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Hey sweetie. Your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm gonna give it a try. Wish me luck. Me again. I put in the license plate. It gave me an offer. Unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check anyway. Carvana, give it a whirl. Love ya. So good you'll want to leave a voicemail about it. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up.
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Fees may apply.
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Quick interruption worth hearing.
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C
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Download TikTok now.
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Hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.
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I'm Matthew Remsky.
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I'm Julian Walker.
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You can find us on Instagram and threads at Conspirituality Pod, as well as individually over on Blue Sky. And you can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on patreon@patreon.com conspirituality if you just want to get our Monday bonus episodes, you can also do so via Apple subscriptions. As independent, independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.
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A
Conspirituality 302 the disinformation dozen Wuhan Drift early in the history of this podcast, we covered the disinformation dozen, 12 wellness influencers and contrarian health figures responsible for spreading the lion's share of vaccine misinformation on major social media platforms. We featured the man behind the report, Imran Ahmed, multiple times to discuss the implications of his center's findings. And of course, we tracked the influencers responsible for spreading uncertainty, doubt and anti science rhetoric around vaccines. Last week on the Maha Action Weekly Call, Tony Lyons got the group back together for a victory lap after a court settlement seemed to justify their actions. Or did it? We'll break down the court case, then hear from the influencers who continue to inflate their own sense of self importance while rewriting a history that only exists in their minds.
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B
If you're not aware, the MAHA report is a weekly live stream run by RFKJR's close friend and business partner. Tony Lyons, who also founded the publishing house Skyhorse Lines, as covered a few weeks ago in an extensive bonus episode on him, is also behind Kennedy's fundraising efforts. Maha Action, which is behind The MAHA report. And trust me, there are a lot of organizations run by this crew.
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A
A Russian nesting doll. Right.
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B
They're responsible for lobbying efforts along with Get Ready. The MAHA Institute, which is their think tank and their media arm, is basically the propaganda wing of the entire movement.
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C
Is this one of the ways in which try to just sort of delegate and make sure that everybody has a role to play? It kind of reminds me of when I was in Geshe, Michael Roche's high demand group or cult where he would sort of like create these make work projects and you could form this organization or that institute or like, you know, he would send people off on doing projects. And I'm. Is there a sense in which Kennedy is also like giving people stuff to do?
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B
I think it's a little more insidious and planned than that, to be honest. Because what's happening is on these calls, it's all the Make America a healthy again again propaganda. It's the seed oils, it's a lot of the. But they have a very sophisticated think tank slash lobbying arm that's being developed right now that's trying to push through legislation on the state level and on the federal level. And I think they like people to know it exists, but not know too much how involved they are in Kennedy's day to day.
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A
Right.
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So I, I, I am, I'm a little more concerned. I actually think it's a very holistic project that people don't understand exact the ways that it operates in the federal and state level of levels of government.
- [04:42]
A
Yeah. And each of those little subgroups and the positions they're in probably come with a fair amount of money that's being generated by their efforts, right?
- [04:51]
B
Absolutely. Their donations, I mean if you're donating because you're an anti vaxxer, you probably don't realize that that money is probably being used for other state level initiatives and we're going to get into some of those today. So last Wednesday's call was one of the most propaganda filled episodes to date. And I watch every week because I like rubbernecking. They were celebrating the settlement of Missouri versus Biden, which two years ago went to the Supreme Court as Murthy versus Missouri. Originally filed in May 2022 by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt, who was then joined by the state of Louisiana. The lawsuit alleged that the Biden administration was working with social companies like Meta, Twitter, this is Pre Musk and YouTube to censor speech related to COVID 19, election integrity and other topics under the guise of combating misinformation Additional plaintiffs jumped on board, including Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit. And then you get Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Korf, who were two of the three co authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which of course is the pro business documents spun up to get the economy economy moving again under the GU of science. The court ultimately reversed the injunction on standing grounds, but the underlying litigation continued under a new title. The Maha report celebrated the settlement as a victory though, and as friend of the pod, Renee DiResta, who was directly implicated in the original case through her work at the Stanford Observatory, she said on social media that this whole thing is kind of a charade. It's really just Trump giving them a participation trophy. And in fact, if you want I'll drop in the show notes Renee was recently on the John Stewart Weekly podcast unpacking some of the details of this case in segments two and three. Today we're going to hear many of the Disinformation Dozen members that were featured during the live stream. I'm going to explain the case in a little more detail in a moment, but first Julian, can you remind everyone who the disinformation doesn't is and how they're trying to kick another friend of the POD in Imran Ahmed out of the country right now?
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A
Yeah, so the Disinformation dozen was a 40 page report published in March of 2021 by the center for Countering Digital Hate, a not for profit NGO whose mission is to make the Internet safer by exposing online harms, publishing analysis of online content and then crunching the numbers in ways that can be used to apply pressure to big tech companies and legislatures around the world. And and we've had their founder and CEO Imran Ahmed on as a guest several times. That report was actually their eighth one tackling Covid and anti vaccine disinformation online. But it made a bigger splash because it identified these 12 main offenders who had a combined total at that time of 59 million online followers. And it showed how they were responsible for almost 2/3 of anti vaccine content over a 2 month period. The dozen identified were Joseph Mercola, RFK Jr. Ty and Charlene Bollinger, Sherry Tenpenny, RZA Islam, Erin Elizabeth Sayer, G. Kelly Brogan, Christiane Northrup, Ben Tapper and Kevin Jenkins. So basically a list of people that we've covered on our podcast, often more than once, the Disinformation doesn't report spearheaded the CCDH's efforts to have META do better at regulating the content of those particular people's accounts and in some cases removing them from Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. And all 12 members of the disinformation dozen were significantly impacted by these efforts. All of that played really well going into the Biden years. And alongside, as you mentioned, Derek, another multiple time guest, Renee Diresta, did information researchers and activists like Imran Ahmed seem to be stemming the tide and winning important battles at the next nexus of big tech and government agencies. But come 2025 all of that would come crashing down as Elon Musk purchased Twitter and other social media platforms, realigned themselves around rolling back content moderation in the name of curtailing the so called censorship industrial complex which was apparently biased against conservative figures who, as it turns out want to be free to spread dangerous lies unchecked and true to form. The Trump administration has tried to deport Imran Ahmed, who is both a British national and a US Permanent resident with a green card, married to an American with whom he has an American citizen child and living in D.C. in 2025 the State Department imposed a visa sanction on him for what Marco Rubio called organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize and suppress American viewpoints. They opp. This action was taken at the same time as four other foreign nationals were banned for their advocacy of Internet safety measures in the eu. The admin actually wanted to detain Ahmed and then deport him, but they were blocked by a district judge and his case is still pending.
