There's a post I've been thinking about for a while, and this gave me a direct lead to it.
As a people manager, I've had to address employee issues where someone was spreading rumors about another person, and I've sometimes wondered about what causes them to do it.
On a grander scale, the same sort of thing appears to be true in the political world...
Take Holocaust deniers. On the face of it, it seems ludicrous. We have well documented pictures, we have veterans (or had) who remembered being there. President Eisenhower even made a point of documenting as much as he could, and ensuring as many people saw the proof as possible. How can anyone possibly pretend the Holocaust didn't happen?
When I think about how such a conspiracy theory develops, well, there's two ways. One benign and one malicious.
The benign way is basically a bit like the game of 'telephone'. Someone said something (probably just bs-ing) that got overheard wrong, which got garbled in discussion with someone else, and it morphs into a rumor that people believe because they want to believe, for whatever reason.
The malicious way is when someone deliberately spreads something they absolutely know is false, something that they made up themselves. And they're probably doing it for political gain.
Take Holocaust denialism. For an Arab world that saw the Israeli nation as an affront (and perhaps even as yet another evil colonial act by Western powers), undermining belief in the Holocaust also undermines some of the reasons that the State of Israel was created. So spreading the belief that the Holocaust never happened is something they probably think helps their cause.
I would argue that it doesn't, but that's mostly because I've come to believe beginnings (and the things we choose to allow at the beginning) shape the end result. In the Biblical context, "By their fruits you will know them."
Our own beginning - in the American Revolution, Articles of Confederation, and writing of the Constitution - shows a mix of good and bad that has profoundly affected the America of today... from the slaveholders writing the Constitution, to George Washington's decision to step down after two terms as President, to the decision - thankfully not required - on whether or not to allow the farmers fighting in the Revolution to return home when they started losing hope and wanted to tend their farms (I'm referring to the book 1776, which discussed the importance of the Battle of Trenton. I look at some other revolutionary movements around the world, and the way the leadership decided to compel support when they started losing it, and I think the decision to force support is part of what makes the leaders of those revolutions so horrible at governing if/when they do succeed).
To get back to Holocaust deniers, I can't believe that anything good would come out of whatever gains they think they'll make by spreading such a conspiracy. Whatever they are attempting would be like building a house on sand (to use another biblical reference), easily undermined by the lie.
We clearly have people today willing to maliciously spread conspiracy theories. Take Alex Jones, and his Sandy Hook conspiracy.
I wonder sometimes what goes through his head when he does something like that. Like - does he do it for political purposes? Out of fear that too many people would support laws restricting gun use? A decision to spread the lie in order to undermine support for gun control?
Is it a power trip? Does he take joy in seeing people believe and act on his BS?
Is he crazy enough to really believe the stuff he says?
And... above and beyond all of that... how is he so completely lacking in any sort of empathy, that he doesn't care what he has done to the families of the deceased? If it were true, if there were really a story there, he should be trying to get evidence and take this to court... not spewing this stuff out onto the general public. And if he thinks the courts and police officers are so corrupt that they wouldn't act on the allegations, then he sure as heck shouldn't be publicizing it like he did. It's basically BS for the gullible, and it apparently works.
How is he capable of even looking at himself in a mirror? How can he like and respect what he sees, when he does?
Okay, okay, that got a little bit more personal than I meant. It's not just one guy, after all.
There's also the people who created pizzagate, and although the person who created it did not force Welch to go shoot up the pizza place, Welch would probably never have done so if someone hadn't created and spread the conspiracy theory.
And now? Now we've got Rush Limbaugh implying that the New Zealand shooting was a false flag operation.
Again, I just have to ask...
How do you stand yourself?
All of you, all the people who do this sort of thing. All the people who make up a bunch of BS, knowing it's BS, and use their platform to spread that BS...
How do you make yourself feel like this is okay?
As a people manager, I've had to address employee issues where someone was spreading rumors about another person, and I've sometimes wondered about what causes them to do it.
On a grander scale, the same sort of thing appears to be true in the political world...
Take Holocaust deniers. On the face of it, it seems ludicrous. We have well documented pictures, we have veterans (or had) who remembered being there. President Eisenhower even made a point of documenting as much as he could, and ensuring as many people saw the proof as possible. How can anyone possibly pretend the Holocaust didn't happen?
When I think about how such a conspiracy theory develops, well, there's two ways. One benign and one malicious.
The benign way is basically a bit like the game of 'telephone'. Someone said something (probably just bs-ing) that got overheard wrong, which got garbled in discussion with someone else, and it morphs into a rumor that people believe because they want to believe, for whatever reason.
The malicious way is when someone deliberately spreads something they absolutely know is false, something that they made up themselves. And they're probably doing it for political gain.
Take Holocaust denialism. For an Arab world that saw the Israeli nation as an affront (and perhaps even as yet another evil colonial act by Western powers), undermining belief in the Holocaust also undermines some of the reasons that the State of Israel was created. So spreading the belief that the Holocaust never happened is something they probably think helps their cause.
I would argue that it doesn't, but that's mostly because I've come to believe beginnings (and the things we choose to allow at the beginning) shape the end result. In the Biblical context, "By their fruits you will know them."
Our own beginning - in the American Revolution, Articles of Confederation, and writing of the Constitution - shows a mix of good and bad that has profoundly affected the America of today... from the slaveholders writing the Constitution, to George Washington's decision to step down after two terms as President, to the decision - thankfully not required - on whether or not to allow the farmers fighting in the Revolution to return home when they started losing hope and wanted to tend their farms (I'm referring to the book 1776, which discussed the importance of the Battle of Trenton. I look at some other revolutionary movements around the world, and the way the leadership decided to compel support when they started losing it, and I think the decision to force support is part of what makes the leaders of those revolutions so horrible at governing if/when they do succeed).
To get back to Holocaust deniers, I can't believe that anything good would come out of whatever gains they think they'll make by spreading such a conspiracy. Whatever they are attempting would be like building a house on sand (to use another biblical reference), easily undermined by the lie.
We clearly have people today willing to maliciously spread conspiracy theories. Take Alex Jones, and his Sandy Hook conspiracy.
I wonder sometimes what goes through his head when he does something like that. Like - does he do it for political purposes? Out of fear that too many people would support laws restricting gun use? A decision to spread the lie in order to undermine support for gun control?
Is it a power trip? Does he take joy in seeing people believe and act on his BS?
Is he crazy enough to really believe the stuff he says?
And... above and beyond all of that... how is he so completely lacking in any sort of empathy, that he doesn't care what he has done to the families of the deceased? If it were true, if there were really a story there, he should be trying to get evidence and take this to court... not spewing this stuff out onto the general public. And if he thinks the courts and police officers are so corrupt that they wouldn't act on the allegations, then he sure as heck shouldn't be publicizing it like he did. It's basically BS for the gullible, and it apparently works.
How is he capable of even looking at himself in a mirror? How can he like and respect what he sees, when he does?
Okay, okay, that got a little bit more personal than I meant. It's not just one guy, after all.
There's also the people who created pizzagate, and although the person who created it did not force Welch to go shoot up the pizza place, Welch would probably never have done so if someone hadn't created and spread the conspiracy theory.
And now? Now we've got Rush Limbaugh implying that the New Zealand shooting was a false flag operation.
Again, I just have to ask...
How do you stand yourself?
All of you, all the people who do this sort of thing. All the people who make up a bunch of BS, knowing it's BS, and use their platform to spread that BS...
How do you make yourself feel like this is okay?
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