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Jan. 25, 2026 - Truth Unrestricted
50:49
Snowden Bishop's Receipts

Send us a text Last week's episode (An Open Letter To Alex Hale) left some unanswered questions. Those questions are answered here. Links Quorac's Nov 8th Twitter space which is referenced several times in this episode. The relevant section starts shortly after the 2 hr mark. https://x.com/AlteredEggoEgo/status/1987015544298701112?s=20

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Snowden Bishop's Receipts 00:15:19
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that is taking the gloves off in the fight against disinformation.
I'm Spencer, your host.
So last episode featured an open letter, and the contents of that letter referred to a person named Snowden Bishop.
In that letter, I made several claims about Snowden Bishop that I said I could back up with evidence.
In online social media terminology, these are often called the receipts.
They are the thing you check to make sure something really is what someone claims it is.
Here are Snowden Bishop's receipts.
Just as a refresher, the crux of the open letter and these subsequent receipts are about interviews that Snowden Bishop did with Judy Mikovitz of plandemic infamy, and the fact that Snowden Bishop has these episodes on a podcast feed on Spotify and iHeartRadio, and that she has not yet taken them down.
Also, that Snowden Bishop keeps trying to work with people whose hands are a lot cleaner than her own in this regard, and that if she really wants to do that, then we should all expect her to remove these episodes and give us all more details on how her thoughts about this have evolved over time.
In the feedback I've been getting from my open letter, it has been said that this is a he said, she said kind of drama that can be discarded.
He said, she said situations are ones in which no one else was there, and therefore no one can use any objective evidence to determine what really happened.
Everyone needs to pass judgment based on which side they were already supporting before the he or she made any claims about made any claims about what the other said.
In stark contrast to a he said, she said situation, I can show explicitly that Snowden Bishop actually said and did all the things I claimed she said and did.
Therefore, this is no longer some form of hearsay in which everything I say can be dismissed.
This is now a she said these things and you can hear them for yourself situation.
As we go through the various clips today, an underlying theme will be present.
I'll mention it now and repeatedly refer to it as we step through.
It's a big part of what drives my work here on this podcast.
Objective reality matters.
We cannot allow our interpretations of the world to get reduced to merely a left-right paradigm.
If objective reality is not our guiding star, then we are truly lost.
Liberals would like to say that reality has a left-wing bias.
If that's true, it can only be because of the truthfulness of the people on the left.
Once those people stop being truthful, then this expression will have no meaning.
These receipts might be out of order based on the order in which the claims were made during the open letter to Alex Hale, but I'm doing them in this order because it makes more sense as a single story being told for this episode.
So the first bit is about claims I made about what anti-vaccine disinformation was actually in those Snowden Bishop podcast episodes.
I played a clip in the open letter episode that featured Judy Mikovitz saying some very dangerous stuff, so I don't feel the need to play that one again.
But I also said that Snowden said some things that were disinformation as well.
So here we are.
This is Snowden Bishop talking about how we should be cautious of vaccines because they are injected directly into the bloodstream.
This visceral imagery is meant to inspire fear of vaccines and is demonstrably false.
Vaccines are injected into muscle tissue.
This is from the intro to that episode.
The same can be said for vaccines.
While inoculations are mandatory in some states, the manufacturers are not required to disclose the binders that carry the pathogens that are injected directly into the bloodstream.
Yeah.
That was Snowden Bishop's voice for anyone who's unfamiliar with it.
A few moments later in that same intro to her podcast episode, we have a bit about vaccine liability and pretending as though the vaccine court to compensate for vaccine injuries doesn't exist.
This rhetoric, again, is meant to encourage vaccine skepticism.
All things considered, there is a reason why pharmaceutical industry is so shrouded in secrecy.
Full disclosure about their methods, sources, and materials could expose them to liability.
And what's more, they could be held accountable.
That's the topic of today's show.
Yeah, a little light laugh there as she attempts to laugh off the idea that there might ever be any accountability.
There's more evidence for each of these claims of mine in those podcast episodes.
I'm attempting to show the receipts while also keeping them brief.
This isn't a director's commentary of her entire podcast.
It's been said that I have done a massive amount of work to get this information that I use to discover how this situation occurred.
The narrative has been that this supposed massive amount of work is a sign of sickness or obsessiveness.
