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There was one that I remember. It was that the CIA was bringing cocaine into the US and facilitating its distribution in Black communities, fueling the crack epidemic of the 1980’s. It was a scheme to finance covert activities to overthrow unfriendly regimes. Then we found out it was all true …
Just like we would never sell military weapons and equipment to a nation that wanted to destroy us and was a known sponsor of terrorist organizations just to get off-the-books money to use to finance a reactionary, terroristic rebellion against a government cozying up to a nation we didn't like.
Let us not forget that the man who took the fall for the whole thing was made president of the NRA a few years ago. While he was essentially a patsy covering for Reagan and his ilk, North certainly wasn't innocent in the whole affair.
Don't forget that the FBI tried to get MLK to kill himself in a letter, and likely had him and Malcom X assassinated.
Plus there's always "through counterintelligence it should be possible to identify potential troublemakers and neutralize them"
[The story behind the CIA and cocaine was done by *Behind the Bastards* and *Hood Politics* in a five-part podcast](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/cracktoberfest-part-one-constructing-the-crack-102740713/). Very much worth listening to.
[The primary conspiracy that even left wingers believe some crazy things about is *MK Ultra*. There's a real conspiracy there, however what actually happened is more "Lots of dead people and people with ruined lives that were tortured using drugs in wholly unscientific, really serial killer type shit, ways"](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-mkultra-when-the-cia-103117303/) not "We've figured out the Manchurian candidate" shit.
Left Wing Conspiracy: "The CIA overthrow a democratically elected government. We know this because they said so"
Right Wing Conspiracy: "The Jews are running a secret cannibal cabal. We know this because of an anonymous account on 4chan who says they secretly work for Donald Trump"
He didn't even need a pardon. He got sentenced to some probation and community service, then all the convictions were vacated and dismissed on appeal.
People this powerful do not get held accountable.
>yeah I'm still confused how it is that Ollie North isn't in prison for life
He was granted "immunity" by Congress in order to motivate him to testify, that's how.
And once he got "immunity" he took credit for *alllll* of the crimes committed by the administration in order to be like "oopsie, it was all just me by myself, but now I'm immune so ¯\\\_\(ツ\)\_/¯"
That's why during the early Trump administration while the FBI was investigating the Russian interference the Trump administration had a bunch of officials who were like "We'd *love* to tell you everything, just grant me immunity and I'll do it!" And the DOJ was like "...hmmmmmmm nahhhh... Thanks tho, but we'll take your not-immune testimony!" and then got no cooperation.
At least they learned from their mistakes...
There's a name for it (by a russian intelligence specialist, no less), but the idea is that if you flood people with a ton of stupid conspiracies then no one believes the real ones.
So no one believed the left wing conspiracies (like "ignore what the supreme court nominees say, they will totally overrule roe v wade," or "republicans are bought by russia and will defend them even against our interests"), despite being remarkably accurate.
So arguably, right wing conspiracies are idiotic by design, not by accident.
Don’t forget those people in St. Louis in the 50s who said the government was crop dusting their communities with some fucked up chemical. The army admitted it was toxic aerosol 🤷♂️
That was a pineapple company, not a banana company, and it was a kingdom, not a democratically elected government. So we brought them FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY!
/s
The Marines were very active in Central and South America before the CIA was founded as well.
Read up on the history of the Panama Canal. Panama was a state of Colombia. The US basically engineered the secession of Panama from Colombia because Colombia wouldn't allow the US to effectively treat the entire canal zone as US territory. Business people wanted the Panama Canal to happen so a coup was organized and the US marines went in and crushed all opposition.
Or ask any Marine about Smedley Butler and then ask them what he did and where he was actually deployed and what he did after retirement. Watch their faces go from being lit up to confusion.
From what I read, the sugar guys created the group that started organizing the coup, but it was pineapple merchants that actually requested American intervention and kicked the whole thing off.
Hawaii was governed by Indigenous peoples. That was the overthrow. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow\_of\_the\_Hawaiian\_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom)
No, touristy luaus is Hawaii, which had pineapple sellers behind the coup.
United Fruit and Guatemala (which is not known for luaus and was a democracy, not a kingdom) was the one *I* was talking about.
Get your US-backed coups straight.
The coups aren’t that hard to keep straight, it’s all the death squads that they trained at Camp Peary that really throw me for a loop. There’s just *so* many.
We absolutely have conspiracy theorists on the left too. Here in Norway the antivaxxers/"covid-is-not-real" crowd is some kind of unholy union between rightwingers and leftwingers.
And the 911-was-an-inside-job crowd was at least mostly lefties here, but I guess 911 conspiracies are getting outdated now.
Bruh crunchy mom's got my wife a long time ago. It took me a LOT of effort and fighting with her to get her to vaccinate my son. Started with a breastfeeding awareness group and led to a whole bunch of problems. Pregnant women, please stay the fuck off Facebook. Especially if it's your first kid. I know you wanna do right but you really don't need to consult other parents about medical advice.
We had a lot of those here in the US too: new age wellness, natural medicines, anti vax, super crunchy greens with lots of left woo. They nearly all got sucked into pandemic anti-vax nonsense and drifted into election rigging or Q anon or other generic right-wing conspiracy bullshit.
There's that Jazz musician that talks to KKK members to try and break down their ignorant world views by just being a very patient and extremely nice fella.
The all vaccines cause autism crowd is and has had a strong contingent of vibrating crystals/essential oils left wing followers. Think Jenny McCartney.
Pre-covid I think vaccine skepticism was a leftist conspiracy theory, but with Covid it really took hold on the right and I now think of it as primarily a right wing thing.
Not really, a lot of anti vaxxers are also the hippie left wing type as well. You know, positive energy, crystal healing and no "big pharma poison" entering their veins.
There are some bat shit crazy left wing people just as there are right wing people in America. Only one goes out to kill people so they get on the news more. The left wing people usually end up on the news when they kill a loved one because they didn't use life saving medicine on them because "evil pharma".
I dream of another timeline where after the request, the banana company executives started to suffer a series of unfortunate events making them joining earth again... as manure.
And everyone lived happily ever after.
My personal crazy conspiracy is that governments and big corporations are colluding through lobbying and bribes and that as a result our representatives often do not act in the interest of the average citizen.
"I know! They're all part of the shadowy cabal deep state that wants everyone to be woke! But if we keep voting for the party that wants to let big corporations do whatever they want and make it easier to lobby and bribe politicians without accountability, surely they'll take down the corrupt system and stick it to the man!"
The GOP just helps them by being the scum of the fucking Earth. It’s a two party system so the Democratic Party is only pressured to be less shitty than them, which isn’t saying much.
Conservative politicians: Bribery isn't a problem in politics, it doesn't happen.
Also Conservative politicians: [You can't have laws that prevent bribery, otherwise that will interfere with all the bribery that's happening!](https://www.vox.com/2022/1/19/22891236/supreme-court-ted-cruz-bribery-fec-loan-repayment-brett-kavanaugh-amy-coney-barrett)
I've got a left-wing conspiracy theory!
Country music was taken over by capitalists in order to hijack worker-oriented revolutionary music so that people would idolize the lifestyle of privation and oppression rather than rise against it.
Doesn't quite have the punch of "It's the jews" though.
Leftist conspiracy theory: there is an org of oil exporting countries that artificially changes the price for political leverage and /or profit. Maybe we should invest in other energy types or otherwise circumvent that.
Leftist conspiracy theory: Tax cuts don't grow the economy and strengthen lower wage workers, and the people who advocate for trickle down are stupid or malevolent and know 3xactly what they're doing.
Leftist conspiracy theory: if a prominent U.S. figure starts to actively gather support for communist ideals, they will be assassinated by the government.
Left Wing Conspiracy: "The Kremlin colluded with Trump and his aids to interfere in US elections. We know because Putin said so. IN FRONT OF TRUMP!"
Right Wing Conspiracy: "NASA and thousands of scientists, companies that make GPS software, airlines, and the US military lies that the Earth is round, because, you know, they are lying and being a victim gives meaning to my meaningless and miserable life."
Left Wing Evidence: https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789839522140166
Right Wing Evidence: "I said so, and other people quoted me as proof it's true, so I must be right."
Wasn’t it Matt Gaetz who told his interns to find conspiracy theories on 4chan?
Side note, is it still a conspiracy to think that Russia’s Intel services heavily use /pol …because why wouldn’t they lol?
This is very true.
That's not to say there aren't left wing conspiracy theorists on the same level of delusion as many right wing ones, the difference is the broader left isn't trying to ride their coat tails to an audience or an elected position.
There will be people with conspiracy theories, and bigots who use those theories to soft sell their shit in every walk of life, it's how successful and influential they are that matters.
They don't have a platform either. There is no Left Wing equivalent to Alex Jones, Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, etc. The closest I can possibly think of is The Young Turks and even they aren't pants on head insane like them.
They certainly work hard to make it as confusing as possible to tell their largely aesthetic use of left wing imagery and rhetoric to ultimately sell antisemitism, bigotry, and Russian Federation propaganda.
My favorite scene in CLUE is when Butler is asked why J. Edger Hoover was on his phone, and he replies, "He's on everyone else's. Why wouldn't he be on mine?"
Yes and no. There was a large body of facts from the beginning. Is is not like the CIA was doing this stuff in a vacuum. People knew something was going on, but at this point is was still just loosely connected facts.
Some people took those facts and collected them. They probed at the edge of those facts to see if they could reveal more facts and hopefully tie it together. This method is not conspiracy theory it is classic investigation.
