Why Conspiracy Theories?

Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
pattycakes_ said:
Most people would rather believe a comfortable lie than an uncomfortable truth
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Or an exciting lie rather than a boring truth

Not boring but undramatic. This is a known tactic of the rich, right? They make finance incredibly boring and complicated to read about so the masses doze off.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Well maybe that's true (although things like body dysmorphia are essentially extreme versions of the opposite tendency, not at all uncommon) but what I was getting at is there is no way to get at the truth now, be it comfortable or otherwise. Reality is unmoored. We really are in a post truth universe. I don't think anyone should be complacently patting themselves on the back for their willingness to look The Facts straight in the eye at this stage.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
He [Assange] decides, instead, that the most effective way to attack this kind of organization would be to make “leaks” a fundamental part of the conspiracy’s information environment. Which is why the point is not that particular leaks are specifically effective. Wikileaks does not leak something like the “Collateral Murder” video as a way of putting an end to that particular military tactic; that would be to target a specific leg of the hydra even as it grows two more. Instead, the idea is that increasing the porousness of the conspiracy’s information system will impede its functioning, that the conspiracy will turn against itself in self-defense, clamping down on its own information flows in ways that will then impede its own cognitive function. You destroy the conspiracy, in other words, by making it so paranoid of itself that it can no longer conspire.

This is the real point of all of the major leaks we've witnessed in recent years. The "Iraq War Logs," the U.S. State Department Diplomatic "cables," etc. all assist in creating an atmosphere of mistrust within the affected institutions. Edward Snowden's leaks on the vast NSA spy apparatus have the same effect. More than just making people aware of how their privacy is being constantly and minutely invaded it causes massive systemic mistrust.

All in all, diplomats are afraid to talk to other diplomats, spies are afraid to talk to other spies, governments are afraid to talk to other governments. No one knows what is going to get leaked, who is listening to whom, who is being set up for what. And so things begin to get even more cryptic to the point of total opacity, confusion, breakdown and silence. Or at least that's Assange's theory.
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This is well worth a read https://groupnameforgrapejuice.blogspot.com/search?q=Assange
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
But if you give up your own power to know truth, someone else will step in and start defining reality.

Have you read anything about Open Source Intelligence techniques, Luka? Someone pulled the trigger that shot down Malaysian Airline 17 - who was it? Can we never know? The Bellingcat people do a good job on constructing a very convincing evidence trail and naming suspects in the first season of their podcast using OSINT. They're the people who named the Skirpal murder suspects.

In this instance, if we give up on our capacity to know truth we give over a lot of our power to totalitarian states and autocracies and let them define reality.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Well sure Danny I'm well aware of the faith you have in your own special magical ability to discern Truth, because you keep going on about it.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
of course I agree that there is a war going on to define reality. That's abundantly obvious. It's that very war which has led to the post truth universe. Having said that I'm not sure this is necessarily a new development. As I've said before I don't think there was truth pre-Internet, there was just more consensus, a unified party line.
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
This is all blowback from nearly a century of manufactured consent. You cant bullshit people for decades, deliberately suppress critical thinking for the purposes of political propoganda and then expect them to behave rationally when the lid is blown off.
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
craner said:
But Leo, it's all true. (Despite the prominence of "may be" in the title.)
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Slimy Craner back in the house!

As I said, this is all exceptionally well documented. I was reading about some of this stuff 25 years ago. Question the final conclusions if you wish, and I agree that there is a ton of circumstantial evidence, but there is also a mountain of credible and verifiable connections pointing to those conclusions.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
droid said:
This is all blowback from nearly a century of manufactured consent. You cant bullshit people for decades, deliberately suppress critical thinking for the purposes of political propoganda and then expect them to behave rationally when the lid is blown off.
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This is my view too, more or less. Decades and decades of Fake News has destroyed any possibility of trust.
 
V

version

Well-known member
Cohn's always put me in mind of that Roald Dahl thing abou ugliness from The Twits:

“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it... "
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
Was unfortunate enough to see a tweet by Katie Hopkins talking about "Londonistan" and then saw this article on the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...a-far-right-conspiracy-theory-went-mainstream
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Here's a quote from the article

Fjordman, whose real name is Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen, now lives in obscurity in provincial Norway. He outed himself as the man behind the pseudonym to a Norwegian tabloid in the weeks following the massacre – but managed to avoid testifying at Breivik’s trial, thanks to the intervention of high-powered lawyers paid for by the Middle East Forum, a rightwing American group that would later sponsor Tommy Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – in Britain. Nonetheless, Jensen’s influence on Breivik, however indirect, had been considerable.

The Middle East forum is used as a source for a lot of Craners articles on his blogs. eg here. https://kirkpatrickmission.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/carnival-of-death/ Not that that is the only eyebrow raising source needless to say
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
Oh wow, this is how conspiracy theory works then? I reference an MEF published article in 2013 therefore I am EDL. Rigorous.
 
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