January 28, 2022 • 53 mins
Journalist and researcher W. F. Thomas talks with Robert and Garrison about DiscloseTV, Telegram, and the cultic milieu.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
It could happen. Here is the podcast you're listening to
with your ears or perhaps other parts of your body
if you have, I don't know, some bizarre form of
synesthesia that causes you to taste sound. Um, maybe you're
tasting us right now, in which case, UM, I'm gonna
open up the flavor bouquet by introducing my co host
(00:27):
Garrison UM, and our guest for today. Why don't you
take over now, Garrison, I've done my job great. That
sounds lovely. Yeah, hey Garrison, here could happen. Here is
the podcast. We have a special guest today, UH journalisten
researcher W. F. Thomas. Hello, Hello, it's so good to
be here on Behind the Woman's Revolution the Police Insurrection Daily.
(00:50):
Thank you, thank you lovely to have you. Um. A
lot of people say Garrison's voice tastes like surbet, by
the way, it's a comment. We get a lot a lot,
a lot of a lot of a lot of those
d M s. Um, you surprised, not that. Um. So
we're gonna be talking about something I've wanted to actually
bring up myself for a while now, but I just
(01:12):
have not put it the work in and now Luckily
someone else did the actual work, so we now we
could just talk about it. We're talking about something called
disclosed TV UM, which is a broad range of things.
It's not it's not just one thing. Uh, And I
guess I'll hand it over to the person who do
the actual work in terms of like how how would
(01:33):
you describe what disclosed TV is? But but like before
we get into like the journey of the platform and
thing like what like what is it? Yeah, UM, let
me start this off by saying, I've already before the
publication of the article been publicly threatened vaguely with legal
action from Disclosed TV, so that will be largely informing
(01:56):
what I say today. But we do have a lot
of receipts. UM, we have very scary lawyers here. So
I'm i'm, i'm I'm excited whatever happens, So feel free
to say whatever you want to say. But UM, Disclosed
TV markets itself and presents itself as a news aggregator
(02:16):
UM operating Twitter, UM Telegram, gab getter. They have a
Facebook as well as well as the main site where
they host what one could describe as articles as well. Yeah,
and I think disclosed TV for our purposes, despite like
(02:38):
they have a very large Facebook presence UM, but the
way that we usually interact with them specifically like me
and Robert and then other people who are like journalists
storage to anti fascist researchers, usually we interact with disclosed
TV on Telegram or through Twitter um Twitter through like
it's how they like break a lot of current events
in like a like you know, a lot of like
(03:00):
political figures talk about them is is Twitter um and
then Telegram is where they really disseminate these out into
more obscure groups and maybe they change their wording because
they know the audience is a little bit different and
they've been a vector of information for a while. Really
really with the protests, they kind of picked up a
(03:21):
lot of there they were everywhere in terms of like
saying specific things, not doing sourcing UM and just having
like basically they are a place where they kind of
create what then they try to create what the news
is because of how isolated they are from the sources
that they actually pull info from, and they're very they're
(03:43):
very interested in kind of crafting their own version of
events UM which appeals to people across the spectrum. Like
they don't just market towards the far right wing. Sometimes
they frame things to kind of attract of a variety
of people on like the under the Street extremist banner.
Let's say. Um, so, you know, you don't just see
(04:04):
them in far right circles. You see discloses pop up
in a lot of places because of the way they
framed news and breaking events. UM. But they didn't always
start out like this. This isn't what they always were.
They weren't always this kind of content aggregator that creates
their version of news. UM. And Thomas did more research
into what they were before, which I actually had not
(04:26):
done that research yet. UM. So yeah, let's uh, let's
talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So I'm gonna
start off with talking about how I first heard about disclosed. UM. So.
I was living in Germany when the pandemic hit UM
and got COVID first wave in Germany in the March. UM.
Luckily I was totally asymptomatic. UM, but I was kind
(04:47):
of stranded in Germany for a couple of weeks UM
and how to isolate in a vacation rental uh and
the Bavarian man who owned it just kept coming in
talking to me and I would tell him, Hey, it's
probably not the best idea for you to be coming
by and chatting with me all the time. And now
he got into talking, and we're talking in German. He
(05:08):
got we got into talking about the pandemic, what he
thought about it, and he started talking about how he thought, Oh,
the government's making this seem way worse than it is.
You know, the deep state if you know anything about that,
and he and he said deep state in English. Um.
And I was familiar with German far right currents at
that time. Um, but I had never encountered a pilled
(05:31):
German dude. And that's when I realized this is gonna
be a fucking problem. Yeah. Yeah, and and it lo
and behold, it has continued to be a problem. So
as I got back to the U S. And and
the other thing when I was in Germany is the
first time I toounded I encountered telegram. Um. When a
German I knew said hey, I I just don't trust
(05:53):
WhatsApp because it's on by Facebook. Why don't you download
telegram in two thousand nineteen, I think, um, and and
it was pretty innocuous to me at the time. I
didn't realize this would become a problem. Yeah, fast forward, UM.
I was working on my master's project, which UM you
(06:15):
can talk about more later on because it's kind of
besides the point, UM if you don't want to hear
about it, But looking at Telegram as the cultic milieu UM,
using Colin Campbell's framework of the cultic milieu UM to
understand specifically how qan on spread in Germany and how
Q and on interacted with these native underlying conspiracy narratives
(06:38):
within Germany. UM. Because Telegram is already massively popular in
Germany before after j six, I think of the band
wave came down and there was much more migration to
the platform. So you know, I did the social network
analysis looking at the conspirat German conspiracy is seen on
Telegram and one of the biggest notes that came up,
(06:59):
and I looking at a number of times shared into
other groups or channels was disclosed tv UM and that's
the first time I came into it. I look through
it and realized, okay, they there is an editorial stance
within this UM, and that editorial stance largely attracts conspiracists
(07:20):
and far right extremists to this coverage and too you
know this is widely shared among conspiracists and far right extremists. UM.
Fast forward. UM. I'm on Twitter, as many of us are, unfortunately, UM,
and I saw Disclosed TV just popping up everywhere, UM,
even from people who who I would think should know better. Yeah,
(07:43):
absolutely are you know big extremism researchers and journalists UM
shared it. I remember there one specific one that really
came across my feed. UM disclosed had had taken a
video from like the Blaze, Glennbex whatever, the Empire whatever,
UM about the firefighters who were quitting over vaccine mandate
(08:08):
or something and had all of their boots or whatever.
And I saw, yeah, lots of people sharing that as well. UM.
And eventually I got tired of saying, hey, this should
is suspect, don't share it UM, and decided to write
an article about it so I could just send my
(08:28):
article to people. And it's really interesting what I found. UM.
Disclosed tv started off in the mid two thousand's as
just this forum for UFOs, paranormal stuff, cryptids, bigfoot sightings,
and existed in largely the same format until two thousand
(08:50):
and twenty one. UM. There were some shifts in in
the way the site presented itself. Um, it was. It
started off as a member loggin where member could write
articles that were largely long form forum posts and then
have people comment on them and reply. Um. And at
one point Disclosed made the jump to functioning as a
(09:15):
news aggregator while including an editorial spin on that and
including some of their own articles. Do you want me
to get more into that now, Yeah, because yeah, because
like the shift was was it wasn't like immediate as well, right,
Like they were starting to kind of present themselves in
more of a news gathering way, you know, around the
(09:35):
late of course, during this became a big thing in
terms of their social media presence. Um, they were trying
to present themselves as like a news aggregator, right, but
they still operated that. But they still operated the forum
on their site throughout most of that time. And it's
only until recently where they shut that forum down. Um,
which was you know, full of full of all kinds
(09:57):
of conspiratorial nonsense. It's very easy to see passed for
most people, uh, secret you know, secret Arctic ship, which
is yeah, it's always that's usually Yeah, even going to
get stuff like watch this s j W get wrecked,
which which is not a quotation, but just that kind
(10:17):
of vibe, that style of content. Yeah, going from the
forum operating than what they know their social media accounts
to the shift this more of like presenting as a
news website. Talking about that and the potential effects that
(10:40):
we see this having on both like the social media
sites and just the overall trend of news aggregation in general,
I guess. Yeah. So the first big shift that I
found UM was the creation of their Telegram channel, which
is in January of one actually, so this is relatively
more recent than Yeah, if that happened UM, and they
(11:04):
operated their Telegram as a UM as more in this
traditional news aggregator since and so that's how they really
blew up on Telegram. At some point they deleted all
of their old tweets UM and started operating their Twitter
in a similar manner. It was after they created this
telegram channel UM in September, actually overnight on septemb they
(11:28):
completely re rebranded the site. They took out all the
user forums UM, they included backdated articles to a year
prior UM, and looking looking through archives of it, there
was a note saying something along the lines of we
have found so much growth on our social media are
(11:50):
growing Telegram channel, are growing Twitter account UM, and something
to the effect of we we are changing our strategy
and going about this a different way. UM. And you
can if you were into the forum, you can join
our discord UM which is defunct and I'll get I'll
(12:10):
get into that later. UM. And yeah, looking it was
really interesting too because looking at these backdated articles UM,
they included very obviously plagiarized content. UM. They had I
believe it's it's all in the article, but they had
four journalists UM names attached with the article using um
(12:37):
AI generated images for their pictures. UM. And the especially
the articles that they themselves published UM were very focused
on UFOs paranormal paranormal phenomenon UM, as well as content
(13:00):
that could cause skepticism within an audience, UM about vaccines
and lockdowns. And I do not know the intent of
U their editorial board, and so I cannot speak on that,
but of course it generated this effect. Yes, that is,
they found a way of creating content which develops a
very specific audience, which grew their numbers, which made them,
(13:24):
you know what one could assume would make them want
to make more of that content. Because that makes more
numbers than they can UM use that to grow their platform. UM. Yeah,
specifically leading up like after after January UM ramping up
one of the vaccines were coming more and more common
in the States and that across the world. UM. They
have seen a pretty significant growth and have changed their
(13:47):
platform accordingly exactly. UM. So we began looking into who
the who the fun owns this, what's going on with
this UM. Like all German companies UM, and it is
based in Germany, there's a requirement by law to include
an imprint or an impress them that includes an address
(14:11):
UM contact information for the site UM. There in the
company that owns it UM a company called Future Bites
operates disclosed tv UM, which describes itself as a private
equity firm and media group. UM and looking into the
(14:31):
ownership behind Future Bites is a man by the name
of Uva Brown who has a pretty interesting backstory. He's hosted,
he's He's made numerous web hosting sites. UM. I believe
he created some dating sites as well, but but my
research was not conclusive, so that's a maybe. UM. But
eventually he sold. He had his most success when he
(14:53):
sold one of his web hosting sites to go Daddy
for a lot of money, and along the way, in
his own as he described, booked a flight on virgin
to go into space and see for himself if the earth,
if the Earth was flat. Oh my god, awesome cool
(15:14):
that that, this is great? Thank you. Yeah. So this
this is who we're dealing with, um. Sweet. And the
thing about Disclosed being based in Germany, UM, that that
becomes an issue, UM, is that Germany has a very
different uh look at free speech than in the US. UM.
