Today, Dan and Jordan take a little breaky into the past to see what Alex was up to back in 2003. In this installment, Alex reveals that most gay people are cannibals, gets annoyed at some callers, and a couple real weird militia guys come up. Citations
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dan and Jordan. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stop it. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love you. | |
| Hey, everybody! | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fright. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm Dan. | |
| I'm Jordan. | ||
| We're a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we are, Dan. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dan! | |
| What's up? | ||
| Quick question for you. | ||
| Hey. | ||
| What's your bright spot today? | ||
| My bright spot today, Jordan, is it's something weird, but it's very satisfying, and I don't think I've ever done it before. | ||
| Well, when a man loves a woman. | ||
| No, very small moment. | ||
| So whenever you use the microwave, obviously you don't want the beeps to happen when the timer runs out, right? | ||
| They're annoying. | ||
| Yes, they're frustrating. | ||
| Yeah, and so you want to pull the door. | ||
| With that exactly one second. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yes, of course. | ||
| But almost every time that I open the door, there'll be one second left on the timer, or I'll miss it and it'll do the first beep. | ||
| Today, for the first time I've ever noticed, I pulled the door at exactly the point where there was no beep, and the timer was done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it felt great. | |
| I would love to shit on that as an achievement. | ||
| But honestly, if I'm alone and I just toss a piece of paper into a trash can, fucking go ape shit dancing around. | ||
| Oh my god, I'm Steph Curry! | ||
| You yell like boom shakalaka. | ||
| Oh, the whole thing. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| You're on fire. | ||
| If I close my eyes, I yell Kobe. | ||
| That's what I do, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's the real, real satisfying tiny moment there. | ||
| I'll never be able to replicate it. | ||
| Isn't that the worst part of it? | ||
| Nah, it's good to celebrate when it happens as opposed to wish we could just live in a space where you always open the microwave door at the right time. | ||
| What about you? | ||
| I think my bright spot is I think I've decided to switch back to contacts, Dan. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| My glasses are... | ||
| My vision's so bad now that at this point I'm like leaning in to read shit. | ||
| I'm doing the whole thing. | ||
| I gotta stop with the glasses. | ||
| I gotta stop. | ||
| I'm gonna go contacts again, my friend. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| Are you gonna be okay? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Do you want me to shave, too? | ||
| I'll go all the way back. | ||
| Short hair, shaved. | ||
| I'll look like I'm 19 again. | ||
| I feel like, I don't know, obviously I'll get used to it, but it'll be an adjustment. | ||
| To be fair, though, I mean, like, I think over the course of the pandemic, you went the headband route, and that was tough at first, but we got used to it. | ||
| Since you've known me, I think I've looked different every five to six months. | ||
| True, but I mean, I changed my beard length a bit. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| And that drastically alters my appearance. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| You've had to deal with it on both sides. | ||
| You know, we both have to... | ||
| We'll live. | ||
| Our relationship will survive this. | ||
| So now I'm rethinking it. | ||
| I've never done contacts before. | ||
| I've never had contacts. | ||
| Does that have, like, do they help more with vision than glasses generally? | ||
| Um, no, well, uh... | ||
| So, with my eyes, contacts are very, very good for like 75% of the world, you know? | ||
| Everything from my full arm away, I can see perfectly in all directions, you know? | ||
| And then there's this weird middle ground between my arm and where I can normally see. | ||
| And that's where I can't see with contacts. | ||
| So you're saying when you wear contacts... | ||
| Sneak up on you. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| As long as you're close. | ||
| It's like a T-Rex. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| And I played the drums for my life, so I'm deaf. | ||
| You know, it's all there for you. | ||
| I'm essentially a helpless little boy. | ||
| As long as you get really close. | ||
| As long as you get real close. | ||
| The slow blade penetrates the shield, Dan, as everybody knows. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Thomas Jefferson. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But with my glasses, as you can see, everything outside of this area is completely gone. | ||
| So I'm just blind. | ||
| To the periphery. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I got no peripheral vision. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, easier to sneak up on you then. | ||
| It is now. | ||
| I'm trying to think of which option allows for the best sneak options. | ||
| Sneak options, yeah. | ||
| We've been playing too many video games lately. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| A little bit of stealth. | ||
| A little bit of stealth is on our minds recently. | ||
| So, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over. | ||
| It's going to be a little bit shorter of an episode, which I think is fine, considering there's been too much of us this week. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Too much content. | ||
| Totally normal. | ||
| It's normal for people to listen to us for several hours every day. | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stop it. | |
| So today, Alex has taken a little breaky. | ||
| He's gone, or has been. | ||
| And so we have no new stuff to go over. | ||
| I was thinking about, like, well, what's Owen doing? | ||
| But Owen's just doing an impression of Alex. | ||
| He's so boring. | ||
| I was listening to some Harrison Smith stuff, and I just didn't want to do that either. | ||
| Although, I should point out, he just recently had Stuart Rhodes back on for an interview. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, so Stuart popped up on his show. | ||
| But not on the flagship. | ||
| I've not seen that happen since the indictment. | ||
| But yes, Harrison's still gung-ho for him. | ||
| But it was kind of a boring interview, so it's just like, ah, my free speech is being taken away, wow. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| I mean, that's a weird thing, considering... | ||
| What was it? | ||
| Just yesterday, one of the guys pled guilty to seditious conspiracy. | ||
| Not anything less than seditious conspiracy. | ||
| That's tough. | ||
| That is tough. | ||
| And there are indications that he's cooperating. | ||
| Oh yeah, that's not good. | ||
| If you plead guilty to treason and you're cooperating, that means that they had a lot going on for you. | ||
| That means that what you were looking at is like, well, no chance I'm making it out of this trial with an acquittal. | ||
| Do they still do public hangings? | ||
| Because it sounds like that's what they're going for, man. | ||
| I'll cooperate. | ||
| I'll cooperate. | ||
| So we'll see how that all plays out. | ||
| But yeah, that interview Harrison did might not look so great. | ||
| Because I think that was before the dude pled guilty. | ||
| Doesn't look good in retrospect. | ||
| The Harrison Smith story. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So what I decided to do instead of going over some of that stuff, which is kind of like just banging a... | ||
| Not a dead horse. | ||
| Banging your head against the wall? | ||
| Kind of, yeah. | ||
| I had a mixed metaphor in my head that just wasn't coming out right. | ||
| But it felt like it was pointless. | ||
| And I thought, let's go back to the past. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| And so we're going back to 2003. | ||
| Continuing that exploration of what the fuck was Alex doing back then? | ||
| And so today we're talking about July 18th, 2003. | ||
| All right. | ||
| This episode's weird. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How so? | |
| Quite weird. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And we'll get down to all the little details. | ||
| But before we do, let's say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| Oh, that's a great idea. | ||
| So first, Brent the Silver Stallion. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thanks, Brent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm gonna steal me, Brent. | |
| Next, Operation Horizon Forbidden West. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Hence the sneakiness. | ||
| Yeah, thank you very much. | ||
| Next, Walt Gisney. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, my older brother is convinced Dan is a witch. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Next, Ross the Philosopher. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much, Ross. | ||
| Next, Trawa Jay. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Might be Troa. | ||
| Could be Troa. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And finally, worst life coach ever. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You and I are a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| So, Jordan, this is a bottle episode, essentially. | ||
| I mean, like, in 2003, a lot of these have very little connection to anything that's going on, certainly in the present day, or even around them. | ||
