In honor of Kevin Trudeau's 61st birthday, a look at the dark side of conspiranoia

Today is the 61st birthday of serial scammer and multi-convicted felon Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie on this blog, so it's a good day to showcase the really dark side of conspiranoia. Conspiranoia is a word I've used often on this blog to describe the paranoia that both fuels and is fueled by an addiction to conspiracy narratives. All too often these narratives are marketed as "secret"/"forbidden"/"exclusive" (mis)information by cynical and greedy hucksters -- hucksters such as Katie, whose stock-in-trade for decades has been conspiranoia crapitalism. After all, he's the grifter who shot to giddy heights of fame and wealth by offering to sell you all of the "secrets" that "they" don't want you to know. And he's still at it today.

The shameless sycophants who, under his direct supervision and instruction, run Katie's Facebook fan club page, have helpfully informed followers that they are welcome to send him money for his birthday. I certainly won't try to stop you; you're welcome to send him anything you want if you don't have any problems with gifting a grifter. (Although I would like to mention that I had a birthday recently myself, and if you really want to give money to someone who needs it, just click on the graphic above, or here, or on the "Donate" button on the right-hand side of the Web version of this blog.)

At any rate, I think it's appropriate to observe Kevin Trudeau's big day with a shout-out to his massive contribution, over the years, to the dumbing-down of humanity via nonstop exploitation of people's deepest fears and longings.

Into the darkness
I have celebrated KatieDay on this blog before -- most notably in 2016, when a decision by an appellate court determined that Kevin was going to have to stay in prison instead of being released. (Of course, that just gave him more opportunities to grift by playing up his big hero/martyr narrative, begging his followers to send more money to help free him.)

Today's celebration, though, was inspired by an AP article published on January 31, 2024. entitled, "Days of Darkness: How one woman escaped the conspiracy theory trap that has ensnared millions." It's framed around the story of a young woman referred to as "Ramona," whose life was nearly wrecked by her belief in the conspiracy narratives embraced by her ex-boyfriend, "Don." The situation was both fueled and exacerbated by the widespread panic over COVID-19.

“I have a lot of fear about what I can’t control,” Ramona, now 23, said of her vulnerable mindset as COVID-19 spread. Ramona agreed to tell her story to The Associated Press after she detailed her experiences on a forum for recovering conspiracy theorists. The AP is not fully identifying Ramona or her ex-boyfriend to protect her privacy and safety. “The stuff he was telling me, it made me feel like at least we understood. He had an explanation for what was going on. I didn’t realize what I was getting into.”

This alternate reality nourished by these conspiracy theories would transform Ramona’s life, sending her down a dark path of paranoia and loneliness that upended her life and spun her dreams of the future into turmoil. Convinced that a “New World Order” was already underway, she fell into a trap that has ensnared millions of Americans and even, at times, hijacked the nation's politics.

Isolated from friends and family, distrustful of the explanations offered by officials and the media, Ramona and Don began to prepare. The military might try to put Americans like them in concentration camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. They had to be ready to flee.

The couple began stockpiling food and supplies. Don started a “go-bag” containing survival gear. He used their modest savings to buy a rifle, a handgun and ammunition.

One cold day in January 2021, Don read about a power outage in Vatican City on one of his conspiracy theory websites. The couple discussed what it might mean: Perhaps the Pope had been secretly arrested for his role in the conspiracy to control the world. Or maybe the bad guys had knocked out the power so they could smuggle child sex victims in or out of the Vatican.

Either way, the outage meant something big was happening. There are no coincidences. Just clues to be deciphered...

Ramona's story was not all that unusual.

The AP spoke with more than a dozen people whose lives were disrupted by conspiracy theories — either because they believed them or because a close loved one did.

Many spoke of the social isolation that comes from spending more and more time on conspiracy theory websites and message boards.

They talked about money lost to investment scams or products that claimed to reverse aging or cure COVID-19. They talked about a mounting sense of paranoia and distrust as they began to lose faith in their community and their fellow Americans.

Former believers said conspiracy theories offered them meaning when they felt empty, even if those promises proved to be hollow themselves.

“I was suicidal before I got into conspiracy theories,” said Antonio Perez, 45, a Hawaii man who became obsessed with Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and QAnon until he decided they were interfering with his life two years ago. Back then, when he first found other online conspiracy theorists, he was ecstatic. “It’s like: My God, I’ve finally found my people!”

“I think I got a sense of self-importance” from conspiracy theories, Perez said. He believed that he alone “was figuring everything out. It all ties into wanting to be a hero.”

Perez, who happens to be a Facebook friend of mine, has written a book, Converting Conspiracy Theorists: Rescue Anyone from Dangerous & Destructive Conspiracy Theories. I have not yet read the book so I cannot evaluate it at this point, but I'm providing the Amazon link. If you have MAGA friends, the book might come in handy.

I urge you to read the AP piece (here's that link again), because it provides insight into the darker side of a phenomenon that all too many folks -- including me, at times -- have dismissed merely as comical lunacy.

Behind every good conspiracy tale is a scammer (or multiple scammers)
What is both sad and infuriating is that the conspiranoid movement is led by parties who may not even believe what they're spouting, but who are motivated by money, ego, money, power, and money. Like all successful grifters, they know their target markets well. Take Kevin Trudeau (please).

During the height of the COVID panic, while Trudeau was still confined in the minimum-security federal prison camp (FPC Montgomery, AL) where he spent eight years, he used his proxies to spin out a wealth of conspiranoid content about COVID-19. Characteristically, he framed his misinfo as exclusive, seekrit stuff that he and he alone was getting from various un-named sources, and was generously sharing it with the public at great risk to himself. To get the full story, of course, you had to pay to join his mega-scam GIN (the Global Information Network), which he was still running from the clink, and continues to run to this day.

Kevin's COVID-19 "updates" were, as I put it on a May 2020 blog post about a related topic, "essentially overcooked sales letters for the Trudeau-founded GIN (Global Information Network), mixed well with stale whines about Katie being 'censored,' and well-seasoned with recaps of conspiranoid and right-wing talking points." Nothing original, in other words. A main thread in the KT narrative was that COVID had been deliberately created to crash the American economy in order make Donald Trump look bad and cost him the 2020 election.

I honestly do not think that Trudeau actually believed that. But he knew his gullible target market would. Plus, he was all-in for Trump in those daze (and he may still be, though I don't know for sure), and he most likely felt that burnishing Trump's own hero/martyr narrative would benefit both Donald Trump and Kevin Trudeau, who are, as I like to say, turds of a feather.

