Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

We’re back. That stomach virus is not a joke; I lost 13 pounds in three days over it. Also note new posts are doing to be on Tuesdays going forward. My teaching schedule switched from Tues/Thurs to Mon/Wed. Two weeks ago, when we last left off, Webster had begun a new chapter. The previous chapter had been curiously devoid of her random anti-Semitism with only a few mentions of the ethnicity of a couple of the French revolutionaries. This chapter wants to make amends for that oversight. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing is, among all of the other things that it is, lazy. Laziness is the least salient criticism of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing, but it’s also an important one. The thing about blaming “the Jews” is that it has an already built in audience that is ready to fill in all of your holes. The writing is done for you. Current GOP darling and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes doesn’t say anything new, he doesn’t have to—it’s all been written for him. He just says it a bit more coherentl...

 It's grading time which means that I will not be posting this week. I'll be back next week for more Webster. 

We shift locations from France to the German states in 1848. Going concurrent with the French revolution apparently. A little context, Germany is not one country. Much like Italy in the Renaissance period it’s a series of republics, principalities, and theocracies with ill-defined borders and a shared language. The strongest of these is Prussia which has a Spartan like devotion to military prowess and has, at its head, the one known as Frederick the Great. We met Frederick earlier in this book, and Webster is not a fan. She’s not a fan, because she hates Germans. I mentioned this in the beginning of this series: the only thing that kept her from becoming an English Nazi is that she hated Germans too much. She was anti-Semitic and as we have seen, a fascist—but aligning herself with the German people was a step too far. It’s a weirdly focused racism that keeps one from becoming a Nazi but here we are. Conspiratorially we’ve met Germany when we dealt with Robison’s book. His problem ther...

When we ended last week, Webster was trying to explain that the Revolution of 1848 failed because it didn’t instantly fix the problem of unemployment. Instead, what it did, was set up a council which then created employment camps that helped people find jobs. This was bad for the reason that the state should not do this. Why? Well, let’s see if she can explain it this week. We get a quote from a character named “Mermeix,” aka Gabriel Terrail; a mediocre journalist and person who accepted bribes in order to change the story. The quote is, “ a government cannot guarantee work since does not depend on it to provide customers.” This is a pseudo profound bullshit. It sounds good at first glance, but any inquiry into this idea shows how vapid it is. The entire thing is based on a false premise; not all work is based on the idea of a transactional relationship. You don’t need customers for work. No one built a road for “customers,” educated children for “customers,” or led the police for “cus...