but an addressing of the individuals caught up in its web.
Sure, I agree, the point I was trying to make, is that some-one who believes that say Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster is real is ultimately not really an issue, and these can be largely disproved without doing the holder of the belief any real damage , The further you go up that chart, the more expert the help needs to be, I'd suggest that none of us (or very very few) are competent to tackle someone who holds that QAnon 'drops' are real.
*googling intensifies*
wild, huh?
WTF? Finland doesn’t exist?!?
*googling intensifies
You think you can Google THE TRUTH!.!?!?
(To be be read in high pitched hysterical voice)
with a side order of laughing and pointing
Just be careful. Someone I know 😬 received persistent death-threats and cyberstalking (initially from GB News comment-thread) simply for my I mean their requesting evidence for claims that face-masks don’t affect viral-transmission.
Humour may be necessary in these times, but these aren't often the laughing types. A sense of humour is a wonderful thing, but don’t assume that the angry warring person shares yours.
Yeah, I couldnt remember what the actual word was. It’s actually Theologize.
Theorist/theorise?
nutters gonna nut
Indeed. I’d argue for simply ignoring them. But I read (linked from the OP)
Covid-sceptic Joe McCarron, who was the presenter of Joe’s Wild Atlantic Country Show at Strabane Radio Online, allowed a group to remove him from the intensive care unit at Letterkenny University Hospital in Co Donegal under the pretence that they were “saving his life”.
The 75-year-old refused to listen to doctors who told him he could die. This morning he’ll be buried in a cemetery not far from the home in Dungloe he shared with his grief-stricken wife Una later this morning.
“The family are angry, they are sad, they are shocked at what these reckless people have done. Joe was taken from the hospital, dumped at home and told, ‘there you are Joe, get on with it — good luck’
I believe he was endangered (by the actions of a conspiracy theorist) and died as a result of those actions. That’s a tough call for legal team.
Judge Finnegan again told the accused he strongly recommended getting legal representation.
Mr Mureddu replied: “Absolutely not. I don’t give any consent. I am the king and you are the public servant. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/news/joe-mccarron-man-released-from-donegal-hospital-by-anti-vaccine-campaigners-to-be-buried-today-40888273.html”
some-one who believes that say Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster is real is ultimately not really an issue, and these can be largely disproved without doing the holder of the belief any real damage
I dunno about that. Surely those are in some cases gateway conspiracy theories into the more sinister stuff.
Everyone wants to be good at something , even it it's being a complete ****.
Wow..... that was..... something.
Apparently there is just sea where we believe Finland is. in the mid 20th Century the russians signed a pact with Japan to pretend that there is land there..... but it's actually a secret bit of sea that the Japanese get to fish in, IN SECRET (because: reasons).
Blah blah, nokia, GPS hacking, Helsinki actually in Russia.
They killed santa! the bastards!!
I always thought the Finland not existing was due to the population of Finland being within the margin of error for the total population of the world.
Looks like that stats joke got well out of hand.
Surely those are in some cases gateway conspiracy theories into the more sinister stuff.
A very good friend of mine is a well regarded professor of Middle Eastern culture and has written a hugely well received work on the representation of Palestinian people in film. So far so normal: She also believes at a fundamental level that the moon landings were faked, and will not be moved from that belief regardless of the many (sometimes fraught) discussions we've had over the years - we now just both leave it alone. I don't think for a second that she's some conspiracist nutbar, and is to all intents and purposes a fully functioning member of society, but I guess on some level she's open to all sorts. I don't think she needs "an intervention" and is otherwise totally rational.
People are weird.
The Loch Ness Monster not real ?? 😯 Outrageous suggestion.
You'll be telling us next Haggis have four legs all the same length. 😆
You’ll be telling us next Haggis have four legs all the same length.
Ah so you believe that haggis legs are shorter on the upslope. Where as the reality is that haggis have pneumatic legs that adjust to the terrain. It was in fact cruel and sickening experimentation on wild haggis that lead to the development of the dropper post.
sheepitude
I so want to use that word today.....
A very good friend of mine is a well regarded professor of Middle Eastern culture and has written a hugely well received work on the representation of Palestinian people in film
The extent of gaslighting and propaganda we're all subjected to when it comes to the apartheid state of Israel is bound to result in a healthy distrust for media and the warped view of history which is continually being churned out
Does that of itself justify considering the moon landings were faked? Perhaps not, but right or wrong, perhaps your friend is a perfectly reasonable and intelligent person who has seen enough to convince her of that scenario.
Of course, this is a whole different area to the worrying number of extremist groups coming into being as a result of the swathes of misinformation we all wade through on a daily basis; many of these groups tap into the (not unreasonable) discontent at the knowledge you're being lied to and magnify it with all the vigour and passion that has traditionally been the reserve of religion.
