Ep. 157: BlueAnon: The Left’s Conspiracy Theories Target Jews w/ David Harsanyi
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Because the conspiracy theories are packaged and then laundered through media, which calibrates it for maximum plausibility, uses experts, it becomes more credible to a lot of people. The current of anti-Semitic paranoia is always a feature of almost any kind of conspiratorial movement. Right, left, it doesn't really matter. But on the left, it's been mainstreamed in higher education. It's been mainstreamed in Congress.

Hello, and welcome to Think Twice. This week, we have an important conversation about conspiracy theories and the way they've been embraced by the political left with author and columnist David Harsanyi. But before we start today's program, I want to remind you, as always, to like this video and podcast, subscribe to JNS, and click on the bell for notifications.

Also, you still don't have to wait a full week for more of our content. There is a Jonathan Tobin Daily podcast where I share more news and analysis with you about the most significant issues we're facing today. You can find The Daily Show under Jonathan Tobin Daily on the JNS channel wherever you get your podcasts. And now to today's program. How did America get to become a nation of believers in conspiracy theories?

Some date it to the John F. Kennedy assassination, an event so shocking and momentous that it was hard for many people to accept that it was merely the action of a deranged communist.

But the cottage industry of books and even films that centered around efforts to provide a more satisfying explanation for Lee Harvey Oswald's actions that grew out of that chapter of history was nothing compared to the fantasies spun about just about every element of modern American life these days.

There is virtually nothing that can or will happen that won't generate talk of the conspiracy theory that is now amplified by social media in a way that not even the craze about the JFK assassination could match. But perhaps the worst element of this age of conspiracies is not the fact that the most outlandish and offensive notions are believed by so many,

but that so many Americans who embrace crackpot ideas and convoluted explanations for what has happened think they are not conspiracy theories. Were conspiracy theories merely confined to the fever swamps of the political right or the left, they would be potentially dangerous and troubling, but still not a major factor of our political and cultural life.

Instead, they have now gone mainstream in a way that is particularly insidious, since supposedly trusted media outlets and respected political leaders openly embrace and spread them. And sadly, they do this in the name of defending important causes like democracy, the rights of women, or saving the planet. And ironically, the bulk of the conspiracy mongering is going on on the political left.

That's not the message we get from the mainstream media, which focuses on the lunacy that can sometimes come from the political right, including a shadowy and insignificant group like QAnon, which has few supporters and none with any political influence.

But unlike most of the conspiracies hatched on the right, those on the left have been treated as legitimate and true, despite being continually debunked and the blatant political motivations of most of the conspiracy theorists. They are what author David Harsanyi has rightly labeled blue anon.

The Russia collusion hoax, a plot hatched by Democratic political operatives to destroy Donald Trump and then assisted by members of the intelligence and legal establishment, is the most conspicuous of these and in some ways perhaps the most successful, since not only did he transfix American politics for three years, but is still spread and believed by many on the left.

In the same way, the claim that Donald Trump is an anti-Semitic supporter of neo-Nazis or a second Adolf Hitler is treated as mainstream discourse on the political left. Other recent examples are the way so many Americans were willing to believe lies about mass killings of African Americans by police, lies about American history that created a mass movement dedicated to smearing the United States as guilty of systematically racist, and irredeemably so.

exaggerated and always wrong predictions about the extinction of the planet and conspiracies about the subjugation of women in the United States.

Another key element of conspiracy theorizing is the way anti-Semitism frequently plays a role. The spreading of lies about Israel both before and after the atrocities of October 7, 2023, in which it is falsely accused of being an apartheid state and committing genocide, is an illustration of how conspiracy theories are normalized and work to spread hatred of Jews in the same way that they have for many centuries. And

And here again, the most frustrating element is the way, unlike the extremists of the right, those on the left, like the members of the congressional squad and MSNBC's Al Sharpton, are given a pass for spewing hate for Jews, but defended as victims of a vast right-wing conspiracy, to use Hillary Clinton's description of those who tried to hold her husband accountable for his lies.

It all adds up to a political and media culture which treats delusional theories as truth and works overtime to brand skeptics as dangerous dissidents. In his new book, The Rise of Bluenon, How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theorists,

David Arsani performs a valuable public service by cataloging the conspiracy theories of the left and how they have dominated our public discourse while destroying faith in our institutions and undermining democracy and also fueling anti-Semitism. And we're pleased to have him with us today.

David Arsani is a senior writer at The Washington Examiner and contributor to The New York Post and National Review, as well as a co-host, along with Molly Hemingway, of the You're Wrong podcast on the Federalist Radio Hour.

He's the author of six books, including Eurotrash, Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent, First Freedom, A Ride Through America's Enduring History with the Gun, and his latest, The Rise of Blue Anon, How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theorists. David Arsani, welcome back to Think Twice. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Well, David, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.

I want to start by asking, what are the factors that make so many of us willing to believe conspiracy theories? What is it about America in the 21st century especially that makes such easy marks for those peddling them? And I guess the follow-up is, isn't the failure of our institutions and obviously the example of lies told by many in charge of trying to do something about the COVID pandemic comes to mind,

that it makes it hard not to buy into the notion that there are hidden factors determining our fate? That's a good question. You know, in part, it's always been part of human nature. I mean, going back to ancient Greece, you know, there are conspiracy theories that move people, you know, people who are powerless or people who believe they're powerless to try to explain why things are happening to them or why the world works the way it is. Yeah.

It is reinforced when you're in part of a mob or a crowd or a group. And in the age of the Internet, it's far easier to find other people who are willing to live in a silo with you and reinforce your beliefs and conspiracy theories. And then you answered the question, basically. And on top of that, now, we don't have trust in institutions anymore that we're supposed to regulate these things, debunk these things, people we could believe, right?

Uh, in fact, many of the people, and that's partly what my book's about is many of the people who are supposed to be, we're tasked with, um, leading us in the right direction, debunking conspiracy theories are the ones who spread them. And, you know, so, or, or, you know, are the ones who, uh, gaslight you into believing that what you believe is a conspiracy theory when actually what you believe is normal skeptic, you know, skepticism. Um, yeah.

So I think all of those factors make us susceptible to that. I don't know that we're more susceptible than before, personally, as people, but I do think that the mechanisms that drive conspiracism are more powerful in many ways. Yeah, certainly social media, sort of like imagine the JFK assassination. If social media had been around then, I guess it would be...

