Read an Interview with Me in Salon.com

6/21/2021

This week, the New York Times published a piece exposing the close connection between Tucker Carlson and the media elite, for whom he often serves a source, in an unspoken exchange that results in soft-pedaling coverage of Carlson’s conspiracy theories and extremist rhetoric. I spoke with Chauncey DeVega of Salon.com about Carlson’s fascination with UFOs and the close connection between radical UFO conspiracy theories and right-wing extremism. You can read my interview here.

18 Comments

kent

6/21/2021 05:36:24 pm

" A majority of Republicans apparently believe the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that it was somehow "stolen" from him and his followers by Joe Biden and the Democrats."

It's clear that that is actually true. Similarly if the votes in 1960 had been properly counted JFK would have lived a long life because Nixon would have been President.

"But at their core, many of these conspiracy theories revolve around ideas about the way things were in a semi-idealized past, whether that semi-idealized past was Donald Trump's presidency, the 1950s, the 19th century or some other period. These were times when white people were at the center of the historical narrative in America and the West."

I like the 60s and 70s. Every time in the past will be seen by WHITE SUPREMACY CONSPIRACY THEORISTS as an era of white supremacy. The Barak Obama administration will soon be seen as an era of white supremacy. This past Saturday, Juneteenth will be seen as a monument to white supremacy.

I'm sorry it has to be said again, but McCarthy was right. And sorry, but look at the Cambridge Five. And the two guys who bounced from NSA in the 50s or 60s also gave gays a black eye. Also the GCHQ cross dresser who was found zipped up in a travel bag in his bathtub.

"Until one of those space aliens decides to let us see a flying saucer and the aliens waving inside, we're going to have to go with the best evidence that we have and the preponderance of evidence and what it indicates."

Who exactly is the "US" here? Mr. Colavito describes something that many people testify has happened as if many people have not testified that it has happened.

Is this the scientific method?

Jim

6/22/2021 02:09:42 am

Many people have testified the world is flat too,,,, that don't make it so.

kent

6/22/2021 10:38:23 pm

Name one. The world being round has been known since the ancient Greeks.

Name one. and "Jim" doesn't count.

Jim

6/23/2021 08:12:46 pm

"Name one"

I don't have to, everyone reading this including yourself knows this to be true.

Kent

6/24/2021 01:28:05 pm

Gratuitously asserted, just as gratuitously denied.

Rhetoric, bizzitch!

Can't even name one. SMFH.

Major Tom

6/27/2021 10:57:44 am

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/flat-earthers-what-they-believe-and-why/

Darold knowles

6/22/2021 06:32:27 pm

Imagine what would happen if a Republican lost a presidential election because a liberal majority of the US Supreme Court stopped a state from administering its own election.

Kent

6/23/2021 11:24:12 pm

It's always ibteresting when the Supreme Court decides against the Constitution.

Are you self administering an intelligence test?

Darold knowles

6/24/2021 06:33:52 pm

We don’t have to imagine that a conservative majority of the US Supreme Court stopped the state of Florida from conducting its own election in 2000 and that it had the effect of handing the presidential election to a Republican while Democrats barely complained. So much for the sacred “states’ rights” that conservatives worship. And that’s not based on some Lyndon Larouche level conspiracy theory about the Richard Daley machine stuffing ballot boxes in Chicago or whatever the wacky claim is about 1960.

Not the Comte de Saint Germain

6/24/2021 06:58:29 pm

Mr. Knowles was clearly describing a hypothetical inversion of the Bush v. Gore decision. I'm happy to see you think Bush v. Gore was unconstitutional.

An Anonymous Nerd

6/25/2021 01:58:23 pm

There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. As is typical in US elections, some fraud slips through but not enough to sway the outcome. The big tipoff here is that Trump's Attorney General was constrained to admit this, and that Republican judges and election officials across the land have rejected the claims.

Here's a starting point, the Associated Press writeup:
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-election-claims-explained-805dd3de1c5e8f1a6a97a13bfec39d97

and here's a piece associated with the Hoover Institution -- a Conservative think tank.

https://www.hoover.org/research/no-evidence-voter-fraud-guide-statistical-claims-about-2020-election

Now you'll rarely see me link to the Hoover Institution but when a Conservative think tank is directly contradicting claims believed by most Conservatives, it's time to pay attention.

I know you won't believe this -- the delusion is powerful and your favorite Fringe celebrity has deemed it so. I post not for you but for others, because even common sense should be documented where possible.

Oh, as to many people believing in a flat earth? Here you go.

https://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html

Flat earthers, sadly, exist. And yeah there's probably "many" of them. Unfortunate but, probably, true.

-An Anonymous Nerd

E.P. Grondine

6/23/2021 03:07:02 pm

Hi Jason -

People believe what they want to believe.
They find other people who believe the same things they do.

The numbers for TRUMP believers are staqgering.

While you focus on that, do not ignore the advertisers who fund their delusions.
May I suggest to you numerical analysis of them, their actions, and their motives?

Perhaps it will all start to make sense if this approach is used.

Kent

6/23/2021 11:06:48 pm

Still waitin' to see ONE picture of ONE seven foot tall Indian.

Kent

6/25/2021 12:34:36 pm

I have to admit you've mastered the salon.com tone,

"People who believe in conspiracy theories are searching for a means to understand a complex and changing world in a simple way, one that flatters their own particular prejudices, particular beliefs and feelings that they should be the ones at the center of the historical narrative."

I call those people White Supremacy Conspiracy Theorists.

"QAnon reaches all the way from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" straight through to UFO conspiracy theories, and draws in the Satanic panic and related ideas"

I'm going to call anything I don't like "what became QAnon."

"the middle-class lifestyle of my generation's parents and grandparents simply does not exist anymore unless you have multiple incomes and the kind of education that requires enormous amounts of debt."

Or you could get a trade like HVAC or plumbing or driving a bus instead of being such a snob,

"The QAnon Shaman" is what my friends and I would call "a dewsh". If you want to give him brainspace that's your lookout or cookout,

Arnold Erickson link

6/25/2021 02:37:28 pm

The link between the right, UFOS, and Trump is interesting. Those who claim to fight the New World Order and aliens, but embrace Trump’s return have been somewhat of a mystery to me - who better personifies the New World Order than Trump?

Nevertheless, there are those like Mark Richards - who emerged with claims of being a captain in the Secret Space Program while serving a life term for the Pendragon murder in Marin County - and Kerry Cassidy (Project Camelot) have adopted QAnon conspiracies. Richards went from describing Trump as a danger, controlled by aliens - to agreeing with Cassidy that he is the reincarnation of Patton.

As you write, simply dismissing such claims as being ridiculous does not make the alliance with Q any less dangerous or fascinating. It seems to be part of a broader shift that I had not been following that closely.

https://www.spacecapn.com/research/kerry/

Mark

6/26/2021 06:25:43 pm

Excellent interview, Jason. A sophisticated analysis of the recurrence of conspiratorial thinking in populist times.

Roge

6/27/2021 10:53:53 pm

Maybe it was the marxists that started it all
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International_Posadist

Roge

Jack Tripp

6/30/2021 01:10:05 am

Salon that bastion of objective nonsense, lmao, you have no credibility either.

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Read an Interview with Me in Salon.com

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