Decoding the Gurus - Interview with Julia Ebner: Extremist Networks & Radicalisation

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Starting point is 00:01:06 But sorry, you have. So my apologies. Dylan Moran. Dylan Moran. Moran. I should get it right. You should be able to get that right. The Irish comedian.

Starting point is 00:01:16 If nothing else, Chris, you should be able to get that right. Anyway, yes. He described the German language as sounding like a typewriter full of tinfoil being kicked down the stairs or something like that but i think that's also a fairly accurate representation of the northern irish accent where you know the southern irish have the like little little i went to the shop with the bought the 33 potatoes whatever it is down there but northern ireland is like that yeah it's like it's it's an unholy hybrid of irish and scottish i think but yeah it's my take that's quite right that's that is correct but before we start my i just wanted

Starting point is 00:02:01 to give a quick shout out to Andy Last from Beyond Synth Podcast. Oh, yeah. Not only endured an interview with me, but also listens to our show. And he's a very good video editor. And he wanted to have a crack at editing some of our badly edited raw videos. And he did that. And he's made very nice videos that were sticking up on the YouTube channel

Starting point is 00:02:28 or the Patreon. So if you see any well-edited videos with fancy camera changes and graphics, that is thanks to Andy Last. And thank you very much, Andy. Let's see how long till he gets rid of. But nonetheless nonetheless even what he's already done is far away and beyond so i wanted to say thank you to andy and that's on

Starting point is 00:02:53 the youtube channel some stuff as well so we do have a youtube channel we don't use it for much we may do if um if if andy keeps it yeah because uh we just don't have any video editing skills, sadly. Yeah, yeah. Look, what can I say? This is a grassroots movement. People lending a hand, lifting each other up. Andy, you're the reason why my nice little LED lights there are turned off and the glaring room light is on.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Not necessarily as flattering as the led lights but here we are this is for you so i'm on board with this i'm a team player i'm on board too that's just good to clarify that and the episode today is an interview episode we have a couple of things to take care of before that, but we should mention that this episode will be airing after the very tragic events that occurred in Israel with the attack from the Hamas terrorists. So we're not going to spend much time dwelling on it. The discourse online has been horrifying around it in so many different ways. And I don't want to contribute to that. I mainly just want to express that all of the images of the attacks and what happened to the people is horrifying. I think anybody with any decency should be horrified by it. And what's going to happen to civilians in the Gaza region is also terrible.

Starting point is 00:04:33 And yeah, the whole situation is a nightmare. And, you know, I just don't have any solution, except I just don't think it should be hard for people to completely without reservation condemn the killing brutal killing of civilians by terrorists so yeah yeah yep agreed i sign off on all of that it's very sad and everyone is rightfully upset i think at the moment and sadly yeah as you say probably more upsetting things will continue to happen in that region of the world and that's actually uh the subject of our introductory segment as well chris something that is more in our balawik which is a particular guru's take on the conflict. Yeah, this is an illustration

Starting point is 00:05:25 about exactly that thing I'm lamenting, the ability for guru types to make events, not just like the tragic events in Israel, but all world events really relate to them and their particular grievances and their friend networks. So this is really just one of the clearest illustrations of this that I've seen in recent times, but it happens all the time after these big major events. And I think it is related to having a narcissistic outlook where you're kind of assuming that a lot of the things that are going on must be related to you when in reality, no, they are not.

Starting point is 00:06:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah, very true. So, yeah, we'll listen to a couple of clips and full credit to BadStats on Twitter. If credit is the right word for bringing... Well, yeah, Badstats, the previous guest on the podcast, Matt, Dan Gilbert, I'm revealing his secret identity, the Bruce Wayne to the Batman. He has been documenting Jordan Peterson, Eric Weinstein, Brett Weinstein, general IDW network craziness for a long time. And he was just recently blocked by Brett for providing these clips. So this is his sacrifice. You know, Brett reached breaking point with him

Starting point is 00:07:01 extracting these clips. So there we we are his sacrifice but but he managed to retrieve these from his last foray really i mean all he's doing is broadcasting brett's profound thoughts to the rest of the world to people who otherwise wouldn't hear it but yeah anyway understandable well, this is true. And actually, the interaction is pretty funny because Bad Stats has a tendency to respond to Brett's tweets by sarcastically praising him for his insight. Brett tweeted,

Starting point is 00:07:40 A word of advice. When things don't add up, you mustn't question it. Keep walking and don't make eye contact you'll find me in the brief period where they leave you alone before the ground liquefies beneath your feet so that's hung in chick mark in case you didn't pick that up and bad stats responded thank you brett for being one of the brave few who are doing the heroic work of keeping the ground solid beneath our feet great uh. And then character response there from Bad Slats 2. But Brer responded saying,

Starting point is 00:08:08 I have observed you for years and find you detestable to your core. Pretending to be like-minded is only one of your despicable traits. But I have not blocked you until now. Surely you wonder why. Hope you figure it out and it causes you to rethink your values.

Starting point is 00:08:25 I love that he gave him a parting mystery box, right? Like he can't just, you've annoyed me too much. He has to hint that there's something, some specific thing that he needs to puzzle out. Yeah, that's right. So now Brett is living in Dan's head rent-free. I'm sorry. Sorry, Dan. He's in there now.tt is living in dan's head rent free i'm sorry sorry dan he's he's in there now good good luck in figuring it out that line matt there where he said pretending to be like

Starting point is 00:08:53 minded is only one of your despicable tricks it's not like bad stats is burrowing his real feelings it's incredibly obvious that he's taking the piss but but there are hints that like he managed to work out right that he he can see through the facade that he's that created like my god yeah i know it's it's always the way actually with with brett and eric which is just things don't quite match up like like superficially it kind of makes sense but if when you think about it it's like it doesn't that doesn't make sense uh yeah yeah yeah and i just want to mention as well that brett appeared with michael schirmer endorsed 9-11 conspiracies but also promoted misinformation about the covid vaccines and you know just in general what he does

Starting point is 00:09:47 and he made all these claims in particular about what the spike protein does just just one set of like covid claims related to the immune system yeah the the spike protein travels around the body and lodges itself in your heart. Yes, all this. And he presented some speculation and said no expert has ever been able to accurately respond to these points that he's made. And Dan Wilson, Debunk the Funk, got three or four experts to explain in detail independently. And each of them provided various explanations as to how badly he was getting things wrong and and chris i really appreciated their explanations too because in many ways they were like a tutorial in in very basic immunology and a review of the

Starting point is 00:10:40 very basic simple literature that brett either hasn't read or doesn't understand or has dismissed because of his conspiratorial mindset. So, yeah, that was an excellent thing. Yeah, so that came out before the clips that we were going to play and Brett responded saying he's going to refute all of them. But, yeah, we'll look forward to that. But in the meantime, he had to respond to the events in Israel. And he did that in part by talking to a sub-stacker, independent journalist there, who is a COVID dissident, as they like to identify themselves.

Starting point is 00:11:22 And on that episode, they promoted a variety of conspiracy theories about the event, about it potentially being sanctioned by the Israeli state or Goliath, some secret entity controlling the Israeli state. Not outright saying it, of course, but saying all the signs point to this not making sense and so on. And just in case you thought that he might walk that back, he then did an episode with Heller in which he went in greater depth into the nature of his suspicions. So let me play two clips related to that, kindly provided by Bad Stats, as you said. This is clip number one. This turn of events, historical and whatever their nature, let's say that they're perfectly

Starting point is 00:12:14 organic, that what took place is exactly what it appears to be, a massive intelligence and military failure. The consequence of it outside of the Middle East is to make conversations that were taking place a week ago very difficult to have, if not impossible now. There's something that I would call the coalition slicer-dicer working on us. And what it does, let's say that you have a group of people who have found each other and they have come to understand how to interact with each other and they have established bonds of trust over their growing sense-making surrounding COVID, right? You have the COVID dissidents who are realizing that they're all seeing pieces of the puzzle and then they pull those pieces and they say, oh my God, here's what the larger puzzle looks like. And they are empowered, and they hold meetings, and they become an important force on the landscape, because as the population wakes

Starting point is 00:13:15 up to the fact that something was done to it that was unholy, these people have all been seen to offer pieces of the truth along the way. That is a very powerful force. That force is fiercely divided over the interpretation of what took place on October 7th in Israel. And this has impacts across the globe. It has impacts on the U.S. presidential election. It has impacts on our understanding of U.S. entanglements abroad generally. And my concern is, you know, divide and conquer is a famously ancient strategy. My guess is we would find the formulation of it in many different traditions. Obviously, Napoleon knew about it. Surely Sun Tzu is going to have things to say about it.

Starting point is 00:14:24 slicer-dicer operation that simply tears coalitions apart so that they are never capable of making any meaningful change, which is, after all, I think the Goliath's purpose. Yes, yes. Interesting reasoning there, Chris. So I think it's helpful. I think it's helpful. Not to dunk on this immediately, but rather let's just follow along with the logic there.

Starting point is 00:14:45 Slicer-dicer operation. but rather let's just follow along with the logic there. So... Lyser Dyser Operation. Yes, Lyser Dyser Operation. So the event that Brett is referring to at the beginning is, to make it perfectly clear, the Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens. And he notes that the consequence that he's noticed in his network is there's some division. There's a lot of people have different opinions. People feel very emotional

Starting point is 00:15:12 about it. And so the effect is to disrupt the COVID dissidents, the anti-COVID vaccination network, just at the point that they're figuring it all out. They're putting all the pieces together. just at the point that they're figuring it all out they're putting all the pieces together they're becoming an important force for truth against the unholy things that goliath or whoever the governments are trying to do to everybody which is the vaccinations they've been divided and you know dividing and conquering is an intentional strategy by dictators like napoleon or whatever so it's very suspicious so the heavy implication there chris if i'm not wrong is that the hamas attacks were orchestrated by a shadowy transnational Goliath, in order to cause dissent amongst the anti-vax network of which Brett is a part?

