The Chaser Report - Some Killer Statistics

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Charles has found a research paper with some genuinely fascinating findings on the meme-ification of murder, which leads to a first time in The Chaser Report's history, where Charles and Dom are taking a stand. ---Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] our caviar addiction: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. Today you have found a study. Yes. Which I must say, you said it to me and I was kind of, oh, what's this academic, PDF, whatever? Yes.

Yeah, this is pretty fascinating. Yes. Talk us through it. And look, I think not to spoil it, but the only conclusion that I can reach is that I think that comedy might need to be banned. Really? Yes. You've changed.

I know, but these are chilling facts. And I don't want any of the following facts to be understood with the tone of sarcasm. Like, there is no hint of sarcasm in any of the things that I say. This is straight research. Yes, because, you know, like, there's going to be things that I say and you're going to go, oh, he's supportive of that and he's just being sarcastically unsupportive. So just be clear, you're not going to happen. I condemn everything.

I condemn all the findings in this research. Do you condemn the research, the people doing the research? I think probably we, I think maybe Donald Trump's onto a good thing defunding all the universities because, you know, you start finding out things like this. The report is called assassination culture, colon, Charles, don't laugh. How burning Tesla's and killing billionaires became a meme aesthetic for political violence. I'm sure that, yeah, those involved in these violent actions will be so gratified to know that they are a meme aesthetic, Charles. That's what they're going for, I'm sure.

Let's talk about what that means after this. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.com.

So this is Rutgers University, and it's a research institute called the Network Contagion Research Institute, which I'm sure I saw in a movie with Dustin Hoffman once. I think when I saw that title, I've just been reading sci-fi. You know the Murderbot series? Yes. I love the Murder-Bot series, but I've read the books before. Martha Wells. There's a book called Network Effect. And then there's something else called Contagion or something.

So I thought it was a sci-fi thing. But no, this is actually a legitimate research institute, very well-respected, that looks at toxic ideology that leads to violence, whether it's on the left or the right. And by the way, just for another time, I looked at some of the other groups on the right that exist in the US. And there's certainly some stuff to talk about that I hadn't heard of before. For instance, had you heard of the Bougaloo movement?

No. Yeah, the Bougaloo movements. It's not, you know, electric bugaloo breakdance to, too, the movie from the 80s. Nothing to do with that. The Bougaloo movement is. it would have been much better if that was the real thing. It is actually a far-right anti-government militia wanting to incite a second civil war

that they call the boogaloo or the boog. Here they are. They're basically people with machine guns and hoodies and they look as though their parents might have been related. Is that unkind? Not really, basically, this one. So you found out about this group by...

By looking at the things that this network contagion research institute looks at. So my point is just that this is not a political group looking at, I don't know, those on the left in particular. This looks at all violence. So basically the headline results are essentially 40% of survey respondents think that destroying Tesla dealerships in protest is at least somewhat justified. 60% of lefties, people left of centre who identifies left of centre believe that.

23% of right wingers believe that destroying Tesla dealerships is... Well, this is the problem, Tesla. Those right wingers wouldn't be aware. of the latest developments, and they just think they're Californian liberal hippies. Yes. This is the problem. Tesla's toxic at both ends of the extreme. Okay, so you go, well, that's sort of higher.

And this is what the survey says is, this is higher than we expected. Like, this is not something, like, the destruction of private property is not something that's usually held in a steam by 40% of people. No, although, Charles, that said, there are a lot of Tesla drivers out there. Yes. And I should out myself that, as a Tesla driver, There are days when the voice recognition makes me very cross. And makes you want to burn down a Tesla dealership.

But it's also, it's entirely possible. They texted the respondents about whether they wanted to destroy a Tesla dealership while they were driving their Teslers. And the response was entirely garbled. I mean, like if I was trying to text, Charles, I'm running a bit late for the podcast, it's entirely possible that the shithouse Tesla voice recognition would interpret it as, Charles, I want to destroy Tesla dealership. But, okay, so you go, that's, that's,

sort of, well, I mean, this has been concerning, it's really concerning. It's why, you know, and we'll get into why this is happening in a sec, but essentially, this is meme culture, taking hold and it's essentially jokes about wanting to burn down

his leadership. And before you know it, it's not a joke anymore. Yeah, I mean, 40% of people. This reminds me of a time, a long time ago, Charles, when people used to, you know, remember on campus back here, this is all the campus culture. Yeah. You know, people, people, Back in the era of protests against voluntary student unionism,

