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right wing politics that led to the election and administration of the greatest troll, donald trump. she examines how they got into the situation and with many differing opinions and how to deal with troll nation how to best do so. engage or not engage. protests against speakers like charles murray. or allow their ideas to be heard denying them and their followers the cherish victim. especially when the actual content is there. and paul is that further into motivation and intent. without understanding and stepping into those arguments where they cannot be agreed upon. and how they found a leader

who shares their contempt for empirical truth and gives them the easy shocks they get off on but also warns that trolls would access to the very highest levels of power regardless of their motivation and on in position to or have done tremendous harm to society on the long cherished ideas. in chapters that in turn address certain issues like women's rights. amanda spells out how trolls have entered the discussion not with reason and arguments and facts and data but with a singular focus on the liberals. due to the mostly conservative communities that they claim to represent. she persuasively argues that there is a way out and while she says she. she writes you can't reason

someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into that they can be outvoted if liberals are willing to actually show up at the polls. the failure to do so risks allowing those viewpoints to prevail. with a motivated base who will turn out. and well regardless of the damage that ensues even to themselves enthusiastically support policies that further marginalized groups. more important that those despised suffer and they went. when was the kind quote that makes us chuckle about our foibles and shared humanity. public content and ridicule. that's what i do.

they can tell the truth with the bark on it. anyone that is ridiculous and go after the bad guys with all the energy that you have. please welcome amanda markoff. now they have a lot to live up to. thank you so much for coming. >> thank you for having me. i had been reading the book in the worst thing you can do to a troll's laugh at them. one would hope. mazy girl. i do think that donald trump has created his own personal hell in a lot of ways.

i do think also that a lot of people that are into trolling so they don't necessarily grasp sometimes how much they are being laughed at. is it the lack of self-awareness or is it well for willful in that sense. i do think that i never stop being amazed about how many men come at me on twitter and they don't seem to grasp that women can be funny work and make fun of them. i think it's just a category error. on their part. >> is it because they have a circumscribed view of what women can do in this particular case.

they just something of women as people that generate humor. you can sit there and make fun of them all day and my just be a translation issue. there is a well-known internet sane which is don't feed the trolls i know in the book you wrestle with that. i continue to wrestle with it. i don't know that i'm ever can have the answer to this question and i know a disappointing thing to say because you read book for answers. but i think that the problem especially with this kind of right wing chile. -- trolling. they are only brought there in

the sense to troll but they also have ideas about racism and sexism, they are pushing bigoted notions. if you don't need people making bigoted arguments. they will interpret that as community assent. there is evidence to back to sometime save you sometimes they feel like they been validated and speaking for the communities. i think that people instinctively just trolls in public and to confront them into arguments them are doing the right thing the question is how can we do that without feeding their victim complex and then on their other narrative which is we are martyrs. et cetera et cetera. i don't know there's everone right answer but i do think that having hash this out with a number of people including some folks at the property

loss center. the best way to deal with them is to bring them the debate that they claim they want but they don't actually want. maybe not go shut me down but the outside of the event and handout literature or talk to some people about what your views are and just try to actually make positive idea based arguments. it's not sexy but it works i think that's different from what we see a lot in the news. mainstream journalists i wanted to ask you about both of these sites. they seem to seek out not extreme cases but the idea that you have to find every single folder and find out what they think and that's not really a counterweight. is there a form where you can

actually hear those ideas encounter them or is it everything so silent right now. >> i don't think things are as silent as we think. i think we can go out there and look in people having conversations across partisan lines every day i think my objective to some of that is to go out to rural america and talk to some working-class trumpet supporters they distort the realities of what's going on when he should be eliminating those realities. so one thing we know the majority of voters are not working class. they are upper-class i think that therefore by pushing the narrative that the average trumpet voter is a working-class person they hide the fact that the average

voter a white white person. not class status or anything of that nature one of the things you talk about in the book we talk about that a little bit. it's in the book. as probably quoting david rogers. i think it's one of the things the most interesting. i feel like the right wing tribe has only kind of formed in a cohesive way in the past few decades. but a lot of the people that are in the right wing tribe and have an allegiance to be in a republican or conservative or whatever else you caught i don't think they

would've thought of themselves as a try. now, i think we had sideload off into tribal identities in a lot of ways. and so much what makes that exist is that they have a notion of themselves as a group of people that have their own identity that isn't to say that they didn't didn't have an allegiance. .. ..

>> it's not just barack obama. like, fox news, rush limbaugh, there's been all these forces, like, reaching out to a certain kind of, like, white american and trying to convince them they're a member of a tribe opposed to these other people for decades now. barack obama, however, did seem like an alien to, you know, the kind of white people i grew up with out in, like, rural texas, you know? they've never met somebody with a name like barack obama, they don't know that many black people to begin with. and so the idea that somebody like that could be supported enough to become president must have felt like a shock to their system. it must have felt like they did -- that this country was not the one that they know. >> so i don't like to wait til the end to open it up to

