>>4794763 (last bread about washington post article on conspiracies)
Hmmm… it’s actually not a bad article, case in point:
MYTH NO. 4
Conspiracy theories are an existential threat to society.
In the first few days of August 2018, mainstream news headlines described an emerging conspiracy theory as “bizarre,” “dangerous,” “terrifying ” and a “deranged conspiracy cult.” The movement, one Post columnist wrote, “is scary because it’s getting bigger, it’s scary because we don’t know how to stop it, and it’s scary because the people behind it won’t be stopped.” Yikes.
The catastrophizing headlines were part of a broader tendency to paint conspiracism as a creeping contagion that “manages to insinuate itself in the most alert and intelligent minds,” as historian Daniel Pipes charitably put it, or as “mumbo jumbo” that has already “conquered the world,” as journalist Francis Wheen bluntly asserted.
Those articles last summer were about QAnon, a loose collection of cryptic nonsense that started online and manifested as a handful of people showing up at President Trump’s rallies with homemade signs and shirts. Though the articles implied a substantial number of believers, none reported any data. Subsequent polling showed that many people — 4 in 10 — hadn’t heard of QAnon or didn’t know enough to have an opinion. Among those who knew about it, it was viewed overwhelmingly unfavorably (by both Democrats and Republicans). An analysis of the QAnon subreddit showed that a tiny but vocal contingent of boosters was making almost all the noise about it on the forum. Most people who engage with ideas like this just sit back and watch, probably treating the theories as a curiosity or entertainment.
If anything, this writer is merely trying to downplay the Q movement. Technically a hit piece, but not over the top. Not bad, and could actually tell people to not just dismiss conspiracies out of hand.