It Could Happen Here - The Fable of the Fake China Coup

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

The crew looks at a truly bizarre conspiracy theory about a coup against Xi Jinping that took social media and India mainstream news by stormSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast,

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami?

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It could happen here. It's not October yet, but this is a preview of kind of how I'll be recording certain things when Halloween gets nearer. So I'm done with my work for the day. The rest of you can take over now. I guess that's me. Hi.

It's me. It's Christopher. What is this episode about, Christopher? Is it about Halloween? No, this is about a thing that did not happen somewhere else, which I guess is slightly off kilter for us but yeah also with me is garrison and shereen and sophie and hi yeah hello excellent all right seems like the episode started good work everybody all right we did it we got there we've gotten through the introduction now we can get to uh a conspiracy theory that's been like all over twitter but not kind of in the usual places where you'd expect a conspiracy theory to be on Twitter.

And that is this whole thing where an enormous number of people were convinced that Xi Jinping had been ousted in a coup and that he was being held by the army under house arrest. And OK, so we're recording this on the 27th. and okay so we're recording this on the 27th um earlier today i think xi jinping like reappeared and it you know we had the final definitive proof that he had not in fact been like disappeared by the chinese army yeah yeah i remember the the way i encountered this was twitter informingly that people were like discussing it. And I spent like three seconds looking at what accounts were saying that Xi Jinping was being fucking cooed. And it was all like, um,

I don't know, uh, uh, anime tit goblin four, two, three. Uh, like,

like analyzing satellite photos and stuff. I'm like, no, we don't. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna wait to hear what's up with this one anime tit goblin that's great yeah someone actually did like a sorry uh like a um like a word cloud of uh yeah like a network map of who was spreading it and it was accounts with names like that

yeah i believe you and i mean and it has spawned like articles from Al Jazeera. No, it's it's it's way worse than that. It's way worse than that. Like, OK, well, I will skip ahead a slight bit to the place we were at two days ago was a Republic Media Network, which is like was one of the biggest news networks in in India. I saw some I saw a source claiming they get one hundred and fifty five million views a week. Yeah, because literally in India, it's one of the biggest in India. It's like one of the biggest in the world. They were literally running a China Watchers parody tweet. Like, he had a tweet.

A China Watcher guy had a thread that was, like, him making fun of it. That was, like, him walking to, like, random empty places and being like, this is a coup. And they, like, they straight up ran, like, like his tweets, like as a news story about the coup, like unreal bullshit. Like I, I, oh boy. Well,

this is again, a point we make regularly on, on all of our shows, but like, you can't, you can't have that kind of fun anymore. Like it, it just immediately gets picked up and weaponized,

like making, making jokes about like fake, oh yeah. Idiots are spreading bullshit about a coup i'm gonna make fake coup news well congratulations now you've convinced a third of india that there's a coup in china yeah and like i think like the china watchers i think were like because okay it like and this is the thing where i there are there are very specific china watch people i am very mad at because when when when they were interviewed

by the press and when they were writing about it, they were like, well, a coup could kind of be plausible, but it's not happening. It's like, no, no, it's not. It is not. I'm sorry. Like, it is a joke. Like, anyone who actually plausibly suggests that Xi Jinping is going to get overthrown in a coup

is not serious. This is not a serious person. This cannot happen. Like, this is like fucking, like Steve Bannon's getting the death penalty shit. Like, it's actually less plausible than that like it's it's nonsense like there's and when you say because i'm not i'm not a china government knower when you say it's impossible is it just because like we have a long history of what happens when like people who are in power in the chinese communist

party lose power and it's not coups well i mean here's the thing right so people will make a there's like there's like a whole big thing about how like hu jintao was like the first like successful like like non-violent like like transition of power in chinese history and like that's kind of true like in in the modern ccp because like so after mao there's another guy who takes power and he gets like fucked up by ding xiaoping and like his sort of minions but like okay so the first thing you have to understand about this and this is something that's going to come up later here is that the chinese army is not going to stage a coup like this is impossible it is not going to happen the chinese army is not a political faction that works like this there has never been like the chinese army has never done a coup like

like the the army of like the people's liberation army has never done a coup that's not how this works it is it is like it is insane it is like just bafflingly incomprehensible that anyone would think they could do this because they can't it like this is this is this is not what this is not what the pla is as an institution insofar as people get overthrown inside of the party it's by other people in the party doing like factional maneuvering against them and that can sort of happen uh but okay, this is the year 2022. Xi Jinping has basically, like, clobbered everyone in the party who, like, anyone who was actually going to present a serious challenge to him, like, was clobbered, like, 10 years ago.

