Transcripts For CSPAN2 Mike 20240704

Were very excited. Host Mike Rothschild in conversation with shane. In 2018 performative congresswoman Taylor Greene took to social media to share her suspicions that the caliber of wildfires were started by solar generators, which were funded by powerful, mysterious backers, instantly, of people rallied around blaming the fire on. Jewish space lasers and ultimately the Rothschild Family. For more than 200 years, the name rothschild has been synonymous with two things great wealth and conspiracy theories. What theyre really doing with it almost. From the moment mayor ash mayor ashmole rothschild and his sons emerged, the jewish ghetto of frankfurt to revolutionize banking world, the rothschild has been the target of myths hoaxes. Bizarre accusation and constant virulent antisemitism. They have been blamed for everything from the sinking the titanic to causing the depression and even creating the covid 19 pandemic. Mike rothschild no relation has thoroughly researched the history of these wild conspiracies. His new book, jewish space the rothschilds and 200 years of theories. Mike has sorted out myth from reality to find the truth about these theories and the people who spread them. And he also examines why, even as their wealth and influence have waned, do the Rothschild Family can tinue to inspire conspiracies and hoaxes michael will be joined in. Conversely tonight by shane burley hes the author of why we fight essays on fascism, resistance and surviving the apocalypse and editor of the anthology no place around antifascist dispatches from a world in crisis. Tonights event includes, an audience q a. We do have folks here for c span tv when the q a is happening please raise your and somebody from cspan will come their microphone like a boom mike and just wait for that to be near you so that they can get you recorded so you can be on tv as well. After that, there will be a book signing and that will start over here in line starts over coming this way and you can get your book signed then pay for it downstairs after its signed. A reminder that we do close at 8 55 p. M. All right. And now, please give a pals welcome to Mike Rothschild old and shane burley. Thanks so much for having us out here. Its great crowd of folks and i feel lucky that i get to be on cspan books finally. So im i could make that happen for you. Well, i thought we would just have a little bit of a back and forth. We both are kind of soaked in far right stuff. The last few years, particularly, it comes to the. And so i thought theyd be interesting conversation. And so i wanted to kind of start with obviously no relation, but where did you get the idea from the book . Where did it come to you . So ive been writing about theories, hoaxes scams, frauds, all of that stuff. You know, the stuff your uncle pins you down and thanksgiving about and you want to go where the wine is. And he wants to talk about. But, you know, writing this stuff, you and exploring these worlds with the last name rothschild the comments started coming pretty much right away. A lot of oh, of rothschild debunking conspiracy theories how stupid they think we are. You know, the matrix must be broken. Somebody unplugged the simulation but you you start to see this name thrown around with so much outlandish and so many memes and accusation and where i really started to realize there was a real story to be told here when i wrote my last book about q and on the the rothschilds are mentioned constantly in the q and on mythos. They own all the Central Banks they have human hunting parties at their lodges in the forest in austria. Q not so good at geography. The black forest is in germany, but felt like there was a real story to be told here about who this family is. I think much more importantly, who they are and why they are linked to so many things. Much more than one family or group of people can possibly have accomplished in lifetime. So it really the story really came out of much more of the work ive done, but not so much the last name. Yeah, i mean, i think we were talking about this before it began, but the end up being a story that says a lot about the people telling story or the people looking for someone to explain. The stories are going through. But i think what you talk about in the book really is that the story is there gentiles about the rothschilds . Historically was a lot different than a lot of jewish communities, at least, you know, 100 years ago or more. What are the kind of stories that were being told about the rothschilds and jewish communities, what role they have in building up jewish confidence in jewish culture, in in jewish communities, especially in eastern europe, the rothschilds were a beacon aspiration. They were the family. You had to clean up your modest because a rothschild might come to your door. I mean probably not hey you know every jewish can dream it and early on in the process, i found this op ed written by eli vissel in 1990 with the revival of the rothschild musical. Yes, theres a rothschilds musical. And he talked about when he was growing up in the very poor, very isolated mountains of romania and. The name rothschild was a name that could unlock doors and free oppressed people from their dungeon. And you looked at them as what you could be in the world, especially in the new world. So for for many jewish families, for stories, for jokes, the rothschilds really served as something to aspire to rather than someone to hang all of your own problems on. So it really is i mean, were talking about a total inversion and thats happening here in the way that like this kind of mythic family forms in peoples minds. So i mean, obviously is a big part of the book, but where does the rothschild, the legend come, it really starts fairly early. Mayor im Michel Rothschild. A prosperous for his Time Merchant in the frankfurt jewish ghetto. Just a wall basically walled city with maybe a few hundred families in it. And the were only allowed to leave at certain times. They had to take off their hats and show respect the christians outside it. They were locked in at nights. They couldnt leave on sundays. But mayor found himself in the position of court. You wouldnt . Yes, that is a real position too. The crown prince of hesse so. In doing so, he had access to other markets. He was dealing in rare coins and metals and he started to work his up into the world to start to make loans his oldest son. Im sheldon joins the business and they essentially carve out a niche as the lenders to royalty of hats and of course hess were famous for the mercenary parties that they sold to the english during the american revolution. The hessians who are mentioned in the declaration of independence were mostly sold by the elector of hesse and mayor