Noelle Cook

WEBVTT
00:00:00.313 --> 00:00:03.096
War is immoral, poverty is immoral,
00:00:03.378 --> 00:00:04.679
racism is immoral,
00:00:04.940 --> 00:00:06.661
police brutality is immoral,
00:00:06.863 --> 00:00:08.003
oppression is immoral,
00:00:08.224 --> 00:00:09.406
genocide is immoral,
00:00:09.627 --> 00:00:11.028
imperialism is immoral.
00:00:11.269 --> 00:00:13.492
This country represents all those things.
00:00:16.615 --> 00:00:18.637
Have you heard of the Tradwife movement?
00:00:19.336 --> 00:00:21.178
It's one way women on the right have
00:00:21.198 --> 00:00:22.937
fallen victim to extremism.
00:00:23.458 --> 00:00:25.419
My Global Warning guest today has seen it
00:00:25.458 --> 00:00:26.600
with her own eyes,
00:00:26.679 --> 00:00:28.359
starting on January sixth.
00:00:29.001 --> 00:00:30.661
Noelle Cook is an ethnographer and
00:00:30.701 --> 00:00:33.021
researcher specializing in the online and
00:00:33.161 --> 00:00:35.203
offline participation of women in
00:00:35.243 --> 00:00:37.463
conspiratorial and right-wing movements.
00:00:37.963 --> 00:00:39.924
With a background in anthropology,
00:00:39.945 --> 00:00:42.085
she has spent years studying how identity,
00:00:42.125 --> 00:00:42.485
belief,
00:00:42.526 --> 00:00:44.728
and belonging shape extremist communities.
00:00:45.188 --> 00:00:45.487
How?
00:00:45.828 --> 00:00:46.948
She embedded herself.
00:00:47.448 --> 00:00:49.789
Noelle is the author of The Conspiracists,
00:00:49.909 --> 00:00:50.951
Women, Extremism,
00:00:50.970 --> 00:00:52.212
and the Lore of Belonging,
00:00:52.351 --> 00:00:53.872
as well as the researcher for and
00:00:53.893 --> 00:00:56.094
associate producer of The Conspiracists,
00:00:56.234 --> 00:00:58.515
a documentary film by Page Seventy-Five
00:00:58.554 --> 00:00:59.176
Productions.
00:00:59.695 --> 00:01:01.356
Both have received rave reviews.
00:01:02.017 --> 00:01:04.299
Noelle's work bridges academia and popular
00:01:04.338 --> 00:01:04.759
media,
00:01:04.938 --> 00:01:06.760
offering insights into the social and
00:01:06.799 --> 00:01:09.242
cultural forces that drive radicalization.
00:01:09.682 --> 00:01:11.743
She has presented her research in academic
00:01:11.864 --> 00:01:12.924
and media spaces,
00:01:13.004 --> 00:01:15.006
focusing on the intersection of gender
00:01:15.085 --> 00:01:17.347
extremism and disinformation.
00:01:17.888 --> 00:01:18.409
So, Noelle,
00:01:18.448 --> 00:01:19.950
thank you today for joining me.
00:01:21.344 --> 00:01:22.927
It is so great to have you.
00:01:23.486 --> 00:01:25.129
Today is January fifteenth,
00:01:25.168 --> 00:01:27.210
so we missed the anniversary of January
00:01:27.251 --> 00:01:28.451
sixth by about a week,
00:01:28.533 --> 00:01:30.995
but I'm sure you still have some feelings.
00:01:31.215 --> 00:01:32.576
Tell me what comes to mind when you
00:01:32.617 --> 00:01:35.500
think back to that day.
00:01:35.519 --> 00:01:37.162
It's still very surreal to me,
00:01:37.682 --> 00:01:39.403
particularly when I think back to having
00:01:39.444 --> 00:01:42.266
been there on January sixth.
00:01:42.326 --> 00:01:44.028
And just to be clear of why I
00:01:46.254 --> 00:01:50.596
I was a graduate student in twenty twenty
00:01:50.757 --> 00:01:53.597
one and there was no in-person research
00:01:53.658 --> 00:01:54.799
because of the pandemic.
00:01:54.938 --> 00:01:56.579
So I decided to go down to D.C.
00:01:56.620 --> 00:01:57.820
while I was living in Maryland at the
00:01:57.861 --> 00:01:59.861
time to take photographs of the Stop the
00:01:59.882 --> 00:02:00.522
Steal rally.
00:02:01.082 --> 00:02:03.444
I had done photographs of other liberal
00:02:03.543 --> 00:02:05.665
events in the years leading up to that.
00:02:06.906 --> 00:02:08.286
And that was one of the only things
00:02:08.325 --> 00:02:10.387
I could think of that might produce a
00:02:10.407 --> 00:02:11.887
visual anthropology project,
00:02:12.086 --> 00:02:17.068
the radicalization pathways of women on
00:02:17.087 --> 00:02:17.788
the right,
00:02:18.008 --> 00:02:19.688
as well as then compare it to some
00:02:19.729 --> 00:02:21.209
of the photos I had done on the
00:02:21.248 --> 00:02:21.508
left.
00:02:22.068 --> 00:02:23.669
But I got something very different when I
00:02:23.709 --> 00:02:24.990
arrived at the Capitol that day.
00:02:25.669 --> 00:02:28.770
I got there very late because I was
00:02:28.889 --> 00:02:30.531
really debating on whether to go down
00:02:30.570 --> 00:02:32.070
because it was so cold that morning.
00:02:33.070 --> 00:02:35.151
And I got a lot of things right.
00:02:35.251 --> 00:02:35.391
Well,
00:02:35.412 --> 00:02:37.051
I got a late start and I really
00:02:37.072 --> 00:02:38.451
thought I was going down to see this
00:02:38.532 --> 00:02:38.872
rally,
00:02:38.931 --> 00:02:40.231
although I realized I was going to be
00:02:40.391 --> 00:02:40.692
late.
00:02:40.731 --> 00:02:42.432
So I was mostly going to get photos
00:02:42.453 --> 00:02:44.612
of people milling around that area of D.C.
00:02:45.272 --> 00:02:47.454
But when I got there and walked from
00:02:47.653 --> 00:02:49.033
Union Station to the Capitol,
00:02:49.234 --> 00:02:51.653
I directed we told we were told people
00:02:51.674 --> 00:02:52.435
were at the Capitol.
00:02:52.474 --> 00:02:53.414
So we walked that way.
00:02:54.414 --> 00:02:55.875
And that was very surreal.
00:02:55.935 --> 00:02:57.675
Rounding the corner and seeing bodies
00:02:57.735 --> 00:02:59.735
plastered against the building.
00:03:00.936 --> 00:03:02.798
Because having been a tourist in D.C.
00:03:02.818 --> 00:03:03.498
plenty of times,
00:03:03.598 --> 00:03:05.140
I know you're not allowed to even step
00:03:05.161 --> 00:03:06.782
on the bottom step of the building.
00:03:06.801 --> 00:03:08.163
You can't stand anywhere on the building.
00:03:08.544 --> 00:03:10.907
So I knew something was amiss immediately.
00:03:11.486 --> 00:03:12.908
But I started out on the east front,
00:03:13.068 --> 00:03:14.751
which was not the side with the tunnel.
00:03:14.790 --> 00:03:15.731
That was the west front.
00:03:16.252 --> 00:03:18.234
And the east front was people mostly
00:03:18.274 --> 00:03:20.056
milling around and sitting on the back
00:03:20.096 --> 00:03:21.978
steps there outside the rotunda.
00:03:22.979 --> 00:03:24.760
um and when you're in dc with that
00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:26.483
kind of crowd you don't get much cell
00:03:26.522 --> 00:03:28.705
service and so it was kind of impossible
00:03:28.764 --> 00:03:30.385
to know at that moment what was hap
00:03:30.406 --> 00:03:32.027
what was actually happening and it wasn't
00:03:32.068 --> 00:03:33.288
until i got home and turned the news
00:03:33.348 --> 00:03:35.270
on that i saw what was going on
00:03:35.651 --> 00:03:37.293
on the inside wow
00:03:38.507 --> 00:03:41.828
yeah amazing and so when you're standing
00:03:41.888 --> 00:03:43.687
around there you must have run into some
00:03:43.728 --> 00:03:46.368
people now in my experience i've never
00:03:46.389 --> 00:03:48.409
been a counter protester so when i go
00:03:48.449 --> 00:03:51.090
to protests i'm you know unless of course
00:03:51.250 --> 00:03:54.730
i am considering someone as potentially
00:03:54.971 --> 00:03:57.572
being an infiltrator the majority of the
00:03:57.632 --> 00:04:01.173
time i'm with my comrades my peers and
00:04:01.332 --> 00:04:03.532
it's a very clear enemy so to speak
00:04:03.592 --> 00:04:05.274
it's the police and the and
00:04:05.954 --> 00:04:08.134
know the capitalist institution that we're
00:04:08.194 --> 00:04:11.036
there to fight in this case you're a
00:04:11.096 --> 00:04:15.556
journalist you're um a woman who is you
00:04:15.597 --> 00:04:19.017
know not in agreement ideologically with
00:04:19.317 --> 00:04:21.038
these people and you're surrounded by them
00:04:21.119 --> 00:04:24.459
so like what was the how did you
00:04:24.579 --> 00:04:27.141
end up like mixing with people who you
00:04:27.201 --> 00:04:30.622
may never have run across and what about
00:04:30.661 --> 00:04:33.043
those conversations inspired you to
00:04:33.822 --> 00:04:35.944
take a next step beyond just taking
00:04:36.004 --> 00:04:40.007
photographs and doing work in academia?
00:04:40.127 --> 00:04:41.728
I think the day it was happening,
00:04:42.449 --> 00:04:43.949
because I was approaching it with an
00:04:44.009 --> 00:04:45.531
academic project in mind,
00:04:46.291 --> 00:04:48.733
an ethnographic project specifically,
00:04:49.394 --> 00:04:51.636
that served as a nice shield in many
00:04:51.675 --> 00:04:52.096
ways,
00:04:52.216 --> 00:04:54.117
because ethnography doesn't demand
00:04:54.177 --> 00:04:54.718
pushback.
