.A demonstrator at the London vigil for the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Photo by Chris BethellThis article originally appeared on VICE UK.
Within hours of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, internet forums were buzzing with alternative explanations for the attack. "The official story doesn't add up," people typed furiously into their keyboards. "We're being lied to."
Over the next few days, the rumors spread. Apparent glitches in reporting–as well as the "suspicious" suicide of the detective in charge of the investigation–were taken as evidence of subterfuge.
Most doubters, however, focused on scrutinizing amateur video footage of the event, asking whether policeman Ahmed Merabet was really shot in the head.. The questioning makes for grim reading. "Where's the blood? Why no splatter?" asked Reddit users. Others offered rebuttals, posting videos of bloodless shootings and suggesting: "Heads don't explode like watermelons."
A long, imaginative list of alternative explanations was offered: It was a false flag attack, executed by Mossad to fuel anti-Muslim sentiment; it was carried out by the CIA for the same reason; it was French Jews; it was a "black-op power bloc operation" to back up the war on terror; Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that the West "playing games with the Islamic world."
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Regardless of their source, the Charlie Hebdo rumors have all the hallmarks of a classicconspiracy theory. Apparent discrepancies in the way the story was reported are jumped on, and the official version of events is discredited. From there, a leap is made to another, alternate, explanation, and evidence is gathered in support. The same thing happened after the murder of journalist James Foley, when critics suggested that the video was staged. Debunkers, in this case, asked why the West would bother faking an Islamic State beheading when the group has already carried out so many.
But how unique is the conspiracy theory-creation process? Plenty of bad journalism follows the same formula, and many an article is based on flimsy evidence and pseudoscience, or distorted by exaggerations. In the case of Charlie Hebdo, for instance, we were misled by pictures of world leaders apparently heading up the march in Paris, when really they'd just gathered in a cordoned-off street to have their photo taken.
Of course, "conspiracy theorists" is a blanket term, lumping together those who believe we're ruled by scaly lizard people with those who simply question the role of Big Pharma. Some–perhaps unsurprisingly–would like to see the name ditched altogether.
"It's a loaded term," says Chris, a friend of mine with a penchant for what most would call conspiracy theories. "It's merely a label applied to certain stories, usually to distinguish them from stories which the user of the label wishes to promote or defend by limiting the parameters of debate.
"I doubt most of what I am told, especially by those in authority, who may have an agenda to advance. The circumstances of the Charlie Hebdo attacks seem very suspicious to me, and the evidence for the official theory lacks credibility. Historical precedent also suggests that alternative narratives may be more likely."
The most recent myth to have been debunked on metabunk.org
In the US, Mick West runs the website metabunk.org, pulling in 10,000 unique visitors a day. He reckons the Charlie Hebdo rumors were predictable.
"It's nonsense," he says. "But sadly it seems like the expected response now. People pick up normal inconsistencies in the initial reporting of a chaotic situation and claim these things are significant. They always make claims about blood and injuries, but seem to be basing their expectations on the depictions of violence in movies and video games.
"It's just cherry-picking, with a strong confirmation bias. The people telling you these things have only one goal: to convince you it was fake. They amplify every little thing that seems to help their case, and they ignore everything that does not."
Conspiracy theories have been around for as long as human beings have been able to articulate the feeling that someone is trying to stitch them up. In living memory, theories have been espoused around the assassination of JFK, Hitler's death, the moon landings, Area 51, Princess Diana's death, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, climate change, Obama's birth, whether Obama is in fact the Antichrist, AIDS, cancer, 9/11, chemtrails, the MMR vaccine, the Sandy Hook massacre, FEMA camps, the beheading of James Foley, Ebola, the Islamic State, the Scottish independence referendum, the Rosetta mission, and, of course, the Illuminati. And that's just a handful.
§Academics, too, have been trying to get their head around it.
"People who believe in conspiracy theories tend to feel they don't have a lot of control over their lives," says University of Winchester psychology lecturer Michael Wood. "It's reassuring to believe the world can be controlled, even if that means it's not a nice place."
Wood says that being a conspiracy theorist is just another world view, no different from being a diehard liberal or a full-on, fox-killing Tory. While right-wingers might see theCharlie Hebdo attack as evidence that uncontrolled immigration leads to problems, and those on the left suggest it's what happens when a group is marginalized, conspiracy theorists are more likely to go for the false flag explanation.
Robert Brotherton, Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, says believing in conspiracy theories fits with the way our brains make sense of the world.
"One of our psychological biases is that, whenever anything ambiguous happens, we connect the dots," Brotherton says. "The basis of many conspiracy theories is simply connecting the dots. Another is proportionality bias. When JFK got shot, people wanted to think that something big caused that, not just that some guy you'd never heard of could have killed the president."
A protester at the Anonymous Million Mask March in London, which is often attended by people espousing all sorts of conspiracy theories. Photo by Jake Lewis
But are there any factors that could signal a propensity to believe? Metrics like gender and income haven't been correlated with a belief in conspiracy theories, and there really isn't enough data available on the topic to say for certain whether–statistically–you're more likely than somebody else of a different socioeconomic group, for instance, to believe.
The advent of the internet is not thought to have swelled the ranks of conspiracy theory believers because, as quickly as the theories can be shared online, so too can their rebuttals. Some theories are plain stupid, others are less easy to dismiss.
Innate paranoia can't be a good starting point, but then not all conspiracies are a figment of the paranoid imagination. The black ops, coverups, and covert missions carried out by governments and secret services around the world are too lengthy to list in full. But to throw out a few, we've had Operation Gladio, the CIA and MI5's role in the overthrow of democratically elected governments around the world, Watergate, the Hillsborough cover-up, the Wikileaks revelations, the NSA scandal, and the discovery that, in 1990, PR firm Hill and Knowlton was behind fake testimony from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti "refugee," Nayirah, who swore she'd seen Iraqi troops killing babies.
Problem is, you can't believe every theory you hear, because many are clearly bullshit. Most of the "OPEN YOUR EYES SHEEPLE" stories you see being shared on Facebook come from sites with just as transparent an agenda as Fox News; conspiracy theories are an industry and a handful of people are doing very well out of it.
Alex Jones at the 2013 Bilderberg Conference. Photo by Matt Shea.
Alex Jones, who spews forth conspiracy theories from Infowars and other platforms, isestimated to make more than $10 million a year. Right-wing mogul Glenn Beck–who's spawned a number of bizarre theories–reportedly earned $90 million in the year from June 2012 to June 2013. Back in the UK, David Icke isn't exactly on the breadline, with an estimated $9 million net worth, much of which will have been generated through book and merchandise sales, and from tickets to the live shows where he rambles on about reptilians from the fourth Dimension ruling the world.
Plenty of conspiracy theory-espousing websites are making money through pay-per-click advertising, and you're as likely to come across a pop-up window for online gambling as herbal remedies. Make no mistake–for some, "discovering" conspiracies is a job. This isn't to say they aren't true believers, but it is in their interest to "uncover" a constant stream of conspiracies.
And all these conspiracy theories they're "uncovering" can do real harm. Antisemitic hoax document the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claims to be a plan for global Jewish domination, has been reprinted across the globe, most notably by the Nazis in 1933. The Protocols not only served as a model for conspiracy theories–some now claim that the "Jews" depicted in Protocols are a cover identity for other groups such as the Illuminati, or, according to Icke, extra-dimensional entities–but the document's message still reverberates around conspiracy theory forums, on which Jewish groups are posited as conspiracy masterminds with depressing regularity.
In 1998, The Lancet published a study suggesting a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The article was discredited and the author banned from practicing medicine. Numerous other studies have shown no such link. Nonetheless, 17 years later, many parents still subscribe to the theory that the government is trying to give their children autism in order to appease Big Pharma and, as a result, whooping cough and measles are on the rise.
Individuals have been targeted as a result of these theories. There's a movement of people who don't believe the Sandy Hook massacre really happened, suggesting it was an operation designed to revoke rights to gun ownership. Fanatics have harassed the parents of murdered children and stolen memorial signs.
A man at Occupy London 2014 who figured the best way to get his theory across was to scribble it on a sheet of cardboard in pretty much completely illegible writing. Photo by Oscar Webb
A questioning of the mainstream press seems sensible–there are direct pressures from shareholders and advertisers, there's sloppy reporting and there are agendas–but knee-jerk disbelief of anything reported by a major news source is misguided. Mainstream outlets frequently question the government and publish things those in power would rather they didn't.
Meanwhile, slavishly agreeing with everything you get from WorldTruth.tv is as sophisticated as pinning a "FUCK THE SYSTEM" badge to a branded sweatshirt made in a Bangladeshi sweatshop.
Perhaps Chris is right; the term "conspiracy theory" covers too much ground to be useful. David Cameron recently described those concerned about the alleged coverup of a VIP pedophile ring as "conspiracy theorists." His intention: to instantly discredit them.
But danger lies in using the small amount of energy you have for politics on chasing illusions. There are plenty of real problems to confront. Question mainstream news, sure, but don't fall into the trap of believing everything you read on Infowars and its ilk. Everyone has an agenda.
Follow Frankie on Twitter
[Images] The Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists and Theories
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.[h=1]The Man Who Tricked Chemtrails Conspiracy Theorists[/h]October 13, 2014
by Michael Allen
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Some airplane condensation trails, which conspiracy theorists believe are "chemtrails." Photo via Wikimedia Commons
The chemtrails conspiracy theory has been circulating for a while among the same sorts of people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job and celebrities are being controlled by the CIA. In brief, chemtrail enthusiasts think that those white trails of vapor you see pouring out of planes are actually nasty chemical or biological agents that governments are using to geo-engineer the weather, create a vast electromagnetic super-weapon, control the population, or—well, you get the idea. There's no science or proof whatsoever behind this, but plenty of people are still willing to entertain this vaguely supervillain-esque notion.
Chris Bovey in Argentina
On October 1, Chris Bovey—a 41-year-old from Devon, England—thought he’d troll the chemtrails camp. During a flight from Buenos Aires to the UK, his plane had to make an emergency landing in São Paulo and dumped excess fuel to lighten the load. Since he had a window seat, Chris decided to film all the liquid being sprayed out of the wing next to him.
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Touching down, he uploaded the video with a caption that suggested it could be evidence of chemtrails, hoping to mess with a couple of friends who he knew might fall for it. The video now has 1.1 million views, nearly 20,000 shares, and dozens of comments telling viewers to “wake the F up," or accusing naysayers of being “stupid paid shills."He then claimed (falsely) that he’d been detained at Heathrow upon arrival, been interrogated by the authorities, and had his phone confiscated. That riled everyone up even more, with “conspiraloon” (Chris’s term) website NeonNettle.com picking up the story and reporting it as evidence of chemtrails.
The video Chris filmed from his seat
Mick West—editor of anti-conspiracy theory website Metabunk, which published an article explaining why Chris’s video was a hoax—explained the history of the chemtrails theory to me. “It started back in the late 1990s,” he said. “People just noticed contrails—the condensation trails behind planes—for the first time, and got this idea that a normal contrail shouldn’t persist for very long. So if anything lasted for more than a few minutes, itmust be something being sprayed.”
While chemtrails advocates might accuse sheeple of believing everything their governments tell them, they themselves tend to believe a lot of the stuff their internet tells them. West thinks its the proliferation of unverified “evidence” online that’s led to this particular conspiracy theory remaining so popular.
“People share things that look interesting without really looking into them, and they take the word of whoever’s posting it that it’s a real thing,” he said. “I knew from the start that it was some kind of hoax, but people want to have their worldview confirmed, so when they see something that seems to fit their worldview they jump on it.”
In Chris’s case, that involved being invited onto a radio show hosted by Richie Allen, a friend of David Icke—the man who claims we’re being ruled by a group of lizard overlords disguised as world leaders. On air, Chris admitted that the whole thing was a hoax and got into an argument with the host about the validity of the chemtrails theory.
Since then, Chris has been subject to a stream of “vulgar abuse” from pissed-off conspiracy theorists—which, admittedly, is completely his own fault. I gave him a call to find out how he was doing.
VICE: So I hear you’ve been receiving some pretty bad abuse since you duped these conspiracy theorists?
Chris Bovey: Yeah, I got some really foul messages. I got accused of being a government paid shill—so where’s my paycheck? The worst bit of abuse is on my Facebook page. I left it up there because it’s so insulting that it made the guy look like an idiot. It was about goat fucking and how I was going to get butt-fucked in prison.
Someone else said I was going to hell for breaking the First Commandment. I’m not religious; I don’t know what the First Commandment is. Maybe it’s, “Thou shalt not post fake chemtrail hoaxes.” [Note: it is actually, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."] Other people were saying I’d been leaned on to change my story, saying that it was really a chemtrail-molecule dump.
Why do you think people were so quick to believe your video was evidence of chemtrails?
I think people want to believe it, and I think people are so distrusting of the government. It says a lot about our government that people are actually prepared to believe that they would do this. It’s a lack of basic scientific understanding. It doesn’t take much research—if you go onto contrailscience.com, you can quite easily see it explains why they’re formed.
A video claiming that easyJet wouldn't be able to sustain itself were it not being paid off to dump chemicals during flights.
Have people stopped claiming that the video is evidence of chemtrails now that you’ve come out and explained it?
Not at all. There are still people sharing it as we speak, saying “chemtrails” in all sorts of languages—some I don’t even recognize.
I’ve got a good 500 people who sent me friend requests, and I accepted them, but today I deleted them all because they kept on inviting me to "like" various strange pages. I knew these kinds of people existed—that’s why I posted it. But I absolutely didn’t realize how strongly these people believed this. With a few of them, I’ve tried to reason with them by sending evidence to explain why they are wrong, and they generally just called me a shill and blocked me.
