90% of Americans believe at least one conspiracy theory (7 Viewers)

[Eeyore]

can someone screenshot? Work computer won't allow Reddit

It's a video. The guy claims that every living thing has its own sun.

 

[Scorpius the Allfather]

It's a video. The guy claims that every living thing has its own sun.

I just realized something, he claims the sun doesn't exist and yet it's 50 miles away and moves further away the closer you get to it. So, if it doesn't actually exist, how is it 50 miles away and moves when we approach it? How does everyone have their own sun if it doesn't exist?

 

[Sailorsaint]

I just realized something, he claims the sun doesn't exist and yet it's 50 miles away and moves further away the closer you get to it. So, if it doesn't actually exist, how is it 50 miles away and moves when we approach it? How does everyone have their own sun if it doesn't exist?

Flat earth logic. Not only is it just like a rainbow but it’s cold as well. I wonder where we get our hot days from?

 

[Optimus Prime]

I just realized something, he claims the sun doesn't exist and yet it's 50 miles away and moves further away the closer you get to it. So, if it doesn't actually exist, how is it 50 miles away and moves when we approach it? How does everyone have their own sun if it doesn't exist?

obviously the sun as “mainstream sheep” believe it (star at the the center of the system 93 million miles away) doesn’t exist

The small personalized suns that are 50 miles away those exist

 

[Optimus Prime]

Very interesting article about how people into wellness are susceptible to conspiracy theories
=================

…….Thanks to wellness, QAnon is the conspiracy that can draw in the mum who shops at Holland & Barrett and her Andrew Tate-watching teenage son. The QAnon conspiracy is one of the most dangerous in the world, directly linked to attempted insurrections in the US and Germany, and mass shootings in multiple countries – and wellness is helping to fuel it.

Something about the strange mixture of mistrust of the mainstream, the intimate nature of the relationship between a therapist, spiritual adviser, or even personal trainer, and their client, combined with the conspiratorial world in which we now live, is giving rise to a new kind of radicalisation. How did we end up here?

There are many people interested in spiritualism, alternative medicine, meditation, or personal training, whose views fall well within the mainstream – and more who, if they have niche views, choose not to share them with their clients. But even a cursory online request about this issue led to me being deluged with responses. Despite most experiences being far less intense than Jane’s, no one wanted to put their name to their story – something about the closeness of wellness interactions makes people loth to commit a “betrayal”, it seems.

One person recounted how her pole-dancing instructor would – while up the pole, hanging on with her legs – explain how the CIA was covering up evidence of aliens, and offer tips on avoiding alien abduction.

“A physiotherapist would tell me, while working on my back with me lying face down, about her weekly ‘meetings’ in London about ‘current affairs’,” another said. “There was a whiff about it, but it was ignorable. Then, the last time I saw her, she muttered darkly about the Rothschilds [a common target of antisemitic conspiracy theories] ‘and people like that’. I didn’t go back.”

Some people’s problems escalated when their personal trainer learned about their work. “I had three successive personal trainers who were anti-vax. One Belgian, two Swiss,” I was told by a British man who has spent most of the past decade working in Europe for the World Economic Forum, which organises the annual summit at Davos for politicians and the world’s elite.

“It was hard because I used to argue with all of them and the Swiss made life very difficult for the unvaccinated, but the Swiss bloke insisted that, with the right mental attitude and exercise, you could defeat any illness. I was always asking what would happen if he got rabies.”

When the trainer found out the man worked for the World Economic Forum, he was immediately cut off.

Other respondents’ stories covered everything from yoga to reiki, weightlifters to alternative dog trainers. The theories they shared ranged from extreme versions of wellness-related conspiracies – about the risks of 5G and wifi, or Microsoft founder Bill Gates plotting with vaccines – to 15-minute cities, paedophile rings and bankers’ conspiracies.

Is there a reason why people under the wellness and fitness umbrella might be prone to being induced into conspiracy? It is not that difficult to imagine why young men hitting the gym might be susceptible to QAnon and its ilk. This group spends a lot of time online, there is a supposed crisis of masculinity manifesting in the “incel” (involuntary celibacy) movement and similar, and numerous rightwing influencers have been targeting this group. Add in a masculine gym culture and a community already keen to look for the “secrets” of getting healthy, and there is a lot for a conspiracy theory to hook itself on to.

What is more interesting, surely, is how women old enough to be these men’s mothers find themselves sucked in by the same rhetoric. These are often people with more life experience, who have completed their education and been working – often for decades – and have apparently functional adult lives.

But, as Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, observes, the answer may lie in looking at why women turn to wellness and alternative medicine in the first place.

