Conspiracy Theories

[broncofan]

What is it that attracts individuals to conspiracy theories? Is it frustration with the world? Is it the realization that global politics is complicated and that there is no shortcut to remaining informed about complex issues? Conspiracy theories do seem to get around the need to analyze each issue on its own terms because you can just blame a systemic cause, like for instance, 120 people meeting at a hotel in the Netherlands (this hotel is called the bilderberg btw).

I happen to think conspiracy theorists are more dangerous than simply naive. Their theories are often used to stoke anger among the masses against classes of people and to anesthetize people to the effects of contrary data. For instance, if someone says that a small group of elites chose our President can you rebut this claim with polling data? Can you say, well high finance was involved in the electoral process but ultimately votes were tallied and at some level the public had their say? Of course not. The conspiracy nut will avoid the confrontation by dealing in unsupported obscurities and proselytize other naive people through pamphleteering activities on the street corner. They will never deal head on with the contradictions, and since the ideas they deal in are of such low credibility they can be generated more quickly than they can be rebutted.

You may wonder why I would create a thread about this. It's because I find the conspiracy theorists to be endlessly frustrating, dangerous extremists, and to waste an enormous amount of valuable time people could be discussing real issues. Anyone else agree, and want to point out the conspiracy theory they find most frustrating? If you want to participate, name a conspiracy theory, and discuss its danger. If you think "conspiracy theory" is used as a cudgel, a slander against those who have identified the source of secretive, concerted action, please fear not. By all means, correct this slander.

BTW, those who think the annual meeting at the Bilderberg has a major impact on global politics? The John Birch Society, Lyndon Larouche, oh and Jesse Ventura. But let's not play guilt by association. The idea is plausible in its own right isn't it;.

[hippifried]

But the CFR Trilateralists at the Bilderberg NWO are just waiting for the Rothchilds to finish buying the Federal Reserve before they start herding us all into Area 51 & turned over to the various aliens. It's all so obvious...

[trish]

People are attracted to the idea that they might possess secret knowledge, or radical knowledge. They like to pretend to themselves that they have the special kind of mind that can see past the veils and into the inner heart and workings of the world. It's easier if you're not encumbered with the burden of intellectual integrity, a virtue rarely exercised and in most people takes up no more space than a couple of neurons. Conspiracies can be fit to almost any political persuasion or worldview and can be used to re-enforce any prejudice and any ideology. When information space becomes infested and overwhelmed with false conspiracies, it becomes difficult that much more difficult for the naive to distinguish false from true. Actual conspiracies (like Mike Turzai and his colleagues attempting to suppress the vote and win Pennsylvania for Romney) get camouflaged by the infestation around them.

I actually had some fun debunking (for myself) the theory that a jet airliner crashing into a twin tower would be insufficient to bring it down...demonstrating that a gasoline fire (like a wood fire in a stone oven) can reach temperatures that would melt steel and the first inelastic collision of the top quarter of the tower with the scorched floor can create a series of inelastic collisions that proceed at pretty much the acceleration of gravity, so that the time of fall is on the order of the time of free fall; i.e. there is absolutely nothing inconsistent in the pancake theory of the twin tower collapse. Now just apply Occam's razor and there's no need the bizarre theory that Bush, or The Jews planted charges throughout the twin tower and timed their explosions with attacks on 9-11.

Obama is not a citizen. Obama has an allegiance to an ownership class. Donald Trump is controlled by an alien badly disguised as a toupee. They are all woven of the same cloth. Lies that speak what some echo chamber wants to hear. That widespread belief in false is claims is dangerous is pretty obvious. Early in the twentieth century widely held conspiracy theories about a Jewish cabal designing to take over the world became part of a NAZI design to take over the world and extinguish whole ethnicities.

[broncofan]

But the CFR Trilateralists at the Bilderberg NWO are just waiting for the Rothchilds to finish buying the Federal Reserve before they start herding us all into Area 51 & turned over to the various aliens. It's all so obvious...

I'm just saying we wait until they do that. There's no need to fret about it when they're still in the planning stages.

[broncofan]

How about the theory that HIV does not cause AIDS? This is of immediate danger to those infected who do not take anti-retrovirals or mothers who are pregnant but do not take AZT to reduce the risk of transmission. The cult of Christine Maggiore provided one of the darkest most chilling conspiracy theories. I suppose the conspiracy theory there was that the medical industry was pretending that HIV, a really harmless virus was the cause of the symptoms of AIDs. Rather, these symptoms were caused by nutritional deficiencies or drug use. Believing this nonsense has the real effect of causing people not to take anti-retrovirals and as a result die in the most excruciating manner, pcp pneumonia. It's hard to think of anything more evil than that.

The reason I think it's kind of surprising that conspiracy theorists are so dangerous is that they present themselves as merely curious people. Like scientists, they are out to discover what other people overlook, but unlike scientists there is no rigor to their thinking.

