How did we get so casual about conspiracy theories?
I was talking with someone today about nutrition. This person has a PhD in material science. They mentioned eating beef daily and I asked about the cholesterol implications. The answer was about a vague ‘they’ wanted us to think that, but it wasn’t true anymore.
I hear the vague ‘they’ so frequently now it’s just a normal conversation. In truth, as soon as I hear the vague they I dismiss the speaker’s credibility on the subject, but how did we get here? Vague they wanted us to think X is a valid counter argument by the most highly educated people in our society?
This sounds like more of a rant than a question, but I do truly want to know how this happened? Was it pop culture like the X Files that made conspiracy theories main stream? Was it social media? When will the vague they stop being an accepted explanation? Has it always been this way and I didn’t notice?
Thanks, love you!
Mk ultra, contra, sterilization of native American women and the intentional infection of African Americans, operation snow white, operation mocking bird, 5 eyes, the business plot, the ongoing business plot 2.0
Uhhh that one room that’s capturing the internet in real time, I forget it’s name.
False flags throughout history.
Paranoia is a survival trait dating back to our ape ancestors.
I don’t know, but I started realizing that nearly all of the holiday traditions I’d ever participated in originated by way of some well received piece of advertising. It’s all a mess. It’s all people lying to each other for power, influence, and resources back to the very beginning. The internet certainly allows for messages to travel and build to critical mass faster, but humanity and this behavior originated together, only the tools change.
- Actual conspiracies and manipulation (leading to probably most imperial wars of the 20th century till today)
- A justified distrust in the government, who people identify readily as not defending their interests in the slightest
- Conspiracy theories straight up cooked up by states to misdirect, or propagated heavily from media that are either state aligned or conveniently left unsanctioned
- The manufacturing of a climate of anti-science (in the US specifically)
Are the main reasons I can identify for why it’s become such a norm. When things like MK Ultra, Cointelpro, Operation Gladio…etc are all declassified, the bar gets puts pretty fucking high for what states are willing and able to do.
MKUltra was a secret government program that experimented on people using LSD and torture. The man who became the Unabomber was one of its victims.
COINTELPRO was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the FBI aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive. This included feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists in the civil rights and Black power movements (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement , Chicano and Mexican-American , and independence movements (including Puerto Rican independence groups).
The Iraq War was predicated on “weapons of mass destruction” which the government knowingly lied about.
The United Fruit Company backed a coup in Honduras.
General Motors conspired to collapse the streetcar industry to gain a monopoly on public transportation.
Cigarette companies suppressed information on the health effects of cigarettes.
Oil companies suppressed information on the environmental effects of fossil fuels.
Purdue Pharma conspired to suppress the risks of Oxycontin and to expand the use of the drug to levels they knew would cause addiction.
My point is, there are true conspiracies all the time. The internet has made it possible for more people to know about it. Unfortunately it has also made it easier for false conspiracy theories to propagate
Also, the fact that those conspiracies were real severely eroded trust in institutions both government and corporate. For example, does anybody really believe the FBI stopped suppressing leftists in 1971? Hell no; they just started calling it something other than COINTELPRO that’s still classified.
Yes, there is ample evidence that we should be distrustful of capitalist, imperialist states and the corporations & capitalists which run them. Previously. Previously.
Deconditioning. If we had a really serious full-on plague we’d eventually get casual about the corpse disposal wagon.
covid sends its regards. “hey, 30k people died today of just this disease.”
its still a thing, that kills and cripples some people, but its like it doesn’t even exist anymore.
A perfect example. Early “conspiracies” like bloating the numbers by counting anyone who died “with COVID” as having died “from COVID” and the disease having come from a lab due to gain of function research appear to have been borne out, among many others, too many to count, that ended up being bullshit.
That was a perfect storm of misinformation and disinformation that is still being pored over to this day.
Another good example is 9/11. People who refused to believe that steel infrastructure could not be damaged to an extent that it would implode and collapse into its own footprint - even if it wasn’t hit by a plane at all - were labeled “truthers”. Whatever you believe about 9/11, it’s very difficult to look at it in retrospect and not admit that something very wrong happened, and many questions are glossed over or left unanswered.
