Why do Conspiracy Theories Exist?

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CASE STUDY: BBC’S CROWDSCIENCE PODCAST “WHY DO CONSPIRACY THEORIES EXIST”?

Link to podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszv5z.

This podcast can be divided into two parts: before the Big Tobacco segment and after the Big Tobacco segment. To the rational listener, the segment on Big Tobacco should have instilled the proof of principle that giant, nefarious, and extremely damaging conspiracies have existed in the past. It should also have instilled the knowledge of key precedents set by the Big Tobacco story — including the industry’s exploitation and weaponization of the term “conspiracy theorist” to tarnish its critics with the image of being a bunch of crazies, of being unhinged and irrational, the great unwashed fringe who are a danger to the good faith uniting society.

Stanford professor Robert Proctor said on the program how the Big Tobacco story is amongst the deadliest conspiracies in the history of human civilisation. He says how it is an example of an “extremely powerful conspiracy” and how “the whole notion of conspiracy theory is partly an instrument used by very powerful corporations to deflect their critics”. He continues, “they helped create this idea that a conspiracy theory is a psychological delusion… and so that is the ultimate conspiracy — to refute conspiracy theorists as just a bunch of crazies… and part of the problem is that academics have been massively corrupted… that was partly the genius of the Tobacco Industry to push hundreds of millions and eventually billions of dollars into what they called alternative causation, something that would exculpate cigarettes. When Richard Nixon launched the war on cancer in 1971 cigarettes were entirely ignored. The real conspiracies are deep”. [i][see Endnote].

If the podcast’s thread had seemed condescending and arrogantly assured of its grounding in “science” and “rationality” before the Big Tobacco segment, you’d have thought Robert Proctor’s cautionary tale would have changed the direction of the podcast’s pitch, that it might have shifted the assuredness of the presenter’s tone. That it might have been a T-junction in the podcast.

But no.

Post Big Tobacco, not only does the thrust of the podcast seem unaltered, it doubles-down on its central message: conspiracy theorists need compassion, and they could do with therapy. “Facts don’t work”, one contributor laments — “I want to fight disinformation with reason, but (when dealing with conspiracy theorists) you need to leave facts at the door”. Not only do those complaining about conspiracy theorists imply they have superior reasoning skills, but they also make the implicit claim that the “facts” they wish to use to counter disinformation are, in fact, facts. This self-appointed claim of rationality links naturally to the opening framing of the podcast, where the presenter proudly sets the scene by saying, “this is a science show” — i.e. as if to say: this is where rational people come home to roost; this is where intelligent people belong; where we already know for sure and can state as fact (before the discussion has even begun) that those who believe in conspiracy theories have a “fantastically wrong view of how the world works”; where conspiracy theory isn’t just wrong, it’s wrong think.

This podcast isn’t a genuine dialogue to explore the topic so much as it is a gathering of the like-minded to shun the topic, and the podcast grants itself the unchallenged default assumption that the essence and method of science itself is incorruptible and uncorrupted.

It’s as if the presenter hadn’t heard a single thing the contributor on Big Tobacco had said. Feign concession, chuck in a couple of bridging caveats and thoughtful-sounding reflections and ponderings, and then cut ties with the deeply instructive precedents set by the Big Tobacco story. Pretend like it offers no relevant insight, no warning, no concrete countervailing narrative to inform and counsel the rest of the podcast. The inclusion of the Big Tobacco segment might give the appearance of a balanced discussion — yet its deep insights, cautionary tale, and gargantuan precedents are not integrated into the rest of the podcast. It’s a disjointed appendage, rather than being the core ‘pillar in the swamp’ that it should be. Perhaps the presenter saw fit to banish the Big Tobacco story into the memory hole — an awkward truth that could nonetheless be framed as a “historical” incident, something which happened in the distant past. Never mind that our media is presently obsessed with the wrongdoings of the slave trade much further back in history. Then again, consistency was never their strong point.

