A lot of the Covid "conspiracy theories" later proven true have their root in government incompetence and not administrative super competence. The six foot rule? Invented out of thin air. The idea that masking did anything? Initially pooh-poohed, then embraced with the excuse that a potential shortage of masks justified the lie, and now finally abandoned with any number of public admissions that surgical masks are completely ineffective.
I haven't even mentioned the russiagate conspiracy theory yet, a whackadoodle conspiracy theory that would have gotten its proponents laughed out of a drunken conclave of Birchers, ca. 1962, and which was and is treated as proven fact by the Great And Good in the US and abroad.
The Hunter Biden laptop went from Russian disinformation to the primary source of evidence used by the DoJ in a criminal trial in the space of a few years. All of the geniuses that affixed their name to the letter claiming that the laptop story had all of the hallmarks of Russian disinfo squandered any credibility they had in exchange for...a narrative that survived for less than three years? What's more it appears likely that Trump will cruise into the White House this November anyway. This is why people argue that the people in charge don't deserve to be in charge.
The signatories on that letter knew full well that they were "speculating", to put it mildly.
It didn't matter. Nor did it matter in the least that their conclusion turned out to be 169% false. In fact. none of the signatories suffered personally or professionally, because they signed on to a narrative that suited the interests of power at the moment.
Anyway, Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated. Even if elected, he won't be allowed to govern.
A second term for Trump in 2020 would have been him on the golf course, basking in his victories. For whatever reason the powers that be freaked out and bent the law to evict him.
Now if he returns to office it's an easy guess that with federal indictments hanging over his head he will be much more interested in the mechanics of power than his golf game.
Assumes a lot, especially as it isn't as if Trump didn't spend 2016-2020 being pursued by any army of spooks, law enforcement and MSM hysterics, not to mention myriad internet Russia experts, volunteer FBI agents, and amateur intelligence analysts.
He was evicted in 2020 through bending the law? I must be confused or have missed some really major news story. He lost an election. There is no more quotidian way for a president to be evicted than to lose an election.
"The idea that masking did anything? Initially pooh-poohed, then embraced with the excuse that a potential shortage of masks justified the lie, and now finally abandoned with any number of public admissions that surgical masks are completely ineffective."
This is pure horsepucky. Surgical masks have worked for influenza like illnesses on patients and people trying to avoid infection, that's why they've been used for decades. They're used for controlling disease spread in TB patients. They are certainly not completely ineffective if actually used.
Cloth masks are not surgical masks. In fact there’s a well done study that shows surgical masks outperforming cloth masks in preventing influenza like illness in caregivers.
Cloth masks were granted the stamp of approval by the CDC, the NIH, etc. during the pandemic. If they were useless where was the government during that period when countless people were relying on them in the mistaken belief that they offered protection?
From that same CNN article:
Yet the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent guidance on selecting, properly wearing, cleaning and storing face masks recommended people avoid N95 masks and instead choose masks with two or more layers of washable, breathable fabric – which Wen called “a major mistake.”
"Many Conspiracy Theories Have in Fact Been Proven True"...
... Because the powerful always have differences of opinion with those they have power over. Where the powerful have little respect for, and/or accountability to, those without power, those opinions and resulting actions are kept hidden. That's called conspiracy. So, yes, Virginia, there are conspiracies, and in a democratic republic, you may certainly theorize about them, for better or worse.
The Classic “Paranoid Style in American Politics” by Hofstadter may more clearly articulate the system at hand - both an article https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ and later a book, it predicts and provides a typology to manage, and the inherent contradiction in the entire enterprise of bullshit:
I quote:
Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.
A bad bicycle lane installed in Valencia street in SF - it’s not incompetence, it is a conspiracy to eliminate cars. QANON is not a joke but an underground tunnel connected to a massive child abuse system. Actual real child abuse in immigrant parental separation to the a catholic church and Larry Nassar are helplessly incompetent in response.
The US governments ineffectual response to Cliven Bundt for 21 years; the simultaneously ineffective (bungled testing) an theatrically sinister vaccination deployment - incompetence or AI-driven malignancy
Yep. "People in power are regularly abusive, often sexually abusive, and they regularly get away with it. Including universally reviled behavior like child abuse" and you've got nods, all aboard the Q train, we should have police who will investigate those with power. "Also they're all satanist lizardmen and President Trump has been called upon by Christ to destroy them" and not only have you lost people but now your theory that some senators are rapists looks like something a clown would post to facebook.