The truth is that I first learned about this a little over a year ago and have done almost nothing because I haven't been looking very hard at all.
I did an episode about Dr. Nice last July because she made some serious allegations and I felt that I needed an episode that I could use as a single link that had the entire explanation.
Since then, again, mostly nothing because I do have other things I prefer to do with this podcast.
I didn't see much of a way forward with an effort to get Snowden Bishop to remove her Judy Mikovitz episodes and I moved on to things I found to be more enjoyable.
If it came up in conversation or it seemed to relate to something that someone I knew was doing, then I made sure they knew about it.
People who know both myself and Snowden Bishop deserve to be able to make an informed decision on how they will interact with their world, and so I do that.
And more to the point, I want content creators to be responsible for any disinformation they produce.
I want them to think about what they're going to say before they say it.
I want people to take the idea of information integrity seriously.
Which is partly how I ended up having two other podcasters, Korak the Bard and Doc Scorpion, sometimes known as Scorpion the Bird, on my podcast.
I had been in touch with them a little.
I listened to their podcast.
They said something on one episode that I strongly disagreed with.
I wanted to know how serious they were about it.
I also wanted to communicate to them and everyone else that we need to not be careless when engaging with conspiracy beliefs.
So I invited them on and they accepted.
We talked for way too long.
We know that now.
People can listen to that episode for themselves and come to their own opinions about how that happened.
The episode with Korak and Doc Scorpion aired on October 31st.
Eight days later, Korak hosted a space on Twitter.
I showed up for the first bit but had to leave early.
Later on, roughly two hours in, this happened.
What you're about to hear is someone named Jen speaking with Snowden Bishop and Korak about Virginia state politics and then making a sharp pivot.
Side note, all the clips from this point on are taken from this space.
It was recorded on Twitter.
Anyone who isn't blocked by the hosts can listen to it themselves.
It is publicly available information.
Committees right now pulling them to the left because we can do that because we now have a 64, 64 seat meeting in the House of Delegates.
So yeah, no more having to lobby, at least for the next two years, knuckle draggers.
So that's exciting.
Yeah, no, that's awesome.
Yeah, we're excited.
We're very excited.
But I need to pick a bone with you, Korak.
I do love getting my bone picked.
Oh, Lord.
I just say you guys going on on Spencer Watson's podcast, that guy attacks liberals.
That's all he does is attack liberals.
So you guys should be careful of that guy.
I really intensely dislike and distrust that man.
He harasses a lot of liberals on Twitter.
And he says he's anti-conspiracy theories or whatever, but the only people he ever goes after is the left.
He's like you guys, how you go after the right, he goes after the left.
So that's just my opinion.
I've not, I watched a little bit of the podcast because I'm a big Scorpion and Korak fan.
And I'm glad you guys, from what I could see, held your own in the podcast with him, but I don't know.
I would not spend a lot of time with that guy because he spends his life attacking liberals.
And that I really dislike that man with an intense passion.
Anyway, I'll land there.
Yeah.
So this happens a lot with Snowden Bishop.
Someone she's often in spaces with speaking on her behalf.
Sometimes even when Snowden is there, as is the case here.
This is why I sometimes refer to Snowden and crew, because Snowden has never spoken to me directly and likely never will.
This is not by my choice.
She has had many opportunities, but stifled every one.
Sometimes one of her crew, like Jen here, will make the claim that I'm being unreasonable because I haven't gone to Snowden with these things.
The truth is that Snowden is the other half of that communication channel, and she has worked to prevent it as thoroughly as possible by blocking me and encouraging as many other people to block me as possible, which is more or less what Snowden and Jen were doing with this moment in Korak Space, attempting to tell Korak that he was a bad boy for appearing on my podcast.
Moving on.
In the open letter, I made the claim that Snowden and crew will say that she is unable to remove these episodes, that it's a lot of work and therefore she should be excused from the responsibility.
Here's the clip.
I don't know if that's a coherent thing.
They go around the internet.
It's not just Snowden.
And I'll just, I don't know.
Snowden may want to speak for herself, but I'm going to speak for Snowden for a second.
The Mikovitz thing, she used to have a podcast called The Cannabis Reporter, I think.
She can speak for herself in a minute.
Where she did platform an odious person because some of us, you know, had formerly odious views.
I also believed the anti-vax bullshit in the late 90s and early 2000s.
