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Live from Auckland! It's (all about) Alex Jones!
50 Plays6 years ago
In this return to the ancestral seat of House Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, Josh and M discuss the recent "todo" around Alex Jones and InfoWars, get into Bigfoot porn, and update you on antifa protests your hosts have been attending.
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Transcript
Is Alex Jones' social media ban a conspiracy?
00:00:00
Speaker
This week on the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy we discuss the recent banning of Alex Jones from numerous social media platforms and ask, is this a problem and is it the result of a conspiracy? Em also regales us with stories about jet lag and we discuss drone assassination attempts. Should you be considering wearing a hat when out and about? All this, and so much less, coming up! The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy
Podcast setup in Auckland
00:00:30
Speaker
Well, hello there and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. Hello, we've got multiple cameras now and wait a lot. So many cameras. We are here in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Addison and in what, for want of a better term, we've decided to call the flesh, it's Dr. M. Denteth. It's true. I am the flesh and I can prove it because I've got the flesh goopod from Dr. Ho. This contains my flesh. I am inside of this.
00:00:59
Speaker
And this form I have here is simply an astral projection. Or is it? Is it?
00:01:06
Speaker
We need a camera over there as well. We probably do. We need cameras everywhere, quite frankly. We need additional cameras from the ones that are already set up by the NSA. What we have more cameras. We need more cameras that we have direct control over, yes. And of course, because I'm back and it's night time, I get to drink whiskey during the recording of this podcast. Well, it could have been drinking whiskey in the recording of the podcast previously, but it was in the morning and that would be considered debauch and I never
00:01:34
Speaker
ever divorced. Not a single time. So now that you're back from Romania, is that vampirism cleared up nicely this time? I still have a slight craving for AB negative, but I'm sure with time that will... What blood type are you Joshua? I'm O.
00:01:52
Speaker
I'm afraid. Oh, it's my third favorite. Which is the real one out of positive and negative? Because I'm not that one. I'm the common gutter, oh, blood. I don't drink common blood, for God's sake. No. This is... Move on from that. So, you're back. I am back. We are co-located. We are. In Milford, in Auckland.
00:02:17
Speaker
We're not having to suffer Skype anymore, which was really starting to become a pain in the ass. And we have this amazing two camera setup with microphones and stuff and things and all the mod cons. So I don't want to promise anything, but this podcast will definitely be at least 5000 times better
00:02:41
Speaker
than it was previously. 5,000 times better. Or, if you're not a patron, you're money back. If you are a patron, no money back, no refunds. No. Also, no scrubs. No, we don't want no scrubs. Now I think about it, that camera should actually be there, having that camera there.
00:02:57
Speaker
Well, you need a camera A and a camera B. Camera A is the one in the middle and it's like the main one. You throw to camera B just for the little science. Yeah, this is camera B. But I do feel that camera A could be more middled on that side. Well, baby steps, teething problems, diaper rash.
00:03:15
Speaker
Diaper Rash, you're describing my day-to-day living, now I'm back in Auckland. Anyway, all this talk of cameras probably is less than edifying to our mere audio listeners, indulging only one of their senses. It's true. What we should be doing... It should be on YouTube, stimulating just so many senses. Yes, that's two of them. Two senses, yeah. At least. Maybe three, but not likely. But anyway, you should move on and go on to the news. Yep, and there's been some, so we'll talk about it.
Venezuelan President's drone attack conspiracy
00:03:55
Speaker
We start in Venezuela, where recently elected President Nicolas Maduro recently survived an assassination attempt by drone. Dun dun dun! Interior Minister Nestor Luis Rivero claimed a day after the government said drone-carrying explosives had targeted Maduro in the midst of a nationally televised address that six terrorists have been detained.
00:04:07
Speaker
We will, after I wake up the teleprompter screen.
00:04:19
Speaker
However, opposition leaders say they doubt the government's version of events. Given questions around the validity of Maduro's electoral victory, some opposition members think the event was a stunt or manufactured to give the re-minted president reason to crack down on the opposition, expressing suspicion at how quickly the alleged perpetrators were identified and arrested.
