#Stop Spreading Conspiracy Theories. stop it! learn skepticism!

[captainjonnitkessler]

I was listening to the "Wellness to QAnon Pipeline" episode of Maintenance Phase, which is as it sounds an episode about how people start off well-meaning and curious and end up drawn into QAnon conspiracy theories, and honestly it mimics a lot of behavior I've seen from the left recently.

Like at its core, QAnon believes that there is an elite class of people who hold all the power and can get away with any number of horrible crimes, because the rest of us are all powerless peasants who are being kept in the dark. The only real difference between them and leftist conspiracy theorists is that QAnon calls the elite class (((globalists))) and leftists call them billionaires, but once you start thinking like that it is SUCH a slippery slope from one to the other. It's incredibly dangerous.

It's stuff like confidently stating that Boeing got away with assassinating whistleblowers even though there's zero evidence and it doesn't even make sense that they would do that. Or insisting that Democrats are intentionally losing elections in order to play up the threat of Republicans in order to get elected, which again makes zero sense. It's insisting that the Democratic party fails on purpose because they are one discrete entity that moves in perfect unison and not, like, thousands and thousands of people with different ideas and goals who sometimes work at cross purposes. It's insisting that the reason American healthcare is bad is because the CEOs are all just evil megalomaniacs hitting the "deny care" button repeatedly, instead of understanding that our healthcare is incredibly complicated with a million interlocked parts that all feed into one another. It's insisting that a real progressive will never be elected because "they" won't let that happen, when there is zero evidence that those progressive candidates ever had any real support within the electorate.

It is - basically - the idea that bad things happen because Bad People are doing Bad Things, and the refusal to admit that sometimes bad things happen because of an incredibly complex web of causes and effects that can't be predicted or controlled.

And it's not like there's not any truth to it. Obviously healthcare and pharmaceutical companies put profits over human lives. Obviously billionaires and corporations interfere in politics. But ultimately most things are just really complicated, and anyone who's trying to sell you a fantasy that it's just the Bad People who are causing problems and all we need to do is get rid of them and let The Will of the People take over is either lying to you or is dangerously misinformed. Use your critical thinking, be a skeptic, and don't be blinded by people promising to sell you simple solutions that feel good.

[fdelopera]

Yo Gentiles! Stop trying to goysplain the history of the I/P conflict at us Jews.

We have studied this conflict extensively, and often for years, because we've had to. Because even when we are Jews in diaspora who have never returned to the Levant and never plan to, the antisemitism that this conflict generates still puts us in danger. And as many of you who are paying attention have witnessed, there has been a drastic world-wide rise in antisemitism over the past month.

When you try to "teach" us about it, especially when MOST of you are using talking points that were developed by Neo-Nazis and the KKK, all you are showing us is that you are lazy, patronizing antisemites.

If you actually want to HELP the Palestinians in this conflict (and I think that some of you do), you need to accept that the following 10 things are true:

We Jews most likely know more about the history of this conflict than you do. We have had to study it in all of its nuance, in all of its painful detail, in order to understand the broader Jewish world. We have to understand the broader Jewish world to decode how Neo-Nazis like Richard Spencer and David Duke are using the I/P conflict to coordinate attacks on Jews in diaspora.

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We Jews have to know about the I/P conflict for our own safety. But many of you gentiles are learning about it for the first time. And instead of understanding how complex the conflict is, you are turning it into a wargame fantasy where you get to playact as a freedom fighter in La Glorious Revolution. Then you coordinate social media attacks against Jews online, and you go out and attack Jews in person, and you harass us until our mental health crumbles. Great job, goys! Great. Fucking. Job.

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You are goysplaining Jewish history at us. Stop trying to tell us a bunch of propaganda that you learned from TikTok, Instagram, and Tumblr memes. It just shows us that you're lazy, and that you've got a lot of Jew-hatred that you need to unpack.

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When we tell you that you're wrong, listen to what we have to say. Don't talk over us. Use this as an opportunity to do further research. Otherwise you're just behaving like some Fox News obsessed Boomer raging on about election fraud and vaccines.

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The Palestinian people need our help, but you are making a TERRIBLE case for helping them when you base your arguments for helping them on shitty propaganda you learned on TikTok, Instagram, and Tumblr.

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Let me say this again: Your bullshit propaganda DOES NOT HELP THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE, and it is easily debunked by just a few Wikipedia deep-dives.

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When you spread this propaganda, you sound like the idiots on Fox News that knowingly spread conspiracy theories about Covid. Not only is the bullshit you're repeating easily proven wrong, but you're just showing yourself to be untrustworthy at best ... and at worst, a bunch of opportunistic liars.

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When you regurgitate propaganda at us Jews, all you are telling us is that you don't give enough of a shit about the Palestinian people to do ANY research into the history of this conflict, other than looking at some infographics and memes.

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You are making us Jews VERY wary and skeptical of you, because most of the "information" you've learned from TikTok, Instagram, and Tumblr is influenced by Neo-Nazi and KKK propaganda, and you are being useful idiots for white supremacists.

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Again, repeating fake shit about this conflict DOES NOT HELP the Palestinian people. It just makes Jews distrust you. And it makes us SCARED to get involved in this movement. Because we are NOT going to march side-by-side with goyim that are spreading dangerous antisemitic lies about Jewish history and Jewish people.

AND NONE OF THIS MATTERS. NONE OF YOUR BULLSHIT FAKE HISTORY MATTERS!!

Because Palestinians are dying!

So stop trying to tell Jews made up stories about our history.

LISTEN TO JEWISH VOICES ABOUT JEWISH HISTORY. (And DON'T listen to JVP, for fucks sake. Learn more here.)

Accept that we know more about the history of the I/P conflict than you do.

AND START WORKING TO HELP PALESTINIANS.

ANERA

Palestine Children's Relief Fund

Doctors Without Borders