But the podcast’s lack of balance doesn’t stop there. Throughout, there seem to be a series of subtle jabs at the populist right — aka, Trump supporters in the US and Brexiteers in the UK. Conspiracy theorists take “pride in individualism” the podcast tells us, nudging us ideologically into believing that this is somehow a bad thing. Conspiracy theorists are “selfish” and are less likely to work “collectively” with others. There is talk of how conspiracy theorists might be misunderstood as just having “bad politics” [read: ‘wrong’ politics such as being a Trump supporter] and the presenter expresses surprise when a journalist from The Atlantic recounts how she fell for conspiracy theories during her adolescent days (note the implication that those who believe in conspiracy theories are immature), calling The Atlantic “a very fact-based publication”.

Note that The Atlantic is not objectively known for being especially factually accurate — and note also how it came out in support of China’s system of control and online censorship in the wake of the COVID-19 situation. The tech giant Apple has shown similar deference to China, having recently removed an App that helped Hong Kong protestors track the police.

After introducing the journalist’s adolescent dalliance with the idea that ‘something in the background is controlling media and governments’, the presenter interjects brashly and impulsively “spoiler alert — it’s not true”! Sure, but as is so often the case, it depends on the sophistry and semantic trickery being used. Its not ‘true’ in the sense of a shadowy, reptilian, bloodthirsty satanic cult — but it might very well be true in the sense of a permanent government, a deep state, which is controlling things out of public view, like the baddie from Inspector Gadget whose face is always well hidden. This is a classic Straw Man error — constructing and burning down an exaggerated and distorted version of a claim. You say you believe in dinosaurs; they say you believe in dragons. This is a particular problem in the vaccine wars: the perception of this debate has been controlled and ring-fenced to such an extent that only two positions are possible — you are either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine. This narrative-control clouds the fact that most “anti-vaxxers” are, in fact, simply concerned about safety. They are pro safe vaccine. In this way, the establishment has created a conspiracy theory of its own, moulding perception to conflate skepticism over vaccine safety with belief in a nefarious, satanic death cult wherein vaccines are used to control the population. This tactic is used broadly by the propaganda arm and Pit Bull dogmatic skeptics of orthodox science. “Anti-science” is one such example. It is a totally meaningless term, a decoy. If science is a tool, then you can’t be anti-tool — you can only be questioning how the tool is used. But “anti-science” has the desired propagandising effect; it lumps those with a dissenting scientific opinion with the stupid, with the anti-progressive, with the backward.

And it acts as a red herring too, distracting us from serious inquiry. The presenter goes on to state that the journalist had been “lured into the world of conspiracies”, and this coerces the listener into conjuring up the image of a cult. There is no concession that secretive forces in the background DO control media and governments — namely giant corporations and other industry vested interests — or that leftist media and political parties have become acquiescent to, and interdependent on, the cult-like dictates of “woke” and politically-correct culture. There is no reverse engineering of Marxist cultural movements such Black Lives Matter and radical feminism to understand that the concept of revolution implies the revolt against something in society which is unnatural and contrived — such as a conspiracy to oppress or to subjugate. There is no such concession or understanding that protests since time immemorial (and recently celebrated by the BBC along with other media) imply conspiracy — that revolution must be against some type of perception or theory of systemic wrongdoing — i.e. conspiracy.

Semantics is a major stumbling block in this discourse. No one should get to decide their own definition for everyone else. All the following things which the media tell us about on a daily basis involve — and amount to — conspiracy: propaganda, corruption, cover-ups, collusion, delay tactics, coordinated campaigns of censorship or subterfuge, ideological manipulation and cultural gaslighting perpetrated by the media (such as double standards, hypocrisy, and doublespeak), industry and corporate lobbying (to force and manipulate the free market), aspects of scientific dogmatism and strategizing (e.g. applying the tactic of alternative causation / sowing doubt), conscious biases of all kinds which steer all aspects of society (and even unconscious ones if they involve the conspiracy of affected, conflicted, or corrupted forces that have been inculcated), fraud, bribery and blackmail, control of perception through marketing and advertising, ideological warfare raging in academia and mainstream media, any time facts are distorted, misappropriated, or omitted, and finally — the institutional filtering system and process of normalisation Noam Chomsky spoke about in his famous interview with BBC’s Andrew Marr, wherein Chomsky suggests the filtering system (and its close cousin normalisation) is, in a sense, the core conspiracy, the conspiracy which prevents others ever needing to be done. This is the key interchange in the interview:

Marr: “How can you know I’m self-censoring”?

