Conspiracy Competition. I lay down the gauntlet.

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
But these are all quite boring compared to what Luka was aiming for, I think.

I probably shouldn't have used the word 'boring' to describe certain conspiracy theories a few pages ago, because they're the theories that anyone who cares about democracy, transparent government, police accountability, civil liberties and so on should be extremely interested in. JE's example of the Hillsborough inquiry is the biggest one I can think of involving the UK police force but there are tons of others, from the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting to the framing of Barry George for Jill Dando's murder. There's the covering up of massive child sex abuse by organizations such as the Catholic Church and BBC, Blair's sexed-up WMDs dossier... I'm sure if we wanted to we could spend the rest of the day listing 'conspiracy theories' that are definitely or probably true. (Perhaps the cleverest is the AGW denial conspiracy, which works by accusing its opponents of orchestrating their own conspiracy.)

But yeah, they're 'boring' in that they don't involve aliens, pyramids, mind control beams, the Knights Templar or radically revising the known laws of physics.

It would probably be useful to distinguish in some way between 'conspiracy hypotheses' and 'conspiracy fantasies'.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I was expecting the wiki page about this to be terrible but the first bit is very good at unpicking what I am getting at in terms of real conspiracies vs conspiracy theory:

A conspiracy theory is an explanation of an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy without warrant, generally one involving an illegal or harmful act carried out by government or other powerful actors. Conspiracy theories often produce hypotheses that contradict the prevailing understanding of history or simple facts. The term is a derogatory one.

According to the political scientist Michael Barkun, conspiracy theories rely on the view that the universe is governed by design, and embody three principles: nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected. Another common feature is that conspiracy theories evolve to incorporate whatever evidence exists against them, so that they become, as Barkun writes, a closed system that is unfalsifiable, and therefore "a matter of faith rather than proof".

The theory about the Hillsborough disaster cover up being a conspiracy carries more weight than theory that chemtrails are a cabal-lead conspiracy to harm the population.

As do the theory of gravity and the theory of evolution.
 

droid

Well-known member
Ive said it many time before. The problem is not conspiracy theory, its conspiracy thinking.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I love how they have categories called things like "9/11 conspiracies" and "Area 51", and one of them is just called "Japan".

David Sylvian was "disappeared" and replaced by a surgically altered CIA agent in 1979. Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Tin Drum are actually full of coded messages to their deep-cover sleeper agents embedded in the post-punk scene.

I appreciate that the thread has moved on between me thinking of that gag and me getting a chance to post it, but I'm buggered if I'm letting it go to waste.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
This is a great article that fits with the line of thought you guys are going down:

https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/l29consp.htm

Bit old now but still worth reading

I will give that a go later. I think Lobster used to use the term "para-politics" to distance itself from conspiracy theorists. It's been a while since I read it but I remember it as being a good example of how you could deal with stuff like P2 (for example) without descending into conspiracy theories. It was heavy on evidence and light on speculation iirc.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
it's probably worth mentioning that false flag/conspiracy reasoning has become a kind of default for a lot of people - a stand in for actually thinking.

Yes, absolutely - it has reached mass status. In germany, there is the following guy: Xavier Naidoo

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Naidoo

Most of the info about him is in German, which makes things on an English speaking board a bit difficult, but he is a prime example how some of that stuff has become an "alternative mainstream" today.

In short, this guy is a mainstream figure in music who had several top ten hits in Germany, was supposed to be the German candidate for Eurovision Song contest, was on TV shows etc. Born in 1972, he reached sucess in the late 1990s - his music is almost unbearable "Neo Soul" and "Soft Rap". Anyways (ok, most unbearbale for me, millions of listeners see it differently). Around 2010 something snapped with the guy - he saw the light. Started out with the good ole "9/11 was an inside job" he later moved on to the German version of the "Freeman/Souvereign Citizen"-movement "Reichsbürger" who believe the Germany of today is a firm/company controlled by some globalist council and that the "Real Germany" is that of between 1871 and 1918. His messianic nature drove him to release a single in April 2017 bearing the title "Marionetten" (translation: puppets) which lyrics include references to "Pizzagate". In several interviews he stated Pizzagate is absolutely real. Several music/TV stations refused to play this single which of course reinforced his believes he was absolutley right, that the globalist pedo ring was out there trying to shut him up.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Several music/TV stations refused to play this single which of course reinforced his believes he was absolutley right, that the globalist pedo ring was out there trying to shut him up.

Great example of the paranoiac's unfalsifiable thinking:

* stations play his single --> "The Truth cannot be contained!"
* stations don't play his single --> "See how They silence me!"
 
