Chez, what makes me shocked is all anti-vaxxers have turned Putin's allies now. How odd.
Are they the Lenin's "useful idiots", paid Russian agents, or just idiots?
Interesting article below on Flat Earther and how it relates to all the fringe conspiracy theorists, being the climate change deniers, the anti vax, or even more recently, the ones pushing ultra-right pro-Russian propaganda.
Across the globe, millions of people believe the Earth — that whirling blue sphere, spinning through space — is, in fact, a flat plane. Believers diverge on the specifics, but tend to understand that we all live beneath a dome that floats through space, or perhaps, hovers above primordial...
www.grid.news
This is also why there is no benefit arguing with the most radicalized of these individuals. They made a choice to abandon and reject all reliable sources of information, for the ones who support their chosen belief, using fringe sources, out of context ones, or just plain fabrication. And so, even when these are clearly disproven by an overwhelming worldwide majority of independent professionals, experts, scientists …
Once they are in this radicalized state, arguing only gives them an opportunity to give exposure to their carefully crafted rhetoric, in hopes to attract malleable people who share some of their frustrations, or at least attempt to cast doubts over the valid sources of information.
This is the more corrupt aspect of their intellectual behavior. Make people doubt facts and loose trust in reliable sources, so they will easily become trapped in the bubble of polarized information these groups creates to support themselves.
As a side note an digression, It is no surprise that the number one thing any aspiring dictator or authoritarian does, is discredit the press until it can control it. By casting a doubt, they cut people off sources of information that could enlighten them or give them pause, and make their sympathizers captive of their own controlled propaganda.
A lot of such damage has been done over the last few years in this department, which does not bode well for democracy.
What the people who support megalomaniacs and authoritarians that appear to be on their side often don’t realize (until it is too late), is that these megalomaniacs and authoritarians are on nobody’s side but their own, and that can & will change overnight depending and what their best interest of the moment will be.
But once you let an authoritarian system be put in place, it is almost impossible to undo it, and you then are at their mercy forever or a very long time.
However imperfect or unaligned with my beliefs some democracies are, I will take any of them over an authoritarian system…
www.newsweek.com
