"Foundations: Truth"

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Meghan Markle is speaking out in the new promo for her in Prince Harry's Oprah Winfrey interview.
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In the latest teaser for Sunday night's 90-minute special, the Duchess of Sussex didn't hold back when discussing the importance of speaking her truth.
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Oprah asked Megan how she felt about having the Palace's eyes on her as she gets candid.
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And she had this to say.
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Did you catch that?
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Let me let me play it again, one more time.
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And this time, listen for the word your.
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How do you feel about the palace hearing you speak your truth today?
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I don't know how they could expect that after all of this time we would still just be silent.
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There, did you catch it that time?
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Your truth.
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Not the truth, your truth.
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And Megan just rolls right past it, doesn't flinch, doesn't go, wait, what do you mean my truth?
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As opposed to whose?
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She just answers.
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Like Oprah asked her what she had for breakfast.
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And I don't blame her.
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By 2021, that phrase had been normalized for so long that nobody on that couch and nobody watching thought to notice, including me.
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I watched that interview when it aired.
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I caught a lot of things in that interview.
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I did not catch this.
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That's where we're starting today.
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Not with a lie, with a two-word swap.
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Truth got a pronoun attached to it.
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And the moment it did, it stopped being truth and became something else: a possession, a vibe, a personal accessory that matches your outfit, your truth, my truth, his truth, hers.
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And once everybody's got their own truth, guess what we don't have anymore?
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Now, before we go any further, I need to tell you what this episode actually is.
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Because this isn't my usual long form early week Monday show, in this case, Tuesday.
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This isn't a trap check.
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This isn't me pulling on some thread in the news cycle.
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This is, and I'm gonna use a word I never used before on this show, this is a foundation.
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A foundational episode.
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Meaning, if you get this one, you'll see every other trap I've ever covered on this show for what it really is.
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Every outrage supply chain, every editorial capture story, every identity laundering operation, every flood the zone moment.
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They all run on the same underlying move, and we're gonna name the move today.
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So this one's a little longer, this one's a little more dense.
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This one's gonna ask more of you than usual.
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I'd tell you to grab a coffee, but honestly, you're gonna want something stronger by the end, maybe a little Irish.
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And I'm gonna call this Foundation One, because I suspect there's gonna be more.
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There are three or four concepts running underneath everything on the show.
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Things I keep gesturing at and never fully sit down to name.
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Today we're gonna sit down with the biggest one, the one that makes all others possible.
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Truth.
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What it is, what it isn't, what happened to it, who did it, and most importantly, how to tell when somebody is running the swap on you in real time.
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Let's go.
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Okay, let's actually dig in.
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January 7th, 2018, the Golden Globe Awards, Beverly Hilton, Oprah Winfrey is receiving the Cecil B.
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DeMille Award, Lifetime Achievement, the highest honor the Hollywood Foreign Press Association gives out.
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First black woman to ever receive it.
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Room full of the most powerful people in American entertainment.
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Cameras are live, viewership is in the tens of millions.
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She gives the speech of her career, and in the middle of it, she does something I want you to watch very, very closely.
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She uses the word truth twice, back to back, 40 seconds apart, and she means two completely different things by it, and nobody in that room notices.
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The applause is the same for both.
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The camera doesn't cut.
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The coverage the next morning doesn't flag it.
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Nobody says, wait, what are we talking about?
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So here's the first clip.
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I'd like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, because we all know that the press is under siege these days.
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But we also know that it is the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and to injustice.
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Did you catch it?
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She's praising the press.
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She's saying the thing that saves us from tyrants and corruption and secrets and lies is the press's, and I'm quoting her exactly here, insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth.
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The absolute truth.
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Singular, out there, discoverable, not hers, not yours, not mine, just truth.
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The kind that exists, whether anybody's feeling it or not, the kind that journalists at their best go dig up, even when it's inconvenient.
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That's the old conception.
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That's the one Americans inherited from the Enlightenment, from the founders, from centuries of Western thought stretching back further than that.
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Truth is the thing you find, not the thing you bring.
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Okay, got it?
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Good.
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Now listen to what comes out of her mouth just about 40 seconds later.
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I want to say that I value the press more than ever before as we try to navigate these complicated times.
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Which brings me to this.
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What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.
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Speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.
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Same speech, same microphone, same woman.
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40 seconds.
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And the word truth just did a complete 180.
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It went from singular, the absolute truth, which is out there, waiting to be uncovered, to possessive, your truth, my truth, the truth that lives inside you, that nobody else can access, that becomes real the moment that you speak it out loud.
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And nobody flinched.
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Nobody stopped her and said, Wait, Oprah, which one is it?
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Is truth the thing we dig up or the thing we generate?
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Nobody in the press the next morning said, Notice that she used two completely incompatible concepts of truth within the same minute?
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The room just applauded both times, the same way.
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Because by January 2018, at the elite level of American culture, the two had become interchangeable.
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You could use either one.
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You could use both in the same breath.
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It didn't matter.
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They were just words, noise that sounded nice.
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The distinction had been eroded to the point that even the highest paid communicator in American media could swap between both of them without friction.
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That's the swap.
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That's the whole move.
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And I want to be clear about something.
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This didn't start in 2018.
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2018 is where it got canonized at a Golden Globe podium.
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But the groundwork had been laid for decades, and Oprah herself was the primary general contractor.
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Go back to the eighties and nineties.
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Oprah builds the biggest daytime talk show on television, and the entire format of the show, episode after episode, year after year, is built around tell your story, tell your truth, speak your truth, own your truth.
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Dr.
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Phil, The Secret, Eckhart Toll, Ayanla Van Zant, the whole stable, book deals, magazine covers, seminar circuits, all of it running on the same underlying message.
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The thing that will heal you, empower you, save you is your relationship with your own inner truth.
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Not the truth, but yours.
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Now I'm not here to dunk on Oprah.
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This is important.
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There's something genuinely valuable in parts of what she's doing.
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Telling someone who's been abused, who's been silenced, who's been told their experience didn't matter, telling that person your experience is real, your memory is valid, your story has weight, that's not a crazy thing to say.
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That's not nothing.
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That's an important corrective to a culture that had, in lots of cases, dismissed people's experiences wholesale.
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But and here's where the trap gets set.
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When you take your experience is real, which is narrow, defensible, psychologically healthy claim, and you stretch it into your truth is truth, which is a completely different and much broader metaphysical claim, you've done something the listener almost never notices.
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You've smuggled a cargo container through customs by declaring it as a paper bag.
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The valuable thing gets stretched into a dangerous thing using the same words, and nobody stops to check the paperwork.
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Because here's what your truth actually does once it's fully installed.
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Truth stops being a thing you discover.
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It becomes a thing you possess.
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And once it's a possession, like a car or a wedding ring or family heirloom, it can't be wrong.
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It can only be respected or disrespected.
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Think about what that does to a conversation.
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If I tell you the sky is green, we can have a conversation.
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You can point at the sky, we can walk outside together, we can look at a color wheel.
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One of us is wrong and we can figure out which one.
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That's how truth used to work.
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But if I tell you my truth is that the sky is green, now we're not having a conversation about the sky.
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We're having a conversation about me.
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And if you push back, you're not correcting a factual error, you're attacking my identity, you're disrespecting my truth, you're invalidating me, and suddenly you're the aggressor just for pointing at the sky.
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That's the swap.
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That's the whole episode in one sentence.
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And once you see it, once you really see it, you're gonna start catching it everywhere on cable news, in your family group text, in corporate HR trainings, in church sometimes, in your own mouth, probably, because we've all been breathing this air for thirty years and none of us got out clean.
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So we've got the swap, we've named it, we've heard it on tape.
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Now here's the question that makes this whole episode interesting.
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If the swap was only happening on one side of the political aisle, this would be a much easier episode to make.
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I could just point at the Oprah Golden Globes Coastal Elite Therapeutic Industrial Complex and say, look at what they did.
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Half the country would nod, the other half would dismiss me, and Trap Think would be just another show coded for one team.
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But that's not what happened.
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Because at the exact same time the therapeutic left was installing your truth, somebody else in a completely different part of American culture, wearing completely different clothes, speaking to a completely different audience, was installing the same move in reverse.
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And we're gonna listen to her next.
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So somebody else.
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While Oprah is building the therapeutic empire, while Speak Your Truth is becoming the catechism of every morning show and every self-help book and every HR training from Santa Monica to Manhattan, something else is happening on the other side of American culture.
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And it's not happening in a Beverly Hills ballroom.
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It's happening in the basement of the American political press.
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January 22nd, 2017, meet the press.
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Chuck Todd is interviewing Kellyanne Conway.
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She's the senior counselor to the brand new Trump administration, which is at this point about 36 hours old.
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And the topic on the table is a fight about crowd sizes.
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Press Secretary Sean Spicer had the day before come out to the White House briefing room for the first time and given a statement about inauguration attendance that was, not to put too fine a point on it, demonstrably not true.
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Numbers didn't match, photos didn't match.
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It was a strange opening move for a new administration, and Chuck Todd is pressing Conway on why they'd picked that hill to die on.
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And then Kellyanne Conway says a phrase that nobody had ever said before on American television.
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Why the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood.
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Why did he do that?
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It undermines the credibility of the entire White House press opposite engaging.
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Don't be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck.
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What is it you're saying it's a falsehood, and they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.
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But the point really is Alternative Facts?
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Alternative facts for the five facts he uttered.
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The weekend he gave Zeke Miller for the five facts he uttered were just not true.
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Look, alternative facts are not facts, they're falsehoods.
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Alternative facts.
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And Chuck Todd, God bless him, he's doing his job here.
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Chuck Todd pushes back immediately.
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Alternative facts are not facts.
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They're falsehood, he says.
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He's not letting her slide it past him.
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In January 2017, a mainstream political journalist still had the reflex to say, no, that's not a thing.
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Facts are facts.
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You don't get to rebrand them.
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Hold on to that reflex because it's gonna erode.
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We're gonna watch it erode across this episode.
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But right here in January 2017, it was still alive.
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Now, here's what I want you to notice about what Conway just did.
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Structurally, it is the exact same move Oprah made.
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It's the adjective in front of the noun trick.
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The truth becomes your truth.
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The facts become alternative facts.
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And in both cases, the adjective does the same work.
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It empties the noun out.
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It takes a thing that used to have weight and turns it into a category with variants.
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You got your facts, I got my alternative facts.
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Let's each go consult the ones that feel right.
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Different team, different vocabulary, different cultural register entirely.
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Oprah's in an evening gown making people cry.
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Conway's in a power suit sparring with Chuck Todd.
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But the move is identical.
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Put a modifier in front of a load bearing noun.
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Watch the noun quietly empty out.
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Walk away before anyone notices what you just did.
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And if this were just one weird press appearance by one political operative, we could call it an outlier, a bad day at the office.
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Sometimes people say things on live TV that they shouldn't say when it doesn't mean much.
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But that's not what happened.
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Because about a year and a half later, the most powerful person on earth stands up in front of a crowd of veterans in Kansas City and does the same move, except he takes it one step further.
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July 24th, 2018, Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, Kansas City, Missouri.
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President Donald Trump is giving a speech that's on its face about trade policy.
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He's going on about the European Union.
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He's going on about China.
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He's talking about tariffs and trade deficits and how foreign countries have been, in his words, ripping us off for decades.
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And he's right about a lot of it.
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But in the middle of it, he says this.
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Amazing.
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But remember they have the biggest, biggest, strongest, lumbiest, and they're doing a number.
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Just stick with them.
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Don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.
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I mean, I'm a piece of an NBC today.
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NBC.
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Not just CNN.
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CNN's the worst.
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But missing a piece of an NBC.
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It was trouble.
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They were interviewing people.
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They probably go through 20, and then they pick the one that sounds like the worst.
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But they went through a group of people.
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In fact, I wanted to think I gotta do something about this Trump.
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And that piece was done by the lobbyists, somebody the people that they hired.
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It was a total setup.
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This country is doing better than it's ever done before economically.
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This is the time to take them off, to rip them off of we have to do them.
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You know, other countries have tamps on them.
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So when I say, well, I'm gonna put 10 months on them, pay them off some screaming, he's using tumor.
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China charges us when we make a comma 25% tariff.
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We charge them two and a half percent.
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Other than that, it's a fair deal.
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Okay, similar things with other countries like the European Union.
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They're big abusers, but it's all working out.
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And just remember what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening.
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Okay, that's a long clip, and I don't know there's a lot happening in there, so let me walk you through it.
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First thing you heard, don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.
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And that's an old standard from Trump.
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We've all heard it a thousand times.
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It's been running since 2015.
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Media criticism.
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Tell your audience not to trust the other guys.
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Every politician does some version of it, it's not new.
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Then there's a whole tangent in the middle about the European Union and German cars and Mercedes and BMW.
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I'm not going to pretend that that was load bearing for the argument.
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That was just Trump being Trump, riffing with the crowd, getting the chant going, working the room.
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It's the texture of the speech.
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You kind of have to sit through it to feel how the next part lands, because then, right at the end, right when he's wrapping up the trade riff, he says, just remember, what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening.
00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:10.559
That sentence, that one is different.
00:18:10.880 --> 00:18:13.759
Don't believe the fake news is media criticism.
00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:19.599
It's a claim about journalists that they're lying, that they're biased, that they have an agenda.
00:18:19.839 --> 00:18:21.119
You can agree or disagree.
00:18:21.279 --> 00:18:22.400
I kind of agree.
00:18:22.640 --> 00:18:24.640
But it's a claim about a group of people.
