Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / Leaving the world of CONSPIRACIES behind, with Brent Lee

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Leaving the world of CONSPIRACIES behind, with Brent Lee · The Smart Cookies podcast

• 0:00
  Brent Lee is an ex-conspiracy theorist of 15 years and host of the Some Dare Call It Conspiracy
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  podcast through which he's trying to help people who are still caught up in these beliefs.
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  Brent, welcome to Smart Cookies. How's everything?
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  Everything's great. Thank you very much for having me.
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  I've been looking forward to this conversation.
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  Likewise. Yeah. I believe it was about two months ago when I read the article about you
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  in Guardian. It was immediately struck by your story because we usually hear about conspiracy
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  theories from people on the internet who are trying to convert you a little bit or from
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  people in our lives who are heavily involved or from various experts who are kind of studying
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  conspiracy theories in a professional capacity. But it's incredibly rare to hear from someone
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  who's been a part of that world and for so long but has managed to kind of pull himself
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  out of this. Well, at least from the outside, seems like, I don't know, a pit of pretty
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  terrifying quicksand or something. I don't know. Sounds like a super human feat, honestly,
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  to do that. And not only that, you've shifted gears even further and are now trying to get
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  others out of Mordor, probably at great personal cost, which we will discuss later on as well.
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  Yeah. Anyway, you probably already know what I'm
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  going to ask you first. The year is 2003. You're 24 years old, I believe. Living in
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  England. You're working in a garage and you're really into music. You're a sharp and articulated
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  young man who's also really savvy when it comes to the internet. So far, it sounds like
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  a pretty quote unquote normal life of a young person. However, 2003 is also the year when
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  you stumble on a collection of, I believe it was 9-11 conspiracy videos that kind of
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  make you question, let's say, the presentation of the world as you knew it. Do you still
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  remember that moment or that feeling? Absolutely. Yeah, I remember even downloading the videos,
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  like going back and actually retrospectively see myself downloading those videos. But I
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  really remember watching them. I remember watching the first one and it was more about
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  Freemasons and like a Illuminati kind of secret societies taking over, well, being the hidden
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  hand in history. I didn't really buy any of that at the beginning. But I remember seeing
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  the first 9-11 videos and just thinking, wow, hold on. What is this? This is quite a compelling
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  argument and quite a compelling presentation of facts. I was pretty much sold on the first
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  9-11 one I saw. I thought, right, I'm looking into this. This looks like it has something
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  to it. This looks like there's some legs on there. So it wasn't like some sort of sliding
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  into this conspiracy mindset that was gradual, like stuff just piling on until you didn't
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  even realize you're in it. It was more of a sudden Eureka moment that shook you to the
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  core. It was with the 9-11 thing. Yeah. And I looked into the 9-11 for quite a while before
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  I started to think about who are these people and other documentaries that you would watch
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  would kind of try and tell you who they were. And it would feed back into the secrets of
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  society, Illuminati, Freemason, conspiracy theories. That's, I think, where the rabbit
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  hole really started to unfold for me. That's where I really started to pile on top of each
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  other. Like 9-11 is the gateway. And then the secret societies are who's actually involved
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  with this false flag. That's where it just gets bigger. You can break it down to three
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  types of conspiracies. The event conspiracy. So that's 9-11.
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  So 9-11 is the event. Yeah, exactly. And then you have the systemic conspiracies, sort
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  of systemic conspiracy theories. So it's like a government is involved in something. And
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  then you have the grand conspiracy, which is where I eventually ended up. And I think
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  it's a sliding scale. And it gets more and more of a pile on as you go down to that scale.
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  That's fascinating. So even though you were exposed to the, what did you call it, the
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  structural conspiracy? What's the last one, the last stage?
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  The last one's the grand conspiracy. But the grand conspiracy.
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  The second one, like more like the systemic conspiracy.
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  But you said that when you downloaded those videos, it was the first was the grand conspiracy.
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  The first thing you saw, the hand that controls the world. But that wasn't the hook for you.
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  The hook was the event. Yeah.
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  Why do you think that is? I think it just really struck me. Like, again,
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  you set it up with, you know, it's 2003 and we're on the brink of like the Gulf War in
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  a war with Iraq and Bush and Blair, both basically lying about weapons and mass destruction.
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  And the lie is very blatant. And everyone pretty much around the world is saying, no,
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  this is a lie. The UN, like they voted against the war because they thought this was a lie.
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  And like the people that were presenting the 9 11 stuff were presenting it as if this was
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  the pretext to go to war. This is what they they like made it happen so that they could
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  do it. You know, they're lying about weapons and mass destruction. Of course, that that
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  they're lying about 9 11. And it just it just made sense. Oh, yeah, they are total liars
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  and they're going to go and kill more people. So why wouldn't they just have killed their
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  own people to go to do this? You know, it just I can't put it any other way other than it
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  just made sense. I mean, that was an actual conspiracy, right? They were lying about weapons
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  of mass destruction that they knew weren't there in Iraq. But it was a conspiracy that
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  then fell apart in front of our eyes, because we all realized that they were lying about
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  that and that a lot of media mainstream media was complicit in it in a way like the New
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  York Times, I remember. So it makes sense that you go from this to the next stage. Do
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  have you met a lot of people in that life whose paths into conspiracy were similar to
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  yours? Oh, yeah, like that they started with 9 11. And then it went totally a lot of people
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  who like I first started to speak to and were friends with for say the first decade of conspiracism,
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  like that whole era was like birthed by 9 11 trusorism. 9 11 was like the truth gateway
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  for so many people. And like today, the pandemic is another like gateway, it's become another
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  like 9 11. And it seems to be like moments like like this that something happens where
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  the world stops. And people all like are trying to figure out what just happened. It's like
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  perfect little breeding ground for the rumor mill to create conspiracy theories. And so
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  9 11 was definitely that for a lot of people in up until like I guess maybe the next big
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  event was 2008, which was and occupy and occupy Wall Street occupy Wall Street. Yeah. Yeah,
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  I think that was like the next big one. That's that kind of red pill moment after 9 11. So
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  all the people from 9 11 to occupy Wall Street would have been like 9 11 trusors. And after
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  that it was that and say 2012 you kind of started getting the Sandy Hook and Boston Marathon
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  sort of trusors false flag stuff. Like those are that's a big route red pill moment for
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  the community. There's like there's definitely events that become like that red pill moment
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  for lots of people. In one of your videos, you said that your father was a Vietnam veteran
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  who suffered from severe PTSD and alcoholism and was abusive, which made you become a radical
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  pacifist. This in turn probably also made you more susceptible to look for any sort
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  of reasons as to why wars keep happening, right? Which is really a totally sort of tragic
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  because you were coming from a good place. In fact, listening to people who subscribe
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  to conspiracy ideologies, it seems they're often quite rightly bothered by injustice.
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  But then they make a really sharp left turn when it comes to actual causes of sad injustice.
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  Did you say that's accurate? Yeah, absolutely. I think like for me with
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  9 11 with 7 7 the London bombing in 2005, like I thought I was uncovering a crime. You
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  know, we all that's what we all were thinking. We're uncovering crimes against humanity and
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  this secret plan to like enslave humanity essentially, like we're trying to tell you
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  guys about it. Like that's definitely coming from a good place. But the evidence that we
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  have like couldn't really convince the journey a jury of a crime actually being committed
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  to be fair. Why do you think this sharp left turn happens instead of adopting a more, I
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  don't know, critical distance approach and being like maybe things are a little bit more
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  nuanced and messy than that. Then then immediately saying that there's some sort of hidden cabal
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  controlling the world. What do you think that is? Is it an emotional thing? Is it maybe it's
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  about timing as well. About six months ago, I hosted journalist Mike Rothschild on the
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  on the pot. I do urge our listeners to go and check out that episode. He was great.
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  He's a really smart dude who wrote a famous book on the QAnon conspiracy. I believe it's
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  called the storm is upon us. Anyway, he said that even though a lot of conspiracy theorists
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  are obviously super pissed off with him and are regularly, you know, kind of threatening
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  him, he felt a degree of empathy towards them because he found that most of them turned
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  to conspiracies after experiencing a heavy dose of trauma in their lives. And they were
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  looking for someone or something that would explain it. Yeah. Well, that's kind of just
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  what I was saying about 9 11 happening. You know, that was a shocking moment for so many
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  people like so many people around the world watched that live. And then to sit there and
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  think, okay, we I just watched 3000 people die in front of my eyes. Watching those buildings
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  come down. You know, I mean, that's that's traumatic for people. Then growing up for
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  the next 10 years living in the war on terror, like so many people in the West thinking that
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  like, one of our cities could be bombed any minute. You know, that I think that's a that's
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  quite a bit of trauma. Again, a breeding ground for conspiracism. And right now, like we've
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  got, again, the pandemic. So many people were affected by it. So many people did lose their
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  jobs, they lost their businesses, lots of small business owners lost their businesses.
