Knowledge Fight - #347: September 23, 2019
Aired: 2019-09-25
Duration: 02:00:39


=== Improvised Policy Wonk Comedy (15:01) ===

[00:00:21]  I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys.
[00:00:29]  Knowledge fight.
[00:00:30]  Man and George.
[00:00:31]  Knowledge fight.
[00:00:32]  Need money.
[00:00:36]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:40]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:41]  Stop it.
[00:00:43]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:43]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:44]  It's time to pray.
[00:00:47]  Andy and Kansas.
[00:00:48]  You're on the air.
[00:00:49]  I love you.
[00:00:59]  Hey, everybody.
[00:01:00]  Welcome back to Knowledge Fight.
[00:01:01]  I'm Dan.
[00:01:01]  I'm Jordan.
[00:01:02]  We're a couple dudes like to sit around, drink novelty beverages, and talk a little bit about that fella.
[00:01:07]  That fella, Alex Jones.
[00:01:09]  Indeed, we are dead.
[00:01:12]  Right.
[00:01:12]  That was sort of like a bad wrestling announcer.
[00:01:17]  The way you were holding the mic.
[00:01:19]  Almost like a let's get ready to rumble.
[00:01:21]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:01:22]  Absolutely.
[00:01:22]  I think I just got charged a copyright on that one.
[00:01:25]  The buffers are going to come after you for that.
[00:01:27]  I think so.
[00:01:27]  They got a lot of money tied up in it.
[00:01:29]  You do not like it when people tell people to rumble.
[00:01:33]  What's going on?
[00:01:34]  Oh, Dan.
[00:01:35]  Yeah, Jordan.
[00:01:35]  You know what?
[00:01:36]  I don't know if I've ever asked you this.
[00:01:38]  Show or outside?
[00:01:40]  This will make for an interesting question.
[00:01:41]  Have you ever done sketch comedy, Dan?
[00:01:44]  I mean...
[00:01:45]  Have you ever done a sketch?
[00:01:46]  You already know the answer to that.
[00:01:47]  I don't know if I do.
[00:01:48]  Yeah, I told you that when I was in church, going to church all the time, I was on the drama team.
[00:01:54]  I did sketches during the youth services.
[00:01:57]  I mean in a sense of actual comedy.
[00:02:00]  Maybe a little bit.
[00:02:01]  Back when I lived in Missouri, I was trying anything I could.
[00:02:05]  Because there's no community there.
[00:02:09]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:21]  No good at it.
[00:02:22]  I'm very bad at it.
[00:02:24]  You're a zilch.
[00:02:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:26]  So we made a couple little video sketches.
[00:02:28]  They were just not...
[00:02:30]  Do you have any one that's memorable?
[00:02:32]  There was one...
[00:02:33]  Whatsoever.
[00:02:33]  The comedian, New York comedian, semi-famous New York comedian, Kyle Ayers.
[00:02:38]  Hey!
[00:02:38]  He and I came up together in Columbia, Missouri.
[00:02:41]  And so we had one sketch where the whole premise was that we were trying to come up with a nickname for me.
[00:02:47]  And so we were sitting there on a couch.
[00:02:50]  And I kept coming up with names that were like the Denialator or something like Dan something.
[00:02:56]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:02:56]  It was just like bickering.
[00:02:58]  Like, that was the whole thing.
[00:02:59]  Okay.
[00:02:59]  Me, him, and Ryan Beck, another comedian.
[00:03:02]  Like, three of us would always get into fights about how I thought the essence of comedy is arguing with each other.
[00:03:08]  Like, people just having disagreements.
[00:03:10]  And then they would disagree with me.
[00:03:12]  And then I would make it funny.
[00:03:13]  And then it would be the essence of comedy.
[00:03:15]  I proved my point!
[00:03:17]  They didn't enjoy that.
[00:03:18]  No, absolutely not.
[00:03:21]  So those meetings about doing sketches was probably more fun and funnier than the actual sketches themselves that ever got produced.
[00:03:28]  It wasn't something I wanted to pursue.
[00:03:30]  I'm not a very good actor.
[00:03:31]  I can't remember lines that well.
[00:03:33]  I'm not really good at improvising.
[00:03:35]  I can have a conversation with somebody, but once the pressure of we're in a scene and I've got to come up with something to follow the game, I can't do that shit.
[00:03:45]  You don't really get into the moment.
[00:03:46]  I have no patience for it.
[00:03:48]  You have no patience for not thinking.
[00:03:50]  Nope.
[00:03:51]  Nope.
[00:03:52]  You have no patience for the instant reaction of something.
[00:03:55]  If I were in an improv show, like, I've seen a lot of them.
[00:03:58]  I don't hate improv or anything, but I've seen a lot of them that are pretty bad, and most of the time I imagine myself in the scene, and my reaction to something would be like, fuck this noise, I just leave.
[00:04:08]  Like, what are you doing?
[00:04:10]  That breaks everything.
[00:04:12]  That would be the best episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?
[00:04:14]  Ever.
[00:04:15]  Somebody just walks up there to Colin Mockery and is like, this is fucking stupid, and then just storms off.
[00:04:19]  Ryan?
[00:04:20]  Ryan Stiles?
[00:04:21]  I gotta go.
[00:04:22]  Would not be as compelling as television.
[00:04:25]  So, no, I don't know a lot about sketch comedy, but I do know quite a bit about Alex Jones.
[00:04:29]  And I only know what you tell me about both.
[00:04:31]  That's right.
[00:04:31]  And that's the theme of this here show.
[00:04:33]  It's the gig.
[00:04:33]  Jordan, today we're going to be going over a present day episode.
[00:04:36]  We're going to be talking about September 23rd, 2019.
[00:04:39]  There's some interesting stuff that goes on.
[00:04:41]  There's some stuff that infuriates me.
[00:04:43]  There'll be some stuff that infuriates you.
[00:04:45]  So we're going to cover all of our bases.
[00:04:47]  On the 23rd, I can't think of any large events that could occur that Alex had stuff to say about that would infuriate me specifically.
[00:04:55]  He might have a take on the climate protests.
[00:04:58]  Interesting.
[00:04:58]  I wonder if it's great.
[00:05:00]  It's pretty good.
[00:05:02]  It's not.
[00:05:02]  But something that is pretty good, pretty great, is how I feel about the people who have signed up and are supporting the show.
[00:05:08]  So we shall take a moment to say thank you to a couple of them there folks.
[00:05:12]  So first of all, Chris, thank you so much.
[00:05:14]  You are now a policy wonk.
[00:05:16]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:05:17]  Thank you, Chris.
[00:05:18]  Next twist.
[00:05:19]  Christopher, thank you so much.
[00:05:21]  You are now a policy wonk.
[00:05:22]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:05:23]  Thank you, Christopher.
[00:05:28]  That's some improv comedy right there.
[00:05:29]  The Chris contingent is coming together.
[00:05:32]  The Chris coalition.
[00:05:33]  That's true.
[00:05:33]  There's a good name in there somewhere.
[00:05:35]  Next, Justin, thank you so much.
[00:05:37]  You are now a policy wonk.
[00:05:38]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:05:40]  Thank you, Justin.
[00:05:40]  Next, Jenny with an I. Thank you so much.
[00:05:43]  You are now a policy wonk.
[00:05:45]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:05:46]  Thank you, Jenny.
[00:05:46]  Thanks, Jenny.
[00:05:47]  I'm going to dot that I with a heart.
[00:05:48]  I'll be goddamn sure about that.
[00:05:50]  Absolutely.
[00:05:51]  Next, Michael.
[00:05:52]  Thank you so much.
[00:05:53]  You are now a policy wonk.
[00:05:54]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:05:55]  Thanks, Michael.
[00:05:56]  And then finally, Callan.
[00:05:58]  Thank you so much.
[00:05:58]  You are now a policy wonk.
[00:06:00]  I'm a policy wonk.
[00:06:01]  Thank you so much, Callan.
[00:06:03]  If you're out there listening, you're thinking, hey, I enjoyed these guys.
[00:06:05]  Do I like this show?
[00:06:06]  You can support our show by going to our website, knowledgefight.com, clicking the button, says support the show.
[00:06:11]  I don't know.
[00:06:14]  I would appreciate it.
[00:06:16]  So, Jordan, today we start on the 23rd.
[00:06:20]  And this is really interesting, because Alex starts the show with the music that I've never heard him use before.
[00:06:26]  And it actually kind of got me pretty excited.
[00:06:29]  I'm pretty hyped.
[00:06:29]  If you come back to California, you should just hit me.
[00:06:36]  Ladies and gentlemen, it is September 23rd, 2019.
[00:06:42]  I'm your Alex Jones host, and we are here attempting to cover the news and chronicle what's unfolding and what we're about to witness here.
[00:06:53]  Three things.
[00:06:54]  First of all, that's Lana Del Rey.
[00:06:55]  Is that Lana Del Rey?
[00:06:56]  Second, Alex said, I'm your Alex Jones host.
[00:07:00]  And third, he said we're going to attempt to cover the news.
[00:07:03]  Oh boy.
[00:07:04]  That's a bad intro.
[00:07:05]  That's a trifecta of greatness right there.
[00:07:07]  So Jordan, it's profoundly weird that Alex is opening his show with a song by Lana Del Rey immediately after we talked about him not liking her on our last episode.
[00:07:16]  It is really not weird.
[00:07:17]  It makes perfect sense.
[00:07:19]  They are fucking with us.
[00:07:20]  No, it could easily be misconstrued as that.
[00:07:22]  Like, sending subtle messages to us.
[00:07:24]  And if I were the type of person who likes Alex a bunch, or someone who works for Infowars and likes to create false perceptions, I would probably accept that's the reality of what's going on, and I would tell the audience, hey, Alex is fucking with us by playing Lana Del Rey.
[00:07:37]  Right, it'd be hilarious.
[00:07:38]  But that's not the case.
[00:07:39]  Oh, no.
[00:07:39]  In truth, it seems like Alex really likes Lana Del Rey's new album, Norman fucking Rockwell.
[00:07:49]  Fine.
[00:07:50]  Fine.
[00:07:50]  I love it.
[00:07:51]  Great.
[00:07:52]  I had to look into it a little bit because I know he hated her in the past, but now he loves this new album.
[00:07:58]  Where do you do the research that says he loves the new album by Lana Del Rey?
[00:08:02]  Well, you see, he thinks that she's celebrating Americana.
[00:08:06]  Oh, okay.
[00:08:06]  Never mind.
[00:08:07]  Never mind.
[00:08:07]  That's easy.
[00:08:08]  I think he might be missing out on some of the subtler artistic elements of Lana's style.
[00:08:13]  I will leave that to some of the music critics out there.
[00:08:15]  So I was trying to look into this because I was like, I remember him hating her.
[00:08:19]  And I found a clip from late August, one of the shows that I must not have listened to because I missed some here and there.
[00:08:25]  Yeah.
[00:08:25]  But on this episode, Alex goes into how he just downloaded the Lana Del Rey album because he saw Matt Drudge tweet about it.
[00:08:34]  Oh my God.
[00:08:34]  He's like, there is beauty in the world.
[00:08:36]  Jesus Christ.
[00:08:40]  It's a great reminder.
[00:08:42]  All right.
[00:08:43]  All right.
[00:08:43]  Fine.
[00:08:43]  So here's a little clip of that where he's talking about how Lana Del Rey's new album's really great.
[00:08:48]  And then he tells a little tale out of school about how he almost met Lana Del Rey 10 years ago.
[00:08:52]  Jesus Christ.
[00:08:53]  And so they put out three music videos that I've seen by Del Rey so far, and they're all incredibly nostalgic.
[00:09:02]  American flags, back when people were moving to California, back when it was the boom state.
[00:09:07]  So it's 50s-esque, 60s-esque.
[00:09:10]  Real quick, that song, California, that he was playing in the intro there, is about some guy who's gone and moved away out of America, and if you come back, I want to fuck you.
[00:09:20]  Right, right, right.
[00:09:21]  To be clear.
[00:09:22]  That is the metaphor for Americana.
[00:09:24]  What are you talking about?
[00:09:25]  I guess.
[00:09:26]  And it's like a big old glass of pure...
[00:09:31]  Rainwater with big old juicy ice cubes in it when you've been marching through the middle of the desert.
[00:09:37]  So whether you're listening to Beethoven's Ninth or tuning in to this young lady, it doesn't matter how boring she's been in the past.
[00:09:49]  Real quick, also, while he's talking about this, they flash up on screen the album cover, but they have to crop it because it's Norman fucking Rockwell.
[00:09:57]  Right, right, right.
[00:09:58]  They can't show Norman fucking Rockwell.
[00:10:00]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:01]  It's truly, truly beautiful.
[00:10:03]  Though I do wish that time I got invited by Mr. Perry and the singer from Aerosmith to go cut their new album ten years ago.
[00:10:13]  I was invited for a week to be there in San Diego with them.
[00:10:17]  She talks about Long Beach at San Diego in one of her songs.
[00:10:20]  She was there then, and I didn't go, because I was too busy fighting the New World Order.
[00:10:25]  That's not name-dropping.
[00:10:26]  But I remember they were like, Stephen Tyler is dating a woman 30 years junior, and it looks just like his daughter, which she does have that elfin look like his daughter.
[00:10:35]  But the point is, is that I had a chance to go.
[00:10:38]  I like Aerosmith, but I'm just not into...
[00:10:41]  Running around, following rock stars around.
[00:10:43]  I got invited to, you know, go hang out with Metallica a couple times.
[00:10:46]  Cool.
[00:10:47]  And I didn't do it either.
[00:10:48]  And I'm not name-dropping.
[00:10:49]  I just don't care about a bunch of dudes.
[00:10:52]  What?
[00:10:52]  No matter how cool their music is.
[00:10:54]  Or no matter the fact I was, you know, nine or ten years old when they only played heavy metal past midnight on the rock station.
[00:11:00]  And I'd stay up and listen to it in my room, you know, with a headset on.
[00:11:05]  Okay.
[00:11:05]  And he just rambles from there.
[00:11:07]  But he loves his Lana Del Rey album.
[00:11:08]  He could have met her ten years ago.
[00:11:10]  It's ridiculous.
[00:11:12]  This is ridiculous.
[00:11:15]  I'm just not into a bunch of dudes!
[00:11:17]  Right, that's a strange way to put it.
[00:11:19]  Next time you invite me out, I'm going to tell you, honestly, I cannot go out with you.
[00:11:23]  I am too busy fighting the New World Order, Dan.
[00:11:26]  You know what?
[00:11:27]  Honestly, if you reframe the New World Order as Alex's bullshit, I might have turned down a number of invitations in my life because I'm too busy with this shit.
[00:11:34]  That's a good point.
[00:11:35]  So the reason that I think that this is really funny, that Alex loves her new album, is because in February 2017, Alex ran an article on Infowars with the headline, Quote, Lana Del Rey joins effort to defeat Trump with witchcraft.
[00:11:48]  This was in response to Lana tweeting about using witchcraft to unseat Trump, so I guess I kind of have to give it up to him.
[00:11:53]  That's kind of a fair headline.
[00:11:55]  That's an accurate headline.
[00:11:55]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:11:56]  No, I get it.
[00:11:57]  But now she's released Norman fucking Rockwell, and Alex has decided that she's the best and is really putting out music that promotes the version of Americana that he's into, which seems weird.
[00:12:07]  For one, she's been working on that album for a long time.
[00:12:10]  She started on it in like 2016.
[00:12:12]  So she was definitely writing and recording the songs that are on this album in the same time span when she decided to take out Trump with witchcraft.
[00:12:19]  And Alex got really furious about it.
[00:12:22]  Further, the album is co-produced by Jack Antonoff, who dated Lena Dunham for like five years, someone who Alex thinks is a literal demon.
[00:12:29]  Does he somehow think that the person who dated a literal demon for a half decade and a person trying to unseat Trump through witchcraft came together and put out a straightforward album glorifying the right-wing fantasies about America?
[00:12:40]  That seems naive.
[00:12:42]  God works in mysterious ways, Dan.
[00:12:45]  He chooses his actors from amongst the gloried and the sinners both.
[00:12:50]  I couldn't find the specifics.
[00:12:51]  But I also do remember Alex yelling about how Lana Del Rey's Born to Die album was celebrating death and all this shit.
[00:12:59]  I like how quickly things can change for him.
[00:13:02]  Doesn't matter how boorish her behavior was in the past.
[00:13:04]  She tried to use devilry to unseat your favorite hero.
[00:13:08]  That's boorish?
[00:13:09]  These are some good tracks.
[00:13:12]  She's got some licks, Dan.
[00:13:14]  So I decided that if Alex loves this album so much, it's probably time for me to jump in and give it a listen.
[00:13:19]  All in all, on a first listen, I think it's a great Lana Del Rey album.
[00:13:23]  Which is to say that it's lousy with dark sarcasm, and most of the songs are about fucking dudes you probably shouldn't fuck.
[00:13:29]  Right.
[00:13:30]  Now, Lana Del Rey's work usually has dual meetings involved and a lot of, like, veiled stuff in it.
[00:13:36]  For instance, her first album, Born to Die, appears to largely be about the trappings of fame and the shallowness therein and complicated relationships.
[00:13:44]  However, in an interview with GQ, she explained that a lot of the album is about the period of time when she was sent to Kent boarding school at the age of 14 because she was a child alcoholic.
[00:13:54]  She also revealed that she almost exclusively drank alone, which kind of introduces the thought that a lot of the characters in the songs on that album might not actually be people, but drives within herself.
[00:14:04]  A lot of the album does work if you view it as an ironic take on the vapidity of show business and the pursuit of wealth and fame over everything else, but there are also other things that Lana is clearly expressing in those songs, which is one of the things that makes her work particularly interesting to me.
[00:14:19]  Gia is a unique sound and makes great, bitingly dark pop songs that also have layers to them.
[00:14:25]  Now, obviously, she's not the only artist out there who you could say that about, but it doesn't really matter to me.
[00:14:29]  I enjoy her work, and if you disagree and think I should be listening to better things, I agree.
[00:14:34]  I also listen to Carly Rae Jepsen.
[00:14:36]  Calm down.
[00:14:37]  What are we doing?
[00:14:38]  Right.
[00:14:38]  What's the point?
[00:14:39]  I would sum this up this way.
[00:14:40]  One consistent thing that has characterized Lana Del Rey's career has been a strain of mocking the myths we tell ourselves about our cultures, our lives, and our country.
[00:14:49]  And in her videos, she uses a lot of patriotic imagery for ironic effect.
[00:14:53]  Alex Jones, because he lacks any depth in his ability to analyze things, sees an American flag and thinks it's something that's patriotic.
[00:15:01]  In effect, he is what she's mocking.
[00:15:04]  But because Lana Del Rey makes really good music, even the target of her ridicule is lured into thinking that she's on their side.