You know, would have been a lot worse. You know, and I think, you know, I would sort of trace the, you know, conspiracy theories as a cottage industry back to that. But still, I think things have changed tremendously because of that. Now, the main thesis of The Rise of Bluenon, your new book...

is that it is the political left that is not only the source of most of the most dangerous conspiracy mongering, but that those on the left are more willing to believe in crackpot theories than those on the right, which is exactly the opposite of what we're told by the legacy media is true. Why is that? Well, you know, obviously, every day there's a new story about how the right is susceptible to disinformation or misinformation, usually as a rationalization for some kind of censorship, honestly.

The reason I think my argument is and the reason I think I don't know that people are more susceptible left to believing it. I think, though, that because the conspiracy theories are packaged and then laundered through media, which calibrates it for maximum plausibility, uses, you know, experts, so-called experts, you know, who are credible people, you know, former intelligence officers, people who ran the CIA and on and on. Yeah.

you know, the, that it is, it is becomes more credible to a lot of people that they can believe it. You bring in, you know, you have social science experts, you know, producing studies that will prove that, you know, the, the, the, the right believes conspiracies and the left don't. But in fact, when you think about Russia collusion hooks, for instance, which I think was the, maybe the high point or the most effective conspiracy theory, you know,

in American political history in the sense that it completely paralyzed the Trump administration. It was, you know, for three and a half years at least,

It enveloped all our conversations in political media and so on. I mean, you don't get more successful than that. But it's not just that. My book's also about sort of currents of paranoia that drive a lot of the issues. We can talk about them later maybe. So it's not always this like conspiracy theory. It's more of a paranoia that you believe things are going on behind the scenes that undermine your life.

So, yeah, I think it's because it's laundered. You know, you cite in the book statistics showing that it's actually people on the left who are more willing to believe, you know, theories about the world, which are, you know, are not supported or, you know, conspiracy theories. Then people on the people on the right are actually more skeptical. I mean, that's, you know, as I said, that's the opposite of what we're supposed to. And we're supposed to think that people on the right are the ones with the tinfoil hats.

And yet it's really the people on the left. It's just that CNN and The New York Times keep telling them that it's, you know, that they're that they're right. They're not crazy. But think about, you know, the 2000s. OK, I mean, now George Bush is this grand statesman. Everyone loves him. But at the time, there were a lot of conspiracy theories about how he first of all, he was called a Nazi or people intimated he was a Nazi all the time. But also think about Michael Moore. He made a...

He produced a documentary that is filled with the just most unhinged conspiracy theories about the world, right? Mm-hmm. He gets a standing ovation at the Oscars. That documentary is one of the top-grossing documentaries of all time. We're talking about Fahrenheit... Fahrenheit 9-11, yeah. Right. Yeah, sorry. And...

A poll in 2006, I believe it was, showed that over 50% of Democrats believed that George Bush knew 9-11 was going to happen to benefit from it beforehand. 2018, there's a poll, more than one poll actually, that shows nearly 60% of Democrats believe that Russians

Not that Russians put up Facebook ads and convinced, you know, credulous people to vote for Donald Trump, but that they changed vote totals. You know, they've gone beyond what the conspiracy is on CNN, you know. And so the left has shown a propensity for that kind of thing for a while. You know, we haven't.

Because of, you know, the media hasn't been tracking that or they're not they're they're they're not that interested in polling certain questions that make the left look bad. But when you actually look at them, they're often worse. I mean, obviously, you know, there's birtherism or whatever. There's all kinds of conspiracies, though. We have to be careful because I think it's OK to ask questions. I mean, you can be skeptical of things, but once you know.

facts are in, you should, you know, it's time to move on. But it's clear, yeah, like you mentioned, that the left is often more open to believing conspiracy theories about the world than the right is. Maybe because they're more skeptical of the state. I don't know what the psychological reasons are, but I think so, yeah. Yeah. Well, the data that you write about in the book certainly backs you up.

Now, you've already alluded to this because you describe in the book the claim that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election as the greatest hoax in American history. And I'm inclined to agree with you. Yet a vast number of Americans not only bought it at the time that it dominated the news and largely sabotaged the first years of the Trump presidency, but

but still believe it. I get that when I refer to it as a hoax in my writing and in the comments. And despite all the evidence that it was a hoax and that even the mainstream media that promoted it moved on, why did it succeed in ways that other political plots and conspiracies did not?

Well, people might not like to hear this, but to some extent, Trump was very different than any other candidate. And, you know, saying... Well, that's true. I'll be... Yeah, yeah. So saying, you know, I hope Russia finds those emails, you know, stuff like that, you know, kind of helped partisans be more inclined to believe things about him that weren't true. Even though he was obviously joking. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think...

I think over the years, maybe over almost a decade, we've come to realize that he uses hyperbole or the way he speaks is a little different and so on. Selina Zito's formula has continued to be true. Trump's critics take him literally but not seriously and his fans take him seriously but not literally. I mean, we have to always remind ourselves of that.

Yeah, to me, he reminds me of people I knew growing up, you know, around Queens and that part of the world in New York, you know, who... And I forgot what the comedian was who says, you know, a New Yorker doesn't say, you know, traffic's bad. They say it's murder. You know, they're always just, you know, using these words and then the media will run and get hysterical over it. But the thing with conspiracy theories are, so they began the conspiracy theory. It's... They're always like...

I mentioned in the book, there are cynical people, the Hillary Clinton types who concoct the hoax, and then there are credulous partisans. And everyone has them, but Democrats have a lot of them. So I'm not sure where a reporter at CNN is. Now, either they're not skeptical, then they shouldn't be a reporter, or they're helping, they shouldn't be a reporter. Either way, whoever spread that conspiracy should be out of the job. But anyway, so here's what happens.

These things always compound. The more questions you ask people,

People, you know, people will say conspiracy theorists will say, well, that's exactly what you would ask if you, you know, you know, or they cobble together all kinds of threads and make it into a story. So, you know, it starts with, oh, the Russians helped, you know, Donald Trump put up Facebook ads, whatever it was. And it ends with Donald Trump has been an asset of the KGB since 1987, which is a real story that was in New York magazine, you know, an 8000 word story on that. So, yeah.

