Better yet, build permissionless, decentralized trust networks and let them compete for credibility and epistemological health in a freer market.
(btw, have you forgotten about https://github.com/vcavallo/ReadToRelay ? here's your reminder)
quoting
naddr1qv…t3sgOriginal source: https://www.thefp.com/p/charlie-kirks-murder-and-the-conspiracy-machine?utm_campaign=260347&utm_source=cross-post&r=67xh9&utm_medium=email
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Assassins often have unclear motives, but evidence is accumulating about what led Tyler Robinson to allegedly kill Charlie Kirk. The bullets were inscribed with anti-fascist messages. Robinson’s mother informed the government that her son had recently become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.” Robinson told his romantic partner, a trans-identifying male, that he had “had enough” of the conservative activist’s “hatred,” and that “some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Given the available information, it is reasonable to conclude that Kirk was killed on account of his political views by someone who believed that his death would advance anti-fascism and transgender rights.
And yet some on the left have suggested that Robinson was in fact a MAGA Republican. Others have suggested that, whoever killed Kirk, the victim was asking for it with his dangerous rhetoric. What these responses have in common is an assumption that the right is always to blame for political violence, even when it is committed by the left.
But an equally conspiratorial, reason-defying reaction has emerged in the independent media that wields so much influence on the American right. Figures such as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson found in Kirk’s death an occasion to criticize Jews and Israel, doing their best to inject a suggestion of Jewish culpability into the conspiratorial brew even as they paid tribute to Kirk. Meanwhile, a predictable assortment of online cranks who see Jewish conspiracy behind the weather and any other event beyond their own control suggested that Kirk might have been murdered by Mossad. All this has been a reminder that for all the failings of traditional media, serious problems beset the independent media that proposes to take their place.
At the center of the controversy is the suggestion that Kirk was subject to undue pressure—even blackmail. Owens claimed that Bill Ackman, a pro-Israel financier, made “threats” after Kirk questioned Israeli policy. Carlson claimed that pro-Israel donors to Turning Point USA, Kirk’s organization, “tormented Charlie Kirk until the day he died,” and that one such person canceled a $2 million donation. Megyn Kelly said that Kirk felt “pressured” to take a pro-Israel stance, and cited an article by the left-wing writer Max Blumenthal—debunked here—that claimed Kirk felt he was subject to pro-Israel “blackmail.” Ian Carroll, a former guest of podcaster Joe Rogan, suggested that Israel was “the most likely culprit.”
Since leaving Fox News, Carlson has spent a remarkable amount of time denouncing Israel and its supporters in the United States. But he has shown less interest in debating the actual details of Israeli tactics and strategy than in insinuating that Jewish power has corrupted the United States. For example, in a recent podcast episode, Carlson claimed that Jeffrey Epstein was part of “a blackmail operation run by the CIA and the Israeli intel services, and probably others. . . . The usual darkest- forces in the world colluding to make rich and powerful people obey their agenda.”
An equally conspiratorial, reason-defying reaction has emerged in the independent media that wields so much influence on the American right.
Now Kirk’s death is being used to accuse Jews of underhandedness and blackmail. It isn’t clear why any donor should feel obliged to support Turning Point USA if he doesn’t like the speakers they are hosting, or how his refusal to donate could constitute blackmail.
But the accusations have less to do with the logic of the case than with the unfortunate utility of anti-Jewish rhetoric when argument fails. Accusations of Jewish blackmail play a prominent role in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fabrication published in 1903 that has received a new lease on life in an internet age of fabrication and conspiracy, such as the unsupported claims about Epstein’s intelligence connections.
The term antisemitic, like racist, has lost its sting for many people. Indeed, an idea’s association with antisemitism now gives it a strange appeal on those parts of the right that are most eager to seem independent of and opposed to the establishment. In order to build their audiences, independent media figures must distinguish themselves from established institutions. One way to do this is to discuss the supposed truths that “they” want to hide from you. For this reason, independent media tend to traffic in what the political scientist Michael Barkun calls “stigmatized knowledge”: claims that are regarded as having truth value precisely because they are denied by institutional authorities.
