SIO83: Dr. Kristi Winters

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas Smith: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 83. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Alright, today's guest is none other than Kristi Winters. I had originally wanted to get together with Kristi after this whole thing was over. And I wanted to try to cover something positive, something different, something about her work. And then we got to talking about her story through all this Mythicist Milwaukee conference stuff. And it was so fascinating that it ended up being a very good use of our time to talk about that. So that's what we talked mainly about, her background and how she got involved with the conference and what she tried to do and what her plan was. And I was incredibly impressed by Kristi and I think you will be too. This is her perspective

0:01:14 Thomas: Of the whole myth information shit show and it's really fascinating. So here you go. Here's Kristi Winters.

0:01:29 Thomas: Winters. Kristi, so nice to actually talk to you.

0:01:32 Kristi: Likewise, we've existed mostly digitally and through typing. And so it's nice to actually to be able to talk to you as well.

0:01:38 Thomas: Absolutely. I had always meant to jump on the phone with you and then somehow it just got so crazy that we never had time. But yeah, Kristi. You know, it's so funny. All of a sudden, I suppose it was Eli who initially tagged You in something about this, and then that was kind of how, how we met online, and then you were giving me all kinds of good information on these people because you know far more about these YouTube shitlords than I do because I haven't existed on that world at all. But I was wondering, for everybody who's not familiar, can you go back before your shitlord

0:01:45 Kristi: It got pretty crazy. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah,

0:02:19 Thomas: And tell us about your background? And I would really love to know, what led you to here and what led you to your interest in kind of fighting back against this particular subset of people online?

0:02:33 Kristi: Right. Well, I'm going to try to do this as quickly as possible. Because I'm 45. And so there's a lot of life. So I'll try to skip that. But I was actually I grew up in Wisconsin. And so when I found out the conference was happening in Milwaukee, and that Carl was was coming to my hometown. My reaction was, not without me saying something.

0:02:36 Thomas: Hey, take your time. Okay. Oh, right. I knew that. Right.

0:02:52 Kristi: So I grew up in Wisconsin, a small town, you know, like my grandparents had dairy farms, and nobody in my family had gone to college at that point. I was a first generation college student, went to the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, became a county supervisor at the age of 20, ran for student government president, became president of the OshKosh Student Association, got hired on to do activism on behalf of students, and that's where I was really exposed to grassroots organizing and direct action. The idea that if you oh sorry, yeah,

0:03:08 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:03:20 Thomas: Well, you're blowing through it, but that's all. So you very, it sounds like from a very early age, you were interested in leadership and doing what you could to, I suppose, make change happen, huh?

0:03:33 Kristi: I actually, the first time I dropped or skipped school and I called my mom and asked for permission, it was, um, before it was, probably 1987, 1988, and I went on a march in Madison, uh, to protest U.S. involvement in Central America. That was skipping, skipping school to go to political protests. That really was, that kind of sums me up. And then I got involved in Democratic politics. I, uh, started off, well, I actually ran for the statewide presidency of the student association on a Saturday and lost, but on Monday I was offered a job on a political campaign. So that turned out okay. Uh, worked on that campaign and we won.

And when we won, we flipped the state senate back to being held by Democrats, and so a bunch of jobs opened up and I was hired on as a legislative aide, then worked for the Democratic Party, did event organizing, so again, organization and collecting information and putting things in order. I did some stuff with Hillary Clinton, with the White House advance team, and Al Gore as well. So, we're heavily in Democratic politics, but when I was in my 30s, I, for various reasons in my life, went and, and back to school.

0:03:50 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah,

0:04:38 Kristi: I also decided I wanted to try living in the UK because I hadn't. So I started a master's program at the University of Essex and realized that despite being a small town farm girl from Wisconsin, when I sat around with the first year PhD students, I could totally do that. I started my PhD. I was hired onto the British election study as their senior research officer. Sir. Although, yeah, My PhD was looking at the idea, the problem with the fact that we measure man-woman in our social surveys, but when people go to interpret them, they rely on social explanations. For instance, women are more likely to say they support censorship. And people will say, "Oh, well, do women do that because they are the primary caregivers of children and therefore they want to protect their children from obscene things in society?" But my point was, but you're... You're measuring man-woman, not social constructs, social

0:04:54 Thomas: What was it in? What was your focus in academics?

0:05:34 Thomas: Hmm.

0:05:34 Kristi: Norms, and things like that. So that was the interest of my PhD. I then, when I finished that up, I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the British Academy for three years. I only ended up staying for two. And I did that in London teaching research methods. And I founded the Qualitative Election Study of Britain, which we've run now at three elections and the referendums as well. So I'm managing my own little national election study sort of in the footsteps of my PhD supervisor, who was the one who hired me onto the British election study, which is the survey based one.

So that all being said, I'm pretty well grounded in politics and how to do things to get stuff done. And when I was around the time of Charlottesville that I heard about the lineup, I know I misspoke in my hangout about when the announcement was made. I meant to say it must have been made before August because I heard about it in mid-August, and I think it came out in April, the Mythicist Milwaukee lineup. But at that point, we had just watched Nazis march in the streets. Heather Heyer had been murdered. There were, I think, 90 free speech rallies still planned around the country at that time because Boston hadn't taken place yet. And I was seeing Pakistani flags being

0:06:10 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:06:48 Kristi: Flown at the rally in Charlottesville. The Southern Poverty Law Center documented all the different flags that they observed, and the Kekistani flag was one of them. And this combined with me learning that Sargon was going to be coming to my hometown, I have a, not a long-running, probably only about two or three years feud, comparatively, you know, Sargon has longer-running feuds. But I had very personal reasons for finding him.

0:07:16 Thomas: Sorry. Sorry, it's just a fun. He's got much longer feuds, but I'm in the top five feuds. Maybe would you say top 10?

0:07:20 Kristi: Probably. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So I got involved in YouTube because I wasn't out as an atheist and I started to become. Well, this is it. I was like, I wanted to do a channel. I decided I was going to start one. And I thought, oh, feminism, feminism isn't controversial anymore. Feminism, you know, we're pretty much moving forward. I know.

0:07:25 Thomas: Okay. Right, right.

0:07:41 Kristi: It's hilarious. I

0:07:42 Thomas: Yeah, well, Well, I mean, you would think, I guess it makes sense to think that. And when are you talking for when you decided to start this channel around? When was that?

0:07:50 Kristi: Think I started about three years ago. I'll be, it was three years in September. And at first I did atheist content and I got a little bit of notice and I had a feminist critique, but nothing big. And then I did a video called evidence that patriarchy is a real thing. And that got attention and that got Carl's attention. And And that was sort of like the start of when he would, you know, he would pick on somebody and their fans would come and flood the comments.

0:07:53 Thomas: Okay. Right.

0:08:17 Kristi: So, I mean, I don't want to get too much into the ins and out of the drama, but the high points are obviously his rape tweet, our debate. He and I had a debate in which I think the consensus view is that he performed poorly. And that Was very different from yours.