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firefinga

Well-known member
it's interesting to ask: if "conspiracy thinking" is, in some sense, becoming more prevalent - why is that?

Many of those conspiracies seem to be a surrogate for religion, respectively for one basic function of religion: to give meaning/direction/sometimes explanation. Instead of an almighty god pulling the strings, it's the Illuminati/globalist council/freemasons etc etc
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Many of those conspiracies seem to be a surrogate for religion, respectively for one basic function of religion: to give meaning/direction/sometimes explanation. Instead of an almighty god pulling the strings, it's the Illuminati/globalist council/freemasons etc etc

I think this is true but it is also partly down to the internet - the ability to disseminate vast quantities of information and also the creation of echo chambers which reinforce certain ideas. It's a lot easier to find out about this stuff now, and also to forge communities around it.

More generally I think lots of people do feel that their lives are subject to forces outside their control. And they are right to feel that, because most people's standard of living has decreased over the last 10, 20 years. In terms of their pay, the support they receive from the state, the general population's mental health, etc. Their lives have got worse regardless of how intelligent they are, how hard they have worked etc.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
More generally I think lots of people do feel that their lives are subject to forces outside their control. And they are right to feel that, because most people's standard of living has decreased over the last 10, 20 years. In terms of their pay, the support they receive from the state, the general population's mental health, etc. Their lives have got worse regardless of how intelligent they are, how hard they have worked etc.

Yes, as in "I have played by the rules all my life, but get no reward, so the rules must be foul, and who is making the rules anyways"?
 

droid

Well-known member
Assimilating information is difficult. Judging credibility, reliability of sources, likelihood of honesty, differing accounts, accounting for institutional and personal bias... these are learned skills that require knowledge, experience, intellectual honesty & a willingness to doubt oneself and examine one's own biases. People aren't trained for this outside academia, politics and media. Combine this fact with a torrent of new information sources & a breakdown in trust in media...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Some things you need to work out for yourself

Then I would guess that it's a fairly typical stoner-paranoiac's insistence that anyone who doesn't share his worldview is necessarily in thrall to the nameless They who run the world, or at the very least The Establishment - the government, the 'MSM' and so on. Though no doubt you're going to tell me I'm embarrassingly, hilariously wrong, because nothing gives you more pleasure than the idea that you understand something that other people don't get.

What's frustrating is that you can be funny and insightful, but the luka persona is at its least attractive when you let your arrogance get the better of you. (I say persona, because you're not actually like this in private correspondence or face-to-face.) Like a few weeks ago when you were right up on your high (or drunk) horse and banging on about how no-one here, apart from Sufi of Arabia, apparently, has been 'further east than Greece', because it tickles you to imagine that everyone apart from you is a normie, a sheeple, a dunderheaded conformist. Basically the sort of adolescent wank that Sam Kriss has somehow made a career out of. (I was going to point out at the time that I've been to several parts of the Middle East, including territory controlled by Hezbollah, but I thought either it would lead to a pissing contest or you'd simply ignore it and carry on regardless with your fantasy that none of us has ever left the country except for a package holiday to Spain, or to visit the obviously boring techno clubs in the obviously boring city of Berlin that you've never been to.)

What's ironic is that this attitude is also de rigeur among the trenchcoated, sword-collecting nerd community that you put so much effort into demonstratively despising. Your Matrix obsession is another point of crossover here, of course.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
He's in Paris with Cath celebrating her birthday. I'm sure he will enjoy your reply on his return, Tea. Everybody else is already buying their beer and pizza for this one.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
He's in Paris with Cath celebrating her birthday. I'm sure he will enjoy your reply on his return, Tea. Everybody else is already buying their beer and pizza for this one.

I hope they're having a great time and he isn't tempted to check up on us reprobates while he's on holiday.

And but so. I'm sure he realises I wouldn't have written so much if I didn't care or thought he was some run of the mill internet nutter or anything like that.
 

luka

Well-known member
My interest in conspiracy theory has nothing to do with the extent to which I ‘believe’ in any given conspiracy theory. I don’t consider myself to be a conspiracy theorist although I’ve certainly felt the dark pull of paranoia and I don’t underestimate its power, its danger or its seductiveness.