| Because, I mean, like, our last episode from 2003, Alex talked to that whiz kid who couldn't get her diploma because she wasn't old enough to get an equivalence of high school degree. | ||
| And then he talked to Dr. David Race Bannon, who pretended to be from Interpol. | ||
| So, like, you have all that. | ||
| It has nothing to do with... | ||
| It's always fun getting just a slight bit of distance away, being with my memory that I have, and then you tell me all of these things, and I know they happen, and at the same time, my brain is like, there's no way those things happen. | ||
| There's no way he talked to somebody who named himself after a Johnny Quest character and then made up an entire history of being an assassin for Interpol. | ||
| I remember that. | ||
| I remember that happening to a fictional character, obviously. | ||
| Yeah, the highlights of some of the stuff that has gone on on this show in the past. | ||
| And by this show, I mean Alex's show in the past. | ||
| So yeah, I feel like one of the only real connective tissue pieces is collars. | ||
| Congratulating Alex on his Ann Coulter interview. | ||
| That seems to be one of the only things that actually goes through all these episodes and makes me feel like, yeah, this definitely did happen the day after the last one. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, that's true. | ||
| Weird. | ||
| So here is an out-of-context drop, Jordan, from today's episode. | ||
| I forgot to plug this. | ||
| We have a new affiliate in Rhode Island. | ||
| I want to thank... | ||
| Mr. Blood there. | ||
| No! | ||
| That's a vampire! | ||
| Alex, no! | ||
| Obvious vampire. | ||
| Obvious vampire. | ||
| Mr. Blood? | ||
| Are you kidding me? | ||
| Alex, don't get into business with Mr. Blood. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| He's from the Northeast? | ||
| I'm sorry, that one tricked me. | ||
| You got me. | ||
| You got me, buddy. | ||
| So, there are two main narratives that are going throughout this episode. | ||
| And one of them is outrageously offensive. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| It is... | ||
| Very much in Alex taking a news story that is happening and repurposing it for his own use as a homophobic attack. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good, good, good, good. | |
| And we get that right off the jump. | ||
| Speaking of cannibalism, it's real big with a culture of death crowd. | ||
| Rolling Stone has reported a liberal publication about how the homosexuals, quote, want to get AIDS. | ||
| It's a culture of death. | ||
| Well, in Germany, cannibalism is big. | ||
| They'll cut their arms and legs off and eat them at large dinners. | ||
| But now they're volunteering to be killed and be gobbled in large death rings. | ||
| This is BBC. | ||
| I mean, any type of depravity. | ||
| Stuff that never has even entered our minds is going on out there. | ||
| And I'm committing a hate crime criticizing the cannibalism, by the way, according to Scotland Yard's diversity unit. | ||
| I'm not joking, folks. | ||
| I will probably be arrested someday just for reporting that this is deviant behavior. | ||
| One of the top media presenters over in England, we had him on the show last year. | ||
| was arrested for using the word homosexual instead of gay. | ||
| You notice all the articles say gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, which isn't the proper word. | ||
| Homosexual, heterosexual, Anglo, Negro, you know, these are scientific terms for things. | ||
| But they find that offensive, so you can't use a scientific term. | ||
| So the gays are big on eating each other, literally, and giving each other syphilis and AIDS. | ||
| I'm not saying all of them, but a larger group, and it's very dangerous. | ||
| And it's horrible, and I hate criminal freedom. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| That is... | ||
| That is one of the more, like... | ||
| Very clearly just a child with no information letting his imagination run wild like, oh yeah, gay people, I don't understand them and I don't understand cannibals. | ||
| Gay people are cannibals! | ||
| They're eating each other! | ||
| That's what it means when you eat ass, Dan! | ||
| You eat each other! | ||
| You eat your ass! | ||
| This is 2003. | ||
| This is before eating ass was really hot. | ||
| This is before eating ass was huge. | ||
| Alex has always been a trendsetter. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| This is a situation where there are a couple of data points that Alex is, like you're saying, like a child just connecting things. | ||
| I don't know what Rolling Stone article Alex is citing, but if it's supposed to back up any of that nonsense, I'd really like to get a look at it. | ||
| Unfortunately, Alex uses no specifics. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What kind of adult could just literally just say that? | ||
| And with this such a blasé, like, you know, this is just, what is it with kids these days? | ||
| They're eating each other, you know? | ||
| Like, he's saying it like it's a human interest piece. | ||
| It's very popular among the gay community to eat each other and give each other AIDS. | ||
| He's doing a trans piece. | ||
| It's just out of a fucking alternate universe. | ||
| Yeah, this is going to be something that keeps coming up on this episode, so we'll deal with it. | ||
| We'll go with it in a little more detail later, but this is just homophobic nonsense. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| And the guy Alex is talking about, he didn't get arrested for saying gay. | ||
| He was questioned and eventually arrested related to some things that he said at a fair that were alleged to have been inciting. | ||
| This dude gave a speech where he asserted that he believed the country people should have the same rights as members of minority groups, or at least that's the version of the story as it appears in papers. | ||
| His speech wasn't recorded, and according to the BBC, quote, several people complained to the police about his speech. | ||
| So I kind of assume that he said some other shit. | ||
| You know, he didn't end up getting charged. | ||
| Alex just created a fake version of the story. | ||
| I get into that weird rant that he has about how he refuses to say gay because it's not a scientific term. | ||
| Hey, you know, as everybody's known for a long time, the Spanish word for black is a scientific term used to describe human beings. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| We've talked about it in the past. | ||
| His name is Robin something. | ||
| I don't even remember what his last name is. | ||
| But we talked about this in detail in a past episode, but I just wanted to refresh that in case people had forgot. | ||
| So this is an interesting point that should be remembered. | ||
| I think is illustrated by this clip. | ||
| Even as far back as 2003, Alex was spreading completely insane and bigoted narratives about how gay people like to be cannibals and give each other AIDS. | ||
| So when someone suggests that he wasn't always such a bigot, that's just not borne out by the reality of this stuff. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| It's pretty nuts. | ||
| I mean, you know, when you can look at somebody's bigotry as like... | ||
| Somebody somehow describing, you know, Alex wasn't as bigoted back then as he is now. | ||
| And your only thing you can hang your hat on right now, I guess, is like, now his bigotry is full out. | ||
| Like, maybe we should just kill everybody I don't like. | ||
| But back then it was like, everybody I don't like is probably a cannibal. | ||
| Which is almost kind of, you know, like, that is bigoted. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| But it's a lot more silly. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| There is a, like, psych meds turn you into Frankenstein monsters or something. | ||
| There's a quality of... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| What are you doing? | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Yeah, why not? | ||
| So, look, I think that I disagree with Alex's coverage here, but he seems to be pretty insistent about this. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| It's a big fetish here in the U.S. that's been reported in the news to go to Mexico and have your legs cut off and then to eat... | ||
| And you run out of the long ham, which we call human flesh. | ||
| Well, you've got to resort to killing yourself, so it's a sacrifice you make so they can have the delicious meal. | ||
| But again, I'm radical and extreme. | ||
| I'm against this. | ||
| I'm also pro-gun, by the way. | ||
| It means I'm a liberal. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| Weird. | ||
| Weird. | ||
| Weird mood. | ||
| Tell me more about that. | ||
| So I knew immediately what Alex was talking about here, but the way he's reporting on this is just cartoonish. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a big fetish in the U.S. to go to Mexico to get your legs cut off so you can eat them. | ||
| But then you run out of legs. | ||
| You run out of legs! | ||
| So people gotta kill you in order for you to be eaten. | ||
| So this is based on just a few stories that have come out of people who want to have their healthy limbs amputated. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| This is a pretty poorly understood phenomenon that's been labeled body integrity identity disorder. | ||
| And the frequency of cases is pretty low, but it's very difficult to get a precise number on people who experience this. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's definitely not always connected to sexual feelings, although sometimes people do have a sexual relationship with it. | ||
| And people who have these feelings, they aren't wanting to get their limbs amputated so they can... | ||
| No. | ||
