Tag: conspiracy theories

When a ‘conspiracy theory’ turns out to be…not a theory

WHEN A ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’ TURNS OUT TO BE…NOT A THEORY. On Monday, the New York Times published a story about Konnech, a small election software company that has just 27 employees, 21 based in Michigan and six in Australia. The paper reported that Konnech has been the target of “election deniers” who have made it the focus of “a new conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential election.”

“Using threadbare evidence, or none at all,” the New York Times’s Stuart A. Thompson reported, the “election deniers” said Konnech “had secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the Chinese government backdoor access to personal data about two million poll workers in the United States.”

In the last two years, the New York Times added, “conspiracy theorists have subjected election officials and private companies that play a major role in elections to a barrage of outlandish voter fraud claims.” But now, “the attacks on Konnech demonstrate how far-right election deniers are also giving more attention to new and more secondary companies and groups.”

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Konnech officials assured the New York Times that “none of the accusations were true.” Thompson reported that employees “feared for their safety” from right-wing violence and that “Konnech’s founder and chief executive, Eugene Yu, an American citizen who immigrated from China in 1986, went into hiding with his family after receiving threatening messages.”

Any reasonable reader would come away with the conclusion that Konnech, an innocent company that makes products to deal with “basic election logistics, such as scheduling poll workers,” has been the target of crazy, and possibly dangerous, conspiracy theories. To press the point, the New York Times used the phrase “conspiracy theory” or “conspiracy theorists” nine times in the article, once in the headline — “How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target” — seven times in the body of the story, and once in a photo caption. Got it?

Fast forward one day. Twenty-four hours. The New York Times published another story about Konnech, this one headlined, “Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft.” Thompson reported that Yu had been “arrested by Los Angeles County officials in connection with an investigation into the possible theft of personal information about poll workers.”

From the New York Times: “The company has been accused by groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election with storing information about poll workers on servers in China. The company has repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States, including in recent statements to The New York Times.” And then: The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office “said its investigators had found data stored in China.” And this is from the New York Times on the core of the matter:

Konnech came under scrutiny this year by several election deniers, including a founder of True the Vote, a nonprofit that says it is devoted to uncovering election fraud. True the Vote said its team had downloaded personal information on 1.8 million American poll workers from a server owned by Konnech and hosted in China. It said it obtained the data by using the server’s default password, which it said was ‘password.’ … The group provided no evidence that it had downloaded the data, saying that it had given the information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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News & Conspiracies

The Western political/media class has been dismissing as “conspiracy theories” all claims that the U.S. is likely responsible for last month’s sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, even while leveling the exact same accusations against Russia without ever using that term. Which probably says a lot about the way that label has been used over the years, if you think about it.

At a U.N. Security Council meeting on Friday, U.S. envoy Richard Mills repeatedly accused Russia of promoting “conspiracy theories” in its Nord Stream accusations against the United States, saying that “our Russian colleagues have decided to instrumentalize the Security Council meeting to spread conspiracy theories and disinformation.”

“It’s important that we use this meeting not to foster conspiracy theories, but to focus our attention on Russia’s blatant violation of the Charter and its crimes in Ukraine,” Mills argues, after saying that “the United States categorically denies any involvement in this incident” and that there is no justification for “the Russian delegation raising conspiracy theories and mass disinformation in this Council.”

Mills then spends the remainder of his remarks insinuating that it is actually Russia who perpetrated the attacks, mentioning the word “infrastructure” no less than nine times in his arguments to establish that in Ukraine, Russia has a history of attacking critical civilian infrastructure similar to the pipelines.

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It’s Only A ‘Conspiracy Theory’ When It Accuses The US Government

The western political/media class has been dismissing as “conspiracy theories” all claims that the US is likely responsible for last month’s sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, even while leveling the exact same accusations against Russia without ever using that term. Which probably says a lot about the way that label has been used over the years, if you think about it.

At a UN Security Council meeting on Friday, US envoy Richard Mills repeatedly accused Russia of promoting “conspiracy theories” in its Nord Stream accusations against the United States, saying that “our Russian colleagues have decided to instrumentalize the Security Council meeting to spread conspiracy theories and disinformation.”

“It’s important that we use this meeting not to foster conspiracy theories, but to focus our attention on Russia’s blatant violation of the Charter and its crimes in Ukraine,” Mills argues, after saying that “the United States categorically denies any involvement in this incident” and that there is no justification for “the Russian delegation raising conspiracy theories and mass disinformation in this Council.”

Mills then hilariously spends the remainder of his remarks insinuating that it is actually Russia who perpetrated the attacks, mentioning the word “infrastructure” no less than nine times in his arguments to establish that in Ukraine, Russia has a history of attacking critical civilian infrastructure similar to the pipelines.

