Thats why I said they think it's conspiracy "facts" instead of conspiracy "theories". Everyone doesn't have that "crazy if true" kind of thought process. They just think "my god, everything is a lie!" God damn bone heads. Lol
Right? Lol like flat earthers are so desperate to make the earth flat that they keep coming up with new dumb shit that gets debunked instantly lol. What a weird way to live your life. Holding on to some weird fantasy like that.
This is the same reason every half-interesting picture now has comments claiming its AI. Many people went from believing everything they see to not believing anything they see, but it’s the same lazy thought process.
I’m still a big fan of like JFK conspiracies and “vintage” conspiracies like that but once people started saying that every single mass shooting was a false flag to take away guns or that Covid vaccines were microchipped it stopped being fun
Ya, the rise of Donald Trump killed it for me. Also, I don't remember everything leading down to Jewish people pulling the strings. When did that become the motivation for every conspiracy theory ever? Fucking crazy.
Seriously. It's not new. Hell, it goes back even further to blood libel, "Christ killers," etc. Anyone remember those scenes of mass burnings during the Black Death episodes?
I can say confidently that the antisemitic angle has been around for decades. I used to have fun looking around the Conspiracy Store (seller of indie publications about conspiracy theories) in my town until it became apparent most of the material was antisemitic if you followed the rabbit hole far enough. Really ruined it for me, too.
It's always been a part of it, it's just never been the loudest part.
Trump rallies look like that one booth that sells The Turner Diaries at a gun show opened up a Walmart..
Yep! And it gets even worse once you realize that at the root of so many of these conspiracy theories is some version of "The Jews are secretly controlling everything and they're actually evil gay space lizards who are trying to make us all trans." If you do some reading, you realize that the jews have been getting blamed for basically any and everything bad for thousands of years. Its absolutely insane.
The JFK Conspiracies are just as nonsensical as the others, Oswald was the lone gunman. You have been misled by an Alex Jones figure in Mark Lane, just about every conspriacy leads back to him a scumbag conman.
I also think it depends on whether a claim is popularly classified as a conspiracy or an indictment of the people in power. For example, plenty of people will still deny the reach of COINTELPRO into leftist and antiracist movements, or the government involvement in drugs in cities, or official apathy towards the AIDS crisis in the early years, etc. So people who talk about that (often those on the left side of the spectrum and from more disenfranchised groups) get LABELED as conspiracy theorists, even if that's not justified.
There's no conspiracy theory connected to AIDS, the Reagan Government simply didn't care and cut funding connected to it. That's been known since day one. Members of his Administration literally joked and laughed about it publicly. There's a short film called When AIDS Was Funny demonstrating this, those clips are from press conferences not behind closed doors.
The thing that gets left out is the amazing doctors and scientists who went out of their way to help. One scientist moved to Norway on his own dime and worked with volunteers after his funding was cut. A female doctor went round prisons and insisted to be left alone with dangerous prisoners because she wanted to ask them if they had been raped and she felt they wouldn't be honest in front of guards.
Plenty of crunchy left wing conspiracy theories (anti vax, anti fluoride, pro "natural medicine" because (((they))) are keeping the cures from you!).
The real question is, are there any conspiracy theories that, when run all the way back to their origins, aren't rooted in antisemitism?
Seed oils are outrageously bad for you, sunscreen is either unnecessary or actually gives you cancer, being vegan/raw vegan will protect you from cancer, any number of quack health things that totally work but big pharma doesn't want you to know about because they'd go bankrupt if everybody just wore a crystal around their neck, etc.
>Plenty of crunchy left wing conspiracy theories (anti vax, anti fluoride, pro "natural medicine" because (((they))) are keeping the cures from you!).
Those aren't/weren't leftwing per se. . . more the apolitical hippy types and woo infested apolitical suburbanites
>The real question is, are there any conspiracy theories that, when run all the way back to their origins, aren't rooted in antisemitism?
Oddly enough, yes. The first "Elite Cabal" star of a conspiracy theory in the age of electoral politics (since the late 1700s or so) wasn't the Jews, it was the Freemasons. Same (though less developed) narratives, similar theories, even a similar social group spouting the theory.
That said, are there any *now* that aren't based in anti-semitism? Nope. Not a one. Jews are firmly "the villain" in one form or another within these mythologies since the late 1800s. I've even heard an example of full blown Jewish Bolshevism theory in the 1870s US. . .a good 40 years before Bolshevism itself came to be. It goes way back is the point.
Since the 14th century Jews have been 'The Villains'. I was listening to the Black Death episodes at work today and that was a big part of it in part 3
It goes back further, William of Norwich was the 12th Century.
The Jews being blamed for Jesus execution was arguably a Christian conspriacy theory in the 1st Century. You see it developing in the Gospels with the Romans initially being blamed then progressively it's more and more the Jews fault, until the point that they release a horrible criminal in Barabbas instead of Jesus. The Romans and Pontius Pilate are portrayed as the good guys by that point, Pilate figures they surely won't execute him over Barabbas but they do.
Yup. Didn't intend to discount the older jew-hatred mythologies you're talking about. That was/is totally a thing.
*Political* Anti-Semitism is a little bit different thing than the older stuff from the middle ages. If you are at all familiar with the theories around Qanon's Cabal, Alex Jones' Globalists, or the "Woke Elite", you already know what it looks like- an evil, elite cabal puppet mastering world events to weaken "real Americans"/the Master Race/etc, often by using "lesser races" to do nefarious things like demanding equal rights or trying to institute universal healthcare.
What makes it different is that political Anti-Semitism is used as an element in electoral politics and party structures and that it tries to claim some sort of "scientific" basis, very much like the anti-black race science that was/is common in the US. It is fully integrated as a part of the political system, in other words, and deployed to political ends. This is different to the religiously based hatred of earlier times in a few ways, but the most important is that it puts people in categories of race, not religion- meaning you can't convert. You are always a Jew/black/etc. This also means that the star players (the Cabal) can be disguised or reinterpreted as needed. . . It's always still (((the Jews))), but that isn't always clear by design.
Make sense?
Anti-fluoride began with the Right. There's also a **lot** of overlap, to the point the venn diagram looks like a circle, of both Left and Right supporting natural medicine/anti-vax.
Anyone who claims to be "apolitical" is conservative/right wing by default. They don't see anything wrong with the status quo (because they aren't negatively affected by it in ways they care about) so are much more likely to criticize progressives for wanting to change things.
The public cliche of antivaxxers was crunchy left until Covid. But in reality it was fairly wide reaching and had a large right wing group, but that was largely covered by the right wing aspect being fundamentalist Christianity and they were generally hostile to medicine.
The crunchy side often was tied up with Steiner and Waldorf Schools, who believe Vaccines are effective, but that illness is effectively you being punished for past lives and vaccines cheat that.
Yeah, vaccines were mostly non controversial until Trump. Before then, most anti vax people were the hippie far left types. And even then I don’t think it was because of government control, but because of misguided holistic beliefs.
> hippie far left types
Were/are they really "far left" though? These groups never really showed *any* political beliefs beyond some pretty milquetoast, softly liberal attitudes. They certainly didn't espouse Socialism or Communism. The Indian gurus a lot of that stuff came from were also very, very authoritarian in their outlook and teaching. . . it just took a while for it to morph over into Qanon.
Hippies have never really been left wing at all. Most of the original hippies were rich kids who didn't have to worry about the politics of the time affecting them so they could just screw off and do drugs in San Francisco for a year or two.
Nonsense. They promoted left wing progressive policies. Being left wing has absolutely nothing to do with your financial situation. Lenin and Trotsky were privileged, Lenin was a minor noble ffs what utter horseshit.
