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The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Replay | Pizzagate: Are Democrats Harvesting Children's Blood? | Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy
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- [00:00]
Jordan Klepper
Buying a car in Carvana was so easy, I was able to finance it through them. I just. Whoa, wait, you mean finance? Yeah, finance. Got pre qualified for a Carvana auto loan, entered my terms and shot from thousands of great car options, all within my budget. That's cool. But financing through Carvana was so easy. Financed, done. And I get to pick up my car from their Carvana vending machine tomorrow. Financed, right? That's what they said.
- [00:21]
Matt Gertz
You can spend time trying to pronounce financing or you can actually finance and buy your car.
- [00:25]
Jordan Klepper
Today on Carvana financing, subject to credit approval. Additional terms and conditions may apply.
- [00:30]
Dr. Elise Wong
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:52]
Jordan Klepper
Of $45 for a three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com this episode is brought to you by Greenlight. Get this. Adults with financial literacy skills have 82% more wealth than those who don't. From swimming lessons to piano classes, us parents invest in so many things to enrich our kids lives. But are we investing in their future financial success? With Greenlight, you can teach your kids financial literacy skills like earning, saving and investing. And this investment costs less than that. After school treat start prioritizing their financial education and future today with a risk free trial@greenlight.com Spotify greenlight.com Spotify. You're listening to Comedy Central.
- [01:38]
Dr. Elise Wong
Blood. It's everywhere. On children at Halloween, in test tubes, at the doctor's office, in the very title of the 2007 drama there will Be Blood. And it's even inside you right now, which means you're part of this story. So buckle up. This is Jordan Clapper Fingers the Conspiracy. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably already know a little bit about Pizzagate and we'll get into that shortly. But this extremely weird idea that pedophiles are using secret symbols is rooted in the belief that elitist cabals, it's always a cabal, are rounding up babies to steal their adrenaline by consuming their blood. There are Republicans in Congress who believe this. You might have also seen it in the Netflix show the Watcher. It's a conspiracy theory that goes way back before Hillary Clinton and Comet ping Pong and 2016. It goes back 900 years to when Joe Biden was born. Let's get into it, as Chris Cuomo would say. All right. Let's bring in our own little blood cabal. I have two guests today. First, we have Dr. Elise Wong, a professor at California State Fullerton who studies conspiracy narratives going back to medieval England. Elise, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:51]
Jordan Klepper
Thanks for having me.
- [02:52]
Dr. Elise Wong
Yes. And my next guest is Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and extensively covers the relationship between Fox News, Donald Trump and Trump supporters. Matt, thank you for being here.
- [03:04]
Matt Gertz
Great to be here, guys.
- [03:06]
Dr. Elise Wong
You guys ready to talk cabals?
- [03:08]
Jordan Klepper
So ready.
- [03:09]
Matt Gertz
It's always an elite cabal.
- [03:11]
Dr. Elise Wong
It's always elite. There's. Yeah. Is there any lower level cabals of just, like, guys just trying to. To get through it who have, like, a high school education? It's always elite, right?
- [03:22]
Jordan Klepper
Yes. That's the point.
- [03:24]
Dr. Elise Wong
That's the point of cabals. You're in a cabal. You have to.
- [03:27]
Jordan Klepper
It's no fun to be in a. In a, like, mediocre cabal.
- [03:30]
Matt Gertz
State school of cabals. I mean.
- [03:32]
Dr. Elise Wong
Yeah. Whoa.
- [03:34]
Jordan Klepper
With the state school thing.
- [03:37]
Dr. Elise Wong
I think this podcast is going to start selling T shirts that says state school cabal on it. There really is. It's always elite cabals and the Illuminati, also very elite. They need to be more encompassing. We need to have our state school Illuminati and cabals. We'll sell the T shirts. Go to dailyshow.com everybody.
- [03:59]
Jordan Klepper
I will wear that at my state school.
- [04:04]
Dr. Elise Wong
Elise, I want to start with you. Let's break down Adrenochrome because it feels like the base for a lot of theories we're going to dive into in this podcast. First of all, is adrenochrome technically real?
- [04:17]
Jordan Klepper
It is, actually. That's a good place to start. It is actually a real thing. It's the oxidation of adrenaline. And this can happen naturally in your body or in a lab. It's actually really easy to come by. You can just buy it on the Internet. Like, not the dark web Internet, just the Internet. I think it's something like 25 milligrams for. For 55 bucks, 58 bucks, something like that. I looked it up, so it's not used for anything really. There's nothing the FDA has approved it for. It's occasionally used for things like blood clotting. There was some interest in the 1960s for using it to treat schizophrenia. But it really showed no promise, so they dropped it. The history of the adrenal gram we're talking about is sort of. It goes back to. I think Aldous Huxley was the first one to talk about it as a drug. He talked about it in Doors of Perception. And then Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is really the one who cemented the myth of adrenochrome as a drug, because he turned it into this kind of immortality drug, this thing that you have to get from a live source. I think the line is, a corpse is no good, buddy. And so that. And then the subsequent movie, they're, like, dramatized to the effects of adrenochrome.
- [05:39]
Matt Gertz
What is this shit?
- [05:40]
Dr. Elise Wong
That stuff makes pure mescaline seem like ginger beer, man. Ginger beer.
- [05:47]
Jordan Klepper
Adrenochrome. Adrenochrome.
- [05:50]
Dr. Elise Wong
Hmm.
- [05:52]
Jordan Klepper
That's really where our modern perception of it as a drug comes from. So it's from these fictional sources.
