GenZedong

I generally like Simplicius but this article sucks. It shows the limits of capital-L Liberal conspiracybrain, suggesting that everything the world over is connected and there are no real surprise events.

The part about Pearl Harbour at the beginning is actually quite illustrative of one of the big flaws of conspiratorial thinking like this, which is the "Everything Is A Hidden Message And You're A Smartypants If You Figure It Out" thing. For example, he says:

There are many circulating accounts of all the things that seem “off” about Hamas’ attack, so I won’t recount every single point here as most of you have likely read them in multiple places; things like the very implausible breach of Israel’s high tech gates and defenses, to the unprecedented failures of Mossad and Shin Bet, to Netanyahu’s eerily scripted invocation of ‘Pearl Harbor’, which is very telling considering that Pearl Harbor was also a falseflag attack with the purpose of bringing the U.S. into WW2.

(did I miss something about Pearl Harbour being a false flag? is that a thing? I admit my WW2 historical knowledge isn't that great as I like other time periods better. regardless:)

The implication here is "Netanyahu used the words 'Pearl Harbour', which isn't a coincidence! He was actually referring to how Pearl Harbor was a false flag, and therefore so is this attack! Aha! I am a 200 IQ very smart person for figuring out this hidden sign!" which is just bonkers; why would Netanyahu covertly spill his plan out to the world? What benefit would that give him? It's much more likely that he just reached for the biggest, most shocking event he and his scriptwriters could think of.

To Simplicius' credit, he does talk about how you could conceivably imagine either the US/Israel or Russia/Iran/China coming up with this masterplan, with it either benefiting US world hegemony or destroying it, depending on what facts you look at and consider compelling. I don't think either narrative is convincing. If the West had planned it in advance, then they would have known that it would have ruined the Saudi normalization deal. Simplicius says that that could be the point because normalization < neverending chaos in the region, but frankly I think there's much more in it for the West to have everybody on their side as much as possible. If Iran had planned it in advance, my understanding is that Iran's government is fairly compromised - I don't know to what degree, but stuff seems to spill out one way or another (and, to be fair, Israel's government may also be fairly compromised if rumours are true). Such plans to do this uprising would have been leaked in advance.