Pod Save the World - White supremacists radicalized online

Episode Date: March 20, 2019

First, Tommy and Ben talk about the New Zealand terrorist attack and the rise of right-wing extremist groups and nationalist political parties, Huawei and Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro visiting Trump. Then the New York Times's Charlie Warzel joins to discuss how radicalization happens online, how we can stop it and how journalists should cover these communities. 

Welcome back to Pot Save the World. This is Tommy Vitor. It's great to be back with you, Worldos. Thank you for tuning in. I appreciate it as always. Pax show this week. Ben Rhodes called in from his travels. We talked about the New Zealand shooting. And a lot of the stuff that he was getting briefed on by his PDB briefer back in the day about, you know, white nationalist, white supremacist extremist groups. There's a lot we learned then that is applicable now. And, you know, truly frightening. We also talked about some of the essential. nationalist parties in Europe and what one could do about them. We also touched based on ongoing struggles against a Chinese telecom giant called Huawei. The U.S. is trying to prevent them from building infrastructure because we're worried about them spying. And then lastly, we talked about Yair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, coming to Washington, and what a frightening individual he is. And then I talked with Charlie Wartzel, who is a writer at large for the New York Times

Opinion Desk. He covers online culture and online communities, including the cesspools where people like the New Zealand shooter can get radicalized, can post their hateful rhetoric, can, you know, slowly find themselves taking offline action and doing really horrible things. So I think that the conversation that Charlie had about the threat from these communities and the way we need to deal with them, whether you're a government or a tech platform or cover them in the media is going to be one of the most important. things that comes out of what happened in New Zealand. So I'm very grateful to him for taking the time. Final thing in the pod today, the world does want to know about Saudi Arabia. So I answered your question. We answered the mail. And so stick around for that after the interview. So without further ado, here's the conversation with Ben. On the line is Ben Rhodes. Ben, where are you? You're at Colgate? I'm at Colgate University, Tommy. What town is that? It's in Hamilton, New York,

a quaint, beautiful 19th century town in upstate New York. Awesome. Well, that's great. I hope you're talking to students and getting them pumped up about foreign policy. So it's been obviously a brutal week in the wake of the New Zealand shooting. You know, we've been talking a lot about right-wing extremist groups. So what that made me think of was back on the White House days. So before you started attending the PDB, the president's daily intelligence briefing with Obama in the Oval Office,

they would bring you the book and then a briefer would brief it to you so you could learn about that day's intelligence. The guy you had briefing you for a while, who I will not name, was actually, I believe, an expert in white supremacist groups, right? And he'd actually, I think, infiltrated one. Was he telling you things about the rise of these right-wing extremist groups then that sort of foretold the events we're seeing now? Yeah, he was. And Tommy, you'll remember, you know, I found this guy so interesting that I used to talk to you about this. he'd come in to brief me and usually the PDB would be filled with, you know, reports of terrorist plots from al-Qaeda and other groups overseas. But this guy had worked to kind of help penetrate and understand the white supremacist movement in the United States.

And this is back in 2009, 2010. And his message to me consistently was always, we got to be worrying more about these guys, that if you look at the actual threats of violence in the United States, States, there was a growing threat that he saw emanating from white supremacists that some of the legacy organizations of like the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, and other white separatist movements were gaining new momentum because of the combination of social media and some of the antagonism towards a black president in the United States. And you might remember, Tommy, early in the Obama years, there was a shooting at the Holocaust Museum from a white supremacist who tragically shot a guard at the Holocaust Museum. And they went, they found in his, among his media, like a list of people that he wanted to target.

And it eerily foreshadowed a lot of plots that we've seen disrupted in a lot of year or two. you know, we did try to sound the alarm on this. And consistently, for instance, to the Obama administration, we would refer to violent extremism generally as a threat because we thought it had to encompass both ISIS and al-Qaeda, but also white supremacist. And this is something that we were kind of relentlessly mocked for, you know, for not naming the enemy as radical Islam. And it was kind of ironic to see Trump refusing to.

label the enemy of white supremacists, you know, and it goes to show, you know, why these labels are important. I mean, I don't think anyone would want us to be referring to kind of radical white terrorism. You know, casting a broad brush on people is not the way to go after them. It's to focus on them and understand them and pull the threads on them. Yeah. So, like, when you think about how one would disrupt, break up, deal with these white supremacist groups, Is it the same tools that you would use with al-Qaeda? I mean, like, I imagine there'd be signals intelligence collection to figure out what they're doing. There would be a law enforcement component, efforts to penetrate the organizations with undercover agents.