people would just pack all kinds of grand kind of brave jokes that, I don't know, smashing the window of the Senate meeting and then going through the hole on campus. And no one ever did that kind of thing, did that, Charles? I'm not saying that I haven't involved, you know, been involved in the destruction of private property before in protest. I think, like, no, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, no, but I'm saying, like, yeah,

it's fine when you're 21 shitty, you know, like lefty who's trying to, you know, pick up chicks by being all trendy by... I was taking photos for the student newspaper that day and I think you didn't break it. I think he just went through it. Let's just say a close, well, chase a colleague was standing with me and he was very happy for me to take the fall that day.

Right. So you went through the hole and the Senate building. And that is why the Senate, by the way, just as a footnote. Yes, we won. They don't meet on a ground floor building anymore. But also we won that battle. which was to stop Senate meetings from meeting on ground floor.

But then I had the same meeting on an upper floor with no accessible windows. No, but the funny thing was that student protest was against full fees for upfront fees. Oh yeah, okay. It was against up front fees for students, right? And we won that year.

Like the University Senate did not vote to support upfront fees that year. Well, they couldn't have a meeting because you kept interrupting them. No, but in the fullness of time. And so we lost. You lost. Yeah.

But that year, we won. That year, yeah. Okay, yeah, true. Anyway, so, but the most interesting thing is the whole thing about how justified murder is. Yes, now this is when things get really quite macab. So, look, a lot of people think it's okay to destroy a Tesla dealership. I mean, that's somewhat shocking to a degree. Yes.

Again, unless you've used the voice recognition. But, no, the point where it comes into murder, and of course, this gets into Luigi Mangione, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. And the United Health Care CEO, Brian Thompson. But let's do. Let's do the top line figures on Musk and Trump first, which is 31%, 31.6% of all respondents said that the murder of Elon Musk was at least partially justified. Partially?

Yes. Partially is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence, isn't it? Between like, oh, wouldn't it be a pity if and let's do this thing? Yeah. But yeah, to put it another way, 58.4% of people said it's never justified, right? Like, that's another way of looking at it. But that's still, yeah, I mean, it's a very low percentage to be opposed to murder.

Yes, exactly. But remember, we were also talking about Elon Musk here. So you've got to sort of, but the most amazing thing. And so that includes 14% on the right, who identifies right wingers. Right. Who think that he's seduced Donald Trump from the, from the, okay. But then we get to Donald Trump, 38.5% of all respondents said that the murder of Donald Trump,

Trump was at least somewhat justified. Bloody hell. 56% of lefties were fine with it. 20.3% of people who identified as right of centre said that the murder of Donald Trump was at least somewhat justified. And going back to the first sentence of the report, Charles, and the timing, this is what I wanted to know, is the timing is this pre or post the actual assassination attempts of Donald Trump where this was in no way hypothetical.

And it says here, following the attempted assassination on July the 13th, 2024, Tolerance and even advocacy for political violence seems to have surged amongst left-leaning segments of the population. So this is after someone tried to shoot him and clipped his ear, a lot of people were like, well, that was a good start. Evidently, I mean, this is extraordinary. And then let's go to the support for Luigi Mangione thing, because this is sort of incredible, right?

Because they're sort of tracing it a little bit to something really crystallized when Luigi Mangiani, who's alleged to have shot... Well, I think... The healthcare CEO. Yeah, healthcare CEO. Where's the stats on that? Oh, fuck. It's now broken out into these...

How does anyone become an academic? Look at the tables. How the fuck do you read this? Definitely don't cut this out. Yeah, we're reading the summary. Look at all the... What are those numbers even mean? I love the fact that it's highly correlated with usage of blue sky.

Oh, really? Yes. Oh, God. So that's where all lefties are. So, Charles, what they've done is they've got, so they've got 68.4% in Elon's case and 61.5% in Trump's case saying not at all justified, by the standard law and general position. And then anything from slightly justified to totally justified, they just grouped together. It seems fair enough to me.

I mean, it's just all, you're just going, this is a society that's clearly... You're looking at the correlation matrix between blue sky usage and support for the... Jimi Manjiani. Yeah, yeah. It does overlap to a chilling degree. I'm so, what I can't see is how many people across the board want to kill are okay with Luigi. I think the whole point is, they didn't ask the Luigi Menjiani question.