So, I mean, 10 is probably slightly over, but, like, you know, he just finished, part of the background to the story is that he just finished purging, like, a few of his, last remaining like kind of serious like not even really serious but like he he he's did another one of anti-corruption purges and he's like had a guy like executed for corruption right like this isn't like that that's how stuff actually works in the party is someone gets arrested for corruption and then put in prison for a long time or killed like but like like you know executed for like corruption like that that's how this stuff actually works there's there's like there are no coups this is bullshit i'm gonna yell at a china watcher specifically who was talking about this like at the end of this episode because i'm mad

about it um like so like and obviously like right now like obviously today the 27th like xi jinping has reappeared in public. So like this is obviously bullshit. Five days ago, if we turn back the clock, it was exactly as bullshit as it was then. But there is some other context here, which is that. So one of the reasons why anyone is even talking about this in the first place is that on October 16th, which is like a bit over two weeks from now, the CCP is going to have the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. And this is like the big one, right? Like every five years, like the whole party gets together and it's where they choose members of the Politburo and it's where they choose the members of the absolutely terribly named Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Wow. And there's like another thing.

There's, like, another, like, all this stuff is, like, it's based on, like, like, the structure of, like, it's based on, like, the party structure that the Bolsheviks set up in the 1920s. What would be the kind of comparison to this for American politics? There isn't. Or really is there not any? I mean, it's kind of, like, the closest thing would be a presidential election, but imagine if a presidential election was, like,

like, imagine if a presidential election was one party got together and they chose the president. So it's a committee that kind of gets the different bureaucratic leaders of different sectors of the economy. Well, it's not so much – so it's basically like it has all of the leaders sort of going down the ranks of the party. You have like each city or whatever like people will okay so you send delegates to it like originally it was like like back in like the like when the bolsheviks were doing this in like in like 19 like 1919 right like it's okay though the like these are based off of like like the whole party like like the bolshevik party would have a congress and all of the sort of leading organizers and all like everyone like all the sort of like local party factions would like elect a

person and they would set a delegate to the thing and then they would all fight out and figure out what their policy was going to be now it's like there's i mean there are power struggles that go on but the whole like this is an actual representative of like a mass party thing it's just sort of gone it's just this is this is sort of like what's actually going to happen at this one is we're going to see exactly how much power like Xi Jinping is going to take because he's the big story that everyone's talking about is like Xi Jinping at the last one of these like, well, not the last one of these. This was it was it was it was a different Congress, but he he was able to, like, eliminate the two term limit on Chinese leaders that have been imposed sort of like after Mao because people were like maybe this is a bad idea so he's gonna get a third term there's a bunch of

debate over like exactly how much power he's gonna get and like what titles he's gonna get but like I don't know I'll do an episode about that after it happens but basically there's all this sort of political intrigue stuff swirling around because this is like the big political events like of of the sort of like

modern period um the other thing that was happening well and this is also why he was like purging some of his opponents because like well you know so like i guess the other thing we should we could talk about with this is like if people have listened to revolutions like this is how stalin took over the party which is that he figured out that like the way you take over this the state apparatus is by you you make yourself the like the head of the politburo and then you have enough vote you have like you you need all you need to do is control like three people on the politburo and you can just sort of like dictate policy down the line for the party and this gives you and this gives you control the state so like this is this

is sort of this that's all like that's like the like ancestor of this it's still a very similar kind of structure sort of um mostly it's just like yeah there's an important political event going on and the other things that xi jinping was out of the country so he was doing he was doing a tour of central asia for like like he's doing one of those sort of like fluff tours people do of like ah we're like reaffirming or like trade ties and stuff and so he was in samarkand and then he came back i think on the 21st and then he just sort of vanished for a few days and the reason that he vanished was that he was in quarantine which is the thing that like is real in china but everyone else has just like forgotten exists and so he was actually doing the thing that like is real in china but everyone else has just like forgotten exists and so he

was actually doing the thing that like you're supposed to do because he was he came back from an international trip yeah well and also like well i hate to say you've got to hand it to xi jinping but i guess you've got to hand it to him that is that's what you should do after getting back from an international trip like jenny wiley one of the few things i will say about xi jinping is he has gotten covid less times than joe biden which is he has not gotten covid yeah right like he hasn't gotten it and the reason he hasn't gotten is because they actually sort of like there are ways in which the way that they take covid policy seriously is nuts like there are like anti-lockdown riots happening right now because they locked down like an entire like they locked down an

entire town because one person got covid which like whatever and you can argue with the covid policy but they right he he doesn't have covid so it just blows my mind that no one was like this might be an option of why he's not around well everyone who was like serious like like anyone who like yeah that's why it was all nonsense people who were spreading it yeah like it was all it was all random twitter accounts i i think what would kind of the missing piece here and what's actually happened is that so those of you who have followed my career uh will know that there's a website called bellingcat that i wrote at that has been in the news pretty continuously for the last almost 10 years because they kind of helped invent

the modern concept of open source research and open source intelligence, which has really had its biggest moment since the invasion of Ukraine, because suddenly there's all this footage of tanks getting blown up, of Russian soldiers doing this and doing that, and of cities changing hands and all this stuff. And people have been following the war through a lot of these big OSINT accounts. Kind of the last huge moment in OSINT prior to the invasion of Ukraine was January 6th. And that was another big moment for people understanding it. And kind of one of the popular conceptions of open source intelligence is that random guys on the internet are getting better intel than, you know, the CIA or whatever, which there's a degree to which that that's true, because a lot of random people did become experts in stuff like, you know, different kind of munitions tracking and whatnot.

