#657: Chatting With Elizabeth Williamson
Today, Dan and Jordan take a little breaky from Alex to have a chat with Elizabeth Williamson, author of the new book Sandy Hook: American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth. Get the book here
March 8, 2022 - Knowledge Fight
01:19:19
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Dan and Jordan. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stop it. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Andy in Kansas. | |
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for holding me. | |
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to KnowledgeFight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm Chuck. | |
| 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. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Dan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Quick question. | ||
| What's up? | ||
| What's your bright spot? | ||
| My bright spot today, Jordan, is that people have been having a little bit of a field day with Alex's framed meme. | ||
| I have enjoyed it quite a bit myself. | ||
| There's been some fun repurposing of that as a meme format. | ||
| Alex holding up the framed meme and replacing it with album covers and what have you. | ||
| A lot of fun. | ||
| A lot of fun. | ||
| If we were smart at all, we would try to find some way to, like, make this trend or something on Twitter. | ||
| Instead of me just being like, oh, this is fun. | ||
| This is fun. | ||
| At the beginning of our show, we would go out and try and, like... | ||
| People do... | ||
| We do do that. | ||
| They create those memes, and then it goes viral, and then they get all the attention. | ||
| It has never occurred to me that we could try to do that. | ||
| It just did right now for me. | ||
| Only in the sense of, like, that's not what we did. | ||
| No, it kind of makes me feel gross to think about artificially trying to do... | ||
| My bright spot is ruined. | ||
| What's yours? | ||
| No, your bright spot's amazing because everybody chose to do it of their own accord with no inspiration from us whatsoever. | ||
| A lot of fun. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| What's yours? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's your bright spot? | |
| My bright spot, Dan, is the news is just... | ||
| Taskmaster is releasing its own service. | ||
| Wait, are you talking about Stone Cold Steve Austin's former character? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am not talking about Stone Cold Steve Austin's former character. | |
| Taskmaster is a British kind of game show thing. | ||
| And what happens is they get five comedians or personalities from TV or whatever. | ||
| And then over the course of a few months... | ||
| They have to do these tasks, so they'll have this task like, put these three balls at the top of the hill, right? | ||
| And they'll have to do it. | ||
| Yeah, you've mentioned this a couple times in the past. | ||
| It seems like a fun game. | ||
| It's fucking amazing. | ||
| I think what I've realized, because whenever they put this news out, and then I re-watched a little bit, I was like, Dan, you and I need to be... | ||
| Yeah, I'm in. | ||
| I like this job offer. | ||
| Yeah, I'm giving it to you right now, buddy. | ||
| Just a quick correction. | ||
| I do apologize. | ||
| Stone Cold Steve Austin was the ringmaster. | ||
| The taskmaster was Kevin Sullivan's character previously in the WCW. | ||
| It's a good thing you corrected yourself. | ||
| I would get a lot of angry emails about that. | ||
| It would be trouble. | ||
| Also, there's talk that Stone Cold Steve Austin's coming back for WrestleMania. | ||
| I heard that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hell yeah. | |
| How is it that I hear about that? | ||
| And that's the bottom line! | ||
| That's a terrible Stone Cold impression. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| What? | ||
| Very fun. | ||
| Very fun. | ||
| The idea that something from, I guess, my childhood or my youth might be able to see Stone Cold stun somebody. | ||
| I guess he has come back a couple times and just, like... | ||
| Beat up people. | ||
| Yeah, I mean... | ||
| At a couple of WrestleManias, I remember from sort of recent times, not having a match or anything, just coming out and giving someone a stunner. | ||
| You run in, you wear a vest, you kick somebody in the gut, you give them a stunner, and then you get out of there. | ||
| That's the greatest gig in the world. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's even better when you consider the payday. | ||
| That's how much you're probably making. | ||
| So, anyway... | ||
| We'll enjoy Stone Cold coming back when that happens. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But, Jordan, today we have an episode to present to the folks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We were thrilled to sit down and have an interview with Elizabeth Williamson, author of the new book Sandy Hook, An American Tragedy. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And it was a lot of fun. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was. | |
| And we'll get down to business on presenting this interview here in a second. | ||
| But first... | ||
| Gotta say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| I think it's a great idea. | ||
| So first, Paul Joseph Watson's distressingly red lips. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Next, Jim Dandy. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Next, Dan. | ||
| It's about time you finally married my aunt, Love Michael, not me. | ||
| It's a different Dan, just to be clear. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Next, Rod and Amanda are celebrating 18 years of marriage with only four anniversaries. | ||
| It's a riddle. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| February 29th, baby! | ||
| Yep, I believe so. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Next, Jermaine, it's Adam. | ||
| And oh my god, Mama Fool's baby boy is here! | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| A lot of wrestling so far. | ||
| Never a bad time for mankind. | ||
| And my nickname in university was the number 23. Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Thank you all! | ||
| And thank you to Elizabeth Williamson for taking some time out to chat with us about her new book. | ||
| Very lovely. | ||
| Also, it is now available in stores. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Indeed it is. | |
| And online. | ||
| It's a good book. | ||
| Yeah, we'll have a link up on the page where we release... | ||
| I guess. | ||
| There'll be a link somewhere. | ||
| There'll be somewhere. | ||
| Well, maybe we'll post it. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| So, please enjoy this interview. | ||
| Hello! | ||
| Welcome! | ||
| Joining us today, this is very exciting. | ||
| A rare guest. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
| Adding to the pantheon of a couple of guests that we've had. | ||
| Most shows after 670-odd episodes have more than three. | ||
| True. | ||
| We buck conventions and have nobody. | ||
| I think largely because you and I don't want to inflict other people with the content that we talk about. | ||
| And I think that most people don't want to talk about those things. | ||
| And so people who are immersed in this world are kind of rare to... | ||
| To interact with. | ||
| And luckily today we have somebody who has immersed herself in this world. | ||
| Very much so. | ||
| Writer for the New York Times and actually has a new book that is coming out called Sandy Hook, An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth. | ||
| Elizabeth Williamson, thank you for joining us here today. | ||
| Hey, Dan. | ||
| Hey, Jordan. | ||
| It's so nice to be with you guys. | ||
| Welcome to this awful content podcast. | ||
| It's a tragic sort of subject matter that we all cover, and that's kind of fitting, because your book is related to sort of tragic topics. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah, you guys immersed yourselves in Alex Jones's coverage of, if you could call it that, Sandy Hook from the very beginning. | ||
| Yeah, we made that mistake. | ||
| For our mental states. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And lives and, you know, just general cynicism has taken hold. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I had hope before. | ||
| Yeah, it was an interesting ride, certainly, watching all of the stuff from late 2012 onward. | ||
| And I imagine that you've probably had the, well, maybe not the exact same, but fairly similar experience diving into a lot of this material. | ||
| Yeah, in fact, I first got to know both of you, your work, that is, and your show, because Lenny Posner, who is the father of Noah Posner, the youngest Sandy Hook victim, recommended that I listen to your podcast, sort of going back and taking a look at what Alex Jones said on the day of the shooting. | ||
| So that was how I first became acquainted with you both and had that whole show transcribed. | ||
| And, you know, kind of really studied what you had to say about it. | ||
| What like? | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Let me see if I remember some of the things I said about it. | ||