questions. so i'd like to start right here. so what i'll do is, if you have a question, i'll make sure everybody can hear it, and i'll repeat it. so if you do have a question, throw your hand in the air. and we'll start with you folks. hi, go right ahead. >> what do you make of this conundrum -- to me, it's a conundrum -- on the one hand, we decry the meanness of -- [inaudible] and yet we adore -- [inaudible] who is self-described as mean, like she's on our side. so how do we deal with that? that's a contradiction, wouldn't you say? >> so the question was, i don't think everybody heard it, how do you deal with what can be potentially described as a sort of meanness on a side that politically you agree with? >> that's a really good question and something that i think has been coming up a lot especially, i think, as there's a sense that hatred and anger is sort of

escalating in this country. but really in this book i'm trying to argue not against meanness or, you know, invective even really. i use both those things myself a lot. [laughter] >> effectively. >> more of the emptiness of it. i think what the difference, to me, is that the right has lost all sense of argument or basis of argument, that they've lost the culture war arguments, they've lost the economic arguments, they've lost the scientific arguments. and so all that's left is anger, invective, resentment and a desire for revenge. i simply don't see the evidence that's true on the left. yes, people on the left are can be mean, i can be mean. they can be insulting. but i have an idea of, like, a set of policy ideas that i believe in, a set of principles that i believe in. and at the end of the day, i think most of them would actually help most conservative americans who also need clean air, clean water to, you know, breathe and drink.

they could use health care through obamacare, they could use the social safe i net. so i think the difference is i don't think liberal politics are, at their core, about punishing the right simply for existing, and i don't think the reverse is true. >> you mention in the book an amazing set of thetistics in terms -- statistics in terms of policies people support when they're asked. >> i can't remember right off the top of my head. >> as soon as i said, you're like, wait, you're going to have to quote the numbers. it is quite remarkable. maybe it's the matter with kansas idea where people voted against their own interests. >> well, define own interests, and i think that's where i really disagree with thomas frank. >> okay. >> like, i think he correctly assessed that culture war politics are often a distraction in a way from economic policies in politics, so i agree with him on that. but what i disagree with is he, i think, buys into an argument

that a lot of us on the left buy into which is that, therefore, culture war politics aren't real, right? that what people are getting out of the sort of racial bigotry and sexism and, you know, flag-waving nationalism or whatever kind of culture war politics you want to decry today, that that's meaningless. and, obviously, i think that's condescending as an argument. i think that it is underestimating what conservative americans are sort of basing their world view on to a certain extent. i mean, i do think that they get something out of it. i don't think they're idiots. and i think, you know, you could make an argument that it's maybe that they just don't have anything else. i think there is validity to that, and i kind of try to make that argument in this. but i think, ultimately, like, that sense of self-esteem that they get from feeling kind of superior is not something to underestimate. >> you break down the famous

quotation from barack obama when you talk about clinging to guns and and religion. you say that that might be an example of what you're talking about. because the entire quote, i think, speaks to what you're addressing right now. >> yeah. and he got raked over the coals. and it's actually one of those kind of perfect examples of the e thesis of this book. obama made a speech that i felt like was, at its core, very sympathetic to right-wing america. like, he said that they feel cut out -- the kind of trump voters that "the new york times" sort of romanticizes. they feel kind of can cut out of american mainstream, they feel like they're being left behind by the world, therefore, they cling to their guns and their god. and they're bitter, right? and i think he was accurately assessing them. and they are so angry -- [laughter] about it. they call, like, if you go on right-wing sites, you'll often see them identify themselves as

bitter clingers. [laughter] and, like, it's -- the anger, it's like it proves it, right? like the bitterness of that sort of proves his point, and yet they think they're retaliating against it. or maybe do they? i think there's maybe a sort of admission it's true, and yet a desire to punish and win anyway. it's a little incoherent, but i think that tells us a lot about the politics we're at now. >> and i think that, the butchering of that old sentiment and also in the last political race, the butchering of the speech where hillary clinton referred to basket of deplorables, really problem pro. as presented in full, maybe it still would make no difference because people hear what they want to hear, but i wanted to ask you about both sides and how that damages the discourse. and i think inadvertently plays into "troll nation."

>> yeah. i mean, one of the things that advantages "troll nation" is the both siders-ism. and i understand why mainstream journalists want to seem fair and evenhanded. ing so it's created this myth that if the right does something, then the left must do it in an equal measure, right? so if the right elects donald trump, i don't know, the left needs some oliver stone president or something. [laughter] but that -- >> i must admit to that. >> it obviously didn't happen -- >> right. >> -- but you see a similar kind of rhetoric going on to. and the right sort of knows that they do this and sort of exploit it. it kind of is a permission slip for them to go as far as they want to and be as ridiculous as they want to because on some level they know journalists are going to try to normalize that by saying, well, that's just politics, both sides do it equal

measure. donald trump is a master at this, actually. he is constantly creating these false equivalences. >> more questions, please. over here. >> you said earlier -- [inaudible] argument and how would you make a difference -- [inaudible] >> so the question is the difference between idea-based and fact-based arguments. >> that's a good question. you know, i think an idea-based, when i talk about idea-based arguments, i think it's very much around, like, what your values are and what you think will accomplish those values. what your stated values are and how your policies or ideas will generally fulfill it. so when i say that the left is still an idea-based kind of thing, i think we have certain ideas. we think people should be equal and, therefore, we have some policy ideas about that.

