[Laid back folk music] A few minutes outside Banff, Alberta, thereâs a serpentine
lake, Lake Minnewanka. Itâs a gorgeous lake, perfect for day trips, boating, hiking, camping, and even SCUBA diving. Itâs actually a natural lake, but not as it currently
exists. The outlet has been dammed three times, first a small timber dam was constructed for flood control in 1895, replaced with a hydroelectric dam in 1912, with the final and current dam and causeway finishing construction in 1941. Cumulatively these damming projects have raised the surface of the lake over 25 metres, flooding the original shoreline, a small settler town, and dozens of ancient Stoney Nakoda worksites. A number of these old ruins, which you can see marked by
buoys, are popular cold water diving destinations. And if you wanted to demonstrate the curve of the earth it would be an ideal place to do it. So you can see that the water Clearly has no curvature. That the water surface is completely flat.v Wait, back up. Why are we demonstrating the curve of the earth? About five, six years back I got really into Flat Earth
theories, not as a believer but as an observer. I would check in on them and watch their documentaries and read through their memes and infographics and generally have a jolly good time poking fun at them on
Twitter. I was, at one point, building up to making a video on the subject when known moon-criminal Hbomberguy produced his video on Flat Earth, and due to YouTube Community Standards and bylaws, section 7.2.1, the Para-Temporal Exclusion Clause, aka âreviewer dibsâ I had to shelve my plans for a year and change. The thing that really spurred me on originally was a specific Flat Earth video I came across one evening in
2017. SubtitleFlat Earth proof 1: the level Now, this video is not particularly noteworthy in the scope of Flat Earth videos. Itâs an hour and a half compilation of short videos stolen from a different, smaller Flat Earth YouTube channel. It runs through the normal Flat Earth tropes, such as not understanding gravity, failing to appreciate just how big mountains really are, and generally being really bad at math. There was no basis for such an explanation, other than the
desperate attempt to excuse away these critical findings. But there is one thing that makes it special. The host of the video does some original research by going out to the shore of Lake Minnewanka. Okay, here we are at Lake Minnewanka. In Alberta. Thing is, Lake Minnewanka is only 90 minutes away from my
house. The Flat Earth is in my own backyard. So, hypothetically, if I did want to debunk a forgotten four year old Flat Earth video that originally had a couple
hundred views, I could conceivably jump in my car on a clear day, drive out to Lake Minnewanka, and set up a camera with the longest lens I own. But thatâd be ludicrous. [Intense music] Okay, here we are at Lake Minnewanka. In Alberta. And as you can see we're just less than a foot above the
water's surface here. And if we zoom in across the lake, the coastline across the
lake clearly comes into focus. So you can see that the water clearly has no curvature. That the water surface is completely flat. Okay, so, letâs talk real quick about the challenges
involved in this kind of proof. Going out to Minnewanka was actually a really good pick. Because the lake is really long thereâs a lot of shoreline where you have several kilometres of unobstructed line of
sight, far enough for the curve of the earth to be meaningful, while the mountainous terrain provides a clearly
identifiable shore on the other side. And while the lake is long enough to get these really far
lines of sight, itâs not big enough to get any meaningful tidal movements, so all the waves are just from wind blowing across the
surface, you donât get the big, roiling surges that you see in the
ocean. From the dam that makes up the south-west bank of Lake
Minnewanka to the rock slide on the far shore where Aylmer canyon meets
the lake, you have a line of sight of seven kilometres, about four and a third miles, which is far enough that the earth curves away around 3 and
a half metres, or eleven feet. This is a kinda perfect distance. Itâs close enough for objects on the far side to still be
identifiable, while being a significant enough curve that the obstruction
is perceptible. If we punch a bunch of numbers into a curvature calculator we can see that going from just barely above the waterâs
surface to an average adult height, the height of a hidden object at 7 kilometres goes from 3.46 metres to only 0.4 metres. This means that something the size of a tree at or near the
water level of the lake should appear just about whole when viewed from a standing
position, but then be visibly obscured by getting down to the surface
of the water. So the experiment should be pretty simple: pick a landmark on the far side of the lake and record it at the same focal length and distance from a couple different elevations above the waterâs
surface. Personally I think that his footage does, in fact, show the
far shore disappearing behind the curve, it's just very difficult to tell because the resolution is
so low. So, letâs say, for the sake of argument, that an obscure Flat Earth video is still under your skin
after several years. What do you do? Well, obviously, you throw a bunch of gear into the car, drive out to the mountains, set up on the side of the lake, and spend an hour aiming at a tree on the far shore, keeping in mind that if you want to persuade Flat Earthers
then you need to eliminate as much ambiguity as possible, so make sure to include an identifiable landmark in the
shots to make it easy to pinpoint exactly where youâre standing
and where youâre looking. Everything gets documented: where was the camera sitting on the beach, approximately how high above the surface, even screencaps of where GPS says youâre standing. You get the footage home, import it, tweak the scale to make sure that objects are the same size
on screen, and line it all up with a unified horizon. There you go, the tree disappears below the horizon of the
lake. Easy. The earth is round. Mmm, yeah, but if I were into Flat Earth you know what Iâd
point out? That last frame, the one thatâs right above the surface of
the water, itâs really hazy, âcus it turns out that on a thirty degree
day thereâs gonna be a lot of vapour coming off the surface of
the lake, and at water level youâre trying to look straight through seven kilometres of the stuff. And having such a stark air temperature gradient right at
the surface of the water it increases atmospheric refraction, resulting in the mirage effect that allows the pebble beach
to occasionally be somewhat visible, despite intersecting the
tree that itâs below. So, you know, a Flat Earther could just dismiss all of this as just heat coming off the water. And the shots are all locked off and disconnected. Thereâs no continuity. Who knows what shenanigans you can get up to when the camera
cuts. Plus, I mean, look at it, all that straightening and zooming
in post, how can anyone trust that the camera is set to what you say
itâs set to? So! Jump back in the car two days later, when itâs partly cloudy and fifteen degrees cooler. Thereâs a lot more chop from the wind, but the waves are
short. Itâs still a lake, weâre not dealing with big ocean swells. Importantly, thereâs functionally no visible vapour coming
off the surface of the water. And this time you make sure to bring the jib so you can smoothly go from standing to the surface of the water in a
single motion and⌠[Delicate piano music] We checked the footage when we were out there on the lake,
we looked at it on the camera just to make sure that we got
something, and so we, we knew that we got it but, but getting home and, and seeing it in, in this detail, like
this level of clarity It's, it's, honestly it's kinda affecting me. You know, you can see this just with the naked eye when
you're out there on the beach. You can pick a thing on the far shore and just kinda look at
it and then like crouch down and get like really close to the water's surface and you
see it get, get occluded but, but Seeing it at this magnitude, it, it feels profound. [Piano music] Itâs a shame itâs not enough. The unfortunate reality of debunking Flat Earth is that itâs
