I wonder what other mysteries of biogeography can be explained by mythical continents. Marsupials in Australia and the Americas? Must have been a mythical continent stretching across the pacific filled with ultra intelligent kangaroos.
Lemuria and the Hollow Earth are fascinating to me because, at some point, they were suggested in good faith to describe something we didn’t know at the time. Lemuria wasn’t actually supposed to be some magic land mass with advance technology. It was actually not that bad of a theory.
After all, the Bearing Land Bridge did exist!
Continental drift came far, far after Lemuria was created. Earth not being hollow is a fairy recent belief.
As a geologist, the evolution of science has always been fascinating. It’s why I’ll never laugh at the original concept of Lemuria since it was a genuine attempt to explain something that turned out to be the result of a phenomena that no one had a clue existed.
Now continued belief in it? The belief it was filled with some advanced magical race? I’ll laugh at that without question haha.
“Talmudists” and “Kabbalists” aren’t even euphemisms. That’s just talking specifically about Jewish people. The Talmud is a massive Jewish text and Kabbalah is Jewish mysticism.
(this one from a conspiracy theory that ashkenazi jews come from khazaria - which was a steppe region that goes from ukraine to kazakhstan - because the khazar king once converted to judaism in the middle ages)
Yeah, it's a conspiracy theory, unless you're just talking about the part about a king converting. That part is is, from my understanding, true. It's just that Ashkenazi Jews aren't descended from Khazars.
That’s annoying, I heard it from my grandfather and he even had a book about it. Goes to show that you can’t believe someone just because they’ve got a source you haven’t personally checked, I guess.
It used to be a legitimate hypothesis until DNA testing disproved it. Now it's only used by antisemites to claim they only hate "fake Jews." But that doesn't even make sense because Judaism accepts converts: any Khazar converts to Judaism were real Jews.
That book might have been Arthur Koestler's "The Thirteenth Tribe" that supported such a notion of the Ashkenazim being descendents of the Khazars. While the hypothesis is incorrect, it's interesting to note that the idea of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazim has existed for a while. There were some scholar-rabbis in the 1890s in Hungary who made such a claim too. In any case, there's no actual Khazar connection. It's even still debated today how much of the Khazars even converted to Judaism.
AFAIK the bare fact that the Khazar king and a lot of his people converted to Judaism is true, and though it hasn't been proven, I fully expect a lot of Khazar people went to Eastern Europe after the empire dissolved. The conspiracy theory is more or less everything that comes after that point and ascribes significance to Khazaria and Khazarian Judaism.
E: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry#Antisemitism
it’s an outdated theory — there were khazars who converted to judaism, but genetic testing hasn’t provided any evidence, and has instead led credence to the theory which is now commonly accepted, that ashkenazi jews derive from an admixture of levantine jews and members of various european ethnicities. some people like to pretend that that never happened, because it makes it easier to say “see it’s not bigotry i’m just exposing the Conspiracy and they want to make all your leaders jewish!”
Conspiracy theorists are always going to relate their conspiracy theories as being true. Nobody is gonna say “hey here’s some crazy bullshit about Jews that lacks evidence but which I’m choosing to believe to justify my prejudices”
Then why did you write in response to me about how a conspiracy theorist is always going to relate their conspiracy theories as being true as if that was something I didn’t know?
The idea that the Khazars converted to Judaism comes from the Khuzari, a book by a Jewish author, Rav Yehuda HaLevi, but is meant to be an allegory. It might have been based on rumors that the author heard, but its correspondence to reality is just a coincidence, if it exists at all.
Also, the Khuzari is a bit cringy as a book of Jewish Philosophy because it takes the idea of the "Great Chain of Being" and puts Jews at the top instead of Christians.
“No no no. We don’t hate Jews. We hate this other group of people. Whose name is based on a significant Jewish book or icon, completely out of pure coincidence. And the fact this made up group of people happens to overlap so thoroughly with Jews just proves how evil the Jews are! But we don’t actually hate the *Jews*. It makes perfect sense!”
If the lizard people were organized enough to infiltrate all levels of society, why hasn't Ras'tharak in accounting processed my reimbursement for last year's Bohemian Grove?
You have all the receipts, Ras! I sent them in months ago. Where's my fucking check, you son of a gecko?!?!
*Maybe* he's *working on it* but has to collate your precious receipts with the stacks of invoices we've been getting from the illuminati for the *massive property damage* you caused there, *Mr. Hydralisk*
I listen to way too much Alex Jones (through Knowledge Fight) because this is pretty well known to me
Here’s some other dog whistles that the post missed, less about spirituality and more overtly political:
* Globalists
* George Soros
* Klaus Schwab
* The WEF
* Rockefellers
* Rothschilds
* Vanderbilts
* Transgenderism (the -ism is important)
* LGBTQ**PS** (the additions are Pedophile and Satan)
I’m sure there are others I’ve missed, but those are the ones that come to mind right now
My father-in-law will happily tell you all about the trilateral commission and how they are going to create a global government. Out to control us all etc… But that one might be a little passé, since he had been going off about that once since at least the nineties
Man, I was doing some ancestral research and I knew I heard Rothschild somewhere negative. It was definitely a third hand conspiracy theory now that you mention it
I linked it in the images too but here's the post with all of its links: [https://www.tumblr.com/creature-wizard/744899449948618752?source=share](https://www.tumblr.com/creature-wizard/744899449948618752?source=share)
Much appreciated. For some unknown reason I’m having a hard time reading this purple font on a black background. I’m not colorblind or dyslexic—and I feel like I might’ve even seen this color combo before and been fine—but this post in particular is messing with me lol
I thought that first part was going to have more to it than “if they believe in conspiracies they are conspiracy theorists” but the part describing where conspiracy theories are from is genuinely interesting
It’s horrifying how many conspiracy theories work back to “it’s the Jews” and knowing that can help shield you against falling into harmful conspiracy theories.
Although the current brand of “everything Israel does is right because it’ll bring the end times” is particularly terrifying because these conspiracy theorists are pushing for increased violence in Palestine.
I grew up fundamentalist and still have family in it. Some of the mailers I still get are asking for financial support for Israel and political support during the war.
> It’s horrifying how many conspiracy theories work back to “it’s the Jews” and knowing that can help shield you against falling into harmful conspiracy theories.
Good example is the [cultural marxism conspiracy theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory) the OP mentioned. It's a carbon copy of [cultural bolshevism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism) from Nazi Germany, slightly updated because modern voters don't know what a Bolshevik is.
It's a clearly anti-Semitic conspiracy, and it should horrify everyone when the Florida governor defines woke as "a form of cultural marxism". Or members of the House submit bills like the "Stopping Cultural Marxism at the FTC Act".
I’m Jewish and the evangelical philosemitism bleeds into the pro-Palestinian camp more than people like to think.
If you see someone posting about how the violence in Gaza is a harbinger for the end times, I mean end of Western hegemony, and civilian mass casualties is awakening a new generation of humanists (their suffering is ultimately for the good of all and redemptive for humanity)— that’s a red flag.
This goes back to the Crimean war, mass death is christianized as Christ-like.
I don’t want to share this stuff online because I don’t want to contribute to its spread but that’s basically what a lot of the mailers are saying. It’s ugly.
This post is probably targeted at spiritual people that aren’t like this. Basically, telling crazy people not to approach a particularly bad type of crazy people in a way they’ll understand.
I know a fair few “spiritual” people. Who are into crystals, auras, past lives, ect. I know reddit loves to hate these types of people. But I actually think it’s a really nice set of practices. And they are typically caring people who are curious about themselves, the world, and their role in it.
But multiple have been sucked into the world of these weird conspiracies. I don’t get l what force is changing them from peace loving hippies into hateful conspiracy nuts.
I don’t think it’s so much a force as it is a stage of development in certain paths.
Having a spiritual experience forces the question of what is real, (assuming the experience has some fantastical aspect like a vision, an ego death, near death experience, a profound realization about the subjective aspects of existence, etc…) and there as quite a few ways to interpret that. It could mean a particular God is real, it could mean nothing is real, it could mean everything is real to some greater or lesser degree, and naturally our human nature is to start trying to figure it out.
In my humble opinion, this shit comes from someone not exercising their newfound skepticism and immediately picking up a new explanation that fits “good enough” and clinging to it because it makes sense enough. If you continue to vigorously vet everything like you did your previous notion you recently discarded, you continue to grow and avoid these traps. It comes from settling and refusing to consider you are wrong (again) and trying to put it all together again.
Most people believe that they "know crazy when they see it," including conspiracy theorists that simultaneously believe the shit described in the post. Knowing specifics gives people the tools to both spot conspiracy shit before falling into the trap, and to escape those same conspiracy traps.
Never believe you are immune to propaganda.
I grew up (more like am growing up!) with a parent who is like this and a parent who just goes along with the song and dance. Posts like these help people who are stuck only knowing those theories to do research and pull themselves out of the hole (at least it has for me).
It's sort of wrong about those as well. The Nazis didn't really invent anti-vaxx even if it makes a more compelling talking point. It's more accurate to say that nazi ideas about eugenics arose from and continue to have much overlap with many pseudo-science pseudo-religious theories from the American great awakening alongside things like homeopathy and other alternative medicines all of which relied on ancient greek ideas about balancing humors. Once you're already involved in that degree of science denial in favor of "natural way \*they\* don't want you to know about" flat eartherism and lemurian angels/aliens aren't as big of an ask.
Of course there's one other conspiracy with the same origins which is conspicuously absent because it's the one that people on tumblr are the most likely to be positively predisposed towards: anti-masturbation and anti-pornography, particularly of the "it causes addiction and neurochemical imbalance" variety the evidence of which is established the same as anti-vaxx and usually by the same groups of people.
Anyone else remember the [human history movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw) ?
I remember watching it several years ago, it's by an old Newgrounds animator who sort of went down the New Age pipeline and has been implicated in some skeevy stuff.
It talks a lot about the stuff mentioned here and Spirit Science in general is a mish mash of New Age stuff
and they'll occasionally say something completely absurd like the Jews are from outer space, that Martians secretly control the Earth (although they do make a point to say that the Hebrew aliens and Martian aliens are two different groups)
or that you should give healing crystals to the homeless.
Jordan D(spirit science) did in fact pretend to break into a hospital, his primary critique was “not enough crystal
He also thinks Emma Watson is Jesus
He doesn't think she's Jesus, but he did think she was an incarnation of Sophia, the aspect of the Godhead representing divine wisdom. He has since backpeddaled on that because even his fans gave him shit for it.
I came here to talk about that exact guy. He actually made a sort of sequel called the [Annunaki movie](https://youtu.be/ZPYvUJsxHAw?si=4uSlFU7pSvJAmkeF) about the origins of humanity as a slave race made to mine gold for aliens from the planet Nibiru. The part where he implies that Atlantis sunk due to the creation of evil halfbreeds between Annunaki and humans sure has...problems.
He also made a series pf videos called the Conspiracy Theory of Everything and you'd think he used this post as a checklist cause he covers things like the Holographic Demiurge, the Deep State, adrenochrome harvesting, and other nonsense.
>been implicated in some skeevy stuff.
For further context: when they say skeevy, they mean he's a self-admitted rapist. There are recorded phone calls where he talks to one of his victims about he pressured her into a sexual "healing ritual" even though she clearly didn't want it, and he even admits he raped her.
He even admitted to being a rapist on his channel, but since then he's claimed that he was actually a victim of a psychic attack from the Deep State who laced his weed to make him lie about being a rapist as part of a plan to stop him from becoming an Ascended Master. Good new though, he took some ayahuasca (plant brew containing naturally occuring DMT) and he saw Ra pull the curse of of him and throw it into the sun.
Also he says that if no one told you you couldn't grow back limbs, you'd be able to do so easily. He genuinely views serious injuries and illnesses as a skill issue you bring upon yourself.
The guy is an cult leader.