=== Representative Death of Youth (01:42) ===

[00:15:11]  This is really impressive stuff, and a really delicious piece of stupidity on Alex's part.
[00:15:18]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:19]  It's like a big glass of rainwater with juicy ice cubes.
[00:15:25]  I don't think he's big into satire.
[00:15:27]  I don't think he quite gets it.
[00:15:28]  No.
[00:15:28]  No.
[00:15:29]  I do really enjoy that, though.
[00:15:31]  It's a very unexpected twist, first of all, that Matt Drudge is into Norman fucking Rockwell.
[00:15:36]  Yeah, that one surprised me.
[00:15:37]  And then Alex saw a tweet that Drudge put out, and he's like, this gal, wow, Americana.
[00:15:44]  Yeah.
[00:15:45]  I mean, I think that's really interesting how...
[00:15:49]  These people can both hate and glorify pop music simultaneously.
[00:15:53]  Yeah.
[00:15:54]  As being like, one album is, oh, this is representative of the death of the youth.
[00:15:59]  And back in my day, we listened to, I love Aerosmith and all that shit.
[00:16:03]  And then the next second is like, Lana Del Rey has some pretty good tracks, man.
[00:16:06]  I'm just going to say that she's got some pretty good tracks.
[00:16:08]  Yeah.
[00:16:09]  She's like Portishead without a rhythm section.
[00:16:10]  I wonder what he thinks of her national anthem video.
[00:16:15]  I wonder what he thinks.
[00:16:16]  Never saw it.
[00:16:17]  What's that?
[00:16:17]  It's that one where she's Jackie O, and it's like she's living this idyllic life with the children and all this until the assassination.
[00:16:26]  But JFK is played by A $AP Rocky.
[00:16:28]  That's fantastic.
[00:16:30]  That's fantastic.
[00:16:31]  So, Alex...
[00:16:33]  At the beginning of this episode, he's pretty depressed and off-track.

=== Alex Co-opts Paul Harvey (04:32) ===

[00:16:37]  You could tell with his, I'm your Alex Jones host.
[00:16:40]  That sort of fumbly intro, there's a vibe that he's a little bit down.
[00:16:46]  And you can hear it as he introduces the special report he's about to play.
[00:16:51]  I'm going to air a Paul Harvey report that we put some images to.
[00:16:55]  It's from the 1970s and 1980s.
[00:16:59]  And then we are going to come back.
[00:17:01]  There's just a vibe of like, ugh, we're just doing it.
[00:17:04]  Yeah, he's not bringing it.
[00:17:07]  No.
[00:17:07]  He's not bringing it.
[00:17:08]  And it's really interesting to see Alex co-opting a piece by Paul Harvey.
[00:17:12]  These days when he has a special report to play, it's always one of his employees who put it together.
[00:17:16]  It's a John Bowne report or a Millie Weaver special.
[00:17:19]  It's really rare for him to just take someone else's material and put images over it.
[00:17:23]  It makes me wonder if John Bowne is getting too expensive for Alex to keep around.
[00:17:28]  The reason this choice is interesting to me, though, is that I've never heard Alex talk about Paul Harvey before, and he absolutely should have.
[00:17:35]  A lot.
[00:17:36]  Paul Harvey is the blueprint for conservative radio types from the 1950s onward.
[00:17:42]  I'm not nearly as interested in those sides of things because I think that Alex Jones has always been pretty far off the beaten path from most conservative radio types, like in terms of style.
[00:17:51]  That being said, there is an element in which Alex is the truest descendant of Paul Harvey, more than anyone else could ever hope to be.
[00:17:59]  He got drunk a lot on air.
[00:18:01]  No, I don't know about that.
[00:18:02]  Maybe.
[00:18:03]  So, Robert Smith discussed Harvey's career in an episode of NPR's All Things Considered, after Harvey had passed.
[00:18:08]  Not lead singer of The Cure, Robert Smith.
[00:18:10]  No.
[00:18:10]  Different guy.
[00:18:11]  An NPR host.
[00:18:12]  Gotcha.
[00:18:13]  This is just after Paul Harvey had passed on.
[00:18:16]  And tell me if any of this sounds familiar.
[00:18:18]  Quote, Harvey's style was unique and always compelling.
[00:18:21]  Even when he got to the ads, Harvey would seamlessly move into his pitch, making it into a story just as riveting as the news around him.
[00:18:28]  The product changed, but the intensity was the same, and for it, he was paid hands-on.
[00:18:32]  That sounds familiar.
[00:18:34]  A little bit.
[00:18:34]  That does sound familiar.
[00:18:36]  Paul Harvey's legacy is essentially intertwined with his ability to make ads sound like they're part of his show.
[00:18:41]  From that NPR piece, Smith asks Bruce Dumont, the founder of the Museum of Broadcast Communication, why advertisers loved Harvey.
[00:18:49]  Quote, well, because he moved product.
[00:18:51]  I mean, that was the key thing.
[00:18:53]  Yeah, that seems like a really simple question to answer.
[00:18:57]  Another article about him from NPR said, quote, Paul Harvey blurred the line between newscaster and outright salesman in a way that Dumont describes as being, quote, very unseemly behavior for any other newscaster to engage in, possibly even a breach of ethics.
[00:19:24]  Paul Harvey's career has touched a lot of the right-wing media in ways that often go unnoticed.
[00:19:28]  Some are stylistic touches, some are political moves, but for Alex Jones, Harvey was the king of integrating ads into your show and making them feel the same as the news.
[00:19:39]  It was probably very unseemly in the 50s, and it sure is shit unseemly today.
[00:19:44]  Oh, it's not good now.
[00:19:45]  And it's all Alex does.
[00:19:47]  That's so funny.
[00:19:49]  Why did advertisers like him so much?
[00:19:51]  Because of his great fucking moral standpoints.
[00:19:54]  What the hell are you talking about?
[00:19:55]  We're advertisers.
[00:19:56]  Why else would we like him so much?
[00:19:58]  Advertisers liked him so much because he was able to use the content of his show to push the ads.
[00:20:03]  Duh!
[00:20:03]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:20:04]  And that's the legacy that Alex carries on today.
[00:20:07]  Absolutely.
[00:20:07]  And I'm sure a lot of these other right-wing radio guys do it too, but not as brazenly as Alex.
[00:20:12]  He is so disgusting with it.
[00:20:14]  As we've seen over and over and over again.
[00:20:18]  So, Alex, at the beginning of this episode, I would say that I think that this episode, someone else produced it.
[00:20:24]  It feels more structured than other episodes, in the sense that the first hour, second hour, and third hour all seem like discrete segments.
[00:20:33]  Okay.
[00:20:33]  To an extent.
[00:20:34]  There's still a little...
[00:20:35]  It's still Alex, so he still goes off track.
[00:20:37]  Right, right, right, right.
[00:20:38]  But there is definitely more of a feel of, like, theme, theme, theme.
[00:20:44]  Somebody's trying to put a fence around his acreage, so to speak.
[00:20:47]  It feels like it's possible, or maybe Alex is just, like, recognizing that maybe I should try.

=== Sexualizing Education? (12:15) ===

[00:20:54]  I don't know what it is, but it felt very different.
[00:20:57]  You know, maybe the reason I'm going out of business is because I'm actively bad at this job.
[00:21:02]  Maybe the things that make me bad are the only things that are marketable about me, and now that I have nobody to market to, it's really fucking up.
[00:21:10]  Maybe I should anchor myself.
[00:21:11]  How about try and be a good...
[00:21:13]  It's too late for that.
[00:21:14]  But it's interesting to see.
[00:21:16]  And in the first section of the episode, Alex is trying to push they want to abuse your kids in the schools.
[00:21:24]  That's his big narrative in the first hour.
[00:21:27]  And there's some...
[00:21:30]  You know, there's some reasons that he's doing this.
[00:21:32]  Like, there are actual news things.
[00:21:33]  But most of it spirals out into really, really disgusting talk.
[00:21:36]  And I'm going to try and keep that to a minimum, except where it's necessary to explain what he's up to.
[00:21:43]  And this first clip, I think, is really telling.
[00:21:45]  Because Alex talks about his Jocelyn Elders ideas.
[00:21:49]  Sure.
[00:21:50]  About what she was pushing for.
[00:21:52]  Right, right, right.
[00:21:52]  Putting forth.
[00:21:53]  His ideas that she was saying that teachers need to manually...
[00:21:57]  Masturbate schoolchildren.
[00:21:59]  Yes, I remember her.
[00:22:00]  No, I remember her confirming that.
[00:22:02]  No, I remember she said that specifically.
[00:22:03]  She said, no, guys, I know a lot of people misunderstood me, but I just want to make my position clear.
[00:22:09]  I want the teachers to jerk off the kids.
[00:22:12]  It was not what she was about, and it was not what she was advocating for.
[00:22:15]  But Alex, he remembers that she said that, and he accidentally kind of reveals in this clip, first of all, that she never said that, and second of all, why he thinks that.
[00:22:26]  Now, I remember listening to Rush Limbaugh when I was just one year out of high school.
[00:22:34]  Real quick, you might hear Lana Del Rey in the background again because he played it a second time.
[00:22:38]  He's listening to, though, damn.
[00:22:39]  It's the same song, though.
[00:22:40]  This dude.
[00:22:41]  Yeah, he loves her.
[00:22:43]  And I remember listening to him when I was at work during the breaks.
[00:22:49]  And I remember going and looking at the things he was talking about and finding out they were true and being amazed.
[00:22:54]  And he would play the audio of Jocelyn Elders over and over again saying, what you do with the kindergartners, that's how she speaks, is you reach down and you help them masturbate.
[00:23:10]  And then she went to Congress and talked about it.
[00:23:14]  But that was pre-internet, really.
[00:23:17]  And I spent an hour and a half this morning obsessively trying to find it.
[00:23:24]  I found one edited version.
[00:23:26]  It's like a joke video of her saying it, but it's a bunch of cutscenes.
[00:23:29]  No, it's not.
[00:23:31]  It's a bunch of joke cuts.
[00:23:33]  Alex, that's not the same thing.
[00:23:35]  You spent an hour and a half trying to find this clip obsessively, and you didn't find it because it's not a real thing that she said.
[00:23:41]  It's the right-wing spin that Rush Limbaugh had back then that you've internalized as the truth, and you can't confirm it because it's not real.
[00:23:49]  Man, that does seem like something that happens pretty frequently, where they just make a claim, and then people remember it being true, but they never really looked into it.
[00:23:59]  And then when you're like, I need to confirm that and show everybody that I'm right, they're like, it's weird that I can't find the lie.
[00:24:05]  Yeah.
[00:24:06]  It's strange.
[00:24:07]  Real, real vague.
[00:24:08]  Real vague memories you have of this.
[00:24:11]  Real odd of reality being changed.
[00:24:13]  Probably Mandela effect.
[00:24:15]  Yeah!
[00:24:15]  Also, I didn't know Jocelyn Elders was the elephant man.
[00:24:18]  I didn't know that's how she spoke.
[00:24:20]  He does that impression quite a bit.
[00:24:22]  It's right up there with Bernie in terms of his favorite.
[00:24:24]  And Ralph Northam.
[00:24:26]  Those are his three SNL characters.
[00:24:30]  For sure.
[00:24:31]  Well, he's got a shot.
[00:24:32]  I hear there's an opening.
[00:24:37]  Man, imagine the backlash.
[00:24:39]  Shane Gillis got this much backlash.
[00:24:41]  Alex Jones, holy shit.
[00:24:43]  I think I would give him a shot.
[00:24:44]  You'd be a good stunt casting.
[00:24:45]  Yeah, I'd give him a year.
[00:24:46]  And we know people who work for SNL, if they hired Alex Jones, I'd be like, hey, could you tell him something for me?
[00:24:51]  Oh, for sure, for sure.
[00:24:52]  Direct pipeline.
[00:24:53]  Hey, Castillo, get on it.
[00:24:54]  Yeah.
[00:24:55]  Hey, Chris Redd, fuck with Alex for me.
[00:24:58]  Do it.
[00:25:00]  So, this next clip.
[00:25:02]  A little warning, because I think this is probably more graphic than I would like necessarily, but it's necessary in order to get us to the point of what he's talking about.
[00:25:13]  But when they can put their hands on your daughter's vagina or your little son's penis, sorry to use those terms, this is what's happened to your kids.
[00:25:21]  What?
[00:25:23]  If they can do that, they can do anything, and they are.
[00:25:29]  The headline on Infowars.com and Newswars.com for this live show, where you can email it out and text it out and share it, is it's official.
[00:25:37]  The left supports pedophilia worldwide, and they're coming after your children with vaccines they're going to put in them, GMO.
[00:25:49]  A little different.
[00:25:52]  It's official, Levinson Doors Pedophilia Worldwide.
[00:25:54]  So, the reason I've got to keep that in, I think, I mean, that's disgusting, first of all.
[00:26:00]  Right.
[00:26:00]  But Alex drops that, this is the headline on today's episode.
[00:26:04]  And it brings up an interesting thing that I don't think I've ever fully explained.
[00:26:09]  And that is on Infowars, the actual website.
[00:26:11]  They have articles, and then they also have posts for every day's episode.
[00:26:15]  So they'll have a post with the video embedded on it of the day's episode.
[00:26:20]  And so what he's describing there, that headline, Democrats endorse pedophilia worldwide, is the headline of the post that has...
[00:26:28]  Post with his whole...
[00:26:29]  Yeah, gotcha, gotcha.
[00:26:30]  Typically the episode's posts, they have sensational headlines of the video of the show, but no substantiation of anything.
[00:26:36]  so specifics about the claims being made in the headline aren't anywhere to be found.
[00:26:40]  It's just clickbait bullshit.
[00:26:42]  Right.
[00:26:42]  I decided to check out the page anyway to see if there was any indication of what Alex was talking about because he hasn't made it clear on the episode yet.
[00:26:49]  You know, like, what makes this official, that the Democrats are now endorsing this?
[00:26:53]  There's no information, but there are comments.
[00:26:56]  Here's a sampling of some of the responses from his listeners.
[00:26:59]  Quote, Epstein was extracted and is sunning himself on the Dead Sea, waiting for Hillary to take her rightful presidency and retroactively change the age of consent to six.
[00:27:08]  She'll be just in time to pardon big-wig Democrat donor, elector, superdelegate, and KKK leader Ed Buck, too.
[00:27:14]  I did not know that.
[00:27:16]  That guy's a big QAnon guy, clearly.
[00:27:18]  Gotcha, gotcha.
[00:27:19]  One commenter claims to be the victim of Catholic priest abuse and says if he saw one of these people targeting kids, he would beat them or possibly kill them.
[00:27:27]  Another commenter replies, quote, no time like now.
[00:27:31]  Another commenter says, quote, they're destroying the souls of our children and no one, absolutely no one is doing anything to take mathematical action to stop them.
[00:27:39]  Trump has done nothing, absolutely nothing to save America's culture way of life liberty.
[00:27:43]  Without a single unified culture ethnicity, there is nothing!
[00:27:49]  So that person's pretty much a white nationalist.
[00:27:51]  Pretty much?
[00:27:52]  I'm going to go with full on!
[00:27:53]  Someone else comments, quote, the Democrat Party should be criminalized.
[00:27:57]  Sure, sure, that's good.
[00:27:58]  Another person chimes in, quote, I'll tell you what, this is truly the direction public education is heading.
[00:28:03]  Public school teachers and administrators had better arm themselves.
[00:28:07]  That's more or less a threat to kill teachers and administrators, so that's definitely really awesome to hear.
[00:28:12]  All I'm hearing is look forward to a peaceful transition of power in 2020.
[00:28:16]  Final comment.
[00:28:17]  Quote, I hope the war comes quick.
[00:28:19]  This country has already passed the point of no return.
[00:28:22]  The only way to get it back is to take it back.
[00:28:24]  Sure, sure.
[00:28:25]  Good work.
[00:28:26]  There's a real feeling of accelerationist belief on display here in this comment section.
[00:28:30]  I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:28:32]  You can look at it as a thing where Alex isn't responsible for the actions of his listeners, and I do agree with that to a point.
[00:28:37]  The reason the argument is pretty uncompelling to me, though, is that Alex is intentionally misleading his audience on very emotionally explosive issues, and it's clearly doing it to make them feel the way these commenters feel.
[00:28:50]  They're supposed to want to outlaw political opposition.
[00:28:52]  They're supposed to want to threaten their enemies.
[00:28:54]  They're supposed to feel so hopeless about the world that the possibility of a civil war is a reasonable option.
[00:29:00]  These people may well have had these feelings independent of Alex, but the reporting style that he needs to use in order to keep making money requires that he justify those feelings, nurture those feelings, and make them worse.
[00:29:14]  It would be hard for me to believe without the endless drumbeat from Alex and his ilk that somebody would just out of nowhere be like, I think all of my six-year-old's teachers are pedophiles and I should probably start a civil war and kill them.
[00:29:30]  And they better arm themselves.
[00:29:33]  We're coming.
[00:29:34]  Yeah, I don't think that one would just spontaneously generate within your brain.
[00:29:39]  It could.
[00:29:40]  I doubt there would be as many.
[00:29:41]  I bet for a small subsection of people it could.
[00:29:44]  Yeah.
[00:29:44]  But the level to which this feeling is being expressed in these comments, it's pretty unnerving to see, I would say.
[00:29:53]  So I looked into this and tried to figure out what he's talking about, and there's an article in The Mirror about the underlying topic that Alex is discussing.
[00:30:02]  The Mirror?
[00:30:03]  The most trustworthy news source I can think of?
[00:30:05]  I do think it was reported in some other places, too, so it's not like a totally made-up thing.
[00:30:10]  But it's more or less just sex education issues being turned into right-wing bullshit about the teachers performing sex acts on kids.
[00:30:17]  The Mirror article includes an image of the part of this manual for sex education that everyone's...
[00:30:24]  It's not really even encouraging kids to masturbate, as the right-wing news people are painting it as.
[00:30:31]  It's really more saying that that is a normal thing that people do, and you shouldn't feel dirty about it.
[00:30:36]  It isn't even sexualizing, really, if you look at the context.
[00:30:40]  It's saying that, quote, lots of people like to tickle or stroke themselves, as it might feel nice.
[00:30:45]  They may play with their hair, stroke their skin, or they may even touch their private parts.
[00:30:49]  This is very normal.
[00:30:51]  Hmm.
[00:30:52]  That's destigmatizing.
[00:30:53]  That's not sexualizing.
[00:30:55]  No, you're just wrong.
[00:30:56]  Everybody who does that is a disgusting hose beast and they should be condemned to hell as the Bible fucking dictates, Dan.
[00:31:04]  Sure.
[00:31:05]  There are...
[00:31:05]  What kind...
[00:31:06]  Who would say that masturbation is an average thing that literally...
[00:31:11]  Everybody does.
[00:31:13]  I don't know.
[00:31:13]  Nobody.
[00:31:14]  The right wing and Alex is arguing that this manual tells kids to touch themselves in the bed or the shower without giving any context to where that comes up in this manual.
[00:31:24]  The manual is using those as examples of places it's appropriate, specifically to make the point that it's super inappropriate to do that sort of thing when other people are around.
[00:31:33]  Quote, it's not polite to do it when other people are about.
[00:31:37]  It's something we should only do when we're alone, perhaps in the bath or shower or in bed, a bit like picking your nose.
[00:31:43]  This is not sexualizing.
[00:31:45]  This is destigmatizing.
[00:31:47]  Yeah, but if you've ever been in a sex ed class, that line is so much like, I can hear my seventh grade teacher going like, you hear that, Carl?
[00:31:58]  In the bedroom or in the shower, goddammit!
[00:32:01]  Not in my classroom!
[00:32:02]  It's not even clear that this manual is meant to be the curriculum itself, as much as sort of guidance for the teachers.
[00:32:10]  I don't even know what the point is.
[00:32:12]  But as far as I can tell, this is also just a UK thing.
[00:32:15]  This is not like in America.
[00:32:17]  It's only at 240 schools in the UK.
[00:32:20]  For some context, the British Educational Suppliers Association estimates there are currently 20,925 primary schools in the United Kingdom.
[00:32:29]  So this is a very small portion that are even possibly utilizing this curriculum.
[00:32:34]  Alex is intentionally trying to conflate this story with the other story that we've talked Yeah.

