Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Wolfgang (False Alarm! part xii)

Episode Date: October 12, 2018

The Hoaxers took over the Conspiracy Theory Championship Title from the Truthers in December of 2012 in response to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary. Eight years later the hoaxers are everywhere, the pizzagaters, the climate deniers, the nationalists, the gaslighters - even the President is a hoaxer. Your host travels to the heart of Hoaxer Darkness: Florida

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called Wolfgang. After the events of 9-11, people came together, especially people who questioned the official narrative of what happened that day at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Collectively, these people came to be known as truthers. But the number of truther subgroups and sects were legion. There were scholars for 9-11 Truth, architects and engineers for 9-11 Truth, teachers for 9-11 Truth,

janitors and service workers for 9-11 Truth, and punk rockers for Truth. I first crossed paths with Alvin holding up his Punk Rockers for Truth sign on the fifth anniversary of the attacks in 2006. He was blasting the song New York City Cops by The Strokes on a loop outside of the entrance to the World Trade Center PATH station. This song, he told me, is what opened his eyes to the big conspiracy You see this song was supposed to be on the official US release of the strokes album Is this it which was due to hit stores on September 25th? 2001 the record ended up being pushed back to October 9th and this song New York City cops was taken off Officially the strokes said they did this because they were moved by the bravery of the city's police force and their response to the terrorist attack.

But Alvin did not buy this for a second. New York City cops, New York City cops, New York City cops, angels smile. This song prodded Alvin to investigate the properties of jet fuel and controlled demolition. This song pushed Alvin to question why Giuliani housed his emergency response team on the top floor of the World Trade Center. This song drove Alvin to study the relationship between the Saudi royal family and the Bush dynasty. This song basically turned Alvin into a full-blown truther. Over the next few years, I would run into Alvin a lot. He was always playing the strokes, and he was always dressed like a Ramon. He would always tell me about his latest discoveries,

truther websites, conspiracy blogs. I imagine this is how he used to talk about music, back in the 80s and 90s, before he became a truther. But besides New York City cops, I couldn't tell you a single song he liked. On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, I decided I should interview Alvin. But of course, once I went looking for him, he was nowhere to be found. He was gone. By 2011, most of the truthers were gone. There was still the guy who carried around the giant inflatable balloon shaped like Building 7, and the woman who would hand out the creepy flyers

about Michael Jackson and his concert from September 10th. But by 2011, the truther movement was a shadow of itself, disappearing into the shadow of the rising Freedom Tower. And then, a year later, something else happened. The worst grade school shooting in U.S. history, at least 27 dead, 20 children, 7 adults, including the principal. And the gunman killed himself. Now, some of the people who questioned the official narrative of what went down at Sandy Hook Elementary do call themselves truthers. But most of them prefer the term hoaxer because these people believe that the cops, the kids, and the shooter were all crisis actors. These people believe the shooting at Sandy Hook was a hoax. And while I'm sure there was some inbreeding between the

truther and hoaxer communities, it is important to understand the fundamental difference between the two. A truther is in search of a hidden narrative to explain something, whereas a hoaxer is committed to denying the very reality of something. Personally, I've always been able to relate to the truthers, this compulsion to connect things that seem unrelated, this search for motive and meaning. The truthers have a lot in common with some of my favorite artists, who mix fact and fiction, the real and the fake, in order to make sense of the world. The hoaxers, well, they're just nuts. Because reality, as Philip K. Dick defines it, is that which when you stop believing in it doesn't go away. But over the past few years, I've had to grudgingly accept

that there's more to the hoaxer than mental illness. In fact, the hoaxer is actually more creative than the truther. Okay, they haven't figured out how to make reality go away yet, but they certainly have become masters at keeping it at bay. For example, a few months after the shooting, a number of children from Sandy Hook sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl in New Orleans with Jennifer Hudson. Some of these children were siblings of the ones who were killed. For spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. A number of hoaxers posted screen grabs on their blogs singers were the same crisis actor kids from the shooting itself,

performing once again for their evil masters. Other hoaxers set out to prove that these singers weren't even kids, but rather teenage victims of human trafficking, on display for the wealthy pedophiles who had come to New Orleans for the Super Bowl. The hoaxers are still talking about this performance. Eight years later, they are still pouring over the facial structures of these children and calling for more photos and birth certificates to be released.

