this is predictive.
This is telling you what the globalists are going to do.
But that's another interesting connection with Jordan Peterson and this sense-maker sphere.
I don't know if you've heard of the sense-maker.
You would love it, Dan.
You would love it.
I'm going to write this down.
Less obviously toxic than Alex Jones, but there's this dimension of it which is being totally enamoured of allegory and archetypes and the power of things in literature that actually reflect reality in a truer way than the stuff you can actually observe.
We've listened to so many hours of it.
It is mental masturbation to my mind, but I can see...
It can be fun.
No, just like masturbation, I can see it in real.
You theoretically can grasp that concept.
But yeah, that confusing of, or rather seeing a way to understand the material.
Like actual historical events, actual politics, actually things that are happening in society today and now, and seeing that the stuff that you're reading in Legends, or even in popular culture, Jordan Peterson loves his pop culture, you're just conflating it with stuff that's actually happening and happened.
It's a fun way to connect everything narratively, you know?
It's a cleaner story than...
Maybe looking at things as sort of disconnected pieces.
In the same way, it often seems like the engagement with the material is so superficial that they've actually got motifs wrong or taken the opposite message.
So it's more like the way Orwell or 1984 is cited in the popular consciousness is I'm very doubtful how many of those people Have actually, you know, read Orwell recently or, like,
you know, spent...
Ever.
Yeah.
And this is, you know, Jordan Peterson this comes up with because he reels against communism and the horrors of it and so on.
And, you know, there are horrors, but it's also clear that he actually has only read, like, the Gulag Archipelago.
The Solzhenitsyn?
Yeah.
And...
And maybe two or three other books that he constantly references.
And even when he's going to be on stage debating a Marxist philosopher, Zizek, he doesn't bother to read any of Zizek's books or even just the Communist Manifesto.
It's hubris.
Yeah.
But I also think it's partially hubris and partially a recognition that you have to keep moving.
I think for people like him and like Alex, I made this analogy before.
It's like a Jesus lizard.
The momentum is what's keeping it above the water.
If it stops running, it's going to sink.
And I think that there is a part of being in the sphere of guruing or whatever that is like constant motion is necessary or else people will start to realize that a lot of this is bullshit.
And you have to...
And that lends itself to a superficial understanding of a lot of these things, because that's the surface.
That's the surface that you've got to keep running on, because if you take the time to dig deeper into anything, it'll be like, wait, you don't know what you're talking about.
I shouldn't listen to you.
And I think that dynamic is pretty widespread.
Yeah, there was a great example recently when Jordan Peterson talked about, like, he had been talking for years, referencing these presentations of coiled snakes, and how...
Yeah, DNA?
Yeah, but he always added in, okay, this is speculative, and you know, I can't really, I don't have time to get into it.
It's very complex.
The things that I think about this, it's not straightforward.
It's very complex.
And then Richard Dawkins, to his credit, like, pushed him on and was like, you know, what did you mean when you said that?
And like, when he explained it, it wasn't complicated.
And it was incredibly stupid.
But it sounded better when he didn't explain it.
Exactly.
And I think with Alex, it's the same thing.
Like, you know, when he appeared on Joe Rogan, and this must have been, like, nails on the chalkboard for your soul.
Like, Joe Rogan said, you know, I'm going to fact check everything Alex says.
And that basically amounted to, Jimmy, Google the document.
Does it exist?
Oh, there is a document!
What the hell?
Alex is right!
We have proven that the surface exists, and we can keep moving.
And if you listen to any of the times he's on Rogan, that's the tactic that he's using, is constantly jumping around, constantly implying that there's another truth that he's going to get to in a minute.
Hold on, you know, like, it's...
Sleight of hand tricks with words, basically.
And, like, it's sad.
That's why when, on your show, you know, you do that thing, which I literally think no one else on the earth possibly does.
Like, when Alex makes an offhand reference, you dig down what is the source that he is possibly referencing or that he is taking this from.
