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Notes -
Netanyahu Conspiracy Theories on X and Mark Levin as MAGA
Quick rundown:
Needless to say, the evidence provided has not dissuaded the rumors on X. I do not think Netanyahu is dead or severely injured, but these anomalies do warrant an explanation.
Why has Netanyahu not had any sort of public presence since March 9th that would be expected from a wartime leader? During the 12-Day War he maintained a public presence and even toured damage sites from missiles and took questions. But now the first time he appears in public in quite some time is is in a pre-recorded video to mock the rumors of his death in a coffee shop?
The easiest answer for the lack of public presence is due to security concerns. But it seems pretty trivial to me for a leader like Netanyahu to maintain a public presence with very low risk, and that risk would certainly be worthy of the benefits of moralizing the Homefront and projecting confidence.
I suspect the reason for this is because Netanyahu wants Trump to be the "face" of the war- several times a day you can see Trump on the News babbling to the media about the war attracting huge amounts of attention, while we can't spare a penny for Netanyahu's own thoughts or leadership at a time it would be expected. In particular, while Trump is clearly trying to muster NATO to join the war, it would be wise for Netanyahu to be far away from weighing in on that question or publicly supporting it because it would do more harm than good.
I do not see how traditional video touchups or filtering would cause the wedding ring to disappear like it did in the video released today, any video editing experts feel free to weigh in. Barring some "yeah I edit videos all the time and I've seen this before", the most likely explanation is that the ring disappearance was a video manipulation, but one intended to misdirect the critics on X- give them a bone to chew on with a false lead.
Mark Levin is MAGA, his critics are not
Rewind to 2016, Mark Levin was an avowed Never-Trumper while the alt-right essentially memed Trump into existence against all expectations. The tables have turned, if it was not already clear what side Trump was on in this feud between the Shapiro/Levin wing of MAGA and the online Right (tbh it was already clear), Trump has picked sides unambiguously:
So there you have it, MAGA has been subsumed, the 2016 alt-right energy that propelled Trump into office is out, hopefully the "plan trusters" now can stop pretending otherwise. For its part Fox News is unsurprisingly 100% behind the war, today they had on another 2016 never-Trumper Ben Shapiro, who gave Trump's Iran War an A+ grade and remarked:
MAGA is not dead, it's the rebranded neo-conservatism. The movement has been subsumed.
To me this sudden speculation about Netanyahu's death is a fairly transparent attempt by the usual suspects to distract from the far more credible reports that the younger Khamenei was either killed or seriously injured in the series of strikes that took out the elder Khamenei and that Iran is effectively without a "supreme leader" at this time.
In any case it is neither here nor there, if the IRGC were able to seriously disrupt or threaten the US or Israel's chains of command I imagine we'd be seeing something a bit more substantial than pseudonymous musings on X, and if Netanyahu or Khamenei (or Trump for that matter) really is dead I expect we'll find out one way or the other in a few weeks.
In the meantime Iran has gone from launching 500+ missiles and drones in the first 24 hours of the war to averaging around 125 launches a day for the week of March 2nd and 32 a day in the week of March 9th. I seen a lot of speculation (again from the usual suspects) how how this apparent decline is a product of Iran trying to draw the Jews and the Americans in so that they can win a decisive battle, but I think it's far more likely that they've shot their load.
As for the rest, the Alt-right has always had a vastly overinflated perception of their own importance. Believing that Trump/MAGA was "memed into existence" by edge-lords posting on 4-Chan requires one to be entirely ignorant of the preceding 8 - 10 years of GOP internal politics. It was only "unexpected" to those who were not paying attention.
Excuse me, but to borrow your own phrasing - who do you think it is that threw the Trump brick through the window? The GOP boomer wine moms wanted someone with decorum like Cruz, Trump's online base of meme-brained young voters wanting politics to mean something was a core part of converting the GOP lifers.
A coalition of Tea-Partiers, Federalists, and disenfranchised "Bernie-Bro" (economically liberal but socially conservative) working class Democrats.
