(Part 2) Top products from r/conspiratard

If America is becoming more like a dystopian novel, I think it would be Gary Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story."

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0812977866

"Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Conspiracist Underground" by Jonathan Kay is pretty great. It tries to understand conspiracy theorists' motivations and reasons for thinking the way they do in a non-mocking way, as many of them (9/11 truthers in particular) are actually pretty intelligent and patriotic, wishing for the rule of law to prevail over whoever they believe really did 9/11.

http://www.amazon.com/Among-Truthers-Cognitive-Underworld-American/dp/0062004816

Also: "The Great Derangement: War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire" by Matt Taibbi has a section about his time immersed in the 9/11 truther movement, followed by a pretty biting and hilarious analysis of the fundamental logical failures that underpin all 9/11 conspiracy thinking.

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Great-Derangement-Terrifying-Politics/dp/0385520344

There's a lot of historical context in the subject of mind control of the masses you could get up speed with;

It started in 1896 by Gustav Le Bon with, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind from there we have Walter Lippman's Public Opinion. Those two works formed the underpinnings of the pioneers that followed.

Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, drew from his uncle, Lippman, and Le Bon building a public relations and advertising empire eventually hired by the US government as a consultant in areas of propaganda and public opinion "massaging". Edward Bernays' work and monumental effect on 20th century advertising and propaganda is brilliantly covered in Adam Curtis' BBC documentary, The Century of the Self.

America's own Noam Chomsky goes in great depth in public opinion control in his book Manufacturing Consent: The Political economy of the Mass Media. His book and historical background is covered in an extensive interview with Chomsky about the subject.

There is no evidence. Podesta mentions pizza in like 3 emails and everyone flips out and over analyzes everything to piece together stuff that isn't there.

"But that picture is weird" Doesn't mean its a child sex ring.

"But they are gay lovers" Oh so being gay = child sex ring?

"They are business partners!" So anyone you have ever been business partners with or worked for/with suddenly shares your same sexual preference and helps develop an underground child sex trafficking ring?

"This artist is a whack job. Just look at her art" Yup she is nuts....oh this is also evidence for child sex...it's exhausting.

This is how every single conspiracy theory works. You grab a couple "facts" interject your own opinion which can change the context of those "facts" tie it loosely to other "facts" pose a question "Isn't it odd that x is related to x?" Let the audience feel like they have been apart of discovering this complicated theory.

If your interested this is a fantastic book a couple people from this forum have talked about it before too I think.

https://www.amazon.com/VOODOO-HISTORIES-CONSPIRACY-SHAPING-HISTORY/dp/0224074709

Another thread about debunking:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebunkThis/comments/5dqwta/debunk_this_pizzagate/

Based on this book I believe. Dear white people

Philip DeFranco did a piece on it that I thought was pretty good.

Here's a great book of primary sources on the topic http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312133936/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

It was a great book.

The "Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy" is the next set of three, and "Masks of the Illuminati" is the final book in that set.

http://www.amazon.com/Schrodingers-Trilogy-Robert-Anton-Wilson/dp/0440500702/ref=pd_sim_b_1

It might just be me that looks at them as one big set like that.

"Why haven't I heard about them?"

Well, Bob isn't doing as much publicity as he used to.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0385334966?pc_redir=1411972918&robot_redir=1 I've been wanting to read this, it seem interesting

I don't have any off the top of my head, but I own (have yet to do any substantial reading of) a book called Fight Club Politics that goes back to pre-Lewinsky era Gingrich and talks about how this poison has been seeping through Congress for a long time. There's also a similar book called It's Even Worse Than It Looks which I haven't read, but I'm lead to understand (by reviews and, among other things, the title) that despite the American electorate believing collectively that on some level all of this is just political theater, that this is actually really really bad partisanship.

Those might not be exactly what you're looking for, but they're surely in the right vein. The other thing when it comes to Obama to remember is that he's black. I'm not saying that everyone who opposes him is an old-fashioned, biological racist. Many are what's referred to sometimes in microaggression theory as "symbolic" racists (whereas when conservatives accuse liberals of being "the real racists" they're accusing them of being "aversive" racists. It's a different thing).

When Obama got elected, he ran on a platform of "hope and change". I think this scared a lot of white people, because for white people, they don't need much hope and they don't want change because things have been going pretty well for them. If you don't recall (I'm not sure how old you are), the rhetoric coming from the right was not far off the shaking in the boots that we're seeing Linsey Graham doing now over ISIS. Obama was going to come for your guns, and then give all your money to the (lazy) black people, and that's based on socialism. Etc. etc. etc... Worse, socialism takes away FREEDOM and, in modern practices has involved DICTATORS, which is likely how people came to a lot of these crazy conclusions.

I'm not sure exactly where in the last 25 or so years--I'm sure it talks about in the books that I mentioned--the word liberal became this weird pejorative. It's funny to me, because I'm a dyed-in-the-wool lefty so I'm proud to call myself liberal and progressive, but whenever someone starts saying "The liberals" or better yet "those libs", I know they're about to spout some baller-level ignorance. My point is, somehow liberals became un-American to the true patriots.