And it's always so superficial and so, you know, unreliable.
But it's that thing of stopping and saying, "Well, where did he get this idea?" Or, "What is he talking about?" And it's so empty.
It's not just Alex, it's a lot in the guru sphere that when they're just pinging off and kind of in the rhythm, it looks impressive.
And it can seem like, wow, they know a lot of stuff.
They've got a lot of information about documents and historical events and myth and legend.
They don't.
They're just really good at talking.
That's the skill.
Well, I also think that it's generous almost to say that it's empty.
Because the reality is that that surface, you think that there's water underneath.
You're being tricked into thinking there's water.
I might be going too far with this metaphor.
But in reality, it's like lava or something.
In reality, what they're skimming on the top of is actually a dangerous ideology and a dangerous worldview.
So there is the appearance of knowledge that is obscuring.
The sources aren't empty often.
The sources end up going back to things that are like...
You take this too seriously and you're going to end up advocating the end of the Voting Rights Act.
You know, like, this is the kind of stuff that he's actually obscuring with the dance on the top of the water.
And I think that that's worse.
Yeah.
I wish they were empty.
You recently, Matt, were saying Jordan Peterson was accidentally reinventing fascism.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, similar kinds of things.
It was...
It was like you were saying, it was just alluding to it in many ways, capturing the feeling of it, the vibe of it, the style, but without going any deeper than that.
And I don't even think Jordan Peterson himself...
He's explicitly aware that the things that he was finding appealing, which is, for instance, like a young man finding a high authority, an organization, and devote and subvert yourself in it completely, but also be a hero fighting for the thing.
And there was a whole bunch of things.
For land and country.
Yeah.
It's a small jump.
Yeah, I don't think he was aware that all of the things that he clearly found appealing, found rhetorically powerful and emotionally satisfying in this was actually all pointing in the same direction.
Well, I think it was around 2015, maybe early 2016, there was a guy who used to be on Infowars all the time named Webster Tarpley.
And he, I'm not a fan, but he did write a very interesting essay about how, like, he'd seen people like Alex end up going to supporting Trump.
And he wrote this piece about how it was wrong to, like, hero worship Ron Paul.
And that the obsession with Ron Paul was essentially the doorway through which all of these people were going to be led to fascism.
And I was like, well...
You had a pretty good point there.
Too late, but good point.
It was a weird level of awareness, and I haven't read it in years, but my recollection of that essay was like, this feels like you have a good point.
We have experienced people within the wider guru sphere who can be quite perceptively critical about particular gurus, often people that have disappointed them.
But then their solution is like, but this guy over here is like a slightly different flavor.
Bitterness brings clarity.
Who has all of the same heart marks, but just is not yet where Jordan Peterson is.
But these guys, they don't have any of those flaws.
We haven't seen them yet.
Yeah, these look very similar.
Well, that dynamic exists, I'm sure, all over the place.
Alex will be like, he'll hate somebody until they pay him attention or like him.
You know, like Tucker was a shill for the mainstream and a globalist until he started getting racist enough for Alex and then he liked him.
Glenn Beck was someone who was just stealing Alex's act and selling it to the globalists.
And now Glenn Beck likes Alex and he's like, well, Glenn Beck was pretty great all along.
One of the best.
Michael Savage was a beatnik from San Francisco and an arch-globalist until he started to like Alex.
And then he was a patriot all along, one of the best, one of the pioneers of our movement.
All this is transactional to an extent, I'm sure.
But very congruent with the narcissism, right?
That's how they operate.
But a lot of it too, of course, is that Alex is so good at Well, rather, he devotes himself so wholeheartedly to trying to get attention and trying to attach himself to anything or person that can get him more attention,
obviously, most notably with Joe Rogan.
Again, another parallel.
I mean, it's kind of embarrassing.
It's cringe the way some of our gurus, like Eric or Brett Weinstein, for instance, just continually try to bring themselves to the attention of people that are slightly more famous than they are.
And it's mostly Rogan.
