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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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A conspiracy theory typically involves some shadowy group doing something in a centrally planned way. Your bullet points are all just badly worded versions of perfectly reasonable observations about uncoordinated human behaviour.

A conspiracy theory such as flat earth or Qanon are in a completely different category.

What is the patriarchy or whiteness except the ultimate in shadowy central planning? With it white men crushed and destroyed the natural inclination of society to employ black women in every leadership role and it wasn't until about a decade ago that we finally realised that and ushered in the current age of milk and honey.

Uncoordinated behaviours wouldn't involve making up entire branches of science to trick people into thinking your ethnicity and sex is superior, and yet that is apparently one of two possible reasons white men do better than their counterparts on iq tests and tests of strength - either a shadowy cabal of evil white men engineered hyper specific tests that look like general knowledge testing or a strict measure of weight lifting while actually biasing these tests on behalf of other whites and guys, or every white just knows in their racist hearts how to pass an iq test the same way every man knows the secret sexist trick to win at arm wrestling.

The only reason q anon or flat earth is different is because it doesn't have the backing of the so called experts. But the experts have been peddling conspiracy theories for decades and the right have been pointing it out the entire time. Don't confuse holding institutional power for actual expertise. Progressives do not deserve endless charity and conservatives do not deserve endless scrutiny.

  • Innocent black men are routinely killed by corrupt police in large numbers, and the murders are covered up.

  • Donald Trump is a Russian Asset, controlled through Kompromat.

  • The Russians hacked the 2016 election

  • Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist, and the Republican machine helped him cover it up.

It seems to me that these four fit your definition of "conspiracy theory", do they not?

Innocent black men are routinely killed by corrupt police in large numbers,

Not a conspiracy theory, just a retarded belief.

and the murders are covered up.

Are there (a significant amount of relevant) people who believe this?

Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist, and the Republican machine helped him cover it up.

This also seems like a strained framing, a lot of blue tribers believe that Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist (unlikely but unknowable) and believe that Republicans don't care about it because they hate women/whatever (wrong, Republicans just don't believe he is a rapist).

2 and 3 are one point stretched into two. But it's true that Russiagate stuff is definitely conspiratorial thinking, but it's miles more believable than QAnon (so is the Stop the Steal stuff, for whatever that's worth).

Not a conspiracy theory, just a retarded belief.

But is the term "conspiracy theory" not already used in a pejorative sense, such that it can be defined as "retarded belief" in the minds of many? To put it in fewer words, these are one and the same, to some.