0:00

This is the BBC. This

0:03

podcast is supported by advertising

0:05

outside the UK.

0:07

BBC Sounds,

0:10

music, radio, podcasts. Hello,

0:13

it's Gabriel Gatehouse here and I am

0:15

interrupting my holiday by the

0:17

Mediterranean to bring you a special episode

0:20

of AmeriCast. I talked to John Ronson

0:23

who

0:23

made Things Fell Apart, which is brilliant,

0:26

on BBC Sounds, still available. And Marianna

0:28

Spring, who apart from being

0:30

a regular presenter

0:32

of AmeriCast is making the upcoming

0:35

Marianna in Conspiracyland. Anyway,

0:38

our conversation is all about conspiracy theories,

0:40

why they seem to spread like wildfire

0:43

in the United States,

0:44

and whether a January

0:46

6th style riot could ever happen

0:49

in the UK. Anyway, if you enjoyed the

0:51

coming storm, I hope you'll like this. AmeriCast.

0:56

AmeriCast from BBC News. Let

0:59

me start off with two words, Made

1:01

in America. My name is

1:04

Ted Cruz and my pronouns

1:06

are kiss my ass. Well I think if they

1:08

win I should get all the credit and if

1:10

they lose I should not be blamed at all. We

1:12

saw freedom in our very

1:14

way of life wither on the vine.

1:17

When 9-11 happened, we didn't ban

1:19

planes, we secured the cockpit. The

1:21

President said something to the effect of, I'm the

1:24

f***ing President, take me up to the Capitol now. Nobody

1:27

should have to go to jail for smoking weed, right?

1:34

Hello, it's Marianna in the worldwide

1:36

headquarters of AmeriCast in London.

1:39

And we're doing something a bit different on this episode

1:41

of AmeriCast today. It is a bumper

1:44

conspiracy theory special and

1:46

I'm joined by two extra special

1:48

guests. They're not Sarah or Anthony

1:50

or Justin. They are actually John Ronson

1:53

and Gabriel Gatehouse. And I'm sure the

1:55

keen podcast listeners among you, especially

1:58

AmeriCasters, may have listened to this. The

2:00

Coming Storm, Gabriel Gatehouse's podcast

2:02

and Two Things Fell Apart by Jon Ronson. And

2:05

I guess just to get started, do you want to introduce yourself,

2:07

Jon?

2:07

Yeah, hello, I'm Jon Ronson. I've

2:10

been writing about conspiracy theories

2:12

and theorists for probably 30 years.

2:16

Back in the 90s, I kind of

2:18

became part of a conspiracy theory in

2:20

a way, because I snuck into Bohemian

2:23

Grove with Alex Jones, America's

2:26

leading conspiracy theorist and

2:28

presenter of The One Show. And

2:31

Bohemian Grove is a shadowy cabal. I wrote a book called

2:33

Them, where I hooked up with conspiracy theorists

2:36

and tried to get into

2:37

the secret room for which the

2:39

shadowy cabal was secretly ruling the world. Oh,

2:42

wow. Yeah. And then in subsequent

2:45

years, I kind of returned over and over again to

2:47

the subjects of conspiracy theories.

2:49

Okay, so we have a conspiracy theory... I'm

2:51

not going to call you a veteran, because whenever we use a veteran

2:53

on America's, no one likes it, but

2:55

a super expert. And then we have Gabriel, who

2:57

also is a super expert. Gabriel, do you want

2:59

to tell us a bit about your involvement

3:02

with conspiracy theories?

3:04

Hi, yes, I'm Gabriel Gatehouse. I'm a newbie,

3:06

a relative newbie to the rabbit hole compared

3:09

to Jon. But I like it down

3:11

here. I'm deep in it. And I love

3:13

it in the rabbit hole. I fell down the rabbit hole

3:16

while looking into QAnon and

3:18

the roots of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

3:23

I did a long podcast series about

3:25

it. And my starting point was basically,

3:27

how on earth do so many people

3:30

believe this incredible nonsense?

3:33

And I came out

3:34

of it thinking, maybe

3:36

I'd fallen down the rabbit hole myself.

3:39

I do think that there's something about navigating

3:42

this world and all of the terms and the people.

3:44

And once you're in it, I feel

3:46

like we're all to varying degrees fluent

3:49

in conspiracies. There are

3:51

certain terms and phrases and words that you have to become

3:53

so well acquainted with when you're navigating

3:56

this landscape. And I think they're particularly relevant to

3:58

America as we're on America.

3:59

I'm a recast here, because I think that's the

4:02

place where at least they sort of were

4:04

born or began. So if we're bringing

4:06

it really back to basics for someone who's

4:08

listening and thinks, what are these guys talking

4:10

about? How would you start by defining

4:12

a conspiracy theory, so to speak?

