Piff Perkins
Veteran
You can't really counter brain worms and the infection of thought. Consider what ties all the right wing content together. It's not the politics, it's the conspiracies. You start with aliens, where you obsess over shadowy powerful forces that are hiding the truth from us. The government is lying to you. Experts are lying to you. Scientists are lying to you. Historians are lying to you. If you consume that all day what are you going to think about expertise and knowledge? You're going to question basic facts and reality. That's why this always follows a very basic pathway from aliens to ancient civilizations to the moon landing to covid to Russia/Putin...and then suddenly you reach the end point of the ride: race IQ and "Hitler was misunderstood" sentiments. Because, after all, the experts are lying to you and there are two sides to everything right?
You can't counter that programming because it's been honed for a very long time. At its core this is the same process that cult members go through. It's similar to what religious extremists go through as well, which is probably why there's been such a deliberate effort to tie religion into the alien thing (see: Tucker Carlson's claims about aliens being angels and demons). All you can do is wait for it to crash on itself when people realize how unhappy, ignorant, and emotional this stuff has made them.
You can't counter that programming because it's been honed for a very long time. At its core this is the same process that cult members go through. It's similar to what religious extremists go through as well, which is probably why there's been such a deliberate effort to tie religion into the alien thing (see: Tucker Carlson's claims about aliens being angels and demons). All you can do is wait for it to crash on itself when people realize how unhappy, ignorant, and emotional this stuff has made them.

Damn I never noticed but you’re absolutely right!