I'm a former conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter. AMA

Title pretty much says it all. A quick back story about myself.

I used to be an advent conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter. In fact, you can see my pro Trump posts and some of my conspiracy theories on this forum. I used to believe in false flags, was skeptical of vaccines, and even lizard people to an extent.

I came out of the conspiracy theory movement a little before I stopped supporting Trump approximately two years ago. My journey towards reality started when I decided to pursue a career in law enforcement. One of the conspiracies I believed in was that Sandy Hook was a hoax. As I was going through the process of becoming law enforcement, I started to realize how ridiculous it is to believe that the same people sitting next to me were (a) willing to pull such an operation off and (b) keep everything a secret.

This led me down the path of asking myself "if I'm wrong about this, what else am I wrong about?" That path led me out of the conspiracy theory movement and led me to start questioning my political views. That's when I started to see what exactly I voted for back in 2016 and all the lies and misinformation I believed and defended.

 

I study conspiracy theorists and their use of language. Online conspiracy websites exist because they organize like chickens, insisting that arguing decides what is the truth, and not the truth itself. In doing so, they actually provide early warnings for when the crap is about to hit the fan. This is actually a cultural phenomena in English speaking countries, which all promote the ideas of common sense and conventional wisdom, when nobody has ever proved their existence anywhere in the world. Believe it or not, modern technology is causing the entire Japanese and white US and EU population to become more stupid and to die faster and reproduce less often. Its related to their immune and reproductive systems, but it means our cultures must change radically within the near future, or become minorities. Among other things, my work can be used to automate ways to save them from themselves, if they wish.

 

I have no doubt that there are conspiracies--the most successful of which we'll never know about. Some, however, are more plausible than others. Lizard people are always suspect. That's not to say there are no lizard people--only to say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and lizard people are quite extraordinary. Then there are the Jewish financiers setting off forest fires from outer space. That could happen, but it seems intuitively unlikely. And George Soros can't be behind everything that rightwingers think is bad. He's not God, you know, even if he is Jewish.
As for all those Democrat Satanist pedophiles eating the flesh and drinking the blood of children kept in the basements of Pizza parlors--too much like the stories the Romans used to tell about Christians and the Christians used to tell about Jews. I was glad to see the poor guy on CNN admit to Anderson Cooper that he no longer thinks Anderson is devouring kids. That's progress! There's hope!

Now if you want a real conspiracy, take what happened on January 6. Right wing groups were talking about it for months beforehand on social media. Right here on HF, our own Cybernator was telling us it was gonna be huge, and Trump was promising on Twitter it would be "wild". Trump, before the election, said that if he didn't win, the election would have to have been rigged. Then we have the record of Giuliani going to one court after another to attack the election without credible evidence.. At least 86 judges across the political spectrum rejected his claims. Then 106 of the 196 Republican members of Congress signed on to an amicus brief supporting the crazy Texas lawsuit challenging electoral votes, which the Republican-majority Supreme Court rejected. And 147 of our Republican lawmakers voted against accepting the electors' votes, without any evidentiary basis, thus asserting the right of Congress to overturn a U.S. election. Meanwhile, Trump and his co-conspirators put pressure on election officials to ignore their oaths of office and refuse to certify election results that didn't show Trump the winner. And we have the tape of Trump himself trying to pressure the Georgia's election chief to find him votes. When Trump finally rallied his army of crazies to march on the Capitol, they were carrying out a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And will anything happen to them? Stay tuned, but as conspiracies go, this one lacks the pizzazz of lizard people, Jews from Outer Space, and Satanist pedophile cannibals. It's all so --normal!

 

nice. I used to be really prejudiced - about lots and lots things, not just race but pretty much any demographic data, like socio-economic stuff. I was suspicious of anything that was sub-par in my opinion. And I was also sick - I live with schizophrenia, which is medicated now and manageable and all but unnoticeable, really.

Anyway... at some point I realized that I was unhappy. I had theories and all of this just garbage and I couldn't look at people or communicate with certain people. I was sort of trying my hand at being my own entitled version of elitist; I wanted so little to do with people who were less fortunate that I really started to hate even myself and where I was going and from, and couldn't really function. I just hated everything.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that at some point I had rejected my faith and upbringing out of convenience. I was not gung ho born-again ready to assimilate or integrate into anything at all, but I saw what had actually happened and I knew that my trajectory was off. So I decided to turn the page.

Lots of stuff has changed since then... It's just a blur, but my schizophrenia is worlds better. Anyway, it's nice to share with you that I came to some positive conclusions.

 

I was a trump supporter I so wanted him to be not politics as usual and he was BUT in the EXTREME wrong way dammit. I read about the lizard people well over a decade ago , illuminati , etc ehhh meh and neh

 

Somewhat late in the day, matey, but welcome to the politics of reason !!!