In fact, watch Jon Stewart's clip from last week ripping Fox News for the latte-salute while followed immediately by the awful boobs-on-the-ground joke. "Fuck your false patriotism" he says. It's pretty powerful, and he doesn't pull any punches.

So yeah, I'm sure someone has done better research on it than me, but combine all those toxic elements and you've got the people convinced that Obama is the Antchrist.

One of the cycling official reasons, yes. For a less jingoistic understanding of US foreign policy, I might suggest The Grand Chessboard by Brzezinski and Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky and Herman. In short, the US would never mobilize its considerable war power at such cost just out of pure, altruistic desire to topple a dictator. No doubt you're aware of the many dictators the US has installed and supported over the years.

Synopsis for the lazy. Amazon has it for ~13$...also can get it on the kindle!

Is that the book?

http://www.amazon.com/American-Terrorist-Timothy-McVeigh-Oklahoma/dp/0060394072

Here ya go.

But if you really have to

>Open up your eyes. Then you'll realize they want Genocide.

>Tell em' once again. No-ones trying to blend out the Africans.

>Africa for the Africans, Asia for the Asians, White countries for Everyone.

>There's no place in modern Europe, no chance for ethnic purity.

>No-one ever says this, bout' African or Asian countries.

>There is no justification.

>Open up your eyes, then you'll realize they want genocide. Anti-Racist is a code-word for Anti-White.

>Tell em' once again, no-ones trying to blend out the Africans.

>Anti-Racist is a code-word for Anti-White.

I've just sent you a link that there were ample reasons to go to Iraq way before 9/11.

About WMDs:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Bomb-My-Garden-Mastermind/dp/0471741272

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_chemical_attack

On your second point, Saddam did sponsor international terrorism, but his connections to al.qaeda aren't well established, as far as I know.

http://www.cfr.org/iraq/terrorism-havens-iraq/p9513

Of course, this book is actually part of the conspiracy for some people.

This is like the #1 thing about conspiracy theorists that drives me up a fucking wall: so many of these theories are born from inaccurate reporting... a totally understood (though not excusable) side effect of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. Books have been written about it. But this seems to be the only time conspiracy theorists will actually trust or even pay the slightest bit of mind to the mainstream media. Once media outlets have had sufficient time to sift through the stories and align the facts, they've somehow become untrustworthy. Apparently they only report the truth within those chaotic first minutes of a disaster. I guess that's before the NWO/Illuminati can get to them (they really need to start calling in these things in advance).

I read the book Ghost Wars: A History of the CIA in Afghanistan from 1979 to 2001. I never was more than 'maybe' on 9/11 being a conspiracy, but reading this and having the endless footnotes killed all doubt. Plus it has the answers he's clearly looking for. And its a damn good story

> False. The term conspiracy theory is dated back as far as 1871, the CIA didn't exist until the 1940s. It was initially a neutral term but is now predominantly used as a perjorative to describe people that reject anything form 'the establishment' in favour of their own, often overly simplistic and grandiose explanations for current affairs.

Thanks, you're right. From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Usage_history

According to this book, it didn't enter the everyday political lexicon until 1964, and was introduced to criticize those that doubted the warren commission report: http://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Theory-America-Discovering/dp/0292743793/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376298654&sr=8-1&keywords=conspiracy+theory+in+America

You don't have to be a conspiracist to have a self-aggrandising attitude or accuse others of being deficient in some way. I've been called an idiot, stubborn, and crazy multiple times in this subreddit. I've had someone tell me they're here to repair my critical thinking skills. I've had someone ask me if this is "critical thinking amateur hour." I've had someone tell me I need to take a "critical reading" class.

I guess you can always read that implication into what I'm saying, but I don't intend it. I get frustrated, sometimes I sound more preachy than I mean to, and the internet always distorts interpreting what other people say. But here's something I actually said earlier about critical thinking and this subreddit:

"I'm not saying everyone here has to agree that 9/11 was an inside job, I would just hope that a subreddit dedicated to critical thinking would be capable of taking that possibility seriously. Which, as it happens, entails skepticism towards the official conspiracy theory as well as likely disinformation candidates, such as the "a missile hit the Pentagon" theory."

What do you make of this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein#.22Conspiracy_Theories.22_and_government_infiltration

It seems like the 2008-2012 head of the office of information and regulatory affairs recognizes that the government has an interest in dispelling conspiracy theories, and also recognizes that for that effort to be taken seriously, it has to look like it's not the establishment doing that.

I think it's also possible that a program like this would pay people to spread false conspiracy theories. You're absolutely right that those discredit conspiracy theory in general. But that doesn't imply the government has no hand in that - they still have an interest in doing so. It also doesn't imply that conspiracy theory in general is an ill-fated enterprise - they wouldn't do something like this if it were.

As for the burden of proof, it only falls more heavily on me if you apply a double standard to the official story which does not recognize it as a conspiracy theory (that al-qaeda acted alone to cause 9/11). What I have tried to do here is present evidence that "inside job" can explain, but the official story can't.