Social Media Shaming Is Modern-Day Witch Hunting—And It Destroys Lives

Author Jon Ronson joined Glenn to discuss the affects of being shamed on social media. His book So You've Been Publicly Shamed tells personal stories about the terrifying phenomenon of social media shaming. One story details how a poorly crafted and misinterpreted tweet destroyed the life of a woman named Justine Sacco.

"We tried her, convicted her and sentenced her to a year in purgatory, not getting another job, while she was asleep on the plane and had no idea there was even a trial," Ronson explained.

RELATED: What Can You Learn From a Drunk, Sexting College Student? Mercy.

Following Justine's infamous tweet, the Twittersphere exploded with angry, hateful reactions, making her the number one trending topic within hours. And people thought it was hilarious.

"The number of tweets that were like, This is the best thing that's ever happened to my Friday night . . . #HasJustineLandedYet may be the best thing to happen to my Friday night . . . people thought it was so funny that she was unaware of her destruction," Ronson explained.

Listen to the full interview below or watch the clips for answers to these questions:

• What did Justine Sacco tweet before her trip to Africa?

• How is social media shaming related to fake news?

• How long did it take Justine Sacco to rebuild her life?

• Where did Glenn's family get publicly shamed?

• Is social media shaming a human or political problem?

• How did Adria shame Hank on social media?

• How was Adria shamed in return?

• How is social media shaming like a modern-day witch hunt?

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

GLENN: We had a really fascinating discussion today that is focused on the internet and the role that it has played with fake news. I want to take it to public shaming. The way we crucify each other on the internet. And then we move on with our life. We say horrible things about each other, or if it's worse, you have said something, and then it's been taken and all of a sudden, you're the number one trending topic in the world. You're like, "What the -- and your life changes, but everybody moves on after we've wrecked your life. So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a name of a book by Jon Ronson. And he has talked to some of the most famous criminals of Twitter. I mean, people who have said horrible things, where we all had to stop our life and comment on them. And then we moved on.

What happened to them? We start there, right now.

(music)

GLENN: All right. I -- I want to start with the story of Justine Sacco. Ever heard of her? Do you know the name Justine Sacco? Anybody? Anybody? Stu does. Stu does.

JEFFY: Yeah. Just because we talked about it a little bit.

GLENN: Yeah. So you remember. But you would not know that name if you were the average person.

STU: Right.

GLENN: Yet you most likely know the story. We're going to start there with Jon Ronson, author of the book So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

Hello, Jon, how are you, sir?

JON: Hey, Glenn, I'm well. How are you?

GLENN: I'm really good.

I -- we were having this conversation the other day about a month ago internally, and we were like, "What happens with these people?" We've just moved on with our life, but their life is just a wreck. And Stu is a fan of yours and read this book. And he said, "Oh, you've got to read this book." So we wanted to bring you on and tell some of the stories because they are truly fascinating.

JON: They are. And by the way, I'm glad you equated it in a way to fake news. Because I think the two things are kind of corrected.

GLENN: I do too.

JON: Yeah. In a story like Justine Sacco the world --

GLENN: Wait. Wait. Wait. Before we get there. Explain how you think they're connected.

JON: Well, because when something like the just teen Sacco incident happens, and there's many incidents like that, the world gets to know a tiny liver of information about a person. And then they decide to draw huge amounts of inferences. A person is defined in that totality by a single tweet that they wrote. And then all hell breaks loose.

So it's kind of like fake news. You take a little sliver of a fact that means nothing, and you create an entire narrative out of it.

GLENN: Isn't it also a lot like celebrity news? I mean, the paparazzi, they take one picture. They take one salacious piece, and your whole life is destroyed.

JON: Yeah, I remember someone saying to me that one of the ironies is that Twitter claims to hate tabloids and tabloid television.

GLENN: Yeah. Uh-huh.

JON: Yeah. That's exactly how we behave every day.

GLENN: It is. It is.

Okay. So Justine --

JON: Yeah. This is a story of hypocrisies, I think.

GLENN: So Justine, she gets onto a plane, and she's going to South Africa.

JON: Yeah.

GLENN: And before she gets on the plane, she tweets.

JON: Well, she had been tweeting little stupid jokes all day. So when she went from New York to London, she tweeted something about a German passenger with BO. I mean, she was not great on Twitter. She was kind of acerbic and not hugely likable. But she had 170 Twitter followers and was basically -- basically a bad comedian tweeting into an empty room.

So she gets to Heathrow, and she writes the tweet that then went around the world. And the tweet was, "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white."

PAT: Hmm.

JON: I mean, not good.

(laughter)

GLENN: You think?

JON: However -- however, when I meet Justine Sacco a couple of weeks later -- I'm to this day the only journalist who's ever interviewed her. And I met her in a bar. And I asked her to explain the joke.

