Conspiracism goes mainstream

Travis

Misanthrope of the Mountains
Travis
Joined
Mar 31, 2007
Messages
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Conspiracism has been with us for sometime. For those of us that were here back in the heyday of the 9/11 nonsense can remember how so much of that was built on old, old conspiracy theories reworked into a new narrative.

But that was always fringe. I honestly can't remember anyone in real power that believed in the stuff (aside from Chavez whose power was debatable). But that is now gone. The right has gone off the rails and conspiracy belief is now rampant among both lawmakers and their staff. We saw that the NSC had loons in it that were circulating a memo that alleged that the Muslim Brotherhood secretly controls Black Lives Matter. In fact it didn't even attempt to establish it as a truth instead it treated the notion as established knowledge despite there being zero evidence for it.

And then we have the old bogeyman of Soros. George Soros has supposedly been bankrolling pretty much every liberal cause conservatives hate from Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, anti-Trump rallies, the Sandy Hook "hoax", gun laws and nutritious school lunches. With there being a common allegation that protestors are all being paid $25 an hour to be at these events I guess Soros has access to that $90 trillion that Rothschild supposedly has as a result from bankrolling every war ever.

And another reminder of how this is all now mainstream comes when a Republican lawmaker from Idaho, Bryan Zollinger, posts an article on his facebook feed that alleges it makes sense that the Nazis at Charlottesville were actually there because of a plot paid for by Soros and executed by Barack Obama. An article with quotes like this: “We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C. home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative agenda.” Which is a thing that certainly isn't known.

Helping this along of course is the sentient eldritch abomination fart known as Trump who continues to advance the absurd idea that the media are "the enemies of America" who continue to advance "fake news" while never, ever substantiating just what makes any of it in any way fake.

With the onset of mainstream conspiracism have we truly entered the post fact era?

More importantly how do we get away from this? How does one convince a Trump supporter that machines took their jobs not a Soros funded pan-global conspiracy?
 
Travis said:
Conspiracism has been with us for sometime. For those of us that were here back in the heyday of the 9/11 nonsense can remember how so much of that was built on old, old conspiracy theories reworked into a new narrative.

But that was always fringe. I honestly can't remember anyone in real power that believed in the stuff (aside from Chavez whose power was debatable). But that is now gone. The right has gone off the rails and conspiracy belief is now rampant among both lawmakers and their staff. We saw that the NSC had loons in it that were circulating a memo that alleged that the Muslim Brotherhood secretly controls Black Lives Matter. In fact it didn't even attempt to establish it as a truth instead it treated the notion as established knowledge despite there being zero evidence for it.

And then we have the old bogeyman of Soros. George Soros has supposedly been bankrolling pretty much every liberal cause conservatives hate from Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, anti-Trump rallies, the Sandy Hook "hoax", gun laws and nutritious school lunches. With there being a common allegation that protestors are all being paid $25 an hour to be at these events I guess Soros has access to that $90 trillion that Rothschild supposedly has as a result from bankrolling every war ever.

And another reminder of how this is all now mainstream comes when a Republican lawmaker from Idaho, Bryan Zollinger, posts an article on his facebook feed that alleges it makes sense that the Nazis at Charlottesville were actually there because of a plot paid for by Soros and executed by Barack Obama. An article with quotes like this: “We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C. home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative agenda.” Which is a thing that certainly isn't known.

Helping this along of course is the sentient eldritch abomination fart known as Trump who continues to advance the absurd idea that the media are "the enemies of America" who continue to advance "fake news" while never, ever substantiating just what makes any of it in any way fake.

With the onset of mainstream conspiracism have we truly entered the post fact era?

More importantly how do we get away from this? How does one convince a Trump supporter that machines took their jobs not a Soros funded pan-global conspiracy?
Click to expand...

Evidence for the highlighted, please?
 
The paranoia over "Sharia law" is really quite remarkable, too. I'm not sure who popularized it as a boogeyman - Jerry Falwell?
 