Kevin's ludicrous COVID claims were previously showcased not only on his Facebook fan page, but also on his main web site. Here's a former link to the latter, but now... "Oops! That page can't be found." Fortunately you can still read all you need to know about it on this Whirled:

• March 20, 2020 ~ The lie-land of Dr. Trudeau: Kevin Trudeau joins the ranks of the corona-crapitalists
• April 2, 2020 ~ Lockdown, schlockdown: Kevin Trudeau is still pooping out COVID-19 nuggets from Camp Cupcake

In the larger scheme of things, Trudeau's COVID content was part of a pattern of what I have dubbed coronacrapitalism, a phenomenon in which Grifter-in-Chief Trump and his allies and cronies also engaged, to the detriment of the entire country. There was money to be made, including significant political capital, not only from hawking dubious and dangerous "preventives" and "cures" for COVID, but also from spreading conspiranoia and mainstreaming even the craziest lies.

And Kevin Trudeau, even though he didn't get nearly the amount of publicity for his COVID lies that Trump and gang did, was right in the thick of it.

Naturally that was totally on-brand for him, especially since the marketing of the aforementioned GIN was, particularly in the early years, centered around conspiracy narratives, "secret" knowledge that Katie had supposedly learned from a mysterious "Brotherhood," and an imaginary "GIN Council" of elites whose names remained a closely held secret (because, of course, they didn't actually exist). There's no telling how many susceptible folks were sucked in by these whoppers, some of which read as if they were ad copy for a secret club for kiddies in the 1950s, but the marketing strategy apparently worked very well for years.

I first wrote at length about GIN's ludicrous marketing in December 2009, shortly after the club was launched. If you want a much more comprehensive history of GIN, here's a June 2022 post that will provide just that.

Why Kevin Trudeau still matters
Kevin Trudeau established himself decades ago as a scammer. And I've made my point, over and over, that GIN was a huge scam until the courts stepped in, and now it's a smaller scam but still essentially a scam, simply because Kevin Trudeau is involved. So why don't I just move on and quit writing about Trudeau? Why does he still even matter, especially since his recent-ish COVID misinformation seems to be wiped from the Internet?

I've answered those questions several times previously on this Whirled, but the points are worth repeating in this context. Once again, in the interest of expediency, I'm going to quote myself instead of rewriting.

In a January 2022 blog post about Kevin Trudeau, for instance, under the subhead "Why this still matters, after all these years," I wrote:

..one major reason that I think Kevin Trudeau is still important, apart from my concern that he has spent decades cheating people out of their hard-earned money, is that he is flagrantly symptomatic of a nearly out-of-control trend of misinformation/conspiranoia crapitalism.

Of course Trudeau was in many respects far ahead of the curve, since he has been trading in "information that 'They' don't want you to know" for decades. Most of that "information" has consisted of misinformation, distortions, exaggerations, lies, repackaged selfish-help/McSpirituality content, or, in some cases, cherry-picked data about issues that have been addressed by far more responsible consumer advocates, whistleblowers, and muckrakers. But the nebulously evil "They" were the perfect scapegoat for Trudeau's marketing strategies.

Shortly after Trudeau was convicted and sentenced back in 2014, Salon.com published a piece by Mary Elizabeth Williams, which I've cited on this blog before, but here it is again. The headline reads, "Kevin Trudeau's empire of 'they' collapses," and the tag line said, "The TV pitchman goes to prison -- but his conspiracy shtick lives on." The piece was spot-on in many ways, but the truth is that Trudeau's own scampire never did completely collapse. As noted, he continued to run it throughout his confinement

And unfortunately, the Error of Trump mainstreamed the conspiranoid, "alternative-facts" mindset that has been the foundation of KT's hugely successful marketing efforts for years, and that has attracted so many gullible people to his "teachings" and schemes. Kevin and his most devoted fans and enablers are emphatically part of the problem, but the problem is so much bigger than they. It's bigger than Alex Jones and Mike Adams and the other conspiracy-porn peddlers I've written about on this blog. It's even bigger than Donald Trump.

What is happening now goes beyond the fact that conspiracy theories have become a booming business. America (and to a large extent much of the developed world) have entered a "post-truth" era in which we're all susceptible, some of us more than others, to conspiracy theories, science denial and extremism. In the May 2021 edition of Scientific American, Andy Norman wrote that we are all being played by liars, and that those lies not only further divide us but also manipulate our brains in a way that we lose the capacity for reasoned reflection....

...Kevin Trudeau has made money for decades not only on peddling questionable products for which he has made outrageous and in some cases fraudulent claims, but also, and more importantly, on pushing conspiracy narratives and misinformation that he always frames as exclusive info that "They" are trying to keep from you, but which can be all yours -- for a price.

And Trudeau has never missed an opportunity to crapitalize on the fears and concerns of the masses, while placing himself firmly front and center as the only source to be trusted for vital information. He has long played on and nurtured people's growing distrust of government and mainstream media...

Later that year, in September, I made the claim that Kevin Trudeau's scampire of misinformation is actually enabling fascism. And for the benefit of anyone who might have thought that was an exaggerated claim, I had this to say:

Perhaps you're thinking that I'm being a bit histrionic (or hysterical), and that I exaggerate the threats to cherished freedoms posed by Trudeau and other scammers. Possibly you even think I'm overstating the threat of Trump and Trumpism. I'm not. Both Trumpism and "Trudeau-ism" feed into, and are fed by, many of the same base aspects of human nature, particularly the aforementioned need for scapegoats and the yearning for a hero.

And both Trumpism and Trudeau-ism rely -- and I can't state this often enough or forcefully enough -- upon the cult of personality: Kevin with the laughably transparent GuruKev shtick, among several other longer-standing ruses; and Trump with a Messiah-ish scam that has sucked in millions of gullibles. As progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann wrote in a September 23, 2022 opinion piece in Daily Kos:

Donald Trump has built a cult around himself. This is dangerous to America and dangerous to democracy.

Cults of personality in governance are broadly incompatible with democracy. They usually erupt in dictatorships where the Great Leader’s face and sayings are splashed all over public places. Think Mao’s China, Stalin’s USSR, Hitler’s Germany, Kim’s North Korea...

...Rational people know that messiahs don’t molest women and brag about it, don’t fleece people with a phony school who just want a college education, don’t encourage racial hatred, and don’t get crowds to try to overturn democracy and kill a policeman.

