As a teenager in the 1980s, I read Robert Anton Wilson’s and Robert Shea’s brilliantly mad tour-de-farce, Illuminatus! and it’s no exaggeration to say that it blew my adolescent mind. It wasn’t just the sex’n’drugs’n’rock’n’roll (although, let’s be honest, that was a lot of it). The book, despite its many faults, is a dazzling paean to free thought. More importantly, it is such a thoroughgoing satire of conspiracy theories that I was forever after inoculated against that particular disease.
Illuminatus! comprehensively mocked conspiracy theories long before believing them became mainstream.
But, like “fascist”, “Nazi” and “racist”, “conspiracy theorist” has become an all-purpose catch-phrase for the gatekeepers of the Official Narrative to dismiss any and all contrary opinion. This puts contrarian me in something of a quandary: if the Establishment are labelling everything a conspiracy theory, does that mean that conspiracy theories are therefore true?
Well, no. Not necessarily. That would be a false dilemma. But just because most conspiracy theories are garbage, that doesn’t mean that everything labelled by the Establishment media as a “conspiracy theory” is a conspiracy theory – much less that it’s false.
What is happening in the West that this label is suddenly being used everywhere? Are you a conspiracy theorist? Am I? How can we even tell?
Let’s start by defining our terms. A conspiracy theory rejects the commonly-accepted story about an unusual event in favour of a more sinister explanation. Conspiracy theories tend to invoke shady figures hidden from public view—powerful (often political) groups that carry out a secret plot to harm others to their own benefit.
You’ve likely come across some of the classic conspiracy theories: that the moon landings were filmed in a Hollywood studio; that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were carried out by the U.S. government; and that Jews are enacting some secret plan for global domination.
A telltale marker of a conspiracy theory is that it can’t be falsified. In other words, evidence for it and a lack of evidence for it are both taken as proof that the theory is true. In this way, conspiracy theories are essentially a matter of faith rather than something that can be objectively proven or disproven.
So, now that we know what a conspiracy theory actually is, how about “conspiracy theories” (so-called)?
QAnon has rightly been identified as a conspiracy theory. It’s true that President Trump led a major crackdown on sex trafficking that saw a number of high-profile arrests—but there is no evidence that a global network of satan-worshipping pedophiles was plotting to get him out of office.
But, just because QAnon was and is a nutty conspiracy theory, doesn’t mean that none of its claims are true. As Chris Trotter pointed out, does the name Jeffrey Epstein ring no bells at all?
On the other hand, BLM mysteriously escapes being called a conspiracy theory, even though it ticks every box on the definition, its claims are blatantly false – and it’s killed dozens more people than QAnon has.
Still, why are conspiracy theories suddenly so popular? (The Jewish conspiracy is beloved of right, left and Islam, after all). Partly it’s the internet, partly it’s the shift in worldview inculcated by neo-Marxism. There is no “truth” any more: only “our truth”.
But cultural Marxism is not the only way that the Establishment has opened the gates for conspiracy theories. The elite are lying so blatantly and continually that nobody in their right mind believes a damn thing they say any more. The Chinese virus is a case in point.
We’ve been hit with mixed messages about the efficacy of masks, the length of lockdowns, the way cases and deaths are measured, and the freedoms that will (or won’t) be restored after the vaccines are rolled out. It seems that each message is delivered with absolute certainty, even if it flatly contradicts the last. This is no way to inspire confidence.
(And don’t forget the conspiracy theories that these institutions have long helped promote, including the Trump-Russia hoax and the unfalsifiable claims of Critical Race Theory).
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Worse, the elite continual sneer at verifiable truths as “conspiracy theories”. They’ve overplayed their hands: if the absolutely-true Great Reset is a conspiracy theory, then why shouldn’t a conspiracy theory like a Flat Earth be every bit as true?
The elite poisoned the well, then proceeded to drink from it by the bucketload. And now they wonder why no one else takes any notice when they tell us to keep away from it.
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