Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Did Alex Jones Kill Free Speech?

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

This week Andrew, Akaash, AlexxMedia, and Mark discuss Alex Jones on Joe Rogan, Andrew's bachelor party, Nelk Boys, Trump, AB to the Bucs, Brady vs Belichick, and much more. INDULGE! Go to https://Surfshark.deals/flagrant and use code FLAGRANT to get 83% off a 2-year plan and 3 extra months for free! Want an extra episode a week? Join the Flagrant Army www.Patreon.com/FLAGRANT2 Flagrant 2 is a comedy podcast that delivers unfiltered, unapologetic, and unruly hot takes directly to your dome piece. In an era dictated by political correctness, hosts Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh, along with AlexxMedia and Mark Gagnon, could care less about sensitivities. If it’s funny and flagrant it flies. If you are sensitive this podcast is not for you. But if you miss the days of comedians actually being funny instead of preaching to a choir then welcome to The Flagrancy.

What up, people? Shulte here, and you guys are about to listen to a clip from our weekly Patreon episode. If you want to sign up to our Patreon, support the flagrancy, support what we are doing, completely uncensored, flagrant content, you go to patreon.com slash flagrant2. With no more interruptions, here is the exclusive clip. Okay, so Alex Jones was on Joe Rogan with the great Tim Dillon. Yes. Our buddy Tim.

Shouts to Tim. And Alex Jones is by far the most entertaining person to listen to in modern society, in my opinion. This guy is mind-bogglingly entertaining. Everything from the voice, he's like the Tasmanian devil, right? And everything he says out of his mouth, it sounds like a complete lie. And then it's also kind of true and you want it to be true. I literally, I'm glad that Joe fact-checked him. I'm glad because he's so easy to discredit when he gets like one little thing wrong. You could disc'm glad because he's so easy to discredit when he gets one little thing wrong. You can discredit everything that he's

possibly said, so I'm glad that Joe's fact-checking because it actually adds more credibility to what Alex Jones was talking about. That's what Joe was trying to tell him for hours. I know. He didn't really get it. That being said, I really wish that there was no fact-checking as well because it'd be great to just see him meander on

and just go on that tangent and just run with it, man. I want to know how crazy it gets. Let me go into your brain. Let me go down that rabbit hole. Go to the UFOs. Go to the different portals to different worlds and universes. You know who he is? Who?

Kanye? White Kanye. Yeah. Isn't that exactly what White Kanye would do? Conspiracy theories? And less successful. Yeah. Like, okay, I don't understand it.

I've never seen Alex Jones before. I've never watched any. I've never heard him speak. Yeah. I hear you guys talk about him. Yeah. I don't get the appeal. So that looked like we were just watching a crazy person that's on the side of the street,

just blabbering all crazy shit. Yeah. Every once in a while, he'll hit something that's like sort of kind of right but it's still like it's still like clickbaity right and to try to assist alice point what he was saying with kanye is kanye is so successful i kind of have to listen alex jones isn't that successful so he's like no he was wildly successful like alex jones was doing he wasn't kanye successful kanye's a billionaire allegedly allegedly but sure sure but alex jones was killing it like he was doing really well he had his own network i mean he was completely independent i mean and he was in a lot of ways

like pushing forward a lot of these news stories that right now we just assume are all true and in the beginning he was he's the epstein guy he was talking about the island years ago nobody was saying anything all of us just accept this right now right we all just sit here of course how could this happen he was screaming about that for years and then like a fucking idiot he's saying that like sandy hook is a hoax so we're like oh he's the sandy hook hoax guy instead of oh he's the guy who's talking about elites banging kids yeah his appeal was back in the early days he was like i think a little bit more leveled like i'm talking like 2006 2007 like he starts info wars and like has like a little bit more credibility he's just doing like conspiracy radio like trying to expose the truth quote unquote and then slowly kind of devolves into

like this caricature of himself and gets like more and more like enraged and like starts going off on these more wild tangents yes but i think in the early days he was like the source for conspiracy news and all these like early conspiracy theorist people on the internet were like oh this is a this is the guy it's like 2010 he's putting out these youtube videos and people are like oh wow this is awesome he's the only one talking about it and so he's the only one in that space and people are fascinated by it early on it's also happening at a time where like we're able to get our own information and there's nothing more interesting than a conspiracy that seems like it could be true especially when it's about certain people that we already distrust or don't like right it's the

