The text of a talk given at Occupy Wellington, New Zealand, on October 27 2011. Around 55 people attended the talk, organised to try to counter the prevalence of conspiracy theories amongst the local wing of the Occupy movement.
Kia ora kotou, thanks everyone for coming. Firstly, a brief run-down of how this workshop will work: first, I’m going to give a brief talk, followed by an open discussion which anyone can contribute to. I also want to make it clear that I’m not here today to debunk or debate any specific conspiracy theory. I’ve got no interest in doing that, I don’t think its particularly productive. What I want to be doing is talking about the title of the workshop is – why our activism must be based in reality. So we’ll be talking about the whole conspiracy world-view, we’ll be talking about what I think is a much better alternative to that, but I’m not going to sit here and argue with you over whether the Government is secretly poisoning us from the skies, or whether shape-shifting reptilian lizards are controlling our lives, or whether or not you can cure cancer with baking soda.
First up, who am I? For those of you who don’t know me my name is Asher, I’m born and bred in Wellington, though I have also spent a few years recently living in Christchurch. I’ve been involved in activism and radical politics for around about 7 years, in a variety of different campaigns and struggles.
If we’re going to talk about conspiracy theories, the first important question is obvious: what is a conspiracy theory?
Now, if you go by a dictionary definition, a conspiracy is just a group of people who get together to plan something, and don’t tell others about it. If I’m organising a surprise birthday party for my friend, then I am conspiring with others. But that’s not a particularly useful definition for the purposes of a discussion like this.
So, for this discussion, the way I’m defining a conspiracy theory is thus: a conspiracy theory is a theory based in supposition, one that flies in the face of evidence or science, often one that claims its correctness can be shown by the paucity of evidence in favour of it, in the sense that ‘this conspiracy goes so far that they’ve even buried all the evidence that proves it!’ Conspiracy theories often encourages an ‘us few enlightened folk versus everyone else’ world view. This creates an atmosphere where conspiracy theorists look down on people, or sheeple as they are often called, and ignores the fact that people, by and large, are actually pretty intelligent. In and of itself this world-view is hugely problematic for as I will discuss later, mass social change requires the participation of the masses and therefore, we have to have faith in the ability of people to decide things for themselves, to come to correct conclusions and ultimately to change the world.
Why am I interested in conspiracy theories, or at least arguing against them? Firstly, because I’m passionate about science and rationality, and I find it fascinating how and when these things are ignored.
Secondly, because I’m Jewish, and many conspiracy theories are antisemitic – whether directly and obviously (eg: Jews run the world, or the media, or the banks). Sometimes its more subtle – people might not talk about Jews explicitly but they may use Zionist as a code word, or talk about the Rothschilds, or an elite cabal of shadowy bankers who all coincidentally have Jewish surnames.
Lastly, I’m interested in conspiracy theories because I want radical social change, and to have radical social change, we need to have an understanding of how society actually works.
We are here at Occupy because we want to see change. What we want differs: some want new regulations on the financial sector, others want to change taxes or the minimum wage, while others still want to destroy capitalism and bring in a new form of production and distribution. Regardless of which of these boxes you fit in, if you fit in any of them at all, we all want change.
We’re also here because we know we can’t simply rely on Government to benevolently grant us the changes we desire. If we believed that, we’d sit at home and wait for the Government to give us these gifts. We’re here because we know that those with power won’t give it up lightly, and that it is only through our collective strength that we can win reforms, or create revolution.
But what do I mean when I say ‘our collective strength’? I think it’s important to clarify who is contained within the word ‘our’. While people involved in the Occupy movements around the globe frequently refer to it as the 99%, I actually think that’s a really imprecise term. So, instead, I refer to the working class. When they hear the term working class, some people think simply of male factory workers, but this is not what I mean. The working class is not limited to blue collar workers in factories, but instead it includes all of us who are forced to sell our labour power to survive. This includes people who are in paid employment, whether in a factory, office, café or retail store. It also includes those who are unable to find paid employment, or have chosen to refuse the drudgery of paid work in order to attempt to live on the meagre benefits supplied by the state, and who provide a vast potential pool of labour that enables the ruling class to further keep wages down. The working class includes stay at home parents, doing vital unpaid work to raise the next generation of human beings. It includes people who are too sick or unable to work for other reasons. In short, if you don´t own a business, if you aren’t part of the Government, if you aren’t independently wealthy (such as from an inheritance), then chances are you are a part of the working class that I’m talking about, this collective ‘our’.
