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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36193 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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Paul Pelosi, husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D), was assaulted in their San Francisco home by a hammer-wielding man early on Friday.

CNN, citing a source, reported that the assailant shouted "Where is Nancy?" before the attack and told police he was "waiting for Nancy" when they arrived at the scene.

I'm reminded of the Congressional baseball shooting in 2017, where six people were shot, including U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R).

I don't have anything intelligent to add. Just curious on your thoughts, if any.

The suspect is a green party voter and nudist activist, I don't think he fits easily into national party boxes.

Not national party boxes, but "Green Party voter some years ago, nudist activists, generally hippy-dippy, now posting Mike Lindell and conspiracy theorist stuff" would fit him quite well to new-ager-to-far-right-within-last-two-years QAnon/antivaxx pipeline box.

Question then is how the hell he got to QAnon from Green Party.

Marin County is an antivax stronghold, yo. There is more than one kind of Democratic voter.

It’s where RFK, Jr. holds luncheons about autism at wineries.

Like I said, there's a very clear pipeline with more than a few treaders. You're active in various hippy-dippy New Age circles, which are probably amenable to conspiracy theories and other "occult knowledge", as well as alternative medicine types, anti-vaxx thinking, general health contrarianism, suspicious of mainstream parties etc.

The conspiracy theory mindset might already make you somewhat amenable to QAnon (which has always had more than a bit of a New Age vibe with its talk of Great Awakening etc.) before Covid hits, but Covid, at the latest, flips you firmly against the consensus mindset that sees Ivermectin, hydrocloroquine and other alternative treatments as bad and lockdowns particularly vaccines as the only solution. Within the American context, pretty much the only option that remains is the conspiracy-oriented far right. Everything else just comes with the territory then.

The kind of alt medicine is meaningfully different though- instead of essential oils and chakras the conspiracy right is advocating, basically, offlabel uses of legit medicine.

In my experience, the altmed crowd is pretty flexible about this, ie. "anything goes as long as it's not conventional". And I've myself tracked a number of local health mommy / healing crystal types drifting steadily towards rightwards during/due to the COVID period, it's not just a theoretical movement.

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