She took down what she could of that woman, but her podcast has been, what is it called when it syndicated?
It's a syndicated show.
So, I mean, I'd have to go after, what, 400 or so stations to tell them to take it down off of their websites.
And, you know, I can't take one podcast down from my heart without having the whole thing removed.
So.
Yeah.
It's an interesting bit here, right?
Jen admits that Snowden used to have anti-vaccine beliefs and platformed an odious person.
This has a who among us has never believed things that weren't true feel to it.
It goes along with Jen saying that she also believed these anti-vaccine lies once upon a time.
But I would interject there and ask Jen, how did you come to believe these untrue things about vaccines?
Was it because the disinformation was available in your environment?
Does that disinformation need to get removed so that it doesn't fool anyone else?
Where does that removal begin?
Does it happen through the setting of a series of social expectations placed upon the people who produce and have direct access to that disinformation?
Look, I've also said some untrue things in my life.
I'm not infallible.
And if I said falsehoods on this podcast and those things were dangerous beliefs that, if believed by listeners that I'm clearly trying to speak to, could harm them, then I should be held to that same standard and have to remove them.
And I need to make sure the difference is clear here.
I believe in an early episode of this podcast, I quoted the wrong temperature scale when talking about how hot it was somewhere.
This is something I got wrong, but it isn't likely to make anyone believe in an entirely false thing about the world.
It's also unlikely to lead anyone to make decisions that would be deleterious to their health and or the safety of others.
But discouraging from health safety measures like vaccines, that's sort of a hot button with me.
Sorry, not sorry.
Talking about the removal of these episodes as the metaphorical stamping out of hundreds of tiny fires is an exaggeration of the amount of work that would be required in order to justify inaction.
And no one should trust the person who treats their own disinformation this way.
iHeartRadio is a single podcast feed.
If the platform doesn't allow Snowden Bishop to take down single episodes, then that's a problem between Snowden Bishop and iHeartRadio.
If you're going to say that it's syndicated to over 400 radio stations, then you could at least provide the list of stations.
If those individual radio stations are airing these podcasts uncritically, then maybe people should know which stations they are so people can avoid listening to them.
Guided Reality Risks 00:05:05
And I will say again that it's egregious for Snowden Bishop to ask anyone to do more work to prevent her disinformation than she does herself.
In the open letter, I said that Snowden claimed to have removed what must be imagined as far worse things from those episodes before they ever aired.
I called this a negotiation with reality, such that the end point of the negotiation just ends up where it is now.
I made the argument that if someone breaks into your house to steal things, but later says they could have stolen far more items, they are no less a burglar.
In the same way, the fact that far worse disinformation could have been in the episode does not make the disinformation there somehow more acceptable by comparison.
I also made the claim that Snowden Bishop said that two doctors reviewed the information before it was aired and that this was an appeal to authority.
This clip contains the receipts for both of those claims.
And she wasn't quite as much of a kook, but during that interview, I started hearing her going into this whole pro-Trump, weird-ass shit that she was saying.
And I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to have to extend this interview.
So I interviewed her for almost two hours so that I would have enough there that I could cut out most of what she was saying because I found her to be really kooky.
And, you know, I always had, there were a couple of doctors that were actually on my board of advisors and I would send things to them before they came out.
Right.
So a few things here.
First, the things that Mikovitz was saying that Snowden needed to cut out were apparently all political talk about Trump.
It's possible that to Snowden Bishop, this is the only thing that properly fits the definition of disinformation.
Anything that adds weight to the other side of the political ledger is bad information and needs to be cut out.
And anything that adds weight to your own side of the political ledger is good information and needs to be treated with great respect, despite any level of critical thinking that might otherwise be applied.
If one looks to the situation from that perspective, then yes, one could see my effort here as ridiculous.
But my point is that narrowing your focus to only the ideas that help you with a direct political victory today will lead to calamity.
It'll just be a calamity of a different shape.
It's why I wanted to talk to Korek and Doc Scorpion about the Butler shooting.
If you're interpreting your reality based on what explanation will assist you in your political goals, then you're devaluing objective reality as something that you will definitely need in the future.
The mental practice of allowing oneself to be guided by reality in select situations, if those situations allow the narrative to lean more heavily to their side, is called the dishonesty of zealotry.
