01x06 - Episode 6

[bunniefuu]

Nice to meet you.

- Okay.
- Yes.

SACHA BARON COHEN: 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.

SACHA: 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.

JIM: You know these pallets of bricks

that are being thrown at the cops?

- Yeah.
- Do you know who owns that?

- Bill Gates.
- JERRY: Yeah.

Bill Gates makes gates?

He makes bricks.

NARRATOR: In 2020, during Black Lives Matter protests,

photos circulated on social media

of conspicuous pallets of bricks
in protest areas.

The posts, a warning
to fellow protesters,

suggested that the bricks
had been placed by police

to incite violence
and property destruction

as a way to increase arrests.

However, after the story
of a Dallas police horse

getting hit with a brick got picked up

by the conservative news site Breitbart,

it began to circulate more widely.

At that point,

the narrative switched
from Black lives to blue lives.

Infamous conspiracy theorist
Alex Jones distorted the story,

again online,
laying the blame at the feet

of a building supplier Acme Brick,

a small company in the portfolio

of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

A former board member of
Berkshire Hathaway, Bill Gates.

This created the conspiracy
theory that anarchists

were being funded by Gates
to spur violence

at Black Lives Matter
protests around the U.S.

Aspects of this conspiracy
theory were even shared

by the NYPD and Trump's White House.

MUTALE NKONDE: Hey, Jim and Jerry.

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

It's good to meet youse.

Nice to be able to sit here
and talk to you.

In my work, I try to describe it to people

as being, like,
an Internet detective.

NEWSWOMAN: Mutale Nkonde is a fellow

at the Berkman Kleine Center at Harvard.

MUTALE: We have been looking
at how platform companies

allow their recommendation algorithms

to spread disinformation.

I haven't really seen much
protesting in person, myself.

What I have seen on TV

has shown a lot of violence.

MUTALE: I saw crazy things looking down

these social media rabbit holes.

Everything like huge violence
through to bricks

- to all kinds of...
- I heard that, too.

Pallets of bricks?
Is that what you're talking about?

Get this, pile of bricks
literally being stationed

near the sites of where
these protests and riots

ultimately become.

They're staging it.

NEWSMAN: I mean, you have
these piles of bricks and rocks

showing up near the various protest sites,

leading many to assume

the bricks were planted

by outside agitators
specifically to stir up trouble.

Most cities have piles of bricks
laying around,

and particularly in the pandemic,

construction had been stopped.

MAN: Just some random-a*s bricks, bruh.

NEWSWOMAN: And these?
Not so random.

Video evidence shows they were there

before George Floyd was k*lled.

JOAN: But because you saw this image of the bricks

in different cities,
there was, uh, almost

like an urban legend around them.

MAN #2: I don't know, man, that,
that don't look right to me.

ANDREW MARANTZ: For conspiracy theorists,

when you see an image online

of a bunch of bricks on a street corner,

instead of thinking,
"I don't know what that is.

Maybe that picture was taken
two years ago..."

NEWSMAN: This pile of bricks in Dallas, Texas.

Google Street View captures
from February this year

show the same pile,
again, before the protests.

ANDREW: ...instead of thinking
about innocent explanations,

you think "Somebody is trying

to mess with us, and that
somebody is probably

some outside interloper like Bill Gates."

Ladies and gentlemen, we've now
discovered who is delivering

bricks to more than 20 cities.
It's Acme Brick,

owned by Berkshire Hathaway and Bill Gates.

There's no reason
to think that's true.

Nobody has ever found
any evidence of that.

It's when you have someone,
like Alex Jones,

who does disinformation for a living,

the point is to shock you
and jolt you into attention.

Who does Gates work for?
You bet... Satan.

The Gates thing was, of course,
taking advantage of the fact

that there was a Gates conspiracy theory

that was gaining a lot
of momentum and shares online.

So, again, you see
the opportunistic nature

of conspiracism, which latches
onto that which is current.

Some of the information about,
kind of, like, Bill Gates,

you know, with the bricks.

I would probably feel

like that he's got quite a bit
to do with it.

But that was supposed to be antifa.
Wasn't it?

It was given to anti... or...

Antifa were the ones that were
supposed to have done that.

But I don't know if that's true or not.

Luckily, for us, as a country,
it turned out not to be true.

The one truth about that conspiracy theory

is that there were bricks present.

They weren't there specifically
for one side or another.

But the fact that they were there,

that has allowed
for the spreading of lies.

I don't know if you all heard,

but there was a great study that came out

that showed that 93% of the protests

were peaceful.

In my opinion, I don't know
how true that is.

I'm not, like I said, if it's
CNN, Fox, or whoever it is,

I've seen it on several
different news channels.

It showed burning
and people jumping on people,

beating the hell out of them.

This is supposed to be a protest.

This isn't a protest.

Conspiracy theorists say,

"Whoever benefits from an event
must have caused it."

Let's say, if the police
benefit from an event,

they must have caused it.

Or if the Black Lives Matter

are fired up by an event,

they must have caused it.

If they're going to tell the stories,

they need to tell it on all of them.

Don't pick and choose
what you want to do.

Tell all of it. Show all of it.

Absolutely.

I wish you both the best.
It was nice to meet you.

You, too.
It was nice to meet you.

It was good to meet you,
and it was a good talk with you.

JIM: I'll see you on the Internet sometime.
I'm sure.

Yeah, you will.

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