00:04:54.757 --> 00:04:56.418
It doesn't demand changing minds.
00:04:57.740 --> 00:04:59.141
It asks you to observe
00:04:59.480 --> 00:05:00.180
another culture,
00:05:00.541 --> 00:05:03.843
which is what I consider the MAGA movement
00:05:03.882 --> 00:05:04.744
to be another culture,
00:05:05.843 --> 00:05:07.944
and to understand what their practices
00:05:08.024 --> 00:05:08.646
mean to them.
00:05:09.125 --> 00:05:11.247
And so with that in mind,
00:05:11.346 --> 00:05:13.088
it was easier to navigate through that
00:05:13.168 --> 00:05:14.148
space that day.
00:05:14.708 --> 00:05:15.309
Plus,
00:05:15.728 --> 00:05:17.209
I didn't know what I was navigating
00:05:17.269 --> 00:05:18.370
through exactly.
00:05:19.730 --> 00:05:20.930
And then there's the sheer fact that I'm
00:05:20.951 --> 00:05:21.932
a middle-aged white woman,
00:05:22.291 --> 00:05:24.213
and I am not only because of my
00:05:24.372 --> 00:05:25.894
age am I mostly invisible,
00:05:26.134 --> 00:05:26.233
but
00:05:26.653 --> 00:05:28.456
But I can pretty much move freely through
00:05:28.495 --> 00:05:29.976
spaces unquestioned.
00:05:30.817 --> 00:05:32.459
If I'm not there to be combatant,
00:05:32.839 --> 00:05:35.601
people just automatically assume that I'm
00:05:35.983 --> 00:05:39.305
one of them or at least sympathetic to
00:05:39.346 --> 00:05:40.547
their cause, potentially.
00:05:40.567 --> 00:05:43.629
And then that can be assumed without any
00:05:43.670 --> 00:05:45.851
prompting, just based on my appearance.
00:05:46.670 --> 00:05:47.850
Which is so amazing.
00:05:47.990 --> 00:05:48.370
And I mean,
00:05:48.451 --> 00:05:49.790
I'll just throw this in there.
00:05:50.192 --> 00:05:53.372
I can relate not to being a woman
00:05:53.413 --> 00:05:54.913
with blonde hair, obviously,
00:05:54.973 --> 00:05:57.214
but just the way that I look,
00:05:57.435 --> 00:06:00.877
I have cops and right-wing types come up
00:06:00.896 --> 00:06:02.557
to me all the time thinking I'm one
00:06:02.576 --> 00:06:04.017
of them because I have a shaved head
00:06:04.057 --> 00:06:04.958
and neck tattoo.
00:06:04.999 --> 00:06:07.339
And so, you know, a little off topic,
00:06:07.360 --> 00:06:09.721
but it's incredible what looks can...
00:06:10.480 --> 00:06:12.502
can tell people whether it's true or it's
00:06:12.562 --> 00:06:14.464
not it can dictate quite a bit about
00:06:14.524 --> 00:06:18.209
how they uh respond to you um so
00:06:18.249 --> 00:06:21.072
what was the response when you started
00:06:21.413 --> 00:06:25.057
like asking questions um you know what
00:06:25.377 --> 00:06:27.699
what what types of people were you meeting
00:06:27.740 --> 00:06:29.562
with and what types of questions were you
00:06:29.661 --> 00:06:31.983
asking and what was what was the response
00:06:32.024 --> 00:06:32.324
like
00:06:33.069 --> 00:06:33.209
Well,
00:06:33.228 --> 00:06:34.870
I didn't really speak to anyone in an
00:06:35.129 --> 00:06:37.031
interview capacity that day.
00:06:37.130 --> 00:06:38.711
I was literally just walking around taking
00:06:38.752 --> 00:06:40.471
photographs of people standing around,
00:06:40.512 --> 00:06:41.192
different groups.
00:06:42.293 --> 00:06:43.713
Yeah, just since that day,
00:06:43.774 --> 00:06:45.894
like throughout this whole, yeah, yeah,
00:06:45.935 --> 00:06:47.716
through the whole book writing process and
00:06:47.776 --> 00:06:48.235
everything.
00:06:48.831 --> 00:06:48.951
Well,
00:06:48.971 --> 00:06:50.771
I started the first year observing on
00:06:50.831 --> 00:06:52.413
paper and on social media.
00:06:52.653 --> 00:06:54.314
And so I spent the whole first year
00:06:54.353 --> 00:06:56.814
studying court records and newspapers and
00:06:57.055 --> 00:06:58.235
social media accounts,
00:06:58.716 --> 00:07:00.057
which unfortunately middle-aged women
00:07:00.396 --> 00:07:01.798
aren't great with using their privacy
00:07:01.817 --> 00:07:02.298
controls.
00:07:02.338 --> 00:07:03.899
And so you can learn an awful lot
00:07:03.918 --> 00:07:04.718
through social media.
00:07:05.620 --> 00:07:07.139
So I spent the first year doing that,
00:07:07.220 --> 00:07:07.940
but at some point,
00:07:08.540 --> 00:07:10.401
um some of the women i was following
00:07:10.422 --> 00:07:12.601
were leading me down paths i really became
00:07:12.622 --> 00:07:14.963
confused by you know i i expected the
00:07:14.983 --> 00:07:17.343
conspiracies i expected right-wing
00:07:17.382 --> 00:07:20.723
extremism but when we got into something
00:07:20.783 --> 00:07:23.024
that is called conspirituality a term
00:07:23.084 --> 00:07:26.406
coined by sociologists in to describe the
00:07:26.425 --> 00:07:28.906
convergence of new age spirituality and
00:07:28.966 --> 00:07:29.747
conspiracies
00:07:31.187 --> 00:07:32.449
That's kind of where they all led me
00:07:32.528 --> 00:07:32.848
to.
00:07:33.290 --> 00:07:34.711
And so at some point after that first
00:07:34.771 --> 00:07:36.173
year, Yvonne,
00:07:36.533 --> 00:07:37.394
one of the women in the book,
00:07:37.913 --> 00:07:38.415
in particular,
00:07:38.435 --> 00:07:40.076
her journey became more complicated than I
00:07:40.115 --> 00:07:41.336
could follow without having some
00:07:41.377 --> 00:07:41.997
background.
00:07:42.478 --> 00:07:43.338
And so I reached out to her in
00:07:43.399 --> 00:07:45.021
one of our Facebook groups and I said,
00:07:45.081 --> 00:07:46.101
could you explain this to me?
00:07:46.242 --> 00:07:47.562
She gave me her cell phone number and
00:07:47.603 --> 00:07:48.184
said, call me.
00:07:48.764 --> 00:07:49.425
And so I did.
00:07:49.764 --> 00:07:52.968
And that happened with pretty much every
00:07:52.987 --> 00:07:54.550
woman I spoke to wanted to talk.
00:07:56.757 --> 00:07:57.017
And again,
00:07:57.038 --> 00:07:58.860
it wasn't interviews because I wasn't
00:07:58.899 --> 00:08:00.601
really doing that sort of project.
00:08:00.661 --> 00:08:02.103
I was trying to understand what things
00:08:02.163 --> 00:08:03.483
meant to them, what I was seeing.
00:08:04.084 --> 00:08:06.646
And so what I started at doing morphed
00:08:06.706 --> 00:08:08.728
and changed over those three or four
00:08:08.769 --> 00:08:11.110
years, because by year two,
00:08:11.511 --> 00:08:13.192
when I'm now having conversations with
00:08:13.213 --> 00:08:13.713
these women,
00:08:14.553 --> 00:08:17.214
I'm having to grapple with, wait a minute,
00:08:17.254 --> 00:08:19.016
what is this I'm feeling right now?
00:08:19.076 --> 00:08:19.675
Is this empathy?
00:08:20.196 --> 00:08:21.716
Am I feeling empathy for these people who
00:08:21.757 --> 00:08:25.759
are just grossly different than me and who
00:08:25.819 --> 00:08:27.538
I don't agree with on so many things?
00:08:28.259 --> 00:08:30.341
But yet just the fact that we were
00:08:30.360 --> 00:08:31.600
both we were middle aged women,
00:08:32.201 --> 00:08:33.922
we found things in common to talk about,
00:08:33.981 --> 00:08:35.062
which surprised me a bit.
00:08:35.503 --> 00:08:35.982
But, you know,
00:08:36.003 --> 00:08:38.323
you start to realize that regardless of
00:08:38.364 --> 00:08:39.303
which side you're on,
00:08:39.705 --> 00:08:41.524
women are going to have some similar
00:08:41.565 --> 00:08:42.765
experiences in this country.
00:08:44.005 --> 00:08:46.567
And so we spoke most of those years
00:08:46.648 --> 00:08:47.989
about our lives as middle aged women,
00:08:48.589 --> 00:08:49.469
as mothers,
00:08:49.730 --> 00:08:52.071
as people who have gone through divorces,
00:08:52.811 --> 00:08:54.371
have experienced financial precarity
00:08:54.412 --> 00:08:55.972
because of that loss of status of
00:08:56.033 --> 00:08:56.432
marriage.
00:08:56.993 --> 00:09:00.235
And so that was surprising to me.
00:09:00.274 --> 00:09:02.056
And I really observed that in year two,
00:09:02.196 --> 00:09:03.876
how I was finding some common ground,
00:09:04.457 --> 00:09:05.518
because to be honest with you,
00:09:05.538 --> 00:09:06.599
we didn't talk politics.
00:09:07.719 --> 00:09:09.620
We talked about their spiritual journeys,
00:09:10.059 --> 00:09:12.761
which was a path directly from right-wing
00:09:13.241 --> 00:09:15.363
politics into conspirituality.
00:09:16.222 --> 00:09:18.565
But we didn't have to actually talk about
00:09:18.825 --> 00:09:21.186
any specifics until we did the road trip
00:09:21.206 --> 00:09:22.726
for the documentary and we were together
00:09:22.746 --> 00:09:23.206
in person.
