How I fell for ideologies I completely disagree with

A lot of what passes as "the truth about the world" and "conspiracy theories" on conspiracy-sites is actually masked left-wing and right-wing ideology and indoctrination. Im glad you found the mind-strength to question it and see through it. Another one who has awoken from false awakening.

Thats not to say that there are no conspiracies, just to point out that not everything that presents itself as a legitimate "conspiracy theory" or "truth" is agenda-less. People can be so naive.

Originally posted by Alxandro
You don't have to buy into everything Jones has to say, but ignoring it could be more dangerous in the long run.
The way I see it, people should always, expect the worst but hope for the best.

I am beginning to seriously disagree with that ideology. Expect the worst. Why? What good does that really bring?

Originally posted by Skyfloating
A lot of what passes as "the truth about the world" and "conspiracy theories" on conspiracy-sites is actually masked left-wing and right-wing ideology and indoctrination. Im glad you found the mind-strength to question it and see through it. Another one who has awoken from false awakening.

Thats not to say that there are no conspiracies, just to point out that not everything that presents itself as a legitimate "conspiracy theory" or "truth" is agenda-less. People can be so naive.

Yes indeed. Naive it is. Naive it was.

I'm glad I saw through it.

Originally posted by dadgad

Originally posted by Alxandro
You don't have to buy into everything Jones has to say, but ignoring it could be more dangerous in the long run.
The way I see it, people should always, expect the worst but hope for the best.

I am beginning to seriously disagree with that ideology. Expect the worst. Why? What good does that really bring?

dadgad I have to agree, negative thinking is best tossed out like spoiled food. I'm more prone to liking the philosophy: "expect nothing, and you may be pleasantly surprised". even then, its more a philosophical thought than an acceptable standard. every worker wants the paycheck on payday

I've never listened to Alex Jones extensively, but yes, there is definitely an agenda that comes with doom and gloom: you have to constantly supply your audience with it.

The only problem is.......Alex Jones is right, you should be scared about the prospect of an Orwellian USA. Things get more surreal every day. Everyone see HR 2411, the proposed "Reduce America's Debt Now Act of 2011"?

HR 2411 states that every worker in America should be able to voluntarily have a portion of his/her wages automatically withheld and sent directly to the Treasury Department for the purposes of paying down the federal debt.

I can only imagine what they have in store for the future........but yeah, the constant doom and gloom makes it hard to focus on trivialities of life that used to be fun, *if* you let it.

I agree with your main thesis though, there is groupthink indoctrination wherever you go, even in the supposed alternative media where no one is a sheep - - well, no one is an unawakened sheep, anyway. I've noticed ATS has a bit of a high school feel to it at times, kinda lame (looking at you, new flag policy thread).

reply to post by TerryMcGuire


I well remember Rev. Syung Yung Moon and The Unification Church (sp?) from back in the day. I think we heard more about such activity in the 70s when young people were looking for answers and rejecting the trappings of American society in droves. The last time I personally heard of someone I knew having cult involvement was in 78, when a friends elder sister experienced kidnapping and deprogramming. Their parents spent a bundle to 'reclaim' their daughter.

TerryMcGuire I hope you do write a OP regarding cult activity. I too would be interested in reading. I think most of the world-weary American tax paying wage slaves that people online say "are asleep" or are called "sheeple" are in reality under the cult of control in which their parents and grand-parents were raised.

In my heart I believe a large portion of this population has to be removed entirely from the beast of burden they are under and allowed to simply catch their breath, free from worries, bills and taxes, for at least a year. After they are out from under the tense and nervous of living in a rat race then they could be slowly lead to the alternative reality and differing viewpoints of so many topics.

In closing, I enjoyed the poetry. It was well chosen and provided a welcome pause to reflect.

reply to post by LargeFries

TerryMcGuire I hope you do write a OP regarding cult activity. I too would be interested in reading.

I have considered this topic for a post. Understanding why someone enters a cult is worthy of books. And the experience of being in a cult is worthy of books. And how many more could be written by people who have left them. Over thirty five years later, I have come to understand exactly what you say here.

I think most of the world-weary American tax paying wage slaves that people online say "are asleep" or are called "sheeple" are in reality under the cult of control in which their parents and grand-parents were raised.

And certainly we can follow this "conditioning back as far as we like. Just being human seems to come with this clause. Live under the system in which you are born or suffer the consequences. To borrow from my reply to another thread on addiction

In my heart I believe a large portion of this population has to be removed entirely from the beast of burden they are under and allowed to simply catch their breath, free from worries, bills and taxes, for at least a year. After they are out from under the tense and nervous of living in a rat race then they could be slowly lead to the alternative reality and differing viewpoints of so many topics.

The drawback here is that for the most part, the only way this happens to anyone only tosses them into some other controlled context where some other belief system prevails. But I share your vision.

In closing, I enjoyed the poetry. It was well chosen and provided a welcome pause to reflect.

This is one of my favorite poems by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

reply to post by dadgad


OP, your story was great and very important! Because it gives us a blow by blow look at the mechanics of ideological brainwashing.

This is why I think ultimately ideology is more emotional than it is rational. You end up accepting leaps of logic that make no sense because you really like and really want to like the person making the argument.