If we agree that we can’t simply rely on Government to benevolently grant us gifts, and that we need to fight for it using our numbers and our power, then it becomes necessary to understand how society is structured and how capitalism actually functions, in order to know where our collective strength comes from, where we have the most power, and where we need to apply the metaphorical blowtorch.
So, why are conspiracy theories not helpful here? Why are conspiracy theories not useful for developing that understanding? There’s a variety of reasons.
Some conspiracy theories, such as those around 9/11, even if they were true, which I don’t believe they are, would only tell us “Governments do bad things”. That’s not actually news to anyone. We know that the British Crown & the New Zealand Government stole vast tracts of land from Maori. We know that the Crown and the Australian Government engaged in genocidal acts against Australian aborigines. We know that Governments the world over have repeatedly sent people overseas to fight, kill and die in wars. There’s so, so much more, but to cut a long story short, everybody knows that sometimes Governments do bad things. So theories that only serve to prove that, even if they were true, aren’t actually particularly useful.
Some conspiracy theories are simply bizarre and the logical conclusions from them, don’t fit with what their believers do. If you actually believed that the majority of people in power around the world was a blood-sucking shape-shifting reptilians from another solar system, then you wouldn’t limit your activity to promoting one guy’s book tours around the globe and chatting with other believers on the internet.
Conspiracy theories often feed on people’s mistrust and their fear. They claim to provide simple answers to complicated questions, but actually when you examine them in detail they’re highly complex themselves. For example, with 9/11, it seems like a simple solution to say ‘it was an inside job by the US Government’. But actually, when you look into what would be required for this to be true, the thousands upon thousands of people who would need to be lying, it becomes incredibly implausible.
Some conspiracy theories, such as many of the shadowy financial cabal conspiracies, only serve to mystify capitalism and falsely suggest a level of control that doesn’t actually exist. Additionally, they remove any sense of our own power, whether real or potential. A theory which suggests such overwhelming power and control over the entire way we live our lives is actually a catalyst for inaction – if a group has such a high level of control over everything, then there’s not really anything we can do about it. On the contrary, capitalism is not a static system, it is dynamic and changing and constantly adapts in response to threats. The threat of working class power has resulted in a number of changes to the functioning of capitalism over time, including the introduction of Keynesian and Neoliberal economics in the late 1930s and 1970s respectively.
Even if conspiracy theories can sometimes seem relatively harmless on the surface, they play a role of absorbing us into a fictional world, somewhat like a dungeons and dragons enthusiast. Once you are in this fictional world, it becomes really easy to get lost in it and to be defensive when challenged, even when challenged on a logical, rational basis.
I’ll quote British political blogger Jack Ray:
The trouble with conspiracy theories is that they’re all rendered pointless by one fundamental, unarguable element of capitalism. That it is, whatever else you have to say about, positive or negative, a system of elites. It has elitism coded into it´s DNA, from the smallest company, to the largest multinational, from the political system to the culture. It’s purpose is to promote elites. It does this legitimately within the logic of the system. It does this publicly, lording super-capitalists like Bill Gates or even for a time, Enron boss Ken Lay. It lays its theories of elitism out for all to see, in policy projects, in university research, through political theorists.
It has no interest in secret cabals, or conspiracies. It has no need for them. It is a system openly, and publicly, run by elites. They might go home at night and secretly dine with their illuminati, lizard-jew, Bilderberg Group friends, and laugh about how they’ve taken over the world. It doesn’t matter to me or you whether they do or not. They are the elite, and we can see who they are and how they live their lives. People know that we live in a system of elites, that acts in its own interests, according to the logic of the society they dominate. Everyone who looks around know this. We don’t need internet documentaries to tell us that we’re dominated, we just need to go to work, or walk through a posh neighbourhood or have a run-in with any politicians, big businessman or even a celebrity to know that. What we need are weapons, ways of challenging that domination, so maybe we don’t have to live under it forever.
