Conspiracy Theories and Antisemitism with Mike Rothschild

TOPICS DISCUSSED

• Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories with Mike Rothschild* (*no relation)

• Outside of Politics: Conspiracy Theories, Secrets, and the Unexplained

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EPISODE RESOURCES

Get your ticket to the Pantsuit Politics Live show in Paducah, Kentucky, on October 21! Get information about our weekend in Paducah here.

Sarah and Beth are booking speaking engagements for 2024 now. Find out how to bring Sarah and Beth to your organization here. Sarah and Beth will be speaking at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA at 2pm CST on November 9th and Giving Diabetes the Blues with the Diabetes Coalition of Mississippi at 11am on November 10.

MIKE ROTHSCHILD

• Mike Rothschild

• Mike Rothschild (Twitter)

• Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories (Mike Rothschild *no relation)

• A Proliferation of Conspiracy Theories with Mike Rothschild (Pantsuit Politics)

CONSPIRACY THEORIES IN POPULAR IMAGINATION

• J.F.K. Assassination Witness Breaks His Silence and Raises New Questions (The New York Times)

• Inside the largest Loch Ness Monster hunt in decades (NBC News)

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:09] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:10] And this is Beth Silvers. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:00:33] Hello and welcome to Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Often relevance in the news spawn conspiracy theories online. The president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, is in the U.S. this week, and we know that conflict in particular has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories. We're getting further and further into the campaign calendar, which also creates its own ecosystem of conspiracies online. And so we have invited Mike Rothschild back to discuss his new book, Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories, and how conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic tropes grow side by side and have for hundreds of years.  

Beth [00:01:10] Before we get started, we are delighted to head to two new states this November. We have not done speaking events in either of these states before, so we're really excited to meet some of you who've never had a chance to see us in person. We'll be at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 9th. Then we'll speak to the Diabetes Coalition of Mississippi in Jackson the morning of November 10th. Both events are open to the public and there are more details in our show notes. We're so excited. These are our last public speaking events of 2023. So if you are in or near Louisiana or Mississippi, we would love to see you there.  

Sarah [00:01:46] Now, don't worry, we are currently booking for 2024, but we only have eight spots available. Guys, we have kids. We can't be on the road all the time, okay? But we would love to come to your community or organization in one of those eight spots. We would love to help you deal with the tough conversation you're having in your community or a difficult transition you're facing in your organization. So if you work somewhere or go to school or church somewhere that would enjoy having us come speak, please check out our website Pantsuitpoliticsshow.com for more details or reach out to our managing director, Alise at Hello@pantsuitpolitics.com for more details.  

Beth [00:02:24] Next up, welcome back, Mike Rothschild.  

[00:02:25] Music Interlude.  

[00:02:43] Mike Rothschild, thank you so much for coming back to Pantsuit Politics.  

Mike Rothschild [00:02:45] Well, thank you for having me back.  

Beth [00:02:47] I was reading your book while I took in the first Republican debate.  

Mike Rothschild [00:02:52] That's a lot of punishment.  

Beth [00:02:54] I'm a glutton-- not for punishment. When I heard Ron DeSantis name check George Soros-- which is a very common thing, not unexpected in a Republican debate-- I heard it really differently because of your book. So I would love for you to give us an introduction to your book via the George Soros baggage that is carried by those name checks.  

Mike Rothschild [00:03:16] Sure. And it's a great place to start because, on one hand, it is the end of the book, but at the same time, it's the most current part of this particular story. So what I write about in the book is that George Soros is essentially the Rothschilds of the 21st century. I didn't come up with that term, but I think it's a really apropos term because in our society, in Western society, we have a need for scapegoats. We have a need for someone to blame our problems on and our political failures or business failures or personal failures. It's never our fault. It has to be somebody else. And psychologically, we really want to believe that there is a vast conspiracy out there pulling the strings, controlling what happens, and that vast conspiracy has targeted us because we are important. We have the special secret knowledge to take them down and we need to be taken out. And that's really where somebody like Soros comes in. Soros is seen as the funder of all of these kind of anti-democratic, progressive ideals: drug law reform, prison reform, voting reform. So when something happens in one of those worlds and you don't like it, you blame Soros because you have taken in a lot of media that tells you Soros did it. Soros is funding this initiative, this DA, that foundation. It's all coming from the puppet master, the guy at the very top. So for two centuries, that was the Rothschild family. And now it is George Soros. And, of course, it's going to start transitioning away from him because he's 93 and he's not going to be around forever.  

Sarah [00:04:52] Now, we do want to clarify, you are not related to the Rothschild family that you write about in the book.  