Also what the fuck did I just watch?
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The Strait of Hormuz is closed with no clear path to opening, Dubai International Airport is shut down, maintaining ~30 missiles a day is enough for mass economic disruption and disruption to daily life. The copium about Iran running out of missiles every day hasn't happened. We've gone from "We've won" to "We're winning" to "Please Help open the Strait" in 3 weeks.
Marcus Crassus fought the Persians (technically Parthians) at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. His strategy was to wait for the Persians to run out of arrows before attacking with his infantry. But it turned out the Persians were being resupplied with camels, so the Romans attacked, and suffered one of their worst defeats in history. Crassus himself was killed during subsequent negotiations to end the fighting. Legend has it that the Parthians poured molten gold down his throat to mock his greed.
It certainly cannot be attributed to the Jewish Zionist wing that now owns MAGA like Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, given that they opposed it in 2016. I think it's delusional to think Trump would have won without the "meme magic" that constantly went viral on the Internet and basically defined his image/aesthetic, but in any case it was a far greater part of the creation of that movement than the people that actively opposed it at the time but now claim they define it. Chutzpah.
Tehran announcing that the straights have been closed is a very different state from no ships transiting the straights. Looking at Marine Traffic, Lloyds List, and various other logistics industry trade sites what appears to be happening is the the Euros are spooked and staying in port, the Gulf States are running dark (IE turning of their transponders), and the Chinese are ignoring the announcement but given that most of their tonnage is bound for Iranian ports anyway that is to be expected.
And again. believing that Trump/MAGA was "memed into existence" by edge-lords posting on 4-Chan requires one to be entirely ignorant of the preceding 8 - 10 years of GOP internal politics.
As I said, what Trump did was accurately identify key fault lines that cut across large swaths of both the conservative and corporate sides of the Republican electorate as well as many former Democrats who'd been alienated by the national party's embrace of Id-Pol and then build a coalition around it. The Bernie-Bro to Trump-Stan pipeline flipped more votes than any on the Alt-Right could have ever dreamed of and that is a large part of why the Alt Right is on the outside. They are not the target constituency, they never were.
I swear I feel like I'm the only one with a 10-year memory. Identity Politics reached peak during Donald Trump. BLM and all of its fallout and cultural Great Awokening was during Trump's first term. In 2016 he ran on Immigration restrictionism, which resonated with dissident elements who then turned all of his leadership faults into funny internet memes that went viral incessantly during the 2016 campaign, to the point Reddit had to eventually ban his subreddit. Trump's 2016 campaign was not an anti-idpol coalition, it was fundamentally a nativist movement. The Zionist wing of the GOP picked up on that energy, which is why they called themselves "Never-Trumpers" and opposed the movement, at least until he proved his worth and now they say they define the movement and all the "nativists" who are skeptical of another war for Israel are not MAGA.
Now, the 2024 campaign was more of an anti-idpol coalition, but by this point more discerning observers knew that MAGA was being subsumed by the interests that have brought us exactly where we are today, and "anti-idpol" was a Trojan Horse to move the chess pieces to achieve this war with Iran and the purge of the actual nativists.
Again the reason the Alt Right is on the outside is that they were not the target constituency, they never were.
I think that you are engaging for the common affluent liberal fallacy of assuming that the you opponents have been somehow manipulated into voting against their own interests to salve your own ego rather than consider the possibility that they have their own reasons and interests that are different from yours.
If you mean zionist elements in his close political orbit then sure. Normiecons didn't outplay shit, they dance to the same tune, but that's pretty much it.
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I dunno, man. I am entirely sympathetic to the American normie populist right, in no way see them as inferior, and the reason I think Trump is being puppeteered, is that he jumped head-first into an idiotic war that he explicitly campaigned against, and which is exclusively in the interest of Israel and against the interest of the normie populist right.
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Trump is right, MAGA is Trump. He created the whole political movement. The broader alt-right was inchoate and without any opportunity before Trump gave it form.