ultimate confirmation bias we're like oh, people in politics are shady and they do fucked up things. And oh, these rich billionaires are shady as well and they do fucked up things. Tell me why. You know what I'm saying? Like if we are, what is that saying that we always say? It's like, if you got to see it to believe it,

we often say you got to believe it to see it. So he's ultimate confirmation bias for those who've like lost faith in institutions. Yeah. Right? And he's coming out here and he's's doing he's got this great voice and he's saying these like crazy salacious stories and he says them in the craziest way the frogs are gay or whatever right but here's the thing the frogs aren't gay but there's so much estrogen or whatever in the water in like florida i think it was um that the frogs were actually trans yeah they became like hermaphroditic. They were hermaphroditic.

Basically, they were coming out with male and female sexual organs. So he gets it wrong with gay, but he is right about what's happening to these. But he also asserts like a motive to a group of people that is not gonna confirm. So he says they are trying to make the frogs gay. Oh, it's just a byproduct of like birth control

and like food and estrogen and all that shit. So it's a tricky situation and he's very easy to discredit. But he happens to be right about certain things and major things. Now, the interesting conversation that we can have about this is, is our government and the people in power so fucking corrupt and disgusting in their regular practices that this guy can throw shit at a wall and enough of it sticks where he has some credibility with certain people donish my homie donish mcgool had a great point where he said that's somebody was like you know he's crazy but he's making some points he starts laughing he goes i love that that's where the world is

he's crazy but he's making some points is enough and he goes now it's news is just horoscopes they get a couple of things that are right and you're like oh that's that's the truth that's my truth now confirmation yeah just and i think in 2006 he probably could do a lot of his own research whatever but then when you become famous for being a conspiracy theorist he just grabs every conspiracy theory and that's why his knowledge on it is half-baked because he's just grabbing a hundred things and some conspiracies are true so a couple will stick he's not the guy that knows though he just fucking grabs as many theories as he can and throws them all and that's what's really interesting about that is that like you only need one conspiracy to stick for the people that want to believe you to justify you and you only need one conspiracy to

be wrong for the people that want to discredit you to discredit you. So it's like the same amount of information justifies you and discredits you. So automatically you're going to be this polarizing figure, right? It's tricky. It's like, do you have to be a hundred percent right about everything in order for us to trust you? The news isn't a hundred percent right about everything, but we kind of trust the news. Well, that's kind of falling apart, but there was a time where we did. It's like, I don't know. When you become the person that is exposing, and I'm not an Alex Jones fan. I've never watched a full episode of his show. I just see clips, and I think he's just an absurdly entertaining guy because he's saying all these things that are absolutely probably bullshit, but there might be shreds of truth in them.

But when you see the state of things where this guy happened to be right about some major events you got to give him a little tiny bit of credibility no no here's the thing though is that he is asserting like pieces of fact and then also drawing a narrative and a motivation around it and it's explain what that is so like yeah he's saying oh the elites and jeffrey epstein are on this island in order to abuse children for Satan, blah, blah, blah. He'll put that out there as like his theory. I don't know if that's an exact- Look it up. Look it up. Something like that. Look it up. Yeah. He has a temple where he's sacrificing babies and he's abusing kids, blah, blah, blah. And then it turns out that

Epstein is abusing kids on an island. And then that's the thing everyone accepts. But he has all these other like causal sort of implications that are not proven. So this is important to know. And I think this is where he loses most of us, right? Is when you add that narrative. He has an intention. Yes. Where we can't, we know the fact and the fact might be right, but you assign this intention to it.

And now you've coupled those and people who are like, oh, the fact is true. A lot of them are like, oh, the intention must also be true. And that's what's dangerous. Because he asserts both is true. Correct. And the attention and the intention and the group that he attaches them to are all, are both, maybe, they're definitely fabrications of his imagination.

Maybe they're true, but it's really hard to prove. But when you say they're in a satanic cult, how do we prove that they're in a satanic cult? Yes, they're fucking these kids. We know that they're fucking these kids. But when you go, they're in a satanic cult run by globalists and they're trying to do those things like where is the proof of that now you lose us yeah because he just has to up the dopamine for for up the morphine whatever they're saying is no dopamine that's good like i can't just give them the same

truth shit that i gave them before now i'm the conspiracy theorist guy so now um okay there's estrogen in the water oh they're doing that to make us all gay or whatever. I have to so those people keep getting that dopamine rush of, oh, this is my guy. I get a rush listening to him. So I have a few questions because I'm really coming at this from an outsider. Yep. Is he playing a character?