How long have you been interested in chemtrails?
I remember seeing them as a little child when I was at primary school on the River Dart, where I grew up in South Devon. On the playground I used to look up in the air and notice that some planes had longer trails and wonder why. Of course, at that point I didn’t realize it was an Illuminati plot.
Why did you admit the video was a hoax and not keep it going?
At the time, I was getting a little bit uncomfortable with it, partly because I didn’t want my sane friends thinking I was an idiot. So it was an ideal opportunity to come clean and also a great opportunity to prank them.
Do you think there’s any evidence to support the chemtrail theory at all?
No, it’s just completely debunked. There’s zero evidence—zilch.
Follow Michael Allen on Twitter.
.[h=1]Man Claimed He Was Detained At Heathrow For Filming Chemtrails Hoax[/h]By: Sasha Sutton |@SashaEricaS
[h=2]Chris Bovey Admitted Hoax On Richie Allen Show[/h]
on 2nd October 2014 @ 5.45pm
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© Chris Bovey/Facebook
The police were very threatening and kept me hanging around for ages, asked stupid questions and took my phoneA man who filmed an alleged chemtrail spraying from the wing of a plane whilst he was a passenger, had claimed he was detained by police at Heathrow after the video went viral. The Video has now set the conspiracyworld alightChris Bovey captured the footage during a commercial flight, as he posted on his facebook page that he had security pounce on him as soon as he touched down in Heathrow – detaining him for eight hours - which turned out to be false.“Finally got home to Devon. Detained by security at Heathrow. iPhone confiscated. I tried to explain I uploaded it from the plane after it landed and that the video was already online, but they wouldn't listen. eight hours in a holding cell. FML”, said Bovey in a Facebook post.The officers also confiscated Bovey’s phone in a bid to seize the content, which he had used to record the shocking event on the plane.“The police were very threatening and kept me hanging around for ages, asked stupid questions and took my phone, it was a f**king expensive phone it had all my contacts in it"“I'm quite angry about it, I'm going to call a lawyer”.© Chris Bovey/Facebook
The Video has now set the conspiracy world alight
This is not the first time someone has been arrested for potentially exposing the chemtrails cover-up. UFO Sightings Hotspot reported that at the beginning of this year, EUCAH public information director Melanie Vristchan was unlawfully arrested in Brussels and placed in a mental institution after proposing a ban on HAARP and chemtrails, under EU law.He said on Facebook - “They took my bags and shoved me, handcuffed, inside the police car”, she said in a statement published by Exopolitics.“They then took me to a room where the female officer searched my body and they waited with me until a psychiatrist arrived at which time they left the room. The psychiatrist told me that he had received the order from the Prosecutor to have a psychiatric admission exam with me”.Lucky for Bovey, he was not sent to a psychiatric hospital and was eventually released by officers. But since his video has been shared over 10,000 times on Facebook, it seems he may have found fame as this footage could expose something big, however, it the claims have turned out to be falseMetabunk have since issued this statement: "On Tuesday September 30th, 2014, flight BA244 from Buenos Aires, Argentina to London, UK, was diverted to Sao Paulo shortly after departure, due to an unusual odor in the cabin. As the 777 was fully loaded with fuel for the long flight, it was unable to immediately land, as it was over-weight. So the plane had to dump fuel until it reached a safe landing weight.Read the full Metabunk post here. Photo Credit: Chris Bovey/Facebook
tags: chemtrails| Conspiracy
...[h=1]Uncovering the "Truth" Among the Conspiracy Theorists at the 2013 Bilderberg Fringe Festival[/h]June 12, 2013
by Matt Shea
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Every year, the Bilderberg Group—a collection of some of the world's most powerful people—gets together to discuss how to keep on being powerful. Now, considering that the past couple weeks haven't been great ones for democracy (shouts to Turkey and theNSA!), I don't blame you if the prospect of powerful government officials holding a closed-door meeting with the financial elite gets your goat a little. Especially since while the big swinging dicks gathered in Watford, England, last weekend, unemployment in the UK continued to rise, cities in Turkey kept on burning, and the war in Syria remained the stuff of nightmares.
While you might look at these worldwide messes and see a lot of basic human weakness and error, conspiracy theorists read the news, see the word Bilderberg, and immediately start connecting the dots: the puppet masters are poisoning the water supply, they're enslaving your mind—bad events aren't the result of human weakness or error at all, but a malicious plan being orchestrated against humans by a New World Order of aliens from space. You can argue that with a guestlist that includes David Cameron, IMF chief Christine Lagarde (one of 14 women among 134 delegates), David Petraeus, and the heads of BP, Goldman Sachs and Shell, the Bilderberg Group should make its high-level discussions open to the public. Unfortunately, the legitimate demand for allowing media inside the conference gets discredited by the swarms of conspiracy theorists who show up at the event each year to stand outside the gate and scream stuff about secret occult societies.
Sure enough, when the Bilderbergers arrived at the five-star Grove hotel in Watford, they were joined by the biggest crowd of conspiracists to date. In fact, the protesters had decided to create an official event and so the inaugural Bilderberg Fringe Festival was born, complete with a campsite, makeshift press tent, security, and the biggest names in the conspiracy world, including David Icke and Alex Jones. So what's the latest in secret truths dreamt up by the powerful to fuck us? I went down to the Grove to test the (fluoride-saturated) waters.
When I arrived, the police had put a one-in, one-out policy in place. "The event has already exceeded capacity," they shouted. "We intended to have 1,000 people there; there are now 2,000. Please keep off the grass."
"Keep off the grass? Is that what we're paying our taxes for?" one guy shouted, to whoops and cheers from the crowd. I waited patiently for my turn to get closer to the fringe festival, along with a bunch of totally legit media organisations, like InfoWars, WeAreChange, and Truthjuice. Everyone seemed nervous and the air smelled of Cannabis Cup-winning weed. I wondered whether these two phenomena might be connected in some way.
Indie Meds, who "put the pieces together" himself.
After watching journalists who figured it wasn't worth the wait to get inside peel off all around me, I finally got through. Alex Jones, the keynote speaker, hadn't begun his speech yet, so I started making friends.
"What’s your name?" I asked a guy in a brown robe.
"Indie Meds. That’s my enlightened name since I started to wake up."
"When did you wake up?"
"I started to wake up about a year ago, when I had a stroke on the left side of my brain. Afterwards, my aware side woke up and I started to notice that the news was a load of rubbish. I started doing my own research into Egyptian pyramids, the Mayans, sacred geometry, the whole package—and aliens. They all sort of came together in a package and I put the pieces together myself."
"What ties all those things together?"
"The message is the same—back to the Mayans, back to the Egyptians and back to the Atlantians even before that: you are God; you are one."
At the back of this photo, past the security, is the Grove, where the Bilderberg Group was meeting.
"What does this have to do with Bilderberg?"
"Bilderberg’s just part of the power game," Indie Meds told me. "All the wars, all the media, all the politics, all the religions. I’m sure they’re tied in with the Vatican, too. Once you start doing research, you find you can link everything together, and once you’ve linked it together it changes your outlook on life."
"OK. What’s the costume for?"
"Because I like dressing up as a Jedi."
After speaking to Indie Meds, I was still confused. What did it mean to be "awake"? Do I need to have a stroke in order to wake up? And how did sacred geometry have anything to do with a load of powerful people who meet once a year without any cameras present? I asked some more people for help.
Philis (left) and Jud Charlton.
Maybe Jud Charlton and his ventriloquist dummy, Philis, could help me wake up.
“The idea with Ventriloquism Against Conspiracy (VAC) is that we come together," Jud said.
"If I came on my own, it’d be no good," chuckled Phillis.
"Fair enough," I replied. "What's the conspiracy?"
“It's all about: let’s get the information out. Let’s get all the stuff that they’re doing out.”
Many of the "awake" people seemed to spend a lot of time sleeping.
"What are they doing?"
“Well, that’s the issue, isn’t it?"
I stared blankly at him for a few seconds. "Yes. Wait—what's the issue again?"
Before I could ask any more questions, a wave of hollers and people shouting the Star Wars "Imperial March" song told me that Alex Jones had taken to the podium. The main event was about to begin.
Alex Jones before his admiring audience.
I'm sure you know who Alex Jones is. If you're not, he can best be explained as kind of like a WWE wrestler who adopts the persona of an extremely paranoid person every time he enters the ring. He seems to have mastered the debating technique of overwhelming you with such a torrent of falsehoods that you couldn't possibly address them all in real time.
"If you think hundreds of raped children and necrophilia is anything, that again is only the surface," he began, gently feeling his way into the swing of things.
There was a lot of weird electrode shit going on.
"They might kill me for getting up here and telling you this, but they have been putting out cancer viruses—that’s why there are hundreds of new bizarre cancers that never existed," Jones continued. "That’s why, 30 years ago—I've talked to medical doctors—doctors would fly across the country to see a child with cancer. Now I can walk out my front door and see children with cancer playing in the playground any time I go there, with their chemotherapy roach poison injectors hooked up to them!"
The crowd cheered.
"These cops. Every one of these cops. Within six years, 40 percent of them will have cancer."
The crowd laughed and cheered. Haha! Cancer.
A little girl breaks through the security line, presumably to join the Illuminati.
"Seriously. By 2030, it'll be more like 70 percent, so these cops will remember when they're burying their young child of cancer and they'll say, 'Oh, this cancer never existed 20 years ago, but all the kids are getting it. Now, let's not discuss why it’s happening, let’s discuss donating money to find the cure.' It's like if Jack the Ripper was stabbing people and we looked for a way to heal them instead of finding Jack the Ripper!"
In case you didn't understand that, which is excusable because it makes literally no sense, what Jones is essentially advocating is, "Instead of giving money to cancer research to find out where new cancers come from and how to treat them, let's stop that and start accusing businessmen and politicians of inventing new, impossibly secretive ways to mutate our genes." It's unclear what exactly the Bilderbergers are getting out of giving everyone cancer.
He then led the crowd in a chant of, “We know you are killers!” Presumably this was aimed towards the Grove Hotel, a good 650 yards away.
:
...
Towards the end of the speech, a lone provocateur jumped up and began accusing Jones of being part of the New World Order himself, infuriating the loyal crowd, who yelled, “Police! Arrest him!” The level of irony in the air was suffocating me. I couldn't help but imagine the provocateur preaching to his own devoted legion of bedraggled conspiracy theorists: The Bilderberg Fringe Festival Fringe Festival.
At the BFFFF, you can be sure there will be yet another provocateur who will interrupt the first one’s speech with passionate cries for the truth (the real truth). Hundreds of years from now, when everything is exposed to history, it will come to surface that that guy—the conspiracy theorist who dared to doubt the conspiracy theorists who in turn doubted the mainstream conspiracy theorists like Jones, who dared to doubt the Bilderberg New World Order—was right.
Trevor, a.k.a. Noisy Parrot.
Despite being buried beneath an avalanche of new information, I still didn't really come away from Jones's speech with any proper understanding of what was going on. So I asked some people if they could dumb it down for me.
"What do you think the main point of Alex’s speech was?" I asked Trevor, who goes by the name Noisy Parrot.
"Trying to enlighten us to what’s going on behind the scenes."
"What is going on behind the scenes?"
"Well, it’s the Bilderberg meeting."
I sighed. "Why do you have elf ears on?"
"Oh, they’re actually fairy ears. I roll with a group of fairies."
Janet (left) and Valerie.
I turned to two of those fairies, Janet and Valerie, to ask, "What do you guys think the main point of Alex’s speech was?"
"Just to spread awareness, I think," said Janet. "To see so many like-minded people come together, it makes me think that there is a shift happening."
"Yeah," Valerie agreed.
"A shift in what?" I asked. "Please can you explain to me what I'm supposed to be aware of?"
"So many people I know are finding things so incredibly different in the past few years. I think people are starting to wake up," said Janet, before prancing away with Valerie. I'm guessing they were off in search of better vibes and people who weren't asking them questions about why they were asking questions.
But I had every right to be frustrated. I'd come here to figure out what was going on inside Bilderberg—or, at least, what these people thought was going on inside Bilderberg—and no one could give me a straight answer. It was around this time that I began to notice a worrying number of children playing around the "spiritual healing zone" that had apparently been set up to counteract whatever dark ceremonies were going on at Bilderberg. I couldn't help but wonder how many of these kids were being ushered into a life of paranoia and strange looks every time they tried to strike up conversations about what "really matters" during history classes.
But maybe I was just being cynical. Maybe they regularly contribute much-lauded op-eds to InfoWars and were here of their own accord? Maybe, with their naive, uncomplicated take on the event, they could help me to finally wake up?
I asked a little girl what she thought about the Bilderberg Conference.
"Ummm. Very fun!" she said, to my surprise. Very fun? Did she have a part to play in the New World Order, too? Was this all some kind of game to her?
"What do you think is going on over in that hotel?" I probed.
"I’m not sure," she said. I wasn't convinced.
"Is it where the New World Order meets to discuss eugenics programs?"
"Yeah!"
I got out of there as fast as I could before she injected cancer into my blood.
This lady's shirt reads, "I went to Bilderberg 2013 and all I got was this lousy New World Order."
By now, I'd met lots of very opinionated people who didn't seem to want to disclose any opinions other than the fact that the Bilderbergers were the guys behind cancer. But I didn't quite feel awake yet. Now, I've been to enough of these type of events to know that you can always find hot girls at the hula hoop circle, and I thought that maybe the hot girls could help wake me up.
Francesca.
Francesca had a killer smile. If auras are real, she definitely had one, and I could totally feel its energy. I think she could feel mine, too.
