#election conspiracy theories

[scottguy]

Go ahead Marge. Tell MAGAs that it's pointless to vote because it's "rigged" according to your paranoid delusions.

[robpegoraro]

Attempted murder of democracy remains a crime

The Trump indictment made for some suprisingly unsettling reading, but we cannot forget that Trump and his fascism-curious minions really did stage orchestrated attempts to null out the ballots of millions of people.

The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they may yet grind whatever is left of Donald Trump’s reputation into radioactive dust. The 45th president’s arraignment Thursday on charges of overturning the 2020 election made him the 1,078th person to face charges tied to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection–but unquestionably the most important. And while United States of America v. Donald J. Trump represents…

[lilliankillthisman]

"Trump staged a shooting where a bullet flew so close it nicked his ear, while already ahead in the polls and while his opponent is having an unprecedented campaign disaster" is a stupid conspiracy theory

But "Bolsonaro staged a stabbing where he LOST 40% OF HIS BLOOD and had to get a colostomy with complications that continued into his presidency" is a much cooler conspiracy theory that I hadn't heard before. So it's impossible to say whether this post is bad or not.

[kitty-gray]

I wholeheartedly believe that, at least from Ty's perspective, Livvy was such an elemental part of his identity that it was impossible for him to even think he could belong anywhere without her, and that that was one of his motivations for the ritual.

Then Kit, who really wanted a life with Ty, goes and says "When you brought Livvy back, you changed yourself. You made yourself a different person than the one I loved, I don't know the person you are now. You took yourself away from me. I can't forgive that." I think it's Cassandra's way to say that, by performing the ritual, Ty's perspective of not fully existing without Livvy became true. Now, they really can't be apart for too long before Ty starts dying. (There's something to say about the necklace but This Is Not That Post)

Thematically, this makes it more about identity than about the ritual per se.

So here's my take:

Ty wants Kit's forgiveness more than anything. But for Kit to forgive him, he has to be Ty again. He has to learn that there's a Ty without a Livvy. And he has to choose it for himself, because Kit would never ask Ty to choose him over Livvy. Ty has to let Livvy go to be his own person again, and it has to be his decision. (There's also something to say about the stages of grief but again: not that post)

And that's the kind of soul wretching torture character development Cassandra would makes us go through.

[mikewheelerfan2022]

Am I the only person who thinks these results are a little fishy? We were getting countless anecdotes of massive turnout, especially in big cities. Stories of lines being pretty much all women. An intensive ground game while Trump had none. Massive rallies, meanwhile Trump could barely draw a crowd. A confident Harris campaign and nervous Trump campaign. All that for a Trump blowout? Yeah, no. Something is fucking wrong. There’s no way 15 million less Democrats voted in 2024 than 2020. And I think that’s why Harris hasn’t conceded yet.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A Surrey BC Conservative candidate is facing renewed pressure to drop out of the race after more offensive social media comments surfaced. But in a statement posted to social media platform X (formerly Twitter), South Surrey candidate Brent Chapman says he has no plans to withdraw. The latest comments were uncovered by CKNW radio host Jas Johal, and show Chapman appearing to question whether a number of high-profile mass shootings, including the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, Quebec City mosque shooting and the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando really happened.

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Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[beauty-funny-trippy]

Ever notice that the Conspiracy Theories that Republicans love most are the ones that have 0% facts, are 100% ridiculous, and if they have elements of racism or bigotry, they'll practically work themselves into a frenzy trying to promote the lies. • Jewish space lasers • Haitian immigrants eating pets • Birtherism (used against non-white politicians) • Holocaust denial • Drag Queen conspiracies • Great Replacement Theory • Racist theories against CRT • Homophobic/Racist theories against Wokeness • Kids going to school and coming back a different gender • Nazi and KKK propaganda • etc, etc,... Unfortunately, these are not the harmless Conspiracy Theories of yesteryear — Bigfoot, Aliens, and the Loch Ness Monster. These Republican lies, about whole groups of people, are dangerous and even life-threatening. And it has become obvious, as seen in Project 2025, that the depth and breadth of Republican discrimination and malice knows no bounds.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Johnson at The UnPopulist:

