Supplementary Materials 14: Return to the Gurusphere
World travels complete the Guru Decoders reconvene to examine how the Gurusphere has been behaving in their absence. Bad news abounds.Featuring:Introduction and Hosts' ReunionChris's Travel Tales Cultural Observations and ComparisonsHealth Concerns and Anti-Vax MovementRFK Jr. and Political EndorsementsQuarantine Measures in HistoryBret Weinstein endorses TrumpEric Weinstein's quasi-endorsementStephen Bartlett promotes Bret and gets in trouble for adsPlagiarism Allegations against Robin Di AngeloElon Musk's Twitter Investors RevealedKonstantin Kisin vs. a normal InterviewJonathan Pageau and 5G ConspiraciesSam Harris & Destiny ConversationSam's Analysis of Jordan PetersonSocial Media Derangement: Sam vs. DestinyOffline vs Online BehaviourFocus on the Far Left vs. the Far RightClosing Thoughts & Next EpisodeThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (1 hr 36 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusLinksRFK endorsing TrumpDelusions, Right and Left: A Conversation with “Destiny” (Steven Bonnell) (Episode #381)Konstantin Kisin vs. NBC interviewerFortune: Elon Musk was just forced to reveal who really owns X. Here’s the listBBC: Steven Bartlett nutrition adverts banned for being misleadingEric's quasi-endorsement of RFK Jnr. and TrumpBad Stats clip of Pageau from Peterson AcademyBret endorsing Trump and RFK Jr.Free Beacon: Robin DiAngelo Plagiarized Minority Scholars, Complaint Alleges
Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus, supplementary material with the cognitive anthropologist Christopher Cavanagh, the psychologist Matthew Bryan, here to talk about gurus and what they've been up to and all those kind of things.
But it's been a while, Matthew.
The coding booth has been empty, sitting here underutilized.
What happened?
What did you do?
Where did you go?
You know very well.
You've been away, haven't you?
You've been off on a trip back to the old country.
Yeah, on a pilgrimage.
I went back to the UK, to London and to Oxford, both places I've spent time in.
And I went to the spiritual homeland, the Emerald Isle, to Belfast to see my family.
And I did also go down to Dublin just to fly out of the airport just to say hello.
Dublin.
And then I went to Switzerland and then I came back.
So I've been away from Japan for a while.
And I did log around all of those countries a microphone with the best of intentions, Matt, the best of intentions.
But it's hard.
It's hard to find the right mind space, the right mentality, the right empty room when you're Jumping around between locations and places.
So, yeah.
You see, Chris, I knew you taking your microphone was an act of incredible optimism.
I knew.
When you say things to me, like, oh, it'll be fine, I'll record on the road.
I know it's never going to happen, but you know what?
I don't contradict you.
I just say, yes, Chris, we'll record then.
And you were just telling me that this is a cultural fault of you and your people.
This is a thing, an Irish thing.
Yeah, and by my people, we potentially mean just my family.
It's quite possible that this is not a Northern Irish trait, but a Kavanaugh family trait, because I did notice that the Kavanaugh family were prone to optimism in their time assessments and fitting things in.
So yes, this could be a Northern Irish trait, could be a family trait.
It's hard to say without a wider sample, but yeah, I was back.
Experiencing the joys of customer service in the UK and Ireland.
And I'm finishing off with Switzerland.
I will say, because I've only had like a couple of days in Switzerland, Switzerland's quite a country.
Like in terms of scenery, it's ridiculous.
It looks like the little, you know, if you type in like Switzerland scenery into Google, you will see these mountains with crystal blue lakes.
That is what the country is like, which I was quite surprised.
That's usually one specific location in a country, but that seems to be what Switzerland is.
I don't know what else they have.
That's primarily what they have.
I did go to a chocolate factory and the little Simpsons scene.
We come from the land of chocolate.
Simpsons was constantly playing in my head.
But yeah, Switzerland.
Quite a scenic country.
That's my take.
And how are the people?
Would you like to slander the Swiss?
Or have you got only good things to say?
The Swiss that I interacted with, that I was staying with, the Swiss-German family, actually international family, but never mind.
One of them, at least, is Swiss-German.
