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How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

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Re: How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

#61

Post by jessaustin »

geofft wrote: post #57
jessaustin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That certainly could be an issue, if that's what seems important to somebody. The main issue to me is that the one group of conspiratorial goofballs is invisible to me (silly Pizzagate dude was arrested before I even heard of "Pizzagate"), while the other group of conspiratorial goofballs is everywhere : on the TV, on NPR, in Congress, on social media. I can't escape them. I voted for neither of the Status Quo Party…

> the primary complaint about the election results was that the voters knew more about one of the candidates and her organization than she wanted them to know. But that's not the complaint! The complaint was that, based on the leaks of private emails, it was possible to construct innuendo that was untrue. Take the entire Spirit Cooking thing, for instance. It would be one thing if Podesta had participated in a Satani…

OK well I never heard of "Spirit Cooking" until now, and now that I've googled it I'm not sure why anyone would care that John Podesta does it. It's certainly not why I voted Green. If you polled voters in my 80% Trump county, I doubt you'd find a single person who had heard of this thing.

Innuendo isn't some magic spell that requires eye of newt and leak of email. There was lots of innuendo about other candidates too. I especially loved how they piled on poor Johnson for forgetting the name of some benighted hellhole he had no plans to invade, ever. If the Russians' plan was a Xanatos Gambit of let's phish Podesta, then we'll publish his dinner invitations, ...., then Hillary will lose? And that worked? In that case they're smart enough to own us no matter what we do.

Re: How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

#62

Post by fnovd »

dllthomas wrote: post #49
fnovd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(What I don't really understand is why US conspiracyism limits itself only to things that don't exist - you don't hear so much about Watergate, Iran-Contra, COINTELPRO and so on.) There's an easy answer: you can't wildly speculate when you have the facts. This is why "PizzaGate" is still being talked about. There will never be proof, because it's a ridiculous conspiracy. That leaves the conspiracy enthusiasts free t…

> It's almost tautological: once we know something happened, it's no longer a conspiracy. That's... not actually what "conspiracy" means.

Typing "define:conspiracy" into Google, I get:

"conspiracy (noun): a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful"

Re: How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

#63

Post by tmuir »

throwaway420 wrote: post #60
tmuir wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the DC police are part of the pedophile ring? I haven't heard anyone disprove that yet, and it would make the conspiracy even more evil. I'm stunned that you haven't made this obvious leap of logic. The hysteria stems from the concept that your algorithm for detecting conspiracy is to grant credence to theories in direct proportion to their nefariousness. Your hypotheses are not falsifiable. This guarantees t…

That last sentence wasn't too precisely worded so I can understand your response...but when I said "so many voices here" I was more thinking about the media entities who were so adamant that there's nothing to see here than the genuine posters on this site. Many of the posters here are well-intentioned, I'm sure, but misled by the media. Pedophile rings have been uncovered in many walks of life: religion, sports, hol…

The fallacy you are touting is that it is established fact that the media is misleading its viewers with respect to the pizzagate conspiracy. For this to be the case, both you and the media would need to possess the truth. Since that is clearly not the case, you are once again jumping to the conclusion that the conspiracy must be true, and from there, working backwards to the media misleading people. You are conflating possibility with actuality.

Yes the media has misled it's viewers in the past. The media will mislead it's viewers in the future. But these facts are not sufficient to logically conclude that the media is misleading it's viewers on the pizzagate conspiracy. Journalism is not 100% misleading.

Yes pedophile rings have existed in the past, and will likely exist in the future. However, starting from the position that all organizations are assumed to be pedophile rings until proven otherwise is a complete inversion of our entire judicial system. The existence of other pedophile rings within powerful organizations does not infer that all powerful organizations contain pedophile rings.

Bias in journalism is an unavoidable reality. Choosing which stories to report upon is an example of bias. But the existence of bias does not infer an agenda. It is possible that journalists have an agenda, but it is not a requirement.

A simple analogy is that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Many of your arguments are analogous to saying that since some rectangles are squares, and we can't directly observe this particular rectangle, we must conclude that this rectangle is a square.