Joe Rogan, a UFC commentator and comedian who hosts the most popular podcast in the United States and possibly the world, has developed a reputation as an anti-tribal and fiercely independent voice who is beholden to no political party or faction. In the eyes of his regular guest Jordan Peterson, Rogan is “the most powerful journalist who’s ever lived,” and he has managed to gain such broad appeal because he “just asks questions.” But the notion that Rogan is an honest broker of information who has an overriding commitment to the truth is absurd. In fact, he has only one consistent mission: attempting to debunk mainstream media narratives by entertaining conspiracy theories. He’s more of a populist than a non-partisan—and he’s definitely no truth-seeker. Nothing illustrates this better than his warmly favorable treatment of both Donald Trump and RJK Jr., along with the parade of other cranks he features who peddle outlandish conspiracy theories and constantly congratulate themselves for being “anti-establishment” or “heterodox.” The effect, whether he intends it or not, is to overwhelm our epistemic infrastructure and pave the way for dangerous populist demagogues.

The Most Popular MAGA Pundit in the World

In his much-discussed interview with Trump last week, Rogan’s approach was to first encourage Trump to air his typical barrage of conspiratorial falsehoods—and then to endorse them himself. Take, for example, the segments on elections and voting, which were always shaped by Rogan’s MAGA-friendly framing. When Rogan told Trump that “a lot of weirdness ... was going on during the 2020 elections,” he was basically affirming Trump’s Big Lie and ignoring the fact that the 2020 election was the most scrutinized contest in American history. The rest predictably followed:

Trump claimed that “old-fashioned ballot screwing” had taken place, such as “people ... dropping in phony votes.” Rogan agreed.

Trump claimed “the Russia hoax” swayed the 2020 election. Rogan agreed.

Trump claimed the temporary suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story also swayed the election. Rogan agreed.

Trump claimed Democrats weaponized the justice system against him. Rogan agreed.

Trump alleged that Democrats are opposed to certain forms of voter ID “because they want to cheat.” Rogan responded: “It doesn’t make sense any other way.” Voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem, given that there is little evidence of widespread voter fraud, but Rogan preferred to attribute to Democrats the most sinister motivation imaginable. Rogan also said “mail-in ballots are a problem” and worried about vote-counting machines getting hacked—a version of a famously discredited conspiracy theory for which Fox News had to pay $787 million in a settlement with a voting systems firm for pushing it on its airwaves.

When the discussion turned to the topic of denying election results, it was the perfect opportunity for Rogan, the interviewer renowned by fans as a tenacious truth-seeker, to press the most high-profile election denialist American politics has ever seen. That’s not what happened. Instead of challenging Trump’s years-long insistence that he actually won the 2020 election, or his enlisting of attorneys like Sidney Powell to claim communist-designed voting machines rigged the contest against him, or his attempts to overthrow the election by sending fake slates of electors to Washington, or his incitement of an insurrectionary mob at the U.S. Capitol to halt the certification of the vote, Rogan brought up ... the Russia investigation. Democrats are especially prone to denying election results, he told the man who believes he beat Hillary Clinton in the popular vote in 2016 and Joe Biden in the Electoral College vote in 2020.

But the segment on elections and voting wasn’t only about 2020. Consider their exchange about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. After Trump declared that Democrats had turned Springfield into a “horror show” by “dropping” immigrants into the community, Rogan’s follow-up wasn’t to press Trump for corroboration, given that state Republican officials said this was nonsense and have asked Trump to stop endangering an innocent minority group. Instead, Rogan asked Trump to hypothesize about what must be motivating Democrats to allow a flood of immigrants into the country. As if that was not a loaded enough question, Rogan then proceeded to say this: “One of the things that’s been very clear is that they’ve moved a large percentage of these migrants—they’re coming across the border illegally—[into] swing states.” Never mind that the Haitians in Springfield are legal. In one fell swoop, Rogan managed to seamlessly transition from asking a question about immigration to asserting the Great Replacement conspiracy theory that Democrats are importing illegal voters to steal elections—exactly Trump’s view.

[...] Rogan’s embrace of RFK Jr. isn’t ultimately down to his personal charms—Rogan is dependably supportive of health and wellness conspiracism just generally. During the Covid pandemic, the Joe Rogan Experience was among the most formidable engines of misinformation about the disease, alternative treatments, and vaccine safety, with appearances by conspiracists like Bret Weinstein, Robert Malone, and Pierre Kory. He regularly invites conspiracists onto his show to pump out hours of uninterrupted anti-vaccine propaganda. Alex Jones—one of the most prolific and notorious conspiracy theorists of our time, who accused the grieving families of Sandy Hook victims of being crisis actors who were part of a plot to take Americans’ guns—has been a guest many times. Conspiracy theorists like Weinstein who rant about the horrors of vaccine injuries, the life-saving properties of ivermectin, and the totalitarian machinations of the WHO for long stretches, are honored guests.