"What brings you here today?" I asked.
"I’ve come here to spread as much unconditional love as I can. To everyone. And I think it’s working—I can feel it."
"Me too, I think it’s working. What do you think was the main point of Alex’s speech?"
Fringe Festival security guards escort someone away.
"They’re just making people aware, which is great. I love the fact that they’re here doing the right thing and speaking the truth."
"What are they making people aware of, specifically?"
"Of what exactly is going on in the world. We’re not listening to the media and all that. This is actual, y'know, important stuff."
I was a little upset that Francesca didn't have any answers for me, either, until she told me that she loved me and hugged me goodbye.
Bryony.
"What brings you here today?" I asked a girl named Bryony.
"People, everyone, connecting and information," she replied.
"What information, specifically?"
"Uh, about the… people in there. What are they called?"
"Bilderberg?"
"The Bilderberg, yes. We shall not surrender to these people who are trying to control us and oppress us. And poison us."
"How are they poisoning us?"
"They’re poisoning us by putting fluoride in the water and genetically modifying nature."
"So does everyone in there support water fluoridation?"
"Like, here’s the thing—I came here with an open mind. I know there are people in there who are trying to do the right thing. I came here to connect with people and to love."
I had expected conspiracy theorists to jump me from every angle while they tried to explain the "truth," but the people at the Bilderberg Fringe Festival I spoke to got flustered and couldn't really tell me what they believed, at least not in a way that I could understand. The only thing everyone seemed to agree on was that Bilderberg is somehow controlling/killing us through water fluoridation. I can't help but thnk that if that was the case, they wouldn't really need to meet for more than five minutes to discuss how to do that. ("Let's put some more fluoride in the water supply!")
It's no wonder that in times of economic hardship people want someone to blame, but if the hippies and shock jocks at the BFF can't channel their anger into something useful, it discredits everyone else who's genuinely fighting for change. We all know that when you take drugs everything seems connected in some giant cosmic conspiracy, but the solutions to the world's problems aren't as simple as trying to expose a secret cabal of lizard people intent on ruling the world. Solving the world's problems takes a lot more hard work and dedication than that, and less scapegoating of non-existent entities.
Follow Matt on Twitter: @Matt_A_Shea
More on conspiracy theorists
https://clonefive.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/the-anatomy-of-a-conspiracy-theorist/THE ANATOMY OF A CONSPIRACY THEORIST
July 23, 2013 · by clonefive · Bookmark the permalink. ·
Image courtesy of berkley.edu.
What is a conspiracy theorist? A conspiracy theorist is defined as one who follows a theory seeking to explain a disputed case or matter as a plot by a secret group or alliance rather than an individual or isolated act that possesses little to no factual foundation. I present five common traits that conspiracy theorists appear to universally share between each other.
Many conspiracy theorists share the inability to accept information that differs from the conspiracy theorist’s perspective, regardless of the credibility differential between the two sources of information regarding the cause. This is an example of a logical fallacy, in which an argument is rendered invalid due to it being inherently one-sided and closed off to criticism – via this concept, conspiracy theorists do not truly possess an ”argument”, but a one-sided conjecture that only acts as a cascade catalyst for other conspiracy theorists.
Conspiracy theorists frequently present ”red herrings” towards individuals of the opposing mindset – the frequent, presumably impulse-driven arisement of irrelevant arguments that detract from the original argument and invoke irrelevant conversation in effort to avoid confrontation against the conspiracy theorist’s original cause. Additionally, such theorists present the viewpoint that if such sources are scientific and detract the cause that the conspiracy theorist possesses, then such sources must be ”fabricated”, despite the conspiracy theorist linking ”sources” that consist of YouTube videos and information sheets with no citations or references.
Another aspect that is common is that of a profound sense of ”superiority” over the sceptic, and that they are ”right” and hold more credibility than anybody else and ask why others cannot ”see” whatever patterns the conspiracy theorist is observing that cannot typically be observed by the majority of individuals and only those who meticulously seek out or fabricate patterns and attempt to decipher them into a fantastical explanation and resorting to personal confrontation to those who do not share the same viewpoint(s), disregarding the logical philosophy of Occam’s Razor method of critical thinking – ”I see a shape in the water, therefore it must be a mythological creature as written about in folklore!” and disregarding more logical explanations for the more fantastical one, so as to correspond to one’s own personal basis regardless of evidence or logic much to the contrary.
Such traits are somewhat similar to those presented in patients with paranoid schizophrenia, in which meaningless events are viewed by one’s internal mind to be significant in value, regardless of opinion or evidence that refutes such a significance. It is important to acknowledge that speculation and conjecture does not constitute as fact, regardless of personal beliefs or suspicions.
In conclusion, conspiracy theorists present many logical fallacies and flaws in critical reasoning – many of which are essential in the understanding of concepts behind conspiracy theories in themselves. Unfortunately, this method of reasoning provokes ”herd” mentality, and others join in on conspiracies, despite the lack of evidence in favour of their cause, and evidence presented against their cause.
Bibliography
Article written by Miles B. Please credit both the author’s and the domain’s name in references.
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Ok lets do this....
The term 'conspiracy theorist' was created by the CIA and planted into the mainstream media (they infiltrated it through operation mockinbird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird ) to be used against anyone who questioned the 'magic bullet' theory of the warren commission when it published its fidnings of its investigation into the assassination of John F Kennedy in which they said a single bullet caused massive damage within the car to the vehicle and to two people
They then said that the following undamaged bullet was the one they found in the body of the president at the hospital:
Does that look like a bullet thats wreaked a lot of damage?
The commission said that Oswald acted alone and got off 3 shots in 6 seconds leaving no traces of powder on his cheek; oswald himself said he was a 'patsy'
So anyone who questioned these discrepancies and many others was then labelled a 'conspiracy theorist'
Lets look some more into this...
The term 'conspiracy theorist' was created by the CIA and planted into the mainstream media (they infiltrated it through operation mockinbird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird ) to be used against anyone who questioned the 'magic bullet' theory of the warren commission when it published its fidnings of its investigation into the assassination of John F Kennedy in which they said a single bullet caused massive damage within the car to the vehicle and to two people
They then said that the following undamaged bullet was the one they found in the body of the president at the hospital:
Does that look like a bullet thats wreaked a lot of damage?
The commission said that Oswald acted alone and got off 3 shots in 6 seconds leaving no traces of powder on his cheek; oswald himself said he was a 'patsy'
So anyone who questioned these discrepancies and many others was then labelled a 'conspiracy theorist'
Lets look some more into this...
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2009/05/26/the-inner-worlds-of-conspiracy-believers
By Bruce Bower, Science News
Shortly after terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center and mangled the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, conspiracy theories blossomed about secret and malevolent government plots behind the tragic events. A report scheduled to appear in an upcoming Applied Cognitive Psychologyoffers a preliminary psychological profile of people who believe in 9/11 conspiracies.
A team led by psychologist Viren Swami of the University of Westminster in London identified several traits associated with subscribing to 9/11 conspiracies, at least among British citizens. These characteristics consist of backing one or more conspiracy theories unrelated to 9/11, frequently talking about 9/11 conspiracy beliefs with likeminded friends and others, taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, feeling generally suspicious toward others and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook.
“Often, the proof offered as evidence for a conspiracy is not specific to one incident or issue, but is used to justify a general pattern of conspiracy ideas,” Swami says.
His conclusion echoes a 1994 proposal by sociologist Ted Goertzel of Rutgers–Camden in New Jersey. After conducting random telephone interviews of 347 New Jersey residents, Goertzel proposed that each of a person’s convictions about secret plots serves as evidence for other conspiracy beliefs, bypassing any need for confirming evidence.
A belief that the government is covering up its involvement in the 9/11 attacks thus feeds the idea that the government is also hiding evidence of extraterrestrial contacts or that John F. Kennedy was not killed by a lone gunman.
Goertzel says the new study provides an intriguing but partial look at the inner workings of conspiracy thinking. Such convictions critically depend on what he calls “selective skepticism.” Conspiracy believers are highly doubtful about information from the government or other sources they consider suspect. But, without criticism, believers accept any source that supports their preconceived views, he says.
“Arguments advanced by conspiracy theorists tell you more about the believer than about the event,” Goertzel says.
Swami’s finding that 9/11 conspiracy believers frequently spoke with likeminded individuals supports the notion that “conspiracy thinkers constitute a community of believers,” remarks historian Robert Goldberg of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Goldberg has studied various conspiracy theories in the United States.
Conspiracy thinkers share an optimistic conviction that they can find “the truth,” spread it to the masses and foster social change, Goldberg asserts.
Over the past 50 years, researchers and observers of social dynamics have traced beliefs in conspiracy theories to feelings of powerlessness, attempts to bolster self-esteem and diminished faith in government. Some conspiracy beliefs — such as the widespread conviction among blacks that the U.S. government concocted HIV/AIDS as a genocidal plot — gain strength from actual events, such as the once-secret Tuskegee experiments in which black men with syphilis were denied treatment.
Swami and his colleagues administered a battery of questionnaires to 257 British adults, including a condensed version of a standard personality test. Participants came from a variety of ethnic, religious and social backgrounds representative of the British population.
Most participants expressed either no support or weak support for 16 conspiracy beliefs about 9/11. These beliefs included: “The World Trade Center towers were brought down by a controlled demolition” and, “Individuals within the U.S. government knew of the impending attacks and purposely failed to act on that knowledge.”
Much as Swami’s team suspected, beliefs in 9/11 conspiracy theories were stronger among individuals whose personalities combined suspicion and antagonism toward others with intellectual curiosity and an active imagination.
A related, unpublished survey of more than 1,000 British adults found that 9/11 conspiracy believers not only often subscribed to a variety of well-known conspiracy theories, but also frequently agreed with an invented conspiracy. Christopher French of Goldsmiths, University of London, and Patrick Leman of Royal Holloway, University of London, both psychologists, asked volunteers about eight common conspiracy theories and one that researchers made up: “The government is using mobile phone technology to track everyone all the time.”
The study, still unpublished, shows that conspiracy believers displayed a greater propensity than nonbelievers to jump to conclusions based on limited evidence.“It seems likely that conspiratorial beliefs serve a similar psychological function to superstitious, paranormal and, more controversially, religious beliefs, as they help some people to gain a sense of control over an unpredictable world,” French says.
Swami now plans to investigate attitudes of British volunteers to conspiracy theories about the July 7, 2005, terrorist bombings in London.
http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...claim_to_know_the_truth_about_jfk.single.html[h=1]Conspiracy Theorists Aren’t Really Skeptics[/h]15.9k356
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[h=2]The fascinating psychology of people who know the real truth about JFK, UFOs, and 9/11.[/h]By William Saletan
Believing in conspiracy theories doesn't make you any less gullible than people who buy the "official story."
Photo by Joshua Roberts/AFP/Getty Images
To believe that the U.S. government planned or deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks, you’d have to posit that President Bush intentionally sacrificed 3,000 Americans. To believe that explosives, not planes, brought down the buildings, you’d have to imagine an operation large enough to plant the devices without anyone getting caught. To insist that the truth remains hidden, you’d have to assume that everyone who has reviewed the attacks and the events leading up to them—the CIA, the Justice Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, scientific organizations, peer-reviewed journals, news organizations, the airlines, and local law enforcement agencies in three states—was incompetent, deceived, or part of the cover-up.
WILLIAM SALETANWill Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right.
And yet, as Slate’s Jeremy Stahl points out, millions of Americans hold these beliefs. In a Zogby poll taken six years ago, only 64 percent of U.S. adults agreed that the attacks “caught US intelligence and military forces off guard.” More than 30 percent chose a different conclusion: that “certain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military, and economic motives,” or that these government elements “actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks.”
How can this be? How can so many people, in the name of skepticism, promote so many absurdities?
ADVERTISING
The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren’t really skeptics. Like the rest of us, they’re selective doubters. They favor a worldview, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It’s about the omnipotence of elites.
Conspiracy chatter was once dismissed as mental illness. But the prevalence of such belief, documented in surveys, has forced scholars to take it more seriously. Conspiracy theory psychology is becoming an empirical field with a broader mission: to understand why so many people embrace this way of interpreting history. As you’d expect, distrust turns out to be an important factor. But it’s not the kind of distrust that cultivates critical thinking.
In 1999 a research team headed by Marina Abalakina-Paap, a psychologist at New Mexico State University, published a study of U.S. college students. The students were asked whether they agreed with statements such as “Underground movements threaten the stability of American society” and “People who see conspiracies behind everything are simply imagining things.” The strongest predictor of general belief in conspiracies, the authors found, was “lack of trust.”
But the survey instrument that was used in the experiment to measure “trust” was more social than intellectual. It asked the students, in various ways, whether they believed that most human beings treat others generously, fairly, and sincerely. It measured faith in people, not in propositions. “People low in trust of others are likely to believe that others are colluding against them,” the authors proposed. This sort of distrust, in other words, favors a certain kind of belief. It makes you more susceptible, not less, to claims of conspiracy.
Once you buy into the first conspiracy theory, the next one seems that much more plausible.
A decade later, a study of British adults yielded similar results. Viren Swami of the University of Westminster, working with two colleagues, found that beliefs in a 9/11 conspiracy were associated with “political cynicism.” He and his collaborators concluded that “conspiracist ideas are predicted by an alienation from mainstream politics and a questioning of received truths.” But the cynicism scale used in the experiment, drawn from a 1975 survey instrument, featured propositions such as “Most politicians are really willing to be truthful to the voters,” and “Almost all politicians will sell out their ideals or break their promises if it will increase their power.” It didn’t measure general wariness. It measured negative beliefs about the establishment.