Right now, the political left is watching how successful the political right has been through the expedient and thorough use of falsehoods.
And there are people on the left who want to use their own falsehoods to counter the narratives coming from the right.
But think about that for a second.
The right wing has had years of experience building entire messaging pyramids based on the production and distribution of these falsehoods.
Ask yourself, could the left win a war of lies against the right?
Likely not.
What's worse than not beating Trump next time around?
Giving up reality and still losing to Trump the next time around.
This is the thinking that I most want people to avoid.
Uncritically accepting the talking points from the left just because they make Trump look bad will lead to an unreal nightmare of merely a different shape than it's heading now, if you win at all.
This conclusion is echoed by what Jen said earlier when she pivoted to how I'm not to be trusted.
She said, this guy does nothing but attack the left.
My argument is that we all need the left to be guided by reality.
In cases where left-leaning voices aren't doing that, I criticize it.
I don't criticize them for being on the left or for being liberal.
I criticize them for deviating from objective reality.
for putting falsehoods and conspiratorial notions into the environment that will make it more difficult to see reality in the future.
Lies are fought with the truth, not with other lies.
Pandemic Timing and Truth 00:05:18
Second, a keen listener might note that Snowden Bishop didn't actually say that those two doctors reviewed and approved of these particular episodes.
This is a rhetorical technique called verbal juxtaposition.
You speak two true facts one after the other as though they are directly related and let the listener draw their own conclusions about what you meant.
This is done in political speech all the time.
And it's one way for politicians to wiggle away from the idea that they said a thing because they weren't as specific as one would be if it were, say, a written contract.
I don't think we need contract law to understand what's happening.
Snowden clearly meant to lead anyone listening to the idea that what was said in her Judy Mikovitz interviews did not contain dangerous disinformation because it was reviewed by the two board members who happen to be doctors.
If she didn't mean that, then there would have been no reason to mention that she regularly sent things to two doctors so that they could be reviewed.
But to imagine that Snowden isn't really trying to say this really makes the sentence incredibly strange.
It would have been the equivalent of saying, so I could have cut out most of what she was saying because I found her to be really kooky.
And, you know, I always had seasoned tickets for LA Lakers games that I used to impress people.
That would have sounded really out of place.
And people should wonder why she would add that part in there if it's not related to the topic at hand.
So this is Snowden Bishop talking here, defending herself.
If that's the hill they want to die on about me, I guess, you know, it's not all that bad, but it's just, it's just bizarre, you know, and I'm very pro-science.
You know, I had a lot of like naturopathic kind of beliefs for a long time.
And I actually, you know, still believe that we should try to avoid as much as possible.
But I'm not an extremist like they were trying to paint me.
And pandemic wasn't even a twinkle in anybody's eye by the time that interview went out in 2020.
So, you know, the things that they were trying to, you know, paint me with broad strokes about just didn't hold any water.
And anybody who actually wanted to talk to me about it and find out exactly what the story was, by the time they heard it, they were aware, you know, but that didn't stop them from coming after me.
And they always find other things to come after me about.
I'm just used to it.
I don't, I don't really care what they think.
Yeah.
Yeah, I could have just talked to her.
Yeah.
She's very pro-science.
And that's great.
I mean, yeah, but I suggest that a person do a little more for science than just repeatedly tell people that they are indeed very pro-science.
And you heard her.
She's not an extremist.
At least not like I was trying to paint her.
I've never said Snowden Bishop was an extremist.
I've said that she platformed an anti-vaxxer, and she did.
Elevating my rhetoric in order to knock it down is a straw man argument.
It's an attempt to make my argument look ridiculous in order to dismiss it.
I will make my argument again.
Snowden Bishop produced podcast episodes that contain anti-vaccine disinformation and platform a notorious anti-vaxxer.
They are still available.
Snowden needs to remove them.
Not removing them is a sign that she is not fully convinced that these ideas are wrong.
If she wants to be taken seriously as being pro-science, she needs to explain how she came to distrust vaccines and how she later came to understand that she had originally been wrong.
Snowden also pivots to how Plandemic wasn't out yet.
And so this exonerates her from any of the bad aura that emanates from that particular film.
This is a way of attempting to dodge blame.
I've never suggested that Snowden had anything to do with Plandemic.
I only mentioned Plandemic in the context of this because Plandemic was the place where Judy Mikovitz became truly infamous.
