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Episode 11 (Redux) - MH17
32 Plays3 years ago
In preparation for the next episode, why not go back to the year it started, and the first time Josh and M talked about the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17...
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Transcript
Opening Parody of Conspiracy Elements
00:00:06
Speaker
Planesoed with corpses and CIA agents. Theories by Henry, Lincoln and Bazian. Disinformation spread on the wings. These are a few of my favorite things.
00:00:22
Speaker
Twin towers falling and passports are burning Conspiracy theorists and fairies are churning Government denials don't take out the sting These are a few of my favourite things When the government slights and the theorist sings When I'm feeling sad I simply remember my favourite things And I don't feel so bad
Introduction and Podcast Mission
00:00:57
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy with Dr. M.R. Extenteth and featuring Josh Addison as the interlocutor. Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I'm Josh Addison and sitting opposite me is Maria Von Trapp.
00:01:16
Speaker
It's true. I do look after an awful lot of children and teach them how to avoid Nazis and actualise their innermost desires through singing. I also love Christopher Plummer. Well, I think everybody loves Christopher Plummer. Christopher, if you're out there and you're listening to this podcast. Is he still alive?
00:01:35
Speaker
Yes. Am I thinking of Christopher Lee? Is Christopher Lee still alive? Oh yes, and releasing Heavy Metal album. Oh that's right, he is. Yeah, he's a heavy metal superstar these days. Right. I fear we may be getting off topic already. It's true, but we should get the off topic out of the way now. Actually that's a good point. So we can stay on topic.
00:01:52
Speaker
through the rest of our thrilling, exciting, escapade into... In too well.
MH17 Conspiracy Theories Overview
00:01:58
Speaker
As you're probably aware, not too long ago, a second aeroplane from Malaysian Airlines was involved in a high-profile, I guess you'd have to call it a tragedy, when Flight MH-17 was shot down over Ukraine. Now, at the moment, all the evidence is pointing to the plane having been shot down by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
00:02:21
Speaker
But if you happen to live in Russia at the moment, you may well be hearing a different story on the media. The reports are coming out of a variety of conspiracy theories being promoted, if not by the Russian government themselves, then certainly by Russian media friendly to the government, suggesting that there was something a lot more sinister to the shooting down of Flight MH-17, as if a plane full of innocent people wasn't sinister enough already. What have you been hearing, Matthew?
00:02:47
Speaker
Wow, stories about planes full of corpses being launched from Amsterdam to be shot down over the Ukraine to make the Russians feel guilty about their incursion into the Ukraine, which to echo a point you just made, not that they have any other reason to feel guilty about making incursions into the Ukraine at this particular point in time.
00:03:06
Speaker
Claims at the CIA are engaging in massive disinformation smear campaigns to bring down the government of Vladimir Putin, and a lot of conspiracy theories that remind me a lot of the reaction that people had towards the events of 9-11 immediately afterwards, where certain people weren't willing to say, well, maybe people like us are responsible for an event like this.
MH17 vs MH370: Theories and Claims
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard a variety of different claims that the main thrust of them seems to be trying to say that yes, the shooting down of MH17 was some sort of a, I don't know, false flag operation is the right term, but it was designed, it's a setup designed to make Russia look bad, rather than being a horrible tragedy perpetrated by people friendly to Russia.
00:03:55
Speaker
I've heard – I've read of claims like some people saying supposedly the plane moved off its standard flight path and wasn't supposed to be in that plane in the first place. Supposedly other people have been claiming it's been recently reinsured.
00:04:13
Speaker
The best one, of course, I've heard is given that it was a Malaysian Airlines plane, the claim that it was in fact the disappeared MH370 flight, which disappeared when was it? March? Yeah, back at the start of the year and has not yet since been found. There's even been claims that it's that very same plane which was stolen in some way or another, taken to an airbase somewhere
00:04:37
Speaker
and then repainted, I suppose, given a new number turned into Flight MH17 and blown up over Ukraine. It all just seems a little bit strange.
False Flag Operations Explained
00:04:48
Speaker
Yes, now for listeners out there who are going, oh, this term false flag, what does that mean? I suppose we should actually do a little bit about what a false flag campaign is. You're right to go, this probably isn't an example of a false flag campaign. No, it sounds similar, but not quite. A false flag campaign is a situation where a government engages in an act
00:05:05
Speaker
and then pins the blame on another dissident group or other government, i.e. the notion it's a false flag, you attribute the disaster or activity to some foreign power. So if it were technically a false flag campaign, it would need to be one that was being run either by the Ukrainians, the pro-Russian part, or by the Russians. This is more using false flag-like logic to deflect the responsibility for this particular action.
