Mike Rothschild: And I really want to get down to, why do these things endure? Where do they come from? Why do people believe them? What hole do they fill in the lives of the people who believe them? Of course, I'm finding that so many of the canards about the Rothschild banking family control the Federal reserve. They fund both sides of every war. They run all of the industries. These things really stem from very specific movements, and I'm seeing a lot of it forming around 1830s and 1840s France, where the Rothschilds are a very powerful family. They really did control a huge portion of the railroads. They controlled a huge part of the banking system. They were lending money to basically every country in Europe. And sometimes these countries went to war with each other.
Chris: This is Chris, and I am a game designer and data scientist.
Kayla: This is Kayla, and I am a television writer.
Chris: And both of us are podcast hosts here on cult orgist weird. Welcome. Hey, welcome to the audience, not to you. Oh, do you like how efficient were with that, though? That was like, boom, done with the snippet. Here's who we are. The show is starting.
Kayla: Let's get into it. Go do the topic right now. No business, no banter.
Chris: But we have to, because Patreon people pay us for business.
Kayla: That's true.
Chris: We have to do the business. So we have three new patrons since last episode.
Kayla: Oh, my God. What are you guys doing?
Chris: I know. Stop paying us. We are worthless.
Kayla: Well, that's not true.
Chris: No. You know what? We did this. I thought the last bonus content we did was pretty cool.
Kayla: Because you did it.
Chris: Because I did it. No. So we got onto the topic on Patreon of what exactly our music producer guy was talking about when he was saying that he listens to appliance noise. Appliance noise to relax sounds or whatever. And went down this whole rabbit hole of what different types of noises were. And then I wanted to make a relaxation track of white noise and the other types of noises that we discussed. And then I was like, oh, you know what I really want to do is I want to make a relaxation track of found sounds. It's called so just like noises from our appliances around the apartment and also our cat purring. So that's our latest bonus.
Kayla: I know. And you tried to get the one cat, and he was all like, nah.
Chris: I tried to get the podcast got, he has a terrible purr. It's just not very loud. But our beast cat has a much better purr. So that's what we did is the.
Kayla: One you heard of.
Chris: So we actually do have cool stuff on Patreon? I think so. Thank you to everyone listening. You're all supporting us, but especially thank you to our new patrons for this past two weeks is Martina Dobson.
Kayla: That's my cousin. She's pretty cool.
Chris: Eileen Zelati.
Kayla: Not my cousin.
Chris: Not related to. I mean, she might be, like our 7th or 8th cousin. You know what I mean?
Kayla: You go back far enough.
Chris: Yeah. And then John Grealish, who actually is my first cousin.
Kayla: So it's just cousin Palooza up in here.
Chris: To be fair, we didn't solicit our cousins on this Patreon. It was just spontaneous. So thank you to you guys. And this is totally not like a nepotism kind of thing, which is a great. It's a really good segue into action. Well, it's not a great segue, because I'm not starting off by talking about the family aspect of today's topic. Instead, I'm starting by asking you, Kayla.
Kayla: Oh, God.
Chris: Some questions.
Kayla: Oh.
Chris: Cause that's what I always do.
Kayla: No, never put the podcast the only.
Chris: Way I know how to do a podcast.
Kayla: Yeah, same.
Chris: Kayla, do you happen to need money for something?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: That was very fast. Are you, like, reading the script with me?
Kayla: No, but I need money.
Chris: You need money? Okay, like, why do you need money?
Kayla: Look around, my man.
Chris: Well, I mean, like, do you have, like, a specific thing in mind that you, like a big purchase?
Kayla: No, I just want to not be sad and stressed out about the fact that groceries used to cost $100 for the week and now cost dollar 200 for the week.
Chris: So groceries, it's more of a general thing. What about a big purchase, though? Like, if you had to buy, like, a car or something, you needed a new car, what would you do?
Kayla: I guess we do need a new car, don't we?
Chris: Yeah. And let's say we do, kind of, and we do need, luckily. Okay, so don't. New donation level. Give us a car.
Kayla: Give us a car.
Chris: If you need to buy a car, though, what are you gonna do? How are you gonna buy that car?
Kayla: I mean, should I answer for real?
Chris: I don't know. I don't know what your fake answer. Like, are you gonna steal it? I don't understand.
Kayla: I have a lot of money anxiety. I had to buy a car. I would go to the man in my life and I would say, dear.
Chris: Chris, okay, so this is close enough to get.
Kayla: What do I do?
Chris: But what, I pretend I didn't exist and I wasn't managing your finances.
Kayla: Okay, well, then I would go, which.
Chris: Is just the most sexist thing that we still anticipate.
Kayla: No, it literally is. And it's because I have money anxiety. And so I made the man do all the money things I don't want to, but what if I were less of a sexist pig? What I would do is I would look at my monthly budget and I would figure out, okay, I can, you know, I have this much money I can play with in terms of a new car payment. And then I would go to, like, Carmax.
Chris: Hold on. Can we drill into the thing you just said about car payment? Why do you need to make a car payment? So you don't have enough cash right now is what you're saying. You don't have the cash flow for a car, therefore you need a loan.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: So you.
Kayla: I'd go to Carmax and get a loan.
Chris: So you go to Carmax and get a loan. I think the bank actually finances that loan. Yeah, fuck that. Okay, good. We'll get to that.
Kayla: Hashtag credit unions, baby.
Chris: What would you think if you were like, I don't know, you say you've done loans is kind of the big thing that I'm getting at here.
Kayla: Yeah, I had. I was.
Chris: Have you ever borrowed? Of course, yeah. I mean, we've all interacted with loans. Right.
Kayla: But yes, I have borrowed from a friend or family. I don't think I have borrowed. I have been gifted, which is different.
Chris: Yeah. That is. I mean, if you had to borrow money to buy a car from a friend, let's say.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: What would you feel if they said they wanted to charge you interest on that, my friend? Yeah. Do you feel different about that than, like, the bank charging you interest or the credit card company charging you a lot of interest?
Kayla: I wouldn't like it. I gotta say. Even if I felt like that was a reasonable, like they were, you know, that was their right to ask for that. I wouldn't like it.
Chris: Would you potentially think differently about this loan depending on your financial need? Like, what if it wasn't necessarily a car? What if it was, like, something you really. Or actually, let's say, what if it was your. Yeah, we're going with a situation where it's just you, not me. You're single and you need this car to get to your job. Suddenly this is a financial need. It's not just like, oh, I could use, you know, we need to replace our second car. It's, I need this car to go to my job.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: How would you feel then about being in that sort of desperate situation and then somebody charging you interest for a loan for that.
Kayla: Okay, well, first again, fuck banks.
Chris: What I'm more trying to get at here is just how you feel about taking a loan out and then paying interest back with that loan, depending on the context. Would you think differently about any of this money lending if you were trying to purchase a house versus trying to start a business versus something like, I don't know, like pay for cancer treatment for a family member that you couldn't otherwise afford? Would those different situations make you feel differently about how you were borrowing money? Like, what if the cancer treatment loan was like 20% interest and the house loan was like 2%? How would you feel about that?
Kayla: I don't know how I feel about it. It's just one of those situations is far more desperate than the others. So it's like one of those situations you're kind of like, I guess I'll pay whatever.
Chris: Do you feel more exploited that way? Do you feel angry about it or out of control or upset?
Kayla: Are you asking me if I feel mad about the fact that we don't have Medicare for all in this country?
Chris: That's not what I'm asking.
Kayla: Yes, I.
Chris: Stop trying to figure out the topic. You are failing.
Kayla: Yes, I feel very upset at that. Exploitation. And it makes me think of like payday loans, makes me think of loan sharks, makes me think of bad people, bad guys.
Chris: Well, how much interest is too much interest to you? What is it like if it was, if the cancer loan was like 1% versus 20%, clearly you feel angry about the 20%. Is there anywhere that you feel like, okay about it, whatever it was in.
Kayla: The merchant of Venice?
Chris: I mean, the answer that I'm maybe zeroing towards here is that it really depends, right?
Kayla: Of course it depends.
Chris: What is too much interest?
Kayla: If I'm like, oh, I'm going to buy a house, who cares? Oh, well. But if I literally need to save my own life with a loan, I'm going to probably take out whatever the terms are.
Chris: So when you think of interest, what do you think the actual definition of that word is? What do you think interest actually is?
Kayla: It's just the monies that they charge you for not having paid the loan back. It's how they make their money from you borrowing money from them.
Chris: Yeah, that's actually, that's exactly right. So if you think of a loan as a product that you are purchasing, the interest is basically the price for that product, right? The same way that you can like buy a piece of gum for a nickel or you can pay for a Netflix subscription, you know, for God knows what it is right now, but it's a price for that product.
Kayla: Everybody's finding out how financially illiterate I am in this episode because of my money anxiety.
Chris: Real quick, what if you put yourself, though, in the shoes of the lender now instead? What if you lent a friend $5,000 to start a business interest free, and then you see them next week and they've purchased a pair of expensive shoes?
Kayla: Ooh, see, I can't get into this.
Chris: And then they splurge for the expensive wine at lunch.
Kayla: This is an episode of Seinfeld, and.
Chris: Then when you ask how the business is going, they say, oh, it's coming along. It's a little slow at the moment, but we're just setting things up. These things take time. So how does that make you feel?
Kayla: I don't like it, but my belief is that, and I'm assuming we're talking about good friends here, if you're lending that kind of money to a friend, it's not a loan. It's a gift that you hope gets paid back. I don't think I would lend a friend $5,000 and 100% expect it to be paid back to me.
Chris: I mean, that's something that differs depending on who you ask. Right. But the thing that I'm trying to illustrate there is that it kind of feels differently depending on which side of you're. The equation. Equation that you're on, too. Right?
Kayla: Do I keep giving you the wrong answers?
Chris: Yeah, basically, yeah. You keep. You're going, like, way off.
Kayla: Sorry.
Chris: Way off. T. It feels different, though, depending if you're on the other side and there's legitimate reasons why you might be on the other side. Like, you might have access to more free cash flow right now than a friend might, and they might have just, like, a really brilliant business idea. And once you lend them money, all of a sudden your motivations change, and you start looking at things differently. Like, I described a situation that's, like, you know, totally like a Seinfeld episode and is annoying.
Kayla: It's a Seinfeld episode.
Chris: Right. But point is, you can actually be on both sides of these equations, and it kind of changes how you feel about the situation.
Kayla: Sure. Of course.
Chris: How do you feel about student loans?
Kayla: Do you really want to get into those?
Chris: No, just how do you feel about them?
Kayla: I feel like it sounds like you.
Chris: Have an emotionally charged opinion about it.
Kayla: They're exploitive as hell.
Chris: What about mortgages?
Kayla: I don't know enough about mortgages.
Chris: I think that payday loans.
Kayla: Payday. I'm going to get out of here with that.
Chris: I'm going to loan sharks.
Kayla: I'm going to break their knees.
Chris: What about when we watch the Sopranos and they do like really crazy high lending there?