...which is precisely why there exist conspiracy theories that some of the most insane ideas are false flag operations designed to discredit the more legitimate suspicions. Whenever conspiracy theories get into what I'd call a conspiracy treadmill (this is a conspiracy...and this other conspiracy addresses this objection to the original theory...and then this other one addresses the objection to the second theory, etc.), I get suspicious. Yes, the world can really work that way...but each subsequent step makes the entire thing less believable.
I'm not sure I agree. I mean obviously i partially agree, people definitely make up and spread more extreme takes to discredit more reasonable and believable ones. But I also know people whose entire cosmology is pretty warped, and they generate similarly bizarre and incredible theories quite naturally. So while some are planted, organic ones definitely exist.
There's a documentary called "Mirage Men" I saw some years back that makes basically that claim – it's focused on UFOs and aliens, but the basic thesis, backed up by the ex-government employees they interview, is that a lot of the conspiracy crap the public gets fed is drummed up by the alphabet agencies to confuse and discredit people who get too close to the truth. They go so far as to claim UFO sightings and abductions are faked to cover up various secret programs etc.
Not even close, dude. If you think that pastors and rabbis and also literally any job where people are in authority over children has a low rate of child abusers, and it's just the priests who are the problem, I've got a bridge to sell you. Coaches. Teachers. Scoutmasters. Day care workers.
Similarly, people with regular power over regular adult people are more likely to abuse their power for sex than everyone else. It's a thing people with power do.
Not to mention the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, in which we are expected to believe, apparently, that Maxwell's extracurricular activities were limited to Epstein and not to any of his powerful friends.
Not to mention, nobody knows where Epstein's supposed money came from, and, for that matter, it beggars belief that, considering Epstein's high profile friends, either the intelligence agencies, with all their surveillance powers and manifest disregard for the Bill of Rights, either knew of Epstein's proclivities and did nothing, not even warn Epstein's friends in politics that this is maybe someone not to get too chummy with. Either that or they didn't know, which means that they are really really clueless. I mean, I was aware of Epstein and his antics, and I'm a cat!
It still bothers me that I took someone on a date to Comet pizza and they never called for a follow up.
I 'll never know if it's because I took them to the place with the secret basement sex dungeon or because I didn't have the clout to get access in there for them to see it.
I liked this piece. We have no problem accepting the idea that genuine criminals conspire all the time to murder, steal, etc. but once "conspiracy" is shackled to the word "theory" a whole lot of people's brains just sort of turn off completely. The focus should absolutely be on the verb here, people! It absolutely is worth pointing out that people genuinely do conspire - and conspire quite frequently!
On a somewhat related note, season 3 of "The Boys" offers the most hamfisted treatment of conspiracy theorists I've ever seen in my life. It has roughly the same level of subtlety as a tap dancing elephant.
Ironically, of course, the main plot of the entire series is that a black ops group financed and backed by the CIA are conspiring to kill the vice president, but hey - look at the CHUDs!
There are two basic kinds of conspiracy theories to me (and I'm oversimplifying; the two are often significantly overlapping): the kind that evolve from an over-obsession with tiny details, and the kind where there simply isn't much evidence, and the evidence isn't particularly conclusive.
So for the first, that's your classic "crazy" conspiracy theory, where they get into numerology "this weird string of coincidences" and coded language with very stretched relations among ideas, like a single thread pulling everything together. These often have real evidence mixed with insanity. These are the ones that end up purporting to explain *everything* where the theory always seems to end up having tentacles in all things. Flat earthers, illuminati-esque stuff, 9/11 truther, etc.
The second is more like the lab leak theory, or the various CIA topples government, FBI initiated the kidnapping plot of Gretchen Witmer, etc. These are things which have some level of evidence and need to (and can have) more gathered, but they have been labeled conspiracy theory simply because they go against the narrative of some of the powerful and didn't have a particularly powerful group backing them.
It's folly to think we can accurately sort all conspiracy theories into these buckets, but there are some good hints: if we're in numerology territory, that conspiracy theory is going to be right only by happenstance.