00:18:25.200 --> 00:18:28.319
What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening.
00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:30.160
That's not media criticism.
00:18:30.319 --> 00:18:33.359
That's an instruction to distrust your own senses.
00:18:33.839 --> 00:18:36.319
The claim isn't that journalists are wrong.
00:18:36.559 --> 00:18:43.519
The claim is that reality itself, as it's reaching you through any channel, what you're seeing, what you're reading, isn't real.
00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:45.279
The signal is corrupt.
00:18:45.519 --> 00:18:49.359
The only reliable source of information is the man standing at the podium.
00:18:49.920 --> 00:18:51.119
That's an escalation.
00:18:51.279 --> 00:18:53.599
That's a different move than the media criticism.
00:18:53.920 --> 00:18:55.039
That's metaphysics.
00:18:55.759 --> 00:19:01.359
And I want to put this next to the Oprah clip for a second, because I think this is the beat the whole episode turns on.
00:19:02.079 --> 00:19:05.519
Oprah inflated the self up to the level of truth.
00:19:05.759 --> 00:19:07.200
Your truth is truth.
00:19:07.359 --> 00:19:10.000
What you feel is as real as anything out there.
00:19:10.240 --> 00:19:12.400
The internal becomes the external.
00:19:12.720 --> 00:19:16.160
You expanded, become the measure of what's real.
00:19:16.880 --> 00:19:21.440
Trump deflated external reality down below the level of the self.
00:19:21.680 --> 00:19:23.279
What you're seeing isn't happening.
00:19:23.440 --> 00:19:27.039
The external world is corrupt, unreliable, manipulated.
00:19:27.279 --> 00:19:29.440
Trust the man, not your eyes.
00:19:29.599 --> 00:19:31.599
The external becomes nothing.
00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:35.759
You, diminished, can only be saved by the authority in front of you.
00:19:36.559 --> 00:19:39.119
Opposite directions, same destination.
00:19:39.440 --> 00:19:46.240
In both cases, the external reference point, the shared world that exists, whether or not you're looking at it, gets dissolved.
00:19:46.400 --> 00:19:53.680
And once it's dissolved, you've got nothing left to measure anything against except whatever's being beamed into your chest at any given moment.
00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:57.359
Your feelings, his words, your truth, his frame.
00:19:58.400 --> 00:20:07.920
And I want to sit with this for a second, because I think a lot of people, a lot of people who consider themselves politically aware, who pride themselves on not being fooled, stop right there.
00:20:08.559 --> 00:20:11.200
They see one side do it and not the other.
00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:16.160
The person who caught your truth missed what you're seeing isn't happening.
00:20:16.400 --> 00:20:18.640
The person who caught Trump missed Oprah.
00:20:19.039 --> 00:20:25.599
And both of those people walk around feeling clear-eyed and informed, and both of them have missed half of what's going on.
00:20:25.920 --> 00:20:33.759
Because here's the actual question the one that makes this episode interesting, and the one that nobody in the mainstream media will sit with for more than 30 seconds.
00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:37.920
Why did both sides converge on the same move at the same time?
00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:39.680
Because that's what happened.
00:20:39.920 --> 00:20:52.400
Between roughly 2015 and 2020, the therapeutic left and the populist right, who agree on almost nothing, independently adopted and normalized moves that do the same structural work.
00:20:52.640 --> 00:21:01.680
They dissolved the external reference point from opposite directions, using completely different vocabularies, preaching to completely different audiences.
00:21:01.839 --> 00:21:10.960
And the thing that they ended up with, functionally, mechanically, in terms of what it does to a listener's ability to check claims against reality, was identical.
00:21:11.119 --> 00:21:14.960
That's not a coincidence, that's a pattern, and patterns have causes.
00:21:15.279 --> 00:21:26.960
Which brings us to the guy who, and I can't stress this enough, named the strategy out loud on camera years ago, and nobody took him seriously at the time because they thought he was just talking.
00:21:27.200 --> 00:21:28.799
But let's listen to him.
00:21:31.119 --> 00:21:42.559
His name is Steve Bannon, and before anybody listening tunes me out because of who that name belongs to, stay with me for 30 seconds, because I'm not here to tell you whether Steve Bannon is a good guy or a bad guy.
00:21:42.720 --> 00:21:45.119
I'm not here to litigate his politics.
00:21:45.279 --> 00:21:47.440
I'm not here to defend him or attack him.
00:21:47.599 --> 00:21:52.559
I'm gonna treat him for the purposes of this episode like a witness at the scene of a crime.
00:21:52.799 --> 00:21:59.680
What I care about is what he saw, what he did, and most importantly, what he said about what he did on camera years after.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:03.200
After the fact, when he had no reason to lie about it.
00:22:03.519 --> 00:22:05.519
Because here's what Bannon was.
00:22:05.759 --> 00:22:15.599
For the first seven months of the Trump administration, from January 2017 until roughly August, Steve Bannon was the chief strategist of the United States.
00:22:15.759 --> 00:22:17.680
He had an office in the West Wing.
00:22:17.839 --> 00:22:22.000
He was one of the two or three people closest to the president of the United States.
00:22:22.240 --> 00:22:28.400
He was, by nearly every account, the principal architect of Trump's first year media strategy.
00:22:28.799 --> 00:22:37.680
And in 2019, after he'd been pushed out of the White House, he sat down with PBS Frontline for a documentary called America's Great Divide.
00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:42.000
PBS Frontline, I want to emphasize this, is not a right-wing outlet.
00:22:42.079 --> 00:22:43.759
It's not OANN.
00:22:43.920 --> 00:22:45.119
It's not Breitbart.
00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:50.160
It's the flagship investigative documentary program of the American Public Television.
00:22:50.480 --> 00:22:53.440
Bannon sat with them voluntarily for hours.
00:22:53.680 --> 00:22:55.359
He wanted to explain himself.
00:22:55.519 --> 00:22:57.599
He wanted to get his side on the record.
00:22:57.839 --> 00:23:03.359
And somewhere in the middle of that interview, he tells the frontline filmmaker how he actually ran the job.
00:23:03.599 --> 00:23:05.920
I want you to listen for three things in this clip.
00:23:06.160 --> 00:23:10.960
First, his diagnosis of the American media, what he thinks is wrong with them.
00:23:11.200 --> 00:23:14.799
Second, his method for exploiting that diagnosis.
00:23:14.960 --> 00:23:20.000
And third, I want you to notice that he's not talking about what someone else should do.
00:23:20.240 --> 00:23:23.039
He's talking about what he did, past tense.
00:23:23.119 --> 00:23:24.079
This is not theory.
00:23:24.240 --> 00:23:25.440
This is operations.
00:23:26.079 --> 00:23:27.279
Okay, here we go.
00:23:27.759 --> 00:23:30.480
Number one is that the Democratic Party shattered.
00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:32.720
They don't know if they're coming or going, right?
00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:37.039
They got one group that's doing identity politics, another group that's a Clinton centrist.
00:23:37.519 --> 00:23:39.599
I said, we've broken them right now.
00:23:39.759 --> 00:23:40.880
They have no idea.
00:23:41.039 --> 00:23:43.119
They're going to have their own internal civil war, right?
00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:44.880
They'll keep them occupied for a while.
00:23:45.039 --> 00:23:48.319
So what we've got to do is just hit, hit, hit, and keep it.
00:23:48.400 --> 00:23:50.000
It's momentum, momentum, momentum.
00:23:50.880 --> 00:23:52.799
The opposition party is the media.
00:23:52.960 --> 00:23:58.559
And the media can only, because they're dumb and they're lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time.
00:23:58.720 --> 00:24:04.480
And the one thing they'll mainly focus on is either they do the horse race, or once the horse race, who's in's, who's out?
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:08.400
It's like the high school, who are the cool kids in the cafeteria, right?
00:24:08.640 --> 00:24:09.200
Because it's easy.
00:24:09.279 --> 00:24:11.440
It's the reason they do the horse race stuff all the time, right?
00:24:11.519 --> 00:24:14.960
And they won't do the basic, what are the core things that are going on in the country?
00:24:15.200 --> 00:24:17.839
I said, all we have to do is flood the zone.
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:22.880
Every day we hit them with three things, they'll bite on one and we'll get all of our stuff done.
00:24:23.039 --> 00:24:24.240
Bang, bang, bang.
00:24:24.400 --> 00:24:26.799
These guys will never, we'll never be able to recover.
00:24:26.880 --> 00:24:29.200
But we gotta start with muzzle velocity.
00:24:29.279 --> 00:24:32.720
So it's gotta start and it's gotta hammer muzzle velocity.
00:24:33.920 --> 00:24:35.279
Okay, let's break this down.
00:24:35.519 --> 00:24:36.480
Diagnosis.
00:24:36.720 --> 00:24:39.279
Bannon says the media is dumb and lazy.
00:24:39.440 --> 00:24:41.839
He says they can only focus on one thing at a time.
00:24:42.000 --> 00:24:43.920
He says they chase the horse race.
00:24:44.079 --> 00:24:48.319
Who's up, who's down, what's the drama, what are the cool kids in the cafeteria saying?
00:24:48.480 --> 00:24:50.240
Because it's easy and it sells.
00:24:50.480 --> 00:24:56.640
He says they won't do the real work, which would be covering the structural stuff that's actually going on.
00:24:56.880 --> 00:25:01.680
Now, whether you agree with that diagnosis or not, understand what it does for him.
00:25:01.839 --> 00:25:08.079
If the media can only focus on one thing at a time, then you can overwhelm them by giving them more than one thing.
00:25:08.240 --> 00:25:09.440
That's the whole insight.
00:25:09.599 --> 00:25:12.559
The attention bottleneck is the vulnerability.
00:25:12.880 --> 00:25:13.680
Method.
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:15.839
Every day we hit them with three things.
00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:17.039
They'll bite on one.
00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:18.079
We'll get our stuff done.
00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:19.200
Bang, bang, bang.
00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:20.799
That's flood the zone.
00:25:21.039 --> 00:25:29.680
Bannon elsewhere in the same interview uses another phrase, muzzle velocity, meaning move fast enough that the debunking never catches up to the next story.
00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:34.960
By the time the New York Times has written a corrective, you're already three news cycles down the road.
00:25:35.200 --> 00:25:37.279
The fact check comes out on day four.
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:39.599
Nobody reads day four fact checks.
00:25:39.759 --> 00:25:41.599
The damage was done on day one.
00:25:41.839 --> 00:25:51.440
And listen, I want you to sit with what this actually is, because a lot of people, when they hear flood the zone described this way, they nod along and think, yeah, that's what politicians do.
00:25:51.519 --> 00:25:52.720
They spin, they distract.
00:25:52.799 --> 00:25:53.680
That's nothing new.
00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:54.960
No, stop.
00:25:55.279 --> 00:25:56.400
This is not spin.
00:25:56.640 --> 00:26:00.000
Spin is when you put the best face on bad news.
00:26:00.240 --> 00:26:02.640
What Bannon is describing is different.
00:26:02.799 --> 00:26:06.960
He's describing a strategy that exploits your attention architecture.
00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:09.200
He's not trying to convince you of anything.
00:26:09.279 --> 00:26:10.960
He's trying to exhaust you.
00:26:11.119 --> 00:26:13.039
The goal isn't to win the argument.
00:26:13.279 --> 00:26:16.480
The goal is to make the argument itself impossible.
00:26:16.799 --> 00:26:20.400
Because here's what happens when you flood the zone with three things a day.
00:26:20.640 --> 00:26:24.079
The listener, the citizen, you start to disengage.
00:26:24.319 --> 00:26:30.880
You can't follow it all, you can't check it all, and at some point you throw up your hands and say, everybody's lying, I don't know what to believe.
00:26:31.119 --> 00:26:34.480
And that, right there, is when the strategy has won.
00:26:34.720 --> 00:26:38.319
Because once you've decided everyone's lying, you've stopped checking.
00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:42.799
And once you've stopped checking, the flooder can say anything, literally anything.
00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:45.200
It doesn't matter if it's true, it doesn't matter if it's false.
00:26:45.440 --> 00:26:48.400
It doesn't matter if it contradicts something they said yesterday.
00:26:48.480 --> 00:26:50.880
It's just more water in the flood.
00:26:51.200 --> 00:26:57.839
And now we need to ask the hard question, the one that makes this section of the episode more important instead of just interesting.
00:26:58.160 --> 00:27:02.799
Bannon named this doctrine on camera to PBS in 2019.
00:27:02.960 --> 00:27:05.519
That clip has been available to watch for years.
00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:10.000
Journalists have seen it, politicians have seen it, platform executives have seen it.
00:27:10.160 --> 00:27:17.440
And I want you to ask yourself, has the American media landscape got less flood the zone since 2019 or more?
00:27:17.839 --> 00:27:19.680
Because here's the uncomfortable truth.
00:27:19.920 --> 00:27:24.400
Flood the zone is no longer a Republican strategy or a Democratic strategy.
00:27:24.559 --> 00:27:26.720
It's not even a political strategy anymore.
00:27:26.799 --> 00:27:27.839
It's just the water.
00:27:28.000 --> 00:27:29.119
Everyone swims in it.
00:27:29.200 --> 00:27:35.279
Your cable news swims in it, twenty-three stories an hour, each replacing the last before your brain can process it.
00:27:35.440 --> 00:27:40.240
Your Twitter feed or X feed, that's what we're calling it now, is Flood the Zone by design.
00:27:40.480 --> 00:27:42.720
TikTok is flood the zone in motion.