Kayla: I don't like it.
Chris: What I hope we're illustrating here is that money lending, and by extension interest, is a very emotionally charged subject. Money lending can actually really cut to the core of some of our deepest emotional centers as human beings because it is inextricably linked to our sense of fairness, justice, and many times our very survival. And it's a complex topic or at least somewhat obtuse to those of us that aren't as mathematically inclined. Me or don't have financial training, me, a lot of us, we already gave the quick answer as to what interest is, right? It's the price of a loan. Just again, like you pay for a pack of gum or a streaming service subscription loan. Interest is what you pay for the loan. And it depends on a lot of factors. It depends on risk.
Chris: So in other words, you are going to want to charge a higher price to someone who is at more risk for not paying you back, essentially in exchange for that risk. It also depends on the opportunity cost. So what that means is if there's like, a bunch of other people, if there's a bunch of other banks out there that you could also take a loan from, then I'm not gonna be able to charge as much interest for my loan because I have competition. Right. And it also depends on things like power dynamics, which probably don't have to explain that one. We kind of talked a little bit about that with, like, somebody that has money. You don't have money and somebody needs a cancer treatment, all of a sudden there's like a power dynamic there, or somebody is more privileged than you.
Chris: There's a power dynamic there. So it depends on that kind of stuff too. On top of all of that, it also historically has depended on your ethno religious background. Religions, at least the western big three monotheistic religions with which I am familiar, traditionally have actually had a lot to say about whether and in some cases specifically whom or how much you could charge interest to. Are you familiar with the term usury?
Kayla: Is that how you pronounce it?
Chris: I believe so, yeah. Usur y.
Kayla: Doesn't it just mean money lending?
Chris: Sort of.
Kayla: Or being a bank?
Chris: Kind of, yeah. So I like Wikipedia's definition best because it gives some context for a word, isn't it? A sin that is actually very context dependent. We'll get to that. And the fact that it's very context dependent is like kind of also why I opened with all those questions to you about money lending was to kind of get at like, how context dependent it can be. So let me quote here from Wikipedia. Usury is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender. And this is just me saying this, not Wikipedia, but notice how many like it depends words there are in there. Unethical, immoral, unfairly.
Chris: Wikipedia goes on to say the term may be used in a moral sense, condemning, taking advantage of others misfortunes, or in a legal sense, where an interest rate is charged in excess of the maximum rate that is allowed by law. A loan may be considered usurious because of excessive or abusive interest rates or other factors defined by the laws of a state. Someone who practices a usury can be called a usurer, but in modern colloquial English may be called a loan shark.
Kayla: A loan shark.
Chris: In many historical societies, including ancient christian, jewish, and islamic societies, usury meant charging interest of any kind and was considered wrong or was made illegal.
Kayla: That's what I'm thinking about, end quote.
Chris: So, yeah, so basically, usury, it's very context dependent, right? Like you might mean, oh, you're being a loan shark. You're charging me like 30% interest because I'm desperate it. And I have no one else to turn to or whatever. Or in some cases, it might mean, like, you're charging any interest at all, especially in historical cases.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: So the Wikipedia article then goes on to talk about some specific definitions and prohibitions of usury across a variety of cultures and religions. So if I say usury, now, does that word feel sort of, like, inherently unethical to you at this point?
Kayla: Well, again, I. Sounds like a sin.
Chris: Yeah. Well, a lot of historical leaders, including names you might know, actually also would agree with you. They really did not care for it.
Kayla: Name drop.
Chris: If you're familiar with the roman thinker Cato the elder.
Kayla: Nope.
Chris: Okay. Well, the following statement is attributed to him. And when he who had interrogated him inquired, what do you think of lending at usury? Then Cato answered, what do you think of murder?
Kayla: I think it's bad.
Chris: The Torah, the Old Testament, I have heard of that also has had a lot to say about it, including the if thou lend money to any of my people, even to the poor, with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor, neither shall ye lay upon him interest?
Kayla: That sounds like, don't do it.
Chris: Christianity, starting with. Well, obviously with the Torah, as I just said. But continuing into the first council at Nicaea, which you may know as one of the earliest codifications of christian theology, forbade clergy from charging interest of any kind. Later councils extended this to laypeople, so non clergy and even condemned any secular law for it. It was such a serious crime to the church that at one point it was decreed that persons who accepted interest on loans could receive neither the sacraments nor christian burial.
Kayla: Oh, boy.
Chris: The church eventually codified usury. Even more precisely, I'm curious what you think of this definition, quote. For that is the real meaning of usury, when from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the requiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense, or any risk. End quote. Thoughts?
Kayla: Wait, so that was like a. That's a christian definition?
Chris: That's what the church said. What do you think about that?
Kayla: I think that they're communists.
Chris: Do you feel like they're socialists? Does that get your juices going, your little commie juices going? Yeah.
Kayla: I mean, I really keyed on the idea of produces nothing. And I'm like, yeah, man, that's the problem.
Chris: Hold that thought.
Kayla: Oh, no.
Chris: Okay, so we've established that among Christians from late antiquity through the middle ages, they had a pretty negative view of money lending. And yet, for an economy to function smoothly, for individuals to actually start businesses, for guilds to have enough cash flow to maintain themselves, for kings to wage war and build castles, well, you literally can't do most of those things without money lending, right?
Kayla: It's a necessary evil.
Chris: You're saying the thing about money lending is that it's necessary. I'm saying it's necessary for projects of a certain scale. An individual person cannot accumulate enough wealth and resources, even if that person is a king or an emperor, to undertake projects of a certain size and scale. This is true, money must be lent to accumulate at a scale enough to build a palace or a fleet or an army. Money represents a person's ability to marshal resources towards a goal, and enormous goals require enormous resources. Then, if the goal is achieved, it pays out enough that both the project leader and the moneylender both profit. This is the modern understanding of banking and theory behind what money lending is. But that wasn't always the understanding. Now, Christians could, of course, lend money.
Chris: They just couldn't charge interest for it, which, going back to the top of the show, if you can't charge money for a product. Like, if you can't actually price your product, you're going to go out of business pretty quickly, right? If you're not allowed to charge money at your lemonade stand, for example, like, eventually you're going to run out of ingredients for lemonade and you won't be able to fix your stand if it breaks down. And money lending is no different if you can't charge for it.
Kayla: You could just come over and fix your lemonade stand, and then your other friend could just bring you some more lemons, and then there's no need for money at all, ever, right?
Chris: Okay, maybe that's true in a post scarcity economy, like on Star Trek, but in a non post scarcity economy, money lending is no different than any other business. You have to be able to charge for your product or else you will go out of business and you can no longer make said product.
Kayla: Ugh, business.
Chris: So how did kings, princes, and dukes of the Middle Ages wage their wars and build their castles if there was no money lending from Christians? Because Christians weren't allowed to charge interest, so they couldn't maintain these businesses, they had to seek out non Christians, okay, folks who weren't bound by church doctrine. And this is where european jewish communities come into the picture.
Kayla: Oh, I think, okay, I smell what you're stepping in. I see what you're getting at.
Chris: I don't want to paint too rosy of a picture here, though. This wasn't like a nice, amicable division of labor where the Christians and Jews are like, yeah, man, let's break it up this way. That'd be great. This is more of like, money lending is dirty, so let the people we don't like do it type of thing.
Kayla: That fits neatly into what we talked about in one of those QAnon episodes about the difference between the various religious groups.
Chris: Exactly. So here's another quote from Wikipedia, derived further from a historical account and from the Financial Times. Quote. As jewish people were ostracized from most professions by local rulers during the Middle Ages, they were pushed into marginal occupations considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting and money lending. Natural tensions between creditors and debtors were added to social, political, religious, and economic strains.
Kayla: I'm about to scream.
Chris: Why?
Kayla: Because I'm so mad. Because this is yet another instance of a dominant group pushing a marginalized group into a box and then blaming them.
Chris: For the box that they pushed them in.
Kayla: Blaming and shaming and oppressing them for said box they were pushed into.
Chris: That's exactly what I talk about next year.
Kayla: I'm gonna scream.
Chris: And it becomes. And then that thing becomes its own thing, like, vicious cycle. Right? Because then they get like, oh, look at those dirty jews. Money lending. And it's like, well, that's the box you pushed them in. And then it just kind of gets worse and worse. Right?
Kayla: So, content warning. Anti semitism.
Chris: Oh, yeah, maybe I should have done that at the top. So, yeah. Financial oppression of Jews tended to. Oh, sorry, I didn't even finish the.
Kayla: Quote, but sorry, I jumped in with my screaming.
Chris: It's okay. You had to scream. Financial oppression of Jews tended to occur in areas where they were most disliked. And if Jews reacted by concentrating on money lending to non Jews, the unpopularity, and so, of course, the pressure would increase. So that's basically exactly what you just said with the vicious cycle. Thus the Jews became an element in a. Oh, yeah. Vicious circle.
Kayla: You said it.
Chris: Okay, I'm just. I'm just, like, spoiling the quote here. It. The Christians, on the basis of biblical rulings, condemned interest taking. Absolutely. And from 1179, those who practiced it were excommunicated. Catholic autocrats frequently imposed the harshest financial burdens on Jews. The Jews reacted by engaging in the one business where christian laws actually discriminated in their favor and became identified with the hated trade of moneylending, end quote. Okay, so, yeah, so basically what were just saying. Christians hated and thought inferior the practice of moneylending, and they had those exact same thoughts about Jews. So the only game in town for Jews really, was money lending, which then made the Christians look down on them and oppress them even more because they were money lending, which only drove them further into it, et cetera, et cetera.
Kayla: Fuck that.
Chris: Until it sort of became impossible to separate chicken from egg. Interestingly, I also read that in part of the Ottoman Empire, which was under muslim rule and didn't have the same thoughts on money lending, and the jewish diaspora that Christian Europe did. Their jewish, and this is only part of the Ottoman Empire, their jewish population actually became known more for blacksmithing than for money lending. Interesting, because they didn't have those same restrictions, so they weren't pushed into the same thing. So it was just like, oh, they wound up in something else. Of course, there's a lot more to say about this. You could write a whole book on the subject, but I got to skip ahead a little bit. Just a couple hundred years. By which point this european link between jewish folks and money lending had basically been cemented.
Chris: People were now born into a world where this cunard was just like cultural default.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: And in 1744, just a few decades before the american and then the French Revolution, in the city of Frankfurt, in current day Germany, an ashkenazi jewish man by the name of Mayor Amschel Rothschild was born.
Kayla: Oh.
Chris: And his descendants went on to achieve dizzying heights of wealth, power, and influence in mostly international banking, as well as become the subject for what you could call maybe today's topic, Rothschild conspiracy theories.
Kayla: Can I make a confession?
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: I don't know anything about the Rothschild conspiracy theories. The only thing I know is that.
Chris: Just plug in Rothschild for Soros.
Kayla: The only thing I know is that this is a very wealthy family, and their doing it all. That's all I know, so I'm. Very.
