Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 So we are we're back
Speaker 1 00:00:04 We're back and very exciting. You have weather to report.
Speaker 0 00:00:10 So I was teaching yesterday and I kept stopping during teaching, looking outside. I was like, huh? There's like weather happening here.
Speaker 1 00:00:18 Yeah. I was so excited when I saw, like, I went on the radar app and I was watching the storm come in and I was like, Oh my gosh, they're getting weather.
Speaker 0 00:00:26 Yeah, we got, we got something called rain.
Speaker 1 00:00:31 Something was, there was a wetness in the air to be forming droplets
Speaker 0 00:00:39 Crops came out of the sky and landed on the ground. February was one of the driest months in San Diego history. Oh really? Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:00:51 We joke a lot, but it does rain on and off, but
Speaker 0 00:00:55 This is supposed to be our regular season. Like we're supposed to get all of our rain from November through March. February was a very, very dry, uh, January was pretty good. February was very dry, but then yesterday we got well over an inch of rain, which is about a 20th of our annual total. So that's good. Um, we actually, a couple of days next week, they're saying we're going to get big rain as well. So, um, Harvey, Harvey did not like the rain at all.
Speaker 1 00:01:26 Sure. He doesn't want to go out, not up a pee pad for me inside please.
Speaker 0 00:01:32 Well, I was surprised I needed to go out and get a few things and I was like, no, like, so in Southern California, when it rains stay at home drive clueless. So they just drive faster. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:01:46 I wasn't on the phone with my parents and they were getting all excited about the rain or I don't know if excited is the right word, but like anxious, maybe my dad's like, I got to go make sure that the windows in the car are rolled up. And I was like, why are they ruled down talking about like, I bet you like, there's like, I dunno, you think he, that cats would crawl in there or something, but I think it was just like, he likes to be alarmed, you know? Like I've got to just make sure everything's perfect.
Speaker 0 00:02:13 So rarely that when it happens, we have to overreact to it.
Speaker 1 00:02:17 When he says like, I'm going to go Batten down the hatches. I was like, listen, it's not hurricane Harvey. Okay. Relax. But we were joking about it. But, um, he's like, well, I'm just going to stay inside all day. So it was, it wasn't event. So good for you guys. There you go.
Speaker 0 00:02:33 So this week, I think we're doing something a little lighter. Um, is it lighter? I don't know. I think it, I think some of the things I'm going to bring up are a little bit lighter. Um, I've tried to balance it with funny things.
Speaker 1 00:02:49 Okay. As opposed to like today, and I'm like, this is so terrifying. So I'm excited to hear what you have to say, because today we're talking about conspiracy theories. Again, we're doing a part two because we first visited the subject very early on in the podcast. Right. I mean, we, we did it, I think, uh, in 2019. So before the 2020 election had really geared up and I really listened to the episode just today to make sure that, you know, I remember what we had said and I am kind of shocked at how flippant I was about it. Kind of like laughing and giggling, like, can you believe these people? And now I'm like, Oh my gosh, to me, so much of the wild, crazy theories have come mainstream where it's not just an off the wall. Like you can go read about it on Reddit or something, or like, there's like a, you know, dark corner of the internet where people are talking like it's so mainstream now that I'm actually alarmed. And so I'm happy that you are like, let's talk about a little bit lighter, but for me, I'm kind of scared. So calm me down, calm everybody down, Jeff. All
Speaker 0 00:04:02 Right. I will. Well, so I mean, let's get started and then we can kind of chat a little more.
Speaker 1 00:04:07 Okay. Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff. And we're your hosts for this weekly history podcasts.
Speaker 2 00:04:16 <inaudible>.
Speaker 0 00:04:37 So before we dive into kind of the, the nitty gritty of today's episode, I do want to clarify the rains completely gone. It is sunny and gorgeous outside with just a few wispy clouds. Beautiful. Um, it's why we live in sunny San Diego, but what's going on in Mississippi? You got,
Speaker 1 00:04:56 It's really beautiful here today. Um, no, not yet. We get, uh, you know, like 20 seconds of spring, I think. And today feels like a very nice spring day. It's probably in the mid seventies, it's sunny out. It's not humid. It just feels really, really good out today. And so, um, I was actually thinking like, gosh, it'd be really nice to go for a walk or something. Um, yet 72 right now in sunny.
Speaker 0 00:05:21 Oh, sorry. The Magnolias are, the Magnolia is getting ready to bloom.
Speaker 1 00:05:26 Not yet. No, that'll happen in a couple of months, but I think I mentioned the daffodils last week and actually trove on campus yesterday and they're not bloomed yet. So I think that that freeze really slowed it down because this time, last year they were gone already. They were wound and gone this time last year. So I'm kind of,
Speaker 0 00:05:45 I mean, beginning of March, I'm trying to remember when I was growing up, like when March would come early growing or when Easter would come early, there was never a time when I grew up in the South, when came early, that flowers weren't blooming like. Hmm. Interesting. So interesting. So Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi, I see the governor of Mississippi raised the mask bandaid. And I'm saying this for a reason, this is leading into a conspiracy.
Speaker 1 00:06:14 Yes, he did. And not just, not only did he lift the mask mandate, but all restrictions that were in place pre COVID or for COVID have been lifted to pre COVID rules. And I was shocked. Our mayor who's been pretty reasonable throughout the pandemic has lifted every restriction. I mean, the bars everything's opened back up to full capacity, no required masks. And I am blown away by that. Uh, because before there was a state mask mandate, we had a mass mandate in the city of Oxford. And so I was always kind of like, Oh, well, that's good. You know, the mayor's kind of following more federal guidelines rather than state, but not now. And everybody, I mean, everybody I talk to is shocked by it, but there must be a lot, a lot of widespread support. And I know that I live in a bit of an academic bubble. Well, not a bit of one. I live in an academic bubble. I get that. But yeah, people, I think people are pumped about it, you know, everyone's back full capacity partying and who
Speaker 0 00:07:25 It's. So, I mean, so Mississippi basically followed Texas, just say everything's open 100% no more, man.