Michel Rothschild worked his way up to essentially taking care of his money when the elector had to go into hiding and the elector had this massive fortune and the rothschilds were tasked with not only with hiding it, but with using it to fund the against napoleon and in the first decade of the 1800s, the rothschilds essentially make an enormous amount of so mayor, the family patriarch dies in 1812 and hes a fairly prosper verus merchant when his son nathan dies in 1836. Theyre one of the richest families in the world. So in those first few decades, they just an uncountable amount of money. They literally could not count it and course, whenever you have that much wealth, accumulate by a prosperous and jewish family, the myths are going to come. And then from the myths, the conspiracy theories, i mean, also tracking time wise, the of modern antisemitism in so at a time when sort of pseudoscientific versions of these theories basically non openly theological ideas about start to particularly about and markets looking to kind of older ideas about jewish and putting it into the modern context. So then you have this perfect figurehead family that can say, well, prove right here, theyre the ones running the show. I they get these incredibly outsized ideas about the role of rothschilds in, the economy in general, even the belief today that they are, you know, amongst the ten richest families in the world or Something Like that, that they have 500 trillion, which is, i think, twice as much money as there is in the world. So, you know, aim high, i guess. But yeah, and one of the things that really differentiated rothschilds even from other germanjewish banking families is is that the rothschilds never assimilated. They stuck to their judaism. They gave generously to jewish causes. Jewish hospitals, jewish charities, a of other families assimilated, changed their names. They sort of moved from public judaism. The rothschild ads never did. So they really were a kind of a flame that all these moths came to carrying their own versions of these myths that had been around for millennia in cases, they sort of did not participate in the discourse very much about this. Theres very few interviews where theyre being asked about the sort of questions like, why have they kind of avoided answering, yes, i understand why i wouldnt want to answer a question about being in the cabal, but what has been their reason for kind of staying out of that . Yeah, they still dont talk about it. I reached out to rothschilds. Anybody who essentially had any kind of public presence and asked them about this and i just got nothing and what theyre archivist told me i did talk to their family archivist london is that the familys stance in history has essentially been they cant a negative, they cant prove that they dont have 500 trillion, that they dont own all but three or five or seven Central Banks or whatever the meme today, the people who believe those things have to prove that theyre real. But of course we know in the conspiracy thats not how it works. So the rothschilds basically say, look, theres we can say about this, we cant disprove of it, they cant prove it. They dont care proving it. So were just not going to say anything and you know, having been my own sort of public floggings with comments ive made, i, you know, you say, oh, im going to back against all of it. Im going to set the record straight. You cant theres too much theres its too vociferous and anything that you say is just going to be pulled into the conspiracy, you know, of course, a rothschild would say that. So i you know, early on, it was really annoyed that none of them wanted to talk to me by by the end of writing the book, i really got it. I really understood why. Yeah, i think when the book came out, i saw on telegram, one person posted, theyre not even trying to hide it. Yeah. As you trace through the generations, you know, that says a lot about the thats developing each version of each generational version of it and so you have one so tied specifically World War Two and then later to zionism or because the anticommunism of the and sixties what you think that these theories are saying about communities now like what is kind of coming up as they develop the new versions of the the need for control is is omnipresent all of these theories whether its the 1800s or the 1900s are right now somebody has to be in charge. Somebody has to be running show because this cannot just be a bunch of random stuff happening. The incompetence of officials the greed of the financial industry, which is well established. Somebody has to be running things. And of course the Group Running things, it has a bunch of different you can call it the deep state as, we call it now call it the new world order in the nineties, the illuminati, the trilateral commission, the bilderberg, the cfr. Often its all them working together and meeting in secret places like Bohemian Grove wards nameless back rooms where they control the world. Somebody has to be funding all of that. And of course that almost always is the globalists, the european bankers, the london financiers and always means. And when youre talking about these powerful , it very quickly goes to the rothschilds. Now it probably goes more to soros but in the 200 plus years before soros, it was the rothschilds. I do you think the soros will extinguish the rothschild they they sort of work off each other. There are people think like soros is the puppet master then like the rothschilds or the puppet masters of soros. Theres that ben garrison its like each each puppet has its own hand controlling. And then of course, ben garrison said, im not antisemitic, im just pointing out who runs the world. Thanks. It really does come back to that need for control and of course, the details dont matter because. Theyre all made up. So theres there is no need for any consistency. The ideal guy doesnt have to match up. It. It doesnt matter. Nobodys in because they really want to figure out whos running things they are in this because theyre mad and they want to be mad at somebody have and its very convenient to be mad at jewish people. And i think theres also a certain of we do live through a sort of like obvious conspiracy of wealth inequality of like hyper of wealth and like especially of things like, for example with the 2008 financial crisis just opened manipulation of markets and profiting off of other peoples suffering. So there is a sort of, i think i understand why peoples instinct to say no, it seems someone actually is controlling this and maybe theyre they dont have their best interests at heart. You know, someone is its citibank, its wells fargo. Its you. Its a union bank. I love union bank. Thank you. But theyre doing it in the open. Theres theres no back room just