The last believers in an ordered universe.
September 13, 2015 9:40 AM   Subscribe

"It is simply easier for some people to believe that the United States government has concocted a vast conspiracy to take away all of our guns than it is to believe that it is too easy for a mentally ill person to acquire one and shoot anyone they want. And now those same people are taking it out on the families of the victims of gun violence after a tragedy." What Do You Say To A Roanoke Truther? Ben Collins, The Daily Beast
posted by The Whelk (76 comments total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
Some people actually think Sandy Hook was staged? What a truly strange mindset.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:50 AM on September 13, 2015 [8 favorites]


Can someone who is more versed in the legal system explain to me: is there any reason why it wouldn't make sense to sue the truthers for libel/slander for any of this? I mean, being found guilty in a slander suit probably wouldn't convince them they're wrong, but presumably it'd put a damper on how active they are online, yeah?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:57 AM on September 13, 2015 [6 favorites]


I have trouble processing this sort of rank idiocy. I can't decide whether to feel sorry for the victims of this sort of cosmic pareidolia or wish a grisly demise on the sort of bottom-feeding shitstain who would actually posit that this was all a great big put-on.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 9:59 AM on September 13, 2015 [6 favorites]


I would probably be too out of breath from all the punching to say anything.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:00 AM on September 13, 2015 [9 favorites]


Empress Callipygos: at least within the USA, Slander carries a very high bar of standards, due to the 1st amendment. You have to show knowing and intentional perpetration of a malicious and false information that degrades a person's public standing.

So these people would have a number of defenses: (a) They honestly believe the truth of their allegation (b) The claims of an internet kook do not have sufficient credibility as to establish a public defamation of the plaintiff's public standing (c) The allegation is not committed with malicious intent (it's for 'the truth', not to hurt others).

Then there's also the whole matter of the pointlessness of suing anybody who doesn't have the money to pay substantive damages. And there's also the fact that a defamation suit opens the plaintiff as well as the defendant to months of rigorous examination of their behavior and speech.

It's a case where the cure (rich people suing for slander with impunity) has traditionally been thought worse than the disease (various F@#$wads yammering relentlessly).


There might be more grounds/basis for a anti-stalking, harassment, or IIED (Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress) tort, depending on the state's laws.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 10:15 AM on September 13, 2015 [9 favorites]


In the minds—and YouTube videos—of some conspiracy theorists, Chris is not a news anchor at WDBJ in Virginia. Chris, the videos say, is a “crisis actor" invented less than a month ago by the United States government as part of a false flag operation that will eventually allow the New World Order to take away every American citizen’s guns and force them into a life of subjugation and tyranny.

Jaw officially dropped.

I cannot believe I live in the same country with people who think the government hires actors to carry out this secretive agenda. Who do they think these government officials are that are so universally capable, efficient, secretive and above all so united in this one goal?
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:18 AM on September 13, 2015 [52 favorites]



all things are possible in this the best of all possible countries. Witness the Trump phenomenon
posted by Postroad at 10:23 AM on September 13, 2015 [6 favorites]


SLoG: and simultaneously, you can be sure, they believe government is incompetent, corrupt, inefficient, incapable of doing anything right, etc.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:24 AM on September 13, 2015 [47 favorites]


I know people who were first responders at the Dunblane mass shooting - I can only imagine how they would react to this profoundly depressing article. While I feel pity for Thom and his cruel delusions, it highlights one of the more problematic aspects of the internet as a platform for crazies of every hue to hang out their shingle, and be co-opted into larger societal struggles as cannon fodder for libertarian lobby groups like the NRA.
posted by aeshnid at 10:25 AM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


SLoG: and simultaneously, you can be sure, they believe government is incompetent, corrupt, inefficient, incapable of doing anything right, etc.

Well, yes, that is exactly what I was thinking. I personally believe that government officials are real people and real people have differing morals, agendas, ideas, etc. Anytime you get more than two people together in a conspiracy there are going to be leaks, accidental or deliberate.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 10:31 AM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


What Do You Say to a [Mass Shooting] Truther?