I, too, recall the early days of 9/11 conspiracy. I would often have to explain to people what loose change was. I recall having to explain chemtrails, flat earthers, Bohemia grove, and even who Alex jones was. Outside of fringe corners of the internet these things just held very little sway. Now nearly everyone watches YouTube videos and regurgitates the latest in easily debunked conspiracy theories. I'll hear people in restaurants and bars openly discussing obama's secret Muslim ring, George soros and his seemingly limitless ability to control every event and organization in the world, and the UN's plan to take our guns. The capstone on all of this is a mutual agreement that you can't trust the scientists or the media and no one can ever really know "what's going on."

I have no idea how this is combated, hopefully it's just a societal phase we are going through and the pendulum will swing back the toward reason and logic. I know that when I have tried to argue, politely, in public against these conspiracies someone almost always interjects that the person spouting the conspiracies, "is entitled to their beliefs and I should respect that." Often this is followed with a not so polite suggestion that I open my mind to new ideas and shed my obvious bias.

What is to be done when the same public schools that taught the engineers who took us to moon is now underfunded and under attack. When tax dollars are being funneled out of public education and into for profit schools and then the public schools are attacked for doing an inadequate job and that is used to justify siphoning away more money we create and educational death spiral.

Full disclosure: I have from a very early age been fascinated with mysteries and conspiracy. The first books I ever checked out from a library were probably about Nostradamus or the Bermuda Triangle. I never really bought into them until the 9/11 videos started appearing but after looking at a lot of evidence I came to my senses. Perhaps my life long interest makes me more tuned to picking up these kinds of conversations in the real world.
 
Here's a question about the OP context... what's the timeframe?

I would certainly have described the Blood Libel and antisemitism's endless invented "justifications" as mainstream conspiracy theories, and they go back... centuries? Millennia?

Sharia Law panic is just 2017's version of Blood Libel, IMO.
 
Travis said:
Conspiracism has been with us for sometime. For those of us that were here back in the heyday of the 9/11 nonsense can remember how so much of that was built on old, old conspiracy theories reworked into a new narrative.

But that was always fringe. I honestly can't remember anyone in real power that believed in the stuff (aside from Chavez whose power was debatable). But that is now gone. The right has gone off the rails and conspiracy belief is now rampant among both lawmakers and their staff. We saw that the NSC had loons in it that were circulating a memo that alleged that the Muslim Brotherhood secretly controls Black Lives Matter. In fact it didn't even attempt to establish it as a truth instead it treated the notion as established knowledge despite there being zero evidence for it.

And then we have the old bogeyman of Soros. George Soros has supposedly been bankrolling pretty much every liberal cause conservatives hate from Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, anti-Trump rallies, the Sandy Hook "hoax", gun laws and nutritious school lunches. With there being a common allegation that protestors are all being paid $25 an hour to be at these events I guess Soros has access to that $90 trillion that Rothschild supposedly has as a result from bankrolling every war ever.

And another reminder of how this is all now mainstream comes when a Republican lawmaker from Idaho, Bryan Zollinger, posts an article on his facebook feed that alleges it makes sense that the Nazis at Charlottesville were actually there because of a plot paid for by Soros and executed by Barack Obama. An article with quotes like this: “We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C. home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative agenda.” Which is a thing that certainly isn't known.

Helping this along of course is the sentient eldritch abomination fart known as Trump who continues to advance the absurd idea that the media are "the enemies of America" who continue to advance "fake news" while never, ever substantiating just what makes any of it in any way fake.

With the onset of mainstream conspiracism have we truly entered the post fact era?

More importantly how do we get away from this? How does one convince a Trump supporter that machines took their jobs not a Soros funded pan-global conspiracy?
Click to expand...

It's pretty ironic that you didn't mention the conspiracy theory du jour which is the Russia collusion nonsense. Nor did you mention the boogeymen for the left - the Koch brothers.

My experience is that I have never personally met an intelligent, educated conservative who believed in a conspiracy theory without solid evidence. I have met dozens and dozens of intelligent, educated liberals who believe in ridiculous conspiracy theories. The problem has accelerated since Trump's election. That election has really had serious negative consequences for the sanity of politically engaged liberals.
 