And she said, "Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the Third World. I was making fun of that bubble." So when you look at it in that perspective, it's not that bad a joke.

STU: And I think it's kind of obvious from the joke.

JEFFY: Yeah.

STU: People are acting as if she thought white people couldn't get AIDS, which is obviously completely absurd.

It's obvious she was commenting on this disconnect between America and what goes on around the world.

GLENN: And, you know, you say it's a bad joke. And it's tasteless joke. And not funny because she's not a comedian. But isn't that -- jokes are kind of like art. It's all, you know, subjective to some regard. And everybody does that. Everybody jokes. It's not like you have to have a license to make a joke.

JON: Sure.

I mean, I suppose what you could say about that joke is that it's a kind of poorly executed version of a kind of (inaudible) little joke.

So, for instance, it's exactly the kind of jokes that's made in South Park all the time. It's the kind of joke that Randy Newman, who I love, has based a career on. You do a kind of exaggerated version of your own privilege and mock it. So it's actually a left-wing joke. But she never got a chance to explain that to anybody because of what happened next.

GLENN: Okay. So she gets on to the plane. They seal the door. They say, "Turn off your phones and your devices, and we'll turn them back on once you get to South Africa."

JON: Right.

GLENN: Anybody who has flown over just the continent of Africa knows, "That's a never-ending trip."

JON: Right. It was about 11 hours of blissful ignorance she slept.

There was no Wi-Fi/internet on the plane. So -- and then she woke up in Cape Town, as the plane was taxiing on the runway. She turned on her phone. And immediately, a text came up from a friend -- from somebody she hadn't spoken to in 20 years that said, "I am so sorry to see what's happening to you right now."

And then she looked at it kind of baffled. Had no idea what was going on. And then another text from her best friend that said, "You need to call me right now. You are the worldwide number one trending topic on Twitter."

GLENN: Imagine how your heart would sink.

JON: Yeah.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. What is happening? So what was happening was ugly.

JON: Right. Yeah, I mean, horrendous.

I should say that I don't -- some people see this as a kind of politically biased story mainly because in this particular story, it was the left going after her more than I would say than the right. Although, kind of everybody went after her. But these stories happen all the time. Sometimes it's the right against the left. Sometimes it's the left against the right.

It's the kind of horrificness of the story I think that matters as opposed to which side of the political spectrum you are.

GLENN: And she was actually left --

STU: It was left going after left.

GLENN: After left. Right? Yeah.

JON: Yeah, exactly.

Well, so the first thing that happened was one of her 170 Twitter followers sent the tweet to a journalist at Gawker called Sam Biddle.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

JON: I know. And so he delightedly retweeted it to his 15,000 followers saying -- I spoke to Sam Biddle not long afterwards. And I said, "How did that feel, to have started the onslaught against Justine?" And he said, "It felt delicious." And then he said, "But I'm sure she's okay now." But she wasn't okay.

GLENN: Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

JON: Yeah. "I'm sure she's okay now." You know, we love to play psychological tricks on ourself to not feel bad about the bad things that we do.

GLENN: So -- so when you met with her, how long after this absolute firestorm. She lost her job. Her life was destroyed. In the book, you say, "Well, it wasn't necessarily the perfect job for you." And she's like, "Yeah, I think it was my ultimate dream job," that she lost.

JON: Yeah. It was -- she -- and the thing is, it was everybody. Her shaming was a shaming that the whole world would get behind. So philanthropists started shaming her and tweeting things like in the light of this disgusting joke, I am donating aid to Africa. And then trolls started going after her saying, "Somebody HIV positive should rape her, and then we'll find out if her skin color protects her from AIDS."

PAT: Oh, jeez.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

JON: Of course, nobody went after that person.

A hashtag started trending worldwide, #hasJustinelandedyet. And people were tweeting that I'm in this bar, and I really want to go home and go to bed. But I can't until Justine Sacco lands and she sees what happens when she turns on her phone.

GLENN: And she didn't even know. When she's walking in the airport -- I saw this in your book, a picture of her walking in the airport. And somebody takes a picture and tweets. Here, she's finally landed, and she's wearing sunglasses to hide her shame.

Did she even know at the time?

JON: Right.

At that point, she knew. I think she had found out. Because that was at baggage claim, and she found out as she was getting off the plane. So I think she had known for about 20 minutes. But I wouldn't say it was -- well, was it shame? I mean, it was certainly fear and distress and agony.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

JON: And maybe some shame. She -- oh, you know, corporations got involved. Gogo, the internet -- you know, the flight internet people tweeted something like, "Next time you're getting on a plane, Justine Sacco, maybe you should choose a Gogo flight." So corporations got involved.

GLENN: Jeez.

JON: Of course, her employers essentially fired her over Twitter. Somebody linked to a flight tracker website so the whole world could watch as her plane got closer and closer to landing.

STU: The worst instincts of humanity.

