Why Conspiracy Theories?

luka

luka

Well-known member
You don't have to buy his point about Bernays. It's the exact same point poetix makes about Cambridge Analytica though. It was all bollocks. Just a sales pitch. You choose what you want to believe.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
As Sufi said on this forum "Matthew is the Frodo to my Sam, I'd happily give my life for him, I'd follow him to the very crest of Mt. Doom, but it's important to remember he's a dangerous right-wing ideologue."
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
Matthew said:
that's true, i'm sure. but that you chose that particular expression is significant.

conspiracy theories presuppose that there is some conscious organisation behind these currents. but everyone is the subject of forces beyond their control. some have the good fortune, like us in the modern west (democrats and republicans all), to be on the right side of the tracks. but in a few generations that can easily change.

it's easy to fall for the idea that we are victims of someone else's cunning - but it's largely an illusion. and that's why i don't buy lorde's argument in fact - and why i don't think it's a helpful one for anyone to think that they are actively under attack.

here's a good example. i just read edward bernays "propaganda" - it has a glowing review from noam chomsky on the cover because, applauding bernays for his "honesty", it tells him EXACTLY the bad news that he wants to hear.

but actually the book is nothing more than bernays' most ambitious sales pitch for his services. like david ogilvy's books it's a purely promotional gimmick designed to give the impression to various bodies that bernays can control the public's mind. and that they should hire him and pay his fees. bullshit from start to finish - i doubt bernays believed a word of it and only a sucker would fall for it.

also, as i think i've mentioned here in the past, i went to school with these people and while they are myopic, greedy and self-interested - brilliant minds they are not. they struggle valiantly to maintain the status quo and try (through ceremony) to reassure themselves and create the impression that they are succeeding by their own agency - but they're just riding the currents like everyone else.
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But it is you and not Lorde that has suggested that the state attacking people is "active" and "conscious" and therefore a conspiracy theory. In many cases it is not conscious, it is unconscious, for example with insititutional racism.

Similarly the lower life expectancies for people who live in shit housing or areas with worse air pollution.

These are not just things that happen, like the sun rising. But similarly there is not some supervillian character, sitting there rubbing his hands with glee because his dastardly masterplan to disproportionally stop and search black youth has been successful. But these things do happen, and people are victims of them through no fault of their own.

I think Lorde is correct in emphasising self-care as radical for people who are at the sharp end. Especially so because there are many unhealthy outlets for the trauma that comes with being in that situation.
 
W

wg-

°
QAnon Shaman seems to me an Eddie Bravo from the Joe Rogan podcasts type, but without the difficult nu-metal 00s that hanging around in his past
 
version

version

Well-known member
If the kind of stuff Bernays was talking about is all bollocks, how do we explain something like the changing attitudes to smoking over the years? Surely both its uptake and gradual decline are victories of advertising and propaganda?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
luka said:
alastaircampbell.org

The most important book you have never heard of, may explain Rees-Mogg love of hard Brexit

Before I tell you about an important book I have recently read (my piece for this week’s New European,) let me first make sure you’re aware of this excellent article in the paper from BBC veteran Gavin Esler. It has had one of the biggest responses to any piece we have run. Alone, it justifies […]
alastaircampbell.org alastaircampbell.org

Here it is
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What this demonstrates is that the very best way to learn about and understand the world is to be concerned solely with making money.
 
shiels

shiels

_
version said:
If the kind of stuff Bernays was talking about is all bollocks, how do we explain something like the changing attitudes to smoking over the years? Surely both its uptake and gradual decline are victories of advertising and propaganda?
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It's not all bollocks, its effective. but in terms of its scale of influence and efficiency or its claim on the truth its also self-perpetuating, a well marketed, well told story. like psychoanalysis!

just because the brexit swinging world domination story about cambridge analytica was overblown and benefited the company doesnt mean their ads didnt work
 
version

version

Well-known member
shiels said:
It's not all bollocks, its effective. but in terms of its scale of influence and efficiency or its claim on the truth its also self-perpetuating, a well marketed, well told story. like psychoanalysis!
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Surely that's just further evidence of it working then if its able to market itself so effectively using its own techniques?
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
luka said:
Barry sent me an article by, by, alistair Campbell saying Rees Mogg snr actually is a genius and they are all following his script
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I'm sure I've mentioned a few times the (excellent) Alms For Oblivion series by Simon Raven. Kind of like a Dance to the Music of Time it's ten short books about a series of characters who begin at private school, go to university and then spread out across the empire and end up running the army, the government and so on. A lot of the characters are based on his school fellows at Charterhouse and so on and virtually all of them are utter utter bastards. Arguably the very nastiest of the whole shower of bastards is a vicious lying git called Somerset Lloyd-James who is based on - you guessed it - Rees Mogg snr.
In one of his entertaining memoirs, Simon Raven describes the panic Rees-Mogg created at Charterhouse when he spread the rumour that masturbation caused syphilis in a priggish attempt to stamp out solitary vice. Rees-Mogg also appears in Raven’s novels as a character called Somerset Lloyd-James who, under a mask of moral rectitude, climbs the greasy pole to power .
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