Speaker 1 00:07:35 I think there's going to be more States that follow. And I think that we will see it fall along the lines of the Confederacy. Um, you know, doing, you know, have playing where our own country kind of stuff like they enjoy doing all the time. Uh, I think we'll see, um, Alabama, Florida. Yeah. I think we'll see a lot of States just follow suit to this because that's just what they do here.
Speaker 0 00:08:02 Talk about COVID-19 and conspiracies. Then we can move back to, cause I want to get to an, a, a couple of other epidemics or pandemics conspiracies were tired too as well. But so, I mean, there are a lot of conspiracies about COVID-19. So one of them, the one that cracks me up Hillary Clinton went to George Soros and got him to give money to bill Gates, to use the bill and Melinda Gates foundation to go to China, to Wu Han, to develop this virus, to undermine Trump's presidency, number one and two simultaneously microchip us for the new world order.
Speaker 1 00:08:54 Yeah, I that one, um, there's a lot of twists and turns here. It takes a lot of different forms. It kind of shoves several things that people are upset about and like shoves them all together into one, one story. And it has a lot of buzzwords, right? So you've got China, George Soros, Hillary Clinton 5g. Is that what that, that's what that is, right? Like the
Speaker 0 00:09:22 Jeez involved in it yeah. Is involved in it.
Speaker 1 00:09:25 So you get like all these buzz things. And what I will say is like the pandemic sucks. We don't really know a lot about it. We know that we're living through it. We know that a lot of people are getting very ill from this virus. We know a lot of people are dying. We know it's easily transmittable and it's trans it's transmitted through the air, which we didn't know at first. Now we know that. And so I think that, you know, since people are so overwhelmed by the overall shittiness of this and there isn't a lot of research or information about it because we're living in it, you know, there hasn't been a huge amount of time to really kind of process what happened. People just make things up.
Speaker 0 00:10:19 I think it's, I think it's what we talked about in our original episode that conspiracy theories emerge when there's a lack of information or there's a high sense of anxiety about something and people just want answers and they actually don't really care if the answers make any sense or whether they're grounded in evidence, they just want answers. But I also think this COVID conspiracy is like packaging. Like you said, all of these things that people love to kind of demonize into one thing. I mean, first of all, logically let's approach this bill and Melinda Gates do not need money from George Soros to do anything.
Speaker 1 00:10:56 That's a really good point. That's such a good point. They don't need money from anybody to do anything. And they're certainly not going to go to somebody like Hillary Clinton for money.
Speaker 0 00:11:07 Well, they went to the winter. George Soros for Clinton was involved too. I thought she told George Soros to give them the money.
Speaker 1 00:11:18 Oh, I'm sorry. See now I'm doing it again where I'm just laughing, but it's a very serious issue. And like it does. Yes. If you break it down step by step, it does not make sense. What I find interesting about this theory though, is this was an made up theory with Zika, with the Zika virus. Remember that? I mean that they, they S they, I hate using them. They said, um, there was a theory going around prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 that Zika was actually an engineered virus by these powers, right by the George Soros, by bill and Melinda Gates that, uh, they had created. And the idea is that this virus was lab created. And so this actually dated COVID, and then when COVID strikes, it was, uh, it was an already in place theory that people had already kind of circulated around and, and everybody's mind was primed for it. And so then this new piece to the puzzle kind of shimmied in there, but I love what you said. Like, how does that make sense that bill and Melinda Gates would need money to do anything?
Speaker 0 00:12:35 Sorry, Harvey's being very rambunctious right now, like having an angel all day and now he's like, you're not recording it's time for me to bark a lot.
Speaker 1 00:12:45 Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:12:48 No, I bought phones on, he can't hear your voice. He wants to play us what it is. Um, so it's, I'm glad you mentioned that it's like engineered because this takes me to the first conspiracy theory, the historical conspiracy theory. So the AIDS virus HIV right there. So there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding HIV. And a lot of these are gonna sound very similar to things that people have said about the Zika, uh, Ebola, and COVID. So first of all, and there are some prominent people who get on board with some of these theories, conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 00:13:31 That's what I was researching too, is that like, there are people at like Harvard and like big, big name people who will get on board and kind of peddle this stuff.
Speaker 0 00:13:41 There is a Kenyan ecologist who wins the Nobel peace prize won garri Mafi my thigh. And my five believed that the, uh, HIV virus was created by the United States to wipe out Africans. So the United States could colonize Africa. Right. Um, and I mean, an interview with Mathias, like included the quote, I'm sure people know where it came from, or where did HIV originate, but I'm quite sure it did not come from monkeys. The, the way epidemiologist understand it is that like many modern diseases and viruses. It it's an organism that crosses from animals into humans,
Speaker 1 00:14:36 Right?
Speaker 0 00:14:36 Where humans and animals are in close contact with one another. And where it, according to epidemiologist emerges in Africa are places where there's a lot of consumption of something called bushmeat. So is basically anything that white people would turn their nose up at eating fair. I mean, is that a fair? And the interesting thing is, is the same thing's going on with the Wu Han China wet markets, where again, they're selling animals for consumption that white, Anglo, Saxon Protestant people in the United States would turn their nose up and say, I would never read that. So I think there's an interesting thing going on there that there's, this there's this other thing that's present for that. But, but here we've got a Kenyon who's, well-respected granted not exactly in the field of diseases and epidemics saying, this is a conspiracy by the U S government at the same time, or kind of, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:15:43 Actually at the same time, people within the gay community in New York and San Francisco and other areas that are initially hard hit by it, um, start to wonder, is this a government created virus that's specifically designed to wipe out gay men because it's overwhelmingly hitting that population. And I think that still persists. I think if you talk to people, maybe not my age, but just a little bit older than me within the gay community, you would hear them talk. They would be a little questioning whether or not the government was involved in this. Um, and there's just no evidence. And this is the thing. If there was a conspiracy like this, thousands of people would have to know about it, and there's just no way that many people could keep this secret.