And one critical component of dealing with, you know, potentially radicalize young people is a community engagement element that helps you identify at-risk individuals before it's too late by getting a tip from, like, their friend, their sister, you know, like, whatever it might be, because we won't necessarily be. able to hear them before it's too late, right? Is the same toolkit apply to white supremacist groups? Yes. I mean, it's a little different if you're dealing with American citizens, obviously. Yeah, good point. The higher bar than in dealing with a terrorist organization based overseas. Particularly for intelligence collection, right?

I mean, we can't spy on an individual American, yeah. But, you know, if we see this as a national security threat, which I think we should, I mean, just think of it this way, if you compare the numbers of Americans killed by white supremacists versus the number of Americans killed by terrorists who represent an Islamic ideology of some sort or another, by far, the greater threat over the last several years has been from white supremacist terrorism. And, you know, if you want to deal with the national security threat, they're multi-dimension to that. If there are people who have already crossed the line into plotting acts of violence, then you can aggressively pursue them and try to penetrate their

organizations and try to detain their leaders who are plotting and to try to understand more about them. And you would want to deploy those law enforcement resources as aggressively as you would against any other terrorist organizations. And that is a matter of resourcing and prioritization. And then secondly, yes, the threat of radicalization, you know, people who've studied this find that it's quite similar. You know, the same pattern that could lead a young Muslim to be, radicalized to the ideology of ISIS, you know, maybe finding online content at first, then maybe being contacted by someone who has been radicalized in his community, and then plotting on his own or with a small group, some active violence. Well, that's the same thing that happens among these

white supremacist groups, people consuming poisonous online content, people joining vitriolic, hate-filled online networks, then maybe meeting a like-minded person and switching a gear to wanting to actually carry out an act of violence. And you do need engagement inside these communities to prevent that process of radicalization. But the uncomfortable truth is that we need to treat this as a threat to our national security. And that means devoting resources to understanding the problem and disrupting people who want to commit acts of violence and trying to stem the rising tide of radicalization, which is harder when the President of the United States is one of the sources of that radicalization. I mean, you know, he may not like people saying it,

but there's a common threat among a number of these people who've been detained here and even among the New Zealand shooter that they are identifying in Trump, someone who they're taking some degree of inspiration from. And that's a reality that's just staring us in the face. Yeah. And I think the debate is over, whether these xenophobic nationalist right-wing parties in the rhetoric they use are actually, you know, driving people to be more violent. But what's frightening is that these nationalist parties are ascendant all across Europe. I mean, Italy, Austria, Germany, Sweden, like the list goes on and on that, you know, members of these parties are winning more and more seats. What role do you think the U.S. should play in trying to deal with these

parties or mitigate the impact they could have in politics in Europe? Well, again, you're absolutely right. This is a transnational threat. And again, And we can learn from the threat of al-Qaeda and ISIS. And the way in which that ideology with social media and other mechanisms spread across borders, we're seeing the same pattern here. Social networks and propaganda and disinformation and common themes and grievances spreading among disaffected white people across borders. So in a strange way, we should be somewhat familiar with how this cancer is, spreading because we've seen it spread in other communities.

I think to begin with, there has to be from the political leadership of countries in the West, just a complete rejection of this ideology. And unfortunately, we don't have that yet. So the first part of this is, frankly, you have to involve kind of winning elections and beating back this ideology at the ballot box. I think beyond that, there really does need to be a reckoning with how social media platforms are used by these groups. And here again, we did this, Tommy, in the Obama administration, we had years of dialogue with Silicon Valley about ISIS content. And, you know,

we got to a point where the government wasn't directing them to do anything, but through sharing of information and education, they began to take down certain verified ISIS content that was calling upon people to commit acts of violence. And I think it just raises the question, you know, why can you take down that content if it's from an ISIS member and why not apply the same standard to other groups who are propagating hateful ideologies that are calling upon people to come acts of violence? I mean, either you want these platforms that have such awesome reach to not be a form that motivate people to kill other people or you don't. And so again, I think we had to apply the same standard here.

terrorism is terrorism, no matter who commits the act. And there has to be, in our politics and in our media, a recognition that this type of content, this type of ideology, gets people killed. Yeah. One last question on New Zealand. I mean, I think a takeaway for me, I think takeaway for a lot of people who have been watching the story unfold, was a reaction by New Zealand's prime minister, just into Arden. She was engaged, empathetic, really substantive and just seemed decent, and it was a reminder what a real leader acts like in a crisis. Ben, I think you spent some time with her. What was your impression when you guys have spoken?

