QAA Podcast - On the Road With the Conspiracist Right feat Mike Wendling (Premium E244) Sample

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Mike Wendling is the National Digital Reporter for the BBC. He is the co-founder of the BBC's disinformation unit and was editor and presenter of BBC Trending. While topics related to disinformation and extremism became popular starting in 2016, he’s been covering this subject matter for decades. He is the author of the book Alt Right: From 4chan To White House as well as the brand new book Day of Reckoning: How the Far Right Declared War on Democracy. Jake and Travis chat with Mike about covering conspiracy theories, adventures in the field, the legacy of 2000 Mules, and Mike’s experiences attempting to use a medbed. Day of Reckoning: How the Far Right Declared War on Democracy by Mike Wendling https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745349718/day-of-reckoning/ Mike Wendling on Twitter https://twitter.com/mwendling Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

Let me I am Ah, and so you Ah, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. If you're hearing this, well done, you've found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, Premium Episode 244, on the road with the conspiracist right, featuring Mike Wendling. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Field, and Travis Vue. Mike Wendling is a national digital reporter for the BBC.

He's the co-founder of the BBC's disinformation unit and was editor and presenter of BBC Trending. Well, topics related to disinformation and extremism have become very popular, you know, starting in 2016. He's been covering this subject matter for decades. He's the author of the book Alt-Right, from 4chan to White House, as well as the brand-new book, Day of Reckoning, How the Far Right Declared War on Democracy. Mike, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.

I mean, like I say, it's fair to say that you are a seasoned veteran in covering the subject matter that has blown up an interest and relevant sort of the last. eight years. So what first got you in Black covering this? Well, you know, it's kind of weird that like my interests in fringe politics and technology somehow merged about 10 years ago. But, you know, basically that's how I got into it. I was making radio documentaries for the BBC about social media and the sort of like the bright inkletsy new world of online social networking. But then I've always also had a fascination with fringe political movements of all stripes. And of course, when the alt-right started to coalesce. And in 2015 and 2016, really, you know, kind of burst out of

nowhere, at least from like mainstream attention. It was very shocking in a way, but maybe not so surprising if you were looking at these things over the long term to realize where all this stuff was headed. And I suppose where it was all headed is, you know, the situation we ever find ourselves in today. Yeah, I sympathize with that. You know, I always had a interest in sort of these fringe topics. But I started noticing personally in 2000. that they started becoming, the things I was interested in, started becoming less and less fringe and started being promoted by people with big audiences. And yeah, that was, yeah, I mean, that was very disturbing to me. I mean, it's so remarkable. I like to tell people that like, you know,

did you believe when you were at that Q&on conference in, you know, 2018, did you believe that this would become something that would be a massive sort of center of political power, you know, debated by the mainstream media? And I would have honestly, said no. And that goes with any sort of other conspiracy theories, you know, that you guys have covered and that I've covered over the years. But this stuff is really kind of salient in today's world in a way that if you look back and if you sort of like wind the clock back, it's kind of astonishing. Yeah. You know, when we first started this podcast, Lisa, I always thought like, okay, there's this weird thing as growing in power and interest and more and more people are,

you know, coalescing around it. But I felt like at some point, surely the adults are going to step in and stomp this out, somehow, the powers that be. I had more faith than the powers that be than are actually true. But that just never, ever happened. One thing I really appreciate about your reporting is the times that you go into the field. I mean, like, with reporting these sort of these online matters, it can be really tempting to do all of your reporting based on things you just see on your computer. And it's certainly possible to do a lot of excellent work that way.

But some of the favorite work I've done for this podcast is when I get to go to conventions and get to meet conspiracists, you know, face to face. and that's something you do, you have done frequently. That's funny because that's my least favorite part of the podcast. I hate going out into the world. I mean, I like confirmations. Like, this isn't just, you know, some sort of weird AI program that's making all these people online. They're real.

