Unpacking the Great Reset & 15 minute tin foil tropes

[Brainaddict]

We used to get quite a lot of hit and run conspiracists too from what I remember. But that was back when the boards were big and people had heard of them....

 

[two sheds]

Let’s be honest it was mostly to temper Jazzz’s output which iirc was consistently bonkers.

Ahead of his time

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Is The Stirrer what used to be the Essex/Heckler lot?

Yes and a bunch of other names, it was hard to keep up!

Rob Ray is right about the transhphobia stuff, but another dimension was that they were really keen on going to anti-lockdown protests in London early on, as that's where working class people were protesting. The idea being I think to take publications and engage with people and raise pro-working class community politics stuff with them. But clearly it's a two way road.

 

[8ball]

Let’s be honest it was mostly to temper Jazzz’s output which iirc was consistently bonkers.

Yeah, this is a fair point. Though I often used to enjoy his tortured logic.

 

[pbsmooth]

Obviously people have had propensities to believe batshit things since humans evolved, but (a) with the rise of widespread education and secularisation I think that tendency reduced a bit for a while, and (b) we now have to answer the question, why the rise in importance of conspiracy theories in recent years?

There is a bit more to it than mental health problems perhaps, but I think you are understating the mental health problems in our society. It's not a 'few', and that's partly because it's not a few who are isolated, its millions. We've basically created a societal machine for producing mental health problems, and then embarked on an austerity drive to remove any support from isolated people and people with MH problems, and then we had an isolating, frightening pandemic which, in my opinion, pushed at the very least hundreds of thousands, probably millions more people over the edge into poor mental health.

surely the internet and social media have to be the main factor here.
in the past, you were muttering nonsense in the pub and most other people thought it was nonsense, so anyone on the fence or who wasn't sure went along that it was nonsense.
now you mutter nonsense online and you come across other people muttering nonsense anywhere in the world. not only do you then have each other, but those people who might have been on the fence now see this big group of people muttering nonsense, which can be attractive.
and people want to be part of something.
lots of articles point to many conspiraloons who just want an audience - or even just a family, a 'tribe' (like internet forums!). and having tried and failed all sorts of things online - noted by what they've posted on social media - they find that when they post conspiracy stuff they get all this interaction and feedback. which is what they wanted. so they lean into it. and the deeper you go, the more interaction you can get. this is fundamental to how social media works.

 

[Brainaddict]

surely the internet and social media have to be the main factor here.
in the past, you were muttering nonsense in the pub and most other people thought it was nonsense, so anyone on the fence or who wasn't sure went along that it was nonsense.
now you mutter nonsense online and you come across other people muttering nonsense anywhere in the world. not only do you then have each other, but those people who might have been on the fence now see this big group of people muttering nonsense, which can be attractive.
and people want to be part of something.
lots of articles point to many conspiraloons who just want an audience - or even just a family, a 'tribe' (like internet forums!). and having tried and failed all sorts of things online - noted by what they've posted on social media - they find that when they post conspiracy stuff they get all this interaction and feedback. which is what they wanted. so they lean into it. and the deeper you go, the more interaction you can get. this is fundamental to how social media works.

Yes, you're right that's part of the picture too. Another part in recent years is right wing funding for certain conspiracy ecosystems. I don't believe for a moment that the 15 minute city hate has developed entirely organically. If you pay youtube they will put a video higher in the algorithm, and it doesn't even have to be your video. A right wing outfit wanting to promote certain viewpoints can fund the videos of other people that they think will help to disrupt the plans of the libs. I suspect that a lot of this has been going on, and I wouldn't be surprised if a whistleblower reveals in a few years how much money has been channelled into basically corrupting social media with this stuff.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Which is a phenomenon which has become depressingly common on social media - someone says something stupid, gets rinsed, rejects former affiliations and dives into a safer space where saying stupid shit is actively encouraged.

There's a wider question isn't there about why the left (obviously in the vaguest possible terms here) doesn't attract more people and this is definitely part of it. I think there's plenty of people who are put off without going off and becoming a conspiracy loon.