Some of the stigmatized knowledge on offer from these sources seems harmless or silly. Take Carlson’s interest in flying saucers, or Owens’s claim that French first lady Brigitte Macron is a man. But figures who trade in forbidden knowledge have incentives to take up anti-Jewish calumnies that still have the power to shock and titillate, such as the claim that Jews have blackmailed leaders across the West.
For a person who instinctively mistrusts official knowledge, and tends to believe whatever the authorities deny, the very fact that antisemitic claims are subject to public condemnation makes them worth considering. This is why, as Barkun notes, some members of the UFO subculture, which initially had nothing to do with Jews, have ended up claiming The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are true.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that independent media figures are unwilling to take responsibility for the influence they enjoy.
It is no coincidence that these sorts of ideas are gaining traction in corners of the right, which over the last decade became increasingly alienated from establishment institutions such as universities, news organizations, and large companies. An important moment came in 2014, when Brendan Eich was [forced out](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/04/03/298777259/a-week-into-his-new-job-controversy-forces-mozilla-ceo-to-resign#:~:text=A%20Week%20Into%20His%20New,Resign%20:%20All%20Tech%20Considered%20:%20NPR&text=Movies-,A%20Week%20Into%20His%20New%20Job%2C%20Controversy%20Forces%20Mozilla%20CEO,means%20he's%20no%20longer%20CEO.) as the CEO of Mozilla. Critics objected to his decision to donate money to Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Eich’s ouster signaled that people with traditional views on marriage (today, they are roughly one-third of the country) were no longer welcome in the halls of power.
Over the next decade, more and more people failed the purity tests. Feminists who believe that there is a biological basis to sex were accused of being “genocidal.” A New York Times op-ed calling for the deployment of troops to quell rioting was said to to put the Times’s “black @NYTimes staff in danger.” The media’s own adoption of far-fetched ideas—such as the claim that Donald Trump colluded with Russian intelligence to win the presidential election in 2016, and that no public gatherings except Black Lives Matter protests were allowable in the summer of 2020—further eroded its credibility. By excluding legitimate views as “disinformation” while peddling fantasies, the mainstream forfeited the credibility that would have helped it in countering lies that now flourish online.
This widespread mistrust created the conditions for right-wing independent media, whose stars enjoy vast and rapt audiences, not to mention access to Trump-aligned Republicans, from the president on down. And yet it is becoming increasingly obvious that independent media figures are unwilling to take responsibility for the influence they enjoy. Kelly’s unsubstantiated speculation in a conversation with Kirk that Epstein was involved with Mossad is a case in point. When the American Jewish Committee pointed out that Kelly was echoing anti-Jewish tropes, Kelly complained. What she failed to do was provide evidence for her claim, or failing that, retract it.
At the same event, Carlson complained that “nobody’s allowed to say” that Epstein worked with Israeli intelligence—despite the fact that he himself was saying exactly that to an audience of thousands at a major conservative gathering. Carlson is the most influential pundit on the American right. His self-conception as a put-upon dissident speaking dangerous truths is wildly at odds with reality.
The carelessness of independent media figures with facts, and their refusal to take responsibility for their claims, mattered less when they were far from power. It matters much more now that they have a great influence on the White House, and are doing their best shape policy. Of course, proximity to power may be seen as another reason for ostensibly independent and dissident voices to mutter darkly about Jews. Anyone can be a persecuted dissident—including the most influential people in the country—if our society is controlled by a shadowy cabal.
St. Augustine observed that “the presence of the prohibition serves only to increase the desire to sin.” Attempts to suppress and stigmatize false claims as “disinformation” or “hate speech” can have the perverse effect of increasing their appeal. For this reason, the best way to fight conspiracies is not simply by refuting them, but by making our universities and news organizations worthy of trust. Doing that will require reversing the purges of the last decade. It will mean bringing in people who have long been considered undesirable on account of their views. Until that happens, the allure of conspiracism will continue to grow.
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