(15:36):
For example, even online displaying swastikas UM and denying the
Holocaust is legal and is a prosecutable crime. They can
get you jail time. UM. So as we explored as
I mostly and UM, there's additional reporting from Berni Piper
and I'll talk a bit more about that later explored
(15:58):
the discord and their telegram. We realized, Hum, it seems
to be a lot of Nazis here, and by which
when I say seems to be a lot of Nazis,
I mean people with swastikas in their profile builds, UM
with you know, names, referencing the Holocaust with the whispers
parentheses um, and saying denying that the hologast Happened UM,
(16:21):
and also sharing the neo Nazi, famous neo Nazi, infamous
new Nazi propaganda film Europa The Last Battle UM, which
was shared by prominent q and On influencer ghost Ezra. Yeah.
I know. UM, oh man, this this came up a
few days ago. One of the one of the channels
(16:44):
that me and someone else have been watching, UH forwarded
me it being that that that film being shared at
the it was it was it was that the the
Free Oregon Telegram channel was sharing links to that and
I wonder I would I would like to track back
where that link came from. UM. Yeah. Not not great
(17:05):
seeing that film circulate more and more, especially among like
you know, the free organ Telegram channels, you know, like
Anti mask, Anti backs, Anti Lockdown channel. Yeah, and seeing
the percoloration of that type of content. Yeah. So and
prepare for this article UM. With the help of of
the Logically editorial team, I'm a freelancer UM, their current
(17:30):
head of content, Ernie Piper UM sent an email basically asking, hey,
what's going on. You all seem to have a Nazi
problem that's kind of borderline illegal in Germany, UM, to
which for a while this for for about twenty four
hours as closed, just went totally quiet and didn't post
(17:52):
Um and then came out with a post specifically targeting
Ernie Um by name him and with a picture of
him and linking to some of his old reporting work
as well, Um saying yes, Uva Brown owns this. He
got his money from Go daddy. You know, we value
(18:12):
free speech and we condemn hatred whatnot, and and saying, oh,
our telegram we have a tell there's a telegram group,
but we have these rules in it, and h okay, yeah,
we we had to shut down the discord that got
a little bit out of hand. We admit that. You know,
they had people denying the Holocaust with swastka icons in
their discord that they didn't seem to care too much
(18:36):
about until someone pointed it out. Um. And you know
there's there was additionally very explicit neo Nazi content in
their telegram channel as well, with the excuse, oh well,
we're a glowing growing platform. We we can't moderate everything.
Is well they have They just crossed four hundred thousand
in their telegram channel and I think about thirty thousand
(18:58):
and their telegram group UM, which is frankly bullshit. Yeah
that is if if my personal opinion is that if
you cannot don't have the resources to moderate this space,
you probably shouldn't space the space. Um. And and additionally confirming, oh, okay,
(19:18):
we we when we made our new version of the site. Yes,
we backdated some articles from previous user generated content that
we you know, didn't vet properly. We're trying to fix
that now they removed some of those articles. Um. And
that yeah, we none of the people who who are
the authors of our articles are real people and they're
(19:40):
all pen names. Um. You know. They also have or
at least had a tab on their website that said
right for us and looking for people to send them
things and saying you know, well we will disclose your
bio and link to all your social media if you
write a story for us. And they're there was zero
of that happening as well. So do you think that,
(20:02):
I know, like on the rules for their telegram they
have the no Nazi stuff rule. Um. Do you think
they're actually trying to discourage that because they're scared of
legal stuff or is that just presentorary and they I
guess you know, this is just going into speculations. So
I think this might be more a question for even
Robert Um in terms of yeah, like is the anti
(20:22):
Nazi stuff presentorary? And because it does seem to be
a lot of their user base is fostering that type
of thing or is you know being moved over from
other similar channels? Um? Because yeah, like a lot of
like the amount that we see disclose, like you know,
intercept with channels like you know, the Rise above Him
the channel, UM, and a whole bunch of like eco
fascist channels, and a whole bunch of channels you know
(20:44):
on a like a broad range of like actual like
fascist topics, like people who are like into fascist theory.
Um is quite high the like the amount that disclosed
shows up. Um. And I don't know, like you could
look at all their stuff saying I mean, like yeah
on on the their rule page saying no Nazi bullshit. Um.
But then if you spend any amount of time looking
(21:04):
at at where they're posts are forwarded, it's almost primarily
people who are self describe themselves as fascists. UM. So
I mean, yeah, it's hard to or Donald J. Trump Jr. Yes, Yes,
it expands out into a lot of you know, just
like you know, American journalists suits studying streamism could also
share discloses stuff on Twitter, right, that is part of
(21:28):
their thing is making that and you know that that
does strengthen them because it gives them that legitimacy. So
then when people point out that they have Nazi problem, like, no,
that's not us, that's just some of our users who
are trolling or you know whatever whatever bullshit they want
to say. Um So I guess, like how I guess
the real way to frame this is like how often
(21:48):
have you seen Nazi stuff associated with the disclose with
the Disclosed TV brand? Because that's the one thing we
actually can measure, right, we can't measure their intentions, but
we can't measure how often this stuff happens. Yeah, mean,
that's always like the best way to measure that kind
of thing, rather than just sort of like making the
allegation listing like we find it in this many channels,
(22:09):
we see it shared in these areas, it's being discussed
by these people, and like like that that's I think
always kind of how you actually build these these sort
of networks is by looking at what is actually spreading
where like that's that it is thankfully, something that you
can measure pretty objectively, and like they are fostering it
with the amount of stuff they talk about, like George Soros,
(22:32):
and you know, the amount of stuff that they like.
The way they frame breaking news is has that editorial
bent where it's very clear that it's getting pushed in
a specific direction like there's that is That is a
thing that you can observe by reading the type of
narratives they're weaving via how they report information. Um, the
(22:54):
the topics that they choose to cover, our topics that
reson very deeply with conspiracist and with far at extremist communities. UM.
If I had to speculate, UM, I will say at
least since the article has come out, Um, they've done
a better job of moderating their telegram channel at least
(23:18):
for now. So good job, disclosed, TV no one. You
can't find links to Europe with the last battle there anymore.
You can still find you can still find very rampant
homophobia slurs um, because you know they didn't. They clearly
auto blocked some words, but people can shorten them or
(23:41):
use different spellings for those words to still be used
in the channel. Um, there's still anti Semitic um coded
anti Semitic references as well responding to something saying oive
a for example, which is something that tends to be
(24:01):
used by a lot of neo Nazis and anti Semites. Yeah,
I mean even and if you do any amount of
research on Telegram, you will you will find forward links
forwarded links to this channel all everywhere, like if it's
it is, it is so massive. The footprint that they
(24:21):
have currently in the in like the the cycle of
of forwarding posts specifically on Telegram UM and yeah, and
they're they're getting a lot of traction on it because
they have stuff framed in a way that's really easy
for them to have those stuff like line up with
the communities that promote those types of worldviews UM and
(24:46):
promote the you know, the narratives that they want to foster.
So let's see, let's have another quick break and then
let's maybe talk about your big master's project, which is
really interesting. Yeah, can I can? I can I do it? Yeah?
I do this. You know you know what isn't telegram? Uh?
(25:08):
Literally these ads unless we get an ad by Telegram,
which we are primarily sponsored by the Duo Brothers UM.
But that's for a separate project. My favorite at is
the is the one where it's the kid playing and
they find a gun. Oh yeah, that's my favorite. And
(25:35):
oh we are thanks to great hope. Everybody enjoyed that
kid finding a gun a kid firing it. Yeah, so
there's one of my favorite tweets recently was like somebody,
it was somebody like clipped a screen grab of news
article that was like a toddler has shot someone every
day in the United States for the last three years,
(25:56):
and somebody quote tweeted and said, somebody fucking stop him.
It's very good. Um. The last thing I want to
talk about is just kind of why news aggregators are
bad in the first place, and examples of which we've
seen the past few years, and how they contribute to
dis information specifically, and how they don't do sourcing for
(26:19):
any claims and they try to make themselves a primary
source even though they're not. UM. And then also would
love to talk about your very fancy project. So yeah,
we saw a lot of news aggregators that like during
the protest, specifically that that spawned and killed many a
(26:39):
news aggregator account UM, which did not help things very much. UM.
And this is this is an issue that strikes across
the political spectrum. Yes, I mean one of the biggest
instances of that would be an account called and on
cat right. That was the yeah um who you know
marketed themselves towards the left wing UM. And I again,
(27:02):
I don't know what their intentionality was. They may have
had their heart in the right place. I have no idea,
um and I'm not going to speculate on that right now.