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  You know, it quite a few people did suffer around the world. And it did hit them. A lot
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  of people obviously died from it. And family members are traumatized by that. Like, I think,
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  you know, I totally agree with that take. But sometimes it's bigger than like a personal
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  trauma.
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  What effect did your conversion, if we can call it that, have on your personal life?
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  What happened to your friendships, romantic relationships, family, etc.
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  Yeah, I had quite a few friends at the time. I was in a band, and quite popular band in
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  the city that we were in. What kind of music?
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  Lots of friends. Our band was a scar wrap of metal band. Nice. Yeah, it was great. It
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  was lots of fun. I was like, I was the lead singer. I basically wrapped and screamed.
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  Was it like a new metal thing? Or no, is that different?
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  Like, it's like that. But it was like that. But with like, scar, a rap metal. It was like,
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  wow, we love scar punk, right? So we like scar punk. So we thought, hey, let's mix up like
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  dub, dub bass lines, but play them with metal riffs instead and like try and mix our scar
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  rap, what a sassy hybrid.
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  Yeah, yeah. It was great. Awesome. So I had, you know, plenty of friends from the other
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  bands that were in the city that we all played with. But yeah, when I started getting into
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  this, like I would want to speak to people about it. And to be fair, no one really wanted
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  to talk about it or found that it was that interesting. So I personally started to stay
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  home more. Like I kind of isolated like myself, essentially from the scene. You know, I didn't
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  go out to like any of the house parties or any of the after gigs or anything like that.
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  I just pulled pulled away to be honest, because I just wanted to know more about this stuff.
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  And this was like the most important thing to me.
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  Again, we had uncovered a crime, like the biggest crime going on. And if we could tell
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  everyone about it, like we could wake everyone up and we could all be free, essentially.
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  So I was just really hyper focused and consumed by looking into this stuff. I spent hours,
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  just reading or watching or listening to content.
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  Were there some friends, some people in your life who are close to you who kind of noticed
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  that you are disappearing into this world and try to maybe argue with you or pull you
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  back some sort of way? Or not that people just leave you kind of alone, leave you alone
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  when started happening. Yeah, it's a bit of a dynamic left meal. They left me alone. There
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  was one friend I had, Richard, like, love Richard. He's great. Hell yeah, let's go Richard.
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  And he wouldn't like talk about, say, the conspiracy government sort of stuff. But when
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  I started getting into like the much more weird pseudoscience sort of aspects, he would
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  step in because he's like a scientist. And he loved to like help educate me on some of
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  that stuff. So it kind of gave me a good, I don't know, a bit of a good defense to some
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  of the more weirder aspects of like pseudoscience slash conspiracism, like, you know, the flairs
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  kind of thing. Like that's all wrapped up in conspiracism, but it's like all based on
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  pseudoscience. He gave me a good, good, a good defense to some of that stuff. Because
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  he would like challenge me or not challenge me just be like, hey, that's not how it really
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  works. And I would stop and listen to him because I know he was he was a scientist and
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  he's super damn smart. So I was like, cool, you tell me, Richard, he was like he was a
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  keyboardist in our band. So, you know, we talk about it. And he he'd school me is cool.
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  So Richard acted as this kind of final barrier that prevented you from going all out on some
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  of the more wild. So you in a way, even though you're part of this world, you still were
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  on the more skeptical side of the conspiracy theory.
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  Yeah, because there's a lot of there's a lot of topics in the conspiracy world. Yeah, I've
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  noticed that there's so much like he obviously like everyone knows the inverted pyramid of
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  all the conspiracies by Abby Richards. And it's just got tons and tons of them in it.
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  But that's true. That is like that's the conspiracy. There's so much of it. And I think you kind
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  of as you're going down the rabbit hole and coming across all these different paths, you
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  kind of have to start getting an opinion on quite a few of them. So like even like UFOs,
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  there's about 700 different reasonings for these things. You know, and you kind of kind
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  of got to pick one what you think it is, you know, that there are so many and you just
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  got to navigate all of them by coming up your own opinion on them. I think that's the whole
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  thing about yeah, do your research, do your own research. And it's it's that trap where
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  it's like, it is cult like, you know, go find your own truth. But you're still wrapped in
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  the rabbit hole. And ironically, there's no light down a rabbit hole. When you're looking
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  for it is that's down in a tunnel. So the more you look, the more in it you are in a
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  way. Yeah, absolutely. You just keep going further and further down. Back to your social
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  life, you probably got new friends, though, once you started to become a part of this
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  scene, right? How does that work? The community within the conspiracy theory world.
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  The first people I started to talk to were the people that I was downloading the material
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  off of in the first place. We're on DC plus plus. And that's like a file sharing app from
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  from way back in the day 2003.
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  Is it like a ZA I used to have that. Okay, it's very similar to that. So you connect
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  other computers and can download like the shared file, just like that. But you could
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  have that old modem like, oh, yes. So it took you like 72 hours to download one five minute
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  video. Absolutely. I remember those days. I miss them sometimes all night. Right. But
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  yeah, you could have separate hubs on there. So it's like private rooms. And I messaged
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  a guy that had lots of these videos and I was like, Hey, where can I like find more of this
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  stuff? And he invited me to a different hub. And on that hub, you had like a chat room.
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  And you could download all their stuff. So on that chat room, I started talking to people,
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  just kind of discussing some of the videos or what do you guys think of this or what
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  do you think of that? And just kind of random chats about that. But by 2005, I thought I
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  really need to like, find more people to talk to. So I kind of started scouring for forums
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  and I found a David like forum. And that's the reptilian guy, right? That is the reptilian
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  guy. Yeah. Yeah. So I joined there. And I started talking to people on there. And I found out
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  quickly that not everyone on there like believed everything that David like would say, it was
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  just interesting place for us all to kind of discuss all this stuff. You know, and that's
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  kind of where I first start speaking to people kind of making friends, but not not IRL friends,
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  not like you might met up in real life or anything. Later on, I would meet normal people
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  or meet other truthers in real life. But then from the forum, we moved to MySpace. And that's
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  really where the conveniences first really started to kick off.
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  Really on MySpace? Yes. Because I remember it more as like space for sharing music and
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  showing up showing off kind of like your taste because you designed your own page and yeah,
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  oh, it's taking me back now. I'm flooded by memories. But it's really interesting that
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  you come back Tom or Tom by Twitter, please. Yes, that's what we really on Tom. We all
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  miss you. But it's fascinating that you guys use that to hang out and discuss conspiracy
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  theories what like via DMs or how did you do that on MySpace? Yeah, and just like being
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  friends and leaving comments on each other's pages. Of course. So you met on a forum, then
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  you moved to a more personal MySpace type of communication. Okay. Yeah. And then MySpace
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  is like where everyone started getting I think a lot bigger and like the 9-11 truth movement
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  started to get like a social media presence. When was this? Like 2000, I joined I joined
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  I think joined MySpace in 2006. And it was around then where I started to like meet more
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  people through it. Yeah. And the 9-11 truth movement was like very, very heavily involved
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  there. Do you know Luke Rikowski from We Are Change and from Tim Pool show? I don't.
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  Okay. So he like started out there as well. Like I remember him from back in the day.
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  He's like ridiculous right wing conspiracists now. But yeah, he was on there as well. Like
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  it was such a interesting like hub of truthers. And then obviously we moved to Facebook. That
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  was like the next place. And that's when I think your uncle and your aunt started to
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  get billed by us. Oh, wow. Okay. How would you do that? Just by sharing more of this
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  stuff basically because now you know, your, your, see MySpace it wasn't your friend, your
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  friends were like just people on the internet that were into the same stuff that you were
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  into. Facebook was your actual friends and your actual family. You know, so you started
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  like kind of sharing the stuff that you would have shared in the old places, talking about
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  the same stuff that you normally would like to talk about. And now you're like, you're
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  like I said, like your uncle, your aunts, your cousins and all these people are seeing it.
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  And like one in 10 is getting billed. Funny that you say uncle and aunt. I remember during
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  the pandemic, my Facebook feed was suddenly full of uncles and aunts sharing some ridiculous
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  like the hospitals are empty. There is no pandemic sort of posts all of a sudden. And
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  you could actually feel how like droves of people in your life were exposed to this stuff
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  and totally buying it. Yeah, I'm really surprised like with the recent rise in or not even the
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  recent rise now in QAnon and Pizza Gate among like older people, you know, my parents age.
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  Yeah. Like that's just wow. My uncles and my aunts and my parents and like people like
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  that are sharing this stuff. Not personally, my family doesn't share that stuff. But I
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  can see people that age doing it.
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  All right, we talked about what happened to your relationships. What about work or keeping
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  a job? If you honestly believe that, like you said, the collapse of civilization is imminent
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  unless you and your friends expose the bad guys. I mean, I imagine at best I would spend
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  my working hours in the toilet on my phone following world developments and connecting
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  with other conspiracists like 24 seven. Did you manage to keep your job or how did that
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  affect your professional life?
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  I think I was like a functioning conspiracist. But I just kept I kept low level jobs, mate.
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  That was my that was my thing. I just work in the garage. I was a cleaner at supermarket.
