Did any of the panel have any advice, the female questioner from Houston asked, about buying gold and silver stocks to help protect them from the New Worldย Order?
The setting was a packed hall in Bozeman, Montana, for the inaugural Red Pill Expo, and it was the British hereditaryย peer, Lord Christopher Monckton, who jumped at the chance to give advice onย commodities.
โItโs a good idea to keep silver rather than gold,โ said Monckton. โCommunists tend to confiscate gold but silver takes more storage, so they donโt confiscate that. So the thing to do is holdย silver.โ
Contained within that response were the key themes of the conference โ communists are everywhere, thereโs a conspiracy of some sort to control the world, and only those taking the โred pillโ will be able to see the realย truth.
For those uninitiated into the lexicon of the โalt right,โย a person who accepts the red pill is choosing to avail themselves of the real truth in theย world.
The phrase is taken from the 1999 movie The Matrix.
The filmโs hero, Neo, is offered a choice. Take the blue pill and return to the fakery of a computer-generated world, or swallow the red pill and have the worldโs painful truths, together with the limited acting range of Keanu Reeves, fullyย revealed.
A Collection of Conspiracyย Theories
From the speeches and videos from the โexpoโ posted online, it seems that in addition to swallowing a fictional red pill, the attendees were also asked to swallow a parade of conspiracy theories about vaccines (dangerous), the United Nations (a global power grab), cancer cures (a cover up of โnaturalโ cures) and the 9/11 terrorist attacks (a controlledย explosion).
But a central theme pushed by Monckton and others was that climate change is largely a hoax that slides neatly into the โred pillโ narrative:ย The work ofย thousands of climate scientists is a ruse to gain control of yourย lives.
Fox News Montana reported on the expo but gave no indication of the oddball views being expressedย inside.
A report in the local Bozeman Daily Chronicle told a different story, quoting a director at the Montana Human Rights Network who saw the event as a recruitment drive for the โaltย right.โ
Freedom Forceย International
The Red Pill Expo was organized by Freedom Force International (FFI) โ a group founded by another conspiracy theorist, G. Edwardย Griffin.
FFI has a โcreed of freedomโ that apparently allows its signatories the โfreedom to accept or reject any currency, or other forms of money, based entirely upon my personal judgment of itsย value.โ
Griffin has said that there is โno such thingโ as HIV and also thinks thereโs something conspiratorially fishy about the contrails that planes leave behind in theย sky.
Another FFI associate, the GOP activist Dan Happell, introduced the conference and appeared to play a role in moderating it. In early 2016, he was part ofย Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruzโs โMontana Leadership Teamโย as an โAgenda 21โย speaker.
In October 2016, Happell helped organize a tour for Monckton around Montana.ย
The following month, FFI held a climate science denial conference, again featuring Monckton together with Professor Will Happer, who was being floated as a possible science advisor to President Trump.
The Study That’s ‘Going to Change Everything’ย โ But Science Journals Won’tย Touch
At the Red Pill event, Monckton claimed to have found fundamental errors in the way that scientists had been calculating the sensitivity of the planet to rising levels of carbonย dioxide.
He had sent the study to Happer, he said, who had checked hisย numbers.ย
Happer also dismisses the risks of burning fossil fuels and, against the positions of science academies across the globe, thinks there are only benefits from adding greenhouse gases to theย atmosphere.
Monckton has been previewing his wild claims in several interviews in recentย weeks.ย
In early Juneย Monckton told Alex Jones on InfoWars (the home of many a conspiracy theory ) that โthis is going to change everything,โย but admitted he was having trouble getting a journal to publish hisย research.
โThe real idea of this climate change nonsense is to take America down,โ said Monckton. โThatโs the objective here โ itโs got nothing to do with theย climate.โ
According to Moncktonโs presentation, his co-authors include David Legates, Michael Limburg, Willie Soon, Alex Henney, and Jamesย Morrison.
Infowars sent along reporter Millie Weaver to the event, who spoke on a panel about โfakeย news.โ
‘Lunatic Farmer’ Meets Climate Scienceย Deniers
But perhaps the highest profile speaker in Montana was not there to talk about climate change, but aboutย farming.
Joel Salatin โ the self-styled โChristian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmerโ โ has been featured in multiple documentary films and in the pages of Time magazine.ย Salatin gave his keynote on the opening morning of the conference and later appeared on a panel besideย Monckton.
โWhat a joy to be with you, to visit with you and to share this stage with these luminaries,โ said Salatin.
Itโs not clear if Salatin stuck around to see those โluminariesโ in full flight or if his first impressions lasted across the two-dayย conference.
DeSmog has emailed Salatin forย comment.ย
Main image: Lord Christopher Monckton gives a presentation at the Red Pill Expo in June 2017. Credit: YouTube/Goneย Green
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