There were and are so many dumb and incorrect conspiracy theories that I think it's understandable that people would outright dismiss them, even if there was a real conspiracy.

Take the deep state. Sure, you can say that there absolutely is a deep state of oligarchs influencing/controlling governments. But if you read about that topic on conspiracy forums, you'll quickly find it getting entangled in bullshit like Pizzagate or QAnon. They said Donald Trump would be the one to finally "expose the deep state", which is just laughable. On the same forums you'll find stuff like "flat earth". So why would anyone use those places as sources of trustworthy information?

Because too many people thought they benefited from the status quo.

The vast VAST majority of the world believes some kind of invisible man lives in the sky and controls everything. These people spend hours each week going to book clubs to not even have discussion just blindly listen to someone read the fanfiction.

You bet your fucking ass they fall for this shit.

western governments only care about what’s best for the oligarchy?

Western, and Eastern, and Northern, and Southern. Historically the majority of Governments across human history care entirely or primarily about what's best for the oligarchy.

People are distracted with their treats. The economic crisis has forced people to actually care.

At one point in time, communists were branded as conspiracy theorists when they called liberal democracies as oligarchies masqueraded as democracies, nowadays it's pretty clear they were correct. Really all these truths that have "come to light" recently are topics that have been studied by communists since at least the early 20th century.

Change doesn't happen smoothly, instead there is quantitative buildup before a qualitative leap. Marxist-Leninists have been correct for a long time, but simply being correct does not mean everyone will agree with you. What's happening now is a destruction of capitalist cultural hegemony due to the heightened contradiction between socialization of global labor and privatization of profits into the hands of the few.

Historically, the imperial core has been able to bribe a large section of the working classes inside the core with the spoils of imperialism (though ethnic minorities and other marginalized groups are often excluded from this). Social democracy in Europe, and the "American Dream," both of which are built on the backs of the global south. However, this system is weakening as the global south is escaping underdevelopment. This means increased austerity measures inside the imperial core to protect imperialist profit margins.

Overall, there is a tendency for the rate of profit to fall, which was mathematically proven by Karl Marx. Imperialism answers this by raising absolute profits, creating the spoils of imperialism by which to bribe sections of the working classes into not organizing for revolution. Imperialism aligns the interests of the working classes in the imperial core more with that of imperialists than the global proletariat, which is why revolution happens in the global south. As the rate of profit continues to fall, though, and there are no new markets to enter, imperialists kick off increased war to try to force open foreign markets, like Venezuela, Iran, and soon to be Cuba (most likely).

The silver lining is that the interests of the working classes in the imperial core are now aligning more with the global south, causing a spike in opposition to the brutal status quo. The only way forward for the world is global socialism, and the only future for the US Empire is dissolution and replacement with socialism. Else we end up with barbarism.

Get organized! Read theory! If you want a place to start with theory, I made a basic Marxist-Leninist study guide you can use if you want.

So back when Snowden told everyone that the u.s government had mass surveillance on the people there wasn't very much outrage.

And I remember a discussion on reddit I posted. I asked if because this idea of "the government is spying on me" has long been associated with cooky crazy paranoid people, that when we learned it actually was all true, that we still were reluctant to engage with it because of its ties to being a paranoid crazy person.

A few people commented but not much could be determined because there is no research on this.

But I speculated that people are apprehensive about engaging in proven conspiracy theories because of the association with conspiracy theories and personality traits that are less socially acceptable (only nut jobs talk about conspiracy theories).

Most people will only engage with the topic once it has become socially acceptable to do so.

How such a topic moves from "only cooky people talk about it" to "everyone talks about it" is not clear. But possibly it is the result of enough people with pull talking about it enough to encourage others.

What are your thoughts on this ?

We left the US when I was 8 years old and god I’m so glad about it. The US has always been like this but at least used to invent bullshit reasons like democracy, freedom and WMDs but nowadays this is more like a sidenote. I think a lot of this just sounded too crazy to acknowledge that it’s actually real.

People have different levels for what they consider that other "people realized the truth". Many communities are full of people that know the truth and when they act to change things get knocked down.

As the Saint George Carlin once said “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

There are a lot of really, really stupid people out there. Poverty, stress, hunger, etc make people even more dumber.

@MindfulMaverick@piefed.zip @asklemmy@lemmy.ml

Humans are normally busy with all sorts of things that make them busy: working, dealing with social duties, etc. When they get some time free, they're too exhausted to do their own research (that is, if they know how to do research, which most humans don't), so they turn on the television (or their favourite YouTube channel) and listen to whatever the simulacrum says:

...when the radio came, and I suppose now television, anything that came through that new machine was believed. (Orson Welles)

Therefore, being able to read conspiracy theories as deeply as possible, being able to do one's own research, being able to spend nights on books and articles, it requires one to be unemployed or, at best, having some kind of job that doesn't drain them mentally and allows for flexible time.