But the effect that they caused was damaging to how
information is disseminated, specifically in high stress events. Um. You know,
like for instance, the writtenhouse shooting, you know, like stuff
like that, Uh, the big accounts, the demos around that
(27:25):
before that, yeah, before that, yes, yeah, like the the
in fostering that very fast paced unverified information circulation UM
that gets you know a lot of retweets, it gets
it gets a lot of eyeballs on it. But but
it's hard. It makes it very hard to backtrack claims
because they do not want to link to other accounts,
(27:46):
because they're mostly interested in growing their own account. Um.
So and I will say Disclose has gotten better about
linking to the sources, even if the title and the
tweet don't necessarily match what in the story they link to. Yeah,
at least someone could take a different interpretation from the two. Yes, So,
(28:07):
just like you know, news aggregation and the way it
intersects with disinformation and misinformation, not just a problem for
the far right, not just a problem for the right wing,
just a problem for liberals, not just problem for leftist
This is the thing that anyone, anyone can really grasp
on to um. And some of it's accidental, some of
it's intentional. Right, there's some some people might just do
this kind of mindlessly, and some people may, you know,
(28:28):
do this aggregation with a very specific intent in mind.
So just be very careful whenever you have an account
that always leads with all caps like breaking like news.
Like if if you have an account that always does that,
maybe maybe maybe don't take that account super seriously all
the time. Maybe you should uh find other sources of
info that don't always start the tweets with breaking news
(28:50):
and all caps or advice to people if they do
want something like that, find an actual news source. Yeah,
there's plenty of valid criticism to be made. Again, you
know these mainstream media m s M centrist stuff from
from you know, even from the left, there's there's criticism. Um,
(29:10):
but you have to find some way of finding your
own meaning and understanding of what is going on in
the world around you. I think a CNN Reuters. Yeah,
And on that point, I think that is part of
why I think Disclosed can succeed and or like what
they did can succeed, even like when I see stuff
(29:30):
shared on the left, even by like anarchists, because it
is a not mainstream media news source, the way they
can frame things of sometimes rarely will match up with
like an actual anarchist views and the like, Yeah, I'm
going to share it from this thing because it does
feel like an underground you know source. It doesn't. It doesn't.
It's not you're not sharing a scene an article, so
you feel better because instead you're sharing something that is
(29:54):
not in the mainstream. So like I get that, I
get that pull to not something that genuous reading of
a CNN article instead. Yeah, but instead of you're you know,
it's not actually better, it's just marketing. They're just tricking
you via esthetics and branding, and that's all that it is, right,
So maybe you should learn learn to see past the
(30:15):
marketing and branding of those types of things, and look
at the actual content of what's being shared. What is
the university project thing that has been taking up a
lot of your time? Yeah, and um, so you're back
in the U S. And I got interested, um, especially
in looking at the spread of Q and on in Germany,
and that you led me down this research path, um,
(30:39):
and brought me especially to telegram um again before it
was largely used in in right wing circles in the
U S. Well, the the Nazis have have pretty regularly
in the US, but on telegram as well. Um. But
this led me to look at this and and um
especially to to look at telegram the context of as
(31:01):
I mentioned, Colin Campbell's concept of the cultic milieu, um,
which I don't know if you'll have talked about that
on this we have one behind subject of time, okay,
but yeah, to give a quick summary, is is the
concept that there is this space and when Colin Campbell
(31:21):
wrote that, it was in I believe the seventies. So
it was a physical space where people go to find
these rejected narratives, you know, reject the idea of rejected knowledge,
and they go to seek this kind of knowledge and
and and these things. UM. So he's talking about things
like UFO conferences or or meet ups, or or alternative bookstores,
(31:45):
or perhaps maybe signing up at an institute to get
a degree in metaphysics. Yeah, as a weirdly specific example,
gear Yeah, sorry, does red red of thought? Yeah. Anyway,
how's that going, by the way, Garrison, it's going good, good, Yeah.
And and what you find is is people can very
(32:08):
easily move between ideologies, UM. And as they move between
ideologies concepts, specific schools, they cross pollinate these schools UM.
And this is how you get these kind of highly
syncretic movements like Q and on UM, like the modern
conspiracy movement UM, which is incredibly syncretic, and UM some
(32:31):
of the other really bad ones that are out there
as well that combine these different views UM. Specifically, when
you start when you start combining the type of like
cultural mysticism with politics, often you can have very volatile results. Yes, exactly.
Can you think of any examples? I mean, in some ways,
(32:53):
the modern eco fascist movement is built on a lot
of this type of stuff, so that that would be
the easiest one, would be the easiest one. The I
think that the syncretism of because I think a lot
of people have been surprised to see like you know,
kind of like natural medicine and and what not subcultures
and eight like alien subcultures kind of colliding with Q
and on and and these like more like far right
(33:17):
neo Nazi type groups, and the fact that there are
all of these things that were associated for years kind
of more with the left have been increasingly um pulled
into this this sort of weather system of conspiratorial thinking
has been surprising to a lot of people who don't
understand this stuff. But it makes total sense if you
if you have been paying attention to the scholarship on
(33:38):
on what is actually like how cults sort of form
like it's it's it's um. It's like a weather pattern
that's been building for quite a while. There's a gravity
to it that sucks um everything in together and it
all kind of it's as you said, syncretic um. It's
not to get into horsehoe through. But this is even
how you get some of that crossover, right, Yes, yeah,
(34:00):
that was that was That was what I was just
going to mention, is that even a lot of like
the left wing authors or you know, post left wing
authors who got into this like cultural mysticism. Um, you
see their texts now getting shared by like like open fascists.
Even though these authors were anti fascist, Um, they are
able to still pick and choose what parts they're writing
to appropriate because some of it can kind of synchronize
(34:24):
at from opposite ends a very long time. Like if
you we've we talked about in our Gabriel the Nunzio
episodes Fume, which was this kind of like we're a
large chunk of like the fascist intellectual movement got started,
um in the post World War One period, but also
there were like a ton of anarchists and a lot
of like left wing um like thought leaders and whatnot.
(34:45):
We're kind of all it was again kind of there
there was this kind of like gravity center that pulled
everything in and it all started churning together, and um,
yeah we're we're we're we're seeing that happen now. Um
and yeah it sucks. That's that's that's great. To jump
back to, campl That's one of those examples of those
physical space of the call and that Cal Campbell was
(35:07):
talking about right, Um, where it's it's any place that
ideas that are rejected by you know, the orthodox kind
of the establishment. There is overlap, there is not necessarily
ideological overlap. There is an interplay between them as people
move between them and as these ideas come into collision
with one another. Um, and with the Internet, right, whole
(35:29):
different fucking ball game. Um yeah, because that space is
now everywhere exactly and and telegram specifically has the specific
affordances that make it ideal for having this soup of
bullshit on it as well. Um. It's it's additionally one
(35:50):
of and this may be changing. There's a lot of
discussion going on about this, especially within the German government,
who could actually they already have a lot that they
could use to say, hey, you can't have Nazis on
you can't have this Nazi ship in telegram. Um. But
telegrams one of these last places where where things are
largely allowed to spread without any kind of interruption, right, Um,
(36:14):
which I do think you know you look at telegram
is used in in um, the Hong Kong uprising as well,
it was used for it was used in the George Yeah,
that George Floyd uprising as well. Um. And it's the
same things that people too at time is fake, um,
bolish lane of your time. Um, but shooting your clock,
(36:37):
shoot the fucking clock. But okay, said, let's get back
to the topic. Yeah, but but but but drumming back
into this, Telegram markets itself is this very secure platform.
It's probably not right. It does have it's certainly not
absolutely not. It does have it does have encrypted chats,
but that's only for one to one messaging between people.
(36:58):
And even then you need to go and make your
the security settings right. And again, I I don't fully
trust that. Yeah, I don't fully truy. I mean signal
is about barely trust signal. Yeah, yeah, I trust conversations
when everyone has put their phone inside a Faraday bag
(37:18):
in a house and then we walked two miles into
we walked two miles into the woods, then you can
have a conversation. Yeah. Um, but Telegram market itself is
a very secure app, right, um, which is which is
largely marketing. You know, It's it's appeal is that it's
not What's app, it's not owned by Facebook. It's probably
worth acknowledging that for because it's also very popular with
(37:39):
a lot of people in um, you know, parts of
the global South and countries with authoritarian governments, and it
is has been used for a lot of organizing and
can be more secure and all more secure but also
more able than what than any other tool people have
access to. I mean in Syria, it's like it's again
extremely common for like nay, like neighborhoods and towns will
(38:01):
have like Telegram groups for this little village where they
a lot of stuff gets done over Telegram in places
like that, And telegram sits in this interesting space between
social media. UM. It's not a full on social media site,
but it's also not just a messaging app like telegrams
to categorize it is an interesting sort of like in
between type thing. Yeah, because you can have essentially unlimited
(38:25):
I think the number is in the hundreds of thousands
for how many people can join a group message UM
on Telegram. And you also have these one way messaging
thing called channels where where one person or group of
people can send out messages that appear alongside everyone else's
message feed as well. UM, and that can you can
(38:45):
also enable comments on that UM, which will get into
in a second UM. But but it's a great way
to share information as well. And what I was specifically
looking at is the forwarding of messages, because you you
can forward a message from this one channel into whatever
a group chat you're in, and it links back to
that channel. And I was interested in saying, how far
(39:05):
you know, what connections can we make from this? What
kind of zigzagging can we find? Um enhancer is sucking
a lot uh where where someone may may use telegram
for for example, a neighborhood group message right, and then
someone forwards the messages a message for this channel UM
or for this other group message UM, where they talk about, oh,
(39:28):
here's kind of helped practices to use. And then you
get into the pseudo science of things crossing into further
messages from what's forward forward groups and channels from what's
forwarded into that group and channel, and so on so on,
until you get to the neo nazis eventually UM. And
it's also it is it is a concerted effort on
the part of people pushing their ideology, who will go
(39:51):
in the comments of these giant channels and say, hey,
check out my channel. UM, what's not a real one?
You know, areean cooking, which is probably a channel but
it probably is. Yeah, great job checking. Sorry, but check
out check out check out, check out this or whatever.