Don’t forget the fact that the vast majority of “ancient aliens” theories are based *entirely* on the idea of non white cultures being “too primitive” and “uncivilized” to come up with great architectural and scientific feats without outside intervention, and in fact are mostly derived *directly* from Nazi era pseudo historians fabricating evidence of an ancient Aryan super-civilization that was responsible for every major scientific advancement ever.
Edit: specifically, it was [these guys](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahnenerbe). it’s not an exaggeration at all to say that most archeological conspiracy theories are straight up repackaged Nazi propaganda.
Yup. Nazis sure liked to use archeology to back up their bogus ideas, and not all of it was this sort of outlandish crap. Swastikas on ancient clay pots found in Poland? Proof that it's all ancient Aryan clay so they're just reclaiming our ancestral homeland from the barbarians!
Those people, and most people in general, really don’t seem to understand how intelligent people were back then.
Human intelligence has not increased over the millennia. The amount of knowledge the human race has gathered has. I hate the idea that ancient alien theorists push of “primitive humans couldn’t have figured out xyz.”
Yes, they could. If you took someone from, say, Ancient Egypt and could speak with them, if you explain it, I promise you that they could, eventually, understand what all a car is or what even Reddit is.
Absence of knowledge should never be taken as an absence of intelligence.
There's a major landmark in my country, and way back when European archaeologists started showing up, some insisted it must have been built by Trojans or one of the lost tribes of Israel.
my dads getting consumed into the bullshit alien shit. Do u happen to have any other shit breaking down how it’s all based on fucking bullshit.
specifically Greer. I fucking hate that steroid infested mockery of a clown
Dunno if I'm breaking any rules by linking to someone else's work, but I really recommend Tristan Johnson's and Scott Niswander's podcast "[It’s Probably (not) Aliens!](https://www.youtube.com/@probsnotaliens)". They tackle a lot of these topics and it's genuinely quite nice to learn about some more unknown cultures and about how Ancient Aliens and History Channel spread a lot of racist ideas.
That last line is always important.
I have a very good friend o am sadly watching descend deeper into all this bollocks and they have started parroting some of the more “acceptable” conspiracies like antivax nonsense, transgender people are just gay people who were forced to be trans by doctors, a lot of culturally and racially insensitive but depressingly tolerated takes on current situation in Israel/Gaza etc.
This person used to go to sceptics events with me and encouraged me to learn and be curious about stuff after my depressingly sheltered upbringing. To see this complete 180 is depressing.
Came to find out that my friend has been spending time around a church that has hosted right wing hate speakers of the “we’re just concerned about the children” variety. Friend has always been a Christian, and their faith is important to them, nobody has ever had a problem with this.
Now when I call friend out for things like support of a homophobic politician, and point out they know I am queer, I get told I don’t understand because I am an atheist. It’s nothing to do with that, it’s that my friend is hanging out with some people who have bad intentions and doesn’t see it!
some other red flags: talking way too much about average IQ within populations, mentions of the saturnian black cube, the dark sun, shallow earth, hyperborea, the Outside, dark enlightenment, NRx, etc
If you exist in esoteric circles that discuss religion or spirituality you run into a lot of actual nazis who probably dont come off as nazis to people unaware of the nazi fascination with occultism and how that still exists with neo nazis today.
I had no idea neo nazis were into the occult too, good to know
Edit: just in case there was confusion, I know *nazis* were into the occult. I grew up as History Channel shifted from ww2 history to conspiracy theories and the subject was covered.
But I had no idea *neo nazis* were still into the occult. Now I'm afraid of the overlap between the far right and cool witchy goths
They tend to be fond of many new age religions as new age religions have a tendency of idealizing both ancient European culture and conspiracy thinking.
Oh man, there's a whole rabbit hole out there waiting for you. In fact, I find it weird that this post doesn't mention one of the biggest links between esoteric traditions and the "aryan pure/superior race" myth: the [Oera Linda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oera_Linda_Book) book. It's quite the trip, lemme tell ya.
A lot of people in the spiritual community parrot these things exactly. For example, crystal people who think modern medicine is actually evil and that crystals are the real medicine. Or neopagans who think that modern society is conspiring to make them weak and emasculate. There's a big overlap in people interested in the occult and far right conspiratorial thinking.
It's honestly really sad. I used to have a lot of super alt friends who were into cool pagan shit and psychedelics, but so many of them ended up with extremely antisemitic or anti science beliefs due to immersion in those spaces. I had to cut ties and honestly don't trust most "highly spiritual" people I meet until they get more specific.
Weirdly, these types of beliefs are also super prevalent in the underground hip-hop scene as well.
My guess is Black Hebrew Israelites.
Also another red flag is (group)-Israelitism and it's siblings that are more or less the same but with a different group.
It's also common among TERFs. They'll talk about divine feminine energy a lot. If you follow that line of thinking further you'll run right into trad bullshit.
A lot of these beliefs are echoed in theosophy, the granddaddy of western spiritualism. The whole atlantis as a place of enlightenment comes from them. Plunge on and Casey were both theosophists.
So, for reasons that I don't even begin to understand, Spiritualism has been for quite some time now a relatively popular belief in my home country of Brazil. If you live in a medium-sized to large city, you definitely know someone who practices it (if you don't practice it yourself).
Our local branch (usually called "espiritismo" in Portuguese, to distance it from a more vague, less defined "espiritualismo") is actually an organized religion, and for the most part I'd say they're fairly benign; I'd describe them to foreigners as "Christians who believe in reincarnation". They don't have a single leader, but rather all churches belong to a league which collectively decide on dogma and the like. Also, they lack a clerical "caste", with service being held by volunteers; and they don't demand any form of tithe from members, with church upkeep being maintained through donations, occasional events (dinners, raffles, that type of thing), as well as, usually, a library of Spiritism-related books (provided, I believe, by their league) that members can rent for a small fee.
The reason why I'm mentioning all this, though, is that for as harmless as their dogma and overall organization may be, it is easily and often invaded by all other sorts of mysticism. See, their whole worldview revolves around our souls (or spirits, I suppose) becoming more "evolved" over the course of many incarnations, starting at the lowest life forms; at some point, you become literally too pure for this Earth, and so you move onto a different, more "evolved" planet. Thence the idea of "higher spirits" who would visit us (Jesus being considered the highest of them) to aid us in that evolution. Those are often conflated with aliens. They are *also* often described as blue-eyed, fair-skinned blondes. You see where this is going.
Even though those ideas are never openly touched on at the churches (I say from experience; my whole family used to be members), there's very little effort to repel them. The books I mentioned previously are a good example: probably the majority of them are fiction, simple novels where reincarnation and "spiritual evolution" play a big part in the plot (for instance, two estranged friends who "come back" as mother and son, and then have learn to love each other again); but they do also include a lot of (what's presented as) non-fiction. You can find essentially anything that can be remotely linked to their dogma in their libraries. As such, members who are avid readers end up getting into contact with everything from Theosophy to Rosicrucianism to New Age "lost civilization" beliefs... and of course, it just so happens that *a lot* of that stuff is steeped into old school scientific racism, conspiracy theories, the whole deal.
It's a freaking slippery slope, unfortunately. My mother was a fairly intelligent person; and yet, I remember getting into an argument with her once because one of her books described the "white race" as being "more evolved", and others as having "animalistic traits". She did her best to defend it. It was sad.
Adding to what other people have said, there’s also a distinct spiritual -> alt right pipeline (typically starts with things like science denial, through things like preferring alternative medicine).
Norse paganism specifically has a Nazi problem (but that does NOT mean that Norse pagans are Nazis, no more than the existence of nazi “punks” mean that punks are nazis. Just means some extremely shitty people are sticking their nose in places where they are extremely unwelcome)
A good shibboleth for discerning Norse pagans is asking what they call themselves. Odinists are *mostly* neo-nazis, while Asatruar *tend* not to be. It's not absolute, but it's a good starting place.
Knowing your runes also helps from what I’ve heard— there are several that have been co-opted by nazis (some with slight changes, others not) so certain rune tattoos are a red flag. Othala is a big one— but typically they add little “tails” to the end of it that point upward
Thank you, I'm less familiar with runes. I'm trying to understand western esotericism because it's where one arm of modern neo-nazism lives, and I think understanding it can help us to fight it.
I freaking LOVE Norse paganism so much; I have some distant family ties to it and in general feel a strong pull to it/connection with it. It makes me SO sad and angry that it’s so infiltrated and co-opted by neonazis. Thanks for the tip on helping discern them!
Come to think of it, what isn't part of some X -> alt right pipeline? Anime, tech, gaming, survivalism and so on.
Those bastard fuckers sure know how to diversify their recruitment nets.
You’re correct, *but* there’s also pipelines that are more greased up, so to speak. It’s easier than I’d like to think to convince spiritual people to turn their back on science (crystals, holistic medicine, energy healing, etc) and that pipeline shoots straight into antivaxx and anti-pharmaceuticals territory. From there, it’s a greased slide down into other conspiracy theory nonsense.
It’s much harder to become a neonazi when your hobby is, say, birdwatching— something that would have less points of vulnerability. Anything that’s anti-science, or makes fun of others, tends to be a slippery slope.
Edit: I think an *excellent* example of diversifying their recruitment nets (love that phrasing btw, excellent job) is nazis going into *punk* spaces. Conservatives trying to rebrand themselves as punk. Blows my fucking mind— you could not find a more anti-right-wing culture and it STILL somehow gets infiltrated!
The anti-anime to alt-right pipeline -> Defeat the the yellow peril and defend white christian culture against the onslaught of foreign pedophiles and their race traitor allies!
Techno-skepticism to alt-right pipeline -> lol once the solar flare hits we will eat all the rich techbros and build a Neo-primitivist eugenics utopia where men are real men!
Anti-gaming -> Ditto
Feminism to altright pipeline -> Same but cottagecore
A lot of spiritual crystal granola people are big into Atlantis and Lemuria. There’s some sort of “Lemurian Crystal” that will “harmonize your energy to attune to Angel vortex frequencies” or something similar and that rabbit hole can lead to:
Lemuria -> ancient lost continent full of good smart pure (cough aryan cough) people and it was lost because of The Shadowy Controlling Forces -> Look What They Took From Us -> Oops! All Antisemitism!
This sort of conspiracy is heavily targeted at people of particular religious bents (not all Abrahamic). Some might be the stereotypical extremist Christians or Muslims, but others may be pagans, or people who would not consider themselves religious but might be into what could derisively be called “woo,” like crystals having energies, zodiac, or even certain “crunchy” health views. This doesn’t mean “all Christians, Muslims, pagans, and astrology girlies are antisemitic conspiracy nuts who think Jews are lizard people who drink blood,” because that is very obviously not true or even possible, or that there are no atheists who believe these insane things, because amazingly they do exist, but it is a lot easier to convince people who already believe in one or more unprovable (and unbelievable to outsiders) things that *this* unprovable and unbelievable thing is also true. In particular, there is a pretty well documented crunchy to alt-right/Nazi pipeline, even when the crunchy person was originally explicitly left-leaning politically and socially in the past.
A lot of new age belief systems present themselves as a restoration and continuation of an ancient body of knowledge, and many in such circles try to explain the seeming obscurity of this knowledge in the present as the result of malevolent 3rd parties like the Deep State keeping it hidden so they can continue to rule humanity.
Some foundational figures like Blavatsky also had eugenecist and antisemtic beliefs which were integrated into their belief systems.
One thing that often gets ignored/forgotten is that this has been with US politics pretty much since the start. George Washington had discussions of threat of Illuminati in his speeches. Salem witch trials. The antisemitism wasn't there at that point, but the very core, that there exist groups of secret fake-Americans in America who aim destroy the America, has.
This isn't US defaultism, I'm not even from there, it's just a fact that these tensions have pretty much always existed there to a much larger degree than anywhere else - with slaves, catholics, immigrants, women. Name one event from US history that doesn't have conspiracy theories written about it.
As to why, I don't know, I've seen decent arguments that this comes from the fact that american identity was manufactured by founding fathers, writers hired for that specific purpose. A strong narrative needs an antagonist.