But Trump isn’t after the rational people. He’s a predator, and his prey are the psychologically and emotionally vulnerable, people crushed by 40 years of Reagan’s neoliberalism, now desperate for simple answers to complex problems.

We should have known when Trump said, in a Charles Manson moment, that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and his followers would still support him.

Charismatic con men can make some people believe anything.

For example, nearly a third of all registered Republicans believe that top-level Democrats are running international child trafficking rings to torture and abuse kids before draining their blood...

Again, Trump is just Trudeau, writ large. Or, for anyone who needs to have the point hammered home, Trudeau is just Trump, writ smaller. Both are ruthlessly exploiting, and profiting from, the inherent irrationality of humans.

And ultimately, that's not good for freedom or democracy.

I stand by my opinions.

False narratives, real dangers
Another opinion I stand by is that, beyond Kevin Trudeau's various schemes and scams, conspiranoia in general is a danger not only to public health but also to American democracy.

I'm far from the only one who believes this. The conservative Bulwark site ran a disturbing piece today (February 6) titled, "Mike Johnson Is Mainstreaming the Spirituality that Gave Us the Capitol Riot." While I think that the headline is an insult to actual spirituality, it's a good article, focusing on a prayer gathering with faith leaders who mobilized their followers to storm the Capitol. It provides insight into the way conspiracy theories, in tandem with increasingly powerful ultra-right religious factions, played a large part in the violent January 6 attempt to overthrow the US government and keep Trump in power.

This event has been billed as a more radical alternative to the newly bipartisan and toned-down National Prayer Breakfast. It was designed for Republican politicians—including, most prominently, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson—to meet and pray with right-wing charismatic/Pentecostal and evangelical Christian leaders. This year’s gathering was a somber affair, focused on national penitence and lamenting the many sins of America. It also demonstrated the mainstreaming of the beliefs and values of a new set of insurgent Christian-right leaders—several of whom played major roles in bringing about the violent events of January 6th.

Yes, you read that correctly: This past week, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, second in line to the presidency, spent hours praying with the Christian leaders who did the most to encourage religious participation in what became the Capitol riot."

The NAR, not to be confused with the NRA (though equally if not more dangerous than the latter), has Cheeto Jeezus' back. I'm pretty sure that Original Jeezus would be appalled. Also from the above article:

In my work as a scholar of American religion, I’ve been tracking a tectonic shift over the last few years in the leadership of the American religious right. In my forthcoming book and in a short documentary released this week, I detail how a fringe set of charismatic evangelical Christian leadership networks known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) have become a vanguard among Christian elites supporting Donald Trump and the Trump administration. The NAR is the backbone of Christian Trumpism, offering not only theological rationales but supernatural prophecies to support Trump, and they have inspired other Christians to rally around the embattled former president, as well."...

...There is, today, a January 6th–based spirituality built around conspiracy theories [emphasis mine ~ CLS], around upholding Trump as a type of messiah, and around aggressive Christian theologies of power and dominion. We see it in the cult of martyrdom that surrounds the violent criminals who are now being prosecuted for attempting to overthrow the government. We see it in the integration of evangelical worship music into right-wing political rallies. We see it in the mystical ties that continue to bind evangelical Christians to Trump.

And if you care anything about Church/State separation in the US, that should scare the bejeezus out of you.

While I do not consider Kevin Trudeau to be one of the ultra-right Christian nationalists who are doing their part to destroy American democracy and turn it into a theocracy in their own image, he has shamelessly pandered to Christians for years. After all, their money is as green as anyone else's, and they're noted for their gullibility, and many of them seem to possess both money and gullibility in large quantities.

Moreover Trudeau certainly has aligned himself with the American political right, on everything from immigration to support for Donald Trump (particularly in more recent years, when Katie and his buddies were furiously, and as it turned out vainly, campaigning to get Trump to commute Katie's prison sentence and even pardon him).

I'm speculating that since the long-dormant Kevin Trudeau Show is poised for a comeback on February 21, 2024, according to an announcement on Katie's Facebook fan club page, we might be subjected to plenty more reich-wing rhetoric and orange-nosing from Katie and friends, not to mention more conspiracy tall tales and secrets that "they" don't want you to know about. Hopefully I'll be able to access the show, and won't be blocked from it the way I am, for some reason, blocked from the aforementioned and otherwise public Facebook fan club page.

It's a big, big problem
There's no doubt that conspiracy theories have become much more mainstream in recent years than they were in the past, and they are playing an outsize role in American politics and society at large. This is not a good thing for anyone but those who stand to gain money and/or power from the public's gullibility (people such as Donald Trump and Kevin Trudeau, if I may belabor a point). In fact, and it can't be overstated, belief in conspiracy narratives can be dangerous. From AP, January 31, 2024:

Polls show nearly half of Americans believe a conspiracy theory and that those beliefs are almost always harmless. But when fringe views interfere with a person’s job or relationships, they can lead to social isolation. And when people put their conspiracy theory beliefs into action, it can lead to violence.

In recent years, conspiracy theorists have tried to stop vaccine clinics, they’ve attacked election officials and they’ve committed murders that they say were motivated by their beliefs. The Jan. 6 riot is perhaps the most notable example of how conspiracy theories can lead to violence: The thousands of people who stormed the Capitol and fought with police were motivated by Trump’s election lies.

Here is a link to more AP articles on the topic of conspiracy theories.

So... Happy Birthday, Kevin. Thank you for your contributions, all in the service of fleecing the public, to the dumbing-down of humanity and the possible dismantling of American democracy. Well done, Sir. Well done.

Maui tragedy fans the flames of conspiranoia

It should come as no surprise to anyone who is even marginally in tune with contemporary culture that the tragic wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui have sparked an explosive round of conspiracy narratives by -- in no particular order of significance -- (1) climate change deniers; (2) anti-government keyboard warriors; (3) conspicuous contrarians who, like teenagers rebelling against Mom and Dad, automatically reject anything reported by the "mainstream" or "legacy" media; and (4) random worshipers at the Universal Church of Conspiranoia. Many if not most of these folks reside quite comfortably in all four groups.

You've no doubt heard some variation on the saying, "Never let a good crisis go to waste," an aphorism variously attributed originally to Winston Churchill, Niccolo Machiavelli, and several others. Today's cynics like to haul out that saying and brandish it like a weapon in the service of blasting pretty much any contemporary person or group (usually political) whose opinions or actions, in response to the crisis du jour, they oppose. (And many like to put the saying into practice themselves; witness the barrage of criticisms, most of them politically motivated, of President Biden regarding his administration's responses to the Maui disaster.)