Mike Rothschild [00:04:56] I am not related to the Rothschild family. There's a big asterisk on the cover--  

Sarah [00:05:00] I know. I love that part.  

Mike Rothschild [00:05:01] I even got a private press genealogy book of my Rothschild family. We come from a completely different part of Germany, totally different trajectory. And one of the interesting things about the Rothschild and I didn't really realize this-- the banking Rothschild, the me Rothschild, the non-rich Rothschild who I represent, is that that family never emigrated to the US. There were a number of opportunities that the Rothschilds had, and none of the family members wanted to come to the U.S. They thought it was too much of a backwater, it was too far away. They had their palaces and their horses and their art collections in Europe. Why would you leave? So the Rothschilds were really overtaken in the United States because nobody from the family thought about coming out here. Nobody saw the opportunity that was present. So that's a very long winded explanation of saying I am not related to the Rothschilds of Frankfurt.  

Sarah [00:05:56] But before we get into how they feed conspiracy theories, even sharing the same last name, and I thought some of the writing you did in the book about the perception of the Rothschilds within the Jewish community was so interesting. I think if you are informed through the conspiracy lens, you missed that they were real people, and still are, and very, very rich, and that they had a totally different perception within the Jewish community as this beacon of hope and prosperity and promise.  

Mike Rothschild [00:06:24] Yeah. The Rothschilds were always referred to in Jewish stories and Jewish jokes as you better clean up your shtetl because a Rothschild might pass through and everything's got to look good. If everything went well in your life, you are a Rothschild. The song from Fiddler on the Roof If I Were a Rich Man is based on a story called If I Were a Rothschild.  

Sarah [00:06:46] I about died.  

Beth [00:06:47] I did too.  

Sarah [00:06:49] I about died at that part in the book.  

Mike Rothschild [00:06:50] Of course, in the Hebrew translation of the musical and then in the Yiddish translation that was done within about the last 10 years, it's still if I were a Rothschild. So that idea that if you are a Rothschild, you have achieved the the best a Jewish person can do. And they're a beacon of aspiration. So putting aside all of the conspiracy theories, and we'll get to all of that stuff, you look at the Rothschild as if everything turns out right, I will have the safety and security of the Rothschilds. And that's a really powerful image for Jews to look up to.  

Sarah [00:07:23] And it's the foundation for the conspiracy theories because I think about the ways I have heard the Rothschilds reference-- and you talk about this in your book-- lots of references inside rap lyrics. And it's that foundation of their success here. And so it's just the funhouse mirror of on one side it feels like a beacon of promise. And then you pass through this funhouse mirror experience of what happens with the conspiracies and then it twist and there's something like, well, there's success here and that means there's something dark here. Like that scapegoating.  

Mike Rothschild [00:07:58] Right. They're successful, but are they too successful? Are they too powerful? And that's such a photo negative of the American experience because America is if you dream it, you can do it. And there's nothing too big and too much is never enough. Nobody's ever too rich-- well, except those people. And that kind of double standard really informs a lot of the writing about the family. We love success, we love money, we love opulence. But maybe you're a little too successful. Maybe you're a little too opulent. That's a little suspicious too. It's a very odd river to navigate.  

Beth [00:08:36] I thought it was so helpful to see these distinctions in your book. The Rothschilds Never Came to America. George Soros was a Republican before he got concerned about authoritarianism in the world and then started funding "progressive causes". It just made me realize how much we are always just playing a game of telephone and getting things wrong as we pass them along. But then when you layer on top of that, seemingly since the beginning of time discrimination against Jews, it becomes something really insidious. So will you take us to the synopsis of the true and accurate story of the Rothschild family for people who don't know this family? Just a little bit on how did they make their money, how did they get their start, and then why they became this photo negative for people of conspiracy minds.  

Mike Rothschild [00:09:28] So the Rothschild family history really starts in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt in the mid 1700s. This was a walled in, narrowly packed ghetto. It was basically a walled city that the Jewish people were only allowed to leave at certain times. Only a certain number of marriages were allowed. I mean, it was essentially a prison within a city. And in that world you had a number of small time coin dealers, money changers, small banks who would make small loans or bigger loans, depending on what was needed by the Christian community. And Mayer Armschel Rothschild was part of that community. His father had been a small time loan maker. Mayer actually went to rabbinical school, but his parents died in very quick succession and he had to move back. So he started off as dealing in coins and metals and making small loans. He eventually becomes the court Jew to the Crown Prince of Hesse. Now, that's a term that's probably going to raise a lot of people's hackles, but it's an actual term. Essentially, the Jewish banker who worked in a private capacity to royalty. So the royals of Europe, and particularly the Holy Roman Empire, could not borrow from Christians because Christians were not allowed to lend in interest. So they borrowed from Jews and they would have a Jew in their informal court to make these deals, make these loans.  

