Conspiracy theory

Wikipedia coverage: Read the full Wikipedia article, including its references. The material below is the existing Deep Politics Wiki article.

Declassified CIA memo# 1035-960 ("Countering Criticism of the Warren Report") reveals that this phrase was deliberately given associations of craziness, as though conspiracies do not happen. It is routinely used by the corporate media in their efforts to discredit suggestions that contradict official narratives. As with other enemy images such as "terrorism", it is only used on this site inside quotation marks.

"Conspiracy theory" File:Glossary.png link (Enemy image, Ad hominem attack, Mindfuck, Thought stopping cliché) Sourcewatch
File:Always-you-with-that-conspiracy-stuff.jpg
An enemy image used to equate scepticism of government with craziness. It was developed by the CIA to try to contain doubt about the FBI's "Oswald did it, case closed" approach to the JFK assassination. It is now being associated with dangerous and violent insanity, in an effort to promote internet censorship of free speech.

Not to be confused with ideas about conspiracies, this is about the label given to dissenters

"Conspiracy theory" is a pejorative term applied to ideas which challenge an official narrative. People interested in challenging ideas are called "conspiracy theorists". This usage stems from the US deep state's efforts to promote the "lone nut" theory of the JFK assassination. The concept was later developed into a general purpose enemy image used to try to prevent the connection of deep events that the commercially-controlled media presented as isolated incidents. Post 9/11, it is the subject of pseudo-scientific study to limit freedom of speech by promoting the idea that the holders of such opinions are inclined to violence and deserve to have their civil liberties removed, in particular by subjecting them to internet censorship.

Origins

The phrase was occasionally used before,Template:Cn but its modern pejorative connotations stem from efforts within the US government to cover up the JFK assassination. The phrase appears in a November 1963 memo by the US Deputy Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, and later in a 1968 CIA internal memo that explains how Operation Mockingbird "assets in the media" are attempting to "counter criticism of the Warren Report".

Nicholas Katzenbach's memo

File:Nicholas Katzenbach Oswald memo section on the communist conspiracy theory.png

The section of the memo that the sent on 25 November 1963 to the White House Press Secretary that contains this phrase.

Full article: Document:Nicholas Katzenbach on the importance of reassuring the US public about Oswald

Within hours of the JFK assassination, the FBI were promoting an official narrative that it was carried out by a "lone nut" who had no deep political motivation. Many people were unconvinced by this, particularly after Oswald himself was assassinated in police custody by another "lone nut".

Nicholas Katzenbach sent a memo to Bill Moyers arguing that it was important then to persuade the public that "Oswald was the assassin," and that "he did not have confederates."

This memo remarked that: "the Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory."

Countering Criticism of the Warren Report

Full article: Document:Countering Criticism of the Warren Report

File:Document Countering Criticism of the Warren Report.jpg

The now-declassified CIA dispatch "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report"

Since the perpetrators of the JFK assassination wished to discredit any suggestion which challenged their theory, a decision was made to use Operation Mockingbird commercially-controlled media assets to use the phrase "conspiracy theory" to do exactly that. Accordingly, they were instructed to use the phrase "conspiracy theory" to refer to anyone who publicly doubted the findings of the Warren Commission. This is explained by declassified CIA memo# 1035-960, "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report", which reports the widespread disbelief of the Warren Commission report with concern:

"This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization [the CIA]... Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists..." The memo recommends that its recipients "employ propaganda assets [in the media] to answer and refute the attacks of the critics".

Pejorative connotations

NYU Media Professor Mark Crispin Miller records that the result of this CIA orchestrated effort was that it increasingly was loaded with connotations of craziness, to the point that by about 1980 it was an almost purely pejorative connotation, as if the official narrative is never mistaken or mendacious. As Miller notes in the public discourse only a century or so back the reverse was assumed to be true; distrust of authority used to be very common place, and formed the backdrop of a lot of political negotiations and some of the laws passed in USA. Conspiracy was formerly understood to be a potent force.