They are flesh and blood and they're meeting, you know? Well, sure. And I guess that goes back a little bit to Mike's earlier point is, you know, when we first went to these conferences, I guess in my head, I kind of thought maybe it would get big because here were a bunch of people out in real life. You know, it was, it was definitely an interesting experience to see all of these characters from the internet, whether it was influencers that we were following, or it was just, you know, various conspiracy theories to then see them all sort of coalesce, you know, in the third dimension and talk. And that was an interesting experience for me, who's, you know,

somebody who's never done journalism work in the past. So, yeah, I imagine that, you know, if you're used to doing that sort of stuff, used to going to these conventions, where, you know, people are discussing conspiracy theories, you know, maybe go, ah, this is, people have been doing this forever. They've been getting together. They've been talking about 9-11, you know. You know, before we go into some of your personal experiences, like, yeah, I guess, you know, with these conventions and meetings, just generally, Mike, when you speak personally

to conspiracists and extremists, like, how have you been received? They're, you know, they're normally quite hostile to the media. Yeah, I mean, I have to say that it does vary in this country. And it varies not only like being a member of. the mainstream media, whatever that means. I always have sort of a weird, you know, a relationship with that term, but also being a part of the foreign media in this country. I mean, I moved to this country, back to this country. I was born and grew up in Buffalo, New York, but I'd been in London for nearly 20 years. And so when I was coming here and doing these reports, there would be a

greater, I suppose, acceptance. I mean, I've had a number of times where people would tell me, you know, oh, you're from the BBC. Okay, fine, you can come and do the interview. If you were from CNN, there's no way or you know i've done reports on you know antifa and stuff and of course you know if i was coming from fox news or even you know something that was sort of like the new york times or something they wouldn't necessarily accept me to do the story in the same way or you know even give me an interview at all so there was sort of a lot of the times you know it kind of depends on sort of you find that these conspiracy theorists they actually want attention right because they want to believe that they want you to believe right and and that's kind of an advantage because for

a long time, a lot of people weren't paying attention to, you know, various conspiracy theories about, say, vaccines or Q&On or whatever it might be. And somebody calls them up and they appear to be a person who's listening to them, even though they're a person who's from the mainstream media. And they're like, yeah, let me tell you all about it. Believing in their powers of persuasion, right? And that's almost enough in most cases to start people talking to you. Now, whether that sort of like pans out, your experience may vary. You know, whether that sort of friendliness continues, let's say it's gone various different ways over the course of my years of reporting on this kind of stuff. Yeah, you know, I'll say I generally the times I've gone into the field and I've been recognized even.

I've been kind of surprised at how non-hostile they've been. I always kind of chalked it up to the fact that maybe they are kind of like PR savvy and they know I'm going to talk or write about my experiences there and they don't want me going. it's like, oh, you know, they kicked me out and they were angry and they yelled at me and that kind of stuff. And so they kind of butter me up so that I can accurately report that, you know, they did not treat me with any great deal of hostility. Yeah. No, absolutely. And like when you talk about some very extreme people, I guess it's like, you know, people sometimes ask me like, you know, is it sort of, you know, scary to call them up or whatever and or, you know, or they just sort of like shut down. How much persuasion do they need? Usually they don't need a whole

lot of persuasion usually it's like they will definitely talk to you or they definitely won't you know it's very rare where it's kind of in between in a weird sort of way you know the characters who are who populate this space are media savvy you know and they and if they think that they can get something from you you kind of always got to be on your guard when you're sort of like taking this stuff and broadcasting it but it's not as it's not as uh it's not as complicated as as many people might think I don't think. Yeah, you mentioned that it's one of the things that I, you know, I'm always wary of is the oxygen of amplification problem is that it's like, okay, maybe they appreciate

they're not being hostile to it for me. But, you know, I got to make sure I'm not, you know, doing their PR for them or that I'm not amplifying messages that otherwise would be, you know, would be wither away and irrelevance if I, if no one reported on them at all. So, I mean, yeah, it's always very, very tricky whenever you, I guess, you can do these sorts of reports in the field. to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast for access to the full episode as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries go to patreon.com slash QAA Travis why is that such a good deal? Well Jake you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month for that very low price you get access to over 200 premium episodes plus all of our miniseries that includes 10 episodes of man plan

with Julian the Nanny, 10 episodes of Pervers with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of the Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis Vue. It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting. Travis, for once, I agree with you. And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion. It's a fact. You're so right, Jake.

We love and appreciate all of our listeners. Yes, we do. And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude maybe that's not true the part about be crying not not me being grateful i'm very grateful