Perfect.
Unbelievably.
Very nice hosts.
The general Swiss people, ah, mixed.
Mixed bag, but I got distinctive German undertones in the engagement.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
Well, what about Northern Ireland?
What about Belfast?
Did you get reverse culture shock?
I did.
Yeah, I reverse culture shock the whole trip.
I've been in Japan for a decade.
It's worth noting that this is going to increasingly occur, perhaps.
But, you know, nothing hugely shocking, but just what you would expect from somebody traveling.
To Europe and there are good points there and there are bad points.
I notice you're being much more diplomatic now we're talking online than when we spoke earlier.
But that's fine.
That's fine.
You don't need to share.
Look, in terms of food culture, I think it's clear that Asia and Japan in particular sets a high bar.
Yeah.
Another way to say it is that it just like knocks Belfast.
Oh yes, specifically Belfast, certainly.
100%.
And Belfast, or Northern Ireland, I will also say, is like, it is really fucking green.
It's so green.
Like, you know, the stereotype of Ireland is it's green.
It is.
It's ridiculously green.
There's green everywhere.
And it's because it means a lot.
It's green and also it's flat.
That's something that hasn't stuck in my mind.
I've been in areas with mountains for quite a bit now.
And then you go to Ireland, and yeah, there's technically mountains.
Some people refer to these things as mountains, but essentially the glorified hills.
And a lot of sheep, a lot of sheep, a lot of cows.
It is the stereotype I was feeling like.
Hey, you know, the polar tent didn't have everything wrong in the way it represented.
There's a surprising amount of sheep around there.
Well, there you go.
This is good.
So the takeaway is that stereotypes are real and true.
Switzerland is just like that.
The land of chocolate and postcard scenery.
Northern Ireland is very green with lots of sheep.
You know, I had the same thing when I came back to Australia.
I was coming on the plane, and then after I landed, I had the same thing after living away for a while, which is, like you, your response was, wow, this is incredibly green.
For me, my response was, this is just incredibly brown.
I can't believe how brown everything is.
There's just one color.
We live in monopilot cultures.
That's what I came to appreciate.
I did, Matt, go to a bouldering gym, as you know, I want to do.
So I experienced Northern Irish bouldering gym culture, which was interesting.
Two things that are notable.
One was, I was actually very glad to see it because it was in high use, that particular gym, and very nicely set up and organized in a wide age range.
That's all nice, you know, healthy culture, not just people getting wasted in forests.
I did, yeah, I should imagine this as well.
You know, going to go to the supermarket or whatever in Belfast, I went to locations where, as a teenager, I hung around and seeing them in the harsh clear of day, like, you know, 20 or 30 years later, where I was hanging around,
it was like...
That's not a good environment.
Parking lots, the edge of forests, whatever.
I was mentioning that and my wife would say, "But what did you do here?"
And I was like, "Nothing good."
Nothing good went on in these dark nights around here.
So, people going to the bouldering jam, epic comparison.
But the funny thing is, I expect this is just like would apply in a whole bunch of countries, but groups of shirtless young men.
Not that many, to be fair, but this seems to be a thing that people do.
And in a hot country.
At least in Australia, you have an excuse.
But in Ireland, you don't really have an environmental reason for that.
It's purely aesthetic.
That's fine.
It's, like I say, better than getting drunk in parking lots and forests.
But yeah, that was different, as was the fact that when we arrived at the opening time, somebody was busy vacuuming, and they saw us come in, and then they just...
Like, proceeded to vacuum for another eight minutes or so.
Actually, they never came.
Somebody else eventually came.
But my son was like, oh, they don't work here.
They must just be...
And I was like, no, no.
They work here.
This is just not Japan.
Somebody will potentially come.
And, you know, he was confused.
He's like, it's not open?
And I was like, no, it is open.
They're just ignoring us, son.
Yeah, they're just ignoring us.
They have seen us.
That was quite funny.
But, yeah, yeah.
Oh, and my son picked up.
A Northern Irish accent within like one day.
Because his default accent is Northern Irish, right?
Because he learned from me, both of my sons.
The primary language model is me in English.