^^^ They're back!!! 🙁 Curious timing - makes you think...
I don’t think for a second that she’s some conspiracist nutbar, and is to all intents and purposes a fully functioning member of society, but I guess on some level she’s open to all sorts. I don’t think she needs “an intervention” and is otherwise totally rational.
People are weird.
That's for sure! For me the issue is harm, to themselves or others - to believe in Nessie or fake moon landings is pretty harmless, happened across a chap on Twitter yesterday who advocates drinking urine and, whilst I don't mind what he does with it in his spare time, I also can't imagine he's likely to attract a following (with genuinely foul breath).
But then you get a belief system, like that covid is a conspiracy, that masks are the start of a slow descent into control, that the vaccines will turn you magnetic or give you AIDS (or both!), and you end up with gangs outside vaccination centres and schools, you get anti-vaxxers pulling covid-ridden people out of hospital and causing their deaths, you get people independently refusing vaccines and treatment and dying. At some level, people have a right to refuse treatment - but if it's a decision based on false information, if their decisions put strain on the NHS and other people suffer harm because of it, is that right?
Yesterday's scenes felt more sinister. Like the Sarah Everrard vigil, there were faces there that pop up regularly whenever there are demonstrations that become troubled - matey-boy William Coleshill is one of them. Are we being played, friends...?
This load of cobblers rears its head every few years or so.
It really gained ground during the last financial crisis as there were grifters on FB/YT espousing the FMOL/SC dogma as a way to get out of your debts (i.e. pay them to tell you this load of cobblers, which you then try with your mortgage co/bailiff/judge/policeman, and by the time you realise you've been had, they've got your money).
I've had to deal with a number of these guys over the years and not once has anything any of them put forward had one iota of success. Indeed, it usually made things significantly worse for them (increased court costs, aggravated the judge etc etc).
It died a death in the UK a few years later after one Canadian judge got so annoyed by it he did a full legal and contextual analysis of the arguments in a great judgment - well worth a read if you have the time:
Whilst it's not binding in E&W, the courts can consider persuasive authority from other jurisdictions and Meads rather brought the shutters down on it (at least in the courts) for a while.
It's sheer fantasy and it makes me very cross that there's this small minority who know it's utter toss but peddle it to the credulous who are often very desperate people looking for any lifeline.
the ailment of the modern world, so much misinformation and yet so many without capacity to discern fact from fiction
I also can’t imagine he’s likely to attract a following (with genuinely foul breath
Ah, um, yes. So you'd think. But then again...
I used to watch the 'Auditors' on you tube, mainly just for laughs as they always end up on the receiving end of angry people, or get arrested.
I'm not getting out my car, 2 minutes later they're being dragged out through the window.
Some of them are hilarious. But the bottom line is they're mostly idiots, drawn to the flame.
Should we be worried? At the moment they really are just a bunch of fringe lunatics.
QAnoners and the assorted motley crew of right wing groups in the US has disturbingly been granted some political legitimacy by Rebuplicans. Is anyone anywhere on the serious political spectrum in the UK doing the same for these nutjobs?
I'm not saying its not worth keeping an eye on them, but they are basically just cosplaying compared to their friends across the pond.
Yeah I think lots of the folks who employ the "Freeman on the Land" type bollocks are doing so in courts to either not pay debts or a futile attempts to not slide deeper into debt, and some of them are genuinely fragile and vulnerable people that should be helped and they've been sucked into it by unscrupulous grifters. The other fringe groups that sometime use the same sorts of tactics that are busting into COVID vaccine centres or coming into my surgery with their leaflets are a different order of things. Jo Cox's death is one of the results of not paying attention to folks who are otherwise off the radar.
Is anyone anywhere on the serious political spectrum in the UK doing the same for these nutjobs?
You like, for example, the leader of our country suggesting that Starmer was in cahoots with paedophiles?
Is anyone anywhere on the serious political spectrum in the UK doing the same for these nutjobs?
You like, for example, the leader of our country suggesting that Starmer was in cahoots with paedophiles?
A slightly extreme example, but I think a better one would be the shift from the perception of UKIP as the headbangers' lunatic fringe when it started, to its aims and ambitions pretty much having been subsumed into the modern Conservative party leaving it pretty much defunct.
One of the issues is the constant need for counter-arguments to be respected. This isn't a pop at the Beeb - I think they do a great job - but more the rise (both here and in the US) of the need for "both sides" of the argument to be represented, even when the "other side" is demonstrably cobblers. It has allowed bonkers arguments to be reframed as the "opposing view" which generates viewer engagement and therefore drives clicks and more views etc.
The amazing thing about monetising conspiracy cultism is the easiness of it. So easy that it writes itself. Ask a writer:
Is the NWO Covid conspiracy running out of steam? That was a big draw. Now what? Well, let’s keep it going a while longer also link it to NWO climate change conspiracy - because that puppy will unravel that recycled paper-roll forever.