[00:10:54] It was a position that gave them a little bit more prominence in the Jewish community, but also brought in a lot of danger because if your patron died, the next prince usually had no use for the last court Jew, and that usually didn't end very well. So, Mayer was the court jew to the Crown Prince of Hesse. By that point he started having children. They had 10 children. He and his wife Gutle had five sons and five daughters. Naturally, the daughters are almost completely written out of the story. They had no role in the business. So one of the things I hope to rectify with the book, the five sons, one in succession after another, begin working for the family business. Mayer becomes more and more powerful. Eventually, the Napoleonic wars break out and Frankfurt is taken over by France. And at that point the elector of Hesse is (one of the officials who helps elect the Holy Roman Emperor) has to go on the run. So the elector of Hesse has an interesting role in American history. He made the vast majority of his money loaning foreign mercenaries called Hessians. And the loaning of Hessians to England is one of the original grievances in the Declaration of Independence. So there's a lot of intermixing with American history, with Jewish history. Mayer by this point, his son Armstrong is also helping run the business in Frankfurt.  

[00:12:15] They have this enormous amount of money that they basically have to hide from Napoleon. And they start funneling this money back and forth across the English Channel to London, where another Rothschild son named Nathan has gone, made a huge amount of money in the textile business. And the Rothschild family essentially props up the effort against Napoleon. This, of course, ends at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Napoleon is defeated. By this point, the Rothschilds have made an enormous amount of money on bonds, on loans, on the sale of gold. So Mayer dies in 1812, relatively prosperous. His son Nathan would die in 1836 as the richest man in the world. So the Rothschilds made a huge amount of money very, very quickly. And eventually that started to arouse suspicion among people who were left out of that bonanza.  

Sarah [00:13:08] And it's so interesting to me, there's just so many aspects of this. I know you're like, this is not a history of the Rothschild family, but I'm like, well, Imma need one after this book because I've learned just enough to be super curious about the rest of it. And from the beginning there's so many interesting aspects about the Jewish stereotype around money and how that formed over time. You had so many religions, including Christianity, that forbid charging interest, which now we just take for granted and forget that everybody does that now. I thought the aspect of just currency exchange, there's just aspects of our economy that I think we associate digital economy with a global economy, but they had a global economy back then too. It just looked different and they had to do a lot of the things that we had to do, like change currency and sell gold and all this stuff. And you see their ability to take that moment in history and adapt, and then in the same moment missed the moment of this developing market in America in such a human way. Just the successes, the luck, the missed opportunity is so human and so filled with good calls and bad calls that you realize it's not about them.  

[00:14:18] Like, this scapegoating, what we do with this narrative is really not about the human beings themselves. Some people make a lot of money, then some people lose a lot of money, and that really has almost nothing to do with it. But it does feel like the money and the sense that when you have a lot of money you have a lot of power that we don't like, but we can't quite name it. And so we find these scapegoats and we find moments in history where we want to blame somebody and we're like, well, we think money means power and this group is who we scapegoat anyway throughout history for lots of reasons, so let's just put these together and this is our-- but again, that implies a logic that's so wild because this is developing in bits and pieces. When you were pulling apart the Waterloo story about him learning and being able to take advantage of it, that still pops up on Alex Jones' show like 200 years later, 300 years later. But it's like you can intellectualize that and you forget like, well, there was nothing intellectual about how this was all coming together.  

Mike Rothschild [00:15:17] Right. And the banking industry completely changed as the Rothschilds were gaining their power. They made their wealth through these massive loans that they made to royalty, to prime ministers. If Benjamin Disraeli needed a whole bunch of money to buy the Egyptian share of the Suez Canal, he went to Rothschild because nobody else had the money. And then, of course, banking all changed.  

Sarah [00:15:41] Royalty changed. They just ran out of royals there for a while.  

Mike Rothschild [00:15:44] We ran out of royals. I mean, the Holy Roman Empire fell apart. These great empires, the Kaisers, the czars, they all got deposed. And the way that the Rothschilds did business in the 19th century didn't work in the 20th century, the loaning of gold wasn't really done anymore. The Rothschilds communications system, which was so novel when they first did it, everybody did that. The Rothschilds actually distrusted the telegraph. There's all kinds of mistakes and assumptions and failing to change with the times that the Rothschilds were part of. And by the time certainly the First World War broke out, the Rothschilds were certainly wealthy, they were well known, but they didn't have the power to make those kinds of loans. When England and France needed a loan to fight the First World War, they went to JP Morgan. Rothschild had nowhere near the kind of money they needed. So, by that point, the Rothschild was much more a myth. It's much more a mythos and a name. And, of course, with myth comes conspiracy theory.  