You don't. You watch as your friends from high school post pictures on Facebook of lit candles, candles for what would have been Ben's eighth birthday, and you think of his mother, back when, before. You reach out to those who knew this mother when she was young, and you know what you know together. And you curse the Truthers who hold their sense of correctness higher than the life of a little boy.
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:34 AM on September 13, 2015 [33 favorites]


The piece is all well and good in terms of defining the psychology of the conspiracist, but it doesn't delve at all into the multiplier, which is technology. The conspiracists of the new right 50 years ago lucked out with direct mail to multiply their nonsense. The internet is the direct mail strategy gone nuclear.

All good intentions aside, the writer here using the "How could you even think this" gambit on a conspiracist whose oxygen is the 792,000 hits on his wackadoodle YouTube videos is kind of missing the point. How, indeed, could the conspiracist not think this, or pretend to think it, given the attention, the rush of dopamine, and the other rewards on offer in an otherwise drab and meaningless life, one in which "shit happens" on pretty much a daily basis?

It's not at all startling or jaw-dropping or mind-reeling that "we" sane people (some or most of us probably adhere to some sort of conspiracy theory or another ourselves, if we're honest, albeit perhaps one that's a little more socially convenient and a little less "wandering the streets in one's underwear with a tinfoil hat strapped to one's head") "share" a country with bonkers conspiracists. The United States has always been thus, from the very beginning.
posted by blucevalo at 10:35 AM on September 13, 2015 [22 favorites]


A while ago there was a thread on flame wars here, linking an article where an ardent defender of all things Microsoft admitted that he was trapped in the sunk cost fallacy of his own efforts: If he calmed down, acknowledged that there's balance and nuance and tradeoffs, then the years he'd spent learning, and arguing, reams of details he didn't need for daily life... were wasted. On some level he understood that he wasn't right, but to stop was to write off so much sweat and so many hours that he couldn't face it.

I imagine Thom and his ilk suffer a similar dilemma, especially when confronted with the pain he might be causing.
posted by fatbird at 10:44 AM on September 13, 2015 [12 favorites]


Another multiplier is governments actually carrying out acts that seem like they belong to conspiracy theory fantasies - France sending covert operatives to carry out a terrorist attack on environmentalists, the CIA aiding and abetting drug trafficking that primarily impacts poor non-white people, the U.S. and U.K. governments assassinating their own citizens, half of the Snowden revelations, etc.

It ends up being only the overarching conspiracy where every mass shooting incident is faked and the whole thing is being expertly coordinated by a hyper-competent evil government that can be declared obvious bullshit without hesitation; point out some discrepancies related to a single incident and people might listen at first.
posted by XMLicious at 10:54 AM on September 13, 2015 [19 favorites]


I am so enraged about Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists to this day that I can feel nothing but anger at them. The very real pain they've caused my whole home town community is immense. I've been working with my therapist for a couple of years to try and let go some of this rage. There's nothing that can be done about them though. They're a natural occurrence like cancer or another particularly horrible disease. There's no cure and the only relief is to shun them.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:54 AM on September 13, 2015 [23 favorites]


I used to read about conspiracy theorists like this and think that there can't be all that many of them, and I would probably never know someone that out-of-their-minds. But I teach public speaking at a community college, and I let my students choose virtually any topic they want for their persuasive speech. At least, I used to. In the months that followed Sandy Hook, I had two different students deliver speeches with the thesis that the school shooting was staged by Obama so he could come take our guns. The first one came to regret that choice pretty quickly, and the second one really regretted it. As it happens, my older daughter shares a birthday and a first initial with one of the little girls killed at Sandy Hook, and it was all too easy to imagine losing her when I watched the news coverage. I didn't find it clever or funny or interesting to come into my classroom and drop a load of BS about how that never actually happened. I'm usually a pretty laid-back instructor, but my displeasure was apparent.

In the same semester, yet another student presented her thesis that the moon landings were faked, and I instituted a blanket rule against presenting anything in class that could possibly be labeled a conspiracy theory.

