Pizzagate: Are Democrats Harvesting Children’s Blood? - Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy

in test tubes, at the doctor's office. In the very title of the two thousand seven drama, there will be blood, and it's even inside you right now, which means you're part of this story. So buffal up. This is Jordan Clapper Fingers The Conspiracy. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably already know a little bit about Pizza Gate,

and we'll get into that shortly. But this extremely weird idea that pedophiles are using secret symbols is rooted in the belief that eliteaus cabals it's always a cabal, are rounding up babies to steal their adrenaline by consuming their blood. Their Republicans in Congress who believe this. You might have also seen it in the Netflix show The Watcher. It's a conspiracy theory that goes way back before Hillary Clinton and come at Ping pong, and it goes back nine

hundred years to when Joe Biden was born. Let's get into it. As Chris Cuomo would say, all right, let's bring in our own little blood cabal. I have two guests today. First, we have Dr Elise Wong, a professor at California State Fullerton who studies conspiracy narratives going back to medieval England. Alice, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Yes, And my next guest is Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Manners for America and extensively

covers the relationship between Fox News, Donald Trump, and Trump supporters. Matt, thank you for being here. Great to be here, guys. You guys ready to talk caballs. It's always an elite cabal. It's always elite. There's yeah, is there any lower level cabals of just like guys just trying to to get through it, who have like a high school education. It's always elite, right, Yes, that's the point. That's the point

of cabals. You're in a couple, you have it's no fun to be in a in a like mediocre call state school. I mean, yeah, the state school thing. I think this podcast is going to start selling t shirts that says State School cabal on it. There really is, there's you know, it's always elite cabals and the illuminati also very elite. They need to be more encompassing. We need to have our state school Illuminati and cabals will sell the t shirts. Go to Daily show dot com, everybody.

I will wear that at my state school at least. I want to start with you. Let's break down adren of chrome because it feels like the base for a lot of theories we're going to dive into in this podcast. First of all, is adrina chrome technically real? It is, Actually, that's a good place to start. It is actually a real thing. It's the oxidation of adrenaline and this can happen naturally in your body or in a lab. It's

actually really easy to come by. You can just buy it on the internet, like not the dark Web and or not just the internet. Um. I think it's something like five milligrams for for fifty five bucks, fifties eight bucks something like that. I looked it up. Um, so it's not used for anything really there's nothing the FDA has approved it for. It's occasionally used for things like blood clotting. UM. There was some interest in the nineteen sixties for treating using it to treat schizophrenia, but it

really showed no promise UM, so they dropped it. The history of the entepreneo girl we're talking about is sort of it goes back to I think Alvis Huxley was the first one to talk about it as a drug. He talked about it indoors of perception. And then Hunter as Tom Sin in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is really the one who cemented the myth of adrena chrome as a drug because he turned it into this kind of immortality drug, um, this thing that you have to get from a live source. UM. I think the

line is a corps is no good buddy um. And so that and then the subsequent movie they're like dramatized to the effects of adrenea chrome. What is the ship that stuff makes pure mescal and seemed like ginger beer man adrene of chrome, adren of chrome W. That's really where are modern perception of it as a drug comes from. So it's from these fictional sources. Are we saying it correctly? Adrina chrome? I mean that's how they say it in the video. Um. And if you go, I know you're

not supposed to the video. Are we talking about the Terry Gilliam film, That's how Johnny pronounces it. Yes, that's that's where this This is where we're getting our information from. Yes, exactly, Well that's where they're getting their information from. Like I know you're not supposed to go to YouTube comments, but if you go to the YouTube comments on this scene, um,

they are all about how how this is real? Yes, based on fair in LOLd in Las Vegas, which I will say I love that book, top ten book in my world. It's a great book. But that is sort of the central the beginning that in Huxley's book is where the first time we actually hear the term adrina chrome. He even said afterwards that he just wanted a quote unquote crazy drug and so he made it up. And so he's drawing on Huxley and then like adding his

own little stuff and the drina chrome. The way it's become it is as you were saying, it's it connects to all of the different conspiracy theories because it's a grab bag of the greatest hits. Right. It's got pedophilia, it's got satanic rituals, it's got blood rituals, immortality like satanic panic and Hollywood elites. It's got everything. It's a good one. It is. Yeah, let's add some context to

it in this world. The conspiracy theory is Hollywood liberal elites and Hillary Clinton are murdering children and ritual sacrifices, harvesting the chemical compound from human children, drinking their blood to ingest adrina chrome because it has some sort of elixir of life properties. Is that right? Yes? Yes, Okay, And you're telling me it may not be true. I mean you should. You should buy it on the internet and find out it's it's at least for at least

for the dabble. Matt, When did you first become aware of adrina chrome? I think probably around As part of the pizza gate conspiracy theory. The pizza gate conspiracy theory posits that this uh cabal of global elites who is you know, are are draining this chemical compound from small children and sexually abusing them, is doing so in the basement of a Washington, d c. Pizza parlor called comt

