Maybe we’ll find out about more decades hence.
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To be fair to conspiracy theorists (?!?) the first time I ever heard the term “false flag” was about 9/11. The idea is that the US government planned the attacks to justify the imposition of martial law. Trump-aligned conspiracy theorists are clearly racist conspiracy theorists, but I think you can be a non-racist conspiracy theorist.
Then again, 9/11 trutherism is an Alex-Jones-promoted theory where 9/11 is blamed on “globalists”. So sometimes it’s not the Muslims, it’s the Jews.
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Why do they feel that there must be some grand explanation? There’s no reason why there must be a reason for the murders.
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I’ve got another idea for the mass-shooting game.
I need to get a bunch of these printed on heavy card stock and hand them out as needed.
Before we have this conversation, here’s a little one-player game I need for you to complete.
Please consider the following questions in order. When you get to one where you answer “No” stop playing. The highest numbered question you answered with a “Yes” is your score.
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Do you consider that the mass shooting that took place in [insert location] [insert date] was an undesirable event?
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Do you think, conceptually, hypothetically, that there is anything at all we could do to reduce the likelihood or severity of a similar incident occurring in the future?
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Do you think that any of the ideas you just had are within the pragmatic realm of something we could actually accomplish?
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Do you think that any of those ideas are things we should try to do?
If you have a score of 3 or 4, we can talk 
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This is a case where everyone has been given a “kill 50 people including yourself” button that they keep in their bedroom to stare in their darkest, saddest moments. And we’re saying, “Why would this guy press his button? That’s crazy!”
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I tell you what, the apple didn’t fall far from Abraham’s tree.
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That’s really the heart of it for these people. They’d rather believe there’s an evil overlord in control of everything, making this stuff happen because he’s evil, than admit that the universe is chaotic, and harsh, and that they actually just don’t fucking matter.
They’d rather believe they matter and be constantly the victim of an imaginary plot than realize the cold truth that they don’t matter and that their lives only have meaning if they themselves figure out the meaning on their own.
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You’re right of course, I completely forgot about the jet fuel etc. I was thinking more about things like the recent car attacks in europe, I don’t think there’s any popular conspiracy theories about those.
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I won that in '95 with Timothy McVeigh. Everyone kept screaming Radical Islamic Terrorism before that ball was drawn. Still, it was a hollow win.
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Let’s be fair. As far as we know, it’s the “Jews” once every 60 years or so. With the “Muslims”, well…
(in reality, it’s probably neither. It’s crazy people claiming to be Jews or Muslims.)
Yeah, the one that swaps the word “terrorist” for “disturbed individual.”
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I think that questionnaire/scorecard might be worth sharing.
Would you like to be attributed, and if so, how?
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It’s an old, old idea in conspiracy theories. The Lusitania was a false flag. Pearl Harbor. The Kennedy assassinations were apparently aborted false flags that were supposed to be blamed on the Cubans. Or the Mafia. Or the left. Or the right. Or Stanley Kubrick’s moon launch death squad.
It really did kick off big with 9/11 was an inside job. That’s the first time I saw it come to national attention. And the first time I saw the media treat it like it might be valid. After that it seemed to become a basic, automatic response to tragedy on the far right.
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I hereby release it to the public domain 
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Like those twitter accounts which have all these crazy accurate predictions.
They post thousands of off the wall predictions and delete the ones which don’t come true.
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To be fair, it was claimed until 1982 that the Lusitania was not carrying munitions, and thus not a valid military target. And then some divers found literal tons of the stuff, so the government copped to it. They still try to keep divers away.
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So far as I know it was fairly well known although publicly denied at the time. The Lusitania may or may not have been a valid target regardless of whether it was hauling munitions or not. As the the ship was unarmed but hauling munitions as cargo. Which was allowed that may not have made it a valid target. But the ship was registered to be run as an armed civilian transport which may have made it a valid target even if there weren’t any munitions aboard. The public denials were about defusing German propaganda efforts. The court records at the time, and even the original customs paperwork listed what it was carrying. And 82 wasn’t the first time the wreck was located or dived on. And I don’t recall seeing legit reference to it ever being unclear to historians that it was hauling munitions. Or explicitly denied by the US after wars end. (Also it was a British ship hauling British munitions sunk in British waters so the US wouldn’t really be the denying party.)
Either way that’s not a false flag. The false flag claims are that the British or US government sunk the ship deliberately, or baited the Germans into doing so. So as to gain justification for escalating the war and the US entering it. Often with the detail that it wasn’t hauling ammo for the war effort. But packed deliberately with explosives to make sure it went down. And killed as many civilians as possible.
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Right. I was not suggesting that it was, just there is some conspiracy-esque aspect to the ship such as it is, which would lead some to speculate about others.
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In reality the third brother gets very little of the due credit.
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