Speaker 1 00:16:46 Well, that's what we always came back to. I think in the last episode, time and time again, and with every one of these is like, you have to assume that thousands, tens of thousands of people would have to know about this in order for it to happen. And it just doesn't seem likely that that sort of a secret would be able to be kept. But also, I mean, what I kept saying last time was like, you assume people are that well organized that they would be able to do something like that. And what nobody likes to think about is just reality. And I was watching a documentary several months ago that was about zoonotic viruses and diseases and stuff. And it was a document. And you know what? It was like a time when I was like taking a break was like, I'm going to take a break.
Speaker 0 00:17:43 It's like, I'm taking a break and reading a book on, um, like I'm not, I'm embarrassed to even talk about what I'm reading a book on the history of Lennox on our Unix, on Apple computers. Like, it's like, I'm going to take a break and read this book about the history of Unix, like
Speaker 1 00:18:02 Need, I just need this me time. That was me. I was like, I'm going to take a break. I'm going to, you know, go and watch this documentary on zoonotic, pandemics and viruses. And like the whole premise of it was like, look because human beings and because our population has expanded so rapidly, we have become closer and closer and closer in contact with animals in ways that we never were before. And there are so many diseases and viruses and a lot of them are who happened to live in bats. Cause that's how this was what I learned too bad to have this very different immune system than us. Like they can live and thrive and whatever with all these different viruses, but they're not the only animals. There's a lot. There are a lot of animals who carry and Harbor these diseases, but that, because we've become in such close contact with them, we, it is shocking that has taken this long for something like COVID-19 to come to humans and to create such a problem, you know, to create this pandemic and that this is, they were saying that basically this is going to be the decade of kind of like pandemic after pandemic after pandemic.
Speaker 0 00:19:13 This is, so this is what a lot of kind of epidemiologists have said is they are surprised it took until 2019, 20, 24, something of this scale to develop. I mean, they thought SARS was going to be it. They thought MERS was going to be at, they thought Zika was going to be at Ebola, was HIV was instill as a pandemic. Um, the, the difference, you know, though, is that HIV is quite difficult to contract, whereas COVID is very easy to contract.
Speaker 1 00:19:49 Yeah. I mean, bring it the same era, somebody. And so that's what I'm, I guess what I started down that path is that people don't like to just confront the reality of the situation that because we have as humans just completely taken over the planet and in cringed, uh, you know, on all of this infringed on all this different space and, and what have you, that we've become so close contact with animals, that it was bound to happen in this way. And because of travel, you know, that this virus was able to spread rapidly undetected for a while because we're traveling in place. We're flying in airplanes all over the place. We covered the 1918 flu pandemic. And we learned at that time that that pandemic traveled on like ships and stuff from soldiers returning from war. We didn't have people in mass airplane transit across the world at that time, had that been the case. Can you imagine the death toll of the Spanish flu?
Speaker 0 00:20:54 And we talked about this when we talked about the Spanish flu, like, we don't really know the true numbers of, of that pandemic because some areas of the world, there's just no way for us to get to reconstruct that data. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's a COVID 19 in many ways was like the perfect virus, because many people who contracted don't show symptoms, but they still can transmit it. Um, it's, you know, which means people could get on a plane, feel fine, land, spread it to everybody on the plane, spread it to everybody. They meet once they land and stuff. And I mean, this is why they kept putting the date of when the first cases were back, back and back. Now here's the thing, I think some of the conspiracy theories about kind of China doing this to get at the United States and stuff, China has not helped itself as far as perceptions about COVID-19 because there's still a sense that perhaps they are not telling us the whole story of how many people got affected by this initially.
Speaker 1 00:22:03 Yeah. I mean, I think that it has been helpful to sowing discord, right? I mean, like there's all this want of conflict, right? Internal conflict, global conflict, et cetera, between all these different powers. Right. And like, it kind of plays in everybody's hand to get everyone all anxious and upset and fighting amongst themselves. And you're right. I mean, nobody's come out and said like, no, this is absolutely not true because in a way it does sort of serve this, this greater distraction kind of, uh, an effort and see that in itself sounds conspiratorial and that's a problem. And so once you believe that it's easy to go down a rabbit hole of it, but there, there has been some, I don't want to say dishonesty, but like, there's been a lot of withholding of information and that's because there's tension between these super powers.
Speaker 0 00:22:58 So we know actually the Trump administration, when Trump was briefed on this early on, he actually is on, he was recorded saying, you know, we don't actually want to tell people how bad it really is. Cause we don't want panic.
Speaker 1 00:23:13 Right? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:23:16 I hear that. And I think it is a very small step then to say the government's covering this up and why is the government covering it up? Um, and that's the thing, that's the way I think a lot of these conspiracies work, and I know we're going to get to Q and on later,
Speaker 1 00:23:30 But part of this though, right.
Speaker 0 00:23:33 And I know that some of the people who were in Q Anon who've left have talked about how look I did not initially believe all the crazy stuff I ended up believing. I believe this one thing that if you look at it is kind of close to the truth.
Speaker 1 00:23:46 Yes. It's the rabbit hole. And if you take one morsel of it and you start heading down, you get fed fact after fact ever misinformation, right? Like you just get fed crazier and crazier and crazier things to the point where you think that the Biden administration is composed of lizard people. And that's not, I'm not making a funny joke. That's actually at the far end and that's, as far as I went, I mean, maybe it goes further, but at the far end of the QA non conspiracy is that the Democrats are actually not human. They are rep reptiles that are come from the dark side of the moon. How scary is it that you can go from? Gosh, it seems like the government's sort of hiding something about this COVID pandemic. Cause I'm, you know, I'm very inconvenienced by this, my family suffering. Um, I'm not seeing huge amounts of impact from it, but I've been stuck in my house and I don't really know what's going on. Gosh, I wonder what that's about two months later, you emerged from your deep dive and you think people are lizards. I mean that's to me. And that's where I guess I was like, this is terrifying before we started talking about it, because I don't know if you've lost a family member or friend to que Anan.