- [05:59]
Dr. Elise Wong
Are we saying it correctly? Adrenochrome.
- [06:01]
Jordan Klepper
I mean, that's how they say it in the 1998 video. And if you go. I know you're not supposed to read the film.
- [06:07]
Dr. Elise Wong
The video. Are we talking about the Terry Gilliam film? That's how Johnny Depp pronounces it, yes. That's where this is where we're getting our information from.
- [06:14]
Jordan Klepper
Yes, exactly. Well, that's where they're getting their information from. Like, I know you're not supposed to go to YouTube comments, but if you go to the YouTube comments on this scene, they are all about how this is real.
- [06:27]
Dr. Elise Wong
Yes. Based on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I will say, I love that book. Top 10 book in my world. It's a great book, but that is sort of the central. The beginning. That, and Huxley's book is where the first time we actually hear the term.
- [06:41]
Jordan Klepper
Adrenochrome, he even said afterwards that he just wanted a quote, unquote, crazy drug. And so he made it up. And so he's drawing on Huxley and then, like, adding his own little stuff. And adrenochrome, the way it's become it is, as you were saying, it's. It connects to all of the different conspiracy theories because it's a grab bag of the greatest hits. Right. It's got pedophilia, it's got satanic rituals. It's got blood rituals, immortality, like, satanic panic and Hollywood elites. It's got everything.
- [07:09]
Dr. Elise Wong
It's a good one.
- [07:10]
Jordan Klepper
It is. Yeah.
- [07:11]
Dr. Elise Wong
Let's add some context to it. In this world. The conspiracy theory is Hollywood liberal elites and Hillary Clinton are murdering children in ritual sacrifices, harvesting the chemical compound from human children, drinking their blood to ingest adrenochrome because it has some sort of elixir of life properties. Is that right?
- [07:33]
Jordan Klepper
Yes. Yes.
- [07:35]
Dr. Elise Wong
Okay. And you're telling me it may not be true?
- [07:39]
Jordan Klepper
I mean, you should buy it on the Internet and find out it's at least worth.
- [07:45]
Dr. Elise Wong
At least worth a dabble. Matt, when did you first become aware of adrenochrome?
- [07:50]
Matt Gertz
I think probably around 2015, 2016, as part of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The Pizzagate conspiracy theory posits that this cabal of global elites who are draining this chemical compound from small children and sexually abusing them is doing so in the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor called Comet Ping Po. This idea spurred, in some ways from emails from the John Podesta hack during the 2016 election cycle. And I've been to the pizza parlor, and it doesn't have a basement that you can use to abuse children and take their bodily fluids. Did you ask?
- [08:43]
Dr. Elise Wong
I mean, it goes one step beyond asking for a bathroom key. Cause they'll happily give you a bathroom key, but you have to be a little pushy and be like, I need to use the restroom. I also would love access to the basement where the children are tied up, and I can get the adrenochrome. Did you specifically ask?
- [09:00]
Matt Gertz
I think there probably was a time that you could have done that. But as the conspiracy theorists seized on this, the pizza parlor started getting bombarded with phone calls from people who wanted to know more about the basement and the, you know, Pizzagate conspiracy theory. And eventually, one of the adherents to this conspiracy theory took a gun, went to the pizza parlor looking to save the children, fired it off inside, and was subsequently arrested and spent a couple of years in jail. So, you know, at that point, it becomes a little bit rude, I think, to ask the people who work at the pizza parlor.
- [09:46]
Dr. Elise Wong
It became a. It had real consequences. And for if this is somewhat new to anybody listening, the Podesta emails get hacked. WikiLeaks leaks some Podesta emails. And emails between Podesta and Hillary Clinton reference buying cheese pizza. Right.
- [10:03]
Matt Gertz
I don't think it's him and Hillary Clinton, but it's some sort of email that references pizza. That then became a sort of Internet meme and brought into the broader conspiracy theory that Elise was talking about.
- [10:20]
Dr. Elise Wong
Well, and cheese pizza becomes abbreviated to cp, which also stands for child pornography. And comet pizza. And so they start to connect those links and comet pizza becomes the place to go in a nutshell, right?
- [10:35]
Matt Gertz
Yeah, that's about it.
- [10:37]
Dr. Elise Wong
I on the road, I somewhat recently talked to somebody who was sort of discussing this theory, and it is amazing. The symbols they see not only in the comet pizza background and the symbolism there, but I asked them, like, what do you need to look at? They're like, well, in the pizza chain, there's a lot of symbols that you have to stay focused on. I was like, what do these symbols look like? And they're like, well, they're predominantly circles and triangles. There's a huge push for normalizing pedophilia. How do they normalize it? Are they making pedophiles look cool?
- [11:09]
Jordan Klepper
If you go online, there's a whole list of pedophile symbols.
- [11:13]
Dr. Elise Wong
Really? Yes. They're like circular symbols. There's a lot of triangles, there's colors. A lot of them are in pizza, which, if you're at all into purchasing pizza, that tends to be all of the symbols you see at any kind of pizza chain. So from their perspective, they're holding a hammer and there's just nails everywhere.
