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Both sides' independent media pundits are captured by conspiracy theories because they pay the bills. This is just the new normal, not something that Kirk especially sowed in his career. The admin failed to use his death in a productive way, and we don't know why.
To me, Tyler's motives, to the extent that we've understood them, are more personally motivated rather than political. Of course they're political too, but he strikes me as someone who was protecting the honor of his partner more than he was sending a political message. Why not go for Trump instead?
It seems to be hard to react to these kinda things for modern conservative movements. Australia's Bondi Beach shooting has definitely moved the overton window electorally, but actual investigation/outcomes seem to be less than zero for conservative causes, since even ideas around increasing investigation into radical groups just led to immediately trying to use them on Australian Far Right groups rather than really censuring the Islamic community.
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Conspiracism isn't nearly as big of an issue on the Left today compared to the Right. At least not without sneakily changing the definition of a conspiracy theory to "partisan fact I disagree with", which is different.
What's your source for these claims?
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Antisemitism, with all the conspiracy theories and blood libel that implies, is more openly practised on the left than it has been for decades. The sitting mayor of New York City openly claims that the NYPD have only committed police brutality because they were trained to by the IDF. The New York Times uncritically ran an opinion piece claiming, with no real evidence, that the IDF trains dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. Leftists are disproportionately likely to claim that the October 7th attacks were false flags, or that most of the civilians were actually killed by the IDF as part of the Hannibal doctrine. Leftists seem just as likely as groypers to believe the specific conspiracy theory that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent, and that the only reason for continued support for Israel among American politicians is because Mossad is blackmailing them using footage secretly filmed on Epstein's island.
Outside of Jew-hatred, American leftists are disproportionately likely to believe that a literal genocide of trans people is either imminent or already ongoing. They believe that numerous people have been successfully acquitted of killings they admitted to committing using the "trans panic" defense. Some would not characterise the BLM narrative as a conspiracy theory, but I think it bears a strong enough familial resemblance to be considered an honorary member at the bare minimum.
Obviously, there's the whole Russiagate thing. Many leftists believe that the assassination attempt against Trump was staged.
Many popular conspiracy theories (the moon landings were faked, vaccines cause autism, JFK was killed by the government) are equally popular among Democrats as Republicans.
I think conspiracy theories are at least as much of a problem on the American left as on the American right. The average American believes that at least one of the last three Presidential elections was illegitimate.
I dislike Mamdani but I've never heard him claim that before so I double checked it
I think it bad faith to assume it the way you do. There is an Israeli-NYPD partnership, this is verifiable fact. He did not say the boot of NYPD is only the IDF, as you claim, just that it was "laced" by them. Even in the literal reading of the analogy, laces are only a part of a shoe so the reading of "only" doesn't work there either.
As another comment pointed out, this isn't a conspiracy so much as it is The Worst Argument In The World. Most leftists I've talked to and see online don't believe the death camps are starting up anytime soon, just that legal discrimination/banning of hormones/etc will happen. They're talking about things like federal government officials drawing up plans to ban trans people from the 2nd amendment.
I agree that it's wrong to call it a genocide, but it's not a conspiracy theory to misuse words! Same way I disagree with the unfair and human rights abusing treatment of Ughyurs being labeled genocide for there has not been a mass death of them, but someone considering their treatment as genocidal is not a conspiracy. I just think they're too loose with the term and should not call it that.
That's somewhat a conspiracy theory, but Trump is also openly friendly with Putin and there's plenty of strong evidence that Russia tries to influence our elections. Any conspiracy theory there is just in how much Trump/Trump allies could have engaged in open collusion.
Good job, you found an unequivocal actual conspiracy theory.
I'll be more willing to believe that once a Democrat anti vaxxer runs the HHS.
Bro, Mamdani has certainly toned down his rhetoric since he became mayor, but how else do you interpret that line about the IDF lacing the NYPD's boots? He was, at the very least, gesturing towards Da Joos and implying Israeli training was responsible for police brutality, and he's too smart not to know what he was implying.
I personally know trans people who genuinely believe that federal agencies are gearing up to start going after trans people, either to put them in camps or forcibly detransition them or maybe just arrest them for having the wrong gender on their driver's licenses.
And we've discussed many times here how many unarmed black people the average leftist believes are gunned down by police every month.
You can quibble over what the precise definition of "conspiracy theory" is, which strikes me as being about as useful as arguing about the legal definition of "genocide" wrt Gaza. But irrationality is definitely not limited to the right.
The same way I said, about the NYPD/Israeli partnership! I even checked the chatbots with the other guy who asked me to see if I'm out of line.
And what did I get?
Unless the chatbots are also trolling or something, this seems to be a fair way to interpret the comment.