Speaker 0 00:25:11 Uh, no, I have not.
Speaker 1 00:25:13 I, I have lost, I have lost some folks and there's a support group on Reddit for this. And I read through the posts, a lot of people who were kind of mourning the loss of somebody who they were close to, who is so far down this rabbit hole, that it's actually impossible to have a conversation with them anymore. And that's sad.
Speaker 0 00:25:36 Well, that's the issue and conspiracy theories are can to cults right? Eventually. And Q Anon has definitely got there, but, but let's talk about some other conspiracy theories. And what's the oldest one you wanted to talk about today?
Speaker 1 00:25:52 The oldest one. Oh gosh. I mean, we talked about several older ones. We briefly touched on the Salem witchcraft trials, which we had a whole episode about that. Um, I was more interested in talking about the recent ones that are clouding our politics today.
Speaker 0 00:26:11 You talk about the new bird conspiracy. I don't think we did. Did we? So the Newburg conspiracy, this is a conspiracy. That's actually true.
Speaker 1 00:26:21 The problem is when there is a, when you do find out that something was true, that's what fuels it's become circumstance, right? That's what fuels like, well, if that's true, then maybe this could be true. And it sends people into a completely psychotic spiral. So let's go into that.
Speaker 0 00:26:39 So Newburgh it's named after Newburg, you knew New York, the continental army was camped in Newburgh, New York and soldiers are very unhappy because they weren't being paid, um, pensions that were supposed to be kind of issued. We're not. And this letter circulates, um, about basically having a military coup and taking, uh, taking over the government of the United States, 1783, 1783, 1783. And this is so when people ask me why I think George Washington, what I think he did good for the country, George Washington stops it dead in his tracks. And he's like this, isn't what we fought this revolution for. Um, and he gives this very famous, really emotional appeal to his officer saying, you cannot do this. The Congress is Supreme in this land.
Speaker 0 00:27:38 And what happened then as Washington said, however, I will bring up the grievances to Congress and say, look, you've got to pay these soldiers and Congress wasn't able to do everything, but they did pay some of the back pain that was missing. Um, and they gave them instead of lifetime pensions, five years of full pay. And so here's a conspiracy, literally a conspiracy because you had conspirators these officers who were trying to engineer a COO of the United States, and then you are George Washington step in and kind of say, look, you can't do this. Now. What's interesting is this Washington has stepped in and labeled all of these men traders and had them executed. He was well within his power to do that. Um, now there is no uniform code of military law at this point, but definitely he could have done it. And there's still some ambiguity of this because we don't know, especially like, um, some of the higher ups involved, um, like John Armstrong and general Horatio Gates. We don't know exactly what they thought they'd get out of this because those two men did not have to worry about money. So what did they have to get out of it? And we'll never really probably know any of that, but I mean, here's a conspiracy, that's actually literally true. This actually happened. It was stopped. Um, and I think you're right. I think it's people who believe in conspiracies, especially the more way out once. I think they can point to something like this and say conspiracies happen.
Speaker 1 00:29:25 Yeah. It, it certainly gives a fuel to that fire to say that, you know, sometimes things don't happen the way that they're reported. Sometimes there are coverups. Uh, and we find that out. We do figure that out from time to time, you know, we will find out years later that, Hey, something wasn't as was originally reported. And I think that with a lot of conspiracy in like medicine, when you thinking back to COVID-19 right, like there has the government, hasn't always functioned as an honest player and medicine either, right? I mean, we've touched on this. That's exactly what I was getting to the Tuskegee airmen, right? Like where they were performing experiments on black Americans. And we also know the story of Henrietta lacks. We also know about, you know, uh, I don't know,
Speaker 0 00:30:17 It's really quickly Henrietta lacks for listeners because they might not be completely familiar with who she is. Although this is someone you should know about
Speaker 1 00:30:25 Henrietta lacks. There's a great book about her and it's called the immortal life of Henrietta lacks. And it goes into, you know, her immortal life, uh, meaning that her cells were taken, um, as a source of cells to, um, become, you know, it's been an importance, uh, excuse me, an important segment of her cells have been used in medical resource, uh, research over the years and this was done without her permission. Um, and she was basically being experimented on when she was sick. Um, she had cancer and her cancer cells were extracted and it's called the Heela line, H E L a S like Henrietta lacks. Um, and so sometimes a lot of people didn't know the origins of the cells and her family was not made aware of her cells or the existence of this massive medical research experiment until well into the 1970s.
Speaker 1 00:31:27 And, uh, so her cells have been used for medical research, radical research and for commercial purposes for years and years and years. Um, so the idea that like the government and medicine can act in, you know, dishonest ways and do things without permission or lie about it, or withhold information that has happened again and again and again. And, um, we also know what the Tuskegee experiment that they were experimenting on blocks soldiers. So the idea that this could never happen, it does. And it has. And so that helps fuel, I think a lot of the conspiracy.
Speaker 0 00:32:11 Yeah. I, again, I think it's a case of here's a conspiracy, that's actually true. Um, and I think for many people,
Speaker 1 00:32:19 Right? Like, so I think that's part of it and it's not a conspiracy anymore, is it? Or won't,
Speaker 0 00:32:26 I mean, it's, there are people who can inspire to keep this secret from her and her family.
Speaker 1 00:32:32 Yes. Okay. Well, we talked a little bit last time. You'd said that like the JFK is what in your mind kind of spurred the modern 20th, 21st century Zelle, you know, like the zealot for conspiracy, it kind of is born in the JFK assassination. There are people who, who are conspiracy theorists who say that the phrase conspiracy theory itself is a conspiracy because it was created in the wake of the JFK assassination in order to discredit those who had, who had different beliefs. And so if you even say, so, if you're talking to somebody who's QA on and you say that's a conspiracy theory, they automatically don't want to speak to you because, or they don't want to deal because they say, you're just trying to discredit me because there's a negative connotation. And that, that negative connotation was created in order to discredit people who thought differently or thought outside of the narrative. And there's so much psychology that goes behind that. Like I've been reading article after article about the psychology that goes into people, just so badly wanting unique information.