I remember what you asked me. Oh, why did they believe it? I think partly because they wanted to believe it. Their hatred of Donald Trump, their aversion to how he is, uh, led leads, you know, leads people to believe, you know, confirm their priors in a way. I, you know, I'm, I'm, everyone's susceptible to that as well. And we've tried to fight against that, but, um,

It's like when I was a metro reporter in Denver, you know, and someone would call me and give me the perfect story, I immediately knew that it can't be right. That they're either using me, but it can't be perfect. There is no perfect story. And the president of the United States being a Manchurian candidate or whatever is too perfect a story. And they should have been quite skeptical of it. Anyway, so I just think they believed it because they hated him. They believed it because...

Hysteria sort of breeds hysteria. So you have, you remember, every time a new story broke, the whole media would just melt down. It would be the biggest story. And after a while, you realize you have to wait like a day or two to make sure. The silver bullet was always just around the corner. It was always just there. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. So and then they just moved on like nothing had happened. You know, there was no reckoning. No one lost a job. They all have better jobs. Adam Schiff is now a senator, you know, and they failed upward for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, did they fail, though? I mean, I think they failed. But for them, it was a success. They they paralyzed Donald Trump's presidency. One pull, you know, the reporters won Pulitzer Prizes. No, right. Exactly. People at The Times and The Washington Post have not returned their Pulitzer Prizes. Right.

So now when I was a kid, if I read a newspaper, I've read the New York Times. Obviously, we all knew it had a bias, like not a kid. You know, whenever I started reading the New York Times, young person, I wasn't a 10 year old going through there. But you knew to read behind the, you know, between the lines, you knew that it was a biased publication, but you never thought they'd make something up whole cloth from whole cloth, you know. So now we can't really trust anything they say anymore. And that is where you get the break in trust.

You just I mean, Donald Trump could literally do something terrible right now and they would report it and no one would believe it. And that's actually not good for, you know, a free nation. You want to you want to press it. You can at least trust some extent. And we don't have that now. Yeah, I think I think that gets really partly to the heart of it. There's a whole generation that have sort of entered our profession now.

who really don't believe in journalism. They believe in activism. They think that journalism is activism. And so, you know, and I think we see, you know, I think both of us are objective enough to see it on our own side of the political spectrum. And, you know, I think some of that, like when Matt Gaetz was, you know, when Trump nominated Matt Gaetz for attorney general,

And all these stories started coming out, including many from his congressional colleagues, his Republican congressional colleagues saying he was terrible. The knee-jerk response on the left was to say, aha, that's what we think about all of you. And from people on the right, including some people we know, trust and like,

The instinct was to defend him because he's just being lied about the way they lied about Brett Kavanaugh, the way they lied about Donald Trump, you know, and they were willing to die on that hill, including, as I said, some people we we know, like and trust. Yeah, it's a problem. Yeah.

you know, again, I'm not sure people will like to hear this, but there is a cultish kind of loyalty to the president. You know, it's not about being a conservative. It's about MAGA. It's about him. I think that's problematic because... But it's also about the intense distrust of those who have been attacking him unfairly. No, it's completely understandable in a way. Yeah, I mean, but now, you know, and I've argued with people who I like very much about this. So what? Now, because Kavanaugh happened and

That radicalized me in a way, that event. But...

I can, there's no Republican who can ever, we can ever credibly talk about doing something wrong again. I mean, it is. Sometimes people are guilty. Yeah. Sometimes people are guilty. So that's a problem. And yeah, it has to, again, do with, you know, the, you know, if it weren't for a few senators speak, you know, privately, I guess, standing up to Trump on that issue, he, you know, he would have gone through and,

Yeah. I mean, that's a problem. And that does speak to the trust issue. Not just trust in the media, but we have a distrust of almost every institution. Well-earned from the Secret Service to the public health officials we have, to the government, to the FBI, to all these institutions that we once sort of, you know, most people sort of trusted. I bet you...

Maybe they exist, but if they'd pull trust factors in the FBI, they're probably very high in the past. The FBI had sort of a major propaganda outlet and popular culture for half a century on radio and television when people really listened to radio and watched television. That was the one thing the FBI was really good at. I don't think anybody would sort of buy it about the FBI today.

It is interesting. I've been thinking about the FBI lately and how it basically just started as this. It's been corrupt since its founding. Basically, it was run by it was run by a dictator dictatorial figure who did whatever he wanted. But people loved it. People. Yeah. You know, I remember when I was a kid and there, you know, there was this show on television, which was the successor of a long running radio show long before both of us were born.

about the FBI. And I had a friend's father who was himself, you know, an immigrant from Germany, a Jewish, you know, a Jew who had fled Germany. And it was his favorite show. And I couldn't believe it because it was so corny. And I once asked him, you know, why do you watch this? And he said, because the good guys always win.

And that meant a lot to him, given where he had come from. But, like, who would believe that now? And that's, you know, sort of, we've come a long way from Ephraim Zemblis Jr., you know, and the FBI and peace and war. Yeah.

Yeah.

But as soon as the Russian hoax collapsed in 2019 with the Mueller report disappointing Democrats, that was soon replaced by another conspiracy theory that revolved around the idea that Donald Trump and his supporters were seeking to destroy democracy, which also played a key role in the 2024 election, which we've just experienced, which he won.

Is this obsession with Trump and the need to believe that he is uniquely evil, just partisan politics gone mad? Or does it, in an era where, you know, I would say politics now plays the role that religion used to play in most people's lives, represent something new in our culture that makes conspiracy theory so central to the thinking of so many people?

That's interesting. I mean, I do think the lack of faith or not even just faith, but religious institutions, meaning a lot of people's lives have turned people to the state far too much. So, yeah, they care way too much. I mean, seeing people cry after an election is so off-putting to me. It just tells me that you're way, way, way too invested in politics.

Not to say it doesn't affect our lives, but, you know, I mean, really, does your life change that much from day to day? But...

I saw, you know, when it looked like DeSantis was, I should start by saying Trump is a black hole. I don't mean that in a negative sense, but he pulls everything towards it. In the sense of science. Exactly. So it is almost impossible not to write about him and not to make everything about him. I detest that because I, you know,

If I write something, you know, critical of Trump, everyone jumps on me and says, you know, I hate Trump, I'm a Trump hater, I'm a never Trump. If I praise him, everyone's like, you know, if Charles Manson ran, you would defend him, you know, if you pick Charles Manson. So there's no way to really win that. And I don't think I should try or anyone should try. We should just write what we believe. But, yeah.