No, but I think he's doing the same thing that, I think he's leaning into what works, but I think he's doing the same thing that what is the guy's name? Hannity did, like a lot of Fox News guys did. I mean, Jon Stewart also did it, where when he gets in trouble, he's like, oh, we're not really the news. This is entertainment.

Oh, he does use that. Yeah, but everybody in news does that when they get something wrong. They go, we're just entertainers. Hannity, there was a big lawsuit against him. It's not really news entertainment. Jon Stewart is like, I'm a comedian. Alex Jones was sued and said basically the same thing. I'm a performance artist. I'm a performance artist. Maybe not him, but his lawyer said it. I don't know if he believes

that about himself, but when you get sued, you're like, oh, I'm performing. Okay, and so now the next thing is when you have intent behind conspiracy, and I'm not against, I mean, I'm for free speech, but isn't that dangerous? It's dangerous.

It can be, yeah. Like, if you convince enough people that these people are Satan, like, hey, let's go out and kill Satan. I mean, that's what happened with Comet Ping Pong, right? That Pizzagate thing? Yeah. You know, the guy stormed the pizza place with an AR-15. He was looking for a pedophile dungeon, right?

So the tricky, excuse me So the tricky thing with that is when you digest enough of this QAnon stuff, you digest enough of these conspiracy theories that have intent, that have that narrative attached to it,

you start to go, if I'm not doing anything, I'm complicit with this evil that is existing in my community that's taking these fucking children. I have daughters. I can't let this happen to my daughters.

I'll go out there and do it. When instead, if they're isolated events, it's easier for the rest of us to live with it. All right, guys. We got to take a break for a second because we need to make sure you're getting the most of the Internet. It's very simple. There's a lot of Internet out there, and you're not able to access it because you do not have a VPN. Now, what is a VPN? There's fancy ways to describe it, but that's not how I'm going to describe it.

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inherently wrong. It's not bad at all. Because he's trying to save the day, trying to save these kids, but is an idiot doing vigilante justice that got wrapped up with conspiracy shit online, even though there's weird shit in the conspiracy stuff, but he got drawn into the narrative. And so Alex Jones puts out these narratives and is like,

this stuff is weird, and here's why it's weird. And then people attach themselves to the why, and then they try to, I don't know, be a hero. Yeah. So maybe we could conclude in a way with like the narrative is often just as dangerous as the information, as the conspiracy. Yeah, it could be. And it's more dangerous in a way that there's no way to – it's way harder to prove. The conspiracy, you can go into some stuff and you can be like,

okay, was 9-11 exactly the way it was portrayed to us? You know, there's a lot of information that says maybe it wasn't, but if you're going to be like, there's a,

what is it, what is the word they use? Cabal. Yeah, global cabal. There's a global cabal of these elites. They're drinking child's blood

and you're just like, okay, there's no way to prove this with, there's no way to prove this besides this conspiracy that you're attaching the narrative to. I'm agreeing with your point, but I'm going to add one word.

It's way more dangerous because it's harder to prove wrong. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. That's the thing. How do you prove something wrong that isn't even provable? So if I believe this and you can't prove me wrong, I'm in. There's no way of pulling me out because there's no proof that they're not a satanic cult. You don't have that proof.

I'm out. So let me ask you guys this question. Do you think that Alex Jones could exist with zero scrutiny if he just didn't attach narrative to these conspiracies? If he was going, look, guys, this information exists right here. I can't tell you what the truth is about this information, but this information I know is true, and it looks like this. I think two things. I think, one, I don don't know about zero but there would be far less scrutiny two he would not be nearly as famous that's true because the romance of it and not like literal romance but the idea is like intoxicating of like satanic cults but it's so fucking captivating yeah

that's what blows him up and that's why he has to lean into it yeah that's a good point yeah i agree i don't think anyone can live without zero scrutiny but like that's where i get frustrated with alex jones because i'm like as someone that's interested in like kind of conspiratorial thinking i like to watch these videos and they're just like fun but like he portrays things that's so crazy that someone that's interested in being like well wait there's like some weird things in these emails or like can someone explain this people write it off because they're like oh you're like an alex jones crazy person it's like and he's like poisoning the well of all his poisoning his own well yeah weird yeah and that's why joe who i think gives him the benefit of the doubt is like dude i'm gonna fact check you yeah so that everybody doesn't write off what you say because i joe believe a lot of the things

