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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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I use fringe in terms of a network where conspiracies exists outside main hubs of “knowledge” so to speak. On top of that I tried to take two of the fringe clusters and put them on a political spectrum on the extremes. Following another branch of discussion I came to realize that my example that I used for the left sparked some discussion. Trying to find a better example but I’m unsure what would be a better representation for qanon on the left(your suggestion on blue anon is good).

It's a little difficult for me to be sure about "fringe + extreme + left" in terms of conspiracy theories, because I think most of the extreme left conspiracy theories I know of might be too common to be fringe. Best I can think of is normal extreme conspiracy theories on the left, plus a further twist in a sort of "50 Stalins" telephone-game way.

A couple more candidates:

"Bush lied us into Iraq in order to steal their oil."

"Brett Kavanaugh organized gang-rape parties in high school."

That might be the problem in that case that we don't know enough of the lefts conspiracies to be sure where their batshit insane are. Reading things like https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1969/essay-liberation.htm I'm sure that they are out there. Just not as public.

The extremes on the political left and right political spectrum has a end goal of subjugating the individual to benefit of collective/state/nation. That goal has a tendency to warp peoples perception on what drives the world and sometimes it ends up with false beliefs about groups of individuals running things behind the scenes. Conspiracy theories can arise and be perpetuated without this political dichotomy and if one side has had their false beliefs thrust out in the mainstream. It doesn't mean that aren't false or conspiracy theories. Most of mainstream Soviet had a belief in Lysenkoism it didn't make it less fringe out of established science or a conspiracy theory that the scientist opposing it are puppets of the west.