largely futile, at least for the actual purpose of persuading Flat Earthers. This isnât me saying that we shouldnât do it, and there are, in fact, a bunch of reasons why we should. I mean, first of all, itâs a lot of fun to debunk Flat
Earth. Proving that the earth is round is one of those exercises
thatâs not quite trivial, it does take some amount of effort, but itâs not that hard
either. Itâs in a really sweet spot. A lot of it can be done from home with some focused research or spending the time to do the math properly, and other experiments just require living near a relatively
big lake. And, yeah, we should admit that itâs a lot of fun to debunk
a claim like this: Another example from Anchorage, Alaska is Mt. McKinley. At 130 miles away on the ball earth the 20,320 foot summit
should be leaning away from the observer And almost half covered by 9,220 feet of curved earth. But just like Mt. Foraker, Mt. McKinley is always seen
standing straight up, and visible from base to summit. Okay, we know the distance from Anchorage to Denali, itâs 129 miles, which, yes, should create a hidden target
height of 9000 feet, and Denali should be leaning away from the observer, but earth has a radius of about 3965 miles and Denali is
over twenty thousand feet tall, so at minimum eleven thousand
feet of the mountain should still be visible, leaning away from the observer by a trivial 1.8 degrees. Like, as a controlled example here are two pyramids in
Blender. One of them is leaning away from the camera by one point
eight degrees, can you tell which one? And the base of the mountain cluster on the Anchorage side is forty miles closer to the observer than the peak, and is 1600 feet above sea level. So the end result is less of the proportional mass of the
mountain is hidden by the curve of the earth than it feels like if youâre just
looking at the numbers. Also you canât actually see the true base of the mountain
from Anchorage, it just feels like you can because you can see so much of
the mountain. Plus to get a really good look at the mountain youâre
probably going to have to find some higher elevation yourself, just to see over buildings, trees, hills, and other nearby
obstructions, which will further increase your line of sight over the
curve. Like just in this example here, we can see over the tallest
buildings in Anchorage, so the photograph was taken from at
least 300 feet up. Bottom line is you can see Denali from very far away because
itâs really, really, really, really big, and it was the pyramid on the right that was leaning awayv. Thatâs fun to figure out. Itâs the same kind of satisfaction you get from solving a
math puzzle. Or something like this, claiming that there are no
south-pointing compasses, thatâs a fantastic starter for talking about how we
privilege the global north in science in small but consistent ways, via
maps or, yes, things like compasses. Because, like, every compass is a south-pointing compass,
but we don't frame it that way. We paint one arm of the compass red and say that that points
north and we talk abut compasses in those terms, we say that, it's
like, oh, this indicates north. Even though what it's really doing is it's aligning itself
with the directionality of the magnetic field So it's indicating both north and south, it's indicating
polarity, and points towards both poles simultaneously, but that's not the language that we use to describe it. And driving out to the mountains with a trunk full of camera
gear, spending an afternoon sitting on the shore of a gorgeous
lake, thatâs just a lot of fun, and you get a chance to show everyone something really cool
about our world. And sometimes Flat Earthers are just hilarious. All the movies about space and all the other movies, they
all in some way push that globe model The globe, the image of the Beast. Heliocentrism has nothing to do with science! The idea that the sun is the centre was thought up by
occultists. Jesuit priests. The Vatican. It's not, it has nothing to do with science. And they say that the earth orbits the sun going 66,600
miles an hour. And if you Google how fast does the earth orbit the sun they
tell you 18.5 miles per second [bong noise] Hold on I'm taking a hit And thatâs honestly the frame that most Flat Earth debunking
lives within. The nonsense claims of Flat Earthers form the starting point
of a process of puzzle solving or discussion of geography or a mini lesson
in optics, because, at the end of the day, Flat Earthers are not
available to be persuaded. [bell noises] So, we do need to be really careful while we're out here,
this is bear country. Not just bear country, this is serious
bear country. So we got bear bells, we got bear spray, and the thing is
that right now we're at the tail end of their fall, like, feeding season, when they get really, when they stock up for
winter, and around the lake and up into a couple of these canyons
here is prime growing area for, for the bison berries that they, that they eat to do it. And at this point we should talk about what Flat Earth is. Like, what Flat Earth really is. Nominally Flat Earth is a belief that the earth isnât a
globe, but is actually flat, a fact that has been kept from Us, meaning normal people, by a nebulous, powerful Them for nefarious, inscrutable
purposes. This is where profiles of Flat Earth tend to stop. Which is fair, itâs a reasonable summary for most purposes. I want to go beyond that, though, because I think itâs worth
considering that the shape of the earth might actually be the least
important belief of Flat Earth. Flat Earth is a syncretic Biblical belief that is both
evangelical and apocalyptic. Thatâs a lot of jargon, what does that mean? Syncretism is effectively a process of creating new texts out of the desirable parts of old texts, regardless of the previous relationship between those texts. Syncretism is saying two different books both mention
dragons or use the word dragon or call an antagonist âThe Great
Dragonâ, so they must be referring to the same thing, theyâre talking about the exact same Great Dragon, and if we cobble together all these different stories of
dragons we can uncover the truth about dragons. The finger pointing at the now defunct NASA will then turn
to finger pointing at the government, who directed the whole
thing. This is where we run into some dangerous ground involving
things like the Arc of the Covenant, the Holy Grail, and the
Ring of Power. As a syncretic belief system youâll find all sorts of
fragmentary elements lifted from seemingly disconnected and often contradictory
sources, forced into something resembling agreement, and this spans various legitimate ancient texts as well as
modern myths. Angels, giants, world trees, and modern conspiracy staples
like MK-Ultra, the Kennedy assassination, and aliens all have a spot at the table in some corner or another. Additionally support will be teased out of nearly any sacred
text that is sufficiently mythological or abstract, such that it can be stripped of context or interpreted
hyper-literally or in some way be made to agree with the construction of
their reality. Also I should note that Iâm specifically framing this as a
syncretic Biblical belief, not strictly Christian, because while the modern Flat Earth
movement clearly has deep roots in the social and lexical traditions
of American Christianity, the actual theological doctrines of Christianity are largely
absent or secularized. While the Bible is a core text, and many Flat Earth
evangelists are unambiguously Christian, the wider Flat Earth movement is largely only interested in the parts concerning the creation and end of
the world. In essence modern Flat Earth is an offshoot of Christianity
where Jesus is a secondary figure and the primary theological concern is
the true nature of the physical world, its origin, and its destiny. But, also, all that lives side by side with pop culture
Egyptology, mystical Gnosticism, and, I dunno what youâd call it,
esoteric fictionalism, this belief that the fantastical worlds of pop culture are a
warped or coded reflection of the true world. Itâs chaotic and inconsistent because there is no central
authority, no unique unifying texts, so youâll find different
commentators that take any given point to more or less extreme conclusions, which
