I believe that’s true with most of these CTs. It boils down to thinking those in power are working in the shadows to enslave us. It could be Bilderberg, Obama or lizard people. It becomes left or right wing depending on the target. Some might forget that Alex Jones was not always focused on a right wing audience. He started off targeting anyone that would fit a conspiracy. His target was often the Bush administration with his 911 trutherism. The Bush’s wanted to impose a New World Order. He found out it was more lucrative if he concentrated on a specific audience.
Understatement of the year follows: Q anon is right wing.
It seems to me that liberals are kind of suckers for health-related scams. As I remember it, the antivax movement was at first more leftish. The target audience for essential oils and overwrought claims about turmeric also seem to be left-leaning.
They also seem to be prone to believe anything nefarious about corporations (which, to be fair, tend to be outdone by actual real nefary). Left conspiracies about the government have the annoying tendency to turn out to be understatements of actual schemes (MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, ETC), though some turn out to be fluff.
Righties tend to go for get-rich-quick schemes, fifth-column panics, and dietary fads. In fact, organic farming had its origins in Nazi culture and mythology.
Have to disagree here. The volume and intensity of corporate and government conspiracies as promoted by the gullible vastly exceed anything that actually happened. Much worse is the implication that any such conspiracy theory must automatically be respected. Don’t trust vaccines or any pharmaceutical “because Vioxx”. Don’t believe fair elections took place “because MK ULTRA”.
It’s a disease.
Cite? Or is that just “something that everybody knows” ?
I mean, it’s something that I already ‘know’, but I don’t actually know of any proof of it.
I’m gonna start a new thing. A running gag for everyone to get in on. Here’s how it works:
You say there’s this anonymous dude spouting off about a new conspiracy theory on Facebook and Twitter. And one day this guy is discussing his CT with the editor of a big media outlet. He offers up some long, crazy, rambling, impossible, ridiculous conspiracy theory; each kookoo detail more bat-shit insane than the last. When he finally finishes the editor says: “Hmmm… that’s a very interesting theory. What do you call it?”
He replies, “The Aristocrats!”
Except it needs another name. The point is, it is a good excuse for a contest of one-upmanship story-telling much like comedians and “The Aristocrats”.
Here’s a long report from Frontline:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/cia.html
The short story seems to be: The CIA investigated itself and decided they were not responsible for the crack epidemic. The CIA was involved with anti-Sandanista groups in Central America who were involved in cocaine trafficking. Whether the CIA knew or not is debatable. Perhaps the CIA didn’t know, which maybe meant they should have known; perhaps they did know and didn’t care; or perhaps they didn’t know, but couldn’t be expected to know. It did seam to put the CIA in conflict with the DEA.
So best case seems to be, the CIA was drug trader adjacent, even if they weren’t complicit, which they may have been. These are the same people responsible for Iran-Contra (weapons to Iran to raise money for the Contras), so the idea they provided some protection for the Contra’s drug trade is not too far fetched, even if there doesn’t seem to be proof.
So for me, I would call this a conspiracy theory, but definitely not an “exceptionally weird” conspiracy theory. Take some known facts (CIA and Contras and drugs), mix them with allegations which were spread and debated by the mainstream media, assume the allegations are true, and then extrapolate.
Let’s look at some that actually happened:
The oil companies knew that burning fossil fuels was causing global warming. They then gave lots of money to groups denying climate change.
When confronted with the dangers of tobacco use, tobacco companies launched a long term effort to deny, confuse, and cover up scientific evidence.
Companies routinely make promises about mergers, and then break those promises. For example, T-Mobile promised that the merger with Sprint would creates lots of jobs, but instead it caused layoffs.
Telecommunication companies accept tax breaks and subsidies to build out their networks and provide services. Then they don’t build out there networks and provide services, or give the money back. They just keep it.
Pharmaceutical companies sometimes bury unfavorable clinical trials. or simply design the trials in ways where they can’t fail.
Safety recalls where the company had evidence there was a problem, but didn’t act until forced to, such as Takata’s airbags, GMs ignition switches, or Tesla’s flash memory.
Does this mean every evil thing corporations are claimed to do is true? Absolutely not. Does it mean that claims some corporation is putting profits before people should be taken seriously? Yes, but how seriously is going to depend on specifics of the claims. It is possible for corporations to be involved in horrible conspiracies, and also have them not guilty of other crazy things.