But what's more alarming is how, over the past eight years, this hoaxer mentality has mutated and grown. It is now so much bigger than Sandy Hook. The pizza-gators, the climate-deniers, the nationalists, the gas-lighters, even the President of the United States. Hoaxers. Every single one of them. Now they're thinking about impeaching a brilliant jurist, a man that did nothing wrong,

a man that was caught up in a hoax that was set up by the Democrats. In order to better understand this hoaxer mentality, I decided to go back to the source. This is how I entered the world of Wolfgang Halbig. Wolfgang Halbig is a 72-year-old former state trooper and child safety consultant who lives outside of Orlando, Florida. In December of 2012, he was unemployed and waiting on a trial involving a fall in which he was seeking

damages for his inability to have sex with his wife and inability to work. Wolfgang spent most of his time on the internet. He was a regular contributor to Obama conspiracy theory sites, and he loved Twitter. He wrote a screenplay about four of the original founding fathers who time-traveled to 2018 to save America, and he would use Twitter to try and get celebrities to read his script. I am a nobody with a great idea. Please look at my screenplay, he once tweeted at Jimmy Fallon. He sent his first email to the Newtown School District in February of 2013,

offering his services as a school security expert to help investigate what happened. He never got a response. This, I am convinced, was the affront that started it all. By September 2013, Wolfgang sent 21 FOIA requests for information related to Sandy Hook Elementary, emailed countless angry rants to the Sandy Hook Police Department, and made numerous phone calls to the Newtown School District demanding answers to questions like the name of the sanitation company used to clean up the blood. He's even emailed the FBI demanding they

start making arrests. And then on the one year anniversary of the attacks, Wolfgang starts sending emails to Sandy Hook parents. And when people refuse to answer simple, logical questions, it raises the red flag. And I'm telling you, I'm not going to stop until we get the answers. We know it stinks. I mean, it's phony. The question is, what is going on? We don't know. We just know it's fake. How fake? We don't know. It's sick. On February 19th, 2014, Wolfgang Halbig makes his first appearance on the InfoWars Nightly News. Over the next year and a half, Wolfgang becomes a regular on Alex Jones' network. But on that first appearance, the focus isn't evidence or proof for why Wolfgang believes Sandy Hook is a hoax, it's his claim that the Florida police had come to his home and demanded

he stop asking the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook questions. And what made it even worse, that if I didn't stop asking those questions, that the Connecticut State Police were going to file criminal charges, felony charges against me for harassment. They see you as a threat, Alex Jones would later warn him. You know what happens to people. They're going to claim you suicided yourself.

They'll probably take some of your family out, claim you killed them to demonize you. That's how they do it now. They kill you and your family. Before Alex Jones was a hoaxer, he was a truther. And before he was a truther, he was just your run-of-the-mill conspiracy theorist. But hoaxing was the racket that paid. And it paid a lot. In 2013, Alex Jones saw his income double to almost $20 million. Wolfgang must have caught a whiff of all this money, because on February 20th,

the day after that first appearance on InfoWars, Wolfgang Halbig formally announces the Sandy Hook Justice Trust Fund on his Facebook page, and he started collecting donations. This is how he funds his trips to Newtown. Over the next two years, Wolfgang takes over 20 trips to Sandy Hook. He visits the police department. He drops in on a school board meeting. He gets into a confrontation at the Sandy Hook volunteer fire department. And he starts harassing Sandy Hook parents in person. On May 28, 2014, Wolfgang receives an email from Len Posner, a father who lost his son Noah in the shooting, saying that he'd like to talk.

