Tag: conspiracy theories

Canadian Media STILL Pushing Crackpot Theory That Truckers Are Russian Agents

As the Canadian freedom convoy rolls on and continues to influence other protesters around the globe, Canadian media continues to push outright disinformation by suggesting that the Russian government is behind the movement.

When the convoy first came to prominence at the end of January, state broadcaster the Canadian Broadcasting Company began spreading completely unfounded claims that “Russian actors” were present among the Canadian truckers holding up major cities including Ottawa and Toronto, as well as border crossings.

The tenuous reasoning behind the theory is that Canada has expressed support for Ukraine during the country’s ongoing tensions with Russia.

Rather than admit that working class truckers are sick of enforced restrictions and vaccine mandates threatening their livelihoods, CBC floated the crackpot idea that Vladimir Putin is secretly behind the protests.

CBC continues to push the conspiracy theory, with correspondent Harry Forestell filing the following report Friday giving airtime to ‘New Brunswick cybersecurity expert’ David Shipley, who is adamant that the Russians are behind everything.

Shipley proclaimed “Who would have reason right now to cause as much chaos in Canada as possible? Well, at the top of that list is Russia.”

Keep reading

QAnon Decoder Says Half of What Conspiracy Theory Says Isn’t True

Dave Hayes, who’s become a prominent figure in the QAnon movement, recently dismissed skepticism about unfulfilled promises from the movement’s leader, known only as “Q,” because he believes part of the strategy of the movement is to put out disinformation.

Hayes is an influential interpreter of the writings of Q, who inspired the QAnon conspiracy theory that believes prominent people, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be arrested for various crimes. While he acknowledged that many have spent the last three years waiting for the arrests, which never came, he argued the disappointment was part of the plan all along.

Speaking with Patrick Gunnels on the Reading Epic Threads webcast on Thursday, Hayes said Q warned people he would put out a lot of “disinformation.” It was designed to “make the bad guys make wrong moves,” according to Hayes.

“If you’re going to buy on to the Q thing, you have to know upfront that half of what Q is going to tell you is not going to be true,” Hayes said. “It’s for the purpose of psychological operations and that’s just what it is.”

Keep reading

COVID “Conspiracy Theories” Have Now Magically Become “Fact-Checked” Mainstream Narrative

I started out 2022 by predicting that capitalism and common sense would catalyze a massive pivot in how the mainstream media reports on Covid.

I believed that the media would eventually start the process of pivoting from hysteria and that politicians, understanding full well that they can’t get re-elected during mid-terms this year on a platform of locking people in their homes, would follow.

All I can say one month into the year is holy shit, does it look like I was right.

So far in 2022, innumerable U.S. states, in addition to countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark, are lifting Covid restrictions.

Connecticut and Delaware are planning on lifting school mask mandates by the end of March. Oregon officials have also announced that general mask mandates would be lifted March 31. Even New Jersey and California announced they would ease mandates in coming weeks.

And the media narrative has very quickly changed, too.

Dr Leana Wen, columnist with The Washington Post and CNN medical analyst who has, in the past, gushed non-stop about following the government’s Covid guidance, has now completely changed her playbook for her appearances on CNN.

On Monday of this week, she told CNN:

“There was, and is, a time and place for pandemic restrictions. But when they were put in, it was always with the understanding that they would be removed as soon as we can. And, in this case, circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed. The responsibility should shift from a government mandate imposed from the state or the local district of the school … it should shift to an individual responsibility by the family, who can still decide that their child can wear a mask if needed.”

Keep reading

Biden DHS Declares Terrorism Threat Due to ‘False and Misleading Narratives’ and ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Online

Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declared a heightened terrorism threat due to “several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories.”

In other words, any speech or opinions of which the DHS doesn’t approve is now a “terrorism threat.”

Read the tyrannical DHS National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin released on Monday:

The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.

These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence. Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation.

While the conditions underlying the heightened threat landscape have not significantly changed over the last year, the convergence of the following factors has increased the volatility, unpredictability, and complexity of the threat environment: (1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions; (2) continued calls for violence directed at U.S. critical infrastructure; soft targets and mass gatherings; faith-based institutions, such as churches, synagogues, and mosques; institutions of higher education; racial and religious minorities; government facilities and personnel, including law enforcement and the military; the media; and perceived ideological opponents; and (3) calls by foreign terrorist organizations for attacks on the United States based on recent events.