00:09:23.706 --> 00:09:25.086
for several days at a time.
00:09:25.607 --> 00:09:27.508
And that was when someone like Yvonne,
00:09:27.528 --> 00:09:28.028
for example,
00:09:28.048 --> 00:09:29.808
who believes she's an advanced being from
00:09:29.828 --> 00:09:32.429
a higher dimension appeared to help usher
00:09:32.470 --> 00:09:34.509
humanity into a new world,
00:09:34.570 --> 00:09:36.291
which was what they call Earth in five
00:09:36.311 --> 00:09:38.251
D. You know,
00:09:38.312 --> 00:09:39.871
it wasn't until I went on that trip
00:09:39.892 --> 00:09:43.393
with her that she started to realize I
00:09:43.413 --> 00:09:45.594
was actually firmly planted in the three D
00:09:45.634 --> 00:09:45.953
world.
00:09:46.673 --> 00:09:50.157
and probably wasn't one of these advanced
00:09:50.177 --> 00:09:50.537
beings.
00:09:50.817 --> 00:09:52.378
I'm probably the sister in three D here
00:09:52.398 --> 00:09:53.219
to help humans.
00:09:53.298 --> 00:09:53.839
So.
00:09:54.239 --> 00:09:55.100
Wow.
00:09:55.200 --> 00:09:57.041
So, yeah,
00:09:57.081 --> 00:09:59.302
I definitely wanted to get into some of
00:09:59.322 --> 00:10:00.744
that because, you know,
00:10:00.783 --> 00:10:02.384
for someone who hasn't read the book or
00:10:02.424 --> 00:10:04.005
someone who hasn't had access,
00:10:04.046 --> 00:10:05.846
doesn't have a relative who thinks like
00:10:05.866 --> 00:10:08.489
this, it's foreign, very foreign.
00:10:08.548 --> 00:10:14.932
So can spirituality five D what among the
00:10:15.033 --> 00:10:15.332
many
00:10:16.894 --> 00:10:18.215
I don't even know what you would call
00:10:18.255 --> 00:10:18.336
it,
00:10:18.375 --> 00:10:24.000
like conspiracy-laden lifestyle choices or
00:10:24.520 --> 00:10:27.283
ideologies among the many.
00:10:27.342 --> 00:10:29.244
What were some that stood out to you,
00:10:29.985 --> 00:10:33.128
either for being very common among this
00:10:33.168 --> 00:10:36.450
group of, I guess, tell me,
00:10:36.590 --> 00:10:38.371
but middle-aged white women?
00:10:40.013 --> 00:10:41.394
Or what were some of the ones that
00:10:41.514 --> 00:10:45.376
struck you as most worth telling about?
00:10:46.828 --> 00:10:49.029
Well, I think the one thing I noticed,
00:10:49.070 --> 00:10:50.791
especially as I began this research,
00:10:51.370 --> 00:10:53.131
and because so many of these women were
00:10:53.172 --> 00:10:53.592
leading me,
00:10:53.732 --> 00:10:55.474
I did not start out wanting to study
00:10:55.494 --> 00:10:56.214
conspiracies.
00:10:56.354 --> 00:10:57.615
I had hoped to stay as far away
00:10:57.634 --> 00:10:58.715
from QAnon as I could.
00:10:59.296 --> 00:11:00.176
But unfortunately,
00:11:00.975 --> 00:11:02.057
when I started doing this work,
00:11:02.096 --> 00:11:04.077
following these people through social
00:11:04.118 --> 00:11:07.279
media and their ideologies,
00:11:07.840 --> 00:11:09.240
I had no choice.
00:11:09.280 --> 00:11:10.922
I was led by all of them into
00:11:10.961 --> 00:11:11.802
conspiracies.
00:11:12.001 --> 00:11:12.942
And specifically,
00:11:12.962 --> 00:11:14.884
the women led me into conspirituality.
00:11:15.563 --> 00:11:17.144
Some are into it more than others,
00:11:17.404 --> 00:11:18.645
but there were always pieces.
00:11:18.686 --> 00:11:20.586
And once you know the vocabulary and you
00:11:20.606 --> 00:11:23.149
know the language, you hear it everywhere.
00:11:23.369 --> 00:11:23.589
You know,
00:11:23.629 --> 00:11:24.789
what I would have heard three or four
00:11:24.850 --> 00:11:26.451
years ago, I might not have recognized.
00:11:26.851 --> 00:11:28.753
But I'll be standing in the grocery store
00:11:28.793 --> 00:11:29.813
and hear someone explain, oh,
00:11:29.894 --> 00:11:30.594
eleven eleven.
00:11:31.215 --> 00:11:32.775
I know exactly what they're talking about.
00:11:32.816 --> 00:11:33.936
They're talking about the angel numbers,
00:11:33.975 --> 00:11:36.518
eleven eleven that, you know,
00:11:36.557 --> 00:11:38.219
that the show up on the clock twice
00:11:38.259 --> 00:11:38.619
a day.
00:11:39.320 --> 00:11:41.100
So but, you know,
00:11:41.120 --> 00:11:43.121
you don't realize how much of this
00:11:43.182 --> 00:11:45.264
language is seeped into the mainstream.
00:11:45.884 --> 00:11:49.027
And the pandemic was really the entry
00:11:49.067 --> 00:11:49.346
point.
00:11:49.386 --> 00:11:51.148
It was like the perfect storm for all
00:11:51.187 --> 00:11:51.609
of this.
00:11:52.168 --> 00:11:53.990
And I think the reason so many middle-aged
00:11:54.029 --> 00:11:56.192
women, because this is not a demographic,
00:11:56.251 --> 00:11:57.452
we spent a lot of time talking about
00:11:57.513 --> 00:11:58.192
middle-aged women.
00:11:58.573 --> 00:12:00.995
So it's pretty niche sounding and yet,
00:12:01.696 --> 00:12:03.157
When you look at disinformation,
00:12:03.717 --> 00:12:04.999
studies have shown that the super
00:12:05.038 --> 00:12:06.919
spreaders of disinformation are middle
00:12:06.960 --> 00:12:09.481
aged women because they are not discerning
00:12:09.961 --> 00:12:10.663
and will click,
00:12:10.923 --> 00:12:13.264
retweet or repost indiscriminately.
00:12:13.865 --> 00:12:15.366
And so I thought that was interesting.
00:12:15.807 --> 00:12:17.447
If you look at the second Trump
00:12:17.488 --> 00:12:18.109
administration,
00:12:18.788 --> 00:12:21.509
The demographic that increased their
00:12:21.529 --> 00:12:23.772
support the second time around by seven
00:12:23.812 --> 00:12:25.451
points were white middle-aged women.
00:12:26.013 --> 00:12:27.692
The only other demographic that came close
00:12:27.732 --> 00:12:29.053
to that were their sons.
00:12:29.955 --> 00:12:30.955
And so that tells me we have a
00:12:31.014 --> 00:12:31.355
problem.
00:12:31.394 --> 00:12:32.975
Like, what's going on with Gen X here?
00:12:33.096 --> 00:12:34.616
Why are we doing this?
00:12:34.677 --> 00:12:36.037
Why are we raising our children to do
00:12:36.077 --> 00:12:36.317
this?
00:12:37.738 --> 00:12:39.219
And so that's kind of an overarching
00:12:39.259 --> 00:12:40.799
question I still don't have the answer to,
00:12:40.820 --> 00:12:42.740
but kind of working into the next project.
00:12:43.620 --> 00:12:44.140
Good, good,
00:12:44.160 --> 00:12:45.261
because I want an answer to that.
00:12:46.221 --> 00:12:47.842
Yeah, it really was.
00:12:47.903 --> 00:12:49.823
It was like that was the only pattern
00:12:49.884 --> 00:12:51.504
I could find from the first one hundred
00:12:51.544 --> 00:12:52.184
women arrested.
00:12:52.245 --> 00:12:54.346
I was looking for affiliation and the vast
00:12:54.365 --> 00:12:55.866
majority of them were not affiliated with
00:12:55.907 --> 00:12:56.907
an organized group.
00:12:58.687 --> 00:13:00.389
And so the only pattern I could find
00:13:00.408 --> 00:13:01.629
consistently was age.
00:13:02.110 --> 00:13:03.629
And that is how I ended up focusing
00:13:03.710 --> 00:13:04.571
on the middle aged women,
00:13:04.931 --> 00:13:06.051
which kind of worked out for me.
00:13:06.171 --> 00:13:06.412
You know,
00:13:06.432 --> 00:13:07.652
it's the first time being a middle aged
00:13:07.672 --> 00:13:09.153
woman turned out to be an advantage.
00:13:09.793 --> 00:13:10.994
Yeah.
00:13:11.094 --> 00:13:11.375
Yeah.
00:13:11.394 --> 00:13:12.596
I mean, that's an advantage.
00:13:12.635 --> 00:13:14.297
And there's and it's also important,
00:13:14.336 --> 00:13:14.998
like you said,
00:13:15.018 --> 00:13:17.139
because it's not a group that's commonly
00:13:18.020 --> 00:13:19.961
considered, let alone studied.
00:13:20.802 --> 00:13:22.264
And then there's the part you mentioned
00:13:22.303 --> 00:13:23.905
where we it's been determined that they're
00:13:23.946 --> 00:13:26.008
the super spread of disinformation.
00:13:26.067 --> 00:13:27.408
So in all these ways,
00:13:27.469 --> 00:13:29.990
it's a critically important audience to or
00:13:30.631 --> 00:13:32.312
community to understand.
00:13:33.594 --> 00:13:34.294
I guess, you know,
00:13:34.315 --> 00:13:35.315
I was going to ask you what were
00:13:35.355 --> 00:13:36.917
some of the most surprising things,
00:13:36.956 --> 00:13:39.118
but I feel like I already got the
00:13:39.197 --> 00:13:40.099
answer I wanted.
00:13:40.379 --> 00:13:44.022
I think how well you were able to
00:13:44.522 --> 00:13:45.003
kind of
00:13:45.682 --> 00:13:48.524
get along with them and not talk politics,
00:13:50.205 --> 00:13:51.385
that surprised me.
