Joe Rogan Experience #668 — Jon Ronson Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Nobody knows. that they're burning effigies in Bohemian Grove. They're worshipping Moloch, the owl god. well known outside. And I was working with this producer, John Sargent, basically, we noticed Koresh's church at Waco, and he seemed kind of gung-ho. And I was like, who the fuck is that? I mean, I could tell, like, I drove through Austin with him.

2:32 Did he tell you that for real? Does he? That was a a big she wrote this book about this called um it was called something like the crisis of democracy it that can't be true so I phoned up David Icke and I said do you want to come do you want to come with So that was the video. This was a long time ago. I said to Alex like have you got like a contingency plan like if we manage to get in and and like

6:10 Yeah. And they really do have like a bundle of sticks that's supposed to represent a human being. like all the troubles White people problems. All the rich people. Ruling the world is a pain in the ass for two weeks a year. We were going to rent a boat and sail it along the river the town wants to know what's going on in Bohemian Grove. So we met Rick to get some tips on how to

8:12 admitted this to me afterwards part of him was worried that like in the wicker man me and rick Oh, so he didn't trust you I wasn't really well-known at all. Is it safe to say that Alex Jones as the bushes i was george bush uh junior and he was senior and we ran around the state capital This is fucking stupid. You hear what he's saying? Oh, my God. Project t-shirt.

11:22 Oh, my God. That's so stupid six six six on bush's head because he felt that I was like... Like I saw them. Oh, I'll tell you the funniest thing that I've missed out of this story was the night actually with our producer, John Sargent. Yeah, we walked in, and there was this bank my memories okay there's this big bank of telephones this was like before cell phones well i guess there were cell phones but

14:08 you know, Mr. Burns. Studio Tours or something. And then we saw pickup trucks okay rightly like the kind of stuff you'd get like like a universal studio tour or But wait a minute. wouldn't that be a cool place to make your sanctuary wouldn't all the So we were wondering about me and Rick, You guys were far away from it. called occidental there's like a no through road and then you go up the road uh is that north of

16:58 Yeah, there's owls, Mike said, there's owls everywhere. i felt like nothing bad would happen to me because he looked so rich and preppy and that's like every actually this moment which i thought was really weird was this old man comes up to me i mean like And there was this look of real fucking intensity on this guy's face. be into it in a different way to the way Alex and Mike

19:12 You know, because like rich old dudes, they couldn't get it up. you ever? There's a photo of I think it's Ronald Reagan at Bohemian Grove. Yeah, with Nixon, right? like And look at the big redwood behind him. in san francisco and then bohemian grove in you know a couple of hours north uh so then this Yeah. In front of a giant fucking owl all descend um in front of the giant owl uh there you go and they uh and they have this ritual where

22:36 fire and the effigy goes I mean, fuck knows where the guy Wow. Harry Shearer from The Simpsons? And he said he thought it was kind of ridiculous. interpretation of it which is basically that it's not evidence that the secret rulers of the world But they're doing that for a reason, right? They want to create this kind of Masonic, ritualistic milieu for themselves.

24:34 I would have to be really fucked up to do it. That gives you a sort of, you know, But I've heard that well young Jamie was saying that Tom Cruise might be leaving Scientology. Is there any evidence to support this? I agree with that. It's definitely there for a reason what exists in so many different cultures. That's the weirdest part about it Things that extend their neck those little bars those women put like God. What are they doing? Well? It's very isolated

27:52 club made a statement i remember about my book what they said they said something along the I mean, look, the Mickey Mouse parade at Disneyland is also an overblown pageant. That's wacky as fuck. put a a spin on it what was alex's spin a Alex's spin was practically that, you know, it's possible I mean, it's true that me and Alex were, like, separate during

30:00 It could have been a total complete joke. He's my friend. We're trying to get people to join them and then arrest them. And what the Asian provocateurs did during the WTO protest is they would, work with WTO badges they had a WTO badge with us a line through it like but basically just using actual news stories and different uh coverages by different local

32:37 Look, if you've got a bunch of people that are protesting showing evidence of that being used before. away with it. What I'm hoping is compromised. I'm hoping that These really grandiose things he says like that, you know if you work at a strip club you get sick of hookers you get sick of working with strippers you know if you're selling drugs though. He's a great guy. I love hanging out with him.

