[Peace-discuss] The Largest Conspiracy Theory Peddlers Are MSM And The US State Department

Sun Dec 9 04:08:04 UTC 2018

and why is this person believable -

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 7:49 PM C G Estabrook via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From: *Caitlin Johnstone <donotreply at wordpress.com>
> *Subject: **[New post] The Largest Conspiracy Theory Peddlers Are MSM And
> The US State Department*
> *Date: *December 8, 2018 at 7:20:40 PM CST
> *To: *cgestabrook at gmail.com
>
> New post on *Caitlin Johnstone*
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2> The Largest Conspiracy Theory
> Peddlers Are MSM And The US State Department
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/12/09/the-largest-conspiracy-theory-peddlers-are-msm-and-the-us-state-department/>
> by Caitlin Johnstone <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2>
>
> The US State Department has issued a statement
> <https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1071126011243302912> accusing the
> Syrian government of having carried out a false flag chemical weapons
> attack in northwestern Aleppo with the intent to blame it on the jihadist
> factions in the region, citing "credible info" that the public has not been
> permitted to see. Never mind the known fact that there are actual,
> literal Al Qaeda affiliates
> <https://southfront.org/jaysh-al-islam-officially-unites-with-al-qaeda-in-eastern-ghouta/>
>  who have admitted to using chemical weapons in Aleppo
> <http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/7a0f6294-ab7f-4d15-b5af-3ff4b444ab3f/Syrian-rebels-admit-chemical-use-against-Kurds>,
> and who are known to have used chemical weapons
> <https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/syrian-rebels-used-chemical-weapons-throughout-the-war-a-partial-list-of-mainstream-admissions/>
>  throughout Syria even by the State Department's own admission
> <https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/syria-mattis-lacks-state-departments-intelligence-on-al-qaedas-chemical-capabilities.html>:
> the Official Narrative is that only the Syrian government uses chemical
> weapons, so the chemical weapons usage must necessarily be a false flag
> staged by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
>
> Except they didn't use the words "false flag". Despite the accusation being
>  the exact definition <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag> of the
> thing that a false flag attack is, you won't see the US government using
> that term, nor will you ever see it used in this instance by any of the
> authorized mainstream narrative-framing institutions like CNN or Fox News.
> This is because the term "false flag" is reserved solely for mention when
> referring to crazy, kooky Kremlin propaganda, as in the insane, unhinged,
> tinfoil hat belief that terrorists in Syria might possibly have some kind
> of motive to stage a false flag chemical attack in order to get the US, UK
> and France to act as their air force in a retaliatory strike against the
> Syrian government. That kind of false flag would be completely
> inconceivable to any right-minded empire loyalist, and is forbidden to even
> think about.
>
> #MSM <https://twitter.com/hashtag/MSM?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> trying
> to link the #GiletJaunes
> <https://twitter.com/hashtag/GiletJaunes?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> protests
> to #Russia
> <https://twitter.com/hashtag/Russia?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> and
> #Putin <https://twitter.com/hashtag/Putin?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>.
>
> Only surprising thing is how long it took.https://t.co/0A0p8dnQiq
>
> — OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) December 8, 2018
> <https://twitter.com/OffGuardian0/status/1071409275858313216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
>
> At the same time we are seeing a push from the mass media to advance a
> narrative that the Yellow Vests protests in France
> <https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/05/yellow-vests-rise-against-neo-liberal-king-macron/>
>  are due to Russian influence, with Iraq-raping neocon
> <https://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/max-boot/>Max Boot publishing a
> column
> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/08/france-online-extremists-put-centrism-torch/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4d9f356552f2>
>  today in the *Washington Post* that is based entirely around the talking
> point that two trending Russian topics on social media have
> been “giletsjaune” and “France,” and *Bloomberg* putting out an article
> <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-08/pro-russia-social-media-takes-aim-at-macron-as-yellow-vests-rage>
>  blatantly titled "Pro-Russia Social Media Takes Aim at Macron as Yellow
> Vests Rage". Their entire theory is that since there are people in Russia
> talking about a major event that everyone else in the world is also talking
> about, the protests against Macron's unpopular centrist policies is
> therefore the result of a conspiracy seeded by Russia.
>
> But you'll never hear this theory about a Russian conspiracy referred to
> as a "conspiracy theory" by the mainstream press. The theory that Russian
> elites have conspired to infiltrate the highest levels of the US government
> has been given serious treatment at the top echelons of media and political
> influence, despite its lacking any discernible evidence whatsoever, but
> when they talk about these alleged conspiracies they always make a point of
> using the word "collusion" instead. There is no actual difference between
> the words collude and conspire when used in this way, but the former is
> used because a deliberate effort has been made to stigmatize the word
> "conspiracy" while the word "collude" remains effectively neutral in the
> public eye.
>
> But the fact of the matter is that conspiracy theories have gone
> mainstream, and there is no legitimate reason to call the authorized,
> power-manufactured conspiracy theories by a different name than the
> grassroots narratives like those about 9/11 or the JFK assassination.
> Indeed, due to the nature of populist folk narratives there is a lot more
> publicly available evidence contradicting the official 9/11 and JFK
> assassination stories than there is for the establishment Russia conspiracy
> theories, because those narratives often boil down to nothing more than
> secretive intelligence agencies saying "This is true because we said so."
> Since grassroots conspiracy theories are unable to rely on empty assertions
> from authority, they tend to be built upon information that is publicly
> available.
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98&w=840&h=473>
>
> Some people get annoyed with me for using the term conspiracy theory at