I would add to your distinctions a difference between believing the government is misbehaving and believing the government is illusory and that there is a hidden “uber” government directing the public governments like a puppeteer. Jews, the UN, pedos, Satanists, or space aliens, etc.
Yes, that's the sort of thing I put in numerology territory: things where you have the "great conspiracy" that brings together all the others (the Jews / illuminati / oil companies / other hidden cabal run everything).
interestingly David Klion-Berlin (who made a more comprehensive collection of the conspiracy tradition in US history since the 1760s than Hofstader's piece) noted that Welch's turn to these "hidden masters" behind all of the above drove off most of the Bircher membership--they either took their study groups independent, or joined another movement; so the "casual to hardcore" hypothesis for CTs is definitely not inevitable
I think this a helpful way to separate them, and it is why, for the second bucket, I feel like those almost need a different term. Another way to think about the latter bucket: they are infinitely more plausible for a couple of reasons:
1. They require a lot less moving pieces. For example, for the 'lab leak' conspiracy, while I do indeed think it was leaked from a lab, this was indeed very unclear for a long, long time. So, in that sense, people pushing the opposing theory (or the shutting down of the lab leak theory) often times didn't know themselves, but definitely preferred a world where it came from a wet market. Similarly, for the FBI 'initiating' the kidnapping plot, we know that law enforcement agencies entrap people, and for a bunch of different reasons. Often times, it can be for a simple a reason that the agents themselves are incentivized to make an arrest or whatever.
2. Additionally, and relatedly, these are plausible often times because a very powerful organization is the entity that is trying to produce an end result. Does the fact that the CIA tried to advance US interests (regardless of whether they were actually doing so) through covert means indicate a conspiracy theory or does it simply show you exactly what you'd expect the CIA to do? Does the fact that super wealthy corporations tried to cover up the harm of cigarettes mean they were engaged in a conspiracy? I suppose. But it's also exactly what you'd expect a corporation to do in order to protect/advance shareholder value.
However, on the flip side, 9/11 Truther conspiracies, for example, definitely fall into your first bucket. Why? WAY too many variables, and the stringing together of evidence in a way that just doesn't make sense.
Anyway, I find your distinction useful, and I'd argue that ultimately, this really just means that we need different terminology for the different types.
Hm, I think I'm with McCullough on this one. I would distinguish between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. The key question is "does widespread belief in a conspiracy predate any proof of its existence?" I think the answer for any actual conspiracy is "no." We know about MK Ultra, Watergate, and the carcinogenic properties of tobacco because of research, journalism, and legal discovery, not because some credulous rubes were passing around stories about them while they were stoned.
MKUltra was dismissed as a conspiracy theory for years! Again, if many people refer to something as a conspiracy theory in order to dismiss it, then for consistency and future understanding, we can't retroactively decide that it was never a conspiracy theory.
I get your point. But was anyone talking about it before 1974? To me, "conspiracy theory proven true" implies that it started as a mere theory that a lot of people believed and "serious people" dismissed, but later was proven true. But "reported by the NYT and investigated by congress" sounds to me like some pretty serious people taking it seriously...
Yes, they absolutely were talking about it. People involved in the experiments were talking about it. An entire counter culture of millions were talking about this type of stuff. But without the internet there was really no way for it to spread far. I think it was the book Acid Dreams that goes into a lot of detail about it.
I would add that, once we make a distinction between the reasonable belief in proven conspiracies and the unreasonable belief in conspiracy theories, it is natural that bad actors will abuse this distinction by pretending that things that belong to the former category in fact belong to the latter. But that doesn't mean the distinction isn't real and worth making.
I'm not understanding how a "theory" is a word that necessarily denotes stupidity/nuttiness, rather than simply a stage that precedes truth. Some theories are later proven false (whether stupid/nutty or not), some are later proven true, and some have never been settled.
But you do get the argument that to be deemed a conspiracy theory, the theory ought to be...well...conspiratorial, baroque, not the facially logical and presumptive theory. By way of example, I think I'd reject that label for the theory that NATO or NATO-allied entities blew up NS1 and half of NS2. It's the obvious and intuitive explanation. The fact that the US press won't acknowledge it doesn't change that fact. It's simply a telling indicator that the legacy US media is regime media.