Because I think that they realize that his standards are low enough for them.
And they see the boost that he has given all of their careers.
So he's like a central hub for all of them to suck up to, basically.
And there was, you know, before when Alex managed to get the reinvitation after he'd been off for a while, he did that exact thing of, like you said, you know, he made one of the compilation videos about Joe Rogan being racist, which went on to trouble.
He threatened to reveal secrets about Rogan's children on air.
Like, he was going at him hard.
Yeah.
And the funny thing is, then when he appears on Rogan, you know, it's very much, they don't really trust, like, that level of vitriol, but they...
Said he was gonna gut him like a pig!
It's nuts!
Yeah, and you would imagine, you know, Joe would have the self-respect, because I would imagine he saw those clips, but yeah, he probably just saw it as, you know, well, that's...
That's Alex being Alex.
Yeah, you can make up stories that justify a lot of behaviors when you want to be like, ah, this guy.
It's all for show or whatever, but I wouldn't put up with that.
If Jordan started threatening that kind of stuff, I'd be like...
Before we talk publicly again, we're going to publicly discuss the fact that you want to gut me like a pig.
That's bullshit.
Let's clear the air of it.
What did you mean?
It was just metaphor.
Just a metaphor.
Dan, there was something I know we've kept you long, and I don't want to steal your whole evening, but there was something that I thought your expertise in particular would have some insight on, and I didn't really...
Know how to interpret.
So, Paul Joseph Watson, a second-in-command figure, at least for quite a while in Infowars, who's now receded into the background a bit on his own.
So, in the trial, he comes across as more, at least better at self-preservation than Alex, right?
About warning, this looks bad, we should be careful here, and seems to...
From this reveal about emails to have continued to occasionally ring some warning bells.
And you guys, you don't give him a whole heap of credit.
You highlight that he is a racist piece of crap.
But he's relatively more strategic.
And yeah, that clip came out of him.
About half a year, maybe a year ago now, of him being cartoonishly racist, anti-Semitic.
Like, he managed to fit into a two-minute clip.
Almost an impressive level of bigotry and racism.
And I wondered, like, I initially thought that clip was too on the nose to be real.
Yeah, me too.
Because the recording quality wasn't good.
And it just seemed like, really, would he have done that?
Would he have said all that stuff?
But he subsequently has never mentioned it, and I imagine he would have tried to sue people if it hadn't been real.
So it left me with this thing where I thought that Paul Joseph Watson would be more, even in company that is sympathetic to his worldview, would be more cautious about saying those things outright.
And it did lead me to wonder, have I underestimated just how racist Those people are, or how bigoted they are, and what Alex and company say behind closed doors.
I'm almost certain you have.
I would almost guarantee that.
With that clip in particular, I kind of have a similar feeling of, like it seemed too explicit to be real.
And yeah, like you said, cartoonish in its bigotry.
But I also believe it could be real.
And almost for the same reason that you're saying.
It's like, this would be actionable if this was, you know, somebody making a fake.
That's defamatory.
And if it's a fake thing, then it's actual malice, for sure.
Because the person putting it out knows that, you know, even though Paul's a public figure, that would be, I mean, he's calling for, like, the extermination of Jewish people in that clip.
Like, that's pretty defamatory.
But I don't know if it's true or not.
I don't know if it's real.
I do think it's something that he would say in private company.
From taking in enough of his content, I don't think that seems too shocking that those would be held beliefs that he has.
But yeah, he's slick.
And I think that the distinction is that that was probably a clandestinely recorded thing, if it's real, whereas emails and texts are obviously things that you know are records.
And they're things that you know that are...
And it's a business decision in some ways for Paul.
This Sandy Hook stuff is going to hurt our business.
Don't do this.
I think it would be wrong to ascribe a level of humanity to what he's saying.
Like, hey, those poor families who you're going to end up getting hurt, that's not the thrust of his point.
It's like, this makes us look crazy.
This is going to hurt us in terms of being able to bring in bigger guests.