GLENN: So I want to go -- because there's a couple of things in this story. We have two other stories I want to get to.

But there's some other things in this story about group madness and what you write about, a poorly worded joke, et cetera, et cetera. But I -- I want to know how long after did you talk to her? And have you talked to her since?

What has changed in her life?

JON: Okay. So the first time I talked to her was probably about two weeks later, when I met her in a bar. And she was just crushed. I mean, she couldn't stop crying.

GLENN: Two weeks later.

JON: She just couldn't believe this sort of -- that the whole world had gotten her wrong. She just couldn't -- she couldn't believe it. And then I spoke to her again a couple of weeks after that. She lost her job. And she continued to lose her job for about a year when she finally got a new job. And, of course, when Twitter found out that she had finally got a new job after a year, they tried to get her fired all over again.

JEFFY: What?

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

JON: I know. Because, you know, when we watch Making a Murderer, whose side are we on? We're on the side of the kind-hearted defense attorney. But when we have the power, what do we turn into? Hanging churches.

GLENN: Really, we are witch hunters.

JON: Yes. But I don't want to go too far with my metaphors. But I remember at one point in the midst of this, I sort of yelled to my wife, "It's like the Year Zero. It's the Khmer Rouge." And my wife was like, "It's not like the Khmer Rouge."

(laughter)

GLENN: Yes. Yes.

PAT: A little context.

GLENN: But honestly, it is the same mentality of the witch hunt. We're just not burning them at the stake.

PAT: Exactly.

JON: Yes.

GLENN: But it is the same group insanity.

JON: Yeah. It really is. And it's done -- you know, in the old day social --

GLENN: For sport.

JON: -- psychologists would say, this is madness. This is literal madness that we lose our sense of sanity in the crowd. But I don't think that was what was happening. What was happening was people -- you know, within the echo chamber of Twitter, people wanted to -- it was like a sort of performance piety. People wanted to show the people who followed them on Twitter that they cared about people dying of AIDS in Africa. So to perform that kind of public compassion, anybody committed this profoundly uncompassionate act of tearing somebody apart while she was asleep on a plane.

GLENN: All right. Jon -- we'll be back with Jon Ronson. The name of the book is So You've Been Publicly Shamed. It is a fascinating look at the past. But also, the future. Because we are one tweet away, each of us, from this happening to us. And do you think you're not, you know, open for this. Well, she didn't think so either. Everybody -- she had 170 Twitter followers. Nobody was following her.

[break]

GLENN: So, Jon, we were talking during the break -- we're with Jon Ronson. So You've Been Publicly Shamed. We're talking about that woman that went over to Africa on the plane. She tweeted something. It was taken out of context. She was incommunicado for 11 hours. The world went crazy. We're looking for our tweet. We think that we tweeted a kind of --

STU: We talked about it on the show.

JEFFY: We talked about it on the show.

GLENN: Or we talked about it. A weak defense of her. Because we didn't know all the facts. But we were like, "This sounds like a joke."

STU: It's written that way. It looks like it's a joke mocking the separation.

GLENN: Right. So -- and we're looking up for the tweets because we believe we were also attacked. And this is the problem. This is why people don't say, "Hey, guys, let's be reasonable."

JON: Yeah.

GLENN: Because then, immediately, oh, of course, you're saying that. You're a hater too.

JON: Right. In fact, a really great British feminist writer called Helen Lewis that night tweeted, "I'm not sure Justine Sacco deserves what she's getting. Maybe her tweet wasn't intended to be racist." And straightaway, she got a whole bunch of tweets like, "Well, you're just a privileged bitch too."

JEFFY: Yep.

JON: So -- and so to her shame, she wrote about my book, and so I know this story. To her shame, she stayed silent and watched as Justine Sacco's life got torn apart.

GLENN: And she feels bad about that that now.

JON: Yeah, and feels bad about it.

GLENN: How does the Gawker guy feel?

JON: You know, actually in the summer -- he wrote another article about her when he discovered that she had got a new job. Wrote another article saying, you know, the lousy has-been's got a new job. So Justine, who I've stayed in touch with the whole time, emailed him and said, "Look, we've got to have a drink to sort this out."

So he met her for a drink and then wrote a bit of a mea culpa article afterwards. Yeah. So he did some mea culpa.

GLENN: Really quite amazing how we don't see people as people.

JON: Yeah. I'm -- you know, both sides do it. That story, in particular, from my book, became really famous. Because I wrote an excerpt for it for the New York Times, and it became really famous. And I think a few people misunderstood as a result, thought my book was an attack on the left. But that's not it at all. I mean, there's plenty stories in my book about the right doing exactly the same thing.

GLENN: Yeah. It's not a left or right thing. It's a human thing. It's like racism. Racism exists everywhere.

