Transcript/788: Mike Rothschild Returns

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Jordan (00:00:55.000)

knowledge fight.com Hello, everyone. Welcome back to knowledge fight. I am Jordan. I'm not. I'm not sharing the mic with Dan today. It's just me. But I also have a subject here to interview. Please welcome back, Mike Rotschild. To the knowledge fight. Community. Hello, Mike.

Mike Rothschild (00:01:18.000)

Hello. How are you? How you doing?

Jordan (00:01:21.000)

Oh, I'm doing just great. I think I think the first question obviously is what's your bright spot?

Mike Rothschild (00:01:27.000)

My bright spot is the new season of Star Trek Picard. I have been. Yeah, I've been loving it. We're five episodes in, I think at a 10. And it's just it's going to some really cool places. It's a lot of it's a lot of nostalgia, but it's also a really interesting story. There's some really cool new characters. It's nice to see everybody back. Mr. Worf is beheading people?

Jordan (00:01:53.000)

No, wait, is that a normal thing? He No, I never watched the next generation. Okay. Well, you

Mike Rothschild (00:01:58.000)

couldn't be head yeah, this

Jordan (00:02:00.000)

episode is no longer about anything you've ever done. This is just the Star Trek podcast

Mike Rothschild (00:02:04.000)

now. This is a Star Trek podcast yet another one? No, you won't. You couldn't be had people on syndication in the early 1990s. There was one where they blew up a guy's head and Danner style scanner style with phasers. He sort of blew up his head and then a worm comes out of his chest and they blew that up too. And it kind of scandalized a lot of people and so they think they backed off from from the gore. But now it's I mean, it's streaming do anything you want.

Jordan (00:02:31.000)

Yeah, John Wick happened. Who cares? Yeah, shoot it up. Guys all watched. Whoo. Shoot. Movies for forever. Yeah,

Mike Rothschild (00:02:41.000)

yeah, America is finally catching up to the door of everybody else. Entertainment.

Jordan (00:02:46.000)

It's about time. Yeah, it's about time. Um, just in case you're wondering my brightspot is until further notice. We're recording this on Tuesday. So the World Baseball Classic will be ending tonight. Yes.

Mike Rothschild (00:03:00.000)

Oh my god. It was it was incredible.

Jordan (00:03:03.000)

Did you watch the game? I

Mike Rothschild (00:03:04.000)

did. I did. Now have you heard now? Did you watch the Japan Mexico game?

Jordan (00:03:10.000)

That's what was last night. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Rothschild (00:03:12.000)

That was last night. Yeah. Did you hear the Japanese call of the walk off double?

Jordan (00:03:16.000)

No, but I mean, I can't even comprehend

Mike Rothschild (00:03:21.000)

it is I don't want to spoil anything. Because it's amazing. So when we're done, just go listen to that and, and it just kind of renews your faith in humanity.

Jordan (00:03:30.000)

Okay, good. I mean, I, one of my best friends growing up in high school, eventually moved to Japan. So I know some swear words. And I'm assuming that is littered throughout the call. Right. It's a lot of

Mike Rothschild (00:03:42.000)

screaming. And I don't understand it, but I don't need to because I can just tell how excited they are. And, and it's nice to see some some joy. And, you know, some some excitement in a world that keeps trying to take it away from us.

Jordan (00:03:58.000)

Oh, absolutely. Not yet. I mean, one of the things that I love so much about it is Murakami is the greatest hitter in baseball NPB at the very least, right? And for him to have such a terrible World Baseball Classic. Literally come up in the bottom of the nine. Round one run. Like it doesn't get more

Mike Rothschild (00:04:22.000)

deaths. That's why we do it. That's why we watch it.

Jordan (00:04:25.000)

100% No, I want to scream at you about it for the next 25 This is the Star Trek of baseball podcast at the moment and leaves Alex Jones is God

Mike Rothschild (00:04:34.000)

What else do we need?

Jordan (00:04:38.000)

Well, one thing we need. Thanks, Jordan. Great Transition is to talk about your book. Your new book is coming out. Not until September, right? Yeah. And it is called Jewish space lasers.

Mike Rothschild (00:04:51.000)

Yes, Jewish space lasers, the Rothschilds and 200 years of conspiracy theories. And on the cover there's a little asterisk by my name with no relation at The bottom? Well, you got it. Not that it will dissuade anybody who wants to believe that I am part of the trillionaire world controlling family judge, you know, I just thought I'd start the conversation. You know, we don't need to talk about it in every interview, I'm still going to anyway. But you know, at least I'm trying.

Jordan (00:05:18.000)

I was my first question was what part of the 500 trillion is yours? But I guess now that I can, I can just get rid of that one.

Mike Rothschild (00:05:26.000)

I don't know if they have that many zeros to to put in front of the decimal point.

Jordan (00:05:33.000)

I think that was one of the numbers that was floated around, right? 500 to 500

Mike Rothschild (00:05:37.000)

trillion. That is that is one of the numbers that you see floating around. And actually in the book, I talk about where that number might come from, because there's a there's a really good chance that it's just totally made up. But there is a book that came out in 1940 by a guy named George Washington Armstrong whose own bio notes he was like a Texas oil man and his own bio notes that he was a staunch segregationist and opponent of the 14th and 15th amendment. This book got this guy wrote a book called Rothschild money trust. And essentially, he blames the Rothschilds for his oil business going bankrupt after World War One. Sure. And he, he comes up with this number that the family has $300 billion, which I think he got from a different crank this fake Russian count, who I write about in the book, who took his own life after his United Gentiles league failed. Some real surreal characters in this one.

Jordan (00:06:40.000)

Oh, yeah, there are I enjoyed your book. Growth is very, very good. It's got a very propulsive. You know, it, it's never slow. It's always taking you through each individual like aspect of where it is, this comes from, you know, we are, you know, obviously you start, right where it begins with Jesus being like, Hey, man, no charging interest.

Mike Rothschild (00:07:07.000)

From there, yeah. So so this sky Armstrong, he took this figure 300 billion, and he just decided that the family made another 100 billion off of the First World War. And they are not sure, of course, and made another 100 billion off the Great Depression. And then this, he was writing in the 1940s. He's right in the 1940s. So 100 billion in the 1940s is roughly Quinn kuggeleijn, or whatever number is astronomical money. Yeah, see that? You see that with other attempts to quantify the Rothschilds network. You see these just these these amounts of money that are more money than exist when the Chinese author of currency wars is very, very popular conspiracy theory book in China, posits that the Rothschilds might have like 1.2 quadrillion dollars, it's it's numbers that are so far away from reality. They're, they're hard to talk about. Because it's like, where do you even start to come up with that?

Jordan (00:08:07.000)

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it is it is to a certain extent, like, every every joke I ever made about Austin Powers whenever he's like, $100 billion. And everybody's like, Oh, okay, I guess that's, it's just a fictional number.

Mike Rothschild (00:08:26.000)

Right? You know, it's just whatever. Yeah, you find the same thing with, you know, abortion statistics, statistics, like you guys are talking about the other day, like, these numbers are just, they just come out of nowhere, and that you can't refute them, because they're totally made up. So the best you can do is try to figure out what the real number is. And suddenly, like the Rothschilds, that number probably is not really knowable, because the family is so broken up, and they've sold off so many of their assets. So you're really just guessing and when you're pushing conspiracy theories, the bigger the number, the the more traction, that's

Jordan (00:08:57.000)

gonna get. Yeah, yeah. And, and the other, you know, obviously, the prot, one of the problems you talk about in the in the book is, it doesn't matter what they could do to like, we're gonna give you an exact accounting, they could have their accounting firm, put everything out online, in line by line by line. And that would never be enough. No, it would

Mike Rothschild (00:09:19.000)

just be fake, that those aren't the real books. They do the same thing with why there are no Rothschilds on the Forbes richest list. Oh, that's not the real list, or they got their names taken off at some point. You just can't argue with it at a certain point. Right.

Jordan (00:09:33.000)

Right. Right. So what I what I read one thing that I really enjoyed about the way that you structure the book is you kind of start with that premise, from the very beginning. Does that does that make sense? You know that Yeah,

Mike Rothschild (00:09:46.000)

yeah. I talk about how this stuff can't really be refuted in a lot of cases. And, and that's the stance that the family has, you know, when I started putting the book proposal together, I thought, well, I got to see if I can actually We get access to these people. And of course, that was the first Yeah, as a journalist pursuing, like, if I'm pitching a book where I write about the Rothschilds, I'm supposed to talk to the Rothschilds, let's see if I can actually get access to them. I thought, oh, you know, there's this, there's gonna be great. They're gonna want to tell their story. Well, that was like, really naive of me. Because if they if they wanted to tell their story, they would just do that.

Jordan (00:10:23.000)

Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, there is like a, they've been not telling their story for several 100 years at this point,

Mike Rothschild (00:10:30.000)

that it would take a lot to change that. And I think my book pitch was not going to move that needle. But what I was able to do was talk to their family archivist in London, and she said, you know, we get all these questions about all the conspiracy theories, and we never talked about it. Because we can't prove it's not true. You can't prove a negative, you can't prove that the family doesn't own every Central Bank, except three, or five or seven, or whatever the meaning today is, you just have to put out there what you have done, and hope that the people who need to be convinced, convinced will listen, and of course they won't. So it seems like we get back to the beginning, you can't really refute a lot of this stuff. So you have to drill down to where does it come from? How does it spread? And why do people believe it? Right?

