Conspiracy Theories and Thought-Stopping Cliches

In March I was the keynote speaker at the Central New Jersey MENSA chapter’s annual convention, discussing misinformation and conspiracy theories, the reasons so many are obsessed with them more than ever today, the pernicious social impact of these belief systems and how to try and combat them. But we also discussed an aspect of conspiracism that is just as dangerous to society; the turning of the phrase “conspiracy theory” into a thought-stopping cliché deployed to shut down conversation, debate, and any and all questions aimed at institutions of power. In the months since the MENSA gathering, this problem only seems to be getting worse. Calling someone a “conspiracy theorist” is now the surest way to try and silence anyone who disagrees with you. 

 

As I had written before in my discussions of my work on the conspiracist phenomenon, its reflections in art and popular culture as well as my run-ins with members of this community—and as you can read in my dialogue with many of these people in this blog, especially the recent posts about the special edition magazines on vampires and Dungeons and Dragons—I think these belief systems have metastasized into something destabilizing and malignant in societies where they take root. And these theories have spread in numerous foreign countries as well, not just in the United States. Check out links here, here and here, for articles about conspiracy beliefs in Europe. Far from merely questioning authorities and being suspicious of bureaucracies and officialdom, the modern conspiracy movement has turned into a phantasmagorical alternate universe where no consensus reality exists, where people create their own reality at will. 

 

Conspiracism has created delusional subcultures of people who believe the Earth is flat, that reptilian aliens are running the world, the Moon landing is a hoax, and that the New World Order cabal used nuclear warheads and death rays from space to destroy the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. These are, of course, a very, very few examples of what goes on in conspiracy world. If you are an avid reader of conspiracy sites like "Before It’s News" and "State of the Nation" and any number of their ilk across cyberspace, you can be deluged by a daily tsunami of conspiracy theories about false flag attacks, predictive programming, crisis actors, the “true” origins of Covid, and rococo yarns spun about “Khazarian” plots to enslave the world that sound so illogical that even the most whimsical science fiction fan couldn’t suspend enough disbelief to accept them on the pages of low-rent pulp novels.

 

Conspiracism leads to a dangerous, unstable world of total relativism, a world where there is no consensus reality, a rejection of all proven expertise, and a place that rejects empirical, evidence-based logic. Although conspiracy world claims to be looking for the “truth” that is “out there,” truth actually does not exist in that world. Truth and reality are whatever you decide they are because they make you feel good. If someone attempts to interrogate your truth, to attempt to counter it with empirical facts, you dismiss that person by accusing them of being a part of the conspiracy. In conspiracy world, people will not only make up their own creative fantasies about human sacrifices and vampiric blood-drinking rites being carried out in tunnels under pizza parlors, but they might pick up a gun and storm pizza parlors on a rescue operation. In conspiracy world, people’s lives were put at risk after a fraudulent claim that the measles vaccine caused autism. Starting in 2020, thousands of people with compromised immune systems, in essence, committed suicide by refusing to take the Covid vaccines after choosing to believe their own personal truth about those vaccines carrying microchips made with alien technology in order to alter human DNA.

 

And conspiracy theories are dangerous because they make many more people automatically suspicious of charges of official misconduct, corruption, and coverup. If people read enough claims of Covid 19 having been caused by G5 cell towers as a part of a mind-control operation by the Illuminati, they tend to dismiss the very real forms of governmental overreach during the pandemic, dishonesty about the efficacy of the vaccines and the lockdown efforts to contain the virus, and the heavy-handed attempts to censor and limit questions and public discussion about the possible origins of the outbreak itself. This is how the term “conspiracy theorist” turns into a thought-stopping cliché, a cudgel to beat down any skeptic of official narratives and policy.

 

The most egregious example of the weaponization of the term “conspiracy theory,” its use as a tool of censorship was in the case of Covid origins. The early hypothesis about the origins of Covid favored by the scientific establishment was that it originated in Wuhan in a wet market where animals like pangolins and racoon dogs were sold for food. Almost from the very beginning, however, any alternative hypotheses like the possibility that the virus could have escaped from a local laboratory where gain of function research—research on how to modify viruses to make them more deadly—was underway was derided as dangerous, “baseless” conspiracy theories. How the idea that a disease outbreak starting in the city where a laboratory was working on increasing the lethality of viruses could be regarded as “baseless” defies all sense and logic. The Chinese government not only denied these claims vociferously, but it hampered the world scientific community’s efforts to find the outbreak’s origins. But such would be expected from a genocidal dictatorship. One would not expect it, however, from many in the scientific establishment who immediately declared that any and all discussion of the lab leak theory should be suppressed immediately. Science, after all, is a method for seeing knowledge, seeking empirical, quantifiable facts. This process involves constantly questioning research findings themselves, double-checking, and constantly replicating previous claims to the truth to make sure that no mistakes had been made. However, in the Covid era's anti-conspiracy hysteria, not only was the idea that a lethal virus could escape from a research facility that was tasked with creating lethal viruses a “baseless conspiracy theory,” but that it was a racist conspiracy theory for good measure. Moreover, it is outrageous how American technology giants like Facebook banned all information suggesting the lab leak theory for nearly two years. 

 

As this article details, during its early days in power, the Biden administration had exerted so much pressure on Facebook that the tech giant was removing joke memes about the possibility of the Covid vaccines being dangerous. The government’s attempt to exert pressure on a private media company to influence its content is censorship in its purest, most reprehensible form. Critics of this policy today are labeled as, of course, “conspiracy theorists.

 

But who is mostly to blame for this weaponization of the term “conspiracy?” I would still argue that it’s the conspiracy culture itself. It’s still the clown world of QAnon and people who had never gotten the note that the eighties are over and there are no global Satanic cults running daycare centers—or pizza parlors—and performing blood-drinking rituals in tunnels deep under the earth. There is, however, the despicable evil of global sex-trafficking organized crime rings, organizations that engage in the trafficking of children as well as adults. They do exist and they constitute a $150 billion a year industry. The problem, however, is that warnings of the existence of these crime syndicates have now been tainted by conspiracism. It becomes harder for some to talk about global crime rings when the discussion raises the echoes of State of the Nation, QAnon, and the madness of their conspiracy theories.

