Conspiracy Theory 102: Hot Housed

by Eve Fisher

Shtisel - Courtesy IMDB 

We've been watching Shtisel on Netflix - and if you haven't, I highly recommend it.  See the IMDB Link HERE.  One of the top rated shows in Israel, currently in its third season (2 are available on Netflix), it's about a Haredi family in Geula, Jerusalem.  For the most part it ignores politics, just follows life in a religious, internet-free, television-free, almost radio-free neighborhood. The community follows strict haredi customs and the youngest son (and our hero) Akiva (on the left in the photo), is an artist, which means he's considered a "screw-up" by most, including his father.  We love it.

The haredi world is a closed world, and closed worlds fascinate me.  I've written before about cults, of which I saw so many back in my California youth.  But there are lots of closed worlds.  The Amish.  The current Facebook / internet world where the algorithms are designed to lock in to your politics, tastes, fears, and [obsessive] interests and give you nothing but more of the same.  Prisons.  The streets.  Some neighborhoods.  Clubs.  Anywhere that people are so isolated (by chance / choice / force) that they really have no contact with the outside.  This leads to some very interesting - and often very wrong - ideas of what's going on in the rest of the world.

An example:  A few years ago, I heard from someone who'd been living on the streets for a decade or so that Texas was a much better place for the homeless than Georgia, because the cops treated people a hell of a lot better in Texas.  As long as you were white, you were welcome.  I'm sure you can unpack all the fallacies that went into the making of that little dream yourself.

Another example:  One of the guys at the pen had to go to the hospital the other day.  The next day, everyone was spreading the word that he was dead.  He wasn't.  He was returned alive and tired.

A rioting-in-the-streets example: Just a few months ago, someone posted on-line about how young Somali men ran amok at a ValleyFair in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 22, 2018, hundreds of them, and the police had to be called, and it turned into a dangerous riot. And the main stream news media wasn't even covering it! (Their emphasis, not mine.) So I checked it out. First, their source: USA Really - one of the more unreliable sources in newsmedia - "According to eyewitnesses who were at the park that night to celebrate Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, “a group of nearly 100 Somali men mob rushed past security and amusement park staffers at the front entrance and proceeded to run through the park and instigate fights among themselves and with guests.  Cliff Hallberg, who was inside the park with his children at the time the fights broke out said it was very frightening for his children. 'I saw about 60 Somali teenagers push their way through lines and scream at guests.  This looked like a targeted attack on law enforcement,' Hallberg added."

What USA Really neglected to mention: It was ValleyFair's "Valleyscare" "Halloween-Haunt" night for adults and teens, so there shouldn't have been any children there, and that while multiple fights did break out, that happened at 11:00 PM, with scheduled closing time at 12:00 Midnight anyway, and the police mopped it all up pretty quickly.  No injuries, no property damage, and only 3 people arrested for minor offenses.  (MPR, CBS, and multiple other news outlets.)   Personally, I suspect that alcohol was involved more than race...


Anyway, I posted the news reports, and was told that I'd just proven their point - the news media was covering it up!  They'd even changed the time!  They had eye-witnesses!  Look at the video!  I pointed out that there was no video, and I was told, semi-ominously, "It's coming!"  It never did.

No, I'll take that back.  It did.  For those of you who like exaggeration and labeling, here it is.  All I can say is, if you think this is a riot, you've never been in a riot.  (I have, in L.A.  A riot is an unmistakable occurrence, and it's not a thing where someone says, in a rather bored voice, "we're never gonna get out of here.")  Again, the videographer never mentions "ValleyScare", "Halloween-Haunt", or that this is all happening after eleven at night.  But of course, the videographer is Laura Loomer, a notorious Internet conspiracy theorist.

(BTW - this does not mean there's no gang violence in Minneapolis. See the National Gang Center, where you can also look up your home town and see how you're doing. White, Somali, Hmong, Native American - there's a lot of gangs. Same as in L.A., Chicago, Atlanta, New York, and every other big city.)

Back to prison for a get-rich-quick-scheme example: "An inmate hands me what looks like a 15th-generation photocopy, asking about the Social Security benefits available to him when he gets out. The piece of paper promises years of free financial benefits from the government.  This is another prison folktale: the myth of a lucrative handout, post-incarceration. The Social Security Administration is aware of such misinformation and has published brochures explaining how Social Security really works for inmates returning to society.  “But the paper says you will deny this program exists,” the inmate says, after I hand him one of those very brochures.  I am at a loss for words. He leaves my (accurate) brochure behind when he exits the library, a cruel reminder that people hear what they want to hear." 

(Conspiracy Theories in Prison)

A fatal example:  The Heaven's Gate cult, which firmly believed that the Comet Hale-Bopp was the mother ship coming to take them home - after they'd killed themselves.  So they killed themselves.

A harmless (?) example:  When I was teaching history up at SDSU, a student came up to me and asked, "Is it true that your parents were CIA agents who got killed in a car wreck in Europe?"  Well, who am I to stand in the way of a good dorm legend.  So I asked, deadpan, "Who said it was a car wreck?"

Extremely dangerous examples:  Pizzagate, White Supremacy (including all its variations from Aryan Nation to KKK), The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a/k/a anti-Semitism), Reptilian humanoids, the Flat Earth Society, George Soros, the assassination of everyone from Geoffrey Chaucer to Diana, Princess of Wales, the Illuminati, Chemtrails, Black Helicopters & UN concentration camps & the barcodes on the backs of traffic signs, Birthers, QAnon, and, of course, the "Truthers" who declare that various things (from the Holocaust to Sandy Hook) never actually happened.  (Thank you WIRED for a list and a portal.)

My favorite BS financial example: "Sovereign citizens" don't have to pay taxes because of the “straw man” theory. According to Richard McDonald, a sovereign-citizen leader, "there are two classes of citizens in America: the "original citizens of the states" (or "States citizens") and "U.S. citizens". 

McDonald asserts that U.S. citizens or "Fourteenth Amendment" "citizens have civil rights, legislated to give the freed black slaves after the Civil War rights comparable to the unalienable constitutional rights of white state citizens. The benefits of U.S. citizenship are received by consent in exchange for freedom. State citizens consequently take steps to revoke and rescind their U.S. citizenship and reassert their de jure (something that exists in reality, even if not legally recognized) common-law state citizen status. This involves removing one's self from federal jurisdiction and relinquishing any evidence of consent to U.S. citizenship, such as a Social Security number, driver's license, car registration, use of zip codes, marriage license, voter registration, and birth certificates. Also included is refusal to pay state and federal income taxes because citizens not under U.S. jurisdiction are not required to pay them."  (Wikipedia)  

I've run into them on a regular basis up here - in the court system and outside the court system - and every one of them has not only been convicted and imprisoned, but no one from the Sovereign Citizen movement (which charges considerably for their Sovereign Citizen ID cards) has ever shown up to support them in any way, shape or form.  

Almost (?) harmless examples:  The Berensteins, the non-existence of Finland and Australia, and Shazaam the Movie (not to mention other movie conspiracy theories - see HERE).

Daily examples:  They're different.  They're weird.  They do things wrong.  They are wrong.  "Thank you, Lord, for making me the right _____  !"  Fill in the blank for yourself.

All of these - and many more - are examples of hot housing / echo chambers / isolation.  But the world is greater than that.  For that matter, the entire human body is greater than that.

"Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.  Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” - 1 Cor. 12:14-21

Enjoy it.