But I like the secret handshakes of the Illuminati
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Gates made his money off monopolizing technology. You can find memos where he specifically leveraged his contacts with manufacturers to ignore specifications (which Microsoft helped specify) so FOSS like Linux wouldn't work properly.
I truly believe in a world without Microsoft that todays software would be much safer, private and advanced by quite a few years.
Gates only became a philanthropist after he married, there's probably a very good reason she left, even excluding the Epstein connections.
And he's largely responsible for the "licensing" model for commercial software, ensuring we'll never actually own software we pay for. So not surprising at all he used 'scorched earth' tactics to impede the Foss movement.
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I mean there's definitely groups of powerful rich people that aren't widely known. That's just cuz they're smart enough to stay out of the Limelight. It's not a secret society though.
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Both. The smart works work behind the scenes like that anti christ looking mfer Peter thiel.
I don't really know how widely known Peter Thiel is. Like the circles I run in know him. He's known here. But does the average person on the street know who is? Not even that does the average news watcher/reader know who he is?
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"You don't need to invent an invisible shadow government to be mad at. You can just be mad at the actual government."
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I mean there's definitely groups of powerful rich people that aren't widely known. That's just cuz they're smart enough to stay out of the Limelight. It's not a secret society though.
If the rich people control everything then it would be normal to put the spotlight on each one of them once in a while just for society to know who holds the power. Instead newspapers gossip about movie stars and a small group of rich people. That's more than smartness.
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If the rich people control everything then it would be normal to put the spotlight on each one of them once in a while just for society to know who holds the power. Instead newspapers gossip about movie stars and a small group of rich people. That's more than smartness.
Well yeah man who do you think owns the spotlights?
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Why not both?
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That kind of sums up the difference Naomi Klein makes in Doppelganger about conspiracy theory and leftist critics: Leftists will look at the system while conspiracy theorists will assume the system is good but some people, most often Jews, have somehow corrupted it.
Good king, eeeeeeevil nobility
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Well yeah man who do you think owns the spotlights?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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What is it with people associating Judaism with secret power? Just because they win a disproportionate amount of Nobel prizes?
The argument that I heard was "historically, jews weren't allowed in many professions. But lending money was something they could do. So that's how they got rich and with money comes power." But I'm not sure whether that's the 'real' reason...
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Well yeah man who do you think owns the spotlights?
Rich people. That's why they are not just smart and stay out of the Limelight. They make the Limelight shine somewhere else.
It's an important distinction because it doesn't make the Limelight appear to be an objective source of truth.
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If the rich people control everything then it would be normal to put the spotlight on each one of them once in a while just for society to know who holds the power. Instead newspapers gossip about movie stars and a small group of rich people. That's more than smartness.
If the rich people control everything then it would be normal to put the spotlight on each one of them once in a while just for society to know who holds the power.
Ain't no "If". There is no need for the people to know who holds the power if they are perfectly capable of maintaining power without the spotlight, which they are. Being in 'the spotlight' would only hurt them because then people would know who to blame.
It's only the ignorant jackasses like Trump and Musk who gained their power by luck who brag about their power, the rest are cunning enough to know better.
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He looks like a fucking tweaker
no joke, he wants to live forever, he's into cryonics and wants to test some random ass not-yet-meds on people to that end (see his anti-FDA stance and enhanced games)
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"You don't need to invent an invisible shadow government to be mad at. You can just be mad at the actual government."
i think- i think the "invisible shadow government" conspiracies are a cope. if someone voted for the current government that is fucking things up (as the opposition said they would) then it might be hard to admit to having made the wrong choice whilst voting, especially if the current government claims to hold the same values as you "my wholesome christian government that said they'd help guys like me wouldn't be the ones making my life harder! it must be the secret cabal!!!"
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i think- i think the "invisible shadow government" conspiracies are a cope. if someone voted for the current government that is fucking things up (as the opposition said they would) then it might be hard to admit to having made the wrong choice whilst voting, especially if the current government claims to hold the same values as you "my wholesome christian government that said they'd help guys like me wouldn't be the ones making my life harder! it must be the secret cabal!!!"
An "invisible shadow government" is a crazy idea. Why would someone in charge of a black budget and it's secret infrastructure accept democratic oversight?
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As Naomi Klein said: Conspiracy theorists often get the feeling right but the facts wrong.
I think this sums up pizzagate. The actual evidence was woeful but some high up people got very scared and shut it down.
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Why not both?
You can't be widely known and not known at the same time
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Im sure you know Cory Doctrorow already but i still wanted to share this little section from one of his recent blogposts.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/19/systemic/
Trump's conspiratorial base are hugely and reliably animated by stories about impunity for elite sex predators. As well they should be! Elite sex predators get away with all kinds of crimes – not just Epstein, but the whole universe of powerful men, from Harvey Weinstein to Donald Trump, who systematically abused women for decades and got away with it – bragged about it, even!
But despite these very real abusers, the conspiracists in the Trump base are mostly concerned with imaginary abusers – Qanon's shadowy cabal of adrenochrome-guzzling pedophiles, tirelessly freighting trafficked children from one nonexistent pizza parlor basement to the next, packed inside of very mid Wayfair home furnishings:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/05/ideomotor-response/#qonspiracy
This is the "mirror world" of right wing conspiracism described in Naomi Klein's Doppelganger:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine
It's the world in which real suffering children (kids in cages, children rotting in Alligator Auschwitz, kids working the night-shift at a meat-packing plant) don't matter at all, while imaginary children (unborn children, Qanon victims, etc) take center stage.
The general difference, though unspoken, is that the kids being "trafficked" in their heads are white middle class suburban kids. A lot of conspiracy simply leads back to antisemitism, white supremacy, or both.
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As Naomi Klein said: Conspiracy theorists often get the feeling right but the facts wrong.
If you're into literature and willing to explore the absurdity of conspiracy theorists then Foucault's Pendulum by Humberto Eco is a great read.
And somehow prophetic regarding the post truth world...
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I mean there's definitely groups of powerful rich people that aren't widely known. That's just cuz they're smart enough to stay out of the Limelight. It's not a secret society though.
Like Thiel and Ellison. They are pulling the strings like a marionette on our government, but they aren't household names.