It’s actually the failure of the alt right that Trump is in power and they can’t get more of what they want. Remember that Scott Adams meme about how Democrats successfully branded Trump as Hitler, then Hitler won? Time for reflection. Mark Levin opposed Trump, now Trump likes him. Time for some reflection.
What I mean is, these impotent Twitter squabbles actually don’t mean anything. The broad base of MAGA still supports Trump and the Republican Party loves Trump. The people braying that Trump has betrayed them, however influential they might be in the small world of right-wing New York / SF influencers — don’t matter. Objectively they don’t matter because Trump has no compunctions about disappointing them. He doesn’t think about them at all. Mark Levin apparently does matter because Trump is thinking about him.
The alt-right is not why Trump won in 2016 at all. It is simply what was easiest for this insular media ecosystem to write about. Insofar as that definition of “MAGA” died it died a long time ago when Milo got canceled for being a pervert and Bannon got fired for leaking like a sieve. But again that’s not what actually matters.
This plan truster is very happy thank you very much.
I'd argue that the alt-right played the important but indirect role of eliciting tendencies from Trump's opposition that were self-radicalizing and self-defeating.
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80% of 2024 Trump voters apparently support the Iran bombing, so "MAGA is Trump" is pretty spot on. The Iran bombing, Epstein files (which I'm incredibly skeptical of) and Trump's undying love for Israel don't seem to put a dent on his popularity with MAGA.
FWIW I'm a Trump supporter and it would take quite a lot for him to lose my support. The reason is very simple: I can sense that the Left has a great deal of hostility and contempt towards, men, white people, and especially white men. And these wokies on the Left have a lot of sway over the Democratic party. Trump is anti-woke, or at least about as anti-woke as one could reasonably hope for.
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Consider the personality and lifestyle of a person who sees a poll in the mail and (1) doesn’t think it’s a scam, (2) trusts institutions, (3) wants their opinion heard by an institution, (4) has the time and interest to answer polls. (WaPo uses SSRS polling which recruits by mailers). This is selecting for (1) the least skeptical Americans, who are more likely to buy-in to propagated narratives, (2) the least independent-thinking of Americans, who trust institutions, (3) the most “authority-pleasing” dispositional types, who are interested in feeling validated by participating in a civic ritual, and (4) the people at home the most with fewer obligations, thus more likely to watch the news.
I don’t know, apparently I am the only person in the world who thinks this kind of polling must be insanely inaccurate due to the infeasibility of polling and determining the personality traits of the very people who would never answer a poll. Everyone seems to trust polling. But I strongly feel that the skeptical and distrusting American will see a poll and throw it away, and that the most “online” American will not go through the trouble of doing a poll. (I am him and he is me). I will die on this hill and if polled my opinion on the hill I will throw away the mailer.
This isn't how all modern polling is done, FYI. My understanding is that a lot of modern polling is compensated, and done online.
We know most modern polling isn't insanely inaccurate because we can track the polling from the past few presidential cycles. Plenty of major polls are off enough to matter, but in knife-fight presidential campaigns a tenth of a percent matters, and because of the Electoral College, gen-pop polling isn't necessarily helpful as to who will win the election. But once you start seeing polls that say "80% X" you generally shouldn't be thinking "well the numbers are actually flipped it's just that they are mostly polling the 20%."
What you should do is look carefully at their sampling methodology and how they phrased the question(s).
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It's not just polling. So much of social science relies on surveys with usually no verification if people are being honest. Which we know they aren't because people often answer what they feel they should be doing, or would like to be doing rather than what they are. See reported vs actual Church attendance. Not to mention so much social science is based solely on WEIRDs who are fairly atypical compared to the average person.
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Well Trump did run on a platform of 'America First' and 'no new wars in the Middle East, in fact Kamala is the one who'll start wars'...