00:27:42.960 --> 00:27:45.279
Even the fact checkers are flood the zone now.
00:27:45.440 --> 00:27:50.079
Six corrections a day, none of them landing, the next scandal already loaded in the chamber.
00:27:50.400 --> 00:27:52.079
Bannon didn't invent this.
00:27:52.240 --> 00:27:53.039
He noticed it.
00:27:53.200 --> 00:27:53.839
He named it.
00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:55.039
He weaponized it.
00:27:55.279 --> 00:28:03.279
And then everybody else on every side in every industry that touches your attention adopted the same method because it works.
00:28:03.519 --> 00:28:10.160
Because the media attention environment he diagnosed is the same environment everyone else operates in.
00:28:10.400 --> 00:28:17.440
And in that environment, flood the zone isn't just a strategy available to bad faith actors, it's just the default.
00:28:17.680 --> 00:28:19.759
It's the path of least resistance.
00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:22.960
You have to work against it to do anything else.
00:28:23.200 --> 00:28:27.920
Which brings us to the institutions that were supposed to sort signal from noise.
00:28:28.160 --> 00:28:38.480
The institutions whose entire job was to not get flooded, to slow down, to check, to publish the day four correction with the same prominence as the day one scoop.
00:28:38.640 --> 00:28:41.440
I'm talking about journalism, the press.
00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:46.880
The thing Oprah was praising at the Golden Globes when she used the phrase absolute truth.
00:28:47.119 --> 00:28:48.400
Remember her saying that?
00:28:48.559 --> 00:28:53.119
About the press's insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth?
00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:54.960
Yeah, about that.
00:28:57.839 --> 00:28:59.920
Okay, so here's where we are.
00:29:00.160 --> 00:29:13.920
We've got the swap, we've got the swap happening on both sides, and we've got a former White House chief strategist on camera to PBS telling us exactly how the Flood the Zone strategy works and admitting that he used it to govern.
00:29:14.160 --> 00:29:21.519
Now, if you're building a functional society, there's one institution whose entire job it is to protect against this.
00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:28.160
One institution whose existence is justified precisely because people in power will always lie.
00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:29.759
And somebody has to check.
00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:39.759
Somebody has to slow down, somebody has to publish the correction, somebody has to make it costly, socially, professionally, reputationally, to flood the zone.
00:29:40.079 --> 00:29:53.920
That institution is journalism, the press, the fourth estate, the reason the First Amendment exists, the thing Oprah was gushing about at the Golden Globes when she praised their insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth.
00:29:54.240 --> 00:30:01.119
So, question for the back of the room If journalism was the immune system, what happened to the immune system?
00:30:01.359 --> 00:30:08.319
Because I'll tell you right now, if this whole story ended with the bad guys lied and the good guys caught them, we wouldn't be making this episode.
00:30:08.480 --> 00:30:16.480
The episode would have ended in twenty seventeen, when Chuck Todd looked at Kellyanne calmway in the face and said, alternative facts are not facts, they're falsehoods.
00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:18.640
That was the immune system working.
00:30:18.799 --> 00:30:24.400
That reflex, the institutional reflex, that was still alive in January of 2017.
00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:28.160
Over the next four years, that reflex broke down.
00:30:28.319 --> 00:30:39.279
And I want to show you how, using one person who articulated the breakdown really clearly, not because he's a villain, but because he's actually one of the smartest people who participated in the shift.
00:30:39.440 --> 00:30:41.279
And he explained what he was doing.
00:30:41.519 --> 00:30:43.519
His name is Wesley Lowery.
00:30:43.599 --> 00:30:45.839
He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
00:30:45.920 --> 00:30:49.119
He worked for the Washington Post, he worked for CBS News.
00:30:49.359 --> 00:30:57.039
He was a major byline on the Ferguson and Baltimore stories that defined a lot of 2014 through 2016 American journalism.
00:30:57.200 --> 00:31:13.839
And in October of 2020, he sat down for a formal conversation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specifically at their Center for Journalism Ethics, to make his case for something he'd been pushing for a couple of years already: a shift in how the profession thinks about objectivity.
00:31:14.160 --> 00:31:20.720
Now, I'm going to set this up fairly because Lowry's argument is actually more sophisticated than the version of it that goes viral.
00:31:20.880 --> 00:31:22.240
He's not a crazy person.
00:31:22.480 --> 00:31:24.640
He's not saying throw out journalism.
00:31:24.799 --> 00:31:31.599
He's saying the word objectivity has been doing work it was never designed to do, and the profession needs to reckon with that.
00:31:31.839 --> 00:31:35.119
And there's a version of his argument that is honestly correct.
00:31:35.359 --> 00:31:40.880
He's right that some forms of objectivity, in practice, have become performative neutrality.
00:31:41.039 --> 00:31:44.240
He's right that false balance can be its own distortion.
00:31:44.480 --> 00:31:48.880
He's right that journalists are humans, and pretending that they're not is its own kind of lie.
00:31:49.200 --> 00:31:54.160
So I'm going to play you his strongest statement of the case, not the weakest, the strongest.
00:31:54.400 --> 00:32:01.680
Listen carefully and listen especially for when he uses the word objective and what he means by it each time.
00:32:02.480 --> 00:32:07.119
The word objectivity has also, which really fundamentally means fairness, right?
00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:16.319
That we're writing things that are objectively true, has suddenly gained all of these additional words that are not really synonyms.
00:32:16.480 --> 00:32:19.920
So sometimes we talk about objectivity, but we also talk about balance.
00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:23.119
Or balance and objectivity are not the same thing, right?
00:32:24.160 --> 00:32:27.759
That if you have a true thing, you don't balance it out with just as much of the wrong thing.
00:32:27.839 --> 00:32:30.400
That doesn't make it objectively true, it makes it false, right?
00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:32.240
We talk about neutrality.
00:32:32.400 --> 00:32:51.759
Well, for me, as someone who's spent a lot of time covering violence or murders, if I write a piece about a murder and you walk away from it with neutral feelings about it, with a neutral conclusion about whether or not this murder was good or bad, I would suggest I have failed to impress upon you the objective truth of the thing that I'm writing about, right?
00:32:51.839 --> 00:32:57.359
So balance, neutrality, those things have nothing to do with objective truth and objective fairness.
00:32:58.720 --> 00:32:59.039
Okay.
00:32:59.599 --> 00:33:02.400
Replay that one in your head for a second if you need to.
00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:03.759
Here's what just happened.
00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:10.640
Lowry started by defining objectivity as fairness, writing things that are objectively true.
00:33:10.880 --> 00:33:11.759
Good so far.
00:33:11.920 --> 00:33:13.519
That's the classic definition.
00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:16.640
The one journalists have operated under for a century.
00:33:16.880 --> 00:33:18.319
Then watch this.
00:33:18.559 --> 00:33:20.079
He uses an example.
00:33:20.240 --> 00:33:29.759
If I write a piece about a murder and you walk away from it with neutral feelings about it, I would suggest I have failed to impress upon you the objective truth of the thing.
00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:31.279
Did you catch the move?
00:33:31.519 --> 00:33:37.759
Because this is, and I'm not exaggerating, the same move Oprah made, except on a different floor of the same building.
00:33:38.079 --> 00:33:44.640
Oprah took the word truth and moved it from external and singular to internal and possessive.
00:33:44.880 --> 00:33:51.519
Lowry just took the word objective and moved it from the process of reporting to the feeling of the reporter.
00:33:51.759 --> 00:33:56.400
The journalist's moral reaction to the story is the objective truth of the story.
00:33:56.559 --> 00:34:05.279
If you walk away feeling neutral, the journalist has failed, not at impressing facts on you, but at impressing his conclusion on you.
00:34:05.519 --> 00:34:06.960
Watch what that does.
00:34:07.200 --> 00:34:16.719
Under the old model, the journalist's job was to collect the evidence, interview the witnesses, check the claims, and put it in front of you so you could form a conclusion.
00:34:16.960 --> 00:34:18.960
The journalist's feelings were irrelevant.
00:34:19.119 --> 00:34:20.639
In fact, they were a hazard.
00:34:20.800 --> 00:34:26.960
The whole point of the objectivity process was that it was designed to work around the journalist's feelings.
00:34:27.199 --> 00:34:29.679
Because the journalist is a human being with biases.
00:34:29.840 --> 00:34:31.119
That's why you have editors.
00:34:31.280 --> 00:34:33.199
That's why you have sourcing standards.
00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:35.679
That's why you quote multiple perspectives.
00:34:35.920 --> 00:34:40.480
The system assumed the individual was flawed and built around that assumption.
00:34:40.719 --> 00:34:47.920
Under Lowry's model, and again, Lowry is articulating something that a lot of newsrooms were already doing by 2020.
00:34:48.079 --> 00:34:52.000
The journalist's moral conclusion becomes the objective truth.
00:34:52.239 --> 00:34:55.679
The reader who doesn't share the conclusion isn't reading carefully enough.
00:34:55.840 --> 00:34:58.480
The reader who pushes back isn't questioning evidence.
00:34:58.639 --> 00:35:00.159
They're resisting clarity.
00:35:00.400 --> 00:35:03.519
And look, Lowry picked the easiest possible example.
00:35:03.679 --> 00:35:04.639
Murder is bad.
00:35:04.880 --> 00:35:06.639
Obviously, nobody disagrees.
00:35:06.800 --> 00:35:09.119
He knew what he was doing when he chose that example.
00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:14.239
It's the case where the moral claim is so universal, it's basically not a moral claim anymore.
00:35:14.320 --> 00:35:15.039
It's just fact.
00:35:15.280 --> 00:35:20.719
Murder is bad, is indistinguishable from the sky is blue for any functional member of society.
00:35:21.199 --> 00:35:22.800
But here's the problem.
00:35:23.039 --> 00:35:29.039
The cases where moral clarity in journalism actually matters are never the murder cases.
00:35:29.199 --> 00:35:30.880
They're the contested ones.
00:35:31.199 --> 00:35:33.840
Is the protest violent or mostly peaceful?
00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:36.880
Is this immigration policy cruel or necessary?
00:35:37.280 --> 00:35:41.440
Is this election integrity concern legitimate or conspiracy theory?
00:35:41.679 --> 00:35:44.880
Is the public health measure science or politics?
00:35:45.119 --> 00:35:48.159
Was the lab the source of the virus or wasn't it?
00:35:48.400 --> 00:35:52.079
Those are the cases that shape how millions of people understand their country.
00:35:52.239 --> 00:36:02.000
And in those cases, by Lowry's logic, if the reporter walks in with a moral conclusion and delivers it with clarity, and you walk away neutral, the reporter has failed.
00:36:02.159 --> 00:36:03.199
You weren't persuaded.
00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:04.800
You weren't properly instructed.
00:36:04.880 --> 00:36:05.920
You didn't get it.
00:36:06.239 --> 00:36:07.840
That's not journalism anymore.
00:36:07.920 --> 00:36:10.400
That's advocacy dressed in a press badge.
00:36:10.719 --> 00:36:14.079
And I want to say this clearly, because I don't want anyone to mishear me.
00:36:14.239 --> 00:36:17.039
I'm not saying Wesley Lowry is a bad journalist.
00:36:17.199 --> 00:36:19.360
I'm not saying he's acting in bad faith.
00:36:19.519 --> 00:36:20.719
Actually the opposite.
00:36:20.880 --> 00:36:23.199
I think he means every word of what he said.
00:36:23.360 --> 00:36:27.519
I think he believes that covering injustice requires moral clarity.
00:36:27.760 --> 00:36:30.239
And I think he's willing to defend that position publicly.
00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:32.159
That's admirable in its way.
00:36:32.320 --> 00:36:35.280
He's not hiding the move, he's making it openly.
00:36:35.599 --> 00:36:43.119
But the institution that hired him and the institutions that followed his lead adopted the move and then pretended that they didn't.
00:36:43.360 --> 00:36:44.639
And that's the problem.
00:36:44.960 --> 00:36:54.079
The institution kept the old labels, objectivity, fairness, balance, just the facts, while installing the new operating system underneath.
00:36:54.320 --> 00:36:59.519
A reader in twenty twenty two who picked up the New York Times assumed he was getting the old product.
00:36:59.679 --> 00:37:03.119
He was getting the new one, same logo, but a different machine.
00:37:03.440 --> 00:37:06.079
Now that's the theoretical version of the shift.
00:37:06.239 --> 00:37:08.480
Let me show you the practical version.
00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:12.800
January 15th, 2021, real time with Bill Maher.
00:37:12.960 --> 00:37:16.480
This is nine days after January 6th, the January 6th.
00:37:16.719 --> 00:37:18.960
Eight days after the Georgia Senate runoff.
00:37:19.280 --> 00:37:23.840
The country is at a level of political tension that it has not been at in living memory.
00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:28.079
And Bill Maher is interviewing Katie Couric, who was not some random pundit.
00:37:28.239 --> 00:37:30.960
Katie Couric anchored the CBS Evening News.
00:37:31.119 --> 00:37:34.079
She ran today on NBC for 15 years.
00:37:34.320 --> 00:37:39.599
She interviewed Sarah Palin in 2008 in an exchange that became genuinely historic.
00:37:39.840 --> 00:37:46.000
For decades, Katie Crook was the friendly, trusted face of mainstream American broadcast journalism.
00:37:46.159 --> 00:37:47.280
She's not fringe.
00:37:47.519 --> 00:37:48.719
She's not experimental.
00:37:48.800 --> 00:37:50.159
She's the establishment.