These are logistical concerns as opposed to it being like, this is wrong to do.
And so he does have a better head on his shoulders in terms of being able to suss out what could have consequences.
But yeah, I think he's probably as big a pile of shit as Alex.
If not, maybe worse.
I mean, it's possible that he's even worse.
I know his content is harder for me to watch because of all the quick cuts and everything.
It's just...
It's disorienting the way he can't even get a sentence out making his point.
It's like three words, and then a cut to another word, and then word, and then he looks like he's crying.
Is he still on Infowars?
He will host the fourth hour periodically.
I know I've seen him come up, but he has that summit.news website, and then Alex uses that as a source a lot.
And so there's kind of a symbiotic relationship.
I wouldn't be surprised if he's still like...
In some fashion, like a contractor or whatever for InfoWars.
But yeah, he appears to have diminished in his stature from when he was editor-in-chief.
Yeah, when he was heir apparent at one point.
But then that article came out and Alex got mad that said he was going to take over.
And maybe that was what did it.
I don't know.
Narcissism.
That's another thing.
Okay, real quick.
Covering him, if someone must.
I think it's a good idea to poke at his narcissism.
If you're going to cover him, do something that will inflame his narcissism.
Because it's fun.
I don't know.
I like that.
I like that as a note.
Dan, I just want to say I'm not going to do the thing that will upset you and Jordan because that upsets us at the end of podcasts as well whenever people are praising.
I think it should be clear that both Matt and I have extremely high regard for the content you put out.
And it was really nice to see the families and also yourself and the people that pushed back on Alex get a win recently.
Yeah, everyone that listens will already know, but where can people find you if they want to?
Well, knowledgefight.com is the website that people can find us at.
And, you know, I appreciate it.
I don't look at this as a win, per se.
I think it's a positive sign, and hopefully there will be some kind of consequence that will come because his behavior merits a consequence.
From everything I can tell, the families look at what happened with the trial as a win in terms of setting the message that they wanted to send.
And for me, that's plenty.
That's what's important, is that they came away satisfied with the conclusion.
So, hooray for that.
And I'll continue laughing at his dumb ass and pointing out how he doesn't know anything about the subject he's covering.
Well, like you said, if they're grandiose narcissists and you want to poke them and do something to upset them, then the best thing to do is to laugh at them.
I would also say the fact that he doesn't mention you guys is an indication that what you're doing is somebody he doesn't like.
I think so.
I don't want to put too much stock into that, but I think...
I think we cut out there.
We got him almost all the way to the end in just the last little bit.
Yeah.
Cheers, Dan.
Thanks from me too, Dan.
Be good having you on.
Keep doing what you're doing.
And let's hope that Alex Jones spends the rest of his life in court.
Thanks for having me.
I think we completely cut out right there.
It's done, Matt.
We're finished.
And we should mention that at the end, the very end of the podcast, we had some technical difficulties where we all got disconnected.
So we recorded and, you know, we've kind of pieced it together.
But that's why the ending is kind of abrupt because we were going to have, you know, the usual probably waffly outro, but instead the internet crapped out.
And so it's just...
Clean break.
Yeah.
We're done, we're done.
Yeah, clean break.
He dropped his microphone, walked away.
It was a baller move.
Yeah, in the internet sense.
So that was very enjoyable.
Thanks to Dan for coming on and sharing his wisdom, as it were.
So hopefully we have more reason to interact with the Knowledge Fight guys again, maybe if we cover.
Alex Jones specifically on an episode.
We obviously would reach out to them, but they might not want to do that.
But, you know, the offer is there anyway.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So, what's coming up next?
I forget.
Is it review of reviews?
It is, and we have just a couple short ones this week.
So, I've got two negative ones.
The first one is a one star from Norway.
That's rare.
People in Norway usually love us.
But the username is called Decoding the Decoders, which suggests that they've registered their account purely to write this review.
Never a good sign.
Never a good sign.
And the title of the review is Unwell.
One out of five stars.