doing it. They just hit you fees. They just manipulate things. They just raise interest rates. They just do it. Theres no secret jewish cabal. Its just you know investor numbers that need to be hit. Yeah. And i think in a way i get ive gotten lot of questions over the last few years about what we actually do about it. And i think theres like a couple of things one is giving people a out by saying like, look, theres actually things we could do politically, socially, theres stuff you can do to affect this. But i think also giving people a pathway to understand these systems, which is not easy. Its not like were kind of, you know, raised to easily able to parse out the Financial System and why its working this way and where we fit into it. Yeah a lot of the early banking stuff with the rothschilds is incredibly complicated the, the consoles and the gold sales and the loans i mean this stuff is very, very technical, i dont really understand it and i read a lot of books about it. So its, its you know, it makes sense that people would be upset at the rothschilds and think, well, too rich, theyre too powerful, they have too much stuff, even in where historically no one is too rich, no one has enough. The only limits are your own dreams. And what you can buy. Somehow the rothschilds too much and the other wealthy jewish, they were just too visible and powerful and a lot of that is just these arbitrary lines that people draw and a lot of that goes back to the middle with these ideas of usury. What is the difference between lending interest, which a lot of Christian Communities would grudgingly eventually accept and usury, which, according to canon law, is on par with murder . Whats the difference . Well nobody knows. But were going to take it out on the Jewish Community, right . Right. And then looking at modern economy and assuming that this modern, you know, banks as well, which essentially runs on the rules of usury in some way, then accusing that being somehow a jewish invention. So its this back and forth relationship where you get out of a cycle of blame, right. And meanwhile, the vast majority, the Jewish Community is not wealthy, is not powerful because the majority of people are not wealthy. Not powerful. You know, you find people online who are just like that. Could live in poverty. And im thinking, you ever seen fiddler on roof . You know, thats a real thats real for most people. Thats why they fled to america. The rothschilds never actually came america. They never had to. But millions of , millions of people from eastern europe, nowhere else to go. And they came here and many of them brought those stories about the rothschilds with them. How conscious. Do you think people are about the antisemitic content of do you think that theres a lot of self acknowledgment like i mean, its very seldom in these are you hearing people say if its an open White Nationalist website right might hear it say that. But like in this case they try and code it and how do you what do you think they think that through they they do try to code it you know you will often have these hideously antisemitic books written by people who will then turn around and well, im not antisemitic. I love the jewish people. And israel has no greater friend. Me, Pat Robertson tried pull that off with his and i write about this in the book in his 1991 book the new world order. I was a New York Times best seller, was a huge hit. That book openly laundered protocols of the elders of zion, accused the rothschilds of being part of an aluminum body occult alliance to bring black magic to high finance. It took a couple of years, but finally a conservative Jewish Journal started to figure out where robertson was getting this stuff from. There was an actual debate over whether he was antisemitic, and hes saying all of this stuff, i could never be antisemitic. I love the jewish people. I just have concerns about these these financiers, these global lists. So you hear those terms, globalists, london bankers, european financiers. Now its soros, you know, the soros backed de the soros backed politicians. They mean jewish wealth. Theyre couching it. Theyre trying to hide in these euphemisms and, these codes. The people who who speak that language know what that means and the rest of us go, well, hes not , so maybe hes not antisemitic. They usually are. Yeah i like drawing israel into it as whole dimension. And i think were seeing that now with eli and musk, who is, you know, spent last several weeks like escalating antisemitic and then meets with Benjamin Netanyahu and says, well, great, like it. Now im having the connection. The jewish leader not depending on what what netanyahus politics are, but its sort of like this way to get out of it without actually engaging in any way. Right. The i love israel. You know, im loved like the king of israel. You know, thats get out of jail free card for people who dont trust liberal and its been played by many before musk before trump. Its a it works people do it because it works yeah i mean its been even played by right wing jewish faith. Oh sure. You know, and thats thats one of the kind of weirdest ironies modern politics now is to see yubico of what seem obviously to be antisemite. Conspiracy theories then parroted by, you know, Benjamin Netanyahus son or other kind of bribery. Yeah, we when i was growing, we had a very close Family Friends who their father was born in a camp. He was born in duration not and he was the most rabid Rush Limbaugh listener you would ever find. He was a carpenter and he would be working on our house. I would hear this guy just scream ing about the clintons, waco, and all this other stuff, like, what is that . I was a kid at the time going, whos who is this person on the radio . Why would anybody listen to this angry man . But he he loved because he wanted strength he wanted figures who would protect american to make sure that it would never happen again. Now, the figures that they look to for protection were rabid antisemites. You just figure out a way to justify you, make you make all the pieces fit together into a puzzle where only you can see the picture. Yeah. And its opportunistic in a way, kind of a strange way of understanding jewish safety. Yeah. You know, i think part of why i feel like this has the last maybe 15 or 20 years has normalized the antisemitic conspiracy theories so heavily. Is that the right needs a narrative to explain dislocation know there was a sort of through the eighties and nineties a certain kind of narrative states this and that you know the economy is going well you want to invest in your homes, things like that. But thats not true for people in a really blatant way anymore. So they actually do need some kind of narrative. And so theyve come up with is basically conspirator