35:43 didn't even debunk. But when I did this uh sci-fi show we like actually get a jet up in the air and film it is that they also have to be entertaining, kind of intensity there which which i believe is very different to what Alex felt was going on, but it was still odd. And we don't want to feel bad about destroying them. and demonizing because if John Ronson says something fucked up,

39:05 could just start typing a bunch of shit and it's this weird thing going on where everybody's And maybe the connection is that it's all about tricking yourself which is like, oh, well, you know, we're better than that person because that person just misused their privilege or that person just, you know, showed their true inner evil. like large groups of chaos rather,

41:24 and two people in the world and two people in the world, Fuck this guy. Let's shame him. Well, that's a very good way of putting it. Whatever the fuck it is. There's push behind them. I wish you stopped using me as like the kind of generic. Well, I always liked it. And I'm like, fuck. On the plane. 16 hours yeah hundreds of thousands of people. get fired in real time

45:47 But it's because they have the green light to object. It's like, we've suddenly got all this new power on Twitter and social media, And if what you say resonates or offends, it can become a hot button, people flee you know my friend a couple yeah a couple of years ago, my friend Adam Curtis. Flip phones, live in the desert, cut your own wood in the forest.

47:44 Yeah. Yeah, I never I when a long time ago like maybe ten years ago or so you know but you realize after a while like oh this is a new thing and I'm I wasted a lot of time had some fun Yeah. It's hard because I don't think we are just who we are as an individual I think we we are we are who we are based on who we're interacting You can become a better person

50:42 Like, what the fuck is going on? We are not like one individual experiencing the universe solely on our own. like mangled up somebody's mental health. publicly shamed, it's fine. It's no big deal. They're just fine. And then, and I was looking I mean, when you go back to the punishing of the witches in Salem or, you know, what they do in Africa. Yes, they're safe for that day.

53:59 how many people went after that person? And they feel totally justified doing it. The one was I had a sex dream about an autistic kid last night i don't know it was something about you know deeply traumatized for a year and i like, for one fucking joke that lands badly a year, you know. inner evil through a little bit of phraseology that's what happened to trevor noah and it just

56:29 Like that's part of like a persona that she'll adopt and abandoned on stage. of a dopey person that's easy to mock. fuck she's got that movie coming out but uh she's very smart yeah she's very smart so she would The publicly shaming part. I went to college in London in the 80s. It's kind of creating an entire society of surveillance society. Well, I did a college once, and this is a perfect example of it.

59:45 And I said, I don't remember anyone. that joke that you did about Jews is very offensive. Yeah, and he just look I'm offended like and there's all these kids then eventually hopefully they'll settle in and hopefully they'll sort of like as I go, first of all, I don't tell, I'm not racist. I assume that when you're doing the art of standup comedy, you're going to say things

1:02:09 Then you remove almost every movie that's ever been made you remove almost every book that's ever been written are you a racist? ugh, that's a betrayed thought. the problem I have with all this pro-gay marriage, pro-peace, pro-choice, pro-love, pro-left-wing ideology, you know, Right. and the unserious transgression. I don't think they are fleeing.

1:05:23 And that's just never... By the way, Tesla predicted this. piece that no, we shall be able to hear one another as perfectly as though we were face-to-face, Fucking unbelievable. of nuance, of context. now than I ever would have been if I had Those people who favor humans over ideology and those people who favor ideology over humans. And right now the ideologues are winning on social media.

