To think my mum has fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole and I can't get her out

There seems to be a somewhat Stalin effect happening here instead of discussing the actual points raised. If people were more curious about conspiratorial beliefs they’d realise that they more than likely come from a place of fear, of feeling powerless, out of control and uncertainty.

Not all people are racist or batshit, a lot of people are scared and perhaps we could discuss the why instead of calling people names.

You might be interested in this - it is an interview with a Professor at King's College who says that civil war is not as unlikely as you think: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6iHfBTH0VWR7JzosbKFtib?si=gZMcaC8yR5mKRYRzI4XQNQ&pi=3ZXctq_YSgSJ5&t=0

Fears confirmed? What are you talking about? Farage caused a problem and it’s difficult to fix it. The Tories couldn’t, Labour are trying but not achieving much, Reform won’t be able to either, but they’ll tank the economy and ruin all our lives into the mix, particularly as women.
Asylum seekers aren’t even our biggest concern. The only people who are obsessed with it are the ones suckling on Farage/Putin’s teat by reading the Daily Heil and watched GB Lies.

This puts her concerns in a context that I don't think many on here don't appreciate due to where they live.

Despite what people say, I think Birmingham does have no go areas for some racial groups. I have Hindu friends who literally drive a considerable way round to avoid driving in certain areas at all.

I have had UBER drivers not let me off in certain areas until they can see the door/building that I am going to. One wouldn't even let me cross a road on my own so did a U turn across 4 lanes 😳

But yeah, keep on laughing at this woman and scoffing at her opinions. Only time will tell.

Really, the left are without aggression. You think all the division is caused by Brexiteers and racists. Which by the way the slurs ending is isms or phobics has lost all meaning as it’s been weaponised against anyone who even dares ask completely reasonable questions. Keep calling people names when they have their fears confirmed later causes anger.

My cousin has gone down the rabbit hole.
Also started during COVID but not about the pandemic itself but focused on low traffic neighbourhoods or places where they closed roads to give pedestrians more room to socially distance.
Then it became all about how fifteen minutes cities and LTNs were a ploy to force us to stay only in our local areas by government. She was obsessed with some LTN in Oxford which is about 150 miles from where she lives and is a city she has visited maybe five times in 55 years.
From there it has been Davos, the World Economic Forum, central banks wanting to impoverish the people (I am not sure she knows what a central bank actually is vs Barclays or HBOS), the war in Ukraine being started by Europe instead of Russia and a lot of Epstein theories.
I have a suspicion that she has probably gone full Farage on small boats but tbh, I have greatly limited contact and blocked her social media so I don't know for sure

She was normal once, I swear.
There are some universities now researching what is causing middle aged people to fall down the rabbit hole but it's not yet told me how to get her out

www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/news/2023/december/dmu-research-investigating-online-extremism-in-middle-aged-people-gains-international-attention.aspx

The constant bombardment of how bad Britain is a constant from certain sections of the media.all Britain's ills didn't spring up overnight but given where she lives her perceptions are understandable.

The video she refers to was full of holes. It’s worded on the lines that migrants are housing themselves in military bases and training in combat to form armies because they are all fighting aged men coming here to fight. It’s bonkers. I think Ant Middleton is in danger of losing credibility if he hasn’t already.

@Mlddleoftheroad one of the mouth pieces in Scotland that gives speeches to the Tommy fan boys has convictions for stalking and assaulting a former partner whilst going on about protecting women and children.
Pot ,kettle and dare I say black.👍😁

@Staringintothevoid616

and you could say the same thing about the useful idiots on the Left, on their marches wearing their black and white scarves chanting “from the river to the sea” trotting out the sane soundbites, the youngsters screeching “transwomen are women” etc etc.
if people are doing good research from a variety of sources, news, history books, biology books, sociology research papers etc then it becomes very apparent how many people on all sides have been completely brainwashed

You're assuming that I'm posting from a left-wing perspective. I'm not (particularly). I'm a centrist. Antivaxx rhetoric hasn't historically been particularly a "right wing" phenomenon although increasingly it is being fuelled by a kind of QAnon tendency which often originates from the right.

Shrill and polarised rhetoric and selective evidence building are not particularly the preserve of either right or left: sadly they're an increasingly universal phenomenon.

I do agree, though, that's very worrying how many people on both sides of this debate have completely lost any grounding in established fact or any ability to acknowledge the validity of arguments that contradict theirs. I know many well-educated, intelligent people who have lost any ability to acknowledge the selectivity and bias of their own viewpoints. On both the left and the right.

They never did answer my question on which war they've lived through on Britain's shores.

The civil war, if one ever occurred, would be driven by Brexit and ill-informed racists. Not by asylum seekers/ immigrants… whatever you want to call people. Unless they start shooting them in the sea, they are going to keep arriving and Farage destroying the Dublin Agreement made things harder to send them away. If we ever (shudder) get a Reform government, the people will still keep arriving on boats.

