The Trouble with Conspiracy Theories

[Len Colby]

Cliff, et al,

Without referencing anyone in particular and as a matter of general tactical significance:

When the Bunker Street Irregulars cannot lure honorable men and women into their rhetorical traps, and not even absurd name-calling works,...

Amazing that the irony of calling those who disagree with him “the Bunker Street Irregulars” and then (in the same sentence) complain that THEY engage in “absurd name-calling” seems to have been completely lost on “Drago”. Of course this is the same "entity" who managed to completely contradict himself in the span of a few days.

Edited February 23, 2009 by Len Colby

[William Kelly]

Just when you thought this topic was going quiet, along come Tirdad Derakhshani, who hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, conspiracy central.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/200...ent_truths.html

Conspiracy theories becoming self-evident truths

Tirdad Derakhshani is an Inquirer staff writer

Everyone knows that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by an unholy alliance of the Feds, Cosa Nostra, and anti-Castro Cubans; that Princess Diana's car crash was staged by British intelligence; that the invasion of Iraq was never about WMDs. Even if you don't believe these theories, I'd wager you still hold to others like them.

Ours is the age of the conspiracy.

Over the last four decades, more and more Americans have begun to accept conspiracy theories as if they were self-evident truths.

Believers seem unconcerned about the growing chasm between their explanations of such tragedies as Hurricane Katrina (some say the Bush administration purposefully flooded New Orleans' poor, predominantly black neighborhoods) and the official story.

For their part, the news media write off conspiracy theorists out of professional prejudice or class bias, even when their claims may merit investigation. Not all conspiracy theories are fictions.

In an April 2001 Gallup Poll, 81 percent of Americans said President Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy. The numbers have steadily increased since 1963, when 52 percent said Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone.

And, in an alarming commentary on our lack of trust in government, a 2006 Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll found that 36 percent of Americans believe federal officials assisted in the Sept. 11 attacks or did nothing to stop them.

This irrational, contagious fever is supported by an avalanche of often controversial, if dead-serious, books, TV shows, and films, including Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Kiefer Sutherland's terrorist TV thriller, 24, Matt Damon's box-office killers, the Bourne trilogy - not to mention comic strips Doonesbury and Boondocks.

By comparison, a decade ago, the elaborate tales told in The X-Files and Millennium were taken with a grain of salt, if not dismissed.

There's a religious impulse behind the need to ascribe Diana's accident to a cabal of evildoers. Like the Christian notion of Providence, it helps us feel that there must have been some reason or purpose behind such a tragic accident. Some find it unbearable to see the universe as ruled by a play of contingent forces. For some, what we call an accident is merely a veil that hides mysterious motives.

The metaphysical need for meaning becomes dangerous when it hides the impersonal social, political, and economic processes that help define our lives. Raised on stories that locate the center of reality in the individual, we anthropomorphize these processes instead of investigating them.

Consider how we talk about the stock market as if it were a person (of almost divine power). The business pages ascribe it volition, motives - even feelings.

Conspiracy theories, which proliferate during periods of traumatic economic and social shifts, are a real form of protest by citizens angry over a system that makes them feel small, impotent.

Ironically, they end up reinforcing that powerlessness. Like the Greeks who preached amor fati in the face of the crushing power of Fate, conspiracy theories teach political quietism and social apathy. They shift the citizen's responsibility onto an imagined devil and make us self-identify as victims in need of salvation by a mythical hero.

Politicians and would-be demagogues capitalize on the frustration of people alienated from the mainstream by offering them scapegoats. Thus Sen. Joseph McCarthy's crusade against a Communist plot to infiltrate the highest echelons of government, a plot he called "a great conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man."

Conspiracy devotees often talk in apocalyptic terms: They win assent not by appealing to logic but by whipping us into hysteria.

Partisan politics is now waged in conspiracy speech, as Barack Obama learned when some Republicans made a big to-do about his middle name, Hussein. They implied that like Saddam Hussein, Obama must be a bad 'un. (Sarah Palin even suggested the Democrat hung out with terrorists.)

For artists, conspiracy tales can still be a potent form of social critique, as was the case during the golden age of paranoid films - the '70s. Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) was a prescient allegory about the dangers of the surveillance society. Three Days of the Condor (1976), Winter Kills (1979), The Parallax View (1974) The Candidate (1972), and All the President's Men (1976) attacked systemic corruption and abuse of power.

These films often had bleak endings. Instead of offering comfort or closure, they inspired viewers not to hide from their anger. Since then, there has been a massive domestication of the conspiracy theory in the media and pop culture. (A conspiracy? More likely the result of economic and political shifts.)

