Countering The Challenge of Conspiracy Theories

[ThunderBox]

I’m not sure if conspiracy is necessarily only left or right wing but happy to be corrected.

Roswell and the U.K. version.
Moon landings
Ancient civil works made by Aliens

The current crop of conspiracy cnuts that are left or right leaning are just taking the piss, they don’t believe it, at least those who start it don’t, they are just agitating and social media has given them an open platform.

When you could only buy books, I had Arthur C Clarke’s World of Mystery (or something), you had to do some work to get a book published to create a conspiracy, to support it or counter it, you had to attend a conference, now anyone can do it and anyone can join in and if the masses want to, they can create a movement, look at Reddit changing the stock market.

 

[Filthy_contract]

I don't think it is beyond reproach and I also know people who work in the NHS who are critical of it. Which isn't the same as a critiques from a mainly US funded "charity" whose boss donated a shed load of money to the Health Secretary.

There's a fairly concerted effort to point responsibility away from the government for the negative side and highlight it as being responsible for the successes.

My ex works in a major London hospital; I am regularly astounded by some of the employment practices that would simply be unacceptable in many other workplaces (staffing ratios, mandated breaks, QA etc). Moreover, the authority gradient still exists between doctors and nurses with some doctors (especially Asian ones, according to her) treat nurses as skivvies and refuse to listen to them. As an experienced nurse practitioner, she doesn't tolerate bullying behaviour an has reported several doctors for practices that are potentially dangerous to patients and other staff. Younger staff will not challenge bad behaviour. Having said that, the NHS pivot to Covid care saw nurses taking a greater part in hospital management, often having clinical staff working for them in covid care teams.

 

[Graculus]

Alternatively... rightish conspiracies are about questioning the official narrative, whereas leftish are about redefining that narrative.

Hence the woke cancel-culture and Orwell's NewSpeak... compared to 9/11 etc

Newspeak?

Government to appoint 'free-speech champion' for English universities

Heritage bodies also to be warned against reevaluating UK history as No 10 culture war agenda intensifies

www.theguardian.com

 

[Graculus]

None of those seem to be challenging reality quite so hard as my original list.

To draw comparisons, claiming that Russia funded/interfered with Brexit is similar to claims that elements of the US government were complicit in some way with the 9/11 attack.

Depends how you word things of course. We don't know exactly what attempts Russia made as the government flat out refused to investigate it.

“had not seen or sought evidence of successful interference in UK democratic processes,”

The US Senate said this though

The Russian government has sought to influence democracy in the United Kingdom through disinformation, cyber hacking, and corruption.

https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FinalRR.pdf

The comparison isn't valid. FWIW, I agree with Cummings, if he'd been running the Remain campaign it would probably have won. the result was more down to the ability of campaigners.

What seems to be lacking in the left-supported theory is the extrapolation to absurdity which takes it from “US gobernment let it happen to further their own ends” through “The US Government did it” to “A secret cabal of monsters that control the world did it with reality breaking space lasers”

You're missing the deliberate manufacturing of stories for campaign purposes. The Clintons and a pedophile ring so beloved of Qanon.

 

[Graculus]

Publicity is powerful. Every black man killed by a white cop is national news in the US, any white man killed is hardly noted in comparison, and this media imbalance fuels the conspiracy. Looking at the figures, proportionally less black men get shot by police than white men, (look at the "America: it's a bit odd" thread for details)

Let's not look at arrse received wisdom, lets look at Statista.

Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 34 fatal shootings per million of the population as of January 2021.

People shot to death by U.S. police, by race 2021 | Statista

so to use the number of black men shot by police as evidence of racism is not exactly conclusive evidence. In fact, it's wrong

It isn't wrong.

The Macpherson Report was published around two decades ago and Stephen Lawrence died nearly three decades ago; much has happened since. Saying the Police is Institutionally racist because of Macpherson, is like saying I am single and have no children, because I was in 2000 (I met my wife two decades ago, and our children are aged 18 and 17).