JON: It's a human thing. For me, it's a story about justice. Like, you know, what we did with Justine Sacco was, we tried her, convicted her, and sentenced her to a year in Purgatory, not getting another job, while she was asleep on the plane and had no idea there was even a trial. And not only was there no feelings of guilty about that, people thought it was hilarious. The number of tweets that were like, "This is the best thing that's ever happened to my Friday night." #JustineSaccolandedyet may be the best thing to happen to my Friday night. People thought it was so funny that she was unaware of her destruction.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. We have -- we have two more stories of destruction. And are we engaging in this? Next.

[break]

GLENN: Welcome back. Welcome back to the program. Jon Ronson is with us. He is the author of So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

We've been talking about fake news. And I'm particularly interested in the ability of the average person to destroy and to be destroyed because now we're all publishers. We are all able to publish something to the entire world. And the entire world gets to judge a book by your one tweet or your one Facebook mention. And that's it.

I mean, we are judging a book by the cover. And it's a frightening thing when you come to think about it and you see the people who have been destroyed.

Jon, should we go to Hank?

JON: Sure.

GLENN: How do you say her name?

JON: Adria.

GLENN: Adria.

JON: Yeah, this is a particularly I think kind of upsetting and difficult story.

So it begins at a tech conference in Santa Clara. Hank is sitting, chatting to a friend, making stupid kind of Beavis and Butt-Head type jokes. Something is happening on the stage about dongles. And Hank whispers to his friend something about dongles, like some kind of stupid joke, but like whisper.

As he told me afterwards, it wasn't even conversation-level volume. So the woman sitting in front turns and takes a photograph. And Hank assumes that she's taking a photograph at the crowd. So he tries to not get into her shot.

But then a few minutes later, Hank and his friend are called out of the conference and told that -- there'd been -- a complaint about sexual language.

So they apologized and then -- because they're kind of nerdy guys, they left the conference. You know, they didn't like conflict. So they left the conference.

On their way to the airport, they saw what happened there. Like what happened.

And the nightmare scenario is that the woman in front had complained via a public tweet on Twitter. And that is exactly what happened. She'd -- she'd sent -- she'd tweeted the photograph of the two men with the comment, something like, "Not cool. Jokes about big dongles, right behind me." And so two days later, Hank was called into his boss' office and fired.

So that night, Hank went on to Hacker News, a message board saying what had happened. Saying, you know, I was fired. You know, I -- I shouldn't have said what I said, but the woman in front just smiled and --

GLENN: It's a stupid -- it's not even her business. It wasn't directed to her. I mean, why does anybody care?

JON: Right. Well -- before we go on to that. Can I tell you what happened next?

GLENN: Yeah.

JON: Because what happened next was really important too.

GLENN: Yes.

JON: So Hank was fired, and then 4chan and the other groups all decided to get Adria. Now -- and so she was then subjected to months and months of photographs of beheaded women with tape over their mouths and death threats.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

JON: And rape threats. And she lost her job too. So it was just carnage. I mean, everyone was just like babies crawling towards guns.

(laughter)

I think what it shows is that we are -- social media is such a kind of primitive thing. And all we can think to do is lurch towards outrage and lurch towards shaming. So a woman shames a man in an inappropriate way. What did the men then do? Shame her back in an even more inappropriate way.

I think -- these are the -- these are the stories that maybe in years to come will form chapters and books about how Donald Trump ended up being our president.

GLENN: I think -- I think in many ways, you're right.

JON: Yeah.

GLENN: I will tell you this, this is probably about six years ago. And I would like to go back into the Twitter feeds and see what could be found now. But I remember as a family, we were in a park in New York. And, Ron (sic), you're from the UK, right?

JON: Right. Yes. Yes.

GLENN: Yeah, so I'm not sure if you know how unpopular I can be in the United States.

JON: I am. I am aware.

GLENN: You're aware. I've made international fame.

So I was in the -- the -- Bryant Park, when I was in New York. And people were mocking my family. And one woman spilled wine on my wife intentionally. And the reason why we know is because they started tweeting things about, Glenn Beck's family is here. And ha, ha, ha how funny it is. I accidentally, in quotation marks, spilled wine on his wife. People also think they're invisible while they're --

JON: Yeah.

GLENN: You know what I mean?

And maybe that's six years ago. But these people in this crowd didn't -- didn't think that we would also be reading what's being said.

JON: And if did you do anything about it?

GLENN: We left.

JON: Right.

GLENN: I just took my family -- we were surrounded. My children and my wife got up to go to the bathroom, and they were almost half a block away from me. And they were being chanted at, "We don't want your kind here." And it was -- it was just -- it was a mob scene. It was a mob scene.

JON: Right.

This is why -- I -- personally, I think kind of conciliatory centrism has become really unfashionable. And there should have been more of it the night Justine Sacco got destroyed. But, in fact, being a centrist was considered to be like a weakness. Like if anybody said, "Let's wait for her to land so we can hear what she has to say about that joke," people thought that was kind of pathetic weakness.

