Post by Eliot Higgins / Redsky

Inversionists don’t trust in verification, transparency, or evidence. They trust in narrative loyalty. If a claim hurts the West, it’s credible. If it doesn’t serve that function, it’s dismissed, no matter how rigorous the evidence.

aug 3, 2025, 8:23 am • 156 9 • view

So when Bellingcat investigates Western allies, that’s not seen as holding power to account, it’s seen as a false flag of neutrality. A deception to protect the bigger project: Western hegemony. Evidence becomes theatre.

aug 3, 2025, 8:23 am • 132 6 • view

This isn’t principled critique. It’s epistemic insulation. It turns journalism into propaganda, NGOs into regime-change ops, and survivors into actors, if they contradict the inversionist worldview, they must be discredited.

aug 3, 2025, 8:23 am • 137 6 • view

That’s why they attack Bellingcat, Amnesty, HRW, OPCW, the White Helmets, Syrian witnesses, Uyghur survivors, Ukrainian civilians, anyone who testifies to crimes committed by regimes they’ve decided are on the “right side.”

aug 3, 2025, 8:24 am • 131 8 • view

They call it “skepticism,” but it’s selective faith. They reject satellite evidence, verified documents, forensic analysis, but will trust a vague tweet from a pro-Assad blogger if it fits the story.

aug 3, 2025, 8:24 am • 133 8 • view

A great thread. But do you think Max B. and others actually believe in their own propaganda?

aug 3, 2025, 1:23 pm • 0 0 • view

Considering that they often flipflop on particular issues to follow RU/CN/etc. narratives, it's impossible for any rational person to believe it. I strongly suspect that they see facts as tools to be weaponised in their war against our societies and no more.

aug 3, 2025, 9:55 pm • 1 0 • view

If they did what they're doing in the countries they work on behalf of, they would have met a very grisly end long ago, yet they hate the countries which allow them the freedom to do this stuff without penalty. Aren't we weak?

aug 3, 2025, 1:45 pm • 0 0 • view

In this case, Inversionism isn’t anti-imperialism. It’s reaction dressed up as principle. And its function isn’t to understand the world, it’s to preserve an identity built entirely around opposition to the West, whatever the cost.

aug 3, 2025, 8:25 am • 124 11 • view

The cost, too often, is truth, and the victims of that truth. The civilians gassed in Syria, shelled in Ukraine, imprisoned in Xinjiang, or starving in Venezuela. For Inversionists, those people are inconvenient.

aug 3, 2025, 8:25 am • 171 9 • view

Every United States president, every UK Prime Minister, every French president and prime minister since WWII (and before) has been 'an inversionist'. Almost all respectable commentators and pundits in Western media are 'inversionists'. People who defend&make this possible: bsky.app/profile/aali...

aug 3, 2025, 3:37 pm • 4 1 • view

You criticize a fringe figure Max Blumenthal before centrists who are more upset about what someone like Max Blumenthal says than what their govs allow in Palestine, Sudan, West Papua or Western Sahara. People who bring up Venezuela but are relaxed about Argentina. People who are 'inversionists'.

aug 3, 2025, 3:46 pm • 6 1 • view

We can guess that everyone who has replied to you supports Ukraine. But do they oppose Morocco's actions in Western Sahara? Do they care that most Western governments support annexation of Western Sahara by invader & occupier Morocco against int. law, int. courts & UN decisions? 'Inversionists.'

aug 3, 2025, 3:52 pm • 5 3 • view

In today's media landscape, when MSM is an active propagandist serving zionists, these critiques are meaningless. It sounds like a personal grudge, or for the more cynical, an attempt at instigating a Bellingcat v GreyZone conflict for clicks. First question, why Blumenthal? Why not a 1000s others?

aug 3, 2025, 10:49 am • 0 0 • view

Because I was asked specifically about him.

aug 3, 2025, 11:29 am • 17 0 • view

So accommodating.

aug 3, 2025, 11:32 am • 0 0 • view

This is an interesting thread, and fits well with reality as I see it. But how, more precisely (and concisely if possible), do you define inversionism/-ist?

aug 3, 2025, 11:30 am • 0 0 • view

Um, looks like I missed the very first post of the thread. Take some entity you dislike, and automatically take the opposite opinion of theirs on every topic. Have I got that right?

aug 3, 2025, 11:34 am • 0 0 • view

This is one of the key features of disordered discourse in disordered counterpublics, which covers a wide range of topics, not just anti-Western "anti-imperialism".

aug 3, 2025, 8:28 am • 147 6 • view

I don't think there's anything disordered about this discourse, and don't find that a helpful term to be honest. However, this is otherwise a great thread, nails it, perfectly captures the illogic of Blumenthal and his followers.

aug 3, 2025, 9:24 am • 7 1 • view

What caused Blumenthal to have such a warped perception of reality? Does he have a relationship with his father or are they estranged? This just never made sense in my head, especially with his dad being Sydney Blumenthal.

aug 3, 2025, 12:56 pm • 2 0 • view

I understand you like your "disordered discourse", but, out of curiosity, did you look up "confusionnisme" in french discourse/politics? There's a small body of work behind the word as it's in use since somewhen around 2010.

aug 3, 2025, 9:05 am • 10 0 • view