But as soon as they heard everyone else being very Northern Irish, it's like their cognitive units kicked in to be like, oh, so you just turn it up the 11. It was really funny because it became like...
Really, really broad Belfast accent almost immediately.
Oh, that's fantastic.
I've heard a certain lilt in your son's voice.
Oh yeah, it's way stronger.
It probably won't last, but it was just very funny because accent was stronger than mine very, very quickly.
So yeah, I enjoyed that.
Well, you know what's been going on here while you've been away gallivanting, having a nice time?
In my kids' school, there's been measles.
And chicken pox outbreaks.
Actually, I was contacted by the public health unit for the area.
Stop your kids getting these, Johnson.
That's right, the government, the government.
They wanted to put the kid in the bubble.
No, they wanted to make sure they didn't go to school, you know what I mean?
Just to stay away from it, which we knew not to send him to school to stop spreading the infection.
I did read, Chris, vaccination rates for those things are dropping measles and chicken pox since the old COVID and the old influences have been making their mark.
So good on them.
Thanks very much for that, guys.
Appreciate it.
Yeah, anti-vax people bringing back long, defeated, infectious diseases.
Lovely, lovely stuff.
Yeah, they should be proud of themselves for all they've accomplished.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that leads nicely to mention that one recent rotation in the guru sphere is that RFK Jr. has dropped out of the U.S. presidential election race.
And RFK Jr. noted anti-vaccine advocate for many decades, but also just generally, he's a pseudoscience lover of every stripe.
Basically, every conspiracy, every circumstance he can come across, he's big in.
Well, on that note, you're probably not aware of this because you were away.
But he's a chemtrail guy as well as the anti-vax and all that stuff.
He's super worried about chemtrails.
And he tweeted a thing, you know, assuring someone who posted about all the poisons that they're spraying in the sky that he's going to put a stop to it.
When he's in the Trump administration.
So, you know, we thought it'd be primed for the health spot, the health czar, but maybe he'd be tempted away by aviation.
He can put it into that chemtrails brain.
Yeah, I did see that actually this morning.
But, I mean, so RFK Jr. was ostensibly running initially on a Democrat ticket, right?
He's a Kennedy, as his name indicates.
And this is the general reason that he gets any attention.
But then switched to independent later when he didn't get much traction amongst Democrats.
However, it was quite clear that the majority of momentum going for him, yes, there was some built-in, you know, Democratic support and independent leaning and whatnot, but he was always much more aligned with the kind of Trumpist reactionary populist stuff,
right?
It isn't a huge surprise to see him drop out and endorse Trump.
I thought that was in the long-term possibilities.
Though it is notable, Matt, that Brett Weinstein called for a unity ticket.
He wanted Trump to select RFK Jr. as his vice president.
But he didn't do that.
He chose J.D. Vance.
But now he's basically spiritually got what he wanted.
Brett Weinstein this is, with the two campaigns combining their energies.
So Brett has now come out and endorsed Trump.
Shocking, shocking revelation that this has occurred.
But before, you know, the Weinsteins like to be a little bit arch about what they're doing.
So Brett, even though he basically Promotes almost every conservative conspiracy and every attack on Democrats or whatever.
He still presented himself as a left-leaning radical.
That's how he constantly presents himself.
And here's him talking about, you know, his change of heart, Matt, his new view.
There is no conceivable scenario in which I would vote for Kamala Harris.
I just simply will not do it.
Am I open to voting for Trump?
I am.
I'm especially open to it if he is partnered with Bobby Kennedy because what that tells me is that my values, which are a much closer match for Bobby's, are represented in that administration.
And that's really what I want.
I want a coalition to redefine American politics because, frankly, we have a longstanding problem with...
Very accurate.
I mean, his values aren't strongly aligned with RFKs.
I mean, they're both conspiratorial nutjobs.
Yeah.
Did you see the event that Brett is at?
Rescue the Republic?
Yes, I saw the list of talkers.
Do you have it handy?
Who's there?
Russell Brand, Tulsi Gabbard, Brett Weinstein, Robert Malone, Heather Haying, Pierre Corey, and Matt Taibbi.
What an incredible team.
Oh, Jimmy Dore.
