Did the president merely tap into this simmering sentiment, or did he inflame it?

Recently, Glenn Greenwald wrote about the reluctance of large news organizations to even mention the Hunter Biden laptop story.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...

As someone who sees this story as hard to believe for a number of reasons, the broad resolve among large news organization to avoid that story raises some serious questions in my mind.

This is not how the press is supposed to work. And it's definitely not how the press reacted to the Steele Dossier, which has similar problems with provenance of information and motivation.

That kind of environment in which the press seems to take sides makes fertile ground for conspiracy theories. If you can't trust the press to be unbiased, then how can you believe anything they say? Along comes someone who claims to have all the answers and away you go, full speed to QAnon Station.

A lot of people believe the Russia investigation was in fact its own form of conspiracy theory, cooked up by a party outraged that it lost an election it thought it had in the bag.

So, why should news organizations give credit to a story whose primary source is a very out of scope Rudy and even the editor who wrote the initial story wouldn't pen their name to it because when they even tried doing basic preliminary journalism to confirm any part of the story that they were left with zippo and the only reason it had to be written is that their bosses wanted it?

The only serious question about it would be that who in their right mind would believe a story that Hunter flew across the US from CA to NY to use some shifty $35 hole in the wall laptop repair place, drop off a pile of laptops, fly home, completely forget about them, the owner then decided to dive through personal data and found "bad things", instead of taking them to the FBI or police, decided that Rudy Giuliani needed them, which then Rudy sat on them for a few months before letting anyone know. Oh, and the mere possession and non-reporting of the "bad things" on the laptop are a felony in and of itself. Wow... interesting that actual journalists wouldn't even give the story the time of day.

Do you expect CNN to do daily breaking news segments on how Sandy Hook wasn't fiction because some right wing radio opinionist is still spouting off daily that the dead kids were actors?

The Steele dossier came from an information agent with a background of competent and viable information and journalists worked on vetting the information before sending any out.

Er except we’ve DKIM validated some of the emails, and they’re concerning in their own right. It’s worth the media at least asking some tough questions about Hunter. If you ignore the conspiracy theory aspects of all of this, the raw facts themselves are still concerning enough to ask questions.

They've validated 1. of the emails, not "some": https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim

And frankly, possession of a single legitimate email's source text, for an intermediate-profile individual from a corporate account, doesn't somehow prove anything else (which again: is zilch - nothing else about this story is verifiable - it reeks of an intelligence op, especially since Rudy Giuliani is known by the FBI to be routinely in contact with known Russian intelligence operatives).

The Steele dossier was opposition research and turned out to be largely baseless. And we know that with some certainty because there was a huge investigation in to it.

The Biden laptop "scandal" is probably also opposition research and probably also baseless. The response to it is rather contrasting though.

A strong tie between Hunter Biden, James Biden and China is not a news. It was before the laptop become a thing. Read some CNN news on 2019 and 2018, when the water is not that hot. CNN still pose some doubt on Hunter Biden's stance and potential corruption.

For example, Hunter Biden has invested a China company called Face++, which later to be a core technology to surveillance on Uygur.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/business/cefc-biden-china...

Patrick Ho, a former Hong Kong official being charged for corruption in US, being accuse of bribing Africa leader for allowing China's Energy company to exploit natural resource in Africa, which is part of the One Belt and One Road grand plan in China. Basically a form of colonialism from China.

The interesting part is right here. When Patrick Ho is on charged, who he called for a help? It is Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden's business partner in China is Ye Jianming, who is the boss of Patrick Ho. Ye Jianming is now "disappeared" or under investigation in CCP because Patrick Ho's arrested and Ye Jianming's operation has failed.

You can seach the keyword here. Those story are in CNN, New York Times etc.

It is pretty strange for the mainstream media to completely ignore the story when they have the same doubt on two years ago.

Tha laptop? It could be a cover-up for a whist-blower. The information could be true or fake. But even without the laptop, there are many evidence that Hunter Biden using his father's name involving in many corruption. And no one asked a question about his father's involvement on that? In fact, Joe Biden has seen Hunter Biden's China customer during the diplomatic visit to China.

If the mainstream media cannot be trusted, then it would be the best catalyst for conspiracy theory. In fact, the bias in the media has strengthened the polarization in the country even more.

> the owner then decided to dive through personal data and found "bad things"

There are certainly some issues with the story. But later on there were photos of Hunter Biden released that certainly depicted what I would describe as "bad things" (those things being drugs).

So pictures do exist that you can lookup yourself. Unless you are going to go conspiracy theory about it, and say that the photos, that you can see yourself, are faked.

So... In retrospect, even if not everything related to the story is accurate, or there were some problems with it, we can now all but confirm that at least something was released that is not "fake news", and that came from this story.

> "bad things" (those things being drugs).

And this is yet another comment made by what I would describe as a "bad person".

I think it is reasonably uncontroversial that many people believe drugs to be some sort of scandal.

But regardless, it is uncontroversial that a large amount of people would describe pictures of someone doing hard drugs as "bad things".

I'm confused as to your intent here. The Hunter Biden laptop story was one of those QAnon conspiracy theories.

And thus the problem: There's no objective distinction between a "conspiracy theory" and a legitimate investigation.

So we have one side saying "You're caught up in conspiracy theories!" and the other saying "You're censoring the truth!"

How do you solve that?

You teach effective critical thinking in schools nationwide for a couple of decades.

You encourage empathy for those you disagree with.

You tolerate intolerant people (but not their intolerant views)

You dig deeper and tell everyone what you found. For the laptop story there was nothing to be found.

Verification takes time, when someone dumps a ton of information publicly and exclaims it is true there is no avoiding some people believing it no matter what happens.

If we are afraid about censoring that being transparent about what is censored and verifying it afterwards can help with that.

However I don't think there is a true solve to misinformation. Lies are catchier than the truth after all.

As terms, 'conspiracy theory' and 'fact' both feel loaded today.

I wonder whether reverting to more neutral labelling would held create a less heated dialogue? Founded and unfounded, for example.