And did a better job of tracing certain things than than state agencies were doing, which is why I like some of those people. doing, which is why like some of those people, um, uh, anyway, it's a whole long story, but the, the problem is that it's led people to believe that the best intelligence often comes from random people on the internet. And no, one of the things, if you, if you're trying to evaluate someone who is claiming to provide OSINT, the most, one of the most important things to do is number one, can you actually trace their work back? Like, is it possible to like follow their, their thinking and their conclusions to determine whether or not what they're saying is nonsense? And number two, do they have, like, a track record?

Because, like, for example, Eric Toler and Elliot Higgins, who I worked with for a while, have, like, a 10-year track record of being consistently right about things and breaking massive stories and doing stuff like uncovering Russian GRU agent operations and stuff. And these were just random accounts that no one had ever heard of on twitter claiming to have detailed figured out detailed information about a coup in the chinese government well there's nothing behind them yeah well it's funny too because like okay so once once like actual people we're gonna get this a second like once actual people started picking it up like if you just googled any of the people who were like writing

about this it it's, it takes like five seconds to figure out this person is just nuts. And, but nobody did it because it's, it's Twitter. And so instead what happened is, um, so this thing starts like on Chinese Twitter. Like it's, it's people like, but like, yeah, it starts on like the Chinese speaking part of like China, Twitter. I'm going to read a thing, uh, from the Indian news site First Post, which like did a kind of cleanup job of like, hey, all of the other Indian outlets who are covering this are just have just completely lost their minds. Here's like what actually sort of happens.

which has over 20 000 followers wrote on the 22nd of september that former chinese president hu jintao and former premier wen jaibao had persuaded song ping the former member of the politburo standing committee to take control of the central guard bureau from xi so i don't my guess is that makes no sense to anyone on like any of you that yeah yeah so this is jib well okay so what this is is this is some like old school very very weird like old school chinese inside baseball shit um the first thing you should know about this is this is completely the first way you can tell this is nonsense is that song ping is not doing shit and song ping is not doing shit because this man is a hundred and five years old baby you know what you credit to China I thought we lived in a kleptocracy run by like an aging ghoul cast but damn 105 to to be fair the queen could have lived so much longer

like to be fair this guy's like three generations out like this is okay so the the sort of like fantasy here is is like hu jintao like taking power and hu jintao is like he was one of the guys who came in like like he kind of made his bones like purging the people in the ccp who like hadn't been hard enough on the jiananmen protesters but he he's like he's one of the sort of reform and opening guys um like song ping is like one of the guys who like helped like hu jintao advance in the part like hu jintao is like a guy from like the 90s right like these are like like people who at one point were genuinely powerful and are now like i don't know i mean there's persistent rumors they do stuff behind the scenes but like it's it's i don't know they are like unbelievably and ferociously

decrepit and okay do you know what else is unbelievably and ferociously decrepit. And okay, do you know what else is unbelievably and ferociously decrepit? Oh, nicely done. The gold company that's now advertising on all of our podcasts? Look, guys, listen, listeners, you're probably going to hear some gold ads. They're very silly ads. People do seem to be enjoying them. I'm going to tell you two things. Number one, don't buy gold.

The only precious metals you should invest, if you're going to invest in precious metals, which I don't necessarily recommend, the only ones you should invest in are lead and brass. Yeah. But yeah, I don't care about these. Like, look, when the fucking CIA or the FBI or the Washington

State Highway Patrol is advertising on our show, we get those ads removed. I don't care. You're not going to buy gold. Don't buy gold. Don't buy gold. But we'll take their money and we'll use it to pay our salaries. It's fine. Like, enjoy it.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly.

I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house.

So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez Thank you. pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Ah, we're back.

Boy, you know what, guys? I said what I just said there and I just bought $137,000 in gold. I'm going to go bury it right now, actually. Exactly, exactly. Hey, I can't even buy gold.'m allergic to it for real yeah really what really yeah i'm not meant to be rich wow i didn't know you could be allergic to gold i also did i knew you could be allergic oh wait no yeah because like rings and stuff yeah that makes sense yeah

i mean like the yeah the metal i'm not like going to die if I touch it. But like it came up on an allergy test. So it's like legit. I wonder if you're only allergic to like broke people gold. And if you're not allergic. Oh, maybe. Poor people gold. I love that there's poor people gold and rich people gold.

I know, I know. It's just very funny that that's. And I'm sure the people advertising on our shows are selling, like, it's like asbestos bricks covered in gold leaf. Yeah. Doreen, we should talk about this. Not right now. Off air.