Jordan (00:11:15.000)

So I mean, I think a lot of people have a ton of different theories on where does it come from, you know, like, and you can draw it back? Say we go back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you know, that the the Russian propaganda, but that's not the beginning. You know, you go back further, and you get to blood libel. And that's not the beginning. You know, like, where do you think that this kind of, I suppose, I guess, the beginning of anti semitism comes from, you know, where does it really begin to you?

Mike Rothschild (00:11:47.000)

Yeah, it really begins with recorded history, the Jews have always made a convenient scapegoat and objective blame for whatever group did not want them in the inner circle, whether it's the Romans, whether it's the early Christians, you know, whether it's the Turks, whether it's the Nazis, it's always kind of the same thing. It's, you know, the stories are told in different ways, it spreads faster, you know, the names change, the dates change, but ultimately, what you're looking at is an outgroup with their own costumes, their own language, they dress funny, they, you know, they they stay very insular, you know, we talked about what the Rothschilds, how they, you know, they kept their fortune in their own family line, you know, sometimes through some pretty extreme ways, including cousin marriage. And, you know, things that were we find abhorrent. Now, that was a really common practice, then it wasn't just the Rothschilds who did it?

Jordan (00:12:43.000)

Yeah, it is. It is funny at the time that people were like, oh, cousin marriage is so terrible. And yet the royal families from all of the countries were married, you know, like, yeah, totally. I

Mike Rothschild (00:12:53.000)

mean, Prince Philip was Queen Elizabeth, third cousin, I think I've been it's just the number of things that we will accept, if it's not a wealthy Jewish family doing it is pretty high. So as Jews began to face more restrictions, particularly in Europe, you know, they found themselves in certain professions. And one of those professions cheaply was money lending. And, you know, there was cat there were canon law, prohibitions on making money off of lending. There's all kinds of things about how metal can't be get metal, and all these these very obscure canon laws. So the Jews really prospered in these fields that prospered in money changing and making small loans and opening businesses, then as the Christians decided, we actually want to get in on that we want to make money, then suddenly, usury, which is the worst thing you can possibly do. Oh, no, that's just interest. But when the Jews do, it's still usury. And what's the difference? We have no idea. I

Jordan (00:13:55.000)

was certain, certainly, to a certain extent, like one of the things that struck me reading the book was like, Why doesn't anybody just come out and say, the moment Jesus was like, don't start charging interest. Jesus Himself created two tiers of human being that were inevitably going to become in conflict. Yeah,

Mike Rothschild (00:14:14.000)

it's people just don't think that way. You know, we we, you know, we see this all the time in modern conspiracy theories. People don't ask themselves, the easy questions, the really simple, almost pedantic things that would falsify the vast majority of conspiracy theories, because people like conspiracy theories, people like blaming out groups, people like to have secret knowledge. So you don't ask yourself the very simple questions, because where's the fun in that? Right,

Jordan (00:14:41.000)

right, of course. No. And then, you know, you have to, I mean, one thing that you talk about a lot in the book is just the convenience of choosing a Jewish billionaire. Over and over and over again, despite all of the other billionaires Historical royal families, all of those things, we're not going to be mad at the British Royal Family, we're going to be mad at the quote, Jewish royal family, the Rothschilds, that kind of thing. So, I mean, I suppose the best place to start with where that comes from is where did the Rothschilds originally come from? You know, and you know, I would hope you could talk a little bit about the beginning of the Rothschild family and that kind of mystique that they have.

Mike Rothschild (00:15:25.000)

Sure. And it's a really good place to start. And I start the book with a kind of brief history of the Rothschild family. And then I get a little bit later I get into some of the, you know, some history sort of leading up to the Second World War, because after that, it's just not that interesting. But the Rothschilds? You

Jordan (00:15:42.000)

know, I recognize that, but I will say that there's something very, very interesting, that's right before the World World War Two that I would like to talk about, we'll get to that later. Absolutely. Yes.

Mike Rothschild (00:15:52.000)

So the Rothschilds came from the Frankfurt ghetto, the Judean goddess. And there were, I think about 3000 Jews living in there, and it was basically squalor. You know, they're living in a essentially a walled ghetto. And they're only allowed out at certain times, and they have to bow and scrape before the Christians. But in that ghetto, you have a number of prosperous merchants and Mayer Amschel Rothschild was the son of a of a Jewish merchant who was sort of moving up in the world. And he, he actually went to rabbinical school, but he had to leave because both his parents died. So he moves back to Frankfurt, and he starts getting into the family business, which starts off with coins and metals. So he's dealing in rare metals, rare coins starting to make small loans start to get into textiles. And then at some point, he becomes the court Jew for the Crown Prince of Hess. So the son of the leader of hats, and this is, this is the Holy Roman Empire. So we're still 100 years before the before Germany comes together and the Holy Roman Empire has all these states, Frankfurt has a special status as a free city row. It's kind of its own enclave. It's very important in terms of trade and banking. And Mayor just moves up the ladder very slowly. He has 10 children, his five sons, you know, of course, we only really talk about the sons. Sure, sure, sure. I mean,

Jordan (00:17:13.000)

you make a good point later on, and how that a lot of people try to erase the female Rothschild store and from history, right, you know, like as if they weren't involved.

Mike Rothschild (00:17:24.000)

Right. And it's really only been within the last few years that the daughters of the Rothschilds and the wives have really started to take their place in scholarship, and

Jordan (00:17:32.000)

welcome to the shithole later. Now, you're gonna be involved in all the shitty conspiracies. That's right.

Mike Rothschild (00:17:38.000)

Everybody gets their turn. Yeah. So the Rothschilds, you know, they're making their way up the ladder in in Frankfurt Jewish businesses, but then the Napoleonic Wars hit. And Nathan Rothschild who's Mayor son becomes the he's in England by this time, he's moved to first to Manchester to get into the textile business. And this is the point where some of the Rothschilds son start going off into Europe. And of course, you hear all the conspiracies, mayor sent his five sons to the capitals, should a lot of them moved out after he died. You know, that whole timeline gets completely messed up by conspiracy theories.

Jordan (00:18:16.000)

Before we get there. Can I asked you to explain just one thing like and I think it'll, it's going to hit the listeners ears pretty heavy. When you said court jus Yes. There's a lot, a lot going on behind those two words. Yes. But yeah, get into in the book, but that idea of like, because there weren't, it wasn't supposed to be lending with interest, right? These these royal families would get around that concept by hiring somebody, a court jus, to handle that.

Mike Rothschild (00:18:48.000)

So you'll see a number of different terms for this court factor is a big one. But they basically weren't court Jews. They were Jewish bankers who were kept on in kind of an informal role by European royalty because they had access to money. And they had the ability to either borrow from other community members or loan at themselves. And you have extremely rich Jews, going back to the Middle Ages, who were the court Jews for European royalty. Now, they also were Jews, of course. And that meant they really didn't have any rights. So their status really hinged on the status of the Royal and if the royal was deposed, and the next guy doesn't want this guy around, well, you're not going to see him anymore. And a lot of them died completely destitute, a lot of them were arrested. There's a very famous court you sauce, the Jew, I think in the 13th or 14th century who was accused of sexually libertine activities with Christian women, and was executed horribly and publicly after after a show trial. That legend is repurposed over and over and over the Nazis really glommed on to it. So for these court Jews life is very precarious but while they were in the employ of their, their person, they had a lot of power. So mayor was the court due to the Crown Prince. And there were other courtrooms and other parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Right. And this was kind of the they were kind of the go betweens with the money.

Jordan (00:20:14.000)

That's the thing that I wanted to because that was something that I didn't know about, as far as the tradition of where the Rothschilds came from, like, the idea of the mystique and all of those things being about money and stuff. People forget that, at any point in time, despite all of the wealth that they had accrued at that point. In an instant, and ripped away. Yeah, so so they're coming from this space of like, I'm always on the knife's edge of survival, no matter how much money I have,

Mike Rothschild (00:20:47.000)

right? And they're still living in the ghetto. They are, they're still when when mayor's sons left, they were really the first of the family line to leave the ghetto. But he and his wife Goodall stayed there, she stayed, you know, he died fairly young. I mean, I guess, young in our terms, but she stayed there for another three decades.

Jordan (00:21:09.000)

anywhere she moved, she moved into myth herself. Yeah. That's one of the the interesting things about her is that whereas, you know, Mayer, and Nathan, and all of them become myth due to their accruing of wealth. She becomes myth due to her in a bit her like refusal to it, right? She lived in the same spot in the same house. Yeah, I can, like in a Knight's Tale. Yes. That kind of thing. Yeah. So that's, that's one of the things that I find very fascinating from the very beginning of their story. They have these two simultaneous paths of both becoming extremely wealthy, and maintaining a humility, that I think a lot of other people around them absolutely did not have. Yeah.

