by PAUL COLLITS – THOSE who questioned the power of the State and were sceptical of its claims were once taken seriously, even lauded – whereas now they’re routinely pilloried by those under the State’s thumb.
I had never heard of Kelly Weill before I saw a book of hers in the local bookshop this week.
- Anyone daring to question “the official line” is associated with flat earthers.
- The blue-pilled class is embedded and it is not about to give any ground to those who are awake to its evils.
- Fact-checkers are typically driven by government-based nudge units in cahoots with Big Tech silencers.
The book is titled Off the Edge: Flat earthers, conspiracy culture and why people will believe anything. You already know where this is going.
Here is the Amazon blurb: “A deep dive into the world of Flat Earth conspiracy theorists … that brilliantly reveals how people fall into illogical beliefs, reject reason, destroy relationships and connect with a broad range of conspiracy theories in the social media age. Beautiful, probing, and often empathetic… An insightful, human look at what fuels conspiracy theories.
BRIMMING
“In Off the Edge, journalist Kelly Weill draws a direct line from today’s conspiratorial moment, brimming not just with Flat Earthers but also anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers, back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s.
“We learn the natural impulses behind these beliefs: when faced with a complicated world out of our control, humans have always sought patterns to explain the inexplicable. This psychology doesn’t change. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century, something else has shifted. Powered by Facebook and YouTube algorithms, the Flat Earth movement is growing.”
How people fall into illogical beliefs? Really. Where to start?
Seeing this book rang several bells. Kelly is a classic example of the emerging the kill-the-conspiracy-theorists sub-genre of the progressive narrative.
She and her ilk are foot soldiers for the blue-pilled aristocracy. It has become a core project of the contemporary Left.
It is all of a piece with the noble-lies work of the fact-checker class, typically driven by government-based nudge units and Big Tech silencers, mostly in cahoots.
If we disempower the flat earthers, we also cut down the centrist, “club sensible” sceptics. The folks who call out government overreach. Cover-ups. Dishonest governance.
It is an old play, and it generally works.
Anyone heard of the straw man fallacy? Name your opponent’s weak point (as you see it), give it a boo-label and then associate it with whacky ideas. Game, set and match.
Well, this has proven to be gold in the age of State-driven COVID. You don’t even have to mention the Covid State. Just invoke epithets like “anti-vaxxer”, “flat earther” and the rest.
This argument worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, when, in the late 1960s, they popularised the very phrase “conspiracy theorist”. It worked then – and it is working now.
PROGRESSIVE
The twenty-something Kelly works for The Daily Beast, an American progressive vehicle which I confess, I do not read. The world is now run by people called Kelly and Brittany, it seems.
Kelly thinks that simply calling someone a “conspiracy theorist” is enough to win any argument. The best pre-emptive strike against an opponent is to deny his or her legitimacy to make that argument.
It saves a lot of trouble. Especially when you know that everyone “in your space” will not only agree with you but will broadcast your “truth” widely and immediately. To all of the usual echo chambers.
Kelly’s book is all-of-a-piece with Hillary Clinton’s recent post-deplorables Atlantic essay on the medicalisation of the underclass. It isn’t their fault! They are lonely! They need help! They need … us!
But we need to be alert to their tricks. Guilt by association, for example. Those who think the COVID State set out to dud us for their own evil ends are … flat earthers!
Once upon a time the questioners were accorded due respect. It kind of fitted with our enlightenment sensibilities. We sat up and took notice of truth-tellers. They shook our complacency.
We distrusted the “government”. We kind of knew they lied, they covered up, they ignored our rights when it suited them. Now this perfectly sensible position has become poison.
Weill’s book is a testimony to the fact that the “Hanlon’s razor” position – that stuff-ups explain bad policy and that governments and supra-national actors are simply stupid, never evil or conspiring to do us ill – is embedded across the political spectrum, and serves to shut down debates that urgently need to be engaged.
It defines out of existence the question that needs to be asked – why and how did this all happen?
WHACKO
By coming up with conspiracy theories that can be shown (or asserted) to be whacko, those who push this line can simply close down further debate.
Convenient, isn’t it? This merely serves the interests of the State and its corporate colleagues (paymasters?).
It shows us that there is a blue-pilled aristocracy still at the helm. Shaping narratives. Still covering up crimes and misdemeanours. And determined to embed the narrative. For the next assault on our freedom.
Kelly Weill is a foot soldier for the system that rules over us. It is astonishing that one so determined to nail those who will believe “anything” seems blissfully unaware that the real goons over the past three years are those who believe that:
- Governments always tell the truth;
- Big Pharma has our interests at heart;
- Experimental genetic drugs are really vaccines;
- Lockdowns work;
- Masks work;
- Dissident scientists are not to be trusted.
The people that “believe anything” are not the flat earthers nor are their presumed fellow travellers, but are the Kellies of this world.
They have believed the tropes of their ideological puppet masters, and they now look really dumb.
GK Chesterton once opined that those who give up belief in God don’t believe in nothing. Instead, they will believe anything.
Like all of us, conspiracy theorists get things right and wrong. Mostly what they said about COVID has turned out to be true. The uselessness and dangers of the vaccines. The evils of gain-of-function research. The lies of Big Pharma and Big Tech. The evils of State and corporate censorship. The abandonment of lockdown science. The abandonment of all science. And the rest. Conspiracy theorists 50, elites nil.
QUESTION
But if anyone raising his or her head above the parapet, daring to question “the official line”, typically at massive cost to his or her career, can be associated with flat earthers, well, job done.
Perhaps Kelly might devote her next book to real conspiracies. And real life.
Blue-pilled operatives like Kelly serve a purpose for their acolytes and adherents. They keep afloat the myths of their masters. They divert attention, the classic feint. Look at those lunatics! We are the sane ones. So long as no one looks too carefully at our arguments and claims.
The blue-pilled class is embedded and it is not about to give any ground to those of us who are awake to its evils.PC
Sir,
A perfect diagnosis and dissection of the blue-pilled brigade whose members themselves seem to walk around with their heads stuck up a very dark place. These people will never admit to being proven wrong no matter if the evidence is staring them in the face.
Their arrogance is unparalleled and opposing views not even remotely relevant to the debate. It makes me wonder what do the Kelly’s of this world actually see, when life as we knew it is literally crumbling around them.
As Rita describes the new left: They have traded logic and facts for delusion and neo-Marxist whackery.