Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The rise of ‘BlueAnon' + Trump shooting merch + RNC influencers

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Minutes after a gunman attacked Donald Trump at a rally, conspiracy theories flourished on social media. Did Trump fake it? Was it a false flag? These are the latest additions to a growing collection of anti-Trump conspiracy theories referred to as "Blue Anon." Taylor Lorenz discusses the rise of conspiracies from anti Trump influencers with Mike Rothschild, author of "The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything." Plus, Taylor explains the alleged shooter's "Demolition Ranch" YouTuber T-shirt, and talks about the RNC influencers tasked with making the GOP look cool. (edited) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, the Trump shooting merch boom. Content creators descend on the RNC. And our main topic, how Blue Anon took over the anti-Trump internet. I'm Taylor Lorenz, and that's all coming up right now on Power User. Minutes after a gunman attacked Donald Trump at a rally last weekend, conspiracy theories online began to flourish. It was a false flag. The Secret Service were in on it.

Trump had a fake blood gel pack in his ear. This is the latest example of a phenomenon online called Blue Anon. It's an obvious playoff QAnon, the right-wing conspiracy theory that alleges a global cabal of elites is trafficking children and secretly ruling the world. Bluenon isn't one conspiracy, but rather it speaks to the growing conspiracy among anti-Trump influencers. For instance, conspiracies like Biden was secretly drugged before the debate, or ABC News intentionally doctored his audio to make him appear worse. We're seeing this BluAnon conspiracyism become more and more widespread. bread. My guest today, Mike Rothschild has done a lot of thinking about Bluenon and QAnon. He's the author of

The Storm Is Upon Us, How Kianon became a movement, occult, and conspiracy theory of everything. Hi, Mike. Welcome to Power User. Thank you for having me. First of all, can you tell me a little bit about the term Bluenon? When did this phenomenon emerge and where did this term come from? I don't know who made up the term. It's probably one of those things where nobody made it up. It just appeared. And where it really started to take off in this sort of conspiracy industrial complex around Donald Trump really was the Russia investigation. And I think there were sort of two different strands of this. There were people who really understood that Trump has a lot of business connections in Russia. He's on a very similar wavelength as Vladimir Putin.

He's very sympathetic to them. That's all real. We understand that. There were then people who told us that Donald Trump has been an agent of the secretly reformed KGB for the last 40 years, and he secretly gets his orders from Moscow in a diplomatic pouch sent. in a gold stork to the Trump Tower. And here's 300 tweets about it. That's Blue Anon to me. Yeah, I saw a lot of the Blue and On stuff start to originate around the Russia stuff as well.

And like you said, obviously we know that Russia played a role in trying to influence the landscape in 2016. When I first started seeing Bluon being used, it was used by these right-wing social media personalities like Jack Bosobiac, Marjorie Taylor Green, and others to kind of speak to what they felt like was this overblown media obsession

with trying Trump to Russia. and sort of like not really acknowledging the grassroots nature of a lot of Trump support in this country. Right. And I think it was especially used by purveyors of conspiracy theories. You know, somebody like Marjorie Taylor Green or Jack Bosobic. Actual human non-supporters. You know, one of these people exposing or accusing somebody else of being a conspiracy theorist. I mean, there's more projection there than a 30-screen multiplex. Exactly. And I feel like the term kind of puttered out, petered along. Until recently, following Biden's really bad debate performance, you started to

see the resurgence of these liberal kind of centrist-driven conspiracy theories. These were things like the Secret Service secretly drugged Biden before the debate. Tell me a little bit about what you started to see post-debate and the types of conspiracies that these liberal groups are suddenly promoting. Well, very quickly after the debate, I started to see these conspiracy theories that Biden's poor performance was not because of Biden performing poorly, but that someone did it to him. You know, the first things I saw where his microphone was all messed up. there was too much buzz and that his volume was too far down. And, you know, you'd see somebody tweet, like, my buddies of sound band for a well-known band. And he told me that, you know,