But it's a pretty short review.
It just says activists, not truth seekers.
Stay clear, folks.
So, yeah.
Okay.
Not much to be done with that.
Not much to be done with that.
There's lots of opinions on the internet.
Some are wrong and some are not.
And this is a wrong one.
I'm seldom accused of being an activist, I have to say.
No.
Me neither.
So, from there, Matt, we'll go to a more substantial negative review.
This is by Marcus517.
Too many style criticisms.
Two out of five.
Oh, not one.
We still, you know, got something valuable.
Okay, it's a left-leaning podcast, but this one's not the worst.
What bugs me is how lightweight it is.
You don't like Jordan Peterson or Brené Brown or probably any other media person who leans right?
Just the insight here.
Pretty sure Brené Brown doesn't lean, right?
But any case, any case.
So, then tell me there...
So tell me there that are wrong.
That's what they wrote.
Tell me there that...
Tell me there that are wrong.
Okay.
By the way, both these people irritate me, but you give me nothing other than style criticisms.
I agree that Brené comes across as a self-help guru.
I too find that irritating.
But what has she said that's wrong?
Somewhat better with Jordan, but too many cheap shots.
Same with the episode on Fridman and Haidt.
You are researchers.
Do your homework.
I've only listened to four or five episodes, so we'll give it another chance.
There you go, Matt.
Okay, that's us told.
But in our defense, we are all about criticizing style.
That's the point.
No, you always say this, and I always pull you on it, because I think that's wrong.
It's false.
It's inaccurate.
One, don't agree with this guy.
But I'll tell you why you're wrong, Matt, because that implies that we don't address the arguments that people make in their content.
And I know from recording 50-plus episodes of this podcast that we often...
Get into the actual arguments.
And in particular, the Lex and Haidt episode.
Yes, the criticisms of Lex were mainly about his kind of, you know, his presentation style and stuff.
But that's because that's mostly what Lex is about.
He's mostly an interviewer.
And so you only get kind of snippets of his worldview.
But we did do criticisms about, you know...
His approach to world geopolitics through personal relationships and his kind of naivety towards, you know, the history of World War II and that kind of thing.
Yes, yes.
And with Haidt, almost all of it was about the content of his arguments.
That's true.
That's true.
So yeah, Matt.
Okay.
Look, we don't disagree.
Look, with the people that are actually saying something a bit more substantial, like Haidt, then we do tend to...
Engage with the content more, right?
But when someone is saying something that is really quite stupid, but it's all dressed up in all kinds of fancy language, then we strip away all of the style.
We do talk about the style as well.
But then when you pull it down, when you get down to what they're actually saying, which in the example you just gave is a good one, just, oh, we can solve the problems of the world by, you know, having a good personal relationship and remembering that we're both just human beings.
You know, it's pretty stupid.
There's not much to discuss there.
So, look there, Matt, there, what you just talked about.
That is looking at the rhetorical and stylistic features that surround the argument, but then highlighting what the actual argument being presented is.
Like with Jordan Peterson, just to give that guy an example, we talked about him talking about how, you know, religious art.
It makes people feel something and they travel far and wide to visit the museums that have religious art in this.
And this shows that religious art houses some deep truth, some profundity, which people are attracted to.
Now, he doesn't apply that logic to modern art, like the lobster telephone, right?
Or, you know, secular art is...
Also in museums.
Also traveled to sea.
But Jordan doesn't focus on that.
So that's highlighting, you know, contradictions in his argument.
But you can also highlight that the way he dresses that up is with this massive, long five or six minute story about people visiting museums.
So there's like a stylistic criticism, but you're also disagreeing with the content of his argument.
I'm just telling you what you're doing.
I'm just telling you what you're doing.
I know.
I know.
You're right.
I'm the spoke.
We don't just criticize style.
And that review was wrong.
And he should have given us five stars.
We're on the same page again.
That's why you and Marcus are wrong.
So there you go, Marcus.
You're in good company.