that you're saying maybe not the narratives you attach but the things that you're saying are real these events are real you do know people need to know about the media you attach, but the things that you're saying are real. These events are real. You do know things that the media isn't reporting. Yeah, the estrogen is fucking up amphibious populations in Florida. We should talk about that and address it. But the fact that he wraps it up as some crazy narrative about satanic whatever. First they make the frogs gay,

then they make the guy. Exactly, 100%. Literally that, it fucks up the whole thing and then the actual problem doesn't get solved. And then you throw the whole thing out. It's nonsense. It is interesting. Does that make more sense, Al? Yeah bit more right i'm also but i think your

reaction is completely understandable coming from someone who has never indulged in alex jones don't you think that that would be the average but you knew more who he was i had an idea but then yeah when the second he was like it's pronounced gizlaine and like he knew and then i'm out that's a fraud. I'm out. I am also, this is what I was going to say. I'm not the free speech absolutist that I used to be. And he's a big reason why. Like I used to think, let anybody say anything.

It's all good. This is the Constitution. Do not fuck with this. And now I see how freedom of speech can actually be dangerous. Yeah. Like Comet Pizza, we're lucky nobody died. But if somebody got shot up, that is off of a fake news story that he put out there is real and that that's the one thing i was struggling with after watching that interview because i'm like yo this type of rhetoric is

dangerous and it's like but i'm against like trying to stop free speech it was i'm just like torn i am a free speech absolutist and um i And I understand the point that you're making. I do understand the point. I just think that this is worth, this is the cost you have to pay for the benefit of free speech. That's just my theory. And nothing is free, meaning in terms of like lives lost, in terms of disinformation and all these things, there's nothing that's going to be free. There's going to be a cost to every single bit of freedom that we have. And I think that we have to be willing to pay this and combat it with free speech, meaning like combat it with the facts and use our free speech to show why some of these

things are completely ridiculous. But once we start clipping, I think there's a little slippery slope that happens. I have no solution in mind. But your criticism is 100% valid. And it's not even just, like if we extrapolate it, it's not just comment pizza. It is, I hate the term post-truth age, but now I know what they mean. Where everybody just kind of chooses the reality and we don't really need that much evidence. And part of the reason the country is so divided

is this kind of shit. So if everybody's absolute free speech has created this crazy division, that literally, are we in 10 years? Are we having a civil war? What's going on? So to that point, which is really interesting about like the history of media and there's this Matt Taibbi – I think it was podcast or something like that. He broke something down that's quite interesting.

Right now we look at news, right, and about how polarized it is. Like CNN is super left and Fox is super right, right? And we look at this as a function of profit, right? Because right now we live in this post- function of a profit right because right now we live in this post-truth age where everybody has their own truth yeah right and they just want their bias confirmed so like i think everything conservative is right fox tell me why and i think everything liberal is right cnn tell me why right right um and we always say this to each other we go yo well back in the day the news was more fair right like people it was more in the middle and

cnn you can kind of trust and like fox was a little bit right but every cnn was kind of the middle that was like tends to be you're like a little bit right but not crazy a little bit right like everything was a little bit left but not crazy yeah um but matt taibbi says an interesting thing he goes before the internet being like centrist with your news source was the most profitable. So it's always been news for profit, but you touched the most people when you were in the center. And because it's become so cheap to put out information, now you don't need a massive printing press. You don't need trucks to deliver newspapers. You don't need these massive structures and systems to get information throughout the world, which is what we did for newspapers. Now you literally need a Twitter account. You can say anything.

Now people are like, oh, well, I'll take my news the way I like it. And it's forced these news channels who were centrists to actually become more extreme to maintain their profit margin. See what I'm saying? Yeah, and adding on to that, it's hard to get the masses in anything now.

Everything in entertainment is so niche. Exactly, because we don't have to accept the masses. I don't have to accept 25% of this article that I want to, right? Like I can have niche. Yeah, so the only way to make money when it's so fragmented is to lean into one side or the other.

Exactly, so they've leaned in an extreme way. And what I believe, and I think this is like the ethos behind our pieces that we're putting out like every week when we were doing the monologue, right, is that the extremes of news have gotten so far left and right that they've actually started to alienate the masses, right? They've gotten so niche that the majority of people are watching CNN and they're like, ah, it's too left for me. And they're watching Fox News like, ah, it's too left for me.

