This country was started by an actual conspiracy.
Of course, we refer to the conspirators involved as “founding fathers,” and as a group they met in secret to plot how to rebel against the government. Benjamin Franklin, commenting on the conspiratorial nature of what they were involved in, basically said: We must hang together or surely we’ll hang separately.”
Watergate is another conspiracy that turned out to be true. And, many in this country didn’t believe that Nixon’s administration had done anything wrong… until everyone finally saw that they did.
What happened on 9-11 was also the result of a real conspiracy. Nineteen religious zealots plotted to fly planes into buildings and that’s exactly what they did.
Now, some believe that 9-11 wasn’t what the government says it was. Some think the government actually planned it. Some think the planes were empty. Others think the buildings had to be wired with explosives in order to fall the way they did.
None of those theories are true, none have been substantiated by any credible source. And, I think it’s safe to say that our government didn’t fly planes into the World Trade Center… no more than they created AIDS to exterminate gay people, which was another theory floating around for a while.
However, there’s also Iran-Contra…
Who would have ever thought that Oliver North was actually selling arms to Iran from the White House basement and then laundering the money received in order to illegally funnel it to Nicaraguan rebels? A lot of people, at the time, didn’t believe that “theory” either… until Lt. Colonel North testified and it wasn’t just a theory anymore.
I think pretty much all conspiracy theories sound outlandish when they begin.
Like, how about the Catholic Church covering for hundreds of priests who were molesting thousands of children? That didn’t sound at least outlandish to you when you first heard it?
Most conspiracy theories, however, are not true and the question is how do we know which are potentially real and which are just made up nonsense?
Remember, once a conspiracy theory takes hold, there are many who profit from it, so it’s not like there’s no incentive for some to perpetuate a theory even though they know it’s not true. For example, there are quite a few people who now profit from the QAnon conspiracy theory either by selling merch and/or driving online traffic to their sites. They don’t want it to end regardless if it’s true or not.
Alex Jones, in point of fact, has made a very nice living of roughly $10 million a year and developed quite a following perpetuating various conspiracy theories alongside vitamin supplements and the like.
Who Killed JFK?
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is perhaps the most famous of modern conspiracy theories. Was Lee Harvey Oswald the lone gunman, or was there another shooter on the infamous grassy knoll?
The government’s Warren Report says it was Oswald acting alone, but surveys have consistently shown that roughly 60 percent of Americans don’t believe it. They believe there was a conspiracy and we may never know who’s right and who’s not.
And don’t even get me started on Princess Diana’s death.
It’s not just harmless fun…
Conspiracy theories, like believing that Oswald wasn’t the lone gunman, can seem like harmless fun on the surface, but the problem is that once someone has bought into one conspiracy theory, it gets easier for them to buy into others.
The reason is that once someone has accepted a conspiracy theory as fact, it erodes their trust in institutions that disseminate information. Over time, they often become skeptical beyond reason, refusing to accept anything they see or read that contradicts their beliefs.
They can reach a point where they no longer believe anything is coincidental and everything that happens is important and somehow linked. To these people, nothing is just an accident and nothing is trivial.
They become suspicious of everything and start to repurpose each new fact they hear as proof of their chosen theory’s validity. Even contrary evidence becomes further proof of their theory. They see patterns in randomness. And the more the theory is refuted or denied, the more it must be true precisely because it’s being denied and therefore hidden.
What’s old is new again…
Some conspiracy theories have been recycled for centuries. For example, the ideas that Jews are controlling the world or are drinking the blood of children have been around since the Middle Ages.
So, it’s no surprise that George Soros, a Jew and Holocaust survivor, is frequently thought to be behind so many of today’s conspiracy theories.
To those who don’t buy into such theories, the arguments sound incoherent… and they often are. That’s one of the tactics believers use to gain followers. They throw so many supposed possibilities into the mix, combined with what sound like unanswered questions that it becomes easy for some people to start questioning their own ideas.
Was Kennedy killed by the CIA, the military, the defense industry? Was it the work of Vice President Lyndon Johnson or was it a foreign power, like Fidel Castro… or was it the Russians who were behind it?