| I believe he's a trash human made of garbage and feces. | ||
| Did that one go into the book? | ||
| That did not go into the book, Jordan. | ||
| I did not quote you on that. | ||
| It is a little surreal to know that random things Jordan was yelling have made it into the transcript of what was research material. | ||
| That will be our close hold, as we say here in Washington. | ||
| So that's how you sort of came upon our show, but was that in the context that you had already had it in your mind to write a book about this subject matter? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I got to know Lenny, obviously, at the very beginning of the project because he was one of Two families that sued Alex Jones in Texas in the middle of 2018. | ||
| And when I saw that kind of come over the transom, you know, one of our reporters who covers breaking news, put that in the paper. | ||
| And I thought, wow, that is a pretty interesting test of the First Amendment. | ||
| And at the time, we were really in the middle of, you know, the very beginning of the Trump era, the concept of post-truth and alternative facts. | ||
| And this just seemed like. | ||
| A real test. | ||
| Alex Jones, as you guys have documented for years, often claims, if not always, claims the First Amendment as a defense for what he says. | ||
| And this seemed like a great test of, you know, what is free speech? | ||
| And do your First Amendment rights cover spreading material that results in significant harm to already vulnerable people? | ||
| That is one thing that I enjoyed about the book is, I mean, it doesn't matter how many years we're going to do this. | ||
| You still have to write out the entirety of the First Amendment, put it in the book, and then remind people once again, it only protects you from the government. | ||
| It doesn't protect you from Facebook. | ||
| I love how a lot of these people kind of say, they call it my free speech and my First Amendment. | ||
| It's kind of ours, you know? | ||
| Right! | ||
| It only exists really in the context of a community. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Interactions. | ||
| It's more of a team amendment. | ||
| It's a promulgated thing, yeah. | ||
| Not the exclusive province of anyone. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| The thing I think is really fun, too, is that now that has become such a meme, kind of, that is used by people in other countries as sort of a buzzword. | ||
| You saw that with the Canadian... | ||
| Truck organizers. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's very strange how that understanding has taken off. | ||
| Well, didn't we just talk to what's-his-dumb-face, the guy who's lizards? | ||
| David Icke. | ||
| We just talked about David Icke, and he was talking about his First Amendment rights, and you're like, you're from Britain, man! | ||
| That's true. | ||
| I think he still lives in the UK, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't think he's relocated. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Yeah, yep. | ||
| It's very strange. | ||
| But you're somebody who I know, you were writing about Alex, or you had written about Alex prior to this, if I understand correctly, because I know that my first interaction with you was Alex yelling about you. | ||
| I had heard him complain about something you had written before we had ever spoken. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so I was kind of wondering, like, where did your exposure with him begin? | ||
| Do you recall when you first came in contact with his content and what kicked off that path? | ||
| Yeah, I do. | ||
| I may have heard about him a little bit during 2015, but my first exposure to him sort of in the flesh was during the Republican National Convention in 2016 in Cleveland. | ||
| So he and Roger Stone, and I describe this in the book, they were on the stage at the America First Unity Rally on the Cuyahoga River, on the convention, you know, sort of in the convention city, if not on the convention grounds. | ||
| And I sat down next to a woman who was a very nice, she seemed like just one of those nice women, you know, she was sitting there. | ||
| You know, had a really big smile and kind of a gentle way about her. | ||
| She was probably in her early 60s. | ||
| And I was asking her the way I was asking a lot of people who were there for that rally. | ||
| Alex Jones and Roger Stone were on the stage. | ||
| And I was saying, where do you get your news? | ||
| And she was saying, Louder with Crowder, Infowars, Ben Shapiro. | ||
| And she said, you know. | ||
| If you're a journalist, because I, of course, introduced myself as one, she said, if you're a journalist and you're not listening to those shows, you're only getting half the story. | ||
| That makes me really sad, because I can understand someone of that age cohort watching Alex, possibly. | ||
| I could see them watching Ben Shapiro, because he at least presents himself as like, I'm pretending to be an intellectual. | ||
| The idea that someone over... | ||
| 25 would watch louder with Crowder is so sad to me. | ||
| That show is the dumbest. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| It's sophomoric attempts at comedy. | ||
| I can't imagine an adult watching that. | ||
| Or conservative comedy. | ||
| Sophomoric attempts. | ||
| Sure, but he does like poo-poo jokes. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| He had her son with her and I would say her son was maybe 30. Or so, maybe a little bit younger, a little bit older. | ||
| And her son was disabled, so he was in a wheelchair. | ||
| And they spent a lot of time together because he had a lot of difficulties. | ||
| And she mentioned that they'd listen to these shows on their way to doctor's appointments and things like that. | ||
| So I think they were things that he started listening to or that he was listening to for a long time. | ||
| And she kind of picked up on it from him. | ||
| At that point, it's a parent's responsibility to not adopt the kid's thing. | ||
| If your son jumped off a bridge, would you jump off of it too? | ||
| Well, I mean, bridge jumping's pretty hot these days. | ||
| That's fair. | ||
| There's also a nice irony to that image that you're painting of this rally involving people like Alex and Roger Stone who are so staunchly opposed to government regulations happening on the Cuyahoga River, which is Essentially a testament to the effectiveness of the EPA. | ||
| It used to just be shit. | ||
| That's a tragic image. | ||
| So you ended up running into this protest, but did you end up talking to Alex and Roger? | ||
| No, it was a very crowded event. | ||
| There were a lot of people there, a lot of Hillary for prison t-shirts, remember those? | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| And and so, no, he was up on the stage and kind of in his, you know, entourage and sort of, you know, security around him and things like that. | ||
| So you describe him in the book as just him and Roger Stone is just swaggering about with their retinue around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Acting like celebrities like that's one of the big things that you you bring up for just specifically that is Alex is such a. | ||
| I mean, star fucker that like he goes to those places to soak up their celebrity, which is such a great point of yours. | ||
| Yeah, he it was interesting. | ||
| His staffers were telling me that that, you know, one of them described him as, you know, he would always say, you know, as you guys know better than me, you know, Hollywood, the root of all, you know, globalist evil and. | ||
| At the same time, he said he was like a girl screaming after the Beatles when it came to, you know, people he was meeting at the convention. | ||
| Oh my God, Antonio Sabato Jr. | ||
| You're the best. | ||
| He was really, and also the other thing he was doing, which is, you know, his cameraman who was with him at the time told me for the book that You know, what they were doing is, you know, making their way through media row. | ||
| You know, they were inside rather than outside the convention barrier where, you know, Alex Jones would typically be with his bullhorn, you know, always on the outside of the perimeter. | ||
| Instead, they were very much a part of things. | ||
| He was definitely on the ascendant. | ||
| They were, you know, kind of swanning through the crowd. | ||
| Creating provocations, you know, on Meteorow, he crashed, sank Uyghur's show, The Young Turb. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jimmy Dore spit on him, I believe, if I recall. | |
| And now they work together. | ||
| He did, yeah, Alex Jones did wind up with spit on him that day. | ||
| But that was all great for him because this cameraman filmed all of that and they were really looking for viral video from there and they got it. | ||
| Yeah, that's the unfortunate thing, that that strategy does tend to end up paying off. | ||
| Yeah, there were a lot of events. | ||
| I think I described him in the book as, you know, he's like a shark. | ||
| He needs attention. | ||
| If he doesn't get it, it's like a shark swimming. | ||
| Can't stay still. | ||
| Never sleeps. | ||
| But with a shark, it's just sort of... | ||
| Evolved that way with Alex, it's because he's on stimulants. | ||