0:08:21 Thomas: Right. Yes, I watched that debate. You did a fantastic job. It was particular inspiration for me. Thank you for sending that.

0:08:42 Kristi: Well, you know, I didn't think about how they had changed the dynamics, Mythicist Milwaukee, when they got criticized. And you guys really should have had a moderator. Because that, given

0:08:49 Thomas: Well, to be fair, So I don't know if you heard my episode, and I might not have, this is is just from my perspective, it was meant to be a, uh, an interview, like a Dave Rubin interviewing me, and then when they switched it to Sargon, they switched to me interviewing him. I said, okay, sure, whatever. And then once you and and some other people made me aware of just how awful the guy was, because, I you know, honestly, I just I wasn't doing my due diligence, uh, you know, kind of my mistake, I wasn't really, yeah, I got a lot going on, so I was just like, I'll look this up when I get get to it, you know? And, but you guys were making me aware of it. And so when I saw just how truly crappy he is, you don't like just how ugly some of the stuff he said is, I had told them, like, I, can we just make this a debate?

0:09:37 Thomas: Like, can, this should just be a debate, you know? They, they, they resisted, I think because they didn't want to, you know, step on the toes of the actual debate that was scheduled, like the, the other one. So they wanted that to be the debate. They didn't want this to, which, you know, makes sense for them, for their scheduling. And so I said, okay, it's probably going to basically be a debate, but, and, you know, people shouldn't really blame them for this. You can blame me for this if you want, because I have done many a, you of semi-hostile interview on my show. Like I've done, I've had plenty of people who I, you know, vehemently disagree with, but I thought, okay okay, I can do an interview. Like I can, what I can manage it. But I didn't anticipate a crowd of Kekistanis shouting.

0:10:25 Thomas: Like that makes, that makes things not work out because, you know, he feels so emboldened that he doesn't have to answer any questions and he can kind of interrupt me and do whatever he wants. So I don't know that I would put that all on them. Like it might've been my fault more than, more than their fault. But anyway.

0:10:40 Kristi: The fact that it was in front of a live audience and you, yeah, you can manage a tense interaction on your show where there aren't people shouting and jumping in. But even the godless engineer said that there should have been a zero-tolerant policy for for who shouted. So there should've been an announcement at the start of the program, and then anybody who made noise should've be escorted out by security. And

0:10:47 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Well, and apologies for for making one more little point here, cause it just occurred to me, this is one reason why if afterward the organizers had been like, shit, that's not what we thought it would be. Uh, I would have been accepting of that. Like, because I just don't think anyone anticipated how, well, sorry, I shouldn't say anyone. I hope that, that the organizers, and I know I didn't anticipate anticipate how bad it would be. So I don't know that they would have known ahead of time to have like a, Hey, don't shout cuck rule. You know, like that's, I would hope that that's not something that they Would have been planning on. And which is why, like if afterward, and that's why I shouted at them in the middle of the thing. I was, I think at some point I said like, is this the conference you want? Like, this is what you want.

0:11:51 Thomas: This is the crowd, the conference you want. That's why it is because I, in my mind, in that moment on the stage, maybe I think think too optimistically about people, but I had to imagine the organizers, the big money guy, you know, like I had To Imagine this can't have been what they wanted, right? They can't have been wanting a crowd that boos defining of terms, like a crowd that doesn't allow me to even start a question or define what I'm saying. Like they I can't imagine that's what they want. But they seem to be doubling down. So maybe I'm wrong about that.

0:12:24 Kristi: That's why it was unfair, because once it stopped being an interview and they were telling people you were going to challenge him, and it basically became a more aggressive scenario. You know, you had to keep Keep the time and ask questions, have Sargon challenge you and come up with things on the spot when you weren't the one being interviewed and try to manage the crowd that was against you. That's a lot to ask of one person, in my opinion.

0:12:33 Thomas: That is true. You're right.

0:12:46 Thomas: Well, I appreciate you saying that. I also, I think another thing that happened was once they cheered sexual harassment, I just didn't care about them. So I don't, I'm not trying to win over a crowd that cheers sexual harassment. I have nothing but disdain for that. So it wasn't really like, you know, if I wanted to go into appeasement mode and you know and try, oh let's all be reasonable here, like, you know, fuck them, I'm not, I don't, I'm not interested in that crowd, so I, it was, it was just, I was just blown away by that, but anyway let's let's Get back to what you were saying. Yeah.

0:13:20 Kristi: Right. I was Going to say, speaking of disdain, um, Well, what, I guess the core motivation for me, people want to, because I'm accused, there's a lot of gaslighting of me. I'm abused of being obsessed with Sargon, and because anytime I try to criticize what He says there's all these followers who will use the typical, she's a crazy woman, he's not interested in you. What really lies at the core of this is that there was a horrible thing that happened in the skeptic community on YouTube. There was a channel, there still is if you want to go look at it, The Skeptic Feminist. It was three people in a polyamorous relationship. They also were modeled on Marvel characters, so it was Russian Deadpool, Ivy, and Harley. And in May, the news emerged that Russian Deadpool—the guy who has that moniker—had been arrested, for, uh, unsuspicion of second degree murder and that a woman was found dead in the front of his home. Immediately, almost within hours, a guy who's on YouTube called V gathered several people who are shit lords in a hangout.

0:13:23 Thomas: Oh.

0:13:32 Thomas: They do that a lot. Yeah.

0:14:28 Kristi: And they joked and laughed about this because it was a feminist man killing a feminist woman. And Carl said in that hangout, they weren't part of any community that I care about. He also, during the course of the show, they learned that Harley, the character Harley, was on Twitter and communicating with people. And from that, they inferred that the woman who had been murdered was Ivy. Her real name was Heather. That was so painful for those of us who, because we knew Heather. Heather was somebody that was part of like a social group that we have on the digital space. We had interacted with them and she was friendly with very many people who, who are still in the YouTube progressive community that I'm part of. And it was so awful because we were dealing with Alexander murdering Heather and how to feel about a friend murdering a friend.

0:15:21 Kristi: And then these assholes going online for almost two hours and joking about it and talking about it and sensationalizing it in a hangout. And on the day of her memorial, Sargon tried to troll me. He sent me some sort of message demanding a response to it. And I asked him if he would apologize for his participation in that hangout because it was the day of her memorial, and he said no. So when people ask me why I'm motivated to make sure that Carl Benjamin isn't normalized, why he won't be appearing in another American conference alongside of Seth Andrews or Matt Delahunty or David Silverman or Aaron Ra, that is my motivation. I don't want him to have an inch of credibility in my home country and certainly not in my home state.

0:15:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:04 Thomas: But he told me before the show, he's a nice guy though. So how do I reconcile that information with what you're telling me?

0:16:17 Kristi: Yeah, well, because he can play nice when it's to his interest because he wants to get you on the back foot in order to, you know, he wants zu be seen as a good guy while he does awful things. And this is Very common. A lot of the things that characterize the sort of absolutist free speech crowd is that, that they want to be able to do anything and then never be held to moral account for it. And I'm going to hold into account.