4:14

Well, I guess it's the idea

4:16

that a group of people are plotting

4:18

together in secret to do

4:21

something. Often it's

4:23

a shadowy cabal of like powerful

4:25

industrialists and bankers plotting

4:28

from inside a secret room, and all of that goes back

4:31

to the protocols of the elders

4:33

of Zion, which is an anti-Semitic tract

4:35

that was written in the, I think, 19th century in Sirost,

4:38

Russia. But I would say, and I'm sure we're going to get onto

4:40

this, it's not just people on

4:42

the right

4:43

who think that powerful

4:45

liberal

4:47

bankers are plotting against us

4:49

meeting in secret. There's also conspiracy

4:52

theories on the left that people

4:54

on the right are all plotting together and

4:56

pretending not to. So that's something that I'd

4:58

like to talk about because I think it's very easy for us

5:01

to concentrate on the sort of baroque

5:03

places where conspiracies come from like QAnon.

5:06

And that is really interesting and important stuff to think

5:08

about. But then you can sometimes forget about

5:10

all the conspiracy theories that are coming, particularly nowadays

5:13

actually coming from the left. So I hope we will

5:15

talk about that at some point

5:16

too. Absolutely, we will later. So keep listening.

5:18

And I guess on the topic of conspiracy theories

5:21

and understanding what they are. Gabriel,

5:23

something I find I'm asked a lot is, or certainly

5:25

when I'm interviewing people who are quite deep

5:27

into conspiracies, they'll say to me, well, actually,

5:29

this isn't a conspiracy theory. Some

5:32

of this stuff ends up being true. What do you think of

5:34

that? How often do these things end up being

5:36

true? How do they work? What's their relationship

5:39

with the truth?

5:40

Well, I mean, it depends quite

5:42

often whether you're looking at these things

5:45

literally or metaphorically, right?

5:47

So to take QAnon, for example.

5:50

That's why we have Q. The

5:53

good guys with control over the NSA

5:55

began the Q intelligence dissemination

5:57

program to invoke an online grassroots

5:59

movement.

5:59

that came to be called the Great

6:02

Awakening. Which is a theory

6:05

that the world is run by

6:07

a secret cabal of satanic

6:10

pedophiles who are

6:12

ruling the world. And Donald Trump, when

6:14

he was president, was trying to expose

6:17

them and bring them down. Now, you know,

6:20

if you take that

6:22

literally, and especially with

6:24

its antecedent in Pizzagate, which was the

6:27

idea that the headquarters, if you like, the

6:29

satanic cabal was in the basement of a

6:31

Washington DC pizzeria that

6:33

doesn't have a basement, then obviously,

6:35

you know, it's complete nonsense. Next

6:37

tonight, a terrifying moment, authorities say a man

6:40

with an AR-15 opening fire

6:42

after police say he showed up at a family pizza

6:45

joint after reading a fake news story

6:47

that a child abuse ring was being operated

6:49

there, but the story

6:51

was completely untrue. What I found

6:53

about it was that actually, if you look

6:55

at these things as metaphors, which

6:58

is that the world is kind

7:00

of changing in ways that we don't really

7:02

understand and possibly, or

7:04

being changed by people whom

7:07

we didn't democratically

7:09

elect, and they don't represent our views

7:11

and maybe don't have our best interests at heart, and

7:14

what should we do about that? Then

7:16

you start to think, well, as a metaphor,

7:19

as a parable, these people

7:21

kind of have a point. And

7:23

I think as well, you've both really hit the nail

7:25

on the head in terms of what's so

7:28

difficult and complex about covering

7:31

conspiracy theories, because ultimately,

7:33

often there is a grain of truth or there's something that makes

7:36

us think something might be true, and then it balloons into

7:39

something even bigger that actually isn't

7:41

really based in any evidence. And also

7:43

this idea that actually we arrive

7:45

with a pre-existing worldview, and

7:47

we try and use things, we

7:50

do it the wrong way around. Instead of looking at the evidence

7:52

and saying, oh, right, the evidence tells us this, we've

7:54

decided we think this is the case, and we're

7:56

just gonna pull everything we can into it to

7:59

help us. understand what's going on. And

8:01

I find that, I mean, particularly when I interview people who

8:03

are deep, deep down the rabbit hole, and I've got

8:06

this new podcast coming out on Radio 4 called

8:08

Mariana in Conspiracyland. It's all about the movement

8:10

here and the people who fell down the

8:12

rabbit hole during the pandemic and often

8:14

had legitimate concerns, questions, fears,

8:16

but now are so deep into it. They

8:19

truly, truly believe in mass

8:21

murder and sinister plots for which there

8:23

just isn't the evidence. And no matter

8:26

what I say to them, no matter how I question

8:28

them, there is nothing I can say that

8:30

will challenge their belief

8:32

because they are so set on what they think.