Chomsky: “I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you say. But what I’m saying is if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”

If the presenter uses the Big Tobacco story at all, she does so in order to selectively cast criticism on the power structures which the political left finds problematic. “Yes, that’s true, large companies don’t always act in our planet’s best interest, despite pretending to do so, and corrupt politicians do take bribes” she says directly after the Big Tobacco segment. Arguably, the first part of her statement is referring to climate change, and the second part to Trump — even though the Big Tobacco story was never directly about environmental destruction or about political corruption. It was about a deep and dark and real medical-corporate conspiracy — yet the podcast exploits this example to win political and ideological points, whilst craftily retaining the option to use “conspiracy theory” for its own side in order to be able to deride and dismiss. She continues, “so we shouldn’t be discouraging people from questioning authority, as sometimes authority can’t be trusted”. But what ‘’authority’’ is she referring to here? We don’t know, but we can guess from her next comment on how interference in political elections is one of the “true” conspiracies. She seems to totally forget or ignore that the Russia-collusion claim surrounding Trump’s 2016 election is a theory, not a fact. It is a conspiracy theory! Thus, she states some conspiracy theories as facts, and misappropriates or minimises real conspiracies. For a media which is predominantly left-leaning (at least in terms of the ideology of the raging culture wars), they’re quite happy — even encouraging — for you to distrust authority on the right.

This is all a paradox, given that by the year 2020, the conflation between the “far right” and conspiracy theories has been pushed so hard by the mainstream media that it is becoming locked in public perception — especially in the US. A paradox because, since 2016, the same media has been pushing onto the world the left’s grand conspiracy theory that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election. A conspiracy theory which has cost countless millions, wasted millions of hours, and which has seen a political system become embroiled and obsessed by a theory which has distracted attention away from helping ordinary Americans. When the presenter states that conspiracy theories can be harmful, again she is being highly selective. The podcast (however unconscious their bias) want you to focus your vitriol on specific targets — e.g. anti-vaxxers — not on others.

By now, what was pitched as a “scientific” and “rational” discussion on conspiracy theory is looking biased, underhanded, and irrational. Even when she makes the solid point of imploring us to always check whether “the source of information has any vested interests”, at this point one might be doubtful whether there isn’t a subtext to her advice — whether she herself is aware of it or not. Is she really prompting us to question all sources of information? Should we question the WHO, our “scientists” and “experts”? We know from the recent round of YouTube, Google, Facebook, and Twitter bans and censorship that anyone who questions the official narrative of the WHO — even mainstream doctors who offer rational, evidence-based dissent — has been punished. Perhaps there’s some truth to Voltaire’s saying, “if you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticise”.

Or is the comment on “authority” really just an allusion to the spread of so-called “fake news” from the Trump administration? Is this just another ideological nudge? Is this entire podcast episode an ideological nudge, a conspiracy of sorts? We know from the Big Tobacco story that such 4-dimensional chess games of deception and distortion have happened before. Why not again? The power structures from the past are linked to those in the present.

And Bill Gates does provide funding to the BBC, after all. And the WHO. And Imperial College London. And many other organisations. Gates is the man with a thousand tentacles — and a perfectly reasonable question is to ask, why? Bill Gates could certainly do without all the conspiracy theories being bounded around in the time of COVID-19.

A question is raised in the podcast of whether authoritarian governments cause more conspiracy theories. An expert responds, “yes, because then you take away freedom of thought and people making up their own minds — which is the best face of liberal democracies — although that’s really challenged now because of the virtual lives people live”. It’s unclear whether she means that it is authoritarian structure or liberal democracy which is challenged by an increasingly online, virtual world. But what is clear is the expert’s insistence that freedom of thought and being able to make up one’s mind is the antidote to conspiracy theorising.

