My rightwing/Trumpster/conspiracy-minded acquaintance on FB just posted this pile of shit. Cutting to the chase: the invasion by Russia is justified, because the U.S. is funding labs in the Ukraine that are engaged in biological warfare. 
I am assuming he found this story on Alex Jones’ website. (On edit: yep.)
From Russia’s mouth, to QAnon’s ears, to Hannity’s microphone.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/09/media/biolab-ukraine-russia-qanon-false-conspiracy-theory/index.html
One of my MAGA co-workers was spouting the same thing at work this evening when I walked in on a conversation he was having with a sensible coworker of mine. The latter subsequently thanked me for giving him an excuse to walk away.
Needs more “Soros” in it.
Is this what they found in Hillary’s missing emails? No wonder they had to overthrow the 2020 election.
It’s all connected!
Stranger
Yeah, this is popping up in the RW corners of the other site I spend time on.
I do give props to the ~50% of the conservatives on those sub-forums who are pushing back.
I mean, is there any way Putin wouldn’t have announced the existence of those labs as a causus belli long before this?
“It’s just like Trump down-playing COVID! He “didn’t want to create a panic”! That’s what a leader does!”
The U.S. appears to have the greatest number of BSL-4 “biolabs” of any country, followed by the UK. None in Ukraine AFAIK.
Well, the super secret ones designed to attack Mother Russia wouldn’t be widely known, would they?
Seriously.
Anyone that doubts the pervasive Russian influence of right-wing conspiracy theories should ask themselves why, out of all the wealthy people in the United States that give large amounts of money to liberal causes, has George Soros been singled out as the liberal boogeyman?
Could it be because his primary liberal cause is the Westernization of Ukraine and other former Soviet countries?
It makes sense to hate him if you’re Putin, but not if you’re some MAGA redneck. I bet if you’re ask that redneck why George Soros is bad, you won’t get any detail beyond some rant about radical socialists. But Putin knows why he hates Soros, it was his idea.
Also, “Soros” sounds like a Bond villain last name. If his name was George Humdinger it wouldn’t work as well.
I checked out r/conspiracy last week and a lot of the regulars are pushing back against the latest batch of Ukrainian conspiracy theories, they’re like we just want to stick with alerting the world to the epidemic of lizard people, but you guys are making us look crazy, go away.…….
Hunter’s laptop.
And that’s something I’ve found WRT most of these things. Just keep asking “why” and see how far they can get. More often then not you’ll get the person worked up and pissed off at you before they can give you a single specific about what they’re angry about. In your case, keep asking what their problem is with, specifically, Soros. Not “the libs”, not the radical loopy left (who hate this president and his thick mack daddy energy), not biden…Soros (or whatever/whomever they’re talking about). I’m willing to bet you’ll never get anything specific and even if you do it’ll be a Fox/OAN talking point that they’re regurgitating without ever giving any thought to it and don’t even fully understand what they’re saying.
Yes. “They gave me someone to blame, stop challenging my beliefs with facts.”
It’s always amusing when a Conspiracy Theorist runs into someone crazier than they are. They can realize that the other person is completely nuts, but they never stop to realize, that’s how they look to everyone else.
Sure enough, the biolab conspiracy theory has popped up on my go-to source for crazy, Natural News, which previously declared that the fuss over the Russian invasion of Ukraine was designed to distract us from the millions (billions?) of people dropping dead of Covid vaccination.
I get the feeling that if the lizard people staged a world takeover and Biden and the mainstream media raised the alarm, the conspiracist loons would be out there defending their new Reptilian Overlords.
I still have issues about the actual idea that someone would wander off abandoning a laptop at a repair shop - while I actually do have 2 laptops and a desk top [one at each house, and the desktop is hooked up to the television so I don’t have to dick around with cable] I do actually know where every previously owned and now dead laptop ended up. Especially if there is compromising material on it.
Supposedly the laptop was dropped off in April 2019. Sometime in early 2019, his family held an intervention to try to help him with his substance abuse problems. Is it possible that his abuse of drugs and alcohol could have led to behavior a rational person wouldn’t have done? (Just some speculation on a way to explain this, if it is true.)
Here is a NYT article about the laptop issue (I’m not sure if there is more info out since then):
But if his name was Dr Christmas Goodhead-Hummer, would that work?
That name sounds like a Bond girl instead of villain.
What a twist!