The Not-So-New Deniers
Whether it's the Holocaust, 9/11, Jan. 6 or Oct. 7, the same playbook is used over and over.
The Washington Post reports on the October 7 conspiracy movement, and its similarities to much older denial/conspiracist movements about 9/11 and the Holocaust:
When she first heard about Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Mirela Monte was “appalled.” The South Carolina real estate agent and self-described holistic healer detests violence and is horrified by war and human suffering.
But as Monte read more in Uncensored Truths, a Telegram group with 2,958 subscribers active on foreign policy and the supposed perils of vaccination, her shock turned to anger. According to the forum, the news reports were wrong: Secretly, Israel was behind the massacre.
Monte now argues the Oct. 7 attack was a “false flag” staged by the Israelis — likely with help from the Americans — to justify genocide in Gaza. “Pure evil,” she said. “Israel is like a mad dog off a leash.”
The Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack is among the most well-documented in history. A crush of evidence from smartphone cameras and GoPros captured Hamas’s breach of the border — a strike Israel says left about 1,200 dead, the most deadly onslaught in the country’s history.
But Oct. 7 denial is spreading. A small but growing group denies the basic facts of the attacks, pushing a spectrum of falsehoods and misleading narratives that minimize the violence or dispute its origins. Some argue the ambush was staged by the Israeli military to justify an invasion of Gaza. Others say that some 240 hostages Hamas took into Gaza were actually kidnapped by Israel. Some contend the United States is behind the plot.
Pearl Harbor, The Holocaust, the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, Sandy Hook, the “stolen” 2020 elections and the failed January 6 putsch, and now the October 7 pogroms…the atrocity or world-changing historical event changes, but the conspiracy theorists’ techniques never do:
dismiss all stories from mainstream media sources which don’t support your narrative, because (((certain powerful people))) control the media;
but use any stories from mainstream media outlets which do support some part of your narrative - and somehow slipped through the net - as definitive proof that the great conspiracy happened;
if there’s eyewitness testimony which goes against your narrative, demand video;
if there’s video, say it’s faked and demand forensic evidence;
if there’s forensic evidence, dismiss it because the people who prepared the reports were paid off;
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