conspiraloons

[panpete]

Are "conspiraloons" the opposite of "sheeple" ?

 

[Mungy]

Are "conspiraloons" the opposite of "sheeple" ?

i think they are just words and another way of pigeonholing us; a broad generalisation.

 

[editor]

Are "conspiraloons" the opposite of "sheeple" ?

Sheeple are ordinary people who, possessing a balanced mind, don't feel the need to fill their houses with shiny guns...

 

[In Bloom]

Ten characteristics of conspiracy theorists.

1. Arrogance. They are always fact-seekers, questioners, people who are trying to discover the truth: sceptics are always "sheep", patsies for Messrs Bush and Blair etc.

2. Relentlessness. They will always go on and on about a conspiracy no matter how little evidence they have to go on or how much of what they have is simply discredited. (Moreover, as per 1. above, even if you listen to them ninety-eight times, the ninety-ninth time, when you say "no thanks", you'll be called a "sheep" again.) Additionally, they have no capacity for precis whatsoever. They go on and on at enormous length.

3. Inability to answer questions. For people who loudly advertise their determination to the principle of questioning everything, they're pretty poor at answering direct questions from sceptics about the claims that they make.

4. Fondness for certain stock phrases. These include Cicero's "cui bono?" (of which it can be said that Cicero understood the importance of having evidence to back it up) and Conan Doyle's "once we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth". What these phrases have in common is that they are attempts to absolve themselves from any responsibility to produce positive, hard evidence themselves: you simply "eliminate the impossible" (i.e. say the official account can't stand scrutiny) which means that the wild allegation of your choice, based on "cui bono?" (which is always the government) is therefore the truth.

5. Inability to employ or understand Occam's Razor. Aided by the principle in 4. above, conspiracy theorists never notice that the small inconsistencies in the accounts which they reject are dwarfed by the enormous, gaping holes in logic, likelihood and evidence in any alternative account.

6. Inability to tell good evidence from bad. Conspiracy theorists have no place for peer-review, for scientific knowledge, for the respectability of sources. The fact that a claim has been made by anybody, anywhere, is enough for them to reproduce it and demand that the questions it raises be answered, as if intellectual enquiry were a matter of responding to every rumour. While they do this, of course, they will claim to have "open minds" and abuse the sceptics for apparently lacking same.

7. Inability to withdraw. It's a rare day indeed when a conspiracy theorist admits that a claim they have made has turned out to be without foundation, whether it be the overall claim itself or any of the evidence produced to support it. Moreover they have a liking (see 3. above) for the technique of avoiding discussion of their claims by "swamping" - piling on a whole lot more material rather than respond to the objections sceptics make to the previous lot.

8. Leaping to conclusions. Conspiracy theorists are very keen indeed to declare the "official" account totally discredited without having remotely enough cause so to do. Of course this enables them to wheel on the Conan Doyle quote as in 4. above. Small inconsistencies in the account of an event, small unanswered questions, small problems in timing of differences in procedure from previous events of the same kind are all more than adequate to declare the "official" account clearly and definitively discredited. It goes without saying that it is not necessary to prove that these inconsistencies are either relevant, or that they even definitely exist.

9. Using previous conspiracies as evidence to support their claims. This argument invokes scandals like the Birmingham Six, the Bologna station bombings, the Zinoviev letter and so on in order to try and demonstrate that their conspiracy theory should be accorded some weight (because it’s “happened before”.) They do not pause to reflect that the conspiracies they are touting are almost always far more unlikely and complicated than the real-life conspiracies with which they make comparison, or that the fact that something might potentially happen does not, in and of itself, make it anything other than extremely unlikely.

10. It’s always a conspiracy. And it is, isn't it? No sooner has the body been discovered, the bomb gone off, than the same people are producing the same old stuff, demanding that there are questions which need to be answered, at the same unbearable length. Because the most important thing about these people is that they are people entirely lacking in discrimination. They cannot tell a good theory from a bad one, they cannot tell good evidence from bad evidence and they cannot tell a good source from a bad one. And for that reason, they always come up with the same answer when they ask the same question.

A person who always says the same thing, and says it over and over again is, of course, commonly considered to be, if not a monomaniac, then at very least, a bore.

 

[William of Walworth]

You people are pathetic.

You refuse to listen to the facts and hand forth dogma as your proof...

Whats the difference between a conspiracy theory and a prosecution case?

Narrowminded bigotry would be one case i`d bring forth against people like you guys.