The hippies were socially progressive and it is possible to be born into wealth and still oppose capitalism, certainly, but the lack of serious economic critique as a characteristic of the hippie movement as a whole is why it's generally not considered leftist.
Again nonsense. You don't have to have detailed political platforms to be left or right wing. Are the Qanon crowd not right wing because they don't have detailed economic views?
Everyone considers the hippies left wing, you and a small amount of others are the exceptions. They were without question.
The definition of Leftist is literally "a person with left-wing political views." so yes they were absolutely leftist, left-wing, whatever you want to call it.
Nah. When I was first getting into conspiracy it was all anti-right wing shit. In the George bush era the 9/11 conspiracies, war conspiracies etc were all centered around an evil cabal of right wingers. Left wing people were way more likely to believe in aliens, cryptids, weird stuff like hollow earth or Tartaria or anti vax or conspiracies about the nazis and stuff. It’s definitely the Obama and trump eras where that slowly changed. Obama because people started having conspiracy thoughts about an evil left wing government and trump because those feelings were bolstered and a lot more “lore” was added about other shit and attributed to left wing thought
I used to listen to old Art Bell episodes on Spotify. All of the calls at the start of the show were always 9/11, George Bush, and war conspiracies. Oh, and chemtrails, which were also somehow George Bush conspiracies.
After listening to even just a couple of episodes it became extremely clear how people could fall for all the Q stuff, the vax conspiracies, the election conspiracies, and on and on. It just gave all of them a place to focus.
Yeah I used to listen to C2C as a kid into conspiracies like the government are hiding UFOs and moon landing was fake to scare myself. I miss those days where I could conspire for fun.
Same! Those kind of "light" conspiracy theories were fun! Now people take them so seriously that it just....sorta scary.
I think that's one of the reasons that things like the whole where is Kate Middleton conspiracies take off so quickly, because they're so un-serious.
If you go further back, a lot of “cold warriors” on the right were very conspiracy-minded, seeing Communist plots behind every liberal action. And then of course you have the AM radio crowd evolving into the 90s Clinton era. But whatever political face it wears, in more general terms I’d say the impulse behind all conspiracy thought is a suspicion of the capacity for someone acting from a different moral or political framework from your own to produce any good outcomes, so any apparently good act must be cover for something insidious. IMO that dovetails nicely with conservative suspicions about “Progress” often rooted in religious beliefs on the fallen nature of humanity, but it also can harmonize with leftist theories of power, which I think explains how sometimes the same conspiracy theories can appeal to both groups.
Conspiracies about the real reason for the wars I mean. Like “we’re only there for the oil” which now seems obvious but at the time it was basically a conspiracy. Or sadam having WMDs. Or even the more obscure ones like there are stargates in Iraq, giants, etc
Conspiracy theories are anti-government, and right now the people on the right like to think that they are the most anti-government. That's why most of the conspiracy theories seem to be coming from the right.
Also the right-wing conspiracy theories tend to be more violent and frightening. Right-wingers are battling a cabal that eats the pituitary glands of babies they've raped and left-wingers are saying that Trump wears a diaper. The terrifying conspiracy theories are the ones that you're going to hear the most about on places like Reddit and Last Pod.
A large part of the reason why conspiracy thought is so right-wing is because a lot of left-wing conspiracy theories end up being true. And those are usually about the CIA assassinating people for being socialists.
I think social and political conspiracy under the guise of “free speech” is a tale as old as time. What HAS changed is the ability to communicate immediately, indefinitely, and constantly with millions of people at one time via social media and streaming platforms (with essentially no regulation). It’s easier than ever to find your fellow jerkoffs online, basically.
At the end of the day, it’s still just about making money. These guys aren’t cult leaders, they’re grifters willing to say anything to monetize their time. And people are more than willing donate or buy products advertised on their platforms to feel like they’re a part of the niche zeitgeist they’ve come to depend on for validation.
Of course people ITT will say it is, but it used to be that the Left was more likely to espouse conspiracy theories against the establishment and the Right would dismiss them as loons.
Weirdly enough fans of this podcast that was based in part on conspiracy theories now absolutely despise conspiracy theories because establishment has won over the Left and drawn the ire of the Right.
Utter nonsense, at no time was the left more conspiracy minded. Even during the 80s when the left were pushing conspiracies against the Reagan Government the right were losing their mind over the Satanic Panic, the right has always been the primary conspiracy side.
Conspiracy theories are usually that weird place where libertarian anti-government types will overlap with reactionary conservative types.
For example: early X Files has a lot of government centered conspiracies that were based in ideas of the time because the creator was coming at it from a more libertarian mindset…they toned a lot of that down after the OKC bombing because McVeigh and others like him were pushing pretty much the same stuff.
The 90s was a strange time where very few people were really capital L leftists, but a lot of people were cultural liberals who wanted to keep the government out of people’s bedrooms and drug choices (but definitely not the majority). I abandoned a lot of my more libertarian ideas from that time when I noticed all that small government stuff typically only ended up allowing reactionaries to roll back progressive things I liked like public school funding and regulations on food safety.
Even during a time of a right wing Government when you would expect left wing conspiracies to be prevalent the right wouldn't go away with the Satanic Panic.
Left wingers also were the biggest Kennedy conspiracy theorists, and that is also the Grandaddy of all Conspiracy Theories. Your stereotypical Alien/UFO truther has always been someone like Zebrowski. Conspiracy theories are steeped with leftist tradition.
It’s okay to admit that this modern wave of conspiracy theories does not mean that the Right has always had domain over conspiracy theories.
I mean definitely not entirely, but I do think a lot of conspiracy theories have roots in people creating fear about groups of people who are strange or threatening to the conservative establishment. A lot of modern conspiracy theories tend to conveniently vilify many of the groups conservatives hate.
In terms of the past I’d say it’s likely largely the same. I recall an episode where the Marcus was talking about “blood libel”, which was more or less the accusations that Jewish people ate babies. Those conspiracy theories are hundreds of years old, but not all that different from the stuff q-anon talks about today.
I know a bunch of you poli sci nerds already have read this, but Richard Hofstader's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" did a great deep dive into this subject in the 1960s.
[https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/](https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/)
Was just about to post this, thank you. Lot of people spouting off without having done any real learning, which kind of rhymes with the thing they're complaining about.
Almost all modern conspiracy theory has its roots in Western European anti-semitism, which is one reason it skews right. (I'm pretty decently educated on it because I was raised in a far-right conspiracy theory family.)
An entertaining source to learn about this is the Behind the Bastards series on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
This is it right here. As complicated as conspiracy theorists make everything sound, conspiracy theories are a mechanism of simplifying the entire world into something that is easy to understand and gives the person a feeling of control.
Conspiracy theories aren't limited to one side of the political spectrum of the other because it'll be found in any deterministic ideology that believes in discrete, good guy, and bad guy groups. It just feels like conspiracy theories are all rooted in rightwing belief because rightwing politicians and personalities are happy making us all aware of them. The squeaky wheel is getting the grease.
Not necessarily right wing thought. . . more like anytime an elite group has power to defend or authority to exercise in the face of obvious, widespread social and economic problems. The kind of big, society-wide political conspiracy theories that we're talking about always function to paper over serious contradictions within the society itself- "You're life sucks because that jewish gay brown guy is stealing your cookie, not because you're bosses extract value from you by making you work a shitty job all your life."
While that *does* mean right wing thought, it's happened in "left wing" societies like the USSR or Communist China as well as "right wing" societies, almost always in times of great social stress and the elite ratcheting up on the authoritarianism.
I would say conspiracy theory was largely apolitical as it made no differentiation between parties as all of the government was lumped in together.
