this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Clever Comebacks
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Bill Gates spends his charity money lobbying for privatized education and Eugenics programs.
Also paying hush money to Jeffery Epstein.
So...
Though I don't have all day to devote to determining if these sources line up with your claims and if they're worth a darn but I did attempt to skim.
Number 1. I dropped my subscription so I can't view the article. Can you share?
Source 2. "The Saviorism of Melinda Gates: Eugenics, Philanthrocapitalism, and the Perils of ‘Western’ Feminisms" . This is a senior honors thesis with some pretty big claims and I'm not sure the paper presents a strong enough argument.
Mind you, Eugenics is evil dog shit steeped in racism, classism and so on. Fuck that shit.
Anyway, the author attempts to draw a line between making birth control / family planning available (to third world countries) and eugenics via population control of certain groups.
Their argument traces a very long and winding path of rather tenuous links along the way and I don't find it very convincing. It seems more like a student grasping for straws to write a paper.
They seem to be suggesting that forced sterilization, forced sexual segregation, and similar despicable things are equivalent to ultimately voluntary family planning.
I see the point. If these programs are intended to control certain populations at a national level driven by eugenics, yeah that's fucked.
They may have shown it is plausible that this is what the Gates Foundation has been doing but I don't think they successfully proved it.
Source 3. Hush money... "Jeffrey Epstein allegedly tried to extort Bill Gates over extramarital affair" ... yeah that's not awesome.
Sir, this is not your Facebook conspiracy theory group.
zifnab's comment has links to:
These seem to me like sources that wouldn't usually be prominent in facebook conspiracy theory groups.
Can you please tell me what the issue is with zifnab's comment? Why do you feel like the comment would be more at home in a facebook conspiracy theory group?
It makes a billionaire "good one" look bad, so they reject it.
"A paper from Duke University". This is a random, non-peer-reviewed, undergrad honors thesis. Having supervised honors theses myself, they are not exactly the height of sociological research. Also note that the author only proposes "throughlines" between eugenics and Melinda Gates' work, by definition flimsy and tenuous, at best.
This is a perfect example of a Facebook conspiracy theory, based on shoddy, non-peer-reviewed, amateur "research", but appealing to authority by attributing the paper to "Duke University", with no understanding of the academic context of the paper in question.
Jesus Christ you can smell the hexbear from a mile away. Go sealion somewhere else.
For anyone else reading this, the problems with the other two "sources" are that the WaPo article is just an opinion piece disguised as "analysis", and the Guardian source (an editorialized version of a much better Wall Street Journal piece) seems to actually imply that Gates didn't pay any hush money to Epstein. Either way, it does make it clear that Epstein had nothing to do with Gates' affair whatsoever, and was just trying to profiteer off it.
Note the fact that the language used by the hexbear above effectively claims the opposite of what their source implies, and leaves out the fact that there's no evidence for any of these assertions. Never blindly trust a source from a hexbear. Actually, never trust a "source" from a hexbear at all, for that matter.
Edit: Also, for anyone reading this, only ever comment on the errors in a hexbear's sources and arguments - don't ever actually engage with a hexbear themselves, because your good faith will be wasted on their disingenuousness. This comment is just a fact-checking PSA for anyone who wondered about the reliability (or lack thereof) of the above sources. Note also the bullshit asymmetry principle well at work here.
As a moderator of Hexbear, I would like to formally apologize for our users committing the Preconceived Prejudice Bias, link if you're unfamiliar.
As we all know, multi-billionaires do not have control of our media institutions and are unable to shut down, directly or indirectly, research and investigations into their activities. They do not have the ability to portray themselves in an extremely positive light. Therefore, you are quite right to assume that all these rumors that they are committing acts like our other users implied are frankly entirely false.
I generally take a similar tack when arguing against conspiracists in Russia who argue in the Russian media that Russian oligarchs are committing evil acts in support of the war - this is obviously untrue, as if they were, they would surely be reported in reputable journals and peer-reviewed as you rightfully point out must be done before putting ANY information onto the internet. Any accusations against Putin himself are, similarly, completely bizarre - the Russian media rightfully portrays him as a shining beacon of light. All other "accusations" are from discredited media and crank Telegram and Facebook groups that oppose Putin and the oligarchs, and I am working to try and get them shut down. It's a similar situation in China, as far as I can tell.
Have a great day, and stay classy, my good friend!
Well I guess I should apologize for myself and others making the mistake of wanting to see claims being supported by, of all things, evidence. What were we thinking?
Apology accepted.
I can't see your image over on Hexbear.
Lmao you didn't even look at the links before dismissing them you dweeb
Thanks for this. I wasn't able to read the wapo article but unfortunately devoted time to the second source. It definitely reads like an undergrad thesis paper written by someone trying to make a very tenuous connection at all costs despite a paucity of solid evidence. Kind of the written version of this:
In addition to being a senior undergrad thesis it's kind of shit. I don't know why I spent the time to skim it but I did. I think it can be tossed right out.
Noted conspiracy rags The Washington Post, Duke University, and The Guardian
I'll cede that the WaPo is a total shit rag, if I'm pressed to it.