Transcript/607: A Chat With Mike Rothschild

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N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-Knowledge Fight

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Dan and Jordan, I am sweating

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knowledgefight.com, it's time to pray

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I have great respect for knowledgefight

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knowledgefight

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I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys

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saying we are the bad guys

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knowledgefight

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Dan and Jordan, knowledgefight

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Riddle her, riddle her, riddle her

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I need, I need money

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Riddle her, riddle her, riddle her

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Andy in Kansas, Andy in, Andy in

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Stop it, Andy in, Andy in Kansas

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Riddle her, Andy in, Andy in

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It's time to pray

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Andy in Kansas, you're on the air, thanks for holding us

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Hello Alex, I'm a first-time caller, I'm a huge fan

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I love your room

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knowledgefight

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N-N-N-N-N-N-Knowledgefight.com

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I love you

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Hey everybody, welcome back to Knowledgefight, I'm Dan

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I'm Jordan

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We're a couple dudes, like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene

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and talk a little bit about Alex Jones

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Oh indeed we are, Dan

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Alex Jones

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All right

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I nodded my head, but I refused to clap along with that

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You were following the beat

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I was, I can't not, I was a drummer, can't not follow the beat, man

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That's what I do, Dan

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We got the beat

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I have a question for you

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What's up, Jordan?

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Do we have the meats?

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Uh, we do have the meats, actually

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You're gonna ask me about my bright spot

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I was gonna ask you about your bright spot

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My bright spot actually kind of comes in the form of something about a meat

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So I was taking a trip this this last weekend

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Yes

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And I was visiting a friend in DC

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And one night we decided to get some Burmese food for dinner

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Okay

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And I was looking at the menu, we're gonna order it

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And there was something that was a beef stewed with chilies

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Oh boy

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It's hot, you know, it's a hot thing

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Yeah, yeah, yeah

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And so I decided to order this

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Is it on the bone?

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No, no

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Oh, okay, that would have been the

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It's kind of like a stew

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Ah, okay

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And so I decided to get that

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And my friend was ordering it

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And I could hear on the other end of the phone the guy taking the order going

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It was a ridiculous belly laugh

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Like he's, oh yeah, he wants to order that

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That's fun, that's fun

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That's our joke menu item, that idiot

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I got humiliated, and I thought everything was going to be fine

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But then it came in, man

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Hot?

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It was too hot

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Yeah, I deserve to get laughed at for that

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Well, I mean, hey

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I couldn't finish it

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And I'm somebody who, you know, like I'm up on the wall of a Thai restaurant

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You know, I've had some adventures in spicy

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Yeah, you got that

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I think maybe I'm getting old

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I think it happens

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Maybe I can't handle it, but it also felt like

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Did you get some of that heartburn?

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No, not really, but I got like overwhelmed

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Ah

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I got like sweats

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You went into shock

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Yes, yes

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It was a full body experience

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Oh boy

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But yeah, the trip was nice

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I got back Monday, and here we are

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That's awesome

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Yeah, it was a good time all in all, you know, bright spot

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But also that getting laughed at over the phone

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Yes, of course, that's too good

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I'll cherish that moment for the rest of my life

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Ah, and that he was right

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That is also pretty fun

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It is nice whenever people are confidently mocking you and then they win

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That's too good

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Yeah, because the people at the Thai place that I go to, they will give you the are you sure

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Yes, yeah

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And usually it's okay, I can handle it

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Right

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But not this time

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I actually honestly kind of think that if it was chicken, I could have been okay

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Because the heat profile was very strong

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But there was something about it being the beef and you have to chew it a little bit more

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It's a little bit more gamey

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Yeah, yeah, yeah

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I don't know

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I've never thought you were a real beef guy anyways

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I'm generally not, I don't go for red meat all that often

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I'm more of a poultry person

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That's kind of what I was thinking

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Yeah, yeah

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What's your bright spot?

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My bright spot, Dan, is

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Somebody tried to order Burmese food from you

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You laughed your ass off

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That would be, that does sound like me

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It would be fun if it was my

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I got a weekend gig in DC at Burmese

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It was my laugh on the other

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That would be great

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Or if every time I hear a laugh it just, it's funneled through my ears as you're laughing

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There's only one laugh

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My bright spot, Dan, is, if you recall, back in the day when I went to see Shoei Otani

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They stole my bag

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I wasn't stoked about it

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Yeah, yeah, because it wasn't see-through

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Because it wasn't see-through

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So then I got a backpack

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Because I'm a messenger bag guy all the way

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Yeah, yeah, yeah

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So then I got a backpack and I tried that out, awful

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It was not, it was not fitting right

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My partner found me the ultimate messenger bag

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Nice

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It's got a buckle and shit for the, the thing

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It's amazing

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It fits all kinds of stuff

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A lot of hidden pockets

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I love hidden pockets

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That is nice

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You know I love a good hidden pocket

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Of course

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Only thing better than a hidden pocket on a bag is a hidden pocket in your coat

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Oh

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Love those

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Those interior pockets?

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Yeah, those are the shit

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That is nice

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You can just pull something out of there

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Oh, it's the best

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Dramatic

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It's the best, yeah

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If it was a handkerchief, you'd be like, ta-da

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You know it goes in there, proof

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Nice

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Evidence

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So you can whip it out just

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What do you think of, why do I have this manila envelope?

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You know why

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Yeah, so the bag is absolutely fantastic

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She thought about a gift for me

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I'm notoriously terrible to buy gifts for

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Sure

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Because I'm not really, I don't really have stuff

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Well, but I mean, I think like, you know, when you're in a position where you're struggling

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with this backpack

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Totally

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It lends itself to a gift

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And it was, it was amazing

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Yeah

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Well, I'm happy for you because I was getting to a point where I started calling you backpack

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Yeah, yeah, it's good to be, it's good to be back

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It's good to be back to message you back

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What's up, backpack?

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So Jordan, we are back from the little break

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Yeah

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Didn't have an episode on Monday and we're gonna jump back in today with something a

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little bit different

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Off the beaten path

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Maybe something that's becoming something we may do a little bit more of as time goes on

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It's been fun

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It has, it has

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It's, it's not always the easiest thing to get people who would want to talk on our show

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Right

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Yes

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Guests are not something we do very often

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But today we got in touch with Mike Rothschild

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Oh yeah

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Is someone who's been following QAnon quite a bit

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And the banking industry for a long time

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Calm down

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Okay

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He has a book out called The Storm is Upon Us

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Right

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And it's about the roots of QAnon

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Yes

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And all that stuff

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So we had a little conversation with him about some of the book and some of the intersections

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with the Alex Jones world

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Speaking of which, it's very funny that even the book world that we live in, he has to

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put in parentheses every time he puts his name, Mike Rothschild, no relation

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To be fair, not every time

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Not every time, but it's in there

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And because I bring this up in our conversation with him and now it's going to sound like

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we're hyper focused on this and that's tacky

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No, it's great

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Um, so we'll get to that interview here in a moment

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But before we do, Jordan, let's say hello to some new wonks

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Oh, that's a great idea

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So first, worshiper of Selene, thank you so much

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You are now a policy wonk

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I'm a policy wonk

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Thank you so much

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Thank you

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Next, the boy is at RateMyCreepyCeiling.com

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Thank you so much

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You are now a policy wonk

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I'm a policy wonk

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Thank you very much

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I worry what I just gave a shout out to

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I don't know how I like Rate My Creepy Ceiling

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If that becomes the new Facebook, we're in real trouble

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That will destroy democracy

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Yeah, oh yeah

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Next, Cam, thank you so much, you are now a policy wonk

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I'm a policy wonk

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Thanks, Cam

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Thank you

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Next, James, thank you so much, you are now a policy wonk

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I'm a policy wonk

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Thanks, James

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Thank you

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Next, Wally the Goodest Boy, thank you so much, you are now a policy wonk

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I'm a policy wonk

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Thanks, Wally

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And we got a technocrat out there to say hello to

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It is I Hate the 2021 Alex Jones, but the super fake 2003 radio voice is unbelievably worse

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Grrr, thank you so much, you are now a technocrat

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I'm a policy wonk

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Crikey, mate, that's fantastic, have yourself a brew

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How's your 401k doing, bro?

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All right, we gotta go full tilt boogie on this, Watson, all right?

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Let's just get down to business

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We ain't making that money off that heroin

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Why are you pimps so good?

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My neck is freakishly large

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I declare info war on you

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Thank you so much, grrr

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Yes, thank you very much, grrr

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Grrrr

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Grrrrrr

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Um, so yeah, without further ado, I say we jump into this interview. Last time when we had an interview, we had that fun, like, that would never have happened

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Yeah, yeah, well, we didn't know we were gonna do it again

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That's true

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We wouldn't have done the bit if it was a thing we did

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That's true, that's true, this is less of a let's take you to a fantasy world where we're interviewing

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Yes, exactly, and this is more like welcome to us interviewing again

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Yeah, so here we are, here we go, enjoy and we'll see you on Friday

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Oh, well, hello, joining us today, very, very exciting. We're drifting into interviews, Jordan

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Yeah, this is weird, we're doing two very short, we've done how many episodes? Well over 600

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And we have two full interviews now

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Yeah, but, you know, opportunities pop up and lend themselves to productive conversations

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Why not?

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That are interesting to the world that we look at

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I think it's also that nobody's ever wanted to talk to us before

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That is true, that is true, there was a long stretch of time where

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Who are they? Why are they doing that?