Re: How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

#64

Post by linkregister »

tmuir wrote: post #63
throwaway420 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last sentence wasn't too precisely worded so I can understand your response...but when I said "so many voices here" I was more thinking about the media entities who were so adamant that there's nothing to see here than the genuine posters on this site. Many of the posters here are well-intentioned, I'm sure, but misled by the media. Pedophile rings have been uncovered in many walks of life: religion, sports, hol…

The fallacy you are touting is that it is established fact that the media is misleading its viewers with respect to the pizzagate conspiracy. For this to be the case, both you and the media would need to possess the truth. Since that is clearly not the case, you are once again jumping to the conclusion that the conspiracy must be true, and from there, working backwards to the media misleading people. You are conflati…

This is a fantastic and concise explanation. Thank you for posting it.

Re: How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

#65

Post by linkregister »

ticviking wrote: post #17
jessaustin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Russians phished some Hillary staffers, and that's why she was so unpopular with voters!"

Yes both sides have their conspiracy theories. The issue is is that the scale of conspiracies imagined by the left just doesn't compare to what is imagined on the right. Imagining that "a group largely ruled by the same people we have been playing spy-games with for a century might be playing spy-games with us" is distinctly different from, "A large part of the US ruling class is part of a satanic cult with food base…

The vast majority of "the right" do not believe in the plausibility of Pizzagate.

Re: How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

#66

Post by throwaway420 »

tmuir wrote: post #63
throwaway420 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last sentence wasn't too precisely worded so I can understand your response...but when I said "so many voices here" I was more thinking about the media entities who were so adamant that there's nothing to see here than the genuine posters on this site. Many of the posters here are well-intentioned, I'm sure, but misled by the media. Pedophile rings have been uncovered in many walks of life: religion, sports, hol…

The fallacy you are touting is that it is established fact that the media is misleading its viewers with respect to the pizzagate conspiracy. For this to be the case, both you and the media would need to possess the truth. Since that is clearly not the case, you are once again jumping to the conclusion that the conspiracy must be true, and from there, working backwards to the media misleading people. You are conflati…

Thanks for your thoughtful response and attempt to provide logic and reason. I respect that. Just to quickly reply to some of this though.

> both you and the media would need to possess the truth. Since that is clearly not the case, you are once again jumping to the conclusion that the conspiracy must be true,

I am not rushing to jump to the conclusion that this conspiracy is true. I said the allegations should have some type of investigation. It is actually the media that has determined, with no conclusive proof one way or another, that this story is absolutely false.

> However, starting from the position that all organizations are assumed to be pedophile rings until proven otherwise is a complete inversion of our entire judicial system.

I never stated this. When speaking about Pizzagate in the past, I've always maintained that everybody is innocent until proven guilty. Given the types of allegations being spread here however, I support some type of investigation.

> Many of your arguments are analogous to saying that since some rectangles are squares, and we can't directly observe this particular rectangle, we must conclude that this rectangle is a square.

No, I'm saying that since we can't directly observe this particular rectangle, I think it's wise to investigate before making a determination about it's shape. The media are the ones that have already decided what shape it is before having proof.

Re: How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

#67

Post by rorykoehler »

petejodo wrote: post #27
rorykoehler wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about Pizzagate. Some of those emails are clearly trying to hide something. The language in them is obviously "code" for something or other. Has there been any other plausible/implausible theories apart from the Pizzagate one? Edit: Getting downvoted for asking a question. To be clear I have no idea what the emails are about and zero agenda here. The emails came across as very weird to me which is why I a…

I think you're getting downvoted because you made the claim that "Some of those emails are clearly trying to hide something" without providing any references to such emails. Maybe post some links to the emails you're referring to so others not in on the loop can join in

This email thread in particular: https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/12/1223066_re-get-ready-f...

Re: How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

#68

Post by [deleted] »

fnovd wrote: post #62
dllthomas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's almost tautological: once we know something happened, it's no longer a conspiracy. That's... not actually what "conspiracy" means.

Typing "define:conspiracy" into Google, I get: "conspiracy (noun): a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful"

[deleted]

Re: How a fake story about Angela Merkel led to a far-right cluster on Reddit

#69

Post by dllthomas »

fnovd wrote: post #62
dllthomas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's almost tautological: once we know something happened, it's no longer a conspiracy. That's... not actually what "conspiracy" means.

Typing "define:conspiracy" into Google, I get: "conspiracy (noun): a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful"

Could you make your point more clearly? I agree that an exposed conspiracy is no longer an ongoing conspiracy, but I don't think that is necessary for a conspiracy theory.
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