3 ms·
It's not nearly as simple as just "anti-Islam" or even "Christianity is the norm". It's a meta-religion that bridges multiple sects of Christianity and even mor
by thephyber 6y ago
It's not nearly as simple as just "anti-Islam" or even "Christianity is the norm". It's a meta-religion that bridges multiple sects of Christianity and even more secular Americans who identify with Christianity as solely a philosophy.
The same propaganda machine that labelled Obama "a socialist Muslim Kenyan agent and anti-Christ" also assassinated the character of Bill and Hillary for 30 years (including attributing something like 40 murders to them) and later credited them with the "under age sex trade ring" (queue PizzaGate and the QAnon canon). Then they attacked Obama's birth certificate. The same thing happened with Obama's advisers (eg. Valerie Jarrett).
It's a power play by politically-biased news sources which convince people of conspiracies. The details are irrelevant because the conspiracies that don't gain traction are left behind and the propaganda evolves. The only details that matter are the ones that best apply to Confirmation Bias.
The NYTimes has a podcast called RabbitHole[1] which describes how this works so well on the internet and reverse engineers how a YouTube visitor was radicalized and later rejected his previous radicalization views.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-hole
- skissane 6y agoConspiracy theories do have a pseudo-religious character, but I'm not sure there is anything specifically Christian about the phenomenon. Many Christians, even conservative Christians, disagree with them. Conversely, conspiracy theories (albeit mostly different ones) are popular in countries where Christians are a small minority, see for example https://thearabweekly.com/why-conspiracy-theories-thrive-middle-east https://thearabweekly.com/why-conspiracy-theories-thrive-mid...
- thephyber 6y agoI intended to focus more on the fact that it's not simply just an "anti-Islam" intention. The fact that there are a plethora of conspiracy theories in the ideology and that it's largely people who identify as Christian or are pro-Christian seem tangential to me.