I mean, I met with her with Obama like a little less than a year ago, and, you know, she's younger than me, Tommy, so it made me feel old. But she's just, she's incredibly, she reminded me a lot of Justin Trudeau. She's just an incredibly competent, empathetic, and real, person. And she was many months pregnant when we met, was focused on having her baby, but also focused on, you know, how could she create, you know, a center-left politics in New Zealand that could be resilient and could be responsive to people. And that could be tolerant and inclusive, but also focused on solving problems. And, you know, I think you see in the aftermath

of this attack, she's doing things. You know, she's not, she, yes, she's giving very, you know, powerful speeches, but she's getting ready to try to crack down on guns, and she's starting a real and necessary effort to root out this type of white supremacist extremism. And so when we talk about how political leadership should respond in the West, I think if you look at what she has done in recent days, if you look at a speech that Justin Trudeau gave in the House of Commons the other day, just categorically rejecting this as the opposite of what our society stand for, that's the type of political leadership that we need to see replicated. And I think in Justin Ahern, who's, you know, obviously it's a small country, but it's an example that there is progressive

leadership that is unifying and is successful and that can be responsive to people. And so I think people should take note of her because, again, it's a small country, but she's setting a really powerful example. Yeah, I agree. Changing gears a bit. So a story that you and I've been tracking pretty closely is the ongoing U.S. struggle against Huawei. Huawei, for those unfamiliar, is the Chinese telecommunications giant that has ties to the Chinese military and intelligence services. And so our intelligence agencies worry that if Huawei is allowed to build out communications infrastructure in the U.S. or around the globe, in particular, the 5G wireless networks, that it would allow Chinese intelligence to build backdoors into the software that would let them spy on basically anyone using them.

So it's a pretty big deal, pretty big security threat. According to the New York Times, the U.S. effort to pressure other countries into rejecting Huawei infrastructure is faltering, including with really close key allies like Germany, which was surprising to me. Do you think that this was inevitable since a lot of these countries probably, you know, here are concerns on Huawei and then say were hypocrites, given what they learned about U.S. spying in the Snowden disclosures? Or is this a result of bad diplomacy, some combination? Like, what did you make of that story? Well, I think there are two elements that are consistent with Trump's broader farm policy.

And this is a really important issue that doesn't necessarily get a lot of tension. But what we're really talking about is how the world's technological supply chain works. you know, and essentially whether or not the U.S. can go around and try to freeze out Chinese technology from other markets. And this affects everything, you know, from the technology you use in your daily lives to, you know, what we rely on for our national security. The two problems, though, are number one, like a lot of things with Trump, including the trade issue with China. He's articulating a goal that is no longer achievable. You know, if you wanted to create a wall between.

any technology emanating from China and technological supply chains emanating from the United States, you would need a time machine to go back in time, you know, 20 years. And so part of the problem here is, as with a lot of things that Trump is demanding that other countries do, whether it's on, you know, trade or other security policies or climate change. These countries, you know, live in a real world, and they're like, look, we can't just cleanse our entire market of technologies that are already embedded into the supply chain. And so I think it just shows an overreach in terms of the Trump administration's rhetoric going beyond what it's possible. But secondly, even if you wanted to try to do that, even if you did want to try to at least figure out where to draw certain lines, which is probably necessary, well, they've been beating this shit out of his allies for two years.

Right. And, you know, it should come as a surprise to nobody that there's a cost to relentlessly insulting these countries and their leaders. And then you go ask them to do something hard, and they say, no, of course they do. Yeah, you make a Twitter troll, the ambassador to Germany. You wonder why they're not going to take your meeting and do what you want when it comes to, you know, intelligence questions. Yeah, you crap on Angela Merkel. You appoint a troll as your ambassador. You threaten them with tariffs whenever you feel like you need a good rise on Twitter.