| Yeah, well, I mean, that's a certain type of evolution. | ||
| An addiction evolves over time. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| So is this where your first article that involved Alex come from? | ||
| Is this where that sprung out? | ||
| Yeah, I was on the editorial board for the Times then, and I wrote a short piece just on... | ||
| What is this, you know, alternative news ecosystem that, you know, these folks are really wired into? | ||
| What is this louder with Crowder that I hear people talking about? | ||
| And I really did feel like very much an outsider because, of course, as soon as that story went in the paper, I got a lot of, you know, people who listen to Ben Shapiro do not listen to louder with Crowder. | ||
| And how could you put them in the same sentence? | ||
| And, you know, all of that. | ||
| But my broader point, you know, nerdier point, was just that this is a whole group of personalities and shows and sources of information that most of us have never really heard of at the New York Times at that time. | ||
| In the intervening time, because I mean, one thing that we talked about with Mark Bankston, who is a solid protagonist in your book, he specifically said, you know, over the years that I've absorbed myself in this case, you know, it has definitely changed some of the way that I think about things. | ||
| Do you feel like this has had that kind of effect on you as well? | ||
| So I remember a moment with Mark Bankston and Bill Ogden. | ||
| Name dropping. | ||
| Another partner. | ||
| Do you know Bill? | ||
| I don't know if Bill's been on the show. | ||
| Has he been on the show? | ||
| He is not. | ||
| We have a strong no Bill Ogden policy. | ||
| Yeah, he gets to go on TV and Mark gets to hang out with us. | ||
| Okay, I get it. | ||
| I like Bill. | ||
| I met him when I was down in Austin. | ||
| He's great, but I also kind of like to pretend there's a feud. | ||
| Oh, I see. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, I'm not going to step on that. | ||
| But he told me once, after one of the, while I was working on the book, we went out to dinner and... | ||
| I remember Mark went off to take a phone call, and Bill was talking about how his role in the case was listening to hundreds and hundreds of hours of InfoWars broadcasts to find the points where he references the families so that they could make sure they had every reference to the plaintiffs, to the Sandy Hook families. | ||
| And he said, I was seriously starting to lose it. | ||
| He said he... | ||
| Late one night, he just was listening to his 40th or 50th successive InfoWars four-hour programming stint, and he was saying, oh my God, what if he's right? | ||
| Yeah, that's a fairly chilling line in the book. | ||
| Yeah, and I thought, wow. | ||
| But it is true that if you, and that's the sort of frog boil of all of this, isn't it? | ||
| This form of propaganda is like Nazi times. | ||
| You start with a relatively minor suggestion. | ||
| Then you start with something a little stronger. | ||
| You have a small lie. | ||
| Then you have a little bigger lie. | ||
| I mean, the very first lie was about crowd sizes at the inauguration, right? | ||
| On the very first day. | ||
| And then, you know, look at the size of the lies. | ||
| By the time we got to January 6th. | ||
| And it really was a kind of continuum like that. | ||
| And it was sort of like before we really knew it, you know, we were looking at this and saying, this lie about the 2020 election was unthinkable even a year ago. | ||
| And here is a significant swath of Americans who really believe it. | ||
| I mean, I suppose my next question then is like, do you feel like this type of propaganda is different? | ||
| Because, you know, before 2017, before the inauguration, it wasn't like that's the first time people were believing in things that were clearly and incontrovertibly bullshit. | ||
| So do you feel like this is something that you have interacted with in a different way from, let's say, other forms of propaganda? | ||
| So I think taking the long view, Jordan, I think the big thing, obviously, that... | ||
| Is a big difference, certainly from the Nazi era until now, is social media. | ||
| And, you know, the gigantic uptake in social media, even from, you know, say, so I went back and I talked to parents of, you know, the mother of a young woman who was involved in the Virginia Tech massacre. | ||
| And she was saying, you know, here was a huge shooting on a college campus in a state. | ||
| Where, you know, people would get concerned about gun policy in the aftermath of that. | ||
| And there just really wasn't a lot of conspiracy theorizing around that shooting. | ||
| But if you look at, you know, how many people had a Facebook account, for example, in 2007, when that occurred, it was 20 million people. | ||
| By December of 2012, when the Sandy Hook shooting happened, that number was 1 billion. | ||
| And I really think that that has accelerated. | ||
| I mean, we've spoken together about some of the old cultish things and things like that. | ||
| The lone guy on the subway with, you know, a photocopied sheet, you know, about the JFK assassination or, you know, those people were really isolated before. | ||
| And now they've found each other and they can speed whatever they come up with around the world in seconds. | ||
| Yeah, and I think that through the social media and YouTube, they've found really efficient ways to monetize and create businesses out of the speediness of that messaging. | ||
| And that's got to be a pretty negative reinforcement. | ||
| Yeah, and that doesn't even... | ||
| You think about that change, and now TikTok is so impenetrable to so many people above the age of 19. Yeah, that's like my louder with Crowder. | ||
| Yeah, or 13. But you do see millions of views on these short videos that are all bullshit instantly. | ||
| They're there and then they're gone, and it sticks in your brain. | ||
| You know, I think it's impossible for humans to interact with social media in a responsible way, but I could be wrong. | ||
| Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that one. | ||
| I think, you know, I do think, I do see, I sound like a super Midwestern Pollyanna here, and I kind of am, but I really do think that Sure, | ||
| the privacy stuff has become so much more clear since. | ||
| You know, I think in just my time since I was in college, you know, Facebook went from the Facebook where it was the thing where only college students were on it to being like open and kind of like this interesting way that you could like promote events. | ||
| And there's all kinds of possibilities to it to now. | ||
| It's like your grandma's on there and she's sending you chain emails. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like it's. | ||
| It's taken on, in addition to the privacy concerns becoming more clear, the evolution of what this is has changed. | ||
| And to your point, Jordan, what you were bringing up, it seems like TikTok is kind of like a place where there is a newer sense of it. | ||
| It's migrated a little bit to that. | ||
| But I wonder if what you're saying, Elizabeth, is that you feel like some of these Like, younger folk are just avoiding even, like, engaging at all. | ||
| Like, even with TikTok kind of stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, you know, I have an 18-year-old, and he got on Twitter maybe in the last two or three months because he's communicating with, you know, his football buddies or something like that. | ||
| But even before that, though, no social media accounts whatsoever. | ||
| You know, just kind of... | ||
| Took it on board that, boy, if you want to go to college, one great way not to get into the school of your choice is to have somebody surface one of your old, you know, awful tweets or Facebook posts, you know, or Instagram posts. | ||
| That's terrifying. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Consider college admissions looking for some racist thing you posted as a 13-year-old or something. | ||
| That'd be crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so I think that, you know, to some degree... | ||
| That message sinks in. | ||
| And also, you know, they're just that much more technologically savvy. | ||
| You know, they kind of understand how the sausage is made online, which is really interesting. | ||
| I mean, and that actually, that knowledge is being used, as I say in the book, you know, there's a series of games now where people can make up a conspiracy theory as a kind of game, as a way to inoculate them against... | ||
| glomming on to conspiracy theories and spreading them online without really knowing it before That's great. | ||
| How do you make one? | ||
| You know, how do you make it spread? | ||
| Like, what elements do you put in there to make it really viral? | ||
| You know, just responding to the, you know, outrage algorithm and all of that. | ||
| So if you see something online and they're studying this, you know, there are people who are looking at this and if they kind of inoculate people in that way by showing them how this is made and how to spread them, then when they run into them online, they're less likely to spread them themselves and to be more skeptical. | ||
| Because what is the belief in a conspiracy theory? | ||