I think a better example than yours (although yours is real and good) that you mentioned but don't fixate on is 9/11. There is a universally known and recognized conspiracy theory that Bush (or Jews, or bush working for Jews) did 9/11. Its proponents have a name, Truthers. I am saying things that literally every person I have ever met is aware of. It is factually incorrect to blame Bush (and/or Israel, if you're that kind of asshole) for 9/11, but many many people do so sincerely.
If tomorrow a bunch of Rabbis and the CIA came out and said 'yeah we did it' it wouldn't be a conspiracy theory, not because it's suddenly proven, but because 'people suspected it?" That seems incredibly bizarre. The entire existence of a conspiracy theory is proof in and of itself of suspicion. Without suspicion it is just a secret that no one is aware of.
Seems like there should be some kind of rule of government competency applied to conspiracy theories. The level of governmental competence required is associated with the likelihood of it being true. CIA sponsoring a coup in Iran or Chile? Totally feasible. Same with some rogue element working with Oswald to kill Kennedy. Successfully faking the moon landing, or secretly rigging the national votes for Trump (but oddly not the Senate)? Not fucking likely. The government isn’t that capable.
I mean, maybe? But people always actually claimed that refs were in on a conspiracy *orchestrated by the NBA.* Meaning, the widespread conspiracy theory was actually that the NBA was picking who won games for ratings and NOT that a referee (or even a few of them) got involved in illegal gambling. I honestly don't think the latter would constitute a conspiracy theory as it strikes me as way more likely than not that a professional official was gambling on games they were working at some point in the past 20 years.
What your formula defines as a “conspiracy theory” is actually a “conspiracy”! Many writers now conflate the two. But a “conspiracy THEORY” is the suspicion that a CONSPIRACY occurred or is occurring. Many such theories have been revealed to be accurate (at which point they are no longer theories but facts, or at least strong probabilities, like the lab leak origin of covid). But the term “conspiracy theory” is used as a smear to throw a warranted suspicion off the trail and into disrepute by lumping it with far more improbable conjectures (like that Hillary Clinton is really a lizard alien).
As a longtime fan of McCullough's videos, he seems to be very concerned about his (very young and very online) fanbase being led down various online extremist rabbit holes. I think some of his rhetorical overreaches are in an effort to be a positive role model against these tendencies. That having been said, I agree with your overall critiques.
The coup in Iran was indeed facilitated by the CIA and MI5, but the issue of oil nationalisation was not the proximate cause. The US feared that the country was at risk of communist subversion and Soviet intervention, and this would have put at risk the oil supply for Western Europe and jet fuel for the Korean war effort. It wasn’t pulled off because of American designs on Iranian oil. This idea has been debunked, the Department of State documents have been declassified for decades and is, if I may say, a very old conspiracy theory.
It's only a conspiracy theory when it doesn't serve the interests of the establishment.
From the right wing rabble-rousers and nutcases at Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/
For that matter, for decades, the CIA piously denied any involvement in the Chilean coup of 1973, before finally admitting what everyone already knew.
The director Costa-Gavras made a really good movie about the Chilean coup called "Missing."
Very chilling and hard to watch. Some of its images still stick with me today; and I watched this movie some 4-5 decades ago.
A lot of the Covid "conspiracy theories" later proven true have their root in government incompetence and not administrative super competence. The six foot rule? Invented out of thin air. The idea that masking did anything? Initially pooh-poohed, then embraced with the excuse that a potential shortage of masks justified the lie, and now finally abandoned with any number of public admissions that surgical masks are completely ineffective.
I haven't even mentioned the russiagate conspiracy theory yet, a whackadoodle conspiracy theory that would have gotten its proponents laughed out of a drunken conclave of Birchers, ca. 1962, and which was and is treated as proven fact by the Great And Good in the US and abroad.
The Hunter Biden laptop went from Russian disinformation to the primary source of evidence used by the DoJ in a criminal trial in the space of a few years. All of the geniuses that affixed their name to the letter claiming that the laptop story had all of the hallmarks of Russian disinfo squandered any credibility they had in exchange for...a narrative that survived for less than three years? What's more it appears likely that Trump will cruise into the White House this November anyway. This is why people argue that the people in charge don't deserve to be in charge.
The signatories on that letter knew full well that they were "speculating", to put it mildly.