(40:11):
And and especially when q and on moved on a
lot of promoters. Um, there there was organized groups of
of internet neo Nazis going on and trying to pill
boomers into neo Nazism. And because of the because of
the mesh like network of Telegram, they try to make
(40:32):
those meshes connect via dissemination. Right you can, you know,
people who are dedicated to these more esoteric groups can
join more regular like Marga groups or qut on groups
and start slowly bringing links to the start doing links
and forwarding to the more extreme channels. Um. And eventually yeah,
that does that does work. It can be a slow,
(40:52):
careful process um, or it can be very fast and
like bobastic And it'll depending on the said one of
them will latch onto one one watch onto the other. Yeah.
And and before the article came out, UM, what I
did see was the specific thing of accounts that I
would associate or or believe to be neo Nazi UM
(41:16):
encouraging people to join their groups and channels UM in
the in the telegram group message as well. And I
cannot speak to what that looks like right now after
the article has come out, yeah, and I've been trying
to take a break from telegram for my day to
day life, um and focus on reading actual books. So
(41:36):
but yeah, that is how I can always tell when
one of us has been spending time on telegram, because
the things we consider jokes get much worse. Yeah. You
remember when I found that playlist of Blink covers covers
it was what there was like a hundred of them
Blink or some full ship. Yeah, you always find you could,
(42:02):
you could find the most fucked up stuff. Don't don't
do it. Don't don't scrowl until do not. You're not
going to get this isn't like coveting the stay. You
don't need to be like it's it's not even it's
not worth it, Like there's no sacred novit like knowledge
that we're hiding. It's just it's it's just kind of sucks,
like it just like it just to feel bad. Yeah,
(42:24):
it just makes you feel worse about life and yourself
and the people around you. So the scope for your
master's project what it's kind of the what's the what's
the deal with like tying these things together? I guess yeah. Yeah,
So so using this social network analysis to argue that
the telegram does function as this could take Millie you um,
(42:46):
which yeah, it seems seems to be. It seems to
be the case. Yeah. Um. You know, and the question
gets into what is the responsibility the platform? Right, um,
because I fully believe there should be something at least
similar to this. It has been used for you know,
(43:07):
purposes along with my politics, in which I would call
good and needed. Um. However, they've also allowed this fucking
awful ecosystem to spread. It's it's interesting to see when
Telegram has had to step in and they you know,
they have pulled down some ices, accounts and channels. Um.
And and they have down when I was in um
(43:31):
Al Hall, which is that the camp where all the
ISIS prisoners were in Syria. Like while Jake and I
were in the camp, we could see on telegram like
ISIS supporters and al hole talking about stabbing guards like
in real time. It was not particularly Uh. They've done
like a lot. There's less of it than there used
to be, but it is still not hard to find
(43:52):
ISIS on telegram. Yeah. And they they've taken down a
few amounts of neo Nazi channels. Um. It's it's funny
because oh god, maybe cut this. But they've taken on
some of the your honesty channels when they've shared Ice
as ship for example. Yeah, yeah, I think we're we've
we're familiar with that line of thing. That's something we've
mentioned before. Okay. There has been pressure from from the
(44:17):
play Store and Google as well, or the play Store
from Google and and the app store Apples, app Store
from Apple to say we we aren't going to carry
the app if you don't do just a tiny bit
better essentially um which which which also it exists as
a web client, um, both as as a web client
(44:38):
and as a desktop app as well. UM. But that
would you know, limits some of it. Um. So, So
this has become largely discussed in the German in the
German parment because there's a new UM, there's a new
government in Germany, and and there is this history of
Germany kind of is the lead for doing things about
(45:03):
this digital content, especially within the EU. And and as
I mentioned, there's already law call Adoptic Enforcement Act that
requires platforms to take down content in Germany. Um. They
could be implemented on telegram as well. There's already a law. Yeah,
I mean This is like the thing why you know
(45:23):
what I watch happen lots is you know, these channels
will get shut down and they'll make a new one,
and it will shut down that one and make a
new one. Right. It's this You see this with like
discord servers, telegram channels. It is kind of this endless cycle, um,
and seeking an end to the cycle. It's always not
as easy as what one would hope, UM, because of
the cyclical nature of building these platforms and connections and
(45:46):
how the people who run these you know, intersect and
specifically with with telegrams. Really easy because channel get shut down,
you're still part of twelve of their channels, and odds
are one of those channels is going to afford you
the link to the new channel that was that was lost. Yeah,
And this is the thing you see where they send
lists of channels within within extremest groups and channels, they
will send out a list of here's other groups and
channels to check out as well. Yeah, but I mean
(46:09):
I would So that's something that's you know, hard for
regular people to actually do. But something I think that
people who do not own these platforms nor lawmakers can't
think about is particularly the the cultic comulie you that
does you know, go past regular left right divisions in
terms of politics and how you know, symbol like symbology
(46:31):
um and stuff that was you know initially you know,
perhaps more anarchist or or left wing is being used
by people on the right, and some people are really
confused by that, and there is ways to there is
ways to understand it, like it is, it does. I
am very frustrated when I look at you know, people
online who don't understand why Nazis can use ted K
(46:54):
and right, it's like, yeah, like it's it's not it's
it's not it's not what It's not not really about
what ted K actually run. It's more the symbolic meme
of ted K. And trying to you know, get that,
get that line of thinking across is not the easiest
thing because sometimes it will go in the other direction
and be like, oh, ted K is a Nazi, which
isn't accurate either, Like that's that's not also the most
(47:15):
accurate thing to say, So it's it's the cultimalu framework
of being. Yeah. Sometimes these symbols can cross over from
one thing to another, and sometimes the action can be
the same you know, both anarchists and like instructionary fascists
both want to like attack like industrialization and attack points
of industry, right, but maybe their ideologies are slightly different,
sometimes in specific ways, so it's always a tricky thing
(47:38):
to kind of navigate. UM. So I think in terms of,
you know, people should think about what symbols they promote, uh,
like publicly and stuff is a good thing, and think
about news aggregation and how to maybe not not just
share something because it's countercultural, trying to figure out what
other what other types of narratives the sources spread. Um
(48:02):
journalists support the work of real journalist because a bunch
of kick asks people out there um who were doing
awesome research and work. So I think that kind of
wraps up the scope of what I want to talk
about around Disclose specifically, because I mean, discloses a thing,
but it's also like it's good as just like an
example to like this overly this broader like phenomenon, I think, um,
(48:23):
because like disclose won't be here forever, hopefully, like you know,
hopefully in a few years. It's something that we can
just like look back on and laugh about. Um. But
it's you know, it's still a good signifier for a
phenomenon that happens, and the phenomenon even even if disclose
goes away, the phenomenon is still going to stay. Um,
and it's important to point it out when you see
whatever the next version of this is. So, And I'll
(48:46):
also say that the culticnalu isn't necessarily a bad thing. Right,
this is you know where where the stuff that is
rejected by the orthodox goes and clearly eliminating right, any
kind of culticnal you just means everything is exactly the
fucking same, mean falls in line with or thoughts belief
which I strongly disagree with as well. No, there's there
is a way to be countercultural without being a conspiratorial fascist.
(49:11):
I would say that most responsibility in which you were
consuming and sharing, Yes, And I would say like most
people who are actually counterculture are Yeah, like actual punk
is that you know, once you're enforcing traditional hierarchical of
viewpoints that that ain't punk. That is uh, that's playing
into what the status quo was. That isn't that isn't revolutionary.
(49:35):
Pistols would disagree with you, aren't they all? Yeah? But
I think we can all agree that having living members
of the sex Pistols was a mistake, and I would
I prefer Alana Wachowski's version of punk to theirs anyway.
So hey, who cares? UM? So thank you for your work, Thomas. UM.
I would recommend people reach your article, UM, which you
(49:57):
can do by googling disclosed TV and out it will
be for me. It's the second result that pops up,
So that's gool um. Send it to all your friends
and mutuals who are sharing disclosed TV. UM. You can
find it on logically dot Ai is the website and
the full title of the article is Disclosed TV Conspiracy
Forum turned disinformation Factory. Thank you, Thank you for that. UM.
(50:20):
Do you want to direct people to your Twitter account
or do you want to be a ghost that fades
away in their memory? Uh? Just don't be fucking weird.
You can find me on Twitter at w underscore underscore Thomas,
God damnit, Christ be weird. All right, I guess I'm
keeping my account Lockford. UM. Yeah, I also want to
(50:41):
shout out, um some of the local mutual aid or
one of the local mutual aid groups in the town
where I live or in the area where I lives.
The Atlanta Justice Alliance. Their cash app is cash symbol
a t L mutual fund and their Venmos a t
L mutual fund. They're helping out. Um they they've done weekly,
UM weekly provided food and resources for people, and how's
(51:05):
people living in downtown Atlanta. UM and are a great group.
And then also people want to give more money to things.
Shout out Atlanta Solidary Fund, who have helped many of
my friends get out of jail after they were arrested
in protests. And also you can hire me, yes if
you researchers, Yes you can. You can't. You can't hire
(51:27):
Thomas if you want. I mean, I've I've I've I've
known Thomas for a bit. Um they do really good work. UM. Yeah,
they're very They're very they're in my experience, they're very
careful researcher. They will not say things without thinking about
them a lot first, which is always great in the researcher,
or at least not publicly send them money and off
(51:50):
put in comments. An even mix of money and really
off putting Twitter comments. One more shout out to my
One more shout out to my friends at Terrorism Bad Pod,
which you should listen to and is on Twitter terrorism
bad pod Well, that doesn't for us today. If you,
for some reason are on social media and you want
to follow us, you can follow us at cool zone
Media or hassolutely don't do or happen here pod um.
(52:13):
You can follow Robert Evans at I Write Okay, send
him weird messages, do not do that, and you can
send me weird messages at creep time all right, Garrison,
pictures of salads that you make, and keep keep doing
that for like five or six years, to the point
that it actually becomes funny, because it's going to take
(52:33):
a while. I'm just happy that people stop sending me
meal porn. So that's honestly, that's a wind. That one's
on you though, A good find everybody. It could Happen
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
(52:55):
media dot com, or check us out on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen of podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening.