Plandemic was released in May of 2020, early in the pandemic, when most people had no idea what was going to happen and many were still wondering about how it happened in the first place.
Plandemic capitalized on the lack of information to stoke fear.
I'm not certain about whether that factored into when Snowden's interviews of Mikovitz were released, but I can say with certainty that those interviews definitely came out at a key moment during the pandemic and due to that timing, very similar to the timing of pandemic, had a high likelihood of causing a lot of damage.
And by damage, I mean a reduction in the overall confidence in vaccines among anyone who listened.
Jim Stewartson's Legal Shenanigans 00:06:12
A reduction in confidence at a time when we really needed the needle to move in the other direction.
Very pro-science.
Here's a clip of Jen trying to manufacture doubt on the sincerity of my intentions.
What I find really interesting about the Spencer crowd is they're very anti-Jim Stewartson, which I don't really even know who that is.
I mean, he's a left-winger, but I don't know that much about him.
But he has been in a lawsuit with Michael Flynn, the enormous piece of shit of the world.
A lot of them are rooting for Michael Flynn in that lawsuit because they hate Jim Stewartson so much.
And I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Like, I get that you don't like this Jim Stewartson guy.
Fine.
Block him, whatever, whatever.
But you're going to take Mike Flynn's side because you hate this liberal?
Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
I don't.
Please make this make sense.
Anyway, I'll lay it.
Yeah.
So Jen doesn't really know who Jim Stewartson is, apparently, but she knows he's on the left and that Mike Flynn is on the right.
And this is enough for her to feel like she can properly assess the entire situation.
No need to look any closer than that.
Just draw the conclusion of rightness and wrongness based on which side of the political spectrum each participant exists on.
Then if any other details cross the path that attempt to interrupt that conclusion, all that's needed is a reminder of the goal that the left needs to win, that Trump needs to go.
So Jen goes on to cast the world into this right-left paradigm.
One can only have one side and that side must be Jen's side.
A little bit of context is needed here.
I've done two episodes on Jim Stewartson and his rhetoric, and people can listen to those if they like.
Jim Stewartson is an ostensibly liberal or left-leaning influencer who peddles his own conspiracy ideas to the left side of the political spectrum.
One of the errant notions he has used for grandstanding is the idea that Mike Flynn is the person who began the Q account that became the genesis for QAnon beliefs.
As part of that, Stewartson has made many unsupported claims that Mike Flynn found to be defamatory.
Mike Flynn sued Stewartson, and the court case is ongoing.
Some people I know on Twitter follow the Flynn v. Stewartson case because Jim Stewartson has used its existence to ask for money from his left-leaning supporters to pay for legal costs.
At last count, this amount was over $90,000.
These are legal costs that could have been avoided entirely if Stewartson had stuck to claims that could be supported by evidence and not whatever reality-rending bullshit he's peddling.
This is why many people call Jim Stewartson a grifter.
It's possible that Stewartson has spent these funds on things other than to pay for his attorneys because he's never provided any proof of how he's spent the money.
Case in point, Kash Patel also sued Jim Stewartson for defamation and was awarded a default judgment of $250,000 because Jim Stewartson did not hire a lawyer or respond at all to the lawsuit.
One does not need to be on one side of this case in order to be against the other side.
Nor does opposing Jim Stewartson's conspiratorial ideas make one a fan of Mike Flynn or his lawsuit against Jim Stewartson.
This idea only makes sense if one has the absolutist perspective that everyone in existence must be entirely with one side or they are necessarily doing the work of the opposite side.
That due to his existence on the left side of the political spectrum, Jim Stewartson is necessarily blameless and can be forgiven for anything he does to advance that effort.
This is what has allowed Jim Stewartson to carry on as long as he has.
The political right has become dangerous enough that an increasing number of people are willing to look past his indiscretions, his toxic demeanor, and his conspiratorial notions to say to themselves, he might fight dirty, but at least he's fighting on my side.
Sometimes people will even be able to tell themselves this while also telling themselves that their political beliefs are inherently better because they don't have to sling mud to make the other side look bad.
That these two ideas can both reside side by side in a human mind is not a great sign and is part of the greater project of pushing back against every unreal notion in our world.
To have reality determined not by left versus right, but by real versus unreal.