 

[8ball]

If you pay youtube they will put a video higher in the algorithm, and it doesn't even have to be your video. A right wing outfit wanting to promote certain viewpoints can fund the videos of other people that they think will help to disrupt the plans of the libs. I suspect that a lot of this has been going on, and I wouldn't be surprised if a whistleblower reveals in a few years how much money has been channelled into basically corrupting social media with this stuff.

Which conspiracy ecosystem would yours be linked to?

 

[pbsmooth]

Yes, you're right that's part of the picture too. Another part in recent years is right wing funding for certain conspiracy ecosystems. I don't believe for a moment that the 15 minute city hate has developed entirely organically. If you pay youtube they will put a video higher in the algorithm, and it doesn't even have to be your video. A right wing outfit wanting to promote certain viewpoints can fund the videos of other people that they think will help to disrupt the plans of the libs. I suspect that a lot of this has been going on, and I wouldn't be surprised if a whistleblower reveals in a few years how much money has been channelled into basically corrupting social media with this stuff.

absolutely.
and having some truth in a conspiracy helps it spread. so yes, the algorithims are being controlled to some extent because you can pay to feature, promote your own content or whatever - that's the business model, and is fair enough - but that turns into 'the evil global overlords are controlling what you watch', which is not really the case.

 

[Cloo]

Feel like it's gone into overdrive since Covid though.

Because that was people's first experience of government 'control' like that I guess, so people were suddenly 'Whoah! They can do that?! That's scary!', and I do understand why people would feel that way, but the problem is some then leap to,or are vulnerable to being manipulated into believing ridiculous worst case scenarios that wouldn't actually make any sense for those at The Top.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

It all seemed to take off in a big way with Zeitgeist in the noughties. I was pretty alarmed at how many mates seemed to have an interest in that at the time. Thankfully none seem to have gone down the rabbit hole but I imagine that was a huge net for it all at the time.

 

[hitmouse]

The thing I found concerning about The Stirrer and Winter Oak I think was that they didn't fall into the poor analysis camp really, at least not initially. They do have a class analysis and I used to keep an eye on them for interesting takes on localising perspectives and the broader green protest scene respectively. The degeneration into siloed conspiracy thinking was sort of predictable in the latter case, less so in the former. This kind of speaks to some of the talk above about how much is meantl health-related etc, but there's a range of reasons why people go down the rabbit hole I think.

Yeah, and DD is a different case/set of politics again - he may have been a bit cranky and annoying for... well, possibly forever actually, but a lot of the old BM Combustion etc stuff was really good, a big influence on me and I'd guess a lot of other people.

In The Stirrer's case what actually started it seems to have been a break with their sense of being part of the "in crowd," in their case because they insisted (unwisely) on constantly broadcasting sometimes iffy musings on the trans debate, which got them into a lot of online aggro and saw many of their old comrades distancing themselves. I suspect that's the case for a lot of people, where feeling excluded leads to a renouncing of old certainties and thus more vulnerability to whackadoodles whose whole shtick is "ah see we were right all along, welcome." In the latter I don't know Cudenec but get the impression he's previously been sort of prone and just got a whole lot worse when he got onto the Great Reset stuff and was told off about it online. Which is a phenomenon which has become depressingly common on social media - someone says something stupid, gets rinsed, rejects former affiliations and dives into a safer space where saying stupid shit is actively encouraged.

Yeah, and tbf I think Cudenec had already dipped more than a toe into conspiracism via Syria/"anti-imperialist" stuff and the like. But yeah, how we deal with people saying stupid stuff without either just nodding along and going "yeah, that's fine" or else counterproductive social media pile-ons that drive people away is... a question it would be good to solve, really.

 

[Brainaddict]

Which conspiracy ecosystem would yours be linked to?