a populist narrative. You know, theyre not fixing it with, you know, lowering taxes on the rich or anything like that. So they have to tell you some theyre going to fix it through this like conspiracy kind of house of mirrors. Its through this this house mirrors and its also through aspiration. I really think that a lot of what propelled donald trump to early electoral success was this idea that if you vote for him, hes going to make you him. And of course, was all ridiculous. But this this persona of the the blue collar billionaire who just worked hard and took his very modest inheritance and, built it into a real estate empire. I mean, it was all built on on balloons that were to pop. Of course, donald trump was bailed out of bankruptcy by rothschild, inc, wilbur ross, his future commerce secretary, was the guy at rothschild who came in and helped help the donald save the taj, save the taj mahal. That connection is never talked about by any of trumps right wing base. I. I didnt even know it until. I started working on the book that, that the buddy buddy friendship with macron. Its another thing macron was like openly pointed out as like the rothschilds to run france because he worked there as a banker for a few years. So he has all these connections. Its just that you sweep all that stuff under the rug because you just hes going to make everything. Hes going to make all the bad people go. Now, meanwhile, hes working with the people who you think are running things, its all just a game. Yeah. I mean, theres the performative aspect i think is underappreciated it because its sort of obvious were talking about billionaire running for things. Im talking about the working class, but the ability to play names that are recognizable has been a huge, huge benefit for it. And i in the same way its like youre talking about the strongman perception he could go up there, say openly antisemitic things and say but i think this and im doing it for you. You know, i actually think this makes you good. And so that kind of like weird trade seems to be like the return of strongmen to the center of politics. Well, sure. And and love to use the Jewish Population in general and wealthy in particular as a means to whatever end they need to accomplish in nazi propaganda to the were as whole were looked at as as you know poor and vermin and disease carriers. They were rootless. They were disloyal loyal. But the financiers, the very top, they run everything. So have to figure out some way to square the circle. Heres these people at the top who run everything. The people at the bottom have nothing. You would think that the people at the top would help out the people at the bottom and like everybody in the jewish religion would be at the top. But thats thats not the way it works. So you had one set of rules for, the bottom one set of rules for the top. But of course, theres no consistency to it at all. But it doesnt matter, because as long as you have somebody to hate and somebody you can blame. Germanys defeat in war one, the depression, germanys failure in the second world war. There you can you can justify anything if you have that scapegoat. Yeah. Its also the assumption this like almost old world assumption that theres this unified jewish people all have the same interests and same organizations and theyre all the same political personalities and that kind of thing. Something thats really projected, again, from the outside into the Jewish Community. I dont know any, you know, three that dont have five opinions. Yeah, no. Anything. If you think all agree everything, go out to dinner with three. You know, its like youre going to get some yelling, know it exists in a world that doesnt actually its a world you create for yourself, but its a world that brings comfort and brings you a strong sense of who the enemy is and what theyre doing to you and how you can fight back. And i think thats where a lot of these newer conspiracy theories. Some things like qanon come from where its not just, well, im going to read what theyre doing to me. Im going to read what the of the catholics, the masons are doing to me, but i cant do anything it now with social media, everybody can fight back. Everybody make their own memes, everybody can make their own videos and send them to your friends. Really, if you feel like it, you can create your own version of the conspiracy theory. Youre really good at it. You can make a career out of it. So the the social media onslaught has not made more conspiratorial. Its just made all of this stuff much faster and much easier access. And i think thats really been a boon for a lot of content creators. You know, as i talk about in the book, you know, people making fortunes off this stuff. And they were 200 years ago. Yeah. And kind of compound conspiracy theories. So you get these pieces and you already have a foundation to build Something Else on top of how did qanon sort of pick up on the rothschild conspiracy . Sure. So qanon definitely uses a lot of those ideas of the rothschilds, everything of soros running, everything the idea of adrina chrome is basically just a souped up version of the bloodline bible. All of these ideas of, these secrets, and these gurus all are sort of picked and chosen other scams and hoaxes but it very much is a choose your own adventure of conspiracy. You can say, i dont like the about jfk jr being alive i dont believe in that, but i definitely believe that the rothschilds hunted human beings sport on there and their lodges. And i definitely believe that soros is putting all of his money into antifa. You can take any aspect that you want from it because none of it matters. None of it has to fit together. No, theres no requirements for logical consistency. And you go back to that with conspiracy theories from hundreds or thousands of years ago. Yeah, its sort of the some people are mentality. Yeah. And interviewing a number of folks that militia allies and asking them because there you see it kind alternating soros signs and rothschilds and you ask them like well you know where did you get that sign . Whats whats going on with it . And the most frequent i would hear is well, so say that, right . Why is this happening . Im like, where do you hear that . Like, well, some people are. Im like, what are they talking about . Well, its a rumor thats around you know. So theres were talking about like stray comments may have heard here and there. And thats enough to sort of build like a very kind of angry response to. Yeah and, it doesnt have to be accurate or based in any sort of fact i write about, you know, in the book i write about somebody at a tea party rally holding up a sign that says barack takes his orders from the rothschilds well. The rothschilds didnt even dont dont get into american electoral