 

Likewise, many had been perfectly comfortable with the censorship of any discussion and debate about the origins of Covid, the effectiveness of draconian lockdown measures, and the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters. As we now know, however, Covid most likely came from a Wuhan lab, the most restrictive of lockdown measures during the pandemic proved to be no more effective in stopping the spread of the virus than the most lax of the Covid policies, and many people who had been vaccinated and boosted still got sick from Covid and still spread the virus. But the madness of conspiracy world helped kill off any tolerance for debate, discussion, and the questioning of official narratives about the pandemic.

 

And that is the true danger of conspiracism.

My Guest Spot on the Common Cents Finance Podcast

I was recently interviewed by a couple of excellent Saint Peter's University business students for their Common Cents Finance podcast and we discussed an eclectic mix of topics that included branding, public relations, crisis communication, publicity and brand management, not to mention our discussion of conspiracy theories. And we even lay the smackdown on John Cena for embarrassing himself with that groveling apology to China.

Check out the episode right here.

And do make sure and listen to all of their other episodes as well because the show's knowledgeable discussion of business issues can give a lot of big-name, professional business-broadcasters a run for their money.

Especially in our discussion of off the wall conspiracists like Alex Jones, State of the Nation, and the rest of their ilk, we discuss why the people behind these odious websites and social media need to argue that EVERY SINGLE major world event is really a part of a conspiracy. While these people might be unscrupulous and obviously lacking any sort of a moral compass, they are shrewd practitioners of personal-branding strategies and tactics. If your brand is that of the biggest conspiracy theorists in the world, you have no choice but spin alternate narratives to the consensus reality and information from mainstream sources to keep your fans happy. Why just imagine if State of the Nation did NOT blame some major news story on the Deep State, the Illuminati, or the New World Order! What would their fans do? Most likely star migrating to other purveyors of nonsensical fabrications and fake news.

You don't become a successful conspiracy theorist like this...

So, my "anti-fan," Hank Wolfe, on the Before It's News conspiracy site is again claiming that I am up to more dastardly deeds and wickedness. So far he had accused me of being a part of a plot to brainwash my students using 5G technology during my online classes and to replace students who are critical of conspiracy theories with computer-generated "deep fake" doubles. He seems to imply that I either had advanced knowledge of the COVID-19 outbreak or I'm just taking advantage of a COVID hoax - his postings are not quite clear if COVID-19 was manufactured or it's a hoax and no virus actually exists - in order to enslave my students. Since he doesn't seem to be accusing me of being one of the creators of the pandemic (or hoax), I am actually a bit disappointed. I really would have liked to have been accused of something as grand as causing the entire outbreak, or maybe just sitting on the all-powerful Committee of Doom that had manufactured the pandemic.

Now in a post from December 23, which I just noticed on Hank's Before It's News page, he does accuse me of being the mastermind behind the 2020 metal monolith mystery. My novel, CONFIRMATION, Hank argues, is but a bit of "predictive programming," or a part of some greater global plot. I need to reread his post since I can't quite recall his muddled line of "reasoning." Or you can check his posts about me and monoliths here and in right here.

It's true that I joked around about the monolith connection to CONFIRMATION on this blog, but it was, you know...A JOKE!!!

Now it's easy - and oh, so enjoyable - to make fun of a second-rate fantasist like Hank Wolfe. He makes broad declarations of grand conspiracy theories without offering a shred of proof for any of them. In fact, he does not even try his hand at the sort of conspiracist illusion of proof where he provides links to other conspiracy sites making their own unsubstantiated claims. 

That sort of citation, for example, is the stock in trade of State of the Nation, where each of their unhinged claims of COVID hoaxes, alien space weapons, and false flag operations reference a large number of other sources. Those sources, of course, are conspiracy theorists or just previous State of the Nation articles. This sort of circular method of self-referentiality is so amusing that I think I might use it as a teaching tool in my research methods class this fall. Study State of the Nation very carefully, I will explain, to learn how not to present research.

But Hank Wolfe does not bother to try and reference his shocking claims with even the sort of inept approximation of the scholarly citation system. Hank, actually, appears to be somewhat of a lazy conspiracy theorist, posting claims of far-reaching evil plots sometimes weeks, or even months apart.

What Hank does do on occasion is offer links to some news stories he attempts to use as proof that some immense conspiracy can no longer be kept secret. For example, check out this post where his headline screams that the January 6 Capitol riot was so obviously a false flag attack that even The New York Times says as much. Except the Times does no such thing.

And then we have Hank's latest postings about several stories in the Saint Peter's student newspaper, The Tribune. He argues that these two stories - check them out here and here - just about admit that my grand scheme of controlling students' minds are in full swing. The first story, about marijuana legalization in New Jersey is really an admission of an MKULTRA-style mind-control experiment, or so says Hank. The the story about students and faculty starting their COVID vaccinations, Hank writes, is a glimpse into the university's forced vaccination policy. If anyone reads these stories, they will immediately see that Hank is either spectacularly delusional, can't read, or that he thinks his fans are as lazy as he is and would never check his sources.

Hank Wolfe really could benefit from taking my class on conspiracy theories. The Do It Yourself Conspiracy exercise could help him come up with a much more convincing fake conspiracy theory than the kind of lame material he posts on his Before It's News page.

But I guess we can thank Hank for his ineptitude. In a way he helps shine a light on this bizarre cultural phenomenon that has gone so far off the deep end that at its core is but a collection of fabricated stories by sad, desperate losers and opportunists dreaming of becoming next Alex Jones. Hank's nonsense about 5G mind control technology and online learning come through in much fewer articles that say the constant deluge of rancid sewer sludge on the Sate of the Nation or Millennium Report sites. Although Hank sometimes proclaims in very matter of fact tones that the COVID pandemic is a hoax, his focus still seems to be on the more exotic realms of MKULTRA-like brainwashing conspiracies. His work is both scattered and inept. It is not in the league of the shear, cold-blooded, opportunistic evil of a conspiracy site like State of the Nation that repeatedly implores its readers not to get vaccinated, not to wear masks if one is not vaccinated and in the company of strangers, and to avoid all safety precautions that might stop the spread of COVID-19. Hank Wolfe is but a sad, inept clown, a wannabe in a crowded field of aspiring conspiracy influencers. His competition, like State of the Nation, on the other hand, spreads information that's as close as one could get to attempted murder.

