The Wellness-to-Fascism Pipeline

> bankers’ conspiracies [..] Satanic paedophiles led by Hillary Clinton and George Soros [..] “Conspiracy theories provide the missing link, turbo-charging an existing account of what’s happening by claiming that it is not just the result of chance or the unintended consequences of policy choices, but the result of a deliberate, secret plan, whether by big pharma, corrupt scientists, the military-industrial complex or big tech.”

The 2008 financial crisis was caused in part by corrupt cooperation between banks and rating agencies, after regulation aimed at preventing the crisis had been stopped by lobbyists [1]. Deutsche Bank was found guilty of price-fixing gold [1a], and Libor manipulation by colluding (i.e. conspiring) banks was a big scandal [1b]. The Guardian itself reported on it, and now they pretend bankers' conspiracies are unheard of?

Epstein and Ghislaine did run a paedophile ring (oh but the article mentions only Hillary and Soros - I'm sure none of the conspiracists so much as hinted at Epstein...), Iraq was invaded under known-false pretenses, and the US coalition's Iraqi order 81, that expands patent protection to seeds [2], is a naked giveaway to US biotech, which is largely big pharma owned. And I'm sure we're all aware of plenty of big tech conspiracies - from the general spying, CPU management engines that can only be disabled by government and intelligence agencies [3], lobbying for anti-circumvention and anti-reverse-engineering laws, sabotaging open standards, Google contractually forbidding manufacturers from making alternative phone OSes [4], Apple deleting protest apps from its (not yours) locked-down devices [5], etc.

I can't think off the top of my head of any confirmed conspiracies perpetrated by the military-industrial complex, though the implication that there are none is downright precious. In any case there are plenty of instances where countries have gone to war for reasons less noble than those openly stated. War Is a Racket by Smedley Butler is a good introduction, and I won't burden this post with yet more examples.

That out of the way... I find it surprising how in every single case, the article uses either unproven or false conspiracies, or unassailably vague terms ("secret plan by big tech"). Not one of the conspiracies the wellness people advocate for is true? Like the sugar industry lobbying to blame obesity on fat? The sudden turnabout of epidemiologists from demanding lockdowns and forbidding protests and gatherings, to realizing that some protests are okay actually [6]? Such an oversupply of conspiracies, yet we are to believe they overlooked all of them, and have fixated solely and exclusively on the false ones?

Or maybe the author is simply cherry-picking. After all, it would be conspiratorial thinking to reach for a more complex explanation..

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(2010_film)

[1a] https://www.reuters.com/article/deutsche-bank-settlement-gol...

[1b] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/18/libor-scand...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders

[3] This mode disables most of ME's functions, and was intended to be available only in machines produced for specific purchasers like the US government - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#%22Hig...

[4] https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/14/22673202/google-south-kor...

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/technology/apple-hong-kon...

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/Epidemiologists-corona...