“Far too often, we blame women for turning to alternative medicine, painting them as credulous and even dangerous,” she says. “But the blame does not lie with the women – it lies with the gender data gap. Thanks to hundreds of years of treating the male body as the default in medicine, we simply do not know enough about how disease manifests in the female body.”

Women are overwhelmingly likely to suffer from auto-immune disorders, chronic pain and chronic fatigue – and such patients often hit a point at which their doctors tell them there is nothing they can do.

The conditions are under-researched and the treatments are often brutal. Is it any surprise that trust in conventional medicine and big pharma is shaken? And is it any surprise that people look for something to fill that void?…….

Peter Knight, professor of American studies at the University of Manchester, who has studied conspiracy theories and their history, notes that the link between alternative therapies and conspiracy is at least a century old, and has been much ignored.

“New age and conspiracy theories both see themselves as counter-knowledges that challenge what they see as received wisdom,” he says. “Conspiracy theories provide the missing link, turbo-charging an existing account of what’s happening by claiming that it is not just the result of chance or the unintended consequences of policy choices, but the result of a deliberate, secret plan, whether by big pharma, corrupt scientists, the military-industrial complex or big tech.”

Knight notes an extra factor, though – the wellness pipeline has become a co-dependency. Many far-right or conspiracy sites now fund themselves through supplements or fitness products, usually by hyping how the mainstream doesn’t want the audience to have them.

Alex Jones, the US conspiracist who for a decade claimed the Sandy Hook shootings – which killed 20 children and six adults – were a false-flag operation, had his financial records opened up when he was sued by the families of the victims. During the cases, it emerged he had made a huge amount of money by selling his own branded wellness products…….

‘Everything you’ve been told is a lie!’ Inside the wellness-to-fascism pipeline

One minute you’re doing the downward dog, the next you’re listening to conspiracy theories about Covid or the new world order. How did the desire to look after yourself become so toxic?

www.theguardian.com

Another article about this phenomenon
=====================

In the terrifying early days of the pandemic, a concerning development emerged in the wellness space. Chiropractors, health coaches, ayurvedic healers and other mind-body professionals took to the internet in earnest to circulate QAnon content, stories about Hillary Clinton guzzling blood, and screeds against social distancing.

It was a puzzling shift for a motley group better known for sharing recipes and stretching tips. Over far-reaching newsletters and palette-perfected Instagram posts, wellness gurus were now peddling plotlines of hidden agendas, secret cabals and the Great Awakening……

She observed that people working in the field of bodily care seemed particularly drawn to anti-vax, anti-mask, “plandemic” beliefs. The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s report on the Disinformation Dozen – a list of 12 people responsible for circulating the bulk of anti-vax content online – was populated by a chiropractor, three osteopaths, and essential oil sellers, as well Christine Northrup, the former OB-GYN turned Oprah-endorsed celebrity doctor who claimed the virus was part of a deep state depopulation plot, and Kelly Brogan, the “holistic psychiatrist” and new age panic preacher.

Klein allows that some of this crossover made economic sense: for people working with bodies, social distancing often meant the loss of their livelihoods, and these “grievances set the stage for many wellness workers to see sinister plots in everything having to do with the virus”.

But the spread of misinformation across wellness culture was likely attributable to more complex factors, including the limits of conventional medicine and the areas of health that are understudied or dismissed.

I spoke with Klein over Zoom about the allure of the mirror world, why wellness culture came to mingle with the far-right, and how we might tunnel back out of the rabbit hole. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.……

We are in this moment where some of these distorted projections are also showing up in wellness culture. You’ve noted that there are a number of people who are in the business of bodies who appear to have been especially seduced by the mirror world. Chiropractors, juice enthusiasts, yogis – they’ve portaged their interests in health towards rabid, far-right belief systems.

First of all, we have to be clear that it’s not everyone – but fitness really was kind of on the front line. I was in New Jersey for the first few months of the pandemic and the two groups that were organizing most in those early days were the very religious, and the very fit.

Some of the first protests against lockdowns were outside of gyms. And I was trying to understand what was going on with that. Why were these super buff folks having these protests, doing push-ups outside of their gyms?

And I came to the conclusion that there was something similar to the way in which some ultra-religious people were reacting, where they were insisting no matter what this was, they had to go pray. They had to be in these collective spaces, because that was their force field. Prayer was their protection against death or what happens after death.

I vividly remember watching the news one night, and there was a story about a megachurch that had broken lockdown. Journalists were interviewing people as they were streaming out of the megachurch. And they said: “Aren’t you afraid of Covid? You’ve just been in a room with thousands of unmasked people singing.” And the answer from one worshipper was: “No way! I’m bathed in the blood of the Lord.”

