George Monbiot Profile picture
Sep 25, 2020 6 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Far-right politics has a standard script.
It goes like this:
A great evil stalks the land.
It’s a plot by a shadowy cabal.
Only a few of us have understood it.
A saviour is needed to rescue us from it.
He is justified in using any measure necessary to root it out.
Thread/
In other words, conspiracy theories are not an emergent or exotic property of far-right politics. They are a foundational principle. You cannot persuade people to endorse or commit atrocities unless they believe absurdities.
The QAnon conspiracy theory is a classic of the genre.
It claims that a cabal of Democrats, celebrities, the Rothschilds, Bill Gates etc etc are abducting children, abusing and torturing them and extracting their blood. Only Donald Trump can rescue the world from this horror.
As @MoiraDonegan points out:
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
But it’s not the only one. The Plandemic theory also slots neatly into the script. It claims that Covid-19 was deliberately engineered and spread by a shadowy cabal seeking to profit from vaccines (also involving Bill Gates).
Every conspiracy theory appears to be a gateway drug for the next one. I’ve watched people lose interest in a false story only when another, more bizarre conspiracy theory comes along. In my experience, when people fall down this tunnel, they seldom return.
So it's grim to see people who were on the left falling for these stories, and gradually aligning themselves with the far-right movements that generated them. If you spread a conspiracy theory, you might think you’re sticking it to the Man. But you’re paving the way for him.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with George Monbiot

George Monbiot Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @GeorgeMonbiot

Sep 18
1. You might not have heard of it, but the system supposed to protect us in England and Wales from #floods is an absolute disgrace: a network of old boys' clubs completely unaccountable to the public. No wonder it fails so badly.
My column + thread.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. The Internal Drainage Boards model dates from the 13th Century, and remains feudal in character. They’re cabals of landowners, unaccountable to the public, beholden neither to government nor to local authorities, who tend to operate in their own interests.
3. All too often, that means speeding floodwater off their own land and down to the nearest town or city, where it inflicts far more damage. We need a whole catchment-based approach, in which strategic decisions are made in the public interest.
Read 6 tweets
Aug 22
1. Whenever I write about new fermentation technologies, that could greatly reduce the environmental impacts of our diets as well as the exploitation of animals, I run into the same set of objections. In this thread, I’ll take them one by one.🧵
2. A. “I don’t want to eat food from factories”.
Well that’s unfortunate, because almost everything you eat has passed through at least one factory before it reaches you. Even your fruit and veg are likely to have been through a grading and packing plant. Cont/
3. The meat you eat has passed through a long series of factories: the mills producing the feed, the industrial buildings in which the vast majority of farmed animals are kept, slaughterhouses, packing plants and warehouses. Cont/
Read 13 tweets
Aug 17
1. How and why did the racist riots happen, and what do they tell us about where we might be heading? This thread concerns one part of the answer, the formation of what the historian Arno Meyer called a “crisis stratum” of disillusioned young men. 🧵
2. He was writing about the rise of fascism 100 years ago, but there are some disturbing parallels. Of course, there are also some major differences: for example, we are not recovering from a devastating war. How has it happened without that catalyst?
3. Well, those who have manipulated and helped create this crisis stratum have played on a similar sense of atomisation and betrayal, caused by decades of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism simultaneously promises the world and snatches it away.
penguin.co.uk/books/455534/t…
Read 13 tweets
Aug 13
There is no such thing as a migrant crime wave. It's a myth spread by racist agitators. 🧵 brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…
In fact, immigration is consistently linked to decreases in violent and property crime:
antoniocasella.eu/nume/Adelman_2…
Nor is there an association between *undocumented* immigration and violent crime: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…
Read 5 tweets
Aug 12
A shocking report about how big environmental NGOs have helped greenwash the most damaging of all food products - beef. They've collaborated with brutal conglomerates to spread disinformation. As I know to my cost, in taking on beef, you take on everyone. vox.com/future-perfect…
These organisations need to take a long hard look at themselves:
@WWF
@nature_org
@EnvDefenseFund
PS: Environmentalists, including @algore, really need to stop hand-waving about "soil carbon sequestration". Agricultural soils are not and never will be reliable long-term stores of additional carbon.
Read 5 tweets
Aug 6
1. What we are seeing all over social media now is flat denial of the very existence of the far right. Far right agitators claim to be simple “patriots”, defending their country. Which is just what far right agitators have said for the past century.🧵
2. They also claim that 20th Century Nazism and fascism were not far right at all, but leftwing movements. On what grounds? That “Nazi” is a contraction of National Socialist. I wonder how many other Nazi claims they take at face value?
3. Actual fascists and Nazis claim that Keir Starmer’s government and the police are fascists and Nazis, for having the temerity to enforce the law. Oh, and those of us who criticise them from the left, we are apparently fascists and Nazis too.
Read 7 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(