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Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

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DetlefK

(16,670 posts)
Wed Nov 27, 2019, 05:35 AM Nov 2019

Professional con-men are taking over and weaponizing conspiracy-theory communities. [View all]

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212730812
Russian online-trolls are gaining more unwitting followers with meaningless feel-good-messages.



And just the other day I saw that the Flat Earth movement is selling out: Several leaders of the Flat Earth-movement (Bob Knodel, Nathan Oakley, Anthony Riley...) have been revealed to not actually believing that Earth is flat. They only PRETEND to believe that Earth is flat in order to solicit donations from people who DO believe that Earth is flat. (IIRC a while back I've read something how the most famous contemporary Flat-Earther Mark Sargent only went into this topic after a marketing-compnay pushed him.)

* The Flat-Earth-movement has nothing new to offer. All of their evidence that Earth is flat has been debunked. They are just rehashing old talking-points.
* Followers are leaving. Donations are running dry.
* They recently held the "Flat Earth International Conference", where you paid $400 to listen to debunked "proofs" how Earth is not a globe and how NASA's army prevents people from going to the Southpole.



But now, something weird has happened...

* Infowars has begun making Flat-Earth content. And in return, one Flat-Earther, Owen Benjamin, is urging his followers to go to Infowars.

* The Flat-Earther Bob Knodel (who famoulsy lied about his engineering-credentials AND who tried to cover up that he accidently proved that Earth rotates) has begun pushing content from the "International Tribunal for Natural Justice".
Who is the "International Tribunal for Natural Justice"? It's a fake court invented by professional con-men to fleece Sovereign Citizens, Pizzagate-truthers and other conspiracy-theorists for donations. (Did you know there are 7 CIAs?)

It was Robert David Stelle of the "International Tribunal for Natural Justice" who provided to Alex Jones the conspiracy-theory that NASA is cannibalizing children on Mars.

Now, here is the interesting question: How can Bob Knodel tell his fellow Flat-Earthers that space-travel is fake while telling his listeners from the ITNJ that space-travel is real? Because he doesn't believe in any of this. He will say whatever is necessary to get donations from conspiracy-theorists.





The small communities of professional conspiracy-theorist fleecers are failing. People are leaving, donations are running dry. So, these con-men use the remaining clout they have to sell their followers to other, bigger professional conspiracy-theorist fleecers. You think that's not bad? Well...
1. They are conning mentally deranged people in serious need of psychological help.
2. These bigger con-men buying out the smaller con-men are pushing political conspiracy-theories.



Expect "fake news" to become bigger and better coordinated.

George Soros, the Clintons, Ukraine and Biden? You ain't seen nothing yet.

It won't be long until we hear RWNJ spreading conspiracy-theories how it was the 7 CIAs who tried to force Trump out of office because Trump was going to reveal that the Soros-controlled NASA is secretly controlling all the space-travel agencies everywhere.
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