Mike Rothschild (00:21:59.000)

And they maintained their, their Judaism, you know, they were very committed, they were very committed to their Jewish practice. And many, many other Jewish bankers. In Germany and elsewhere, they converted, and especially when a lot of them moved to the United States, a lot of them converted, took Christian last names left all that behind. But the Rothschilds really stayed as a beacon of visible Jewish wealth. And I think that's another thing that's really compounded all the conspiracy theories about them, right, is that they didn't assimilate, they stayed true to who they were.

Jordan (00:22:29.000)

Right. And I have, and I mean, it's, it's hard not to believe that there was a lot of resentment from the people who converted. Yeah, you know, I have no doubt that when they were when they were feeling that they were going well, the only way we can survive is to do this. Yeah, we're jealous of you for being able to retain your Judaism. Right.

Mike Rothschild (00:22:47.000)

Right. Right. It's like they were so rich, that even the rules for other wealthy Jews did not apply as much to them.

Jordan (00:22:55.000)

Right. Right. So it is, it is a little bit like the deck was stacked against them conspiracy wise from the beginning. Oh, totally, should never have been that successful. Like, yeah, dare you, period. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one of the things that that struck me, as I was thinking about it, is you're going through what amounts to hundreds of 1000s, you know, hundreds of years of, of this cycle of ebb and flow of anti semitism. You know, and one thing that I kept thinking of, oddly enough, is, I don't know, if you've watched MTBS, real world Road Rules challenge, I have not said don't worry about it. Okay. The only thing about it is that in the early part of the game, what gets me, what I can compare this to, is the first person who goes into elimination, the first person they all vote in, if that person comes back, then the next week, they're going to vote that same person in because all of the alliances, all of the powers that they've created have been built around the idea that they're already gone. Yeah. So so no matter how many times they keep coming back, in order to avoid conflict between the current alliances, that person keeps going back in an N and N, and the cyclical nature of the anti of anti semitism reminds me of that, because it appears that like, every time there's about to be a conflict of such huge proportions. The first thing that happens is they send in the Jews to elimination, so to speak. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And it just keeps happening over and over again. Yeah. Because it's the path of least resistance for racism.

Mike Rothschild (00:24:38.000)

Right? It's always the easiest thing to scapegoat the most visible out group and, you know, certainly the Jews have dealt with that for two millennia. And the Rothschilds have dealt with it, you know, since they really rose up to international power. They've always been the beacon for cranks and anti Semites. And you know, the 19th and 20, early 20th century version of conspiracy Grifters to look at and say it's their fault, because they're the Jews we know best and they've got the most money. Ryan and it's just it's just so easy to do it.

Jordan (00:25:14.000)

Yeah, what struck me, what struck me as you're going through this was later on, eventually you talked about I'm sure, Yoko, the the Japanese cult? Yeah. And when you go into that area, and you see like, there isn't really any source for that. It's just, it's completely external. Yeah. And the thought occurred to me, like a horrific thought occurred to me like, it doesn't matter if even if Hitler had successfully eradicated the, quote, Jews, the next second, there would have been, Oh, we found out that everybody from Africa is a Jew. Right? Do you know what I mean? So it again, it is like, one of the things about anti semitism is it's the fundament of racism.

Mike Rothschild (00:26:01.000)

Right? It is, it is the it is the bedrock of everything we're dealing with now, is based in the same stuff from decades ago, generations ago, centuries ago, and even in countries with no Jewish tradition. I mean, there, there are probably enough Jews in Japan to fit inside a small college basketball arena. Yeah. And you still have this bizarre fascination. And some of it is kind of complimentary. Some of it is Japanese people, especially in the 70s and 80s. We're looking at Jews as kind of a fellow oppressed minority, you know, the West is trying to take them down, they're trying to take us down, they don't want us to be too successful. They're spreading all kinds of theories and tropes about us, they did the same thing to the Jews, and there was a lot of fascination about Jewish business and Jewish wealth. But of course, that very quickly curdles into into blame into conspiracy theory. And of course, a lot of it is wrapped up with, you know, local culture and local conspiracy theories. You know, the the nuclear stuff is very big anti nuclear stuff is very big in Japan, and the teachers were blamed for that. So anything that you can blame on a Jew or a group of Jews, that's even just germane to your own culture is very easy to do that.

Jordan (00:27:19.000)

Yeah, I mean, and it is, it is almost like, it's an oversimplification, obviously. But to a certain extent, it is bullying of like, well, I'm gonna be a racist either way. Yeah. Like, I wake up every day as a racist, and I'm gonna racist today yet, right? It is easier for me to be racist towards Jews, there aren't that many of them, right? I don't want to be racist towards people who can kick the shit out of me. Right? Kind of, you know, I don't want to be racist towards people who have a bigger team than I do. Right. And so again, they we keep coming back to like, it's it's almost an unfortunate place that they have been that Jews have been trapped in, right from the moment they were like, Hey, let's be Jews today. You know, it was the beginning.

Mike Rothschild (00:28:03.000)

Yeah. Yeah. And the tropes get recycled, you know, the terms change. You know, it's the Illuminati in the in the 90s. It's the super government. It's the insiders, it's the hidden hand, but it's always the same thing. It's this small group controls everything else. And meanwhile, the small group is going, Hey, we're not all part of that, like most of us were born into, you know, especially before the 20th century, most of us are still born into relative poverty in in Eastern Europe, and the vast majority of Jewish people have no access to that kind of money. You know, to them, the Rothschilds are a beacon of aspiration. You know, they talk about this in talking about the Rothschilds and pop culture. You know, the Rothschilds are the family that you hope will one day come to your humble shtetl and enjoy a couple of your tea that you know, this kind of scapegoating and out grouping, it doesn't even apply to most of the people who are scapegoated.

Jordan (00:29:04.000)

Yeah, and the thing about the thing about that, that fascinates me is it is almost a self fulfilling prophecy. You know, like, they they the people both admire, you know, the outgroup are no not the outward the in groups, yes, so to speak, admires the Rothschilds, puts them on a pedestal of their own, then calls them the Jewish royal family, right. And at the same time, they are on a pedestal because they are so successful, right? That in a certain way, they are the Jewish royal fan. Oh, yeah. But at the at the same time, not in the way that you know, like it is both a true and untrue thing simultaneously.

Mike Rothschild (00:29:43.000)

Right, right. And you can you can see that in a lot of the writing about the family, especially sort of the early American writing about the family. They're very there is that pedestal there's that admiration for the wealth and style and the and the money and the palaces, but it's almost like well We don't want them to be too successful. We don't want them over here, they can stay over there and have their palaces and that's, you know, beautiful every American should want to be that rich, but not that rich. And it's it's comes back to that like interest versus usury. Who decides what is acceptable and what is not acceptable and how do you navigate if you are the group of people who are in that gray zone of, well, we're successful, but are we too successful? What you know, how are we?

Jordan (00:30:28.000)

Oh, Jesus tried and here we are. So yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yes. The one time somebody was like, let's try and figure this out for ya. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So but that takes us into the the Grifters? Yes. So all of this stuff, you know, we've gotten to the reality of the Rothschilds being both admired and hated simultaneously by the poorest and by the richest. But, you know, like, the bankers who aren't Jewish, right? They are furious. How dare they, you bangers who had to convert to whatever way that they felt they needed to to survive? They're furious. All of those things. Yes. So these are the people who have something to gain by the destruction of the Rothschilds. And then we get to the propagandists. Yes. So the propagandists take advantage of those things. Right. And they began, you know, right away to like you talk, of course, you know, our listeners are familiar with Alex and are familiar with Bill Cooper. Sure, you know, and then Father Coughlin, but you're talking about people even further back. From what I mean, the early 1800s, right. Yeah.

Mike Rothschild (00:31:41.000)

Yeah. So so the Rothschild myth really begins in the 1840s. And it begins in earnest with a pamphlet written by a French hack journalist, whose name I'm going to butcher George Darren Vale probably wasn't his real name, but he went by Satan.

Jordan (00:32:03.000)

So which was his real name,

Mike Rothschild (00:32:05.000)

which was Israel? George St.

Jordan (00:32:08.000)

George, Satan,

Mike Rothschild (00:32:09.000)

you're Satan. And he writes a pamphlet blaming the two of the Rothschild brothers, James de Rothschild, who's based in Paris, and then Nathan Rothschild who had died by that point. And this is the origin of the Waterloo myth. This is the myth where Nathan Rothschild was supposedly at the Battle of Waterloo watched the whole thing go down, knew that Wellington forces were going to win, but that a lot of people didn't think Wellington was going to win. So he you know, as the story goes, he takes a midnight horse ride to the channel port of Ostend in Belgium, pays terrified sailor 2000 francs to ferry him in a once in a century storm gets to the London Stock Exchange just in time and stands against his favorite pillar slumped over and looking defeated, and all the other bankers go Rothschild knows Rothschild knows we've lost the war as lost, they start selling all their bonds. You know, the the British consoles dropped by 95% or, you know, whatever the number is, and then Rothschilds agents, in a stroke of cunning by them all up. Suddenly, the news arrives, Wellington has won the day as Victoria's, those consoles shoot up in value. And suddenly Nathan Rothschild is the richest man in the universe. That story did not really exist until 30 years after the Battle of Waterloo, printed in this pamphlet by Satan. So that's kind of the thing that everybody does know about. And if you know anything about the Rothschilds, it's probably the Waterloo myth. But there's another story in that pamphlet. And it's blaming James de Rothschild for a train accident that took place just maybe a few weeks or a couple of months before this pamphlet came out. And it's a train derailment and I think 15 People die. This is this is the era where train travel is just starting become commonplace. There are a lot of train accidents. Somehow James and his cheapness and his depraved it and his indifference towards human life are all to blame for this horrible crash. This pamphlet called the edifying and curious history of James the first king of the Rothschilds love these titles, they, those were the days whenever you know, those are the days you could title something and you can say

Jordan (00:34:27.000)

your first page of a book should be the title and it should be single spaced. Yep, size eight font. That's what it should

Mike Rothschild (00:34:34.000)

be at all and just nothing but words just just just an avalanche of words.