nobody's microphone sounds like that. Like, okay, sure. Maybe we should address some of the actual issues going on with Biden's candidacy rather than making up conspiracy theories about why he sounded bad. But that's what people do. You make up a conspiracy theory because you don't want to acknowledge the truth. And then, of course, in this case, the truth is that, Joe Biden had a disastrously bad debate performance. And we don't want to acknowledge that so the conspiracy theories and the excuses start coming out. Yeah. And you see this idea that it sees these nefarious forces at work. And specifically, it's elites and the media. I think, look, the media did undeniably do this about face pre and post debate. Right. Post debate, it was 100% if you went to the New York Times.com like wall to wall to wall coverage. And I get it. Political reporters, you know, they focus on things. horse race politics problems. I have lots of criticisms for the media. But I think that this notion that the media is somehow working to destroy XYZ's favorite candidate is what's worrying to me.

That starts to sound kind of Q and on, this notion of collusion and powerful secret forces. Right. And I think we saw a really good example of the media taking something that wasn't really a story and turning it into a story when you had something like Hillary Clinton's health. You know, her collapse after the September 11th memorial. She was, like, thrown into a car and driven away. She was fine. She was, like, back on the campaign trail a day later. That wasn't a story.

Biden's age, his, you know, whether he can do this job or not, whether he can win his mental acuity, this is an actual story. This is a story that happens because the nominee for the Democratic Party is 81 years old. He will be 86 at the end of a second term. I don't think it's agist or ablest or whatever to talk about this as an actual issue. I've known a lot of people in their 80s who were doing fine, and then they weren't doing fine. And I've been choosing to look at this through the lens of watching somebody age, rather than some sort of a conspiracy between the boom mic guy at CNN and the opinion publisher at the New York Times.

That's ludicrous and it's unnecessary. So when you're talking about this Blue and On group online, do these people identify as BluAnon? And who are some of the key figures that have been pushing some of these more extreme conspiracy theories? Well, one of the things about conspiracy theorists is that they will never identify themselves as conspiracy theorists. They are researchers, they're citizen journalists, they're the truth tellers. The rest of us are the ones who are asleep. We're the ones who believe in the conspiracy theory. But there's a real lack of kind of self-awareness with these people. And in terms of who's doing it, you're seeing accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers.

I saw, you know, people like Brooklyn Dad and the Jack Hopkins. The resistance. The hashtag resistance liberals who have just made careers off of doing this. A lot of these people, they're totally unknown outside Twitter. And on Twitter, they're superstars. So you can understand why some of these people would lean into these conspiracy theories for the same reason that a lot of right-wing influencers lean into conspiracy theories. That's their brand. That's what people expect of them. Yeah, 100%. I think it just shows how more and more people are all. also getting their news from these influencer-driven accounts. I mean, to me, and the reason I wanted to write this Bluenon story now, is because it seems to have reached this critical tipping point,

where especially post-shooting, you know, what happened at the Trump rally this past weekend, almost immediately a lot of these big liberal personalities started to push this idea that it was a false flag and everything was staged. And once again, this was, you know, Trump up to his old hijinks, you know, staging things. And you started to see that being pretty widespread believed, right? Like, I mean, it was trending on Twitter. I saw people on threads expressing this. It seemed to kind of break through in a way that I haven't seen some of those previous

blue-and-on associated conspiracies breakthrough. Yeah. In the earliest kind of seconds and minutes after an incident like this happens, we don't know anything. The only thing that we know is what we already knew and what we already believed coming into it. So it's very natural for people desperate for information. you know, is Donald Trump alive? Was he shot? What happened? Those are very natural questions. We don't

have any of those answers in the first couple of minutes after an incident. But we love stories. And we want to know what's going on. We don't want to feel left out. We want to feel like we've got the special secret knowledge. So we start making up conspiracy theories. We say, well, it looks like a movie. Well, we've all seen a lot of movies where a presidential candidate is assassinated. The actual ones and the movie ones, they look a lot of like. That doesn't mean it's fake. It just looks like what we think it looks like. We need to know what's going on. And in the absence of actually knowing what's going on, we just decide that we know. And we decide that we know based on the things that we already believe. We believe Trump is a showman. We believe he knows things from his association with