In any event, while the identity of the individual who coined the phrase is a matter that will probably never be settled, what is certain is that the conspiranoid crowd will never, ever let a crisis such as a natural disaster or other tragic event go to waste. The moment the news breaks, the hysteria is flying around social media and blogs and chat forums.

DEWs and dont's
Some experts who have weighed in about the Maui disaster have indicated that extreme weather, driven by human-induced climate change, has contributed to the fires -- if not outright causing them, then making them far more severe than they might have ordinarily been. Others have said pish-posh to that, claiming instead that decades of poor land management and declining agriculture are to blame. I think it's reasonable to speculate that it's not an either-or situation and is very likely a combination of those factors. (Which is congruent with most credible analyses I've seen so far of the Maui fires.)

But that's not good enough for the conspiranoids, many of whom are stalwart climate change deniers and will reflexively argue against any explanation that even remotely suggests climate change. One of their pet narratives is that the fires were deliberately set though government use of Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs). And these folks are more than willing to share photographic "evidence," even if some of those photos are bogus.

This just raises the question of why the big bad gummit would be doing such a thing to the innocent residents of Maui. Apparently it's all part of a plot to turn Maui into a "smart island," and/or to transform the city of Lahaina -- which has been devastated -- into a "15-minute city." From Vice.com, August 15, 2023:

For the Maui wildfires, the conspiracy theorists have added a new twist to their claims, asserting baselessly that the fires were purposely started to fulfill the World Economic Forum’s goal of creating a smart island on Maui or a 15-minute city in Lahaina, depending on which conspiracy theorist you listen to.

Some social media users pointed to a conference that took place on Maui in January, where scientists discussed the idea of 15-minute cities—an urban planning concept where all amenities would be available within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

While the claims about the government seeking to create a smart island or turn the fire-razed city of Lahaina into a 15-minute city are new, the idea that laser weapon systems developed by the government have been used to start the wildfires are nothing new, dating back to at least the devastating wildfires that raged across California in October 2017.

These claims merge two distinct conspiracy narratives: a deep distrust of governments, and claims that undermine the role of climate change in the dramatic increase in the number of wildfires raging across North America in recent years.

And, as noted above, the conspiranoids don't care about facts, and they'll share photographic or video "evidence" for their claims, even if that "evidence" is totally made up. Also from the Vice article:

On X, where much of the conspiracies have been spread, video claiming to show a “direct energy weapon” or DEW being fired in Maui was viewed 10 million times before a Community Note was added pointing out that the footage actually showed a transformer explosion in Chile earlier this year.

Another post on X showed what appeared to be a laser beam pointing at a burning church in Maui, but a review of the original image taken by an Associated Press photographer shows the image had been doctored. That post racked up 9 million views.

One claim made by the conspiracy-minded to reinforce their argument is that a "smart city conference" was held in Maui in January 2023, presumably in preparation for an attack later in the year. Another related claim is that the upcoming Hawaii Digital Government Summit, scheduled for September 25, 2023, will include the formulation of plans to make Maui the first "smart" island. Those claims have been debunked, but that has apparently done little to discourage the conspiranoids.

In a further attempt to validate their accusations, some of those embracing the DEWs narrative have shared links that offer valid information about the weapons, accompanying their posts with some comment such as, "See, Directed Energy Weapons are REAL!" But that's a straw-man argument, as nobody credible is arguing that these weapons are not real. The US government has been researching them for decades, spending billions of dollars on the research, but so far nobody has been able to get them out of the lab and into the battlefield (or onto Maui, as the case may be).

"That's what they WANT you to think," I can hear the conspiranoids and contrarians sniffing now. Unlike we the sheeple, they refuse to be placated.

One small book for Amazon, one giant leap to conclusions for the conspiranoids
The conspiracy buzz has only heightened with the publication of a "book" titled Fire and Fury: The Story of the 2023 Maui Fire and its Implications for Climate Change, by someone (or something, if you lean towards the theory that it was AI-generated) going by the puckish pseudonym of "Dr. Miles Stones." (Milestones, get it?) So far the book has a one-star review average on Amazon, with some reviewers being indignant climate-change deniers who know beyond a doubt that this work is socialist propaganda. Nevertheless as I write this, Amazon lists it as the #1 bestseller under the category "Natural disasters."

Beyond their resistance to climate science, what has so many of the "netizens" up in arms is the fact that the book was generated so quickly, while the tragedy is still ongoing. To those folks, the work clearly had to have been prepared ahead of the (deliberately-set) fires. Typical of the responses I've seen to this book is a Facebook post where the poster asked:

Who on Earth can write a book and get it out four days after such a tragedy? Oh, the rulers.Guess what the angle is...

Who on Earth can write a book and get it out in four days? I think the answer is, pretty much anyone with an Amazon account and a valid payment method, due to something that is commonly called "technology." Currently this title is listed as being available in two formats: e-book (Kindle) and a paperback print version. Amazon’s well-oiled self-publishing machine allows for rapid publishing of an e-book, and print versions are print-on-demand, meaning that if there’s an order for a print copy, a copy will be printed and shipped. Even if there are no orders for the print book it will still be listed as an option if the author is willing to pay for that option. If the author of this book had been willing to spring for a hard bound print copy, that would have been listed as well.

And Amazon, of course, doesn’t care about the merits of a work. Even if it’s crap that was hammered out in a half hour and uploaded, as long as the writer also provides valid payment information to Amazon, a book is born.

Also worth noting is that, according to the product descriptions on Amazon, this particular title is a mere 44 pages if you print out the Kindle version, and only 86 pages in the actual print version. If you're a prolific or long-winded writer, writing that much in a day, or even a couple of hours, is NBD. It's also entirely possible that in creating this work, the author simply copied and pasted material he/she/it had already composed elsewhere since news of the disaster broke, and then cobbled it into something he/she/it could sell as a book, and then uploaded it to the big Amazon self-publishing machine. Or, as several folks have mentioned, AI could have been used to generate the content. These days you never know.

Is it exploitative to publish a book about a tragedy while it's still raging on? No doubt. But it doesn't take any paranoid conspiracy narrative to explain how this work could have gotten published so quickly.