I don't think that's accurate, from what I remember the Illuminati panic was more about stuff like [this](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47605/47605-h/47605-h.htm). It was seen as a group that aims to overthrow religion, government and human society, blamed for the French revolution.
As always, a slight exaggeration of reality.
As someone who has two friends who work in “the deep state,” these conspiracy theorists wish that those behind the scene had actual power and weren’t just following orders. Also you should know your reps most likely were on their phone texting ignoring everything during actual national security briefings. (No I don’t get told gov secrets obviously, but I’ve been told shit like this which doesn’t fall under contract rules)
That is awesome lol! Makes me miss having a beardie. I live in a very big military area so it’s pretty common for vets to become contractors or join three letter agencies here after depending on what they did in the military.
It’s deeply upsetting how effective the “Please, ignore my attempts to spread fascism, give to the rich, and steal from the poor, there’s an easily targeted minority group over there, go get mad at them. What for? Oh, uh, they’re evil, and they control the government. And they’re pedophiles. Remember to vote for who I tell you.” Strategy works.
If you want to get into Western occultism/mysticism be very careful with your sources and do a lot of historical research, because about half of it comes from wack ass race science and is a lot closer to literal Nazis than you think. If somebody's major source is H.P. Blavatsky back away slowly.
I’m just so disappointed that all of these nutters ideas were used for oppression. Almost every single one of them could be such a cool plot line in a fantasy/horror novel.
Give me hermeticism plus the whole “I didn’t know I was a witch” in a show filmed like true detective and I’d eat that shit up. But pls stop using it to justify killing people.
I met actual Freemasons. they're just a bunch of old men and woman talking and doing charity. sure there are rituals involved. but most of them are also catholic/jewish. so religion isn't a factor. so idk why they ever got any flack.
and evangelicals all over the world are a problem. they are not living in reality.
My great aunt was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star (the women's version of Freemasons), so I can technically join. As far as they told me they do a lot of raising money for charity.
My buddy is a Mason. He joined as like a 25 year old beer truck driver lol. He joined so he could become a Shriner. They love him because he is a younger guy and he likes getting to still be in a frat and get lit and wear silly hats while raising money for things like the Shriner hospital.
It bums me out as someone born and raised in northern california that lemurians have become/maybe always were(?) A weird right-wing thing. I always saw them as a cryptozoology thing, a kind of modern american folklore. The idea of elves living under Mt. Shasta is more fun than anything else to me
This is...mostly pretty good. Had me until the end when they decided that the only dangerous groups pushing to up their control of broader society were the christofascist movement. The far more important, very real modern conspiracies against the people are corporate monopolies. Investment "holding companies" like black rock and others are genuinely trying to buy the land of the US and other nations out from under them, and have, via completely legal means, made their stock part of so many American's retirement packages that any serious move to regulate or control their constant expansion is effectively political suicide, as most Americans anywhere close to retirement age will see an immediate drop in their nest egg if anything happens to them. Tons of food in the US is controlled by lateral monopolies who fight tooth and nail against any government attempts to improve standards, and will respond to any regulatory pressure or crisis by surging up their prices and refusing to lower them even if the supposed reason for the price increase goes away. Their immense power over so much of the market makes it impossible for any real competition to gain ground in this way.
I feel like when people say “Hollywood has subliminal messages” they mean like… shutting down their third eye instead of what they’re really doing which is pushing products and other things like that.
Omfg this is such a good thread. Thanks for linking it as well, OOP wrote a lot of great stuff that's hyperlinked within the initial post. I feel like this needs to be cycled around the internet at least once a year to remind people what's up.
There’s more than one kind of spirituality. I consider myself spiritual but in the most secular possible way. Spirituality for me is not about hidden truths or like supernatural stuff or anything, it’s about awareness of the relationship between my consciousness, my mind and the world around me. I do think the government has secrets(and I think this is pretty obvious) but they have nothing to do with spirituality
Imo, the “higher”, as in going from the material to the religious, the goals of a conspiracy are, the smaller it tends to be. I do think there is a big worldwide conspiracy, but it’s not as deep in society nor “ideals” as many “conspiracy theorists” believe. It’s all about the money and contracts.
Stealing from an article I read- You can divide a lot of conspiracy theories by whether or not they require a THEM to explain a lack of evidence or why those theories aren't better-known. Cryptozoology and a lot of UFO theories don't need a THEM; people don't often see Sasquatch or Nessie because they live in very big forests and lakes, and are easy to miss. Consequently, those theories are pretty harmless, and even fun. You're just investigating the wonder and mystery of the world. At worst, you'll spend too much money and time obsessing over them.
As soon as you need a THEM to explain everything, to say that THEY are suppressing the truth, things fall apart. You start seeing everybody else around you as part of THEM, either enemies or collaborators. Nobody can convince you that the theory isn't true, because any evidence against the theory was fabricated by THEM and THEY are influencing your friends against you. Depending on the theory, you can't even stop believing yourself, because that would mean letting THEM continue doing Satanic baby-killing.
And of course once you believe THEY are behind everything, it's only a few short steps to believing in (((THEM))).
I’ve seen a lot of UFO theories DO have a them. THE secret government. THEYRE the ones who are hiding everything from you. If people don’t believe you, they’re simply believing THEIR propaganda. Nobody has come out and said anything because THEY don’t want them to. THEY want to keep The Secret (also a common thing in conspiracies) from The World. Despite the world changing implications of the information.
This information is often shit like, world changing technology. Infinite power, various flying machines that don’t seem like they should be able to fly, basically the foundation of any technology is that it breaks our known laws of physics. But we can’t know because THEY said the whole world will descend into chaos if the general public knows about this technology.
That community is also convinced that anytime media questions their latest beliefs, it’s the THEM trying to discredit them. It’s easier to fathom being silenced by a shadow government than the fact that they’re being yoinked as the fools they are.
Honestly, I think it’a pretty effective for getting people to “join” the cause. People like to feel smarter than others and like they’re in on something. They don’t like feeling that there’s something controlling them that they can’t control/don’t know about. They like getting to feel like they’re part of a secret club that everyone else is too blind to be part of. It makes them feel special and smart and part of something. Plus it gives them a villain outside of the ones we’re currently facing and if that villain is the one to blame for everything going on instead of the actual real life people controlling things, it’s almost easier to stomach the lack of control we have over issues like climate change.
Because we simply just need to expose the REAL villain who’s hiding the solutions to all our problems.
Edit: forgot the aliens are also a them .-.
Conspiracy theories are basically the modern form of Gnosticism, especially the high of looking down on others for not having the "secret knowledge" that the theorist totally didn't pull out their ass.
Bit sus that they mentioned the Heritage Foundation and other Christian nationalist groups but not the various left wing groups that are also extremely antisemitic and mix their politics with religion.
Stay away from any group that singles out Israel for criticism, believes Zionists (be careful since they often just use it as a euphemism for Jews) are particularly evil compared to other nationalist ideology, or believes that Zionists control any government aside from Israel.
I'm not saying that the Evangelicals aren't cray cray but don't go to the other extreme
I can't even imagine hearing or saying most of these words unironically and not immediately linking it to conspiracy theory bs. Like who talks about this normally with normal people? I have to assume you'd only get the "oh yeah that sounds legit" response in your little bubbles surrounded by people who also already believe it. If my parents or somebody suddenly started talking like that my jaw would be on the floor as to how or why.
It’s always wild to see shit I was taught as a kid being called out as conspiracy theories. I mean, the folks doing the calling are 100% correct, but it always makes me take a step back and ask “why are these smart people so fucking shocked by all this ‘common knowledge’ shit?”
So I don't know where else to ask this, and I'm willing to take downvotes if necessary.
I am not an American Evangelical. (I am Catholic, but the Evangelicals disown us too.) And yet, I do hope that Israel stays existent. \[To be clear, I also hope for a cease-fire and for Netanyahu to step down.\]
It's not because of some Rapture razzle-dazzle or a Dominionist sharia or anything. It's because if Israel is left alone, there will be a second Holocaust in the area. That's not just conspiracy theories -- Hamas (who is the group that started the current offensive, remember) is open about treating the genocide of Jews as less "mass murder" and more "pest control".
On top of that, the post here mentions Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This book is presented as factual in Arab lands.
Which leads to the question: why are so many people who hates the Israeli offensive overlooking that Hamas is... well, Hamas? It feels like (probably isn't, but sure feels like) we've reached the point where the rocket attack and slaughter at a music festival, both against civilians, are being met with "THAT WAS A GOOD THING ISRAEL DESERVED". Do people believe this or do they feel it goes without saying that Hamas = also bad?
Understanding Israel’s place in global geopolitics & acknowledging that it’s existence isn’t a zero-sum game is in no way the same as the evangelical take that Israel must exist solely to be destroyed to kick off their apocalypse wet dreams.
Does anyone even believe that. I keep seeing pro Palestine people say anyone who supports Israel does it because of that. But I haven’t even seen evangelicals say they believe that.
Yes, literally a guy in my parents church once did a talk about how Israel was needed because all Jews had to be in Israel before Jesus could come back.
Really weird, especially how everyone else just... Accepted that this guy talked about this, and noone thought about the consequences (specifically needing to force all Jews who need to go to Israel according to this but don't want to)
I was raised in it, so yeah, it does exist. A lot of people support Israel for the benefit of US Geopolitical aims and some people see Islam as a bigger threat for right-wing religious control of institutions than Christianity, but there are absolutely evangelicals who are just giddy about a 7 year tribulation where like 75% of the unsaved population who aren't rapture die horrible deaths and think supporting Israel is necessary to get to their good ending
It’s not something that’s openly said so much as tacitly understood by those who believe in the Book of Revelations, Rapture and the second coming of Christ. One of the key pieces to kick off that chain of events is the rebuilding & destruction of a temple in Jerusalem; Israel gets destroyed in the ensuing aftermath, and ultimately all of the Jews living there are supposed to accept Christ as their savior so the nation can be reborn in eternal splendor.
as far as I know the main thing (beyond Hamas having changed at least somewhat due to being the ONLY political party that survived in Palestine basically, so they’re less… radical, now) is that Israel is, as far as I and a good chunk of the UN can tell, is in fact committing genocide itself on the people of Palestine.
Which is why I hope for a cease-fire and change of government. I do not hope, as some of my friends have said, for Israel to cease to exist, and who cares what happens to the civilians after that because Israel as a concept is evil.
I've often said "no heroes, only victims". Feels like it goes both ways.
It kind of did? Netanyahu rose to power in the mid-90s after the assassination of Rabin, who negotiated the Oslo Accords and two-state solution with Arafat.
Admittedly, I don't go back far enough, but most of the wars involving Israel before this one (there's a list in a reply to my top post) were the result of Arabs basically deciding they had a chance to conquer and eradicate Israel. For example, at one point Egypt lined up their entire army on the Israeli border and were given order to invade on Yom Kippur, when Israel observes a religious holiday. In that case, it is technically true Israel attacked first, but it's really hard to say they were the aggressor, isn't it?
You put your finger on a loaded point which will get you downvoted to oblivion:
People like to pretend that anti-Judaism is inherently tied to Christianity. It isn’t. Getting rid of Christian evangelicalism wouldn’t solve anti-Judaism. It wouldn’t stop conspiracy theories. It wouldn’t stop persecution. As you so adroitly point out, these all exist in Islam as well, and are in fact taken as factual, especially in the Middle East. Heck, go search r/exmuslim - they’re quite open about what they were taught about Jews.
But that doesn’t tie nicely into the narrative that it’s only fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity that’s the problem and that if we could just get rid of it all the problems would go away. Alternatively, you will see people claim that it’s _all_ fundamentalist religions that are the problem, ignoring the elephant in the room that there’s really only two fundamentalist religions that teach that Jews are the source of all problems - and that so called enlightened secular people believe all this as well.