When DeSantis, it looked like DeSantis might actually run and Trump might not run. Hard to remember as though that as that is. But a couple of years ago that that was, you know, sort of probably where I thought he had it. Yeah. At least the law and the law. Everyone thought maybe the lawfare was going to cripple Trump. In fact, it just helped him, I think, very much. It killed DeSantis, actually. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you could see the same sort of thing creeping in the same sort of thing.

paranoia, you know, that he was part of a death cult in Florida during COVID, that he was worse than Trump because he was going to, you know, he was much more competent and he was going to dismantle all these institutions and stuff. So I think almost every Republican would have had to have dealt with the same kind of rhetoric. I think that at some point,

Maybe during the Obama years, Democrats started, no matter what I wrote about Obama, I'd get an email saying, you know, you're a racist, you know, so everything became very race centric, which I think is also part of our paranoia problem with race. But and then it became you're phobic of this, you're phobic of that. And it got to the point where Democrats stopped debating and they would just essentially accuse you of sedition, right?

accuse you of being a Russia dupe, accuse you of being bought by the NRA, you know, who wanted to see dead children, this kind of stuff. And it just constantly gets ratcheted up to the point where the president of the United States stood there in front of the crimson, you know, red background in Philadelphia and said that, you know, half of America were abetting semi-fascism, whatever that is. So

And then it seemed like they couldn't really debate anymore. I can't remember the last time I've had a policy debate with someone on the left. It's always, you know, your intention, you know, about your intentions or about democracy or all this stuff. Take abortion. You know, when was the last time anyone actually had a debate with someone on the left about when does life begin or something like that? It almost never happens.

Other than that guy that goes to college campuses, you know, skewering college kids. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's the only one who does. But you know what I mean? It's just there's no more when I started out or, you know, even in the blogging years, you know, there were so many policy debates that crossed. You know, you would debate not just people on your own side, but the other side. I don't rarely see that ever happening. And what's interesting to me is I always mention Scott Jennings. I think his name on CNN. It does a really good job. They're really good job.

What's interesting to me is not that he is so much better at debating issues. It's that sometimes he brings up stuff and the other people, they're just clueless that anyone even thinks that way or some issue that they never even thought about. As a writer, I mean, I don't know how good a job I do, but I try to understand the other side's position and where they're coming from. I try to

frame that fairly and then I try to knock it down as best I can, you know, but I don't think the other side actually understands where the right's coming from. It's much easier just to say you're fascist and this and that, you know, and democracy is just a euphemism for whatever Democrats are thinking at the time. There's really no shared

you know, shared set of facts that we debate over anymore. It's just this like, yeah. So, yeah. People read, watch, listen to different media and they isolate themselves on social media, you know, which made that less worse. So we were just a bifurcated country. Yeah. I mean, and social media, you know, it's, it's,

terrible in many ways, but also allows us, I mean, you remember when we grew up, we had three stations and they were gatekeepers and they told you whatever they felt like. The news was what four middle-aged white guys said it was at 6.30 p.m. every night.

And, you know, everyone talks glowingly about people like Walter Cronkite now, but I actually think he was, you know, quite often he would just lead the American people wherever he felt like, you know, I mean, he would. Everyone is biased. This idea that you can have unbiased reporters is ridiculous. What we need are people who present facts fairly and we need a diverse, you know, your bias because of your ideology, but also regionalism, you know, your faith. There's a million reasons, you know, that.

sort of, you see the world through a certain prism and there are reasons for that. And that's fine. That's why I think you need conservatives in newsrooms so they can report on other stuff. And so anyway, yeah, I think so in that sense, I think social media is good that we can debunk stories and we can, you know, debate things. Unfortunately, you know, so you live with the bad and, you know, and hopefully some of the good. But yeah, I'm not sure that it was much better in the past. We were lied to quite often, you know, and by three people. Yeah. So.

Well, I guess I'll go back a little bit. The left answers doubts about its Trump is Hitler conspiracy mongering by pointing to January 6th and election denial. But in the rise of Blue Anon, you know, you point out that denying elections was normalized by Democrats long before Trump claimed the 2020 election was stolen. Yeah. Listen, I think Trump...

had every right, for instance, in 2020 to go through legal channels to challenge an election. Part of being free and in a democracy and so on is that you get to have transparency and challenge results. I don't like the stuff he did and said. I think it's a little paranoid. I don't think he can lose, you know. But Al Gore couldn't really lose either, you know. And John Kerry in 2004, people forget now. You know, every major Democrat, you know, I laid out in the book, you

Cast doubt on Ohio's results. Every single one of them. In 2004, yeah. Yeah, in 2004. Yeah.

Which was the last time a Republican won the popular vote before this one. Yeah, right. And 2016, obviously, they did what they did. And even I note in my book, the New York Times, for instance, will give a hearing to any crazy conspiracy you have about an election if you're from the left. So they recently or last year ran a story from a guy who's in his 80s who claimed that Ronald Reagan stole the 80 election by making a deal with the Iranians not to release the hostages. Now,

This is not new. It's been around, but you can write about it. I don't care. But the guy offered no evidence. There was no proof. There was not a slip of paper. He said he had gone and made this deal. There was not an airline ticket. There was no, but the New York Times will give it a hearing.

They'll give a hearing to any kind of crazy conspiracy like that. And if the right did it, they would go bananas. But they do it all the time. So they are election deniers. And they didn't this time. It was a pretty emphatic win, I guess. And it was very difficult for them. I don't think, you know, they knew what to do. I also think they came with Hillary. I think it was a shock to most people that he won. But with

I think most people felt like it was not going in the right direction for them pretty early. Yeah, well, it was a tough year for them with having to defend Biden and basically lie about Biden, you know, Biden's ability to function. And

And when that, you know, when that reached a dead end, then they were stuck with Kamala. And now they're still debating that. But yeah, it was harder for them to deny this this time. But... And you made a great point about activism. Think about what they did by covering up Joe Biden's acuity decline and physical decline. And then when they couldn't gaslight us anymore, they just turned on a dime and did something else and got her, you know, into the, you know, they just backed her basically. Yeah.

