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PaperclipPerfector  12hr ago (text post)   1145 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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Netanyahu Conspiracy Theories on X and Mark Levin as MAGA

Quick rundown:

  • Netanyahu has had no public appearances since March 9th, leading to huge speculation on X that Netanyahu is dead, there are a couple different theories for which strike killed him.
  • Netanyahu's son tweeted an average of something like 20-30 tweets a day up until March 9th, and then did not send a single Tweet until today- anomalous.
  • Netanyahu was not present at the past two Security Council meetings he almost always leads, which is anomalous.
  • The first "public appearance" by Netanyahu was a pre-recorded coffee shop visit released yesterday where he mocked the rumors of his death. Not good enough for many X users who scoured the video trying to find proof of AI creation, none of the evidence of that I found compelling.
  • The second "public appearance" by Netanyahu was another pre-recorded video released by his X account of talking to some citizens in the countryside.
  • The video released today does have a very suspicious element, the wedding ring on his left finger disappears entirely within a single frame and then reappears seconds later. This is clearly visible in the original video too, not just that edit. Some attribute this to filtering, I can't attest to that and in my own videos with filtering I've never seen a total disappearance of an object like that.

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:

Mark Levin, a truly Great American Patriot, is somewhat under siege by other people with far less Intellect, Capability, and Love for our Country... When you hear others unfairly attack Mark, remember that they are jealous and angry Human Beings, whose "sway" is much less than the Public understands, and will, not that they know where I stand, rapidly diminish. Other than for his wonderful wife and family, Mark Levin only cares and wants one thing, GREATNESS AND SUCCESS FOR AMERICA! Those that speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside, as do the people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound. THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM...

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:

The president, right here, is doing the BRAVEST thing that I’ve ever seen an American president do when it comes to foreign policy

MAGA is not dead, it's the rebranded neo-conservatism. The movement has been subsumed.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Often we see arguments against censorship or abuse of power that go like "imagine what happens if the other side did this to us?" with the idea that the only/main issue of censorship is an external threat. Rather I think the main threat is internal, the abuse of power that makes people think "well maybe that one is ok, I didnt like the victims anyway" that normalizes, and more importantly, empowers the abuse.

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.

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.

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.

different strategy they are pursuing by keeping Netanyahu out of the limelight for some reason

An easy guess would be that they feel US commitment it secure at the moment, and full focus on Trump thrashing and babbling moves the public perception towards this being just a blunder of a demented old man.

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