| It's sort of saying, I possess superior knowledge. | ||
| I know something the rest of you rubes don't know. | ||
| And so if you can use that in this sort of pre-bunking thing, as they call it, all to the good. | ||
| Because talking people out of this stuff, as you guys know, is really hard. | ||
| Yeah, that's definitely something that we hear a lot. | ||
| It does also sound like you're a tyrant pushing vaccines on us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I heard inoculation there, too. | ||
| I don't know what you're trying to bring at us, New York Times. | ||
| Sounds like a bio-weapon to me. | ||
| Yeah, I think one of the things that I find very interesting about my experience with doing this show is that there has not really been a ton of... | ||
| Interaction with info warriors, let's say. | ||
| And I think part of that is just due to the fact that we don't really engage on social media all that much. | ||
| It's kind of like the way that folks end up having most of their arguments. | ||
| So we have not had a ton of instances where we try to talk somebody out of these beliefs. | ||
| But secondhand, I do hear that, you know, it's... | ||
| Deprogramming, as it were, can be very difficult. | ||
| Once you internalize an idea like Sandy Hook was fake or January 6th was provocateur and set up by the FBI. | ||
| Or Antifa. | ||
| Do you get a lot of that from your work? | ||
| Do you get a lot of folks who want to convince you that you're wrong? | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| In reporting this book, Just every conspiracy theorist I spoke with. | ||
| In fact, there's one in particular, Kelly Watt, whose life I really sort of delve into. | ||
| I was just very curious about how does someone with the email handle, great mom, you know, G-R-8, numeral 8 mom, actually get to a place where she's posting on Lenny Posner's memorial site to his murdered son. | ||
| I want Geraldo to open the caskets. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That story was fucked up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I could not understand how someone could get to that place. | ||
| Geraldo famously opened Al Capone's safe and there was nothing in it. | ||
| She was kind of making a... | ||
| I'm being facetious. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| No, she was. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, and then the idea of, so she had a cleaning, house cleaning, house and office cleaning business in Tulsa, Oklahoma. | ||
| You know, her sort of unique contribution to this crazy quilt of Sandy Hook theories was, let's find out what company cleaned up the school after the massacre. | ||
| And that became one of the more toxic requests that these hoaxers put in to the Board of Ed in Newtown and to the city of Newtown. | ||
| You know, we want a copy of the contract and we want receipts and we want photos. | ||
| And they were extremely graphic in what they were describing might have been cleaned up from the school. | ||
| And the thing that was really interesting is one of Lenny Posner's volunteers in debunking all of this stuff actually found the records, a police report that said this is the name of the company. | ||
| I actually called the company. | ||
| I had a conversation with them. | ||
| They confirmed that, yes, they did, in fact, clean up the school. | ||
| There was an extremely detailed record of what was removed from the school and what happened to it. | ||
| And so I presented this to her. | ||
| Comes the answer after some silence. | ||
| Where's the receipts? | ||
| So, it's just never ending. | ||
| And, you know, there is no... | ||
| And I actually think that maybe someone like her, they're so far down the rabbit hole that there would be a level of shame involved. | ||
| I mean, you know... | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| Your entire life is a lie. | ||
| Well, and not yet. | ||
| That definitely, Jordan. | ||
| But I think beyond that, you have tormented the families of murdered children. | ||
| I mean, at some point, maybe you can't come to grips with that anymore. | ||
| It's easier to believe the lie. | ||
| I think I would personally have a really tough time. | ||
| But I also think that maybe if you're in that state, you're not even consciously making that decision. | ||
| Like, you know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You obviously can't accept the possibility that you did something. | ||
| Because you don't believe that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You just won't allow it to happen. | ||
| And that manifests as these, like, just instinctual denials of any proof that you're wrong. | ||
| What do you think is different, Elizabeth? | ||
| Because there is the story where Lenny Posner joins the, I mean, I guess hoax Facebook group. | ||
| And I believe it's Jen. | ||
| Who eventually exits the group and helps Lenny start, you know, his programs. | ||
| So I was wondering, what do you think is different between Jen and Watt? | ||
| You mean great mother? | ||
| Great mother. | ||
| Yeah, great mom. | ||
| She actually was a great mom. | ||
| So that woman, Jen Forsman. | ||
| So here's what I think happened at the beginning. | ||
| I think a lot of the parents, you know, enlighten me to this and share this view that in the beginning, this was such a horrific crime that no one wanted to believe it happened. | ||
| You know, it was the parents themselves, when they write and speak about it, they talk about waking up in those first days, you know, and saying, oh my God, what a horrible nightmare I just had. | ||
| And then realizing that they're living it. | ||
| That is their life. | ||
| And that did happen. | ||
| And there were a significant number of these early... | ||
| And one of them, you know, I profile for the book, a woman named Tiffany Moser, who became one of Lenny's most convinced and committed volunteers, who, you know, had had a tragic situation in her past. | ||
| She hit a child with her car and that child died. | ||
| She had Two children who were around the same age as the children who were killed. | ||
| And she went on to the Sandy Hook Hoax Facebook page just saying, I am here for whoever can tell me this didn't happen. | ||
| I just need to believe that this did not occur. | ||
| And that was Jen, too. | ||
| She also took a little bit of a true crime kind of approach to the whole crime. | ||
| But these were the people who kind of peeled off because they were open to being convinced. | ||
| It was more of a gut kind of emotional reaction to the crime itself. | ||
| I just don't want to believe this level of evil is possible kind of thing. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Exactly right. | ||
| They just couldn't do it. | ||
| It's interesting that you brought up that people with young children around that. | ||
| Something I find really bizarre is that I just realized that Alex's kids would have been younger at that point in 2012. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that wasn't an experience that he had. | ||
| I believe it was actually on the very first day when the news broke, because this is something that I remember specifically when we covered it, is when the news first broke. | ||
| Alex did not immediately have a negative reaction. | ||
| His first reaction, his instinctive reaction was, I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm sorry for the families. | ||
| That was his instant reaction. | ||
| And then the next day, it was all fake. | ||
| Everything was a lie. | ||
| He was couching ways to make it fake on the first day. | ||
| He was. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| There was a gut check a little bit, but it didn't last the whole show. | ||
| No, you're right. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| My memory is literally always fuzzy. | ||
| That's the only reason this show works. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But there was a moment, remember when he talked about, okay, this is happening at the holidays. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| You know, however many kids he had the number wrong, but he knew that it was it was a large number. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And and he did seem to be at least momentarily taken aback. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But then he dove right in. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What an asshole. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I'm thinking this guy's no good. | ||
| I'm really I'm having a negative opinion on him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's. | ||
| That's really bizarre. | ||
| Just thinking about the differences between what makes somebody who would give up on the conspiracy when confronted with some reality and somebody who sticks to their guns. | ||
| Who just never stops. | ||
| I wonder if there is even some kind of consistency between what you could learn from that. | ||
| The differences. | ||
| I think it really has to do with, I mean, this guy at University of Miami, Joe Ushinsky, who studied conspiracy theories, especially political ones. | ||
| And I would call this one of those because gun control was always a factor and, you know, or almost consistently. | ||
| And definitely the government planned it, makes it a political conspiracy theory. | ||