[...]

Heterodox Media Has a Right-Wing Conspiracism Problem

Rogan has presented his podcast as a counterweight to the “establishment” media. That means he regularly platforms figures that traditional outlets won’t because they don’t meet basic journalistic standards. He evades accountability by always pointing out that he’s a mere comedian and entertainer, a clever rhetorical shield. This grants him the latitude to speculate as recklessly as he wants, indulge some of the wildest conspiracy theories around, and consistently get basic facts wrong while allowing his guests to do the same. So long as his audience laps it up, he has no reason to approach things any differently. But that’s also why the backlash from Trump’s MAGA base was so threatening to him: that’s an occasion in which he risked losing his audience. Rogan has become wholly captured by his audience even as he maintains the pretense that he’s a fair-minded and inquisitive political observer who is capable of seeing through what he regards as the sinister machinations and distortions of both major political parties. That’s why, when the wave of MAGA resentment came crashing down on him when he endorsed RFK Jr., he caved.

Kamala Harris’ supporters never expected Rogan’s endorsement, and there’s no Democratic equivalent of Catturd to chastise Rogan for supporting a third-party candidate. Nor does Rogan have much of a non-right audience. So all his incentives lean in the direction of becoming a right-wing conspiracy theorist—especially since, right now, there are more conspiracies on the right. Indeed, there are few, if any, MAGA conspiracy theories that Rogan hasn’t amplified. Last year, he suggested that Jan. 6 was a “false flag” operation in which “intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people into the Capitol.” He defended Arizona’s Republican senatorial candidate, Kari Lake’s, debunked claims about voter fraud in her state’s gubernatorial race: “All that Kari Lake stuff in Arizona they tried to dismiss, it doesn’t look like that’s invalid. It looks like there’s real fraud there.”

Rogan, of course, isn’t the only one. There is an entire industry of self-styled “heterodox” thinkers who have gravitated toward the right. Peterson, Rogan’s frequent guest, was once merely critical of campus identity politics and other forms of “wokeness.” He’s now a committed political partisan indistinguishable from a standard-fare Fox News commentator (e.g., characterizing Harris as “a master of chaos and deception” who is full of “envy” and “spite”; or describing Trump’s indictments as a “horrible” form of political “persecution”). Rogan and Peterson are part of an alternative media community providing an intellectual permission structure for people to support MAGA under the guise of “independent thought,” “heterodoxy,” or “classical liberalism.”

But Rogan plays a crucial role in this right-wing alternative media ecosystem. Because he has always presented himself as non-partisan, millions of listeners trust that he doesn’t have an agenda. Heterodox intellectuals and influencers like Peterson constantly decry traditional media as captured by elite interests, and they present shows like the Joe Rogan Experience as the alternative. But when Rogan and his guests shower praise on Trump and relentlessly attack his political opponents, they prove that they aren’t the anti-establishment crusaders they claim to be—they’re just supporting one establishment over another. In many ways, Rogan is the perfect embodiment of the Trump-era podcaster.

Joe Rogan claims to be an independent voice, but is in reality a right-wing conspiracy theorist whose podcast has a largely MAGA audience.

[thashining]

🤔I guess

[schraubd]

Does the NYT Know What a "Progressive" Is?

