It's not a conspiracy, it's capitalism

Hey comrades,

It has occurred to me that there is a section of the population - a section particularly represented on the internet, rather than in real life - that believes in all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories.

These conspiracies are usually bullshit, but are grounded in something: conspiracy theories exist to explain (incorrectly) phenomenons occurring that people genuinely observe. These phenomenon can actually be explained away by capitalism, and the way its structures and tendencies work.

These conspiracy theorists are unconsciously expressing anti-capitalist sentiments. We could win these sections to socialism if we properly and patiently explain to them why the phenomenon they are correctly observing are being misdiagnosed, and that the correct diagnosis is capitalism.

We should work towards de-bunking these conspiracies with the aim of convincing people that these phenomena are actually the effect of capitalism. Some examples I can think of are: Reptilians controlling the world, Jews controlling the world, any and all of that "New World Order" stuff, the US government being involved in 9/11, etc.

So, would comrades be interested in helping put together a series of documents/arguments/infographics to explain this to people?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=wseyWRBWzyM
libcom.org/library/how-overthrow-illuminati
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

A lot of "conspiracy theories" are actually correct though. Obviously not reptilians or Illuminati or whatever, but things like MK-Ultra, the near false flag attack officiated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy, Contra war CIA cocaine scandal, Tuskegee experiments.. the list is pretty endless. It's not as if there's not a reason these theories are so widely propagated.

I'm not saying these grander theories hold any sort of water, but I think it's difficult to really convince anyone of anything without acknowledging the fact that a lot of the stuff that people were told was absolutely impossible and delusional for a long time actually fucking happened and there's a good chance a lot of the stuff we suspect of being true now will also probably be revealed to be true in the near future as a result of declassification or investigation.

Well yeah of course, and things that are correct and true can be used to further explain the real cause behind them. It's a lot easier to convince someone of something if you can show them you are willing to take some of their existing ideas as correct and agree with them.

Illuminati is an enemy of socialism. They are main force behind revisionists and freemasons, and communist leaders were falsely accused of being them, because they held the same stupid hand sign of holding your hand inside the jacket since Marx, which was just simple popular pose for a photo.

Now look at this obelisk, its a Moscow park for soldiers who had fallen in first world war. Notice the typical Illuminati symbol? Now did any communist aesthetic had any hind of triangle eye and shit like this? No.

Imperial russia was controlled by Illuminati and Lenin freed russia, its obvious!

I've had limited success with certain people (almost all of whom are around my age) who totally buy into this stuff by essentially holding their hand through the history of the collapse of American Keynesianism at the hands of the neoliberal revolution and the subsequent bankrupting of the working class purely as a result of that shift. It takes a fucking ton of patience though, and most of the time it's only worked if I've pretended to be a libertarian or center-right Republican or something. People clamp the fuck up if you come at it from anything even seeming to approach a leftist vantage point.

I think history is crucial to getting people to stop consuming the absurdity. If you can empirically point to this, this and this decisive turning point and why, specifically, it wasn't the Chinese / blacks / women / immigrants / Mexicans who stole their jobs and reduced their lifespans but actually the capitalists, slowly it gets less and less likely to them that there are FEMA concentration camps under construction in Nebraska. That being said I mostly had success with this last year and a little earlier - I really do not know how willing or able people are to shed this violent paranoia in this current environment.

I've had limited success with certain people who totally buy into this stuff by essentially holding their hand through the history of the collapse of American Keynesianism at the hands of the neoliberal revolution and the subsequent bankrupting of the working class purely as a result of that shift. It takes a fucking ton of patience though, and most of the time it's only worked if I've pretended to be a libertarian or center-right Republican or something. People clamp the fuck up if you come at it from anything even seeming to approach a leftist vantage point.

I think history is crucial to getting people to stop consuming the absurdity. If you can empirically point to this, this and this decisive turning point and why, specifically, it wasn't the Chinese / blacks / women / immigrants / Mexicans who stole their jobs and reduced their lifespans but actually the capitalists, slowly it gets less and less likely to them that there are FEMA concentration camps under construction in Nebraska. That being said I mostly had success with this last year and a little earlier - I really do not know how willing or able people are to shed this violent paranoia in this current environment.

Agreed. Is there any way to do this succinctly, you think? Like with a few key "debunking" documents. Or is it a case of a lengthy discussion session with each new person?

Personal experience (and having actually been deeply fucking mired in an Infowars degree of this shit for the vast majority of high school, truly a miracle I'm not anymore because of how complete the sycophancy was) tells me that it's an individual process that takes an extensive amount of time and needs to happen in a non-judgemental, hyper-simplified, and probably private and definitely in real life context. People buy into conspiracy theories because they are indignant about how out of control the world is, and scared of what that means for them. Just compiling a list of reading material suggests that they're too dumb to really get what's going on, and is such an affront to the ENORMOUS amount of internalized propaganda most people, even non-conspiracy theorists, have narratively strung together and entrenched over several decades.

I will say I like dealing with conspiracy theorists more than glibly accepting full out deniers if only because they clearly have the capacity for critical thinking and default suspicion. As leftists, we're conspiracy theorists in a lot of ways too, we've just got a different target - it's why I'm friends with so many libertarians and anti-statist redneck conservatives. There's a lot of common ground to start off with, which makes it easier and sometimes even fun.

If we were to entertain the notion of a prospective reading list, I think Chomsky would actually be a good place to start. I dragged myself out of ancap libertarianism beginning with anarchism - realized that it wasn't other women or political correctness that was oppressive to me but the state - and then slowly made my way to Marxist-Leninism over a number of years. Might be counter-productive if they actually know who Chomsky is, though. Harvey would also likely be good.

Also this is super anecdotal but for some reason it seems to help immensely if you make it known pretty immediately that you're pro-gun rights and just generally let them know you have almost identical opinions about the state, specifically the American state. Shit kind of starts to fall into place once they see that you're actually not a liberal.

Yeah, the conspiracies that are the most serious are all related to governments, and for good reason – the populace has little leverage over their own government, whereas a company is beholden to its customers.

If a conspiracy in a company is detected by a populace, then the people will vote with their dollars and the company will go bankrupt. Therefore there is a strong incentive for a company to show to their customer base that indeed the conspiracy is false to prevent losses.

If a conspiracy in a government is detected there is often little a populace can do other than wait for whistleblowers, say, NSA spying.

Of course, the bastard child of both conspiracies is often labelled as "capitalism" is in fact cronie-capitalism, that is, companies influencing a fat government to give them a slice of the taxpayer pie. For example, in the case of HALLIBURTON providing terrible service to the US army and running massive costs to charge the taxpayer premiums, or in general, bailouts to specific individuals who bet wrong when investing.

This is why centralized anything is so prone to corruption, taking away from the taxpayer is like stealing from the void, a "victimless" crime. Who wouldn't take a big fat taxpayer paycheck if offered so? This is not capitalism, this is corporatism, favoritism, and I hope you all are smart enough to tell the difference.