00:04:41
Speaker
However, witnesses in a nearby building said that they saw the drone and watched it explode, which doesn't necessarily negate the possibility the event was staged, but it does support the notion something actually happened.
00:04:57
Speaker
Now the political situation in Venezuela is such that it's possible both to think that Maduro has engineered a plot to engender sympathy, while also thinking that the opposition is conspiring to get rid of a president who either wins the popular vote or rigs elections so he appears to win.
00:05:13
Speaker
Add to this previous US attempts to destabilise the regime, and you have a heady mixture of potential conspiracies everywhere. So, more news as it comes to hand I guess.
Bigfoot erotica in politics
00:05:28
Speaker
Meanwhile, across the Gulf in the US of A, Bigfoot porn has become a political issue.
00:05:34
Speaker
Finally. Finally. People like us, people like me, get so little representation in politics these days. I mean, really, the cryptozoological community gets nothing but shame. I'm sure we'll come back to this in a later episode, but for the time being, in what really isn't conspiracy theory news but deserves mentioning anyway, we turn to the curious case of Denver Riggleman,
00:06:00
Speaker
who is running for Congress in Virginia and appears to be a fan of white supremacism and, well, Bigfoot erotica. Yeah. Regelman has, for months, been advertising a forthcoming self-authored book, The Mating Habits of Bigfoot and Why Women Want Him. Indeed, the news about Regelman's interest in Bigfoot and Bigfoot sexology has somewhat overshadowed his association with Isaac Smith, the co-founder of the white nationalist group Unity and Security for America.
00:06:29
Speaker
Now we're not suggesting that the Bigfoot thing is a distraction from Wriggleman's other political views, given he has a 2006 text on Bigfoot hunting. But what we are saying is that Bigfoot and Bigfoot pornography has finally become a political issue in America. Long live the Trump Imperium and all who sail beneath her flag, we say.
00:06:49
Speaker
And by that we mean we now live in a political era where anything goes.
Protests against Southern and Molyneux in NZ
00:06:53
Speaker
And before the end starts singing, let's discuss white supremacism here in Aotearoa. As you will be doubtless aware, the Lauren Selden and Stephen Molyneux show came to Auckland last week on the back of a free speech trucker. I arrived back in the country a day before the proposed talk and even attended an anti-fart protest in Aotear Square.
00:07:14
Speaker
Well then, how did it go? Well, 1,000 people turned up to peacefully protest Southern and Molyneux's talk, and we were met by a counterprotester of about a dozen people who yelled free speech at us and performed a few Hitler salutes. But for them it was all in vain, as Southern and Molyneux's last minute venue ditched them the day they were meant to give their talk for what looks to be entirely economic reasons.
00:07:38
Speaker
The power station, a popular music event location, found that local musical acts were threatening to withdraw their custom should Southern and Molyneux's racist show go ahead.
00:07:50
Speaker
How did Southern and Molyneux take it? Not well. Molyneux got very snarky on Twitter about the events cancellation and the events promoter told the country to enjoy Sharia law. Possibly the best outcome from the cancellation was a whole bunch of alt-right people on Twitter saying that Aetora is no longer on their list of places to go on holiday.
00:08:12
Speaker
So the alt-right's response to rejection here is to reject the rejectors? Yes. Sadly enough, alt-right speakers are claiming that as they are unwelcome here, they won't be coming back. So, good result all round.
00:08:27
Speaker
Yes, but then it gets complicated, because of off the back of the Southern in Molyneux Victory, former National Party leader and spokesperson for the racist Hobson's Choice group, Don Brash, has had a speaking engagement at Massey University in Palmerston, North Cancled, and even elements of the left are a little perturbed by it all.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yes, Dombrash has problematic views about Maori, it is fair to say, given he doesn't believe in structural inequalities due to race, nor wants Torayo Maori, the Maori language, to get government subsidies to help it survive. He famously gave the Orewa speech when campaigning to lead the country, which was considered a recent low point.