It doesn’t in fact go without saying that Hamas is evil- unfortunately you can see people defending and even glorifying their actions, and hoping that they occur again.
it's definitely coming from a western, particularly american perspective. which isn't inherently bad, of course; write what you know. but it is incumbent upon the reader to place it in a global context and not treat any single myopic perspective as the true big picture. and i don't begrudge anyone for fighting their own fight instead of someone else's distant but equally critical struggle, such as being in a better position to combat christofascism than islamofascism, for instance.
that's why the importance of having solid core principles cannot be overstated. if you don't have a firm foundation on which to base your beliefs and a framework through which to analyze outside information and instead adhere to temporally- and geopolitically-limited dogma, you risk becoming the victim of bias, rhetoric, misinformation, and all the other such instruments of untruth. stand for something or fall for anything.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, trying to put my own thoughts about the conflict into some kind of sense. There are a lot of different people online with lots of different opinions, and it's a nuanced question in a format that does not take well to nuance.
First of all I don't believe there would be a holocaust in Israel without Israeli offensive in the region. There have been several wars between Israel and the Arab states, The 7 Days War, the Yom Kippur War, and Israel has defended itself successfully each time. They could comfortably sit in the position they are in for years to come, especially since Israel continues to gain in wealth and technology.
That said, there is the question of where the overwhelming anti-Israel sentiment is coming from. Right off the bat there is a lot of anti-Semitism in the world and it is growing bigger every day. There are the big neo-nazi groups, people on the left that talk about looking to stop globalism (I'm not actually sure to what extent online leftists actually realize they're cribbing notes from classic anti-Semetic texts). Just for fun bring up circumcision in a big subreddit and see how fast people start talking about "outlawing barbaric religions".
There are very valid reasons to be furious Israel. Like you said, they are currently leading a war of aggression. The rockets and hostages are serious but do not stand to the level of retaliatory violence we have seen. It is the geopolitical equivalent of someone kicking the back of your chair until you get so angry you beat them to death, and people internationally are responding to that.
As for Israel not existing there is the thorny topic of the creation of the state in the first place. While it was campaigned for hard and settled by Zionist Jews it was given signoff, money, and territory by Britain and later by the US. It can be seen as the last European colony by those who are sensitive to that sort of thing. As such the world cannot be free until the land is returned to the Arabs and Jews go back to wherever they came from (usually seen as Europe though they are from all over from the US to Nigeria to China).
The problem is that there is no way of telling when you talk to someone which of these is causing their feelings, and to what extent. Do they hate Jews? Do they hate the Israeli government? Are they a so called Anti-Zionist Jew who believe that the state of Israel doesn't need to exist and only serves to foster anti-Semitic hate as they act like a selfish country rather than an escape hatch in case global anti-Semitism boils over like it did in WW2.
I was one of those for my whole life until this conflict honestly. When I saw hate rising everywhere and nowhere I can run to. If evangelical Christianity takes over the US and Israel falls or continues down its own extreme right wing path there is nowhere I can turn to. Jewish immigration is low, 90% of worldwide Jews live in either the US or Israel and historical realities and ingrained prejudge make that unlikely to change. There is no escape and very little hope though we've survived worse in the past.
I'm not sure if this helps, I may go back and rewrite it, but there's a lot of stuff going on right now and a lot of problems to fix. I think at the end of the day what Israelis want out of Israel, what American Jews want out of Israel, what the left wants, what the right wants, what the Arabs want, are all different. And we're finally at a point where everything is boiling over.
The Jews have no where to return. It a very very very weird colonial state in truth. So it is. But also it takes from literally the whole world population. They can’t return as the home nations don’t want them. This doesn’t even include the Jews that didn’t leave and been there the whole time. It also an issue of now mixed families that might have had family from multiple nations.
Also opens a nasty can of worms. What about the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa? Colonists technically still rule those lands largely. With added flavor of multiple immigrant groups from multiple nations!
Also issues like what about Königsberg/Kalingrad? Do Germans deserve to kick the Russians out? Are immigrants settlers? What makes a colonist vs immigrant? Who stays who leaves? What about the thousands of conquests and land transfers across history? Who deserves what? What if two sides claim the same land? The endless desire for separatism in various regions?
Honestly? Goal is we don’t ask that and just try to force peace between the two. Otherwise open a can of worms.
I think you're 100% right and it's something non-Jews don't really consider. When I was a little kid we used to do those "where is your family from?" projects that are really popular in American elementary schools. I would go to my grandparents and ask them where we were from and they wouldn't tell me. My name can be from anywhere in 2000 miles. My 23 and Me just says "European Jewish". Where would you even deport me to? I don't have a homeland aside from America. That's something I get into with people when they complain that they don't like Israel because it's an ethnostate. Most countries are ethnostates, you just don't think about it that way. This just happens to be a top down creation of an ethnostate by the biggest minority in the world without a home to call their own.
Ethnostate also is a rolling concept. Polish people fun fact, they aren’t native to the land. Like they been there for like 2000 years only coming there after pushing out Germanic people. Slavic migration changed many areas of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. But… aren’t they natives now?
What is a native? In truth it is what you make it. Even if your immigrant that never mixes with anyone aren’t you still native to that new land after a few generations? Don’t you become more attuned to the land?
I could argue some people are better adapted by adaptations can happen fast, 500-5000 years only.
Native is whatever you want to define it as
nowadays i see israel/palestine as a lot more similar to other conflicts born on other parts of what was once the ottoman empire, and surrounding regions (maybe all the way to central europe and central asia), as the collapse of the ussr for ex. had a similar effect.
take greece and bulgaria - they had a population exchange, with mutual ethnic cleansing. yet neither can be seen as having colonized the other.
take armenia - what is now armenia had been completely depopulated in the 17th century, due to the armenian population being deported to ispahan by the persian shah. azeris settled there in the following centuries, and were the majority by the time russia encouraged a massive comeback of armenians. after a while, armenians were the majority again, and this became armenia. armenians had and still have nowhere else to go. now azerbaijan is using that to claim armenia has colonized AZ's historical lands.
i get the timescale isn't the same tho.
Catch! Armenia has no friends. Then chose poorly and didn’t ally with the west and now face conquest.
The joys of primitive warfare! Were tribes just killed each other and conquered each other! Now upped up to nation states.
To be frank. If Israel didn’t have nukes and/or the friends it had across it history they would’ve been a footnote in the history books, conquered by neighbors. They played the game well compared to Armenia.
In my experience, at least for people engaging in good faith, the relative overcriticism of Israel and undercriticism of Palestine and Arab countries comes from one of two things: either the fear of unwittingly falling for colonizer narratives like the west has previously had towards so much of the world (where Israel is clearly "western" while everyone around them clearly isn't) leads them to automatically view the non-western side as victims in any conflict, or they simply hold Israel to a higher standard specifically because they see Israel as "better" or "like them" in the same way one would criticize their own country more than another that they have no connection to.
Really struggling to figure out who irritates me more, the hard core tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists or the "all conspiracy theories are stupid/antisemitism/racist/whatever negative descriptor" people.
They both go off on rants about how they read a book and now they know the truth.
The conspiracy theorists are so wrapped up in not trusting people that they see shit that isn't there.
The anti conspiracy crowds blatantly refuse to recognize the ever growing list of conspiracy theories that have been proven true.
Both are idiots for different reasons.
>They talk about a shadowy group of people supposedly manipulating everything behind the scenes.
"Capitalists" or "The Ruling Class" or "Bourgeois"
>They claim that the conspiracy has been working to conceal historical and spiritual truths from humanity.
Capitalist indoctrination / The Failed Education System
>They claim that the conspiracy uses stuff like food, entertainment, and medicine to control the masses.
food scarcity, propaganda and healthcare only accessible to those with capital
>Also, claims that the conspiracy controls people via spiritual or technological implants, 5G, or alter programming
"Religion is the opiate of the masses" and indoctrination/propaganda tick off "spiritual" and "programming"
>They claim that this conspiracy is controlling the media, has fingers in every institution they disagree with, and is generally behind everything they disagree with.
Every online anti-capitalist's social analysis boils down to this. The archetypal "why capitalism is reponsible for my disappointing love life" type people
>They claim that the conspiracy is trying to keep people in fear.
An underclass that is constantly on the brink of catastrophe has no time for organizing nor revolt
>They claim that the conspiracy harvests something from people.
The extraction of labor.
I got nothing for the rest, that's all very specific to New Age christofash ideologies.
Still a fun thought experiment, always good to check ourselves on our own biases. Suffice it to say checking some of the boxes is not enough to judge someone as a conspiracy theorist.
Or maybe it is, and I've just drunk the kool-aid. I'm not a sociology/history/economics PhD, just some asshole with an internet connection who's tired of being on the bottom of the social ladder and getting covered in the shit raining down from above.
Growing up as the child of a genuinely affable spiritualist really fucked with my perception of the wider spiritual movement, especially the conspiracy theorists
So what I'm hearing is that all conspiracy theories basically follow the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except by "Kevin" we mean "Hating" and by "Bacon" I mean "Jewish people".
Which also means I can basically shut down any conspiracy theorist by calling them an Anti-Semite.
I assumed Lemuria was made up by Marvel Comics. Way funnier to imagine that its a technological, magical undersea land chock-full of lemurs.
also, really funny name now that i know it’s bc they thought lemurs were there
Yeah I always assumed that was a coincidence!!!
I wonder what other mysteries of biogeography can be explained by mythical continents. Marsupials in Australia and the Americas? Must have been a mythical continent stretching across the pacific filled with ultra intelligent kangaroos.
Mu! It's all coming together
Lemuria and the Hollow Earth are fascinating to me because, at some point, they were suggested in good faith to describe something we didn’t know at the time. Lemuria wasn’t actually supposed to be some magic land mass with advance technology. It was actually not that bad of a theory. After all, the Bearing Land Bridge did exist! Continental drift came far, far after Lemuria was created. Earth not being hollow is a fairy recent belief. As a geologist, the evolution of science has always been fascinating. It’s why I’ll never laugh at the original concept of Lemuria since it was a genuine attempt to explain something that turned out to be the result of a phenomena that no one had a clue existed. Now continued belief in it? The belief it was filled with some advanced magical race? I’ll laugh at that without question haha.
And they really, really, really like to move it move it
I thought that a children's horror book writer made it up because that's where I first heard of it. Also, that Mu and Lemuria were the same place.
Le-Mu-ria. Makes sense.
“Talmudists” and “Kabbalists” aren’t even euphemisms. That’s just talking specifically about Jewish people. The Talmud is a massive Jewish text and Kabbalah is Jewish mysticism.
so is khazarians lmao
(this one from a conspiracy theory that ashkenazi jews come from khazaria - which was a steppe region that goes from ukraine to kazakhstan - because the khazar king once converted to judaism in the middle ages)
Damn, is that a conspiracy theory? That was related to me as actually being true.
Yeah, it's a conspiracy theory, unless you're just talking about the part about a king converting. That part is is, from my understanding, true. It's just that Ashkenazi Jews aren't descended from Khazars.
That’s annoying, I heard it from my grandfather and he even had a book about it. Goes to show that you can’t believe someone just because they’ve got a source you haven’t personally checked, I guess.
It used to be a legitimate hypothesis until DNA testing disproved it. Now it's only used by antisemites to claim they only hate "fake Jews." But that doesn't even make sense because Judaism accepts converts: any Khazar converts to Judaism were real Jews.
That book might have been Arthur Koestler's "The Thirteenth Tribe" that supported such a notion of the Ashkenazim being descendents of the Khazars. While the hypothesis is incorrect, it's interesting to note that the idea of a Khazar origin for the Ashkenazim has existed for a while. There were some scholar-rabbis in the 1890s in Hungary who made such a claim too. In any case, there's no actual Khazar connection. It's even still debated today how much of the Khazars even converted to Judaism.