That is not journalism. You know, the journalists I worked with who were older when I was young, you know, they were like commies basically, but they relished taking down the powerful. They didn't really care if they had a story. They were in the grand American tradition of being again the government. That's what reporters always were.

Yeah. But now so many in the press, because they have, you know, replaced activism, you know, replaced journalism with activism. They're part they're part of a state media at times, except when a Republican is in power. Yeah. I mean, think about that. And it's you know, people ask me, you know, is it changing because, you know,

Jeff Bezos didn't endorse. And it's a culture problem from the bottom up. It's not, you can't just fix this with a few owners. Think about the New York Times op-ed editor was fired because there was a rebellion with assistant editors and editorial page writers who rebelled against him because he had allowed someone who had a different opinion have a voice. The rebellion at the Washington Post was all about

you know, the paper not being an activist entity, you know, no one, the idea of it, the idea that your endorsement matters for president anyway, at this point in history is ridiculous. I think pretty much maybe lower races, judges, you know, whatever, maybe people take a peek to see what they're supposed to do. But the presidency, I think most people who read the Washington post have their minds made up on that one. Speaking is, you know, listen, it's,

The only people who care about unsigned editorials are the people who write unsigned editorials. Speaking of somebody who used to do that, it's an art form that I enjoyed, but the idea that it actually determined elections was always a myth, even when more newspapers published them.

Another key episode of modern conspiracy theorizing is the way the Black Lives Matter movement successfully peddled a big lie about police in the shootings of unarmed and innocent African Americans.

What made that work so well and how was it bound up with the effort to convince Americans not only that their country is irredeemably and systematically racist and justifying the takeover of American education by woke ideologues determined to foment racial division rather than heal it? How did that succeed so magnificently just as the Russian collusion one did?

I mean, the easiest answer to that is that people feel guilty, you know, and they want to do the right thing. But it is...

I think the most pernicious current of paranoia on the left is racial. The idea that there is a systemic effort, for instance, to stop people from voting. It's just simply untrue. It is easier to vote now than ever in the strictest state that exists. It is easier to vote now than it's ever been and probably anywhere in the world. They will mail you a ballot. All you have to do is fill it out and send it back.

minimal effort. So that, and I think the Georgia results show that, you know, that that was a myth calling it Jim Crow 2.0. That's disgusting. Right. And it's also paranoiac where the idea, like, you know, as we're talking about BLM is that, you know, white cops are out there hunting black males and that no one cares or that actually they want this to happen. The numbers don't

show that that's true. And when you think about BLM, many of the bedrock, you know, cases that made that movement explode had no racial component that we know of. Some of them were complete myths, like Michael Brown. But many of them had no... In Ferguson, Missouri, which was really the place where it began. Yeah. And on CNN, you know, hands up, don't shoot. They were, you know, putting their hands up and stuff, which is a complete mythology that never happened. Um...

So, you know, corporations participate, many Republicans participate because it's, you know, it feels good to be on the side of the oppressed and all of that. And victimhood, as I mentioned earlier, is a key, is a component to why people believe conspiracies. So what the left does, they run basically every institution in the country, but yet somehow they can convince large groups of people that they are still victims. So, you know, they've won so many cultural awards.

battles that they have to continue to come up with new ones, transgenderism, whatever, because they're running out of victims because there really aren't many victims in this country as far as groups go. Yeah, well, that is certainly true. And it's partly, you know, the long march of sort of the ideological left to take over American education, I think, is

in some ways, the most significant. And it's not just education because, you know, we spoke of the change in journalism. It's because the younger generation of journalists were indoctrinated in a lot of these divisive, toxic, you know, myths about race. And that's influenced everything they do, you know, in how they cover everything. I was reading a piece on music, nothing to do with politics at all. And in the middle of it,

The writer says, you know, mentions the Israeli genocide that's getting worse and worse. And, you know, we haven't spoken about that, but there's, you know, the current of anti-Semitic paranoia is always a feature of almost any kind of conspiratorial movement, right, left, it doesn't really matter. But on the left, it's been mainstreamed in higher education. It's been mainstreamed in Congress to some extent.

On the right, they exist, you know, and a lot of people listen to some of these podcasts where people are anti-Semitic, but they're still not policymakers. They're still somewhat on the fringe. I've never, you know, I don't think as we know, Donald Trump isn't scared to be pro-Israel because he might make someone mad about it. So there is a difference, I think. Yeah. Well, in your book that you anticipated my next question, which was in your book,

you devote a considerable amount of space to the way anti-Semitism and obsessive demonizing of Jews in Israel are as essential to contemporary conspiracy theories as they were to those in the past. And I guess the question is, why has the political left embraced anti-Semitism at a time when the political right has, with some exceptions and people like Candace Owens, and I would argue Tucker Carlson, largely rejected it?

Well, we all know that anti-Semitism has been a big part of the left from the beginning. Karl Marx was an anti-Semite despite his, you know, coming from rabbinic tradition and all that.

But I think within progressivism, there's this idea that a few shady people behind in the shadows are controlling the whole entire economy. It's a zero-sum view of the world. AOC has this view.

uh, that, you know, the only reason you're poor is because someone else is getting rich off you, which is not how it works. Yeah. Unfortunately, at the Met Gala. Exactly. Exactly. Just, just ridiculous. Yeah. But, um,

Unfortunately, a lot of this zero something I think is cropped up in economic populism on the right as well, though I'm not saying those people, you know, I'm not saying like J.D. Vance is anti-Semitic at all. I don't think he is. But he also, you know, the robber barons of Wall Street are taking it. So this creates and is driven by envy and paranoia about other people. Now, of course, I'm not saying every corporation, just like I'm not saying there aren't any racists in the world. I'm not saying that, you know, every corporation acts.

in the right way or doesn't ever rip anyone off or doesn't ever do anything wrong. Of course they do. But the idea that people are operating in the shadows in groups to, you know, even lobbyists, I'm seeing lobbyists don't exist. I'm not saying they don't have some say, but the idea that

you have seed oil in your fries because of some conspiracy like RFK seems to think, and because people want to make you sick. That's paranoiac thinking. I know my book's not about the right, but I think it's creeping in there as well to some extent. Yeah. Yeah. Well, to drill down a bit more on anti-Semitism and the myths about Israel committing genocide, which is

