The point of conspiracy theories?

[zarathustra]

What's the point of 'conspiracy theories'? It's a term I don't like because it has ad hominem ramifications for anyone who tries to point out the genuine intersection of elite interests that goes on. But it will suffice.

What will happen when the grand truth the brave theorists struggle valiantly for is discovered? When through the sheer nobility of rational discourse and badly photoshoped allegadly authentic images, all agree that in fact there is a grand world conspiracy longing after a FASCIST WORLD LIBERAL POLICE STATE - how will they defeat this utter terror?

Will the Illumanti come crashing down to the ground purely by way of being exposed? Or will said theorists gradually come to realise the truth.. that the illumanti was simply a huge wind up by a load of people who took far too much acid for their own good, perpetuated by the conservative establishment to distract people from the secret rule of the crab people.

Obviously I'll be smeared as a conspiracy theorist for revealing the truth. But it is the price we noble people pay.

*sniff*

 

[Idris2002]

Conspiracy theories find their widest audience among the fearful and confused members of the lower middle class.

People like my grandfather, who as a young bank clerk in Ireland shortly after the Irish civil war was exposed to the notorious antisemitic libel and forgery The protocols of the elders of zion and bought it hook line and sinker.

This is the social class Orwell described as the 'shock absorbers of the bourgeoisie'.

They have enough of a stake in the system to shun radical leftist movements most of the time.

But their stake is so small they are regularly exposed to personal and financial crises (or worse) whenever the system takes one of its regular downturns.

(my grandfather had had guns pointed at him on more than one occasion during the war of independence and the civil war - not strictly speaking the kind of thing Orwell was talking about, but bad stuff to have to deal with all the same).

Conspiracy theories are what they use to make sense of the world they live in, without actually turning to a radical analysis of that world. By believing in conspiracy theories, they are able to convince themselves that the problems they and their societies face are not the result of defects in the social and economic system itself, but are the result of conspiratorial activity by this or that group of evil individuals.

ADDS:

Hey DrJazzz! Are you a son of the lower-middle class, the petit bourgeoisie, call it what you will? Do you work in a clerking capacity for the Bank of Ireland? I think we should be told, don't you?

 

[zarathustra]

By believing in conspiracy theories, they are able to convince themselves that the problems they and their societies face are not the result of defects in the social and economic system itself, but are the result of conspiratorial activity by this or that group of evil individuals.

Thankyou!

That's precisely what I've been trying (and failing) to get into words for some time. My frustration with conspiracy theories stems mostly from the fact that the criticisms are specific, rather than systemic. It's such a ridiculously simplistic and yet ridiculously complex way of understanding the system we find ourselves within.

 

[butchersapron]

I wouldn't say that they're 'specific' - i'd say that they're rather vague and they need to be...

 

[zarathustra]

Specific in the sense that they relate to certain instances of power, rather than a generalised critique of power.

 

[sparticus]

I've got to say the evidence regarding the crab people is new to me, however regarding 9/11 I have the evidence to demonstrate the USG KNEW and LIHOP. Whilst I dislike the term conspiracy theory precisely because it is used by them to lump together all discordient information and theories that challenge 'their' lies and bullshit and ridicule it under a convenient banner, I'm happy to play your game.

9/11 is definately the most widely discussed CT on these boards and so I guess those of you who try to knock and ridicule us 'CTers' are in a large part talking about bonkers 911 theories. Well come on then. If you reckon you can explain away the evidence supporting

THEY KNEW AND THEY LIHOP, let's hear from you.

Or don't tell me you have never actually done even the most elementary research into 9/11 and therefore are unaware of it. Your silence will speak volumes.

Ian

 

[zarathustra]

No, you misunderstand me, m'lad.

Why do you want to prove that events x,y,z happened on 911?

 

[laptop]

Conspiracy theories are what they use to make sense of the world they live in, without actually turning to a radical analysis of that world. By believing in conspiracy theories, they are able to convince themselves that the problems they and their societies face are not the result of defects in the social and economic system itself, but are the result of conspiratorial activity by this or that group of evil individuals.

Well put.

Also:

• If the problems are systemic, then it's incumbent on the people who've spotted them to at least try to do something about them. But if they're down to the action of said group of evil individuals - who must be assumed to be all-powerful in order to give the "theory" even a semblance of narrative coherence - then there's nothing to be done. Except spending endless hours kvetching onto badly-typed Gestetner skins, photocopied pamphlets or Web pages depending on the decade...
• And for many conspiracy theorists, it's all clearly an attempt to prove to themselves they are "sane". If you can recruit five people to accept your delusional system, you're a successful conspiracy theorist. If you can recruit 500, you've founded a cult. If no-one, you have to face up to the disordered nature of your thoughts.
• I guess there's a subset of the above who acquire their delusional system under the influence of cannabis, fail to do any thinking when not stoned, and just can't bear to admit they're talking bollocks.