can make it difficult to talk about the movement as a whole, but there
are elements that remain consistent across the field of Flat Earth texts. The world is flat and âtheyâ are hiding that fact from you
because a Flat Earth would be irrefutable proof that we live in a
divine fishbowl, and thus god is real. This is important because, again, they are evangelical and
apocalyptic. This means, first, that orthodoxy is considered a spiritual
necessity, that there is a universal divine moral right and wrong, and
all are held to account for the rightness of their beliefs. As a result it is the imperative of the believers to make
sure as many people are believers as possible because there are
consequences for not believing. To be clear, and I can't stress this enough, do not start
conversations with the word 'flat earth' You may note, already, that this is clearly setting up an
adversarial relationship between Flat Earthers and everyone else, as
anyone who denies Flat Earth or works to debunk it is not just presenting
alternative evidence of the way the world works, but is impeding proof of god. The second critical meaning is a belief that there is an
impending literal end to the world. This end will occur at some unknown point in the future, but that point is always âsoonâ. Many Flat Earthers
subscribe to the pop culture version of a Biblical apocalypse, but it doesnât actually feature very heavily for the most
part, with most skipping past the details to the part where god
shows up and proves they're right. It is difficult to understate the impact on long term
planning, the support for policies and politicians, that comes from the belief that at some point in the next
generation or two God will just personally show up and wrap up humanity, like a board game being packed back into its box. A critical component of Flat Earthâs worldview is the
baked-in idea of opposition. The enemy, the âthemâ, isnât merely another group with a
different idea of whatâs best for the world, or a different set of
motivations that may or may not intersect with the wellbeing of others, they are actively seeking harm. This is, in a way, the immune response of paranoid
conspiratorial thought. It creates an impenetrable counter to any conflict. Any disagreement, any counter-argument, is clearly
manufactured by an opposition that isnât merely indifferent to truth, but actively,
knowingly suppressing it. I wanted to take a look at this dimension of Flat Earth
because two of my peers and friends, H.bomberguy and Philosophy Tube, have done videos on Flat
Earth and while I donât think they are wrong, I think their
assessment of Flat Earth is incomplete. Both of their videos function, like many others, by taking
Flat Earth as a jumping off point to discuss intersecting concepts of philosophy and science
and sociology, and thatâs great. Theyâre good videos. The idea that Philosophy Tube brings up, that discussions of
science are a rhetorical exercise, influenced by the social context that they are had within, and the idea that Flat Earthers are unpersuaded by
conventional rhetoric, or perhaps persuaded into Flat Earth by unconventional
rhetoric, is one that we have grappled with in making this, it is an extremely relevant concept. None of those have anything whatsoever to do with the evidence they just all note a failure to be rhetorically persuaded Harry goes to great lengths to give Flat Earthers the
benefit of the doubt, carefully isolating the very specific belief that that world
is flat and addressing the anxieties that specifically, narrowly come up with the ontology of the physical world. you're right to feel that something is wrong because something is wrong just maybe keep looking for the source of what that thing is because the earth is not flat. On the surface Flat Earthers share many of the same
anxieties as the rest of us: they are worried about the power structures that have
immense influence over our lives, the systems that shape the information we have access to, and the shared fictions that society operates on like money and rent. But there is, perhaps, an over-willingness to treat them as
harmless cranks, as though we can start from their shared frustrations with
the world, and just gently nudge them in a more sensible direction. These common anxieties are a shared coordinate that is, I
think, far more superficial than we would want it to be, because while weâre all worried and skeptical of what people
in power are doing, Flat Earthers have very, very different ideas about whoâs in
power and what theyâre trying to do with it. Flat Earthers are not otherwise empty vessels who believe
one kooky thing. They believe that thing because it suits their purposes. Flat Earthers have an agenda. The end goal of conspiratorial beliefs is to simplify
reality by attributing the high-chaos state of the world to a singular active force or group opposed by an equally
singular solution. indoctrination is the way they run this world it's the way that they keep their lie going it's the way that they have passed their lie along as science when it is nothing more than a belief they have a biased foundation built on a lie and now they know they're stuck Their anxiety is that the world has become too complex, that too many things are changing, and that science and progressivism are actively malicious
elements working to obstruct the true nature of god. Most people donât actually believe Flat Earth because they
were persuaded by shoddy evidence, or they found other evidence to be less persuasive about the
nature of the physical world, they do so because it says something they already believe
about the nature of the social world. Flat Earth is a thing people want to believe because if it
were true it would be irrefutable proof of everything else they
believe. Flat Earth is a system that selectively delegitimizes power
structures and does so by working backwards. Flat Earth insists that you are being lied to by âthemâ, typically gays, liberals, or jews, in order to obfuscate the existence of God and are thus not
merely an opponent of their isolationist, xenophobic policies but
an enemy of righteousness itself. heliocentrism is simply modern day sun worship masquerading as a science They are not trying to explain the world, they are
attempting to un-explain it, because those explanations, the real explanations, have
become inconvenient to their politics. And while there is a shared sense of the world being out of
whack, the diagnosis and prescriptions are very different. I donât think itâs actually possible to isolate Flat Earth
from the reactionary current that it swims in and, I dunno, for some reason in 2020 Iâve found myself with a lot less
patience for people who engage in performative rejection of empathy and
evidence. On that note, who wants to guess how Flat Earthers feel
about COVID masks? anyone that is voluntarily wearing a mask at this stage is a mindless drone who couldn't think for themselves if their life depended on it The deeper, more critical issue is in the information
landscape that has given rise to new faith movements like Flat Earth. We are in an extremely low-trust media environment as a
product of decades of active sabotage combined with a corporate, capitalist environment that prioritizes the interests of the
wealthy or blindly pursues metric-driven success models like
âengagementâ. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to distrust the media,
to see them as at-best spineless in the face of disinformation or as outright collaborators
and profiteers. The prevalence of legitimate reasons for distrust,
legitimate anxieties for the future, creates an ideal environment for groups like Flat Earth who
peddle a simplistic Us vs. Them model of the universe. so a couple days ago i'm tracking down some uh flat earth stuff and i find myself watching a live stream a flat earth live stream that's mostly um they're just watching basically reruns of conference videos and and other stuff and other flat earth stuff and i i make the mistake of uh talking in chat that i mentioned this experiment that i did and i don't you know come in as as a like aggressive disbeliever but i'm like hey so like the video that we were watching the video that they were watching was one where the guy says like okay like there's these experiments you can do like you can try these yourself and you can get the results and you can see the results you can see that there is no curve so i'm like hey a couple weeks ago i went out to a really really big lake and i did this test you know i i replicated these tests that they're saying to do and you know like boats and the far shore disappeared behind