[00:16:48] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:16:57] I don't know how you do your job without losing your mind, because then it's like they fade away and that just feeds the conspiracy theory. Well, they're so powerful we don't even know what they're doing anymore. No, they just made some bad calls. That's what happened. That's why you don't hear about them all the time anymore.  

Mike Rothschild [00:17:09] Right. You get the why are there no Rothschilds on the Forbes richest list? Oh, they're so powerful they had their names taken out. No, they're just not among the richest people in the world anymore. Times have changed.  

Beth [00:17:21] So build that bridge for us a little bit, Mike. Talk to us about why Alex Jones in particular is so obsessed with the Rothschild mythology.  

Mike Rothschild [00:17:30] This is really one of the biggest things I wanted to do with the book, was to build that line going backwards from the Alex Jones's and his ilk of today through the materials that inspired them, through the materials that inspired those works, and back and back and back to the sources, as we like to say in Judaism. So Alex grew up with a John Birch Society father. His father, David, was a well-known dentist in Dallas, I think it was, who's a member of the John Birch Society. And so you had all of these fringe radical thinkers, these big time conservatives at the time floating around in that area. Alex talks about how he was inspired by all of these different great books of history. And one of the conspiracy books that really inspired him was the 1971 book, None Dare Call it Conspiracy, which was written by a John Birch Society speechwriter named Gary Allen. That book sold 5 million copies. It was hugely popular. Teenage Alex Jones picks that up and suddenly learns all of the secrets of the insiders and the Cabal and all the string pulling. Well, None Dare Call It Conspiracy mentions the Rothschilds many, many, many times, calling them fake Jews, claiming that they sat out World War Two in their luxury hotels while other Jews suffered.  

[00:18:48] And the big inspirations for None Dare Call It conspiracy were some of the past books like Secrets of the Federal Reserve. It's another book I talk about quite a bit, its written by this guy, Eustace Mullins. While Mullins was a protege of Ezra Pound. Of course, people know Ezra Pound as this great poet, man of letters, editor. He's also a pretty vicious racist and fascist and a rabid anti-Semite. So Ezra Pound takes his inspiration chiefly from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. So you have this through line from one of the most anti-Semitic works ever put to paper, which has inspired countless acts of violence against Jews, going all the way to right now, going all the way to podcasters and live streamers and Internet trolls who are working as we speak. And it is a direct ladder, one rung to the next. And the Rothschilds really are the foundation of that ladder.  

Sarah [00:19:45] So what do we do about it? How do we not go crazy when you feel like, well, goodness, we couldn't keep it contained from the 1700s through the 1900s, and now we have the Internet, which is like gasoline on this fire. What do we do in the face of these conspiracy theories and these anti-Semitism, which is dangerous. It is dangerous. People get killed and hurt. And I think the word loses some of its meaning and we forget it's a physical risk.  

Mike Rothschild [00:20:16] Sure. There is enormous danger, particularly right now. We are in a very public spike of anti-Semitism. We're seeing anti-Semitic acts of violence, vandalism, leafleting. You've got these very fringe groups who maybe only have a few dozen or a few hundred members, but get a lot of attention for passing out fliers with all of the people in the media industry and banking who are Jews. And then they live stream it and then Kanye talks about them and then it's like this whole moment. So it is a very, very perilous moment for Jews right now. And every moment is kind of perilous for Jews. But right now in particular, there's a kind of public acceptability of anti-Semitism that is worse even than it was when a lot of this stuff was ticking back up again in the nineties pre 9/11. Now you have this idea that it's just all Jews. It's the entire Jewish religion who is responsible for all of this. Even then, even in the early nineties there was this facade of, "Well, it's not all Jews. I'm not anti-Semitic. I love Israel." You find that with something like Pat Robertson when he writes a book called The New World Order and becomes a New York Times bestseller. It's a very, very thin retelling of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But he says, "Oh, no, no, no, I would never say that about Jews. The Jewish people are my best friend." I'm just talking about the wealthy string pullers from Europe, wink, wink, nod, nod. And, of course, everybody knows what that means. We're not doing the wink and the nod anymore. We're just doing, "Yeah, we've got to get rid of the Jews." You have very, very popular, far right Internet personalities who just talk all the time about we just got to get rid of the Jews and whatever we have to do to them, we'll just do it. That is an escalation that is fairly new and very, very disturbing.  