0:16:21 Thomas: Yep. Yep. Yeah.

0:16:43 Thomas: They right. Right, yeah, well said. And that, that particular example, I didn't know all the ins and outs of that, and I apologies, but I did, would they ever find out what this guy's motive was for what he did? I'm just so blown away by what happened.

0:16:56 Kristi: Yeah, apparently they were both on mushrooms. And in the course of it, Alexander became paranoid and convinced that Heather was poisoning him. And he got the gun out that was in their house. And this is part of the reason, I know, I've always hated guns. But now I have a personal death in my family, or in my life, because of easy access to handguns. And he shot her.

0:16:56 Thomas: Oh. My, my gosh.

0:17:10 Thomas: Yeah. That is so sad. Gosh.

0:17:20 Kristi: And when he came out of it, he's on suicide watch. He's in jail now. He will probably be, in all likelihood, convicted unless the prosecutor tries to overreach and go for first degree. I think they could get a second degree conviction. But he basically wants to kill himself every day because he hates himself for what he did. At least this is what sort of information that has come in. And so, yeah, it's a terrible, awful tragedy that should not have been laughed at in a hangout.

0:17:47 Thomas: Because I was, you made me aware of that and it was disgusting and sad and I had There's so much, it's sort of like the Trump effect, you know, where there's so much to criticize, you can't even do it all. And so with the thing with Sargon, I ended up having to try to focus and I had picked those two quotes, the rape tweet and then the feminists are, you know, mentally whatever. And I kind of ignored the other one because, A, because I didn't know all the details of the story and I didn't really want to use it, you know, to try to get, it just felt bad, but, but

0:17:50 Kristi: It's too... Yeah, there's so much Yeah, no,

0:18:24 Thomas: Yeah,

0:18:24 Kristi: The It's tactically it makes sense to go with the "I wouldn't even rape you" tweet because it still sums up a moral position of his, and then the other thing too to show that this is just a one-off, it's part of a pattern. So I think in terms of the interview that that's a smart choice. You don't want to get into the backstory of people who were doing drugs, and one guy shot his girlfriend, and you know, that's not where an interview should be going. And so I completely understand why that was left to one side. Yeah.

0:18:36 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah.

0:18:48 Thomas: Right. And I, but I just can't believe the lack of humanity that it would require to be so callous about someone dying, you know, like, especially didn't he do, didn't they kind of moderate the debate that you you had with him, wasn't that it was on their channel

0:19:01 Kristi: Yeah, they were the Russian Deadpool Moderated our debate. Yeah, and when I came into the hangout before we went on air, they were, you know, talking and laughing and doing stuff. And then it got really awkward when I showed up. He didn't try to be a nice guy with me. I thought that was an interesting difference. Yeah, but Should I, um, talk a little bit, sorry, get back on the direct action stuff, so I'm sorry.

0:19:03 Thomas: Right, gosh. Oh, Really? That Is interesting. Wow, yeah, no. He, uh, Yeah. Of course, yeah, I'm just so sorry, this is there's so much, and and it's really interesting to me, I was just trying to think about kind of what that means, you know, it's interesting that he didn't do the nice guy thing with you, what that

0:19:23 Kristi: No, It's okay, I'm not cutting you off, I just, I'll forget if I don't keep, uh,

0:19:35 Thomas: No, no, no problem, okay, sure, let's, let's get back to that then.

0:19:39 Kristi: So, right, so, found out he was coming to Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Charlottesville, 90 rallies planned with free speech people, Kekistani flags at Charlottesville. And it's not the only time the Kekistani flag has shown up on these sort of far-right or alt-right rallies. You can find other – they actually show up in Canada, people showing up with Trump regalia and Kekistanis flags there too.

So, again, Milwaukee is my home city, and I felt – first, I mean, I was naive enough to think maybe the organizers didn't know what was going on. And two, you know, I've been told, I can't tell you how many times, that I, that his fans wouldn't even rape me, I receive rape threats from Sargon fans, I receive death threats, I mean, I've got entire folders that are screenshots of comments, uh, really vile, awful comments from his fans, in fact, I have to separate them by month, sort of wave of harassment that he sent me, so I've got like the December folder and the February folder, because there's different themes depending on which harassment he's sending, was sending my way. So I was concerned about the free speech element, the rally element, the kinds of fans that he attracts, so I did contact the venue, because, you know, being a former member, like, I vote in Wisconsin, I feel like I had a duty to

0:20:54 Kristi: Let people know. And my letter to the venue is actually on my Twitter, there's no threats, it basically says, hey, you bringing this guy on this date, and I quote the website, and then I say, he was endorsed by the English Defense League, which is a racist far-right party, he never disowned it, Richard Spencer called him a great entry point, he has also been using this Kakastani flag which showing up at the Charlottesville rally, here's the SPLC article, he also organized an online rape harassment campaign, so I just kind of listed his, his given his rap sheet, and I ended it with saying, I thought you would like to know, and they got back to me and basically blew me off, to be honest, um

0:20:54 Thomas: So You sent this to the Papst the Theater, or the, okay.

0:21:35 Kristi: They Yep. Because I was concerned for people's security, knowing what kind of fans he attracts, because I see what it's like when their ire is directed at me, and if they're worked up and in a frenzy, yeah. And, you know, I don't know what the energy was like in the room, and I don't know if there was security in the the room or just outside of it, but, you know, I don't regret letting the venue know that somebody with that record was going to be showing up at their venue. So that happened, but, um, you know, there's a lot of, my name is being tied to threats, um, or harassment, so, like I said, um, the Paps Theater blew me off, they just sent me like, oh, thanks for your update, well, you know, whatever, like that was it, and I never contacted them again.

0:21:36 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:22:18 Kristi: Then I have always contacted Mythicist Milwaukee either at, at their Twitter address handle, or at the hashtag. I didn't look anybody's name up. I didn't, like, send people email. I don't send them harassing emails. I've always either tweeted at their official account, or use their hashtag. I don't think you can harass a hashtag. I think they cannot, like, what I hashtag into their hashtag, but they, and if they, I don't have any recollection, not a single time where when I tweeted at them with their Twitter handle, that that they ever acknowledged me, so, you know, when they say that people didn't try to contact them or whatever, yeah, and actually on Akkadian Times I've just posted a letter from somebody who raised the, yeah, Akkadiantimes.com.

0:22:37 Thomas: Can you explain what that is? Is that the name?

0:23:03 Kristi: It's an aggregation site, but they also have a little section on the manosphere that I write for, or at least I have since this started, not getting into the direct action thing, so anyway, yes, getting back to the direct action thing, um, once the conference, very, very shortly, like within a week, they made an official statement, we are sticking by our lineup. And so, again, grassroots organizing, when you have an objective, like, for instance, alerting people to the fact that somebody very vile and aggressive is coming to their event, who has the power to give you what you want. So the first two is, you know, contact the organization, contact that the venue, because they can make those decisions about security. When the conference said, we're standing by Carl, then my focus changed.