00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:54.880
Listen to what she says and listen in particular for one word she hedges with.
00:37:55.039 --> 00:37:56.800
You'll know it when you hear it.
00:37:57.199 --> 00:38:04.719
Okay, and as much as I'm worried about these loons who break into government, I'm actually more worried about the loons who did get elected.
00:38:05.199 --> 00:38:08.880
Because I I mean, what do you do about these people?
00:38:09.039 --> 00:38:16.480
There's 147 Republicans in Congress who still don't concede that Trump lost the election.
00:38:16.719 --> 00:38:22.320
What do you do about people who are in the government who don't believe in our way of government?
00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:24.159
It is so shocking.
00:38:24.320 --> 00:38:31.199
Not only do are they not conceding, Bill, but there's thoughts that there might have been some collusion among members of Congress.
00:38:31.360 --> 00:38:37.280
Some are refusing to go through magnom magnometers or whatever you call them to check for weapons.
00:38:37.440 --> 00:38:39.679
They're not wearing masks during the siege.
00:38:39.840 --> 00:38:46.639
I mean, it's really bizarre, isn't it, when you think about how AWOL so many of these members of Congress have gotten.
00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:54.880
But I also think some of them are believing the garbage that they are being fed 24-7 on the internet by their constituents.
00:38:54.960 --> 00:38:57.199
And they bought into this big lie.
00:38:57.360 --> 00:39:05.280
And the question is, how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump?
00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:06.800
Almost.
00:39:07.039 --> 00:39:14.159
She said almost deprogram on HBO in prime time to an audience that applauded, but I cut that out.
00:39:14.320 --> 00:39:19.840
And I want to sit with that word almost, because I think it's the most important word in the whole clip.
00:39:20.079 --> 00:39:23.360
That almost is the thing that tells you she knew.
00:39:23.599 --> 00:39:31.840
On some level, some journalist reflex buried under 30 years of career, the same reflex that Chuck Todd still had in 2017.
00:39:32.239 --> 00:39:35.840
She knew what she was describing was not a thing journalists say.
00:39:36.159 --> 00:39:39.519
Deprogramming, that's a word from the cult recovery industry.
00:39:39.679 --> 00:39:45.760
It refers to an intensive, coercive process of forcibly changing someone's belief structure.
00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:47.440
That's not a neutral term.
00:39:47.599 --> 00:39:49.360
It's not even close to a neutral term.
00:39:49.519 --> 00:39:58.480
You don't de-program people you disagree with, you deprogram people whose minds have been captured by an outside force that has removed their agency.
00:39:58.719 --> 00:40:07.440
And when you apply that word, even with the softer almost to 75 million American voters, you're no longer doing journalism.
00:40:07.519 --> 00:40:08.960
You're doing diagnosis.
00:40:09.119 --> 00:40:14.000
You're declaring half the electorate mentally ill, captured, in need of intervention.
00:40:14.239 --> 00:40:19.840
You're sorting humans into sane and not sane on the basis of their political preferences.
00:40:20.159 --> 00:40:28.239
And the person doing it is the person who, for decades, was the face of the institution we were supposed to trust to sort truth from falsehood.
00:40:28.480 --> 00:40:30.400
This is the Lowry model arriving.
00:40:30.559 --> 00:40:37.920
This is what moral clarity over objectivity looks like when it leaves the journalism school seminar and walks around in prime time.
00:40:38.320 --> 00:40:40.079
Couric has a conclusion.
00:40:40.320 --> 00:40:43.199
The conclusion is that Trump voters are an occult.
00:40:43.360 --> 00:40:56.719
And because she has a conclusion, and because by the new standard, her moral conclusion is the objective truth, any reporter who walks away from the story with neutral feelings about Trump voters has failed her professional duty.
00:40:57.039 --> 00:40:58.480
Do you see what just happened?
00:40:58.639 --> 00:41:00.400
Do you see what the swap did?
00:41:00.719 --> 00:41:11.199
The institution that was supposed to be the immune system against the flooded zones and polarized truth claims became a source of flooded zones and polarized truth claims.
00:41:11.760 --> 00:41:16.559
The referees joined the game, and when the referees join the game, there are no referees.
00:41:16.639 --> 00:41:18.079
There's just more players.
00:41:18.320 --> 00:41:20.880
Which is a disaster for a functioning society.
00:41:21.119 --> 00:41:28.639
But it's also an opportunity, a massive commercial opportunity for anyone with a platform big enough to replace the referees.
00:41:28.960 --> 00:41:32.320
Because now there's a vacuum where the immune system used to be.
00:41:32.480 --> 00:41:37.840
And there are some very large companies who were more than happy to step into that vacuum.
00:41:40.079 --> 00:41:42.480
So the immune system was drifting.
00:41:42.559 --> 00:41:46.159
And when an immune system drifts, pathogens multiply.
00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:50.239
That's true in a human body and it's true in an information ecosystem.
00:41:50.480 --> 00:42:04.000
When the institution tasked with sorting signal from noise stops doing that job or starts doing a different job it wasn't designed for, the things that the system was supposed to keep in check start to spread unchecked at scale.
00:42:04.320 --> 00:42:16.719
Now, if you're a very large company that owns a very large platform, and by platform, I mean a piece of digital infrastructure through which a meaningful fraction of human communication now flows, you have a decision to make.
00:42:17.119 --> 00:42:25.760
You look at the landscape, you see that the referees left the field, you see that your platform is now the single biggest venue for political speech in human history.
00:42:26.079 --> 00:42:28.639
And you ask yourself, what's my role here?
00:42:29.199 --> 00:42:31.280
There are honest answers to that question.
00:42:31.599 --> 00:42:37.519
An honest answer would sound like we're a distribution system, we're a pipe, speech flows through us.
00:42:37.679 --> 00:42:39.280
We don't arbitrate truth.
00:42:39.440 --> 00:42:40.079
We can't.
00:42:40.400 --> 00:42:45.199
We don't have the competence, we don't have the legitimacy, and we don't have the constitutional authority.
00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:46.880
Go fight it out yourselves.
00:42:47.519 --> 00:42:50.159
That is not the answer the platforms gave.
00:42:50.400 --> 00:43:09.599
The answer that the platforms gave starting around 2017 and escalating every year through 2021 was we will adjudicate, we will partner with fact checkers, we will flag, we will throttle, and we will remove, we will ban, and we will do it in coordination with government agencies who have flagged content for us.
00:43:09.840 --> 00:43:11.760
I'm gonna show you what that looks like.
00:43:11.920 --> 00:43:14.800
And here's what's interesting about how we're going to see it.
00:43:14.960 --> 00:43:18.079
We're not gonna see it through a leaked document or a whistleblower.
00:43:18.239 --> 00:43:31.280
We're gonna see it because the CEO of the largest speech platform in human history went on the biggest podcast in the world and just described it out loud, conversationally, like he was describing how a sandwich got made.
00:43:31.519 --> 00:43:39.760
August 25th, 2022, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and threads.
00:43:39.920 --> 00:43:44.719
He sits down with Joe Rogan for episode 1863 of the Joe Rogan experience.
00:43:45.039 --> 00:43:46.239
Three hour conversation.
00:43:46.480 --> 00:43:50.079
Rogan at one point asks him about the Hunter Biden laptop story.
00:43:50.239 --> 00:43:51.360
Remember that story?
00:43:51.679 --> 00:43:54.880
October 2020, three weeks before the presidential election.
00:43:55.039 --> 00:43:59.760
The New York Post publishes reporting about materials allegedly recovered from a lack of.
00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:03.039
Laptop belonging to the son of the Democratic nominee.
00:44:03.280 --> 00:44:12.960
The story gets throttled on Facebook, gets locked on Twitter, becomes almost immediately one of the most controversial content moderation decisions in internet history.
00:44:13.280 --> 00:44:16.400
Rogan asks Zuckerberg about it, and Zuckerberg answers.
00:44:16.559 --> 00:44:19.519
I want you to listen for four specific things in this clip.
00:44:19.760 --> 00:44:25.599
First, how Zuckerberg describes the FBI coming to Facebook before the story existed.
00:44:25.840 --> 00:44:29.280
Second, how he explains Facebook's fact-checking protocol.
00:44:29.519 --> 00:44:34.639
Third, what happened to the story's distribution during the window it was being reviewed?
00:44:34.800 --> 00:44:42.159
And fourth, and this is the strangest moment in the whole interview, listen to the metaphor he reaches for at the end to describe what happened.
00:44:42.400 --> 00:44:45.199
It's going to be almost three minutes, so settle in.
00:44:59.840 --> 00:45:00.480
Yeah, we had this too.
00:45:00.880 --> 00:45:02.639
Yeah, so you guys censored that as well?
00:45:02.719 --> 00:45:05.679
Aaron Powell So we took a different path than Twitter.
00:45:06.239 --> 00:45:16.239
I mean basically the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, hey, um just so you know, like you should be on high alert.
00:45:16.400 --> 00:45:21.360
There was the we we we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election.
00:45:21.519 --> 00:45:30.480
We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump of of um uh uh that's similar to that.
00:45:30.639 --> 00:45:31.840
So just be vigilant.
00:45:32.159 --> 00:45:34.400
So our protocol is different from Twitter's.
00:45:34.559 --> 00:45:37.599
What Twitter did is they said you can't share this at all.
00:45:37.840 --> 00:45:38.960
Um we didn't do that.
00:45:39.199 --> 00:45:52.239
What we do is we have um if something is reported to us as potentially um misinformation, important misinformation, we uh we also third-party fact-checking program, because we don't want to be deciding what's true and false.
00:45:52.480 --> 00:46:08.079
And for the I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being um being determined whether it was false, um the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it.
00:46:08.239 --> 00:46:10.400
So you could still share it, you could still consume it.
00:46:10.880 --> 00:46:14.719
So when you say the distribution is decreased in the How does that work?
00:46:14.960 --> 00:46:17.280
It basically the ranking in Newsfeed was a little bit less.
00:46:17.599 --> 00:46:20.400
So fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.
00:46:20.639 --> 00:46:22.880
So it definitely By what percentage?
00:46:23.280 --> 00:46:24.639
I d I don't know off the top of my head.
00:46:24.800 --> 00:46:26.239
But it's it's it's meaningful.
00:46:26.559 --> 00:46:32.719
But I mean but basically a um a lot of people were still able to share it.
00:46:32.960 --> 00:46:34.880
We got a lot of complaints that that was the case.
00:46:34.960 --> 00:46:42.480
Um you know, obviously this is a hyper-political issue, so depending on what side of the political spectrum, you either think we didn't censor it enough or censored it way too much.
00:46:42.639 --> 00:46:46.079
But we weren't sort of as black and white about it as as Twitter.
00:46:46.159 --> 00:46:58.880
We just kind of thought, hey, look, if if the FBI, which you know I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, it's a very professional law enforcement, they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously.
00:46:58.960 --> 00:47:02.239
Aaron Ross Powell Did they specifically say you need to be on guard about that story?
00:47:03.519 --> 00:47:03.679
No.
00:47:03.920 --> 00:47:07.760
I I don't remember if it was that specifically, but it was it basically fit the pattern.
00:47:07.840 --> 00:47:20.079
Aaron Ross Powell When something like that turns out to be real, is there regret for not having it evenly distributed and for throttling the distribution of that story?
00:47:21.039 --> 00:47:22.480
What do you mean evenly distributed?
00:47:22.559 --> 00:47:25.519
Aaron Ross Powell I mean evenly in that it's not suppressed.
00:47:25.760 --> 00:47:26.239
It's not suppressed.
00:47:26.559 --> 00:47:27.039
Yeah, yeah.
00:47:27.199 --> 00:47:27.360
Yeah.
00:47:27.519 --> 00:47:28.639
I mean it's it sucks.
00:47:28.960 --> 00:47:29.039
Yeah.
00:47:29.440 --> 00:47:29.519
Yeah.
00:47:29.599 --> 00:47:35.119
I mean because I mean it turned out after the fact, I mean the fact checkers looked into it, no one was able to say it was false.
00:47:36.239 --> 00:47:36.480
Okay.
00:47:37.039 --> 00:47:37.840
Four beats.
00:47:38.000 --> 00:47:39.199
Let me walk you through them.
00:47:39.519 --> 00:47:40.079
Beat one.
00:47:40.400 --> 00:47:41.760
The FBI came to Facebook.
00:47:42.000 --> 00:47:48.960
Zuckerberg's words, some folks on our team, it was like, hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert.
00:47:49.119 --> 00:47:53.920
There was we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election.
00:47:54.159 --> 00:47:58.079
We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump.
00:47:58.320 --> 00:47:59.840
That is pre-framing.
00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:03.920
The FBI didn't come to Facebook with evidence of Russian disinformation.
00:48:04.159 --> 00:48:12.079
They came with a warning that the thing that was about to happen was Russian disinformation before the thing had happened, before the story had been reported.
00:48:12.239 --> 00:48:14.400
The frame was installed in advance.
00:48:14.559 --> 00:48:29.760
And I want you to sit with what that means, because if you tell the largest speech platform in the world in advance that an imminent story is likely to be foreign propaganda, you've just pre-committed that platform to a specific interpretation of the story once it appears.
00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:32.320
The platform is now on a hair trigger.
00:48:32.480 --> 00:48:35.519
The moment the story breaks, they're not evaluating it fresh.
00:48:35.599 --> 00:48:39.039
They're matching it against the template the FBI installed weeks earlier.
00:48:39.280 --> 00:48:40.800
That's not law enforcement.