The common thread between distrust and cynicism, as defined in these experiments, is a perception of bad character. More broadly, it’s a tendency to focus on intention and agency, rather than randomness or causal complexity. In extreme form, it can become paranoia. In mild form, it’s a common weakness known as the fundamental attribution error—ascribing others’ behavior to personality traits and objectives, forgetting the importance of situational factors and chance. Suspicion, imagination, and fantasy are closely related.
The more you see the world this way—full of malice and planning instead of circumstance and coincidence—the more likely you are to accept conspiracy theories of all kinds. Once you buy into the first theory, with its premises of coordination, efficacy, and secrecy, the next seems that much more plausible.
Many studies and surveys have documented this pattern. Several months ago, Public Policy Polling asked 1,200 registered U.S. voters about various popular theories. Fifty-one percent said a larger conspiracy was behind President Kennedy’s assassination; only 25 percent said Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Compared with respondents who said Oswald acted alone, those who believed in a larger conspiracy were more likely to embrace other conspiracy theories tested in the poll. They were twice as likely to say that a UFO had crashed in Roswell, N.M., in 1947 (32 to 16 percent) and that the CIA had deliberately spread crack cocaine in U.S. cities (22 to 9 percent). Conversely, compared with respondents who didn’t believe in the Roswell incident, those who did were far more likely to say that a conspiracy had killed JFK (74 to 41 percent), that the CIA had distributed crack (27 to 10 percent), that the government “knowingly allowed” the 9/11 attacks (23 to 7 percent), and that the government adds fluoride to our water for sinister reasons (23 to 2 percent).
The appeal of these theories—the simplification of complex events to human agency and evil—overrides not just their cumulative implausibility (which, perversely, becomes cumulative plausibility as you buy into the premise) but also, in many cases, their incompatibility. Consider the 2003 survey in which Gallup asked 471 Americans about JFK’s death. Thirty-seven percent said the Mafia was involved, 34 percent said the CIA was involved, 18 percent blamed Vice President Johnson, 15 percent blamed the Soviets, and 15 percent blamed the Cubans. If you’re doing the math, you’ve figured out by now that many respondents named more than one culprit. In fact, 21 percent blamed two conspiring groups or individuals, and 12 percent blamed three. The CIA, the Mafia, the Cubans—somehow, they were all in on the plot.
Two years ago, psychologists at the University of Kent led by Michael Wood (whoblogs at a delightful website on conspiracy psychology), escalated the challenge. They offered U.K. college students five conspiracy theories about Princess Diana: four in which she was deliberately killed, and one in which she faked her death. In a second experiment, they brought up two more theories: that Osama Bin Laden was still alive (contrary to reports of his death in a U.S. raid earlier that year) and that, alternatively, he was already dead before the raid. Sure enough, “The more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered.” And “the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive.”
Another research group, led by Swami, fabricated conspiracy theories about Red Bull, the energy drink, and showed them to 281 Austrian and German adults. One statement said that a 23-year-old man had died of cerebral hemorrhage caused by the product. Another said the drink’s inventor “pays 10 million Euros each year to keep food controllers quiet.” A third claimed, “The extract ‘testiculus taurus’ found in Red Bull has unknown side effects.” Participants were asked to quantify their level of agreement with each theory, ranging from 1 (completely false) to 9 (completely true). The average score across all the theories was 3.5 among men and 3.9 among women. According to the authors, “the strongest predictor of belief in the entirely fictitious conspiracy theory was belief in other real-world conspiracy theories.”
Clearly, susceptibility to conspiracy theories isn’t a matter of objectively evaluating evidence. It’s more about alienation. People who fall for such theories don’t trust the government or the media. They aim their scrutiny at the official narrative, not at the alternative explanations. In this respect, they’re not so different from the rest of us. Psychologists and political scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that “when processing pro and con information on an issue, people actively denigrate the information with which they disagree while accepting compatible information almost at face value.” Scholars call this pervasive tendency “motivated skepticism.”
Top Comment
People cant accept how easily one lone gun man or a few guys with a bomb can totally change people's lives. More...
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Conspiracy believers are the ultimate motivated skeptics. Their curse is that they apply this selective scrutiny not to the left or right, but to the mainstream. They tell themselves that they’re the ones who see the lies, and the rest of us are sheep. But believing that everybody’s lying is just another kind of gullibility.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2015/05/05/conspiracy-theory-as-a-personality-disorder/
[h=1]Conspiracy Theory as a Personality Disorder?[/h] by Kerry R Bolton May 5, 2015 15 Comments
The treatment of "conspiracy theories" by the US intelligentsia is reminiscent of the Soviet commissions that labeled political dissidents mentally ill.
John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower at Camp David, April 22, 1961 (John F. Kennedy Library)
Download this essay (PDF)
While psychiatry as a means of repressing political dissent was well-known for its use the USSR, this occurred no less and perhaps more so in the West, and particularly in the USA. While the case of Ezra Pound is comparatively well-known now, not so recognized is that during the Kennedy era in particular there were efforts to silence critics through psychiatry. The cases of General Edwin Walker, Fredrick Seelig, and Lucille Miller might come to mind.
As related by Seelig, the treatment meted out to political dissidents in psychiatric wards and institutions could be hellish. Over the past few decades however, such techniques against dissent have become passé, in favor of more subtle methods of social control. While the groundwork was laid during the 1940s by President Franklin Roosevelt calling dissidents to his regime the “lunatic fringe,” this became a theme for the social sciences, the seminal study of which is The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno et al. This Zionist-funded study established an “F” scale in which respondents were tested for latent “Fascism.” The extent depended on their attitudes towards hitherto what was regarded as traditionally normative values, such as affection for parents and the family, the latter in particular regarded by these social scientists as the seed-bed of “Fascism.”
While social mores have been established to make dissidents pariahs, to impose a soft totalitarianism of the Huxleyan Brave New World variety, social scientists remain occupied with creating new approaches for the continuing de-legitimizing of dissident opinions. Among the primary targets are those who have in recent years been termed “conspiracists.” The term is used to induce a pavlonian reflex in nullifying dissident views on a range of subjects, like the words “racist, “fascist,” “sexist,” etc. Any hint of “conspiracism” in a paper is also sufficient to prevent it from even reaching the initial stage of peer review if submitted to a supposedly academic journal, where one might expect a range of views to be debated.
Recently a group of psychologists studying the allegedly contradictory nature of conspiracy beliefs were able to furnish mind-manipulators with a study that can be used to show that anything associated with or labelled as “conspiracy theory” can be relegated to the realm of mental imbalance. The paper was published as “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories.”[1] The abstract reads:
Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: A self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that even mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement. In Study 1 (n ¼ 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (n ¼ 102), the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive. Hierarchical regression models showed that mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively associated because both are associated with the view that the authorities are engaged in a cover-up (Study 2). The monological nature of conspiracy belief appears to be driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another but by broader beliefs supporting conspiracy theories in general.[2]
The conclusion is that conspiracy theorists have a generalized suspicion of all authority and thereby believe that any event is the product of a conspiracy by authority. Several categories were used to score contradictory attitudes in regard to conspiracy. The subjects were chosen from 137 undergraduate psychology students. Five questions were asked regarding conspiratorial beliefs in Princess Diana’s death.[3] The results “suggest that those who distrust the official story of Diana’s death do not tend to settle on a single conspiracist account as the only acceptable explanation; rather, they simultaneously endorse several contradictory accounts.”[4]
There are several factors to consider:
In is of interest that Wood, Douglas, and Sutton draw on The Authoritarian Personality in creating a psychological profile of conspiracists that will accord with the Liberal-Left assumptions of “conspiracists” as “fascists’ and “anti-Semites”: “There are strong parallels between this conception of a monological belief system and Adorno et al.’s (1950) work on prejudice and authoritarianism.”[5] The purpose of the study can be discerned from this passage:
If Adorno’s explanation for contradictory antisemitic beliefs can indeed be applied to conspiracy theories, conspiracist beliefs might be most accurately viewed as not only monological but also ideological in nature. Just as an orthodox Marxist might interpret major world events as arising inevitably from the forces of history, a conspiracist would see the same events as carefully orchestrated steps in a plot for global domination. Conceptualizing conspiracism as a coherent ideology, rather than as a cluster of beliefs in individual theories, may be a fruitful approach in the future when examining its connection to ideologically relevant variables such as social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism.[6]
Conspiracism is identified as inherently “right-wing authoritarian” ideology. The authors, Wood, Douglas, and Sutton, thereby show themselves to be ideologically biased and agenda-driven; in the same manner as Adorno, et al. Moreover, in ascribing “conspiracism” to “right-wing ideology’” there seems to be a remarkable ignorance as to the diversity of “conspiracists.”
What is one to make, for example, of Carroll Quigley, Professor of History at Harvard and Georgetown University Foreign Service School, whose academic magnum opus Tragedy & Hope, is often quoted by “conspiracists.” This includes several dozen pages describing an “international network” of bankers whose aim is to bring about a centralized world political and financial control system.[7] Despite the relatively few pages on this network in Quigley’s 1,300-page tome, he regarded the role of this network in history, over the course of several generations, as not only pivotal, but also as laudable (apart from its ‘secrecy”).[8]
Wood, Douglas, and Sutton begin their paper with the definition: “A conspiracy theory is defined as a proposed plot by powerful people or organizations working together in secret to accomplish some (usually sinister) goal.”[9] Based on that definition, it would seem difficult to conclude anything other than that Quigley was describing conspiracy, insofar as it is:
What can one make also of the “warning” to the American people by Dwight Eisenhower during his “farewell speech,” in which he referred to the ‘military industrial complex,” which became a favorite expression of the Left? Eisenhower pointed out its wide ramifications, not only economic and political but also on moral and cultural levels. He stated of this:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist….
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.[11]
Here are the primary elements for “conspiracy theory” in Eisenhower’s address:
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence—on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.[12]
Kennedy used the word “conspiracy.” He was a “conspiracist” in today’s derogative terminology.
Are we really to believe that it is mentality questionable to state that the Bilderbergers for example are a “conspiracy” with a globalist agenda when they have all the facets of a “ conspiracy,” other than to decide subjectively whether such cabals have an evil or a noble intent?
Would Eisenhower score as a “right-wing authoritarian” on Adorno’s personality tests, or as “monological” on the tests of Wood, Douglas, and Sutton? Would Quigley? Kennedy? Would Professor Michel Chossudovsky and the large number of academics who are involved with the Centre for Research on Globalization[13] be characterised as ‘monological” and “right-wing authoritarians’ by Wood, Douglas and Sutton? Perhaps what is required is a screening process whereby “conspiracists” of the “Left” are distinguished from “conspiracists” of the “Right,” allowing the former to retain their legitimacy, while the latter can be subjected to either public anathema or psychiatric treatment, such as lobotomy, medication, or long-term confinement?
Therefore, it seems that there must be arbiters from on high to determine what “conspiracy theories” are socially and politically acceptable and what are not, reminiscent of the Soviet psychiatric commissions that examined political dissidents and diagnosed mental illness.
Dr Karen Douglas describes her academic focus:
My primary research focus is on beliefs in conspiracy theories. Why are conspiracy theories so popular? Who believes them? Why do people believe them? What are some of the consequences of conspiracy theories and can such theories be harmful?[14]
The description implies that “conspiracy theorists” are apt subjects for psychological diagnosis, because they are intrinsically “harmful” to society, like Adorno’s suspicion of the family as the seed-bed of “Fascism.”
References:
[h=1]Conspiracy Theory as a Personality Disorder?[/h] by Kerry R Bolton May 5, 2015 15 Comments
The treatment of "conspiracy theories" by the US intelligentsia is reminiscent of the Soviet commissions that labeled political dissidents mentally ill.
John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower at Camp David, April 22, 1961 (John F. Kennedy Library)Download this essay (PDF)
While psychiatry as a means of repressing political dissent was well-known for its use the USSR, this occurred no less and perhaps more so in the West, and particularly in the USA. While the case of Ezra Pound is comparatively well-known now, not so recognized is that during the Kennedy era in particular there were efforts to silence critics through psychiatry. The cases of General Edwin Walker, Fredrick Seelig, and Lucille Miller might come to mind.
As related by Seelig, the treatment meted out to political dissidents in psychiatric wards and institutions could be hellish. Over the past few decades however, such techniques against dissent have become passé, in favor of more subtle methods of social control. While the groundwork was laid during the 1940s by President Franklin Roosevelt calling dissidents to his regime the “lunatic fringe,” this became a theme for the social sciences, the seminal study of which is The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno et al. This Zionist-funded study established an “F” scale in which respondents were tested for latent “Fascism.” The extent depended on their attitudes towards hitherto what was regarded as traditionally normative values, such as affection for parents and the family, the latter in particular regarded by these social scientists as the seed-bed of “Fascism.”
While social mores have been established to make dissidents pariahs, to impose a soft totalitarianism of the Huxleyan Brave New World variety, social scientists remain occupied with creating new approaches for the continuing de-legitimizing of dissident opinions. Among the primary targets are those who have in recent years been termed “conspiracists.” The term is used to induce a pavlonian reflex in nullifying dissident views on a range of subjects, like the words “racist, “fascist,” “sexist,” etc. Any hint of “conspiracism” in a paper is also sufficient to prevent it from even reaching the initial stage of peer review if submitted to a supposedly academic journal, where one might expect a range of views to be debated.