Oprah did it! (Along with Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, et al.)
For various reasons, I'm not a big fan of Oprah Winfrey. But I'm not at all willing to believe, as some apparently do, that she was part of a conspiracy of "elites" who own property on Maui and were responsible for the fires, presumably in order to force indigenous people and other less fortunate folks to sell their properties. Nevertheless that's one of the other pet narratives that the conspiranoids are pushing. Their key "evidence" is their (false) claim that all of the properties belonging to the celebs has remained mysteriously undamaged, as reported on, among other sources, news.com.au (August 15, 2023):

Twitter user Matt Wallace, who has 1.2 million followers on the social media platform now officially known as X, claimed on Sunday that “locals in Maui were refusing to sell their land to the elites”.

“The part of the island mainly destroyed by the fires was prime area right next to lavish mega-mansions,” he wrote in the post which has been viewed nearly 12 million times. “Now, a lot of those locals are forced to sell their land and many tragically died in the flames.”

He claimed “Oprah Winfrey has a luxury mansion in Maui — it’s completely fine”, repeating the statement for Jeff Bezos, Lady Gaga, Bill Gates, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith and Julia Roberts.

There have also been reports that investors have been calling victims who had to evacuate their land, with offers to buy that land. Now that is one claim that I'm willing to believe; unfortunately, these tragedies attract scummy opportunists. But the celeb-blaming? Just more conspiranoia fiction.

Into the fiery archives...
Of the various conspiracy narratives that are swirling around the Interwebs about the Maui fires, it's the celebrity-focused one that interests me the most, especially the suspicious harrumphing about homes of "the elite" mysteriously being untouched by the flames. That puts me in mind of a long-ago online conflagration ignited by none other than career huckster Joe Vitale, one of this blog's former favorite subjects, who years ago and apparently without irony took on the nickname "Mr. Fire."

Waaaay back in the autumn of 2007, back in the daze when the crassly materialistic new-wage moviemercial The Secret was still the rage, Mr. Fire, one of the "stars" of that big hit, wrote a controversial blog post about the devastating San Diego wildfires. His post generated so much heat, so to speak, that not long afterward he scrubbed all of the critical comments to the post, and has since wiped that post, and a followup, from his archives altogether. Since his original writings are long gone, you'll just have to take my Whirled's word for it, starting with this October 26, 2007 post (see the first item, "How to avoid getting your house burned down").

If you don't feel like following that link, I'll just quote myself, and quote myself quoting Joe, right here.

There has been an incredible amount of pain, suffering, and loss of life and property on the Left Coast this past week or so, what with those pesky wildfires. But much of this could possibly have been avoided if only all of the residents had been Law Of Attraction hustledorks. How do I know? I know because it’s all there in black and white on the blog of Mr. Fire himself. Apparently if you have a fire in your soul and are focused on that, your house won’t burn down. To me this sort of contradicts the "like attracts like" idea so popular with LOA-ers, but then again, it does fit in nicely with that whole concept of "fighting fire with fire." Or even with "like cures like," which is the basis of the well-respected science of homeopathy.

Mr. Fire tells us that while 45 homes burned near the home of Secret star John Asshat Assaraf, John’s home is safe! And so are the home and office of another Secret star, James Earl Ray…oops, I mean James ARTHUR Ray. (James EARL Ray is deceased, and so, because of him, is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sorry; I keep getting my James Rays mixed up.) Furthermore, the manager of yet another Secret star, Lisa "Hairdo" Nichols also escaped the fires unscathed.

"Instead of wondering why they attracted a fire," writes Mr. Fire, "it might be wiser to wonder how they didn’t attract a fire." Mr. Fire says he has spent the last day or so with Lisa and John, who, he says, "are not focused on fires. They are focused on the fire in their soul." What sets them apart from others, apparently, is that they "spend their time working, making a difference, writing, speaking, and changing lives." Same goes with Dr. John Demartini, yet another Secret star and a friend of Joe’s for more than 20 years. Like the others, Dr. Demartini lives a life of passion and purpose.

"Fires," says Mr. Fire, "don’t stop people like this."

Given the content of his post, and in the context of Joe's many other declarations about the magic of the "Law of Attraction," it's hardly a shocker that the message most people took from Joe's words was that these Secret stars -- who were of course experts in the Law of Attraction -- were somehow able to lasso said law and keep it from damaging their homes. And lots of folks called Joe on that.

In an indignant and defensive followup post, which I wrote about in my own followup (but which, like the original Mr. Fire post, is long gone), Joe said that his post had been a sort of Rorschach test for his readers. He essentially declared that if people had a problem with his original post, that was purely a result of their own bias/limited vision/spiritual flaws. And he also explained that he had deleted most of the comments to that original post because too many of them contained "personal attacks, insults, wild claims, and dark negativity."

In retrospect, the old online battles over The Secret and the ridiculous hype by flopportunists such as Mr. Fire seem like such innocent times. Given the milieu of "alternative facts" and formerly-fringe-but-now-mainstream conspiranoia narratives in which we now live, I'm almost nostalgic for the good old daze when the ludicrousness of The Secret, and the foibles of its cast of hustledorks, were the most pressing issues on this Whirled.

Addendum, August 23, 2023: The other day I was discussing the Maui wildfires with a good friend who said she was sure that the rethuglicans would find a way to blame President Biden for the disaster (or for making it worse). I added that they would probably blame "wokeness" too. Both my friend's and my predictions were no-brainers, of course; Biden had already been catching flak from the reich, and it seems that the reich blame wokeness for virtually every bad thing that happens these days. Regarding the latter, on August 16, 2023 The New Republic ran a piece about -- yes, far-reich figures blaming the wildfires on wokeness. Or at least, they're accusing wokeness, specifically DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) ideas and policies of being responsible for a five-hour delay in diverting water to firefighters in Lahaina.

As Hawaii reels from devastating wildfires and considers how to rebuild, far-right figures are… blaming wokeness for the whole thing.

The conspiracy theory essentially goes like this: An Obama-backed Hawaii official delayed the diversion of water to firefighters during the wildfires in Maui, because that official is a native Hawaiian who respects how water is used...

...“[W]e’re learning that the official who delayed the approval is an Obama Foundation ‘Asia Pacific Leader’ & a climate activist,” [GOP presidential candidate Vivek ] Ramaswamy tweeted. He’s a “climate activist who believes water should be ‘revered’ first and foremost. The DEI agenda is literally costing people their lives.” 

Ramaswamy and his fellow fascists based their entire blame-DEI narrative on the fact that in 2022, as a member of a panel on sustainability, the official in question, M. Kaleo Manuel, had made comments about how native Hawaiians consider water to be one of the "earthly manifestations of God." Somehow this got twisted into Manuel declaring that water itself is more important than human lives. Just take a look at some of the recent comments on the YouTube video linked to in this paragraph. The same types of comments are littering Twitter/X too, with reich-wing hysterics blaming DEI and liberals and so forth for the fact that little children were burned alive. They're calling for imprisonment or even the death penalty for Mr. Manuel and other scapegoats.

