Eighteen percent believe there is “a covert government effort” for the pop icon to help President Biden win re-election, according to a Monmouth University survey.
Public Policy Polling’s recent poll on conspiracy theories mostly showed up on my Facebook feed as “Four percent of Americans believe lizardmen are running the Earth”.
(of note, an additional 7% of Americans are “not sure” whether lizardmen are running the Earth or not.)
I think the results here can be explained by Lizardman’s constant and an additional few respondents who interpreted the question to mean “Do you support Trump?” and then gave the answer that corresponded to supporting Trump.
Regardless of the nuance, when 20% of people - let’s be conservative and say 10% even - translates into tens of millions of people, it normalizes very odd, if somewhat tamer, theories and ideas.
This is a cornerstone of rightwing thinking and spreading conspiracies. Qanon says “there is a secret democrat soros-clinton pedo ring and they all talk about it in code via emails. That’s why the Clinton emails/server are so important.” Then Breitbart says “liberals protect pedophiles and are corrupt with their emails and servers.” Then Fox News says “Are liberals protecting pedophiles? Who can say. But this Clinton lady and her emails/servers are very corrupt and that’s bad for America. We’re just here asking questions and protecting the country.”
Each version is more diluted so as to be more palatable to less and less extreme audiences. But it’s a foot in the door. Because now someone has an opinion about pedophiles that is clearly laid out as one party’s issue, so they are now receptive to things like “Biden is inappropriate with children.” While further up the extremism ladder (or down the spiral, depending on your preferred analogy) they’re already saying he’s single-handedly running pedo camps or whatever insane idea they have that week.
Big problem is that these fucking idiots who come up with these theories used to not have this practically unlimited reach the internet and particularly viral social media gives them.
And these stupid fucking ideas are really contagious among stupid people who have a chip on their shoulder and wanna have some sorta inside information that makes them feel in some way superior to others. That’s QAnon in a nutshell as well.
Prior to all this social media bullshit there’d be enclaves of these dummies spotted around but they couldn’t organize and breed like this.
I think for a lot of folks it’s also the idea that there is a neat, identifiable cause of all their problems that falls under easy to tap in to prejudices. They don’t want to accept that sometimes bad things just happen or maybe the people they vote for/believe in aren’t doing everything they can to help them. It has to be someone putting their thumb on the scale. And dammit, Trump is going to stop that person!
Lizardman’s constant is 4%
I think the results here can be explained by Lizardman’s constant and an additional few respondents who interpreted the question to mean “Do you support Trump?” and then gave the answer that corresponded to supporting Trump.
Regardless of the nuance, when 20% of people - let’s be conservative and say 10% even - translates into tens of millions of people, it normalizes very odd, if somewhat tamer, theories and ideas.
This is a cornerstone of rightwing thinking and spreading conspiracies. Qanon says “there is a secret democrat soros-clinton pedo ring and they all talk about it in code via emails. That’s why the Clinton emails/server are so important.” Then Breitbart says “liberals protect pedophiles and are corrupt with their emails and servers.” Then Fox News says “Are liberals protecting pedophiles? Who can say. But this Clinton lady and her emails/servers are very corrupt and that’s bad for America. We’re just here asking questions and protecting the country.”
Each version is more diluted so as to be more palatable to less and less extreme audiences. But it’s a foot in the door. Because now someone has an opinion about pedophiles that is clearly laid out as one party’s issue, so they are now receptive to things like “Biden is inappropriate with children.” While further up the extremism ladder (or down the spiral, depending on your preferred analogy) they’re already saying he’s single-handedly running pedo camps or whatever insane idea they have that week.
It’s just the same crap over and over again.
Big problem is that these fucking idiots who come up with these theories used to not have this practically unlimited reach the internet and particularly viral social media gives them.
And these stupid fucking ideas are really contagious among stupid people who have a chip on their shoulder and wanna have some sorta inside information that makes them feel in some way superior to others. That’s QAnon in a nutshell as well.
Prior to all this social media bullshit there’d be enclaves of these dummies spotted around but they couldn’t organize and breed like this.
I think for a lot of folks it’s also the idea that there is a neat, identifiable cause of all their problems that falls under easy to tap in to prejudices. They don’t want to accept that sometimes bad things just happen or maybe the people they vote for/believe in aren’t doing everything they can to help them. It has to be someone putting their thumb on the scale. And dammit, Trump is going to stop that person!
I like how he didn’t stop shit (drain the swamp) whatsoever and that’s not a topic of discussion with those people.
So crazy that anybody could revere that guy. He’s all the worst aspects of humanity wrapped into a single person.
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