In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On July 24 2017 04:26 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote: usually when I argue about news with people a lot of them somehow think that the Huff post is somehow equivalent to Infowars. It gets annoying
Well, my best guess is, it's because of insensitive and disgusting articles like this: North Korea Proves Your White Male Privilege Is Not Universal I wonder whether the author La Sha regrets the article, considering the guy was tortured to death....
On July 24 2017 04:26 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote: usually when I argue about news with people a lot of them somehow think that the Huff post is somehow equivalent to Infowars. It gets annoying
The Huff Post is still pretty bad though. Its content may be a smallish step up from Fox News, but there's no real reason to read the paper unless you're looking for a media outlet to confirm (or challenge in some cases) your views imo. Which leads to a highly dogmatic reader base that shares some traits with the Far Righters.
While I'm on the topic, the NYT certainly didn't help the Left's journalism credibility problem when they declared in an editorial that they would be campaigning against him in their non-editorial articles.
On July 24 2017 03:34 Liquid`Drone wrote: Who would that be? I'm not disputing that there are crazy conspiratorial leftists out there, but the crazy part about Alex Jones isn't how crazy he is, it's how he wields any degree of influence. For there to be a leftist equivalent of Alex Jones, he'd have to be sufficiently famous for us to know about him, and I don't know of any.
The problem isn't Alex Jones pushing nonsense. The problem is the President pushing Uranium One like it hasn't been debunked two years ago. Flip back a few pages and you can see Kwark's longform takedown with something like 10 links to actual facts showing how ridiculous it is. The highest levels of Government (President Trump) and the Conservatainment universe (Hannity) push post-fact narratives that never die, no matter how many times you try to beat the truth into them.
To the point about the left, the post-truth left has largely moved on to be an anti-Russian-collusion cheerleading squad. Check out The Young Turks or The Intercept or Jill Stein or Dennis Kucinish. All of them are in unison pushing the idea that somehow Russia didn't intervene in the 2016 election and Trump certainly didn't collude with them (documentary evidence from Don JR is selectively ignored). Something fun to think about, consider who runs/ran the label 'anti-war' and recall who ran that label back in 2006-2008 era. Now think of a ven diagram of the 'anti-war' people and the Russia-2016-interference-deniers. It ends up being the same people.
An actual Canadian left-extremist on youtube. I am not quite sure if he is trolling, but it looks like he is trying very hard to get attention! You guys are right though, the main difference is the right-wing nut-cases having much more influence. He is in fact so fringe that he is not even worth attacking, few of his videos has more than 2k views.
The guy you cited is a perfect example of my second point. Check out his list of videos. It fits perfectly into the Russia-2016-interference-deniers narratives. He pushes DNC-Ukraine collusion as some kind of alternative. He blames HRC for assassinating people. And he even has some pro-Russia propaganda about the Donbass in there. Can you see how the 'anti-war' left seems to conveniently buy into every Russia/RT pushed storyline? It lines up like clockwork every time. TYT, Intercept, Jill Stein, Kucinich, and even these lesser guys just happen to always push the same thing.
Jill Stein I can understand given her personal involvement in the matter, but what is the rational behind those other left-wing outlets denying the Russia narrative?
I have my theories as to why they all seem to line up that way. The unifying strand among those groups is being 'anti-war'. Now Stein is the most laughably hypocritical about this amongst the rest. She is conveniently anti-war in every single USA action, but manages to find ways to support Russia's actions in stabilizing the crisis in Novorussia and dealing with the terrorists in Syria. The rest always manage to come down on opposing the use of force by the USA. But if you go back far enough, back to the Vietnam era, you can see this thread run throughout all the anti-war groups. Boooo USA use of force, but hey maybe the Khmer Rouge might be on to something (Chomsky). But come Iraq War 2, a lot of these anti-war groups got big time credibility on the broader left. Think, Salon era Greenwald (but supported the war initially, but wrote a lot of great anti-Bush2 stuff, so he got popular). But Greenwald is a great case study, he keeps his Booo USA use of force thing going into the Obama era and uses it as a cudgel against HRC. Note that he also always finds a way to never condemn Russia over Crimea and spends his days doing his damndest to minimize any Russia-2016-USA-election-interference. I can't really piece it all together, but the thread linking all these characters is "boo USA use of force, maybe Russia not so bad".