=== Complete Falsehoods Relief (14:09) ===

[00:32:54]  Yeah!
[00:32:55]  But at least he's telling complete falsehoods.
[00:32:58]  That is a relief.
[00:33:00]  That's a positive.
[00:33:00]  Yeah.
[00:33:01]  I'm glad.
[00:33:01]  You know what?
[00:33:02]  Because if he was right about anything, I'd be angry too.
[00:33:04]  Yeah.
[00:33:05]  Right?
[00:33:05]  I feel comfortable knowing he's 100% wrong.
[00:33:08]  Well, if you want to have a conversation about, like, this should be taught at home as opposed to in school, I think there's a different way you would go about it.
[00:33:15]  Like, if your problem is sincerely, like, this isn't appropriate at a school, you wouldn't...
[00:33:20]  Escalate it to they're giving kids handjobs at school.
[00:33:24]  You wouldn't do that.
[00:33:25]  If you had a problem with something real, you wouldn't completely exaggerate it out to a completely absurd version.
[00:33:34]  That only serves the purpose of radicalizing and angering your audience in the direction you want them to be angry so you can capitalize on their anger.
[00:33:44]  And that's exactly what Alex is doing.
[00:33:46]  He does a really long, disgusting segment about this, and then here's what he does immediately after.
[00:33:53]  We're going to go to break with this key report.
[00:33:55]  We're going to come back and break it all down.
[00:33:56]  Please stay with us.
[00:33:57]  Infowars.com.
[00:33:58]  Tomorrow's news today.
[00:34:01]  I've never been a vain person.
[00:34:04]  I've never been obsessed with my looks.
[00:34:06]  And I never claimed to look like a supermodel or something out of a Calvin Klein.
[00:34:13]  He's literally claimed to be a Calvin Klein model.
[00:34:16]  He's claimed all of those things.
[00:34:18]  He's talked about how he used to get beat up because he was too attractive.
[00:34:23]  I get he's talking about his present self or whatever.
[00:34:28]  But the vanity he has for his youth is insane.
[00:34:31]  It's ridiculous.
[00:34:32]  So he does this really long, disgusting segment about child abuse.
[00:34:36]  And then he's like, we've got to go to this crucial report.
[00:34:39]  And it starts with him being like, I've never been fain.
[00:34:42]  And I'm like, I don't like where this is heading.
[00:34:44]  And you know where it's heading.
[00:34:46]  Just in the last month, I decided to religiously take the supplements from InfoWarsLife.com that I already know are so good.
[00:34:57]  And voila!
[00:34:59]  Just doing that and drinking more water.
[00:35:01]  My workouts are better.
[00:35:02]  My stamina, my focus, my energy is just incredible.
[00:35:06]  And I've lost 12 pounds in a month.
[00:35:10]  Great.
[00:35:10]  That's not helping.
[00:35:11]  So it's all just ads.
[00:35:13]  It literally is just the sort of thing where he does all this, riles people up, angers them with these misrepresentations of news stories, and then throws it to a special report.
[00:35:23]  He's got a really important special report.
[00:35:26]  It's crucial.
[00:35:26]  Which is just an ad.
[00:35:28]  Well, I mean, yeah.
[00:35:29]  It's just a commercial being played on the actual show because he knows that people don't listen to commercials.
[00:35:34]  So he's even expressed that in the past.
[00:35:36]  Like, you know, you gotta plug on the show because no one listens to the commercials.
[00:35:39]  So now he's migrated commercial onto the show.
[00:35:43]  Not even him doing plugs.
[00:35:45]  Just throw a commercial in, pretend it's a special report.
[00:35:48]  It's crazy.
[00:35:49]  That's probably something that he should point out as sponsored content, maybe?
[00:35:54]  Self-sponsored.
[00:35:55]  A little disclaimer there?
[00:35:57]  Yeah.
[00:35:58]  Otherwise it might seem unseemly, Dan.
[00:36:01]  Very unseemly.
[00:36:02]  Bordering on inethical.
[00:36:04]  So I was so flabbergasted by that.
[00:36:08]  First of all, I think the way he does these things about child issues and that stuff is so utterly repulsive.
[00:36:16]  And it always makes me so mad.
[00:36:19]  And then for it all just to be like a lead in for this ad special report thing, I was like, go fuck yourself, man.
[00:36:26]  I felt like I would take a look at some of those.
[00:36:43]  and see what we can find out about how his fan base is doing.
[00:36:46]  The first thing we've seen recently was Alex launched his troll petition to get the White House to annex.
[00:36:51]  the moon as the 51st state, which also actually, if you go and look at it, includes a suggestion to, quote, annex Antarctica as the 52nd state and tell the UN to fuck off.
[00:37:01]  All right.
[00:37:03]  That's a bold proposal.
[00:37:05]  I like bold proposals.
[00:37:07]  You know, in committee, maybe it'll get watered down, but you start with the boldest position you can.
[00:37:12]  Alex announced this petition when he had big-time celebrities Eddie Bravo and Sam Tripoli on the show, so you'd expect that this would amplify the audience he's reaching with this troll bullshit.
[00:37:21]  You know, it would certainly expand the reach.
[00:37:24]  As of noon on September 24th, this petition has been up for five full days, and there are 712 signatures, which is just shy of their goal of 100,000.
[00:37:34]  Okay.
[00:37:35]  This is a really bad sign.
[00:37:36]  They're getting close, though.
[00:37:37]  Yeah.
[00:37:38]  Progress.
[00:37:39]  Yeah!
[00:37:40]  Every vote counts, Dan.
[00:37:42]  This tells me that the trolly meme crowd that Alex think fully support him are either an imaginary audience or they've left him.
[00:37:49]  Like, no matter how much you bring up Carpe Donctum on the show, that's not your crowd.
[00:37:53]  Because if they were, they would have astroturfed the shit out of that.
[00:37:56]  Oh, yeah.
[00:37:56]  And so I think that that's a really bad sign for the reality that Alex wishes to portray.
[00:38:03]  Yeah, he's not going viral like the let's storm Area 51 guys.
[00:38:10]  That's not going to happen.
[00:38:12]  And that one even, if you look at that petition, it's clearly meant to not have InfoWars on it.
[00:38:18]  Yeah.
[00:38:18]  For the sake of, like, being able to repost it or whatever.
[00:38:22]  Ooh, they're not even being...
[00:38:23]  Like, it was posted by Kit Daniels, but the initials are just KD on it.
[00:38:27]  So, like, it's very clear that they're trying to, like, not put any red flags on here.
[00:38:32]  Right, right, right, right.
[00:38:33]  Which is sad.
[00:38:34]  That is sad.
[00:38:35]  So the meme crowd, I don't think, is into him all that much.
[00:38:38]  And like I said, he brings Carpe Donctum on the show and talks about him being great, and it doesn't help.
[00:38:42]  Well, I mean, he forgets that he's bad at memes and they're not funny.
[00:38:45]  Well, he is.
[00:38:46]  But also, speaking of Carpe Donctum, I want to check on his website, Meme World.
[00:38:50]  How's he doing?
[00:38:52]  You know, that Meme World was set up to free memes from the bondage of social media censorship.
[00:38:57]  That website still looks like shit, and I was scrolling through it quite a ways down the page before I found a meme that had over 100 likes.
[00:39:04]  It was a Ben Garrison cartoon, so I don't know if that even counts as a meme, and it only had 104 likes.
[00:39:10]  Ooh, oh boy.
[00:39:11]  Seize the donk.
[00:39:13]  The cartoon in question is based on the Thomas Jefferson quote about the tree of liberty needing to be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
[00:39:19]  Oh, man.
[00:39:20]  In my mind's eye, I can already see all of the Ben Garrison labels on it.
[00:39:23]  There have to be so many labels on that.
[00:39:26]  The cartoon is a tree being attacked by a bird with an Illuminati hat, a bird with a hammer and a sickle, a caterpillar labeled Democrats, and a cat with a Google tail.
[00:39:34]  Oh, yeah.
[00:39:35]  Oh, and an axe that says globalism.
[00:39:37]  Brilliant.
[00:39:37]  The tree is saying, quote, I'm thirsty, which is to say, it's time for bloodshed.
[00:39:42]  Right, right.
[00:39:42]  I'm not sure I've seen a cartoon so clearly express a call for violence than this, but also, it's probably not that dangerous.
[00:39:49]  If Ben Garrison's audience need all those damn labels to get what he's trying to say, I don't think they'll pick up on the subtext that he's saying it's time to spill people's blood to feed the tree.
[00:39:58]  Yeah, also, if it's a Ben Garrison cartoon that gets us all killed, I am going to have some complaints to the manager, Dan.
[00:40:07]  That's going to be my number one thing to say to God.
[00:40:10]  Really?
[00:40:11]  Ben Garrison is what did it?
[00:40:12]  And then God is going to pull up a label and put it on you.
[00:40:15]  Idiot.
[00:40:17]  So Meme World doesn't look like it's doing great.
[00:40:19]  Yeah.
[00:40:20]  Then I remembered that Alex was trying to crowdfund his shit on Subscribestar, so I thought I would check in on that.
[00:40:26]  He currently only has 349 subscribers, which is a profoundly low number for someone who claims to have the audience size he does.
[00:40:33]  Yeah, that's not good.
[00:40:34]  Fucking Sargon of Akkad has almost 2,700 subscribers.
[00:40:37]  That is a damning indictment of Alex's non-popularity.
[00:40:41]  So, I checked in on Alex's new YouTube rip-off site, Band.Video.
[00:40:46]  Yeah, he claims that he set up that site to be a place where all banned people from YouTube could have their free speech respected.
[00:40:52]  And even though he says that, it's still just an avenue to put out Infowars content.
[00:40:56]  Right.
[00:40:57]  Every single channel is one of his employees.
[00:41:00]  Unsurprisingly, Owen Schroyer and David Knight's channels are dead zones.
[00:41:04]  Almost no traffic.
[00:41:05]  The same is true of Alex's new show, Firepower News, which I literally couldn't have less interest in.
[00:41:10]  I have never heard of that before in my entire life.
[00:41:13]  Yeah, I don't even know anything about it.
[00:41:15]  I've heard the name.
[00:41:16]  Don't care.
[00:41:17]  I'm fine with it.
[00:41:18]  It's not going to last.
[00:41:20]  Something I found kind of interesting is that Paul Joseph Watson's channel also has terrible traffic.
[00:41:25]  But then I realized he still hasn't been kicked off YouTube yet.
[00:41:28]  Yeah, of course it has terrible traffic.
[00:41:29]  They're just going to the real world.
[00:41:31]  Yeah, his fans don't need to migrate to this site when his stuff is still available where it's always been.
[00:41:36]  Right.
[00:41:37]  That's going to be a problem for Alex.
[00:41:39]  His most popular asset doesn't really meet the qualifications for being on this site.
[00:41:43]  Specifically, he hasn't been banned.
[00:41:45]  Dot video.
[00:41:47]  Another issue is that there's no way for Alex to offer monetization for any of these video creators.
[00:41:53]  He has literally no appeal to most advertisers, and there's no way that the soap limerick guy can subsidize ads on all the crypto-fascist videos that site has the potential to host.
[00:42:02]  That's really a serious problem.
[00:42:05]  It's like...
[00:42:06]  What he's doing is solving all the wrong problems.
[00:42:10]  Like, the right-wing scammers on YouTube are mostly mad because their scam got disrupted.
[00:42:14]  They figured out how to game the suggestion algorithms to inflate their channels to the point where they're making massive amounts on Google ad revenue.
[00:42:21]  Demonetization is just as bad as being kicked off for them, and Alex really has no answer for that.
[00:42:26]  Let's say one of these non-InfoWarriors employee MAGA assholes comes over and wants to start posting videos here.
[00:42:32]  There's no reason to expect there's ever going to be a way to replicate what they had with YouTube, and no reason to expect that there's ever going to be money in it.
[00:42:40]  As a place where Alex can just post his videos, it serves that function, I guess.
[00:42:44]  But it's going to be deeply expensive over time.
[00:42:46]  The amount of content he wants to push out to keep people's attention won't be cheap.
[00:42:51]  Like, for hosting and the space he needs.
[00:42:53]  I could see this as a good decision to make in better times when you could afford to take a hit as an investment in something that you could build into something bigger.
[00:43:01]  Like, you lose a million this year to make 10 million in five years.
[00:43:04]  That kind of a thing.
[00:43:04]  This kind of makes sense there.
[00:43:06]  But as it stands now, this seems desperate and like a lot.
[00:43:09]  A little too late.
[00:43:10]  I don't think you have time to build this into what you want it to be.
[00:43:14]  You also would never want to allow free speech on there.
[00:43:18]  Like, you'd never want that.
[00:43:20]  Oh, no.
[00:43:20]  It's crazy.
[00:43:21]  It's like Ted Nugent wanting guns at his shows.
[00:43:24]  Of course he doesn't want guns in his goddamn shows.
[00:43:26]  No, you say that you want it, and then you monitor heavily.
[00:43:29]  Yeah, of course.
[00:43:31]  Like, the idea that the complaint is that YouTube doesn't allow X on their channel, on their platform.
[00:43:36]  Now you've created your own...
[00:43:38]  Platform, ban.video.
[00:43:40]  And not only do you not allow X, you only allow Y, which is your employees.
[00:43:44]  Yeah, of course.
[00:43:45]  Well, there's a reason they banned X, Dan.
[00:43:49]  And I'm sure if Alex were drunk and being very honest, that's exactly what he would say.
[00:43:54]  Yeah, of course.
[00:43:56]  It's dangerous to allow X. It's dangerous shit out there.
[00:43:59]  If you have a responsibility for what X does, you don't want to allow X if you don't have to.
[00:44:04]  Absolutely.
[00:44:05]  All right, Dan, I've got a pitch for you.
[00:44:07]  This is my brilliant idea.
[00:44:08]  What if we made YouTube but made sure no one wanted to use it and no one would pay for it?
[00:44:14]  How does that sound as a business model?
[00:44:16]  Look, I got nothing else to try.
[00:44:18]  Let's do it.
[00:44:19]  I'm a Wolverine backed into a corner.
[00:44:22]  Knowledgefight.video.
[00:44:23]  Sure.
[00:44:23]  So I think that all the little indications that I can get are that things aren't great.
[00:44:29]  All these ways that you could sort of deduce impact don't match up with Alex and the way he presents his audience.
[00:44:41]  Right.
[00:44:41]  The millions and millions of people.
[00:44:43]  It matches up with a fairly successful podcast being done out of a bedroom.
[00:44:48]  Those numbers are about what you'd expect for that, not for a, I'm on stations all over the country and Putin listens to my show.
[00:44:58]  Yeah, although now I think that puts us in the running for shows Putin might listen to.
[00:45:02]  I think we've got a shot now.
[00:45:05]  Could be.
[00:45:06]  One thing I will say, though, is that we solved a little mystery on this episode, and that is that Alex revealed why he went to L.A., And it was to be on T.I.'s new podcast.
[00:45:16]  T.I. Tip has a new podcast.
[00:45:19]  No, no, no.
[00:45:20]  Don't say those words to me again.
[00:45:21]  That is supposed to drop on Thursday, apparently.
[00:45:24]  Did you say T.I.'s new podcast?
[00:45:25]  The rapper T.I. Yeah, no, I know who T.I. is.
[00:45:28]  I was hoping that you would tell me there was a different T.I. It is not.
[00:45:31]  Okay.
[00:45:32]  It is not Thomas Ian Nicholas.
[00:45:33]  All right.
[00:45:34]  Star of American Pie.
[00:45:37]  It is the rapper T.I., and I can't imagine that not being a fight, because I don't think T.I. cots into a lot of Alex's bullshit.
[00:45:45]  I don't know.
[00:45:45]  I don't know.
[00:45:46]  I don't want to listen to it, but I do hope T.I. Do we know if Alex survived the podcast?
[00:45:53]  Well, yeah, because they recorded it in advance.
[00:45:55]  Right.
[00:45:55]  And so now Alex is back in Austin.
[00:45:57]  So yes, he did survive.
[00:45:58]  Okay, well then I guess I don't need to listen.
[00:46:00]  I think it probably will be a fight.
[00:46:01]  I don't know.
[00:46:02]  That's in a very strong running for what we might cover on Friday.
[00:46:05]  Yeah.
[00:46:05]  Because that could be literal insanity.
[00:46:08]  But we'll see.
[00:46:09]  I mean, it's one of those things.
[00:46:11]  Alex knows that like...
[00:46:12]  This guy has much more of a reach than I could possibly hope for.
[00:46:16]  Right.
[00:46:16]  Let's do this, even if he yells at me.
[00:46:18]  This is T.I. over here.
[00:46:19]  Right.
[00:46:20]  So we'll see about that.
[00:46:22]  But also on this show, the first hour was that gross child abuse stuff.
[00:46:28]  Yeah.
[00:46:29]  Second hour, Alex gets into the climate change business.
[00:46:33]  Great.
[00:46:34]  So this is going to be right in your wheelhouse.
[00:46:35]  Got a lot of hot takes coming out of here.
[00:46:37]  I can sense it.
[00:46:38]  Yeah.
[00:46:39]  I can see a volcano coming.
[00:46:41]  So he's been rambling quite a bit at this point about climate change and how it's just meant to destroy America and the West.