Starting point is 00:16:14 That would be correct, yes. And just to make it clearer, Matt, the second clip I think helps. You know, if you think that we are stretching things there beyond what was said. Listen to this. Has something gotten into the Israeli system that is ready to sacrifice civilians for some other purpose that has not been named and we do not know? Now, that's an incredible thought. It's a terrible thought. On the other hand, if you look at what Israel did during COVID,

Starting point is 00:16:55 the entire population was betrayed. Israel had amongst the highest vaccination rates of any country on earth. Israel had amongst the highest vaccination rates of any country on earth. That was the result of whatever it is that controls the Israeli system of government inflicting unnecessary harm on the population of Israel. I don't know what to make of it. two historical events that appear to have nothing to do with each other that share the characteristic of looking like something that must go beyond the level of organic failure both of which involve something in control that has asymmetrical access to information putting the population of citizens in jeopardy of terrible things and then not telling the truth about it. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. So to recap, Goliath, this shadowy transnational force,

Starting point is 00:17:54 has gotten into the Israeli system where vaccination rates in Israel are very high, which is suspicious to begin with. They were betrayed by the government because why would the Israeli government do something that is obviously harmful to Israeli citizens like vaccinating them? So, Goliath or whatever it is that controls the Israeli government actively harmed the Israeli population. Then there was also intelligence failures in not predicting, anticipating the Hamas attacks, a very suspicious intelligence failure also resulting in harm to the Israeli population. So you put these two pieces of information together and it shows that there's evidence that the Israeli government is being controlled by Goliath with the intent of hurting Israeli citizens. Yeah, yeah. And this just is very reminiscent to me of the kind of narratives

Starting point is 00:18:56 that you see on Infowars immediately after any terrorist attack or, event in the world where something happens that was considered unlikely to happen, September 11th being the most obvious of them. So in their case, they're very quick often to suggest false flags, right? That this is an attack which has been orchestrated or permitted by the government that's what brett is saying now he does at other times imply that hamas also independently might want to do harm to israel but the clear inclination is like the attack could have been stopped if they had wanted it to be so So they, Goliath, the Israeli government controlled by Goliath, whoever, are using Hamas as a tool for their nefarious purposes. And they will cite things that you can find speeches from Netanyahu, for example,

Starting point is 00:20:01 where he's suggesting that in order to increase support for his government, it is good for them if Hamas is the party that's in control in Gaza, because it increases the public support for his right-wing coalition. But this is very different. This is such a huge step beyond that. It's the same thing as jumping through George Bush's approval rating, going up after 9-11 too. George Bush orchestrated 9-11 in order to get his approval rating to go up, right? And that's a big jump. Of course, Netanyahu and many other people are going to capitalize on these events or attempt to they're also going to face like huge criticisms for this occurring so that's

Starting point is 00:20:55 the bit where the people will say well are you saying the hamas are not used in a strategic way by the far right in Israel. And no, but that's not, he's going much farther than that. And that line where he said, I don't know what to make about it. You know, that's like Eric Weinstein saying, I don't know what we see here. And they always throw that in, Matt, make the lurid conspiracy very clear. And then add in the strategic disclaimer of, i'm not sure what i'm seeing here i wasn't clear and that's what they'll retreat to whenever people point out the lurid conspiracism they'll say well i didn't say and alex jones does that too

Starting point is 00:21:38 yeah yeah yeah it's it's a classic conspiratorial thing isn't it to assume like perfect perfect degrees of information perfect degrees of knowledge and control by the powerful forces that exist, right? So there's no way that Mossad or the Israeli Defense Intelligence or whatever could not know exactly what Hamas was doing. doing clearly they must know because in in their mind whether it's the pentagon or the illuminati or or the israel defense they they have this sort of perfect knowledge and uh are all controlling yeah and as as you say the history of it is always complicated they you know dodgy things are done by intelligence agencies and politicians that you know there's there's evidence of them at least in the past being quite happy with with radicals getting control because it does serve you know hard right interests in

Starting point is 00:22:30 israel to have the the evil bad guys out there to essentially justify their policies right but the flip side of it just being that when 9-11 and those kind of things happened, you eventually get the deep dives into all of the things that different intelligence agencies knew, the reports by various governments and whatnot. And you typically do find out that there were attempts at warnings, there were people highlighting issues, and there was imperfect sharing of information, right? Or there were people that were dismissed information. And famously, in the case of 9-11, there were the different intelligence agencies not sharing information or heeding warnings correctly. And that is likely to turn out to be true here. People are already saying that Egypt shared some warnings about attacks,

Starting point is 00:23:27 but they never do that thing, Matt, where they take the baseline of how many times are things warned about that don't turn out to be actual attacks. It's always anomaly hunting. And there will be failures. There will be people who are culpable for not anticipating various things.

Starting point is 00:23:45 But at the end of the day, people come up with ingenious ways to kill each other all the time in conflicts. And it just doesn't have a perfect defense. No, I know. Look, it's like an inversion of the old saying of never ascribe to malevolence what could be explained by incompetence, right? It's an inversion of that, the way that conspiratorial people think. But, you know, let's not forget the absolute batshit insanity of the logic, which is that, you know, the Israeli government has proved that they want to kill and harm Israeli citizens by vaccinating them.

Starting point is 00:24:29 And therefore, you know, that's a piece of information that goes into the explanation that they're behind these attacks and doing it to disrupt the anti-vax network that Brett's a part of. It's absolutely insane. It's batshit crazy. I expected you to say it, but you didn't say it i'm gonna have to say it you said there are the see guys i can say it there's there's the good takes there's the bad takes and then there's the inscrutable missives from saturn as i've said before and yeah brett's is just out there on the dark side of the moon so but yeah a nice little case study we haven't covered brett and heather too much recently even though they've produced so much absolutely insane stuff because they're

Starting point is 00:25:09 actually too insane for us like you shouldn't need our help to understand that they are mental discredited well yeah discredited and mental yeah discredited and mental yeah yeah i mean brett comes across as paranoid and conspiratorial but again i, I don't think that this is an entirely new development because Brett did put little tinfoil hats on his cameras and electric equipment to stop some outside agent from when he was experiencing technical difficulties. And yes, he highlighted the humor of, you know, oh, people are going to say, but he was still doing it, right? It's like somebody putting on a tinfoil hat to stop their brainwaves and say, I know, I know. Yeah, yeah, tinfoil hat guy putting on. Yeah, it's very funny, isn't it?

Starting point is 00:25:59 But you're still putting on the tinfoil hat. So that doesn't make it not crazy what you're doing so but then they were doing that ages ago right this was when they thought that people were targeting their electronics to stop them getting accurate covid information out about the dangers of the potential vaccines so yeah just just to say they've been bad a long time. They have. I don't buy the thing where often people say, oh, such and such. He used to be good, but now he's gone crazy. They said it of James Lindsay. They said it of Jordan Peterson.

Starting point is 00:26:35 But, you know, I think it's to a large degree people just weren't looking carefully enough. The seeds were there. I do think that people get substantially worse like they definitely do they i mean even the case of brett and heller they wouldn't have endorsed rfk jr at the beginning of the pandemic they wouldn't have talked openly about that james lindsey was uh for many years saying that he would never vote for trump right like people do change, but when you go and look at their content... Chris, importantly, they change in terms of their published public content,

Starting point is 00:27:11 but that's a little bit different from who they are, I guess. Right. It is true. And when you go back and look at old talks, you can see all the warning signs. And yes, there's an element of hindsight bias in that but yeah and in any case i don't think brett has ever been particularly good or non-conspiratorial i just don't think it was the primary focus of his output at one point right yeah yeah well that's

Starting point is 00:27:40 right and there is the issue of hindsight bias but you, just to toot our own horn here a little bit, Chris, we covered most of these figures long before they got demonstrably much worse, as bad as they are now. Anyway, just saying. I agree. I agree. We are cutting edge, Matt. But it's also because everyone that we cover inevitably gets worse,

Starting point is 00:28:03 almost all of them. So it's pretty easy. The Decoded Review is curse. Yeah, it's like opening the mummy's tomb. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well. Okay, there you go.

Starting point is 00:28:14 Thanks for that, Chris. Thank you, BadStats. That was a good exercise in lunacy. So, yeah, what's next for us though what is next well we're going to go and talk to someone much nicer than any of that julia ebner who is a researcher on right-wing extremist networks and actually has also done work on extremist Islamist groups as well, an academic and researcher, and all-round smart person. So we're going to go and have a chat with her.

Starting point is 00:28:55 Let's do that. Okay, so we have with us now Julia Ebner, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and recently a doctoral researcher at Oxford University at the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, which I should know because I also have a researcher in that department. So Julia is also an author of a number of books going dark the rage and most recently what what was the title of the one that's forthcoming going mainstream so it's kind of the sequel of going dark yeah yeah that's right so so julia does work on far right and other extremist movements. And as mentioned, has published a number of books on the topic, but also has recently published

Starting point is 00:29:54 various research, some of which I am involved with or familiar with and some of which I'm not. So we wanted to have her on to have a talk about radicalization and extremist networks and potential overlaps or differences from the kind of guru networks and dynamics that we see there. So thank you for coming, Julia. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, welcome, Julia. Yeah, so maybe we should start by getting you to give us just a bit of a brief overview of what you've been doing in terms of investigating these extremist networks and how people find their way into them.

Starting point is 00:30:35 Yeah, definitely. I'm happy to, I mean, I'm happy to maybe first tell you a bit about what motivated me to do this kind of research. I actually started out, I think, seven years ago, when I looked into jihadist networks. So back then, ISIS was at the height of their power, and that was mainly looking at Islamist extremist radicalization. And of course, they were already starting to use new technologies in quite a sophisticated way to launch propaganda campaigns, to radicalize sympathizers. And then after this whole series of

Starting point is 00:31:08 jihadist attacks that we had really across the world, but especially I think in the UK where I'm based and in Europe, after that, there was a big backlash from far-right extremists who then painted the whole Muslim community as evil, as the enemy, and really painted them as a demonized out group. And that led to my research interest in exploring a bit further what overlaps of far-right white nationalist communities with other with conspiracy myth movements or with the misogynist online community and as part of that part of my research has always been more academic more analytical and another part of it has been more investigative uh so i've been doing a lot of undercover research where i really joined joined a range of extremist groups from isis hacking groups to to white nationalists and neo-nazi

Starting point is 00:32:12 groups and the misogynist movement incel and i joined them sometimes online but sometimes i also went to meetings with these radicalized individuals in person to find out more about what motivates them. Why are they part of these groups? So it's really about, yeah, getting to understand a little bit the psychology that drives people towards extremism and potentially even towards violence. And Julia, there was a time previously where I think you worked at Quilliam, right? The Majid Nawaz's organization. time previously where I think you worked at Quilliam, right? The Majid Nawaz's organization.