Jimmy Dore, of course.
Jimmy Dore.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, that's, you know, they were looking for that last zinger.
Yeah, yeah.
So Tulsi Gabbard, I think you mentioned, has also, is she endorsed Trump?
Yeah, that's shocking.
But she was a Democrat, Matt, as well.
Like, yeah, Tulsi Gabbard, who was Tucker Carlson standing for a while.
That should give a hint.
About her general political lean, but once was a Democrat.
So that's it.
Like in so many people's minds, that's all that matters, right?
Like if there's any affiliation, she is a liberal for life and now a disaffected liberal.
But yeah, she's come out and endorsed Trump as well.
And she appears regularly on various Heterodox podcasts.
She was on with Chris Williamson talking about, you know, how...
The Republicans are just making so much more sense now, and the Democrats are crazy.
They're off the hinges.
So, yeah, that's a collection of dunderheads.
Anti-vax primarily, right?
Yeah, anti-vax is the thing that binds them together.
That Rescue the Republic event started as the defeat the mandates anti-COVID-19 thing, but also linked together with another...
This Rage Against the Wall machine, which is basically an anti-Ukraine pro-Russian thing.
Lovely!
They just have to have that then.
I was worried.
Actually, I think their agenda here, their key bullet points are instructive crews.
War is always the last resort.
Okay, that's fine, but that's frankly code for...
Being pro-Russia, frankly.
Sanctify, recodify informed consent, secure monetary freedom, enact a rational border policy, restore family sovereignty, liberate truth-seeking, banish state media control, surveillance, and propaganda.
Oh, yeah.
It just captures what they're on about, like what their political valence is.
And I think it's kind of interesting because they're more than just...
Conservatives, right?
They're more than just reactionaries.
It's this nouveau stark raving conspiratorial thing.
Yeah, I think that is very much though modern conservatism.
That is modern conservatism.
And each of those, you know, I don't like the over-reliance on dog whistle or that kind of term, right?
But each of those is essentially something like, you know, protect the family is...
Yeah, it's code for...
Anti-gay, right?
Anti-trans stuff and informed consent.
That's vilify doctors and say that Fauci should be in the HIG.
So all of those are just like the positive spins of quite nefarious things.
And all of them align with the kind of Trumpish populist stance.
Yeah, yeah.
Isolationist.
Yeah, things have changed.
The political axes have...
Swivelled.
And like, well, yeah, like you said, conservatism is not conservative.
Modern conservatism is...
It's not really conservative anymore.
It needs a new label.
It's something else.
Well, populist, right.
But yeah, like secure the border.
Yeah, anti-immigration, right?
Because that thing that annoys me so much is that the discourse and the...
I do think the extreme left on occasion do this as well, but they're not maybe...
As vocal as the far-right or this like insane conspiratorial right, to frame everything as the position being open borders or secure the borders, right?
And what they mean by secure the borders is ethnonationalism, in essence, like a very harshly restrictive immigration that is highly balanced around ethnicity.
But those two positions, so your ELA, if you are not that, you are for...
Pure, unfettered immigration with anything less than that being regarded as complete racism or insanity, right?
And no, no, the majority of political parties, the majority of people are for immigration that is controlled, like controlled immigration with reasonable limits, with good paths to citizenship and whatnot.
That is, you know, humanitarian focused and whatnot.
So there's a whole bunch of positions in between.
The most restrictive ethno-nationalists and complete borderless utopians who want national identities erased or whatever.
But online, these are the two camps that a position does.
Well, if you're not going to be an ethno-nationalist, then you're a far-left person who doesn't think there should be any immigration restrictions.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, things are really going to get crazier before the election.
What else has been going on?
Can I also mention, just before we get off the Bobby Kennedy thing, that like, so Brett just comes out and directly says, yeah, I'm going to vote for Trump now.
Oh, his views align with mine.
What a surprise.
It's not like Brett has been carrying water for the populist right for many years already.
But his brother, Matt.
So Brett's endorsement is pretty upfront.
Eric made a comment also about RFK Jr. dropping out.
And I think it highlights...