EDIT: fuck huffpo. I haven't clicked one of their links in 4-5 years and I am plenty left. I don't think they are news. At best they reprint an AP article. The rest of it is a blogger free-for-all of nonsense peddlers. I don't even think they have a lefty narrative, it is just free wheeling speculation by gigglers.
Whatever communism may have once stood for, the modern version is but a perversion based on an aggressive desire to support ideas contrary to reality. A viable ideology is open to change based on reality; modern "communists" do precisely the opposite. Comparing the leftist idea of communism to any previous or existing communist governments is an invalid comparison.
On July 24 2017 04:26 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote: usually when I argue about news with people a lot of them somehow think that the Huff post is somehow equivalent to Infowars. It gets annoying
Well, my best guess is, it's because of insensitive and disgusting articles like this: North Korea Proves Your White Male Privilege Is Not Universal I wonder whether the author La Sha regrets the article, considering the guy was tortured to death....
obviously Huffpost goes way too far sometimes in a lot of their articles. But they do sometimes do legitimate journalism and it's not like their supporting the idea that NASA is runnign a child sex ring on mars. It's much more like Breitbart which is also incomparable to Infowars. Basically Infowars is its own brand of crazy that is also possibly all a big scam to sell supplements.
and it's also not like Obama was calling or citing Huffpost.
On July 24 2017 04:44 mozoku wrote: There's leftist conspiracy theories as well: the military-industrial complex, crack being planted in black communities by the CIA, the Iraq War being fought over oil.
The reason right-wing extremism is more prevalent currently is probably due to a number of factors.
The failure of communism worldwide combined with the cultural after-effects of the Red Scare likely dealt a strong blow to left-wing extremism. Conversely, the fact that the US never had a real fascist movement probably resulted in the anti-facist/anti-nationalist sentiment in the US being somewhat suppressed relative to Europe. In addition to the fact that the costs of WW2 (caused by facism/nationalism) were much heavier in Europe than in the US, so the historical scars don't run as deep.
As for the conspiracy theories, it's probably due to the makeup of the the two parties in the current time period. The Left is made up primarily of minorities (who tend to be less interested in politics) and educated whites--education tends to lessen belief in/acceptance of conspiracy theories. The moderate establishment Right (who are also usually college educated) is much less interested in conspiracy theories.
Again conversely, the largest faction of the right is working class whites, who are both less educated and relatively politically active.
These are generalizations but probably explain the trend.
The military industrial complex does exist, the term was popularized by Eisenhower for fucks sake.
As for the CIA smuggling cocaine, again, that's not a conspiracy theory. It can get into conspiracy theory territory if you refuse to accept things like the official story that Gary Webb, the journalist that uncovered the CIA cocaine smuggling operation, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head... twice. But the core story, that actually happened.
Iraq War and oil, again, not really a conspiracy theory. The US is only in the Gulf because of the geopolitical importance of oil, the idea that oil had no impact on the decision to intervene in Iraq would to me be a far more unlikely theory. Honestly I'm not even sure how the oil free story of the Iraq interventions would go. Was the US just passing through the area in 1990, happened to see the Kuwait invasion go down and thought it would show some upstanding global citizenship and intervene?
On July 24 2017 04:44 mozoku wrote: There's leftist conspiracy theories as well: the military-industrial complex, crack being planted in black communities by the CIA, the Iraq War being fought over oil.
The reason right-wing extremism is more prevalent currently is probably due to a number of factors.
The failure of communism worldwide combined with the cultural after-effects of the Red Scare likely dealt a strong blow to left-wing extremism. Conversely, the fact that the US never had a real fascist movement probably resulted in the anti-facist/anti-nationalist sentiment in the US being somewhat suppressed relative to Europe. In addition to the fact that the costs of WW2 (caused by facism/nationalism) were much heavier in Europe than in the US, so the historical scars don't run as deep.
As for the conspiracy theories, it's probably due to the makeup of the the two parties in the current time period. The Left is made up primarily of minorities (who tend to be less interested in politics) and educated whites--education tends to lessen belief in/acceptance of conspiracy theories. The moderate establishment Right (who are also usually college educated) is much less interested in conspiracy theories.
Again conversely, the largest faction of the right is working class whites, who are both less educated and relatively politically active.
These are generalizations but probably explain the trend.
The military industrial complex does exist, the term was popularized by Eisenhower for fucks sake.
As for the CIA smuggling cocaine, again, that's not a conspiracy theory. It can get into conspiracy theory territory if you refuse to accept things like the official story that Gary Webb, the journalist that uncovered the CIA cocaine smuggling operation, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head... twice. But the core story, that actually happened.
