[Theme Music Starts]

SCOTT:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Scott Mitchell, filling in for Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

Jon Ronson has spent time with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, uncovered the secret US military program to train psychic soldiers and telling the stories of the first people to be publicly shamed in the modern social media age.

Now, he’s investigating the culture wars; from fears about left-wing activists taking over the streets to paranoia about vaccines, he’s discovering the surprising origins of our most divisive social conflicts.

Today, author and journalist, Jon Ronson, on how things fell apart and we all ended up fighting over very different versions of reality.

It’s Thursday, February 22.

[Theme Music Ends]

SCOTT:

Jon, thanks so much for joining us, how are you feeling?

JON:

Great. Well, I feel absolute, I feel like I couldn't be more ready.

SCOTT:

Fabulous. Let's get into it, shall we?

Now Jon. You've been looking into the culture wars recently.

And I think sometimes we can hear the word culture wars and it's really easy to think about kind of bombastic TV news commentators and people think of that when they think of the culture wars, and we can laugh at them or something.

But in so many of your stories, you see how the beliefs in these culture wars actually have, have huge effects. People's lives are completely changed. Or why did you think it was so important to highlight that element of the culture wars?

JON:

Because I saw friends kind of topple to getting too obsessed with it with a particular culture war issue. I had this friend. I'm not going to name them because, like Beetlejuice, I don’t want to summon him.

But he was a friend who was a brilliant writer, got too enmeshed in the gender critical culture war, on the side of the gender critical people became extremely belligerent about it.

To the extent that he lost his family, he lost all of his work. He just spends every day battling, like, trapped. Like that scene in Poltergeist. When you open the door that's spinning around really fast. And that seemed so extraordinary.

But also, I think we've all got someone like that in our lives. Somebody from this tweet to that tweet two weeks later has completely changed to become an extreme caricature of themselves trapped down the rabbit hole that they can't escape from.

It seems to be a very modern and shocking malaise, and I really wanted to unpick that. Like, what were the mechanisms of, of somebody like that toppling in that way. And I thought the interesting way to do it would be to go back in history and find these tiny human stories. If you go to a party that were screaming at each other, it's impossible to know how that started. So it's nice and instructive and clarifying sometimes to go back to the moment it all began.

SCOTT:

Right, and as you were investigating the culture wars for the new season of your own podcast Things fell apart, you began to focus on the time period of May 2020. And I wonder what was it about that time specifically that caught your eye as a way to look into these conflicts?

JON:

Right. Well, just the research it turns out that we were all pretty compliant for six weeks, six weeks of like mid-March through to May. We were pretty compliant and then in May like coiled springs, we all went nuts and started massively mistrusting of institutions.

I met a neighbour who lives in a farmhouse and he said, have you heard about Plandemic? Like America's most eminent scientist has given an interview saying that everything we're living through isn't what we think it is. So I looked, so when I decided to make season two about this period in May 2020, everything exploded, Plandemic.

Audio excerpt – News Reporter:

“One video making the rounds is called Plandemic it features a former scientist saying this coronavirus did not occur naturally.”

JON:

The murder of George Floyd.

Audio excerpt – News Reporter:

“Cities across the United States remain in high tension tonight as the country braces itself for another wave of protests after the death of George Floyd.”

JON:

Antifa.

Audio excerpt – Unknown:

“Antifa moving in next door... Oh my god!”

JON:

Ron DeSantis, all of these things all happened all at once, within 20 days of each other.

And things certainly haven't gotten any better. I was talking to a YouTube creator the other day. He said that whenever he puts on anything nuanced on his channel, he gets like, no views at all, like 10,000 views at the most. Whatever. He puts out an extreme culture warrior who calls woke people a death cult or whatever, he gets hundreds of thousands of views. And so he's rewarded.

You know, I guess this is always been the way, the way before the internet, when we were televised, you know, terrestrial television. But the fact is, you're rewarded for extreme polarising, oppositional, rage inducing content, and nuanced, try to see every side of the argument content like mine is getting more and more niche.

SCOTT:

And yeah, I do want to ask you about news media. So much of your work talks about the way the media and news media can make things more difficult and create these grand illusions we all share I suppose. Can you tell me about a time where you've seen the news media actually make things worse?

JON:

Certainly. In one of the episodes of the new season in Things fell apart about this family from the Pacific Northwest in America, they were Twilight fans. They were fans of Twilight. So when the lockdown restrictions were lifted, they went off for a Twilight camping adventure to Forks, Washington, which is where the movies were set.

