Debunking Borat (2021) s01e04 Episode Script
China Virus
Nice to meet you.
- Okay.
- Yes.
SACHA BARON COHEN: 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.
SACHA: 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.
JIM: Do you know
who George Soros is?
He's a Hungarian Nazi,
or a Hungarian Jewish person.
When he was a kid, he was
passed off as a Christian boy
and given to a Nazi guy.
And this Nazi guy, um,
claimed him as his godson,
if I remember correctly.
So, anyway, he didn't
get shipped off to the camp,
but he helped ship a bunch of
Jewish people off to the camps
and stole their prop helped
steal their property, whatnot.
So he's just as guilty
as the Nazis were.
NARRATOR: For decades the Jewish philanthropist
and billionaire investor George Soros
has been the target of multiple
conspiracy theories
accusing him of being
a global puppet master
who controls everything
from the world economy
to the protests following
the killing of George Floyd.
At the heart of this
anti-Semitic fallacy
is the long-held conviction
that powerful Jews
are bent on world domination.
Today George Soros is a frequent target
at the center of it all.
Soros made his money
in the world of finance
and investments, was one
of the financiers to profit
from the pounds fall in 1992,
which earned him
the nickname "the man who broke
the Bank of England,"
and is a generous philanthropist and benefactor,
having given away over $32 billion
to a wide variety of causes.
As early as 1979,
he funded scholarships in
South Africa during apartheid.
He expanded from there
to Europe, Asia, Latin America,
and the U.S.
with endeavors as diverse
as promoting democracy,
funding Ebola treatment,
hate crime prevention,
and was an early LGBTQ rights supporter.
In 1998, the news program
60 Minutes profiled Soros.
In it, the reporter explored
how, as a teenager,
Soros survived the Holocaust
by pretending to be the godson
of a Christian government
official in Budapest.
When pressed about his experience,
Soros answered that he had
witnessed his godfather
confiscating the property of other Jews.
This complicated chapter in
Soros's life has been pointed to
by conspiracy theorists
as proof that he was either
complicit in these actions
or else a Nazi himself.
Further supported by a photo
of an Auschwitz bookkeeper
that was falsely identified as him,
these lies spread rapidly,
defaming his character.
Hi.
[LAUGHS]
- Hi, Imran. I'm Jim.
- I'm Jerry.
Hi, Jim and Jerry.
My name's Imran Ahmed.
Uh, I run the Center
for Countering Digital Hate.
The Center for what? I'm sorry.
And it's good to meet you,
by the way, first.
What, now, is it?
It's the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
- Counting Countering Digital Hate.
- Countering.
NEWSWOMAN: I want to bring in Imran Ahmed.
He is the founder and CEO of the Center
for Countering Digital Hate.
Misinformation intermingles
seamlessly with information,
with no way of telling
what's right and what's wrong.
So we should be making sure
that good information is being pushed out.
There's this theory that George Soros,
he was a Nazi during the Second World War.
I've heard that.
Do you remember where you heard it?
All I saw was a picture somewhere,
and it was,
he was in a Nazi uniform,
and that's all I know about the guy.
IMRAN: He wasn't a Nazi
during the Second World War.
No 14-year-old child can ever
be credibly called a Nazi.
- Especially a Jewish child
- [LAUGHTER]
uh, during the Holocaust.
JIM: What I really wonder
is how Hitler got all of those people
- to follow him.
- That's easy.
It's just,
it-it just baffles my mind.
Throughout history,
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,
they're like the original.
The aim of them
is to give you the rationale
to go and kill Jewish people.
There is a fake book called
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It said that it was the proceedings
of a meeting of the Elders of Zion,
who are meant to be the leaders
of the Jewish community,
to talk about how they were
going to take over the world.
Well, that book,
which was a forgery, of course,
because there are no Elders of Zion,
quite specifically Hitler used
it as one of his justifications
for the Holocaust.
It takes a lot of
misinformation, a lot of lies,
to persuade someone to hate that much.
'Cause we ain't born that way,
are we?
- No.
- No.
- Absolutely not.
- Right?
And it shows you how fragile
our society can be.
Especially when we live
in this social media age where
conspiracy theories and lies
can be transmitted
like that.
SIR RICHARD J. EVANS: You can look at the Internet
and see Soros involved
in a web of conspiracies
to undermine civilization.
On a broader scale,
these conspiracy theories
about George Soros perpetuate the image
of the Jewish financier as an
evil plotter behind the scenes.
GLENN BECK: The strings that are being pulled
by the puppet master.
Guess who controls most of the most powerful.
George Soros.
His thoughts and his
and his beliefs
that he's wanting to push on people
His way of trying to control
funneling his money down
in different ways
and setting up different organizations.
It's, in my opinion, I think,
the reason why we're having
a lot of the problems
that we're having today.
ANDREW MARANTZ: George Soros is Jewish,
and because he
does a bunch of politically
controversial things
with his money, that then
morphs, very easily,
into George Soros is part
of a secret Jewish cabal
that is controlling the world.
The world of conspiracy theories
is a world of black and white
and right and wrong
and good and evil.
And it is
comforting, I think,
for many people to believe
that bad things that happen
happen because some bad person
wanted them to happen.
Soros is the bogeyman, in that sense.
