Episode Summary

Brooke and Casandra talk with Why We Fight author, Shane Burley about conspiracy theories, false consciousness amongst the right, how mythos get built to influence how people think, and how the root of a lot of conspiracy theories is anti-semitism.

Guest Info

Shane Burley can be found on Twitter @Shane_Burley1, on Instagram @ShaneBurley, on Mastodon @Shane_Burley, and on Patreon at www.patreon.com/ShaneBurley

Host Info

Casandra rocks. Brooke can be found at Strangers helping up keep our finances intact and on Twitter @ogemakweBrooke

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Next Episode

This Year in the Apocalypse on 12/30/22 and every two weeks there after.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Shane Burley on Conspiracy Theories

Brooke 00:18 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcasts for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, one of your hosts today, along with Casandra. Today we have the honor of talking with the author, researcher, and journalist Shane Burley. We're going to discuss conspiracy theories or whatever rabbit holes that topic takes us into. But first we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle for one of the other podcasts on the network. Here it goes.

Brooke 01:29 And we're back. Shane, thanks for joining us today to talk about conspiracy theories. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself, including sharing your pronouns?

Shane Burley 01:36 Sure. Thanks so much for having me on. My name is Shane Burley, my pronouns are he/him or they/them. I research the far right amongst other things. I've written a few books on it, Why We Fight from back in 2021 and Fascism Today from 2017. And most recently edited this big anti fascism anthology called an No Pasaran: Anti Fascist Dispatches From a World in Crisis. And right now I am working on a book with my co-author Ben Lorber for Melville House books, on anti semitism.

Brooke 02:06 Nice, thank you. Yeah, the one you wrote back in 2017 - Casandra has a copy of that book. And when I realized that my beliefs align with anarchism, I was like, I should learn about what this is. And, you know, learn more about fascism, too. And I was like, Casandra, do you have a good, like, primer book on this for me? And she just went to the bookshelf and pulled that one out. It was yours! Handed it over.

Shane Burley 02:33 Oh, awesome. That's what I was hoping for, when we wrote it because there wasn't a lot that was good and straightforward at the time, at least from our side.

Casandra 02:40 Spreading the good news about anti-fascism.

Brooke 02:46 That was, it was a good piece for, for getting started and learning there. So thank you for writing that. And for your continued work.

Shane Burley 02:53 Yeah, thanks so much for saying that, it's really kind.

Brook