1:07:55 This is what somebody wrote about my book, which I really agreed with. Yeah. justin saka was that she was kind of racist and and anybody who tried to stick up for her just got Like... and then do a kind of grotesque, I think people just don't understand what the fuck is going on when they say things Right. It was hilarious. woman on before me um was a doctor and she was doing a video about her book and she said

1:12:29 that made me feel a bit i i was no longer anxious but i felt groggy and then i had to He was a social justice warrior and he said a bunch of incorrect things that people attacked him I tend not to pile in on anymore. And most people, I think, agree with me that that's kind of, it's like easy to agree with me about that. And I said, well, even words like names for people.

1:15:01 Ronson's, goddammit, you're a Rogan. You'd say, oh, well, what do you expect? You could be Donald Trump, you know, and you're right now. This is the Trump Casino, the Trump this. New news right now that just came out. a sedative with the intent of giving them to women he wanted to have sex with, according to records obtained by the Associated Press on Monday.

1:17:21 Another thing I was reading, this will be a good set. and treated like a celebrity and i think because of that, he sort of had an expectation of worship and also an – this is total armchair psychology from a dude who went that from people and can even justify horrific behavior That's a police officer. things that's happening in this country at the moment.

1:20:11 This is what I felt, you know, I felt most out of step lately with the whole Rachel Dolezal thing. out i can't you know what i thought i thought I've been a journalist for 30 years and I'm sick. Right. But on another side, I agree so torn because on one side I want to go after them. But on another side, that they can't have a substance that has never killed

1:23:30 it's it's there and that's my job just like the fucking crocodile sees the wounded antelope and punishments of people who don't deserve it. I should say, by the way, that me sort of saying all of that stuff on Twitter was right clearly plagiarized and she's just deceptive she lied lied about her background. She said she was born in a teepee. They didn't ask to be born.

1:25:45 segment of society that has already been stolen from from white by white people you know and i And I've come to conclusions about the way you should regard other people, other human beings, with sort of interest and curiosity and compassion, not cold, hard judgment. position to talk, well, then you're publicly silencing people. Why would they say that, though?

1:28:04 Well, at the con club. had found itself in post-slavery, america's just sort of kind of waking up to the fact that well fuck man a hundred or so years ago when the Dukes of Hazzard was on TV. What? Is he back in the news? I didn't kiss no black baby. Yeah, and they were allowed to burn a cross one day a year. then tom looks at me as if to say i'm so sorry that my members are such idiots like tom preferred

1:31:32 And one of the clansmen was like going, more straightforward like do you worry a lot? Now, what is the reason why they burn the cross? You know everything for a short amount of time, and then you move on to the next story. we've done 667 episodes now. Right. clan whoa and at one point tom turned to me the leader and he said can i ask you a question and I said what and he said do you think I'm weird

1:34:00 actually. I mean, I've met white separatists like Randy Weaver and they're far nicer people they believe in bohemian grove and bilderberg and i i went i tried to infiltrate bilderberg one time That was his big undoing, was that he would take the family up local Aryan Nations with the family. That was his Nations, like pretty much So then Randy thought that was that.

1:36:02 You've now committed a firearms offence. and kids and dog um and then and so they they surrounded the cabin the the atf and this went and starts shooting wildly. in the shed and then the next day oh um one of randy's friends is there and there's a shootout is standing in the doorway Like all these local militia people all form at the bottom of the roadblock

1:38:57 admitted responsibility and paid each of Randy's For how much? and another person who visited Randy's cabin was Timothy McVeigh shortly before blowing up the The bomb that they used, the fertilizer bomb that blew half that building apart. news reports that he played these clips of where they were talking about fbi agents removing bombs And they had done it all with this fertilizer bomb.

1:41:43 that planted bombs inside the building. by Bilderberg. They knew about the Bilderbergs? Yeah, everyone, all of these, all of that crowd saying that there's this group called the Bilderberg group and they secretly rule the world He said that he had emphysema, Yeah, he only died recently, like a couple of years ago. And he said, okay, as long as you don't... Did he use the term covert wickedness?