Beth [00:22:01] Will you tell the story around the title of the book just in case anyone misses the reference?  

Mike Rothschild [00:22:06] So Jewish Space Lasers is that phrase supposedly written by Marjorie Taylor Greene in her absolutely deranged 2018 Facebook post before she got into politics, when she was still just a CrossFit trainer and a Georgia mom, alleging a vast conspiracy behind the 2018 camp fire in California. This was one of the worst wildfires the state has ever had. I remember it quite clearly. It was terrible, terrible to live through. But this is a conspiracy that this fire was set intentionally to clear land for a high speed rail project. And that Pacific Gas and Electric was in on it. Jerry Brown was in on it. And, of course, one of the PG&E board members was also an executive at Rothschild Inc. And isn't that interesting?  

Sarah [00:22:57] Oh, no.  

Mike Rothschild [00:22:58] Yeah. And, of course, all of it is done by the space based solar generator that fired a blue beam that everybody could see and it missed its target and started this fire. So Marjorie Taylor Greene in that post-- and this post is crazy, but she never says Jewish space lasers. She never says Jewish. Now she's talking about the Rothschilds and everybody knows what that means. But that phrase came a little bit later once the post was discovered. And the post wasn't discovered until about three years later, I think just after she was sworn in. Just after January 6th, somebody at Media Matters found an archive of that post. And then of course it was just jokes and memes and hashtags. And it's fun to make fun of stuff like that because it's deranged, but there's also a lot of danger in it. It's very classic Jewish scapegoating. And Jews have been blamed for all sorts of bizarre things. Controlling the weather, making it snow, making earthquakes, anything that you can blame on somebody, somebody is probably going to blame on the Jews. And it's very easy to see the Rothschilds as the pinnacle of the Jewish string pullers. So while her post is ridiculous, there's also a real sinister edge to it. And I really wanted to use that as the title because I think it really leans into both the absurdity and the danger.  

Sarah [00:24:17] Well, maybe that's my question then. Going forward, as we look back at this flow of conspiracy theories and scapegoating, are there times where you felt like, okay, this worked, this got it a little bit under control, this dampened down the need for scapegoating or the desire to blame the Jewish people or whatever? Are there stories where it ebbed in a productive way?  

Mike Rothschild [00:24:42] It does ebb and flow. And one of the things I really found is that it is very cyclical. You would have a major spike of anti-Semitism in the late 1840s. There was another one in the U.S. around the Civil War. There was another one in Europe in the 1890s, obviously the pre World War Two years. But what happens is that the cycle dies down because for a while we find somebody else to scapegoat. And you find that in American history very recently anti-Semitism very popular in the nineties. After 9/11,well, suddenly there's a new scapegoat. There's a new outsider religion to blame everything on. And that spike in Islamophobia really coincides with a sort of dampening a little bit of anti-Semitism. Then, of course, COVID hits and now we're suddenly blaming China, we're blaming Asian Americans. And so anti-Semitism tamps down a little bit there. But it comes back. It always comes back because it eventually it comes back around to the Jews. And I talk about this in the book, how COVID 19 was eventually blamed on the Rothschilds. There's some researcher who patented a form of viral testing, last name happened to be Rothschilds, and he re-upped that patent for COVID 19. And people are going, "Oh, you see, the Rothschilds knew COVID 19 was going to happen." Well, first of all, they didn't. But also you would think if there's a sort of grand master plan to unleash this pandemic, maybe you'd be a little less sloppy with your paperwork and not have it so easy to trace back to you. These things fall apart so quickly because they're so easily found and they don't make any sense and they fall apart under the slightest amount of examination. But, unfortunately, a lot of people don't want to do that examination, and it's just easier to blame somebody else.  

Beth [00:26:29] That is a great transition to a question that I have to ask you. Your book is not about QAnon but you have a lot of expertise around QAnon. And while you're here, I have to know. I've been blissfully unaware of QAnon for the last year or so.  

Sarah [00:26:42] Did they go away? Is that the answer?  

Beth [00:26:44] What's going on there? Yeah, what's happening with QAnon?  

Sarah [00:26:48] Did they all go home? That's the answer I hope.  

Mike Rothschild [00:26:49] Oh, they never go home. They just find somewhere else to crash. So the QAnon that we knew of from October 2017 up until January 6th, that's not really going any more because it really can't. The entire QAnon mythology was based around Donald Trump unleashing the purge of the deep state on Twitter. Well, Donald Trump is not the president anymore and he's not on Twitter anymore. So that whole thing just doesn't really work. But you never let a good conspiracy theory go to waste.  