The conspiracy of rich people deliberately subverting public discourse to their own benefit. It's one of the real conspiracies, though even the left doesn't always pay enough attention to it. "Oh stupid climate change deniers," people moan, ignoring that hundreds of millions of pounds has been pumped into promoting climate denial through both mainstream and social media. Look at the money thrown at Prager U amongst others Right-Wing Megadonors Are Financing Media Operations to Promote Their Ideologies

 

[8ball]

The conspiracy of rich people deliberately subverting public discourse to their own benefit. It's one of the real conspiracies, though even the left doesn't always pay enough attention to it. "Oh stupid climate change deniers," people moan, ignoring that hundreds of millions of pounds has been pumped into promoting climate denial through both mainstream and social media. Look at the money thrown at Prager U amongst others Right-Wing Megadonors Are Financing Media Operations to Promote Their Ideologies

Ah, not heard of that one.

 

[krtek a houby]

Is this the same BBC that spread lies about WMD and Jeremy Corbyn? Yes it is

And I have dealt with Monbiot vs Brand on another thread

As for Soros, he is a big time interfering capitalist and tax evader who does interfere in politics and nearly bankrupted the UK. It is his actions I have a problem with not his ethnicity beefore u ask

Iirc, it was the Blair government of the time pushing the WMD bullshit, and the Beeb had the temerity to go against it and there was heavy fallout, resulting in Greg Dyke resigning from the corporation. No resignations from the Blair government, though. Not on that particular scenario.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Iirc, it was the Blair government of the time pushing the WMD bullshit, and the Beeb had the temerity to go against it and there was heavy fallout, resulting in Greg Dyke resigning from the corporation. No resignations from the Blair government, though. Not on that particular scenario.

Blair and Alastair Campbell don’t appear to have experienced any consequences either.

 

[Cloo]

I think there is a genuine issue that very wealthy powerful people and organisations who have major investments in fossil fuels will be fighting their decline every step of the way - but that's not an organised 'conspiracy', that's just self interest with a bunch of people doing the same thing. It makes sense as it's not a bunch of people twirling their moustaches to be evil and 'control' people, it's people trying to 'protect their investment' because frankly they can afford to shield themselves from the ill effects.

 

[Spandex]

The thing about stuff like fossil fuel companies secretly funding climate change denial is that it demonstrates that there is shady shit going on behind the scenes. Similar stories flicker across the news from time to time: politicians taking payments from dubious interests; Cambridge Analytica; fake companies and secret bank accounts in Bahamas; world leaders and businesses having private meetings that the public are kept well away from; scandals covered up; obvious lies and half truths from politicians and media. People know there is stuff going on that they don't know about and by its nature it leaves a blank space in what we know. And people who want to understand the world look to fill in those blank spaces.

Mostly they're probably disparate issues about elites obtaining and maintaining power and the operation of capitalism, or sometimes, as in the case of the pandemic, shit just happens and states scrabble about to respond without a clue what they're doing. But those blank spaces do leave room for other stories to blossom, for people to join the dots however feels right to them, to come up with more interesting explainations than mundane day-to-day politics and capitalists seeking to maximise profits. People can choose the believe what's exciting and scandalous and shocking over what's likely. Who doesn't love a good story?

Once someone has gone all in on one conspiracy theory, completely rejecting mainstream narratives and their sources, seeing YouTube videos and Twitter accounts as a more reliable source of information, then they're open to exposure to other conspiracy theories, their way of understanding the world is not rooted in mundane realities but in nefarious people plotting nefarious things. It becomes an ideological position.

 

[Cloo]

And sadly, antisemitism is always there eager to fill in those gaps.

 

[Brainaddict]

I think there is a genuine issue that very wealthy powerful people and organisations who have major investments in fossil fuels will be fighting their decline every step of the way - but that's not an organised 'conspiracy', that's just self interest with a bunch of people doing the same thing. It makes sense as it's not a bunch of people twirling their moustaches to be evil and 'control' people, it's people trying to 'protect their investment' because frankly they can afford to shield themselves from the ill effects.

I'm not sure the line is so clear because a lot of this funding of clearly socially damaging ideas happens secretly, or at least is kept secret from the public. If people have sat around trying to work out how to make climate denial respectable and have set up front organisations to do it, and obscured where their funding has come from, and have harvested social media data to target people who don't know they are being targeted, that's pretty much a conspiracy in my book. Of course it's not so super-secret that you can't find out its happening if you look hard enough, but then conspiracy theorists think that if they look hard enough they'll find out what's really going on...