So, on a pure numbers basis, it looks like about 2% of my students will believe truly nutso stuff, and no amount of evidence makes any difference. It's been any eye-opening experience teaching this course.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:55 AM on September 13, 2015 [50 favorites]


At some point, you have to just stop engaging with crazy people. The attempt to understand and deal with crazy people is itself a belief in an ordered universe, one in which crazy people can be educated and healed of their craziness.

What do you say to a Roanoke Truther? You don't say anything. Shit happens. People believing in conspiracy theories is also shit that happens.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 10:56 AM on September 13, 2015 [13 favorites]


The last believers in an ordered universe.

On the other extreme, I have relatives who believe everything they see on their preferred TV station, perhaps that Jesus is an American and America is the good guy and everyone else is the bad guy, and that everyone that has bad things happen to them, especially at the hands of military or law enforcement, is/was a bad person.

To hold the middle position is to admit that the world is complex and that most things will not live up to your ideals, which is untenable for some people. This is part of the reason that religion exists.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:05 AM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


Whatever happened to safe conspiracies like the lost wonders of MU.
posted by clavdivs at 11:06 AM on September 13, 2015 [8 favorites]


At some point, you have to just stop engaging with crazy people.


At the same time, there has to be a way to get them to stop engaging with the actual victims of tragedies like this. No one deserves that.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:29 AM on September 13, 2015 [11 favorites]


If Sandy Hook did not usher in the New World Order of total gun confiscation, then why would The Conspiracy waste its time with the on-screen shooting of just two people, which—awful as it is—is trivial by comparison. The Conspiracy should be upping the ante with every mass killing. We should be seeing entire cities felled in a blaze of gunfire at this point. It's the only thing that makes sense.

Either that or the conspiracy theorists are wrong.
posted by adamrice at 11:32 AM on September 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


Pater Alethias, you say the students regretted the presentations. Was it a question of reactions from the audiences, or grades? Did anything seem to get through to them?
posted by dilettante at 11:39 AM on September 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


Aren't cruelty and viciousness to other users against the facebook and twitter terms of service?
posted by bukvich at 11:40 AM on September 13, 2015


There is a level of nuance that is missing from reporting like this on conspiracists, and I get frustrated reading it. I think the forms that conspiracies tend to take in contemporary U.S. society are particularly harmful: distrust of government at all levels, distrust in intellectuals and the careful language of experts, xenophobia, obsession with guns and militias. It's Hofstadter's "Paranoid Style in American Politics," and it never goes away.

But how I want this political style to be disentangled from fear of schizotypy and "crazies," even when we're talking about the same people. When I was working at a government library, I saw both sides of this. Flag fringe truthers would come in and harangue people with their beliefs. But I also saw considerate, kind schizophrenic people, usually homeless, get thrown out and banned from the building because people were afraid of them.

I dunno, I just think delusions have been with humanity since forever and aren't always terrible. But public figures who promote this kind of fear in particular directions in political speech are terrible, for sure.
posted by thetortoise at 11:40 AM on September 13, 2015 [11 favorites]


This crap is all over my Facebook page all the time - the hazard of having a lot of artists, musicians and weirdos as friends.

I have category names for a lot of these now. The most common facepalm is what I call the "arduous conspiracy" - conspiracies requiring inconceivable amounts of effort. Take the Sandy Hook "crisis actor" theories. If you sit down and work out how many people who have to be in on it, you're talking *thousands* of people - and for what? "Gun control." But we didn't even get gun control!
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 11:46 AM on September 13, 2015 [9 favorites]


The prevalence of criterion-diagnosable schizophrenia in the general population is somewhere between 0.5 and 1%. The prevalence of sub-clinical related syndromes, such as schizotypy, schizophrenia family probands, and delusional disorder, not to mention bipolar mania/mixed in an active phase or depression with psychotic features, also adds significantly to the numbers. In a population the size of the US, that's several million people. More than enough to stir the pot.
posted by meehawl at 11:46 AM on September 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


