Every old pretext is new again

Good thread about how the global right is going back to a familiar well to justify an imperialist invasion by an ideologically congenial leader:

First off, Russia has always claimed its adversaries were the ones using biological weapons when they were about to use them.

But they didn’t use it to justify the Ukraine invasion until last week.

Putin gave an ambling speech before the invasion.

Never mentioned biolabs. pic.twitter.com/QsX5GtFnEa— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 14, 2022

I mean, give Bush this, he put on his dog and pony show about WMD that didn’t exist and wouldn’t remotely justify a preemptive invasion if they did before the war. OTOH, Putin seems to understand that given how willfully gullible his audience is there’s no need to even pretend to be acting in good faith. Just randomly pulling idiotic conspiracy theories from QAnon randos is good enough for the Tucker/Greenwald Alt-Right Industrial Complex:

So what made the “biolabs” conspiracy theory take off on the day of the invasion?

It was a Twitter thread from a now-banned account called @WarClandestine.

The account was previously a QAnon account that had been evading bans with new names. pic.twitter.com/Cx5CrDxi6R— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 14, 2022

But let’s dive deeper into where @WarClandestine got his insider info about the Ukrainian biolabs.

Where did he get that map of Ukrainian biolabs for his viral tweet?

From an antivaxx Gab user eight days prior.

It had 3 comments. It just wasn't part of the talking points yet. pic.twitter.com/X5lAxS6y9b— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 14, 2022

So here’s my whole story with @kevincollier on how the Ukrainian “biolabs” conspiracy came to take over the global far-right, and put Putin back in the good graces of American conspiracy theorists.

It has decades of history in it. I hope you read it.https://t.co/YOxOiqrQwi— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 14, 2022

No matter how dumb you expect this timeline to be, it’s always dumber.