butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No they're not.
Why Conspiracy Theorists are so prevalent.
- Thread starter Gnome Chompsky
- Start date
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
I've been patronised by a dizzying array of people over the years. And yet, there is something remarkable about how angry I get when being told to watch a 4 hour youtube video.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
8ball
Decolonise colons!
elbows
Well-Known Member
And one reason lots of people may sometimes be easy to characterise as mugs is the frequency with which they are presented only with a set of crap multiple-choice answers to choose from. Ones that pander to the knee-jerk, or quickly disfigure reasonable grievances into something else as part of a deliberately disempowering agenda. Taking time to treat people as rational beings and not use them as crude tools, let their decent emotions be channeled in a productive and empowering direction, and far fewer of them can be written off as mugs.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
If you're not capable of enunciating your argument yourself don't expect other people to sit through a 4 hour youtube presentation for you.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
It's just the equivalent of Trots and their reading lists.
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
Speaking of which
http://socialistunity.com/stephen-f...ved-from-russia-over-gay-rights-is-hypocrisy/
Cunts.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
That's phooey, and another straw man.
Of course plenty of people like you opposed the Iraq invasion, and I'm sure your efforts against it were as credible as that of many others. Don't put words in my mouth or accuse me of putting them in other people's.
The point about Iraq is that WMD claims were knowingly fabricated. It was a conspiracy. The people who theorised that it was were correct.
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
The people who "theorised" it? You truly are a ignorant cunt.
Iraq WMD claims? We knew Iraq had WMDs. This was a fact. How? The west sold most of them to him. Saddam used them against the Kurds, and Iran.
The question was whether Saddam still had WMDs and no one could say for certainty whether he did or not. It wasn't a conspiracy theory, there were two sides arguing whether Saddam had these weapons, and the Neo Con hawks pushed the case that he had the weapons because it suited their agenda. Your reading of the situation exposes your basic ignorance of the facts.
Please stop confusing your fact free speculation about 9/11 or JFK with y'know actual facts.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Just because there are conspiracies does not make the CT mindset automatically valid. That's like saying "look, I just saw someone doing 80mph on the M1, therefore all motorists are speeding".
Logic fail, taffboy. Really, you're worth more than this.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
People theorised that the WMD were fabricated. What's ignorant about that? Why do you resort to sweary insults?
We knew that Saddam had put his WMD beyond use, or that they were degraded? How, because Blix, Ritter and others said so.
The Yellow cake claims - the result of a conspiracy, just like the baby/incubator story years before and the Jessica Lynch weirdness
We knew that the 45 minute claim was concocted in a conspiracy involving A Campbell.
This is how it works : If something might be true at some level it's a laughable conspiracy theory. Swear at people. If it then turns out to be true...well how dare we conflate it with things that might be true. Swear at them more.
Heads I win. Tails you lose. With swearing to gloss over a vapid case.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
It would be a logic fail. Your analogy is correct. But you have misattributed to me. If by "CT mindset" you mean the blithe and unfounded assumption that just about everything is a conspiracy I wholeheartedly agree and think you have misunderstood me. Such people discredit more credible claims in fact.
But conspiracies happen, and theorising about them is really not so out of whack. It doesn't mean declaring them to be true (or not).
I have considered many CTs before concluding there was diddly fuck to them.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Whoopie-ding, it was a conspiracy (assuming it was).
So how, exactly, does that validate the views that you and others then start trying to peddle about grand over-arching conspiracies? We KNOW that politicians are bent, and will lie to further their own interests. That doesn't automatically mean that there's a Judaeo-masonic-lizard conspiracy to hollow out the moon and use it to control our minds with alien space lasers.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Fair point, perhaps I am exaggerating my position unnecessarily. But all too often I find myself reading a reasonable-sounding post of yours, and then suddenly we're veering off into, frankly, Paranoid Fantasy Central. I'm not going to cite examples, because this is a general impression formed over quite a long time, but it's happened often enough that I know I'm not kidding myself here.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
Fair enough likewise. I entertain some pretty outlandish ideas, it doesn't mean I agree with them.
Partly this has been due to the nature of alternative media, especially internet radio and TV...it has tended to be more towards those realms. Perhaps that is changing, but too slowly I would think. Also I think the left sometimes has dropped the ball, being too quick to dismiss the possibility of conspiracy in some cases.
These clashes played out somewhat at Occupy. I see them possibly emerging again in the anti fracking stuff.
Partly this has been due to the nature of alternative media, especially internet radio and TV...it has tended to be more towards those realms. Perhaps that is changing, but too slowly I would think. Also I think the left sometimes has dropped the ball, being too quick to dismiss the possibility of conspiracy in some cases.
