Chris: As a teacher, I had a unit on conspiracy theories to help teach critical thinking, and it was fun looking at aliens and mystical monsters. But now in the last few years with attacks on the government and Russia, it's become more of a public service and education tool to teach about misinformation and disinformation.

Amanda: I am mother to a six-year-old autistic little girl. Family and friends have shared with us anecdotes they've heard of people that became autistic because of taking childhood vaccines.

Abbie: I started making content on TikTok and was just flooded by misinformation, conspiracy theories, and was chasing them down trying to get people who posted them to remove the content and no one's really listening to me.

Amanda: These sorts of things are very hurtful for us, and they're very destructive.

Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright and welcome to the show. We are a newly national live show, a place to gather, share experiences, and talk honestly about the society we want to create together. A special welcome to my people in the Chicago area who are joining us for the first time this week. That's my birth city. I'm particularly glad to have you in the community. We start this week with an iconic moment in US political history. The moment when much of the world outside of Chicago first met a new political star.

Barack Obama: We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Kai: This is, of course, Barack Obama. He's speaking at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and he has just famously dismissed the Red state, Blue state conception of America as a myth. This moment was immediately and correctly understood to be one of the most effective bits of oratory in political history, but there's another more quiet section of the speech, which a new book argues was equally consequential and dominates our politics today.

Barack Obama: My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin roof shack. His father, my grandfather was a cook, a domestic servant to the British. But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance, my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America.

Kai: Patricia Turner is a folklorist at the University of California Los Angeles and her new book draws a line from this moment in 2004 to the conspiracy theories that threaten democracy today and in this upcoming election. The book is called Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century. Patricia, thanks for joining us.

Patricia Turner: Nice to be here, Kai.

Kai: There are many arguments for how US politics got to a place where an alarming number of candidates for both federal and state office in this November's election will not commit to accepting the outcome if they lose. You point back to that 2004 speech specifically, and as someone who had already spent decades researching how conspiracy theories develop and spread, you said that you knew right away that this Obama guy was going to be a magnet for this stuff. Can you take us back to when you heard that speech and just what you thought at the time?

Patricia: Well, one of the things I had in common with most of the audience for that speech was I was unfamiliar with Barack Obama before then. I had not heard the name before. In the speech and the aftermath of the speech and the audience was just mesmerized. They were on the edge of their seats or standing up and the announcers covering the speech were saying already this guy could be the first African American president. People were immediately blown away. When people are immediately blown away by some product or some individual or something, that's one of the triggers for rumors, legends, and conspiracy theories.

We puzzle over media rock success. It doesn't make sense to us. The name was unusual. I didn't know anyone named Barack Obama before this, and I don't think anyone else did as well. I knew that things with unusual names also catch our attention. The content, he was a different kind of politician. He was putting himself out as an alternative kind of elected official. There are members of the audience that actually don't want alternatives. They want people who look like and sound like and have a background like everyone else who has entered the political realm. There are many factors that just jumped out at me right away.

Kai: It's the things that happen really fast, and that seem out place, we have to name the Black part.

Patricia: Right. The Black part here is the African part is key because part of what we see with the lore that develops about Barack and Michelle Obama, is just how xenophobic and anti-African segments of the population who might themselves think that they've made a place in their lives for what they might think of as traditional Black Americans. But someone whose father is from an East African country, someone with a name that's unconventional, all sorts of memes and tropes began to develop focusing on the African roots of Barack Obama.

Kai: I say all that because I think it's important. There's a way in which this all seems so just out there and sudden and crazy, but as someone who studies this stuff, you were able to establish that there are patterns here, there are things that we can know about when these kinds of theories will take off. You mentioned in the book that right before the 2008 election, you presented a paper to other folklorists about where you compared the Obama campaign and Snapple, the drink Snapple, and said there's things to learn from the drink Snapple about what's about to happen here. Can you try to quickly tell that story for folks?

Patricia: Well, so many of my students and probably members of your audience don't recall, but when Snapple Iced Tea came out, it had a very similar trajectory to Barack Obama. One day, there was no designer iced tea in the store, on the restaurant menu, and then Snapple was introduced to the public and it was everywhere, just like Barack Obama was. The rumors and legends began to develop both in the Black and white community and the Black community that the owners of Snapple were Ku Klux Klan or white supremacist members who were using the profits from the ice tea to further their white supremacist agenda.

In the white community, the rumors were that the owners were using the profits to support Operation Rescue. We have, but just widespread suspicion of this new iced tea. Who names an iced tea Snapple? It advertised in a very unorthodox way. By the time we get to 2008, this seems so strange to us. Now to explain to my students the fact that Barack Obama was using the internet for promotion, that he had a campaign website. All of that was new then, and get very, very different from what people were accustomed to. Yes, I drew a lot of comparisons between Snapple Iced Tea and Barack Obama

Kai: What do we take from that comparison? What's the takeaway from that comparison?