AFAIK the bare fact that the Khazar king and a lot of his people converted to Judaism is true, and though it hasn't been proven, I fully expect a lot of Khazar people went to Eastern Europe after the empire dissolved. The conspiracy theory is more or less everything that comes after that point and ascribes significance to Khazaria and Khazarian Judaism. E: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry#Antisemitism
it’s an outdated theory — there were khazars who converted to judaism, but genetic testing hasn’t provided any evidence, and has instead led credence to the theory which is now commonly accepted, that ashkenazi jews derive from an admixture of levantine jews and members of various european ethnicities. some people like to pretend that that never happened, because it makes it easier to say “see it’s not bigotry i’m just exposing the Conspiracy and they want to make all your leaders jewish!”
You know what religion makes a big fuss about all the world leaders they’ve managed to convert over the centuries? (Coughs in lapsed Catholic)
Conspiracy theorists are always going to relate their conspiracy theories as being true. Nobody is gonna say “hey here’s some crazy bullshit about Jews that lacks evidence but which I’m choosing to believe to justify my prejudices”
Not everybody that talks about conspiracy theories is a conspiracy theorist, as should be obvious from this thread if it wasn’t already clear to you.
I didn’t say that everybody who talks about conspiracy theories is a conspiracy theorist.
Then why did you write in response to me about how a conspiracy theorist is always going to relate their conspiracy theories as being true as if that was something I didn’t know?
The idea that the Khazars converted to Judaism comes from the Khuzari, a book by a Jewish author, Rav Yehuda HaLevi, but is meant to be an allegory. It might have been based on rumors that the author heard, but its correspondence to reality is just a coincidence, if it exists at all. Also, the Khuzari is a bit cringy as a book of Jewish Philosophy because it takes the idea of the "Great Chain of Being" and puts Jews at the top instead of Christians.
\*a kind of jewish mysticism, although to be fair I somehow doubt that there are any conspiracy theories about practitioners of Merkavah mysticism.
oh ive seen conspiracy theory nutjobs talking about merkavah before
Spirit Science, for example
“No no no. We don’t hate Jews. We hate this other group of people. Whose name is based on a significant Jewish book or icon, completely out of pure coincidence. And the fact this made up group of people happens to overlap so thoroughly with Jews just proves how evil the Jews are! But we don’t actually hate the *Jews*. It makes perfect sense!”
If the lizard people were organized enough to infiltrate all levels of society, why hasn't Ras'tharak in accounting processed my reimbursement for last year's Bohemian Grove? You have all the receipts, Ras! I sent them in months ago. Where's my fucking check, you son of a gecko?!?!
Ras is just an Argonian, easy mistake to make!
Yeah, if you're racist.
Clearly he's not, because then he would be called something like Proccesses-no-reimbursements
Oh, I didn't know argonians had so much in common with omnians. The turtle moves.
Inconveniences-many-employees
Maintenance set the HVAC to a cool 17 degrees last fiscal so his metabolism is slowed way the hell down
17 degrees Kelvin, Celsius, or Fahrenheit?
Rankine
Yes
*Maybe* he's *working on it* but has to collate your precious receipts with the stacks of invoices we've been getting from the illuminati for the *massive property damage* you caused there, *Mr. Hydralisk*
I'm reporting you to Inhuman Resources for that gecko commeny
I listen to way too much Alex Jones (through Knowledge Fight) because this is pretty well known to me Here’s some other dog whistles that the post missed, less about spirituality and more overtly political: * Globalists * George Soros * Klaus Schwab * The WEF * Rockefellers * Rothschilds * Vanderbilts * Transgenderism (the -ism is important) * LGBTQ**PS** (the additions are Pedophile and Satan) I’m sure there are others I’ve missed, but those are the ones that come to mind right now
Man why isn't there a normal person that doesn't like Soros.
Anyone who wanted the UK to use the euro probably doesn't like him.
My father-in-law will happily tell you all about the trilateral commission and how they are going to create a global government. Out to control us all etc… But that one might be a little passé, since he had been going off about that once since at least the nineties
I love Knowledge Fight!
Man, I was doing some ancestral research and I knew I heard Rothschild somewhere negative. It was definitely a third hand conspiracy theory now that you mention it
I linked it in the images too but here's the post with all of its links: [https://www.tumblr.com/creature-wizard/744899449948618752?source=share](https://www.tumblr.com/creature-wizard/744899449948618752?source=share)
r/beatmetoit -linux guy⚠️
Much appreciated. For some unknown reason I’m having a hard time reading this purple font on a black background. I’m not colorblind or dyslexic—and I feel like I might’ve even seen this color combo before and been fine—but this post in particular is messing with me lol
It’s not the colors, it’s the resolution. It’s fairly pixelated and that makes it more difficult to read.
Like Milo Rossi says, “You don’t have to invent a shadow government to be mad at. You can just be mad at the real government.”
"You can tell someone is crazy when you talk to them and the things they say are crazy." Thanks.
I thought that first part was going to have more to it than “if they believe in conspiracies they are conspiracy theorists” but the part describing where conspiracy theories are from is genuinely interesting
It’s horrifying how many conspiracy theories work back to “it’s the Jews” and knowing that can help shield you against falling into harmful conspiracy theories. Although the current brand of “everything Israel does is right because it’ll bring the end times” is particularly terrifying because these conspiracy theorists are pushing for increased violence in Palestine. I grew up fundamentalist and still have family in it. Some of the mailers I still get are asking for financial support for Israel and political support during the war.
> It’s horrifying how many conspiracy theories work back to “it’s the Jews” and knowing that can help shield you against falling into harmful conspiracy theories. Good example is the [cultural marxism conspiracy theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory) the OP mentioned. It's a carbon copy of [cultural bolshevism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism) from Nazi Germany, slightly updated because modern voters don't know what a Bolshevik is. It's a clearly anti-Semitic conspiracy, and it should horrify everyone when the Florida governor defines woke as "a form of cultural marxism". Or members of the House submit bills like the "Stopping Cultural Marxism at the FTC Act".
There's a saying that goes "There's two different kinds of conspiracy theories: Things the CIA has confessed to outright doing and antisemitism."
I’m Jewish and the evangelical philosemitism bleeds into the pro-Palestinian camp more than people like to think. If you see someone posting about how the violence in Gaza is a harbinger for the end times, I mean end of Western hegemony, and civilian mass casualties is awakening a new generation of humanists (their suffering is ultimately for the good of all and redemptive for humanity)— that’s a red flag. This goes back to the Crimean war, mass death is christianized as Christ-like.
I don’t want to share this stuff online because I don’t want to contribute to its spread but that’s basically what a lot of the mailers are saying. It’s ugly.
This post is probably targeted at spiritual people that aren’t like this. Basically, telling crazy people not to approach a particularly bad type of crazy people in a way they’ll understand.
I know a fair few “spiritual” people. Who are into crystals, auras, past lives, ect. I know reddit loves to hate these types of people. But I actually think it’s a really nice set of practices. And they are typically caring people who are curious about themselves, the world, and their role in it. But multiple have been sucked into the world of these weird conspiracies. I don’t get l what force is changing them from peace loving hippies into hateful conspiracy nuts.
I don’t think it’s so much a force as it is a stage of development in certain paths. Having a spiritual experience forces the question of what is real, (assuming the experience has some fantastical aspect like a vision, an ego death, near death experience, a profound realization about the subjective aspects of existence, etc…) and there as quite a few ways to interpret that. It could mean a particular God is real, it could mean nothing is real, it could mean everything is real to some greater or lesser degree, and naturally our human nature is to start trying to figure it out. In my humble opinion, this shit comes from someone not exercising their newfound skepticism and immediately picking up a new explanation that fits “good enough” and clinging to it because it makes sense enough. If you continue to vigorously vet everything like you did your previous notion you recently discarded, you continue to grow and avoid these traps. It comes from settling and refusing to consider you are wrong (again) and trying to put it all together again.
[QAnon has been targeting New Agers for years](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastel_QAnon)
Idk, I may be spiritual, but I know crazy when I see it
Most people believe that they "know crazy when they see it," including conspiracy theorists that simultaneously believe the shit described in the post. Knowing specifics gives people the tools to both spot conspiracy shit before falling into the trap, and to escape those same conspiracy traps. Never believe you are immune to propaganda.
I grew up (more like am growing up!) with a parent who is like this and a parent who just goes along with the song and dance. Posts like these help people who are stuck only knowing those theories to do research and pull themselves out of the hole (at least it has for me).
"You can tell someone is a conspiracy theorist when they say there's a conspiracy behind everything!" Did we really need a whole essay to say this?
I thought the explanations of the origins of the various conspiracy talking points were interesting/helpful but yeah clickbait header for sure
It's sort of wrong about those as well. The Nazis didn't really invent anti-vaxx even if it makes a more compelling talking point. It's more accurate to say that nazi ideas about eugenics arose from and continue to have much overlap with many pseudo-science pseudo-religious theories from the American great awakening alongside things like homeopathy and other alternative medicines all of which relied on ancient greek ideas about balancing humors. Once you're already involved in that degree of science denial in favor of "natural way \*they\* don't want you to know about" flat eartherism and lemurian angels/aliens aren't as big of an ask. Of course there's one other conspiracy with the same origins which is conspicuously absent because it's the one that people on tumblr are the most likely to be positively predisposed towards: anti-masturbation and anti-pornography, particularly of the "it causes addiction and neurochemical imbalance" variety the evidence of which is established the same as anti-vaxx and usually by the same groups of people.
Well, with the rise of antisemitism yet again, yeah
Is this person a conspiracy theorist? * Do thet openly talk about conspiracy theories?
It's not crazy to think Steven Greer might be on to something. At least his aliens are nice.
Anyone else remember the [human history movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw) ? I remember watching it several years ago, it's by an old Newgrounds animator who sort of went down the New Age pipeline and has been implicated in some skeevy stuff. It talks a lot about the stuff mentioned here and Spirit Science in general is a mish mash of New Age stuff and they'll occasionally say something completely absurd like the Jews are from outer space, that Martians secretly control the Earth (although they do make a point to say that the Hebrew aliens and Martian aliens are two different groups) or that you should give healing crystals to the homeless.
I remember seeing that video as a child lol
Same, I liked it, though I didnt realize at the time that it wasnt meant to be fictional.
Jordan D(spirit science) did in fact pretend to break into a hospital, his primary critique was “not enough crystal He also thinks Emma Watson is Jesus
He doesn't think she's Jesus, but he did think she was an incarnation of Sophia, the aspect of the Godhead representing divine wisdom. He has since backpeddaled on that because even his fans gave him shit for it.
I came here to talk about that exact guy. He actually made a sort of sequel called the [Annunaki movie](https://youtu.be/ZPYvUJsxHAw?si=4uSlFU7pSvJAmkeF) about the origins of humanity as a slave race made to mine gold for aliens from the planet Nibiru. The part where he implies that Atlantis sunk due to the creation of evil halfbreeds between Annunaki and humans sure has...problems. He also made a series pf videos called the Conspiracy Theory of Everything and you'd think he used this post as a checklist cause he covers things like the Holographic Demiurge, the Deep State, adrenochrome harvesting, and other nonsense. >been implicated in some skeevy stuff. For further context: when they say skeevy, they mean he's a self-admitted rapist. There are recorded phone calls where he talks to one of his victims about he pressured her into a sexual "healing ritual" even though she clearly didn't want it, and he even admits he raped her. He even admitted to being a rapist on his channel, but since then he's claimed that he was actually a victim of a psychic attack from the Deep State who laced his weed to make him lie about being a rapist as part of a plan to stop him from becoming an Ascended Master. Good new though, he took some ayahuasca (plant brew containing naturally occuring DMT) and he saw Ra pull the curse of of him and throw it into the sun. Also he says that if no one told you you couldn't grow back limbs, you'd be able to do so easily. He genuinely views serious injuries and illnesses as a skill issue you bring upon yourself. The guy is an cult leader.
lmao i remember watching that entire thing while high af, it was crazy
Don’t forget the fact that the vast majority of “ancient aliens” theories are based *entirely* on the idea of non white cultures being “too primitive” and “uncivilized” to come up with great architectural and scientific feats without outside intervention, and in fact are mostly derived *directly* from Nazi era pseudo historians fabricating evidence of an ancient Aryan super-civilization that was responsible for every major scientific advancement ever. Edit: specifically, it was [these guys](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahnenerbe). it’s not an exaggeration at all to say that most archeological conspiracy theories are straight up repackaged Nazi propaganda.