the curve. and and they say oh well you know it must have been it must have been big you know water swells it was it was swells in the waves and i'm like nah this is a this is a long lake but it's not a big lake like this the water was like really calm you know there were no swells and they're like well you know boats aren't that big they can they can hide themselves in their own wake i'm like well no this is like a tour boat it's like four meters tall and and we go through like kind of a bunch of other things where they're just like oh well was it this and and it was all stuff that i had controlled for it was all stuff that i had anticipated and factored in and the one guy is just like well you must have done it wrong you did something wrong pray about it and do it again And I think it's just like you just told me to pray the curve away Okay, so, how did Flat Earth actually gain traction? Like, okay, thereâs a lot of different conspiracy theories
out there, thereâs a lot of worldviews, both legitimate and scams, that have the same âyou have been
lied toâ pitch. So why Flat Earth? Modern Flat Earth was essentially created by content
algorithms trying to maximize retention and engagement by serving users
suggestions for things that are, effectively, incrementally more concentrated versions of the
thing they were already looking at. Bizarre cranks peddling random theories are an aspect of
civilization that has always been with us, so it was inevitable that they would end up on YouTube, but
the algorithm made sure they found an audience. These systems were accidentally identifying people
susceptible to conspiratorial and reactionary thinking and sending them increasingly
deeper into Flat Earth evangelism. And within that was just a quirk of good timing, I guess. The right cranks were churning out huge volumes of
low-effort content at just the right time for YouTube to prioritize it, and the moment it gained any traction at
all the system reinforced that success. But, you know, letâs keep some perspective here. Flat Earth, for all the command it holds over our collective
interest, is still a very small movement. The largest channels cap out around 150,000 subscribers,
with most coming in well below that. and this is not much in the scope of YouTube where the
opportunity cost of subscription is extremely low, and for the last couple years newer pro-flat-earth videos
from these channels have mostly been skating by with a few thousand views. In fact Mark Sargent, the guy largely credited with
popularizing Flat Earth in the YouTube era, his videos used to get hundreds of thousands of views. His seminal work, Flat Earth Clues, has 1.1 million views. But heâs only had two videos break six digits since the
start of 2018: one thatâs just a bootleg repost of Shane Dawsonâs Flat
Earth video, and one whinging about The Last Jedi. Now, YouTube, notably, has made some changes to the
algorithm to prioritize credible sources, which lowers the ranking of Flat Earth videos even within
their own sphere, but those changes were only implemented in early 2019 when
Flat Earth was already on a downslope. More impactfully, whether itâs debunking or merely
profiling, mainstream channels talking about Flat Earth from an
external perspective are just vastly more popular than actual Flat Earth content. So if youâre watching Flat Earth videos you are far, far
more likely to be recommended mainstream videos with millions of views over evangelist
videos with hundreds. The bottom line is that Flat Earth has been slowly bleeding
support for the last several years. Because theyâre all going to QAnon. [Peppy music] QAnon is a fascist Biblical esoteric apocalypse cult that
believes an anonymous government agent known only as Q is leaking sensitive âabove top secretâ
information to "Patriotsâ revealing that the political and cultural opponents of
Donald J. Trump, the so-called âDeep Stateâ and âHollywood eliteâ, are the
minions of âThe Cabalâ, literal Satan-worshipping pedophiles who kidnap, traffic,
molest, and terrorize children in order to produce and harvest adrenochrome (a byproduct of
the body processing adrenaline) which they use to get high during the ritual worship of
their lord, who is, again, Satan; a constructed enemy so cartoonishly evil that it justifies
discarding basically all human rights in order to turn opposition to Trump into a crime in a
sweeping authoritarian purge of undesirables and political opponents called The Storm
that will usher in a golden age of peace and prosperity, or The Great Awakening. Q has put out there that many high level officials will soon
be arrested, and it will actually be the Drain The Swamp scenario that we
have, that we have always been wanting to happen. He says that once the corruption and the type of corruption
is revealed to the American people, it will trigger
something he calls The Awakening He says it will be like an event, something that we've never
witnessed in American history But it will, it will cause Americans to unite behind
President Trump and his administration in order to
completely clean house. Okay, you guys, if that happens, we will be so happy I see all those hearts and I love it If that happens we will be so happy, um, I really truly pray
that this is true. And thatâs not even getting into the co-morbid Pizzagate
myth of hidden pedophile pizza-shop sex dungeons that has led many followers to see any visual
depiction of pizza, the famous and popular food, as subliminal code marking the
outlines of this vast conspiracy. Look at this, what's on his back, y'all Like, if Flat Earth is simply anxious for the end of the
world, QAnon is a straight up doomsday cult, except the form of
their apocalypse is less divine and more secular, with mass arrests and, in many versions, public executions. Itâs mostly just remixed takes on the Day of the Rope from
the 1978 neo-Nazi novel The Turner Diaries. Also sometimes itâs just literally the Day of the Rope,
because theyâre fascists. If you are unfamiliar with the Turner Diaries this is a pretty effective summary the The novel told from the perspective of a future activist in the year 2099 outlines the diaries of a revolutionary terrorist named Earl Turner in the distant future of the early 90s it is in many respects the most hateful book ever written. Even though itâs a distinctly American conspiracy, hinging
specifically on Donald Trumpâs presidency, QAnon has found traction with far-right and authoritarian
movements worldwide. Indeed a huge part of Qâs success can be attributed to
effective branding, the kind of instant recognition that makes it appealing for
groups worldwide to just localize and adapt. QAnon is pretty easy to recognize around the internet and in
real life because, similar to Flat Earth, there is a deeply evangelical streak. They will share their beliefs aggressively with just about
everyone, and are big fans of branding. Things marked with Q and QAnon are pretty straightforward,
but slightly more covert is their rallying cry, Where We Go One We Go All, or WWG1WGA, a line lifted from
the 1996 film White Squall. Largo Entertainment present a film about loyalty Where we go one, we go all Also in recent months QAnon has been aggressively colonizing
#SaveTheChildren, a fairly generic hashtag thatâs been in use for years, but
QAnon has been taking over in order to organize rallies and meetups that are more
likely to draw in non-Q believers, taking very real cases of child abuse and using them as the
bridge to introduce their entirely fictional cases of child abuse and the bulk of Q
beliefs. the messaging here is so insidious is that i'm for children and if you don't come out here you don't love children as much as i do i think we're going to see a lot more of this he doesn't lead with the pizzagate stuff he doesn't lead with q anon he leads with save the children and then the pizzagate stuff has sort of slipped underneath While QAnon originated in 2017 on 4chan via cryptic,