Also, there's this "Boy crying wolf" dilemma when it comes to conspiracy theories: the same places where one can discover about Bilderberg Meetings before they became officially disclosed annual event, is the same place swearing that the Earth is some kind of DVD disc ruled by extraterrestrial lizards. I used to be an avid participant of conspiracy theory communities (not 4chan, but Orkut and Telegram communities) and a conspiracy theorist myself, but these nonsensical theories were part of the reason why I departed both from conspiracy theory communities, and from christianity as well, as I began to realize how "satanic panic" was christian bigotry.

For most people, the busy and vampiric mundane life, alongside the perception of "craziness" when it comes to conspiracy theories, contributed to this boiling frog phenomenon.

But, yeah, lots of conspiracies, once theories, became fulfilled, and became integrated into the normalcy.

Maybe "ignorance is a bliss" (Cypher, The Matrix), and not knowing what will happen beforehand gives one the necessary delusions to keep their biological existence going.

Unfortunately, this is no longer my case for more than a decade. And now, with the once-conspiratorial internet ID ("age check", now extended to OSes so, essentially, "internet ID") helped cemented my long-standing hopelessnes... Because, now, as someone who departed from Christianity into the very opposite belief (devoted to The Dark Mother Goddess), but still surrounded by mostly christian people (and this includes potential employers, buyers and merchants), the slightest leak (purposeful and whatnot) of my real legal identity tied to my openly, mostly-occultist online activity will further cement my social ostracisation (being refused from jobs because the employers will see my online activity tied to my age check and argue that I "worship the devil" or something). But, yeah, "nothing to hide, nothing to fear", people say...

Let me nutshell this, since I know in crisis news cycles people are not keen on reading paragraphs that are not accompanied by explosion maps (rightfully): The main threat to Israel is people recognizing the financial layout of U.S. imperialism. They benefit from being framed as the primary threat, and their propaganda is structured around demonizing themselves.

Israel is more or less a country made by the CIA. They do not control the CIA, although many of them likely believe they do. This is a useful tool to get them to risk things like getting blown up by Iranian missiles, which only the stupidest, Camaro-seeking Americans will do ordinarily and not for their entire lives.

Well the Americans are now turning their systematic rape of the world into a partisan corruption scandal (shouldn't need to clarify they have never done anything about these other than talk about them). That should explain a lot of what you see on social media. The Israel Lobby story is such a Kosher explanation for imperialism that I even saw Chapo Trap House orbiters (think Bernie Sanders but he smokes hella weeeed man) talking about how they need to "go back through American history" (by which they presumably meant the 20th century lol) and "check for Zionist influence on foreign policy" in every event. Qatar's Al Jazeera is a huge supporter of Zionism despite their selective posting of dead children for demoralization purposes, and they codified this story in people's minds with their U.K. Israel lobby doc. TUCKER CARLSON AND MARCO RUBIO ARE NOW PUSHING THE ISRAEL LOBBY EXPLANATION OF THEIR OWN ACTIONS! 😭 What are people fucking babies? Come on! These people lie to you! Christ almighty

Israel is obviously the spearhead of imperialism in MENA, has distant financial leverage, and provides critical military leverage over the gulf monarchies and, well, they tried to have it over Iran. Like the third reich and rhodesia before them, they get what people correctly identify as "special white supremacy privileges" under the US. Losing them will be a tremendous blow. Still, we have some serious problems to deal with after Israel. Singapore/Australia/Japan, Western Europe particularly France/Germany/Belgium/Netherlands/U.K., Scandinavia.

I'm not being negative here I swear, it is much easier to explain the difference between Zionist Corruption theory and Imperialist Triad Theory when they are infatuated with the former. Many westerners will not budge on it though because they cannot accept

• they benefit from imperialism even if there are profound negatives

• foreign policy is driven by ruling class interest, not "national interest" a la John Mearsheimer

I mean the current administration rode on a wave of conspiracy types os im not sure the conspiracies have been vindicated. Sorta feels the opposite in some ways. It was like there was integrity and limits then it was like well they at least wanted to appear to have integrity and now we are at nothing matters so why even pretend.

Did things really have to get this obvious before people finally realized that western governments only care about what’s best for the oligarchy?

You think people have actually realised this?

The system has the newspaper barons onside.