Chris: Well, that's the point. Well, Kayla, what a great segue.
Kayla: I'm just excited for this topic.
Chris: You might be wondering, though, why I chose this topic for today's show.
Kayla: I am wondering that.
Chris: Oh, I'm so glad you asked. Remember how in my last episode, the Toolbox, where we talk to folks about their self care strategies?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: And I spoke to one Mister Mike Rothschild, about what he does.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Well, I had him on the line, so, like, I figured I should also just ask him, like, what he's working on and stuff. After all, our goal this season is to highlight the helpers. Right? So, anyway, we had this chat about what he's working on, and I actually got pretty curious about his answers. So let's hear the rest of what he had to say, and then I can tell you a bit more about the history of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Welcome back to the show. Could you reintroduce yourself all over again for our newer listeners that may haven't heard the previous episode you were on?
Mike Rothschild: Sure. My name is Mike Rothschild. I'm a journalist and author, and for the past few years, I've been studying mostly the QAnon conspiracy theory. And I wrote the book the storm is upon us, how QAnon became a movement, cult, and conspiracy theory of everything, which came out of last summer. And I've been keeping very busy because despite my stubborn attempts to educate the world, QAnon is still with us and sort of bigger and more mainstream and more diffuse than ever.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. So I have noticed. Yeah. The last time we had you on the show, I believe, was either it was like October or November of 2020, and we are now pushing April of 2022. How has QAnon changed since then? This is just sort of an aside, I guess, because I mostly want to talk to you about you today. But want to get your feel on what's been going on for the past. What would that be, a year and a half now?
Mike Rothschild: Year and a half? Yeah. Well, Q has not made a post since December of 2020. The last Q drop is a dead link to a YouTube video that no longer exists, which I think is just the perfect ending for QAnon to be last ever statement. It's not even there anymore. And then the last drop, I think, before that was like an american flag. I mean, like, very low effort, just trying to keep people on the hook kind of stuff. But as we've seen, the most likely suspect behind the bulk of the Q drops on eight code, of course, is Ron Watkins, who is now a budding politician running for office in Arizona. Refashioned himself into an election fraud expert and a wizard hacking dominion voting machines. He is none of those things.
Mike Rothschild: He meme magicked himself into being retweeted by Donald Trump almost half a dozen times. So Ron is out there. All of the big Q promoters are still out there. There's even newer Q promoters who have taken it off into really bizarre directions. But the movement itself really doesn't rely on a lot of the iconography that we talked about or that I wrote about in the book, the catchphrases and the hashtags. You're not really finding as much of that anymore. You're seeing a real effort to distance themselves from QAnon as an organized movement. They even say there is Q, there are anons. There is no Qanon. Basically saying that entire term is made up by the media. Of course, that's not true at all.
Chris: We have rebranded.
Mike Rothschild: Yeah, you can go back to the very beginning of Q and see people using that term. The most popular book about QAnon, written by believers, is called QAnon, an invitation to the great Awakening. It's just preposterous. But their mythology has become much more mainstream, much more palatable to the down the middle Republican who maybe doesn't quite think that Hillary Clinton eats babies. But sure, Covid is a hoax and Joe Biden's not really the president. And cancel culture is coming for all of us, and they won't let you read doctor Seuss or eat meat, and men are winning women's sports and all this other nonsense. So the tenets of Q really are kind of everywhere, even as the branding behind Q has really started to disappear.
Chris: Yeah. What's interesting about that is following you and several other good researchers on social media and also the research we did ourselves when we did our QAnon episodes. One of our big themes for those episodes was, hey, this isn't new. This is stuff that's been around. It's a different flavor. It's a different face of a phenomenon that's been around for a long time, and it feels like we're in the next phase of that. It's changed its face again. Not really gone away. It just looks different. Would you sort of characterize that as what's happened over the past, like, yearish?
Mike Rothschild: Yeah, I definitely would. And QAnon really excels at that, at taking things that have already been out in the conspiracy world and really repurposing them. One of the reasons I wanted to write the book was to strip away the social media veneer of what QAnon was doing and get down to those component parts, some of which are decades or centuries old. You know, things going all the way back to the blood libel of the 12th century, to anti globalist and anti rich conspiracy theories of the 18th and 19th century, anti masonic stuff, anti catholic stuff, anti semitic stuff. I mean, that's all the DNA of Qanon. So it's so durable because it's made up of things that are durable.
Chris: Yeah, DNA. That's a good way of. That's a good metaphor. I like that. So one of the things that Kayla and I are, like, have been sort of struggling with as we do the show and as we've done more episodes is that it does kind of feel like there's almost like, this never ending, you know, like, waterfall of. How do I. How do I put this lightly? Fecal matter. I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, there's this never ending garbage.
Mike Rothschild: Yeah.
Chris: Deluge of either. Yeah. Qanon to. Anti vax to. I mean, there's just so much of, like, the. You know, the sort of the grift culture out there right now. It feels overwhelming. And so what we wanted to do with this season was. Was kind of, like, take a little bit of a step back and be like, all right, I know it's funny to, like to dunk on some of these, you know, weird groups and whatnot all the time. Like, that's cool. But maybe it would better for us, for our audience, and for everyone if we just, like, focused a little bit more on people that are doing good, people that are helping, people that are researching these phenomena, but also working in other fields that are helping.
Chris: And so that's, like, a big reason why we wanted to talk to you, because you're a very prominent researcher in this field. Obviously, we've been talking about things that you've been working on in the last few minutes, but I was wondering if you could maybe go into a little more specifics if you're able to. I don't know if you have secret projects, but anything that you've been sort of working on over the last year and a half since we've talked, we'd love to hear about it.
Mike Rothschild: Sure. So one of the things that I've really been focusing on is not doing what everybody else is doing. We've really seen this explosion in the last couple of years of people launching their own podcasts, people starting their newsletters on Substack. I get newsletters every day from people, which is great. I think a lot of people are really good at that. But I don't necessarily want to be doing the thing that everybody else is doing. I really don't want to be chasing down the conspiracy theory of the moment because with some exceptions, when you've really put together a very well researched and cogent debunking of a new conspiracy theory of the day, it's not being talked about anymore.
Mike Rothschild: We had recently the whole ukrainian bio labs thing that bubbled up from a couple of social media posts to, like, influencing international politics, but it's already almost been forgotten about by a lot of people. You know, it was, people were talking about it like crazy last week, and, you know, this is the third week of March, and now it's. You're not really seeing it as much anymore. And it feels almost like, not a waste, but, you know, maybe a misallocation of resources to be. To have everybody working on the hot new conspiracy theory, knowing that by the time you get that stuff out there's going to be something else. So I am actually.
Chris: Can I ask you about that real quick? Like, would you say that it kind of feels like it's not that. Correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like it's not that we're too slow to the. To the punch. It's just that there is no being fast enough. Because, you know, if we're going to put, like. Like just totally doing this, like a game sort of way, like, it's like one unit of effort to, you know, have a conspiracy theory blow up because there's like a million out there and only one needs to catch fire.
Mike Rothschild: Right.
Chris: And it's like ten units of effort to, like, debunk it in a way that's, you know, well researched and well thought out and ethical and whatever. So it's kind of like no matter what we do, it's, we're always going to be like nine units of effort in the hole if we try just debunking the latest. Does that sort of sound right to you?
Mike Rothschild: That really does sound right. You know, we're always going to be a step behind because it takes very little effort to crank out a conspiracy theory, and it takes a lot of effort to disprove a conspiracy theory. So one of the things that I really want to do is think bigger. Think about sort of bigger projects and drilling down, not into what these things are, but why these things have endured. So I'm working on a new book right now called Jewish Space Lasers, and it's about the growth of Rothschild banking family conspiracy theories and why jewish money tropes have existed for so long. These things form the very root of a lot of anti semitic thinking that's gone on for centuries. And we're seeing it replayed every day in our life.
Mike Rothschild: We're seeing it right now, Ukraine as a jewish president, and we're seeing echoes of those conspiracy theories in the way that he is talked about. And I really want to get down to, why do these things endure? Where do they come from? Why do people believe them? What hole do they fill in the lives of the people who believe them? And of course, im finding with jewish space lasers that so many of the canards about the Rothschild banking family, they control the Federal Reserve, they fund both sides of every war, they run all of the industries. These things really stem from very specific movements, and I'm seeing a lot of it forming around 1830s and 1840s France, where the Rothschilds are a very powerful family. They really did control a huge portion of the railroads. They controlled a huge part of the banking system.
Mike Rothschild: They were lending money to basically every country in Europe. And sometimes these countries went to war with each other, and you would have one Rothschild house's country fighting another Rothschild house's country. And it's very easy to see how those things can mutate into the Rothschilds fund both sides of every war when it's much more complicated than that. And the other really interesting thing I found is that the Rothschilds tried to get into the us market in the early 18 hundreds. They failed. They couldn't penetrate New York, they couldn't penetrate the us railroad system. But the popularity of Rothschild conspiracy theories in the United States long outlasted their attempts to break into the american market. So im just really curious to see where reality and fantasy sort of diverged from each other.
Mike Rothschild: And how it affects how we think about wealthy Jews today, especially with somebody like George Soros, where the conspiracy theories about Soros have done in 20 years what it took Rothschild family conspiracy theories nearly two centuries to do, which is basically just demonize this mandev as a string puller for the wealthy cabal that runs the world. So that's the big thing I'm working on right now. And I'm also exploring doing that also as a documentary project. And I'm also working on another project based on de radicalization. So getting people out of these kinds of movements and examining where it is that this no longer works for somebody, how it affects their family. How do you rebuild your life when it's been taken over by something like QAnon or the anti vax movement or something like that?
Mike Rothschild: So I'm really much more interested in sort of origins and then aftermaths than what's going on in the day to day world, because there's so much, and so much of it will have faded away by the time we're able to present a real defense against it. This is a very long winded answer.
Chris: Yeah. No, that's a good answer. And it gives me a bunch of things to sort of follow up, ask you about. I really like your sort of strategy of pulling back a little bit and looking at some of the bigger picture and the words you were using. Why is this so enduring? I wonder that myself. What is it about some of these things that is just so. Evergreen? That's, I mean, I know you talked a little bit about why, but I assume your book will go into that a little bit more. Is that something you can elaborate on a little bit here? Like, to answer that question of, like, what is it that makes some of these things just like over the centuries, just not go away?
Mike Rothschild: Well with the Rothschilds, it's really interesting because a lot of the tropes that we think about today, certainly the stuff around the battle of Waterloo, where the rumor has always been that Nathan Rothschild, who was the head of the family in London, was at the battle of Waterloo, and he knew what happened before anybody else did. And he braved a cross channel storm to get from Europe to London, and he convinced everyone to sell their bonds, and then he bought up all the cheap bonds. And then the news broke that the British had won. None of that happened. That is total nonsense. None of that is true. But it's an extremely enduring myth, to the point where a century later, the Nazis were using it in their propaganda films to whip up hatred against the Jews in general.