Labeling something a conspiracy immediately causes people to recoil lest they be categorized as tinfoil hat kooks, but the idea that powerful people will do horrifying things for their own interests under the thinnest cover and get away with it is not new.
That said, it is far too easy to lose grip on reality and start seeing everything as a conspiracy, so it’s always advisable to hold truths lightly, and examine them frequently. Hand waving things away with “they” statements is the worst kind of intellectual laziness and doing so is a great disservice to oneself.
Because the government keeps lying about extremely dangerous stuff to make 5 bucks profit.
Case in point shell and otherd lobbying governments for decades to deny global warming.
Microplastics are showing up everywhere because of products which were supposed to be safe.
Israel controls half the Western governments not sure if it’s still “antisemitic” to point that out
Israel doesn’t control western governments, it’s just a very valuable tool of the US, for which they are ready to make a lot of concessions. Western governments in turn are broadly servile to the US. I’m not sure how you expect a small broadly hated state like Israel to control the whole west. Lobby and intelligence can get you far, but not that far.
AIPAC: We control Western governments. These are our guys on the inside. We are spending tonnes of cash to oust anyone who is anti Israel! Look at us owning all these politicians!
Enlightened Liberals: “no this is a strategic partnership”
Listen up. What Israel is currently doing is speedrunning the reputation of the entire Western world into the ground so they can commit a genocide in front of the world in plain sight.
You cannot in any way explain to me how this is a strategically sound plan nor offer any logical explanation except what the Israelis are screaming out loud themselves: Israel controls Western governments. Not the other way around.
Jewish Zionists and Israelis certainly play a significant role, but the tail is not wagging the dog. As Biden has explained for decades, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.” Israel is America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in West Asia. Consider also that most Zionists are not Jewish, but Christian. AIPAC Not Just for Jews Anymore
This take has been destroyed over the past two years. Joe Biden is the top AIPAC recipient of all time. The “military base” is a very clear excuse used to send billions of dollars to Israel.
Of course most American Zionists are Christians not Jews. This is why I said “Zionists”. Very few Israelis are even practicing Jews.
Biden has been an ideological Zionist since the start of his career. His many “you don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist and I’m a Zionist” speeches are often forgotten
America has military bases all over the middle east except one place strangely enough. Israel. There are plenty more reliable dogs which are groveling and listen very well to America. Egypt, UAE, Saudi, Jordan, etc. Not Israel.
Bookmarking this. Well put.
AIPAC: We control Western governments.
They are coping, trying to project their own power when they see very clearly that they’re on the brink. I don’t remember AIPAC saying that outright in english, but I wouldn’t exactly put it past those psychos either.
Enlightened Liberals: “no this is a strategic partnership”
I’m neither enlightened nor a liberal, but this is broadly a strategic partnership (in defense of the empire). Liberals still believe that an apartheid ethnostate is a completely acceptable thing, and that they should just kill a little bit less children. When exactly did the US need to convinced to lay waste to the middle-east for their own profit? If Israel sounds like a perfect unsinkable aircraft carrier in the area, it’s because that’s exactly what it is, and the kind of things they have never shied away from.
I don’t deny that they most likely have dirt on some politician, Israeli intelligence is on record trying to pull the grossest shameless stunts, and of course they try their hardest to impact policies abroad, they’re not even trying to hide it. But saying “they control western government” as if the entire western world is a collection of Israeli puppet states is legitimately insane. The US military budget alone eclipses their whole GDP.