I saw these gym protests as a similar idea: my body is my temple. What I’m doing here is my protection; I’m keeping myself strong. I’m building up my immune system, my body is my force field against whatever is coming.……

Naomi Klein on wellness culture: ‘We really are alive on the knife’s edge’

The author examines how some chiropractors, health coaches and fitness fanatics came to embrace far-right theories

www.theguardian.com

 

[Eeyore]

Another article about this phenomenon
=====================

In the terrifying early days of the pandemic, a concerning development emerged in the wellness space. Chiropractors, health coaches, ayurvedic healers and other mind-body professionals took to the internet in earnest to circulate QAnon content, stories about Hillary Clinton guzzling blood, and screeds against social distancing.

It was a puzzling shift for a motley group better known for sharing recipes and stretching tips. Over far-reaching newsletters and palette-perfected Instagram posts, wellness gurus were now peddling plotlines of hidden agendas, secret cabals and the Great Awakening……

She observed that people working in the field of bodily care seemed particularly drawn to anti-vax, anti-mask, “plandemic” beliefs. The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s report on the Disinformation Dozen – a list of 12 people responsible for circulating the bulk of anti-vax content online – was populated by a chiropractor, three osteopaths, and essential oil sellers, as well Christine Northrup, the former OB-GYN turned Oprah-endorsed celebrity doctor who claimed the virus was part of a deep state depopulation plot, and Kelly Brogan, the “holistic psychiatrist” and new age panic preacher.

Klein allows that some of this crossover made economic sense: for people working with bodies, social distancing often meant the loss of their livelihoods, and these “grievances set the stage for many wellness workers to see sinister plots in everything having to do with the virus”.

But the spread of misinformation across wellness culture was likely attributable to more complex factors, including the limits of conventional medicine and the areas of health that are understudied or dismissed.

I spoke with Klein over Zoom about the allure of the mirror world, why wellness culture came to mingle with the far-right, and how we might tunnel back out of the rabbit hole. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.……

We are in this moment where some of these distorted projections are also showing up in wellness culture. You’ve noted that there are a number of people who are in the business of bodies who appear to have been especially seduced by the mirror world. Chiropractors, juice enthusiasts, yogis – they’ve portaged their interests in health towards rabid, far-right belief systems.

First of all, we have to be clear that it’s not everyone – but fitness really was kind of on the front line. I was in New Jersey for the first few months of the pandemic and the two groups that were organizing most in those early days were the very religious, and the very fit.

Some of the first protests against lockdowns were outside of gyms. And I was trying to understand what was going on with that. Why were these super buff folks having these protests, doing push-ups outside of their gyms?

And I came to the conclusion that there was something similar to the way in which some ultra-religious people were reacting, where they were insisting no matter what this was, they had to go pray. They had to be in these collective spaces, because that was their force field. Prayer was their protection against death or what happens after death.

I vividly remember watching the news one night, and there was a story about a megachurch that had broken lockdown. Journalists were interviewing people as they were streaming out of the megachurch. And they said: “Aren’t you afraid of Covid? You’ve just been in a room with thousands of unmasked people singing.” And the answer from one worshipper was: “No way! I’m bathed in the blood of the Lord.”

I saw these gym protests as a similar idea: my body is my temple. What I’m doing here is my protection; I’m keeping myself strong. I’m building up my immune system, my body is my force field against whatever is coming.……

Naomi Klein on wellness culture: ‘We really are alive on the knife’s edge’

The author examines how some chiropractors, health coaches and fitness fanatics came to embrace far-right theories

www.theguardian.com

If there was somebody walking around shooting people those folks would be taking precautions to avoid those places but the virus is too small to see so they don't believe in it.

Funny how some people who believe in something that they can't see refuse to believe in something because they can't see it

 

[Eeyore]

60 years ago today

 

[Yatman]

regardless one's conspiracy beliefs, a great leader was lost that awful day, r.i.p.

 

[Eeyore]

 

[bigdaddysaints]

color me shocked..

 

[bigdaddysaints]

60 years ago today

also my parents anniversary.
they were walking out of the court house just as it happened. people were freaking out and crying, they had no clue. it was always easy to remember their anniversary, when i start seeing commercials for specials and documentaries coming on tv, I'm like, oh, their anniversary is coming up.
they are having a 60 year anniversary party this weekend.

 

[Eeyore]

Big Egg is rigging the market to raise prices !

U.S. Senate candidate's family business found liable in egg price-fixing

Rose Acre Farms, another egg producer and two trade groups were found liable in the federal price-fixing case.

www.indystar.com

 

[Eeyore]

 

[bigdaddysaints]

i love how they casually mentioned that small pox just went away.. lol

 

[Eeyore]

i love how they casually mentioned that small pox just went away.. lol

Magic!