I have to mention here that I like to always point to what the “champions” of the posters said. Sometimes they are not really saying what they think they do, it seems to me that **Defero **does not realize that Chomsky is not really helping his position. Chomsky concentrates on mainstream media reports, propaganda and biases rather than secretive coalitions of individuals.
True enough. I’m a good bit more curious, however, to see how the OP defends what seems to be the main thrust of his OP or if he abandons it for vague talk about the evils of Christianity.
A very good post, Richard. I especially liked this part:
Not only does this cut to the chase on why humans feel the need to create and/or believe CTs, it also sparked an idea in my mind that had never occurred to me before.
That is: religion and belief in the existence of God(s), is merely a massive and ancient Conspiracy Theory.
Actually, a good example of how to counter conspiratoid thinking can be found in the recent rollout of the H1N1 vaccine. The CDC, scientists and public health workers did a pretty good job countering the antivax rumors and lies, and the key was that they did it promptly and made sure that the facts circulated on a wide scale. You can’t allow such conspiracy nonsense to fester without a determined effort to debunk it. Political campaigns have also learned this lesson about smears generated by the opposition and its supporters.
So while “openness” is a virtue for government and other targets of conspiracy drivel, it’s just as important to have a rapid response mechanism to fight the paranoid fear-mongers.
Internet presence is a two-way street. You can’t eliminate the CT’ers, but they can be marginalized and their ability to spread poisonous nonsense limited.
And yes, I’m one of those poor deluded folks who think that facts are important. When they’re ignored is when scorn and derision become useful tools. 
(missed edit window)
Oh crap! It looks like **Defero **had beaten me to the punch (post #32) on the whole “religion as CT” thing. Hmmmm… but I still haven’t read all of this thread yet…
Ok, in my humble opinion responding requires sifting through a great deal of ad homonym and psychoanalysis, but there are some points that remain which include a few that are within the scope outlined in the initial post. I’ll address them, even the ones out of scope, but I am not a CT proponent, nor an expert on their validity, so I can and will only use official, reputable sources that are non-controversial. I use WIKI as cited throughout with the full knowledge that it is far from uniformly reliable. If the sub-referenced citations within the WIKI strike anyone as controversial I’ll replace them in a heartbeat upon request.
I. First: that conspiracy theories were something like as common in the 1950s as they are now. I demonstrate that this is as absolutely false in every proposed case as it is in general.
-
The Roswell Incident. That would be a valid example of a CT, and a good and quacky one at that. However, since it’s not from the 50’s (it’s origin as a CT is apparently the 70s) and since it very much supports my thesis of establishment cause and culpability, it is a dually unwise choice.
“In 1947, the United States Air Force issued a press release stating that a “flying saucer” had crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. This press release was quickly withdrawn, and officials stated that a weather balloon had been misidentified. The Roswell case quickly faded even from the attention of ufologists until the 1970s”. So in addition to it being an official government report of a flying saucer it wasn’t on anyone’s nut-radar until about 25 years later. So, A. not from 50s; B. story sources back to government itself. Don’t know anything about it other than what the Wikis say, but scratch that one as a not a 50s CT and yes it is of establishment origin. So 0 for 1. (Sorry xtisme, I’m not a CT buff so I didn’t know this either). -
McCarthy witch-hunts. They do last into the mid 50s, but regrettably another one for me, and probably one of the most classic examples of my thesis, both as an establishment created and propagated affair and as a conspiracy that was declassified under FOIA in 1995 (i.e. so it’s not a theory anymore either). From wiki:
Now, isn’t that the just the most classic EVER case of a government gone secretly mad and generating piles of hysteria and CTs? If not for FOIA you would have been able to argue the fallacy of pinning that one on a dumb public. As it was, it is very, very common knowledge that it was ONLY public outrage which stopped it. (The opposite of your people are stupid thesis). So 0 for 2. I think that one goes to Finn from right after the rules-compliant sentence “I see you’re peddling pure, weapons-grade ignorance here.” and just prior to a long discourse on 9-11 apropos of nothing I’ve said anything about or care anything about.
3,4. Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and certain opponents of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Not 50s. 0 for 4. (Marley, would it be possible to source these either to the 50’s or to the 30+ percent popularity of the mid-popularity CT’s today? I would accept even just the latter and count it as 1. I don’t really know anything about either CT.)