Like, why should we wait to hear what she has to say? We know what she means. That was a clue to her kind of secret inner evil. So as a result, I really admire anybody who is trying to move away from this kind of, you know, pollution of polarization. And I've noticed that that's what you've been doing lately, Glenn. And I really appreciate it. I think people on all sides need to do what you're trying to do.

GLENN: Well, I will tell you, Jon, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on. Because the first thing is to make people aware of what's happened and to start to see people on Twitter as people.

JON: Yeah.

GLENN: Because I don't think we would do this -- well, I mean, I just told you a story in Bryant Park where it was in person. But for the average person --

JON: But you're Glenn Beck.

GLENN: Yeah, I'm Glenn Beck. So I'm not a person anymore.

JON: Right. And you're right. Everybody, Glenn, on Twitter has become -- everybody on Twitter has become like corporations that have to learn damage limitation, which is very stressful, given that Twitter was supposed to be kind of fun.

GLENN: Yeah.

JON: And Twitter was supposed to be like a fun way to connect with our fellow humans.

GLENN: Go ahead.

STU: Jon, this is an interesting point on this. Because the two examples we've talked about so far, both Justine Sacco and the guy with a dongle joke, I think to a conservative audience, you say, this is ridiculous. You know, you make a kind of an off-color joke, and maybe it's not right, but you get beat up and you get fired for it.

I like that the example you have of Lindsey Stone -- because to our audience, I think it's more challenging. But all the same principles apply here.

JON: Right. Yes. Absolutely.

So Lindsey Stone, you couldn't meet a nicer person. I mean, on many levels, Lindsey is even more sympathetic -- I mean, I think most people are sympathetic.

But she works with adults with learning difficulties and was great at her job. Took them on a trip to Washington, DC. Sort of went to the mint and the Holocaust Museum. And then they went to Arlington. And Lindsey and her friend have this little douchey joke that they would share amongst their Facebook friends. And the joke was to stand in front of the sign and do the opposite. So they would smoke in front of a no smoking sign or loiter in front of a no loitering sign.

JEFFY: It's funny.

JON: It was just like a little private joke.

Anyway, at Arlington, they see a sign that says, "Keep off the grass," and they thought, "Should we?" And they thought, "No, we don't want to get in trouble." Then they saw another sign that said, "Silence and respect." And so, as Lindsey told me later, "Inspiration struck."

(laughter)

They were pretending to shout and flip the bird. And so she puts it out on Facebook. And then a friend of hers who was in the military said, "I think that's kind of disrespectful. You should take it down." And Lindsey went, "Oh, don't be ridiculous. It's just us being us. You know, it doesn't mean anything." And then they forgot all about it.

And then a month later, suddenly, it just went super viral. Some pro military website had picked up on it, and she got everything that just even got. Death threats. Rape threats. And because it was from the right, it was things like -- you know, when it was Justine, it was like, "Typical privileged white woman," when it was Lindsey, it was "Typical feminist." So it's exactly the same. Exactly the same demonization happening, just from a different spectrum.

And it went on and on and on. And Lindsey was completely ill-equipped to deal with it. So she went from being this happy-go-lucky young woman who went to karaoke to somebody who stayed home for a year and a half, having suicidal thoughts, depression, anxiety, insomnia. Of course, she lost her job too. And, you know, by the time -- go on, sorry.

GLENN: No, no, no. Go ahead. By the time...

JON: By the time, I met her -- again, she was just crushed. I mean, we always end these stories by thinking, "Well, I'm sure they're fine now." But they're not -- I mean, people kill themselves. Everybody I spoke to will have complemented suicide. But some people do kill themselves.

Frequently, people kill themselves because of social media shamings. And there's no outrage about that because we don't want to feel bad about the bad things that we won't be.

STU: But there doesn't seem to be a line in our society anymore of -- like, if Barack Obama went into Arlington and flipped them off and started fake screaming in front of the sign, I think there would be a righteous outrage over that act. But some person we don't know -- we don't know anything about them --

GLENN: We all want to be outraged.

STU: Yeah. Why? I don't want to live like that. Why does everyone want to live like that? I don't get it.

GLENN: I don't either.

JON: I think it's in part because social media, in its earliest form, it was kind of a beautiful egalitarian thing, where suddenly everybody had a voice. So voiceless people had a voice. And by voiceless, I mean, you know, people from marginalized communities. And I also mean people who were so socially awkward in real life.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

JON: That when you met them at a party, they'd just be standing in the corner of the room. But suddenly they -- on social media, they were funny and eloquent.

And this was like powerful. But -- and then we thought, "Wow, we can do things. We can right wrongs." So we would get people who kind of deserved it.

I mean, I can think of lots of things in the early days of social media when a corporation had done something really bad, and social media put pressure on them and they changed their policy.