Imagine the creeps who would laugh at others' misfortune

Taking a deep dive into the conspiracy subculture for a project I am working on, I've been seeing the largely expected effort to keep current with the times, or explain that yet another major news event is not as it appears to be. Websites like Alex Jones' Info Wars, Before It's News, State of the Nation, and other such serial fabulists are very predictable arguing that the deep freeze that has been devastating Texas is either not real (Texas has been covered by white plastic-like goo and not snow, some conspiracists argue) or that the storms are a result of a weather-manipulation technology.

Wow!

And while the weather-manipulation technology is the more interesting of the two theories, the identity of the mastermind behind this fiendish plot to freeze the world in Texas is none other than...Bill Gates!

Gates, that overachiever of diabolical New World Order supervillains, must have had some free time on his hands after creating the COVID-19 virus and the microchips inside the vaccines, so he whipped up a quick storm to batter Texas.

The proof of this conspiracy, as usual, is nothing but a long list of links to other conspiracy sites. Or, as in the case of the State of the Nation - turning these days into perhaps the laziest of conspiracy mongers - the links to the evidence lead to yet other SOTN articles.

While the claims of these so-called "Texasgate" and "Stormgate" conspiracy theories are hardly worthy of examining and wasting one's time in refuting, their true repugnant nature emerges if one only spends a few minutes skimming their texts. These "theories" look like the handiwork of gleefully sadistic sociopaths who enjoy mocking others' pain and suffering. Why not take death, destruction, financial ruin, and illness, these people must ask themselves, and exploit them in these ludicrous exercises of cherry-picking facts, misquoting sources, and presenting information wildly out of context all for the entertainment of a collection of ghouls who like to use others misfortunes for entertainment?

Not surprising in a world with no consensus reality

So I've been away from the blog for a while, as the holidays and numerous writing projects have been taking up my time, but found myself shaking my head in dismay at a month's worth of insanity every time I glanced at trending stories in news apps or turned on the TV. Even though I study the social phenomenon of conspiracy theories, the events of the past month leave me stunned. Although I guess they shouldn't. The logical end result of the conspiratorial mentality, as we have seen so plainly on January 6, is anarchy violence, and destruction. 

This shameful end of the road to the QAnon conspiracy and its adherents should, again, not be a surprise. In 2019 an unpublished FBI memo warned that QAnon and similar conspiratorial subcultures should be viewed as a potential terrorist threat as we would approach to 2020 elections and its aftermath.  And now the memo was proven right.

But even before January 6, the depth of the depravity to which conspiracy fantasies could be goaded into has been obvious. What could be more repugnant than the harassment of the families of Sandy Hook victims by conspiracy theorists? Or anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists taunting and mocking the parents of children who had needlessly died of the measles because they haven't been given life-saving vaccines? Does it surprise anyone that people who could sink as low as the harassment of the Sandy Hook families would be capable of rioting in the Capitol building?

And the worst part of this conspiratorial madness is the fact that the disaffected, a disillusioned collection of unfortunate souls out there, people somehow so disconnected from a consensus reality as to actually entertain the irrational tenets of QAnon, have been goaded on in their beliefs. They have been pushed and egged on, their gullibility, anger, fear, and disillusionment with the world exploited by opportunistic con artists. Their fears have been fed by people like Alex Jones and his imitators all across the Internet - from the State of the Nation to the Millennium Report, Before It's News and Zero Hedge - egging on the unstable toward the inevitable violence.

And the most frustrating and shameful of this exploitation of a disaffected subculture of America was Donald Trump's own tacit endorsement of the QAnon movement from its very inception in 2017. Turning a blind eye to the sort of extremism growing on the fringes of the conservative right by the President of the United States is outrageous. His claims that he knew nothing of QAnon's off-the-wall Satanic child-trafficking conspiracy theory is completely unbelievable. 

People as angry and volatile as the ones who stormed the Capitol are still out there and all over the country. Dealing with this madness, the ultimate madness of a world where there is no consensus reality, is perhaps the biggest existential challenge this culture has to deal with in a long time...perhaps a threat it has never faced before in its history.

If they won’t wear a mask, throw the bums out!

Well, okay, maybe don’t call them bums. At first, be nice. 

Several weeks ago, I was interviewed for this Fatherly.com article about how conspiracy beliefs are tearing some families apart. What can you do if one of your relatives keeps insisting that COVID does not exist, the Earth is flat, and Bill Gates is trying to microchip you through vaccinations to imprint the mark of the Beast 666 on your DNA? 

 

Actually, as I discuss in the article, the most useful approach to pulling your wacky uncle back out of the rabbit hole is not to dismiss his claims as absurdity or call him crazy or naïve. Confrontation will only cause the true believer to dig his heels in and cling to his beliefs even more tenaciously. All you will achieve by that tactic is to drive the conspiracists back to Alex Jones or State of the Nation or Before It’s News, or any of their ilk. Your conspiracy-believing relatives will take a deep dive back into their paranoid safe spaces on the Internet, questing ever more tenaciously to hear reaffirmations of their fringe belief systems…or just gather more “facts,” more ammunition to fight back next time when you try and tell them that Lee Harvey Oswald really did shoot JFK alone.

 

The best method to dealing with the conspiracy believer, instead, is to ask them to examine their belief systems. Ask them to take a close, critical look at the other theorists who have convinced them that time-traveling aliens were really behind 9/11 and see what testable, verifiable evidence these theorists can provide. Or is the evidence provided by these purveyors of colorful stories of grand global cabals just a long list of web links to other conspiracy theorists who make more claims with no verifiable evidence. Ask wacky Uncle Bob to think about whether or not it is suspicious that an Alex Jones or a State of the Nation claim that everything you read about in the news is a conspiracy? If a conspiracy blogger were to claim, for example, that maybe just the JFK assassination was a conspiracy or the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, a reasonably patient person could hear them out. But absolutely every single world event is part of a conspiracy? At that point, Uncle Bob should realize that he is being taken for a ride by an unconscionable liar and fraud, a flim-flam artist who is monetizing traffic to his blog by spinning one outlandish, absurd claim after the next.

 

In fact, this sort of examination of conspiracy web pages has been an ongoing part of my Conspiracy Films class throughout this semester. Among all of the conspiracy sites, perhaps none was a better teaching tool than State of the Nation. My students were able to use it as a prime example of how to spot the most audacious examples of disinformation and fake news.

