Roswell… Bigfoot…
Oh, that kind of thing.
OK… Shape-shifting lizards. Interesting.
Conspiracy theories do require a wild imaginative leap.
I think we can explain it in scientific ways.
So why do we believe some more ridiculous way.
Yes and of course they spread much more readily now
with the advent of social media.
Who can you trust?
The term conspiracy theory refers to explanations according to which
events in the world are caused by an evil plan
plotted in secret by a small group of powerful individuals.
Some decades ago there was this tendency
to conceive conspiracy beliefs as pathological,
but psychologists have shifted this.
They nowadays believe normal functions of our mind
explain why people believe in conspiracy theories.
The defining features of the conspiracy theory are:
the conspirator, the conspiratorial plan –
the sinister plan that they’re trying to bring about –
and the means of mass manipulation
by which the conspirator is keeping the plan secret.
Sometimes the conspirator will be defined in terms of a concrete body
with an identifiable membership.
The Illuminati, or the Freemasons,
Jews, more recently things like the Bilderberg Group,
the Skull and Bones Society, and various other secret societies.
However very often, the conspirator will be defined
in much vaguer terms –
the Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex,
global elites and so on.
So they’re always balancing between the need to define the enemy
and the need to accept that the enemy is always going to be shady,
secret and so on.
Conspiracy theorists will often argue
that if you destroy a group of powerful people in the world
you will not destroy the conspiracy
because the plan is the key thing.
Very often, that plan is going to involve world domination,
but if one looks at the level of cover up that would be required
in order to keep all these things secret
it necessitates having somebody who is actually in control of everything.
Much of the conspiracist’s writing will involve trying to analyse
what strategies and what power the conspirators have
to keep their sinister plan or their identity hidden.
Very often the manipulation comes from the plausible –
things like science, government, media ownership –
to the ludicrous –
paranormal manipulation, use of occult powers,
manipulation of brainwaves.
Conspiracy believers, I think they genuinely believe in the theories
and they really strive for the truth.
It may seem naive, but there is this human tendency
to underestimate the role that chance alone can play in events that occur.
This belief that the world is ultimately controllable
and that is a very powerful driver
of conspiracy beliefs in moments of crisis
where there is almost like a vacuum in explanation.
We see this more social function of conspiracy beliefs
in the fact that people believe in them or not
as being part of their social identity.
The stereotype is that they’re in their cellar
on the internet, looking for the most recent conspiracy theory.
But most people are neither believers nor sceptics
but fall somewhere in the middle?
And for me the key question is not
what differentiates the hard believers from the hard sceptics,
but how do we interpret that section of the population in the middle.
Conspiracy theories can be dangerous for society –
people who believe that vaccines cause autism
and avoid vaccinating their children, put them in danger.
A thorough thinking person could debunk one argument at a time
but could not debunk all their arguments.
The most sinister conspiracy theories,
like the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the early 20th Century,
or if you talk outlandish in terms of David Icke’s alien lizards,
the fundamental error is always the same,
they’re all based on the fundamentally flawed assumption about how the world works.
And I think that if one makes people more aware of what conspiracy theories are
it enables them, when they see a conspiracy theory,
to see it for what it is.