Mike Rothschild: And you see these tropes right now going to Waterloo, the very specific actions around the battle of Waterloo. But there's another incident that happened around the same time which really fueled a lot of french socialist resentment against the Rothschilds, which has really filtered into worldwide resentment against them. And that was a train derailment at this little town called, I think it's frampo in the north of France. It's an incident that nobody knows about. There's not even an english language Wikipedia page for this. But a Rothschild owned train derailed and a bunch of people died. And this incident was written about by this french anti semite working under the pen name of Satan. And this guy combined the Waterloo canard with the train derailment and turned it into this broadside against Nathan Rothschild.
Mike Rothschild: No, actually, James Rothschild, the head of the family in France, he called him king of the Jews. And he went into this whole thing about how cheap they were and how shoddy their railroads are and how greedy they are and how evil they are. This pamphlet was so popular that it touched off what are called the pamphlet wars in Paris in the 1840s. So you had response pamphlets written and then responses to those response pamphlets written. But it was all based in a couple of things that were very much on the mind of the French at the time. This is the, you know, the reaction to the defeat at Waterloo and Napoleon's exile and all of that. But also with this idea that the Rothschilds were just too rich and too powerful.
Mike Rothschild: And so you had a turning of public sentiment around Europe against the family, which was very satirical, very kind of gently poking fun of them, the way a lot of people would think about something like Jeff Bezos today. You'll pass around an Instagram picture of Jeff Bezos wearing leather pants that are too tight. You'll make fun of them for that. But that moment, that series of pamphlets, really was the time when the criticism of the Rothschild went from sort of gentle satire to full on anti semitism. And we've really never gone back from that, and it's only gotten worse. But these pamphlets and these primary source documents are so obscure that they aren't even translated into English. I'm actually having to get my own translation done of a couple of these pamphlets because they've just been forgotten about.
Mike Rothschild: And I would guarantee that the vast majority of people spreading Rothschild conspiracy theories have never heard of any of this stuff. But its DNA is there right now in the stuff being passed around places like four Chan Reddit Twitter right now, that it's all the same thing. It's just got a very murky history.
Chris: Right. That's really fascinating. I love how deep you're going into the history and sort of the primary sources and sort of going back to the, like, you know, what makes this enduring? Like, what are the, actually one thing that we may have talked about by now, depending on where this episode airs, is the idea of sort of, like, tropes within conspiracy theories and, like, that as a way to sort of help combat that, like, effort ratio problem that we talked about. Right. Like, if the only way to combat the scale of the disinformation is to address it as, like, tropes that you can sort of, like, rule of thumb, you can pretty much dismiss or identify at least. So some of those tropes that you're saying. Yeah, it makes sense.
Chris: Like, I'm hearing things like, you know, resentment for war profiteering and, you know, things like that. Like, you know, the sort of. Some of the stuff that we hear today. Right. Resentment against elites for XYZ reason. Right.
Mike Rothschild: I.
Chris: So that's interesting. Yeah. Going back to some of those, like, what are these, like, enduring tropes, what is the. What is the DNA?
Mike Rothschild: Yeah, yeah. You know, the greedy Jew, the chiseling Jew who doesn't care if good christians die because they are so greedy that they neglect safety measures. There's one part of one of these pamphlets that talks about the opening of one of the railroads, and James Rothschild is looked at as too cheap to serve anything but bread and lemonade at the grand opening of his railroad. I mean, it's, like, really petty stuff, but it wants lemonade.
Chris: I don't know.
Mike Rothschild: Yeah, I'd like some bread and lemonade. But it endures because these stereotypes haven't changed at all. You go to a place like Aitkun right now, and you can find memes about greedy, chiseling jews. I mean, none of this stuff changes. It just hits us faster.
Chris: And like you said, the other really, like, insidious part is that a lot of these people passing around these memes have no idea, like, where the origin was or the origin of the origin. I mean, it's just. It gets disconnected enough, but the trope, the meme remains, and it's just as damaging. But it's like, oh, it's. I don't know. It's, like, scary on ramp. Right? Because it's like, sometimes you don't even know. Like, we talked about this last season when I think were talking about, I want to say the gravitoy codes episode. But it was, you know, this sort of, there was a, there was something going around. Tick tock. That was like a Atlantis sort of thing. Yeah, right.
Mike Rothschild: Oh, yeah, I've written about that, about grab a boy and codes and how vile this guy was.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. And some tied to that was this Atlantis myth of like, you know, oh, back in the day, you know, there were these Atlanteans and, you know, like, at first blush, you're like, oh, death, just like some neat Tolkien esque mythology. Cool. But then you're like, oh, wait a minute. When you actually look into it, the DNA of that comes from, or at least part, not all of the Atlantis myth, but there's a big chunk of it that's also anti semitic because it has to do with, well, you know, what caused the downfall of Atlantis. Right.
Mike Rothschild: Yeah.
Chris: So it's like this on ramp where it's like you feel like you're kind of just talking about like, you know, elves and magic or whatever, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, shit. So I don't know. I don't even know like what my question is there.
Mike Rothschild: But just, well, it's just, it's so easy to tie this stuff back to rich jews because they've been seen as outsiders for a millennium. You know, they even going, you know, going back to middle ages, Europe, they spoke their own language, they had their own customs, they had their funny hats and their long beards and they had ways that christians didn't empty. And it's very easy to see that person as the other and then to see them as the enemy working against you because they hate you and they hate your religion and all of those things. So it always ties back to who are the outsiders that we can blame for what's going on with us.
Chris: Yeah. And that the cognitive ease of doing that versus like, how do we unravel this crazy system that has led to war profiteering and all these things that we dont like that are legitimate? Its much easier to just say, what if we just ostracize or worse, these people that look different? Its much easier cognitively to do that than it is to actually think about unraveling some of these systems. Right.
Mike Rothschild: And we saw the exact same thing with the early stages of COVID Theres a reason why so many people on the far right were throwing around these anti asian slurs. It was just easier to look at China, where this came from, as having done this on purpose or done this because they're negligent or whatever, than to examine our improper response to it and how weren't really prepared for something like this and we had people in charge who maybe we're not the people to have in charge when a global pandemic was just starting. It's just so much easier to pick an outsider and point to them as the person at fault.
Chris: Right, right. Well, I'm really looking forward to your new book. I love the title. Yeah, you kind of have to be a little bit online, or at least know, unfortunately know who Marjorie Taylor Greene is to. You. Want to talk about the title real quick?
Mike Rothschild: Sure. So that title, jewish space laser, stems from a Facebook post of hers in 2018, you know, when she was just an Internet troll, not a politician. Arguably. I think she's still an Internet troll and not a politician.
Chris: And also a politician. Right.
Mike Rothschild: And she also happens to occasionally go to Congress, not get fined. But she posted on Facebook about how the head of PG and e Pacific gas and electric was also a member of the Rothschild family and that they were behind the forest fires that were going on in California then using their directed energy weapons in space, because you could tell from the exact patterns of where the fire was going that no fire could ever behave that way naturally. It had to be set by the wealthy cabalists. And who's a wealthy cabalist more than the Rothschilds? I mean, it was just totally bonkers. But of course, she was not the only person who was saying this. The directed energy weapon conspiracy theory is a really popular one. I was seeing it in a lot of different places when the fires were going on.
Mike Rothschild: And of course, it's another one of those things that completely misunderstands the basics of science. You know, people are like, well, how is that tree not. Not burning down? That means the fire was steered around it. Well, in a fire, you don't often see trees completely destroyed, and there's a really simple reason. They're full of water.
Chris: Yeah.
Mike Rothschild: Trunk trees have trunks and roots that have a lot of water, that have evolved to suck up as much water as possible. Things that have water in them will not burn down. Houses burn down because the wood in them does not have water. You don't want water full of your wood full of water when you're building a house. It's just like basic science stuff. It's the same with those videos that crop up every year of why won't the snow melt? When I put my lighter up to it's because it's got nanopolymer chemicals in it sprayed on us through the chemtrails. Well, no, your fire is wicking away the moisture and burning it rather than melting it. Again, like basic science stuff. But that's not what conspiracy theorists want to talk about. They want to talk about nano polymers and weather weapons.
Mike Rothschild: And so here we are.
Chris: Yeah. And there's sort of currency in trade, too, is like, sort of like what? That's unexpected.
Mike Rothschild: That doesn't. That doesn't happen.
Chris: Yeah, well, I thought it was x, but actually it's y. Oh, my gosh. Everybody else, now I have the secret knowledge. Cool, right?
Mike Rothschild: And you don't get clicks and views and website subscriptions by saying, this thing that happened that looks weird is not actually weird. It's just.
Chris: Yeah, the mundane is never as fun.
Mike Rothschild: Mundane stuff does not get clicks.
Chris: Yep, yep. Yeah. Well, that's it for me today. You know, if you have anything else you want to add or plug or talk about or anything, now's the time.
Mike Rothschild: Sure. You can still get my book on QAnon. The storm is upon us. Hardcover, ebook, audiobook, all that good stuff. You can find me on Twitter othchildmd. I'll have hopefully, some more announcements coming soon about other stuff I'm working on. So, yeah, just, I'm out there, and I'm not that hard to find a.
Chris: All right. Thanks for coming back on the show, Mike.
Mike Rothschild: Absolutely. I'm happy to appreciate it.
Chris: Okay, so, first of all, I. I really like interviewing Mike because there's, like, there's very little editing. Like, he doesn't ever go, like, or stuff like, he's just a very good speaker. He's, like, a really good speaker. And I really. I swear I'm not just trying to be, like, our guest is so good, but, like, literally, like, editing him was really. So I just wanted to mention that here.
Kayla: Thanks, Mike.
Chris: Thanks. Mike also wanted to mention that we interviewed him. This interview is from late March, so that's why there was some discussion about, like, the Ukraine biolabs conspiracy, which I. Current events at the time.
Kayla: What is that?
Chris: It was, we don't have time.
Kayla: I muted a lot of things on Twitter, so I've gotten it.
Chris: There was just some conspiracy that there were, like, bio labs in Ukraine, and that's, like. That's really why Russia was invading, was to, like, shut down these bio labs. And it was just.
Kayla: Was it, like, Covid related?
Chris: I don't. I don't. I don't know. Yeah. What are you doing, man? Stop right now. We're here to talk about the Rothschilds.
Kayla: And get to it.
Chris: Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, great interview.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Anything that you found that particularly stood out or you have questions about.
Kayla: So the first thing helps me feel a little bit better. When he said that the Rothschild family had difficulty penetrating american society. And I was like, oh, maybe that's why I know less about it, because I'm not european. But I thought that was interesting because I didn't know that. I don't think I even knew that the Rothschilds were european.
Chris: I didn't know much about them.
Kayla: They were like carnegies or something. Rockefellers.
Chris: So Rockefellers and Carnegie's were. Yeah, they were american, like dynastic wealthy families.
Kayla: I just assumed Rothschilds were like.
