Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

xp Hard not to feel kind of nihilist/hopeless with that attitude, though (which I generally have regarding "debating the other side")

There are reachable people out there, but the ones who are most eager to have a debate so that they can show off their Prager U talking points are probably a waste of time.

Hell yeah, you have to ask yourself why you're arguing and how it's making you feel

I'd gone a few rounds of 'just when I thought I was out...' incidents on FB with a cousin who's just asking the questions the questions the lamestream media won't go near then finally realised I was stressing myself for absolutely no reason or benefit to anyone.
The guy's lost a pile of work through lockdown and is looking through a different lens and I'll never fix that.
It was just raising my blood pressure so I told him to believe whatever the fuck he liked and bowed out.

I can't really blame anyone who is doing badly because of lockdowns for thinking eh idk something doesn't sit right here.

Lots of things don't sit right but he was pulling out conspiracy nonsense like it's no worse than a flu and no extra deaths have occurred and the Irish govt have adjusted their covid death figures down to zero and the cdc says masks don't work and you're breathing in your own carbon dioxide and it's all a big control experiment.

I couldn't quite get to the bottom of why such diverse leaders as Angela Merkel, Donald Trump and Nicola Sturgeon would want to work together to prevent him from DJing because he's actually quite good at it.

Lol it always seems to be DJs

xp

And I often wonder, in these conversations - "what are you trying to *do* here?" is an incredibly important question for us to be asking ourselves. And sometimes the answer is, genuinely, I need to blow off steam, and that's fine if you're honest that is what you are doing. But also, try to understand, that if you do actually want to change someone's mind / opinions / behaviour, that a different tack is neccessary.

I guess that might be the motivation for some people but probably more often the answer is "I want to stick to my principles and not compromise or say something I wouldn't endorse"

But you don't have to compromise or say something you wouldn't endorse in order to end the conversation - you can just say something like "you're wrong and I'm not gonna argue with you over it".

Scientists are at the point Economists were at 5 years ago when they got Brexit wrong. They have no one else to blame though, and now they are shutting down dissent as scientists who argue against prevailing wisdom are being ostracized and facing censure.

'They're deliberately adding false positives to the tally!
They're suppressing the whistleblowers' videos!
Those who died were going to die anyway!
Those who died deserved to die because they're not fighting fit like me! I don't need to see a doctor, I will bury you all!
You're too young to understand the implications of a curfew!
This is a dictatorship and you fucking like it, sheeple!'

...and the worst is still on the horizon now that the Loose Change of covid is out in France. 2 hours and 45 minutes of JuSt AsKiNg QuEsTiOnS and arguing that the International Elites no longer need approx. 3 million proles and have therefore decided it is time to cull them via a mass 5g (the g stands for B. Gates) vaccine that will be delivered to your doorstep by Amazon drones.

vaccine that will be delivered to your doorstep by Amazon drones.

I expect early access as a Prime member

on a "it always seems to be DJs" note i had to unfollow Hannah Wants today :(

Doorstep, hell, the drone is gonna fly around directly injecting everyone it sees wearing a mask, the mark of the cullable sheep

NV if it makes you feel any better she’d already been called out for plagiarising Joy O tracks

Drone vaccine predicted by Star Wars in '77

The long march of the institutions is now wreaking havoc in the corporate world as socialism has taken root in the private sector. Its unclear how they've been able to do it when they are so few in number, but its very clever

I mean, just look around you – they’re everywhere. Don’t you see?!?

Its a strange scenario alright. It turns out that we actually already have socialism, even though we never voted for it.

What it does make clear is that in such conversations we make a lot of assumptions about words. Not just with brain-wormed people either, but in other conversations. How often do we even mean the same things when using the same words, and what is to be gained by arguing over the meaning of a word?

What is to be gained by arguing, and work from there

Why would you spend 5 minutes speaking politics to a person who thinks "we already have socialism"? These are people/conversations for whom weather/sports were created.

speaking = discussing

(talk about brain worms)

What is to be gained by arguing, and work from there

Nothing is to gained by arguing as you must presumably be certain of?

Why would you spend 5 minutes speaking politics to a person who thinks "we already have socialism"?