The NYT reports on the integration of Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. into the Trump campaign. This is news, though its essentially news that "conservative cranks support the supreme conservative crank." But instead, the NYT frames it this way: Donald J. Trump plans to name his former rival, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard, a onetime Democrat, as honorary co-chairs of a presidential transition team that will help him select the policies and personnel of any second Trump administration, according to a campaign senior adviser. Mr. Kennedy ended his independent campaign for president and endorsed Mr. Trump on Friday. Both he and Ms. Gabbard spent most of their public life as progressive Democrats, and Mr. Kennedy had started his presidential run as a Democrat, before renouncing his party and running as an independent instead. Ms. Gabbard left the Democratic Party after her 2020 presidential run and has rebranded herself as a celebrity among Trump’s base of support. Excuse me? Until recently, RFK Jr. was known for two things (aside from his name). First, water-related environmental causes; second, being an anti-vaxx nut. The former I'll agree is a progressive issue. The latter ... well, I guess there was a time when anti-vaxxers were partially associated with the crunchy granola left (you know, before it stopped being funny and started being a Serious Issue of Principle We All Must Respect). But this isn't exactly the profile of a progressive champion. Yet Gabbard is even worse -- she's been widely recognized as a conservative for years! Anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, a friend of dictators and authoritarians the world over ... what, exactly, is supposed to be her "progressive" rep? The answer is that there continues to be a small number of "progressives" (and, I guess, NYT writers) who are absurdly easy to dupe by anyone who makes some vague "anti-establishment" (especially "anti-war") rumblings. But aside from that, nobody actually ever thought that Tulsi Gabbard was any kind of progressive -- she has always been in a class of her own. And the thing is -- Democratic voters have made this conclusion very obvious, by emphatically rejecting both Gabbard and RFK Jr. every time they tried to hop onto the national stage. Their defeats were not situations where the "progressive" faction of the party happened to get outvoted by more moderate or establishment cadres (compare, say, Bernie Sanders). RFK and Gabbard both failed to get any discernable support from any substantial wing of the Democratic electorate -- left, right, or center. Progressive Democrats didn't see either as progressive choices, they saw them for what they were -- conspiratorial right-wing cranks. And now they've found their natural home alongside Trump. No news there. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/kvQKYlA

[ohihopeicanchangethislater]

I don't give much thought to conspiracy theories, they're just a waste of time. I have a hard enough time keeping up with real things going on.

That said, there is currently a documentary in theaters titled "Vindicating Trump" and while I have no intention to see it, I found the description intriguing.

"Dinesh D'Souza examines the political, legal, and attempted-assassination obstacles faced by Donald Trump in his quest to retake the White House."

Might just be me, but it seems a little weird that a documentary highlighting at least one assassination attempt was greenlit, produced, and distributed to theaters within just a few months of the first attempt and a few days after the second.

I'm not necessarily saying I believe the attempts were staged, but the timing of all of it seems a bit more than coincidental

[tilbageidanmark]

Post-Debate Midnight Consolation Visit.

[tomorrowusa]

Dr. Anthony Fauci voluntarily testified before a House committee and debunked MAGA Republican conspiracy theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Donald Trump and his lickspittles were telling Americans to drink bleach, take useless malaria pills, stick ultraviolet lights up their butts, and eat horse paste, Dr. Fauci headed an effort to develop vaccines for COVID-19.

A reminder to people with short memories who view the Trump administration as some sort of bucolic paradise: The last quarter of that administration included the worst government response to an infectious disease outbreak since 1920. Trumpsters who want us to ignore Trump's horribly botched response to the pandemic are like cruise-liner enthusiasts who want us to ignore the last 2% of the voyage of the Titanic.

Economic activity ground to a halt in 2020 as the US slid into a recession. I took this picture of a sign at a dollar store which had been completely closed for almost two months.

The whole Trump clan was disdainful of the sacrifices hundreds of millions of Americans were making.

Why has the U.S. COVID-19 response been so bad? Jared Kushner, Vanity Fair suggests.

At Times Square Jared and Ivanka's contemptuousness was made into an ad before Election Day.

If you are looking for the Original Sin of Trump's pandemic response, it was on January 22nd when he basically told CNBC's Joe Kernen that COVID-19 was nothing to worry about.

Of course it wasn't "just fine".

Trump did not declare a state of emergency for seven weeks. That gave the virus plenty of time for it to spread throughout the US.

Republicans know that their Dear Leader totally mishandled the pandemic response. That's why they repeatedly try to make Dr. Fauci a type of scapegoat for Trump's horrendous incompetence. Dr. Fauci has spent his entire career fighting disease. Donald Trump has spent his entire career narcissistically promoting himself.

Harry Truman had a sign on his desk saying: "The Buck Stops Here!" If Trump had a sign on his Oval Office desk (which he seldom used except for photo ops) it would be: "It's Everybody's Fault But Mine!"

Don't be hesitant to remind people of how awful 2020 was. And point the finger of blame at the orange blob who was responsible for the catastrophe.

[independent-fics]

Thinking about Sophie’s dramatic death in the “San Lorenzo Job” today and how many Leverage altered things will be written in history books people will have no explanation for.

[creature-wizard]

I have seen far right conspiracy theorists sling around the words "controlled opposition" and claim that both Democrats and Republicans are controlled by ~the Elite~ and are therefore basically exactly the same too often to take far leftists seriously when they do the same thing under a different banner.

To put it even less nicely, I know what a political cult looks like and some of these people out there are ticking off a whole lot of boxes.