Patricia: Well, part of it is what you were saying before, that some of this is formulaic and we often think that it's about the person, and it's in part about the person, but there are certain triggers that make it easier for rumor-mongers and others to attach stories to individuals or products or things that already have these sensitized areas.

Kai: Listeners, as I talked to Patricia, we can take your calls. What I want to hear about are experiences countering political conspiracy theories of all sorts. Do you have any success stories that you can share with other listeners? Patricia, we'll talk about some of the specific conspiracies that you have tracked since 2004, but I do want to establish why this stuff about Obama isn't just history. You say that the deep state idea that Donald Trump and his followers have invoked repeatedly while contesting the outcome of the 2020 election is directly rooted in the anti-Obama conspiracy that goes back to 2004. How so? Can you spell that out?

Barack: Sure. Well, Trump, of course, trafficked in conspiracy theories about Barack Obama, starting with his embrace. He didn't find the birther ones, but he certainly took the ball and ran with them in 2012. When he was pursuing the presidency in 2016, he began to promote the idea that Obama was in the process of placing high-level bureaucrats and important offices throughout the United States government, so that after he termed out of office, he would still be able to control the government.

In the early days of the Trump administration when he had a loss, for example, he campaigned to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. When he was unable to do that, he blamed it on Barack Obama's manipulation of the deep state and the bureaucrats and authorities that Obama had put in place. The deep state becomes this shorthand for an Obama-led conspiracy to keep the democratic and in the minds of the far-right, socialist agenda moving forward.

Kai: It came up even again in the hearing about hurricane Ian recently, that there's at least two former congressional candidates, GOP former congressional candidates, who say that there's a deep state conspiracy to manipulate weather satellites, I guess.

Patricia: Well, they love conspiracy theories about satellites. They blamed Obama in the January 6th hearings. They talk about the one that focused on Italy, but they didn't have the time to tell the full story. The one that focuses on Italy claims that in 2016, Barack Obama conspired with the then Prime Minister of Italy so that satellites could control the dominion voting machines in 2020 and convert Trump votes to Biden votes.

In January 5th and January 6th, Trump was on Mark Meadows to track this down. This was one of the ones that he thought he could use to validate the big lie. Now if you know where to look on the internet, now you'll see all kinds of deep state references to Obama manipulating Joe Biden as a puppet. The terminology is this is Obama's third term. You can find that plentifully. The deep state beliefs were in 2017, according to what--

Kai: We got to take a break, Patricia, but I'm talking with Folklorist Patricia Turner about her new book, Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century. We'll be right back.

Rahima Nasa: Hello there. This is Rahima, one of the producers who help make Notes from America with Kai Wright, or the show formerly known as The United States of Anxiety. Now, you can listen to our show on more stations across the country. Also, don't freak out about all these changes. We're still the same show made by the same people you know and love, but maybe with a little less anxiety than before. Well, not me, I'm still a deeply anxious person.

Anyway, we're stoked to be reaching a wider audience and getting calls from all over the country. If you can't call in, don't worry there's plenty of other ways for you to join the conversation. You can talk to us on Instagram and Twitter. Our handle is @noteswithkai. We also love getting voice messages. You can leave us one at our new email address, which is notes@wnyc.org. That's notes@wnyc.org. Thanks for listening.

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Kai: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. This week we're talking about conspiracy theories. We've been tracing a line from the very onset of the lies about Barack Obama through to the big lie about the 2020 election that still threatens our democracy in this election. Before we turn to that conversation, I want to share something that we heard on Instagram last week. We partnered with Abbie Richards, who goes by @tofology on social media. She is an independent misinformation researcher/content creator. She's built a community invested in fighting disinformation in finding conspiracy theories. We asked her to see how this stuff is showing up in the lives of some of her followers.

Regina de Heer: Hi, Abby. Hello. What did you hear from your community on Instagram?

Abbie: I got a lot of responses from people with various stories about conspiracy theories and how they've impacted their lives. I think a big theme was how they were impacting their personal relationships.

Regina: What things were you hearing? What are some of the examples?

Abbie: People whose parents believed a lot of conspiracy theories. Someone who said that their best friend believed in these conspiracy theories and had ended their friendship because she just couldn't "get with the program". She said she felt she had lost her sister.

Regina: Wow.

Abbie: What else? "My wife is an anti-vaxxer, sucked my mother-in-law into a black hole, now she won't move here." "Not so bad." Shrug emoji. "My mom believes all of them fell down a YouTube rabbit hole before QAon even existed." "Several people who just said that they're Jewish and therefore feel the effects of them." "12-year-old came home asking where came from because of talk at school." "My husband's business partner ditched him to go start a ranch because he thinks the country is running out of food."