It isn't. Really.

Similarly the Police is hugely different when it comes to racism; I'm reliably informed that in any Police force service, it's the quickest way to get your P45, if proven.

Indeed, as it should be.

My first bold above, I may be reading this wrong, but are you saying that institutional racism is an issue of public perception?

I'm saying that white people are much more likely to perceive the police as not being racist because they're statistically much less likely to get tasered or stopped and searched for not very much. When it does happen it's interesting to see how outraged they are.

That's not what the quote says.

I know

The second bold: That most definitely isn't the fault of the Police IMHO; in the last 15 years at least, there has been a positive discrimination in effect for police recruitment, precisely because of this. I was warned off from applying from for the Met in 2007 precisely because I had insufficient melanin to be likely to get through (this was on the Army Resettlement Police course. There was a black guy and an Asian guy on the course who were both encouraged to apply for the Met). From friends serving in Kent, Hampshire & Met Police, I am confident this is still the case.

Did you apply? If not, why not? If you're young enough and want it, no reason not ot. Those from BAME populations are less likely to view the police as being a suitable profession. Law and IT much more attractive but...this is where we come to perception again..

One newly appointed BAME officer, who did not want to be named, said he was initially put off applying to the police because he did not think he would be welcomed. It took working alongside officers in another job to convince him it was worth applying. “It took me a while to make the decision, purely because I did not think I would be successful. It was just a perception that I had and a few of my friends have it as well. One friend to whom I mentioned the idea of joining the police force ruled out my chances of being accepted because I am a first generation immigrant.

Most UK police forces have disproportionate number of white officers

Figures paint picture of police service in which people from ethnic minorities have less chance of jobs than white counterparts

www.theguardian.com

Of course there will still be racists in the Police, as there are anywhere, but the institution itself is almost painfully desperate to be "colour blind", which they take to mean not racist against BAME. Have a look at the way the BLM marches were treated in comparison to the football hooligan ******* this summer. But the Police is still seen by many as racist against BAME.

The headshed says stuff and fails to follow through. No shocks there. There were plenty of arrests at BLM. I've seen no authoritative comparisons.

 

[Themanwho]

Let's not look at arrse received wisdom, lets look at Statista.

Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 34 fatal shootings per million of the population as of January 2021.

People shot to death by U.S. police, by race 2021 | Statista

My apologies; I was referring to unarmed blacks killed by Police, and I didn't make that clear. Look in the thread I mentioned for details or look at the first link I opened:

WALSH: I Looked Up Every Case Of An Unarmed Black Man Shot By Cops In 2019. Here’s The Truth The Left Is Hiding.

I have already made the case that systemic racism in law enforcement is a myth. The claim that racist police are prowling the street searching for black

editorial.dailywire.com

I'm saying that white people are much more likely to perceive the police as not being racist because they're statistically much less likely to get tasered or stopped and searched for not very much. When it does happen it's interesting to see how outraged they are.

That's not what institutional racism means.

Did you apply? If not, why not? If you're young enough and want it, no reason not ot. Those from BAME populations are less likely to view the police as being a suitable profession. Law and IT much more attractive but...this is where we come to perception again..

I didn't join the Police, although I went through the selection process and was offered a place by Kent, because on the same day I was offered a two year extension in the Army on over twice the money. It wasn't a difficult choice to make, and one I've never regretted.

 

[Themanwho]

The headshed says stuff and fails to follow through. No shocks there. There were plenty of arrests at BLM. I've seen no authoritative comparisons.

I have no idea what you mean here; your comment seems to have very little to do with my comment you're supposedly answering.

 

[Murphy_Slaw]

People seem to love a conspiracy - why? I have always considered that it is because people getting hold of an idea, and are reluctant to let go of it. Or tht they find it hard to imagine that things are as simple or obvious as they are, or that they find it hard to accept that they do not understand.

Patrick Shroder from Chatham House has recently written about the phenomena.