0:23:49 Kristi: Because what I wanted to do then was make sure the stink that I knew Carl would bring would stick on their organization. Because I don't want, like I said, to see Carl normalized. I don'T want to see him appearing at American conferences. So that's when I started on AcadianTimes.com, which is a spoof. It started off as a spoof on Sargon's name. It's run by somebody else, not me, but that's the name it's got.

I started collecting information, the lore of YouTube progressive content, content like we know these stories about Carl, about him screaming about the feminist system after the LA Roger murder, we know about him breaking down, you know, and having a rant about Bernie, but people outside of our bubble didn't know that.

So in the end of August and the start of September, I just started aggregating instances of him being awful by theme, because I wanted a quick resource for people to be able to go to, to say, look at what this guy is like. And that's when, when I produced, I think, like four articles or something in about two weeks, blog articles, not proper articles, um, because again, I wanted to make sure that there were always these resources that people didn't have to go into obscure videos or have a long explanation.

0:24:01 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:59 Kristi: So when Eli and and all that kind of died down, to be honest, I mean, there was the initial sort of like, blah, and then we're standing by him, and then it it went down a bit, and then, like I said, you mentioned the Eli post, that was the first time anyone was trying to, at least that I saw, I was trying to connect the top names with the grassroots. And that was when Aaron Raw learned about it. Now, Sargon had attacked Aaron Raw in a video earlier. And so he was, yeah.

0:25:23 Thomas: Oh, really? I didn't know anything about that.

0:25:25 Kristi: So he was like, I know this guy. Nope. And then Seth actually cited one of the videos that I had made a point of putting into circulation on these blogs. I don't know how he found it, but clearly it got to him. Andso that made me very very happy. Um, and so basically I wanted all of, I wanted everything ready for when the moment happened for everyone to be able to pass around information about Carl. Um. And that to be the first exposure.

0:25:26 Thomas: What? For what?

0:25:50 Thomas: So it's sounding to me and let me know if I have you wrong, but it's something like you actually or maybe didn't even try to necessarily contact the people speaking. Like, it sounds like you're saying they just kind of, you know, Seth happened to find something aren't already knew that Sargon was awful. Was that not something you guys tried to do? Like I say, you guys, who are you? So, so if you don't mind answering that, and then also talk about if there's who else you were working with on this, or if it was more just a solo effort for you.

0:26:10 Kristi: Yeah. Well, right. Well for a while it was me like feeling a lot like a lost love voice in the wilderness, But I know direct action can be like that. And Steve was certainly with me from the start. Um, Dan Errol also took things that I had, you know, like information that I had provided, and he did his own thing. And so it was really just, you know, people either me kind of like collecting information and circulating it, putting it into the hashtag, or other people mentioning it or discussing it. That was basically like I said, um, I wanted to have things ready because there was this lull between the end of August, but the conference wasn't happening until the 30th, and I know that people's attention is very short. I worked on election campaigns. So it's those last few days, it's that last week that people actually start to pay attention again.

And so yeah, I sort of had, it was in a good, I was in a good position to when people like Seth, and other people's attention were brought to it, that the information was able to be freely passed around. And then to be honest, I didn't know what was going to happen at the event. But the person who had the amazing timing, this is just like, like serendipity, I don't know. She knew when you were going to be asking that question, but the

0:26:22 Thomas: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

0:27:28 Kristi: Clip of you reading out the rape tweet and the reaction, oh my gosh, like if I were a political operative, that is precisely, yeah, that's the moment I would have asked for. Like as a, you know, because that is a, that communicates more about Carl than I could say in a thousand blocks.

0:27:34 Thomas: Oh, Sharon. Yeah.

0:27:46 Thomas: Right. Yeah. No, Sharon's a good friend. I didn't tell her what I was going to do, but I'll have to ask her. But I believe she might have, it's possible she recorded a lot of it and then posted that minute because the rule was you can't post more than a minute. That was their policy. So maybe that was why she did it. But it was, you know, that, that's where, and it also, yeah, I'll have to ask her, but it could have had something to do with, with, uh, how much I talked about that being when the conversation ended. So maybe she had it and then, but yeah, I'll have to talk to her. But yeah, that definitely, that that I posted about that before I knew there was any video about it. And then she posted the video and I really do think it, it drove the point home.

0:28:17 Kristi: Definitely.

0:28:27 Kristi: And because the Milwaukee, Mythicist Milwaukee guys hunkered down, they didn't control any of the narrative coming out of the conference, so again, like, for me, from a grassroots tactical point of view, okay, I want to say I feel awful for any woman or man who was a victim of sexual assault who had to sit in that room. I like I don't know how that is not worth anything, like, if, if this all could have blown over and those people could have been spared that pain, I would trade that in without without a doubt, but given that he was going to do that and given that the organizers didn't put out a content warning, or right, so when that happened, I mean, insofar as we're going to have to say that that pain and anguish, whatever, I, I don't want to discount it, but we're sort of setting it to one side. If you look at it as a, a political operation, I got exactly what I wanted.

0:28:45 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Too. Gosh, Right.

0:29:18 Kristi: I mean, this hack ended up being better than I thought it could have ever been. This is why I wasn't never called for him to be deplatformed. That's why even people are accusing me of deplatforming him. What I was trying to do was put a spotlight on him.

0:29:26 Thomas: Hmm. Interesting. Well, because just to clarify, so like I asked earlier, you never contacted the speakers, the other speakers. And you Didn't say it's not like you said, you know, get out of this event, stop this event. That's interesting.

0:29:36 Kristi: No, no, No. Yeah. And so now Carl will never be accepted at a a mainstream American atheist conference again, as far as I can see. And that to me is the biggest victory of all, because in the end, it means he won't be able to use our platforms to spew his garbage and make people either think that that's atheism and that's the face of it. And that's what's acceptable in atheism, or bring in more disproportionately young men into that movement. And as Richard Spencer said, you know, once you start hating on feminists and hating on different groups of people, it's pretty easy to move from that just hating on groups to actually becoming closer to white supremacy. It's a gateway drug, as it were. And I want to shut that gate forever.

0:30:32 Kristi: So yeah, I wish we could have avoided the pain of anybody who saw that video, that said, I got a thousand percent of what I started out this sort of direct action campaign with my goals as being, and you were vital to that, and Eli was vital to that, and you know, a lot of other people who helped me lift, help lift up the issues, who have bigger platforms and bigger voices, and this seems to be, you know, like my name hardly ever gets mentioned except on YouTube, where I'm hated already, but yeah, it's just gonna feel like, you know, I'm this sort, sort of the woman who's been doing all the work and then the men get all the talking back and forth. So thank you for letting me come on and talk about all the workout.