Speaker 0 00:33:55 Yeah. I mean, I, I, I, what I'd like to bring up, which is another one that there is a portion of truth in the conspiracy theory and people who believe in this then take that portion of truth and say, well, then the whole thing has to be true or Harbor.
Speaker 1 00:34:16 Oh yeah. I think we talked a little bit about that.
Speaker 0 00:34:19 I got a little more information add to that. Okay. So Pearl Harbor, you know, there's a conspiracy theory of the United States has for knowledge of the attack. Of course, Naval strategists realized that when the United States and Japan go to war Pearl Harbor, the headquarters for the Pacific fleet is going to be a primary target for the Japanese Navy. Of course, they know that and people were like, well, then the government let it happen. Well, no, they didn't let it happen. In fact, we can look, you can see kind of a series of blunders happened to make it worse. And a movie it's one of my favorite movies. My dad and I used to watch it all the time. Uh, Tora, Tora Tora. It is a co-produced American Japanese film about Pearl Harbor. And it kind of shows you the series of blunders that happened that lead to this thing. One of the things is they had this new fangled radar and they had stationed the radar on Oahu, but they turned it off most of the day because they only had a couple of people who could man it, so when they weren't there, they would turn the thing off.
Speaker 1 00:35:26 And so that's, what's kind of brilliant about it, right? It's not brilliant. It's terrible. But like that, it happened on a Sunday, the Japanese knew like these Americans, these Christians, they're going to be sleeping in a church and resting and not men
Speaker 0 00:35:41 Sailors were hung over from Saturday night and he knew it was the perfect time to attack. I mean, it's so people hold out. So on November 30th, fi Hawaii, uh, the Hilo Tribune Herald runs a headline. Japan may strike over weekend and people point to this and say, they knew it was going to happen. It's like, yes, they knew the United States was going to get hit by Japan. At some point they don't know when, but they have a pretty good idea of where, and that's a, there's a big difference between that. And FDR let Japan attack us. So we could go into the war by the end of November, the United States and Japan were, I hate to use the word inevitable, inevitably going to fight.
Speaker 1 00:36:29 I think we talked a little bit about this in the Pearl Harbor podcasts specifically, but that Japan's, they were twisting Japan's arm. The United States, the United States had been twisting Japan's arm and cutting off their oil supply for months. And they were being forced into an aggressive position in order to actually fuel their, their military campaign and their takeover of Southeast Asia. So the United States in Japan had been feuding for a while. Um, and the attack on Pearl
Speaker 0 00:36:59 Harbor 1898.
Speaker 1 00:37:01 Well, sure. I think
Speaker 0 00:37:05 Japan was not happy with the United States taking the Philippines, not happy at all.
Speaker 1 00:37:10 Well, they weren't happy with the forced opening of Japan in the first place. Was that in 1868, right. Going back, but you're right. There has been this longstanding feud. And then it really, really came to a fever pitch when the United States cut off their oil supply and the United States had sided with China. A lot of students are surprised by that. It's like, no.
Speaker 0 00:37:35 Yeah. The United States like did this in support of China and Japanese aggression into China. Um, and it's does the United States know that Pearl Harbor is going to be attacked? Most definitely. Do they know when it's going to happen? They have a general idea, but they don't have a precise idea. And they thought they would get, especially with this new fangled radar, they'd have some kind of advanced warning. Well, it turns out when you turn the radar off 18 hours a day, it doesn't work very well. Turns out when it's off
Speaker 1 00:38:06 The question though, is why did the United States move the Pacific fleet
Speaker 0 00:38:12 From San Diego, from San Diego to Hawaii?
Speaker 1 00:38:16 And that's where I've had a conversation with. And I mean, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:38:22 Why is the logical forward? I mean, this is, and here's the thing if you're thinking strategically, I mean, it's funny. So I, I teach a class with an institution. Um, I won't mention, um, and we talk about Mehan and Corbett who are two big Naval strategists. Both of them would agree. It makes more sense for you to have that headquarters out in the middle of the Pacific than on the West coast of the United States, proper, particularly if you're anticipating an attack. Um, it just makes more sense. And yeah, I know people are like, well, the United States were pro they were provoking Japan by moving it there. They were making. So it'd be easy for Japan to attack them. No, they were making it easy for the United States to respond.
Speaker 1 00:39:09 Yeah. To be actually halfway right. Or an halfway perhaps to where this was going to be the fight. So that is, that is another one where there's like a small nugget of truth. And then it just gets, it just gets blown out of proportion.
Speaker 0 00:39:25 People are saying, you know, FDRs letting thousands of us sailors die. And it's like, no, that's not what happened. Exactly. All right. What do you got, what do you got for a snack?
Speaker 1 00:39:37 Well, I think, um, one of the ones that we did not really talk about last time, because it was so fringe and I think we mentioned it really quickly was the whole Pizzagate conspiracy theory in QA non. And I dunno if you know, this is like a recent thing, but we, we talked about how it has roots in like medieval, uh, anti-Semitic Colt beliefs of medieval. And even prior to medieval times, and it's like,
Speaker 0 00:40:13 It's like the mother of all conspiracies. Now
Speaker 1 00:40:16 It is. And it's, but it's so deeply rooted in ancient belief. That's tied to anti-ice antisemitism. And the idea is that there. So if new, if you aren't familiar with pizza gate, I'm so happy that you're not. And if you remain unfamiliar with it, please shut it off. But, um, the idea is that there is the, the first part of pizza gate was that there was a pizza parlor in Washington, DC. I think it's called rocket pizza, rocket pizza that was serving as the storefront for child trafficking in the basement, in the basement. And that's, it's positioning in DC. You know, that there were a lot of elite members of government and more specifically Democrats who would frequent this pizza location. And it was, this was during the 2016 election that this came out. And the idea was that Hillary Clinton was behind it. Um, and not in the basement, there were children being trafficked into sexual slavery. This is, if you think that this is happening, it's so scary and sad, right? If you think, Oh my gosh, kids are being sexually trafficked.