Yeah, let's continue. Okay, so back to another kind of incredibly bizarre fantasy. So, like, there's this group of, like, people who are, like, Chinese dissidents or whatever, but, like, whose thing is that, like, they think that, like, Xi Jinping is, like, an unreconstructed Maoist and that, like, you know, one day, like, the people from the reform period who, like, ended Maoism are one day going to, like, sweep him out of power. Like, this is nonsense. Like, it's, like, the only equivalent I can think of this is, like, every once in a while you'll see some Russia expert ranting about how like Putin is like on the verge of being overthrown and like some like liberal no one has ever

heard of the 90s is gonna do this same shit by the way the fake OSINT that comes out because it's all stuff like look they've closed the streets in Moscow and like this street you know they've got military out and it's like well yeah they're having a parade it's like a pre-announced parade they do this every year they hold this exact parade every year and they close the street

down the same way and you can find that if you look into it, but people can take like post a bunch of pictures on Twitter of like cleared streets and like soldiers blocking intersections. And it looks to somebody who doesn't know anything about Russia, like, wow, these, the, the OSINT people have done it again. They've uncovered another, a coup against Putin. Well, onein well one thing one thing the other thing that i'll say about coups is because we like in the last like maybe three or four years have actually been a lot of coups but the thing about a coup right is that like one of the things that happens very quickly usually in a coup if if the coup plotters are

winning is that like they there's you'll you'll you'll see a message from something called like the government of national salvation or some shit. Yeah. And they'll like start putting out statements. And if you don't see a statement from like the United Liberation Army of National Salvation or whatever, like it's not happening. That's what I'm going to call mine. Well, I'm just OK. I understand how it spreads.

I'm sure we're going to get into it. But I understand how it spread to like people on the internet that want something to latch on to but if you're saying it got to like al jazeera and all that stuff like there wasn't like a journalist that like looked into it so it's the thing okay so there there's a couple yeah we're gonna get to that like so there's two different kinds of things happening right one of the things about this conspiracy is that there's a lot of people who see it and are like, like, like, I saw a guy who was like an Ultramaga account, right? Like his thing was like, he was like nuclear Ultramaga who posted a picture that was like, oh my God, this is an explosion in Beijing. And it was like, no, this is from a changing explosion in 2015.

And this is the only time I've ever seen this. The next day he was like, yeah, I'm sorry. That's actually not what I thought it was. Like even those guys look at this and were like. Critical support to nuclear Ultramaga. No, it was like even those guys look at this and we're like critical support to nuclear ultra mega no it was interesting those those are the people you know normally expect just get bowled over by this stuff and they were like this is nonsense like what is happening you know i'm glad that we can rely on the journalistic credibility of nuclear ultra mega in these uncertain times thank god

nuclear ultra manga was being more responsible than most of the mainstream Indian journalistic outlets, which is terrifying. Yep. Yep. So, okay. So like, like the thing about this, this, the, the, the original version of this conspiracy though, is this is like, this is gibberish. Nobody knows what the central guard bureau is. Like I had to look that up. Like apparently it's a, it's a, like the central guard bureau is like this thing, this thing that's in charge of, like, protecting, like, high-level leaders or whatever.

Like, it's nonsense. Like, this is, this is, like, pure inside baseball shit for, like, like, people who are, like, really committed, like, Chinese dissident, what, pads or whatever. But what happens next is, so people start kind of picking up on it. up on it and in particular there's a person of jennifer zhang zhang who has like 200 000 twitter followers um starts she starts posting this video that claims to be pla military vehicles heading to beijing on september 22nd and this like goes viral um so here i'm gonna give us three options one this is footage footage from 2014 two it's footage from a video game three video game let's yeah let's think that happens a lot well no so here's i i i actually think this is real military footage and i think it's actually kind of recent it's just that like it's really easy in china to just like look at a road and

see a military truck like option three it's footage of some fucking like tank on the road in china it's not even a tank it was just like armored cars which is like a thing that like people move troops around. I just did a road trip up to northern Washington for a parkour conference. Nerd. I know. And we passed three military helicopters

flying in the sky. We passed like two we passed like two like troop carriers. We passed a two troop carriers. We passed a whole bunch of military equipment. I'm not going to film and be like, they're invading Oregon! Like what?

This is the thing. If you take one thing out of this episode, it is that anytime someone says that they are seeing troop movements, it is always a lie. This was a huge thing during Hong Kong. Everyone was terrified the army was going to show up. Every two days, there'd be another video. Someone's like, oh, there's an army confine moving into Hong Kong.

Every, it's always fake. It's never real. It's like the only time it's ever real is if there's actual shooting. Like if there's a literal war going on, maybe. It's never real. You're going to know when it's real. It's also, if you want to look about it at times, because there are times where people do OSINT on military movements and it's meaningful. A good example would be the months that led up to the invasion of Ukraine.