0:30:32 Thomas: Oh No problem. I I mentioned you in in the last show, and uh, yeah, I'm sorry if you are not getting the credit you're very clearly due. It sounds as though I am merely a pawn to your President Underwood machinations, but I'm

0:31:26 Kristi: I will more like, you know, no, you were the candidate, you know you were on stage. So I wanted to make sure you were prepped. You had all the information you needed. I wanted make sure the media was ready to go. And I wanted to make sure that our pundits, you know, we're out on Twitter giving the spin of our story as soon as you walked off the stage. I don't know if you know, I had your back, but the the whole time, I had your back.

0:31:31 Thomas: The Manchurian kid.

0:31:45 Thomas: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Totally recognize that feeling. I think there, and it's something that I totally screwed up on Facebook when I asked for people who wanted to condemn the Mythicist Milwaukee organization. Really, all credit needs to go to the people who were telling us the whole time and we weren't listening. You know, the people who have been vocal about this undercurrent, obviously you being a main figure, vocal about this element of the atheist movement and our society at large, but specifically when it comes to atheists. I mean, there are people, there Are Women, there are People of Color, there are people who have been aware of this problem and haven't been listened to. And, uh, that, that really sucks.

0:32:31 Thomas: And I'm sorry about that. Um, and I think it just goes to show we need to listen more. Uh, I hope that this ultimately is a victory that he won't get any sort of mainstream platform. And yeah, I think, I Think you can claim that victory. I think you can, you know, I, I definitely think a lot of, a ton of credit is, is due to you for sure.

0:32:52 Kristi: Well, and certainly, I mean, if he had just been deplatformed, the narrative would have been entirely different, and it would have been a victim narrative for him.

0:32:52 Thomas: Yeah. Interesting.

0:32:58 Kristi: Whereas here, it's really the Mythicist Milwaukee guys and their series of decisions, and Carl's series of decision. That put them both where they are right now. And I get why people sometimes feel like the term neo-Nazi or fascist is overboard. Board. But at the same time, they, some of the people that I'm thinking of, and these are the higher ups, the sort of the leadership things, didn't really look into Sargon. Literally the same day that, or the day after Matt Dillahunty's video came out, Right Wing Watch did an expose on how white supremacists have figured out how to get YouTube famous.

And Carl Benjamin's picture is in there. And he's mentioned in the article for Giving a platform to somebody who is a white supremacist. This is the thing that I don't know that people who aren't dealing with this stuff on a more regular basis in their comment section on YouTube like we are, but the Nazis didn't show up in their SS uniforms and their flags. When they showed up initially, it was to beer halls and they were just wearing regular people's clothing. It wasn't people dressed up in SS SS uniforms marching in Charlottesville. It was guys in khakis and polos.

0:33:36 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:34:11 Kristi: So we have to look at what they say.

0:34:12 Thomas: Well, I think you're addressing possibly, unless I have you wrong, because I did make comment about calling the organizers Nazis. That was kind of what I thought there was not really much productivity to. Maybe feel free to disagree, but I just...

0:34:29 Kristi: All right. Yeah. Didn't I see that happen. I saw a lot of the hashtags. I see a lot back and forth. Maybe you saw that. But in terms terms of people calling people Nazis, I didn't see that happening. And I don't know how often it happened. So for the other thing about the Mythicist Milwaukee guys is they don't have a great track record on telling the truth. They like to sell, they like to promote.

0:34:30 Thomas: Sure. Yeah, that's true.

0:34:53 Kristi: And I have to say, I mean, I'm not doubting that they didn't get some strongly worded or even mean tweets or, but they make a lot of claims about harassment and I haven't seen it on their Twitter feed, I haven't seen it on their hashtags, right.

0:35:05 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, You're totally right. They just had that tweet the other day that was, they'll not back down to bullying. It's absurd. You're right. Yeah, that is definitely a very secondary concern, like that's not the lesson out of all this. Shouldn't be, let's talk about the the precise degree to which you can call somebody a Nazi or white supremacist or whatever, the the the lesson from this needs to be, they platformed a horrible person and you know this is this is who he is.

0:35:33 Kristi: We should look into the views of what people are saying before we put them on the platform, or yeah, when we find but we find out about them, look at what they've said publicly before making a, you know, decision. So yeah.

0:35:35 Thomas: Yes, and I well And that's the thing about these organizers is, they they knew. They knew what he'd said. They defended it on Callie Wright's show. I mean, very clearly, they don't see it as a problem, and that's the issue here.

0:35:51 Kristi: Oh Oh, can we bring up the hypocrisy of them complaining about bullying and then going on the YouTube channel bearing, Bearing, a guy who has been bullying me online for a year and a half now. And yeah,

0:35:57 Thomas: Sure, sure. Yeah, can you give us the details on that? Who is this guy?

0:36:09 Kristi: Bearing is an Australian YouTuber, anti-feminist, anti social justice. His content is very formulaic. He'll pick a person and he will cut up the video and mock them, take them out of context or humiliate them in some way. He had a very long, when I came across his channel, he was targeting bedroom bedroom feminists sometimes. Not all the time, but he would take a video from a 14-year-old.

0:36:34 Thomas: Now, to find that for people, yeah, okay, go ahead.

0:36:38 Kristi: Bedroom feminist is like a YouTube bedroom feminist. It's a 17-year old or a 14 year old who has her camera in her bedroom and she turns it on and she talks about how feminism is about wanting people to be equal. And he was basically targeting feminists, especially women, for this kind of humiliating content. And I came on his radar and he started going after me and I don't want to get into the long history the drama but we are there's very bad blood between bearing and myself he routinely makes videos where he uses a sexual slur in replacement of my first name he's got a cartoon that mocks me in very degrading ways that he uses in his thumbnails and YouTube doesn't do anything about this they went on his channel to promote their conference and bearing put my picture and the slur that he users in the description box when titling the the video so when these guys want to talk about harassment and bullying I don't want to invalidate what happened to them oh sorry can you start again oh

0:37:29 Thomas: Yeah. That's just bullshit. God, I cannot. Not, I, sorry. I mean, I'm, that's just such bullshit behavior out of them. You know, like the idea that they're just, they're trying to paint themselves as this, well, we're just facilitating a new direction. Now you're participating in this. Like you, they very clearly have their, and that's why I was so in disbelief because I didn't know this at first really, or maybe I just didn't want it to be true. But after they saw what happened in the conference and they saw people cheering for that tweet, they showed they showed us all that they want that. It's not it's not, oh, we got it over our head. Oh, we set up something that, you know, we didn't know about them. Oh no, they knew what it was.

They got exactly what they wanted and they're happy about it. The idea that they go on this channel, that's something as you're describing, and I've seen a bit of, of what you're subscribing to, uh, that that's, that, that something they would just go go on, well, I'll just promote stuff, you know, just whatever, and not address the disgusting harassment, they are a party to it. They don't care about it.

0:37:47 Kristi: Yeah yep Nobody mentioned this when they talk about the conference and harassment. You know what happens to me, that's just, "Screw her."