Both the similarities and the distinctions between the two of them because Eric posted on Instagram, not on Twitter, a picture of him and I think his wife with RFK Jr. and his wife Cheryl and somebody's son.
Could be Eric's or RFK's.
But happy families, you know, hanging together.
And he says from May 2023, I got to say...
My father worked for yours and wrote one line in your uncle's State of the Union address.
This is a courageous man.
I didn't post it at the time because I don't post a lot of things that feel personal or strategic.
But the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I met was a courageous man willing to risk his own life and comfort for his love of his country.
I promise you that.
Please listen to his speech suspending his campaign.
It is an address for our times.
One that will be listened to when this election...
Is long since decided.
Praying hands.
That, to me, reads like, essentially, because if you listen to his concession speech, it's basically him talking about how important it is to now support Trump.
But also, it's a rambling conspiracy thing about how he was going to definitely be the Democratic candidate until the evil forces stopped him, right?
And all those things.
So, one, no, it's not going to be listened to for decades or even weeks.
After the current cycle.
But two, this is Eric's version of an endorsement for what Kennedy is saying, which is, you know, vote for Trump.
But he will, in coming weeks, also say that he can't endorse thing or whatnot.
So in content, it's essentially pointing people towards the RFK Trump ticket, but not as directly, as openly as Brett.
Yeah, yeah.
This is Eric's signature style.
A lot of strategic ambiguity.
You notice he's not going to endorse anything specific that they do because then...
He's tied to it.
He likes to maintain just a cloud of obfuscation and he's very good at it.
And, you know, not surprising because Robert F. Kennedy is promising people he's going to put a stop to the crime of chemtrails praying when he gets into power.
So that's probably not something that Eric wants to spend his time defending.
I really, it would be funny, though, if he gets in and he gets appointed by Trump to be...
One of the people in a cabinet or some chief of something or other.
And I just want him to send out an executive order to the aviation companies to cease all chemtrails.
Yeah.
It'll be like that old Simpsons thing where he keeps telling the baseball guy, like, cut off those sideburns.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah, well, so both of them.
And also, just as well, Matt, he shared the picture, right, of their families.
He highlighted some connection, somebody writing a speech.
Like, this is very much Eric, right?
It's about interpersonal connections.
And the key characteristic, I think, is which person pays attention to Eric and can he post a picture of them with their arms around?
That is the key ingredient.
So, like, if Biden...
Had invited Eric to the White House, treated him nicely, and whatnot.
I think you would find Eric willing to look past his disagreements, right?
It's whoever is putting that man in the suit into the important table to talk to the adults.
Yeah, you can't go wrong.
Oh, a side note on that just before I forget.
The diary of a CEO guy, Stephen Bartlett, two things about him.
One related to this is he recently promoted Brett, or he platformed Brett for a three-hour talk about a whole bunch of things, like basically all of Brett's conspiracies about COVID,
of course, but also, you know, predictions about sunspots and alternative theories of global warming, all of the things.
And yeah, it just reminded me, you know, we recently covered...
Stephen Bartlett, when he was talking to Gabber Mate, and these people, part of the reason that Brett even has anybody listening to him talk about RFK Jr. is because of people like Stephen Bartlett, who put him in a high production room and then listened to him waffle on for three hours as if he's a very insightful professor with great expertise,
as opposed to a raving conspiracist who...
Really shouldn't be getting long-form interviews with anybody at this stage.
Well, yeah, that just illustrates the abysmally low standards of these influencers, like that guy, Dario, the CEO.
He doesn't really have a valence of his own too much.
It's more just that he'll have anyone on, he'll do the numbers, right?
Gets the clicks.
Yeah.
And he was also, just to note, this is our, we never missed Tully.
Getting dinged up, Matt.
He was reprimanded recently for failure to disclose ties to various brands that he worked for in advertisements that he read.
So, you know, I think that we dinged and said, like, isn't this a bit underhand?
He received a UK equivalent of official...
Reprimand for that.
The Advertisement Standards Agency banned some of the ads that he's been producing, saying that it wasn't disclosing his role in the company.
Well, you'd think you'd get sick of being proven right all the time, but you never do.
Chris, there was actually two more news stories involving our gurus that came across my desk.
Oh!
