The Guardian – Page 2 – Conspiracy Resource

Rise of the Maha moms: the momfluencers embracing RFK’s push for a ‘healthier’ America

Experts condemn his conspiracist thinking as dangerous – but some ‘crunchy’ Trump backers feel vindicated by the health secretary pick

For Mikyla Page, keeping a three year-old daughter healthy is serious business. Before eating anything, the stay-at-home mom reads an ingredients list, staying away from artificial colors, flavors, dyes, and excess sugar. She doesn’t support vaccination, instead believing that “bathing in sunlight” will keep her family healthy, making sure her family gets outside every day to soak up vitamin D.

At first, Page felt alone in her choices. “You’re called crazy for even questioning the medical field,” she said. “My intuition was telling me one thing, but the world was telling me something else. My husband was like, ‘Are you sure this is where you want to go?’ I just went with my gut.”

Seed Oils

January 13, 2025 rfk jr

Robert F Kennedy Jr claims seed oils are ‘poisoning’ us. Here’s why he’s wrong

Robert F Kennedy Jr claims seed oils are ‘poisoning’ us. Here’s why he’s wrong The Guardian

Majority of Britons believe Musk having negative impact on UK politics

Conspiracy

January 11, 2025

Majority of Britons believe Musk having negative impact on UK politics

More voters think tech tycoon’s comments on grooming gangs are unhelpful than those who back him

More than half of voters think Elon Musk is having a negative effect on British politics following his criticism of Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

The South African-born billionaire has spent much of the past week using his social media platform X to attack Starmer and the Labour government for their opposition to another national inquiry into grooming gangs. He accused Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, of being a “rape genocide apologist” and falsely claimed Starmer was “deeply complicit in the mass rapes in exchange for votes”. Despite strong suggestions that Musk is preparing to make a large donation to Reform UK, he also recently tore into Nigel Farage, saying he was not up to the job of leading the party.

Mark Zuckerberg’s end to Meta factchecking is a desperate play for engagement

Conspiracy

January 10, 2025 big tech

Mark Zuckerberg’s end to Meta factchecking is a desperate play for engagement

As factchecking attempts end, Meta’s platforms will become a wasteland of fake news and misinformation

Mark Zuckerberg craves one metric more than any other: engagement, the statistic that tracks how long social media users spend scrolling, clicking, commenting, and viewing ads. More engagement, more profit. The Meta CEO will do almost anything to keep users online for an extra two minutes – even, it seems, surrender his websites to a flood of fake news.

On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced that his company plans to fire its US factcheckers and weaken its ability to moderate disinformation on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. This new policy is meant to curry favor with the coming Trump administration. It’s also a desperate attempt to boost engagement across all Meta’s social networks.

Conspiracy

January 9, 2025

My friend keeps sending me unsolicited conspiracy theory material. Should I ask them to stop? | Leading questions

Loosening the grip of a conspiracy theory is a complex task, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Aim to change the relationship with your friend, not their mind

Read more Leading questions

My friend has started sending me lots of links and articles on UAPs [unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as UFOs]. I’ve tried to gently assert that I don’t find the sources reliable or credible and that I do not believe respectable news outlets are conspiring to conceal the truth but they still persist. Should I ask them to stop? I think these conspiracy theories are really harmful.

Eleanor says: One question is: can you stop your friend believing these conspiracy theories? Regrettably, almost certainly not, at least not without a huge investment of time and patience. People are free to think whatever they want and some of us put that freedom to the weirdest uses. At least we can be thankful the conspiracies your friend has latched on to are about objects in the sky and not, say, which reptilian species is secretly controlling things.

Chemtrail conspiracy theories: why RFK Jr is watching the skies

Chemtrails

December 26, 2024 rfk jr

Chemtrail conspiracy theories: why RFK Jr is watching the skies

Belief in a supposed US government plot linked to aircraft condensation trails has been boosted by confusion over proposals to geoengineer a response to the climate crisis

A conspiracy theory that airplanes are leaving nefarious “chemtrails” in their wake due to a sinister government plot has been given fresh impetus in the US amid a swirl of concerns and confusion about proposals to geoengineer a response to the climate crisis.

State legislation to ban what some lawmakers call chemtrails has been pushed forward in Tennessee and, most recently, Florida. Meanwhile, Robert F Kennedy, who has expressed interest in the conspiracy theory on social media and his podcast, is set to be at the heart of Donald Trump’s new administration following his nomination as health secretary.

Bilderberg Group changes itself for the modern world – and return of Trump

Deep State

December 25, 2024 ukraine

Bilderberg Group changes itself for the modern world – and return of Trump

Once the apex of conspiracy theories, the influential group signals a shift by naming ex-Nato chief as new co-chair

The former head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, has been named the new co-chair of the influential Bilderberg Group, which convenes a yearly transatlantic policy conference and has long been the subject of conspiracy theories around the extent of its power to shape global events.

After a turbulent decade at the helm of the alliance’s military, Stoltenberg now takes over at its pre-eminent discussion forum: a fiercely private four-day event frequented by prime minsters, EU commissioners, bank bosses, corporate CEOs and intelligence chiefs.

How I escaped the wild west of #cleaneating Instagram and TikTok

Conspiracy

December 16, 2024 big tech, great reset, qanon, seed oils

How I escaped the wild west of #cleaneating Instagram and TikTok

Misinformation about health, nutrition and food are rampant on social media. For people prone to eating disorders, this can lead down a dangerous path

Weeks after giving birth to my son in early 2022, I found a lump in my breast. After an ultrasound, it was deemed suspicious and required a biopsy. The two-week wait for results was terrifying, not least because I have a family history of breast cancer. The chronic eczema I have always suffered from flared up, thanks to stress, sleep deprivation and the upheaval of early parenthood.

The lump turned out to be benign, but the experience brought my mortality into sharp relief and my anxiety levels to new highs. After treating my skin with round after round of prescription medication, to little avail, I became committed to “naturally” curing the eczema, staving off disease and perfecting my already cautious diet.

Sold-out farm shops, smuggled deliveries and safety warnings: US battle over raw milk grows

Conspiracy

December 14, 2024 marjorie taylor greene, qanon, rfk jr

Sold-out farm shops, smuggled deliveries and safety warnings: US battle over raw milk grows

Unpasteurised milk, seen as both anti-government and anti-corporate, soars in popularity among conspiracy theorists and new agers

It’s 8am, and Redmond, an 11-year-old Brown Swiss dairy cow and designated matriarch of the Churchtown Dairy herd, has been milked in her designated stall. She is concentrating on munching hay; her seventh calf is hovering nearby.

The herd’s production of milk, sold unpasteurised in half-gallon and quart glass bottles in an adjacent farm store, sells out each week. It has become so popular that the store has had to limit sales.

Revisited: Did the assassination of JFK kickstart the conspiracy theory movement?

JFK Assassination

December 12, 2024

Revisited: Did the assassination of JFK kickstart the conspiracy theory movement?

Jonathan Freedland speaks to Prof Kathryn Olmsted, author of Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11 about why the assassination of JFK spawned dozens of conspiracy theories that have persisted for decades?

Because of industrial action taking place by members of the National Union of Journalists at the Guardian and Observer this week, we are re-running an episode from the archive.

This episode originally ran on Friday, November 24th, 2023.

President John F Kennedy was shot dead 61 years ago, as he travelled in the back of a car through the streets of Dallas, Texas. From the moment the news broke, people had their theories about what happened.

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