Jordan (00:34:39.000)

So no margins, no margin,

Mike Rothschild (00:34:42.000)

no marks pamphlet kicks off a pamphlet war. And there are dozens of pro Rothschild anti Rothschild pamphlets, response pamphlets, responses to the responses, pamphlets that are supposedly written by James spreads into into the rest sort of Europe, there are German versions, Austrian versions. So this really starts to kick off this era of scapegoating the

Jordan (00:35:07.000)

Rothschilds. Yeah, I mean, it is it is like a proto Facebook fight. It's a proto phase 100% people posting then shitposting shit, people making bullshit jokes, but they take them seriously. It was that exactly.

Mike Rothschild (00:35:21.000)

It it is it is there is nothing new, you know, a pamphlet war in 1840s. Paris is just, you know, a fight on on your communities next door page. Yeah, it is the same thing. And this is, of course, it's tied into the revolutions of 1848, which are a series of socialist upheavals all across Europe. And that eventually starts to die down. And there's some other factors going in there that it's just gets too complicated to talk about. But then in the US, you start you're starting to see wealth building. So there's another cycle of Rothschild conspiracy theories based around the Civil War, that eventually burns out then there was another cycle in the 1890s in both France and in the US, that starts to get based on the gold versus silver debate, that spills into the First World War that spills into the interwar period. So every every uptick of anti Rothschild attacks, spills over into next one. And what I do in the book is I trace, every cycle up going into the next cycle. So the pre World War two attacks, obviously, we know where that leads to, then we get the Cold War, then we start getting 70s paranoia, then we get the internet and it every cycle builds and builds and builds on the next one. And everybody takes their version of it, puts it in their own book usually sells a whole lot of copies of it, and somebody sees that goes, Oh, I can do that. I'm gonna add in my own details, then they sell a whole bunch of copies. And here we are, and we're talking about the same stuff.

Jordan (00:36:49.000)

Right, right. No, I mean, you're, you're describing the beginning of those pamphlets turning into fucking behold a pale horse, you know, like, it is that perfect lineage of bullshit. That continues unabated. And in one part of your one part of your book, you know, there's, there's that detail you add of a lot of these books, a lot of these anti semitic conspiracy theory books written by these dumb white dudes wind up in Osama bin Laden's collection. Yeah. And when you when you think about that, you obviously he's not reading them because he's like, holy shit, Bill Cooper's got some great ideas. You know, he's reading them because it is through these lenses that he can propagandize to get people to keep them fighting him, and to get people to join his side. You know, like that concept of all of this is part of an ecosystem that is exploited individually by so many different people. You know, it's like there's this big circle in the center. And everybody just throws their their little line on it, and figures out which way to attack the Jews. Yep, that's

Mike Rothschild (00:38:01.000)

exactly what it is. And you say the repurposing and over and over and over I mean, we see Cleon Skousen. repurchases. Carroll Quigley, well somebody repurchases Cleon Skousen, you know, pat robertson extols him as he's laundering the protocols through nesto. Webster, it becomes a kind of a, I mean, it's like the stereotypical red strings and corkboard. But the conspiracy is just how can we make money off of hating Jews?

Jordan (00:38:28.000)

Right. Right. Absolutely. I mean, you know, going, going through all of the all of the propaganda that keeps getting put out, one thing that that I keep going back to is this idea that it is almost universally supported monetarily, by people who are guilty of the things that they're claiming, the Rothschilds are doing, you know, like, I don't know how it is that Henry Ford gets away with being like, the Rothschilds are too rich, you know, like, that kind of thing. Like, yeah, when we're when we're building, Elon Musk is currently building a factory town, you know, like, what are we doing here? Why are we blaming anybody, but just the, you know, that kind of thing? Yeah. And it does feel I mean, not to get conspiratorial. What I'm not doing is getting conspiratorial, I'm saying that this is part of the function of the system. Is that because they are there to exploit, of course, rich people are going to do it. Right. Right.

Mike Rothschild (00:39:28.000)

Right. And Rich people are going to take the people's attention off of their own misdeeds by focusing on the misdeeds of others. And we, you know, we see that over and over with a lot of these wealthy industrialists who would scapegoat Jewish money or the wealthy bankers, you know, the banking failures of the 1930s were easy to blame us particularly on the Rothschilds in Austria, because they founded the first major Austrian bank that failed, right but you know, at no point are we are we saying how are we going to abate this for everybody, how are we going to make sure this doesn't happen again, and then attempts to make sure that it doesn't happen? Again, you blame those on the Jews too. If you look at something like the Federal Reserve, this was put together in an effort to get a handle on the constant cycles of boom and bust in the American economy. And what do we do we just blame some Jews for it. And we just make up that the Rothschilds? You know, not only were at this, this meeting, were at launch to their, their huge parts of it, they had nothing to do with it, literally nothing. But and then,

Jordan (00:40:29.000)

years later, we destroy it by blaming the Jews and go back to the boom and bust cycle, right? That's exactly what it is. This kind of cycle over and over.

Mike Rothschild (00:40:37.000)

That's exactly what is we make as much money as we can. And then when it starts to go south, well, let's blame the Jews for it. And never look at our own behavior at what we have enabled in in the wealthiest in our society. It's just let's just blame this. These people who we have always blamed and they will who are in for a lot of people are always going to be the most the most obvious targets.

Jordan (00:41:00.000)

Yeah. So I mean, I suppose my next question is now like, the way people respond to these conspiracy theories in the way that they are so effective, is by giving people an avenue to do something about what is going wrong. Right. So to me when I when I see the like, you know, we just had we just talked to will summer about his book, which is another fantastic book. I believe it's trust the plan? Yes. And as I'm going through it, you know, I keep coming back to this line that he has at the very end of his book, which is, I don't know if we can deal with conspiracy culture within the American political system. Yeah. And the thing that I keep coming back to is the word system on that. I feel like what we're seeing is the problem as it happens, you know, like, a conspiracy theorist might say, like, Oh, hey, you're using this debunking, or whatever, to distract from the real problem, right? You know, but I just said earlier, that Henry Ford is using antiSemitism to distract from the real problem, you know? Yeah. So it is like a pre emptive. They say, Oh, you're doing what we're doing. Because when I say you're doing it, then it's, it's all fucking confused.

Mike Rothschild (00:42:24.000)

Right? And it becomes impossible to actually talk about, it becomes impossible to address the psychological and societal causes behind the success of anti semitism, or the success of conspiracy theories like Q Anon, because we get so wrapped up in our own versions of it debunking our own versions of it, and kind of trying to find the people who started it, you know, you get a lot of this with Q anon with, like, trying to figure out all who made the first posts, and you know, my stance, and I know, we'll stand like the QA guys. It's always been, it doesn't matter. Because they're, you know, people don't go to church, and ask their pastor who wrote the Bible, who wrote down the words, it doesn't matter who wrote down the words, what matters is that we have the words and we can reinterpret them endlessly. But whoever, you know, hit that text on 4chan and hit post, that person doesn't matter. The interpretations of it matter. So the time that we waste arguing about all of this, and trying to trying to poke holes in our own versions of it distracts from the very real psychological aspects that these things tap into human on taps into the same stuff that the antiSemitism of 1840s France taps into, it moves at a different pace, you know, the stories told a little bit differently. But in the end, it's the same fears, the same hopes, the same need for villains and heroes and stories. And that is always going to be part of, of human human brains, and particularly Western political systems. So I think well is right on the money that we can't address the societal, systemic causes of this, because nobody will ever be able to do that.

Jordan (00:44:12.000)

Interesting. I'm interested in what you just said, right there. Nobody will be ever will ever be able to handle the so so my question then is like, Okay, well, now what the fuck do we do? You know, and here's, and this is the conversation that I keep having with myself about Q anon. And the thoughts that I keep rolling with is, let me let me try and explain it this way. Right? Sure. So a conspiracy theorist like, like Alex Jones, right? They're coming to somebody selling them false hope. Yeah. If you pull this bullshit, or if you buy this bullshit, then you'll feel better. Right? You know, if you do this, you'll feel better. Right. And for so much of our disk disinformation space, we say, well, they're lying to you, you know, they're lying to you. This is bullshit. This is nothing.

