Berating "Conspiracy Theorists" is a disgusting display of arrogance, bigotry, narcissism and delusions of Western superiority. History is littered with examples of powerful conspirators vying for more power at the disregard and even contempt for the people that stand in the way. No nation in no era is exempt from this historical law and existential human flaw.
It is worth noting before we begin that the term "Conspiracy Theorist" is simply a memetic rhetorical device meant to act as a pejorative designed to denigrate those who question the prevailing establishment-approved narratives. In a sense a 'CHECKMATE' rebuttal meant to render the "Theorists’" claims automatically useless and irrational no matter how well thought out and logical.
The truth is, Western political epistemology, especially as it pertains to recognizing and contending with pathological power dynamics, is as in danger of being covertly confined to the Overton window of acceptable discourse as any other philosophical endeavor. The only thing that has become more sophisticated is facade that blinds you to it.
Take the following scenario. You are in your High School History class and learning about the horrors of history's past. The cabal of power brokers and conspirators that shape humanity's timeline. The teacher mentions various kings, monarchs and dictators that insisted the population be disarmed. Historically this has occurred as either overt and outright subjugation of a population already thoroughly dominated and controlled for the explicit purpose that they cannot rebel, or through covert and pernicious disarmament that eventually starved out and suffocated any realistic hope of the population to defend. Would this lesson be in any way outrageous or controversial? Of course not.
If you were to theoretically float the scenario correspondent to even the most seemingly ludicrous of modern day "Conspiracy Theories" but ascribe it to, say, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao or even Pol Pot - all within the 20th century - that they secretly conspired behind closed doors to poison the people through air or water, that they insidiously weakened their defences, staged false flag events and manipulated the dissemination of information for the express purpose of power gain to the point of total domination...would this be unbelievable intellectual blasphemy and offensive to your sensibilities? To continue the thought experiment; what if the teacher told the class this was happening today but in some other non Western part of the world? Could the teacher name any 3rd world - or even simply a non Western nation - that would cause the class to interject and exclaim "NONSENSE!"...? How about with university environmental studies students at a left leaning campus like Berkeley or Columbia and the claim involved a vast right wing conspiracy of oil tycoons like the Kochs whereby they manipulated their connections and resources to install a president favorable to oil and pipeline interests, all at the expense of the environment and inevitable global warming polar meltdown that jeopardized the entire human race and many other species we share the planet with. What if this became, to borrow a Leo line "humanity's greatest existential threat"? Would the students find this asinine?
The levels of evil and psychopathy that are imagined, believed and deemed socially acceptable to consider in public discourse when associated to a figure such as Hitler or even Trump are near limitless when given a “mainstream” stamp of approval, and it seems to be the only time the majority of people care to truly consider the implications of their relative fragility and the power they have relinquished. Again, history has demonstrated throughout thousands of years and hundreds of millions of lives that this is a very serious threat worth due examination. So why when it involves contemporary Western nations, normalization within one's own tribe, or apparent State approval, does the notion of surrendered power becoming corrupt or pathological and inevitably turning against the people become a laughably absurd notion to entertain?
When a claim is made that doesn't conform to the mainstream narrative put forth, often you will be met by those who scramble to defend it with the usual and predictable sentiment - "That's a 'Conspiracy Theory'. You are a "Conspiracy Theorist" - as if by simple virtue of attaching the phrase to the claim it instantly negates its veracity. But what they are really saying is; "But that couldn't happen to us, no, that has only proven to be a problem for the savages of the 3rd world and idiotic generations past. Us, on the other hand, would not make such fatal errors. We on the other hand, we are immune!!! If only those who suffered death and destruction at the hands history's tyrants shared me and my fellow liberals' superior intellect they too would have been immune to the genocides they ultimately endured. If only the noble savages of the 3rd world, so pathetically misguided by disinformation that to believe raping a virgin would cure their AIDS had my intellectual prowess, if only they had the sophistication and nuance of me and my contemporary Western brothers they wouldn't fall victim to such obvious stupidity. If only they could erect such a foolproof paradigm on uncompromised and flawless axioms. But alas, they are obviously incapable."
So how is this apparent arrogance possible?
When one really takes the time to carefully examine our epistemological structures they will understand how deeply fragile and persuadable they are truly are. This is true right down to the foundational level of axioms. If that isn’t worrying enough, when the axiom is flawed the potential pathology can amplify as it manifests all the way up and pervades every aspect of the existential theory or paradigm, whether personal or even societal. As I mentioned above, the comment about entire populations believing that rape is not only a viable but acceptable method to cure AIDS isn’t just shock-value facetiousness. A dangerously false axiom can ripple through every mode of society with devastating consequence. To paraphrase the great Carl Jung; “people don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.” Not only that, an axiom’s “truth value” isn’t as cut and dried and objectively reflective as one would initially believe. As Godel discovered and articulated with his incompleteness theorem, within a self-referential system (as we are) a truth value cannot be proved from within that system. It always needs another seperated system, or “meta-system” brought to bear and applied from outside to determine with certainty. And this logic continues ad infinitum. But that’s another entire article itself to properly unpack.