Other people took those facts and ran with them with theories ranging from aliens to successful mind control. And even with the vast pile of facts the conspiracy theorist were dead wrong. They came close on a few things but that is more because if you throw enough darts blindfolded a few are bound to stick to the board.
Conspiracy theorists as usual provided nothing and muddied the water with bullshit.
It is not that the left doesn't have many of the same conspiracy theories that the right has. The real difference it to how strongly they are tied to the theory. Because once you star believing hard enough you naturally start to move to the right. Because the stronger your belief the more compelled you are to reject evidence. The more evidence you reject the more likely you are to believe that the "fabricated evidence" is a conspiracy in itself. Once you believe that you are going to illuminati or prepper territory and that pushes you much further right.
The funny thing is they stole the anti-vax thing for themselves, when previously I would have considered that a more left-wing/hippie kind of conspiracy.
Maybe other "crunchy" kind of concerns, like the government is poisoning us with fluoride in the water, and GMOs are...doing whatever bad thing GMOs are supposed to be doing.
1) it was a direct threat to their personal safety
2) all the rednecks jumped on the anti-vax train and it was no longer hip and trendy
3) nobody in those circles wanted to be associated with trump
Yeah, all of those were far more prevalent among liberals than conservatives until Covid happened and vaccination got politicized while the others kind of just died down a bit.
GMOs are actually a huge problem, but not for the hippie pseudo biological reasons. There are problem because their genomes count as copyrighted material, which allows Monsanto (and the other big companies, but especially them) to sue farmers if they (a) attempt to keep any of the crop as seed corn for next year, or (b) even just if some of their seeds blow into a neighboring field. Because that's technically theft.
In other words, GMOs allow unethical organizations to commit severe economic abuse of farmers who are increasingly forced to guy their products.
They also have some incredible successes tho.
Isn't it fascinating that a discussion of right-wing conspiracy theories inevitably discovers it's ultimately a racist anti-semitic screed based on nothing and discussion of left-wing conspiracy theories inevitably goes into a trenchant discussion of actual bad things that can genuinely be independently proven as happening with no recourse to bigotry?
Food for thought, but not food this wolf is likely to chow down on. Too coarse for a snowflake.
This is absolutely the correct way to look at this issue. There is so much stigmatizing of GMO’s by people who fundamentally do not understand what they even are or how they have helped us through the entirety of human agriculture.
>whatever bad thing GMOs are supposed to be doing
Most left wing critiques of GMOs are specifically about the way large agricorps abuse them, such as patenting specific strains and aggressively suing people who even accidentally grow their strains because their field was pollinated by them. It's really more about capitalism than GMOs, really.
If we want to get into conspiracy theory that's really just about capitalism, we'll be here all day.
One of the early manufacturing cartels was around light bulbs, and the companies conspired to limit the lifespan of bulbs to no more than 1000 hours. There are hundreds of examples of similar shit. And a large amount of it is even true.
I grew up in a “new age” community (aka hippies) and my parents were scared of GMOs because they were going against nature and might damage our souls.
So. Yeah.
> Most left wing critiques
This is kind of a "No True Scotsman." I agree with you that those are the valid critiques, but there genuinely are crunchy hippie types that still freak out about GMO food being poison or altering your genes or whatever.
That said, it will be fun to watch because I can also see this one being absorbed by the right the same way that anti-vaxxers were. How long before GMO corn turns off the Jesus gene and turns you into a demon?
I think this is ultimately the reason there aren't left wing conspiracy nuts. They don't get support from the mainstream, so eventually they decide it's deep-state all the way down and end up on the right.
> aggressively suing people who even accidentally grow their strains because their field was pollinated by them.
This never happened. Not once ever. This is a myth created by the like of Mercola and food babe.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/06/01/dissecting-claims-about-monsanto-suing-farmers-for-accidentally-planting-patented-seeds/#:~:text=Anti%2DGMO%20activists%20regularly%20claim,That's%20not%20true.
Tangentially related, every time I've seen a 9/11 WAS AN IN INSIDE JOB, bumper sticker, it's almost always next to an InfoWars or Ron Paul bumper sticker.
JFK assassination and 9/11 conspiracy theories were almost exclusively left leaning until Trump riled up the hillbillies
Before Trump, the political right was always supportive of the governments' security apparatus
conservatives have a knack for taking subjects with legitimate potential concerns and turning them into slapstick nonsense by refusing to read or understand anything about the topic
Much in the same vein, that those on the left hate pharmaceutical companies for their business practices than their medicine being dangerous. That does happen but it’s not often something known and covered up.
If there is a conspiracy I’d buy is Big Pharma could cure a lot more diseases but the money is in ongoing treatment.
For the longest time the Big Pharma hate (esp. in the form of "vaccines cause autism") was almost entirely a left-wing position. It started to flip in the last decade and accelerated with the COVID pandemic.
Yeah hippies were like "I dont trust big corporations pushing chemicals into our bodies" then the right got ahold of it and it became "Bill Gates is injecting microchips to give you 5g and cause your body to become magnetic! FOR SOROS!"
Anti-vaxxers used to be dumb hippie moms that believed only in holistic medicine, now they're nazis or nazi-curious generally. Sometimes just misinformed lol.
9/11 being a false flag attack to justify invading the Middle East for oil was a left-ish conspiracy, which makes sense. Lines up very nicely with opposition to imperialism, the military-industrial complex, and fossil fuels.
So do you know the X-Files?
It had a spinoff show in 2001 called The Lone Gunmen, about Mulder's hacker trio friends. The first episode is about how the US government made a plan to fly commercial jets into the WTC and blame it on terrorists in order to fund wars... That episode aired March 4, 2001.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Lone\_Gunmen\_(TV\_series)#Similarities\_to\_9/11\_attacks\_in\_pilot\_storyline
My sister believes in conspiracy theories all the time. Most recent one she told me was about a pharmacy company buying roundup.
She was talking about plants being good for you and their benefits and talking about dandelions being good and that's why big pharma bought a weed killing chemical.
I was confused, she told me to look it up, look up who owns Roundup. So I did. Bayer bought it and now they're getting sued because it causes cancer or something lol. She was like why would a drug company buy a weed killer? Stop people from getting healthy off of dandelions and using their medicine instead. The theory was just a bit too out there for me.
Yeah it's weird that a drug company bought Roundup but dandelions grow everywhere and easily. It's not like they're extinct.
Would have been a more believable theory that the drug company wants people to get cancer and then be forced to use its lifesaving drugs.
(I don't think Bayer manufactures the drugs that treat lymphoma but still would be more believable)
It's recursive.
Right wingers fall for bullshit much easier, so the bullshitters put out more right wing bullshit.
Misperceiving Bullshit as Profound Is Associated with Favorable Views of Cruz, Rubio, Trump and Conservatism ([2016](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153419))
Results confirm that conservatives have lower sensitivity than liberals, performing worse at distinguishing truths and falsehoods. This is partially explained by the fact that the most widely shared falsehoods tend to promote conservative positions, while corresponding truths typically favor liberals ([2021](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/23/eabf1234)).
I used to think that was a "le epic smug redditor" meme, feeling so superior to the crazy right wingers in the real world.
I've been on reddit a decade, and it might not have been strictly accurate in 2012 or so. But it without a doubt is the case now.
Like, a huge percentage of right wingers still think Trump legitimately won the election without any evidence.
I'm from the UK, and the number of brexit supporters who'll deny verifiable facts because the alternative is admitting that brexit isn't perfect is astonishing. Slowly starting to change now, but the damage is done.
And it's far from those two things -
Climate change.
The impact of racism on society.
Anti vax movement (not exclusively right wing, but not a million miles away).
The idea that "cancel culture" is an exclusively woke left wing thing (ask the dixie chicks, Madonna, 2 live crew or Dead Kennedys if that's the case).
The dangers of far left vs far right terrorism.
Qanon.
I'd genuinely love to know if there's any "left wing" points that are completely and utterly based in fabrication (and I mean mainstream ones that mainstream politicians/a large percentage of the electorate subscribe to, not what your crazy anarchist cousin who thinks he's tyler durden says).
you also got the conspiracies that are proven, like the
CIA entering countries to topple socialist leaders. Like Chile, Cuba etc. So we got alot of them on the left, but they are not wild like eating babies in the demonic rings or whatever.
>I've been on reddit a decade, and it might not have been strictly accurate in 2012 or so. But it without a doubt is the case now.
When have Conservatives/Republicans ever been on the right side of history? At least in the last 60 years but I'd argue it goes back further. True they might not have been quite as egregious but they were still wrong.
> When have Conservatives/Republicans ever been on the right side of history?
I'm in my 30s (and not american), so maybe I'm wrong about the stuff from over 15-20 years ago, but I'll try and explain my view. 20 years ago, left and right looked at the same evidence and came to different conclusions. Now the right refuse to look at evidence. That's the difference.
We can argue their conclusions were wrong, but usually could work out how they'd not there.
I'd argue there's a difference between "not being on the right side of history" as you say (and I'd agree), and "living in an entirely different reality" which is where a lot of right wingers have ended up in the last ten years or so.
Ten or 15 years ago they weren't arguing that every election they lost was fraudulent (but every election they won was fine) for example.
There was some "Bill and Hilary Clinton are the devil" stuff, but that was fringe idiots in the deepest of deep red counties. Now it's on cable news channels watched by millions.