8:35

And actually for me, it becomes about why do

8:37

they believe it more so than

8:39

what they actually believe. Suez Canal,

8:41

remember that? It was

8:43

deliberately knocked into that

8:45

and lodged in there because what was on

8:48

it, thousands and thousands

8:50

of children and women, the

8:52

sex trafficking and adrenal chrome,

8:55

and also those vaccines. Word

8:57

on the street is that Junior, J.F.K. Junior,

9:03

will show up and introduce his parents. 48's

9:05

evil. E-V-I-L, E-S-5, V-S-22, I-S-9,

9:08

L-S-12, 48. Negative

9:12

evil, negative 48.

9:14

I don't know if you find that, John. Oh yeah, and

9:17

I think there is one answer. This isn't

9:19

like a nice thing to say, but I think it is kind

9:21

of a true thing to say, which is that I

9:23

think a lot of people who fall down the rabbit hole, especially

9:26

if they do it because of grievance, there's

9:29

a lot of narcissism in the

9:32

leadership, I'd say particularly of conspiracy theories,

9:34

because A, narcissists

9:37

are wounded easily and

9:40

it's a wound so deep that it won't

9:42

heal and so they lash out and lash out and lash

9:45

out. So I think that's one reason. And

9:47

another reason is that narcissists

9:49

don't really care about the truth. The truth doesn't matter, the

9:51

truth is immaterial. People have said to me for

9:54

years, my life and Alex Jones' life is

9:56

so intertwined. Like does

9:58

he mean what he says or does he not mean?

9:59

what he said. Is it real or is it not real? And

10:02

I veered from one to the other. One

10:05

time after we snuck into Bohemian

10:07

Grove and Alex was going around saying, you know,

10:09

we've had a witness to an actual human sacrifice and

10:11

I overheard two old men say, yeah,

10:14

we're going to get him elected. And I

10:16

said to Alex, come on, you

10:18

didn't, you didn't overhear two old men say that. That's exactly

10:20

the kind of thing that you would want to have overheard

10:23

at Bohemian Grove. And he said,

10:25

you know that, I know that, I'm not going to tell my listeners

10:28

that. So for the longest time, I thought

10:30

Alex doesn't, it's

10:32

a show, he doesn't mean it. But then I

10:34

met this cameraman called Joshua

10:36

with Alex for years and became a whistleblower.

10:39

And he said, no, no, no, Alex

10:41

is exactly the same off camera as he

10:43

is on camera. And eventually then I came

10:45

to the conclusion that, you know, if Alex has narcissism,

10:48

which he has been diagnosed with in

10:51

court, then it's kind of immaterial

10:53

whether he believes it or not. And

10:56

the idea of what is truth.

10:58

Somebody said to me the other day, it's a

11:00

phrase that we've all heard, like your truth.

11:03

Oh, no, that's a very dangerous

11:05

phrase, because what it obviously means is that

11:07

there's no such thing as evidence based

11:10

truth. Yeah.

11:10

And people say it all the time. It's

11:12

kind of, it's my truth, it's your truth, it's become such

11:15

a buzzword online. And I guess

11:17

as well, I mean, we've just been talking about the murkiness

11:20

of this and just how hard it can be to really

11:22

unpick it all. And just for listeners, and I

11:24

think it's probably helpful for them to hear from both of you,

11:26

I'll start with you, Gabriel. How do you think people can

11:29

spot this stuff? How can they tell when they

11:31

might be being drawn into a conspiracy

11:34

theory, whether it's on, you know, the fringes of

11:36

social media or whether it's actually on, you

11:39

know, the telly or in the mainstream

11:40

media, how can we spot this stuff?

11:44

That is a hard question. I would

11:46

say if it seems too

11:48

incredible to be true, then check yourself,

11:52

you know, just take a moment. Do

11:55

do your own research, but don't just do it online

11:58

because, you know, you will find yourself.

11:59

in a rabbit hole, partly

12:02

because it's out there and partly because

12:04

the algorithms of these big

12:07

social media companies, YouTube and what

12:09

have you, will lead you down these

12:11

kind of more extreme places because

12:14

that's where they get more clicks and that's

12:16

how they make their money. So

12:18

if something feels

12:21

too outrageous and too

12:23

weird to be true, it doesn't mean it's not true, but

12:26

just like go to some different

12:28

sources, try and seek out some people who

12:30

you know disagree with you

12:32

on that or don't believe that and listen

12:34

to what they have to say because it's

12:37

really important to do that.

12:38

I think it's important talking about the algorithm actually

12:40

and something that we do on Americaast, I

12:42

have these characters called the undercover voters

12:45

and they have social media profiles across

12:47

the main platforms and they're based on

12:49

data from the Pew Research Center and they allow me

12:51

to see, you know, they're not an exhaustive view but they

12:53

give me a bit of an insight into what different

12:55

people are being recommended and I know

12:57

we're told it all the time, you know, you're in an echo

13:00

chamber, you're probably in your own filter bubble, you're not

13:02

seeing everything but when you witness it firsthand,

13:04

it is so surprising that just watching the same

13:06

event through five different prisms

13:09

and thinking, wow, I can see why you

13:11

would see this one thing in a totally different

13:13

way to this person. How

13:16

do you think, I mean, other than just being aware

13:18

of it, what's the solution to that? Is it

13:20

just breaking away from our own

13:22

feeds and making that deliberate

13:25

attempt to actually look at what someone else might

13:27

be seeing?