00:09:07
Speaker
in race relations here in the country. However, unlike Southerner Molineur, who antagonistically used their racism to incite hatred and potential acts of violence, Rache is more of an old-fashioned racist, who just wants a conversation. A one-sided conversation, admittedly.
00:09:25
Speaker
And many on the left think that Brash's style of local racism is so out of touch with the populace now that he's just kind of seen as a cranky old man with no friends whose views are best expressed in public so people can see him for the man he is.
00:09:39
Speaker
However, due to worries by the Vice-Chancellor of Massey University, concerning security on campus, Brash's talk to the politics club there has been cancelled, which has made him out to be a bit of a martyr. Yes, and a bit of a martyr is the right description here. No one seems particularly or strongly upset about Brash's treatment here. It's just that it seems it might be a bit of an overreaction. But maybe we'll return to talk about this when we talk about Alex Jones as our main topic.
00:10:09
Speaker
Indeed, let's finish on what John Oliver calls Stupid Watergate, the Russian collusion theory that says members of the Trump team colluded with Russian agents to help get him elected. This last week saw a dramatic turn in the story, with President Trump admitting that the meeting at Trump Tower in June of 2016 was not about adoptions at all, but rather an attempt by some to get dirt on a political rival.
00:10:36
Speaker
Yes, Trump tweeted the following, a fake news reporting, a complete fabrication that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son Donald had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent totally legal and done all the time in politics and it went nowhere. I did not know about it.
00:10:52
Speaker
This is newsworthy, because previously the Trump team has denied this was the case, and said that the claims that it was a muck-breaking exercise were just fake news. But now the President has said it was what people thought it was, but A, it was perfectly legal, and B, if it wasn't, his sudden law only accidentally broke the law.
00:11:14
Speaker
The question of the legality of going to a foreign power to get dirt on a political opponent doesn't seem at all murky. But it does seem that Trump's legal team is going to argue that it is. Or, and this is Shades of Nixon, that the fact that the president did it makes it legal. Except he wasn't president at the time.
00:11:29
Speaker
As people have been remarking, however, the Trump presidency is weird precisely because things which normally would be big scandals for other politicos seem to be water off the ducks back for the Donald. So I suspect we'll be bringing you more big news, the hugest news, the best news, because we know the biggest and best news on the 45th president for quite some time. Hmm.
00:11:56
Speaker
You know, it makes me miss the days when we just pretended that Andy Bishago won that election. Excuse us as we play the chime and hike it out over the break. Feel it, man. Feel it! Game over, man! Game over!
Social media bans on Alex Jones
00:12:13
Speaker
Right, so this week we're talking about Alex Jones because of course we are.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yep, Alex Jones has become big news in the last week because almost every social media company, aside from Twitter, has decided to dump Jones from their distribution platforms. Well, for the most part. And let's just say there are cries of conspiracy ringing out across the internet and where there are cries of conspiracy. We here at the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy will sometimes lift our heads up from our desks and go,
00:12:48
Speaker
Low. Land ahoy. Because for some reason, we pretend to be sailors. Sometimes we do. So yes, I may be missing some, but at last count, Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Spotify, MailChimp, Pinterest, and YouPorn have taken down Alex Jones' content. Let's focus on Pinterest and YouPorn. So nobody knew there was an InfoWars Pinterest group until it was too late.
00:13:17
Speaker
And suddenly everyone's going, what were they pinning to the board? God, I wish I'd been a member of that group. Now, the newborn thing is actually slightly more interesting because if you're aware of any of the politics going around on YouTube at the moment, there's what's called the demonetization scandal. So there's a whole bunch of prominent creators who are finding that their audience numbers are disappearing due to A, the way that YouTube makes its algorithm work,
00:13:47
Speaker
and be the discoverability that YouTube uses to allow people to find new content. And people are finding that people just aren't viewing videos in the numbers they were, including people with large subscription bases who are finding that their viewers are not being notified about new content.
00:14:06
Speaker
So, because of that, U-Porn of all places, a pornography website as its name suggests, did say, well, you know, there's nothing stopping people from uploading non-porn to U-Porn. So you can upload your gaming channel to U-Porn if you so desire.