In response to these major “threats” of unsanctioned speech, the DHS said it’s “working with public and private sector partners, as well as foreign counterparts, to identify and evaluate MDM, including false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories spread on social media and other online platforms that endorse or could inspire violence.”

Keep reading

The JFK QAnon Cult in Dallas Is Somehow Getting Weirder

Laura’s mother, Patricia, was among the hundreds of QAnon followers who went to Dallas last November to see the prophesied resurrection of President John F. Kennedy. At the time, Laura wasn’t sure exactly why her mother was going, but she wasn’t particularly concerned, especially when her mom returned a few days later.

But then Patricia left for Dallas again the following week—and again a couple of weeks later. When she left again in the final weekend of November, Patricia said she was leaving for good.

“We just started to feel very helpless at that point and just very sad and backed into a corner because we had a big feeling that she was not coming back,” Laura told VICE News.

Months later, Patricia is still in Dallas and still under the influence of Michael Protzman, the antisemitic QAnon influencer who made the wild predictions about JFK’s resurrection. Many observers believed Protzman’s influence would wane after his predictions repeatedly failed to come true and the major announcements and revelations he promised never materialized. Instead, his group of followers are growing again. And Protzman’s predictions and actions are becoming ever more outlandish. 

Besides claiming that JFK appeared in disguise as Trump at a rally last month, Protzman has begun to openly berate his followers, some of whom have reportedly drunk toxic chemicals from a communal bowl. Most recently Protzman, who’s known to his followers as Negative48, claimed that 17 dead celebrities are now taking part in the group’s online chats.

While many people, including some within the QAnon community, have dismissed Protzman as a freak show and something to be ridiculed, his ability to control and coerce people into abandoning their lives to follow him has destroyed families.

Keep reading

MSM Pundits Push Idea That Criticizing US Policy On Russia Makes You A Russian Agent

One thing I’ve been meaning to write about these last few days has been the way mass media pundits have been insinuating or outright asserting that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is literally an agent of the Russian government.

Carlson has been accused of promoting Russian propaganda by mainstream narrative managers for frequently criticizing the Biden administration’s hawkish posture toward Russia regarding the entirely unsubstantiated claim that Moscow is preparing to launch an unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. We’ve been seeing things like Anderson Cooper innocently musing that “It is striking how neatly Kremlin propaganda seems to dovetail with Carlson’s talking points” and this CNN segment from December with Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter and tinfoil hat Russiagater Julia Ioffe wondering aloud about why Russian state media seem to be so fond of Carlson. By mid-January, Democratic Party operatives were openly demanding that Carlson be investigated for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

“This isn’t journalism, it’s an ongoing FARA violation. Tucker Carlson needs to be prosecuted as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation and treason under Article 3, Sec. 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution for aiding an enemy in hybrid warfare against the United States,” tweeted former DNC official Alexandra Chalupa, best known for colluding with the Ukrainian government in 2016 on opposition research against Donald Trump.

The accusations and insinuations increased, eventually leading to Carlson outright denying being a Russian agent in a recent interview with The New York Times saying, “I’ve never been to Russia, I don’t speak Russian. Of course I’m not an agent of Russia.”

As you would expect, this denial was then spun by the same demented mainstream pundits who’ve spent the last five years being wrong about Russia as evidence that Carlson is a Russian agent.

Keep reading

Anonymous Officials Claim There’s An Evil Russian Plot Again But The Evidence Is Secret Again

Major western news publications are running a story about a sinister plot by the Russian government, and — you may want to sit down for this — the sources of the report are anonymous, and the evidence for it is secret.

The New York Times reports that according to anonymous individuals within the US and British governments, Russia is currently plotting to topple the existing government of Ukraine in some way using some method and then somehow install a puppet regime that is sympathetic to Moscow using some sort of means. What specifically those means and methods might be are not revealed to us in this very serious news report.

“The communiqué provided few details about how Russia might go about imposing a new government on Ukraine, and did not say whether such plans were contingent on an invasion by Russian troops,” the Paper of Record informs us. “British officials familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent was both to head off the activation of such plans as well as to put Mr. Putin on notice that this plot had been exposed.”