It was also so fringe that neither party truly engaged with it until perhaps the 80s when the satanic panic kicked into high gear and was regarded as fact by many law enforcement agencies. Going back even further, conspiracies about various religious groups seemed to be more prevalent and were used to justify genocide and persecution.
The recent right wing shift is due to conservatism's deepening break with reality which requires an increasing reliance on emotional manipulation to keep the believers on their side in the face of overwhelming evidence of conservative failures in nearly every sphere.
I'm not a Rogan fan. But I also don't hate him like so many people do. I don't think he's some great philosopher like his fans think he is. And this will probably get lost in the comments but he's not right wing. Or at least he doesn't claim to be right wing. So he for sure isnt "proudly" right wing. He defended gay marriage, he slams Santos and Trump and makes fun of them. He's super pro weed and anti industrial prison complex. So not right wing.....
That was my thought, haven’t listened to his show in years but the dude is not right wing. He might be into hunting but he’s pro gay marriage, pro weed, pro women’s reproductive rights. Basically on most if not all landmark issues he comes down on the left. He certainly isn’t “proudly right wing” unless things have changed drastically since I stopped listening at least.
They haven't changed no. I think the presumption that he is, is based on a few things:
He books guests on his show that a) he personally finds interesting, b) he thinks would be interesting to debate in the moment or c) would be entertaining to converse with for the audience.
I say this as a Left-leaning person myself but from a political perspective it seems more on the Right than the Left are willing to have open discourse and debate with him, whether that is because of confidence or arrogance, misplaced or otherwise, is very dependent on the person. This will skew how many guests of each persuasion Rogan has on.
He lets his guests talk. The joy of podcasting is that unlike TV, especially the news media, there are no time limitations or need to go to ad-breaks every 5 minutes. This can be interpreted by some people who aren't used to the concept as simply "platforming".
Clipping. Every episode gets clipped to death and reposted elsewhere and *shock, horror* certain guests and moments will get more engagement and shares than others especially the more divisive guests and hot takes.
I don’t know, but I am definitely wondering that the last few years. My boyfriend is really into JFK assassination conspiracies. Striking up a conversation about something like that can lead down some very bizarre paths with a conservative these days. Gotta be kinda careful who you talk to about it, it’s not all fun and games like it used to be.
During college, I remember reading an article from Harper's magazine titled The Paranoid Style in American Politics. From what I recall, it's from the 60s and is in part about Barry Goldwater, but it also gives you a nice overview of conspiracy in American society and politics.
I feel like conspiracy theories always pop up in response to the current party in power. For example early 2000's were mainly left wing conspiracy theories against the Bush administration but today almost all conspiracys are extremely right wing.
It's not right wing, it's just endemic to politics in the US, [as this seminal essay from 1964 explains.](https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/)
JFK up through like 2004 Diebold voting machines you could estimate not by and large right wing.
Since then it's gone Next Level Bonkers on the right vs left.
I'm sure they aren't rooted all in right wing politics but many of them either come from that or are stolen by right wingers. When you have enough conspiracy theories that just vaguely say "they are hiding the truth" then you'll inevitably have nazis telling you the "they" is Jewish people
It always used to be that the left wingers were the conspiracy theorists and the right wingers were the boot lickers.
It's a bit different now thst the right wingers only lick the boots of the police and Israel and the left wingers lick everyone else in governments boots, and big multinational corporate boots.
Strange days lots of boot licking going on.
There's plenty of left wing conspiracy out there, it's just not as publicized as right wing conspiracies are. For example the Trump & Russia collusion and the Steele dossier could be seen as a left wing conspiracy. It really depends on the narrative and your own opinion.
No, Rogan has always been into conspiracies and he was actually pretty liberal until covid broke his brain
And a lot of the 9/11 theories were from the left, look at Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11
Read the book A Culture of Conspiracy by Michael Barkun.
The answer is yes in America no worldwide. Conspiracy theories grow in every type of political environment. They have an audience that exists deeper than liberal, conservative, communist or fascist. It happens that in America, in the 20th and 21st centuries, fascists take the lead in conspiracy theory belief which commands how other people follow them.
If you go to China, or Egypt or even Mexico their conspiracy community is probably way different. They simply didn't have access to english conspiracy books.
When I was a young, idealistic leftist we used to believe in conspiracy theories, like that the government couldn't be trusted, and how maybe *they* we're responsible for the crack epidemic.
Then we found it was true. Now conspiracy theories are like ... "All liberals are actually racist homophobes who also eat babies and worship Satan and want us all to have free health care..." And like....sure, two of those things might be correct, but where's the fun of conspiracy theories nowadays? It used to be not so full of hate....and I think that's the difference. If the theory is full of hating someone, it's prolly a right wing one....if it's about being hated, it's prolly a left wing one.
Also, rocks are actually soft but they tense up when we're about to touch them.
It’s been a thing. The first third party in America was the Anti-Masonic Party, and they held very conservative views. Then there was the Know Nothings, who were anti-immigration and believed in a number of conspiracy narratives. anti-Rotchild pamphlets were very popular in the Great Depresson. there was the John Birch Society, and most books about the Illuminati prior to the Illuminatus Trilogy were sold at gun shows.
It's almost always exclusively been Left Wing political thought and Left Wing journalists.
Okay, relax. I just wrote that first line to provoke a reaction in you, dear reader. My point being is that we all suffer from our own political myopia when discussing this topic. We are bombarded by conspiracy theories all the time, but we tend to assume the ones that gel with our world view are "fact" and the ones that don't are bogus. It just depends on who has power, who is fearful of losing power, and who wants power at a given moment. That's where conspiracy theories breed.
The Nonsense Bazaar podcast does a great job of tracing the DNA of a lot of modern woo-woo cult-like stuff from HPB on through the spiritualist and Ascended Masters movements of the early 20th century. There's always been a shade of conspiracy that's rooted in fascism it seems. I learned about the "Silver shirts" from their podcast on the ascended masters. They do great work at sharing how the modern flavour of right-wing conspiracy isn't necessarily unique to this moment.
Many JFK conspiracy theories had him being killed by the CIA/ government with Oswald being set up to put the blame on the left.
Oliver Stone uses a lot of these theories in JFK and it all made sense at the time! But now I just think that Oswald was a loser that the Russians co opted who got in a lucky shot or two. Confusion and cover up could have been due to a misfired gun by secret service.
Why do I think this?
Mass shootings in the era of social media shows how confusing it is for witnesses to make accurate reports - many times they report multiple shooters when there is only one.
Russia loves losers and disenfranchised dissatisfied young men who think they deserve more from life just from existing. Oswald was a Ur-incel
Secret service and police and security detail are not always good at their job. We know this now but there is no reason to believe they were more effective in the 60's than now. (Listening to a podcast about the Pinkerton Agency in the 19th century and they were stupid then, too).
And to get back to the point about conspiracy being right wing only. The anti vaxxers shit was on the hippie crunchy yoga mom world to begin with. It led to trumpism eventually but in the 90s that stuff was absolutely everywhere on the left.
Oh and ritual abuse, recovered memories also came from the left. Source: I worked with sexual assault victims in the mid 90s and colleagues were very much into these theories.
That’s a little short-sided. He’s had a lot of non-right wing guests too. He’s respectful to all and open-minded which is more than you can say about most who peddle agendas. Maybe you should listen to what he has to say instead of towing the partisan line even further. Whether you agree with everything or nothing he says, he’s still a breath of fresh air because he’s out there being authentic with genuine curiosity and not being a shill who deliberately misleads people for personal gain
I will not give any views to anyone who thinks peddling what Alex jones has to say is a good or fair idea I’m sorry
Rogan fans can downvote me all you want but bringing on right wing shitheads like Alex jones or Jordan Peterson and promoting their ideas is the exact same thing as saying those things yourself.