Yeah. In which case, you were able to clearly show, here is satellite footage three months ago of this place from the air, and here is it now. And there's like a million more guys there. Clearly something is going on, and we can show this pattern repeating in a bunch of areas right but this is this is a very different thing from the thing that goes viral on twitter is someone will just post a video of it and if so and if what's happening is they're posting a video of some military looking trucks that person is and that's all it is 99.9 percent of the time that person is full of shit yeah it's and this is this is like one of the most common patterns of just like weird bullshit conspiracy stuff is this stuff but people like love this again the thing that's happening to open source intelligence is the

thing that happens to everything cool that comes on the you have this you have this this thing is figured out that is made possible because of new technology people do really rad shit in the case of oscent it's like prove that the the Russian government shot down MH17 over fucking Ukraine and solve all of these war crimes being committed in different areas by figuring out exactly who the perpetrators were and where they were committed and all this shit based off of sketchy video footage. And then the thing goes viral

and elements of the aesthetics of it are taken by people who just want to spread bullshit or, in some cases who think they're actually doing real research and are just dumb and you know then you get to this point where kind of this thing that was

pretty wild and pretty pretty free for a while has to there's a degree to which it has to become professionalized so that people can know who is full of shit and who is not. And like who has a track record and who doesn't. And I'll go back to, in terms of like how you can tell if something is real OSINT,

kind of the, the earliest big case study of like OSINT researchers breaking something is proving that the Russian government shot down MH17, this Malaysian air flight over Ukraine, when the Russians were blaming the Ukrainians for it. And the way they did it is, there were pictures in the wreckage of the aircraft that were taken, numerous ones,

that showed pieces of the missile. Some of those pictures had numbers on them. All weaponry, military-grade weaponry, has serial numbers and shit. And using those serial numbers, people were able to track it back to the Buck missile battery that the missile had been on. And because the buck missile battery also has like numbers and shit, you can trace its progress. They figured out what base it originated at. And then using a mix of like videos civilians had taken and like other stuff, they were able to kind of trace the path of this buck missile as it left Russia and entered Ukraine and then found it in a village, like video evidence that just some taxi driver was literally a guy who had like a fucking car camera on and he just uploaded footage from like driving around town.

You see in this town next to where the plane was shot down, the buck missile launcher that has the missile that shot down MH17 driving through that town the day that the plane is shot down. It's like, oh, OK, well, there you go. And again, it's the thing in terms of like how to tell if something is validocent you can track all of that back every stage of it makes sense every stage of it is repeatable to a lay person and and and if they're good they're going to demonstrate their work as they tell this as they like show here's the steps that i took um they're never gonna just

say here's a video of two army vehicles look troop movements you know yeah okay we're gonna be getting into who she is after these ads oh oh um you know when i'm thinking about shooting down civilian airliners i I wish I had gold in my basement. I was wondering how you were going to get gold. Yeah, same. It came around. Next year, we're launching our first trebuchet exclusively using gold as the projectile.

And the end mission by the end is to set up next to the airport and shoot down as many planes as possible using the gold trebuchet. Wow, wow. Garrison Davis, threatening international air travel. Hope your passport comes in soon, buddy, before anyone hears about this at the State Department. Here's some ads.

Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora, an anthology of modernday horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist

and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join

me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them.

Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

I just got my gold purchase flagged. I don't know what's going on, but it's not letting me buy any more. So I think they're on to me. Wow. Yeah. Listeners, we need you to just buy all of the gold you can and mail it to Garrison so that Garrison can fight climate change with his gold-powered anti-aircraft catapult. So, Chris, how's it going? Okay, so,

the thing that also should have clued people in, like, that something was going wrong, is if literally any of the people who were retweeting Jennifer Zeng had, like, literally just googled her name because it... Okay, so if you do this, what you find out is that she is a self-proclaimed human rights activist and journalist who writes for like really weird right-wing outlets in japan

and also writes for the epoch times oh so really now now finally finally we can pull back the curtain and reveal what has been going on this entire time which is that and then this is yeah what's actually going on here is that jennifer zhang is part of the falun gong which is like a very very weird right-wing chinese cult she was like like it she like had to leave china because she went to write a book about them like this this whole thing's been a full-on gong yeah falun gong off the whole time oh there we go back yeah okay good love it so yeah okay so people who don't know what the fallen gong is they're they were okay so it's a thing that kind of emerged out of a bunch of these sort of like chi meditation practices but in the late 80s and 90s like the fallen gong it turns into this like

this full-scale religious cult that's like and as as as the ccp like increasingly sort of represses them they become like increasingly anti-communist um you've they're they're like literally like you cannot be a chinese person in the u.s and not run into these people fucking everywhere they'll just like march through chinatown i mean there's billboards for their fucking music show thing like yeah everywhere around fucking where i live you know yeah yeah yeah they have they have a show called shen yu and like i'm betting most yeah that's yeah that's them china before communism yep yeah and everywhere it's everywhere billboards the actual show is wild yeah yeah they have they have a huge network in the u.s and like the actual thing that it is it's like it's mostly like china for communism the actual thing is this

weird combination of like half-assed Buddhism and Taoism and then like absolutely insane anti-evolution shit. But also like really like Christian Buddhism as well. It's like there's a whole bunch of weird – it's not just like Taoism. It's a bigger – Well, it's more Buddhist. It's called Unhinged. But like yeah, it's a very, very weird cult thing.