00:14:26
Speaker
and so people have been. So it's actually not out of the question that U-Porn has got rid of a totally non-knowned Alex Jones related channel. Although I do like to think that maybe there was a Infowars X channel that
00:14:45
Speaker
isn't worth thinking about in any particular sense. Possibly not. I do have to stress, as far as we know, there is no Alex Jones pornography on the internet, nor was there ever. As far as we know. Well, none that stars the actual Alex Jones, given that there is celebrity porn using impersonators, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, Trist scene that can be watched on YouTube right now. And if there isn't,
00:15:15
Speaker
I'm not inviting people to make the scene, but I am saying that it probably should exist.
00:15:22
Speaker
Oh, actually, sorry, Stitcher. Stitcher was the other one. Which is the one that started the cascade. A fine website on which this very podcast is hosted. Yes, they were the ones who kicked it all off. And then Apple? They booted off all of his stuff, didn't they? They took the whole lot down. Facebook has taken down all but one or two of his pages, I think. I think I read there was still one or two still around, but all the main ones.
00:15:48
Speaker
down. Apple got rid of everything apart from the InfoWars app. So this is an interesting aspect of the story here. So poor Joseph Watson in particular, who kind of is the protege of Alex Jones,
00:16:05
Speaker
has been talking for a long time about how government censorship is bad, and how it's great that they're working with private interests to make sure their message gets out there. Then, of course, the bans occur, and poor Joseph Watson's going, it's terrible! These companies are working at behest of the government, or they're not really private companies, they're publicly traded to Ipsofacto, they're public companies.
00:16:27
Speaker
and look at them they're banning us they're engaging in censorship and then as of today's visit no it's fine it's fine our app is still functioning so it's good that we now control the audience except of course they don't because their apps exist in the apple app store for phones tablets and the like
00:16:46
Speaker
and the Google Play Store. And so they're still completely reliant on the big tech companies to provide them with viewerships, despite the fact they're claiming those big tech companies are conspiring against them to destroy them. So where do we go first?
Controversial content of Alex Jones
00:17:02
Speaker
Do you want to just have a look at the general issues that people have been talking about, the free speechy stuff, or do we want to jump straight into the actual claims of conspiracy?
00:17:10
Speaker
Let's talk about the free speech itself. So, Josh, give me a rundown. What kind of things has Alex Jones been saying on his various social media accounts? Well, I mean, what hasn't he been saying? Nice things about me, apparently. Sandy Hook, obviously, is the one that everybody's been talking about. The idea that Sandy Hook was a false flag, that the
00:17:30
Speaker
supposed grieving parents are in fact crisis actors who supposedly dead children never existed. And this is probably the straw that broke proverbial camel's back because if you're not aware of it, Alex Jones and
00:17:46
Speaker
two of the parents of the children slain in the Sandy Hook massacre are currently having a legal battle. They are suing him for presenting the false flag narrative about Sandy Hook. He is counter suing them for defamation and is currently in the process of trying to make their residential addresses public in a way which is definitely not going to lead
00:18:14
Speaker
to fans of info wars engaging in returnatory actions towards the parents of people whose children were killed at Sandy Hook. Indeed, parents whose lives have been made difficult enough by this already to the extent that some of them cannot visit the graves of their children.
00:18:29
Speaker
because the locations of their graves are public places, so anytime they're spotted heading towards there, people come out and harass them. So yeah, I think that's been the bad bit. I mean, that's not the only thing you said. Pizzagate was one of his things, although he did backtrack on that because it's a little bit hard. Well, he promoted Pizzagate. That's a... Well, he didn't get it originally. That's a Mike Adam Michael. So Venovitch classic, that one.
00:18:59
Speaker
What else? 9-11 is an inside job, obviously. Government sanctioned or controlled weather manipulation. Apparently it's talked to the Oklahoma City bombing, a favourite of ours. Well, perhaps not the right word, but a conspiracy theory. A story we've gone back to several times, yes. That was an inside job. The whole Obama was a Muslim. A Muslim. So tell me Josh, what is a Muslim? How do you recognise one? A British Muslim, possibly a blue Muslim.