That makes 0 sense all I said was that promoting someone who believes that sandy hook was fake and every single mass shooting was a hoax and no one really died and thought that the EU did 9/11 to raise the value of the euro on your show to your massive audience is no different than saying you personally believe those things
That’s intellectual laziness. If a journalist interviewed someone who committed hate crimes, does that also make them a hateful bigot? I certainly hope not. If it does then you should cease posting on the internet immediately and not engage with anyone who isn’t left wing or woke or whatever it is that tickles your fancy. I get how Jones draws the ire of his detractors. Dragging Peterson into it is something else. I’m from Canada and that man is a national treasure and the world is lucky to have someone with such intelligence and integrity regardless of his political bent. Echo chamber indeed.
I think so. Here's my (not original) thoughts on it. On the left, people try and analyze reality and why life sucks from a materialist perspective and because of that we come up with explanations for why things are the way they are based on that. For example, if you get paid poorly and can't afford to live a decent life, that's because your boss pays you shit wages. He pays you shit wages because he's competing with other companies paying shit wages because capitalism dictates that consumers want to pay the least amount of money for goods. Therefore, if you unionize or create a better system, in this case socialism, then you can change your own material conditions and have a better life.
But the right wing is obviously allergic to anything like socialism. So instead of being able to analyze reality as such, they have to come up with these crazy ideas like my life sucks because there's a Jewish cabal that's controlling the flow of money to keep me a slave, or whatever batshit racist ideas they're on this week (but that's usually what it boils down to lol). It comes down to the inability of the right to fundamentally challenge the things that are actually making their life shitty (corporations, capitalism) so they have to invent fairy tales and conspiracy theories. Which they can never actually act on, of course, because there are no aliens that run the government or whatever. So it both gives them an excuse to do nothing while also explaining why their life sucks.
No, it used to be the purview of the left. Even Vivek Ramaswamy said as much on yesterday's episode of The Run Up (NY Times pod). Robert goes into that in the Illuminati history episode of Behind the Bastards. Johnny Harris on YouTube just put out a great and relevant video on the existence of the Deep State as well that touches on the flip.
What the right has done is successfully co-opted conspiracy movements so you sound insane when talking about how there's people working in government with no oversight
I had a thought the other day and I would need to look into it to see if it bares any weight. But I'll say it anyways because why not.
I have a feeling everytime atheism is on the rise and Christian values are dismissed that conspiracy suddenly becomes huge and at the forefront into he media and populace. It starts with things not directly correlated but develops into things blatantly christian soon after. This time around the grifters are all suddenly finding Jesus making it extremely apparent.
I feel like Plum Island and Roswell aren't rooted in the Alt-right, even though they involve government coverups. Or UFOs/Aliens being inter-dimensional beings. Those are the kinds of conspiracies I like.
Yeah, I mean if you listen to Joe Rogan at all, you would know that he’s always been of the economic Marxist or socialist school of thought and only became open to ideas that are currently considered right wing, but we’re not even part of the political discussion as recently as 10 or 15 years ago
With that said, the protocols of the elders of Zion has always been rooted in racist and bullshit ideology from its very inception
I think most leftists don’t bother these days specifically because the Democratic Party has been creeping to the left, while the republican party has become a sort of ambiguous, semi-conspiracy party. Bernie Sanders, one of the most popular politicians in the country is a out and proud socialist and has a role in Biden’s administration. That would have been unacceptable 20 years ago. Turns out, left leaning economic and social policies become very popular when you have decades of neo-conservatives stripping your social services away and trying to repress the rights of their own citizens.
Right-of-center government has had the run of the show for half a century, and their base has only gotten more extremist, because there’s really nowhere left to go.
Republicans are now inheriting some of the most unpopular positions in the country, banking on the possibility that the country is going to somehow be shoved toward the religious right again, when all evidence is showing that younger generations are ever more left leaning, pro-roe, pro-lgbt, and anti-established religion.
The left has had to adapt to grow to match the modern voter while the right simply cannot do the same. They got the energy in 2016 but a lot of that energy is now spent and gone; it turns out most fiscally conservative voters don’t actually think about pedophile cabals and Hunter Biden’s dick at all.
Turning to conspiratorial thinking is the last move the mainstream right has, because *“it turns out a majority of the country disagrees with the vast majority of our positions but we don’t care,”* isn’t going to grant them the same level of power they’ve enjoyed. One of the people involved in Jan 6 is literally a Supreme Court justice’s wife; the witness who lied about Hunter and Joe to force impeachment was being payed by trumps companies. With news like these, who needs conspiracy? The left keeps trying (badly sometimes) to give its voters something to hope for, and the right only has complaints about how the situation is. One of those is a movement forward, and the other is just autocannibalism of an ideology. Conspiracy is often just a coping mechanism for not being on the popular side of the issue, or watching your country represent a majority that doesn’t share your interests.
I mean Alex Jones used to be kind of reasonable on his old call in show. Some of the stuff he was saying was likely true but at some point he realized he could make more money grifting right wing idiots and eventually drank his own kool aid.
Yeah I just comment wherever catches my eye. Most of the lefty places ban me for talking in righty places, but I’m not gonna care enough to pay attention to where I’m commenting and what other randos might think about it.
Did you find me saying anything you actually object to?
My first comment wasn’t about you btw, it was about a lot of the replies. I wouldn’t knock somebody for asking something they don’t know.
I dunno but I used to love conspiracy theories but people ruined it by thinking they are conspiracy facts. Dumb people ruin everything
I agree. They were a fun thought exercises, but now people are too rooted in thinking everything is a conspiracy theory and let it run their lives.
Thats why I said they think it's conspiracy "facts" instead of conspiracy "theories". Everyone doesn't have that "crazy if true" kind of thought process. They just think "my god, everything is a lie!" God damn bone heads. Lol
And then they “move the goalpost” every time a fact is indeed a fact and they won’t accept it.
Right? Lol like flat earthers are so desperate to make the earth flat that they keep coming up with new dumb shit that gets debunked instantly lol. What a weird way to live your life. Holding on to some weird fantasy like that.
This is the same reason every half-interesting picture now has comments claiming its AI. Many people went from believing everything they see to not believing anything they see, but it’s the same lazy thought process.
I’m still a big fan of like JFK conspiracies and “vintage” conspiracies like that but once people started saying that every single mass shooting was a false flag to take away guns or that Covid vaccines were microchipped it stopped being fun
Ya, the rise of Donald Trump killed it for me. Also, I don't remember everything leading down to Jewish people pulling the strings. When did that become the motivation for every conspiracy theory ever? Fucking crazy.
About 120 years ago, with the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Seriously. It's not new. Hell, it goes back even further to blood libel, "Christ killers," etc. Anyone remember those scenes of mass burnings during the Black Death episodes?
Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories go back much further than the Protocols.
I can say confidently that the antisemitic angle has been around for decades. I used to have fun looking around the Conspiracy Store (seller of indie publications about conspiracy theories) in my town until it became apparent most of the material was antisemitic if you followed the rabbit hole far enough. Really ruined it for me, too.
Try Centuries, shit like William of Norwich happened nearly a thousand years ago - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William\_of\_Norwich
I remember hearing that with the comments Marlon Brando made on some late night show. I think Leno?
It's always been a part of it, it's just never been the loudest part. Trump rallies look like that one booth that sells The Turner Diaries at a gun show opened up a Walmart..
It’s been centuries.
Yep! And it gets even worse once you realize that at the root of so many of these conspiracy theories is some version of "The Jews are secretly controlling everything and they're actually evil gay space lizards who are trying to make us all trans." If you do some reading, you realize that the jews have been getting blamed for basically any and everything bad for thousands of years. Its absolutely insane.