00:13:51.446 --> 00:13:53.606
But I guess, was there anything else?
00:13:53.866 --> 00:13:54.986
I should still ask you.
00:13:55.307 --> 00:13:57.448
Was there anything else that really took
00:13:57.489 --> 00:13:59.549
you by surprise that just stands out to
00:13:59.590 --> 00:13:59.730
you?
00:13:59.750 --> 00:14:01.409
Because this has been a few years in
00:14:01.429 --> 00:14:02.250
the making now.
00:14:03.182 --> 00:14:03.383
Yeah,
00:14:03.582 --> 00:14:05.364
I did this for a long time and
00:14:05.403 --> 00:14:05.945
full time.
00:14:06.424 --> 00:14:08.485
And so I think the thing that surprised
00:14:08.505 --> 00:14:10.528
me most was less about what I heard
00:14:10.607 --> 00:14:12.369
because we can all, you know,
00:14:12.389 --> 00:14:13.950
it's hard to shock you after a while.
00:14:13.990 --> 00:14:15.190
You've kind of seen it all at this
00:14:15.250 --> 00:14:15.770
point, right?
00:14:15.791 --> 00:14:19.332
And the most absurd thing is working here
00:14:19.373 --> 00:14:20.254
in reality now.
00:14:21.594 --> 00:14:23.014
I think what surprised me most was how
00:14:23.296 --> 00:14:25.177
I changed in this.
00:14:25.197 --> 00:14:26.817
That was the most surprising piece.
00:14:27.758 --> 00:14:29.399
especially once I went into year two and
00:14:29.438 --> 00:14:31.659
was actually making contact and then
00:14:31.700 --> 00:14:33.461
starting to what I would say develop
00:14:33.500 --> 00:14:35.341
relationships with these people, right?
00:14:36.442 --> 00:14:37.721
I had to grapple with that quite a
00:14:37.761 --> 00:14:38.001
bit.
00:14:38.062 --> 00:14:39.903
How am I feeling this empathy for people
00:14:39.942 --> 00:14:42.583
who I disagree with so wholeheartedly on
00:14:42.644 --> 00:14:43.404
so many issues?
00:14:46.676 --> 00:14:48.376
which was the advantage of doing something
00:14:48.437 --> 00:14:50.437
over time and getting to know people as
00:14:50.577 --> 00:14:51.719
people, right?
00:14:51.778 --> 00:14:54.640
But this is also something I have to
00:14:54.681 --> 00:14:57.162
recognize as a really privileged position
00:14:57.461 --> 00:14:58.043
to be able to do.
00:14:59.642 --> 00:15:01.383
because I'm not part of one of the
00:15:01.423 --> 00:15:02.903
marginalized communities who's targeted
00:15:02.923 --> 00:15:04.283
and attacked, right?
00:15:05.464 --> 00:15:06.443
Just as I described before,
00:15:06.543 --> 00:15:07.924
I'm pretty benign.
00:15:08.024 --> 00:15:09.284
I'm a middle-aged white woman,
00:15:09.325 --> 00:15:13.265
so people don't look twice at me usually.
00:15:13.666 --> 00:15:15.346
That's a privilege to be able to sit
00:15:15.386 --> 00:15:17.246
down and have rational conversations with
00:15:17.267 --> 00:15:18.006
people that you know,
00:15:18.047 --> 00:15:19.628
that if I was part of another group,
00:15:20.727 --> 00:15:22.470
I know what they would think of my
00:15:22.509 --> 00:15:24.932
life, the quality, the value of my life.
00:15:26.033 --> 00:15:27.214
So that's a disconnect for me.
00:15:27.293 --> 00:15:28.914
And that was a hard one to reconcile
00:15:29.336 --> 00:15:30.657
is how could I be feeling empathy for
00:15:30.716 --> 00:15:33.578
people who on one hand are talking about
00:15:33.599 --> 00:15:35.400
taking away rights of lots of people for
00:15:35.441 --> 00:15:35.961
different reasons.
00:15:36.100 --> 00:15:37.162
for different reasons i'm going to tell
00:15:37.201 --> 00:15:39.764
you the answer it's because even if you
00:15:39.803 --> 00:15:41.924
don't know it you're an abolitionist just
00:15:41.985 --> 00:15:44.746
like me and i'll explain what that means
00:15:45.207 --> 00:15:46.668
it it well i'm not going to get
00:15:46.688 --> 00:15:48.350
into detail about what abolition is but
00:15:48.450 --> 00:15:50.511
one of the key elements to it is
00:15:50.532 --> 00:15:53.653
the understanding that all of us are the
00:15:53.754 --> 00:15:56.076
products of years of
00:15:57.187 --> 00:16:01.009
training whatever it might be we are fed
00:16:01.129 --> 00:16:03.191
information in school we are fed
00:16:03.250 --> 00:16:05.871
information on tv and other forms of media
00:16:05.912 --> 00:16:07.852
from our friends as you pointed out from
00:16:07.913 --> 00:16:11.514
our parents and so in other words most
00:16:11.595 --> 00:16:14.177
perpetrators in a variety of ways are also
00:16:14.236 --> 00:16:16.577
victims and when we believe really
00:16:16.618 --> 00:16:18.359
strongly about something and it's
00:16:19.139 --> 00:16:22.301
it tends to create problems because
00:16:22.321 --> 00:16:23.721
there's hate involved or there's
00:16:24.001 --> 00:16:26.344
misinformation involved.
00:16:27.423 --> 00:16:28.965
It can be traced to a place and
00:16:29.024 --> 00:16:31.427
thus I think it can also be addressed.
00:16:32.947 --> 00:16:34.568
You relate to these women because as
00:16:34.629 --> 00:16:34.908
women,
00:16:34.948 --> 00:16:37.090
you've all gone through similar things as
00:16:37.169 --> 00:16:39.611
women and being able to empathize with
00:16:39.631 --> 00:16:41.192
them as people who have been
00:16:41.732 --> 00:16:43.354
put in a position where they've allowed
00:16:43.374 --> 00:16:45.215
themselves to go down this path.
00:16:45.554 --> 00:16:47.416
That just means that you're recognizing
00:16:47.436 --> 00:16:49.437
that they're human beings and that they
00:16:49.977 --> 00:16:52.078
and that like they've been transformed
00:16:52.318 --> 00:16:52.599
once.
00:16:52.639 --> 00:16:54.679
It's not your job to transform them.
00:16:54.700 --> 00:16:55.721
You're an ethnographer,
00:16:55.760 --> 00:16:58.062
but someone else might be able to do
00:16:58.101 --> 00:17:01.244
that because they are just human beings at
00:17:01.264 --> 00:17:02.745
the end of the day and they have
00:17:02.804 --> 00:17:05.066
feelings and they got to this place from
00:17:05.165 --> 00:17:05.685
somewhere.
00:17:06.527 --> 00:17:08.307
But I but I am curious about that.
00:17:08.367 --> 00:17:10.249
Have you gotten any pushback from
00:17:11.108 --> 00:17:13.351
people on the far left or I'm going
00:17:13.371 --> 00:17:14.952
to guess not other academics,
00:17:14.992 --> 00:17:17.094
but from maybe people who don't understand
00:17:17.515 --> 00:17:19.777
what it means to truly embed yourself in
00:17:19.797 --> 00:17:20.998
a community like this.
00:17:21.357 --> 00:17:22.880
Have there been people who've questioned
00:17:22.920 --> 00:17:23.881
your allegiances?
00:17:25.432 --> 00:17:25.573
No,
00:17:25.633 --> 00:17:27.474
but that was one of my big concerns
00:17:27.596 --> 00:17:28.236
early on.
00:17:28.375 --> 00:17:30.338
And I kind of addressed that upfront
00:17:30.398 --> 00:17:31.279
though also.
00:17:33.261 --> 00:17:37.606
I haven't gotten as much pushback from my
00:17:37.686 --> 00:17:39.288
side as I expected to.
00:17:39.868 --> 00:17:40.809
And again, I think partly,
00:17:41.651 --> 00:17:43.872
It's coming at something with an academic
00:17:43.912 --> 00:17:45.092
lens to start with.
00:17:45.152 --> 00:17:48.273
So when I explain the method I'm using,
00:17:48.394 --> 00:17:50.034
even though I kind of bastardized that
00:17:50.094 --> 00:17:50.433
method,
00:17:50.474 --> 00:17:52.295
which is why it's no longer an academic
00:17:52.315 --> 00:17:53.536
project and it's a book,
00:17:54.076 --> 00:17:56.396
because academia doesn't want you to get
00:17:56.436 --> 00:17:57.277
personal, right?
00:17:58.597 --> 00:18:00.538
But it's really hard to understand people
00:18:00.798 --> 00:18:02.499
if you're hovering above them and making
00:18:02.538 --> 00:18:04.000
these- And that's what makes it good.
00:18:04.039 --> 00:18:06.881
That's what makes it different for sure.
00:18:06.901 --> 00:18:07.000
Yeah.
00:18:08.644 --> 00:18:08.983
Yeah,
00:18:09.064 --> 00:18:11.465
because people are not all one thing,
00:18:11.766 --> 00:18:12.267
as you know.
00:18:12.287 --> 00:18:13.086
Right.
00:18:13.147 --> 00:18:13.847
Right.
00:18:14.188 --> 00:18:17.191
And so I can have empathy for these
00:18:17.250 --> 00:18:20.074
people as humans and the experiences
00:18:20.094 --> 00:18:21.154
they've had in their lives.
00:18:21.615 --> 00:18:22.256
But at the same time,
00:18:22.276 --> 00:18:24.096
I can also say what you did on
00:18:24.136 --> 00:18:25.097
January six was wrong.
00:18:25.618 --> 00:18:25.959
And yes,
00:18:25.979 --> 00:18:27.460
you deserve a consequence for that.
00:18:27.559 --> 00:18:27.820
Right.
00:18:28.340 --> 00:18:29.981
I mean, both things can be true.
