I have to say that I had never heard of Kelly Weill before I saw a book of hers in the local bookshop this week.
The book is titled Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything. You already know where this is going. Here is the Amazon blurb:
“A deep dive into the world of Flat Earth conspiracy theorists . . . that brilliantly reveals how people fall into illogical beliefs, reject reason, destroy relationships, and connect with a broad range of conspiracy theories in the social media age. Beautiful, probing, and often empathetic . . . An insightful, human look at what fuels conspiracy theories.” —Science
In Off the Edge, journalist Kelly Weill draws a direct line from today’s conspiratorial moment, brimming not just with Flat Earthers but also anti-vaxxers and QAnon followers, back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s. We learn the natural impulses behind these beliefs: when faced with a complicated world out of our control, humans have always sought patterns to explain the inexplicable. This psychology doesn’t change. But with the dawn of the twenty-first century, something else has shifted. Powered by Facebook and YouTube algorithms, the Flat Earth movement is growing.
https://www.amazon.com/Off-Edge-Earthers-Conspiracy-Anything/dp/1643750682
How people fall into illogical beliefs? Really. Where to start?
Seeing this book rang several bells. Kelly is a classic example of the emerging the kill-the-conspiracy-theorists sub-genre of the progressive narrative. She and her ilk are foot soldiers for the blue pilled aristocracy. It has become a core project of the contemporary left. It is all of a piece with the noble-lies work of the fact-checker class, typically driven by Government based nudge units and Big Tech silencers, mostly in cahoots. If we disempower the flat earthers, we also cut down the centrist, “club sensible” sceptics. The folks who call out government overreach. Cover-ups. Dishonest governance.
It is an old play, and it generally works.
Anyone heard of the straw man fallacy? Name your opponent’s weak point (as you see it), give it a boo-label and then associate it with whacky ideas. Game, set and match. Well, this has proven to be gold in the age of State-driven Covid. You don’t even have to mention the Covid State. Just invoke epithets like “anti-vaxxer”, “flat earther” and the rest. This argument worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, when, in the late 1960s, they popularised the very phrase “conspiracy theorist”. It worked then, and, alas, it works now.
The twenty-something Kelly works for The Daily Beast, an American progressive vehicle which I confess, I do not read. The world is now run by people called Kelly and Brittany, it seems. Kelly thinks that simply calling someone a “conspiracy theorist” is enough to win any argument. The best pre-emptive strike against an opponent is to deny his or her legitimacy to make that argument. It saves a lot of trouble. Especially when you know that everyone “in your space” will not only agree with you but will broadcast your “truth” widely and immediately. To all of the usual echo chambers.
Kelly’s book is all-of-a-piece with Hillary Clinton’s recent post-deplorables Atlantic essay on the medicalisation of the underclass. It isn’t their fault! They are lonely! They need help! They need … us!
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/hillary-clinton-essay-loneliness-epidemic/674921/
But we need to be alert to their tricks. Guilt by association, for example. Those who think the Covid State set out to dud us for evil ends are … flat earthers!
My discovery of Kelly’s book occurred (coincidentally) in a week when the famed London Calling podcast of James Delingpole and Toby Young came to a sad end. And where, in a classic Delingpod interview between James and the legendary Ivor Cummins, the latter came up with the immortal line, that (I paraphrase) once upon a time those who questioned the power of the state and were sceptical of its claims were taken very seriously, even lauded, whereas now those who question the power of the State are routinely pilloried … for their scepticism. By those who are now under the thumb of the State.
It is true. Once upon a time the questioners were accorded due respect. It kind of fitted with our enlightenment sensibilities. We sat up and took notice of truth-tellers. They shook our complacency. We ourselves distrusted the “govmint”. We kind of knew they lied, they covered up, they ignored our rights when it suited them. How this perfectly sensible position has now become poison.
(The London Calling divorce is germane to this. It had evolved into a slinging match between two opposing positions on the nature of the Covid State, its origins, purposes and methods. This is a shame, as a more open dialogue and acknowledgement of each other’s positions might have yielded more truth).
Weill’s book is a testimony to the fact that the “Hanlon’s razor” position – that stuff-ups explain bad policy and that governments and supra-national actors are simply stupid, never evil or conspiring to do us ill – is embedded across the political spectrum, and serves to shut down debates that urgently need to be engaged. It defines out of existence the question that needs to be asked – why and how did this all happen? By coming up with conspiracy theories that can be shown (or asserted) to be whacko, those who push this line can simply close down further debate.