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  Night cleaner, these sorts of like kind of mundane jobs without that much without that
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  much responsibility, just have to turn up do the job and go home. You know, you still have
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  to do the lot of times I was. Yeah, but a lot of times I like to do jobs that I was left
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  alone on. So I see like working in the garage. I worked at night. No one else was allowed
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  into the garage overnight. So I could same with the cleaning like when I used to clean
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  at night, I used to work on my own and I could like listen to conspiracy stuff all night.
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  You know, audio books or coast to coast radio shows or whatever. And that's why I would
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  do I would study and do this stuff all the time while I was at work and I would kind
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  of keep those sorts of jobs. For a little while, I was able to make money off my music.
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  So I didn't have to go go to work. So I could spend all my time like making music and looking
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  into this stuff and talking about this stuff. Always was able to keep a job if I needed to
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  keep a job. It didn't. I could keep it on hold and just like not tell anyone about it
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  not speak to too many people about it because I know to me like after a while that I was
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  in it, I realized a lot of people don't want to talk about this and I don't think it's
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  my job to wake you up. It's your job. It's your job to wake yourself up. But when you
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  do wake up, come chat to me. Wow. That's a more advanced. That's a more advanced position.
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  You weren't like actively proselytizing. You were not anymore. I had I tried that for
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  years and in it and it backfired. Lots of people don't obviously don't want to talk
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  about it. And I felt like, you know, a lot of these conspiracy influencers do say this
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  as well like, Oh, they're not ready for it yet. You know, they go through this thing
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  like cognitive dissonance when you try to speak to them about it. And they're just
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  not ready yet. It's okay. They'll wake up when it's ready. It's time for them to wake
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  up. And I didn't really listen to that at first. I just kind of tried to wake people
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  up. But then I realized yet it doesn't really work. So I'm going to like make my music as
• 28:57
  like a welcoming party music. So once you're awake, you can come in and hey, welcome to
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  the party. You know, I'm here to show you around the first guide into this world.
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  You shall not pass. But once you pass, I'll be waiting. I'm just wondering what did an
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  average day look like for you in those days? Did you just log into your laptop and spend
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  I don't know 12 hours straight doing online research? Or did you also socialize with like-minded
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  people in real life attend conferences and meetups? Had your music still other friends
• 29:38
  like Richard? Or did it monopolize your entire existence in a way? Because it sounds like
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  you still had other stuff. Yeah, because I had my music and I had like a small group
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  of friends, say about three or four, that sort of entertained some of the conspiracy
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  stuff like maybe all agreed like 9-11 was an inside job. Yeah, there's probably some
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  sort of a Luminati, but they're not all as into it quite as much as I am. But we all
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  hang out because like I'm a music, I was a music producer. And I made like hip hop music
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  and like say two of these guys were rappers. And then my other friend was just like into
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  rap, but he was he'd like to come over all the time. And we'd all hang out and I'd make
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  beats and they'd spit and like we'd press demos and do all that, you know, and talk
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  about conspiracism and whatever like whatever we're into or watch a lecture and kind of
• 30:45
  debate different things about it with each other, you know, that was like, say that was
• 30:54
  like so one of my friends or my circle of friends while I was making music and while
• 31:00
  I was still a conspiracist, sorry as well, this is after I leave my band because I do
• 31:07
  leave my band like at some point because like they I didn't I felt it was unfair. I was
• 31:15
  picking up like the energy from some of my some of them that it was unfair for me to
• 31:21
  talk about some of the stuff I wanted to talk about in my lyrics because they didn't believe
• 31:25
  in any of it.
• 31:26
  Oh, right. So this stuff started kind of seeping into your music as well.
• 31:33
  And they were cool at first with some of the politics stuff. But once it kind of started
• 31:37
  getting a little bit more into like Masonic things and different trying to sort of calling
• 31:46
  them Satanists or acting like it's rituals and stuff, I think they were kind of a bit
• 31:49
  like, yeah, look, we're a scar wrap metal band man, we're supposed to have fun. Like
• 31:56
  you're bringing it down, you know. So I felt like I should I should I should leave and
• 32:04
  just go do like my solo stuff. So I started making like lots more hip hop and met some
• 32:11
  other guys who were rappers and they wanted to wrap on my beats.
• 32:15
  I'm sorry, but that's a really funny image of your band of your scar band being like,
• 32:22
  come on man, you're acting like a depressed bride on your wedding day. Like, come on,
• 32:28
  we're trying to have fun and you're talking about it.
• 32:32
  Really honestly, in a way, but sorry, but also a little bit humorous. I'm sure it was
• 32:38
  painful at the time for you, of course, because your band must be everything, right?
• 32:42
  Yeah, yeah, I know man. But hey, look, I was grateful for the time that we all had together
• 32:50
  and the music that we made, the fun we had, all of that stuff, like the friendships that
• 32:56
  we had, the trials and tribulations, it was fantastic. Even now, like I have no regrets
• 33:02
  about what I've gone through or wasted or whatever it's like all been about growing and being
• 33:10
  who I am today. So I loved going through that band. And then I loved taking everything I
• 33:17
  learned from being in a band and being the frontman to the next stage, you know, the
• 33:25
  next stage in my life, which was being a solo artist and a producer and like, much more
• 33:34
  of a truth activist and actually starting to go, like you said, to conferences, protests
• 33:42
  and playing gigs, like on my own, to rooms of like five or six people.
• 33:52
  I heard you say a couple of times now that you became a truther. But what exactly did
• 33:58
  you believe at the height of your journey into this stuff? I mean, there's still a world
• 34:05
  of difference between someone who thinks 9-11 was an inside job and someone who believes
• 34:10
  the earth is flat. Like you said, the 9-11 true stuff is then basically an event conspiracy.
• 34:18
  And then there's the systemic one. And then there's the grand one. And the grand one is
• 34:23
  everything. Every system is actually part of it, not just one. And basically, I thought
• 34:33
  that the entire world was run by a network of secret societies and cults. They basically
• 34:43
  controlled every facet of life. They controlled governments, they controlled media, they controlled
• 34:51
  the entertainment industry, banking industry, the religious institutions, they even would
• 34:58
  like, were in control of the black market and the criminal networks, they controlled
• 35:03
  practically everything. And these were different secret societies. So it was like Freemasons,
• 35:14
  Resécrutions, Skull and Bones, even the Bullingdon Club in England. And like just lots of any
• 35:24
  different secret society, they were all also part of it, these fraternal orders. And like,
• 35:35
  I call them cults, essentially. And I thought that they, there was like a satanic cult, there
• 35:45
  was a lunar cult, there was a solar cult, a Saturnalian cult. And then I thought that
• 35:54
  there was also like a paganistic cult, which kind of worshiped lots more to do with Earth.
• 36:01
  And I thought all of these things were working together basically to rule all of us. They
• 36:08
  wanted to take over the entire globe. They wanted us all to be their slaves, essentially.
• 36:18
  That's why I thought that's why I thought the New World Order was.
• 36:22
  I wanted to ask you about that next. I keep hearing about the New World Order, but no one's
• 36:28
  adequately explained it yet. Or maybe I'm just too thick to get it. The New World Order is always
• 36:35
  the end goal. It's the end goal. That's the end goal of these secret societies, enslaving.
• 36:42
  Yeah. To what end? It's their utopia, our dystopia. I see. And in the plan, the agenda is called the
• 36:53
  New World Order. So what does dystopia look like? Were all sort of slaves who are unaware? Is it
• 37:00
  already here? The end goal is that we'd be aware. I would be aware that we're slaves. We'd be
• 37:07
  totally aware that because there would only be 100 million of us left. I see there's going to be a
• 37:15
  deep, there's part of this agenda is that there's a depopulation agenda. So they're trying to depopulate
• 37:24
  the world so that there's enough of us to control aptly. You know, they can't really control the
• 37:30
  7 billion or nearly 8 billion of us now. Because the population is boomed. So they got to bring it
• 37:39
  back down to like about 100 million. And that that's enough to make their society work for them.
• 37:47
  And we'd be totally aware. Be a bit, I guess, like big brother. I've heard this depopulation
• 37:54
  argument, argument, quote unquote, many times before. Like you said, every time a crisis happens,
• 38:02
  I keep hearing it from the uncles and aunts on Facebook. But what happens today after,
• 38:11
  when after a crisis, even after the pandemic, let's say, this doesn't happen. And you know,
• 38:18
  you keep these people keep saying, you know, now it's starting to happen, they're going to depopulate
• 38:24
  us with the virus or with another war or with starvation, whatever, you've basically hanging
• 38:33
  everything on this expectation, and it keeps failing. How do you justify it? I think you,
• 38:39
  you keep moving a goalpost. And the ultimate goalpost for that kind of thing is, well,
• 38:47
  that was an exercise. That was a test run. It'll be next time. Next time is coming. You know,
• 38:55
  that was a test run next time. That is funny. Yeah, like that's why that's why we were allowed
• 39:02
  out of the pandemic this time and the great reset didn't happen. They didn't quite do it the way
• 39:06
  they wanted to do it. Right. So it was a bit of a test run. Next time. Next time is coming five,
• 39:12
  10 years, five or 10 years. Just your weight. Yeah, exactly. That is that's just how it goes,
• 39:19
  unfortunately. But then like me, after 15 years of this is happening, this big false flag attack
• 39:30
  is about to happen. Oh, this war is about to happen. This financial crash is about to happen
• 39:35
  over and over and over. And I just see that this these are these predictions are never coming true.