But then, you know, I think what happened was that a day without a shaming felt like a day sort of picking fingernails and treading water. It's like we fell in love with getting people so much, that we lowered our standards and started getting anyone.

GLENN: So let me ask you this -- have you watched Westworld, the TV show on HBO?

JON: Yes, I have. I watched the last episode last night.

GLENN: Okay. It was great, wasn't it?

JON: Great.

GLENN: One of the best endings -- but let's stay on track. Sorry. Riddled with ADD.

STU: Come back for another hour-long interview on Westworld.

JON: Right.

GLENN: Yeah. So, Jon, the question in the park is, does the park make you into something, or does it reveal who you are?

JON: I think in terms of social media, part of the -- part of it is this is lying dormant within all of us. But it's also partly because of the technology itself.

Social media is created by engineers. You know, it's engineered in Silicon Valley. And what do engineers love? They love stability. They love everything going along, nicely. And that's why I think Twitter has evolved into a kind of echo chamber, where we surround ourselves with people who feel the same we do and we approve each other. And that's like a good feeling.

And then -- and it's such a powerful feeling, that when somebody gets in the way who is not like us, like Lindsey Stone or Justine Sacco, we're like a machine furiously ejecting a destabilizing fragment. So I think the machine contributes to -- to the problem.

GLENN: Jon, I would love to have you in and spend more time with you in person. Because I just think you're a fascinating guy. And this is -- this is something that I think historians will be reporting on. This is the beginning of a massive cultural change globally and what we do and how we, each of us, act as leaders in our own home, in our own circle of influence, and how we either hang ourself or don't hang ourselves as individuals is important. And I'm glad you're watching this, Jon. Thank you so much.

JON: Thank you, Glenn. I really appreciate it.

GLENN: You bet. Jon Ronson. The name of the book is So You've Been Publicly Shamed. It is a fascinating look of stories that you have heard.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: But you've never heard it from their side. You've never seen what happened afterwards. Isn't it amazing? He's the only -- only person in the media to reach out to her, to this day.

STU: Well, at least successfully.

JEFFY: Right.

STU: Since he wrote about it, I'm sure people have been interested.

GLENN: I'm sure people also -- she's not taking very many that she doesn't know. Yeah.

STU: No. She wants out of this.

Featured Image: Be More Human: Mindshare meets Jon Ronson during Advertising Week Europe 2016 at Picturehouse Central on April 18, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Advertising Week Europe)

There is no doubt about it—we are entering dark times.

The November presidential election is only a few months away, and following the chaos of the 2020 election, the American people are bracing for what is likely to be another tumultuous election year. The left's anti-Trump rhetoric is reaching an all-time high with the most recent "Bloodbath" debacle proving how far the media will go to smear the former president. That's not to mention the Democrats' nearly four-year-long authoritarian attempt to jail President Trump or stop his re-election by any means necessary, even if it flies in the face of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Biden is doing worse than ever. He reportedly threw a tantrum recently after being informed that his polls have reached an all-time low. After Special Counsel Robert Hur's report expressed concerns over Biden's obviously failing mental agility, it's getting harder for the Democrats to defend him. Yet he is still the Democratic nominee for November, promising another 4 years of catastrophic policies, from the border to heavy-handed taxation, should he be reelected.

The rest of the world isn't doing much better. The war in Ukraine has no clear end in sight, drawing NATO and Russia closer and closer to conflict. The war in Gaza is showing no sign of slowing down, and as Glenn revealed recently, its continuation may be a sign that the end times are near.

One thing is clear: we are living in uncertain times. If you and your family haven't prepared for the worst, now is the time. You can start by downloading "Glenn's Ultimate Guide to Getting Prepared." Be sure to print off a copy or two. If the recent cell outage proved anything, it's that technology is unreliable in survival situations. You can check your list of supplies against our "Ultimate Prepper Checklist for Beginners," which you can find below:

Food

  • Canned food/non-perishable foods
  • Food preparation tools
  • Go to the next level: garden/livestock/food production

Water

  • Non-perishable water store
  • Water purification
  • Independent water source

Shelter

  • Fireplace with a wood supply
  • Tent
  • Generator with fuel supply
  • Go to the next level: fallout shelter

Money

  • Emergency cash savings
  • Precious metals

Medicine

  • Extra blankets
  • Basic first aid
  • Extra prescriptions
  • Extra glasses
  • Toiletries store
  • Trauma kit
  • Antibiotics
  • Basic surgery supplies
  • Potassium Iodate tablets

Transportation

  • Bicycle
  • Car
  • Extra fuel

Information

  • Birth certificates
  • Insurance cards
  • Marriage license
  • Immunization records
  • Mortgage paperwork
  • Car title and registration
  • House keys, car keys
  • Passports
  • Family emergency plan
  • Prepping/survival/repair manuals
  • Go to the next level: copy of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and other important books/sources

Skills

  • Cooking
  • Gardening
  • Sewing
  • First Aid
  • Basic maintenance skills
  • Go to the next level: farming/ranching
  • Self-defense training

Communication

  • Family contact information and addresses
  • HAM radio

Miscellaneous

  • Flashlights and batteries
  • Lamps and fuel
  • Hardware (tools, nails, lumber, etc)
  • Extra clothes
  • Extreme weather clothes and gear
  • Gas masks and filters
  • Spare parts for any machinery/equipment

Is Trump's prosecution NORMAL?  This COMPLETE list of ALL Western leaders who served jail time proves otherwise.