Recently a group of psychologists studying the allegedly contradictory nature of conspiracy beliefs were able to furnish mind-manipulators with a study that can be used to show that anything associated with or labelled as “conspiracy theory” can be relegated to the realm of mental imbalance. The paper was published as “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories.”[1] The abstract reads:
Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: A self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that even mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement. In Study 1 (n ¼ 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (n ¼ 102), the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive. Hierarchical regression models showed that mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively associated because both are associated with the view that the authorities are engaged in a cover-up (Study 2). The monological nature of conspiracy belief appears to be driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another but by broader beliefs supporting conspiracy theories in general.[2]
The conclusion is that conspiracy theorists have a generalized suspicion of all authority and thereby believe that any event is the product of a conspiracy by authority. Several categories were used to score contradictory attitudes in regard to conspiracy. The subjects were chosen from 137 undergraduate psychology students. Five questions were asked regarding conspiratorial beliefs in Princess Diana’s death.[3] The results “suggest that those who distrust the official story of Diana’s death do not tend to settle on a single conspiracist account as the only acceptable explanation; rather, they simultaneously endorse several contradictory accounts.”[4]
There are several factors to consider:
- The small number of subjects drawn from the same background.
- Whether the belief in contradictory theories is rather the willingness to accept several alternatives rather than being bound to a single explanation.
- The tests appear to be of a “tick the boxes” character, and do not appear to offer the subjects opportunity to explain their views.
- The test therefore seems to be nothing other than very limited statistical surveys from which a generalised theory is postulated in regard to “conspiracism.”
In is of interest that Wood, Douglas, and Sutton draw on The Authoritarian Personality in creating a psychological profile of conspiracists that will accord with the Liberal-Left assumptions of “conspiracists” as “fascists’ and “anti-Semites”: “There are strong parallels between this conception of a monological belief system and Adorno et al.’s (1950) work on prejudice and authoritarianism.”[5] The purpose of the study can be discerned from this passage:
If Adorno’s explanation for contradictory antisemitic beliefs can indeed be applied to conspiracy theories, conspiracist beliefs might be most accurately viewed as not only monological but also ideological in nature. Just as an orthodox Marxist might interpret major world events as arising inevitably from the forces of history, a conspiracist would see the same events as carefully orchestrated steps in a plot for global domination. Conceptualizing conspiracism as a coherent ideology, rather than as a cluster of beliefs in individual theories, may be a fruitful approach in the future when examining its connection to ideologically relevant variables such as social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism.[6]
Conspiracism is identified as inherently “right-wing authoritarian” ideology. The authors, Wood, Douglas, and Sutton, thereby show themselves to be ideologically biased and agenda-driven; in the same manner as Adorno, et al. Moreover, in ascribing “conspiracism” to “right-wing ideology’” there seems to be a remarkable ignorance as to the diversity of “conspiracists.”
What is one to make, for example, of Carroll Quigley, Professor of History at Harvard and Georgetown University Foreign Service School, whose academic magnum opus Tragedy & Hope, is often quoted by “conspiracists.” This includes several dozen pages describing an “international network” of bankers whose aim is to bring about a centralized world political and financial control system.[7] Despite the relatively few pages on this network in Quigley’s 1,300-page tome, he regarded the role of this network in history, over the course of several generations, as not only pivotal, but also as laudable (apart from its ‘secrecy”).[8]
Wood, Douglas, and Sutton begin their paper with the definition: “A conspiracy theory is defined as a proposed plot by powerful people or organizations working together in secret to accomplish some (usually sinister) goal.”[9] Based on that definition, it would seem difficult to conclude anything other than that Quigley was describing conspiracy, insofar as it is:
- “Secret,” which Quigley laments as being the primary cause of his disagreement with it,
- Composed of powerful people or organizations,
- Aims to accomplish a specific goal.
What can one make also of the “warning” to the American people by Dwight Eisenhower during his “farewell speech,” in which he referred to the ‘military industrial complex,” which became a favorite expression of the Left? Eisenhower pointed out its wide ramifications, not only economic and political but also on moral and cultural levels. He stated of this:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist….
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.[11]
Here are the primary elements for “conspiracy theory” in Eisenhower’s address:
- There is a threat that is obviously “secret,” or at least not above-board, otherwise Eisenhower would not see the need to make it a feature of his final words as President.
- This threat involves a cabal: “the military industrial complex,” and a technocratic “elite.”
- The threat involves “the power of money.”
- The threat is that of the accumulation of power by these elites.
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence—on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.[12]
Kennedy used the word “conspiracy.” He was a “conspiracist” in today’s derogative terminology.
Are we really to believe that it is mentality questionable to state that the Bilderbergers for example are a “conspiracy” with a globalist agenda when they have all the facets of a “ conspiracy,” other than to decide subjectively whether such cabals have an evil or a noble intent?
Would Eisenhower score as a “right-wing authoritarian” on Adorno’s personality tests, or as “monological” on the tests of Wood, Douglas, and Sutton? Would Quigley? Kennedy? Would Professor Michel Chossudovsky and the large number of academics who are involved with the Centre for Research on Globalization[13] be characterised as ‘monological” and “right-wing authoritarians’ by Wood, Douglas and Sutton? Perhaps what is required is a screening process whereby “conspiracists” of the “Left” are distinguished from “conspiracists” of the “Right,” allowing the former to retain their legitimacy, while the latter can be subjected to either public anathema or psychiatric treatment, such as lobotomy, medication, or long-term confinement?
Therefore, it seems that there must be arbiters from on high to determine what “conspiracy theories” are socially and politically acceptable and what are not, reminiscent of the Soviet psychiatric commissions that examined political dissidents and diagnosed mental illness.
Dr Karen Douglas describes her academic focus:
My primary research focus is on beliefs in conspiracy theories. Why are conspiracy theories so popular? Who believes them? Why do people believe them? What are some of the consequences of conspiracy theories and can such theories be harmful?[14]
The description implies that “conspiracy theorists” are apt subjects for psychological diagnosis, because they are intrinsically “harmful” to society, like Adorno’s suspicion of the family as the seed-bed of “Fascism.”
References:
- Michael J Wood, Karen M Douglas, Robbie M Sutton, Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories, Social Psychology & Personality Science, 25 January 2012, http://m.spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/18/1948550611434786.full.pdf
- Ibid., p. 2.
- Ibid., p. 4.
- Ibid., p. 5.
- Ibid., p. 6.
- Ibid., p. 6.
- C Quigley, Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: The Macmillan co., 1966), p. 51.
- C Quigley, ibid., pp. 950-956. See also: K R Bolton, Revolution from Above (London: Arkos Media Ltd., 2011), pp. 24-26.
- Michael J Wood, et al, op. cit., p. 2.
- Robert Eringer, The Global Manipulators (Bristol: Pentacle Books, 1980, pp. 9-10. Eringer spoke to Quigley regarding the professor’s predicament after running afoul of the ‘network’.
- Dwight D Eisenhower, ‘Farewell Speech to the American People’, 17 January 1961, IV, http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html
- John F Kennedy, Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, April 27, 1961.
- Centre for Research on Globalization, http://www.globalresearch.ca/
- Karen Douglas, University of Kent, http://www.kent.ac.uk/psychology/people/douglask/
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/...heorists-sane-government-dupes-crazy-hostile/
In short, the new study by Wood and Douglas suggests that the negative stereotype of the conspiracy theorist — a hostile fanatic wedded to the truth of his own fringe theory — accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it. Press TV
Fri Jul 12, 2013 4:3AM GMT
By Dr. Kevin Barrett
Recent studies by psychologists and social scientists in the US and UK suggest that contrary to mainstream media stereotypes, those labeled “conspiracy theorists” appear to be saner than those who accept the official versions of contested events.
truth of his own fringe theory — accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it.
Additionally, the study found that so-called conspiracists discuss historical context (such as viewing the JFK assassination as a precedent for 9/11) more than anti-conspiracists. It also found that the so-called conspiracists do not like to be called “conspiracists” or “conspiracy theorists.”
Both of these findings are amplified in the new book Conspiracy Theory in America by political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, published earlier this year by the University of Texas Press. Professor deHaven-Smith explains why people don’t like being called “conspiracy theorists”: The term was invented and put into wide circulation by the CIA to smear and defame people questioning the JFK assassination! “The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.”
In other words, people who use the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” as an insult are doing so as the result of a well-documented, undisputed, historically-real conspiracy by the CIA to cover up the JFK assassination. That campaign, by the way, was completely illegal, and the CIA officers involved were criminals; the CIA is barred from all domestic activities, yet routinely breaks the law to conduct domestic operations ranging from propaganda to assassinations.
DeHaven-Smith also explains why those who doubt official explanations of high crimes are eager to discuss historical context. He points out that a very large number of conspiracy claims have turned out to be true, and that there appear to be strong relationships between many as-yet-unsolved “state crimes against democracy.” An obvious example is the link between the JFK and RFK assassinations, which both paved the way for presidencies that continued the Vietnam War. According to DeHaven-Smith, we should always discuss the “Kennedy assassinations” in the plural, because the two killings appear to have been aspects of the same larger crime.
Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed “conspiracy theory” label impedes cognitive function. She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief.
In the same issue of ABS, University of Buffalo professor Steven Hoffman adds that anti-conspiracy people are typically prey to strong “confirmation bias” — that is, they seek out information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, while using irrational mechanisms (such as the “conspiracy theory” label) to avoid conflicting information.
The extreme irrationality of those who attack “conspiracy theories” has been ably exposed by Communications professors Ginna Husting and Martin Orr of Boise State University. In a 2007 peer-reviewed article entitled “Dangerous Machinery: ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ as a Transpersonal Strategy of Exclusion,” they wrote:
“If I call you a conspiracy theorist, it matters little whether you have actually claimed that a conspiracy exists or whether you have simply raised an issue that I would rather avoid… By labeling you, I strategically exclude you from the sphere where public speech, debate, and conflict occur.”
But now, thanks to the internet, people who doubt official stories are no longer excluded from public conversation; the CIA’s 44-year-old campaign to stifle debate using the “conspiracy theory” smear is nearly worn-out. In academic studies, as in comments on news articles, pro-conspiracy voices are now more numerous — and more rational — than anti-conspiracy ones.
No wonder the anti-conspiracy people are sounding more and more like a bunch of hostile, paranoid cranks.
KB/HSN
Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, and author of the books Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009). His website is www.truthjihad.com. More articles by Dr. Kevin Barrett
Learn more
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23847577
http://www.frontiersin.org/personal...differences/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00409/abstract
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0292743793/?tag=infjs-20
http://www.globalresearch.ca/conspiracy-theory-foundations-of-a-weaponized-term/5319708
http://thewebfairy.com/masonic/cia_document.htm
In short, the new study by Wood and Douglas suggests that the negative stereotype of the conspiracy theorist — a hostile fanatic wedded to the truth of his own fringe theory — accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it. Press TV
Fri Jul 12, 2013 4:3AM GMT
By Dr. Kevin Barrett
Recent studies by psychologists and social scientists in the US and UK suggest that contrary to mainstream media stereotypes, those labeled “conspiracy theorists” appear to be saner than those who accept the official versions of contested events.
truth of his own fringe theory — accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it.
Additionally, the study found that so-called conspiracists discuss historical context (such as viewing the JFK assassination as a precedent for 9/11) more than anti-conspiracists. It also found that the so-called conspiracists do not like to be called “conspiracists” or “conspiracy theorists.”
Both of these findings are amplified in the new book Conspiracy Theory in America by political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, published earlier this year by the University of Texas Press. Professor deHaven-Smith explains why people don’t like being called “conspiracy theorists”: The term was invented and put into wide circulation by the CIA to smear and defame people questioning the JFK assassination! “The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.”
In other words, people who use the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” as an insult are doing so as the result of a well-documented, undisputed, historically-real conspiracy by the CIA to cover up the JFK assassination. That campaign, by the way, was completely illegal, and the CIA officers involved were criminals; the CIA is barred from all domestic activities, yet routinely breaks the law to conduct domestic operations ranging from propaganda to assassinations.
DeHaven-Smith also explains why those who doubt official explanations of high crimes are eager to discuss historical context. He points out that a very large number of conspiracy claims have turned out to be true, and that there appear to be strong relationships between many as-yet-unsolved “state crimes against democracy.” An obvious example is the link between the JFK and RFK assassinations, which both paved the way for presidencies that continued the Vietnam War. According to DeHaven-Smith, we should always discuss the “Kennedy assassinations” in the plural, because the two killings appear to have been aspects of the same larger crime.
Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed “conspiracy theory” label impedes cognitive function. She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief.
In the same issue of ABS, University of Buffalo professor Steven Hoffman adds that anti-conspiracy people are typically prey to strong “confirmation bias” — that is, they seek out information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, while using irrational mechanisms (such as the “conspiracy theory” label) to avoid conflicting information.
The extreme irrationality of those who attack “conspiracy theories” has been ably exposed by Communications professors Ginna Husting and Martin Orr of Boise State University. In a 2007 peer-reviewed article entitled “Dangerous Machinery: ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ as a Transpersonal Strategy of Exclusion,” they wrote:
“If I call you a conspiracy theorist, it matters little whether you have actually claimed that a conspiracy exists or whether you have simply raised an issue that I would rather avoid… By labeling you, I strategically exclude you from the sphere where public speech, debate, and conflict occur.”
But now, thanks to the internet, people who doubt official stories are no longer excluded from public conversation; the CIA’s 44-year-old campaign to stifle debate using the “conspiracy theory” smear is nearly worn-out. In academic studies, as in comments on news articles, pro-conspiracy voices are now more numerous — and more rational — than anti-conspiracy ones.
No wonder the anti-conspiracy people are sounding more and more like a bunch of hostile, paranoid cranks.
