Tag: conspiracy theories

The 2024 Santa Monica Film Festival was chock full of red-pilled conspiracy content

The 18th annual Santa Monica Film Festival, which held in-person screenings on Saturday, February 3 and which is running online screenings through February 28, chose to feature and then give awards to some dangerous right-wing conspiracy theories masquerading as “documentary” films.

The festival awarded “Best Documentary Feature” to The Great Awakening, the third film in anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Mikki Willis’ Plandemic series. The Santa Monica Film Festival website describes the film:

The Great Awakening is the third installment of the ‘Plandemic’ series. This documentary experience assembles forbidden puzzle pieces to reveal the big picture of what’s really happening in America and beyond. The Great Awakening is intended to be a lighthouse to guide us out of the storm and into a brighter future.

 The Plandemic website also provides a description of the film:

Witness the culmination of truth-seeking as PLANDEMIC 3: The Great Awakening unravels the layers of corruption and unveils a path towards a brighter future. Prepare to be inspired, awakened, and empowered to take a stand for liberty.

After the screening, the audience was treated to a Q&A with Rizza Islam, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and member of the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s disinformation dozen.

The first installment of Plandemic was released May 4, 2000, and was largely responsible for the viral spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories and vaccine disinformation. The New York Times explained in 2020 that nothing in the pandemic had gone as viral as the 26-minute short film, “a slickly produced narration that wrongly claimed a shadowy cabal of elites was using the virus and a potential vaccine to profit and gain power. The video featured a discredited scientist, Judy Mikovits, who said her research about the harm from vaccines had been buried.”

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Why So Many People Believe Taylor Swift Is a Psy-Op

You’d have to go back to the peak years of Bob Dylan’s cultural relevance, when one critic cum stalker started searching the songwriter’s garbage for clues about his lyrics, to find a musician who attracts as many amateur code breakers as Taylor Swift does. Swift has fed the frenzy by declaring that her songs, her liner notes, her social-media posts—basically everything around her—might have hidden meanings embedded in them. As she told The Washington Post in 2022, she and her fans have “descended into color coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints, and Easter eggs.”

That scavenger-hunt mentality can lead would-be decoders in directions the singer might not prefer, as with the “Gaylors” who search for signals that Swift is secretly queer. Now a different subculture is getting in on the act: A chunk of the GOP has been conjuring alleged evidence that Swift is a deep-state psy-op, and that maybe—we’re just asking questions here—the NFL is in on it.

This theory got its first burst of mainstream attention last month, when Fox’s Jesse Watters aired a video that, he claimed, shows that “the Pentagon psychological-operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.” The person speaking in the video was not in fact from the Pentagon, she was citing Swift as a generic example of celebrity influence, and this all happened years after Swift became super popular anyway, but Watters still seemed to think it might explain “why or how she blew up like this.” He then interviewed a former FBI agent, who said that Joe Biden’s presidential campaign would like Swift’s support (which is true) and that she could move substantial numbers of votes into Biden’s column (which is not the track record that pop-music endorsements have historically had in American politics).

The psy-op rumor mutated into its most infamous form a few weeks later. Vivek Ramaswamy, until recently a presidential candidate himself, posted on X, “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

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Media Still Claims Biden Campaign-Taylor Swift Plot is a “Conspiracy Theory”

The legacy media is still characterizing the fact that the Biden campaign is working with Taylor Swift for voter recruitment as a crazy conspiracy theory, despite also acknowledging that this is in fact taking place.

In one instance, CNN reported that the Biden campaign was feverishly working behind the scenes to secure the pop star’s endorsement.

Yet later that same day, on the same network, the notion that there was a “psyop” at work to elevate Swift via her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce was aggressively dismissed.

Hosts on CNN News Central characterized the claim that the Biden campaign was in “cahoots” with Swift to influence voters and “try to get President Biden re-elected” as a nonsensical “conspiracy theory”.

The hosts then rounded on Jack Posobiec for daring to suggest that “the Democratic Party and other powers are gearing up for an operation to use Taylor Swift in the election against Donald Trump,” as well as Fox News’ Jesse Watters for asking if Swift was a “front for a covert political agenda.”

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Prosecutors Admit Ray Epps ‘Committed Multiple Crimes,’ Offered Plea Deal Because Of ‘Conspiracy Theories’

Veteran reporter Julie Kelly has obtained a transcript of the sentencing hearing for Ray Epps, a man who was filmed urging people to enter the Capitol at numerous points on January 5 and 6.

Epps — who was also one of the first to protesters to breach Capitol Police lines on January 6 — was given overwhelmingly light treatment from federal prosecutors when compared with the majority of protesters arrested that day. More than three years after the protests, the FBI is serving no-knock raids for demonstrators who are typically charged with four misdemeanors, including disorderly conduct, picketing in the Capitol Building, remaining in restricted grounds and similar trespassing-related misdemeanors.