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We got a lot of whys

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Yeah, a lot of why, a lot of personal friends asking why also

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But joining us today, very excited to have Mike Rothschild on the show

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There's a new book that he has out called The Storm is Upon Us with a long subtitle

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A lot of words

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Let's just call it The Storm

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We'll just call it The Storm, I can't even finish the title

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You subscribe to the Alex Jones School of Just Reading Headlines

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Just Reading Headlines, yep

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So Mike, thank you, thank you for joining us

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Oh, thanks for having me, I'm really excited to be here

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I think the elephant in the room, of course, is that you're very

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insistent in the book that you're not related to the Rothschilds

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I am not related to the Rothschilds, look, I drive a 2004 Toyota Corolla

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That's just what they would want you to drive

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Right, right, but it's made of platinum

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No, no, there are people with the same last name not related to each other

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Shock, I know

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My last name's Holmes, nobody's related to me

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NFL running back Priest Holmes looks just like you

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He's great

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I imagine that you get accusations about that a lot, though

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Like, I noticed in the book there was at least a time

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there's parenthetically no relation to the author

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And I just have to assume with the world that you cover

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with QAnon and conspiracy stuff

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people would make that connection and probably be mad

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Yeah, people think that I'm acting as some sort of like hype man for the family

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that, you know, they're like Chuck D. and I'm like Flavor Flav

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and I've got my clock on and I'm yelling like, we don't drink blood, yo

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It's sort of a defensive hype man

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Yeah, yeah, it's like a crisis PR hype man

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Like how Goebbels was a hype man, you know?

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Like, yeah, yeah, yeah

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Goebbels was very flashy

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Yeah, very fly, wore a big clock, swastika shaped

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made it hard to tell time

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But the thing that you find with a lot of sort of old money families

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is that they don't address this stuff at all

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Like they don't talk about it

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Like there's no, and I've looked for this stuff

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I've looked for members of the Rothschild family

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going on the record and talking about this stuff

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and they don't talk about it

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It doesn't exist for them

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They just live their lives because they know that anything

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that they throw into that particular fire

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is just going to be used as proof that it's all true

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You can't prove that you're not something

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So you just don't talk about it

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You know, you get that a lot with these older money families

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You know, these families that have passed down a lot of wealth

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and have been the subject of rumors

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Like they just, there's nothing to say

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Yeah, there's no win in coming out and being like, not true

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You end up in a situation then where it's like the, you know

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proving you're not a witch by being drowned

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Right, right, exactly

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That's exactly it

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I would say they could come out and say

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peasants, we give no fucks about you

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That would also count

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Right, it would be the same thing

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That would be basically the same thing

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Yeah, yeah

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So you wrote this book about QAnon

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Yes

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And I was curious about like how much of this was

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like the result of like a passion

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or did you set out as a project?

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Like, was this something that you were interested in

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before you were getting into the book?

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Were you following it like organically as it was happening?

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Yeah, see, I've been writing about conspiracy theories

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for about 10 years

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I mean, most of it just, you know, on blogs

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and for no money, I mean, obviously

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But I've been interested in the subject

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for much longer than that

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I really got into the whole idea of conspiracy theories

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as storytelling through coast to coast AM

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I used to listen to Art Bell a lot

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And I, you know, I never believed any of it

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But it was so outside of my own

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sort of middle-class suburban existence

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talking about UFOs and the Illuminati

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And there were ghost circles

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Suburbs

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Well, yeah, but you just didn't talk about them

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That's true, that's true

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So this was, I was really into this as a form of storytelling

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And so I sort of drifted into it more and more professionally

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And so I wrote, I had an opportunity to write my first book

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which came out beginning of 2020

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But long before that, I'd started to look at QAnon

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And the first, my first inkling of seeing something there

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was beginning of 2018

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So just a few months after the first drops came out

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And I started seeing tweets about John McCain

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and Hillary Clinton wearing orthopedic walking boots

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Not because they like hurt their feet

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like the rest of us peasants

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But because they were wearing ankle bracelets

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that were secret

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because they'd been arrested in a purge called the storm

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And I'm like, oh, this is awesome

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I've got to dive into this and see where this is going

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Well, if this is true, what else is true?

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Yeah, exactly

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Like if people believe this

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like ankle bracelets are bulky

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They're not like slap bracelets

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You know, they're like

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you can't like hollow out a walking boot to wear one

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I've got a monitor bracelet and it's leopard print

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I've always liked that the most filmed people on earth

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need ankle bracelets to track their movements

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Yeah, yeah, yeah

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Well, it's because they all have clones

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Well, that's, yes

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But I started to get a little more concerned about it

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when I started to see the parallels in QAnon

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to these previous affinity frauds

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The things I write about a lot in the book

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The Iraqi Dinar scam

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And then before that in the Sara

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before that, the Omega trust scam

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And these, some of these things have been running

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since the early nineties

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and have built a lot of people out of a lot of money

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using the same kind of setup

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This sort of all knowing guru

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who has access to secret intel

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that they will dole out to a select few people

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who are the special chosen ones

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who will know what to do

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when the great change event happens

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And it's always about to happen

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And there's always some dark force

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that gets in the way just as everything's about to change

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It's such a coincidence that happens every time

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Every time, every time

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It's always like just about to happen

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And with the Dinar scam

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I mean, the level of minutia that went into this

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of these anonymous gurus

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with these names like Wolfy Man and T.S. and Tony

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who are just like these scam artists

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These scam artists who are in like Kansas city

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who also have like secret access to the inner workings

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of the Iraqi foreign ministry

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And they were like the Dinar revalue

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has already been announced in the mosques

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Standby to get your secret 1-800 number

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to call in when you'll be told where to go

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And you need to have these code words

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and you need to dress up

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and you need to not tell anybody where you're going

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and bring your dinars in a metal case

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and in a Faraday cage

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I mean, it's like on and on and on

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And it works like a lot of conspiracy theories do

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as you guys know

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that the more arcane detail you load onto something

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the more believable it becomes

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The more vague something is, the less real it seems

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Yeah, because I think people have just sort of a way

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of being tricked by specificity

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You know, you don't think that someone would make up

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all of these details

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That would be exhausting

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That would be insane

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That would be crazy, who would do that?

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Yeah, and I think another element too

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is like when you have all those details

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and all of these weird steps that you need to take

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If you get tricked by one

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you really don't want to admit you got tricked by that one

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And so you go for the second and the third and fourth step

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It becomes much easier to rationalize

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Yeah, it's like blackmail

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It's like you're not done

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You're not done being blackmailed

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There's always going to be more that you're supposed to do, you know?

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Right, there's always another step

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There's always another bit of minutiae

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You know, one of my favorite details with the Omega Trust scam

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which was the precursor to Nasara

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which was this long-time grifter

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who promised that he had access to prime European banknotes

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that only five people in the world knew about

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This dude's a plumber in Mattoon, Illinois

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I mean, really?

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I know Mattoon, Illinois

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And that is where they keep those secret banknotes

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You better believe that shit

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My favorite detail of that was that

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the cash that you sent in to buy your Omega units

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had to be wrapped in tinfoil

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Sure

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I don't know why

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You know what, those rays getting in and disrupting the currency

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Yeah, but it's those details that make something seem real

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Because otherwise, why would you do that?

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Yeah, I admire the confidence of these people

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That's why they call them con man

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Yeah, exactly

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There's a reason

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Just such, I don't know how, I mean like

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I don't even know how I would be able to tell you

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that I have secret European notes

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Let alone strangers

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Right, yeah

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Let alone your sort of circle of church cronies

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that you have making phone calls

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to get more people to invest in this thing

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Yeah

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It's hard not to view that as the story of America, though

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Like it was literally founded upon cults and con men

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The entire country has been built out of people

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bullshitting other people for money

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There's a lot of financial myths intertwining

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Yeah, yeah, yeah

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The Puritans were very capitalist

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And the aspirational model, I think, is something that

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you know, really works with those kinds of cons

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and works all the way going up to Trump

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I mean, so much of Trump's appeal was

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I'm going to make you just like me

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We've got the bigger boats

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We've got the nicer apartments

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I mean, you're talking to coal miners

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in like rural Pennsylvania

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Like we're talking about boats and penthouse departments

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overlooking Central Park

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Again, really?

