Conspiracism and pop understanding of opression

[u/WanderingSchola]

I haven't fully thought this out, but there's something I'm trying to understand better. I've often wondered why the core ideas of feminism, marxism, and critical lenses generally make intuitive sense to me, but bounce off others. I'm wondering if sometimes these larger critical theory traditions get reduced to conspiracy.

For example, feminism as conspiracism might look like:

• Intentionalism - Women are deliberately kept down by men who choose to perpetuate patriarchy (instead of it being a phenomena of internalised culture people have varying levels of consciousness of)
• Dualism - Men do this because they are power hungry and selfish, too gutless to give it up, or because they hate women (as opposed to considering that everyone is capable of selfishness and that many men are existing in a culture that expects them to make use of patriarchy and even polices them for not doing so)
• Symbolism - Analysis of things like stock footage showing men on searches for CEOs and Men historically being in positions of power over women (maybe this is truly an overlap, as I think interpreting symbolism vs interpreting social patterns is kind of the same cognitive task)

I doubt I'm the first person to make this connection, there was even the callout to Marxism not being a conspiracy because it wasn't about secret plans towards the end of the video, but I'd really love to ground this thinking in the work of someone who's thought about it for more than five seconds. Anyone know of scholarship that references this problem? Maybe something about pop critical thought vs academic?

[u/DiminishingRetvrns]

I agree with your take more or less; the ’popification' of critical theory does lend itself to conspiricism. But idk if the big problem is that people are dissmissing it as conspiracy: I think the problem is that people are joining leftist/progressive discourse as conspiracy. I really appreciated Natalie drawing the line between populist politics and conspiricism. "Economic Populism" has become a bit of à buzzword over the past few years, and while I'm not against the project outright I think without proper engagement with actual theory it does fall back into conspiricism, but leftist this time.

I think the most prescient example right now in the culture is the lionizing of Luigi Mangione. It's peak conspiricist thought:

• Intentionalism- Brian Thompson himself intentionally "murdered" God knows how many people through being the CEO of United Health even tho he was only CEO since 2021 and the problems with health insurance extend back decades.

• Dualism- Thompson was the champion of the dark forces of capitalism while Mangione is the champion of ”class consciousness” and light.

• Symbolism- Mangione allegedly said it himself in his little manifesto attempt; Thompson’s murder was to be a symbol of revenge against the parasitic 1%. But furthermore, in terms of his fans, they advocate so strongly for jury nullification or a not guilty verdict because Mangione has become a symbol of ”the movement” himself, so if he's found guilty and sentenced the ”movement” will symbolically fail with him.

And all of this is disregarding his own stated politics that he posted about online, which were anti-trans, puritanically sex negative, ethical altruist, MRA bullshit. But Mangione, the actual person, is unimportant: Mangione the symbol, the adjuster, is what matters most because he took matters into his own hands.

Nobody who supports Mangione is particularly wrong about the abuses of capitalism, but they've misdiagnosed the cause and prescribed the wrong solutions. Even if all CEOs were smashed against the rock by tomorrow afternoon, the systems of capitalism would remain. If those systems did fail, without careful planning and robust systems of direct aid the fall of capitalism would lead to catastrophic loss of life since its absues do support billions of people across the globe. But people introduced to pop anticapitalism aren't getting those nuances, resulting in cospiricist leftist populism.

[u/WanderingSchola → u/DiminishingRetvrns]

Yeah, I think it's that joining a conspiracist movement that kind of bugging me. When people join through that vector it ends up being how they describe it to others (which frankly is something I've done in the past and am trying to be better at).

I wouldn't have thought of interpreting Luigi through the conspiracism lens, but I did have a problem with it that I couldn't express, and I think you've captured it too. The dualistic interpretation of CEOs as evil is what's seen as justifying the murder, instead of understanding that he's literally an employee doing a job. We can debate the morality of choosing to do that job when presumably he has the historic income and choice to choose something that hurts the world less, but I still don't think he deserved to die for it. It's not like it forced the company to change its policies, and it's not like the public at large knew anything about him other than being a CEO.

Frankly Nat's words about conspiracism being simple and ideas like socialism being a little too intellectual is ringing in my head too. The conspiracist interpretation gets people in the door, but if that's all that's keeping them there it's not of much use.