=== Only White Countries? (08:08) ===

[00:46:49]  Sure, sure, sure.
[00:46:51]  One thing I think is really interesting here is the way he frames what the goal of these climate change initiatives is and the specific countries he names that are targeted.
[00:47:03]  But regardless of that, it's all one-sided where Europe...
[00:47:08]  The U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia make the cuts and no one else does.
[00:47:13]  Not Mexico.
[00:47:17]  Not Brazil.
[00:47:19]  Not China.
[00:47:20]  Not Russia.
[00:47:22]  Not India.
[00:47:23]  Not Nigeria.
[00:47:25]  No one but us.
[00:47:29]  No one but us.
[00:47:31]  I don't...
[00:47:32]  If I recall, I'm pretty sure us is not in the...
[00:47:36]  So now this is interesting.
[00:47:40]  Man, Alex is in the middle of a diatribe about how climate change is just a plan to destroy the West, and he lists off the countries he thinks are the only ones that have to make cuts in their carbon use.
[00:47:49]  They're Canada, Australia, the U.S., Europe, and New Zealand.
[00:47:52]  Now it's weird how that's basically the exact list of countries that formed the acronym CAUSE, which was the name of the organization founded by neo-Nazi white supremacist lawyer Kirk Lyons.
[00:48:02]  Alex has just swapped out New Zealand for South Africa, and, you know, when Lyons made that organization...
[00:48:09]  It was in the 90s, early 90s.
[00:48:11]  So South Africa might be more of an interest to him back then.
[00:48:14]  I did not know about Cause.
[00:48:15]  We talked about it when we talked about Kirk Lyons.
[00:48:18]  Oh, did we?
[00:48:18]  He had the Patriots Defense Fund that was specifically to defend white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
[00:48:23]  And then after a little while, it was a little bit too problematic.
[00:48:27]  So he changed the name to Cause, which was advertised as the first pro-white law firm.
[00:48:32]  Right, right, right, right.
[00:48:33]  Cause was named what it was specifically because Lyons felt like...
[00:48:38]  Those were the countries where the white race was under attack.
[00:48:40]  This grouping of countries of what constitutes quote-unquote the West is closely related to older white supremacist beliefs and propaganda about those being white countries, the places where a white majority was being threatened by the evils of non-whites.
[00:48:55]  Now, it could be a coincidence that Alex is using that.
[00:48:59]  List.
[00:49:00]  But we've also heard Alex constantly let slip that he believes that the West is the same thing as white, so it seems like he's just mirroring classic white supremacist talking points and applying them to the climate change conversation.
[00:49:11]  The reason that this feels like explicit white supremacist propaganda being masked as being about something else is that Alex is saying that only these quote-unquote white countries are being made to lower their carbon emissions, when that's never been true of any climate change initiative ever.
[00:49:28]  Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was a myth that they put out immediately after the Paris Treaty was signed, like the right wing immediately was like...
[00:49:37]  India and China are the biggest producers of CO2 emissions in the world, and they don't even have to make any cuts.
[00:49:46]  They had goals of cuts.
[00:49:46]  And everybody was like...
[00:49:48]  Well, let's start from the beginning, you dumbfucks.
[00:49:51]  They had goals of cuts, but there was no enforcement mechanism.
[00:49:54]  So no one was forced to make cuts.
[00:49:57]  The things that we can do as a country are things like cap and trade or carbon credits.
[00:50:02]  Any of those sorts of ideas aren't things you can apply to the rest of the world.
[00:50:07]  Like, you could if you had a world government.
[00:50:09]  Yeah, that would help.
[00:50:10]  Right, but you can't do that.
[00:50:11]  So whenever we talk about those sorts of things being used in order to help with the climate situation, of course those are only going to impact us.
[00:50:20]  But ideally, you'd be a leader in the world and other countries follow.
[00:50:24]  You know, you can't just be like, aha, we're going to enforce our system on everyone!
[00:50:28]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:50:29]  Which Alex wouldn't want them to do anyway.
[00:50:32]  No, no, he does.
[00:50:33]  I guess.
[00:50:33]  He does.
[00:50:37]  Governing body to force countries to do what it says.
[00:50:45]  Sure.
[00:50:46]  You know, in spite of their...
[00:50:47]  Some word...
[00:50:50]  Sovereignty, I think, is the word that I'm looking for.
[00:50:52]  That word is in play.
[00:50:53]  Yeah.
[00:50:54]  So, I mean, what he's talking about doesn't depict reality in any meaningful way.
[00:50:58]  Like, all of those countries that he listed...
[00:51:00]  Right, right, right.
[00:51:16]  There's no reality to Alex's bullshit about how these agreements and climate change initiatives only target the West.
[00:51:22]  When there's something that's so glaringly like this, so not based in truth that also happens to line up curiously well with traditional white supremacist beliefs and a worldview, it's enough to make me pretty suspicious about what point Alex is really trying to make.
[00:51:36]  It feels not about climate change.
[00:51:40]  It feels like Alex thinks that whites are being oppressed all around the world.
[00:51:45]  Well, we know he feels that.
[00:51:47]  Blamed for problems that are just, they're not our fault.
[00:51:50]  Dan, we're just whites.
[00:51:52]  We're just hanging around here, not causing any problems.
[00:51:55]  You know, whiting it up.
[00:51:56]  Doing finger guns, listening to Lana Del Rey.
[00:51:59]  Just doing all kinds of white shit.
[00:52:00]  Right.
[00:52:01]  Cool.
[00:52:02]  So Alex yells a bit about the UN, of course, how evil they are, and UNESCO.
[00:52:08]  Sure, sure.
[00:52:09]  Throw them in there.
[00:52:10]  And he makes a claim that's just absolutely unacceptable.
[00:52:13]  And then again, I'll also get into this.
[00:52:16]  The fact that all over the world, the UNESCO system of the UN, that is the UN, that's global governance, United Nations Cultural Educational Organization, that gets all the countries to sign on treaties.
[00:52:31]  It standardizes the global policies.
[00:52:34]  They want pedophilia legalized.
[00:52:36]  NAMBLA is on their steering board as an NGO.
[00:52:39]  North American Man Boy Love Association.
[00:52:42]  So now you can see the sort of dovetailing of the climate change and pedophilia narratives.
[00:52:48]  Throw it all in there.
[00:52:48]  This is just Alex's classic shit where he misrepresents events from 25 years ago as meaning anything.
[00:52:54]  Briefly, in case anyone hasn't heard the episode where we went over this, in 1993, the International Lesbian and Gay Association applied for consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council.
[00:53:05]  In the process, it was found that NABLA was a member group within the ILGA, at which point the ILGA's full membership voted to expel NABLA from their organization, reflecting a possible unawareness that they were affiliated with the group to begin with.
[00:53:18]  This set off a chain of events where Jesse Helms introduced a bill to make certain that no groups associated with the UN had pro-pedophilia views, resulting in Section 102 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Acts of 1994 and 1995.
[00:53:32]  Since that point, it's a matter of withholding all funding to the UN if they're associated with groups that endorse pedophilia.
[00:53:40]  UNESCO is one such group that falls under these same requirements, so what Alex is describing is literally and legitimately insane.
[00:53:48]  I have zero idea what Alex means by saying that NABLA's on UNESCO's steering board, since different initiatives that UNESCO undertakes usually have different boards to accomplish different goals.
[00:53:58]  However, UNESCO does keep a very public list of the tons of non-governmental organizations that they work with.
[00:54:05]  And what do you know?
[00:54:06]  Namble isn't on that list.
[00:54:08]  Because of fucking course they're not.
[00:54:10]  I don't know if they'd ever take the time to sue him, but this is probably legally slander against UNESCO.
[00:54:16]  UNESCO?
[00:54:16]  Oh yeah, absolutely.
[00:54:17]  I don't know how that would work or anything, but that's definitely a malicious lie.
[00:54:24]  Yeah.
[00:54:24]  That he knows is not true.
[00:54:26]  Yeah, he has every reason to know that that's not true.
[00:54:29]  Absolutely.
[00:54:29]  So, I don't know.
[00:54:30]  I think that that's probably dicey.
[00:54:35]  That's just...
[00:54:36]  And it's not like we, you know, it would be if they did sue him.
[00:54:40]  It's not like he can make a retraction, considering he's said that.