To me “exceptionally weird” is going to be things that are impossible to be true, like woo and most alternative medicine, not things which are plausible, but not actually true.
Thank you, that’s the point I keep trying to make. These theories were called “fringe” for a reason, they were outside of the fabric of mainstream politics even if they might be tangentially connected.
That was always the case until the right wing began to weaponize conspiracy theories, then the right wing began to unravel and became mostly fringe,
The people on the outside saw this happening, those on the inside, not do much.
That frustrated my conspiritual friends. They actually claim that Alex Jones isn’t political, and the accusations that he’s hard right is just a campaign to discredit him.
Some of y’all seem really unclear on the idea of “exceptionally weird.” Remember: our gold standard right now consists of the following theories:
-A major wildfire was started by space lasers controlled by Jews.
-A cabal of liberals kidnaps children and drinks their blood in order to gain immortality.
It doesn’t even consist of:
-Any minute now, Donald Trump is going to finalize his plan and cause the mass arrest of Democratic leaders.
That last theory isn’t weird enough to qualify. So whatever theory you’re coming up with to attribute to the “left wing” needs to be weirder than that.
The only thing I can think of close to this is the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s. Janet Reno, Bill Clinton’s attorney general, was part of this. Most people would say she was on the left as part of Clinton’s administration. At the time though, Satanic Panic wasn’t a left versus right issue.
She pursued child abuse claims as a state attorney in Florida. Certainly a proper thing to do, but she used discredited techniques to elicit testimony from children. The ridiculous stories they kids came up with fueled the satanic panic conspiracy.
When Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranded as KFC, I knew a few people who were certain it was because they were using vat-grown meat, and weren’t legally allowed to call it chicken any more. I don’t know if that was specifically liberal, but I heard it more than once in a very liberal part of the country. Counts as “exceptionally weird” because vat grown meat didn’t exist yet, and they still used the word “chicken” in their ads and menus.
Yeah, that counts. I also had a relative tell me that some brand of crunchy peanut butter was cut with grasshoppers as a cost-saving measure. Far less sinister than cannibalistic pedophile Satanic Democrats, but equally weird.
But that’s the thing. I’ve heard this one, and the grasshoppers one, but it’s never been clearly tied to a political cause. They were more just Urban Legends or gross-out stories that were pretty ecumenical in their extent. Back when the KFC stories were about, I was a (Canadian) conservative, and never heard this as a specifically “Can you believe the liberals believe this?” kind of story.
Are you sure it was not a “Satanic Mechanic”?
Bad behavior by companies is not automatically equivalent to Massive Secret Conspiracy.
Nor does it mean we must give serious consideration to the idea that Covid-19 vaccines contain tracking chips, that 5G will rot our brains and give us deadly diseases, that They are hiding evidence of massive harm from water fluoridation or that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was caused by Dick Cheney, sabotage by environmentalists or UFOs.
But thanks for reminding us that companies can distort science or be dishonest about the effects of corporate mergers. And “Tesla flash memory”, oo.
Yeah, it seems the best we can do is, “Conspiracy theories that a leftist might believe.” Specifically left wing conspiracy theories seem rather thin on the ground - at least, as far as the “Jewish space lasers” weight class goes.
Given that 5G facilitates better internet access, and we have seen what the internet does to our collective brains, 5G may not itself rot our brains directly, but it seems unlikely that it will improve our mental health (or stress levels) any time, uh, ever.
Oh yeah, exactly. I’d read your previous post as suggesting that all of these things the left accuses corporations of were symptoms of the left’s “disease.”
Verizon accepts federal money, and doesn’t provide the promised services and improvements: Fact.
Verizon’s 5G towers give people COVID: Wackadoo, no reasonable person can even begin to figure out how that would work.
Bill Gates was the head of a corporation that is a convicted monopolist and their anti-competitive business practices set computing back by a decade: Fact and opinion.
Bill Gates is using the COVID vaccine to implant microchips in people: Also completely wackadoo, and no reasonable person would even entertain the idea.
The problem with the left/right thing, is that I don’t think either of the above nonsense conspiracy theories fall on left/right lines.
CT is a very selective brush. You could argue that the whole War On Drugs was a playing out of the absurd CT fostered by Reefer Madness.