With a few exceptions, today's conspiracy thrillers do not criticize the system itself. Films such as The Shooter (2007), The Bourne trilogy (2002, 2004, 2007), Wag the Dog (1998) and The Matrix (1999) ascribe corruption to evil persons who have infiltrated the system - which itself stays fundamentally good. The evildoers are invariably defeated, mano a mano, by a hero who perpetuates the myth of radical individualism.

These films offer catharsis and closure - the bad guys are killed or put away. We feel sated, not impelled to take political action to reform perceived corruption.

Most of all, they keep us in a realm of grand fictions that offer only imaginary solutions to real and often intractable problems.

Contact staff writer Tirdad Derakhshani at 215-854-2736 or tirdad@phillynews.com.

[Evan Burton]

I've said it before, but I simply don't understand why anyone on this forum takes Tom Purvis seriously or respects his ridiculous opinions. He is about the only person I've ever met whose theory is more absurd than the official one.

I agree but he is an expert at taking over threads. It is a shame because this could have been an interesting discussion. Especially, if Evan and Len would have been willing to contribute.

John,

I have to apologise for not contributing to this thread... especially as I was the one who started it. I'll try and make some small amends for that.

I don't agree with everything that was said in the article, but I agree with it overall. I can accept conspiracies that involve few people and are relatively simple to accomplish. I can see JFK possibly fitting in there. A couple of extra gunmen to ensure the task is done. Did LHO actually fire off rounds? I just don't know enough. He could have just been having lunch, as he claimed.

9-11 starts to fall outside the simple area. Could a group have posed as Islamic radicals, recruiting and financing the terrorists who carried out the attacks? Yes.

Could a group have replaced aircraft with missiles, planted demolition charges in buildings, etc? No way.

So this is where I agree with Edward Feser. No huge conspiracies involving hundreds of people, such as the Apollo programme.

[John Simkin]

I have to apologise for not contributing to this thread... especially as I was the one who started it. I'll try and make some small amends for that.

I don't agree with everything that was said in the article, but I agree with it overall. I can accept conspiracies that involve few people and are relatively simple to accomplish. I can see JFK possibly fitting in there. A couple of extra gunmen to ensure the task is done. Did LHO actually fire off rounds? I just don't know enough. He could have just been having lunch, as he claimed.

9-11 starts to fall outside the simple area. Could a group have posed as Islamic radicals, recruiting and financing the terrorists who carried out the attacks? Yes.

Could a group have replaced aircraft with missiles, planted demolition charges in buildings, etc? No way.

So this is where I agree with Edward Feser. No huge conspiracies involving hundreds of people, such as the Apollo programme.

I think it is important to distinguish between those involved in a conspiracy and those involved in the cover-up. I agree that “if hundreds of people know details of a conspiracy” it is unlikely to be kept quiet. However, if it is in the interest of those in power to keep details of a conspiracy from the public, then it will use aspects of that structure, for example, the media, to cover-up the conspiracy. For example, the role that Operation Mockingbird has played in the assassination of JFK. Of course, the vast majority of those involved in such a cover-up, will have no idea of what really happened. They probably do not have strong feelings about what they are doing. They are just doing their job.

This is not to say I believe in all conspiracies. In fact, I believe in very few of them. In fact, of the major conspiracies suggested by “researchers” only the JFK case is convincing. However, I do believe that acknowledged conspiracies, such as Watergate and Iran-Contra, have only scrapped the surface of really happened and major figures involved in these events remain unpunished.

The problem with most “conspiracy theorists” is that they seem to believe everything is a conspiracy. They even think this forum is part of a conspiracy.

[Guest]

The problem with most “conspiracy theorists” is that they seem to believe everything is a conspiracy. They even think this forum is part of a conspiracy.

It is indeed a curious mindset and one which of course requires no critical thought at all. More an affectation than a 'theory' in fact. God help you however if you point this out to them

[William Kelly]

The problem with most "conspiracy theorists" is that they seem to believe everything is a conspiracy. They even think this forum is part of a conspiracy.

It is indeed a curious mindset and one which of course requires no critical thought at all. More a affectation than a 'theory' in fact. God help you however if you point this out to them

The biggest falacy is that there is a select group of people, like Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives, who can be defined as "conspiracy theorirsts," as in fact there is no such animal, despite the concerted efforts of people like Colby, Fesser and Tirdad Derakhshani to create them.

One of the most frequently identified and quoted "conspiracy theorists," John Judge, doesn't believe that the WTC was brought down by controlled demolition, or that a plane didn't it the Pentagon, and has taken a heavy rap from those who do.

He does believe that a gunman may have shot at JFK from the sewer, and that the Pentagon was behind the assassination.

When confronted, he now concludes that "we are allowed to believe anything, but know nothing."

