Thread by @ParanoidPol

Making my way through the @joerogan episode. Thread to follow with some inner monologue.

@DouglasKMurray is absolutely right to call out the rise on the Right of ahistorical narratives coalescing around the likes of @IanCarrollShow and @martyrmade.

Downplaying Hitler's actions, Holocaust denial, reversing the order of operations and history on Ukraine and flipping the defender to the offender is the playbook and @DouglasKMurray is asking the correct question as to what the purpose of the promulgations are.

It's something much more insidious and its why @DouglasKMurray opens up by asking the most important question which is why the most extreme fringe views are being given the most oxygen. Obviously its for clicks and content and he's correct to call out how dangerous this is.

He goes on to make a key point that I have been shouting into the void about. Conspiracy theories, especially those with a grain of truth, are weaponized to make people question the entirety of reality around them. He is on the money calling out COVID lab leak validation here.

Lab leak was then used as a springboard to jump into Holocaust denial, USS Liberty, Ukraine's responsibility in causing the war, NATO being bad, AIPAC controlling the U.S., and so much more. Minds are being turned into clay that's shaped by those with the loudest microphone.

@ComicDaveSmith is basically engaging in this around the 32 minute mark when he hedges it all and says the Nazis absolutely had to be defeated with force but the outcome of WWII gave Stalin half of Europe so maybe there was a better way.

Total tinfoil hat history being done here that's insinuating Germany could have been defeated without partnering with the Soviets prior to the Manhattan Project being completed. Also - Stalin lied and said at Yalta Eastern Europe would hold free/fair elections, then rug pulled.

The crux of all of this is the following: the experts have let us down in some ways, therefore we can never trust people who know what they're talking about.

And that then results in people who don't know what they're talking about like @ComicDaveSmith & @IanCarrollShow in a weird and twisted way being seen by masses of people as actually having more credibility because they themselves aren't the experts.

It's why @martyrmade is a known entity to @joerogan on Winston Churchill while at the same time Joe doesn't even know who Andrew Roberts is. Andrew is the establishment, and Darryl is the anti-establishment, and that's more appealing today.

On Ukraine: @ComicDaveSmith is totally out to lunch opening with the claim that he doesn't think many on the Right are making the claim that Putin is a good guy. 1. many do say that & 2. many more are saying it indirectly by punching down at Ukraine for defending itself.

After literally just ending a portion of the podcast talking about crackpot historians - @ComicDaveSmith brings up @scotthortonshow and his book on how Nato antagonized Russia into invading Ukraine. Completely ignores Georgia in 2008, Moldova in the 90s, and much more.

These kinds of comments split the responsibility for the war by allocating blame to both Russia and the West. It can never just be Russia - that would be too clear cut. Too clean. Too simple. There has to be more to the story, more fog, more conspiracy, right?

Dave is pushing the CIA crackpot coup revisionism behind the Maidan protests in 2014. Boring. Anyone that knows Ukrainians knows that this was organic and bottom-up. Dave himself admits he's been to none of the places he talks about and it shows.

@ComicDaveSmith: yes despots are bad but also the West is bad and we can't influence the theocrats and autocracies of the world but we can influence the fact that the West is also/equally bad so we should all focus on the West being bad, basically.

Murray nails it with empathy being dished out for the Bataclan victims and the Believe All Women movement but withdrawn in totality when it comes to the victims of October 7th.

"You can't time travel but you can travel" in response to the shock of @ComicDaveSmith talking about conflict in the Middle East for 18 months and never visiting the region is just poetry.

@ComicDaveSmith: Gaza "shares a lot of similarities" with a concentration camp.

Gaza before October 7th:

I don't see the similarities to Dachau, Ravensbruck, or Auschwitz, but maybe that's just me.

https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1906293795450155042

This is clearly a 2v1 debate.

@ComicDaveSmith is entirely wrong around 1:54:00 on Weizmann losing the PM position to Ben Gurion because he was a moderate. Weizmann was in failing health by '48 and unwell regularly. He wasn't in a position to become PM.

Weizmann had to get out of his sickbed in '47 to convince Truman to support Israel's claim to the Negev for more secure borders in Resolution 181 at the UN. It took him everything he had. This attempt to position him as a moderate against the radicals and losing is ahistorical.

@ComicDaveSmith totally and completely wrong again on Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007.

1:56:30 ish "and then of course there was an attempted coup, after that and that's when Hamas seized control.. the coup failed." Oh really?

theguardian.com/world/2007/jun…

Dave Smith: Gazans couldn't leave Gaza without approval of Israel. Does Egypt and the border with Rafah just not exist? How did Gazans get out of Gaza before the war and go places outside of Gaza when they weren't going to work in Israel?

@ComicDaveSmith: there is tremendous suffering in Gaza

@DouglasKMurray: yes and the explicit strategy of Hamas is to maximize that suffering for PR and weaponization against the Israelis

@ComicDaveSmith: yea but its Israel's fault

2:11:00 ish - Insurgent math = you can never fight back against insurgents who use civilians as human shields because it kills civilians and creates more insurgents so the best thing to do is never fight back and let the insurgents win. 200 IQ wargaming from @ComicDaveSmith

@ComicDaveSmith "When you slaughter innocent people, those people tend to hate your guts" from @ComicDaveSmith around 2:13:00 - again - total lapse of agency on the part of the people putting civilians in harms way by virtue of the way they choose to fight.