And then you say, oh, by the way, we need you to change the entire way in which your country uses technology. Well, I guess it shouldn't be a surprise anybody. No. That's not going to work. God, these clowns. Okay, last question. So Brazil's far right president, Jair Bolsonaro, is in Washington today to meet with President Trump. He did an interview with Fox News in advance of the meeting and had dinner with Steve Bannon because, of course, Bolsonaro's son is in business with Bannon.

So that's weird too. He is terrible. He is misogynistic. He's anti-immigrant. He's homophobic to the point where he's created a climate that drove a gay lawmaker out of the country because that lawmaker feared for his lawmaker feared for his law. life. Bolsonaro's family is suspected of being linked to the execution of another British politician. So, I mean, that's crazy. Trump brought him to the Oval Office anyway, and they did the press of illibility after, where they continue to hammer on Venezuela, float the idea of a military

intervention or a U.S. military base in Brazil. So, I mean, my question is, I don't know, like, what do you do with this guy, given how important the relationship is in the country of Brazil is, but how absolutely terrifying he is. I mean, this guy is a fascist. He's a strong man. He's the worst kind of individual to lead a country that's important. Well, you know, you don't need to roll out the red carpet for him. You know, that's for sure. But Trump seems to be much more comfortable with these people than Angelo Merkel or Justin Dredo or other leaders or allies. Look, part of what happened in Brazil is that you did have a deep-rooted corruption, disaffection among the public, people turned to this guy.

One of the only hardening things is that, by all indications, you know, his popularity in Brazil is plummeting, you know. And you don't need to throw the guy at life raft. I mean, and look, it's an important partner, but we can engage, the things that we engage Brazil on, we can do without hugging this guy. I mean, we have commercial ties. You know, we have cooperation in different fields, ironically, one of the better areas. of cooperation in recent years is on climate change. But there's no need to have this close political relationship with the leader of Brazil

to keep that moving forward. And so I would not be, I'd be keeping somebody like this a character like this at arm's length. And on Venezuela, let's just, again, take a step back. Everything has gotten worse since the Trump administration launched their big play here, of recognizing opposition, of more sanctions, of trying to force an aid. So they could bluster all they want, but they haven't put forward a plan B. And some hypothetical military base in Brazil is not the plan B that anybody's looking for at this point. No.

You know, look, we all want Maduro to not be in power and not starting as people. But you're right. I mean, they made this big, bold play. And they, you know, we had all this saber rattling. And, you know, I think it's time to be honest that it hasn't worked. And I think we also need to downgrade General Rubio to Colonel Rubio. because, you know, I don't think he's earned those stripes. Colonel, maybe Sergeant, I mean, the fact that matter is Sergeant Rubio charged up the hill

and, like, nobody's, you know, following him on Twitter, you know, maybe German damn, you know, but I just, the issue with this, too, is that they keep threatening this military option, but nobody has any idea what they're talking about. I mean, if you heard anybody, Tommy, articulate what that even means? No. The closest I've seen is 5,000 troops to Columbia on a scribbled note on John Bolton. On a scribble on John Bolton thing, right? I mean, so, you know, if they're serious about it, you know, what are they talking about here? Yeah. And who's going to support it and how is it going to work? You know, I worry about it. Yeah. I'm with you. Like, I don't mean to be glib about

this. I have worried about this and thought about it and tried to do interviews on it for a long time because I don't know what else to do. That's my only thing I can do in this post-White House life, but their plan is not serious nor is it credible. And it is, not that effective. And the fact that we're still focused on, you know, the military discussions and all these options that he floated today with Bolsonaro, instead of a real diplomatic effort that unites the world and actually does something diplomatically that would help people. It's problematic. It's not helping. And that's the point is, are you actually trying to get something done, or is this just kind of a bad posture, you know? If you actually want to help the Venezuelan people,

what they are doing has made things worse. And then the military intervention, I think, would make things even worse. Agreed. You know, they are sitting on a easy, no-brainer policy decision to provide protected status for Venezuelans who have come to the United States fleeing this. And they're refusing to do even that, which just shows that this does not seem to be about helping actual Venezuelans. It seems to be about a political agenda of Trump and private Rubio. Yeah, agreed. Ben, travel safe. Please grab every student's phone and smash. that subscribe button when you find Podse of the world. You know, every little stat matters. They all add up. Life is a game of inches. Podcasting is a game of inches, as they say.