| But, you know, he will say, you know, even QAnon. | ||
| Does not select for politics. | ||
| That, you know, it is really your kind of mindset and your personality much more than your politics that determines whether or not you believe these conspiracy theories. | ||
| And, you know, initially I was skeptical because QAnon is so much about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats and, you know, Democratic stronghold and blah, blah. | ||
| If you really look at, you know, the different variants of that, you know, child trafficking theme, you can kind of understand where he's coming from. | ||
| And I think, you know, a lot of these people, there's a level of narcissism, as you guys have documented so well with Jones, that, you know, I need to possess superior knowledge. | ||
| And then there's a certain, you know, and this is this woman, Kelly Watts' daughter, Madison, explained to me, you know. | ||
| My mom never felt like anybody really respected her for having an original idea or making a kind of intellectual contribution or something like that. | ||
| It's really important to her to be the sort of very unique truth, which, you know, it's hard to even countenance that. | ||
| You think, you know, other people would, you know, maybe like... | ||
| Get an advanced degree or study something. | ||
| It's an emotional thing you can relate to and understand. | ||
| It's a struggle, but the way you proceed from there is not good. | ||
| The interesting thing about your book that I appreciate is that despite it being very focused on Sandy Hook, it is also... | ||
| A really good example of that kind of great conspiracy theory singularity. | ||
| So many of these people wound up at Sandy Hook conspiracy theories coming from different motives, different backgrounds, different things that they wanted to be true. | ||
| And, you know, as you point out, yoga moms turn into anti-vaxxers five years later. | ||
| And it's all the same conspiracy theory, but people are just coming at it from so many different areas. | ||
| Yeah, no, it's true. | ||
| And, you know, one thing I didn't explore a lot, although I did in talking about Kelly Watt's life and kind of what her life had been, because there's a lot of trauma in her life. | ||
| I do think trauma in some of these folks' lives played a role. | ||
| You know, like Tiffany Moser, the woman, you know, who had the accident with her car and a child died or, you know, we just had a story in the Times yesterday about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his belief in, you know, just one of the biggest anti-vaxxers, you know, with an enormous following and just like an absolutely divisive force in the Kennedy family. | ||
| But, you know, a lot of trauma in that guy's life. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Alex was stuck under a house one time when they were fumigating it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Drama. | ||
| No, I mean, it is it is very much a I find it so analogous to evangelical born again Christians, the ones that come to it later in life because something happened. | ||
| Something is like prisoner. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, or yeah. | ||
| Well, Roger Stone, of course. | ||
| But there is that, like, there's an inciting event that where you're at your lowest, there's a group that love bombs you, essentially, and then you're just in, you know? | ||
| So if you're at your lowest point, your business isn't going so well, nobody's helping you out, you find a QAnon website, you're immediately love bombed with, guess what? | ||
| You're so smart. | ||
| Yeah, it's not even love bombing, it's like validation bombing. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, no, it's, that makes me think of, I think that's a really good point. | ||
| It makes me think of somebody like Mike Flynn. | ||
| You know, Mike Flynn, when he was in the military, was, you know, people called it Flynnformation, you know, his kind of misconceptions about Islam or radicalism or, you know. | ||
| He didn't have... | ||
| That's terrifying. | ||
| That is a terrifying thing that you just told me. | ||
| Yeah, you hear about people being like, don't listen to that guy. | ||
| I know, but it's a general, and you're telling me that everybody's like, oh yeah, we know that guy's full of shit, but we're going to continue promoting him. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| You've worked at offices where people are like... | ||
| True. | ||
| We're going to make him the national security advisor. | ||
| Exactly, yes. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Awesome. | ||
| Yeah, but it was that, you know, that kind of, the thing that really struck me about a lot of these groups, like the Sandy Hook Hoax group, or any of these gatherings, you know, on social media, was how mutually reinforcing they were. | ||
| You know, they all made each other feel really smart. | ||
| And that's what Kelly Watts' daughter said. | ||
| To have a guy like Jim Fetzer, who is a PhD, who is a former professor of... | ||
| Wait for it. | ||
| Logic at the University of Minnesota, one of the biggest Sandy Hook hoaxers out there, praising her for her insights, for her scrappy reporting, for calling hundreds of people in Newtown and never giving up as she sought, you know, the contract, the Holy Grail for, you know, who cleaned up the school. | ||
| That makes people feel good. | ||
| And if they don't have a lot of other sources for that, it's really hard to... | ||
| Give that a rest. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm bummed out that Jim Fetzer was a professor of logic. | ||
| I studied a bit of logic in college. | ||
| You did? | ||
| I do think that when people who study that break, it's not a twig, it's a tree. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| It's a tree falling. | ||
| Logic is too much of a... | ||
| You break bad really hard. | ||
| Yeah, logic is like a third rail for you. | ||
| Once logic breaks, you're out of games. | ||
| Well, it's also just a tool you can use also for nefarious ways to make really bad arguments. | ||
| But that's what shocks me, too, is that Fetzer's arguments are not logical. | ||
| They don't follow formal structure. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just got lost there for a second. | |
| I am amazed. | ||
| One thing that I will give to Jim Fetzer is that Even in print form, when you write out his quotes, he does sound like he's a shrieking madman. | ||
| You know, like you can hear him going, ah, this is true, in your head while you're reading his quotes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| How many times did you interview him? | ||
| A few. | ||
| In person, that interview in my rental car. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I enjoyed that story. | ||
| He's laid low after the case and he does not want to talk to a lesbian and eventually he's like, fine, I'll get in your car. | ||
| Like it's a drug deal. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely like a drug deal. | ||
| My family doesn't need to know about this. | ||
| I'll get in your car. | ||
| Yeah, his family was so angry that But it was like crack to him, the idea that he would get yet one more interview and some attention and be able to trumpet his, because he had been successfully by Lenny's lawyers, you know, Lenny, just to fill your listeners in. | ||
| He had sued him for defamation and won. | ||
| So he won a $450,000 judgment in October of 2019. | ||
| And so I went and spoke with him after that. | ||
| And after he lost, you know, this was enough to bankrupt probably two generations of his family. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he was saying, you know, my family doesn't... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| And it was killing him to say that, because it was his wife and daughter, so it just seemed like he had been completely, you know, emasculated by this. | ||
| But, you know, it was sort of like, I'll talk to you in the car, so then my wife doesn't see me. | ||
| And then he immediately decided to find a way to double that judgment against him and bankrupt four generations of his family. | ||
| Lenny's sealed videotaped deposition and gave it to the hoaxers and then they put it online and they compared Lenny's ear to his ear in previous photos and decided that the Lenny who testified in that defamation case in the courtroom was an impasta. | ||
| This checks out. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| I remember that actually being a really popular thing on conspiracy message boards. | ||
| The, like, let's compare ears. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| So weird. | ||
| Once you get an ear, you know the rest of a person's soul. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a Joe Biden ear conspiracy, too, I think. | ||
| One of the hoaxers told me about it. | ||
| I'm sure I... | ||
| There's a Joe Biden body part conspiracy forever. | ||
| It's top to bottom. | ||
| And I'm sure there's an ear conspiracy for everybody. | ||
| The queen. | ||
| I mean, hey, honestly, Joe Biden is three people. | ||
| He's a clone. | ||
| He's a walk-in. | ||
| Also Jim Carrey. | ||
| And he's Jim Carrey. | ||