KB/HSN
Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He is the co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, and author of the books Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters (2009). His website is www.truthjihad.com. More articles by Dr. Kevin Barrett
Learn more
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23847577
http://www.frontiersin.org/personal...differences/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00409/abstract
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0292743793/?tag=infjs-20
http://www.globalresearch.ca/conspiracy-theory-foundations-of-a-weaponized-term/5319708
http://thewebfairy.com/masonic/cia_document.htm
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/04/02/who-is-afraid-of-conspiracy-theories/
[h=1]Who is Afraid of Conspiracy Theories?[/h]Lance deHaven-Smith, Ph.D, New Dawn
Waking Times In his book Philosophical Investigations, philosopher of science Ludwig Wittgenstein demonstrated that words are more than designations or labels. They are signals in a context of activity, and are invested with many assumptions about the roles and social status of speakers and listeners.
In the 20th century, men often called women “girls.” This term, while indeed referring to something real – to women – was more than merely a label; it was demeaning and implicitly conveyed a subservient status. Wittgenstein called the common sense view of words standing for things, the “naming theory of language.” However, he pointed out, if words were merely labels, you could not teach language to children. If you pointed at a table and said “table,” how would a child know you are referring to the piece of furniture and not to the rectangular shape of its top, or the table’s colour, or its hardness, or any number of other attributes? Language is taught in the context of activity. You say to the child, “the cup is on the table,” “slide the cup across the table top,” “I am setting the table for dinner,” and slowly the child learns what a table is and how the word table is used.
Wittgenstein’s observation may seem simple, but it posed a profound challenge to all of Western philosophy since Plato, who had asked: What is beauty? What is truth? What is justice? Wittgenstein’s critique of the naming theory of language suggested these were the wrong questions. What needs philosophical investigation is who uses such words in what circumstances and with what implications.
Initially, conspiracy theories were not an object of ridicule and hostility. Today, however, the conspiracy theory label is employed routinely to dismiss a wide range of anti-government suspicions as symptoms of impaired thinking akin to superstition or mental illness. For example, in his 2007 book on the assassination of President Kennedy, former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi says people who believe JFK conspiracy theories are “as kooky as a three dollar bill in their beliefs and paranoia.” Similarly, in Among the Truthers, Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay refers to 9/11 conspiracy theorists as “political paranoiacs” who have “lost their grip on the real world.” Making a similar point, if more colourfully, in his popular book Wingnuts journalist John Avlon refers to conspiracy believers as “moonbats,” “Hatriots,” “wingnuts,” and the “Fright Wing.”
As these examples illustrate, conspiracy deniers adhere unwittingly to the naming theory of language. They assume that what qualifies as a conspiracy theory is self-evident. In their view, the phrase conspiracy theory as it is conventionally understood, simply names this objectively identifiable phenomenon. Conspiracy theories are supposedly easy to spot because they posit secret plots that are too wacky to be taken seriously. Indeed, the theories are deemed so far-fetched they require no reply or rejoinder; they are objects of derision, not ideas for discussion. In short, while ridiculing conspiracy beliefs, conspiracy deniers take the conspiracy theory concept itself for granted.
This is remarkable, not to say shocking, because the concept is both fundamentally flawed and in direct conflict with English legal and political traditions. As a label for irrational political suspicions about secret plots by powerful people, the concept is obviously defective because political conspiracies in high office do, in fact, happen. Officials in the Nixon administration did conspire to steal the 1972 presidential election. Officials in the Reagan administration did participate in a criminal scheme to sell arms to Iran and channel profits to the Contras, a rebel army in Nicaragua. The Bush-Cheney administration did collude to mislead Congress and the public about the strength of its evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. If some conspiracy theories are true, then it is nonsensical to dismiss all unsubstantiated suspicions of elite intrigue as false by definition.
This fatal defect in the conspiracy theory concept makes it all the more surprising that most scholars and journalists have failed to notice that their use of the term to ridicule suspicions of elite political criminality betrays the civic ethos inherited from British legal and political traditions. The Magna Carta placed limitations on the King, guaranteed trial by one’s peers, assigned historic revenue sources to London, and in other ways recognised the dangers of unrestrained political authority. More generally, the political institutions of the English speaking peoples presuppose political power is a corrupting influence which makes political conspiracies against the people’s interests and liberties almost inevitable. One of the most important questions in Western political thought is how to prevent top leaders from abusing their powers to impose arbitrary rule or tyranny. The men and women who fought for citizens’ rights, the rule of law, and constitutional systems of checks and balances would view today’s norms against conspiratorial suspicion as not only arrogant, but also dangerous and historically illiterate.
The founders of English legal and political traditions would also be shocked that conspiracy deniers attack and ridicule individuals who voice conspiracy beliefs, and yet ignore institutional purveyors of conspiratorial ideas, even though the latter are the ideas that have proven truly dangerous in modern history. Since at least the end of World War II, the citadel of theories alleging nefarious political conspiracies has been, not amateur investigators of the Kennedy assassination and other political crimes and tragedies, but political elites and governments. In the first three decades of the post-World War II era, officials asserted that communists were conspiring to take over the world, Western governments were riddled with Soviet spies, and various social movements of the 1960s were creatures of Soviet influence. More recently, Western governments have accepted US claims that Iraq was complicit in 9/11, failed to dispose of its biological weapons, and attempted to purchase uranium in Niger so it could construct nuclear bombs. Although these ideas were untrue, they influenced millions of people, fomented social panic, fuelled wars, and resulted in massive loss of life and destruction of property. If conspiracy deniers are so concerned about the dangers of conspiratorial suspicions in politics and civic culture, why have they ignored the conspiracism of top politicians and administrators?
In my book Conspiracy Theory in America, I reorient analysis of the phenomenon that has been assigned the derisive label of conspiracy theory. In a 2006 peer-reviewed journal article, I introduced the concept of State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD) to displace the term conspiracy theory. I say displace rather thanreplace because SCAD is not another name for conspiracy theory; it is a name for the type of wrongdoing which the conspiracy theory label discourages us from speaking. Basically, the term conspiracy theory is applied pejoratively to allegations of official wrongdoing that have not been substantiated by public officials themselves.
Deployed as a derogatory putdown, the label is a verbal defence mechanism used by political elites to suppress mass suspicions that inevitably arise when shocking political crimes benefit top leaders or play into their agendas, especially when those same officials are in control of agencies responsible for preventing the events in question, or for investigating them after they have occurred. It is only natural to wonder about possible deception when a US president and vice president bent on war in the Middle East are warned of impending terrorist attacks, and yet fail to alert the public or increase the readiness of their own and allies’ armed forces. Why would people not expect answers when Arabs with poor piloting skills manage to hijack four planes, fly them across the eastern United States, somehow evade America’s multilayered system of air defence, and then crash two of the planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington, DC? By the same token, it is only natural to question the motives of President Bush and Vice President Cheney when they dragged their feet investigating this seemingly inexplicable defence failure and then, when the investigation was finally conducted, they insisted on testifying together, in secret, and not under oath. Certainly, citizen distrust can be unwarranted and overwrought, but often citizen doubts make sense. People around the world are not crazy to want answers when a US president is assassinated by a lone gunman with mediocre shooting skills who manages to get off several lucky shots with an old bolt-action carbine that had a misaligned scope. Why would there not be doubts when an alleged assassin is apprehended, publicly claims he is just a patsy, interrogated for two days but no one makes a recording or even takes notes, and then shot to death at point-blank range while in police custody at police headquarters?
In contrast, the SCAD construct does not refer to a type of allegation or suspicion; it refers to a special type of transgression: an attack from within on the political system’s organising principles. For these extremely grave crimes, English legal and political traditions use the term high crime and included in this category istreason and conspiracies against the people’s liberties. SCADs, high crimes, and antidemocratic conspiracies can also be called elite political crimes and elite political criminality. The SCAD construct is intended not to supersede traditional terminology or monopolise conceptualisation of this phenomenon, but rather to add a descriptive term that captures, with some specificity, the long-recognised potential for representative democracy to be subverted by people on the inside – the very people who have been entrusted to uphold the constitutional order.
If political conspiracies in high office do, in fact, happen; if it is therefore unreasonable to assume conspiracy theories are, by definition, harebrained and paranoia; if constitutional systems of checks and balances are based on the idea that power corrupts and elite political conspiracies are likely; if, because it ridicules suspicion, the conspiracy theory label is inconsistent with the traditional Western ethos of vigilance against conspiracies in high office; if, in summary, the conspiracy theory label is unreasonable and dangerous, how did the label come to be used so widely to begin with?
Most people will be shocked to learn the conspiracy theory label was popularised as a pejorative term by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a global propaganda program initiated in 1967. This program was directed at criticisms of the Warren Commission Report. The propaganda campaign called on media corporations and journalists around the world to criticise conspiracy theorists and raise questions about their motives and judgments. The CIA informed its contacts that “parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by communist propagandists.” In the shadows of McCarthyism and the Cold War, this warning about communist influence was delivered simultaneously to hundreds of well-positioned members of the press in a global CIA propaganda network, infusing the conspiracy theory label with powerfully negative associations. In my book, I refer to this as the “conspiracy theory conspiracy.”
For a more detailed exposition on the above, read Prof. Lance DeHaven-Smith’s Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press, 2013), available from all good bookstores and online retailers.
[h=6]About the Author[/h] LANCE DEHAVEN-SMITH is Professor in the Reubin O’D. Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. A former President of the Florida Political Science Association, deHaven-Smith is the author of more than a dozen books, including The Battle for Florida, which analyses the disputed 2000 US presidential election, as well as The Hidden Teachings of Jesus: The Political Meaning of the Kingdom of God (Phanes Press, 2001). His latest book is Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press, 2013). DeHaven-Smith has appeared on Good Morning America, the Today Show, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, CBS Nightly News with Dan Rather, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and other US TV and radio shows. His website is www.dehaven-smith.com.
The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 6
[h=1]Who is Afraid of Conspiracy Theories?[/h]Lance deHaven-Smith, Ph.D, New Dawn
Waking Times In his book Philosophical Investigations, philosopher of science Ludwig Wittgenstein demonstrated that words are more than designations or labels. They are signals in a context of activity, and are invested with many assumptions about the roles and social status of speakers and listeners.
In the 20th century, men often called women “girls.” This term, while indeed referring to something real – to women – was more than merely a label; it was demeaning and implicitly conveyed a subservient status. Wittgenstein called the common sense view of words standing for things, the “naming theory of language.” However, he pointed out, if words were merely labels, you could not teach language to children. If you pointed at a table and said “table,” how would a child know you are referring to the piece of furniture and not to the rectangular shape of its top, or the table’s colour, or its hardness, or any number of other attributes? Language is taught in the context of activity. You say to the child, “the cup is on the table,” “slide the cup across the table top,” “I am setting the table for dinner,” and slowly the child learns what a table is and how the word table is used.
Wittgenstein’s observation may seem simple, but it posed a profound challenge to all of Western philosophy since Plato, who had asked: What is beauty? What is truth? What is justice? Wittgenstein’s critique of the naming theory of language suggested these were the wrong questions. What needs philosophical investigation is who uses such words in what circumstances and with what implications.
The term conspiracy theory did not exist as a phrase in everyday conversation before 1964. The conspiracy theory label entered the lexicon of political speech as a catchall for criticisms of the Warren Commission’s conclusion that US President Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman with no assistance from, or foreknowledge by any element of the United States government. Since then, the term’s prevalence and range of application have exploded. In 1964, the year the Warren Commission issued its report, the New York Times published five stories in which conspiracy theory appeared. In recent years, the phrase has occurred in over 140 New York Times stories annually. On Amazon.com, the term is a book category that includes in excess of 1,300 titles. In addition to books on conspiracy theories of particular events, there are conspiracy theory encyclopedias, photographic compendiums, website directories, and guides for researchers, sceptics and debunkers.Initially, conspiracy theories were not an object of ridicule and hostility. Today, however, the conspiracy theory label is employed routinely to dismiss a wide range of anti-government suspicions as symptoms of impaired thinking akin to superstition or mental illness. For example, in his 2007 book on the assassination of President Kennedy, former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi says people who believe JFK conspiracy theories are “as kooky as a three dollar bill in their beliefs and paranoia.” Similarly, in Among the Truthers, Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay refers to 9/11 conspiracy theorists as “political paranoiacs” who have “lost their grip on the real world.” Making a similar point, if more colourfully, in his popular book Wingnuts journalist John Avlon refers to conspiracy believers as “moonbats,” “Hatriots,” “wingnuts,” and the “Fright Wing.”
As these examples illustrate, conspiracy deniers adhere unwittingly to the naming theory of language. They assume that what qualifies as a conspiracy theory is self-evident. In their view, the phrase conspiracy theory as it is conventionally understood, simply names this objectively identifiable phenomenon. Conspiracy theories are supposedly easy to spot because they posit secret plots that are too wacky to be taken seriously. Indeed, the theories are deemed so far-fetched they require no reply or rejoinder; they are objects of derision, not ideas for discussion. In short, while ridiculing conspiracy beliefs, conspiracy deniers take the conspiracy theory concept itself for granted.
This is remarkable, not to say shocking, because the concept is both fundamentally flawed and in direct conflict with English legal and political traditions. As a label for irrational political suspicions about secret plots by powerful people, the concept is obviously defective because political conspiracies in high office do, in fact, happen. Officials in the Nixon administration did conspire to steal the 1972 presidential election. Officials in the Reagan administration did participate in a criminal scheme to sell arms to Iran and channel profits to the Contras, a rebel army in Nicaragua. The Bush-Cheney administration did collude to mislead Congress and the public about the strength of its evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. If some conspiracy theories are true, then it is nonsensical to dismiss all unsubstantiated suspicions of elite intrigue as false by definition.