I do think Covid is to blame for distrust. The fact masks work, no they don’t, yes they do etc. we need to vaccinate children, whilst walking to your table in a restaurant you must walk with a mask on in 1 direction & then remove the mask whilst sitting down. The vaccine stops transmission, no it doesn’t. Stay in don’t kill granny. This many people died, no they didn’t we just don’t put report recoveries & if you got hit by a bus and died covid would appear alongside the cause of death blah blah blah. The government was blatantly lying & exaggerating & it’s opened people’s eyes. Your mom would remember the illegal Iraqi war where Labour lied to get us to join. She’s doesn’t trust what’s she’s being told because we are lied to constantly. The paper is full of reports of illegal immigrants committing serious crimes. You don’t have to look for them. They’re there in every news outlet. As for the cloud seeding, I read in the guardian they’re just planning on doing it in the UK. Everything is a conspiracy till it’s not. The problem I think you have with your mom is she’s consumed by it. I live not far from Birmingham where we had that lady stabbed in the neck waiting for the bus at the same time as the trending video of kids aiming fireworks at cars and people in the city centre. Your mom is scared, not because she’s mentally ill, she’s scared because the world has changed so dramatically she has lost trust

This is bullshit. Hijacking the trauma that women and children have been through to push an entirely different agenda is a disgusting thing to do. It's come from the likes of far right activist and convicted women beater Yaxley Lennon and friends.

And you wonder why those repeating this abhorrent statement to cause division as some kind of gotcha are considered far right?

This. This statement is part of it.

Having sympathy for refugees doesn't mean you support rapists and to suggest this is abhorrent towards survivors.

This comment disgusts me and shows you for who you are.

Indeed, some of the bollocks I have read is just mind boggling.

Quadruple sigh.

My dad is the same. I posted about it too.

Problem is the FB algorithms. He knows about this but is so wed to his bonkers views he won't admit his head has been turned.

Anti immigrant, racist, pro-Trump, Reform and Farage. He is completely obsessed with chemtrails, COVID being a hoax, vaccines being mind control. I respect his right to his opinions but I draw the line at overt racism, borderline fascism.

We need the bridge of sighs and it still wouldn't be enough👍😁

This. 👍

That is exactly what happened in Lebanon, so it's probably why she is worried about it

You can tell her if Ant Middleton really cared about this country then he wouldn’t have flounced off to Dubai, and would have paid the government the £1m+ he owes in company tax!

Lots said here about the role of social media spreading conspiracies, and yup, totally true.

But here is a strange thing. All western social media is blocked in China. TikTok especially, that is super block. Even a VPN can't get that. It's blocked at SIM card level.

Chinese social media is also among the most censored, moderated, and monitored in the world. Try posting on there about fake moon landings, and leaders are lizards. No chance.

So you would think no conspiracy theories?

Nope, there are a few. A popular one for example is that all western history is fake. Yup, the Pyramids were recently constructed, because the west had no history, they sailed to China and stole Chinese inventions etc. Bat shit stuff. Folk create conspiracies that get past the censors.

So it seems to me, that no matter what, you will always get groups of people huddled in corners making stuff up, alternative facts, and all that.

There is an ironic part to this as well though re conspiricies in China. The government issued its final report on the origins of covid recently......and it's a conspiracy theory.

How eloquent.

Got anything of value to say or are you just as worthless as all the rest?

Again, the 250, 000 figure is the commonly-cited estimate.

After decades of cover-ups and dismissals by authorities, the true scope of the crimes will be impossible to estimate.

It is very telling that your focus, in the entirety of my post, was to nitpick the figure. As if it alters the material reality of the scandal. Would it be better if it was 100,000 girls as opposed to 250,000 girls?

Incredible how a potential discrepancy in figures is your only weapon in declaring it "misinformation."

The crimes themselves took place, though, didn't they? Regardless of the figure, we know that large numbers of predominantly Pakistani or South Asian Muslim men, have been grooming, drugging and raping white girls from poor backgrounds because they were vulnerable and easy targets.

That is undeniable, and yes, rape and grooming is horrendous no matter the background, but it's a fool's errand to ignore the pattern here. As a previous poster said, her Lebanese friend said a lot of Muslim immigrants view white girls as easy due to how we dress and act "loose morals."

You're dealing with men who come from countries where child marriage is not illegal. In one video, a Pakistani Muslim man was caught in a trap by pedophile hunters trying to meet up with a fourteen year old girl for sex. When challenged, he defended himself by saying that it's legal in Pakistan.

You can try your hardest to ignore the pattern and say it has no relevance or bearing on the crimes themselves-despite how obviously untrue that is. You can pretend everyone who arrives here, touches our ground with their feet and they're all magically cleansed of the culture and upbringing that they were raised with, ready to assimilate to our way of doing things.

Magic soil, don't you know?

Your nitpicking over figures as opposed to a real genuine reaction to the crime itself and the cover-up involved is so very telling. You want to bury your head in the sand, pretend everything is hunky-dory, despite all evidence to the contrary, and say such crimes are obviously an anomaly and anyone who speaks out and disagrees is just a hateful bigot trying to stir up division.

Let's remove the cultural/religious aspect, shall we? The reason these crimes were ignored, despite many in our police force, social services, councils, schools, being fully aware of it-is because they didn't want to stir up racial tensions by dealing with the issue.

But sure...everything is hunky-dory here. By the way, I knew you or someone like you would be skipping along, zoning in on the least relevant part of the post to cry about misinformation because that's what you all do. You don't really care about what happened and just want a way to continue to shove it under the carpet.

Okaaay….