Mike Rothschild (00:45:10.000)

That product doesn't do that. Right? Yeah. But what I'm

Jordan (00:45:15.000)

seeing now is that there's no there's nothing to give in return, you know, so So what winds up happening is, they say, you know, here's hope. And you say, well, it's false hope. And that's taking away hope, right, giving nothing in return. Right. So we've got false hope and no hope. I understand why people buy holes. Totally,

Mike Rothschild (00:45:35.000)

totally. I mean, look at look at just today, Tuesday. This is supposedly indictment day for Donald Trump. I mean, I don't think he look, he's, I think he's going to get indicted at some point. But the idea that it is some magic bullet that's going to make everything better, I think, is that false hope, but it's like you want you want him to have some consequences. You don't want this to be able to go on indefinitely, and the people who did it, never to feel any pain because of it. So I think you're totally right, you're taking away false open, you're replacing it with like, cold pragmatism. And

Jordan (00:46:13.000)

yeah, drastic is hoping dickwad I'm hoping Yeah, like, that sucks. Nobody wants

Mike Rothschild (00:46:19.000)

that. The, you know, you can only throw so much cold water on people's hopes. But I think what we can do with with a lot of this, and I think you can do it with, you know, sort of the micro with something like Q anon. And then the macro, it's something like anti semitism is to at least understand what it is, where it comes from, what its allure is, and be able to spot it in your own life and push back against it. So if you have that friend who's posting Facebook memes about international bankers, or they're parroting Kanye West, talking about 300, Zionists who run the world, you at least can know what that is. And you can say to that person, hey, that's, here's what this is, this is a really dangerous stereotype is really hurtful, you know, do better, for lack of a better term, and we can see it in ourselves. We can not share those things, we can not fall into those tropes in that easy blame. But the idea of converting the whole world at scale into, you know, getting rid of all of these things that have been in our culture for 1000s of years, that's probably a lot harder and a lot more frustrating.

Jordan (00:47:35.000)

Yeah, but 1000s of years thing makes it a little bit tougher to Yes. If it were if there was a solution that was like, Oh, we can knock this out in six months. I feel like we would have been there right now. Right?

Mike Rothschild (00:47:46.000)

Yeah, yeah. And there isn't that simple solution. And it's never going to be something that we can arrest our way out of, you know, we'll never be able to, you know, put as many Trump cronies in jail, to to make all of these problems that that made Trump and the Magga movement so appealing to so many people. That's not something we can arrest our way out of. That's something we have to deal with in our own lives and in the lives of the people around us.

Jordan (00:48:15.000)

What are some ways to do that?

Mike Rothschild (00:48:18.000)

Oh, gosh, you know, I

Jordan (00:48:19.000)

think isn't that kind of a it's not a shitty question. It feels like the end when you're like, we got to find ways to do well, and somebody's like, how and you go. Okay, so what if we buy bottled water?

Mike Rothschild (00:48:33.000)

I don't pump as much fluoride as we can into the water supply. You know, I

Jordan (00:48:40.000)

like your advice is eco terrorism. I don't want to say eco terrorism, right. That's your plan. I know.

Mike Rothschild (00:48:49.000)

And he started to air. You know, I think what we need to do is recognize the tendencies in ourselves and say, Look, everybody has this stuff that they carry around with them. Everybody has those jokes that they grew up hearing that they still think you're kind of funny, that are not acceptable anymore. Everybody has the prejudices that they grew up with. And then we can work to overcome them in ourselves, find them and see them and other people, people in our lives work together as very, very small groups to understand where these things come from, and understand that the people who believe this stuff are not all crazy. You know, you don't not every person who listens to Infowars is a raving lunatic. Some are certainly, but most of them aren't. They're just looking for some kind of community of people who think they're going through the same thing. And maybe what we can do in the very basics is just build those communities again, you know, be outside with other people and stop thinking about how terrible everything is and how everybody's out to get us and you know me Maybe that can make our lives just a tiny bit better. And then things like anti semitism and q&a are not quite so appealing. After a while. I think things like anti semitism appeal to people who think everybody's out to get them and think that there is some other solution for their problems other than what they're doing. You know, maybe by rebuilding our sense of community and our sense of interpersonal relationship, we can make hateful movements and conspiracy theories, a little bit less shiny and a little bit less desirable.

Jordan (00:50:29.000)

Sure, no, I mean, in reading wills book, I kept coming back to these personal stories. And it's like, you know, where q anon begins? It begins with a medical bill. Yeah, it doesn't begin on 4chan. It doesn't begin there. It doesn't begin in the 1840s. Right. It doesn't begin when Jesus was like, hey, maybe don't let these people get in here. Right. It was it was a medical bill that then started taking them down this terrible path. Yeah. So all too often, what I'm seeing is the intervention point for Q anon and the like, is way before Q anon ever shows up. Right. Right. Right.

Mike Rothschild (00:51:08.000)

And you find that I went through the depositions of a lot of the arrested January 6 writers. And what they talk about a lot of them is the pandemic closed their business, the lockdown, yeah, the lockdown, got them fired. And they had nothing to do, and they were pissed off. And here's Donald Trump telling them, well, China did this to you. And there's, you know, Alex Jones saying, Klaus Schwab did this to you. And, you know, here's Breitbart saying George Soros did this to you. And so it suddenly becomes like, oh, somebody did this, to me, this isn't my fault. And it wasn't your fault. It's not any individual person's fault, there was a pandemic, and there were lock downs, and the economy went to the shitter. That's not any one person's fault. But it's a lot easier for it to be one person's fault, or the World Economic Forum or Bill Gates than it is to look at how our economy works, and why we weren't providing more money for people to not to stay home, why we weren't giving more money to businesses that didn't steal it in PPP loans. There are real people to blame here. But that takes a lot of work, and a lot of societal soul searching. Whereas it's a lot easier to point the finger at the Hungarian billionaire, or the the German globalist, or Bill Gates, and that that's really where it starts is this shit happened to me? And somebody did it to me.

Jordan (00:52:40.000)

Yeah. Well, I mean, the question that the interesting point there, which I find so fascinating, because this is the push and pull that I feel in your book, right? You're right. It is a confluence of forces, a system that is designed explicitly to fuck you over. Right? Yeah. And yet at the same time in the book, there are people with agency, you know, and if not us, right. Right. Right. So in a certain sense, when you say to me, like, oh, somebody you can't you have, you can't think that somebody did this to you. At the same time, I am at the at will, of people with agency where I don't? Do you know what I mean? Sure. So So part of that conversation is like, somebody people do need to be held accountable. Oh, absolutely. This yet to me. Yeah. A problem. It may not be conspiracies so much as it is. No one's being held accountable for fucking with us.

Mike Rothschild (00:53:43.000)

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And that goes back to all the anger with the, you know, with the banking crisis, and you see so much anti semitism revolve around financial panics, you know, certainly certainly in the 30s. You know, the boom and bust

Jordan (00:53:57.000)

the bailout. Sure. I think the bailout is a huge part of Q anon. You heard of the Tea Party,

Mike Rothschild (00:54:04.000)

Tea Party, which is a huge part of q&a. Yeah, the transition

Jordan (00:54:07.000)

from to me like the last person who really was giving that positive. You know, I'm not just debunking things, we can change things was Obama, right, right. You know, that hope and change message was the last time I had hope that things would change. And then he appointed Geitner and it was like, Oh, well, we're fucked. Right. So and then you go back and you're like, well, the the Iraq War, right. That's the source of all of this conspiracy, because it was a lie to get us out of the war. Yep. You know, and then you go back further than that, and you're like, Oh, it was the it was the it was the NAFTA. You know, all of these things. Are the the decisions of our government that have effects on people that people are unable to affect?

Mike Rothschild (00:54:53.000)

Yeah. Yeah. And that is a huge part of where so much of the anger comes from is totally legitimate, you know, people getting screwed over by locked down by the bailouts by things like NAFTA by economic proposals that don't do anything for them. And and I think the anger that that drives people into conspiratorial movements and into hate movements. It is it is legitimate. There is legitimate anger there that people had a reason to be angry about the bailouts, people have a reason to be angry about the still lingering after effects of the Iraq War. But but the people who get blamed for it usually are not people who had anything to do with it. Right. And it's, and it's the right and it's the people who, who get that target, who have been targeted before. Like, yeah, there are people who

Jordan (00:55:43.000)

like the challenge, jump, full circle, full circle, full circle.

Mike Rothschild (00:55:49.000)

But it's, it's, it's easier to blame the people who are already getting wiped. And that's why it just keeps coming back to Bill Gates, George Soros, the Rothschilds World Economic Forum, because you've already got this whole corpus of material blaming them for all this other shit that happened? Well, they're, they're so evil, why won't they do more stuff and we don't look at the more obscure figures. We don't look at the, you know, bank, vice presidents, we don't look at the people we're sending to Congress, who will say they're gonna do this for us and they just don't do it. Right. Right. All right. We scapegoat the wrong people. And there are very good, there are people who are very good at taking advantage of our need to scapegoat by pointing us at those people.