=== Alex And The Globalist Narrative (13:26) ===

[00:54:45]  Like, ten million times.
[00:54:46]  Yeah.
[00:54:47]  Well, in different permutations.
[00:54:48]  Yeah.
[00:54:48]  Like, he says that Nambla is a part of every group that he wants to attack internationally.
[00:54:54]  Sooner or later.
[00:54:55]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:54:56]  So, also, Jordan, on this episode, Alex interviews Andrew Pollack, whose daughter was one of the victims in the Parkland shooting.
[00:55:03]  I don't have any clips of this interview because I find the whole thing deeply upsetting.
[00:55:06]  I would venture to guess that Pollack doesn't have a good idea who Alex is and the things that he's done, even surrounding the Parkland shooting itself.
[00:55:14]  If he did, I would assume he wouldn't want to associate with this show.
[00:55:17]  I find little interest in critiquing the interview of a parent of a victim of a school shooting on Alex's show.
[00:55:23]  The only thing you're going to find is generally Alex being a dick, and it's not really all that worth it.
[00:55:28]  Also, I mean, Pollock doesn't seem like he's all that aware of a lot of stuff, and I don't want to mock him, even if he has some beliefs that are...
[00:55:36]  I can definitely tell you, I could have debunked a number of things.
[00:55:40]  I just take no pleasure in that.
[00:55:42]  I have no interest in Alex talking to a bereaved...
[00:55:47]  No.
[00:55:48]  No, fuck that.
[00:55:49]  That said, Alex seems to not mention in this interview that Pollack was instrumental in helping get Florida Senate Bill 7026 passed.
[00:55:57]  That bill made it so some teachers could carry guns at school, which Alex is probably fine with.
[00:56:02]  However, it also raised the age you can buy a gun from 18 to 21. It banned the sale of bump stocks.
[00:56:08]  It had provisions for law enforcement to take your guns if you're deemed a threat.
[00:56:11]  It made it so cops could petition courts to take your guns and ammo if they think you're a danger.
[00:56:15]  It made it so if you've ever been committed to a mental hospital, you can't have guns.
[00:56:20]  And created waiting periods to buy guns.
[00:56:22]  This is exactly the sort of bill that Alex screams about all the time.
[00:56:25]  Like, this is gun-grabbing to him.
[00:56:27]  And here he has, as his guest, someone who is instrumental in getting gun-grabbing passed.
[00:56:31]  And yet Alex doesn't seem to know about that, or else he thinks it's better for his narratives to just ignore it.
[00:56:37]  If I had to guess, Alex knows that Pollock called for better safety at schools and tried to refocus the debate about not being gun-centric to being safety-centric.
[00:56:47]  and Alex knows he can work with that.
[00:56:50]  Alex further knows that he's being sued by Sandy Hook parents right now and the last thing he needs is an on-air fight with a Parkland parent about their gun-grabbing legislation.
[00:56:57]  It's best for the brand to pretend that he wasn't Yeah, that has...
[00:57:19]  There's a tossed-up idea on the whiteboard in a production meeting all over it.
[00:57:25]  It's optics.
[00:57:26]  How do we change the narrative over this whole Sandy Hook thing?
[00:57:29]  Oh, I know.
[00:57:30]  We have tons more mass shootings.
[00:57:32]  Let's talk to somebody involved in those, and we can be like, I believe you.
[00:57:35]  This is 100% real, and I've made mistakes.
[00:57:39]  Also, Pollock wrote a book, and he's trying to sell that book.
[00:57:42]  So he's on kind of like a book media tour.
[00:57:44]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:57:45]  So it makes some sense for him to be on.
[00:57:48]  I don't know.
[00:57:48]  Ultimately, I'm not charmed by that, and I don't want to pile on this guy.
[00:57:52]  No interest.
[00:57:53]  No.
[00:57:54]  So, Alex, we know in the past, has talked about how the New World Order and the Illuminati approached his father, David Jones, dentist to the stars.
[00:58:02]  Yes.
[00:58:03]  He got approached.
[00:58:04]  The literal stars, by the way.
[00:58:07]  Beetlejuice.
[00:58:08]  Yes.
[00:58:08]  Like the whole thing.
[00:58:09]  Absolutely.
[00:58:09]  He got approached as a younger man and they offered him to join up with them to be world royalty or whatever.
[00:58:17]  And we know that David Jones, DDS, said no thank you.
[00:58:21]  He's not a globalist.
[00:58:23]  He saw through their bullshit right away.
[00:58:25]  He's a genius.
[00:58:25]  One of the smartest people in Texas from the age of six.
[00:58:29]  Well, the story has changed a little bit.
[00:58:31]  Oh, has it?
[00:58:31]  Yeah.
[00:58:32]  And it's so far gone.
[00:58:34]  There's this whole breakaway civilization.
[00:58:38]  And it's playing God.
[00:58:40]  And Trump's the president now.
[00:58:42]  And he damn well knows about all this.
[00:58:44]  I know all about it.
[00:58:48]  My dad got invited to join it when he was in high school at UT.
[00:58:51]  Plan 2. Didn't join it.
[00:58:54]  At least the first time around.
[00:58:56]  What?
[00:58:56]  But the point is...
[00:58:58]  What?
[00:58:59]  No, what?
[00:58:59]  This is real, folks, okay?
[00:59:01]  No, no, no.
[00:59:02]  You don't get to drop that in there and then move on.
[00:59:04]  So they asked again?
[00:59:04]  What?
[00:59:05]  And then he did join?
[00:59:05]  And then he said yes?
[00:59:06]  That's the only thing you can draw a conclusion from.
[00:59:08]  What does that mean about you, Alex?
[00:59:10]  No!
[00:59:11]  Your dad's in the Illuminati?
[00:59:15]  This is stupid.
[00:59:16]  What did he say?
[00:59:17]  Did he?
[00:59:18]  And he doesn't clarify that.
[00:59:20]  Not a bit.
[00:59:20]  Not at all.
[00:59:21]  He just says, the first time.
[00:59:23]  Nope.
[00:59:23]  That implies...
[00:59:24]  Oh, my God.
[00:59:25]  Now, that's interesting.
[00:59:26]  That's going to kill me.
[00:59:27]  Because I don't believe anything he says.
[00:59:29]  Of course not.
[00:59:29]  I don't care about that.
[00:59:30]  But it is funny that he's trying to present it as like, I guess your dad did join the globalists.
[00:59:34]  Is he in there now?
[00:59:35]  Now, the most important thing about this is, as we discovered on a 2013 episode, I believe, Alex said the name of the person who tried to lure him into this cult.
[00:59:44]  Right.
[00:59:45]  This globalist death cult or whatever.
[00:59:47]  And that was Dr. Erwin Spear at UT.
[00:59:51]  In 2013, him talking about it is outside the statute of limitations.
[00:59:55]  But now, because we have the context of him naming who the person is that he's talking about, and a day ago, retelling the story, it's reasonable to take one and one, put it together, that's two.
[01:00:08]  He's retelling the story about, there's every expectation, and every reasonable person would know that he's talking about the same event in his father's life.
[01:00:18]  He has just committed slander again.
[01:00:20]  He has renewed the statute of limitations.
[01:00:23]  Erwin Spears' family could absolutely sue him for this.
[01:00:26]  I don't know if they'd be successful.
[01:00:27]  Unless he's referencing the second, unless Erwin Spears was involved in the second one.
[01:00:32]  It really doesn't matter.
[01:00:33]  I don't know if they would win, but he is absolutely in jeopardy because of that.
[01:00:37]  He has re-brought up this story that he has explained in the past, and from what I understand, that does renew.
[01:00:45]  Oh, that's good.
[01:00:48]  All right.
[01:00:49]  I'm glad that he re-upped his subscription to getting sued for the rest of his life.
[01:00:53]  So just on this episode, we have UNESCO and Dr. Irwin Spears' estate are now possible litigants against Alex Jones.
[01:01:02]  Oh, why can't we?
[01:01:03]  He's sloppy.
[01:01:04]  He is not good at this.
[01:01:05]  No.
[01:01:06]  And I would like Lana Del Rey to sue him, too, for playing our music.
[01:01:09]  Just for fun?
[01:01:09]  Yeah.
[01:01:10]  I know he probably has a contract and everything, but still think she should sue him.
[01:01:16]  So, Alex gets around to talking about how, you know, the ruling class, they're coming out now, and they're saying that they're going to kill everybody.
[01:01:24]  Right.
[01:01:24]  And there's an element of this that makes Alex mad at Trump, and you'll see what that is.
[01:01:30]  And they're so disconnected from us now, the ruling scientific class, that they're now telling us, oh, by the way, we're about to get rid of all of you for the earth, and they're moving forward with it.
[01:01:40]  So I'm just guessing Matt Drudge is a little pissed about that, probably, like I am.
[01:01:46]  Because Trump started the right direction.
[01:01:47]  We're going to release the secret medical stuff.
[01:01:49]  We're going to release the secret technology, new patents and things to cause a new renaissance.
[01:01:53]  But it hasn't happened.
[01:01:54]  And we're bogged down instead.
[01:01:57]  And I'm angry.
[01:01:58]  I'm upset.
[01:01:59]  Because there's a whole other real world out there that humanity built that's been stolen from us.
[01:02:04]  Are you afraid to go to the mailbox because of letter after letter from the IRS?
[01:02:09]  Great transition.
[01:02:11]  Yeah, so I guess he's becoming mad at Trump because the miracle cures aren't coming.
[01:02:15]  Man, these guys just will not look into Occam's razor at all.
[01:02:22]  This is monorail shit.
[01:02:23]  Why is...
[01:02:24]  Wait!
[01:02:25]  Wait!
[01:02:25]  He promised us all this stuff!
[01:02:28]  He must still be hiding it.
[01:02:29]  Or, guys, now I'm going to throw this out there.
[01:02:33]  He was lying to you.
[01:02:35]  This is Alex going through the crisis of falling for a con.
[01:02:38]  Yeah.
[01:02:39]  He's like...
[01:02:40]  It's very sad.
[01:02:45]  It is surprising that he was...
[01:02:46]  This guy's so stupid.
[01:02:47]  It's one of those things where a lot of...
[01:02:50]  What?
[01:02:51]  Some of the old con guys used to get away with it so much because it was like...
[01:02:56]  It was too embarrassing to reveal that you had given somebody $20,000.
[01:03:00]  But if you had your own radio show, they're like, man, this dude, I gave him $6 million and he didn't deliver on this promise.
[01:03:10]  I've staked my career on this person.
[01:03:12]  I've changed everything that I've built over decades to suit this.
[01:03:18]  Based on the con that this guy was running, he might as well be pushing for Randy Kramer, the guy from Project Camelot who has the magnetic medbeds.
[01:03:26]  I was just thinking the exact same thing.
[01:03:30]  Why hasn't Randy Kramer produced these medbeds?
[01:03:35]  Because he's too smart.
[01:03:37]  Right.
[01:03:37]  I can understand why Alex has this buyer's remorse and feels like shit, but it's just really sad to see.
[01:03:44]  He's an adult.
[01:03:45]  Like, it's really sad.
[01:03:46]  It is.
[01:03:46]  Yeah, but he's a dum-dum.
[01:03:49]  So there's that.
[01:03:50]  You bet he is.
[01:03:51]  So this climate change conversation that Alex has, we've got sidetracked from a little bit here, but he gets back to it.
[01:03:57]  And the bottom line is that Alex is trying to push the idea that they're just trying to scare you.
[01:04:04]  And they admit that they're just trying to scare you.
[01:04:06]  All this climate change stuff is all based on fear, which is ironic for Alex to be complaining about, quite frankly.
[01:04:13]  I don't understand why.
[01:04:14]  There's similarities between his style and what he's accusing other people of doing.
[01:04:17]  No clue what you're talking about.
[01:04:18]  Which seems to also be a pretty big trend in his work.
[01:04:20]  But he's really stressing over and over again.
[01:04:23]  They admit that they're just trying to scare you, which I think is interesting.
[01:04:28]  In this clip, man, there's so much to unpack in here, and I'm sure you're going to love it.
[01:04:33]  First, it was the world's going to end in 12 years.
[01:04:35]  Then Beto said 11 after, you know, to outdo AOC.
[01:04:39]  And then that moved on to seven years.
[01:04:41]  And this is the talking points.
[01:04:43]  And then the woman who's one of the organizers admits, oh, we're just scaring people.
[01:04:46]  Yeah, honey, we know.
[01:04:47]  And that's why you target elementary school students and scare the daylights out of them.
[01:04:51]  They teach them penguins are dying.
[01:04:53]  They teach them that they can't swim.
[01:04:55]  The polar bears can't swim.
[01:04:57]  They hunt on the ice floes.
[01:04:59]  They're not drowning.
[01:05:00]  Polar bear numbers are five times what they were in the 50s.
[01:05:02]  But some middle school girls commit suicide because they're taught the earth is so bad.
[01:05:08]  So there's a lot there.
[01:05:11]  So when he's saying that the lead people are saying that they're just trying to scare you, I was trying to figure out what he's talking about because he doesn't use any specifics.
[01:05:20]  And what I think he's talking about is Obama's former chief of the EPA, Gina McCarthy.
[01:05:25]  She recently did an interview with Scientific American.
[01:05:28]  And if this is what he's talking about, this is pathetic even for Alex.
[01:05:32]  In the interview, McCarthy is asked about taking a more systemic approach to climate issues and how the conversation has largely shifted from one where the question is, is this happening, to a question of what should we do?
[01:05:45]  She commends Cory Booker's recent comments about how his cabinet would view all of their jobs through the lens of climate, and she goes on to list a few ways this could play out in the real world, like the military converting to renewable energy sources.
[01:05:57]  She then says, quote, She's explicitly saying that she wants the I want to scare you mentality to not be how the debate is framed.
[01:06:20]  If this is what Alex is talking about, Alex and all the right-wing that repeat this bullshit are completely, 100%, without a doubt, intentionally and consciously taking McCarthy's statements out of context.
[01:06:30]  The only other possibility is that they didn't even read one sentence of her words and decided to attack her anyway.
[01:06:36]  This is some shameful shit right here.
[01:06:37]  But that's only if this is what he's talking about.
[01:06:40]  And I have every reason to assume it is because this interview came out like a day before this episode.
[01:06:47]  Like, it's fresh news.
[01:06:48]  Nah, this is all made up.
[01:06:50]  You think so?
[01:06:50]  No, I mean, no, that whole, like, they're just trying to scare you thing.
[01:06:57]  I guarantee that this is all made up because it's coming from every single guest on your Fox News shows.
[01:07:05]  It's not coming from any of their...
[01:07:06]  It's a talking point.
[01:07:07]  It's not coming from the anchors or anything like that.
[01:07:09]  They're specifically staying out of it and allowing every guest to come on and say, they're just coming out here to make people afraid.
[01:07:17]  Right.
[01:07:17]  Because they know it's not substantiated by anything.
[01:07:20]  And if the news organization were to actually say...
[01:07:24]  They are coming out here to make people afraid.
[01:07:27]  They would have to then back it up with literally anything, and they have none.
[01:07:31]  That is a good point.
[01:07:32]  And actually, I do know what happened here.
[01:07:35]  What happened?
[01:07:36]  Well, we'll get to it later.
[01:07:37]  But I honestly thought that this is what he was talking about, but the reality is far stupider.
[01:07:42]  Okay.
[01:07:43]  But I had every reason to think that it was Gina McCarthy's comments because she does say the, I want to scare you.
[01:07:49]  And if you took that out of context, you could say that that's what she was saying.
[01:07:51]  Yeah.

=== Polar Bears and Suicide Rates (08:52) ===

[01:07:52]  And it was just the day before.
[01:07:53]  It makes total sense.
[01:07:54]  No, it does.
[01:07:55]  But I've seen it.
[01:07:56]  And because Alex is so nonspecific about it, it makes sense that this is what he's pointing to.
[01:08:01]  It's so much more disappointing.
[01:08:04]  It's actually even worse than that.
[01:08:07]  All right.
[01:08:07]  But before we get to all that and the realities therein, I want to talk a little bit about this polar bear stuff.
[01:08:13]  Alex constantly makes a grave error in his attacks on the narratives that conservationists have about polar bear populations.
[01:08:19]  Their arguments aren't necessarily that polar bears are all dying off now.
[01:08:23]  It's that in the future, they're a species that's in serious danger.
[01:08:26]  Polar bears have fluctuated in their endangered status since the 1970s, from a species of least concern earlier on to 2005 when they were upgraded to vulnerable.
[01:08:36]  It's not a dispute that many of the polar bear populations have stabilized in the last decades or so, a little while back.
[01:08:44]  But...
[01:08:45]  That is very clearly known that it's because of protections that were put in place by conservation groups by outlawing hunting polar bears or introducing negative environmental pressures into their habitats.
[01:08:57]  The stabilization of polar bear populations is largely thanks to the 1973 International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears, which I think Alex would call world government or some shit.
[01:09:07]  Yeah, I always love whenever they take credit.
[01:09:10]  They're like, oh, we don't need to worry about the polar bears.
[01:09:13]  See, they've gotten better over the years.
[01:09:15]  Why did they get better?
[01:09:17]  You know, polar bears are great.
[01:09:19]  International law.
[01:09:20]  No, no, no.
[01:09:23]  Well, yeah, but that was back then when we needed it.
[01:09:26]  Now we don't.
[01:09:28]  Cool.
[01:09:28]  Another factor to consider is in that period, we also put in place a lot of restrictions on commercial seal hunting.
[01:09:34]  So the food source for these bears dramatically increased in the same time period that it was becoming illegal to hunt them.
[01:09:39]  Thus, there were more bears not being killed who had a more stable food supply, giving them the best opportunity to replenish their populations.
[01:09:47]  Polar bear populations have recovered somewhat and stabilized, and this has been taken up by all manner of right-wing climate denial pundits.
[01:09:55]  They all use the conception that climate change must be a hoax because as the climate's warming, the polar bear population has drastically increased.
[01:10:03]  A lot of this goes back to a 2007 book by Bjorn Lomburg called Cool It!
[01:10:08]  The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming.
[01:10:11]  Oh, I know Bjorn Lomburg quite well.
[01:10:13]  You guys go way back?
[01:10:16]  Yeah, no, that was a...
[01:10:17]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we talked about that.
[01:10:18]  I knew the name rang a bell.
[01:10:19]  He's a brilliant scientist.
[01:10:22]  Wait, well, let me pull that back.
[01:10:25]  He's a political scientist.
[01:10:27]  Okay.
[01:10:27]  He is not a...
[01:10:28]  Yeah.
[01:10:28]  So in that book, Lomberg says that there were about 5,000 polar bears in the 1960s.
[01:10:33]  And his citation for that was an article in the LA Times by a guy named Clifford Krauss.
[01:10:38]  The Journal of the Society of Environmental Journalists looked into this back in 2008 in a piece by Peter Dykstra.
[01:10:45]  And they found that Krauss didn't even have a solid source for that statistic and told Dykstra that, quote, he understood the number to be widely accepted.
[01:10:54]  The only other citation given by Lomborg was a report by the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture in 1965 that guessed there were between 5,000 and 8,000 polar bears in the Arctic.
[01:11:05]  Most scientists who talked to Dykstra were quick to point out that our ability to accurately gauge the population of polar bears was really bad until at least the 70s, and numbers before that point are really unreliable estimates.
[01:11:17]  One big problem is that polar bears live in really remote areas, and they're very hard to count from above, since they're white, and so is the entire Arctic.
[01:11:25]  I don't understand why that would be difficult.
[01:11:26]  It's difficult.
[01:11:27]  They have some sort of camouflage or something.
[01:11:32]  So until technologies that developed later, it was a really imprecise game that people were doing.
[01:11:37]  Yeah, you know that whole, guess the number of marbles in this jar.
[01:11:41]  You know that game?
[01:11:42]  Well, imagine if you just threw those marbles into the ocean and then were like, now guess how many marbles used to be in the jar.
[01:11:49]  It would be a challenge.
[01:11:50]  And make sure it's a remote part of the ocean.
[01:11:52]  Exactly.
[01:11:53]  So people who study the issue say that the populations have recovered and they're higher than they were like 40, 50 years ago.
[01:11:59]  But not nearly the jump that climate deniers constantly peddle.
[01:12:02]  And they're also quick to point out that the issue of their recovery has nothing to do with climate change.
[01:12:07]  It's all about the international restrictions on hunting and the food supplies replenishing because of international law.
[01:12:13]  Absolutely.
[01:12:14]  It's fucking...
[01:12:26]  It makes you want to rip your hair out.
[01:12:28]  The problem is that polar bears do rely on ice, as Alex has accurately pointed out, and projections currently look like by about 2040, many of their habitats will not be hospitable to their current mode of living, and that likely approximately 30% of the remaining polar bears will die off because of it, which will lead to a big bottleneck.
[01:12:48]  The discussion of polar bears is one that surrounds negative outcomes that we are yet to experience, not a description of things that are happening now.
[01:12:55]  Alex is really just peddling thoroughly misleading bullshit here, and he's created a straw man of the argument that people are making in order to attack it.
[01:13:04]  In a climate debate?
[01:13:05]  Come on!
[01:13:06]  Now, the last part of that clip is interesting.
[01:13:09]  Because he says that people are committing suicide because of climate change.
[01:13:12]  And I have no idea what specific case Alex is talking about.
[01:13:16]  He's saying that a young middle schooler killed herself because of climate change.
[01:13:19]  I'm not saying that didn't happen.
[01:13:21]  I believe it's possible that it did.
[01:13:23]  I looked and I couldn't find the story that he's talking about.
[01:13:27]  I don't want to say this never happened on the off chance that it has and I just couldn't.
[01:13:32]  Figure it out and find the specific story.
[01:13:35]  Alex gives no information about it outside of middle school person, suicide, climate change.
[01:13:41]  I don't know.
[01:13:42]  Yeah, I don't know if there's a specific, but the right-wing talking point is about how there's an increase in kids going to...
[01:13:47]  Right, we'll get to that in a second.
[01:13:49]  But I can find one specific person who did commit suicide because of climate change.
[01:13:55]  This was the case of 60-year-old lawyer David Buckle, who made the choice to self-immolate or set himself on fire.
[01:14:01]  Prior to his act, he emailed media outlets saying, quote, He left a note for first responders saying, quote, Quote, I'm David Buckle, and I just killed myself by fire as a protest suicide.
[01:14:20]  I apologize to you for the mess.
[01:14:23]  David Buckle was the lead attorney in the case brought by Brandon Tina's mother against the Sheriff's Department, who told Tina's eventual murderers about how Tina had accused them of rape, which almost certainly led to his murder.
[01:14:35]  Buckle was a civil rights lawyer well ahead of the curve and ahead of the game, and his protest suicide was absolutely not the result of him being scared.
[01:14:44]  A 2019 study published by Nature Climate Change Journal did indicate a connection between climate change and suicide.
[01:14:52]  But unless you read about it, you might be inclined to draw the wrong conclusions.
[01:14:56]  Marshall Burke was the lead researcher, and he found that there was a link between increased temperatures and suicide rates.
[01:15:01]  So the conclusion was that if consistent temperatures are higher, then you would expect to see increased suicide rates.
[01:15:07]  It's easy to take a poorly written headline about this study and come away with the wrong idea that this is a study linking climate change and suicide.
[01:15:14]  If you don't read the articles, you might assume that climate change fears are linked to suicide by this study, and that's just not the case.
[01:15:21]  Other studies have found that crop damage caused by temperature increases is associated with elevated suicide rates in India, so there are definite things to be worried about on this axis.
[01:15:30]  That said, I don't know what case Alex is referring to, and I don't...
[01:15:34]  I don't think whatever he's talking about is a large phenomenon that's going on.
[01:15:39]  I think there's other conversations that people are having and other instances of things that Alex is clearly...
[01:15:46]  Well, there's that famous saying that we always say, which is that correlation equals causation.
[01:15:51]  We always say that, right?
[01:15:53]  Sure.
[01:15:54]  Yeah.
[01:15:54]  I think that's how it's supposed to go.
[01:15:56]  As far as I know, the right-wing talking point is based on...
[01:16:02]  I don't know if it's a survey of psychiatrists and therapists and the like but a large number of people under the age of 25 are now That makes total sense.
[01:16:28]  Yeah.

