Demanding change economic recession and geopolitical tensions not to mention the small matter of a looming election. Steve clemons in conversation with leading voices on the bottom line your weekly take on u. S. Politics and society on aljazeera. Welcome to the stream home edition josh rushing in you are in my home edition today. With the owner might you run off the top this is out going out on you tube live and im hoping youre going to join us in that discussion box over there to get some of your comments into the show or try my best listen. Would you believe me if i told you i had an inside source with a trumpet ministration and theyre planning to arrest Hillary Clinton bill gates tom hanks because theyre all part of a cannibalistic pedophile rig you know who doesnt believe who do it who does believe that Michael Flynn former National Security advisor to the United States check out this video he put out around july 4th. Playing a man do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support and defend supporting the constitution of the United States because usually. All enemies foreign and domestic of us all be foreign and domestic i will be your very you know we just the same here through 3 families and i take this obligation freely that it is ill be asian freely about any mental reservation without a reddish or purpose of evasion or her is that we are not i will well and faithfully and that all well and gave discharge a duty to duty of the office on which i am about to enter of the oz if he was about to enter so help you god so where we go one we go or where you go i know all about last part where we go one week oh all that is pacific reference to kew anon but what is q when none this is alice kaplan for media matters. You know as if far i could spears the theory that originate a message board sites tied to white nationalists for chandan a chance remark on its more about the f. B. I. And his multiple ties the violence its been spreading in multiple social media platforms where they can organize in facebook groups and hashtags on twitter right where we go on we go all and you to check out and what you need to read is its been dissed by multiple congressional candidates this cycle in some aspect more than 60 congressional candidates and its been voters support out in some aspect by multiple figures in the orbit of president. Trump himself has retreated or amplified mulcher not twitter accounts ok joining me today to talk about cure known as a really exciting panel of guests 1st we have im going to introduce themselves but kelly has a book coming out here in about a platter 3rd and associated conspiracies kelly who you are and maybe a just a touch about your book sure im kelly while im a reporter at the daily beast where i cover the far right i cover weird internet culture and increasingly there overlap my forthcoming book is about the flat Earth Movement but also other conspiracy movements and format and history of conspiratorial thinking around the mid eightys hundreds and. Flat earth emergence because back that far well yeah yeah. I mean theres a whole other topic. That i had no idea there were backed up i want to talk about that. To move it on to gerrard and im actually im about more than halfway through gerrards book that he has coming out called american role and i tell you it is a fantastic look kind of a howard zinn type look at American History from a different perspective than we normally get the mythologized perspective jerde give us a touch on who you are why youre here today. Sure my name is charity exception im a political analyst and the author of the forthcoming book american role how nation conquer the world that failed its people and its its a look at American Mythology and all that is unable to america to become the major superpower but also how it has drowned out democratic movements and personal freedoms very thing started and then if you do any research on Conspiracy Theory in the us like those who are researching it talk about experts in it every article quotes one person and that person is joseph who is down at the university of miami Police Justice knows who you are but other than being the man on conspiracy right now. Hi im joe use in ski im an associate professor of Political Science here at the university of miami and i have been studying conspiracy theories for about a decade and am coauthor of american conspiracy theories. That the book that i have on the shelf American Express theirs is actually our lets begin with kelly kelly so we talked a bit about who q. Anon is but what are they really do they believe. Him a number lever is subscribed to a nexus of loosely defined beliefs but i think their core is that virtually all of president Donald Trumps foes are involved in a ring of say 10 a head ophelia and cannibalism and they believe offshoots in different variations on it they believe that the mahler investigation was not actually an investigation of President Trump but about trump going after his pedophile. They can believe certain things like john f. Kennedy jr is still alive and hes trying to bring down the path while raines and they are increasingly networked with high profile people in congress in the white house unself with trump retreating several cunanan supporters so this is a large and groWing Movement. So here and im curious you mentioned the part about j. F. K. Jr being actually live in going to come back and bring down this ring so he would be from the left or right and i think most people associate is it fair to say q anon is a right Wing Movement or is it something else. It certainly is theres an interesting sort of a harsher situation happening with that where the mythology of turin on actually holds that the j. F. K. Assassination in the 1960 s. Was actually part of this big giant conspiracy by what they call the couple and you know we have these president s particularly j. F. K. Ronald reagan and ol trumpet all in this mythology that they are you know these iconoclast who have trouble the ball they fought