• 39:45
  And they're these predictions are based on intelligence. So why is it keep failing? Maybe
• 39:52
  because they're just actually lying to me. You know, and after a while, like I just start,
• 40:00
  I stopped listening to anyone who said who had some sort of prediction the amount of times I heard
• 40:05
  that North Korea was like about to be nuked or about to send a nuke and start World War Three.
• 40:10
  Like for eight years, I think I kept hearing this like, this is about to happen. This is about
• 40:18
  to happen. It just never happens. None of these things ever happen. And I keep I kept pushing the
• 40:24
  goalposts. And I think I honestly think for me is like, I've just pushed far too many. And I just
• 40:32
  couldn't I couldn't push the goalpost any further, I was backed into a corner. And eventually,
• 40:41
  that's why the whole Jenga Tower comes down. Like, we're going to talk about it a little bit more.
• 40:48
  But I just remember when the pandemic started, when the vaccination started, I was in Berlin in
• 40:55
  Germany, I lived there for 10 years. And I remember some people who started subscribing to these
• 41:00
  ideologies, were saying goodbye to me and my friends once they heard that we've been vaccinated.
• 41:07
  They were like, you're going to die now, you know, I can't so I can't kind of keep a relationship with
• 41:16
  you. Because I know that you're going to get cancer or whatever and die soon. So they they they
• 41:22
  looked really grave and serious. And they actually said, you know, goodbye. But now they're just
• 41:29
  carrying on like nothing happened. They didn't come back and like, hey, you're still alive or
• 41:34
  they weren't like, Hey, maybe I was a bit wrong about that one, you know, my bad. But I saw that
• 41:40
  they really believed it. It's a sad state of affairs, this anti-vax propaganda. It's convenient as
• 41:48
  well for these people. It's so convenient because now anybody who dies, anybody who gets sick, at
• 41:56
  any point, it's just like, Oh, were they vaccinated? See, we were right. It's like, they're acting like
• 42:03
  nobody got sick, or nobody died before the pandemic happened, or before anyone was ever
• 42:09
  vaccinated. It's really weird. And like I said, it's so convenient for these for these people who are
• 42:17
  making money off of pushing it. That's for sure. In my previous job, I had a colleague who was very
• 42:21
  dear to me. But once she heard that I am getting vaccinated, she really tried to dissuade me from
• 42:29
  doing that. And she said, you know, I have a friend who just got vaccinated. And he did a little
• 42:35
  simple experiment. He took a magnet, and then the magnet just immediately stuck to his shoulder where
• 42:43
  he was vaccinated, because of course, they injected him with a lot of heavy metals, which are poisoning
• 42:50
  him. So she gave me a whole regimen. Once she realized she's not going to be able to convince me,
• 42:56
  she gave me a whole like anti-metal regimen, like she's, you know, she tried to help me. She was like,
• 43:01
  you're going to get vaccinated. I can't convince you to do it otherwise. But at least you can protect
• 43:07
  yourself, you know, with this anti-metal poisoning regimen. And she's coming again from a good place,
• 43:16
  you know? Yeah. I also remember going to the U-Bahn in Berlin, the Metro, and on the day of this huge
• 43:26
  anti-vax demonstrations in the center of the city, I think 40,000 people showed up. And me and my
• 43:33
  girlfriend were sitting opposite from two really young girls, I would say 21 and 22. And they just
• 43:42
  started talking to us because they were returning from this protest. And they were like, are you
• 43:46
  vaccinated? And oh my God, you know, that's really bad and stuff. And they couldn't help themselves.
• 43:51
  They tried to convert us, you know, and they got more and more worked up out of nowhere. We didn't
• 43:59
  even respond that much. They were so intent on doing this and on believing in this stuff. And then
• 44:06
  they started saying really loud that this is like the Nazi times again, you know, that's in the middle
• 44:13
  of Germany. Then people in the train got really upset once they heard that. And they started
• 44:18
  shouting at them. But they kept going and shouting back. And it was a quite sobering and scary moment.
• 44:24
  Yeah, it's a belief that's really strong. You know, they really truly believe this thing. And if
• 44:31
  you didn't, if you believed like, this is killing people, you would try and tell people like, don't
• 44:39
  take it, it's gonna kill you. This is why I say it's dangerous. You know, this is something that I
• 44:45
  really have realized it. I didn't realize it back in the day. Didn't realize how dangerous like this
• 44:52
  would have been. But after the pandemic and after all the anti-back stuff, and after January 6, I
• 45:01
  definitely see how dangerous all this is. I always wanted to know, is there a place for humor in
• 45:08
  this world of conspiracies? Or is it all serious all the time? Did you and your friends, for example,
• 45:13
  ever like roast flat earthers or even each other a little bit when you went too wild? Or were you more
• 45:20
  like, I don't know, a bunch of stiff chaplains or something? Like, you know, this is serious
• 45:26
  mission. It's fun. It was fun. Lots of us had fun with each other. Like at the end of the day,
• 45:31
  you're just people, aren't you? You're still people. I still have a sense of humor. I feel
• 45:39
  like the generation of truthers that I come from, like it's a little bit different than the truthers
• 45:48
  of the 2010s. Like I come from the 2000s, the ones from say 2010s or 2015s onwards, kind of totally
• 45:57
  different. But the ones like I'm kind of from is that there was this like anti-authoritarian streak.
• 46:05
  There was this like anti-status quo, you know, fringe alternative kind of people. So those sorts
• 46:19
  of people are like fun, you know, we're all into weird stuff. We're into weird music. We're into
• 46:26
  weird comedy. And we all like to, I guess we all like to have fun. But let's be fair today, like
• 46:34
  we might not find it funny. All right. A lot of jokes I see on the internet, I don't find funny.
• 46:39
  But look, they love their memes and they think they're having a hilarious time. So there's your
• 46:46
  there's your answer right there. Like there is room for for laughter and ridicule in the
• 46:55
  conspiracy. But it's usually more aimed at people who don't believe this stuff. Like look at how
• 47:03
  ridiculous they are trolling and stuff. True. True. But I guess some of them will make fun of
• 47:09
  each other. They'll make fun of flat earthers are fair game. Everyone makes fun of flat earthers.
• 47:14
  Oh, that's funny. That's awesome. What about taking yourself seriously? That's just going to be a
• 47:26
  personal thing. If you're that type of person or not, that's fair. That's fair. You know,
• 47:31
  I've always been someone who was able to laugh himself. I love it. I just wanted to talk about
• 47:36
  this as well. On one hand, we have famous conspiracy theorists, like people like Alex Jones,
• 47:42
  for example, and we're going to talk about them later. But before we do, I wanted to ask,
• 47:45
  how big is the role of more mainstream celebrities endorsing or at least enabling these views?
• 47:54
  For example, Joe Rogan has a bigger audience than CNN. And is notorious for having conspiracy
• 48:00
  theorists on his podcast regularly with zero pushback. I can imagine that seeing this kind of
• 48:08
  endorsement must feel like the ultimate personal validation. No, if this huge superstar
• 48:16
  is openly discussing these sort of fringe ideas, then surely I'm not going crazy. I'm not mad.
• 48:24
  And something must be to it. Yeah, absolutely. If someone has an elevated platform and they're
• 48:32
  talking about it to more people, it validates it, doesn't it? It does that across the board with
• 48:39
  society, no matter who it is. If it's someone who's got a big platform and they're talking about
• 48:43
  something, everyone pays attention to it and is like, yeah, they believe what I believe.
• 48:48
  It validates us across the board. So of course, conspiracy world is no different.
• 49:00
  Probably, I say no different, but probably is more important to them because their
• 49:06
  belief is so fringe, actually, to be fair. If someone big was talking about it or someone
• 49:13
  connected, that's the other one. If someone sort of connected to it in some sort of way,
• 49:17
  and they're like, yeah, I'm a world economic forum whistleblower, big celebrity person,
• 49:24
  Bono. If Bono comes out and he's like, yeah, that's all true. The conspiracy world would go mad.
• 49:29
  They'd go, whoa. To be fair, me and my partner used to write blogs about conspiracy stuff.
• 49:39
  And we had a section on our blog site called Celebrity Whistleblowers. And we would write little
• 49:49
  put links to videos or articles or whatever of, say, some celebrity talking about 9-11
• 49:56
  truth or anything up that alley because it validates the argument.
• 50:04
  Were they actually talking about it or were you trying to find some sort of clues?