=== Black Friday Two Months Early (03:07) ===

[01:16:31]  If you were to do, like Alex's audience probably isn't in therapy, but if they were, you'd probably hear them talking to their therapists a lot about the globalists' plans.
[01:16:41]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:16:42]  You know, the fears that Alex has introduced into their lives.
[01:16:44]  I don't think that, I don't know, he's just a big old hypocrite.
[01:16:48]  Except the therapist wouldn't be like, no, that's a legitimate fear.
[01:16:52]  Yeah.
[01:16:53]  I don't know.
[01:16:54]  I just think that there's a lot of bullshit going on.
[01:16:57]  That last clip was 36 seconds, and there's just a load of bullshit in it.
[01:17:01]  Like, it's really...
[01:17:02]  It's pretty crazy.
[01:17:04]  And when you see these things, these, like, really direct misrepresentations being passed off, it makes this next clip even more offensive.
[01:17:13]  Oh, no.
[01:17:13]  And I think that this clip is really just, like...
[01:17:15]  I don't know how to describe it other than, like, this show is a parody of itself.
[01:17:19]  You know when people would try and make fun of the Juggalos?
[01:17:22]  Yeah.
[01:17:22]  It's like, you can't.
[01:17:23]  You can't make fun of that.
[01:17:25]  Yeah, they embrace it.
[01:17:26]  Yeah, you can't do it.
[01:17:28]  I almost feel like I can't make fun of this clip.
[01:17:30]  It's a parody of itself.
[01:17:32]  I don't know what else to say.
[01:17:33]  It's ridiculous.
[01:17:34]  Please don't forget that I like to do things a little bit different.
[01:17:37]  We are bringing Black Friday two months early, and it's going to be a week-long store-wide free shipping, double Patriot points, and 50% off all preparedness, water filters, air filters, storable food.
[01:17:51]  You're not going to find better deals on this.
[01:17:53]  Okay, look at that.
[01:17:54]  That's the same deal he constantly has.
[01:17:57]  Free shipping, double Patriot points, 50% off all this shit.
[01:18:00]  That's constantly the sale.
[01:18:02]  He's having Black Friday two months early.
[01:18:05]  You can't make fun of that.
[01:18:06]  We talk about the Easter sale still going.
[01:18:09]  I got nothing for two months early on Black Friday.
[01:18:12]  That's just beyond.
[01:18:14]  He won.
[01:18:15]  You know what?
[01:18:16]  He won.
[01:18:16]  He beat me.
[01:18:17]  Okay?
[01:18:17]  That's fine.
[01:18:18]  I'm willing to accept defeat.
[01:18:19]  When you both complain about Christmas coming sooner and being commercialized, while at the same time being like, our Black Friday sale is two months early, and it's the same sale, you win.
[01:18:33]  You win.
[01:18:34]  I got no jokes.
[01:18:35]  It's almost like he's in on the joke and leaning into it, of how crass and offensive his commercialism is.
[01:18:42]  What do you do?
[01:18:43]  How do you make fun of that?
[01:18:44]  I don't know, but if he shows up tomorrow in Juggalo makeup, then we know he's fucking with us.
[01:18:49]  All right, guys.
[01:18:50]  Whoop whoop to my homies out there.
[01:18:52]  You know what?
[01:18:52]  They're teaching six-year-olds about Nedden.
[01:18:56]  I don't have many Juggalo references.
[01:18:59]  Oh, man.
[01:18:59]  Magnets!
[01:19:00]  Magnets!
[01:19:00]  They're putting fluoride in the Faygo.
[01:19:05]  Delicious, delicious fluoride bago.
[01:19:08]  So at this point, Alex has Savannah Hernandez on the show to talk about climate change.
[01:19:14]  She is an employee of Infowars who went out to the climate protests in Austin and captured some footage that they're going to go over, and I have some very important thoughts about that.

=== National Geographic's Manipulative Footage (15:16) ===

[01:19:26]  They're not important at all.
[01:19:27]  But I do have one thought, and that is that I think Savannah Hernandez is unfortunately...
[01:19:33]  Very similar to everyone else who works at InfoWars.
[01:19:35]  Possibly kind of stupid.
[01:19:37]  Oh.
[01:19:37]  Because she's talking about how she was afraid of climate change when she was younger.
[01:19:42]  Oh, no.
[01:19:42]  And now, listen to the example that she uses to describe what she was afraid of.
[01:19:47]  And I was even talking to Owen, and I was telling him that when I was younger, I was terrified of climate change, of the fact that we were all going to drown to death, because I think you all remember in 2012, the world was supposed to end.
[01:19:57]  They even came out with movies about it.
[01:19:59]  So I was terrified that we were all going to drown to death.
[01:20:01]  And now that's being shown with our kids here today.
[01:20:03]  They're all marching out of school.
[01:20:05]  They are so afraid that we're going to burn to death.
[01:20:07]  We're going to drown to death.
[01:20:08]  2012 was not necessarily about climate change as much as it was about the Mayan apocalypse.
[01:20:14]  All the scientists.
[01:20:16]  Coming out and saying, guys, we gotta prepare.
[01:20:19]  We're all gonna drown in 2012.
[01:20:21]  We did the math.
[01:20:23]  I think she might be talking about The Day After Tomorrow, that disaster movie.
[01:20:27]  Yeah, that was in, that was what, 2004 or something like that?
[01:20:31]  I don't remember when that was, but she could be talking about that.
[01:20:34]  Or she could be talking about the movie 2012.
[01:20:36]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:20:38]  But, I mean, the cultural fears about 2012 weren't driven by, let's say, climate scientists.
[01:20:43]  No, no, no.
[01:20:43]  As much as they were people like Eric Vondana.
[01:20:46]  Dumb-dumbs.
[01:20:47]  Ancient aliens, people.
[01:20:50]  Alex Jones.
[01:20:51]  Now, to be fair, he wasn't in on that tip.
[01:20:53]  That is a great...
[01:20:56]  That is a very good distillation of what it takes to be a good InfoWars employee.
[01:21:02]  Be afraid of something, and then find a movie, and then call the movie fake, and now you don't have to be afraid of anything.
[01:21:09]  Yeah.
[01:21:09]  That's it.
[01:21:10]  Yeah, and just have like...
[01:21:12]  Oh yeah, you know what?
[01:21:12]  If you're listening to her and not really paying attention or know all that much, you'd be like, oh yeah, we were afraid back then.
[01:21:19]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:21:19]  That is true.
[01:21:21]  No.
[01:21:23]  You know what?
[01:21:23]  And we didn't all die in Y2K, so obviously climate change is a hoax.
[01:21:28]  Can't use that one.
[01:21:29]  Can't use that one.
[01:21:31]  Alex was on board with that one, so you don't want to bring that up on the show.
[01:21:35]  So they go over a list of time scientists have been wrong about predictions, and I don't really give a fuck.
[01:21:41]  Because some of them are actually like, I don't know, that one might have been right.
[01:21:44]  Like, scientists predict super hurricanes.
[01:21:50]  I don't know why you're including that on the list.
[01:21:53]  I would take that one off.
[01:21:54]  The guy you think is so great didn't even know there was a Category 5 on the third Category 5 of this year.
[01:22:01]  And he had mentioned the other ones as being Category 5. Exactly.
[01:22:04]  Yeah.
[01:22:04]  So I don't care too much about that, but it's all in service of building up this idea that everyone who talks about climate change lies to you about it.
[01:22:15]  Savannah uses a specific example that I think actually is a little unfair for her.
[01:22:20]  And National Geographic actually had to come out and admit they took a picture of this starving polar bear.
[01:22:26]  They said it was because of climate change, and then they had to come out and admit actually that the polar bear wasn't dying because of climate change.
[01:22:32]  That was actually fake.
[01:22:34]  What does that even mean?
[01:22:36]  She's kind of misrepresenting things here a little bit.
[01:22:38]  For one, she's saying that National Geographic took the picture and stuff, and that's not true.
[01:22:43]  What happened here was that a photographer named Christina Mittermeier and her team found a polar bear that was at the point of starvation and captured footage of it.
[01:22:51]  Their intention in the expedition was explicit.
[01:22:54]  As Mittermeyer explained, quote, Photographer Paul Nicholin and I were on a mission to capture images that communicate the urgency of climate change.
[01:23:02]  Documenting its effects on wildlife hasn't been easy.
[01:23:05]  With this image, we thought we'd found a way to help people imagine what the future of climate change might look like.
[01:23:11]  Neither she nor Nick ever explicitly tied the Bears' condition to climate change.
[01:23:15]  That was done by National Geographic when they picked up the footage and attached the words, quote, this is what climate change looks like to the video.
[01:23:22]  Mittermeyer responded to the backlash that the video caused from climate denialists by agreeing that the caption was probably going a little too far.
[01:23:30]  And even National Geographic has said as much, in a slight retraction.
[01:23:34]  But that's far from saying that they are just making stuff up.
[01:23:37]  It was only a recognition that they couldn't prove that climate change had anything to do with this specific bear's starvation, which was never a claim being made by the photographer and the team.
[01:23:47]  But you know what?
[01:23:48]  That's kind of missing the point.
[01:23:49]  In Mittermeier's explanation post about this, she says, quote, I can't say that this bear was starving because of climate change, but I do know that polar bears rely on a platform of sea ice on which to hunt.
[01:24:01]  A fast-warming Arctic means that sea ice is disappearing for increasingly longer periods of time each year.
[01:24:06]  That means many more bears will get stranded on land where they can't pursue the seals, walruses, and whales that are their prey, and where they will slowly starve to death.
[01:24:14]  The caption implied more than anyone knew about this specific bear, but the specific bear was an evocative, realistic portrait of what the future holds for polar bears if action isn't taken.
[01:24:23]  If anything, this was an instance of sloppy editorial work, but absolutely not a gotcha moment that proves that all climate change activists and conservationists are just making shit up to scare kids or whatever.
[01:24:34]  Yeah, that's just indicative of why we lose.
[01:24:38]  That whole thing of like...
[01:24:41]  Look, you're misunderstanding everything and you're making a bad faith argument towards us, but maybe you have the thinnest, barest sliver of a point, so we're just going to come out because we don't want to do it.
[01:24:55]  We just don't want to fight this bullshit.
[01:24:57]  Fine, we can't prove that one polar bear is dying of climate change.
[01:25:02]  And I'm never going to stop saying this.
[01:25:05]  What they should have said was, go fuck yourselves.
[01:25:08]  Right.
[01:25:09]  That's what you should say to any climate denialist ever.
[01:25:12]  Always.
[01:25:13]  I see your side of it.
[01:25:14]  I also see the side of National Geographic erring on the side of like, well, let's retain our standards.
[01:25:23]  No, and I totally understand that.
[01:25:26]  It's not that I don't understand where they're coming from.
[01:25:29]  It's absolutely not that.
[01:25:31]  And it's not even that I'd necessarily disagree with the editorial position in many aspects.
[01:25:36]  But with this kind of bullshit, that's why we lose the messaging fight over and over and over and over again.
[01:25:44]  We are not going to do anything about climate change because of a bunch of shit, but includes that.
[01:25:51]  We talk about this all the time, and you and I...
[01:25:55]  Have a slight disagreement, but it's actually you agree with me, but you emotionally can't handle it.
[01:26:00]  And that is that people like National Geographic need to uphold these standards.
[01:26:05]  And we need equally, not equally large, because it shouldn't be as large as, let's say, National Geographic, but you need forces making that go-fuck-yourself point.
[01:26:16]  That aren't the National Geographic.
[01:26:18]  We need them to maintain their integrity while other voices in media and people like you can say those things.
[01:26:25]  And that can be a messaging tentacle.
[01:26:29]  And National Geographic can play by editorial standards.
[01:26:33]  Having both is crucial.
[01:26:34]  And they have both and we don't.
[01:26:36]  Or actually, they have the go-fuck-yourself wing and we just have the editorial standards wing.
[01:26:41]  Well, that's why we need...
[01:26:44]  Boost our go-fuck-yourselves wing as well.
[01:26:46]  Wow.
[01:26:46]  That's your mission.
[01:26:48]  So, earlier, I thought...
[01:26:50]  It kind of is my mission.
[01:26:51]  Yeah.
[01:26:52]  I wasn't saying that sarcastically.
[01:26:53]  I know.
[01:26:54]  So, I was saying earlier that I thought that Alex was basing the...
[01:26:57]  They've admitted that they're just trying to scare you on the comments made by Obama's former head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, saying that that could easily be taken out of context.
[01:27:06]  Seemed like Alex's M.O. seemed perfect.
[01:27:09]  Had all of the pieces in place.
[01:27:11]  But you know what?
[01:27:13]  I was giving him way too fucking much credit.
[01:27:16]  All right.
[01:27:16]  This is one of the first instances of me being like, aha, I bet this is what Alex is talking about, that later in the show he reveals what he's talking about.
[01:27:23]  I'm like, I can't believe I thought he read an article.
[01:27:26]  I can't believe it.
[01:27:28]  Because you know what?
[01:27:29]  It's just a random person in Savannah Hernandez's report.
[01:27:33]  There it goes.
[01:27:34]  I know Beto O 'Rourke came forward, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
[01:27:37]  They said we had about 10 to 12 years to fix things before.
[01:27:39]  I'm not sure if either we all die or if it's irreversible.
[01:27:43]  What do you guys think about all of those comments?
[01:27:45]  I think it's that amount of time until it's irreversible.
[01:27:49]  But once it's irreversible, we're kind of done for.
[01:27:52]  There's nothing else we can do.
[01:27:53]  It's kind of scare tactics sometimes.
[01:27:57]  You kind of have to scare people to jumpstart them to do anything about it because, like she said, there is data to back it up about the way things are headed.
[01:28:05]  This is what he's basing it on.
[01:28:07]  Just random people that Savannah Hernandez interviewed at the climate change rally.
[01:28:12]  That's so sad.
[01:28:14]  I thought he was talking about the former head of the EPA and lying about her.
[01:28:17]  Nope.
[01:28:18]  It's just random man on the street shit.
[01:28:20]  Dude.
[01:28:20]  And he's presenting it as the leaders are admitting that it's just about fear.
[01:28:25]  This is such a pathetic...
[01:28:26]  This is a fucking...
[01:28:29]  I don't even know how to describe how flimsy this shit is.
[01:28:32]  I have watched so many goddamn man-on-the-street interviews from the right wing on the climate march.
[01:28:41]  What boggles my mind is literally every answer they get is actually very reasonable and intelligent.
[01:28:47]  And they're like, look at these dum-dums.
[01:28:49]  They don't even bother with engaging with it at all.
[01:28:52]  They're just like, look at how stupid this person is after they're like, well, it is...
[01:28:56]  I understand that you don't understand that it's irreversible after 10 or 12 years, but that is the data on it.
[01:29:03]  And sure, it is scare tactics, but you know what?
[01:29:06]  You need to scare people sometimes to force them into action.
[01:29:09]  I mean, that is...
[01:29:10]  That's something that everybody knows.
[01:29:12]  Isn't that Alex's business model?
[01:29:14]  Look at those idiots over there, a bunch of kids at the climate march.
[01:29:17]  Anyways, these people are liars.
[01:29:19]  Anyway, the globalists are trying to kill you by putting things in your water and all these different supplements.
[01:29:23]  Yep, exactly.
[01:29:25]  Great.
[01:29:25]  Good work, dude.
[01:29:26]  So I was also curious, though, when I was listening to this report that she filed, I was thinking, like, why is she getting straight answers?
[01:29:33]  You know?
[01:29:34]  Yeah.
[01:29:35]  She's an InfoWars reporter going out to a climate change rally.
[01:29:38]  She doesn't have InfoWars branded stuff, does she?
[01:29:41]  Well, folks, we heard a lot of facts and statistics today, and, well, f*** it, we're gonna die.
[01:29:46]  This has been Savannah Hernandez with Action 7 News.
[01:29:49]  These people are a death cult.
[01:29:51]  She's with Action 7 News.
[01:29:52]  She's with Action 7 News?
[01:29:54]  What?
[01:29:55]  This is such manipulative shit.
[01:29:57]  Alex knows that when his reporters go out to places, they'll rightly get yelled at, flipped off, and mocked.
[01:30:02]  Like, he knows that that's absolutely what's always going to happen to them.
[01:30:05]  And he knows that he can't create effective propaganda with that.
[01:30:08]  Don't get me wrong.
[01:30:09]  That still serves a purpose.
[01:30:10]  He knows that when he sends Caitlyn Bennett out, for instance, people are going to yell, Come girl!
[01:30:15]  at her and tell her to fuck off.
[01:30:17]  That's why most of her field pieces are about how evil and mean the left is.
[01:30:21]  She's just this nice girl trying to go out and ask people questions and they all just yell gun girl at me.
[01:30:26]  She's a lightning rod for that kind of a response because most people know who she is and they have no interest in doing much more than laughing at her.
[01:30:33]  And the best way to monetize that reaction is selling victimhood narratives.
[01:30:37]  But you can't just do that about everything.
[01:30:39]  Like with the climate protest, it's a little off target to just paint the protesters as a rabble-rousing crowd of rude people.
[01:30:46]  That dog doesn't really hunt.
[01:30:47]  On account of their children.
[01:30:49]  Well, that's part of it.
[01:30:51]  If your coverage is just constantly portraying everyone else as rude, you kind of run the risk of the audience eventually catching on and realizing that maybe that's just how the public responds to you.
[01:31:00]  So you use that selectively.
[01:31:03]  And, like, Owen can't really do much in public anymore.
[01:31:05]  He's sort of crossed that recognizability threshold, so people don't really respond well to him.
[01:31:10]  Like, children tell him to fuck off when he goes out with an InfoWars mic.
[01:31:14]  hilarious the perfect solution is a new woman reporter who no one recognizes pretending she doesn't work for info wars no one has any idea who savannah hernandez is and action 7 news sounds so bland as to be Can they do that?
[01:31:43]  Well, it's interesting you ask.
[01:31:44]  Okay, there we go.
[01:31:45]  According to the ethics section of journalists.org, quote, for the news to have credibility, we must be ethical in our news gathering.
[01:31:52]  They go on to say, quote, most news organizations agree that journalists generally should identify themselves and their news organization in the course of a routine news gathering.
[01:32:01]  It is not appropriate to mislead or deceive someone you're interviewing or to use subterfuge to obtain news.
[01:32:08]  The general exception to this guideline is when someone is doing investigative reporting and they're undercover.
[01:32:13]  But generally speaking, the guidelines on that are really based on, like, is it appropriate?
[01:32:19]  Is the news that you're gathering so crucial for the public to know about that it justifies going undercover?
[01:32:27]  You can only get this by going undercover.
[01:32:29]  Is there a safety issue?
[01:32:31]  Right.
[01:32:31]  I don't think the meatpacking industry was going to tell Upton Sinclair everything on the up and up, if you will.
[01:32:38]  Probably not.
[01:32:39]  On the Upton and Upton, if you will.
[01:32:40]  I won't.
[01:32:41]  But if this is how Alex wants to play it, I guess it says something deeply pathetic about the state of things at Infowars.
[01:32:48]  They are so not credible, so disliked, so universally mocked, that in order to get a straight answer out of a random person at a public protest, they have to conceal their identities.
[01:32:59]  That is amazing.
[01:33:00]  That is bad.
[01:33:01]  That's not good.
[01:33:02]  That is bad.
[01:33:03]  Oh, man.
[01:33:04]  That's Alex having to wear a hat, sunglasses, and a fucking Charlie Chaplin mask in order to...
[01:33:11]  In order to get just like a normal interview going, they have to resort to, like you said, Upton Sinclair levels of deception.
[01:33:20]  Yeah.
[01:33:21]  And it's like, I mean, that's unseemly.
[01:33:23]  Yeah, that's not good.
[01:33:24]  That's not good.
[01:33:25]  All of it's kind of moot, though, because we know Infowars isn't a journalism outlet, so they're not really held to the same standards of ethics that a real news operation would be.
[01:33:33]  If they were subjected to that kind of scrutiny, all this shit they do would be so laughably disqualifying.
[01:33:38]  Pretending you work somewhere else to go do man-on-the-street interviews.
[01:33:41]  The fuck out of here.
[01:33:43]  That is...
[01:33:43]  God, that's so sad.
[01:33:45]  The response that you get is not organic.
[01:33:47]  That's so sad.
[01:33:48]  Every question that you're asking, the response is deceptive because you're using deception to ask the question.
[01:33:55]  Right.
[01:33:56]  So by default, all of this stuff you have to view as like, well, throw it out.
[01:34:01]  Even though these answers that the people give are innocuous and...
[01:34:05]  Fine answers to questions.
[01:34:07]  It's still like you're lying to retrieve that information.
[01:34:12]  That's interesting because it's almost the inverse, I would say.
[01:34:19]  Like, if you were coming at me with an InfoWars microphone, I would never give you a genuine answer.