Starting point is 00:32:48 This is going back in the day. But I'm curious about your experience there. And our listeners are probably very familiar with Majid and where he's went familiar with magic and where he's he's went from in more recent times but I I believe your departure from quilliam was also related to potential concerns about the way he was approaching things so I I don't know if you're happy to talk about that experience yeah yeah I'm happy to share some of those experiences I mean it is it is probably kind of highly related to to, of course, to your podcast topic, which is the gurus. I'm happy to talk about that and share some experiences about much in the was and the Quilliam Foundation, where I actually started my my kind of research career after finishing my

Starting point is 00:33:41 master's degree. So I mean, the organization, it was interesting because of course, Majid Nawaz is a former extremist and he's been very public about that. So he used to be with Hizb ut-Tahrir. He used to be quite an influential recruiter for them. And he completely de-radicalized, wrote his autobiography, Radical. And he seemed to be on the right side.

Starting point is 00:34:03 He, as a student I was I remember reading some of yeah some of his articles or some of his thoughts and I thought this is actually quite interesting because he takes a more he still took quite an intellectual approach to understanding why people are joining islamist extremist organizations but had this insider perspective in addition to that so that's what kind of drove me to join the organization but i soon realized that actually the way the organization was run was still in a very it still felt a little bit like an extremist organization to be honest it was very much trust-based not really not really transparent

Starting point is 00:34:42 in terms of yeah in terms of many different aspects. But I guess there was also the sense that they were not really having my back. So, for example, I was leading the research into far-right extremism, which was quite rare for an organization that mainly looked at jihadist threats and was a bit one-sided in that respect, which is also why they were heavily criticized by Muslim communities, because they felt like they were actually blind on the right-wing side of the threat. And so I published an article in The Guardian, which was about this English former football

Starting point is 00:35:19 hooligan turned white nationalist, Tommy Robinson, who was the founder and leader of the English Defence League here in the UK. And this guy clearly kind of enraged by the article that I'd published about him where I associated him with white supremacy, then turned up at our supposedly secret office at Quilliam. And he, I mean, he live streamed that to his back then 300,000 followers on Twitter.

Starting point is 00:35:46 And the organization under Majid Nawaz was really not having my back. Instead, they forced me to basically issue an apology to him, to Tommy Robinson, to that extremist, which I refused to do. So they gave me an ultimatum and said that I would be fired if I didn't do it by then. And that's what happened. I didn't really give in because I felt like I didn't want to retract my article from The Guardian or apologize. So, yeah, so it was, there were clearly conflicts of interest there. But it was also, it just felt like a very yeah like a very difficult situation for me personally but also i guess for the organization it showed a little bit how they were operating and and that

Starting point is 00:36:32 was that was because in around that time they or i don't know what was after before but they had presented tommy robinson as being de-radicalized partly by his interactions with Majid. It was not the case that they went on some media shows and stuff together to kind of tout that Tommy was no longer a far right or racist person and Majid was kind of taking credit for part of that. Did that happen before or after? That was before that. It's true that that was part of the story. That was part of the buildup.

Starting point is 00:37:16 So the other issue was that they, because they were mainly focusing on jihadists, on the jihadist threat and on islamist extremism they also did have some sympathizers some donations from a support base on on the very much i would say very much the right wing spectrum political spectrum including some far-right people as well who were not really who didn't really like the idea that all of a sudden the organization also would be looking at at far-right extremism. And so Tommy Robinson was in that sense, I think, a turning point for myself because I realized, okay, this organization is actually not what I thought it would be.

Starting point is 00:37:58 But also actually a lot of people left during that wave when I was fired and the organization in general then implode I would say and much now as of course in recent years has also gone a little bit into more more into the conspiracy myth corner and has been endorsing some COVID disinformation and COVID related conspiracy myths and even the election fraud campaigns in the US were, it was, yeah, in retrospect, I'm quite glad I left the boat. I think that's a good choice. That's a very polite way to put it. He's got completely mental if he wasn't always.

Starting point is 00:38:39 But yeah, it's a fascinating trajectory, isn't it? And I don't know, maybe Majid Nawaz is like a case study that maybe argues for the fact that there are some psychological risk factors or underpinnings that lead someone to veer off course, whether it's towards one form of extremism or towards another kind. I would say as well that I came across, Julia, back in the day some criticisms of Majid by, like, I can't remember the journalist's name, but they weren't an entirely reliable journalist

Starting point is 00:39:18 because they had their various own axes to grind, but they produced this big long article kind of detailing all the people that Majid Nawaz had ever wronged saying what a terrible narcissistic person he was. And it seemed at the time like a kind of unfair character attack. But I wonder if I went back and revisited it, if I wouldn't now think that a lot of the comments by friends and families warning about narciss it, if I wouldn't now think that a lot of the comments by friends and families warning about narcissistic tendencies and stuff wouldn't seem prescient, regardless of

Starting point is 00:39:51 whether the journalist who produced it was overall reliable. So, so yeah, and I before we move off that one thing I did want to ask just a point because it had it did come up a little bit in our conversation that we previously had with Sam Harris so Sam had made comments also back in that era that he when he looked at Tommy Robinson's output he didn't see anything wrong like everything especially everything that he said about Islam, he said seemed to be relatively sensible. And that Sam mentioned, you know, he was told that this guy is a far right extremist, but like, he didn't see evidence that there were extremist elements, especially in regards to his comments around Islam. And I just wonder, given your familiarity with Tommy Robinson's output at the time, was it easy to miss?

Starting point is 00:40:48 Or was it something that was pretty straightforward to detect? I'm just wondering, in this case, if Sam deserves a pass for, well, you would actually have to be familiar to see he was pretty good at disguising it. Or if it was relatively superficial you know at the surface level well one thing that i guess even quilliam and much noice taught tommy robinson during this whole de-radicalization attempt was definitely i mean they tried to de-radicalize him but what they essentially did was teach him ways of camouflaging his extremist rhetoric behind a more legitimate, more socially acceptable rhetoric, which was really about transforming his comments about Muslims or about minority communities into something that could be interpreted as pure criticism of religion.

Starting point is 00:41:41 The thing here was that there were still comments in his Twitter feed, there were still comments he made publicly, which were showing that he was in essence demonizing and sometimes even dehumanizing entire minority communities or outgroups. And the overall picture he was painting, especially of Muslims, just really, it was like he was painting this big threat that came from that community, whereas he didn't really apply the same. You can call it critique, but he didn't apply that to other religions.

Starting point is 00:42:12 Sam Harris has been more consistent in his rhetoric. And you can also, I mean, there's also enough criticism against him and his approach, but he was very, he is very consistent. It seems in terms of his, his critique of religion, whereas Tommy Robinson has been very one-sided. And now in recent years, he's gone back to the more extreme and openly aggressive rhetoric. So I think now there's almost no doubt or very few researchers would even put a question mark behind, is he an extremist?

Starting point is 00:42:41 behind the, is he an extremist? Yeah, he clearly is. And he clearly has voiced a lot of even pro-white nationalist ideas and pro-white identity, white European ideas that are not only critiques of religion or culture, but that they're also going into a more racist spectrum. Yeah. So, Julia, as well as having that academic, intellectual approach, you've obviously had this personal experience, not only with Majid Nawaz and that episode, but also in, I guess, personally going in and enrolling in various online communities and having that very much personal experience of the individuals involved so you've I don't know what the word is infiltrated

Starting point is 00:43:26 is that too strong a word but you've engaged with shall we say quite a few different strange internet communities and I was wondering if you noticed some commonalities in terms of those psychosocial or personality features or whatever the case may be, that sort of binds those different groups together. Yeah, definitely. I would say immersed myself is actually the term I now prefer to use, because it's the most kind of anthropological term I can think of. But yeah, in my kind of in these immersion experiences, I definitely encountered a lot of individuals who'd gone down the radicalization spiral because of some kind of identity crisis. A lot of them were, I guess, rooted in traumatic childhood experiences or some kind of traumatic and transformative experience that happened early on in their

Starting point is 00:44:17 lives. But some of them would also just have something come up during their teenage years or later on in life where they went through identity crisis in one shape or form that can be in the form of a masculinity crisis. I would even say I also encountered women with what I would call femininity crisis. We don't even talk about that very much because we mostly talk about masculinity crisis. But there were also a lot of questions these women post about their role in society, about womanhood and questions like that. For example, when I joined female misogynist communities, which is really, which sounds like an oxymoron, but these women do exist and they glorify even things like domestic violence and hyper conservative family and family models. family models and we recently talked about pearl davis so unfortunately familiar with that side of the pool that's yeah yeah but a lot of them in general i would say whether i looked at islamist extremists in isis networks or at neo-nazis or misogynist communities it was very often that sense that they they felt

Starting point is 00:45:28 like they needed to look for some new form very strong form of group belonging and very often i mean a lot of them were also driven by some by some deeper sense of loneliness or lacking kind of social connection in their in their real lives and they found that in these new communities in these new groups where often these groups then become almost like family replacements and they even talk in kinship language to each other so yeah i think that was a commonality on a on a psychological level i julia there's a we were recently talking to the host of the Conspiratuality podcast, and they were asking our opinions about this kind of age old debate amongst researchers and amongst public intellectuals about the role of ideology versus the role of social factors, deprivation,

Starting point is 00:46:20 or geopolitical things, and psychological characteristics of individuals. Like what is the dominating factor or what's the mix in there? And obviously, you have people like Sam Harris that have quite strongly argued for ideology as the key component and other researchers arguing that psychological and social factors are more significant. that psychological and social factors are more significant. And I'm curious from your work, what you think about that mix. And if there is any ingredient that is particularly potent in pushing people towards extremist groups.

Starting point is 00:47:02 Yeah. I mean, most of today's evidence suggests that ideology alone cannot really drive extremism, that it's usually a combination of different factors. And ideology or narratives are often just an outlet for personal struggles, for psychological crisis. So it's usually a combination of there is a kind of a personal grievance or a personal, there are different psychological factors that play a big role and that then are channeled towards an ideology, which is also why there are so many similarities across different ideologies. In my first book, The Rage, I examined the parallels between Islamist extremism and far

Starting point is 00:47:42 right extremism. And there are so many many there are so many parallels in terms of the radicalization pathways of individuals but also in terms of the narratives where you always have the same type of narrative and you can just replace certain words with others and you essentially have the same ideology like muslims are at war with the west or the west is at war with muslims or there is an inevitable conflict of races, cultures, and religions. These narratives, these kind of overall threat narratives and apocalyptic ideas are very often inherently part of extremist ideologies.