- [11:33]
Jordan Klepper
Well, I think watching Pizzagate happen and then from my end, watching the chat rooms and, you know, message boards and all of these things, both before and afterwards, there's that aspect of it, like the people who really get into the game of it, like, let's find the numerology and all of like the special symbols. And then there's the people who are actually mobilized around this. And that's what really struck me about Pizzagate. It was the first time that I really saw this where you could see there was already this theory about a pedophile ring being run by the Clintons. And it was kind of a theory in need of specifics. And so they went out seeking specifics and they decided basically randomly that Comet ping pong was going to be the place. And then it started this sort of multimedia propaganda campaign where people, they got people to call and harass, as Matt was saying, they got people to flood the Yelp reviews and the Google reviews and people to go and harass the proprietor. And then this sort of culminated in the guy who drove up from North Carolina to self investigate. But that wasn't really the story. The story was that then people talked about it, that then it was in the national media for like 48 hours, like a whole week. And it was not only in the media, Their theory was in the media. And I went back to the message boards Afterwards, and they were just beside themselves with joy over this. Like, it was not. It was not a. It's not at all about, oh, our guy was arrested, whoops. Or huh. He didn't really seem to find anything. It was not about that. It was about the media exposure. And then there were sort of further suggestions. Well, how can we get them to keep taking. Denying it? So they keep saying it, so people keep googling it. And when I was seeing that, I was like, oh, this is something else. This is a kind of savvy media campaign that I think most of us at that point were not totally familiar with. Now we know if you mention something, you have to be very careful what, what sort of buzzwords you mention because it will sort of feed the conspiracy theory monster.
- [13:58]
Dr. Elise Wong
I'm curious in hearing that, what do you think the end goal was? How was that a success? Was it, you know, a lot of that online culture does, you know, traffic and trolling and the successes of trolling often is large reaction. Is it. Is it that that made it the win? Is it the fact that their conversations became mainstream news that was the win? Is there still a connection to the veracity of this theory and that because it's being talked about, that that adds some credibility to it or is just we like Shine and we got some shine.
- [14:33]
Jordan Klepper
I think it's a lot of we like Shine. But I do think that there, there was the, the. The jubilation of being able to make the social media to mainstream media jump. And then I think it was a huge recruitment tool. I think people hearing the name would then go Google it and then would find their way to these message boards. So I think for them, the coup was really through recruitment.
- [14:55]
Dr. Elise Wong
Matt, what did you notice the coverage of Pizzagate? When did you first remember seeing it and who was first to jump on that?
- [15:03]
Matt Gertz
I think I want to bring in Alex Jones here because I think he has played a key role in conspiracy theories for quite some time, but I think really made almost a sort of mainstream jump during this conspiracy theory. He was one of the major propagators, one of the people with the biggest PL platforms who would talk about Pizzagate and try to encourage people to look into Pizzagate. We had been following Alex Jones at Media Matters for quite some time, but we always, I think, as Elise was alluding to, were very hesitant to bring too much direct attention to his conspiracy theories for fear of just sort of bringing more attention to them. And so when we wrote about Alex Jones In 2010, 2011, we were largely writing about how Other people were giving him their support. Fox News personalities who would go on his show, Rand Paul and Ron Paul who would go on his show and use the platform of someone who is one of the chief popularizers of the idea that 911 is an inside job, sort of bringing him into political prominence. And Pizzagate, I think, was really a turning point because we saw that someone could use those conspiracy theories, could inflate them, and that there could be a big real world impact when people who came to believe those conspiracy theories went too far. It was, I think, pretty disturbing time for all of us when we saw.
- [16:51]
Dr. Elise Wong
That come together, I mean, as somebody both with the Daily show and having done a TV show after that, parroting the Alex Jones talking points and what was happening in that far right world. That was always a conversation of at what point you don't want to amplify these wild ideas, but at the same time turning a blind eye to something that's already having an effect on culture. It's already being amplified by legitimate politicians. Even the Donald Trump, legitimizing the points of view there. Like you saw people taking what they would hear from Infowars and the conversation around that. And it was becoming very real world news. I want to talk a little bit more about how some of these things spread, but I want to focus one more time on the adrenochrome specifically. Elise, I want to know if we trace back this specific theory, even the origins of adrenochrome, does it go back before Hunter Thompson? Does it go back before it becomes sort of pulp in. In modern culture? Is there a history that dates back even. Even earlier?
- [17:55]
Jordan Klepper
It definitely does. And the way that it dates back is a little bit of sort of associative thinking. So conspiracy theories often work this way. They kind of jump onto things. They have a very lazy logic. They jump onto things that are already fully formed. One of the conspiracy theories that is attached to adrenochrome, or that adrenochrome is. Is basically drawing on and modeling itself on, is blood libel, which is a conspiracy theory dating back to the Middle Ages, that Jewish people drink or use the blood of Christian children for their religious rituals, specifically at Passover.
- [18:36]
Matt Gertz
And for the record, we don't do that.
- [18:38]
Jordan Klepper
Yes, I mean, thank you, Matt.
- [18:41]
Dr. Elise Wong
Thank you for contacting me.
- [18:42]
Jordan Klepper
Thank you for specifying that. And it's designed specifically to incite violence. Like that is what blood libel is. So there's that kind of thematic connection. But then there's also the fact that the main purveyors of adrenochrome, like Alex Jones, like Liz Crokin. Say that it's bloodline. Well, say that it actually dates back to that. And if you look at these adrenochrome memes, one sort of popular one that goes around has this very obviously medieval image of a baby being drained of blood with people standing around it. And it says at the top, why does this image even exist? And the image is of Simon of Trent, which is the most famous and well documented blood libel. And this particular blood libel started Passover 1475. A father had come to the Bishop of Trent and said, my two year old son Simon is missing. And this, this bishop already had a story ready to go. He decided it must be the Jewish community, the very small Jewish community in Trent. He had a couple reasons for, for wanting this story to be true. One, he felt like the Pope was too soft on the Jewish people and that he was too cozy with them. So this was his little power grab in opposition to the Pope. And then also, if you had a saint, if, if he could prove that Simon was martyred by the Jews, if you had a saint in your town, that was a huge money making opportunity. Like you could get people from all around to make pilgrimages to your little altar. And then you would make money basically off of like brand, brand building.