| Yeah, we learned that from Project Camelot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| Jim Carrey is wearing a mask. | ||
| You guys are way ahead of me. | ||
| He plays Joe Biden. | ||
| That's why he does these gaffes. | ||
| Sometimes he does pratfalls. | ||
| It's because it's Jim Carrey. | ||
| He can't stop himself. | ||
| He can't not be funny. | ||
| Very insightful stuff. | ||
| Actually, Project Camelot, who interviewed Jim Fetzer also a couple times. | ||
| Yes, it's all connected. | ||
| Full circle. | ||
| I can't imagine what that would be like to be in a closed space with him. | ||
| Would you say that that was maybe the most bizarre experience of the book preparation? | ||
| Because I would love to hear about if there was something weirder. | ||
| Enclosed spaces with Jim Fetzer is pretty damn weird. | ||
| What tops Jim Fetzer's weirdness? | ||
| Jim Fetzer's breath. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| Yeah, I do mention that in the book. | ||
| That's the only reason I brought it up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| It was quite funny. | ||
| On a technicality, I still think that's part of the being in a confined space. | ||
| Yeah, I will give Dan that. | ||
| Yeah, I can't fairly separate that out. | ||
| I would have to say the Alex Jones interview. | ||
| When I interviewed him, that was really interesting. | ||
| And it was funny because... | ||
| After I interviewed him, I had a couple years to think about it before I put it in the book. | ||
| So, you know, I kind of listened to it again and again and thought about it and thought about it in the context of everything that came after. | ||
| And I think, you know, it was a really interesting window into the man, more so than it seemed on the day of, because at the time it seemed like he was just... | ||
| You know, a lot of it. | ||
| He called me the next day and then he spoke for two more hours on the phone. | ||
| And that was actually a little more real because I think he got he might have called his lawyers and realized he made a mistake. | ||
| Listen, I didn't actually put snipers on the roof of my building. | ||
| Or maybe he could have just gotten drunk. | ||
| Yeah, he could have just been drunk. | ||
| Perhaps. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But. | ||
| You know, no idea. | ||
| But I got the sense, like, when we were speaking, Rob Dew, his, you know, top lieutenant, was in the room. | ||
| And I got the sense that he was trying to entertain him. | ||
| You know, watch me intimidate this woman. | ||
| You know, watch me, like, make fun of her. | ||
| Watch me make fun of her paper to her face, etc., etc. | ||
| And that kind of stuff really doesn't bother me. | ||
| And so... | ||
| It didn't really rattle me much. | ||
| Yeah, there's such a good little part in whenever you're describing the interview in your book where you say, if he was really trying to intimidate me, he would have come up and put his face right into mine. | ||
| And instead, he just kept backing further and further away from you. | ||
| Yeah, he was kind of moving around the room and seeking the corners. | ||
| Yeah, that was a great kinetic description of his complete and utter cowardice. | ||
| I feel bad for Abdou. | ||
| He didn't get a show. | ||
| That's really where my heart goes out to. | ||
| Well, he gets to be the corporate representative a few years after this. | ||
| And then he gave us a show. | ||
| Yeah, I'll say. | ||
| His behavior was also really interesting because it was such a... | ||
| He'd laugh at Alex's jokes and then sort of check Alex's face to make sure it was okay that he was laughing. | ||
| Was that a joke? | ||
| Because if you didn't mean it as the joke boss, I don't want to be laughing. | ||
| That was interesting. | ||
| And then I remember calling back, writing a different story, and he was like, is this Elizabeth Williamson from the CIA who says she works for the New York Times? | ||
| And I was just like, Rob, that's just lame. | ||
| You know? | ||
| You can do better, Rob. | ||
| Come on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I go, yeah. | ||
| Okay, Rob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is Alex around? | |
| Rob, can I talk to your dad, please? | ||
| Stop pretending to be a big boy. | ||
| Yeah, that's actually kind of sad. | ||
| I was thinking, you can do better, Rob, but I bet he actually can't. | ||
| No, that's probably as good as he's got. | ||
| I don't think he can, yeah. | ||
| I think history teaches us this. | ||
| Yeah, I've gone back and I realize that one of the things that I've generally missed over the time doing the show is the entire existence of the Infowars Nightly News, the show that Rob was the head of. | ||
| I've gone back and watched some of that and it's... | ||
| I was right to ignore it. | ||
| It's so bad. | ||
| He did a terrible job for years. | ||
| Matched only by David Knight, right? | ||
| I think David Knight had a competence to him. | ||
| He was just boring. | ||
| He was for the... | ||
| The set of the older crowd who might be offended by Alex's yelling. | ||
| Instead of Louder with Crowder or Ben Shapiro, you would think that... | ||
| Quieter with David. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Quieter with David. | ||
| Let's calm it down with David Knight. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Have some chamomile tea in the morning. | ||
| Bedtime. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Do you like to go to bed at 11 a.m.? | ||
|
unidentified
|
David Knight is for you. | |
| You celebrate New Year's at four in the afternoon. | ||
| You interviewed Alex. | ||
| What was the surrealness of it, other than him backing into a corner and failing to intimidate? | ||
| What about it was so surreal? | ||
| I really was trying to get to the idea of how do these two things exist in Alex Jones? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He is the father of... | |
| You know, three children. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Four, sorry, now four. | |
| And he is someone who knew that he was inflicting a lot of pain on parents who he had to have known, obviously, that he was inflicting a lot of pain on the parents of children who were his children's ages who were brutally murdered. | ||
| And I just... | ||
| You know, all the joking aside and all the, you know, the sort of bravado and the kind of, you know, performance, I just, I couldn't really get there. | ||
| And it made me think about some of these other conspiracists where, is it that if you actually looked at that and you didn't just deflect the question, could you actually live with yourself? | ||
| I mean, I've talked with John Ronson, the Welsh filmmaker who spent a lot of time with Alex Jones from way back. | ||
| And he thinks that he was a different person before. | ||
| That earlier on, he was not the kind of person who could do something like that. | ||
| And the Islamophobia and the racism and all of that. | ||
| And he thinks that with money and power... | ||
| I don't necessarily believe that. | ||
| I think that John knew him and obviously has more exposure to him. | ||
| But I think that a lot of the stuff, let's say the bigotry and the denial of stuff. | ||
| Those colonels were there in his earlier career. | ||
| It's just maybe with money and power, he had more to protect and more need to accelerate and be a more dramatic and interesting person. | ||
| Because once you start to make money off being, I don't know, a shithead, it doesn't... | ||
| Excite the audience as much to maintain that same level. | ||
| You kind of have to escalate in order to keep people's attention. | ||
| I think that business model maybe he became a slave to, but I think a fair amount of those tendencies were already there. | ||
| He's a big John Birch guy from the beginning of his career, and they're nothing if not an ideology that's based around Pretty racist central concepts. | ||
| You don't get to be a nice, caring person and also believe that black people are part of a communist plot to kill white people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They just don't. | |
| The idea of civil rights is a communist conspiracy. | ||
| Anathema to... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't feel like... | ||
| I don't feel like that exists generally in a non-bigoted person's... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that is an interesting question as to what Alex was like in different time periods. | ||
| But one thing that John said to us when we talked to Mr. Ronson was he doesn't know if you can really judge Alex based on the way that we would judge other people. | ||
| Because maybe Alex is really just a narcissistic psychopath. | ||
| And if that's the case, what really do we have to say to a person who is just utterly incapable of giving a fuck about whether or not murdered kids' families are in pain, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I always shy away from those things because I'm not a psychiatrist, obviously. | ||
| Goldwater. | ||
| Just a journalist. | ||
| Exactly, Goldwater. | ||
| It is awfully hard to come up with the how, and not only him, you know, how these people could, it's either, maybe it's that they truly, truly believe it. | ||
| In Alex's case, he has already said he thinks children died, so this does not apply to him. | ||