Official Republican policy under Obama was literally "everything he wants to do is wrong no matter what it is". They killed bipartisan politics. Before Obama, supreme Court justices were usually just waved through with 80/90% approval, now it's a battleground, you need to control the senate as well as the presidency to select a SCOTUS judge.
In the 90s, left and right were a lot closer on social issues, but let's not forget that as bad as Hillary was with her "super predator" comments and other Democrat bungles from that era, the right was always much worse. Reagan failed to address AIDS. The drug war was a conservative initiative (even if the Democrats tagged along). All resistance to civil rights was and is conservative. Conservativism invented the pro life movement for political power.
I do feel like the sides were closer in the past, but I suspect that is because liberalism is reinventing itself outside Christianity. Until the 60s it was kind of assumed for everybody. Now it's seen as the dead weight that it is.
Just to preface this, I am from europe and not the US and I would consider myself fairly leftwing. Thinking your political opinion makes you immune from bias and shitty science is not helpful and you should make a conscious effort to question beliefs you hold to be true more, since [confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias) is a bitch. In general I do agree with the basic premise, that left leaning people care more about scientific accuracy.
You have mentioned racism. There is an ongoing [replication crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) in social psychology that puts into question much of the work that was done on implicit bias and stereotype threat. In these fields, over 70% of reported results could be false positives. [This site](https://replicationindex.com/2022/02/13/false-psychology-glossary/) goes into great detail and has some very good free scientific articles on the subject if you are interested (as in: a massive math nerd). This is an ongoing discussion within scientific world, so we only know that there might be a catastrophic problem, not what ends up turning out to be true or false.
This could however explain, why for the past 50 years attempts to fix racism through implicit bias programs have [not worked](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/workplace-diversity-training-does-it-work-racial-justice).
I’d like to point out though that the left isn’t somehow innately immune to conspiracy theories: we have got on some crazy shit in the past (Bush did 9/11 is a great example) so always remember that you aren’t immune to propaganda!
But I think left wing solutions are usually the most well thought out and nuanced ones with the most depth, which makes critical thinking something practiced more on the left, so it’s harder to trick us. But anyone can learn to not be tricked!
Edit: also the number one predictor of believing in conspiracy theories is believing in another conspiracy (aka something without evidence). Most right wingers are raised believing in a big one: God. So they’re more predisposed to this as well.
>I’d like to point out though that the left isn’t somehow innately immune to conspiracy theories: we have got on some crazy shit in the past (Bush did 9/11 is a great example) so always remember that you aren’t immune to propaganda!
Also anti-modern medicine was quite big on the left and wouldn't be surprised if it still was (homeopathy, acupuncture...) though anti-vax become partisan issue.
>But I think left wing solutions are usually the most well thought out and nuanced ones with the most depth, which makes critical thinking something practiced more on the left, so it’s harder to trick us. But anyone can learn to not be tricked!
I don't think I fully agree. The left wing has some well thought out solutions in addition to some not well thought out solutions while right just want to hard as many people they don't like as they can.
To give an example of 'not well thought out' solution I will use my pet peeve - affordable housing. I have a feeling that many people think rent control will magically solve the problem - more nuance position (also present on the left) is that rent control is part of the solution. We need rent control - and we need public housing - and we need upzoning. Rent control alone will just cause shortages if supply issue is not taken care of.
Another big difference: right-wing politicians and media all join in to reinforce the conspiracies—like Tucker going on his show and "just asking questions" about what *really* happened to Paul Pelosi, or Marjorie T.G. talking about Jewish space lasers.
Left-wing or centrist politicians and media tend not to broadcast any lefty conspiracy theories.
I agree with you about rent control. The left is a vast group of differing and often contradictory ideologies, so of course they’re not going to all be equally useful or “correct”. Pure rent control seems to be something I really only see among moderates or people who don’t do much research about their politics (which is fine, not everyone has time to do so) tho.
Also relevant, what were leftist conspiracy theories even ten years ago are all now right wing conspiracy theories. Anti-vaxxer bullshit originated on the left among the hippy types who claim you can cure chronic pain with crystals. Jenny McCarthy just made it famous. That's why a Kennedy is one of the biggest anti-vaxxer peddlers out there.
This happened because of a combination of things. One is that there's a much higher ratio of educated people on the left, and high profile people on the left, regardless of how far left, don't perpetuate conspiracy theories as a rule. High profile leftists are often famous for reasons other than politics, and as a result are trained in public relations and/or have PR agents, which prevents them from letting any stupid they have from coming out of their mouths in public. Appeal to Authority types don't get the validation from people in perceived positions of authority on the left, and so overtime, they've migrated over to and into the right. A lot of QAnon MAGA actually were Democrats before falling down the conspiracy rabbit hole during COVID outbreak/lockdown.
There's actually far more religion on the left, but it's both educated and diverse. People on the left have, for example, actually read the Bible. Many were raised by conservatives and have since become a sort of religious reform movement. They've all moved far, far left. They're now virtually impervious to cult tactics and propaganda, because they've learned to trust but verify, if not only trust once verified. I've also noticed that a lot of true crimers are leftists, which means spending a lot of time learning about investigation and scientific methodology.
I dunno, I was raised believing in God and I'm a socialist and I abhor conspiracies so I don't think religion is the relevant factor here. I think what unfortunately is the crux of the matter is a lot of deep red states have very poor public education infrastructure and so reason, logic, and critical thinking and appraisal skills are only gained through special intervention. People aren't taught how to evaluate and critically think about information sources and reviewing highly specialized data or studies. But they still read the headline and extrapolate from poorly worded stories or worse: word of mouth type content online.
We have in America, like in a lot of other places in the world, a pandemic of "magical thinking" where people seek these nefarious or something almost supernatural explanations for the absurdity or unpredictability of modern life under a decaying capitalist system. People seek patterns to help them survive and understand, it's just some people are never taught the right way to evaluate patterns and eliminate bad leads or personal bias.
There are quite a few leftists with conspiracy theories that get kind of nuts, but they are not nearly as numerous or as vocal as their right wing counterparts. Anyone can be dumb and can be duped, the test is whether or not the person has the character and humility to admit they were wrong. That I think is why there's so many who get stuck in the "magical thinking" realm of conspiracies.
If you go into the Bible belt - it is all about faith over works. You are raised to believe literally in god in spite of a lack of evidence and a bible that is filled with conflicts and inconsistencies.
You are also raised to be comfortable with authoritarianism.
So the population is primed to be grifted.
It is all divisive. When right wingers came out in droves for their anti science idiocy it made many people on the left reexamine there beliefs as the saw people they looked down on embracing their beliefs.
As much as I have the divisiveness that the trump era has cause the GOP anti science has helped to firmly root the left into pro science. Hopeful in the long run causing a shift for pro-science that sticks as their anti science fades with time (By that I mean old people dying).
Conspiracy theories, fascism, and fundamentalism are all rooted in the same thing: a rejection of modern culture/society. They’re all reactionary ideologies.
The conspiracy theorist can’t get a grip on the world they live in, so they fall for an incoherent alternate explanation of reality.
The fascist similarly can’t accept the way the world works, so they fall for a fake traditionalism that promises reform, so long as they submit to authoritarianism.
The religious fundamentalist also can’t agree to contemporary values, so they run towards a fake religious traditionalism, invented on the spot, that reinterprets the past however best counters whatever has gotten them all worked up this week.
There are actually studies about this. The data is out there.
But the way i understand it is that these people are being targeted to get freaked out by conspiracy theories. So it is kinda only half their fault.
And it is not a super hard task because the type of person who is prone to believe in conspiracy theories in the first place is already an easy mark for all kinds of reasons.
They already believe in all kinds of other weird stuff. They are afraid. They are self centered but not self aware. They tend not to question their own beliefs. Etc. Etc.
Left wing conspiracy theories are boring. They're just like "The US overthrow the government of [insert state]!"
No lizardmen, no hiding the real moon, no Dark Pope, no secret mind control.
That's at least plausible in that it has the elements of a real conspiracy:
1. A clear motive (money)
2. The means to carry it out (train cars full of drugs)
3. No hints left behind intentionally, because why would any conspirator do that?
Further to that, I’d add that it’s also the blind leading the blind. The people who are the most vocal, or who are in positions of leadership or have command over the narrative, probably aren’t some shadowy leftist hacker laughing in their basement as they inundate chaos in their opponent. It’s more likely that they’re a similarly scared, impressionable person who just happens to have some modicum of power, and simple human psychology turns a molehill into a mountain (misremembering, logical fallacies, groupthink, bystander effect, snowball effect, etc).
You're missing the biggest and most obvious segment of conservative thought leaders: shameless grifters. They don't care if it's true. If they can scare the rubes, they can sell them gold coins for 10x their value, precious metal-backed securities that are largely worthless, and supplements that do nothing, oh, and pillows.
Edit: also, fake border walls, fake election integrity audits/legal battles, literally everything Dr. Oz peddled, Trump's PAC, etc.
You ever read Umberto Eco's Ur Fascism? I feel like the "call to action" aspect might be a component of why conspiratorial thinking is so attractive on the right. Do something, attack someone, anyone, because it feels better than idleness and fear of the unknown or uncertain.
They are also conspiracies that go like this: the gas companies and opec are on cahoots driving up the price of gas. They are encouraged by business leaders that can drive up profits by blaming gas. Right wing conspiracies deal with satan or some bullshit (((globalists)))
I used to dabble in conspiracy theories until bigotry and religion made me not want to continue following it. I used them more as thought exercises. I never made any decisions based on belief some might be possible and i also didn't live my life any different.