> all, but I insist that the phrase is itself intrinsically neutral: a theory
> about a conspiracy. The problem is not the phrase, it is the stigma that
> has been attached to that phrase by establishment media and establishment
> politicians; shifting to a different phrase to describe theories about
> conspiracies would only ensure that that phrase becomes stigmatized in the
> exact same way by the same sort of campaign. This would only ensure the
> survival of the tactic of regurgitating a pre-stigmatized label in the war
> of ideas instead of advancing actual arguments. The fact of the matter is
> that powerful people do indeed conspire, those conspiracies do indeed need
> to be talked about, and the largest promulgators of conspiracy theories are
> not Infowars or RT, but mainstream media and the US State Department.
>
> Those who dismiss an idea by calling it a "conspiracy theory" without
> providing further argumentation are simply admitting to you that they have
> no argument, and it is right to point this out when they do it, because
> something being a conspiracy theory doesn't mean it's not grounded in
> facts. Some conspiracy theories are good and are backed by solid evidence,
> some are stupid and are circulated for intellectually dishonest reasons.
> Once upon a time you would be called a conspiracy theorist for saying the
> west is arming terrorists in Syria or the DNC is conspiring to ensure the
> primary victory of Hillary Clinton; those things are now conspiracy facts,
> as history has vindicated the solid theories which predicted them. Other
> conspiracy theories are promulgated by dim-witted partisan loyalists for no
> other reason than dim-witted partisan loyalty, like the aforementioned
> Russiagate conspiracy theory, or the QAnon conspiracy theory which claims
> Donald Trump is leading a rebellion against the Deep State as cryptically
> reported by an anonymous user on 8chan.
>
> Other conspiracy theories are subscribed to simply because they help
> people escape the cognitive dissonance of conflicting beliefs. For example,
> a strong believer in capitalism who sees the undeniable signs that a
> plutocratic class has control of their government, but who cannot accept
> that this plutocratic takeover was facilitated by a rampant capitalist
> system which ensures that the greediest sociopaths rise to the top
> <https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/twelve-tips-for-making-sense-of-the-world-43348077cf80>,
> may avoid cognitive dissonance by explaining the existence of the corrupt
> dominator class with conspiracy theories about Jews or pedovore cults. A
> liberal who cannot accept that neoliberal empire loyalists like Macron have
> failed to "make centrism cool" as Max Boot predicted
> <https://twitter.com/MaxBoot/status/875477832624992257> will avoid
> cognitive dissonance by explaining the failures of the Church of the Status
> Quo with conspiracy theories about Russian social media campaigns.
>
> To defeat populism, America needs its own Macron--a charismatic leader who
> can make centrism cool. My take: https://t.co/AAF1YwTnqb
>
> — Max Boot (@MaxBoot) June 15, 2017
> <https://twitter.com/MaxBoot/status/875477832624992257?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
>
> Conspiracy theories, in reality, are nothing more than people's attempts
> to explain what is going on in their world. Why Trump got elected. Why
> things stay shitty despite our perfectly rational attempts to change them.
> Why voting doesn't seem to make much difference in the actual behaviors of
> one's government. Why we keep marching into stupid wars, Orwellian dystopia
> and climate collapse despite having every incentive not to. Why the
> wealthiest of the wealthy keep getting wealthier while everyone else gets
> poorer and poorer. Some attempts to explain these things will come from a
> well-informed and intellectually honest place, and some will come from a
> myopic and intellectually dishonest place. Their individual merits can only
> be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
>
> And in my opinion the conspiracy theories coming from the world's most
> powerful institutions are the most dishonest by far. I saw a recent post
> by the WikiLeaks Twitter account
> <https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1071103835018575872> which referred
> to the corporate media as "the narrative business pretending to be in the
> news business," which is in my opinion a perfect way to phrase it. The real
> currency of the world is not gold, nor is it bureaucratic fiat, nor even
> raw military force; it's narrative control. The ability to control the
> stories people tell about what's going on in their world means the ability
> to control how they think, how they vote, how they behave, and how they all
> agree money and power itself operates within our society. Since society
> is made of narrative
> <https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/society-is-made-of-narrative-realizing-this-is-awakening-from-the-matrix-787c7e2539ae>,
> controlling the narrative is controlling that society.
>
> Conspiracy theories are a way for those in power to manipulate the
> narrative without actually giving the public any hard facts and evidence,
> and the world's most powerful institutions are increasingly relying on
> conspiracy theories because they don't have facts and evidence on their
> side. And why would they? The same power establishment which deceived the
> world into destroying Iraq is obviously far too depraved to be able to
> justify its global hegemony with factual evidence. All they have is
> narrative control, and they're starting to lose even that
> <https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/msm-is-getting-weirder-more-frantic-and-more-desperate-by-the-day-3b220ea0bb97>
> .
>
> ________________________
>
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> *Caitlin Johnstone <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?author=2>* | December
> 9, 2018 at 1:07 am | Tags: Aleppo
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=aleppo>, conspiracy
> theory
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=conspiracy-theory>, false
> flag <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=false-flag>,
> France <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=france>,
> Russia <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=russia>, state
> department
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=state-department>,
> Syria <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=syria>, Yellow
> Vests <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=post_tag&term=yellow-vests> |
> Categories: Article
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=category&term=article>, News
> <https://caitlinjohnstone.com/?taxonomy=category&term=news> | URL:
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