It's like how in the UK, people were voting for Brexit as part of a way to reduce immigration. Then Boris ramped immigration way up. And so now the Tory Party is gone, effectively wiped off the map just after winning a huge electoral victory under a populist platform. Farage is clearly trying to do the same thing, there is this elaborate misdirection about his real agenda and priorities, he wants to get Poles out and bring more Indians in, to neutralize anti-immigration sentiment, he certainly has no problem with Islam... That's what Brexit was really about in his mind, a dog and pony show for the rubes to persuade them that they were being listened to.
Being a populist is easy, you just have to follow through on your promises and give your voters what they want. You've adeptly explained the 'make promises and then betray promises' part. The next arc coming up is 'get shown the door by voters'. Populism is a reaction against politicians who make all these promises and then renege on them.
All Trump had to do is what he said - mass deportations, cutting leftist grifting to dry up the NGO blob, avoiding foreign wars. Not hard! But instead he shows his real priorities - slavish obedience to the latest batch of Israeli 'intelligence' and all the shady Shapiros, Levins and Kushners in his inner circle.
Trump has done more to follow through on his promises to voters than any president in memory. Immigration tariffs deportations taxes emissions regulations vaccine mandates Paris climate accords government layoffs birthright citizenship. He pardoned the J6ers, he moved our Israeli embassy. This is the first net-negative period of migration in fifty years. Like it or not this is what it looks like when Trump keeps his promises — mostly it looks like the base likes it. Which isn’t just to appeal to popularity but to say there is a fairly simple measure of whether Trump’s voters feel betrayed. They do not.
If you think Trump is taking Israeli intelligence over American intelligence you have crazy priors about what is going on in the Oval Office.
He didn't listen to General Caine who warned about all the obvious flaws in the 'bomb Iran' approach that Trump is now discovering the hard way. Someone must've been telling him it would be easy, Iran was about to collapse.
The Israelis have been shovelling out that same old story about Iran being a few months away from a nuclear bomb, they've been going on about that for decades now. But Trump still buys it, he went on about how they were going to get a nuke and would've if he didn't stop them. US intelligence is much more cautious about this.
You can follow through on 99 promises but if you renege and do the opposite on a high profile promise and can't explain why (Israel was going to strike first, the nuclear weapons that weren't actually being made), it can easily outweigh whatever promises you do make. Especially if it raises oil prices and induces a recession.
We are two weeks into a war and you are declaring that Trump must be blind to “obvious flaws” because Iran hasn’t totally collapsed. Get some perspective. If Trump wanted to we could bomb Iran back to the Stone Age by destroying all their electrical infrastructure. Meanwhile, we are sitting at home.
Trump has always promised to fight Iran and so far this is not another Iraq Forever War.
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All of the energy behind Trump originally came from the “alt right”, who created the memes that boosted his popularity in the first place. They were fighting the likes of Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin. I remember the exact moment when he spoke about Mexican immigration in unadorned speech and how that immediately turned up the support 10x. MAGA is Trump if we’re talking copyright but the nationalism obviously preceded him. You had to be there. The nationalist current began at least four years before Trump’s elections.
He’s on Fox News. That’s pretty much it. Unfortunately he is 80 years old. We had a guy on Fox News, they got rid of him, but now Tucker has his own show. This does allows Tucker to continue the true “alt right” spirit though. We will see where we end up over the next decade, if it looks more like the original MAGA vision or the Mark Levin vision.
I see no organic support for Trump online. I think midterms will tell. I think there are those like myself who will be voting straight D.
I was there before anyone, I was there from escalator day and faced a lot of doubters and social consequence. The arguments I could recount… The nationalist current was formless. It was there but it had no shape. In Britain it arrived in Brexit and then was squandered for ten years because there was no other figure or leader to champion it — look at Britain for an idea of where America could be without Trump, look to Britain for an idea of what “squandering MAGA” would actually mean.
I don’t really believe this “Trump gets everything from Fox News” meme mostly spread by left-wing journalists painting a picture of Trump the simpleton. (By other accounts he consumes a lot of news in all forms.)
However that’s not really my point; if Trump does just get all his idea direct from Fox News, then it’s a failure of the alt-right not to fight for it. Who’s in the editing rooms, who’s in scheduling? Ten years on the feeling is that Fox is basically no better no worse than it used to be — well at least we still have shitposts and memes!