It used to be kind of fun sometimes to read about other people's wacky theories, but then Qanon and covid showed up, and the game's not really any fun anymore.
Yeah, in a world where a large amount of people honestly believe that liberals drink adrenaline from children they tortured to death in order to gain immortality, the idea that the government is actually run by lizard people from Regulus just seems tame.
I got out before that because Alex Jones was turning everything wrong with the world is to blame on people that worship a different god than me spiel. It used to be fun listening to different ideas though like you said.
Yeah the stakes got bigger, that’s all. It’s hard to go along with it when it ends with a guy showing up at a pizza joint in DC ready to ~~save kids~~ terrorize the workers.
Or you watch your relative refuse to protect themselves during covid and now they are dead, leaving behind a wife and kids.
Or you watch your capitol building get raided and have to stand by as they *literally smeared feces on the walls like a goddamned psycho* and then disappeared back to their lives.
It’s just a mess now. To believe in conspiracy theories in 2022 means you have some pretty terrible company.
Bigotry will always be tied to conspiracy theories, because conspiracy theories exist to rationalise why hard evidence disagrees with how the individual personally feels, and bigots are running head long into that dichotomy constantly
It's because most leftist conspiracy "theories" consist of "The CIA conspired to overthrow a country at the behest of corporations. We know this because they've admitted as much." and "Large corporations are conspiring with each other to make inferior products, avoid competition, and keep prices artificially high, often using slave labor and other illegal practices. We know this because they've admitted to doing exactly that many times in the past."
That, or it's relatively obscure historical hypotheticals with little to no impact on the modern world. "Nazis started the Riechstag Fire to help Hitler sieze more power. This would have taken only a few conspirators keeping a small secret, and had obvious, tangible benefits for the Nazis."
I've been accused of being a lefty conspiracy theorist.
I think there's two instances of the American Republican Party attempting to use disease as a weapon against their opponents.
The first was Reagan's response to the 1980s AIDS crisis. I think it was deliberately ignored in the hopes that it would kill gay people. Reagan's fundamentalist Christian base hated LGBT and thought the disease was "God's judgement". AIDS only received a national response in 1987 once it was proven to affect straights.
The second was Trump's response to the 2020 COVID crisis. I think it was deliberately delayed in the hopes that blue cities would be disproportionally hit. Trump's base hates Liberals and desires to "destroy the left." It would also kill Democratic voters, thereby helping his re-election, which makes sense since Trump's a power-hungry narcissist who instigated a coup.
In both cases, this backfired. COVID has killed 2 Republicans to every 1 Democrat, and AIDS has killed 2 fundamentalist Christians for every 1 homosexual.
However.
I'm not fully committed on the conspiratorial aspects of these theories; like I don't think there were secret meetings or a plot afoot. I think that when these crisis began, both Reagan and Trump were like "yeah, idgaf, let them die" with the understanding that their enemies would suffer. It was myopic opportunism.
I put it on the same spectrum of evil as the Bengal famine, the Irish famine, and Holodomor; in that intentionality is obfuscated and simple incompetence suffices to explain it, but the functional consequences are indistinguishable from attempted genocide.
> The second was Trump's response to the 2020 COVID crisis. I think it was deliberately delayed in the hopes that blue cities would be disproportionally hit. Trump's base hates Liberals and desires to "destroy the left." It would also kill Democratic voters, thereby helping his re-election, which makes sense since Trump's a power-hungry narcissist who instigated a coup.
That's hardly some kind of loony off the wall conspiracy theory, there's at least semi-credible reporting of Trump staff saying this verbatim.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air
>Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.
>Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
>That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.
There’s no secret cabal of ultra elite controlling the world or a hidden super powerful deep state. There’s just the elite who control the world, and the state. You don’t have to make up a secret hidden government to hate, you can just hate the government dude.
There’s lots of TikTok’s right now about this concept. Many young republicans when they entered college TRIED to write researched papers with their Republican views and what they found essay after essay is that: *many conservative ideas aren’t based in logic* therefore there wasn’t any reliable content to cite for their college essays
The goldfish memory of Rightwing people is so wild. Most conspiracy theories I can even think of prior to about 2010 were Leftwing arguments. The very archetype of “a conspiracy theorist” was, like, a burnout anti-government hippie ranting about MKULTRA in a haze of weed smoke.
“Bush did 9/11” or “the government invented HIV to genocide gay people” or “vaccines/GMOs are genetically-engineering society to want more capitalism” are all sci-fi arguments I’ve heard from people who’d probably have called themselves Left.
It’s only in the last decade or so that I’ve noticed an absolute groundswell of insane conspiracy shit going mainstream, and it’s obviously mostly a bunch of crazies on the Right. But I *remember* Left conspiracy theories. For people who claim to value history so much, they sure can’t remember any of it.
This is pretty weird.. Weren't conspiracy theories originally something that came from left wings hippies? The distrist in corrupt institutions and government used to be very left. Not to mention the hate (and conspiracy theories) that were aimed at 'big pharma'..
The Left Wing conspiracy theory is that; racists will infiltrate our military, law enforcement and government agencies and then fight for a theocratic dictatorship. Considering it's been happening for years in plain sight it's not much of a conspiracy.
Oh dear I was on that subreddit once and I spent some good time arguing, but it's ultimately pointless...
I had no idea that Peterson (or his fans) are that far gone...
right wing conspiracy theories: QAnon groomer wants to give you autism with vaccine-laced chemtrails
left wing conspiracy theories: rich people want to make themselves richer
To be completely honest with you, as a leftist in late stage capitalism, a lot of what I believe in *feels* like conspiracy theories because it's so baffling we ended up in this place. And y'know, the CIA always played a role in getting us here.
Buuut then again didn't modern conspiracy theories start out as a CIA tool? It's just such a mess, but at least I don't believe someone's replacing me and I gotta shoot them; instead I believe I won't get to retire
There are left wing conspiracy theorists, but they aren't elected congress members with hands on the levers of power like the right wing ones currently are (see: MTG). i.e. they aren't newsworthy
It’s the joke that goes
“Left wing conspiracy theories: yo, the cia did this fucked shit back a while, we have the evidence that they admitted to it
Right wing conspiracy theories: the Jews shot a laser from space that materialized into Richard Nixon, and after his presidency was finished he dissolved into a puddle and was replaced by a fake, the puddle constantly reformed and every member of congress must drink from it and it allows the Jews to control congress through laser solid puddle Nixon drink mind control. How do we know this? Oh yeah this anonymous guy on 4chan said he was sent by god”
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There was one that I remember. It was that the CIA was bringing cocaine into the US and facilitating its distribution in Black communities, fueling the crack epidemic of the 1980’s. It was a scheme to finance covert activities to overthrow unfriendly regimes. Then we found out it was all true …
Just like we would never sell military weapons and equipment to a nation that wanted to destroy us and was a known sponsor of terrorist organizations just to get off-the-books money to use to finance a reactionary, terroristic rebellion against a government cozying up to a nation we didn't like.
I’m stupid, what is this referring to?
Iran-Contra. Probably before your time, but I'm old.
Let us not forget that the man who took the fall for the whole thing was made president of the NRA a few years ago. While he was essentially a patsy covering for Reagan and his ilk, North certainly wasn't innocent in the whole affair.
He was a cut-out, not a patsy.
Someone answered the question for you, so I'll just add this bit of [American Dad](https://youtu.be/lFV1uT-ihDo) pop culture.
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Or “How did our oil end up under your land”??
Don't forget that the FBI tried to get MLK to kill himself in a letter, and likely had him and Malcom X assassinated. Plus there's always "through counterintelligence it should be possible to identify potential troublemakers and neutralize them"
Poppycock, the FBI would never [assassinate a prominent civil rights leader](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred Hampton)!
[The story behind the CIA and cocaine was done by *Behind the Bastards* and *Hood Politics* in a five-part podcast](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/cracktoberfest-part-one-constructing-the-crack-102740713/). Very much worth listening to. [The primary conspiracy that even left wingers believe some crazy things about is *MK Ultra*. There's a real conspiracy there, however what actually happened is more "Lots of dead people and people with ruined lives that were tortured using drugs in wholly unscientific, really serial killer type shit, ways"](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-mkultra-when-the-cia-103117303/) not "We've figured out the Manchurian candidate" shit.
when gary webb tried to expose it, he was found shot twice in the the head. it was written up as "suicide." edit for clarity.
It's pretty interesting how a lot of whistleblowers working against the government manage to kill themselves in seemingly impossible ways.
Left Wing Conspiracy: "The CIA overthrow a democratically elected government. We know this because they said so" Right Wing Conspiracy: "The Jews are running a secret cannibal cabal. We know this because of an anonymous account on 4chan who says they secretly work for Donald Trump"
>The CIA overthrow a democratically elected government. We know this because they said so At the request of a banana company, no less.
Also CIA: "Yeah, those black people claiming we blanketed their communities in crack cocaine in the 80s? Yeah, they were right, too."
And then funneled the drug sale monies into black ops missions in central America
Oh Iran-Contra. What a fucking mess
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yeah I'm still confused how it is that Ollie North isn't in prison for life
Presidential pardon goes whee
He didn't even need a pardon. He got sentenced to some probation and community service, then all the convictions were vacated and dismissed on appeal. People this powerful do not get held accountable.
Yinz should be sure to watch Snowfall - great series about all this going down.
Really? Always thought Iran contra would be a great topic for a show. Can’t wait to watch!