It's always struck me that those who most fear a New World Order-style government takeover tend to live in areas that are badly underserved or outright neglected by the local government. If the government had taken decent care of the areas in the Jade Helm panic belt, maybe there wouldn't be such panic. But we all know there are many, complicated and bitter reasons why and how that never happened.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:47 AM on September 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


There isn't much you can do. Thanks to the Internet, you can live in the reality you choose with like-minded fellow travelers.
posted by dr_dank at 11:54 AM on September 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


Fast Company on how to persuade a conspiracy theorist. The article references work by The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:55 AM on September 13, 2015 [7 favorites]


Of course, these assaults could be staged, only by fanatic gun nuts to ensure a perpetuation of the apparently auto-reinforcing dynamic because, as pointed out above, we haven't gotten any gun control to speak of despite these many mass shootings. If that were the case the truthers would be hired to make sure all the second-round outrage is dissipated by being directed to the fringe issues rather than what's central. The utter abomination of what they are accusing the government of doing could be designed to make the regular old gun nuts & NRA types look more middle of the road.
posted by chavenet at 11:58 AM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


Pater Aletheias: do you think the students seriously believed that, or were they just being rebellions smart-asses? It's a type. "I'm so smart, I could argue that the moon landing was faked! Students are not known for their sense of propriety or awareness.

On the other hand, I don't know which scenario is more disappointing.
posted by ctmf at 12:15 PM on September 13, 2015


Countertheory: These 'truthers' can't be independently doing it on their own without somebody feeding them their 'truths' AND paying them to distribute them. I mentioned elsewhere that if Putin can have an office building of professional trolls writing pro-Russian comments for newspaper sites, imagine the disinformation campaigns a few of America's most evil billionaires can do. So my standard response to shit like this is not "do you really believe that?", it's "how much is the Koch Brothers paying you to say that?"
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:26 PM on September 13, 2015 [5 favorites]


Pater Alethias, you say the students regretted the presentations. Was it a question of reactions from the audiences, or grades? Did anything seem to get through to them?

By the grading rubric we use, 10% of the grade comes from quality of evidence, and another 10% comes from clear thinking and well-crafted arguments. So that was a 20% instantly, because there's no evidence for their claim and the arguments were ridiculous. So all the conspiracy theorists wound up failing a speech that was a major part of their grade. But the also regretted it because of the rather emphatic discussions I had with them afterward about the horrible ethics of treating tragedy as a game.

Pater Aletheias: do you think the students seriously believed that, or were they just being rebellions smart-asses? It's a type. "I'm so smart, I could argue that the moon landing was faked! Students are not known for their sense of propriety or awareness.

I think they believed it. We don't get a lot of students who get off on trying to be clever. I don't think I've ever seen one. I'd know, too, because I was one of those students. Mine just want to pass and someday get a decent job.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 12:53 PM on September 13, 2015 [11 favorites]


oneswellfoop: Unfortunately, from accounts I've heard of paranormal and conspiracy theory conventions (yes, this is a thing), many conspiracy theorists are perfectly happy to believe multiple, incompatible conspiracy theories, and will readily label other conspiracy theorists who adhere to slightly different theories than their own as "plants" by the Government or Illuminati or Reptilians or whoever, without the slightest hint of self-awareness. I don't think being accused of being a Koch brothers agent would phase them in the slightest; it would just prove to them that you're either a dupe or an agent.

Fear, ignorance, and lack of critical thinking make people do evil and self-destructive things.
posted by biogeo at 12:54 PM on September 13, 2015 [5 favorites]


biogeo: "Fear, ignorance, and lack of critical thinking make people do evil and self-destructive things"

So do strength, knowledge and a surfeit of devious thinking.
posted by chavenet at 12:56 PM on September 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


i don't know if it's the koch brothers - or anyone - but i have to wonder - who benefits? - and are they doing anything to help propagate this kind of thinking?

if you have 1 or 2% of the population who's going to believe this kind of thing, can you unite them around something they can fight for? - is someone trying?

these people seem to be patsies - but for whom?
posted by pyramid termite at 1:14 PM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm not saying it because it might affect them, I'm just saying it because IT'S TRUE!