And like they're everywhere. And they also operate the Epoch Times, a fascist newspaper. Yeah. Although, weirdly, the Epoch Times... Okay, so this is the part of the story that's very odd, which is that I'm about 80% sure that that original... So the original account that did this, that did the original conspiracy,

that the New Highland Vision thing. Was like a pretty new account. It had a bunch of followers. And it just vanished. And there were a bunch of other accounts. Like tiny accounts. That were also new Highland Vision. I'm about 80-90% sure that that was a Falun Gong thing.

But weirdly the Epoch Times. Doesn't really touch this. It's very weird. I'm going to read read a passage from from the epoch times and it's like the epoch times insofar as i talk about it are citing ex-indian officials talking about it but like here here's a pack here's like a a a quote from a passage of like the thing they're writing about like a potential like stuff like okay yang noted in his article that lee was promoted to commander of northern theater command in 19 sorry in 2017 by xi and that lee led the formation of flash in the military parade on the anniversary marking the

ccp's takeover of china which shows that she values him like this is just like the most boring ass china watcher shit i've ever seen like the epoch times didn't like cover this as like like they didn't do the like the the thing that all the rest of long gone people were doing which is this sort of like oh my god there's a coup like they just did this that kind of makes sense because if they're on the inside in any way they kind of know it's bullshit so they don't want to kind of ruin some of their reputation at least in like the far right in the states so it makes sense that they don't want to kind of ruin some of their reputation at least in like the far right in the states so it makes sense that they would only cover it in the extent of them quoting

like other people so that they're actually not actually giving their kind of definitive opinion on it yeah it's interesting and i think also because i mean i think the thing is that they also knew that this thing has limited shelf life because the moment that xi jinping reappears in public everyone knows it's bullshit yep but before then so the the new version of this of this conspiracy coalesces around like four things one is the sort of military convoys going to beijing thing there are two there's i guess there's five because there's also technically that there's there's that image of the explosion that they claim is in beijing that's like not in beijing it was from like seven years ago um there's there's the there's the big the big one is there's

this image going around that is like partially it's fake and then people try to do ons and don't and it sucks um is is they there's this thing that that's like beijing has canceled 60 of its flights and trains and there's like there's so the original pictures of it are fake right and then people try to go on flight trackers to like check if it's happening but they don't know how to use flight trackers oh boy so they look at the planes you're like oh my god it's been canceled if you look at the actual map there's just a bunch of planes over beijing which is the thing you would expect there to be happening and they were like and it was one of those normal things were like like the actual thing that was happening was there were there

were some cancellations but like that's because flights get canceled yeah like it was just completely normal flight cancellation stuff or like it wasn't even like a statistically significant number of them it was just regular flight cancellations and then like planes that had landed but people were being like they were canceled it's like no like they got there yep so that happened there was a lot of people trying to like do research stuff and just failing um there's there's this whole thing about xi jinping like missing this really important military meeting which like he actually he genuinely wasn't there but he wasn't there because he was quarantining and he like sent um he sent like a message to it which is interesting because uh the the like the epoch times actually reports on that like that that passage that i read about like the weird like people trying to figure out

who's holding a flag so you get promoted like that that that's about that meeting um but yeah then the last thing is just like where is xi jinping like blah blah blah if he's fine why isn't he and this stuff like it's the especially the flights and the convoy stuff like starts spreading like wildfire and the thing that happens that like this thing should have died like there shouldn't have been enough stuff to keep it going but it hit bjp twitter which is like so like so the bjp is basically like it's it's the fascist party that controls india they're like like really fanatical like hindu extremist right-wingers um they hate muslims they suck they're like i i i would i would argue i think there's a decent argument for this that this is the closest thing to like a confessional 20th century fascist party that exists on earth like on a mass scale we've talked about yeah long gone

and the and the epic times on here before or at least on bastards i i know i've talked about them a decent amount chris i know you have have. Robert, you have. Yeah. They're kind of one of the recurring characters. Yeah, but what's interesting here is that one of their ops, like, the op doesn't really go towards sort of like American right-wing Twitter. It goes towards Indian right-wing Twitter. Which is notable. Yeah, yeah.

And the reason I think a lot of this is happening is that like so do you ever remember like a couple years back when like a bunch of indian and chinese soldiers like beat each other to death in like the mountains with sticks it was pretty cool yeah yeah so like this is like a thing there's there's been border disputes between china and india like since india was created basically like um they they they fought a war like okay the war that people want to talk about the least is the 1962 Sino-Indian war where Mao just kind of like invaded a bunch of