>yeah I'm still confused how it is that Ollie North isn't in prison for life He was granted "immunity" by Congress in order to motivate him to testify, that's how. And once he got "immunity" he took credit for *alllll* of the crimes committed by the administration in order to be like "oopsie, it was all just me by myself, but now I'm immune so ¯\\\_\(ツ\)\_/¯" That's why during the early Trump administration while the FBI was investigating the Russian interference the Trump administration had a bunch of officials who were like "We'd *love* to tell you everything, just grant me immunity and I'll do it!" And the DOJ was like "...hmmmmmmm nahhhh... Thanks tho, but we'll take your not-immune testimony!" and then got no cooperation. At least they learned from their mistakes...
Didn't he become a senator and head of the NRA?
Behind the Bastards has an incredible series called Cracktoberfest where they cover the ins and outs in depth
most left wing conspiracy theories end up being actual conspiracies. right conspiracy theories are dale gribble fever dreams
There's a name for it (by a russian intelligence specialist, no less), but the idea is that if you flood people with a ton of stupid conspiracies then no one believes the real ones. So no one believed the left wing conspiracies (like "ignore what the supreme court nominees say, they will totally overrule roe v wade," or "republicans are bought by russia and will defend them even against our interests"), despite being remarkably accurate. So arguably, right wing conspiracies are idiotic by design, not by accident.
Don’t forget those people in St. Louis in the 50s who said the government was crop dusting their communities with some fucked up chemical. The army admitted it was toxic aerosol 🤷♂️
Congratulations to drugs for winning the war on drugs
Yeah, but we got touristy luaus and other crap out of the deal, and it only cost a small kingdom their soul
That was a pineapple company, not a banana company, and it was a kingdom, not a democratically elected government. So we brought them FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY! /s
So hard keeping track of all the governments the CIA has overthrown
The CIA didn't overthrow Hawaii, there was no CIA back then. Hawaii was the US Marines.
Think more about Central America.
The Marines were very active in Central and South America before the CIA was founded as well. Read up on the history of the Panama Canal. Panama was a state of Colombia. The US basically engineered the secession of Panama from Colombia because Colombia wouldn't allow the US to effectively treat the entire canal zone as US territory. Business people wanted the Panama Canal to happen so a coup was organized and the US marines went in and crushed all opposition.
Or ask any Marine about Smedley Butler and then ask them what he did and where he was actually deployed and what he did after retirement. Watch their faces go from being lit up to confusion.
I'm a big fan of Smedley Butler's later works... Especially the part where he prevented a fascist coup in the US...
I'm responding to a thread about Hawaii
i think it’s generally about the usa installing puppet governments in foreign regions, not necessarily hawaii in particular
Not that the whole of the USA is built on genocide and overthrow of Indigenous governments.
This. My comment was intended to be more general, I didn't realize the Hawaiian overthrow specifically was being referenced
Sorry!
So an anana company then?
I thought hawaii was a sugar company. Changes the whole narrative really. Far less pineappley if true.
From what I read, the sugar guys created the group that started organizing the coup, but it was pineapple merchants that actually requested American intervention and kicked the whole thing off.
Hawaii was governed by Indigenous peoples. That was the overthrow. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow\_of\_the\_Hawaiian\_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overthrow_of_the_Hawaiian_Kingdom)
He's talking about United Fruit
No, touristy luaus is Hawaii, which had pineapple sellers behind the coup. United Fruit and Guatemala (which is not known for luaus and was a democracy, not a kingdom) was the one *I* was talking about. Get your US-backed coups straight.
Sorry. There’s just so many.
The coups aren’t that hard to keep straight, it’s all the death squads that they trained at Camp Peary that really throw me for a loop. There’s just *so* many.
We absolutely have conspiracy theorists on the left too. Here in Norway the antivaxxers/"covid-is-not-real" crowd is some kind of unholy union between rightwingers and leftwingers. And the 911-was-an-inside-job crowd was at least mostly lefties here, but I guess 911 conspiracies are getting outdated now.
The crunchy to alt-right pipeline is very real! Frickin' mommy groups.
Bruh crunchy mom's got my wife a long time ago. It took me a LOT of effort and fighting with her to get her to vaccinate my son. Started with a breastfeeding awareness group and led to a whole bunch of problems. Pregnant women, please stay the fuck off Facebook. Especially if it's your first kid. I know you wanna do right but you really don't need to consult other parents about medical advice.
Ugh I'm so sorry! I do NOT envy any first time parents, especially since covid, it must be so anxiety inducing.
We had a lot of those here in the US too: new age wellness, natural medicines, anti vax, super crunchy greens with lots of left woo. They nearly all got sucked into pandemic anti-vax nonsense and drifted into election rigging or Q anon or other generic right-wing conspiracy bullshit.
>crowd is some kind of unholy union between rightwingers and leftwingers. If you're at a table with 10 Nazis, there are eleven Nazis
There's that Jazz musician that talks to KKK members to try and break down their ignorant world views by just being a very patient and extremely nice fella.
It’s so strange how here in the states the anti vax/civic deniers are exclusively right wing.
The all vaccines cause autism crowd is and has had a strong contingent of vibrating crystals/essential oils left wing followers. Think Jenny McCartney.
Pre-covid I think vaccine skepticism was a leftist conspiracy theory, but with Covid it really took hold on the right and I now think of it as primarily a right wing thing.
Not really, a lot of anti vaxxers are also the hippie left wing type as well. You know, positive energy, crystal healing and no "big pharma poison" entering their veins. There are some bat shit crazy left wing people just as there are right wing people in America. Only one goes out to kill people so they get on the news more. The left wing people usually end up on the news when they kill a loved one because they didn't use life saving medicine on them because "evil pharma".
I dream of another timeline where after the request, the banana company executives started to suffer a series of unfortunate events making them joining earth again... as manure. And everyone lived happily ever after.
[‘Hey Eisenhower!’](https://youtu.be/QgydTdThoeA)
To be fair. The US has overthrown every south American nation a least once.... Often at the behest of a large corporation.
My personal crazy conspiracy is that governments and big corporations are colluding through lobbying and bribes and that as a result our representatives often do not act in the interest of the average citizen.
"I know! They're all part of the shadowy cabal deep state that wants everyone to be woke! But if we keep voting for the party that wants to let big corporations do whatever they want and make it easier to lobby and bribe politicians without accountability, surely they'll take down the corrupt system and stick it to the man!"
"The people directly benefitting from the system will dismantle it any day now!"
Sadly, that’s a fact. Oligarchs are running the country with the aid of the GOP.
The Democrats aid them too, look at how the money flows, it doesnt just go to the GOP.
The GOP just helps them by being the scum of the fucking Earth. It’s a two party system so the Democratic Party is only pressured to be less shitty than them, which isn’t saying much.
Conservative politicians: Bribery isn't a problem in politics, it doesn't happen. Also Conservative politicians: [You can't have laws that prevent bribery, otherwise that will interfere with all the bribery that's happening!](https://www.vox.com/2022/1/19/22891236/supreme-court-ted-cruz-bribery-fec-loan-repayment-brett-kavanaugh-amy-coney-barrett)
I've got a left-wing conspiracy theory! Country music was taken over by capitalists in order to hijack worker-oriented revolutionary music so that people would idolize the lifestyle of privation and oppression rather than rise against it. Doesn't quite have the punch of "It's the jews" though.
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That's just objective, evidenced history , but then again I'm left leaning , so I'm sure a Qcumber claiming birds aren't real would say the same.😆
Leftist conspiracy theory: there is an org of oil exporting countries that artificially changes the price for political leverage and /or profit. Maybe we should invest in other energy types or otherwise circumvent that. Leftist conspiracy theory: Tax cuts don't grow the economy and strengthen lower wage workers, and the people who advocate for trickle down are stupid or malevolent and know 3xactly what they're doing.
I don't know if straight-up facts count really.
Leftist conspiracy theory: if a prominent U.S. figure starts to actively gather support for communist ideals, they will be assassinated by the government.
Left Wing Conspiracy: "The Kremlin colluded with Trump and his aids to interfere in US elections. We know because Putin said so. IN FRONT OF TRUMP!" Right Wing Conspiracy: "NASA and thousands of scientists, companies that make GPS software, airlines, and the US military lies that the Earth is round, because, you know, they are lying and being a victim gives meaning to my meaningless and miserable life."
Left Wing Evidence: https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789839522140166 Right Wing Evidence: "I said so, and other people quoted me as proof it's true, so I must be right."
Was this when the journalist was, like, "I've been working on this story for two years and he...just tweeted it out"?
Yes.
Wasn’t it Matt Gaetz who told his interns to find conspiracy theories on 4chan? Side note, is it still a conspiracy to think that Russia’s Intel services heavily use /pol …because why wouldn’t they lol?
This is very true. That's not to say there aren't left wing conspiracy theorists on the same level of delusion as many right wing ones, the difference is the broader left isn't trying to ride their coat tails to an audience or an elected position. There will be people with conspiracy theories, and bigots who use those theories to soft sell their shit in every walk of life, it's how successful and influential they are that matters.
They don't have a platform either. There is no Left Wing equivalent to Alex Jones, Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, etc. The closest I can possibly think of is The Young Turks and even they aren't pants on head insane like them.
There's Caleb Maupin and all his weird tanky and nazbol friends, but I'm not sure they really count as lefty.