The flames conspiracy theories are fanned by those who generally do not wish well for society,

My challenge to most conspiracy theories is, nearly all of them require the co-operation and secrecy of hundreds of people (mainly in government departments). As we all know there are very few things that are truely secret and government departments leak like a sieve.
For a conspiracy to really work, only a handfull of people would know about it and almost certainly none of them would work for the security services!

 

[Cyberhacker]

Let's not look at arrse received wisdom, lets look at Statista.

Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 34 fatal shootings per million of the population as of January 2021.

Just curious, what is the similar figure for White Americans and Hispanic Americans?

And can you break it down by "in the process of committing a felony" and "innocent bystanders"?

 

[Spartak1st]

Just curious, what is the similar figure for White Americans and Hispanic Americans?

And can you break it down by "in the process of committing a felony" and "innocent bystanders"?

The number of police shootings cant be compared on a simple “Noahs Ark, two of each kind” principal before calling racism. If we look at the national crime stats published by the FBI we can see the breakdown of charged crimes by race & ethnicity. Despite being 12-13% of US population, 41.8% of possession of weapons charges are of Black & African Americans. So are 51.2% of murders, 36.4% of violent crime. Therefore proportionately more Black & African Americans are going to be involved in a confrontation with police during arrest.

Overall, officer involved shootings have come down significantly since the 70’s and there’s been a continued downward surge since 2010. But....there’s been a significant reduction in non violent crime being reported to the police, which in itself illustrates why you can’t just draw conclusions based on a single set of figures.

 

[Spartak1st]

And can you break it down by "in the process of committing a felony" and "innocent bystanders"?

It’s not that easy as the 18,000 US law enforcement agencies record, collect and publish different information over and above that required for the national statistics which includes the FBI’s Universal Crime Reporting. Some don’t record or at least publish, non fatal shootings.

You can dig into many, but not all police department records & reports but it is time consuming. In part as there’s several layers of reports and stats and guess what? Each department presents them differently. New York incidentally has one of the best set of published stats. Every weapon discharge by a police firearm is investigated and published... so you find for instance that a policeman's wife used his service weapon to commit suicide, two cops were shot dead by other cops responding to an incident etc.

Federal agencies report to the Bureau of Justice and their published reports are more detailed. I’ve popped a couple of tables below, which go toward answering your questions. But remains only a small illustrative sample when you consider the number of local police departments.

 

[Cyberhacker]

It’s not that easy as the 18,000 US law enforcement agencies record, collect and publish different information over and above that required for the national statistics which includes the FBI’s Universal Crime Reporting. Some don’t record or at least publish, non fatal shootings.

You can dig into many, but not all police department records & reports but it is time consuming. In part as there’s several layers of reports and stats and guess what? Each department presents them differently. New York incidentally has one of the best set of published stats. Every weapon discharge by a police firearm is investigated and published... so you find for instance that a policeman's wife used his service weapon to commit suicide, two cops were shot dead by other cops responding to an incident etc.

Federal agencies report to the Bureau of Justice and their published reports are more detailed. I’ve popped a couple of tables below, which go toward answering your questions. But remains only a small illustrative sample when you consider the number of local police departments.

Interesting...

So in 20116 and 2017, there were a total of (only?) 51 and 41 arrest related deaths, respectively. Of which [at least] 34 (71%) and 23 (61%) respectively were white.

Given 10 and 12 respectively (plus, potentially, the 3 in each year that are "unknown") that still does not indicate an institutional problem... just a few idiots who want to try it in with an armed plod; and/or a trigger happy cop.

 

[Lardbeast]

The Lizard People only think they run the world because my people let them.

No I don't.

Report for mind alteration immediately.

 

[Boumer]

I didn't join the Police, although I went through the selection process and was offered a place by Kent, because on the same day I was offered a two year extension in the Army on over twice the money. It wasn't a difficult choice to make, and one I've never regretted.

Most wise.