I've already met one friend of the pod, Tommy. All right, good. Coming to my hotel who said, she heard us talking about this last week. Oh, there we go. Expect to see some friends of the pod tonight. And I've got some more colleges and universities coming up in the spring because my book's coming on paperback. Oh, cool.

You know, college kids can afford it. So I'll have more info on that next week. Fantastic, man. All right, buddy. Great talking to you. See you soon. And that's all I got. Cool. All right. Bye. Bye. And now for my conversation with Charlie Wartzel from the New York Times. On the line, I am honored to have Charlie Worszel, who's a writer at large for the New York Times Opinion Desk and an expert in internet culture, all the scary people that are on there, the shit posting, the memes, all the good stuff, right?

Is that a fair summation of the communities you are an expert in? That's probably the most eloquent description of my title, which is like, you know, bad internet. Perfect. Bad internet guru. Charlie, thank you so much for doing this because, man, the bad internet has turned into the really scary internet lately. You know, New Zealand is the latest example, but there were a whole bunch of examples prior to that about people being radicalized and finding truly frightening content. And I guess, you know, anyone who spent time on Twitter or God help you gab or any of other places, knows that there are some terrible people there.

So I wanted to start with a great piece you wrote in the New York Times on Tuesday about the ways that tech platforms can help deal with the creation of extremist communities and extremist content online. You wrote, quote, focusing only on moderation means that Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms such as Reddit don't have to answer for the ways in which their platforms are meticulously engineered to encourage the creation of incendiary content, rewarding it with eyeballs, likes, and in some cases, add dollars, end quote.

Can you explain this engineering problem in some more detail? Because I think it is so, so important, and it's something people don't necessarily understand. Yeah, I mean, I think it's so core to the way that the Internet works that we almost don't realize it. It just feels so baked in, and that's because it is. But that makes it really hard for people to understand how they're being manipulated in their everyday life. life by these platforms, but also how the worst of the world is being manipulated and sort of nudged towards extremes. So, you know, I think YouTube is probably the most concrete example of this. You know, you have with YouTube an algorithm that recommends content to people that, you know,

puts different things in your feed and even autoplay the videos next after you've seen something. And that is optimized by watch time primarily. And this idea of, engagement viewed in this really blunt lens, this idea that you are, it doesn't matter whether that content shocks or surprises you. If you don't click away or if you click on something similar next, YouTube treats that as a satisfying experience and an experience that they want to give you more of. And that is, you know, that's fine when you're talking about, you know, beauty videos or unboxing toys or sports highlights. We all want that to some degree. But when you apply that to extremist ideology or even just politically divisive ideology, you know, that slowly becomes a slippery

slope. And I think the way that that works, especially on a place like YouTube, is the most, the savvious creators and pundits and shock jocks and trolls and racist sort of cloaking themselves in amateur philosophy, those. people tend to exploit that. They know how to make content that's going to, you know, get people mad or afraid or, you know, that is misleading that will get people to come back. And I think we're seeing all those, we're seeing YouTube's algorithm in tandem with those creators, nudge people further into, you know, this rabbit hole of content that gets more and more extreme. Yes. Let's talk about rabbit holes for a minute, because I have a theory, basically,

on zero academic research, which allows me to be a podcaster, that conspiracy theories are the cousin of some of these extremist communities. So, for example, there's a documentary right now in Netflix that's about a group of people who sincerely believe that the earth is flat. And they find such a community among the flat earth world that is literally impossible to convince them that they're wrong because their whole world is based around this view. And to me, that feels related to the QAnon community. And so for those who are fortunate enough not to know what this is, QAnon followers believe literally that Hillary Clinton is the leader of a satanic cabal that feeds on the blood of children and makes money off of child sex trafficking and that the Mueller probe

is actually working with Trump to take Clinton down. They're teaming up. So does that sound insane to you? It should. But there is a book about this theory about QAnon that is currently right now an Amazon bestseller. And people are really seeing this. You're seeing this. You're seeing. Q signs pop up at events. The guy who shot the mob boss had Q written on his hand in court the other day. So, like, it doesn't seem like it would be hard to get from a belief like QAnon

to believing there's an ongoing white genocide or that Soros is leading a global conspiracy that might lead you down an even darker rabbit hole into, like, extremist, potentially violent actions via this content. I think you're totally right. And I think to the thing that both of those really have in common,

And I think you said it right at the very beginning, is a sense of community, right? I mean, this is at the epicenter of, you know, why there's a responsibility on the sense of these platforms for fostering some of this. The Internet is, you know, it does a lot of things, some good, some bad, but the thing it does best is build community.