This fatal defect in the conspiracy theory concept makes it all the more surprising that most scholars and journalists have failed to notice that their use of the term to ridicule suspicions of elite political criminality betrays the civic ethos inherited from British legal and political traditions. The Magna Carta placed limitations on the King, guaranteed trial by one’s peers, assigned historic revenue sources to London, and in other ways recognised the dangers of unrestrained political authority. More generally, the political institutions of the English speaking peoples presuppose political power is a corrupting influence which makes political conspiracies against the people’s interests and liberties almost inevitable. One of the most important questions in Western political thought is how to prevent top leaders from abusing their powers to impose arbitrary rule or tyranny. The men and women who fought for citizens’ rights, the rule of law, and constitutional systems of checks and balances would view today’s norms against conspiratorial suspicion as not only arrogant, but also dangerous and historically illiterate.
The founders of English legal and political traditions would also be shocked that conspiracy deniers attack and ridicule individuals who voice conspiracy beliefs, and yet ignore institutional purveyors of conspiratorial ideas, even though the latter are the ideas that have proven truly dangerous in modern history. Since at least the end of World War II, the citadel of theories alleging nefarious political conspiracies has been, not amateur investigators of the Kennedy assassination and other political crimes and tragedies, but political elites and governments. In the first three decades of the post-World War II era, officials asserted that communists were conspiring to take over the world, Western governments were riddled with Soviet spies, and various social movements of the 1960s were creatures of Soviet influence. More recently, Western governments have accepted US claims that Iraq was complicit in 9/11, failed to dispose of its biological weapons, and attempted to purchase uranium in Niger so it could construct nuclear bombs. Although these ideas were untrue, they influenced millions of people, fomented social panic, fuelled wars, and resulted in massive loss of life and destruction of property. If conspiracy deniers are so concerned about the dangers of conspiratorial suspicions in politics and civic culture, why have they ignored the conspiracism of top politicians and administrators?
In my book Conspiracy Theory in America, I reorient analysis of the phenomenon that has been assigned the derisive label of conspiracy theory. In a 2006 peer-reviewed journal article, I introduced the concept of State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD) to displace the term conspiracy theory. I say displace rather thanreplace because SCAD is not another name for conspiracy theory; it is a name for the type of wrongdoing which the conspiracy theory label discourages us from speaking. Basically, the term conspiracy theory is applied pejoratively to allegations of official wrongdoing that have not been substantiated by public officials themselves.
Deployed as a derogatory putdown, the label is a verbal defence mechanism used by political elites to suppress mass suspicions that inevitably arise when shocking political crimes benefit top leaders or play into their agendas, especially when those same officials are in control of agencies responsible for preventing the events in question, or for investigating them after they have occurred. It is only natural to wonder about possible deception when a US president and vice president bent on war in the Middle East are warned of impending terrorist attacks, and yet fail to alert the public or increase the readiness of their own and allies’ armed forces. Why would people not expect answers when Arabs with poor piloting skills manage to hijack four planes, fly them across the eastern United States, somehow evade America’s multilayered system of air defence, and then crash two of the planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington, DC? By the same token, it is only natural to question the motives of President Bush and Vice President Cheney when they dragged their feet investigating this seemingly inexplicable defence failure and then, when the investigation was finally conducted, they insisted on testifying together, in secret, and not under oath. Certainly, citizen distrust can be unwarranted and overwrought, but often citizen doubts make sense. People around the world are not crazy to want answers when a US president is assassinated by a lone gunman with mediocre shooting skills who manages to get off several lucky shots with an old bolt-action carbine that had a misaligned scope. Why would there not be doubts when an alleged assassin is apprehended, publicly claims he is just a patsy, interrogated for two days but no one makes a recording or even takes notes, and then shot to death at point-blank range while in police custody at police headquarters?
In contrast, the SCAD construct does not refer to a type of allegation or suspicion; it refers to a special type of transgression: an attack from within on the political system’s organising principles. For these extremely grave crimes, English legal and political traditions use the term high crime and included in this category istreason and conspiracies against the people’s liberties. SCADs, high crimes, and antidemocratic conspiracies can also be called elite political crimes and elite political criminality. The SCAD construct is intended not to supersede traditional terminology or monopolise conceptualisation of this phenomenon, but rather to add a descriptive term that captures, with some specificity, the long-recognised potential for representative democracy to be subverted by people on the inside – the very people who have been entrusted to uphold the constitutional order.
If political conspiracies in high office do, in fact, happen; if it is therefore unreasonable to assume conspiracy theories are, by definition, harebrained and paranoia; if constitutional systems of checks and balances are based on the idea that power corrupts and elite political conspiracies are likely; if, because it ridicules suspicion, the conspiracy theory label is inconsistent with the traditional Western ethos of vigilance against conspiracies in high office; if, in summary, the conspiracy theory label is unreasonable and dangerous, how did the label come to be used so widely to begin with?
Most people will be shocked to learn the conspiracy theory label was popularised as a pejorative term by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a global propaganda program initiated in 1967. This program was directed at criticisms of the Warren Commission Report. The propaganda campaign called on media corporations and journalists around the world to criticise conspiracy theorists and raise questions about their motives and judgments. The CIA informed its contacts that “parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by communist propagandists.” In the shadows of McCarthyism and the Cold War, this warning about communist influence was delivered simultaneously to hundreds of well-positioned members of the press in a global CIA propaganda network, infusing the conspiracy theory label with powerfully negative associations. In my book, I refer to this as the “conspiracy theory conspiracy.”
For a more detailed exposition on the above, read Prof. Lance DeHaven-Smith’s Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press, 2013), available from all good bookstores and online retailers.
[h=6]About the Author[/h] LANCE DEHAVEN-SMITH is Professor in the Reubin O’D. Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. A former President of the Florida Political Science Association, deHaven-Smith is the author of more than a dozen books, including The Battle for Florida, which analyses the disputed 2000 US presidential election, as well as The Hidden Teachings of Jesus: The Political Meaning of the Kingdom of God (Phanes Press, 2001). His latest book is Conspiracy Theory in America (University of Texas Press, 2013). DeHaven-Smith has appeared on Good Morning America, the Today Show, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, CBS Nightly News with Dan Rather, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and other US TV and radio shows. His website is www.dehaven-smith.com.
The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 6
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/07/12/313399/conspiracy-theorists-vs-govt-dupes/
[h=2]New studies: ‘Conspiracy theorists’ sane; government dupes crazy, hostile[/h]
Recent studies by psychologists and social scientists in the US and UK suggest that contrary to mainstream media stereotypes, those labeled “conspiracy theorists” appear to be saner than those who accept the official versions of contested events. The most recent study was published on July 8th by psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of the University of Kent (UK). Entitled “What about Building 7? A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories,” the study compared “conspiracist” (pro-conspiracy theory) and “conventionalist” (anti-conspiracy) comments at news websites. The authors were surprised to discover that it is now more conventional to leave so-called conspiracist comments than conventionalist ones: “Of the 2174 comments collected, 1459 were coded as conspiracist and 715 as conventionalist.” In other words, among people who comment on news articles, those who disbelieve government accounts of such events as 9/11 and the JFK assassination outnumber believers by more than two to one. That means it is the pro-conspiracy commenters who are expressing what is now the conventional wisdom, while the anti-conspiracy commenters are becoming a small, beleaguered minority. Perhaps because their supposedly mainstream views no longer represent the majority, the anti-conspiracy commenters often displayed anger and hostility: “The research… showed that people who favoured the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile when trying to persuade their rivals.” Additionally, it turned out that the anti-conspiracy people were not only hostile, but fanatically attached to their own conspiracy theories as well. According to them, their own theory of 9/11 - a conspiracy theory holding that 19 Arabs, none of whom could fly planes with any proficiency, pulled off the crime of the century under the direction of a guy on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan - was indisputably true. The so-called conspiracists, on the other hand, did not pretend to have a theory that completely explained the events of 9/11: “For people who think 9/11 was a government conspiracy, the focus is not on promoting a specific rival theory, but in trying to debunk the official account.” In short, the new study by Wood and Douglas suggests that the negative stereotype of the conspiracy theorist - a hostile fanatic wedded to the truth of his own fringe theory - accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it. Additionally, the study found that so-called conspiracists discuss historical context (such as viewing the JFK assassination as a precedent for 9/11) more than anti-conspiracists. It also found that the so-called conspiracists to not like to be called “conspiracists” or “conspiracy theorists.” Both of these findings are amplified in the new book Conspiracy Theory in America by political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, published earlier this year by the University of Texas Press. Professor deHaven-Smith explains why people don’t like being called “conspiracy theorists”: The term was invented and put into wide circulation by the CIA to smear and defame people questioning the JFK assassination! “The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.” In other words, people who use the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” as an insult are doing so as the result of a well-documented, undisputed, historically-real conspiracy by the CIA to cover up the JFK assassination. That campaign, by the way, was completely illegal, and the CIA officers involved were criminals; the CIA is barred from all domestic activities, yet routinely breaks the law to conduct domestic operations ranging from propaganda to assassinations. DeHaven-Smith also explains why those who doubt official explanations of high crimes are eager to discuss historical context. He points out that a very large number of conspiracy claims have turned out to be true, and that there appear to be strong relationships between many as-yet-unsolved “state crimes against democracy.” An obvious example is the link between the JFK and RFK assassinations, which both paved the way for presidencies that continued the Vietnam War. According to DeHaven-Smith, we should always discuss the “Kennedy assassinations” in the plural, because the two killings appear to have been aspects of the same larger crime. Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed “conspiracy theory” label impedes cognitive function. She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief. In the same issue of ABS, University of Buffalo professor Steven Hoffman adds that anti-conspiracy people are typically prey to strong “confirmation bias” - that is, they seek out information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, while using irrational mechanisms (such as the “conspiracy theory” label) to avoid conflicting information. The extreme irrationality of those who attack “conspiracy theories” has been ably exposed by Communications professors Ginna Husting and Martin Orr of Boise State University. In a 2007 peer-reviewed article entitled “Dangerous Machinery: ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ as a Transpersonal Strategy of Exclusion,” they wrote: “If I call you a conspiracy theorist, it matters little whether you have actually claimed that a conspiracy exists or whether you have simply raised an issue that I would rather avoid… By labeling you, I strategically exclude you from the sphere where public speech, debate, and conflict occur.” But now, thanks to the internet, people who doubt official stories are no longer excluded from public conversation; the CIA’s 44-year-old campaign to stifle debate using the “conspiracy theory” smear is nearly worn-out. In academic studies, as in comments on news articles, pro-conspiracy voices are now more numerous - and more rational - than anti-conspiracy ones. No wonder the anti-conspiracy people are sounding more and more like a bunch of hostile, paranoid cranks. KB/HSN
[h=2]New studies: ‘Conspiracy theorists’ sane; government dupes crazy, hostile[/h]
Recent studies by psychologists and social scientists in the US and UK suggest that contrary to mainstream media stereotypes, those labeled “conspiracy theorists” appear to be saner than those who accept the official versions of contested events. The most recent study was published on July 8th by psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of the University of Kent (UK). Entitled “What about Building 7? A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories,” the study compared “conspiracist” (pro-conspiracy theory) and “conventionalist” (anti-conspiracy) comments at news websites. The authors were surprised to discover that it is now more conventional to leave so-called conspiracist comments than conventionalist ones: “Of the 2174 comments collected, 1459 were coded as conspiracist and 715 as conventionalist.” In other words, among people who comment on news articles, those who disbelieve government accounts of such events as 9/11 and the JFK assassination outnumber believers by more than two to one. That means it is the pro-conspiracy commenters who are expressing what is now the conventional wisdom, while the anti-conspiracy commenters are becoming a small, beleaguered minority. Perhaps because their supposedly mainstream views no longer represent the majority, the anti-conspiracy commenters often displayed anger and hostility: “The research… showed that people who favoured the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile when trying to persuade their rivals.” Additionally, it turned out that the anti-conspiracy people were not only hostile, but fanatically attached to their own conspiracy theories as well. According to them, their own theory of 9/11 - a conspiracy theory holding that 19 Arabs, none of whom could fly planes with any proficiency, pulled off the crime of the century under the direction of a guy on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan - was indisputably true. The so-called conspiracists, on the other hand, did not pretend to have a theory that completely explained the events of 9/11: “For people who think 9/11 was a government conspiracy, the focus is not on promoting a specific rival theory, but in trying to debunk the official account.” In short, the new study by Wood and Douglas suggests that the negative stereotype of the conspiracy theorist - a hostile fanatic wedded to the truth of his own fringe theory - accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it. Additionally, the study found that so-called conspiracists discuss historical context (such as viewing the JFK assassination as a precedent for 9/11) more than anti-conspiracists. It also found that the so-called conspiracists to not like to be called “conspiracists” or “conspiracy theorists.” Both of these findings are amplified in the new book Conspiracy Theory in America by political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, published earlier this year by the University of Texas Press. Professor deHaven-Smith explains why people don’t like being called “conspiracy theorists”: The term was invented and put into wide circulation by the CIA to smear and defame people questioning the JFK assassination! “The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.” In other words, people who use the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” as an insult are doing so as the result of a well-documented, undisputed, historically-real conspiracy by the CIA to cover up the JFK assassination. That campaign, by the way, was completely illegal, and the CIA officers involved were criminals; the CIA is barred from all domestic activities, yet routinely breaks the law to conduct domestic operations ranging from propaganda to assassinations. DeHaven-Smith also explains why those who doubt official explanations of high crimes are eager to discuss historical context. He points out that a very large number of conspiracy claims have turned out to be true, and that there appear to be strong relationships between many as-yet-unsolved “state crimes against democracy.” An obvious example is the link between the JFK and RFK assassinations, which both paved the way for presidencies that continued the Vietnam War. According to DeHaven-Smith, we should always discuss the “Kennedy assassinations” in the plural, because the two killings appear to have been aspects of the same larger crime. Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed “conspiracy theory” label impedes cognitive function. She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief. In the same issue of ABS, University of Buffalo professor Steven Hoffman adds that anti-conspiracy people are typically prey to strong “confirmation bias” - that is, they seek out information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, while using irrational mechanisms (such as the “conspiracy theory” label) to avoid conflicting information. The extreme irrationality of those who attack “conspiracy theories” has been ably exposed by Communications professors Ginna Husting and Martin Orr of Boise State University. In a 2007 peer-reviewed article entitled “Dangerous Machinery: ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ as a Transpersonal Strategy of Exclusion,” they wrote: “If I call you a conspiracy theorist, it matters little whether you have actually claimed that a conspiracy exists or whether you have simply raised an issue that I would rather avoid… By labeling you, I strategically exclude you from the sphere where public speech, debate, and conflict occur.” But now, thanks to the internet, people who doubt official stories are no longer excluded from public conversation; the CIA’s 44-year-old campaign to stifle debate using the “conspiracy theory” smear is nearly worn-out. In academic studies, as in comments on news articles, pro-conspiracy voices are now more numerous - and more rational - than anti-conspiracy ones. No wonder the anti-conspiracy people are sounding more and more like a bunch of hostile, paranoid cranks. KB/HSN
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/insights-into-the-personalities-conspiracy-theorists/[h=1]Insights into the Personalities of Conspiracy Theorists[/h]Psychologists find that distrust of authority and low agreeableness are among factors underlying the willingness to believe
By Caitlin Shure | Aug 8, 2013
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Flickr/Upside of Inertia[h=3]More on this Topic[/h]
Conspiracy theories and scientific theories attempt to explain the world around us. Both apply a filter of logic to the complexity of the universe, thereby transforming randomness into reason. Yet these two theoretical breeds differ in important ways. Scientific theories, by definition, must be falsifiable. That is, they must make reliable predictions about the world; and if those predictions turn out to be incorrect, the theory can be declared false. Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are tough to disprove. Their proponents can make the theories increasingly elaborate to accommodate new observations; and, ultimately, any information contradicting a conspiracy theory can be answered with, “Well sure, that’s what they want you to think.”