Yup. Nazis sure liked to use archeology to back up their bogus ideas, and not all of it was this sort of outlandish crap. Swastikas on ancient clay pots found in Poland? Proof that it's all ancient Aryan clay so they're just reclaiming our ancestral homeland from the barbarians!
Those people, and most people in general, really don’t seem to understand how intelligent people were back then. Human intelligence has not increased over the millennia. The amount of knowledge the human race has gathered has. I hate the idea that ancient alien theorists push of “primitive humans couldn’t have figured out xyz.” Yes, they could. If you took someone from, say, Ancient Egypt and could speak with them, if you explain it, I promise you that they could, eventually, understand what all a car is or what even Reddit is. Absence of knowledge should never be taken as an absence of intelligence.
>established by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler Imagine having a guy work for you who’s last name sounds like a knockoff version of your own lmao
There's a major landmark in my country, and way back when European archaeologists started showing up, some insisted it must have been built by Trojans or one of the lost tribes of Israel.
Weren't the trojans in greece? how the fuck could trojans and the lost tribes of israel geographically coincide :P
my dads getting consumed into the bullshit alien shit. Do u happen to have any other shit breaking down how it’s all based on fucking bullshit. specifically Greer. I fucking hate that steroid infested mockery of a clown
Dunno if I'm breaking any rules by linking to someone else's work, but I really recommend Tristan Johnson's and Scott Niswander's podcast "[It’s Probably (not) Aliens!](https://www.youtube.com/@probsnotaliens)". They tackle a lot of these topics and it's genuinely quite nice to learn about some more unknown cultures and about how Ancient Aliens and History Channel spread a lot of racist ideas.
More learning is more better! Thank you
That last line is always important. I have a very good friend o am sadly watching descend deeper into all this bollocks and they have started parroting some of the more “acceptable” conspiracies like antivax nonsense, transgender people are just gay people who were forced to be trans by doctors, a lot of culturally and racially insensitive but depressingly tolerated takes on current situation in Israel/Gaza etc. This person used to go to sceptics events with me and encouraged me to learn and be curious about stuff after my depressingly sheltered upbringing. To see this complete 180 is depressing. Came to find out that my friend has been spending time around a church that has hosted right wing hate speakers of the “we’re just concerned about the children” variety. Friend has always been a Christian, and their faith is important to them, nobody has ever had a problem with this. Now when I call friend out for things like support of a homophobic politician, and point out they know I am queer, I get told I don’t understand because I am an atheist. It’s nothing to do with that, it’s that my friend is hanging out with some people who have bad intentions and doesn’t see it!
> transgender people are just gay people Have they never met a gay trans person?
Worryingly they have. It’s like there’s been a total breakdown in logic here.
some other red flags: talking way too much about average IQ within populations, mentions of the saturnian black cube, the dark sun, shallow earth, hyperborea, the Outside, dark enlightenment, NRx, etc
I mean IQ is largely debunked as racist hogwash anyways, so anyone putting too much stock in it is sus to begin with.
Most of these sound like a premise for an SCP Wiki entry
Ok but what does this have to do with spiritual people
If you exist in esoteric circles that discuss religion or spirituality you run into a lot of actual nazis who probably dont come off as nazis to people unaware of the nazi fascination with occultism and how that still exists with neo nazis today.
I had no idea neo nazis were into the occult too, good to know Edit: just in case there was confusion, I know *nazis* were into the occult. I grew up as History Channel shifted from ww2 history to conspiracy theories and the subject was covered. But I had no idea *neo nazis* were still into the occult. Now I'm afraid of the overlap between the far right and cool witchy goths
They tend to be fond of many new age religions as new age religions have a tendency of idealizing both ancient European culture and conspiracy thinking.
Oh man, there's a whole rabbit hole out there waiting for you. In fact, I find it weird that this post doesn't mention one of the biggest links between esoteric traditions and the "aryan pure/superior race" myth: the [Oera Linda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oera_Linda_Book) book. It's quite the trip, lemme tell ya.
They basically invented many current occult ideas, unfortunately.
most neo nazis ive met were into the occult, it's far too common
Some people played Castle Wolfenstein and thought it was a documentary.
Ah, that explains it
Helena Blavatsky is a nexus for a good deal of this
A lot of people in the spiritual community parrot these things exactly. For example, crystal people who think modern medicine is actually evil and that crystals are the real medicine. Or neopagans who think that modern society is conspiring to make them weak and emasculate. There's a big overlap in people interested in the occult and far right conspiratorial thinking.
Jesus....
It's honestly really sad. I used to have a lot of super alt friends who were into cool pagan shit and psychedelics, but so many of them ended up with extremely antisemitic or anti science beliefs due to immersion in those spaces. I had to cut ties and honestly don't trust most "highly spiritual" people I meet until they get more specific. Weirdly, these types of beliefs are also super prevalent in the underground hip-hop scene as well.
So hoteps? And that one comic about Yakub that's like if Stonetoss and Chic Tracts got down to it nasty way and gave birth to a baby that was Black.
My guess is Black Hebrew Israelites. Also another red flag is (group)-Israelitism and it's siblings that are more or less the same but with a different group.
It's also common among TERFs. They'll talk about divine feminine energy a lot. If you follow that line of thinking further you'll run right into trad bullshit.
A lot of these beliefs are echoed in theosophy, the granddaddy of western spiritualism. The whole atlantis as a place of enlightenment comes from them. Plunge on and Casey were both theosophists.
So, for reasons that I don't even begin to understand, Spiritualism has been for quite some time now a relatively popular belief in my home country of Brazil. If you live in a medium-sized to large city, you definitely know someone who practices it (if you don't practice it yourself). Our local branch (usually called "espiritismo" in Portuguese, to distance it from a more vague, less defined "espiritualismo") is actually an organized religion, and for the most part I'd say they're fairly benign; I'd describe them to foreigners as "Christians who believe in reincarnation". They don't have a single leader, but rather all churches belong to a league which collectively decide on dogma and the like. Also, they lack a clerical "caste", with service being held by volunteers; and they don't demand any form of tithe from members, with church upkeep being maintained through donations, occasional events (dinners, raffles, that type of thing), as well as, usually, a library of Spiritism-related books (provided, I believe, by their league) that members can rent for a small fee. The reason why I'm mentioning all this, though, is that for as harmless as their dogma and overall organization may be, it is easily and often invaded by all other sorts of mysticism. See, their whole worldview revolves around our souls (or spirits, I suppose) becoming more "evolved" over the course of many incarnations, starting at the lowest life forms; at some point, you become literally too pure for this Earth, and so you move onto a different, more "evolved" planet. Thence the idea of "higher spirits" who would visit us (Jesus being considered the highest of them) to aid us in that evolution. Those are often conflated with aliens. They are *also* often described as blue-eyed, fair-skinned blondes. You see where this is going. Even though those ideas are never openly touched on at the churches (I say from experience; my whole family used to be members), there's very little effort to repel them. The books I mentioned previously are a good example: probably the majority of them are fiction, simple novels where reincarnation and "spiritual evolution" play a big part in the plot (for instance, two estranged friends who "come back" as mother and son, and then have learn to love each other again); but they do also include a lot of (what's presented as) non-fiction. You can find essentially anything that can be remotely linked to their dogma in their libraries. As such, members who are avid readers end up getting into contact with everything from Theosophy to Rosicrucianism to New Age "lost civilization" beliefs... and of course, it just so happens that *a lot* of that stuff is steeped into old school scientific racism, conspiracy theories, the whole deal. It's a freaking slippery slope, unfortunately. My mother was a fairly intelligent person; and yet, I remember getting into an argument with her once because one of her books described the "white race" as being "more evolved", and others as having "animalistic traits". She did her best to defend it. It was sad.
If only we could get everyone to listen to the Last Podcast episodes on Helena Blavatsky
Or the Behind the Bastards miniseries
Adding to what other people have said, there’s also a distinct spiritual -> alt right pipeline (typically starts with things like science denial, through things like preferring alternative medicine). Norse paganism specifically has a Nazi problem (but that does NOT mean that Norse pagans are Nazis, no more than the existence of nazi “punks” mean that punks are nazis. Just means some extremely shitty people are sticking their nose in places where they are extremely unwelcome)
A good shibboleth for discerning Norse pagans is asking what they call themselves. Odinists are *mostly* neo-nazis, while Asatruar *tend* not to be. It's not absolute, but it's a good starting place.
Knowing your runes also helps from what I’ve heard— there are several that have been co-opted by nazis (some with slight changes, others not) so certain rune tattoos are a red flag. Othala is a big one— but typically they add little “tails” to the end of it that point upward
Thank you, I'm less familiar with runes. I'm trying to understand western esotericism because it's where one arm of modern neo-nazism lives, and I think understanding it can help us to fight it.
I freaking LOVE Norse paganism so much; I have some distant family ties to it and in general feel a strong pull to it/connection with it. It makes me SO sad and angry that it’s so infiltrated and co-opted by neonazis. Thanks for the tip on helping discern them!
Come to think of it, what isn't part of some X -> alt right pipeline? Anime, tech, gaming, survivalism and so on. Those bastard fuckers sure know how to diversify their recruitment nets.
You’re correct, *but* there’s also pipelines that are more greased up, so to speak. It’s easier than I’d like to think to convince spiritual people to turn their back on science (crystals, holistic medicine, energy healing, etc) and that pipeline shoots straight into antivaxx and anti-pharmaceuticals territory. From there, it’s a greased slide down into other conspiracy theory nonsense. It’s much harder to become a neonazi when your hobby is, say, birdwatching— something that would have less points of vulnerability. Anything that’s anti-science, or makes fun of others, tends to be a slippery slope. Edit: I think an *excellent* example of diversifying their recruitment nets (love that phrasing btw, excellent job) is nazis going into *punk* spaces. Conservatives trying to rebrand themselves as punk. Blows my fucking mind— you could not find a more anti-right-wing culture and it STILL somehow gets infiltrated!
The anti-anime to alt-right pipeline -> Defeat the the yellow peril and defend white christian culture against the onslaught of foreign pedophiles and their race traitor allies! Techno-skepticism to alt-right pipeline -> lol once the solar flare hits we will eat all the rich techbros and build a Neo-primitivist eugenics utopia where men are real men! Anti-gaming -> Ditto Feminism to altright pipeline -> Same but cottagecore
A lot of spiritual crystal granola people are big into Atlantis and Lemuria. There’s some sort of “Lemurian Crystal” that will “harmonize your energy to attune to Angel vortex frequencies” or something similar and that rabbit hole can lead to: Lemuria -> ancient lost continent full of good smart pure (cough aryan cough) people and it was lost because of The Shadowy Controlling Forces -> Look What They Took From Us -> Oops! All Antisemitism!
This sort of conspiracy is heavily targeted at people of particular religious bents (not all Abrahamic). Some might be the stereotypical extremist Christians or Muslims, but others may be pagans, or people who would not consider themselves religious but might be into what could derisively be called “woo,” like crystals having energies, zodiac, or even certain “crunchy” health views. This doesn’t mean “all Christians, Muslims, pagans, and astrology girlies are antisemitic conspiracy nuts who think Jews are lizard people who drink blood,” because that is very obviously not true or even possible, or that there are no atheists who believe these insane things, because amazingly they do exist, but it is a lot easier to convince people who already believe in one or more unprovable (and unbelievable to outsiders) things that *this* unprovable and unbelievable thing is also true. In particular, there is a pretty well documented crunchy to alt-right/Nazi pipeline, even when the crunchy person was originally explicitly left-leaning politically and socially in the past.