So what is the alternative to this conspiracist world-view? For that, we need to look at history. The history of how social change comes about is not always easy to find. It suits those in power to downplay the role of mass movements, so the dominant narrative is often one that ignores the long term grassroots organising that has happened, and simply focuses on legislative change enacted by the Government of the day. But a people’s history is out there – often in the form of first hand accounts by those who took part in these movements, such as those for homosexual law reform, of the 1970s strike wave across New Zealand, of the movement against native forest logging and so on.
One thing, from looking at this history, is abundantly clear. Mass action is vital for mass change. If you look through history, time and time again, it is when large groups of people have got together and shown themselves to be a threat to those in power that concessions have been granted. This happens on a small scale as well as a big one – when all 10 employees at a small business go on strike and refuse to work until their boss gives them a pay rise, the boss is forced to listen.
From this example, it becomes obvious that it isn’t simply numbers alone that allow us to exercise power. It is also using those numbers strategically to hit those in power where it hurts. As workers, we create wealth for the bosses each and every day at our jobs. Some of this wealth is returned to us in the form of wages, but much is stolen. This stolen wealth is often called ¨surplus value¨. It is the accumulation of surplus value, stolen by our bosses, that forms the wealth of the ruling class. But because the goods and services that create this surplus value ultimately come from our hands and our brains, through collectively withdrawing our labour, we can force the bosses to give in to our demands.
So taking collective action the workplace is one way we can impose our power on the bosses to help us better meet our needs and desires. And if we extrapolate this to larger numbers of work-sites, to larger numbers of people both employed and unemployed, then we can begin to see how we can make changes to the functioning of society as a whole.
I don’t have all the answers, though I do have plenty more to say than I’ve had time to touch on in this talk. But I want to open things up to discussion soon, because I think that’s one thing that is really important about this Occupy Wellington space, that we can talk through things, together, to come to new ways of thinking and working politically.
To finish things off, I want to emphasise that while it is important to have an open mind, this must be tempered with a commitment to rationality and the examining of evidence. Or, to quote Australian sceptic and comedian Tim Minchin, “If you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out”.
Good on you for fighting the good fight Asher. How did the talk go down?
You make some good points and for the most i agree; yet, is there not a danger here of dissmissing salient theory as the ramblings of conspiracy? especially in social theory grounded in everyday language use and its production power relations which are not marginal angles in academic literature and while many of them imply a totalizing nature of coercion, take for instance Foucauldian discourse theory, i do not think they necessitate inaction as you argue.
Hi. I agree with the general theme – that activism should be based in reality – of course, but we shouldn’t turn our backs on the facts, because we might actually close ourselves off to helpful information.
eg
“At every major strategic point in the world, we find that US and Western power is symbiotically melded – through financial, military and intelligence connections – with al-Qaeda; and further that al-Qaeda has in certain places been explicitly used as a military-intelligence asset by Western powers, particularly the United States and United Kingdom. This documentation indicates that international terrorism in the form of al-Qaeda is not merely an enemy to be fought, but rather an unruly asset to be, when possible, controlled and manipulated in the pursuit of quite specific strategic and economic interests. Worse still, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that certain elements of the policy-making establishment are perfectly cognizant that as a direct result of such policies, national security is being fundamentally and continuously undermined with repeatedly fatal consequences. Yet the same brand of policies persists. Without dwelling unnecessarily on the possible theoretical ramifications of this phenomenon, it is sufficient for me to note that these facts fundamentally challenge the entire paradigm of the ‘War on Terror’ as articulated and legitimized by the official narrative.”
Source: Ties With Terror: Western-Al-Qaeda Relations in the Post-Cold War Period by Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/04/368971.html
Yes good on you Asher for encouraging a healthy skepticism, I watched a 3 hour video of David Icke all very entertaining but not much content on strategies for putting the capitalist and their corrupt politicians out of power.
I will admit that in the 9/11 incident, the US government knew that there was going to be an attack. like Churchill knew Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed. But so what!!
It’s unfortunate that Asher chose to discard both baby and bathwater here…
Q: Which part am I calling “the baby”??
A: The history which shows how the Rothschilds (most especially) came to power and how SL E Rothschild inherited his position as Lord of the financial epicenter of the planet..