The first one is obviously a conspiracy, these other ones are not.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/denton-county-rep-wants-to-institutionalize-transgender-people-23307423/
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2021-2022/billintroduced/House/htm/2022-HIB-6454.htm
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/28/nx-s1-5728969/kansas-revokes-drivers-licenses-of-hundreds-of-trans-people-prompted-by-new-law
Being wrong about that number does not allege a shadowy cabal behind such shootings.
First of all, I am really not a fan of "Ask ChatGPT to settle a debate." There are lots of reasons for that, and it's not because I don't think AI is useful for a lot of purposes. But AI is definitely not useful for impartially adjudicating subjective interpretations of culture war events and statements.
ChatGPT sort of gives it away with "I think the most charitable—and probably most accurate—" ChatGPT likes to be charitable. ChatGPT does not like to imply negative things about contemporary figures. A judgment like "probably most accurate" is purely the LLM churning out tokens in a most-probably-plausible response, not any actual reasoning or analysis by which it can tell you that this interpretation is "probably most accurate."
It's specific claim? "A metaphor for institutional influence"? What ... institution would be that, exactly? How does the IDF become "a metaphor for institutional influence"?
Come. On. Apply some actual critical thinking. Don't offload it to ChatGPT and say "Neener neener an LLM says I'm right and you're wrong!"
Yes they are. I am well aware that some states are passing laws requiring birth sex on driver's licenses. I figured you would bring it up. But that does not mean that federal agencies are preparing to conduct mass arrests of trans people who have the wrong sex on their driver's licenses. Yes, their current licenses were invalidated in Kansas and they have to get new licenses, and that sucks, but it's a leap, a stretch, a ballistic missile launch from "federal troops rounding up trans people."
A ban against transitioning children is not forcibly detransitioning people.
Congressman Ronny Jackson sounds like a crackpot. Let me know when he gets any traction outside of Newsmax.
I mean, come the fuck on. You are willing to give maximum charity to Mamdan's crack about the IDF lacing the NYPD's boots, accepting any interpretation other than the obvious one, while you want us to give full weight and seriousness to a Republican popping off on a radio show as if he's speaking for the federal government.
Right, so we're going to debate the nuances of what constitutes a "conspiracy theory." Fine, I'll grant it's not a modal example, but it certainly does allege that, not a shadowy cabal, but massive institutional power, is behind such shootings. Which seems at least "conspiracy-adjacent" to me.
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And here is your shtick — Zohran says something crazy conspiratorial and you try to argue around it.
What do you think Zohran meant by the IDF laced the boot on your neck? Don’t dance. Don’t pull a Darwin.
I opened up a new ChatGPT instance (without any history of my account) and literally asked it
And that's when I got back the response of no, it's not really accurate for the reasons I shared.
I also asked your question now.
Those are the only two messages I sent, go ahead and check the responses yourself if you want. Use only those two lines and in a new instance.
Do you think ChatGPT was also "pulling a Darwin" for having the same perfectly logical conclusion I came up with? If not, then don't accuse me of bad faith.
I think that you are Darwin, and that you are pulling a Darwin by asking ChatGPT, because only Darwin ever asks ChatGPT and thinks the result is of any use.
Not to get in the way of a good public lynching, but I occasionally ask ChatGPT to vet my argument here, or help me refine it by looking up example citations (Which I do check for correctness!)
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You're so right, literally no one else could possibly view AI to be useful as a reference. That's why all the AI companies are poor and failing, their employees are getting laid off, and fortune 500 CEOs are banning all AI usage from their workers.
The Darwin conspiracy goes deep, even Elon Musk is him! Terrence Tao too?, one of the smartest mathematicians in the world. Just how many IRL alts does this guy have?
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Typical—first you never explained what you think it meant (and never did in your OP).
Clearly Zohran is suggesting there is strong influence by IDF to encourage police brutality. You can quibble on the margins but the core of the claim is bs conspiratorial thinking.
And now you’ve trolled your way to numerous other posts instead of just being direct to start with.
I did explain a possibility of what it meant, referencing the verifiably true Israeli/NYPD partnership. It doesn't mean he's claiming that the "NYPD have only committed police brutality because they were trained to by the IDF."
Do you think that the AIs are also just trolling when they interpret his comments the same way?
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It’s called sanewashing. Both sides obviously do it.
I do think the IDF comment is a bad area to do it and is basically antisemitic. Why do I say this? I have a lot of respect for the NYPD and honestly think they do a really good job and if shouldn’t get criticism. NYC does actually have low crime rates. Though sometimes I think this may just be filtering and superior demographics of the populace similar to how Florida’s superiority with Hispanic education is likely superior demographics and heavy selection of rich white Latinos.