The biggest problem with those who Poo Poo conspiracies and conspiracy theorists, especially the JFK assassination, is that they depreciate the fact that political assassination is the most serious threat to our national security today, and the biggest threat to the Obama presidency, and it is so because of the failure to properly resolve the most serious issues on the assassination of JFK.

Oh, and if you insist on calling any group of people "conspiracy theorists" and not include yourself among them, then I insist on calling you a "coincedentialist" who believes that events are random accidents and not devised by the conspiratorial minds of men.

BK

Edited March 2, 2009 by William Kelly

[Guest]

The biggest falacy is that there is a select group of people, like Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives, who can be defined as "conspiracy theorirsts," as in fact there is no such animal

Oh yes there is!

Better perhaps however to call them 'relativists' for whom there are no objective facts just competing subjective opinions. With just one leap inductive reasoning, logic, consistency and evidence can be rejected wholesale and the holocaust can be denied, the Apollo landings become hoaxes, Aids does not exist, Diana was bumped off by the Duke of Edinburgh, Bush masterminded 9/11, fiction becomes fact and lies become research.

It is highly fashionable fueled by new technology and appears rife in the USA where perhaps it appeals to an misplaced sense of 'listening to the other side' but it is not research and ultimately and ironically it supports the status quo. Worse than this it can on occasions takes us to very dark places indeed.

Superficially it may even feel like free speech but it is of course nothing of the sort.

One does not have to be a "coincedentialist" to reject the irrationality of relativism - a stout commitment to academic discipline and conventions will suffice.

Neither is one a 'Neo Con' or supporter of the existing order for rejecting the post modernist twaddle that is relativism. In fact a rejection of relativism is in my view the first step to a radicalism that might just have a chance of achieving something.

[Cliff Varnell]

The biggest falacy is that there is a select group of people, like Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives, who can be defined as "conspiracy theorirsts," as in fact there is no such animal

Oh yes there is!

No, this is a figment of some hyper-active imaginations.

Better perhaps however to call them 'relativists' for whom there are no objective facts just competing subjective opinions. With just one leap inductive reasoning, logic, consistency and evidence can be rejected wholesale and the holocaust can be denied, the Apollo landings become hoaxes, Aids does not exist, Diana was bumped off by the Duke of Edinburgh, Bush masterminded 9/11, fiction becomes fact and lies become research.

I don't think anyone who posts here regularly denies the Holocaust.

Some here may question the moon landings, but I don't -- and I doubt if

"most" do.

AIDS doesn't exist? Where do you dredge this nonsense up?

To lump every marginal conspiracy theory in with the very arguable

challenges to the official stories behind JFK and 9/11 is pure strawman.

This is the central fallacy of Fesser and Simkin's view -- lump all conspiracy

theories together and then attribute all of them to "most" if not "all" researchers.

Andy, John, yours' is indeed a curious critique and one which of course requires

no critical thought at all.

More an affectation than a 'critique' in fact.

[Guest]

Cliff

If you would like to be serious about these matters for a moment you might begin to see them as matters of ideology or perspective - this is in fact the broader and more important point.

[Len Colby]

The biggest falacy is that there is a select group of people, like Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives, who can be defined as "conspiracy theorirsts," as in fact there is no such animal, despite the concerted efforts of people like Colby, Fesser and Tirdad Derakhshani to create them.

Bit of a strawman Bill. A search of my 3056 posts (including this one) turns up only 4 – 6 where I labeled people “conspiracy theorist” or “conspiracy theorists” and only 2 – 3 which could be interpreted as lumping together people who believe such theories. I have probably used the abbreviation abbreviation “CT” but it is too short to search. I normally use the term two ways:

1) to indicate people who support specific conspiracy theories and

2) more rarely people who believe a wide number of such theories.

I defy you to show that I have made a “concerted effort” to show “that there is a select group of people, like Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives, who can be defined as "conspiracy theorirsts,"”

It is true that on one hand while there are people like John Simkin and most if not all the mods who only seem sold on a few such theories (not accepted as proven by most historians) there are others like Jack White who seem to believe just about every such theory that has crossed his doorstep.

[David G. Healy]

[...]

I defy you to show that I have made a “concerted effort” to show “that there is a select group of people, like Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives, who can be defined as "conspiracy theorirsts,"”

[...]

forgive the question, why should any US citizen give a good healthy s*** what foreigners or lost ex-pats opinions are concerning "defined" American conspiracy theorists? You, John Simkin, Andy the bowtie, etc.... have no dog in this beef why do you bother? Hobby? Or just keeping website hit numbers up?

Edited March 3, 2009 by David G. Healy

[John Dolva]

[...]