I was wrong, but now I've seen the light.
You've turned me around.
It was useful.
This was useful.
And so the last thing, I'll end on a positive note.
A five-star review from BangBangBart.
Say better username.
And the title is Typical.
Typical.
And then it says, five out of five, just your regular to postmodernist neo-Marxist rebelling against God for the crime of being.
Two thumbs up.
Nice.
Nice.
Yeah.
That's accurate.
That's accurate.
You know, we're only activists if your worldview is, you know...
Particularly partisan.
Like, that's the only way, if you think that, you know, us critiquing Brett Weinstein and Jordan Peterson and stuff, like, that's all really based on partisanship.
Like, no, it isn't.
It really is not.
And when we do our season of left-wing gurus, it'll be even clearer for people, but there we go.
Yeah, I'm a partisan against World that has demons in it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, now listen.
Listen for the people that are listening.
Listen better.
Because this is not saying we don't have any political views.
We don't have any biases or that kind of thing.
We're just too lazy to act on them.
That's...
Yeah.
We have biases, but we're not activists.
And, like, yeah, I've never been mistaken for an activist.
So, anyway, there we go.
Look, you riled me up with your negative reviews.
Well, now, now, now, now.
I mean, come on.
Let's throw them a bone.
I mean, I can understand how it would feel if you've got right-wing sympathies and you listen to us and we're knocking all of these people who espouse, you know.
Right-leaning, at least, things, then that's the way it's going to feel, right?
It's going to feel like that.
Yeah, I get that.
I get that.
But they're still wrong.
Sorry, facts don't care about your feelings.
If we are left-wing activists for you, your bar is to...
You should get on Twitter.
You should see what they're up to.
They're different.
So Matt, the last thing to turn to is to say thanks to our lovely patrons.
And I've got a bevy.
Of them to shout out this week.
A veritable bevy.
A veritable bevy.
So, for conspiracy hypothesizers, we have Matt Johnson, Wendy Hylett, Sheila Underwood, Stephanie Caron, Dee Ann Gregory, Rob Andrews, you can't do that on Robert Olson,
and Joseph Riley.
Great.
What a gaggle of conspiracy hypothesizers are good.
Thank you all.
Thank you all.
Every great idea starts with a minority of one.
We are not going to advance conspiracy theories.
We will advance conspiracy hypotheses.
Next up, Matt, then we have our revolutionary geniuses.
A higher class altogether of patron donators.
And there we have Diane Morrison, Simon Cooper, Carrie Ann Edgehill, John Hand, somebody who makes various memes on Twitter that are good.
Neil Hornsby.
Chris from the Rewired Soul podcast.
And Chris Barber.
Hey, I was just talking to Chris earlier.
Very good.
Thank you, guys.
A lot of good Chrises.
A lot of good Chrises out there.
Thanks, everyone.
Maybe you can spit out that hydrogenated thinking.
And let yourself feed off of your own thinking.
What you really are is an unbelievable thinker and researcher.
A thinker that the world doesn't know.
Okay, and last, Matt, but certainly not least.
Not least at all.
The galaxy brain gurus.
And here, Matt, here we have Derek Varn.
We have four RSF.
We have...
The real Eric Weinstein.
I didn't know he had signed up, so that's...
Thank you, Eric.
Jedi Mishap.
Another good username there.
And Bui Niklasen.
Bui Niklasen.
Excellent.
Thank you, one and all.
Thank you.
You're sitting on one of the great scientific stories that I've ever heard, and you're so polite.
And, hey, wait a minute.
Am I an expert?
I kind of am.
Yeah.
I don't trust people at all.
Okay, Matt.
Well, it's time for us to bid everyone adieu and get out of here.
And I think, given the release schedule, probably next up is the sense-making extravaganza.
So there's something for people to look forward to.
More sense-making to come.
We will be integrating...
Sense-making about sense-making.
Turning sense-making squared into sense-making cubed.
A little maths reference there for the people that would appreciate that kind of thing.