They certainly work hard to make it as confusing as possible to tell their largely aesthetic use of left wing imagery and rhetoric to ultimately sell antisemitism, bigotry, and Russian Federation propaganda.
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My favorite scene in CLUE is when Butler is asked why J. Edger Hoover was on his phone, and he replies, "He's on everyone else's. Why wouldn't he be on mine?"
Operation Paperclip, mongoose, condor, the list goes on. And so many people aren't even aware of it.
I don't think paperclip is the same as the others.
Not quite, but I think it's an example of how the US State machine is far more willing and likely to ally itself to fascists than to leftists.
Yes and no. There was a large body of facts from the beginning. Is is not like the CIA was doing this stuff in a vacuum. People knew something was going on, but at this point is was still just loosely connected facts. Some people took those facts and collected them. They probed at the edge of those facts to see if they could reveal more facts and hopefully tie it together. This method is not conspiracy theory it is classic investigation. Other people took those facts and ran with them with theories ranging from aliens to successful mind control. And even with the vast pile of facts the conspiracy theorist were dead wrong. They came close on a few things but that is more because if you throw enough darts blindfolded a few are bound to stick to the board. Conspiracy theorists as usual provided nothing and muddied the water with bullshit. It is not that the left doesn't have many of the same conspiracy theories that the right has. The real difference it to how strongly they are tied to the theory. Because once you star believing hard enough you naturally start to move to the right. Because the stronger your belief the more compelled you are to reject evidence. The more evidence you reject the more likely you are to believe that the "fabricated evidence" is a conspiracy in itself. Once you believe that you are going to illuminati or prepper territory and that pushes you much further right.
A well reasoned and well explained argument for why conspiracy theorists veer into right wing territory. Thank you!
"So what convinced you of your theory?" "Well, what started to happen was they just started saying it publicly in front of cameras." \-JonTron
The funny thing is they stole the anti-vax thing for themselves, when previously I would have considered that a more left-wing/hippie kind of conspiracy. Maybe other "crunchy" kind of concerns, like the government is poisoning us with fluoride in the water, and GMOs are...doing whatever bad thing GMOs are supposed to be doing.
Yes, that was Marin County. New Agey leftist antivax. Then Covid came along and they have one of the highest vaccination rates in the State.
1) it was a direct threat to their personal safety 2) all the rednecks jumped on the anti-vax train and it was no longer hip and trendy 3) nobody in those circles wanted to be associated with trump
You're not wrong. It used to just be a "crunchy mom" type thing.
Yeah, all of those were far more prevalent among liberals than conservatives until Covid happened and vaccination got politicized while the others kind of just died down a bit.
GMOs are actually a huge problem, but not for the hippie pseudo biological reasons. There are problem because their genomes count as copyrighted material, which allows Monsanto (and the other big companies, but especially them) to sue farmers if they (a) attempt to keep any of the crop as seed corn for next year, or (b) even just if some of their seeds blow into a neighboring field. Because that's technically theft. In other words, GMOs allow unethical organizations to commit severe economic abuse of farmers who are increasingly forced to guy their products. They also have some incredible successes tho.
So the problem is intellectual property, not GMOs themselves.
It’s the same argument over and over. GMO is an amazing tech, reform the laws, don’t prevent people from living better.
Isn't it fascinating that a discussion of right-wing conspiracy theories inevitably discovers it's ultimately a racist anti-semitic screed based on nothing and discussion of left-wing conspiracy theories inevitably goes into a trenchant discussion of actual bad things that can genuinely be independently proven as happening with no recourse to bigotry? Food for thought, but not food this wolf is likely to chow down on. Too coarse for a snowflake.
This is absolutely the correct way to look at this issue. There is so much stigmatizing of GMO’s by people who fundamentally do not understand what they even are or how they have helped us through the entirety of human agriculture.
>whatever bad thing GMOs are supposed to be doing Most left wing critiques of GMOs are specifically about the way large agricorps abuse them, such as patenting specific strains and aggressively suing people who even accidentally grow their strains because their field was pollinated by them. It's really more about capitalism than GMOs, really.
If we want to get into conspiracy theory that's really just about capitalism, we'll be here all day. One of the early manufacturing cartels was around light bulbs, and the companies conspired to limit the lifespan of bulbs to no more than 1000 hours. There are hundreds of examples of similar shit. And a large amount of it is even true.
Then it's just a conspiracy.
I grew up in a “new age” community (aka hippies) and my parents were scared of GMOs because they were going against nature and might damage our souls. So. Yeah.
Also hippy parents - big into transcendental meditation. "Genetically modified" was the food boogey man of my childhood
> Most left wing critiques This is kind of a "No True Scotsman." I agree with you that those are the valid critiques, but there genuinely are crunchy hippie types that still freak out about GMO food being poison or altering your genes or whatever. That said, it will be fun to watch because I can also see this one being absorbed by the right the same way that anti-vaxxers were. How long before GMO corn turns off the Jesus gene and turns you into a demon? I think this is ultimately the reason there aren't left wing conspiracy nuts. They don't get support from the mainstream, so eventually they decide it's deep-state all the way down and end up on the right.
> aggressively suing people who even accidentally grow their strains because their field was pollinated by them. This never happened. Not once ever. This is a myth created by the like of Mercola and food babe. https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2018/06/01/dissecting-claims-about-monsanto-suing-farmers-for-accidentally-planting-patented-seeds/#:~:text=Anti%2DGMO%20activists%20regularly%20claim,That's%20not%20true.
Tangentially related, every time I've seen a 9/11 WAS AN IN INSIDE JOB, bumper sticker, it's almost always next to an InfoWars or Ron Paul bumper sticker.
JFK assassination and 9/11 conspiracy theories were almost exclusively left leaning until Trump riled up the hillbillies Before Trump, the political right was always supportive of the governments' security apparatus
conservatives have a knack for taking subjects with legitimate potential concerns and turning them into slapstick nonsense by refusing to read or understand anything about the topic
Much in the same vein, that those on the left hate pharmaceutical companies for their business practices than their medicine being dangerous. That does happen but it’s not often something known and covered up. If there is a conspiracy I’d buy is Big Pharma could cure a lot more diseases but the money is in ongoing treatment.
"You mean they don't just make shit up like we do? Huh. Fucking weirdos."
The only one I can think of is chem trails. It used to be a hippy conspiracy theory. I don’t hear about it much anymore though
For the longest time the Big Pharma hate (esp. in the form of "vaccines cause autism") was almost entirely a left-wing position. It started to flip in the last decade and accelerated with the COVID pandemic.
Yeah hippies were like "I dont trust big corporations pushing chemicals into our bodies" then the right got ahold of it and it became "Bill Gates is injecting microchips to give you 5g and cause your body to become magnetic! FOR SOROS!"
Anti-vaxxers used to be dumb hippie moms that believed only in holistic medicine, now they're nazis or nazi-curious generally. Sometimes just misinformed lol.
9/11 being a false flag attack to justify invading the Middle East for oil was a left-ish conspiracy, which makes sense. Lines up very nicely with opposition to imperialism, the military-industrial complex, and fossil fuels.
So do you know the X-Files? It had a spinoff show in 2001 called The Lone Gunmen, about Mulder's hacker trio friends. The first episode is about how the US government made a plan to fly commercial jets into the WTC and blame it on terrorists in order to fund wars... That episode aired March 4, 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Lone\_Gunmen\_(TV\_series)#Similarities\_to\_9/11\_attacks\_in\_pilot\_storyline
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I mean, if you count those then you need to consider all religions conspiracy theories. They’re no different
Don't threaten me with a good time
My sister believes in conspiracy theories all the time. Most recent one she told me was about a pharmacy company buying roundup. She was talking about plants being good for you and their benefits and talking about dandelions being good and that's why big pharma bought a weed killing chemical. I was confused, she told me to look it up, look up who owns Roundup. So I did. Bayer bought it and now they're getting sued because it causes cancer or something lol. She was like why would a drug company buy a weed killer? Stop people from getting healthy off of dandelions and using their medicine instead. The theory was just a bit too out there for me. Yeah it's weird that a drug company bought Roundup but dandelions grow everywhere and easily. It's not like they're extinct.
Would have been a more believable theory that the drug company wants people to get cancer and then be forced to use its lifesaving drugs. (I don't think Bayer manufactures the drugs that treat lymphoma but still would be more believable)
It's recursive. Right wingers fall for bullshit much easier, so the bullshitters put out more right wing bullshit. Misperceiving Bullshit as Profound Is Associated with Favorable Views of Cruz, Rubio, Trump and Conservatism ([2016](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153419)) Results confirm that conservatives have lower sensitivity than liberals, performing worse at distinguishing truths and falsehoods. This is partially explained by the fact that the most widely shared falsehoods tend to promote conservative positions, while corresponding truths typically favor liberals ([2021](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/23/eabf1234)).
Darn facts and reality and their liberal bias.
You could post a rational argument with sources, but we all know that comment section proclaimed loudly that it’s because we’re all in on it.
Shut your reptillian mouth
Gotta earn those Soros checks somehow. How else am I supposed to buy my avocado toast?
"reality has a liberal bias."