Hanlon's New Multi-Blade Razor: Never attribute to independent stupidity that which is adequately explained by malicious organization of stupidity.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:15 PM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


This crap is all over my Facebook page all the time - the hazard of having a lot of artists, musicians and weirdos as friends.

I know what you mean. One of the best musicians in this country (and a Facebook friend, although we do not know each other that well IRL) has a Facebook feed that is about 80% photos of and anecdotes about some of my heroes and about 20% links to the latest findings on how World Trade Center 7 was demolished by placed charges.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:42 PM on September 13, 2015


Any time you get more than two people in a conspiracy...

Let alone ten to one hundred thousand other people: 9/11...

Plus several hundred thousand gallons of what have you in bacteria cultures, industrial chemicals, tank trucks, etc: chemtrails

Not to mention super genii running the whole show...
posted by y2karl at 1:42 PM on September 13, 2015


Hanlon's New Multi-Blade Razor: Never attribute to independent stupidity that which is adequately explained by malicious organization of stupidity.

That's of course the exact reason conspiracy cranks think that anyone who rejects the "truth" has to be paid by the government and/or the Jews.
posted by effbot at 1:44 PM on September 13, 2015


Pater Aletheias: I had a similar experience teaching English comp at a community college and my approach was similar - I basically pointed out the students that they were free to take any position they wanted but they needed to bear in mind that the skill I was teaching them wasn't "writing" but rather "writing to persuade members of the academic community" and as such, certain kinds of arguments wouldn't work, and other would. Just like walking into an evangelical church and appealing to science wouldn't be effective, but appealing to scripture and religious tradition would, so too, in academia, appealing to Internet-based source material and relying on slippery-slope arguments wouldn't fly. Instead they'd need to back up their assertions with watertight logic based on evidence cited in peer-reviewed journals. Some of them switched sides when they realized their arguments had no evidence. Most, however, dropped the class.
posted by eustacescrubb at 1:44 PM on September 13, 2015 [7 favorites]


>but i have to wonder - who benefits? - and are they doing anything to help propagate this kind of thinking?

The NRA Industrial Complex

Ridiculous NRA Conspiracy Theory Claims Obama Will Ban All Ammo

U.S. gun manufacturing soars as Americans worry about security
posted by AGameOfMoans at 1:47 PM on September 13, 2015 [5 favorites]


You know, if there really is a conspiracy organization running the world, they'd have to have been doing it for a very long time. Which means they'd have to have handed the keys down for generations to a new group to continue the plan.

So how do they do the recruiting for that? Is there an aptitude test? Can you apply? Or more importantly, can I apply? I've got my resumé all polished.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 1:50 PM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


That's of course the exact reason conspiracy cranks think that anyone who rejects the "truth" has to be paid by the government and/or the Jews.

But why would a smart conspirator work for the government OR the Jews when the Libertarian Tech Moguls and Oil Sheiks have more money to throw around? I'm actually complimenting them on their career savvy.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:55 PM on September 13, 2015


If Sandy Hook did not usher in the New World Order of total gun confiscation, then why would The Conspiracy waste its time with the on-screen shooting of just two people, which—awful as it is—is trivial by comparison. The Conspiracy should be upping the ante with every mass killing. We should be seeing entire cities felled in a blaze of gunfire at this point. It's the only thing that makes sense.

Either that or the conspiracy theorists are wrong.