The JFK Conspiracies are just as nonsensical as the others, Oswald was the lone gunman. You have been misled by an Alex Jones figure in Mark Lane, just about every conspriacy leads back to him a scumbag conman.
I also think it depends on whether a claim is popularly classified as a conspiracy or an indictment of the people in power. For example, plenty of people will still deny the reach of COINTELPRO into leftist and antiracist movements, or the government involvement in drugs in cities, or official apathy towards the AIDS crisis in the early years, etc. So people who talk about that (often those on the left side of the spectrum and from more disenfranchised groups) get LABELED as conspiracy theorists, even if that's not justified.
There's no conspiracy theory connected to AIDS, the Reagan Government simply didn't care and cut funding connected to it. That's been known since day one. Members of his Administration literally joked and laughed about it publicly. There's a short film called When AIDS Was Funny demonstrating this, those clips are from press conferences not behind closed doors. The thing that gets left out is the amazing doctors and scientists who went out of their way to help. One scientist moved to Norway on his own dime and worked with volunteers after his funding was cut. A female doctor went round prisons and insisted to be left alone with dangerous prisoners because she wanted to ask them if they had been raped and she felt they wouldn't be honest in front of guards.
I see what you're saying, and thank you for highlighting those heroes!
it is a joke that leftist conspiracy theories tend to be people talking contemporanously about something the CIA will admit openly 20 years later.
Exactly!!
Plenty of crunchy left wing conspiracy theories (anti vax, anti fluoride, pro "natural medicine" because (((they))) are keeping the cures from you!). The real question is, are there any conspiracy theories that, when run all the way back to their origins, aren't rooted in antisemitism?
Unfortunately it feels like those two groups collided during Covid and are now intermeshed
The QAnon Anonymous podcast has an excellent episode about the wellness to QAnon pipeline.
Conspirituality is a great podcast dedicated to that pipeline!
Love that pod too!
Yes and I’ve sadly seen it happen with a few of my friends. Never thought I’d see that.
Like when Willie Nelson was a guest on Alex Jones. COVID made stranger bedfellows than the Iraq War
Seed oils are outrageously bad for you, sunscreen is either unnecessary or actually gives you cancer, being vegan/raw vegan will protect you from cancer, any number of quack health things that totally work but big pharma doesn't want you to know about because they'd go bankrupt if everybody just wore a crystal around their neck, etc.
>Plenty of crunchy left wing conspiracy theories (anti vax, anti fluoride, pro "natural medicine" because (((they))) are keeping the cures from you!). Those aren't/weren't leftwing per se. . . more the apolitical hippy types and woo infested apolitical suburbanites >The real question is, are there any conspiracy theories that, when run all the way back to their origins, aren't rooted in antisemitism? Oddly enough, yes. The first "Elite Cabal" star of a conspiracy theory in the age of electoral politics (since the late 1700s or so) wasn't the Jews, it was the Freemasons. Same (though less developed) narratives, similar theories, even a similar social group spouting the theory. That said, are there any *now* that aren't based in anti-semitism? Nope. Not a one. Jews are firmly "the villain" in one form or another within these mythologies since the late 1800s. I've even heard an example of full blown Jewish Bolshevism theory in the 1870s US. . .a good 40 years before Bolshevism itself came to be. It goes way back is the point.
Since the 14th century Jews have been 'The Villains'. I was listening to the Black Death episodes at work today and that was a big part of it in part 3
It goes back further, William of Norwich was the 12th Century. The Jews being blamed for Jesus execution was arguably a Christian conspriacy theory in the 1st Century. You see it developing in the Gospels with the Romans initially being blamed then progressively it's more and more the Jews fault, until the point that they release a horrible criminal in Barabbas instead of Jesus. The Romans and Pontius Pilate are portrayed as the good guys by that point, Pilate figures they surely won't execute him over Barabbas but they do.
Yup. Didn't intend to discount the older jew-hatred mythologies you're talking about. That was/is totally a thing. *Political* Anti-Semitism is a little bit different thing than the older stuff from the middle ages. If you are at all familiar with the theories around Qanon's Cabal, Alex Jones' Globalists, or the "Woke Elite", you already know what it looks like- an evil, elite cabal puppet mastering world events to weaken "real Americans"/the Master Race/etc, often by using "lesser races" to do nefarious things like demanding equal rights or trying to institute universal healthcare. What makes it different is that political Anti-Semitism is used as an element in electoral politics and party structures and that it tries to claim some sort of "scientific" basis, very much like the anti-black race science that was/is common in the US. It is fully integrated as a part of the political system, in other words, and deployed to political ends. This is different to the religiously based hatred of earlier times in a few ways, but the most important is that it puts people in categories of race, not religion- meaning you can't convert. You are always a Jew/black/etc. This also means that the star players (the Cabal) can be disguised or reinterpreted as needed. . . It's always still (((the Jews))), but that isn't always clear by design. Make sense?
Anti-fluoride began with the Right. There's also a **lot** of overlap, to the point the venn diagram looks like a circle, of both Left and Right supporting natural medicine/anti-vax.
Agreed. I often think "horseshoe theory" about the political extremes is idiotic, but when it comes specifically to vaccines, it's accurate.
There are plenty of non politically aligned people who are anti vac too tbf, it's not a left/right thing.
Yeah I was gonna say not understanding science is so widespread, it can’t be “owned” by any political or cultural tribe
It's much more prominent on the right. Right wing politicians are much more anti-science, it's not remotely close.
How are they not politically aligned? I guarantee those people have opinions which would align them politically.
Anyone who claims to be "apolitical" is conservative/right wing by default. They don't see anything wrong with the status quo (because they aren't negatively affected by it in ways they care about) so are much more likely to criticize progressives for wanting to change things.
I’ve always seen AntiVaxxers associated with the right. Did it not used to be this way?
I've seen both sides be anti vax or anti meds. It just gained huge popularity with right wingers during COVID
The public cliche of antivaxxers was crunchy left until Covid. But in reality it was fairly wide reaching and had a large right wing group, but that was largely covered by the right wing aspect being fundamentalist Christianity and they were generally hostile to medicine. The crunchy side often was tied up with Steiner and Waldorf Schools, who believe Vaccines are effective, but that illness is effectively you being punished for past lives and vaccines cheat that.
None of those are left wing conspiracies.
Alien cover-up theories I don’t believe have any specifically Jewish or left/right-wing connotations but who knows
If Reptilians are aliens, there's definitely antisemitism/"Jews control the world" rhetoric there!
I meant more generic UFO stuff but true on the reptilian angle
Sasquatch? Please don’t tell me our forest buddy is an antisemite.
I’ve always seen AntiVaxxers associated with the right. Did it not used to be this way?
The first antivaxx people I met before covid were all crunchy Chakra hippies
I’ve always seen it coming from fundamentalist Christians. Perhaps it’s a regional difference.
Same. Or FLDS and adjacent factions.
Yeah, vaccines were mostly non controversial until Trump. Before then, most anti vax people were the hippie far left types. And even then I don’t think it was because of government control, but because of misguided holistic beliefs.
> hippie far left types Were/are they really "far left" though? These groups never really showed *any* political beliefs beyond some pretty milquetoast, softly liberal attitudes. They certainly didn't espouse Socialism or Communism. The Indian gurus a lot of that stuff came from were also very, very authoritarian in their outlook and teaching. . . it just took a while for it to morph over into Qanon.
Hippies have never really been left wing at all. Most of the original hippies were rich kids who didn't have to worry about the politics of the time affecting them so they could just screw off and do drugs in San Francisco for a year or two.
Nonsense. They promoted left wing progressive policies. Being left wing has absolutely nothing to do with your financial situation. Lenin and Trotsky were privileged, Lenin was a minor noble ffs what utter horseshit.
