Oliver Stone pretty much sealed the deal in my mind that the CIA assassinated JFK, that’s one major so-called “conspiracy theory” cemented as probably true.

The U.S. state has poisoned its own citizens before, dropped bombs on people in its commonwealths. Is it poisoning the water supply? What reason would they have? Weakening agents, toothpaste lobbyists putting shit in the water to rot our teeth in order to spike demand for their product? Testing bioweapons that cause esophageal cancer? Water that causes acid reflux at the behest of Big TUMS? Their justification for using bioweapons in San Fransisco and New York were to “test against a possible hostile bioweapon attack”, so we know the Amerikkkan state doesn’t need justification to do anything, it’s completely arbitrary and irrational at times – as fascism is wont to be.

What about our news media? We know mainstream news outlets are bought and paid for by RFA and the NED and other NGOs the alphabet boys and the pentagon use to maintain hegemony. What about the news outlets we trust? We know the U.S. state will brazenly ban and shut down entire websites and newspapers if they’re deemed a security risk (as they did with that Iranian website), but usually it’s a soft-ban where social media and streaming corpos deplatform news outlets like the Grayzone, RT, Lee Camp, etc. Who’s to say that the state department isn’t carefully cultivating a drip-feed of true info to keep us content as a portion of the population “in the know”, but just little enough to ensure that we aren’t keen on the absolute, total, nightmarish barbarity of it all – just little enough that the masses will consider us conspiracists forever. Does there exist a sort of “information bubble” that will never be popped until the state is destroyed?

I’ve heard some people claim that we give the modern state too much credit, that it’s much weaker than it was in the Cold War days because they refuse to adapt and change strategy, and it’s led by a bunch of senile fools who promote shit like “cisgender woman of color CIA agent” propaganda. On the other hand, communists seem to be split on exactly how strong the state is – are we all on a list, or is the bureaucracy so disorganized and overwrought that a true “list” is improbable?

I don’t know. Materially, if all of this is true, or if none of it is, it won’t impact the fact that we need to organize, nor that Marxism is a science and framework for responding to the material reality as far as we are capable of witnessing it. It just bothers me. The neoliberal hegemon, in all of its cruelty, is capable of trying anything and for any reason, most usually profit.

      • SovereignStateOP
        link
        72 years ago

        Absolutely phenomenal write-up comrade, and everything you said eases the mental burden this has been weighing on me considerably. I adore Caitlin Johnstone’s work for doing the same, as well as many other reasons of course. I don’t have much precisely other to say at the moment other than thank you, and the piece you wrote in GenZedong is also great.

  • @Mzuark
    cake
    link
    82 years ago

    All the time. All I want is to know the truth, but there comes a point where you’re so far down the hole that fact and fiction become irrelevant and your brain turns to mush. It’s the same as my cryptozoology hobby. One minute you’re reading scary stories about Bigfoot and the next you’re researching interdimensional portals and hollow earth theory.

    Sometimes you need to know when to stop.

  • SovereignStateOP
    link
    72 years ago

    This got really rambly and I apologize. A couple of addendums:

    A lot of this fear I think certainly personally comes from social isolation. It is also, intrinsically, a fear of the unknown.

    Certain undeniable truths, like the fact that the U.S. was bombing the DPRK and China before the DPRK ever crossed the thirty-eighth, like the fact that RFA and the NED are tools of the CIA, like the fact that Qadaffi did not order his troops to commit war-rape and that Mao was not a pedophile and the fact that Beria was not a deviant, etc. etc. etc. x 100 are all dismissed as conspiratorial en masse anyways by the left-of-center and anarchists. This probably serves to gaslight one (me, in this case) closer into the vestiges of conspiracy theory. If everything one knows as true is actually just a conspiracy theory, then…

    Thanks for reading.

  • @guojing@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    62 years ago

    I’ve heard some people claim that we give the modern state too much credit, that it’s much weaker than it was in the Cold War days because they refuse to adapt and change strategy, and it’s led by a bunch of senile fools who promote shit like “cisgender woman of color CIA agent” propaganda. On the other hand, communists seem to be split on exactly how strong the state is – are we all on a list, or is the bureaucracy so disorganized and overwrought that a true “list” is improbable?

    You cant say this for “the state” in general, because every country is different. Many states are so weak that they are completely controlled by another state. Like how United States controls EU countries for its own interest in the war against Russia.

    • SovereignStateOP
      link
      32 years ago

      100%. I referred to the U.S. state throughout the post but quit doing so as it became a bit tedious and felt redundant, so I apologize that that point was lost.

  • @guojing@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    42 years ago

    Well do you know any details about the moon landings? After reading about them, I find the whole story very hard to belief. Here is a good starting point. Of course you need to take it with an open mind.

    Now I’m just waiting to be called a conspiracy theorist.

    • SovereignStateOP
      link
      32 years ago

      Yeah I mean exactly, the U.S. had the most perfect of perfect reasons to falsify the moon landing – to discredit the Soviets during the Cold War. I’m not entirely sold either way (I haven’t looked at it too seriously) but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in 20 years the state dept. admits that at least the first one was staged or something. It’s definitely one of those things where if you question the official narrative at all you’re immediately dismissed as a right-wing lunatic.

      • @guojing@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        42 years ago

        Personally I dont care at all what the US government says, they have been proven to be liars. Its better to look at the sources directly. And yes there is a real taboo on discussing these things, its annoying.