politics. One member of the Rothschild Family got involved in the 2008 election for hillary clinton. I mean, it just it has no basis, in fact. But it doesnt matter. And the more outlandish it is, the more bizarre it is, the more sort of ridiculous detail it has, the more believable it is. It feels more lived in to have just layer after layer of nonsensical, contradictory detail. It somehow makes the story seem seem to come alive more. And thats very hard to combat. How is it getting i mean, weve some some really, really outrageous was at the end of the book really we start getting into some of the more recent frequent ones including for example like think a washington dc city councilperson believing that the rothschilds were controlling the weather. How, how strange that kind of getting how far afield are we getting mean. How much time do you have . Its so bizarre and divorced from anything that could ever possibly be reality the whole space laser thing i mean the the idea of the of a directed Energy Weapon that is needed start forest fires as if forest fires a have not historic started on their own since for ever need a reason right and be as if we werent going through a Climate Crisis so because you dont believe the Climate Crisis is real there has to be Something Else and a space laser run by jerry brown and pg and e and rothschild linked sounds as good as anything. Yeah, i its sort of like a explicit sort of political impotence. Its saying like, look at vast, profound problems. If only it wasnt for these individual figures. We wouldnt have to look at systems. We wouldnt have to actually make any changes. And more than maybe we wouldnt even know what changes to make. And so theres a certain kind of giving in that happens with that. Theres a nihilism to it. Its just theyre so powerful. All we can do is be awake and know what theyre doing. And, you know, maybe some buy some protein powder from infowars, you know to get ready for the fight but its its hopelessly complicated. You know, i read this Facebook Post from, marjorie Taylor Greene she never says she never has to because she mentions inc. But the plot is so convoluted, it requires so many pieces moving together at the exact same way with nothing going wrong. It would be one of the most dastardly plots ever, ever conceived. But somehow this like crossfit in georgia, just figured it all out and put it up on facebook again. Just it doesnt have to make any sense as long as it sounds like could be possible, because the people involved are just pure evil, then you just with it. Yeah. I mean these like so many of them are kind of silly and they build on each other in this kind of rumor mill, but it leads to real world acts of violence. Really profound and not even just obviously like. We talked about the book, the pittsburgh synagogue shooting being related to george soros theories, but other racist attacks also had at their core, these antisemitic theories. Either they cite the rothschilds or, other jewish families, but its the coherent that what gives it coherency, what gives it a totalizing effect is having the controlling everything and thats what leads people to such extreme acts of violence. Right. And you can link the to anything you can link them certainly to banking chicanery, but also to the of social laws, to racial pollution. I mean, the tramp this antitrans hes still that is going on on the right right now which is like bomb threats going on constantly. Theres a bomb threat near where i grew up in highland park, illinois. Thats the community had a mass shooting last year. There is no end to the cruelty that these people will foist on other people. And at the end of it, it comes down some sort of a massive jewish conspiracy to sap us of our of our purity, to infect with the this plague of gender swapping and race. I mean, this this is stuff that goes way back. The nazis made a huge to to exploit this stuff. None of this stuff changes. It just gets updated and disseminated faster. Yeah. I mean, look at any of these sort of like bigoted movements right now . Youre going to find traces of antisemitic conspiracy theories even when its only the subtext or maybe its not the dominant piece of it. So a, of this antitrans legislation that you see people doing testimonies or people writing online about them, guess who they blame on . They blame it on rothschilds that they endorse or else even though that has nothing to do with their at hand. I know conspiracy journalists and research who are definitely not jewish, who get emails constantly, you filthy , you know the, three parentheses and like like, why . What is the point of that . Of course, its all usually set with your real name, you know, from your linkedin account or something. So maybe theres not most thought being put into this, but the blame on putting the blame on for things that have absolutely nothing do with , it is it is endemic. Do you think its getting more severe right now . Were talking about so we have the election next year. Theres a few really big set pieces. So we have the the Sanders Campaign and every kind terrible thing thats happened around there. The increase of neonazi presence in. Florida, you have the stuff with musk before that you have the stuff with yeah its been a sequence through the last like 9 to 12 months. But do you think an escalating sequence . Its definitely an and whats most worrying for me is not even much that its escalating because public antisemite is and really does cycle i write about this a lot in the book. Theres these every couple of decades theres another sort of antisemitic hysteria driven by some sort political event thats then monetized by a group of grifters. And it goes on on what is worrisome to me is how the veneer of, well, its not all the. Were not blaming the jewish people, its just the globalists, financiers that even thats the honest veneer of not blaming all the is starting to disappear, because youre getting people like kanye, youre getting people like nick fuentes, like elon musk, who are just blaming jewish people and saying, weve got to get rid of all of them. Theyre all a problem, something to be done about them. And these are massively influential voices. They sound like theyre crazy. They sound like theyre raving lunatics. Some of them are, but have audiences. And those audiences totally divorced from, right and wrong. Those are the people calling bomb threats. Those are the people who stormed the capitol. Its not the leaders. Its not the people very top. Theyre not going to get their hands dirty like that. Theyre going to put these messages out there and hope that you know enough. The right people will hear it and go do something about it. And it does have a cumulative effect over time. So it starts with the rothschilds, it comes in as , then it