Official narrative

If its labelled a "conspiracy theory" it can be dismissed, with or without evidence.

The widespread belief in conspiracy theories has become a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists, and experts in folklore since at least the 1960s, when a number of conspiracy theories arose regarding the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Sociologist Türkay Salim Nefes underlines the political nature of conspiracy theories. He suggests that one of the most important characteristics of these accounts is their attempt to unveil the "real but hidden" power relations in social groups. The term "conspiracism" was popularised by academic Frank P. Mintz in the 1980s.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines conspiracy theory as "the theory that an event or phenomenon occurs as a result of a conspiracy between interested parties; spec. a belief that some covert but influential agency (typically political in motivation and oppressive in intent) is responsible for an unexplained event." It cites a 1909 article in The American Historical Review as the earliest usage example, although it also appeared in print for several decades before.

The earliest known usage was by the American author Charles Astor Bristed, in a letter to the editor published in The New York Times on January 11, 1863. He used it to refer to claims that British aristocrats were intentionally weakening the United States during the American Civil War in order to advance their financial interests.

Big Tech soft censorship

On YouTube, videos containing certain buzzwords or conspiracies come with a warning and a link to an external site. Wikipedia is used as an authoritative source to provide "context".

These warnings come up when searched in the UK:

File:Abbie Richards-pyramid-small.jpg

Info-graphic created by Abbie Richards; making perfectly clear what acceptable speculation is and at which point asking questions makes you a bad person. Note, she lists: "Vaccines have microchips" as discussions that are "dangerous to yourself and others", but does not mention "Vaccines have side effects" anywhere.

• 9/11, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Chemtrails, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Climate change, Wikipedia
• COVID 19, NHS
• Great Replacement, Wikipedia
• Holocaust, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• JFK/Assassination, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Jo Cox, Wikipedia
• Illuminati, Encyclopaedia Britannica
• New world order, Wikipedia
• QAnon, Wikipedia
• Vaccines, NHS

These and other topics also have a disclaimer on Twitter and Facebook.

Modern usage

As the internet allowed widespread access to diverse opinions, the label "conspiracy theory" has been working overtime as authorities try to sideline any competition to their favoured official narratives. It is associated with the word "extremist", which is used as a more general enemy image, to describe anyone with significant disagreements with official points of view. A dramatic awakening since around 2005 has lead to increasingly aggressive (and unsuccessful) efforts to censor such alternative ideas. Mark Crispin Miller says in modern use, people use the term to describe idea that they "couldn't handle" if the turned out to be true.

"Conspiracy theorists"

Full article: Conspiracy theorist

File:Tinfoil Hat Guy.jpg

Nowadays however, the label "conspiracy theorist" has become an ad hominem attack used on those with opinions which threaten the powers that be, as if anyone harboring such thoughts can be safely dismissed as a victim of irrational paranoia, possibly even mentally unbalanced or dangerous. The commercially-controlled media clearly have a commercial interest in casting suspicion on anyone whose primary source of information is elsewhere as inherently suspect, so it is easy to see why they might wish to repeatedly lump together patently absurd ideas together with well-founded doubts about the official narrative under a single label:'conspiracy theory'.

Wikipedia on Conspiracy Theories

Wikipedia noted as of January 2018 that “Theories involving multiple conspirators that are proven to be correct, such as the Watergate scandal, are usually referred to as "investigative journalism" or "historical analysis" rather than conspiracy theory.”