=== Deceptive Journalism (11:43) ===

[01:34:27]  So, in this sense, the only way that they can't get it, the only honest...
[01:34:33]  The answer is going to come from deceit.
[01:34:35]  And if they're honest, they're only going to get deceit in response.
[01:34:38]  They've created an alternate reality of journalism.
[01:34:42]  Well, definitely.
[01:34:42]  What you have to do is be deceptive when gathering the information in these interviews, and then be further deceptive in how you present the responses that you get.
[01:34:52]  So it's...
[01:34:53]  I don't know.
[01:34:54]  I mean, if we're at the point for Infowars to actually get an answer from someone, they have to go full undercover journalist.
[01:35:03]  Yeah.
[01:35:03]  Great.
[01:35:04]  That doesn't bode well.
[01:35:06]  Man, that is...
[01:35:06]  Because eventually people are going to know who Savannah Hernandez is, and then he's going to need a new employee.
[01:35:12]  Everyone's disposable once they are recognizable.
[01:35:15]  That is really interesting.
[01:35:17]  They have gone through the...
[01:35:19]  The Abyss no longer looks back at them.
[01:35:21]  They're like hanging out with the Abyss, chilling.
[01:35:23]  Like, hey, wait until somebody else comes over here and looks at us, and then we'll bring them in.
[01:35:27]  And you know what the essential problem with this, too, is?
[01:35:30]  It's self-destroying.
[01:35:31]  Yeah.
[01:35:31]  Oh, absolutely.
[01:35:32]  Because if Savannah Hernandez makes some amazing piece that goes viral, that ruins her usability in any other video.
[01:35:38]  People start to know who she is.
[01:35:40]  Like, Owen Schroer can't really do those man-on-the-street bits because everyone reposted the video that she...
[01:35:45]  That kid telling him to fuck off.
[01:35:46]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:35:47]  That ruined his ability to go out without anyone to be like, ah, InfoWars!
[01:35:52]  Hey, fuck off!
[01:35:53]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:35:55]  Caitlin Bennett came in with that reputation.
[01:35:57]  She was already that person from Talking Points USA, Turning Point USA, and the gun girl shit.
[01:36:04]  She already had that reputation.
[01:36:06]  So anybody that he has...
[01:36:08]  It has to stay obscure.
[01:36:10]  There is a ceiling to the amount of attention they can get, which is self-defeating.
[01:36:15]  It's a sad state of affairs.
[01:36:17]  It would be interesting.
[01:36:19]  Getting popular blows their cover.
[01:36:21]  It's like they're doing one of those interviews with somebody who doesn't want to be identified, so they're in all black and they've got their voice modulated, but the interviewer is the one who's in all black with their voice modulated and they're talking to the normal person.
[01:36:36]  It does not look good for the future.
[01:36:38]  So Alex does his whole thing about this climate stuff, and it's very uncompelling, and I think we've hit a lot of the main points.
[01:36:44]  But Alex, in the middle of it, I'm sorry, at this point, this is past that, he's brought on Joel Skousen.
[01:36:52]  Sure!
[01:36:53]  Get the Scousen there!
[01:36:54]  Yeah, which is interesting because he's someone who doesn't like Trump that much, and he's someone who has waned in his influence on Alex in the days since Alex went to Trump.
[01:37:03]  Like, he used to be far more of an expert.
[01:37:05]  And him coming around does seem to indicate to me a sense that Alex is more willing to criticize Trump.
[01:37:12]  More willing to go towards Scousen than Scousen coming.
[01:37:15]  Towards Alex.
[01:37:16]  Skousen is not moving on anything.
[01:37:18]  Okay.
[01:37:18]  Like, he is a...
[01:37:20]  He is a rock.
[01:37:20]  He is an ideologue.
[01:37:22]  He is someone who is very dead set in his ways.
[01:37:26]  And should be.
[01:37:27]  I mean, he has his own business.
[01:37:29]  Yeah.
[01:37:29]  Like, he has the world affairs brief or whatever.
[01:37:31]  Like, he's comfortable.
[01:37:33]  He doesn't need Alex.
[01:37:35]  And the fact that Alex is bringing him around...
[01:37:38]  I heard him on an episode a couple weeks back, too.
[01:37:41]  And he had been gone for a bit.
[01:37:44]  Yeah, I can't remember the last time we talked about him present day.
[01:37:47]  He pops up periodically, but it's a long time in between.
[01:37:53]  Whereas before, he was a pretty regular guest.
[01:37:56]  It does indicate to me a slight wavering on Alex's part about Trump.
[01:38:01]  But when he brings in Skousen, he wants to talk about geopolitics and what have you.
[01:38:07]  All of his views are stupid.
[01:38:09]  Whatever event you're thinking of, false flag.
[01:38:12]  Everything is a false flag.
[01:38:13]  Sure, sure, sure, sure.
[01:38:14]  Every goddamn thing.
[01:38:16]  He's scowling, scowsing.
[01:38:17]  He's got to have an angle.
[01:38:19]  And it's uniform.
[01:38:21]  False flag.
[01:38:21]  Gotcha.
[01:38:22]  Everything.
[01:38:22]  Who cares?
[01:38:23]  Cool.
[01:38:23]  Alex wants to impress him, though, and so he plays a video at the beginning of this interview.
[01:38:28]  Is it Lana Del Rey?
[01:38:29]  It is not.
[01:38:29]  Although that would impress me.
[01:38:31]  We're seeing Chinese-style censorship come here to America.
[01:38:34]  But first, let's hear from this little piece that triggers leftist.
[01:38:38]  Here it is.
[01:38:39]  So that's the introduction for the video, and you can tell already it's probably going to be him doing his Asian impression again.
[01:38:45]  Oh, no.
[01:38:46]  Oh, no.
[01:38:47]  Alex made a second.
[01:38:49]  He made a second video?
[01:38:50]  He made a second video where he's just doing that Asian voice.
[01:38:54]  So here's a little piece of it.
[01:38:56]  Let's get triggered, Dan.
[01:38:58]  All it is also, like, you'll hear in this, like, you'll see what he's, this is just amazing stuff.
[01:39:03]  Whatever you do, do not visit banned.video.
[01:39:08]  Band.video is evil Americans who Silicon Valley is teaching to shut up.
[01:39:15]  Like China do!
[01:39:20]  He just did a second video like this, and it's just a commercial for his banned.video site.
[01:39:27]  That's...
[01:39:28]  That's just...
[01:39:29]  Sad?
[01:39:30]  That is sad.
[01:39:31]  That is very sad.
[01:39:32]  That is sad.
[01:39:33]  I'm...
[01:39:34]  Wow.
[01:39:34]  I have not felt true sympathy towards Alex in, I don't know, two and a half years?
[01:39:40]  I still don't.
[01:39:41]  I mean, but that is just...
[01:39:43]  The closest I can get is just, like, watching...
[01:39:46]  Like, look, he's a monster, but if I was walking by him and he was in a goddamn gutter, like, soot all over his fucking face, you know...
[01:39:57]  A chimney sweep from Mary Poppins.
[01:40:00]  Okay.
[01:40:00]  If he's doing that.
[01:40:01]  I'm like, Alex, I really hope you die sooner rather than later, but this sucks, man.
[01:40:06]  I'm sorry.
[01:40:07]  If you're a family member and Alex does his second weird Asian voice video.
[01:40:12]  Oh, you kick him out.
[01:40:13]  You kick him out.
[01:40:13]  You do an intervention.
[01:40:14]  Yeah.
[01:40:15]  This is sad.
[01:40:15]  This is a pathetic attempt to get attention.
[01:40:18]  Like, you can even see in the intro, this triggers the libs.
[01:40:22]  I've not heard anybody talk about this other than us.
[01:40:25]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:40:52]  And you introduce it as, this triggers the libs, you couldn't be more clear what you're trying to do.
[01:40:57]  And he's so proud of himself for it, too.
[01:40:59]  So proud.
[01:40:59]  That's what makes it, that's the cherry on top, is he's like, look at what I did that triggers all these leftists.
[01:41:06]  And meanwhile, dude, go home.
[01:41:09]  Go to bed.
[01:41:11]  So Alex wants Skousen's response to the video.
[01:41:15]  Stop it!
[01:41:17]  Stop it!
[01:41:18]  Quick!
[01:41:18]  While I do say that he's an ideologue and he's not going over to Alex's side, Skousen is still polite.
[01:41:25]  Okay.
[01:41:26]  Joel Skousen's always so serious.
[01:41:28]  That means he wasn't laughing.
[01:41:30]  No, he was not.
[01:41:31]  Hey, Joel, what do you think of that?
[01:41:34]  Brilliant.
[01:41:35]  I'm glad to see you come up with banned.video.
[01:41:37]  There's got to be some alternative to YouTube that allows the truth to come out without being censored.
[01:41:43]  Well, you're welcome to have a dial-in and a channel on it.
[01:41:46]  We're going to expand it to folks that do great work like you do to be providers.
[01:41:52]  And so anything goes as long as we know the folks are good and have a great history.
[01:41:56]  We will be the gatekeepers of who can have any posting abilities on this total free speech site.
[01:42:01]  Yeah, it sure seems like that means that you can kick people off if you want to.
[01:42:06]  Yeah, you can preemptively kick people off by not allowing them on.
[01:42:09]  Yeah, that seems strange.
[01:42:10]  Oh, it seems like you have far more censorship than you do.
[01:42:18]  What if, like, Brian Stelter wants a channel?
[01:42:21]  No, we don't have Brian Stelter.
[01:42:23]  You're going to give Brian Stelter a channel on Banned.
[01:42:25]  This isn't for you!
[01:42:27]  We need a safe space, Dan!
[01:42:30]  We're triggered by his content!
[01:42:32]  It's obviously not for banned people, because Paul Joseph Watson's still on YouTube, and he has a fucking channel on there.
[01:42:37]  Such ridiculous bullshit.
[01:42:39]  But the presentation of it is such a scam.
[01:42:42]  This is all about promoting Infowars, his own content, and his guest's content, I guess.
[01:42:49]  Skousen's not going to have a channel on there.
[01:42:50]  I highly doubt.
[01:42:51]  But, like, it's about that.
[01:42:54]  It's about funneling people to Infowars.
[01:42:56]  And anybody who's not on that tip, there's no reason for him to give them a channel unless there's someone huge.
[01:43:03]  Like Sargon of Cod.
[01:43:05]  Like we mentioned, he has a big fan base.
[01:43:06]  If he wanted a channel on there, Alex would probably allow that because it gives him more traffic to his thing.
[01:43:12]  But there's still no real way for him to monetize it.
[01:43:15]  Like, I don't...
[01:43:15]  This just is stupid.
[01:43:17]  Even for what it aspires to be, I don't see the path that works, and it's not what it aspires to be.
[01:43:24]  No, it is, it is, it has all the hallmarks of a half-assed idea.
[01:43:30]  It has every hallmark of people like, well, we gotta do something.
[01:43:36]  We just got to do something because everything that we've been doing isn't working.
[01:43:39]  So let's try this.
[01:43:41]  Let's throw this out there.
[01:43:42]  Let's throw this out there.
[01:43:42]  You don't have an infrastructure in place.
[01:43:44]  You don't have any providers other than the people who work for you.
[01:43:48]  You've got nothing.
[01:43:49]  Yeah.
[01:43:49]  But it's responding to something that people want.
[01:43:52]  Like you hear in all these really messed up places of the internet, you hear people say, like, we need an alternative to YouTube.
[01:43:59]  Right.
[01:43:59]  And so Alex thinks or acts like...
[01:44:02]  He's filling that need.
[01:44:03]  But what he's actually doing is quite different.
[01:44:06]  It's gatekeeping.
[01:44:07]  It's creating his own space.
[01:44:10]  No one who are in those, let's say, crypto-fascist, neo-Nazi-adjacent, white-nationalist-type worlds, those people who had those channels that maybe got demonetized or kicked off YouTube, they're not going to want to come on Alex's thing.
[01:44:27]  Right.
[01:44:27]  Well, I mean, if you wanted to make the thing itself a success, then you would have to have, before you even launched it, you would have had to have a bunch of people already created.
[01:44:37]  What if I didn't launch with the bands that...
[01:44:40]  Of the people who worked for Spotify.
[01:44:42]  Right.
[01:44:42]  And that was it.
[01:44:43]  Three bands.
[01:44:43]  And then like six months later, a few more came on.
[01:44:47]  Right.
[01:44:47]  You know, it's like you have to have a catalog when you launch.
[01:44:51]  Otherwise, it's going to disappear and nobody's going to come back.
[01:44:54]  So either this is a completely half-assed idea.
[01:44:57]  Or they don't even really expect it to succeed.
[01:45:01]  Could be both.
[01:45:01]  Yeah, it could be both.
[01:45:02]  So we got three clips left.
[01:45:05]  Because the rest of the episode is him talking to Skousen about how everything's a false flag.
[01:45:09]  Sure, sure, sure.
[01:45:09]  I don't care too much about that.
[01:45:11]  But it is.
[01:45:11]  But Skousen says three things that I think are particularly absurd.
[01:45:15]  And they will be our countdown.
[01:45:18]  Okay.
[01:45:19]  In no particular order.
[01:45:20]  Just in chronological in the interview order.
[01:45:22]  Here's the first one.
[01:45:24]  These people are crazy.
[01:45:27]  Well, they've been propagandized.
[01:45:28]  They just don't have any basis of knowledge for this stuff that they're saying.
[01:45:33]  They're pro-socialists because they don't understand the concept of hidden victims.
[01:45:37]  Socialism always has hidden victims.
[01:45:39]  Regulations always have hidden victims.
[01:45:41]  Well, yeah.
[01:45:41]  Where's all the free money going to come from people that don't want to work?
[01:45:44]  Yeah.
[01:45:46]  Capitalism.
[01:45:47]  Zero hidden victims, Dan!
[01:45:49]  No hidden victims.
[01:45:50]  No hidden victims at all, Dan!