It could happen. Here is the podcast you're listening to
with your ears or perhaps other parts of your body
if you have, I don't know, some bizarre form of
synesthesia that causes you to taste sound. Um, maybe you're
tasting us right now, in which case, UM, I'm gonna
open up the flavor bouquet by introducing my co host
(00:27):
Garrison UM, and our guest for today. Why don't you
take over now, Garrison, I've done my job great. That
sounds lovely. Yeah, hey Garrison, here could happen. Here is
the podcast. We have a special guest today, UH journalisten
researcher W. F. Thomas. Hello, Hello, it's so good to
be here on Behind the Woman's Revolution the Police Insurrection Daily.
(00:50):
Thank you, thank you lovely to have you. Um. A
lot of people say Garrison's voice tastes like surbet, by
the way, it's a comment. We get a lot a lot,
a lot of a lot of a lot of those
d M s. Um, you surprised, not that. Um. So
we're gonna be talking about something I've wanted to actually
bring up myself for a while now, but I just
(01:12):
have not put it the work in and now Luckily
someone else did the actual work, so we now we
could just talk about it. We're talking about something called
disclosed TV UM, which is a broad range of things.
It's not it's not just one thing. Uh, And I
guess I'll hand it over to the person who do
the actual work in terms of like how how would
(01:33):
you describe what disclosed TV is? But but like before
we get into like the journey of the platform and
thing like what like what is it? Yeah, UM, let
me start this off by saying, I've already before the
publication of the article been publicly threatened vaguely with legal
action from Disclosed TV, so that will be largely informing
(01:56):
what I say today. But we do have a lot
of receipts. UM, we have very scary lawyers here. So
I'm i'm, i'm I'm excited whatever happens, So feel free
to say whatever you want to say. But UM, Disclosed
TV markets itself and presents itself as a news aggregator
(02:16):
UM operating Twitter, UM Telegram, gab getter. They have a
Facebook as well as well as the main site where
they host what one could describe as articles as well. Yeah,
and I think disclosed TV for our purposes, despite like
(02:38):
they have a very large Facebook presence UM, but the
way that we usually interact with them specifically like me
and Robert and then other people who are like journalists
storage to anti fascist researchers, usually we interact with disclosed
TV on Telegram or through Twitter um Twitter through like
it's how they like break a lot of current events
in like a like you know, a lot of like
(03:00):
political figures talk about them is is Twitter um and
then Telegram is where they really disseminate these out into
more obscure groups and maybe they change their wording because
they know the audience is a little bit different and
they've been a vector of information for a while. Really
really with the protests, they kind of picked up a
(03:21):
lot of there they were everywhere in terms of like
saying specific things, not doing sourcing UM and just having
like basically they are a place where they kind of
create what then they try to create what the news
is because of how isolated they are from the sources
that they actually pull info from, and they're very they're
(03:43):
very interested in kind of crafting their own version of
events UM which appeals to people across the spectrum. Like
they don't just market towards the far right wing. Sometimes
they frame things to kind of attract of a variety
of people on like the under the Street extremist banner.
Let's say. Um, so, you know, you don't just see
(04:04):
them in far right circles. You see discloses pop up
in a lot of places because of the way they
framed news and breaking events. UM. But they didn't always
start out like this. This isn't what they always were.
They weren't always this kind of content aggregator that creates
their version of news. UM. And Thomas did more research
into what they were before, which I actually had not
(04:26):
done that research yet. UM. So yeah, let's uh, let's
talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So I'm gonna
start off with talking about how I first heard about disclosed. UM. So.
I was living in Germany when the pandemic hit UM
and got COVID first wave in Germany in the March. UM.
Luckily I was totally asymptomatic. UM, but I was kind
(04:47):
of stranded in Germany for a couple of weeks UM
and how to isolate in a vacation rental uh and
the Bavarian man who owned it just kept coming in
talking to me and I would tell him, Hey, it's
probably not the best idea for you to be coming
by and chatting with me all the time. And now
he got into talking, and we're talking in German. He
(05:08):
got we got into talking about the pandemic, what he
thought about it, and he started talking about how he thought, Oh,
the government's making this seem way worse than it is.
You know, the deep state if you know anything about that,
and he and he said deep state in English. Um.
And I was familiar with German far right currents at
that time. Um, but I had never encountered a pilled
(05:31):
German dude. And that's when I realized this is gonna
be a fucking problem. Yeah. Yeah, and and it lo
and behold, it has continued to be a problem. So
as I got back to the U S. And and
the other thing when I was in Germany is the
first time I toounded I encountered telegram. Um. When a
German I knew said hey, I I just don't trust
(05:53):
WhatsApp because it's on by Facebook. Why don't you download
telegram in two thousand nineteen, I think, um, and and
it was pretty innocuous to me at the time. I
didn't realize this would become a problem. Yeah, fast forward, UM.
I was working on my master's project, which UM you
(06:15):
can talk about more later on because it's kind of
besides the point, UM if you don't want to hear
about it, But looking at Telegram as the cultic milieu UM,
using Colin Campbell's framework of the cultic milieu UM to
understand specifically how qan on spread in Germany and how
Q and on interacted with these native underlying conspiracy narratives
(06:38):
within Germany. UM. Because Telegram is already massively popular in
Germany before after j six, I think of the band
wave came down and there was much more migration to
the platform. So you know, I did the social network
analysis looking at the conspirat German conspiracy is seen on
Telegram and one of the biggest notes that came up,
(06:59):
and I looking at a number of times shared into
other groups or channels was disclosed tv UM and that's
the first time I came into it. I look through
it and realized, okay, they there is an editorial stance
within this UM, and that editorial stance largely attracts conspiracists
(07:20):
and far right extremists to this coverage and too you
know this is widely shared among conspiracists and far right extremists. UM.
Fast forward. UM. I'm on Twitter, as many of us are, unfortunately, UM,
and I saw Disclosed TV just popping up everywhere, UM,
even from people who who I would think should know better. Yeah,
(07:43):
absolutely are you know big extremism researchers and journalists UM
shared it. I remember there one specific one that really
came across my feed. UM disclosed had had taken a
video from like the Blaze, Glennbex whatever, the Empire whatever,
UM about the firefighters who were quitting over vaccine mandate
(08:08):
or something and had all of their boots or whatever.
And I saw, yeah, lots of people sharing that as well. UM.
And eventually I got tired of saying, hey, this should
is suspect, don't share it UM, and decided to write
an article about it so I could just send my
(08:28):
article to people. And it's really interesting what I found. UM.
Disclosed tv started off in the mid two thousand's as
just this forum for UFOs, paranormal stuff, cryptids, bigfoot sightings,
and existed in largely the same format until two thousand
(08:50):
and twenty one. UM. There were some shifts in in
the way the site presented itself. Um, it was. It
started off as a member loggin where member could write
articles that were largely long form forum posts and then
have people comment on them and reply. Um. And at
one point Disclosed made the jump to functioning as a
(09:15):
news aggregator while including an editorial spin on that and
including some of their own articles. Do you want me
to get more into that now, Yeah, because yeah, because
like the shift was was it wasn't like immediate as well, right,
Like they were starting to kind of present themselves in
more of a news gathering way, you know, around the
(09:35):
late of course, during this became a big thing in
terms of their social media presence. Um, they were trying
to present themselves as like a news aggregator, right, but
they still operated that. But they still operated the forum
on their site throughout most of that time. And it's
only until recently where they shut that forum down. Um,
which was you know, full of full of all kinds
(09:57):
of conspiratorial nonsense. It's very easy to see passed for
most people, uh, secret you know, secret Arctic ship, which
is yeah, it's always that's usually Yeah, even going to
get stuff like watch this s j W get wrecked,
which which is not a quotation, but just that kind
(10:17):
of vibe, that style of content. Yeah, going from the
forum operating than what they know their social media accounts
to the shift this more of like presenting as a
news website. Talking about that and the potential effects that
(10:40):
we see this having on both like the social media
sites and just the overall trend of news aggregation in general,
I guess. Yeah. So the first big shift that I
found UM was the creation of their Telegram channel, which
is in January of one actually, so this is relatively
more recent than Yeah, if that happened UM, and they
(11:04):
operated their Telegram as a UM as more in this
traditional news aggregator since and so that's how they really
blew up on Telegram. At some point they deleted all
of their old tweets UM and started operating their Twitter
in a similar manner. It was after they created this
telegram channel UM in September, actually overnight on septemb they
(11:28):
completely re rebranded the site. They took out all the
user forums UM, they included backdated articles to a year
prior UM, and looking looking through archives of it, there
was a note saying something along the lines of we
have found so much growth on our social media are
(11:50):
growing Telegram channel, are growing Twitter account UM, and something
to the effect of we we are changing our strategy
and going about this a different way. UM. And you
can if you were into the forum, you can join
our discord UM which is defunct and I'll get I'll
(12:10):
get into that later. UM. And yeah, looking it was
really interesting too because looking at these backdated articles UM,
they included very obviously plagiarized content. UM. They had I
believe it's it's all in the article, but they had
four journalists UM names attached with the article using um
(12:37):
AI generated images for their pictures. UM. And the especially
the articles that they themselves published UM were very focused
on UFOs paranormal paranormal phenomenon UM, as well as content
(13:00):
that could cause skepticism within an audience, UM about vaccines
and lockdowns. And I do not know the intent of
U their editorial board, and so I cannot speak on that,
but of course it generated this effect. Yes, that is,
they found a way of creating content which develops a
very specific audience, which grew their numbers, which made them,
(13:24):
you know what one could assume would make them want
to make more of that content. Because that makes more
numbers than they can UM use that to grow their platform. UM. Yeah,
specifically leading up like after after January UM ramping up
one of the vaccines were coming more and more common
in the States and that across the world. UM. They
have seen a pretty significant growth and have changed their
(13:47):
platform accordingly exactly. UM. So we began looking into who
the who the fun owns this, what's going on with
this UM. Like all German companies UM, and it is
based in Germany, there's a requirement by law to include
an imprint or an impress them that includes an address
(14:11):
UM contact information for the site UM. There in the
company that owns it UM a company called Future Bites
operates disclosed tv UM, which describes itself as a private
equity firm and media group. UM and looking into the
(14:31):
ownership behind Future Bites is a man by the name
of Uva Brown who has a pretty interesting backstory. He's hosted,
he's He's made numerous web hosting sites. UM. I believe
he created some dating sites as well, but but my
research was not conclusive, so that's a maybe. UM. But
eventually he sold. He had his most success when he
(14:53):
sold one of his web hosting sites to go Daddy
for a lot of money, and along the way, in
his own as he described, booked a flight on virgin
to go into space and see for himself if the earth,
if the Earth was flat. Oh my god, awesome cool
(15:14):
that that, this is great? Thank you. Yeah. So this
this is who we're dealing with, um. Sweet. And the
thing about Disclosed being based in Germany, UM, that that
becomes an issue, UM, is that Germany has a very
different uh look at free speech than in the US. UM.