How can you discard and ignore the FACT this family owns the controlling majority of the Federal Reserve Bank??
How can you discard and ignore the FACT that Nathan Mayer Rothschild (son of Mayer R who funded the creation of the Bavarian Illuminati) stole the entire wealth of England on one day in 1815 by manipulating the London Stock Exchange – based on false rumors of Napoleon actually winning – because he had informants at the Battle of Waterloo who got him news of Napoleon’s loss a full 20 hours earlier than the King?
He swept up the entire wealth of a nation in ONE DAY!!!!!
They are still the most powerful family in the most powerful nation in the WORLD, who own pretty much every country and continent.
That family owns and manages $500trillion on a daily basis.
That is around 1/2 of the world’s wealth.
And when currently-young sons of Rothschilds (David Mayer R. and Nathaniel Amschel R.) are still the world’s leading young industrialists [David goes around pushing for his family’s carbon tax at all of the eco/green related fairs and symposiums.. selling the world on his family’s CO2 tax…] it’s pretty laughable to say their influence (control) is all just an anti-semitic conspiracy theory.
David Rothschild has a major Jesus image going on and he is literally the Son of the Lord of London City. The financial epicenter of the world (more so than Wall Street). London City is the R&D laboratory and Wall St is the racetrack.
Carbon taxes go to Rothschild-owned banks in Switzerland.
And we emit CO2 out our mouths.. the agenda is obvious.
Leaches tapping into another vein (CO2 emissions) of our body to suck more of our energy out.
This is HISTORY and FACT, not conspiracy “”theory””.
Asher refers to talk of Zionism and The Rothschilds as anti-semitic..
And states his Jewish descent as a reason for his stance.
That is also an emotional bias which doesn’t serve any movement outside of his own motivations of racial pride.
I won’t touch 9-11 because it’s too pre-loaded, stigmatized and for that I will choose my battles here.
But there is a mountain of evidence linking Israel and Zionism (Larry Silverstein, Frank Lowy.. etc.. etc..) to the act of perpetrated terrorism. There is a lot more fact than you should need to say it’s not all just “theory”.
It’s too bad that this movement is so powerless due to the lack of grasp it exerts on reality.
Who in the Occupy movement really knows what’s going on as opposed to being a mass of uneducated, frustrated zombies stinking up cities and making a bad name for activism everywhere.
He doesn’t defend Zionism, he criticises the use of it as a code word… to pick a random detail, do you really think anthropogenic global warming is actually just a myth so people can profit off our breathing? Especially considering the efforts monopoly capital has gone to in undermining climatologist consensus?
Thank you for taking time to read, consider and then reply… I salute you for that. That means you are worth spending the time to break this down…
This is about CO2 levels, not temperature..
It is a known fact that CO2 enrichment in plant labs is an MO for any indoor farmer who wishes to increase yield. This is true because before we humans came along, our plants were here, living in CO2 levels of 1400-1500PPM (before us).
Now, CO2 levels are between 200-300PPM avg. This is why we must enrich with it to see optimum plant yield.
Now tell me how this supports the argument that CO2 causes global warming.
It’s elementary biology..
And how is it that CO2 which is heavier than air, (look up molecular weights of both gasses) will rise up and fill the atmosphere, when every square inch of soil on earth is off-gassing CO2 all day long as things biodegrade and decompose.
There are ways human can offset CO2 by using things like Charcoal in soil which sequesters CO2 and minimizes the soil breakdown effect. Amongst other things.
We are polluters and that is the problem. It should NEVER have been about CO2.
I don’t want to make this too long, but it is a long story I haven’t even scratched the surface of in this short post.
Again, thank you for your response.
I’m open to continuing the dialog.
Sorry, one more thing since you mentioned climatology:
The science community has come together to voice their non-support for “global warming” theory and shown that we are currently in a natural *cooling* trend.
That’s why it’s no longer referred to by scientists as “global warming” and instead as “climate change”.
It’s still a huge bandwagon for grant moneys support and people must tack “climate change” onto any grant requests in order to be given priority and funding. This is a problem.
