Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter recently visited the Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli podcast, sharing some of his conspiracy theories and expressing his belief in several controversial ideas. Among the things learned during the chat were that Carpenter adheres to a "flat Earth" view and he also questions the effectiveness of vaccines.

The guitarist says he started investigating some of these theories dating back to the early '90s. The first subject to come up with the "flat Earth" theory, the idea that we are not on a globe-shaped planet.

He explained (as transcribed by ThePrp), "If you think you live on a spinning, flying space ball, you’re in a cult.”  He continued, “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. 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.”

When asked to explain his view on the Earth, the guitarist stated, “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 are working on those things. And it’s just exciting, you know, seeing it from… it’s a much clearer perspective once you acknowledge it, because it’s something that’s blatant and it’s in everything. And you just have to, you know, understand what you’re looking at. You don’t feel it, I mean if you’re walking on a treadmill, a half a mile per hour, and I unplugged it, you would feel it.”

"You’re gonna always fall for everything if you don’t know that you’re actually not in reality," added Carpenter. "And that’s the entire point of even mentioning that Earth is flat. Like, when you’re saying, you know, when you’re having conversations with people like, I don’t mind having conversations with people—especially even if they’re completely different [opinions] than mine, and especially when they are, because that’s usually where I’ll cut right through all of their like, ‘Alright, I’m gonna take you to the maximum when it comes to crazy.’"

The guitarist says he's since investigated "flat Earth" videos with his friends and sees some validity. "It’s like when you’re watching something about reality The Matrix is trying to remind you this isn’t real, look away. But like I said you know I was like, ‘Look, you know, you’re right I was wrong. I’m sorry I laughed at you all those times.’ That very first realization. I have to say that, you know, it was probably a couple weeks where I was like man I really wish I had this volume of information to fill the hole where that other volume of information used to be."

He continues, "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? [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.”

Carpenter also shared his views on the current Covid-19 pandemic and the push for vaccines. He explained, “[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.”

When the podcast host brought up the Polio vaccine, Carpenter shot 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 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."

When asked about the push for masks to cut down on the spread of Covid, the guitarist offered, “All propaganda all the time. No matter how many times you want to present to people that it says right on the box that it says that this protects you against nothing, you know it won’t matter. I mean they could read it themselves and who wants to admit they’ve been played? I mean who wants to own that they were the sucker. That’s hard I guess for most people, because that’s what we’re going through."

He continued. "Most people know that it’s bullshit. The germaphobes we’re not… we can’t do anything but try to help them out because they genuinely believe that there’s a deadly virus going around and they would have believed it already. They already thought life was deadly and dangerous. So this is no help to them. But everyone else part-time wears the mask, they already know it’s worthless. You know they all got their little favorite little logo matching their outfits. It’s like clown show. Please stop, you’re embarrassing yourself."

Carpenter insists, "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. And it’s unfortunate that everybody just gave in. It was a two week event when it started, and then it just now it’s forever… Thank you to all your mask wearers for making this permanent, good job.”

Carpenter also adds, “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 guitarist later spoke on the suppression of conspiracy theories, stating, “In this reality, truth is what is being suppressed. Or, you know, I wouldn’t even say truth. You know just people that are presenting alternative perspectives that are better based in what they believe to be evidence proving their point. And that’s the stuff that’s getting smashed."

"There’s a force that does not want you to educate yourself, there’s a force that does not want you to feel confident about yourself. There’s a force that does not want all the people uniting together. I mean it’s hard to, it’s really hard to comprehend and 99 percent can’t figure out that that’s that what kind of value they got versus one percent, that’s insane.”

There's plenty more to the interview which can be heard in full below.

Deftones' Stephen Carpenter on the Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli Podcast

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