Starting point is 00:48:17 What now in my latest research, and I guess, I mean, Chris, you're very much familiar with that having been involved in that research as well. But what kind of shows up as the most, I guess, significant trait or the most significant characteristic in radicalization pathways towards violence is a mix of identity fusion. So when the personal group, when the personal identity becomes one with the group identity, but also then dehumanizing and demonizing labels that are applied to the out group. And that is, of course, inherently often inherently part of an extremist ideology, like, for example, the great replacement idea or jihadist ideologies that would already have that demonization narrative as an integral part of what their framework is standing for. And then violence condoning norms are also playing a big role. And again, some movements already have that inherently integrated as part of their ideology,

Starting point is 00:49:19 like the accelerationist movement, for example, where they already see violence as necessarily being part of any form of radical change. Yeah, so those were the different factors that came up as kind of the most statistically significant when analysing terrorist manifestos. So this is a bit of a subversive question, but when I was listening to you talk earlier today in some of those recordings, I was wondering whether or not the stuff that you focus on, which is more at the extremes, corresponded to the stuff that we tend to look at, which is more in the normal range, if you like. Relatively normal. Relatively normal, but still has these features of

Starting point is 00:50:05 cultishness still has this the in group in the out group and i was even like i was looking at there was a particularly inflammatory um video on twitter some some rich capitalist type was talking things like mean about workers and there was the usual sort of guillotine memes and responses from from from people that are more socialist. So that sort of pinged what you just mentioned about condoning violence towards the out group. So it's a bit of a tricky question, but I'm just wondering whether or not you reckon there's a big qualitative difference, like a sharp distinction between the stuff you see at the extremes and the stuff that all of us to one degree or another are kind of susceptible to in terms of the little cultures and little groups that we find ourselves in.

Starting point is 00:50:53 I think from my experience and also from talking to a lot of radicalized individuals, I feel like we're all prone to radicalization, not at all times. prone to radicalization not at all times I think there are always specific moments in in our lifetimes where but pretty much everyone is susceptible to to radical narratives and even to to radicalization yeah potentially even towards violence I guess that's also that's part of human nature and I definitely I also when I did my research I sometimes also felt like I was getting closer to actually being more receptive and being more prone to radicalization whenever I was in a tricky personal life phase or, for example, after a difficult breakup or when you're already in an identity crisis, then it definitely feels like we could all be prone to that. And of course, there is also a very human thing

Starting point is 00:51:45 of that we like to watch videos that are, or content that is what we've always liked to watch. We've always liked to watch gladiator fights or bloody things or witches being hung. Or unfortunately, that is really driving our attention to content today still. These types of pieces of content that are either very sensationalist or even bloody or at least in some shape or form, apocalyptic or violent. And I guess, yeah, some of the memes that we see today in the open public would also speak to that. And memes are a very powerful way of communicating because you can make a joke with a meme,

Starting point is 00:52:28 but still have quite a deep message behind it and have maybe even an extremist message behind it. Yeah, an interesting dynamic there is kind of like sometimes the more extreme characters are brought into content to be denounced or argued with, but they can also be used to present positions which are then not whitewashed exactly, but suggested. There's something to the argument and it's good that we hear these people out.

Starting point is 00:53:01 And I remember with the K kick streamers and some of the other platforms, you, you know, I have this wave of people performing stunts that are, you know, quite antisocial and sometimes overtly racist and so on, and then getting social outrage directed at them, but that also increases their, their profile. And I, I just seen recently in, in Japan, there's a streamer called Johnny Somali who travels around was, was making comments about Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the train in Japan and, you know, streaming it and generating offense. And he just recently got punched in the street by some random person. But then that was shared as, you know, like a kind of cathartic moment where everybody

Starting point is 00:53:50 was sharing, like, look at this comeuppance. But he was promoting it on his feed because it's, you know, increasing. So it's such a toxic story. You know, Carl Davis appearing with Piers Morgan recently as well. A similar kind of thing. His stunts really drive the traffic towards content. And we've seen a lot of influencers, also like Andrew Tate, make use of such quite aggressive rhetoric or quite provocative, crossing the borders of what's socially acceptable and

Starting point is 00:54:23 breaking those taboos. And I think that's really become a key tactic in the digital age to make content go viral. But of course, it's also really been exploited by, especially by extremists who benefit from that because in any case, they would be breaking taboos. They would be going beyond those limits. So they're the ones who really benefit from that from that digital dynamic. I one thing Julia is like, I think in some respect, the dynamics that you were talking about in your earlier books about the kind of far right and Islamist movements having

Starting point is 00:54:58 degrees of overlap, look a lot more obvious in some respect, when you have figures like Andrew Tate and various other influencer types who have strong right-wing socially conservative views and then ostensibly become Muslims, right? So I think in some respect those connections are a little bit clearer or right-wing figures in the US celebrating the Taliban for their strong gender roles. But I'm curious, and this might be a little bit of a provocative suggestion, but I'm just curious what you think about this. So there's obviously an interplay and an interaction overlap there.

Starting point is 00:55:39 But other people with various degrees of seriousness have argued that elements of the far left and the far right feed off each other in presenting that they're fighting a kind of black and white cosmic battle against fascism, or they're trying to save the country from the neo-communist takeover. And with varying degrees of rigor, have suggested that there is a feedback going on there and a kind of interactive overlap, especially critique of the mainstream has been wrong. And I wonder, do you think there is merit to that argument? Or is that connection and dynamic overstated based on the communities that you've looked at? I think to some extent, it's justified because the extreme edges usually meet somewhere. And very often it is, as you say, in the kind of anti-mainstream, anti-establishment thinking, anti-status quo, wanting radical change. And when looking, however, at the similarities, for example, between Islamist and far-right extremist movements, there you really see that

Starting point is 00:56:50 they have a lot of commonalities in wanting to go back to a distant time where privileges were still reserved and wanting to go back, reverse human rights to a level where they are misogynist. They would be considered misogynist today, both Islamists and far-right extremists, of wanting to roll back women's rights, but also wanting to roll back the rights of people of other ethnicities or races or cultures. And also often there is a sense that they meet in their anti-Semitism. So there are overlaps between the far right and the far left as well, especially in antisemitism, for example, but also in these anti-establishment ideas, which often lend themselves to antisemitic conspiracy myths about the global elites and so on,

Starting point is 00:57:41 plotting, for example, COVID is a good example, where you had a lot of these covid related conspiracy myths including q anon that attracted people from both the far right and the far left and a lot of people from kind of former leftist communities from where the yoga and spiritual community actually joined joined q anon which was quite interesting to observe. So there were certainly common elements. But in terms of what we call the culture wars, I would say, yes, there are some similarities, but what is called the far left is having a different type of ideology from the far right, whereas the far right really wants to roll back human rights. I don't think the same can be said of the far left.

Starting point is 00:58:28 They are against, they're more against, they're against authority. Traditionally, the left is, they're more, they're potentially against the far right, but they're not really against minority communities. And they're not really in favor of rolling back human rights. And I think there is an essential difference to be made here. And I know also a lot of movements, for example, climate change activist movements or environmental activist movements have been labeled extremist or even terrorist by security services. And I think that's actually quite dangerous because they don't really have the same types of destructive ideologies they might resort to tactics that can be dangerous and of course that's worth monitoring

Starting point is 00:59:10 as soon as they turn to violent means but in terms of their ideology it's much more inclusive they talk about abstract threats to the whole of humankind rather than a specific out group that is then demonized and dehumanized and is a threat to a closed in group. So I think there's really a difference in those. I do think if the out group that you're demonizing is fascists, that does seem an important distinction to me, although it does matter then what you're putting into that category. But yes, I completely agree with everything you outlined there. I guess the thing I was asking about a bit more, the worded badly,

Starting point is 00:59:53 was whether there's a... It's definitely not a case of ideological overlap, except for the exceptions that you highlighted, potentially with antisemitism and opposition to israel or stuff like that but in the dynamic of there being a kind of enemy and both having very strong opposing visions of utopian futures and um i'm not saying to draw an equivalence between the two groups or the damage that they do, but in terms of whether there's a feedback energy between the two. And I'm kind of wondering whether the notion is in those far right communities that the people they really have to care about are, you know, because basically with the gurus, what we've seen is that sometimes they will praise people who advocate for extreme positions, even if they

Starting point is 01:00:50 don't hold them because they say at least they want something, right? At least they want to change society and they're arguing for something, whereas the normies are the problem. And I'm kind of wondering if that rhetoric is similar, or if the view is more that basically, the real problem is the far left, and that just needs to be exterminated. So there is no, you know, you got to hand it to ISIS type comments in those communities. Yeah, no, I do definitely think that we're seeing reciprocal radicalization, so that there's an interplay between the far right feeding off the far left and vice versa. There is almost a sense that polarization is becoming stronger because of the interactions we're seeing, especially in the U.S. context. I guess there's no country that's a better example of hyper-polarized left versus right communities than the U.S.