Halbig doesn't respond. He has another hoaxer send a response instead. Wolfgang does not wish to speak with you unless you exhume your son's body and prove to the world that you lost your son. When Alex Jones is sued by a number of Sandy Hook parents, including Len Posner, he apologizes. Well, he performs something that sounds like an apology. I said, I'm sorry the media took it out of context or me looking at both sides like a lawyer does or whatever. I believe your children died, so no one should go to your house or whatever. I think Sandy Hook happened. Wolfgang takes this as the ultimate betrayal.

I think Alex Jones is a chicken shit, he's a coward, and he has got no courage in finding the truth for the American people. Wolfgang Halbig is committed to remaining a hoaxer till the bitter end. Remember, when I got into this, it was only asking 16 simple questions. It was all about police response and the medical response. It had nothing to do with any of the parents. It had nothing to do with harassing anybody, the crime scene. Just why no trauma helicopters? Why no paramedics? And why can't we get the answers to those 16 simple questions? That's what I'm pursuing.

I will get those answers. When I began this false alarm series, I had three goals. First, I wanted to figure out how I could keep making my podcast, because in 2018, virtually everything has become a blending of the real and the fake. And secondly, I wanted to understand the historical resonances of this political and cultural moment. I wanted to find out what is unique, what is different about the present moment. I feel like I've met both of these goals. But like I said, when I first sketched this series out last winter in the public library on 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village, I wrote down three goals.

I wanted to do something in this last arc of the miniseries that would take the show to another level. I wanted to up the stakes, up my game. This is why I decided to fly to Florida and interview Wolfgang. Now, I didn't contact him in advance to set up a time to meet or anything like that. I just bought a plane ticket to Orlando, Florida, and booked a room at the Hampton Inn in Mount Dora, which is about 20 minutes from his house in Sorrento. In order to catch this Wolfgang, I knew I would need to be like Wolfgang.

I took an early evening flight from New York, and after I checked into the motel, I unpacked my bag and tested my sound devices recorder and my Audio-Technica dynamic microphone. Then I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. I figured if I could get a good night's sleep, then in the morning I would be at the top of my abilities when I went to Wolfgang's house and knocked on the door. But as I lay there in the dark, trying to fall asleep, it hits me. There is no way I'm going to be able to talk to Wolfgang without punching him in the face.

Perhaps if I wasn't a father I could pull it off, but as the parent of a three-year-old, how the hell do I listen to this guy insult mothers and fathers of murdered children without totally fucking losing it? But it's one thing to punch a hoaxer in the face, and another to beat him with an Audio Technica dynamic microphone. I reach over and grab my phone off the night table near the bed, and I google, can you kill someone with a microphone? The only thing that comes up

are metaphorical references like, kill the mic, which make me realize that it's more likely that it will be me, the guy holding the mic, who ends up dead. This is Florida. You're allowed to kill people who show up at your house unannounced, waving around heavy metal objects. Perhaps this is what Wolfgang's been waiting for all along. Perhaps Wolfgang, too, is hoping to up his game. In the 1930s, as the fascists rose to power,

they welcomed violence. In many cases, they sought it out. For them, even the slightest pretense of violence was an opportunity to respond with maximum force. And if I've learned anything from the time I've spent in the 1930s these past few months, dear listener, it's this. The fascists, the people who couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what was fake, were way better at violence than the liberals and the socialists and the pacifists who oppose them.

When the hoaxers turn to violence, we won't be able to stop them. This thought is what's swimming in my head as I fall asleep. But when I wake up, I am fully dressed, standing near the door, holding my microphone, which is covered in blood. Okay, I'm still dreaming,

but it's one of those dreams where you can't tell if you're dreaming or if you're awake. Plus, I'm in a motel in Florida. I have no idea what is real, but I am definitely scared. I'm terrified. If I've just killed my interview subject, then I'm going to have to come up with another idea for this episode, which is already overdue. And then there's my Google search.