Jordan (00:56:33.000)

Yeah, I mean it again, I'm sorry, I read your book. I'm gonna keep pointing to it. But, you know, the story of I believe it's Ganden Ghanians manifesto. Yeah. So what what fascinated me the detail that fascinated me about that is that most of that was fucking stolen ship copy pasta bullshit. Yeah. What he added though, was an anti semitic element. Yeah, like that detail seems so weirdly important to me. And I can't really completely unpack why why is it that of all the things that this dude have? I mean, why? It was about shorting currencies? Right? Like, what are we doing?

Mike Rothschild (00:57:18.000)

What does this guy have anything to do with shorting currency? What what does he have to blame on George Soros? George Soros has nothing to do with this guy, that none of this has any application to this person's life. It's just a crutch. It's just something to be angry about. Because being angry at maybe choices he's made at where his life has gone, for sure that you don't want to do that. You want to blame these other people. So you take this this nonsensical garbage in this one manifesto, which of course the media, you know, rents all of it and tries to analyze it as if it's supposed to be analyzed. I mean, the vast majority was not supposed to be analyzed, but the but the anti semitism comes from somewhere. And it comes from this really rich tradition of the financial machinations of this elite have have ruined my life. Well, the financial machinations of the elite probably have, you know, detriment been detrimental to your life, except it's just not this guy. It's these other people whose names you'll never know.

Jordan (00:58:20.000)

Right? Right. I mean, it is it is fascinating to me just that we're playing so much catch up, you know, like what I see in my head all too often is like these propagandists, these people exploiting things are children throwing plates off of a table and we're all there picking up all the pieces of those plates. And we're like finally we put the plate back together and there are already three more plates on the floor. Yeah, you know the disinformation situation is so much of all too often it feels like a losing battle. You know, like I'm sure you feel that there's you've become part of disinformation

Mike Rothschild (00:59:00.000)

Yeah, I mean, I get you know conspiracy theories about my last name or my you know, who really pays me all this other stuff who pays you the Eco terrorists got us finally, finally. But but it's actually one of the reasons why I really wanted to look to the past and the the origins because the sort of boil in a bag ready in five minutes conspiracy theories that we spend so much of our time knocking down now. They won't even be remembered in a month. We won't even remember what we were talking about why we were

Jordan (00:59:37.000)

talking about the migrant caravan is coming back the migrant caravan is coming two or three years late, but it's on the way.

Mike Rothschild (00:59:45.000)

Well, the and the the right culture war obsession is so good at that at taking a miniscule issue and blowing it up into the most important thing that could possibly affect your life. And then two weeks later, you'll you'll never speak of it again. We, you know, we saw this with their banning Dr. Seuss books, they want to take your Keurig away, you know, now it's guest death bam, yeah. You know, the height, trans rights in high school sports. This is not stuff most people care about, of course, we've seen the results in elections where the more you run on this stuff, the the less well you do, because most people don't care about it. But you're getting on Fox News you're getting on Steve Bannon, this podcast, you grift off that. And then here's the next thing. And it's usually some line and a governmental report that somebody takes out of context, and then you can spin up a whole new cycle again. Well, you know, while we're trying to debunk the gas stove, you know, hijack of 2023, they're coming up with something else. So for me, the more interesting things are the pamphlets from the 1840s, the Nazi propaganda videos from a century ago, because that's the building blocks of why this stuff works so well. And if we don't get a handle on the whole bottom of the Jenga tower, we're never going to be able to pull the pieces out that finally topple the whole thing.

Jordan (01:01:13.000)

Right, right. Yeah, I mean, from reading your book, what conclusion I've drawn is that we are not going to get a top down solution. No. So I mean, what's fascinating about again, what's fascinating about the book, is that difference in agency, you know, like, when you think about World War One, a certain narrative point of view could be this dumbfuck family couldn't stop fighting with each other. Right now. There's, there's all of these little bits of who has agency and we all too often, I feel like, don't focus on how it is to give ourselves agency, right? You know, like that idea of, hey, if somebody wants to lie us into a war book, you right, I'm not gonna go right, you know, and if enough people said, I'm not gonna go, then we don't go, right. How do we, how do we skip over that? You know, like, it feels like we can't do anything, because we have to wait for the top. Right. And because we think that we can't do anything, and we wait for the top. Right, and they're not going to do it. Right.

Mike Rothschild (01:02:19.000)

Yeah. And we get stuck in this cycle of waiting for salvation from entities that, that don't have the power to give it to us,

Jordan (01:02:27.000)

and actively don't want and actually don't want it, doing their best to keep forgiving us agency.

Mike Rothschild (01:02:33.000)

Right. And I think the best thing that we can do is really just, you know, in ourselves, you know, just just don't be an anti Semite. Don't be an asshole. Don't, don't, don't, you know, don't fall for Kevin. I mean, it's like

Jordan (01:02:49.000)

to appreciate that our, our entire motto is essentially boiled down to don't be a dick. So you're right on the right show. And

Mike Rothschild (01:02:56.000)

if enough people decide, I'm not going to be a dick today, you know, maybe things can get a little bit better. But it's so hard, because we are kept so distracted. And we are kept. So in pursuit of the you know, the next paycheck, the next promotion, the next time that we can win an argument on the internet. And we're not doing the things to really, truly take care of ourselves and make us less vulnerable to conspiracy theories to top down lying, you know, like you had with the Iraq War. 20 years ago, we were just, we were just too off the ball to really sustain the anger that that we had at the beginning. And I was in some of those protest marches at the very beginning. And then it kind of petered out. And then everybody just kind of moved on.

Jordan (01:03:48.000)

Yeah, that's America for you. Right? Yep. That's the west. It is very much like, Why are you mad today? Two weeks from now? No one will care. Right? This includes the Iraq fucking war. Yeah. If the Iraq war didn't move the needle for more than a month, we're in real trouble.

Mike Rothschild (01:04:06.000)

Well, you know, if Sandy Hook didn't really move the needle on gun control, what's going to, you know, right.

Jordan (01:04:15.000)

Right. I mean, it is it is, to a certain extent, just like what you're saying, you know, the people in Q anon and the the people who are trapped in these conspiracy theories and the people that are trapped in this mind view in this worldview, they're not irrational in the sense that if they want to achieve their goals, they do have to act like insane people. Right. You know, if you want to achieve the hang Mike Pence goal, you're not going to vote on it. Right? Right. The problem. The problem is the goal, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. So So it's that rationality, that I feel is so destructive, is again nobody Giving them a positive place for this to go. But the liars, right, right. Nobody's saying to them, I hear you. I'm angry too.

Mike Rothschild (01:05:08.000)

Let's figure it out together, right? Because that doesn't sell books that doesn't get the podcast subscriptions that's hard to build a brand off of

Jordan (01:05:20.000)

what I mean, that's literally our brand so well.

Mike Rothschild (01:05:24.000)

But I didn't like I, all I can do is and all you guys do is and very well is just put the information out there and try to figure out how to talk about it in the right way. You know, I really appreciate when you guys get really, really like volcanically mad about Alex Jones being talked about the wrong way.

Jordan (01:05:43.000)

Yeah, we, we do occasionally have a, you know, after after 795 episodes of being mad at Alex, you know, you take fewer you take a few to be mad at the rest of the press. Now for later you get there.

Mike Rothschild (01:05:57.000)

Yeah. And we get I see the same thing with Q I see the same thing with sort of Soros like, there is a right way to talk about this in a responsible way to talk about this. And I think, you know, for people like us who do this, you know, is to keep having those conversations and keep talking about how is how is it right and responsible to talk about this? How, you know, what is the line of platforming this versus not platforming it? Right, these are very important conversations. And I think to do it without the sort of salaciousness and finding the wrong things to focus on. That that's really tricky to do. And I think if we can do more of that, and maybe we can start moving the conversation into a more productive place to make conspiracy theories and hatred, less appealing for people on our side of things, and maybe just come together a little bit more. But it's it's really hard. And you guys know, Phil, Oh,

Jordan (01:06:52.000)

I understand the art. Like, to me, the thought I've always had about us. And Alex is I don't want us to be to be big. I want us to put a like snow globe over Alex. So the only way you can experience Him is if you shake us. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, like there's no mainstream press coverage. There's no nothing about this. Like with Q anon. There's no mainstream press coverage. It's under these bubbles. Yeah. So we can all contain them. Because you can't. I mean, if you've been paying attention to the past several 1000 years, which based on your book you have, you can't eradicate them, they're not going to go away. We have to find a way to contain them. Yeah. In these kinds of things. So that's what I've always dreamt of, you know, Dan wants to be good at stuff. And I just want to be a snowglobe which I think explains the difference in our philosophies.

Mike Rothschild (01:07:47.000)

Well, you know, I talked about this in the in the introduction to the book about, you know, the sources, like I say very explicitly, do not go read this stuff, you do not have to read it to understand the thoughts behind it. You don't need to read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you don't need to read David Icke, you don't need to watch the Eternal Jew to understand why it's bad. That's where the the the snowglobe comes. I think it's a great analogy, because it's talking about this stuff in a responsible way. It's talking about it in a responsible way. But also understanding that this shit works for a reason. And if you start reading it, just to even understand it, there's a decent chance if it hits you at the right time in the right way, it could start pulling you in. And that's that's always my worst fear with a lot of this stuff.