As you say, it pops up everywhere. And certainly the arts, we could do a whole program about how the arts have been sort of gone woke and every major arts company, and certainly in the fine arts, has its own woke commissar. But in some ways, this was supposed to be fixed.

by Holocaust education, you know, that anti-Semitism, you know, and why do you think the enormous effort to spread knowledge about the Holocaust failed to effectively combat not only Holocaust denial, but also to counter conspiratorial thinking about Israel and the Jews today? It's, I'm sure you've probably seen this, but there is considerable evidence that the more you teach people about Holocaust, the Holocaust now, the more

likely they are to say it didn't happen. You know, maybe they can't wrap their minds around it. Maybe they don't care. Maybe they don't like being like feeling guilty or they don't like seeing it. And they they lash out in that way. I think it's important to remember that we do have a

because of social media, we have a bunch of people, probably mostly young males who like to upset other people, you know, so they like to go on there and say things, anti-Semitic things, racist things, whatever, because it upsets people. They get a thrill out of it. So sometimes I wonder how many people, you know, are, are, are really anti-Semitic and how many people are just out there joyriding, you know, or, or whatever. I don't know the answer to that. I,

I think a lot of what the problem is are universities. These people are historically illiterate, especially on that topic. They don't know anything about it. I've never seen so many people chime in about an issue they know so little about as Israel. They don't, I don't know. I also think a lot of this stuff becomes trendy. So I see a lot of young people have the little Palestinian flag in their Twitter account.

Do they really understand or know anything about what's going on? I don't think so. They see a brown person being, in their mind, being oppressed by a white colonialist and they jump into that issue. So when you do polling, most people are still pro-Israel. I think any mature person is going to be anti-terrorist and pro-Western civilization and pro-Israel.

You know, I'm sorry that the Democratic Party has gone in a different direction. I think the Jewish vote shifting pretty dramatically. And I have to say, I was completely surprised by that because I've heard it a million times and it never actually happened. But I think the Democrats have gone too far. And one of the problems, and you didn't ask me about this, but it's the Jewish leadership. In all American Jewish leadership, virtually, by the way, but especially in Congress, you had Chuck Schumer and people like this. They...

They're willing to look the other way because their religion is politics and they don't care that there are anti-Semites in their midst. They don't do anything about it and they don't say anything about it. So they deserve to lose as many Jewish votes as we possibly can pull away from them. Yeah, well, the failure of Jewish leadership is a constant theme on this podcast and often on JNS, certainly in my columns and elsewhere. So forgive me for not throwing it at you reflexively.

But I think, you know, you mentioned, you know, the Marxist, you know, problem, the Marxist origin of much of the anti-Israel propaganda and the way it has been normalized on the left. And to my mind, that is because of, you know, the critical race theory and intersectionality, which divides the world into two perpetually warring groups of victims and white oppressors and assumes, right?

that Israelis and Jews are white oppressors, even though that has nothing to do with actually the population of Israel, which by the definition of left, the majority of Israeli Jews are actually people of color because they trace their origins to the Middle East or North Africa. But it is something that has been normalized on the left. And quite frankly, it's not just even the SWAT anymore. You know, the few, you know, congressional leftists

And the squad has grown in numbers since its debut in 2018. But the intersectional sort of activist core of the Democratic Party has shown, you know, and indeed, you know, some of the attacks on Kamala Harris was that she wasn't anti-Israel enough.

And Biden, too, who they call Genocide Joe, despite the fact that he's been very ambiguous about his support for Israel. Its roots in the political left are deep and they're far more mainstream than the, you know, as I'm willing to acknowledge them, the stray right winger and, you know, Candace Owens, you

It's just made it more, not only become normalized, but it has made it more mainstream to believe in anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, such as the ones that are believed about what is happening right now in Gaza and in the battle with Hezbollah and Hamas.

Yeah. And you make a great point about how they take this identitarian racial view of the world and impose it on a place where it's not even happening. And I give you the perfect example of that is Ta-Nehisi Coates' book, his garbage book about Israel, where, you know, he essentially...

He literally does that. He speaks about, you know, he even talks, makes comparisons between slave owners and settlers, which, you know, are just Jews living in their historic homeland and so on. So it's just obviously a trendy thing to do. And he wrote an entire book.

Not his whole book, but a big part of his book is about Israel. And he knows nothing about it. But he can get away with this. Probably was a runaway bestseller. I don't know how many he sold. And people treat him with reverence when he is... They got a rollout as if it would be a bestseller. Yeah, I don't know if it was in the end. Yeah, but he'd be, you know, my kid went to school. She had to read a Ta-Nehisi Coates book, right? And he's a racist, A. His heroes that he mentioned in the book were all...

anti-Semites, you know, from Angela Davis on. And, you know, he is an anti-Semite and he's celebrated and it's fine, you know, because, you know, because I think because of the color of his skin. Yeah, well, it's a terrible book, but it's actually very, and an ignorant book, a book where...

you know, about, in part, a large part about the Middle East, published a year after October 7th that never mentions October 7th, that never mentions terrorism, never mentions the word Hamas. So in that sense, it's actually very insightful because it tells us exactly how the political left and the fashionable political left thinks. Completely rationalizes the violence. He doesn't mention October 7th and doesn't mention Hamas. And the only time he mentions terrorism is to describe Hamas

early Zionists, by doing all that, he's rationalizing and justifying what Hamas has done. He doesn't understand anything about the situation. He didn't even bother speaking to an Israeli about anything. His entire experience of the region is 10 days in quote unquote Palestine. Yeah. On a literary cultural retreat with Palestinian writers mostly. So

On the other side, I think there's a different dynamic going on, which has been around a while with Buchanan and others, is that the paleocon types think that Israel and Jews in extension have too much influence over American foreign policy.

It is easy for them to constantly blame that influence on any war we're in, especially anything to do with the Middle East, when it is far more complicated than that. I am positive that Bibi would have rather have gone after Iran than Iraq, for instance, and stuff like that. Certainly, that's what Ariel Sharon told George W. Bush, but we didn't want to hear it at the time. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but they will blame, they will blame the Amen lobby and all of, you know, whatever they called it during the Bush years. So, you know, there's, there's that threat. And then that grows into something, you know, more nefarious, especially with someone like Candace Owens, who, let's face it, is an ignoramus as well. I mean, she knows nothing. She thought that Muslims couldn't leave the Muslim quarter in Jerusalem. She doesn't know anything. So, yeah.