| But I think there are some of these individuals who really do believe that. | ||
| This didn't happen or it didn't happen the way it was reported. | ||
| And then I think there are others of them that there's something they're getting out of this that is much more precious to them than even their reputation. | ||
| Or the sort of ostracization that comes from espousing a theory like this. | ||
| So they're kind of driven back into their own crowd because those are the only people who will give them the benefit of the doubt anymore, not only as a conspiracy theorist, but as a person. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. | ||
| If you go out into reality, it's painful. | ||
| And if you retreat back into fantasy, everybody likes you. | ||
| I mean, if you go outside and you're a vampire and you get burnt, you're going to stay inside. | ||
| Yeah, this is their group. | ||
| It's become a kind of new family to them. | ||
| You know, a number of them, I mean, Wolfgang Halbig, again, springs to mind, his wife left him. | ||
| He is completely estranged from, insofar as I can tell, you know, from his children and from his grandkids. | ||
| And, you know, these, James Tracy, you know, University of... | ||
| FAU. | ||
| FAU, thank you. | ||
| Florida Atlantic University. | ||
| Yeah, I read the book. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Appreciate that. | |
| You'd almost think I didn't. | ||
| I just, you know. | ||
| So, yeah, so he, you know, for him, I mean, he lost his job. | ||
| He told me he's an absolute pariah in academia. | ||
| You know, he is unemployable. | ||
| He has a lot of kids and including a child with a lot of difficulties who needs a You know, medical care. | ||
| And yet he doesn't find a road back for himself. | ||
| And as I'm getting off the phone, kind of feeling awful at, you know, what he's just described as, you know, his life, he's like, wait, wait, we didn't talk about coronavirus yet. | ||
| You know, another government plot. | ||
| So there is an element of psychology there that, you know, I think requires some professional training to understand. | ||
| Yeah, probably. | ||
| Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. | ||
| It's really interesting to look at... | ||
| I'm not going to diagnose that person, but that person's crazy. | ||
| That person needs a diagnosis. | ||
| That person needs a diagnosis. | ||
| You have these people like Fetzer and Halbig and Tracy who you're describing as have faced drastically severe consequences. | ||
| And it's... | ||
| Maybe that's what's coming for Alex, but it's so weird that he's been able, to some degree, to avoid the fate that these other folks have. | ||
| Just duke boys in the General Lee over the laws. | ||
| Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| Well, he's made a lot of money doing this, as you guys know from the documents that have come out in the court cases. | ||
| You know, he can hire legal counsel, and so far he's, you know, but I do think the reckoning is coming in terms of these damages trials. | ||
| I think what I'm hearing from you is that Fetzer's mistake was he didn't start a pill company. | ||
| This is the classic mistake. | ||
| That's where it began. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's where it always begins. | ||
| That's our downfall. | ||
| Yeah, we need a pill company. | ||
| We gotta get a pill company, man. | ||
| So, Elizabeth, I was thinking about this, and, you know, the process of writing this book took quite a while. | ||
| And it's, as much as it is a creative process, it's gotta be also, like, a learning experience as well, going along. | ||
| What do you think is, like... | ||
| One of the most central things that you learned over the course of the experience of writing the book. | ||
| I think I'm not original in saying this, and that's that every book is a lot harder to write than you think it is starting out. | ||
| That's what a lot of colleagues who have written books told me. | ||
| Jordan's complained about that a bit. | ||
| Yes, Jordan. | ||
| Don't you think? | ||
| It's great. | ||
| The process is awesome. | ||
| It happens so quick, and you never, ever struggle. | ||
| That's the thing I learned from writing a book. | ||
| It's not painful in the least. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| You never stare at your computer screen and wonder if life is worth living. | ||
| Well, I mean, the process you're describing is obviously very difficult. | ||
| And then when you add the subject matter being something that's so uncomfortable to wrestle with, that's got to compound things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, one thing that I struggle with as a writer just in general, just in my day job at the Times, is, you know, that sort of that blank paper kind of feeling. | ||
| I will just put something down just not to have to look at that. | ||
| And because as long as the page is blank, I can come up with the most amazing things to do to keep me from actually writing. | ||
| I organized an entire... | ||
| Linen closet during this book project before a chapter, and it wasn't even my linen closet. | ||
| You learned procrastination techniques. | ||
| Really new ones, yeah. | ||
| I impressed even myself, and I'm used to myself on that. | ||
| But I found that that happened before every chapter. | ||
| And there are 26 chapters. | ||
| And I added up all the days that I spent kind of Stalling between chapters because of this total terror of starting a new chapter. | ||
| And I thought, you know, I could have probably finished this book six months earlier. | ||
| Every now and again, when I'm trying to not prepare an episode, I will consider learning a new language or something. | ||
| I find that that's such an impulse of like... | ||
| I don't want to even... | ||
| This material is ugly. | ||
| At least that's productive, though. | ||
| I don't actually do it. | ||
| I just think about it. | ||
| And then sometimes I scroll through Duolingo and I'm like, maybe today is the day that I brush up on my French or whatever. | ||
| Today is Sanskrit day. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I remember when I was writing mine, I had a blank page and I was doing everything possible to avoid looking at it. | ||
| And then the next time I turned and looked down, I had written, you're doing all right. | ||
| Just without, I didn't think about it. | ||
| It was there waiting for me when I went back and I was like, I think I need help. | ||
| I think I'm in trouble. | ||
| I think you might need a diagnosis. | ||
| I think I might need a diagnosis. | ||
| How did you get over that feeling, that blank tape? | ||
| Well, I mean, that was kind of part of, we talked about it before we recorded, but that was part of my chopping up. | ||
| So I printed everything out and then chopped it up. | ||
| And so having the physical Like chopped up pieces of paper with stuff that I had already written on it. | ||
| I could look over at that and then start writing again. | ||
| So that was really, you know, I'm holding a... | ||
| It's almost like you're transcribing then. | ||
| Yeah, it's trying to mix the transcription and turn it into something new, you know? | ||
| So one thing that I did was, and this was on the advice of, you know, a guy who's a mentor to me who's written three or four books. | ||
| His name is David Hoffman. | ||
| And wonderful, wonderful friend. | ||
| And he said, one thing you want to do, bang out a bunch of chapters, or if you can swing it, your whole first draft. | ||
| Send it to a group of readers, people you trust, not just journalists, not just people in Washington or in New York or wherever, but like some friends who read a lot of books and, you know, who you trust to give you some honest feedback. | ||
| So I printed all that out, you know, at 16 chapters. | ||
| I realized that at 16 chapters, and again, there are 26, I was 100,000 words over. | ||
| So that's actually an entire book. | ||
| That's two of my entire books. | ||
| Yeah, I had to cut 100,000 words from the first 16 chapters and then write 10 more. | ||
| But those following 10 were definitely a little more refined than the first 16. The lesson of the 100,000 was learned. | ||
| I mean, one thing that I will say absolutely is great is how readable it is. | ||
| It is so straightforward, well-paced, written, organized, that it's... | ||
| I mean, I read it in, I think, three or four hours. | ||
| Like, sat down and just banged it out. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| And thank you for reading it. | ||
| You're welcome. | ||
| That's a lovely exchange. | ||
| I have another quick question for you. | ||
| What we found is when you study the misinformation world, if you get good enough at it, you become part of your story. | ||
| From the beginning, the idea with our show, Dan's intent was we're not going to interact with Infowars. | ||
| I don't want to become part of the story. | ||
| And in your case, he talked about you on the show. | ||
| Do you feel like you got added into the story more than you wanted to? | ||
| Oh, that's a great question. | ||
| I know! | ||
| What a great exchange! | ||
| What a great exchange! | ||
| You know, I suppose it was going to be inevitable. | ||