Wikipedia's list of conspiracy theories is an interesting read as a reflection of how commercially-controlled media would like people to behave. The 'Conspiracy Theorist as defective personality' meme is present, with Wikipedia reporting that "The motivations for nations starting, entering, or ending wars are often brought into question by conspiracy theorists." This may refer indirectly to the neglect of economic reasons for war by the commercially-controlled media. In contrast, economic motivations are not questioned by Wikipedia's page on cartel and anti trust law. Acknowledging that "proving the existence of a cartel is rarely easy, as firms are usually not so careless as to put collusion agreements on paper" and that "Cartels usually arise in an oligopolistic industry", Wikipedia avoids the word 'Conspiracy' to describe those hidden arrangements, although American anti trust law such as the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act uses the term. Back then, it seems, conspiracy theories abounded.

The reframing of the term "Conspiracy Theory' is also brought to attention by Daniele Ganser saying the official narrative of 9/11 is by definition (read: the "old" definition) nothing but another "Conspiracy theory". Needless to say that taking back the original meaning of such a major spin keyword (already loaded with the 'defective personality' meme after endless repetitions) can not be allowed by those who brought forth the spin in the first place.

A German editor Phi, (real name Dr. Philipp Heyde) who describes himself as senior government official, in section 'Psychological Foundations' remarks that 'Conspiracy Theories are similar to paranoia, a mental disorder...' He goes on to associate this paranoia with the delusion of the people's Führer in totalitarian regimes. The English Wikipedia is more polite but adds 'schizotypy' to the long litany of 'thought disorders' prevalent amongst "conspiracy theorists".

Marginalisation

In the section on assassinations, Wikipedia notes that "the question of Who benefits? (Cui bono?) is also often asked, with conspiracy theorists asserting that insiders often have far more powerful motives than those to whom the assassination is attributed by mainstream society". In the case of the JFK Assassination, since the majority of the US population doubt the Kennedy was killed by a "lone nut", this use of the adjective "mainstream" cannot be interpreted numerically. How then is it best understood? Since the US House Committee on Assassinations, the official US government position is that Kennedy was probably killed due to a conspiracy, this "mainstream" does not necessarily even mean the "government narrative". The "mainstream" in question is the commercially-controlled media, which loves to represent itself as "mainstream" as if any deviation from it is marginal and suspect.

Barrett Brown describes a pattern that commercially-controlled media articles mostly follow when they write about "conspiracy theory":

1. The term “conspiracy theory” is never actually defined.
2. In the absence of any such explicit definition, the reader is left to guess at this based solely on an array of examples provided by a given author.
3. Between halfway and two-thirds through the article, a psychologist or other subject matter expert is quoted providing a purely pathological explanation for belief in such conspiracy theories.
4. The apparent rise of belief in conspiracy theories is most always attributed largely to “the internet”, and rarely to the legacy press outlets of the sort that employ the author.

Inability to handle it

Media professor Mark Crispin Miller has advanced an alternative interpretation of the phrase "conspiracy theory" as used by the commercially-controlled media. He suggests that it refers to an idea which, if true, the speaker would find it difficult to handle.

Public attitudes to conspiracies

Full article: Public attitudes to conspiracies

Historically, conspiracy was understood to be an every present danger. The UK Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, for example, said to Parliament in 1856: {{#subobject: |Has superobject=Conspiracy theory |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=|+sep=, |Has text=“There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House ... I mean the secret societies... It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe — the whole of Italy and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries — is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. And what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do not want constitutional government; they do not want ameliorated institutions ... they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out the present owners of the soil and to put an end to ecclesiastical establishments. Some of them may go further...” |Is about=Conspiracy theory,European Deep state, Germany/Deep state, Italy/Deep state, France/Deep state|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate= |Sourced from= |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName= |Has sourceURL=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19104/19104-h/19104-h.htm

}}

“There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House ... I mean the secret societies... It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe — the whole of Italy and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries — is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. And what are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do not want constitutional government; they do not want ameliorated institutions ... they want to change the tenure of land, to drive out the present owners of the soil and to put an end to ecclesiastical establishments. Some of them may go further...”
'

Michael Parenti on Conspiracy theories

Journalist Michael Parenti has pointed out that politicians and corporate leaders naturally work to further their own monetary and power interests, often in a conspiratorial manner. "To believe otherwise is to believe in Coincidence Theory, the truly nutty idea that the interests of the very wealthy are magically maintained by chance, year after year." In his "Dirty Truths" (City Lights Books, 1996), Parenti points out that "conspiracy" can simply mean that ruling class individuals "are aware of their interests, know each other personally, meet together privately and off the record, and try to hammer out a consensus on how to anticipate and react to events and issues."