It seems more like the end result of the southern strategy coming home to roost.

CNN revealed Tuesday night that the frontrunner in an Alabama Senate race has repeatedly questioned President Barack Obama's citizenship, and did so again late last year — even after Donald Trump backed away from the claim.

Judge Roy Moore, who won the first round of the Alabama GOP Senate primary this August, began expressing doubts about Obama’s citizenship in 2008 and has done so at least through December 2016, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Paul LeBlanc reported. (Also a former champion of the conspiracy theory, then-presidential candidate Trump held a press conference in September of last year designed to distance himself from the birther claim.)

Moore will face incumbent Sen. Luther Strange in a runoff in the Alabama Senate primary on September 26, after none of the 10 candidates in the first round cleared the necessary 50 percent of the vote to avoid a second round. Moore beat Strange in the race’s first round by about 10 points.

Moore holds a host of policy positions that put him far afield from what at least used to be the Republican Party mainstream. Famous for refusing to take down a monument to the Ten Commandments from his courthouse, and then again for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Moore has defied federal court orders, addressed a white supremacist group, penned invectives against Perez Hilton over same-sex marriage, and argued that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) should not be seated as a Congress member because he is Muslim.
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In order to spend 70 years pandering to southern racist, you're going to have to say a lot of untrue things about brown people. It's not a coincidence that just about everyone of these kooky theories that have been mainstreamed focus on brown skinned minorities and/or Jews.
 
sunmaster14 said:
It's pretty ironic that you didn't mention the conspiracy theory du jour which is the Russia collusion nonsense. Nor did you mention the boogeymen for the left - the Koch brothers.

My experience is that I have never personally met an intelligent, educated conservative who believed in a conspiracy theory without solid evidence. I have met dozens and dozens of intelligent, educated liberals who believe in ridiculous conspiracy theories. The problem has accelerated since Trump's election. That election has really had serious negative consequences for the sanity of politically engaged liberals.
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The difference is that there is evidence for both those.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
The paranoia over "Sharia law" is really quite remarkable, too. I'm not sure who popularized it as a boogeyman - Jerry Falwell?
Click to expand...

The fear of Sharia Law is perfectly reasonable. Islam is not just a religion, since it prescribes conduct, law, and punishment for the secular world as well. It is a religion and a political ideology stapled together. As the Muslim population in a country grows, it strikes me as reasonable to believe that the percentage of the population sympathetic to implementing Sharia Law, at least in part, will grow. And is also reasonable to project that as the percentage of the population sympathetic to a particular political ideology grows, the probability that such political ideology will be incorporated into state institutions and into the law will grow.

Virtually every Muslim majority country in the world has implemented Sharia Law to some extent, and many countries with a sizable Muslim minority incorporate principles from Sharia. Unless you believe that Muslims emigrating to the West can be assimilated as fast as their population is growing, then current demographic trends make it likely that Sharia will be partly recognized or implemented in Western countries in the not-too-distant future. The evidence to date I think is that Muslims are not assimilating to Western culture and political ideology nearly as fast as their population is growing.
 
Stacko said:
In order to spend 70 years pandering to southern racist, you're going to have to say a lot of untrue things about brown people. It's not a coincidence that just about everyone of these kooky theories that have been mainstreamed focus on brown skinned minorities and/or Jews.
Click to expand...

On the other hand, conspiracy theories are pretty much always blaming the minorities.
 
sunmaster14 said:
It's pretty ironic that you didn't mention the conspiracy theory du jour which is the Russia collusion nonsense. Nor did you mention the boogeymen for the left - the Koch brothers.

My experience is that I have never personally met an intelligent, educated conservative who believed in a conspiracy theory without solid evidence. I have met dozens and dozens of intelligent, educated liberals who believe in ridiculous conspiracy theories. The problem has accelerated since Trump's election. That election has really had serious negative consequences for the sanity of politically engaged liberals.
Click to expand...

How is the Russia investigation or Koch Brothers involvement a conspiracy theory?
 
Argumemnon said:
On the other hand, conspiracy theories are pretty much always blaming the minorities.
Click to expand...