nonsensical anonymous posts monikered âQ dropsâ, and even though new Q drops arrive regularly on the 8chan
derivative rebrand 8kun, QAnon is, at this point, largely self-sustaining via social
media. QAnon has become a haven for just about every true believer
in bizarre conspiracies, anti-science movements, fad diets, and the grifters who prey
on them, whatâs called a âbig tent conspiracyâ because virtually any
other conspiracy can fit inside it. This is, as we discussed, already something of a feature of
Flat Earth: many new age, mystical, and political conspiracies are
compatible with Flat Earth, and Q is that, but bigger. Janet Ossebaardâs two and a half hour YouTube series Fall of
the Cabal, which is in many ways to QAnon what Loose Change was to the
9/11 Truther conspiracy in both format and in function, is mostly just a collection of other, mostly racist
conspiracies that she claims are all ultimately QAnon. okay let's have a look at the migrant caravan do you realize that these foreskins are actually sold that president obama received the 2009 nobel peace prize only months after his inauguration why for god's sake he came from nowhere and had achieved nothing at the time Hell, even 9/11 trutherism is compatible with Q. 9/11 whereas one bird can cause terrible damage to a plane on 9 11 two planes managed to cut through steel a third plane mysteriously disappeared in a building and number four plunged into the earth without leaving any debris or bodies the planes were piloted by terrorists who only had had a few flying lessons in a small Cessna See, okay, just a bit more groundwork, because that sounds
silly. QAnon trusts military intelligence and reveres military
might and shares a lot of pro-cop, thin blue line type sentiment, while they distrust the
civilian intelligence agencies. Now, the standard 9/11 truther conspiracy is that Bush
orchestrated 9/11 in order to create a crisis that would allow him to
implement the Patriot Act, create Homeland Security, and justify a couple wars. But QAnon, they imagine the Patriot Act as a tool that Trump
is using to dismantle the Deep State, and they love Homeland Security because DHS is loyal to
Trump, so the Q narrative of 9/11 focuses on the Pentagon, that Bush was a Cabal member who orchestrated 9/11 in order
to cover for a precision missile attack on the Pentagon in an attempt at covering up
Cabal activities. None of that makes sense, donât try to understand it through
the lens of facts, itâs all about loyalty. one of the oft-discussed elements of these types of groups is the way that fact checking is often used as a kind of filter so if you sit down to watch Ossebaardâs fall of the cabal and you're the kind of person who is inclined to fact check and is curious about the world and is you know interested in thinking for themselves and thinking about things analytically and from a scientific standpoint you're probably not going to get very far into it because it comes out so fast and so quick with things that are going to make you like pause and stop and like gather your thoughts on explaining why they're wrong first of all give you a short overview of things that made me go hmm did you know that these fires forgot to burn trees that they were capable of cutting through houses like like yes extremely hot fast-moving fires will just kind of burn through half a house thatthey were able to lift cars tilt them and smash them down yeah that's what happens when the gasoline in the car's tank ignites and explodes that they burn trees from the inside out oh this is a really cool phenomenon actually so if you have a tree that's dead or has a weak spot in the bark or has been attacked by certain types of fungus the interior of the tree uh gets exposed and is potentially very dry and much more flammable than the protective bark on the outside of the tree and so the fire is able to penetrate to the interior of the tree and burn it from the inside out it's it's really cool and you're turning it into conspiratorial nonsense A challenge in making this is that the Q movement evolves
very quickly and is basically an ongoing story, so itâs impossible to give a summary of the full scope that
wonât be out of date as soon as the video goes live. Not only that, but I have different dimensions of the
phenomenon that I want to focus on, so just know that Iâm skipping hours and hours and hours of
discussion. Thereâs also a lot of stuff that we just donât know for
sure, like the identity of the actual person or people who write
and post the Q drops. Thereâs some evidence that the original Q author was Coleman
Rogers, the founder of Patriotâs Soapbox and one of the first people
to popularize âdecodingâ as a social activity. In a 2018 NBC News profile of the movement, this claim is
acknowledged and supported by evidence like Rogers apparently logging into 8chan as Q on stream or knowing about âauthenticâ Q drops that werenât posted
with the Q account, i got a question for you pam how come on my system I don't
get that picture? the google bike rack thing yeah i it's not showing up on the um the q post uh aggregator sites because q posted i think by accident as an anon but a lot of that evidence was poorly archived and has since
been deleted. Thereâs also a compelling argument that the Q account has
changed hands completely at least once, and many people believe that Jim Watkins, the owner of
8chan, or at least someone very close to Watkins, is the current author of Q and has been since November 2019
when 8chan re-launched as 8kun. That re-launch represents a break in continuity that makes
it basically impossible to verify one way or the other with the information that we have
access to. And to a point it doesnât matter. Whether or not Rogers or Watkins are or were the anonymous
authors of the Q drops, they are publicly collaborators and enablers of the
movement, and benefit from it in money and influence. So while I want to focus mainly on the bigger picture, the underlying philosophical beliefs that drive QAnon
regardless of the specific form those beliefs take, would be irresponsible to not talk about how this is
manifesting in actual actions, because, ultimately, these are the stakes. For example, a notable sub-group that QAnon has drawn in are
unstable parents who are embroiled in custody battles, sometimes pre-existing and sometimes as a direct result of
their involvement in QAnon driving their partners away. Someone whoâs already on really shaky emotional ground
starts getting super into QAnon, itâs all they want to talk about, and they begin to fixate
on comorbid anti-vax conspiracies or bleach-treatment conspiracies, and they start giving
their children bleach or put them on an all-meat diet. Someone, either their partner or extended family or child
protective services, steps in. These individuals, believing that they are in the right, convince themselves that the Cabal or the Deep State has
targeted them and their children in retribution for âknowing too muchâ, the act of
intervention becomes further proof of their correctness because "of course" thatâs what the Deep
State would do to protect their secrets. On June 11th, 2020, Alpalus Slyman attempted to kidnap his
five children in a mental breakdown that led to a 110 mile-per-hour chase
with authorities that Slyman live streamed portions of to
Facebook. "Donald Trump I need a miracle, or something, somebody,
QAnon help me." On July 2nd, 2020, Corey Hurren crashed a pickup truck
through the gates of 1 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, the home of Canadaâs Governor General and temporary
residence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and stalked the grounds with a pistol and rifle before being
apprehended by RCMP officers. Shortly before the incident Hurren sent a letter to his
supervisor in the Canadian Rangers claiming that he was motivated to stop Trudeau from "turning
Canada into a Communist Dictatorship". Over the months prior Hurren posted various QAnon and
general conspiracy memes to his Instagram account, including a white rabbit meme with the description text âHas anyone else been following âQâ and the âWhite Rabbitâ
down the rabbit hole and how this all relates to the Corona virus/COVID-19 situation?