0:38:37 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And you know it's so funny. I believe, unless somebody's impersonating him, that person emailed me you're talking about. Yes, and it was a typical sort of MRA apologetics. And again, I will leave open the possibility that somebody with an email that's deceptively meant to be his, but I received an email asking me, well, if, if what Sargon did was sexual harassment, why didn't she press charges on him? You know, like that, of course, the implication being, you know, the assumption being like everything that's sexual harassment people will, you Know, press charges over, they find it worthwhile to press charges over, you Now, there's so many stupid assumptions in that, but that was sort of, guess, their their gotcha case for me about why this wasn't sexual harassment. So, yeah.

0:38:37 Kristi: Yeah oh that bearing person well You know, bearing has around, what, some over 300,000 subscribers. And so because his views are popular, he must be right and

0:39:38 Thomas: Yeah. And that's, that's it's alarming how many followers these people have, you know, because as I think I mentioned in the last thing I did on this, like it really is anger is the primary motivator. I mean, there's not, stop pretending that this is about argument and facts and whatever. It's about anger. It's yelling at- it's pausing a video of a woman and yelling at it. Like that's it's like that's like 95% of what this is, you know? Oh

0:40:07 Kristi: The consequence of that, you know, it's not. Not as if Carl isn't completely aware of the cause and effect relationship between him going after someone and then that person getting, you know, having harassment. These guys have been told about the pattern of when they tweet things, not Carl anymore because he's off Twitter, but when, you know, buried and would make a video, there's the amount of awful comments, rape comments, death threats, kill yourself, drink bleach, shut up, go away, I'm going to dox you out of existence threats. I actually had somebody related to Bering saying, if I don't go on a video and say something, they were going to punch a random feminist and it was going to be my fault.

0:40:47 Kristi: It's crazy. And they oftentimes will accept no responsibility for controlling their fans. And yet Carl, I noticed in, I think it was Godless Engineer's video on the conference, said that Carl did try to control his fans at the end. So they can, they just don't want to, because what their fans want is the same sort of red meat that Trump has. But when Trump goes and talks at a rally about how evil fill in the blank group is, people don't have immediate access to a individual that they can harass online, line but when Sargon does this or other bigger anti-feminist YouTubers do this, they do have a channel to go to and they do have a person to harass. And people have taken down their videos, people have shut down their channels as a direct result of this kind of harassment, and that is shutting down speech. These so-called free speech warriors don't want to acknowledge the fact that they're playing a massive role in bullying the kinds of speech they don't like into silence. And then declaring victory because nobody will stand up to them.

0:40:46 Thomas: My god, right.

0:41:47 Thomas: The Free speech narrative is so obviously bullshit. I mean, watch that video, I haven't watched my full video yet, I don't know if I ever will, maybe someday, I just don't, I don't- I know I didn't do the best I could have done, yeah, yeah, I, I know I didn't do the best I could have done, but watch how little the audience has any patience for any sort of real debate or dialogue, they have no patience for it, they just, they just want ownage, that's all they want, like they won't, they won't let me finish something, they won't, like, if it really was about exchange of ideas and, you know, of this, higher, you know, that's high level thinking and debates and and and point counterpoint, you know, like if, if it was really about that, they would have shut the fuck up and let us actually

0:41:59 Kristi: I didn't watch my debate for the longest time either.

0:42:15 Kristi: Yeah.

0:42:32 Thomas: Do something, you know? Whatever.

0:42:33 Kristi: I would like to see a transcript of your debate because that would strip away a lot of the ruckus. And you would actually look very clearly at what Carl was saying and what he was, you know, like what was he thinking in his head? What was he trying to get out? And I would be very interested in how much he really intellectually engaged at all or when you would read the transcripts, it was it would be obvious that it was mostly games so

0:42:55 Thomas: It would be confusing if you didn't include the heckling in the transcripts, because I would look like some sort of insane person who wasn't able to, like, talk and get it. I mean, well, no, no.

0:43:06 Kristi: Tell me about, because, yeah, I haven't watched the video either, but you were heckled like the whole time and what, were people trying to shut the audience up, was anybody trying to control the audience, well

0:43:16 Thomas: Not that I saw. Well, okay. People should watch the video. I don't know. Now, here's the thing. I haven't seen it, so I don't know, depending on the video you watch, like, so, I've seen some of the cell phone videos of certain clips, depending upon where the microphone is, you may not, like sometimes, like one clip of the cheering the rape tweet sounded, you know, not as loud, like oh, they didn't cheer that loud, and then another one sounded incredibly loud, I think it depended on where you were, given that all of the Sargon sycophants were right on the front, like right right next to me, uh, just in the front, several rows. Uh, it was definitely very loud and very apparent to me to where if there's some video recorded from the back of the theater, I don't know what it'll sound like.

0:44:02 Thomas: I'm not sure. Um, but yes, from my, from my perspective, uh, it was, it was difficult. And Sargon didn't let me finish. Like, he didn't, let me, finish stuff, off, oftentimes. I mean, he kind of fed off the audience and used that sort of the power of the heckler's veto, actually, to stop the questions that he didn't want. But I insisted. He tried to just completely get out of one of the questions. And I was like, well, sorry. Anyway, he said something like, I don't care about your question about my video. I was like, well, I don't care that you don't care, so we're just sitting here then, and you can answer the question, but uh, no, it's hard, I, I guess I will have to watch it to really answer that, but from my perspective there was a lot of heckling, and there was, uh, particularly when I tried to define intersectionality, um, you know, he was just, the idea that someone would dare define a term in a debate was too much for these poor people.

0:45:02 Kristi: And see, this is it, the other thing that you didn't have enough exposure to to realize is another one of their tactics is to criticize you for everything, criticize you for talking too loud criticize, criticize you for talking too soft, criticize you for the words you use. So no matter what you do, no matter which way you turn, there's someone saying that's bad, that's terrible, you should just shut up, you should go away because that's what I get. I know.

0:45:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, no, you're right. You're absolutely right. And it's disgusting. It's absolutely disgusting. It's gaslighting. It absolutely is. And way I put it was it's also sort of like this, almost like this mob, this mass hallucination thing. It's like this emperor's new clothes thing where like, they just decide what, no matter what happened, they decided before the video was even out, they decides Sargon owned me. And that was the, it was disturbing to see like how the, the Twitter sphere just decided that, you know? And it's like, if they all believe it, it's true. You know, if they all believe that these little criticisms of, oh, I was mad or I was whatever, If they all believe that amounts to anything, which, I mean, it doesn't really, like, it doesn't matter if I was heated. Like, what matters is what I said, you know, like you want to talk about an actual debate, like if he won an argument, it would be because he made a point.

Now you could analyze it and say, okay, he, he beat you on this point. He made a good point. Sure. That wasn't what was happening. What was happening was we heard you were mad. So therefore, you know, he won and it's all like people just unflinchingly believe it with no self-reflection at all in that crowd. And it's it is this mass sort of ritual they're participating in. You know?

