Musk and Trump in conspiracyland
JVL Introduction
Unfounded speculations about dark forces controlling us and influencing world events all too often lead to the same place – conspiracyland, home of the Jews. Elon Musk and Donald Trump may parade themselves as friends of ‘the Jews’, although it seems they are friends only of those Jews that offer them support.
This fist of friendship fails to prevent them diving straight into the conspiracy sewer. This lowers the quality of political debate for everyone and blunts everybody’s understanding of events – you do not need to think critically if you already know that they are to blame. For Jews, of all political persuasions, it is not just just mind numbing it is acutely dangerous; far too frequently ‘they’ are easily equated to ‘Jews’.
MC
This article was originally published by Forward on Tue 13 Aug 2024. Read the original here.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump want us to live in conspiracy land — you can guess who the scapegoats will be
Conspiracy theories and antisemitism have always gone hand in hand
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“Conspiracy theories and antisemitism have always gone hand in hand”
“‘globalists’ — a word long understood to be antisemitic”
“It is a well-proven fact that a conspiratorial society is often a dangerously antisemitic one”
This is just ignorant MSM rubbish the author’s just made up to fit a victim narrative. SOME conspiracy theories involve Jews, but it is a self-absorbed Zionist fantasy that ALL conspiracy theories are. In fact they are a small minority overall and only believed by idiots.
I note the author does not actually provide any proof of anti-Semitism that might’ve occurred during the interview. Just “It was conspiracy central, and it boded ill for Jews” or “We’ve seen this show before. It tends to go badly for Jews”. Followed by “If you’ve ever encountered an antisemitic stereotype in your life, you know who those inside enemies behind the government are supposed to be”. Really? Yes, I do know, but “Jews” would be about the last people on my list!
Has she had her A-level results yet?
I find this article very problematic. It demonstrates the same totally exaggerated focus on Jewish victimhood as currently being used to deny the relevance of Palestinian lives as Israel is carrying out a genocide. Trump has created real non-Jewish victims through his activities and is promising to implement the mass deportation of Muslims and give Netanyahu a green light for any and all aggression against Palestinians. And yet according to the author it is the possibility of hypothetical Jewish victimhood that we should all be concerned about. This is not innocent under circumstances in which Jewish victimhood is being used to justify genocide. It intimidates people into not speaking out forcefully against what Israel is doing, even if that is not the intention.
Some conspiracy theories are good and turn out to be true. The idea that the Birmingham Six were innocent and had been framed was one such example. There are many more.
And so, conspiracy theories are not always wrong. But you can also have bad conspiracy theories that do not stand up to scrutiny and which can do much harm.
So, we should not condemn all conspiracy theories but seek to understand if it is a good or a bad one. Nobody would seriously argue that we should regard all books as bad because of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’. That would be illogical.
The problem is the word “conspiracy”. I try to avoid using the word as it can cause otherwise rational people to start talking gibberish. Some conspiracies are real. I am a prison officer. I lock up members of criminal conspiracies for a living. If you are stating that there are some miscarriages of justice, I would accept that. If you are stating that ALL people convicted of being in criminal conspiracies MUST be innocent, I would suggest that you should either have a LOT of evidence to back up this statement, or withdraw it.
This isn’t just a theoretical argument. If you want people to believe that the accusation of a specific conspiracy is false, then you need to say so, and say why. If all you’ve got is “yah-boo conspiracy”, you are effectively stating that you have no argument at all.