But, ultimately, will this attempt at helping those poor alienated souls who are feel so disconnected from any kind of a consensus reality always work? And what can one do about the loved ones who cling to their theories the most tenaciously? 

 

Well, legally there is nothing one can do. Just because a friend chooses to live in their own, self-constructed reality, there is no way we can force him to accept the fact the Earth is round or that over 300,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19 if they refuse to do so. They can't be forced into the psychiatric care they so desperately need. If these people annoy you enough, you can always just ignore them. Or how about a rule that we don’t talk politics or conspiracy theories around the dining room table this Christmas?

 

But it these people cross the line into dangerous behavior, such as refusing to wear a mask in a crowded place or congregating with the rest of their COVID-denying friends, to only responsible thing to do is to bar them from your life, your home, or from making contact with your family.

Believe Me, We Did You a Favor!

So, I’m feeling quite impressed that more than three weeks after our “From 9/11 to COVID-19” conference, conspiracy theorists are still worked up about it. Some guy named Hank Wolfe on the Before It’s News conspiracy site is conducting an “investigation” of “Donovangate” and my masterminding of a nation-wide plot to replace students in online classes with deep-fake avatars. Seriously!

 

You can check out the “ongoing investigation” right here.

 

And, by the way, Hank Wolfe is also fixated on the Satanic significance of the October 13 date of the event. 

 

An article in the Saint Peter’s student newspaper about the event is still bombarded by unhinged comments and rants about how an audience of “truth seekers” were silenced in the Zoom chat room and we refused to answer any of their questions. 

 

The State of the Nation ran a couple of stories on the event, warning their readers about the “anti-truth” event and sharing a hysterical, whiny email from someone who claims to have logged into the event but couldn’t get any questions answered. You can check out the SOTN article here. The first story, by the way, also warns of a dark and dangerous Jesuit conspiracy to deceive America’s youth.

 

Now the student newspaper, as I understand it, contacted SOTN for comments about their dangerous Jesuit conspiracy but got no response other than a list of links to other conspiracy theorists. 

 

But were there questions from outsiders screened out during the conference? Yes, there were. This event was intended for an SPU audience, so imagine our surprise when we notice scores of people logging in who were not affiliated with the school. While we thought we were only sharing the login information with our colleagues and students, apparently someone must have shared that information with who knows how many other friends and they in turn shared it again and so on and so forth. Then it wound up in the conspiracy community.

 

Does the easy escape of the login information make you think of anything interesting, though? Do you notice how hard it really is to keep anything secret? Makes you wonder about those rococo conspiracy theories SOTN loves to spin seemingly 24/7.

 

But to get back to the issue of whether or not we tried to avoid answering the questions of the outsiders, let me just say this: we probably should have. We should have let them ask their Holocaust-denial questions and ask about anti-Semitic conspiracy theories like Jews seen celebrating the attacks of 9/11. They would easily have been exposed as the vile hatemongers they are. The best defense against the worst, most hateful people in this world who trade in discord and prejudice is to shine a light on them and have the world see them for what they are. That, by the way, is why I don’t remove any reader comments from this blog, no matter how ridiculous or even hateful they may be. Stupidity should be shown off in all its slow-witted, demented glory. So not listening to and acknowledging these people’s comments during the conference probably did them a great big favor. 

 

It is also for this reason, to shine the light on American culture’s ugly, deranged underbelly the conspiracy culture represents, that I teach my class on conspiracy theories. People like whatever anonymous collection of charlatans is behind State of the Nation is a constant staple in the class. They are a perfect teaching tool when it comes to demonstrating every underhanded, unethical, dishonest, and manipulative form of communication today. For the major final assignment of the semester, the Do It Yourself Conspiracy assignment, I repeatedly send my students to the SOTN page to have them see conspiracist sleaze at its very worst…or is that sleaze at its very best?

Unconscionable Monsters...

That’s the only phrase I could use in a recent reply I wrote to a comment on my October 29, 2018 post about the Call for and Uprising YouTube channel that has recently shifted from its laughably ridiculous obsession with Satanists in the entertainment industry to its jumping on a series of repugnant, morally bankrupt Coronavirus conspiracy theories. The worse of these theories—to be found all over the online conspiracy community—all amount to attempting to convince people to ignore the scientific and medical establishment’s guidelines on avoiding the COVID-19 virus. People who actively try to convince others to ignore the safety warnings about this disease can hardly be classified as human. Can there be no clearer example of true evil in this world today than someone who willfully attempts to deceive others into endangering their lives and health? Such behavior is on par with attempted murder.

Among some of the most repellent examples of these theories, found all across web pages like State of the Nation, The Millennium Report, Before It’s News, or Alex Jones’ Infowars, include claims that the virus just simply does not exist, that the illnesses are caused by 5G cell towers, that the entire outbreak was engineered by some mysterious “they” to depopulate the Earth, or that the virus is real but it had been created to then compel people to take vaccines that will kill them. 

Alex Jones, the most high-profile and prolific of these professional scumbags, has also just been warned by the New York State attorney general’s office to stop peddling a “natural” remedy he claims will cure COVID-19. Check out an article about it right here. Jones, of course, knows full well that tens of thousands of his readers and listeners hang on his every word every day. And he knows that there is no cure yet for the virus. Attempting to sell his listeners this modern day version of snake oil (a concoction called colloidal silver that has absolutely no scientifically proven medicinal properties) is the act of one of the most brazen, the most audacious sociopaths in the conspiracy world.

There indeed are a couple of horrible diseases spreading the world right now. The Coronavirus is just one of them. The other one is the conspiracy theory.

Yes, fear peddled by conspiracy theorists sells

There are conspiracy theories spreading on the Internet about the Wuhan coronavirus! Shocked! Shocked I am! 

If one looks around online, curious perhaps about who might have spread the virus and for what purpose, one will find exactly the sort of nonsense anyone even remotely familiar today’s subculture of disaffected paranoids would expect to find. There are the rather stale old standards about the New World Order, the Globalists, the Freemasons, and the Illuminati creating this virus to rule the world, to create a one-world government, prepare the way for an alien takeover, or reduce the human population. This stuff has already turned up on Before It’s News, the Millennium Report, and State of the Nation among others, as quickly as one would expect. And these theories about the coronavirus are stale and unimaginative, I suppose, because the pressure must be high to crank out a new paranoid fantasy the moment a new story hits the headlines. Inventing a new conspiracy theory virtually overnight is not easy, so sometimes the folks behind these websites have to just slum it a little bit and blame the same bogeymen of the NWO and the Illuminati for the same old reasons. Very disappointing, guys, very disappointing!