TJF

 

[Spartak1st]

Interesting...

So in 20116 and 2017, there were a total of (only?) 51 and 41 arrest related deaths, respectively. Of which [at least] 34 (71%) and 23 (61%) respectively were white.

Given 10 and 12 respectively (plus, potentially, the 3 in each year that are "unknown") that still does not indicate an institutional problem... just a few idiots who want to try it in with an armed plod; and/or a trigger happy cop.

St Louis has the highest amount of Officer involved shootings in America. It also has highest homicide rate I believe, since 2014. It therefore makes a good testbed. The dots represent Officer involved shootings between 2008-15. 353 officer involved shootings, 35 suspect deaths, 2,300 officers injured in assaults & shootings in thus timeframe. The image on left shows city blocks with highest amount of firearm crime (black being highest). On the right, neighbourhoods with highest concentration of Black & Black American residents (black being highest). Now lets map on 2018/19 homicide locations which matches, data I’ve viewed from 2014-17 and the 2008-15 firearm incident/OIS maps.

I’ve added a snapshot of overall crime for 2019 from the SLPD annual report. From what I can tell, there were 8 fatal police shootings of suspects in 2019. 314 officers were injured and two? killed. There were 261,000 calls for police assistance. 17 under 17 year old residents who were fatally shot by other residents. 9 of those were by other under 17s. Remember, 8 fatal police shootings, 194 homicides (175 black victims with 70 charged black suspects, 90 unknown).

This is only a small snapshot of data, but you can see when equalities groups or news articles claim police are using force more against black communities than white, there may well be a correlation between where violent crimes mostly occur, the race/ethnicity of the neighbourhood & race/ethnicity of the suspects.

 

[Spartak1st]

It’s important that we question calls of racial bias, especially at this emotive time when each instance stokes the engine on what is becoming a run away train of accusation, division & conspiracy.

Yes, there probably is racial bias within some police departments and there will undoubtably be individual police officers who are racist. Just as in any workplace. In many instances it’s probably more likely they are inured to daily, constant threatening, unpleasant & often potentially dangerous encounters with the public.

Headline grabbing figures, often using decontextualised data, are used to punch buttons on the 90 second Wokerati and build distrust and hatred within the communities the police serve. Regardless of personal, political and commercial agendas behind them, these can create a smokescreen where the real problem is obscured or even forgotten.

St Louis has one of the highest annual number of officer involved shootings in America. It has led to accusations of “Death by Cop”. So let’s use it as a case study utilising the accessible data available, to look for ourselves at a specific year which generated headlines of bias.

In 2016, there were 899 incidents where St Louis police used force on suspects (including 16 officer shootings with 4 deaths*). This use of force occurred three times more frequently in majority-black neighbourhoods compared to majority-white (inc Hispanic) neighbourhoods.

Based on this, shocking headlines were generated and an equalities advocate within the St Louis administration wrote:

“If use of force were equitable, officers would have used force 291 fewer times in majority-black neighbourhoods.”

Crime is not ‘equitable’, and is not usually committed in a spatially uniform manner. In America you are 1,000 times more likely to be a victim of violent crime in your home than in an autoshop or mall. The racial and ethnic distribution of the population is not uniform either. 48% of the population of St Louis is black but they are largely resident in 70-85% majority-black neighbourhoods.

Police Districts 4,5,6 are predominately majority-black neighbourhoods. As are the North and East side of District 1, NE of District 2, and 60% of District 3. In fact the murder location clusters in the Geography of Homicide Map below pretty much coincides with these majority-black neighbourhoods. If you also superimpose this over the Person Crime by Neighbourhood map, you’ll see that it not surprisingly corresponds to the majority of areas which experienced the highest violent crime rates. Mostly majority-black neighbourhoods.

Add to this 75% of all arrests were of Black & Black African Americans. Twelve times more of these were arrested for murder & robbery than whites (inc Hispanics), then 10x more for weapons offences, 6x more for aggravated assault, 4x more for other assaults. By far the majority of these perpetrated their crimes and/or were apprehended in these same districts.