I googled, can you kill someone with a microphone? Surely the cops will discover it. And then there's a knock at the door. I open it a crack. A woman pushes me aside and strides into the room. It's Hannah Arendt. She tells me she's just time-traveled from the past to stop me from starting World War III. But then she sees the bloody microphone. She slumps to the floor and starts to weep. I try to comfort her. I tell her about how

I had used her quote about the ideal subject of totalitarianism, not being able to tell the difference between the true and the false in a recent episode of my podcast. But this only makes things worse. She's inconsolable. I sit down in the chair by the window and open the curtains. Once again, I'm unsure if I'm dreaming or if I'm awake. The sky is dark, but I can hear the sound of an angry mob in the distance.

And then I wake up. For real, I'm back in bed. Alone. Hannah Arendt is nowhere to be seen. And my microphone, it's on the desk. I pick it up to be sure. Not a spot of blood. But for some reason, I'm still terrified.

My heart is racing. So I decide to call Wolfgang at his home to make sure he's still alive and I haven't just hidden away the memories. When he answers, I hang up. It sounds like I've interrupted him. My mind starts racing again. What if I called him just as he was about to do another fake fall for another lawsuit? And what if my call threw him off?

So when he jumps out of the shower, he misjudges the distance between the sink and the floor and accidentally hits his head on the toilet and cracks his skull open the same way a heavy Audio-Technica dynamic microphone would crack a skull open. I could still go to jail for this, even though I never even left the motel room, because now there is a Google search and a phone call. I had to get out of Florida. I had to get back to New York. So I throw my stuff in my bag and I call an Uber for the airport, and then I rush out of the motel. As soon as I step outside, I'm knocked to the ground. When I look up, there's a girl standing

over me. She's wearing ripped jeans and heavy makeup, but she can't be more than five years old. Kicked your ass outside, she screams. Didn't I, bitch? For a second, I think I'm still dreaming. But then another girl emerges from the bushes, holding out her cell phone. No, no, no, she says. You gotta say cash your ass, not kick your ass. This girl's maybe 13, 14. They both huddle over the cell phone, looking at what the older girl's just filmed. Damn, the little one says. Look at his face. He's real scared.

Hey, mister, the older girl says. We're trying to make a video. My sister's going to be the next bad baby. Is that okay if she body checks you again? My Uber pulls up. I grab my bag and dive into the back seat. But before we can get away, another girl, maybe seven, eight, steps from the curb and hurls a brick at us. She's also being filmed by her mother, grandmother. What the fuck is going on, I shout.

Everyone out here wants to be the next bad baby, he replies. When I confess that I have no idea what he's talking about, he takes out his phone and starts playing me a song. Check this out, bro. 142 million views on YouTube. And this is how I learn about Danielle Bregoli, the Florida teen who shot to fame after her September 2016 appearance on Dr. Phil in an episode called I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime.

When the audience laughed at her, Danielle lashed out. Kiss me outside, how about that? Huh? Kiss me outside, how about that? Those six words was all it took. Instant internet celebrity. One of the people who watched Danielle's viral video

was an out-of-work music producer named Adam Kluger. He was living in Miami at the time, and he found the Bregoli address online, got into his car, and drove to her house in Boynton Beach. When she opened the door, he promised her that he would make her rich and famous. And he did. And while Adam Kruger deserves the credit for transforming Danielle into bad baby, the phenomenal response, the gold records, international tours, Grammy nominations. None of this would have happened, my Uber driver insisted, if she was fake. Which is why we now have all this, he gestured out the window. There are young girls making raw street videos on every corner. I see toddlers curb stomping a crossing guard,

a two-year-old menacing her nanny with her stroller, a five-year-old trying to ride someone's poodle like a horse, and a girl who's maybe seven trying to board a school bus with an AR-15. As we turn onto the highway to the airport, my driver turns up the music. This is not a dream. This part is 100% real.

You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called Wolfgang. Oh my god, Ronnie. White Jays, white Porsche, white wrist, white horse. Hi bitch, hi bitch, hi bitch, hi bitch. Before we do the credits, we're going to have another update on a previous false alarm segment. But first, this short message. Host the most delicious dinner party ever with Joule Sous Vide.

