we need to say clearly and fortunately white supremacy all forms of hate fueled by violence have no place in america failure to call it out is complicity my dad would say if your silence is complicity we can't remain silent there's those who say we bring this up we just divide the country bring it up we silence it instead of remaining silence for in silence wounds deepened president biden once again blasting hate-fueled political violence in our nation violence that exists in large part because of lies and conspiracies we're all very very familiar with donald trump's big
lie the one that sparked the capital right but there are many other lies about things like barack obama's birthplace and the so-called deep state and the new peacock docu-series shadowland aims to explore it all a conspiracy theory is a theory that there is someone bigger that is pulling the strength there are wealthy powerful families that control everything [Music] the nazis are coming they're here our elections were stolen you devil worshiping satan is a witch the rule of law in this country has been eliminated [Applause] there's money to be made here people are dying that don't
need to they are trying to manufacture anger i lost everything i ever worked for i miss my dad all the time this is really pulling people in i'm never gonna talk something again here with us tonight joe burlinger oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker and executive producer of shadowland all six episodes of the series will premiere september 21st on peacock joe this is a stunning piece of work you put together i want to know did any one person one event get us to this point that's a great question you know the easy answer is first of all thank
you for having me i'm a big fan of the show um the easy answer of course is uh social media but i actually look further back there was a time when there were you know three networks and there was a dividing line between you know the news division and the entertainment division and at a certain point the line fell and and ratings and selling ads and all that stuff became important for news and then the explosion of cable networks and 24-hour news cycle i think are generally our media culture has allowed a lot of opinion
to get into the dialogue and that then intersected with social media and it's been it's been a decades-long progression of where people just don't know what the truth is well certain people don't know what the truth is um and it's it's it's deeply troubling you know like my iphone is is the greatest device you can imagine uh we've never had more information than available at our fingertips but there's never been a time where the truth has been so elusive for so many people and i think this is this is destroying democracy and for this show
what i wanted to do was really not get into the finger pointing and the demonization that has happened we've divided into two camps and we demonize one another and we each side looks at the other side as you know as two-dimensional human beings and we don't we don't have any dialogue anymore and i think that's the that that is destroying a democracy it will destroy democracy if people can't come together and compromise and so instead of doing the usual finger pointing i wanted to do a deep dive into the world of conspiracy thinking understand at
least try to understand how people come to their views you know without without judgment what i found most fascinating when you follow these stories what you end up following is the money people don't realize that much of this whole conspiracy theory universe is really a multi-billion dollar industry alex jones probably the best known but he's only the tip of the iceberg isn't he exactly people want we follow a guy named pastor locke who wants to build his church we follow people who are wanting to sell products so there are people who know better there are
political leaders in november there are people in congress who know better but they're taking advantage and manipulating regular people for whom life has not gone well and they're looking for an answer and that's the thing that's shameful that i find in income you know our leaders who are knowingly promoting uh conspiracy theories it's but they're what we've learned like we we spent time with a woman in uh in rural pennsylvania she owns a pizza shop if you were driving through rural pennsylvania and stopped off at her pizza shop she thinks she she's a lovely person
and you'd want to sit and chat with her and she felt feels like you know an american and yet she's in january 6 in the capitol calling for nancy pelosi's head and she's sitting in prison right now awaiting trial but she deeply believes you know i i want i want to have empathy for for these people who because of the people who are making money off her and manipulating her politically i want to have some empathy to try to understand where these people are coming from so that we can we can talk because if we
don't talk we are headed down a very dangerous path my opinion decency empathy compassion those are things we all need to have calling for nancy pelosi's head and storming the capital not so much joe berlinger thank you so much and you at home can watch shadowland on peacock starting wednesday i highly recommend it [Music] you