And as they get into town, the townspeople start following them. They pull in to buy some shrimp at the grocery store, and they're circling their, their bus. The family are in a bus. And then the family go to the campsites and set up camp, and they're having people, like, zooming past them and shooting in the air. And then somebody chops down some trees to, to entrap them with this campground. They're still setting up their tent at this point, by the way. They're the most optimistic people I've ever come across.

It turns out that the reason why all of this happened was because the town had got it into their heads that this family was Antifa, the anti-fascist organisation coming to topple their town.

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“The violence, and vandalism is being lead by Antifa and other radical left wing groups who are terrorising the innocent, destroying jobs, hurting businesses and burning down buildings.”

JON:

And I think the way it breaks down is that the right wing media, tell these great big, almost like mythological balls out lies.

And with Antifa at this time, when this family went into Forks, Washington, the right wing media was saying that, you know, Antifa were responsible for, like, all the horrors, all the looting Antifa's going to break out of the cities and destroy your town.

Audio excerpt – Tucker Carlson:

“The shadowy heavily armed left wing militia group, the guys dressed like strong strippers and black masks. You remember them of course well because of the summer 2020, they burned our cities that year! Churches, and police stations and courthouses.”

JON:

The left wing media are more subtle than that, it's the activists and, but activist journalism, while it sometimes has very positive, results the cost as it's another kind of lying. It's not about evidence. It's about ideology and activism. And the left wing media were like, no, Antifa are just freedom fighter and looting is another way from redistributing wealth.

Audio excerpt – Unknown:

“What is a looter? And what we’ve seen often is that the very system of racial capitalism has been the looter.”

JON:

from this incredibly, extraordinarily polarised media. Everyone just gets confused and bewildered at this innocent family get mistaken for Antifa and hounded out by people with shotguns.

We're all connected more than ever now. our actions ripple out in the most extraordinary, twisty turny ways and sometimes change societies from these tidy human stories do mighty, nefarious oaks grow.

SCOTT:

After the break – The one person Jon Ronson underestimated and how he went on to help elect Donald Trump.

[Advertisement]

SCOTT:

Jon, often your work, I guess, it looks at how individuals, sometimes individuals on the fringes, how their ideas can ripple out and, actually effect all of us. Thinking back over the people you've interviewed, have you ever underestimated just how influential someone could be?

JON:

The time I've been sort of accused of that mostly was when I snuck into this secret club in Northern California called Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones. Who then went on to hound the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook and so on.

Audio excerpt – News Reporter:

“The parents of a child killed in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School are suing InfoWars host Alex Jones for defamation for his repeated claim of the massacre is a hoax.”

JON:

I definitely underestimated the power and influence he would have. You know, Donald Trump went on his show.

Audio excerpt – Alex Jones:

“And obviously he is a maverick, he’s an original, he tells it like it is, doesn’t read off a teleprompter, neither do I. He’s self made…Donald thank you for joining us.”

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“Thank you Alex! Great, great to be with you.”

JON:

Trump distanced himself from Alex during his presidency, But the fact is Alex had 4, 5 million viewers who didn't vote. You know, these are like, you know, shut-ins and disenfranchised kids. Trump goes on the show. Alex convinced them to vote for Trump.

Audio excerpt – Alex Jones:

“I gotta just back you up again, because the more I research for what you’ve said and done, it’s amazing.”

JON:

And, Trump wins by a pretty small margin. So very smart and surprising that Trump would see Alex as a resource, as opposed to somebody so extreme that it wouldn't want to be associated with him.

SCOTT:

Yeah absolutely, but just to go back to that first time you met Alex Jones. I mean, it’s a pretty incredible story, can you tell me a bit about what you were doing with him, exactly?

JON:

It was the greatest night of my life.

Audio excerpt – Jon Ronson:

“His plan is to infiltrate Bohemian Grove in the dead of night and secretly film their owl burning ritual. His name is Alex Jones.”

JON:

For us to successfully sneak into this secret club in the redwood forests where people like Henry Kissinger, George Bush were rumoured to have a ritual which culminated in a papier maché effigy being thrown into a bonfire in front of a giant owl.

Audio excerpt – Alex Jones:

“It’s kind of like a little visit to America’s Transylvania. We’re in search of these, what are they? Cultists, weirdos or just big business. I sure wish we’d brought a gun.”

Audio excerpt – Jon Ronson:

“Why would you want to bring a gun?”

Audio excerpt – Alex Jones:

“Because they say people disappear from here.”