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To get yours, visit chefsteps.com slash Joule and use the code THEORY to get $15 off for a limited time. That's chefsteps.com slash J-O-u-l-e, Code Theory. All right, we're going to be continuing our updates from False Alarm. Andrew Calloway's here, and I guess this week we're going to do deepfakes. Yep. Back in part two of False Alarm, fake nudes, Benjamin did an interview with this guy who was claiming to be the Reddit user Deepfakes, the actual creator of the Deepfakes AI technology used for face swapping in videos.

It got a lot of attention from pundits discussing the implications for politicians, but Deepfakes' subreddit was dedicated to putting female celebrities' faces on porn stars' bodies. Deepfakes told us that this is the real reason he created it. Let me ask you something personal. Aren't you sick of this Me Too shit? Uh, no. You're not sick and tired of seeing feminists screaming for manicide every time you go on the internet? I sure as hell am.

And it's why I put so much work into deep fakes. I'm so confused. Yeah, I know. But it's not my fault. We're talking primal social justice. Right? It's like how society used to deal with women who tried to destroy men's lives with their lies and ambition. Yeah, that went in so well.

He did call you Benja Woman at the end. Yeah, I tried to block that one out. Yeah, but guess what? You might be surprised to hear that he's actually reached out, and he really wants to be back on the show again. Ooh, I'm pretty sure I don't want to give him one more second of air time. Well, just let me play you this voicemail that he left us hey listen i know we uh we didn't exactly end things on the best of terms last time because i allowed your passive

aggressive bullshit to get to me so i wanted to come back on the show to explain that deep fakes is going a different direction consensual that's. I'm pivoting into the legit porn business. Instead of slamming the women, I'm focusing more on helping the men. I'm doing a public service. So this time, instead of you taking a woman's face and putting it on the porn star getting rammed, you take your own face and put it on the guy doing the ramming totally harmless you know and that gives you a little bit of feeling better about yourself you get a little self-esteem going there right so i think that this is the way to go and there is a shit ton of money to be made here so don't be a cuck, you fuck. Get in on this.

Yeah, I think I'm going to stick with this is a no. You know what? I'm with you on that. We definitely shouldn't have deepfakes back on the show, especially because if he's really trying to make money off his deepfakes, that's just the wrong way to do it. What do you mean? The best way to make

money with deepfakes is with deep fake news. Dimitri is 18 years old and he says that in the past six months he's made more than $60,000 writing, posting, and sharing fake news articles about the American election. So you remember that Macedonian town where everybody was getting rich making fake news stories? They weren't even doing videos. You know, that was all just Photoshop and text. With my video editing skills and your ability to make fake stories that people think are real, we could make so much money if we just were using Deepfake's AI. Yeah, I appreciate, you know, you putting the effort to think this through, Andrew,

but I think we should just stick with the Benjamin coin for now. Do we have an update on that? Well, you know, I haven't been kicked out of my apartment yet, and I'm still on the show, so it's safe to say the Benjamin

coin has been a success. We've gotten orders from entrepreneurial TOE listeners all across the globe. Yeah, I had a few meetups in London and Canada that were really great. And I've delivered a few coins InstaSurf style to listeners in the Bay Area. We should probably do a meetup in New York, don't you think? Absolutely, especially because I have not sent out the New Yorker's coins yet. That's what all the emails are about.

Well, now you've got the chance to come pick up your coin in New York, in person. You know, buy one if you don't have one. Or just come by and say hi if you don't even want one. How about the day after the election? November, what is that date? That's the 7th this year. Spicy choice, Benjamin. Should we do it in Brooklyn or Manhattan?

Let's wait to see who we hear from, and then we can just email people the location. I don't want to give it away in advance. It should be secret, maybe a code. So what are we saying? You should just have people email us if you're interested? Absolutely. And the email is super easy.

It's toe at prx.org. And we'll be able to get back in touch with you. All right. Let's all get rich together. Yeah. This episode was produced by me, Benjamin Walker, and Andrew Calloway. There's lots more about the hoaxers and false alarm on the website. That's theoryofeverythingpodcast.com. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia,

home to some of the world's best podcasts. Find them all at radiotopia.fm. Radiotopia.fm