I think of the Hunter Biden laptop story as being a lame Swiftboating slimy character assassination that isn't exactly a new thing in politics. Qanon is a different beast altogether because it stokes this really paranoid "they're all against you" mentality that a large portion of the population seems to have been increasingly susceptible to in recent years.

I’d argue that they’re not entirely wrong. The lives and problems of rural Americans are dramatically different than urban Americans, and given the all-or-nothing nature of the system, neither side is well represented when the other has power.

QAnon is obviously garbage, but it’s a symptom of a broken system that can’t effectively represent the entire population, and not just one half.

No? Nobody was saying Hunter Biden ran a pedo ring with abductions and body doubles replacing key national figures.

It's real-world verifiable that Hunter Biden made 600k/yr for several years for a foreign gas company while his dad was VP and involved in pressuring domestic politics in that country.

And so we come back to GP's point: If mainstream media is calling everything that's not politically advantageous for the dems a "conspiracy theory", then they lose credibility. If everything's a conspiracy theory, nothing is.

For one thing, the Steele dossier was hinted at but not actually released during the election. That's understandable, as it was a piece of opposition research. I read that the Steele dossier was delivered to the press for a while before Buzzfeed leaked it. Then it was discussed as news.

The news organizations were sitting on the document and afterward they said they were verifying its claims.

Large news organizations did run stories. They investigated, found no corroborating evidence, and ran boring stories to that effect. Glenn Greenwald also investigated and found no corroborating evidence, but he hated that some people might take the lack of a smoking gun as evidence that there was no corruption connected to Biden, so he thought the media should use this shady, unlikely, as-yet-unsubstantiated story as a titillating hook to talk really loudly about all the possible ways that Biden and his son might be corrupt.

I can kind of see his point, since everybody in Washington seems to regard Hunter Biden as a completely unexceptional person of no particular merit who makes huge amounts of money because of who his father is, and that should be a scandal, though more a general scandal about the system than about the Bidens specifically.

On the other hand, that's no excuse to make a huge news story out of an unsubstantiated story fed to the media by partisan operatives a few weeks before an election. If they did that, these stories would arise before every election, and part of the political contest between the parties would be competing to come up with the best juicy lies. Considering what a free buffet that would be for the media, I'm honestly surprised that they managed to refrain.

What is coverage of the Hunter Biden story supposed to say? Rudy Guiliani claims he has a laptop that has some emails but refuses to produce the laptop. There is no way a news organization can verify the claims, and the claim itself is just hearsay.

The reason it hasn't been covered is because there is nothing a news organization can publish about it. Fox News passed on it. It is most likely simply bullshit.

I think you raise a good point here, but one that is essentially invalidated by years of journalism that's mostly funded and managed by people with a lot of interest in the political discourse.

Very little of "the press" or "journalism" that reaches the true majority of people can be considered much more than entertainment television. Not only that, they have very clear goals, partisan alignments, and deals to own up to.

My point being, this picture of "the press" is not new nor is it simple to unravel, especially because a lot of the coverage we see, and how it's done, depends on a multitude of factors.

Let's take, for example, your point about the Hunter Biden story and let's allow ourselves to conjecture for a moment.

In a "press" state such as the one I described above, a big part of the "news media" is running amok with the story regardless of having little to no evidence to back it up. On the other hand, the world is still spinning and news that are noteworthy are still coming out. One might even say people should know about these things.

What's one to do in face of such situation? Do we expect that the "news media" devote all focus to arguing the conspiracy theory, which will most likely boost the conversation around it, or should we expect the "news media" to focus on things that can actually be proven, assessed, researched?

Of course, this is one narrow example that only scratches the surface of something that, like I said, is very complex. But I do believe that, considering the current environment, it's more harmful to debate the conspiracy stories than to ignore them. Consider any other conspiracy theory that you ever heard of. Would it be beneficial for anyone to have constant debate on television about whether or not the Earth is round, or if men have been to the Moon, etc.

So the core problem with most of the complaints about it is that nothing substantial ever came out implicating Joe Biden in any way. Some people claimed there was evidence but none was presented.

The news as a whole shrugging off a story about Hunter Biden makes perfect sense, it wasn't about Joe except in so far and Hunter might have name dropped him.

The conspiracy theory for the conspiracy theory is that his campaign owns/runs Q. Q is responsible for many of the other conspiracy theories following that.

In my opinion everyone needs to cool down. America is polarized over being correct, not being happy.

Q is Jim Watkins, or perhaps someone close to him. He's the one who owns the site that Q (now, after the Christchurch shooting) posts "drops" on.

I seriously doubt anyone from Trump's orbit is involved. Qanon was a huge thorn in their side.

> This is not how the press is supposed to work.

It really is. As a former journalist, I can tell you a lot of crackpot stories come across our desks. We look at them, will see if the evidence can ‘stand up’ the story - if not, it gets spiked.

Hunter Biden wasn't running for president. He's an adult responsible for his own choices. If he were trying to profit off his father he'd hardly be the first child to attempt to do so - that probably applies to a third of congress.

For some reason I just can't get the thought out of my head that if this were a kooky story about a rando laptop repair shop in San Francisco that claimed it had Ivanka's laptops with proof she was doing something nefarious you wouldn't have any of these same qualms about the news media treating it skeptically.

Even worse the people have been watching the media fibbing to them nonstop for 20+ years, since Iraq at least.

This is how you get people like Alex Jones. People see the lie, start looking for the truth and here is guy saying "I'll tell you what is really going on!" and if they weave a coherent soundings story (which the media fails to do... they just move on to the next talking point) people take it as reality.

No matter how you feel politically the media is a big part of the divide issues in the U.S today. They have behaved horribly irresponsibly.

You cannot hold the media accountable for the lies of republicans? Modern media is profit-based and just reports on who said what. Unfortunately, this is not enough to keep people informed. And nobody can claim absolute truth anyways, though facts do exist and need to be recognized.

Who said anything about Republicans? I specifically mention the Iraq war.