Or maybe the conspirators were made up of some blend of Army generals, organized crime bosses, FBI agents, Dallas Police, Cuban Dissidents, the New Orleans gay community and defrocked pedophile priests, as depicted in Oliver Stone’s movie, “JFK.”
Maybe that’s why so many Americans don’t believe the Warren Report. Because there are so many contradictory theories from which to choose.
In 2013, Gallup asked people who guess specifically was involved in the JFK assassination – 13 percent said it was the Mafia, 7 percent called out the CIA, and to 5 percent it was Fidel Castro. In total, more than 17 bad guys were mentioned by respondents to the survey.
Some of the responsibility for these beliefs about JFK falls on the government. The government has been called upon to release documents pertaining the assassination since at least the late 1970s and yet it continues to withhold documents from public view, which undoubtedly has fanned the flames for conspiracy theorists.
Hollywood and the media hasn’t helped in that regard either
Timmothy McVeigh drove away from the Oklahoma bombing in a car without license plates. Ah hah! That must mean that something is askew, some people apparently believe.
Or, maybe it’s that Tim just didn’t have license plates?
Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia passed away in 2016… in Texas, where no autopsy was performed or required. I just learned yesterday, that as a result, some believe he was murdered.
He was found in a hotel room with a pillow near his head, which to some is proof that he was smothered. Or, maybe he was just a 79 year old guy who wasn’t in particularly good physical shape, that died in bed, where pillows are known to frequent?
Some believe, and President Trump even suggested foul play, that he was killed to silence his conservative voice on the court. That theory, however, faded away when Trump replaced him with another conservative justice.
What’s the harm?
The problem with believing in the JFK conspiracy theories, for example, is that distrust breeds more distrust. If the government is lying and covering up who really killed JFK, then what else are they hiding and covering up, the thinking goes.
That can lead to mistrusting sources that are providing accurate information and that can become a real problem, especially when the information is important to health or well-being.
Some who’ve chosen not to believe the science behind climate change, come to distrust many other things. It’s a vicious cycle to a nihilist degree of skepticism that feeds on itself and can lead people to becoming delusional, even about the simplest of subjects.
Like, 5G. Is it simply another technological innovation? Yes. But, many around the world now believe the most fantastical ideas about our new cell phones that I can imagine. Now, we’re seeing that belief preventing people from getting vaccinated against Covid-19.
The Boston Marathon bombers were convinced that the CIA pulled off the 9-11 attacks. Their Internet histories showed that they were frequent visitors to websites that align with that view.
Are they crazy?
The easiest reason to attribute to those that believe conspiracy theories is that they’re all crazy. This explanation, however, doesn’t cut it. Consider that studies have shown that most people believe at least one conspiracy theory and many believe more than one. So, clearly, they can’t all be dismissed as simply being crazy.
Others attribute conspiracy theorising to paranoia, feelings of powerlessness or alienation. But, given the numbers of people that believe in conspiracy theories, it would be difficult to label all or most of society as being paranoid.
(And remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people are not out to get you.)
Some explain that in today’s complex world, people seek to find simple explanations to events with complicated causes, but I don’t see how that can be the case. From what I’ve seen, conspiracy theories are far more complicated than the official news accounts.
For example, is it easier to believe that Covid-19 is a new virus now affecting every country on the planet, or that it was intentionally cooked up in a lab and unleashed by Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci as part of a plot to gain control and reduce the world’s population.
Is it a vaccine that protects against Covid, or an elaborate plan to implant tracking devices under our skin or control our thoughts and actions?
I would think that the easier answer to accept is that it’s a virus and a vaccine.
Oh, what a tangled web…
No discussion about conspiracies today would be complete without blaming their spread on the World Wide Web or the media, but I’m not even sure that’s true.
Yes, you can certainly find plenty of such theories online, but you can also find plenty of sites and programs that exist to debunk them, and plenty of discussion boards where conspiracy theorists are maligned and ridiculed.
Not only that, but the Web has only been around for the last 15 years, which does little to explain the proliferation of such ideas in the past. Could it be that we’re just hearing about them more because of today’s ubiquitous media and the Internet?