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Some of this is just The Worst Argument in the World, more than it is conspiracy thinking.
I think if you tried to drill down into what American leftists thought a "trans genocide" meant, they wouldn't bring up death camps or an imaginary Kristallnacht, but some states banning youth gender medicine or banning trans student athletes, or black trans prostitutes who meet bad ends, or the federal government switching to birth sex for ID's. They're catastrophizing more than they are imagining vast conspiracies.
I think BLM is based on a number of false assumptions, but I don't think it's a conspiracy theory exactly. More like a moral panic, similar to the AI datacenter panic, or fracking, or Dungeons and Dragons in the 80's. There's definitely a mistake being made, and a warped interpretations of the facts taking place, but it isn't about projecting a conspiracy out into the world. (In the case of BLM this is especially true, because advocates usually assume the issues are systemic, and not the result of a shadowy cabal, which is what a conspiracy would require.)
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Are you sure about that? Leftist conspiracy theories are arguably much worse because they tend to be held by people in positions in power, compared to the powerless yokels who have right-wing conspiracy theories.
Example conspiracy theory: African-American test scores are the result of systematic racism. And the higher you go up in the Democratic Party structure, the more common this belief is.
Dingbats like Tucker and Candace, on the other hand, have low status audiences.
That's not exactly a "conspiracy" though, is it? It might be wrong-headed or incorrect, but where is the shadowy cabal who planned everything out?
Like, if the 2020's election was stolen, it was stolen by a specific group of bad people, who could, in theory, be rooted out or put on trial. I think believing false things about how the world works is slightly different from a conspiracy theory. There's probably some better word for it, at the very least.
Fair enough, and that was a bad example on my part. A better example is the Russiagate hoax. That's a conspiracy theory. And probably 90% of Democrats still believe it or pretend to.
I don't think there's a substantive difference between the two parties in terms of their ability to believe false things, even outlandish conspiracies. It's just that the left is able to put the imprimatur of respectability on things, thereby allowing high status people to maintain false beliefs long after its obvious they are false.
2016 election was stolen: Aww, you're sweet.
2020 election was stolen: Hello, HR
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ESR's coinage of "prospiracy" might fit this case. There's no shadowy cabal of racists conspiring to squelch African-American test scores, but if there's e.g. a lot of racists in the education system who each neglect African-Americans (and who might admit this to each other after building trust, but don't need to discuss it with each other and wouldn't dare discuss it with non-racists) then (in that version of the theory, anyway) that could explain the observed gap.
IMHO, all other things being equal, believing in a prospiracy requires a lower burden of proof (and thus is more forgivable when it's a mistake) than believing in a large conspiracy. "Racists control public education" has some obvious contrary-evidence issues but it's not as bad as "a cabal of racists regularly meets to plot their control of public education".
If one conspirator breaks and admits their secrets to the public, the conspiracy would be revealed! The secrets would be out in the open! And depending on the size of the conspiracy, the biggest secret would be: how do you get that many people to keep a secret without anybody cracking earlier?
If one prospirator breaks and admits their secrets to the public ... not much would change, right? Everybody knows some people are jerks who are motivated by self-interest rather than principle, but that doesn't mean 90% or even 0.9% of people in similar positions will be jerks too. Just one bad apple, am-I-right? The "secret" is vastly more robust.
No, based on the past track record of people confessing to e.g. having killed JFK, people will just assume you're a crank.
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If one conspirator breaks and admits their secrets to the public, the conspiracy would be revealed! The secrets would be out in the open! And depending on the size of the conspiracy, the biggest secret would be: how do you get that many people to keep a secret without anybody cracking earlier?
This generalized argument against conspiracy theories is pretty poor because:
I am in favour of tabooing the concept of "conspiracy theories" in general.
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Republicans hold power approximately 50% of the time in the US. Like... uh... you do know who's president now, right?
Not a conspiracy, as I explained to FCfromSSC
They're big audiences though. Tucker and Candace are regularly near the top of the biggest podcasts in the US. They're very influential within MAGA.
And as he replied to, in detail, explaining that most of the examples in question did in fact require multiple people in positions of power coordinating in secret for malign purposes.
You're not quite as bad as magicalkittycat at ignoring counters to the things you claim, but you're getting there.
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"Trump is a Russian asset."
"The police routinely kill unarmed, innocent black men."
"The wage gap is a real measure of sexist discrimination."
"Billionaires control the government."
"Billionaires got their money by stealing it from ordinary people."
"Appropriating Billionaire wealth could pay for all/most/any significant number at all of good things people want."
"High health care costs are a conspiracy by greedy capitalists."
"Capitalism is at fault for [insert social problem here]."