And in the case of Flynn v. Stewartson, it's perfectly possible that both parties are unreal and need to be stopped.
Feeding money into the Stewartson machine so that it can eventually end up in Flynn's pocket is a losing strategy.
Also worth noting, the fact that Jim Stewartson has attacked, trolled, doxxed, and generally disrupted far more people on the left than anyone who's not part of the Trump administration makes the idea that his detractors should be quiet to allow for peace to reign on the left is a dangerous inversion of reality.
Anyone who realistically wanted to make peace on the left would assist in shutting down Stewartson rather than just shutting down everyone who has disagreed with him.
Feud Fueled By Stewartson 00:15:36
So this is Snowden talking about the hypocrisy of attempting to hold her to account for having anti-science media online while claiming to have pro-science views.
The controversy of it all is, you know, trying to paint me as like an anti-vaxxer or a conspiracy theorist or whatever it is they're trying to, you know, their main goal is just to isolate me, which, you know, I understand that.
I understand exactly what their MO is and there's nothing I can do about it.
It's just what, but to see me being very much an advocate of the science community, having a lot of friends who are in the science community, launching a new show that is basically to specifically fight disinformation about science, and then having them sabotage the last two shows that we tried to have, that just shows the level of hypocrisy.
They're not interested in changing my mind about science, you know, or making me a pro-science person.
That's not what this was about.
This was about isolating and discrediting and defaming and all those things that they feel that they need to do for whatever his little assignment is with me.
And, you know, that's all it is.
So that was really bizarre.
And one of the shows that we had was with Brent Lee.
And he contacted, he and this other person contacted Brent Lee.
They also contacted Angela Rasmussen, the two shows that we had booked and that we were promoting.
And when one dropped out, we pushed up the other one.
We were going to have a show.
Then they contacted that person, told them that I was an anti-vaxxer or whatever they told her, and then she canceled.
So we're like, why are these people canceling?
Come to find out.
Very close to the date that we were supposed to be having Brett Lee on the show, he actually invited that person to his little space that he did and interviewed him there, like just to say, fuck you.
So, yeah, so if he really wanted me to be pro-science, like he says he does, then he would have let me do my, you know, pro-science, anti-disinformation space with the doctors and an attorney that, you know, we had it scheduled.
So there's a level of hypocrisy that, you know, if people actually hear what is actually going on, they would totally understand it.
And he would be completely discredited.
So yeah.
Yeah.
It's pretty incredible to listen to Snowden Bishop attempt to persuade people to not listen to me while she says that having me persuade people to not appear in her Twitter spaces was inherently wrong.
She's like a walking source of irony.
Also worth noting, I dissuaded no one from appearing in the various Twitter spaces she had planned.
I have heard about some of the cancellations she mentions.
I know Brent Lee, but I don't know why Brent Lee canceled.
He makes his own decisions.
I don't pull his strings.
He's not my puppet to be dangled in Snowden's face.
I occasionally send him direct messages and sometimes he even answers those.
Brent, if you get around to hearing this, no shade.
I know you've got a lot on your plate.
One day, I was home from work and I decided to host a Twitter space in the morning.
The app offers to send an invite to the most recent people you've messaged.
I did that.
He was one of the people who got it.
It was morning for me and evening for him in the UK.
To my great surprise, he showed up.
Turns out that he happened to have the evening off and came along.
We had a good chat.
We argued with a right-winger who was pretending to be far more sane than he really turned out to be.
Brent left and I haven't actually spoken to him since.
Maybe we'll have some time again.
Maybe he'll have some time again later this year.
If I had the opportunity to take an hour of Brent Lee's time and I knew about it in advance, I definitely wouldn't have done it on a Twitter space arguing with other randos.
I would have put that into a podcast episode where we could have discussed something more specific and useful.
Very strange that Snowden thinks this was done to her personally.
I don't plan my life or my online time around ways to annoy Snowden Bishop.
And pretending like Brent Lee would participate in such a childish farce only insults him.
That said, there's also the issue of Angela Rasmussen.
For those who don't know, Angela Rasmussen is a world-class virologist who is a professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
What strange trip through life, what strange trip she took through life to end up there, we may never know.
Dr. Rasmussen also volunteers her time to the thankless task of science communication, mostly to push back against anti-vaccine disinformation that intersects with her field of study.