PhotoQuest / Contributor, The Washington Post / Contributor, Win McNamee / Staff | Getty Images

Mainstream media is on a crusade to normalize Donald Trump's indictments as if it's on par with the electoral course. Glenn asked his team to research every instance of a Western leader who was jailed during their political career over the past 200 years—except extreme political turmoil like the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Irish Revolution, etc.—and what we discovered was quite the opposite.

Imprisoning a leader or major political opponent is not normal, neither in the U.S. nor in the Western world. Within the last 200 years, there are only a handful of examples of leaders in the West serving jail time, and these men were not imprisoned under normal conditions. All of these men were jailed under extreme circumstances during times of great peril such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

What does this mean for America? Are Trump's indictments evidence that we are re-entering times of great peril? Below is a list of Western leaders who were imprisoned within the last 200 years. Take a look and decide for yourself:

Late 1800s

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Jefferson Davis: The nearest occurrence to a U.S. President to serve jail time was in the case of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson was captured in Georgia by Northern Soldiers in 1865 and locked up in Fort Monroe, Virginia for two years. He was offered a presidential pardon but refused out of his loyalty to the confederacy.

Early 1900s

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Eugene V. Debs: Debbs, a Midwestern socialist leader, became the first person to run for president in prison. He was locked up at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta having been convicted under the federal Sedition Act for giving an antiwar speech a few months before Armistice Day, the end of World War I. Many of his supporters believed his imprisonment to be unjust. Debs received 897,704 votes and was a distant third-part candidate behind Warren G. Harding, the Republican winner, and James M. Cox, the second-place Democrat. Harding ordered Debs’s release from prison toward the end of 1921.

Nazi sympathizers and collaborators: After the end of World War II in 1945, several European leaders who had "led" their countries during the Nazi occupation faced trial and imprisonment for treason. This list included Chief of the French State Philippe Pétain, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and Minister-President of Norway Vidkun Quisling. The latter two were also executed after their imprisonment. President of Finland Risto Ryti and Prime Minister of Finland Johan Wilhelm Rangell were also tried and jailed for collaborating with the Nazis against the Allied Powers.

Late 1900s

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The end of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the pivotal moments that brought the Cold War to a close and marked the end of Communist East Germany. With the fall of the wall and the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the former leaders were brought to trial to answer for the crimes committed by the GDR. General Secretary Erich Honecker and General Secretary Egon Krenz were both put on trial for abuse of power and the deaths of those who were shot trying to flee into West Germany. Honecker was charged with jail time but was released from custody due to severe illness and lived out the rest of his life as an exile in Chile. Krenz served 4 years in jail before his release in 2001. He is one of the last surviving leaders of the Eastern Bloc.

Lyndon LaRouche: Larouche was a Trotsky evangelist, public antisemite, and founder of a nationwide Marxist political movement, became the second person in U.S. history to run for President in a prison cell. Granted, he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a long-shot third-party candidate. When he tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, he received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. Even though in 2000 he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in a few states, the Democratic National Committee refused to seat his delegates and barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.

TOP 5 issues that have gotten WORSE since the last State of the Union

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If you saw Biden's State of the Union last week, or Glenn's firey reaction to it, you know that Biden hardly spoke a word that wasn't a flat-out lie.

If you spent the last 12 months in a fallout shelter and Biden's speech was the only media interaction you had since the last State of the Union, you might be tempted to believe that the country has improved in some way over the past year. But the rest of us, who have been living above ground, going to the grocery store, and paying some attention to current events, had only to look around to see that Biden's speech was nothing but hot air.

Here are the TOP 5 issues that have gotten worse since the last State of the Union.

Economy

Biden spent a significant amount of time during the State of the Union boasting about the strength of his economy, but anyone who has checked their bank account lately was left wondering if he was holding his speech upside down. It's not just the cobwebs in your wallet; the numbers show the devastation wrought by "Bidenomics" too. In 2022, American grocery bills increased by 11.4 percent and restaurant bills by 7.7 percent. In 2023 prices only continued to rise, with an additional 1.2 percent increase in food-at-home prices and a 5.1 percent increase in away-from-home prices.

Debt crisis and inflation

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The national debt continues to grow, and Biden managed to add almost 3 trillion dollars in just one year. As of December 2022, the national debt was $31.42 trillion. As of January 2024, the national debt has risen to $34.19 trillion.