it all the way kennedy of course lost his life because of it and it sort of brings this sort of you know bipartisan flavor to the conspiracy but its definitely by nature a right wing conspiracy. And we would term you if you actually was you had a twitter thread were going to my screen im going to show people here and you can check out jared twitter its at j y sexton and you kind of give a history of this this is this is not new in its rooted in kind of the grand conspiracy of all can you walk us through that relatively quickly. Sure theres a history unfortunately in america of all these right wing conspiracy where basically people are told that there are traitors and there met usually the liberals and there are people outside of america usually you know this goes back to the protocols of the elders of zion on the idea of jewish puppet masters or anti zionist conspiracies but then they are manipulating people with american particularly people of color and trying to destabilize america and you know taking over for their own nefarious means but this is been a long and really dangerous history of the United States. Joel what makes one. Willing to believe some of these things that seem so fantastical. Well theres a lot of reasons so one of the biggest questions i get asked is why do people believe conspiracy theories and if you think about it a little bit what the question really devolves into is why do people believe anything. And the answer is for a lot of reasons there are top down reasons so for example you might be listening to leaders of the group that you belong to theres bottom up reasons like you have your facing koreans of uncertainty and powerlessness that might lead you to believe certain things. But the answer that i would give that i think has the most explanatory power is that people buy into conspiracy theories generally because they have a worldview in which the most likely explanation of events and circumstances is a conspiracy so what we tend to find is that people who have this worldview very strongly will believe lots of conspiracy theories as long as those conspiracy theories match their other dispositions so for example if youre a republican you think the democrats are up to no good if youre a democrat then you believe the republicans are no good. But if as long as the theories are exposed to match the dispositions you have then then youre likely to buy in. So how do you have how do you set your moral compass between being naive or being conspiratorial like lets say you told me that the cia was using l. S. D. On people without their knowledge to practice mind control and im like thats that that i just cant be true turns out it was actually true as part of in k. Altria so im naive to not believe that right but if you tell me that tom hanks is part of a cannibalistic pedophile ring that seems to be on the pill to me without really some serious evidence how do you keep yourself between being naive and maybe over conspiratorial. Well democratic societies or hire people to be vigilant so we need it to as a citizen walk to the government Interest Groups whatever and make sure theyre not abusing whatever power they have and undermining our bedrock ground rules against for fraud. So its healthy to engage with conspiracy theories sometimes it can go overboard as you point out and just the same you know we find that people who have very high levels of conspiracy thinking will believe almost any Conspiracy Theory that they come across but people with very very low levels of it will reject conspiracies that are true like m. K. Ultra so being at the extremes isnt very good its much better to be somewhere in the middle where youre willing to consider these ideas but perhaps wait until theres better evidence that jared is there some need to believe a conspiracy for societies to congeal and work. You know theres a lot of ancient thought in this idea we go back to the idea of the noble why which is of course this idea that we have to talk about our nations and who we are and sort of you know our own mythologies about how Society Works and this is going on the organizing principles for a very long time but you also take a look and i. Just mention in terms of saying that choice a lot of this Conspiracy Theory mongering comes from a place where people feel as if theyre shut out from politics and places of power and as a result they start working up these new mythologies to explain why theyre shut out and particularly what people of power are doing and so a lot of times you see these conspiracy theories and Conspiracy Theory movements as sort of symptomatic of. Our in particular and you see people who feel again powerless as if they need to come up with some sort of a story about why theyre powerless and what the power of doing in closed doors some comments from our you tube chat heres one from someone awake and now says i make you an honor just because someone says its a Conspiracy Theory does not mean its not true there must be the whole thing just because youre paranoid doesnt mean theyre not after you. Have some other people a lot of people are saying stuff like 2 q 2 q trump 2020 pizza gate is real let me put that one to bed. Kelly why does q. Not matter. Cuma matters because its a really a it hijacks a discourse for a lot of otherwise well meaning people and thats on the left and the right people on the right can have legitimate convictions real political conservatism but what youre in on is doing is redirecting those ideals into just fraud and its telling people that you dont have to engage with trumps political ideals or his policy agenda all you need to do is buy into this idea that hes part of this black and white good and evil battle between this heroic champion and this evil cabal so its who are real darrelle mince of any kind of meaningful political discourse one of the wild things to me about this conspiracy is it may have started on the furniture something that is its not there when the president early states has tweeted or reach we did more