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I think it's important to note as well that Ahmed and the CCDH have also focused in their history on anti Islamophobia and anti misogyny initiatives. And so their focus on public health is then connected in these people's minds to a broader social justice outlook. And I would imagine that that confluence of WOKE themes just put a bigger target on his back.
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Let's go into the settlement. It prohibits the US Surgeon General, the cdc, and the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency CISA from pressuring social media platforms into censoring constitutionally protected speech while preventing federal officials from interfering with how social media companies make content moderation decisions. Those agencies cannot threaten social media platforms with legal, regulatory or economic consequences in an effort to induce the removal, suppression or algorithmic downranking of protected speech. It is true that White House officials publicly and privately called on platforms to address vaccine misinformation. They expressed concern that Facebook was one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy, and they asked the company detailed questions about its policies and pushed it to suppress certain content while recommending policy changes. This is all true, and it's how the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court. But here's why Maha's victory lap is effectively a charade. The court ruled 63 in June 2024 that the states lacked standing to sue because they felt to demonstrate a substantial risk of redressible injury traceable to government action. Importantly, the court didn't say the government's contact conduct was constitutional. It said the plaintiffs couldn't prove their speech was suppressed because of the government, as opposed to the platforms acting on their own. During the next few segments, you're going to hear a lot of bluster about government suppression, which is a real thing, just not in this case. The majority of the Supreme Court states that the evidence indicates that the platforms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exercise their own judgment. And in fact, the platforms had all moderated similar content for years before the government got involved during COVID So this was nothing new what they were doing. But Maha activists spin one hell of a story, and the disinformation doesn't. Narrative was one they weaponized within their own communities and have used to portray themselves as martyrs. You're going to hear a lot of personal grievances and continued misinformation under the guise of free speech and science coming up. And just remember that as Renee noted, they're really just running around with that participation trophy. Like how I used to win old bowling trophies by throwing a ping pong ball into a fishbowl at the town fair while I was growing up. It was fun for a moment, but I never thought I did anything meaningful. I ended up just throwing those trophies away. But unfortunately, these people think they really got awarded something special.
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A
I just want to point something out here for anyone listening who doesn't know. Renee DiResta's intersection with this whole realm starts off as being employed by the government to look into how Al Qaeda was using Facebook to radicalize and recruit young people. So she's been involved at a very high level. She then ends up testifying before Congress about Russian interference during the 2016 election. So so much of her work is about recognizing, recognizing how the dangers of propaganda on social media and how it can be used to subvert democracy. So, you know, in a way all of this is about making propaganda great again, but through the intersection with pseudoscience and anti vaccine rhetoric.
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C
You know, I think that the way in which this group has been able to co opt the label of disinformation dozen into a kind of martyrdom pivot is really something to learn from, like, I'm not exactly sure what, except, I mean, I think we all have to really think ahead about the language and symbols that we use to define bad actors. This is a totally different context. But what comes to mind is when the comedian Drew Ski does Erica Kirk face and makes the entire right wing melt down. There's nothing to co opt there. It is just a symbolic assault with nothing really to sort of hold on to. Except, you know, Erica's launching this defamation suit because apparently, you know, he's harmed her reputation by.
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A
Yeah, so this is different. This is like categorically different than say, how the disinformation doesn't, in the first, like six months of them being exposed, started branding themselves using like superhero imagery and you know, that they could run with it in a particular way. And you're saying Erica Kurt Kirk can't really do it with this kind of satire, right?
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C
No, no. I mean, another example that comes to mind is that there's this guy who goes by the handle of doinkles on TikTok. And I don't know if anybody's seen him, but he's like, he has some filter that gives him an RFK junior Face, which is really, you know, I mean, it's quite high resolution and he's got a great voice and he does things like, you know, point of view, RFK Jr. Is your psychedelic trip sit. And you know, he'll look down and he'll be wearing like a locust costume and he'll say, I thank you, I think you took too much. The ambulance is on its way. And like, yeah, there's no wiggle room there for what's actually happening. And so, I don't know, it makes me wonder whether in the future organizations like CCDH and the Stanford Lab might be better positioned as like the hidden think tank support organizations behind like an influencer class where the disinfo battle is actually being fought and won or lost. Like, they research and establish what's what. But I think the aesthetics of rationalism and proceduralism are at a severe disadvantage against fascist rhetoric. I mean, I've said this before, but it's an anti intellectual movement at its core. And if you outsmart them in the marketplace of ideas, they first of all don't care. And second, suddenly they mock you as a bootlicker to the powers that be. You are a nerd. And I remember Ahmed's core advice was about Internet hygiene. Like, don't link to the things you are criticizing. Don't interact with misinformation in ways that boost its visibility. For every bad bit of data you see, put a good bit of data out there and all of that makes sense. And I also hope there are movements out there thinking about how to play dirty.
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A
Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with epglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema after an initial four month or longer dosing phase. About four in 10 people taking EB GLISS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. Hemglis Lebricizumab LBKZ a 250mg per 2ml
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topicals or who cannot use topical therapies.
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Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe.
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Tell your doctor if you have new
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or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Eglis before starting ebglis,
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Ask your doctor about ebgliss and visit eglis.lilly.com or call 1-800-Lily RS are 1-800-545-5979.
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Maha report live stream we're covering today is titled Red Siren Emoji Free speech. Just one. The disinformation dozen joins us to celebrate. Now, not all 12 showed up, but we have quite a selection to choose from. Plus a few other guests that I've clipped near the end.
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Derek, I just have to say, today I learned that was Red Siren because I thought it was a Shriners hat. For like 10 years, I thought that that little emoji was a fucking Shriner's hat.
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So you just learned it when I said that? I think so.
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C
You said siren. Holy shit. Okay.
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All right.
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Yeah, it's the red siren.