13:27

Ultimately, you

13:29

can't tell anyone anything. People

13:31

have to come to it themselves. Obviously,

13:33

it's very good to put out into the world to

13:36

remind people of how important evidence-based

13:39

journalism is over ideological journalism,

13:41

for instance, and just rational thinking

13:44

is and so on. So, you know, I think

13:46

rational, reasonable people should keep

13:49

doing that but I think ultimately

13:51

the person has to find their own way out. I

13:53

think it's the truth.

13:54

There was something that you said, Gabriel, that

13:57

I think is so interesting and important here, which is

13:59

this idea of... do

14:00

your own research and we know that's one of the slogans

14:02

of the conspiracy theory movement worldwide

14:05

including in the US and something I've

14:07

found is the way that what feels

14:10

I think perhaps

14:11

more distinct or feels

14:14

unique to the kind of

14:16

the conspiracy movement that really boomed during

14:18

the pandemic is this idea that the calls to action

14:21

are embedded within the movement and you actually have

14:23

to you can't it's no good just sitting around believing

14:25

this stuff you actually have to be doing

14:27

something you need to be taking part in rallies you

14:29

need to be handing out stuff you need

14:31

to be posting things you know there's almost evangelical

14:34

approach to conspiracy this

14:35

is this is something that has really

14:38

changed I think from the from the days

14:40

of and John you'll set me right on this

14:43

if I'm wrong but because you've been in the rabbit hole

14:45

for longer than I have but you

14:47

know when it was kind of JFK

14:50

and the gunman on the grass you know the

14:52

moon landings or even you know

14:55

9-11 this was more of a sort

14:57

of passive kind of top-down

14:59

oh there's this theory I can believe

15:01

in it or not believe in it but you know there we

15:03

go you know they're lying to

15:05

me but when it came to

15:07

QAnon QAnon was an

15:10

active movement

15:11

the first time I met somebody who was a proper QAnon they

15:14

were holding up a queue sign at a

15:16

Trump rally I said what is this queue she said

15:19

what the plan to save the world as if I was

15:21

like ignorant of efforts to eradicate

15:24

polio or something so the reason

15:26

why QAnon was so powerful was

15:29

because it gave people

15:31

not just a sense of being

15:33

possessors of secret knowledge but

15:35

it also it gave you an active

15:37

duty in literally saving

15:40

the world yeah I mean absolutely

15:43

about how it used to be much more passive than it is

15:45

now I think it's rather

15:47

good that conspiracy theorists are getting

15:49

in their 10,000 steps more than in

15:51

the old days it was the thing that frustrated

15:53

me most when I was starting to write my book them back

15:55

in the 90s because I noticed I was going around gun

15:58

shows in America in the 90s and what I

15:59

started to notice was that the conspiracy

16:03

video table was

16:05

more popular than the AR-15 table.

16:09

And these videos were terrible.

16:11

It was like two old men sitting

16:14

at some public access TV

16:16

station with a giant cardboard

16:19

cutout of the all-seeing eye on the back of the dollar

16:21

bill. It sounds like a podcast. It

16:23

sounds like us. You just described a podcast. It sounds

16:25

like what we're doing. They were so

16:27

boring. And yet these videos

16:29

were really popular. So

16:32

when Alex Jones came along, who was really the first

16:34

very active conspiracy theorist,

16:36

because he would go and confront people and

16:38

he'd go off on adventures. And that was so

16:41

galvanizing. A, he was incredibly

16:43

eloquent and very good at it. And

16:45

B, he was going out and doing stuff.

16:48

Because, yeah, back then,

16:50

the worst conspiracy theory was

16:52

chemtrails.

16:53

Well, they are part of our everyday

16:55

sky. The white lines known as contrails

16:58

that follow airplanes above. Now,

17:00

to scientists, these lines are

17:02

nothing more than water, vapor and exhaust.

17:05

But to conspiracy theorists, something

17:07

much more sinister. Spokane

17:10

City Council member Mike Fagan is raising some eyebrows

17:12

after suggesting that airplanes, even those above

17:14

our city, could be spraying chemicals

17:17

on a regular basis to control our climate.

17:20

That's

17:20

the least amount of work you have to do to

17:22

be a conspiracy theorist, because all you do is looking out in the window

17:24

and up into the sky. So, yes,

17:27

but now it is a lot more active.

17:28

And I mean, the thing that comes to mind immediately when

17:30

I think about offline action is those

17:33

riots on January the 6th, Gabriel.

17:35

And I just wonder kind of what,

17:37

how you characterize the relationship

17:40

between those

17:41

riots and the belief

17:43

in conspiracy, because there's kind of all sorts of things

17:45

at play there.

