this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
420 points (98.4% liked)

News

23406 readers
4844 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Conspiracy theorist said to have been key promoter of false rumour about immigrants ex-president repeated in debate

Republicans are blaming the influence of Laura Loomer, a rightwing conspiracy theorist, for this week’s botched debate performance by Donald Trump, which included the former president repeating a bizarre and unfounded claim that pet cats and dogs were being eaten by Haitian immigrants.

Loomer flew with Trump on his private plane to Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia and has been identified as a key promoter of the pets rumour, which has been dismissed as false by authorities in Springfield, Ohio, where the practice was alleged to have been taking place.

Loomer, who styles herself as an “investigative journalist”, last year promoted a conspiracy theory alleging that 9/11 was an”inside job”. On Wednesday she posted an unfounded allegation that Harris had worn earphones disguised as earrings during the debate.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

last year promoted a conspiracy theory alleging that 9/11 was an”inside job”.

How did this one go from leftists in the early 2000's who thought Bush and Cheney ignored intelligence to let it happen to unhinged conspiratorial right wingers spouting the same bullshit. Leftists back then blamed it on warmongering and letting it happen so Bush could use the excuse to become a deeply loved "war President" (It worked... for a while) and Cheney could make a mint with no-bid contracts for Halliburton to rebuild Iraq. That... at least made some sort of sense. What's the right-wing excuse for it being an inside job?

It's like right-wingers decided to exploit valid distrust in the news media as stenographers for the government to make everyone crazy. The thing that's crazy about it working is the distrust was sewn by them to begin with and then they turned around to exploit that same distrust. How do people not see that??

[–] someguy3 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

go from leftists

I never got the impression that 9/11 conspiracy theories were from leftists, though I could be wrong. I thought it was from everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I had every right winger freaking out that Bush and Cheney were beyond reproach and nothing could be further from the truth at the time. I lived in Louisiana and I learned to just shut the fuck up about it because people fucking loved Bush more than their own god damned families. Honestly, the environment wasn't that much different from what we're dealing with in terms of Trump.

Now it's fucking gospel for half of the right wing. I don't get it.

Although to be fair, Alex Jones was promoting that stuff at the time, and he's been the throughline in the last 20 years. But people also assumed he was a leftist back then, too. The people showing me his Prison Planet videos in 2004-2005 that crowed that Bush was building prison camps were all super leftist people.

Actually, to be clear, this guy is the first person who ever showed me Alex Jones/Prison Planet:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whatever-happened-to-pizza-at-mcdonalds/id1152856686

https://open.spotify.com/show/7pbtiktDvlEAyFHT7KR98Y

Brian Thompson of the Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald's podcast. He was my neighbor and coworker at a local news station. He almost got fired because he was working the chyron and had jokingly changed it from "Donald Rumsfeld - Secretary of Defense" to "Donald Rumsfeld - War Criminal" and then accidentally put the joke on the air. Generally people who considered the Bush admin guilty of war crimes weren't right wingers.

[–] someguy3 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Ok you're moving around a lot. This was about 9/11 conspiracies. Not love of Bush, not prison camps, not war crimes, (a lot of all that is the some people playing into the "you're either with us or against us"). Those are all different than 9/11 conspiracies.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I brought up Jones because he was one of the main purveyors of 9/11 conspiracy theories as well as other conspiracy theories.

Love of Bush means you won't buy the conspiracy, because you think Bush is a hero and wouldn't do any such thing. That was the majority of conservatives at the time. Bush was so fucking popular he won the popular vote in 2004, something most other modern Republican Presidents have failed to do, relying on Electoral College wins. Despite the release of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in May 2004, a full 5 months before the election. (Michael Moore is traditionally leftist...)

Believing the Bush administration committed war crimes was absolutely tied to believing that we had entered unjust wars over false pretenses.

[–] someguy3 -1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Love of Bush means some won't buy the conspiracy. That does not rule out that 9/11 conspiracy theories could come from the right. They are not a harmonious group.

Just like entering the wars on WMD is different than 9/11 conspiracies.

You're really all over the map, so I think I'm out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Does this sound like a right wing conspiracy theorist to you? https://youtu.be/NWxISwEBU0U

[–] billiam0202 14 points 2 months ago

How did this one go from leftists in the early 2000's who thought Bush and Cheney ignored intelligence to let it happen to unhinged conspiratorial right wingers spouting the same bullshit.

The exact same way that both the left and the right agree that Epstein didn't kill himself, except one side thinks the AG of the then-current President who oversaw the DoJ and had connections to Epstein was responsible, and the other side thinks the presidential candidate that lost to Trump and retired from politics and has zero connections to the administration of the prison did it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Funny, I just mentioned PNAC in another post earlier today.

I am never going to not believe bush/Cheney/runsfeld were in some part aware of/responsible for what happened.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Oh, same. There was boatloads of evidence that they just sort of... let it happen so they could exploit the situation. PNAC outlined that they needed "another Pearl Harbor." They were honestly just as open as Project 2025 but back then no one took it as seriously as that even though they amount to the same thing.

That's why it's so fucked that it has become a right wing conspiracy...

[–] captainlezbian 3 points 2 months ago

The problem with conspiracy theories is that even the ones grounded in reality and reasonable evidence attract the sort of people easily drawn into conspiracy theories as well as changing some people into them. And those people eventually find their way into the rabbit hole that leads towards deciding that problems must be caused by someone, and that someone must be those who are different and ends with accusing the Jews and gays of intentionally masterminding the destruction of society.