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C
I like the Shriner hat better. I'm gonna try to forget that I heard that.
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B
Sorry for dispelling that illusion. Yeah. We're gonna start off today with Tony Lyons, who I mentioned earlier. Quite an interesting take on science, though it is one that he often repeats.
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The Maha movement exists to be the
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megaphone for every American who refuses to shut up and comply because a right you don't use is a right you eventually lose. You can't separate free speech from health. If you silence scientists, science just becomes whatever the people in power say it is true. Science requires ruthless debate and the absolute freedom to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
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And today I have massive News.
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Less than 24 hours ago, Maha won a colossal victory for free speech. In 2022, a coalition including Dr. J. Bhattacharya sued the Biden administration in a case known as Murphy v. Missouri.
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The evidence was undeniable.
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The administration colluded with tech giants to silence Americans who called out Dr. Fauci's bad science and the tyranny of the COVID area era.
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Yesterday we won and the case was settled.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I mean, what he's saying in the beginning really takes me back to the old creationism debates and the classic new age pseudoscience arguments. But that's just not how science works, Tony. It's not advanced by scientists debating conspiracy theorists to find out what's really true.
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C
Derek, I. Or guys, have you guys heard Tony Lyons before? This is my first time maybe, but we must have covered him before.
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B
Yeah, yeah, I've heard him for years. He's very uncharismatic.
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C
Well, I was gonna say uncharismatic in a kind of way that sounds like he's on a gramophone coming out of the 1930s or something like that. There's something very old fashioned about his delivery. And I also, I have to say that what this is shaping up to. To be is that this blunt instrument of the concept of protected speech is really no match for how you're going to actually define what disinformation is like. That seems, that really seems like they've got us over a barrel here. Right. And until he gets into the case detail in that quote, and if you don't know what doctors he's referring to, he is, from that point of view, he's making a solid case about the necessity for dissent. And so yeah, it's just there's this contradictory, you know, situation between free speech and consensus science that these guys are all exploiting.
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A
Yeah. I mean you can always, you can always in bad faith use certain valid critiques about paradigms of knowledge to try to advance pseudoscience or supernaturalism or, you know, to say that it was just your opinion, man, that that Russian disinformation information, you know, may be affecting how people perceive reality because what is reality after all?
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B
Yeah, Hofstadter wrote about that in the 60s with anti intellectualism like that is, that is always. They will fall back on cliches related to protected or I, you know, idealistic American values in order to distract. And in fact, I mean, we're going to get into this. But they don't even reference Imran Ahmed in at all. In the entire hour and a half talk. They, they talk about it from the level of government suppression, which is, is like not who the government did not create this report. Yeah, but if you, but if you don't know that and you're just watching this call, you think the government is behind the report and that's purposeful. So they're, they, they, they, I think they think a lot more about the ways they say things and the fact that they had at least half of the disinformation doesn't on and none of them mentioned Imran kind of makes me think, oh, they, they, they're talking behind this. They got a WhatsApp chat group going on about planning for these episodes as well.
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C
Well, so even though they spent a long time excoriating Imran and going after him in public, they, you're saying they've probably consciously decided to leave his name out of their mouths entirely so that they can make this like protected speech
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argument for this episode and for this press run that they're on because Children's Health Defense is, is sending out media about this case and all the MAHA channels are doing it as well. And they're all framing it purely as government suppression behind the report. Not, you know, what they did in the court case, but actually they are the ones who sort of coined the term. Yeah, absolutely. So first up on the guest list is Green Med Info founder Douglas Sayer G, a recurring guest on the Maha report. Let's hear just how censored he was.
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But they did attempt to make an example of us, which is a very old tactic where you might bring some
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people that spoke up against the crown
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or whatever authority and you pillory them or you make a spectacle about how. How bad they are and you invoke a moral contagion.
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And essentially that's what we experienced having
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been named in such a manner along
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the likes of now Secretary Kennedy and other colleagues who couldn't be here today.
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It's really honorific because all of us here and those who are also listening, we're fundamentally parents, we're dutiful citizens who would like to believe that our government is thinking of our best interest. And now, thankfully, we have representation in
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the executive branch, for example, that really cares about making America healthy again and the health of our children. So that's where we were coming from.
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A
Right.
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B
And we were just sharing often factual information.
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Peer reviewed research indicating that there are
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unintended adverse effects to any intervention could be a supplement, it could be a vaccine.
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A
It's the same principle.
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B
There was nothing radical about what we were saying. Right, Sayer, I see you guys going hard after supplements all the time. You are, you are on top of that science. And there's certainly nothing radical about claiming that the Pfizer COVID vaccine killed more people than Covid, which is something Sayre has repeated in his version of trust me, bro, science.
- [26:48]
A
Yeah, it's like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth here. Right? He's like, he's just a dutiful citizen who wants to believe that his government has his best interests at heart, but they didn't. He knows how to turn on all that pseudo intellectual language too. A. It's like the pillory, the moral contagion, the honorific. It's not like you were actually being criticized for claiming that Anthony Fauci and the whole medical science establishment was complicit in knowingly harming people with dangerous vaccines and covering it up. Like it's so aggressive and it's so slanderous. And then they act like they're the ones who've been victimized.
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C
Well, I mean, okay, I hate to play this role and we'll see if it's consistent throughout, but I am not going to lie that when I did that investigation into Sayers operation with his ex friend of the pod, Kelly Brogan. I did all kinds of moral analysis of intentions, charismatic overreach, you know, the narcissism of fake expertise. I think a lot of us used the language of viral spread when we were talking about these influences. So, you know, he. There's something that he's pulling on there. There's, you know, there was a moral critique. Critique.
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A
He didn't like being critiqued for spreading pseudoscience that. That was incredibly dangerous to the population and claiming that the whole establishment of people who were in good faith trying to save humanity were actually villains. Yeah, he didn't like that. He got criticized for that.
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C
Right? He didn't.
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B
Speaking of virality, we're going to move on to another old friend of the pod, Christiane Northrup, who, of course, is largely responsible for the spread of plandemic, as a New York Times analysis found out years ago. I also found it interesting that Tony introduced her as Christian or Kristen Northrup, and she. The first thing she did was get a little offended and correct her saying, it's Christiane or even, I'll take Christian, you know, like the religion. And she's really concerned with our ability to give a hug.