(15:36):
For example, even online displaying swastikas UM and denying the
Holocaust is legal and is a prosecutable crime. They can
get you jail time. UM. So as we explored as
I mostly and UM, there's additional reporting from Berni Piper
and I'll talk a bit more about that later explored
(15:58):
the discord and their telegram. We realized, Hum, it seems
to be a lot of Nazis here, and by which
when I say seems to be a lot of Nazis,
I mean people with swastikas in their profile builds, UM
with you know, names, referencing the Holocaust with the whispers
parentheses um, and saying denying that the hologast Happened UM,
(16:21):
and also sharing the neo Nazi, famous neo Nazi, infamous
new Nazi propaganda film Europa The Last Battle UM, which
was shared by prominent q and On influencer ghost Ezra. Yeah.
I know. UM, oh man, this this came up a
few days ago. One of the one of the channels
(16:44):
that me and someone else have been watching, UH forwarded
me it being that that that film being shared at
the it was it was it was that the the
Free Oregon Telegram channel was sharing links to that and
I wonder I would I would like to track back
where that link came from. UM. Yeah. Not not great
(17:05):
seeing that film circulate more and more, especially among like
you know, the free organ Telegram channels, you know, like
Anti mask, Anti backs, Anti Lockdown channel. Yeah, and seeing
the percoloration of that type of content. Yeah. So and
prepare for this article UM. With the help of of
the Logically editorial team, I'm a freelancer UM, their current
(17:30):
head of content, Ernie Piper UM sent an email basically asking, hey,
what's going on. You all seem to have a Nazi
problem that's kind of borderline illegal in Germany, UM, to
which for a while this for for about twenty four
hours as closed, just went totally quiet and didn't post
(17:52):
Um and then came out with a post specifically targeting
Ernie Um by name him and with a picture of
him and linking to some of his old reporting work
as well, Um saying yes, Uva Brown owns this. He
got his money from Go daddy. You know, we value
(18:12):
free speech and we condemn hatred whatnot, and and saying, oh,
our telegram we have a tell there's a telegram group,
but we have these rules in it, and h okay, yeah,
we we had to shut down the discord that got
a little bit out of hand. We admit that. You know,
they had people denying the Holocaust with swastka icons in
their discord that they didn't seem to care too much
(18:36):
about until someone pointed it out. Um. And you know
there's there was additionally very explicit neo Nazi content in
their telegram channel as well, with the excuse, oh well,
we're a glowing growing platform. We we can't moderate everything.
Is well they have They just crossed four hundred thousand
in their telegram channel and I think about thirty thousand
(18:58):
and their telegram group UM, which is frankly bullshit. Yeah
that is if if my personal opinion is that if
you cannot don't have the resources to moderate this space,
you probably shouldn't space the space. Um. And and additionally confirming, oh, okay,
(19:18):
we we when we made our new version of the site. Yes,
we backdated some articles from previous user generated content that
we you know, didn't vet properly. We're trying to fix
that now they removed some of those articles. Um. And
that yeah, we none of the people who who are
the authors of our articles are real people and they're
(19:40):
all pen names. Um. You know. They also have or
at least had a tab on their website that said
right for us and looking for people to send them
things and saying you know, well we will disclose your
bio and link to all your social media if you
write a story for us. And they're there was zero
of that happening as well. So do you think that,
(20:02):
I know, like on the rules for their telegram they
have the no Nazi stuff rule. Um. Do you think
they're actually trying to discourage that because they're scared of
legal stuff or is that just presentorary and they I
guess you know, this is just going into speculations. So
I think this might be more a question for even
Robert Um in terms of yeah, like is the anti
(20:22):
Nazi stuff presentorary? And because it does seem to be
a lot of their user base is fostering that type
of thing or is you know being moved over from
other similar channels? Um? Because yeah, like a lot of
like the amount that we see disclose, like you know,
intercept with channels like you know, the Rise above Him
the channel, UM, and a whole bunch of like eco
fascist channels, and a whole bunch of channels you know
(20:44):
on a like a broad range of like actual like
fascist topics, like people who are like into fascist theory.
Um is quite high the like the amount that disclosed
shows up. Um. And I don't know, like you could
look at all their stuff saying I mean, like yeah
on on the their rule page saying no Nazi bullshit. Um.
But then if you spend any amount of time looking
(21:04):
at at where they're posts are forwarded, it's almost primarily
people who are self describe themselves as fascists. UM. So
I mean, yeah, it's hard to or Donald J. Trump Jr. Yes, Yes,
it expands out into a lot of you know, just
like you know, American journalists suits studying streamism could also
share discloses stuff on Twitter, right, that is part of
(21:28):
their thing is making that and you know that that
does strengthen them because it gives them that legitimacy. So
then when people point out that they have Nazi problem, like, no,
that's not us, that's just some of our users who
are trolling or you know whatever whatever bullshit they want
to say. Um So I guess, like how I guess
the real way to frame this is like how often
(21:48):
have you seen Nazi stuff associated with the disclose with
the Disclosed TV brand? Because that's the one thing we
actually can measure, right, we can't measure their intentions, but
we can't measure how often this stuff happens. Yeah, mean,
that's always like the best way to measure that kind
of thing, rather than just sort of like making the
allegation listing like we find it in this many channels,
(22:09):
we see it shared in these areas, it's being discussed
by these people, and like like that that's I think
always kind of how you actually build these these sort
of networks is by looking at what is actually spreading
where like that's that it is thankfully, something that you
can measure pretty objectively, and like they are fostering it
with the amount of stuff they talk about, like George Soros,
(22:32):
and you know, the amount of stuff that they like.
The way they frame breaking news is has that editorial
bent where it's very clear that it's getting pushed in
a specific direction like there's that is That is a
thing that you can observe by reading the type of
narratives they're weaving via how they report information. Um, the
(22:54):
the topics that they choose to cover, our topics that
reson very deeply with conspiracist and with far at extremist communities. UM.
If I had to speculate, UM, I will say at
least since the article has come out, Um, they've done
a better job of moderating their telegram channel at least
(23:18):
for now. So good job, disclosed, TV no one. You
can't find links to Europe with the last battle there anymore.
You can still find you can still find very rampant
homophobia slurs um, because you know they didn't. They clearly
auto blocked some words, but people can shorten them or
(23:41):
use different spellings for those words to still be used
in the channel. Um, there's still anti Semitic um coded
anti Semitic references as well responding to something saying oive
a for example, which is something that tends to be
(24:01):
used by a lot of neo Nazis and anti Semites. Yeah,
I mean even and if you do any amount of
research on Telegram, you will you will find forward links
forwarded links to this channel all everywhere, like if it's
it is, it is so massive. The footprint that they
(24:21):
have currently in the in like the the cycle of
of forwarding posts specifically on Telegram UM and yeah, and
they're they're getting a lot of traction on it because
they have stuff framed in a way that's really easy
for them to have those stuff like line up with
the communities that promote those types of worldviews UM and
(24:46):
promote the you know, the narratives that they want to foster.
So let's see, let's have another quick break and then
let's maybe talk about your big master's project, which is
really interesting. Yeah, can I can? I can I do it? Yeah?
I do this. You know you know what isn't telegram? Uh?
(25:08):
Literally these ads unless we get an ad by Telegram,
which we are primarily sponsored by the Duo Brothers UM.
But that's for a separate project. My favorite at is
the is the one where it's the kid playing and
they find a gun. Oh yeah, that's my favorite. And
(25:35):
oh we are thanks to great hope. Everybody enjoyed that
kid finding a gun a kid firing it. Yeah, so
there's one of my favorite tweets recently was like somebody,
it was somebody like clipped a screen grab of news
article that was like a toddler has shot someone every
day in the United States for the last three years,
(25:56):
and somebody quote tweeted and said, somebody fucking stop him.
It's very good. Um. The last thing I want to
talk about is just kind of why news aggregators are
bad in the first place, and examples of which we've
seen the past few years, and how they contribute to
dis information specifically, and how they don't do sourcing for
(26:19):
any claims and they try to make themselves a primary
source even though they're not. UM. And then also would
love to talk about your very fancy project. So yeah,
we saw a lot of news aggregators that like during
the protest, specifically that that spawned and killed many a
(26:39):
news aggregator account UM, which did not help things very much. UM.
And this is this is an issue that strikes across
the political spectrum. Yes, I mean one of the biggest
instances of that would be an account called and on
cat right. That was the yeah um who you know
marketed themselves towards the left wing UM. And I again,
(27:02):
I don't know what their intentionality was. They may have
had their heart in the right place. I have no idea,
um and I'm not going to speculate on that right now.
But the effect that they caused was damaging to how
information is disseminated, specifically in high stress events. Um. You know,
like for instance, the writtenhouse shooting, you know, like stuff
like that, Uh, the big accounts, the demos around that
(27:25):
before that, yeah, before that, yes, yeah, like the the
in fostering that very fast paced unverified information circulation UM
that gets you know a lot of retweets, it gets
it gets a lot of eyeballs on it. But but
it's hard. It makes it very hard to backtrack claims
because they do not want to link to other accounts,
(27:46):
because they're mostly interested in growing their own account. Um.
