[Genuine Realist]

Teejers:

I admit that my exposure to the crazier ideas linked to this pandemic, and to all manner of other topics, is limited because I generally choose to avoid platforms where I will encounter such ideas, including Twitter and my younger brother, who elicited a Christmas-marring rant from me a couple of years ago when he characterized the Newtown parents as "crisis actors."  So I had not know about the anti-Gates beliefs until I read the article I cited.  But I would point out to you that Laura Ingraham is mentioned in the NY Times article as one promulgating crazy crap, and she has a large audience on Fox.

In the face of the divisions we face, I believe that it will be incumbent on the majority of conservatives who are reasonable and can comfortably weigh and calmly discuss the different possible ways that the virus might be tackled to marginalize the radical elements on the right.  Fortunately, it seems that more and more have been doing that recently.

Again, I appreciate your involvement in this forum where I imagine you feel you are subject to a fair amount of criticism.

DC,

I'm not at all inflamed by the article, but I am a'weary of the NYT. That piece is typical New York Times-ese, of the type that has cost that once respect institution so much credibility in the last three decades. The presentation is somewhat akin to the manner in which it created the myth of a White Nationalist or Supremacist movement out of nothing in the year after Trump was inaugurated. Back then, it began to cover the same ditsy rallies that had been going on continually for decades, as if they were new and ominous events. You had to read to the third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs to learn that there were 10, 20, or 30 (on a good day) participants from an entire State. (This even applies to the infamous Charlottesville incident, in which the actual number of White Whatevers was the same miniscule fraction. The vast majority were Civil War sentimentalists - completely misguided historically (that's a different post), but not American Nazis.) The rallies hadn't changed. But the coverage did.

Here the trick is in the number of You Tube clicks, 10, 14, 18,000. But You Tube these days has over a billion views a day. By way of comparison, I am linking a video from an idiot 9/11 conspiratist from last year, a lecture by Richard Gage, which is absolute nonsense, and which to date has  . .. 208,000 clicks. That doesn't mean there is a raging conspiracy movement about 9/11. It means the Internet is that big. I'm not going to root around YouTube looking for crazy conspiracy theories involving Trump. But they're there, and I would bet many times the size of the sites that target Gates. It doesn't mean that the Left has given way completely to anti-Trump conspiracy nonsense.

Basically, the Times isn't reporting a movement. It isn't even reporting noise. It's reporting Internet static.

So it includes an interview from Laura Ingraham, that actually isn't about any crazy Gates conspiracy, but some concern that the tracing app that Google and others are developing is another step towards Big Brother - akin to the concern that NSA surveillance caused a few years ago. For a lot of reasons (again, that's another post), I think that the entire concern about the surveillance state misplaced paranoia. But it's fairly mainstream, including any number of op-ed writers in the Times itself. You don't cite it side-by-side with wackos about Gates  - at least, not if you're responsible. 

Add to the melange that well known Right wing spokesman Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (huh???), and you have what has unfortunately become a staple of the Times - a sort of miasmic opinion piece, intended to hoist a flag for the ever narrowing readership it cultivates, based on a mass of factoids that don't stand up to analysis. It's the sort of thing that has cost it immeasurable credibility since 1990. Back in the days of Scotty Reston, I doubt that sort of article would even make it to the editorial desk. But times - and the Times - have changed.

I'm sure Bill Gates is the target of a few crazies. Every public figure is. But a major target of a significant number of right wing adherents? Not on this evidence.

[Genuine Realist]

Teejers:

I admit that my exposure to the crazier ideas linked to this pandemic, and to all manner of other topics, is limited because I generally choose to avoid platforms where I will encounter such ideas, including Twitter and my younger brother, who elicited a Christmas-marring rant from me a couple of years ago when he characterized the Newtown parents as "crisis actors."  So I had not know about the anti-Gates beliefs until I read the article I cited.  But I would point out to you that Laura Ingraham is mentioned in the NY Times article as one promulgating crazy crap, and she has a large audience on Fox.

In the face of the divisions we face, I believe that it will be incumbent on the majority of conservatives who are reasonable and can comfortably weigh and calmly discuss the different possible ways that the virus might be tackled to marginalize the radical elements on the right.  Fortunately, it seems that more and more have been doing that recently.

Again, I appreciate your involvement in this forum where I imagine you feel you are subject to a fair amount of criticism.

DC,

I'm not at all inflamed by the article, but I am a'weary of the NYT. That piece is typical New York Times-ese, of the type that has cost that once respect institution so much credibility in the last three decades. The presentation is somewhat akin to the manner in which it created the myth of a White Nationalist or Supremacist movement out of nothing in the year after Trump was inaugurated. Back then, it began to cover the same ditsy rallies that had been going on continually for decades, as if they were new and ominous events. You had to read to the third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs to learn that there were 10, 20, or 30 (on a good day) participants from an entire State. (This even applies to the infamous Charlottesville incident, in which the actual number of White Whatevers was the same miniscule fraction. The vast majority were Civil War sentimentalists - completely misguided historically (that's a different post), but not American Nazis.) The rallies hadn't changed. But the coverage did.

Here the trick is in the number of You Tube clicks, 10, 14, 18,000. But You Tube these days has over a billion views a day. By way of comparison, I am linking a video from an idiot 9/11 conspiratist from last year, a lecture by Richard Gage, which is absolute nonsense, and which to date has  . .. 208,000 clicks. That doesn't mean there is a raging conspiracy movement about 9/11. It means the Internet is that big. I'm not going to root around YouTube looking for crazy conspiracy theories involving Trump. But they're there, and I would bet many times the size of the sites that target Gates. It doesn't mean that the Left has given way completely to anti-Trump conspiracy nonsense.

Basically, the Times isn't reporting a movement. It isn't even reporting noise. It's reporting Internet static.

So it includes an interview from Laura Ingraham, that actually isn't about any crazy Gates conspiracy, but some concern that the tracing app that Google and others are developing is another step towards Big Brother - akin to the concern that NSA surveillance caused a few years ago. For a lot of reasons (again, that's another post), I think that the entire concern about the surveillance state misplaced paranoia. But it's fairly mainstream, including any number of op-ed writers in the Times itself. You don't cite it side-by-side with wackos about Gates  - at least, not if you're responsible. 

Add to the melange that well known Right wing spokesman Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (huh???), and you have what has unfortunately become a staple of the Times - a sort of miasmic opinion piece, intended to hoist a flag for the ever narrowing readership it cultivates, based on a mass of factoids that don't stand up to analysis. It's the sort of thing that has cost it immeasurable credibility since 1990. Back in the days of Scotty Reston, I doubt that sort of article would even make it to the editorial desk. But times - and the Times - have changed.

I'm sure Bill Gates is the target of a few crazies. Every public figure is. But a major target of a significant number of right wing adherents? Not on this evidence.