Familial bond. Curiosity.

what is to be gained by arguing over the meaning of a word?

― anvil, Saturday, 2 January 2021 12:13 (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I didnt start my question from zero position

A friend, not a close one, more an old colleague, well someone I once had to fire, but she took it well, has been silent on Facebook for most of the last year and has come back with these long blog posts about how she has gone from being a left wing activist to a right-wing anti-mask anti-lockdown person. I don't want to link to her blog directly but if you go to rae lle ka ia (dot) medium (dot) com (hope that's google-proof) then I think it's a very interesting study for the ILX brainworms research group.

Has her activism either way been anything more than posting things on various online platforms, out of interest

Her therapist stopped seeing her just because of what she shared in that first post? Is that credible? I'm not really siding with the therapist here if so

Has her activism either way been anything more than posting things on various online platforms, out of interest

― spruce springclean (darraghmac), Saturday, January 2, 2021 1:29 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I saw she had been to a few protests over the previous few years, and was always posting Bernie Sanders stuff, tbh I don't know her that well.

 I had thought being on the Left was all about freedom, dignity, liberty, equality, and democracy. 

I would contend that this person hadn't thought really hard about what it means to be on the left.

i would contend that whatever you think you used to be if you've gone full rona conspiracist then you're a moron

Strikes a lush G chord

Morona

Moronnnnnaaaaaa

etc

‘QAnon Anonymous’:

a support group for people addicted to insane conspiracy theories, including... wait for it... pic.twitter.com/ocIb8HaePQ

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) December 21, 2020

I think it's a very interesting study for the ILX brainworms research group.

I only read her first post on Medium, not the second much longer one but I didn't really see any brainworms there. Maybe thats more apparent in in the longer post but this just seems like someone feeling discombobulated and anxious by how things currently are, which isn't exactly surprising right now

Yeah, it's the longer one I was talking about, and absolutely lockdown / isolation has done this. But also she is now well on her way to full-on right-wing.

There's a few longer ones, too long to read really. I skimmed one and idk it didn't seem all that brainwormy, skimmed another and got to the vaccine bit and yes it does look like a collection of worms are hanging out in that bit.

It looks like she thinks 'The Left' (by which I presume the people she knows and interacts with) are sort of dogmatic, overly sure they are in the right, unquestioning, and shut her down if she doesn't have the right opinion? I don't know if you know who her 'Left' friends are, but that seems pretty plausible?

I think she belonged to what you could call the Marianne Williamson left

You mean healing crystals?

MW had an interview where she was talking about how a lot of people from the healing crystals left had moved far right over the last decade or so

yeah the alternative medicine holistic crystal skull healing yoga retreat crowd

Is Rex Chapman some kind of real person who became known for thinking things, or was he always a FuckJerry?

former nba player, no idea how he become a Content Vulture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llRahjL6X4s

Wikipedia says he's from Bowling Green, maybe he's responsible for the massacre in some way?

Also known for shoplifting Apple merchandise to pawn and pay off his gambling debts

Possibly horse? Must remember to investigate further.

a lot of people from the healing crystals left had moved far right over the last decade or so

It’s QAnon and conspiracy theories as gateway and they swing right because of accelerationism and not being all that bright.

I've noticed this and def think part of the appeal is they see it the other way around, i.e. we're the sheeple who blindly accept whatever the "mainstream" outlets say.

Healing crystals etc appeal to personal beliefs, you are talking about people who find the scientific worldview very limited to begin with, so...

In the US, a lot of the wellness/bro science/nootropics/etc. world is rooted in an understandable distrust of/lack of access to our healthcare system - therapy and drugs are expensive, maybe this capsule I can buy off Amazon will make my brain work better; the never-ending history of people of color being used as medical guinea pigs; regulatory capture, etc..

Without a broader understanding of the forces at work and some idea of what else is possible, it can trip over the line to unfounded conspiracies pretty easily.

(Also: American Protestantism)

I've always wanted to get a PhD in American Studies just so I can write a book about the connections between New Age spiritual beliefs and white supremacist power structures.

I mean, I could write that book, but I would need funding to do so.

There’s also something about the self-centred nature of the yoga/crystals crowd that aligns with the “fuck you Jack, I got mine” of the Cons.