So and I will say Disclose has gotten better about
linking to the sources, even if the title and the
tweet don't necessarily match what in the story they link to. Yeah,
at least someone could take a different interpretation from the two. Yes, So,
(28:07):
just like you know, news aggregation and the way it
intersects with disinformation and misinformation, not just a problem for
the far right, not just a problem for the right wing,
just a problem for liberals, not just problem for leftist
This is the thing that anyone, anyone can really grasp
on to um. And some of it's accidental, some of
it's intentional. Right, there's some some people might just do
this kind of mindlessly, and some people may, you know,
(28:28):
do this aggregation with a very specific intent in mind.
So just be very careful whenever you have an account
that always leads with all caps like breaking like news.
Like if if you have an account that always does that,
maybe maybe maybe don't take that account super seriously all
the time. Maybe you should uh find other sources of
info that don't always start the tweets with breaking news
(28:50):
and all caps or advice to people if they do
want something like that, find an actual news source. Yeah,
there's plenty of valid criticism to be made. Again, you
know these mainstream media m s M centrist stuff from
from you know, even from the left, there's there's criticism. Um,
(29:10):
but you have to find some way of finding your
own meaning and understanding of what is going on in
the world around you. I think a CNN Reuters. Yeah,
And on that point, I think that is part of
why I think Disclosed can succeed and or like what
they did can succeed, even like when I see stuff
(29:30):
shared on the left, even by like anarchists, because it
is a not mainstream media news source, the way they
can frame things of sometimes rarely will match up with
like an actual anarchist views and the like, Yeah, I'm
going to share it from this thing because it does
feel like an underground you know source. It doesn't. It doesn't.
It's not you're not sharing a scene an article, so
you feel better because instead you're sharing something that is
(29:54):
not in the mainstream. So like I get that, I
get that pull to not something that genuous reading of
a CNN article instead. Yeah, but instead of you're you know,
it's not actually better, it's just marketing. They're just tricking
you via esthetics and branding, and that's all that it is, right,
So maybe you should learn learn to see past the
(30:15):
marketing and branding of those types of things, and look
at the actual content of what's being shared. What is
the university project thing that has been taking up a
lot of your time? Yeah, and um, so you're back
in the U S. And I got interested, um, especially
in looking at the spread of Q and on in Germany,
and that you led me down this research path, um,
(30:39):
and brought me especially to telegram um again before it
was largely used in in right wing circles in the
U S. Well, the the Nazis have have pretty regularly
in the US, but on telegram as well. Um. But
this led me to look at this and and um
especially to to look at telegram the context of as
(31:01):
I mentioned, Colin Campbell's concept of the cultic milieu, um,
which I don't know if you'll have talked about that
on this we have one behind subject of time, okay,
but yeah, to give a quick summary, is is the
concept that there is this space and when Colin Campbell
(31:21):
wrote that, it was in I believe the seventies. So
it was a physical space where people go to find
these rejected narratives, you know, reject the idea of rejected knowledge,
and they go to seek this kind of knowledge and
and and these things. UM. So he's talking about things
like UFO conferences or or meet ups, or or alternative bookstores,
(31:45):
or perhaps maybe signing up at an institute to get
a degree in metaphysics. Yeah, as a weirdly specific example,
gear Yeah, sorry, does red red of thought? Yeah. Anyway,
how's that going, by the way, Garrison, it's going good, good, Yeah.
And and what you find is is people can very
(32:08):
easily move between ideologies, UM. And as they move between
ideologies concepts, specific schools, they cross pollinate these schools UM.
And this is how you get these kind of highly
syncretic movements like Q and on UM, like the modern
conspiracy movement UM, which is incredibly syncretic, and UM some
(32:31):
of the other really bad ones that are out there
as well that combine these different views UM. Specifically, when
you start when you start combining the type of like
cultural mysticism with politics, often you can have very volatile results. Yes, exactly.
Can you think of any examples? I mean, in some ways,
(32:53):
the modern eco fascist movement is built on a lot
of this type of stuff, so that that would be
the easiest one, would be the easiest one. The I
think that the syncretism of because I think a lot
of people have been surprised to see like you know,
kind of like natural medicine and and what not subcultures
and eight like alien subcultures kind of colliding with Q
and on and and these like more like far right
(33:17):
neo Nazi type groups, and the fact that there are
all of these things that were associated for years kind
of more with the left have been increasingly um pulled
into this this sort of weather system of conspiratorial thinking
has been surprising to a lot of people who don't
understand this stuff. But it makes total sense if you
if you have been paying attention to the scholarship on
(33:38):
on what is actually like how cults sort of form
like it's it's it's um. It's like a weather pattern
that's been building for quite a while. There's a gravity
to it that sucks um everything in together and it
all kind of it's as you said, syncretic um. It's
not to get into horsehoe through. But this is even
how you get some of that crossover, right, Yes, yeah,
(34:00):
that was that was That was what I was just
going to mention, is that even a lot of like
the left wing authors or you know, post left wing
authors who got into this like cultural mysticism. Um, you
see their texts now getting shared by like like open fascists.
Even though these authors were anti fascist, Um, they are
able to still pick and choose what parts they're writing
to appropriate because some of it can kind of synchronize
(34:24):
at from opposite ends a very long time. Like if
you we've we talked about in our Gabriel the Nunzio
episodes Fume, which was this kind of like we're a
large chunk of like the fascist intellectual movement got started,
um in the post World War One period, but also
there were like a ton of anarchists and a lot
of like left wing um like thought leaders and whatnot.
(34:45):
We're kind of all it was again kind of there
there was this kind of like gravity center that pulled
everything in and it all started churning together, and um,
yeah we're we're we're we're seeing that happen now. Um
and yeah it sucks. That's that's that's great. To jump
back to, campl That's one of those examples of those
physical space of the call and that Cal Campbell was
(35:07):
talking about right, Um, where it's it's any place that
ideas that are rejected by you know, the orthodox kind
of the establishment. There is overlap, there is not necessarily
ideological overlap. There is an interplay between them as people
move between them and as these ideas come into collision
with one another. Um, and with the Internet, right, whole
(35:29):
different fucking ball game. Um yeah, because that space is
now everywhere exactly and and telegram specifically has the specific
affordances that make it ideal for having this soup of
bullshit on it as well. Um. It's it's additionally one
(35:50):
of and this may be changing. There's a lot of
discussion going on about this, especially within the German government,
who could actually they already have a lot that they
could use to say, hey, you can't have Nazis on
you can't have this Nazi ship in telegram. Um. But
telegrams one of these last places where where things are
largely allowed to spread without any kind of interruption, right, Um,
(36:14):
which I do think you know you look at telegram
is used in in um, the Hong Kong uprising as well,
it was used for it was used in the George Yeah,
that George Floyd uprising as well. Um. And it's the
same things that people too at time is fake, um,
bolish lane of your time. Um, but shooting your clock,
(36:37):
shoot the fucking clock. But okay, said, let's get back
to the topic. Yeah, but but but but drumming back
into this, Telegram markets itself is this very secure platform.
It's probably not right. It does have it's certainly not
absolutely not. It does have it does have encrypted chats,
but that's only for one to one messaging between people.
(36:58):
And even then you need to go and make your
the security settings right. And again, I I don't fully
trust that. Yeah, I don't fully truy. I mean signal
is about barely trust signal. Yeah, yeah, I trust conversations
when everyone has put their phone inside a Faraday bag
(37:18):
in a house and then we walked two miles into
we walked two miles into the woods, then you can
have a conversation. Yeah. Um, but Telegram market itself is
a very secure app, right, um, which is which is
largely marketing. You know, It's it's appeal is that it's
not What's app, it's not owned by Facebook. It's probably
worth acknowledging that for because it's also very popular with
(37:39):
a lot of people in um, you know, parts of
the global South and countries with authoritarian governments, and it
is has been used for a lot of organizing and
can be more secure and all more secure but also
more able than what than any other tool people have
access to. I mean in Syria, it's like it's again
extremely common for like nay, like neighborhoods and towns will
(38:01):
have like Telegram groups for this little village where they
a lot of stuff gets done over Telegram in places
like that, And telegram sits in this interesting space between
social media. UM. It's not a full on social media site,
but it's also not just a messaging app like telegrams
to categorize it is an interesting sort of like in
between type thing. Yeah, because you can have essentially unlimited
(38:25):
I think the number is in the hundreds of thousands
for how many people can join a group message UM
on Telegram. And you also have these one way messaging
thing called channels where where one person or group of
people can send out messages that appear alongside everyone else's
message feed as well. UM, and that can you can
(38:45):
also enable comments on that UM, which will get into
in a second UM. But but it's a great way
to share information as well. And what I was specifically
looking at is the forwarding of messages, because you you
can forward a message from this one channel into whatever
a group chat you're in, and it links back to
that channel. And I was interested in saying, how far
(39:05):
you know, what connections can we make from this? What
kind of zigzagging can we find? Um enhancer is sucking
a lot uh where where someone may may use telegram
for for example, a neighborhood group message right, and then
someone forwards the messages a message for this channel UM
or for this other group message UM, where they talk about, oh,
(39:28):
here's kind of helped practices to use. And then you
get into the pseudo science of things crossing into further
messages from what's forward forward groups and channels from what's
forwarded into that group and channel, and so on so on,
until you get to the neo nazis eventually UM. And
it's also it is it is a concerted effort on
the part of people pushing their ideology, who will go
(39:51):
in the comments of these giant channels and say, hey,
check out my channel. UM, what's not a real one?
You know, areean cooking, which is probably a channel but
it probably is. Yeah, great job checking. Sorry, but check
out check out check out, check out this or whatever.