But then check out this whole new theory about the coronavirus having been created by “Big Pharma” simply in order to then supply a vaccine for it and make money. The brains behind the theory appears to be a particularly opportunistic little jackal named Jordan Sather (in the picture above), a social-media conspiracy theory figure. A college dropout and apparent self-published author of a 35-page pamphlet about the importance of standing upright and keeping a good posture (I’m not making this up, check it out on Amazon), Sather nevertheless appears to be running a successful racket—ahem…online enterprise—exposing the “truth” about vaccines, holistic medicine, and still endorsing the delusional rantings of QAnon. 

As the article I linked to above explains, Sather’s theory—spreading across social media like wildfire—claims that the coronavirus already had an antidote created for it by the diabolical Big Pharma and the Gates Foundation, back in 2015. So Big Pharma will now unleash their virus, wait for it to kill enough people to make the world panic, and then offer up their solution in the 2015 vaccine and make a handsome profit.

Anti-vaxxers and QAnon fans are, naturally, agreeing with Sather’s theory.

The one problem with the theory is that the coronavirus vaccine from 2015 he refers to (and yes, a certain vaccine exists) is for the avian coronavirus. It’s not the coronavirus making the headlines right now. You see, people who are not college dropouts and understand the importance of expert sources on scientific information will know that “coronavirus” refers to a whole family of viruses. It’s just that the current one that has been spreading through China is not the same virus the vaccine was created for in 2015.

Thus, the moral of the story here is the importance of education and critical thinking. The kind of education one gets in an accredited institution of higher learning and not YouTube videos and social media pages run by college dropouts.

The most ironic part of the whole Jordan Sather story is when he warns his readers that a lot of money can be made from selling fear. Sather, you will find if you visit his web page, propagates many, many videos and documents “proving” other shocking conspiracy theories. For the price of a subscription, of course.

So Jordan might not have finished college, but he knows enough how to be an effective swindler.

The anti-vaxxer terror movement

A couple of recent articles here and here give an overview of the mistake that had been made in the New Jersey State Senate in December which will hopefully be corrected when the legislature reconvenes in February. In a development that helps make New Jersey an embarrassment, a bill to bar all religious exemptions to vaccination requirements was defeated in the senate, thanks to the concerted thuggery and propaganda campaigns of anti-vaxxers, fringe religious zealots, and conspiracy theorists.

I just realized what the anti-vaccination movement and its vocal activists remind me of. They make me think of several recent criminal cases where people who encouraged their depressed friends to commit suicide. Take the Conrad Roy case, for example, where the troubled teenager was coerced into killing himself by his girlfriend through a series of texts and phone calls. Then there was the case of Boston College student Alexander Urtula who was allegedly (the case has not gone to trial as of this writing) harassed, demeaned, and goaded by his girlfriend through a series of some 47,000 text messages into killing himself. 

The anti-vaccination movement similarly preys on the fears and insecurities of parents, bombarding them through a twisted cyber network of blogs, web pages, and social media sites with deceptive and destructive messages that wind up leading those parents to harm their own children. Telling parents not to vaccinate their children, propagating the lies and fabricated conspiracy theories of Internet charlatans is no different than pressuring someone who is depressed or struggling with various forms of mental illness into committing suicide. There is absolutely no credible scientific evidence to suggest that childhood vaccines are dangerous. Read this op-ed about the issue of vaccine safety and this story about yet another major study that proves no connection between vaccines and autism for a detailed discussion about vaccines and science for more details. And, again, telling a worried parent to the contrary is akin to pressuring and goading a dangerously depressed person into harming themselves. In fact, the woman who had allegedly sent her boyfriend 47,000 texts telling him to kill himself looks like an amateur when compared to the sewage of lies and distortions that flood the internet from the anti-vaccination movement every day. As the Globe and Times articles point out, the New Jersey legislature was basically caught off guard by the sheer size and organization of the anti-vaxxer extremists and the power their deception has over people who are scared, who have to medical training, who are alienated from institutions of expertise and authority. Unfortunately this reprehensible, destructive movement has the power to pressure and intimidate lawmakers as well, intelligent individuals who should know better.

So how frustrating is the defeat of the religious exemption bill in light of the fact that New Jersey’s Lakewood community was hit with a measles outbreak in 2019? It’s frustrating enough to make me wish that anti-vaxxers who encourage parents not to vaccinate their children be treated exactly the same way by the law as the people who manipulate others into committing suicide. Yes, I am most often a knee-jerk, free-speech, staunch libertarian, but cases like these shake the very foundation of some of my beliefs. It almost makes me wish that the purveyors of the anti-vaccination propaganda and the conspiracy theories they are founded on would not be protected by the First Amendment. We can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, after all. Moreover, religious liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment are not absolute either. For example, if your religion tells you to commit human sacrifice, the law would certainly take issue with you. And no, parents do not—and should not—have absolute authority over every aspect of their children’s lives. You DON’T have the right to do anything to your children and be free of government interference. You can’t beat your children, for example, and you can’t sexually abuse them either. So you also shouldn’t be allowed exemptions from vaccines based on your religious and philosophical beliefs.

Last year, in fact, I was glad to see the stories about the FBI memo suggesting that some circles of today’s conspiracy community should be viewed as a new form of domestic terrorism. I had written about that on this blog, and it was energizing to see that society is opening its eyes at last to the destructive threat people like the Alex Jones crowd, the Millennium Report, State of the Nation extremists and the rest of their ilk pose to this country. The anti-vaccination movement should be added to this new domestic terror list.

So let’s hope that New Jersey’s elected representatives come to their senses in February and reject the lies, fearmongering, and (what should be criminal) manipulations of the anti-vaxxer terror movement.