Dog-whistling/crumb-dropping just enough to keep on winding up potential insurrectionists/hospital-invaders/weapon-wielding-maniacs (while while keeping own hands and nose clean) is a long-time business strategy for a certain breed of newsreader extremist infotainment grifter.
“You, yes you poor people. THEY want to twke away your heating, your bacon and your car. They want to take away your food, to remove your ability to survive, and also your access to transport. They want you dead. And THEY think that you are going to sit there shivering and starving and stand for that? Did they eve, leave you a chair? What if your chair is deemed to be now ‘unlicensed’. Non carbon-neutral? You think they won’t take your last remaining chair. Think again”
/satire
#isdead
. Is anyone anywhere on the serious political spectrum in the UK doing the same for these nutjobs?
The Starmer/Saville allegation had supposedly reappeared on a UK based Qanon linked site.
Then the Prime Minister gave them some sort of legitimacy and a heap of publicity by repeating them in Parliament. At a time when he was under the cosh for parties.
Seems to have backfired on him
You like, for example, the leader of our country suggesting that Starmer was in cahoots with paedophiles?
Its a fair point but I don't think it granted legitimacy to anything, it just looked absolutely desperate.
It really gained ground during the last financial crisis as there were grifters on FB/YT espousing the FMOL/SC dogma as a way to get out of your debts (i.e. pay them to tell you this load of cobblers, which you then try with your mortgage co/bailiff/judge/policeman, and by the time you realise you’ve been had, they’ve got your money).
It’s sheer fantasy and it makes me very cross that there’s this small minority who know it’s utter toss but peddle it to the credulous who are often very desperate people looking for any lifeline.
Is there cash involved (directly?). I've always assumed it was more like a cult - the people propagating it were doing it for the attention/status rather than to make £.
Certainly a lot of the Alex Jones type grifters actually make a fair wedge of cash from snake oil (or at least falsely advertised) dietary supplements, weirdly enough. Joe Rogan is in on it too.
It's literally 'don't trust mainstream medicine but here I have these magic pills'
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/alex-jones-infowars-store-165-million-1281059/
Behind the Bastards podcast has a good bit on the supplements he hawks on one of their Alex Jones episodes.
I think there's also a lot of grifters out there getting funding from shady right wing 'think tanks' funded by people like the Koch brothers who are keen to discredit scientific authority generally because it suits their pro fossil fuel agenda. #conspiracy
Its a fair point but I don’t think it granted legitimacy to anything, it just looked absolutely desperate.
To a right thinking person who can critically analyse what they hear.
To desperate people desperately using conspiracy theories to make sense of their problems, not so straight forward
It's a sad fact but in the vast majority of cases, anyone who makes it to prominence in these circles is likely spreading every bit as much misinformation as the mainstream media.
Whilst Alex Jones and David Icke are 2 clear examples, there's evidence to suggest more credible sources such as Carole Cadwalladr and Peter Jukes are not all they seem
Then of course we have the very shady outfit behind the once oft cited Exaro News...
It’s a sad fact but in the vast majority of cases, anyone who makes it to prominence in these circles is likely spreading every bit as much misinformation as the mainstream media.
No shit?
Whilst Alex Jones and David Icke are 2 clear examples, there’s evidence to suggest more credible sources such as Carole Cadwalladr and Peter Jukes are not all they seem
Bullshit. 😀
Is there cash involved (directly?). I’ve always assumed it was more like a cult – the people propagating it were doing it for the attention/status rather than to make £.
Definitely when this stuff took off - 2007/8 - there were people who peddled the old "with this one quick trick you can write off your debts" stuff and charged for their advice, claiming to be 'debt advisers'. Shameful.
So now they're shouting at SKS and clearly see themselves as aligned with our great PM, is the inference that this 'Sovereign Citizens' lot are to Bozza, what the 'Proud boys' were (still are?) to Trump?
Cheerleading, reactionary and generally disgruntled (mostly) white men who like to play ninja/soldier in the woods and fantasize about being an Alpha big man during the apocalypse, and probably like Boris because He's apparently working to bring it about...
They bought the M5 to a standstill on Saturday.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/m5-chaos-protesters-spark-delays-6608934
Nope, this was part of a UK wide Freedom Convoy that was taking place over the weekend. Also, Europe was doing the same with supporters descending on their respective capital cities. All were showing support for the Canadian truckers. This coming weekend sees EU truckers descending on Brussels.
I was part of one convoy on Sunday that headed for the M25 for a circuit of the motorway. Plenty of plod around cos they knew it was happening. It was amazing to get support from people on motorway bridges with their banners.