- [20:36]
Dr. Elise Wong
And so it was like that, the.
- [20:38]
Jordan Klepper
Brand building opportunity, I was like, there.
- [20:39]
Dr. Elise Wong
That era's Cheesecake Factory. If you had a Cheesecake Factory in town, you know, you're gonna get people from the suburbs who are gonna come in, they're going to pay some money, it's going to help the town.
- [20:48]
Jordan Klepper
That's the thing. And he wanted to kind of put Trent on the map. And so even before they start any kind of trial or anything, they round up the Jewish community, the entire Jewish community, and imprison them. And he hires a physician to write this very inflammatory autopsy that talks less about Simon's body and more about the, I think the phrase is dry throated Jews howling for Christian blood. Like this really over the top kind of autopsy. And then he takes this autopsy.
- [21:25]
Dr. Elise Wong
That was the doctor. That was the, that was the doctor. That's, that's some really high end literary antisemitism.
- [21:31]
Jordan Klepper
Yep. And well, it gets more high end because then he takes this and he sends it around to poets and to artists and is like, make stuff from this. And they do. Like, the poets start writing poems about Simon of Trent and the woodcutters start making images. And that's the image that shows up in that Adrenochrome meme is this sort of propaganda campaign by this Italian bishop who decided he really wanted his own little ritual cult.
- [22:02]
Dr. Elise Wong
Those woodcutters, they just will take money whoever puts it out. Where is the artistic integrity in 15th century woodcutters? They, you know, I hold them in such high regard. I love them. I think it's the best century for woodcutters. And yet they are so willing to turn a blind eye to the social responsibility of being a woodcutter. In that time, they're taking dirty money to put out anti Semitic propaganda. Shame. Shame on them. I'm never, I'm never buying 15th century woodcutter art again. Shame.
- [22:37]
Jordan Klepper
I feel like the parts of this that are really useful, though, is kind of. It's kind of that. That, like, it was the propaganda campaign that really made this take off. It wasn't like this was kind of a grassroots rumor that was rooted in sort of general antisemitism. I mean, that's why it took off. Was sort of latching onto generalized anti Semitism. But the actual formation of the blood libel was very intentionally crafted for a political end by someone who was powerful.
- [23:07]
Dr. Elise Wong
I had never heard of that. I think it's so easy to. To look at those in power and also the religious heresy at the time and the institutions at the time and the point of view they wanted to get out. But the fact that they were using artists to spread that message to affect culture, you see obvious comparisons to what happens today. But that even then it was still important. You want this thing to stick, culture needs to stick. And the fact that we're using those images yet today as proof of what Hillary Clinton is doing is bonkers. Well, I want to take a short ad break. When we come back, we're going to talk more about how adrenochrome spread as an idea even before the Internet was even around. We'll be right back.
- [23:53]
Jordan Klepper
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Matt Gertz
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Jordan Klepper
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- [24:14]
Jordan Klepper
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- [24:16]
Matt Gertz
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Jordan Klepper
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- [24:45]
Dr. Elise Wong
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- [24:46]
Jordan Klepper
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- [24:51]
Dr. Elise Wong
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- [25:17]
Jordan Klepper
Vehicle configuration.
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Dr. Elise Wong
See label and door jam for carrying capacity of a specific vehicle. Always properly secure cargo. Welcome back to Jordan Clapper Finger the conspiracy.
- [25:26]
Jordan Klepper
I mean I never, I didn't actually plan to work on conspiracy theories. Like I'm a medievalist, I'm like a huge nerd. I like books and this was not the way I saw my studies going. But here we are.
- [25:41]
Dr. Elise Wong
You basically stumbled on it and we're like here we go. Also is that something was in the ether, the modern ether that you saw a connection between the two.
- [25:51]
Jordan Klepper
Yeah, it was basically in 2015. I started, I mean like all of us, I think I was a little bit concerned and uneasy about the fake news phenomenon and in particular this epistemology aspect, this you can't trust anything that you see. And I started hearing echoes with the stuff that I study and speech patterns. Like that's what they want you to think. Do your own research. I've heard or people are saying these kinds of gestures towards sources. I started seeing those things. I was like, oh, that doesn't sound good. That sounds familiar and not good. And I just sort of started following that. And now my autocorrect knows adrenochrome. So here we are in the case.
- [26:42]
Dr. Elise Wong
Of these historical conspiracy theories and the beginnings of blood libel. How do you see these theories spread before modern news and communication and memes and 4chan and 8chan and parlor and trusocial and. Should I keep going? I'm not going to keep going.
- [26:58]
Jordan Klepper
Well, they spread remarkably well. I think that the, the essential shape of blood libel was a very compelling shape. It was, you know, there are evil forces that are out to get Christian children. And there was also the fact that it was pretty common for medieval children to die in accidents or disappear or fall into a river like child death was. Was quite common. And so it became kind of a predictable thing that if a child died in a Christian community, that pretty soon suspicion would fall on the Jewish community. And it did spread by word of mouth, but it also spread by all of these sort of cultural productions that it spread by these woodcuts, it spread by these poems that were written in honor of Simon. And it also spread because these stories got baked into the official histories. These historians think of themselves as, you know, responsible, reliable, and they go back to the local histories and they just sort of draw from whatever the local history is. And so these blood libels get baked into sort of accepted history as fact. And then anyone who reads that will. That will be their primary interaction basically, with the Jewish community for a lot of places, because these pogroms have already taken place. Magda Tater has done a really great job. She studies blood libel, and she's done a really great job of showing how actually before the printing press, word of mouth didn't work that great. It really needed to be written down. And that also shows that it was mostly educated people, mostly higher class people who were spreading blood libel. It wasn't a low class theory. It was a kind of upper class theory.