That is what you hear Mark Zuckerberg talk about. You hear, you know, Jack Dorsey talk about with the conversations in the Global Town Square. This is what these social networks, you know, have done better than, probably anything that's come before, any piece of technology, is they've bound people together. They've allowed people to find each other, form these groups, and sort of solidify around that. And in some cases, that's a wonderful thing.

In the case of something like Flat Earth or QAnon, what that has allowed them to do is take these sort of either ridiculous, scientifically inaccurate, or, you know, just plain, like, dangerous and crazy conspiracy theories or ideas and, you know, come together around them, and the idea slowly become less insane. Even if you join, you know, a Q&N group thinking, oh, these guys are ridiculous, you know, being around these groups and having nobody else sort of penetrate them and tell you they're crazy, that has a huge effect. But the other effect is you just find community in them. You know, even if they're white nationalist, white supremacist organizations or communities online,

you start to develop your own in-jokes. it starts to seem like fun maybe. It starts to be a place where you spend your time. These people, even if you've never met them before, become something akin to friends. And they slowly emboldened each other. And I think what was most shocking, not to jump around too much, but with what we saw in New Zealand last Friday,

and what we saw with the shooter in court, is this idea that he's constantly signaling to that group, whether it's, you know, with the things that he did in his live stream video, whether it's in his manifesto, whether it's, you know, the hand symbols he's making in court. He's signaling to them in the same way that you signal to somebody with a post in a terrible forum, like 8chan or 4chan. And so I think at the heart of all of this is this community building. You know, it really emboldens people.

Yeah. And so these communities develop leaders, for lack of a better word, and often they're grifters who find ways to monetize whatever gross thing they're selling. But, like, it's, they pop up. we learn about them. So there's been some whack-a-mole handling of some of them. Take, for example, Alex Jones over at InfoWars. Alex Jones traffics in conspiratorial, bigoted, wild conspiracy theories. He said, Sandy Hook was a hoax. That got him kicked off of major platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. He's also dealing with a series of defamation suits. So I guess my question is,

do you think dealing with the sort of community leaders like the Alex Jones is and deplatforming them is an effective way to deal with them, if done quickly enough? I think it could be because it's one of the easiest ways for these tech companies to address the sort of the thornyer issues of speech, right? None of these tech companies, I mean, the reason why all this stuff exists is, A, because there's money behind it, like you said, there's a grift going on. There's money to be made in peddling conspiracy theories, and there always has been, but the Internet supercharges that.

But I think the other reason is that, you know, these companies are very afraid to sort of set clear red lines around issues of speech, especially when there's a partisan nature to it. But these people, like in Alex Jones, are actually helpful in that they violate things like terms of services. All these Internet companies create rules that when you sign up for the platform, there are things you're not allowed to do. And people like Alex Jones and deplatforming Alex Jones or someone like Milo, you know, sets a precedent based off of just the simple rules that you agree to. You're not going to, you know, publish defamatory information. You're not going to make a violent threat. They're very specific things. And I think that, you know, deplatforming is helpful in a lot of ways for rooting out the worst problematic attention-seeking folks.

But it's also really good in setting precedent and saying you can't do it. do this on our platform. And I think that's what these companies need to do. They need to take a stand. Yeah, agreed. And so, you know, unfortunately, even if Twitter kicks you off, YouTube, Facebook, you know, there are still far darker corners at the internet. There's, there's 4chan, which is sort of a message bore. You mentioned that earlier. There's 8chan, which I think is even worse. There's GAB. There's Discord. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, some of these platforms, the kind of content you might find? And I guess my question is, if these alternatives, these fringier alternatives exist,

is kicking people off, say, Twitter, like enough of a positive step because it prevents mainstreaming of their views or is this just like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole? Well, that's a great question because it's a never-ending game of whack-a-mole at the heart of it. But that doesn't mean it can't be mitigated

in some capacity. And I think something like Twitter, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are sort of stand-out examples because they're so prominent. You know, Twitter is sort of the way that someone like Alex Jones was able to cross over to the mainstream, to sort of get the attention of a lot of journalists like myself or, you know, make some stupid meme that pissed everybody off. And then all of a sudden, two-thirds of the press is sharing it.