• 50:10
  No, really actually talking about it. But it would be people like, say, like KRS-1,
• 50:16
  the rapper, or Roseanne Barr. She was talking about 9-11 truth way back in the day.
• 50:24
  But literally saying, yeah, 9-11 was an inside job. But to us, because the entertainment industry
• 50:35
  and celebrities, they were in on this. Like I said, they were controlled. They were controlled.
• 50:43
  So if someone was from that industry and they broke away, that really validates the argument.
• 50:50
  So someone like Roseanne Barr, she was a big comedian back in the day. Then she became quite a
• 50:56
  big comic actress. And for her to break away from it and start becoming as political as she was and
• 51:06
  critical of the Bushes and the Iraq war, and then talking about 9-11, like, oh my God, that was
• 51:15
  that was gold. That was such validation for us to have someone like that break away from it.
• 51:25
  Speaking about celebrities, what's this business with clones? Every once in a while,
• 51:30
  you're going to hear that somebody's been replaced with their clone. I've recently,
• 51:35
  I've heard it with not recently, I think it was about a year ago with Everlavine. They're like,
• 51:40
  oh, she looks different. She's been replaced by a clone. I've heard it about Eminem, I think.
• 51:44
  Or Justin Bieber. Right. Everlavine. Anne Hathaway.
• 51:53
  Anne Hathaway. Wow. Yeah. They know how to pick them.
• 51:57
  She was like, I think she's like a clone from someone from the 1920s or something as well.
• 52:02
  Someone famous, I can't remember. The rabbit hole goes deeper on Anne Hathaway as well.
• 52:08
  Me, I'm sorry, but I have no answers for you there because that is one of the things that
• 52:13
  I started to think there's a lot of lies in the conspiracy movement.
• 52:18
  I made a post in 2017 saying I think the truth movement has been infiltrated by a
• 52:25
  load of different psyops. I think everyone needs to be aware of these psyops. They're trying to make
• 52:32
  our movement look stupid. It's these clone things. It's the flat earth stuff and the Mandela effect.
• 52:40
  And the crisis actor hoax thing. These are all psyops put out by the Illuminati to make us look
• 52:48
  stupid. Sorry. From the get go, I didn't believe the clone thing. What's the crisis actor hoax thing?
• 52:57
  Okay, so the crisis actor, it stems from the Sandy Hook shooting first. It comes out from
• 53:06
  Alex Jones and people like this saying that the victims were all crisis actors. All the people
• 53:15
  that you saw on TV were crisis actors. And now a crisis actor is someone who is paid to pretend
• 53:23
  that they've been in an event. It could be a terrorist event. It could be like a mass shooting.
• 53:30
  It could be a natural disaster. But these people are actually hired to practice what to do if
• 53:42
  something like this happens. There's a real thing, true thing called crisis actors. But
• 53:50
  the conspiracists act like the victims and everything around these actual events are these
• 53:57
  things called crisis actors. So the event itself was actually a hoax. And that's the claims that
• 54:06
  started coming around in 2012 with Sandy Hook and then Boston Marathon bombing and pulse
• 54:14
  nightclub shooting and pretty much everything after that, including Charlie Hebdo and the
• 54:20
  Nisa tax in Paris as well. Everything after that. That just became the common narrative.
• 54:28
  And I felt like that was just garbage. I didn't believe it from the outset. I looked into it at
• 54:35
  the very beginning because people were talking about it. But straight away, I was just like,
• 54:39
  this doesn't make sense. These events are real. People are really dying. But
• 54:48
  it's the people who are getting blamed for it that aren't really the people who did it because it
• 54:52
  was the government or it was the secret societies and the cults that were pulling these events off.
• 54:59
  That was my kind of belief. And I just didn't like what the rest of the people were talking about
• 55:07
  acting like none of this actually happened. I just wanted to ask you the following. The world is I
• 55:15
  experience it is super messy and chaotic. Right? I don't know. Two days ago, in the morning, I was
• 55:24
  leaving the apartment and I had it in my mind that I need to take the keys, of course, of my
• 55:32
  apartment. And then I take the keys, take the keys, take the keys and then I drink some coffee and
• 55:38
  then make my bed and put the clothes on, shoes on. I take my backpack and take the keys. And then
• 55:46
  I leave my apartment. I didn't take the keys. I got to go back. And I'm sure I'm not the only one
• 55:52
  that this happens to. On the other hand, you have these theories where shadowy governments or shadowy
• 55:59
  societies are enacting, coordinating these massive global conspiracies that are happening.
• 56:07
  And then there are these policies that would take superhuman levels of synchronization and
• 56:16
  coordination and just organization where nothing ever goes wrong. Nobody acts irrationally. Nobody
• 56:26
  gets shitfaced and then just starts bragging about controlling the world to their mistress or
• 56:32
  we're so messy. And of course, even people who are into conspiracy theories recognize a degree of
• 56:39
  messiness in their own lives. How come they just suspend it when it comes to their theories? Because
• 56:46
  like you said, you still believe that the people who are controlling the world are people.
• 56:52
  Yeah, but they have elite privilege as well. I said they're on the top of the pyramid.
• 56:59
  They're born into affluent families. They're always on top. But to be fair, for me, I can only say
• 57:10
  the best thing I can say is that I can only talk for myself. I can only explain how I made some of
• 57:16
  these things make sense to me. And the final goal post I had for how all of this works in tandem
• 57:28
  is a spiritual element to it. There was like demons controlling things behind the scenes.
• 57:38
  These elite families were, they were descended from the union of fallen angels and humans.
• 57:49
  That is basically how I eventually made it work. So because they were, they were the progeny of
• 57:57
  humans and fallen angels, that means they had like a connection and they could communicate with
• 58:05
  the dark stuff like through rituals, through like Masonic rights, through
• 58:15
  um, rights, through satanic rights, all of this kind of stuff, black magic essentially.
• 58:23
  Like, so I had this spiritual element of it that was like the ultimate puppet master behind
• 58:34
  everything else. It's how it made things actually kind of work because humans are messy, like,
• 58:43
  and to, to leave it all up to humans, it's going to mess up. So there's constantly,
• 58:50
  like say with a, like a mass shooting, for instance,
• 58:58
  like I had to play out a scenario in my head where it's actually multiple shooters. It's not this
• 59:03
  one person who they would use, but it's multiple shooters. And as this is happening, there's like
• 59:10
  demons and that around these multiple shooters telling them to go left or go right, making sure that
• 59:18
  I know, I know how ridiculous this sounds, but I'm just trying to be open and just trying to
• 59:25
  explain it to you as best as I can, like how I made it, how I made it.
• 59:30
  Actually, it makes, it makes sense. Because for me that, yeah, it does make sense in a way that
• 59:34
  once you hit this obstacle of human messiness, which for me is very convincing, you gotta
• 59:41
  shift gears and go supernatural.
• 59:43
  Yeah. So if, if we go with like, here's a good example, like the Columbine shooting,
• 59:50
  that there, I thought like that was a ritual. And basically, it's because 12 students and one
• 59:58
  teacher was killed. So that was a representative, like, or representation of killing the 12
• 1:00:04
  disciples and Jesus. So, so how would these two kids pick exactly 12 students to die and one
• 1:00:21
  to die and other students to be injured, but only this amount happened. Well, it was due to, like,
• 1:00:28
  demons kind of directing the shooters to like kill the right amount of people and to kill the
• 1:00:36
  specific people, shall I say. So I had to have this extra element to make it really work.
• 1:00:44
  I tend to not speak too much about like the, the, that spiritual element of it. But that is,
• 1:00:52
  that's just what I believed.
• 1:00:53
  There finally comes a moment when you begin to question the whole thing, right? I don't know if
• 1:00:57
  it was, if it was a moment or it was a gradual thing. But after a decade and a half of living
• 1:01:05
  in the conspiracy realm, what was sort of the chief reason that sent or caused this?
• 1:01:12
  Back of cards to finally come tumbling down. Was it like you said, perpetually moving the goalpost?
• 1:01:21
  Was it something else?
• 1:01:23
  2018 is the time when I actually decide I'm just walking away from it all and I need to
• 1:01:30
  figure it all out. But the reason why is because from 2015 to 2018, I started seeing a lot more
• 1:01:39
  things that completely shattered my belief system. Up until 2015, it was just goalpost moving
• 1:01:52
  constantly. But yeah, then 2015 happens and these things on the main stage basically started to
• 1:02:04
  break it, break it down. And basically it's Trump, the rise of QAnon, the Brexit vote,
• 1:02:13
  and Jeremy Corbyn taking over the Labour Party. Like these things to me, right, were just,
• 1:02:22
  I know they don't make sense, but let me make it make sense for you. At the time, I thought every
• 1:02:30
  single election was controlled. Yeah, everyone was rigged. It was totally rigged. Didn't matter
• 1:02:38
  what we did. If we went and voted, it didn't matter. The outcome was already planned and
• 1:02:46
  leaders are selected, not elected. It's nothing to do with us. It's all about the cabal.
• 1:02:53
  And basically, so with Trump, the plan was that it would be Hillary. She was straight up establishment.