The Guru's Pod news desk.
Yeah.
One involving Robin DiAngelo and one involving Elon Musk.
Which one would you like to hear about first?
Nealer, but tell me about Robin DiAngelo.
Robin DiAngelo.
Well, people may know that there's been a bit of an outbreak of people being done for plagiarism.
Who was the other person?
It was the heads of the universities that got in.
Trouble for the presidents after their kind of questioning at Congress, and then people looked into their records, right?
Wasn't that it?
I know there were all those.
Claudine Gay, I think, was the most preeminent one.
Yes.
Oh, and what's-his-face wife?
The Ackerman, his wife.
Neri, Neri Oxman, who got black basically by being in proximity to him.
Yeah, so the reporting is by the Free Beacon, some right-wing publication, but if the screenshots are accurate, the case looks quite strong.
There's a lot of copied and pasted work from scholars of colour that Robert D 'Angelo has.
Copied and pasted into her PhD thesis, you know, with the insertion of a word or two here and there, which is obviously a bad look for Robin DiAngelo, who makes an incredibly big deal about citing, you know, white people have to cite people of colour's voices and they should always give credit and always,
you know, elevate those other voices.
So it is a bit inconsistent with that when you are plagiarising.
So, yeah, we'll see what happens with that.
There'll be an investigation.
And like I said, it's not confirmed.
It's just this one source, even though, you know, on the face of it, it doesn't look good for Robin.
No, we did an episode about the plagiarism thing before, and I agree.
This is, you know, like it's never good.
I haven't looked into the case with Robin DiAngelo, so no idea how much is plagiarized versus not.
But it does to me very much matter the extent of it, right?
Like, you do tend to find that when people plagiarize without credit for substantial sections that this is not a single sin, right?
It's a recurrent thing.
But I am much less concerned about a paragraph in the thesis going uncredited than I am, you know, somebody passing off.
Like a chapter in a book or something like that.
It does seem to...
Or actually taking a whole theory, say, and basically...
Yeah, and repurposing it.
I mean, if somebody took a paragraph that they thought was really good in their literature review section and they stole it from someone else, that is lazy.
It's bad.
But it's not like somebody was going to get huge amounts of credit for that and you've stolen it.
That's different than...
Taking someone's paper, you repurposing it and presenting it as your own work that you get citations for and they don't.
So I feel like that might be a little bit...
Well, yeah.
Chris, I will agree with you.
In fact, it did occur to me that a lot of the kind of stuff that D 'Angelo writes and people in that genre feels like much of what they're writing is like rehashing the same 12 sentences.
Anyway, and I think you're correct in your take there, which is, it's more indicative of just laziness than anything else.
Like, here's a paragraph of the kind you describe.
The original, indeed, whiteness may be characterized by a contradictory consciousness in which a definitive innocence is contingent upon involvement in racial oppression.
Okay?
Yeah.
D 'Angelo's is, indeed, whiteness may be characterized by a contradictory consciousness in which an insistent...
That's the one word of hers that's original.
Innocence is contingent.
So, I mean, I think your point is true.
Like, that paragraph, as far as I can tell, is just kind of saying the same thing as, like, it's that jargon sort of vague stuff.
And it's lazy, but it's not really stuff of substance, is it?
No, just to be clear.
I still think she deserves to be hoisted by her own petard on this, especially because she would present this in someone else as like, you know, a huge sin.
I feel like live by the moral crusade, die by the moral crusade, right?
Like, so I don't have sympathy in that regard for her specifically, just in all of these cases, including Neri Oxman or some right-wing figure.
Neri Oxman isn't, I think, a right-wing figure, but, you know, she was getting targeted because of Bill Ackman.
In all those cases, I think if there's a pattern of it and if it's very bad, it is indicative of sloppy laziness.
But it is this huge sin in academia that can completely take people down and that you shouldn't do.
I don't do it specifically because of that.
But I also am like, it would be perfectly fine if they took that exact paragraph, changed the words, around and then said the exact same thing.
That's fine.
But then, you know, taking it and cheating one word is terrible.
I'm like, I know it's bad.
I'm not saying it isn't bad, but I just mean, to me, it's kind of the same thing.