Well, two of the dominant conspiracy theories today are about institutionalized patriarchy and institutionalized racism. They blame any and all group differences in outcomes on sexism or racism, which of course is a logical fallacy.
 
sunmaster14 said:
The fear of Sharia Law is perfectly reasonable. Islam is not just a religion, since it prescribes conduct, law, and punishment for the secular world as well. It is a religion and a political ideology stapled together. As the Muslim population in a country grows, it strikes me as reasonable to believe that the percentage of the population sympathetic to implementing Sharia Law, at least in part, will grow. And is also reasonable to project that as the percentage of the population sympathetic to a particular political ideology grows, the probability that such political ideology will be incorporated into state institutions and into the law will grow.

Virtually every Muslim majority country in the world has implemented Sharia Law to some extent, and many countries with a sizable Muslim minority incorporate principles from Sharia. Unless you believe that Muslims emigrating to the West can be assimilated as fast as their population is growing, then current demographic trends make it likely that Sharia will be partly recognized or implemented in Western countries in the not-too-distant future. The evidence to date I think is that Muslims are not assimilating to Western culture and political ideology nearly as fast as their population is growing.
Click to expand...

Personally I don't see Sharia Law actually becoming secular law. By what path do you think this could happen?
 
You can probably include a belief that Manmade Global Warming is a myth, and that a lot of scientists are in a conspiracy to promote this myth
 
Travis said:
How is the Russia investigation or Koch Brothers involvement a conspiracy theory?
Click to expand...

The Russia investigation is a witch hunt. It is a classic example of confirmation bias. Any and all evidence that points to a lack of collusion (or even "hacking" of the election by the Russian government) is dismissed, and any evidence consistent with the Democrat's narrative is elevated and highlighted. I am quite confident at this point that there was zero collusion (however broad one can reasonably expand the definition of the term) between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. I have moderate confidence that the Russia collusion narrative was ginned up by John Brennan and other Obama appointees, with an assist from the Hillary campaign desperate to blame her loss on something other than her wretched personality. I am further starting to think that the Russian government did not actually direct a hack (which wasn't a sophisticated hack - it was a spearfishing attack) of the DNC and John Podesta. So far I have seen no credible evidence that the Russian government was responsible. The publicly available report from the DNI, which purports to provide such evidence, is laughably (and suspiciously) weak.

As for the Koch brothers, why are they any more of a boogeyman than George Soros? They're both actively involved in funding think tanks and political action committees. In fact, Soros backs pretty extreme outlets like Media Matters and ThinkProgress. The Koch brothers don't back anything so extreme. Unless you think the Cato Institute is extreme.
 
Travis said:
Personally I don't see Sharia Law actually becoming secular law. By what path do you think this could happen?
Click to expand...

It could happen if Muslims become a substantial majority in a western country. Say, Germany. Not sure that's in the cards, however, but if it were to happen Sharia Law could be a result.
 
Argumemnon said:
I'm not sure I'd count those as conspiracy theories. What features do they display that would have them included in that set?
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I explained it in my post. They attribute any and all group differences in outcomes to racism and therefore as confirmation that such racism exists and has a material impact. As an example, I refer you to the recent kerfuffle at Google about the percentage of women in tech jobs.
 
sunmaster14 said:
The fear of Sharia Law is perfectly reasonable. Islam is not just a religion, since it prescribes conduct, law, and punishment for the secular world as well. It is a religion and a political ideology stapled together. As the Muslim population in a country grows, it strikes me as reasonable to believe that the percentage of the population sympathetic to implementing Sharia Law, at least in part, will grow. And is also reasonable to project that as the percentage of the population sympathetic to a particular political ideology grows, the probability that such political ideology will be incorporated into state institutions and into the law will grow.

Virtually every Muslim majority country in the world has implemented Sharia Law to some extent, and many countries with a sizable Muslim minority incorporate principles from Sharia. Unless you believe that Muslims emigrating to the West can be assimilated as fast as their population is growing, then current demographic trends make it likely that Sharia will be partly recognized or implemented in Western countries in the not-too-distant future. The evidence to date I think is that Muslims are not assimilating to Western culture and political ideology nearly as fast as their population is growing.
Click to expand...