• 1:03:09
  We had been talking about her becoming president for like 15 years. Like, oh, she'll be next after
• 1:03:18
  Obama. We know this is what's going to happen. Like it was one of those predictions, you know,
• 1:03:23
  because she's like the one that's straight up in line, like as one of the elites. But Trump comes
• 1:03:32
  along and he kind of wins with this conspiracy stuff. He starts courting Alex Jones and everything.
• 1:03:37
  And I'm just like, this is really weird. What's going on? I was really struck by it and thought,
• 1:03:43
  well, this is just, this is confusing. But before that, earlier that year, we had Brexit.
• 1:03:54
  And Brexit vote as well was another one that the outcome just didn't make sense because
• 1:04:02
  it was essentially breaking up what was the stepping stone to this new world order. The European
• 1:04:09
  Union was a gateway to global control. So why would England break away from it? And why would they
• 1:04:21
  set this vote up like this? That doesn't really make sense. And then like Jeremy Corbyn takes over
• 1:04:32
  the Labour Party. And again, it's like, hey, that's that anti-war guy who's like totally not in
• 1:04:42
  the cult. He's one of those very few stragglers that kind of got into Parliament. And it's kind
• 1:04:51
  of their seats don't really matter. But he's taken over and he's not establishment. He's like the
• 1:04:58
  anti-blair, you know, who like just didn't make sense. But what I had saw that like made these
• 1:05:08
  things happen was actually like people voting was actually like democracy in action and seeing
• 1:05:15
  people against basically the establishment making these things happen. And well, the establishment
• 1:05:29
  couldn't stop it. So these like I said, these these massive votes all changed changed the power
• 1:05:37
  structure in my mind. It changed how much power they actually had. And that hey, actually, they
• 1:05:45
  don't control the votes. So that kind of means they don't control both sides and they don't control
• 1:05:55
  the government completely. And yeah, it just started to fall apart in that sense.
• 1:06:03
  And I just was like, yeah, I just couldn't I couldn't make it make sense. And I needed to figure out
• 1:06:15
  why it didn't make sense. And I need to figure out what had actually happened. So by 2018,
• 1:06:21
  I just kept seeing more and more people
• 1:06:24
  talking. Like, I just felt like all my friends that were truthers, right?
• 1:06:34
  Were spouting nonsense. But it was stuff that I had believed. But as I was seeing it coming up on
• 1:06:40
  Facebook, it just felt like, well, this is this is rubbish. And I logged off. And I thought I'm not
• 1:06:51
  going on Facebook. I'm sick of seeing this. Sick of seeing this stuff. I don't know what's going on.
• 1:06:56
  But I don't think I don't think the New World Order is in charge as much as I thought it was.
• 1:07:02
  So then yeah, 2018, I, I logged off and I start to try and
• 1:07:11
  figure out like, okay, what is actually going on? And I do that away from the community. I don't
• 1:07:18
  want to speak to anyone else about it other than my partner. Me and my partner were both like
• 1:07:25
  hardcore conspiracists. But we had been talking about this stuff happening. And we both kind of
• 1:07:30
  come to this conclusion that they're not really in charge as much as we thought they were.
• 1:07:38
  And they had like said, so we spent a bit of time trying to
• 1:07:42
  rebuild like a worldview at that time, like what's actually happening here.
• 1:07:51
  CB – Is that painful? What does that process look like?
• 1:07:55
  DL – It's a journey first. So you just kind of go in along that journey feeling like you're
• 1:08:03
  learning stuff again still. But at some point, you're like, whoa, I was like wrong about a
• 1:08:10
  load of things here. And that's where it starts. It starts getting a bit like
• 1:08:18
  painful, shameful even, especially like some of the really, really
• 1:08:24
  out there accusatory stuff that I would think about certain people.
• 1:08:30
  Mainly like elites being in some sort of satanic cult and possibly murdering ritual,
• 1:08:41
  ritualistically murdering people and abusing children. I thought that about these people.
• 1:08:51
  Yeah, that kind of thing, they were shameful thinking like, oh, actually, I was like super
• 1:08:57
  wrong about that. And I shouldn't have said or thought these things about those people.
• 1:09:01
  Even if I didn't really say it that much or like accuse them of it on social media or anything,
• 1:09:08
  like I said, I wasn't that guy. I wasn't out there proselytizing, especially when Twitter
• 1:09:13
  and Twitter comes around and you're kind of you're in people's faces. I wasn't really doing that.
• 1:09:19
  Yeah, it was an interesting time just having to go through all this building again.
• 1:09:30
  During this period of recovery, were there any like siren calls that you experienced
• 1:09:38
  of stuff trying to lure you back into this world? I mean, it's 2018. That's before the pandemic,
• 1:09:45
  right? So you just start to get out and then the pandemic happens, which is another massive
• 1:09:51
  eruption of conspiracy ideologies. How did you survive that one without getting sucked right
• 1:10:00
  back into it? So from 2018 to 2020, like I'm watching lots of stuff still going on.
• 1:10:06
  I'm starting to learn about like, I wanted to know why I believed what I believe, right? I really
• 1:10:11
  wanted to know, okay, where did this conspiracy theory even come from? Who started it? Why did it
• 1:10:22
  manifest? So I kind of go start looking into that and I start looking at how it's like used as
• 1:10:29
  manipulation tools by other politicians, by political parties over the centuries, basically. Yeah, I
• 1:10:42
  start to see that actually playing out in the real world there. I start to see politics and
• 1:10:51
  like I said, the rise of QAnon, people like Trump really embracing conspiracies,
• 1:10:56
  Nigel Farage going on to Infowars and seeing like really, really nasty people,
• 1:11:09
  embracing conspiracies and using them. So that whole time, I'm starting to like really
• 1:11:21
  dislike the movement, see where it's coming from, see why they're using it, and seeing that it's
• 1:11:26
  like this populist message. And that's kind of what's really appealing. That was what was appealing
• 1:11:35
  to me is like putting these elites are in charge of, you know, they're manipulating and controlling
• 1:11:41
  the rest of us. And that's exactly the grand conspiracy. So I'm like, I'm starting to understand
• 1:11:49
  how the whole conspiracy thing works. And I'm just keeping an eye on everybody talking about
• 1:11:55
  this conspiracy stuff. So the pandemic hits, right? And I can just see, my eyes are open
• 1:12:06
  to those manipulation tactics. And I was just could see this was a replay of like swine flu
• 1:12:14
  or foot and mouth disease, or any of these other things that we've gone through before, SARS and
• 1:12:19
  MERS, like they're saying the same thing. But it's just transplanted, you know, and then obviously
• 1:12:30
  lockdowns and certain things that come along. And I'm like, I could just, it was such
• 1:12:39
  like familiar language, but just transplanted on a completely different thing. And I felt like
• 1:12:45
  I'm vaccinated against conspiracies. Like when new ones come out, it's just like I've already been
• 1:12:51
  vaccinated against them. If they just like resemble other conspiracies, just transplanted on to a
• 1:12:56
  different thing, I can just just see it. I mean, there was a moment like you asked, there was a
• 1:13:04
  moment like where I thought, okay, I need to ask myself an important question here. Was I wrong?
• 1:13:13
  Was I wrong? Is this, is this what we've been waiting for? Is this the depopulation plan is
• 1:13:21
  going to come out? Is this the global lockdown? Is this the real one? Is this it? Yeah. No,
• 1:13:29
  it's actually a genuine virus. It's I can see all the countries are not actually in lockstep.
• 1:13:35
  They're all doing whatever the hell they want to do. No one's following the UN. No one's following
• 1:13:39
  the WHO. No one's following exactly what they're supposed to do. Okay, yeah, like there's no control
• 1:13:44
  here whatsoever. This is actually chaos. And I just kind of like we said messiness at work, right?
• 1:13:52
  Italy, lots of people dying, Sweden completely open. Some countries strict lockdowns. It's just a
• 1:14:00
  yeah, just a complete mess. No one's doing what they're supposed to do. But somehow the conspiracy
• 1:14:04
  theorist people are all saying that it's all in tandem and stuff. And I was like, are we not
• 1:14:10
  watching the same show here? Like, what's wrong with you? You know, I could just see me like the
• 1:14:16
  whole conspiracy movement was just lying about stuff still. And it wasn't how it was all playing
• 1:14:23
  out. And so I wasn't, it didn't I didn't fall back down like that rabbit hole. Every once in a while,
• 1:14:31
  there's something that kind of I feel like it's learned behavior where I kind of think I see
• 1:14:38
  a Freemason sign in a movie and I'm like, Oh, Freemasons. Like is that no, of course not. It's
• 1:14:44
  it's just a symbol because it's the National Treasure movie. Of course, it's all about Freemasons.
• 1:14:54
  What's the best way to reach somebody who is deep into this stuff?
• 1:14:58
  I think if you're a friend or family member, you're probably the best person to do it.