I could write a book on how 9/11 was conducted by a criminal element with the US govt. Welcome to the real world.

Thank you for performing this valuable service with that post, Azrael

Accuse anyone who doesn't subscribe to your 'alternative versions' of reality, is a narrowminded bigot? Presumably we gullibly lap up establishment propoganda as well.

Way to go persuasiveness wise!!

 

[William of Walworth]

never heard the phrase conspiraloons before, absolutely quality

"some nutter today reckons the world is round.. conspiraloon"

"i swear some people think that the earth goes round the sun.. conspiraloons"

yeah and back in the 40's some conspiraloon jews were telling other jews that the nazis were going to work them to death, gas them and burn them alive.. conspiraloons eh?

next some nutter will claim that Iraq hasnt got WMD;s -- CONSPIRALOONS

HAHAHAHAHA

An object lesson it us all in how conspiraloons operate ....

That's right -- conspiracy sceptics are holocaust deniers!

Hands zark Gold Star For Logic

 

[William of Walworth]

maggots. You know nothing of what you speak.

How am I distracting people from real govt crime when I`m trying to expose it? Simply because you do not believe the truth that doesn`t mean it goes away.
You called me a conspiraloon for talking about bohemian grove and labour camps in america. Thats all provable. You refuse to acknowledge any of the sources and called the video a fake even though the bohemian club admitted it wasn`t.

Your intellectual cowards. If alex jones is such a loon how come he predicted 9/11 2 months before it happened? How come he gets everyone from michael meacher to andreas van buelow on his radio show?

Do some research.

Remind me -- is it 'us' sceptics who are being insultingly arogant, or conspiracists like you?

It's so hard to tell sometimes

 

[William of Walworth]

Thank you, In Bloom, for finding that Donna Ferentes list. I was about to go and find it myself, and you've saved me the bother.

Any conspiracist who puts forward their 'theory' while avoiding the observance of ANY of those ten characteristics, is a better conspiraloon than any I've ever seen operating on here before ...

 

[William of Walworth]

If you want a good example, try this thread:

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=151365

28 pages though!!!!!!!!!

 

[editor]

Thank you, In Bloom, for finding that Donna Ferentes list. I was about to go and find it myself, and you've saved me the bother..

Now included in the Bulletin Board FAQ section!

http://www.urban75.org/info/conspiraloons.html

 

[White Lotus]

28 pages though!!!!!!!!!

Well, I did say the thread had deteriorated and "was going to post it there but by now only the hardiest posters are on that thread"!

--------

Jazz - thanks for the polite words earlier. FWIW, I think one or two of your theories may have a grain of truth at the core, specifically those about drugs and vaccinations. I don't subscribe to the "conspiracy" explanation, it's more a case of looking where the money is. In the case of drugs, the process of getting them approved is so expensive only the megabucks players - big pharmaceutical companies - can afford it. This means that a drug approved to treat a certain condition may actually be less effective than plant-based traditional or herbal remedies, but since they cannot patent a plant, nobody is going to pay for the expensive research and testing.

Current research on medicinal cannabis is a case in point: they're testing for a modified extract they can patent, rather than allowing patients who have conditions that can be helped by it, to take the whole plant. Oh yes, and because they want to eliminate the psychoactive side effects ...

 

[aylee]

maggots. You know nothing of what you speak.

When I read this first line, I heard it as if spoken by an alien, distorted through a vocoder, on some cheap 70s sci-fi programme like Buck Rogers or something.

Is this Azrael?

 

[DrRingDing]

Considering the amount of people on here who don't swallow CNN et al's version of 9/11, I think most of us are conspiraloons.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Anyway, to repeat the question that ended up near the bottom of the last page: why don't we get the interesting delusions here?

They pop up in H&S occasionally.

 

[editor]

Considering the amount of people on here who don't swallow CNN et al's version of 9/11,

I didn't realise CNN had their own version of 9/11.

Is there a Lidl version for High Street shoppers too?

 

[zoltan]

You know what..I am bored to fuckin death of 9/11.I dont care if it was fuckin Elizabeth taylor & June Whitfield behind it. I just dont fuckin care any more. I am not interested in who did what or what plane may or may not have crashed into the pentagon.I wish they would all fuck off now & let the entire fuckin thing rest for a while. Along with the Potato famine & similar, this is a scenario that is going to be regurgitated for the rest of our fuckin days.NO more.

We need move on.