Sarah [00:27:21] They put a lot of work in mike. They've put a lot of work in, okay? That'd be wasteful.  

Mike Rothschild [00:27:26] If you pitch a big project and it doesn't go forward, you don't just trash it. You use some of that for your next big project. So the next big conspiracy project is this mainstreaming of the stolen election, of all the COVID conspiracies. So, Q in the Q posts spent a year pushing the idea that Joe Biden could not win the election. The only way that Biden could win is if he cheated. Well, Biden won, so he cheated. So all of that, of course, is now completely mainstream in the GOP, and all of that really touches on QAnon. All of these ideas and all of these conspiracies about the stolen ballots and the ballot dumps and the voting machines and the satellites and all that stuff, that stuff is all QAnon. Now, the other thing that has really ramped up in 2023 is this idea of fighting trafficking. So we have this Sound of Freedom movie.  

Sarah [00:28:20] Have you seen it, Mike?  

Mike Rothschild [00:28:22] You know what? There is only a certain amount of masochism that I had.  

Sarah [00:28:25]  Well, dang it. I was hoping you would do the work for us because we don't want to see it either.  

Mike Rothschild [00:28:30] Everything that I know about the film is that it really is not worth seeing. It's not a great movie. But a lot of it has been blamed on QAnon. The movie was shot five years ago. QAnon hadn't been started. But you've got a lot of these concepts that are very central to QAnon. And, of course, it doesn't help that the star of the movie, Jim Caviezel, is a QAnon promoter who is going on QAnon shows and going to QAnon conventions. So the director of the film is being asked over and over and over again, "Hey, what does this have to do with QAnon." And, of course, he doesn't want to throw the leading man under the bus, but he doesn't want to have anything to do with QAnon. It's that same dance that these people have done for years. They don't push it away and they don't pull it closer. They just kind of throw out enough to keep the believers happy. So you've had all of this mainstreaming of these ideas behind QAnon. The trafficking. You have this country song, Rich men North of Richmond, makes the Jeffrey Epstein reference. I don't know that happens without you QAnon. So we've now left behind the trappings of the hashtags and the codes and the memes. But we now just have a mainstream acceptability of all this stuff. It doesn't need any of the special codes and the clues anymore. It's just kind of everywhere now.  

Beth [00:29:50] And Jeffrey Epstein continues to be so heard because with the Rothschilds, they were really rich. And Jeffrey Epstein really did do terrible things. And there really is trafficking in the world. All of these components of truth that just balloon into mythology. And I guess I wonder, as you continue to do your work, what you find to be really helpful in speaking to people who are down the rabbit holes here, to acknowledge what is true without embracing what has grown out of that truth.  

Mike Rothschild [00:30:26] We can absolutely embrace the truths that form the core of a lot of these theories. Jeffrey Epstein was a bad person. The banks are not necessarily your friend. The pharmaceutical industry has harmed some people. The government does not always do things the right way. All of that's true. None of it requires a conspiracy theory. So, for me, with the Rothschilds, I think they are extremely wealthy. They were extremely powerful to the point where they could act as European peacemakers. They could diffuse wars with their money. They can't do it now, but they could do it before. They made a lot of money off of the Napoleonic wars. All of that is true. That does not mean that Nathan Rothschild manipulated the Battle of Waterloo to become the richest man in the world. Not true. It's not necessary to have happened. You can look at who the family is, what they accomplished, and look at the positives and negatives of that kind of concentration of wealth, without getting into conspiracy theories and certainly without getting into anti-Semitic canards.  

Sarah [00:31:28] Yeah.  

Sarah [00:31:30] Well, thank you so much for your work around this. Everybody should check out the book. I really enjoyed it. I learned so much.  

Mike Rothschild [00:31:35] Good.  

Sarah [00:31:36] And thank you for your work around conspiracy theories and disinformation. And I guess we won't require you to see Sound of Freedom.  

Mike Rothschild [00:31:42] Thank you.  

Sarah [00:31:58] Beth, for Outside of Politics today, considering we just had Mike on, we thought it would be fun to talk about conspiracy theories in our own lives. And at first we were like, should we talk about a conspiracy theory we kind of believe? But I don't think I do. And then we thought, well, how do we define a conspiracy theory? So I looked it up. And it is a belief that some secret but influential organization is responsible for an event or phenomenon. And under that definition, I really don't believe in any conspiracy theories. What do you think?  

Beth [00:32:23] I don't think so either. As I was considering what do I actually believe, that's a little off the beaten path. I realized I don't believe in conspiracy theories that require secret knowledge or coordination. I am more likely to buy things that are about how little we know.  

