I was just reading with mild interest another GD thread about the JFK assassination.
The thought occurred to me that the US seems to have by far the most high profile well known conspiracy theories. Particularly in the sense that the CT’s are known outside of the US itself.
The big ones for instance includes,
You have the JFK Assassination,
the Moon Landings, (sort of an international event true, but the CT around it seems to be centred in the US)
9/11 of course
In Australia, the biggest and closest event I can think of that gets even close is the disappearance of Harold Holt. He was our Prime Minister in the 60’s, and just disappeared while swimming at a beach, presumed drowned. His body was never found though, which has spawned a long standing CT that he was picked up by a chinese submarine and whisked away. Even that is generally treated with amusement by your average citizen.
I can’t think of any other CT’s from any other country that come even close to the high profile ones from America.
Just an interesting thought. Is there something in the American psyche or the social makeup that spawns these CT’s maybe?
That said, from observation most of the ones in other countries tend to be about America. Either buying into US-spawned CTs, or blaming the US for completely natural phenomena, e.g. the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Some of this nonsense has been encouraged by our own intelligence agencies which want people to believe they are all powerful, and some of it by our enemies intelligence agencies which want people to believe we are all powerful and evil.
Then there are also the stupid conspiracies we actually were involved in. For instance poisoning Castro’s cigars and MKULTRA.
I think conspiracy theories are pretty much fueled by aggrieved factions of a population nursing a grudge, an inferiority complex, or both. The US has plenty of those, as does Europe; but I get the impression that the latter’s conspiracy theories are considered more actively & politically dangerous, and not a matter for light discussion or popular entertainment. Maybe it’s Australia that is the outlier and relatively blessed in this regard.
Doesn’t seem like that to me. Maybe the US has more believers in nutjob conspiracies, but Australia has plenty. Way too many, if you ask me.
In the US, paranoia about Big Brother seems to have been promoted by the right wing corporate-apologist faction as part of the let’s-strip-the-gummint-of-all-power thing. I don’t actually think the US has more stupid people than anywhere else, I think it’s that the stupid people feel a bit more secure in voicing their stupidity because it’s been pandered to and cultivated by a powerful faction of the establishment.
Which isn’t to say that what passes for a left wing in the US isn’t also riddled with paranoid conspiracies - the WTC “inside job” and Moon “hoax” seem to be widely believed by idiots across the political spectrum. Which is true here in Australia, and no doubt everywhere else, too.
Yes, the cultural dominance of the US. We all have heard of their conspiracy theories because we’ve all watched their series, and their movies, and sung their songs. But because of that same dominance, we get things like European or Australian movies set in the US, because that means a large amount of cultural shorthand (plus we’re convinced that they’re nuts, those Americans - stories which wouldn’t make sense set in MyTown make sense set Over There At That Strange Place).
Plus, they are more likely to take those things seriously and not as a mere exercise in “what if”. Other countries are more likely to treat conspiracy theories as a source of jokes; they actually want politicians to base policy on them.
There are more conspiracy theories that are about something in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean that Americans are more likely to create conspiracy theories. For instance, I’ve read that the reason that the Italian prosecutor thought that it was plausible to add Amanda Knox and her boyfriend to the people who were responsible for the murder of their roommate was the Italian tendency to believe conspiracy theories about anything (a greater tendency than exists in the U.S., according to the article that I read). It wasn’t enough that one person had already been shown to be responsible for the murder. The prosecutor felt that he had to show that it was also a conspiracy by some more people.
American people and institutions appear in conspiracy theories more because American people and institutions are perceived as being influential. To some extent they are, but there’s an tendency by everyone to treat them as being more influential than they actually are. This tendency is true everywhere, not just in the U.S. I don’t think that Americans are any more likely to believe in conspiracy theories.
ETA, GAL and 3-11 aren’t conspiracy theories. I mean, unless you think that the Oklahoma bombing and Contra are conspiracy theories. If you do, we may be able to direct you to some nice headologist in your area…
And there aren’t any conspiracy theories surrounding ETA, I suppose? If I read it correctly, it looks as if members of the former ruling party are basically accusing Spain’s security forces of collaborating with a terrorist group to throw it out of power. Heady stuff, I wish we had such juicy conspiracies on our side of the Atlantic . . .
Sigh. That wasn’t a conspiracy theory, that was the first reaction, not only of one politician who happened to say it on TV, but of pretty much everybody including yours truly, my family, the Madrid coworkers who were with me in New Jersey when the bombs exploded, etc. Literal quote from one of those coworkers, to general nods: esos cabrones de ETA, esta vez se han pasado. I’m not going to try and translate that, since you know so much more about Spanish culture than I do you should be able to understand it.
It lasted a few hours, and nobody has ever taken it seriously once the evidence started coming in. The only people who’ve mentioned that theory again in Spain have been PSOE politicians using it to attack PP ones - as if it hadn’t been what the whole country had thought of at first. And not even those PSOE politicians were serious about it, they were just trying to use anything for potshots. The only other people I’ve seen trot out that poor aborted horse are Dopers.
Hey, good for the goose, good for the gander. Point me to any serious national politician in the US who believes in WTC, JFK or other far out conspiracies. But you assert that our politicians are building political platforms on the Grassy Knoll. That’s interesting.
All but one or two of the Congressional Republican leadership made statements implying their support for Birtherism when it was at the peak of its popularity. They were positively Clintonesque in the care they used in constructing their sentences, so they could deny actually supporting the nutcase CT, while sounding like they agrred with the nutcase CT, and the nutcase voters who supported it. I’m sure John Boehner says he does not support crazy CTs, and “I take him at his word.” :rolleyes:
The US House of Respresentatives had a select committee investigate famous assassinations in the late 70s. A lot of tax dollars went into this, and all they accomplished was adding a bit more fuel to the stupid JFK assassination CT. I hope that idiocy dies with the last Baby Boomer, or a lot sooner.
I wonder if it might be something to do with size. Because the US is so huge, in terms of both size and population, it could feel very unmanageable, psychologically, and the government could feel very distant and dislocated. I can see that situation predisposing people to conspiracy theories. There’s this immensely powerful, inaccessible organisation somewhere out there, making decisions for you, which is unsettling; and you want to feel some kind of control and connection, so you want to believe that you know what’s actually going on.
Ireland is tiny, and everyone feels like politicians are very nearby and accessible. I don’t move in political circles at all, but I’ve met a couple of politicians along the way. One used to drink in the same pub as us. Another one let Widget pat his horse. When I was a teenager I was over at one of my now-TDs’ house because his brother knew my brother and we wanted to see their puppies. They don’t feel like faraway, all-powerful entities; they’re just people from around the corner. This makes it harder to think of them as part of some complex, sinister conspiracy.
Most of the conspiracy theories around here involve bribery, corruption and property developers. And they mostly turn out to be true.
Also, our government is much, much less powerful than the US government. There’s a general sense that if they tried to do something conspiracy-ish, they’d probably make a bollix of it. The US government, on the other hand…it’s much more plausible that they could manage a conspiracy without screwing it up.