Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter is known as the most visible marijuana advocate in the band, and clearly the dude has had plenty of seshes where he's gotten deep into conversation, because Carpeneter has some thoughts on things. During a recent interview, he admitted that he is a flat-earther, he doesn't think any vaccine has ever worked and he put doubts on how serious the coronavirus pandemic is.
ThePRP transcribed portions of his interview with Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli podcast. Carpenter, who has been studying conspiracy theories since the early 90s, was asked if he was a flat-earther. He responded “Absolutely… If you think you live on a spinning, flying space ball, you’re in a cult.” He elaborated later “The simplest terms for my perspective with flat Earth is simply, I know we’re not on a spinning, flying space ball. Now, what it actually is and all that and, and, and to what depths it goes to, that’s all still to be discovered and people are working on those things."
He pushed back on the idea that any human was ever in space, saying “the only thing that was ever launched into space was humanity’s imagination.”
Carpenter notes that when people try to debate him on the flat earth stuff, they have to find common ground first. “When you tell people that the Earth is flat I want to ask and answer all the questions that you want to ask and answer as well. But I want you to first acknowledge that you don’t live on the spinning space ball. Because once you know you can acknowledge that, then you get to that place where, like ‘okay, now we’re legitimately asking the same question.’ People are still discovering lots of things in regards to that."
Carpenter pointed to a video titled Flat Earth: The Ultimate Litmus Test that convinced him of the highly questionable theory. "When I first saw this, my initial response was laughter, because that’s what I’ve always done. And then I was like you know what? He’s actually showing me something now and I’m still laughing about something that I don’t know about. I at least owe it to just watch this, you know, see what he’s talking about because he’s still telling me a year later that Earth is flat, and I’m still going What are you talking about?"
Carpenter noted he ended up watching the video twice and then was convinced of the message. "When you first learn about flat Earth, at least when I did that, I learned about all that no dinosaur shit, no nuke stuff and everything. I mean literally you just start going down the path. Oh my god, there’s so much fake shit. And it just keeps happening you know?” He continued “[Once] I realized that there was no such place as space and we’re in this, you know, created environment, if you will. It changed everything. I immediately lost all the space fear. Like I have no fears of us ever being struck by some rogue asteroid, meteor, comet, rogue planet, no solar flares, none of this space fucking devil’s gonna get ya.”
He was then asked if reality as we know is part of a simulation. Here's his response:
“If you want to call it simulation. That’s fine, it’s simulation is still implying that you’re not on the flying, spinning space ball, this is some other shit right? And I’m just saying. I’m just saying that you know here in The Matrix where we are, there’s a reality and there is The Matrix right?
Flat Earth is outside of The Matrix, when you’re in The Matrix, you have all kinds of versions of what you think it is, but it’s not. It’s a flat motionless plane of existence. And I don’t know, you can debate it forever, but it will never change the fact that that’s what it is. You know what I mean? And that’s why I was saying…
Initially I said, you know, it’s really hard, um, after you know that, because you are outside of The Matrix. In The Matrix you know, the majority is in The Matrix still, so it’s hard to actually talk to people who want to have serious conversations about subjects that they think they know about but they don’t, because they’re not in actual reality.”
Carpenter boiled down his life philosophy at one point. “Here are three things you need to keep your clarity through all of this mental insanity. This will keep you straight through all of it, if you just remember these three things. And those three things are: one, projection. Two, incrementalism and three, Boogeyman everything. The Boogeyman is constantly being projected, and he’s incrementally getting worse, all the time. Boogeyman, Boogeyman, Boogeyman.” He later added “I literally filter through the fact that I know I’m not on a flying spinning space ball and the Boogeyman is always trying to get me.”
The subject of coronavirus came up and the idea of a vaccine, to which Carpenter replied “[There’s] never been one single vaccine that’s ever worked ever. All poisons, you can never get it out of your body, [your] body has no means to expel it, it’s stuck in you forever and you just suffer with whatever it becomes.”
A successful polio vaccine was brought up, and Carpenter pushed back “We never eradicated it [Polio]. It was… we’ve never actually learned… I’m grateful for COVID, for teaching me the actual germ theory, and that is the virus is something the body creates. You are not not capable of catching a virus from somebody. You develop viruses because you have some type of poison or toxin within you. And that’s your poisoned and toxined cells secreting the virus to clean them from the body."
Carpenter thinks masks don't work because of the legal wording on the boxes of the masks that they don't protect from the virus. As for the virus itself, he expressed doubts on how widespread it is saying “Wouldn’t the homeless population be all you need to know about the virus? I mean, if there was this incredibly deadly, deadly virus going around for this whole entire year, We would have lost everybody on the street by now. I’m sure of it. But in fact we didn’t lose them, their numbers got stronger"
The Deftones guitarist did offer a disclaimer to any fans who happened to lose a loved one "And that’s no disrespect to those who’ve fallen ill and even those who died from whatever they may have died from. Obviously none of that is disregarded, but I do not connect that to what this is, you know? What this is some, this is just some mental trickery."
At one point in the interview, Stephen says "It's far easier to fool people than to ever let them know they've been fooled. Nobody wants to be the fool."
It seems like quite a revealing interview. You can watch it below. Big thanks, again, to thePRP for transcribing. More transcriptions can be seen at their site.