Now if you are hoping to be provided with some sort of evidence for these incendiary claims, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you, because get this: the journalists reporting on this story have not seen any evidence. Apparently they’re just passing on unverified government assertions made by unknown spies to their readers because they were told to, which I guess is something journalists can do now?

I know, I know, I was a little surprised when I learned that too. But here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth:

“The British communiqué provided no evidence to back up its assertion that Russia was plotting to overthrow the Ukrainian government,” the Times reports.

You will be reassured however to learn that despite the actual evidence of the actual Russian nefariousness being kept invisible to us, anonymous officials within the US government have reviewed the intelligence gathered by anonymous British spies for us and concluded on our behalf that the evidence is solid.

Keep reading

Why Does the Media Keep Blaming the Russians for JFK’s Assassination?

In mid-December, the Biden administration released nearly 1,500 documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Out of all the intelligence agencies memoranda, dossiers, and interview transcripts, the media has seized upon one: a CIA memo about Lee Harvey Oswald’s supposed in-person meeting with Valery Kostikov, a notorious KGB official, in Mexico City in September 1963.  

There’s nothing new about the memo in question. The same is true for most of the JFK records released in December. But as a round of fresh press coverage indicated, the encounter suggests Oswald was working for the Soviets, and that America’s Cold War nemesis was responsible for Kennedy’s killing — not the mob, anti-Castro Cubans, the CIA, or the military-industrial complex.  

The theory that Oswald was a KGB asset has persisted for decades, despite a lack of evidence. Even the CIA concluded that any contact Oswald had with KGB-affiliated Russians was a “grim coincidence.” (A man claiming to be Oswald did contact the Soviets in Mexico City — but that man was an impostor.) 

This most recent recycling of the “Oswald and the Russians” story — the JFK assassination’s very own Russiagate — follows a predictable pattern that appears every time there’s a release of JFK records. It happened in 2017 and during the 1990s.

So, what gives? Why does the media gravitate toward the Oswald/KGB “revelation” every few years rather than any of the other more plausible theories? 

Keep reading

Conspiracies as Realities, Realities as Conspiracies

American politics over the last half decade has become immersed in a series of conspiracy charges leveled by Democrats against their opponents that, in fact, are happening because of them and through them. The consequences of these conspiracies becoming reality and reality revealing itself as conspiracy have been costly to American prestige, honor, and security. As we move away from denouncing realists as conspiracists, and self-pronounced “realists” are revealed as the true conspirators, let’s review a few of the more damaging of these events. 

Keep reading

When is a conspiracy theory not a conspiracy theory?

It is fascinating how the meaning of the phrase “conspiracy theory” changes depending on who is using it. Or more specifically, it depends on how Democrats are using it to advance their political goals.

For years, if not decades, some Americans were noticing behind-the-scene, well-concerted efforts to impose on our country a form of semi-totalitarian regime, not unlike the one that collapsed in the Soviet Union three decades ago. However, anyone who pointed to facts that supported claims of coordinated attempts to reduce the governments’ accountability to the American people, restrict individual liberties, expand governmental powers, and strengthen federal law-enforcement agencies was promptly branded as a “conspiracy theorist” (think of the character Mel Gibson played in Conspiracy Theory) who might belong in a mental hospital and certainly shouldn’t be taken seriously.

There were no conspiracies in America, we were told, and anyone who suggested that there were such conspiracies was insane, evil, or both.

That “mainstream” rhetoric changed a bit in 1998 when Ms. Hillary Clinton, defending Bill against charges of sexual misconduct with Monica Lewinsky, claimed he was the victim of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” No one in the “mainstream” called her a “conspiracy theorist,” never mind asking for factual proof of her claim. Nineteen years later, when we were suddenly told that President Donald Trump “colluded with Russia” (another name for conspiring with Russia), despite (as we learned later) zero credible evidence supporting them, no “mainstream” narrator referred to House impeachment managers and their Congressional supporters as crazy “conspiracy theorists.”

But the progressive “mainstream” did not permanently abandon—at least, not permanently so—its disdain for “conspiracy theories.” It was back to its usual modus operandi during the 2020 presidential elections. Then, everybody who was concerned about plans to facilitate election fraud and cheating and, after the fact, was concerned about the swift destruction of evidence and the refusal to investigate to allay voters’ fears, was promptly relegated to the “conspiracy theorist” category.

Keep reading