00:48:40.960 --> 00:48:42.320
That's narrative management.
00:48:42.480 --> 00:48:53.920
And it's being done by the largest law enforcement agency in the United States in private conversations with the largest speech platform on earth before any crime has been committed and before any story has been published.
00:48:55.039 --> 00:48:59.679
Beat to Zuckerberg explains Facebook's fact-checking protocol.
00:48:59.920 --> 00:49:01.519
Listen to that exact wording.
00:49:01.920 --> 00:49:07.199
We also use this third-party fact-checking program because we don't want to be deciding what's true and false.
00:49:08.239 --> 00:49:09.119
Stop right there.
00:49:09.440 --> 00:49:13.440
Because that sentence contains a very elegant dodge that almost nobody catches.
00:49:14.079 --> 00:49:17.440
Zuckerberg says Facebook doesn't want to decide what's true and false.
00:49:18.159 --> 00:49:20.000
Okay, that's a reasonable position.
00:49:20.239 --> 00:49:22.320
Facebook isn't the Ministry of Truth.
00:49:22.639 --> 00:49:23.440
Good so far.
00:49:23.840 --> 00:49:25.440
So what does Facebook do instead?
00:49:25.679 --> 00:49:28.639
It outsources the decision to a third-party fact checker.
00:49:29.519 --> 00:49:32.400
But and this is the important part that nobody presses on.
00:49:32.719 --> 00:49:36.320
Facebook decides which fact checkers to use.
00:49:36.800 --> 00:49:40.719
Facebook decides which fact checker's rulings get applied to which posts.
00:49:41.039 --> 00:49:46.400
Facebook decides what algorithmic consequence follows from a fact checker's ruling.
00:49:47.039 --> 00:49:51.920
Facebook decides when to override a fact checker and when to escalate and when to appeal.
00:49:52.559 --> 00:49:56.079
In other words, Facebook didn't stop deciding what's true and false.
00:49:56.239 --> 00:50:00.880
It moved the decision one desk over and pretended the new desk was independent.
00:50:01.280 --> 00:50:08.719
But the new desk operates inside Facebook's building, on Facebook's rules, with Facebook controlling all the meaningful variables.
00:50:09.119 --> 00:50:12.159
It's the same decision, just laundered through a shell.
00:50:12.880 --> 00:50:17.519
That's the move that got installed at every major platform between 2017 and 2021.
00:50:17.760 --> 00:50:20.079
Not we decide the truth, never.
00:50:20.400 --> 00:50:22.719
We partner with independent fact checkers.
00:50:22.880 --> 00:50:23.840
Very different vibe.
00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:24.960
Same mechanic.
00:50:25.519 --> 00:50:26.159
B3.
00:50:26.800 --> 00:50:35.119
During the five to seven day window that the Hunter Biden laptop story was being evaluated, Zuckerberg says the distribution of the story was reduced.
00:50:35.360 --> 00:50:42.239
I'm quoting the ranking in the newsfeed was a little bit less, so fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.
00:50:42.880 --> 00:50:44.800
Rogan asks, by how much?
00:50:45.039 --> 00:50:46.400
Zuckerberg doesn't know.
00:50:46.559 --> 00:50:51.440
But Zuckerberg acknowledges it was, and this is his word meaningful.
00:50:52.239 --> 00:50:53.280
Let me translate.
00:51:05.519 --> 00:51:10.159
Not banned it, not removed it, just turned down the volume, throttled the signal.
00:51:10.400 --> 00:51:11.679
The story was still there.
00:51:11.840 --> 00:51:16.800
You could technically find it if you went looking, but fewer people did because fewer people saw it.
00:51:17.119 --> 00:51:18.960
And that throttling was invisible.
00:51:19.119 --> 00:51:23.760
No warning labels, no notice to users, just less of it in your feed.
00:51:24.639 --> 00:51:28.480
That is the invisible, frictionless, deniable version of censorship.
00:51:28.719 --> 00:51:30.239
You don't have to ban a story.
00:51:30.400 --> 00:51:32.639
You just turn its volume from ten to three.
00:51:33.280 --> 00:51:34.480
It's still technically there.
00:51:34.719 --> 00:51:40.159
You can't say you censored it, but the impact on public awareness is identical to banning it.
00:51:40.719 --> 00:51:41.519
Beat four.
00:51:41.760 --> 00:51:45.519
And this one is look, this this is the part I think reveals everything.
00:51:45.840 --> 00:51:50.239
Rogan asked Zuckerberg whether the Hunter Biden laptop story turned out to be true.
00:51:50.400 --> 00:51:53.679
And Zuckerberg admits the fact checkers look into it.
00:51:53.840 --> 00:51:59.679
No one was able to say it was false, which is a very carefully worded way of saying the story was true.
00:51:59.920 --> 00:52:01.920
The story we throttled was true.
00:52:02.079 --> 00:52:06.159
The Russian propaganda frame the FBI installed in advance was wrong.
00:52:06.400 --> 00:52:10.960
The people who were flagged for sharing the story were flagged for sharing true information.
00:52:11.199 --> 00:52:13.440
And then Zuckerberg reaches for a metaphor.
00:52:13.599 --> 00:52:15.119
Listen to what he reaches for.
00:52:15.280 --> 00:52:17.039
He says, it sucks.
00:52:17.199 --> 00:52:25.039
Though I think in the same way that probably having to go through like a criminal trial, but being proven innocent in the end sucks.
00:52:25.280 --> 00:52:31.039
Like it still sucks to have that you had to go through a criminal trial, but at the end you're free.
00:52:31.440 --> 00:52:37.920
I need you to sit with this metaphor for a minute because it's one of the most revealing things I've ever heard a tech CEO say.
00:52:38.239 --> 00:52:48.960
Zuckerberg is comparing a true news story, getting throttled on his platform on the basis of a government warning that turned out to be wrong to a defendant in a criminal trial.
00:52:49.199 --> 00:53:01.119
The story is the accused, the throttling is the prosecution, the fact check is the verdict, and when the verdict comes back and the story is found to be true, well, you can't unsue somebody.
00:53:01.280 --> 00:53:05.280
Sorry, the story had to go through the trial, but hey, at the end the story was free.
00:53:06.159 --> 00:53:08.400
Do you see the architecture of that metaphor?
00:53:08.880 --> 00:53:11.119
Speech, by default, is on trial.
00:53:11.440 --> 00:53:13.119
Platforms are the courts.
00:53:13.360 --> 00:53:16.400
Government FBI flagging is probable cause.
00:53:16.639 --> 00:53:18.320
Fact checkers are the jury.
00:53:18.480 --> 00:53:23.440
And any piece of information you try to share is, in Zuckerberg's own framing, a defendant.
00:53:23.920 --> 00:53:26.079
Until proven innocent, guilty.
00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:29.679
And even after proven innocent, damaged by the process.
00:53:30.079 --> 00:53:32.480
That's not how free speech works in a free society.
00:53:32.639 --> 00:53:35.119
That's how speech works in a managed society.
00:53:35.280 --> 00:53:44.239
And it just got described out loud, conversationally, by the CEO of the largest speech platform in human history on the biggest podcast in the world.
00:53:44.480 --> 00:53:47.199
And and this is the part that should make your eyes widen.
00:53:47.360 --> 00:53:49.519
Almost no mainstream outlet picked it up.
00:53:50.079 --> 00:53:56.159
Zuckerberg said the machine out loud, and the media that was supposed to notice was too busy doing moral clarity.
00:53:56.719 --> 00:54:02.079
Now, one platform, one admission, you could argue maybe this is just Facebook.
00:54:02.320 --> 00:54:04.400
Maybe this is just the Hunter Biden laptop.
00:54:04.639 --> 00:54:06.159
Maybe this is just a one-time thing.
00:54:06.239 --> 00:54:07.360
Maybe it's not a pattern.
00:54:07.519 --> 00:54:10.159
Except the same thing was happening at Twitter.
00:54:10.320 --> 00:54:12.400
And at Twitter, we have documentation.
00:54:12.639 --> 00:54:24.000
When Elon Musk bought Twitter in late 2022, one of the first things he did was open the internal files to a handful of independent journalists, a process that became known as the Twitter files.
00:54:24.159 --> 00:54:32.079
And over the following months, those journalists published thread after thread showing that what Zuckerberg had described at Facebook was also happening at Twitter.
00:54:32.400 --> 00:54:46.880
FBI requests, DHS flagging, CIA involvement, State Department involvement, lists of accounts, throttling, suspensions, coordination with academic institutions, coordination with think tanks, an entire apparatus.
00:54:47.039 --> 00:55:02.639
The reporter who documented most of it called it the censorship industrial complex, operating in coordination with multiple federal agencies, targeting accounts, suppressing content, shaping what hundreds of millions of Americans saw on their feed.
00:55:02.880 --> 00:55:06.719
Now this whole thing became politically explosive for predictable reasons.
00:55:06.880 --> 00:55:09.519
It got covered by right wing outlets as a scandal.
00:55:09.679 --> 00:55:12.880
It got covered by left wing outlets as a nothing burger.
00:55:13.119 --> 00:55:26.159
It got dunked on and dismissed and celebrated and misrepresented across every seam of the American media ecosystem, which is exactly what you would expect to happen when the machinery of narrative management gets exposed.
00:55:26.400 --> 00:55:29.679
The narrative managers go to work on the exposure itself.
00:55:30.320 --> 00:55:54.800
But on March 9th, 2023, the two reporters who had done the most work on the Twitter files, Matt Taibi and Michael Schellenberger, were called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government under oath, on the record, in a House hearing room, and each of them got five minutes to give an opening statement before the partisan cross examination began.
00:55:55.119 --> 00:55:57.679
I'm going to play you Taibi's opening statement in full.
00:55:57.840 --> 00:55:59.199
It's about five and a half minutes.
00:55:59.599 --> 00:56:08.719
And I want you to listen to it carefully, because Taibi, in this statement, accomplishes three things that almost nobody else has managed to articulate this clearly.
00:56:09.119 --> 00:56:15.280
First, he names a word, a specific word that, once you know it, you cannot stop seeing it everywhere.
00:56:15.679 --> 00:56:18.480
Second, he preempts the partisan frame.
00:56:18.639 --> 00:56:24.960
He explicitly documents that the Twitter files targeting hit people on both the political left and the political right.
00:56:25.280 --> 00:56:28.559
And third, he names what this whole machine actually is.
00:56:28.800 --> 00:56:34.480
Not just a set of practices, a category of information governance that didn't used to exist.
00:56:34.880 --> 00:56:35.840
Okay, here we go.
00:56:36.320 --> 00:56:40.800
Chairman Jordan, Ranking Member Plaskett, members of the Select Committee, thank you for having me today.
00:56:40.960 --> 00:56:42.239
My name is Matt Taebe.
00:56:42.400 --> 00:56:46.800
I've been a reporter for 30 years and a staunch advocate of the First Amendment.
00:56:46.960 --> 00:56:49.519
Much of that time was spent at Rolling Stone Magazine.
00:56:49.920 --> 00:56:53.360
Ranking Member Plaskett, um, I'm not a so-called journalist.
00:56:53.519 --> 00:57:03.280
Uh I've won the National Magazine Award, the IF Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I've written 10 books, including four New York Times but New York Times bestsellers.
00:57:03.599 --> 00:57:08.400
Um I'm now the editor of the online magazine Racket on the independent platform Substack.
00:57:08.639 --> 00:57:13.920
I'm here today because of a series of events that began late last year when I received a note from a source online.
00:57:14.159 --> 00:57:20.719
It read, Are you interested in doing a deep dive into what censorship and manipulation was going on at Twitter?
00:57:20.960 --> 00:57:25.039
A week later, the first of what became known as the Twitter Files reports came out.
00:57:25.280 --> 00:57:29.280
To say these attracted intense public interest would be an understatement.
00:57:29.519 --> 00:57:41.280
My computer looked like a Vegas lot machine, uh, as the just the first tweet about the blockage of the Hunter Biden laptop story registered 143 million impressions and 30 million engagements.
00:57:41.440 --> 00:57:52.719
But it wasn't until a week after the first report, after Michael Schellenberger, Barry Weiss, and other researchers joined the search of the files, that we started to grasp the significance of this story.
00:57:53.039 --> 00:57:58.800
The original promise of the internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally.
00:57:59.280 --> 00:58:08.480
A free internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of government everywhere.
00:58:08.719 --> 00:58:20.239
What we found in the files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise and use machine learning and other tools to turn the internet into an instrument of censorship and social control.
00:58:20.719 --> 00:58:24.880
Unfortunately, our own government appears to be playing a lead role.
00:58:25.119 --> 00:58:37.440
We saw the first hints in communications between Twitter executives before the 2020 election when we read things like flagged by DHS or please see attached report from FBI for potential misinformation.
00:58:37.679 --> 00:58:44.800
This would be attached to an Excel spreadsheet with a long list of names whose accounts were often suspended shortly after.
00:58:45.119 --> 00:58:53.119
Again, Ranking Member Plaskett, I would note that the evidence of Twitter government relationship includes lists of tens of thousands of names on both the left and right.
00:58:53.360 --> 00:59:03.840
The people affected include Trump supporters but also left-leaning sites like Consortium and Truth Out, the leftist South American Channel Telesaur, the Yellow Vest movement.
00:59:04.000 --> 00:59:09.119
That in fact is a key point of the Twitter files, that it's neither a left nor right issue.
00:59:09.360 --> 00:59:17.119
Following the trail of communications between Twitter and the federal government across tens of thousands of emails led to a series of revelations.
