All language subtitles for Borats.American.Lockdown.and.Debunking.Borat.S01E03.WEBRip.x264-NH

Nice to meet you.

- Oh, okay.
- Yes.

In Borat subsequent moviefilm,

I lived with two conspiracy theorists,

in character, for several days.

- Vaccines.
- Bill gates.

- Mail-in ballots.
- Chinese virus.

- Drink their blood.
- Not nice.

The myths and misinformation
they shared with borat

fuel a dangerous rhetoric that
is tearing apart societies

in front of our eyes.

In this series of episodes,

we'll introduce Jim and Jerry
to world-leading experts,

doctors and academics, who will address

some of the most dangerous
conspiracies head-on

and debunk them face-to-face.

Hello, Jim and Jerry.

This is Hillary rodham Clinton.

You know, I refuse to take
part in mail-in ballots.

It's just bullshit.

Right?

Mail-in ballots...

They can cheat. They can win that way.

In 2016, during the
presidential primaries,

before the election ever happened,

Roger stone launched the
stop the steal website,

and since then, trump
has touted voter fraud

as the only reason he would
ever lose an election.

Unsolicited millions of
ballots that they're sending.

It's a scam. It's a hoax.

Even after he defeated hilary Clinton,

he claimed to be a victim of it,

keeping the threat alive in
the minds of his supporters,

until the next election.

During the 2020 election, in the
midst of a global pandemic,

many states determined that the
best way to keep voters safe

and distanced was through
mail-in ballots.

As election day drew
closer, trump ramped up

his baseless attacks
against mail-in ballots,

continuing to cast doubt
on their accuracy.

This was a way to
undermine the validity

of the traditional Democratic
voter living in cities

who were thought to be more likely

to utilize the mail-in system.

While dramatic, these
claims are patently false.

Mail-in ballots have reliably
been used since the civil war,

showing no party bias.

One analysis of mail-in ballots
in the 2016 and 2018 elections

found only 372 possible cases of fraud,

out of 14.6 million votes cast.

These facts were drowned out
by the story of a president

creating doubt about his own
nation's electoral system,

which became daily fodder
for all the news networks,

which, in turn, continued to
spread this false narrative

of election fraud.

Hey, Jim and Jerry.

How are you? I feel
like I know you two.

Mutale nkonde is a fellow

at the berkman klein center at Harvard.

We have been looking at
how platform companies

allow their recommendation algorithms

to spread disinformation.

It's good to meet you.

It's nice to be able to
sit here and talk to you.

Like, I would love to hear

what element of the election,

if any, do you think...

I think that they used a lot
of ballots that were false.

Mail-in voting, is, is open for fraud,

and even Jimmy Carter said that.

It is. It's open completely to fraud,

and you're able to do so many things

with so many extra ballots.

I, I did mail-in, uh, voting for
years because I travel a lot.

So, that's how I did it.

But I had to request it. All right?

What happened was, they
just mass-mailed them out.

The independent studies that
the secretary of states

did afterwards with this election,

they said it was the safest
election in U.S. history.

Last year's presidential
election in United States,

was, all the electoral officials agree,

and all observers and
commentators agree,

the fairest and most
scrupulously carried out

in American history.

The justice department
has not seen fraud

on a scale that could
have changed the outcome

of the presidential race.

Bush said, in part, the American
people "can have confidence

that the election was
fundamentally fair."

The voters and the clerks are
to be commended for the work

that they did to ensure that,
under such significant scrutiny,

the process worked.

But Donald trump cannot
stand the idea of defeat.

And so, he began to say,

even before the election,
that if he was defeated,

it would be the result of fraud.

The biggest critical thing that
we're looking at right now

- with this country is the corruption.
- Yep.

And that's what it boils down to.

That's what's going on right now.

It's... to me, it's disgusting.

On Election night 2020,

there was an explosive renewal
of the ♪stopthesteal hashtag

causing the eponymous Facebook
group to amass 360,000 members

in the 48 hours following election day.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
allowed ♪stopthesteal

to circulate on their platforms.

Despite the group's violent rhetoric,

it took Facebook over a month
to remove them from their site.

But as we saw on January 6,

- violent rhetoric became real life. -

a mob of domestic terrorists

broke into the capitol to try
and stop the confirmation

of the electoral vote.

See, if you believe that the
elected representatives

have been fraudulently elected,

then you consider yourself justified

in overthrowing them
and attacking them.

Which is what happened on January 6.

I think that they put biden in there.

He wasn't elected.

You can't tell me that.

You just... I just can't believe that.

Stop the steal! Stop the steal!

Stop the steal! Stop the steal!

Stop the steal!

The current wave of conspiracy theories

bypass the traditional gatekeepers

of opinion formation.

Newspaper editors, radio
and TV producers,

who would say, "you can't do this.

I'm not going to print this,

because there's no factual
evidence for it at all.

It's just a-a, a vicious fantasy."

And with the Internet and social media,

you can bypass all of that

and say whatever you
like on the Internet.

That's beginning to change, and I think

it's important that that's changing.

Um, that social media companies

now are beginning to
take responsibility

for the kind of information
that they carry.

But there's still a long way to go.