00:05:33
Speaker
So most of the conspiracy theories that are emanating from Russia at the moment are all designed to go look we're not really to blame for a tragedy here because either it was an understandable mistake because it's all part of a smear campaign or disinformation campaign organized by the CIA or by Holland or it's part of an elaborate conspiracy of some particular stripe. Actually another point which I should make you're talking about the
00:06:01
Speaker
story not necessarily being disseminated by the Russian government but by media organizations associated with Russia. One of the big issues in post-communist Russia is the fact that you have a whole bunch of business and media oligarchs who are now very senior figures in the Russian political establishment.
Russian Media's Role in MH17 Conspiracies
00:06:20
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So when you get major news stories of this particular type being disseminated by these news organizations, it's not that unreasonable to go
00:06:30
Speaker
is the Kremlin actually feeding them these particular lines? So it's not unreasonable to go, well maybe this is a government propaganda line to try and make Russia not look as complicit in a terrorist act as they appear to be.
00:06:45
Speaker
Yes, and I find that quite interesting. I mean, certainly on the face of things, these conspiracy theories do appear to be nonsense, or all the other evidence that we've seen. I mean, there was stuff on the internet, I think, even there was on Twitter, they were interested in communications from these pro-Russian rebels claiming credit for shooting down this aeroplane before they found out it was actually a passenger plane full of innocent people. And then sort of a lot of those things
00:07:15
Speaker
were hastily scrubbed from the internet. But I mean, yeah, the evidence appears to be that it was an attack by pro-Russian rebels and that therefore these conspiracy theories coming out of Russia are not true and are an attempt to deflect blame. And that strikes me as interesting because
00:07:33
Speaker
I mean, here you've got conspiracy theories apparently being shopped around by a government. Now, I mean, it's not at all unusual to see conspiratorial activity being undertaken by a government. And it's not at all unusual to see conspiracies being directed against a government, as in, say, 9-11, where most of the conspiracies are saying that the US government was to blame for something.
Historical Context of Russian Disinformation
00:07:56
Speaker
I can't think of any other examples where you have conspiracy theories actually being disseminated by a government as this kind of propaganda. Ah, but you see, when it comes to Russia, these kinds of stories... Well, I don't say I'm more often true than not, actually. There's one major Russian example which actually plays exactly into this particular kind of propaganda machine. So in the 1930s,
00:08:22
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Joseph Stalin, a fairly terrible human being by all accounts, made absolutely obsessed that his former mate and ally now living an exile enemy, Leon Trotsky, was plotting to take over Russia again. And so Stalin was so concerned by this that he bade the proto-KGB to go and investigate this particular hypothesis
00:08:44
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KGB came back and said, well, actually there's no evidence that Trotsky wants to come back to Russia. He wants to ignite the communist revolution overseas, he thinks Russia is largely a failed experiment, and force Russia to come online with global communism.
00:09:01
Speaker
Now Stalin's response to this was, look, I told you to go away and find evidence that Leon Trotsky is conspiring to come back to Russia. And you come back to me with a story that says he's not doing that. That's not what I asked you to do. And so over about nine months, the proto KGB engaged in psychological torture of suspected sympathizers to Leon Trotsky and got them to purge of themselves in what are now known as the Moscow trials.
00:09:28
Speaker
and claim there actually was a conspiracy by Trotsky to return back to Russia. Now, at the time that this occurred, the Dewey Commission was formed, so John Dewey, a very famous American philosopher, he and a bunch of mates basically got together and went, we think the trial data, which was publicly available, points towards there being a conspiracy by the Russian state because it's just not possible that Trotsky was up to these particular things.
00:09:56
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This is the point in time in which Russia invents the term disinformation or disinformation to tar the claims of the Jewish Commission as being a mere conspiracy theory. But it turns out that what the Russian state was promulgating was the conspiracy theory.
00:10:12
Speaker
The Jewish Commission was largely right about what really went on in the Moscow trials. It turns out the Russian state conspired with members of its intelligence agencies to make Leon Trotsky look guilty of a crime he wasn't actually in the process of committing and then eventually legitimized his assassination outside Freda Kahlo's house in Mexico. So actually this stuff does occur. Governments sometimes do use conspiracy theories to cover up what really has occurred.