Convenient, n’est pas? This merely serves the interests of the State and its corporate colleagues (paymasters?).
It shows us that there is a blue pilled aristocracy still at the helm. Shaping narratives. Still covering up crimes and misdemeanours. And determined to embed the narrative. For the next assault on our freedom.
Kelly Weill is a foot soldier for the system that binds us. It is astonishing that one so determined to nail those who will believe “anything” seems blissfully unaware that the real goons over the past three years are those who believe that:
· Governments always tell the truth;
· Big Pharma has our interests at heart;
· Experimental genetic drugs are really vaccines;
· Lockdowns work;
· Masks work;
· Dissident scientists are not to be trusted.
The people that “believe anything” are not the flat earthers or their presumed fellow travellers, but are the Kellies of this world. They have believed the tropes of their ideological puppet masters, and they now just look really dumb.
GK Chesterton once opined that those who give up belief in God don’t believe in nothing. Instead, they will believe anything. Like all of us, conspiracy theorists get things right and wrong. Mostly what they said about Covid has turned out to be true. The uselessness and dangers of the vaccines. The evils of gain-of-function research. The lies of Big Pharma and Big Tech. The evils of State and corporate censorship. The abandonment of lockdown science. The abandonment of all science. And the rest. Conspiracy theorists 50, elites nil.
But if anyone raising his or her head above the parapet, daring to question “the official line”, typically at massive cost to his or her career, can be associated with flat earthers, well, job done.
Perhaps Kelly might devote her next book to real conspiracies. And real life. Blue pilled operatives like Kelly serve a purpose for their acolytes and adherents. They keep afloat the myths of their masters. They divert attention, the classic feint. Look at those lunatics! We are the sane ones. So long as no one looks too carefully at our arguments and claims.
The blue pilled class is embedded and it is not about to give any ground to those of us who are awake to the evils that are abroad.
Paul Collits
17 August 2023
Many years ago, a courageous and devoted American journalist, whom I adored, broadcast a message to his listeners that served as a harbinger for where the nation was headed societally and culturally. How did he know? In his broadcast he revealed what he would do if he were “the devil,” to destroy our culture and undermine our collective societal standards and social mores. That man was Paul Harvey, and his message not only has proven to be prophetic, but serves as a warning to Americans today of where our society continues to trend. Here is the text of that broadcast:
“If I Were The Devil": A Warning to America From Paul Harvey
“If I were the devil … If I were the Prince of Darkness, I’d want to engulf the whole world in darkness. And I’d have a third of its real estate, and four-fifths of its population, but I wouldn’t be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree — Thee. So I’d set about however necessary to take over the United States. I’d subvert the churches first — I’d begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: ‘Do as you please.
To the young, I would whisper that ‘The Bible is a myth.’ I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what’s bad is good, and what’s good is ‘square.’ And the old, I would teach to pray, after me, ‘Our Father, which art in Washington…
And then I’d get organized. I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting, so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I’d threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa. I’d pedal narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. I’d tranquilize the rest with pills.
If I were the devil I’d soon have families at war with themselves, churches at war with themselves, and nations at war with themselves; until each in its turn was consumed. And with promises of higher ratings I’d have mesmerizing media fanning the flames. If I were the devil I would encourage schools to refine young intellects, but neglect to discipline emotions — just let those run wild, until before you knew it, you’d have to have drug sniffing dogs and metal detectors at every schoolhouse door.
Within a decade I’d have prisons overflowing, I’d have judges promoting pornography — soon I could evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. And in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and deify science. I would lure priests and pastors into misusing boys and girls, and church money. If I were the devil I’d make the symbols of Easter an egg and the symbol of Christmas a bottle.
If I were the devil I’d take from those who have, and give to those who want until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious.
And what do you bet I could get whole states to promote gambling as the way to get rich? I would caution against extremes and hard work in Patriotism, in moral conduct. I would convince the young that marriage is old-fashioned, that swinging is more fun, that what you see on the TV is the way to be. And thus, I could undress you in public, and I could lure you into bed with diseases for which there is no cure. In other words, if I were the devil I’d just keep right on doing what he’s doing
I don’t think people like Kelly have beliefs, they just seek acceptance by the elites who just use them.