(40:11):
And and especially when q and on moved on a
lot of promoters. Um, there there was organized groups of
of internet neo Nazis going on and trying to pill
boomers into neo Nazism. And because of the because of
the mesh like network of Telegram, they try to make
(40:32):
those meshes connect via dissemination. Right you can, you know,
people who are dedicated to these more esoteric groups can
join more regular like Marga groups or qut on groups
and start slowly bringing links to the start doing links
and forwarding to the more extreme channels. Um. And eventually yeah,
that does that does work. It can be a slow,
(40:52):
careful process um, or it can be very fast and
like bobastic And it'll depending on the said one of
them will latch onto one one watch onto the other. Yeah.
And and before the article came out, UM, what I
did see was the specific thing of accounts that I
would associate or or believe to be neo Nazi UM
(41:16):
encouraging people to join their groups and channels UM in
the in the telegram group message as well. And I
cannot speak to what that looks like right now after
the article has come out, yeah, and I've been trying
to take a break from telegram for my day to
day life, um and focus on reading actual books. So
(41:36):
but yeah, that is how I can always tell when
one of us has been spending time on telegram, because
the things we consider jokes get much worse. Yeah. You
remember when I found that playlist of Blink covers covers
it was what there was like a hundred of them
Blink or some full ship. Yeah, you always find you could,
(42:02):
you could find the most fucked up stuff. Don't don't
do it. Don't don't scrowl until do not. You're not
going to get this isn't like coveting the stay. You
don't need to be like it's it's not even it's
not worth it, Like there's no sacred novit like knowledge
that we're hiding. It's just it's it's just kind of sucks,
like it just like it just to feel bad. Yeah,
(42:24):
it just makes you feel worse about life and yourself
and the people around you. So the scope for your
master's project what it's kind of the what's the what's
the deal with like tying these things together? I guess yeah. Yeah,
So so using this social network analysis to argue that
the telegram does function as this could take Millie you um,
(42:46):
which yeah, it seems seems to be. It seems to
be the case. Yeah. Um. You know, and the question
gets into what is the responsibility the platform? Right, um,
because I fully believe there should be something at least
similar to this. It has been used for you know,
(43:07):
purposes along with my politics, in which I would call
good and needed. Um. However, they've also allowed this fucking
awful ecosystem to spread. It's it's interesting to see when
Telegram has had to step in and they you know,
they have pulled down some ices, accounts and channels. Um.
And and they have down when I was in um
(43:31):
Al Hall, which is that the camp where all the
ISIS prisoners were in Syria. Like while Jake and I
were in the camp, we could see on telegram like
ISIS supporters and al hole talking about stabbing guards like
in real time. It was not particularly Uh. They've done
like a lot. There's less of it than there used
to be, but it is still not hard to find
(43:52):
ISIS on telegram. Yeah. And they they've taken down a
few amounts of neo Nazi channels. Um. It's it's funny
because oh god, maybe cut this. But they've taken on
some of the your honesty channels when they've shared Ice
as ship for example. Yeah, yeah, I think we're we've
we're familiar with that line of thing. That's something we've
mentioned before. Okay. There has been pressure from from the
(44:17):
play Store and Google as well, or the play Store
from Google and and the app store Apples, app Store
from Apple to say we we aren't going to carry
the app if you don't do just a tiny bit
better essentially um which which which also it exists as
a web client, um, both as as a web client
(44:38):
and as a desktop app as well. UM. But that
would you know, limits some of it. Um. So, So
this has become largely discussed in the German in the
German parment because there's a new UM, there's a new
government in Germany, and and there is this history of
Germany kind of is the lead for doing things about
(45:03):
this digital content, especially within the EU. And and as
I mentioned, there's already law call Adoptic Enforcement Act that
requires platforms to take down content in Germany. Um. They
could be implemented on telegram as well. There's already a law. Yeah,
I mean This is like the thing why you know
(45:23):
what I watch happen lots is you know, these channels
will get shut down and they'll make a new one,
and it will shut down that one and make a
new one. Right. It's this You see this with like
discord servers, telegram channels. It is kind of this endless cycle, um,
and seeking an end to the cycle. It's always not
as easy as what one would hope, UM, because of
the cyclical nature of building these platforms and connections and
(45:46):
how the people who run these you know, intersect and
specifically with with telegrams. Really easy because channel get shut down,
you're still part of twelve of their channels, and odds
are one of those channels is going to afford you
the link to the new channel that was that was lost. Yeah,
And this is the thing you see where they send
lists of channels within within extremest groups and channels, they
will send out a list of here's other groups and
channels to check out as well. Yeah, but I mean
(46:09):
I would So that's something that's you know, hard for
regular people to actually do. But something I think that
people who do not own these platforms nor lawmakers can't
think about is particularly the the cultic comulie you that
does you know, go past regular left right divisions in
terms of politics and how you know, symbol like symbology
(46:31):
um and stuff that was you know initially you know,
perhaps more anarchist or or left wing is being used
by people on the right, and some people are really
confused by that, and there is ways to there is
ways to understand it, like it is, it does. I
am very frustrated when I look at you know, people
online who don't understand why Nazis can use ted K
(46:54):
and right, it's like, yeah, like it's it's not it's
it's not it's not what It's not not really about
what ted K actually run. It's more the symbolic meme
of ted K. And trying to you know, get that,
get that line of thinking across is not the easiest
thing because sometimes it will go in the other direction
and be like, oh, ted K is a Nazi, which
isn't accurate either, Like that's that's not also the most
(47:15):
accurate thing to say, So it's it's the cultimalu framework
of being. Yeah. Sometimes these symbols can cross over from
one thing to another, and sometimes the action can be
the same you know, both anarchists and like instructionary fascists
both want to like attack like industrialization and attack points
of industry, right, but maybe their ideologies are slightly different,
sometimes in specific ways, so it's always a tricky thing
(47:38):
to kind of navigate. UM. So I think in terms of,
you know, people should think about what symbols they promote, uh,
like publicly and stuff is a good thing, and think
about news aggregation and how to maybe not not just
share something because it's countercultural, trying to figure out what
other what other types of narratives the sources spread. Um
(48:02):
journalists support the work of real journalist because a bunch
of kick asks people out there um who were doing
awesome research and work. So I think that kind of
wraps up the scope of what I want to talk
about around Disclose specifically, because I mean, discloses a thing,
but it's also like it's good as just like an
example to like this overly this broader like phenomenon, I think, um,
(48:23):
because like disclose won't be here forever, hopefully, like you know,
hopefully in a few years. It's something that we can
just like look back on and laugh about. Um. But
it's you know, it's still a good signifier for a
phenomenon that happens, and the phenomenon even even if disclose
goes away, the phenomenon is still going to stay. Um,
and it's important to point it out when you see
whatever the next version of this is. So, And I'll
(48:46):
also say that the culticnalu isn't necessarily a bad thing. Right,
this is you know where where the stuff that is
rejected by the orthodox goes and clearly eliminating right, any
kind of culticnal you just means everything is exactly the
fucking same, mean falls in line with or thoughts belief
which I strongly disagree with as well. No, there's there
is a way to be countercultural without being a conspiratorial fascist.
(49:11):
I would say that most responsibility in which you were
consuming and sharing, Yes, And I would say like most
people who are actually counterculture are Yeah, like actual punk
is that you know, once you're enforcing traditional hierarchical of
viewpoints that that ain't punk. That is uh, that's playing
into what the status quo was. That isn't that isn't revolutionary.
(49:35):
Pistols would disagree with you, aren't they all? Yeah? But
I think we can all agree that having living members
of the sex Pistols was a mistake, and I would
I prefer Alana Wachowski's version of punk to theirs anyway.
So hey, who cares? UM? So thank you for your work, Thomas. UM.
I would recommend people reach your article, UM, which you
(49:57):
can do by googling disclosed TV and out it will
be for me. It's the second result that pops up,
So that's gool um. Send it to all your friends
and mutuals who are sharing disclosed TV. UM. You can
find it on logically dot Ai is the website and
the full title of the article is Disclosed TV Conspiracy
Forum turned disinformation Factory. Thank you, Thank you for that. UM.
(50:20):
Do you want to direct people to your Twitter account
or do you want to be a ghost that fades
away in their memory? Uh? Just don't be fucking weird.
You can find me on Twitter at w underscore underscore Thomas,
God damnit, Christ be weird. All right, I guess I'm
keeping my account Lockford. UM. Yeah, I also want to
(50:41):
shout out, um some of the local mutual aid or
one of the local mutual aid groups in the town
where I live or in the area where I lives.
The Atlanta Justice Alliance. Their cash app is cash symbol
a t L mutual fund and their Venmos a t
L mutual fund. They're helping out. Um they they've done weekly,
UM weekly provided food and resources for people, and how's
(51:05):
people living in downtown Atlanta. UM and are a great group.
And then also people want to give more money to things.
Shout out Atlanta Solidary Fund, who have helped many of
my friends get out of jail after they were arrested
in protests. And also you can hire me, yes if
you researchers, Yes you can. You can't. You can't hire
(51:27):
Thomas if you want. I mean, I've I've I've I've
known Thomas for a bit. Um they do really good work. UM. Yeah,
they're very They're very they're in my experience, they're very
careful researcher. They will not say things without thinking about
them a lot first, which is always great in the researcher,
or at least not publicly send them money and off
(51:50):
put in comments. An even mix of money and really
off putting Twitter comments. One more shout out to my
One more shout out to my friends at Terrorism Bad Pod,
which you should listen to and is on Twitter terrorism
bad pod Well, that doesn't for us today. If you,
for some reason are on social media and you want
to follow us, you can follow us at cool zone
Media or hassolutely don't do or happen here pod um.
(52:13):
You can follow Robert Evans at I Write Okay, send
him weird messages, do not do that, and you can
send me weird messages at creep time all right, Garrison,
pictures of salads that you make, and keep keep doing
that for like five or six years, to the point
that it actually becomes funny, because it's going to take
(52:33):
a while. I'm just happy that people stop sending me
meal porn. So that's honestly, that's a wind. That one's
on you though, A good find everybody. It could Happen
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
(52:55):
media dot com, or check us out on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen of podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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