00:19:28
Speaker
So by blue are we talking uporn blue or as an arrested development painted in blue blue? That would be the logical inference I think, yes. Or perhaps I simply misspoke and meant to say Muslim but was thinking about Obama and bees and it came out as Muslim. Fair enough, Reverend Spooner, please do continue. Moon landing was faked, chemical warfare, turning frogs gay.
00:19:53
Speaker
And actually the whole chemical warfare turning frogs gay, which is actually part of this general narrative about the gay epidemic has been caused by chemical warfare and chemicals in the water. It's such a bizarrely homophobic conspiracy theory. Why is there a problem with homosexuality? Why are we concerned about gay frogs?
00:20:19
Speaker
Well, because then they'll be bursting out of boxes and singing show tunes when the construction worker who found them in the keystone of that building, and then he'll try to show people that the frog can sing, but it won't sing when other people are around, it only sings when the guy's here and will drive him completely mad. I just described the plot of an old Warner Brothers cartoon. So you also could have gone with the first Muppet movie? Yes, yes, I suppose I could have.
00:20:46
Speaker
Why are there so many songs about rainbows? Rainbows? Homosexuality? You wrote it here first. Yes, precisely. That's why I've got the PhD. So it's this sort of thing that has basically been the justification for getting him banned. The various companies that have booed him out have said he's violated our terms and conditions in terms of either offensive content or harassment, bullying, that sort of stuff. In particular, I think it's been the
00:21:13
Speaker
the victimization that has happened to the Sandy Hook parents has really been the thing. Notably though, Twitter has not booted him off and is standing there ground. Yes, and of course this is slightly awkward because Twitter is claiming it simply wants to facilitate a conversation, but as we've seen in the last day or so,
00:21:36
Speaker
people have been reacting to Jack Dorsey or ex-Jack on Twitter by going, it's strange.
00:21:45
Speaker
Neo-Nazis are allowed to go on Twitter and incite hatred and claim that people should be raped and killed. And they don't violate the terms and conditions of Twitter. But if I go around making fun of Nazis or making jokes at the expense of Nazis, suddenly the ban hammer comes down hard on me. And so people are pointing out that Jack Dorsey is saying, oh, we're just supporting a conversation. We don't think that Jones has violated the terms and conditions and people are going,
00:22:13
Speaker
he has, you've just never done anything about it, and not just that. Twitter is so inconsistent with the way it handles this material, it actually looks somewhat suspiciously, like Twitter's a bit of a fan of Nazism.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yes, there's one particular thread that everyone seems to be having a go at where you basically say, yes, we want to facilitate the conversation. People are putting forward views and then sort of said it's up to the journalists to investigate these things and get to the truth of the matter to which people have replied with journalists have been saying Sandy Hook happened a hell of a lot.
00:22:50
Speaker
and that doesn't seem to have stopped these conspiracy theories. My favourite reaction though was someone saying that's right, people should be able to just bring forth views here and then the journalists can go and investigate this sort of thing. So I'm just wondering, given that he's talked about it, maybe Jack himself was actually behind the Sandy Hook shootings.
00:23:09
Speaker
Jack is the murderer of over 26 and 7 year olds. Media? I've put it out there. Media, come on up to you guys. You go investigate and see whether or not Jack is in fact the worst child mass murderer America has ever known. Hasn't been banned as far as I've seen yet. No, and I have a feeling it might be the case that Twitter's not going to be able to react to that because otherwise they will be hoist by their own petard.
00:23:34
Speaker
And this has echoes of what what's his name Zuckerberg of Facebook was saying the other day or the other week when he was talking about in his particular case, I think it was Holocaust deniers or some other savory times where he at the time they were making the claim that
00:23:53
Speaker
It was okay as long as they really meant it. I think his argument was that if people were being disingenuous and attempting, or they're attempting to deceive, then that was bad. But these Holocaust deniers do seem to genuinely believe that it was all a hoax, so therefore that was okay.