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That's such a depressing thought

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I never really put it that way in my head

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of like Trump being like, I will make you like me

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Yeah, yeah

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I mean, when you look at the social mobility numbers

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through class systems

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and you realize that nobody from the lower class

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is even moving up to the middle class

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There's no greater con than the American dream

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You can build whatever you want and become rich

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That is the biggest con

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I really liked your rebuttal in the book

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for the Dinar revaluation thing

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where it was just, this is not how this works

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This would never happen

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Fundamentally mistaken

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This would destroy all money in the world

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Yeah, and that's a really

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It's a really useful way to look at something

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that seems really complex

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Like the Dinar, like QAnon

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To break it down into the simple idea of

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that's not how this works

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This is not possible

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This is not how things happen

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Money does not simply appear like that

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You can't just become a billionaire overnight

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with the stroke of a pen

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and have all your friends be billionaires

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and have money have any value anymore

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Yeah, yeah

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Then you have the dollar is the new Dinar

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You just end up, it's circular

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Yeah

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Yeah, I think that that is helpful

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unless you already believe all the stuff

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and then I think it's still not penetrative

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Yeah, no, it's not

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It's then you start to fall back on

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Well, that's what they want you to think

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They don't know what we know

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We have the secret knowledge

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They don't know

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They're asleep

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It's that feeling of specialness

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that you get when you are consuming conspiracy media

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and it's being reflected back to you of

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I know something you don't know

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I mean, ultimately

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It's paradigm changing

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Yeah, yeah

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I mean, ultimately if your response

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like when you boil down that Dinar scam

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your response like at the most elemental level

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is just no, back, no

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You know, you want to be like

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hit them with the newspaper

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You can't think like this

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Yeah

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One of the things that I think is really interesting

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about framing QAnon that way

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or looking at it from that perspective too

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is like, you know, it doesn't appear to be the similar

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necessarily in the same way as those

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Those are like very clearly

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I want money kind of schemes

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Whereas I think externally you view QAnon as like

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wow, this is ideas or

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It doesn't seem as much of like a money machine

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Right

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And that was what was really troubling to me

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was with something like Nasara, the Dinar

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there's the financial aspect of it

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And most people are kind of savvy enough to know that

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you can't buy a million dinars

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and somebody signs a piece of paper

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and you're a millionaire

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Like most people know that that's not how money works

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But what Q was selling wasn't that you're going to get rich

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It was you're going to feel awesome

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when Hillary Clinton and John Podesta

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get the short drop from the rope at Guantanamo Bay

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It was selling good feelings

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And it was selling the idea that these people

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that they've hated for decades

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are finally going to get what's coming to them

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You know, it is absolutely no surprise

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that the first post by Q was

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Hillary Clinton is on the run

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She's going to be extradited

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There's going to be riots

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The National Guard is going to come out into the streets

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Everything that you've wanted is going to happen

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And it all goes from there

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Yeah, I think something that's so

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I don't know if people recognize

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but like in those communities and conspiracy

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and right-wing communities in particular

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like Hillary Clinton's like catnip

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Like if you want to pitch something kind of silly

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attaching her to it is

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We've seen this over and over again

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through years and years on Alex's show

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Like Larry Nichols was able to create

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a cottage industry for himself

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just coming up with nonsense

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but saying like Hillary

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Yeah, I mean the moment they successfully got everybody

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to tie the foster murder to the Clintons

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no matter what

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Like it doesn't matter if you believe it or not believe it

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You know that they are associated

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with the Vince Foster murder

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Then you can just make up anything

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Yeah, I was actually

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I was listening to an old Art Bell Open Lines show

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from I think like mid or late 1995

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And one of the things that he was talking about

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was having a handwriting analyst

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take a look at the Vince Foster suicide note

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Now Art Bell was tended to be a little bit more skeptical

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than a lot of the modern conspiracy gurus

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But even then it's like they're just blaming stuff

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on the Clintons

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I mean this is the mid 90s and it's still happening

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Yeah, you brought up like in Coast to Coast AM quite a bit

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You just brought back up Art Bell

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So now I have to ask this

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Do you not like George Norrie as much as I don't like it?

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I do not like George Norrie at all

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That guy sucks

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It's just a different kind of show

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and it's not as fun

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It's not as like we're gonna figure this out together

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And Bell was skeptical

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I mean that's one of the things about his show

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is that if somebody called in

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and had some cockamamie story

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like he wasn't just going aha that totally happened

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I believe that completely

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He would actually sort of talk about this

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and try to tease out is this possible

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Did this happen?

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I mean look the guy was also a crank

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but he was at least sort of a selective crank

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if that's a thing

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He seemed to have less of like an agenda

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than like George Norrie is definitely like he has ideas

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Yeah, yeah

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But then again I mean even Art Bell was like

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he was the one who had Courtney Brown on

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when they were talking about the spaceship behind Hale Bopp

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Oh yeah, totally

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So he fucked up a bit

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Oh yeah, there's no question about it

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Yeah, but George Norrie way worse

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We can all agree on that and I'm glad

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What other radio hosts do you hate?

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Go ahead and just give me a list

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All of the fill-in hosts on Coast to Coast

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Yeah, it's just it's not the same

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Pun it sucks

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It's very granular hate

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Yeah, oh actually that's an interesting connection too

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is that George Norrie on his show

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actually has had Steve Pechenik as a guest a number of times

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and I know that this is something

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that we'd sort of messaged a little bit about

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but I'm fascinated to understand

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what kind of an interaction you, someone who's studied Cubanon

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would think of him, of Dr. Steve Pechenik

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So Pechenik is one of those guys

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and you get a lot of this in this world

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these guys who are sort of quasi-military connected

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quasi-intelligence connected

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and they've turned that into a persona

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where they know everything and they have all the secrets

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and they can see through everything

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and they're like the most dangerous people in the world

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because they're the only ones who are willing

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to tell the truth

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and meanwhile like nothing ever happens

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You can trust me, I murdered Aldo Morrow

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Right, yeah exactly

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Like I know about the slave colonies on Mars

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It's the most deadly secret in the world

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and yet I continue to not be assassinated

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but you get a lot of those people in that world

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these sort of tenuously military connected

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or tenuously intelligence connected

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and they've turned that into a persona

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where they are the oracles

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and they're the most dangerous people around

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I mean Bill Cooper was the same way

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These guys somehow have all of the secrets

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and are never actually put in any kind of danger

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but they think they are

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and through some kind of an accident

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they ended up stumbling on to like the...

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I guess that's more just like Bill's mythology

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but yeah they have something that they can't ever prove

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but they know for sure

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and they can't be killed over it

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because if they get killed then you'll know it's true

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Right

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That's why they can't assassinate you

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It's a good explanation for it

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I think that you're comparing

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or you're bringing up like Robert David Steele

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and Steve Pachannik in sort of the same area is relevant

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except I don't know it would...

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like do you know if Robert David Steele

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actually was in the FBI or anything?

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Like he makes a lot of claims

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whereas Steve Pachannik was in the State Department

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he did kill Aldo Moro

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Yeah he did do a lot of that stuff

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Yeah

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It's always hard with these guys

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because they're such bullshitters

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and they lie so much all the time

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that you kind of never quite know where you are

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so you just have to take their claims as they come

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rather than sort of do that deep dive into their backstory

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because so much of it is just so murky

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and built around their own mythology

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so it's never quite as satisfying to try to dig in

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and sort of figure out who these people really are

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In terms of the QAnon posts and the like

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not coming directly from the cadre of potential Qs

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Do you get the vibe that people are just making stuff up whole cloth

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or are they stealing it from somewhere?

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It's both

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with the Q drops

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you know the early story told by the Q drops

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of what the storm was originally supposed to be

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you know this mass arrests unleashed by Trump through Twitter

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you know the Marines of the National Guard called up

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that very much seems like something you would read in a Robert Ludlam novel

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in a Tom Clancy novel

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I mean that's another you know pochenic thing

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the co-creator of the op center series

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I mean he didn't really do much with those books

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but he tried

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Yeah

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You've got this sort of Tom Clancy-esque story being told

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and it does seem very original

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but at some point that story kind of burned out

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and then Q just kind of kept kicking the can down the road

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which is the traditional thing that you get with this

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and one of the things that really happened with Q

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is that there was a need for more content

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this became really popular very quickly

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so Q needed to just put more stuff out there

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so there was a lot of stealing

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you know you get a lot of repurposed memes

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you get a lot of stuff grabbed off of blogs

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there's a I think fairly early on in Q

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there's a four drop list of raw content

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there's a four drop list of Rothchild central banks

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it's again not a thing that's not how banking works

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but it's a huge conspiracy

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like Rothchild and central banking and the federal reserve

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but this list of Rothchild central banks

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had been floating around since 2012 or 2013

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from some anonymous blog and then somebody else grabbed it

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and somebody else grabbed it

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and then Q grabbed it and somebody else will grab it

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and what happened with there is a Q drop

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where Q insinuates that Angela Merkel

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is the daughter of Adolf Hitler

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sure they're both in Germany

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they're both associated with Germany

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yeah yeah that that came from the hoax site

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what does it mean

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what does it mean

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what does it mean

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what does it mean

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what does it mean

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but that was hold on hold on

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I could just continue saying what does it mean

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different inflections for the rest of my life

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because I know from other reputable sources

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that George W Bush is also the spawn of Hitler

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and so that would make him and Angela Merkel

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like cousins second cousins

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it gets a little weird

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you have to think that like Der Führer saved his semen

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and somebody just like kept it for 10 years

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like how did that work

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I don't know

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they bring it out every Christmas

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they're just like hey let's pass the sperm around

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this is Hitler come on everybody

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let's get it uh yeah

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I've seen enough weird stuff on the History Channel

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that that doesn't strike me as impossible

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it really doesn't

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yeah it's not

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you can't prove it didn't happen

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yeah I have like a sort of a pet theory

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and I don't know if it ever like sort of bear out

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or actually if there's any credence to it at all

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but when we were going back

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and looking at some of the lead up to the 2016 election

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Steve Pachanik was on Alex's show

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talking about there being a secret coup

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of military people on the inside

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like I don't I didn't follow

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Alex it's already happened

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you don't need to worry about it

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they're all already in jail

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I don't I never followed QAnon closely enough

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to know how well that matched up

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but it felt very similar

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like it felt like there were at least thematic parallels

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yeah the thing with Q is that it's very different

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from a lot of traditional conspiracy theories

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most traditional conspiracy theories

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about people out of power taking it back

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that's where you get those like the secret counter coup

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and the deep state and stuff like that

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with Q it was we have the power and we're going to use it

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so that's where that aspirational model comes in

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that's where that that hopium aspect comes in

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of we've got the power to do this

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we just have to wait until all of the pieces are in place

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everything is perfect

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like there can't be any questions

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like it has to look legal

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it has to be completely legit

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and then we're going to round up

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hundreds of thousands of people and kill them

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so with Q it wasn't like a coup

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because it was already the people who are in power

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now the the question that the Q people never ask themselves

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are we still on?