Conspiracy theorists are conspiracy theorists because they never engage in this kind of thing. They do not proceed from the logic, "If Conspiracy Theory X is true, then what else would also be true or likely to happen?" Instead, they always start from the "official story" (which they are primed to distrust simply because it's "official"), look for inconsistencies in the glut of Internet "data" about the official story, and then pronounce the conspiracy theory to be true because the "official story" is only 99.9% internally consistent instead of 100% internally consistent. In almost no case do you find a conspiracy theorist doing comparative hypothesis testing of a conspiracy theory vs. a more conventional theory. The conspiracy theorist is not interested in "proving" anything, but in being a contrarian against some theory designated as "official" or "Establishment."
posted by jonp72 at 2:00 PM on September 13, 2015 [7 favorites]


The NRA Industrial Complex
U.S. gun manufacturing soars as Americans worry about security


See? If these Lying Truthers aren't getting paid and paid well by the gunmakers, they'd have to be total idiots, and I give them much more credit than that. Of course, the fun way to troll them would be to ask to be referred to whoever's paying them because you'd like to get in on some of that good Conspiracy Money too...
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:03 PM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Some people actually think Sandy Hook was staged? What a truly strange mindset.

Some of these people are people I went to high school with. One of the supposed pieces of "evidence" for Sandy Hook as a false flag operation was that online memorials for the Sandy Hook victims were put up before the shooting happened. The idea that a conspiracy to fake a massive violent event that involved the death of several children (if it didn't happen, where did the "dead children" go?) is somehow more plausible than the possibility that...hmm...maybe Google's algorithm has the wrong date for a web page just boggles my mind.
posted by jonp72 at 2:05 PM on September 13, 2015


I guess you could count me as sort of 50/50 with some of the conspiracy people. I do feel the government is too incompetent to possibly pull off these faux crises without anyone reputable finding out.

I also pity the survivors that have to deal with the assholes.
posted by Samizdata at 2:30 PM on September 13, 2015


One thing the article didn't get into was the breakdown between believers in conspiracy theories and believers who confront the people involved. There's "I argue crazy shit on the Internet", and there's "I confront the evil henchmen on their facebook pages", and the latter seems like a completely separate level of nuts, maliciousness, or just barking madness that's not explained by belief in a deeply ordered universe.
posted by fatbird at 2:55 PM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


I remember seeing an Alan Moore documentary where he remarked that "the greatest conspiracy is that there is a conspiracy". I definitely see Keeley's point, that "by supposing that current events are under the control of nefarious agents, conspiracy theories entail that such events are capable of being controlled", because that's at the heart of pretty much every conspiracy theory; this desire to believe that a random act of senseless violence had an actual purpose orchestrated by powers that be. Believing that the world is actually a mess of conflicting and aligning interests, chains of unintended cause and effect, and chaos is deplorable and laughable to these people.

But it's not just a belief in an ordered universe - it's the belief in an antagonistic one. There's never a grand conspiracy to make the world a better place, or to free people from tyranny. No one makes YouTube videos talking about how the government has a secret plan to make everyone younger, healthier and free from war. The conspiracist's universe is one controlled by a stationary figure with a plan, yeah, and that plan is always destruction. Must be a pretty miserable place to live.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 2:59 PM on September 13, 2015 [20 favorites]


I actually know someone who eventually revealed themselves to be a Sandy Hook truther.

I don't really have anything to do with them anymore, because jesus christ wtf.
posted by bibliogrrl at 3:09 PM on September 13, 2015 [6 favorites]


Along with our manifold mental biases seems to be a strong aversion to ambiguity. The outstanding feature of the conspiracy folks I have met is a stunning level of certainty.
I try to remind myself to think and speak in terms of "might, could possibly, may have" etc. And also "you may be right".
Eric Hoffer at the end of The true believer - a book about mass movements, but really about the same people - was only able to suggest replacing true beliefs with new and better ones.
It's a tough problem.
posted by Alter Cocker at 3:20 PM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


If I could actually read the DailyBeast article, it would help. Using three different browsers I gave up every time. Whatever adware they have in the background makes it impossible to scroll through the page.
That being said, these conspiracy nuts need to be rounded up and dope slapped. Sick. Sick. Sick.
posted by AJScease at 3:45 PM on September 13, 2015


Meanwhile, here's how Buzz Aldrin dealt with a moonwalk skeptic.
posted by chavenet at 3:50 PM on September 13, 2015 [7 favorites]


So my standard response to shit like this is not "do you really believe that?", it's "how much is the Koch Brothers paying you to say that?"