Inflation didn't fare much better. While the 2023 annual inflation rate did drop from the horror of 2022, from 6.5 to 3.4 percent, that is still significantly higher than anything we saw before 2021. You also have to remember that it CARRIES year to year, as Glenn explained in his response to Biden's State of the Union: "Yes, it's not as bad as it was, but it's still what it was PLUS what it is now."

Border

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Biden's mismanagement of the southern border has inflamed the border crisis to all-time highs. In 2022 there were a staggering 2.2 million illegal border crossings, but that wasn't enough for Biden apparently, as an additional 2.5 million illegally crossed in 2023. An estimated 10 million illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border since Biden took office, and the effects are being felt. There has been a surge in crime across the country that is impacting millions of Americans, including the tragic murder of Laken Riley.

Fentanyl

The fentanyl crisis has only continued to worsen as more and more synthetic opioids flood our streets. Between the fiscal year 2021 and 2022, there was a shocking 54 percent increase in fentanyl trafficking offenses as more and more of the narcotic is smuggled across the southern border. We also saw an increase in fentanyl overdose deaths. In 2022 there were approximately 73,654 deaths, which is a significant increase from 70,601 in 2021.

Education and mental health

While the pandemic is long over, the lingering effects of the lockdowns are still being felt. Unsurprisingly, missing years of school has a major impact on the educational development of children. Kids across America are STILL struggling from pandemic-related setbacks, reading scores are still falling, and parents are reporting that their kids are struggling in their studies. The mental health crisis, another symptom of the COVID lockdowns, has also continued to worsen. Tragically, suicides increased by 2.6 percent between 2021 and 2022, marking the continued decline of mental health in America.

TOP FIVE takeaways from Super Tuesday

Anna Moneymaker / Staff, Win McNamee / Staff | Getty Images

The 2024 Presidential Election is taking shape.

Yesterday was Super Tuesday, the single biggest day in the presidential primary season. More than one-third of all delegates needed for a candidate to become the Presidential nominee of their party was up for grabs along with a plethora of state and local elections. In short, yesterday's results will shape the rest of the election season. It was a big deal.

Here are the top 5 takeaways from yesterday's elections:

Haley drops out

Nikki Haley drops out of the 2024 Presidential election.

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After the mass exodus of Republican candidates in January, most commentators agreed that it was only a matter of time before Haley stepped out as well. Haley put up a valiant effort and held out almost two months longer than the other Republican candidates, but after a disappointing turnout on Super Tuesday, she made the call to step back from the race. There was a small victory for Haley fans, however, in that she won Vermont, her first state primary victory following her win in Washington, D.C.

Trump sweeps the board

Trump wins over 1,000 delegates during Super Tuesday.

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While Haley had a disappointing day yesterday, Trump and his team celebrated a huge win. Aside from Vermont, Trump won every state that had a primary. At the time this was written, Trump had picked up a whopping 731 delegates, bringing his total to 1,004, out of the required 1,215 to win the presidential nomination.

Democrats are not committed to Biden

Biden wins big on Super Tuesday, but he is struggling to maintain his Democrat base.

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

On paper, Biden had an excellent Super Tuesday, winning every state primary except American Samoa. However, a closer look reveals cracks in his supporter base. Yesterday, a shocking 19 percent of Minnesota Democrats voted for "uncommitted" instead of Biden. While that wasn't enough to change the outcome of the primary, it shows that Biden is walking on shaky ground, even among Democrats.

This phenomenon wasn't limited to Minnesota either. Eight percent of Colorado and Tennessee Democrats voted "uncommitted," and 10 percent of Massachusetts Democrats and 10 percent of North Carolina Democrats voted "no preference." Is this more evidence of a third-quarter bait-and-switch that Glenn has hypothesized?

The search to replace Feinstein continues

Adam Schiff and Steve Harvey compete for Diane Feinstein's Senate seat.

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California is having two Senate elections to replace the late Senator Dianne Feinstein. There is a special election to fill out the remainder of her term and a regular election to fill her seat for the next six years. The results of the Tuesday primaries put Republican and former Los Angeles Dodgers player Steve Garvey and Democrat Adam Schiff as the front runners, and the two of them will be going head-to-head in November. Surprisingly, even in deep blue California, Garvey won more votes than Schiff in the special primary. Does Garvey have a chance?

Ted Cruz is back up for election in Texas

Ted Cruz is up for re-election in 2024

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The Texas senate primaries were also on Tuesday, and Ted Cruz is back up for election in November. Cruz comfortably won the Republican Primaries with 88 percent of Texas Republicans backing him. Rep. Colin Allred, a Dallas-area congressman won the Democratic primary with a narrower margin of 58 percent. While it's easy for Texans to take their state's red status for granted, it is vital Texans stay vigilant and cast their vote this November.