Despite their unfalsifiable nature, conspiracy theories attract significant followings. Not all theorists, it seems, hold their “truths” to the standards of conventional science. And scientists are beginning to understand the types of personalities that buy into more extreme and unlikely theories. Research reveals that conspiracy theorists tend to share a core set of traits, regardless of their conspiracy of choice. Low self-esteem, for example, may characterize both those who believe that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and those who think that Britain’s royal family consists of reptilian aliens.
For a more in-depth account, see “What a Hoax” by Sander van der Linden in the September/October issue of Scientific American MIND.
DA VINCI'S DISCIPLES
Credit: Courtesy of Jez Elliot
The theory:
Some or all of the claims made in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code, are true.
Studies say:
Even theories billed as fiction can attract a following. A survey conducted in 2005 revealed that 64 percent of respondents who read The Da Vinci Code believed to some extent that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene had spawned a secret bloodline. Willingness to believe in this conspiracy may be related to what researchers call “terror management theory,” which holds that subscribing to such grand dogma can assuage fears related to mortality. Indeed, a 2011 study found an association between belief in Da Vinci-esque conspiracies and anxiety about death.
AMELIA EARHART
Credit: Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Harris & Ewing Collection Collection
The theory:
The disappearance of aviators Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan has bred an array of conspiracy theories ranging from the optimistic (Earhart survived and lived in New Jersey until 1982) to the extraterrestrial (the duo was abducted by aliens).
Studies say:
In a study of 914 adults in London, University of Westminster's Viren Swami andAdrian Furnham of University College London found that 4.5 percent of respondents espoused an alien abduction theory, 5.5 percent believed the two were spies taken down by the Japanese, and only 32 percent endorsed a relatively undramatic account that the plane crashed into the Pacific after running out of gas. Further, researchers found that respondents who believed in Earhart conspiracy theories had lower self-esteem, were more likely to be cynical toward politics, were less agreeable and gave themselves lower ratings of intelligence
SPAWNING A "TRUTH MOVEMENT"
Credit: Courtesy of diking
The theory:
Numerous outlandish narratives exist surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. In many of these stories, the U.S. government knew about the attacks ahead of time; in some, they even helped orchestrate the tragedy.
Studies say:
A second study by Viren Swami and colleagues found that belief in a 9/11 conspiracy was associated with political cynicism and a general tendency toward believing in conspiracies. This latter finding supports what psychologists call a “monological belief system,” in which any and all events can be explained by a web of interconnected conspiracies.
INFECTIOUS IDEAS
Credit: Courtesy of Michael Irving
The theory:
HIV was created by government-funded scientists as a bioweapon to extinguish certain minority populations.
Studies say:
Conspiracy theories can sometimes arise as a means of making sense of an otherwise senseless tragedy. In this way, theories about the HIV epidemic may help people cope with fear of the virus or the passing of loved ones afflicted by disease-related illness. Though assigning blame may be therapeutic to some people, such attribution has been linked with risky sexual behavior, negative attitudes about medication and lower treatment adherence among those infected with the disease.
DIANA and OSAMA (and 2Pac and ELVIS)
Credit: Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Exit Art's "Reactions" Exhibition Collection
The theory:
Osama bin Laden was dead prior to the U.S. raid on his compound. Also, he is still alive.
Studies say:
A study in 2012 by Michael J. Wood and his colleagues at the University of Kent found that those who believed Bin Laden was dead prior to American intervention are more likely to believe he’s currently alive. Similarly, authors found that those who think Princess Diana faked her death are more likely to believe she was murdered. So, which is it? Dead or alive? Research suggests that such contradictory narratives are linked by an underlying distrust of authority. Among conspiracy theorists, it seems, this suspicion is strong enough to overpower traditional life-death logic.
FAKE SCIENCE
Credit: Courtesy of Kathryn Hansen/NASA
The theory:
Scientists are not to be trusted. The 1969 moon landing was produced on a Hollywood movie set. And global warming is a conspiracy between the government and scientists to achieve world domination.
Studies say:
Polls estimate that anywhere from 6 to 25 percent of the general population believes the moon landing was faked, and 37 percent of Americans suspect global warming is a hoax. Although theories of earth and moon seem worlds apart, they are linked by a general rejection of science wherein distrust of one scientific claim predicts distrust of others. Researchers have found, for example, that people who reject climate science are also more likely to reject evidence that smoking causes cancer. But that’s just, y’know, according to science, and who believes that stuff, anyway?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-conspiracy-theory-director/The Conspiracy Theory Detector
How to tell the difference between true and false conspiracy theories
By Michael Shermer | Nov 17, 2010
Illustration by Emiliano PonziThis past September 23 a Canadian 9/11 "truther" confronted me after a talk I gave at the University of Lethbridge. He turned out to be a professor there who had one of his students filming the “confrontation.” By early the next morning the video was online, complete with music, graphics, cutaways and edits apparently intended to make me appear deceptive (search YouTube for “Michael Shermer, Anthony J. Hall”). “You, sir, are not skeptical on that subject—you are gullible,” Hall raged. "We can see that the official conspiracy theory is discredited....It is very clear that the official story is a disgrace, and people who go along with it like you and who mix it in with this whole Martian/alien thing is discrediting and a shame and a disgrace to the economy and to the university." [sic]* Hall teaches globalization studies and believes that 9/11 is just one in a long line of conspiratorial actions by those in power to suppress liberties and control the world.
Conspiracy theories are a dollar a dozen. While in Calgary on that same trip, I met a politician who told me that he believes the fluoridation of water is the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the public. Others have regaled me for hours with their breathless tales of who really killed JFK, RFK, MLK, Jr., Jimmy Hoffa and Princess Diana, along with the nefarious goings on of the Federal Reserve, the New World Order, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, Yale University’s secret society Skull and Bones, the Knights Templar, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers and the Learned Elders of Zion. It would take Madison Square Garden to hold them all for a world-domination meeting.
Nevertheless, we cannot just dismiss all such theories out of hand, because real conspiracies do sometimes happen. Instead we should look for signs that indicate a conspiracy theory is likely to be untrue. The more that it manifests the following characteristics, the less probable that the theory is grounded in reality:
The fact that politicians sometimes lie or that corporations occasionally cheat does not mean that every event is the result of a tortuous conspiracy. Most of the time stuff just happens, and our brains connect the dots into meaningful patterns.*Erratum (12/6/10): In this quote the word "economy" should be "academy". Also, the [sic] annotation should be disregarded.
- Proof of the conspiracy supposedly emerges from a pattern of “connecting the dots” between events that need not be causally connected. When no evidence supports these connections except the allegation of the conspiracy or when the evidence fits equally well to other causal connections—or to randomness—the conspiracy theory is likely to be false.
- The agents behind the pattern of the conspiracy would need nearly superhuman power to pull it off. People are usually not nearly so powerful as we think they are.
- The conspiracy is complex, and its successful completion demands a large number of elements.
- Similarly, the conspiracy involves large numbers of people who would all need to keep silent about their secrets. The more people involved, the less realistic it becomes.
- The conspiracy encompasses a grand ambition for control over a nation, economy or political system. If it suggests world domination, the theory is even less likely to be true.
- The conspiracy theory ratchets up from small events that might be true to much larger, much less probable events.
- The conspiracy theory assigns portentous, sinister meanings to what are most likely innocuous, insignificant events.
- The theory tends to commingle facts and speculations without distinguishing between the two and without assigning degrees of probability or of factuality.
- The theorist is indiscriminately suspicious of all government agencies or private groups, which suggests an inability to nuance differences between true and false conspiracies.
- The conspiracy theorist refuses to consider alternative explanations, rejecting all disconfirming evidence and blatantly seeking only confirmatory evidence to support what he or she has a priori determined to be the truth.
<font color="#000000"><span style="font-family: Georgia"><em>[video=youtube;I5NRfvAMk2c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5NRfvAMk2c[/video]
http://conspiracypsychology.com/2013/09/11/conspiracy-distractions/[h=2]Conspiracy distractions[/h]Posted on September 11, 2013 by Rob Brotherton
[I wrote this article two years ago, on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. It was originally published in The Skeptic magazine.]
On the morning of September 11th, 2011, New York City solemnly remembered the thousands of people who lost their lives in the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of ten years ago. At the newly completed memorial where the Twin Towers once stood in Lower Manhattan, the names of the 2,977 people who died in the towers, the Pentagon, and on the hijacked airplanes were read by family members and friends. Their voices reverberated for blocks around the subdued streets of the financial district.
But two blocks from the Ground Zero memorial, opposite the peace-ribbon-covered railings of St. Paul’s Chapel at the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street, the victims’ names were drowned out by a general rabble punctuated by chants of “controlled demolition, 9-11” and “three buildings, two planes”. Here dozens of people were gathered wearing identical black t-shirts with the logo ‘9/11 was an inside job!’ and armed with placards, banners, fliers and DVDs to give to strangers. Many passers-by stopped to listen to the chants and rhetoric of the ‘Truthers’, to start conversations or arguments with them, or simply to take pictures and videos of the curious gathering with camera phones.
These street-rallies have become an annual occurrence, an uninvited guest accompanying the official 9/11 memorial events each year, distracting from the real grief and pain still felt by many New Yorkers. This year may have been their strongest showing yet. Many of the ‘Truthers’ had travelled from other parts of the U.S.; some had flown in from overseas just to be part of the demonstration. After ten years the 9/11 conspiracist movement is perhaps stronger than ever. Yet ten years of extensive investigations have not produced a single scrap of credible evidence to back up the conspiracist claims; no verified traces of explosives in either the Twin Towers or WTC 7, no evidence that Bin Laden or other members of al-Qaeda were employees of the C.I.A., no evidence of any member of the U.S. government conspiring to bring about the events which unfolded. By now we can be reasonably sure that the conspiracy theories are not true. Yet the theorists continue to make a lot of noise and garner popular support.
The conspiracist worldview paints the world in black and white terms – the valiant and righteous conspiracy theorists battling against the monolithic and psychotically evil conspiracy. But reality is shades of grey. While the U.S. government is probably not the perpetrator of an evil conspiracy, neither is it blameless. There were things that could and should have been done differently leading up to 9/11. We know, for instance, that the C.I.A. had intelligence that two of the hijackers were living in the U.S for months before the attacks. The F.B.I. would have had the authority to investigate the men if they knew of their presence on U.S. soil. One C.I.A. agent repeatedly emailed his superiors specifically requesting permission to pass this information on to the F.B.I. His emails went unanswered.
The problem was not conspiracy within the government, but incompetence. Endemic lack of inter-agency communication – failure to divulge information to those who most needed it – rendered everyone blind to the clear and present danger right in front of their eyes, and meant that essential actions which could have thwarted the plans were not taken. Mistakes were made, and by calling attention to them we may be able to prevent the same mistakes from being made in the future. However, according to those in the know, the network of U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies is now more complex and convoluted than ever, with ever-increasing levels of bureaucracy and redundancy. These real issues receive much less attention from the public than the conspiracy theories.
By painting over the grey areas of reality and making scapegoats of imagined conspirators, conspiracy theories distract attention from real and potentially rectifiable issues. We can’t combat a conspiracy which doesn’t exist, but we can force those in charge to learn from their mistakes.
Rob Brotherton
NYC
September 12th, 2011