comes to this people taking action on that. And i think whats surprising, lester, theres always been, you know, a celebrity that says something kind of bonkers and then kind of wigs out about it. The problem is no ones wigging out about these and theyre happening in short succession and. So that seems like obviously were talking about normalization in a lot now. But this becomes so common that people sort of come to expect it and the right is actually starting to welcome it in some cases. Yeah, we it just comes of so fast. We just get pummeled with it. Its just like, oh, what stupid thing did musk say today . And the stupid thing that hes going to say tomorrow will completely usurp the stupid thing. He said yesterday. Meanwhile, his fans are catching all of it and they know exactly what it means. Yeah, i, i think it will probably go to questions a few minutes, but what do we do i think like theres were everyone in here, im sure knows the conspiracy theorists and its affected your relationship its affecting certainly their relationships its affecting us communally. But what are some things that you think now this is your second book dealing with the subject. What do you think are some practical measures people should take or can we take collectively . Well, ive definitely had a few people who say, wow, the end of the book is pretty grim, no happy ending here. And im like 2000 years of this. Do you have a happy ending in mind . Id love to hear it, but i think what need to maybe move away from a little bit is the idea that the government is going to save us from this. Certainly that the Tech Companies are to save us from this because theyre not. What we have to do is really the language and understand what it means when these figures blame random things on george soros, the adl or the rothschild. We have to understand what globalists, what european bankers means, what it means when you freely conflate american and israel as reducing the identity of american to just sort of temporarily displaced israelis. We have to understand what all of that means and why its used. And then we have to look for in the people that we know were never going to be able to do anything about the about the politicians, the professional conspiracy theorists do this. But if people in our own lives are doing this, especially if theyre doing it online, we can step in and say, hey, thats that article you posted. Its that term. Its antisemitic, that joke youre telling. Its not funny its just antijewish. Its hard to do that because nobody wants to sort of pick that fight publicly online. And people dont want have those Uncomfortable Conversations in private. But i think if we can do something about it in our own spheres, influence in our own families and our own friendships, maybe can stem the tide of this a little bit, knowing that there is always going to be another grifter, another professional conspiracy pusher pumping out a book or a podcast or a video that tells you who the real enemy and how to fight them. Thats not really something we can do anything about, but we can do something about it in our own lives. You know, i think making the case that this is something affects everyone really intimately across different lines of identity in different communities. They feel so many different, not just far right movements. Well, far movements, neonazi movements, basically, these have such a common roots that it gives us actually that common experience. So start to understand they see this see as threatening and see it as something that needs to be undermined. Is this Community Action or however people take on i think thats important. I think like you said, we cannot just depend the Tech Companies to do that. Even if we did there were talking about, you know, kind of large, draconian, you know, Tech Companies. And so we cant just depend on them to be able to do that. I mean, we saw this very recently like twitter had brought in, you know, very minimal moderation. But it had it changed hands. They immediately strip it out, you know, and this is what happens generally with these institutions. So i think there has to be a thought about how else would a community confront Something Like this . Like what other measures can people take . Yeah, its it is noticing what this means and where it all comes from and also understand that very few people are just antisemitic. Youre also probably youre also probably homophobic. So, you know, just because a person is not openly blaming maybe theyre blaming the lgbtq community, maybe theyre blaming people of color. Scratch the surface of that person and youre probably going to find somebody whos blaming as well. Right . Right. I mean, were talking about were talking about Marjorie Taylor here. Thats an elected official, right. Like thats something that people can do, something about. And theres a number of people that are kind of leading that charge people in power. And i think recognizing what kind of power people have in their community or their organizing, those are ways of kind of combating that and just vote for better people. Run, run yourself. You know, we can do better than. The people that we have in our government now, we we can make those changes ourselves. Its very hard to do. But we can have we can demand better from the people send to washington to our local governments. You know, local government. I know, you know, this has been where so much of this has been going on the city council, the school board meetings, the labor board meetings, the zoning commissions. These battles are not just being fought in the senate. Theyre not just being fought in the Supreme Court. Theyre being fought, you know, some local committees in which probably five people going to it. Theres a good chance three or four of those people are cranks who are going to get up in front of a microphone and spout whatever ridiculousness is on their mind. And maybe one of them goes viral, gets a couple million views for for their troubles, and suddenly these ideas get spread around and people know, well, if i go to the local school board or the library, im not going to get any pushback. So we have to fight those battles, you know, in these very small environments and not just congress, the white house, the Supreme Court we have to do that, too. But those the people who are responsible for our communities to day and i think people are waiting for a social movement or a Political Movement to actually speak to what theyre experiencing is that they cant pay their mortgage, which is that they cant pay their student loans. Thats basically acknowledging economic and social dislocation. And were having a place where people generally dont get that, acknowledge even by ostensibly left wing candidates. So theyre looking for someone that uses that