Conspiracy Theorists

[kuozzman]

Really good article.....
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1313.htm

Everyone has heard, and has probably used the term "conspiracy theorist," and the fact of the term being in common use, also indicates that we generally agree on what it means. I saw a movie by that name, and the title character was a raving lunatic who kept his food in thermoses with combination locks to reduce his chances of being poisoned by imaginary enemies.

Regardless of how the stupid movie turned out, what's important here is the common perception people have of someone to whom that label is applied, and just as important, is who it is that applies the label. The common perception is that someone who is labeled a "conspiracy theorist" is suffering from some type of psychological disorder, and that label is usually applied to people by our government, and our news media. The next thing to consider, is that the label is applied to anyone who questions our government's version of events in any matter. Doesn't it logically follow that the media are teaching us to assume that anyone who questions the government is insane? When that label is applied to a person, doesn't it become easy to dismiss everything they say without even hearing it? How convenient for them.

I think the label first became widely used to slander people who questioned the details surrounding the JFK assassination, and forty years later, there aren't too many thinking people who still believe the Warren Commission's "lone gunman" explanation. That explanation is doubted by everyone who has taken the time to look into the details, and believed only by people who refuse to.

Which is "theory" and which is fact? In the absence of a full confession, this can only be decided by a preponderance of evidence, and it would be silly to come to a conclusion on any matter without looking at all the evidence available. This is only common sense, just as it is safe to assume some degree of guilt or complicity on the part of anyone who lies about an event, or tries to hide, plant, or destroy any type of evidence.

Conspiracy theories arise from evidence. After the government releases an explanation of a particular event, a conspiracy theory is only born because evidence exists to disprove their explanation, or at least call it into question. There's nothing insane about it, unless you define sanity as believing whatever the government tells you. In light of the fact that our government lies to us regularly, I would define believing everything they tell you as utter stupidity.

[yella_dawg]

1. Let the flame war begin.

I agree with you, and what's more, I often wonder if some of those here at DU that leap howling and dumping disdain on any thread that smacks of "conspiracy theory" are not paid moles. The attacks come quickly and predictably. I've even gone so far as creating threads with "certain phrases" just to test this "theory". They hit so fast I had to wonder if they have search programs running on the servers.

I guess I'm insane... :shrug:

[DrWeird]

2. No, the paid moles...

are the ones posting "tsunamis are caused by George W. Bush and his chemtrails" stuff.

But we already knew that.

[SmartBomb]

7. The two threads above are conspiracy theories

Question Authority

[AngryAmish]

14. I think that is unfair

[JohnOneillsMemory]

15. Complex. You're right that chaff is braided with the wheat to hide it.

This article describes how the intellectual ghetto of 'conspiracy theory' is used to create an intellectual fence to thinking about topics the government and especially military prefer to stay hidden:
www.mackwhite.com (The TV Hive Mind)

This is why Tom Delay can scornfully rage against those Democrats who think electronic voting machines are rigged as the "X-Files Wing of the Democratic party" and have most Republicans never think about election fraud ever again. (Until they lose.)

Here's something about 9/11 that has been hidden in plain sight with a tiny blurb in an Associated Press story from 8/21/02 that makes every 9/11 Ommission Panel member, the White House, and TV talking head complicit in one of the biggest cover-ups...ever. Is this a conspiracy theory? Counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke mentioned it in one sentence in his book 'Against All Enemies' but without explaining it, a DEAFENING SILENCE!:

http://www.oilempire.us/wargames.html
(NORAD/CIA Excercise Prepares for Multiple Planes Crashed Into Buildings on the Morning of 9/11 While 'Real Thing' Happens!)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/08/21/national1518EDT0686.DTL
(The AP Story is here in the SF Chronicle on 8/21/02)

This tells you something about how the military, government, and press 'conspire' to not tell you what the hell is going on and suggest that people who don't trust them must be crazy as bedbugs and unreliable.

This country has been an experiment in controlling the masses through encouraging some beliefs and discouraging others. All very deliberately and honed all the time to be more effective.

It is a challenge to weed out the difference between 'who shot JFK' and 'what was his astrological chart that day?'(Sorry, astrologers. Even if you accept that the planets can affect our minds and bodies like the moon, there is no way to correlate a cause and effect and this renders astrology useless for anything beyond amusement.)

Study psychology, history, psy-ops, and the CIA. You'll learn things about how you think you'd rather not believe.

And that is the key. Most people believe only what they want to based on their childhood experiences and what everyone else accepts. I'll bet most Americans think this country is a noble democracy, there are free markets, our troops defend our freedom, etc.

100% bullshit believed by most Americans, some of them ready to join the military to defend these fantasies only in their minds.

They do because they were raised on these lies for a very specific purpose that is the same as all social controls-predictability to be exploited.

There is a reason that the military uses psy-ops on other countries and psy-ops are used on us, too.

Aldous Huxley gave a speech at UCBerkeley in 1962 called 'The Final Revolution.' He described how the masses could be either controlled at gunpoint or through their minds by controlling their beliefs with a propaganda matrix of lies so people accept rather than resist their manipulation and control.

This is what TV Nation lives in, something Huxley called 'Scientific Fascism.'

[yella_dawg]

18. You make some excellent points.

I don't mean to belittle your post, but I wanted to add something that although trivial in nature, it bears heavily on what you said.