Larry, you claim that scientists agree against global warming without having done proper research, here is a graph showing readings from different climate centers around the world – http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20110113/509983main_adjusted_annual_temperature_anomalies_final.gif
The facts are very simple to understand and have even been included in a major motion picture (the day after tomorrow); the temperature increase over the last 100+ years causes problems such as the melting of the polar ice caps and the death of ocean algae, as a result of the planet being a self contained system, these issues affect the earth’s ability to reflect solar heat out of the atmosphere causing further warming. Also, the mix of salt/fresh water in the oceans is essential to the currents our climates around the world rely on.
Please do not say ‘scientist say…’ and not provide evidence for your views as this is the un-helpful attitude the blog post is referring to in the first place.
I totally agree Larry as regards the baby and the bathwater phenomenon, but I would also like to say that I don’t agree with the definition of the fight. Who are we fighting? The author would have us believe that it is everyone who doesn’t “own a company” against everyone who does. I honestly don’t think that is the problem. The last few years have shown us more than ever that it is the banks that are running the world and taking decisions about our lives. And that is not a conspiracy theory. The Occupy movement started as a result of action of banks and here the author is talking as if the last few years never happened
And Larry the Poodle merely proves the point that Asher was making. Yawn. (One clue is when the word fact is repeated many times in upper case letters).
Get off your high horse “wisewoman”, it’s folk like you who are going to lead us to oblivion and eternal serfdom.
Larry the Poodle you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Where do these people get off actually ignoring the torrents of evidence pertaining to the globalist Zionist Rothschild agenda?? It is genuinely sickening!
And in regards to 9/11, I think you’ll love the FACT that Mossad agents were seen in a van in the vicinity of the trade center with a mural of the twin towers in flames. . . It doesn’t really get more obvious than that; especially when there was a failed bomb attack soon after. . . You guys really need to stop drinking tap water 😉
As does Stinkray
lol you don’t do yourself any favours by resorting to name-calling..
stingray, please feel free to lock yourself in a hermetically sealed bunker to protect yourself from all the chemicals in the air/water/food… we will tell you when it is safe to come out.
ttp://vimeo.com/65430488#
Wake up.
Skeptisism = useually an excuse to be ignorant.
This article is ignorant in it’s basis. Your activism will continue to fail, as it has done for the last 2 years, because you are not addressing the real issue.
Congratulations, you’re doing a disservice to man kind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AedUKIPWxMI
Please tell me that over 30 PHD’s and specialists are wrong on 9/11.
Bubba J, over 30 PhDs and specialists are wrong on 9/11
You also lost me when you said that people are pretty intelligent. That’s your first mistake, we are currently extremely stupid. Not because we ignore facts, or don’t know. I’ll give you an example…
resent studies into cancer have shown that cancer can NOT grow when the body is in the balanced state known as homeostasis. This is ensured by eating properly and having sufficient vitamin levels, hormonal balances etc. Now most people don’t know this… Why?
Because people are fucking stupid, sit at home watch Television, never do ANY homework, never research, never look up anything, bitch and complain.
People are stupid, this article is stupid. Only when you realize that you know jack shit about reality can you start to navigate reality with a sound hand.
Please stop spreading mindless shit.
Conspiracy theorists ROCK. Everyone else are idiots.
I think that it’s dangerous to speak critically of ‘conspiracy theories’ as a whole, and that this can easily lead to an overly complacent view of reality. When does spin and political manipulation start being classed as a ‘conspiracy’? When does questioning this spin and manipulation start to indicate that one is kooky? There are lots of wild and nutty conspiracy theories around… there are also lots of powerful groups of people who are pursuing their own interests in a way which most would find to be morally problematic.
The World Trade Centre attack was a result of conspiracy, but the word has now become so misused that acknowledging this fact is routinely taken to mean that one believes Bush had ordered the strike from the oval office. Conspiracies are a routine part of live, and talking as if a theory that involves ‘conspiracy’ can be assumed to be false is likely to lead to a highly distorted view of the world.
When researchers spin data in order to make a treatment appear more effective than it is, this is a conspiracy. The use of black sites and torture by the US government was a conspiracy. Lord John Stevens believes that a covert section of the British military was involved in the office fire which hampered his investigation into collusion between Loyalist Paramilitary groups and the British military, and it would be wrong to assume that, as this is a conspiracy theory, it should be dismissed. Certainly, there was a history of collusion, and this was a conspiracy.