As is very often the case, the real story is much more nuanced than reich-wing pearl clutchers tell it. Battles over water rights have been raging in Maui for generations, but access to water for firefighting is a priority even among the "woke." And in this case, there's no clear evidence that it would have made any difference even if the request for diversion had not been delayed for five hours. Other factors, such as melted pipes and powerless pumps, not to mention winds that were too strong to drop water from helicopters, made reservoir levels moot.

A series of blunders and miscommunications probably did hamper the firefighting efforts overall, costing people their lives. But to blame "wokeness" for this is either stupid or cynical or both. But that's the American reich for you.

Note: If you want to help the victims of the Maui fires, here is a list of resources.

Related on this Whirled:

• August 31, 2017: Harvey is bringing out the conspiranoids -- Wildfires are far from the only conspiranoid attractants; hurricanes bring 'em out too. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey devastated my former hometown of Houston, Texas, as well as numerous smaller cities in southeast Texas. Even other states were affected. For their part, the conspiranoids claimed that Hurricane Harvey was engineered as a "weather terrorism" weapon, and they provided all sorts of "evidence" to prove it.
• August 9, 2019: Conspiranoid claptrap & manipulative manifestos cloud narrative about El Paso & Dayton shootings -- Mass shootings are also magnets for conspiranoids, and the El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio shootings, which took place in early August 2019, were no exception. From conspiracy-porn crapitalists like Alex Jones and Mike Adams to republican "leaders" including then-president Trump, the American reich was out in force with a variety of conspiracy narratives and targeted scapegoating. Many of them blamed "antifa" and/or "the Deep State" for the shootings, while accusing Democrats/liberals/gun safety advocates of exploiting or even engineering the tragedies in efforts to advance a nefarious gun-control agenda.
• September 11, 2011: Farces of nature -- Back in 2011, during a terrible drought and a plague of Texas wildfires, Ron and I experienced firsthand the awful fear that happens when fires hit much too close to home. We were fortunate that the fire didn't reach our house, but we and our multiple fur babies did have to evacuate, and it was a very stressful time. Many of the people around us fared much worse. Meanwhile, Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale was working his McSpirituality magick on his blog and other forums, offering spiritual explanations for the fires that were raging across Texas. He also invited his readers to help him stop the wildfires, the way they had previously helped him "stop" a couple of hurricanes (or so he claimed), using only the awesome power of their collective minds. Of note, he has so far not made a similar public invitation to help stop the Maui wildfires -- at least not that I've seen; perhaps he issued the invitation on more exclusive forums, having learned his lesson from being so soundly ridiculed for previous such missives.

Covidiocy continues: Canadian crackpot, COVID camps, Carlson claptrap

A year ago, I would never have dreamed that in August of 2021 I would still be blogging about the COVID-19 pandemic, and I'm pretty sure that thousands of working journos and pundits in the "legitimate" media didn't think they would still be reporting and commenting on it... yet here we are. I am far from the first or the only or the best to observe that the plagues of misinformation, conspiracy narratives, anti-vax hysteria, and dangerous (right-wing) politicizing surrounding COVID-19 are posing as much of a threat to our individual and collective well-being as the virus itself -- and in fact are directly contributing to making the virus more... well... virulent. That point can't be emphasized enough.

Some of the hucksters I've written about over the years have participated enthusiastically in the misinfo campaign, such as serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, whose contributions to the con-versation (emphasis on the first syllable) I wrote about at some length here and here last year. Another peddler of pandemic piffle, much lesser-known and far stupider than Trudeau, is one of his former grift-buddies, cancer quack/fraudster/anti-vaxxer/neo-Nazi Leonard Coldwell. Trudeau, still serving out a ten-year prison sentence and faced with restrictions to his online activity, has spread his COVID lies through proxies, but Coldwell apparently posts his own content.

A Facebook friend of mine recently expressed concern about the lies that Coldwell has been posting on his main Facebook page, regarding COVID concentration camps, microchips in vaccines, and whatnot. While COVID-19 may be relatively recent, the Facebook falsehoods problem is not new: for years Coldwell has been using social media to spread anti-vax lies, "alternative" health misinformation (especially about cancer), conspiracy tall tales, and the like. When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, he jumped right into the deep end of the covidiocy pool.

That's really no surprise; the surprise would have been if he had passed on such a golden opportunity to spread his toxins. But my friend seemed to be really fed up with the continual flow of sludge from Coldwell's Facebook page, and wondered if it would be possible to get him permanently removed from that platform.

No doubt many have tried to do just that -- not me, believe it or not; I only reported Coldwell to Facebook a couple of times when he was posting things that directly endangered me, and once when he was publicly and falsely accusing an ally of mine of being a child rapist. All of that took place years ago. As I've been saying for years, for the most part I'm content to let people make assholes of themselves in public. It gives me something to snark about here, and I don't have to search very hard for material. Lazy bloggers like me like having easy pickin's.

But others have reported Coldwell at various times over the years, mostly for hate speech, and no doubt at least some of those folks have urged Facebook to permanently ban him. Yet the most that has happened so far has been that Facebook suspends him for 30 days...and he whines about it on his other forums (claiming Facebook has “banned” him only because he isn’t afraid to tell “the truth”)... and then he uses that as the hook to get more people to sign up for his "exclusive information" that he promises is absolutely life-changing and possibly lifesaving and that you cannot find anywhere else, but which is almost always recycled rubbish that you actually see everywhere these days.

The suspension/whinefest/reinstatement cycle has occurred again and again and again with Coldwell. I wrote about it back in May of 2016, but it's happened numerous times since then.

My normally laissez-faire attitude to public discourse notwithstanding, however, I find the new COVID-19 surges due to the Delta variant alarming. And I share my friend's concerns about the effects, whether direct or indirect, of COVID lies and misinformation posted by Coldwell and a host of other cranks. What I worry about are not just the effects these lies and rumors have on the course of the pandemic and public health, but also on the future of critical thinking and rational discourse.

Oh, Canada!
A couple of Coldwell's recent COVID offerings stood out for me. The first one occurred earlier this month when he posted a link on his Facebook page to a video on BitChute, which is sort of an online refugee camp for conspiranoid nutcakes and far-right hate-speechers who were booted off of YouTube. Or maybe "toxic waste dump" would be a better description than "refugee camp." My apologies to refugees.