Continued…
Finn also points out that Chomsky doesn’t believe in the 9-11 CT. Of course he doesn’t. Why would he? What’s there to believe in? He’s a completely reasonable person, and the irrelevance of CT validity is very much the central part of my thesis here and his.
Finn also points out that he doesn’t believe in the JFK conspiracy. I should think not, as there is no JFK conspiracy anymore is there? From wiki “In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded that there were at least four shots fired and that it was probable that a conspiracy existed.” The House Select Committee on Assassinations is the most recent and thus far final word on the JFK assassination. It is the present official government viewpoint. It unequivocally rules out any possibility of a single shooter and alleges a probable conspiracy. So I don’t see how the JFK any longer can be considered a conspiracy theory. It is merely one of those cases where the government position has converged with what was previously considered a CT. Therefore it may be in your best interest to avoid the JFK “CT” like the plague in the future. I actually did not know this until now! But then I’m not a CT buff.
So that covers all attempts to imply that there were conspiracy theories abounding in the 1950s. In reality, the 1950 was a very “square” and “tame” decade and nearly everyone towed the line. Combined with extensive poll data near the start of the thread, my point stands so far. Maybe someone can come up with a 50s CT that enjoyed wide currency. If so, great, you’re aiming for about 30% or better public belief. Until then, we have what appears to be manifold increase in CT popularity exactly per my statement.
II. Christianity. Definitely not a CT! (And yes, I kinda figured that, lol!) Just wasn’t able to resist drawing attention to my subjective perception of the excited heresy-like reactions, and pointing out that the surest way to catapult a fringe idea into pre-eminence is via knee-jerk, suppressive and condemnatory tactics. Just as the surest way to dissipate it is to air it out peacefully and unemotionally. [Which was then perhaps unwisely offered as advice on how to stop losing the fight against CTs across the nation, and for which I apologize.] But, definitely not a CT! But, back to the actual scope of the thread:
III. Almost on topic now:
So we are converging on real discussion. I would argue that other than the Net and Future Shock arguments, the rest are time-invariant, and do not explain the massive upsurge in popularity mentioned in pt I which as yet still stands unchallenged. Other factors, I think, include
- that for the first time whistle-blowers have an instantly wide audience
- images don’t have to be “smuggled out of” war zones as they did in earlier times
- corporate/government control of the media is massively less overarching (torrents apparently figure prominently in CT dissemination, modernized readers use the internet for news almost exclusively)
- people with alternative views do not feel they “must be the only one”
- perception of government and corporate transparency and benevolence is at an all-time low leaving room for people to speculate wildly
- government and corporate uptake of public dollars in the last several years is greater than at all previous times combined
- financial decline makes people angry and causes them to ask “what has gone wrong” while recalling that virtually all mainstream news articles and talking-head economists failed to predict the crisis
We’re getting there. Emotions are lowering. Dialog is flowering. I appreciate the effort and realize that this is a really tough, taboo area, even just to skirt around the edges and ramifications of as I am seeking to do. Hope I didn’t miss anything. Please remind me if I have.
My entire point was that they are older than the 1950s. The Protocols are more than a century old. I don’t know how widely believed they were at that time, or at any time since. Allegations about FDR and (for example) Jewish bankers date to his administration in the 1930s. And if we go further back - I think FinnAgain made reference to this - you can find people blaming Jews for the spread of the Black Death. I think you missed my comment about real, non-metaphorical witch hunts as well. All of these theories flourish in an environment that was decidedly non-modern, where information was much harder to come by. They took root in ignorance.
Please note that the first block of points appearing after III. above are Finn’s and were intended to be in a quote box.
Fixed that for you.
Thanks! Also, I respect your point about the historical booms/busts in CTs. I’m attempting to localize it to something we can study very numerically and that pertains to us and our present culture as much as possible. I submitted the interval of 1950s (a very low point, or CT bust) and now (the highest point in modern history?) and here in the West. The response was that my claim was absurd. I hope I demonstrated the contrary. I remain open to more examples. Hopefully some of them start to have citations.
And the ultimate CT, the Illuminati was also from centuries before. Also, there were various CT’s about the Knights Templar, the Mason’s, and various other groups. In the US there were all kinds of funky CT’s involving the Mason’s and the FF’s.