And they're watching Fox News like, ah, it's too right for me. Will somebody just tell me the fucking truth? Like, what is happening? And then you see a platform like Rogan pop up and just have people come out that just give the truth. I mean, maybe outside of an Alex Jones episode,

but usually he has these experts that are just like, hey, I don't have a bias. Like, here's just my take on these events. And then we start doing these monologues where we're like, yo, we're not gonna be biased. We're just gonna give what the truth is.

And you see the whole world start to gravitate to it. And I think it's a really cool time in media where the profit matrix has actually punished the brands themselves. Does that make sense? Like CNN has gone too far one way. Fox has gone too far.

And then the most of us, most of us are sitting here waiting for someone to speak for us. And the voices that do come up and speak for the people, they gravitate to. So you think in the end, it's worth keeping free speech because we'll get back to a place where-

I think so, and I think this is a cost that sucks, and honestly, lives are lost, and it is fucked up, don't get me wrong, but I think eventually the ship does balance itself, and we need free speech in order for it to be balanced. But your criticism is not wrong and anybody who like doesn't have any understanding of why you have that like it's just one of these absolutists that are that are just as blinded as you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah there's people that

like lost their kids in sandy hook and then alex jones goes out and says oh they're faking it and then these people are getting death threats after their kid got murdered like and that's where it's trickier for me is like if you present it as a fact. Yeah. Then I'm like, that's dangerous. Yeah. Whereas entertainment, I think you should be able to say whatever you want. And I guess they try to sneak in and say we're entertainers.

But like. That's the other thing. They're being fraudulent in terms of their identity. Right. Yeah. They're going, I'm a news guy. And then the second you're on trial, I'm not a news guy. Exactly.

So that's my biggest criticism is less like what they're saying. It's more how they're presenting it. Right. You know, like we're out here calling ourselves comedians. So when we say a bunch of bullshit that's not true, they're like, oh yeah, they're comedians.

Like we're being honest about what we're giving y'all. Yeah. You know, these are jokes. Yeah. Right. Whereas these motherfuckers are like, no, this is the one truth,

the only truth. As soon as they get called on it, they back up. No, it's not the truth. I'm just doing a thing. I'm a performer. It's pussy at the end of the day bro yeah you gotta stick by it

so then what's the answer for the conspiracy kid that's like on YouTube looking at conspiracy shit like how should they discern the free speech versus the not free speech well one you gotta like check yourself a little bit and that's the hardest thing for all of us to do you know what I mean the hardest thing for all of us to do is like do I want to believe this or

is this the truth and you know i'm sure there's tons of things that we watch because there are people that are annoying right you know chelsea handler yapping about 50 cent we're like just roast this bitch she's just fucking annoying because we think she's annoying but if we sit back objectively and we go okay she's actually trying to joke around she's not really telling black men what they can or can't fit you Then we have this more objective approach. How willing are people to separate themselves from their biases is really tricky. And also, how willing are they to remove themselves from their community? We're lucky as comedians.

We're around people who are all the time trying to think about things differently. Yeah, they're open-minded and willing to analyze shit. Exactly. Akash comes in with some spin justifying some crazy shit and instead of us going how could you think that way we're like man i should have thought of that shit we're upset we didn't have the weird take it's your job to look at every angle yes and find the unique ones so i got empathy for motherfuckers who are locked into a community that is kind of only allowing people to think one way right and then if you try to think another way you could kind of be ostracized

you gotta be a little scared yeah yeah so maybe it's like on, right? And then if you try to think another way, you could kind of be ostracized. You got to be a little scared. So maybe it's like on a personal level, like see if you can not, you know, see if you could check your biases and see if it adds up. But also on a societal level, like, bro, you got to do what you got to do to kind of exist within the ecosystem you're in. And hopefully you could find an ecosystem that is a little bit more tolerant of your views if they don't go along with your peers. Right.

But also discerning and skeptical of information that's bullshit and these fraudsters that are faking it. Yeah, like, yo, healthy skepticism is good. Like, that's all comics we are

in a lot of ways. We're just skeptics. We're like, eh, is it? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, is it really? Like, what's going on? Like, be skeptical.

You know, that's the, yeah, I think that's the uh yeah be i think that's that's that's a great point mark be skeptical all right guys you just listened to a clip from our weekly patreon episode if you want to continue to listen to that episode subscribe join the asshole army patreon keep it tight and keep it flagrant with us you can do that at patreon.com flagrant to indulge