Ping pong Um. This idea spurred in some ways from emails from the John Podesta hack UH during the election cycle. And Uh, I've been to the pizza parlor and it doesn't have a basement that you can use to abuse children and take their bodily fluids. Um, did you ask? I mean it goes one step beyond asking for a bathroom key, because they'll happily give you a bathroom key, but you you have to be a little pushing and

be like, I need to use the restroom. I also would love access to the basement where the children are tied up and I can get the adrede of chrome. Did you probably ask? I think there probably was a

time that you you could have done that. But as the conspiracy theorists seized on this UH, the pizza parlor started getting bombarded with phone calls from people who wanted to know more about the the basement and the uh, you know, pizza gate conspiracy theory, and eventually one of the adherents to this conspiracy theory took a gun, went to the pizza parlor looking to save the children, fired it off inside UH, and was subsequently arrested and spent a couple of years in jail. So, uh, you know,

at that point it becomes a little bit rude. I think to to ask the people who work at the pizza parlor. Um, it became they had real consequences. And for if if this is somewhat new to anybody listening, the Podesta emails get get hacked, Wiki leaks leaks and Podesta emails and emails between Podesta and Hillary Clinton referenced

buying cheese pizza. Right. I don't think it's him and Hillary Clinton, but it's it's it's a some sort of email that references pizza that then became a sort of internet meme, uh and brought into the broader conspiracy theory uh that at least was talking about. Well, and cheese pizza becomes abbreviated to c P, which also stands for child pornography and common Pizza, and so they start to connect those links and common Pizza becomes the place to

go in a nutshell. Right, Yeah, that's that's about it. I on the road, and I somewhat recently talked to somebody who was sort of discussing this um theory, and it is amazing the symbols they see not only in the common pizza background and the symbolism there, but I asked them like, what do you need to look at their like, well, in the pizza chain, there's a lot of symbols that you have to stay focused on. It was like, what do these symbols look like? And they're like, well,

they're predominantly circles and triangles. There's a huge push for normalizing pedophilia. How do they normalize it? Are they making pedophiles look cool? If you go online, there's a whole list of pedophile symbols. Really, yes, they're they're like circular symbols. There's trying, there's a lot of triangles, there's colors. A lot of them are in pizza, which, if you're at all into purchasing pizza, that tends to be all of the symbols you see it any kind of pizza chaine.

So from their perspective, they're holding a hammer and there's just nails everywhere. Well, I think I think watching pizza Gate happen, and then from my end, watching the um chat rooms and you know, message boards and all of these things, both before and afterwards, there's that aspect of it. Like the people who really get into the game of it, like let's let's find the numerology, and they all like the special symbols. And then there's the people who are

actually mobilized around this. And that's what really struck me about Pizza Gate. It was the first time that I really saw this where you could see there was already this this theory about a pedophile ring being run by the Clintons, and it was kind of a theory in need of specifics, and so they went out seeking specifics and they decided, basically randomly, the comment Ping Pong was

going to be the place. And then it started this sort of multi media propaganda campaign where people they got people to call and harass, as Matt was saying, um, they got people to flood the Yelp reviews and the Google reviews and people to go and harass the proprietor. And then this sort of culminated in the guy who drove up from North Carolina to self investigate um. But

that wasn't really the the story. The story was that then people talked about it, that then it was in the national media for like forty eight hours, like a whole week, and it was not only in the media. Their theory was in the media. And I went back to the message boards afterwards and they were just beside themselves with joy over this, like it was not it was not a it's not at all about oh, our guy was arrested whoops or ha. He didn't really seem to find anything. Um, it was not about that. It

was about the media exposure. And then there were sort of further suggestions, well, how can we get them to keep denying it, so they keep saying it, so people keep googling it. And when I was seeing that, I was like, Oh, this is something else. This is this is a kind of savvy media campaign that I think most of us at that point we're not totally familiar with.

Now we know if you mentioned something, you have to be very careful what what sort of buzzwords you mentioned, because it will sort of feed the conspiracy therry monster. I'm curious in hearing that, what do you think the end goal was? How was that a success? Was it? You know a lot of that online culture, does you know traffic controlling and the successes of trolling often is a large react action? Is it is it that that made it the win? Is it the fact that their

conversations became mainstream news that was the win. Is there still a connection to the veracity of this theory and that because it's being talked about that that adds some credibility to it, or is just we like shine and we got some shine. I think it's a lot of we like shine. But I do think that there there was the jubilation of being able to make the social media to mainstream media jump, and then um, I think

it was a huge recruitment tool. I think people hearing the name would then go google it and then would find their way to these message for its. So I think for them the coup was really through recruitment. Matt, what did you notice the coverage of pizza Gate? What did you first remember seeing it and who was who

was first to jump on that? You know, I think I want to bring in Alex Jones here because I think he play has played a key role in conspiracy theories uh for quite some time, but I think really made almost a sort of mainstream jump during this conspiracy theory. He was one of the major propagators, one of the people with the biggest platforms who would talk about pizza Gate and try to encourage people to look into pizza gate.