00:10:42
Speaker
Well, there we go. Yes, I had not really been aware of other cases like that. I mean, and I know this is a point that you often like to make, that even the official version promoted by the American government of what happened on 9-11 is a conspiracy
9/11 Conspiracies and Government Propaganda
00:10:55
Speaker
theory. The official version is that members of Al-Qaeda conspired to carry out attacks on American soil. But yes, to see them put out in such a, what you call it, disingenuous way as a means of propaganda or disinformation is quite interesting to see.
00:11:12
Speaker
Although that being said, any conspiracy theorist of 9-11, elk, worth their salt, listening to this podcast will be going, but that's precisely the point, Joshua. The American government is promulgating an unwarranted conspiracy theory about really what happened on September the 11th, 2001. You're just a tool of the machine, you're a sheeple, you're a goat of Alistair Crowley, you don't understand, man, what's really going on, man.
00:11:36
Speaker
As well, they might. You don't see them at all distressed by my rant at you in this particular way. Curiously enough, I'm not, no. I mean, we really must go over 9-11 at some stage, though. Well, I think in September, I think we should do a September story. Yes, I mean, we could probably get more material out of that than we could on David Icke, whose surface we barely scratched last episode. And we'll be scratching his surface a whole lot more, because he likes it. So I'm told.
Impact on Malaysian Airlines and Public Perception
00:12:03
Speaker
So, returning to the matter at hand, I don't know what else there is to say about the conspiracy theories specifically, although it's just odd to see the same or two disasters happening to Malaysian airlines so closely apart. I mean, people are saying that it could sink the company this. They're saying they might not actually recover.
00:12:26
Speaker
I imagine the liability actually from losing two flights is actually strikingly large and insurance companies will be going, well, you know, it's not really your fault that MH370 wandered off track and we never found it again. And it's not really your fault that Ukrainian rebels decided to shoot this particular plane down. But at the same time, we have calculators and those calculators say that your insurance premiums are going to really skyrocket up.
00:12:54
Speaker
And also, you have to replace those plans. And not forgetting the fact that now lots of people are cancelling their flights with Malaysia Airlines. Yeah, and actually quite unjustly. I mean, these are two unrelated events. Well, exactly. These are frequent currents. Or are they? Well, yes. Any conspiracy theorists with the assault will say there's actually something to this. And of course, that gets us back to the MH370, MH17 conspiracy theory. What better way to bring the MH370 flight back
00:13:22
Speaker
without having to take any responsibility to what really happened to it to then fly the plane filled with corpses now where they got their hundreds of corpses from I don't know the story seems to be rather vague as to where the corpse repository is that conspirators go to find their corpses to put on planes
Malaysian Airlines Disasters: Coincidence or Conspiracy?
00:13:39
Speaker
like in 911 or in the MH17 case. And then fly MH370 over Russian airspace, maybe you pay off a few rebels to fire a rocket at it, and suddenly you remove any evidence of MH370 from existence and you have this mythical MH17 flight which gets destroyed.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, and as you say, some people have managed to tie this not just to MH370 but to 9-11 by saying it's a similar kind of thing. It was the same bomb on the plane or something, the same sort of technique they used to crash the plane supposedly into 9-11.
00:14:19
Speaker
not into 9-11, sorry, on 9-11, into a building on 9-11. As long as it makes you take the date. The date itself actually is remarkably robust. It occurs every year, yes. No, I've noticed that. It's almost like clockwork. Yes, no, sorry. My problem with prepositions aside,
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, they have managed to sort of link it to a bunch of different conspiracy theories. But as a wider point that I think we'll want to go into in another episode soon, this idea of looking at what on the surface of it kind of has to be a conspiracy. Sorry, it kind of has to not be a conspiracy.
00:14:56
Speaker
I'll just negate myself completely. On the surface, it appears to be a coincidence. These are two seemingly unpredictable freak occurrences that just happen to have occurred within a relatively close period of time to planes from the exact same airline. It seems like a coincidence, but that's a key feature of a lot of conspiracy theories. If something
00:15:20
Speaker
is too much of a coincidence, then perhaps it's not a coincidence, yes. If you're in that mode of thinking, I can see how it would be easy to link the disappearance of MH370 to the tragedy of MH17 and try to find a connection between the two.
Linking Unrelated Events in Conspiracy Narratives
00:15:38
Speaker
And I actually wouldn't be surprised if with the manipulation, conspiracy theories are in on this as well. Basically any kind of major event of this particular type, certain conspiracy theorists by no means all conspiracy theorists will find a way to link this one particular event
00:15:55
Speaker
to the other events they're interested in. So you'll get all sorts of explanations as to what really brought down the plan. And of course that trades upon the fact that it's a contentious issue and only contentious because there's a media debate about it as to who's actually responsible for the downing of MH17.
