Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 Before we even delve into chapter IV, we have to get something straight. When people like Webster (and anyone in the conspiracy world today) talk about “Socialism” they do not mean the philosophical stance about resource allocation. They are not referring to a classless society, or any of the positions of 19th century industrial revolution philosophers. They mean something much different: a strawman of the position usually written by people who have no interest in reading what actual Socialism means. Do not get me wrong, I’m not a Socialist evangelical, I’m not saying that if they read it, they would agree; my position is that if they read it, or even just skimmed a proper definition, they might still disagree, but they wouldn’t be wrong about it. What Webster and her kind mean by Socialism is this: “To achieve the SOCIALIST dictatorship of the proletariat, three things would have to be accomplished: (1) The elimination of all right to private property; (2) The dissolution of the ...

I knew that this was coming, but I was going to wait on the commentary until chapter 15 hit. Famously (infamously), Cooper is going to include, in this book, the entirety of the notorious anti-Semitic tract "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. I was going to discuss the history of this work then but at the bottom of page 178 (PDF) he says this:  " I managed to locate a reference to The Protocols of Sion dated in the 1700s (see chapter 15, page 269). This plan for subjugation of the world correctly outlined exactly what has happened since the Protocols were discovered, and that is all that is needed to confirm the authenticity of the information contained within the document. It is clear that the Illuminati has planned to rule the world for centuries ." This paragraph is all that there is, save one sentence in the beginning of the next paragraph, " They have followed the plan outlined in the The Protocols of Sion. "  I feel as though I have to address some ...

We are finally done with this book, but like all terrible books it is not done with us. I mentioned in the very first post on this book that Allen's work is surprisingly and depressingly influential. To repeat that point, I was paraphrasing the co-host of the " Knowledge Fight " Podcast who said that this book was like the Velvet Underground. No one really bought their albums but those that did, all started their own bands. Allen's work is like that: every major conspiracy theorist you've heard of, has read this book.  Further, this book is the central political position of the John Birch Society. While the two aren't related in the sense that Allen wrote the book for them (unlike what he says Marx did for the Illuminati), the positions that they both take are nearly identical. We should absolutely care about this work because this book and the JBS are the current US Conservative movement...I guess with the exception that I would find it hard that the JBS woul...

We left off last week as Allen was giving us his four keys to stop the takeover by the globalists. Sorry, I'm used to Alex Jones who clearly "borrowed" the ideas of this book for his schtick. So I guess I mean the CFR elite, but it doesn't matter, the superconspiracy boogeymen are all the same in that we can just substitute the proper nouns and the conspiracy theory is the same. Deep State, Illuminati, Freemasons, CFR, Tri-Lateral Commission, etc. it's all the same. Even according to these people it is the same, it's just the villain of a thousand faces. This is Hydra if you need a fictional reference point that was more realistic in that at least it was aided by magic or some kind of cosmic power (at the very top the Marvel universe gets very weird).  We're not here for the admitted fiction, we are here for the unsupported conspiracy theory that sustains this book. Allen believes he's laid out his case, he hasn't, but that's what he is going f...

Of all the things that author Gary Allen is bad at, I didn't think shameless plugs were going to be one of them. We'll get there in a second. First, we've got to deal with the clean-up from the list. What does Allen have to say, regarding his accusation that all of the signposts to slavery are being proposed? Nothing.  He is as finished with that list as we are. This is foolish because that list could have been its own chapter if he was willing to explain it and then give the sources for his position that government control over private schools keeps getting proposed in many state legislatures. That's it, he name drops Reuther as a union organizer and then he's done.  According to the page count on the pdf that I have, this book has 8 pages left. Scrolling ahead it only has two. This means that this book is now issuing its call to arms, " You are in this fight whether you want to be or not. Unless you are an Insider, you are a victim. Whether you are a multimil...

 It is with great regret that I announce that this book has not jumped the shark, it should have, because it's poorly written, poorly researched, and comes to terrible conclusions. That alone should have been enough but it does another thing that should have confined it to the trash fire of history and somehow didn't: it made predictions.  Predictions, that never came true. Well, some of them did, but they did so only because the predictions are so general that you can figure out something that will fit. It's the broken clock being right. Bill Cooper and Alex Jones both claim to have predicted 9/11, but their prediction was "something big is going to happen." It lacked any kind of specificity and if we look at their track record, they were more thinking that it was going to be an NWO type thing anyway. So, it doesn't really count as a prediction any more than my prediction that someone will win the lottery...eventually counts as a prediction.  Predictions are ...

I find it interesting when reading/listening/watching anything that portrays the Soviet/Nazi front of WWII; that it's not clear who the real villain is. Of course, Hitler and the Nazis, but that also means that we are rooting for Stalin; and it's easy in the beginning because the Soviets were attacked first. But, again, we are rooting for Stalin to be the hero that the world needed. In Allen's world, there is a stark villain but in reality there isn't a hero either. Allen has the world set up in a false dichotomy but he wants everyone reading to take "not one step back" but there is no enemy advancing on us. There isn't a step back to refrain from but there also isn't a step forward.  As I ended with last week, Allen thinks this is an information war but he hasn't provided us with anything more than "rich guy A knew rich guy B." He claims that these connections are enough to justify action, but I ask "what kind of action would be eff...

 I think, dear reader, we have entered the final chapter of this book. Probably, it's hard to say but given that this chapter is titled: "You are the Answer," I think I have a good assumption here. My only problem is that I'm still not quite sure what the question is supposed to be. You might want to accuse me of being dense, "he's saying that there is a massive conspiracy to throw the United States into COMMUNISM, duh." I get that, but he has not made this case so far. He thinks he has, so we have to assume this counter-factual. Meaning that we are going to pretend for the sake of argument that this position of his has been made and is logically sound and valid. It's a big ask, I know, but we pretend that Iron Man's suit made sense for a solid decade we can do this together.  Now, I have to give credit where it is due, and Allen's call to action is actually well written. In the first paragraph of the chapter, he is both impressing upon the r...