Iraq War and oil, again, not really a conspiracy theory. The US is only in the Gulf because of the geopolitical importance of oil, the idea that oil had no impact on the decision to intervene in Iraq would to me be a far more unlikely theory. Honestly I'm not even sure how the oil free story of the Iraq interventions would go. Was the US just passing through the area in 1990, happened to see the Kuwait invasion go down and thought it would show some upstanding global citizenship and intervene?
This is sort of a silly post. Pretty much all conspiracy theories are originate from some kind of fact basis. What you've done is remove the wild speculation (aka the conspiracy theory part), point to the original fact, and claim "Look, it's real!"
Eisenhower warned against a MIC affecting foreign policy. That in no way lends any support to the conspiracy theorist version of the MIC (i.e. that the most/all US military engagements are due to MIC). Or that the MIC was the leading driver in any foreign US military engagement.
Really? The CIA actually planted crack in African-American communities? That actually happened? Because that's the conspiracy theory I was talking about.
Iraq War 2: Again, you've shifted the conspiracy theory from "the war was fought over oil" to "oil played a role." Which is still debatable, but I'm going to walk over that rabbit hole.
Nobody made up conspiracy theories about Iraq War 1.
On July 24 2017 04:44 mozoku wrote: There's leftist conspiracy theories as well: the military-industrial complex, crack being planted in black communities by the CIA, the Iraq War being fought over oil.
The reason right-wing extremism is more prevalent currently is probably due to a number of factors.
The failure of communism worldwide combined with the cultural after-effects of the Red Scare likely dealt a strong blow to left-wing extremism. Conversely, the fact that the US never had a real fascist movement probably resulted in the anti-facist/anti-nationalist sentiment in the US being somewhat suppressed relative to Europe. In addition to the fact that the costs of WW2 (caused by facism/nationalism) were much heavier in Europe than in the US, so the historical scars don't run as deep.
As for the conspiracy theories, it's probably due to the makeup of the the two parties in the current time period. The Left is made up primarily of minorities (who tend to be less interested in politics) and educated whites--education tends to lessen belief in/acceptance of conspiracy theories. The moderate establishment Right (who are also usually college educated) is much less interested in conspiracy theories.
Again conversely, the largest faction of the right is working class whites, who are both less educated and relatively politically active.
These are generalizations but probably explain the trend.
The military industrial complex does exist, the term was popularized by Eisenhower for fucks sake.
As for the CIA smuggling cocaine, again, that's not a conspiracy theory. It can get into conspiracy theory territory if you refuse to accept things like the official story that Gary Webb, the journalist that uncovered the CIA cocaine smuggling operation, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head... twice. But the core story, that actually happened.
Iraq War and oil, again, not really a conspiracy theory. The US is only in the Gulf because of the geopolitical importance of oil, the idea that oil had no impact on the decision to intervene in Iraq would to me be a far more unlikely theory. Honestly I'm not even sure how the oil free story of the Iraq interventions would go. Was the US just passing through the area in 1990, happened to see the Kuwait invasion go down and thought it would show some upstanding global citizenship and intervene?
This is sort of a silly post. Pretty much all conspiracy theories are originate from some kind of fact basis. What you've done is remove the wild speculation (aka the conspiracy theory part), point to the original fact, and claim "Look, it's real!"
Eisenhower warned against a MIC affecting foreign policy. That in no way lends any support to the conspiracy theorist version of the MIC (i.e. that the most/all US military engagements are due to MIC). Or that the MIC was the leading driver in any foreign US military engagement.
Really? The CIA actually planted crack in African-American communities? That actually happened? Because that's the conspiracy theory I was talking about.
Iraq War 2: Again, you've shifted the conspiracy theory from "the war was fought over oil" to "oil played a role." Which is still debatable, but I'm going to walk over that rabbit hole.
Nobody made up conspiracy theories about Iraq War 1.
I think part of the problem is the wording from your first post, wherein you said: "There's leftist conspiracy theories as well: the military-industrial complex, crack being planted in black communities by the CIA, the Iraq War being fought over oil." you ddin't reference the conspiracy theories themselves, but merely descriptors related to them. the military-industrial complex is a well defined term, and does not direcrtly refer to a conspiracy theory itself, it does have related conspiracy theories to it, but the term itself does not reference those, but merely the existence of the complex and eisenhower's remarks, which is not at all conspiracy theory. a clearer wording from your post would've prevented kwark's response I reckon.