- [28:47]
Dr. Elise Wong
And that's interesting. And I mean, there's great book by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, that talks a lot about how the mediums affect the message. The adventure of the printing press affected not only the way information was spread, but the way we think about information, the way we process information. And then you suddenly have television come out and out. The way in which we communicate and the way we process information is very different than the way we used to with the printing press. I think it's fascinating to think of that in terms of like, who is spreading information and that it was a. It was an elitist thing. You had to be able to speak that language then. But now that we see information changing, the technology changing. Matt, I want to bring you in here. How are you seeing conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and other Q theories spread given the new technology that we have?
- [29:38]
Matt Gertz
Well, the core benefit that social media companies will say that they provide to their customers and that Internet companies say they provide to their customers, is the idea of bringing the world together, giving people an opportunity to find communities, to communicate with people across the globe and to sort of find a common purpose together. And, I mean, there's a dark side to that. It also has made it much, much easier to find a community of conspiracy theorists to share your ideas about the, you know, dark hidden messages in the world's events to share your views about the Illuminati or whoever else is manipulating what's going on around you. And that's just an incredibly powerful force. The barrier to entry for producing one of these conspiracy theories is much lower. You don't, you don't, you know, the JFK conspiracy theories, you know, you had to like write letters to people later on as Xeroxes and faxes and so on and so forth.
- [30:53]
Dr. Elise Wong
It's just very easy now how lazy conspiracy theorists are now. Can you imagine if you had to write letters to spread just some BS you read on Twitter? You're like, oh, I want to put that out. Elon Musk, he would not be pushing conspiracy theories if he had to write a letter to get that thing going. Do you also look at places like Fox? We look at what's happening with social media, but more of the mainstream media outlets. How are you seeing that affect this conversation specifically with something like Pizzagate?
- [31:20]
Matt Gertz
Sure. So, I mean, the reality is that we live in a bifurcated news environment. There is one set of sources of information that is generally used by people in the left, on the center, just sort of mainstream media news outlets. And then you have this entirely separate realm of right wing media outlets that speak very clearly and directly to a right wing audience. The way we see conspiracy theories moving these days is they'll start at this sort of message board and social media platform level with a sort of army of individuals who are coming up with their own spin on what's happening on a particular event. It will spread from there through a network of hyper partisan news sites, places like Gateway Pundit, that do not have standards of any sort, that are not interested in the basic rules of journalism, but that want to have political impact and make money off of advertising. And from there you can see them sort of get woven into the broader debate. You know, the reality is that the right wing media figures at the sort of higher level, your Fox News are not interested in batting down those sorts of conspiracies. They're not interested in challenging their audiences and telling them that what they might have heard is incredible wrecked. Instead, you'll see either them ignoring it altogether or providing a sort of wink and a nod at the conspiracy theory or telling their viewers that it's okay, more or less, that there are reasons to be skeptical of things that are happening around you, that the elites want to keep you from talking about QAnon or what have you, and that, you know, whether or not that's true. It's not a danger the way, you know, other, other people will tell you.
- [33:37]
Dr. Elise Wong
I mean, if this is an issue with right wing media, they have this weird rhetoric that is politicizing children in the name of protecting them. Anything from disturbing conspiracy theories to don't say gay bills, anti trans bills, et cetera. Do you see a connection? There's.
- [33:57]
Matt Gertz
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of these conspiracy theories get rolled up together. There was a big push over the last year and a half or so on the right throughout the entire ecosystem to talk about the idea of groomers.
- [34:12]
Jordan Klepper
Of Save the children.
- [34:14]
Matt Gertz
Save the children. Absolutely. Basically that teachers are trying to turn your kids gay, turn your kids trans, possibly molest them, and it all kind of gets wound up together. There aren't really firm barriers to a lot of these conspiracy theories. People who start to believe one of them tend to start adopting others as well.
- [34:37]
Dr. Elise Wong
Elise, historically, has there ever been a way to get people to stop believing conspiracy theories?