Based on this data, I for one, find the apparent disparity in the use of force by the police in predominately majority-black neighbourhoods wholly understandable and most likely without a substantiated bias.

What about ‘murder by cop’? 4 deaths by officers that I could find for 2016*. Yet there were 188 homicides including 3x infants, 3x 10-14 yr olds, 11x 15-19 yr olds, 4 over sixties. 133 of these were Black & African American. 124 of those arrested for these crimes were Black & African American. In other words, around 30x more Black & African Americans killed Blacks in St Louis in a single year than the police did.

Again, I recognise that there may be individual racist or unduly aggressive officers in the SLPD, and I am not whitewashing any genuine wrongdoing by law enforcement. More could possibly be done to train SLPD officers to de-escalate encounters. But the police need to respond to and police areas where crimes take place regardless of the majority colour. Let’s not forget that for every person committing a violent crime there is at least one victim, and the majority of these victims are also Black & African Americans living & working in predominately majority-black neighbourhoods.

Maybe the population of St Louis is inured in itself to it’s citizens killing its own citizens. Like Covid, the numbers become meaningless after a while, except to those immediately impacted by loss or those who want to make capital from the figures. Every unnecessary death must be prevented. But focus, energy and effort needs to be directed where it can do most good, and this may well mean unpalatable dialogues need to take place, which some don’t want to see happen and others prefer to be blind to as it doesn’t fit their world view or political agency.

*based on two unofficial datasets. Im still researching these.

 

[ipso_facto]

People seem to love a conspiracy - why? I have always considered that it is because people getting hold of an idea, and are reluctant to let go of it. Or tht they find it hard to imagine that things are as simple or obvious as they are, or that they find it hard to accept that they do not understand.

Patrick Shroder from Chatham House has recently written about the phenomena.

The flames conspiracy theories are fanned by those who generally do not wish well for society,

Hahahahaha

Assets (and Chatham House is rumoured to be a Cabal asset) have been activated because the label 'conspiracy theory' is losing its impact to control thinking. It's now a red flag to actually investigate something rather than avoid it.

Here's a question for you; are all events in history organic and spontaneous or are they planned?

 

[dogmeat]

My challenge to most conspiracy theories is, nearly all of them require the co-operation and secrecy of hundreds of people (mainly in government departments). As we all know there are very few things that are truely secret and government departments leak like a sieve.
For a conspiracy to really work, only a handfull of people would know about it and almost certainly none of them would work for the security services!

"Look at how your local authority handles, say, cold weather conditions during winter.

These are exactly the same type of people you claim have the wherewithal to conduct secret conspiracies against the entire population without detection."

In the interests of disclosure, the presence of any council gritters round here usually remains undetected until a week after the ice and snow have melted.

 

[Yokel]

Hahahahaha

Assets (and Chatham House is rumoured to be a Cabal asset) have been activated because the label 'conspiracy theory' is losing its impact to control thinking. It's now a red flag to actually investigate something rather than avoid it.

Here's a question for you; are all events in history organic and spontaneous or are they planned?

What on Earth is a 'Cabal asset'?

If history was all planned by the elites in Government and big business, then why do they seem to spend most of their time being caught unawares and having to react after the event?

Lunatic! Been forgetting your medication again?

 

[Yokel]

Why do they do it?

Covid misinformation about a Glasgow hospital - UK Defence Journal

A person has entered the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow to video what she believes to be a COVID19 conspiracy, only, she has filmed areas that do not treat COVID19 patients.​

So, what do we have? Allison Leitch has entered into areas that do not accept walk in coronavirus patients to lament the fact that there are no walk in coronavirus patients.

The video is captioned “QEUH… NO OVERSTRETCHED HOSPITAL HERE” despite the fact that the poster has entered a public lobby which is not somewhere patients are treated.