They're just like...
Yeah, it's just lazier.
And like you said, the substance is the same.
But yes, it is.
I feel like journalists also regard this as a very...
Big sin because their income is based on their work.
So when someone plagiarizes in journalism, it's a really big sin.
And I get why it is in academia too, but I just think you have to have the degrees for it.
So if it turns out that D 'Angelo has done this in lots and lots of her papers and she's constantly plagiarizing others' work without credit, then fine.
If she was just lazy writing her thesis.
That's bad, but to me, it's, you know, whatever.
But in her case, given all her rhetoric, people will absolutely crucify her for it.
And tough.
Hoist by your own petard.
Okay, Elon Musk.
Again, this is just a news thing that came to my attention.
It seems to be backed up when I did some cursory checking, but he was forced to reveal The investors that helped him buy Twitter as part of some legal cases that he's perpetually getting himself involved in.
Science of free speech, were they?
No, Chris, they were not.
Well, who knows?
Maybe Russian oligarchs.
Yearn to be free and really just want America to have more free speech and for Katur to spread the good word.
Ian Miles Chung needs to be heard, Matt.
He must be heard.
So I believe it's also the case that a fair amount of Saudi money...
I thought that was known, though.
Yes, that was already known.
That's right.
So we have Russian oligarchs now.
That's the new thing.
Added into the mix.
Added into the mix.
So I think they've all lost a huge amount of money by investing in Twitter.
But, you know, one does suspect, because it is also, I think, the case, and it is not really in dispute, that, you know, countries like China or Russia or probably factions within other countries, like perhaps Saudi Arabia, maybe not Saudi Arabia,
I don't know.
But, you know, it is used to do what they would see as destabilizing the United States, right?
America's free speech thing and free markets and all of that stuff is basically an Achilles heel and they see what looks to them like
a lot of lack of social cohesion, and they see it as an opportunity to weaken the United States by essentially promoting whatever is going to cause...
Disruption and contention.
So, you know, it could be vaccines one day.
It could be trans things the next day.
It doesn't really matter as long as it makes Americans upset.
So, you know, one can't help be a little bit suspicious about the motivations behind some of those foreign investments.
Yeah, well, you know, the CM playbook, I think it's just a very old playbook as well, but like the Internet Research Agency or what is it?
Anyway, the Russian...
Disinformation Bureau, basically.
Their activities were documented and they were doing stuff like that.
Not as on such a grand scale as pumping billions into Twitter, but this was setting up various Facebook groups that were on different sides of issues and fermenting distrust.
But it is also noticeable.
Like that's often presented as they were astroturfing the left and the right equally, but it wasn't.
The relative proportion was vastly in favor of Trumpish stuff, but they also did do like left
wing racial identity politics stuff as well so but it was all about stoking grievance and division and dissension and you know the the civil war is imminent as elon musk would say so yeah yeah
Yeah, I think they see people like Trump or Musk as easy marks, frankly.
Useful idiots to help them with that kind of thing.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Constantine Kissing got contacted by a reporter.
I forget for which publication it was for, but he recorded the telephone call.
NBC was the journalist.
And it was a journalist who wanted to ask him, About comments that Musk had made about a civil war in Europe being inevitable, and I think the UK as well.
And then Constantine kind of seeming to endorse these, right?
And the reporter wanted to ask him about his view about those and what Musk meant.
And obviously, the reporter had a line, which was that he read Musk's various tweets predicting imminent civil war as exacerbating the possibility of that happening, especially in the...
Week of violent outbreaks, anti-immigrant riots and whatnot in the UK.
So, Constantine, he posted the recording of the interview and kind of presented it as the mainstream trying to railroad him.
But if you listen to it, Matt, as I'm sure you did, it was essentially a reporter doing their job.
Calling up, they were asking about Constantine's taking things and Constantine was giving very diplomatic answers towards things and then being outraged by the implication that he would be, you know, presenting things as immigrant versus non-immigrants or this kind of thing.
And then getting annoyed at the reporter saying, like, I've already answered that.
Like, why?
I find it strange that you're still asking me for this and like predicting the contours of a civil war.
Like, why are you asking me?