It's sad that people listen to them, but this, I guess we can take it back to the beginning, has something to do with a lack of trust. People can't turn to her because they don't know where else, you know, it's a place to go and they don't trust the normal people, you know, the people who normally would give them facts about the Middle East to present them fairly or not to just make them up. Yeah, and I think it's also a lack of leadership on the political left from, you know, the same people. You

You rightly mentioned Pat Buchanan and sort of the anti-Semitic stuff that he tried to mainstream in the early 90s around the time of the first Gulf War. But to counter him was William Buckley, who in the 1960s kicked the lunatics of the John Birch Society out of the political right.

He was a gatekeeper, but a gatekeeper for good. And he did the same thing when he wrote his book in the early 90s about anti-Semitism, calling out Buchanan and Joe Sovrin, who were sort of colleagues of his, people he knew. But there's been no similar attack on the political left from a sort of someone, assuming that there was someone of comparable stature on the left,

to, you know, route the anti-Semitic lunatics from, you know, from liberalism. In fact, liberalism has proved itself to be defenseless against them. They actually, many Jewish, so-called Jewish groups are part of it. You know, they've distorted what Judaism means. They've molded these quacky, you know, factions, I guess you'd call them, you know, that claim Judaism but have nothing to do with Judaism really. Yeah.

you know, as far as anything having to do with, with, with the faith or with the ethnicity or the history of Judaism, they've, you know, they've just concocted these organizations that participate or justify the antisemitism, which, uh,

Which is horrifying in a way. And that's why I was kind of felt happy when I saw the numbers were after the election that all of American jury hasn't been lost in a way. Not because they voted Republican, but because they said, no, we've had enough of this from the Democrats and the left. I don't know how they get over it because it's so integral, these facts.

These factions are such a big Democrats have to cobble together all these factions to win an election. They can't lose any of them, really. And the progressive parts of their party need to be patted on the head and give you know, I don't know how they're going to move forward. But anyway, you're right with with Buchanan and folks like I've met Pat Buchanan. I, you know, I don't.

he's probably not an anti-Semite. Like he cares that you're Jewish. He's probably very nice to anyone he met, you know, but it's more like a political anti-Semitism, I guess I'd call it. Whereas on the left you have, you know, there's a reason that all these attacks on Jewish people happen in Brooklyn and in, in blue, you know, areas and in colleges, like this is much more in a way I'm not forget. Yeah. I'm not saying it's okay. What, what, what paleo cons do, but I think that this is,

more dangerous in a way, more violent, potentially more violent. And when you see the far left get together with Islamists, basically, that becomes really a dangerous thing. And it's not new either, as you know. Even in Entebbe, you had communist Germans participating. The communists have always sort of

you know, seen the third, this third world struggle against colonialism and all that as part, part of what, you know, they're fighting against. So it just makes natural sense that those two get together. The problem is, you know, they're getting together at Harvard and Columbia and, and,

places that we're supposed to produce our best, and they're producing a bunch of, you know, just violent dimwits, basically, and not everyone, but a lot of them. Yeah, well, I would be remiss without, you know, touching on one of the, you know, sort of important themes in your book, because perhaps one of the most far-reaching conspiracy theories of the 21st century is the widespread belief that the planet is melting and that global warming will make us extinct.

At some point soon, though, as you point out, the dates do vary.

Why are so many of us ready to play chicken little and believe the world is coming to an end, even to the point of stifling any debate about the issue and labeling anyone who questions it or asks questions as anti-science and the equivalent of those who think the earth is flat? And I would say, again, to sort of drill down deeper, have ideas about the evils of capitalism turned a scientific debate into one

that is really a religious one about a sinful mankind being punished, much like the Noah story in the first book of the Bible.

I mean, I think that's it right there. You saw, I think Rush Limbaugh even talked about this many years ago. It has all the hallmarks of a religion, the apocalypse, everything, you know, sinning. But instead of a God, instead of, you know, sort of the God of the Tanakh, of the Bible, of Judaism and Christianity, it's Mother Nature punishing, you know, sinful mankind. Yeah, it's almost like a regression, you know,

into into animist or like idolatry or something but anyway i i i do think that many people believe it because it takes the place of of faith i mean the way they talk about it but like everything else all like all the other things we talked about it's the same mechanisms are in place it's easier to say that you're a you know knuckle-dragging troglodyte and not have to debate

you know, what are we really doing here? Are we really going to shut down capitalism? You know, it's easier to do that. And they've been doing that for many years. The problem is that, you know,

Boy cried wolf stuff. I mean, they've been warning and warning and things don't get worse because it is a lot, at least this is my opinion, easier to acclimate to a little different weather and deal with it through technology than shut down all of modernity and start again in some different way. As the Green New Deal would actually have us do. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean...

But then, like with everything else, there are the credulous people and there are the cynical people. And the cynical people who do this, and maybe some of them are true believers, actually, they are willing to try to scare people into action because they're socialists, essentially. And they want to, I mean, if you control carbon dioxide, you control the entire economy. And that's what they want to do, right?

So this isn't just another way for them to have the state tell you how to live your life. And do-gooders like throughout history want the state to tell you how to live your life. It's just, I think, you know, everyone, you know, again, like all the other stuff we talked about, higher education, scientists participate, you know, everyone participates in trying to scare you.

into acting a certain way, into believing something that isn't true. I wouldn't call it a conspiracy theory, but I do think it's a hoax. And I don't mean it in kind of the rough way that a lot of people say it. I'm not saying that the weather doesn't, you know, the climate hasn't changed at all. But I am saying that people realized initially that no one was acting on it. And the only way to get them to act was to say that their cities were going to be underwater. And, you know, when the cities don't go underwater, people ignore it.