There is an old saw that goes: A man forms all his opinions by the time he's 18.

I've rarely seen evidence which contradicts this "popular wisdom". Which if you really think about the football team / cheerleader atmosphere of public schools is pretty scary.

[RBHam]

3. As one who's felt the lash of that term as a perjorative...

Thank you for the post.

I agree as well.

Who ya gonna believe?

A Government that regularly lies to its own people?

OK.

[KlatooBNikto]

12. There are a couple of additional things in this whole flap about CT.

1. The Governement has made it an obsession to deny us information on any significant issue. Especially when it casts a negative light on the government's motives, acts of commission or omission.
2. It has also gone out of its way to "manufacture reality" as Ron Suskind's article in NYT put it, intentionally fogging up our perceptions.
3. In the absence of any truthful or real information coming from sources with the most resources, people who are curious create secenarios that makes the most sense to them and immediately are labeled CT theorists.

In this CT mongering, the real culprits are the Government's obsession to classify even the most trivial items that may prove embarrassing, the concept of Plausible deniability and lastly, of course, the complete surrender of our brain dead Press.

After nearly forty years and millions of lives lost, McNamara confesses that the Gulf of Tonkin was a manufactured incident. Sens. Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening were denounced in those days as CTs and much worse. I am sure that 9/11 is going to be shown up as the Reichstag Fire of our times.Although the fissures are apparent, the rock hasn't broken yet. Only time will tell.

[jdj]

4. The U.S. just elected one, and this isn't stressed enough.

WMD's in Iraq? No proof.
Connection between al quaeda and Hussein? No proof.
Homosexual agenda? No proof.

etc, etc, ad nauseum.

I don't know why people aren't more upset by the fact that the only difference between a conspiracty theory and an irrefutable fact is what political leaning promotes it.

[DrWeird]

5. "Conspiracy theories arise from evidence."

You know, you're absolutely right. Here's evidence the government is spraying us with mind control chemicals.

[SmartBomb]

10. Seems sort of knee jerk

Why auto-reject the concept of government conspiracies. They have occasionally turned out to be true in the past. Why not now?

[spooked]

13. I second that conspiracy!

[boi1946]

6. There's a big difference between a "conspiracy theorist "

and an "earnest and dogged investigator"---although the governemnt and the media don't seem to make this distinction. Should we re-frame?

[jdj]

8. but if you have to "investigate" then you're an automatic traitor.

Because it means you aren't slurping the gov't soup.

[Demit]

9. Very interesting article. The comment following it is weird though.

It says "Anent the 911 attacks, a new story making the rounds is that the filmed scenes of the aircraft smashing into the two buildings and the many pictures of the subsequent fires (jet fuel is very volatile and burns much hotter than standard gasoline) in addition to the dramatic collapses of both buildings as the intense heat weakened the steel supports, were all shot in a Hollywood sound stage weeks before and then run on national television while real shots of robot planes and rockets crashing into the buildings were ruthlessly suppressed by High Level Government plotters..."

I certainly have not heard this story "making the rounds". It sounds very much like a freeper plant, if it is. Has anyone heard this story repeated anywhere?

[TrogL]

11. A few words from your friendly neighbourhood debunker

I'll keep this relatively short because I'm on a really kludgy browser (Netscape for AIX) and I can barely read this.

I am a conspiracy theorist. Go to my website (click below) and read all about my theories about the religious right and oil wars.

My theories change when presented with new evidence. I don't (AFAIK) mold my evidence to match the theories.

The problem I have with most conspiracy theories is that they ignore perfectly good evidence of an ordinary explanation. Chemtrails comes to mind.

The article (which I only read briefly) mentioned the Oklahoma bombing and the impossibility of a fertilizer bomb blowing off the front of the building. It didn't. It blew off the structural support for the facade and the weight of the facade ripped off the front of the building taking a lot of other stuff with it. That's why it looks so strange, as if it had been cut off with a (rather large) knife. That's why there's perfectly intact furniture and stuff right at the edge of the hole. This explanation matches the known facts, the architecture of the building and the way explosions and gravity work.

My complaint about most conspiracy theories is that they violate known laws of physics, usually having to do with gravity.

(on edit)

Oh, by the way, no I'm not a paid mole even though plenty of people on this board have accused me of being one.

What, exactly, is a paid mole supposed to accomplish?

If somebody would like to pay me, I need a new garage door opener, and a brake job on my van. Any takers?

[aeolian]

16. Oh, no...

*fear*

*backs out of thread*

[JohnOneillsMemory]

19. Was that an aknowledgement of the power of 'early scorning systems?'

...which is what I would call the taboo-effect of the words 'liberal' and 'conspiracy theory.'

Since George Lakoff's 'Framing' concept is about pre-emptive judging embedded in the words we use, then an early-scorning system to prevent people from finding the organized crime called conservative politics is invaluable and damn, it sure sets folks a-runnin' like a stampede of bees.

'Conspiracy theory' is what conservatives call it when liberals figure out their scam and tell on them.

That's why the words have been intentionally taboo voo-doo'ed.

If psychology was taught in high school, would fascism die out?

[bobthedrummer]

17. An example of US mind control: "Bush's Perception Management Plan"

by Robert Parry
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/111804.html

Mind control is a fact, not a theory.