That's a win for him. That's amplification that even, you know, all bad press for Alex Jones is good. And getting kicked off of some of those big platforms that allow him to sort of control the conversation and really cross into the mainstream is huge in limiting the reach of the more odious ideas and the truly like harmful misinformation that is peddled. So I think, you know, the communities like 4chan, 8chan, Discord that are kind of, to some degree, just lawless spaces where any of this stuff can happen. it's going to be hard to prevent those from, you know, existing in general. And there's always going to be spaces on the Internet where people can gather. But if you look at, you know, what has happened to a lot of the people who have been kicked off of Twitter for, you know, the white nationalists or the neo-Nazis who have been kicked off of Twitter, they've gone to Gab, which is essentially a Twitter clone, but has no rules about speech and has just become this sort of white nationalist cesspool. If you look at that, they have a really hard time of programming the mainstream media in any way, getting their ideas out there.

Because it's a really terrible place that just, you know, most people aren't going to. And so getting those ideas out of the mainstream is probably the biggest part of de-platforming. And even if they exist elsewhere, you know, that's something we have to worry about. But it is, it's a positive step forward, I think, to get, you know, the truly racist, bigoted, dangerous, harmful. false ideas out of the mainstream. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, like, so much work had been done with Alex Jones to de-platform him and sort of get his disgusting views out of our faces.

And then I saw, you know, he was on Joe Rogan's podcast like two weeks ago. And, I don't know, I think we also need to have a conversation about stop not treating people like him who are causing real harm to, you know, parents of Sandy Hook shooting victims, like not treating them with ironic detachment or someone who just sort of amuses us. It's a very deeply frustrating lack of seriousness that I think people have approached this problem to date. And that's a hard thing, I think, especially with the press, because take someone like Alex Jones, he is a lot of things. He's also, you know, a generator of eyeballs and clicks and page views. And I know from firsthand experience covering him for a couple of years, those articles do really well.

And so it's incumbent on the press to, I mean, he's a good story regardless of what happens, unfortunately. And I've struggled a lot in my own coverage with trying to, you know, grappling with this idea that you have to really walk a fine line. You do not want to amplify this behavior. You do want to, you don't want to normalize it. And I think, like you said, have this sort of sense of ironic detachment. He should not be entertainment for journalists in the same way that we treat all sensitive stories, stories about, you know, even like, you know, say something like mental illness. Like, even if, even if there's something sensational about that, we treat that with the approach. appropriate level of seriousness. And journalists need to sort of, I think, broadly do a better job of that.

Yeah, I agree. So look, I wanted to have this conversation on this show, which is, you know, foreign policy and national security focused, because I think we do need to treat the issue more like a national security one. You know, I mean, if what happened in New Zealand had been the reverse, if it had been someone who is an Islamic terrorist who was radicalized online and shot up a church, if that happened in the United States, you know, you would see resources just pour towards the problem the way we did after 9-11, but you just don't see that here. I think we need to rejigger how we approach these issues. And so one piece of that is that I think you're seeing journalists reckon with very publicly is how to cover these events. So the Prime Minister in New Zealand said she will

not name the shooter's name. She doesn't want to give him the attention. A lot of reporters who cover these online communities warned us pretty early on not to get distracted by intentional misinformation in the New Zealand shooters manifesto because it was filled with memes and jokes and things that were seemingly designed to distract. How are you making your way or helping your colleagues understand and figure out how to cover these incidents

and this type of content online? I think it's so treacherous, but I think the ways to get around this and to really help audiences understand and also just to do the service of informing while not strictly amplifying and playing into the hands of, you know, a monster like this, there's a couple things that need to be done. And one of them is we all need to slow down.