| That's not typically the presentation of this. | ||
| Alex is just writing a grotesque story about something that he knows nothing about and something that he knows that it's not in his financial interest to know anything about. | ||
| If he learns things, then he can't do these cannibals walk among us rants to scare the audience and make them think that gay people should be seen as less than human. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a big fetish to go to Mexico. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know that old fetish. | |
| Old chestnut. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| So, look, okay. | ||
| You can tell me, like, oh, there's this fetish for going and getting your legs chopped off so people can eat them. | ||
| He did. | ||
| He did tell you that. | ||
| He did tell me that. | ||
| My problem, really, is the follow-up where he's like, and they say I'm crazy. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| You are crazy, sir. | ||
| There's actually... | ||
| I think that by the end of this episode, I will lay out what I believe that strategy is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gotcha. | |
| Because I do think that that's an intentional strategy. | ||
| Him saying, they'll say that I'm extreme because I'm criticizing. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| So, on our way to finding this conclusion, we need to learn more about this. | ||
| Yeah, obviously. | ||
| There's some more cannibalism to be discussed. | ||
| Quick question. | ||
| Is there a demographic breakdown we have? | ||
| Is it more large people with larger legs who are chopping their legs off? | ||
| Like, if I'm a skinny person, I'm gonna, like, practice. | ||
| You know, I'm going to gain some weight before I go down there. | ||
| Then I got something substantial to really chew on, you know? | ||
| Right, but that might actually not be how you get the best meat. | ||
| Ooh, that's a good point. | ||
| Might want lean. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| No, there is no discussion of this. | ||
| But it turns out that there is a case of a cannibal in 2003. | ||
| German cannibal charged with murder. | ||
| The man he ate wanted to be eaten. | ||
| He was part of a 450 group. | ||
| Cannibal organization. | ||
| They found some other stuff. | ||
| There may be multiple bodies in the house. | ||
| You talk about the culture of death, very successful importation by UNESCO, the culture of death. | ||
| As Rolling Stone reported, these people want to die. | ||
| They want AIDS. | ||
| This is Rolling Stone, by the way. | ||
| A large section, they say now about a third of San Francisco men who were pulled want AIDS, want to die. | ||
| And there's also now this scandal slash Satanist. | ||
| That's BBC. | ||
| Talking about dehumanization, scientists to clone a mammoth. | ||
| That's coming up. | ||
| A lackadaisical throw to a mammoth cloning story. | ||
| Man, you know, it turns out a third of all men in San Francisco want to get AIDS and die, and I guess mammoths are around. | ||
| Next on news! | ||
| I didn't track that down, because I don't know what he's talking about, and I don't know what this Rolling Stone article is. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But in terms of the cannibal, this is about Armin Muse, who was that German dude who ate a guy who had volunteered to do it after meeting Armin on a message board called the Cannibal Cafe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There may have been like 450 people on that message board, like Alex saying, it's a group of 450. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I'm going to guess that a vast majority of them were just people who had a vorophilia kink, which is the erotic desire to eat someone or be eaten. | ||
| Like the cannibal cop from years ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well... | |
| Not quite, but yes. | ||
| I would say that almost everyone on that message board was on there to roleplay something that was part of a fantasy, but not something they actually wanted to do, which is... | ||
| Probably a big part of why Armin had multiple people agree to let him eat them, but then they ultimately backed out. | ||
| I would guess that that was because they realized he was serious about eating them, which was a deal-breaker. | ||
| They didn't want to get eaten. | ||
| No. | ||
| They wanted to jerk off to the thought, not actually get eaten. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Initially, this was a mess from a court perspective, because as the BBC put it, quote, Cannibalism is not a recognized offense under German law, and the defense will argue that since the victim volunteered, this was... | ||
| No murder. | ||
| That's trouble. | ||
| That's a bad day in court for everyone involved. | ||
| No one's happy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, shit. | |
| We forgot to make this illegal. | ||
| Wait, is cannibalism fine? | ||
| Did we forget cannibalism was wrong? | ||
| So in his first trial, he was convicted of manslaughter, but he was retried in 2005, where the argument that he was killing for sexual gratification, which was proven by the fact that he had videotaped the crime, led to a murder conviction. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah, that one works. | ||
| It probably didn't help that he had also posted on that message board looking for a... | ||
| Another person to eat, which really made the case pretty strong that he was likely to re-offend. | ||
| Now you're a serial eater. | ||
| Yeah, now you're a serial cannibal killer. | ||
| Yeah, that's trouble. | ||
| Anyway, this is an exceedingly uncommon crime for someone to commit, as evidenced by the fact that this is... | ||
| The entire world knows the story! | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| This is the same case where he cut off the penis and they ate it before the guy died. | ||
| Yes, absolutely! | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So Alex is using this very sensational and headline-grabbing case as a way to demean the gay community. | ||
| And this is an important piece to recognize. | ||
| In 2003, trans people weren't the primary target of the extreme right in terms of their desire to kick up fake moral panics. | ||
| This isn't to say that homophobia doesn't exist anymore in our present day, but it's not as central to the right-wing strategy anymore because it doesn't create the same response in their audience. | ||
| People are cooler with gay people now, so they gotta get more extreme. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They have to shift over to a vulnerable group. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| And the homosexual community is not as vulnerable as they were to their attacks as they were in 2003. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| So Alex pretends to be above all the stuff that the more mainstream right-wing pundits get into, but... | ||
| He's no different than any of them. | ||
| He's just a more extreme version. | ||
| He's willing to make more stuff up to keep his audience interested, but he plays the exact same game that his contemporaries, like a Rush or a Hammy, would do. | ||
| Yeah, and it's so emblematic of who they are as people, like deep down, that the moment a minority group becomes strong enough... | ||
| And receives enough support, they stop attacking it on whatever ideological quote-unquote grounds or moral grounds they had before, and they go to somebody weaker. | ||
| Weaker. | ||
| Always. | ||
| Always weaker. | ||
| Some group that has less societal support, more vulnerability, and the thing that's particularly distasteful about it is that then they'll pretend that, like... | ||
| I never really had a problem with that. | ||
| I never had a problem with gay people. | ||
| It doesn't matter what they do inside their bedrooms. | ||
| I'm fine with whatever you do at home now. | ||
| I should tell you, they like to eat people. | ||
| They do like to eat people. | ||
| It's like, yeah, it's just such a, like, how does everybody not look at them and go, oh, they're just a bunch of cowardly bullies and we get trapped by them because they're so fucking loud all the time. | ||
| You know? | ||
| It's brutal. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think that one of the values of going back and looking at these past episodes is that the cultural milieu of the right wing and their sort of culture war narratives are so... | ||
| Similarly strategized, but their focuses are different, and you can see so clearly how that works by comparing the past to the present. | ||
| No, and they just keep going down the list of letters in LGBTQ as just like, oh, well, today we're going to pick on G. Tomorrow we're going to pick on T. It's just a monster. | ||
| It's just monstrous. | ||
| So, Alex goes to calls. | ||
| He takes a lot of calls with this episode because he burned himself out on guests with Dr. Ray Spannon, I believe. | ||
| You're not going to get much better than that. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| He's a hero. | ||
| And so, this caller has a great question for Alex. | ||
| You could tell Alex was a little bit pissed off by this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I miss Brian of New York calling in. | |
| Do you guys have a fallout? | ||
| Yes, yes, I had a fallout with a caller. | ||
| No, I haven't had a fallout with anybody. | ||
| Brian of New York? | ||
| Sir, come on, I haven't had any fallouts with anybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Okay, my show isn't about fallouts with callers. | ||
| I'm not mad at you, but it is kind of irritating. | ||
| No, I know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he calls Tom Valentine, but I used to like to hear him call your show. | |
| Okay, well, he can call and be like to. | ||