 

[sparticus]

Quote ......."If the problems are systemic, then it's incumbent on the people who've spotted them to at least try to do something about them."

Absolutely true and hence why I type this shit. In what ways are you aware that the problems are systemic and in what ways do you seek to do something about it? Right now this is how I choose to do something about it.

And quote......... "But if they're down to the action of said group of evil individuals - who must be assumed to be all-powerful in order to give the "theory" even a semblance of narrative coherence - then there's nothing to be done. "

The 'problems' the world faces are both 'systemic' and 'down to the action of said group of evil individuals'. It is not either or but both. 9/11 is the classic example since it would be impossible to explain the co-operation/co-option of much of the media or military in this 'conspiracy' if the problem were not systemic. I'm not interested in exposing one conspiracy but the whole conspirational nature of the system. 9/11 is the perfect opportunity to expose both the criminals and the criminal system

I am absolutely NOT saying there is "noting to be done". Precisely the opposite. That's why I'm here, to change things. Why do you visit U75? And when will someone debate the evidence and not just talk bollocks.

Excuse me I'm tired and off to bed

Ian

 

[Loki]

I'm almost convinced that people who embrace conspiracy theories somehow have their brains wired different.

The WTC disaster is typical: Lots of ridiculous theories expounded, but no attention paid to the question of missing passengers and those phone calls. Whereas most people would ask of a theory, well then how does it explain that? And if it can't at all then it should be rejected. But not according to conspiracy theorists.

 

[sparticus]

Really last post since it is an attempt at debate. I'll take this real slow

If they (the USGovt) knew in advance that something very, very similar to 9/11 was being planned (which they absolutely did) and if they choose, on learning on the day a plane had been hijacked in easy reach of NY and Washington , to act so incredibly and inexplicably slowly and ineptly so as to allow the planes to hit the WTC and Pentagon (which they absolutely did). I believe that these 2 facts prove that there was a conspiracy involving the US Govt in regard to 9/11. the mobile phones and missing passengers and all the other bollocks that passes for informed debate on these boards is entirely beside the point. Your challenge and the challenge of everyone else who believes the official story, is (should you choose to accept your mission) to prove that these 2 facts are not supported by the evidence sourced from mainstream news sources and presented expertly by Nafeez Ahmed's book The war on Freedom.

There is absolutely no middle ground. This is not opinion it is fact. There is either a conspiracy involving the US Government and relating to 9/11 and they are trying desperately to cover this up or there is not. I know which side you are on at present and I know you are probably a majority of readers at present.

The trouble is just like the editor I suspect you have actually done naff all research in to 9/11 and so know naff all about it. If you would like I will share with you the top bits of evidence IMO but really I would recommend you buy the book and come back when you know what you are talking about. No offense like. All I'm asking is you look at the evidence with an open mind. I do not pretend to know everything, but with regard to 9/11 and the wider systemic corruption I know considerably more than most, especially those speak in favour of the official story of 911

Out of here. I will post towards the end of the week.

Ian

 

[zarathustra]

Ian, come back..

You've yet to answer my question: Why do you want to prove that events x,y,z happened on 911? What's your motive? Your purpose? Your goal?

 

[editor]

Really last post since it is an attempt at debate. I'll take this real slow

The trouble is just like the editor I suspect you have actually done naff all research in 9/11 and so know naff all about it. If you like I will share with you the top bits of evidence but really I would recommend you buy the book and come back when you know what you are talking about. No offense like

Oh dear. Such arrogance and pomposity!

Despite your sneering tones, you're saying nothing that we haven't heard before, Almost every theory imaginable has already been discussed and argued here ad infinitum, long before you shoved your patronising nose into the boards.

And when you refer to 'research', why do I just know it's going to involve some previously unheard-of author with a book or two to flog and some dodgy websites?

But seeing as you're so incredibly well informed and you're finding the debate so disappointing here, perhaps you might offer an historical, post Cold War precedent which involved America mass murdering its own citizens and blowing up large chunks of New York in order to give an excuse to invade a smaller country?

In fact, any precedent will do.

 

[zarathustra]

Why post cold war?

 

[laptop]

I'm almost convinced that people who embrace conspiracy theories somehow have their brains wired different.

Hmmm.

On the one hand, the end-points of the theories are very close to the reactionary urge to simplify - to ascribe disturbing events to a bunch of men (sic) in a room, conspiring.

On the other, the evidence of the content of conspiracy theories is that their authors revel in messiness. The more baroque the plot, the better. Each new assertion they come across is lovingly bolted on to the rickety sculpture.

These are people in revolt against Occam's Razor. They live by the maxim "multiply entities unnecessarily".