00:18:32.384 --> 00:18:32.765
And again,
00:18:32.904 --> 00:18:34.286
I'm also looking at a population.
00:18:34.445 --> 00:18:37.949
I chose to study the ordinary women that
00:18:37.989 --> 00:18:38.589
got involved,
00:18:38.890 --> 00:18:40.691
not people who already had some sort of
00:18:40.731 --> 00:18:43.894
position as influencer or who was already
00:18:43.933 --> 00:18:46.496
affiliated with a organized group.
00:18:47.636 --> 00:18:49.058
Because I think especially when dealing
00:18:49.078 --> 00:18:50.058
with conspiracists,
00:18:50.579 --> 00:18:52.520
looking at motivation for why they're
00:18:52.540 --> 00:18:54.242
continuing perpetuate these messages.
00:18:54.563 --> 00:18:56.443
is really important because everyone's got
00:18:56.483 --> 00:18:57.443
a different motivation.
00:18:57.884 --> 00:18:58.785
And for Tammy and Yvonne,
00:18:58.805 --> 00:19:00.224
who are true believers,
00:19:00.305 --> 00:19:01.826
which is why I only settled on two
00:19:01.846 --> 00:19:02.766
women at the end of the day,
00:19:03.686 --> 00:19:04.586
I had to siphon through.
00:19:05.227 --> 00:19:06.607
I probably had twelve different women I
00:19:06.627 --> 00:19:07.667
was talking to for a while,
00:19:08.568 --> 00:19:10.210
but it became very clear, oh,
00:19:10.230 --> 00:19:11.650
this person is trying to position
00:19:11.670 --> 00:19:13.310
themselves as a J-six influencer.
00:19:14.070 --> 00:19:15.932
And this person now is going to use
00:19:15.991 --> 00:19:19.173
it to further her alt wellness prophecies.
00:19:19.294 --> 00:19:19.513
Right.
00:19:20.914 --> 00:19:21.915
And so when you see people have a
00:19:21.955 --> 00:19:23.257
motivation that self-serving,
00:19:23.517 --> 00:19:25.498
it's not you don't learn as much.
00:19:25.738 --> 00:19:26.939
But when you find true believers,
00:19:26.979 --> 00:19:28.920
you can learn a lot about it.
00:19:28.940 --> 00:19:31.020
And what I really came to believe was
00:19:31.402 --> 00:19:33.643
that so many people using conspiracies are
00:19:33.722 --> 00:19:35.064
using them as coping mechanisms.
00:19:36.104 --> 00:19:37.424
to explain the unexplainable.
00:19:37.464 --> 00:19:39.165
Why do these bad things keep happening to
00:19:39.365 --> 00:19:39.486
me?
00:19:39.905 --> 00:19:41.567
What broken systems,
00:19:41.646 --> 00:19:43.227
rather than looking at the politicians and
00:19:43.247 --> 00:19:44.147
the broken systems,
00:19:44.607 --> 00:19:48.289
it's easier to look at the trans agenda
00:19:48.569 --> 00:19:52.250
or Antifa as the problem, right?
00:19:52.571 --> 00:19:55.153
It's much easier to create a fictional
00:19:55.192 --> 00:19:57.834
boogeyman for everybody to be afraid of.
00:19:59.513 --> 00:20:00.994
um but when you when you what was
00:20:01.035 --> 00:20:02.375
interesting to me is to watch some of
00:20:02.394 --> 00:20:04.056
these women they got further down that
00:20:04.155 --> 00:20:05.875
rabbit hole that can spirituality rabbit
00:20:05.915 --> 00:20:08.477
hole after january six there was some
00:20:08.517 --> 00:20:11.538
dabbling prior but again when i talk about
00:20:11.597 --> 00:20:13.519
using conspiracies as a coping mechanism
00:20:14.199 --> 00:20:16.280
I watched people go even further all in
00:20:16.621 --> 00:20:17.781
after January six.
00:20:17.842 --> 00:20:18.202
And again,
00:20:18.242 --> 00:20:20.044
we're dealing with this is a huge trauma
00:20:20.104 --> 00:20:21.365
event in these people's lives.
00:20:21.424 --> 00:20:23.007
Most of these people did not have criminal
00:20:23.047 --> 00:20:23.646
backgrounds.
00:20:24.127 --> 00:20:25.828
And so the proposition of going to federal
00:20:25.868 --> 00:20:27.550
prison was a big deal, right?
00:20:27.990 --> 00:20:28.872
You know, in Yvonne's case,
00:20:28.892 --> 00:20:31.294
she had done time in the brig for
00:20:31.314 --> 00:20:32.755
a dishonorable discharge in the Marines
00:20:32.795 --> 00:20:34.636
back back in the early two thousands.
00:20:35.237 --> 00:20:37.699
But the vast majority of those women who
00:20:37.719 --> 00:20:38.259
were arrested
00:20:38.819 --> 00:20:39.760
didn't have criminal records.
00:20:39.780 --> 00:20:41.163
They were literally ordinary women.
00:20:41.742 --> 00:20:43.684
And, you know, people often say, you know,
00:20:43.704 --> 00:20:45.227
I guess there were all those men there
00:20:45.247 --> 00:20:47.929
and they were wearing their body armor and
00:20:47.949 --> 00:20:49.991
their camo and they were spewing their
00:20:50.011 --> 00:20:50.892
violent rhetoric,
00:20:51.212 --> 00:20:52.574
while women were sitting around in
00:20:52.614 --> 00:20:53.535
pictures I took, you know,
00:20:53.555 --> 00:20:56.718
taking selfies and it felt almost like a
00:20:56.919 --> 00:20:58.799
sinister carnival atmosphere.
00:20:59.661 --> 00:21:00.021
And yet,
00:21:01.413 --> 00:21:03.974
There was a weird camaraderie going on
00:21:03.994 --> 00:21:04.674
with all these people.
00:21:04.734 --> 00:21:06.954
And I recognized the feeling.
00:21:07.214 --> 00:21:07.654
And again,
00:21:08.214 --> 00:21:09.536
so much of this is about feeling,
00:21:09.635 --> 00:21:10.375
not facts.
00:21:11.135 --> 00:21:12.395
And I remember the Women's March,
00:21:12.435 --> 00:21:14.277
the original Women's March I went to in
00:21:14.416 --> 00:21:15.277
in DC,
00:21:15.336 --> 00:21:16.696
where we were packed shoulder to shoulder.
00:21:16.737 --> 00:21:17.517
You could not move.
00:21:17.537 --> 00:21:18.298
There were so many people.
00:21:18.817 --> 00:21:19.778
But it was the most,
00:21:20.337 --> 00:21:21.817
it was like this feeling of like absolute
00:21:21.877 --> 00:21:23.919
solidarity, right?
00:21:24.259 --> 00:21:26.338
And it felt so good that day.
00:21:26.378 --> 00:21:28.299
And you were kind of with your people.
00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:29.400
And I know that feeling.
00:21:30.099 --> 00:21:32.240
and i know how easy it is to
00:21:32.280 --> 00:21:33.941
kind of lose yourself in that feeling now
00:21:34.181 --> 00:21:35.320
the women's march didn't have
00:21:35.361 --> 00:21:37.501
opportunities to become violent or storm
00:21:37.521 --> 00:21:39.942
buildings but i see you know the vast
00:21:39.961 --> 00:21:41.383
majority of the people on the capital
00:21:41.403 --> 00:21:43.782
grounds that day did not enter the capital
00:21:44.303 --> 00:21:45.522
and i know that's one thing on my
00:21:45.563 --> 00:21:46.963
side you don't necessarily want to hear
00:21:47.423 --> 00:21:48.483
but when you look at pictures of that
00:21:48.523 --> 00:21:50.403
rally that day there were so many people
00:21:50.444 --> 00:21:51.944
there and then when you see
00:21:52.904 --> 00:21:56.307
The pictures from the Capitol afterwards,
00:21:56.607 --> 00:21:57.548
there's a lot of people there.
00:21:57.648 --> 00:21:59.029
There's several thousand for sure.
00:21:59.510 --> 00:22:01.451
But when you look at the arrests and
00:22:01.571 --> 00:22:03.032
the estimated number of people on the
00:22:03.073 --> 00:22:03.554
inside,
00:22:03.594 --> 00:22:06.155
it was a pretty small faction of people.
00:22:06.715 --> 00:22:08.057
And then you go a step farther.
00:22:08.178 --> 00:22:09.338
And how many people did I see with
00:22:09.358 --> 00:22:11.180
zip ties hung to their belt loops?
00:22:11.220 --> 00:22:13.142
How many people did I see with flagpoles
00:22:13.182 --> 00:22:14.041
whittled into points?
00:22:14.603 --> 00:22:15.483
And I did see that.
00:22:16.284 --> 00:22:18.266
But the vast majority of the people I
00:22:18.326 --> 00:22:20.347
saw were out in the grass area on
00:22:20.387 --> 00:22:22.529
the east front doing prayer circles or
00:22:22.950 --> 00:22:25.512
meeting up with people they knew from
00:22:25.532 --> 00:22:26.933
maybe online, right?
00:22:27.413 --> 00:22:29.115
And so it was almost like a,
00:22:29.635 --> 00:22:30.596
I think I said in the book at
00:22:30.676 --> 00:22:31.298
one point, it was like,
00:22:31.617 --> 00:22:33.119
I felt like in ways it was like
00:22:33.140 --> 00:22:34.740
being at a big Gen X high school
00:22:34.780 --> 00:22:36.363
reunion if you had gone to a high
00:22:36.403 --> 00:22:37.403
school of all white people.