we feel things like health care and shelter are rights. so we create policy ideas based around that. and it's not that the right hasn't done that traditionally. and i think to a certain extent still does, you know? it's just i think a lot of their ideas have failed, and they haven't been able to come up with new ones. and so all that's left is the sort of vortex of nihilism and anger. [laughter] and i know that sounds extreme, but it's true. i mean, you think about what were some of the classic right-wing arguments? traditional family values. that's a legitimate argument. i don't agree with it, but the notion that men have a role, and women have a role, and it creates stability in the home and that that's a desirable thing, but that's an argument, but it's not one that makes sense when you elect donald trump thrice married, multiple

adulterer. in red america people are living their lives in a way that shows they've given up on the idea of the traditional family structure. like, they have premarital sex, they get divorced more than in blue states. it's -- they've lost that argument. so instead they're just angry, and they're going to elect this, like, open, leering misogynyst that sort of lays naked which was, i feel, a little bit underneath that. >> more questions, please. right here. >> i have a question about -- a. [inaudible] one thing i think is that the right -- [inaudible] take a lot of pleasure in the outrageous. and i think they think that the left is -- [inaudible] you know, queer outrageousness, so they want to be outrageous too, it's this weird way of mimicking what they think identity politics are? so is i guess -- [inaudible] so i was just curious if you had

any thoughts about, like, can the left -- [inaudible] or, like, do you think there is this kind of weird -- [inaudible] of the left sometimes or what they imagine the left gets to do that they don't get to do? i'm just curious. >> i think it's a really good observation and absolutely, like, jealousy and biting people's style is a huge part of what i think is driving this kind of alt-right way of thinking about politics. and it goes back to that what about-ism that he was talking about, both sider-ism. i think right-wingers have read saul alinsky's -- [inaudible] and they are kind of borrowing, i think to great effect, so somf his ideas. they're not rolling that humor and trolling are effective political strategies. i would be the first to say that, used correctly, like, trolling can actually work as a political strategy.

my question is when you -- what are you trolling for? like, what is your end goal? like, what are your actual values? and i think that's where the big difference is. i think trolling has become an end in and of itself on the right, just sticking it to liberals has become the end whereas ideally if you're doing a saul alinsky-style troll, it's turned people's attention to a positive change you want to see in society. [laughter] does that -- i hope that answers your question. >> yeah, thank you. >> thank you. other questions. yes, right here. >> [inaudible] how do you define, how do you describe trolling? online harassment -- [inaudible] i'm curious of, like, what your main theory for trolling or, like, how you would explain it. >> so the question is what is the baseline definition of trolling. >> i mean, the most basic form of trolling is being deliberately provocative to get

a rise out of somebody else, you know? so that you can kind of make a spectacle out of their reaction. right? i think that's kind of where trolling has begun, like, especially on the a a lt- alt-right that drew a lot of people in. it's inherently a sadistic act, right? you're trying to make somebody else look like a fool by, like, provoking them to act in a way that you think looks humiliating for them. and it is clear to me that that is why, that's kind of why i wanted to go with this for the book, because i feel like above all other things voting for donald trump was an act of trolling. like, the whole point of voting for donald trump is because you feel like it's going to anger liberals and make them mad, and then you can mock their liberal tears and their snowflake reactions. and, you know, i think there's more to kind of like the sadism

and desire to punish and i humiliate your opponents, but ultimately why i wanted to use the sort of troll mentality was i wanted to, like, get ready -- a question i think a lot of liberals have which is what motivated that desire to vote for trump in the first place, especially, like, those who voted for him in the primaries. >> i wanted to ask you about sort of the, in terms of book itself, obviously, you write a tremendous amount. how did you approach writing the book differently than, let's say, the number of articles that you write, essays you write? >> well, i was lucky to be writing as a journalist for "salon" while i was writing this. lucky in the sense that it kept me sort of constantly doing research that i could then use and cannibalize for the book. [laughter] not lucky in the sense that working all day and then going home to write at night, that's a

lot of work. [laughter] i didn't -- because the book is on the hot books label, it's supposed to be short, it's supposed to be analytical. i wasn't able to do, like, a lot of independent research for the book, but i was lucky that being a journalist means i already had that on file. >> okay. what was the biggest problem you ran into in writing the book, and how did you get around it? >> my biggest concern, i would say, is that everything is moving so fast in the news cycle right now that you feel like you file be it, and it's not coming out for a few months, and so much other crazy stuff is going to happen. so i acknowledge it in the book, and i try to make it clear that i feel like all these trends that i'm sort of identifying are probably going to continue. i will say the one thing that's true about donald trump as a man and his supporters as people is that their behavior is, i think,

predictable. and so as crazy as the news cycle gets, i think you can kind of predict everything that they're going to do and react because of past behavior. >> more questions, please. right here. thank you. >> [inaudible] the degradation of the sense of shared reality, of -- [inaudible] i guess the idea of -- [inaudible] what's actually underneath that, you no longer have an agreed reality -- [inaudible] >> so the question was having an agreed reality that we all buy into, the role of trolls. and i was going to ask about the concept of devaluing the truth that you write about in the book. >> i thought about this a lot, and i have a chapter about conspiracy theories in particular. and i think that troll nation and trolling has actually made