"Made our church culture fearful and insular so we left." "Oh, I'm a therapist, client's will bring it up in session." "Dissolution of a 30-year friendship." "My husband falls for them on social media and tries to convince me. Almost divorced because of it."

Regina: Abbie, what did you learn from this experiment? What did those responses tell you?

Abbie: I think that they show just how these beliefs affect people's personal relationships and can actually cause quite a bit of pain. A lot of these responses were not positive. They were people who feel like they'd lost people who were close to them.

Kai: That was Abbie Richards, also known as @tofology on Instagram talking with our producer Regina de Heer. Thanks, Abby, for collecting those comments with us. Thanks to everyone who shared something with us. I'm still joined by Patricia Turner, a folklorist, whose new book is called Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century.

Patricia, before the break you were wrapping up the idea of what the deep state is. I think I got it. The point is that this goes all the way back to the idea that Obama stacked the federal government with people to help him control it even after he had left office. Every time you hear that phrase, that's what we're still talking about, even now with satellites.

Patricia: In 2017 when he left the Snopes website, which is actually a great source if you've got someone who might be persuaded by evidence, said that deep states were in the top 10 of conspiracy theories reported to them that year. That's how pervasive they were.

Kai: That's how pervasive it is. We heard from Abbie and her followers about some of the stuff, how hard this is in people's lives. Let's see if we have callers who have any solutions for us, anybody who has had a success story in countering political conspiracy theories that come up in your life. Let's go to Tom in Minneapolis. Tom, welcome to the show.

Tom: Hi there. What I was calling in to talk about is kind of arguing against conspiracy theories is something that I've done as a hobby for a long time. The big thing that I've picked up from various sources and podcasts and stuff is that it's not like evidence that really is going to convince people, like your guest just said, you can't always guarantee that-- the big thing that I've found is that it's more so about weaving a narrative, a competing narrative alongside whatever conspiracy theory you're talking about because it's not facts that a person has convinced themselves into believing something absurd like chemtrails or the deep state or something.

It's that it tells a story and has explaining power. If you're able to find a way to make something that sounds like just as powerful but is much more reasonable it tends to really shift how people think about it. Even if it doesn't instantly convince them, it tends to sow the seeds of doubt a lot of the time.

Kai: Thank you for that, Tom. What do you think, Patricia, this idea that it tells a story and you got to tell a countering story? Does that make sense to you as well?

Patricia: Yes. That's definitely a strategy that can work with some individuals. Unfortunately, this isn't one size fits all scenario. What might work really well with your aunt Martha will work as well with some other people, but story is an extraordinarily pervasive and intoxicating pull for many individuals.

Kai: Story is what this is all about in the first place. I do want to talk a little bit about how you've documented the ways in which these stories evolve over time. One example is a conspiracy theory involving Ebola. Sadly, I need to be very clear as we get into this, this is not true. What you are about to hear is false, but there is this theory about Barack Obama and genocide that involves an Ebola outbreak in the run-up to the 2004 midterm elections. Can you explain what happened there, Patricia, as a way to illustrate how these stories develop?

Patricia: Yes. The 2014 midterm elections, that the Ebola outbreak happened and we get the beginnings of what's now called in conspiracy theory parlors: replacement theory. The notion was that Barack Obama was sending American troops to Africa. That's true. We did send troops to Africa to help on the ground with aid workers. That's true. The goal of this in the minds of the conspiracy theorist was so that these soldiers would contract Ebola themselves, bring it back to the United States, then distribute themselves through the 50 states, wherever they came from.

That would spread Ebola amongst the American population. Americans would die and Barack Obama's ultimate goal of replacing Americans with Muslims could be realized through that.

Kai: There's a huge ramp up there, but it didn't start with genocide like when you first started tracking people talking about this, that's not where they began. That wasn't the initial theory, right?

Patricia: Right. Initially, it starts very rumor like, "Why are we sending money over there?" The backdrop against that's also, I think, key. As I said, it was right before the midterm elections and Donald Trump still had his Twitter accounts then, of course, and he was tweeting about this constantly. He was tweeting dissatisfaction with the fact that Barack Obama was planning to send soldiers, planning to send money, all of the name calling, all of the vitriol we associate with Trump was coming out in that period of time and it builds up to this fully realized narrative that the most extreme people were willing to accept at the end from, "He shouldn't be spending our taxpayer dollars in Africa," to "He wants to replace all of us."

Kai: It's this build that is striking to me. I want to ask you a bit about what has not worked in your analysis for the Obama's and for the Democratic party, in general, in their response to this. I began this conversation with Barack Obama's famous 2004 speech at the DNC. I also, in this light, want to talk about Michelle Obama's speech at the 2016 party convention, which also became quite famous. She's talking here about the parental guidance that she gave Sasha and Malia during their time in the White House. This will set up a question I have for you. Let's listen to this.