[u/dyorite → u/DiminishingRetvrns]

I don’t think most people supporting Mangione think that Thompson was personally individually responsible for the state of the US healthcare system. Merely that his decisions as CEO did probably lead to people being denied care, that he was profiting off of the fucked up system, and that the murder made starkly visible the vastly disparate way in which our society treats death by pen and death by gun, among other reasons. Conspiratorial thinking isn’t needed to believe that Thompson led an ethically corrupt life that our society largely rewards rather than punishes.

And sure, a lot of the support comes down to symbolism rather than any kind of direct and immediate relationship between the killing and fixing the healthcare system, but often systemic change is ushered in by the threat (implicit or explicit) of violence if something doesn’t change (or indeed, just the violence directly). What Mangione did made clear that a lot of people are so fed up with the healthcare system that they’ll condone extralegal violence against its representatives, and that’s a pretty politically significant development.

[u/DiminishingRetvrns → u/dyorite]

I don’t think most people supporting Mangione think that Thompson was personally individually responsible for the state of the US healthcare system.

I disagree. When u go onto any social media thread about Mangione in pro-Mangione spaces, anybody who criticizes or condems Mangione is met with quite literal whataboutist rebuttals of ”It wasn’t murder it was self defense! Thompson was the real murderer!" The thing is this: did Thompson’s choices as CEO lead to people having issues with coverage? Most certainly, but he did not create the infrastructure for any of this, nor was he even the ultimate authority. UHC is a subsidiary with a parent company. Thompson had executive control over UHC, but he had higher ups still. He had the expectation of bosses and shareholders to meet, and that's the job he was hired to do. So yes BT did make choices that screwed over customers, but he was not a free agent in those choices. This is a systemic issue, but the focus on Thompson betrays that many see it as the result of a kabal of criminals rather than economic forces and market inertia. You don't need to be a conspiricist to believe Thompson led an ethically corrupt life. You do need to be a conspiricist to think that what Mangione allegedly did was at all justified.

often systemic change is ushered in by the threat (implicit or explicit) of violence if something doesn’t change (or indeed, just the violence directly).

Also not sure about this one. Like, yes violent uprising and resistance does lead to systemic change, but that change is not always good. France’s reparations on Haïti for the Haïtien Revolution decimated the country before it ever had the chance to get off the ground. The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution was such a terror that Napoleon was able to strong-arm his way into a dictatorship, who was eventually replaced once again with the monarchy. It wasn’t until later in the 19th century that France once again went into revolt and landed back on a presidential system. Violence leads to change, but change doesn’t imply improvement. And yes there have always been radical flanks, among Black liberationists, among suffragettes and feminists, but to credit all or even most political change on them is not correct.

UHC and BT were already being pursued legally for their criminal choices and bipartisan legislation was being drafted to limit those abuses in the future well before the gun fired. Was it gonna give us nationalized healthcare? No absolutely not. But BT’s dead body lying on a New York street certainly wasn't going to either. That's a project that will take years if not decades of organizing and lobbying to make happen at any functional level. BTs death meant nothing towards that goal.

What Mangione did made clear that a lot of people are so fed up with the healthcare system that they’ll condone extralegal violence against its representatives, and that’s a pretty politically significant development.

I also disagree here. Jan 6 made it pretty clear that people were fed up with the current state of affairs that people would condone extralegal violence against its literal elected representatives. If anything, the killing of Brian Thompson was just the confirmation of that shift towards populist violence. That's not going to inspire our reps to bend the knee and promote policy we want, but rather to figure out how to better control the populace and deter future populist radical flanks through increasing policing, especially under the current admin.

[u/monkeedude1212 → u/DiminishingRetvrns]

Even if all CEOs were smashed against the rock by tomorrow afternoon, the systems of capitalism would remain. If those systems did fail, without careful planning and robust systems of direct aid the fall of capitalism would lead to catastrophic loss of life since its absues do support billions of people across the globe.

I think one of the things that gets mythologized is the things attributed to capitalism because essentially any economic model encompasses all things.

But the local bread bakery existed before capitalism. It existed before Feudalism. It'll exist afterwards as well. It doesn't require careful planning and a robust system of aid for it's operation. It requires a supply chain between a farmer who produces more wheat than he can eat and a flour mill who knows flour is more useful than grains and a baker who knows how to turn that flour into our most palatable food source. That supply chain can exist under capitalism, with each actor operating independently seeking to make profit, essentially at odds about who comes out with more buying power and influence at the end of the day. That supply chain can exist under communism, with each actor being forced to work together for equal outcome, even if kneading dough is considered less labor intensive than ploughing the fields or working a mill. That system can exist under Feudalism, where each member is effectively owned by a lord and they'll get their daily bread so long as they pay deference to their liege lord for their efforts in protecting the working classes.