00:24:10
Speaker
Now, admittedly, you can kind of see an argument here, which is the argument from sincerity. So, going back to the earlier news discussion about Stephen Molyneux, Lauren Southern and Don Brash, it's quite clear that Southern and Molyneux engage in trolling. They go to a country, if they don't get a media response to what they're doing, they then escalate things like going to mosque and handing out flyers saying, Allah is gay.
00:24:37
Speaker
And so they're trying to get into the news, and there's a feeling that there's at least a level of insincerity with what they actually do. Well, Stomp Rash appears to be sincerely a cranky old man with outmoded racist views about Maori.
00:24:53
Speaker
And so you can kind of go, it's true, if someone's being sincere, it's very hard to tap them on the wrist and say, no, you've told a lie there. No, I haven't. I've just said what I believe. It's just that the argument from sincerity requires you to start making assumptions about the intentions of agents.
00:25:14
Speaker
And that is a notoriously hard thing to do when two people are talking face to face, let alone when you're engaging in textual conversation on the internet.
Implications of banning Alex Jones
00:25:27
Speaker
Returning to the idea of conspiracies, I mean, one thing people will claim is that this is all a big conspiracy against Infowars, the big tech companies, they've got it in for them. And look, finally it's happened, they've done their best to silence them and get rid of them.
00:25:45
Speaker
First of all, I suppose you could say that the fact that, as we've just said, they have seemed, at least in the past, to have had a much freer reign than people who say were critical of them, in the past it's kind of looked like the bias has gone the other way.
00:26:02
Speaker
But also there's the idea that, as we said, Stitcher started it, and it was kind of the domino effect, which, if not a conspiracy, does at least point to some sort of a coordinated action of some kind, and that everybody's decided to sing from the same playbook, songbook, whatever book you sing from, the quiet stuff. Or, of course, the counter-argument there was that people were going,
00:26:29
Speaker
we want to be the ones that do this but if we do it and other people yeah so we're waiting for someone to take that first step so it's not coordinated action it's people going we're all independently making this decision it says that we don't want to be the first to do it because if it goes wrong it goes really really wrong but if they do it then we can do it everything will be fine
00:26:56
Speaker
And of course there's been lots and lots and lots and lots of discussion about this. There's the free speechy business and first of all there's the idea, is it a free speech issue? At least the American constitution free speech is guaranteed by the first amendment?
00:27:14
Speaker
The second amendment is free speech. But as people pointed out, that's about the relationship between the private individual and the state. The government has to respect people's rights to free speech, but private individuals don't have to respect other private individuals' right to free speech on their own private property, as it were.
00:27:35
Speaker
And so the claim has been, well, you know, that doesn't even really apply, because free speech is about the government and it's not the government who is beating these guys off. They could start up their own website, they've got their own app. They do, at infowars.com, prisonplanet.com. They could start their own video hosting, podcast hosting service, might be a bit more of an ask.
00:27:56
Speaker
So there's that side of things, but that seems more quibbling than anything. Now, of course, some people are saying, but it's still a public issue because these are publicly traded companies. And episode factor, that means they have a public obligation. They may not be the state, but they are certainly operating in a society now where corporate interests are so akin to the state, you might as well treat them as a branch of the executive.
00:28:24
Speaker
Now of course that argument requires you to go through a lot of linguistic hopes to be able to make the claim that a publicly traded company is the same thing as the government. But certainly there are questions here as to whether big companies like Facebook, Apple and Google
00:28:43
Speaker
are required to represent a diversity of views in their marketplace, or whether they are allowed to engage in certain actions which are either economically motivated but stifle speech, or are politically motivated to stifle speech they don't like.
00:29:03
Speaker
And then the other point of discussion, again not really related to conspiracies but an interesting thing to talk about on the list is simply is this the right thing to be doing? Is essentially victimising them or giving them cause to feel victimised, giving them exactly what they want?
00:29:24
Speaker
is it doing more harm than good? People have claimed that certainly the treatment that Southern and Molyneux got here basically gave them exactly what they wanted. They got to say, look, given that a large amount of their shtick is these tired old racist slogans that we're saying are actually what they don't want you to hear. This is stuff that we're saying, the things that they don't want you to say. And then we actually made it so they couldn't say them, at least in the venue that they had planned and in the manner that they had planned.