 

[OriginalSinner]

They pop up in H&S occasionally.

Why is everyone so funny today?

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Considering the amount of people on here who don't swallow CNN et al's version of 9/11, I think most of us are conspiraloons.

"Swallow". That's another good conspiraloon word, whereby they claim that people who don't go for their theories are just accepting what they're told while the conspiraloons (sorry, "truth movement") are brave truth-seekers rather than, say, goggle-eyed obsessives.

Here is a useful resource that people may like to bookmark. Lots of good stuff on it, including this amusing list of all the people who would have had to have been involved in the conspiracy and yet not one of them has spoken out.

 

[DrRingDing]

You know what..I am bored to fuckin death of 9/11.I dont care if it was fuckin Elizabeth taylor & June Whitfield behind it. I just dont fuckin care any more. I am not interested in who did what or what plane may or may not have crashed into the pentagon.I wish they would all fuck off now & let the entire fuckin thing rest for a while. Along with the Potato famine & similar, this is a scenario that is going to be regurgitated for the rest of our fuckin days.NO more.

We need move on.

Aah! But that is what they want you to feel.

 

[William of Walworth]

Considering the amount of people on here who don't swallow CNN et al's version of 9/11, I think most of us are conspiraloons.

False dichotomy. Conspiraloons LOVE to paint conspiracy sceptics as gullible dupes of establishment propaganda.

It's perfectly possible to be sceptical about all the details of the officially-sanctioned, Bush or CNN approved version of 9/11 (or anything else) **AND** at the same time even more sceptical about the deeper realms of conspirafruitcakeland. There's plenty of 'alternative theorists' about the whole bloody thing who do nothing bit discredit themselves with THEIR gullibility towards any and every 'alternative' source, however barking the website involved ...

Having little patience with conspiraloons of that stripe does NOT make you a Bush lover or CNN-gullible ...

 

[Bob_the_lost]

I wonder how the ed feels about having the number one site for "conspiraloons" according to google.

 

[zoltan]

Aah! But that is what they want you to feel.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHH

 

[DrRingDing]

"Swallow". That's another good conspiraloon word, whereby they claim that people who don't go for their theories are just accepting what they're told while the conspiraloons (sorry, "truth movement") are brave truth-seekers rather than, say, goggle-eyed obsessives.

Here is a useful resource that people may like to bookmark. Lots of good stuff on it, including this amusing list of all the people who would have had to have been involved in the conspiracy and yet not one of them has spoken out.

And that's the conformiton's classic riposte, highlight the paranoid and forget the rest.

 

[DrRingDing]

False dichotomy. Conspiraloons LOVE to paint conspiracy sceptics as gullible dupes of establishment propaganda.

Guess what William most people do swallow neoliberal propaganda with hardly a whisper.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Incidentally, talking of how this stuff helps obscure rather than illuminate the real point: there is, of course, a real conspiracy here. There was a conspiracy to take the US and Britain into an illegal and ill-motivated was in Iraq.

When I say a conspiracy, I don't mean something out of the movies, with loads of secret operatives all dressed in black: I mean simply that a number of people combined with a common purpose while trying to keep hidden both their combination and their actual purpose.

The difference between this and imaginary conspiracies is of course enormous. Instead of everything being huge, far-ranging, perfectly carried out, involving many, many people and there being no evidence for it, we have something involving a small number of people, imperfectly carried out. We know who most of these people were, though not all of them, and we know much of what they did, though not all of it.

But unfortunately, saying so isn't good enough for the conspiraloons. Unless you accept their utterly impossible version of events, you're sheeple who swallow the CNN version of events. Or, seeing how much the "truth movement" resembles a religion, blasphemers.

 

[editor]

I wonder how the ed feels about having the number one site for "conspiraloons" according to google.

You should see how much the CIA paid me to get that slot!

<book holidays for entire mod team>

 

[DrRingDing]

Having little patience with conspiraloons of that stripe does NOT make you a Bush lover or CNN-gullible ...

But disregarding all logical thought because a tiny minority are clearly off their tits, simply doesn't make sense.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Logical thought entails having evidence for your contentions.

 

[editor]

And that's the conformiton's classic riposte, highlight the paranoid and forget the rest.

Conformiton?

Wooowargh! They sound cool!!!! Are they like cybermen or something?

 

[OriginalSinner]

Guess what William most people do swallow neoliberal propaganda with hardly a whisper.

Because most people are able to make a value judgement on the information they need.