Right. And it's just their audience then laps up, you know, this is how dishonest the media is.
And you're like, no, that is just a reporter asking questions in a way that you don't like with an implication that you don't like.
And yes, they are wanting to frame it as, isn't this a bit racist?
Isn't he encouraging dissension?
But like, they're allowed.
To do that, right?
This whole freedom of the media.
And it's presented very much as, you know, by doing that, it's illegitimate.
And what you should be doing is sitting down with Elon Musk for three hours and just asking him in indulgent ways, you know, like...
Flattering him.
Flattering him.
That's right.
Their idea of an interview is where you sit down with them for three hours, let them ramble on about whatever takes their fancy and take every opportunity you can to flatter them.
That's it.
So it's ironic that these are champions of free speech, but they all hate the media.
Just the normal, like normal media practice, like a tough interview, being asked difficult questions.
Yeah, they hate that.
They hate that.
And it would actually, the thing is as well, if a reporter came out with an article that was biased, right, and over-interpreted Elon Musk's tweets and whatnot, that could perfectly happen, right?
And an outlet has an editorial line.
And then that gets criticized.
You can criticize the line and the spin that they're taking on it, but they just present it as fundamentally dishonest.
Like, Constantine talks about the media narrative that he wanted to impose on this event, but he doesn't talk about the fact that, like, Elon Musk has a narrative, right?
That Constantine Kissin has a narrative.
They all have narratives, so the reporter is pressing them.
On what their narrative implies and they don't like it.
So, yeah, just that it's this constant presentation of persecution.
They're trying to get me.
They're trying, you know, but I'm one step ahead of them.
And I noticed this because Andrew Gold retweeted it saying, you know, do you ever think or wish that you were just as quick thinking as Constantine Kissin is, you know, as soon as.
And I was like, Jesus Christ.
The level of crawling that is accepted.
Because this is Constantine Kissin defending Elon Musk's tweets, right?
And trying to demonize a reporter and kind of get kudos from Elon Musk, right?
And then Andrew Gold crawling to Constantine Kissin as an important person to argue back against the mainstream.
It's like layers of sycophancy deep that you get very quickly on social media.
It's like a pyramid of idiots kissing each other's butts up the hierarchy.
It is.
It's a bit like that horrible movie, The Human Centipede.
Oh, The Human Centipede.
Yeah, I thought of that too, but I didn't go there.
Well, that's it.
So there's two last things, Matt.
I've got two for you now to round things off.
One of them is short, so I guess we'll do that first before going to the longer one.
The short one is just, You know, Peterson Academy launched and intrepid Internet Explorer Badstats signed up for their course and has been taking the courses documenting that Peterson doesn't know how to use PowerPoint to present their vote and various issues with the tests that are automatically generated seemingly not working and whatnot.
But he also extracted a clip of Peugeot who teaches You know, of course, on symbolism and religious symbolism and all this.
But he talked a little bit about 5G, Matt, and COVID.
And let's hear the wisdom of Pajot on this topic.
When COVID started, if you remember, some people started saying that the...
What is it?
The new internet.
I forget what the name of it.
It's like this new, the highest form of internet, whatever, these towers, these cell towers and these internet towers.
They were the ones that were causing COVID.
Remember that?
Right.
So these, sorry?
Yeah, 5G.
Sorry.
So you see how little I know about these things.
I was like...
5G towers are causing COVID.
And it got so far that some people actually like burn some down.
Some people like attack some of these 5G towers.
And so ridiculous, right?
I mean, it's so ridiculous to think that these 5G towers are causing COVID.
Okay.
Is it really that ridiculous?
So the question is, at what level is it not ridiculous?
So often the problem is that we look at material causalities, and then we look at those, and that's ridiculous.
Like, I honestly really, it's clear that 5G towers aren't causing the virus in your body or the symptoms in your body.
But are 5G towers causing COVID?
Well, that's a more interesting question to ask.
So think about what happened during COVID.
And imagine that happened 100 years ago.
Would we have had COVID if that had happened 100 years ago?
Would they have shut down everything?
Would they have shut down schools and stores?
And could they have shut down everything?
And the answer is obviously no.
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