No, that's not what media has been doing. And these are the results we get.

This isn't a partisan statement but a simple statement of cause and effect.

Iraq war was initiated by Republicans, despite world-wide protests and lack of evidence of WMDs.

True, but entirely irrelevant to the point being made.

Did you not read the post you respond to or are you just engaged in shallow partisan trolling? I can't decide.

If you'd like to ignore my point it's fine. But it's how it is. It's reality.

You failed to assert a backed-up argument about media though. They just report on events and opinions. Don't blame the mirror.

We now see maybe reporting people blatantly lying can be dangerous to democracy itself. There's no question which side is most manipulative, cynical and lying. It is classic psychopathic behaviour to blame others for own failings with baseless accusations. Fortunately we don't exist to serve the ego of one, and there's no basic right to provide a platform for lying and division.

If we fail to address lies, any side can turn on its own population without those checks and balances. It is never enough to tolerate abuse and lies, as humanity witnessed before.

If this was your point to, explaining in your own words may help.

I’d say Trump tapped into the sentiment of conspiracy theories by adding many of his own.

But in Europe, America have always been bigger and crazier, so it’s not a big surprise to hear about the conspiracy theories.

Hopefully the US can now move forward in a positive and constructive way, but the two-party system does seem to get in the way of improving things. Either you’re for or against, without any real middle ground.

If Biden can overcome that he is already on his way to become a great president.

> Glenn Greenwald

What is going on with him? I started following him in ~1997 when Salon.com was a burgeoning news site. He's taken some pretty extreme views since (essentially) expatriating.

This is affecting me, too. I see immediate family members (especially older generation) unable to distinguish sources of truth. It makes me reconsider China's state-run propaganda system filtering what people are allowed to see/hear. Perhaps western civilization swings too far towards individualism when railing against the value of groups & institutions digesting information first.

Chinese people cannot have a say on things like Xinjiang in their own country because of the influence of the party over their media ecosystem. We can improve ours significantly, undoubtedly, but I would look more towards Europe than China for alternatives. Germany spent years Nazi proofing their system and so far the results have been not bad.

You're right that in Germany the Nazi problem is now negligible, but the real problem we face is extreme Islamofascist groups (to use Macron's words). In France, Macron banned the Gray Wolves, a Turkish ultra-nationalist group.

But Germany faces a very big problem with the Turkish-nationalist population. Probably more of a threat than France, given that the Turkish population in Germany is upwards of 9%. Even Turkish-German politicians are now calling for a ban on the Gray Wolves and other such extreme organizations (see https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/german-lawmakers-urge-b...).

While this ban may go through, the problem of radical Islam will remain a persistent threat in Europe.

I don't know that there's any clear-cut way to avoid extremism while also preserving freedom.

My 90 year old man had a burglary here in the U.K. while she was at home. They didn’t get anything, a neighbour scared them off.

She was obviously shocked about it.

Rumours spread on the local Facebook group and was picked up by the local paper who ran a story two week later.

My Nan then read about how lots of things had been stolen from her house and now believes the paper, not the reality she had lived.

If people are willing to believe what they are told third hand rather than what they know themselves, what hope is there?

But don't state-run information filters exploit the gullibility flaw, not alleviate it? In other words, how do you tell?

If you look at how the elections were conducted with county level governments effectively counting vote tallies without any serious claims of errors, that may offer a hint as to what might work: stronger local sources of news and journalism.

Social media ravaged the local news industry and exposed every hick town to the insanity of conspiracy theories. Better regulation of social media, investing in local news and journalism may be one way to allow towns to get back sources of information that they trust and believe.

In fact instead of the stupid “everyone learn to code” pipe dreams, more investments in local journalism may help revitalize smaller towns to a certain extent. Local journalists focus and investigate local issues; they improve the quality of state services.

Interestingly, it's not just conservatives. I'm in the UK, and some of the circles I move in are a bit "hippy" (and thus not conservative/right wing at all) and some of those folks are absolutely lapping it up. It is bewildering to see.

Right, it's infected the anti-vax and supplements community.

Of course. These conspiracies depend on how schizotypical people are. People who are more “fantasy prone” are more likely to believe in magic, the supernatural, aliens and various other kinds of woo. It’s hardly surprising that hippie types should be included - what is the fundamental difference between believing in crystal healing and laylines and believing qanon? There’s no rational basis for either.

It’s interesting to see how it swings the same way again. I hear the ‘masks are bad’ mantra from both the most right, and most left wing components of people I know.

> I hear the ‘masks are bad’ mantra from both the most right, and most left wing components of people I know.

"Masks are bad" was the official government policy in Nordic countries up until August. And still is in Sweden.

Fascinating. What kind of stuff? The whole qanon deal?

Not so much that (I think Q has thus far been mainly a US phenomenon, though it _is_ making inroads here apparently), but mainly I'm seeing stuff around covid being a hoax and/or a control ploy, forced vaccinations, tracking chip injections, Agenda 21, Bill Gates, etc. — all that stuff. It sort of makes sense in a group of people tending to favour "natural" stuff (some of whom were also antivax tbh) but it's been surprising how far it's gone, and how fast, with some of them.

Yes I'm in the UK too. I have family members who believe the whole Bill Gates mircochip injections, 5G causing COVID, anti-vax nonsence. My experience is people who loose control of their own lives (job lose, health, etc) seem to grip onto all these conspiracies, as if to try and explain their bad luck.

In Finland, QAnon is known to gain support in yoga studios and among people who are into wellness and alternative medicine.

https://www.is.fi/menaiset/ilmiot/art-2000006672495.html

"One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens."

Someone who was e.g. raised as a Christian, and then concluded that some of the stories they were told in Sunday School were lies, is likely to treat an appeal to religious authority as evidence against a claim. Even in domains where Christian groups have been effective in practice.

The same can be said about mainstream media or science.