The world may not be controlled by devious Jewish lizard-men, but ‘conspiracy’ is a normal part of life, and a reoccurring part of our history. One should criticise those who make claims unsupported by the evidence regardless of whether they are making claims about a supposed conspiracy or anything else.
“One should criticise those who make claims unsupported by the evidence regardless of whether they are making claims about a supposed conspiracy or anything else.”
agreed, however this talk was in response to the prevalence of a particular kind of pseudo-science at Occupy sites.
There was no science in Ashers diatribe ,pseudo-science or empirical .
For the most part I agree with disregarding baseless conspiracy theories, but you used a bunch of over-the-top, easily debunked zany conspiracies there. There’s no real need to cite them in your article to prove a point (reptilians.. really?) Don’t bolster your “there are no conspiracies” (yes, they are) argument with fodder.
Plain and simple: If there’s evidence for something, no matter how silly the claim, it should absolutely be investigated If something sounds ridiculous and unbelievable, it should still be investigated and thus debunked, or confirmed or perhaps left as an unknown if sufficient evidence can’t be found to support either conclusion. That’s the easy scientific solution.
Keep this in mind…
….Because you’ve COMPLETELY misrepresented the 9/11 argument. You’re clearly not privy to the details because the official story quite CLEARLY makes absolutely NO sense. We’re talking more holes than swiss cheese. Instead of giving a fair portrayal of the issue, you instead make it out to seem like the 9/11 camp came to a consensus on “government did it”, which is largely untrue. For one, such a simple explanation would not placate any mind above a 10 IQ… and secondly, you disregard the mountains of evidence. I won’t bother pointing to any docs or videos as I imagine (if you were well read) you’d seen enough to back up your beliefs and can even provide something digestible (spare me 100+ pages of so called “debunks”). Also, why disregard the FACT that the government is highly compartmentalized? (PAY ATTENTION: I’m NOT saying “the government did it” but rather saying, that isn’t completely IMPOSSIBLE– your assertion that it is, is an ASSUMPTION) For big things to happen you don’t need thousands of people… you’re under another assumption that 9/11 “truthers” believe that normal everyday hard-working government workers all gathered around, plotted, sworn stuff to secrecy, etc. which is clearly a stretch. Also why assume that anything done on a large scale needs to be carried out by thousands of people in the first place? A terrorist attack can theoretically be carried out by any small group…
I suggest you watch Pat Tillman’s documentary (The Tillman Story) to see how truly compartmentalized the government/military is, and how things can be done with the little guys (those lower in rank) being completely left out.. Oddly enough you disregard tons of discrepancies in the official story. I have to ask, are YOU living in reality..? You seem to be behind on this matter.
[moderator note: snipped for anti-semitism]
Awaiting, a hopefully respectful discussion..
if you’re wanting a “respectful discussion,” it might help not to conflate Zionists with all Jews. That is racism, and it is a conspiracy theory. Not all Jewish people support Netanyahu or Israel, or international banking for that matter.
Where did I conflate Zionists with “all” Jewish people? I think you had a bit of trouble reading what I wrote there, and you actually went ahead and deleted that section because you took offense to something you clearly misinterpreted…
And also, are you saying “Zionism” is a conspiracy theory? I’m not sure if you understand what the term means in that case but either way, I don’t recall being racist anywhere in my post, but sure, I guess have fun editing people’s comments and branding them “anti-Semitic”
Way to make the website less laughable and more credible… *applause*.
Asher failed miserably at his initiated “talk’ . I attended and spoke in favour of allowing NZ 911 Truth to be part of the Occupy movement . In fact that very week the Wall St Occupy movement had held a vote and decide to incorporate 911Truth into their agenda.
My point that was made at Ashers little get together was “at what point after evidence has been gathered does a “conspiracy theory” become proof of a conspiracy ?” .Asher failed to address this question but it seemed that a lot of people in attendance considered this a valid point.