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A
This is a really important moment for me, guys, so just, Just give me a second to prepare. She's my original conspirituality muse, and I've been waiting at least a couple years to hear her on Alex podcast again. So I'm going to take a breath.
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B
I'll produce a little harp music in here for you. Julian.
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C
Beautiful.
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A
Nothing has been ever more successful than the COVID thing, because I lost my publishers, my email people, my marketing arms,
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B
all of that simply because I told
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the truth and I was compelled to save lives when it mattered. First of all, by teaching people this
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B
is not what you think it is, there are ways to protect yourself. And Dr. Zelenko had a protocol.
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A
I got that out there as soon as I could in April of 2020.
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B
Everything that was working to keep people safe we were talking about.
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A
I couldn't even post Russell Blaylock's information about masks.
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B
Masks.
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A
I knew that solitary confinement is not
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B
even allowed in prisons to the extent
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that you could lock down the entire population. I knew people in New York City who never hugged another person for six months.
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C
Oh.
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B
Dr. Zelenko's protocol, in case you forgot, was a three drug cocktail of hydroxychloroquine, zinc sulfate, and azithromycin, which has never been shown to be effective against Covid. But he's the reason Trump started promoting, promoting hydroxychloroquine during the pandemic. And then Russell Blaylock, the man who criticizes evidence based doctors as collectivist and said Obamacare was actually engineered by extra governmental groups that wanted to euthanize people. You mean the retired neurosurgeon who wrote
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the COVID 19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream led by government bureaucracy, medical associations, medical boards, the media and international agencies.
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B
And the same man who wrote that the COVID 19 vaccine is a dangerous,
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C
essentially untested experimental vaccine.
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B
I'm so sorry Christiane, that you could not share his definitely reliable information.
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A
I just love too that she claims to have saved lives by sharing the Zelenko protocol and that whole entitled victim mentality on display again here, framing the government as the the mean parent who didn't let you hug people during a highly infectious novel pandemic and thus perhaps hasten their demise. To me, that's always the telltale piece about the psychology going on here.
- [31:35]
C
Dr. Zelenko was such a sad figure, wasn't he? I mean just sort of country doctor guy who was well loved in his community, probably did great work for several decades and he has this kind of DIY I'm going to help my folks and I've come up with this thing and then he gets sort of glazed for that.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And then he died right, Pretty, pretty soon on into the pandemic, maybe 2022 or something like that.
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A
Yeah, as I remember. Yeah.
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C
But Northrup is lying about not being able to post stuff because she posted whatever the fuck she wanted to my recollection. I mean I bet she remembers a few times when she thought she posted something between like the first and third glass of Maine huckleberry wine. But. But then she didn't and then she thought she was being supp but after a while they did ding her for QAnon and you know, satanic ritual abuse stuff and so she did pivot to more selfie harp concerts. I remember that.
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B
I also love the dig she takes in New York City. Christian took my yoga class in Chelsea in like 20 2007. She was there pretty regularly visiting her daughter. So like to take this like fantastical view of I own only liked you know, New York at this time. It's just you know again I said in the beginning rewriting history.
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C
Well it's because of your class Derek.
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B
She loved your clothes.
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C
She didn't. She loved your. You didn't make her wear a mask back Then the world was saying, no, I did not.
- [33:09]
B
So in the preparation meeting for this episode, you guys were like, derek, what do the chiropractors have to say about COVID 19. And we have a few to choose from today, but let's start with Ben Tapper.
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A
Yes, the government can label us, and
- [33:23]
C
that's a slippery slope.
- [33:25]
A
They label us.
- [33:25]
C
This information doesn't. And what does that mean? If you zoom out of 30,000 skyfoot
- [33:29]
A
view, when a government can label your
- [33:32]
C
voice, then they can control it. And freedom. Freedom of speech is not.
- [33:36]
A
Was never there to protect the popular voice.
- [33:40]
C
It was there to protect dangerous voices.
- [33:43]
B
I flagged this earlier, but again, this is just the framing of the government is doing this where it was the center for countering digital hate.
- [33:52]
A
Yeah, and he also sounds like he's just kind of, you know, salty that he wasn't included on the list. It's obviously not big enough.
- [33:58]
B
No, he's one of the disinformation dozen.
- [34:00]
A
Oh, is he?
- [34:01]
B
Yeah.
- [34:01]
A
Yeah, sorry I missed him.
- [34:03]
B
So.
- [34:03]
A
So. So then it's just me. It's just me who finds him irrelevant.
- [34:06]
B
I think you read his name earlier.
- [34:08]
A
I may have. I'm just not familiar enough with him.
- [34:11]
B
Probably not, because he's got a big beard. He's a big beard guy. So, like, you would remember if you spent more time watching.
- [34:17]
A
You know, those guys with big beards all, like, look the same to me. I don't know what to tell you.
- [34:22]
B
Now, as to Ben's claim that the First Amendment exists to protect dangerous voices, you might be surprised to learn that he's being hyperbolic. The First Amendment protects freedom of conscience, which the founders considered first among the unalienable rights. Jefferson and Madison held the belief that public deliberation would check partisan demagogues and that more speech would lead to the spread of more truth rather than more falsehood. Obviously, they couldn't have imagined the speed at which misinformation flows through online networks. Plus, Madison wrote the amendments as a solution to limit government power and protect individual liberties. The primary target was preventing federal government censorship, not specifically shielding any category of quote, unquote, dangerous speech.
- [35:14]
A
Yeah, but we know this old free speech, martyrdom vibe is super versatile. It makes BS sound noble and privileged. But this guy has never smelled a whiff of actual oppression via being categorized negatively by the power structure.