| Maybe he's on vacation. | ||
| Thanks for the call. | ||
| I really appreciate it, sir. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| I love that this show could have those moments back then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, man. | |
| That's what we... | ||
| Fuck all those CNN as this guy, the mastermind documentary. | ||
| Give me a compilation of other callers being like, is Brian from New York okay? | ||
| We haven't heard from him in a while. | ||
| Did you guys get into a fight? | ||
| You guys doing okay? | ||
| And I love the moment of Alex responding, yeah, me and this caller got into a fight. | ||
| No, what are you talking about? | ||
| What? | ||
| What? | ||
| Why would we get into it? | ||
| What? | ||
| That kind of, like, yeah, that's what happened. | ||
| Like, that kind of rhetorical thing doesn't exist for Alex anymore. | ||
| There's no good sarcastic shitbag comebacks. | ||
| No. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| There's something refreshing about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, there's also a caller with a conversation about a nuclear attack. | ||
| Or maybe a false flag nuclear attack that's coming. | ||
| And Alex has some interesting advice about when you should get your guard up. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| They want a Pearl Harbor where we get nuked, Barney. | ||
| Think of the insane police state that will come out of that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The way it looks to me, it would be too risky for them to rely on missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles or whatnot. | |
| Real quick, he's talking about North Korea. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Former defense secretary says we will be nuked, Washington Post, by North Korea. | ||
| And I don't want to put it past the globalists to detonate one and say they did it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They probably already got their warheads planted here in this country. | |
| Well, the globalists are totally ruthless, and they want to re-engine our society. | ||
| They're putting the control grid in all around us right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they wouldn't take a chance on losing their own people. | |
| They have to have them planted. | ||
| Well, that's why you've got to watch out when, exactly, you've got to watch out when the globalists are all out of town or at one meeting place or not in Washington. | ||
| Just look out. | ||
| Yeah, look out. | ||
| Whenever the globalists are out of town, that's when the nuke is going to go off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Have you ever done those shows at VFWs? | ||
| No. | ||
| Or something along those lines? | ||
| Never done an Elks Lodge or anything like that? | ||
| Maybe, but it's been a long time since I was doing stand-up. | ||
| I don't remember all of the gigs I did. | ||
| I've been to more than my fair share. | ||
| I feel like I've done karaoke at VFW halls more than stand-up. | ||
| I've done plenty. | ||
| It's all going fine before the show. | ||
| You do the show, and if everybody likes you... | ||
| You get asked to join conversations that sound absurdly like this one all the time. | ||
| I'm just like, well, you know, obviously the evil boogeyman wouldn't do this. | ||
| They would hide the nukes inside your bedroom. | ||
| And you're like, sure, man, fine, whatever. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| And then when they go out to the grocery store, that's when the nukes can go off. | ||
| Yeah, I appreciate your scare quotes. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so this is a false flag that didn't happen. | ||
| Another bad prediction on Alex's part. | ||
| But I do like, there's a distinct difference here between the way Alex talks about the globalist evil plan compared to the present day. | ||
| And that is in the present day, he's like, they are going to kill all of their own people. | ||
| You don't have to worry about the globalists going out of town anymore. | ||
| The world? | ||
| Yeah, in the present, that's not going to help you determine whether or not there's an attack coming. | ||
| So we got another bad prediction on Alex's part here. | ||
| That's how you support the troops. | ||
| You just use them up. | ||
| Don't worry, they'll have a new crowd of young people. | ||
| They're going to have the national draft. | ||
| I mean, come on, baby. | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot. | ||
| So we have two predictions here just from the beginning of this episode that... | ||
| Or not good. | ||
| One, another national draft. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did not happen. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Two, a nuclear attack from North Korea, or possibly a false flag made to look like North Korea of a city being nuked. | ||
| I wouldn't put it past the globalists to do that. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| So, you know, just as a reminder of the litany of things that Alex is wrong about predicting. | ||
| The problem was you had just gone out of town when the North Koreans nuked us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| So, like, you were out of Chicago. | ||
| We got nuked. | ||
| Oh, sh**. | ||
| And I didn't hear about it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no. | |
| We put it back together pretty quick. | ||
| We didn't want the North Koreans to get the win. | ||
| That's impressive. | ||
| So they blew us up. | ||
| Community solidarity coming together. | ||
| Rebuild in time. | ||
| We've got to get this together before Dan gets back. | ||
| We can't let Dan know about this. | ||
| He's going to put it all out on the streets. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| You're a gossip, Dan. | ||
| That's what everybody said. | ||
| So we heard from the Out of Context drop that Mr. Blood is now syndicating Alex's show. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So, Alex gets a call from somebody who's... | ||
| I think this is maybe from the same station or another station in Rhode Island. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Alex may have two... | ||
| Two Mr. Bloods? | ||
| No, two stations in... | ||
| And I actually think I know what the issue is here. | ||
| I think I know what the deal is. | ||
| Because he does mention that there's like two stations in Rhode Island. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So this person is calling from one of them. | ||
| Michelle, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Hi, Alex Jones. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
| Good to talk to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good to talk to you. | |
| My name is Michelle Freeman, and my husband's Ben Freeman, and he's on WARL, and I just wanted to let you know. | ||
| Tell us the call letters, and tell us about the station. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's WARL, Power 1320, and it's Reality Radio. | |
| Oh, what a good name. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they come from pretty much Providence and up to Attleboro, Massachusetts. | |
| Now, where is this based? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's based in Providence, and they're upping their wattage so that they can reach more listeners. | |
| So this lady giving her first and last name is the beginning of something that ends up paying off later. | ||
| The next caller gives his first and last name, and Alex is like, people gotta stop doing this. | ||
| I'm not mad at you. | ||
| You can't use your first and last name, because somebody could be calling in to make somebody else look bad. | ||
| You gotta cut it out. | ||
| Um... | ||
| So, it should come as no surprise here, Jordan, though, that this radio station doesn't exist in the same format that it did in 2003. | ||
| That whole reality radio thing that Alex is so excited about. | ||
| But it was a great name! | ||
| Oh, it was a bust. | ||
| So, 1320 AM in that area of the Northeast is actually based out of Attleboro, Massachusetts, and has been operational since 1950, going through many changes in their theme from that time. | ||
| Previous to rebranding as reality radio, it had been following an easy listening format. | ||
| So there was another AM station in Providence around that time, W-A-L-E 990, that was a lot of conspiracy talk. | ||
| And I think that's the other station that Alex is talking about being on. | ||
| They went bankrupt in 2003, at which point a lot of their programming was shifted over to 1320. | ||
| And they sold their name to Wally. | ||
| Yes, the rapper. | ||
| So it should be noted that a non-insignificant part of this station going bankrupt had to do with them airing some really fucked up shows. | ||
| Like American Dissident Voices, which was released by the National Alliance, who are Nazis. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The fun time happy Nazi hour in Rhode Island. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, that station went bankrupt. | ||
| 1320 switched formats over to an all-conspiracy lineup and took some of their programming on, and it was not a hit, because by 2004, they'd switched again and were now a sports talk station. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| They were running Lake Onobagon for a long time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where the men are all Nazis, and the women are Nazis, and the children are really fucking Nazis, man. | ||
| I think Garrison Keillor's a mess enough. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I watched... | ||
| I didn't realize they had videos of live performances. | ||
| Of those old shows, yeah. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| I watched... | ||
| Number one. | ||