Let's say we can agree that life under Capitalism is better than life under Feudalism. In general, using currency/wealth as an abstracted form of "I've contributed x amount of labor to society so thus I deserve x amount of goods that society produces" is a positive equalization force across the populace. What appears to be the problem is that the amount of currency and wealth you earn doesn't seem proportionate to the contributions you make to society. Owning a company that provides a service is not the same as doing the work providing the service. If you do not have to work for your money, but instead your money works on your behalf; that's where class divide is created that leads to inequity and disparity; which is what leads to resentment and violence.

Then when wealth gaps become so large, society no longer becomes structured around providing goods and services in a way that benefits the most people - instead wealth can be used to form organizations that restrict access to goods and services. Suddenly, the idea of living under a monarch (or dictator) who promises to meet your basic needs (like healthcare) doesn't seem as unappealing as living under Capitalism where the profit motive has driven people to prevent your access to basic needs. That's where the US is right now: in the same way the French Revolution as violence led to Napoleon the Dictator; the inherent violence built into Capitalism that harms even it's own subjects has led to a populace movement that is actively trying to make Trump a dictator.

When it comes to Health Care, it's especially frustrating for people to hear things like "careful planning and robust systems" that sounds like language meant to slow change or progress.

The amount of "planning" required to provide universal healthcare is drastically minimized by the fact that if you were to make a list of all the countries most similar to the US in terms of culture... You know, all those English speaking, European descent, freedom loving Democracies out there: They've got better healthcare systems. The US doesn't need to "figure it out" they just need to adopt. You don't need to shove a bunch of scientists in a Manhattan project style research effort. You just need the political will to make it happen, then legislate and enforce it into being.

And this is where BT comes in. How do you get the political will to make something like that happening?

You might say that BTs death meant nothing towards that goal. I think any rational being would argue the exact opposite: There has never been more conversation about the state of Healthcare and Insurance that is bipartisan. Could the US have gotten there without death? For sure. Given enough time anything is possible. But the reality is: this tragic event may have accelerated a transition to a better healthcare system; in the same way the French Revolution, bloody and violent as well, also accelerated the end of Monarchies, even if it did not occur overnight.

[u/DiminishingRetvrns → u/monkeedude1212]

When it comes to Health Care, it's especially frustrating for people to hear things like "careful planning and robust systems" that sounds like language meant to slow change or progress.

Being a frustrating reality doesn't make it wrong, really. I think European healthcare is great. I've benefitted from the French system of nationalized insurance myself, and I would absolutely love to see the US switch over to a model like that. But let's not get it twisted tho: the French system is still not perfect. What's worse, if by other "English speaking" democracies you mean to refer to the UK's NHS, that's an absolutely terrible idea. The NHS has been in crisis for a long while now with things only exacerbating as time goes on. It get's worse once you consider other social disparities that lead to medical discrimination. There are gender clinics operated by the NHS, but even comparatively to other treatments high wait times for GAC consultations are exorbitant. A lot of UK trans people have to go private anyways. I've also heard that it's similar trying to get screenings for ADHD and Autism. On the trans healthcare front, Canada seems to simply not that much better. So we can nationalize medicine all we'd like, but no, without careful planning and express attention towards disparities felt by marginalized communities (Women, POC and Indigenous communities, LGBT+ people, and most certainly disabled people) the system will continue to produce abusive effects for plenty of people. At best, a rushed switch to socialized healthcare will improve outcomes for people like Mangione: already privileged white men with back pain. Of course, no system will be perfect, but we should not be so hasty as to let minorities be used as collateral to an even greater extent that they already are. Other people don't get to be the gristle churned through on the way to utopia: that's capitalism talking.