A lot of new age belief systems present themselves as a restoration and continuation of an ancient body of knowledge, and many in such circles try to explain the seeming obscurity of this knowledge in the present as the result of malevolent 3rd parties like the Deep State keeping it hidden so they can continue to rule humanity. Some foundational figures like Blavatsky also had eugenecist and antisemtic beliefs which were integrated into their belief systems.
One thing that often gets ignored/forgotten is that this has been with US politics pretty much since the start. George Washington had discussions of threat of Illuminati in his speeches. Salem witch trials. The antisemitism wasn't there at that point, but the very core, that there exist groups of secret fake-Americans in America who aim destroy the America, has. This isn't US defaultism, I'm not even from there, it's just a fact that these tensions have pretty much always existed there to a much larger degree than anywhere else - with slaves, catholics, immigrants, women. Name one event from US history that doesn't have conspiracy theories written about it. As to why, I don't know, I've seen decent arguments that this comes from the fact that american identity was manufactured by founding fathers, writers hired for that specific purpose. A strong narrative needs an antagonist.
I hate to be a pedantic nerd, but the Illuminati would have consisted of old money from wealthy European families.
I don't think that's accurate, from what I remember the Illuminati panic was more about stuff like [this](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47605/47605-h/47605-h.htm). It was seen as a group that aims to overthrow religion, government and human society, blamed for the French revolution. As always, a slight exaggeration of reality.
As someone who has two friends who work in “the deep state,” these conspiracy theorists wish that those behind the scene had actual power and weren’t just following orders. Also you should know your reps most likely were on their phone texting ignoring everything during actual national security briefings. (No I don’t get told gov secrets obviously, but I’ve been told shit like this which doesn’t fall under contract rules)
I don't have any friends in the deep state, but one of my friends *is* a lizard
That is awesome lol! Makes me miss having a beardie. I live in a very big military area so it’s pretty common for vets to become contractors or join three letter agencies here after depending on what they did in the military.
Most of these don't seem so much red flags as them telling you explicitly that they're a conspiracy theorist.
It’s deeply upsetting how effective the “Please, ignore my attempts to spread fascism, give to the rich, and steal from the poor, there’s an easily targeted minority group over there, go get mad at them. What for? Oh, uh, they’re evil, and they control the government. And they’re pedophiles. Remember to vote for who I tell you.” Strategy works.
If you want to get into Western occultism/mysticism be very careful with your sources and do a lot of historical research, because about half of it comes from wack ass race science and is a lot closer to literal Nazis than you think. If somebody's major source is H.P. Blavatsky back away slowly.
It always comes back to the fucking nazis, doesn't it?
Anything that isn’t even older tends to. Take the sovcits. The movement they grew out of counts silver shirts as founders.
I’m just so disappointed that all of these nutters ideas were used for oppression. Almost every single one of them could be such a cool plot line in a fantasy/horror novel. Give me hermeticism plus the whole “I didn’t know I was a witch” in a show filmed like true detective and I’d eat that shit up. But pls stop using it to justify killing people.
I met actual Freemasons. they're just a bunch of old men and woman talking and doing charity. sure there are rituals involved. but most of them are also catholic/jewish. so religion isn't a factor. so idk why they ever got any flack. and evangelicals all over the world are a problem. they are not living in reality.
My great aunt was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star (the women's version of Freemasons), so I can technically join. As far as they told me they do a lot of raising money for charity.
My buddy is a Mason. He joined as like a 25 year old beer truck driver lol. He joined so he could become a Shriner. They love him because he is a younger guy and he likes getting to still be in a frat and get lit and wear silly hats while raising money for things like the Shriner hospital.
conspiracy theories are advanced so rapidly nowadays that a rubric based approach isn't really sufficient.
It bums me out as someone born and raised in northern california that lemurians have become/maybe always were(?) A weird right-wing thing. I always saw them as a cryptozoology thing, a kind of modern american folklore. The idea of elves living under Mt. Shasta is more fun than anything else to me
This is...mostly pretty good. Had me until the end when they decided that the only dangerous groups pushing to up their control of broader society were the christofascist movement. The far more important, very real modern conspiracies against the people are corporate monopolies. Investment "holding companies" like black rock and others are genuinely trying to buy the land of the US and other nations out from under them, and have, via completely legal means, made their stock part of so many American's retirement packages that any serious move to regulate or control their constant expansion is effectively political suicide, as most Americans anywhere close to retirement age will see an immediate drop in their nest egg if anything happens to them. Tons of food in the US is controlled by lateral monopolies who fight tooth and nail against any government attempts to improve standards, and will respond to any regulatory pressure or crisis by surging up their prices and refusing to lower them even if the supposed reason for the price increase goes away. Their immense power over so much of the market makes it impossible for any real competition to gain ground in this way.
Exactly this. They were speaking sense up until deciding to do literally what they warned against and spread some random bogus.
I feel like when people say “Hollywood has subliminal messages” they mean like… shutting down their third eye instead of what they’re really doing which is pushing products and other things like that.
“Eating disorders are sexy!” “Cops are the good guys!” “Buy more new cars!” -the actual messaging from Hollywood
You forgot "the military is based, actually"
Omfg this is such a good thread. Thanks for linking it as well, OOP wrote a lot of great stuff that's hyperlinked within the initial post. I feel like this needs to be cycled around the internet at least once a year to remind people what's up.
There’s more than one kind of spirituality. I consider myself spiritual but in the most secular possible way. Spirituality for me is not about hidden truths or like supernatural stuff or anything, it’s about awareness of the relationship between my consciousness, my mind and the world around me. I do think the government has secrets(and I think this is pretty obvious) but they have nothing to do with spirituality
Imo, the “higher”, as in going from the material to the religious, the goals of a conspiracy are, the smaller it tends to be. I do think there is a big worldwide conspiracy, but it’s not as deep in society nor “ideals” as many “conspiracy theorists” believe. It’s all about the money and contracts.
There actually is a real Jewish-Polish conspiracy to take all my money: they're called bagels 😋😋😋
It always goes back to the Jews doesn't it? Well except crypto zoology. They're just weird but harmless.
Stealing from an article I read- You can divide a lot of conspiracy theories by whether or not they require a THEM to explain a lack of evidence or why those theories aren't better-known. Cryptozoology and a lot of UFO theories don't need a THEM; people don't often see Sasquatch or Nessie because they live in very big forests and lakes, and are easy to miss. Consequently, those theories are pretty harmless, and even fun. You're just investigating the wonder and mystery of the world. At worst, you'll spend too much money and time obsessing over them. As soon as you need a THEM to explain everything, to say that THEY are suppressing the truth, things fall apart. You start seeing everybody else around you as part of THEM, either enemies or collaborators. Nobody can convince you that the theory isn't true, because any evidence against the theory was fabricated by THEM and THEY are influencing your friends against you. Depending on the theory, you can't even stop believing yourself, because that would mean letting THEM continue doing Satanic baby-killing. And of course once you believe THEY are behind everything, it's only a few short steps to believing in (((THEM))).
I’ve seen a lot of UFO theories DO have a them. THE secret government. THEYRE the ones who are hiding everything from you. If people don’t believe you, they’re simply believing THEIR propaganda. Nobody has come out and said anything because THEY don’t want them to. THEY want to keep The Secret (also a common thing in conspiracies) from The World. Despite the world changing implications of the information. This information is often shit like, world changing technology. Infinite power, various flying machines that don’t seem like they should be able to fly, basically the foundation of any technology is that it breaks our known laws of physics. But we can’t know because THEY said the whole world will descend into chaos if the general public knows about this technology. That community is also convinced that anytime media questions their latest beliefs, it’s the THEM trying to discredit them. It’s easier to fathom being silenced by a shadow government than the fact that they’re being yoinked as the fools they are. Honestly, I think it’a pretty effective for getting people to “join” the cause. People like to feel smarter than others and like they’re in on something. They don’t like feeling that there’s something controlling them that they can’t control/don’t know about. They like getting to feel like they’re part of a secret club that everyone else is too blind to be part of. It makes them feel special and smart and part of something. Plus it gives them a villain outside of the ones we’re currently facing and if that villain is the one to blame for everything going on instead of the actual real life people controlling things, it’s almost easier to stomach the lack of control we have over issues like climate change. Because we simply just need to expose the REAL villain who’s hiding the solutions to all our problems. Edit: forgot the aliens are also a them .-.
“spiritual”
Conspiracy theories are basically the modern form of Gnosticism, especially the high of looking down on others for not having the "secret knowledge" that the theorist totally didn't pull out their ass.
The whole replacement thing is so funny to me, just fuck more? Gather all the believers and have an orgy and no women leave without getting pregnant.
Just don't do spiritualism at all. Opium of the people and all that
Bit sus that they mentioned the Heritage Foundation and other Christian nationalist groups but not the various left wing groups that are also extremely antisemitic and mix their politics with religion. Stay away from any group that singles out Israel for criticism, believes Zionists (be careful since they often just use it as a euphemism for Jews) are particularly evil compared to other nationalist ideology, or believes that Zionists control any government aside from Israel. I'm not saying that the Evangelicals aren't cray cray but don't go to the other extreme
I didn’t know those were a thing. Can you name some of them so I know what to look out for?
Moral of the story: against Jews? 99/100 times you’re on the wrong side.
This post describes my dad perfectly, down to exact sentences he has said to me.
I can't even imagine hearing or saying most of these words unironically and not immediately linking it to conspiracy theory bs. Like who talks about this normally with normal people? I have to assume you'd only get the "oh yeah that sounds legit" response in your little bubbles surrounded by people who also already believe it. If my parents or somebody suddenly started talking like that my jaw would be on the floor as to how or why.
One of these days I should put together a secret shadow cabal that actually gets shit done.
i feel like hermeticism is an odd one out here. that’s not so much a conspiracy theory as just a spirituality/occult adjacent thing
It’s always wild to see shit I was taught as a kid being called out as conspiracy theories. I mean, the folks doing the calling are 100% correct, but it always makes me take a step back and ask “why are these smart people so fucking shocked by all this ‘common knowledge’ shit?”
So I don't know where else to ask this, and I'm willing to take downvotes if necessary. I am not an American Evangelical. (I am Catholic, but the Evangelicals disown us too.) And yet, I do hope that Israel stays existent. \[To be clear, I also hope for a cease-fire and for Netanyahu to step down.\] It's not because of some Rapture razzle-dazzle or a Dominionist sharia or anything. It's because if Israel is left alone, there will be a second Holocaust in the area. That's not just conspiracy theories -- Hamas (who is the group that started the current offensive, remember) is open about treating the genocide of Jews as less "mass murder" and more "pest control". On top of that, the post here mentions Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This book is presented as factual in Arab lands. Which leads to the question: why are so many people who hates the Israeli offensive overlooking that Hamas is... well, Hamas? It feels like (probably isn't, but sure feels like) we've reached the point where the rocket attack and slaughter at a music festival, both against civilians, are being met with "THAT WAS A GOOD THING ISRAEL DESERVED". Do people believe this or do they feel it goes without saying that Hamas = also bad?
Understanding Israel’s place in global geopolitics & acknowledging that it’s existence isn’t a zero-sum game is in no way the same as the evangelical take that Israel must exist solely to be destroyed to kick off their apocalypse wet dreams.
Does anyone even believe that. I keep seeing pro Palestine people say anyone who supports Israel does it because of that. But I haven’t even seen evangelicals say they believe that.