00:16:14
Speaker
And so in any situation where you've got a this state said, that state said, you're going to get someone who goes, well, you know, maybe the real explanation here is weather control technology, all the real explanation here are alien shape shifting reptiles, all the real explanation here is mind control devices, all the real explanation here is, and they'll insert their own explanation in there to go, well, look,
00:16:37
Speaker
It's all contentious, it's all up in the air for debate. So, you know, listen to my particular hypothesis, I think it's the best explanation at this particular point in time. Yes, I think any time there's any sort of uncertainty, and there's pretty much always going to be a little bit of uncertainty. That gives people room to shoehorn in their own pet theories. I don't know that there's much more we can say other than that, then it just seems to be a depressingly regular phenomenon in conspiracy theories.
Adaptation and Persistence of Conspiracy Theories
00:17:06
Speaker
Yes, and also depressingly regular phenomenon that any tragic event can be post facto put into an existing conspiracy theory. So MH17 is the same flight as MH370. You've got your conspiracy theories about MH370.
00:17:24
Speaker
You're probably only still alive because it only occurred a few months ago. So then you have another Malaysian Airlines flight disaster and so you factor MH17 into your existing conspiracy theory narrative and that's actually a depressing reoccurring feature of particular types of conspiracy theories you see in the literature.
00:17:45
Speaker
Now, I haven't actually seen anything from the various movements that are out to find out the truth behind 370, such as the campaign on Indiegogo that we mentioned a few episodes ago. Have you heard anything from those sorts of organisations looking into the MH17?
00:18:02
Speaker
not that I've seen. So I think most of the people who are behind the search for MH370 do think it was a disaster of some kind and they're trying to solve that disaster by working out where the resting place of MH370 is. I imagine many of those people
00:18:18
Speaker
are quite frustrated by these new conspiracy theories about MH17 and MH370 being exactly the same vessel. Because A, it opens up a whole bunch of words as we've seen with, and we'll get onto this when we get to September and talk about 9-11 properly,
00:18:34
Speaker
There's a school of 9-11 truther who believes that the planes that hit the twin towers were empty at the time or they were filled with corpses and the actual passengers had disembarked and are now living new lives under assumed names and so what they do is these people ring up the family members and they try to harangue the family members
00:18:57
Speaker
into revealing where their surviving family members are, i.e. the people who are on the plane. And so there are going to be people, presumably of the MH17, MH370 are the same flight hypothesis, who will be inclined to do the same thing, to try and go through the route of locating
00:19:16
Speaker
the family members of the passengers on M8370 and trying to get them to admit that actually their family members didn't die that day and that actually it is the same flight and they know exactly
MH370 Cover-Up Beliefs and Frustrations
00:19:28
Speaker
what went on. They just need to be pressed to tell the truth or some version of that particular kind of hypothesis.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yes, no, that sounds right. I imagine the people who are genuinely interested in finding out what happened to MH370 aren't going to be too impressed by these things, especially since, from what I saw of those people, the conspiracy theories that they were peddling, such as they were, were more along the lines of that there's been a bit of a cover up either to, you know, cover for someone's incompetence or something in the plane being lost in the first place or in the difficulty they've had in finding it and so on.
00:20:01
Speaker
or not doing the right psychological profile of the pilot or things of that particular type. And so the claims there have simply been that nothing too particularly mysterious or covert going on, just simply that information is being withheld. There are people out there who know what happened
00:20:18
Speaker
and they're not telling and trying to get to that information, which incidentally mirrors, I see David Cameron was making the specific claim just the other day that Russia has information that it's sitting on about flight MH17 and it needs to release that information to the world, which I suppose is a conspiracy theory in and of itself, isn't it? He's suggesting that Russia is conspiring to withhold information that would paint them in a bad light, yes.
Conclusion and Social Media Plugs
00:20:48
Speaker
Well that about wraps up our discussion of MH17. Now for the usual business that we conclude our shows with. We put our pants on and Josh tells us that the email address for the podcast is... Now Josh can be found on Twitter with the username monkeyfluids. He explained the reference and origin of that last episode. And I can be found on Twitter with the username horansom.
00:21:18
Speaker
Now, are we going to end on a song this week, Joshua? Yes, I think we should. We have one here called When Conspiracy Theories Become Mainstream by Stealing Orchestra, which seems fairly appropriate given the topic of this episode. Shall we go out on that one? I think so. Play on, Stealing Orchestra.
00:25:40
Speaker
you