What are exceptionally weird left wing conspiracy theories you've seen?

[Asuka]

Remember that story last year about THE US ARMY IS LITERALLY SENDING ARMED CHILDREN TO DEAL WITH THE BLM RIOTS!?! that was quickly debunked?

I still know one person on Facebook that will fight you tooth and nail claiming it’s true and that it was a test run so Trump could replace the entire Army with children who would obey his command.

[bobot]

@Asuka

Remember that story last year about THE US ARMY IS LITERALLY SENDING ARMED CHILDREN TO DEAL WITH THE BLM RIOTS!?!

No. 3,4,5.

[Bonum_Legatum]

Not quite the “left wing” that the OP was looking for, but consider every disinformation campaign that the USSR ran against the United States. The origin of AIDS, etc.

To paraphrase one quote, supposedly taken from Pravda: “Violent spectator sports are encouraged to desensitize Americans for the coming war against Russia. At the University of Michigan, football players who are killed in the game are taken directly to the cemetery.”

[Bonum_Legatum]

Here’s one from the Vietnam war:

Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos

In short, the war was fought for tungsten, no wait - it was titanium. Wrong again, it was for rubber!

[GIGObuster]

@Jackmannii

What more needs to be added to what I already quoted? Summary: Dangerous viruses are an important part of biome diversity, trying to keep them from killing people is a part of the plutocratic plot to suppress nature, and Bill Gates is a fount of enormous Evil, as symbolized by his conspiring to amass ever-increasing amounts of money by giving it away.

I have seen that a lot on the right wing side. Yet another CT that depends more on NIMBY than just politics.

[RTFirefly]

Most of the left-wing conspiracy theories here fall into one of several categories, AFAIAC:

1. I remember hearing them in the 1960s and 1970s, but haven’t heard them in >40 years.
   (E.g. the car companies could make cars that get 300 mg, but are hiding the tech)
2. They aren’t really conspiracy theories.
   (E.g. Dubya was Cheney’s puppet. More of an exaggeration than a conspiracy theory, IMHO, especially in the early going. Became less true the longer Shrub was in office.)
3. They aren’t really left-wing conspiracy theories.
   (E.g. anything to do with Bill Gates)
4. They’re of recent vintage, but I’ve never heard them.
   (E.g. Anti-GMO theories that include bonkers stuff like transhumanism)
5. They’re of recent vintage that I’ve heard of before this thread.
   (E.g. Afghanistan invasion had to do with oil.)

The #5 group is rather small.

[Wesley_Clark]

@Smapti

Remember Jeff Gannon, the “reporter” who was planted in the White House press pool to toss softball questions to Dubya around 2005?

I knew several left-leaning people at the time who insisted that, because there were days when he forgot to sign out in the White House guestroom, he must have been Dubya’s secret gay lover who was spending the night with him in the Lincoln Bedroom.

I knew another far-left person around this time who believed the 2004 flu vaccine shortage was a plot to kill off the elderly, and even claimed that Donald Rumsfeld had given a TV interview where he told seniors it was the most patriotic thing" they could do to die quickly.

Those are the craziest that come to mind.

There was also a theory that he was also the grown up version of kidnapped child Johnny Gosch

If so, you’d assume a DNA test or facial recognition software would resolve that issue.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

LBJ ordered JFK’s assassination so that he would become President.

Ted Kennedy was concerned, to the very end of his days, that if he probed too deeply into his brothers’ deaths, he would be assassinated too.

Dubya would declare a national emergency to stay in power forever after the 2008 economic crisis.

Dubya did whatever Cheney wanted him to do, all the time, without exception.

The white supremacists behind the U.S. Government would never let Obama get elected or take office.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will be the powers behind the throne during the Biden Administration, and will use the 25th Amendment to force ol’ Joe out if he ever outlives his usefulness.

[Saintly_Loser]

Wow.

That is a very long string of words that comply with all the rules of grammar and sound like they mean something, sound like they make sense, sound like they actually have content, sound like they’re conveying meaning, but just, well, don’t.

[Saintly_Loser]

@Asuka

A weird American left wing conspiracy theory I saw a lot on left wing blogs about 12 or so years ago was the idea that due to “Stolen Valor” laws that ANY piece of visual media (from movies to video games to TV shows) that has somebody dressed in a US military uniform was LEGALLY forced to have the Pentagon/Department of Defense review their program and add their own comments/ideas if the content producers wanted it to be distributed in the United States thus making pretty much all American media that involved the military genuine propaganda.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s just stupid.