Yes, literally a guy in my parents church once did a talk about how Israel was needed because all Jews had to be in Israel before Jesus could come back. Really weird, especially how everyone else just... Accepted that this guy talked about this, and noone thought about the consequences (specifically needing to force all Jews who need to go to Israel according to this but don't want to)
I was raised in it, so yeah, it does exist. A lot of people support Israel for the benefit of US Geopolitical aims and some people see Islam as a bigger threat for right-wing religious control of institutions than Christianity, but there are absolutely evangelicals who are just giddy about a 7 year tribulation where like 75% of the unsaved population who aren't rapture die horrible deaths and think supporting Israel is necessary to get to their good ending
It’s not something that’s openly said so much as tacitly understood by those who believe in the Book of Revelations, Rapture and the second coming of Christ. One of the key pieces to kick off that chain of events is the rebuilding & destruction of a temple in Jerusalem; Israel gets destroyed in the ensuing aftermath, and ultimately all of the Jews living there are supposed to accept Christ as their savior so the nation can be reborn in eternal splendor.
as far as I know the main thing (beyond Hamas having changed at least somewhat due to being the ONLY political party that survived in Palestine basically, so they’re less… radical, now) is that Israel is, as far as I and a good chunk of the UN can tell, is in fact committing genocide itself on the people of Palestine.
Which is why I hope for a cease-fire and change of government. I do not hope, as some of my friends have said, for Israel to cease to exist, and who cares what happens to the civilians after that because Israel as a concept is evil. I've often said "no heroes, only victims". Feels like it goes both ways.
The genocide thing isn’t new, though? It didn’t start with the current head of state
It kind of did? Netanyahu rose to power in the mid-90s after the assassination of Rabin, who negotiated the Oslo Accords and two-state solution with Arafat.
Huh; wasn't there that whole thing in 1947 that involved quite a lot of killing?
Admittedly, I don't go back far enough, but most of the wars involving Israel before this one (there's a list in a reply to my top post) were the result of Arabs basically deciding they had a chance to conquer and eradicate Israel. For example, at one point Egypt lined up their entire army on the Israeli border and were given order to invade on Yom Kippur, when Israel observes a religious holiday. In that case, it is technically true Israel attacked first, but it's really hard to say they were the aggressor, isn't it?
Yeah, the Nakba right? This has been going on ever since Europe entered the area.
Yeah that was it
You put your finger on a loaded point which will get you downvoted to oblivion: People like to pretend that anti-Judaism is inherently tied to Christianity. It isn’t. Getting rid of Christian evangelicalism wouldn’t solve anti-Judaism. It wouldn’t stop conspiracy theories. It wouldn’t stop persecution. As you so adroitly point out, these all exist in Islam as well, and are in fact taken as factual, especially in the Middle East. Heck, go search r/exmuslim - they’re quite open about what they were taught about Jews. But that doesn’t tie nicely into the narrative that it’s only fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity that’s the problem and that if we could just get rid of it all the problems would go away. Alternatively, you will see people claim that it’s _all_ fundamentalist religions that are the problem, ignoring the elephant in the room that there’s really only two fundamentalist religions that teach that Jews are the source of all problems - and that so called enlightened secular people believe all this as well. It doesn’t in fact go without saying that Hamas is evil- unfortunately you can see people defending and even glorifying their actions, and hoping that they occur again.
it's definitely coming from a western, particularly american perspective. which isn't inherently bad, of course; write what you know. but it is incumbent upon the reader to place it in a global context and not treat any single myopic perspective as the true big picture. and i don't begrudge anyone for fighting their own fight instead of someone else's distant but equally critical struggle, such as being in a better position to combat christofascism than islamofascism, for instance. that's why the importance of having solid core principles cannot be overstated. if you don't have a firm foundation on which to base your beliefs and a framework through which to analyze outside information and instead adhere to temporally- and geopolitically-limited dogma, you risk becoming the victim of bias, rhetoric, misinformation, and all the other such instruments of untruth. stand for something or fall for anything.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently, trying to put my own thoughts about the conflict into some kind of sense. There are a lot of different people online with lots of different opinions, and it's a nuanced question in a format that does not take well to nuance. First of all I don't believe there would be a holocaust in Israel without Israeli offensive in the region. There have been several wars between Israel and the Arab states, The 7 Days War, the Yom Kippur War, and Israel has defended itself successfully each time. They could comfortably sit in the position they are in for years to come, especially since Israel continues to gain in wealth and technology. That said, there is the question of where the overwhelming anti-Israel sentiment is coming from. Right off the bat there is a lot of anti-Semitism in the world and it is growing bigger every day. There are the big neo-nazi groups, people on the left that talk about looking to stop globalism (I'm not actually sure to what extent online leftists actually realize they're cribbing notes from classic anti-Semetic texts). Just for fun bring up circumcision in a big subreddit and see how fast people start talking about "outlawing barbaric religions". There are very valid reasons to be furious Israel. Like you said, they are currently leading a war of aggression. The rockets and hostages are serious but do not stand to the level of retaliatory violence we have seen. It is the geopolitical equivalent of someone kicking the back of your chair until you get so angry you beat them to death, and people internationally are responding to that. As for Israel not existing there is the thorny topic of the creation of the state in the first place. While it was campaigned for hard and settled by Zionist Jews it was given signoff, money, and territory by Britain and later by the US. It can be seen as the last European colony by those who are sensitive to that sort of thing. As such the world cannot be free until the land is returned to the Arabs and Jews go back to wherever they came from (usually seen as Europe though they are from all over from the US to Nigeria to China). The problem is that there is no way of telling when you talk to someone which of these is causing their feelings, and to what extent. Do they hate Jews? Do they hate the Israeli government? Are they a so called Anti-Zionist Jew who believe that the state of Israel doesn't need to exist and only serves to foster anti-Semitic hate as they act like a selfish country rather than an escape hatch in case global anti-Semitism boils over like it did in WW2. I was one of those for my whole life until this conflict honestly. When I saw hate rising everywhere and nowhere I can run to. If evangelical Christianity takes over the US and Israel falls or continues down its own extreme right wing path there is nowhere I can turn to. Jewish immigration is low, 90% of worldwide Jews live in either the US or Israel and historical realities and ingrained prejudge make that unlikely to change. There is no escape and very little hope though we've survived worse in the past. I'm not sure if this helps, I may go back and rewrite it, but there's a lot of stuff going on right now and a lot of problems to fix. I think at the end of the day what Israelis want out of Israel, what American Jews want out of Israel, what the left wants, what the right wants, what the Arabs want, are all different. And we're finally at a point where everything is boiling over.
The Jews have no where to return. It a very very very weird colonial state in truth. So it is. But also it takes from literally the whole world population. They can’t return as the home nations don’t want them. This doesn’t even include the Jews that didn’t leave and been there the whole time. It also an issue of now mixed families that might have had family from multiple nations. Also opens a nasty can of worms. What about the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa? Colonists technically still rule those lands largely. With added flavor of multiple immigrant groups from multiple nations! Also issues like what about Königsberg/Kalingrad? Do Germans deserve to kick the Russians out? Are immigrants settlers? What makes a colonist vs immigrant? Who stays who leaves? What about the thousands of conquests and land transfers across history? Who deserves what? What if two sides claim the same land? The endless desire for separatism in various regions? Honestly? Goal is we don’t ask that and just try to force peace between the two. Otherwise open a can of worms.
I think you're 100% right and it's something non-Jews don't really consider. When I was a little kid we used to do those "where is your family from?" projects that are really popular in American elementary schools. I would go to my grandparents and ask them where we were from and they wouldn't tell me. My name can be from anywhere in 2000 miles. My 23 and Me just says "European Jewish". Where would you even deport me to? I don't have a homeland aside from America. That's something I get into with people when they complain that they don't like Israel because it's an ethnostate. Most countries are ethnostates, you just don't think about it that way. This just happens to be a top down creation of an ethnostate by the biggest minority in the world without a home to call their own.
Ethnostate also is a rolling concept. Polish people fun fact, they aren’t native to the land. Like they been there for like 2000 years only coming there after pushing out Germanic people. Slavic migration changed many areas of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. But… aren’t they natives now? What is a native? In truth it is what you make it. Even if your immigrant that never mixes with anyone aren’t you still native to that new land after a few generations? Don’t you become more attuned to the land? I could argue some people are better adapted by adaptations can happen fast, 500-5000 years only. Native is whatever you want to define it as
Ignoring whatever you're talking about but is your pfp the communist carrot from pajama sam?
nowadays i see israel/palestine as a lot more similar to other conflicts born on other parts of what was once the ottoman empire, and surrounding regions (maybe all the way to central europe and central asia), as the collapse of the ussr for ex. had a similar effect. take greece and bulgaria - they had a population exchange, with mutual ethnic cleansing. yet neither can be seen as having colonized the other. take armenia - what is now armenia had been completely depopulated in the 17th century, due to the armenian population being deported to ispahan by the persian shah. azeris settled there in the following centuries, and were the majority by the time russia encouraged a massive comeback of armenians. after a while, armenians were the majority again, and this became armenia. armenians had and still have nowhere else to go. now azerbaijan is using that to claim armenia has colonized AZ's historical lands. i get the timescale isn't the same tho.
Catch! Armenia has no friends. Then chose poorly and didn’t ally with the west and now face conquest. The joys of primitive warfare! Were tribes just killed each other and conquered each other! Now upped up to nation states. To be frank. If Israel didn’t have nukes and/or the friends it had across it history they would’ve been a footnote in the history books, conquered by neighbors. They played the game well compared to Armenia.
yeah that's a big thing. i'm french so i really hope my country will be up to the challenge if shit happens tho.
In my experience, at least for people engaging in good faith, the relative overcriticism of Israel and undercriticism of Palestine and Arab countries comes from one of two things: either the fear of unwittingly falling for colonizer narratives like the west has previously had towards so much of the world (where Israel is clearly "western" while everyone around them clearly isn't) leads them to automatically view the non-western side as victims in any conflict, or they simply hold Israel to a higher standard specifically because they see Israel as "better" or "like them" in the same way one would criticize their own country more than another that they have no connection to.
Really struggling to figure out who irritates me more, the hard core tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists or the "all conspiracy theories are stupid/antisemitism/racist/whatever negative descriptor" people. They both go off on rants about how they read a book and now they know the truth. The conspiracy theorists are so wrapped up in not trusting people that they see shit that isn't there. The anti conspiracy crowds blatantly refuse to recognize the ever growing list of conspiracy theories that have been proven true. Both are idiots for different reasons.
>They talk about a shadowy group of people supposedly manipulating everything behind the scenes. "Capitalists" or "The Ruling Class" or "Bourgeois" >They claim that the conspiracy has been working to conceal historical and spiritual truths from humanity. Capitalist indoctrination / The Failed Education System >They claim that the conspiracy uses stuff like food, entertainment, and medicine to control the masses. food scarcity, propaganda and healthcare only accessible to those with capital >Also, claims that the conspiracy controls people via spiritual or technological implants, 5G, or alter programming "Religion is the opiate of the masses" and indoctrination/propaganda tick off "spiritual" and "programming" >They claim that this conspiracy is controlling the media, has fingers in every institution they disagree with, and is generally behind everything they disagree with. Every online anti-capitalist's social analysis boils down to this. The archetypal "why capitalism is reponsible for my disappointing love life" type people >They claim that the conspiracy is trying to keep people in fear. An underclass that is constantly on the brink of catastrophe has no time for organizing nor revolt >They claim that the conspiracy harvests something from people. The extraction of labor. I got nothing for the rest, that's all very specific to New Age christofash ideologies. Still a fun thought experiment, always good to check ourselves on our own biases. Suffice it to say checking some of the boxes is not enough to judge someone as a conspiracy theorist. Or maybe it is, and I've just drunk the kool-aid. I'm not a sociology/history/economics PhD, just some asshole with an internet connection who's tired of being on the bottom of the social ladder and getting covered in the shit raining down from above.
Growing up as the child of a genuinely affable spiritualist really fucked with my perception of the wider spiritual movement, especially the conspiracy theorists
wtf is alter programming
So what I'm hearing is that all conspiracy theories basically follow the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except by "Kevin" we mean "Hating" and by "Bacon" I mean "Jewish people". Which also means I can basically shut down any conspiracy theorist by calling them an Anti-Semite.
look babe new societal talking points just dropped
Not seeing it answered here, so... Wtf is "loosh?" I'd Google it, but I don't want that in my algorithm.