Badham, V. 2021. QAnon and on: A short and shocking history of internet conspiracy cults. Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, 469p.1 I cannot remember where I heard about this book initially, but…
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After the US mid-term elections, I wrote a piece about some astonishing data from the University of Michigan in which 94% of voters (presumably mostly educated young students) at the…
The emotional appeal of a conspiracy theory is in its simplicity. It explains away complex phenomena, accounts for chance and accidents, offers the believer the satisfying sense of having special, privileged access to the truth. For those who become the one-party state’s gatekeepers, the repetition of these conspiracy theories also brings another reward: power.
Every year, up until recently (I thought), the RWNJs from places like the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and the Murdoch gutter media have maintained that there is a war…
The Murdoch pretend journalist Adam Creighton has tweeted the following “‘My mask protects you, your mask protects me’. The most embarrassing, unscientific slogan of the pandemic?”1 There were numerous replies…
The idiotic Adam Creighton, who has seemingly been banished from Australia to the US by his Murdoch bosses, put out a Tweet stating: “’Guess which developed country had the lowest…
The industry that has sprung up around the hatred of Meghan Markle is an extraordinary development and I wonder where it has come from. Since assorted RWNJs whined that they…
Under the influence of great fear, almost everybody becomes superstitious. Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity towards those who are not regarded as members of the herd. Fear generates impulses of cruelty, and therefore promotes such superstitious beliefs as seem to justify cruelty. Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
A funny thing happened on the social media site, Mastodon. Someone made a comment about the name of the site and illustrated not a Mastodon, but a Mammoth. This was…