Jordan (01:08:31.000)

That is such a great point. You know, like, with my family, you know, if you are hit at the right time, in the right spot in your life, then things can go weird, you know, like it is. I don't look at people who walk by the Scientology center and go in as people who are like, huh, I bet Scientology has got great ideas. Yeah, I look at them as people who are like, I don't know what to fucking do. Yeah. And then they see a bright light. Do you know what I mean?

Mike Rothschild (01:09:02.000)

Like and somebody and a guy just experienced Yes. And a guy in a in a crisp Sailor Suit saying Free stress test. Love you

Jordan (01:09:09.000)

feel you, you know that? Oh, yeah.

Mike Rothschild (01:09:11.000)

Feeling any feeling any pressure in your life? Well, who is going to say no to that feeling any stress? Of course, we are all feeling stress. And if you just had a bad day, and you're walking by the right guy at the right time, 99% of people are going to just keep walking, but that one guy is going to get pulled in that one person is going to be presented with something ridiculous. Like, behold a pale horse and 99 people are gonna go this is garbage. And one person is gonna go Oh, interesting, huh? I had a bad day. And this is kind of this sounds interesting to me. That's all it takes.

Jordan (01:09:48.000)

Yeah, I had my car towed today. I'm a Scientologist now. Like it's not. It's not that straight, but not as far away as you might

Mike Rothschild (01:09:56.000)

know. And no one is immune. No One is too smart, too accomplished, to get hit by the right, asshole speaking the right poison into their ear at the right time.

Jordan (01:10:10.000)

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it is, it is one of the things that I have always felt not, you know, not offended by so much as like, disappointed by is so many people refusing to look at Q followers and say there but for the grace of God go I Yeah, as opposed to like, look at these Dum Dums. Right. Look at these idiots who believe that someone will be held accountable and right. Yeah, morons, like to think, as opposed to thinking, you know, if if I had, sometimes I think if I was like, 22, in the situation that I was in, and somebody offered me hope like that. Yeah, it's entirely possible that I could have joined it, you know, sometimes I'm grateful that I spent several years of my life hopeless.

Mike Rothschild (01:11:01.000)

Well, and that's the thing, that's where we come back to with well, like, it takes one medical bill one job loss, just the right the right timing, and like, you can think you're, you're better than this. And there's not many people who are who are better than somebody telling them, it's all going to be okay. And here, this book helped me or, Hey, check this video out, you know, and we saw that just over and over during the pandemic, just people who needed something in their life, because they were just alone, and they didn't have anything to do you know, people who had families at home, people who were able to keep their jobs. You know, maybe those people were able to resist some of the conspiracy theories a little bit more than the person who suddenly is alone and their friend group is cut off, and they don't have their job anymore, and people they know are getting sick. And what are you going to do sit around watch TV, or you're going to go find some answers, and you will find it in a Facebook group. And it's a Facebook group that's telling you Well, I heard Bill Gates had something to do with this, you know, check out event 201. And you'll look at that, and suddenly, the wheels start turning and it doesn't, it doesn't take a lot. And then you find yourself storming the Capitol, because a process started. And at some point, you just didn't want it to stop and you couldn't stop it. Yeah.

Jordan (01:12:25.000)

Oh, I mean, when we, when we did our live show, a lot of people came up to us after the show with a story like that, like similar to that of like, I was feeling lonely, I was feeling lost. And then I found you guys. And this helped me. And to us to Dan and I, we see that as like maybe the most important responsibility in our lives, like, truthfully, that we can have an effect on somebody like that is, I mean, a responsibility, maybe we maybe no one should have made well don't deserve that responsibility. And maybe we're not going to live up to it as well as we'd like to. But it is so important to us that it's like, if, like the number one thought we have is will this exploit our audience in any way? Yep. Because if somebody gives you that level of trust it, it has to be returned.

Mike Rothschild (01:13:21.000)

It's it is a it is a deep responsibility to have a platform of any kind where anybody is listening to you and thinking that you know what you're talking about. That is a responsibility that, that it's it's almost sacred, in a way, you know, I get emails, or I get DMS on Twitter of people who are like, I read your book, and now I understand what my mom is going through or Yeah, I read read read. Yep, I read a piece you wrote, and suddenly cute, didn't make as much sense to me anymore. And I'm, and I'm going, it's, I'm never going to save the world. You guys are never gonna save the world. But maybe we can make it a little bit less shitty for a few people. And that is a responsibility that, you know, I know, we both take incredibly seriously. Oh, for

Jordan (01:14:05.000)

sure. No, I was Dan and I were talking a little bit. And at a certain point, you know, you say something very, very simple. Like, if, if CEOs and politicians would just fucking act right, then we wouldn't be in this situation. And then the the part of my brain that kicks in is the ego of saying that, like, what I'm really saying is they should act more like me. Right, you know, why are they more like me? But then I think of just if ski and I think of every happy family is happy in the same way. Yeah. And every unhappy family is happy, separate, you know, like, yeah, like that concept of maybe if they would just act right at that has nothing to do with me. It's just It's unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah, there's really only one way to be

Mike Rothschild (01:14:53.000)

well, and that's Yeah, and that's why the idea of D radicalizing at scale doesn't work because everybody has their own path into this. Everybody has Oh, individualism, it's so individual it is that one thing that happened to them when they were nine years old, or it's they lost their job on this particular day. And there was that one bill they couldn't pay. And it just started that cycle of debt. Everybody's path into it is different. And therefore, everybody's path out has to be different. And there is no textbook.

Jordan (01:15:22.000)

That is a great point. That is a great, great point. Yes.

Mike Rothschild (01:15:25.000)

And there. Yeah. And there is no textbook for how to de radicalize from conspiracy theories, because everybody's gonna have a different textbook.

Jordan (01:15:34.000)

Yeah, that's why I've obviously like the irony of of our situation is with disinformation with this kind of thing. We also want a big solution. Yeah. Also want a simple, hey, if we could all just say this, then it would go away. Yeah. And yet at the same time, it's such an individual problem, that it can't be solved like,

Mike Rothschild (01:15:59.000)

right, right. It would be great to think that if everybody listened to knowledge fight, Alex Jones would have to get a job. Or, like, if everybody read Jewish space, lasers, anti semitism would go away. I'm like, Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you have any real solutions? Because that's never gonna happen. Well, I mean,

Jordan (01:16:18.000)

yeah, it is so fascinating. Reading this book, it is over and over and over again, like, Okay, if the intervention was here, society wide of like, oh, we needed to intervene before this happened, then this pogrom wouldn't have started, right? Is that intense? A truth of like, this was where the real pogrom started, right? It didn't start it. It didn't start in 1939. Right, started in 1929. Right at the end of the war, whenever Germany was, you know, all of those things. Right. So it's so it's so fucking brutal. I mean, obviously, 19, not 1920. I'm sure you understand my point.

Mike Rothschild (01:17:01.000)

Yeah. And it's, you know, you can look at it as Europe is in ruins in 1945. Because in 1921, the communists and the Social Democrats in couldn't Weimar Germany couldn't get it together. Couldn't get their shit together. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, because there was doctrinal infighting among this group of, you know, communists versus socialists. I mean, whatever. Then 20 years later, there's millions of dead people. It's it is these problems are so they won when we have identified them, the the peas in the pool already. So the only way to get P out of a pool is just not pour the pee in.

Jordan (01:17:44.000)

Right. Right. That is that is, I think, essentially where we're stuck with. Yeah, where we're stuck at is, in order to get rid of the pee in the pool. We have to drain the pool, which again, brings us back to drain the swamp, you know, like, yeah, when you have the pre emptive I know you are but what I'm what am I? It gets in the way of actually solving the problem.

Mike Rothschild (01:18:10.000)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's so

Jordan (01:18:14.000)

Mike, fix that. Together, man,

Mike Rothschild (01:18:17.000)

that. That'll that will be the next book, how I fixed everything.

Jordan (01:18:22.000)

Mike solves everything like solves.

Mike Rothschild (01:18:26.000)

Coming 2025?

Jordan (01:18:29.000)

Well, like, could you tell us? Could you I don't want to dominate your time any longer? I don't know the past. We're well past? Oh, no, no, no, we can go endlessly. All right. Well, excellent. Then I have some more questions. Let me see where we're at? Um, yes. If you are going to give a you know, like, how would I put this in your personal experience? As the person who is the object of a conspiracy theory? Have you seen any situations that have been able to, like prevent it from occurring? You know, when you researched your book, there's so many situations where it's like tidal forces coming together, where at the end of the day, a pogrom is gonna happen. Yeah. Have you seen any examples where those tidal forces get stemmed?

Mike Rothschild (01:19:23.000)

got stopped? You know, it's, it's really if

Jordan (01:19:27.000)

you say, No, I'm gonna be really bummed

Mike Rothschild (01:19:28.000)

out. No, it's and I'm trying to think of because these things are so cyclical. You can attempt to to intervene, you can attempt to foresee the problems. You know, actually a really good example is right at the end of the war, when the concentration camps are starting to get opened up. And Eisenhower had the foresight to have everything documented, knowing that there would be people who would say that this didn't happen. And you know, you had stories obviously survivors of timeliness, your advice be

Jordan (01:19:59.000)

like Like,

Mike Rothschild (01:20:01.000)

maybe in that sense. But but you know, and have that very universe, you know, slim jacket.