In the short term, it's practically impossible to reach such people without identifying somewhere they're actually right in their rejection of the mainstream narrative, and gaining their trust by recognizing that. Only with that trust do you have a shot of being listened to when you point out where they overcorrected against the mainstream narrative.

In the longer term, it would really help if some key mainstream narratives became more accurate. Without that, "getting out of the country" may actually become the best option for an increasing number of people.

I do have some hope that the more extreme conspiracies pass in time and don’t permanently damage the psyche of those involved. Growing up in the Bible Belt during the Satanic Panic, I was legit afraid of being caught and sacrificed by satanists after a friend’s dad had us watch a movie about the “Pagan Invasion”. Satanists out to kidnap kids for ritual sacrifice was a Big Fucking Deal that many people actually believed —- Paradise Lost is a good documentary from that wave of hysteria.

I know of very few people that are terrified of satanists any longer.

Q seems to be a direct continuation of the satanist panic. Not only are the satanists real, but they control the government, rape children, drink their blood etc. etc.

It actually is an interesting topic to look at the history of Blood Libel and see the Satanic Panic and QAnon as the evolved/remixed version with different actors.

I think with the advent of the internet, things are shifting away from ritual murder to sexual exploitation of minors as the big fear, but “that group of people you don’t like is out to get your children” is quite the enduring narrative.

Communication has become weaponised. It either helps the cause, or hinders it. The content is irrelevant.

Not much different to the democrats after the last election and Russia. Turns out everyone reaches for conspiracies when they would rather not change their world view.

It is true that immediately after the election, there was a "Russia hacked the election" narrative that many partisans were latching on to to explain an unexpected Trump victory.

I think the primary distinction is that democratic politicians and "thought-leaders" (or wtv term is better suited for influential partisans) quickly dismissed the fact that the actual democratic institutions were compromised (that is to say, the integrity of the vote was compromised, or that ballots didn't represent vote intention), but rather the claim quite quickly became that an influence campaign was supported by foreign powers, and the Trump campaign was happy to profit from it, if not colluding with said nation-state actors.

So, you're entirely correct that we have a tendency to seek out the narrative that best affirms our priors, but whether that tendency is legitimised depends on our institutions and the people we put in places of authority.

I agree the Russia thing was way overplayed (even though Russia did run a propaganda campaign, which all evidence does point to, actual American people were still voting for Trump). I don't think it really holds a candle to the batshit craziness of QAnon though.

Not my president people are everybit as unhinged as qanon people. They unironically said Trump was a kgb asset who Putin was controlling.

Again, if we found out that some Democrat staffer had stuffed a ballot for their guy it wouldn't mean that the vicotry for Biden was fraudulent. It would mean that one single operative committed fraud and probably had no wider impact.

I'd even go as far as saying that it would be far more dangerous than the fsb posting memes.

Do you know the QAnon stuff? It's on a different scale, more in-line with scientology:

> QAnon's adherents, while seeing Trump as a flawed Christian, also view him as a messiah sent by God.

> there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything

> Followers of QAnon also believe that there is an imminent event known as "The Storm", when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested and possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay prison or to face military tribunals, and the U.S. military will brutally take over the country.[3] The result will be salvation and utopia on earth.

In comparison to believing that a business man with multiple accusations of corruptions and financial crime, might be collaborating with Russia for his personal gain?

There is, of course, actual smoke on the Russia issue.

- It's unambiguously true that Russia helped Trump get elected in 2016. Even the Republican Senate acknowledges this.

- Trump's campaign had various (documented) unsavoury links with Russia.

- Mueller didn't clear Trump of collusion with Russia, and indeed stated that the (clear) obstruction prevented a full investigation of the topic.

- Trump himself has been extraordinarily soft on Russia, while burning relationships with traditional allies.

- Trump is also pretty effusive in his praise of Putin - dictator of a geopolitical enemy and all-round bad dude.

None of this is speculative - it's all backed up by the facts. This is not to say that Trump is a KGB asset, but it's not hard to see why people might see indications in that direction and take it a step too far. Honestly my personal view is it's highly unlikely - if he was a Russian asset it's likely our intelligence agencies would have known in advance and done something about it. Personally my view is simply that Trump wishes to be an autocrat, and admires other autocrats.

The Q stuff, the Bill Gates microchip stuff, on the other hand, is just completely out of left field.

I'm sure you can point to individual wackos but what is there that has the same scale and impact as Qanon? It's a very unique thing, and it's almost exclusively affecting conservatives.

How are you measuring the scale and impact of Qanon? And lets not forget about the red baiting of Tulsi Gabbard.

Russia gate, if anything its even more unhinged because it was on national news instead of blogs. It is one of those things that even a year later everyone involved is keeping really quiet about given how embarrassing it is to have believed it.

I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about. It's now well established that Russia did interfere in the elections with the goal to promote a Trump victory. The only thing not conclusive was active and intentful collaboration with Russia from Trump. But it's very normal to want to open an investigation into Russia's meddling.

> Mueller concluded that Russian interference was "sweeping and systematic" and "violated U.S. criminal law", and he indicted twenty-six Russian citizens and three Russian organizations. The investigation also led to indictments and convictions of Trump campaign officials and associated Americans

> The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee submitted the first in their five-volume 1,313-page report in July 2019 in which they concluded that the January 2017 intelligence community assessment alleging Russian interference was "coherent and well-constructed".

> The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. According to U.S. intelligence agencies, the operation was ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin

> Several individuals connected to Russia contacted various Trump campaign associates, offering business opportunities to the Trump Organization and proferring damaging information on Clinton.

Here's the thing, I don't even know what to make of it. Sure, Trump didn't seek.out Russian help actively or ask them to do any of this, but Russia still interfered in a way to promote his election. Now hard to say how much that helped him win, but it's hard to standby and think... Ya I guess this is fine? Shouldn't we do something to stop this from happening again? And why didn't Trump do anything about it? Shouldn't he say something like ... Well I believe I would have won even without their help, but this is unacceptable and we need to put in place measures to make sure Russia and other foreign powers can no longer meddle in US elections?