professional wrestling. Oh, he'd know how to get down on the ground and cut his ear to make himself look like he's bleeding. Nobody knows what's going on. Why not tweet it? What else are you going to do? But then we start to find out what happened. And in this case, that two people are dead. And you would think that that would very quickly put an end to the idea that this was all fake. But by then, you've already invested in it. You already want to believe it. And also, a bunch of these people were saying, well, Trump has no problem killing his own supporters, right? You know, you've said that Bluon's roots are sort of similar in origin to MAGA. Can you talk about the parallels here? I think the parallels between Bluon and MAGA is that they're

kind of the photo negative of one another. Maga is, you know, Trump is the God king. He's the 12-dimensional genius. He always wins, and when he loses, he only loses on purpose so he can win bigger. Blu-Anon is kind of taking all of that as true, but reversing it, so that he's an evil genius. He always wins. We have to do something to stop him. So you understand why, when you see somebody like Trump, who just does seem to get away with everything, why people would make up conspiracy theories and a narrative for why he gets away with everything, because it's all part of a plot. And you don't think about, well, maybe he gets away with everything for the same reason that a lot of really wealthy white people get away with things. Because our justice system, our banking system, our

media are kind of all run by these people. They look out for each other. They take care of each other. That's also a conspiracy, but it's not one that people want to really confront because it involves kind of introspection and not cheap clicks. And systemic change. And systemic change, right, which doesn't benefit a lot of these people either. Yeah. What would you say, though, to all of the people that feel like this is drawing false equivalences? After my story went up, I heard from a lot of threads users, especially where a lot of these people congregate saying, you know, well, look, Trump is this unique threat to democracy. And Biden is not. And, you know, you need to talk about these things in terms of scale and impact. And, you know, you're overly focusing on this one small phenomenon and ignoring the

bigger phenomenon, which I, by the way, reject when I've written so many stories. on right-wing extremism. But talk about, you know, this notion of false equivalences. Sure. And I think it's really important to point out that a lot of the right-wing conspiracy world really is built around this rotten core of racism and anti-Semitism and transphobia, Islamophobia. You know, I acknowledge all of that. That's all true. The problem is that conspiracy theories that desensitize you to reality and sort of force you into this cynical posture of everything is fake, everybody is lying to me, whether you're on the the left or the right that has a deadening effect on people. And I've seen it a lot on the right,

and I'm starting to see it more on the left, this kind of joylessness and this cynicism and this inability to engage with reality. I don't think it's about the particulars of the photo op or how far the shooter was that none of that stuff really matters that much. I think what it does is it trains you to just think everyone is lying to you and nobody can be trusted. And that's really bad for everybody. Yeah, I mean, I think it just dismantles trust in all of our institutions that we need, right? And again, I have so many problems with the mainstream media. Literally built my career on media criticism. So I hate this idea that, like, I'm some staunch defender of the mainstream media. But I will say that having worked at places like The New York Times and The Post and a lot of other legacy places,

what people are ascribing to malice is almost always incompetent. You know? or an error or, you know, a political reporter trying to get the story right and fucking up. Or, look, there are people with agendas. There are bad editors, right? The Times does publish a lot of really evil shit on certain issues. I'm not arguing any of that. However, I think you're totally right in terms of this cult's mindset and this idea of like helplessness. And it's like, it does matter. The truth does matter. Yeah, we should care. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was a false flag or not, right? Right. Right. We should care. And the idea of building a cult around Joe Biden to fight the cult around Donald Trump is not appealing or helpful.