I'm not a big fan of that gambit since being accused of being a paid shill for big pharma because I have denied that fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood is put into vaccines.

But, yeah, what is it about musicians and conspiracy theories? I've got one on my FB feed not only going 100% 9/11 truther, but also claiming that Fidel Castro was a CIA patsy all along.
posted by LindsayIrene at 4:13 PM on September 13, 2015


I think many conspiracy theories are adopted when the alternative to accepting the conspiracy would be changing a strongly held opinion. See the certainty that a black boy shot in cold blood must have been a criminal, see the assumption that a woman raped by an acquaintance must have done something to lead him on, or failed to say "no" forcfully enough. These are conspiracy theories that mainstream society needs, because otherwise it would be forced to change.
posted by idiopath at 4:28 PM on September 13, 2015 [8 favorites]


The piece is all well and good in terms of defining the psychology of the conspiracist, but it doesn't delve at all into the multiplier, which is technology. The conspiracists of the new right 50 years ago lucked out with direct mail to multiply their nonsense. The internet is the direct mail strategy gone nuclear.

I would say that the explosion in the 80s of reactionary talk radio was the actual first nuclear salvo. Trinity to the Internet's Castle Bravo.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:34 PM on September 13, 2015 [5 favorites]


I've not finished RTFA yet, but there's this standout:
All you have to do is forget about the 2,567 people left dead by gun accidents, lone wolf attacks, and gunfights over petty grievances that weren't caught on camera between June’s mass shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and the live-on-TV execution two weeks ago.
Between June and September? In three months (generously) two and a half thousand people have died from being shot? That's war. That's Ypres.

At least war has a point.
posted by prismatic7 at 6:12 PM on September 13, 2015 [9 favorites]


Well it sounds horrible, and really it is horrible, but in grading the horror it's a good idea to remember that that's out of 300 million people, and you are still a lot more likely to die of diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's, a stroke, pneumonia, or successfully killing yourself than you are to get shot by someone else.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:35 PM on September 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


Sure, but for
diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's, a stroke, pneumonia, or successfully killing yourself
there are massive programs dedicated to those things not happening. Foundations, fun runs, public health initatives. Not people actively campaigning to retain and/or increase the body count.
posted by prismatic7 at 6:57 PM on September 13, 2015 [5 favorites]


Don't forget there are anti-vaxxers and HIV denialists, too.
posted by biogeo at 7:02 PM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Not people actively campaigning to retain and/or increase the body count.

Sadly, that's actually not true.

Remember the tobacco company CEOs all testifying before Congress that there was no evidence cigarettes cause cancer or heart disease? Or the current campaigns against regulation of transfats, high fructose corn syrup, or basically anything else anyone makes money by selling?

There are always well-funded campaigns to increase body counts if the body counts make money for someone. The NRA campaign is simply a particularly well-organized one.
posted by Justinian at 7:42 PM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


My own personal conspiracy theory is that the NRA actively encourages shootings like these. Why wouldn't they? Every time one happens, the gun nuts run out and buy more guns, and the gun makers profit. That's why they fight any laws that would keep guns out of the hands of criminals or the insane.
posted by fungible at 7:49 PM on September 13, 2015 [3 favorites]


I know there is no Conspiracy, because she died last summer. You were a good kitty, Connie.
posted by maxwelton at 8:02 PM on September 13, 2015 [4 favorites]


We all knew the cats were up to something.
posted by Artw at 8:16 PM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Right, fungible, if "nothing stops a bad man with a gun like a good man with a gun", then "nothing sells guns to good men like guns sold to bad men".
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:57 PM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


My own personal conspiracy theory is that the NRA actively encourages shootings like these.

As in so many cases the actual "conspiracy" is right there in the open. Why posit clandestine NRA efforts, without evidence, when scores of journalists can be clearly & openly seen to encourage this behavior by aggrandizing the perpetrators?
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 9:25 PM on September 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


I know that anonymity is useful. I know that people need anonymity. I know that there are users, right here at Metafilter, who are better off now because of what they could reveal from under an anonymous cloak.