Jordan (01:20:11.000)

But but more of a Truman guy like a hat, you know,

Mike Rothschild (01:20:15.000)

we need, we need that we need that time back. He was a haberdasher. And, you know, what you can do is try to anticipate where some of these problems are going to are going to be and try to take some action against it, you know, a lot of people in this field are talking about pre bunking, you know, kind of right, inoculating people against conspiracy theories that haven't happened. Yeah, which I think is an incredible idea. It's just so hard, because these things are so reactive, you know, they react to things that are going on, that really can't be predicted, right. But I think if you can document as much as possible, and stick to what you know, is true. And, and make that your base, it's harder to, to get to let yourself get pulled into it. But so often, these things happen so quickly, and especially now, you know, they move much quicker, you know, the, the percentages of conspiracy belief are probably about the same now, as they as they were in, you know, ye old days, but we now have methods to disseminate this stuff very, very quickly, and in a way that has no barrier to entry. You know, it used to be that if you wanted to spread your own conspiracy theory, you had to put a little bit of money into it, you had to print the pamphlets, you had to print the books, you had to know where to get them. But now it's just like, Sure, I'm gonna be Whitehouse insider Anon, and I'm gonna go on 4chan, and I'm going to share some shit, and maybe it'll take off. And if you do it enough, and if you if you are prolific, and if you're telling a story that people want to hear, you can make yourself a personality in this world very quickly. And that's the kind of thing that, you know, maybe we need social media companies to step in. And that's a whole other conversation that we've been having.

Jordan (01:21:57.000)

If you think holding politicians accountable is crazy. Oh, good luck with social media. Right. Right. I was there at Citizens United good. fucking luck. Yeah. I mean, I find this What would I say, you know, like, D? Boy, it's, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to like, figure out because when you want to try and pre bunk something, yeah. To me, I think of like, immediately, what we should be doing right now is preparing for the next pandemic. Yeah. You know, because there's going to be, you know, of course, there will be Yeah. And it's, it's not a conversation, and we know there's going to be another one, because the elements that have created this pandemic are not gone. Right. I'd like for instance, there's going to be another January 6, because the elements that created January 6, are not gone. Right? Right. So it seems like now is the time to prepare for those. You know, eventualities, and yet at the same time, people are reasonably concerned about the fucking present, right?

Mike Rothschild (01:23:12.000)

Right now, it's hard to prepare for the future when the present is still so uncertain. And I think what happens in a lot of cases, and we're seeing this with some of this potential Trump indictment is now we're seeing like, every gathering of a couple of mega dopes is like a potential January 6, and I think what we're missing already is a lot went into January 6, I'm not talking about like conspiratorial planning. I'm talking about Trump saying over and over and over, they're going to steal the election from me, only you can stop it. That's the kind of planning that went into it. I'm not talking about, you know, Mike Flynn. And so

Jordan (01:23:49.000)

again, confluence of events, tidal forces all coming together, right. And it wasn't, it wasn't like everybody going, here's what we're going to do on this day. Right, exactly this point in time. Some people said, we're going to do this other people just showed up, this guy was doing some bullshit, Mike Pence went got went rogue, you know, like, all of this stuff happened.

Mike Rothschild (01:24:09.000)

Yeah. Yeah. And we're, we're looking for things that in some cases can't really be seen until it's already happening. And that makes that makes that kind of inoculation. Very, very difficult.

Jordan (01:24:22.000)

For sure. Oh, man, that's tough. I mean, the thing I keep struggling with so often is just the lack of what to do, you know, like here is, to me the way that we need to like take the first step towards combating conspiracy theories, is doing both debunking the fake conspiracy and offering a positive hopeful view of how to move forward you know, so to me, it's almost like every conspiracy theory debunking should be like, hey, you know, this is not what's happening. The government is not Doing this there's no death panels. Also, here are medical avenues that you go to right help people out. Right? Oh, like everything should include that. And if you're reading this go here. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rothschild (01:25:11.000)

If you're angry about what Obamacare is gonna do to you, here's the here's the address of a free class solutions, and it's actionable things that you can do, as my cue was so popular, because it was it was actionable, it wasn't. I'm gonna read secrets of the Federal Reserve, and I'm gonna know what the insiders are doing, but I can't do anything about it. Q anon was, here's all the things that are going on. Here's what you can do. You can make Yes, you can decode the the the drops, you can make a video you can read pal, your friends, you can show up at this rally. There were things that you could do. And yeah, a lot of busy work. But that's at least feeling like you're part of the solution. And I think we we write off a lot of these movements, as you know, as crazy, when in reality, it's giving people something to do. And like you've been saying it's giving people hope. And unless you can give people something else to look forward to. And something else to focus on. That is healthier and more productive and better for them. The conspiracy theory is always going to be more appealing.

Jordan (01:26:15.000)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's I mean, at the end of the day, it all it all too often boils down to there are three choices. There's no hope, false hope and real hope. Yeah. And in the absence of real hope, well, I can get no hope for free. So I might as well by false hope. That kind of

Mike Rothschild (01:26:33.000)

something could happen.

Jordan (01:26:35.000)

Sure, sure. I mean, and the irony of that, is, of course, that the false hope is more likely to lead to something actually happening. The no hope, at the very least, right? Yeah, like the false hope lead to January 6, you know, hope will lead to us being like, advocate Trump,

Mike Rothschild (01:26:54.000)

there's nothing I can do.

Jordan (01:26:56.000)

The electoral college is real. Like we all pretend that matters.

Mike Rothschild (01:26:59.000)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan (01:27:03.000)

Yeah, yesterday, nine idiots decided abortion is illegal. So that's just how we live now. Well,

Mike Rothschild (01:27:09.000)

I guess guess can't can't do anything about it. Right. Yeah. And that hopelessness and that, that lack of agency is really I mean, you guys know, it drives people toward not just conspiracies but toward the Guru's toward the ones telling you, Hey, we got this, we're going to do this together. And that is really a feeling. And that is where the popularity of Alex comes from. That's where the popularity of Dondero call it conspiracy comes from. That's where the popularity of Eustace Mullins or any number of cranks comes from, because at least it's somebody saying, Hey, we're gonna figure this out. Yeah, and maybe maybe there's an oppressive super government lording over us, but at least now we we know what it is.

Jordan (01:27:55.000)

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I suppose. Okay, there's one last thing I want to get into and then we'll then we'll be done. I won't I won't keep you any longer. I've been having a fantastic time. So the funniest thing about Kanye going on Infowars now to me after reading your book, is that no American music as it stands now would exist if it weren't for a Rothschild? Yes. Funniest thing to me is yeah, without Nico Rothschild financing bird fucking Bolognaise like out her. None of Kanye doesn't exist, right? Still playing bluegrass.

Mike Rothschild (01:28:38.000)

Banjo is under us. Yeah. Ya know, the irony of, of Nika, you know, being this patron of all of these jazz greats, and all those samples, making up some of the earliest hip hop. And then, you know, you got Professor Griff screaming about how the Jews are the cause of all the wickedness you all have ice cube, and then fast forward. And it's Kanye. And there is there is like no awareness of where you've been, and how you got to where you are. And that's the thing that really, you know, you that's the cycle that you try to break by going back to the sources with this stuff and going, Look, this is where this came from. And now we can spot it. And now now we know what it means. And that to me is there's a lot of utility in that there's a lot of value in that.

Jordan (01:29:27.000)

I agree. 100%. Mike, thank you so much for joining us for this. Well, maybe for this episode. Could you go ahead and tell everybody where to find your you have published books currently out that people can buy? Yes. And your new book Jewish Baselayers? There's, we'll be out September 15th,

Mike Rothschild (01:29:46.000)

September 19. And yeah, that's close enough. Close.

Jordan (01:29:50.000)

Close enough. Close at 300 on September 15. Everyone,

Mike Rothschild (01:29:55.000)

yeah, you can preorder You can preorder the book through bookshop.org or your local bookstore. or, or that other place that sells books, pre orders hugely, hugely important. That is what spurs more orders going into the future. So yes definitely order

Jordan (01:30:10.000)

a lot of my a lot of our audience is going to ask how best to support you specifically. Any number of people in the intervening time period? Yes. So if pre orders are the way to go, then that's

Mike Rothschild (01:30:25.000)

reorders are the way to go and my book on Q anon the storm is upon us. That is available everywhere hardcover, paperback, ebook audiobook, and you can find me on Twitter still still fighting the good fight on Twitter. God knows why.

Jordan (01:30:41.000)

I left I left after a very public explosion so I'm happy to

Mike Rothschild (01:30:45.000)

see you did I know you did, you did the right thing. It's going nowhere good. But you know, it's it's still there. And it is still, you know, it, there's still value there. And, you know, I'm trying to do my part to make it a little less horrible. So you can find me at Rothschild, MD. And yeah, that's about that.

Jordan (01:31:07.000)

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming I for coming onto the show. I suppose. I am neither Neo nor Leo nor dz X Clarke. I am not the juiciest Ice Cube. Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. Thanks for holding. Well, Alex, I'm a first time caller. I'm a huge fan. I love your work. I love you.