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yeah oh yeah okay

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no we're just listening really really intently

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this is the first time i've done this in a long time

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yeah yeah when we do not interrupt people

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it doesn't seem like we're frozen

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but it's like what there it's been five seconds

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it's been five seconds

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they should have said something by now

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yeah the the question that the Q people never ask themselves

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is why don't we just do it

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like Trump is the president

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he could just do this

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like he doesn't have to worry about how it looks

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he's the president

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he's the he's the god emperor

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who cares what the optics are

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just grab them

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every every day that you wait

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more children are trafficked

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more more adrenochrome is drained

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more Rothschild money is moved around

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do it now

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why why are you waiting?

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and they never they never ask themselves that

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so you had this period in the summer of 2019

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where 8chan went down for about three months

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and there were no new Q drops

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and then 8kun comes back

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and it's the same thing as 8chan

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nobody in the Q world is like

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wait a minute this is the military intelligence operation

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that's saving the world

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did they just take the summer off?

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was it just like were the children being trafficked

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and they just didn't matter

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they just these are the simple questions

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that these people never ever ask themselves

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well as as somebody who believes in workers rights

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I would say that they should take

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they should have a full

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just because you work for satan

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doesn't mean you shouldn't summer somewhere

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you know like it's just good

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probably somewhere cold

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oh what a nice change of pace this is

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yeah that is that is one of the interesting disconnects

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that is the like well

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if this really were what it says to be

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uh or presents itself as

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it seems incredibly incompetent

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like what has what has uh sort of happened

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and how the messages have gotten out

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the websites being what they are

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right it's me yeah being that

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HN is like full of child pornography

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and mass shooter manifestos

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I mean there's that great moment in the uh the documentary

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Q into the storm

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where uh Liz Crokin is is being told by by Cullen Hoback

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that you know there's there's child porn on HN

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and she's like well you know

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Q is fighting is fighting the child pornographers

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he's like you know HN's full of child pornography

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and she has that look on her face

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like somebody kicked her dog or something

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like it's just not computing with her how vile this place is

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yeah I think some of that has to do with like the

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you know the audience of this being a little bit older

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and maybe people who aren't as familiar with the

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the realities of these message board sites

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like some of them and the character that they have

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and what goes on there

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yeah and there's there's a reason that the Q ecosystem

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really revolved around these um these these websites

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these sort of aggregators that would post the drops

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after they went up on 8chan or 8kun

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where you didn't have to go to the place

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you they didn't want people going to those places

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those places are awful

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nobody should probably go there and be like uh-oh

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yeah I don't know about this whole thing

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like like oh maybe maybe this is not something I want to be involved with

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you want people to be involved with it

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you just don't want them to know how it actually works

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yeah put them on these very slick very simple to use aggregator sites

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and that's where you get your drops

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that's where you you find your decoding threads

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and your like lists of resignations and mysterious deaths and whatever

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yeah

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you're not going to the source

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everything is getting wandered at least one time through the aggregator sites

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that's that's the thing that I was uh really struck by

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is like it wasn't it was almost distilling less than it was laundering

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it was like they took out the craziest parts that were on 8chan

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and they put them one step below

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and then one step below until the the thing that was valuable

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suddenly shows up on fox news

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right

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and then people go from fox news to the next step back up

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to the next step back up until they get more and more extreme

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so it was kind of a weird almost fluctuation of

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yeah

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uh trickle down bullshit being pushed back up into a feedback loop

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yeah yeah it's definitely a pyramid where sort of the the worst stuff is like

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8chan and and you know just the really swampy reddit stuff like

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like places that most people just don't go

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and it and it moves upward to the more legitimate right-wing blogs

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and more legitimate right-wing social media

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then it winds up on info wars

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then it winds up on like gateway pundit

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then it winds up on fox news

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and trump tweets it and then it just goes right back down

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i mean it's it really was a a well-developed system

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i don't know that anybody like sat down and developed it

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it just that's just how information flows with these people

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because nothing nothing gets in there it's it is a bubble

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and there are no there's no light that pierces that bubble

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it is all suffocating darkness and paranoia and anger

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it's a great sentence

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and i think it's also like an information space where like

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it's like truthfulness neutral or whatever

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it's it's things are things are expedient or useful

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they're not really it does not really it's not a hindrance

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if something is not true or patently not true

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right and you say well it's it's my truth

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it's it's true for me

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and that's how the wellness world got so sucked in with QAnon

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because that's always been a world of like well it's it's my experience

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it's my journey it's my truth

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you can't tell me it's it's wrong it's it's true to me

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this objective reality is for suckers

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right exactly

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that sucks

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yes it does

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yes it does

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it's an impenetrable crushing darkness

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that is that is my distillation of all that

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oh no what a bummer

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i was wondering because i was reading through this book

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and the the beginning of QAnon happens so similarly to just all cults

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you know that just like progression of step-by-step process

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and i was i was seeing it happen and now that it just seems so replicable

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do you know what i mean like there are so many possible new QAnons

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if you go to any of these different spaces

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people are trying to create that phenomenon again

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do you think that's possible

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you know every one of these things is a little bit different

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but they're also really similar

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you know one one of the the goals i really had with writing the book

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was to strip back the the social media sheen of QAnon

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and reveal what the component parts are

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and the component parts are all old

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it's all stuff that's been floating around for decades centuries

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i mean you go back to the blood libel of the 1200s or whatever it was

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there's very little in QAnon that's new

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so the parts of QAnon that work for people

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can be repurposed into new conspiracy theories

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new persona

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i mean we saw that we've seen that on telegram this year

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where uh post january 6 QAnon promoters

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have taken QAnon and taken in a completely different direction

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you got people like Ghost Ezra

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people like Patel Patriot

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who are taking the mythology of Q and rebuilding it into something that works for them

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and that can get them viral fame and money coming

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you know everybody everybody takes it in their own direction

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and some of it doesn't work and some of it does work

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and and that will continue on and on and on forever

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because people will always be susceptible to being told what to believe

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and being validated in what they think is true

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and in being part of a special secret community

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and that's QAnon that's the new world order

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that's everything Alex Jones has pushed

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that's that is going to be with us forever

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ah that sucks

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yes it does

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i do like this is this is the part in in like tv or normal radio interviews

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where they're like uh okay well you've told us a lot about this

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what do you think our next steps are to stop this

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and the previous answer is just this is here forever

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we die with this

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it also sucks because like these are kind of the feelings and thoughts that i have

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when i when i you know look at this stuff and i you know i wrestle with Alex uh primarily

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and you know it is you know hard to fight those feelings of like well

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this is just something that humanity is always going to have to deal with

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yeah it's not it's not something that can um ever be like well we've we've fixed it

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um and it sucks to you know you know be talking to somebody else who

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researches a lot of this stuff who actually did all the work

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have a lot of the same conclusions

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like yeah this is a geometric proof being followed up with eyeballs you know yeah

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rats yeah

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but i do think i i did appreciate in the book also that uh

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that you did very clearly delineate that blood libel part

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like that's such an important piece of like what makes some of this

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like the archaic anti-Semitic tropes yeah

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uh being cooked into a lot of these conspiracy theories

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it's something that i think a lot of people uh may miss or may not want to address

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and i think that's super important

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yeah there's a real sense of with QAnon of like we're still doing this

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like we're still dredging up these stereotypes

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you know based on things like the protocols of the elders of Zion

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you know these these debunked myths that are knocked down over and over and over again

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but it doesn't matter to people who want these things to be true

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and everything that they do is validated by the idea that yeah there are wealthy string pullers

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who are making their lives miserable

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and the rising tide of progressivism is canceling their way of life

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it's making it you know wrong for them to tell the jokes they used to tell

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worship the way they used to they can't say certain words

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although they they can't you know eat 25 burgers a week anymore

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they they have to eat 23 burgers now

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this Dr Seuss book that they've never heard of is suddenly not being printed anymore

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and it's like that's worth dying over

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that's that's how Hitler came to power

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yeah it's a Dr Seuss book that I'd never heard of

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yeah I just I just want somebody to come out and be like look

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we've got thousands of years of unbroken hatred towards the Jews

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and we're just not going to stop now

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yeah well it's it's always going to appeal to somebody

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yeah and and you really whoever made those posts really understood that

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that that understood the way these tropes work

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why they work understood how they are communicated effectively on places like 4chan

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and was able to exploit that

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I mean whoever did whoever wrote these drops really did know what they were doing

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they really understood American evangelical hucksterism

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and and exploited it kind of brilliantly

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that's a really interesting perspective that I don't think I've heard a lot

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because I think a lot of people look at you know QAnon and think like

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ah this is all stupid and like you know hearing you say

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whoever did this was like they knew what they were doing

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is fascinating to me

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yeah and and the idea that they knew what they were doing doesn't necessarily mean

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that there was some grand conspiracy behind it

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that it was some like military grade psychological warfare

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you just have to know how hateful conspiratorial people think

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and if you spend enough time in places like 4chan you can do that

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that's not that difficult

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and of course we've seen things on 4chan things on reddit go mainstream viral

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we've seen it with rick rolling we've seen it with slender man

