I was reading the news today at the Stranger blog & came across a mention of an "Aztlan conspiracy", so naturally I thought of Shadowrun. It linked to this page at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

If Aztechnology was actually in charge of such conspiracies, I'd imagine they would already be in effect. Otherwise, wow. How do these people actually think any of this would happen? And why do they think it would happen? Guess there is no point in trying to have a rational discussion with paranoid racists though, and you can't argue with crazy either.

I am appalled, horrified, and deeply embarrassed that what would be the province of a tiny cult in any other country can actually get enough traction in America to be covered on CNN.

Weird conspiracy theories get airtime every now and then. May I remind you of the "satanic ritual abuse" scare? Or the whole "creeping sharia" story, aka. "judges can ignore American laws, therefore we need to pass American laws against that"?

@Topic: Well, if you want to make a near-future setting where balkanization is king, it makes sense to incorporate some RL separatist groups

Yes the Aztlan term was used by the Chicano movement in the 60s/70s. Hunter Thompson wrote about them (and his friend Oscar Zeta Acosta)

Wow, this is hilarious.

As if George Dubyah and anyone who considers themselves any kind of Liberal could muster the courtesy to give one another the time of day, let alone to engage in widespread conspiracy together.

This shit really was invented by a bunch of cranks. It makes great fiction, though!

That's...really, really sad. I grew up in the 90's in Utah, when the militia/anti-feds fervor was almost ridiculously strong. Not to the point of secession talk, but there were plenty of people talking about what they needed to do when the UN started rappelling down from their black choppers...so none of this is too strange, but I'd thought it had died out.

"Three men can keep a secret when two are dead" has always been my mantra for conspiracies. Too many dumb people wanting to impress others with their "secret knowledge" for any of this shit to be anything but that.

White Sheets and burning crosses just are so yestercentury. In Shadowrun, these people are called "Humanis". On a side note, I'd like to see more crackpot conspiracy theories in SR, covering up metaracism. Like about the dwarfs of the world conspiring to overthrow the UCAS and turn it into a dwarf Tir Tairngire, or the Orks in whatever ghetto they are forced to live in plan to secede, every elf is an immortal, and elves control the media and therefore blot out "the truth", and of course government fluorization of water to turn more people into metahumans.

The Plan Espiritual de Aztlan is an interesting information nugget, though. And I think it went into Shadowrun as a setting. Aztlan did, after all, reclaim the lost territorries of Mexico after the civil war. And it explains the odd name of Awakened Mexico, since Aztlan is in itself a tiny and obscure lost nation. I always wondered why, of all things, Aztlan.

SPLC is a fund-raising scam. They have obtained $240 million in assets from credulous donors and clients, which allows the scam artist-in-chief to live in the style to which he has become accustomed. Everything they publish is designed to raise more money for him, accuracy is not a high priority. It doesn't mean that something they publish isn't true, as even Pravda occasionally published the truth, but don't believe it without a primary source.

Instead of pushing political agendas that aren't even relevant to anyone not from the States, can we please keep this thread vaguely related to Shadowrun?

Aztlan was the mythical place of origin for the tribes that eventually coalesced into the Aztecs. It was said to be to the north, among the "barbarians". Linguistice evidence suggests they did come from north Mexico/south USA region.

Well, all natives in the Americas came from up north at some point. So among all the "god(s) lead our forefathers on an epic journey" creation myths, the Aztlan story actually gets the cookie for having some part of it right

And I'm really surprised this is seemingly news to many posters, do you never google SR-related terms?

The problem is that fiction has to make sense.

Yup. Try writing a story that shows the same series of events as what lead to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. It's an unbelievable string of bad decisions and insane coincidences, no editor would accept it. Or Hitler's "Thirty Days to Power". Nobody could really be so stupid as to give this nut and his cronies control of the government, could they?

If your president is a senile old fart with military past, militia nutbags could actually convince him to do something like that.

Pretty much all the people who put him in power had bad things happen to them. They were not his allies, they were convinced they could control him. The smarter ones of that band spent the next 10-13 years outside Germany until they were invited back for Nuremberg.