The Russiagate Conspiracy is an Embarrassment to Conspiracies
October 30 2020: Why Democrats and their supporters should leave the tin foil hats to the experts
Images allegedly taken from one of Hunter Biden’s laptops
As I have made clear on multiple occasions, I am a proud conspiracy theorist.
I enjoy challenging the narrative that seems to have settled in, particularly in progressive/liberal circles, that to question the motives of political, media and other establishment institutions is somehow a controversial intellectual act.
Governments would never use an increasingly questionable pandemic as a smokescreen to sneak in authoritarian measures! You monster!
The media would never act in a self-interested manner, and are in no way beholden and ideologically identical to the political establishment it is supposed to be holding to account! An attack on the press is an attack on Democracy itself!
Elements of the scientific and medical establishments could never have descended into corruption and no longer serve the public interests! How dare you try to tear down the benchmarks of Western civilisation like that!
I try to stay in the realm of fact and evidence in the conspiracies I put forward, but remain open to a lot of theories that I know cannot be proven. It doesn’t mean I believe them — it means I have had my worldview challenged and broken down so many times that I am open to the validity of realities that I once considered to be ridiculous.
So, with that spirit in mind, I am open to the current conspiracy gone mainstream, being advanced with particular fervour by the Democratic Party and their liberal-progressive voting adherents (who is going to tell them that they are conspiracy theorists now?), of widespread, coordinated and malicious interference in US elections by various foreign agents: most notably Russia. Even despite a lack of sound evidence to support it.
Stranger things have happened. Perhaps anonymous Russians did conspire to help Trump get elected in 2016, hacking Hillary’s emails and releasing them to Wikileaks with impeccable timing.
Perhaps they do have that infamous pee pee tape of Trump doing unedifying acts with Russian prostitutes, as identified in the mysterious but still unverified Steele dossier, and are using it to control him to forward their agendas.
Perhaps they have concocted these emails, text messages and pornographic videos that are leaking out from Hunter Biden’s various laptops and providing the mother of all October surprises.
I would like to see some evidence though. I am no expert on such matters, and I am certainly not going to blindly follow the right-wing pundits who have an ideological motive to attack Russiagate in its totality. I’m sure Russia are up to no good in some way, which would only be fair given the shit the US have tried to pull themselves. But what really sparks my BS detector is the numerous, sound of mind, highly credible (in my eyes) left-wing commentators who also say this whole Russiagate thing is hot garbage cooked up by the Democrats and their cronies.
Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize winner and breaker of the Snowden revelations. Matt Taibbi, formerly of Rolling Stone where he wrote some of the best coverage of the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis. Basically every notable writer on Counterpunch, one of the most well-fortified bastions of leftist political opinion on the interwebz. Even our dear Caitlin Johnstone of Medium. None of these people have a nice word to say about Trump, yet they have all strongly and convincingly denounced the Russia collusion conspiracy theory.
Many are currently raising alarms that its evidence-free resurrection is currently being used as an attempt to distract or explain away the inconvenient contents of Hunter Biden’s laptops, including the censorship by Big Tech of the New York Post article that broke the story. In fact, Glenn Greenwald recently announced he was leaving the publication he founded, due to their censorship of his attempts to talk openly about the implications of the contents of Hunter’s laptops on his father’s Presidential campaign.
I also have no right to get on my high horse, because not long ago I would be jumping all over this conspiracy as well. I was still drinking the Democratic Kool aid, albeit the watered down version all the way over here in Australia. I would have voted for Hillary in 2016 if I was eligible to (may I be forgiven). I thought Joe’s folksy act was authentic. I still have a framed picture of Obama lying under my bed, as I wonder what to do with it. But now I see them for who they are: imposters in a progressive political movement that is doomed unless they denounce them at the soonest possible opportunity.
Regardless of where we think we lie on the political spectrum, even if we don’t place ourselves on it at all, we should all want a genuine and honest debate between opposing sides. We aren’t getting that right now: not just because of disinformation and censorship, but because so many people — in this case those on the progressive left — take their cues from completely undeserving leaders.
What I will say about Russiagate and the people who promote it is this: there is a rank hypocrisy lying under the conspiracy that really gets to me. How many times have I read a smug, condescending article crapping on conspiracy theorists from a great height, accusing them of believing in a fanciful and baseless theory simply because they are unwilling to face the cold, hard, brutal truth of the reality of the world. I wonder what the Venn diagram overlap is between these people and those who are currently all in on this conspiracy?
Because this is exactly what Russiagaters are doing now. They are refusing to accept that the party and the individuals who have for so long been telling them just how awful Trump and his Kompramised Kronies are, may in fact be awful in these exact same ways. They are refusing to accept the reality that there is no remotely electable progressive candidate on this election ballot, which is entirely the fault of the elite Democratic Party.
It was bad enough the first time. Hillary Clinton has emails released that show political meddlings, shady business dealings, intra-party backbiting and back stabbing and even — ‘debunked’ conspiracy alert — suggestions of involvement in human trafficking? Nope, I refuse to believe or even look into it, because it came from the Russians.
But again? Joe Biden, through the truly pitiful figure of his son Hunter, has emails released hinting that he might be involved in political interference in Ukraine and have profited from business deals with China? On top of that, if we are going to take this current scandal to its darkest aspects: the parallel release of Hunter engaging in pornography and drug use with promises of much more to come, seemingly making Biden an almost irredeemably compromised Presidential candidate?
Nope: the Russians. There is simply too much at stake, the means simply too beholden to the end of getting rid of Orange Man — TDS be damned — for it to be considered anything except Russian disinformation.
Even though there is no evidence of these emails, text messages and videos having been faked, even though the theory has been denounced by Director of National Intelligence, even though their authenticity has been confirmed by a former business associate and a letter from Hunter Biden’s lawyer, even though the friggin’ New York Times has even stated there is no evidence of Russian involvement… even though Hunter has still not come out and challenged any of this himself! Nope: Russia. Just because.
All those people who sneer at anyone who points out how unlikely it is that two planes could have brought down three separate buildings each designed not to be brought down by a plane without the help of explosives (not to mention all the other glaring inconsistencies in the official 9/11 narrative); or write off as a collective delusion the testimony of hundreds and thousands of people and dozens of cultures around the world who have had experiences with aliens and/or supernatural entities; or who dismisses anyone bringing attention to elite child trafficking and pedophilia networks as deranged Qanon cult members… well, they are now the same people hanging on for deal life to a lazy and not even subtly racist storyline about conniving Russians to avoid facing up to the reality that they have been gaslighted by their political idols.
I thought I would find it satisfying to see those who have so fiercely denounced conspiracy theorists to descend into the exact kind of thinking they have been religiously opposed to. But actually, I find it intensely frustrating, pathetic and embarrassing. Perhaps they should leave the conspiracy theories to the experts.
