Interesting in this context is completely divorced from morally good/bad. Could be any group from any area at any time in history. I’ll start with a few, followers of the cult of pythagoras, contemporary black Hebrew Israelites, antiracist skinheads and the Amish (neo-luddites in general). Don’t be racist or a prick to other people discussing.
Space deniers.
They are a sub-set of flat earthers. Not all flat earthers are space deniers, but every space denier I’ve seen is a flat earther.
Some of the more prominent ones like Level Earth Observer spend innumerable hours picking apart International Space Station live footage as “fake”. Things like space rocket launches need to be picked apart to absurd degrees as well. Every camera glitch, every stutter, every little movement is hyper-analyzed and declared to be a fraud.
I find it all fascinating. Some of these deniers put forth their own lay theories, which are usually very Biblical in bent, but many of them like LEO will twist themselves into incoherent knots refusing to admit they have a viewpoint and that they are “just asking questions” despite pushing back in a very particular way to all the answers they get.
Some of them like “CC from New York, Westchester County” are just totally off the deep end, not even playing word games, just conspiratorially ranting without even internal consistency.
I’ve only ever interacted with a space denier directly once and it was as equally interesting as it was frustrating.
There’s a big flat earth/space denier overlap with other fringe ideas like young earth creationism which gets you into Kent Hovind territory. That’s interesting in its own way but also full of slime.
The Luddites were a labour movement with really admirable goals. They were only anti technology because it was being used to screw over textile workers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
They weren’t even really anti technology - breaking the tech was the means available to them that worked. Protesting and petitioning didn’t get them anywhere, so they decided on direct action to make it hurt the capitalists in the only place they care about. That meant smashing looms and carders and everything else, because those were incredibly expensive.
Oh that’s interesting! I had a different internal definition of the term. Thanks for sharing!
Here’s an excellent recent book on the topic. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/
Rojava, an socialist autonomous region in northern Syria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava_Revolution
And the Zapatistas, another successful socialist insurgency in mexico: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation
Juggalos are pretty out there. Huffing nitrous, and drinking shitty beer and root beer? And they are super proud of it. I’m pretty sure there’s meth involved. I don’t think they do much harm to anybody but themselves, and maybe anybody they influence into becoming a juggalo. But man, what a weird group of people.
I’ve known a handful of juggalos. I can’t claim that the ones I’ve met are necessarily representative of them as a whole.
But I will say that overall the ones I’ve met have been really solid people. Not the brightest bulbs out there, but also very aware of that fact.
I think the best way to think of them is they’re the weird kids you went to school with who weren’t smart enough to be nerds. They’re a pretty welcoming and friendly group as long as you give them some basic respect, and they really look out for each other. There have been two occasions where one has literally offered the shirt off his back.
Some of them definitely have some drug issues, but the ones I’ve met are mostly just regular stoners in clown makeup, most of them haven’t even been big drinkers.
Juggalos get a bad rap, but I think it’s mostly a handful of loud assholes making all the rest of them look bad, I’ve never had a bad interaction with one and I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
antiracist skinheads
I’ve read about these guys. Their take on it is that the skins started as a working class solidarity movement (the short hair is for safety while working on factory machinery) that got corrupted by nationalism and they have more in common with immigrant workers than with their own country’s capitalists.
The Weather Underground were a leftist militant group in the US who did a bunch of bombings and riots in the 1970: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground
There’s a decent documentary about them: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0343168/
I’m not typically in favor of bombing things. You know, like in general. That said, blowing up a statue, waiting for it to be rebuilt and then blowing it up again is pretty funny.
Yeah. Also AFAIK, they bombed a bunch of buildings, but only at times they knew no one would be in them, and never killed or injured anyone.