That's not a conspiracy theory, both in that it actually happened, and it's not even that unusual for governments to mess with foreign elections if they feel they can get away with it.

There is a theory that Trump conspired with Russia. That is a conspiracy theory. There is evidence that Russia wanted Trump to win and they helped him do that. There is no evidence that Trump conspired with Russia. Those two are different things, yet many still believe that Trump conspired with Russia.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump asked Russia to release Hillary Clinton's emails. As president, he met with Putin in secrecy with no other officials present and went as far as destroying the interpreter's notes. These are a few prominent examples of his utterly bizarre behavior towards Russia.

I'm inclined to believe Trump is simply stupid and admires Putin as the kind of strongman he desperately wanted to be, but he certainly stoked the theories with his own behavior.

There are two things that people who do not want Trump to have ever been a president mix up and pretend are equivalent.

One is the fact that every country interferes with the elections of every other country. The other is that the fsb was so wildly successful at it they changed the result of the 2016 election.

The two have nothing to do with each other and mentioning the first when I'm talking about the second is deeply disingenuous.

Stop trying to both sides the idea there is a pedophile ring of shadowy Democrats that actually control the government and the fact that Russia interfered and ran misinformation campaigns to influence the election.

You can argue about how effective you think those campaigns were in their influence but you're just trying to muddy the conversation if you are trying to make them out to be equivalently valid or equivalently ridiculous.

Well let's think this out for a minute, a extremely well connected liberal billionaire with a island was found out to be a pedofile and peddeling underage women to politicians. So much so that while it has not been proven their is a mountain of evidence that the British Crown was a solicitor. This has been extracted to a global cabal of pedofiles.

Conversely, we know that the russians ran bot farms and did various other unscrupulous activities during the election. Yet nobody involved with Trump was implicated in what the Russians did. The evidence was well vetted and there was a through investigation on the subject matter, further, the Steele Dossier was proven to be a hit piece. This has been extracted to Trump is a KGB agent or under the influence and direct control of the Kremlin. Yet both are not on the equivalent on the conspiracy theory scale?

Are you trying to both sides about Donald's best friend? The guy he has been filmed and photographed with on multiple occasions?

Not sure what you are asking, but my point was both sides are just as willing to extract truth into the realm of conspiracy.

Please don't try to construe that as somehow me proclaiming my admiration for Trump. Sure Donald was friends with him, and most certainly he lied about his affiliation with him and distanced himself from him, but that is not the focus of my post.

My focus was to highlight the rabid denialism that is rampant on both sides and both sides thinking they are the norm and the other guys are the extremist.

Please read what I actually said.

Thank you.

> The two have nothing to do with each other and mentioning the first when I'm talking about the second is deeply disingenuous.

That Russia interfered in US elections has nothing to do with how successful Russia was in interfering with US elections, huh? Amazing logic there.

Those two things aren't equivalent, but the former is a component of the latter. Pretending that they're unrelated is bizarre.

> The other is that the fsb was so wildly successful at it they changes the result of the 2016 election.

I mean, we know that Russia pushed Trump hard. Probably it wasn't enough to sway the election, but it's more than a little disingenuous to pretend that this is equivalent to "Hillary has a satanic pedophile ring" or "Bill Gates is injecting tracker 5G vaccines into people", where they're completely fabricated.

I think you can make a pretty strong claim that without the email leaks, Hillary would have won. Thus making Russia hacks and leaks of her emails directly responsible for the push to presidency.

And here we are. Four years later, a victory and still knee deep in conspiracy land why the loss was a fluke caused by evil doers against the righteous and noble Hilary.

You're projecting quite a lot here. There is a large number of Americans who obviously support Trump, you most likely, and about 47% of them it seems in fact. That said, the prior elections were really close, with Trump even losing the popular vote, so it's really no stretch to think that it didn't take much to tip the scales one way or another, no conspiracy here, just elementary observation.

Russia hacked Democratic email accounts and trickled them out to WikiLeaks. They set up troll farms to promote pro-Trump narratives.

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee characterized this as "The Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure at the state and local level."

That was unusual. "Every country interferes with the elections of every other country" is disingenuous. And thinking maybe that there's more that might have happened there that went undiscovered is not even close to the same level as thinking that Wayfair is facilitating child trafficking.

I think people wanted it to be true because they didn't want to believe a man like Trump could be elected President of the United States normally.

I do think the rise of social media has opened up the ability for foreign countries to influence people's beliefs regarding an election, much more than they could in the past (although it's not a new phenomenon and the US is guilty of it as well).

But I also think the 2020 election also helped prove that it's not just foreign influence that can make people vote for someone like Trump, they're perfectly capable of coming to that conclusion on their own. There wasn't just social media influencing this time, they could see with their own eyes what Trump was doing the past four years, not just speculation, and still decided they wanted to support him.

From my perspective, the two things that people mix up are: A. Russia interfering with the election. B. Trump welcoming Russia's interference.

For me, (B) is significant regardless of whether the interference was impactful — and bringing up (B) in response to (A) does not seem disingenuous.

> The other is that the fsb was so wildly successful at it they changes the result of the 2016 election.

Do you have examples of people believing this?

There are replies in this thread that are saying Clinton II lost because of the emails being leaked.

I'm tired of this false statement being peddled.

The FBI, CIA, and republican-led Senate Committee on Intelligence have all produced extensive volumes of documentation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

If you're referring specifically to accusations of collusion between Trump and Russia, the core accusation was that he and his administration were playing the role of the useful idiot, being plied and influenced by Russia to the detriment of American interests.

The idea that he was intentionally working with Russia in a direct manner may has always been a misleading straw man.

The whole Russia thing went deep into conspiracy theory territory even before the 2016 election. The part that astounded me was the conspiracy theory about Trump being in secret communication with a Russian bank (and, for some reason, a US healthcare provider) via DNS. It was rejected by multiple outlets before a partisan rag ran with it, and made no sense on multiple levels - we were supposed to believe Trump got some subcountractors of subcontractors who he had no reason to trust to set up a communication channel so poor he'd need another, better communication channel just to agree what the messages meant, giving them the ability to blow the whole scheme and tying those communications to himself for no reason in the process, and they somehow went along with it and kept their mouths shut, and that this made more sense than email servers doing DNS lookups as the result of having received ordinary marketing emails for Trump hotels like you'd pretty much expect them to do.