Starting point is 01:01:44 hyper-polarized left versus right communities than the US. And there, I guess we could observe sometimes in real time how these campus fights or even online debates, how that drives radicalization on both sides and is really eroding the middle ground. And that is dangerous in terms of the dynamics. I still would say that most of the studies show that whereas far-right violence can be very much targeted at, as I said, minority communities or at specific political opponents, far-left violence usually very often occurs at counter-protests to far-right demonstrations and often occurs in a kind of more reactionary, yeah, reactional way. often occurs in a kind of more reactionary, yeah, reactional way. And I think that is a key difference when looking at the threat landscape, also from the perspective of security services, where far right extremists still plot a lot more terrorist attacks, and so on. Whereas the far,

Starting point is 01:02:36 the far left often does pose a bit of a threat in terms of to the safety of protesters, for example, and you can, I mean, you can then you could argue, well, should neo-Nazi protesters be protected? But of course, in terms of lives, protecting lives, yes, they also have a right to be protected. So I guess there is always that threat of violence that is exacerbated by this increasing polarization. And I think in the US case, I mean, some scholars have even talked about the risk of civil war in the US

Starting point is 01:03:07 because of these dynamics, like scholars like Barbara Walter, who is a leading civil war scholar who has observed a lot of the dynamics in the lead up to civil wars in other countries. And she's been arguing in her publications that we're seeing all the signs in the US of this dynamic escalating. And this is essentially reciprocal radicalization. Yeah. And I would also underline

Starting point is 01:03:30 that point that I think goes unmentioned whenever people are talking about those reciprocal dynamics that even where they do exist and are real, that all statistics that I'm aware of in pretty much all developed Western countries, at least, show that the far right is responsible for much more attacks and violence than the far left. So whatever the threats are, they're not equivalent. And I think if you're going to talk about those dynamics, it's often important to make that about the the statistics when it often goes unsated especially in the kind of guru's fear that we look about but um but you already did that so i'm just i'm just pointing out that i agree before anyone accuses me of of feeling to know

Starting point is 01:04:19 that yeah very true i think although those sort of almost universal characteristics of saving anti-institutional anti-status quo utopian nostalgic for a bygone era those are generic terms that you could actually apply to left right or up and down any part of the political spectrum you like but all of these things occur in a sort of historical sociological context. And at the moment, in this particular place in time, it tends to have a particular slant. With Algorometer is or attempts to be politically neutral, but that there's a reason why the vast majority of the people we cover have this right wing, weird slant. But Julia, I might bring us down to earth a little bit and i'd ask you a more

Starting point is 01:05:06 basic question which is like in in your experience in dealing with these unsavory communities with these horrible ideas did you find the the people that you interacted with universally abhorrent and despicable or did you have any sneaking suspicion sorry not suspicion sympathy for them yeah well sympathy is is probably too strong but definitely empathy i and i often had empathy for especially where they were coming from kind of the the root causes of their radicalization journey and very often they were quite openly talking about that when when i chatted to them either online or in person and it became clear that they were just very vulnerable individuals in many cases sometimes even even very

Starting point is 01:05:56 young people i sometimes encountered minors and school kids aged age children who, school age children who were part of white nationalist communities or the misogynist incels fear. And that was really heartbreaking. And those were moments where also I could really have a lot of empathy for not what they were, not the ideologists they were constructing, or they were adopting as part of the radicalization process, but definitely the starting point of their radicalization journeys. And I think that's also an important, I guess that that's very important to always keep in mind, they're also human beings for any type of intervention or prevention approaches. It's really important to focus on those human layers and those commonalities. They still have a lot of, I still found a lot of things that I had in common with them.

Starting point is 01:06:50 And probably in a different setting where we wouldn't be talking about vile ideologies and crazy conspiracy myths, I could have potentially even been friends with some of them because they also have, they might have had hobbies that are similar to mine or we could talk about other things. But as soon as, yeah, as soon as the discussion becomes ideological or even focused on violence endorsement, that's of course where it gets very difficult.

Starting point is 01:07:21 I just wanted to say I had exactly the same experience for a little while there. I was a little bit obsessed with the flat earther community. That was a big flat earther. We wouldn't stop talking about it, bringing it up constantly. Eventually, Chris made me understand that it is round. But it became an odd obsession, which maybe started out with not the best motives in terms of thinking these people are all idiots and how could people think this, but in engaging with them and wanting to understand why they thought the things that they did, I ended up having quite long discussions

Starting point is 01:07:58 with many of them and learned things about them that they'd never been on a plane. Like they'd never been anywhere except for the little town and the state in which they grew up and and putting a lot of pieces in place you realized and of course the the religious background they were coming from and they they knew very little about the rest of the world and they weren't idiots they were just normal people and quite nice people and interesting people in many respects with with some very unusual opinions yeah yeah there are usually there are always psychological purposes of each conspiracy myth and that might vary for for each person but it's always it's it's super interesting and especially important in terms of kind of bringing people out of those communities to understand what is driving them in the first place or why they ended up in this conspiracy myth community.

Starting point is 01:08:51 What was the psychological purpose this conspiracy myth fulfilled? At least the flat earthers are not, I guess, not as dangerous. Not all conspiracy myths are dangerous inherently i mean they are a bit crazy and nuts but i wouldn't i wouldn't consider them as as similarly dangerous as the great replacement people or q anon because there it's a lot more about yeah about out groups that are being targeted and demonized and and that are part of the conspiracy myth although partly sometimes flat earthers might also then add another layer that is then anti-semitic or yeah or more dangerous yeah of course you're completely right that those sorts of conspiracies don't have a a direct uh harmful outcome they're only

Starting point is 01:09:36 harmful in an indirect way i suppose and in which one adopts a view of reality that is increasingly out of step with with with reality and that can lead one to there could be some knock-on effects i suppose yeah exactly and studies have shown that once you believe in one conspiracy myth you're much more likely to then adopt others in addition to that and of course it's just it's it's already if you doubt science as such and if you cast out on everything the media reports on then you're much more likely to also buy into other conspiracy myths that have that same layer to it so it can definitely be a pandora's box where you once you open it you get all the conspiracy myths that yeah yeah there's a so julia your your book titles have documented an increasingly depressing path because you in your previous book just from a couple of

Starting point is 01:10:38 years ago going dark the secret social lives of extremists you were talking about extremist groups, but also in part able to look at their social lives through the digital networks that they are now able to establish, right, and communicate over. And so the role of the internet or electronic media in general in enabling those groups to grow, or at least just to more easily find recruits and sympathetic people. And your more, your forthcoming book, Going Mainstream, How Extremists Are Taking Over, implies that the roller than existing in the fringe species and communities of the dark web or wherever they were on various discords, that now they're increasingly becoming figures that we're all familiar with, connected with politicians, in some cases, politicians

Starting point is 01:11:38 and far right political parties getting more members and more support. So is your, I'm wondering one, how, how depressed looking at this topic makes you and whether you think there has been like an increase in how far this has come to impact the political mainstream. So is it that it's more visible just because of the internet or does it actually have more influence and more possibility to recruit people than previously, the kind of extremist groups? Yeah, initially, I have to say five years back or seven years ago,

Starting point is 01:12:22 I was mostly concerned about risks of violence and terrorism. That was my main focus. And it still is to some extent. I'm still interested in predictors of why do people resort to violence. But I don't think it's the biggest threat anymore. a much, much larger long-term threat to our democratic processes, our democratic institutions, because of that mainstreaming dynamic that we've seen, where we've seen fringe communities that I used to observe in the darkest corners of the internet that are now becoming more mainstream and that are now leaking into public debate and with the influences that have millions of followers like Andrew Tate, who then makes misogyny cool again. Or Kanye West, who has, of course, also double as many followers as there are Jews on Earth and voices all these anti-Semitic ideas. So those are examples of influencers we've seen in recent years where definitely their impact on the public discourse is immense. And then that's just the influencer sphere.

Starting point is 01:13:27 We, of course, also have political parties rising to power, like Fratelli d'Italia in Italy or the Sweden Democrats in Sweden. And I guess those are not really just isolated phenomena anymore, but it's part of a bigger pattern. And that is concerning. really just isolated phenomena anymore, but it's part of a bigger pattern. And that is concerning. I think the fact that anti-minority and far-right populist ideas have managed to gain ground at such a rapid speed over the last few years is really alarming. And a lot of this is, of course, also happening in the wake of all these different interrelated crises from the COVID pandemic to the Ukraine war, and now the ongoing economic and inflation crisis and living cost crisis,

Starting point is 01:14:13 especially in Europe, but pretty much, I think, across the world, it is being felt to some extent. I think that is really driving people towards anti-establishment opinions that might then make it easier or that are then good gateways into extremist narratives in some cases, because people are just frustrated with the current situation, with the status quo. And then in combination, that is also happening in combination with a big digital revolution, where of course, we've already had the impact of social media and digital spaces where extremists find it easier to connect. But now we have the next generation of AI-based technologies and completely new virtual communities

Starting point is 01:14:58 that might be based on VR, where I see the next threat is also just right around the corner. are where I see the next threat is also is also just right around the corner and we've seen looking back at history that always technological revolutions can really lead to big changes in terms of politics and also to exploitation by extremist forces and the same is true for for global crisis like whether that's a health crisis or an economic crisis, usually anti-minority views and conspiracy myths tend to be on the rise during those or in the aftermath of those crisis moments in history. So I think that combination of major technological changes and crisis overlapping international

Starting point is 01:15:40 crisis is really quite a toxic combination. international crisis is really quite a toxic combination. Yeah, it's a bit depressing, especially the extent to which what we've observed sort of parallels with what you've seen at the extremes. I mean, the other thing I was thinking was how the printing press led to the Reformation and some of Europe's most destructive cultures for centuries. So hopefully that won't happen again. But in terms of the gurus we look at, I mean, we're in a situation where Joe Rogan's podcast, he is mainstream by any account. And it is quite, if you pay attention to what is being said there, it is quite extreme anti-vax

Starting point is 01:16:20 and conspiratorial content. We have, I think he's the richest man in the world now, Elon Musk, who is very influential and endorses a lot of these anti-institutional conspiratorial ideas. I think characters like Elon Musk seem particularly worrying, warning signs, I think, in terms of all of this anti-institutional stuff going mainstream. I couldn't agree more. And in the space that I work in preventing extremism, it's been really frustrating actually to watch what's been happening with Twitter or, well, X in the last year since the takeover

Starting point is 01:16:56 because we've seen a lot of the extremist accounts return because of his completely unlimited approach to free speech. And I'm completely in favor of free speech, but I think free speech should end at that point where you limit someone else's free speech by either intimidating or threatening them. And that's exactly what's on X right now. There are a lot of accounts that we used to, that Twitter had removed earlier or content that Twitter would have removed that

Starting point is 01:17:25 is now back. So it almost feels like we're going back backwards in time. And that's been quite frustrating to watch for someone like myself, been working exactly in that field. And it feels like, oh, wait, we're now where we were five years ago. Okay. Yeah. And he's currently, Elon's concern presently is to at least on Twitter, perhaps in the courts we'll see, but like rage or with the ADL and the center for countering digital hit, right. And which you can make plenty of legitimate criticisms about various approaches or, or things that they've done in the past. But obviously, when there's

Starting point is 01:18:09 a very strong streak of overt anti sentimentism, which is very easy to find on Twitter, no, I like extremely including in kinds that Elon promotes, it doesn't send the best message, if that's what you want to spend your time focusing on. So yeah. And as you said, for somebody with supposed concerns about unlimited free speech, he certainly doesn't seem that concerned about the chilling effects of expensive legal cases aimed at enemies. So not an entirely consistent man.