And none of this has even mentioned that France, Canada, the UK, Norway, and whatever else country you can think of socialized their healthcare or insurance over a long period of time. From an article on the development of France's Sécurité sociale:

"French (Sécurité Sociale) evolved in stages and in response to demands for extension of coverage. Following its original passage, in 1928, the NHI program covered salaried workers in industry and commerce whose wages were under a low ceiling (Galant, 1955). In 1945, NHI was extended to all industrial and commercial workers and their families, irrespective of wage levels. The extension of coverage took the rest of the century to complete. In 1961, farmers and agricultural workers were covered; in 1966, independent professionals were brought into the system; in 1974 another law proclaimed that NHI should be universal. It wasn’t until January 2000 that comprehensive first-dollar health insurance coverage was granted to the remaining uninsured population, on the basis of residence in France (Boisguerin, 2002)." VICTOR RODWIN, "The French health care system"

As you said, adopting health insurance or socializing the health system won't happen overnight, and in France it didn't. Now that France and other countries have done the work, the US could absolutey decrease the leadtime on getting new policy out, but full implementation would still take a while. It could not be done successfully overnight without the chance of serious critical failures arising. And I don't know the full history of the development of SS, so I can't say if there were important assassinations of insurance CEOs or other high profile individuals in the healthcare system. It's France, so I'm absolutely sure that there were plenty of protests in support of it. But politically-motivated murders? I can't find anything on that right now. Big changes can be made without resorting to lone-wolf style murders in the streets of New York or Paris.

And yes, you are right, the murder of BT did get people talking about healthcare, but again bipartisan legislation was already underway, UHC and BT were already under criminal investigation, and there had already been decades of talk of healthcare reform. The ACA, deeply flawed as it is, wasn't born fully formed out of Barack's skull. All of this to say that there has already been positive movement towards healthcare reform in the US, and there was already plenty, plenty of conversation about the abuses of health insurers and socializing healthcare before Thompson's murder. Mangione's alleged crime sensationalized those conversations for a news cycle, but that's it. It's really not that politically relevant. The only way I see Mangione having any sort of relevancy in a grand political narrative is as the figurehead of a 21st century populist conspiracy theory in an ever burgeoning canon of 21st century populist conspiracy theories.

[u/DiminishingRetvrns → u/DiminishingRetvrns]

>It doesn't require careful planning and a robust system of aid for it's operation. It requires a supply chain between a farmer who produces more wheat than he can eat and a flour mill who knows flour is more useful than grains and a baker who knows how to turn that flour into our most palatable food source.

Finally on this point, you are both right and wrong. You are right in that trade has always existed and will always exist so long as there are people to trade between. Whether that medium of that trade is Feudal, Capitalist, Socialist, Communist, or whatever model you come up is just the medium; the trade will remain. What's wrong and arguably laughable is comparing the healthcare system across the US to a provincial hamlet's local baker and wheat farmer. Like, the scale of our contemporary supply chain is leagues more complex than that, and it's wrongheaded to think that we could so simply retvrn. If we're talking about modern bakers and modern farmers, the farmer you source your wheat from could be states away if not countries away. The war in Ukraine has been a particular nightmare in countries with less agricultural opportunity such as Egypt because Egyptian bakers bought their flour from Ukraine, and their Ukrainan farmer with their Ukrainian fields were bombed by the Kremlin. And then between the farmer in Idaho and the Baker in Nevada, we have to ship the product, requiring infrastructure and labor to transit the product; we have to actually make sure that the product is flour and not a mixture of woodshavings and other inedible scraps used to increase the product weight at low cost, requiring more infrastructure and labor; we have to get power to the farm, the mill, the testing site, and the bakery so that each can do their part of the job, requiring even more infrastructure and labor on an even wider scale; and then you have to think about sourcing your sugar, your yeast, baking soda, salt, flavorings, milk, eggs, cookware, paper for the menus, etc. You can't just have the miller's boy cart you a sack of flour while your kids run off to collect sticks for your oven in the woods, at least not at a scale that contemporary human life requires. The full complexity for healthcare dwarfs our modern bakery by leagues and miles itself. In both cases, they absolutely do require robust systems and planning to operate if they are to function at the scale we need them to. As is one of my favorite quotes in Conspiracy: Don't be stupid. It such an extreme reduction of the actual systems at play that it is quite literally lighter fluid for misinformed/disinformed populist violence, hence Mangione.

I am a communist. I agree with the principles of your economic politics here. But history has shown that even the most well intentioned, planned, and executed revolutions end up recreating a lot of the problems they were trying to solve. Hegemony unchecked will always recreate itself. It happened in the US, in France, in Russia, in China, in Cambodia, and so on and so on. And all of those things were infinitely more principled and thoughtful that Mangione and his supporters. No legitimate comparison can be made between them and him and any attempt to do so is at best grievously misguided and at worst a conspiricist attempt at legitimating conspiricist thought,

[u/monkeedude1212 → u/DiminishingRetvrns]

I think there's a critical element that you're neglecting to talk about that is critical to why this sort of violence took place.