=== Hidden Victims Debate (08:12) ===

[01:45:52]  That's not to say that either system is entirely right or without problems, but if that is one of your marquee criticisms of people who push for socialist-leaning policies, you're an idiot.
[01:46:06]  Absolutely.
[01:46:07]  If you're pretending that hidden victims are your problem, then you should also have a robust critique of capitalism.
[01:46:14]  If that is the problem, it's not unique to this.
[01:46:20]  It's not unique to socialism.
[01:46:21]  Well, I mean, obviously his problem is that he thinks in socialism he's going to be one of the hidden victims, whereas right now in capitalism he seems to be doing just fine.
[01:46:30]  That might be a more accurate way to read his comments.
[01:46:34]  But that said...
[01:46:36]  Even if you don't want to apply that assumed motivation to him, he's still making an incredibly flimsy argument.
[01:46:43]  Oh, it's not a flimsy argument.
[01:46:45]  It is a non-argument.
[01:46:46]  It is stupid.
[01:46:47]  Who are you, Molyneux?
[01:46:47]  Hey, there we go.
[01:46:49]  You know, he responds to everybody, not an argument.
[01:46:51]  Really?
[01:46:52]  Yeah.
[01:46:52]  Oh, God, what a fucking dick.
[01:46:55]  God, I hate him so much.
[01:46:56]  He's the worst.
[01:46:58]  So here's Skousen making a prediction, coming in at the number two spot.
[01:47:03]  The big problem comes in World War III when we're going to absorb a nuclear first strike, our military is going to be decapitated, and our leaders are going to come out of their bunkers and say, we didn't know this was happening, but the only way we can defend ourselves now is to join in a militarized global government with taxing power and all the things that Britain doesn't want out of the EU.
[01:47:23]  World War II were engineered to bring in the League of Nations and UN.
[01:47:27]  That is their plan.
[01:47:28]  So we're going to absorb a first strike, a nuclear first strike.
[01:47:32]  All the globalists will be in bunkers or redouts.
[01:47:34]  Oh, boy.
[01:47:35]  And then they'll emerge and create a one-world government.
[01:47:37]  Oh, boy.
[01:47:38]  Great.
[01:47:39]  And World War I and World War II were just false flags.
[01:47:41]  I did not expect that to follow up.
[01:47:43]  Everything is a false flag.
[01:47:44]  Everything is a false flag to get to a world government.
[01:47:47]  Nothing has ever actually happened.
[01:47:49]  You know what I find fascinating?
[01:47:51]  That nothing has ever happened?
[01:47:52]  Is that...
[01:47:53]  Nobody is talking about how the only way the human race survives is if we absorb a first strike.
[01:48:00]  Do you know what I mean?
[01:48:01]  Like, if we actually just accept a first strike instead of creating that chain reaction of nuclear...
[01:48:09]  You need to be super clear about this.
[01:48:11]  Oh, yeah.
[01:48:11]  You're not saying that the only way the world survives is if we get nuked.
[01:48:14]  No, no, no, no.
[01:48:16]  We're there to be.
[01:48:17]  Yes, exactly.
[01:48:18]  A nuclear exchange not responding is the only way to save the world.
[01:48:22]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:48:23]  Absolutely.
[01:48:24]  I don't know if I 100% agree with you, but I'm inclined to agree with that hypothetical.
[01:48:29]  Because it's one place being nuked versus...
[01:48:33]  Everybody.
[01:48:33]  Yeah.
[01:48:34]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:48:34]  Once the chain reaction starts, it's all, you know, the only way would be if somebody is like, guys, we're not going to respond.
[01:48:41]  The ideal state of affairs is everyone dismantling their nuclear weapons and all those sorts of weapons.
[01:48:46]  Right.
[01:48:48]  But failing that...
[01:48:49]  If someone nukes somebody, them not responding with equal measure is a preferable outcome.
[01:48:56]  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:48:57]  Even though the nuclear strike would be devastating and one of the worst things that could ever happen.
[01:49:01]  Right.
[01:49:02]  People don't...
[01:49:03]  All of those arguments of like, no, we need to keep our ability to strike first on the table is like, you're insane.
[01:49:11]  You're absolutely insane.
[01:49:13]  The idea that you would ever use them, period, is insane.
[01:49:16]  And anybody who doesn't say that is insane is insane.
[01:49:20]  I...
[01:49:20]  Yes.
[01:49:21]  Yeah.
[01:49:21]  I had a hard time tracking that sentence because you said insane so many times, but I think I agree with you.
[01:49:26]  Yeah.
[01:49:27]  So we have this last clip coming in at number one!
[01:49:30]  Skousen saying something fucking stupid.
[01:49:33]  And you simply have to say, I'm sorry, we're not dealing with this anymore.
[01:49:38]  There's no way, and you should never try to improve the public schools.
[01:49:41]  You don't try to improve an inherently evil institution.
[01:49:44]  It just keeps people in there longer.
[01:49:46]  People need to get their kids out of public schools, either through private or homeschooling education.
[01:49:52]  Is that an option for everybody, Skousen?
[01:49:55]  You know what?
[01:49:57]  There are some hidden victims to this plan.
[01:50:01]  Maybe a couple.
[01:50:03]  Maybe a couple.
[01:50:05]  I don't...
[01:50:06]  I feel like that is ridiculous.
[01:50:09]  It's the same thing with a lot of these initiatives that Alex really wants to...
[01:50:14]  And his guests and his worldview that they put forth.
[01:50:16]  they foresee an ideal situation off in the future, which is like everybody's homeschooled and we're all great.
[01:50:25]  Yeah.
[01:50:26]  What they don't realize is that the process getting to that outcome would be devastating.
[01:50:32]  It would destroy countless lives and preclude us from ever reaching the destination.
[01:50:38]  Their method to get to where they want to go Makes it so that end goal is impossible.
[01:50:45]  I see where you're coming from.
[01:50:47]  And that would be the end of the sentence.
[01:50:51]  I just think it's delusional to think that you're ever going to get to a point where everyone is able to take their kids out of school and homeschool them or put them in private school.
[01:51:03]  From a financial standpoint, from a life logistics standpoint, there just isn't the ability for everybody to do that.
[01:51:12]  Because that's a very pie-in-the-sky-ish kind of thinking, what you're advocating for is never improve the public schools.
[01:51:23]  I find this repulsive.
[01:51:25]  I find this to be a terrible prescription for life.
[01:51:29]  Yeah.
[01:51:30]  The only people who get hurt are people who...
[01:51:34]  You know, wouldn't be able to use the remedy to begin with.
[01:51:38]  Right.
[01:51:38]  The people who wouldn't be able to homeschool because they work multiple jobs to make ends meet.
[01:51:44]  Or they can't afford a private school.
[01:51:47]  It's just prohibitive for them.
[01:51:48]  Those are the people who are hurt by what you're suggesting of let's make the schools worse.
[01:51:53]  Yeah.
[01:51:54]  Well, the first clip is very clear.
[01:51:57]  I'm worried that I'm going to be a hidden victim in your system.
[01:52:00]  Whereas right now...
[01:52:02]  I am not a victim, and I don't really care about the people who are.
[01:52:05]  It doesn't matter to me.
[01:52:07]  When you talk about people who are out of touch, and you talk about the elitists, this is out of touch in a completely different ballpark.
[01:52:15]  He just doesn't even comprehend the lives of people who aren't like him.
[01:52:19]  Well, and he also goes on to say, yeah, it can be tough, but I did it.
[01:52:22]  I homeschooled my kids.
[01:52:24]  It's like, well, great.
[01:52:25]  That doesn't mean...
[01:52:26]  I don't think that you should have, or...
[01:52:28]  I want them to go back to public school!
[01:52:31]  Everybody has a choice, I guess.
[01:52:34]  I don't know.
[01:52:35]  I mean, specifically, with the Skows.
[01:52:37]  Okay, yes.
[01:52:38]  I don't want Skowsen teaching anyone anything.
[01:52:41]  The arch-family of anti-communism that is the Skowsens.
[01:52:45]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:52:46]  I do have questions about their curriculum.
[01:52:48]  Right.
[01:52:49]  Yeah.
[01:52:50]  I think it's absurd and very dangerous as a mentality.
[01:52:55]  You are just like...
[01:52:57]  Applying whatever is true subjectively to you on everyone objectively.
[01:53:04]  And it's deeply unfair to people's life circumstances.
[01:53:08]  And what you're advocating for is hurting people.
[01:53:11]  That's all.
[01:53:12]  It's that same kind of concept that so many of these people bring of like, well, you know, the government is running a deficit.
[01:53:20]  When my family's running a deficit, we tighten our belts and we don't do that.
[01:53:25]  And it's like...
[01:53:25]  I get why you think that makes sense, but you're an idiot.
[01:53:29]  So go back to fucking public school and don't listen to your dad scousing anymore.
[01:53:33]  Now, if we...
[01:53:34]  I don't even care.
[01:53:37]  We should improve the public schools.
[01:53:38]  Yeah, we should absolutely improve the public schools!
[01:53:41]  That's one of the only things that always leads to positive out...
[01:53:46]  There has never been a situation where people are like, oh man, these public schools are so good, and everything is destroyed around them.

=== Alex's Progress (05:16) ===

[01:53:55]  Fuck these guys.
[01:53:56]  They're really cheering for negative outcomes for everyone who's unlike themselves, and that's a...
[01:54:02]  Very consistent trend.
[01:54:04]  Yeah.
[01:54:04]  So it was interesting to me, though.
[01:54:06]  I mean, first of all, the Lana Del Rey stuff is just like, I cannot be more excited about this weird progression that he's on.
[01:54:12]  Yeah.
[01:54:13]  That makes me...
[01:54:14]  I do feel a little weird about having something in common with Alex.
[01:54:17]  Where do we go next?
[01:54:19]  I'm not a pop music guy, so what do you got?
[01:54:22]  I don't think he could ever get on board with Carly Rae Jepsen.
[01:54:24]  Can't do Jepsen.
[01:54:25]  Although if he does, I'm out.
[01:54:26]  Can't do Kesha, right?
[01:54:28]  He hates her.
[01:54:29]  Never going to do Kesha.
[01:54:30]  No, and especially because her latest album, Rainbow, is very...
[01:54:34]  Well, just saying the word rainbow to Alex triggers him.
[01:54:37]  Yes, I think he would have a lot of trouble with woman and learn to let go.
[01:54:45]  I don't think he'd like.
[01:54:47]  This is a hymn for the hymnless, that song too.
[01:54:50]  I really don't think he would like that.
[01:54:51]  Not going to enjoy that.
[01:54:53]  Even though she's really evolved as an artist from her days of like...
[01:54:57]  Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy.
[01:55:01]  Brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack.
[01:55:03]  She's evolved a lot from those days.
[01:55:06]  And even the Die Young, that Warrior album.
[01:55:10]  She's definitely come a long way, but the progression is something that Alex would absolutely not be on board with.
[01:55:16]  Yeah, I don't think he's going to go backwards in the catalog either.
[01:55:21]  I don't think that's going to prove.
[01:55:22]  I don't think he's going to get into Michelle Branch.
[01:55:24]  What else?
[01:55:25]  What else?
[01:55:26]  Nico Case?
[01:55:27]  Maybe.
[01:55:28]  Nah, I don't think so.
[01:55:30]  Annie DeFranco!
[01:55:34]  I don't know.
[01:55:37]  It's very absurd.
[01:55:38]  I love it, though.
[01:55:39]  But the other thing that's really interesting is this sort of like...
[01:55:42]  Three-act structure that this show kind of has.
[01:55:45]  I very rarely see things that are kind of on message for Alex, and that's very strange.
[01:55:52]  You have the touching kids in schools in the beginning, and then the interview with the Parkland father.
[01:55:58]  That makes up the first hour.
[01:56:00]  Second hour is all the climate bullshit.
[01:56:02]  Third Hour is Interview with Joel Skousen.
[01:56:04]  It has much more of a rigid structure than other episodes, even in the present day that I've listened to.
[01:56:12]  I don't know if that makes this easier to take in, but it wasn't as much of a chore listening to it.
[01:56:18]  When Alex is scattershot and literally just bouncing off the walls, this, this, this, this, this is like ba-ba-do-ba-do, it's very difficult to keep up with him and keep track of what are you even saying?
[01:56:30]  Maybe this is...
[01:56:32]  A blessing for me in some ways.
[01:56:34]  You know, in terms of actually dealing with the issues that he's talking about.
[01:56:38]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:56:39]  In keeping with Alex's truth, though, it is one of those things where it could mean either that he's giving a shit and trying to make a better show.
[01:56:53]  Or it could mean that he's completely given up and is letting somebody else tell him what he...
[01:56:58]  He's giving his producers more authority.
[01:57:00]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:57:01]  But it doesn't...
[01:57:01]  There's no like...
[01:57:03]  There's a third possibility.
[01:57:04]  And he's talked about how he doesn't drink anymore.
[01:57:07]  And it's possible that his sobriety is kicking in.
[01:57:10]  And his head is clearing up a little bit from those days when he would scream about the ways to learn.
[01:57:16]  But he's doing all that speed with Barnes over there.
[01:57:19]  Come on, man.
[01:57:20]  I mean, but speed sometimes helps you with your...
[01:57:22]  Yeah, that's true.
[01:57:24]  For a while.
[01:57:25]  For a bit.
[01:57:26]  It could be, like, I never believe him when he says anything.
[01:57:31]  Yeah.
[01:57:31]  But he has said that he's, you know, not drinking and trying to exercise more.
[01:57:36]  And there's a decent chance that it just puts him in a place where he's better able to organize what he's presenting.
[01:57:43]  Yeah, that's true.
[01:57:44]  Because if you look back into the past, I mean, he's all over the place, but he could make points better.
[01:57:48]  In the past, whereas we've seen in 2019, 2018, so much just like, this guy is unwell.
[01:57:55]  Yeah.
[01:57:56]  Like, the process of thinking is disorienting.
[01:57:59]  There's still a bit of that, but maybe it's a sign of progress.
[01:58:03]  Or he could be lying about everything he's talking about in his health, and it is just his producers being more on the ball, or it could be his...
[01:58:12]  Last gasp attempt at, like, maybe this will right the show.
[01:58:15]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:58:15]  Maybe I'll control myself.
[01:58:17]  Who knows?
[01:58:18]  Could be anything.
[01:58:18]  But whatever the case is, like I said, it's a little easier to...
[01:58:21]  To swallow.
[01:58:23]  Yeah.
[01:58:23]  So thank you, Alex.
[01:58:25]  Like rainwater with cold ice cubes after walking through the desert.
[01:58:30]  Juicy ice cubes?
[01:58:31]  Who says that?
[01:58:32]  Alex fucking Joe.
[01:58:34]  So we'll be back on Friday with either another present day episode because Alex, we don't know his response at the time we're recording this, but Trump just gave that speech where he said that the future is not for globalists, it's for patriots.
[01:58:49]  Right.
[01:58:49]  And we have to assume Alex is freaking out about that.

=== Sonoma Rows and Sticks (01:48) ===

[01:58:51]  Something is going on.
[01:58:53]  To get this episode out in time, we don't have time to see his response.
[01:58:56]  So we may have to do that on Friday, or we might have to do the TI podcast, or maybe both.
[01:59:02]  Or maybe something else.
[01:59:03]  Who knows?
[01:59:04]  But we'll be back one way or the other.
[01:59:06]  But we have a website.
[01:59:07]  We do have a website.
[01:59:08]  It's knowledgefight.com.
[01:59:09]  You bet.
[01:59:10]  We also are on Twitter.
[01:59:12]  We are.
[01:59:12]  It's at knowledge underscore fight and at go to bed Jordan.
[01:59:15]  We're also on Facebook.
[01:59:16]  We are!
[01:59:17]  And if you wanted to download the show, you could go to iTunes.
[01:59:20]  You could leave a review.
[01:59:22]  That'd be really great.
[01:59:23]  You could recommend it to some friends.
[01:59:24]  But let me tell you something about the best way to get the show.
[01:59:28]  Have you ever been to wine country?
[01:59:31]  Sonoma?
[01:59:32]  Exactly!
[01:59:33]  You gotta go down to Sonoma.
[01:59:35]  You go through.
[01:59:35]  There's these gorgeous rows upon rows of grapes.
[01:59:38]  If you've ever seen it in the fall time of year.
[01:59:41]  I've been.
[01:59:42]  Amazing.
[01:59:42]  It's great.
[01:59:42]  You're gonna walk down the 38th row.
[01:59:46]  Of the Sonoma...
[01:59:48]  I was really hoping...
[01:59:51]  I was hoping it would pop in!
[01:59:53]  I thought for sure one of the wines would pop in.
[01:59:55]  I thought for sure I could have gotten a vineyard in that moment and it never came.
[01:59:59]  You could just choose anything.
[01:59:59]  It never came.
[02:00:00]  Sutter home.
[02:00:01]  No, I know!
[02:00:02]  That's what I'm saying!
[02:00:03]  My brain just shut off all the wineries.
[02:00:05]  Fuck!
[02:00:07]  Coppola.
[02:00:08]  Oh, Francis Ford Coppola's winery.
[02:00:10]  38th row.
[02:00:11]  Go down 28 feet.
[02:00:13]  Grab the third grape, you see.
[02:00:15]  Pull it out.
[02:00:16]  There's going to be a little stick drive in there, and you can listen to the show.
[02:00:18]  This is the problem with specifics.
[02:00:19]  I know!
[02:00:21]  I'm not that good at improv, it turns out.
[02:00:22]  Well, stick to sketch.
[02:00:25]  Guys, we'll be back.
[02:00:26]  But I'm Neo.
[02:00:27]  I'm Leo.
[02:00:28]  I'm DZX Clark.
[02:00:29]  I am the juiciest Ice Cube.
[02:00:32]  Andy in Kansas.
[02:00:33]  You're on the air.
[02:00:33]  Thanks for holding.
[02:00:36]  Hello, Alex.
[02:00:36]  I'm a first-time caller.
[02:00:37]  I'm a huge fan.
[02:00:38]  I love your work.