00:22:39.085 --> 00:22:42.386
yeah and interestingly enough that is not
00:22:42.426 --> 00:22:44.488
that different from what it's like going
00:22:44.528 --> 00:22:46.430
to a protest as a leftist there are
00:22:46.470 --> 00:22:49.050
people doing direct actions there are
00:22:49.071 --> 00:22:50.833
people more on the outskirts and then
00:22:50.853 --> 00:22:52.433
there are people who are more casual
00:22:52.473 --> 00:22:56.175
observers who are there to feel that vibe
00:22:56.195 --> 00:22:58.397
to be part of the the community and
00:22:58.438 --> 00:22:59.898
the movement um
00:23:00.419 --> 00:23:02.461
And I think that was such an important
00:23:02.500 --> 00:23:05.001
point you just made, those similarities,
00:23:05.041 --> 00:23:07.084
that that is why a lot of people
00:23:07.243 --> 00:23:07.983
are coming there,
00:23:08.023 --> 00:23:10.086
no matter which side you're from.
00:23:10.526 --> 00:23:12.548
It's this feeling that we all have in
00:23:12.567 --> 00:23:15.750
this country of of confusion,
00:23:15.809 --> 00:23:16.990
of alienation,
00:23:17.270 --> 00:23:19.613
of of feeling like the government doesn't
00:23:19.633 --> 00:23:22.054
care about us and not knowing who to
00:23:22.074 --> 00:23:24.476
blame for that because we don't feel like
00:23:24.496 --> 00:23:25.817
we have any power either.
00:23:27.438 --> 00:23:29.319
So I'm just curious,
00:23:29.380 --> 00:23:32.623
are there any other similarities coming
00:23:32.682 --> 00:23:34.523
more from the left and knowing crazy
00:23:34.564 --> 00:23:35.484
people like me?
00:23:37.586 --> 00:23:39.248
Are there any other things that you
00:23:39.548 --> 00:23:42.310
witnessed or heard that may have reminded
00:23:42.351 --> 00:23:44.393
you of people on the far left?
00:23:45.694 --> 00:23:46.015
And again,
00:23:46.035 --> 00:23:48.016
this is not something we want to hear
00:23:48.076 --> 00:23:49.977
either, but I think it's super important.
00:23:50.057 --> 00:23:50.297
Like,
00:23:50.616 --> 00:23:52.218
there's a difference between leftist
00:23:52.278 --> 00:23:53.518
extremists and right wing.
00:23:53.718 --> 00:23:55.239
One is for love, one's for hate.
00:23:55.278 --> 00:23:56.099
But beyond that,
00:23:56.140 --> 00:23:57.579
there's some similarities, too,
00:23:57.599 --> 00:23:59.540
in the way we organize and the way
00:23:59.580 --> 00:24:01.301
we act and how passionate we are,
00:24:01.342 --> 00:24:01.801
et cetera.
00:24:03.038 --> 00:24:03.397
Yes,
00:24:03.478 --> 00:24:04.980
although I will say the right is much
00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:07.101
better at some of this organizing because
00:24:07.161 --> 00:24:10.644
the right puts money into it, right?
00:24:11.025 --> 00:24:12.566
Someone like you, for example,
00:24:12.605 --> 00:24:15.907
would be being paid by some organization
00:24:15.949 --> 00:24:17.650
to keep your show going and to keep
00:24:18.049 --> 00:24:18.990
seconding people in.
00:24:19.490 --> 00:24:20.071
And the right,
00:24:20.092 --> 00:24:21.792
the left doesn't do that so much.
00:24:22.354 --> 00:24:23.755
So you have a lot of people who
00:24:23.795 --> 00:24:26.037
have a lot of knowledge to share,
00:24:26.737 --> 00:24:28.258
but there's no one out there hiring them
00:24:28.298 --> 00:24:28.858
to do it.
00:24:29.398 --> 00:24:31.520
And that's the part of the problem I
00:24:31.540 --> 00:24:32.182
see on the left.
00:24:34.866 --> 00:24:36.186
Yeah, nicely said.
00:24:36.207 --> 00:24:37.528
But you know what the problem is with
00:24:37.567 --> 00:24:39.709
that is on the left,
00:24:39.828 --> 00:24:42.970
we have problems too with disinformation
00:24:43.150 --> 00:24:44.029
and conspiracies.
00:24:44.550 --> 00:24:46.770
And some of that is this ecosystem that
00:24:46.810 --> 00:24:50.593
creates this competition for an audience.
00:24:51.516 --> 00:24:53.857
where influencers have to figure out how
00:24:53.897 --> 00:24:55.638
to keep you engaged and coming back for
00:24:55.739 --> 00:24:56.058
more.
00:24:56.659 --> 00:24:59.500
And playing on emotion typically is the
00:24:59.520 --> 00:25:00.362
way that happens.
00:25:00.801 --> 00:25:02.202
Sometimes it can be celebratory,
00:25:02.502 --> 00:25:04.625
but oftentimes it's to keep you enraged or
00:25:04.664 --> 00:25:05.164
fearful.
00:25:06.605 --> 00:25:09.788
And there's a lot of, I would say,
00:25:09.807 --> 00:25:11.669
maybe the left doesn't quote lie quite as
00:25:11.730 --> 00:25:12.049
much,
00:25:12.430 --> 00:25:14.351
but by omission of big chunks of
00:25:14.371 --> 00:25:17.053
information and just making it bombastic
00:25:17.113 --> 00:25:18.614
or spectacle or sensational,
00:25:19.094 --> 00:25:20.736
we're doing the same thing the other side
00:25:20.776 --> 00:25:21.115
does.
00:25:22.376 --> 00:25:24.858
And we also have the same group of
00:25:24.919 --> 00:25:26.840
middle-aged women who are super spreaders
00:25:26.861 --> 00:25:28.442
of disinformation and propaganda.
00:25:28.542 --> 00:25:29.903
Totally, totally.
00:25:30.163 --> 00:25:31.885
And I rely on those women.
00:25:32.306 --> 00:25:34.387
No, you are so right.
00:25:34.769 --> 00:25:37.531
And all of that is so real.
00:25:37.551 --> 00:25:38.332
That hits home.
00:25:38.432 --> 00:25:38.653
I mean...
00:25:39.133 --> 00:25:40.874
because yeah like i have a lot to
00:25:40.913 --> 00:25:42.756
say but i am not making a ton
00:25:42.776 --> 00:25:44.457
of money saying it and no one wants
00:25:44.537 --> 00:25:47.259
to give me money to say it and
00:25:47.479 --> 00:25:49.800
probably one of the reasons it's not lack
00:25:49.840 --> 00:25:52.022
of information it's not lack of experience
00:25:52.042 --> 00:25:53.804
i've been doing this a long time it
00:25:53.844 --> 00:25:55.986
might be because i have conversations like
00:25:56.006 --> 00:25:58.267
this or have cats jump on my shoulders
00:25:58.327 --> 00:25:58.468
but
00:25:59.327 --> 00:26:01.369
um outside of that i think it's it's
00:26:01.450 --> 00:26:04.172
really that i'm not here to get you
00:26:04.192 --> 00:26:06.333
to say the craziest thing you can possibly
00:26:06.413 --> 00:26:08.694
say i want to know what we're living
00:26:08.734 --> 00:26:10.916
in right now and it's just everyone's
00:26:10.957 --> 00:26:12.798
giving me their perspective on this what
00:26:12.817 --> 00:26:14.479
are we living in right now and what
00:26:14.519 --> 00:26:16.220
we can we do to fix it that's
00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:18.902
just not as exciting as like i don't
00:26:18.922 --> 00:26:20.923
know you know some of the other stuff
00:26:20.943 --> 00:26:22.944
that's being yelled across the internet so
00:26:22.964 --> 00:26:24.906
thank you for pointing that out
00:26:25.346 --> 00:26:27.628
yeah and i i don't the world is
00:26:27.669 --> 00:26:29.570
tough enough without me doing that on my
00:26:29.611 --> 00:26:33.074
show um so on that on that note
00:26:33.193 --> 00:26:36.317
this conversation has flown by i'm like
00:26:36.376 --> 00:26:38.538
twice past what i'm supposed to be doing
00:26:38.598 --> 00:26:40.359
here but i do want to um get
00:26:40.519 --> 00:26:42.642
one more thing out of you um
00:26:43.762 --> 00:26:46.625
for for the general population those of us
00:26:46.664 --> 00:26:49.467
who are less concerned about which side of
00:26:49.507 --> 00:26:51.167
the political aisle we're on or how
00:26:51.208 --> 00:26:53.269
extreme or not extreme we are we just
00:26:53.328 --> 00:26:55.529
want to see good in this world we
00:26:55.569 --> 00:26:57.510
don't want to see hate at the micro
00:26:57.631 --> 00:26:59.853
or the macro level what is the best
00:26:59.932 --> 00:27:01.693
thing that we can do right now
00:27:03.217 --> 00:27:03.636
Well, I mean,
00:27:03.656 --> 00:27:05.298
I'm going off of what I do here.
00:27:05.317 --> 00:27:08.719
What I have found is I approach people
00:27:08.739 --> 00:27:10.339
with curiosity, I think.
00:27:10.980 --> 00:27:13.682
Even if my first instinct is you're
00:27:13.721 --> 00:27:14.301
abhorrent.
00:27:16.942 --> 00:27:18.784
If you approach people with curiosity and
00:27:18.824 --> 00:27:19.864
you ask questions,
00:27:20.023 --> 00:27:22.384
you can start to learn a lot.
00:27:22.705 --> 00:27:23.806
And I feel like by doing that,
00:27:23.846 --> 00:27:25.227
by having conversations with people,
00:27:26.086 --> 00:27:27.667
I feel like I'm doing my very small
00:27:27.728 --> 00:27:29.950
part in kind of dispelling this myth that
00:27:30.029 --> 00:27:31.912
every liberal woman is a Karen or
00:27:31.971 --> 00:27:33.032
everybody I'm going to attack.
00:27:33.452 --> 00:27:35.674
I think that's a surprise to people when
00:27:35.734 --> 00:27:36.715
I don't go at them.
00:27:37.817 --> 00:27:39.018
But I think if you want to learn
00:27:39.057 --> 00:27:39.538
about people,
00:27:39.557 --> 00:27:40.578
if you want to understand where they're
00:27:40.598 --> 00:27:40.919
coming from,
00:27:40.959 --> 00:27:42.760
you have to approach it with curiosity and
00:27:42.780 --> 00:27:43.961
you have to be willing to listen to
00:27:44.001 --> 00:27:44.261
that.