Chris: That, except in Europe. And actually, one of the things that, just as an aside, I think one of their family members at one point lamented that they should have done more to try to build their wealth and build their empire in America and was like, oop, that was like one of our big mistakes. We didn't do that.
Kayla: So I bet there were some other mistakes as well.
Chris: I'm sure there were.
Kayla: I don't like wealthy people. But the other thing that I thought was really interesting was when you two were talking about the fact that because it was such a dynastic family with so much wealth amassed, countries would come to them and borrow from them. So like, the English would come and borrow and the French would come and borrow, and then that would end up, they would, those countries end up using those finances to go to war with each other. And then that fueled conspiracy theories of, oh, the Rothschilds are orchestrating this and they're funding both sides of the war, which is a very unnuanced understanding of that system. You can criticize people for funding wars, but that's clearly a conspiracy theory. It's interesting to me how that is still a conspiracy theory in play now with the George Soros of the world.
Chris: Yeah, that's, and I think nuanced is the right word to use there, because actually they did fund wars and they did fund wars because they were so spread out across Europe. And we'll get to that. But they did fund, in many cases, opposite sides of wars. But what they didn't do is orchestrate the wars. That's the thing. That's sort of the leap that didn't really happen. But I get why a conspiracy minded person might make that leave, because you say, like, oh, well, they're war profiteering, so of course they orchestrated it.
Kayla: I mean, I would get into that kind of. I personally would get into that kind of conspiracy theory with, like, our current government.
Chris: Sure.
Kayla: Where it's like, I mean, like, you don't have to look that far to go back to the Bush administration and what's his face, what's the guy, what's the company that made all the money off of the war?
Chris: Oh, Halliburton. Yeah.
Kayla: Well, look at Halliburton.
Chris: Perhaps, yes, but it's very easy to.
Kayla: Get into conspiracy theory land without it because war profiteers are not fake. Like, those are real fakes.
Chris: Right. And I personally don't know enough about Halliburton to speak to that too much. But I know a little bit about just the Rothschild stuff from doing this research and talking to Mike. If you want a little bit of antidote for that.
Kayla: I do.
Chris: At least with banking, which is what the Rothschilds were into, you actually do prefer stability and peace to conflict and war, right? Generally, it's more lucrative to have nations be at peace than at war. That being said, once they go to war, if the government that you are working with, which these banks were, and we'll get to this, too, were sort of like heavily entwined with their governments. That's what you do. The banks lend money to the government so they can spend it on wars. That was kind of what was going on. So if that helps you kind of break that little, like, of course they would orchestrate it. They want to go to war. Well, it's actually probably more profitable for them to not be at war. So if that helps.
Kayla: That does help.
Chris: So, like I said before the interview, like, part of what you're saying here, like, I got really curious about some of the stuff. Like, you said this, like, I don't. Whoa. What the hell? I don't know anything about this. I didn't really know that much about it either. And I was like, yeah, okay, first of all, I'm definitely gonna be reading jewish space lasers, which.
Kayla: Oh, my God.
Chris: The title of his book. It will be the title of his book. He's currently working on it.
Kayla: Great title.
Chris: But to. Yeah, I know. But to wet my whistle, I also did a little bit of research on the subject myself, and I can give you some of the more interesting highlights that I have learned.
Kayla: Please do.
Chris: So, first things first. Mike definitely has his work cut out for him.
Kayla: Oh, no.
Chris: It's one of the things about. Well, actually, if he. If he focuses mostly on the conspiracies surrounding Rothschild family, I think he might be all right. But one of the things about the Rothschild family, and I think this definitely contributes to the fertility of conspiracy ground around them, is that they are very discreet.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: They are very, you might even say, non transparent. And they've historically always been that way. In fact, here's a quote from Mike himself. He actually just did another interview like a week or two ago with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and a couple weeks ago as of the time of this writing, which is, what are we doing this? We're recording this on May 28. So this is him replying to a question they asked him. Did you reach out to the Rothschild family? And he says, quote, I tried to. When starting working on the book, I reached out to a bunch of different members of the family and they don't discuss this. And he's talking about the conspiracy theories. They don't talk about it, they don't write about it. There's nothing even in their archives about it.
Chris: I talked to someone at the Rothschild family archives in London. She told me they don't want to put themselves in the position of proving a negative, you know what?
Kayla: Good for them.
Chris: I agree. If they come out and say, well, we don't have $500 trillion, we didn't fund both sides of every war, they can't prove that they didn't. Again, the people who make these accusations have to prove that they did. That's how proof works. That's my aside, but that's not how this stuff works in popular culture. So rather than having to prove it's not true, they just don't discuss it.
Kayla: I really hate of billionaires.
Chris: Well, they're not all billionaires anymore, if that makes you feel any better. Now this makes total sense to me. Right? But as we've discussed in the show before, privacy is very easily conflated with secrecy and with nefariousness. The context we've mentioned in before is like when private email servers become public, like with the podesta emails being the prime example there, right?
Kayla: Or when Barbra Streisand says, don't take pictures of my house.
Chris: Right? So again, you get this conflation of privacy with like, trying to hold something back and being secret about it. Right?
Kayla: What are you trying to hide?
Chris: If they have nothing to hide, why are they being so private?
Kayla: Right?
Chris: So I think that this sort of nature of the Rothschilds contributes, and it's been true historically of the family as well. In fact, it has been reported in historical records that keeping their banking affairs within the family, Washington purposeful in order to not have to disclose things like their total wealth, for example. And according to what I've read, they've also just been, historically, not really much into the, like, whole fame thing. They've just been discreet. Right, right. Like, some rich folks are like Elon Musk and just, like, addicted to the spotlight and to shitposting on Twitter. And some are more like Donald Bren, who owns the city of Irvine. And you've never heard of him.
Kayla: And I mean, you heard his name all over the goddamn place, but you never hear anything from him.
Chris: Yeah, exactly. He's not.
Kayla: But it's the same with the Rothschilds. You hear the name.
Chris: Exactly, exactly. And I mean, shit, like, if I ever stumbled across a treasure chest full of Scrooge McDuck money, you better fucking believe I'd be quiet and subtle about it.
Kayla: So what if your friend wanted to borrow $5,000?
Chris: That's why I would be quiet about it, because then he wouldn't know I would have the money, because fuck all of my friends. No, but I really feel for the Rothschilds here in their attempt to be discreet. Right. So it just sucks that also has a tendency to feed the conspiracy mongers. Anyway, the reason I bring all this up before talking about the rest of the stuff is that, well, it's just like, there's not that much literature on them, as one might expect, given their wealth, influence, and accomplishments.
Kayla: But what accomplishments? What do they do?
Chris: Here's the quick and dirty version. What's your thing?
Kayla: Yeah, have they done anything good? Can you say they did a good thing?
Chris: Well, it depends, Kayla. Like, this is okay, first of all, like, there's a bunch of others. There's a bunch of things that I'll go into here that are just like, ooh, cool, they did that. But, like, understand that the fact that they make money off of banking is already them doing something. Lending money is doing something. And that's part of what I was.
Kayla: Like, and then what I do.
Chris: I don't know. What do you do with your money?
Kayla: I'm not a billionaire.
Chris: It doesn't matter. The point is, like, they make money banking that's already doing something. You make money writing. That's doing something. I make money. Actually, right now, I don't make money because I'm currently fun employed. But no, you gotta make money off the podcast from our patrons. Thank you very much, Patreon. But even if the rest of the podcast. I said nothing. This is it. This is the end of the podcast. They were still very successful bankers, which means that they provided money lending to people who needed it in exchange for their interests, right?
Kayla: Yes. What do they do with their wealth that doesn't go back into the business?
Chris: They are into a lot of different things, which we will get to that.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Okay. So before the interview, I mentioned the birth of Mayor Amschel Rothschild in Frankfurt. In 1744, Mayor developed a finance company out of the money changing business his father ran. Then Mayer did the thing that really set the Rothschilds light years apart from everyone else. He successfully turned his business into a dynasty. And I mean that with, like, a capital d. It's like Logan Roy's wet dream on steroids. For those of you who watch succession.
Kayla: And if you're not, go.
Chris: And if you're not, go watch succession now, and then come back to the. Stop listening anyway. Now, okay. For everyone who's back from watching successful succession, first of all, it had been traditionally very difficult for court factors, which is a new term I learned that basically meant the court jewish person who handled finances for the nobility, that is a court factor, did not know that term. So it had traditionally been very difficult for them to pass their wealth to their future generations. But Mayer figured out how to do this. Additionally, there was challenge in simply maintaining your estate as a court factor while you were still alive. I read it described as you were in danger of being plundered by the enemy during war and by your own countrymen during peace. This is what historian Paul Johnson has to say about Mayor Rothschild's achievement.
Chris: Unlike the court factors of earlier centuries, who had financed and managed european noble houses, but often lost their wealth through violence or expropriation. And I'm gonna add this part that he didn't, but that's a racially motivated, that type of thing. Like, hey, so and so, rich jewish banker. Let's get him. Pitchforks. Time. So key continues. Often lost their wealth through violence or expropriation, the new kind of international bank created by the Rothschilds was impervious to local attacks. Their assets were held in financial instruments circulating through the world as stocks, bonds, and debts. Changes made by the Rothschilds allowed them to insulate their property from local violence. Henceforth, their real wealth was beyond the reach of the mob, almost beyond the reach of greedy monarchs, end quote.
Chris: So, like, in a way, like the technology that they sort of developed there, the thing that they invented, this international banking, was a way for them to. It was a way for these court factors, these jewish court financiers, to protect the wealth that was traditionally very difficult for them to protect because of their surroundings. So what Mayor Rothschild did, by the way. That's m a y e r, not. He's not like a mayor of a.
Kayla: City or a horse.
Chris: Meyer, maybe. I don't know.
Kayla: Horse. Like a mayor.
Chris: Oh, probably.
Kayla: Meyer.
Chris: Meyer. I'll try to say Meyer. Yeah. Because he was german. What Meyer Rothschild did was not just to, like, idly pass his wealth to his five sons. Like, here you go. Here's the money I made. Here it is. But rather to send them to five of Europe's most important cities and then reinvest the family fortune into building separate banking empires in each.
Kayla: I'm having a hard time not enjoying that.
Chris: Amschel Rothschild, his first son, stayed in Frankfurt. Salomon set up shop in Vienna. Kalman Rothschild in Naples in Italy, Jacob Rothschild in Paris, and Nathan in London.
Kayla: That's just.
Chris: That's just good planning, in short. And that. And that's actually true. Like, that. One of the things I bring this up later, but, like, something that gets lost often and, like, talking about these canards and whatnot, is that, like. Because they were. Because jewish folks were forced into this thing that they had to do to survive, they actually became quite good at it.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: And I talk about this later, but it's like, it tends to always just present it as, like, oh, it's. They're greedy. And there was this big trope of them being greedy, and that's why they make money, because they're greedy. Obviously. That's easy to counter. That's like, no, you racist. Shut up. But what often gets lost is like, well, wait, so why were they successful at this over the years and the centuries? And it's like, actually, they became good at it. It's a talent. It's a skill. There are things you have to do to become good at being a banker that people tend to overlook, because even now we tend to think of banks. Banks are just greedy pieces of shit.