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I mean we know where this stuff comes from pizza game

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we know where this stuff comes from it's not a mystery

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people just believe it because they want to

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because it's a good story and it validates things that they already believed

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yeah it almost seems like something that somebody who had like a really good grasp of like marketing

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could have uh could have swung

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yeah you know it's wild to me

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uh have you do you watch ted lasso

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I don't I don't

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don't worry about it it's it's fine

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but there was one episode where they straight up rick rolled me

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and my partner had no idea what I was talking about

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and that was the first time in a long time I've really felt like

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oh I've been on the internet way too long this is not good

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yeah well and it's it's that's great perspective like like

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my wife doesn't know anything about this stuff she's not in she doesn't do social media really

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at all like this is my world and I'll like I'll like bring up some really common meme

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that I'm like you know everybody knows what that is and she's like huh what is that

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yeah and it's it's a reminder that that while things online are really important

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and we can't just dismiss that stuff as like oh it's just internet people

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like not everybody is as extremely online as people like us as people who are mainlining

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info wars I mean there there is a there's a world that exists not on twitter that doesn't

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get this stuff and and that's why I wrote the book as a very simple guide to this you know

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I didn't want to assume that anybody knew anything you know I've you know I'll I'll

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talk about QAnon people will ask me still in interviews what's QAnon and I'll explain it

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and people will go like wait what's an image board what's it and it's it's not it's like

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it's just not their world yeah and so we have to do this very simply and it's what I think

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you guys are great at is breaking this stuff down into why does it matter what about it matters

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what can be discarded how does it affect us and that's a really really important thing to do is to

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as much as we really like to get into the weeds and the details that's not where most people live

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most people live they don't have time for this they want to know the very basics does it matter

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to them how does it affect them and I think you guys are great at that well thank you yeah the

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thing I I definitely agree too like I get a lot of criticism and I think that sometimes of our

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shows like well why are you taking like speaking like we don't know anything yeah well some people

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may not there's like an entry level I mean what you what you just said right there you know a

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lot of these people aren't online this isn't a full thing and then as you're going through

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the book you're reading like oh okay so these are people who are inexperienced with the internet

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who are finding this stuff yes so they have no concept of what the online people have which is

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like fuck this noise these people are all out of their minds you know if you're online all the

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time you're best friends you're like these people are out of their fucking minds you know right that

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kind of feeling so if you don't have experience you'd also don't know how to discern like a wink

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exactly right no all these people were just dodo birds walking up to liars and just getting smashed

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on the head and then they're overthrown the country it's it's bananas yeah the the the degree

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to which fake stories were shared by the the older Americans who got into QAnon is enormous I mean

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these people passing around this stuff because you just don't have the discernment to tell real from

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fake and you think well these people wouldn't lie to me they're my friends I've gotten to know them

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right I I you know I hear their stories and their struggles like they would never not tell me the

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truth well that's the basics that's the basis of how affinity fraud works is somebody in a

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community like a trusted member of a small insular group ruthlessly exploits the rest of the people

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in that group yeah yeah the affinity itself is necessary to be exploited right exactly exactly

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yeah I my I went to a funeral uh my grandma's funeral was held at a mega church and I I like

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walked in there and I was ready to start fires like I just couldn't handle it yeah no it was

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brutal yeah so one thing I definitely wanted to ask about um is uh you know the the biggest

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intersection I think between Alex Jones and QAnon directly um is the affair of Jerome Corsi yes and

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I watched that happen but I don't think that we did a good job of covering that was that an Oscar

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Wilde book the affair of Jerome Corsi yeah so from what I understand he tried to get involved

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basically like he tried to become a Q person yeah he did for a while like he got really into it and

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I and the timing with this stuff is always really murky but he got really into it like he was

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tweeting relentlessly about about Q like decoding the drops you know trying to figure out what was

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going on tying it into his own personal stuff I believe he was even writing a book he was yeah

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yeah he he you know Alex had him on all the time Alex was talking about how the White House wanted

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Corsi covering 8chan I mean just just bizarre stuff and then of course like so much of the

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Alex Jones world Jones just turned on it on a dime and then it was disinfo and he talked about he he

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talked to somebody who played golf with QAnon and like the you know five people who were running

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QAnon and now it's been taken over by Masad I mean like like you know how it is it's like this

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is the most important thing in the world and now suddenly we have to destroy it yeah if I can't

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take it over then it must be defeated yeah well yeah he did he has talked about how he tried to

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co-opt it when it was sort of growing and it was he was unable to yeah yeah I I my own personal

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opinion I I don't really have anything that backs this up other than just knowing the people

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involved is that he was trying to co-opt it and it was getting bigger and it was a threat to him

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and it was a threat to the the sanctity of the info wars empire because it was it was a little

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bit more participatory and a little simpler like it was a game it was a game yeah it was a puzzle

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that I mean never mind that there was no solution to the puzzle there's just more puzzles but I

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think he started to see it as a as more of a threat and less as something that he could

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sort of integrate into his own mythology and I think that's why he's turned on it yeah I would

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I would definitely agree I don't know if I have anything solid to back that up but that's my sense

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too like yeah you know he's had this this period of decades where you know he's essentially been

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the authority on a lot of this uh kind of conspiracy bullshit yeah and you have something

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like you it threatens that authority because there's the decentralized yeah uh you know as

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you put it gurus and and stuff that he's no longer necessary as a gatekeeper for for this stuff and

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that that was the vibe that I got for sure yeah and Hugh is really is really good at allowing

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people to rise up and create their own version of this and and profit off you know you have these

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promoters these people I talk about in the book these people like in the matrix and Joe M and

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Jordan Sather and on and on and on these sort of original QAnon promoters who are making the

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videos and the podcasts and the live streams and the merchandise and that they didn't need Alex

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Jones they thought Alex Jones was a sellout was a patriot was controlled up you know they're they're

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doing this without any training they're just building this from the ground up and I can see

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that if you're somebody like Alex Jones you're going these people are a threat to me they they

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could they could take over my audience yeah I need to own this or I need to be against it yeah kind

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of yeah it's Leno and Conan that's basically yeah yeah yeah so some of those early guys like they

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have fallen off right I mean like a lot of them aren't really Q folk anymore they've like shifted

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their grifts a little is that right yeah they've really diversified and you if the the big promoters

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all kind of have their own niche like Jordan Sather is really into like the wellness stuff

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and the secret space program drinking bleach if I recall drinking the bleach the MMS the

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miracle medical solution whatever it is do not ever take that no some of them have really

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disappeared Joe M was one of the really big Q grifters he's the guy I write about in the book

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who got that charter school fundraiser cancelled by sharing this interpretation of a James Comey

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tweet that there was going to be a false flag attack oh that was that was that was a fun one

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yeah that story like hearing some of the other people just going what why did they what what

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what is happening yeah yeah why did we do this and then you know I covered that when it happened and

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I talked to the people who are organizing it and then of course they had to cancel it the next year

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because covid and I think they'd cancel it again and I don't think they're ever going to have

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another one and it's just it's enraging to think about these these anonymous gurus who just roll

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this into their grift and then they just move on but so Joe Joe M's gone now he's really disappeared

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he he kind of went to ground after the big twitter ban I think he popped up on gab maybe for a little

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while but he's really taking himself out of it but you know he's a cement mixer now he's a really

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nice guy working a job you know yeah he's in but then you know a lot of them have gotten into sort

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of evangelicalism of course the pandemic is all completely mixed up with it the stolen elections

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all completely mixed up with it and this is what I talk about with the evolution of Q is it's now

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just everything QAnon as a as a brand really doesn't exist anymore these conspiracy theories

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are just mainstream conservatism now you know you get people who used to be in these completely

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different worlds of you know big pharma conspiracy theories you know anti you know where's barack

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obama's birth certificate conspiracy theories this is now all the same thing they all believe that

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vaccines are poison masks are slave muzzles donald trump is still the real president uh the deep

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state controls everything you know uh run for school board everything is now everything and

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it makes it very difficult to pin down how to deal with some of these things because it's all

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interconnected and it all bolsters everything else so these this new generation of Q gurus they're

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just they're sort of pumping out everything everything is related to everything else

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and it's a very lucrative persona if you do it well do you think that they're uh more fractured

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now and then i would i would assume that would mean more likely to compete with each other as

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they kind of butt spaces do you know what i mean yeah you get there's been a lot of infighting in

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the the Q influencer arena lately you know some people who are more stolen elections some people

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who are more uh anti-vaxx there are some people who think donald trump really is the president

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some people who think biden is technically the president but trump's gonna come back and they're

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sort of insulting each other and then they they're like they're yelling at each other over money and

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over who is who is a real patriot you know you've got like margery taylor green feuding with lynn

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wood who's feuding with cuta who's feeding feuding with q anon john it's impossible to

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follow there's no reason to follow i mean that that's kind of my my uh view on this is this is

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the type of movement that is inevitably going to destroy itself yes the question is just are they

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how quickly can they take us with them you know that's it like it's it's just going to they're

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going to eat each other alive they're going to cannibalize each other oh yeah you know and you've

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you've got this going on with these health freedom stolen election conferences that are happening

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like every weekend now you know it used to be that it you know it was a big deal of 52 believers got

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together now you've got these massive conferences going on there's sometimes two going on in the

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same weekend you've got just coming up i think it's this weekend the patriot double down in

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vegas and then there's another one that's the one that has a chicken too i was you can't yeah

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you can't make that joke before me okay those are the rules of our relationship