“Sabotage of critical infrastructure should be of concern to us all,” Mills says. “In the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, we have seen numerous Russian attacks damaging civilian infrastructure. We witnessed Russia recklessly seize control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, risking a nuclear disaster in Europe. We saw countless attacks destroying civilian electricity infrastructure.”

“Despite efforts that we heard today to distract us from the truth, to distribute more disinformation and slightly wacky theories, the facts on the ground in Ukraine speak for themselves,” Mills concludes.

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Xi Jinping’s Fake Coup

Many readers reported reading that strange things were happening in China. For example, Twitter and Newsweek reported that China mysteriously canceled thousands of commercial flights and trains. Some bloggers wrote that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was under house arrest, and others reported seeing hundreds of military vehicles heading toward Beijing.

Others said these rumors are fake news.

What’s Really Going On?

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has not confirmed or denied the rumors. The CCP wants people to wonder what’s going on.

Xi is conducting a “palace coup” to flush out his opponents and remove them before the 20th National Congress begins on Oct. 16.

Many dictators and autocratic rulers conduct these actions to ensure they stay in power. In 2016, Turkish President Erdogan acted similarly and subsequently “declared a state of emergency, imprisoning opposition politicians, arresting tens of thousands of perceived opponents, journalists, and civil society leaders, confiscating opponents’ businesses and bank accounts, and cracking down on the remnants of the free press,” according to think tank American Enterprise Institute.

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There’s a conspiracy theory that the CIA invented the term ‘conspiracy theory’ – here’s why

Conspiracy theories have a long history, but the actual term “conspiracy theory” emerged much more recently. It was only a few decades ago that the term took on the derogatory connotations it has today, where to call someone a conspiracy theorist functions as an insult.

So it may come as no surprise that there is even a conspiracy theory about the origins of the label. This conspiracy theory claims that the CIA invented the term in 1967 to disqualify those who questioned the official version of John F Kennedy’s assassination and doubted that his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, had acted alone.

There are even two versions of this conspiracy theory. The more extreme version claims that the CIA literally invented the term in the sense that the words “conspiracy” and “theory” had never been used before in combination. A more moderate version acknowledges that the term existed before, but claims that the CIA intentionally created its negative connotations and so turned the label into a tool of political propaganda.

The more moderate version has been particularly popular in recent years for two reasons. First, it is very easy to disprove the more extreme claim that the CIA actually invented the term. As a search on Google Books quickly reveals, the term “conspiracy theory” emerged around 1870 and began to be more frequently used during the 1950s. Even die-hard conspiracy theorists have a hard time trying to ignore this. Second, the more moderate version received a big boost in popularity a few years ago when American political scientist Lance DeHaven-Smith propagated it in a book published by a renowned university press.

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QAnon Follower Killed Wife and Shot Daughter Before Cops Shot Him Dead

A 53-year-old Michigan man who was consumed by “Stop the steal” and QAnon conspiracies allegedly shot his wife, daughter, and their dog at their suburban Detroit home early Sunday morning, killing his wife and the dog.

He was shot dead by police officers moments later when he exited his home and began firing at the officers. While police said Sunday they don’t know what led to Igor Lanis shooting his wife, Tina, 56, and one of their daughters, Rachel, 25, another daughter who was not in the house at the time has claimed that QAnon is to blame.

“My Qdad snapped and killed my family this morning,” Rebecca Lanis, 21, wrote in a thread on the QAnon Casualties subreddit on Sunday, hours before the Detroit police and media first reported the details of the shooting.

She wrote that “growing up, my parents were extremely loving and happy people. I always had a special bond with both my parents.” But, she said, things began to change with her father a couple of years ago, after former President Donald Trump contested the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“In 2020 after Trump lost, my dad started going down the Q rabbit hole,” she wrote in the forum, which provides support to the families of those who’ve been affected by QAnon believers. “He kept reading conspiracy theories about the stolen election, Trump, vaccines, etc. It kept getting worse and he verbally snapped at us a few times. Nothing physical though. He never got physical with anybody.”

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Robert Anton Wilson on conspiracies…