They certainly don't follow the same rules of evidence and explanation as the rest of us.

Which would be a reason why I've yet to see a conspiracy theorist actually show signs of understanding meta-level questions like "why conspiracy theories?"

 

[zarathustra]

"why conspiracy theories?"

Indeed. It's quite strange when they profess to like questioning things so much.

 

[editor]

Why post cold war?

It would save the tedious fantasy of the Operation Northwoods non-event being trawled up again, but in my post I did in fact ask for any precedent.

 

[Idris2002]

'Brains wired differently', is it?

Back in the mid-1980s, an anthropologist called Dan Sperber argued for a theory of the 'epidemiology of representations'.

By this he referred to the ways in which representations - e.g. cargo cults or conspiracy theories - spread and diffuse through populations in ways that are analagous to the spread of diseases studied by epidemiologists.

Sperber proposed that there was something about the make-up of certain human brains that made them more susceptible to this or that particular type of representation.

Harvey Whitehouse an anthropologist here at QUB - has since then refined Sperber's original model by adding the insight of contemporary neuroscientists that the internal pathways of the human brain ( i.e. the way in which 'brains are wired') are laid down after birth in response to environmental stimuli experienced in infancy and early childhood.

How you could use these ideas to study the spread of conspiracy theories, I'm not sure. I'm sure you could, but I think that's a job for another lifetime - someone else's lifetime.

 

[Dirty Martini]

Conspiracy theories are what they use to make sense of the world they live in, without actually turning to a radical analysis of that world. By believing in conspiracy theories, they are able to convince themselves that the problems they and their societies face are not the result of defects in the social and economic system itself, but are the result of conspiratorial activity by this or that group of evil individuals.

As others have pointed out, spot on.

I'm wondering what role the internet plays in the spread of conspiracy theories. It's a commonplace that porn is prominent in any new medium; with the internet, it seems that conspiracy theories have taken their place alongside it as the second great online subculture. I was wondering whether, for example, similar things happened with the advent of mass printing (scaremongering pamphlets about the menace of the Jews, the French, conspiracies to topple the British state from across the water, etc).

There's a legitimacy attached to the printed word that gives body to what is, to my mind, a species of campfire story -- coupled with the colonisation of a new medium in which the expenses of paper publication and the traditional need for peer review are bypassed. It's tail-chasing though -- for the medium that allows someone to pass themselves off as an expert attached to an organisation is the same medium that allows an inquisitive mind to check those credentials and that organisation.

 

[fela fan]

Ian, come back..

You've yet to answer my question: Why do you want to prove that events x,y,z happened on 911? What's your motive? Your purpose? Your goal?

Well, meanwhile i'll answer that question.

Some background to my objectives: either the conspiracy of incompetence put forward by the USG is correct, or the conspiracy of them being involved in the attacks is correct. Only one of those can be correct. Without publicly available truth, both reside in the area of conspiracy.

For me, should it come out that the USG were indeed involved, then western people will have to radically alter their thinking towards their political (corporate backed) leaders. In particulary the gullible americans.

In my opinion mankind will be forced to radically alter its path. And it can only be for the better, coz i feel the world is at rather a critical juncture in time, and i just do my bit to try and expose who i think are responsible for most of the negative crap that goes on: the USGs and elites.

I am aware that i positively want it to have been the USG behind those attacks.

 

[fela fan]

With regard to CTs, humans have been conspiring ever since when. It's what those in power have to do to keep their power. Everyone will surely accept that politicians do a lot of lying. This is because what they say is always different to what they do. They say what the public wants to hear, but do what keeps them in power.

Therefore it seems to me that they are constantly conspiring.

Then we get members of the public, for example some posters on these boards, who get accused of being conspiracy theorists. But generally it might be accepted that such posters are not lying.

So 'conspiracy theorist' is levelled at truthful members of the public, concerned (NOT mad) citizens, to ridicule them, while those doing the lying and real conspiring, the politicians, must be laughing all the way to the bank.

How easy our squabbles make it for those corrupt killers in charge of the US and UK nations.

 

[editor]

So 'conspiracy theorist' is levelled at truthful members of the public, concerned (NOT mad) citizens, to ridicule them, while those doing the lying and real conspiring, the politicians, must be laughing all the way to the bank.

Do you mean citizens like Joe Vialls?

 

[tim]

Conspiracy theories find their widest audience among the fearful and confused members of the lower middle class.

People like my grandfather, who as a young bank clerk in Ireland shortly after the Irish civil war was exposed to the notorious antisemitic libel and forgery The protocols of the elders of zion and bought it hook line and sinker.

This is the social class Orwell described as the 'shock absorbers of the bourgeoisie'.

They have enough of a stake in the system to shun radical leftist movements most of the time.

But their stake is so small they are regularly exposed to personal and financial crises (or worse) whenever the system takes one of its regular downturns.