The key point that Defero ignored, however, is the global communications and data sharing capability of today vs any other time in human history. CT’s of the past were purely local affairs…or, perhaps, CT’s withing a city, region less commonly, an entire nation. The fact that they are seemingly more prevalent now has more to do with the fact that you can actually poll people about it on such a scale (or would even think to ask them about such a thing), and that CT’s can now go international with a well composed viral video or even a post on a message board. We all have access to levels of communication that were un-dreamed of in the 50’s…so, it’s only logical that something that’s always been with us (i.e. CT’s) are with us now, but a lot bigger and more accessible to a much wider audience.
-XT
But you haven’t demonstrated that belief in conspiracy theories was any lower in the 1950s, and your argument is a nonstarter until you back that up. We know belief in those kinds of theories is pretty high now.
First, pay attention, it was me who pointed that out.
Second, you have no idea.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/wrone.htm
Virtually every year there is still a discussion on conspiracies related to the assassination or the persons involved.
Hardly.
In the 40’s we had many conspiracies related to WWII, starting with the infamous “Roosevelt knew the Pearl Harbor attack was coming”, the “Philadelphia experiment” conspiracy also initiated in the 40’s
The 60’s can be considered a good competitor to more recent days for having originated many conspiracies that still crop up today (moon landings were faked for example)
http://www.life.com/image/51970887/in-gallery/33572/the-31-wildest-conspiracy-theories
It’s probably been mentioned (sorry, hard to read back using my phone), but as for the 50’s, there were the McCarthy CT’s (Communists had infiltrated to the highest levels of the government, etc), and a lot of UFO CT’s in the US, UK and, oddly, the Soviet Union (among other countries). In fact, far from the placid, boring time with everyone in lock step, it was really a golden age of CT’s (much as the 60’s was as well)…many CT’s from that time are actually still with us since many had their roots in this time period.
-XT
You are contradicting yourself one sentence to the next.
His being a “reasonable” person would have nothing to do with belief or disbelief in a CT if its validity had nothing to do with it. But as he pointed out himself in the clip that was already linked, its validity is exactly at issue when rejecting it.
Then use the search function and find a few Dope threads where that tired old bullshit is eviscerated. You might also want to learn the definition of a CT. Just because the authorities promote it does not make it a non-CT, see, for instance, the Red Scare or the Lavender Scare.
Your argument is risibly failing. You just provided your own cite for the fact that there was a massive CT perpetrated by McCarthy, with government approval and backing… as an attempt to debunk the fact that there was a massive CT perpetrated by McCarthy, with government approval and backing.
You are still peddling weapons grade ignorance, only now you’ve upped the dose of irony in your argument. And no, public reaction to McCarthyism was largely due to his attacking the integrity of the US Army so soon after WW II, much of American society was still quite captivated with the idea of commie bogiemen and it wasn’t until McCarthy’s persona and tactics began to turn people off did the Commies Under the Bed! CT begin to face serious challenges to its popularity.
You still haven’t come right out and stated your point, so far you’ve been Just Asking Questions. State your point, clearly and unambiguously. Of course, when pretty much everybody reading along notes that your points have been demolished or remain unsupported on all counts, you might want to consider whether your praise for your own argument is justified.
More epistemologicaly unsound nonsense. First, you have to show that the rate has actually risen, the burden of proof is on you. Second, you need to do more than show that there exists a correlation, as others have provided much stronger explanations for a potential causal relationship than “let’s not look at the validity and just assume that they’re valid enough that we can look at their mere existence as proving something about valid distrust and reactions to it.”
Even if that was a given, there’s no reason to assume that valid distrust can rationally lead to wildly irrational flights of fantasy like JFK CT’s, 9/11 CT’s, International Banker CT’s, etc, etc, etc.
Oh, what a witty tactic, you argued for something you knew wasn’t true in order to tweak the people who were reacting to your argument. Good show.
By the way, cut this shit about “emotion”. If you can’t stick to the points raised without playing Internet Psychologist, please start a Pit thread.
You misspelled ‘unproven, unsupported, and unexplained by any causal relationship.’
C-c-c-c-c-c-ombo breaker!
I mean, cite?
Please show us the major upswing in conspiracy theories following every major recession, depression, etc… in, say, the last 100 years.
- No, it isn’t. We’ve dealt with this same shit many, many times on this board.
- No, it isn’t, pointing out how people are stupid is hardly taboo.
- Stop skirting and come right out with what you’re actually trying to argue. It’s about time you flesh out and support your own OP.