You know, we had been following Alex Jones at Media Matters for quite some time, but we always, i think, as at least was alluding to h were very hesitant to bring too much direct attention to his conspiracy theories for fear of just sort of bringing more attention to them. And so when we wrote about Alex Jones in UM, we were largely writing about how other people were giving him,

uh their uh support. Fox News personalities who would go on his show, Rand Paul and Ron Paul, who would go on his show and use the platform of someone who you know, is one of the chief popularisers of the idea that nine eleven is an inside job, you know, of bringing him into political prominence and pizza gain, I think was really a turning point because we saw that someone could use those conspiracy theories, could inflate them, and that there could be a big real world impact when

people who came to believe those conspiracy theories went too far. It was a a I think, pretty disturbing uh time for all of us. When when when we saw that come together, I mean, as as somebody both with the Daily Show and having done a TV show after that, you know, parroting the Alex Jones talking points and what was happening in that far right world. That was always a conversation about what point You don't want to amplify

these wild ideas. But at the same time, turning a blind EyeT is something that's already having an effect on culture. It's already been ample fed by legitimate politicians, even the Donald Trump, uh, legitimizing the points of view They're like, you saw people taking what they would hear from info wars in the conversation around that, it was becoming very real world news. Um. I want to talk a little bit more about how some of these things spread, but I want to focus one more time on the adrena

chrome specifically. At least I want to know if we trace back this specific theory, even the origins of adrena chrome. Does it go back before Hunter Thomps says, does it go back before it becomes sort of pulp in modern culture? Is is there a history that dates back to even even earlier? It definitely does, And the way that it dates back is a little bit of um sort of associative thinking. Um. So, conspiracy theories often work this way, they kind of jump on to think they have a

very lazy logic. They jump onto things that are already um fully formed. One of the conspiracy theories that is attached to adrena chrome, or that adrena Chrome is basically drawing on and modeling itself on, is blood libel, which is a conspiracy theory dating back to the Middle Ages that Jewish people um drink or use the blood of Christian children for their religious rituals, specifically a passover. And

for the record, we don't do that. Yes, I mean, thank you, Matt, thank you for thank you, thank you for for for yeah specifying that, um it's and it's designed specifically to incite violence, like that is what blood libel is for. So there's that kind of thematic connection. But then there's also the fact that the main purveyors of adrena chrome, like Alex Jones, like Liz Croakin say that it's blood life. I'll say that it actually dates

back to that. And if you look at these adrena chrome memes, one one sort of popular one that goes around has this very obviously medieval image of a baby being drained of blood with people standing around it and it says at the top, why does this image even exist? And the image is of Simon of Trent, which is the most famous and well documented blood libel, and it's the this particular blood libel started um passover. A father had come to the Bishop of Trent and said, my

two year old son, Simon is missing. And this this bishop already had a story ready to go. Um. He decided it must be the Jewish community, the very small Jewish community in Trent. He had a couple of reasons for for wanting this story to be true. One, he felt like the pope was too soft on the Jewish people and that he was too cozy with them. So this was his little power grab in opposition to the pope. And then also if you had a saint, if if

he could prove that Simon was martyred by the Jews. Um, if you had a saint in your town, that was a huge money making opportunity, Like you could get people from all around to make pilgrimages to your little alter, and then you would make money basically off of like brand, brand building. And so it was it was like the brand building opportunity. I was like, there, that's cheesecake. Factory if you had if you had a cheesecake factory in town,

you know, you're gonna get people from the suburbs. We're gonna come in, they're gonna pay some money. It's gonna help the town, that's the thing. And he wanted to kind of put Trent on the map. And so even before they start any kind of trial or anything, they round up the Jewish community, the entire Jewish community, and

imprisoned them. And he hires a physician to write this very inflammatory autopsy that talks less about Simon's body and more about the I think the phrase is dry throated Jews howling for Christian blood, Like this really over the top kind of autopsy. And then he takes this automy that was the doctor that was the that's a that's

a really high end literary anti semitism yep. And well it gets more high end because then he takes this and he sends it around to poets and two artists and it's like make stuff from this, and they do. Like the poets start writing poems about Simon of Trent, and the woodcutters start making images and that's the image that shows up in that adrena chrome meme is this sort of propaganda campaign by this Italian bishop who decided he really wanted his own little ritual cult. Those woodcutters,

they just will take money whoever puts it out. Where is the artistic integrity Cury woodcutters? They you know, I hold them in such high regard. I love them. I think it's the best century for woodcutters, and yet they are so will blind eye to the social responsibility of being a woodcutter in that time. They're taking dirty money to put out anti Semitic propaganda. Shame, shame on. I'm never I'm never buying fifteenth century woodcutter art again. Shame.