- [34:44]
Jordan Klepper
I mean, it's a complicated question, right? It depends on who you're talking about. Like I don't. Johannes Vint Hinderbach, the Bishop of Trent. I don't know that he actually believed that Simon was killed by the Jews. That was sort of beside the point. I think he believed that Jewish people are evil and he wanted to drive them out and this was a convenient way to do it. Plus a bunch of other political benefits. I don't know that he actually believed it. So if you're talking about these sort of cynical purveyors of it who use it for radicalization and use it for their own sort of economic and political gain, I think you just have to take away the gain. And then like, that will. That will kind of kill it for everybody else. I think it is a complicated question because the thing about conspiracy theories is they're not about the details that are not about the story. They're. I mean, I feel like your segments, Jordan, have really shown this. Well, as soon as you ask them a question like that's the end, like there's. It doesn't go anywhere. You can't actually have a conversation about conspiracy theories. I don't even think that conspiracy theorists could have a conversation with each other about it because it's fundamentally not discursive. It's not something you can have a discussion about. It is just an attempt to make this sort of core story about yourself match up with the world. And every conspiracy theory has the same core story. And that's why it's so powerful. It's the story that the theorist holds on to and then sort of tries to match up with the world in a kind of messy way. The story is basically once upon a time. We were happy and everything was good and we were in charge and we were safe. And then the monsters took hold, but no one knew that they had. And these monsters are not of the sort of vaguely threatening variety. They have to be absolutely gigantic, demonic, sort of the. The most hyperbolic thing you can think of. Go another step. So it's always children, Satan, mutilation and torture, pedophilia. And the story goes that everything seemed fine because the monsters made sure this was all kept secret. So the monsters control what you know. And only the heroes of the story knew the truth. And then they arrived to save the world. And that's the benefit that you get from it. You get that worldview about yourself that you are a continuously just sort of horrifically embattled hero of the story. And you can't really give up on this self, like the self image of embattled heroism. It's very difficult to give up on. It's not just the high of thinking of yourself as a hero. It's also that you convince yourself that you are in this battle of absolute good and absolute evil. And so then you get to issues of like, if you ask about democracy or fair play, what are you nuts? Like, this is about, this is about the end of the world. So it makes it impossible to sort of dial back to issues of fairness or accuracy. It's actually not about that. And I feel like you can kind of hear that when you're talking to these QAnon followers when they try to answer your questions. They aren't actually trying to say like you say, so what did actually happen in January 6th? They'll say FBI, CIA, Clinton, just sort of a grab bag. But what they're actually trying to tell you is this story that the monsters are out to get us and I'm trying to save us. There's kind of no other point to it. That's the whole ball game.
- [38:36]
Matt Gertz
And when the monsters, when there's a partisan overlay on that, when the monsters are one party and the people who are trying to save you are Donald Trump, I mean, there's no room for debate at that point, right? There's no room to talk about. It's important to respect electoral defeats, right? Because if the people who you are losing elections to are monsters who are abusing children, then you have a moral responsibility to go try to subvert those election results.
- [39:10]
Jordan Klepper
And the resistance is kind of like baked into the story because the story is that the monsters came and took over and they covered it up. They kept everybody from knowing. So any information that you get in from the outside is suspect, even information that you might get from sympathetic sources. So the only thing then you're left with is kind of like going with your gut and what feels true. It feels true that I am a victim and it feels true that I'm the hero of the story. And so let's just go with that.
- [39:40]
Dr. Elise Wong
So you're telling me I shouldn't read this story to my son every night before going to bed? He loves it. It's a dark Eric Carle story. But I like it so much better than that hungry caterpillar.
- [39:55]
Jordan Klepper
You might be unhappy with the results of raising your child this way.
- [40:00]
Dr. Elise Wong
I'll tell you, all of his peers are reading it. They seem to really be into it. That Hero's Journey. After the break, we're going to talk about how the Adrenochrome conspiracy theory is related to the attack at Nancy Pelosi's house. It seriously is. This is Jordan Klepper Figures the Conspiracy. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com/podcast for 40% off. Terms apply. Welcome back to Jordan Clapper Fingers the Conspiracy. I'm here with Dr. Elise Wong and Matt Gertz, two experts who follow conspiracy theories and we're talking about Adrenochrome. How Democrats are drinking baby's blood. Allegedly. Allegedly. And what that means for American politics. Now, recently, Nancy Pelosi's house was broken into by a right wing conspiracy theorist. He was looking for Pelosi and ended up attacking her husband with a hammer. But Matt, you've written about how the conspiracy theories this attacker specifically believed and how he was radicalized in the ecosystem of right wing misinformation. How does this all connect?
- [41:26]
Matt Gertz
Well, the alleged assailant had a substantial Internet paper trail. He had a couple of blogs, various other social media platforms. And what he posted on Seitz was very much the kind of textbook online right wing conspiracy theory radicalization pattern that We've been seeing for years now. His social media and blogs are filled with references to QAnon, to Adrenochrome, to Pizzagate, to Gamergate, as well as a sort of grab bag of bigotries related to black people and women and Jews and gay people and trans people.
- [42:16]
Dr. Elise Wong
It's a grab bag. Yeah.
- [42:18]
Matt Gertz
No, it's the greatest hits. Honestly, I spent some time looking through these websites on Friday and I was like, oh, it's just, it's all of it from there. And this happened very, very quickly. You did not see people on the right saying, oh my God, the things that people on the right are saying are leading to political violence. Instead, a story about political violence committed by someone who believed right wing conspiracy theories about how Democrats are depraved. It was turned into another right wing conspiracy theory about how Democrats are depraved. The story that developed over the following hours was that the assailant had not broken into the house, but in fact he had been invited in by Paul Pelosi because they were gay lovers, and that the violent attack on Pelosi was in fact some sort of gay lovers spat. That's what they came up with. And that spread remarkably quickly, as it tends to do through this right wing information ecosystem until you had Elon Musk tweeting out a link to a sort of hyper partisan fake news website on Sunday morning. So it was, you know, 72 hours, 48 hours from the assault becoming known to the conspiracy theory reaching the wealthiest man on earth.
- [44:01]
Dr. Elise Wong
Elise, something like this pops up. Is this how you imagine it playing out? This quickly and evolving or devolving in this similar manner?