I mean, the number of people who the same yelled at me, who have been yelling at you, been yelling at Maddie Hassan to just shut up, get in line. What's wrong with you? You must love Trump. You must love MAGA. Oh, didn't know you were a fascist, unfollowing you. Well, I think that like a debate about something as critical as the mentally. acuity of the president is important. And it's something we should have had a year ago. Unfortunately, we're having it now. But I think this is a really, really crucial discussion to have. It's also

the discussion that the Trump cult has never had. They have never, never questioned whether Trump has the ability, the acuity, the morality to do this job. It has been lockstep marching, you know, in formation for the last almost 10 years. I don't want to do that. I like Joe Biden. I hope he wins. He's not my cult leader. Since my story went up, there's also a lot of people online that are the Ian Miles Chungs,

the right-wing people of the world, right, that have been saying, oh, look, finally the mainstream media is acknowledging that, you know, Democrats are the real conspiracy theorists. I think it's so toxic because, as you mentioned, these people, right, Ian Miles Chung, Glenn Greenwald and such, they have spread actual conspiracy theories. Can you talk about kind of like why it's so important to still acknowledge things like Bluenon and not just ignore that? Well, I think we should acknowledge this because it's doing the same thing that the conspiratorial sentiment on the right is done for a long time.

It's driving people toward either hopelessness and despair or toward violence. And you're not seeing it at that level on the left yet, but that doesn't mean it's okay. It's not okay to just lie to people. It's not okay to spread conspiracy theories around and not address what's actually. going on. Yeah, it's a distraction. And I think it's really important, too, that we stamp that type of thing out before it becomes too pervasive. Absolutely. And I think the fact that you're seeing more and more of it from these centrist, Democrat, traditional voters, like, these are pretty mainstream people that, of course, as you mentioned, they've been getting more conspiratorial

for years, especially around the Russia stuff, sure, sure. But this feels like a real departure and turning point. Why do you think threads has emerged as a hub? for this sort of blue anon, blue MAGA mentality. Yeah, I think you're seeing a lot of this emerging on these Twitter alternatives. You know, I've certainly seen it on blue sky. I haven't been on threads, but I know it's there. You know, people are looking to congregate in spaces where nobody disagrees with them. And we've seen this on the right with places like Gab, with places like parlor.

It's just, it's all fear and hate and conspiracy theories all the time. And no discussion, no apostasy is required. or desired. And I think the left is finding those spaces, too, where they can just say what they want. No one's going to yell at them. No one's going to push any kind of alternative viewpoint. And look, I mean, X has a lot of problems, a lot of problems. But I think that there is a little bit more of a vibrant discussion going on there that I think in either of the hermetically sealed far right or far left bubbles. Yeah, I would not call threads far left. Okay. But I haven't been on there and I'd rather drink a sand smoothie than do it than do it. But, you know, well, let's talk about

the political ideology of these people, because they're not far left, which has its own brand of conspiracism, right? These are centrist Democrats. And I think that's what interested me so much and why I wanted to write this story, because the extreme far left and the extreme far right have always been sort of prone to conspiracyism. Sure. But these centrist liberals have traditionally, I mean, prided themselves on being media literate. trusting places like the New York Times, right? And now you're seeing even them flip and engage with these centrist Democrat influencers that don't seem to have any regard for the truth. So totally agree that these sort of alternative social platforms have become deep echo chambers, no matter what your

ideology, you can find the right platform, it seems like, to validate it. Yeah, I think what you're seeing is a lot of these more centrist influencers are kind of figuring out what a lot of really about far-right influencers and media figures figured out a long time ago, that there is a lot of money to be made and a lot of clout to be generated and a lot of infamy to be gathered by pushing the most extreme viewpoints. You know, there's been so much digital ink spilled over whether Alex Jones believes what he's actually saying or whether it's an act. It doesn't matter. What he believes is totally irrelevant. It's that he's telling people things that they want to believe, that they already think are true. And I think with a lot of

these influencers, these pro-Biden influencers, you're seeing the same thing. You're pushing out conspiracy theories and unhinged nonsense to people who want to believe that Joe Biden is, like, persecuted and Donald Trump is an evil genius and would stop at nothing to get his way when reality is a lot more nuanced and a lot weirder in some ways. I mean, so much of the need for something like QAnon was driven by the fact that Trump wasn't accomplishing anything in his first term. Here's a year into him being president. He hasn't locked Hillary up. He hasn't built the wall. Well, we need a conspiracy theory to explain. explain why he's failed. His failure is a success. So that's where this stuff comes from. And it's