- [35:29]
B
No. And he's definitely like, say he's one of those guys who's always saying he's being oppressed, suppressed, while he has hundreds of thousands of followers. Again, he's a Chiropractor who talks about all sorts of interventions that are sells things. So of course it plays very well to his marketing strategy. Strategy. Now, as with the three previous guests, RZA Islam is one of the disinformation dozen. He's long been known for spreading anti semitic, anti LGBTQ and anti vaccine rhetoric, well predating the pandemic. In fact, during his segment he mentions his mother was a naturopath and he has never had a vaccine nor have any of his children. While a member of the Nation of Islam and its paramilitary wing Fruit of Islam, he's also been tied to the Church of of Scientology. His parents served as founder and executive director of World Literacy Crusade, which is or was a Scientology backed non profit that once sold fake low cost housing vouchers. RZA was arrested in 2015 alongside his mother for defrauding Medi Cal, which is the California state Medicare Medicaid program. And that was part of the group's supposed drug detox program. So they sort of took the Scientology anti anti depressant wing of we're going to cure you. Naturally that was where the nonprofit focus, which is a little bit weird if you're called the World Literacy Crusade and your supposed goal is to help people read it and then you have a drug detox aspect. But let's hear what RZA has to say and I'll just want to flag that. I've stitched two moments together here. One big thing that I continue to look at was 10th grade biology taught us that the immune system is something that was given to us by God. You have the innate immune system. You have that natural thing that you were given to protect you from external forces, external pathogens, et cetera.
- [37:30]
C
Bobby Kennedy was brought to me regarding
- [37:33]
B
the MMR shot as it pertains to
- [37:35]
C
what was occurring and what is still
- [37:37]
B
occurring with black boys, as it pertains to data that came out of the CDC from the data where they said that 236% were leaning onto the autism spectrum. At that rate, who took the MMR on time versus those who waited after a certain point in comparison to young white boys. And that was data that was brought to me by Bobby Kennedy because no one listened to him in the Black community. My 10th grade biology teacher went on about God all the time.
- [38:03]
C
Well, I mean it makes me wonder whether or not the. I'm not sure about this, but did Nation of Islam have its own school schools? Because I mean it would be plausible that that might be a framing in, in a Farrakhan school, right?
- [38:19]
A
Yeah, it's possible. I've never come across that. Have you, Derek?
- [38:22]
C
No, I haven't. But I. I don't know. Like, it's just a bizarre statement. Like, is he. He's extrapolating from his own beliefs back into his public education or. Or what?
- [38:31]
B
It's just, I would actually say he does get the public education school curriculum. Right, because 9th grade was earth sciences, 10th grade was biology, 11th grade was chem, grade was physics, so.
- [38:43]
A
Right.
- [38:44]
B
It does match up to a public school education.
- [38:47]
A
Yeah. And it also feels like he's kind of telling on himself about not having gone any further than that in terms of his understanding of biology or not
- [38:54]
B
paying attention unless, you know, you know, if he was also in a Christian school or not. Obviously not, but who knows? Actually, sometimes people do cross religions to go to the better schools in districts that happen to my friends. So as for the claim that Black boys have a 336 higher incidence rate of autism after taking the MMR vaccine vaccine. And I. I know RZA said 226, but the study he's referencing is actually 100 points higher. It's a misrepresentation of a 2004 CDC study, but it does trace back to Kennedy because he falsely claimed the study showed African American boys who received the vaccine on time were more likely to be diagnosed with severe autism. The study did not find that vaccines were causing autism. The reanalysis produced, that produced the racial disparity claim was performed by a known vaccine opponent. It was subsequently retracted.
- [39:50]
A
Yeah, and this is one of the central things that anti vaxxers bring up a lot. It's. It's an infamous and debunked claim that's often referred to as the CDC whistleblower. And Kennedy. Kennedy featured it in his appalling medical apartheid film, which, you know, may be where some of this crossover with. With both black activism and the Nation of Islam and Scientology ends up happening. It was all manipulated. And I've included a link about it for anyone who wants to see.
- [40:15]
C
You know, I think it's worth pointing out that there's a key anchor point here for one of Bobby's many claims on solidarity with minorities. Like, he knew exactly how to play on his family's names on his family names. You know, popularity, contested popularity, you know, in constant popularity with black voters. Just like he's always presented himself as a champion of women. Like, while fucking as many as possible. I get so many headaches every month.
- [40:49]
A
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C
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- [41:39]
A
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- [41:47]
C
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- [42:17]
B
I'm Nomi Frye.
- [42:18]
A
I'm Vincent Cunningham. I'm Alex Schwartz and we are Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. Guys, what do we do on the show every week? We look into the startling maw of our culture and try to figure something out. That's right. We take something that's going on in
- [42:31]
C
the culture and now maybe it's a movie, maybe it's a book, maybe it's just kind of a trend and we
- [42:37]
A
expand it across culture as kind of a pattern or a template. Join us on Critics at Large from the New Yorker.
- [42:43]
C
New episodes drop every Thursday.
- [42:45]
A
Follow wherever you get your podcasts.
- [42:47]
B
Let's start this final segment with one of my absolute favorite Covid moments. The woman who claimed vaccines magnetized people. Sherry Tenpenny the death rate really hasn't slowed down a whole lot because it's transferred from an acute, acute death that happened within 72 hours after someone died to chronic long term death to where people are still dying suddenly from blood
- [43:12]
C
clots, myocarditis, renal failure, and all the
- [43:15]
B
things that were the long term consequences of the COVID shot. And I just talked about it. Yeah, you just talked about chronic long term death in which people died suddenly. I just talked about it. It's amazing.
- [43:26]
A
Make it stop. I mean, this is from that period, Derek, that you just remember reminded me of where all over social media for a little while there were people sticking quarters onto their shoulders and showing how their shoulders were magnetized by the vaccine.
- [43:38]
C
Was it their shoulders or their noses? The spoon with the nose. Oh, no, that's just a magic trick.
- [43:43]
B
Yeah.
- [43:44]
C
Okay. So Tenpenny to me always seemed like kind of a D string player in this group. Like it didn't seem she was ever really quite keeping up with everybody else. You know who she reminds me of is Magenta Pixie was like way less popular than Laurie Ladd at the channeling game. But I'm actually wondering whether the disinformation doesn't benefit it from like a spectrum of personalities and competencies like this. Like, you really want somebody who, I don't know, just kind of sounds like, you know, she's doing hobby farming in her daily life. She's, you know, she's got like miniature horses or something like that and she kind of does medicine on the side.
- [44:24]
A
This is suspiciously like dei. Matthew, you want to be about that? Yeah. We don't want to get. We don't guess. Russ, vote down on us.