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i actually i over the weekend i was looking at twitter and i saw like some video of uh on a

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recent episode we were making fun of the patriot street fighter uh and because i went and looked

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at his tour dates he was advertising uh his tour on alex's show there's a commercial for it okay

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and uh so i was looking at the tour dates and everything passed like four days in advance was

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all location tbd yeah like he didn't have any venues i'm like ah look at this this is never

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gonna happen and i saw a video and it was like a full yeah like a conference room and granted it

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looked like a bunch of you know pretty much just all old white people but uh it still was like

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that's a lot more people than i would have expected to be hanging out with the patriot

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street fighter yeah no they they they would have you know they had a september 11th event i think

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it was last year where there was like 120 people at the washington monument that was a big deal

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and now they there are so many of these things that they are poaching guests from each other

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mike flinn was supposed to speak at the patriot double down and he got a better offer from some

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other conference happening in the same weekend jeez it's it's i mean it really is if i like to

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think of this as like pro wrestling and it's almost like you've got competing leagues now

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yeah and they're all just swapping talent they all say the same thing i mean god knows why they

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haven't joined forces other than like money obviously right but this has gotten so big and

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so diffuse that these conferences they're about everything they're about covid is a hoax second

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amendment the border media censorship the deep state you know biden is a fake president uh on

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a set in tyler perry's house ivermectin you know it's everything they say tyler perry's house just

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because he made that show the oval right god knows where this stuff comes from it is it just emerges

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out of the ground like worms after the rain yeah the way the way you're describing it it almost

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like i have a real like sort of ominous feeling of it almost it almost feels like like tenants

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are being formed you know like like a canonization of like a belief system is like in progress and

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we're sort of seeing it happen uh through these conferences and these online fights there's gonna

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be the bill of rights theses uh nailed to the wall of the capitol building the next time they

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throw it up yeah i mean we're really starting to get into that like people's front of judea versus

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judean people's front aspect of it like these people all believe the same thing yeah they're

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just fighting over who has the biggest audience and who has the most money and i think that's

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where the you know the q drops come in of you know people ask me are there going to be more q drops

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and i don't think there will be because they're not necessary yeah the the q persona was taken

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as far as it was going to go and you don't need new q drops nobody goes to church and is like

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hey we need new books of the bible right they've got the bible they don't need anything else they've

Unknown Speaker (01:00:52.400)

got the q drops they they you know there's a q catchphrase you you have more than you know

Unknown Speaker (01:00:58.239)

well they have it the the drops are there they're taking them off into a million different directions

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there never needs to be another q drop yeah what a bummer this very this is all but very informative

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but very depressing yeah yeah i mean who says who says that it's done you know we we had the bible

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then we got the book of mormon i'm sure that there's an enterprising liar out there who's

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gonna reform q anon again that's golden plates that you never know yeah nobody in uh you know

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the around the crucifixion could have anticipated uh joseph smith you know it's i think you are way

Unknown Speaker (01:01:35.920)

wrong sir jesus did several thousand years ago thank you yeah it's it's you know it's so it's

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so weird because i have a lot of similar feelings about like a lot of the alex stuff but it never

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feels quite like um like it has the ability to to to formalize like going on does or like to

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to turn into something else like i think both of them are primarily scam oriented you know like

Unknown Speaker (01:02:03.119)

alex is a pill scam and yeah you know and q anon the various promoters are you know basically

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attention economy scamming and what have you but the danger of of q anon turning into something

Unknown Speaker (01:02:17.119)

different is is so uh another thing than than like right like just pure right-wing conspiracy stuff

Unknown Speaker (01:02:24.800)

yeah i have a quick question for you uh i'm working on a theory uh about uh alex actually providing a

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weird sort of bull work against something along the lines of q anon by having uh more control

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over that space you know he creates almost a bottleneck there and i think what we're seeing

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is that what happens when you let all the steam out is a massive diffuse uh organization that

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nobody can have any control over you know yeah like if alex is in charge he can funnel all of

Unknown Speaker (01:03:00.000)

it to his pill business exactly and they're not overthrowing the capital you know right it's it's

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that aspect of q that is not quite like a traditional cult there's no charismatic leader

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there's no figurehead at the very top whose word is bond with q like you do your own research you

Unknown Speaker (01:03:19.679)

are your own leader and that allows these promoters to step in and take control and take their version

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of the movement spinning off in any number of directions that's why the the mythology of q anon

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is becoming much more mainstream while the actual like iconography of it is really fading away you

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don't you're not seeing the the q swag quite as much you're not you know they dropped the term

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q anon they now think that that's something that the mainstream media made up to make them

Unknown Speaker (01:03:48.079)

look crazy i mean that makes sense there's no escape from these people right right and never

Unknown Speaker (01:03:53.280)

mind that they were using that term right at the very beginning that the most popular pro q book is

Unknown Speaker (01:03:58.960)

literally called q anon an invitation to the great awakening right about it um but then they then

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they decide that that term never existed and it's i imagine they're also trying to not have those big

Unknown Speaker (01:04:11.599)

maps anymore with like the a thousand things on it that are all connected yeah the the deep state

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mapping project and all that stuff because it makes you look insane yeah it makes you look like

Unknown Speaker (01:04:22.719)

you know the red strings and the cork board and you know it makes you look like a raving lunatic

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whereas you know somehow insinuating that donald trump is still the president because he signed

Unknown Speaker (01:04:34.559)

some executive order 12 years ago and his you know time-traveling uncle used tesla technology

Unknown Speaker (01:04:41.119)

i mean blah blah blah that doesn't that all makes sense that makes sense yes i think research i

Unknown Speaker (01:04:46.639)

think one of the weirdest things that q anon has actually revealed is that these people don't know

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how anything works they don't know how civics works they don't know how economics works

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so you can kind of just tell them like oh if you sign an executive if the president signs an

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executive order well then it must be law forever right right right biden tomorrow could sign an

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executive order that we are now all part of panama yeah totally right and we would be part of panama

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that's how it works you know yeah they just don't know how shit works right and it's it's you know

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they don't know how banking works they don't know how money works they don't know how the media

Unknown Speaker (01:05:21.440)

works uh they it's a it's a misunderstanding of the basics of the world filtered through the way

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that they want things to be or the or the way that things used to be and are not anyone and they they

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cling to that and they cling to the reality that they have created for themselves and that reality

Unknown Speaker (01:05:40.400)

is a lot more entertaining and has them a lot more successful and has the bad people eventually

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being punished and has somebody in control and that's really what we all want is somebody in

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control we want an adult yeah right life should not be an endless series of random events that

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we really don't have any say over like we want that scary yeah that's scary man i i think too

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like it just i mean it's essentially what so much of the conspiratorial thinking boils down to it's

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like a little bit of magic and then what uh like an easy solution yeah with someone in charge like

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that's exactly it it's uh it it's it's remarkable how how like it really is a lot of in a lot of

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ways a lot of it is very simple and a lot of it is impossible hopelessly complex yeah it is both

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incredibly basic psychology and the most incomprehensible garbage that you will ever

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stumble upon and somehow these people are able to kind of have one foot in each and like make it

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work for themselves and rationalize away the failures and the cognitive dissonance and the

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obvious fraud and it just this is the world they want to live in and nobody's getting them out of

Unknown Speaker (01:06:56.400)

it i was uh i was thinking of uh this uh i remember this cult uh i can't remember the name

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but it was in the late 1800s and uh this woman had predicted the end of the world was going to

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happen at the stroke of midnight on blah blah blah day right and if the stroke of midnight happened

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the end of the world didn't happen they talked about it the next day it was supposed to be next

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year something along those lines you know it was that kind of thing yeah but easy mistakes yeah

Unknown Speaker (01:07:26.159)

yeah no i mean you read the but you read the things wrong yeah yeah but there was one dude who

Unknown Speaker (01:07:31.280)

whenever he he believed that the world was going to end so he went to his own house stood up on top

Unknown Speaker (01:07:37.440)

of his roof and at the stroke of my night just fell off and he died and the more i thought about

Unknown Speaker (01:07:43.760)

that the more i was like oh man that guy is so stupid he could have survived and then now looking

Unknown Speaker (01:07:48.960)

at all these q-anon people that guy is easily the happiest person ever to live in that cult

Unknown Speaker (01:07:53.840)

right totally like that was the perfect time to die when everything you believed was true

Unknown Speaker (01:07:59.039)

you can't you know you can't have to live through the deflation and the rationalization yeah you

Unknown Speaker (01:08:04.400)

don't have to go with the cult leader being like i messed up and you're like you were supposed to

Unknown Speaker (01:08:08.480)

know everything right yeah and it's and it becomes uh impossible to go back you you have i mean to

Unknown Speaker (01:08:17.520)

use the the example of cortez in the new world you've burned your ships you can't go home you

Unknown Speaker (01:08:22.640)

your family doesn't want anything to do with you your friends don't want anything to do with you

Unknown Speaker (01:08:26.880)

you have sunk your time your money your your emotional well-being into this conspiracy theory

Unknown Speaker (01:08:33.520)

being true into this great event happening the event doesn't happen and you have the option

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of either saying well i was wrong i got fooled i'm sorry or saying well i i can't i can't go back

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i have to just go forward it's going to happen eventually and then i'm going to be right and

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then everybody's going to be sorry i'll go deeper and then eventually i'll be right yeah yeah that

Unknown Speaker (01:08:55.840)

well i hate to keep saying this but that sucks yeah it is that is the dynamic that i think a