| I forgot that the news from Lake Wobegon was such a long segment. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I didn't realize that some of them were like 20 minutes long. | ||
| Forever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought it was just like a little thing. | |
| When you remember the show in your head, it is encapsulated by like five sentences every show. | ||
| And then if you actually go back and listen to it, you're like, this is interminable. | ||
| This never ends. | ||
| I thought my memory of Garrison Keillor's show was that it's sort of like a variety show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Where one of the segments is news from Lake Wobegon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| There'd be the fake commercials. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's the sound. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And it was so long. | ||
| I got so bored. | ||
| But also, watching Garrison Keillor deliver this was something that everybody... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe it was just because I grew up in this NPR kind of family. | ||
| There was this impression of him as one of the great orators and storytellers in the legacy of Mark Twain. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| The way he was lackadaisically staring, looking down at the ground and like... | ||
| Like, kicking non-existent rocks on stage as he told the story. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It was awful. | ||
| He has got a face for radio, my friend. | ||
| Did you see the movie? | ||
| No. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I may be misremembering this entirely, but I'm fairly certain Lindsay Lohan was in there. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I want to say so. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It was non-stop excitement. | ||
| I was shocked watching it, how... | ||
| Just uncompelling of a performance it was. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it made me reconsider a lot of the things that my parents thought were entertaining when I was younger. | ||
| Yeah, well, that'll do it. | ||
| Just make sure I never have to watch a video of a live taping of What Do You Know? | ||
| Yeah, please don't. | ||
| That would be trouble. | ||
| We do not recommend it. | ||
| Although, I have found old recordings of Celtic Connections and Hearts of Space. | ||
| Never heard of Hearts of Space. | ||
| What's Hearts of Space? | ||
| Hearts of Space was a show that would play on, like, I think it was Saturday or Sunday nights on NPR, and it was space music. | ||
| So it was like weird soundscapes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But then there would be, like, the narrator of it would be like, Welcome to Hearts of Space, fellow travelers. | ||
| Welcome, fellow space fans. | ||
| Oh, so it's straight up like a quiet storm, like the Tim Meadows SNL character thing. | ||
| I don't know that sketch you're talking about, but perhaps. | ||
| But each episode, as I recall, would have a theme that were just these abstract themes, like, today we're dealing with envy. | ||
| The music would be like, beep, boop, boop. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Was this where Swearie Carey's first album was dropped? | |
| It could have been. | ||
| It could have been. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I still really enjoy Hearts of Space, though. | ||
| That is a lot of fun. | ||
| Anyway. | ||
| Let's go back and revisit that. | ||
| Anyway. | ||
| So, yeah, Alex is on this station in Rhode Island. | ||
| And then it went off the air within a year. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Or went to a sports talk format. | ||
| Hey, that's not bad. | ||
| So, Alex gets another caller, and this guy is, you know, just a nice, pretty clearly sovereign citizen fella. | ||
| Eh, good guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I, myself, like you, have fought against the government as far as the identity issues. | |
| I fought against Los Angeles Police Department, got rid of my social security number, revoked my social security number, driver's license, did all that, and I ended up spending two and a half years in a county jail, and they said in the court that they had to punish me extraordinary. | ||
| The FBI argued in Denver last year, Denver Post, that the Constitution is not admissible and has connections to terrorists. | ||
| They didn't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| And we'll actually get to this Denver case accidentally in a little bit. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| But, yeah, I think you can do a lot of hiding by calling yourself a constitutionalist instead of a sovereign citizen. | ||
| Weirdo, which is what this guy's doing. | ||
| I would love to get... | ||
| My hands on whatever he went to jail for because I'm sure it's not what he's saying. | ||
| No, it's probably just because he loves the Constitution too much. | ||
| Probably it's something to do with the Constitution and his love of it. | ||
| Yeah, he was at the library and he tried to check out a copy of the Constitution and 16 secret police members just descended upon him and they had to throw him in jail immediately. | ||
| But the same caller has some other ideas. | ||
| I think he's kind of getting the tone from Alex and he's just bouncing it back at him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, one more point. | |
| You know, I was looking at Bush and the Prime Minister of England walking together. | ||
| They look like two gay guys prancing in the woods. | ||
| I mean, what's up with that? | ||
| They look like they're in love with each other. | ||
| Well, they are in love with each other. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Should be down here in West Hollywood working it. | |
| Anyways, I'm sorry for the shock news here, so thanks a lot. | ||
| All right, thank you. | ||
| Please, we have a family audience here. | ||
| It's a family show. | ||
| You know, it is... | ||
| A sad day. | ||
| Every time I hear a conservative laugh just because some guy went, those two men standing close to each other, what if they were banging right? | ||
| Oh my god, that's the funniest thing I've ever considered. | ||
| Well done. | ||
| Great joke. | ||
| It's an expression of some homophobia, but it is also, at the same time, just not a... | ||
| Good joke. | ||
| No, it's just a bad joke. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's kind of unclever and hacky, even if it weren't offensive. | ||
| It's just sad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| So, I told you there were two narratives that were sort of running through the episode. | ||
| The first is gay people like to eat humans. | ||
| They do. | ||
| But that's not a bad thing. | ||
| I think Alex is reporting it as a bad thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| All right. | ||
| So the second story is about David Kelly, who was a... | ||
| Not the TV producer. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| He was a weapons inspector and a doctor who committed suicide and died the day before this episode. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And the backstory of it has to do... | ||
| He had been quoted in an article in the BBC that had to do with a claim that was in a British government dossier about the Iraq war and their potential for weapons of mass destruction that had to do with, there was a line in it about there being the... | ||
| The weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes. | ||
| This line itself, as alleged by David Kelly, was something that the Downing Street spokesperson insisted be put in the report. | ||
| And so there was a big brouhaha about this and the characterization of it in the BBC, whether it matched. | ||
| What David Kelly had told this reporter, whether it was supposed to be entirely on background, and it's just a huge mess, and he ended up dying from suicide prior to this. | ||
| The episode narrative, I didn't want to cut a ton of clips because it's kind of grotesque in some ways, but Alex is just insisting that the government killed him off because he was blowing the whistle. | ||
| Alex exaggerates the actions and the circumstances around it. | ||
| And I'm just going to play this one clip because I think it's important to recognize how Alex takes... | ||
| An absence of information and how he has no idea what happened. | ||
| This guy was announced dead hours before this show. | ||
| So he knows all the details he needs to. | ||
| Right, there isn't any available information. | ||
| So in that space, he just declares it essentially a cover-up and a murder because it's more interesting for him. | ||
| That's all coming up. | ||
| More on the British doctor-scientist. | ||
| He was high-level in Ministry of Defense, exposed the cover-ups by Blair of the false evidence of weapons of mass destruction. | ||
| He ended up dead last night after being threatened and being, quote, mistreated, the BBC said, because he was one of the leakers. | ||
| He's leaking, but in other ways, of course, the government won't say how he died. | ||
| I'm sure the family will be told to shut up. | ||
| It'll never come out how he died, or maybe it will. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We got loaded phones. | ||
| We're about to go to... | ||
| What is the point of saying it'll never come out how he died or maybe it will? | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| What is the point of that except to inject unhealthy distrust? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, just complete knee-jerk, based-on-nothing distrust and an expectation of everything is a lie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think that that's not helpful. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, he's just saying, Look. | ||