In so many ways, Dr. Rasmussen is the scientist that Judy Mikovitz pretends to be, which really adds an interesting spin to this.
Snowden Bishop did promote a Twitter space involving Angela Rasmussen as a guest speaker.
That Twitter space was subsequently canceled.
After the cancellation, I did some asking around, and I found out that someone had indeed contacted Dr. Rasmussen and informed her about Snowden Bishop's anti-vaccine past and the interviews with Mikovitz.
And this is very likely what caused the cancellation.
I don't know Dr. Rasmussen.
I've never spoken with her.
I feel that this issue is beneath her time to notice, so I haven't bothered to make the attempt to contact her to see how much of this is true from her perspective.
But note how Snowden talks about it.
It's not the fault of Snowden's anti-vaccine past that's the problem.
It's not the relative proximity to friendliness with Judy Mikovitz that's the problem.
It's not that as a science communicator, Dr. Rasmussen must maintain a reputation.
It's not that due to that reputation, Dr. Rasmussen might like to make informed choices regarding who she accepts speaking engagements from.
No.
To Snowden Bishop, the fault lies with whomever told Dr. Rasmussen about Snowden Bishop's past.
And for that, it's not Snowden's fault for not removing the anti-vaccine disinformation.
It's not Snowden's fault for not explaining herself and her past adequately.
No, everything would have turned out fine in Snowden's view if Dr. Rasmussen had been none the wiser about any anti-vaccine podcast episodes that Snowden had previously done and were still available.
Because this isn't about helping Dr. Rasmussen be a competent and trusted pro-science voice.
It's about creating the image that Snowden is fine and good and everything she does is fine and good.
It's about creating the political illusion that everything Snowden does is pro-science because she explicitly says she's pro-science and because no one really knows what she did in the past and no one has a reason to not believe her.
It's about ignoring the facts of the case and only judging Snowden by the selection of things Snowden has allowed anyone to know.
It's about washing Snowden's reputation of its past and reshaping it into the appearance of being pro-science.
But again, this is not how one demonstrates being pro-science by merely having one's name mentioned with as many scientists as possible.
That would be verbal juxtaposition again.
Snowden Bishop doesn't talk about science to show a pro-science stance.
She talks about the people she hangs out with to show a pro-science stance.
She will literally say, I have a lot of friends in the scientific community.
Snowden would love to name drop Angela Rasmussen as a name of a legitimate scientist in the field as proof that Snowden is no longer an anti-vaxxer.
But that's not how belief works.
That's not what it means to be pro-vaccine or pro-science, and no one should be swayed by that.
Also note the language used in reference to me.
That my criticism is a little assignment.
Who gave me this assignment?
What hierarchical structure lives above me to communicate this work to me?
One is left to wonder.
This is a bigger part of the picture that I need to get across.
It's part of the absolutist political view that Snowden holds.
To those who speak for Snowden Bishop or to Snowden Bishop herself, it does not matter that I had nothing to do with these speaker cancellations.
Snowden and crew cause a lot of ruckus and ruffle a lot of feathers with their bully tactics, blatant attempts at emotional manipulation, and winner-take-all approach to social media by extensive use of the block function while actively encouraging everyone they meet to block the same list of people.
It squeezes out any criticism and actively prevents any chance of useful change.
In causing all that ruckus, you can well understand how it is that they have accumulated a few axe grinders.
Snowden and crew would like to paint all of their opponents as being identical.
Every naysayer is as bad as the worst naysayer.
If one person trolls them, then everyone who has ever disagreed with them has also been part of that same trolling effort.
If it turns out they weren't, then that doesn't matter because they probably would have cheered it on and therefore have earned the same level of retaliation.
If any single person engages in a personal attack, then every person who disagrees with them is guilty of having done that same personal attack.
To Snowden, there aren't a list of individuals who oppose her.
There is only one group opposing her, and everyone who speaks up to contradict her joins that group.
This is how she comes to describe me as being part of a they.
It's a worldview that leads to the metaphorical lighting of torches and grabbing of pitchforks on a weekly basis.
Snowden and crew circle the wagons at any sign of dissent or minor disagreement, even among the people they've invited to group chats to work with.
These tactics provide for no nuance or additional perspective, and they actively lead to the demonization of people who attempt to encourage positive change.
Because to Snowden, only Snowden's version of positive growth will be acceptable.