I feel like the parts of this that are really useful, though, is kind of it's kind of that that, like, it was the propaganda campaign that really made this take off. It wasn't like this was kind of a grassroots rumor that was rooted in sort of general anti semitism. I mean, that's why it took off, was sort of latching onto generalized anti semitism. But the actual formation of the Blood libel was very intentionally crafted for a political end by

someone who is powerful. I have never heard of that. I think it's so easy to to look at the um those in power, and also the the religious heresy at the time and the institutions at the time and the point of view they wanted to get out. But the fact that they were using artists to spread that mession message to affect culture. I mean, you see obvious comparisons to what happens today, but that even then it was still important. You want this thing to stick. Culture

needs to stick. And the fact that we're using those images yet today as proof of what Hillary Clinton is doing is it is bonkers. Well, I want to take a short ad break. When we come back, we're gonna talk more about how adrena of chrome spread as an idea even before the Internet was even around. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Jordon's upper fingers. The conspiracy I mean I never I didn't actually plan to work on conspiracy theories. Like I'm a medievalism like a huge nerd.

I like books and this This was not the way I saw my studies going. But it just it just you basically stumbled on it. We're like, here we go. Also, is that something was in the ether, the modern ether that you saw a connection between the two. Yeah, I was basically in I started, I mean, like like all of us, I think I was a little bit concerned and uneasy about the fake news phenomenon, and in particular

this epistemology aspect, this you can't trust anything that you see. Um. And I started hearing echoes with the stuff that I study and speech patterns like that's what they want you to think, do your own research. Um, I've heard or or people are saying these kinds of gestures towards sources. I started seeing those things. I was like, Oh, that doesn't that doesn't sound that sounds familiar and not good. And I just sort of started following that. Um. And

now my autocorrect nos adren of chrome so clear. We are in the tas of these historical conspiracy theories and the beginnings of blood libel. How do you see these theories spread before modern news and communication and memes and four chan and e chan and parlor and true social and should I keep going, I'm not going to keep going. Well, they spread remarkably well. UM. I think that the the essential shape of blood libel was a very compelling shape.

It was, you know, there there are evil forces that are out to get Christian children, and there was also the fact that it was pretty common for medieval children to die in accidents or disappear or fall into a river like child death was was quite common, and so it became kind of a predictable thing that if a child died in a Christian community that pretty soon suspicion

would fall on the Jewish community. And it did spread by word of mouth, but it also spread by all of these sort of cultural productions that it's spread by these woodcuts, it's spread by um, these poems that were written in honor of Simon, and it also spread because

these stories got baked into the official histories. These historians think of themselves as you know, responsible, reliable UM, and they go back to the local histories and they just sort of draw from whatever the local history is, and so these blood libels get baked into sort of accepted history as fact, and then anyone who reads that will that will be their primary UM interaction, basically with the Jewish community for a lot of places, because these programs

have already taken place. Mug Ditator has done a really great job. She studies blood libel and she's done a really great job of showing how actually before the printing press, word of mouth didn't work that great. It really needed to be written down. And that also shows that it was mostly educated people, mostly higher class people who were adding blood libel. It wasn't a low class theory. Um. It was a it was a kind of upper class theory.

And that's interesting. And I mean, there's a great book by Neil Postman, I'm Using Ourselves to Death that talks a lot about how the mediums affect the message. The events of the printing press affected not only the way information was spread, but the way we think about information,

the way we process information. And then you suddenly have television come out and out the way in which we communicate and the way we process and information is very different than the way we used to with the printing press. I think it's fascinating to think of that in terms of like who is spreading information and that it was a it was an elitist thing. You had to be able to uh speak that language then. But now that we see information changing, the technology changing, Matt, I want

to bring you in here. How are you seeing conspiracy theories like Pizza gate, uh and other Q theories spread given the new technology that we have. Well. The the core benefit that social media companies will say that they provide to their customers and that Internet companies say they provided their customers is the idea of bringing the world together, giving people an opportunity to find communities, to communicate with people across the globe and just sort of find a

common purpose together. And I mean there's a dark side to that. It also has made it much much easier to find a community of conspiracy theorists to share your ideas about the you know, dark hidden messages in the world's events. Uh, to share your views about the Illuminati or whoever else is manipulating what's going on around you. And that's just an incredibly powerful force. The barrier to entry for producing one of these conspiracy theories is much lower.

