Conspiracy Theories: Which Do You Believe?

The next evening over dinner I discovered that my guests also believed that the 9-11 destruction of the twin towers was engineered by the US secret service because the government needed an excuse to attack Afghanistan. I argued that no nation would develop an elaborate plot that cost the lives of thousands of its innocent citizens. It just wasn’t necessary to take such extreme measures and I asked them how they thought the US government would be able to persuade Arab terrorists to support their evil scheme. My cousin’s answer was that the details of the attack were known before it took place and there were powerful bombs placed in each building ready to be exploded as soon as the planes struck. The towers, he claimed, were built to withstand a much greater impact than the force of an aeroplane and powerful explosives would be needed to demolish them completely. How else, they asked could I explain destruction on such a terrifying scale. I didn’t want to argue with such madness any more but in the next couple of days I learned about corrupt judges. I learned that the European Union is just the first step in a plot to develop  United States of Europe and, I was warned, ‘It won’t stop there,. They told me about secret societies including one called Common Purpose that is, in their view, plotting against the common good and supporting the interests of an elite at the expense of the rights of ordinary people. There were other conspiracies involving social services and adoption agencies but I can’t remember all the details.

I have to ask myself why I don’t believe any of their stories however well documented they may be by Jane Burgermeister and the other writers who can be found by trawling through the websites. Firstly, it troubles me that my cousin and his wife don’t just believe one conspiracy but seem to believe a whole host of them. This seems to suggest that there is a particular personality type that needs to believe that we all live in an evil world in which we are being constantly deceived by secret organisations. The second thing that struck me is that the evidence is almost always quoting the opinions of authorities who claim to have privileged information. It is never or almost never the direct physical evidence that would convince almost anyone. Finally why is the evidence to support the claims about a conspiracy always so complicated? People die tragically in aeroplane accidents and in road accidents unless they are a royal princess or an important politician. If the victim of the tragedy is important enough then the conspiracy mongers comes up with a very complicated explanation involving covert operations carried out by an evil government, a ruthless big business, the Mafia or a secret society that is always careful to make it look as if someone else is responsible.

It’s all nonsense isn’t it? Unless of course you are the believing type in which case you probably take these and other conspiracies very seriously