It didn't matter. Nor did it matter in the least that their conclusion turned out to be 169% false. In fact. none of the signatories suffered personally or professionally, because they signed on to a narrative that suited the interests of power at the moment.
Anyway, Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated. Even if elected, he won't be allowed to govern.
A second term for Trump in 2020 would have been him on the golf course, basking in his victories. For whatever reason the powers that be freaked out and bent the law to evict him.
Now if he returns to office it's an easy guess that with federal indictments hanging over his head he will be much more interested in the mechanics of power than his golf game.
Assumes a lot, especially as it isn't as if Trump didn't spend 2016-2020 being pursued by any army of spooks, law enforcement and MSM hysterics, not to mention myriad internet Russia experts, volunteer FBI agents, and amateur intelligence analysts.
He's still weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
He was evicted in 2020 through bending the law? I must be confused or have missed some really major news story. He lost an election. There is no more quotidian way for a president to be evicted than to lose an election.
Your 2nd paragraph is of more concern than the 3rd
And may I ask why is Alexander Smirnov currently in jail for orchestrating the conspiracy you say didn’t happen ?
https://www.justice.gov/sco-weiss/pr/grand-jury-returns-indictment-charging-fbi-confidential-human-source-felony-false
Somehow less than what you proclaim.
It clearly supports exactly what I’m saying.
Yet it says not a word about the 2016 election but about Burisma, something entirely unrelated.
"The idea that masking did anything? Initially pooh-poohed, then embraced with the excuse that a potential shortage of masks justified the lie, and now finally abandoned with any number of public admissions that surgical masks are completely ineffective."
This is pure horsepucky. Surgical masks have worked for influenza like illnesses on patients and people trying to avoid infection, that's why they've been used for decades. They're used for controlling disease spread in TB patients. They are certainly not completely ineffective if actually used.
“Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations. There’s no place for them in light of Omicron,”
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/24/health/cloth-mask-omicron-variant-wellness/index.html
Cloth masks are not surgical masks. In fact there’s a well done study that shows surgical masks outperforming cloth masks in preventing influenza like illness in caregivers.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4420971/
Cloth masks were granted the stamp of approval by the CDC, the NIH, etc. during the pandemic. If they were useless where was the government during that period when countless people were relying on them in the mistaken belief that they offered protection?
From that same CNN article:
Yet the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent guidance on selecting, properly wearing, cleaning and storing face masks recommended people avoid N95 masks and instead choose masks with two or more layers of washable, breathable fabric – which Wen called “a major mistake.”
I like the jump back you made from surgical masks in the original post to cloth masks now.
Oh ffs dude, give it up. Attempting to defend the absurdity of the official responses to Covid is just ludicrous
Has nothing at all to do with whether surgical masks have efficacy, which was the original question.
“ The six foot rule? Invented out of thin air.”
False - it was based on studies dating back to the 19th century. Stop repeating lies.
And Iran. And Salvador/Nicaragua. And E Timor. And Cambodia/Laos.
"Many Conspiracy Theories Have in Fact Been Proven True"...
... Because the powerful always have differences of opinion with those they have power over. Where the powerful have little respect for, and/or accountability to, those without power, those opinions and resulting actions are kept hidden. That's called conspiracy. So, yes, Virginia, there are conspiracies, and in a democratic republic, you may certainly theorize about them, for better or worse.
Also, the term “conspiracy theory” was actually introduced by the CIA in order to counter criticisms of the Warren Commission’s lone gunman conclusion: https://kcchurch.substack.com/p/conspiracy-theory-is-not-a-useful
The Classic “Paranoid Style in American Politics” by Hofstadter may more clearly articulate the system at hand - both an article https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ and later a book, it predicts and provides a typology to manage, and the inherent contradiction in the entire enterprise of bullshit:
I quote:
Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.
A bad bicycle lane installed in Valencia street in SF - it’s not incompetence, it is a conspiracy to eliminate cars. QANON is not a joke but an underground tunnel connected to a massive child abuse system. Actual real child abuse in immigrant parental separation to the a catholic church and Larry Nassar are helplessly incompetent in response.
The US governments ineffectual response to Cliven Bundt for 21 years; the simultaneously ineffective (bungled testing) an theatrically sinister vaccination deployment - incompetence or AI-driven malignancy
It’s not like it was proven true, but Pizza-gate suddenly became a lot less crazy to me once more of the Jeffrey Epstein details came out.