| Because when you're asking people why they do what they do and, you know, it's clear that you're not on their team, that they're going to see. | ||
| And again, the nature of this was these people are getting so much psychic income from what they're doing that anyone on the outside of that asking questions and saying what you just said isn't true is a threat and an enemy. | ||
| So I think that there was part of that. | ||
| And then also, you may have noticed over the past several years that the New York Times in general is a pretty handy foil for a lot of, you know, folks who tend to believe some of this stuff. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And it's something that has... | ||
|
unidentified
|
On the right and left, by the way. | |
| Pardon me? | ||
| And it's something that has some clout attached to it. | ||
| The New York Times is attacking me is almost like a sign of validation for someone like Alex. | ||
| It would be very difficult to resist complaining about it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I tried to... | ||
| While some of what I knew had gone on and what I was learning and what people were saying was absolutely infuriating. | ||
| Really, beyond infuriating, I was trying to understand. | ||
| I just kept trying to think, if I'm passing judgment or I'm just pushing back all the time, I'm not going to gain any fresh insights. | ||
| I mean, we know this stuff is wrongheaded. | ||
| We already know that. | ||
| So they don't need me to tell them that. | ||
| I'm trying to figure out, how did you... | ||
| Become this way? | ||
| And why do you think this? | ||
| Is it a profit reason? | ||
| Is it an ideological reason? | ||
| Is there some need in you that this fulfills? | ||
| I was trying to understand that just because I wanted the book to actually help our... | ||
| Collective, societal thinking about this and maybe help us arrive at some answers. | ||
| How can we bring people back from the edge or keep them from tipping over in the first place? | ||
| That's what I was trying to do. | ||
| And I guess by fighting with people, you're probably not going to get there. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It doesn't seem like it. | ||
| No, you might be able to write a book that's full of action sequences of fights that you have. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But yeah, that might not be societally as useful. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then I also, you know, the thing I was always obviously holding close was this idea that, you know, these families and telling me their story, you know, they were trusting me with the worst. | ||
| possible day of their life or anyone's life. | ||
| And they were doing it not because of anything having to do with me. | ||
| They were doing it because they wanted you and all of us to understand that this was something that if these folks can come for the parent of a murdered child, they're coming for all of us. | ||
| And that this is A societal warning that they're trying to raise. | ||
| And I know that this is a really hard topic. | ||
| This shooting is something that a lot of humans, and it's a very human reaction to want to look away from it and not want to relive those details and where you were when it happened and how old your own children were and all of that. | ||
| But I kind of feel like we owe it to the families to walk through that with them and understand what happened afterward because they are trying to help by telling this story. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a great, great thought. | ||
| I feel like... | ||
| It doesn't get better than that. | ||
| No, I feel like that may be a great thought to close on. | ||
| I think there's a lot to think about there. | ||
| Yeah, we're not going to be able to top that one. | ||
| So since you get the best line, I think we'll just end it. | ||
| Oh, well. | ||
| I'm so grateful to you guys for having me on and for reading the book and really for... | ||
| I mean, you guys helped me so... | ||
| So much in this book. | ||
| I mean, Dan, just, you know, you know so much about the way Infowars and Alex Jones operates. | ||
| It's unfortunate. | ||
| And I know you're going to feel embarrassed that I'm, you know, giving you, but you really deserve so much credit for helping me understand this guy and where he's coming from. | ||
| Well, that's actually probably, it's probably good that we give full disclosure that I did, we did speak in the process of you writing the book. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, I don't want to try and hide that point. | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| I mean, you guys helped me a lot to understand, you know, that corner of what this book is. | ||
| And it's a big corner, believe me. | ||
| I'm really grateful for you using the plural. | ||
| That's really nice of you to really include me, even though you don't have to. | ||
| It's the royal you guys. | ||
| It's really nice of you. | ||
| Well, I was thrilled to be able to put this information to use. | ||
| Just like you were talking about with Bill Ogden and the experience of watching a ton of Alex's content, it's incredibly painful if you're actually engaging with it and looking at it critically. | ||
| And I think going through the process of learning so much about this would be useless. | ||
| If it wasn't for something, if it wasn't used for something. | ||
| So thank you for providing something of an outlet for that. | ||
| Oh my gosh, yeah. | ||
| No, I just remember all the time saying, what do you think he was saying when he said this? | ||
| Or on this particular date? | ||
| Or do you have this particular video? | ||
| Or, you know, it was just, you know, if the effort is to try and understand why this happens, thank you so much. | ||
| You're quite welcome, and thank you. | ||
| People can find the book everywhere, right? | ||
| Where do people get books? | ||
| Where do people get books? | ||
| Barnes& Noble. | ||
| I didn't even bother with the print engine. | ||
| I just put it on a website. | ||
| It's like, take it. | ||
| Cheers. | ||
| I just had a mini panic. | ||
| I guess it's people download books now, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's it. | |
| That's all I did. | ||
| You can get it at the library. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can get it at your favorite local bookstore. | |
| Wait, Trump didn't kill libraries? | ||
| I thought Trump ended it. | ||
| I thought Trump ended libraries. | ||
| Didn't Trump kill all libraries? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Only his own presidential library, maybe. | ||
| Is this book going to be in the Trump presidential library? | ||
| That is a good question. | ||
| He's in it a lot. | ||
| Library of Congress. | ||
| Yeah, and again, it's called Sandy Hook, An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth. | ||
| Thank you again, Elizabeth. | ||
| We appreciate you joining us. | ||
| Yes, thank you so much. | ||
| Thank you both. | ||
| Really appreciate it. | ||
| Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that. | ||
| Nice to take a little break. | ||
| A little breaky. | ||
| A little breaky for us. | ||
| Because, man, shit's about to get crazy. | ||
| Is he doing better today? | ||
| Well, Enrique Tarrio just got arrested today as we're recording these intros. | ||
| And that was part of a conspiracy charge that also includes Rambo Joe Biggs, former InfoWars employee. | ||
| Seditious conspiracy, too. | ||
| I believe it was actually just conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. | ||
| Oh, that's nice. | ||
| But in the indictment, it does involve, at one point... | ||
| Enrique Tarrio meets with Stuart Rhodes in an underground parking garage. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Sneaky stuff might be afoot. | ||
| Was it with his fucking deep throat there, too? | ||
| The whole gang was down there. | ||
| Fox Mulder. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Just everybody getting together like, wait, what are you doing here? | ||
| Yeah, so some crazy stuff may be about to pop off, and so it's nice to just get ready for that incoming barrage of shit. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So yeah, we will be back, Jordan. | ||
| Probably dealing with that. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| If Alex decides to deal with it. | ||
| If not, I guess we might talk about the fucking convoy in D.C. Do this again. | ||
| Coming to you from an undisclosed location in Mexico for no reason whatsoever. | ||
| Hey everybody, I'm recording this from the underground parking garage where Stuart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio had a clandestine meeting. | ||
| Sounds great, amazingly. | ||
| Acoustics. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Wonderful. | ||
| But yeah, we'll be back. | ||
| But until then, we have a website. | ||
| Indeed we do. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We are also on Twitter. | ||
| Indeed we are. | ||
| It's at knowledge underscore fight and at 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 robot. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're on the air. | |
| Thanks for holding. | ||
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |
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