 When did "vise" become "vice?" As in squeezed like a vice? I noticed that in reading today's section that Allen calls it a "vise" and it just looks wrong, and in this book when something stands out as being wrong it's something. Of course, I could be wrong and am just using the British spelling of it--I've been known to do that for some reason.  The word comes up because Allen has on page 79, a picture of a vice/vise. With the "middle class" in the center and the two clamps around it. The top clamp (the enemy above) is labeled with the names Rothschild, Rockefeller, and the CFR elite. The bottom is labeled with the SDS, the Black Panthers, the Yippies, the Young Socialist Alliance, and something called "Common Cause." I look at this list and I know immediately that my post is going to be about these groups and Wikipedia is getting a strong visit from me today. We will put these groups aside and deal with the overall critici...

 Well, finally.  I've probably mentioned this before: but I used to be a conspiracy theorist. I was a Mulder-type, X-files, quasi-militia supporting, conspiracy theorist in the 90s. I believed in the UFO thing, I believed in the government plot to keep that a secret, and I believed in the one-world government bullshit. Somehow, and thankfully, this was separate from my devout religious belief, but that's probably because I was raised Catholic. The Vatican was dealing with its own conspiracy at the time: only that one was real and they were doing it. The coming "New World Order" was definitely a thing in my mind. At this point in history, the NRA was tilting towards the batshit conspiracy theory haven that they have become. It was around this time that they called federal law enforcement officials "jack booted thugs" causing George HW Bush to turn in his lifetime membership. They did so as a response to both Waco and Ruby Ridge, which the perception was that ...

"It is generally believed in England among students of this conspiracy that John Maynard Keynes produced his General Theory of Money and Credit at the behest of certain Insiders of international finance who hired him to concoct a pseudo-scientific justification for government deficit spending-just as the mysterious League of Just Men hired Karl Marx to write the Communist Manifesto." Mother fucker that's a hell of a sentence. I mean, the words all have independent meanings but, damn, put this shit show together and it's all kinds of wrong. Where do I even begin? Well, if a student turned in a paper and this sentence was contained, I'd fail it. There are two qualifiers here that are doing way too much work: "it's generally believed" and "certain Insiders" (which would be fine if they were named). Conspiracy theorists like to do two things: one is overload with citations and sources. I've mentioned this before: but it's designed to em...

 " Instead, the liberals have showered the President with dead cats, while most conservatives have maintained a glum silence, and thus the Administration has been 'little credited' for 'much genuine achievement."--Allen quoting Conservative columnist Stewart Aslop regarding Nixon. I'm not up on my slang, not now, not in the past, not anywhere. My personal slang is usually stuff I lifted from movies or books and is obscure enough where I sometimes have to explain what I meant. I'm familiar with it though, and while I've had friends laugh at me for not quite getting "imma" on the second try, eventually I come around. I mention all of this because I have no idea whether "showered the president with dead cats" is a good thing or a bad thing here.  What further complicates this is that we've begun Chapter 7 "Pressure From Above and Pressure From Below;" but we are still continuing Allen's rant against the liberal foreig...

 One of the more funny underpinnings of this book is that the author is claiming that Nixon is too liberal. If you're new here, that's not a typo. Richard M Nixon was too liberal for Gary Allen and the John Birch Society. These are the type of people that thought Eisenhower was a Communist so we should be aware of how extremist they were. I say were, because today, they'd be right at home in the mainstream of the GOP.  A friend of mine pointed out some of Nixon's accomplishments that the left would approve of today: he continued the policy of desegregation begun under Kennedy and continued under Johnson. He opened trade with China which we can debate about now, but such trade prevents wars. Nixon also created the EPA after a river in Ohio caught fire because of the pollution (there is an urban legend that it was Lake Erie). Nixon is famous for acting like a crazy person, which was on purpose...his plan was to act like this so that Ho Chi Minh would be afraid of nuclear ...

We're back with no more interruptions. Grading is done and I can certainly carve out the time to write these updates...until the next grading season that is.  We come back with Allen focusing on a familiar target to 90s era conspiracy theorists: the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers are one of those people/families that are so wealthy that the word "wealth" doesn't apply anymore. They aren't rich, they are beyond it. So this makes them a frequent target of conspiracy theorists, anarchists, socialists, and a bunch of other people that normally wouldn't agree on anything. The central idea that all of these groups agree on is: someone like them shouldn't have that much influence when they are largely unaccountable. Nelson Rockefeller was accountable when he was NY governor, but that's not what people like Allen mean. He means overall they have so much money that nothing can happen to them which is a bad thing.  And I, agree. Pre-Covid, I worked as a va...

 I play a lot of strategy games on my computer. For some reason, they just make sense there, where the console is for all of the other types of games. One thing that I never neglect, is establishing a web of spies (when I'm able). In the old Red Alert, I would spend an inordinate amount of time training spies because sure, the Russians were coming but I wanted to know every single thing they had in production. I just like it. The new Civ has a really great espionage mechanism, and I love sabotaging and stealing all of my rival's stuff. Sure, they own two continents and our trade is so intertwined that war between us is almost impossible...but for some reason, they just can't get that spaceship built can they. The reason that I bring this up is because of one important feature about espionage: it doesn't work if the enemy knows it is happening. So when Allen tries to link the trade with the USSR (which is one of the things that prevented the outbreak of a hot war) with t...