Speaker 0 00:41:37 Somebody shows up at the pizza place
Speaker 1 00:41:39 Breaking, right. Somebody shows up and start shooting up the pizza place. So in another one of my leisure moments, I watched a documentary on the rise of Alex Jones. I'm a PBS frontline documentary that I would recommend. And they show footage of the man who showed up at the pizza parlor. He was driving to DC. I believe from North Carolina, he's in his car, he's driving there. He's taking a video of himself explaining I'm doing this for my kids. I'm so devastated by what's happening in DC by these elite people that are hurting children. I mean, this man's heart is pure. He, I mean, I know, I know that sounds weird, but it's like, he truly is coming at it with like, I'm going to help and save the world because he had gone down this rabbit hole of conspiracy about a pizza parlor. And he goes,
Speaker 0 00:42:40 And this is all taking place on like four Chan and eight Chan.
Speaker 1 00:42:43 Yeah. And so it's not mainstream at this time. No. And as a matter of fact, when I brought it up last time, we kind of like, ha laughed it off. And it went away. We didn't really get into it that big because it seems so fringe. But now this theory, it, it moves past the pizza parlor now. And it's about private islands. It's about celebrities. It's about Democrats. It's about
Speaker 0 00:43:10 Steam was going to spill all the beans.
Speaker 1 00:43:12 Right. And so the idea is like, okay, Jeffrey Epstein was the one who had all the information about this evil conspiracy to harm children. And then he was murdered in his jail cell and he had all the tapes, he had all the flight logs. You hear about that all the time. Um, and then, you know, things, flight logs will appear and they've been doctored. People have edited them. We've seen just over the past week, how sophisticated Photoshop, video editing, et cetera have become, I don't know. Have you seen the Tom cruise deep thing? Oh my God. So there's like these videos of someone who totally appears to be Tom cruise and they are fake videos and there's a deep, fake, um, I think the British media did one of the queen, right? She was like dancing and stuff. And it was
Speaker 0 00:44:05 New, uh, software that just got released on one of the genealogy sites where they can animate, Oh, I don't have a relative. And it's creepy. It's disserving. And it's so it's, I think, I think we are at the tip of the iceberg as far as how crazy conspiracies are going to get, because now Pete, it's so easy for people to create evidence to substantiate their positions. But I said the pizza gate thing evolves though, and it starts to change from simply, they're not simply sex. It's not just sex trafficking. So it's not just pedophile elites. And these are political financial and, um, entertainment elites. It's not just that they are having sex with these children. They also killing these children and drinking their blood to remain a mortal.
Speaker 1 00:44:57 Right. So if, again, if you've not heard the term, adrenochrome, I, again, apologize for tainting you. But the idea is that children, when they're frightened have an adrenaline kind of like spike in their blood that creates this elixir kind of like a fountain of youth sort of thing for the celebrities who then drink their blood. This is insane to even say out loud, but this is a mainstream belief at this point.
Speaker 0 00:45:26 So I don't know whether you've read this yet or not, but I was reading this the other day. Um, many Q Anon believers believe the elites have become so emboldened in their actions that they're actually flaunting all of this right in front of us. Look at the plot for Pixar's monsters, Inc.
Speaker 1 00:45:47 Oh, I haven't seen that. I've seen a lot of arguments
Speaker 0 00:45:51 G from children who are frightened. Oh geez. Oh my gosh. So the idea is like Steve jobs and Pixar and Disney, they are flaunting it right in front of our faces and saying, look, we are pedophiles who drink the blood of your children to remain immortal. And there's nothing you can do to stop us. So who, who to cue in on people say is going to save them?
Speaker 1 00:46:17 Okay. So this is, I, you think it can't get crazier. And then it does. They think that John F. Kennedy Jr. John, John, John, John JFK's son who was killed in a plane crash in 1997, his wife, his wife rip, they believe that he's actually not dead. And that he has been working underground for the CIA all this time to stop child trafficking. And that he has been like a deep CIA plant all along. And that he is the one who positioned Donald Trump to take the presidency and that they together were going to work to save all the children who are being enslaved on these private islands that belong to entertainers and democratic elite.
Speaker 0 00:47:13 I mean, nevermind the fact that Donald Trump was friends with Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 1 00:47:16 He was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. They say this conspiracy group says because he was just trying to get, you know, kind of like get close to the right. You know, like he's, he's wanting to take him down, but like, he's going to do in like a, and sort of a double agent kind of way. I mean, this is anything you say, and I'm telling you, I have dealt with people like this, who I was once very close to anything you say there is an answer for it. And the answer is even more batshit, crazy than the last answer. How does the moon base figure into this? So the, okay, so the moon base does figure into it because they think that the, the reason that they have to drink the blood and they have these rituals and all this is because they're not actually human, that they're reptilian and that people leave planet earth through a base in it Arctica and they shown like, you know, imaging of, uh, maps and imaging and stuff of like caves.
Speaker 1 00:48:16 And like, this is the cave that they go into and then they leave there and then they go to the moon base. And I'm assuming people are listening to this and like laughing. I don't know. I mean, cause it's so bizarre, but this is not like a fringe. Like I, you do not have to dig deep on the internet to find this. So why to lizard. People want to live on the moon that I don't know. I that's, that's their natural habitat. Oh, they're an alien space. Fake the moon landing. What was that? I thought the government faked the moon landing. Well, that's also a part of this theory. I don't know. I mean, that's about it. It's like people are so dead set that this is the case that even if you were to suggest it, a lot of the very first things like, well, do you want children to be trafficked?