Kayla: Me. Me think this. And also, I am. Yeah, that's.
Chris: We'll get to that.
Kayla: Very clever foresight to be like, hey, we have this money. Hey, we have this family. Let's do XYZ. I wouldn't think to do that.
Chris: And the Rothschilds had clever foresight and spades, as we'll see. So, in short, Meyer Rothschild basically invented international banking, and he did it by having five sons who had enough competence porn in them to start, essentially five of their own dynasties, each in five of the most powerful countries in contemporary Europe. So when were talking before about, like, oh, financing wars across Europe, like, this is kind of where this comes from is that each of these banking empires were, like. Was run by one of the Rothschild sons and their descendants. And then when the napoleonic wars happened and Austria and France were like, yo, we need money. And England was like, yo, we need money. These were the people they were asking money from, because that's who was there. Like, that's who the. Those were the biggest, most successful banks at the time.
Chris: And so that's who ended up lending that money. And it's. I mean, it's like, you know, wars are weird, man. It's like the civil war here. Like brother against brother, right? Like, that's not uncommon. It's just at this scale, it makes you think of, like, nefarious, sort of like string pulling, right? Which. Another canard. So, earlier I mentioned that the Rothschilds like to keep things in the family, if you recall, remember, as a part of, like, the privacy and discretion strategy. And also, to be fair, that was because they wanted to keep their enormous fortune within the family as well. But this strategy was so important that Meyer, now firmly the patriarch of the wealthiest private family in Europe, actually arranged a lot of marriages. So just like the royalty at the time, even two first or second cousins within the Rothschild family.
Chris: Note that this had basically ended by, like, the end of the 18 hundreds, when the family was sort of past its zenith of power. But I thought it was really curious that they did that same thing that royalty did with marrying within the family. Of these five branches of Meyer Rothschild's family, Nathan's London branch is probably the most accomplished. Although when you're talking about these guys, it's also kind of like giving gold medals at the Olympics, right? Like somebody is able to swim like a fingernail width faster than the next guy. They're all pretty successful, obviously, but the accomplishments of that London branch are like things you've heard of.
Kayla: Tell me.
Chris: Several of them are pretty colonialist things, unfortunately. But we are talking about Europe in the mid 18 hundreds. So that's like the water in which we swim during that time. So, under the leadership of Nathan's son, Lionel, so we have Meyer Rothschild. He had those five kids. Nathan was the one that went to London, and then his son was named Lionel. So under his leadership, the Rothschild family financed the british purchase of Egypt's interest in the Suez Canal. So that's pretty big. Also under his leadership, the Rothschild bank financed Cecil Rhodes's british South Africa company.
Kayla: Wow.
Chris: And Lionel even managed his estate after Rhodes death and helped set up the famous scholarship that bears Rhodes name. If you've ever heard of Rhodes scholars.
Kayla: I have heard of Rhodes Scholars.
Chris: And a combo platter of the british and French Roth style banks also loaned money, too, and became the largest investors in the De Beers diamond company.
Kayla: I've heard of that.
Chris: So we have Suez Canal, we have Rhodes scholars, we have de Beers. I'm leaving a bunch of stuff out, too, because it's like stuff I personally hadn't heard of. But the numbers are certainly big and actually, fast forward about a century. So go to 1961. One of the members of the family. So the family still exists today, by the way. But one of the members of the family, Edmund Adolph Rothschild. Adolphe Adolph or Adolph, ad o l p h E. That's Adolph. Adolph.
Kayla: I don't know.
Chris: I don't know. Whatever. That's not important. What is important? He purchased club Med because apparently he'd had a really fun time at a stay at one of their resorts.
Kayla: Okay, that is a storyline from succession.
Chris: I know. So they don't own it anymore, by the way. They sold off the last of their interest in it in the nineties. But that's sort of an illustration of two things. One, the family is still around and still wealthy, which I'll talk more about in a sec. And two, the stuff they do nowadays is much more like diversified than it had been in the past. So about their wealth and holdings, it's a bit hard these days to talk about a they when it comes to Rothschilds, because it's been literally 250 years since the actual patriarch of the family, Meyer Rothschild, was born. It's relatively easy to trace a single generation descendants, right, as five sons, that's easy, somewhat easy to trace their progeny like we talked about, Lionel. Right.
Chris: When you start getting like three, four, five and more generations in the downline, these things become very complex and murky very fast, and they fan out quite a bit. Exponentially, as a matter of fact. So these days there are like, I don't know, a hundred, not, I don't know, nobody knows because it's been so long. And that's how genealogy works. But there's probably hundreds of descendants that can trace some lineage to Maya Rothschild and his kids, but it's literally impossible to determine who all of them are. Exactly, because again, that's how genealogy works. Now, that's not to say there aren't, there's nothing that's named Rothschild anymore. There are definitely some companies and holdings that are held by family members, but those interest holdings are diluted by a lot of non family anyway, right? And everything used to be like all in the family.
Chris: And now it's like, oh, a Rothschild runs this company type of thing. So it's really impossible at this point to say, like, well, the Rothschilds as a family own this much wealth because it's impossible to know, like, who you're supposed to be counting and how much to count, right? If you look at, like, the wealthiest families in the world, like, they don't even make the list anymore because it's just like they don't know who to count. Like, that's what the Wikipedia article says. It's like, I don't know, like, who's Rothschild now? Like, you can count a couple of these guys, like, the guys that we know for sure don't make the list if you add them up.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: By the way, I think the Waltons are number one.
Kayla: They're not marrying in the family anymore.
Chris: Exactly right. That's the thing. Like, once they, when they were all doing, like, marrying cousins and stuff in the early 18 hundreds, sure. But now it's like, who the hell knows? It's been 250 years. That being said, there are Rothschild financial services companies, and you can trace ownership to a wide array of activities. They historically have been really into wine. So you can trace, like, a bunch of ownership to, like, a ton of winery chateaus in France. To this day, I'm not even gonna list them all because there's, like dozens and there's a bunch more. So according to this Wikipedia quote, since the late 19th century, the family has taken a low key public profile, donating many famous estates, as well as vast quantities of art to charity and generally skewing conspicuous displays of wealth. So we talked about, again, the discreteness, right?
Chris: Today, Rothschild businesses are on a smaller scale than they were throughout the 19th century. And this is just my commenting on this. Like, it's harder to like. Of course, they're on a smaller scale because they were the wealthiest family in the world at that point. Although they encompass a diverse range of fields, including real estate, financial services, mixed farming, energy mining, winemaking and nonprofits, end quote. They do the stuff that you think of, like, just like, pretend it's a Rockefeller, right? It's like they do a lot of philanthropy and donating and art and finance and wine and the rich people stuff. Plus they're into, like, the whole space laser thing, the jewish space lasers. So that's, you know, that's a big thing.
Kayla: I don't think that's real.
Chris: Oh, what? You don't think that's not real? It turns out that a popular anti semitic global domination trope has a special flavor of weather control.
Kayla: Come on, guys.
Chris: So, according to report by the Washington Post, and also a salon.com article, which. I will reveal the name of the article in a bit.
Kayla: Cloud busting was just a song, guys.
Chris: A branch of the Rothschild array of businesses, so this part is true. Purchased a controlling stake in Weather Central, a company that provides weather info to a bunch of broadcasters. And the strategy here was to become a competitor to the Weather Channel. And like everyone else, was skin in the game. The Rothschilds don't want our planet to incinerate. So they were like, let's buy this weather thing. Let's try to help with that. Right? So here's a quote from that Washington Post article, quote. As weather becomes more extreme around the planet, with greater human and financial ramifications, sir Evelyn de Rothschild said in a news release, we believe that weather Central will play a major role in mitigating damage and improving lives. End quote. Pretty normal stuff.
Kayla: We're gonna bust some clouds.
Chris: But it was seized upon, as you are doing right now in conspiracy land. As, and I say this further proof that the Rothschild family somehow was controlling weather. So this is like something that had been following them or this is one of the conspiracies of the Rothschild family, is that they are orchestrating everything, including weather. What, for their own profiteering ends.
Kayla: Okay?
Chris: So I don't know why they would need forecasting. Like, if they can control the weather, like, why are they buying a company that forecasts it? Right, like, you can control it. Why do you need that? But I don't know. I can't tell you. You know how that goes with conspiracy theorists. Anyway, the article goes on to trace the weather control notion to the. Basically to the Rothschild's control everything conspiracy theories that are centuries old at this point, including the conspiracy that Mike talked about, which is the last specific thing that I want to mention, and I don't know if you remember this part from the interview, but that's the idea that Nathan Rothschild. So recall, Nathan was the guy who started the London branch of the family's banking empire.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: So the idea that he personally was at the Battle of Waterloo and was able to speed home, and this was like, across the English Channel during a storm, and he was able to profit off the information that the Battle of Waterloo saw, the defeat of Napoleon, he was able to profit off of that a full day in advance of it becoming public knowledge.
Kayla: That feels a little woot.
Chris: So that, as Mike said, is not true. What I was able to find out about this, and this was just sort of in the course of the research, because this is like a famous event, like in the Rothschild narrative that has grown over the years. And this is via the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. And I'm saying that source, because, one, it probably should be a pretty good source, but also this weird thing of, like, maybe a grain of salt, even here, should be taken, maybe taken with anything. Rothschild, because I also read that some misinformation about them actually gets codified into pretty reliable sources, like dictionaries. I think it has since been purged. But I just want to say, I'm not 100 normally. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. I'd be like, oh, yeah, for sure, this is good.
Chris: But here I'm like, okay, 99.9% sure this is good info.
Kayla: The dictionary is fake news, maybe.
Chris: I think it's good at this point. That's what I'll say. All right, so according to them, Nathan Rothschild, via what they call a network of family agents, was in fact able to learn about the Waterloo victory ahead of the public. But he wasn't there. Like, he wasn't personally at the Battle of Waterloo. This was more like he learned about it through an information network faster than most people did.
Kayla: And rich people have certain privileges.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Connected.
Chris: Well, that's. Yeah, we'll get to that. I mean, that's speculation on my part as well. But anyway, the article continues on. But rather than going out and making a big stock market play, this isn't a direct quote from. I'm paraphrasing here, but the thought is that, oh, he sped across the English Channel, made this huge stock market or bond play or whatever ahead of the news, and then, like, profited off the war again. So actually, what it turns out is that when he learned this info, he actually took it immediately to the british government, whereupon it then became public knowledge.
Kayla: Oh, okay, well, that's a little different then.
Chris: Later, long after Waterloo, Nathan was able to make some savvy predictions about the direction that the bond market it would take in Britain over the next couple years as a result of this war having been resolved.
Kayla: That's a whole different story.
