While it was almost inevitable that the right-wing outrage industrial complex would make the Titan submarine disaster another flash point in its never-ending culture war over “wakeiness,” conservatives also found a way, a Hunter Biden conspiracy theory to add to the mix.
And as an aside, at least one prominent far-right media personality has implied that the OceanGate tourist submersible implosion was part of a bizarre conspiracy to cover up the real truth about the sinking of the Titanic — which has to do with the Federal Reserve and the Rothschilds.
As of Thursday afternoon, after days of around-the-clock reporting, officials confirmed that a debris field found near the wreckage of Titanic belonged to Titanic. The submersible, which had five passengers on board, had been missing since shortly after beginning its voyage on Sunday. “We now believe that our Stockton Rush CEO, Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet are sadly lost,” Titan’s owner, OceanGate Expeditions, said in a statement.
The search for the missing craft was initially thought to be a race against time, as OceanGate said the submarine had 96 hours of oxygen supply. But after the rubble was found on Thursday, those hopes were dashed. It was revealed Thursday night that shortly after OceanGate lost contact with Titan, the US Navy spotted signals “indicative of an explosion or implosion.”
While this information was sent to the operations manager to narrow the search, a Navy official said at the time it would still have been “irresponsible” to assume that all five people had died as a result of a catastrophic failure. As such, the mission continued to be treated as a search and rescue mission through Thursday.
But even before it was announced that Titan had been lost to a “catastrophic implosion,” OceanGate and its founder criticized the inadequate precautions that put their $250,000-per-person passengers at risk. Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Cameron, a veteran deep-sea diver, openly criticized the company for disregarding safety standards. Along with Cameron, other experts said Titanic’s design was not designed to withstand the sea pressure at the depths of the Titanic wreck.
However, right-wing experts turned their attention to another factor that they believe was responsible for the submarine disaster: alertness.
Earlier this week it became Murdoch’s own New York Post reported that Rush once stated that he was not interested in hiring “50-year-old whites” with military experience to pilot his submarines. “When I started the company, one of the things you’ll notice is that there were other subcontractors out there, but they typically have, uh, gentlemen who were ex-military submariners, and they — You’re going to see a whole lot of 50-year-old white people,” Rush said in an undated Zoom interview.
“I wanted our team to be younger and more inspiring, and I’m not going to inspire a 16-year-old to get into ocean engineering, I’m going to inspire a 25-year-old, uh, you know, who’s a submarine pilot or…” A Platform operators or one of our engineers can be an inspiration,” he added.
It should be noted that on the doomed mission, it was Rush – a 61-year-old white man – who piloted the ship. He previously claimed that “anyone can drive the submarine,” operated by a $30 PlayStation controller.
With the conservative media obsessed with raging at all things “woke” — now being redefined as a catchphrase for diversity and race — the posts Wednesday’s story was like catnip for right-wing infotainers.
“The woke CEO of a company whose manned tourist submarine Titanic VANISHED didn’t want to hire ‘old whites’ because they weren’t ‘inspirational’ 😳” tweeted Series plagiarist and MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson.
Since Johnson naturally had to monetize the outrage, he shared this later a video on topic headlined: “The Lost Titanic Submarine Company Didn’t Hire ‘WHITE MEN’ Because They Aren’t ‘Inspirational’ | CORNICE!”
Ultra-conservative youth leader Charlie Kirk, a day before it was confirmed that the five-man crew had died, simply blamed “awakeness” for their downfall.
“If it is true that this person has tragically passed away, the CEO of OceanGate, and he says he selected and selected his staff on the basis of not wanting fifty-year-old white people, then the argument could be made albeit more like “cruelly and bluntly he killed himself and his customers while awake,” Kirk ranted, adding that the disaster should be a cautionary tale against diversity efforts.
“It’s meant as a warning when we say this, We want to hire more black pilots. “Wait, slow down,” he scolded. “People could die if you take the poison of wakefulness.”
During the airing of Fox News’ most-watched show on Wednesday The fiveCo-host Jesse Watters — who just can’t stop whining about “woke” — seemingly caught himself in mid-sentence making a similarly wacky connection to wokeness.