But that's the thing though right - the crazy versions have a tendency to crowd out a more mundane but similarly evil variety
Yep. "People in power are regularly abusive, often sexually abusive, and they regularly get away with it. Including universally reviled behavior like child abuse" and you've got nods, all aboard the Q train, we should have police who will investigate those with power. "Also they're all satanist lizardmen and President Trump has been called upon by Christ to destroy them" and not only have you lost people but now your theory that some senators are rapists looks like something a clown would post to facebook.
...which is precisely why there exist conspiracy theories that some of the most insane ideas are false flag operations designed to discredit the more legitimate suspicions. Whenever conspiracy theories get into what I'd call a conspiracy treadmill (this is a conspiracy...and this other conspiracy addresses this objection to the original theory...and then this other one addresses the objection to the second theory, etc.), I get suspicious. Yes, the world can really work that way...but each subsequent step makes the entire thing less believable.
I'm not sure I agree. I mean obviously i partially agree, people definitely make up and spread more extreme takes to discredit more reasonable and believable ones. But I also know people whose entire cosmology is pretty warped, and they generate similarly bizarre and incredible theories quite naturally. So while some are planted, organic ones definitely exist.
I'm endeavoring to explain how conspiracy treadmills work, not very well.
There's a documentary called "Mirage Men" I saw some years back that makes basically that claim – it's focused on UFOs and aliens, but the basic thesis, backed up by the ex-government employees they interview, is that a lot of the conspiracy crap the public gets fed is drummed up by the alphabet agencies to confuse and discredit people who get too close to the truth. They go so far as to claim UFO sightings and abductions are faked to cover up various secret programs etc.
Pretty good piece on that: https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/14/takes-one-to-know-one/
Yeah, and it distracts from the fact that the biggest conspiracy wrt child sex abuse is the Catholic Church
Not even close, dude. If you think that pastors and rabbis and also literally any job where people are in authority over children has a low rate of child abusers, and it's just the priests who are the problem, I've got a bridge to sell you. Coaches. Teachers. Scoutmasters. Day care workers.
Similarly, people with regular power over regular adult people are more likely to abuse their power for sex than everyone else. It's a thing people with power do.
Not to mention the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, in which we are expected to believe, apparently, that Maxwell's extracurricular activities were limited to Epstein and not to any of his powerful friends.
Not to mention, nobody knows where Epstein's supposed money came from, and, for that matter, it beggars belief that, considering Epstein's high profile friends, either the intelligence agencies, with all their surveillance powers and manifest disregard for the Bill of Rights, either knew of Epstein's proclivities and did nothing, not even warn Epstein's friends in politics that this is maybe someone not to get too chummy with. Either that or they didn't know, which means that they are really really clueless. I mean, I was aware of Epstein and his antics, and I'm a cat!
Let the implications of that sink in.
https://x.com/kenklippenstein/status/1798402393966588309
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/3-hilariously-pathetic-ways-congress
Senator Kennedy's facial expression is priceless.
The FBI Director is bullshitting, the Senator knows he is bullshitting, and there is nothing the Senator can do about it and nothing will come of it.
It is nice to have it on record though. Small consolation that it is.
It still bothers me that I took someone on a date to Comet pizza and they never called for a follow up.
I 'll never know if it's because I took them to the place with the secret basement sex dungeon or because I didn't have the clout to get access in there for them to see it.
Pizzagate became less crazy because of details regarding Jeffrey Epstein? No, it didn't.
I liked this piece. We have no problem accepting the idea that genuine criminals conspire all the time to murder, steal, etc. but once "conspiracy" is shackled to the word "theory" a whole lot of people's brains just sort of turn off completely. The focus should absolutely be on the verb here, people! It absolutely is worth pointing out that people genuinely do conspire - and conspire quite frequently!
On a somewhat related note, season 3 of "The Boys" offers the most hamfisted treatment of conspiracy theorists I've ever seen in my life. It has roughly the same level of subtlety as a tap dancing elephant.
Ironically, of course, the main plot of the entire series is that a black ops group financed and backed by the CIA are conspiring to kill the vice president, but hey - look at the CHUDs!
