Why Conspiracy Theories?

luka

luka

Well-known member
"Fame resulting from objective processes in a market society, always fortuitous be often unsought, yet with an aura of justice and free choice, has been liquidated. It has become wholly a function of paid propagandists and is measured in terms of the investment risked by the bearer of a name or the interests behind him."

"Things have come to a pass where lying sounds like truth, truth like lying. Each statement, each piece of news, each thought has been performed by the centres of the culture industry. Whatever lacks the familiar trace of such pre-formation lacks credibility, the more so because the institutions of public opinion accompany what they send forth by a thousand factual proofs and all the plausibility that total power can lay hands on. Truth that opposes these pressures not only appears improbable, but is in addition too feeble to make any headway in competition with their highly-concentrated machinery of dissemination."

Adorno minima moralia
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
At first, MaryAnn explains, David was not a person for her but a number. “The Lord had given me, shot into my spirit and I could never shake it, the number 44,” she explains. Years before she met David, she’d even named her dog 44. “Periodically I would get the number 444, which was like the perfection of the number.” MaryAnn didn’t understand at first, but later the meaning became crystal clear. She says, “It was the identification of David Berkowitz.” Initially, the press called him the “.44-Caliber Killer,” because his six murders were committed with a .44-caliber pistol. Then two years ago, she ran into a guy she knew at the local Shop Rite, a Christian like her. They started talking, and soon he invited her to visit David in prison.

“When David walked in [to the visitors’ room], I knew,” she tells me.

Again, I wonder, “What did you know?”

“There’s nobody bigger than this guy. Oh, my God, this guy is an apostle of the Lord.”

David Berkowitz, the Jewish serial killer, an apostle of Jesus?
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http://nymag.com/news/crimelaw/20327/
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
New paper out from Kate Starbird into disinformation and technology in the modern age. Not read it yet but I will. This thread has a link and summaries her conclusions:
This view suggests that simple cause-effect models of media effects (e.g. trying to measure impacts on votes) will fall short of accounting for 2nd- to nth-order effects of longitudinal influence campaigns that work to shift social norms, networks of influence, ideologies, etc.

In short, it's the long term unpredictable shaping-ideology effects of this stuff that are of the most interest.
Labour MP Lisa Nandy recently gave a brilliant talk that touched on similar themes.

The usual suspect talking heads who pop up denouncing her (Starbird) as a CIA operative illustrate her thesis.
 
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version

version

Well-known member
Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled rise of The Epoch Times - https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-n...ay-behind-facebook-fueled-rise-epoch-n1044121

This is a crazy, long ride of an article that goes into detail about a media group called The Epoch Times and their online ads, videos and articles that support Trump and Qanon conspiracies. Even “cleaning up” the Qanon conspiracies by branding them “Spygate” and editing out some of the more spiritual elements etc out. It may seem like just another conservative media group on the surface however it is very unique. It’s run by a certain cult group that has seen a sudden rise in their media outlet on Facebook by supporting Trump and Conservative media. This group, known as Falun Gong, was banned from China, believes that their leader can walk through walls, weird stuff about aliens and that there’s an anti-communist-China apocalypse coming -lead by Trump. This may be a bit of a trip to read, but it shows how this strange little group has successfully gotten in the door of conservative media and having a significant impact on Facebook. Truly strange bedfellows.
Click to expand...
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
The Epoch Times was always a bit cracked but I was surprised to see them get into bed with the alt-tight. Actually a bit hurt.
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
they've protested across the street from the Chinese consulate in New York every day for years. all ages, kids and senior citizen, holding signs and doing tai-chi (or something).
 
version

version

Well-known member
At least one camera in the hallway outside the cell where authorities say registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein killed himself earlier this month had footage that is unusable, although other, clearer footage was captured in the area, according to three people briefed on the evidence gathered earlier this month.

It was not immediately clear why some video footage outside Epstein's cell is too flawed for investigators to use or what is visible in the other, usable footage. The incident is being investigated by the FBI and the Justice Department's inspector general's office, which are attempting to determine what happened and how to assess whether any policies were violated or crimes committed.

The footage is considered critical to those inquiries, and the revelation of an unusable recording is yet another of the apparent failures inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the short-staffed Bureau of Prisons facility in downtown Manhattan that held Epstein.

It's unclear whether the flaw in the taping affected a limited duration of the footage or whether it was a chronic problem in the beleaguered facility.

A Bureau of Prisons spokesman declined to comment, as did spokespeople for the FBI, the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan.

The people who spoke about the footage requested anonymity, citing the ongoing probe.
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
the craziest part is that while all signs point to a conspiracy and murder, that facility is so shitty and incompetently run that there's actually an outside chance that it was all just an innocent convergence of mistakes, neglect and malfunctioning equipment.
 
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