Leah Feiger: Thanks, David. Something to continue thinking about and keeping track of for sure. We’re going to take a quick break and when we’re back, Tess and David are going to be sharing their favorite conspiracies of the week. Welcome back to WIRED Politics Lab. I’m Leah Feiger, and this is Conspiracy of the Week, the part of the show that’s hopefully slightly more fun than everything we just talked about. Tess, David, what stood out to you this week? What’s your favorite conspiracy theory?
Tess Owen: I bring to you a sort of oldie, but a goodie.
Leah Feiger: Oh, fantastic.
Tess Owen: That Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen so that he could eventually be brought back to life, and that his body is being stored under the Pirates of the Caribbean ship at Disneyland.
Leah Feiger: Stop. What? This is so weird.
Tess Owen: Disney made frozen so that when people Googled Disney frozen, a film would come up instead of the speculation that he was cryogenically frozen.
Leah Feiger: Oh my goodness.
Tess Owen: And I was thinking, what would be the problem with Walt Disney being brought back to life? He made charming films for children.
Leah Feiger: Some issues there.
Tess Owen: Yes, yes, yes.
Leah Feiger: Some low-key anti-Semitism racism. That works.
Tess Owen: Definitely. But when you consider that people think he was a satanic pedophile-
Leah Feiger: No.
Tess Owen: … the stakes get a bit higher. And I’ve followed, unfortunately, grooming conspiracies for the last few years. And-
Leah Feiger: Oh no.
Tess Owen: … when they started around Disney, specifically there were concerns that a same-sex kiss in a Buzz Lightyear film was part of an agenda to brainwash children into the sort of LGBTQ agenda, dah, dah. Anyway-
Leah Feiger: Good. Yes. Great.
Tess Owen: … these satanic panics and grooming conspiracies surrounding Walt Disney go back quite far.
Leah Feiger: Wow. Okay. That’s a lot of history I don’t actually think I knew about. I got to get to the Pirates of the Caribbean.
David Gilbert: I was going to say, I think you need to send Tess to the Pirates of the Caribbean-
Leah Feiger: Yeah, Tess, report back.
David Gilbert: … and report on this.
Leah Feiger: Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous conspiracy. Okay. David, what do you got?
David Gilbert: So my conspiracy this week comes from a group that I’ve followed for quite a while, and it’s an offshoot of the wider QAnon conspiracy, deeply fetishizing John F. Kennedy and his family. So they’re kind of known as the JFK QAnon cult.
Leah Feiger: And you’ve done a ton of reporting on them.
David Gilbert: Yeah, yeah. I have over the years, and they’ve been going for quite a while now. And even though their leader died last year, they’re still pushing ahead with this idea that JFK will suddenly come back to life. And some of them believe that Donald Trump is JFK in disguise.
