Why people believe conspiracy theories
Who would believe that the US military would simulate a terrorist attack, just to increase government spending on defence? Only a crackpot, right? Think of the number of conspirators who would have to be in on the conspiracy, and the implausibility of the truth not coming out. That sort of thing could only happen in a dictatorship, right? OK, Putin can hide the truth from his people, but that can’t happen in a democracy, right?
Well, there is the Club of Rome, which published “Limits to Growth” in 1972 saying that we’d run out of stuff and that we would have to have a global agreement to limit consumption and population. The theory was that we’d need a global government to ‘coordinate’ national governments’ efforts, which would then morph into a global government with the ultra-wealthy pulling the strings.
I’m not sure it’s a theory, but Eisenhower warned, in his valedictory speech, about the threat from the “Military Industrial Nexus.”
The Bilderberg Group, supposedly plots to form a world government, as does the World Economic Forum. The “Great Reset” is the WEF’s bid to control the world, under cover of the pandemic.
A rich source of conspiracy theories is the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001. One important element is that the impact of the jets was not enough to cause the towers (as well as a smaller tower nearby, Tower 7) to collapse completely.
When a politician speaks, it is rarely candidly and almost always with a view to getting re-elected. This is not to say that politicians are very different to the rest of us. We will rarely come out with statements which make us look venal, or unreliable, or dishonest, or unfair. Everyone wants to be loved!
Conspiracy theorists have their own axe to grind. Most often, it will be to attract attention. It is much more interesting to read that a building was destroyed by a secret plot organized by the CIA than by an unlucky and unplanned sequence of events. But, mostly they are denied a platform in the mainstream media, so it’s a hard way to get noticed. Sometimes, they just have come up with an alternative explanation which fits the facts so well, they fall in love with it, and accept that being thought of as a bit odd is a price worth paying.
It may be that you have missed it, but a crazy new technology is now widespread. It’s called the Internet, and it gives us all access to vast quantities of high-quality and detailed information about virtually everything under the sun. Having the ability to check if a theory is plausible or not should mean that these theories can be refuted before they get traction, right? Well, wrong, actually. In fact, conspiracy theories thrive in the Internet, where the smallest set of like-minded, but loopy, people can get together and tell each other how smart they all are. Hearing that Osama bin Laden is still alive, or was killed by Mossad, is much more interesting than being told that US SEALs dumped his body at sea to prevent his burial site becoming a place of pilgrimage.
Maybe the increased activity of conspiracy theorists is liked to the increasing activity of conspiractors, and dishonest of governments. It would seem that early advice to not use masks for Covid was the result of a desire to preserve what stocks of PPE were available for hospital use. Officials stated that they had very limited or nil effects knowing this was not strictly accurate.
Politicians have always run mistresses (or the male equivalent). They tend to be found out more now, which makes available more evidence that politicians lie to their spouses and others. Boris Johnson is famous for being less than completely transparent with his superiors and his wives, over his lifetime. I doubt if voters really care, but they are less likely to take his pronouncements about the safety of vaccines quite as seriously as they would if Frank Field were PM.
I am not convinced that the Rockerfeller Foundation is really the puppetmaster of western governments. But I am convinced that Larry Fink has much more influence on how the average cabinet goes about arriving at a decision than has a regular voter.
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