The Neo-Nazi core of the 9/11 "truther" movement

 

During the recent anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I spent a few days perusing the (all too many) 9/11 “truther” sites and their latest claims of conspiracies and coverups. Now I know what you’re thinking: what do 9/11 conspiracy theorists have to do with the truth. And you’re absolutely right. The inhabitants of the “alternate news” funny-farm have nothing to do with the truth. But just go with me. I did put the word truth in quotes to signify sarcasm.

But I digress from something serious. Perhaps the loudest and dumbest of the “truther”/”alternate news”/conspiracy-theory is no longer even attempting to hide the fact that at the core of this movement is a malignant culture of bigotry and anti-Semitism. So how did you guess that I am writing about the State of the Nation? Although originally the 9/11 conspiracy movement had its fair share of crackpots from the far left—the Bush and Chaney and Haliburton and the military/industrial-complex were behind it all crowd—they had eventually become outnumbered by the anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli far-right Neo-Nazi lunatics. These are the people who believe that the attacks were staged to start wars against Arab nations at the behest of Israel. This is the crowd that used to advance the thoroughly discredited, baseless assertion that Jewish employees of the World Trade towers were told to stay home from work on 9/11.

State of the Nation, of course, still advances this theory, along with every other theory about Jewish cabals, world-wide Zionist subversion, and so on and so on. In fact, if you visit this website, you’ll find a massive, putrid electronic garbage dump of alt-right talking points and links to various Holocaust denying Neo-Nazi sites.

For a closer look, scroll through the archives of SOTN on the right side of their page and look for the following links:

“The real 9/11 perps outed – yes, it’s all the usual suspects!”  Spoiler alert: the usual suspects the article talks about are Jews.

“Dr. John Dee: Occultist Behind the British Empire and Judaic New World Order”

“Here’s how the Israeli puppet masters coerce PM Netanyahu to steal Palestinian land in order to stay out of prison.”

“Was Bolton fired to make room for another rabid Neocon Zionist and confirmed Muslim hater?”

“Israel stages F35 Saudi attack after Putin’s smackdown of Netanyahu over Syria.”

“Conspiracy for total world domination exposed by religious proponents of scheme”

“The dancing Israelis and Mossad: How did they have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks?”

“Why has this crazy tribe been kicked out of every country on Earth?”

Perhaps the most repugnant of these links is the last one above, the “crazy tribe” piece. It originates from a virulently anti-Semitic site full of more links to Holocaust-denying books and various sundry bits of fascist propaganda.

And do pay close attention of the content in the “crazy tribe” article. At first, of course, you will notice the grotesque caricature of a Jew. With the large, hooked nose, its sneer, it looks exactly like it could have been lifted from an anti-Semitic propaganda poster in Nazi Germany. But then you must understand the article’s content. It lists incidents throughout history where Jews had been oppressed and expelled from lands as a matter of official state policy. The title of the piece implies, of course, that the “crazy tribe” must somehow have deserved these pogroms. They must obviously be at fault if they had been oppressed so often.

So yes, the legacy of 9/11 must include a quest for the truth. The real truth is that a barbaric attack on the United States by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorists is being exploited by hate mongers and home-grown Nazis. Another enemy is attacking the U.S. now and they are called conspiracy theorists, “truthers,” and the purveyors of “alternative news.” These people need to be exposed, opposed, and, as the FBI correctly stated not too long ago, called the terrorists they are.

The most despicable conspiracy site, hands down.

As an observer of the modern conspiracy culture, I often find myself in the same situation as Robert L. Ripley did when he chronicled the world’s oddities. I spend a whole lot of time looking at the strange, the bizarre, and the unexpected. There are the theories about the Earth being flat, the back-engineered alien spacecraft fantasies from the not so distant fringes of UFOlogy, and the stale, shopworn JFK assassination theories. But then there are the conspiracists who are vile beyond any measure of human depravity.

For one, there are the anti-vaxxers who might as well be treated by the law as murderers. Their scientifically discredited nonsense is leading to a global wave of disease outbreaks and death. People like this are no better than someone who prods and cajoles a depressed, suicidal individual into taking their own lives. 

Then we have the 9/11 conspiracy crowd, a collection of blood-sucking vampires exploiting the deaths of over 3000 Americans in order to sell their self-published books, cheaply produced DVDs, and get hits on their social media platforms. 

Then there are the climate-change-deniers who still insist on claiming that global warming is some kind of a massive hoax perpetrated by a conspiracy of scientists. In the middle of this freakshow we have the State of the Nation website, which subscribes not merely to all of these theories—and pretty much every conspiracy theory under the sun—but has now taken to mocking children and calling them crisis actors. If you visit the SOTN site, you’ll find them not only joining the attacks on 16-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg, but upping the ante in personal attacks and ridicule. In fact, SOTN displays its unique ability in taking tastelessness, absolute sociopathic callousness to heretofore unseen levels. You will see SOTN offer a rebuttal to Thunberg’s activism by making fun of her appearance and mocking her with nicknames like Greta the Grinch. 

But then if any other boundaries of boundaries of decency might come up, SOTN, of course, finds it and immediately crosses it. SOTN then mocks Thunberg’s Asperger’s Syndrome and, naturally, claims that her condition is some kind of a willful creation by the “globalists” who had vaccinated her to turn her into their puppet on a quest for worldwide domination.

So State of the Nation likes to refer to the big, invisible bogeyman of the New World Order and the “globalists” as “sociopaths” and “psychopaths” a lot. They throw these phrases around constantly. But what they really should do is look those words up in a dictionary. Whoever the dregs of humanity are who run that site should find the experience akin to staring into a mirror.

Conspiracy vs. Incompetence

After a shocking event or a calamity of some sort dominates the news cycle suddenly, no one’s a happier camper than the average conspiracy theorist. The event becomes a Rorschach test onto which conspiracy theorists can fasten their tentacles and hang on for days, weeks, or months even. The most unscrupulous conspiracy theorists—and these days I can’t really think of any other type in the “alternate news” or “truther community”—are probably the happiest when the event claims a large number of lives, as we had seen in the obscene spectacle of the “false flag” theorizing that followed the latest mass shootings. So the way the Jeffrey Epstein case is being milked for everything it’s worth by conspiracy sites like State of the Nation and their ilk is no surprise. Yet looking closely at the rhetoric and logic behind the coverage of the Epstein case gives a glimpse into the utterly erroneous and naïve thought process of conspiracy believers.