JON:

We were advised that the way to get in because we were going to climb the mountain a bit out the other side and get in that way. This local lawyer called Rick, who had himself successfully infiltrated. But he said to me, and, Alex, if you go in that way, you're going to get yourself killed. And I just remember Alex got out his notepad and wrote down, going in that way - dash - killed.

What Rick said is you just dressed preppy. Just, go to the local preppy clothes store, buy some chinos and just walk up the drive. One of my favourite moments in that adventure was Alex buying some preppy clothes and then practising being preppy.

Audio excerpt – Alex Jones:

“Right here we go.”

JON:

By having preppy conversations with his producer.

Audio excerpt – Alex Jones:

“But I really want to know your opinion of nanotechnology, you studied so close.”

Audio excerpt – Jon Ronson:

“Are you sure you don’t look too preppy?”

JON:

And in the end I went up the drive and yeah we got to witness the owl ceremony.

SCOTT:

I mean, so our listeners know, over the years you've felt the need to, revisit him and kind of, cover him again. I wonder what you make of where Alex Jones is today.

JON:

Well I think he's still very powerful. Like I don't understand. He's got like a $1 billion judgement against him from the parents of Sandy Hook kids. And he's been deplatformed, but extraordinarily since he was deplatformed from YouTube and so on, the amount of money he made went up, which shows how dysfunctional things are right now, that if you're ejected from mainstream society, you now go to this upside down world, this shadow world where you're more successful and you make even more money.

I never thought that somebody that fringe could attract, you know, real power. I don't have realised how rich he'd become either, and how mainstream his ideas would become. So did I underestimate Alex? He was so much more charismatic than any of the other conspiracy, you know, leaders at the time. He was always destined to become the most successful conspiracy theorist. But yeah, but I think I estimated just how nefarious and how powerful he'd become.

SCOTT:

And as well as someone who investigates, you know, this stuff, you're also a consumer of all these things like the rest of us, but has doing this kind of work, taught you or are there things that you try and keep in mind to avoid going down a rabbit hole or getting a delusion of your own or anything, or falling into a venomous kind of conflict with someone of the things that you try and do yourself.

JON:

Well, I definitely try to avoid getting into venomous conflicts with people who I'm fairly conflict averse. But the other stuff that you talked about, I actually absolutely want to do, I want to fall down the rabbit hole and lose myself because I think if you write non-fiction you should have all the ambition of a, of a fiction writer, and in fiction you expect your protagonists to go through life changing experiences.

And I think that, you know, my books, The Psychopath Test and say, be publicly shamed, that I go through life changing experiences. I start one way. Something happens, I totally change. I see the world to the new way. losing yourself, getting paranoid, getting drunk with your psychopath, spotting powers, like all the stuff I do in my books. I actually really love. You Just have to pull yourself out of it at the end to get, you know, become rational again. But yeah, if you could lose yourself to craziness, I think go for it and put it into your book.

SCOTT:

John, thank you so much for your time.

JON:

That was such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

SCOTT:

Jon Ronson will be in Australia later this year for a series of talks asking ‘Do Psychopaths rule the world?’

And, I came across while prepping for this interview that you're a fan of Amyl and The Sniffers.

JON:

Oh, God. Yeah yeah. They're great. I discovered them about a year and a half ago, and I can't believe how good they are. Are you a fan?

SCOTT:

Yeah. And I, thought I'd ask whether you're coming out to Australia at the end of the year, whether you'll try and make it to a show or something if the times overlap.

JON:

Oh my God, I would love that. Although they were playing in New York quite recently, and I got so excited and, and I saw doors were eight And I like, thought that not going to be until ten. I can't do that. Like I'm in the 50s, so I didn't go, but I might have to wait 40 years until they're like a legacy band and come out at 730.

[Advertisement]

[Theme Music Starts]

SCOTT:

Also in the news today,

Amanda Bardwell has been named the new CEO of Woolworths, after its current chief executive, Brad Banducci, announced his resignation yesterday.

It comes after the supermarket posted a $781 million loss, and in the same week as Mr Banducci walked out of an interview with the ABC’s Four Corners program, asking for material in the interview to be excluded from the program.

And

A landlord in Queensland has been charged over failing to install compliant smoke alarms in a home where a fire killed six of its tenants.

The house fire at a home on Russell Island in August 2023, led to the deaths of a 34 year old man and his five young sons who were aged between 11 and 3 years old. The maximum penalty for not having compliant smoke alarms at a home in Queensland is $774.

I’m Scott Mitchell, this is 7am. Ange McCormack will be back with you again tomorrow.

Take care.

[Theme Music Ends]