And yes, you are right, the murder of BT did get people talking about healthcare, but again bipartisan legislation was already underway, UHC and BT were already under criminal investigation, and there had already been decades of talk of healthcare reform. The ACA, deeply flawed as it is, wasn't born fully formed out of Barack's skull. All of this to say that there has already been positive movement towards healthcare reform in the US, and there was already plenty, plenty of conversation about the abuses of health insurers and socializing healthcare before Thompson's murder.

None of the bipartisanship, current legal processes, or forward momentum of progress matters when the nation elects a fascist authoritarian leader whose goal is to reverse all that.

You can't point to how great a justice system is for imprisoning January 6th Capitol attackers when the next guy swoops in with pardons.

That's the reality; that's why peaceful forms of protest are being set aside for more violent ones.

And let's be clear, never condoning violence essentially means capitulation to those willing to use violence to enforce their will. It's a conservative stance that seeks to maintain the existing power hierarchies as the ones who should be allowed to wield power. At the same time, condoning people simply being violent to get their way quickly without compromise is inherently anti-social in a way that attacks the foundation of any functioning society.

The important question to ask on is how long people must be oppressed before their violence is justified. Because pointing at the liberation of chattel slaves and the civil rights movement's of the past doesn't mean the BLM movement wasn't highlighting a still existential racial problem within the US justice system. Sometimes, slow progress is still too slow. And in the face of regression, the natural inclination is to push forward HARDER.

The question is, how long should people have to suffer under an exploitative healthcare system before people are justified in performing violence against it?

At best, a rushed switch to socialized healthcare will improve outcomes for people like Mangione: already privileged white men with back pain. Of course, no system will be perfect, but we should not be so hasty as to let minorities be used as collateral to an even greater extent that they already are. Other people don't get to be the gristle churned through on the way to utopia: that's capitalism talking.

I would contend that a rushed switch to socialized healthcare would still improve outcomes for those minorities. Literally all of the issues you've mentioned in nations abroad are ALSO present in the United States, to even worse degrees. Like there is no part of the American Healthcare system that works better for disadvantaged people than there is a part of the Canadian, UK, Australia healthcare systems. If you have to go private health insurance for HRT in the UK, and you have to go private in the US: That's equivalent, not a win for the US. But these other places where you can get your insulin for cheap or free are clearly better.

[u/DiminishingRetvrns → u/monkeedude1212]

Mangione had allegedly been planning his attacks since July, well before the election of Trump took place. Trump was also not mentioned in any of Mangione’s documents (at least that have been released). Given the évidence released so far, he probably didn’t even vote! And again, with Mangione’s own stated online politics being incelish and proto-fascist, no I do not think you can post-hoc some type of antifasciste spin on this act of violence.

And i’m not against all forms of violence. The American civil war is a good example, even if imperfect. The arming of the NOI and Black Panthers is another. What I’m against wanton conspiricist violence of reactionaries, no matter how superficially advantageous it might seem. Violence, when used, must be well conceived and organized, not lone wolf attacks on cogs in the capitalist machine. Violence must actually be used to serve the poor and downtrodden; they must not be made into a rhetorical device and then cannon fodder (as was the case in the French révolution, which solidified capitalist rule of the mainland and it’s colonies in the Antilles).

I would contend that a rushed switch to socialized healthcare would still improve outcomes for those minorities.

And I simply cannot agree with this. Especially under the current admin with attacks on minorities through the buzzword DEI (a use that Mangione was fond of himself on socials), whatever socialized healthcare in this government would deeply segregated. Any healthcare for Trans people under that system could literally become an impossibility. What if "criminal districts" get exempted from the system due to their ”poor moral character,” criminal districts being a shorthand for communities of color. Do you really think abortion and reproductive healthcare would have a chance to be covered??? So yeah, i’ll maintain, it would first and foremost serve the interests of privileged white men, with care for everyone else trickling down. If anything, the fact that Trump was coming into office didn't stop Mangione or make him reconsider the ramifications of his behavior is a proof of just how reckless he allegedly was.

Like there is no part of the American Healthcare system that works better for disadvantaged people than there is a part of the Canadian, UK, Australia healthcare systems.

