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PaperclipPerfector  13hr ago (text post)   1483 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.

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.

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