0:45:29 Kristi: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

0:46:48 Kristi: You mentioned it in your podcast about the fact that these people talked about, if you put them up on stage and you challenge their ideas, their ideas will be shown to be bad, and that assumes two honest brokers. These people are not honest brokers. They're not interested if their ideas are bad or not.

0:46:59 Thomas: Yeah. No.

0:47:06 Kristi: They believe them. They are not open to questioning that feminism is a mental illness. That's what they want to hear. And that's why when you give people like this a platform, all you're doing is encouraging them, normalizing them, and potentially giving them more people who will listen to them in the future. Sure.

0:47:26 Thomas: Yeah. You know, I wanted to ask you about the Kekistani flag thing, because do think that genuinely some group of people, and it is hard to know how much, but some number of these people do think this is making fun of the identity politics of white nationalists. They think it's a good satire of that. On the other hand, one might argue that's a convenient sort cover for what's going on. What's your view on that?

You know, the person who, I, the person who had the Kekistani flag asked the question, you know, I, so I've, know, I've actually heard this person, you know, I've actually. I actually kind of have some insight, some level of insight into who he is. He certainly didn't seem to take himself very seriously. It didn't seemed, it from my perceptions, did not seem to be like someone who was trying to smuggle in white nationalism, but at the same time, you've pointed out that these Kekistani flags are appearing at actual white nationalist, what would you call them, gatherings. So, what is your view on that? How much of it might be an actual satire, and how much does that matter? What do you think?

0:48:39 Kristi: Right. So here is my take on the Kekistani flag. You've got Karl, who's a big proponent of it, who claims to be anti-collectivist, leading a nation, a fictional nation made up of Kekistanis, which is primarily, from what I can see, cis white guys, you know, hetero, just sort of mainstream guys who don't have a nexus of intersectionality of oppression. So by taking Kekistan on as a, you know, a foreign nation where there's all this oppression, what they're able to do by claiming their Kekistani identity is mock everybody else who is actually trying to validly express their oppression. And here is an example, a real life example of which I have documentation that this is not about satirizing white supremacists.

0:49:26 Kristi: When Sargon was still on Twitter, the British government put out a survey for LGBT people to try to better understand their experiences of discrimination in British society. Carl thought this was hilarious, and so he sent out a tweet to his followers commenting on the survey. And a whole bunch of them started to basically brigade the survey, and when they asked what their identity was, they put in Kekistani. And they took pictures of the screenshot, and they sent it to Carl, and he would retweet it.

All right, so this isn't about satirizing white nationalism. It's about satirizing the people that white nationalism criticizes. So I don't buy their satire argument, because they don't use the Kekistani flag. I don't see Kekistani flags at the counter protest. I don't see it at a gay pride parade. I don't see them in places where there are actual humanist values being articulated. Where I see it is in places where one group of people wants to stop other people from actually actualizing, from lifting themselves out of the status quo, out of positions of oppression or marginalization. And the way that I see them acting is to use Kekistani in order to come down on our level, to discredit us, um, while not actually being on our level. They want to claim victimization based on their Kekistani identity when actual people have actual victimization. So no, I don't think that it's satire. And also, to quote, I guess I'll call my friend David Shirat, if people think your satire is actually your beliefs instead of satire, your satire is shit. Sure.

0:50:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And there was that article, the ironic Nazis are still Nazis article, article, um, that ultimately, once again, tactically I decided not to bother with in the debate, just because I feel like it would have been pretty easy for him to just say, no, it's it's iron, it's satire, it's whatever. So I, I didn't try to press him on that, um, do think there's a lot to be said for the comparison? I think at, it's the, the time in 1944 or whatever, you know, or, or earlier when this was building, this satire, this absurdity was a place to hide. If someone didn't fully accept your disgusting anti-Semitic stuff, you know, like it was, it was a way for people to hide. Ah, just kidding. It's not, you know, what, no big deal, you know, when challenged, it is, it it is really convenient.

0:51:44 Thomas: This, it muddies things up. It's just another tactic to be able to, to give cover to some really awful ideas. The idea that everything's a joke until, you know, oh, look, everything's the joke until, oh there's an alt-right white nationalist rally. And then all of a sudden it wasn't really a joke for those people, you you know? I I'm fully willing to believe that some number of people do think it's a joke. Like maybe they're, who knows what the numbers are.

0:52:10 Kristi: Know, some people, yeah, some friends of mine are mad at my, my position on Kakistan, because they're like, it's a joke. I'm like, dude, no. Yeah.

0:52:16 Thomas: Yeah. And yeah, it's just, it's not a joke that's worthwhile though. Like, and it's, and the idea, and you have, you reference a picture that was taken with Sargon and the Kekistani flag VidCon.

0:52:30 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. And they're making white power gestures, right?

0:52:29 Kristi: At VidCon Yeah The Okay symbol. Yeah.

0:52:36 Thomas: Yeah. And it's like, OK, you can say that's a joke. You can say, oh, it's it's irony. It's irony. I'm not going to know. No decent person is going to be involved in that. Like, what is, what do you think you're doing? You know, like, what do do you think? Oh, they're great people. They're fantastic. They are on the side of right. They also like to take pictures where they're making white PowerSigns because, you know, it is funny. Like, what I, how could you think that that's a good thing to do? I don't understand. Yeah.

0:52:36 Kristi: Yeah And That's why I felt confident that if I focused on their behaviors and what Carl has said, that the reaction we would get would be the reaction that we got. There are, I know people who, um, that critics, so much, well, some critics I guess, who would say that I should, I need to understand the Kakistani world better, and I, to really get into this ideology and understand the difference between people who follow Armored Skeptic and shoe on head and Carl, and the differences between them. I'm like, you know, I don't care, that's not my goal here. My goal isn't to understand, my goal is to make sure that whenever someone brings up bringing Carl Benjamin to an American Atheist Skeptic conference, people pull out that video of you. And in a minute, they'll go, no, let's not. And that's what, so, yeah.

0:53:54 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. Well, oh my gosh, the time has flown. Uh, let's, there's so much I want to talk to you about, we definitely need to do this again, very, very soon. Let me, uh, I guess I'll try to bring it to a close by asking what your view of the future is. I'll just give you a tiny bit of what, what I think, and then you can give me your view.

I have said, and I don't know if I fully laid this out, but I do believe, in all likelihood, despite our best efforts, I believe that this organization will probably continue. Who knows? Maybe we will be able to put enough pressure and to make people realize that this will just be a shitlord convention in the future.

But it's my view that as long as they do become merely a shitlord convention, and there's not any actual legitimate atheist voices involved lending their credibility to it, if indeed next year comes along and it's a shitload convention, I think we should absolutely ignore it, because I was told that tickets did not sell until this was a controversy. Tickets started selling once they thought they, you know, they were under threat. And I would love nothing more than for them to put on a shitlord convention and sell like no tickets. That would be the best for me. That'd be great if they just realized, oh, this is a stupid thing to do.