Additional to planting axioms that serve the purpose of groups we may not even know exist, or manipulated by a process we didn’t recognize or realise, psychological complexes are also quite easy to shape and form. This can be accomplished by conditioning co-called sceptics (who I now term "Conspiracy Denialists" if we are going to play a game of overly simplified and weaponized rhetoric) into believing they are special and a cut above intellectually for not buying into the supposed nonsense. "Conspiracy Theorists", they will say, cling to alternative explanations in an attempt to feel unique despite their apparent intellectual deficiencies. Another popular method is to foster feelings of superior intelligence of the Denialists. An added bonus for the power brokers is if the Denialists will even go so far as to parrot some "wisdom" for them; a popular one being that that there is no grand design, that nobody is "in charge" so to speak. They will often bestow this wisdom to the lesser masses by explaining the psychological tendency of humans to believe that such a grand design exists because it makes them feel safe and secure, and they will cling to this even if this belief in a controller is to their obvious detriment. This mirrors the atheistic argument of knocking theists by reminding them that their belief in heaven must be due to the human desire for comfort in the face of death anxiety, while purposely and conveniently avoiding the obvious fact that theists also firmly believe in hell. When the “Theorist" reminds a Denialist that any comfort derived from the belief in a religious grand design or shadowy cabal is negated by the obvious and often overwhelmingly focal downside, this is when the sceptic will invoke the "you just want feel special by believing in something fanciful" cliché. This is often done with the implicit or explicit pontificating reminder that the Theorist wouldn't have to resort to such unsubstantiated claims if only they could grasp complex concepts such as the String Theory of Quantum Mechanics or advanced Geopolitics.
Commonplace mainstream articles such as this Independent article for example, although obviously true on a simplistic level of analysis, serve to reinforce this idea of the dissident bringing nothing to the table but idiocy masquerading as profundity.
An informative development to take note of is the inversion has taken place over the last 40 or so years within the Left/Right dichotomy and their relationship to the establishment. As I have illustrated in a previous article, the Left and Right have done a sort of swapping of roles in many regards, especially subsequent to the self-described "Progressive" Left winning the establishment and its institutions. Upon this victory the Left began seeking to "conserve" the status-quo and cultural hegemony they have come to enjoy. It used to be that those on the Left were anti-establishment and anti-war. But one will find today that it is often those on the Right questioning official narratives and the potential for false flag attacks and the very real potential outcome that they push us to the brink of total war. Neo-cons aside, the Right as it now stands, are often the ones seeking to disrupt the status-quo as an emerging counter-culture, and the Leftists are often the ones to passionately attempting defend whatever narrative is being pushed by the mainstream media.
In short, this is a consequence of conscious or unconscious self-preservation. Those on the Left have become reliant on ever increasing collectivism and a strong centralized government dedicated to the ever increasing demands of redistribution.
The concept that a state can buy and bribe their voters with delusions of righteousness is an interesting and important one - by robbing Peter to pay Paul they can always count on the support of Paul. But this form of instilled cognitive dissonance is also how in effect the figurative Paul becomes a weapon of the State - so convinced and willing to accept that an oil corporation is capable of such fatal disregard to the people and devoid of any compassion or accountability to them, but bizarrely believing that the government is somehow immune to this moral putrefaction. Interestingly it is fairly logically demonstrable, in most cases anyway, that corporations' greed and monopolistic stranglehold over the ethics, will and functioning of a nation is empowered by an overly centralised government to begin with, growing like a malignant tumor in order to accommodate the ever increasing collectivism, and the corrective forces of the organic free market supplanted with a system of unseen bureaucrats and puppet politicians doing the bidding of lobbyists now incentivized to take advantage of the unfettered power of the state. Yet alas, so laser focused is Paul to be funneled Peter's money that he will forever vote and do the biddings of the corrupt, satisfied with his willful ignorance and self-imposed blinders that would otherwise allow him to see what he is helping to create.
Questioning prevailing narratives - especially when the consequences can lead as far as war - have an immensely important place public discourse, and employing a method of analysis to determine the legitimacy of claim - establishment espoused or otherwise - based off how antithetical or supportive of the conventional narrative may often prove valuable. In a world where information is limitless, a filter or axiom is always necessary to examine and interrogate what information will be worth accepting as valid to move forward. Understanding that power can often corrupt and is inherently unstable or prone to abuse, although bleak and seemingly cynical, proves to be effective and healthy to understand in the long term if applied in a way that increasing authority should always be buffered by increasing questioning and accountability. Power that can literally wipe out humanity is absurd, and indeed even the most seemingly absurd potential outcomes should be entertained as possible, at least to the extent that discussing it isn’t worthy of ridicule.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." -Noam Chomsky