Michelle Obama: How we urge them to ignore those who question their father's citizenship or faith. How we insist that the hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country. How we explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don't stoop to their level. No, our motto is when they go low, we go high.

Kai: Of course, that became a catch phrase and a very popular idea and you argue, as I understand, Patricia, that both this and the fact checking response are precisely the wrong way to deal with conspiracy theories. How so?

Patricia: I don't know if I argue that it's the wrong way, but it doesn't work with everyone. There isn't a magic bullet and one of the researchers who does more experimental work with this law than mine, has done actual social science experiments which reveal that when some people don't hear the negation of an untruth, if they don't hear the accused politician denying it, they think there's something to it.

The fact that the Obamas so frequently took the high road in the minds of some not in the minds of all led them to say, "Well, if he really wasn't a Muslim, why didn't he just go out and make a speech about that?" "If she really wasn't a man, how come she hasn't publicly said that she wasn't born a man." In the lack of the denial on the part of the accused for some people is problematic.

Kai: Just so listeners know what we're talking about it, again, I'm going to repeat this theory, but it is false. There is a very popular and still ongoing conspiracy theory that Barack Obama is secretly gay, that Michelle Obama is secretly transgender. I'm not quite sure what the point is and that Joan Rivers, who made a joke about it at one point, that the Obamas had her killed. What is the point of that theory? Patricia, why is that such a popular thing that still is ongoing today?

Patricia: When you look at the way in which the Obamas have been assaulted, every aspect of what we would consider our identities has to be hit upon in some way. Our identities are where we're born. The whole citizenship thing with Barack, our faith, our politics, the people who say that he's really socialist and not a Democrat. Another part of our identity is our sexual orientation and our sexuality. They have to negate the heterosexuality of Obama to complete the list and they ascribe him as being gay. How do you explain the nuclear family? "Well, she's transgender," and the daughters are according to the believers of this, adopted

Kai: The point is to cover as many slurs as possible, I suppose. Let's go to James in Queens in New York. James, welcome to the show.

James: Hey, thanks for having me.

Kai: Thank you, James. Do you have a success story you want to share?

James: Yes. I had a friend who I played a show with long time ago and I posted a photo on Facebook and he commented all sorts of conspiracy theories and he was angry, just as vitriol. I commented back arguing with him and then it went to the messages and we had this whole thread of messages back and forth about various theories. He told me all about the Pope and his red shoes and now they're like blood and all this crazy stuff. He told me at one point that all Talmudic Jews are evil. I was like, "Dude, do what the Talmud is?" He said, "No."

Kai: How did you respond?

James: I was like, "Dude, I'm Jewish. We're friends," and he was like, "Yes." I was like, "Well, do you think I'm evil?" It just got to that point and I was like, "Just watch The 13th, the documentary," because this is around George Floyd, this is right at that time.

Kai: The documentary, The 13th.

James: Exactly. He was like, "Netflix is biased." I was like, "Yes, I know. Who isn't biased? But watch that thing because it has a lot of good facts in it."

Kai: Thank you, James. A lot of people want to share resources with each other, Patricia. It is that useful?

Patricia: It can be. Another thing I'll be interested if any of your callers have had this experience. Sometimes you can't convince people of the negation on a factual level, but all of these things have been monetized. There are individuals and corporations and new sites who make their money, people who support themselves by promoting these materials. I think we learned in the trial of Alex Jones over the Sandy Hook accusations, that his company, the conservative estimate for what his company has become worth, the conservative estimate is $135 million.

You may not be able to convince people that what Alex Jones and he has perpetuated all of the anti-Obama ones and more. You may not be able to convince them that they're wrong about that, but you can maybe say, "Don't you object to the fact that when you go to the InfoWars website, you have to click through vitamin sales in order to get there?" These people are trying to separate you from your dollars and many people will respond to that a little bit more agreeably than someone telling them that the content is wrong.

Kai: Patricia Turner's new book is called Trash Talk: Anti-Obama Lore and Race in the Twenty-First Century. It's published by University of California Press. Patricia, thanks for writing this book. Thanks for joining us to talk about it.

Patricia: Thanks. It's been great to be here.

Kai: This is Notes from America. We're a production of WNYC Studios. You can follow the show wherever you get your podcasts and also find us on both Instagram and Twitter @noteswithkai. That's notes with K-A-I. Our live engineers this week are Matthew Mirando and Milton Ruiz. Our team also includes Karen Frillman, Vanessa Handy, Regina de Heer, Rahima Nasa, Kousha Navidar, and Jared Paul. I'm Kai Wright. If you heard anything you want to comment on or ask about tonight, email me at notes@wnyc.org. Bonus points if you send it as a voice note. Otherwise, I will talk to you here next week. Thanks for spending time with us.

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