00:27:44.642 --> 00:27:45.823
That doesn't mean giving up any of your
00:27:45.863 --> 00:27:46.423
own beliefs.
00:27:46.943 --> 00:27:47.684
I don't do that.
00:27:48.566 --> 00:27:50.227
I've not changed a single thing.
00:27:50.907 --> 00:27:52.150
belief I had prior to this.
00:27:52.191 --> 00:27:53.092
In fact, if anything,
00:27:53.152 --> 00:27:54.894
I probably radicalized for the left.
00:27:55.256 --> 00:27:55.477
Right.
00:27:57.019 --> 00:27:58.422
But at the same time,
00:28:00.726 --> 00:28:02.308
what's so strange and, and, and,
00:28:05.119 --> 00:28:07.761
disconnected from this new age
00:28:07.801 --> 00:28:09.823
spirituality that people have adopted,
00:28:10.002 --> 00:28:11.284
as opposed to, you know, you think, okay,
00:28:11.304 --> 00:28:13.005
you're backing away from the apocalyptic
00:28:13.065 --> 00:28:14.546
Christian nationalism, but it's the same,
00:28:14.726 --> 00:28:16.327
it's still got the same elements into it.
00:28:18.028 --> 00:28:19.869
I was very surprised to see something that
00:28:19.890 --> 00:28:21.871
you typically think of as very lefty,
00:28:21.931 --> 00:28:24.913
kind of like a hippie-ish new age stuff,
00:28:25.473 --> 00:28:27.134
to go to something like the Conscious Life
00:28:27.214 --> 00:28:28.175
Expo and then
00:28:29.096 --> 00:28:30.817
hear all the anti-government conspiracies,
00:28:30.856 --> 00:28:31.876
to see Del Bigtree,
00:28:31.916 --> 00:28:34.518
who is probably the world's largest
00:28:34.538 --> 00:28:37.577
purveyor of anti-vax information, right?
00:28:38.338 --> 00:28:39.598
Which was another thing that we have to
00:28:39.618 --> 00:28:40.739
remember on January sixth,
00:28:40.798 --> 00:28:42.619
not everybody there that day was there for
00:28:42.660 --> 00:28:43.640
the Stop the Steal rally.
00:28:44.119 --> 00:28:45.740
There was another rally going on on the
00:28:45.780 --> 00:28:46.921
Lower Senate Park that day,
00:28:46.961 --> 00:28:49.682
which was an anti-COVID-Nineteen mandate.
00:28:50.021 --> 00:28:52.123
And it was kind of going after Fauci
00:28:52.163 --> 00:28:52.863
and that whole thing.
00:28:53.282 --> 00:28:54.363
So there were a lot of women who
00:28:54.403 --> 00:28:55.884
were at that rally who ended up at
00:28:55.903 --> 00:28:56.743
the Capitol as well.
00:28:58.104 --> 00:28:59.965
And I think the disinformation,
00:29:00.046 --> 00:29:01.105
and I'm not sure how you get people
00:29:01.145 --> 00:29:01.727
out of that now,
00:29:01.767 --> 00:29:04.428
because all of the wacky,
00:29:05.067 --> 00:29:08.509
wacky conspiracists that were everywhere
00:29:08.529 --> 00:29:10.010
in twenty twenty two are now sitting in
00:29:10.030 --> 00:29:11.811
places like Health and Human Services and
00:29:12.071 --> 00:29:12.873
the FBI.
00:29:13.333 --> 00:29:14.053
And so.
00:29:15.815 --> 00:29:17.776
we're in a situation where we already had
00:29:17.836 --> 00:29:19.837
all these true believers who have changed.
00:29:20.117 --> 00:29:21.419
It is less about ideology now,
00:29:21.439 --> 00:29:23.140
it's about community, participation,
00:29:23.279 --> 00:29:23.881
belonging.
00:29:24.381 --> 00:29:25.862
Where are you going to spend sixteen hours
00:29:25.902 --> 00:29:27.482
a day if you're not in your online
00:29:27.523 --> 00:29:29.285
groups, right?
00:29:29.305 --> 00:29:32.227
Disagreeing with an idea also makes you
00:29:32.267 --> 00:29:32.907
have to consider,
00:29:33.548 --> 00:29:34.749
do I want to give up my community?
00:29:35.630 --> 00:29:36.509
What am I going to do for all
00:29:36.549 --> 00:29:38.271
those hours every day if I'm not online
00:29:38.291 --> 00:29:39.011
in these groups?
00:29:39.512 --> 00:29:41.134
So there's a lot of questions people have
00:29:41.513 --> 00:29:43.015
to reconcile before they can just walk
00:29:43.035 --> 00:29:43.295
away.
00:29:44.175 --> 00:29:48.257
So maybe one of those solutions is someone
00:29:48.356 --> 00:29:51.278
coming up with alternative groups that can
00:29:51.317 --> 00:29:54.759
attract these people and pull out some of
00:29:54.799 --> 00:29:57.840
that negative stuff that creates harm.
00:30:00.340 --> 00:30:00.602
I don't know.
00:30:00.642 --> 00:30:02.761
Pulling tears us apart more, right?
00:30:02.781 --> 00:30:03.522
So tell me about that.
00:30:04.002 --> 00:30:04.103
Well,
00:30:04.123 --> 00:30:05.482
there's a man I met in twenty twenty
00:30:05.522 --> 00:30:07.523
three, Rich Logis,
00:30:08.044 --> 00:30:12.185
who is a former Trump supporter and was
00:30:12.645 --> 00:30:15.507
heavily involved in politics in Florida
00:30:15.747 --> 00:30:17.528
and Trump activists,
00:30:18.228 --> 00:30:19.068
for lack of a better word.
00:30:20.128 --> 00:30:21.409
And at some point during the covid
00:30:21.449 --> 00:30:21.970
pandemic,
00:30:23.009 --> 00:30:24.751
He started listening to contradictory
00:30:24.791 --> 00:30:26.574
statements by various politicians about
00:30:26.594 --> 00:30:28.596
the vaccine and the virus and started
00:30:28.756 --> 00:30:29.676
having his own doubts.
00:30:29.797 --> 00:30:31.198
And that's how he kind of made his
00:30:31.218 --> 00:30:32.420
way out of the movement.
00:30:32.920 --> 00:30:34.622
He has created an organization called
00:30:34.662 --> 00:30:35.323
Leaving MAGA.
00:30:35.883 --> 00:30:38.885
And it's because he recognizes through his
00:30:38.945 --> 00:30:39.406
own journey
00:30:40.491 --> 00:30:42.313
When you leave it, where do you go?
00:30:42.353 --> 00:30:42.894
What do you do?
00:30:43.713 --> 00:30:46.256
When so many people now have kind of
00:30:46.336 --> 00:30:48.656
moved their social activities online,
00:30:50.798 --> 00:30:51.979
what do you do when you don't get
00:30:52.019 --> 00:30:52.799
to do that anymore?
00:30:52.880 --> 00:30:54.520
And so he recognized the need for
00:30:54.560 --> 00:30:55.060
community.
00:30:55.340 --> 00:30:57.702
And I think that's been interesting to
00:30:57.742 --> 00:31:00.265
watch over the last couple of years as
00:31:00.325 --> 00:31:01.204
people have doubts,
00:31:01.664 --> 00:31:03.125
there is a place to go and they
00:31:03.145 --> 00:31:05.228
can find rich and it's leavingmaga.org.
00:31:06.367 --> 00:31:08.028
And there's a support group there.
00:31:08.068 --> 00:31:10.329
So you have meetings for families and
00:31:10.369 --> 00:31:11.410
friends who want to come.
00:31:11.930 --> 00:31:13.330
And so that's, I think,
00:31:13.431 --> 00:31:16.352
one of the best ways is trying to
00:31:16.372 --> 00:31:18.573
create new communities to land in.
00:31:18.593 --> 00:31:21.233
Communities of formers, perhaps.
00:31:21.913 --> 00:31:24.134
Because you learn the most from the
00:31:24.174 --> 00:31:25.135
formers, to be honest.
00:31:25.796 --> 00:31:26.435
Yeah.
00:31:26.496 --> 00:31:28.017
And I've met a few over the last
00:31:28.057 --> 00:31:29.156
few years too.
00:31:29.538 --> 00:31:29.698
Um,
00:31:29.758 --> 00:31:32.759
and they're all very committed to getting
00:31:32.778 --> 00:31:34.859
the information out there also.
00:31:35.460 --> 00:31:36.461
Um, and then, you know,
00:31:36.500 --> 00:31:37.500
before I let you go,
00:31:37.520 --> 00:31:39.801
there's also Daryl Lamont Jenkins and One
00:31:39.862 --> 00:31:41.403
People's Project, um,
00:31:41.442 --> 00:31:44.203
who help people leave that world and, um,
00:31:44.544 --> 00:31:44.824
you know,
00:31:44.864 --> 00:31:47.224
find alternative ways of thinking and
00:31:47.285 --> 00:31:49.286
being and being in community.
00:31:50.047 --> 00:31:50.207
Um,
00:31:51.106 --> 00:31:53.008
so yeah and he was a guest um
00:31:53.167 --> 00:31:54.689
he was my first guest and you're my
00:31:54.929 --> 00:31:58.050
guest yeah so this is a a nice
00:31:58.391 --> 00:32:00.892
tie up to all of that um i
00:32:00.951 --> 00:32:03.614
definitely recommend people read your book
00:32:03.913 --> 00:32:06.714
um watch the conspiracists as well because
00:32:06.734 --> 00:32:10.676
there's so much more in depth about what
00:32:10.777 --> 00:32:14.019
conspirituality is for instance um and
00:32:14.078 --> 00:32:15.819
what it's really like to to be a
00:32:15.880 --> 00:32:17.461
part of that movement um
00:32:18.060 --> 00:32:20.021
So is there anything else that I didn't
00:32:20.122 --> 00:32:20.542
ask you,
00:32:20.563 --> 00:32:22.584
you want to make sure my audience knows
00:32:22.604 --> 00:32:23.605
before I let you go?