1:44:42 So me and Jim Tucker flew to Portugal and scouted around the Caesar Park Hotel. rearview mirror and there was a car following me. No. and i say i'm being followed by the builderberg group i am I didn't put this in my book. often cites me And so then she says, this is like the most startling thing that happened that day. Right. jim tucker throughout all of this by the way he's loving it he's loving every fucking second of this

1:49:32 so I went to the beach and reading brochures and they're only pretending to read brochures. And Jim says, Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, all of these people. order, I think is true. I think they were trying to create like a one world government where And so that's why Bilderberg became this kind of more nefarious, presumably became a slightly more nefarious thing.

1:53:01 I don't know much about it. Yeah, star spotting. places exist for a reason. I take a bit of credit. I think my book then was the first of me, suddenly Bilderberg is discussed Yeah, exactly. We're terrified of extreme lefties and we're terrified of extreme righties you know did you when did you was anything like really revealing or Even if what you're saying is absolutely ridiculous, like stoning people for homosexuality.

1:55:57 who feel the same way we do they say knowing that people are going to approve. So I believe in all the things that they believe in right i believe in gay marriage i believe in And so I tweeted like something hadn't noticed that Robin Williams... And there's Or how do they know whether or not you knew? Well, I explained that I didn't know. But that's not, because how do they know that you didn't know? Or how do they know whether or not you knew?

1:58:07 How could you possibly be forced to know about that? you don't give a fuck like everybody around you doesn't give a fuck like you're wearing a uniform rallying against is the one thing that you are rallying against is the significant realities about humans which is the fact that if if we try to understand each other Yeah, I mean some people's transgressions are so serious, it deserves to overwhelm them.

2:01:08 But this is all a long way away from the question which was about kind of hanging out this Islamic group called Al-Muhajiroun. I spent a year with this Islamic group I want something in return. Did you go home when you said you were with him for a year? This was pre-9-11. Yeah. I remember watching that online against my own better judgment. but I was in Brooklyn and the taxi driver told me that he watches like all of them.

2:04:02 these people were not Arabs I mean, you know, I got chased away from Bilderberg. that actually do happen. Okay, in the book, Like trying to kill goats just by staring at them. Yeah. and determined that it was a dinosaur's ghost. Yeah, he was one of the main. Very stressful. how annoyed they were that because they were black op, I forget his name, but we actually tried it out.

2:07:29 He's a debunker and a skeptic. you're talking like angles. I'm sorry if I can't remember correctly because it was all nonsense to me at the time. I remember one time they were looking for Noriega, General Noriega, viewing thing a bit boring but then And that stuff was so fun to me. who was involved in like exotic, you know, sound blasting $20 million, I think.

2:10:42 Okay. smiling at you i have beautiful eyes do you need live support call me sugar i'll show you how to try to find out whether or not they could control them. That's 100%. studies on LSD? Oh, really? Kaczynski thing is pretty well documented that he was a part of those studies. set you off the rails in a way that you might not be able to recover from.

2:14:00 I mean look and that, you know, that the Nazis had done the Koreans and then they were Supremacist or an Islamic fundamentalist or anything, but when you're with them for a long period of time when you're embedded and then suddenly i'm being chased by the builder group and i go fucking nuts and like i've become psychopath test sort of teaches people how to spot psychopaths and then the second half becomes like

2:17:09 I think you're more likely to find psychopaths at the top of the tree than at the bottom I mean, the upshot is that I don't think there's any real difference. but I met him in jail. And he kept on saying to me, I want people to like me, who doesn't really feel like empathy? He said, I would like get up from behind a tree. from behind a tree and my bag would have bricks in it

2:19:16 And I said, and how do you feel now? But the human beings that I've hurt and killed, don't feel anything. There's something disturbing about someone who's just not willing to ever join the community. There's just this other species that aren't quite human. I don't like statements that are so absolute. Honestly, I think there's truth in both camps. They sit down and their body, you know, just conforms to their office chair and they're there all day.

2:22:46 There's an opening. Yeah, well, certainly you keep coming back to that. Oh, I think we could have a hundred of these. Oh, okay, great. when you're back in town, Like Amazon and all that jazz. Actually, there is another John Ronson on Twitter. So, yeah, John Ronson on Twitter. John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John, John,