If you think about it, this comment is utterly bizarre. In countries like the US and UK today, silencing and censorship (including de-platforming and cancel-culture) is coming almost exclusively from the left. Today, it is the right who are the strongest protectors of free speech. The expert fails to mention this, as well as failing to mention the “woke” / politically-correct culture which is behind the emergent authoritarianism of the left. This is bizarre because today it is the left who have co-opted “conspiracy theorist” as a weapon against the right — and yet it is the authoritarianism of the left’s censorship and cancel culture which is providing the ammunition for its own weapon. The culture wars are rife with the type of doublespeak which would make Orwell turn in his grave. For example, in the recent General Barr hearing in the US — where he was lambasted by Democrats for the administration’s use of federal troops to quell the rioting and protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death — the Democrats extolled free speech in their support for the legitimacy of the protests. “This country was built on free speech” they exclaimed proudly. Yes, but we know — we know categorically — that it is the same left who have been behind the restriction of free speech in society and on the big tech platforms… behind censoring, de-platforming, shadow-banning, outright banning, silencing, and cancel-culture more broadly.

Of course, the podcast does make some valid points — such as regarding psychology and evolutionary explanations — but even here, the self-appointed “gatekeepers” for fact and reason appear to be blind to how these same forces are mirrored within themselves. In bashing conspiracy theories, they position themselves as authority credulists — which, if you’ve read any of the writings of Nassim Taleb, Eric Weinstein, or the Ethical Skeptic — can be argued to be more problematic and more pathological. If nothing else, they certainly exhibit their own plethora of defence mechanisms, ego mechanisms, and psychological projections.

Three reasons are given for conspiratorial ideation — epistemic (the need for knowledge), existential (the need to feel safe), and social (the need for belonging). But, of course, everyone shares these needs. More specifically, conspiracy theorists are characterised and even pathologized as having a heightened desire to feel special. There is a correlation between conspiratorial ideation and narcissism, we are told. But the podcast doesn’t say whether these studies differentiate between those conspiracy theories which are absurd and those which are reasonable (i.e. the podcast hasn’t defined its terms and stated its goals) — and it doesn’t say what the control group is. It is quite possible — even probable — that extreme fringe conspiracy theorists and dogmatic skeptics / authority credulists overlap significantly in their narcissistic tendencies.

If some conspiracy theorists do indeed have a heightened need to feel special, then surely the scientists and experts speaking out against them have sought to become important and feel special by spending their lives climbing another sort of hierarchy — the conventional one of professional achievement and status. It is even stated that experts and scientists are “just doing their job”, implying they aren’t the least bit emotionally invested in the position they take against conspiracy theorists, nor that they are in any way beholden to corporate or ideological interests.

Apparently, a belief in conspiracy theories gives those struggling with powerlessness a sense of control in the world. Yet, even this assertion implies that everyone isn’t vying for power and control in their own way (which is clearly false — and especially in the case of dogmatic skeptics and authority credulists who can be very controlling and power-hungry), and it implicitly states there to be a group or elite in society who are powerful. Where there is power, there is corruption. And where there is corruption there is conspiracy. Thus, to a certain extent, to pathologize conspiracy theorists is to pathologize oneself and to inadvertently prove that conspiracies exist. To bash conspiracy theories could simply be part of intellectual enquiry and free speech — but the fact that the resistance of conspiracy theories comes most strongly top-down from our establishments and institutions begs a lot of questions. We can also ask how the term “conspiracy theory” has become such a weaponised term of derision. How has its associations been inculcated? How has public sentiment been nudged toward self-censorship?

Those who go out of their way to bash conspiracy theorists are undoubtedly also grappling for a sense of control. Bashing conspiracy theories is sort of like bashing alien / UFO theories. To do so is to appear rational, sane, intelligent, reasonable, grounded, un-gullible, and sovereign in one’s immunity to others’ tendency to becoming derailed and unhinged. But aliens are a mathematical certainty — as certain as the fact that the earth is round and much more probable than the blanket assertion that vaccines are safe. Here, you might be the one accused of playing semantics — they are willing to concede that primitive lifeforms might exist elsewhere in the universe. But alien theorists aren’t playing semantics — they mean intelligent lifeforms, and civilisations. And, indeed, the existence of these is predicted by the Drake Equation, however distant in space and time these civilisations might be.