Speaker 1 00:49:17 It's like, no, I don't. And here's the thing. Human trafficking is real child. Sexual slavery is real. This happens. We know it happens. We know that, um, humans are trafficked. This, this is not fake. Right? So you get that shred of evidence. And, and I always ask people who believe this. I say, you know, why don't you read the book half the sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Cheryl Woden. They're New York times reporters. And they write about trafficking and you know, they write about ways that you can help people who are victims of human trafficking. And you know, that's, that's a place I would point you into. Cause like that's an actual real, but those are lizard people and see that's. So then when people are so far far there, I mean, it's almost like they would need to be institutionalized and reprogrammed and have to undergo intense daily in order to reprogram their minds to behave normally, because they're just so far gone. I don't. And you know, the thing is like, no, I don't like child trafficking. I don't want that to happen at all. But to assume that it's like taking place on this scale where it's political that's, what's so bizarre to me like, Oh, it's the Democrats who do this. Okay. Why, why Democrats?
Speaker 0 00:50:57 I mean, I here's the thing. Do you think if COVID hadn't happened, Q Anon would have gained traction like it has.
Speaker 1 00:51:05 I don't think it would've no, I think it was always fringe. I think it was going to stay on the fringe. I think that, you know, there were going to be a number of Trump supporters who believed it. I don't think that the capital insurrection would have happened and I don't think you would have spread this rapidly. And I blame Facebook. I blame Instagram. I blame tick talk, right? Like this is how this information, I don't blame them. Like, Oh, they're responsible for it. It's like, that's where the information spread so rapidly. We have always had conspiracy theories.
Speaker 0 00:51:39 I'm I'm partially guilty for listening or watching Q Anon videos on tick-tock because they kill me, cut me up. They just kill me because the logical circles, people have to go in to make this whole thing work. Um, it it's just mind boggling.
Speaker 1 00:52:00 So the reason we're doing this episode today, today's March 4th, 2020,
Speaker 0 00:52:04 Something was supposed to happen at 12 o'clock Eastern time.
Speaker 1 00:52:07 So a very special day for QA on, right. It didn't happen. The idea was that going to be referred to power, he was going to be reinvigorated as president today, March 4th, it
Speaker 0 00:52:19 Is president. They
Speaker 1 00:52:22 Said the 19th, what was that about? They say, he's going to be,
Speaker 0 00:52:25 Oh, the United States has been a corporation, um, since U S Ulysses grant and that's not legal. And that, that was going to be rolled back. So every president, since Ulysses S grant would be invalidated. So Trump would actually end up being the new president, but he would now be eligible for two terms because his first term had been out of the corporation and blah, blah, blah, and all of this and surprise it doesn't happen. Although on the East coast now officials did finally take it seriously at the Capitol and say, look, there is a possibility of nutjobs showing up with weapons
Speaker 1 00:53:04 And apparently they didn't do that last time. But look at how much money has gone into this. Now how much, how much of, you know, taxpayers' money has gone into stopping people who are so deranged and out of their mind from again, attacking the United States Capitol.
Speaker 0 00:53:22 I mean, how could that money have been used to actually combat child trafficking,
Speaker 1 00:53:28 Educate people about literacy
Speaker 0 00:53:31 Or to help people who've lost jobs because of the pandemic. I mean, many other things could have been done with that money. And it's maddening because the, uh, the time and energy people spend on this conspiracy, which is not going away anytime soon.
Speaker 1 00:53:52 No, I think you're right. When you said tip of the iceberg,
Speaker 0 00:53:55 I'm curious to see what date they've put forward.
Speaker 1 00:53:58 Next. I know there's going to be, so this is the thing there's always a date. So there was supposed to be, I think back in October, the, there was going to be a rally in Dallas, a Trump rally, and he was supposed to unveil JFK Jr. As being this soldier for fighting against child trafficking. And they were finally going to reveal hashtag trust the plan. They were going to reveal what had happened and that, you know, they'd been fighting this the whole time. Guess what? The man who died 25 years ago, didn't show up because he's dead. How is it that people can't get a fact that someone's dead? I mean, it's like the people who think Elvis is still alive
Speaker 0 00:54:43 So that they latched onto John, John as this person. Like, I don't understand that exactly.
Speaker 1 00:54:50 I mean, he had the, you know, 90 sex appeal going on, but women who were in their forties that was like, who their crush was like. I was like, Oh, Jonathan Taylor, Thomas is going to save the world. You know, like
Speaker 0 00:55:06 Seinfeld,
Speaker 1 00:55:08 I was thinking of that episode, Jon Jones in my exercise class.
Speaker 0 00:55:16 Yeah. I don't,
Speaker 1 00:55:18 We're running out of time, but I do want to bring up
Speaker 0 00:55:19 One final true conspiracy theory, um, that I think is connected with this. And I think it'll be a good intro when we revisit some topics related to this. I don't think we're going to have, uh, an episode devoted to conspiracy theories again, although who knows, but the branch Davidian massacre, if you call it that in Waco in 1980 93, this along with Ruby Ridge are two big rally points that lead to the bombing, uh, the federal office building, um, the borough building and Oklahoma city, and many people who are now part of Q Anon were early believers in this. And the issue
Speaker 1 00:56:02 With rations gotta start. Right?
Speaker 0 00:56:05 Right. So 82 people die in this fire that tears through the branch Davidian compound outside of Waco, Texas after kind of a siege by ATF officials and, and the FBI and the conspiracy theory goes that federal officials started this fire intentionally, um, within Cindy RA devices. And, uh, this was at the behest, uh, Janet Reno who was attorney general. Um, and that this was simply a people trying to exercise their constitutional right, freedom of religion and the federal government, the feds, um, during bill Clinton's presidency, quash, this, so there've been multiple investigations. And while they have criticized some of the things, the ATF and the FBI did during this incident, no credible evidence has ever emerged that the fire was caused by federal officials.
Speaker 1 00:57:17 But this was a great launch point you're right into, I think it's like the baby of QA on,
Speaker 0 00:57:23 But since the investigations are created, either by media outlets or by the government, if you're a conspiracy theorist, you point to that and say, well, that's no evidence. This didn't happen. Like, of course, they're going to say this didn't happen.
