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.
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.
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.
Thanks for posting this!! Much needed insight for me.