This is simply wrong. Saying sharia law is like a christian saying the law should be based on christian principles. It doesn't advocate any specific laws or doctrines, and the scholars can not agree on what it means.

It really is a meaningless buzz word that is used in islamic countries to shut down debate about a law, and used in america as a scare tactic.
 
sunmaster14 said:
The Russia investigation is a witch hunt. It is a classic example of confirmation bias. Any and all evidence that points to a lack of collusion (or even "hacking" of the election by the Russian government) is dismissed, and any evidence consistent with the Democrat's narrative is elevated and highlighted.
Click to expand...

I agree that one must be careful in drawing conclusions, but even you have to admit that the investigations into the matter seem to be closing in on the President and his people. Hardly something you'd expect if there wasn't more solid evidence than what you claim exists.
 
Travis said:
Personally I don't see Sharia Law actually becoming secular law. By what path do you think this could happen?
Click to expand...

By unassimilated Muslims gaining a local plurality and insisting, predominantly through Democratic means (but with a hint of violence or the threat of violence), to have some aspects of Sharia Law incorporated into local law. The changes happen slowly and at each point don't seem worth getting in a big fight about. This is called slicing the salami. The Nazis actually gained power this way, even though they never secured more than 1/3 of the popular vote.
 
So the threat of Sharia Law is reasonable, while the possibility of Russian collusion is solidly in the absurd conspiracy theory section.

Despite Trump actually asking for it.

Is this the "good faith" debating we heard about elsewhere?
 
Argumemnon said:
I agree that one must be careful in drawing conclusions, but even you have to admit that the investigations into the matter seem to be closing in on the President and his people. Hardly something you'd expect if there wasn't more solid evidence than what you claim exists.
Click to expand...

I disagree. I think the investigation is moving on to find wrongdoing elsewhere. They'll try to squeeze Flynn over his lobbying contract with Turkey and Manafort over his lobbying contract with Ukraine, and there might be some financial irregularities and unpaid taxes that can be used to prosecute some people close to Trump, but the collusion story has collapsed. If it hadn't you would have heard about it.

As Lavrenti Beria said to Stalin (Alan Dershowitz keeps point this out), "Show me the man, and I will show you the crime." There is always something you can prosecute if you dig deep enough, and that is the fundamental problem with special counsel investigations. They have an unlimited budget and almost no oversight. The probability that people with such complex business ties as Manafort, Flynn, or even Trump did not at least get into murky legal territory one or two times over the last 10 years is almost nil.
 
sunmaster14 said:
By unassimilated Muslims gaining a local plurality and insisting, predominantly through Democratic means (but with a hint of violence or the threat of violence), to have some aspects of Sharia Law incorporated into local law. The changes happen slowly and at each point don't seem worth getting in a big fight about. This is called slicing the salami. The Nazis actually gained power this way, even though they never secured more than 1/3 of the popular vote.
Click to expand...

How is this any different from what Christians have been doing for decades?
 
Argumemnon said:
I'm aware of that. How does that make it into a conspiracy theory?
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What makes a CT a CT (in the colloquial sense) is that it is built on a foundation of logical fallacies. So it is with institutionalized sexism/racism/whateverism.

If you see that women dominate jobs such as nursing and teaching, and men dominate jobs in finance or tech, it is a fallacy to attribute that to sexism and completely ignore other possible factors. The whole "women make 73 cents for every dollar a man makes for equal work" is a complete myth. And yet it is so much a part of the mainstream on the liberal side, that it is practically a mantra for Democratic politicians.
 
NoahFence said:
So the threat of Sharia Law is reasonable, while the possibility of Russian collusion is solidly in the absurd conspiracy theory section.

Despite Trump actually asking for it.

Is this the "good faith" debating we heard about elsewhere?
Click to expand...

Yes, it's a surprisingly civil discussion so far. I'm like a pig in slop, although I do have to get back to work very soon.
 