“It’s inconceivable that Epstein could have killed himself since he was such a high-profile prisoner,” says the core argument upon which the hundreds (or maybe thousands) of Epstein conspiracy theories are based. “It’s too far-fetched. He would be watched day and night.”

But he wasn’t because of sheer bureaucratic incompetence.

I bring this up as we are just about two and a half weeks away from the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. That tragedy birthed a new era of conspiracy theorizing that is more deranged and morally bankrupt than any other previous conspiracy craze in history, more so than the various Freemason moral panics, the Kennedy assassination fantasies, or the nonsense about “secret” policy organizations like the Council on Foreign relations or the Trilateral Commission plotting to rule the world. The 9/11 conspiracies are also founded on the same fallacy of perfect governmental organizations that couldn’t possibly have been so off guard as they were in 2001. Rather than recognizing ineptitude, convoluted and inefficient bureaucracies, missed signals, and just plain stupid mistakes—the kinds that have plagued complex organizations since groups of people have ever attempted to collaborate on any large-scale endeavor—the conspiratorial mindset starts inventing massive, labyrinthine plots and the work of evil cabals.

Such is now the case with Epstein’s death. Despite the fact that investigations of the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center—as discussed in this article—have demonstrated a long record of inept management of the institution, that history of gross mismanagement is now the fuel for ever more absurd Epstein conspiracy theories. Epstein was killed by Trump, some argue. Epstein was killed by the Clintons, others counter. Epstein was killed by Satanists. Epstein was killed by the Illuminati. There’s probably a blog or Facebook page or web page out there arguing that Epstein was killed either by aliens or NASA because he was either about to blow the whistle on what really crashed in Roswell or give conclusive proof that the Earth is flat.

The amusing part of all of the Epstein theories is the fact that it proves how die-hard conspiracists might be the most optimistic human beings on the face of the Earth. If they are to be believed, this world would be a perfect Nirvana on its own and every problem and calamity is caused on purpose by the hidden hand of some shadowy cabal.

Ah…the wonderful, childlike naivete of simple minds.

Sandy Hook "truther" James Fetzer loses libel suit. Good!

All words have consequences and now the conspiracy community is learning it the hard way – finally – in court, according to this story. A Wisconsin judge just found conspiracy theorist James Fetzer guilty of libeling Leonard Pozner, the father of one of the children murdered in the Sandy Hook mass shooting of 2012.

The details of this case are so repugnant that it’s impossible, I think, to have any kind of a measured, civil discussion of who James Fetzer is and what he was sued for. As the NY Times story outlines, Fetzer wrote a book arguing that the Sandy Hook massacre was a “false flag” attack, a hoax perpetrated by some government cabal to use as a pretense for cracking down on gun-ownership rights. By that account, of course, all of the grieving families, friends, and coworkers of the children and staff members who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School were liars and “crisis actors,” coconspirators of the shadowy evil cabal. Thus Fetzer got hit with a well-deserved libel suit and now he has, thankfully, lost the case.

The only evil perpetrated in this case, of course, was the one by Fetzer, his co-author, and his publisher. First, arguing that no shooting took place at Sandy Hook is mind-boggling in its sheer callousness. Not only does what they describe – or any of the arguments made by all the other “truther” bottom-feeders like the State of the Nation web page, Alex Jones, the Millennium Report, or the rest of their slimy ilk – defy all logic and common sense, but it’s virtually unfathomable how insensitive it is to the pain of these families. Faking a mass shooting at a school in the middle of a community like Newtown, Connecticut, is impossible. Period! It is just as impossible as the 9/11 conspiracy theories, the vaccination conspiracy theories, and the flat Earth conspiracy theories an ever-growing subculture of the alienated, mentally unstable, psychotic, and pathologically unstable believe in these days. But the fact that Fetzer would use the death of children to make money off of, that he would continually encourage the harassment of people like Leonard Pozner, is an act of inhuman depravity that could only be born of the mind of a sociopath. 

But a quick review of Fetzer’s background reveals that none of what he did with the Sandy Hook tragedy should be of surprise. He is, after all, one of the stars of the 9/11 conspiracy movement. A quick Google of his name will provide a wealth of information about his background, including his founding of the Scholars for 9/11 Truth organization in 2005. The fascinating thing about Scholars for 9/11 Truth is that by 2006 the group saw a schism, where a sizable faction of its members – and no, most of them are not scholars, and the few that are have mostly scholarly credentials like an expertise in horticulture, art, or literary analysis – decided to break away and start their own group, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. Their problem with Fetzer, they said, was that he wanted to keep an open mind to and include such lunatic theories like the World Trade Center towers being destroyed by lasers from space or mini nuclear weapons.

Again, sorry for the incivility, but you can see what happened to Fetzer, right? He was deemed too batshit-crazy for even the average 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Since then, Fetzer has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like. Aside from the 9/11 derangement, he has endorsed the Moon-landing hoax theory, various harebrained JFK conspiracy theories, and has been friendly to various Holocaust-denier and world-Jewish-conspiracy theories. A true, class act, right?

Also it’s worth remarking about something unfortunate concerning Fetzer. From the 1970s until the 1990s, he actually had a legitimate academic career. He is today a professor emeritus of the philosophy of science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Cranks, fringe kooks, and the utterly unscrupulous, do turn up in academia as well from time to time. Intelligence, unfortunately, does not always rule out a lack of morals and conscience…or sometimes just plain mental illness. The Fetzers of academia, thankfully, however, are kept to a minimum by the nature of that business. And Fetzer’s descent into conspiracy theorist batshit-craziness only started after his retirement as a full-time faculty member. With age, one can suppose, the body is not always the first to go. Or maybe he just needed a little extra retirement income and he realized there was an a big enough audience out there to pay for books and videos about 9/11 and crisis actor conspiracy theories, no matter how ludicrous these theories may be.

But aside from celebrating Leonard Pozner's victory, we must also laud his other activism against this predatory, destructive conspiracy culture that is pushing American society ever closer to a new dark age of irrationality and mindless paranoia. Pozner also founded the HONR Network, dedicated to fighting back against online harassment and challenging the malicious lies of conspiracy theorists. As Pozner argues so correctly, conspiracy theories can’t be ignored because they will not fade away on their own. These theories are kept alive by the Internet and they spread like a vicious cancer until they erase real history. 