I do, for what it’s worth, believe power to operate conspiratorially to a large extent, and in that sense am able to accept the illuminati, or the reptilians, as broad, crude but functional metaphors to describe the power elite. Power is in some sense a conspiracy against everyone outside of its circle.
So in that sense, and again we are talking really quite broadly, I believe conspiracy theory captures something about the reality of human society. Groups emerge and rise to dominance and will go to extraordinary lengths to maintain that dominance. What you see enacted in the internal dynamics of organised crime is what is hidden but no less brutal and uncompromising in the internal dynamics of any other hierarchy, be it political, corporate or what have you. There is a huge amount of art that explores this field. A lot of Stanley Kubrick is about this. A lot of The Wire was about this. And of course there’s a ton of scholarly work and investigative journalism you can sift through. The existence of conspiracies, current and historic, is uncontroversial. (as we all agree) I don’t believe there to be one overarching group which controls all things. There are, plainly, a number of groups which are hugely powerful, and some or all, of these groups converge around certain shared interests, and collaborate, in secret. Again, this is common knowledge and uncontroversial.

Societies are machines but much of the moving parts are hidden from view. We are told those parts don’t exist but you can’t understand how the machine functions just by looking at what is on display. You can’t follow cause through to effect. You have to extrapolate, and at some point, due to the amount of obfuscation, lies and misdirection in play, you have to make guesses. James Ellroy novels are about this hidden half of power and how it operates.

One of the things I find so fascinating about the conspiracy theory culture, is the way it sheds light on the way we fill in the blank spaces of the map. We project our fears and our fantasies onto those blank spaces. Our fears and fantasies are usually tawdry, lurid and irrational but they are ours and seeing them on display is useful, and, to my mind, extremely interesting. The internet is laying bare the collective unconscious and it is as fascinating as it is horrifying. Recoiling from it won’t make it disappear. Repressing it won’t make it go away. These are things which need to be worked through, if I can slip into therapy jargon briefly.

Nobody, not even the heads of secret services, are working with anything like a full data set. No one can see the full picture. Everybody is groping a different part of the elephant. The way data is assembled into a world view, and how near-identical data inputs can form into radically different world-pictures is, I want to keep using the word fascinating, because it is fascinating. In fact no one is as famously paranoid as the heads of secret services. Read up on them and you will see what I mean.

I consider it to be hubristic to assume that one has a better grasp on reality than anyone else. This is the basis of my railing against ‘common sense’ which is just an unwillingness to examine underlying and often unconscious assumptions.

The news comes down a very small number of pipelines. It is like oil or gas in that regard. And yet people construct such different narratives from that limited amount of ‘raw data.’ Why is that? I have no patience for the trite, smug, patronising dismissals of people on this forum. It can’t be explained away as easily as you’d like it to be. It’s a real force in our culture (in world culture in fact, not just in the west) and yes, as we have been reading a lot about recently, it has been ‘weaponised’ (to use a vogueish word)

It helps to understand its allure from the inside. It thrives on the ambiguity of the uncertain and the unknown. You can’t wish away this ambiguity. It exists. It is a crucial part of being human and it is amplified by propaganda, by secret services, by the media and so on and so forth. It is a corollary of being able to lie. Horses presumably can’t. Humans do, habitually. If you take all official pronouncements at face value you are a naïf. To feel the biting point of a conspiracy theory, where the alternative presentation of the ‘facts’ (as they are commonly understood) starts to seem as plausible as the official version is essential to grasping the appeal. The vertigo of that. Allowing the anomalies in any account to hold their full force. To be able to be poised in that ambiguity, without toppling, is a useful experience.

It is the basis of imagination. To turn the wheel of the kaleidoscope and have the particles cohere in a completely new pattern. If you cannot do this, and at will, then you are only partially human. I don’t claim that all, or even more than a handful, of conspiracy mongers are terribly imaginative. As I have said, a lot of it is a crude projection of tawdry fears and fantasies. But even in its most debased and tawdry forms there is something very interesting going on. It is very rarely, virtually never, that a conspiracy is made out of whole cloth. It is rather a collective mythos, a patchwork quilt. So you get to see this and trace this, really in real time. The participants build on a number of foundational myths or stories. Why do these take hold? Why does, for example, the ancient astronaut myth resonate? But it does, and the degree of convergence among all proponents of ancient astronaut myth is startling. There is very little divergence from Zecharia Sitchin and von Danniken. The idea is to contribute to a pre-existing universe. In that sense it is like writing for Marvel comics, for example. There has to be some degree of continuity. That collective myth-making and tacit collaboration tells us a lot about how society works. If you can be bothered thinking about these things you can learn from them. Being dismissive and condescending strikes me as the least useful and least interesting of all the possible responses to this stuff. I hope that goes some way to explaining my attitude towards this discussion and why I occasionally lapse into irritability and/or dismissiveness.
 

luka

Well-known member
the purpose of this thread was to see if it was possible to weave our own thread into that mythos which i thought would be more interesting and educational than rehashing this conversation for the nth time but never mind. i guess people enjoy rehashing this conversation.
 
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