Argumemnon said:
I agree that one must be careful in drawing conclusions, but even you have to admit that the investigations into the matter seem to be closing in on the President and his people. Hardly something you'd expect if there wasn't more solid evidence than what you claim exists.
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Actually, is there anything that suggests Trump's involvement?

Further, his closest aides met with a lawyer that didn't have the goods. If they were colluding with Russia, that process would have been unnecessary.
 
sunmaster14 said:
What makes a CT a CT (in the colloquial sense) is that it is built on a foundation of logical fallacies.
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Not really. A LOT of wrong ideas are based on logical fallacies but that doesn't make them CTs. Wiki says:

A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy without warrant, generally one involving an illegal or harmful act carried out by government or other powerful actors. Conspiracy theories often produce hypotheses that contradict the prevailing understanding of history or simple facts. The term is a derogatory one.

If you see that women dominate jobs such as nursing and teaching, and men dominate jobs in finance or tech, it is a fallacy to attribute that to sexism and completely ignore other possible factors. The whole "women make 73 cents for every dollar a man makes for equal work" is a complete myth. And yet it is so much a part of the mainstream on the liberal side, that it is practically a mantra for Democratic politicians.
Click to expand...

I agree with all that, but I don't see the conspiracy aspect.
 
sunmaster14 said:
The Russia investigation is a witch hunt. It is a classic example of confirmation bias. Any and all evidence that points to a lack of collusion (or even "hacking" of the election by the Russian government) is dismissed, and any evidence consistent with the Democrat's narrative is elevated and highlighted. I am quite confident at this point that there was zero collusion (however broad one can reasonably expand the definition of the term) between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. I have moderate confidence that the Russia collusion narrative was ginned up by John Brennan and other Obama appointees, with an assist from the Hillary campaign desperate to blame her loss on something other than her wretched personality. I am further starting to think that the Russian government did not actually direct a hack (which wasn't a sophisticated hack - it was a spearfishing attack) of the DNC and John Podesta. So far I have seen no credible evidence that the Russian government was responsible. The publicly available report from the DNI, which purports to provide such evidence, is laughably (and suspiciously) weak.
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Yeah, no.
 
sunmaster14 said:
What makes a CT a CT (in the colloquial sense) is that it is built on a foundation of logical fallacies. So it is with institutionalized sexism/racism/whateverism.

If you see that women dominate jobs such as nursing and teaching, and men dominate jobs in finance or tech, it is a fallacy to attribute that to sexism and completely ignore other possible factors. The whole "women make 73 cents for every dollar a man makes for equal work" is a complete myth. And yet it is so much a part of the mainstream on the liberal side, that it is practically a mantra for Democratic politicians.
Click to expand...

You misunderstand the 73 cents thing. Many on the left acknowledge it is attributable to things like leaving the work force to be a parent, but the goal is to resphape the workforce.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Actually, is there anything that suggests Trump's involvement?

Further, his closest aides met with a lawyer that didn't have the goods. If they were colluding with Russia, that process would have been unnecessary.
Click to expand...

That's precisely the kind of thing I'm referring to when I talk about confirmation bias. I look at that meeting as evidence of Trump Jr.'s idiocy, but other than that, I see it as exculpatory rather than inculpatory. Reasonable people can disagree because it shows an eagerness to get dirt from any and all comers, but I think the fact that the meeting was a clown show, and that it was set up by one of the most ridiculous people I've ever seen in a political context (i.e. Rob Goldstone), is more persuasive as an argument that there was no serious cooperation at that time.
 
sunmaster14 said:
That's precisely the kind of thing I'm referring to when I talk about confirmation bias. I look at that meeting as evidence of Trump Jr.'s idiocy, but other than that, I see it as exculpatory rather than inculpatory.
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Except that he took the meeting with the intention of getting dirt on a political opponent that came from a foreign government. Whether the meeting bore fruits is irrelevant: the intent and the act of going to the meeting are in and of themselves sufficient.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Yes, it's a surprisingly civil discussion so far. I'm like a pig in slop, although I do have to get back to work very soon.
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To me, good faith requires honesty, at a minimum.

Where is the honesty in saying that there's no evidence for collusion despite trump directly asking for it?
 
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