The veiled Ad hominem attack is a persistent theme in the podcast. Ad Hominem attacks aren’t an argument. Whilst psychological and evolutionary reasons are always interesting, the key focus should be on the actuality of the conspiracies themselves. If an appeal is made to evolutionary theory, we must do so consistently in all areas of life. But this clearly isn’t the case. Appeals will be made to evolutionary theory to account for conspiracy theory — but when it comes to the biological differences between men and women, appealing to evolutionary theory is seen as bigoted and hateful. The problem, as in so many instances of modern discourse, is one of selectivity.

We have evolved to find patterns in our environment, and this can misfire as Illusory Pattern Perception. This is very interesting, and does go some way to explain people who believe everything is a conspiracy. As Jordan Peterson says, we’re not natural scientists, we’re natural sociologists. Conspiracy theories are not by definition wrong, just unproven. I would agree that the more extravagant a conspiracy theory, the higher is the burden of proof on those who suggest it. But, as we saw with Big Tobacco, the most destructive conspiracies are often those which are the least extravagant, the least “far-out” or whacky, and which are also the most likely.

As scientist Michael Shermer said on a recent London Real episode (the same London Real which has been banned and censored, by the way), “conspiracies are all over the place”. Flat-earthers and Moon Hoaxes are just a distraction — a convenient distraction — from the real conspiracies which have had devasting consequences in time and space. The Blair / Bush Iraq war was justified on the basis of weapons of mass destruction which never existed, as proven in the Chilcott Report. $2.5 trillion has been spent on that war, destabilising an entire geopolitical region in the process. If you believe that amount of money was spent with no ulterior motive, the shear improbability of that belief means the burden of proof really is squarely on you. We already know from the Gulf of Tonkin incident that the US lied to justify it’s invasion of Vietnam. Quote:

The original American report blamed North Vietnam for both incidents, but the Pentagon Papers, the memoirs of Robert McNamara, and NSA publications from 2005, proved that the US government lied to justify a war against Vietnam.

Was Gulf of Tonkin a conspiracy? Yes. Did it result in the deaths of hundred of thousands of people and a long legacy of misery? Yes. Are people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange revered by our governments and media for exposing secrets (i.e. conspiracies)? No. Given the long and ignoble history of all our institutions — be that governments, corporations, the banking system, politicians, or media — people shouldn’t be patronised and mocked for being distrustful. Trust has to be earned. Where there is power, there is the risk of corruption — of conspiracy. Conspiracies aren’t just likely, they’re inevitable. History is littered with them, big and small, innocuous and nefarious. In this sense, this is perhaps why conspiracy theories are so infuriating to so-called “rational” people and “scientists” — they are one of those things we know to be true, but which are difficult to prove. The existence of conspiracy theories is undoubtedly true, but often not factually supportable. Perhaps Joe Biden was on to something after all when he exclaimed, “we choose truth over facts”. On the podcast Rebel Wisdom, the host suggests that conspiracies are metaphorically true, but literally false. I would go a step further and say that, where conspiracies are true, they are rarely factual. Indeed, the whole point of a conspiracy is to cover its tracks.

Establishment busybodies have tried to conflate all types of conspiracy, and someone like Lewandowsky is famous for promoting the idea that those who believe in fringe conspiracy theories (e.g. the Moon Hoax) are more likely to believe in all other ‘conspiracies’ — such as the idea that climate change is exaggerated — the aim being to dismiss climate change skeptics and ‘denialists’ as crazies. However, in Psychological Science professors Dixon and Jones laid out their argument for why Lewandowsky’s conclusions are false. In other words, people do distinguish and discern — people can’t be lumped together and discarded.

See: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797614566469.