And yet, this didn't stop the Clinton campaign demanding the FBI investigate it from her official Twitter account, and that demand going viral. Not only that, when the New York Times pushed back against this nuttery in the weakest way possible by reporting that the FBI had looked at the claims and concluded all the evidence pointed to it being the result of ordinary junk emails, their reader's editor pushed back, there was a boycott, and they eventually admitted it was a mistake and they wouldn't do it again. People are probably still holding this against the New York Times even now, and the theory got resurrected later by publications which should know better.

In a sea of readily-available information with no way to qualify it, people gravitate towards concepts they can understand and that fit within their ideological framework.

If we're in the Information Age, why is information literacy not as important as literacy itself?

Yeah, it's really weird.

My dad is an old guard conservative, and he's flabbergasted at the embrace of Trump and all these conspiracy theories and people going, "MY FREEEEDOM!!" instead of wearing a mask.

Seems like a lot of these problems stem from a failing education system. Teach kids critical thinking and scientific literacy and about media bias. Seems more important ever to teach kids that they shouldn't believe everything the see at face value. Easier said than done I suppose

> Seems like a lot of these problems stem from a failing education system. Teach kids critical thinking and scientific literacy and media bias. Seems more important ever to teach kids that they shouldn't believe everything the see at face value. Easier said than done I suppose

No education is perfect. Even if those things are taught (which I'm pretty sure they are already at some level), there will still be loads of people that:

1) didn't pay attention in school, or didn't absorb the lessons;

2) don't have the ability to apply the lessons;

3) forgot the lessons (esp. if they previously spent a lot of time in a sane media environment where the lessons were less necessary);

4) found it too much trouble to apply the lessons consistently, and let their guard down;

5) found the emotional content of the conspiracy was just too tempting; or

6) encountered a evolved conspiracy theory that found a way around their (years old) lessons.

I'm very inclined to believe, but I personally know a couple of medical doctors who are 100% into the theories. And I imagine lots of other people also know well-educated individuals with the same beliefs.

I don't know if education is enough. People seem to decide at some point what they believe, and then back all evidence into either it supports their beliefs, or the evidence is fake.

Doctors have a very narrow area of training.

Are you saying we need even more education than what doctors currently attain?

Or are you agreeing with my underlying point that education doesn't matter and won't help here?

I think GP is saying that we need _different_ education, not necessarily "more". It could be more if the new stuff was added in, or it could be the same amount if it replaces something else. The total amount of education isn't super relevant, and it's a bit misleading up claim that teaching anything other than what is already part of a medical school curriculum means you're requiring students to learn "more than a doctor".

For a more concrete example, I have never gone to graduate school; my education ended after finishing my undergrad. By any reasonable measure, I received "less" education than a doctor, who presumably completed an undergrad like me but also medical school afterwards. However, I almost certainly learned certain things that most doctors didn't in my computer science education, like how a compiler or operating system is written. If instead of those computer science courses I took courses dealing with media literacy and how to recognize bias, I still would have "less" education than a doctor.

...coupled with a wide path of respect and influence. It makes them powerful in both good and bad situations

I think the original commenter meant that at no point of your educational career do we teach things like distinguishing facts in the media - and while there is relation to learning about the scientific method as a doctor, it could be made clearer.

My point is that my experience has been that assholes are going to be assholes regardless of how much you educate them. We see this now where those with no education and very little wealth are out there saying "Trump isn't hurting the right people."

It doesn't matter the level of education someone has in that scenario - they've already decided on an "us vs them" mentality and will believe what they want to justify their actions.

There are very well-educated, well-informed, and critically-minded white supremacists - they use that knowledge and intelligence to further their racism. No amount of education will help them.

They've already decided they want to hurt other people, and just take all evidence and back it into either "supports my stance of hurting others" or "this is fake."

I think we're spending too much time on the pity party of the uneducated. That if they just had the chance of the college dream, they'd open their eyes and want to help others. I think the vast majority have already decided on their tribe, and we as a society need to be aware of this and structure accordingly rather than insult these groups by saying they're just stupid or misinformed. They know exactly what they're doing and are more than happy to achieve their goals because the ends justify the means.

Here’s a provocative argument that “media literacy” won’t help: https://points.datasociety.net/you-think-you-want-media-lite...

Exactly this - but this is why conservatives routinely defund education.

It was baffling listening to an SF tech worker in 2016 try to convince me Pizzagate was real.

Can you expand on why it’s dumb of me to dismiss Pizzagate?

A well intentioned question: in your view, were the various conspiracy theories about Barack Obama that went variously unopposed, weakly opposed, or openly embraced by mainstream conservatives depending on who you asked, "normal" conspiracies or crazy conspiracies?

People who believe Obama was born in Kenya, who believe George Soros funds every leftist cause on the planet, or... you know the stuff... are believing things that are both nutty and really obviously false. Is that stuff really any less nutty than the QAnon stuff?

I guess I feel like that maximum level of craziness isn't really new.

My view is this is because at its core human brain has evolved to not reject reality however weird it may be (bear with me), The problem is that when 'facts' are presented in form of live media (audio, video) the chances of it being interpreted as 'reality' by our adaptive brain as reality is high.. because you just saw & heard it, there in very little space there to inject intellectual discretion there, and even if you do you still have to have a special case for 'that reality'.

the best counter to fake news IMO is to not consume any news in a narrated form unless its from a really trusted source & I mean invite-home-and-fireside-chat trusted. I prefer reading news to this. the other benefit is that you can read at your own pace instead of the narrators pace so you have better chance of not missing crucial detail. Second is free is bad, my take away after last election cycle was we need to pay for the news. I got NYT & wapo sub and have not cancelled it since. Just these two things, paying for the news and reading it helps me keep this conspiracy BS at bay.

