01x03 - Soros

[bunniefuu]

BORAT: Nice to meet you.

- Oh, okay.
- Yes.

SACHA: In Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,

I lived with two conspiracy theorists,

in character, for several days.

- Vaccines.
- Bill Gates.

- Mail-in ballots.
- Chinese virus.

- Drink their blood.
- Not nice.

The myths and misinformation
they shared with Borat

fuel a dangerous rhetoric
that is tearing apart societies

in front of our eyes.

In this series of episodes,

we'll introduce Jim and Jerry
to world-leading experts,

doctors and academics,
who will address

some of the most dangerous
conspiracies head-on

and debunk them face-to-face.

Hello, Jim and Jerry.

This is Hillary Rodham Clinton.

You know, I refuse to take part
in mail-in ballots.

It's just bullshit.

Right?

Mail-in ballots...

They can cheat.
They can win that way.

NARRATOR: In 2016, during the presidential primaries,

before the election ever happened,

Roger Stone launched
the Stop the Steal website,

and since then,
Trump has touted voter fraud

as the only reason
he would ever lose an election.

Unsolicited millions of ballots
that they're sending.

It's a scam.
It's a hoax.

NARRATOR: Even after he defeated Hilary Clinton,

he claimed to be a victim of it,

keeping the threat alive
in the minds of his supporters,

until the next election.

During the 2020 election, in
the midst of a global pandemic,

many states determined that
the best way to keep voters safe

and distanced
was through mail-in ballots.

As Election Day drew closer,
Trump ramped up

his baseless attacks
against mail-in ballots,

continuing to cast doubt on their accuracy.

NARRATOR: This was a way to undermine the validity

of the traditional Democratic
voter living in cities

who were thought to be more likely

to utilize the mail-in system.

While dramatic, these claims
are patently false.

Mail-in ballots have reliably
been used since the Civil w*r,

showing no party bias.

One analysis of mail-in ballots
in the 2016 and 2018 elections

found only 372 possible cases of fraud,

out of 14.6 million votes cast.

These facts were drowned out
by the story of a president

creating doubt about his own
nation's electoral system,

which became daily fodder
for all the news networks,

which, in turn, continued
to spread this false narrative

of election fraud.

Hey, Jim and Jerry.

How are you?
I feel like I know you two.

WOMAN NEWS REPORTER: Mutale Nkonde is a fellow

at the Berkman Klein Center
at Harvard.

We have been looking
at how platform companies

allow their recommendation algorithms

to spread disinformation.

It's good to meet you.

It's nice to be able
to sit here and talk to you.

MUTALE: Like, I would love to hear

what element of the election,

if any, do you think...

I think that they used a lot
of ballots that were false.

Mail-in voting, is,
is open for fraud,

and even Jimmy Carter said that.

JERRY: It is.
It's open completely to fraud,

and you're able to do so many things

with so many extra ballots.

I, I did mail-in, uh, voting for
years because I travel a lot.

So, that's how I did it.

But I had to request it.
All right?

What happened was,
they just mass-mailed them out.

The independent studies
that the Secretary of States

did afterwards with this election,

they said it was the safest
election in U.S. history.

Last year's presidential
election in United States,

was, all the electoral officials agree,

and all observers
and commentators agree,

the fairest and
most scrupulously carried out

in American history.

WOMAN: The Justice Department has not seen fraud

on a scale that could have
changed the outcome

of the presidential race.

Bush said, in part, the American
people "can have confidence

that the election was fundamentally fair."

The voters and the clerks
are to be commended for the work

that they did to ensure that,
under such significant scrutiny,

the process worked.

EVANS: But Donald Trump cannot
stand the idea of defeat.

And so, he began to say,

even before the election,
that if he was defeated,

it would be the result of fraud.

The biggest critical thing
that we're looking at right now

- with this country is the corruption.
- Yep.

And that's what it boils down to.

That's what's going on right now.

It's... To me, it's disgusting.

NARRATOR: On election night 2020,

there was an expl*sive renewal
of the #StoptheSteal hashtag

causing the eponymous Facebook
group to amass 360,000 members

in the 48 hours following Election Day.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
allowed #StopTheSteal

to circulate on their platforms.

Despite the group's violent rhetoric,

it took Facebook over a month
to remove them from their site.

But as we saw on January 6,

- violent rhetoric became real life.
- [ANGRY MOB SHOUTING]

NEWS REPORTER #2: A mob of domestic t*rrorists

broke into the Capitol
to try and stop the confirmation

of the electoral vote.

See, if you believe
that the elected representatives

have been fraudulently elected,

then you consider yourself justified

in overthrowing them and attacking them.

Which is what happened on January 6.

I think that they put Biden in there.

He wasn't elected.

You can't tell me that.

You just...
I just can't believe that.

[CROWD CHANTING] Stop the steal!
Stop the steal!

Stop the steal! Stop the steal!

- Stop the steal!
- [g*nsh*t]

The current wave of conspiracy theories

bypass the traditional gatekeepers

of opinion formation.

Newspaper editors,
radio and TV producers,

who would say,
"You can't do this.

I'm not going to print this,

because there's no
factual evidence for it at all.

It's just a-a,
a vicious fantasy."

And with the Internet and social media,

you can bypass all of that

and say whatever you like on the Internet.

That's beginning to change,
and I think

it's important that that's changing.

Um, that social media companies

now are beginning to take responsibility

for the kind of information
that they carry.

But there's still a long way to go.

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