These clashes played out somewhat at Occupy. I see them possibly emerging again in the anti fracking stuff.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
There's an unscientific approach in there somewhere. And some straw men.
Just because people agree that claims about the gulf war were false, doesn't mean that they have to swallow any bonkers theory going.
The whole "oh but you agree that THIS was a conspiracy, ho ho!" line is a complete red herring.
ETA - sorry existentialist said it better and first. But then, being a mason he probably had foreknowledge anyway
Just because people agree that claims about the gulf war were false, doesn't mean that they have to swallow any bonkers theory going.
The whole "oh but you agree that THIS was a conspiracy, ho ho!" line is a complete red herring.
ETA - sorry existentialist said it better and first. But then, being a mason he probably had foreknowledge anyway
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
Duh because you're a cunt. cunt.
Who thought that Saddam's WMD were completely fabricated? He USED THEM.
If you actually read what Blix claimed he thought that Saddam had WMDs.
Heads you're a idiot. Pointing at the WMD issue about Iraq doesn't prove your fucking bullshit about 9/11 or JFK.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
They are different events. I am pointing at WMD in Iraq as evidence that conspiracies happen, now you are shifting goalposts because it's so obviously a reasonable case. What "fucking bullshit" about 911 or JFK?
ETA : Blix as much as said the war was illegal, which would make the idea of usable WMD in his mind pretty sketchy. Blix repeatedly said there had been co operation and nothing found. He asked for more time and didnt get it. Because there was a conspiracy to invade come what may.
Ritter knew there was nothing useable.
Kelly was pro war, but knew there was a conspiracy to mislead.
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
And as we saw this attempts were seen through by thousands of people straight away.
A reasonable case for what? When governments lie to people they get called on it straight away.
Do you need to me quote some of your shit about 9/11
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
If people can strongly demonstrate there is a lie, but they still get called conspiracy theorists if it isn't 100% proven. Governments aren't always stupid enough to lie in a 100% provable fashion.
Why do you think the WMD conspiracy has any bearing on a theory about 911 being shit or not? Are you running on some kind of confirmation bias?
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
This is pathetic. Conspiracies happen therefore... what? Come on, say it.
8den
No I'm pretty sure that was 8ball...
no see taffy's argument is that other people where right about the government's hyperboloid rhetoric pre the Iraq war, ergo er something.
Anyway it's a conspiracy theory, and its true so it vindicates him. Or something.
taffboy gwyrdd
Embrace the confusion!
Therefore people shouldn't be so dismissive of theorising about them?
What do you think I want to say?
What number am I thinking of?
69.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
He's not sure whether the Protocols are anti-semitic or not as he's never looked into it. (millions fucking roll eyes)
Or at least that's the line he once took to defend his friends like Jazzz and Icke.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
why so many conspiracy theories?
because there are fuck loads of conspiracies going on all the time by those in power around the world, as well as those who want to be in power, but those involved tend not to be that open about them, so those who're interested attempt to theorise to fill in the gaps.
Fuckloads of ridiculous theories out there mind - personally I expect a fair few of the most ridiculous theories to have actually been put out there deliberately to discredit the entire notion that there might have been a conspiracy involved. That's certainly my viewpoint on a lot of the wilder 911 shite, which has largely served to distract from the documented fact that the neocons had taken Clinton's handover warnings about AQ being the biggest threat to the USA and failed to hold a single top level meeting to discuss their strategy against AQ until shortly before the attacks, 9 months or so after they took power.
The process involved in taking the world into a war in Iraq was also definitely a conspiracy by any standards. IMO it was a conspiracy involving multiple overlapping groups of conspirators each with their own overlapping agendas, hence stuff like the fake yellow cake documents, which eventually the UK had to state had been faked, but not by them.
because there are fuck loads of conspiracies going on all the time by those in power around the world, as well as those who want to be in power, but those involved tend not to be that open about them, so those who're interested attempt to theorise to fill in the gaps.
Fuckloads of ridiculous theories out there mind - personally I expect a fair few of the most ridiculous theories to have actually been put out there deliberately to discredit the entire notion that there might have been a conspiracy involved. That's certainly my viewpoint on a lot of the wilder 911 shite, which has largely served to distract from the documented fact that the neocons had taken Clinton's handover warnings about AQ being the biggest threat to the USA and failed to hold a single top level meeting to discuss their strategy against AQ until shortly before the attacks, 9 months or so after they took power.
The process involved in taking the world into a war in Iraq was also definitely a conspiracy by any standards. IMO it was a conspiracy involving multiple overlapping groups of conspirators each with their own overlapping agendas, hence stuff like the fake yellow cake documents, which eventually the UK had to state had been faked, but not by them.
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