00:29:53
Speaker
Now, admittedly, as a response to that, Molyneux and Southern were going to get a reaction no matter what they said, because, as mentioned previously, they go out of their way to get that reaction. They go to a country, and the media ignores them, they go to a mosque, they hand out flyers saying, Allah is gay, hope that there's going to be a violent reaction by someone taking offence,
00:30:16
Speaker
which then allows them to paint themselves as the victim, that then becomes newsworthy. So the argument that we can simply ignore speech we don't like and it goes away doesn't actually hold muster if the people who are engaging in this particular kind of speech are going out of their way to get reactions whenever possible. And this is the argument from the reasonableness of debate
00:30:43
Speaker
which is the free speech motto is very good when both sides are acting in a reciprocal fashion to one another. But if one side is engaging in speech for the purpose of rhetoric and not for the purpose of actually engaging in a conversation,
00:31:02
Speaker
then giving people the free speech adage doesn't necessarily produce the kind of responses we want in a liberal society, or at least so that argument goes. And yes, I mean very much the idea that if the debate is good, but it has to be debate in good faith, and Molyneux and Southern do seem to be that of that school that the debates in quote marks are really just then rattling off
00:31:31
Speaker
off their alternative facts and slogans and catchphrases. It's the sort of rhetorical technique. I first saw it at least 10, 15 years ago in discussions about some arguments between scientists and creationists where there was one creationist in particular, I can't remember which one it was,
00:31:49
Speaker
who pioneered the technique of when he was sort of invited to debate a scientist, he would spend his time just machine gun rattling off dozens and dozens of creationist facts. Now, they were all nonsense and all easily disprovable, but not in the amount of time that they were given. This is called the Gish Galap. That was him. Yes, there we go. Thank you.
00:32:09
Speaker
And Molyneux and them have been known to do as well. There's the interview they had with local journalist Patrick Gower, where Molyneux basically started off on that. I don't remember what the question was, but he just sort of started giving a spiel and Patrick Gower kind of had to shut him down because he wasn't engaging in an interview. He was just blurting out his views with no actual interest in being contradicted or debated.
00:32:33
Speaker
Which does raise the question, is Alex Jones and his ilk on infowars.com and prisonplanet.com being sincere? Well, if we are to believe the words of one Alex Jones, a lot of it is an act and a persona that he plays. Yes, as came out in one of the recent court filings where he admitted he does play a character on Infowars.
00:32:59
Speaker
And another counter argument. I'm not sure how many counters deep we are now, but another side of it is the whole sort of deplatforming thing. Is it good? Is it bad? One thing that I just saw mentioned the other day is old Milo. Old Milo Yiannopoulos.
00:33:13
Speaker
haven't heard a hell of a lot from him lately. Last time I saw him, he was advertising health supplements on infowars.com and looking very embarrassed about it. But he's a fellow who actually did manage to get himself banned by Twitter. Yeah. So it does seem to have possibly muted his particularly obnoxious voice there. So who knows? And that's the worry. If you are into infowars.com and prisonplanet.com, the fact that they now are at a single point of failure
00:33:43
Speaker
which is they are largely reliant on people accessing their content through the app available on Apple's App Store or Google Play. They do have a website. It's pretty awful. It's not particularly readable. The app is a much better way of experiencing the content. It's quite clear that
00:34:02
Speaker
Apple and quite possibly Google are looking very closely at that app now, having banned their content elsewhere, made their content disappear. This is the awkward thing about talking about this is whether they've actually banned it or whether they've gone and just taken it down because it breaks terms and conditions. And of course, if those apps disappear,
00:34:24
Speaker
their audience disappears as well, and Alex Jones could go back to being that minor figure that even two or three years ago, not many people knew about. Well, I think we're about out of time, but there is one
00:34:41
Speaker
one extra note here that I would like you to expand upon.
Alex Jones and acid house music
00:34:45
Speaker
What is it about Alex Jones in predicting Ridley Scott's alien prequels? Oh yes, so I did a search this afternoon for things that Alex Jones got wrong, which is a very long list, and things that Alex Jones has got right, which turns out to be a very short list.