I think we now have a propaganda apparatus that folks in the past could not even have dreamt of. I fear that this will take us to a very dark place.

It's not as if other countries are lands of gold and honey... I live in Europe, and there are also anti-lockdown Covid-skeptics around here screaming "The goverment has turned authoritarian and is slowly turning us into sheep!" (luckily they're in the minority). And surely they are or will be vaccine-skeptics.

It seems truth has become subjective. I tried to talk to a QAnon-spouting girl and posted links to Snopes or The Guardian. She said, "Well, MSM is owned by the Rottschilds so you can't rely on them to tell the truth.". I never asked where she read this, but she probably would've replied she figured this out by reading some random Wordpress blog or watching some nutter on YouTube.

I thought "So, you believe those sources and think my sources are lying?!?". But wait, from her point of view, this sentence is also true! One could try asking them to check the reputation of their sources or dig deeper, but it seems this is an exercise in futility. When there are actual doctors arguing against Covid restrictions or publishing flawed studies on hydroxychloroquine, how do we trust who is reputable? (I'm talking about Didier Raoult, who now also has conspiracy theorists championing him as someone the French government "ousted" because he wasn't towing the party line).

Then again, there are utterly stupid conspiracy theories like the Wayfair one: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53416247 ; the idea that secret cabals would use publicly accessible online shops to traffic children is laughable, but the people who believe this sort of thing doesn't get that the real human traffickers (is a sad fact that they're out there) probably knows how to communicate in secret.

> "The goverment has turned authoritarian and is slowly turning us into sheep!"

You don't need to be "covid-skeptic" to say that, I say the same thing simply because I'm strongly libertarian. It also highly depends on the value system, e.g. if you're young and healthy you might think the marginally increased chance of complications because of this virus isn't worth delaying your life for months or years.

Also, Snopes and the Guardian (along with most other MSM and fact-checking sites) have pushed enough biases, falsehoods and conspiracy theories to be completely untrustworthy.

If you're young and healthy and have fast reaction times drive a large safe vehicle you might think the marginally increased chance of injury because of a crash is not worth delaying your journey by driving at a limited speed or obeying stop lights. but now everybody's driving fast and on the wrong side of the road and zooming through red lights and nobody gets anywhere faster safely because you have to slow down at every intersection and check if a car is coming. Lock down isn't delaying people's lives it's ensuring there's a society for those lives to continue in.

That's actually a really good analogy. We don't say "drive at 5 km/h to save lives", just like we shouldn't say "only be at home, work or in the store to save lives". There's a middle ground, which in addition is consistent with freedom (don't wanna die? don't drive, don't party during a pandemic)

> I'm strongly libertarian

Ah, labels, I don't find them helpful because everyone seems to understand political labels differently. What does this label mean to you? To me it means someone who would be quite dead after he gets the systen he wants, because he would end up eating tainted meat and drinking poisoned water, because, in my imagination the libertarian mindset is "Geez, government controlling my food? how dare they?".

So I end up rolling my eyes at anyone calling themselves this label...

Exactly, it’s a confusing label. I’m a strong believer in rules that prevent market inefficiencies, e.g. against misleading advertising, some sensible health regulations, ... but most of those rules affect corporations not people (and I don’t think corporations have any rights, the society allows them to exist).

People should be mostly free, including to eat poison (as long as they actually want to and are not mislead into it).

I think the size of these groups are greatly exaggerated by social media.

Conspiracy theorists have always existed and are practically harmless.

Sure there are incidents that occur, but likewise, 1000 people a month die from falling down the stairs. It's just not a problem in the grand scheme of things.

There are members of the US House of Representatives which believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory now (Marjorie Taylor Greene). Sure it's just one representative among hundreds, but that shows it's not a deal breaker and might even have widespread popular support.

I see the conspiracy theories as substitutes for more concrete reasons why people feel so divided and under attack. Recalling back to research done on conflicts between groups, the most strongest way tensions and fear are created is when people displays different symbols representing difference in values, unclear and uncertain definitions of identities and groups, and large difference in social and economic status being highly visible and displayed. Get people afraid with a strong dose of us vs them and people will latch onto any theory that will explain that emotional state regardless if some are true and some are false.

The best way to meet in the middle would be to do the opposite to those triggers and then talk to them.

> How do you even begin to "meet in the middle" or have reasonable conversations with people who believe in that stuff?

This is the Overton Window on steroids. I've struggled to put aside my partisanship in discussions with different opinions, I have trouble even when the other person is being rational and informed, but to go against flat-out-batshit-insanity?

How did that happen? Did we just assume people always want to be smarter, and that was wrong?

Where would you go? Conspiracy theories aren't unique to the us.

I was thinking Switzerland. Other European countries are also enticing, and I'm actually completely fine with the higher taxes, but less fine with the substantially lower wages for software engineering.

I am sure there are conspiracy theories everywhere but it feels like even some of the crazier ones are becoming mainstream in the US. I worry that staying here too long is playing chicken against the possibility of a crazy+competent person taking advantage of the conspiracy theories in ways Trump couldn't fully do.

You might check out this related comment before jumping ship: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25020778

Yeah, like I said surely there are conspiracy theorists everywhere and the "hippy granola" conspiracy theorists are a group I'm familiar with in the US (usually these are the "holistic medicine", anti-vaccine, unschooling, etc. people). I remember traveling through Germany and seeing tons of alternative medicine physician offices, and was surprised to learn in a lot of European countries you can actually use the socialized/public health systems to pay these "physicians", which I would find infuriating if it were my tax dollars going to that. But that's a bit of a digression. What's important to me is the scale and impact of the delusion moreso than the fact there are at least some deluded people.