Starting point is 01:18:44 Yeah, not a hugely consistent person. But But yeah, so one thing we've seen, which speaks to these dynamics is that figures that before would have been tabooed, like, for example, RFK Jr, even for many of the figures in our, like guru sphere who even for many of the figures in our like guru sphere who present themselves as contrarians and you know as outside the box thinkers they would have been very reluctant to promote rfk jr directly and in fact i know that brett weinstein had various contact with rfk jr and he had never mentioned him on his podcast or that kind of thing. But now, you know, RFK Jr. is an in-demand guest. And yes, he has a presidential run, but it's clear that something there shifted, at least in regards to the mainstream acceptance

Starting point is 01:19:40 of anti-vaccine figures on the right. I know that RFK Jr. is running as a Democrat, but it's clearly much more popular on the right than the left. So yeah, is the anti-vaccine aspect, does that come up in these communities as a distinguishing feature? Or is that more, like you said, that that was, it definitely appealed to various people from traditional left-wing communities or left associated communities. But a lot of the energy for anti-COVID measures seem to be coming from the extreme right or far right figures as well. So yeah, I'm just curious about that overlap. Well, regardless of where these people were coming from

Starting point is 01:20:31 that were flocking to anti-COVID conspiracy myth communities, they soon radicalized towards more right-wing or even radical right views. So even people coming from more the left-wing side of the spectrum would then slowly adopt ideas, many of them would adopt ideas very much associated with the far right. So I'd say there was almost a recruitment out of left-wing constituencies into the far right happening based on COVID and anti-vaccine and anti-COVID measures rhetoric. It's definitely reached a turning point.

Starting point is 01:21:04 I think both just in general that whole anti-vaccine movement but also more specifically q anon has reached a turning point where it's gone so mainstream that a lot of the influencers who would have probably five years ago not there to talk about q anon internal symbols or or mention some of the conspiracy myths there or mention some of the figures within the movement would now be very openly speaking about it and have no shame anymore in terms of, yeah, also voicing similar ideas

Starting point is 01:21:35 or at least catering to these audiences because they now, and you even see it with politicians, that it's now, it is on their agenda, at least in the US, when you look at even republican candidates were running for congress but also now there is definitely a flirt going on with these conspiracy myth crowds also the of course the election fraud ideas that

Starting point is 01:21:57 are kind of loosely associated with with those conspiracy myths, but also other just disinformation about about the vaccines or about COVID as such. I do that there's a paradox here that I'm curious to get your opinion on. So like, obviously, one of the narratives around the COVID was to oppose authoritarian public health measures right to and to the same with the Brexit, um, campaign to like rest sovereignty back right away from these international elites and, and bring it back to the, the, the people at home, so to speak. And in.

Starting point is 01:22:40 Yeah, there in, in a lot of those movements, there's also a kind of, if not admiration overtly, a large level of tolerance extended towards authoritarian right figures, the figures who would restrict media or would prevent opposition parties from being able to campaign victor orban in hungary or or bolsonaro in brazil and i'm just curious about that that like kind of contradictory i know that people are perfectly well able to be contradictory but it seems such an obvious contradiction to be like opposed to authoritarians while saying what we really need is a authoritarian strongman to come in and like fight the system so does that does that ever come up in the discussions like how are we opposing authoritarianism by wanting to instill a strongman leader

Starting point is 01:23:42 it's it's it's really crazy I also came across so many contradictory approaches and also ideologies, especially within the QAnon community. I mean, it's just one big massive conspiracy that's full of contradictions and full of paradoxes. And there are studies that show that people are, especially in conspiracy myth communities communities they just built their own their own kind of cognitive framework it doesn't matter whether one conspiracy myth completely is at odds or is contradicting another one it somehow it is possible to believe in these very contradictory ideas but definitely for for a lot of these especially the q QAnon movement, they have, for example, also glorified Putin or even Xi Jinping most lately, although they initially painted him as the enemy. But then

Starting point is 01:24:31 when they saw Putin and Russia and China are now actually working more together, they saw they had made a complete 180 degree turn in their ideas towards China and they all of a sudden started endorsing Xi Jinping and started saying he's maybe one of us. And that's really interesting to see from people who are exactly, who were scared and especially during COVID times of kind of the global establishment of authoritarian style surveillance and so on. And then they glorify the leaders of countries like China or Russia, which is completely, I mean, yeah, it is quite ridiculous to be honest.

Starting point is 01:25:14 But it also shows that, yeah, that I guess you can make anything work in such conspiracy myth communities if you want to. It is also a very crowdsourced organic community where when you look at those those big pictures of all the different elements that they combine with each other i mean it's it's mind-blowing when they try to explain not just the moon landing was was fake but also princess diana's death was plot and then they also talk about world war ii and the holocaust and they talk about aliens and they connect that

Starting point is 01:25:51 with the hollywood elites and it's all it all then has to be connected and they find meaning in every single thing in every single um the point you made about you know the the tolerance of inconsistency is is something that we come across a lot and it's in part seems to be that as like if there is disagreement you can you don't dwell on it you you just focus on the points of the critique that that shore each other up and you might all have your individual spin on things. And maybe you, there's an element that contradicts like your, whether you think that the vaccine was, and was not at all serious. It was just like a common cold, but it was also a bioweapon designed to populate the earth in 50 years or whatever. But, but a lot of the figures that we cover, they, they just have a very strong tolerance for that as long as the people that they're interacting

Starting point is 01:26:51 with are being nice about them and praising them. So it's, it's kind of like the interpersonal and the broad agreement. That the institutions and stuff are wrong is the main thing that the actual details, they're not that important, even as it's presented that that's all that matters to them so yeah so it's often it's often also about the charismatic leaders themselves rather than what they represent or what they stand for and that actually leads to a question that i had for you which which kind of combines our interests and yours, which is that, like we've been talking about,

Starting point is 01:27:30 a lot of the figures that we cover, they do tend to crop up with figures who, if not more politically extreme, certainly have a more extreme view and express it more openly than would have been the case when we started the podcast a couple of years back.

Starting point is 01:27:51 And there's more tolerance for big ideas, if you want to put it like that. And I'm curious, there's been a lot of people that have argued that the IDW or that's less relevant now, but you know, the, the kind of heterodox contrarian space

Starting point is 01:28:10 that it works as funneling people towards these more extreme communities. And others have been more critical of that saying that actually they can kind of siphon off people into potentially more productive spaces, or at least not that extreme, you know, so this is one of the debate that ridges around Sam Harris and his impact. And I'm wondering, one, what you think about that purported connection between the kind of IDW contrarian, too far right pipeline pipeline whether it is a significant pipeline or or is overstated and secondly if the kind of less extreme guru contrarian figures people like joe rogan people like russell brand or or so on if they can be seen as

Starting point is 01:29:18 If they can be seen as increasing, you know, the trend towards extremism or just their opportunists reacting to the environment, like how crucial are the kind of charismatic guru figures to this? Or are they just people that would leap on to whatever trend happens to get them attention? Those are super, super good and interesting questions. I think for the pipeline or the role that the gurus, the right-wing gurus or influencers play in terms of providing a pipeline into further radicalization, I think it's actually findings are mixed. I mean, based on all my observations, you have a have a mix of on the one hand, yes, it is true that in some cases they might put a stop to people who would go down potentially further the rabbit hole and would even radicalize towards violence. So that's also been the argument of maybe Jordan Peterson has kept some misogynists from actually going down the route towards incels and has provided alternative solutions. And, or maybe the same is true for someone like Sam Harris in terms of kind of putting things into, or keeping people in a space where they're not potentially then resorting

Starting point is 01:30:17 towards violence, towards Muslims or towards minority communities. But there's also enough evidence to suggest that they've actually been such a big, they've really been such a big factor in legitimizing and normalizing some of the ideas and also providing an entry, a gateway into more extremist worlds, that there is definitely a radicalization factor there. I think, and that is more also about bringing these ideas to much bigger audiences. That's probably the key factor here. Even if they manage to keep a few individuals

Starting point is 01:30:51 from committing violent acts, I do think that bigger picture influence that they have on, yeah, literally in some cases, millions of online users, that is quite concerning in some cases, especially when it's about normalizing misogynist views or normalizing potentially views that can then feed into anti-Muslim or anti-minority hatred. Yeah, Joe Rogan strikes me here as a relevant figure because without his promotion of various anti-vaccine figures, of course, they would have still had influence and they would have got a lot of attention, but they got a lot more of a profile after appearing on his show. case, he was introduced to most of them through Brett Weinstein, who in many respects is a marginal figure, right. But in, in that respect of introducing anti-vaccine figures, Robert Malone, Peter McCulloch, and the guy that is PR Corey.

Starting point is 01:31:58 Yeah. That's it. Like that's a, that's a substantial influence. So, so yeah. I agree. That's the other, that's the substantial influence. So, yeah. I agree. That's the other thing. They give a platform and often a voice to fringe actors who might never make it into the public discourse otherwise without having a big guru or a big influencer mention their names or even host them. The same is true for Tucker Carlson.

Starting point is 01:32:25 names or even host them the same is true for tucker carson when tucker carson i mean tucker carson has has given airtime to the great great replacement or white genocide conspiracy myth and has also talked a lot about anti-covid and anti-vaccine conspiracy myths and even just the fact that he's mentioning it live on air on one of the biggest watch shows in kind of in the u.s i think that is really, that really did a lot. And now, of course, he still has a platform. And he's still also someone who drives people towards more radical views and more extreme communities. Okay. So looking forward, Julia, I wonder, like, what do you think are the emerging things we should be focusing on? And this is probably too optimistic, but do you have any advice about actions that should be taken

Starting point is 01:33:10 to kind of ameliorate or reduce the impact of these things? I always hate this question when people ask it to me, because I never have any idea of what to suggest. But maybe you can do better. What are your thoughts? but but maybe you can do better what are your thoughts yeah i i also i spend more of my time studying the threats than than thinking about solutions but i do do a bit of work also in the prevention and early intervention space so i have some experience in that and it is it is true that there are many routes and I think especially now looking forward there are there is a lot of potential for what kind of yeah prevention preventing people from from going into conspiracy myth communities in the first place or into extremist spaces I do think I've been rather

Starting point is 01:33:59 disillusioned when it comes to de-radicalizing people who are who are already very deep down the rabbit hole is extremely difficult and what we need to understand is is that i'm gonna say that again um understanding the psychological factors that drive people there in the first place is probably the best option that we have for a preventing them from going there and be trying to have them return to what's what they would call the normies but return from those extremist echo chambers i do think that we're still a long way away from really understanding that on a more not just in in very general terms but really looking at at an individual level understanding what is what is driving an individual person and finding tailored prevention approaches or intervention approaches

Starting point is 01:34:50 that can also be carried out in the online spaces. There are a lot of good de-radicalization programs already happening in offline contexts, and we can really learn from what we know works in those settings and apply that to the online world. I guess we've not really seen a lot of effective online interventions yet. And also there is a lack of evidence which ones actually work, where can we improve the effectiveness. And so a lot of evaluation also still needs to happen to really learn from that.