| Anything could happen, but whatever it is they tell you is not true. | ||
| And it's the same thing that we heard him say as it relates to the invasion of Ukraine on our last episode. | ||
| You'll never know the actual death numbers. | ||
| They'll never tell you the truth. | ||
| You'll never know. | ||
| Did he not do it? | ||
| You'll never know. | ||
| And if you find out, they're lying to you. | ||
| And if what they're lying to you is what's true, they're lying to you about what's true to lie to you about it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's an attempt to insulate all information sources on the outside. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Trust no one but me. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So, Alex gets a call from another guy who wants to ask about this fella who's got himself a little militia going. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, listen, Alex. | |
| We respect your opinion, and I need one from you on some information I found. | ||
| At a website a couple of days ago, it's stanley2002.org. | ||
| Are you familiar with Rick Stanley, his Mutual Defense Pact Militia? | ||
| Did you know he's issued a preliminary militia alert? | ||
| And last but not least, don't we have an obligation to protect our like-minded friends? | ||
| Just say white, dude. | ||
| I don't know of this Stanley individual. | ||
| Is he in Texas? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's in Denver. | |
| Actually, I've heard that name somewhere. | ||
| Is he the guy that... | ||
| Went to the Capitol arm and got arrested? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's it. | |
| That's it. | ||
| Yeah, I was making the point that we don't have a Second Amendment. | ||
| He just said to the news, I'm going to go with a gun, holstered, I have this right, and you watch, I'm going to get arrested, and he did. | ||
| And then the FBI said in that case, quote, the Constitution can't be argued. | ||
| That was one of the deals. | ||
| And I don't know what he's calling for. | ||
| I need to get him on. | ||
| The show. | ||
| So this is the Denver case that Alex was referencing earlier. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Which is weird, because he was referencing it sort of abstractly, and then this caller calls in, not in response to Alex's comment, but brings up the guy that that case was about. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Nuts. | ||
| It's a nice coincidence. | ||
| So this guy's website is stanley2002.org, because he's running for Senate in Colorado as a libertarian at this point, or did. | ||
| Spoiler alert, he didn't do too well. | ||
| He did somehow get 111 votes, which is way more than I would have expected. | ||
| I bet it was all from, quote, like-minded people. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| Part of why I'm shocked he got this many votes is because he's clearly an insane person, based on this caller and Alex's description of him, but also... | ||
| Because he got in a bit of trouble prior to the election due to some bad behavior in an online discussion about immigration. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| His behavior was apparently so offensive that his webmaster quit over it, to which Stanley commented to the Rocky Mountain News, quote, Michelle is a very emotional woman. | ||
| Surprise, surprise, in politics there might be emotional women. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ah, wow. | |
| Seems like an asshole. | ||
| Just wow, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just those guys. | ||
| So in this discussion about immigration, for some reason, Stanley decided to post a really offensive racist poem titled Illegal. | ||
| I can't find the full text to it, but here's the part that's quoted in the Rocky Mountain News. | ||
| Quote, welfare checks, they keep you wealthy. | ||
| Medicaid, it keeps you healthy. | ||
| By and by, I got plenty. | ||
| Thanks to you, American dummy. | ||
| Doesn't really rhyme necessarily, but that's the beginning of it. | ||
| And apparently here's the last line from the poem. | ||
| Quote, We think America, darn good place. | ||
| Too darn good for the white man race. | ||
| If they know like us, they can go. | ||
| Got lots of room in Mexico. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| You know... | ||
| Racist poetry has really fallen since A White Man's Burden. | ||
| At least A White Man's Burden had a structure to it. | ||
| This action did not sit well with folks. | ||
| The idea of... | ||
| Contributing this racist poem to an online discussion about immigration. | ||
| He's a few hundred years late. | ||
| He's a few hundred years late to that being a great poem. | ||
| Yeah, so he took a little bit of a heat for that in the local press. | ||
| Maybe he went from 115 votes to 111. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| So the event that Alex and this caller are talking about isn't quite what they're making it out to be. | ||
| Stanley had gotten arrested for open carrying a 357 at a campaign event, which is illegal in the town that he was in. | ||
| That would be one thing, and maybe it could be a situation, if that happened, where you could appeal it and see if you could get the law changed, but Stanley's a real weirdo, so he took a different route. | ||
| He was set to start his 90-day sentence in jail that he got for this open carry violation, but he didn't show up. | ||
| Ooh, that's gonna go wrong. | ||
| Instead, he decided that he was gonna threaten the judges in town that if they didn't overturn the verdict in his case, he and his mutual defense pact militia would arrest them and try them for treason. | ||
| He sent each of them notices, and guess what? | ||
| This is way more illegal than open carrying. | ||
| Oh yeah? | ||
| What about it? | ||
| Well, the court put in protective orders against him to ensure the safety of the judges, orders which Stanley was explicit that he did not accept as real. | ||
| This led to getting SWAT teams to have to protect the judges from the potential threat of this guy and his militias that he clearly believes are above the law. | ||
| I mean, hey, you know. | ||
| He was sentenced to six years in jail, and after the sentencing, he was quoted as... | ||
| The only victim here is Rick Stanley on behalf of every American. | ||
| I mean, I was thinking that his final words are going to be like, what did I do? | ||
| So that's this guy. | ||
| That's who they're talking about. | ||
| I'm just out here trying to be a good dude. | ||
| You guys are the ones going crazy. | ||
| It's fun how these kinds of people and their clearly fucked up behavior gets reinterpreted and repackaged on Alex's show as like, yeah, you know what? | ||
| He was just going to be a symbolic protest where he brought a gun to the courthouse in order to bring attention to gun rights. | ||
| He just wanted to let people know what was going on. | ||
| And then the FBI was like, you can't use the Constitution. | ||
| And then he was like, I'm gonna kill these judges and I don't even know why people got mad. | ||
| You know? | ||
| What was the problem in the first place? | ||
| He was just open carrying a.357 Magnum at a fucking political rally like people who are doing good things do. | ||
| I honestly think that, you know, based on whatever, I don't think him having the gun at his rally is necessarily the biggest deal. | ||
| And that's why he only would have gotten 90 days in jail. | ||
| For it, and could be the kind of wedge issue that Alex wants to present it as. | ||
| Him having the gun at the rally... | ||
| Could be the case that you use as something to initiate a larger discussion about it. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Threatening judges? | ||
| That's where you went wrong. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You take the 90-day sentence, you blow it way out of proportion, you go, 90 days, they might as well be killing my child, you know? | ||
| And then the Second Amendment, blah, blah, blah, you do all that. | ||
| You completely forget the part where you're threatening judges. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, but the threatening judges part where you go to jail for six years, that one's going to really hurt the other. | ||
| And I think really one of the parts that made the threats to the judges more problematic was that it was clearly, you have to overturn my sentence or there's this consequence. | ||
| Yeah, that's a threat. | ||
| You know, your intention's clear. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And the fact that he was saying that he had the backing of this militia group, those two things combined made the threat a little bit more difficult for him to not get in trouble for. | ||
| I mean, ideologically, libertarians are okay with extortion, I guess, so that's fine. | ||
| It's just speech, man. | ||
| Yeah, it's just speech with a gun at your head. | ||
| So Alex gets another caller, and man, there's a lot of weirdos who are getting play and shout-outs on this episode. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, the guy that just called from Idaho, Dan, I thought he was going to mention this guy. | |
| He's, to me, in my opinion, is really important. | ||
| He's got a strategy for a gradual transition, a peaceful, orderly transition back to the law of the land, you know, through attrition, basically. | ||
| But this guy knows the law, and you never hear about him. | ||
| You hear about Earl Schiff and all those guys, which, in my opinion, they're distractors. | ||
| They're meant to mislead. | ||
| You know, the 16th Amendment, I agree, it probably was not ratified. | ||
| However, you don't need to go that route. | ||
| There's a better way. | ||