(my grandfather had had guns pointed at him on more than one occasion during the war of independence and the civil war - not strictly speaking the kind of thing Orwell was talking about, but bad stuff to have to deal with all the same).

Conspiracy theories are what they use to make sense of the world they live in, without actually turning to a radical analysis of that world. By believing in conspiracy theories, they are able to convince themselves that the problems they and their societies face are not the result of defects in the social and economic system itself, but are the result of conspiratorial activity by this or that group of evil individuals.

ADDS:

Hey DrJazzz! Are you a son of the lower-middle class, the petit bourgeoisie, call it what you will? Do you work in a clerking capacity for the Bank of Ireland? I think we should be told, don't you?

Just because your grandfather was a gullible twerp, doesn't mean that all members of his socioeconomic group were similarly deluded. Perhaps rather than a class thing it was something familial - the desire to use abstract simplistic theories to try and explain the society around them

 

[Jazzz]

No, you misunderstand me, m'lad.

Why do you want to prove that events x,y,z happened on 911?

People are still theorising about who Jack the Ripper was. He murdered six people a long long time ago.

But clearly it would be ridiculous to spend any time wondering about the true culprits of the most extraordinary criminal act that anyone has ever seen which killed thousands and on which the whole political landscape of the world has changed.

 

[Dirty Martini]

So 'conspiracy theorist' is levelled at truthful members of the public, concerned (NOT mad) citizens, to ridicule them, while those doing the lying and real conspiring, the politicians, must be laughing all the way to the bank.

How easy our squabbles make it for those corrupt killers in charge of the US and UK nations.

It's all scattershot though, ff. The way I see the 9/11 arguments shaping up, if one element of the conspiracy is shown to be false, ridiculous or impossible, it's disregarded because the sceptic wishes the broad premise to be true. It's no good to anyone interested in fighting US and UK foreign policy (among other things) that this goes on; standards of truth and rigour have to be maintained even if that means accepting as much more likely the broad explanation of those you're struggling against. Of course, the analysis of existing conditions and what should be done will be different. But that's where the stuggle is, not in the ceaselessly changing and baroque chain of events that the 9/11 sceptics are manufacturing.

 

[fela fan]

Do you mean citizens like Joe Vialls?

No. If you look back at my post you'll see the example i used of such citizens was posters here on urban.

I've never read anything by that man, so cannot comment on him.

 

[chegrimandi]

People are still theorising about who Jack the Ripper was. He murdered six people a long long time ago.

But clearly it would be ridiculous to spend any time wondering about the true culprits of the most extraordinary criminal act that anyone has ever seen which killed thousands and on which the whole political landscape of the world has changed.

fair point it is worthy of time, interest etc but I fear your labours will simply take you to the point that it was just as it has been widely reported a criminal act of genius by some fundametalist loons....well its a good story and I cant see how an act of such complexity could have been faked....

 

[fela fan]

It's all scattershot though, ff. The way I see the 9/11 arguments shaping up, if one element of the conspiracy is shown to be false, ridiculous or impossible, it's disregarded because the sceptic wishes the broad premise to be true. It's no good to anyone interested in fighting US and UK foreign policy (among other things) that this goes on; standards of truth and rigour have to be maintained even if that means accepting as much more likely the broad explanation of those you're struggling against. Of course, the analysis of existing conditions and what should be done will be different. But that's where the stuggle is, not in the ceaselessly changing and baroque chain of events that the 9/11 sceptics are manufacturing.

What you say isn't wrong particularly.

But i'd much prefer to see the struggle being carried out by our 'free' western media. They have a lot more power and ability to effect change by exposing what the killer leaders are up to.

Sadly, they don't do this any more. Anyone with half a brain must see that there are quite a number of holes in the USG version of events to say the least. Some may be explained away, some not. But we'll never know in our media coz they're not interested.

So it's left to members of the public, and with the internet age, organising themselves becomes easier. If the real truth ever comes out, then it won't be thanks to the censored mainstream media of the US and UK. In fact the latter will probably still be talking about Beckham.

 

[Idris2002]

Just because your grandfather was a gullible twerp, doesn't mean that all members of his socioeconomic group were similarly deluded. Perhaps rather than a class thing it was something familial - the desire to use abstract simplistic theories to try and explain the society around them

you've not met many Irish people, have you?

 

[Jazzz]

ADDS:

Hey DrJazzz! Are you a son of the lower-middle class, the petit bourgeoisie, call it what you will? Do you work in a clerking capacity for the Bank of Ireland? I think we should be told, don't you?

This comment says a lot about the insults and baiting that passes for free discussion around here.

I don't see quite what the fuck my socio-ecomonic background has to do with the price of fish, but to answer your questions, no, no, and no, I don't think you need be told.