You don't you don't you know, um, the JFK conspiracy theories. Uh, you know you had to like write letters to people later on as xerox is and what faxes and so on and so forth. Um, it's just very easy. Now, how lazy conspiracy theorists are. Now, can you imagine if you had to write letters to spread just some bs you read on Twitter? You're like, oh, I want to put that out Elon Musk, he would not be pushing conspiracy theories if he had to write a letter to

get that thing going. Do you also look at places like Fox like what you know, we look at what's happened to with social media, but more of the mainstream media outlets. How are you seeing that effect this conversation conversation specifically with something like pizza Gate. Sure? So, I mean the reality is that we live in a bifurcated

news environment. There is one set of sources of information that is generally used by people in the left on the center, just sort of mainstream news outlets, and then you have this entirely separate realm of right wing media outlets um that speak very clearly and directly to a

right wing audience. Um. You know, the the way we see conspiracy theories moving these days is they'll start at this sort of you know, message board and social media platform level, with a sort of army of individuals who are are coming up with their own spin on what's

happening on a particular event. Um. It will spread from there through a network of hyperpartisan news sites, places like Gateway Pundit that do not have standards of any sort that are not interested in the basic rules of journalism, but that want to have political impact and make money off of advertising. Um and and from there you can see them sort of uh, we get woven into the

broader debate. You know. The reality is that the writing media figures at the higher level your Fox News is uh, are not interested in batting down those sorts of conspiracies. They're not interested in challenging uh their audiences and telling

them that what they might have heard is incorrect. Instead, you'll see either them ignoring it all together, or providing a sort of wink and a nod at the conspiracy theory, or telling their viewers that it's okay more or less that like that there are reasons to be skeptical of things that are happening around you, that they're the elites want to keep you from talking about Q and on

or what have you. Um and that Uh. You know, whether or not that's true, it's not a danger the way uh, you know, other other people will tell you. I mean, if this is an issue with right wing media, they have this weird rhetoric that is politicizing children in the name of protecting them anything from the serving conspiracy theories to don't say gay bills, anti trans bills, et cetera. Do you see a connection there? Yeah, I mean I think a lot of these conspiracy theories get rolled up together.

There was a big push over the last year and a half or so on the right, you know, throughout the entire ecosystem to talk about the idea of groomers of save the children, save the children absolutely basically that that teachers are trying to turn your kids gay, turn your kids trans, possibly blest them, and it all kind of gets wound up together. There aren't really firm barriers to a lot of these conspiracy theories. People who start to believe one of them, uh tend to start adopting

others as well. At least historically, has there ever been away to get people to stop believe mean conspiracy theories. I mean it's a complicated question, right, It depends on who you're talking about. Like, I don't Johannes smint Hinderback, the Bishop of Trent. I don't know that he actually believed that Simon was killed by the Jews. That was that was sort of beside the point. I think he believe that Jewish people are evil and he wanted to drive them out, and this was a convenient way to

do it, plus a bunch of other political benefits. I don't know that he actually believed it. Um. So if you're talking about these sort of cynical purveyors of it who use it for radicalization and use it for their own sort of economic and political gain, um, I think you just have to take away the gain and then like that will that will kind of kill it for everybody else. I think it is a complicated question because the thing about conspiracy theories is they're not about the

details that are not about the story there. I mean, I feel like your segments short and of really shown this well. As soon as you ask them a question like that's the end, like there's it doesn't go anywhere. You can't actually have a conversation about conspiracy theories. I don't even think that conspiracy theorists could have a conversation with each other about it, because it's fundamentally not discursive.

It's not something you can have a discussion about. It is just an attempt to make this sort of core story about yourself match up with the world, and every conspiracy theory has the same core story and that's why it's so powerful. Um it's it's the story that the theorist holds onto and then sort of tries to match up with the world in a kind of messy way.