Like, so that's kind of where I am, but I'm very open to what you think and your opinion on this. What do you think we should do if next year it's, let's say, it's just a bunch of the same YouTubers and then, you know. And then the other thing I said is it'll be, it'll be shitlords and then anyone who hates the left enough to kind

0:55:31 Kristi: Right.

0:55:31 Thomas: Of embrace the, the anti, you know, free speech narrative, you know, that that's the left is just trying to shut down free speech. So that, that who it'll probably be.

0:55:40 Kristi: I would say that, you know, I really, I kind of feel like Mythicist Milwaukee has the stink of Carl on them now. So I've kind of declared victory and I'm willing to walk away, way, um, if They were to bring him back again for another year, I would probably contact the venue and tell them the same thing I told the past, because I feel like that's a moral obligation I have, given his fans' behavior toward me and toward other people online, and, um, and so, um, but I'm perfectly happy if they want to just split off and do their own thing.

I think, you know, what what, here's a little bit of hope, I guess, from my perspective, is when I came onto the YouTube scene three years ago, there were maybe two or three channels trying to fight back, small little channels, uh, Steve Shives was an often the target, he was a voice on YouTube, and slowly we built up a bigger, bigger community, not only on YouTube but on Twitter, there's a lot more pushback to the shit lords than there has been when I started. Twitter, Twitter has also gotten better about harassment and reporting and enforcement, and that's made such a difference.

But what I feel hope about is I've been listening to podcasts of people reacting to the conference, and and I'm hearing people looking at something they haven't seen before and feeling motivated to react against it, people saying, "I didn't know this was a part of what was going on," or "I kind of knew about Sargon, but I didn't know it was this bad." And and I'm hoping between our two worlds, the podcast world and the YouTube world, we can start to connect a little bit more, our progressive voices, because, because, and we can, we should probably have a whole discussion about this yet, the future of

0:55:50 Thomas: Okay. Sure

0:57:17 Kristi: American atheism. You know, do we want, do we want Carl to be the face of it? Or do we want different people to be the face of it. I know what I want. Yeah. And so I want to reach out, you know, I've got some great Eli was my first sort of contact through Steve. And now I know you and I've talked to Kelly and some hoping maybe we can do more crossover, because you guys have a really big audience that doesn't necessarily know what's going And I don't want to bring our drama into podcasting, but I think we should be watching the content of what is being said in the name of skepticism and atheism, because really people have just been happy to let it be under a rock.

0:57:23 Thomas: He's not even an American yeah Yeah.

0:57:55 Kristi: Now you kicked over the rock. So the question is, what are we going to do with all the worms and grubs we found underneath? Underneath. And I feel that the, you know, I I joked about this on on Facebook, that as all the podcasters I was listening, they're like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. And it feels like John McClane in Die Hard, uh when he shoots out the window and um gets a police officer involved, he's like, welcome to the party, pal, when you were getting brigaded on Twitter, I'm like, yeah, yeah, come on, you know know exactly what that's like

0:57:55 Thomas: Yeah I just had to turn off to I don't I can't I I look at it occasionally and I realize, oh, it's just two shit lords arguing. But to be fair, there are people kind of fighting back against them, which is great. I just don't have the pay. It's too much for me to bother with right now. But that was brilliantly stated. I am certainly guilty and I apologize for ignoring this element of our movement too much. Now, I do think I've been doing what I can to fight back against these ideas, but I I didn't maybe fully grasp how big this was. And I just don't like YouTube. I mean, I just hate YouTube for this reason. I mean it is – this is the YouTube culture and I had sort of abandoned it to the wolves. I got just – whatever. Take over YouTube misogynist because I personally – I have where I am and I just don't don't – know what I could do to fight back against that. But having been, suppose, more exposed to what's going on there, I do think we need to stop ignoring it, and we do need

0:58:24 Kristi: Yes that's it yeah yes definitely Matt

0:59:30 Thomas: To realize that this is a part of our movement. And I firmly believe that if you are just putting on a normal atheist convention, that these people are there. I think they're there. I don't think it's the majority, but they're there. You know, just because you're not having Carl Benjamin speak, they're not showing up with Kekistani flags and yelling and stuff. But I think they're around, and I think that if we ignore it and if there are people who don't want to get involved and just want to stay silent, I do think they are prioritizing profiting off of these people rather than making any stand for women and for the subjects of their bullying and their disgusting views. Use.

1:00:09 Kristi: Delhunte can go to a conference and talk to a thousand people, but Sargon is going to get 150,000 views for every video, and that's the disproportionate power he has as a big online person. So, yeah, I mean, I I'm glad that people are saying, are acknowledging, not acknowledging, but willing to say this is a problem, and I want to do something that really makes me happy thank

1:00:33 Thomas: All right. Well, Kristi, thanks so much for coming on. I mean it. Let's do it again very soon. There's so much more I want to hear about that's not so intimately related to Mythicist Milwaukee. But I actually didn't know most of your story involving this. I think that gaslighting was successful to where I wasn't even clear all the things you were doing. And I'm really glad. I think that was very good information to get out what you had planned, what you actually did from your side, because, man, they are good at propagating this this bullshit. You know, they're good at flooding the system with victim narrative about how you're abusing all of them. You know they're Good at it and it's

1:00:37 Kristi: You yes yep thank

1:01:17 Thomas: Good to get the truth out there. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for everything you've done and for educating me on what this world is. And I think you definitely made all the difference in the world in terms of getting this exposed for what it was.

1:01:32 Kristi: You

1:01:57 Thomas: Really good conversation. Thank you so much to Kristi for all her help and everybody who was there at the beginning, early on, who knew that this community, if you could call it that, this dark, disgusting, misogynistic faction existed and who knew the harms and were trying to alert others. Make sure to check out Kristi's work at youtube.com/user/drkmwinters, drkmwinters, that's her YouTube channel, search Kristi Winters, but you'll see probably a bunch of bullshit, disgusting, misogynistic hate that has been launched at her, and then same goes for Twitter, actually, if you just search her on Twitter, you'll probably see that, so type in kwintie, k-w-i-n-t-i, if you'd like to follow Kristi Winters on Twitter. I will tag her in this, but yeah, that's one thing you'll notice if you try to search for her is you'll see a bunch of just disgusting, I I can't even imagine a community could take itself seriously and promote this kind of just filth about Kristi, about anyone. I mean, I I don't get it.

I mean, it's not as though the people I disagree agree with, I've ever had a thought to like post a weird page that lies about them and talks and uses sexual slurs to, to, as a nickname for them. I mean, I don't get it. I don't get how these people could at all think they are in the right or think they're serious thinkers for doing this. I mean, it's, it's absurd, but anyway, that's the, that's, that's what you get with a shitlord group, group, and a shit lord conference.

1:03:32 Thomas: So there you go. Thanks so much to Kristi. That was a lot of fun. That was really interesting conversation. I hope to have another one very soon with her, maybe, maybe less focused on this and more focused on some of her other work, because I know that would be really interesting. And with that said, I'll have to see you guys on Thursday.