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Ok I swear I don't just get up every morning and ask, "How can I be schizo today?"
But in one day I saw the following two things:
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1731747916568727610
Among the masses of migrants flowing across the southern border each day, a whole line of Chinese nationals, military aged men, automatically standing at "parade rest" as one reply pointed out.
And this:
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1731808064108372245
Senator Dick Durbin making a speech in favor of allowing illegal immigrants into the military.
My schizo sense is tingling and saying that Nefarious Forces are Intentionally using the Power of Money to plan Bad Things for America.
Or, since this space has norms in favor of speaking plainly and against Darkly Hinting, let me put it more directly:
Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?
Less Of This, Please. There are plenty of 500k follower twitter accounts that react with horror to tweets with out of context clips and screenshots of news headlines, I know where to get it if I want it, and I don't want it here.
It's funny how all sorts of "conspiracy theorists" and people with weird ideas are halfway self-conscious of the fact they're like that, and make jokes about it. You should either genuinely believe your ideas, deeply investigate them, debate them - or consider what 'schizo' ideas you had five or ten years ago and how many of them have held up, and admit you're very wrong.
Also, whatever standard approves of this post but not posts about perfectly reasonable topics that just don't have enough context isn't serving its purpose.
It's because the term "conspiracy theorist" is used as an insult rather than a rational argument, if you endorse it, you take away it's power. If you say "yes, I am a conspiracy theorist, here is a conspiracy theory I believe in, and here is the evidence - come at me!" all sneering is suddenly reduced to quiet whimpering to the effect of "that doesn't count as a conspiracy, that's just a bunch of people coordinating to achieve a common goal".
Hanlon's Razor, the bottom-up view of society. Very schizo ideas I was very wrong about, this is why I'm a conspiracy theorist.
Eh. There's a real class of very bad ideas like the QAnon cinematic universe, or things like 'the government has secret spies all over the place. I have a friend who used to be one of them, he tells me about the reptilians and their spiritual plans for humanity's enslavement. I'm not sure I believe it but apparently the elites conspire with them, they took out JFK, they took out the people on the Clinton kill list..." (those are all real things I've actually been told by people who were being genuine, not hyperbole). I think OP is very much coming from the mindset that generates that.
The goverment having secret spies all over the place, especially in important organizations like twitter, is actually plausible and on some level true. There are agents of the goverment promoting censorship and it is hard to ascertain where certain of the biggest NGOs, private organizations, intelligence services, and parts of the bureaucracy like FBI begin and end.
In general, things that are true, or plausible are called conspiracy theories all of the time.
The mechanism of this can be seen with the Nordstream attack. The theory that the Russians did it was not called a conspiracy theory all that commonly, but the theory that America did it was called a conspiracy theory. Even though the later is much more likely than the first.
Another issue is that we have exaggerations being treated as a reason to not take serious things that are much more plausible. For example is the WEF running everything? No. Do they promote certain agendas and try to put their own people in positions of power? Out of their own words.
So yeah, there are true conspiracies, plausible ones and some more kooky claims. And there isn't a shared wise humanity that will accept the validly of all that belong in the true or plausible categories. Plenty of people would dismiss them if they go against the establishment.
There is also a conspiracy to promote ridiculous conspiracies and focus on them. But such tactics can be taken by fewer people as well who are inclined to do so. Is there a conspiracy to do so? Well, if there are people who work for an organization who promotes these claims, yes it will count as such.
Cass R. Sunstein and Andrian Vermule argued that the best way to combat conspiracies promoted by supposed extremists was to flood those spaces with ridiculous conspiracies. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_economics/119/
For example, instead of talking about Epstein who according to an Ex Mossad agent he was part of Mossad, promote, or focus upon reptilians, q-anon or aliens. https://7news.com.au/the-morning-show/jeffrey-epstein-was-a-mossad-spy-says-investigative-journalist-dylan-howard-c-595812
There are those who promote these theories, those who bite into the bait, and then those who overly focus on them and dismiss more legitimate issues. And once this tactic has started working as a result we will also observe people who do the second on their own and others who dismiss legitimate issues on their own, thinking that they are promoting what is true in accordance to their belief, rather due to some other motivation. We will also see people booing the concept also because they do side and support American elites for example and due to opposing scrutiny.
No, there is a thing that 'conspiracy theory' materially refers to and they are extremely wrong. There are people in 2018 who believed that secret numbers in Trump's tweets are hints about how he's still the real president and fighting a shadow war against the soros deep state. "Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?" is recognizably one of those, in a way that "ukraine did nordstream" is not. I agree there are gradations, but there's clearly a huge gap between the two. Just because some NYT journalists called things you agree with conspiracy theories doesn't mean the concept isn't useful. Your reply is pure 'arguments as soldiers' - kooky conspiracy theories are bad, therefore they must be generated by the other side to hide the REAL truth! Come on.
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