00:59:17.360 --> 00:59:17.679
Mr.
00:59:17.840 --> 00:59:25.119
Chairman, we summarized and submitted them to the committee in the form of a new Twitter file stride, which was also released to the public this morning.
00:59:25.599 --> 00:59:42.400
We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, the DHS, the HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at state, even the CIA.
00:59:42.559 --> 00:59:57.679
For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps 20 quasi-private entities doing the same thing, including Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership, NewsGuard, the Global Disinformation Index, and many others, many taxpayer funded.
00:59:57.920 --> 01:00:10.159
A focus of this fast-growing network, as Mike noted, is making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations, or sympathies are deemed misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation.
01:00:10.559 --> 01:00:14.800
That last term is just a euphemism for true but inconvenient.
01:00:15.039 --> 01:00:19.519
Undeniably, the making of such lists is a form of digital McCarthyism.
01:00:19.760 --> 01:00:30.239
Ordinary Americans are not just being reported to Twitter for de-amplification or deplatforming, but to firms like PayPal, digital advertisers like Xander, and crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe.
01:00:30.639 --> 01:00:41.920
These companies can and do refuse service to law-abiding people and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul of a distant, baseless, unaccountable, algorithmic judge.
01:00:42.239 --> 01:00:52.079
As someone who grew up a traditional ACLU liberal, this mechanism for punishment and deprivation without due process is horrifying.
01:00:53.360 --> 01:00:58.559
Another troubling aspect is the role of the press, which should be the people's last line of defense in such cases.
01:00:58.719 --> 01:01:02.239
But instead of investigating these groups, journalists partnered with them.
01:01:02.320 --> 01:01:14.400
If Twitter declined to remove an account right away, government agencies and NGOs would call reporters for the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets, who in turn would call Twitter demanding to know why action had not yet been taken.
01:01:14.639 --> 01:01:19.920
Effectively, news media became an arm of a state-sponsored thought policing system.
01:01:20.239 --> 01:01:27.360
I'm running out of time, so I'll just sum up and say it's just not possible to instantly arrive at truth.
01:01:27.440 --> 01:01:37.199
It is it is, however, possible becoming uh technologically uh possible to instantly define and enforce a political consensus online, which I believe is what we're looking at.
01:01:37.360 --> 01:01:41.039
This is a grave threat to people of all political persuasions.
01:01:41.199 --> 01:01:49.199
Uh the First Amendment, an American population accustomed to the right to speak, is the best defense left against the censorship industrial complex.
01:01:49.360 --> 01:01:56.639
If the latter can knock over our first and most important constitutional guarantee, these groups will have no serious opponent left anywhere.
01:01:56.880 --> 01:02:05.360
If there's anything the Twitter files show, it's that we're in danger of losing this most precious right, without which all democratic rights are impossible.
01:02:05.599 --> 01:02:09.679
Thank you for the opportunity to appear, and I'd be happy to answer any questions from the committee.
01:02:10.559 --> 01:02:12.079
Malinformation.
01:02:12.239 --> 01:02:12.960
That's the word.
01:02:13.199 --> 01:02:14.400
Taibi said it.
01:02:14.559 --> 01:02:18.800
That last term is just a euphemism for true but inconvenient.
01:02:19.119 --> 01:02:23.199
Malinformation is information that is true and also disfavored.
01:02:23.360 --> 01:02:26.639
Information that is true and also targeted for suppression.
01:02:26.880 --> 01:02:36.159
Information that is true and also appears on lists shared between government agencies and private platforms for purposes of throttling, flagging, or removal.
01:02:36.559 --> 01:02:40.719
And I want you to sit with what it means that this word had to be invented.
01:02:41.039 --> 01:02:46.079
Because language doesn't invent new categories unless the new categories are doing work for someone.
01:02:46.400 --> 01:02:50.079
We had a word for false information for centuries, lies.
01:02:50.400 --> 01:02:53.599
We had a word for misleading information, propaganda.
01:02:53.760 --> 01:02:58.320
We had a word for information stolen for strategic purposes, espionage.
01:02:58.559 --> 01:03:03.519
Those categories existed because the problems existed and the language adapted to them.
01:03:03.920 --> 01:03:06.000
Malinformation is a new word.
01:03:06.239 --> 01:03:20.719
It was coined in this exact usage somewhere around 2019 or 2020 as part of a growing vocabulary developed by academic institutions, government agencies, and NGOs working on disinformation research.
01:03:21.119 --> 01:03:25.840
And it was coined specifically because the old categories weren't sufficient.
01:03:26.239 --> 01:03:29.119
The old categories all had one thing in common.
01:03:29.360 --> 01:03:31.760
The information in them was false.
01:03:32.079 --> 01:03:33.039
Lies are false.
01:03:33.199 --> 01:03:36.559
Propaganda is distorted, misinformation is wrong.
01:03:36.960 --> 01:03:40.880
But the people building the censorship infrastructure kept running into a problem.
01:03:41.280 --> 01:03:44.000
Some of the information they wanted to suppress was true.
01:03:44.159 --> 01:03:46.000
The Hunter Biden laptop was true.
01:03:46.159 --> 01:03:48.800
The vaccine side effect reports were often true.
01:03:49.039 --> 01:03:53.440
The lab leak hypothesis turned out to be plausible and possibly correct.
01:03:53.679 --> 01:03:56.239
The Fauci mask reversals were real.
01:03:56.639 --> 01:04:00.079
And you couldn't classify any of these under the old categories.
01:04:00.320 --> 01:04:03.039
Because the old categories required falsity.
01:04:03.519 --> 01:04:04.639
These weren't false.
01:04:04.800 --> 01:04:09.280
They were just, from the platforms and agencies' point of view, inconvenient.
01:04:10.159 --> 01:04:12.800
So they invented a new word, malinformation.
01:04:13.119 --> 01:04:15.599
Information that is true but disfavored.
01:04:15.760 --> 01:04:18.079
And once you have the word, you have the category.
01:04:18.239 --> 01:04:21.760
And once you have the category, you have the justification for suppression.
01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:24.159
That is a civilization level move.
01:04:24.400 --> 01:04:26.079
That is not a normal thing to do.
01:04:26.239 --> 01:04:33.199
No functioning free society has ever had a formal category for information we suppress because it's true but we don't like it.
01:04:33.440 --> 01:04:39.199
That's the kind of thing that requires an authoritarian government with no regard for basic epistemic freedom.
01:04:39.440 --> 01:04:49.039
Or, and this is the modern version of it, it requires a public-private partnership sophisticated enough that nobody's sure who's actually making the suppression decisions.
01:04:49.280 --> 01:04:53.360
And Taibi, in his opening statement, nailed the pattern perfectly.
01:04:53.519 --> 01:04:55.280
The targeting was bipartisan.
01:04:55.440 --> 01:04:56.880
Trump supporters got hit.
01:04:57.039 --> 01:04:59.360
The yellow vest movement in France got hit.
01:04:59.599 --> 01:05:02.159
South American leftist news channels got hit.
01:05:02.480 --> 01:05:06.880
American left wing sites like Consortium News and Truth Out got hit.
01:05:07.039 --> 01:05:08.800
The machine isn't ideological.
01:05:08.960 --> 01:05:10.639
The machine is just the machine.
01:05:10.880 --> 01:05:13.199
It flags what it's trained to flag.
01:05:13.360 --> 01:05:15.039
It throttles what it's flagged.
01:05:15.119 --> 01:05:21.599
And whether what got flagged happens to be true or false, popular or fringe, left or right, the machine doesn't care.
01:05:21.760 --> 01:05:24.960
The machine is doing something more fundamental than ideology.
01:05:25.199 --> 01:05:27.440
The machine is managing reality.
01:05:27.920 --> 01:05:31.199
That's what Zuckerberg described in the criminal trial metaphor.
01:05:31.360 --> 01:05:34.400
That's what Taibi described in the malinformation framework.
01:05:34.559 --> 01:05:38.000
Two different platforms, two different witnesses, one system.
01:05:38.639 --> 01:05:42.239
And here's the part I want to sit with before we go on, because this is heavy.
01:05:42.719 --> 01:05:47.760
For most of modern history, lying has been understood as a specific thing.
01:05:48.159 --> 01:05:52.079
Saying something you know to be false, that's the basic definition.
01:05:52.639 --> 01:05:55.199
That's the one kids learn in kindergarten for crying out loud.
01:05:55.519 --> 01:05:58.079
And when you lie in public life, there's consequences.
01:05:58.320 --> 01:05:59.519
Reputations get damaged.
01:06:00.000 --> 01:06:09.199
Careers end, newspapers print corrections, the ecosystem has immune responses for lying because lying is a well defined category of harm.
01:06:09.519 --> 01:06:11.599
What we just described is not lying.
01:06:11.760 --> 01:06:25.280
What we just described is an architectural management of what counts as knowable, not lies, something worse than lies in a way, because lies can be refuted by evidence, and what we just described suppresses the evidence.
01:06:25.519 --> 01:06:31.440
And the reason it's so difficult to fight this is because everyone involved can honestly say they didn't lie.
01:06:31.679 --> 01:06:35.920
The FBI didn't lie when it warned Facebook about Russian disinformation.
01:06:36.159 --> 01:06:41.039
The fact checkers didn't lie when they rated the laptop story as missing context.
01:06:41.199 --> 01:06:44.079
Context is always missing from any story technically.
01:06:44.400 --> 01:06:48.000
Zuckerberg didn't lie when he said Facebook doesn't decide what's true.
01:06:48.239 --> 01:06:52.880
He just set up a structure where somebody else decided and he enforced their decision.
01:06:53.119 --> 01:06:56.559
Twitter didn't lie when it said it respected free speech.
01:06:56.719 --> 01:07:00.880
It just put certain speakers on quiet lists that throttled their reach.
01:07:01.119 --> 01:07:07.599
The Aspen Institute didn't lie when it ran a tabletop exercise about a hypothetical future Hunter Biden leak.
01:07:07.840 --> 01:07:09.280
It was just exercise.
01:07:09.440 --> 01:07:13.119
Every individual link in the chain can honestly say they didn't lie.
01:07:13.360 --> 01:07:21.679
And the chain, taken as a whole, produced an outcome that no one in a free society would have consented to if it had been proposed openly.
01:07:21.920 --> 01:07:22.960
That is the machine.
01:07:23.039 --> 01:07:24.239
That is the architecture.
01:07:24.400 --> 01:07:28.239
And it's running on you, on me, on all of us, every day.
01:07:28.480 --> 01:07:31.840
And the worst part is what it does to the people who notice.
01:07:32.159 --> 01:07:46.800
Because noticers, the people who catch the swap, the people who notice the throttle, the people who remember the original Fauci clip, the people who remember that the laptop was real, they become a problem for the machine, and the machine has a name for them too.
01:07:46.960 --> 01:07:48.800
We'll get to that next.
01:07:50.320 --> 01:07:52.960
Here's the thing that happens when the machine runs.
01:07:53.199 --> 01:07:55.199
It doesn't hit big important people.
01:07:55.440 --> 01:07:57.920
Big important people can mostly take care of themselves.
01:07:58.159 --> 01:08:02.079
They have PR teams, they have lawyers, they have friends at other platforms.
01:08:02.320 --> 01:08:05.119
When the machine comes for them, they all know who to call.
01:08:05.280 --> 01:08:07.119
The machine hits ordinary people.
01:08:07.280 --> 01:08:12.719
It hits the guy at the office who posts a news article to his Facebook page and suddenly gets a warning label.
01:08:12.960 --> 01:08:19.439
It hits the grandmother who remembered something from last year and said so in a comment and got a 30 day suspension.
01:08:19.600 --> 01:08:24.880
It hits the nurse who had a question about a medication and asked it in public and got dragged.
01:08:25.119 --> 01:08:29.119
It hits the pastor whose sermon got clipped and context collapsed.
01:08:29.359 --> 01:08:35.119
It hits the doctor who deviated from the approved statement and found his medical license under review.
01:08:35.359 --> 01:08:36.479
Yeah, that happened.
01:08:36.720 --> 01:08:44.319
It hits you quietly, without ceremony, without you necessarily even noticing at first that it's happening.
01:08:44.560 --> 01:08:47.199
One day a post gets fewer likes than usual.
01:08:47.359 --> 01:08:48.960
Your reach feels smaller.
01:08:49.359 --> 01:08:51.840
People that you used to talk to stop responding.
01:08:52.079 --> 01:08:55.039
You think maybe you said something wrong, maybe you're being paranoid.
01:08:55.119 --> 01:09:00.239
You shrug it off, and the machine hums on in the background, doing its work, and you go about your day.
01:09:00.479 --> 01:09:05.279
Until the day the machine does something to someone you trust, and then everything changes.
01:09:05.520 --> 01:09:13.760
I want to show you what I mean with a specific case, and I want to be careful with it because it's a case that most people have already formed strong opinions about.
01:09:13.920 --> 01:09:18.479
So I'm going to ask you to set your opinions down for a minute and just listen with fresh ears.
01:09:18.960 --> 01:09:20.399
The man's name is Dr.
01:09:20.560 --> 01:09:21.600
Anthony Fauci.
01:09:21.760 --> 01:09:30.159
And regardless of what you think of him personally, and I know some of you have strong feelings in both directions, what I want to show you is not about Anthony Fauci.
01:09:30.399 --> 01:09:34.079
It's about what happened to the people who remembered the things he said.
01:09:34.319 --> 01:09:38.000
Two clips, same man, about five months apart.
