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Today, Explained

One Man vs. InfoWars

Today, Explained

Vox

Politics, Daily News, News

4.310.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2018

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The white nationalist rally in Charlottesville sparked outrage when a driver barreled through the crowd, killing one woman and injuring more than 30. Brennan Gilmore filmed it, and everyone saw his video. Then came the conspiracies, backlash, and death threats. Now, Gilmore is fighting back. He’s taking InfoWars' Alex Jones to court. Can a victim of conspiracy theories take down the king of conspiracy theories? Sean Rameswaram speaks to Gilmore and Vox's Jane Coaston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:07.4

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0:18.2

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0:30.0

Remember those protests in Charlottesville last August? And the terrifying video of that car speeding into the crowd?

0:52.0

Brennan Gilmore was the guy who filmed that video.

0:57.0

Brennan lives just outside Charlottesville. And last August when he found out that white supremacists were planning a rally there, he decided that he would go to.

1:12.0

I was there as a counter-protester. You know, the counter-protesters came from the kind of all walks of life and just unified and they're, you know, a horror about this expression of white supremacy in the streets of our community.

1:25.0

So, you know, I didn't necessarily have an agenda. I wasn't part of an organized counter-protesting group. I just went down to be part of a show of numbers and to document what was going on.

1:37.0

You know, we were just walking down the street and saw this crowd marching up. I was with two friends of mine and I stepped out on the street till sort of like center up the shot, just like holding the camera to where the car was.

1:48.0

I was thinking, well, maybe it'll get his license played. And then it just, you know, all hell broke loose in this most sickening, disgusting sound. You know, even more than the image of the sound of him hitting those bodies, even as I'm talking to you, it's like making me sick to my stomach.

2:02.0

Then I just stepped back off the mall, what we call the mall in Charlottesville where this attack occurred and stepped into a storefront to look at my camera and see, you know, and it wasn't until then that I actually realized that I had been recording.

2:17.0

And my immediate thought was, well, this shows exactly what happened, you know, there's, and I need to get this to the police.

2:24.0

Brennan showed his video to the cops and then he uploaded it and it became the definitive footage of an American tragedy.

2:31.0

And for most of us, that's where the story sort of ends. But for Brennan, it was just the beginning.

2:36.0

By Sunday evening, my sister had texted me, she's like, have you talked to mom and dad? And I said, no, why? You know, it's like, well, these Nazis have doxed them and they put their addresses online. And there's death threatening against you. So because when I was in the foreign service, that was my home record.

2:56.0

I didn't have my own address or the address that these people had doxed was my elderly parents, you know, in Lexington, Virginia. And that was, you know, day one of what has become this huge part of my life now, which is that I am the center of these conspiracy theories that I'm behind like they attacks in Charlottesville.

3:14.0

The most extreme of them are like these fake intercepted Russian intelligence reports that said I was in Africa, not to, you know, represent my country in the foreign service, but to orchestrate genocide on behalf of the CIA against Muslims and Central Africa, or, you know, that I was this deep state actor.

3:31.0

But the basic, the general outline of the conspiracy theory is that there is a deep state that is trying to overthrow Donald Trump. And I am an operative of it. I was paid, you know, Alex Jones in his conspiracy theory says I was paid $320,000 by George Soros to come to Charlottesville to orchestrate the event and then to get on mainstream media and lie about what happened, which would help undermine Trump's administration.

3:55.0

They got state department at high level CIA. One guy is paid $320,000 a year on the payroll of Soros. He doesn't just get money from Soros. He personally played $320 a year. And then he's there, CIA state department. And he's on the news. And then when people pointed out who he was, they took his game off the State Department website and stuff, but Google has all the shots of it. I mean, it's like, whoa.

4:25.0

Well, within 36 hours, Alex Jones in full wars had hour long specials, you know, comparing what I was doing in Charlottesville to other conspiracies around the world, you know, calling me a CIA asset and hack Alex Jones. I mean, the combined viewership of the videos that are about conspiracy theories about me are probably in the millions, certainly the hundreds of thousands. But yeah, Alex Jones, Gateway Pundin, you know, and within the

4:55.0

that entire week was just a deal. I mean, that entire week started what became a deluge just a deluge of hate mail and harassment and death threats and doxing and, you know, people harassed me on the street in Charlottesville. I have, you know, people I grew up with that started listening to the stuff and believing in it and, you know, not talking to me like was just

...

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