Do check out the HONR Network’s web page right here and support its mission.

It’s time that the tide began to turn against the terrorists of the conspiracy theory community and the people who should start living in fear – in fear of the exposure of their unconscionable lies – are the Fetzers of this world and the rest of their kind in the “truther” community.

Jessica Biel clarified her position on vaccinations...

...and she still sounds ridiculous.

According to this L.A. Times article, the actress had earlier this week publicly sided with the anti-vaxxer crowd, going to California's Capitol to help lobby against a new law that would tighten vaccination requirements. After a sudden backlash from the public all over social media - thank goodness - she has been quickly backtracking on what her actual position is on vaccinations.

"I am not against vaccinations," Biel tweeted, "I support children getting vaccinations and I also support families having the right to make educated medical decisions for their children..."

It sounds more reasonable, but this argument is the exact sort of absurdity that has now given the U.S. some 1000 cases of the measles. It asks that parents be given the opportunity to research the issue on their own and draw their own conclusions about whether or not to vaccinate their kids. Except parents, unless they happen to be doctors or scientists, are not qualified to research the issue on their own - by spending a few hours on Google and running across the kind of terroristic garbage posted on pages like State of the Nation and similar "truther" sites - and make any kind of an informed decision on their own.

But at least the sudden pushback is heartening to see. More people are finally recognizing the destructive madness of the anti-vaccination movement and the conspiracy theory nonsense it's built on, and they are calling BS.

As the article writes, comedian Jim Kirkman's reply to Biel was perfectly put: "People are dying due to anti-vaxxers and your ignorance will contribute to that death toll."

A state of moral depravity.

On occasion I wander back to the State of the Nation website to check whether or not I am being accused of plotting an alien invasion or putting the finishing touches on the Illuminati’s plan for creating a Luciferian one-world government. Stories like that amuse me. They’re a source of a good a laugh for the day. But when I looked at their page in the aftermath of the recent mass shooting in Virginia Beach, there was nothing at all to be amused about.

The page was only the site of cynical, moral depravity that has taken root in a sizable percentage of the American population. It is a moral depravity that is being fostered and nurtured by a handful of con artists and swindlers who run webpages like SOTN, the Millennium Report, Before it’s News, and the rest of the Alex Jones wannabes on the Internet. On the very day of a tragedy, these parasites are already at work spinning their—rather predictable and stale at this point—conspiracy theories about another “false flag” attack.

So consider this: on the very day of the Virginia Beach shooting, SOTN had already come to the conclusion that the murders were actually a false flag. Wouldn’t you think that it’s quite remarkable that the people who run this site, where ever they may be holed up in some basement, would be able to put the pieces together and determine exactly what happened even before law enforcement agencies even started their investigation? But investigations, facts, data, evidence, of course, are completely pointless in the bizarro world of SOTN. They already have their set conspiratorial world view they graft onto any major event. They take their master narrative, something that might have been spun from a second-rate self-published conspiracy thriller about a Deep State cabal of Illuminati New World Order supervillains plotting to bring about a global totalitarian order through a series of manufactured emergencies, and graft this narrative onto the events of the day. Then, without any form of evidence—save for links to OTHER CONSPIRACY WEBSITES and their unfounded, unproven allegations—they begin repeating their claims of false flag attacks over and over again, their stories looping back on themselves where links to “evidence” are previous SOTN or Millennium Report postings.

But at the core of these conspiratorial fantasies are the dead, the injured, and the traumatized. The swindlers and the charlatans like SOTN exploit these victims to get page-views, social-media likes, and shares. Individuals who follow these websites must recognize the ugliness, the sheer callous disregard for pain and suffering people running these “alternate news” sites are capable of.

If you want to imagine what the people running the State of the Nation are doing after every loss of life, imagine them laughing with glee and high-fiving each other, happy as they can be that there is a new tragedy to exploit, a new opportunity for page views by the gullible, simple-minded rubes that will swallow every claim of a conspiracy.

And let me repeat something that I have written here before. Every committed State of the Nation fan, please take note. Please jot it down on a paper just in case you might forget and need to refresh your memory. If the sort of New World Order your favorite website claims exists is really out there, orchestrating these mass murders, how come they haven’t yet found and eliminated the entire SOTN editorial staff? Why are the grand plans of the globalist insider Freemasons and Satanists appearing all over the Internet unchecked?

The answer, of course, is simple. There is no New World Order, there are no grand plans, no false flag attacks, no Satanic secret societies, and the people running State of the Nation are not only lying to you but laughing at you as they are doing so.

They are doing the right thing in Maine.

According to this piece in CNN, Maine is now the fourth state to do the sensible thing and prohibit people from opting out of immunizations on religious and philosophical grounds. 

Good for Maine!

Of course, I am almost tempted to take some credit for this. I almost want to claim that I called a meeting at the Jersey City headquarters of the American branch of the Illuminati and gave the order to my minions—just as I had done when I ordered the measles outbreak up in New York, according to the State of the Nation website—but it would be really dishonest of me to do so.

In all seriousness, this is a step in the right direction. But it’s also staggering to consider that in 2019 only three other states—California, West Virginia, and Mississippi—have ended religious exemptions to life-saving vaccinations. As I have written before, are we completely committed to returning to the Dark Ages where we are willing to let people suffer and die out of superstitious fear when the power to prevent diseases exist? When it has existed for decades and has saved lived for decades? 

This issue is so frustrating because we see the political power of people so ignorant as to not realize that the religious liberties guaranteed by the Constitution are not without boundaries. Your rights to practice the worship of your invisible magical beings does not outweigh others’ rights to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. People are not allowed to infect others, to spread death and disease out of religious liberties. Saying that people ought to be allowed to opt out of vaccinations on religious grounds is like saying that I had visions where my deity commands me to drink a half a bottle of whiskey every Friday night, then get in a car and drive it as fast as I can, and I must be allowed to do so by law enforcement lest my religious liberties be trampled upon.

The First Amendment rightly protects people’s consciences and allows them to believe as they choose or not to believe as they choose. But it does not give them the right to force their beliefs on others and it certainly does not give them the right to put others’ lives in danger because of religious belief.

So now the rest of the states need to do the right thing, too, and they must protect the lives of their citizens. There must be no exemptions to vaccinations allowed for anything other than medical reasons.