[Jackmannii]

Denial is so very sad.

[RitterSport]

@Asuka

Remember that story last year about THE US ARMY IS LITERALLY SENDING ARMED CHILDREN TO DEAL WITH THE BLM RIOTS!?! that was quickly debunked?

Man, you have very weird news sources.

[Saintly_Loser]

@Bijou_Drains

A lot of well educated liberals are anti vaxers along with conservatives

Yes indeed.

Long before COVID, anti-vaxxers tended to be highly educated, relatively affluent liberals. Park Slope, Brooklyn (which is perhaps the most liberal neighborhood in NYC) was a hotspot of anti-vaxxers.

This was, to me, incomprehensible.

And then it all got mixed up with COVID and insane right wing crap. This manifestation of vaccine denialism is inextricably intertwined with Trumpism and COVID denial, so I guess it’s somewhat different than the original form of anti-vaxx.

[Smapti]

@Saintly_Loser

Long before COVID, anti-vaxxers tended to be highly educated, relatively affluent liberals. Park Slope, Brooklyn (which is perhaps the most liberal neighborhood in NYC) was a hotspot of anti-vaxxers.

RFK Jr. has been the face of left-wing antivax for the last 20 years.

[Loach]

@SharltoCopley

This may be a left-wing conspiracy theory in the US, but it’s true of many Arab/MidEast countries. If a TV show, film or any other production depicts a person in military uniform, or so much as tells a story that includes references and or discussion of the military, the screenplay must get a Ministry of Defense approval before the first scene is filmed.

There is a group in the Pentagon that works with Hollywood. They do approve scripts. The big difference is it’s voluntary. If you are making a movie you can ask the military to use their equipment and facilities. They can turn the producers down if they don’t like how the military is portrayed. Top Gun never could have been made without the Navy.

One of the more famous examples is Clint Eastwood’s Heartbreak Ridge. The only way the script really makes sense is if they were Army Rangers. That’s how the script was written. The Army thought all of the foul language was bad for their image. The Marines said fuck yeah let’s do this so they became Marines.

If they don’t have cooperation the movie can still be made they just have to figure out a way to do it without the equipment.

[erysichthon]

@Little_Nemo

I don’t know if this qualifies as a conspiracy theory but I know a lot of people believed that George W. Bush was essentially a figurehead while President and that Dick Cheney was actually running the country and telling Bush what to do.

This reminds me of the speculation that Bush was wearing a hidden listening device during the first 2004 debate with Kerry, and was being fed answers via radio. This theory fit nicely into the left-wing perception of Bush as a puppet and a dim-bulb.

I never took that theory too seriously; if it was true, the person feeding Bush the responses was doing a lousy job.

[Monty]

@Loach

If they don’t have cooperation the movie can still be made they just have to figure out a way to do it without the equipment.

And the personnel. Remember the film The D.I.? Serving Marines were on screen as recruits and some had speaking parts.

[kaylasdad99]

@Loach

@SharltoCopley

This may be a left-wing conspiracy theory in the US, but it’s true of many Arab/MidEast countries. If a TV show, film or any other production depicts a person in military uniform, or so much as tells a story that includes references and or discussion of the military, the screenplay must get a Ministry of Defense approval before the first scene is filmed.

There is a group in the Pentagon that works with Hollywood. They do approve scripts. The big difference is it’s voluntary. If you are making a movie you can ask the military to use their equipment and facilities. They can turn the producers down if they don’t like how the military is portrayed. Top Gun never could have been made without the Navy.

One of the more famous examples is Clint Eastwood’s Heartbreak Ridge. The only way the script really makes sense is if they were Army Rangers. That’s how the script was written. The Army thought all of the foul language was bad for their image. The Marines said fuck yeah let’s do this so they became Marines.

If they don’t have cooperation the movie can still be made they just have to figure out a way to do it without the equipment.

Like Dr. Strangelove.

[Manwich]

The extremes of the Russia conspiracy got weird. The piss video might exist but that’s still weird if it does. The idea that Russians lurked in every corner of the internet posting for pay for Putin. They probably were sometimes in some places but it reached ridiculous proportions as if half the country was shit posting for their weirdo oligarch.

[eschereal]

There is a sort of loose cabal of big business, the media (yeah, I know, that is redundant) and the major political parties that is working to foster, maintain and nurture our social divide because it is good for their profitability, keeps the mass of citizenry off balance and makes everyone so angry and paranoid at the street-level that they do not pay much/any attention to the cabal itself.