Speaker 1 00:57:42 Yeah. And I would like to point out though that, you know, starting to believe this kind of stuff, and then blaming entire groups of people. This is what leads to genocide. I mean, I mean, that sounds like I've just taken such a massive leap, but it's like we see evidence of this kind of conspiratorial thinking in the 1920s in the 1930s in Germany and the Nazi party rises based on a conspiracy that Jewish people are taking over the world and taking over the banks and ruining the economy. And well, what's the best way to handle that. Well, we round them all up and we kill them. And if you, you take something so serious, if to two people in the United States like religion, right? Like your religions being infringed upon people get really upset about that. You take, you just keep taking it further and further and further to the point where I think one of the most sense, the things that we are most sensitive about as a society is cruelty toward children and stack upon that sexual cruelty toward children. So you take this idea that there is an entire group of people responsible for the most egregious crime that we can come up with in our society. Why wouldn't you want to take those people down? Are you a part of them? You know, that's how it gets to that point.
Speaker 0 00:59:08 Well, and I think your, I think your analogy with Germany is well founded because here's the thing Jewish people have long been demonized in Europe, particularly Germany as engaging in like drinking the blood of Christian babies.
Speaker 1 00:59:26 Yeah. This is where it goes back to. I mean the adrenochrome thing, people think it's like, so, Oh, this is weird. It's like, no, that actually we know that that dates back to like the 13th century.
Speaker 0 00:59:36 What's interesting though, is that here? You've got Christians in Germany saying this is what Jewish people are doing. One of the early conspiracy theories about Christianity as it becomes a religion in the Roman empire is Christians kill and sacrifice babies and drink their blood.
Speaker 1 00:59:56 Well, they, okay. So here's the thing, like they're not helping that conspiracy because you have, you know, communion, which is like drink my blood and growing up Catholic. I can tell you when you go sip that wine, you, you are supposed to believe with all your heart and soul that you are drinking the blood of Jesus Christ himself. It's cannibalistic. I know we've talked about this before. If you didn't catch her last episode or if you did, I'm sorry to repeat, but it is Christianity at its core. We take it so faith, like we just take it like it's so normal. Cause so many of us grew up with it, but like that's cannibalism, you're eating somebody's body and drinking. Somebody's blood. That's weird. Like let's dress up. Let's dress up seven year olds in white dresses and make them drink a man's blood. What the what's going on here?
Speaker 1 01:00:47 Let's take pictures. We'll have a cake. It's called communion. It's bizarre. But you know, so that's where this kind of stuff comes from though is like, it's, it's rooted in religious ritual, religious practice, religious anxious, anxious, ancient. And it's not new. It's not new. But if you don't know that and then you hear it. So I think my fear of all this it's like, I scroll through tick talk. I'm highly amused by it. The people who scroll through talk or on average between like what, 10 and 20 years old, they're young. They are young kids that are not educated. And they're going through and watching 62nd clips where somebody is like, you want to know what happened in the conspiracy theory without a law. And they talk really quickly and they like flash pictures up. And then they tell you something that shit insane. And it plants the seed in your mind.
Speaker 1 01:01:46 And then you scroll through and watch somebody dancing. And then you scroll again and you watch a cat doing something funny. And then you scroll again and you get another 16, second insane video. And this is like, to me, that is an indoctrination, right? Like this massive spread of misinformation. And I see it all the time. And like, I can look at it and go, this is rooted in anti-Semitism. This is ridiculous. This is not historically accurate, but I'm 32 years old. And I spend my, I devote my life to watching frontline documentaries, you know? And you have like a 17, 18 year old kid. They don't know I've had so many students peddle conspiracy theories at me. I mean the latest one that I heard, I know you said we ran out of time. I'm sorry. The latest one. I heard those. They think Helen Keller doesn't exist. Have you heard that?
Speaker 0 01:02:39 Well, they say it's impossible for her to have done what she was supposed to have done.
Speaker 1 01:02:43 It's impossible that she existed. It's like, okay. I mean,
Speaker 0 01:02:46 Say it's impossible that she wrote as much as she did because she was blind and she could not speak.
Speaker 1 01:02:52 So it's, if you look at that right. Kind of itself, it's somewhat harmless. It's stupid. It's ignorant. It's incorrect. Somewhat harmless if we, but it's also, it's, it's also, it's not going to like bring down the government. If people think Helen Keller didn't exist. Right. But that's where you get sucked in. You watch one video and interact with one video and the algorithm tunes into your thought process. And then you just get fed a stream of misinformation. And it's, it's so terrifying. I we're laughing. We're crying. I don't know. I don't know what this is all gonna mean for the future. You said we're not going to have another episode on this. Like
Speaker 0 01:03:44 I said, we probably won't. Well,
Speaker 1 01:03:46 I think that we're going to keep seeing the repercussions of this word again and again.
Speaker 0 01:03:53 So there are many conspiracy theories involving the United States and Cuba. And I do at some point, want to have an episode where we deep dive into the United States and Cuba's kind of long relationship because I think a lot of those conspiracy theories elements of those have been co-opted into more modern conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 01:04:12 That's what it always is. Right. You can, you can find the original somewhere buried none of new stuff
Speaker 0 01:04:20 Just to tease that conversation, which will happen at some point. Justin Trudeau, maybe Fidel Castro's son.
Speaker 1 01:04:28 Oh my gosh. Okay. We've got a D
Speaker 0 01:04:33 All right, well, thanks for joining us this week. I'm Jeff. Yeah,
Speaker 1 01:04:37 I'm Hillary. And I wanted to say really quickly. We have the YouTube channel. We have, you know, podcast subscription, Spotify, likened subscribe, please. Um, leave us a comment. Interact with us. Uh, we're happy to be here. We're doing this every week and it's great to be on a schedule. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 01:04:59 <inaudible>.