Starting point is 01:35:22 And to understand better, how can we work with trained psychologists with with trained intervention providers or even former extremists or conspiracy myth adherents who might help with these online interventions and really going into channels like the incel community or q anon channels and start a one-on-one engagement program. I think those are all options for the future, but we still have, I think, quite a long way until we get there. The other important part, I think, is education in general. I would love to see more of almost a new subject being integrated in national curricula

Starting point is 01:36:01 that's at the intersection of digital literacy and psychology we talk a lot about digital literacy in the sense of how do you distinguish fake news from reliable news sources but we don't really yet talk about what does the internet and what do digital spaces or online influencers do to us on a psychological level and how can you brace yourself from these effects how can you tell the red flags? What happens if a hobby community all of a sudden turns political or turns radical? And how do you behave in that scenario? But also what does digital citizenship look like?

Starting point is 01:36:39 How can you show digital civil courage? We would all intervene if we saw someone, yeah, discriminating or being, or even offending someone on the tube or on public transport, but very few people would intervene in the same case in an online attack or an online hate campaign. So I think there's a lot there as well

Starting point is 01:36:59 to teach all of us how to be good digital citizens. That sounds like courses I'd be happy to take. And it also reminds me of this little intervention that pre-Elo Musk Twitter had, which it may still apply to, I haven't seen it, where when you were going to tweet something like, you idiot, why do you have a head made of salmon or something that would fly up? You know, most people don't tweet like this, are you sure you want to send

Starting point is 01:37:30 that and they did, you know, just a nudge, but it is in the studies they did, it really reduced for the vast majority of people, they revised the tweet down in some Aidan McCullen, it helped a lot as well. Aidan McCullen, it really did help but it but also in in a small percentage which might be more of the people that you see this piece is here at julia it actually made them make the message worse but that was a tiny percentage of people so they they're the people who want to see the world burn so yeah that's i think that's a sort of hope slightly

Starting point is 01:38:04 hopeful no it's probably as best as we're going to get outside the dystopian future where the extremist groups are recruiting us in VR and the deradicalization groups have VR deradicalization set there. But we might be headed there. AI bots. Yeah, all stopped by AI bots. Yeah, but if the ai bots can spend their time doing it instead of us that would probably be just take human out of it and let them do it but that would be fine but um it's been a pleasure to talk to you and thank you for going through your research and and your previous work and and putting up with our guru themed questions. So, yeah, it's been a pleasure.

Starting point is 01:38:50 Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great to join you. Thanks so much, Julia. We'll see you again. Yeah. And definitely I will. As we continue to publish things. And that was Julia. Thank you, Julia. Thank you. That was very informative, only slightly depressing.

Starting point is 01:39:15 We managed to get enough light moments in there that hopefully sprinkled in the dark some cupcakes for people to enjoy. Yes, depressing in some parts, but informative all the way through very good stuff yes and speaking of informative we have reviews of the podcast that pure podcast we have reviews of the podcast that we like to discuss highlight we like to consider them and review them yep we like to turn the mirror and put ourselves firmly in the spotlight so uh it's good it's good time for some self-reflection some patting on the backs maybe some self-searching what have you got for us today yeah so there was a lot to choose from here hi i want to highlight some of the beautiful reviews which are very specific one issue reviews then i'm not going to go through it but there's one that is called baby aspirin question mark question mark by nostradamus nice of him to pop in and it's

Starting point is 01:40:26 basically he's a gp from australia and he wants to pass on i think it's a matthew remski because you asked him what um uh like supplements and whatnot he takes and he wants to pass on that baby aspirin does not prevent deep vein fibrosis and he he has a very long review explaining like why that's a mistaken uh thing that some people believe so oh matthew if you're listening you've been told i'm not taking baby aspirin so i'm not gonna read that but um for anyone who is for deep vein thrombosis um you better read that yeah it's very it's very clear about why it wouldn't work as well so just just go check it out don't want to spread medical disinformation so i i like that that was part of a five-star review yeah i like it too and i don't mean to sound dismissive i mean you

Starting point is 01:41:23 could take everything i know about deep vein thrombosis and aspirin and fit it onto a post-it note so um no shade from me i'm sure it's good information yeah so we also had a kiwi with a review that referenced my pronunciation of aotearoa but that's that's not the one i want to highlight matt um there's just two meta reviews that i want to highlight and one i like this it's it's titled a review of the review of reviews how's this a review of reviews okay yeah that's that's Yeah. That's us now. This is us. Yeah. It's reviewing us reviewing reviews and it's by Texas Trilobite.

Starting point is 01:42:11 And it says the podcast is fine, but the review of reviews is fantastic, especially when Matt and Chris try to be nice when they get a critical one and hearing Chris say it is worth the wait. a critical one and hearing chris say it is is worth the wait so that i just like that because then we are reviewing their review of our review of reviews i like that that is that is so meta this is inception level that's great i love it it can never end not that's just content forever we'll just all be endlessly reviewing our own reviews so yeah we need to make a dedicated podcast it's just a review of the review of the review of the reviews but so the next review a little bit self-serving i'll admit it but i feel that it's important that people hear this because

Starting point is 01:43:01 this is not the only time that we have received feedback like this. And I didn't write it. I can't say that Matt didn't write it, but I know that I didn't write it. So let me just read it. And the title is, well, it actually says DCD saved me, which is not our acronym, but let's set that aside. I'll correct that for them. And this is by Slim. It says, I was an avid listener of many of the culture war gurus, including being hypnotized every day for years by Scott Adams. This also meant falling into their social media orbit and all its toxicity. I always said to myself that I was just observing, but that was largely a delusion.

Starting point is 01:43:47 said to myself that i was just observing but that was largely a delusion through listening to dcd i could at least allow myself to challenge what i've been consuming and some reassessment was possible with the outbreak of the war and the great clarification this brought i could finally shake off the shackles and stop following so many right-wing grifters and charlatans thanks guys look forward to more oh that's very nice that's very nice apart from the dcd thing i mean how carefully are you listening unless there is another podcast that is credited this could be a mix-up this could be a mistake the credit could go to another podcast yeah yeah so that's but you know that is a heartening message to receive. We've received dollars like that in the past, various emails and DMs and stuff from people that say that.

Starting point is 01:44:31 And equally as many from people that say that that will never happen because we're too sarcastic and rude about people. And I just want to point out that at least some people do suggest that we play a part in um them seeing through things so i don't know they might be creating false memories or or the but in in any case it is nice to receive those messages and we do receive them from time to time so yeah uh slim a shout out uh because it's nice to receive it yeah yeah that's right and i feel like this is a little bit of validation too for i think a conscious decision to try to downplay even though we can't eliminate it our own personal worldview and political preferences and so on

Starting point is 01:45:19 i mean with with a criticism that's been leveled at us before is that we haven't, I don't know, taken whatever, an anti-capitalist stance or whatever, a certain kind of thing, because that is clearly how the world works. But not everyone sees the world like that. And it would be good for everyone, whatever your political persuasion is, even Nazis. Sure, why not? If they can at least apply their critical thinking, notice when people are pulling their leg, taking them for a bit of a ride, then that's got to make things a little bit better. And it would be good if that outreach was across the entire spectrum. So I think if we did things that were coming from a very specific lens, then we wouldn't reach anyone

Starting point is 01:46:05 except people that are already committed to that lens. So that's the way I see it. Well, you know, are we saving the world? A little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Is this long-form podcasting protecting Western civilization? A little bit. A little bit a little bit a little

Starting point is 01:46:26 it's not perfect we can't do everything you know iron dome we're just two men we're just we're just men chris we're just we're just just ordinary men that little funny clip on the internet yes and actually another review which i won't read because it would be too indulgent, mentions that we are not just constantly piss-taking, but do on occasion attempt to steal from other people's positions. So just someone else saying that we do that. Just saying it's not us. Say no, it's an anonymous person online.

Starting point is 01:47:00 That's what the people are saying. A lot of people are saying, Chris. A lot of smart people. A lot of smart people notice that. A lot of people are saying, Chris. A lot of smart people. A lot of smart people notice that. A lot of smart people. There is some piss-taking. There is some piss-taking. We accept that.

Starting point is 01:47:13 A small one. A tiny, tiny one. Just a little bit. Just a little dash of salt. I have to admit, I didn't try to steal man Brett Weinstein's clips at the beginning of the intro of this podcast. I didn't steal man those.

Starting point is 01:47:29 I don't know. I think I fairly represented them, Chris. No, I think you addressed them in a way that would be more charitable than a lot of the people that would critique Brett. But there's just not very much charity that you can extend. So one thing that people say, he thinks that he's being very sophisticated and, you know, it's highlighting this nefarious thing, which is playing the work.