it easier for conspiracy theories to take off not just in terms of, like, the social media structures that spread them, but also the way of thinking about politics. like if all you care about is getting a rise out of your opponents, humiliating them and just winning at all costs, then things like truth and facts don't matter anymore. and what i find interesting watching trolls, like conspiracy theory trolls like alex jones or donald trump himself is that you can tell on some level that they don't believe the own thing -- the lies that they're telling. like, they just simply don't care, and their audience doesn't really care because they feel like as long as i'm scoring points on to opponent, as long as i'm dumping on liberals, then i can say or do whatever i want. i can accuse hillary clinton of running a pedophilia ring out of a pizza shop because the end goal is that i've a made up mean

things about hillary clinton, and that is good in and of itself. and so i think this has, like, a long tail of it too. this didn't come out of nowhere. i'm very stuck on the notion that climate change is kind of like the original conspiracy theory that once all republicans had kind of signed on to the idea that climate change is a hoax, which is a conspiracy theory, like it opened up the door to whatever, pizzagate, info wars, you name it. because literally the top republicans in this country endorse a pretty lurid conspiracy theory that the majority of scientists around the world are conspiring to hoax us about climate change. >> yes, go ahead. >> [inaudible] it may sound quite a bit or oxymoronic -- [inaudible] goldwater, small government conservatives. simply given trump's not --

[inaudible] nativism. where are principled conservatives in the moderate republican party? >> the question -- >> [inaudible] >> so the question is, basically, are there any more principled conservatives, and how -- is there a way out for conservativism to challenge the existing troll nation wing of the conservative movement. >> that's a really good question, and i think it underpins this whole book. and i think that my answer to that is i think what happens is they lost the argument. the evidence was stacked up against them. i would argue that most of the kind of general conservative arguments about what's good for people and good for society have lost empirically, they've lost the popular vote, they've lost in some fundamental way, and

they know it. and so it's difficult, i think, for them to continue on continuing on. and ill actually say someone like -- and i would actually say someone like paul ryan would be, arguably, a principled conservative in the sense that i think he actually does believe that tax cuts for the wealthy are good for society in some way. but even then he's, he kind of started to become part of what became troll nation in that he pretended to believe that it was good for poor people, and it was good for even middle class people, that he kind of pretended to believe the discredited theory of trickle down economics. and i think that's what happened to them, is they had a bunch of series of arguments and principles, they failedded one of after another -- failed one after another. and then rather than admit defeat, they started to embrace this kind of nihilistic politics. and paul ryan's a good figure to see that happen to because, on one hand, he has an ideology.

on the other hand, he sold it out completely to trumpism because he knew, i think on some level, he couldn't win any other way. >> and it's also, i think, i mean, i think it's not just liberals that troll nation turns their targets on. >> no. yeah. in fact, the thing that's kind of alarming in some red states is that the republican party itself is being subject to increasingly crazy, like, attacks from the right. and i'm from texas originally, and you can definitely see it going on in texas. there's a group called empower texans. they are using dark money like from oil billionaires in the state. there's a lot of extremely right-wing oil billionaires in texas who are willing to spend a lot of money secretly, and they spend most of it primarying republicans in state legislature. they don't spend it trying to

beat democrats. they don't have to. democrats have been gerrymandered out of power in that state. so instead they target people like the texas speaker of the house, joe strauss, who was kind of an old school business republican who wasn't really interested much in these culture war politics. and they basically have effectively pushed him out of the speakership. and that's happening in texas, i would argue that that was happening to a large extent in wisconsin. i think there's, you can see it happening in ohio. and what it is, is this effort to sort of make all conservative politics just this sort of all-out fundamentalist culture war. >> is it an achilles heel of that kind of politics that they actually can't govern? [laughter] >> yeah. i mean, they have no interest in governing, right? i mean, like governing i think at its core is still based in

the sort of, like, general idea for the common good, and i think they've rejected that as an ideal. >> there's a really fascinating study that you talk about, and it's public opinion quarterly. you talk about why troll nation actually posits the idea that they do. and they're asked questions in different ways. can you relate that where they're -- if, it's about barack obama's birth certificate. >> oh, yeah. >> i found that fascinating. >> yeah. >> and very revealing. >> i don't have the exact study in front of me right now, but there has been research that shows that if you ask, like, conservatives if they believe barack obama was born in the united states, it sort of depends on how the question is framed. if you frame it as we're doing a trivia quiz about how knowledgeable you are about politics --

[laughter] conservatives will accurately say that barack obama was born in hawaii. if you frame it in terms of culture war politics, they will say he was born in kenya or not in the united states. so it's clear that on some level believing that barack obama is concealing where he was born isn't a sincere belief, but what it is is a way to stick it to liberals. >> right. >> and to sort of show your tribal affiliation. >> more questions. yes. >> amanda, what do you make of the notion that troll aring is its own defense -- trolling is its own defense? i'm only in it for -- [inaudible] totally outrageous, and then when people get upset, well, you can't criticize me on ethical grounds because i'm just doing it to provoke you. >> so the why did they say they're only doing it for the --