Tucker is a grifter and not a very successful role model for how a political movement should function.
Well if you support unlimited immigration and Minneapolis daycare fraud and never arresting criminals on the trains I don’t really trust your opinions on the original MAGA spirit.
Fox and people like Levin are dying out; viewer average age is 65. And Levin would not allow any genuine MAGA person in his newsroom. It’s just unfortunately not something MAGA can change. This is entrenched media which we always hated. MAGA never cared about Fox.
Tucker was the most popular Fox show, so it worked with Tucker, for a while, until he was fired. Now he is on x: 18 million views on his Nick Fuentes interview on x, 7 million on YouTube, while Levin is lucky to get 4,000 views on his YouTube channel and 150,000 views on his Fox videos. Tucker’s video on Iran is 4.5x the views of Levin, which is insane when you remember that all Levin does is fearmonger Iran to his audience averaging 65yo. But none of that matters because it’s Trump’s favorite show. The Alt Right has no avenue to influence the 80yo Trump like that, they just have to create propaganda and wait it out.
Genuinely makes no sense. What is he grifting? What does grifting even mean to you?
Ok yeah MAGA is weak and powerless Trump has betrayed us you’re right all we can do is post on Twitter. The key thing is that this explanation absolves us of having to do anything differently, because if it were the case that Trump isn’t beyond influencing and we gave up for nothing boy that would be a shame
Well there’s a lot you can do if you support MAGA. You can rally behind its new figures (Tucker, Fuentes, Fishback). You can make propaganda. You can start an organization, for the purposes of propaganda. You can create art, for propaganda. (I really think everything just comes down to propaganda). You can boycott things, and get people to boycott things. Things are decided by money and opinion: get the money, change the opinion. You can ensure that your money only goes to Americans with a pure allegiance, and you can change opinions. The strategy of “spend a decade in the Fox News room for the small chance to persuade Mark Levin” is just not realistic.
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The disappearance is unusual but I think it’s very hard to hide the death of a world leader for a long period of time, there are too many internal factions who hear word and start posturing. In addition, who can forget the approximately one million times Putin has allegedly died in secret over the last decade according to tabloid rumor. In addition, keeping news of Netanyahu’s death secret wouldn’t serve even his relatively close political allies, since if anything it would rally people to their cause and Israeli morale in this conflict doesn’t depend on Netanyahu’s life at all, they largely believe it’s about life and death for all of them. Lastly, Iran has not successfully killed many senior Israeli officials, while even Soleimani’s assassination alone made successful Israeli targeted killing claims much more believable whether or not the state confirmed someone’s death.
For the record, I think Netanyahu is laying low, trying to avoid saying something provocative because he knows this war will end when Trump decides it does, and concentrating on eliminating Hezbollah in Lebanon as much as possible, which seems like Israel’s primary focus in this war.
And I think Mojtaba is probably alive. The Telegraph suggested he was injured but is alive. He may not be particularly lucid (I doubt he is vegetative), but I suspect he is alive and has at leas a chance of recovering; there were other supreme leader candidates living and a hereditary succession was not uncontroversial.
They definitely can't keep it secret for a long period of time, but probably long enough for a severe escalation to put things past the point of no return. IF he is dead and they are trying to keep it secret, I suspect there's going to be a huge escalation, maybe an attack on Iranian infrastructure or worse. I do think Netanyahu's death would be a potential de-escalatory turning point because it gives the Iranians a powerful symbol to declare victory and return to the negotiating table. And the Israeli power vacuum could cause the US to hesitate, not to mention potential US allies and the Gulf States. If he is actually dead, and Israel wants to escalate, I do think they have a motive to keep it secret. Israel's desire for escalation is suggested by their attack on the Iranian Oil storage facilities, which kicked off the ongoing price volatility in oil markets.
But I agree by far more likely is laying low to avoid provocation and denunciation by potential allies. But then there's Ben-Gvir, who has also been notably absent. So something is going on there, there's a reason this is happening.