 

Well on the politics forum we have been trying to keep conspiracy theories out for some years even before the Politics Forum Guidelines were first posted in 2007 (at a time when the forum seemed to be under assault by some conspiracy nuts)

I’ve always seen political conspiracy theories as undermining of any real political debate because they are about shutting down debate, by shovelling so much shit on real debate that people just give up contributing – that is what the conspiracy nuts tried to do back in 2007 and why we worked to stop it.

I think we made the right choice

 

Thanks Mac for opening up.

The thing is that we can't send all conspiracy belevers on the same jouney as Mac and he was able to get out by coming out of that bubble many are stuck inside and will never come out.

 

Tish

The thing is there are conspiracy theories and there are conspiracy theories.

There are those that are based on logical conclusions but lacking evidence at the time. Such as the belief that US governments and the FBI/CIA were secretly trying to undermine and bring down civil rights and left wing groups in the US and left leaning governments aboard which were called conspiracy theories by right wingers at the time but later after research turned out to be true. However by then right wingers just shrugged said who cares that was in the past - let’s move on.

Theories that are validated become dismissed as history the righteous indignation fades and dies

And then there are those theories based on irrational feeling and beliefs such as the idea that the US government and society was filled with communist infiltrators that spawned McCarthyism and the un American committees which all evidence then and later turns out was fiction (but is still believed to be true by many Americans even today).

The thing is that if you base your ideas on feelings and never go looking to see if the views generated by those feelings are validated then you can always feel they are true even if not and the righteous indignation burns brightly forever.

 

Forty percent of the country is demanding Donald Duck be made a dictator, making distinguishing politics from a lynch mob difficult, and reality stranger than anyone's conspiracy theories.

 

Let us look at gun issues as an example of how steps can be taken toward people believing in things that outsiders see as fantastical –

The exaggeration - the belief pushed by some gun advocates and believed by many gun owners that all left wingers and Democrats want to ban all guns – take away all guns and forbid all gun ownership and that all gun control is aimed at bringing that about. Anyone who’s been in a gun issue thread know that this idea has to be corrected many times.

The half-truth – that those that want gun control use school shootings and gun massacres to push their agenda – well that is true but half true– because the accusation seems to imply that such people don’t push for gun control at other times, I’ve literally been in gun issue threads that have gone on for years, gun control people use such incidence as examples as to why gun control is needed (edit They want to try and stop them from happening).

The conspiracy theory – take the first two and you can see how it can be manipulated into the belief that school shootings and gun massacres are made up (or organised) by lefties and Democrats to help them push their agenda to take away all guns.

 

A quarter of Americans insist the sun revolves around the earth, while a strong majority believe in common sense and conventional wisdom, which have never been proven to exist anywhere in the world. Begging the question as to when to call common sense a conspiracy theory.

 

The examples you cite are evidence of one thing for sure ................... MASSIVE gullibility. Lizard people and infant-eating cannibals ........... are you shittin' me??? These people need to be LOCKED UP in rubber rooms!!!!

And as for what Trump said and did - since he was a spotlight HOG .......... everything is on VIDEO and AUDIO TAPE. Proof positive, irrefutable evidence that CANNOT be disputed - even by the crazies.

 

Never underestimate the ability of a Retrumplican to deny reality, especially when it's politically advantageous!

 

I’ve read a number of books over the years which espoused various conspiracy theories from the JFK assassination, to RFK, to the Martin Luther King Jr assassination by James Earl Ray.

I ultimately came to the conclusion that each was killed by a lone gunman despite numerous inconsistencies and some bizarre coincidences..

Being of African American decent the King assassination was the toughest conspiracy to overcome, because we know the FBI waged a campaign to discredit King by bugging and taping his private and personal conversations,
paying informants to spy on him, and the FBI sent him a letter suggesting he should kill himself.because of his extramarital affairs – after the letter was sent he was assassinated by James Earl Ray.

 

Whether you believe conspiracy theories or not, they can fuck with your head and make you distrust any source of information. The problem is, even academia is rapidly proving to be an unreliable source of information, with their own studies indicating they are avoiding addressing mortality figures in particular, because they don't favor academics.

 

You’re missing the point, again.

In each case I came to the sound conclusion that there was no conspiracy.

Even in the case of Martin Luther King Jr. with its strong racial and emotional ties, I reached the only conclusion possible.

 

You miss the point that Fox News is legally entertainment, and owns the rights to "A People's History of the US". All the crap academia has fed you is about to come under fire, and I do mean a raging forest fire. Their own computers are telling them they are killing themselves and their own students. The neurological and sociological evidence alone prove that classic logic is crap, and we require networking systems logic that are anathema in the hallowed halls, which are about as objective as Wall Street. Western civilization is based on common sense and conventional wisdom, which are both bullshit, flat out lies that don't exist, and the lies are killing the workaholic populations of Japan and the white US and EU. Their own immune systems are making them more racist, as a way to save what it can of their genome, and increasing their rates of rape.

The truth shall set yea free, but nobody ever said the truth wasn't sometimes as ugly and brutally honest as it gets.