Incompetence theories distract from understanding malice. Limited hang outs are like using Newton's Laws to describe the way the universe works at the subatomic level. Newtonian physics is useful for building a bridge, but is an incomplete description of reality. http://www.oilempire.us/map.html

Watch on YouTube

Understanding Deep Politics featuring Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti offers the following "alternatives" to conspiracy theories:

• Somnambulist Theory: The wealthiest 1 percent sleepwalk through life, never giving a thought to their vast wealth or how to keep it.
• Coincidence Theory: Things repeatedly happen by chance in ways that magically maintain the interests of the very wealthy, year after year.
• Stupidity Theory: The very rich are befuddled, incompetent and ineffectual. They just don't know how they keep that power.
• Spontaneity or Idiosyncrasy Theory: Stuff happens (in a way that keeps the system in place.) Again and again. Over long periods of time.
• Aberration Theory: Dirty tricks of the CIA and so forth are "atypical departures" from the norm.

The above theories would have us believe our inequitable tax system, corporate-owned media, unjust social conditions and other wrongful policies are momentary aberrations, isolated from the central goal of our political system. Again, that goal is protecting the money and power of the wealthiest 1%. Parenti points out that the wealthiest 1 percent naturally defend their interests, just as farmers or steelworkers defend theirs. He also notes that the CIA is by definition conspiratorial, "using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies?"

Academic research

Full article: Academic research into conspiracy theories

Pseudo-scientific study

On 15 January 2008, deep state actors Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School published an academic paper entitled Conspiracy Theories, by which claimed that "the best response [to "conspiracy theorists"] consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups". This is typical amongst the genre in adding an academic gloss to the comforting lie that authorities' versions of events are more or less always reliable and well intentioned, and anyone who suggests otherwise is crazy and potentially dangerous.

Demonisation

File:NYT-rabbithole.png

2021 New York Times article

Late 2015 and early 2016 has the release of various papers on the topic of "conspiracies", which some have suggested may be indicative of an organised campaign to equate dissent with mental illness. Certainly, it is interesting that such superficial work has received wide press coverage. A 2016 paper by Oxford physicist Dr. David Grimes, for example, was published by a supposedly highly reputable PLOS-One in spite of a simple statistical error and a very crude approach which ignored flew in the face of established historical evidence such as the existence of Operation Gladio and the Manhattan Project. The BBC reported on this paper uncritically under the headline "Maths study shows conspiracies 'prone to unravelling'", and cited Grimes' conclusions that “the Moon landings "hoax" would have been revealed in 3.7 years, the climate change "fraud" in 3.7 to 26.8 years, the vaccine-autism "conspiracy" in 3.2 to 34.8 years, and the cancer "conspiracy" in 3.2 years.”

Censorship proposals

In 2015, French President François Hollande compared "conspiracy theories" to Nazism and called for their dissemination on the internet to be made illegal. Since around that time censorship by US based social media platforms has steadily increased, along with the implementation of so called "fact checkers" to legitimize the official narrative.

Cultural references

The second series of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy concludes with the protagonists having finally located the ruler of the universe (a.k.a. the "man in the shack") who makes the real decisions ascribed to the President of The Galaxy, whose "job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it." The posthumously produced series three of the radio series (produced after Adams' death) diffuses this plot by suggesting that this was a psychotic episode. In the radio adaptation Trillian describes the idea of the secret ruler of the universe as a "conspiracy theory".

References