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It's ironic. The conspiracy theory would be valid if it were applied to another person instead : Mojtaba Khamenei
Iran's new Supreme Leader is either maimed, on his death bed, or already dead.
He hasn't made a public appearance since his appointment, in person or on video. We know that he was injured in some capacity. There are plausible-ish reports that he has been flown over to Russia for emergency medical care.
Frankly, Netanyahu's death would be a nothing burger when compared to Trump or the Khamenei family's death. It would also be impossible to hide given the democratic nature of Israel. The attacks on Iran have unanimous support from Jews in Israel (~93% approval). Netanyahu would be replaced by a caretaker govt, with a Likud placeholder, Yair Lapid, or Benny Gantz as a temporary face. The attacks would continue.
Before Oct 7th, Israel had a diverse political landscape spanning everything from the far left to the far right. Oct 7th collapsed the Overton window to only tolerate the center-to-center right. That's it. Unlike the decades prior, Netanyahu's actions have bipartisan support and a new leader would merely change the pace of Israel's offensive, not much else. The war is a foregone conclusion.
Lastly, the gulf states and the US now have more at stake than Israel. Rising oil prices will decide Trump's midterm fate, and he risks looking like a loser if he pulls out early. After Iran's drone tantrum, the gulf is now brought into Israel's framing of Iran's military capabilities as an existential threat. They will want Iran's nuclear efforts and dirty weapons manufacturing capacities to stay dismantled for good.
Actually I thought another Star Wars quote was more appropriate here:
“The attempt on my life has left me scarred and deformed. But, I assure you, my resolve has never been stronger! In order to ensure the piety and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Islamic Empire! For a safe and halal society” (thunderous applause)
—Mojtaba Khamenei, probably
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Like 8 guys in front him for succession all got immediately killed. It seems likely he is laying low so that he doesn't similarly get to see some cool top secret American military technology first hand.
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So why did they pick him? It seems like such an odd thing to do. I mean, some scarring, fine, "disfigured, vengeful, homosexual Ayatollah" is a pretty funny villain for a Saturday morning cartoon. But if he's dying or dead, why not just pick someone else? Unless the USA got him right after he was picked, but then the USA would tell us the particular strike I would think? They were saying he was dead before it was confirmed he was even picked.
The only Islamic group to defeat the US was the Taliban; they may simply be taking inspiration from Mullah Omar in picking a reclusive leader with severe war injuries.
Good strategy to imitate the Taliban, now if only they could raise the perception that their enemies excuse child molesters in their midst...
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I think it's a pretty funny thing to do if you are tired of the US assassinating your leadership.
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Is Bowen Yang still on SNL? I can't wait for the poorly-closeted Ayatollah Weekend Update sketch.
Lindsey Graham forces us into a war with the gay Ayatollah, Schearer said something about how the Roehm era S.A. was riven by the kind of bitter interpersonal strife only possible among homosexuals.
Heftige Rivalität, soon on Netflix.
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What's Andy Samberg doing these days?
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He was unable to step back when they asked for volunteers. They knew the person with the title would have a target on their back.
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Supposedly his dad was adamantly against him taking over, possibly for being gay, possibly for being an idiot.
Maybe the coma is a feature not a bug - he makes a decent figurehead, while being too incapacitated to attempt to actually rule, while also being totally expendable. Same logic as electing Biden, and it fits with the "mosaic" approach.
Yeah I guess I've never had the most sophisticated military in history targeting me, but it seems shortsighted to pick a guy you will need to replace later. Coaching changes always produce instability.
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It's not really ironic, because I and others do believe in a high likelihood that Khamenei is dead or severely injured also due to the lack of public presence typically shown by a wartime leader.
You want irony, I saw some IDF guy on Fox News earlier today float the theory Khamenei is dead, and he actually said the Iranians should release a video of him to prove he's not dead... it was literally like he was saying "we released the Coffee Shop video to prove Netanyahu isn't dead, what do you have Khamenei?" It's a strange situation.