Sarah [00:32:40] Yes. Okay.  

Beth [00:32:42] I will buy some sightings of a Loch Ness monster or a Yeti. You know what I mean? Things where it's like there are unexplainable phenomenon in the universe and we haven't categorized and labeled everything yet. That's more my jam than a whole bunch of people really know everything and are pulling the strings on everything.  

Sarah [00:33:02] Well, that's a good transition to our Friday show, which for real, for real we're going to talk about UFOs, guys. For real. Unless the universe throws us a curveball, which I shouldn't have said out loud.  

Beth [00:33:11] I like how you said for sure. Except not.  

Sarah [00:33:15] It's not our fault if it doesn't happen, it's always the news. But, yeah, I agree with that. I'm more likely to think some things aren't well explained. Under explained, if you will. I definitely don't believe in the role of like secret organizations. I guess I believe that there's coordination that has led to things that we don't fully understand. The first thing I thought of was the JFK assassination. And you know we have news about this. Have you heard?  

Beth [00:33:41] Yes.  

Sarah [00:33:42] About the Secret Service Agents.  

Beth [00:33:43] Yes. The Secret Service Agents.  

Sarah [00:33:45] So the magic bullet, which truly is hard to believe that the bullet went through JFK and then went into the governor of Texas and turned around a couple times. It stretches the bounds of the imagination. Now, this guy saying, well, I found that bullet in the back of the governor's seat. So it definitely didn't hit the governor because I found it. And then I put it on the hospital gurney that the president was on. I don't think we fully understand the JFK's assassination, but I don't think it's a secret organization trying to pull the strings. I think what most likely happened is in that moment there were many people in charge and organizations that thought like, we don't understand this. And if we go to the public and say we don't understand this, that's really going to set off a five alarm fire. So let's just pretend we understand it. I think that's probably more likely in a lot of conspiracy theories. People think, well, I don't have the answer, so let's make one up knowing that people are going to figure out you made it up and that's going to make it worse.  

Beth [00:34:41] Yeah, I believe there are mysteries. I believe there are nefarious actors. I believe there are coincidences. I believe a lot of what gives rise to a conspiracy theory. I just don't believe in invisible hands where someone really does have all the facts and is making all the decisions. I just don't think people are very good at keeping secrets or coordinating waiting with each other or following hierarchy to the degree that would be needed for that kind of structural string pulling to happen.  

Sarah [00:35:16] But then I read this article in the New York Times about the art world and how it really is. Like a couple of families, they corner the market on an artist. They drive the prices up and you're like, you read stuff like that and you're like, well, this is how people get there. And this was hidden. But eventually someone pursued them. They kept treating their ex-wives bad enough that some of the lawyers pursued them. And that's what actually happened. You read those stories and you're like, well, I see how people get there. So then let's think about this then. What mysteries do you think maybe we think we understand, but we don't fully understand? Like the JFK assassination that is rife for conspiracy theories, but that's not necessarily what you believe but you do think we don't know everything.  

Beth [00:35:54] I definitely think that we have government organizations that know lots more than the general public knows that they know, or even more than Congress knows that they know. I believe in secrets operating within portions of the government. And let me be clear, I think some of that's important. That's not to say that it's all bad. I just believe that there are secrets, things being developed and tested that we don't know about. So I would put that in the specter of mystery. I would like to know about the Bermuda Triangle. I think there are a number of things throughout history where it's like, boy, that's weird. Can't explain it yet, and I hope someday that we will. But I also kind of like that we can't explain everything.  

Sarah [00:36:35] I will say with regards to the Loch Ness Monster, which I've really never believed in and wasn't super fascinated by. We drove by Loch Ness and we didn't even stop. I was like, "Oh, there it is. Cool." Until recently, I read that it is deeper than the mountains around it are high. And then I thought, oh, dang, I wish I'd stopped.  

Beth [00:36:53] I am appalled that you did not stop. I am appalled by this. Loch Ness is one of the spookiest, strangest, coolest places I have ever been. We took a boat across Loch Ness when we were there, and the water is so dark it looks like you're floating on oil. It's amazing. It is so dark and it just hangs in the air like this is somewhere really different. The whole town just has a vibe that it's like there is something unusual here. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if we just haven't named all of the life that exists in a place like that. And that people have seen things combined with that kind of creepy vibe and built a story around it. I cannot believe you didn't stop at Loch Ness!  

Sarah [00:37:39] I didn't.  

Beth [00:37:39] I don't know, Sarah. I don't know.  