Returning to the point about perception — just because conspiratorial ideation is linked with IPP, this doesn’t prove theories to be wrong. And it doesn’t disprove the existence of patterns in a system which is infinitely complex. We would do good to be vigilant of the fact that Big Tobacco exploited noise and complexity to hide a clear signal. If seeding that much doubt is possible with one variable (i.e. smoking), imagine the obfuscation campaign which could be waged in a system with more variables. We would also do well to be vigilant of the opposite tactic, exploited by some factions of the Maoist revolution where criticism, reflection, and dissent was welcomed and encouraged to both present the illusion of freedom and to whip people up into such a fervour of intellectualisation and pinballing inside their own heads they became so exhausted and confused that they gave up and resorted to just believing The Party line.

If the accuracy of our pattern perception is the key to understanding how the world really works, then we should seriously question the fact that so many of our institutions — be it governments, corporations, media, advertising & marketing, or Big Tech — purposefully attempt to alter our perceptions as a matter of course, or by design, or as an aspect of their business model. Here, David Icke has a point. If you don’t believe anything else he says; here he has a point. Noam Chomsky essentially makes the same point anyway in Manufacturing Consent — so if Icke makes you feel a bit “icky”, you could go with Chomsky’s mainstream version of the same idea.

Ironically then — in suggesting how faulty pattern perception correlates with conspiratorial ideation, the podcasts once again shoots itself in the foot: if illusory pattern perception makes us more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, then our institution’s constant campaign of perception distortion not only validates the conspiracy theorist’s suspicions and their attempt to dot-connect (i.e. in an environment of perception deception, conspiracy theorising can be considered a natural and even adaptive response) — it also proves the existence of insidious conspiracies themselves. One must concede — if being at all reasonable — how convenient it is that all the biggest supposed threats to humanity (and thus, those which can be used to exert most control) are invisible and/or intangible. Climate change is caused by an invisible gas, COVID-19 is an invisible threat, terrorism is sensed more than it is seen, and the supposed systems of discrimination and oppression (e.g. patriarchy and racism) which drive so much of today’s “woke” ideological narrative are largely nebulous, abstract forces.

Sure, conspiracy theories can do harm. But the weaponization of the term to dismiss dissent can also do harm. Both extremes are harmful — those extreme conspiracy theorists who see shadows at night — and those authority credulists who deny even real conspiracies and who wish to equate dissent with mental illness, conspiracy theory as a psychological delusion. If authority credulists win out, valuable insights will be lost, and respect for questioning — and for vital intellectual heresy — will be undermined.

Whilst journalists squirreled about reporting on the Iraq war, few — if any — have come to focus on the fact that it all began on false pretences. It’s as if they are only able to pitch their questioning downstream, reluctant to consider the deeper questions or the iceberg below the surface. So too, we face a global pandemic with a mainstream media which seems very reluctant to question its origin story in China. Those in the alternative media who do are — you guessed it — labelled conspiracy theorists, even though the best objective evidence is pointing (and has always pointed) toward a leak from the Wuhan BSL4 lab. The hydroxychloroquine scandal is another angle of the COVID-19 story which is very troubling. It has been safe this whole time. It’s use could have saved countless lives. But hydroxychloroquine is an off-patent medicine which wouldn’t make the pharmaceutical companies a lot of money. The high-profile studies which showed it to be ineffective and dangerous — published in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine — had to be retracted. The studies were seriously flawed. The question is, how did they get to be published in these high-impact medical journals in the first place? Blame is being cast at the author of the studies, but he is just a scapegoat. The deeper question is why did the most prestigious journals in the world so readily publish false findings? Could it be that Big Pharma didn’t want an unprofitable medicine to be used? Could it be because Trump supported its use that the rest of the world recoiled from the idea? Are these conspiracy theories? Perhaps. But they are probable conspiracies. Big pharma has a long and ignoble track record of doing exactly this. And there’s nothing political about hydroxychloroquine. Unless, like a lot on the left, you have Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The media which we rely on to uncover the facts and to tell us the truth is largely corporately owned, and Noam Chomsky expands on this in his famous interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, where he provides numerous examples to show how the entire media totally ignored some critically important events in recent history. Thus, the idea that all conspiracies eventually fail due to exposure assumes that the media will disclose their findings — if they even look for it at all. And, if they are revealed by alternative media sources and / or whistle-blowers they will likely be branded “conspiracy theories”, so they are destined to remain in the realm of the unacknowledged and unratified. As we see in Mike Cernovich’s documentary Hoaxed, the mainstream media don’t like others doing what they consider to be solely “their job”. They are the truth-tellers. They are the gatekeepers. They are the media. To reiterate an earlier point — Julian Assange wasn’t welcomed with open arms by the mainstream media at large.