intoxicating to get that kind of reaction online. And, you know, I was talking to the threads metacombs person over the weekend about my story just to get comment. And, you know, he was asking, like, well, what could threads have done better? Right. And I was talking to other researchers, too. To me, this isn't a tech problem. I think it's exacerbated by technology and the incentive structure of these platforms like you're mentioning. But I think the broader problem here stems from political distrust and people feeling kind of disenfranchised, like feeling powerless. It's absolutely not just a tech problem. And it's not an internet problem. It's not a social media problem. You know, you had in the 1800s people passing out pamphlets about how the Rothschilds

controlled France, conspiracy theories adapt to new technology, but they're driven by the same hopes and fears that all of us have. And they stem from feeling powerless. You feel like there's nothing you can do. Like, you don't know what's going on. And the conspiracy narrative lets you know what's going on. It lets you feel like you're accomplishing something. So I think by addressing some of the issues that drive people to conspiracism, hopelessness, loneliness, lack of media literacy, lack of just understanding the way things work, lack of empathy. Those are things that drive people to conspiracy theories. Threads or VHS tapes or homemade pamphlets, those are just the

way we spread those things. What do you think it says about our political landscape or media ecosystem that pretty much everyone in no matter what your ideology is now is falling further and further into this conspiratorial thinking structure? Well, I think we're living in this time right now where things are happening at this unbelievably accelerated rate. There is more just happening to us every day than probably happened to people 50 or 100 years ago in a week or a month. We are struggling to understand what's going on, why it's going on, and sort of who's benefiting from it, and why aren't I benefiting from it. And I think what's happening is we're now internalizing all of these things that happening and melding them into our own grievances. Our own things that have

already gone wrong in our life. Well, here's a conspiracy theory that explains all of it, and here's a video I can watch, and here's a book I can buy, here's a podcast I can listen to. So there's more stuff happening and more people trying to explain it using their own bias. and it just, it gets really hard to not just turn all of it off and then you don't know what's going on at all. All of the conspiracy theories sort of revolve around this powerful group of secret elites that are working with the media to control the world, whether you think that's Hillary Clinton eating babies or, you know, the New York Times or whoever else for the Bluenon people. And I think to an extent that's true, right? We have record wealth inequality. There's way too much money in politics.

But rather than address the systemic issues that created these conditions, these conspiracy theories instead have you yelling at other people online that are really just ideologically, maybe slightly to your left. And I think that's a bigger problem, too. I wish that these balloon on folks would, I don't know, think a little bit more about structural power, you know. Yeah. Rick Pearlstein, the historian, wrote a piece about what's actually in Project 2025. And people are just screaming at him. how dare you read this and talk about maybe not working? It's actually important to realize what these things are. That's actually how you defeat it. You don't defeat it with conspiracy theories and just screaming at other people. You defeat it by understanding it and trying to work your way inside it and find the weak spots.

That's how you win. You don't win with conspiracy theories about a microphone not working or Trump rubbing stage blood at his ear. that's just not going to move the needle. 100%. All right, Mike, well, thank you so much for joining me this week. Well, thank you. This was great. We'll be right back to chat about the biggest news stories this week after the break. Hi, I'm here with my showrunner, Zach Mack.

We are going to chat about some of the big stories this week. All right, let's do it. So there was lots going on with the Trump shooting last weekend. One thing I noticed is almost right away within hours, merch began hitting platforms like Amazon, Red Bubble, and a bunch of Chinese e-commerce sites. I don't know if you've copped the Trump shooting merch yet, Zach, but this stuff was all over. There's T-shirts, there's keychains, there's mugs, there's hats, like, you'd name it.