Starting point is 01:47:59 Yes, I completely believe he's sincere in what he says. he thinks that the nefarious uh forces are arrayed against him and his friends who are saving people from a deadly vaccine so he's sincere i think he's sincere and believing that because he's a narcissistic prick so sorry but um yeah that's very generous of you chris um well done yeah speaking of generous people but oh nice segue nice segue yeah we have a patreon on our patreon there's various things there's decoding academia 22 episodes in the back catalog there of us going through academic papers and discussing them and detailing out a kind of mini academic journal

Starting point is 01:48:51 club. There's that and there's bonus episodes, little mini decodings of stuff that we feel is too indulgent for the main feed or that kind of stuff. And we tried to release things earlier sometimes with not entirely complete editing but if you want episodes or interviews as soon as we

Starting point is 01:49:12 record them we post them up there so we have a patreon we put those things and now patreon also activated chat chat features they're bringing back internet chat we have no moderation it's not the oscar so this is this is like telnet this is telnet chris it is like telnet wow there's just like a little option to turn it on and then it just you know it just is like a chat client and i was like what so this is just a like a free-for-all chat and there's a moderation thing if people report stuff but like that's it that's the only two so i'm like oh what like you're expecting me to individually moderate well you know because i've been on internet forums but people get in arguments and that but nobody on our have done so. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:50:06 I think it's, I mean, we're also, we were invited to be moderators on the, what's it called? Reddit. Reddit. Subreddit. I couldn't agree. Worldly honorary. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:50:19 We don't, we don't exercise our moderatory powers. That was a correct decision. So they followed the very bad wizards model not the fake like moderator robots of lex friedman there are actual moderators and they put us in an honorary position we are moderators but we cannot do anything we can't actually moderate i didn't know that i assumed i could i believe so i was at least told that so i remember i i i don't know if that's fake news or not but i believe we are like limited moderators with the ability to talk to other moderators and that's it but in any case we don't moderate there so and it's and it's anything out there it's purely out of a love of free speech and a welcoming attitude to criticism or partly due to the fact

Starting point is 01:51:05 that we're extremely lazy and busy you know both of those things are in the mix 50 percentage and that means that any problems with the stuff that appears there or the arguments or whatever people are saying that's not on us that's that's that's out of our hands i mean we can come on here and complain about what people are doing in the subreddit and stuff but that you but apart from that we cannot control the map we won't control them on principle because we love free speech so much god damn it that's right i'll defend to the death they're right to say nasty things about the government memes and and say chris is wrong about something that i'm not wrong about and in fact if you subscribe at the at the highest tier the $10 tier for our patreon you have carte blanche you could call me a fat ugly fascist old man

Starting point is 01:52:01 fascist wouldn't bother me so much as fast misogynist misogynist sure go wild as long as those 10 bucks a month keep rolling in i'll take it that's it that's it and you can actually come on if you are like the galaxy being guru level you can come on to the monthly like group zoom thing and those those are good matt in person call him a fat nasty say it to my face you cowards that's right get to that top tier come along to the meet and greet session call me a fat fascist this is open to all the gurus as well you know you want your right to reply you don't like what we said just pay your ten dollars come on and we'll we'll hash it like face to face you don't like what we said just pay your ten dollars come on and we'll we'll

Starting point is 01:52:46 hash it out face to face you don't even need to access your public right to reply you can just do it in internally in the patreon so anyway extended thing we you know we don't we don't tend to advertise very much my i look long ago was our last advertisement like a year or something so this is just and we never got paid i don't think we ever got paid by any of our advertisers we probably did we probably did but we should probably check that but um in any case let's shout out some patrons let's do it matt i've got a load here absolute mountain of conspiracy hypothesizers so i'm gonna go with them i'm gonna just fire down this list like a machine okay got seichuan golden schmincke drepp panasaur trader in Trader in New York City, Rebecca Kowal, Bethany Delicky-Earns,

Starting point is 01:53:51 Michelle Aepshi, PaleBlue.89, Adam Bosnian, Hugh Corrigan, Hashim Mude, Alan Hutton, Billy Hanson, Hutton, Billy Hanson, Shona Perez, Michael Zak, David Brown, Heller Elaine, Thomas Mormon, Robert Timdy, Corey Bicknell, Moby Toby, Alan Murphy, Joe Jack Terry,

Starting point is 01:54:16 Justin Fishtick, APNVA, Andrew Maeda, Andrew Guetta, Sharon Joe Downey, Louise Forndycraft, Alison Dale, and Diana Lenartorich. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. The $2 a month, money well spent.

Starting point is 01:54:37 I hope you're satisfied. Thank you very much. Yeah. Here's your reward. I feel like there was a conference that none of us were invited to that came to some very strong conclusions. And they've all circulated this list of correct answers. I wasn't at this conference. This kind of shit makes me think, man, it's almost like someone is being paid.

Starting point is 01:54:58 Like when you hear these George Soros stories, he's trying to destroy the country from within. We are not going to advance conspiracy theories. We will advance conspiracy hypotheses. George Soros is paying Mossad to let the terrorists in to, yeah, anyway. Well, he certainly will advance conspiracy hypotheses, Matt. He has done that. He has done that. He has done that with a vengeance. Yes.

Starting point is 01:55:28 Yeah, this week, pretty good. Now, revolutionary thinkers or revolutionary geniuses, whatever your term for them is, the slightly higher people, the ones with the access to the academic knowledge behind the $5 curtain, wall, paywall, whatever it is. There's some of those, Matt. I'm going to find them.

Starting point is 01:55:48 I'm going to shout out to them. Matthew Natalia. Diane. Wes. Kenya McRae. Dylan Selterman. Scott Stacey. Seb Kadimus, JJ, Jonas Gaydilis, Paul, Jesse Wheeler, Zvi Pardes, Mitchell W., John McKay, Andy, Matthew Parsons, Curtis Kofoed, Brendan Hitch, Caleb Catlett, and Jake Simpson and Rebecca.

Starting point is 01:56:44 Okay, good. Thank you very much, everyone. It's a shame I don't have access to this list of names because I feel like I could pronounce them with a lot less trouble. But well done anyway, Chris. I don't think you could. You have no idea what these spellings are like. I'm shielding you, Matt.

Starting point is 01:56:58 I'm shielding you. Revolutionary geniuses, one and all. Thank you. I'm usually running, I don't know, 70 or 90 distinct paradigms simultaneously all the time. And the idea is not to try to collapse them down to a single master paradigm. I'm someone who's a true polymath. I'm all over the place. But my main claim to fame, if you'd like, in academia is that I founded the field of evolutionary consumption.

Starting point is 01:57:22 Now, that's just a guess, and it could easily be wrong, but it also could not be wrong. The fact that it's even plausible is stunning. Collapsing everything down to one paradigm, Chris. That's a rookie error, a rookie error. I never do that. No, me neither. That's what the first semester of guru school is about how to avoid doing that now matt unfortunately i do not have many people at shame shame shame on you shame on you all i do have i do have a few though or perhaps less than a few, but I've got Pim Hardeman. That's, that's one. And I also have, I also have Matt.

Starting point is 01:58:15 You just have Pim, is that what you're saying? Just Pim? That's all we've got? Which it's possible that that is all I'm going to unless the next page no we've got rob osborne as well rob thank god thank god that was that was close so when i when i said a few we need three and and christian birkin christian Birkin. Thank you. Christian. Tim, Rob, and Christian. You're very special. You're very dear to our hearts.

Starting point is 01:58:47 The Trinity. Oh, and Matt, don't forget dianemartingutale.com. Okay. That's full. Diane.com. Yeah. Dot com, Liam. And Jason Parker, also another one.

Starting point is 01:59:03 Jason, let's wait, that's five. That's more than a few now. You made a liar of yourself, Chris. No, Lisa Pennycook as well. Lisa Pennycook. I wonder if she's any relation to good old Gord Pennycook. Isn't he Pennycock? I'm just joking.

Starting point is 01:59:24 You had me there i know i know well they are galaxy brain gurus and they all help me there get beyond a few to a handful to a handful yeah yeah yeah like a mess of top tier patrons there so all of you come along to the um to the live stream thing it. It's nice. You can come up on stage. You can be video. It's called a siege. All the other special people can see you. As well as us seeing you and you seeing us.

Starting point is 01:59:53 Everyone's seen everyone. We've seen it all. We're all seeing each other. And the huge reward. Besides that. Besides that. We tried to warn people. Yeah. Like what was coming,

Starting point is 02:00:08 how it was going to come in, the fact that it was everywhere and in everything. Considering me tribal just doesn't make any sense. I have no tribe. I'm in exile. Think again, sunshine. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:00:24 I love those clips. I feel like we should refresh them at some point but i i love the ones we have so much they're so good martin wenzel is responsible for refreshing them a couple months ago so that's pretty neat martin did a great job martin yeah and by the way chris there's been some discussion on the reddit someone else because I have been interested in doing like visualizations and stuff of the garometer. And my suggestion, I can't remember whether I actually posted this, maybe I just dreamt it, it was in my head, but it's a good suggestion nonetheless, is that somebody, probably you, should calculate the correlations

Starting point is 02:00:59 between the different axes of the garometer and find the ones that cluster together and they should go together. Do a factor analysis? No, not a factor analysis, just a correlation matrix. Okay, a correlation matrix, fine. I can do that.

Starting point is 02:01:13 I'm good at that as well. Then, Mark, you're just going to get accused of scientism, though. Oh, you need a visualization. Do you think you're a real scientist? No. It's all right. It's all right.

Starting point is 02:01:24 As long as in the methods section you put data scientist? No, it's just... It's all right. It's all right. As long as in the methods section, you put data in scare quotes. We can do the little Eric Weinstein disclaimer, like a complex... This is the work of entertainment. Yeah. Yeah. So we should do that,

Starting point is 02:01:39 but that will be okay. And now, Matt, our decoding is done for the week. Next time you will hear a decoding of guru content. You heard a little bit at the start with good old Brett, but next time, it'll be a full guru episode. So look forward to that. It's coming.

Starting point is 02:01:58 Yep. A full and a full-on guru. It'll be good. Great. Thank you, Chris. Full frontal guru. All right. Full frontal gurus. all right i've finished

Starting point is 02:02:07 potting my succulents i'm gonna go make mapo tofu you go and do whatever it is you do over there in japan yeah good luck i will and and you you are in just in case you're wondering you didn't understand what food matt referenced he did say muppet tofu. He's going to cook Muppets. I'm going to cook Muppets. It's a delicacy. It's very unusual. The screams are chilling, but you get your sustenance where you can. Don't judge our culture. Don't judge my culture.

Starting point is 02:02:41 There's too many Muppets anyway, an invasive species in Australia. We hunt them down. We put a bullet in their head for the environment. So't question us yeah that's it all right well g'day mia enjoy your muppet barbecue or whatever you're gonna do and we'll see the rest of you soon enough okay bye-bye. Thank you.

Decoding the Gurus - Interview with Julia Ebner: Extremist Networks & Radicalisation

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