Once again referencing Dan Olson's video about Flat Earth/QAnon where he said something along the lines of "QAnon is not an attempt to explain the world, it is an attempt to un-explain it." This is a perfect example of that.
I see people on the left do this too sometimes, although not to this extent. The world is insanely complicated and events happen as a result of millions of independent factors, which yes, can make for really convoluted and seemingly contradictory explanations sometimes. "It's a psyop" is a much simpler explanation because it takes away all these annoying, complicated outside factors and points its finger at a single, ominous shadow cabal that pulls the strings in the background. "It happened because a very powerful outside entity consciously decided to make it so" is the same line of argument used for creationism, it's very hard to disprove, internally sound and much easier to argue for than argue against.
This is why I hate calling anything a psyop, even though I'm aware that they do in fact really happen sometimes. It's conspiratorial thinking that enables ignorance to the many complexities and intricacies that shape the world and explain why things are the way they are in favor of a cheap & easy non-explanation that can be applied to literally anything.
Yeah I feel that reactionary thought falls into magical thinking more often (being a prerequisite for deliberately ignoring the systemic issues of capital), though the left can also be vulnerable to it (LaRouche and Rouchites, Jim Jones can also be seen as a pseudo example). Still this is a big issue of macroscale versus micro and how it is commonly accurate to apply outcomes to systems (i.e. capitalism makes things pretty shit y'all) and is not creating a conspiracy, versus having psyop as your go to in a diatribe to explain how an individual is not connected to your political ideologue because "insert weird as shit series of events". Also I hate using occam's razor but I feel it is a good tool to also ask a simple question "what's the benefit for this psyop versus this just being another radicalized violent young guy among a string of radicalized violent young men?"
Once again referencing Dan Olson's video about Flat Earth/QAnon where he said something along the lines of "QAnon is not an attempt to explain the world, it is an attempt to un-explain it." This is a perfect example of that.
I see people on the left do this too sometimes, although not to this extent. The world is insanely complicated and events happen as a result of millions of independent factors, which yes, can make for really convoluted and seemingly contradictory explanations sometimes. "It's a psyop" is a much simpler explanation because it takes away all these annoying, complicated outside factors and points its finger at a single, ominous shadow cabal that pulls the strings in the background. "It happened because a very powerful outside entity consciously decided to make it so" is the same line of argument used for creationism, it's very hard to disprove, internally sound and much easier to argue for than argue against.
This is why I hate calling anything a psyop, even though I'm aware that they do in fact really happen sometimes. It's conspiratorial thinking that enables ignorance to the many complexities and intricacies that shape the world and explain why things are the way they are in favor of a cheap & easy non-explanation that can be applied to literally anything.
Yeah I feel that reactionary thought falls into magical thinking more often (being a prerequisite for deliberately ignoring the systemic issues of capital), though the left can also be vulnerable to it (LaRouche and Rouchites, Jim Jones can also be seen as a pseudo example). Still this is a big issue of macroscale versus micro and how it is commonly accurate to apply outcomes to systems (i.e. capitalism makes things pretty shit y'all) and is not creating a conspiracy, versus having psyop as your go to in a diatribe to explain how an individual is not connected to your political ideologue because "insert weird as shit series of events". Also I hate using occam's razor but I feel it is a good tool to also ask a simple question "what's the benefit for this psyop versus this just being another radicalized violent young guy among a string of radicalized violent young men?"