Of course Twitter uses proceeded to AI generate a video of Khamenei in the exact same coffee shop scene replacing Netanyahu, pretty funny warfare nowadays.
If we go in with no priors, then the situations can seem somewhat similar.
However that is not the case. In real life, we know Mossad knows where and when substantial portions of Iranian leadership takes a piss. On the other hand, we also know that Iran and the IRGC's best plan is typically to try and shoot as much shit as they can in the general direction of an Israeli airbase to hopefully kill a few pilots and temporarily take a runway offline.
I think this is true, which is why I don't see how security concerns would be the reason for Netanyahu's total absence in his public-facing role. He can do meetings and pressers and meet-and-greets! The Iranian leaders actually can't. So why hasn't he done any public engagement like that, at all, for a week?
Could be some unrelated medical issue. The guy is 76.
For the record, if it turns out Netanyahu has died there is no information, medical records, doctor testimony, audio, video that could convince me it was a poorly timed medical event rather than an Iranian attack haha.
The sheer Larry David-esque humor potential would greatly bolster the "dankest timeline" hypothesis.
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Back circa 2011-12 I speculated that if Obama wanted to win in such an incredible landslide that Dems could get back to close to their 2008 landslide would be to basically go away. The theory was that, in my opinion, "Fake Obama" aka the person who didn't really have policy positions and just had really good posters saying "Hope and Change" was much more popular than the real Obama. This is obviously true for Israel. Netanyahu is reviled by Europeans, so much that they have brought a bunch of pseudo-real criminal prosecutions against him for warcrimes of dubious veracity. If, instead, generic Israel is seen as a second tier actor in this war, they can default back to something like being 20% underwater instead of 30-40% in those areas.
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I've talked previously on here about how exclusionary groups expand the enemy list to previous neutrals or allies and this new MAGA v America First schism is just another example.
We see this now with say, Brandon Carr. All the abuse of FCC powers he used to "own the libs" is now being used to threaten anti war speech. The "woke left" was well known to "eat their own" and have people who are otherwise left treading carefully to not speak out of line or else the same cancelling mechanisms could be used on them.
Purge powers are a powerful tool, and the types of people who are prone to use and abuse that tool won't just stop at your enemies, they're perfectly happy to use it on you too when you step out of line. Even the best and most loyal allies of Putin or Xi Jinping or Kim Jong Un aren't allowed much room to disagree.
Which is why I've always argued for trying to limit usage instead of getting "revenge" with purges and censorship, it just further accelerates your own future oppression when you become a traitor for disagreement.
How is the MAGA v America First schism an example of that though?
The real story is the Ziocons weren't with Trump in 2016, they didn't create the movement, but after his ascendancy they found him pliable and then they took over the movement and purged the anti-semites. The end. I don't see the lesson you are proposing here.
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They're creating the appearance that he was killed, without having to falsely claim he was, for some psyop reason. I can't see why though.
It’s not for the Iranians, who won’t comment until it’s confirmed (in the hypothetical situation in which it’s true). I always thought the occasional Putin disappearances were in part about seeing who seemed to move suspiciously fast or ask a lot of questions during a leader’s unexplained absence, but Netanyahu doesn’t have close to that power even now after almost as many years in power. In a way, I think @SecureSignals is probably directionally correct. I don’t think it’s about US or even NATO public opinion, though, I think it’s about the Gulf and the Arab world. There are people who can politically withstand going to war in partnership with America, but not with Israel. If Israel fades into the background, the former becomes more likely.
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Maybe they’re conspiracy baiting? All of the people who would otherwise be making incisive arguments about why exactly this war is in Israel’s interest but not America’s are now wasting their time arguing about irrelevant bullshit like whether or not Netanyahu is dead.
I think they are definitely conspiracy baiting, I proposed that as the explanation for the "disappearing ring" but I don't feel fully explains Netanyahu's leadership strategy here... it's more of an addon misdirection to a different strategy they are pursuing by keeping Netanyahu out of the limelight for some reason.
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