[inaudible] i would say that's a good example of what's going on in this political correctness debate. it goes back to the notion that the right knows they can't defend their arguments on their own merits, so they find ways to promote their arguments without having to actually defend them. and one way they do it is say, you know, i'm only being politically incorrect, i'm only trying to get a rise out of you, and if you react negatively, that's on you. because it's a way to deflect the argument, you know? they say something racist, you say i'm going to argue with you on that. they go it was just for the lulls. so they got to advance the racist argument without having to defend the racist argument. and i think to a certain extent these trolling events on campuses where milo or charles murray or somebody goes to to do a speech on campus and draws out protest, they're doing the same thing which is they're trying to make the argument about their right to speak or their right to be provocative without actually

discussing what they're trying to actually say in their provocative argument. it allows them to romanticize what they're doing without actually having to defend it. >> more questions, please. yes, sir. >> yes. you mentioned how so often -- [inaudible] over a few days and how maybe they focus too much on -- [inaudible] i'm kind of curious -- [inaudible] conservatives from all shapes and sizes, but how do you bridge that gap to more accurately portray -- [inaudible] he's been covering, you know -- [inaudible] how do you bridge that gap from what people here in new york -- [inaudible] >> i think the two things are, one -- yeah, lean on people who actually have cultural knowledge

to begin with. i think one of the most frustrating things is all these people who have never, like, lived amongst -- apparently, my tribe that i grew up in is, like, this exotic group of people. [laughter] you know? maybe -- [inaudible] second of all is cover all of them. like, this way of only talking to working class white people, it's creating this very distort vision. talk to the business openers. talk to the -- business owners. talk to the rich people that voted for trump. talk to the people that are going to make your readers uncomfortable because maybe they look a little bit more like them, you know? they're well off, they have a college degree, they voted for trump. and that's a lot of trump voters. >> [inaudible] >> sure. >> i guess or -- [inaudible] because so often -- [inaudible] the biggest gap is the local pretty and the national press -- [inaudible]

reporters, you know -- [inaudible] >> yeah, i think that would be useful. that would be one way to do it especially since local papers or are so often failing because they don't have any financial support. gosh, maybe kick a little bit of that new york times, washington post democracy dies in dark kansan money their way, right? -- darkness money their way, right? [laughter] >> but is there also, to sort of follow up on your question, is there also a responsibility then to flip the idea as well? because i think that both, like we do both sides, there are cliches that head in both directions. i mean, we kind of know what a lot of people think about the new york liberal elite. is there sort of a benefit to perhaps taking that idea and turning it around as well?

>> well, i would like to see, you know, i mean, there's been a couple of efforts to respond to this criticism of the times and ore papers -- other papers by profiling clinton voters, but those efforts have focused on also white, well-off, the stereotype of the clinton voter. and the reality of the clinton voter or is not that. i would like to see some profiles of the actual diversity of clinton voters. and not just clinton voters, like democrats generally. but, you know, if you're going to profile the trump voters, the obvious inverse of that is the majority of voters who voted for hillary clinton which was a diverse coalition. and i don't think that diversity is reflected in the media at all. >> is there, i think there's -- do you think there's an assumption that when someone says working class person, they generally in the media mean a white personsome is. >> yeah. i think that's been proved,

like, over and over again. you see people say working class person and they mean white person. sometimes they'll say white working class, and even that doesn't excuse it in my opinion because, again, you're hiding the fact that the majority of -- or not the majority, but, like, the class of people we call working class is a racially diverse group of people. and, like, black and latino and asian working class people are just not well portrayed in the media. they are hidden completely. and the reality is, especially when you look at labor organization efforts right now, you know, the face of working class labor is female, and it's not white. >> you had a question right here. >> yes. can you talk about how troll nation emerged in part from failures of right-wing ideas and policies and arguments, but do they believe those ideas -- [inaudible] have, in fact, failed?

in reading -- [inaudible] do they actually believe it? >> you can't crack other people's skulls and see what's in their head. [laughter] i've judged from the behavior, and the behavior shows increasingly a lack of at least enthusiasm to defend their own ideas. i mean, you turn on fox news and, i mean, it's true that both msnbc and fox news, "salon" and "national review," like, we spend a lot of time obsessing what the other side's about. i mean, i wrote a book about the other side. [laughter] but i think that i'm stunned by the utter lack of willingness to really argue for and engage ideas on the right. and i think it shows at least a, like maybe they don't acknowledge it for themselves, but there's at least a sense that there's no point anymore. >> wasn't there a report that came out after the romney

campaign which talked about an autopsy after the romney campaign which did talk about how they needed to genuinely change their approach to voters in terms of their ideas? do you recall that? >> yeah, yeah. the rnc autopsy? many a lot of that was sort of -- a lot of that was sort of aimed at engaging if they promoted their ideas correctly, they could get more minority voters in, right? and i think the ideal person for that was, like, susana martinez from new mexico. did i get her name right? she actually kind of tried. she was, like, small government, low taxes and was actually kind of out there trying to promote the idea that latino voters would like these ideas. and she lost completely -- [laughter] like, republican voters took one look at her and her strategy and were like, nope. voted for donald trump instead. so i think that tells you all

you need to know about that. >> right. let me, can we get someone else to ask a question? i'll come back to you. go ahead, please. >> [inaudible] actually going up, getting stronger -- [inaudible] >> so looking at, looking at the trend line of trolls, where are we in the trend line? where's the market on trolls right now? [laughter] >> gosh, i don't know. [laughter] it's so hard to tell with, like, the russian bot noise in there really. like, it seems like trolling got worse, and now we're only just beginning to grapple with the fact that a whole bunch of them were, like, fake. [laughter] that said, i think at least until recently the rise, i think, in my experience -- and this is just anecdotal and just my observation, not backed up with any scientific evidence -- i feel like it was getting worse because like a lot of, like, older people learned how to use