17:47

But that still feels like a really important part.

17:49

I think it was 100% a causal relationship.

17:51

I mean, the reason that those people

17:54

ended up inside

17:56

the Capitol building is because they believed they

17:58

were going to be there.

17:59

that democracy had been stolen.

18:02

As far as they were concerned, they

18:04

were the people who were trying to save democracy.

18:07

We're gonna walk down to the Capitol.

18:10

Yeah! Get

18:12

that motherfucker outta there! Take

18:15

him out! He's gonna kill!

18:17

And the

18:19

people who were wringing their hands and

18:22

complaining about this were in on

18:25

the conspiracy, who were trying

18:27

to subvert democracy. So these people believed

18:30

that they were doing the right thing because

18:33

of a conspiracy theory that had been fed

18:35

to them, at first by shadowy

18:37

figures on niche websites like 4chan

18:40

and 8chan, which had then kind of vaulted

18:43

into Facebook and Twitter and the more kind of mainstream

18:46

internet, and had then been taken

18:47

up by

18:49

Donald Trump and his supporters,

18:52

high-level supporters. And so, you

18:54

know, of course, if they see their commander in chief

18:57

saying this stuff, they're gonna believe it, right?

18:59

People believe they're president. That's...

19:03

Americans have respect for the

19:05

office. And so, in

19:07

a way, you can really understand why

19:09

those people were there. There was a causal relationship.

19:13

And I think you can also understand why

19:15

some people are a little

19:17

iffy

19:18

about the kind of stringent

19:20

sentences that some of these people got. Like,

19:23

you know, the guy that sent me down this rabbit hole,

19:25

the guy who became known as the Q. Shaiman, Jacob

19:29

Chansley, the guy with the horns and the furs

19:31

and the loud halo and stuff.

19:33

I developed a lot of sympathy for Donald Trump because

19:36

it seemed like the media was picking on him. It

19:38

seemed like the establishment

19:41

was going after him unnecessarily

19:43

or unfairly. And I had been a victim

19:45

of that all of my life, whether it be at

19:48

school...

19:48

He was not a violent protester.

19:51

He did not, as it were, storm

19:53

the Capitol. He kind of went in with the

19:55

crowd. He, at one point,

19:57

he stopped another rioter

19:59

or...

19:59

insurrectionists, whatever you want to call

20:02

them, from stealing a congressional muffin from

20:04

a little kitchenette, saying, hey guys,

20:06

let's, you know, keep it decent,

20:09

that's private property, don't steal that. Do

20:11

you know what I mean? So, and he got whatever it was,

20:13

two and a bit years, he's just come out. Now he's

20:16

come out sort of, it seems, even

20:18

further down the rabbit hole, but

20:23

he was not in

20:24

himself a violent person, I don't

20:26

think he was a bad person, and I

20:28

think that

20:29

people who feel that he got a disproportionately

20:33

high sentence because of his

20:35

symbolic value and because of the symbolic

20:38

value of what happened on January the 6th,

20:41

I think I have a point.

20:43

Yeah. It's the eclectic mix of views that

20:45

exist within this one, so to speak,

20:48

movement and the different groups and the different people

20:50

and the different aims, and that's what can also make this really

20:52

hard to unpick and cover because

20:54

actually there's not one universal,

20:56

cohesive, organized thing.

20:58

It's like this kind of globule where there

21:01

are different people who are sometimes

21:03

reading from the same, I don't

21:05

know if manifesto is fair, but the same sort

21:08

of like book that's

21:10

helped inform their views, but they've kind of taken different

21:12

bits that they agree with and don't agree with, and

21:14

that's what can be so complicated and they can come from all different

21:16

areas of the political spectrum, they can come from all

21:19

kinds of different places, and there might be things

21:21

they share in common, but yeah, they're just complex,

21:24

and I think, I don't know, why is it, you

21:26

know, we often talk about conspiracy theories in relation

21:28

to the US. Is there something about the US

21:30

that makes it especially vulnerable to

21:33

or a fertile place for conspiracy?

21:35

Well, I know my friend Adam Curtis

21:38

made a documentary where he looked at like the very,

21:40

very, it's like my roots of conspiracies go

21:42

back to like the 90s, but Adam went back

21:45

to like the turn of the century and his theory

21:47

was just the geography of the place. It

21:49

was people isolated and

21:51

farmhouses on planes and that's

21:53

where paranoid thought, you know, when you're isolated

21:56

from society, that's where paranoid thought can,

21:58

can burden.

21:59

course, you know, another version of the isolated

22:03

paranoid planes, I guess, is the internet,

22:06

because we're all just doing it from, you know,

22:08

we're all retreating to our quarters and doing it from our

22:10

rooms. So I think, you know, maybe the geography has something to

22:12

do with it, although I would say, Mariana, that when

22:14

I was, you know, in the 90s looking into

22:17

conspiracy theories for the first time, I spent

22:19

quite a lot of time with David Eiken Brisson and he

22:21

was, you know, he had this

22:23

theory about giant lizards secretly rolling the world.