The biggest issue, you know, in covering the shooter's manifesto is people sort of regurgitating those points as they find them. The shooter very purposely made that manifesto easy to find in the moments after. And I think that's because that person had a kind of sick, intimate, you know, familiarity with the way that the modern media apparatus works, you know, in the, and there's a big news story and this void of information and a real hunger to fill it as fast as possible. That is the trap that journalists are going to fall into trying to get into this space. And it doesn't mean that they shouldn't cover it. You know, journalists exist to inform, and I think that, you know, these are, these fever swamps are places that a lot of people

don't understand in a lot of readers. And so we, we owe them that service. But I think, think it's all about the amount of time that we take with it. There's no reason to regurgitate those talking points quickly. You know, what I have sort of advised people to do, colleagues and other people at other organizations, is find some experts. There are people, Joan Donovan is a PhD at Harvard who studies online extremism. Becca Lewis works for data in society and understands the amplification systems of the internet and white nationalism. These are people, there's plenty of other experts on extremism, both on and offline. Find those people and work with them on a longer timeline to walk readers through the context of this thing.

There's no reason why we have to know this yesterday. We can take the time and be responsible with it. And it doesn't mean not uttering the ideas at all. It means being careful. We really have to do that. Yeah. So last question, sort of along those lines. I mean, 2020 is some would say,

Here, maybe it's fast approaching. I don't know anymore. But we know that last in 2016, yeah, it's here. God damn it. You know, fake news, hacking, Russian misinformation, just a cesspool of subterranean garbage on your parents' Facebook feed. We know now that all that stuff, these very online communities impacted the outcome of the election, the way people felt about candidates, et cetera. Are there steps you think newsrooms or I guess voters and news consumers should be taking to get ready to deal with that stuff? Or is it too sanguine to me to think that maybe we can even be prepared? Oh, man, it's, I don't know. I mean, because these things tend to sort of, we know the contours of the 2020 sort of like fake news ecosystem, right? You're going to have, it's going to be coming

from inside the house from bad actors. The sort of propaganda is going to be coming from various politicians and various behind the scenes spin artists, it's going to be coming from foreign governments trying to influence our elections. It's going to be coming from conspiracy theorists who truly believe it. It's an all-pronged attack. I think news organizations need to invest heavily on having journalists who understand this stuff, on having experts on speed dial, on really walking readers through not necessarily what's being said, but how it's being said, how we're being manipulated. Because I think if there's one bit of solace in all of this, it's that Americans in general don't like to be swindled. They don't like to be manipulated or pushed towards some kind of belief

or outcome by someone they don't know or trust. So I do think, you know, the awareness is going to be really key in all of this. But, you know, we're up against it. And, uh, I'm not optimistic at this point that we have ANA-N-L-A-N-A-N-A-Y yet. Yeah, I'm not either. Well, one thing I've done to try to help myself deal with this is follow a lot of the journalists like you who are on Twitter doing like the dystopia beat. So everyone should follow at C-W-A-R-Z-E-L on Twitter.com, if you dare to join the website. And, you know, thanks so much for talking about this stuff today.

I think I sincerely think that the intersection of media and online culture and all the stuff we just talked about is quite possibly the most important beat in the 2020 news cycle. And so I hope to talk a lot more about this stuff with you as we go forward. I'm here for it. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks, man. Talk to you too.

We are back for your second installment of World Does Want to Know, a segment already more popular than the Keep It segment on some show. I can't remember the name. Alexis asked news report show Jamal Khashoggi's murderer was part of a covert campaign by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to silence dissidents. what should the U.S. and the international community do in response? Great question. A couple thoughts in this. One, we should already have known this. It's good the New York Times reported this out, but the U.S. intelligence community has all kinds of ways to know these things. And this was based on intelligence reporting,

so the administration should have known this information for a very long time. Two, this was kind of hiding in plain sight. I mean, Muhammad bin Salman locked up most of his relatives in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Some were beaten. one actually died, some were tortured. He made them sign confessions, hand back, all kinds of assets and things. So we knew that there was this repressive undertaking happening in real time. Civil rights activists were being locked up. So I think all of this just leads me to believe that we should continue to hold the Saudis at arm's length. The administration should report what they found about the Khashoggi murder under the Magnitsky Act. And then I think Congress should keep moving to either sanction the Saudis or at a bare minimum, cut off support.

for their disastrous war in Yemen. It's killing people and there's absolutely no reason to continue. So keep the pressure on. Look to people like Rokana, Chris Murphy, Bernie Sanders and Congress who are doing great work. Thanks for tuning in to POT Save the World. I love you, all of you. I'm looking at you, Michael, looking at you, Kyle, looking at you Elijah, I'm looking at you listeners. I can see you through your phone right now. No, I can't. Have a great week.