language, even if its false. And, you know, people arent encountering, you know, political education in places like they used to. They have labor unions. They might learn about these things. They might have theyll political churches in the same way. What have is for chan quite literally. Right. And particularly during the pandemic and i for a piece i wrote i went through the transcripts of some of the arrested january 6th rioters who spoke to the committee and i was i really thought you know like oh you sent me im going to go die for trump. Some of that was there, but a lot of them had lost their businesses. They had to lay people off. They went bankrupt. They went broke during the pandemic. They were angry. And this idea that everybody on the right is is, like they say, economic anxiety. They really mean all the racists. A lot of them are really, really anxious. Economic climate. And theyre theyre angry about it. And theyre looking for somebody who is going to help them find a way out of it. Yeah. Well, so we move into. I think we should do that. Getting questions from the crowd right away from the microphone. Yes. Okay. So yeah, were going to have a microphone come over your way. You mentioned your public floggings. Yes. And im interested to hear about that. And does that also include an element threat . So my public floggings are actually much less bad than basically any woman or any person of color in any public field. Theres still unpleasant. About two months ago, i went on cnn and i talked about the movie sound of freedom and how it was based a hero who maybe had falsified some of his background and some statistics that were sort of made up and that a lot of the human trafficking, you know, sex rings and all of this stuff is kind of a moral panic. And the far right came after me really hard. And i was attacked. On steve bannons. Laura ingraham was ranting about me, alex jones like a whole hour about me it was it was not great for a couple of weeks. And then it sort of went away and it moved on and. A lot of i just didnt engage with, you know, i got absolutely deluged messages, emails, linkedin messages is direct, you know, direct messages on twitter, the vast majority of it. I never engage. I keep my own sort of personal life pretty tight. Like i delete my information, dont talk about my family. So there really wasnt much to go on. I knew having seen these things before, that it would eventually fade away, but there were definitely some, some rather threatening messages, almost always sent people using their real names and just thinking a yahoo email address is free. People, come on on. Ive ive had people take photos of my house parties on stormfront and stuff like that, or texts that ive had to put they would do a lot is text me address. So i get Text Messages as live here like congratulation phones. You can google. But again i think like you said, you know i, have a lot of women friends who are journalists and the be what they get is just so constant and disgusting. Yeah mean ive had a lot of you know emails from like White Nationalist types who sort of treat me like like the batman to their joker or something. And thats not how, thats treated like in of color or women. No. So guys talked a lot about like the conspiracy from the right and kind of how perpetuated along that spectrum, but i think something ive always found interesting is like rothschild kind of lizard people, the connections that are made on the left, like in the very like the wellness community. So i guess, im just wondering like what you encountered your research that kind of talked the perpetuation of those in that kind of like what we would perceive as like the leftist or wellness or Health Community that is also like. Yeah, but what about the rothschild . Youre like, that was not what expected when i was stretching. Yes. Well, its a its a huge thing right now. This sort of wellness to q and on pipeline. But it really at the beginning of the some of the original anti rothschild materials emerged in paris in the late 1840s came from movements we would now think of as the far left particularly socialist movement. There was a huge outcry against wealth constantly nation and in particular role that james de rothschild who is the paris the head, the paris rothschilds his in destroying the pristine beauty of frances forests. Its very caught up in Natural Communities that wouldnt think of as sort of hardcore but they really it wasnt so much the religion of the rothschilds, but definitely the wealth of, the rothschilds. And of course then it eventually gets to the religion of the rothschilds, but now the this sort of new age, health, freedom, antivax facts mash up that has kind of taken over the conspiracy. Its hideously antisemitic. It absolutely believes that the rothschilds are soros are running all the pharmaceutical companies suppressing all the secret cures for cancer. Theyre theyre giving us all the drugs to, you know, to make us sick, all the bad food, all all these pollution, the pornography all of this stuff is coming from the same jewish interests who were doing it 100 years ago, just controlling the banks. And, of course, they also the banks. So yeah, there is definitely quite a bit of antisemitism on this sort of nominally far left, but not really far left anymore community. I also, you i wouldnt put it past a lot on the to have their own embarrassing conspiracy theories dont think theres a left wing social movement ive ever come across. I didnt have rothschilds show up anti war marches with asia. You know saying the rothschilds did 911 or occupy wall street so there might i mean its radically smaller than on the far right because on the far right is a Foundation Part of the world view. On the left, its sort of like an embarrassment, but it definitely shows up there too. Yeah. Yeah. What do you point as the ultimate roots of antisemitism 2000. However, years ago theres a theres couple i mean, certainly the deicide, the idea that the killed christ, the idea that it was the jewish moneylenders who were thrown out of the temple, which is not true, of course, jewish jesus and all his disciples were jewish. Certainly the bloodline bible, which goes back probably close to a thousand years now, but a lot of it really stems from jewish wealth constants in the middle ages because were allowed to money at interest to these and ministers and princes who needed money. You know the churches needed money to build their edifices. The rulers all needed money to go march off to war they could get it from the Jewish Community who they also castigated as being sinful for lending money and interest. So this contra of we need the wealth of these people but we dont trust people because they have all this wealth that we also need. Its paradox thats kind of built into