Or is it time to convolute the borders of "conspiracy theory"?
These largely aren't conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are typically things that allege multiple actors secretly coordinating for malign purposes, while concealing the real plan from the public.
Some of these like "Trump is a Russian asset" are borderline I suppose, where weak versions are just normal partisan attacks while strong versions definitely do veer into conspiracism.
Pam_they're_the_same_picture.jpeg
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...Not convoluting the definition, but leaving it to obviously include most of the examples given while simply asserting that it does not fit them is also a strategy, I suppose.
"Trump is a Russian Asset" alleges that Trump and many members of his staff are working for the Russian government, their cooperation being secured through some combination of kompromat, bribes and ideological alignment. There is no way you can spin this claim where it does constitute a highly central example of "multiple actors secretly coordinating for malign purposes". This is your reminder that this particular conspiracy theory was a paid op by Hillary Clinton, that Obama appears to have been at minimum aware of it and declined to intervene, that Obama's senior officials were directly involved in its implementation, and that it was pushed to the hilt by every major media organization in the country for multiple years, with devastating political consequences and zero accountability.
"The police routinely kill unarmed, innocent black men" claims that police routinely cooperate to murder innocent black men and then to cover up these murders as legitimate police actions, aided and abetted by other elements of the criminal justice system such as judges, prosecutors, etc. There is no way you can spin this claim where it does constitute a highly central example of "multiple actors secretly coordinating for malign purposes". Engagement with this conspiracy theory is universal within Blue Tribe, and conformity is policed viciously.
"The wage gap is a real measure of sexist discrimination" claims that business owners secretly coordinate to violate black-letter federal anti-discrimination law, artificially depressing wages for women by 30% economy-wide and with sufficient cunning that they never, ever get caught doing it, because they hate women and want to exploit them. There is no way you can spin this claim where it does constitute a highly central example of "multiple actors secretly coordinating for malign purposes". Less prevalent that the racialized conspiracy theories at the moment, Feminism peaked early and largely exhausted itself, but we could tack on "Rape Culture/Believe All Women/Justice Kavanaugh is a rapist" as further examples as well.
"Billionaires control the government" claims that Billionaires have secretly subverted democracy through various legal, quasi-legal and illegal actions to put themselves beyond the reach of law and bend the government to their will. It universally involves claims that multiple actors are secretly coordinating for malign purposes, while concealing the real plan from the public. How could you possibly argue otherwise?
"Appropriating Billionaire wealth could pay for all/most/any significant number at all of good things people want." This one does not fit your definition of conspiracy.
"High health care costs are a conspiracy by greedy capitalists." "Conspiracy by greedy capitalists" is literally in the belief-statement, and is by no means a straw-man. Millions of people observably believe this, and are willing to endorse murder as a plausible solution.
"Capitalism is at fault for [insert social problem here]" likewise observably involves claims of malign coordination by rich villains in a large and highly central proportion of real-world instances.
I do think /u/TheAntipopulist is wrong, but I would only class the following as conspiracy theories:
Those are the only ones that really require secret coordination by a small group. The others are just false beliefs about reality. Like, where is the secret coordination mechanism for police killings or the wage gap? Even advocates of those ideas think they come from unconscious biases picked up over a lifetime of living in a racist and sexist culture, not because of specific coordination on the parts of the actors doing it. Similarly, the idea that billionaires are stealing money is often based more in the Labor Theory of Value, which is wrong but not a conspiracy.
This one isn't necessarily a conspiracy theory either depending on what we mean "control" by. If a person means that political spending has a meaningful sway on elections by convincing voters to turn out/switch who they're voting for, that doesn't require a shady cabal to happen. If they think that politicians are overly receptive to the demands of the wealthy over the average person because of campaign finances/donations, that also doesn't require anything shadowy and conspiratorial.
It only turns into a conspiracy if you think there are behind the scenes bribes and stuff like that, which sure some might think happens often but it's not the only interpretation of "controlling the government".
This also depends on what is meant. Of course high prices for anything is from greed, since prices exist from greed. The capitalist argument isn't that greed doesn't exist, but that greed is good and is the engine for how and why things get done. People perform labor for others out of desire to gain for themselves after all.
And just like above with billionaires controlling government this doesn't require a shadowy cabal working in secret. If you just believe the upper class have outsized influence due to political spending/ads/etc, then that's enough. They are wrong about pricing, but if they're not alleging a secret behind the scenes group enacting stuff then it's not a conspiracy.
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"Trump is a Russian asset" is a definitive example of a conspiracy theory, given that it's directly borrowed from one of the most famous conspiracy films of all time. People who believe this conspiracy theory are not shy about where they got their inspiration from.
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