• 1:15:05
  I feel like people on the internet, strangers, professionals, probably not the best people to
• 1:15:16
  like personally pull someone out of a rabbit hole. Because it could be like we're met with such
• 1:15:24
  suspicion. This is something I've learned. Like I've wanted to do that. I wanted to be the guy
• 1:15:28
  that would help you help pull you out of a rabbit hole. But I've I've realized the reaction I get
• 1:15:34
  is mainly like I must be an agent or something like that, or an actor or just disingenuous,
• 1:15:44
  you know, not not not really genuine. Because, you know, once you wake up, you can't unsee it.
• 1:15:50
  But like I think it's friends and family members who are the real the real ladder out of the rabbit
• 1:15:59
  hole. And you can be like if you've got the energy, if you got the time and you got the energy to do
• 1:16:05
  this, because it's a hard job. But I think you're the ones to do it. And you got to do it with
• 1:16:11
  compassion. You got to do it with understanding. You got to remind them like, okay, I'm going to
• 1:16:18
  tell them like, okay, our relationship is built on love. It's built on trust. And no matter what
• 1:16:28
  we say, like, we always got to remember that part. So we disagree with each other over different
• 1:16:33
  things. It doesn't matter. We love each other as we're friends, we're, we're family. We've been,
• 1:16:40
  you know, brothers or sisters or whatever for past 20 years. So let's just let's, let's be cool to
• 1:16:49
  talk about it as a safe space. No matter what you believe, let's talk about it as a safe space. It's
• 1:16:53
  all good. The other thing is that you need to validate their concerns. Because like we've said
• 1:17:01
  before, if these things are real, like, of course, they're going to want to talk about it. Of course,
• 1:17:07
  they're going to want you to understand that this crime is happening. Understand that, that they are
• 1:17:17
  coming from a good place. And that that concern that they have is, is, is valid.
• 1:17:24
  Right. The outcome might not be, might not be the truth, but that concern is valid. So you have to
• 1:17:31
  remember that. And the other thing is that is you need to, you need to brush up on that conspiracy
• 1:17:38
  theory. You need to understand what it's about, why it's believable. You know, if you want an entry
• 1:17:46
  level to that, I suggest like checking out Mick West's book, Escaping the Rabbit Hole. That's
• 1:17:55
  like a brilliant starting step, you know, to Chemtrails 9-11 conspiracy theories and some
• 1:18:05
  anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. And it kind of gives you a really good, good method of speaking
• 1:18:12
  to people about it. It's like, it's definitely the number one book I recommend for that side of it.
• 1:18:19
  And then obviously, once you've gone into that, and you need to learn about other conspiracy
• 1:18:27
  theories, because they might be into the World Economic Forum stuff, they might be talking more
• 1:18:32
  about Jeffrey Epstein or Pizza Gate, then self-plug, obviously, you got to come check out my podcast,
• 1:18:38
  some of their call it conspiracy, because we'll do that exact thing. Do that. Yes.
• 1:18:43
  We show you what that conspiracy theory is, we explain where it comes from, and we explain why
• 1:18:50
  it's believable, and then we explain what is false about it, why it's false, where that falsehood
• 1:18:58
  comes from. You know, so that's like a bit more of a, more of a deep dive than say, the
• 1:19:06
  Midwest book, but definitely start there, and you want to expand your knowledge into more of them,
• 1:19:15
  then you got to come to places like that, like some of their call it conspiracy.
• 1:19:22
  You have to learn about this, you have to know what it is, what it is they believe and why they
• 1:19:28
  believe it, especially why they believe it. If you really want to bring them out,
• 1:19:32
  that's the key. Inevaluable advice, really, because probably for the most of us, our first
• 1:19:38
  instinct is to become confrontational when faced with this stuff, and you're like, come on,
• 1:19:44
  how the fuck can you believe that? Some elites are wearing special type of shoes to
• 1:19:50
  accommodate for their reptilian limbs or whatever, you know, like, you want to attack,
• 1:19:56
  but this is what I got to tell you, this is why the friends and family can do this, right?
• 1:20:06
  Because you know how far you can push them. You know whether you can say, oh, fuck off, come on,
• 1:20:13
  if you can be a jokey with them, you know exactly how far you can push them and the stranger doesn't.
• 1:20:19
  You know, so just keep them, push them at the right place. You know them. At the end of the day,
• 1:20:26
  you know them, you know how to interact and engage with them. Some will respond better to jokes,
• 1:20:33
  some won't, but you know that. That's my biggest advice, like, you're the person who knows this.
• 1:20:39
  Light roasting amongst friends goes a long way. Okay, we have to wrap up. I took a lot of your time.
• 1:20:52
  This conversation is so interesting and fascinating and just I want to keep going on forever, but I
• 1:20:58
  understand that you have to go to sleep also eventually. Yeah, now sadly, I went through your
• 1:21:05
  file before the interview and saw that you engaged with one of the most well-known conspiracy
• 1:21:09
  theorists out there. We mentioned him before, the reptilian guy, David Ike. Why did you choose to kind
• 1:21:16
  of challenge him openly in such a direct way? By the way, I saw that you got way more likes than
• 1:21:22
  he did when he actually replied to you. So people are listening to what you're saying, even on his
• 1:21:28
  Twitter page. Yeah, I've been challenging conspiracy influencers since pretty much the day I started
• 1:21:41
  going on Twitter. I mean, I don't do it every day, but I challenge them all the time and I get blocked
• 1:21:50
  all the time. I don't abuse them. I generally don't abuse them. Okay, maybe there's about three or four
• 1:21:57
  that have blocked me because it was a little bit of a touchy joke, but it's never generally like,
• 1:22:03
  oh, you're an idiot. And it's like some kind of bantery joke that maybe pushed it a little bit too
• 1:22:10
  far. So I generally do challenge these people. I prefer to challenge the influencers over a
• 1:22:19
  genuine believer in just someone who's got 500 followers or someone that's just normal. I don't
• 1:22:27
  go looking for those people. If I interact with them or I retweet them or something like that with
• 1:22:33
  a bit of a bantery joke, it's normally because they've commented on my stuff. So you've come to me,
• 1:22:39
  so I'm going to retweet you and we can all laugh at you. It's fine. But generally, I will seek out
• 1:22:47
  the influencers and I will challenge them over stuff. And yeah, so David's one of my, I call him
• 1:22:58
  the four horsemen of my apocalypse. Now apocalypse means to the revealing, yeah, to lift a veil.
• 1:23:06
  So those are the four people that kind of tended to wake me up. It was a guy called Jordan Maxwell,
• 1:23:12
  William Cooper, Alex Jones, and David Eich. These are the four guys. So
• 1:23:22
  I've kind of come to a point where I think that they're all charlatans. And they've all lied to me.
• 1:23:28
  And they've all manipulated people. And their information is bad. And they all need to,
• 1:23:33
  they all need to pay or take responsibility for the bad influence that they've put on people.
• 1:23:45
  So Eich is one of the guys that I like to, I don't know, challenge a bit. But I also kind of
• 1:23:54
  like to make fun of them. And that's what happened here. So he posted something
• 1:24:00
  that it was just some rubbish about like the truth is our only tribe or something. And I kind
• 1:24:12
  of just quoted it like with a gif of him being laughed on Terry Wogan, the they're laughing at you
• 1:24:19
  gif. And he read some reason he retweeted that and said like only morons are laughing now.
• 1:24:30
  So I thought, oh, I got a David Eich retweet. I didn't notice it yet first either. I just
• 1:24:36
  noticed in my notifications, I had a lot of David Eich fans saying something to me. I was like, oh,
• 1:24:41
  they must not like that gif. But it's because he had retweeted it. So I thought, all right,
• 1:24:47
  he's obviously retweeted it to say something because I got a bit of a following. A lot of people
• 1:24:54
  like my joking and have have retweeted it and liked it and commented and everything on that
• 1:25:00
  that gif. So obviously caught his attention. All right, maybe I will use this opportunity
• 1:25:05
  to tell him exactly how I feel exactly what is what I feel he's done to me. I just thought,
• 1:25:13
  why not? He probably won't see this one, but he saw the last one. So that's cool. But I'm going
• 1:25:19
  to say this because this is what I really feel. And so I did. I just thought, yeah, I'll retweet
• 1:25:27
  that. And I'll list out and tell you like you are a manipulator. I followed you for 15 years. I
• 1:25:36
  used the word disciple because it's a bit of a hyperbole. But you know, I followed the guy for
• 1:25:41
  so long. I respected him. I thought he was like one of the top dogs. I didn't think he I didn't
• 1:25:46
  think everything I said was 100% accurate, but he's one of the top ones, man. He knew what he
• 1:25:52
  was doing. He knew what he was talking about. But I think he's a top charlatan. And I'm going to
• 1:25:56
  tell you, I think you're a top charlatan and I'm going to like, I'm pissed off. I am pissed of what
• 1:26:05
  you you let us all down the wrong path with your information. You acted like you were trustworthy.
