I fantasize all the time about traveling back to, say, 2012 and telling my father that he was about to vote for a philandering, twice-divorced billionaire* (*citation needed) from New York City who spent his entire adult life claiming to be a democrat. Then I’d tell him it would be Donald Trump.
There is zero chance he’d believe me and would probably get angry at the suggestion, especially when I mentioned his name. Yet, here we are.
ETA: Oh, and that he’d be assisted by a Russian propaganda campaign directed by a KGB Soviet revivalist. And everyone on the Right would suddenly bend over backward to recast Russia as an ally all along.
Is there a Godwins Law equivalent for conspiracy thunkers and the Elders Of Zion?
This ain’t my area of expertise but here’s a rough sketch of it:
“In any conspiracy theory explanation for why things aren’t going the way of the speaker, the probability of Protocols Of the Elders Of Zion being mentioned approaches 1:1 the longer it goes on for”
Honestly surprised that “mind control” wasn’t part of his conspiracy defense. I guess that goes against feeling like you’re the only one who knows what’s going on and is only not in control of your life because of shadowy forces tilting reality against you, that you’re a hero for fighting, though…
Could work… but really, it’s just that so many conspiracy theories found in western society just go straight back to blaming Jewish people, since there was a long history them being the “internal enemy” in Europe… Even the protocols themselves were just updated and modernized versions of older conspiracy theories about Jewish people based on the rise of Zionism as a political position with the European Jewish community…
True. But I’ve always thought that Godwin’s Law wasn’t addressing the historical fact of Nazism or Hitler but the tendency of that topic to be raised in an online discussion of some sort, specifically as a rhetorical device of highly questionable value.
That’s what I was going for. Not an examination of the continuity of anti-semitism as it is experienced as a million headed hydra by its victims but by the tendency of knuckleheads to refer to the Fauxtocols of the Zelda’s of Iron as a historical fact.
Fauxtocols Of the Zelda’s Of Iron coming soon to a punk dive bar near you.
it’s almost always about “the Jews”…