- [44:10]
Jordan Klepper
Unfortunately, it doesn't surprise me. I do think the speed is different from sort of the history that I study, but the manner in which things spread is really not. And I think a few things are key that the platform matters. It depends on who is picking this up and who is running with it. And then there's also a durability to conspiracy theories that because they have this sort of epistemological challenge built into them. By that, I mean they challenge how you know what you know. And they say these things that you think you know, you don't know, but it doesn't replace it with anything. So it's just sort of epistemic destabilization. So you just don't have anything to stand on. And that creates an environment in which conspiracy theories really thrive. Because once you it. Once you can't trust anything, then the only thing you can trust is your own sense of the story that you like or the one that sounds good to you, this was definitely true. In sort of the medieval and early modern period of blood libel, there were often people who, powerful people who opposed blood libel. For Simon of Trent, the reason why we have so many documents on it is the Pope tried to intervene in this. He tried to put a stop to it. Then in the very first blood libel in the 12th century, this was a boy named William of Norwich. The Norwich sheriff actually got involved and protected the Jewish community. So there's always been pushback from kind of mainstream sources. And yet these conspiracy theories just thrive if there's already a kind of destabilized trust in the regular sources of knowledge. So I think the modern speed that is new, how quickly that happens. But you would have a blood libel come out, and the next week all of the Jews in town would be arrested and tortured. And it was pretty fast. It happened pretty fast.
- [46:12]
Dr. Elise Wong
Well, we mentioned the platform here, and Matt, you brought up Elon Musk and the tweet that he had. Adding to this confusion, he referenced a website that claimed Hillary Clinton died in 2016 and was replaced with a clone. So what does this say now in this new era of Elon's Twitter? What is that going to do to these conversations?
- [46:34]
Matt Gertz
I mean, I think it's going to continue to accelerate them. I think there has been some effort by the social media platforms some of the time to try to rein in the most extreme and dangerous forms of misinformation. It's been haphazard, it's been imperfect. But Elon Musk's Twitter is going to do is kind of toss that aside. He himself is quite obviously a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Someone who has, you know, accused people of being pedos, that that's just sort of sort of his wheelhouse, so to speak. And it's difficult to imagine Twitter being interested in throttling conspiracy theories that its own owner is spreading. That's just not going to happen. And so, you know, I think that platform is going to become less stable. It's going to become a less valuable source for credible information because of that.
- [47:36]
Dr. Elise Wong
Elise, I'm curious, can you talk about the progression of belief into action? Like what takes somebody from Pizzagate to an actual act of political violence in 2022?
- [47:51]
Jordan Klepper
I mean, this is what scholars of radicalization study, right? How do you come from an idea into actual action? Radicalization online is part of the story. It's not the whole story, but it certainly directs your any sort of anger or dissatisfaction. You already have it validates it, and it amps it up and it focuses it on a target. So it's a little bit like pointing a loaded gun at a specific target.
- [48:28]
Dr. Elise Wong
And.
- [48:29]
Jordan Klepper
Can I go back to the Elon thing for just a sec?
- [48:31]
Dr. Elise Wong
Yes, please.
- [48:34]
Jordan Klepper
The, the whole verification thing really struck me because I think, you know, it's clear the money of it doesn't actually matter. Like, he's like $20, $8, whatever, to sell, sell verification, right? That's his new thing. He's going to sell verification on Twitter. What really struck me is that this is not an attempt to get the money. It's an attempt to devalue verification in general, because verification is meant to show you which sources are trustworthy, right? It was meant to sort of identify members of the media and corporations, and so that you knew that it was actually coming from that source and you knew that you could trust it. It was not a sort of celebrity thing originally. That was, that was not the purpose of verification. And by turning it into something that you can buy, it just completely devalues verification. And it gets rid of that layer of validation so that you, you know, what you can trust, which sources you can trust. It gets rid of that sort of, you know, it's, it's destabilizing the, the way we know what we know. And that seems to me to be the point of the whole verification thing.
- [49:47]
Matt Gertz
In fact, because Musk is so polarizing, we could see a situation where his supporters, who are largely on the right, are much more willing to actually shell out the money than, you know, more credible mainstream journalists are. Those less credible sources will get sort of algorithmically accelerated more than everybody else and become a bigger part of the conversation.
- [50:16]
Dr. Elise Wong
I'm curious what advice you would have to consumers, specifically of Twitter. I think a lot of people are looking at this. They see these issues, see the problem, and are asking themselves the question, do I divorce myself from this platform? I don't know if the answer is to step away from it and not be a part of the conversation or understand the conversation. But are you complicit in what is becoming a less and less trustworthy place?
- [50:40]
Matt Gertz
So I think part of the issue here is I don't really view it as a place for conversation. I mean, I, I, I tweet at.
- [50:49]
Dr. Elise Wong
Me, Matt, I got a lot of interesting things to say. Come at me. We'll go back and forth. It's fun, we playful. I got some gifs I'll send your way. It's a really fun chat.
- [50:57]
Matt Gertz
The way I use Twitter, I use it as a broadcast medium, right? It's a way for me to get my views and my work out into the public. It's a way for me to hear views from people who might have interesting ideas or thoughts. But I. I don't do that much interaction with it because I think it's actually a really bad medium for having debates of any kind. If I want to have a conversation with someone, I will try to follow up with them in a certain email conversation or phone or what have you. It's hard to have a substantive discussion with the rest of the world trying to involve itself in that. I will use Twitter less if that becomes less feasible. If I think that my tweets aren't getting read, or if I think that I am not able to easily find credible information that I want to be reading, that's when the value proposition will fall to basically nothing.