Lots of coincidences in all the âQâ posts if this turns out to be a
âNothingburgerâ. #QAnon #Anons #FollowtheWhiteRabit #Adrenochrome
#AdrenochromeHarvesting #FrazzleDrip #PodestaEmails #SpiritCooking #Molech #SethRich
#PedoWood #Pedogate #Pedovores #Pizzagate #EpsteinIsland #PedoIsland #IsaacKappyDidntKillHimself #ThesePeopleAreSick #Cabal
#WWG1WGA #Redpill #Spygate #DeepState #TheStorm #TheStormIsHere
#TheStormIsUponUs #TrustThePlan #coronavirus #covid19 #coincidenceâ In June, 2018, QAnon believer Matthew Wright barricaded the
Hoover Dam bridge with an armoured truck for over an hour, demanding that authorities release the OIG report, a document that Q believers think holds evidence of the
thousands of sealed indictments that they believe Trumpâs administration has filed against Cabal
members. during the pandemic the q anon movement has been appears to be gaining a lot of followers can you talk about what you think about that and what you have to say to people who are following this movement right now well i don't know much about the movement other than i understand they like me very much these are people that don't like seeing what's going on in places like portland and places like chicago and new york and other cities and states and i've heard these are people that love our country and they just don't like seeing it This is the radicalizing effect of cults like Q: it attracts and enables people with personalities that are
already inclined towards these kinds of actions, and gives them a reason to take it further. The reason the fragmentary, shoddy, and contradictory ideas
of Flat Earth are so easy for most adherents to accept are because theyâre principally
interested in the broad strokes, and, indeed, the broad strokes are all that matters. This is really easy to demonstrate for Q. The gap-filling that happens in between is largely
entertainment that keeps people engaged but rarely sticks long enough to form a doctrinal pillar. For example the idea that the Cabal is harvesting
adrenochrome has been floating around in the Q lore since late 2017, but only
really surged in popularity in 2020, and thereâs no guarantee that itâll last even to the point
that this video is published. Q support for bleach drinking and hydroxychloroquine as
COVID treatments have stuck around reliably for months, but could be dropped any
day now, and followers wouldnât see any contradiction in that at all. The Q lore is highly unstable and extremely fluid. This is actually part of how people are pulled in and kept
engaged, as thereâs a soap opera or ARG-esque immediacy that brings
people back day after day to get caught up on the latest developments, the latest
theories, and to all pitch in on trying to decode the latest Q drop, which is the colloquial term for what are effectively the
beliefâs foundational texts. These âQ dropsâ, and the smaller âQ crumbsâ, are thousands
of deliberately vague messages, written in a mess of codewords and meaningless word salad, and it is then left to adherents to unravel and establish
meaning by consensus. So, for example, Q Drop 142, from November 12th, 2017 reads: How did Soros replace family âyâ? Who is family âyâ? Trace the bloodlines of these (3) families. What happened during WWII? Was Hitler a puppet? Who was his handler? What was the purpose? What was the real purpose of the war? What age was GS? What is the Soros family history? What has occurred since the fall of N Germany? Who is A. Merkel? What is A. Merkelâs family history? Follow the bloodline. Who died on the Titanic? What year did the Titanic sink? Why is this relevant? What âexactlyâ happened to the Titanic? What âclass of peopleâ were guaranteed a lifeboat? Why did select âindividualsâ not make it into the lifeboats? Why is this relevant? How do we know who was on the lifeboats (D or A)? How were names and bodies recorded back then? When were tickets purchased for her maiden voyage? Who was âspecificallyâ invited? Less than 10. What is the FED? What does the FED control? Who controls the FED? Who approved the formation of the FED? Why did H-wood glorify Titanic as a tragic love story? Who lived in the movie (what man)? Why is this relevant? Opposite is true. What is brainwashing? What is a PSYOP? What happened to the Hindenburg? What really happened to the Hindenburg? Who died during the âaccidentâ? Why is this relevant? What are sheep? Who controls the narrative? The truth would put 99% of people in the hospital. It must be controlled. Snow White. Iron Eagle. Jason Bourne (CIA/Dream). Q What does that mean? Honestly, whatever the hell you want it to mean, or more
accurately, whatever you need it to mean. we are we're past lm8 and we're coming up on lm9 and the gosh i'm not i haven't checked the i haven't checked the map for i haven't checked the map for exactly where we are uh but we're real close and i'm looking off to the right now in just every single one of these poplar trees i'm thinking like oh could that be it is that it is that the one The âofficialâ Q drops are verified on the image boards by
the use of a tripcode, a system that image boards use to show that anonymous posts
are coming from the same user, or at least users who share the tripcode password, but ideas that gain traction in the conspiracy donât even
need to come from the Q drops or be implied by the Q drops. The adrenochrome conspiracy is a kind of free radical idea
thatâs been bouncing around niche cultures for decades, and is essentially a remix of the centuries old anti-Semitic
conspiracy of Blood Libel, but neither have ever been mentioned by Q in an official Q
drop. The less-vague Q predictions, citing specific dates and
outcomes, have universally not come true, instead of detailing every single one we'll just put a list on the screen of all the dates that qanon said there was going to be mass arrests or some kind of exposure of trump's enemies in the deep state or just anything happening at all only to have nothing happen but as with most failed doomsday predictions, this isnât
really a hangup. Because all of that is just sandwich filler to justify their
support for authoritarian policies directed at people they
already donât like. In fact one of the core anxieties, from the perspective of
QAnon, is that Donald Trump hasnât been authoritarian enough, and the multi-layered Deep State game of 4D chess is their
explanation for why he has not simply eliminated his enemies and Made America
Great Again. Likewise, every failed Q prediction simply becomes
reinforcing evidence of just how powerful, and thus dangerous, the mythological Deep State really is. president trump and the entire q team are working out a plan that has been in the making for the past 20 years a plan so all-encompassing it took this long to calculate every step every move to perfection The dissonance of Q is that the faithful were supposed to be
the beneficiaries of Trumpâs strongman, nativist, xenophobic, anti-progressive campaign, but they
havenât, because heâs a selfish grifter who used them for their
political convenience, and thus despite all his promises their lives have generally
gotten materially worse under his criminal presidency. That is, emotionally, psychologically, a lot to deal with, and Q gives that disappointment shape and form, encouraging
believers to Trust The Plan. Itâs deeply sad, and the increasingly convoluted
explanations for why followers should discard their own rational instincts and Trust The Plan create a
self-radicalization cycle. One of the most insidious elements of a confidence scam is
that the victims who invested the most are often the most passionate defenders, because shame is a
powerful force in the human psyche, and they canât bear the shame of admitting they were
tricked. This results in Q believers growing more and more
passionate, getting more and more involved, and further isolating themselves from others, particularly
people who push back against their evangelism. The end result is Q believers only socializing with other Q
believers. The COVID pandemic, already a source of anxiety and
isolation for virtually everyone, has further accelerated the process, with the ranks being