The video to which Loony Lenny linked is about an Alberta, Canada man named Patrick King, who'd apparently ended up in court after being fined for not wearing a mask. Coldwell didn't make any comment on his own post; he merely posted the link to the vid, which bears the teaser headline, "YUGE!!! Canadian Court Victory Proves Covid-19 Is A Hoax & All Restrictions Have Now Been Dropped." Here's the blurb on the BitChute page, complete with typos and spelling and grammatical errors:

Patriot Patrick King represented himself in court after being fined $1200 dollars for protesting against the Covid-Hoax, he slew the beast and emerged VICTORIOUS. He issued a subpoena to the Provincial Health Minister for proof that the so-called Covid-19 Virus exists, and they were forced to admit that they had no evidence whatsoever. The virus has never been isolated, and thus the government had no legal grounds to impose any of the punishing restrictions they have inflicted on society. Since this shocking confession came to light, the Province has since rescinded all Covid-Restrictions and now officially treats Covid-19 as nothing more than a mild flu! WE WON

King has shown the template to be followed WORLDWIDE. This is what can happen when you are not re-presented by a BAR (British Accredited Registry) Lawyer who's first obligation is to the Corrupted Courts and not their client.

THIS IS HUGE

That's pretty much the gist of the narrative that has appeared all over the right-wing/COVID-is-a-hoax looniverse, and it's no surprise that, as is the case with most covidiocies, Coldwell is far from the only person to spread this one. I've seen it in numerous other places myself -- even, I'm sad to say, on a forum that once upon a time, before the Age of Trump, was in sync with this Whirled, particularly on matters regarding Coldwell's general idiocy. Those were the days, my friend.

To my pal who was concerned about Facebook letting people like Coldwell continue to rant, I pointed out that one encouraging sign is that Facebook has become more vigilant about flagging misleading or false posts, and explaining why they are flagged, while providing links to correct info. I noted that maybe this is the best course; they leave the posts up so the potential martyrs can’t whine about being “censored” (as right-wing ranters are wont to do), but readers have easy access to correct information. And even if the true believers refuse to follow the links, it does take some of the wind out of the sails of the original post.

Indeed, Coldwell's post about the Canadian anti-masker was flagged by Facebook as false information, and immediately under the post were these three links:

• Fact Check: Alberta Man Did NOT prove COVID-19 Is Hoax, Restrictions NOT Dropped Because Of Him (Aug. 6, 2021)
• Fact Check -- Alberta court case not linked to lifting of COVID-19 restrictions (Aug. 7, 2021)
• Canadian court case unrelated to lifting of Covid-19 restrictions in Alberta (Aug. 10, 2021)

The headlines reveal the basics, but there's much more detail in the respective articles.

Not surprisingly, Coldwell objected to being corrected, and wrote that the video content he'd shared is 100 percent true.

One small story, one large (and stupid and dangerous) narrative
This whole little Canadian drama would be just another silly story if not for the fact that it provided yet another reinforcement of the (almost exclusively right-wing) narrative that COVID restrictions (masks, vaccines, etc.) are a dire threat to freedom, and that those who flout those restrictions are exemplary heroes who have taken a bold stance against looming tyranny. And you can be assured that this narrative is alive and well, and that there are many Americans who actually believe that the republican governors (e.g., Florida guv Ron DeSantis and Texas guv Greg Abbott) who are working so hard to quash basic COVID safety measures are in fact fighting for the "freedom" of all of us. Here's one example of this delusion; it's on one Floridian's public Facebook page.

I am amazed at just how many people do not appreciate freedom. [cute little flag icon to demonstrate patriotism]
Our Governor is standing up against big government and so many Floridians can't even grasp that. Just because you don't happen to agree with his current stance just shows that you aren't smart enough to realize it's a lot more than just the current news uproar that he is fighting for.
It's being done in an attempt to preserve YOUR rights and freedoms... That YOU don't even appreciate and are ready to throw away so easily. It would be far easier for him to just "go along"...
Stop being so ungrateful.

I should note that this post is from a former enthusiastic follower of Kevin Trudeau -- one who was eventually convinced by others to see him for the scammer he was and is, but who was not smart enough to see that Leonard Coldwell is actually even worse than Trudeau, and apparently is not savvy enough to understand that politicians such as DeSantis are not motivated by altruism or principle.

I mention Kevin Trudeau again because there are striking parallels between Trudeau's propaganda about being a freedom fighter, and the propaganda of the republican "leaders." For years Trudeau -- and his loyal fans -- have insisted that Kevin has been battling for the rights and freedoms of all of us, when in reality he has only been interested in furthering his own scam agendas. Similarly, republican pols such as Governors DeSantis and Abbott, and even lesser ones such as Texas' dumbest box of rocks, Rep(rehensible) Louie Gohmert, claim to be taking their "bold" stands on COVID in order to stand up for "freedom," with their supporters endlessly and annoyingly echoing those claims. The reality is that the repubs are doing nothing more than pandering to a fairly significant base of misinformed or stupid voters, the public good be damned. They just want to get re-elected. With them, it's all politics.

(Besides, isn't it the height of "big government" for a governor to issue an executive order banning mask and/or vaccine mandates, even if the individual businesses or institutions deem that such mandates are necessary to protect the health and safety of their staff/students/customers? Just wondering.)

The Canada tale is also one more instance of the refusal of COVID deniers to perform even the most rudimentary research before they regurgitate content on their social media or blogs.

This one time, at COVID camp...
Another tale that has the conspiranoid tongues wagging is the "news" that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is plotting to set up COVID "concentration camps" for the unvaccinated or those exposed to COVID. Right-wing rabble-rouser Candace Owens was apparently the one who got this particular balderdash ball rolling, on Twitter.

Another Facebook friend of mine shared a video about the alleged COVID camps a few days ago on her feed. The teaser/headline was ominous: "They are coming for us." The source of that video was Rumble, which has also become popular with conspiranoids and haters who were exiled from YouTube. In response to my friend's post I shared a link to a debunking article, and she responded that she just hopes people will do their own research and then make up their own minds, without resorting to calling each other names. (Okay, I'm a name-caller and not ashamed of it, because some names deserve to be called.) To my friend's comment, I responded that while I have a similar wish to hers, people who rely on conspiracy sites to "research" and reinforce their anti-vax convictions are endangering all of us.