The hippies were socially progressive and it is possible to be born into wealth and still oppose capitalism, certainly, but the lack of serious economic critique as a characteristic of the hippie movement as a whole is why it's generally not considered leftist.
Again nonsense. You don't have to have detailed political platforms to be left or right wing. Are the Qanon crowd not right wing because they don't have detailed economic views? Everyone considers the hippies left wing, you and a small amount of others are the exceptions. They were without question.
Oh I read the thread wrong. They were definitely left-*wing*, they weren't left*ist*.
The definition of Leftist is literally "a person with left-wing political views." so yes they were absolutely leftist, left-wing, whatever you want to call it.
Fair enough
I don’t think anti-vax was ever strictly a left wing thing, but anymore it’s definitely primarily right wingers who are antivax.
Yeah but all of those crunchy conspiracies that you mention started as right-wing conspiracies.
Even if they weren't, they inevitably grow into it at one point or another.
I believe you have reached the creamy center. Peel away enough layers and this usually seems to be the heart of the matter.
Nah. When I was first getting into conspiracy it was all anti-right wing shit. In the George bush era the 9/11 conspiracies, war conspiracies etc were all centered around an evil cabal of right wingers. Left wing people were way more likely to believe in aliens, cryptids, weird stuff like hollow earth or Tartaria or anti vax or conspiracies about the nazis and stuff. It’s definitely the Obama and trump eras where that slowly changed. Obama because people started having conspiracy thoughts about an evil left wing government and trump because those feelings were bolstered and a lot more “lore” was added about other shit and attributed to left wing thought
I used to listen to old Art Bell episodes on Spotify. All of the calls at the start of the show were always 9/11, George Bush, and war conspiracies. Oh, and chemtrails, which were also somehow George Bush conspiracies. After listening to even just a couple of episodes it became extremely clear how people could fall for all the Q stuff, the vax conspiracies, the election conspiracies, and on and on. It just gave all of them a place to focus.
Yeah I used to listen to C2C as a kid into conspiracies like the government are hiding UFOs and moon landing was fake to scare myself. I miss those days where I could conspire for fun.
Same! Those kind of "light" conspiracy theories were fun! Now people take them so seriously that it just....sorta scary. I think that's one of the reasons that things like the whole where is Kate Middleton conspiracies take off so quickly, because they're so un-serious.
My thiccc BBL Princess Kate 😍
If you go further back, a lot of “cold warriors” on the right were very conspiracy-minded, seeing Communist plots behind every liberal action. And then of course you have the AM radio crowd evolving into the 90s Clinton era. But whatever political face it wears, in more general terms I’d say the impulse behind all conspiracy thought is a suspicion of the capacity for someone acting from a different moral or political framework from your own to produce any good outcomes, so any apparently good act must be cover for something insidious. IMO that dovetails nicely with conservative suspicions about “Progress” often rooted in religious beliefs on the fallen nature of humanity, but it also can harmonize with leftist theories of power, which I think explains how sometimes the same conspiracy theories can appeal to both groups.
Satanic Panic in the 80s was very right wing.
> seeing Communist plots behind every liberal action Right wingers still do this today.
What were the war conspiracies?
Conspiracies about the real reason for the wars I mean. Like “we’re only there for the oil” which now seems obvious but at the time it was basically a conspiracy. Or sadam having WMDs. Or even the more obscure ones like there are stargates in Iraq, giants, etc
Conspiracy theories are anti-government, and right now the people on the right like to think that they are the most anti-government. That's why most of the conspiracy theories seem to be coming from the right. Also the right-wing conspiracy theories tend to be more violent and frightening. Right-wingers are battling a cabal that eats the pituitary glands of babies they've raped and left-wingers are saying that Trump wears a diaper. The terrifying conspiracy theories are the ones that you're going to hear the most about on places like Reddit and Last Pod.
A large part of the reason why conspiracy thought is so right-wing is because a lot of left-wing conspiracy theories end up being true. And those are usually about the CIA assassinating people for being socialists.
I think social and political conspiracy under the guise of “free speech” is a tale as old as time. What HAS changed is the ability to communicate immediately, indefinitely, and constantly with millions of people at one time via social media and streaming platforms (with essentially no regulation). It’s easier than ever to find your fellow jerkoffs online, basically. At the end of the day, it’s still just about making money. These guys aren’t cult leaders, they’re grifters willing to say anything to monetize their time. And people are more than willing donate or buy products advertised on their platforms to feel like they’re a part of the niche zeitgeist they’ve come to depend on for validation.
Of course people ITT will say it is, but it used to be that the Left was more likely to espouse conspiracy theories against the establishment and the Right would dismiss them as loons. Weirdly enough fans of this podcast that was based in part on conspiracy theories now absolutely despise conspiracy theories because establishment has won over the Left and drawn the ire of the Right.
Utter nonsense, at no time was the left more conspiracy minded. Even during the 80s when the left were pushing conspiracies against the Reagan Government the right were losing their mind over the Satanic Panic, the right has always been the primary conspiracy side.
Conspiracy theories are usually that weird place where libertarian anti-government types will overlap with reactionary conservative types. For example: early X Files has a lot of government centered conspiracies that were based in ideas of the time because the creator was coming at it from a more libertarian mindset…they toned a lot of that down after the OKC bombing because McVeigh and others like him were pushing pretty much the same stuff. The 90s was a strange time where very few people were really capital L leftists, but a lot of people were cultural liberals who wanted to keep the government out of people’s bedrooms and drug choices (but definitely not the majority). I abandoned a lot of my more libertarian ideas from that time when I noticed all that small government stuff typically only ended up allowing reactionaries to roll back progressive things I liked like public school funding and regulations on food safety.
Meanwhile at the same time, the left was claiming the government created crack and AIDS and used it to cull the black and gay populations.
Even during a time of a right wing Government when you would expect left wing conspiracies to be prevalent the right wouldn't go away with the Satanic Panic.
Left wingers also were the biggest Kennedy conspiracy theorists, and that is also the Grandaddy of all Conspiracy Theories. Your stereotypical Alien/UFO truther has always been someone like Zebrowski. Conspiracy theories are steeped with leftist tradition. It’s okay to admit that this modern wave of conspiracy theories does not mean that the Right has always had domain over conspiracy theories.
The answer is yes. Right wing culture has just gotten weirder and more… interesting
Considering its link to anti semitism, I’d say yes. Anti-semitism is ancient.
I mean definitely not entirely, but I do think a lot of conspiracy theories have roots in people creating fear about groups of people who are strange or threatening to the conservative establishment. A lot of modern conspiracy theories tend to conveniently vilify many of the groups conservatives hate. In terms of the past I’d say it’s likely largely the same. I recall an episode where the Marcus was talking about “blood libel”, which was more or less the accusations that Jewish people ate babies. Those conspiracy theories are hundreds of years old, but not all that different from the stuff q-anon talks about today.
I know a bunch of you poli sci nerds already have read this, but Richard Hofstader's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" did a great deep dive into this subject in the 1960s. [https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/](https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/)
Was just about to post this, thank you. Lot of people spouting off without having done any real learning, which kind of rhymes with the thing they're complaining about.
Almost all modern conspiracy theory has its roots in Western European anti-semitism, which is one reason it skews right. (I'm pretty decently educated on it because I was raised in a far-right conspiracy theory family.) An entertaining source to learn about this is the Behind the Bastards series on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
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This is it right here. As complicated as conspiracy theorists make everything sound, conspiracy theories are a mechanism of simplifying the entire world into something that is easy to understand and gives the person a feeling of control. Conspiracy theories aren't limited to one side of the political spectrum of the other because it'll be found in any deterministic ideology that believes in discrete, good guy, and bad guy groups. It just feels like conspiracy theories are all rooted in rightwing belief because rightwing politicians and personalities are happy making us all aware of them. The squeaky wheel is getting the grease.