Unfortunately this is something I too fell for. It was not until this week that I even fully recognized what had happened to me. Back in 2009 I joined ATS and began exploring the conspiracy world, admittedly I was a devout Democratic Socialist but by the end of 2010 I was a Libertarian Conservative. There is no single thing I can point to that explains how or why that happened. For me it was not about Alex Jones as I visited site only on occasion, it was perhaps the hours upon hours spent here on ATS reading these near apocalyptic threads and posts, everything just seemed so dire.

Everyone in a position of power was immediately corrupt, traitors, trying to brainwash you and control you, attempting to form a one world government, and anyone who disagreed with that was an outright sheep who needed to be woken up. There was a threat at all times, each week it was though the big ‘battle’ was right around the corner with people saying crazy things about revolution, fighting back, etc… so it almost becomes like another state of mind, one detached from complex thought and more attached to immediate reaction based upon irrational fear and anger.

Now I am not saying Libertarians, etc… are brainwashed, absolutely not. They adhere to that ideology for their own unique reason, assuming they do not endlessly consume worthless exaggerated garbage. It came to the point where I thought anything and everything government even thought of doing, let alone actually doing, was designed to further enslave us, take away our rights, and set us on the road to authoritarianism. Basically almost everything the government did was designed for our detriment.

What finally woke me up was that I just sat back, allowed the whole rush of fear/anger pass by me, as I allowed myself to critically analyze this whole debt ceiling debate issue. Before the answer was clear, do not yield for any reason the ones saying we will default are traitors just playing the fear card. But after actually really thinking for me without the haze of emotion clouding my judgment the real answer became clear to me, I was duped.

When it dawned on me that I was duped then suddenly questions began springing up which before were thought of as sheep-like, it was as if a great curtain was lifted in my head and I began to not see everything as ‘us versus them’. Not everything had to be ideologically rigid, not everyone was lying and out to get you, basically what I thought was wrong before I now did not see as being that wrong, if not possibly right.

These men who peddle this crap grab hold of your mind in such a way it is worse than anything the supposed ‘powers that be’ have done. I was watching Glenn Beck, Judge Napolitano, Stossel, and occasionally Alex Jones and believed basically everything they said. Just as it was in 2009 when I was a Socialist it was ‘this person is completely right or completely wrong’ and that is how I treated these men. Since I thought they were right they had to be completely right thus those who opposed must be completely wrong.

Not anymore, that period is over for me. I will not bend at the knee to emotionally driven rhetoric which feasts upon your ignorance, fear, and anger, that is exploitation and in this case, for political ends. That just seems awful to me, in no way would I want to exploit others so why exploit me? They are smart men and know exactly what they are doing. The ones talking about conspiracies with emotional dribble are just peddlers of their particular ideology. Conspiracy theories, many but not most, as I seem them now are driven by ideologues for specific ends, regardless of the means, and no longer will I subscribe and be fooled by their propaganda.

Note: I did not become a Socialist again, rather I would have to consider myself somewhere between Liberal Conservative and Pragmatist.

Best Alex Jones video ever... Joe Rogan is a friend of Alex Jones and his friend Joey Diaz appears on Alex Jonnes show in November, Diaz is completely out of control and Alex can't control him. Joey's impression of Alex is spot on too.



As for truthers, Jones, ANY conspiracy - see my sig

I think for myself and I'm going to.
Some of what Alex talks about INFORMS me.
Some of what he talks about - some of his conclusions - tick me off.
Because he often informs me, I do listen to him.

But I remain a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. I don't see that changing because my house is pretty much built on rock.

I'm not a Christian but I find some of their teachings very good.
I guess a cherry picker lives in my house built on rock.

reply to post by Misoir



This is a very good post. You and I are much alike!

There isn't much I can say. Your story feels like mine.

Secret societies are satanic defy the illuminati Christianity and conservatism is the answer but not republicanism Communism is evil but so is capitalism and though New world order is evil so is the constitution in it's own ways republicanism is FAKE conservatism we need to restore republicanism to it's conservative roots and not just pretend to like bush and ron Paul but sincerely restore it .

While there is certainly too much paranoia on this site and others, the facts still show the following:

- The twin towers and building 7 were brought down by internal mechanisms (thermite is clearly seen)
- Fukushima is releasing radioactive particles everywhere
- The dollar is headed for collapse

That's already plenty of doom & gloom. You don't need the kooky stuff to rightly feel like the world and/or freedom is ending soon.

I don't personally like AJ.

But, I am glad that he is out there doing what he is doing. The problem starts when you buy into someone's ideology, instead of forming your own. AJ brings up a lot of topics that otherwise wouldn't reach so many people, so I applaud him for that. I'm sure AJ is responsible for "waking up" hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. I just hope those people look for the truth themselves, and don't rely on AJ to spoon feed them everything they think they need to know.

People like AJ are a resource, use them wisely though. Don't rely on them to form your opinions for you, use them to show you subjects that you otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to. Then do your own research, form your own opinions, and go from there.

One of the big issues I have with Jones, is he fails to bring up anything with regards to Israel. He's married to a Jewish woman, and because of this he refuses to accept anything that doesn't cast Israel in a positive light.

There is also the fact that he claims to be a Christian. Not that I have anything against people who are religious, but I know his Christian ideology is going to slant anything he has to say.

Just like everyone in the "media" business, he is nowhere near being impartial, fair, balanced, or anything else like that. He wants to sell his brand, and what he is doing works. Take what good information he does present, and then ignore the rest of the brainwashing tactics.

I'm glad you have gone further on your path, hopefully you can keep traveling in the right direction