| But, I mean, I understand what you're saying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me tell you the guy's name first. | |
| Gary A. DeMott. | ||
| And they've got him in prison in Mississippi, even though the first conviction was not executed because he got a jury trial instead of a trial by jury. | ||
| Ah. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| So this is really exciting. | ||
| Another person has a violence-free plan on how to revert the government back to a law of the land situation, which I guess probably has to mean sovereign citizenship. | ||
| You just gotta go with the law of the land. | ||
| This guy's just talking about, like, you know, taxes being illegal and shit. | ||
| Anyway, Gary DeMont got arrested for filing fraudulent tax returns and helping other people file fraudulent tax returns. | ||
| But the larger picture of his career is that he's another really scary militia demagogue that tried to take over a... | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well... | ||
| I like this. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I do! | ||
| I do! | ||
| I'm starting to like this idea. | ||
| I guess you could sell your right then, too. | ||
| You could sell your Third Amendment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Commodify all things. | |
| I've got a fetish for cutting off my own leg. | ||
| I'm going to sell you my rights to keep it. | ||
| Soldiers could force you to put them up for $100,000. | ||
| I think that's fine! | ||
| I'll take that. | ||
| So this came into effect because there was a woman in the area whose husband had died and she had Alzheimer's. | ||
| The judge in Ada County had assigned a guardian to take care of her, which DeMott claimed was a violation of this woman's due process rights. | ||
| I have no idea how he was connected to this woman, and it's entirely possible he had no connection to her at all. | ||
| Just found her. | ||
| Yep, I have no idea. | ||
| Anyway, DeMott was really mad about this, so he gave notice that he and his group planned to arrest the judge, Patricia Flanagan. | ||
| But this wasn't all. | ||
| He was also demanding that every other official needed to retake their oaths of office with the words, so help me God added, or they would risk being arrested by his militia. | ||
| It was important that these words be added because DeMott thinks that not having so help me God in there is a loophole that allows these officials to commit perjury without it actually being perjury. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So from an article in the Associated Press from 1996, quote, those who receive notices will have 10 days to take new oaths of office. | ||
| On September 28th, town criers will read the names of those who have not complied with the steps from every county courthouse in Idaho. | ||
| Unreal. | ||
| I honestly, like, there's no way to solve this problem for good, except I have a thought. | ||
| How about we gather all of these people, all right, and if you're a militia person who does stuff like this, you just get put under a giant dome, you go to sleep, all of a sudden you wake up, you're in a giant dome, real lost scenario, you know? | ||
| Nobody knows what's going on, but... | ||
| You're not in jail. | ||
| That's better, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go live in your little utopia where you can be all like, oh, we're in the Old West! | |
| Put them under a dome! | ||
| I do think, I think a Truman show of, like... | ||
| It's the only way! | ||
| Well, and I think... | ||
| One of the things that would be interesting if you did that, almost as a social experiment, is that these people would not get along at all. | ||
| No, they'd all be dead in a short period. | ||
| If not dead, they'd be threatening to arrest each other constantly. | ||
| It would be a great... | ||
| Why not have Sovereign Citizen Island? | ||
| Why can't we have nice things? | ||
| I think we had the idea for Grifter Island. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
At some point. | |
| We have a lot of islands that we need. | ||
| Well, these people need to be isolated from the rest of humanity. | ||
| That's really the issue that we're dealing with. | ||
| We shouldn't be harmed because they're just people trying to go about their day. | ||
| But they also can't interact with the rest of society because they're going to kill people. | ||
| Well, and if not kill people, just waste everyone's time. | ||
| Just fucking ruin everybody's day all day. | ||
| And terrify people. | ||
| Yeah, all the time. | ||
| So he put out this order that everyone had to retake their oaths of office or they were going to get in trouble. | ||
| And then from there, DeMott planned to arrest all the officials who didn't retake their oaths and Justice Flanagan. | ||
| She was going down. | ||
| He was going to do this with the help of sheriff's deputies, but... | ||
| If they didn't go along with the plan, DeMott said he was going to arrest the sheriff. | ||
| I was going to say, he's already getting the, my marching orders only come by a threat, not by any established authority. | ||
| And I love the, like, sheriff is the highest law of the land thing, but also if he doesn't go along with me, I'll arrest him. | ||
| Well, we'll just fucking kill him. | ||
| Anyway, this guy's a tax protester, sovereign citizen proponent who tried to create plans to take over a county in Idaho in the mid-90s. | ||
| A lot of old school... | ||
| That was just the thing at the time, you know? | ||
| A lot of old school weirdos on this episode. | ||
| I mean, you know, gay people have a fetish for cannibalism. | ||
| Sovereign citizens have a fetish for overthrowing elected local governments. | ||
| By way of... | ||
| Administrative threats? | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| Yuck. | ||
| Everybody knows this. | ||
| This is just one of those things. | ||
| So, in this next clip, Alex is complaining about Patriot shows, other Patriot shows, and how they're like knitting circles for Patriots. | ||
| And he doesn't like the drama. | ||
| But I would say that at the end of this clip, Alex gives a piece of advice that he himself should have taken. | ||
| Listen to me for just a second there, Frank. | ||
| Almost all the shows are basically sewing circles for people in one particular sliver of the patriot movement. | ||
| And, yes, they know what they're talking about. | ||
| Yes, they're as on as anybody. | ||
| can be. | ||
| Yes, they're aware of what's going on. | ||
| I wasn't talking about Mr. Stanley when I said that government violence. | ||
| What I was saying was, is that they use things like marches on Washington and things like that to backfire against us, and they're very dangerous. | ||
| Oh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| They use things to backfire on us. | ||
| Not, we are a bunch of idiots who have bad ideas that when they are put into practice, even we are forced to acknowledge they're so fucking stupid. | ||
| Look, you know, they try and get us to take over counties in Idaho. | ||
| They trick us into doing the things that we say are a good idea, and then when it turns out they're bad ideas, it's probably their fault. | ||
| Probably. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's gotta be. | |
| Yeah, but I think it's interesting that in 2003, Alex had a pretty strong, like... | ||
| Don't go to a march on Washington. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Just amazing. | ||
| Could have used that insight. | ||
| It's just, you just never, it's never not there, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, on this episode, he took a lot of calls, and I did get the sense that he was getting annoyed at them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it wasn't, it wasn't like, there were never any real blow-ups. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| But there were, you know, the, are you having a feud with another caller? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The fuck are you talking about? | ||
| That moment. | ||
| Then when these people are bringing up these other folks, like Gary DeMott and Rick Stanley, Alex is kind of being like, hey, don't bring up other people on my show. | ||
| I'm a patriot hero. | ||
| There is a little bit of him being like, God, I wish my callers weren't all so stupid. | ||
| Or I wish they weren't promoting other people. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| But I mean, I wish they were more my, you know, I wish they weren't. | ||
| They should be on my team for my show instead of throwing wrenches in it every time. | ||
| Whatever it is, it's a slight disappointment. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And so Alex addresses that. | ||
| I just... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's Friday, last segment, and I've been... | ||
| I got a headache today. | ||
| I've been a little grumpy at the callers. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm just mad at the New World Order, folks. | ||
| I am. | ||
| I'm kind of like an alligator just snapping in all different directions here. | ||
| Because I'm so mad at the New World Order. | ||
| The anti-New World Order alligator. | ||
| I'm not going to be like, oh, I'm having a bad day, or oh, I'm hungover. | ||
| I'm never going to do that again. | ||
| I'm just going to be like, listen, I'm sorry I snapped at you. | ||
| I'm an alligator. | ||
| I'm just so mad at the New World Order. | ||
| I'm like an alligator. | ||
| I'm an alligator. | ||
| I can't stop snapping because of the New World Order, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think, though, like, if you hear that, it sounds more genuine. | ||
| It sounds more sincere than his, like, apologies for outbursts in the present day. | ||
| Like, there is, like, yeah, I believe he has a headache, and I obviously don't think that he's just mad at the New World Order, and that's why he's being snippy with these callers. | ||