What Israel is currently doing is speedrunning the reputation of the entire Western world into the ground
We can do that ourselves tyvm, Israel isn’t responsible for Trump remarkable attempts at destroying the US economy, USD, and the entirety of their softpower. Israel has decided to completely overextend in a way where western governments, despite their ardent zionism, haven’t been able to reign in antizionist sentiment. But do you think that Israelis mind controlled Trump into destroying their lifeline and tariffing their own fucking selves? Everyone knows that Israel is only held afloat by the uninterrupted stream of weaponry from the US, and that’s a
sacrificeprofit the military-industrial complex is willing to make.You cannot in any way explain to me how this is a strategically sound plan
No I cannot, it’s a fascist state eating itself, many such examples. They are desperate, and they’re very clearly running straight into a wall. I’d like you, however, to explain to me how this is a strategically sound plan even IF you assume their total supposed control of western governments when they inevitably crash and burn, as they’ve been working overtime towards. It’s not sound. They’re not sound. It’s a fascist ethnostate.
Israel isn’t responsible for Trump remarkable attempts at destroying the US economy, USD, and the entirety of their softpower.
No, but they helped get him elected.
Not sure they did it on purpose, and it only affected the stupidest of Democrat voters, but any argument that the genocide in Palestine didn’t impact our election is not being honest.
Miriam Adelson gave 200 million dollars to Donald Trump. Betar writes all his policies when it comes to Israel. They are deporting people inside of America for protesting against Israel. This is completely unheard of even for protesting against America. They do not care about Trumps policies when it comes to anything except Israel. If Trump wants to destroy the dollar they will let him do so.
Israel is the Nazis. They have no strategically sound plans. The previous times their genocides were stopped. It was by Republican presidents who got external pressure from countries such as Saudi Arabia and they did the realpoltik thing. Which was for the best for Israel because it is not able to win a sustained war in the region. Inadvertedly them stopping Israel helped Israel.
The problem now is that Israel controls America and the West completely and there is nobody left to stop Israel self-destructing. Liberal Zionists always made sure to keep up the illusion that Israel was the good guy, but the new right wing Israelis do not feel they need to do that. The West has every power to stop Israel and make them still look like some kind of good guy, but they are not doing it. Why??
There is only one thing that Israel has not managed to do and that is to get America to bomb Iran for them.
Speak for yourself. Whenever I hear the vague “they” I ask who exactly that is supposed to be. Sometimes in earnest, sometimes I just sarcastically throw it back at them: They?
But as far as I can I try to make sense of what people are trying to tell me.
BTW a PhD does not protect one from being nuts, please perish the thought.
In the case you mentioned I’d really like to know why they said it wasn’t true anymore, in addition to who “they” are.
I do the same with “we”. Someone will say something like “How did we get so casual about conspiracy theories?” and my first thought is “Who is ‘we’? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?” because I personally don’t feel like I am casual about conspiracy theories. It doesn’t matter if that’s accurate or not. When someone uses “we” like that, they are speaking for others in a way that might not be true and in my opinion that’s a manipulative way to trick some people to think incorrectly and excludes the possibility that other people might think in a different way. I don’t like when others speak on my behalf, I am not part of their “we” world.
They is their preferred pronouns
I always suspected the trans were behind this
Trans-fats being demonized makes more sense now
(THIS IS A JOKE)
The Cholesterol thing is mostly true though.
Saturated fats aren’t a problem for most people, trans fats are a problem. Saturated fats are what you get with things like meat, trans fats are what you get with processed foods and vegetable oils.
In the early 1900s a Dr. Stefansson MD lived with the Inuit for 6 months. He was used to the diet meta of the times which dictated a vegetable heavy diet was necessary for health, the Inuit don’t have vegetables, they eat fish and fatty meat exclusively. He saw the Inuit as a healthy people and his own health improved during his time with them. He returned to the US and tried to spread his experience, he was dismissed because of racism towards the Inuit. They said that the diet and health of the Inuit has no relevance to the white man because the Inuit are primatives that have no culture or civilization.
He later did a study on himself and another man where they ate nothing but meat and had regular tests done. They were in perfect health, except when they ate too much lean meat and going back to fatty meats corrected the issue. Doctors, unwilling to find out what they knew was wrong, disregarded the study.