- [44:32]
B
Right, let's move on to. I think it's the last member of the DD we're going to cover and then move on to some other figures. Aaron. Elizabeth, also known as Health Nut News, she's the final member. At the time, she was the romantic partner of osteopath Joseph Mercola, who of course is the longtime alt med grifter that we've covered often. Let's hear Aaron's thoughts on Covid vaccines. It's difficult because I have part of
- [44:59]
C
my family, family that is very like minded, like me.
- [45:02]
B
But then the other half of my family, I'd say, who believe that it's, you know, I'm, I'm doing the devil's
- [45:09]
C
work or something by not still, by not promoting the, the COVID shot. There are still family members of mine
- [45:14]
B
getting booster shots, which is really sad. A couple of whom have gotten very sick, had cancer, or even one who has Parkinson's and is barely surviving.
- [45:22]
A
No, no, Erin, none of your family members think you're doing the devil's work. Anti science people invoke supernatural natural causes. People with a basic understanding of science know that it comes down to ignorance and disinformation when you're spreading this kind of stuff. And I'm sorry that you've never heard of the background rate, but a certain number of people within any given population every single year are going to get the different conditions that you talked about. And saying that is caused by vaccines is just. There's no evidence for it, you know.
- [45:50]
C
Family alienation, however, was a huge talking point for so many of these intersecting movements. I mean, it's. It almost sounds like she could be describing a qanon split in her family, where some people still believe that, you know, she's made it all up and, you know, she's gone down the rabbit hole, but she knows that she's actually enlightened and they're never going to sort of mend again. This is huge.
- [46:17]
B
Yeah. I also want to point out this was a great example of how these grifters deny plausibility. She doesn't specifically say that the COVID vaccines cause those cancers or Parkinson's, but it's impl in the way she strings together her thoughts there. And that's. That's a technique that I see very often. Kennedy does it. So when he's in front of Congress, to be like, I never said that I said this. And. But when you hear it, the way they lay out the argument, again, it's one of those things where it seems like they're just spouting things, but I actually think there's a little more thoughtfulness behind it.
- [46:54]
C
So this is a really great point because Kennedy is always in the position of saying, I didn't say this, that. And I'm wondering whether somehow there's like an ongoing split within him and other people where they're like, the. The implication of what's being said is continually sort of ignored. Or it's like they, they. They have some difficulty in distinguishing between when they're making causal statements and when they're making what connective or like, intuitive statements, or there's just a sort of perpetual scrambling of these two registers. Right. Like, I'm not saying that A actually leads to B. And even though I implied it, I didn't actually say it. Like, there's always an out that these people have.
- [47:45]
B
But Kennedy, half the time, if that will be able to go to the transcript and you can see how. And he's gotten actually better at it since assuming hhs, probably because someone is writing his scripts.
- [47:58]
C
Right.
- [47:59]
B
But there's plenty of times where he says, shit. He's like, I didn't say that. And then you find a tape where he says exactly that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's move on to some non DD members. Now we have three more to go through. We'll start with Eric Berg, who is the founder and CEO of Dr. Berg Nutritionals, a privately held company that offers a wide range of dietary supplements, which of course means he's a chiropractor. And I have to say this is one of the wild, wildest moments of the entire live stream. They restricted, restricted alternative cancer treatment discussions.
- [48:34]
A
We couldn't talk about that.
- [48:35]
B
I had to take all my cancer
- [48:39]
A
videos off and put them on other platforms.
- [48:43]
B
It was pretty crazy.
- [48:46]
A
You couldn't talk about vitamin C in
- [48:48]
B
relationship to radiation for cancer.
- [48:51]
A
I mean, that was a violation.
- [48:52]
B
You couldn't talk about colloidal silver. You still can't talk about it. That's one of the main natural antibiotics
- [48:59]
A
that medicine used for a very large, long time. But then now all of a sudden, it's folk folklore medicine.
- [49:06]
B
You can't talk about it. I'm a chiropractor, and chiropractors don't get
- [49:11]
A
the blue label, but if you're a medical doctor, you can, but you have
- [49:15]
B
to submit to it. And just to make sure that you're in agreement with all the things that medicine agrees on.
- [49:20]
A
And you have to walk the party line on that.
- [49:24]
C
They don't get the blue label because they have the blue skin from the colloidal silver.
- [49:30]
A
Yeah. The longer he goes on the, like, the, the worse it gets. Right? You're just like, oh, oh, oh, okay, okay, oh.
- [49:36]
B
It starts off, it starts off pretty bad when a chiropractor says, I couldn't talk about cures for cancer.
- [49:43]
A
Well, he doesn't reveal that. We know he's a chiropractor, but he doesn't reveal it until like, close to the end of that clip. I mean, the thing about all of this that I often think listening to, to these kinds of roundtables is that these are people who've really wanted to be taken seriously. They've. They really wanted to be profess and people at the top of various medical institutions, but they weren't qualified to do that. They weren't good enough at what they did. And so they end up on social media spouting all of this unhinged stuff during COVID And now they're having their day in the sun because listen to this guy. And like several others, like Sayurg as Well, he's just calmly listing all the ways that he's supposedly been persecuted because of these reasonable things that he was saying, which are actually dangerous health claims that don't follow the medical science consensus. But then he flips the medical science consensus into this actual political concept. It's a very. A very quick kind of flip, that this is toeing the party line and you're going to be suppressed if you don't do it.
- [50:42]
C
And what's going to be suppressed, too? I get a little bit of this here, but you hear it, and others as well, is that what's being taken away, what's being suppressed, is that we have these remedies. We have these precious sort of stacks and concoctions that we've developed over time. They're like family recipes, and we know that they work. Why would you take these things from us? It's also this category confusion between remedy that you would find in your kitchen. Kitchen. And something that you would sell in the open market with, you know, like, with medical claims.
- [51:27]
A
This is so good. Right. Because you're. You're illustrating how it's not just those two layers that I was referencing. There's actually a third layer in there. So you're conflating. He's conflating how medical science functions and how public health community communication functions with some kind of political messaging. And then underneath all of that is this kind of appeal to a folksy, wholesome, kind of, kind of family and almost like cultural knowledge that is being violated.
- [51:55]
C
Yeah. And it's almost as if they're saying, you came into my garden and you uprooted my herbs and you didn't allow me to benefit from the harvest of my own hands. And this material has been with us for a long time. And. Yeah. So there's this real sort of like, offense taken to the supposed organic and heirloom kind of feeling about the. The remedies.