 

[Rob Ray]

Mostly they're probably disparate issues about elites obtaining and maintaining power and the operation of capitalism, or sometimes, as in the case of the pandemic, shit just happens and states scrabble about to respond without a clue what they're doing.

Very much this. There definitely are conspiracies out there, and in fact it's perfectly normal practice for both States and corporations to engage in underhand activities in an effort to gain advantage. It's the stitching of them together into overarching narratives, and specifically the creation of shadowy central power structures directing these efforts as long term strategies, that gets weird. And it gets in the way of genuine analysis.

Will neoliberals attempt to use the rising popularity of 15-minute cities concepts to their advantage? Absolutely, and it's worth talking about. They'll co-opt that shit soon as look at it, either as propaganda or to continue shining up their concepts of middle/upper class luxury living while punting working class people ever further out the way. Is there a plot by Marxist leaders of the World Economic Forum to use the 15-minute cities concept as their "in" for a permanent lockdown of the general public though? No. That wouldn't benefit the prevailing economic form, and implies a level of co-ordination that the capitalist class barely possesses in outright individual autocracies, let alone across the sum of competing global interests. But because the latter is so obsessively talked about in grand conspiracy terms it blocks more clearheaded discussion.

 

[Serge Forward]

I think the rule is, if the conspiracy is a distinct possibility, ignore. If the conspiracy is far-fetched and highly unlikely (if not impossible) to have any basis in reality, then that's the one you run with.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

And sadly, antisemitism is always there eager to fill in those gaps.

Parallels with the Nazi version of antisemitism. Jewish capitalists in cahoots with Jewish Marxists. ( And Freemasons etc etc). Nowadays it's Bill Gates in league with Big Pharma, eco-fascists, cultural Marxists and the Islington elite.

They've got tentacles everywhere, it seems.

 

[krtek a houby]

And sadly, antisemitism is always there eager to fill in those gaps.

So many out there, on the far right, engage in using dog whistles, canards and tropes but at the same time, a lot of them are virulently supportive of the Israeli government and IDF. And if you show the slightest empathy for the Palestinians or criticize the heavy handed and disproportionate actions of the government and IDF... it's you who are anti-Semitic.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I think there is a genuine issue that very wealthy powerful people and organisations who have major investments in fossil fuels will be fighting their decline every step of the way - but that's not an organised 'conspiracy', that's just self interest with a bunch of people doing the same thing. It makes sense as it's not a bunch of people twirling their moustaches to be evil and 'control' people, it's people trying to 'protect their investment' because frankly they can afford to shield themselves from the ill effects.

Conspiracies exist. It’s just the ‘theories’ always tend to go down well trodden paths of far right bullshit.

 

[chilango]

Filling a vacuum innit?

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Arguably any class based society is a conspiracy of one class ruling over another in their own interests. Conspiracy theories always seem to attempt to obfuscate this.

 

[mojo pixy]

One of the hallmarks for me of a Conspiracy Theory (capital C capital T) is that it focusses on individual actions and relationships being the main problem with society, rather than identifying social structures and systems and how those could be changed for the better. It's what primarily makes CTs so useless (even counter-productive) in regard to social resistance; the only solution they could ever offer is a change of individuals or relationships, as if we could change those and everything would be fine. Systems and structures (ironically) remain untouched.

Start talking about systemic change and CT-ists 1. glaze over and 2. call you a commie weirdo.

 

[Cloo]

Well I guess it's reassuring that if only you got rid of those Bad People, everything would be OK.

 

[tim]

Iirc, it was the Blair government of the time pushing the WMD bullshit, and the Beeb had the temerity to go against it and there was heavy fallout, resulting in Greg Dyke resigning from the corporation. No resignations from the Blair government, though. Not on that particular scenario.

Rod Liddle came out of that quite well. Then we got to discover what a vile shit he really is.