01:09:38.159 --> 01:09:41.600
The first one is from 60 Minutes, March 8th, 2020.
01:09:41.840 --> 01:09:42.159
Dr.
01:09:42.239 --> 01:09:46.399
John LePuc is interviewing Fauci about the emerging pandemic.
01:09:46.560 --> 01:09:48.319
The topic is masks.
01:09:48.479 --> 01:09:49.840
Listen to what Fauci says.
01:09:49.920 --> 01:09:51.840
Listen to how confidently he says it.
01:09:52.000 --> 01:09:54.239
Listen to the qualifications he adds.
01:09:54.399 --> 01:09:57.119
Listen to the interviewer asking if he's sure.
01:09:57.439 --> 01:10:01.199
Because people are listening really closely to this right now, he says.
01:10:02.159 --> 01:10:06.880
There's a lot of confusion among people and misinformation surrounding face masks.
01:10:07.199 --> 01:10:08.479
Can you discuss that?
01:10:08.560 --> 01:10:15.199
Aaron Ross Powell The masks are important for someone who's infected to prevent them from infecting someone else.
01:10:15.520 --> 01:10:22.079
Now, when you see people and look at the films in China and South Korea, whatever, everybody's wearing a mask.
01:10:22.399 --> 01:10:27.279
Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.
01:10:27.920 --> 01:10:28.720
You're sure of it?
01:10:28.800 --> 01:10:31.039
Because people are listening really closely to this.
01:10:31.119 --> 01:10:31.279
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
01:10:31.439 --> 01:10:32.800
Right now, people should not be walking.
01:10:32.960 --> 01:10:35.359
There's no reason to be walking around with a mask.
01:10:35.760 --> 01:10:45.520
When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet.
01:10:45.760 --> 01:10:50.319
But it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.
01:10:50.560 --> 01:10:54.000
And often there are unintended consequences.
01:10:54.159 --> 01:10:57.039
People keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.
01:10:57.199 --> 01:10:57.439
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
01:10:57.520 --> 01:11:00.560
And can you get some schmutz sort of staying inside there?
01:11:01.119 --> 01:11:01.279
Of course.
01:11:01.520 --> 01:11:01.840
Of course.
01:11:02.079 --> 01:11:07.439
But when you think masks, you should think of healthcare providers needing them and people who are ill.
01:11:07.680 --> 01:11:14.560
The people who, when you look at the films of foreign countries and you see 85% of the people wearing masks, that's fine.
01:11:14.720 --> 01:11:15.199
That's fine.
01:11:15.279 --> 01:11:16.000
I'm not against it.
01:11:16.159 --> 01:11:17.279
If you want to do it, that's fine.
01:11:17.359 --> 01:11:17.520
Trevor Burrus, Jr.
01:11:17.760 --> 01:11:19.439
But it can lead to a shortage of masks.
01:11:21.199 --> 01:11:25.119
It could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it.
01:11:26.159 --> 01:11:26.479
Okay.
01:11:27.119 --> 01:11:28.159
So remember that.
01:11:28.319 --> 01:11:30.720
The year is 2020, early in the pandemic.
01:11:30.800 --> 01:11:34.880
The authority figure on American infectious disease is on 60 minutes.
01:11:35.039 --> 01:11:39.680
In a lab coat, telling Americans that there is no reason to walk around with a mask.
01:11:39.840 --> 01:11:42.880
He's acknowledging that masks might make people feel better.
01:11:43.039 --> 01:11:45.600
He's allowing that they might block a droplet.
01:11:45.840 --> 01:11:48.640
He's adding that there could be unintended consequences.
01:11:48.880 --> 01:11:51.600
People fiddling with them, touching their faces.
01:11:51.760 --> 01:11:56.319
And he's landing on a practical concern about mask supply for healthcare workers.
01:11:56.479 --> 01:11:56.960
Got it?
01:11:57.119 --> 01:11:57.680
All right, good.
01:11:57.760 --> 01:11:58.560
Hold on to it.
01:11:58.800 --> 01:12:03.119
Five months later, August of 2020, ABC World News Tonight.
01:12:03.279 --> 01:12:06.880
David Muir is interviewing Fauci about the reopening of schools.
01:12:07.119 --> 01:12:08.159
Here's clip two.
01:12:08.800 --> 01:12:12.880
And now we've learned that nine students and staff have already tested positive in that school alone.
01:12:12.960 --> 01:12:14.319
Do those images concern you?
01:12:14.399 --> 01:12:18.560
And should all students, should all students in this country be wearing masks?
01:12:19.039 --> 01:12:31.840
You know, I'm one, and I've said it for so long, David, that I really do believe if you if and and it's part of what I call a comprehensive way to really avoid the things that you were just referring to.
01:12:32.000 --> 01:12:34.479
There should be universal wearing of masks.
01:12:34.640 --> 01:12:38.960
There should be the extent possible social distancing, avoiding crowds.
01:12:39.199 --> 01:12:48.640
Outdoors always better than indoors, and be in a situation where you continually have the capability of washing your hands and cleaning up with sanitizers.
01:12:48.800 --> 01:12:52.000
When I see sites like that, it is disturbing to me.
01:12:52.399 --> 01:13:00.239
So when you hear this local guidance coming from some schools that mask wearing will be uh voluntary for students in those schools, you disagree with that.
01:13:00.479 --> 01:13:02.239
You say universal mask wearing.
01:13:07.600 --> 01:13:08.960
I could give you my opinion.
01:13:09.439 --> 01:13:09.600
Right.
01:13:09.680 --> 01:13:12.319
You just said you just said universal wearing of masks.
01:13:13.039 --> 01:13:23.760
I would I I feel that universal wearing of masks is one of five or six things that are very important in preventing the upsurge of infection.
01:13:24.720 --> 01:13:35.119
Same man, same confident delivery, same steady tone, same lab coat energy, and this time universal mask wearing for students in schools.
01:13:35.279 --> 01:13:40.159
And when Muir catches Fauci hedging, Muir presses, you just said universal.
01:13:40.319 --> 01:13:44.000
And Fauci, credit to him, doesn't back down, reaffirms.
01:13:44.239 --> 01:13:45.600
Universal masks.
01:13:45.920 --> 01:13:48.640
One of five or six things that are very important.
01:13:49.039 --> 01:13:51.359
Now, here's where I have to be really careful.
01:13:51.600 --> 01:13:58.479
Because there is a version of this section of the episode that is a cheap, easy, partisan-friendly dunk on Anthony Fauci.
01:13:58.800 --> 01:14:03.279
That version would go something like, see, he lied, he flip-flopped, he can't be trusted.
01:14:03.359 --> 01:14:05.199
The science was political the whole time.
01:14:05.359 --> 01:14:06.560
That version is available.
01:14:06.720 --> 01:14:08.399
A lot of people have made that version.
01:14:08.560 --> 01:14:11.279
It's been monetized many times by many people.
01:14:11.520 --> 01:14:13.840
That version is not the trap think version.
01:14:13.920 --> 01:14:15.600
Because here's the honest truth.
01:14:15.840 --> 01:14:19.439
In March of 2020, Fauci said what he said for a mix of reasons.
01:14:19.600 --> 01:14:20.960
Some of them were legitimate.
01:14:21.279 --> 01:14:24.720
Mask supply for healthcare workers was a real concern.
01:14:24.960 --> 01:14:26.319
Some of them were medical.
01:14:26.479 --> 01:14:32.239
The state of the evidence on masking was genuinely evolving, and some of them have been wrong in hindsight.
01:14:32.399 --> 01:14:34.079
All of that can be true.
01:14:34.319 --> 01:14:43.039
And the charitable read, the one a reasonable person could extend, is that information changed, the science updated, and Fauci updated with it.
01:14:43.199 --> 01:14:45.199
That's how expertise is supposed to work.
01:14:45.359 --> 01:14:46.800
That's actually a good version.
01:14:47.039 --> 01:14:48.399
Fine, grant him that.
01:14:48.479 --> 01:14:49.600
I'm happy to.
01:14:50.000 --> 01:14:51.359
But that's not the story.
01:14:51.520 --> 01:14:55.359
The story is what happened to the people who remembered the first clip.
01:14:55.520 --> 01:14:59.520
Because by the time the second clip aired, something had shifted in the culture.
01:14:59.680 --> 01:15:01.760
Not officially, nobody announced it.
01:15:01.920 --> 01:15:03.520
There wasn't a press release.
01:15:03.680 --> 01:15:12.640
But somewhere in the interval between March and August of 2020, the first clip had become, in the language we learned in part five, malinformation.
01:15:12.880 --> 01:15:14.399
True but disfavored.
01:15:14.640 --> 01:15:19.359
Still accurate as a record of what was said, no longer acceptable to bring up.
01:15:19.600 --> 01:15:34.560
And the people who brought it up, who did the most basic thing in the world, which is to remember what an authority figure had said on television five months earlier, and compare it to what the same authority figure was saying now, well, those people found themselves in a strange new position.
01:15:34.720 --> 01:15:36.079
They weren't debating policy.
01:15:36.239 --> 01:15:37.680
They weren't attacking science.
01:15:37.840 --> 01:15:41.680
They were just remembering with receipts on camera, on the record.
01:15:41.840 --> 01:15:51.119
And they got flagged on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, in family group chats, in workplace Slack channels, in church lobbies.
01:15:51.359 --> 01:15:59.359
They posted the first clip and the platforms added a warning label, or throttled the post, or suspended the account, or removed it entirely.
01:15:59.600 --> 01:16:18.399
The fact checkers, the ones that Zuckerberg told us about in part five, the ones that were independent but operating inside the house, adjudicated that posting a 2020 clip of Anthony Fauci in 2021 was quote unquote missing context or misleading, or in some cases flat out false.
01:16:18.800 --> 01:16:20.720
Because of course it wasn't false.
01:16:20.880 --> 01:16:23.039
The man said the words, the tape was real.
01:16:23.279 --> 01:16:24.720
60 Minutes had aired it.
01:16:24.800 --> 01:16:27.279
The archive existed, the transcripts existed.
01:16:27.359 --> 01:16:28.319
I just pulled it.
01:16:28.560 --> 01:16:37.439
But bringing it up in 2021 in a country trying very hard to mandate masks for school children and vaccines for workers was now a problem.
01:16:37.600 --> 01:16:41.279
And the system found ways to make it a problem for you personally.
01:16:41.520 --> 01:16:42.640
That's the cost.
01:16:42.880 --> 01:16:48.560
Now I want you to zoom out for a minute because this isn't just about one clip, and it isn't about Fauci.
01:16:48.880 --> 01:16:51.279
It isn't even just about the pandemic.
01:16:51.600 --> 01:16:58.640
This is about what happens to a person's relationship to their own memory when the machine tells them that their memory is misinformation.
01:16:58.880 --> 01:17:04.000
Think about what that does to somebody over time, over hundreds of small interactions.
01:17:04.239 --> 01:17:07.840
You remember a thing that happened, you bring it up, you get flagged.
01:17:08.000 --> 01:17:12.880
You're told the thing you remembered either didn't happen the way you remember it or shouldn't be mentioned.
01:17:13.119 --> 01:17:23.279
You get the label, the warning, the throttled reach, the cool-off period from your friends, the raised eyebrow from your sister-in-law at Thanksgiving, the dismissal at work.
01:17:23.439 --> 01:17:30.239
And at some point, slowly, quietly, without even realizing it's happening, you stop trusting yourself.
01:17:30.479 --> 01:17:32.079
That's what the machine does.
01:17:32.239 --> 01:17:42.880
Not in a dramatic way, not in a way you can point at, not in a way that makes for a great news story, but in thousands of small erosions every day to millions of people.
01:17:43.119 --> 01:17:52.000
Your own memory, the most basic building block of who you are, the thing that lets you know yesterday is connected to today and today is connected to tomorrow.
01:17:52.159 --> 01:17:58.720
Well, that becomes unreliable because the machine has told you over and over that your memories are malinformation.
01:17:58.960 --> 01:18:00.479
That's why people feel crazy.
01:18:00.640 --> 01:18:02.159
That's why we're all so tired.
01:18:02.319 --> 01:18:04.319
That's why your cousin won't talk to you anymore.
01:18:04.399 --> 01:18:08.079
That's why your mom thinks the news is lying to her and doesn't know which news.
01:18:08.319 --> 01:18:11.039
That's why the guy at the grocery store looks haunted.
01:18:11.199 --> 01:18:13.600
The machine isn't just managing what you can say.
01:18:13.760 --> 01:18:16.720
The machine is managing what you're allowed to remember.
01:18:17.039 --> 01:18:25.199
And when you can't trust your own memory, can't trust the basic continuity of your own experience, you can't be a citizen in any meaningful sense.
01:18:25.359 --> 01:18:26.239
You can't deliberate.
01:18:26.399 --> 01:18:27.680
You can't weigh evidence.
01:18:27.840 --> 01:18:30.079
You can't hold institutions accountable.
01:18:30.239 --> 01:18:33.840
You can't do the basic work of being a person in society.
01:18:34.159 --> 01:18:36.960
You can only comply or disconnect.
01:18:37.119 --> 01:18:39.359
And most people are choosing disconnect.
01:18:39.439 --> 01:18:41.760
That's what the last five years have actually been.
01:18:42.000 --> 01:18:49.920
Not a political crisis, not a misinformation crisis, not a polarization crisis, though it looks a lot like that from certain angles.
01:18:50.319 --> 01:18:54.800
What it actually is is a memory crisis, a continuity crisis.