In giving the media the benefit of the doubt, we can reverse the approach and ask whether, if facts came to light that what the media had been reporting on was either partly or entirely false, would they come clean and admit their mistake?

If the answer is no — and it has been on multiple occasions as Chomsky suggests — then this failure to set the record straight amounts to a conspiracy of wilful negligence, a conspiracy of silence and of omission.

In concluding, we would do well to note the advice of a wise scientist in the flat-earth documentary Behind the Curve. He points out how it is in large part all this mockery, condescension and vitriol directed toward dissenters and those who believe in far-out claims which creates the backlash and tribalism that entrenches them ever deeper in their views. Ridicule just makes people defensive. And condescension makes them angry. If the BBC really wanted to tackle conspiracy theories, they could go about it in a better way.

We need a broader context, and a deeper sympathy. Scientists tell us that the universe sprang from nothing, and they tell us that particles which are quantumly entangled remain so even if separated at opposite ends of the cosmos. “Spooky action at a distance” is real, scientists tell us, as well as the fact that everything came from nothing. These truths seem infinitely less probable than the idea that shady figures in smoky rooms conspire to get rich, consolidate power, or control the masses. The universe is mysterious, but the animalistic gaming and strategizing for power really isn’t that far-fetched at all. Chimpanzees do it. All the natural world do it. Life itself — and the process of evolution which drives it — is a dog-eat-dog world; survival of the fittest. Conspiracies are, perhaps, as old as time itself.

 

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[i] [Note that little has changed today. The exploitation of nuance to obfuscate (and it’s evil mirror: appeals to simplicity and reductionism to evade relevant nuance) goes on all the time, and in all spheres of public discourse. Even if we ignore the historical battles between naturopathic and allopathic medicine (e.g. Wilk v American Medical Association, where the AMA was found to have violated trust laws, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilk_v._American_Medical_Ass%27n) and the 1910 Flexner Report which purposely set mainstream medicine on a more reductionist path which strongly favoured pharmaceutical interests; still, today, the present Biomedical Model and its deep and tentacled network of allies — be it it’s bulldog army of dogmatic skeptics; AstroTurf think tanks; conflicted science journalists; a biased, censorious and monopolistic Google search engine; biased Wikipedia pages (most Wikipedia pages are unilaterally controlled by anonymous editors, and when they are locked against edit to “protect against vandalism” often what this really means is it is locked to gatekeep the narrative); or pharma-funded medical schools and academic journals — all conspire to tirelessly pump out a message of alternative causation, to seed doubt, to muddy the water, to maintain a dependence on drugs and medical therapies rather than getting to grips with the reality that lifestyle and environmental factors are the key drivers of chronic disease in the modern world… and the term “conspiracy theorist” has once again become the mechanism of derision and exclusion of anyone who questions the official narrative.

Patent law is just “economics” you might claim — but patent law in medicine has led to strong monopolistic protectionism and the roll-out of a complex octopus-like system of practices to exclude and dismiss other approaches and realms of medicine. Today, some of the biggest R&D and PR arms of Big Pharma have been softened and disguised under their rebranding as “Charities”, “Foundations”, or “Trusts”. For example, Sense About Science is heralded as an “independent” “charity” which supports science and rewards those in science-outreach efforts (e.g. science journalists) who ‘stand up for science’ — yet SAS has strong industry links, being funded by pharmaceutical interests and even Coca-Cola. Another example is Wellcome Trust — a multibillion dollar “charity” strongly embedded within pharmaceutical and other industry interests].