“He is quoted as saying he did not hire a group of 50-year-old white men with military experience because he didn’t want his ships to be uninspiring to a younger generation.” he proclaimed. “I don’t care who is in these ships, I just want them to be experienced and safe. And when you wake up, you might have to — I don’t want to say it because I don’t want to go through these people’s legacy, but I don’t see how they’re ever going to find that thing again.”
Over at Fox News’ would-be rival Newsmax, the cartoonish MAGA host Greg Kelly – known for his over-the-top racist comments – also got in on the action on Wednesday night.
“Look, we hope and pray that this man, Stockton Rush, and all his colleagues there and the customers are saved and reunited with their families. And then when they’re sure they’re dry, we’re going to have to yell at this guy a little bit,” Kelly scoffed. “Sorry, but this wobbly routine he’s been getting lately about who should be on the sub, what kind of people he hires, listen to that!”
However, after it was confirmed that the ship had been lost, the right quickly abandoned their claims that they had doomed the Titan and instead focused their attention on a far more insidious conspiracy: a staged cover-up by President Joe Biden.
According to this particular conspiracy, Biden intentionally created a multi-day news cycle about the sub to distract from his son’s scandals. At the heart of the claim are reports that the Navy had identified a possible implosion as early as Sunday.
According to these tinfoil conservatives, not only has media coverage of the Titan eclipsed the news of Hunter Biden’s plea for tax burdens, but the revelation that the sub was lost was timely to speak of Republican Release of IRS Whistleblower Testimony Deflects Hunter Tax Investigation.
“So basically the five people on board died days ago, but Biden allowed the story to dominate all news cycles to distract from this week’s Hunter Biden news,” failed congressional candidate and anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer tweeted.
“They knew the sub was going to explode days ago but kept it going to distract and cover for Biden’s crack heads son,” she added. “This is so sick and twisted considering how the media ran an oxygen countdown and made family members think there was hope.”
Fox News staff and New York Post Columnist Miranda Devine, who recently linked her career to Hunter Biden’s laptop bag, also insisted it was part of a White House diversion plan.
“The Biden administration knew the Titan submarine imploded on Sunday. But I waited until today to make it public,” she said claims. “Convenient cover for today’s release of the IRS whistleblower testimony regarding the US Department of Justice’s sabotage of the investigation into Hunter Biden.”
fox & friends Co-host Brian Kilmeade strengthened Devine’s unsubstantiated theory on Friday morning, although he noted he “wasn’t sure” if he saw a “connection between those two things.”
A cadre of other MAGA influencers also insisted this was a “Distraction to protect Hunter‘ and an attempt, ‘hide new evidence” of Presidential corruption, including a Senate GOP digital strategist Who said that? The situation is proof that this is “the most corrupt government in US history.” (While Republican lawmaker Dan Crenshaw didn’t go so far as to allege a Hunter-related cover-up, he nonetheless directly blamed the White House for the sub’s destruction and loss of life.)
And of course Johnson had to get involved again – this time assert It’s been part of a “psy-op” that has increasingly become part of the right-wing media lexicon since “chief twit” Elon Musk began using the term to complain about stories he disliked.
However, far-right podcaster Stew Peters won out with his outrageous theory that Titan was deliberately destroyed to hide a secret plan for Titanic to be sunk so the Rothschild family – long the target of anti-Semitic conspiracies – could start Federal Reservations.
Peters, accused of spreading anti-Vax lies and white nationalist rhetoric, hosted a QAnon conspiracy theorist on Thursday to lay out this complicated conspiracy.
“What if all of this was actually a ploy to discourage people from visiting the wreck of the Titanic? But if that’s the goal, why? Maybe because if people researched the Titanic too much, they would discover that it wasn’t an iceberg that sank the Titanic,” Peters said. “There are many alternative theories as to how this sinking came about — that it was sunk on purpose as part of an elaborate insurance fraud, and that it was even sunk by a newly created Federal Reserve.”
Peters’ guest Zach Vorhies, meanwhile, claimed that “explosives were planted on the Titanic to blow it up” and that the OceanGate submarine “was funded by the Rothschild dynasty” because “they want to prevent that.” people visit this Titanic”.
Just another normal week for the right-wing outrage industrial complex.