Hundreds of protesters have also been charged and jailed after being convicted of “obstruction of an official proceeding,” which has been advanced by federal prosecutors under a convoluted legal theory that it currently set to be ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court. While federal prosecutors have largely stopped charging non-violent protesters with the felony statute, it is still being brought in a number of cases despite the impending Supreme Court ruling.

For Ray Epps, he was charged and pleaded guilty to just one count of disorderly conduct. While hundreds of non-violent protesters with clean records have been sentenced to months or even years in jail, Epps was sentenced to just one year probation and was ordered 100 hours of community service.

According to the sentencing hearing transcript obtained by Julie Kelly, prosecutors admitted that Epps “committed several crimes” on January 6.

“Your honor, Ray Epps has been unfairly scapegoated, but he is not a victim. He was not a secret agent of the government on January 6, trying to trick unwitting Trump supporters into committing federal crimes,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon during last month’s hearing. “That’s not what happened. But he is not innocent, either.”

Gordon went on to concede that Epps “did not start the riot or cause it, but he did make it much worse.”

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Canadian man who claimed wildfires were a federal conspiracy admits arson

A Canadian man who claimed forest fires were the result of a government conspiracy has pleaded guilty to lighting more than a dozen blazes during the country’s record-breaking wildfire season, as nearly 100 fires persist in drought-stricken regions.

Brian Paré admitted to 13 counts of arson and one count of arson with disregard for human life at the courthouse in central Quebec, an act that drew away key firefighting resources from nearly 700 fires in the province last summer.

Those blazes, which required the aid of international fire crews, charred more than 4.5m hectares of boreal landscape. Virtually all of those fires were caused by lightning strikes, the Quebec’s fire service says.

But at the courthouse in the town of Chibougamau, prosecutor Marie-Philippe Charron said on Monday two of the 14 fires lit by Paré forced the evacuation of 500 homes, the Canadian Press reported. The largest fire lit by Paré consumed nearly 873 hectares of forest.

Fire officials investigated a string of five blazes in June that had no possible natural cause and broke out days after the province had implemented a fire ban. The 38-year-old Paré quickly became a suspect when he was spotted in the location of the fires and “demonstrated a certain interest in fires” after an interview with police, said Charron.

In June police began watching his social media posts, which frequently focused on the province’s wildfires. He shared content suggesting the record-breaking fire season was the result of government intervention, not climate change. The prosecution said police specialists developed a suspect profile based on the fires – and increasingly, Paré’s seemed a match.

Police later obtained a warrant to install a tracking device on Paré’s vehicle and found he travelled to locations where other fires were started.

After he was arrested in September, he admitted to starting nine fires and “claimed he was doing tests to find out whether the forest was really dry or not”, Charron told the court.

Despite a string of conspiratorial theories over the summer, amplified by Alberta’s premier, nearly all of Canada’s fires were caused by lightning striking the tinder-like condition of forests.

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One big…lie? As NASA delays its moon landing to 2026, conspiracy theories are reignited online – with one sceptic claiming the space agency ‘can’t figure out how they did it the first time’

It has been more than 50 years since humanity first set foot on the moon. 

And ever since, conspiracy theories that the landing was faked have been rife.

While none of these theories have any grounding in reality, that hasn’t stopped them from spreading like wildfire.

Now, as NASA delays its highly anticipated return to the moon to 2026, social media has once again been flooded with claims that man has never visited our lunar satellite. 

The delayed missions have even led some sceptics to claim that ‘they can’t figure out how they did it the first time’. 

Citing safety concerns, NASA announced that Artemis II, which will complete a lunar fly-by, has been delayed until September next year.

Meanwhile, Artemis III, which will once again put astronauts on the moon, won’t now take place until September 2026.

These sudden and unexpected delays have ignited a wave of conspiracy theory content on X (formerly Twitter).

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No jail for Trump supporter who joined Capitol riot and was later targeted by Jan. 6 ‘false flag’ conspiracy theory

The Donald Trump supporter who had encouraged a raucous crowd to go to the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 and was later targeted by a right-wing conspiracy theory that he was a federal plant will not serve any time behind bars.

Ray Epps, 62, was sentenced Tuesday to one year of probation for participating in the riot at the Capitol, in which hordes of Trump supporters angry over Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win overwhelmed law enforcement and violently forced their way into the building as Congress was certifying the results, as required by the U.S. Constitution.

“Defendant sentenced to twelve (12) months Probation, a $25 Special Assessment, and Restitution totaling $500,” the docket read Tuesday following Epps’ sentencing before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a Barack Obama appointee. The docket noted that Epps appeared via Zoom and was not present in the courtroom.