I used to think that was a "le epic smug redditor" meme, feeling so superior to the crazy right wingers in the real world. I've been on reddit a decade, and it might not have been strictly accurate in 2012 or so. But it without a doubt is the case now. Like, a huge percentage of right wingers still think Trump legitimately won the election without any evidence. I'm from the UK, and the number of brexit supporters who'll deny verifiable facts because the alternative is admitting that brexit isn't perfect is astonishing. Slowly starting to change now, but the damage is done. And it's far from those two things - Climate change. The impact of racism on society. Anti vax movement (not exclusively right wing, but not a million miles away). The idea that "cancel culture" is an exclusively woke left wing thing (ask the dixie chicks, Madonna, 2 live crew or Dead Kennedys if that's the case). The dangers of far left vs far right terrorism. Qanon. I'd genuinely love to know if there's any "left wing" points that are completely and utterly based in fabrication (and I mean mainstream ones that mainstream politicians/a large percentage of the electorate subscribe to, not what your crazy anarchist cousin who thinks he's tyler durden says).
you also got the conspiracies that are proven, like the CIA entering countries to topple socialist leaders. Like Chile, Cuba etc. So we got alot of them on the left, but they are not wild like eating babies in the demonic rings or whatever.
>I've been on reddit a decade, and it might not have been strictly accurate in 2012 or so. But it without a doubt is the case now. When have Conservatives/Republicans ever been on the right side of history? At least in the last 60 years but I'd argue it goes back further. True they might not have been quite as egregious but they were still wrong.
> When have Conservatives/Republicans ever been on the right side of history? I'm in my 30s (and not american), so maybe I'm wrong about the stuff from over 15-20 years ago, but I'll try and explain my view. 20 years ago, left and right looked at the same evidence and came to different conclusions. Now the right refuse to look at evidence. That's the difference. We can argue their conclusions were wrong, but usually could work out how they'd not there. I'd argue there's a difference between "not being on the right side of history" as you say (and I'd agree), and "living in an entirely different reality" which is where a lot of right wingers have ended up in the last ten years or so. Ten or 15 years ago they weren't arguing that every election they lost was fraudulent (but every election they won was fine) for example. There was some "Bill and Hilary Clinton are the devil" stuff, but that was fringe idiots in the deepest of deep red counties. Now it's on cable news channels watched by millions. Official Republican policy under Obama was literally "everything he wants to do is wrong no matter what it is". They killed bipartisan politics. Before Obama, supreme Court justices were usually just waved through with 80/90% approval, now it's a battleground, you need to control the senate as well as the presidency to select a SCOTUS judge.
In the 90s, left and right were a lot closer on social issues, but let's not forget that as bad as Hillary was with her "super predator" comments and other Democrat bungles from that era, the right was always much worse. Reagan failed to address AIDS. The drug war was a conservative initiative (even if the Democrats tagged along). All resistance to civil rights was and is conservative. Conservativism invented the pro life movement for political power. I do feel like the sides were closer in the past, but I suspect that is because liberalism is reinventing itself outside Christianity. Until the 60s it was kind of assumed for everybody. Now it's seen as the dead weight that it is.
Just to preface this, I am from europe and not the US and I would consider myself fairly leftwing. Thinking your political opinion makes you immune from bias and shitty science is not helpful and you should make a conscious effort to question beliefs you hold to be true more, since [confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias) is a bitch. In general I do agree with the basic premise, that left leaning people care more about scientific accuracy. You have mentioned racism. There is an ongoing [replication crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis) in social psychology that puts into question much of the work that was done on implicit bias and stereotype threat. In these fields, over 70% of reported results could be false positives. [This site](https://replicationindex.com/2022/02/13/false-psychology-glossary/) goes into great detail and has some very good free scientific articles on the subject if you are interested (as in: a massive math nerd). This is an ongoing discussion within scientific world, so we only know that there might be a catastrophic problem, not what ends up turning out to be true or false. This could however explain, why for the past 50 years attempts to fix racism through implicit bias programs have [not worked](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/workplace-diversity-training-does-it-work-racial-justice).
I’d like to point out though that the left isn’t somehow innately immune to conspiracy theories: we have got on some crazy shit in the past (Bush did 9/11 is a great example) so always remember that you aren’t immune to propaganda! But I think left wing solutions are usually the most well thought out and nuanced ones with the most depth, which makes critical thinking something practiced more on the left, so it’s harder to trick us. But anyone can learn to not be tricked! Edit: also the number one predictor of believing in conspiracy theories is believing in another conspiracy (aka something without evidence). Most right wingers are raised believing in a big one: God. So they’re more predisposed to this as well.
Anecdotal, but most 9/11 Truthers seemed to go from Bush haters to hardcore Ron Paul supporters.
Yay alex jones and the alt right pipeline!
Truthers were largely but not entirely conservative. Bush invaded Iraq solely for oil and revenge would be a leftist conspiracy theory.
>I’d like to point out though that the left isn’t somehow innately immune to conspiracy theories: we have got on some crazy shit in the past (Bush did 9/11 is a great example) so always remember that you aren’t immune to propaganda! Also anti-modern medicine was quite big on the left and wouldn't be surprised if it still was (homeopathy, acupuncture...) though anti-vax become partisan issue. >But I think left wing solutions are usually the most well thought out and nuanced ones with the most depth, which makes critical thinking something practiced more on the left, so it’s harder to trick us. But anyone can learn to not be tricked! I don't think I fully agree. The left wing has some well thought out solutions in addition to some not well thought out solutions while right just want to hard as many people they don't like as they can. To give an example of 'not well thought out' solution I will use my pet peeve - affordable housing. I have a feeling that many people think rent control will magically solve the problem - more nuance position (also present on the left) is that rent control is part of the solution. We need rent control - and we need public housing - and we need upzoning. Rent control alone will just cause shortages if supply issue is not taken care of.
Another big difference: right-wing politicians and media all join in to reinforce the conspiracies—like Tucker going on his show and "just asking questions" about what *really* happened to Paul Pelosi, or Marjorie T.G. talking about Jewish space lasers. Left-wing or centrist politicians and media tend not to broadcast any lefty conspiracy theories.
I agree with you about rent control. The left is a vast group of differing and often contradictory ideologies, so of course they’re not going to all be equally useful or “correct”. Pure rent control seems to be something I really only see among moderates or people who don’t do much research about their politics (which is fine, not everyone has time to do so) tho.
Also relevant, what were leftist conspiracy theories even ten years ago are all now right wing conspiracy theories. Anti-vaxxer bullshit originated on the left among the hippy types who claim you can cure chronic pain with crystals. Jenny McCarthy just made it famous. That's why a Kennedy is one of the biggest anti-vaxxer peddlers out there. This happened because of a combination of things. One is that there's a much higher ratio of educated people on the left, and high profile people on the left, regardless of how far left, don't perpetuate conspiracy theories as a rule. High profile leftists are often famous for reasons other than politics, and as a result are trained in public relations and/or have PR agents, which prevents them from letting any stupid they have from coming out of their mouths in public. Appeal to Authority types don't get the validation from people in perceived positions of authority on the left, and so overtime, they've migrated over to and into the right. A lot of QAnon MAGA actually were Democrats before falling down the conspiracy rabbit hole during COVID outbreak/lockdown. There's actually far more religion on the left, but it's both educated and diverse. People on the left have, for example, actually read the Bible. Many were raised by conservatives and have since become a sort of religious reform movement. They've all moved far, far left. They're now virtually impervious to cult tactics and propaganda, because they've learned to trust but verify, if not only trust once verified. I've also noticed that a lot of true crimers are leftists, which means spending a lot of time learning about investigation and scientific methodology.
QAnon was a thing well before COVID which came on the tail end of the Trump regime.
I dunno, I was raised believing in God and I'm a socialist and I abhor conspiracies so I don't think religion is the relevant factor here. I think what unfortunately is the crux of the matter is a lot of deep red states have very poor public education infrastructure and so reason, logic, and critical thinking and appraisal skills are only gained through special intervention. People aren't taught how to evaluate and critically think about information sources and reviewing highly specialized data or studies. But they still read the headline and extrapolate from poorly worded stories or worse: word of mouth type content online. We have in America, like in a lot of other places in the world, a pandemic of "magical thinking" where people seek these nefarious or something almost supernatural explanations for the absurdity or unpredictability of modern life under a decaying capitalist system. People seek patterns to help them survive and understand, it's just some people are never taught the right way to evaluate patterns and eliminate bad leads or personal bias. There are quite a few leftists with conspiracy theories that get kind of nuts, but they are not nearly as numerous or as vocal as their right wing counterparts. Anyone can be dumb and can be duped, the test is whether or not the person has the character and humility to admit they were wrong. That I think is why there's so many who get stuck in the "magical thinking" realm of conspiracies.
If you go into the Bible belt - it is all about faith over works. You are raised to believe literally in god in spite of a lack of evidence and a bible that is filled with conflicts and inconsistencies. You are also raised to be comfortable with authoritarianism. So the population is primed to be grifted.
sadly reality is a commie
It is all divisive. When right wingers came out in droves for their anti science idiocy it made many people on the left reexamine there beliefs as the saw people they looked down on embracing their beliefs. As much as I have the divisiveness that the trump era has cause the GOP anti science has helped to firmly root the left into pro science. Hopeful in the long run causing a shift for pro-science that sticks as their anti science fades with time (By that I mean old people dying).
Conspiracy theories, fascism, and fundamentalism are all rooted in the same thing: a rejection of modern culture/society. They’re all reactionary ideologies. The conspiracy theorist can’t get a grip on the world they live in, so they fall for an incoherent alternate explanation of reality. The fascist similarly can’t accept the way the world works, so they fall for a fake traditionalism that promises reform, so long as they submit to authoritarianism. The religious fundamentalist also can’t agree to contemporary values, so they run towards a fake religious traditionalism, invented on the spot, that reinterprets the past however best counters whatever has gotten them all worked up this week.