- [52:24]
A
And we're so. We're just a hop, skip and a jump away from the lost golden age then, right?
- [52:29]
C
Pretty much.
- [52:29]
A
Right.
- [52:30]
C
Yeah.
- [52:31]
B
Whiskey cake. That's my favorite family recipe. My wife contacted my mom without me knowing once and asked for the recipe because I talked about it so much. And then she made it, and she was like, your mom was making a cake with this much booze and you. No wonder you love whiskey. Yeah, yeah. That's why I'm a whiskey fan. But was it.
- [52:49]
C
Was it a fruit cake?
- [52:50]
B
No, no, it's. It's just like a pound cake with chocolate chips and whiskey. It's delicious. Of like, whiskey. Yeah.
- [52:56]
C
Because my mom did like an English, you know, or Scottish, very heavy fruit pound cake that she'd soak in brandy for like three months before Christmas.
- [53:06]
B
Okay, nice.
- [53:07]
C
Yeah. That was awesome.
- [53:08]
A
That's a traditional Christmas thing.
- [53:10]
C
Yeah.
- [53:11]
A
I think I'm gonna go from the British Isles. Yeah.
- [53:13]
B
So what alcohol did your parents give you, Julian?
- [53:16]
A
My dad's a recovered alcoholic, so none.
- [53:19]
B
Right.
- [53:19]
C
Okay.
- [53:19]
B
Okay.
- [53:20]
A
I had to sneak out and hide
- [53:21]
B
it under my bed.
- [53:23]
C
Well, to our point though, I. I think, yeah, just to bring it back around, I think these people are talking about whiskey cake. They're talking about. They're talking about Christmas cake. Like, why would you take this thing?
- [53:32]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's a good point. All right. What Tony Lyons is to Kennedy's fundraising, lobbying and media arms. Mary Holland is to his anti vaccine propaganda. She's the chief operating officer of Kennedy founded nonprofit Children's Health Defense, and she acts as the main cheerleader for all of their media. She really doesn't say much of interest during her five minute slot, but this moment really jumped out at me.
- [53:59]
C
So we have a fantastic initiative called
- [54:02]
B
the COVID Justice Resolution. We want the Senate to pass a
- [54:06]
C
resolution that says they're not going to do again what they did during COVID No science, no hearings, no input from
- [54:14]
B
the public, and doing things that were
- [54:16]
C
explicitly in violation of our Constitution. Okay, so she's saying resolution. Right. But this is not a bill, am I correct?
- [54:23]
B
Well, if she. She kind of messed up because if it gets to the Senate, it will be presented as a bill. I mean, it'll be voted on in a committee as a resolution. So what she's saying is she wants. And they've identified, I think Ron Johnson and definitely Rand Paul, who is also on this call, as the people. They want to sponsor this resolution. And then they'll bring it before a committee, it'll get passed, and then it'll get voted on as a bill. So that's. That's the flow that she's looking for. And that all plays Maha's growing influence in legislation and policy, because this is even more insidious than it sounds. And to me, it's one of those moments you really have to pay attention to. I've talked on this podcast a bunch about my early experiences as a beat reporter in New Jersey, covering local politics around Middlesex County. I would attend zoning board, city council and school board meetings multiple nights a week. And while they can be mind numbingly dark dull, these are the places where the wheels of bureaucracy turn. Every week, the Maha report sends out a list of local, state and federal legislation they want their followers to support. Not only are they acting as cheer cheerleaders, but as I said, they're behind the fundraising and lobbying efforts of this legislation. So they're working on it behind the scenes and funding candidates who will support Kennedy's agenda. It's a very holistic operation. Operation and yet people generally don't pay attention to things like House state bills. And they know that. As I said, Rand Paul was on the call. I didn't clip from him, but he used his time to support the nomination of Casey Means as Surgeon General. Just as an example here, and it doesn't look like that's going to happen because she doesn't have the support, but we'll see. Now, the CHD Children's Health Defense page, as I mentioned mentioned it, is asking for Johnson and Paul to support this and I'm guessing they're going to introduce this act into Congress. The Res the resolution starts with the expectable. You can't close schools or businesses for too long or force people to wear masks or shelter in place if another pandemic happens. Then it goes on to prohibit the
- [56:38]
A
following restrictions on routine access of nursing homes, hospitals and other medical services include including dentistry that fell outside emergency demands resulting in misdiagnostics and medical disruptions for millions of people agency led dismissal, deprecation and even removal from access to known therapeutics for respiratory viruses which were made unavailable even with a physician prescription.
- [57:04]
B
Well, hey, hey, we all have the God given right to horse dewormer. So you know, let's be clear on that.
- [57:09]
A
The eviction moratoriums issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that exceeded statutory authority and disrupted the contractual foundations of property rights.
- [57:21]
B
Yeah, this is interesting because if you were a rent payer, you know, a tenant during COVID like I was, you didn't have to pay for a prescribed period of time. We did have to pay it later. However they want to make sure landlords are getting paid even if those people lose employment during another pandemic which will
- [57:41]
A
squeeze people into then finding ways to work even even though they're being told to be more careful about the spread of the. Yeah, vaccine mandates imposed directly or indirectly through osha, cms, Department of Defense, or federal contractor rules upon private employees, healthcare workers, members of the armed forces or students as a condition of employment, education or participation in civic life.
- [58:07]
B
Yeah, so this part would basically challenge all vaccine requirements for schools, employment and federal service. It's basically a a way to sneak in their Anti vax agenda under the guise of a pandemic and then sort of normalize it. Be like, hey, we're doing it here. Let's make legislation to do it all of the time. Now there's a section against de platforming people as well, of course. And then they have an entire other section to establish permanent U.S. policy for any future emergency response, such as no response can exceed 30 days without explicit reauthorization. So basically, you know, if there's another lockdown, it cannot go more than 30 days unless all of Congress is to vote on it. There's another part about keeping elementary and secondary schools open no matter what. So even if we close down parts of society, schools have to continue. These two jumped out at me as well.
