When the National Lottery was first launched in 1994, there was a widespread belief amongst many - that persists to this day - that this ostensibly get-rich-quick scheme was really nothing but a tax on the poor and vulnerable.
After all, it is they who primarily fund the lottery, as it is they who most dream about winning a lump sum of money to transform their difficult lives. More middle-class people, financially comfortable and with all their material needs met, generally don't bother.
The chances of winning the lottery being infinitesimally small, all that's really happening when people participate is that the hopes and dreams of vulnerable people are being weaponised and exploited by the wealthy ruling classes, so they can absorb yet more of poorer people's wealth.
We as conspiracists may like to think we would never fall for such a transparent ploy, the lottery being yet another obvious exercise in wealth transfer from poorer to richer, but is it perhaps the case that there's a stealth "conspiracy tax" that many of us may currently, or have previously, paid out?
I mention this now because, with weary predictability, there is yet ANOTHER high-profile legal fees fundraiser, this time for Stephen "Tommy Robinson" Yaxley-Lennon.
"Robinson" only launched the campaign a matter of days ago, but has already raised over £100,000.
Over £100k in a matter of days?
Nice work if you can get it. The average employed person in the UK would have to work full-time for around three years to earn that much.
But of course, the MSM has obligingly made our Tommeh very famous, so whenever he needs hundreds of thousands of pounds, he instantly gets it.
Now, yes yes, I know, the fundraiser alleges this money is "just for legal fees and none of it goes to Tommy himself".
Well, first of all, there's no way of knowing if this statement is actually true, as the platform in question is not a specific legal fees platform, where the solicitors are explicitly named, and it's verifiably clear the money really is just going to pay their fees. It could be going anywhere and we'd have no way of knowing.
The same is true for Andrew Bridgen's fundraiser to "sue Matt Hancock for defamation". He has used the exceptionally dodgy Democracy 3.0 platform, which is totally lacking in transparency, and the money could have gone anywhere (we do at least know where £40,000 of it went - straight to Matt Hancock).
Ditto for Richard D. Hall's fundraising appeal, which doesn't even use a crowdfunding platform at all, where at least we can see how much an appeal has raised, but simply gives his bank details, making this the least transparent, and therefore most suspect, of all fundraisers listed so far - especially because Hall's campaign has had so much mainstream media publicity, therefore hugely inflating the number of donations he will have received.
There are, of course, several other examples of such high-profile legal fundraisers, including footballer Joey Barton's, when Jeremy Vine threatened to "sue him for defamation".
Now, examine all of these examples closely and ask: what is the common theme?
It's that all these people lost their cases, and were therefore required to give the victorious parties money.
Tommy Robinson had to give Jamal Hijazi money (£100,000)
Andrew Bridgen had to give Matt Hancock money (£40,000)
Joey Barton had to give Jeremy Vine money (£75,000)
And Richard D. Hall has to give the Hibberts money (amount to be confirmed).
So the question is: where did the aforementioned people get this money?
From their conspiratorially-minded supporters - that is, from us.
That means that anybody who funded these people has effectively been taxed for believing in conspiracy theories, because their money has been handed straight to the very people they're railing against.
It's a trap and a trick.
Just like the National Lottery promises easy riches, but in reality makes poor people poorer (so it's a tax on the poor), these high-profile, MSM-promoted, controlled opposition characters going to court promising to "expose the truth" and "get justice", are in reality simply giving your money to the enemy.
We should all know better than to ever fund such cases because we all know that the courts are completely corrupt.
These are the same courts, after all, that openly order the execution of children, overruling the wishes of their families and experts around the world who offer to treat them.
Do you therefore expect anyone, especially a "state dissident", to get a fair trial in these places?
I see a lot of people complaining that "Richard D. Hall wasn't allowed to present his evidence that the bombing was a hoax! The judge wouldn't allow it!"
And we would expect anything different, because..?
To reiterate, Hall was NOT in court for saying the bombing was a hoax (even though the MSM keeps implying that he was and a lot on our side continue to believe them), he WAS in court on charges of harassing people, which he claimed was not harassment but investigative journalism.
So the case was not about his beliefs, but rather, whether his behaviour based on his beliefs constituted investigative journalism (as was his claim) or harassment (as was the Hibberts' claim).
So yes, obviously his beliefs came into it, but did anyone honestly expect the same court system that had Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans very publicly executed in front of the world's media, was going to say, "sure Richie, let's see all your evidence that the state pathologically lies and fabricates events for the purposes of controlling the populace!"
Of course it wasn't.
Though to be very clear once again, even if that evidence was submitted and accepted, it still wouldn't vindicate someone of harassment charges. Even if you successfully prove someone is a crisis actor, it's still not legal to harass them. Harassment is not legal in any circumstances. Literally a convicted paedophile can move next door to you and it's still not legal to harass them.
I'm not saying that I agree with this law in any way, shape, or form, but I am saying that that's what the law is, so if you break it, you can get into legal trouble
So what did anyone expect would happen in Richard's case?
There was no logical reason to believe he was going to win it, and every reason to believe he would lose and, therefore, be ordered to give a lot of money to the Hibberts.
Just as always happens in these staged, engineered, show trials.
So, put simply, these high-profile court cases involving conspiracy theorists are nothing but wealth transfers from people who believe they are challenging the state by calling out hoaxed events, to that very state and its bad actors.
Essentially, anyone who believes the Hibberts participated in staging a hoax and on that basis, contributed to Richard's legal fund, has actually paid Martin and Eve Hibbert for their starring role in said hoax.