Yes, the birther issue was a mainstream conspiracy theory. 9/11 inside job. Holocaust denial. Federal Reserve creating a one world government. Good post Trish.

[broncofan]

I actually had some fun debunking (for myself) the theory that a jet airliner crashing into a twin tower would be insufficient to bring it down...

Perhaps it was fun because there was an audience of sane people to watch you dissect their poorly constructed fantasy built on the foundation of junk science. Or if not then you are extremely secure in your sanity that you do not need an audience. But if you are surrounded by people impervious to proof by reason and supportive of the most audaciously stupid ideas known to man, the rebuttals cease to matter. Frustration can quickly turn to fear!!! (play spooky music).

[robertlouis]

I might be one of the very few here who have actually encountered the Bilderberg.

12 years ago I was staying in the eponymous hotel in Amsterdam when an announcement came asking all guests to report to the foyer, where we were told with little ceremony that we had to move out immediately as some important guests were arriving and that they would be taking over the entire hotel and its facilities. The foyer was also full of large unsmiling men in suits and dark glasses, so the threat, unspoken, against protesting, was pretty obvious. We had 20 minutes to pack our stuff and were then taken to a fleet of taxis which distributed us around the city to other hotels of similar standing. When I went to pay my bill (three days stay - it was a business trip) I was advised that it had been taken care of.

When I mentioned the strange experience a local colleague told me that it was the Bilderberg group and their normal modus operandi - they never "booked ahead' because so many powerful people meeting together in one place would present a very obvious terrorist target - this was about nine months before 9/11.

I never saw any of the attendees - they must have been sitting in the black limos outside - nor do I know anything else about them, but I was certainly impressed and intimidated by the amount of power that they seemed to have.

[martin48]

The greatest living conspiracy guy is David Icke – knocks spots off any one else. We are controlled by The Global Elite, The Shadow Government, The Global Conspiracy and the monumentous "contrick" perpetrated on a cosmically and spiritually asleep human race. These people, including the UK Royal Family, are reptiles. His latest book - Human Race Get off Your Knees – reveals that the Earth and the collective human mind is manipulated from the Moon, which, he says, is not a ‘heavenly body’, but an artificial construct – a gigantic ‘spacecraft’ (probably a hollowed-out 'planetoid') – which is home to the extraterrestrial group that has been manipulating humanity for aeons.

He has just completed a 10-hour talk at Wembley Arena – see http://www.davidicke.com/wembley
OK – he might be harmless but not all conspiracy theories are such – Holocaust Denial being one!
If a person who believes in one conspiracy theory they tend to believe in others.
Psychologists believe that the search for meaning is common in conspiracism and the development of conspiracy theories, and may be powerful enough alone to lead to the first formulating of the idea.
Then, confirmation bias and avoidance of cognitive dissonance will reinforce the belief.

You can not use logical argument and historical evidence in discussion with believers.

[Prospero]

Best book on conspiracy theories was Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch.

Some are deadlier than others.
For example, the ongoing poison of The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion, a fake document produced in Czarist Russia alleging a global conspiracy by the jews. It fuelled Nazi ideology, Russian antisemitism and present day antisemitism among some Muslims.

While long since proven to be a fake it can still be purchased in bookstores all over the Middle East alongside Henry Ford's despicable book "The International Jew" - a four volume diatribe against Jews.

I've seen both in bookstores in the Gulf and Egypt.

[Stavros]

In his study of post-war American fiction, City of Words, the late Tony Tanner discusses conspiracy theories as being integral to the American novel, and also relates it to theories of society and language that concern the socially constructed ideas we have of ourselves, and the inheritance of a language that we use, that we can manipulate but never entirely control without becoming unintelligible to others. In particular, because of the concept of freedom in the American experience and its liberation from the complex structures of church, monarchy and state that were left behind in Europe, the fear of being taken precisely by such forces infiltrated the American mind. Here in his introduction is a perceptive remark where he refers to

the American writer's dread of all conditioning forces to the point of paranoia which is detectable not only in the subject matter of many novels but also in their narrative devices. Narrative lines are full of hidden persuaders, hidden dimensions, plots, secret organizations, evil systems, all kinds of conspiracies against spontaneity of consciousness, even cosmic take-over. The possible nightmare of being totally controlled by unseen agencies and powers is never far away in contemporary American fiction. The unease is revealed in such novels is related to a worried apprehension on the part of the author that his own consciousness may be predetermined and channeled by the language he has been born into.
(Tony Tanner, City of Words, 1971).

Are Americans more prone to conspiracy theories than anyone else? I don't think so, although Tanner's argument is persuasive; I have met Arabs and Iranians who are convinced their lives are controlled by the Americans, 'the Jews' and so on, but they live in states where secret government is often a daily reality, or simply cannot accept that they are the architects of their own misfortune and thus external powers must have been the cause, common amongst Iranians. Perhaps the feeling is that we have lost control of our own political systems, but even if that is true, and I am not sure it is wholly true, doesn't that improve the argument for more transparency?