- [59:03]
C
Religious exercise. Places of worship shall be classified as essential at all times and may not be subjected to numeric capacity limits or activity restrictions more stringent than those applied to commercial establishments. Religious freedom shall never again be infringed. Bodily autonomy. No American may be compelled, coerced, or subjected to adverse employment or educational consequences or denied access to private businesses or their services or to civic life for declining any medical intervention, including vaccination, during a public health emergency. Let me just flag that. Denied access to private businesses really stands out to me there. Right? Like if, like, you could. If. Yeah, I mean, ostensibly, if. If you were visibly ill and you were. You were coughing on the way into the bakery over the croissants, they're saying that this. Would you. There would be nothing that would allow the proprietor, the baker, to say, can you step outside? Can you put a mask on? Can you please come back when you're feeling well? Is that right?
- [60:14]
B
Yeah, yeah. And even the language, the framing, right, Denied access, it takes. It's always this passive language or this very active language, like they switch everything around to. To just put it. To put it back to the idea of individual liberties are being infringed upon.
- [60:31]
A
Yeah, I mean, that one's interesting, right, because what I hear in that. In that section is you're being denied access for refusing a medical intervention, including vaccination. I mean, I still think that they would probably stand behind the right to refuse service based on sort of, you know, standard property rights that like, no, you. You can't come into my business if you. Not wearing shoes or a shirt or if you're obviously like, you know, intoxicated. They might say, well, of course, if someone looks like they're really sick, it's only that they haven't been vaccinated. Right.
- [61:02]
C
Well, except if they classify a mask as a medical intervention.
- [61:05]
B
Yes, yeah, right, that's right.
- [61:07]
A
No, that's right. Exactly, exactly. So it's like you could.
- [61:11]
C
Yeah, yeah, Like I'm not going to put on a mask to cover up my coughing up my lungs on your baked goods and you've denied me access and I'm going to sue you under this law.
- [61:23]
A
Yeah. So as Derek is saying, it opens up all of this wiggle room for, you know, all kinds of different prosecution and.
- [61:31]
C
Yeah, well, in fact, the text says any medical intervention, including vaccination. So, I mean, I mean, masks would definitely be in there.
- [61:39]
A
Absolutely. And this is just the danger of science illiteracy. Like tens of thousands of scientists from around the world involved in public health, epidemiology, medical research, their work ends up being reduced to a political football like this, as if it's on equal footing with like extremist libertarian politics or delusional religious commitments. We have to get together and it's a violation of our religious freedom. If you don't let us all be in a contained space, you know, singing worship songs together. This entire movement threatens to make the next pandemic the exact catastrophe that all of the measures they are objective reacting to actually prevented last time.
- [62:16]
B
All right, well, nearly every Maha Report live stream ends with one particularly particular Galaxy Brain commentator. And Julian, you and I are covering him for this Saturday's brief because he's just had Mickey Willis on his podcast. Here we go. Do we really need some galloping gallivant on horseback heading to Westminster or DC to represent a community when perhaps now we could represent ourselves and one another under God, grow our own food, treat one another, worship and love and expect the expect, anticipate and accept the grim finality of inevitable death that all of us know is coming. All of us know is coming. Let that be the marker, let that be the horizon that we look towards spending all of our time erecting for false gods, occupying false temples, living within the institutions that we know, bow down and worship. Moloch, baal, Baphomet, the necromancer, he who walks backwards, the follower of the left hand path. Ah, man. Tony, I need your optimism. I need your leadership because I feel that what we need is revolution. Thankfully, we have revolutionary leaders here on this call.
- [63:40]
C
Derek, is this on Zoom? Because it actually literally sounds like he's phoning this in.
- [63:45]
B
Oh, he's, yeah, he's always like in. He sometimes will be in a car taking the call. Yeah, absolutely, yes, It's. It's over Zoom on YouTube.
- [63:54]
C
Effort. Yeah, yeah, it's so low effort.
- [63:57]
B
And they finish with him every week because like they never know where he's gonna be. He comes on and has nothing to do with the rest of the episode. He just, it's just to have Russell Brand on the episode. And so he just. I really, especially sometimes I'm like, this dude's got to be so lonely. Like he's just dialing into these fucking live streams and just spouting off and they're letting them have their, their audience.
- [64:18]
A
Well, these are the only friends he has left. And you know, he misses his days of doing the poetry slam. So he's just going to get into his rhythm where he's going to keep talking. It's. It echoes though that Dr. Zach Bush kind of Christian influenced argument about how accepting death is more virtuous than vaccines or other mitigation efforts. Except then he flips it into fram medical science as part of the satanic panic. Right. With Moloch and he who works backwards and all that stuff. This is a tangent that some people have taken in the wake of the Epstein files.
- [64:51]
C
I remember when people thought he was a leftist, like in earnest, but I mean, I think he was really a leftist as much as, I don't know, Mussolini was when he started out or something like that. Like somebody who is a bloodhound for transgressive language and its rhythms. Like he was really into the vocal vibe. And so obviously the content can turn any which way because it's, it's really about him. It's about attention.
- [65:18]
B
He was about all of the yogi yoginis he could get in Los Angeles at the time.
- [65:25]
C
Right.
- [65:25]
B
Because that's, that was the moment you're identifying. So that, that's the language that would work to get the yoginis was what, what he. Was he into? Yeah, yeah.
- [65:35]
A
I mean before that, when he was still in England, if you scrolled back far enough on his YouTube channel, it was all about supporting socialist candidates in local British elections. And he seems to have removed that stuff now. I went looking for it to, to back up what I'm saying, but you can still find some of those infamous interviews like the one with Jerry Jeremy Paxman, where he told people not to vote, but as an expression of his anti capitalist political identity which he would hold forth on and advocate revolution and high taxation and a communist utopia. So you know, we always argue about or reflect on the difficulty of finding sincerity and who's really, you know, earnest in what they're representing. It does seem that he held onto his populist, revolutionary appetites, as we hear, a few minutes ago, but he switched ideology. Yeah.
- [66:27]
C
So that he could play, that he could have games, so that he could assault people. Okay, So I remember. Remember as well that when he got baptized after getting outed by the Times of London for serial sexual abuse, I really wondered, like, what would come after God for him? Like, if. If he had to continue to escalate his content, where would he go? And I think we probably have our answer now because it's years later and he already sounds bored with theology. He. He's even chuckling as he sounds off on Moloch and BAAL like, this is the guy who believes in nothing.