India and just like absolutely kicked the shit out of the Indian army and this has been a sort of like there's a sort of like a recurring like Indian nationalist like bugbear thing where like when border tensions flare up like india people you get a bunch of like really terribly animated things of like an indian soldier with a giant staff like beating the shit out of a dragon or something this is

sort of like something that happens on like indian right-wing twitter and jordan peterson shit yeah literally like it's it's really funny too, because you get two of the absolutely funniest... You get the Chinese wolf warrior accounts and the BJP people going at it, and it's just unbelievably funny to watch, because they're two of the most absolutely psychotic, insane nationalists in the world. You're just going to watch them fight for a bit, and it's a good time. Unfortunately, like... So these guys pick it up and and it rapidly like it okay like one of the things like that there's this right-wing indian astrologer

who predicted that in 2023 she was gonna get overthrown stop yeah that's that is one of the worst ad-lib sentences ever he He's a BJP Indianist. Wait, that's kind of interesting to me. That's kind of interesting. A right-wing Indian astrologer. There's a lot of right-wing people who are into astrology, Shereen. Specifically, a lot of that is very influential in the RSS, which is kind of the Indian fascist movement that is backing modi who's the guy

who runs the country right now who's yeah it's it's not it's not weird that that's happened given the context of indian politics it's not surprising but it sucks it does suck it's for sure sucks we can say that for certain i wonder what sign he is i i'm so sorry am i right guys fucking libras okay okay he gives me a lot of pisces rising energy actually so super bar and some swami who is a guy who was this guy was a sixth term bjp mp he was a he was a this man was a government minister at one point starts tweeting about this whole thing great and then like it just it just like this thing just like goes through the actual indian media sphere like fucking wildfire um the z news which is an outlet founded by the uh deceased right-wing media like an indian media

billionaire suprash chandra who uh rest in piss by the way died in august uh runs a story called china coup beijing hiding something big xi jinping in deep trouble what rumors suggest like the fucking economic times this is the second largest english language business paper in the world runs a story titled quote chinese president xi removed from power in a coup here's what we know so far it is nuts like i mentioned this at the beginning like what part of the reason this goes viral is that republic media network like the like like our probably india's largest tv network is just just runs with the fucking like runs with it as a story like fox news yeah well it's yeah

it's like foxes but it's like they're i guess the way i would describe it is like they don't like fox news has like a really really elaborate like like system because they've been doing this for ages right they have a very very elaborate system for like running like running a dumb thing from twitter like and turning it into like turning into like a package story yeah uh this is not what's happening here they are just like live reporting from twitter and i and i think this is i don't know like i think it's like it's it's it's it's a degree ofiness that, like, you see this in American journalism a lot, too, where, like, people will just literally, like, report things that happen on Twitter. Like, this is how, like, Goblin Mode became a thing. Like, there's a lot of stories that are just, it's just linking to Twitter.

And they're basically doing this. And part of the other thing that's going on here is that, like, you know, so, like, Indian media has just become increasingly right-wing over the past decade. And they've gotten, like, increasingly more fascist. And, you know, everything is, like, know so like indian media has just become increasingly right wing over the past decade they've gotten like increasingly more fascist and when you and you know everything is like fascists are incompetent and like this is basically the result of the sort of hollowing out of the indian media sphere is that these like matt like these absolutely titanic like cable and news networks are running this just like like stuff that is so bullshit that like like the fucking newsman like there was a newsmax anchor grant stitchinfield who's a newsmax host like has like a video about this and the video both starts and ends with him going this is probably bullshit and

then in the middle there's like some incomprehensible thing that he like half read an epoch times article and didn't understand he starts ranting about like the general of the Northern war who has just been relieved of his duties as a direct quote, by the way, absolute nonsense. Like, yeah, but like even,

even those guys were kind of like, this is whack. Like we, we can't run with this, but the, like the, the sort of like, like the,

the, the, the, the sort of like Indian fascists people are like so incredibly desperate for just like any like like even more so than the american right are more desperate for just like here is an anti-china story we can just sort of like throw out because of the sort of like increased tensions around the border etc etc this stuff just this stuff just explodes um and eventually you get like the indian media outlets who are like the Indian media outlets

who are like still actual like outlets who are like hey guys this is nonsense like the Hindustan Times and the Tribune write stories that are like really like are you guys kidding me like come on this is like obviously fake um

yeah and at a certain point like this whole thing it's sort of like phase but it has this there's there's no there's but then there's a sort of second wave of it which is there are a bunch of people who are like weird like chinese dissident quote-unquote people but who aren't like who aren't following gong people who like looked at this and were like this is obviously a lie i'm not gonna jump in on this layer of the bullshit. But then we're like, okay, I've got a second layer of this. There's someone, Dr. Li Mengyan, who's like,

she's like an old school, like COVID bio, like bioweapon, like lab truther person. She was like, okay, okay, no, no, no, hold on, hold on. What's happening here is that this whole discourse was a Xi Jinping op to distract everyone from the alliance with Putin that he's going to announce at the party congress. A PR zone! it's just like it's it's it's a real it's a it's a real circus of just like like all like you you gotta see like this whole sort of second and third waves of media grifters like looking at the story of being like okay how do we spin this how do we and it's i don't know like i i i feel like this

is a part of like this part of twitter like the sort of like it's this kind of there's a kind of intersection of like weird chinese cranks and like china watcher twitter where you get a bunch of these very weird things but yeah i've talked about this but it's like the thing that's interesting to me is like the extent to which the right doesn't pick this up like this is the kind of thing like you would expect like alex jones to be talking about and as best i can tell like a, Alex Jones doesn't cover it. Like, fucking Bucky Barnes, like, talks about it, like, briefly. Like, on, like, but, like, while Alex is, like, walked out of the room. Talks about it for, like, five seconds and then stops. And I was like, really?

