Matthew Remski

Rather, you ask him, ‘Well, okay, if I'm a non-believer and I want to know about consent. How would you explain it to me?’ I’m betting he’d have a ready answer.” /end

The litmus test is not just looking at his conversation on Rogan about the annunciation in isolation and being like: ‘Oh, he thinks Mary freely said yes to Gabriel, and that's what he's actually basing his beliefs about consent on.’ /8

It's like he has a passport to these different worldviews and he can travel back and forth—and that makes him an indispensable person to help build a progressive liberal or leftist project if you're dealing with a populace who is widely religious. /7

But Talarico seems terrific at invoking his religious language and his theology but also not having to use it at all, and being completely comfortable in these different worlds. /6

So if you ask them to break it down, as in: ‘You're seem to be using religion to justify these particular policies. How would you sell those policies to a non-believer?’ They just wouldn't know what to do. They'd be like, ‘What are you talking about? This is God's way.’ /5

They are fully within their worldview. They are immersed in the vocabulary and the story that they tell, and that's all they got. /4

One important question is how well can any given politician who's invoking religion translate that information into non-religious language. The true believer has a really hard time translating or speaking to an outsider audience. /3

“We see a lot of Christian politicians who are cynical exploiters of their faith, but then there are true believers. And sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. /2

🧵 Big-tent insight from my friend @blairhodges.bsky.social on how and why James Talarico is using progressive theology to sell progressive policy in Texas. Context is a debate on whether this blurs the very church-state separation Talarico says he supports. /1

Brief: DJ Khaled of Pseudoscience — Conspirituality Against all odds, Theranos is back, with a wellness twist, as the new founder is directly courting MAHA.

Strange billboards have been popping up all over Los Angeles featuring disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Against all odds, the brand is back, with a wellness twist: the new backer is directly courting MAHA.

www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-dj-khaled-of-pseudoscience

I'll look more closely at that, thx.

No it doesn't, but when that content piles up on a particular corner of the board, everyone looks at that corner.

Oh yeah, no argument there. What I'm most interested in is the premise that the anti-disinfo project can have other impacts by flowing into familiar grooves.

Grateful that Jutel is tracking this down. There’s no media literacy without political literacy. /end

The rage of conspiracism is real, but the facts are unsound. A key moment for me was understanding "antisemitism is the socialism of fools," and then scaling it up. Plus reading Lagalisse on conspiracism as a language of folk wisdom on the left. Team anti-disinfo wasn't focused on that very much. /5

Both pathways seem hardwired: the eternal Red Scare return, primed to view 2016 as the culmination of decades of carefully crafted tech-gangster-commie tactics. On the other side, hasbara is so baked into the cake of foreign policy and its media support, it’s invisible. /4

At the time I chalked it up to personal commitments to Zionism, and for some folks I think that's true. But it's bigger than that. For too many, one category of disinfo threatens the conventional order, but other categories support it—or at least help us avoid the hardest questions. /3

For me, ‪@ojutel.bsky.social‬’s slam dunk for the disinfo set acting out a parochial infotech dispute within empire is the comparison of responses to Ukraine vs. Gaza.

Russian bots are everywhere, but somehow there’s mostly radio silence in the face of obvious, blatant hasbara. /2

The Problem of Disinformation (E334) This week we are joined by Dr.  Olivier Jutel, a lecturer in the Department of Media, Film & Communication at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. His scholarly focus is in communication s

Solid reality check for those who have suspected that some disinfo discourse has often (inadvertently) run liberal cover for the status quo, sublimating, psychologizing, or avoiding issues of basic economy and morality. /1

soundcloud.com/qanonanonymo...

268: Rogan’s Christian President — Conspirituality We catch up on three figures this week: Bari Weiss, who's trying to sell her upstart media org, The Free Press, to Skydance for a reported $250 million; RFK Jr and his continued dismantling of our pub...

Bari Weiss is cashing out on the cosplay of independence while echoing imperial talking points. RFK Jr gets (fake?) sued. But did Joe Rogan's character judgment radar magically improve when he sat down with James Talarico?

www.conspirituality.net/episodes/268-rogans-christian-president

Hey there... I've got a book out this coming April with NAB called Antifascist Dad, concentrating on intergenerational dialogue in terrible times. I can send a digital ARC when they're ready if you DM me. Also, I'm in Toronto!

They came from all walks of life, and as many as 30% of them died.

That was a different time in terms of technology, surveillance, border controls, and the totalizing power of empire.

So I don't know what a similar response would look like today, but we have to imagine it.

/end

(Just one of many possible analogies:)

In 1937, similar politicians facing similar truths were not willing to do more.

In response, as many as 40K *volunteers* traveled to Spain from over 50 countries to protect the poor from the fascists. This was *before* genocide was on the horizon. /3

The last gasp of democracy is to watch the feckless realize they might have to respond to catastrophe in some manner. Whether democracy starts breathing again (if it ever did) depends on whether these powerful forces are willing to do more than hand-wring and wait to profit on the rebuild. /2

🧵 After all of the cowardice, false equivalence, bigotry, Orientalism, New Atheist interference, fear-mongering, lies, propaganda and conspiracies, the liberal establishment is turning towards the truth about Gaza. Not from an attack of conscience. Not to take responsibility. To mirror polling. /1

Brief: Mehdi Hasan vs Jordan Peterson — Conspirituality Mehdi Hasan's recent Jubilee appearance has blown up—and so has criticism of the entire media operation. Derek and Julian discuss the value and pitfalls of this format, contrasting the far-right parti...

[Head tilts, eyes narrow, necktie feels too tight, pitch rises to full whine:]

"What do mean by 'debate'?"

www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-mehdi-hasan-vs-jordan-peterson

Yes, and—I don't think it causally tracks up to political structure. Those 70s theorists were pretty internal-gazing. I do think that the inner conflict mirrors the material crises of capital that the old left theory says provokes fascist repression to keep things in order.

This is not an original idea. It’s a psychologization of a simpler description of how contradictions and cognitive dissonances in capitalism lead to crises. It has been around for over a century on the left, and it predicts how fascism emerges. /end

They point out how the powerful must both hide their sins, but also rub our faces in them. They point out the basic bait and switch of the free market promise: we are encouraged to pursue wealth within a framework that ensures most people will not achieve what is promised. /5

There’s a nearly-impossible-to-read book from 1972 on this called Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. If you can somehow wade through its jargon it’s about how these contradictions create mass psychosis, which they characterize as schizophrenic. /4