But I would really love it in this one case if YouTube forced everyone to have a real name and a real e-mail address attached to their account. "Thom" wants to tell the "truth" but he wants to hide behind anonymity. He can freely, viciously lash out against others, but suffers no consequences himself. He is at liberty to promulgate vile lies and idiocies without compunction or consideration.

Sometimes, it feels like the price is too high. The price of Thom, the price of Orly Taitz, the price of the 9/11 truthers, the price of weev, the price of the Klan, the price of all this freedom is so much hurt and anguish. It's so hard to be "better than them" when there are so damn many of them.

I don't have a solution. I'm just tired. I'm exhausted from the lies, the stupidity, the mean, petty, vicious, dipshit horribleness of some "people".

Note: Help maintain a healthy, respectful discussion by focusing comments on the issues, topics, and facts at hand—not at other [people].

Would that "Thom" had read something like that before ever posting on the Internet.
posted by aureliobuendia at 10:42 PM on September 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


Good for this reporter to ask such questions. When I see such posts in my Facebook feed, I do not unfriend or block them. I politely engage for a bit, not to win arguments, or call people idiots, but just to insure they don't live inside a bubble. I have friends and relatives who believe in chemtrails, Monsanto conspiracies, and who vote Republican. I can't see how eliminating them from my feed so that I don't have see them does much good.
posted by jetsetsc at 9:22 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


You know, if there really is a conspiracy organization running the world, they'd have to have been doing it for a very long time. Which means they'd have to have handed the keys down for generations to a new group to continue the plan.

So how do they do the recruiting for that? Is there an aptitude test? Can you apply? Or more importantly, can I apply? I've got my resumé all polished.


The answer to that question is usually an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:32 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


I keep asking my agent to send me in for one of those crisis actor jobs but she always just tells me maybe next year, after I get my new headshots.
posted by SassHat at 10:31 AM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


Anti-vaxxers are one of the few (only?) conspiracy groups that don't think the government is way more competent that it really is. Not that they're correct, of course, just a little more realistic in a small part of their beliefs.
posted by tommasz at 1:08 PM on September 14, 2015


The answer to that question is usually an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

Often with "the Rothschilds" used in place of "the Jews" for some (not particularly) plausible deniability of that anti-Semitism.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:38 PM on September 14, 2015


Often with "the Rothschilds" used in place of "the Jews" for some (not particularly) plausible deniability of that anti-Semitism.

Argh, I remember explaining to a family member who posted a giant Rothschilds conspiracy theory that this is an anti-Semitic trope older than the Holocaust and therefore liable to make me and other Jews very angry. Not fun.
posted by thetortoise at 1:47 PM on September 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


I cannot believe I live in the same country with people who think the government hires actors to carry out this secretive agenda. Who do they think these government officials are that are so universally capable, efficient, secretive and above all so united in this one goal?

I think part of what's going on here is that there's a deeply ingrained idea that the federal government is an all-powerful, all-consuming force, but then when you look at the actual politics of the thing, it's a lot of the supposedly most powerful person in the world pleading with Congress to do stuff, and heads of agencies being weak and feckless, and generally the whole thing is being run by boring humans with boring human motivations and problems. One way to reconcile that cognitive dissonance is to make a world where the visible politics are just a meaningless show for the dupes, so of course the people running it seem ludicrous, because they're either completely disempowered or knowingly playing a game for the public's consumption.

Basically, I don't think these people are unaware that most visible agents of the government are well within the normal human range of capability, efficiency, etc. Coming up with a way to make that true at the same time that the evil government is coming at you from every direction relentlessly is, I think, one of the reasons people come up with these unlikely conspiracies in the first place.
posted by Copronymus at 4:52 PM on September 14, 2015


Often with "the Rothschilds" used in place of "the Jews" for some (not particularly) plausible deniability of that anti-Semitism.

No, honestly, I thought you said a group of "Wankers" were running it all.
posted by Artw at 5:32 PM on September 14, 2015


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