Actually, at least in Germany the physicians you saw are still proper educated and certified doctors. They also are typically grounded very much on fundamental health education (although I'm certain there are exceptions). Many of them I suspect are using the whole alternative medicine more as an advertisement or a distinguishing factor, and the main thing they do might be prescripe acupuncture instead of pain meds. At least that was the experience I had when I went to one (I didn't seek him out specifically, it was just the closest one where I could get an appointment quickly).

Stop worrying. There have been popular conspiracy theories for ages. Aliens abducted by the CIA, JFK assassination, Moon landing hoax, 9/11 truthers, Illuminati, chemtrails, 5G, and the biggest one of all that you'll never escape from - religions. It's OK that people have different beliefs from you. You probably believe in some things, even dangerous things, that are obviously wrong too without realizing it.

People worrying about Qanon might just be suffering from selection and recency biases. If you don't quantify it and compare it to other conspiracy theories that you already tolerate, it might be an illusion. So much of this culture war stuff seems to be driven by those biases and complete failure to understand the scale of anything. Using instead, the frequency of news report and social media posts to estimate how popular an idea is.

The mania that these wild fabrications create in the US is... particular.

People are credulous of falsehood and don't seem able to apply critical thinking. Maybe these collective delusions help the deluded groups in some way... or serve the needs of a power structure.

You can have the bravery to understand that there are nuggets of truth in even what you may consider the crazier conspiracy theories, and then to follow up with researching and understanding psychological operations both the history and current extent therefor (of what we know), so that you can come to the table both with a) uncomfortable to you facts, and b) knowledge of how those psyops are used on the populace (which in particular gives one a better understanding/empathy with those who buy into xyz).

The media told everyone not in the conspiracy realm about how pizzagate was false, and it likely is, but only to an extent. But wait, I can feel the recoil already, just a moment. For those of us in the conspiracy realm, who know about the real use of children for blackmail operations mostly by intelligence agencies but also by organized crime, pizzagate suddenly becomes much more plausible (note I didn't say real). It's not a popular position because most people simply don't want to know how dark the world really is. The framing of Epstein as some one off independent abuser is actually part of the coverup of just one middle manager in one of said blackmail rings. He ran girls, others run boys. Top level politicians and businessmen are targets for leverage. If you balk at even this assertion just because of the "crazy by association" to pizzagate, take the time to lookup: The Dutroux Affair, aka Belgiums X-Files, The Franklin Scandal, the Finders Scandal, Roy Cohn (Trumps mentor)... as just a start. Also note: wikipedia will not provide good information on these kinds of topics. If one were to look at the entry for the Franklin Scandal without digging further, one would probably walk away thinking it was a hoax, which isn't the truth at all.

On the topic of psyops, one of the most used techniques is called the "limited hangout". I usually use the flat earth conspiracy as an example of this. Of course it is quite assinine, and should generally just be ignored as such, an analysis will show that those who talk about it (I would posit are often not organic), also talk about much more legitimate conspiracy theories. The intent is to make the more legitimate conspiracy theories discredited as crazy by association. Qanon is such an operation. It took what could have been a movement against the blackmail networks that have infiltrated and compromised huge amounts of business and politicians on both sides of the isle, and turned it into a partisan, quasi-religious outlet that goes nowhere, but always promises something is about to happen (keeping the partipants hopeful and distracted from more meaningful action) with the added side-bonus of being one of the best honeypots for metadata on those types in existence.

The Bill Gates topic is another good example. It's easy to kneejerk dismiss those concerns as they sound quite outlandish... but again, there is at least a modicum of truth, or rather, a handful of reasons people should be much more skeptical of the intentions of Bill Gates on the topic. For example, Bill Gates had quite an extensive relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, something a cursory search on the topic from mainstream sources will give nothing more than a passing mention. He had a relatively sordid relationship with the pharma industry in India, one worth digging into. On the "microchip" thing, another great example. Gate's related foundations and companies have openly talked about the quantum dot system, which is just readable markers to identify who has had a particular vaccine, and have actively partnered with the pentagon and darpa, and the ID2020 program is being tested on newborns in Bangladesh and homelss people in Austin, TX already. Those kinds of assocation alone are enough to at least empathize and understand where those who then take that and buy into the microchips story are coming from. So while it's untrue that the Gate's linked programs intend to put microchips in, the talk of digital certificates linked to biometrics such as quantum dot scare people, and then combine that with the fact that DARPA and the pentagon have been investigating such microchips, along with a history of medically experimenting on humans without consent, it's easy to see the jump to conclusions being made.

Given the huge amount of propaganda being heaped on the American public from all sides then, I think you should reconsider judging so harshly those who have fallen victim to that propaganda, and instead should focus on the purveyors and originators of that propaganda. To be frank, I also find this disproportionate judging of people in the current day to be very unprincipled also. We can invade countries illegally, murder hundreds of thousands of people abroad... and crickets... but talk about how the same engine that did that abroad is now turning it's eye of sauron back towards us, inward, and you must be a batshit crazy conspiracy theorist. To just now be losing faith in America/it's people is myopic at best. Try to judge a bit less, and exercise a bit more empathy and even sympathy for those who have fallen for the untrue (which is literally all of us, to some degree), and understand the outlandish might not be as unplausible as you might think, and you will be on a better path to engaging genuinely with such people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-GppBpUeYg

Don't forget that Hillary Clinton complained about 'vast right-wing conspiracies' publicly on multiple occasions. The talk of conspiracies is not unique to one side.

What’s hilarious with your position is that your “side”, the liberals, is perceived to be immune the conspiracy theories. For example, like how QAnon is widely believed throughout the conservative community. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/30/qanons-cons...

Actually that study just shows that people have not heard about the term Qanon. I actually believe that left leaning voters are more familiar with the term. I suspect it hardly gets mentioned on fox news for example. The more interesting thing would have been to ask about some of the theories from Qanon and to scale them likely to unlikely similar to the other questions.

The second difference between Qanon and some of the previous conspiracy theories (on both sides) is that we have several republicans quite openly supporting some of those theories, and even the president retweeting qanon theories. That's why people are saying it seems to becoming mainstream.

OP is talking about their own family

I am not conservative.