bolstered by more and more people who already subscribed to fringe medical or conspiratorial
beliefs, who are deeply unstable, or who are just generally amenable to authoritarianism if
they stand to benefit. And, of course, grifters. So, so many grifters. Q has managed to attract all the normal types of grifters, from policy hacks who see the movement as a political body
that they can try to steer to either bolster their own support or hurt their
opposition, to pundits who benefit from the traffic Q brings in, to
quick buck dropshippers, to regular old conmen. In fact whether youâre looking to just make some cash
selling Q-branded merchandise or if you want to build an entire career on YouTube as a Q
decoder, thereâs money to be made off QAnon. Now, all this isnât to say that everyoneâs either completely
on board or a full blown grifter, that there arenât casual posters or that people donât break
out of these groups. A lot of people flirt with conspiracies for periods of time
because theyâre entertaining, theyâre exciting. The idea that the world is no more complex than a long
running TV show is appealing, and itâs fun to think that thereâs somewhere you can go for
a narratorâs eye view of reality. Thereâs an emotional security in believing that the world
will only ever be brought to the dramatic edge of peril before a clever twist saves
the day. A lot of casual investigators dabble in the fun and then
bounce off after run-ins with insufferable believers, disruptions like a website outage, or just getting
distracted by a new video game. However this is a radicalization pipeline, and a lot of
people donât bounce off once they come across something
distatestful. People start with their generalized sense of unease with the
world, their undefined anxieties, and a thing like QAnon comes alone with a lot of answers. Bizarre answers. Inconsistent answers. But a lot of them. in every speech and every tweet he used codes for the q anons to pick up on he used spelling errors such as 'covfefe' instead of coffee referring to a new act about the saving of all social media posts by the president They come in so fast and so confidently that itâs
persuasive. Itâs not cohesive, but thereâs so much of it. As believers get more invested they spend time decoding, or
watching others decode, and they become more accustomed to integration and
synthesization. With QAnon this phase consists mostly of constantly
rearranging and rewriting existing and evolving lore in order to preserve desired outcomes, and gradually those
outcomes, the only thing that remains consistent, become the fixed
point in someoneâs life. Thatâs the thing that QAnon trains you to do, to see
specific outcomes, The Storm and the Great Awakening, as the only thing that really matters, and everything else
is mutable. QAnon trains people to see facts as subservient to outcomes, that facts are just game pieces you rearrange to justify
actions. This is how someone starts off with a vague, justified
distrust of the financial relationships between elected officials and health insurance companies, and comes out the other end believing that coronavirus is
spread by 5G networks and the only solution is a fascist crackdown on Black Lives
Matter protesters and a war with China. Increasingly one of the biggest reasons why people leave Q
is because they become frustrated with the lack of results and jump right into hardcore
accelerationist groups. This is something to be really worried about because, well,
theyâre hardcore accelerationists, and itâs the precursor to whatâs called âforcing the end.â This is where members of a doomsday cult, disillusioned with
the fact that doomsday hasnât arrived, synthesize the belief that itâs their responsibility to
create the circumstances that will allow doomsday to occur. Those circumstances, by the way, are almost always death,
plague, ecological collapse, and societal instability. And for people who have steeped themselves in these ideas, that there is a foretold day of reckoning that is directly
contingent on a specific manâs access to political power, and been told over and over and over again to suppress
disillusionment with the lack of desired results and âtrust
the planâ, it is a very small leap to deciding that The Plan all along
was Q training them to be the instrument of The Storm and now they need to take
matters into their own hands. we have this timeline here the mass arrests they can't act too quickly because they have to have certain assets in place like judges you know other countries have to be ready to go because this is going to be a global takedown and so and then you have another window over here where it's like it's they wait too long and so we're in between this period of too soon and too long before we make the mass arrests and what's happening is what the lord has shown me is that if they wait too long which i don't think they will but if they do is that it could be another mogadishu or another benghazi where the patriots will rise up and say enough's enough they will take matters into their own hands and they will drag their dead bodies through the streets they will go to these politicians houses or offices and drag them out okay because again we want to pray against that but i have to put that warning out there i've been sitting on this for a year because we're coming to the pinnacle here where they're gonna have to act at some point because the people are not asking for justice they're demanding it so the government has to act now if they need to buy more time because they don't have the assets in place quite yet they need to make probably one or two high-level arrests high-profile arrests perp walk them on national television so that people will see that justice is going to be done where i think they've got to make the arrest before january if they're going to make them this year because if he arrests anyone after january when campaign season starts it's going to make it look like he's just arresting those that oppose him Coming at all this from the outside, itâs really, really
easy to get frustrated with Q, to get frustrated talking about Q or trying to explain Q,
because thereâs so much noise in their messaging, so much chaos, that itâs really easy to get hung up on the
sensational stuff, to fixate on the beliefs like adrenochrome or the Cabal. Statues of Moloch, an expression of the devil, are now
watching over several American cities If you want to cut through the noise, itâs this: the unifying theme is a desire for a sort of restorative
authoritarianism, for a strong man to come in and forcibly put everything back
âwhere it belongs.â Everything else is aesthetic. Like Flat Earth, there is a sympathetic nugget in the
anxiety that the world has gotten too complex, that things are spinning out of control, but the Q analysis
of the problem is that the fault lies with the people outlining the
complexity. The purpose of cosmologies like Q, like Flat Earth, is to
simplify the world. And, I know, that sounds ridiculous. The irony here is that this isnât all that far off base. Now, not this specific example, the QAnon map of global
politics is almost pure nonsense, but the shape of it isnât. If you were to map out the political landscape of the world
it would look a lot like this: thousands of political entities, big and small, all with
their own goals, values, and incentives, navigating an equally complex series of conflicts,
alliances, and rivalries in competition for power, fame, or limited resources. So how is something like this making the world simpler? Because it takes all this, the chaos of millions of
individuals trying to reshape the world in their own way, for good or ill, and turns it into a single entity. All the worldâs complexity, all the chaos, itâs all the
fault of one group. Not an ideology, not a worldview, not historical inertia,
not anything so nebulous as the way we think about the
world. A single, tangible, identifiable group with a written
agenda. These types of conspiratorial beliefs, for all their complex
cosmologies, exist in opposition to structural challenges, and a lot of people get involved because they resent