You could get it on your doorstep within 24 hours. I was impressed with the turnaround. I mean, obviously that photo is like sort of instantly iconic, but that turnaround was at such a rapid clip. But yeah, there was a whole industry behind that image overnight. Especially coming from foreign retailers. know, people in China and other places working to get this stuff out fast. So I haven't seen anybody wearing it in person, but I know people have been taking a lot of pictures of people wearing this sort of shooting merch. Speaking of shooting merch, the shooter himself was wearing

a Demolition Ranch T-shirt, which is a giant YouTube channel. It's kind of part of the broader Gun Tube universe. I will say, Demolition Ranch is one of the more mainstream, like YouTube channels. It's so massive. Somebody compared it to like a dude perfect. but for guns, where it's kind of just, it's for gun enthusiasts. Of course, gun enthusiasts generally have a political leaning. But the owner of Demolition Ranch actually went on YouTube and issued this statement being like, this is crazy. We were shocked and confused to find this out.

The shooter who tried to assassinate Trump was wearing merch from my channel, wearing a Demolition Ranch T-shirt. And that sucked to see that. And we never would condone that at all. I hate that. Yeah, look, it's not surprising to me that a gunman is really into watching stuff about guns online. That's all just say that. Yeah.

To me, this reminds me a lot of when the Christ Church shooter shouted subscribe to PewDie Pye. I feel like these shooters and these people that get radicalized, they are very into internet culture and online culture. That doesn't mean that the content creators, that they reference or where the merch of are necessarily directly responsible for their actions. But I do think it can, you know, allow us to pull back and take a look at the different cultures that we're seeing online, who's involved in what and what sort of ideology these channels are fostering or at least creating communities for. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

And then, of course, right after the shooting, you have the RNC this week. And dozens and dozens of right-wing content creators descending on Millwall. to create podcast content, Instagram content, TikToks, etc. This is part of the RNC's Youth Outreach Initiative. It's being run by these two Gen Z content creators, one of which I've known actually for a long time. And their whole goal is to essentially make Republicans cool on the internet. So they've got the Nelk boys.

They've got, you know, a bunch of other sort of right-leaning TikTokers, YouTubers and podcasts that are creating content from the RNC all week. Yeah. I mean, the little bits of the RNC I saw, they just seemed very starved for cool people, so much so that they had to trot out Kanye West's ex-girlfriend, Amber Rose, who's not a rapper, even though she was labeled as a rapper,

and put out a god-awful rap video. I don't know. Did you see that video she made? I did. It was pretty embarrassing. But, yeah, she's right-wing now. I mean, I think that the right, as we've talked about, has always succeeded on the internet in a way,

and they've always been able to wield attention, where they are struggling is with Gen Z, which is more progressive. So I think having this sort of coordinated influencer program for the first time here at the RNC makes sense. I was at the RNC back in Cleveland in 2016. There were tons of content creators there. There were a lot of right-wing figures, but they weren't brought into the fold. They weren't given credentials. They weren't given all-access passes.

And I think that's what's changed. I think that the right, much like the Democrats, recognizes that the Internet is important. And we need to cater these people. It's really important. In a lot of ways, it's like more important than the news outlets, right? Yeah, definitely. I mean, these are the people that are shaping the perception of the GOP to millions online. I'm curious to see what the Democratic influencers have in store for Chicago coming up.

Yeah, the Democrats also have a coordinated influencer strategy this year. Although I spoke to a major YouTuber recently who has tons of subscribers, is very connected. in the YouTube commentary world. And the Democrats denied him credentials, which I think is interesting. This is the guy that has consistently supported Democrats. He is more left-leaning, but he's a type of content creator they would want around.

And so I think it'll be interesting to see who they choose. I mean, this has been sort of a constant struggle for the Democrats, is finding people to work with and turning away people who maybe have been vocally pro-Palestine and things like that. Right. Yeah, I feel like both sides really need some image,

rehabilitation and some cool people backing them because it's a little bleak on both sides. Yeah, I think it's pretty bleak on both sides. I think politics people, D.C. people and generally are not known for their knowledge of the internet. Well, D.C. has got to be one of the most swagless cities I've ever been to. It's true. All right, Zach, well, thanks so much. All right, that's the show. Power User is produced by Travis Larchick and Jalani Carter. Our video producer is Brandon Kiefer. watch full episodes on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Our executive producers are Zach Mack and Nishot Kerwa. Power User is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you like the show,

give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week with another episode. See you then.