way jewish power and jewish wealth are conceived. So i think its its definitely deicide. Its definite the blood libel and its definitely this wealth concentration and lot of it is just scapegoating. Youre just a community that is different that that has their own language and own customs and their own way of dressing. They dont eat some of the things that we do. We cant trust them. And have a lot of money. Oh, and they killed god. So it really it to be this durable it cant be any one thing it has to be a lot of different. I think it maybe get in the weeds a tiny bit but i think thats sort of a little bit of a difference between of historic anti judaism kind of xenophobia that experience in this kind of complex. We call it antisemitism that developed over time. It developed with christian super secessionism. The idea that the church replaced at the church with people the apart in this Jewish Community pushed into the sense of conspiracy that they was given, projected on to them. And then like you talked about the economic that many jewish communities not all that many communities were put into and then that process of modernization. Its complicated piece that had many generations since but what i think is interesting about it is that many cultures had stories about certain minorities in there that were of parallel the difference differences they didnt all export their entire ways of thinking to rest of the world. And so thats why you often antisemitic conspiracy theories places that dont have Historic Jewish communities. People maybe never met , but were basically encountering these things transposed from maybe the european context when they started. Now theyre in these different contexts. Theyre kind of projecting them on to their own unique cultures. Yeah, and i think the other thing we cant is that this has been around for long time because its been around for a long time and a lot of the people who crank material out are really lazy and just dont want to. We, we reinvent the wheel if the wheels are already invented. Its been running just fine for 2000 years. The amount of plagiarism they have, they plagiarize each other just constantly yeah, yeah. And it seems to that the, the big advance in antisemitism occurred in the mid19th century when. Judaism became a certain writers, antisemitic writers made judaism race and not just an idea group of ideas, an assembly or an assembly of ideas that because you cant kill ideas, but you can definitely kill people. Right. And a lot of the really, really i hate to say stand out books of those times they, they look at as a kind of unify wide race that is inflicting own morality on people and functions as one when again, as we were talking about never functioned as one. Yeah i mean, its sort of interesting because the story of that changing idea about is also the story of the creation of race, science and, kind of like those early racial theories where it was, you know, it used to be compulsively converted, right . That was sort of like at point of death, but it was still, you know, you could find way out of it conversion and over the 5000, 670 this basically concept you couldnt convert away from jewishness which then impacted, you know, politics for and for the right and even for the left all over the place. That really did take over over. That. Then we solved it. No more entitlement ism. Were done. Lets please. Ed, theres time. More questions. Anybody . Yeah, lets get that. Mike mike. I was accused of the relationship, the spare, the protocols the early 20th century and rothschild conspiracy theories that one sort of did they revive rothschild theories. Was it a way around birth as it reinforced was already out there with the rothschild conspiracy theories. Its a great question obviously the rothschild conspiracies came first. You know, the protocols really didnt in the west until the early 1920s, but they they served as kind of a new mutation of of a lot of this, you know, especially in the 1800s. A lot of these conspiracy theories were just like theyre really wealthy. They owned all the banks. They killed lincoln started the civil war but it wasnt this like World Domination that you had. This is like ham fisted idea of these old sitting in a room and like plotting whos going to win the next war that were funding sides of the protocols really, that they they gave a very palatable story to a to a whole new audience just at a time when this interwar was really going on, particularly in europe and of course in america, too, with the America Movement and the isolationist movement was extremely antisemitic and they absolutely made use of the protocols as proof that the were trying to get us into another war with germany. So the protocols came along kind at the right time. Certainly for the nazis. The nazis had it interesting relationship with the protocols they they printed a lot of them and they really used them but a lot of the top nazi propagandists knew that they werent real but they didnt care because they said things that sounded like they could be real. So again, that idea of veracity doesnt matter whether or not it is actually real, it is that no importance can we get people to think this sounds real and then do what we want them to do . And that really works quite well, you know, set the function of unifying their community a little bit and giving a totalizing worldview. So now there can have one language that different communities can like talk about the same issue with. I mean, this happened in later generations of kind of White Nationalist hatred where like a particular author now becomes the guy and everyones kind of citing him. Kevin macdonald which is a popular alt right author, a psychologist out of a university, had a whole bunch of theories about and wrote a series of books and those became now one of the go to this for us so now everyones kind unify around these books they have a common language, they have the same jargon. Theyre all going to be able to reference it. And i think the protocols had that real effect for the 20th century. Yeah the fact that we knew fairly early on that they were a complete hoax just didnt matter because even if theyre a hoax, you think, well, it wouldnt be this popular if there wasnt something to it. So the document might be real, might not be real, but it doesnt matter. And, you know, thats one of the things thats hard for people to really wrap their heads around that so much of this stuff, it doesnt matter that its been debunked over and over and over again because you just ultimately you want it to be true. Its sort of like mythically true. You it doesnt have to be factually true because it tells a bigger truth. Okay. Okay, im good. If youre good. Good. All right. Thanks so much for coming out. Everyone assumes such great questions