[♪♪♪]
Nice to meet you.
- Okay.
- Yes.
SACHA BARON COHEN: 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.
SACHA: 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.
JIM: Do you know
who George Soros is?
He's a Hungarian Nazi,
or a Hungarian Jewish person.
When he was a kid, he was
passed off as a Christian boy
and given to a Nazi guy.
And this Nazi guy, um,
claimed him as his godson,
if I remember correctly.
So, anyway, he didn't
get shipped off to the camp,
but he helped ship a bunch of
Jewish people off to the camps
and stole their prop helped
steal their property, whatnot.
So he's just as guilty
as the Nazis were.
NARRATOR: For decades the Jewish philanthropist
and billionaire investor George Soros
has been the target of multiple
conspiracy theories
accusing him of being
a global puppet master
who controls everything
from the world economy
to the protests following
the killing of George Floyd.
At the heart of this
anti-Semitic fallacy
is the long-held conviction
that powerful Jews
are bent on world domination.
Today George Soros is a frequent target
at the center of it all.
Soros made his money
in the world of finance
and investments, was one
of the financiers to profit
from the pounds fall in 1992,
which earned him
the nickname "the man who broke
the Bank of England,"
and is a generous philanthropist and benefactor,
having given away over $32 billion
to a wide variety of causes.
As early as 1979,
he funded scholarships in
South Africa during apartheid.
He expanded from there
to Europe, Asia, Latin America,
and the U.S.
with endeavors as diverse
as promoting democracy,
funding Ebola treatment,
hate crime prevention,
and was an early LGBTQ rights supporter.
In 1998, the news program
60 Minutes profiled Soros.
In it, the reporter explored
how, as a teenager,
Soros survived the Holocaust
by pretending to be the godson
of a Christian government
official in Budapest.
When pressed about his experience,
Soros answered that he had
witnessed his godfather
confiscating the property of other Jews.
This complicated chapter in
Soros's life has been pointed to
by conspiracy theorists
as proof that he was either
complicit in these actions
or else a Nazi himself.
Further supported by a photo
of an Auschwitz bookkeeper
that was falsely identified as him,
these lies spread rapidly,
defaming his character.
Hi.
[LAUGHS]
- Hi, Imran. I'm Jim.
- I'm Jerry.
Hi, Jim and Jerry.
My name's Imran Ahmed.
Uh, I run the Center
for Countering Digital Hate.
The Center for what? I'm sorry.
And it's good to meet you,
by the way, first.
What, now, is it?
It's the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
- Counting Countering Digital Hate.
- Countering.
NEWSWOMAN: I want to bring in Imran Ahmed.
He is the founder and CEO of the Center
for Countering Digital Hate.
Misinformation intermingles
seamlessly with information,
with no way of telling
what's right and what's wrong.
So we should be making sure
that good information is being pushed out.
There's this theory that George Soros,
he was a Nazi during the Second World War.
I've heard that.
Do you remember where you heard it?
All I saw was a picture somewhere,
and it was,
he was in a Nazi uniform,
and that's all I know about the guy.
IMRAN: He wasn't a Nazi
during the Second World War.
No 14-year-old child can ever
be credibly called a Nazi.
- Especially a Jewish child
- [LAUGHTER]
uh, during the Holocaust.
JIM: What I really wonder
is how Hitler got all of those people
- to follow him.
- That's easy.
It's just,
it-it just baffles my mind.
Throughout history,
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,
they're like the original.
The aim of them
is to give you the rationale
to go and kill Jewish people.
There is a fake book called
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It said that it was the proceedings
of a meeting of the Elders of Zion,
who are meant to be the leaders
of the Jewish community,
to talk about how they were
going to take over the world.
Well, that book,
which was a forgery, of course,
because there are no Elders of Zion,
quite specifically Hitler used
it as one of his justifications
for the Holocaust.
It takes a lot of
misinformation, a lot of lies,
to persuade someone to hate that much.
'Cause we ain't born that way,
are we?
- No.
- No.
- Absolutely not.
- Right?
And it shows you how fragile
our society can be.
Especially when we live
in this social media age where
conspiracy theories and lies
can be transmitted
like that.
SIR RICHARD J. EVANS: You can look at the Internet
and see Soros involved
in a web of conspiracies
to undermine civilization.
On a broader scale,
these conspiracy theories
about George Soros perpetuate the image
of the Jewish financier as an
evil plotter behind the scenes.
GLENN BECK: The strings that are being pulled
by the puppet master.
Guess who controls most of the most powerful.
George Soros.
His thoughts and his
and his beliefs
that he's wanting to push on people
His way of trying to control
funneling his money down
in different ways
and setting up different organizations.
It's, in my opinion, I think,
the reason why we're having
a lot of the problems
that we're having today.
ANDREW MARANTZ: George Soros is Jewish,
and because he
does a bunch of politically
controversial things
with his money, that then
morphs, very easily,
into George Soros is part
of a secret Jewish cabal
that is controlling the world.
The world of conspiracy theories
is a world of black and white
and right and wrong
and good and evil.
And it is
comforting, I think,
for many people to believe
that bad things that happen
happen because some bad person
wanted them to happen.
Soros is the bogeyman, in that sense.
[♪♪♪]