“Indeed, those who think “conspiracy theories” never contain anything but paranoid fantasy should remember that our government itself and all advanced governments believe in conspiracies and have laws against them. Special branches of the police power have the job of investigating possible conspiracies in various areas—the SEC looks for bank swindles, the Red Squad of every police department looks for subversive ideas, district attorneys hunt for books so evil they are not protected by the First Amendment (which radicals like the late Justice Brennan believed was intended to protect all books), even the CIA (when it can spare the time from its profitable cocaine business) looks for external conspiracies, etc. If we (or three out of four of us) don’t trust the people who govern us, they don’t trust us, either. And no other country lacks some criminal conspiracy laws or agencies charged with seeking them out and prosecuting them. This, for instance, explains how the Italian government in the 1980s discovered the P2 conspiracy, which had placed over 950 of its agents in top government positions. Similarly, the U.S. government has recently found evidence of a conspiracy of deception by the tobacco industry. Such facts should warn us again dismissing all conspiracy theories as the pastime of dingbats and cranks. None of the investigative agencies charged with bringing hard evidence into court, however, have ever found traces of any of the Really Big Conspiracies that most “conspiracy buffs” believe in. This, of course, only proves one thing to the true conspiriologist: The major conspiracies really do have almost universal power, because the investigating agencies themselves “are part of the cover-up.” Against that kind of logic, the gods themselves contend in vain. But, of course, a truly powerful and truly intelligent conspiracy would never get “exposed” or even suspected, as Mel Gibson says in the popular film Conspiracy Theory.

Thus nobody can totally refute any truly crazy conspiracy theory, because all such theories have a Strange Loop in their construction. Any evidence against them also functions as evidence to support them, if you want to look at it that way. Thus, like its cousin, theology, the pop demonology of conspiracy theory survives any and all criticisms. People do not believe theological or demonological models of the world for logical or scientific reasons, but for “artistic” or at least emotional reasons. These models or narratives provide harmonious, coherent, and starkly simple explanations of events that otherwise seem chaotic and beyond human comprehension. That’s why I believe in so many of them myself.”

Robert Anton Wilson

UN Education Agency Launches War on ‘Conspiracy Theories’

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, better known by its acronym, UNESCO, is escalating its global war on ideas and information it considers to be “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories.”

According to the Paris-based U.N. education agency, which released a major report on the subject for educators this summer, conspiracy theories cause “significant harm” and form “the backbone of many populist movements.”

Among other concerns, conspiracy theories “foster and reinforce harmful thinking patterns and exclusive worldviews,” the report said.

They also “reduce trust in public institutions” and “scientific institutions,” which can drive people to violence or decrease their desire to “reduce their carbon footprint,” UN officials argued in the document.

While “all conspiratorial thinking threatens human rights values,” the document says without elaborating, some conspiracy theories are more dangerous than others.

In some cases, teachers are even encouraged to report their students to authorities.

Examples of “conspiracy theories” cited in the report include everything from widely held and respectable beliefs such as “climate change denial” and “manipulation of federal elections” in the United States, to more far-fetched notions such as the “earth is flat” or “Michelle Obama is actually a lizard.”

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A Former Member of the JFK QAnon Cult Tried to Kidnap Her Own Children

When Samantha Ricks was kicked out of the JFK-QAnon cult led by Michael Protzman at the beginning of December, she was already in a downward spiral. 

A couple of weeks later, Ricks was accused of substance abuse by the woman who had taken her family in. Then, child protective services said she had exposed her children to “inappropriate sexual behavior.” Three days before Christmas, Oklahoma Child Protective Services knocked on her door and took her 6-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son into foster care. 

Ricks then raged online about how child protective services was secretly trafficking children. She accused everyone, including those who tried to help her, of collaborating to take her children away from her, beliefs founded in QAnon conspiracies about global child sex trafficking rings that are reinforced by extremist groups who have made it their mission to prey on vulnerable parents.

After months of spreading misinformation, lashing out at everyone around her, and even fundraising, Ricks took matters into her own hands. 

What happened next was the culmination of her extremist views and desperate outlook: On August 8, Ricks tried to kidnap her own children. 

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What are ‘transvestigators?’ Conspiracy alleges numerous celebrities, politicians secretly transgender

On the surface, it seems to be an incredibly niche conspiracy theory that exists primarily in insular social media groups, occasionally spilling over onto Twitter or Reddit when particular claims get a lot of attention, but the attitude of “transvestigators” might not be limited to conspiratorial spaces.

“Transvestigation”

“Transvestigators” are people who believe that a large swath of the population (usually celebrities and politicians) are secretly transgender. They often demonstrate these beliefs by imposing shapes over pictures of celebrities to demonstrate the “male” qualities of women’s bodies or the “feminine” qualities of men. Some people within these groups do the same to regular people they see out in public, secretly photographing them to critique the shape of a woman’s collarbones or the way a man stands, using all of this as “evidence” that people everywhere are secretly transgender. 

Pictures of celebrities like Henry Cavill are shared with comments about eyes and brow ridges used as “evidence” of some sort of trickery. 

The tone of discussions within the Facebook group tends to lean in a more esoteric religious tone than a political one, with people whose pictures are shared referred to as “Baphos,” which appears to be a reference to reference to Baphomet, “an invented pagan or gnostic idol or deity that the Templars were accused of worshipping,” apparently drawing a connection between the celebrities and occult forces.

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