Consider ,before it was widely know and proven anyone saying Multi National Banks had colluded to fix interest rate would have been labeled as ” conspiracy theorist ” to which you could apply my “at what point after evidence has been gathered does a “conspiracy theory” become proof of a conspiracy ?” .
I don’t know what Ashers agenda was for calling for his little gabfest but he lacked a coherent argument as witnessed by his lame example ie. ” reptilian lizards are controlling our lives,”.
“conspiracy theory” is a derogatory term that I’m sure Richard Nixon wishes he had used to his advantage .
@Sentience: You strongly implied that Asher supports Israel and Netanyahu. To quote a section of the deleted rant, “Sorry to break it to you but your Netanyahu’s a pretty ridiculous guy geopolitically.” How did you conclude that Asher supports Israel and Netanyahu?
First of all, I didn’t strongly imply anything. Good job quoting out of context and asserting yourself to be right when, as I said before, you clearly misread. Secondly, even if I did “assume” he followed Netanyahu, how is that anti-semitic in any way, and why is that worthy of being “snipped”? It’s obvious you were offended by the comment.
Also, it’s a proven fact that Netanyahu is a political nightmare highlighted by his own racist policies in Israel and his unjustified belligerence towards Iran. No conspiracy theory there, just common knowledge, which has absolutely nothing to do with his race, so again I don’t see where anti-antisemitism would even come into play here…
Finally, Asher recognized himself as a Jew, which means he immediately associated himself with Israel, which is obviously why I mentioned Netanyahu — not to imply all Jews support him (stop twisting words) — which is where the connection comes from.
FYI, “Jewish” isn’t even really a race, it’s a religion. The fact that he identified himself as Jewish in THIS particular article IS relevant because it denotes a personal bias for why he would be against any “theory” that suggests “Jews” have a large aggregate influence in the world, which they undeniably do. Acknowledging this is NOT racist…
Fightback marches against real Zionism (ie oppression of Palestinians by Israel) in the streets. So has the author of this article.
However these are anti-semitic statements, because they imply Jewish people are monolithic and all support Zionism:
“Finally, Asher recognized himself as a Jew, which means he immediately associated himself with Israel”
“The fact that he identified himself as Jewish in THIS particular article IS relevant because it denotes a personal bias for why he would be against any “theory” that suggests “Jews” have a large aggregate influence in the world, which they undeniably do.”
“the fact that he identified himself as Jewish in THIS particular article IS relevant because it denotes a personal bias for why he would be against any “theory” that suggests “Jews” have a large aggregate influence in the world”
There was a time when the pseudo-science phrenology was used to show Africans were inferior to Europeans and justify slavery. If phrenology was still popular today, and a black activist critiqued it would you cry “the fact that you’re black denotes a personal bias for why you would be against any “theory” that suggests Africans are less intelligent than white people”
@Byron You’re referring to phrenology; long since debunked pseudo-science.. In the case of Jews having influence in the upper echelons of business and government, along with their back-and-forth- movement between such institutions and AIPAC however, this is observable, provable fact so the cases are completely different. That isn’t to say it’s a massive organized conspiracy.. that is NOT what I’m getting at. I’m merely acknowledging the existence of Jewish influence in the U.S. and thus the rest of the world. It’s far from the sole reason things suck in this world, not even close (I can blame many socioeconomic things for that), but it’s there; it’s a part of reality.
And in your example, honestly, if such a thing were scientifically shown to be true (although given the wide gamut of what could be considered a measure of “intelligence”, such a study would have much reason to be undermined/disputed anyway) I would not be able to reject it merely on the grounds that I’m offended by it. Science isn’t a person, it’s a method so if it turned out that black people had smaller brains than “white” people statistically then so be it, what then? It’s not really a great analogy, but I do get your point.
In Asher’s case, it’s still something to note as it does affect the way “Asher” reacts to that particular group of conspiracy theories otherwise he wouldn’t have felt the need to include it. If you could dismiss something on the basis of fact, then why mention that you’re any certain race..? He mentioned it because it personally offended him and there lies the bias.
@Sentience: “Jews having influence in the upper echelons of business and government”
Christian/post-Christian white people have far more influence. Does that mean all white people support imperialism, or support the banking system or capitalism? No. Would you try to discredit arguments solely on the basis that people are white?