In the 50s, as a result of Eisenhower’s heart attack, a study was done of diets in 22 countries and their rates of heart disease. Of those 22 countries, 6 of them were chosen to be the basis of the argument that saturated fats are bad because they showed a direct link between a diet higher in saturated fats and a higher rate of heart disease. When you look at all 22 countries, no such correlation can be drawn. That study was reported on heavily and saturated fats were now the cause of heart attacks.
Later on in the 70s the government got involved with nutrition and diet, in order to address the growing heart disease, and did what government does best and they fucked it up with a commission that was made up of politicians. They spent 10 years wanting to say that fats were bad because there was fatty deposits in patients with heart disease, so fat must be the problem. Their entire argument was that the cholesterol observed in hearts and arteries was a result of eating fatty foods. There was no evidence, only an unsupported hypothesis based on logic about as bulletproof as saying that meat makes maggots because you find maggots on meat. They pointed to the 1950s study as supporting evidence, they remember when it broke as news and held onto it religiously. Doctors at the time disagreed and wanted more studies done before saying that fatty foods were the problem. No evidence from those studies supported removing meat, nuts, cheese, and other fatty foods from your diet improved one’s health. At the end of it, the commission declared that some fatty foods is ok but grains, fruits, and vegetables should be most of your diet.
The whole fat is bad argument comes from that dietary and nutrition commission. It was also the basis for the food pyramid, which has no foundation in nutritional science.
Epidemiological studies are an inflammatory aspect of the cholesterol issue. They are poorly conducted studies that show vague associations and then the media pulls small associations from and blow it up to say things like egg yolks cause a greater risk of hearth attack when the data they got didn’t say that.
Tl;Dr: Eating lots of meat isn’t a problem for cholesterol, you only think that because of decades of bad science.
So your friend isn’t a conspiracy theorist, they just couldn’t or wouldn’t tell you all of that and what I wrote is like 10% of the whole story.
Trans fats are from processed vegetable oils though, right?
My understanding is that typically, unmodified vegetable oils are considered the safest oils for human consumption.
“In the past, most of the trans fat in foods came from partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), formed through a manufacturing process that converts vegetable oil into a solid fat at room temperature. Trans fat also occurs naturally in food products from ruminant animals (e.g., milk, butter, cheese, meat products).”
That is my understanding of the available and validated research.
Vegetable fats are the lesser of two evils when it comes to processed vs unprocessed vegetable sourced fats.
However, I have come to the conclusion that vegetable fats are lacking in terms of overall benefits vs meat fats.
Could we eventually adapt to plant fats being better than meat fats? Absolutely, but we haven’t evolved that to be true and too many micronutrients are less available from vegetable fat sources.
No matter, processed foods are worse than natural sources and meatless diets are harder to maintain health than an omnivorous diet.
Just going through the wikipedia and a lot of health organizations still recommend reducing saturated fat including the WHO, the American Heart Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the British Dietetic Association, the World Heart Federation, the British National Health Service. These organizations are run by health professionals, not politicians with some vague anti-fat agenda.
Here’s a study going over some meta analysis and finding that
Saturated fat was associated with an 8% increase and trans fats; a 13% increase in total mortality compared with carbohydrate. Thus, replacing 5% of energy from saturated fats with equivalent energy from PUFA ( polyunsaturated fat) and MUFA ( monounsaturated fat ) was associated with estimated reductions in total mortality of 27% and 13%, respectively
It goes on to say that there is less evidence for fat in general to cause cardiovascular disease and mortality, but saturated fat and trans fats definitely do.
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/saturated-fat#evidence-to-date
Not all experts agree.
- A 2009 meta-analysis of 28 cohort studies and 16 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) concluded “The available evidence from cohort and randomised controlled trials is unsatisfactory and unreliable to make judgment about and substantiate the effects of dietary fat on risk of CHD.”
- A 2010 meta-analysis of 21 cohort studies found no association between saturated fat intake on CHD outcomes.
- A 2014 systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies and randomized controlled trials found that the evidence does not clearly support dietary guidelines that limit intake of saturated fats and replace them with polyunsaturated fats.
- A 2015 meta-analysis of 17 observational studies found that saturated fats had no association with heart disease, all-cause mortality, or any other disease.
