Evidence for the claim: proves the claim

No evidence: obviously the evidence is being suppressed, proves the claim

Evidence against the claim: shills obviously trying to control the narrative, proves the claim

I recall an anecdote by a mathematician about his approach to peer-reviewing proofs of theorems. He said he glosses over most of it, but very thoroughly checks anything the author claims to be "obvious" because it's the things that seem obvious that screw people up.

This. It doesn’t matter what you do, conspiracy theorists can and will justify it as a conspiracy.

Had a discussion about Assange the other day (contentious I know but bear with me). I brought up how he had a show on RT, the Russian state media channel, mentioning that it’s pretty bad optics regardless of what one thinks of the dude. They immediately went “no they didn’t that’s got to be a CIA myth.” Hand to god that’s what they said.

I showed him the IMDb and Wikipedia pages for it and a clip. Without missing a beat - remember they literally had never heard this before and have already decided it’s misinformation planted by the CIA - he said “Well it’s an independent show he put on that happened to be shown on RT.”

I mean what can you say to that?

'Happens to be' is doing alot of work in that sentence

Seriously! Like I said, I get it’s a very contentious issue and I’m sure people have varied feelings on this, but to walk into a conversation literally knowing nothing about the topic at hand and then hand waving it away so quickly…I mean there’s no point in even continuing the conversation at that point.

Assange knew every western government was likely to do literally nothing to defend him against the US. In his shoes you'd also probably be drip-feeding information and money to the Russians. Info which should be out in the open anyway.

But that’s what any decent conspiracy would do!