| I think he's probably, you know, hey. | ||
| We're about to have a weekend. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I've mentally checked out of here. | ||
| I got a headache. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Some of these people are dicks. | ||
| But I'm going to take the high road and be like, I'm just mad at the New World Order. | ||
| Sorry, guys. | ||
| I don't mean to be an asshole. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That seems like a human thing. | ||
| It's an olive branch. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Hey. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're all good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we have one last clip here, and it's at the end of the show, Alex wants to touch back on this cannibals thing. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, you gotta. | ||
| And, yeah, I think you can kind of get a sense of what's going on here. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And, folks, I read about these homosexuals. | ||
| They go down to Mexico to have a leg cut off, and then they lovingly slice salami meat off of it and bolognese and have little parties. | ||
| And Rolling Stone, which is liberal, said, my gosh. | ||
| A third of the gay men, homosexuals in San Francisco, want AIDS. | ||
| I mean, folks, you talk about destructive lifestyle, I'll be arrested as a hate criminal for saying wanting to be killed and eaten is wrong. | ||
| And the liberal groups are saying it's their right to be killed and eaten if they want to, and we're wrong to it. | ||
| I'm serious. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Just fine, okay? | ||
| Okay, I'm wrong. | ||
| I'm an extremist, okay? | ||
| I guess this is Olson then. | ||
| So this is what I was talking about earlier, the strategic aspect of this. | ||
| There's a stupid game that Alex is playing, and he knows exactly what he's doing and what kind of response he's likely to elicit. | ||
| He's not talking about this case of the German cannibal as it really exists. | ||
| He's using it as a data point to attack the entire population of gay people by applying the facts of this one cannibal to the entire community. | ||
| He knows what he's doing and his goal is to malign and dehumanize gay people. | ||
| He knows that people will see through that and he's going to get some criticism for it, which he'll just say is people trying to insist that he's a bigot because he doesn't want people to eat each other. | ||
| It's a simple sleight of hand trick where he's trying to mask the homophobia that's behind him. | ||
| ...with this... | ||
| It's like, oh, they say I'm such a bigot because I don't like cannibals. | ||
| Oh, here I am using one story to denigrate an entire group of people without any connection between the two whatsoever. | ||
| And now people are calling me a bigot. | ||
| What's next for the left, huh? | ||
| I do probably, you know, I obviously wasn't paying super close attention to things in 2003 around cannibal news. | ||
| But I would bet that there were at least some people who were saying that, like, you do have a right to agree to have yourself eaten. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But I would guess that a lot of them are libertarians. | ||
| Yeah, I would say that's... | ||
| Isn't that a fundamental aspect of self-ownership? | ||
| If you own yourself... | ||
| If you can sell your leg for $100,000 for food, I guess that's fine if you're a libertarian, right? | ||
| I would assume so. | ||
| As long as you're not entering into it as being coerced into the contract, I don't see why libertarians would have a problem with that. | ||
| If a libertarian can sell his kidney on the black market, then I should be able to sell my leg on the black market, right? | ||
| Yeah, and if it's for a transplant, how is that any different than someone eating it? | ||
| Totally. | ||
| It's a type of... | ||
| Maybe it offends your sensibilities, but why should your sensibilities rule how the government operates? | ||
| I mean, how do you think a Christian scientist would feel about you taking an organ and putting it in somebody else's body? | ||
| They would be very unhappy with it. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| It's a matter of perspective. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
| So I think that there probably were some voices that were like that, but Alex is mischaracterizing it as like the entire left is just like, yeah, hooray for eating people. | ||
| But that's because he knows that if... | ||
| People catch on to the game, the homophobic game that he's playing. | ||
| He has that in his back pocket as a preemptive defense. | ||
| And it's... | ||
| I hesitate to call it smart, but there's a craft to it. | ||
| There's a little bit of a strategy to it. | ||
| It's cunning, not smart. | ||
| It's like what you would describe a rat as having. | ||
| Not intelligence, but base cunning. | ||
| It's a low level of cunning. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's just recognizing the likely consequences of the rhetoric that you're disseminating and planning in advance to not have to own the consequences. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It is fun, though. | ||
| To make up stereotypes that are that batshit crazy. | ||
| I mean, it is offensive, and it is bigoted, but at the same time, if there was a Def Jam comic in the 90s who was like, Man, you ever notice how gay people be eating legs like this? | ||
| And you'd be like, yeah, that's insane, man. | ||
| That's the craziest fucking stereotype I've ever heard. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| Yeah, if I saw it, I wouldn't think that joke was funny. | ||
| No, you'd be like, what is happening? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would be intrigued. | |
| What are you talking about? | ||
| What are you talking about, sir? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But for Alex, it's a little bit less intriguing, because you know what it's rooted in. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's just pure bigotry, but for an absurdist, yes. | ||
| So, we come to the end of this 2003 episode, and, you know, I think that cannibals got a lot of attention. | ||
| Not enough anymore. | ||
| I would say they had their run. | ||
| Deep homophobia running throughout this, and the callers... | ||
| Are much more interesting, I think, in the past than in the present. | ||
| And that's because I think that a lot of them are like... | ||
| Really interested in weird, fringe, militia-y communities. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so they bring some of that sensibility to Alex's show. | ||
| Whereas now, he doesn't take a whole lot of callers. | ||
| Most of them just parrot back to him what he said. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then other ones are, sometimes it's just a plug for his products. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then there's, like, Carlos from Canada calls in every fucking time Alex takes calls. | ||
| And, you know, it's just, it's not like this. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it is, I almost said cute, but I think the word I'm thinking of is quaint. | ||
| Like, all of these callers are almost quaint. | ||
| Like, look at you with your, this guy from Denver is leading a militia. | ||
| That's cute, you know? | ||
| Well, it's... | ||
| You know what it is? | ||
| Even beyond quaintness, it feels like a sustainable ecosystem. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It hasn't self-selected out for lunatics. | ||
| Well, I mean, in a way. | ||
| Even though it's a bigoted show and, you know, obviously everything the saying is stupid or awful, it doesn't feel destined for collapse. | ||
| No, no, it really doesn't. | ||
| There's not, like, a feeling of... | ||
| It doesn't feel destined for success either. | ||
| This show kind of feels like if this exact show happened every day with an audience of like 200,000 people, it could have gone on forever. | ||
| You know, like this could have just been played out every day for the rest of our lives. | ||
| No one would have really known about it but him and the 200,000 people, and it would have been fine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| But... | ||
| But here we are. | ||
| His ambitions. | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| Like, Icarus' wings flew him too close to the sun. | ||
| If only it weren't a pattern that played out every single fucking day. | ||
| You know what the problem was? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| He got in bed with Mr. Blood. | ||
| That was where it all fell apart. | ||
| That's the beginning of the end for him. | ||
| Mr. Blood and Mr. Gold. | ||
| So, Jordan, we'll be back on an episode on Monday. | ||
| Probably back to the present day, but we'll see if Alex's vacation lasts the rest of the week. | ||
| Maybe he's in the forest for good. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| And then this show will become all Owen Schroyer all the time. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| But until then, we have a website. | ||
| We do. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We're also on Twitter. | ||
| We are on Twitter. | ||
| It's at knowledge underscore fight. | ||
| And I go to bed, Jordan. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We'll be back. | ||
| But until then, I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I'm DZX Clark. | ||
| I'm Dr. Marbles. | ||
| And now here comes the sex robots. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
| Hello, Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a first-time caller. | |
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your work. |