They just included it in correlations. In the correlations and the, presumably just to make headlines. Yeah. They're saying there's a broader assassination culture, but also the memeification of Luigi Manjone. It's not even just like do you support him, but it's kind of like he's becoming an idea as well. Well, this is where I think we need to talk about outlawing jokes. Well, just before we do that, Charles, though, the other thing that's really quite shocking

about this is I thought that given those figures and given the sort of summary of all this that they'd gone out to specifically look, interview, specifically interview very left-wing people. No, no, no, no, no. And it's not at all. No, this is just normal. It is balanced to reflect census data on diversity. So they've made an effort to make.

make it representative of the American population. Yes. Which means that speaking of murder bot, I mean, that is something that wouldn't be satirical to a lot of Americans right now. That would be a useful household appliance to own a murder bot. Yeah, only in the case of 40% of people. Yeah, not for everybody. Not for everyone.

But it's a higher rate that people who like automatic vacuum, you know, vacuum cleaners at this point. So after the ads, when we come back, let's talk about who we want to kill in Australia. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month.

Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.ca. The Chaser Report. Now with extra whispers. Well, Charles, you were saying that you think jokes need to be banned at this point. And I mean, there's potential, potentially a few reasons why you might think that. I'm interested to know which it is. Like, why are we banning jokes?

Well, I just, I worry about the safety of upstanding citizens in Australia. Who work in Tesla dealerships. Who work in Tesla dealership, but also who own the means of production, you know. Like, you know, the ordinary everyday billionaires who sort of run the mines and the, and the captains of industry in this country. I don't want them caught up in. this sort of memeification trend that makes them fear for their lives. Wouldn't you be, wouldn't you really be pissed off?

Wouldn't you be really pissed off, Charles, if you were, if harm was done to you in this process. And let's say, I can't think of a worse way to go. Like, I mean, being assassinated for beliefs or whatever is one thing. But for it to be a meme, I mean, for it to have been some stupid TikTok thing that got out of control. A meme involving the word Luigi as well. Exactly. That isn't relating to Mario.

Yeah. I mean, this is quite an extraordinary thing. So the good news is, as you've mentioned before on the podcast, Elon Musk has some of the world's greatest security. Like, we've discussed this in the past, haven't we? Yeah, he's got 35. He's got like a better than Secret Service level of protection. Better than Taylor Swift.

Oh, really? Yes. Taylor Swift has 29. Okay. Yeah. We covered this. But which 20, oh, well, it depends how good the 29 up. So they'll be okay, highly likely.

Yeah. It's the lower grade billionaire schlubs. Yes. The slubs of our favorite word of the billionaire class. They're the ones. The poor billionaires. He's only got one or two. He only got a couple of bill.

Yes. And can't afford to have 30 full-time security stuff. They're the ones that be picked off in this meme culture to be for a TikTok. If I am to be killed, Charles, if I am to be killed, and you may say this at my funeral, I don't want it to be for a TikTok meme. No. You want a way to go, make it at least noble. A Reddit or a Reddit meme or a Blue Sky meme.

Is that what you're saying? I think Twitter. Oh. Yeah. The very least. I mean, I did, I just like Twitter. Yeah. I kind of feel like we're, like, because I'm actually a bit squeamish about this.

Like, I'm all for, you know, taxing billionaires. And I'm all for, you know, maybe nationalizing Tesla to take it out of the hands of billionaires. That's actually quite a good idea. I'm not a huge fan of murder. Well, this is, I genuinely wasn't sure where you're going to go with this, Charles. Because it is, it is exactly the. The point, isn't it, is that you spend your life railing against things. And, I mean, people have said, whether you or others, people have often said, you know,

kill all CEOs or, but that wasn't a call to arms. It was a sort of extreme provocative statement of basically saying they're a bunch of shits, right? Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, advocating the widespread murder of CEOs. Yes. Is both, you know, really irresponsible and immoral. But Charles, we've all got, through our super, we've all got shares in companies. Imagine what the companies are.

would do without CEOs, who would, the CFO would have to step up. What if they weren't ready, Charles? What if they weren't ready? What if there wasn't a good recruiting? Charles, if this happened on a mass scale, imagine the recruiting process. You'd get dudd CEOs. But maybe that would provide an opportunity for, for you. Yeah, for say, failed media proprietors to step up into the...