There are two basic kinds of conspiracy theories to me (and I'm oversimplifying; the two are often significantly overlapping): the kind that evolve from an over-obsession with tiny details, and the kind where there simply isn't much evidence, and the evidence isn't particularly conclusive.
So for the first, that's your classic "crazy" conspiracy theory, where they get into numerology "this weird string of coincidences" and coded language with very stretched relations among ideas, like a single thread pulling everything together. These often have real evidence mixed with insanity. These are the ones that end up purporting to explain *everything* where the theory always seems to end up having tentacles in all things. Flat earthers, illuminati-esque stuff, 9/11 truther, etc.
The second is more like the lab leak theory, or the various CIA topples government, FBI initiated the kidnapping plot of Gretchen Witmer, etc. These are things which have some level of evidence and need to (and can have) more gathered, but they have been labeled conspiracy theory simply because they go against the narrative of some of the powerful and didn't have a particularly powerful group backing them.
It's folly to think we can accurately sort all conspiracy theories into these buckets, but there are some good hints: if we're in numerology territory, that conspiracy theory is going to be right only by happenstance.
I would add to your distinctions a difference between believing the government is misbehaving and believing the government is illusory and that there is a hidden “uber” government directing the public governments like a puppeteer. Jews, the UN, pedos, Satanists, or space aliens, etc.
Yes, that's the sort of thing I put in numerology territory: things where you have the "great conspiracy" that brings together all the others (the Jews / illuminati / oil companies / other hidden cabal run everything).
interestingly David Klion-Berlin (who made a more comprehensive collection of the conspiracy tradition in US history since the 1760s than Hofstader's piece) noted that Welch's turn to these "hidden masters" behind all of the above drove off most of the Bircher membership--they either took their study groups independent, or joined another movement; so the "casual to hardcore" hypothesis for CTs is definitely not inevitable
I think this a helpful way to separate them, and it is why, for the second bucket, I feel like those almost need a different term. Another way to think about the latter bucket: they are infinitely more plausible for a couple of reasons:
1. They require a lot less moving pieces. For example, for the 'lab leak' conspiracy, while I do indeed think it was leaked from a lab, this was indeed very unclear for a long, long time. So, in that sense, people pushing the opposing theory (or the shutting down of the lab leak theory) often times didn't know themselves, but definitely preferred a world where it came from a wet market. Similarly, for the FBI 'initiating' the kidnapping plot, we know that law enforcement agencies entrap people, and for a bunch of different reasons. Often times, it can be for a simple a reason that the agents themselves are incentivized to make an arrest or whatever.
2. Additionally, and relatedly, these are plausible often times because a very powerful organization is the entity that is trying to produce an end result. Does the fact that the CIA tried to advance US interests (regardless of whether they were actually doing so) through covert means indicate a conspiracy theory or does it simply show you exactly what you'd expect the CIA to do? Does the fact that super wealthy corporations tried to cover up the harm of cigarettes mean they were engaged in a conspiracy? I suppose. But it's also exactly what you'd expect a corporation to do in order to protect/advance shareholder value.
However, on the flip side, 9/11 Truther conspiracies, for example, definitely fall into your first bucket. Why? WAY too many variables, and the stringing together of evidence in a way that just doesn't make sense.
Anyway, I find your distinction useful, and I'd argue that ultimately, this really just means that we need different terminology for the different types.
Hm, I think I'm with McCullough on this one. I would distinguish between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. The key question is "does widespread belief in a conspiracy predate any proof of its existence?" I think the answer for any actual conspiracy is "no." We know about MK Ultra, Watergate, and the carcinogenic properties of tobacco because of research, journalism, and legal discovery, not because some credulous rubes were passing around stories about them while they were stoned.
MKUltra was dismissed as a conspiracy theory for years! Again, if many people refer to something as a conspiracy theory in order to dismiss it, then for consistency and future understanding, we can't retroactively decide that it was never a conspiracy theory.
I get your point. But was anyone talking about it before 1974? To me, "conspiracy theory proven true" implies that it started as a mere theory that a lot of people believed and "serious people" dismissed, but later was proven true. But "reported by the NYT and investigated by congress" sounds to me like some pretty serious people taking it seriously...
Yes, they absolutely were talking about it. People involved in the experiments were talking about it. An entire counter culture of millions were talking about this type of stuff. But without the internet there was really no way for it to spread far. I think it was the book Acid Dreams that goes into a lot of detail about it.