22:25

He hates me now. He wrote something about me the other day.

22:28

Oh really? He's not a fan, but

22:30

he's still around. Is that because you don't agree with him, Mariana? Is that

22:32

because you don't buy the whole lizard thing?

22:34

It's actually because I am a lizard. Yeah,

22:37

but I will tell you that, yeah, I do think it comes

22:39

to a great extent from America, but I would go to

22:41

David Eiken events like in Froome

22:43

in Somerset, you know, back in the 90s and they

22:46

were packed and he was talking

22:48

for like six hours at a time

22:50

and they were absolutely fantastic. I

22:53

think one of the reasons that perhaps

22:55

it's, I take what you say, John, and I think

22:57

you're right and an American political culture

23:01

has always been more kind

23:03

of anti, yeah, paranoid,

23:06

exactly, right, that's correct word,

23:08

the paranoid style in American politics, et cetera,

23:10

et cetera. But I think one

23:12

of the reasons that it seems

23:14

more bright

23:18

in America is because Americans

23:21

are less cagey

23:23

about talking about this stuff. You know, whenever I go

23:25

and meet these people in America, they

23:27

will be perfectly open with me and they

23:29

know full well that I don't agree

23:32

or buy most of this stuff that they're

23:34

talking about, but they will be open with me. Whereas

23:36

I find in Britain, elsewhere

23:38

in Europe, people are much more

23:41

keen to calibrate what they say to

23:44

their audience, right? So I think in a way

23:46

it's the kind of this American openness,

23:48

which is a wonderful thing that also leads

23:50

it to seem

23:51

more prevalent in America.

23:53

And I would like to point out that you mentioned

23:56

at the beginning, John,

23:58

the protocols, the elders of Zion.

23:59

which of course came not from America, but from Russia. So,

24:02

you know, as a sort of foundational

24:05

document, this idea of

24:07

this anti-Semitic idea of Jews running

24:09

the world, from which comes

24:12

the idea of the cabal and

24:14

the roots of so many conspiracy theories. You know, this

24:16

actually comes from Russia, not

24:18

America. Yeah. Have you ever, I've

24:20

read the Protocols of Zion. I've

24:23

been looking at it for this new broadcast, because

24:24

it's still like very much

24:27

part of the literature. Yeah. You read

24:29

it. It's like, it's nuts. It's

24:32

purports to be the minutes of a secret

24:35

Jewish meeting that's kind of leaked out.

24:37

And it's all things like, the weapons in our

24:39

hands are merciless, greed, vengeance.

24:42

It's a bit like Alex Jones saying he overheard two old

24:44

men say we're going to get him elected. It's like, you don't,

24:46

you know, like,

24:48

really have some rationality. Come on.

24:51

And we've got, so we've had lots of questions

24:53

from America pastors and we've got one,

24:55

which is from Claire Chatwell from Ohio.

24:58

And this is what she asks us. You often

25:00

cover conspiracy theories

25:02

held by Republicans, but

25:04

I've not heard you talk about many conspiracy

25:06

theories from the Democrats. Why are

25:08

conspiracy theories only associated

25:11

with Republicans?

25:12

I think a lot of people genuinely

25:16

believe that people who are on

25:18

the right are more prone to conspiracy theories

25:21

than people on the left. And I think that is absolute

25:23

nonsense, I have to say. I think

25:26

the reason people are prone to conspiracy theories is

25:28

because they feel disempowered and confused

25:31

about what's happening in the world. And frankly, who

25:33

wouldn't feel disempowered and confused about what's happening in

25:35

the world because the world is a disempowering

25:37

and confusing place at the moment.

25:40

I think that the people who seem

25:42

to be most prone to conspiracy theories

25:45

are not on the right or

25:47

left, but people who feel themselves shut

25:49

out from the center and the mainstream. And

25:52

conspiracy theories help explain

25:54

to

25:55

them why

25:57

they do feel shut out and disempowered. Yeah,

26:00

I agree with all that and I would add

26:03

also just the dangers

26:05

of falling in love too much with an ideology because

26:07

if you allow ideology to, you know,

26:11

if you're a journalist who

26:13

cares more about ideology than evidence, for instance,

26:16

then you can easily succumb to conspiracy theories

26:18

yourself.