This is the thing. I mean, I've got in front of me a book called Wankanomics, a deep dive into workplace bullshittery. The Wanganomics part of your business, I don't even know why. why you're still here on the podcast, Charles. It's going so incredibly well. Yeah. And as we know from Vladimir Zelenskyy,

parodying someone doing something, like running a country, that's only a small step to actually doing the thing, Charles. So you will be a Fortune 500 CEO within 10 years. I have no doubt at all. Thank you. Or until you're killed. Especially if they all get it in the neck.

Well, that's what I'm saying. But I wonder with it, because you at least know how to talk the talk. Do you think it will change behavior? Like the use, the actual theoretical use of political violence or the threatening of political violence is to get people to change their ways. Yes. The theory is if you sort of go, if you create a sort of culture where it's like, you know, Elon Musk should die or whatever, you know, maybe he'll moderate his behavior is the theory of change. I think that's sort of, a theory of change or just basically the underlying logic of terrorism. Yeah, yeah.

But it sort of, but it doesn't work that way, does it? because actually what happens is those people get more fearful of you and you get more fearful of them and everyone sort of polarises. I'm going to go even further than that. What happens is that the state then cracks down and keeps with them all. That may happen, Charles, but also there's a new option on the table for these CEOs, which this very situation in America may be advancing, leaving the planet.

Maybe that's why they're all working on. I mean, that's why they've all got these space projects, that they're all just planning to blast off away from these essence. But this is a representative cross-section, like 20% of right-wingers want to kill them. So who are you going to staff spaceships with? Who are you going to hire for your launch crew that's not going to leave a wire? 40% of your launch crew are going to be going to be going, oh, I hope this one explodes. Maybe that explains why SpaceX, with all their rockets that are supposed to be manned.

Oh, you think that's what's going on. Yes. People are trying to turn them into missiles. Charles, no, this is too stupid a suggestion to say. Should I say it anyway? Yes. I'm just, look, I mean, I'm going to seem really silly and naive, but I guess one thing they could do is actually maybe use some of their wealth

to redistribute some of it and maybe improve conditions for people at the bottom. No. Dom, I think you've just committed a thought crime. And because Elon has so many hundreds of billions of dollars that if some of that money was given to the people who really doing it tough and were angry. the revolution. What you're basically doing is funding murderers and potential assassins. Now, we don't need to make things fairer so that the bottom, you know, 10% have better

lives. We just need to make the security detail. I think it's the bottom 90%. Yeah. But we just need to make the security details bigger. Yeah. If Elon has tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people working security. 40% of them will want to kill it.

There'll be a lot of people in the new jobs. It'll look after itself. There'll be a lot of new jobs. It'll be a hiring boom, Chuck. I mean, the biggest industry in the world will be building. billion air security. Well, I think that's what we're saying anyway. Like, you know, today, Peter Heggshev, you know,

criticise the government for not spending 3.5% of our budget on military. That's what the solution is. Everyone should just buy lots of guns all the time. Well, actually, I mean, putting the military, who often don't do very much, you know, they're just getting ready for a war. Why aren't they tasked to billionaire security? I know.

There's all these laws in America about not using the domestic law enforcement. But as we know, laws don't mean anything. no exactly use the navy seals to keep to keep Elon safe why not yes get the whole of the seven they're born or whatever division isn't that to keep Jeff Bezos safe isn't that because 40% of them want to kill him wow it's a it's a really shocking it's really we've we've actually for the probably the first time in our more than 1,000 episodes of the podcast just we've hit a real impasse yeah because it's sort of funny and amazing and at the same time We don't want this.

There's not. Don't think this. Can we just, can the Chaser report actually for the first time in history take a stand against widespread murder, even, even if billionaire CEOs? Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, not all widespread murder. Obviously, there are some wars that Australia is complicit in that we can't possibly oppose. So we're just, we're just going to, when it comes to, when it comes to billionaires CEOs,

we are definitely relatively against. it. You know, when you think about it enough. Actually, now that I think more about it, I think I need to sit on the fence. Given my other commitment. We are, yeah, yes. We are part of the Oconoclast Network.

Catch you tomorrow, unless I get assassinated, Perth. You're a CEO and I'm not. I'm a meme. You actually are a meme. Yeah. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold any of.

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