What happened in London last night is presumed to be the work of crisis actors and nothing to do with the Freedom Convoy.
What happened in London last night is presumed to be the work of crisis actors
What has happened to you?
What happened in London last night is presumed to be the work of crisis actors and nothing to do with the Freedom Convoy.
On what is that presumption based?
I was part of one convoy on Sunday that headed for the M25 for a circuit of the motorway. Plenty of plod around cos they knew it was happening. It was amazing to get support from people on motorway bridges with their banners.
What happened in London last night is presumed to be the work of crisis actors and nothing to do with the Freedom Convoy.
My first reaction was too harsh maybe.
You are (probably) involved in some peaceful protests, though many on here disagree with your view.
Do not be surprised thst within the wider organisation, or coming in from outside and using it as a cover, are people with a "less lawful" view on how and what to protest.
"Crisis actor"?
https://twitter.com/Benjwestwood/status/1490798670501056516?s=20&t=HjgM3M_PpJZbiWeYlNmbow
What happened in London last night is presumed to be the work of crisis actors and nothing to do with the Freedom Convoy.
This is a sign of someone who is so far gone they're coming back round the other way.
"Crisis actors" is a smear used by people such as Alex Jones, who accused the parents of the slaughtered children at Sandy Hook of being paid actors.
If you genuinely believe there's some shadowy cabal paying people to act like mindless idiots to further some "deep state" agenda, then I'd get some professional help if I were you.
What happened in London last night is presumed to be the work of crisis actors and nothing to do with the Freedom Convoy.
Have a word with yourself!
Spouting conspiracy theory bullshit like this makes you just as bad as them.
The mods on here should be getting the ban hammer out to stop the spread of this kind of nonsense.
What has happened to you?
AFAICS she had some health issues that unfortunately the NHS weren't much help with (CFS/ME type stuff - I remember because I am a fellow sufferer), which led her into looking for answers in alternative medicine, which then led to her going down a full on rabbit hole into creepy/unhinged anti-vaxx, anti-science conspiratorial type circles that also involve some pretty sinister far-right figures. Pretty sad really but a textbook example of how it can happen.
Grum has it for the history as far as I recall.
I can't really see how crisis actors would fit into this scenario...
Agent provocateurs however are a well known tactic used by Police and Intelligence agencies to derail political protest
There's a lot to unpick here. The OP of this is a long standing forumite for previous good character, so I'll moderate my responses accordingly
Nope, this was part of a UK wide Freedom Convoy that was taking place over the weekend. Also, Europe was doing the same with supporters descending on their respective capital cities. All were showing support for the Canadian truckers. This coming weekend sees EU truckers descending on Brussels.
This is about vaccine mandates. I've seen posts of yours over the last year or so that refer to the pandemic as "plandemic". I'm not sure if you believe covid to be a hoax, or if you used to believe that covid is a hoax and now you simply feel that a mandated vaccination is an affront to your personal liberties, or even if you simply feel that you've had enough of the pandemic (as have most of us) and simply want to get back to normal and perhaps haven't considered that vulnerable people will pay the price for your liberties.
Are you comfortable that a large sum of the money raised by the Canadian truckers' GoFundMe page can be traced directly to well funded far-right organisations? That would be a red flag to me.
Whatever way, I'm afraid that we simply can't wish away a virus that's killed 175,000 people in the UK - as you probably know, this includes two members of my family and I am a wee bit touchy about this.
I was part of one convoy on Sunday that headed for the M25 for a circuit of the motorway. Plenty of plod around cos they knew it was happening. It was amazing to get support from people on motorway bridges with their banners.
We don't have vaccine passports (although we will soon need to present an actual passport in order to be able to vote, but that's another issue entirely), nor do we have mask restrictions. We've got probably the most libertarian government in Europe, so I don't understand the need for this sort of protest.
Question - how do you feel about Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion? Would you view their actions as legitimate, or do you have the opinion that the climate crisis is fabricated too?
What happened in London last night is presumed to be the work of crisis actors and nothing to do with the Freedom Convoy.
The term "crisis actor" is a red flag here - it was popularised by the shock jock Alex Jones, who opined that the Sandy Hook shootings never happened and that the event was staged. Survivors of school shootings have been harassed in the street Marjorie Taylor Greene here harassing a Parkland shooting survivor.
"crisis actor" is another far-right trope that makes for uncomfortable reading from a fellow forumite.
Moreover, we've identified the person filming and heckling Keir Starmer yesterday - one William Coleshill. We know that he's anti-vax and that he has previously claimed to carry a knife. Are you concerned that someone like Coleshill who has previous for contemptible behaviour harassed the leader of the opposition last night and that since 2016, two MPs have been murdered by extremists?
Or is it that you feel that the event was somehow staged by Keir Starmer? If so, to what end?