It will come as no big shock that Loony Lenny had to sound the COVID camp alarm too on the blog on his main website. His August 10, 2021 entry, under the category "The War on America," contains an embedded link to yet another Rumble vid, this one from conspiranoid nutcake radio host Stew Peters. The teaser on Coldwell's blog reads:

YOU HAVE TO STAND UP NOW! There is no more time. They are trying to separate vaxxed/unvaxxed and put the unvaxxed in internment camps…………………….DO not be bullied into taking this v a x. It is NOT an immunologic! IT IS intended to kill you.

I hate to piss on the parade of the paranoid... oh, you know I really don't, but anyway, let me let Reuters set the story straight (and this is only for those of you who don't fervently believe that Reuters is part of the big "Them" that are trying to shield us from The Truth and kill us). This is from August 13, 2021:

One Aug. 9 tweet saying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had written a document “to discuss putting high risk people into camps to ‘shield’ low risk people” during the pandemic can be seen here .

Other tweets making similar claims can be seen here and here .

Posts replicating the claim can also be seen on Instagram (here) and Facebook (here).

However, this claim is misleading as presented. The document, last updated in July 2020 (during the Trump administration), is a discussion of pandemic approaches for people who already live in “humanitarian settings” such as refugee camps and displaced populations. It is not a strategy relevant to the U.S. general public (here).

Then there's this, from USA Today on August 17, 2021 (I know, I know, USA Today is yet another corporate media monster, but if you're interested in what the monster has to say, follow the link).

If you need more sources, help yourself.

Camp, schmamp
I suppose it was inevitable that the conspiranoids would start foaming at the mouth about government camps in America again, now that a Democrat is back in the White House. During the Obama administration, the nutcakes absolutely could not stop talking about "FEMA camps." Loony Lenny was an enthusiastic promoter of that narrative. Supposedly Obama and FEMA and George Soros and the rest of the usual gang of suspects were plotting to herd Americans into big internment camps, where they would be forcibly vaccinated and microchipped and who knows what else'd. It didn't happen.

They weren't nearly so paranoid during the Trump reign of ruin. They didn't utter a peep when real internment camps became, for all practical purposes, more of a thing than they'd been since World War II, thanks to the cruelty-is-the-point immigration "policies" of Trump and his reincarnated Nazi helper, Stephen Miller. Those camps didn't and don't matter, because they were built for "illegals" who are scarcely human and clearly have no right to be on hallowed American ground.

But now that there's a Democratic president again -- and one who actually seems to care about taking real steps to end a deadly pandemic -- it's time to dust off the "camp" narratives and update them for the times. Deja vu all over again...

Is fact-checking a losing battle?
Despite the time and effort have I put into writing this post, and every other post I've written on these subjects over the years, I am fully aware that fact-checking sites don't faze the conspiranoids and covidiots one bit. In their eyes, the fact-checkers are part of the MSM (mainstream media) or "Them" or the Deep State or the Killuminati and/or whichever other force(s) they imagine are trying to shield us from The Truth. Fact checkers are just there to placate the sheeple, while the awake and aware crowd knows what's really going on.

So much of the misinfo/disinfo industry, which formerly was relegated to the fringe, has become all too mainstream, and particularly in recent years, its products have leeched into American politics, which is the core reason that this formerly apolitical blog has become so political at times. And so much of the misinfo/disinfo is just plain silly or stupid. But silliness and stupidity have consequences, and some of them are dire.

An August 23, 2021 opinion piece on Slate, written by Amanda Marcotte, suggests that much of today's politically-oriented stupidity has become strategically weaponized. Marcotte frames her piece around Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who is one of the main sources of right-wing toxicity these days (and has made no small contribution to COVID-19 misinfo himself). The arguments Carlson makes are maddeningly stupid on purpose, Marcotte asserts, with the goal being to destroy rational discourse itself.

For instance, there's Carlson's assertion that refugees are mainly to blame for the housing crisis in America. Intrepid Media Matters analyst Matt Gertz quickly debunked that claim, but on Twitter, Gertz acknowledged that "it's fruitless to fact-check a wildly dishonest demagogue like Tucker Carlson." Gertz' pessimism is understandable, Marcotte acknowledged.

The whole incident illustrates one of the most pernicious problems with modern right-wing discourse: stupidity is strategically weaponized. And the strategy is as simple as it is sinister: make arguments so transparently false and silly that it makes people feel stupid for even engaging with you.

Carlson, in particular, is the master at playing dumb. It is a tactic that requires none of the hard work of learning, only shamelessness and a lack of basic morality. Carlson regularly makes claims so preposterous that it's unlikely even the most QAnon-addled conspiracy theorist can take him seriously...

...While deliberate stupidity is, well, stupid, it's also maddeningly effective. Carlson's playing dumb act works primarily as permission to his audience to let go of any lingering attachment to good faith or rationality. He allows them to instead glory in bullshit. After all, asinine arguments that don't make any sense at all drive the liberals up the wall, and nothing matters more than "owning" the liberals. Why bother being correct when you can be glib instead? ...

And actually there's nothing particularly new about this tactic; fascists and Nazis have been using it for decades. Today's right-wingers have found that this time-dishonored strategy works. Concluded Marcotte:

It's why Tucker Carlson's arguments are often transparently stupid, to the point where they self-debunk. He is training an audience in the bad faith that Sartre so eloquently described when he wrote that fascists [specifically anti-Semites, but pretty much the same thing ~ CLS] "delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert." It is what modern people call "gaslighting." It's different than lying because liars are often trying to legitimately deceive people about the truth. This isn't about trying to deceive anyone, so much as it's about taking a hammer to the very idea that words mean things, facts matter, and rationality is important.

The right knows they can't win in a debate based on facts and reason. Instead, they're turning political discourse into a whirlwind of meaningless noise. 

While I am inclined to believe that Leonard Coldwell, various other right-wing ranters, and many of their most loyal followers are, in fact, stupid enough to actually believe many if not most of the lies and bad-faith arguments, the points in the Slate piece are well taken. And whether the spewers of spurious content about COVID-19 (or a "stolen" 2020 election or US withdrawal from Afghanistan or any other burning issue of the day) are genuinely dumb or disingenuously faux-dumb, the effects may be the same, and they're harming all of us.

Nevertheless I believe that it's more important than ever to try to keep hammering away at the nonsense, even if the effort does seem at times to be a losing battle. And one of the ways to do this, if you're so inclined, is to report lies and misinformation to Facebook or other forum hosts when you see them. After all, their bots and human fact checkers can't do it all.