Lastly, some think it has to do with political affiliation. The left accuses the right of being more into conspiracies and the right accuses the left of the same. The truth, however, according to numerous studies, is that both sides are equally susceptible. They each just believe in different villains.
What it seems to come down to is how you view the world. Those that view it in conspiratorial terms are more likely to buy into conspiracy theories.
If you think that many conspiracies are out there, then it’s easier to accept a theory that builds on that belief. If, on the other hand, you don’t have that sort of world view, then you probably won’t buy in to that sort of theory.
My way of thinking…
For me, when faced with a conspiracy theory, the first thing I always think about is how many people would have to be a part of the conspiracy in order for it to have remained secret. For example, one study showed that for the moon landing to have been shot on a sound stage, would have required 410,000 people to all stay silent for all these years.
And, in my mind at least, that’s just way, way, way too many people keeping such a secret for way, way, way too long.
Secrets are hard to keep, even little ones. Have you ever tried to pull off a surprise party for your spouse? That’s hard enough to keep secret when only a couple dozen need keep quiet.
Bigger secrets are generally impossible to keep under wraps for very long. Like, in order for Covid-19 not to simply be a virus, as every country on the planet says it is, think of the hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people that have no connection to each other, that would need to be in on it.
Secrets are pretty hard to keep secret in this day and age. Whistleblowers come forward for free and are protected under federal law, and money chases truth. In other words, if you’re in on a big secret, there’s someone looking to pay you to come forward. And the bigger the secret, the bigger the prize.
While higher level people may not be as prone to financial incentives, lower level people certainly are.
The other thing I consider when considering a conspiracy theory is Occam’s Razor, or whether the simplest explanation makes more sense. I simply find it easier to believe that Covid is a bad virus than that it’s some elaborate plot to reduce world population.
Lastly, I try to figure out who benefits from the conspiracy, as opposed to who benefits from the official account. Is there a reason for keeping the secret over telling the truth? Do the conspirators all know each other? Do their incentives to keep quiet align? And what types of people would have to be involved? It’s hard to imagine, for example, that unrelated university professors and researchers are all agreeing to maintain silence on anything.
My father, Dr. Julian Andelman, was a university professor in the field of public health. He taught doctoral students and did research at the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh for 34 years. He was also the Associate Director at the Center for Environmental Epidemiology.
Growing up with that sort of father, I can tell you that people like him cannot be compromised. Their reputations among the scientific community are sacrosanct.
My father’s authored a couple of scholarly books and his research was published in such places as:
- Science of the Total Environment Environmental Epidemiology
- Water Research
- Air Pollution Control Association Journal
- Atmospheric Environment
- Environmental Science and Technology
- The Journal of Exposure Analysis
You don’t get to do any of that faking things or keeping secrets. Growing up with that sort of father, I can tell you that for people like him, professional reputations are everything. They’re not in it for the money and they have tenure, which means they can’t be fired or told what to teach or research. Their reputations among members of the scientific community are sacrosanct.
So, yes… I believe it’s a bad virus and as such I don’t believe it’s the product of some sort of global conspiracy theory. I’m not saying that you have to believe what I believe. And I’m not even saying that everything you think is right or wrong. I’m just telling you why I don’t believe the virus related conspiracies.
Is QAnon crazy?
QAnon is the latest high-profile conspiracy theory to make headlines… and it’s pretty elaborate, as such theories go.
As I understand it, QAnon followers believe that there is a global cabal of elite, Satan worshipping pedophiles who grow and traffic children in order to molest them and/or drink their blood? Oh, and many are Jewish, although the supposed list of villains includes George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama… and others who aren’t Jewish.
Does it sound completely insane to you? I understand, but then again, I would have told you that it was insane to think that the Catholic Church or The Boy Scouts of America, or Penn State were guilty of what they’ve been shown to be guilty of too.
And, as to those organizations, I would have been wrong.
Does that mean I accept QAnon’s theories as being true? No. But, it does mean that I’m starting to understand somewhat, why some people do.
Of course, it is a lot easier to think they’re all just crazy.
Mandelman out.
P.S. There’s also something going around about “secret Jewish space lasers,” but that one I’m buying into.