The story is basically, once upon a time, we were happy and everything was good, and we were in charge and we were safe, and then the monsters took hold, but no one knew that they had. And these monsters are not of the sort of vaguely threatening right, they have to be absolutely gigantic, demonic, sort of the the

most hyperbolic thing you can think of. Go another steps, so it's always children satan mutilation and torture or pedophilia, and the story goes that everything seemed fine because the monster has made sure this was all kept secret, so the monsters control what you know, and only the heroes of the story knew the truth, and then they arrived to save the world. And that's the benefit that you

get from it. You get that world view about yourself that you are a continuously just sort of horrifically embattled hero of the story and you can't really give up on this self like the self image and embattled heroism. It's it's very difficult to give up on UM. It's not just the high of thinking of yourself as a hero. It's also that you convince yourself that you are in

this battle of absolute good and absolut little evil. And so then you get two issues of like, if you ask about democracy or fair play, what are you not slating? This is about This is about the end of the world. So it makes it impossible to sort of dial back to UM issues of fairness or accuracy. It's actually not

about that. And I feel like you can kind of hear that when you're talking to these Q and ON followers, when they try to answer your questions, they aren't actually trying to to say, like you say, so, what did actually happen in January six? They'll say, fbi ci A. Clinton's just sort of a grab bag. But what they're actually trying to tell you is this story that the monsters are out to get us, and I'm trying to save us. There's kind of no other point to it.

That's that's the whole ball game. And when the monsters, when there's a partisan overlay on that, when monsters are one party and the people who are trying to save you are are Donald Trump, I mean, there's no room for debate at that point, right, Like there's no room to talk about it's important to respect electoral defeats, right because if the people who you are losing elections to are monsters who are abusing children, then you have a

moral responsibility to go try to subvert those election results. And the resistance is kind of like baked into the story, because the story is that the monsters came and took over, and they kept it, they covered it up, they kept everybody from knowing. So any information that you get in from the outside is suspect, even even information that you might get from sympathetic sources. So the only thing that you're left with is kind of like going with your

gut and what feels true. It feels true that I am a victim, and it feels true that I'm the hero of the story, and so let's just go with that. So you're telling me I shouldn't read this story to my son every night before going to He loves it. It's it's the it's a dark Eric Carl story. But I like it so much better than that hungry caterpillar. You might be, you might be unhappy with the results. I'll tell you all of his peers are reading it. They seem to really be into it. That hero's journey.

Uh Um. After the break, we're gonna talk about how the Adrena chrome conspiracy theory is related to the attack in Nancy Pelosi's house. It seriously is this is Jordan Clapper figures the conspiracy will be right back, Welcome back to Jordan Clapper figures the conspiracy. I'm here with Dr Alice Wong and Matt Gert's, two experts who follow conspiracy theories, and we're talking about Adrina chrome Democrats are drinking babies

blood allegedly, allegedly, and what that means for American politics. Now, recently, Nancy Pelosi's house was broken into by a right wing conspiracy theorist. He was looking for Pelosi and ended up attacking her husband with a hammer. But Matt, you've written about how the conspiracy theories this attacker specifically believed, and how he was radicalized in the ecosystem of right wing misinformation. How does this all connect Well, The alleged assailant had

a substantial internet uh paper trail. He had a couple of blogs, various other social media platforms, and what he posted on those UH sites was very much the kind of textbook online right wing conspiracy theory radicalization pattern that we've been seeing for years now. His social media and blogs are filled with references to q and On, to Adrina Chrome, to pizza Gate, to gamer Gate, as well as a sort of grab bag of bigotries are related to black people and women and choose UH and gay

people and trans people. Um, yeah, no, it's it's it's it's the it's it's the it's the greatest hits. Honestly, I spent some time looking through these websites on Friday, and I was like, Oh, it's just it's it's all of it from there. And this happened very very quickly. You did not see people on the right saying, oh my god, the things that people on the writers saying

are leading to political violence. Instead, a story about political violence committed by someone who believed righting conspiracy theories about how democrats are are depraved. It was turned into another

writing conspiracy theory about how democrats are depraved. H The story that developed over the following hours was that the assailant had not broken into the house, but in fact he had been invited in by Paul Pelosi because they were gay lovers, uh, and that the violent attack on Pelosi was in fact some sort of gay lovers spat.

That's what they came up with, and that spread remarkably quickly, as as it tends to do through this right wing information ecosystem, until you had Elon Musk tweeting out a link to a sort of hyperpartisan fake news website on Sunday morning. So it was, you know, seventy two hours, forty eight hours from the assault becoming known to the conspiracy theory reaching the wealthiest man on earth at least

something like this pops up. Is this how you imagine it playing out this quickly and evolving or devolving in this similar manner? Unfortunately it doesn't surprise me. Um. I do think the speed is different from sort of the history that I study, but the manner in which things spread is really not. And if I think a few things are key that the platform matters, it depends on who is picking this up and who is who is

running with it. And then there's also a durability to conspiracy theories that because they have this sort of epistemological challenge built into them by that by that, I mean they they challenge how you know what you know, and they say these things that you think you know, you don't know, but it doesn't replace it with anything. So

it's just sort of epistemic destabilization. So you just don't have anything to stand on, and that creates an environment in which conspiracy theories really thrive because once you it, once you can't trust anything, then the only thing you can trust is your own sense of the story that you like or the one that sounds good to you. This was definitely true and sort of the medieval and early modern period of blood libel, there were often people

