Like the type to unironically think Freemasons are the top dogs that control every faucet of society and every other sinister organization bows down to them. The ones who think they’re very smart and woke by saying some shit like “the media is trying to divide us…” They’ll see some socialist quote warning about bourgeois domination of the world and agree with it, but then have zero interest in actually internalizing the material reality. It’s like their entire brain is just based on random quotes and simpsons clips with red circles.

It is so intellectually lazy that I get whiplash every time I see them in the wild because I forget people like this exist. At least with right wing nut job conspiracies will have convictions whether they’re racist or antisemitic or just projection about pedophilia. Centrist conspiracy theorists’ just post some vague “I told you so” in the comments of YouTube and Facebook.

  • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    47
    ·
    10 months ago

    every faucet of society

    The real question is, water we going to do about it?

    If there was a leak we could at least get a drip of information, but since we don’t, that idea’s just down the drain.

  • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    10 months ago

    I read the title and thought you may have meant

    “9/11 was done by Osama Bin Laden for one tower and George W Bush for the other tower, completely co-incidentally and unbeknownst to each other”

  • Great_Leader_Is_Dead@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    10 months ago

    Like the type to unironically think Freemasons are the top dogs that control every faucet of society

    The reality here is more insidious. The Freemasons are essentially a secret society for the Petite Bourgeois, they can’t pull off any actual CIA Deep-State shit, but they’re a great way for guys who own two car dealerships and several rental properties to networks and hatch their own little locally grown Psy-Ops. Still probably a decent amount of drug smuggling and sexual abuse going on but on a much more artisanal scale.

    • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      ·
      10 months ago

      This is true, but Freemasonry also exists as a higher cult than that - lots of US presidents have been members (partly because elites join every exclusive club going for networking), and it was/is rife in the British Empire at all levels, just that the higher levels like with every cult exploit the lesser, while allowing the lesser to exploit outsiders.

      In religious terms, Freemasonry is just protestantism mixed with old Judaism - partly why its disliked by ‘popular’ christianity, being suspected of a return to what the ‘early church’ had an issue with.

  • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    10 months ago

    My dad is more or less like this, the other day we were talking about some conspiracy theories and he says “if only there was someone who could do something about the CIA,” I quickly say “China” but he gives me this look

    side-eye-1

    Centrist conspiracy theorists are just people that are smart enough to see some of the problems, but not enough to defeat the propaganda obscuring the solutions.

  • HiImThomasPynchon [des/pair, it/its]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    That used to be me. It came from the meilieu of George Carlin, Penn & Teller: Bullshit, and South Park that permeated the era. It’s part of that wing of the ‘manosphere’ that believes true masculinity includes being a pseudointellectual dipshit. These people make up most of the viewerbase for youtubers with debatesonas.

    They may pull the “I hate everyone equally!” card or the “both sides hate me!” card but the truth is they’re closer to racism/antisemitism. Fascists will encourage this kind of behaviour and outlook because this position makes it easier and more comforting to blast off into moon logic and fascism than to confront the long and sordid history of white supremacy.

  • GinAndJuche@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    10 months ago

    They fucking suck, they are just contrarians for the purpose of being smug. The least principled of those who reject the MSM narrative.

    At the end of the day, nkthing is lower than a centrist.

  • context [fae/faer, fae/faer]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    10 months ago

    Like the type to unironically think Freemasons are the top dogs that control every faucet of society

    i’m pretty sure they’re the reason it takes so long for my shower to heat up, though

  • super_mario_69 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    10 months ago

    Jesus christ yes, oh my god. What zero materialist analysis does to a mf. My theory is that their general lack of ideological framework and refusal to look at history through a materialist context, combined with living within or in the sphere of influence of an undeniably declining empire, has led to some kind of terminal doomerism. Like “It doesn’t matter who wins, every ideology is bad, the rothschilds/freemasons/whoever will still control everything, everything is and will always be bad, and the violence will continue forever.” E.g. “It doesn’t matter that Iran is resisting the empire in the middle east, because they are religious extremists, which is Bad, therefore their resistance is Bad, and plays right into the hands of the powers that be.” Might there be some, hmm, historic and/or material reason for Iran’s actions? No, of course not. The people in power there are simply evil and bad. In their world it’s like power exists like mana, and some people are capable of wielding it through some evil esoteric arcane means. There’s always that ominous REAL ENEMY that we should be focusing on, instead of bickering amongst ourselves, “not left or right, but forward” etc etc. I’m convinced these guys would be fash if they had the guts to hold any convictions.

    • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      10 months ago

      Well its likely that the rothschilds for example will continue to ‘win’ for the foreseeable future, they’re not wrong. In my country, the descendents of rulers of 1000 years ago still largely rule. One person of this kind I met told me ‘we’ve been fucked since the Pharoahs, we’re just slaves’ and I can see his point. What good is communism to a western peasant, its kind of ‘pie in the sky’ to someone who’s never seen, or been decived about, a tangible victory.

      I guess from the point of view of a ‘peasant’, I can see why they think that way - for example, it does look like collusion when China trades with and signs deals with the US, or Russia does the same, or when countries participate together in international bodies, despite their differing interests and conflicts. Of course, as you say, its a narrow focus and lacks a kind of context & analysis that is more kind of big picture. But its the education system and propaganda at fault, not them so much.