Unknown Speaker (01:09:00.560)

lot of people find themselves in and that's why i think it's really important uh to try and retain

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some empathy for people who are yeah you know caught in these um uh belief traps or scams or

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you know it's it can be hard because a lot of the beliefs themselves are destructive and they're

Unknown Speaker (01:09:18.399)

causing damage to polite society right a lot of the people are victims and it's yeah it sucks

Unknown Speaker (01:09:25.039)

and one of the things that i i see so often about uh all the narratives around QAnon is look at how

Unknown Speaker (01:09:31.039)

bad these people on 8chan and 8k and all i'll look at how bad all of these people are but no

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one is at all dealing with the fact that the reason it is easy to believe in QAnon is because

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all of the systems have failed these people right like it's it's not like they were doing great you

Unknown Speaker (01:09:48.079)

know you you go into these hoping that Hillary Clinton is murdered by the government because

Unknown Speaker (01:09:53.119)

the 90s weren't great you know like that you're mad about NAFTA and you should be mad about NAFTA

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you know it's just white water you know i'm still talking about white water it's like one of the

Unknown Speaker (01:10:05.359)

big things that i wish the systems would look at QAnon and think is oh maybe we fucked up too right

Unknown Speaker (01:10:11.680)

you know right and yeah and and you know i get asked a lot about the the demographics of QAnon

Unknown Speaker (01:10:16.880)

and yeah it's primarily white it's you know split down the middle men and women upper you know

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middle class upper middle class but the the biggest demographic for belief in QAnon is

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already being a conspiracy theory very few people i mean practically none that i've seen have been

Unknown Speaker (01:10:34.239)

just like msnbc watching new york times reading you know centrist democrats who just one day

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just happened to go to x22 report or watch you know fall of the cabal and then suddenly

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got radicalized into thinking that there's a pedophile cult running the world that's not how

Unknown Speaker (01:10:52.239)

it goes i was gonna vote for medicare for all but now i think i want hillary clinton to die in public

Unknown Speaker (01:10:58.159)

right you you were already a 9 11 truther you were already a uh barack obama birth certificate

Unknown Speaker (01:11:04.880)

person you were already somebody who had their sort of knowledge base rewired by trump winning

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and exposing all of the corruption that you thought you thought about but you never could put

Unknown Speaker (01:11:15.760)

into words that was that was already your world you were already listening to info wars you were

Unknown Speaker (01:11:20.960)

already reading gateway pundit or brightbard or whatever she was just the next rung on the ladder

Unknown Speaker (01:11:27.039)

and of course a lot of people are coming to that ladder from different things but it's anti-vax

Unknown Speaker (01:11:32.239)

stuff it's big pharma conspiracy theories it's um you know anti-5g anti-bill gates anti-globalism

Unknown Speaker (01:11:39.680)

uh super super hardcore bernie sanders who thought hillary screwed him out of the nomination

Unknown Speaker (01:11:45.199)

in 2016 whatever it is there is a conspiracy theory for you and it will lead to q anon because

Unknown Speaker (01:11:51.600)

q anon involves all of it yeah like if you're eight steps down the road no matter what road

Unknown Speaker (01:11:56.880)

it is it's easy to take those two steps to get to the the final point yeah but if you're like

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at step one or you're not even down that road you're not gonna it's not attractive enough of

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a conspiracy to get you to be like yeah i'm gonna go from zero to 60 on this all roads lead to rome

Unknown Speaker (01:12:13.680)

unless you live in south america right yeah right unless you just don't also get on the road

Unknown Speaker (01:12:20.159)

if you eschew roads well there is that yes if you're a person who understands how things work

Unknown Speaker (01:12:26.159)

then these conspiracy theories don't have a lot of appeal like the stolen election idea

Unknown Speaker (01:12:30.720)

doesn't really appeal to you because you know that that's not how elections work

Unknown Speaker (01:12:34.560)

like like you can't like there isn't one guy in a in an office at dominion voting systems

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who just hits a button at biden wins the election like you know that that's not true

Unknown Speaker (01:12:44.399)

counterpoint there is a guy at dominion who just presses

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yeah yeah i think i think that one of the things that we always talk about and it just is like when

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if you're if you deal with the complexity of a lot of issues and events that happen in the world

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a lot of these conspiracies don't really make sense but if you don't want to deal with that

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and you want to look at things kind of in a sort of overly simplistic black and white way they're

Unknown Speaker (01:13:12.000)

like heroin yeah yeah and i mean you you you know again you look at this shit right now and you see

Unknown Speaker (01:13:19.119)

mansion and cinema are like ah well you know everybody wants this stuff but i guess we're

Unknown Speaker (01:13:24.000)

paid enough to say fuck off right and it does make sense for you to think fuck it i want trump to

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just stroke a pen and do this right because these people are fucking corrupt yeah you know it's like

Unknown Speaker (01:13:34.640)

that's what it is yeah it's the unfortunate reality that there's a basis for the feelings

Unknown Speaker (01:13:40.239)

that underpin a lot of you know and and the thing is is that people believe this stuff for a reason

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like big business is not your friend the government is corrupt you know jeffrey epstein did horrible

Unknown Speaker (01:13:53.920)

things like this is not made up this is all true this is i i was just thinking like in a radio

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interview it's like what do we do next with q anon and my first question epstein dead or alive

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junior what do you got who's dead who's not run down the list

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so i had i had one question that i definitely wanted to get to so i'm gonna slip it in here

Unknown Speaker (01:14:20.399)

and that is that what what i hate if this is putting you on the spot at all but you're you

Unknown Speaker (01:14:25.760)

know you're somebody who focuses on this stuff a lot and i imagine that you see coverage of q anon

Unknown Speaker (01:14:32.159)

that kind of may be frustrating i was wondering if there's one thing that you think is important

Unknown Speaker (01:14:38.079)

that people know about it that it just gets gets missed great a lot of the time oh that's a wow

Unknown Speaker (01:14:44.000)

that's a great question i i think the the thing that gets missed a lot is that you can believe

Unknown Speaker (01:14:50.560)

in something like q anon and not be crazy not be violent not be stupid you are just looking for

Unknown Speaker (01:14:58.319)

something in the wrong place i think what gets missed a lot is that these these theories are

Unknown Speaker (01:15:04.800)

compelling they grab people for a reason they always have you know people look at something

Unknown Speaker (01:15:10.159)

like q anon is like we've never dealt with anything like this before like there's never been

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a mass brainwashing like this i mean turn and look to your left and all mormons are wearing the same

Unknown Speaker (01:15:20.079)

underwear this is probably no big deal i was alive during the satanic panic yeah exactly yeah yeah

Unknown Speaker (01:15:25.840)

i mean the the number of people who think that there is a conspiracy to kill jfk is basically

Unknown Speaker (01:15:32.319)

the same now as it was weeks after the assassination like people believe this stuff

Unknown Speaker (01:15:39.199)

this this is meaningful and compelling and explanatory for a lot of people and i think

Unknown Speaker (01:15:45.279)

just writing these people off as either idiots or on the flip side is like mind-controlled zombies

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with no agency i i think you're missing the the really compelling aspects of this and the way that

Unknown Speaker (01:15:58.479)

this explains so many things to these people yeah it fills the needs that uh that maybe people

Unknown Speaker (01:16:06.960)

uh don't want to recognize are there right right yeah and one of the things that i think is is

Unknown Speaker (01:16:11.840)

really key i think it's close to what you're getting at is that like i think that it's so

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relevant to make fun of the thing but not the people you know and i think people kind of uh

Unknown Speaker (01:16:22.479)

air they they make the mistake of making fun of the people who believe this stuff as opposed to

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mocking the idea yeah right right mocking the idea and and mocking the promoters like i will

Unknown Speaker (01:16:34.079)

i will uh unsparingly savage people like ron walkins people like uh ghost ezra people like

Unknown Speaker (01:16:41.520)

in the matrix like i will mock those people up and down left and right i have for a long time

Unknown Speaker (01:16:45.840)

i mean you're still gonna vote for ron but sure i'm yeah i'm moving arizona so i mean obviously

Unknown Speaker (01:16:52.399)

he's the best man for the job he has a really good school platform yeah look i mean the guy's

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already pulled off a lot of shit he's a great businessman you know you know he uh he beamed

Unknown Speaker (01:17:02.560)

and tweeted his way to being an expert on election fraud and getting retweeted by the president of

Unknown Speaker (01:17:08.239)

the united states that's impressive honestly you can't be completely stupid and do that

Unknown Speaker (01:17:13.039)

yeah but that's fair i will mock those people you know all the time but the actual like rank

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and file believers the people who are really stuck in this i do have empathy for those people

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because i i think they're caught up in something that is way worse than they think it is and at

Unknown Speaker (01:17:30.079)

some point the rug is going to get pulled out from under them and then what do you have left

Unknown Speaker (01:17:34.800)

who is left in your life that wants to hear about this that wants to help you after you've said and

Unknown Speaker (01:17:40.800)

done possibly reprehensible or illegal things and i i i have a lot of empathy for the people who are

Unknown Speaker (01:17:47.119)

caught up in this and uh you know it is that that classic thing of like you know when you when you

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go down the road towards this you don't take the first step knowing that it's going to lead to

Unknown Speaker (01:17:57.760)

something reprehensible right let's say or you know it's there's there's a rational maybe pseudo

Unknown Speaker (01:18:03.840)

rational reason why you know you you go down the road and then before you know it you're far down