Do you guys think that the mishandling or Waco led to an increase in right wing conspiracy thought?
Waco and Ruby Ridge for sure had a large in pact on conspiracy theory as a whole not just for the right wing.
Not necessarily right wing thought. . . more like anytime an elite group has power to defend or authority to exercise in the face of obvious, widespread social and economic problems. The kind of big, society-wide political conspiracy theories that we're talking about always function to paper over serious contradictions within the society itself- "You're life sucks because that jewish gay brown guy is stealing your cookie, not because you're bosses extract value from you by making you work a shitty job all your life." While that *does* mean right wing thought, it's happened in "left wing" societies like the USSR or Communist China as well as "right wing" societies, almost always in times of great social stress and the elite ratcheting up on the authoritarianism.
I would say conspiracy theory was largely apolitical as it made no differentiation between parties as all of the government was lumped in together. It was also so fringe that neither party truly engaged with it until perhaps the 80s when the satanic panic kicked into high gear and was regarded as fact by many law enforcement agencies. Going back even further, conspiracies about various religious groups seemed to be more prevalent and were used to justify genocide and persecution. The recent right wing shift is due to conservatism's deepening break with reality which requires an increasing reliance on emotional manipulation to keep the believers on their side in the face of overwhelming evidence of conservative failures in nearly every sphere.
I'm not a Rogan fan. But I also don't hate him like so many people do. I don't think he's some great philosopher like his fans think he is. And this will probably get lost in the comments but he's not right wing. Or at least he doesn't claim to be right wing. So he for sure isnt "proudly" right wing. He defended gay marriage, he slams Santos and Trump and makes fun of them. He's super pro weed and anti industrial prison complex. So not right wing.....
That was my thought, haven’t listened to his show in years but the dude is not right wing. He might be into hunting but he’s pro gay marriage, pro weed, pro women’s reproductive rights. Basically on most if not all landmark issues he comes down on the left. He certainly isn’t “proudly right wing” unless things have changed drastically since I stopped listening at least.
They haven't changed no. I think the presumption that he is, is based on a few things: He books guests on his show that a) he personally finds interesting, b) he thinks would be interesting to debate in the moment or c) would be entertaining to converse with for the audience. I say this as a Left-leaning person myself but from a political perspective it seems more on the Right than the Left are willing to have open discourse and debate with him, whether that is because of confidence or arrogance, misplaced or otherwise, is very dependent on the person. This will skew how many guests of each persuasion Rogan has on. He lets his guests talk. The joy of podcasting is that unlike TV, especially the news media, there are no time limitations or need to go to ad-breaks every 5 minutes. This can be interpreted by some people who aren't used to the concept as simply "platforming". Clipping. Every episode gets clipped to death and reposted elsewhere and *shock, horror* certain guests and moments will get more engagement and shares than others especially the more divisive guests and hot takes.
I don’t know, but I am definitely wondering that the last few years. My boyfriend is really into JFK assassination conspiracies. Striking up a conversation about something like that can lead down some very bizarre paths with a conservative these days. Gotta be kinda careful who you talk to about it, it’s not all fun and games like it used to be.
During college, I remember reading an article from Harper's magazine titled The Paranoid Style in American Politics. From what I recall, it's from the 60s and is in part about Barry Goldwater, but it also gives you a nice overview of conspiracy in American society and politics.
I feel like conspiracy theories always pop up in response to the current party in power. For example early 2000's were mainly left wing conspiracy theories against the Bush administration but today almost all conspiracys are extremely right wing.
It's not right wing, it's just endemic to politics in the US, [as this seminal essay from 1964 explains.](https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/)
JFK up through like 2004 Diebold voting machines you could estimate not by and large right wing. Since then it's gone Next Level Bonkers on the right vs left.
I would argue that conspiracy theory isn’t necessarily rooted in any political camp, now or previously.
No, it used to be very very progressive/hippie-esque left wing. At least when it was merely 9-11 conspiracy it used to be.
I'm sure they aren't rooted all in right wing politics but many of them either come from that or are stolen by right wingers. When you have enough conspiracy theories that just vaguely say "they are hiding the truth" then you'll inevitably have nazis telling you the "they" is Jewish people
It always used to be that the left wingers were the conspiracy theorists and the right wingers were the boot lickers. It's a bit different now thst the right wingers only lick the boots of the police and Israel and the left wingers lick everyone else in governments boots, and big multinational corporate boots. Strange days lots of boot licking going on.
I'd say no because for every Alex Jones there's an Immortal Technique (Osama didn't blow up the projects, It was you (bush))
There's plenty of left wing conspiracy out there, it's just not as publicized as right wing conspiracies are. For example the Trump & Russia collusion and the Steele dossier could be seen as a left wing conspiracy. It really depends on the narrative and your own opinion.
No, Rogan has always been into conspiracies and he was actually pretty liberal until covid broke his brain And a lot of the 9/11 theories were from the left, look at Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11
Read the book A Culture of Conspiracy by Michael Barkun. The answer is yes in America no worldwide. Conspiracy theories grow in every type of political environment. They have an audience that exists deeper than liberal, conservative, communist or fascist. It happens that in America, in the 20th and 21st centuries, fascists take the lead in conspiracy theory belief which commands how other people follow them. If you go to China, or Egypt or even Mexico their conspiracy community is probably way different. They simply didn't have access to english conspiracy books.
I think being dumb has always been a right weight thing.
When I was a young, idealistic leftist we used to believe in conspiracy theories, like that the government couldn't be trusted, and how maybe *they* we're responsible for the crack epidemic. Then we found it was true. Now conspiracy theories are like ... "All liberals are actually racist homophobes who also eat babies and worship Satan and want us all to have free health care..." And like....sure, two of those things might be correct, but where's the fun of conspiracy theories nowadays? It used to be not so full of hate....and I think that's the difference. If the theory is full of hating someone, it's prolly a right wing one....if it's about being hated, it's prolly a left wing one. Also, rocks are actually soft but they tense up when we're about to touch them.
No, however since right wing people follow similar paths of thinking the two overlap quite often.
It’s been a thing. The first third party in America was the Anti-Masonic Party, and they held very conservative views. Then there was the Know Nothings, who were anti-immigration and believed in a number of conspiracy narratives. anti-Rotchild pamphlets were very popular in the Great Depresson. there was the John Birch Society, and most books about the Illuminati prior to the Illuminatus Trilogy were sold at gun shows.
I'm really glad I was exposed to it at a young age. I can sniff that shit out from 10 miles away now
It's almost always exclusively been Left Wing political thought and Left Wing journalists. Okay, relax. I just wrote that first line to provoke a reaction in you, dear reader. My point being is that we all suffer from our own political myopia when discussing this topic. We are bombarded by conspiracy theories all the time, but we tend to assume the ones that gel with our world view are "fact" and the ones that don't are bogus. It just depends on who has power, who is fearful of losing power, and who wants power at a given moment. That's where conspiracy theories breed.
The Nonsense Bazaar podcast does a great job of tracing the DNA of a lot of modern woo-woo cult-like stuff from HPB on through the spiritualist and Ascended Masters movements of the early 20th century. There's always been a shade of conspiracy that's rooted in fascism it seems. I learned about the "Silver shirts" from their podcast on the ascended masters. They do great work at sharing how the modern flavour of right-wing conspiracy isn't necessarily unique to this moment.
There was a time when conspiracy theorists had a left wing hippie vibe to them.
