Category: conspiracy theory

NESARA Reborn

Mike Rothschild2 Comments

As the United States government struggles under the weight of both the pandemic and the economic devastation it’s brought, an old conspiracy theory has suddenly reared its ugly head – and because I’ve written about it before, I’m in a unique position to write about it again.

That conspiracy theory is NESARA, a pie-in-the-sky prosperity scam that would see all debt abolished and vast riches raining down on the people as the culmination of a great war between good and evil. In the prospective cash payments, mortgage pauses, and debt forgiveness that are being kicked around by Congress, conspiracy believers see the fulfillment of NESARA – a time of light and hope that will make us all rich beyond our dreams.

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“Help Me, Obi-Wan Durham…You’re Our Only Hope”

Mike Rothschild2 Comments

The QAnon conspiracy theory is a road that leads nowhere, with the only off-ramps leading to other roads that lead nowhere. It’s a constant stream of lofty promises and predictions that fizzle out, constantly kicking the can of a “great awakening” or “storm” of mass arrests down to another day – a day always coming “soon” or “next week” or some unspecified time that’s “about to happen.”

How much longer can this go on before a disgruntled Q believer decides to start the “great awakening” themselves? I have a feeling we’re about to find out, thanks to the one last reasonable hope that the QAnon movement has of the “deep state” being swept aside: the investigation by US Attorney John Durham into potential abuses by the FBI and DOJ during the Mueller investigation.

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Does Debunking Conspiracy Theories Make Them Worse?

Mike Rothschild

Does pushing back against disinformation actually amplify disinformation?

It’s a question that journalists and debunkers constantly grapple with – whether their efforts to expose the truth about conspiracy theories merely expose more people to conspiracy theories. And by extension, they give life to a conspiracy theory just at the point where it should be hitting the limit of people open to believing it. Even just the act of taking apart misinformation can be used as proof that the misinformation is the truth, and that the person taking it apart is a paid shill trying to “contain the damage.”

There’s a name for this phenomenon, the “backfire effect.” Coined in 2010 to describe proponents of the Iraq War digging in deeper when evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction was debunked, the backfire effect essentially states that, as RationalWiki puts it, “in the face of contradictory evidence, established beliefs do not change but actually get stronger.”

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The Clinton Murder Machine Breaks Down

Mike Rothschild

Last summer, conspiracy watchers were abuzz over the shooting death of former Arkansas state senator Linda Collins-Smith. And recent updates in the case have made the case even more bizarre and noteworthy.

The 57-year-old Republican was found dead in her home of a single gunshot wound to the chest. Naturally, the death of anyone involved in Arkansas politics, no matter who they were or what they did, instantly points back to the Clintons – a couple long rumored to have a monumental list of people they’ve killed. It didn’t help the conspiracy theories that Collins-Smith had recently appeared on the QAnon YouTube channel Patriots Soapbox, and even though she wasn’t there to talk about Q, just the correlation was enough.

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Who is Somerset Belenoff?

Mike Rothschild16 Comments

I’m often introduced to new topics in the fringe world by ways that people find my writing. So I was especially interested when a spike in searches for the name “Somerset Belenoff” brought increased traffic to my piece on the “Rothschild human hunting lodge” hoax. The name wasn’t familiar to me, so the search traffic couldn’t have been because of the content of the piece. Was it embedded in a tweet? A comment?

And most importantly, who is Somerset Belenoff, and why are people searching for him/her?

Well, the answer to the first question is easy. The search traffic comes from a comment on the piece, by “2CrayCray” that goes [sic] “Conspiracy is Truth: And how do we know you arent a plant or paid informant working for somerset belenoff or her stooges the Rothchilds? How will you expose this eveil i ask you? Of course you wont because you are working with THEM. you are probly also a reptellion lizard and a cannable.”

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