On July 24 2017 04:44 mozoku wrote: There's leftist conspiracy theories as well: the military-industrial complex, crack being planted in black communities by the CIA, the Iraq War being fought over oil.
The reason right-wing extremism is more prevalent currently is probably due to a number of factors.
The failure of communism worldwide combined with the cultural after-effects of the Red Scare likely dealt a strong blow to left-wing extremism. Conversely, the fact that the US never had a real fascist movement probably resulted in the anti-facist/anti-nationalist sentiment in the US being somewhat suppressed relative to Europe. In addition to the fact that the costs of WW2 (caused by facism/nationalism) were much heavier in Europe than in the US, so the historical scars don't run as deep.
As for the conspiracy theories, it's probably due to the makeup of the the two parties in the current time period. The Left is made up primarily of minorities (who tend to be less interested in politics) and educated whites--education tends to lessen belief in/acceptance of conspiracy theories. The moderate establishment Right (who are also usually college educated) is much less interested in conspiracy theories.
Again conversely, the largest faction of the right is working class whites, who are both less educated and relatively politically active.
These are generalizations but probably explain the trend.
The military industrial complex does exist, the term was popularized by Eisenhower for fucks sake.
As for the CIA smuggling cocaine, again, that's not a conspiracy theory. It can get into conspiracy theory territory if you refuse to accept things like the official story that Gary Webb, the journalist that uncovered the CIA cocaine smuggling operation, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head... twice. But the core story, that actually happened.
Iraq War and oil, again, not really a conspiracy theory. The US is only in the Gulf because of the geopolitical importance of oil, the idea that oil had no impact on the decision to intervene in Iraq would to me be a far more unlikely theory. Honestly I'm not even sure how the oil free story of the Iraq interventions would go. Was the US just passing through the area in 1990, happened to see the Kuwait invasion go down and thought it would show some upstanding global citizenship and intervene?
This is sort of a silly post. Pretty much all conspiracy theories are originate from some kind of fact basis. What you've done is remove the wild speculation (aka the conspiracy theory part), point to the original fact, and claim "Look, it's real!"
Eisenhower warned against a MIC affecting foreign policy. That in no way lends any support to the conspiracy theorist version of the MIC (i.e. that the most/all US military engagements are due to MIC). Or that the MIC was the leading driver in any foreign US military engagement.
Really? The CIA actually planted crack in African-American communities? That actually happened? Because that's the conspiracy theory I was talking about.
Iraq War 2: Again, you've shifted the conspiracy theory from "the war was fought over oil" to "oil played a role." Which is still debatable, but I'm going to walk over that rabbit hole.
Nobody made up conspiracy theories about Iraq War 1.
Pizzagate?
Out of curiosity, what's the craziest conspiracy theory that extremist liberals have completely fabricated against Republican politicians, in an effort to discredit the person's character or accuse them of something illegal?
For example, is there an equivalent to the Clinton Pizzagate accusation, which was started by alt-righters/ white supremacists?
Pizzagate was the insane hoax that the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and John Podesta (chairman of Hillary's 2016 campaign), had a Satanic, underground, human trafficking system and child-sex ring, and that it was being covered up by coded e-mails and a pizza parlor location. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
Is there anyone who argues that oil wasn't the reason for the US being involved in Iraq? That seems a very odd thing to call a conspiracy theory, to me it's like being told that the round earth theory is the conspiracy.
As far as I know, the conspiracy theory is that people wanted to get rich off of oil/war and so Bush blew up the WTC to get some kind of pretext. That's the theory, and one that I don't subscribe to obviously.
But regarding America's interests in Iraq, that's oil. And pretty much only oil. Not sand, not holiday properties, not historical relics for Hobby Lobby, oil. America is in Iraq for oil. There are plenty of great countries around the world with shitty regimes that the US would love to have better regimes. The reason the US doesn't regime change those countries, and does regime change Iraq, is because Iraq has oil and oil security is a critical geopolitical interest of the United States.
Whenever I hear someone going "open your eyes, we're in the Middle East for oil, the evidence is right there" etc I always get a little confused about what other explanation I'm meant to have subscribed to which they think they're disillusioning me of. This whole exchange reminds me somewhat of this. Only in this case you'd be on the other side, insisting that NASA isn't run by the government.