Right. Al Gore's film, which as you note in your book, which was widely, you know, acclaimed, you know, won an Oscar like Michael Moore, you know, made a lot of claims that have already been proven untrue, but nobody cares. Yeah, and there's no big story about how Al Gore was wrong about everything, you know. There's no big story now about how we never should have trusted the whole climate, you know, alarmist, you know,

12 years until Armageddon or whatever. Yeah. And then you have, you know, the Greta Thunbergs and others who are like, she's the Joan of Arc, you know, like she, you know, it's a real, almost a religious, they had her on the cover of Time Magazine, you know, and she knows nothing and about the world or any, or science or anything. And I,

This is a perfect example. She's on the, you know, pro-Hamas, you know. Well, that was my next question because, and she's, because she is anti-democratic. She's an authoritarian, but she illustrates what you, you know, what you talk about in your book, the way so many of these conspiracy theories blend together and the way that leftist activists migrate between the causes and, you

You know, when it comes to Greta Thunberg, who seems to have given up ranting about taking us back to the pre-industrial age lately in favor of promoting other conspiracy theories about the Jews committing genocide and Israel being an apartheid state. Well, what was it? I think it was BLM. One of the BLM groups, you know, put out a...

of a, you know, I think it was October 8th, you know, put out, you know, some kind of statement, you know. The hand gliders. Yeah, the hand gliders. The murderers and rapists and kidnappers of Hamas. Right. And it just shows you what...

incredible hypocrites they are that they can justify sexual torture and rape and killing of children, you know, in a cause that they believe in. And let's be honest, you know, the left has been far more... It's another thing. I'm not even sure it's in the book. I hadn't thought of it. But

Constantly, they always are depicting the right wing as a potential terrorist and it happens. But the left has been far more violent in American history, going back to the anarchists of the early century, but also in the 70s, there were terrorist attacks, you know, all kinds of terrorism going on from left wing groups, not right wing groups.

And think about what BLM, you know, the BLM rights. Think about the pro-Hamas riots, you know, and things that they did. And think about the 60s. You know, the left has always been more violent than the right in American politics. Yeah, well, they focus on Charlottesville, which was horrible, a neo-Nazi rally. But we've had thousands of Charlottesvilles since October 7th, and nobody on the political left or at the New York Times...

You know, it seems to care about that. No. I mean, kids dressed cosplaying as Hamas terrorists while running around with Hezbollah flags. I don't even know. You know, people mock them, you know, queers for Gaza or whatever. But, you know, you can mock them because it is dumb in a way. But it's also a natural alliance, like I mentioned. You know, I mean, they have the same enemies, Western society, you know, Judeo-Christian beliefs, traditional faiths.

traditional ideas about how we, you know, have family and all that. So-- And our system. So, I think it's-- Yeah. It is intersectionality illustrated. That's right. Exactly. Intersectionality. Yeah. So-- Now, you close your book with a section imploring conservatives to rise above the lunacy that now prevails largely on the left.

But while the mainstream media depicts the effort by Trump and the GOP to combat the administrative state and the way it acts, I would argue, as an unelected fourth branch of government that obstructs Republican presidents as a conspiracy theory, isn't the deep state something that, as the Russia collusion hoax showed, very real? Where do you draw the line between justified distrust of

dishonest and even corrupt government agencies and exaggerations that are as destructive to the American Republic as what we've seen coming from the left. Will you let me get away with saying, you know, when you see it like pornography? Okay. Well, if that's your answer, I guess... Well, I mean...

I very often, as I mentioned at the end of the book, you know, they are the ones who gaslight you. They tell you what you believe is a conspiracy theory. It goes back to 1998 when Hillary Clinton sat down on The Today Show and said there was a vast right conspiracy against her husband when, you know, when when the Monica Lewinsky thing broke up.

So that happens quite often. And I think it's good to be skeptical. I think it's good to call out Democrats who claim that, you know, everything you want to do that takes us back to a more legitimate American republic is some sort of act against democracy. I note this in my book as well. One of the things they do in their gaslighting efforts is to pretend that normal things are not, you know, are weird or authoritarian, a tax cut, rolling back, what was it called?

Internet, I forgot what it's called. Anyway, so internet neutrality. So whatever you do, they act like it's the end of the world and they pretend there's something weird about it. Having originalists on the court, what do they do? They create these conspiracies around them.

to pretend that Clarence Thomas is being controlled by some billionaire. Now, he's never deviated from his judicial philosophy for himself or for anyone else. Anyway, so it's hard to know when. I think skepticism is good. I think, you know, all of that's good. But

At some point, sometimes you have to say we're moving on. Did Trump lose the election or birtherism or whatever the right believes? I think it's important to ask questions and then move on when you've gotten an answer. It's very easy to simply dismiss stuff that is inconvenient or doesn't

comport with your worldview just because it's there. And we tend to do that more and more. And like we were talking about sexual assault charges, for instance, it's very easy or whatever. It's very easy to just dismiss them now and pretend like no Republican could ever do anything wrong simply because Brett Kavanaugh happened or the Russia collusion hoax happened. So

I guess I'm just imploring people. I think in the end, people who vote, for instance, want... I think, for instance, this election was the normie election. I don't think... Right. The revenge of the normies. Yeah. I don't think Trump is very ideological. I wouldn't even call him really a Republican in any kind of traditional sense. It's kind of normal. Yeah.

You tell someone, listen, I'm going to respect human beings and treat them with respect, but a boy can't be a girl. It just doesn't happen. I think you just have to be reality-based and grounded in the long run to win these political battles. You see now the left, no one listened to them about this Hitler stuff. Every minority group went towards Trump from last time. She couldn't turn one county around in the whole country or whatever. So

I think if you're grounded in reality, you can do better in the long run because at some point, boy cried wolf happens and that's it. So no one listened to the media this time. No one believed them. No one trusts them. And a lot of that has to do with their conspiracy theories and their paranoia and their hyperbole and their hysteria. So I don't know. I'm just imploring the right not to go down that

path. I don't know. I don't think anyone's listening to me, but we'll see. Well, I'm listening to you. And I think the people who are listening and watching to this podcast, I think that's a great way of rounding it up. Don't believe the conspiracy theorists.

Use your common sense. Yeah, use your common sense. David, thanks so much for joining us today. We often have authors on this show discussing books that they've written, but I can think of few that are as timely and necessary as The Rise of Blue Anon, which I hope our viewers and listeners will read. You can also follow David on X at David Arsani and read his work in The Washington Examiner and other publications.

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