Sarah [00:37:41] We didn't stop.  

Beth [00:37:41] I'm going to have to take a breath about that.  

Sarah [00:37:43] There's so much driving in Scotland you can't stop everywhere, Beth. We almost ran out of gas one time because the place is so dang remote.  

Beth [00:37:49] Well, everybody's on notice. If you go to Scotland and don't stop at Loch Ness, please don't tell me about it. I'm appalled.  

Sarah [00:37:55] Well, look, and that's what happens I think. It's like the conspiracy theories are getting at something that's off. It's just to me it's like they try to find an answer and they rob the complexity, the mystery of the actual situation. But the problem is when you try to shut down a conspiracy theory by saying, that's dumb, the people hear you're also telling me nothing's off at all. Which is not necessarily what you're saying. And so it's like a catch 22, which is what the last time Mike was on, we talked about this more broadly.  

Beth [00:38:25] And it is a super fine line when you look at things like the Pandora papers or the entire situation with Jeffrey Epstein, open secrets like Harvey Weinstein, things that you're just like, this is not right. Why have so many people been complicit in something being wrong? I get how you can start to tiptoe away.  

Sarah [00:38:47] Yeah, but complicit and secretive are not the same thing.  

Beth [00:38:51] Right.  

Sarah [00:38:53] They're not the same thing. And that's, I think, what we struggle with. We struggle with the difference between complicit, which I think is harder to understand. That's why we create the nefarious secret keeping highly organized organizations, because it's hard to face the reality that people are just complicit in situations that shock the conscience.  

Beth [00:39:13] And we're still learning what transparency in the digital age means. I could see believing in a lot more of this stuff before the Internet and before the time when journalists have become so good at infiltrating things that used to be truly secretive. But just this morning I'm reading about a secretive push to force Texas senators to vote not guilty for Ken Paxton in his impeachment trial. Now, I don't think that's a conspiracy theory because it's out there and we understand how it happened. But five, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, what would that have looked like to everyone? Would there have been a sense that some people were pulling strings behind the scenes? I don't know where the lines are.  

Sarah [00:40:00] No, I totally agree. It's like we need a different word. It's like we need a different word for that complicitness and systems that are really harmful versus conspiracy theories which branch off and create really harmful things like all these anti-Semitic tropes, and stop people from facing the gray areas of life. I think that's it. It's like people want the villain. They want the black cat in the white hat and conspiracy theories allow them to do that and really complicated, ethically ambiguous situations.  

Beth [00:40:33] I think we all also want to be on the hero's journey in some way. There's a reason that National Treasure was such a big movie. I think we all like the idea that there could be gold buried somewhere or these amazing artifacts, and if we can only solve puzzles left for us by the ancients we'll get there. I love that kind of movie. I'd watch it all day long. I don't know if I believe that sort of thing is actually out there, but I would be delighted if it were.  

Sarah [00:41:00] I don't know if I would be delighted if it were. I prefer the gray morally ambiguous to the power of the easy black and white situation. That kind of freaks me out, I would say. But maybe what you're getting at is the aspect of conspiracy theories, which I do think you have to name, which is that they're entertaining. I think that's what happens so often with people. Is that they name something that makes them feel better and it tells a story that's entertaining. I mean, that's why we all like The Da Vinci Code so much even though that book was bad. The book was bad, y'all.  

Beth [00:41:30] And online conspiracy theories give you a role to play, right? You get to be a detective. You get to be on this adventure of connecting dots and pulling pieces together. And I completely understand that instinct.  

Sarah [00:41:43] So in summary, conspiracy theories, we understand the instinct but we have to fight them, y'all.  

Beth [00:41:47] Correct. Because people get hurt by them. And that's where the fun stops.  

Sarah [00:41:51] Isn't that the truth. Often the truth of many things, not just conspiracy theories. Well, thank you to Mike Rothschild for joining us here again at Pantsuit Politics. And thank all of you for listening. We will be back in your ears on Friday with UFOs. Unless some secret organization interferes to create a news event that keeps us from doing this very important episode. Just saying.  

Beth [00:42:12] Don't forget that we'd love to join your organization in 2024 to help you communicate better through presidential elections or whatever you're dealing with. One corporate event recently said we were able to simplify the complex, read the temperature of the room and engage the audience exceptionally well. We love to hear that and we would love to do it with your group as well. Check out our website Pantsuitpoliticsshow.com for more information.  

Sarah [00:42:33] Thank you for joining us here at Pantsuit Politics. We'll be back in your ears on Friday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

[00:42:55] Music Interlude.  

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. The Lebo Family.

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.