00:32:24.384 --> 00:32:25.726
I'll just touch on what you started with
00:32:25.746 --> 00:32:27.007
with the introduction when you talked
00:32:27.027 --> 00:32:28.008
about trad wives.
00:32:28.087 --> 00:32:29.368
And we did not talk about trad wives
00:32:29.388 --> 00:32:30.048
during this conversation.
00:32:30.068 --> 00:32:30.450
Fair enough.
00:32:30.490 --> 00:32:30.789
Thank you.
00:32:30.809 --> 00:32:31.770
So people might be like,
00:32:31.851 --> 00:32:32.671
where did that come from?
00:32:32.691 --> 00:32:34.833
That's my bad journalism.
00:32:35.053 --> 00:32:35.653
Good job.
00:32:35.673 --> 00:32:36.233
No, no, no, no, no, no.
00:32:36.273 --> 00:32:39.415
It's good because the trad wife may seem
00:32:39.435 --> 00:32:41.156
like it has absolutely no connection to
00:32:41.176 --> 00:32:42.498
what we just talked about with January
00:32:42.518 --> 00:32:43.818
Sixth and conspirituality.
00:32:44.259 --> 00:32:46.279
But, you know, unbeknownst to me, it does,
00:32:46.359 --> 00:32:46.700
right?
00:32:46.740 --> 00:32:48.421
Because there's various kinds of trad
00:32:48.441 --> 00:32:48.721
wives,
00:32:48.740 --> 00:32:50.201
just like there's various kinds of
00:32:50.801 --> 00:32:51.602
conspiracists.
00:32:52.182 --> 00:32:53.982
And the thing with the right that I
00:32:54.022 --> 00:32:54.683
have found,
00:32:55.183 --> 00:32:57.164
you can have a trad wife and you
00:32:57.184 --> 00:32:58.464
can have someone who believes they're a
00:32:58.484 --> 00:33:00.326
starseed from a higher dimension,
00:33:00.346 --> 00:33:01.946
which is basically alien DNA.
00:33:02.386 --> 00:33:04.008
You can have a white nationalist or a
00:33:04.067 --> 00:33:04.988
Christian nationalist,
00:33:05.008 --> 00:33:06.147
and you can all swim in that same
00:33:06.188 --> 00:33:06.388
pool.
00:33:06.429 --> 00:33:07.368
Everyone's got their lane
00:33:07.849 --> 00:33:09.010
As you stay in your lane,
00:33:09.490 --> 00:33:11.551
you're fine with adjacent to, you know,
00:33:11.571 --> 00:33:13.292
okay, there's some neo-Nazis over there.
00:33:13.752 --> 00:33:15.554
I might not be okay with everything they
00:33:15.574 --> 00:33:15.973
believe,
00:33:15.993 --> 00:33:18.055
but I'm okay traveling next to them.
00:33:18.555 --> 00:33:20.236
And that's what was so bizarre to me.
00:33:20.296 --> 00:33:22.597
And Tradwives came up because I started
00:33:22.617 --> 00:33:23.577
seeing those hashtags.
00:33:24.038 --> 00:33:24.858
And then when I started following
00:33:24.898 --> 00:33:27.140
Tradwives, I was seeing new hashtags.
00:33:27.619 --> 00:33:29.743
And this is important because I'm watching
00:33:29.763 --> 00:33:32.468
these women with vintage sewing patterns
00:33:32.627 --> 00:33:34.330
and showing how these made these dresses
00:33:34.371 --> 00:33:35.392
and sourdough starters.
00:33:35.432 --> 00:33:36.994
And then these are looking at block
00:33:37.035 --> 00:33:39.980
hashtags and I'm homemaking, homesteading.
00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:41.962
But then I see revolt against the modern
00:33:41.982 --> 00:33:42.282
world.
00:33:42.983 --> 00:33:44.124
I see that over and over,
00:33:44.163 --> 00:33:45.884
over time in these different women's,
00:33:46.345 --> 00:33:47.685
you know, trad white spaces.
00:33:47.746 --> 00:33:48.925
And so I finally Googled it.
00:33:49.026 --> 00:33:50.405
And it's the title of the book by
00:33:50.445 --> 00:33:51.267
Giulia Savola,
00:33:51.747 --> 00:33:53.646
who is a nineteen thirties fascist in
00:33:53.707 --> 00:33:54.028
Italy,
00:33:54.468 --> 00:33:57.528
who some who claim to be more fascist
00:33:57.548 --> 00:33:58.189
than Mussolini.
00:33:58.388 --> 00:33:58.669
Right.
00:33:59.048 --> 00:34:01.950
And so you see how one day and
00:34:01.990 --> 00:34:03.651
this is why the pandemic was such a
00:34:03.750 --> 00:34:04.471
perfect storm.
00:34:05.131 --> 00:34:07.031
is women were online for the very first
00:34:07.051 --> 00:34:08.492
time in many cases looking how to
00:34:08.552 --> 00:34:10.715
homeschool their kids because they were
00:34:10.775 --> 00:34:12.916
now responsible for keeping their kids in
00:34:12.936 --> 00:34:15.077
front of a computer doing their work for
00:34:15.097 --> 00:34:17.440
that year and so as you're googling what
00:34:17.519 --> 00:34:18.940
are the tips for keeping my five-year-olds
00:34:18.960 --> 00:34:20.702
sitting in front of a computer you're
00:34:20.722 --> 00:34:22.043
going to be getting fed more and more
00:34:22.063 --> 00:34:23.483
of the whole homeschool content
00:34:23.603 --> 00:34:26.324
which we already know lives on the right,
00:34:26.425 --> 00:34:26.784
right,
00:34:27.005 --> 00:34:29.405
either through biblical womanhood or trad
00:34:29.425 --> 00:34:30.547
wives or whatever.
00:34:31.086 --> 00:34:32.807
But it also moved into another space that
00:34:32.867 --> 00:34:35.268
looks very crunchy lefty when you first
00:34:35.309 --> 00:34:36.068
look at it.
00:34:36.509 --> 00:34:36.809
You know,
00:34:36.849 --> 00:34:38.849
homesteading and self-sufficiency,
00:34:39.250 --> 00:34:41.931
accelerationism comes in left and right.
00:34:42.210 --> 00:34:43.992
And so you start to see how all
00:34:44.052 --> 00:34:46.572
of these different ideologies change.
00:34:46.733 --> 00:34:50.398
coalesce and work together to support
00:34:50.739 --> 00:34:53.302
common goals, which oftentimes,
00:34:53.342 --> 00:34:54.764
although very few people I've talked to
00:34:54.784 --> 00:34:56.827
would actually say this and agree with me,
00:34:57.148 --> 00:34:58.429
but if you really break it down to
00:34:58.489 --> 00:34:59.291
its bottom level,
00:34:59.692 --> 00:35:00.853
it's the identity of whiteness.
00:35:01.706 --> 00:35:03.568
You know, that is really what everyone,
00:35:03.927 --> 00:35:05.309
every one of these groups across the
00:35:05.349 --> 00:35:07.449
board, you know, you could be,
00:35:07.489 --> 00:35:09.070
you might think you're a Pleiadian from a
00:35:09.130 --> 00:35:11.032
higher dimension and alien DNA,
00:35:11.411 --> 00:35:13.333
or you might be a staunch, you know,
00:35:13.614 --> 00:35:15.514
Christian nationalist, biblical womanhood,
00:35:15.994 --> 00:35:17.815
and those things don't seem to match up.
00:35:17.835 --> 00:35:18.556
You know,
00:35:18.597 --> 00:35:20.518
how is that person going to accept an
00:35:20.597 --> 00:35:21.297
alien hybrid?
00:35:22.077 --> 00:35:23.940
But if the end goal,
00:35:24.199 --> 00:35:26.701
if everyone's end goal is this same place,
00:35:27.061 --> 00:35:28.021
that's how it works.
00:35:28.532 --> 00:35:29.333
Yep.
00:35:29.514 --> 00:35:31.394
And that's how they are so much,
00:35:31.554 --> 00:35:33.655
among the other things you pointed out,
00:35:33.856 --> 00:35:36.157
so much better organized than us because
00:35:36.556 --> 00:35:39.159
we're busy purity testing and taking every
00:35:39.239 --> 00:35:43.380
little minutia of belief system and
00:35:43.420 --> 00:35:45.882
questioning and criticizing instead of
00:35:45.922 --> 00:35:47.802
joining together for a common cause.
00:35:47.862 --> 00:35:51.164
And our common cause would probably be
00:35:51.184 --> 00:35:52.746
better for all of us,
00:35:52.806 --> 00:35:54.266
even for those who may disagree.
00:35:55.347 --> 00:35:57.547
Whereas that doesn't always work in the
00:35:57.608 --> 00:35:58.108
opposite.
00:35:59.608 --> 00:36:01.030
Noelle, thank you so much.
00:36:01.130 --> 00:36:02.010
This was great.
00:36:02.309 --> 00:36:03.811
I could talk to you for hours.
00:36:04.650 --> 00:36:06.012
Everybody who's been watching,
00:36:06.112 --> 00:36:07.452
thank you for joining us.
00:36:07.853 --> 00:36:10.253
Thank you for staying on a little extra.
00:36:10.614 --> 00:36:12.635
Be sure to check out Noelle's work.
00:36:12.715 --> 00:36:14.835
It's incredible and it's a unique niche
00:36:14.896 --> 00:36:16.976
that's definitely worth investigating.
00:36:18.577 --> 00:36:20.518
See you soon for episode eleven.
00:36:22.101 --> 00:36:24.905
War is immoral, poverty is immoral,
00:36:25.184 --> 00:36:26.487
racism is immoral,
00:36:26.726 --> 00:36:28.469
police brutality is immoral,
00:36:28.668 --> 00:36:29.789
oppression is immoral,
00:36:30.010 --> 00:36:31.211
genocide is immoral,
00:36:31.431 --> 00:36:32.813
imperialism is immoral.
00:36:33.052 --> 00:36:35.275
This country represents all those things.