twitter. [laughter] and so there was this, like -- >> and and they use it very well in very positive ways. [laughter] >> well, like, of course, of course. >> however -- >> fife or six -- five or six years ago your average fox news viewer was not on twitter, now they are. and, again, that's just personal anecdote. but i think that more americans generally are on social media, and that's created more trolling behavior on social media. but on the flip side, i think a lot of them were kind offing trolling their relatives and friends to begin with. [laughter] >> thank you. >> so finish. [inaudible] the democrats take the -- [inaudible] >> i'll repeat it. >> and donald trump loses -- [inaudible] >> so what does a, cross your

fingers, post-trump/pence world look like? put on your prognostication hat. >> i thought we learned not to do that after 2016. [laughter] >> disclaimer, past results are no guarantee of future performance. [laughter] >> well, i don't know. i really, i'll give you my hope and my fear. my hope is i look at these kids from the, the parkland kids, and that's my best hope for the future. i see these young people, and there are so many of them that genuinely want a politics of progress, genuinely want a politics of change and genuinely have the optimism that we can kind of get past these tribal politics and think of solutions that actually make for a better tomorrow. [laughter] worst case scenario is redux 2008, right? like, barack obama was elected in no small part because

conservatives and republicans were demoralizedded after the failures of the bush administration. liberals were fired up, and they elected barack obama, and everything was great. and then we got complacent. and they got angry. [laughter] and they got resentful and rageful and gave us donald trump as basically, functionally, an act of revenge for barack obama. and i'm not sure that i see enough evidence that that cycle, that we've found a way to break that cycle of vengeance and seen politics as kind of, conservatives seeing politics as vengeance and liberals kind of only getting it together when they feel they've lost. i don't know. y'all are in the room. you're, like -- [laughter] i hope i can sell the book and convince some people to, like, maybe think about politics differently and hopefully -- because that's the only way it can change, right? >> register to vote, register

ten people to vote. let me go to this gentleman first, and i'll come to you. >> [inaudible] you say that most people did not -- [inaudible] they didn't believe the bullshit? >> so the question did most people just not believe donald trump, even the ones who voted for him anyway, you're saying? >> well, no, i'm asking that question. that's what i'm -- [inaudible] >> well, i mean -- >> [inaudible] you know? [inaudible] >> well, i guess my question would be, like, what did they believe about him. and i think that that's a more, like, a better way to put it which is, like, donald trump changes what he thinks one minute to the next. like, and he will openly lie. and i think his supporters know that and get that about him, and

they just don't care. but i do think that they believe that he's a racist, and i do believe that they believe that he's a sexist. and i do think that they believe that he's going to be a warrior for their tribe. and that's all they care about. and they don't care that he's against bombing syria one second and then bombing syria the next second. they don't care that he said he'll protect medicare and medicaid on the trail, and then he gets into office and sets up -- tees up paul ryan to slash these benefits programs. the fact that every two seconds what he thinks about daca changes. they don't care about that as long as he actually continues to be racist to latinos and continues to assert that real america is this kind of white, christian identity politics. i hope that clarifies, because, i mean, he's not somebody who has policy beliefs, but he is somebody who has cultural beliefs. >> right here, please. >> well, i hope that this

doesn't sound too -- [inaudible] or steven pinker-esque. [laughter] i'm a little older than you, and when i think back to my childhood and when trolls were actually -- [inaudible] and they were throwing lit matches at negro students and axes at their faces and even killing them -- [inaudible] troll nation and even trolls, even the nazis that are coming out online that we haven't in sum moved forward? because i don't think what happened in little rock could happen today. maybe not. what do you think? >> i hope you're right. and i think that there's a lot of evidence for what you're saying. and i think that that's true. i also know that a lot of the times these kind of hate movements sort of rise up and bubble and bubble and then spill

over and surprise people. so, you know, they're not burning churches until they are, right? and that said, i mean, i often joke -- and i'm only half joking -- that we're lucky in our opponents in that, you know, the younger people of this generation despite, like, the alt-right being, you know, the faces of the charlottesville -- [inaudible] more younger, the majority of people that voted for trump are older. and i think that that takes a lot of -- [inaudible] [laughter] like, it takes young people to burn churches and riot in the street and pick up guns and start revolutions. and i do think that the younger generation, while there is a subset of young men that are embracing neo-naziism and really going to the mat with this, i think they are a very small subset of their generation, and i don't think that they have the

numbers to cause the kind of social chaos that you rightfully worry about. >> we'll take one more question if someone's got one. right back here. >> this is, i hope it's not a -- [inaudible] i've noticed this really weird thing -- [inaudible] on twitter to kind of spy on -- [inaudible] like ultra left wing. and what i think is really freaky is the overlapp in conspiracy theory -- overlap in conspiracy theory -- [inaudible] there's one that i call both sides pushing hard and then the deep state is hilarious because the right claims -- [inaudible] the left side -- [inaudible] and it's just cracking me up that they're both pushing, like, the same exact narrative in some cases -- [inaudible] they don't trust it, only trust -- [inaudible] and it's the same exact