structural criticism. Structural criticism poses that we are the way we are
because of complicated forces, some intentional and many not, that have compounded and
morphed over generations. Thereâs no plan, no template, and no goal. The world wonât just magically morph into a better place as
a function of its existence: we are responsible for confronting the past, fixing the
present, and shaping the future. QAnon, and not just QAnon, many people, many many people,
want to believe that things are the way they are because someone has deliberately
crafted it to be that way, that there is a natural order to the world, and we need to
just trust the plan. Climate scientists, trans and queer activists, womenâs
rights, reproductive autonomy, racial justice, protests against police brutality, protests
against generational wealth inequality, and protests against the increasing transfer of the public
good into the hands of corporations for privatization and exploitation, all of them
interlocking, systemic issues. These are, inarguably, disruptions of the status quo,
confrontations of deep-rooted complexities that intersect the lives and
futures of billions of people. And it is that disruption, not the underlying injustices,
not the underlying conflicts, that make QAnon anxious, that make QAnon feel like the world
has gotten too complex. They donât want those complexities to exist, and by talking
about them you make them exist. Itâs a form of magical thought. Talking about police brutality wills police brutality into
existence. A disruption of the status quo is seen as a disruption of
the natural order. The problem they see is that no one has made those people
shut up. That is what they want: someone to come in and make those
people shut up and go away, to put things back âwhere they belongâ. Now, this is not a philosophy unique to QAnon, itâs the lifeblood of all reactionary movements. They are, of course, in conflict with facts. Global warming, to pull one example, is real, and an
existential threat to civilization. Thatâs just a fact. It wasnât willed into existence by people talking about it, it isnât over-tuned leftists looking for patterns in clouds, itâs the byproduct of dumping carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere on an industrial scale for two hundred years. And there is a temptation to engage on that level, to confront all the material ways in which they are just
wrong, and it largely does not work. And whatâs unique about QAnon is the degree to which it
doesnât work, the degree to which the movement is immune to evidence. All reactionary movements are in tension with reality, a tension that eventually results in psychological crisis, and belief systems like QAnon are the endpoint of that
crisis, the point where reality itself becomes an enemy. Because ultimately itâs not about facts, itâs about power. QAnons are not otherwise empty vessels who believe one
whacky thing. They have an agenda. QAnon, what it accepts, what it believes, is driven by the
outcomes it justifies. The Democratic National Convention is thinking about
bringing Bernie Sanders back to run for president in 2020. Can you imagine? Like, what if he gets elected? I seriously hope not. Hopefully all this stuff goes down and there is an awakening
and everyone lines up behind President Trump. I'm fed up with the attacks on President Trump, I think he's the greatest president that we'll have in our
lifetimes, and I'm grateful for all he's doing, and I'm proudly running for congress in Georgia's 14th
district. The reason they arenât more bothered by Q constantly getting
things wrong, why they arenât more bothered by the extreme inconsistencies
and outright contradictions, by the claims that are just materially wrong, is because it gives them power over others who are bound by
something as weak and flimsy as reality. They claim to be against corruption while hanging their
hopes on an openly corrupt man, and that naked hypocrisy is the point. They will effortlessly carve out an exception because it
makes them exceptional. They engage in wild hypocrisy as an act of domination, adhering to something demonstrably untrue out of spite, because they believe that power belongs to those with the
greatest will to take it, and what greater sign of will than the ability to override
truth? Their will is a hammer that they are useing to beat reality
itself into a shape of their choosing, a simple world where reality is exactly what it looks like
through their eyes, devoid of complexity, devoid of change, where they are right
and their enemies are silent. They are trying to build a Flat Earth. [Intense music]
Its such an excellent documentary.
Also, the shot of the lake proving the curvature of the earth is fascinating and indeed feels "profound".
The turn this video takes at 38 minutes... So fucking good. Seriously, if you're scrolling through the comments here to determine if you should watch it, yes.
Back in the early 80s, President Ronald Reagan was briefed by an analyst by the name of Donald Rumsfeld on the Soviet stealth capabilities.
Donald Rumsfeld told Reagan that there was no evidence of any stealth capabilities or any support structures anywhere in the Soviet Union. But that this total lack of evidence is proof that their stealth capabilities are so advanced that we can't even recognize them.
President Reagan politely thanked Rumsfeld for his briefing. Staffers reported hearing Reagan chuckling to himself the whole rest of the day.
I'm quite certain pharaohs had to deal with conspiracy nutjobs bacj in their day too. And I'm sure with their bad math and horrible logic in full glory. The only difference between then, and now is the internet.
I love when he lowers the camera above the lake. I think I have never seen such simple and compelling proof.
ÂŤIf you Google how fast does the su- or the Earth orbit the sun, they tell you 18,5 miles per second... water bubbling Hold on Iâm taking a hit...Âť
And there are people who believe that guy over science. How is this reality?
Also great video
Folding ideas is a brilliant channel, his interpretation of Fight Club completely changed my view of that movie
This is a repost but I upvoted it because this actually provided some pretty irrefutable footage of the earth's curve over water. The guy put a lot of effort into providing detailed information to make the experiment reproducable
It really takes a scary turn when he's goes into all the QAnon stuff
He covers the point which is that people believe in Flat Earth and Qanon largely because it enforces things they already believe. Largely a distrust of the state and believing in religion beyond what most people would believe to be reasonable.
The fact it enforces them to distrust science unless it is a part which in some small way is an advantage to them. In that case they are quite happy to dismiss the rest of the report over one small detail out of context.
Here is an example of a debate I had recently. The CDC report on COVID19 mentioned only 6% of people died without having any underlying conditions such as high pressure, overweight, etc etc.
Qanon supporters seem to view this data as COVID only kills 6% of the cases and reference this report. However as I pointed out the report does not come to that conclusion in fact it covers in detail the underlying conditions and explains the causes of death due to COVID 19. which I do through the report and highlight these points.
In response to that the Qanon's then start to claim the report is fake, that it is deep state. Which is then odd because as you point out it is the same report where they got the 6% theory from.
At which point it shifts into asking me why I support murders via abortion and how it is gods will. It is worth pointing out at no point before this was abortion mentioned or my views on it. It was just out of the blue completely switching to a different topic.
This is the problem in trying to reason with Qanon it is so fast and broad yet not really based on any real structure by the time you put down one theory they are off on another one.