00:35:00
Speaker
It doesn't seem to even have the success rate of David Icke, which is saying something. But one thing he's been really good at is based on trailers and pre-release gossip for Ridley Scott's lesser Alien sequels, Prometheus and Alien Covenant, being able to predict A, the content of the films and B, the themes of the films. So I would recommend go look up
00:35:30
Speaker
Alex Jones, Alien Films, there's a wonderful piece I think that was written at Vice. And it basically goes through how much Alex Jones got right about the themes of those films and how he connects it back to
00:35:50
Speaker
a plot by the world government to reveal that there is a kind of precursor Anunnuki style race which engineered humanity in its current form. It's quite the ride because you read it going Alex Jones is obviously a really big fan of Ridley Scott's work and is able to predict what's going to be in those films. In another world he actually might have had a fairly good career as a film critic.
00:36:20
Speaker
I got this very intense song out of four! Yes. The other article I saw, which claimed to be the best conspiracy theory about Alex Jones, this was a good old Cracked.com one. They still exist, barely. It was... The particular conspiracy theory about Alex Jones kind of stretches the definition of conspiracy theory, which was that Alex Jones is, without having made much of a big deal about it, quite a big fan of acid house music.
00:36:50
Speaker
This was going by the fact that at several times in some of his videos he's shown to have had quite a sophisticated music studio production setup in wherever he records things. There have been sort of shots where he's panned across the sort of mixing board that you don't get if you're just an enthusiastic amateur and also large amounts of keyboards that he's been shown to own.
00:37:18
Speaker
And the fact that he's commented on YouTube videos of people making acid house music have led people to say that that's his secret shame? A thing that he just hasn't happened to have talked about because it hasn't got anything to do with conspiracies and gay frogs?
00:37:35
Speaker
See, I really thought you were going in a different direction there. I thought you were going to bring out the Bill Hicks-Alex Jones connection. But you've gone down a rabbit hole that I didn't even know existed. It isn't even really a rabbit hole. He has a certain taste in music that he hasn't been 100% explicit about. But now you know. Now you know.
00:37:55
Speaker
Now we all know. Well, I have to say my world has changed. I will never be able to go back to the old world now. No. I will never be able to listen to acid house music, which admittedly I've not really listened to it in the past, but if I do listen to it now, all I'll be able to see is a shirtless Alex Jones in downtown Texas dancing his nut off, getting really, really sweaty to those waves.
00:38:29
Speaker
So I think on that cheery note, we're about done with this episode. We are indeed. So it only remains to say, of course, welcome back.
00:38:39
Speaker
I have neither the knowledge nor cultural cachet to actually organize a porphyry for you, but I feel something like that would have been appropriate to herald your re-arrival in our fair lands. Well, it would have been, and now you've mentioned it, you've really let me down. I really have, I'm afraid. Yeah. So what are your plans for now?
00:39:00
Speaker
I'm working on a new book proposal, I've got several articles I need to finish work upon and of course I need a job. It's the problem with the early career researcher always looking for more postdoc and grant opportunities, working on grant proposals at the moment, so hopefully at some point in the near future something's going to come my way.
00:39:25
Speaker
You had to say come, didn't you? I did. Okay, well, in that case, it's goodbye from me. And it's goodbye from him. You've been listening to the podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. It is written, researched, and performed by Josh Addison, aka Monkey Fluids, and M. R. X. Denteth.
00:39:48
Speaker
aka Conspiracism on Twitter. This podcast is available where all good podcasts can be found, as well as iTunes, Podbean and Stitcher. It can also be watched on YouTube. Just search for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy or, if you happen to be technophobic, consult the Auguries.
00:40:11
Speaker
You can support the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy via our Patreon page, as listed in the podcast description, or just by searching for us on Patreon. You can also support us via the Podbean Patronage system, if that is more your style. You do you. If you want to get in contact with us, why not email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com, or find us on Facebook.
00:40:41
Speaker
And remember, silent green is meeples.