who are powerful people who opposed blood libel. For Simon of tenth, the reason why we have so many documents on it is the Pope tried to intervene in this, he tried to put a stop to it. Then then the very first blood libel in Um the twelfth century. This was a boy named William of Norwich, the Norwich Sheriff,

actually got involved and protected the Jewish community. So there's always been pushedback um from kind of mainstream sources, and yet these conspiracy theories just thrive if there's already a kind of destabilized trust in the regular sources of knowledge. So I think I think the modern speed that is new, Um how quickly that happens. But you would have a blood libel come out and the next week all of the Jews in town would be arrested and tortured. And

it it was pretty fast. It happened pretty fast. Well, we mentioned the platform here, and Matt you brought up Elon Musk and the tweet that he had adding to this confusion. He referenced a website that claimed Hillary Clinton died in and was replaced with a clone. So what does this say now, in this new era of Elon's Twitter, what is that going to do to these conversations. I mean,

I think it's going to continue to accelerate them. I think there has been uh some effort by the social media platforms some of the time to try to rain in the most extreme and dangerous forms of misinformation. It's been haphazard, it's been imperfect. But Elon Musk's Twitter is going to do is kind of cost that aside. He himself is quite obviously a bit of a conspiracy theorist, someone who has uh you know, accused people of being Pettos that that's just sort of, uh, sort of his

wheelhouse to speak. Uh. And it's it's difficult to imagine Twitter being interested in throttling conspiracy theories that its own owner is spreading. Um, that's just not going to happen. Uh. And so you know, I think that platform is going to become less stable, It's going to become a less valuable source for credible information because of that. At least, I'm curious. Can you talk about the progression of belief into action, like what takes somebody from pizza Gate to

an actual act of political violence? I mean, this is what scholars of radicalization study, right, how do you how do you come from an idea into actual action? Radicalization online is part of the story. It's not the whole story, but it's certainly Um directs your any sort of anger satisfaction you already have, It validates it, and it amps it up, and it focuses it on a target. Um. So it's a little bit like pointing a loaded gun at a specific target. And can I go back to

the elon thing for just a second. Um, The whole verification thing really struck me because I think, you know, it's clear, the money of it doesn't actually matter. Like he's like twenty eight dollars whatever to sell sell verification, Right, that's his new thing. He's going to sell verification on Twitter. What really struck me is that this is not an attempt to get the money. It's an attempt to devalue verification in general, because verification is meant to show you

which sources are trustworthy, right. It was meant to sort of identify members of the media and corporations and so that you knew that it was actually coming from that source and you knew that you could trust it. It was not a sort of celebrity thing. Originally that was that was not the purpose of verification, And by turning it into something that you can buy, it just completely devalues verification and it gets rid of that layer of validation so that you you know what you can trust,

which sources you can trust it. It gets rid of that sort of you know, it's it's destabilizing the way we know what we know, and that seems to me to be the point of the whole verification thing. In fact, because Musk is so polarizing, we can see a situation where his supporters who are largely on the right, are much more willing to actually shell out the money than

you know, more credible mainstream journalists are. Um, those less credible sources will get sort of algorithmically accelerated more than everybody else and become a bigger part of the conversation. I'm curious what advice you would have to consumers specifically of Twitter. I think a lot of people are looking at this, They see these issues, see the problem, uh, and are asking themselves the question, do I divorce myself

from this platform? I don't know if the answer is to step away from it and not being part of the conversation or understand the conversation, but are you complicit in what is becoming a less and less trustworthy place. So I think part of the issue here is I don't really view it as a place for conversation. Um. I mean I I A lot of interesting things come at me. We'll go back and forth. It's fun, we playful. I got some gifts I'll send your way. It's a really fun chat. The way I use Twitter, I use

it as a broadcast medium. Right. It's a way for me to get my views and my work out into the public. It's a way for me to hear views from people who might have interesting ideas or thoughts. Um. But I don't do that much interaction with it because I think it's a actually a really bad medium for having uh debates of any kind. If I want to have a conversation with someone, I will try to follow up with them in a certain email, conversation or phone

or what have you. It's it's hard to have a substantive discussion with the rest of the world trying to involve itself in that. I will use Twitter less if that becomes less feasible. If I think that uh my tweets aren't getting read, or if I think that I am not able to easily find credible information that I want to be reading. Um, that's when the value proposition will fall to basically nothing. I feel like this is where our disciplines come into play. Because you're in media.

