Thread by @karamballes

1/ Conspiracy Theories and the Far Right

Its worth considering some of the driving factors behind these conspiracy theory protests.
Anti masks rhetoric can be a gateway drug to the far right. Once people believe one others become more believable.
amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug…

2/ Its similar to how groups like ISIS groom recruits. Its about formenting distrust, separating the target away from others, only the groomer speaks the truth others won't admit, only the groomer can be trusted.
The problem is that the groomer wants the target to be

3/ marginalised, to make them feel the victim. It means they are more likely to be drawn towards towards the groomers off of a helping hand, to be accepted as part of their tribe.
It means ridicule and insults dont work, you are doing the work of the groomer for them.

4/ And once a target has been dragged down the rabbit hole to a certain level of tribalism then they will embrace and celebrate anger and insults towards them.
'Anoying the right kind of people' they get a kick out of trolling, others anger vindicates their behaviour, it becomes

5/ a vicious 'positive' feedback loop.

What is worrying is the creeping in of Qanon and their conspiracies theories into the UK.

Plenty of Qanon and other related symbols in the anti lockdown crowd today, also started hearing more late night called on radio BBC 5 live and @LBC

6/ 'Trump will win the election because its written in the bible' I heard a few days ago. 'The end days are coming' also seems to be increasing in frequency in the past couple of weeks.

Its amazing how little attention this creep of dangerous conspiracy leading to ideology is

7/ Its about creating the fog of war in a digital age. One conspiracy linking into another.

For instance it can be worth lookinh at which hashtags are bunched together.
Lots of London protect & covid is fake #'s that are international in use.
Also the #1stAmmendment, many of the

8/ If you start checking through accounts, you get the expected Venn diagram.

Here we have 5G

9/ Many groups and accounts involved in the anti lockdown protest were also involved in the protest outside the Palace the other day protesting about Prince Andrew, a save children hashtag has hijacked and plenty of blue tick accounts amplified that protest and its messaging

10/ Not here to defend Prince Andrew, we probably should be shipping him off to the FBI, however perfectly legitimate calls for him to answer questions can be usurped for other intentions as Qanon managed to do successfully this week.

11/ For those not in the know a core Qanon conspiracy is that a secret cabal of satanic paedophiles are running the world and only Trump can save us by secretly uncovering the truth from inside the white House

A look an Qanon and 'The Great Replacement'⬇️

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1272607966601056256?s=19

12/ You can see why Qanon appeals to people waving Nazi flags, they say the conspiracy is run by Jews, other Qanon fans talk about Marxist conspiracies and then phrasing starts getting mixed up by people including UK politicians using phrases like intellectual marxists and

13/ even cultural Marxist which is a less than subtle term of antisemitics.
I sometimes wonder if some politicians and commentators even realise what they are saying or if they are just using the phrases that they know will rally the trolls to them.

14/ Sometimes I wonder who is setting the political narrative and discourse. Are politicians and media types encouraging the trolls and conspiracy theorists, or have the commentators and MPs now trying to brandish their warriors against woke credentials become reactionaries

15/ merely in pursuit of chasing those clicks and likes, because as professional politicians their only concern is maintaining power particularly now theyve outsourced policy making to opaquly funded think tanks

16/ And its always worth keeping an eye out for digital agent provocateurs

https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1298489077164118017?s=19