I have mentioned this before (in another context), but I think it would be very helpful if schools had courses in critical thinking - what evidence is, how to analyze it, what constitutes valid research etc.
This would enable young people to be smarter consumers, of both products and ideas.
I see such courses as a more practical means of countering sloppy conspiratorial thinking than vague proposals to increase government “openness”.
Long, long ago there was a cabal of powerful people who manipulated situations for their own ends…
Of course, they were the pantheon of Greek gods. I have to admit, I hadn’t previously linked religion and conspiracy theories, but now they both look to me like drawing comfort from the idea that someone is in charge and life isn’t random.
Let’s go back to the actual OP:
Bolding in the original, underscoring mine
The opening paragraph is probably OK up to the point where I have underscored. At that point, it runs into a serious problem that is partly based on begging the question and partly created by implying some things without being sufficiently explicit of what was implied, (this giving a LOT of wiggle room to play games in further discussion).
I would agree that a lack of true and complete information will encourage conspiracy theories, but the way that the sentence is constructed implies that the only reason that information might not be available is if it is withheld or obscured by the government or big companies. There are dozens of reasons why information might not be true and available ranging from simple confusion at the point of origin, deliberate obfuscation by people attempting to hide things from the government, (as opposed to the government doing the hiding), poor methods of communication, events too complex for a majority of people to grasp without careful instruction, phenomena that contradict major cultural assumptions, and others.
Trying to make a case that it is deliberate government or corporate subterfuge that solely, (or even primarily), feeds conspiracy theories must first successfully eliminate the many other possibilities.
The second underlined statement would appear to be the point of the OP, (although the rude behavior and dancing about in the intervening posts has obscured that point).
Fine. Let us see the evidence that government and corporations are the sole causes of such conspiracy theories.
So far, we have the ludicrous notion that the government caused the Red Scare when any decent student of history knows that McCarthy and all his predecessors back to Wilson and the Parker raids and even before did not invent the fears of government overthrow but were, themselves, influenced by the fears that existed in society.
The notion that the government invented the hoax about moon landings needs to have some shred of proof provided for it.
The notion that a rampaging CT regarding the JFK assasination that was later embraced, (with no serious evidence), by members of a Congress that wanted to look like they were addressing the concerns of the citizenry, when it was already a full-blown CT long before Congress got in on it, does not make it a government consipiracy. (And, of course, the fact that the grandstanding congresscritters who signed off on that report pretty much got it all wrong, to begin with, hardly means that it is not a CT–it is.)
The government had nothing to do with the CT of the 1950s that promoting the fluoridation of water was an attempt to hurt our bodily essences. All the information was correct and available from the government and news sources; fearful people simply chose to ignore it.
The government had nothing to do with the nonsense in the 1950s, (promoted initially by Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent), about comic books being deliberately written to corrupt America’s youth.
Now, is trust of the government lower today than in previous decades? Quite possibly. Does a general fearfulness among the citizenry promote Conspiracy Theories and does a mistrust of government feed into that? Again, quite possibly.
However, the general break in U.S. society with citizens losing trust in the government occurred at the convergence of the lies told regarding the Vietnam War and the abuse of power by the Nixon White House. There had always been a certain amount of distrust of government prior to that time, (see fluoridation and any discussion of taxes), it was simply exacerbated by those events.
In addition, CTs regarding the moon landings or even the WTC/Pentagon attacks are not based on deliberate misinformation from the government or major corporations. The actual information is out there in sufficient depth and with sufficient clarity for anyone who bothers to look to see the actual situations. The perpetuation of CTs on those or similar subjects are not due to lying or manipulation by governemnt or big companies, but by a willfull desire on the parts of fearful people to choose to disbelieve actual evidence when it is available.
Your thesis was that government and industry are solely responsible for Conspiracy Theories and you have provided absolutely no evidence to support your thesis.
Would you like to provide some evidence? (Preferably in a polite fashion.)
Religion and CTs may both be attractive to people for some similar reasons*, but religions generally fail to actually qualify as CTs for the simple reason that they usually don’t imagine that there’s a conspiracy of those in power in place to hide the truth. Without that, all you have is an ordinary theory.
- though obviously religion has other weapons in its popularity arsenal too, the most obvious ones being that religions tend to offer people a chance at salvation, ultimate justice, and/or techniques to supernaturally influence or control the world around them to their benefit. There are few religions that only offer a controlling (malevolent!) force behind the curtain, the way CTs do.