I'm in medieval studies, so I have a vary my my following will you will be shocked to hear is tiny? Um. I Also I'm also locked, so I I really just use it for conversation, Like I really just use it to connect with other other people in my field or

who study the same things that I do. And I think one of the really one of the reasons a lot of people are mourning this is it has been an incredible tool for people to connect um within their own tiny little sub field, Like I feel more connected to other medievalists of color on Twitter because we have kind of created our own little ecosystem than anywhere else. And I wouldn't get that anywhere else. I would miss

it for that. And obviously, if again, if like you said, if if that becomes impossible, then then like I'm not going to use it anymore. But I also think this whole question of so do you stay, do you go? Do you pay the eight dollars, twenty dollars whatever it ends up being, I feel like it it's a very American question, Like how can we make this the individual responsibility to decide what to do? Um? This is the the robber baron has screwed up the system, and now

we are responsible for fixing it. And you know, my recycling or not recycling my water bottle is really what's leading to climate change. Like that's that's really that's really the thing, um, the sort of individual responsibility for these things. And I think that's kind of what gets us into trouble with conspiracy theories to begin with. Right, do your own research, find out for yourself. The thing is, with huge platforms and huge areas of knowledge, you just can't

do it yourself. I mean, as we all discovered in the pandemic when we all became amateur epidemiologists, right, we're not very good at this. I don't remember high school biology very well. I'm not I'm not going to be good at making choices, personal choices about my own level of risk, can my kids level of risk? And you know, I am not a good person to put that decision on.

And that's kind of how we've offloaded it. And so I feel like that's maybe not I know that it's sort of going to be personally difficult for a lot of people to figure out what to do about Twitter, um, but I don't really feel like that's that's where the

change comes from. UM. I want to wrap this up kind of looking specifically at what happened with Nancy Pelosi's husband and what we've sort of been discussing here, but sort of to zoom out as well, how do politicians like Nancy Pelosi try and convince people that they don't partake in ritual children sacrifices. At a rally weeks ago, and a man was convinced the Nancy Pelosi is a vampire and drinks children's blood. It was convinced. I followed

up and I asked, you said literally? Did you mean literally? He said literally? You see Republicans on one side, and are we talking metaphorical devil like, oh, they do bad stuff? Literally? You vampires like a blood. I don't want to nitpick here, but vampires tend to be eternally youthful. And I look at Nancy Pelosi and she's a lot of things, but I guess I don't think vampire somebody in her party. How does someone like that attempt to knock down this issue?

And and with those difficulties, what does that say about where we're at politically if we struggle to even do that, Matt, I don't know, honestly. I mean, it's very difficult to reach someone who believes that you drink the blood of children. Um at d d uh. You know. I think that it's just a hard problem, and so we end up talking around it, right, We end up talking about what are the ways that policy can weaken the structures that

are in place that allow these conspiracy theories to flourish. Um, Because, as Atlie says, these conspiracy theories have always been with us, but it has become easier for them to propagate and easier for people to come to accept them. And I think that's really uh, the the available chattel mhm, Alice, is there is there any advice you have for Nancy Pelosi or anybody else who looks at this is pulling out their hair, just attempting to to try to knock

down what seems like to be the inconceivable. I mean, I think there's sort of the media answer, and then there's the personal answer about approaching this person personally. UM, So the media answer like, I don't I'm not a media expert and so I wouldn't know exactly how to do this. But I think that platforms really are the key, the platforms that we give people to propagate these ideas. UM. I think that you know, when Alex Jones got involved,

things really took off. And when Alex Jones was taken off of Twitter and sort of d platform from a bunch of places, his his influence really did die down. For a little while, like it actually had an influence. And I think d platforming and treating social media as the sort of communities that they are and the news sites that they are, and having even stricter standards for them than we do for sort of in person conduct,

I think is it's not going to happen. But that would be my suggestion for for the media side of things. I think you have to control the the amplification of these conspiracy theories. And there's also just sort of the larger problem of society wide radicalization and um that is

a that's a bigger question than just conspiracy theories. The only people who can really get to people who are deep into it are those who are already intimate with these people, who are already friends with these people who already have some other form of connection with them. You're not going to get through to them. That's not sorry, I know. And there talk to those you love, I

mean you also speak to to something there. There's the intimate relationship people have with their computers when they're alone in their room, and that person interesting like the paras social relationship. Yet, yeah, exactly, And I see going to

these rallies this myth of American exceptionalism. We talk with such rhetoric of everybody their own hero's journey, and I will say a lot of those Maga rallies you talk about all the problems in the world, and then somebody gets on stage and he says, you're a patriot, you can be a hero, you can do this. Yeah. Well, guys, uh, this has been lovely at least Wang Matt gertz U. I leave this conversation energized as if I've sucked on the blood of a child. Thank you. That's all I

could ask for. Um. I appreciate your insight and your thoughts. Thank you, guys, thanks for having you listen to Jordan's Clupper figures the Conspiracy from The Daily Show on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.