Everyone else has been given a little assignment to oppose her.
Conjuring the idea that there is a coordinated effort to prevent her from succeeding is a comforting notion.
It explains why so little progress has been had so far.
But these all-or-nothing tactics cause a lot of division on the side of the political spectrum that Snowden claims to want to heal.
Snowden wants unity on the left to oppose Trump.
But it's everyone else's fault for not working with her and her ideas to get that done.
Everyone else has been given a little assignment to stop her.
This is the conspiratorial thinking.
So who gave me this little assignment?
After all, there's no way I could have come up with this all on my own, right?
There's no way I could have done any of this out of a sense of outrage at the irrationality of it.
To believe that, you would have to believe that I've spent several years now building language and terminology to articulate these exact paths of conspiratorial and dishonest thinking.
Terminology like absolutism, where everyone is either with you or against you.
The dishonesty of zealotry, which is the drive to deviate from the truth in service of a political goal, reciprocal populism, where you see how effective the other side has been at accomplishing political goals with their populist rhetoric, so you engage in the same tactics to oppose them.
And reality inversion, a special form of gaslighting in which you bypass or ignore the evidence and simply declare that the opposite interpretation is perfectly valid and maybe even more likely.
So unless I'd already been doing that this whole time, there would be no reason to believe in my sincerity.
Somehow, Snowden and crew have convinced themselves that though their worldview is not as simple as black and white, it is as simple as red and blue.
That the world is both not as simple as I'm saying they make it out, but also exactly that simple.
I'm a bad person because I criticize people on the left.
That my project to use reality rather than political allegiance to determine right and wrong is holding back the left.
That my interest in keeping the left honest and guided by objective reality is a sign that I'm working for the other side.
The idea that the divisions on the left could be healed by ignoring objective reality is flawed.
I ask, what guiding principle could bring everyone on the left together?
The fact that they're all on the left?
This is circular logic and has already failed.
If simply being on the left or opposing Trump were enough to bring everyone together, then it would have happened already.
I suggest that the only banner that could possibly unify the left is that of reality.
Using objective reality to judge the rightfulness and wrongfulness of each faction and each participant.
Those whose actions and character fail when confronted with the objectively real things they've done will and should be discarded.
And for anyone who holds beliefs that are not supported by objective reality, we have a process for leaving those beliefs behind.
Remove access to any disinformation you have created.
Explain how you came to be wrong and how you've come to change your mind.
Using Reality to Unite 00:02:51
This process echoes that which science uses to find consensus and is how one does more than merely claim that they are pro-science.
Somehow, Snowden Bishop has convinced herself that truth is not found in a careful examination of observable data as science would do, but instead in an understanding of the political optics.
Nothing has any meaning except for the way in which it can be used to accomplish the political goal, and all other considerations must be cast aside.
We all want shortcuts to help us understand a world this complicated.
It would be convenient if the world could be divided into left versus right to give everyone a series of handy shortcuts to understand what's happening.
But that way of thinking is disconnected from objective reality.
Objective reality needs to be our guiding principle, not allegiance to a political side or to a single politician.
Giving in to that simplification of just two political perspectives will prevent the effectiveness of objective reality to affect public opinion.
There's a reason why the so-called Bernie bros are mostly pro-Trump now.
They disconnected themselves from the idea that the electoral process in the 2016 primaries was fair.
They unmoored their boats from the shelter and stability of reality and so became vulnerable to the politically opportunistic grifters who happily agreed with them to get them on side.
And the Bernie bros went there in droves.
Why?
Because giving up on reality makes you vulnerable to whatever side will work more shamelessly to agree with you.
And I'm trying to tell the left in the U.S. that giving up on reality to accomplish a political victory will be short-lived at best.
Because the left is never going to be as shameless as the right at appealing to those voters who have given up on objective reality as a means of finding the truth.
It's a losing strategy.
This is much bigger than just some old anti-vaccine podcast episodes.
This podcast episode that I'm recording right now will be characterized as an attack, though exactly what kind of attack and exactly which thing I said could be pointed to as the attack will be very unclear.
Encouraging Improvement Through Criticism 00:00:22
If anyone would like to enlighten me on the nature of that attack, they can write an email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com and articulate their view.
This is criticism.
It is done in the hope that people who are making less useful decisions can be encouraged to improve those decisions.
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