Chris: Which years? Like, I think two or three years later, came to fruition and made him a lot of money. Now, like I said, like, even this may have some I'm not sure of. Like, the. I'm, like, 99.9% sure, you guys. But there's just so much smoke and mirrors that surrounds this family. But I think what seems plausible to me about it, based on the other things that I read about them, is that they were, like I said before, extremely savvy businessmen.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: So this is what we talked about earlier. Right. Another thing that really gets lost in the antisemitic, like, World banker canards, is that frequently the antagonists in these stories are presented as, like, fundamentally greedy or predatory. Otherwise, how could they make all of that money off of us good christian souls if they weren't greedy and predatory? Right? When in fact, if you look at history, moneylending was something that the jewish people became very good at in the middle ages because their survival depended on it. Running a bank isn't about greed and predation. It's about using smart financial technology, cutting edge bookkeeping, which I could even talk about. I mean, some people think that one of the most important inventions of the past several hundred years is double entry bookkeeping, which is a really boring topic that I won't put on you right now anyway.
Kayla: Okay, but what about, like, Wells Fargo?
Chris: Wells. What about Wells Fargo, Kayla, what about him? Yeah, what about Wells Fargo?
Kayla: Wells Fargo was good.
Chris: Guys, I'm not saying anybody's good or bad. I'm just saying that to make money in banking is not merely a matter.
Kayla: Of, like, being a greedy asshole.
Chris: Being a greedy asshole, right? You have to have these things. You have to have smart financial technology. You have to use financial technology. And I mean that not in like a.
Kayla: Not like a CD Rom.
Chris: Not necessarily like a CD ROM, but like the mathematic behind it, right? And lending methodology, accurate records, all that sort of thing. And finally taking smart risks with your money, which is what it sounded like Nathan did after the battle of Waterloo. Right. It's risky to do, like, when you put a lot of money into something, it's a big risk, right? So you have to make those risks smartly. And if you do, they pay off. And if they don't, you go out of business, and then you're somebody that nobody history remembers. But we do remember the Rothschilds, because all the things I just said they did. And I just think that gets lost a lot. To this day, anyway, it also seems likely that there's some kernel of truth to the mythological crossing of the stormy English Channel to insider trade, the Waterloo News.
Chris: So it does seem reasonable that a man in position of power like Nathan Rothschild might have had knowledge of world events earlier than most.
Kayla: I mean, that's a problem that we try to solve. Solve is like, how do we prevent people in power from doing insider trading? And it's like, it happens all the.
Chris: Time, and the people in power just use that to prevent everyone else from insider trading while they do just that and make a shit ton of money off of it.
Kayla: Zoom.
Chris: And I'm not kidding.
Kayla: Companies before a global pandemic.
Chris: Yeah, don't get me started on fucking insider trading, man. Anyway, it seems reasonable, too, that he might have informed the British of such an event. After all, we talked about this, that his bank branch was helping to fund. Actually, I think he was specifically helping to fund Lord Wellington's military expeditions in the napoleonic wars. Not like he worked with him directly instead of the british government. I wasn't super clear on that. It was kind of confusing. Like, everything with this is super confusing. But anyway, it seems reasonable that he would learn about it early and that he would tell the british government that. Seems reasonable to me.
Chris: Anyway, the Rothschild family began to decline in the latter half of the 18 hundreds, and by World War One, their system of five banks being helmed by one of the five descendants of Meyer Rothschild was basically gone, thanks to a variety of factors that I won't go into all here. A few notable events for the non london branches of the family. The French Rothschild bank was nationalized in the 1980s by the socialist leaning french government at the time. But I didn't go into this too. I didn't, like, research this too much, but basically they just restarted from scratch. They were like, oh, you took our bank. I guess we'll start a new one with nothing. I mean, not with nothing but a few hundred thousand dollars, which to them is nothing.
Chris: And I guess that it's one of the biggest private banks in Europe again now.
Kayla: Oh, interesting.
Chris: Okay, so, like, again, competence porn. The Neapolitan, which means from Naples. So, like, the Naples branch, the italian branch, they didn't survive italian unification in the late 18 hundreds. They were actually one of the first branches to kind of, like, decline once the unification happened. Long story short, they had to sell off all their holdings and basically close up shop. The Vienna branch didn't survive the Nazis.
Kayla: That makes sense.
Chris: But generally speaking, the family has weathered the. Yeah, there's like, a whole thing I didn't get into here, but, like, they're, you know, they have, like, a lot of estates and art and the Nazis looted it. And post World War two, there was like, they. I think the governments of those countries, like, tried to return a lot of their stuff, but, like, I don't know how much of it got returned.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: Like, I'm skipping a lot here.
Kayla: Well, that's because there's got to be.
Chris: Some stuff left for the book, right? You guys are just gonna have to read Mike's book. So, yeah, the Vienna branch didn't survive the Nazis, but generally speaking, the family has weathered the centuries pretty well, considering their holdings and, like, the size of their family tree that we mentioned earlier. Earlier, they're still around. Right. And I don't know. It's interesting because the Rothschilds just kind of feel like this sort of like microcosm or avatar or lightning rod for, like, our western culture's tropes about the jewish people in general.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: We have, like, a bias, originated in medieval Europe about jewish bankers and, you know, in banking. And the Rothschilds are, like at the center of that and like, did that very successfully and invented international banking. And it's kind of hard to tell what's chicken and egg with them. Right. Were they a part of that bias, that societal sort of like, well, it came out of that. Or are they contributing to it or both. And they have been extremely successful despite, or maybe even because in some cases of the hardships they faced. And they're survivors still going strong today, and they're at the center of antisemitic canards that unfortunately, all jewish people face. And, you know, like, your average jewish person isn't a wealthy international banker.
Chris: So the point is, it just like, it's just interesting to me that they seem like this sort of like, I don't know. Yeah, microcosm, like of like the, a whole lot of things that. A whole lot of canards and a whole lot of, like, biases and tropes that jewish people face in our culture.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: I, so this comes back to the question that I pondered with Mike. What makes some of these tropes so durable that they've been around for hundreds of years? I mean, like, the usurus jew, Kennard was around for hundreds of years before the Rothschilds even came on the historical scene. So what is it? And I think my answer for this, and this is just me maybe curious to see what you think, but I think it's a combination of, like, two things. And Mike brought up couple of these. Certainly he brought up this first one, is the jewish diaspora means that jewish communities are consistently outsiders in Christendom. So, like, you always have this out as, as Christians, as european christian Europeans, you always have this group to point to point at and to blame problems on.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So you have that and you combine that with sort of like how I tried to illustrate at the top of the episode. Money lending is like, inherently, like, very emotional and very power dynamic oriented.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: And so you combine these two things. You combine. You have this bit of a powder keg of conspiracy fuel, right? You have an easy target of outsiders, and you have a gun full of, like, I am angry at XYZ power dynamic because of money stuff, whether that be mismanagement of your own financial affairs that's causing that anger or anger at Lockheed Martin making a buck off building missiles. I have anger at that or just plain bad luck. I think it's that combination of that sort of emotional powder keg of the flow of money with the outsider diaspora of the jewish people that is at the heart of it, at least for this particular international banking cabal canardous that the Rothschilds have unfortunately become a mascot for. Right, are you ready for criteria?
Kayla: Oh, we're doing that? Yeah, let's do it.
Chris: Because I haven't done criteria yet this year.
Kayla: I haven't done criteria yet this year.
Chris: No, you've done it twice.
Kayla: Oh, I did. I did it twice, yeah.
Chris: For the tea. And then. Didn't you just. What was one you just did?
Kayla: No idea.
Chris: Oh, corporate culture.
Kayla: Corporate culture. Thank you.
Chris: Didn't we do? Didn't we do? Didn't we? Didn't.
Kayla: Nope.
Chris: So we've only done criteria once?
Kayla: Yep.
Chris: Oh, man, that's. That's messed up. That's like. That's why people come to the show.
Kayla: Let's do it.
Chris: It's like you said, though, it's a little weird.
Kayla: What's the conspiracy? What's the cult? Is it the Rothschilds or is it.
Chris: No, I think it's. I think it's the conspiracy theory.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: It's a little weird because it's, like, the conspiracy. The conspiracy theory is more of, like a feature or a trope than an actual cult. You know, it's not like QAnon where it's like, there's, like, a group and they believe things. It's like, this is a belief that things like QAnon take on. So there's no, like, the anti Rothschild Club or whatever. It's just like a conspiracy narrative that other groups pick up from the conspiracy buffet.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But let's give it a whirl anyway.
Kayla: Okay.
Chris: Charismatic leader.
Kayla: I don't know who is at the forefront of saying the Rothschilds are bad, and it seems to be one of those things where it's a little bit emergent.
Chris: Well, there was that pamphlet writer. There's the pamphlet writer that Mike talked about. But, like, yeah, I think it's just one of the. Certainly, like, because the conspiracy is sort of just. It's another iteration of like, anti semitic canards. It's like it predates the Rothschilds anyway, so. And it's like, who knows? Like who knows? Like who the first person was to think to like blame Jews for stuff, you know? So I think it's low on charismatic leader expected harm. I don't think we need to go into how high that was. I didn't talk about this very much, but Rothschilds were the Nazi. Actually, Mike mentioned this, that the Nazis blamed them. They used them as like a blame stick.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: During their campaigns.
Kayla: Fucking sucks.
Chris: There was actually a trio of propaganda films that were produced and one of them was specifically about the Rothschilds. Anyway, I don't think I needed to mention that to know that this is extremely harmful.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Presence of ritual conspiracy theories, man.
Kayla: I think passing down canards is a ritualistic thing.
Chris: I agree. Yeah.
Kayla: And we talked about it a little bit with the QAnon episode where we discussed the history of blood libel. And I feel like the passing down of those stories and that mythology is very ritualistic.
Chris: Yeah, I agree. High on ritual niche within society. Like, not too many people even really know about the Rothschilds.
Kayla: See, but I just, I feel like. I disagree. I feel like the. Maybe the Rothschilds. No, I feel like if you went out onto the street and were like those Rothschilds, I feel like people would know what you were talking about. And I feel like the depends on the street, the canard of there being like a wealthy global cabal. Rich, money lending jewish people, jewish families. That's very well known.
Chris: Right, that's true. And actually, like a lot of what, we didn't talk about this either because we're trying to keep down on time.
Kayla: But, you know, we've been recording for an hour and 20 minutes.
Chris: Oh, Jesus Christ. Okay, excuse me, sorry.
Kayla: Everybody talking.
Chris: Well, I talk a lot. I am very long winded. Anyway. Soros is another thing that comes up here. Soros is sort of like the, you know, and Mike mentioned this sort of the modern.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Rothschild. So, yeah, if you look at it in a broader lens, then I agree that actually it's not super niche anti factuality. It's a conspiracy theory.
Kayla: So it's high, my friend.
Chris: It's pretty high there a lot. And then, you know, it does the usual thing of like, the more you have evidence against it is more proof that they're hiding something from you. Life consumption, I think it can consume some people's lives. We didn't really, I didn't research that much. Like, honestly, part of this is, like, I more just researched, like, the history of the Rothschild.