Boasberg did not place any travel restrictions on Epps, The Associated Press reported. The sentence reflected what Epps and his lawyer had requested, and rejected the federal government’s argument that he deserved six months of jail time.

Originally from Arizona, Epps has said that he and his wife were forced to sell their property and business and flee their home after facing threats to their safety over the so-called “false flag” theory that accuses Epps of being an agent of the federal government. They now reportedly live in a trailer in the woods.

Boasberg reportedly expressed sympathy for the man’s situation.

“You were hounded out of your home,” the judge said, according to The Associated Press. “You were hounded out of your town.”

Boasberg reportedly said that he hoped the threats against Epps and his wife would subside. For his part, Epps said that he shouldn’t have believed what he saw on Fox News, including false statements that the election was stolen from Trump. Epps has blamed Fox and former host Tucker Carlson — from whom he sought an apology — and has since filed a defamation lawsuit against the network.

“I have learned that truth is not always found in the places that I used to trust,” he said, according to AP.

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The Big Flaws in That Study Suggesting That China Manipulates TikTok Topics

The latest wave of fearmongering about TikTok involves a study purportedly showing that the app suppresses content unflattering to China. The study attracted a lot of coverage in the American media, with some declaring it all the more reason to ban the video-sharing app.

“Hopefully members of Congress will take a look at this report and maybe bring the authors to Washington to give testimony about their findings,” wrote John Sexton at Hot Air. The study “suggests that the next generation will have had a significant portion of their news content spoon fed to them by a communist dictatorship,” fretted Leon Wolf at Blaze Media. “TikTok suppression study is another reason to ban the app,” declared a Washington Examiner editorial.

But there are serious flaws in the study design that undermine its conclusions and any panicky takeaways from them.

In the study, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) compared the use of specific hashtags on Instagram (owned by the U.S. company Meta) and on TikTok (owned by the Chinese company ByteDance). The analysis included hashtags related both to general subjects and to “China sensitive topics” such as Uyghurs, Tibet, and Tiananmen Square. “While ratios for non-sensitive topics (e.g., general political and pop-culture) generally followed user ratios (~2:1), ratios for topics sensitive to the Chinese Government were much higher (>10:1),” states the report, titled “A Tik-Tok-ing Timebomb: How TikTok’s Global Platform Anomalies Align with the Chinese Communist Party’s Geostrategic Objectives.”

The study concludes that there is “a strong possibility that TikTok systematically promotes or demotes content on the basis of whether it is aligned with or opposed to the interests of the Chinese Government.”

There are ample reasons to be skeptical of this conclusion. Paul Matzko pointed out some of these in a recent Cato Institute blog post, identifying “two remarkably basic errors that call into question the fundamental utility of the report.”

The errors are so glaring that it’s hard not to suspect an underlying agenda at work here.

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Pennsylvania residents left terrorized after finding notes about JFK, terror-riots, SS and Lord of the Rings inside SEALED packets of Lucky Charms, Lindt Chocolate and chai tea

Pennsylvania residents have been left terrorized by mysterious notes found inside sealed food packages that reference JFK, terror-riots, SS and Lord of the Rings. 

The cryptic notes have been discovered in ordinary grocery items, including Lucky Charms, Lindt Chocolate and Chai tea, bought from multiple stores in Northeastern Pennsylvania and across the state.

Joe Miller, from Sugarloaf Township, couldn’t believe his eyes when he found a folded piece of paper containing secret society messages in a box of Lucky Charm’s S’mores cereal that he purchased last week.

‘It just bothers me. The note really – it’s the note that really bothers me. These notes are found inside food like kids’ food,’ Miller told WBRE.

He promptly reported the discovery to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and local news outlets.

More than a dozen people in the area have expressed concerns about the notes, with two area congressmen promising to investigate. 

The notes contain a mash-up of words with references to current events and conspiracy theories. 

In an interview with WBRE on Tuesday, Miller, who bought the cereal from a Luzerne County grocery story, said: ‘I opened up the box … I poured it out in my bowl and out came this paper that was all folded up just like this,’ 

‘Oh, I was devastated. I mean I didn’t even want to eat the cereal, although, I still have the box here. 

‘Probably not going to eat it. I don’t know what’s inside the cereal or if this note laced with anything.’

Another resident from Montoursville, Pennsylvania, revealed she found a similar cryptic note in a sealed box of Chai tea. 

‘It’s kind of disturbing that this could happen in sealed-up bags. Things like this it’s a little unnerving to me,’ Chris said. 

Other residents also shared their experiences on social media.

One told WBRE on Facebook: ‘I found one several months ago and just last month in Lindt dark chocolate. They were purchased from different retailers. Tried to research but came up with nothing.’

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