      Power is kind of mana, its just money, laws & the more abstract ‘influence’, and of course guns and such, and money is spent like mana and granted by a higher power (social relations). I think the ‘evil esoteric arcane means’ is just code for legal systems - ‘fairy tales’ talk a lot about this kind of thing in metaphor, like these conspiracy theories, because its a way of communicating knowledge and getting it past censors. Simultaneously, a lot of these theorists use a religious framework to talk about this stuff, coming from that kind of upbringing, hence the constant references to demons (amusingly, also how Iran refers to the west in terms of Satan).

      But I think they’re talking about the same things, usually, and in fact its kind of like ‘esoteric anarchism’ in the sense of anti-archon ism. I think the constant ‘they’re dividing us’ ignores the material reality that people are divided (and often fails to question and criticise those divisions and how they can be resolved), but it also idealistically displays a yearning for people not to be divided by for example, race, which is a laudible goal or wish.

      I don’t mean to write an apologia for them so much, but I’m not sure about this kind of reaction against them being particularly useful, its the kind of orthodox reaction against heresy, and our current orthodoxy is capitalist, aristocratic, and so on. If someone is shitting on the Rothschilds or Freemasons, I don’t see much of an issue. But I can understand the frustration, but I think its also important to understand them too, and why they think like that, and also not to take what they say entirely literally.

    • Tunnelvision [they/them]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      That is pretty true though. Actually what is the consensus on 9/11 for hexbear? Because I really don’t see a reason to believe the US and Saudi Arabia didn’t do it. I’ve seen some people claim it’s genuine blowback and in all honesty I’ve never heard a convincing argument as to why.

      • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        10 months ago

        idk what the consensus is and can only speak for myself, but I’m convinced it was the US, with some level of collaberation with Israel, Saudis, Pakistan, UK, or factions therein. False flags are the US’s go-to for starting wars - its difficult to get a good casus beli like a border dispute when you’re miles away from everyone on a separate landmass.

        • Tunnelvision [they/them]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          10 months ago

          Exactly. Like people need to remember 2001. You’re talking about the US being the uncontested superpower of the planet. No other time in human history has there ever been a nation with that much influence over the globe. How else was the GWOT supposed to kick off other than the US terrorizing itself?

          • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            10 months ago

            whenever i think about it, I picture some crazy drunk guy screaming and slashing himself with a knife then running at people in a crowd of horrified onlookers, theres something really primitive about it, despite the cold calculation involved. But then when has the US cared about its own people, or anyone really, except as a means to an end.

  • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    10 months ago

    Is the Freemasonry one ‘centrist’? I’ve seen it advocated by all kinds… its an anti-British Empire, sort of Catholic one isn’t it? And the protestants respond with ‘its actually all the Jesuits and the Vatican’. And then there’s syncretic versions that accuse both.

    I’m not sure they’re intellectually lazy, but its rather like tracking the cults of the Elites, of which there are many. They do tend to ignore environmental/class causes and processes and focus more on individuals and discrete specific parts, but they do a lot of research (sometimes of dubious quality ofc). Misguided or tunnel vision maybe, but not lazy.

    Personally, I don’t think they’re too offensive, they broadly share the same principals - anti-elite and pro-popular mass movement. Though maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re referring to, ‘centrist’ is confusing me.

  • SerLava [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    10 months ago

    A centrist conspiracy theorist is just someone who’s one year away from deciding all their conspiracies are due to Jewish sorcery

  • M68040 [they/them]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    10 months ago

    I’ve delivered mail to a Masonic Temple. Seemed nice enough? The Christian bent isn’t really to my taste, but apparently historical masons sort of had a proto-union for stone workers thing going on?

    • Carguacountii [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      Its not particularly centralised, more like a franchise system, so they vary a lot. There’s thousands of lodges still in the UK, like one in almost every town of a certain size, multiple in cities. They’re very secretive so membership is a guess.

      A lot of them still don’t accept women in their cult. A lot of them have ties with Unions (as well as political parties/figures, and other power structures and institutions, mostly in the protestant world), including infamously police Unions.

      I suppose a proto-union thing (there being a lot of stone building particularly in the gothic/European Imperial era like victorian/georgian times in the UK), with a somewhat absurd claim to be descendents of or inheritors of the secrets of the builders of Solomon’s Temple. But not too different from other guilds, like the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers for example, the sort of pirates, scammers, merchants, artisans, and monopolists who founded the East India Company and built the British Empire.

      They might seem nice, and some probably are, but I don’t trust them at all - like I wouldn’t trust a Scientologist. Religion needs to be conducted in the open and publically by the masses, not in the shadows by cabals and cults or else they get up to all sorts of mischief.

      edit: the builders of Solomon’s Temple incidentally were according to most accounts demons/devils/jinn, so its not a particularly endearing claim to most christians.

      • M68040 [they/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Yeah, not really the sort of crowd I’d fly with (were it on the table) but not really a group I’d consider my single biggest problem at any given time either.

        • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          10 months ago

          I could get in because my grandpa was a mason but he left so was actually an ex-mason and he had nothing good to say about the organization, called it a pyramid scheme (which from what information I’ve learned about how going up in rank cost more and more money seems to check out)