Unknown Speaker (01:18:09.119)

uh into muck territory gross nobody nobody clicks on a link on facebook going like well time to get

Unknown Speaker (01:18:16.479)

rid of my family click right right no but nobody joins a cult you you join a group of people who

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believe the same things you do or want the same things you do or whatever but you wouldn't have

Unknown Speaker (01:18:27.199)

any idea about that you didn't choose to be born yes but that's the thing is that this is this

Unknown Speaker (01:18:35.359)

this is compelling for a lot of people and it was at the very beginning i mean that that's the thing

Unknown Speaker (01:18:39.920)

you go back to with those early q drops is that they they told a story that people wanted to be

Unknown Speaker (01:18:44.720)

true it wasn't one of these like fbi anon or you know white house inside or one of these early you

Unknown Speaker (01:18:50.399)

know anon accounts who was like i have all the secrets i'm going to reveal everything that's

Unknown Speaker (01:18:55.199)

that's interesting but it's not compelling faking that you have inside knowledge that hillary

Unknown Speaker (01:19:00.399)

clinton is on the run and is going to be arrested on november 3rd that's not going to happen

Unknown Speaker (01:19:05.039)

then you go oh i want that to happen let's let's follow this yeah and i mean it is compelling i

Unknown Speaker (01:19:11.199)

think that you and i are both clear examples that it's compelling even if you don't believe it

Unknown Speaker (01:19:16.239)

totally these things are intellectually and sort of academically interesting and compelling yeah

Unknown Speaker (01:19:22.880)

and that's great storytelling yeah well

Unknown Speaker (01:19:25.920)

oh i i just feel deflated you know we've got two interviews under our belt we've got one that was

Unknown Speaker (01:19:36.640)

happy alex is going to get his comeuppance and this one is the most unimaginably bleak thing

Unknown Speaker (01:19:42.399)

we could possibly hear i think we're evening out i still think there's a little bit of hope in there

Unknown Speaker (01:19:46.319)

oh there is there is and if there was no hope i wouldn't do this because it would be if you're

Unknown Speaker (01:19:53.359)

just telling people that everything is awful all the time eventually people some people like that

Unknown Speaker (01:19:59.279)

but i think most people will tune out i i think the thing that that keeps me going is people do

Unknown Speaker (01:20:05.680)

get out of q anon people do find the the the weakness and the dangling thread to pull on and

Unknown Speaker (01:20:13.039)

then the whole thing falls apart people people are capable of walking away from this and people are

Unknown Speaker (01:20:18.720)

capable of understanding it and of maybe looking out for the signs that somebody they care about

Unknown Speaker (01:20:23.439)

is getting radicalized into q or q adjacent conspiracy theory and then they they maybe have

Unknown Speaker (01:20:30.000)

read my book or they've they've listened to you guys and then they they kind of know what to look

Unknown Speaker (01:20:33.760)

for a little bit and then they could maybe stop it before it goes a little bit too far yeah they

Unknown Speaker (01:20:40.000)

can approach it with like uh like a little bit of care instead of judgment and you know i think

Unknown Speaker (01:20:45.439)

is as more people can take that perspective maybe it'll lead to more people leaving and then more

Unknown Speaker (01:20:51.359)

of those stories will become amplified and you know the conversation can completely change a

Unknown Speaker (01:20:56.079)

little bit yeah and i have some hope of that that that's my hope is that as we go forward into this

Unknown Speaker (01:21:02.159)

more execute people will uh will come out and sort of talk openly and on the record about their

Unknown Speaker (01:21:08.640)

experience i mean you have something like Scientology where there is a a very large group

Unknown Speaker (01:21:13.680)

of apostates who are fearlessly speaking out about this without fear of the repercussions that

Unknown Speaker (01:21:19.199)

they're going to have q is just too new to have that you you just the the people who have left it

Unknown Speaker (01:21:25.119)

they they're reintegrating into the world they they can't like they can't launch the podcast

Unknown Speaker (01:21:29.840)

yet because they're still grappling with it right and the good news is when they do there aren't

Unknown Speaker (01:21:35.359)

those repercussions of the people who have left Scientology all right i have one quick question

Unknown Speaker (01:21:40.800)

for you okay um what are the chances that in about 10 to 15 years you go full greenwald and start

Unknown Speaker (01:21:47.600)

your own q anon well i would know how to do it see that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying

Unknown Speaker (01:21:54.000)

here we can't trust you the chance isn't zero the chance i mean once you kind of know what buttons

Unknown Speaker (01:22:00.159)

to push and who is the audience that can be riled up with this kind of culture war red beat

Unknown Speaker (01:22:05.600)

it i can imagine it becomes tempting to cash in and you're tired of like fighting for scoops and

Unknown Speaker (01:22:11.920)

you're tired of like butting your head against the government and and the big media and and then you

Unknown Speaker (01:22:17.520)

go shit i'm gonna i'm gonna cash in like i'm gonna go full culture war and then of course you start

Unknown Speaker (01:22:23.840)

to believe it right because you can't just say this stuff and have it be a persona you you

Unknown Speaker (01:22:30.479)

believe it to a certain extent i get that a lot with a lot of the big q promoters like oh they

Unknown Speaker (01:22:34.640)

can't actually believe this no they do they maybe not all of it and they know how to monetize it but

Unknown Speaker (01:22:41.439)

this is their world they believe this stuff is real yeah you have to convince yourself

Unknown Speaker (01:22:46.399)

or you'll sink yeah you will be an obvious fraud and at the same time you have to keep some of

Unknown Speaker (01:22:52.800)

yourself back knowing like like alex like i know covet's real but i keep it to myself to make sure

Unknown Speaker (01:22:59.199)

that nobody fucking takes that next step you know right yeah right uh that that uh that temptation

Unknown Speaker (01:23:06.479)

of like uh you know you know the buttons to push and such i think early on doing the podcast we

Unknown Speaker (01:23:12.399)

did talk a whole lot more about like god it'll be so easy just to go easy go just turn right wing

Unknown Speaker (01:23:17.439)

yeah yeah yeah no be the best make so much money yeah rats well we we should probably wrap this up

Unknown Speaker (01:23:26.319)

we uh this has been a delightful conversation i really appreciate it amazing guys you taking

Unknown Speaker (01:23:30.319)

the time uh the book is called into the storm wait the storm is upon us the storm is about that

Unknown Speaker (01:23:36.079)

storm oh there's too many goddamn storms nobody starts too many stars uh the storm is upon us uh

Unknown Speaker (01:23:42.079)

how q anon became a movement cult and conspiracy theory of everything uh you can get it everywhere

Unknown Speaker (01:23:48.239)

you can get it as a hardcover an e-book an audiobook uh however you like information

Unknown Speaker (01:23:54.159)

delivered to you and whoever you like delivering it to you you can find it let me ask you this did

Unknown Speaker (01:23:59.119)

you read the audiobook i did not read the audiobook we uh we we got a guy who has done

Unknown Speaker (01:24:04.640)

like 500 audiobooks Maurice LaMarche as Orson Welles but he but he would uh he uh joe joe barrett

Unknown Speaker (01:24:15.199)

is his name he would dm me once in a while and asked like how do i pronounce this and so i was

Unknown Speaker (01:24:19.920)

it was nice that he was like committed enough to it to like understand how important it is to get

Unknown Speaker (01:24:24.720)

the minutia of this right sure that's great how do i pronounce three x's and in the matrix uh i

Unknown Speaker (01:24:31.520)

think it's just because that guy jeffrey peterson is his name and he has turned that into a grift

Unknown Speaker (01:24:40.640)

that is like breathtaking how he's turned that into an industry it's it's like admirable well

Unknown Speaker (01:24:45.600)

i mean they've got the new matrix movie coming out i'm sure he's gonna make some moves on that

Unknown Speaker (01:24:50.560)

sure yeah yeah i mean the the worst thing is that so many psychopaths are so goddamn enterprising

Unknown Speaker (01:24:56.640)

yep it's like fuck well we talked about that on i think our last episode the young fascists are

Unknown Speaker (01:25:02.880)

they're hard workers they're coming yeah um anything else on the horizon people should be

Unknown Speaker (01:25:08.159)

looking out for anything uh hopefully hopefully something soon uh i definitely do not want to be

Unknown Speaker (01:25:13.119)

the the q guy forever sure that that seems uh a little too much but are you are you knocking the

Unknown Speaker (01:25:20.880)

alex jones guys forever is that what you're talking us for i mean so everything sort of

Unknown Speaker (01:25:27.119)

flows through him so it feels like if you're understanding alex jones you're understanding

Unknown Speaker (01:25:32.079)

all of this and the thing with q anon is that you know as we've talked about that iconography is

Unknown Speaker (01:25:36.560)

starting to disappear so you know it's it's sort of like being the the best betamax repairman you

Unknown Speaker (01:25:43.119)

know at some point you do have to do something else that's great like it's really great it's

Unknown Speaker (01:25:48.960)

that uh alex lives on that uh sort of anti-communist tradition there's like a lot of stuff that's sort

Unknown Speaker (01:25:54.960)

of rich veins that's always going to be that's always going to be right for exploration yeah

Unknown Speaker (01:26:00.800)

and i think a q anon probably has a bit of that too but it's stolen it's like hijacked from yeah

Unknown Speaker (01:26:05.279)

yeah uh well thank you again mike this has been a lot of fun this is great i i hope uh everything

Unknown Speaker (01:26:12.079)

goes well for you and everybody a good wish to all and to all a good night you