- A 2017 meta-analysis of 7 cohort studies found no significant association between saturated fat intake and CHD death.
Plus more at the above well cited reference
Extremely well written! Thank you for putting that together
Eating lots of meat isn’t a problem for cholesterol
There is a group of people, the LMHR (lean mass hyper responders) who do have highly elevated cholesterol on very keto/carnivore diets.
The outstanding question is if cholesterol is actually harmful in of itself - the data I’ve seen indicates that it isn’t harmful.
True, but our overall guidelines should not cater to exceptions and apply those specific needs to humanity as a whole.
Cholesterol is a broad term and doesn’t address the specifics necessary to addr iness overall average health for an individual. We do love our neat boxes to put things in.
Then there is the whole “sugar” issue. There are dozens of sugars and we only associate the term with fructose or sucrose. We can technically name all sorts of things as sugars, but if it doesn’t include sucrose and fructose explicitly, then it “isn’t” sugar on the label.
Cholesterol is a broad term and doesn’t address the specifics necessary to addr iness overall average health for an individual.
I agree completely, people should not be trying to treat a cholesterol number. They should be optimizing their metabolic health. Cholesterol should be an indicator that further follow-up is required, either arterial imaging, or diet and lifestyle interventions
Then there is the whole “sugar” issue. There are dozens of sugars and we only associate the term with fructose or sucrose. We can technically name all sorts of things as sugars, but if it doesn’t include sucrose and fructose explicitly, then it “isn’t” sugar on the label.
Happily, all of those sugars do get included in the carbohydrate label on packaging. I would say dietary carbohydrates are the biggest culprit in cardiovascular disease, and that’s what people should focus on instead of cholesterol.
That you very much for writing this up. It is super interesting, and I feel bad for dismissing her. Unfortunately, I will probably continue people whom are the vague they.
You are absolutely right to approach any vague information with skepticism, especially when “they” are behind it, because that tends to be code for Jews, reptilians, reptilian Jews, the shadow government, Soros, Soros the reptilian Jew, etc.
If I can’t call bullshit(flat earth, moon landing hoax, etc.), just get out of the conversation by saying that “I will have to look into that” or something to that effect and changing topics.
The answer was about a vague ‘they’ wanted us to think that, but it wasn’t true anymore.
I hear the vague ‘they’ so frequently now it’s just a normal conversation.
If you want to know what “they” someone might be talking about, then ask them. Some conspiracies are very much real.
Michael Parenti, 1996, Dirty Truths: Reflections on Politics, Media, Ideology, Conspiracy, Ethnic Life and Class Power:
Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary.
Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history.
Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.
At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95).
Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
Idk what material science is but it doesn’t sound like nutrition.
As someone getting their PhD I know a lot about my very specific sub topic in a very small field but that’s it. Who even has time to really know anything else? So point being highly educated people can still be bozos though they should have better research skills.
In regards to the beef guy. As someone who is on the carnivore diet, I’m guessing “they” are the lobbyists for Big Grain (or whatever) who fight to keep the Standard American Diet in place. You know, even though it hasn’t been working for decades and we’re fatter than ever.
(If anyone is curious, I was previously on carnivore to lose weight and it helped a lot. Nowadays I’m also on it because it’s the only thing that combats my long covid symptoms. Carnivore is an anti-inflammatory diet, so I guess it makes sense why it’s helping.)
“They” can also just he normal people who don’t want to be wrong. Doctors are famous for their humility and self reflection.
The cholesterol heart hypothesis was pushed by ancel Keys, who has since been shown to be a dishonest academic, leaving out data, or abandoning research if the results didn’t math the preconceived conclusions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys
In medicine, like many fields, sometimes the old guard has to retire out before change can happen.
I’m also a [email protected] and I’ve satisfied myself that LDL by itself is not a risk factor I should be concerned with.
I think it’s always been like this. I’m old as dirt, and I remember noticing the same thing in the 90s
We desperately need to teach critical thinking skills and source evaluation
Repeat something enough times and people will believe it.