I defy you to show that I have made a “concerted effort” to show “that there is a select group of people, like Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives, who can be defined as "conspiracy theorirsts,"”

[...]

forgive the question, why should any US citizen give a good healthy s*** what foreigners or lost ex-pats opinions are concerning "defined" American conspiracy theorists? You, John Simkin, Andy the bowtie, etc.... have no dog in this beef why do you bother? Hobby? Or just keeping website hit numbers up?

David that is so funny.

Why should any global citizen give a rats ass what chain any yank chooses to pull? No reason at all, this is about finding a rational world. I wouldn't start looking in the US except to find origins of irrationality. The CIA, for example, is by its very nature conspiratorial, the government that funds it and the popuation that by omission allows it to exist are themselves co-conspirators.

Apart from all that, the insistence on calling ideas or hypothesis 'theories' straight away takes it way out of the scientific and makes an obvious target of ridicule. That in itself s a conspiracy of sorts that 'theorists' happily participate in. It would be so easy to shift the paradigm out of this realm into what this forum at least tries to do, which is to have a semblance of rational discussion of ideas and exchange of information.

[Cliff Varnell]

Cliff

If you would like to be serious about these matters for a moment you might begin to see them as matters of ideology or perspective - this is in fact the broader and more important point.

From this side of the Atlantic your ideological perspective seems oddly askew.

Holocaust denial has nothing to do with challenging the official story of 9/11,

ideologically or otherwise.

This is about the facts in certain crime cases.

Basic, simple facts. Matters of record. Many "conspiracy theories" disregard

matters of record, as do many "coincidence theories."

No side has a monopoly on sloppy research, and poor arguments.

Take, for instance the "official" villain of 9/11 -- Usama bin Laden.

Here's the official FBI webpage for UBL:

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/laden.htm

Notice how they don't say anything about the crimes of 9/11?

The "outside the United States" phrase is used twice.

Then we have this report:

http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters,

(202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not

indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker

Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI.

When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted

web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama

Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence

connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

Since the central claim of the "official story" of 9/11 -- that the hijackers

worked for UBL -- is in doubt, it is reasonable to question other aspects of

the case.

It is unreasonable to conflate the merits of arguments -- or lack thereof -- in

different cases with those arguments challenging 9/11.

These people Simkin described as "most conspiracy theorists" do not exist.

[Evan Burton]

I think it is important to distinguish between those involved in a conspiracy and those involved in the cover-up.

Agreed. There is ample evidence of numerous governments covering up details of an event that do not wish to disclose, or that they wish to keep as low key as possible. I daresay that there is not a government on the planet who has not been guilty of this to some degree. Problem is, that is by definition a conspiracy. So yes - important to distinguish between them.

I agree that “if hundreds of people know details of a conspiracy” it is unlikely to be kept quiet. However, if it is in the interest of those in power to keep details of a conspiracy from the public, then it will use aspects of that structure, for example, the media, to cover-up the conspiracy. For example, the role that Operation Mockingbird has played in the assassination of JFK. Of course, the vast majority of those involved in such a cover-up, will have no idea of what really happened. They probably do not have strong feelings about what they are doing. They are just doing their job.

This is not to say I believe in all conspiracies. In fact, I believe in very few of them. In fact, of the major conspiracies suggested by “researchers” only the JFK case is convincing. However, I do believe that acknowledged conspiracies, such as Watergate and Iran-Contra, have only scrapped the surface of really happened and major figures involved in these events remain unpunished.

The problem with most “conspiracy theorists” is that they seem to believe everything is a conspiracy. They even think this forum is part of a conspiracy.

There's the old saying:

"Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead"

Though what you say is correct (some people are just doing their job, etc) the likelihood of the secret being discovered - deliberately or inadvertently - is directly proportional to the number of people who are involved. Someone who knows nothing directly can cause the disclosure of things that others wanted kept secret.

[Evan Burton]

The biggest falacy is that there is a select group of people, like Democrats or Republicans, or liberals or conservatives, who can be defined as "conspiracy theorirsts," as in fact there is no such animal, despite the concerted efforts of people like Colby, Fesser and Tirdad Derakhshani to create them.

I don't quite agree, Bill. I agree that because you identify with a particular group does not mean you automatically believe in all the various theories. Because you believe that 9/11 was an inside job does not mean you believe there is a JFK conspiracy.

I do believe, however, that there are some people who tend to believe most of the conspiracy theories. These people often have nothing in common except their willingness to believe these theories, no matter how seemingly bizarre the theory is. Upbringing, intelligence, social standing, moral beliefs, etc, are not a common denominator and play no part in why this group holds the opinions they do.