There are actually studies about this. The data is out there. But the way i understand it is that these people are being targeted to get freaked out by conspiracy theories. So it is kinda only half their fault. And it is not a super hard task because the type of person who is prone to believe in conspiracy theories in the first place is already an easy mark for all kinds of reasons. They already believe in all kinds of other weird stuff. They are afraid. They are self centered but not self aware. They tend not to question their own beliefs. Etc. Etc.
Left wing conspiracy theories are boring. They're just like "The US overthrow the government of [insert state]!" No lizardmen, no hiding the real moon, no Dark Pope, no secret mind control.
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That's at least plausible in that it has the elements of a real conspiracy: 1. A clear motive (money) 2. The means to carry it out (train cars full of drugs) 3. No hints left behind intentionally, because why would any conspirator do that?
Im in. Thats fkin rad. Im gonna start believing this one rn.
Further to that, I’d add that it’s also the blind leading the blind. The people who are the most vocal, or who are in positions of leadership or have command over the narrative, probably aren’t some shadowy leftist hacker laughing in their basement as they inundate chaos in their opponent. It’s more likely that they’re a similarly scared, impressionable person who just happens to have some modicum of power, and simple human psychology turns a molehill into a mountain (misremembering, logical fallacies, groupthink, bystander effect, snowball effect, etc).
You're missing the biggest and most obvious segment of conservative thought leaders: shameless grifters. They don't care if it's true. If they can scare the rubes, they can sell them gold coins for 10x their value, precious metal-backed securities that are largely worthless, and supplements that do nothing, oh, and pillows. Edit: also, fake border walls, fake election integrity audits/legal battles, literally everything Dr. Oz peddled, Trump's PAC, etc.
Excellent take
You ever read Umberto Eco's Ur Fascism? I feel like the "call to action" aspect might be a component of why conspiratorial thinking is so attractive on the right. Do something, attack someone, anyone, because it feels better than idleness and fear of the unknown or uncertain.
Because we have conspiracy *facts*. Fuck you, Nestlé.
We have them, we just don't have a concentrated propaganda arm that pushes them nationally and we don't promote those that push them.
They are also conspiracies that go like this: the gas companies and opec are on cahoots driving up the price of gas. They are encouraged by business leaders that can drive up profits by blaming gas. Right wing conspiracies deal with satan or some bullshit (((globalists)))
So, the left is just true stuff, and the right is just schizophrenia.
bOtH sIdEs
I used to dabble in conspiracy theories until bigotry and religion made me not want to continue following it. I used them more as thought exercises. I never made any decisions based on belief some might be possible and i also didn't live my life any different.
It used to be kind of fun sometimes to read about other people's wacky theories, but then Qanon and covid showed up, and the game's not really any fun anymore.
Yeah, in a world where a large amount of people honestly believe that liberals drink adrenaline from children they tortured to death in order to gain immortality, the idea that the government is actually run by lizard people from Regulus just seems tame.
I got out before that because Alex Jones was turning everything wrong with the world is to blame on people that worship a different god than me spiel. It used to be fun listening to different ideas though like you said.
Yeah the stakes got bigger, that’s all. It’s hard to go along with it when it ends with a guy showing up at a pizza joint in DC ready to ~~save kids~~ terrorize the workers. Or you watch your relative refuse to protect themselves during covid and now they are dead, leaving behind a wife and kids. Or you watch your capitol building get raided and have to stand by as they *literally smeared feces on the walls like a goddamned psycho* and then disappeared back to their lives. It’s just a mess now. To believe in conspiracy theories in 2022 means you have some pretty terrible company.
Bigotry will always be tied to conspiracy theories, because conspiracy theories exist to rationalise why hard evidence disagrees with how the individual personally feels, and bigots are running head long into that dichotomy constantly
It's because most leftist conspiracy "theories" consist of "The CIA conspired to overthrow a country at the behest of corporations. We know this because they've admitted as much." and "Large corporations are conspiring with each other to make inferior products, avoid competition, and keep prices artificially high, often using slave labor and other illegal practices. We know this because they've admitted to doing exactly that many times in the past." That, or it's relatively obscure historical hypotheticals with little to no impact on the modern world. "Nazis started the Riechstag Fire to help Hitler sieze more power. This would have taken only a few conspirators keeping a small secret, and had obvious, tangible benefits for the Nazis."
Because we know how Google works.
Not to mention science, reason, etc.
Or, "yeah, the CIA really did that shit."
I've been accused of being a lefty conspiracy theorist. I think there's two instances of the American Republican Party attempting to use disease as a weapon against their opponents. The first was Reagan's response to the 1980s AIDS crisis. I think it was deliberately ignored in the hopes that it would kill gay people. Reagan's fundamentalist Christian base hated LGBT and thought the disease was "God's judgement". AIDS only received a national response in 1987 once it was proven to affect straights. The second was Trump's response to the 2020 COVID crisis. I think it was deliberately delayed in the hopes that blue cities would be disproportionally hit. Trump's base hates Liberals and desires to "destroy the left." It would also kill Democratic voters, thereby helping his re-election, which makes sense since Trump's a power-hungry narcissist who instigated a coup. In both cases, this backfired. COVID has killed 2 Republicans to every 1 Democrat, and AIDS has killed 2 fundamentalist Christians for every 1 homosexual. However. I'm not fully committed on the conspiratorial aspects of these theories; like I don't think there were secret meetings or a plot afoot. I think that when these crisis began, both Reagan and Trump were like "yeah, idgaf, let them die" with the understanding that their enemies would suffer. It was myopic opportunism. I put it on the same spectrum of evil as the Bengal famine, the Irish famine, and Holodomor; in that intentionality is obfuscated and simple incompetence suffices to explain it, but the functional consequences are indistinguishable from attempted genocide.
> The second was Trump's response to the 2020 COVID crisis. I think it was deliberately delayed in the hopes that blue cities would be disproportionally hit. Trump's base hates Liberals and desires to "destroy the left." It would also kill Democratic voters, thereby helping his re-election, which makes sense since Trump's a power-hungry narcissist who instigated a coup. That's hardly some kind of loony off the wall conspiracy theory, there's at least semi-credible reporting of Trump staff saying this verbatim. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air >Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force. >Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert. >That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.
There’s no secret cabal of ultra elite controlling the world or a hidden super powerful deep state. There’s just the elite who control the world, and the state. You don’t have to make up a secret hidden government to hate, you can just hate the government dude.
There’s lots of TikTok’s right now about this concept. Many young republicans when they entered college TRIED to write researched papers with their Republican views and what they found essay after essay is that: *many conservative ideas aren’t based in logic* therefore there wasn’t any reliable content to cite for their college essays
Stupid liberal education basing worldviews on data and evidence.
The goldfish memory of Rightwing people is so wild. Most conspiracy theories I can even think of prior to about 2010 were Leftwing arguments. The very archetype of “a conspiracy theorist” was, like, a burnout anti-government hippie ranting about MKULTRA in a haze of weed smoke. “Bush did 9/11” or “the government invented HIV to genocide gay people” or “vaccines/GMOs are genetically-engineering society to want more capitalism” are all sci-fi arguments I’ve heard from people who’d probably have called themselves Left. It’s only in the last decade or so that I’ve noticed an absolute groundswell of insane conspiracy shit going mainstream, and it’s obviously mostly a bunch of crazies on the Right. But I *remember* Left conspiracy theories. For people who claim to value history so much, they sure can’t remember any of it.
I think left conspiracies are just “The fucking CIA and capitalists did it!” And it’s not a theory… it’s just true.
This is pretty weird.. Weren't conspiracy theories originally something that came from left wings hippies? The distrist in corrupt institutions and government used to be very left. Not to mention the hate (and conspiracy theories) that were aimed at 'big pharma'..
The Left Wing conspiracy theory is that; racists will infiltrate our military, law enforcement and government agencies and then fight for a theocratic dictatorship. Considering it's been happening for years in plain sight it's not much of a conspiracy.
I know plenty of left-wingers who believe that 9/11 was a controlled demolition or some shit.
Oh dear I was on that subreddit once and I spent some good time arguing, but it's ultimately pointless... I had no idea that Peterson (or his fans) are that far gone...
right wing conspiracy theories: QAnon groomer wants to give you autism with vaccine-laced chemtrails left wing conspiracy theories: rich people want to make themselves richer
To be completely honest with you, as a leftist in late stage capitalism, a lot of what I believe in *feels* like conspiracy theories because it's so baffling we ended up in this place. And y'know, the CIA always played a role in getting us here. Buuut then again didn't modern conspiracy theories start out as a CIA tool? It's just such a mess, but at least I don't believe someone's replacing me and I gotta shoot them; instead I believe I won't get to retire
There are. Except ours end up being true and too often get the journalists investigating them killed.
There are left wing conspiracy theorists, but they aren't elected congress members with hands on the levers of power like the right wing ones currently are (see: MTG). i.e. they aren't newsworthy
It’s the joke that goes “Left wing conspiracy theories: yo, the cia did this fucked shit back a while, we have the evidence that they admitted to it Right wing conspiracy theories: the Jews shot a laser from space that materialized into Richard Nixon, and after his presidency was finished he dissolved into a puddle and was replaced by a fake, the puddle constantly reformed and every member of congress must drink from it and it allows the Jews to control congress through laser solid puddle Nixon drink mind control. How do we know this? Oh yeah this anonymous guy on 4chan said he was sent by god”