behavior, it's just one -- [inaudible] obama's evil, hillary's evil, vote for this crazy person -- [inaudible] >> so the question, i think -- please, correct me if i'm wrong -- is there overlap at the fringes -- >> yeah. >> -- and how does that speak to the idea of troll nation. >> i mean, i think that's true, and we've seen that happen. and there's definitely political theorists of propaganda that could do a better job at discussing the way that, like, trolls and propagandaists kind of exploit these cultural be tensions and prey on left-wing types to sow chaos, right? i think what i would say though is that the difference as far as i can tell is that the crazy conspiracy theory right has traction in their mainstream

media that is not true on the flip side. like, for instance, as it became more and more evident that julian assange is clearly, on some level, a lackey of the russian government, like, liberal -- mainstream liberal sources abandoned him, like, as a source, like, en masse. you don't see "the guardian," you know -- [laughter] really defending julian assange anymore or new yorker or "salon," places like that. whereas these right-wing conspiracy theories are on fox news. like, sean hannity was pumping that seth rich conspiracy theory on prime time television, and you do not see the same thing on the left with -- you're never going to see rachel maddow -- [laughter] talking about the deep state. >> i think that's actually, since you mentioned seth rich, i want to give people sort of a taste of the book. do you want to read a little bit

from the seth rich section that we've carefully marked in advance and just happen, we just happened to land on that, so thank you. [laughter] i think that would be a nice way to wrap things up. >> sure, sure. so if you'll indulge me for a minute, it's just a couple pages from the book. but sean hannity of fox news mainstay since 1996 made a bold attempt in 2017 to change all that by getting a show deeply involved in a conspiracy theory accusing hillary clinton of killing a democratic national committee staffer named seth rich. the whole debacle wasn't just an assault on truth, it was a vile assault on basic human decency and another sign of the rot that has descended on the country. rich died in the early hours of the morning on july 10th, 2016, a couple of weeks before a set of e-mails -- which we now know were stolen by the russian governments -- from dnc staffers

were leaked on internet through wikileaks. at the time of his murder, he was providing tech support for the dnc. the 27-year-old had gone out drinking in his washington, d.c. neighborhood and was murdered in an apparent robbery gone wrong a block from his home in the wee hours of the morning. right-wing conspiracy theorists reacted by trying to argue that rich, and not the russian government, was the source who leaked the e-mails to wikileaks and that he was murdered for it. on the surface, the argument doesn't make sense. conspiracy theorists what about you to believe that rich was trying to shine a light on the dnc primaries so clinton beat bernie sanders, but there was no evidence in the e-mails that were leaked. wikileaks wanted people to believe that and, sadly, many sanders' supporters were suckered by the accusations. but a close examination of the e-mails found that some people in the dnc were grumpy sanders wouldn't concede the race after

clinton had racked up a vote count sufficient to pressuring guarantee the nomination. but a bunch of people were, but a whole bunch of people are deeply invested in denying the russian government is behind the hacked e-mails. that group includes julian assange who went on twitter to insinuate rich was the leaker though it's damn near 100% that he's not. and his failure to prove it is just one more piece of evidence -- [inaudible] that group also includes trump supporters and the portion of sanders' supporters who got taken in by russian propaganda and don't want to admit to themselves or others that they were fooled. the seth rich conspiracy theory is an alex jones-level pile of bull withshit, but it got a lift in the mainstream media when hannity started using his fox news show to start selling this

nonsense to his gullible audience. hannity had hinted many times, but in may 2017 he went all-in. that's when fox news reported that a private investigator named rod wheeler allegedly claimed that seth rich had been communicating with wikileaks before his death. that was untrue. the reports that wheeler had been hired by the rich family were false, he had been hired by a wealthy trump supporter. wheeler himself sued the network saying fox news had fabricated some of his statements. and i just want to pause to say it was so hard to keep track myself of all this stuff. [laughter] no matter, hannity had picked up the stick, and he was running with it. on his fox news show, his radio show and twitter account, hannity relent he isly promoted -- relentlessly promoted this conspiracy theory. hannity's purpose was obvious. if he could convince his

audience that rich had leaked the dnc e-mails to wikileaks, then they had an excuse to dismiss the reams of real world evidence that hackers paid by the russian government did it. explosive developments in the mysterious murder of former dnc staffer seth rich that could completely shatter the narrative that, in fact, wikileaks was working with the russians or there was collusion between the trump call pain and the russians -- trump campaign and the russians. the timing is important to understand hannity's desperation. oi may 9th, trump had fired james comey in an obvious bid to derail the russia investigation. oi may 1 is he admitted that his purpose was obstruction of justice. you know this russia thing with trump and russia's a made-up story. on may 17th robert mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate any potential collusion between the trump campaign and the russian government to commitillegal acts in order to tip the election.

as of this writing, mueller has secured two indictments of campaign staff. the rich gambit was a pathetic ploy to tap into the conspiracy theory-minded nature of 21st century america in an effort to poison his audience against accepting any forthcoming revelations about the administration's involvement with the russian conspiracy to manipulate the election. but it was so over the top that even fox news turned on hannity. on may 23rd, hannity reluctantly agreed to stop embarrassing the network, but he still kept at it on his radio show and on twitter. there was a conspiracy, but not among democrats to kill seth rich. instead it was reported in august that the wealthy trump supporter backing wheeler had been in contact with the white house and fox news about his efforts to claim the dnc and clintoned had rich murdered. these sort of political games have real costs and not just on election outcomes. the rich family has suffer ised greatly because of the exploitation of the murder.