Like, Alex Jones isn't going to cover this? Like, uh. I mean, it's possible i missed part of if she shouldn't paying is at is if like less secure in power and can be overthrown by other elements in the chinese government then china's kind of less scary that alex jones tends yeah that's true it is so that's might be part of it yeah i don't know though we'll give him some time maybe he'll get on this later yeah i don't know he's got a lot going on right now yeah oh god okay so the last thing i want to talk about is like so i've been saying i've been talking about china watchers this whole time there's like basically there's kind of a

academic career slash profession like in the u.s that's like being a china watcher and so you get like some international relations degree you get some like cultural studies degree and you go to china for a bit and you come back and then like your job is to write about like the inscrutable oriental mind and i there are like one or two of these people there are a couple of these people who i like have some respect for uh writ large i i literally cannot with these people um well so what the guardian writes an article about this later on they're like yeah because this is not happening but the guy they quote writes in a twitter thread i'm just gonna read this tweet because i jesus christ a palace coup in a time of political

pressurization is not implausible gorbachev and yeltsin were detained during the ussr russia transition period a coup is not an anathema to China either. Emperor Guangzhou was arrested by Dowager Empress Cixi when he attempted reforms. That, by the way, the second thing he's talking about, that is from, like, I think it's 1898, is the last coup he can find. Like, you could just say shit.

Like, you could literally say whatever the fuck you want and people will be like oh yeah no no no the uh this coup that is literally too political there are two entire political systems that china has had between right now and the time that the emperor's regent like overthrew the the emperor to stop madru like i just i just come on like why why why are people allowed to say this like why are people allowed to go oh yeah gorbachev and yeltsin got couped so that means that there can be a coup in china in 2022 like this this this is one of the experts like i just like one of these every single every single one of these articles has this passage where they're like oh well part of the reason why this is

happening is because the chinese government is so unbelievably not transparent and i'm like no like part of the reason this is happening is because you guys just literally will say bullshit which means that people will just believe like literally yeah you can just say anything about china you can say that like it's all, it all comes down once again, as every problem in the world does to the 24 hour news cycle, where is this bullshit? Sure. But like got to fill airtime.

It's happening right now. People are talking about it. So we get to talk about it. We don't have to say it's true. We can just like talk about it. And then we filled some airtime and you know, we keep making money. It's good.

And now we're talking about it yeah i mean it's like if it's a topic that people are not in like i'm gonna say something then add a caveat if it's a topic that people are not very knowledgeable about like the inner workings of chinese politics then they're going to be easier to believe it now even now obviously this strategy can work even for topics that people are knowledgeable about sometimes. Oh, yeah. But especially in something related to, like, foreign countries that most Americans know very little about, then, yeah, that's super easy to believe.

Like, remember a few years ago when everyone convinced themselves that King Jong-un died? Yeah, that was so weird. Because people are willing to believe something it's yeah it's like like there there's there's a thing i've been like i've run into a lot where like there's there's a bunch of like there's a bunch of people in the american left who's like basically and i don't even really know how they came to believe this because this isn't something that the ccp even says about itself but like they've come to believe that china has universal health care which it doesn't they used to have one and they got rid of it like they literally

dismantled the universal health care system like there are people who believe that like like china has like a right to housing and that everyone in china just gets a house and it's like like this is all this shit that's like i just has like it's so completely uncoupled from reality that like i can't i can't even trace the source to where they got this stuff, but it's really easy to spread, because yeah, it's just like, nobody knows any, especially, like, yeah, it's a foreign country, nobody knows anything about it, and you can,

and, like, the actual people who are experts will just, like, start spouting shit about how it's plausible there could be a coup against Xi Jinping because a fucking emperor was overthrown 150, like like 124 years ago like it's it's uh it's endlessly frustrating and yeah anyway so don't don't use the internet uh attack global communications infrastructure and

buy gold. Buy some gold. And if you see something on Twitter or really anywhere online, instantly believe it, no matter what it is. Yeah. Live your life that way. It's fine. Also, should we plug our

live show that we're doing? Yeah. We're doing a live virtual It Could Happen Here and Q&A. The entire squad will be there. You can get tickets from moment.co slash ICHH. It's all over our socials if you're looking for it. And that will be on October 26th at 6 p.m. Pacific time. Mark your calendars. Mark your calendars.

Mark your calendar. Moment.co slash ICHH. I feel... That was beautiful. Ridiculous. Good for you, Sophie. I know we've had a lot of debate about what we're going to be talking about. And I think one of the most important things in current events right now

that kind of indicates the kind of collapse of American society is all of the Try Guys discourse so we are going to be preparing a two hour presentation It is just Try Guys Two hour presentation on the evolution of the Try Guys discourse and what really happened behind the

scenes and how it impacts American politics going forward. Spoilers. None of them were ever married. Bye-bye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.