blissblogger

Well-known member
A very old friend with a brilliant mind has fallen down the wormhole.

The signs were there some years ago when this person sent a link to a video purporting to show armored vehicles stockpiled in readiness for a military takeover of the USA. It was quite a sight I must admit - field after field in New Mexico or somewhere like that, row upon row of tanks, armored cars, you name it - but of course the military takeover never happened (this was when Obama was president) and I surmised that this was just shit the massively overfunded US military had produced and had no use for and was waiting to sell off to some developing world dictatorship.

Then this year she's been going on about covid as hoax, the death rate is no worse than the flu, how it's a rehearsal for some future system of bio-political control, preparing the citizenry for massively invasive infringements of rights etc. Conflict-averse, I didn't point out that I personally know people, relatively young, who have died from it and others who have had the most grueling experience of catching it and the long debilitating aftermath.

And then today she emails to inform me that the sources she trusts make clear that Trump was defrauded of his election victory.

What do I do, politely change the subject? Attempt a bit of amateur deprogramming? This is one of the brightest, sharpest brains I've ever known - it feels quite tragic.

What's worse though is that the very faculties that made that her such an acerbic critical mind are engaged and activated by these endlessly proliferating and infolding narratives that give the brain-tingling double-buzz of complexification and "revelation' - "the world is not as it seems!!!". "Wake up!!!"

A common refrain amongst this type of person is "I've done my research..."

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IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah... open your mind... stop believing what you're spoonfred by the mainstream media and dive into some completely insane stuff on some random website that has a few crazy ideas about the pyramids and, admittedly, it goes a little bit racist with some Jew stuff... but they really know what they're on about when they get on to the US election and covid, don't dismiss it...

What do I do, politely change the subject? Attempt a bit of amateur deprogramming? This is one of the brightest, sharpest brains I've ever known - it feels quite tragic.

This is a good question here that I don't think we've really touched on much in this thread. We've talked about the upside and the chaoitc gains that can (or just about might) come from the study of conspiracies and so on... but we've done a lot less about the more obvious downsides.
And I've been thinking about this a lot at the moment. Specifically with the election stuff and how there may be potential there for the fall-out to help with deprogramming.
I say this cos you have Ellis and Rudy continually claiming that they have mountains of evidence of fraud - but when they go to court they don't even allege fraud (cos of no evidence). To me this feels as though it should be a good one for deprogramming cos at both ends you can access their words with no spin - on the one hand you can go to RG's or JE's twitter account, which are (supposedly) their literal unvarnished words, and on the other hand, you can access the court documents and transcripts and so on.
So anyone who cares can look at Jenna Ellis's twitter where she says something like "The disgraceful activist judges refused to let us produce our huge mountains of evidence of fraud" and then you can look at the court document and see Giuli saying "This is NOT a fraud case, we are not alleging fraud" and no-one can claim it's cos CNN or the MSM or whatever is distorting it, you have a clear lie at the expense of Trump's own supporters. And you would think that this would be caught out straight away, cos a lot of Trumpoids are quite fanatical and read whatever they can (on this subject at least).... but it doesn't seem to be happening as much as you might think.
I have a little feeling that people are deliberately choosing not to look at the court case docs cos they know deep down that reading them will reveal they're being lied to and robbed, right now, by the people they've put all their faith in, invested so much into over the last few years. How do you recover from that?
Trumpism totally is a cult and although now the facts are there, not even via the hated media, but from their own words, but there is absolutely no... I dunno, exit strategy (I mean, no-one is creating an exit strategy to help people out of it) that I know of. No halfway house type thing where people can go and be comforted by other survivors welcoming them back to reality and saying "It's not your fault" while reassuring them by pretending that somehow Trump was really convincing.
The Guardian in fact did do a piece the other day on how to deal if you had a Q-Anon sucker in your family and what you should do but I didn't find it particularly insightful or thought through. Probably was just a buzzword kinda thing that they thought they'd better quickly bosh out something on.
 
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linebaugh

Well-known member
blissbloggers situation is entirely different as I assume his friend is older and well read, but on my end of things Ive tried to recommend legitimate journalism and writing to friends flirting with the same thoughts. You can fall down an equally compelling wormhole of elite pedophilia and authoritarian abuses of power without ever having to delve into Qanon nonsense. nothing combative either, just 'hey I bet youd like this too.' doesnt make you seem as inherently opposed if you ever want to have that come-to-jesus moment
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
blissblogger said:
What do I do, politely change the subject? Attempt a bit of amateur deprogramming? This is one of the brightest, sharpest brains I've ever known - it feels quite tragic.
tbh, and I say this with sympathy, when it gets to that point you're probably just fucked, as having to resort to a word like "deprogramming" indicates. what you have really have to do - and I realize this isn't always easy or possible, depending on your relationship to the person - is challenge nonsensical views early and often, when a person's worldview is still flexible enough for give-and-take and critical introspection. once it's hardened beyond a certain point of belief, challenges are more likely to reinforce it than anything. having said that, I agree with @Linebaugh that a non-combative approach, if circumstances allow it, is likely to produce better results.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I also agree that discussing real conspiracies is a good way to combat conspiracist thinking. That seems counterintuitive, but the existence of real conspiracies and especially large government conspiracies like Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc actually show how difficult it is for people to keep secrets, especially large groups of people whose actions are subject to some level of public scrutiny. Things almost always come out, and the more people know about them, the quicker they tend to come out. The JFK assassination, the ur-text of the modern iteration of conspiracy thinking, is also the perfect example. it's been almost 60 years - if some great hidden truth was going to be uncovered it almost certainly would have been by now.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
One thing I would caution against, from experience, is getting too far into the details of any single issue, especially if it’s one the person is fixated on. Despite not trusting facts, the MSM, etc a true believer is almost certainly going to hurl endless claims at you – from all that “research” they’ve done – and then at best you’re stuck in the weeds of refuting them point by point, and no matter much actual research you do or how many facts you marshal or holes you poke in their theories you’re not going to win them over.

Conceptualize conspiracy thinking as an insurgency of the mind. Just like a real insurgency, conventional methods – i.e. facts, reasoning – probably won’t work and can actually be counterproductive. Taking territory (winning a debating point) is useless if you’re not winning hearts and minds. And just like an actual insurgency, neutralizing it is likely going to take a long time and a great deal of effort and you still might not succeed.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Also - this goes for anyone interested in conspiracy thinking - as general background read "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" by Hofstadter if you never have. Not the first time I've made that recommendation, probably won't be the last. His view of society is a bit outdated - he was writing in 1964 - and some of the details have been disputed but he nails the overall picture, thrust, and motivation (i.e. feelings of dispossession) of conspiracy thinking so convincingly - and crucially, places it in a historical context - that it maps just as easily onto Trump, QAnon and COVID denialism as it did to Barry Goldwater and the John Birch Society.
 

luka

Well-known member
sometimes people come out of it after a kind of counter-revelation. Grapejuice speaks a bit about his. Being on mushrooms in a Japanese forest and realising, with profound relief, that the world is too complex to be under the suzerainty of a single conspiratorial group. And that coming after a few years of the full black iron prison. In the belief that everything is under control.
 

luka

Well-known member
it's obviously interesting. It's rife everywhere now. Someone like Carole Codwaller or Louise Mensch, feverishly making links, connections, tracking coincidence, who attended this Mayfair party on September 16th...
 

luka

Well-known member
So many different ways you can arrange the tiles, so many different pictures you can make with them.
 
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