26:27

Now, just to throw us forward

26:29

and to think about what's coming next, I think a lot

26:31

of people, a lot of America's is at least

26:33

are thinking about the US election in 2024. We

26:37

know that Trump's running for the Republican nomination

26:39

for president. We know that people like Robert F. Kennedy

26:41

Jr. are running for the Democratic

26:44

nomination for president. And that's not just for

26:46

the people who have been accused in the past of pushing disinformation

26:50

or conspiracy theories. Gabriel,

26:52

just to start with you,

26:54

what do you think? And I am always

26:56

wary dealing in speculation and, you

26:59

know, us warning what we think is going

27:02

to happen. But what do you think we need to keep

27:05

our eye on

27:05

in the build up to this upcoming election? I saw

27:07

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak just a couple of weeks ago, actually,

27:10

in Miami. And

27:15

I think that's a very important question. We

27:17

live at a time now that technology has dangerously expanded the

27:20

capacity for governments

27:25

and corporations to control

27:27

our lives. Distant, impersonal, multinationals and authoritarian technologies

27:30

have usurped the realms of human

27:35

activity that were once private

27:37

or held by a community.

27:39

Every movement, our communications,

27:42

our every transaction and

27:45

the technologies they use to monitor

27:47

us

27:47

can also be used to control us.

27:50

Well, his message basically was

27:52

that, you know, cryptocurrencies

27:54

are good because the government can't

27:57

seize your money. And they talked a lot about the.

27:59

the Canadian truckers,

28:02

some of whom they said had their assets

28:04

frozen, you remember

28:06

those protests, etc. He was sort

28:08

of

28:11

speaking in a way from a slightly conspiratorial

28:15

point of view. But in another

28:17

way, what he was saying was

28:21

factually true. So if you have your

28:23

money in a

28:26

bank account and somebody somewhere

28:28

doesn't like what you're doing, those

28:31

assets can be frozen or confiscated, as many

28:35

murdering Russian officials have now

28:37

found to their displeasure, right? They've

28:40

had all their assets frozen, because the

28:43

powers that be don't like what they're doing. So he's

28:45

not wrong in saying that if you want to

28:48

live beyond the reach of

28:50

the powers that be, go

28:52

for cryptocurrencies or something like that. As for

28:55

what's likely to happen in 2024,

28:59

on the specifics, I

29:01

don't know. But I do know that

29:03

the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen,

29:07

which is believed by tens

29:11

of millions of Americans, vast,

29:14

vast numbers of people. Basically,

29:17

most Republicans kind of believe that it was stolen.

29:20

Most Democrats believe that it wasn't. That idea

29:22

has gone nowhere. That hasn't

29:24

receded. And

29:25

I cannot imagine

29:28

that in 2024, these

29:33

people who believe that it was stolen last

29:36

time, if they don't win this time, are just

29:38

going to go, well, this one was fine. This

29:40

one was just legit. It was a textbook

29:42

perfect election.

29:43

John, what do you think? Right now, at this

29:45

moment in time, it's going to be a shoo-in

29:47

for Trump getting the nomination. I mean, DeSantis

29:49

is the best thing that could possibly have happened to Trump.

29:53

Interestingly, you know, Trump is positioning

29:55

himself to the left of DeSantis and

29:58

that's working.

30:00

the Bernie people. One thing

30:02

I like about American conservatives is that they're

30:04

not authoritarians. And so DeSantis

30:07

is going to get nowhere. I mean, I hope I'm not going to look

30:09

like an idiot in six months time saying this.

30:11

We'll get you back, John. We'll get you back when we're like,

30:14

President DeSantis. Do you

30:16

remember that clip of George Clooney going,

30:18

Donald Trump is not going to be

30:21

president Donald Trump? It's

30:23

not

30:24

going

30:29

to happen because fear is not going to be something which

30:31

drives our country. We have a good question

30:33

from another Americaaster, Barney Durant

30:36

in Brighton, asking us about the next election

30:38

and the different things that might be at play.

30:40

What impact do you think AI

30:42

will have on the next US election now

30:44

that it is possible relatively easily

30:47

to create fake video and

30:49

imagery of a real person?

30:52

I'm still a little optimistic about this, but I've got to

30:54

say, I think my optimism will probably drain away

30:56

as AI gets better and better. But one

30:58

thing I did find quite encouraging, you

31:01

remember the Pope? It is puffer.

31:03

It is puffer. So for 24 hours,

31:06

everybody thought that was real.

31:07

Hold on for a second. When did the Pope get

31:10

dripped like this? Pope

31:11

got more swag than me. That's blasphemous.

31:14

24 hours later, everybody knew that

31:16

it was a deep fake. And that's because

31:18

society is still relying on

31:21

rational humans to tell us what's

31:23

true and what's not true. So that was an

31:25

example of, OK, maybe we're going to be

31:27

quite good at adapting. Well, all I

31:29

would say is we didn't need AI

31:32

to make 70 million Americans

31:34

believe that the election

31:36

had been stolen by a cabal

31:39

of Satan worshipping pedophiles operating out of

31:41

a basement in a pizzeria that didn't have a basement.

31:43

We didn't need AI for that.

31:44

So maybe

31:46

it's going to make it worse, but we're there.

31:49

Well, I get asked about this all the time, and I often say to

31:51

people, A, at the moment, I can think

31:53

of so many examples of harm

31:55

caused by disinformation or false claims,

31:58

et cetera, et cetera, all of which are dying. in a very

32:00

low budget, pretty straightforward way.