I haven't read it, but yeah that would definitely invalidate my argument. I will check it out. Thanks!
I would add that, once we make a distinction between the reasonable belief in proven conspiracies and the unreasonable belief in conspiracy theories, it is natural that bad actors will abuse this distinction by pretending that things that belong to the former category in fact belong to the latter. But that doesn't mean the distinction isn't real and worth making.
I'm not understanding how a "theory" is a word that necessarily denotes stupidity/nuttiness, rather than simply a stage that precedes truth. Some theories are later proven false (whether stupid/nutty or not), some are later proven true, and some have never been settled.
But you do get the argument that to be deemed a conspiracy theory, the theory ought to be...well...conspiratorial, baroque, not the facially logical and presumptive theory. By way of example, I think I'd reject that label for the theory that NATO or NATO-allied entities blew up NS1 and half of NS2. It's the obvious and intuitive explanation. The fact that the US press won't acknowledge it doesn't change that fact. It's simply a telling indicator that the legacy US media is regime media.
I think a better example than yours (although yours is real and good) that you mentioned but don't fixate on is 9/11. There is a universally known and recognized conspiracy theory that Bush (or Jews, or bush working for Jews) did 9/11. Its proponents have a name, Truthers. I am saying things that literally every person I have ever met is aware of. It is factually incorrect to blame Bush (and/or Israel, if you're that kind of asshole) for 9/11, but many many people do so sincerely.
If tomorrow a bunch of Rabbis and the CIA came out and said 'yeah we did it' it wouldn't be a conspiracy theory, not because it's suddenly proven, but because 'people suspected it?" That seems incredibly bizarre. The entire existence of a conspiracy theory is proof in and of itself of suspicion. Without suspicion it is just a secret that no one is aware of.
Seems like there should be some kind of rule of government competency applied to conspiracy theories. The level of governmental competence required is associated with the likelihood of it being true. CIA sponsoring a coup in Iran or Chile? Totally feasible. Same with some rogue element working with Oswald to kill Kennedy. Successfully faking the moon landing, or secretly rigging the national votes for Trump (but oddly not the Senate)? Not fucking likely. The government isn’t that capable.
I think the "NBA refs have crazy biases and are on the take" conspiracy theory being true (Tim Donaghy) is one that is too quickly forgotten.
Every professional sport. I know a guy who literally got a phone call "Tell Bill, Atlanta" because the fix was in
I mean, maybe? But people always actually claimed that refs were in on a conspiracy *orchestrated by the NBA.* Meaning, the widespread conspiracy theory was actually that the NBA was picking who won games for ratings and NOT that a referee (or even a few of them) got involved in illegal gambling. I honestly don't think the latter would constitute a conspiracy theory as it strikes me as way more likely than not that a professional official was gambling on games they were working at some point in the past 20 years.
What your formula defines as a “conspiracy theory” is actually a “conspiracy”! Many writers now conflate the two. But a “conspiracy THEORY” is the suspicion that a CONSPIRACY occurred or is occurring. Many such theories have been revealed to be accurate (at which point they are no longer theories but facts, or at least strong probabilities, like the lab leak origin of covid). But the term “conspiracy theory” is used as a smear to throw a warranted suspicion off the trail and into disrepute by lumping it with far more improbable conjectures (like that Hillary Clinton is really a lizard alien).
As a longtime fan of McCullough's videos, he seems to be very concerned about his (very young and very online) fanbase being led down various online extremist rabbit holes. I think some of his rhetorical overreaches are in an effort to be a positive role model against these tendencies. That having been said, I agree with your overall critiques.
Good piece. This was a nice summation:
"But of course independence doesn’t ensure being correct"
Also, typo in this line:
"In an effort to defend the the American and British actions that would follow,"
The coup in Iran was indeed facilitated by the CIA and MI5, but the issue of oil nationalisation was not the proximate cause. The US feared that the country was at risk of communist subversion and Soviet intervention, and this would have put at risk the oil supply for Western Europe and jet fuel for the Korean war effort. It wasn’t pulled off because of American designs on Iranian oil. This idea has been debunked, the Department of State documents have been declassified for decades and is, if I may say, a very old conspiracy theory.