Kayla: I guess where we're gonna leave this one is. I would need more information. I feel like if you connect this directly to something like QAnon, which, you know, that line is very clear, then you could make the argument that, like, wow, this really can take over somebody's life.
Chris: It can. Yeah. So, yeah, I kind of feel like for all of these, it's just like, we need to wait for Mike's book, because I think his book is going to talk more about the conspiracy stuff.
Kayla: Mike put the criteria in your book.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. We'd really hit the big time then. Dogmatic beliefs. We're right. Everybody else is wrong.
Kayla: Hi. I guess high in a conspiracy theory like that.
Chris: Yeah, that's true. In a conspiracy land. Yeah. You do kind of feel like you're. You against everyone.
Kayla: Special knowledge.
Chris: Right. The special knowledge aspect. Yeah. Chain of victims. I definitely think that this get the. The aspect of passing it down.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: Like, you can create a new. A whole new generation of victims by, like, passing these canards down. I don't think it does the same sort of, like, MLM pyramid scheme thing, but it's mid. Mid. And then the last one, which I. I do think we should add for the season, I think. Can we consider this added safe or unsafe exit? How safe is it? Is it to. We're doing it, baby. We talked about it on a preview. We talked about it on the second episode on your. I was like, I want to add this one.
Kayla: Let's add it.
Chris: Okay. So is it safe or unsafe to exit the group? Being that this doesn't really have a group and it's more of just, like, a conspiracy trope, I would say this is maybe, like, Naezen. Not applicable.
Kayla: I would say, again, I need more information because it's not super safe to leave QAnon.
Chris: That's true.
Kayla: Ways, but I don't know. I can't. I don't want to just apply the QAnon label to everything, because it's probably possible to believe in this conspiracy theory without. Oh, it's definitely possible being in the full Q sphere. So I'm not sure.
Chris: Q is just the latest iteration of people that believe in this. Right. This outlives, this predates and will outlive Q.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: So I would say that people that tend to believe in these things, maybe whatever they are exiting from is probably not super fun. So mid to high. I don't know. It's like, I just, I think it, like, it hits some of the. Hits some of the points here, but it just doesn't, like, I don't know, do we need to have a criteria of, like, it's a group of people rather than, like, an idea?
Kayla: Yeah, I think that ultimately, this is a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theories can have. Can hit on the cult criteria, but conspiracy theories are not necessarily themselves cults.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. But what is nice about not nice, it's bad.
Kayla: What's nice about.
Chris: What's lovely about this antisemitic thing? No, what's good about the knowledge here is that I feel like it ties neatly into what were talking about in the first episode of the season in that it is a trope. And so if you can kind of recognize these tropes, then it helps you kind of, like, think about what, you know, this, whatever. Whatever it is that you're applying it to, like, oh, I've seen this before. I've seen this, like, international banking cabal thing before. I've seen this thing where war profiteering can make people frustrated, which then makes them, you know, target an out group to take out their frustrations on.
Kayla: And we will see it again.
Chris: And we will see it again. So, sources, because sources are important. For this episode's research, I used Wikipedia, of course, encyclopedia britannica, ceylon.com. And so here's the article titled Do Jewish Bankers control the weather? A short history of this dumb but ugly conspiracy theory. And that, by the way, that follows the rule of thumb that if it's asking a question, the answer is no. No. Jewish bankers don't control the weather. Next source is Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Washington Post, Paul Sammons Associates blog Salmans Paul Salmans, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, but I did look into them a little bit. They do a lot of good work. I encourage you to check out their website, ajc.org, comma, that stands for the American Jewish Committee.
Chris: I think I mentioned the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and of course, our interview with Mike Rothschild, no family relation. And I very much look forward to when his jewish space Lasers book is published. As always, these links will be in the show notes. And please send me corrections and correct me where I have may have been wrong or inaccurate, because this topic is extremely challenging, both in terms of how much potential for damage there is by covering it poorly and also in terms of how difficult it is to, like, actually isolate good nuggets of information about this family in particular. So I would love to hear about things that I got wrong, and I will absolutely issue corrections on the show. So, Kayla, before we sign off, I kind of want to do a little self reflection.
Kayla: All right.
Chris: This is why I wanted to open the show with a discussion of how you and I might personally feel about the idea of banking and charging interest, because I found myself questioning myself, found me questioning myself quite a bit when I was reading about some of the Rothschild Kenards. Specifically, I think that we have, like, a bit of a blind spot on the liberal left, especially further left, for these kinds of, like, emotionally charged reactions to situations where we feel completely powerless.
Kayla: Are you directing this directly at me?
Chris: I mean, both of us, but, like. But yes. I mean, certainly, like, statements that we made during this episode today about banks are evil and charging interest is evil. How many times have you and I joked about, like, oh, we should guillotine the billionaires every day? That joke hits me a little different, actually, after doing this research.
Kayla: So what you're saying is, won't somebody think of the billionaires? I mean, no. I think it is very fair to say, hey, man, you cannot. It is important to not forget about the intersectionality of everything. And if you engage in perpetuating anti semitic canards in your political leanings and your political viewpoints and your political talkings, then that is a problem that is problematic, to use our favorite word. I think it is the correct thing to do to remember that when you perpetuate stereotypes and prejudice and things like that, even if it's towards a quote unquote group that has more power than you billionaires, you can also be doing harm to a group that has less power than you marginalized groups that is jewish people in our society.
Chris: Yeah, it kind of makes me think about, like, I just think about the slippery slope, right? Like, the on ramping. Like, sure. Like, if we're gonna sit here and bust on, you know, people that are like, oh, Atlantis, you are anti semite. Like, yeah, then I'm gonna think this sort of the same. And, like. And granted, that's, like, a simplification. Like, that's not what I think, but I'm going to bring the same scrutiny to this, where I'm like, oh, if he's thinking twice about how cool Atlantis is because it's dangerous, maybe we should also be thinking twice about how cool it is to say guillotine the billionaires, because that is also smuggling in some antisemitic potential canards there as well into our thinking. And that can be dangerous.
Chris: And the only way to, I don't know, the only cure for this kind of stuff is constant vigilance, as we've said before.
Kayla: No, that's a good perspective. That's a good point. And I will be carrying that with me as I continue on in my day of being upset at wealthy people.
Chris: And I'm not saying billionaires are all wonderful people, right? Obviously we're not saying that.
Kayla: But like the Rothschild.
Chris: Yeah, exactly. There's nuance. And the Rothschild family was like, only ever responsible for good, never ill. Like, far from it. Like they hardcore participated in colonialism, as I, you know, just in the minor number of things I mentioned. Right. But what I am saying is, yeah. Is that I feel weird about the temptation to place all of society's ills on the head of a few powerful elites and then joke about chopping their heads off as if that'll suddenly solve all of those world problems. Right. I'm like, reminded of these memes on twitter that say something like, the world, if so and so, didn't exist. And it's, you know, it's like future utopia land, you know, I don't know.
Chris: And I also noticed, like, a lot of similarity about how, like, you know, a lot of leftists talk about landlords and other, quote unquote, parasites on society. And it makes me pretty queasy whether it ties directly to anti semitic canard or not. Right? Like, it's not like we'll sit here and say landlords are evil and then also say, because jewish. Because we're nothing racist, nasty pieces of shit. But like, I don't know, man. Like, how different is the all landlords are evil on ramp from some of the other on ramps we've talked about.
Kayla: It just makes me think a lot about, if you've seen, there's a meme that I have seen shared by far leftists and far right extreme rightists. And it is an image of a group of older looking, suit wearing, bearded men sitting around what looks to be like a board game table.
Chris: Oh, I know the one you're talking about.
Kayla: Like a monopoly table. And the board game table is on the backs of a group of hunched over men. And the, I don't know, the writing, the words say something like all we have to do is stand up and their little game is over. And it's really, it's unfortunate how easy it is for people on the left to look at that and go like, yeah, billionaires. Yeah, the elites. Yeah. If we just all, you know, joined collectively together and stood up, their little game would end without realizing that the origins of that meme are from far right. Anti semitic, global cabal. Literally what we've been talking about this episode. Conspiracy theory.
Chris: Right, right. And there's also, like, a tinge, too, to some of this, of, like, punish thine enemies, which is a little bit q, right. So it's. Oh, no, it just, you know, it just makes me think, like, I. And it's. But it's weird because, like, I do, you know, think that there's, like, a lot. I don't know, it's so hard because, like, you want to say, like, Jeff Bezos has too much money, but, like, you have to think about, like, what does that mean? Like, Jeff Bezos made a lot of money based on how we've structured our society and how we structured our economy. And it rewards people that have these shareholders and companies that become insanely large.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And I think, I'm. I don't know, this is, like, tangenting a little bit here, but, like, I think that this is part of why I'm more, like, pro union than, like, pro taxation. Not that I'm against taxation.
Kayla: Get out of here.
Chris: Not that I'm against taxation, but, like, if I had to choose, like, whether to put that money in Uncle Sam's pocket or in the pocket of, like, all of the Amazon workers who made that money, then I think that's actually better. Right?
Kayla: Why not both?
Chris: I know. Why not both? And I'm not saying, like, yeah, no taxes, zero taxes. But definitely, like, I'm not saying that. I'm just like, rather than be like, you know, take away his money down, off with his head, like, I'm more inclined to support the fact that, like, why did he make that much money in the first place? Is it because there's a bunch of Amazon workers who make, like, jack shit and, like, should be sharing in the wealth that company has created for society? Like, we can both say, like, hey, good job Amazon, at providing a valuable, prime service to everybody. Good job, Rothschilds, at making, like, a really successful bank and being savvy financially. Can you share, please? You know, like, I think that's fine.
Kayla: I'm not fully on the same page as you with that.
Chris: I'm a little speculating as far as the tax thing. All I'm trying to say with that is I think that's why I veer in my mind, unions are. I'm like, rah. Unions on top and then other things below that.
Kayla: Sure. I'm just saying I'm not fully on the same page as you with that. Which is fine. And obviously, there's. This is a very large conversation. I also just want to point out that I think it is important to remind ourselves that there are not widespread arguments of, yeah, let's just chop Jeff Bezos head off, and that'll solve all the problems. Like, there is also nuance, the arguments coming from the left as to how billionaires should or should not exist in society. So we also shouldn't fall down that slippery slope of painting that argument as unnuanced.
Chris: Yeah, it shouldn't be like, hey, anti semitic canards exist, therefore billionaires are uncriticizable. Like, that's also wrong.
Kayla: So these are hard conversations to have, you guys.
Chris: Very difficult. So I'll just say, I hope you enjoyed this bit of history, and I hope, as always, you think about your blind spots and your own worldview, where you might be applying some conspiratorial thinking and. And how that might place other human beings inadvertently in a crosshairs. And also by Mike's book, when it comes out.
Kayla: I'll do that.
Chris: This is Chris, this is Kayla, and this has been cult or just space lasers, billionaires. Oh, yeah, space lasers.