- [51:56]
Jordan Klepper
I feel like this is where our disciplines come into play. Because you're in media, I'm in medieval studies, so I have a very. My following. What you will be shocked to hear is tiny. I'm also locked. So I really just use it for conversation. Like, I really just use it to connect with other people in my field or who study the same things that I do. And I think one of the, really, one of the reasons a lot of people are mourning this is it has been an incredible tool for people to connect within their own tiny little subfield. Like, I feel more connected to other medievalists of color on Twitter because we have kind of created our own little ecosystem than anywhere else. And I wouldn't get that anywhere else. I would miss it for that. And obviously, if, again, if, like you said, if that becomes impossible, then, then, like, I'm not going to use it anymore. But I also think this whole question of, so do you stay, do you go? Do you pay the $8, $20, whatever it ends up being. I feel like that's a very American question, like, how can we make this the individual responsibility to decide what to do? This is the. The robber baron has screwed up the system and now we are responsible for fixing it. And, you know, my recycling or not recycling my water bottle is really what's leading to climate change. Like, that's, that's really. That's really the thing, this sort of individual responsibility for these things. And I think that's kind of what gets us into trouble with conspiracy theories to begin with, right? Do your own research. Find out for yourself. The thing is, with huge platforms and huge areas of knowledge, you just can't do it yourself. I mean, as we all discovered in the pandemic, when we all became amateur epidemiologists, right? We're not very good at this. I don't remember high school biology very well. I'm not, not going to be good at making choices, personal choices about my own level of risk and my kids level of risk. And, you know, I am not a good person to put that decision on. And that's kind of how we've offloaded it. And so I feel like that's maybe not. I know that it's sort of going to be personally difficult for a lot of people to figure out what to do about Twitter, but I don't really feel like that's where the change comes from.
- [54:38]
Dr. Elise Wong
I want to wrap this up kind of looking specifically at what happened with Nancy Pelosi's husband and what we've sort of been discussing here, but sort of to zoom out as well. How do politicians like Nancy Pelosi try and convince people that they don't partake in ritual children sacrifices? At a rally weeks ago, and a man was convinced that Nancy Pelosi is a vampire and drinks children's blood. He was convinced. I followed up and I asked, you said literally. Did you mean literally? He said literally. You see Republicans on one side and.
- [55:20]
Jordan Klepper
The devil on the other.
- [55:21]
Dr. Elise Wong
Are we talking metaphorical devil? Like, oh, they do bad stuff. No, literally, you know, vampire drinking blood. I don't want to nitpick here, but vampires tend to be eternally youthful. And I look at Nancy Pelosi and she's a lot of things, but I guess I don't think vampire. Somebody in her party definitely drinks water. What. How does someone like that attempt to knock down this issue? And with those difficulties, what does that say about where we're at politically if we struggle to even do that? Matt?
- [55:52]
Matt Gertz
I don't know, honestly. I mean, it's very difficult to reach someone who believes that you drink the blood of children. The. You know, I think that it's just a hard problem. And so we end up talking around it, right? We end up talking about what are the ways that policy can weaken the structures that are in place that allow these conspiracy theories to flourish. Because as Ely says, these conspiracy theories have always been been with us, but it has become easier for them to propagate and easier for people to come to accept them. And I think that's really the available channel.
- [56:48]
Dr. Elise Wong
Elise, is there any advice you have for Nancy Pelosi or anybody else who looks at this is pulling out their hair Just attempting to try to knock down what seems like to be the inconceivable.
- [57:06]
Jordan Klepper
I mean, I think there's sort of the media answer and then there's the personal answer about approaching this person personally. So the media answer. I'm not a media expert and so I wouldn't know exactly how to do this. But I think that platforms really are the key. The platforms that we give people to propagate these ideas. I think that when Alex Jones got involved, things really took off. And when Alex Jones was taken off of Twitter and sort of deplatformed from a bunch of places, his influence really did die down for a little while. Like it actually had an influence. And I think deplatforming and treating social media as the sort of communities that they are and the news sites that they are and having even stricter standards for them than we do for sort of in person conduct I think is not going to happen. But that would be my suggestion for the media side of things. I think you have to control the amplification of these conspiracy theories. And there's also just sort of the larger problem of society wide radicalization. And that's a bigger question than just conspiracy theories. The only people who can really get to people who are deep into it are those who are already intimate with these people, who are already friends with these people, who already have some other form of connection with them. You're not going to get through to them. Them. That's not. Sorry.
- [58:48]
Dr. Elise Wong
I know it's a new family out there. Talk to those you love. I mean, you also speak to something there. There's the intimate relationship people have with their computers when they're alone in their room. And that person. Interesting video.
- [59:02]
Jordan Klepper
It's like a parasocial relationship. Yep.
- [59:04]
Dr. Elise Wong
Yeah, exactly. And I see going to these rallies, this myth of American exceptionalism, we talk with such rhetoric of everybody on their own hero's journey. And I will say, a lot of those MAGA rallies, you talk about all the problems in the world and then somebody gets on stage and they says, you're a patriot. You can be a hero. You can do this.
- [59:22]
Jordan Klepper
Yeah.
- [59:22]
Dr. Elise Wong
Well, guys, this has been lovely. Elise Wong, Matt Gertz. I leave this conversation energized as if I've supped on the blood of a child. Thank you. That's all I could ask for. I appreciate your insight and your thoughts. Thank you guys.
- [59:42]
Jordan Klepper
Thanks for having me.
- [59:43]
Matt Gertz
Thank you.
- [59:44]
Dr. Elise Wong
Listen to Jordan Klepper Fingers the Conspiracy from the Daily show on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts Explore more shows from the Daily show podcast universe by searching the Daily Show Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [60:00]
Jordan Klepper
Watch the Daily show weeknights at 1110 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount. Plus, this has been a Comedy Central podcast.