than 70 times different account to show you on line here this is alex who we heard from earlier in the release not on twitter hes a d. C. If you want to call him a twitter but hes just showing how many times trump has reach we did the q one on conspiracy guys if you want to jump in here what does it mean when the president United States is pushing out this. Well i would just say that the deep state Conspiracy Theory that term has used for its own political purposes since right into this year and on to unity and whether or not he understands Human Element or whether its people around him who does that sort of mindset is perfect for him weaponize and distrust and paranoia so i mean that youre in on its not going and i dont think you could have possibly race this point and for us if it wasnt for it all trumps reliance on Conspiracy Theory and weaponized paranoia ok grace i want to go to another sound bite from our community this is from joe in miller shes an associate professor at university of delaware she went on doesnt have isnt busy assoc affirming as it may seem in a recent nationally representative survey bribes you im 76 percent are adults in the us and they did not anything after only 3 percent said they knew a lot of that here and you know the 3 percent what percentage of them has favorable opinions so you the reason why some candidates political candidates in the ras may be making some overtures towards you is probably to see their antiestablishment news to people who know something about q. Theyve probably been emboldened to do so by president john treatment he uses antiestablishment and rhetoric so if he hears the polls hes talking about if we can go to my computer 76 percent americans have heard nothing at all but ive also seen that q. Has about 3000000 followers arak aggregated through Different Social Media so we have a question from you tube about who actually believes in and maybe joe your you might be best chance that this what age groups are subjected to believing conspiracy theories and disregard history that is from america marie. All age groups believe conspiracy theories and i will 2nd what joanne said theyre. Not only that poll the polls that ive done myself show that a lot of people dont know what human on is and despite you know things you hear in the media that its going mainstream and its taking over or Something Like that its just its just not so i hold on this in the late summer of 2018 in florida after a few people are trying to support his work you are gallia to a trump rally in tampa and it became major news for about a month so i polled on it and it was one of the least well known things that we polled on and it was rated about as highly as fidel castro in our poll if you know anything about florida you know we dont like castro very much i repeated this poll just last month and found that support for cuban on has not increased. At all in 2 years and weve also done this nationwide and ive seen revolts results of other polls. Too and its not a big thing out there and i would say that its support or is deeper than it is wide and i would also say if were defining far right as the political dispositions of the people who support it its not far right in any sense at all its its equal numbers of republicans and democrats and republicans and democrats rate it equally poorly so its much as we like to think of it as the evidence for for that if were talking about the followers just isnt there. You know if you go back to that pew poll i dont have it on the computer theres this other part of it but it was. Democrats were more likely to have heard of it than republicans actually i believe in this poll and i can maybe pull that up later in the show its good to if if i can if i can Say Something really fast i think one of the things that weve actually seen with q. And a and is that i think democrats are more likely to understand what human on is or having a working understanding of what is necessarily happening or how the philosophy works but meanwhile during the pandemic particularly with a lot of radicalization on social media youre starting to find a lot of people who are sharing your know on me and to and on documentaries and you know an information who may not even interest understand what youre in on is that they understand the basic philosophy so while it might not be why widely known about it were totally understood its starting to sink into the social Media Communities particularly with Trump Supporters who may not understand where it came from or particularly what its saying that its antiestablishment and conspiracists conspiratorial themes are definitely catching on with a lot of people who might not even know what it means to kelley maybe you know a whole bunch of dont know it means but arent we bout to see our 1st member of congress be a q a non believer coming out of georgia. Thats very likely and i do agree with the sentiment that a lot of these congressional candidates are signaling pure nonsupport to reach out to this more friend nj population or to indicate an anti establishment this position one thing i will say about q popularity sort of to jareds point isnt that there is a increasing i think saturation of language of q. Means of q. Ideas into a Republican Space that is not necessarily knowledgeable or even receptive to the core claims but if i might just use an anecdote i was reading news from my hometown there was a dispute about me asking and somebody in the comments was sharing a mean. Name but i have a q. And a slogan on there i will bet you 50. 