32:03

And actually, when it comes to AI, a bit

32:05

like Pope in the Jacket, people quite quickly

32:07

say, oh, that's AI, that's AI at the moment. And

32:09

so you're not getting that same sort of real

32:11

world harm, I guess, in the way that you certainly get

32:14

with some of the more low budget techniques. So

32:16

yeah, I kind of think we're already there as well.

32:18

Yeah. And I've got to say, in the

32:20

midst of this, there is something that feels very bleak

32:23

and dispiriting, which is the fact that

32:25

all of these people believe that the election

32:27

was stolen despite the fact that

32:29

there were, what, 60 court cases

32:32

or 61 court cases, and all but one were

32:35

lost by the Trumpers and still

32:37

everybody

32:37

believes. I think it's so important that all of this

32:39

happens in a wider context

32:42

where bad things do happen, powerful

32:44

people do do bad things, and all

32:46

kinds of things cause harm. And when I think

32:48

about the harm of this and the harm of conspiracies,

32:51

I think about people no longer wanting to

32:53

vote because they genuinely don't trust

32:55

democratic processes anymore and they think

32:58

despite

32:59

evidence to the contrary that their

33:01

vote will not count at all. And

33:03

I also think of this idea that conspiracy,

33:06

a

33:06

lot of conspiracy at its heart is about blaming

33:09

someone and finding someone to blame for

33:11

what's going wrong. And that's the bit that

33:13

worries me, I think, because I think that often

33:15

it's about blaming an individual. And in

33:18

some ways it's almost better when it's blaming an organization

33:20

or a big corporation. It's worse

33:23

when it's blaming a specific doctor or

33:25

a specific journalist or a specific politician.

33:28

And we saw this kind of incident involving Nancy

33:30

Pelosi, the former speaker of the house, and her

33:33

husband, and these kind of allegations about

33:35

this guy breaking

33:36

in and whether he was fueled by some of the stuff

33:38

he'd seen online.

33:40

Paul Pelosi underwent surgery

33:42

to repair a skull fracture after

33:44

he was beaten with a hammer inside his San

33:46

Francisco home Friday. A suspect

33:48

is in custody, charged with attempted

33:51

murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary,

33:54

and elder

33:54

abuse. Speaker Pelosi

33:56

was not at home at the time of the attack.

33:59

going into 2024 and the thing I

34:02

am kind of keeping an eye on is how

34:04

far that blame game goes and how

34:07

committed people who genuinely believe this stuff,

34:09

genuinely believe that humanity is under serious

34:12

threat, but believe it on the basis of

34:15

distorted fact or believe it on

34:17

the basis of information that's not true, how far

34:19

they could go. I think that's what

34:21

scares me a bit because it's

34:23

quite a scary world to operate in when you genuinely

34:26

believe

34:27

people are evil and you're

34:29

willing to go quite far in your attempts

34:31

to target them. I don't know what you

34:33

think, April. Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think

34:35

that's right. And they're always

34:37

the most ugly

34:39

and the most scary when they're kind of targeting

34:44

individuals because the individuals

34:47

can't really defend themselves, even

34:49

if they're like Hillary Clinton. Whatever

34:52

you think about Hillary Clinton, she's

34:55

not a satanic witch who

34:58

drinks children's blood and that

35:01

is a scary thing to sort of contemplate being

35:03

in the middle of such a firestorm.

35:05

Thank you both so much for joining me today. John

35:08

Ronson's new podcast, The Debutant, is available

35:10

now. On Audible and

35:12

also my BBC show, Things Fell Apart,

35:15

is available right here, wherever

35:17

you're listening. Gabriel's podcast, The Coming

35:19

Storm, is also up on BBC Sounds.

35:21

You've got more recent episodes, you've got the original episodes,

35:24

don't you, Gabriel?

35:24

Yeah, we did a couple of extra episodes and

35:27

there is a second season coming

35:31

sometime in

35:32

As is also the case with Things Fell Apart,

35:35

a second season coming in January 2024. All

35:38

the plugs. You're working much harder than I

35:40

am, John. Well, all I do is work. Or

35:42

at least it seems that way.

35:43

And you can listen to my

35:45

new Radio 4 podcast, Marianna

35:47

in Conspiracyland, which will be available on BBC

35:50

Sounds from June the 12th. And

35:52

obviously you can also listen to America's

35:54

first and in full as a podcast

35:57

on BBC Sounds. So you have got so

35:59

many podcasts.

35:59

can listen to. I hope that keeps you very,

36:02

very busy for the coming weeks. And

36:04

we'll see you all later. Bye.

36:06

Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thanks.

36:09

America's. America's. From

36:12

BBC News. Thanks for listening

36:14

to America's from BBC News. You

36:16

can subscribe to this podcast on the free

36:19

BBC sounds app, which is now available

36:21

worldwide.