01:18:55.439 --> 01:19:00.000
Can I trust the sequence of events I have personally witnessed crisis?
01:19:00.239 --> 01:19:04.399
And when enough people stop trusting their own memories, you don't have a country anymore.
01:19:04.479 --> 01:19:05.920
You have an audience.
01:19:06.239 --> 01:19:07.680
So now what?
01:19:08.000 --> 01:19:11.439
That's the question this episode has been walking toward the whole time.
01:19:11.680 --> 01:19:24.800
If the swap happened and the flood happened and the journalism drift happened, and the machinery got built and it's running on you every day, and if you can feel it chipping at your memory and your attention and your trust, well now what?
01:19:25.199 --> 01:19:26.479
Is there a way out?
01:19:26.720 --> 01:19:29.119
Is there something, anything to anchor to?
01:19:29.359 --> 01:19:30.640
I think there is.
01:19:30.800 --> 01:19:31.920
And it's not clever.
01:19:32.000 --> 01:19:34.319
It's not a seven-step program, it's not even a hack.
01:19:34.560 --> 01:19:38.880
It's the oldest idea in the world, and it's been waiting here the whole time.
01:19:39.039 --> 01:19:40.640
Let's talk about it.
01:19:43.439 --> 01:19:44.720
So here we are.
01:19:44.880 --> 01:19:49.439
We've walked through the swap where truth became your truth and nobody flinched.
01:19:49.680 --> 01:19:55.119
We've walked through the mirror, where the same move showed up in reverse on the other side of the aisle.
01:19:55.279 --> 01:20:03.439
We've walked through the named doctrine, where a White House chief strategist admitted on camera that flooding the zone was the operating method.
01:20:03.680 --> 01:20:09.439
We've walked through the journalism pivot, where the referees joined the game and stopped calling fouls.
01:20:09.680 --> 01:20:17.359
We walked through the machinery where platforms and government agencies built a system for architecturally managing what counts as knowable.
01:20:17.840 --> 01:20:24.319
And we've walked through the cost where the machine reaches into your memory and makes you doubt what you personally witnessed.
01:20:24.640 --> 01:20:30.079
Now the question that's been sitting in the back of the room the whole time what's the opposite of all this?
01:20:30.640 --> 01:20:36.000
If you've been listening, really listening, you should be feeling something kind of uncomfortable right now.
01:20:36.399 --> 01:20:41.600
Because every single thing we've diagnosed in this episode has one structural feature in common.
01:20:42.079 --> 01:20:54.399
In every case, truth got moved somewhere it didn't belong into the self, into the feeling, into the conclusion, the algorithm, the flagging cue, into the fact checker's ruling.
01:20:54.560 --> 01:21:00.560
In every case, truth got collapsed down from something external into something manageable.
01:21:00.880 --> 01:21:04.560
And once it's manageable, someone is managing it.
01:21:04.880 --> 01:21:08.079
And the someone doing the managing is never accountable to you.
01:21:08.720 --> 01:21:10.239
So opposite.
01:21:10.720 --> 01:21:22.239
If the problem is that truth got pulled inside, pulled into the self, pulled into the machine, into the algorithm, then the opposite by definition is truth that stays outside.
01:21:22.479 --> 01:21:39.359
Truth that does not belong to you, truth that you cannot manage, truth that you don't generate, truth that is simply there, whether you feel it or not, whether you endorse it or not, whether the platform flags it or not, whether the fact checker agrees with it or not.
01:21:39.600 --> 01:21:42.800
Truth is something you find, not something you bring.
01:21:43.119 --> 01:21:44.560
This is not a new idea.
01:21:44.720 --> 01:21:49.199
This is actually one of the oldest ideas human beings have ever had about what truth is.
01:21:49.439 --> 01:22:08.720
It shows up in the pre-Socratic philosophers, it shows up in Plato, it shows up in the Hebrew prophets, it shows up in the whole architecture of Western thought from before the Common Era through to, I would argue, about 45 years ago, when the slow dissolution we've been tracing this episode really began to pick up speed.
01:22:08.960 --> 01:22:14.800
And I want to name it directly, because this is what I'm calling a foundation episode, and I'm not gonna hedge.
01:22:15.439 --> 01:22:26.880
The biblical conception of truth is that it is external, given, and discoverable, not generated by you, not voted on by us, not adjudicated by an institution.
01:22:27.279 --> 01:22:34.399
Truth is a property of reality, which is a property of creation, which is a property of the one who created it.
01:22:34.800 --> 01:22:40.079
Truth is not mine, it is not yours, it is not ours, it is his, capital H.
01:22:40.560 --> 01:22:44.239
And we discover it, or we refuse to, but we don't make it.
01:22:44.479 --> 01:22:46.319
That is not a power we possess.
01:22:46.720 --> 01:22:57.039
Now, if you're a listener who doesn't share that framework, stay with me because you don't have to accept the theological claim to see what the structural claim does to the problem we've been tracing.
01:22:57.199 --> 01:23:03.600
The structural claim is truth is located outside the observer, anywhere outside.
01:23:03.920 --> 01:23:09.600
That alone, just that, just the location, breaks every single move we've diagnosed in this episode.
01:23:09.920 --> 01:23:13.359
Oprah's your truth doesn't work if truth is external.
01:23:13.600 --> 01:23:15.920
Conway's alternative facts doesn't work.
01:23:16.079 --> 01:23:19.680
Trump's what you're seeing isn't happening, that doesn't work either.
01:23:19.840 --> 01:23:21.920
The fact checker's algorithm doesn't work.
01:23:22.159 --> 01:23:24.960
Malinformation as a category doesn't exist.
01:23:25.279 --> 01:23:32.479
Every single move in this episode requires truth to be manageable, which requires it to be inside the system managing it.
01:23:32.720 --> 01:23:36.479
Put it back outside, and the whole apparatus collapses.
01:23:36.640 --> 01:23:38.479
That's the philosophical claim.
01:23:38.640 --> 01:23:41.359
And you can accept just that much if you want.
01:23:41.520 --> 01:23:46.079
But I'm gonna go further because this is a foundation episode, and I told you I would.
01:23:46.319 --> 01:23:54.640
The reason the biblical framework is the strongest version of this claim is that it doesn't just locate truth externally, it locates truth in a person.
01:23:54.960 --> 01:24:05.680
Two thousand years ago, a Jewish rabbi stood in front of his disciples and made what is structurally the most radical claim about truth that any human being has ever made.
01:24:05.920 --> 01:24:09.279
He said, I am the way and the truth and the life.
01:24:09.680 --> 01:24:14.319
Sit with that for a second, because you've probably heard it so many times it doesn't really hit anymore.
01:24:14.560 --> 01:24:20.479
He didn't say I know the truth, he didn't say I teach the truth, he didn't say I point to the truth.
01:24:20.640 --> 01:24:22.399
Those are all smaller claims.
01:24:22.640 --> 01:24:25.840
Those would make him a philosopher or a teacher or a prophet.
01:24:26.159 --> 01:24:28.720
What he said was something categorically different.
01:24:28.960 --> 01:24:32.399
He said truth is a person, specifically him.
01:24:32.880 --> 01:24:44.800
Which means truth isn't a concept you argue about, truth isn't a feeling you have, truth isn't a proposition that a committee votes on, truth is someone you meet or refuse to meet.
01:24:45.119 --> 01:24:52.479
And if that's true, even if the possibility of it is taken seriously, every single move in this episode becomes nonsense.
01:24:52.720 --> 01:25:03.600
You can't have your version of a person, you can't have alternative facts about a person, you can't throttle a person on a platform, you can't flag a person as malinformation.
01:25:03.840 --> 01:25:06.159
A person either is or is not.
01:25:06.399 --> 01:25:09.199
A person is either met or is not met.
01:25:09.439 --> 01:25:17.439
A person, a real particular historical person, cannot be managed into irrelevance by a fact checker in Menlo Park.
01:25:17.760 --> 01:25:19.680
That's that's a different kind of anchor.
01:25:19.840 --> 01:25:21.439
That's not a concept you hold.
01:25:21.520 --> 01:25:23.199
That's something that holds you.
01:25:23.439 --> 01:25:28.159
And I want to be clear about the cost because this re-anchor is not comfortable.
01:25:28.479 --> 01:25:31.279
Meeting truth is harder than having your own.
01:25:31.520 --> 01:25:34.479
That's the whole reason the swapped work for 30 years.
01:25:34.640 --> 01:25:35.840
Your truth is portable.
01:25:36.000 --> 01:25:37.920
Your truth fits in your pocket.
01:25:38.159 --> 01:25:44.880
Your truth never disagrees with you, never embarrasses you, never calls you to repentance, never asks you to change.
01:25:45.199 --> 01:25:48.319
Your truth is the easiest companion you'll ever have.
01:25:48.800 --> 01:25:54.640
External truth, whether you take the biblical version or just the philosophical version, is harder.
01:25:55.199 --> 01:25:57.760
Because external truth can say no to you.
01:25:58.079 --> 01:26:01.199
It can tell you the thing that you wanted to believe isn't so.
01:26:01.840 --> 01:26:04.159
It can refuse to confirm what you feel.
01:26:04.560 --> 01:26:12.239
It can cost you friends, cost you careers, cost you comfort, it can demand you give up something you've been holding tightly for years.
01:26:12.880 --> 01:26:14.560
That's why people traded it away.
01:26:15.119 --> 01:26:18.399
That's why an entire culture quietly said yes to the swap.
01:26:18.800 --> 01:26:20.479
Because the swap was easier.
01:26:21.359 --> 01:26:23.439
But easier isn't the same as better.
01:26:23.920 --> 01:26:31.920
And what we just spent this entire episode documenting is what happens to a civilization that trades external truth for managed truth.
01:26:32.399 --> 01:26:46.720
You lose your memory, you lose your continuity, you lose your ability to be a citizen, you lose your trust in your own senses, you lose slowly, gradually, in thousands of small erosions, the thing that makes you a person.
01:26:48.000 --> 01:26:54.159
So here's the invitation not to agree with me, not to become a Christian on the spot, just go look.
01:26:54.479 --> 01:26:56.079
Go read what he actually said.
01:26:56.319 --> 01:27:05.600
Go look at the historical record, go check the sources, treat it like journalism, because the person being claimed is historically attested and what he said is documented.
01:27:05.760 --> 01:27:07.760
And you can actually go see for yourself.
01:27:08.000 --> 01:27:09.199
That is not sermon.
01:27:09.359 --> 01:27:13.199
That is the most trap think kind of thing I could possibly ask you to do.
01:27:13.359 --> 01:27:14.560
Go check the source.
01:27:14.720 --> 01:27:15.680
Check it yourself.
01:27:15.840 --> 01:27:17.199
Don't take my word for it.
01:27:17.359 --> 01:27:19.520
Don't take anybody else's word for it either.
01:27:19.680 --> 01:27:28.800
And if what you find when you go look turns out to be a person, a real person making real claims with a real historical footprint, then everything changes.
01:27:28.960 --> 01:27:30.079
Not just for you.
01:27:30.319 --> 01:27:45.359
For every future episode of this show, for every swap you'll see in the news this week, for every flood you'll wade through in your feed tomorrow, for every machine-managed assertion you'll be told is true or false by an institution that would prefer that you not check.
01:27:45.600 --> 01:27:56.800
Because once you know that truth is something you meet, not something that you have, not something the machine decides, not something the fact checker adjudicates, you stop being manageable.
01:27:57.680 --> 01:28:05.600
And an unmanageable person is the The single thing every part of the architecture we described in this episode is built to prevent.
01:28:06.399 --> 01:28:08.159
Be unmanageable.
01:28:08.479 --> 01:28:10.000
That's the episode.
01:28:11.039 --> 01:28:17.760
This has been foundation one: the swap, the flood, the machine, the cost, the anchor.
01:28:18.000 --> 01:28:21.279
If you heard anything in here that you'll still be thinking about tomorrow, good.
01:28:21.439 --> 01:28:22.239
That's the job.
01:28:22.399 --> 01:28:23.439
Bring it up at dinner.
01:28:23.600 --> 01:28:25.680
Send this to somebody who will push back on it.
01:28:25.840 --> 01:28:27.920
Argue with me in your head or on your commuter.
01:28:28.079 --> 01:28:29.600
Go to my website and argue there.
01:28:29.840 --> 01:28:31.439
That's how foundations work.
01:28:31.600 --> 01:28:34.159
They're not drivetime content on your way home.
01:28:34.319 --> 01:28:35.600
They're floorboards.
01:28:35.840 --> 01:28:40.560
You walk on them for years without noticing, but everything you build sits on top of them.
01:28:40.800 --> 01:28:42.239
There'll be more foundations.
01:28:42.399 --> 01:28:44.000
I suspect three or four.
01:28:44.319 --> 01:28:46.479
Identity, outrage, authority.
01:28:46.880 --> 01:28:48.319
Maybe want to have it named yet.
01:28:48.479 --> 01:28:49.279
We'll get there.
01:28:49.520 --> 01:28:51.279
But for now, go look.
01:28:51.439 --> 01:28:52.560
Go check the source.
01:28:52.720 --> 01:28:53.840
Go meet the person.
01:28:54.000 --> 01:28:56.319
Don't take my word for anything.
01:28:57.279 --> 01:28:58.399
Think deeper.
01:28:58.640 --> 01:29:01.279
Stay free, and stay unmanageable.
01:29:01.920 --> 01:29:02.880
I'm Darren.
01:29:03.039 --> 01:29:04.479
Thanks for listening.