u/blackglum

Yesterday I posted a thread expressing concern about conspiracy thinking increasingly becoming normalised on the left, particularly online. Right now, the top post on the politics subreddit is: “I get why people call the white correspondence dinner shooting staged. I was there.”

Within an hour of last nights thread, it had accumulated over 100 comments, many of which confidently asserted that the recent assassination attempt on Trump was staged.

That response however reveals something about the discourse in this subreddit. Criticism of Sam (which of course is fair game) has routinely produced arguments that are not engaged with on their merits, but instead caricatured, misrepresented, or replaced with claims he simply hasn’t made.

Given the critical thinking skills on display with yesterdays thread, outside of the usual bad faith suspects, much of Sam’s critics stem from a failure of basic comprehension combined with a reflex that treats any proximity to controversial topics as evidence of wrongdoing.

Last nights thread was sobering and reaffirming to me that no matter the tsunami of bullshit that comes flying in Sam’s direction, he is still a sane voice in this ever increasing delusional landscape.

Sam is right. This subreddit is a cesspit.

I want to raise something that I’m finding genuinely concerning.

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, and the recent attempted attack, I’m seeing a lot of confident claims that it was staged, that the injury was fake, or that it was some kind of “false flag.”

I’m seeing it regularly on the front-page of Reddit, in mainstream and left-leaning subreddits, and in the comment sections of mainstream outlets like The New York Times. They dominate the conversation.

These are communities that typically pride themselves on being rational and evidence-based, which is why this feels notable.

After a exchange tonight with a peer on Facebook (someone I previously regarded as fairly rational and broadly aligned with me politically) I found it hard to avoid the impression that that die-hard MAGA and terminally online lefties aren't that different in critical thinking skills.

I have not seen any threads on reddit discussing this. Certainly not in any centrist/moderate subs.