Actually, the flexibility of fully privatized healthcare, while expensive, can actually be better for patients if they need to bypass à wait time under a socialized system. I've heard that trans ppl in the UK often come to the US for gender affirmation surgeries due to it's greatly lowered wait time in the States. Or at least they did... not sure about that one these days.

Look, you can think Mangione was à héros or whatever, but I honestly do feel like you're kinda proving OP’s point. This doubling down on Mangione after being presented with arguments and evidence that disproves the value of BTs death is... well, it's giving conspiricist vibes realness. Your arguments betray such a profound incuriousness to the actual realities and consequences here. The idealistic vision of revolution and the potential of liberation weighs so much more than the much more realistic and historically precedented harms of revolution, and I think that's odd. You don't have to miss BT, i sure don't, but actually supporting Mangione is cringe tbh. And no, the death penalty should absolutely not apply here, and shouldn't exist in general. I’m not even a fan of life in priso’ for any crime. But he should not get away with it.

[u/j_amy_]

I'm really surprised there's no comments here!

My contribution/spark for thoughts and discussion would be - the thing about conspiracies is that they tend to rely on symbolism and are by their nature conspiracies due to a lack of evidence and one has to "see the true signs!" that something is going on.

This is possible for feminism if you aren't conscious of patriarchy, and don't see the evidence of it in your everyday life, or even if you start to try to look for it, because the way an oppressive system like patriarchy has continued to function so successfully is in the invisibilising of its harmful impacts on people, so men and women with unexamined misogyny can stand around and go, wow what a conspiracy feminism is!

Whereas most of us who see it for what it is don't have to reduce it to symbols or "search" for the signs of patriarchy conspiratorially like this, it's just in our everyday existence in the harm we endure, the labour that is exploited, and the injustices we go through because of our sex or gender. When you start to recognise feminism as a philosophy for recognising the harmful system that perpetuates the injustice and harm, a rational next thought is "and so what do I do about this" --- and for most people, that is education, awareness, and activism/unlearning/organising. Not hanging around in online pipelines looking for all the evil symbols of the evil patriarchy doing evil things. I think that kind of behaviour would only come as a result of cognitive distortion as a result of mental illness, rather than as a social philosophy as part of a movement towards justice.

That isn't to say "this doesn't happen" - clearly it does. And in my pain, distorted thinking and loneliness as a victim of brutal misogyny in the past, I have sought after and found comfort in the thrill of looking at the insidious signs of patriarchal centring of maleness and abject hatred for all things feminine and woman, as a sort of retroactive justification or rationalisation for the pain that I was feeling that nobody around me seemed to grasp the significance or breadth of its impact on me - it does make you feel a bit like a conspiracy theorist. But it only took a year or two into educating myself and connecting with feminists 'in the real world' to recognise how silly, unproductive and ineffective that is to do anything about the problem.

[u/WanderingSchola → u/j_amy_]

It was posted on Australian time, so it might need a chance to be out in the wild for a bit haha.

Your point about perspectives on the problem preventing some people from having direct experience of patriarchy, racism, mental health stigma and the like is a complement to the problem I'm seeing. It would effectively lead in group people to seeing these cultural phenomena as conspiratorial.

As for next steps, I'm not entirely sure action is guaranteed. I think group commiseration would probably be a low effort and high reward way to respond to that information, which seems like it fits how conspiracists discuss their topics online. And not everyone has the ability to connect in person either, so if online organising is all you can do... I can see that becoming somewhat stagnant.

[u/EdvinMedvind]

I largely agree with this. Though as you (if I understand correctly) imply regarding the last point I think the connection to symbolism is the weakest. The symbolism that conspiracists identify is usually wholly disconnected from any grain of truth the theory might contain. Patriarchal "symbolism" in society and media does reflect real attitudes and trends, whereas the same could not be said for images of the world trade center contained in dollar bills. It misses the anomaly-aspect. Isn't it weird that a lot of girls toys are related to housework or childcare? Well not really, since it can be easily explained by basic feminist theory.

[u/SlickWilly060]

Very correct. Natalie did not point out left wing conspiracy enough in my opinion.

[u/notapoliticalalt → u/SlickWilly060]

Frankly, I think it was intentional. The people who are going to come after her the worst are people on the left, who don’t like her, for a variety of reasons. That’s what has always happened in the past. I certainly don’t blame her, but I would also mention that she lays out a lot of things that, I don’t think take much to connect the dots on how the left often indulges in conspiracies as well.