Same with the MIC. The theory basically asks me to believe that there are a number of very rich people who make their money off of government defence contracts and therefore lobby the government to give them defence contracts and create a need for defence contracts by increasing military involvement or hardware aid packages aid. The inverse sounds far more unbelievable, that the people who make guns go to their shareholder meetings and say "unfortunately it looks like this latest tragedy will result in record dividends and growth this year, let's all join hands and pray for peace".
Trying to protect someone from bullets mostly fired by the person himself is very difficult. And many tried to get him away from the gun (aka twitter) but nobody had success so far.
On July 24 2017 06:26 KwarK wrote: Is there anyone who argues that oil wasn't the reason for the US being involved in Iraq? That seems a very odd thing to call a conspiracy theory, to me it's like being told that the round earth theory is the conspiracy.
As far as I know, the conspiracy theory is that people wanted to get rich off of oil/war and so Bush blew up the WTC to get some kind of pretext. That's the theory, and one that I don't subscribe to obviously.
But regarding America's interests in Iraq, that's oil. And pretty much only oil. Not sand, not holiday properties, not historical relics for Hobby Lobby, oil. America is in Iraq for oil. There are plenty of great countries around the world with shitty regimes that the US would love to have better regimes. The reason the US doesn't regime change those countries, and does regime change Iraq, is because Iraq has oil and oil security is a critical geopolitical interest of the United States.
Whenever I hear someone going "open your eyes, we're in the Middle East for oil, the evidence is right there" etc I always get a little confused about what other explanation I'm meant to have subscribed to which they think they're disillusioning me of. This whole exchange reminds me somewhat of this. Only in this case you'd be on the other side, insisting that NASA isn't run by the government. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmXEThTtwaM
Gotta love the Onion.
edit:
Also want to point out the fact that you guys seem to have a different understanding of "conspiracy theory". To me (and i assume quark) a conspiracy theory is alex jones-esque. Bullshit like chemtrails turning frogs gay, nazis on the dark side of the moon, etc. In regards to the contra-"conspiracy", we know that shit went wrong, it's just the extent that's debatable, so i don't really see that as a conspiracy theory. Even the DoJ report states that it was exaggerated, but not made up.
Trump's new communications director proving himself a master of communication by citing an anonymous source in U.S. intelligence then instantly destroying anyone's thoughts it might be a legit one by saying it was Donald Trump when asked.
Mooch will be out by labor day. Blabbing that your anonymous source was DJT himself is not a forgivable error. The basic idea is to pretend that your insane and false ideas are coming from anonymous experts, not a doddering old man.
I guess to some degree, at least in europe, 911 qualifies as a leftist conspiracy theory. I don't think the left-right dichotomy works the same way in the US though. There are definitely elements of conspiracy thinking to opposition to gmo as well, but I don't think the 'I wish we proceed with some caution because we dunno what the consequences are from a biodiversity perspective + there's something iffy about the whole patenting of infertile seeds thing' really qualifies. I guess at some point GMOs were blamed for the zika virus outbreak, I even saw this linked in a mainstream slightly leftward norwegian newspaper, at which point I think the conspiracy has significant traction. But then they posted a debunk to the story the day after.
Haven't seen anything remotely as crazy as the pedophelia sex rings on mars though, and I don't even know if that is alex jones at his worst.
On July 24 2017 07:05 Wulfey_LA wrote: Mooch will be out by labor day. Blabbing that your anonymous source was DJT himself is not a forgivable error. The basic idea is to pretend that your insane and false ideas are coming from anonymous experts, not a doddering old man.
On July 24 2017 07:08 Liquid`Drone wrote: I guess to some degree, at least in europe, 911 qualifies as a leftist conspiracy theory. I don't think the left-right dichotomy works the same way in the US though. There are definitely elements of conspiracy thinking to opposition to gmo as well, but I don't think the 'I wish we proceed with some caution because we dunno what the consequences are from a biodiversity perspective + there's something iffy about the whole patenting of infertile seeds thing' really qualifies. I guess at some point GMOs were blamed for the zika virus outbreak, I even saw this linked in a mainstream slightly leftward norwegian newspaper, at which point I think the conspiracy has significant traction. But then they posted a debunk to the story the day after.
Haven't seen anything remotely as crazy as the pedophelia sex rings on mars though, and I don't even know if that is alex jones at his worst.
9/11 conspiracy theories seem to fit both sides pretty well. I think it's more of a government is evil people/new world order than a left or right thing
EPT