Did he really harass them, did he not, can be argued back and forth all day (although I would point out that, given Eve was only fourteen years old at the time of the Manchester event, then if she was a crisis actor, that was obviously not her free choice and she was pressurised or threatened into it by abusive adults, so she deserves our sympathy as a victim of child abuse, not shady middle-aged men hiding in her bushes and filming her).
The point is ultimately not whether Richard D. Hall's behaviour really constituted harassment or not (though I suspect that it probably did, as it's extremely easy to become guilty of harassment, even if that's not your intent. For instance, if you were to write me an email, and I responded asking you never to contact me again, but you did, legally, that can constitute harassment).
The point is, what have the overall effects of this exceptionally high-profile trial, that's been covered by vehicles as internationally renowned as the New York Times, been?
Hall has lost his case - and unless you thought the courts were totally impartial, fair, and free of corruption, then (regardless of whether you thought he was guilty of harassment or not), you surely must have known he was going to.
That means he gives the Hibberts money.
Money he raised from the very people who think the Hibberts are liars and frauds.
As I said, that's a key purpose of these high-profile show trials. To trick conspiracists into bankrolling the very state actors they are trying to expose.
If you believe otherwise, please provide some examples of where a high-profile, MSM-promoted "anti-establishment" figure has fundraised for a court case that they've actually won.
(Remember the Simon Dolan debacle... This wealthy businessman took nearly half a million pounds from the public to "take the government to court" over lockdown, and got absolutely nowhere. A lot of very rich establishment lawyers got a lot richer though.)
They never win. They always lose and, consequently, they always give the money (the money donated to them by genuine dissidents) to the enemy.
And it's all by design, because whilst illegitimate actors hoover up whatever spare money conspiracists may have, they succeed in keeping real grassroots opposition movements, which desperately need funding to have any real impact, starved of resources and therefore unable to have any real sway.
That's the number one reason the resistance isn't more effective than it is - lack of funding - and the number one reason the mainstream tends to repeatedly win the information wars - enormous funding, including from the "conspiracy tax" whenever conspiracists fund one of these high-profile "legal fundraisers".
If you're going to donate to a legal funds crowdfunder, then please do your due diligence and ensure that it's not just a cynical wealth transfer exercise so your money ends up with the people you're trying to fight against.
The aforementioned high-profile legal fundraisers have raised millions of pounds between them, and have achieved a big fat nothing for the conspiracy crowd - rather, they have simply further enriched the coffers of the establishment.
Can you imagine what legitimate enterprises could do with that kind of money?
Not waste it on frivolous, meaningless "defamation cases" - because even if you win one of these, so what? The other party gets a slap on the wrist and is told not to do it again. Nothing of any consequence has changed.
When Andrew Bridgen was fundraising to "sue Matt Hancock for defamation", people donated because they didn't understand what a defamation case is, they just saw the words "sue Matt Hancock" and equated that to him being held to account for his unspeakable Covid crimes.
Yet that wasn't what was happening at all: he was being taken to court for calling Bridgen a naughty name on Twitter. It was a totally meaningless, frivolous, vanity case, which even if Hancock lost - and as I said from the start, it was very, very unlikely he would lose - would just mean he gave Bridgen a small fraction of his personal fortune.
Absolutely nothing of any significance would change. He wouldn't be going to prison, losing his job, or even being meaningfully inconvenienced. It's basically akin to paying a glorified parking fine.
Yet people donated to Bridgen anyway because he cynically exploited generalised ignorance of the law, and that's what all these fundraisers do, in one way or another, therefore sucking up money that could otherwise have been used for genuine initiatives that really make a difference (or could if they were properly funded).
Genuine activists with the access to the kind of money these "legal fundraisers" make could, for example: invest in prominent billboard campaigns in every city warning of the dangers of vaccines; they could arrange high-profile screenings of key documentaries in locations all over the country; they could give the genuine pro-freedom political parties like Heritage proper funding so they could run campaigns to rival the uni-party. The possibilities are endless...
Yet instead, all this money is going to frauds and assets who simply feed it straight back into the system and change nothing.
So you can see why I have increasingly come to think of these legal fundraisers as a conspiracy tax, a scheme which works the same way the National Lottery does as a tax on the poor.
When you're poor, your deepest desire is to win a big sum of money.
When you're a conspiracy theorist, your deepest desire is to see the truth exposed on the world stage.
So, the establishment cynically exploits the dreams of the poor with the National Lottery - which really just hoovers up money from disadvantaged people and passes it on to the wealthy - and likewise, exploits conspiracy theorists by setting up intelligence assets who claim to be "exposing the truth by going to court", but just end up giving your money straight back to the establishment and changing nothing (except for maybe tightening up free speech laws a bit more).
That's the con. That's how it works.
It keeps your valuable energy, attention, and the key resource of money, flowing towards the very people you think you're railing against.
If you've got spare cash and really want to make a difference, please don't give it to famous media celebrities, but rather, invest it in projects and people with no mainstream media profile, because they are the ones who really need it. Any of my recommended Substack authors, for example, represent extremely hardworking real journalists who often struggle for money, sometimes meaning (as in the case of my friend Alex Kriel, founder of the excellent Thinking Coalition) they have to give up.
There are so many brilliant resistance initiatives out there, too, like the Good Food Project, run by genuine activists who've been at this for years, but who will never be promoted to notoriety by a string of "hit pieces" in the mainstream media - because they're legitimate, and legitimate people never get that kind of publicity.
So in closing, I think we can all agree that we already pay more than enough in taxes as it is.
Let's at least make sure we're not paying the "conspiracy tax" too.
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