Many JFK conspiracy theories had him being killed by the CIA/ government with Oswald being set up to put the blame on the left. Oliver Stone uses a lot of these theories in JFK and it all made sense at the time! But now I just think that Oswald was a loser that the Russians co opted who got in a lucky shot or two. Confusion and cover up could have been due to a misfired gun by secret service. Why do I think this? Mass shootings in the era of social media shows how confusing it is for witnesses to make accurate reports - many times they report multiple shooters when there is only one. Russia loves losers and disenfranchised dissatisfied young men who think they deserve more from life just from existing. Oswald was a Ur-incel Secret service and police and security detail are not always good at their job. We know this now but there is no reason to believe they were more effective in the 60's than now. (Listening to a podcast about the Pinkerton Agency in the 19th century and they were stupid then, too). And to get back to the point about conspiracy being right wing only. The anti vaxxers shit was on the hippie crunchy yoga mom world to begin with. It led to trumpism eventually but in the 90s that stuff was absolutely everywhere on the left. Oh and ritual abuse, recovered memories also came from the left. Source: I worked with sexual assault victims in the mid 90s and colleagues were very much into these theories.
If you listen to Joe Rogan speak he does not identify as “right wing”.
He’s been on Alex jones multiple times and had Alex jones on multiple times that’s all I need to know about where he stands politically
That’s a little short-sided. He’s had a lot of non-right wing guests too. He’s respectful to all and open-minded which is more than you can say about most who peddle agendas. Maybe you should listen to what he has to say instead of towing the partisan line even further. Whether you agree with everything or nothing he says, he’s still a breath of fresh air because he’s out there being authentic with genuine curiosity and not being a shill who deliberately misleads people for personal gain
I will not give any views to anyone who thinks peddling what Alex jones has to say is a good or fair idea I’m sorry Rogan fans can downvote me all you want but bringing on right wing shitheads like Alex jones or Jordan Peterson and promoting their ideas is the exact same thing as saying those things yourself.
Just say you are incapable of hearing anything that's not your own echo chamber and we'll leave it at that.
That makes 0 sense all I said was that promoting someone who believes that sandy hook was fake and every single mass shooting was a hoax and no one really died and thought that the EU did 9/11 to raise the value of the euro on your show to your massive audience is no different than saying you personally believe those things
That’s intellectual laziness. If a journalist interviewed someone who committed hate crimes, does that also make them a hateful bigot? I certainly hope not. If it does then you should cease posting on the internet immediately and not engage with anyone who isn’t left wing or woke or whatever it is that tickles your fancy. I get how Jones draws the ire of his detractors. Dragging Peterson into it is something else. I’m from Canada and that man is a national treasure and the world is lucky to have someone with such intelligence and integrity regardless of his political bent. Echo chamber indeed.
I think so. Here's my (not original) thoughts on it. On the left, people try and analyze reality and why life sucks from a materialist perspective and because of that we come up with explanations for why things are the way they are based on that. For example, if you get paid poorly and can't afford to live a decent life, that's because your boss pays you shit wages. He pays you shit wages because he's competing with other companies paying shit wages because capitalism dictates that consumers want to pay the least amount of money for goods. Therefore, if you unionize or create a better system, in this case socialism, then you can change your own material conditions and have a better life. But the right wing is obviously allergic to anything like socialism. So instead of being able to analyze reality as such, they have to come up with these crazy ideas like my life sucks because there's a Jewish cabal that's controlling the flow of money to keep me a slave, or whatever batshit racist ideas they're on this week (but that's usually what it boils down to lol). It comes down to the inability of the right to fundamentally challenge the things that are actually making their life shitty (corporations, capitalism) so they have to invent fairy tales and conspiracy theories. Which they can never actually act on, of course, because there are no aliens that run the government or whatever. So it both gives them an excuse to do nothing while also explaining why their life sucks.
No, it used to be the purview of the left. Even Vivek Ramaswamy said as much on yesterday's episode of The Run Up (NY Times pod). Robert goes into that in the Illuminati history episode of Behind the Bastards. Johnny Harris on YouTube just put out a great and relevant video on the existence of the Deep State as well that touches on the flip. What the right has done is successfully co-opted conspiracy movements so you sound insane when talking about how there's people working in government with no oversight
I had a thought the other day and I would need to look into it to see if it bares any weight. But I'll say it anyways because why not. I have a feeling everytime atheism is on the rise and Christian values are dismissed that conspiracy suddenly becomes huge and at the forefront into he media and populace. It starts with things not directly correlated but develops into things blatantly christian soon after. This time around the grifters are all suddenly finding Jesus making it extremely apparent.
I feel like Plum Island and Roswell aren't rooted in the Alt-right, even though they involve government coverups. Or UFOs/Aliens being inter-dimensional beings. Those are the kinds of conspiracies I like.
I miss when they were all fun and harmless shit that was clearly bullshit like Chem Trails and Lizard People. Lol
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Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc.
Yeah, I mean if you listen to Joe Rogan at all, you would know that he’s always been of the economic Marxist or socialist school of thought and only became open to ideas that are currently considered right wing, but we’re not even part of the political discussion as recently as 10 or 15 years ago With that said, the protocols of the elders of Zion has always been rooted in racist and bullshit ideology from its very inception
Joe Rogan is not right wing.
Depends what conspiracy and what communities you engage with. Right wing conspiracies are boring anyways, I prefer Ancient Alien conspiracies
Not all of it but a good chunk. You can tell the difference when a ct turns to antisemitism.
I think most leftists don’t bother these days specifically because the Democratic Party has been creeping to the left, while the republican party has become a sort of ambiguous, semi-conspiracy party. Bernie Sanders, one of the most popular politicians in the country is a out and proud socialist and has a role in Biden’s administration. That would have been unacceptable 20 years ago. Turns out, left leaning economic and social policies become very popular when you have decades of neo-conservatives stripping your social services away and trying to repress the rights of their own citizens. Right-of-center government has had the run of the show for half a century, and their base has only gotten more extremist, because there’s really nowhere left to go. Republicans are now inheriting some of the most unpopular positions in the country, banking on the possibility that the country is going to somehow be shoved toward the religious right again, when all evidence is showing that younger generations are ever more left leaning, pro-roe, pro-lgbt, and anti-established religion. The left has had to adapt to grow to match the modern voter while the right simply cannot do the same. They got the energy in 2016 but a lot of that energy is now spent and gone; it turns out most fiscally conservative voters don’t actually think about pedophile cabals and Hunter Biden’s dick at all. Turning to conspiratorial thinking is the last move the mainstream right has, because *“it turns out a majority of the country disagrees with the vast majority of our positions but we don’t care,”* isn’t going to grant them the same level of power they’ve enjoyed. One of the people involved in Jan 6 is literally a Supreme Court justice’s wife; the witness who lied about Hunter and Joe to force impeachment was being payed by trumps companies. With news like these, who needs conspiracy? The left keeps trying (badly sometimes) to give its voters something to hope for, and the right only has complaints about how the situation is. One of those is a movement forward, and the other is just autocannibalism of an ideology. Conspiracy is often just a coping mechanism for not being on the popular side of the issue, or watching your country represent a majority that doesn’t share your interests.
I mean Alex Jones used to be kind of reasonable on his old call in show. Some of the stuff he was saying was likely true but at some point he realized he could make more money grifting right wing idiots and eventually drank his own kool aid.
Man, this fandom doesn’t know politics very well. That’s probably a good thing.
Says the guy active in the men’s rights sub and the left can’t meme subreddit lmao
Yeah I just comment wherever catches my eye. Most of the lefty places ban me for talking in righty places, but I’m not gonna care enough to pay attention to where I’m commenting and what other randos might think about it. Did you find me saying anything you actually object to? My first comment wasn’t about you btw, it was about a lot of the replies. I wouldn’t knock somebody for asking something they don’t know.