00 that i did not know about you and am was but its becoming more late in in the republican discourse interesting so its kind of seeping in in a way. Another question from are our audience here is this is from chris jones in says are there common themes to conspiracy theories and how do you had to defy what joe. Well a Conspiracy Theory is a small group working in secret against the common good for their own benefit and in a way that undermines our bedrock ground rules and. You know tries to institute force and fraud against people. Some people say theres nothing new under the sun and having been studying this for 10 years i could tell you that the conspiracy theories is wacky as they sound theyre just boring and theyre rehashed and theres really nothing new and as goofy as cumin on comes off its just the plot of oliver stones j. F. K. A pedophile deep state working against the. Working against the government and. So so the themes here are as strange as they sound are not new and theyre not solely you know held by the right because the j. F. K. Movie was by oliver stone a far left fella. But you bring up stone i would equally believe if you told me he was a target of human and or he was a deep believe or of q. And a and i would like either one what were you going to say jared well i was just going to say the new feature about your non that is particularly startling its popularity and influence is it is the same old story as he was talking about but it now has this interactive element to it that the online culture brings to it which means that all the socalled Digital Soldiers are combing through all these clues and old pieces of media and you know finding these revelations and sharing so its actually an interactive Conspiracy Theory that dans one the reasons why this this cult if youre not its growing the way it is is because people who feel powerless can now feel like they are somehow or another exciting the socalled deep state income all by finding these clues and then by providing their own revelations so this is one of the reasons why its becoming more popular more powerful is because its the same old narrative but its actually bringing in sort of a crowdsourcing element. Going to bring in an nother reporting source here on it that ive enjoyed is that land that has a special can we go to my computer so we can show those that have a special website a lot of reporting done is called shadow land here im going to kind of scroll through and show you some of the graphics are very interesting but one of the things one has articles talks about if you know which one it was but that this is becoming kind of a new American Religion is can someone talk to me about that like how does Conspiracy Theory become a religion was the it religious aspects of it in our their current religions to like compare that to. I think q. And im is increasingly taking on the weight of a religious text with some followers and youll see that with people who print out q drops the key posts in almost bible form they can cite certain posts isnt there scripture i dont think that is representative of most nonbelievers but with some of the diehards you will see them using these clues almost like bible verses where they will apply them to daily life and theyll adapt to them and use them as a lens through which they interpret the things going on. But which would seem to be basically religious ceremonies where there blending. Christianity and here theyre quoting the bible and theyre quoting to you and its very much just like you would watch a you know that some other christian ceremony except for theres a lot of this q. Stuff woven into it its a question from our audience again this is. A part day do you think you anon is a manifestation of if you stablish missed symptom and brought about by trump what do you think you and i will live on beyond chance presidency. Well better i mean i guess what you think of the answer i bet it lives on is some kind of malleable form right as youre saying joe its all the same it just gets recycled right. Yeah i mean well see what happens in the future of trump wins the presidency or loses how well adapt to that my guess is that if he loses than q. And on will just say that trump has decided to fight the deep state from some other position. To cover up his loss. It is very antiestablishment so we can measure these views on surveys so journalists often think of our politics in one dimension you have left right far right are left people in the center but that sort of squishing peoples opinions into one dimension and people arent unidimensional so well some people see themselves and gauge the battle against the other side many people to one degree or another see themselves in gauged in a battle against the establishment written large. Have their view there of it being crushed by the establishment those are the ones who tend to get into. So i want to pull up weve got about a minute left to show him to pull more tweet this is bin collins you can find him on twitter a talks about how to talk to somebody about human on who is a believer the very 1st crumb dropped by q was Hillary Clinton will be arrested between 7 45 am and 8 30 am eastern time on monday the morning of october 30th 2017 so the question to a q. Nonbeliever as did that happen. And if it didnt what does that tell you some i think all of you guys for being with us joe i know youre under great demand these days as conspiracies are a popular story in jared i know your prayers for your book to come out america rule its a great book i recommend people look at it ive enjoyed it and im really looking for to your book keli about flatter thers you know lets get together after this and let me know where i get a copy of that think all you cast for being here the conversation continues on you tube clinton next time be well. Capturing a moment in time snapshots of the lives of the stories provided a glimpse into someone elses one. Inspiring documentary witness on aljazeera. Tens of thousands of filipino the us is a saving american lives during the clinton 19. They came to the us for a better life which is what cost. One a one east investigates just. To. Aljazeera. Fully back to bo this is a news hour live from our World Headquarters in doha coming up in the next 60 minutes if youll be as water minister says the failing of the controversial grand renaissance dam megaprojects on the blue nile has begun. Manias foreign minister says International Mediators are attempting to find a true soft