every day we wake up to new headlines, new lies, new factual errors his parents wrote in an editorial on may 23rd. it just won't stop. the amount of pain and anguish this has caused us is unbearable. we are forced to relive seth's murder and a small piece of us dies as more of seth's memory is torn away from us. few things demonstrate the depravity that has swept over conservative america more than the widespread embrace of conspiracy theories. the proliferation of lies is rapidly degrading public discourse which is why lol nothing matters has become the dark sphwhert joke of our time. worse, real people are being hurt by the rapidly i growing pile of bullshit. unfortunately, there's no real remorse fromming troll nation which means we can only expect this problem to expand until it engulfs us all. [laughter] [applause]

>> so, amanda, thank you for being here, thank you for writing the book. everyone, please feel free to stay here in the room, talk to amanda, buy your two copies of the book, please. [laughter] [applause] thank you very much for being here. good night. [cheers and applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's our prime time lineup. first up tonight, peter rubin discusses virtual reality. at 7:30, a look at the strained relationship between president dwight eisenhower and supreme

court chief justice earl warren. at 8:50, sally kohn explores where hate comes from. she's in conversation with former cnn chief political correspondent candy crowley. then on "after words" at 10, journalist jerome corsi argues there's an effort to thwart the presidency of donald trump. he's interview by investive journalist sharyl attkisson. and we wrap up our prime time programming at 11 with former secretary of state condoleezza rice and stanford's amy zegart discussing global insecurity and the future of american diplomacy. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend, television for serious readers. >> but how do we fit into this? >> all right. >> how do we fit in, ed? >> okay. look, what makes us human. what makes us human is that

emotional ap apparatus that drives all of our behavior seeking, as we do, rational means of achieving our innate goals every minute of our lives. and where did that come from? it came from the evolution of emotional centers and the massive cerebral memory capacity that we acquired in enabling those actions that were emotionally guided. and what did those come from? they came from a million years of what we call hunter-gatherer life. and our ancestors, the ones that created humanity -- and history, you should keep in mind, did not begin with the origin of literacy 6,000 years ago, it did

not begin with the origin of the neolithic, it began a million years ago with an existence that depended upon intimate relation to the natural world, an appreciation of all of the natural world's qualities, a love of the home that one forms in the natural world. so it's inevitable that deeply in our thinking we should turn to great satisfaction and imaginative power in that world that gave us birth. >> okay. >> it's pretty hard to top that, but i think -- [laughter] if you would like to, if john --

>> i'll give it a shot. >> if you could give it a shot. >> i'll give it a shot. i think ed also points out, and i often tell my wife that we only recently came inside, that as a species we've been outside for millions of years. and there is a deep spiritual connection to that. and in my experience in the national parks, i could take any individual regardless of their socioeconomic, ethnic background to, you know, the rim of the grand canyon or into the high sierras to see the milky way or to stand beneath the giant sequoias, and they are moved. there's something that happens to those individuals in those spaces. you know, to honor terry who was so gracious to write the introduction to the book that gary maklas and i have written,

i want to read a little section from terry's introduction. you know, terry has that extraordinary skill of writing eloquently about our public lands and our parks, and she's, she has a deep spiritual side as well. and she often draws from her experiences with the native americans of our nation who often practice that spiritual connection. and in one conversation with the utah tribes, a guy that i actually know, willie gray eyes, he said that this is not a time for anger, it is a time for healing. our public lands and waters, deserts, forests, prairies, our national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges and free-flowing rivers, lakes, wetlands and oceans are our common ground, our natural inheritance to be passed on from one generation to the next.

they are our soul geographies, the landscapes of our imaginations, the seed bed of an ecological state of mind. we are not only inspired, but healed by nature's sense of integrity, harmony and wholeness. each time i stand at the needles overlooking canyonlands national park in the midst of this landscape carved and created through wind and water and time, deep time, i have the sensation of being very, very small and yet very, very large at once. the navajo have a word for this kind of balance and beauty, hoso. we are one with the universe. without a spiritual dimension to our work as conservationists, we are only working for ourselves, not the future, and certainly not for future generations of all species. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

>> booktv tapes hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. here's a look at some of the events we'll be covering this week. on wednesday we'll be at politics & prose bookstore in washington, d.c. where former cia director michael hayden will assess the current threats to u.s. national security. thursday we'll be in new orleans at the national world war ii museum to hear historian edith scheffer discuss the life of austrian life asperger whose work led to a better understanding of autism but was complicit in the nazi child euthanasia program. later on that night, the nephew of president john f. kennedy will reflect on robert f. kennedy's life at the free library of philadelphia. on friday, cal turner will be at rips comb university in nashville to discuss the rise

and values of his family's retail wiz. and on saturday, booktv will be live from the gaithersburg book festival just north of washington d.c. that's a look at some of the events booktv will be covering this week. look for them to air in the near future on booktv on c-span2. .. professor extraordinaire, george mason university, old friend of mine and a brilliant scholar who will be joining me to discuss the book. jeremy, back to