• 1:26:15
  And yeah, of course, I make my own choices, but I only make my own choices based on the information
• 1:26:23
  I have. And you I felt your information was the right one. So I followed that and I wasted a lot
• 1:26:32
  of my life. And I just thought I'm going to tell you so I did. And obviously, like you said, he
• 1:26:38
  even responded to that by practically saying, Hey, it's your own fault for believing my bullshit.
• 1:26:47
  Do you think people like David Ike actually believe what they're saying? Or do they know what
• 1:26:52
  their peddling is absolute bullshit? And they're it's just a cynical racket for them? Yeah, or is
• 1:26:59
  it a mix of both? It's definitely a mix of both. It's definitely a mix of both. And it's trying
• 1:27:05
  to figure out what what he does and doesn't believe like what's true, what's not. The thing is,
• 1:27:13
  is I feel like we've broke down quite a few of his claims on our podcast, like from the reptile
• 1:27:22
  stuff to the things he says about like Bohemian Grove or other goddesses or whatever. And it turns
• 1:27:31
  out to be like completely factually incorrect. Like and if he's going to push things that are
• 1:27:37
  factually incorrect, and I'm not talking about whether or not the queen or someone was a shapeshifting
• 1:27:43
  reptile, because you can't I can't prove that either way, right? But there's other facts that he
• 1:27:51
  says that are just completely not true whatsoever. So I feel like if you've pushed yourself as this
• 1:28:00
  amazing researcher, who really pushes for the truth and everything, why are you telling like
• 1:28:05
  actual lies about different things here? It seems like you're spinning a narrative,
• 1:28:12
  you're making stuff up. So I don't think you believe that if you know that it's not true.
• 1:28:18
  You know, so there's that mix there. I think same with Alex James, I think,
• 1:28:25
  to me, I think he believes more of the politics conspiracies than he does when he says like
• 1:28:33
  Hillary Clinton smells a sulfur or something. I think that's just him being an idiot and
• 1:28:39
  talking about it. At the same time, it's so hard to believe that he believes any of this stuff.
• 1:28:46
  Because why I selling some sort of fucking vitamin pills on the side, he tells you,
• 1:28:53
  yeah, Hillary Clinton smells like sulfur, sulfur. Yeah. But here's my vitamin, you see.
• 1:29:01
  Right. But here's my vitamin package that you can get for $99, which are full of 99% sulfur.
• 1:29:08
  Too shade. Yeah. Yes, it's tough. Okay.
• 1:29:16
  Tough one to work out what people believe or don't believe. It's kind of as hard to find,
• 1:29:23
  to figure out someone's true intent. Yeah. You don't know. Only that person knows 100%.
• 1:29:30
  Everyone else has to try and work it out.
• 1:29:32
  Just have two really quick questions. Go for left. What kind of DMs are you getting these days?
• 1:29:40
  You said already that people sometimes accuse you that you're a paid actor yourself,
• 1:29:45
  a paid shill or whatever they say. How do you withstand that? And I can imagine that if you're
• 1:29:50
  going after these sacred cows of the conspiracy world, you must get some angry people writing to
• 1:29:57
  you. I deal with each one differently. A lot of the time I ignore, I don't even bother. I just scroll,
• 1:30:05
  scroll past. In my head, I will say something. I'll see something and I'll be like, yeah,
• 1:30:10
  your mom, skip past. I'll read another one of them. Never fails. I just say stuff like that in my
• 1:30:17
  head, yeah, whatever. Okay. I care what you say. Okay, whatever. Another smart ass remark,
• 1:30:23
  goodbye. And I just will ignore it. Other times I will think it depends on how sassy I feel.
• 1:30:32
  And if I feel up for it, I feel like I'm in a good mood. I'm going to retweet you and say something
• 1:30:38
  smart ass about you just because it's fun. You're just there to troll me, right?
• 1:30:43
  Why should I take you serious? Why should I do the debunk or the conversion or the conversation or
• 1:30:49
  the discourse with you? You're just here to troll. So karma, I'm going to troll you back.
• 1:30:56
  How does that have fun? But then sometimes, like, I was talking to my partner the other day about
• 1:31:03
  this and it's like, your conscious mind, like your ego yourself, you know, you, you're reading
• 1:31:13
  these things and me and yeah, whatever, who cares, whatever you're in it. Yeah, suck my balls. Your
• 1:31:19
  mom, I don't care what you're saying. All that, you know, you're saying this, but it's on a screen,
• 1:31:25
  right? It's really there in writing. And all the while that's being logged in your brain.
• 1:31:34
  Your brain's not forgetting this stuff, like it's taking it in. And after a while, you think,
• 1:31:40
  I've just been called an asshole, like 17 times and I haven't even had my first coffee
• 1:31:51
  in the morning yet. Like, I haven't even gone to work yet. Like, I'm not there yet. Like,
• 1:31:57
  how do I, how do you really process something like that? Sometimes it does like make you feel
• 1:32:02
  it makes you feel shit and you don't realize why. Like I'm feeling I'm in a bad mood. I'll probably
• 1:32:10
  because of that happened or whatever it does. It does affect, but look, it just kind of,
• 1:32:18
  I just got to go, I just got to go with it. I just got to keep pushing and just try not to
• 1:32:24
  not let it get to me because at the end of the day,
• 1:32:26
  who cares? Like, there's a great, I saw this great graffiti one day, and it's always stuck
• 1:32:38
  with me. And it was like just around the time that I started to like, make content and be public.
• 1:32:45
  And it said, stop trying to be liked by everyone. You don't like everyone.
• 1:32:51
  And I was like, that's absolutely true. I don't like everyone. So not everyone has to like me.
• 1:32:57
  Fine. I'm going to have, I'm going to have people who don't like me, who don't want to have a good
• 1:33:01
  conversation, who just want to troll whatever. I tend to block people now. I've had enough
• 1:33:11
  of being called a wanker before I've had my breakfast. So I block people every once in a while
• 1:33:18
  if I've had like a bit of a viral, viral tweet, like that's attracted a lot of like negative
• 1:33:24
  attention, I'll go on lockdown for a few days, just to kind of, until my tweet is out the algorithm.
• 1:33:33
  Because I tend to like, my experiences, if I do one of those viral tweets about two or three
• 1:33:42
  days afterwards is when like the really nasty people come for some reason. Like it's like as
• 1:33:49
  if it gets picked up at some other point. And that's when they come. So after about two or three
• 1:33:55
  days after something like that, like after David, like, like yesterday, I locked down because a few
• 1:34:00
  more, more nastier ones started coming around. So I kind of locked down. And at that point,
• 1:34:08
  I kind of used the option to kind of block people, remove followers, and, and clean up that timeline.
• 1:34:18
  Last question. I asked my cross child, a similar one. What's the funniest or the most silly
• 1:34:25
  conspiracy theory you've ever heard of? Me. Can you elaborate please? What does that mean?
• 1:34:35
  That I'm an actor, that I'm a paid, sigh up, that I'm this sigh up, and I am the, I'm a conspiracy,
• 1:34:42
  I am become conspiracy. And it's a crisis actor. The funniest thing to me, it is. And every time
• 1:34:49
  someone says it to me, it convinces me or solidifies that idea in me that yes, conspiracy theories are,
• 1:34:58
  well, conspiracism is bullshit. This whole thing is, is rubbish. And it's not based on any
• 1:35:06
  actual research here. It's just conspiracy claims. And I'm proof that that doesn't exist. Excellent.
• 1:35:15
  I find it hilarious.
• 1:35:19
  That's a good way to finish a conversation about conspiracy theories. Brent, this was such an
• 1:35:25
  this was such an unbelievably amazing conversation. Thank you for being so open about this stuff.
• 1:35:30
  Thank you for sharing your journey. Where can people find your podcast, Spotify, Apple Pods,
• 1:35:38
  all reputable streaming services? I gather. Are you on YouTube as well?
• 1:35:42
  Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm everywhere. Every platform, a bit hit and miss with YouTube,
• 1:35:49
  because of some of the topics we talk about, like, I don't know, sometimes it gets flagged
• 1:35:54
  for the wrong reason. But yeah, every platform we're on there, best place to go is someday
• 1:36:03
  call it conspiracy.com. And then you'll get the list of every platform that you need. Basically,
• 1:36:09
  all our social media sites, every single thing is there. Follow me and Neil, wherever. But yeah,
• 1:36:15
  someday call it conspiracy.com. And you'll find us. Brent, once again, thank you so much.
• 1:36:23
  Thank you.
• 1:36:24
  Oi, thank you for listening to the episode. If you've enjoyed it, please subscribe and follow
• 1:36:30
  on YouTube, Apple podcasts and Spotify. As always, eternal glory and gratitude to my producers who
• 1:36:38
  are supporting this show on Patreon, the Kings and Queens, Gordon, Yurechuk, Lorenzo, Veronica,
• 1:36:45
  Mila, Carmen and Taichi without you, this pot would not have been possible at all.
• 1:36:51
  If you'd like to become a certified Tuvarish or Tuvarishica of the show too,
• 1:36:54
  head to Patreon, find SmartCookies podcast on there and become one. It's as simple as that. Thank you.