On Conspiracy Theories

The world of social media is a bizarre land. Even more bizarre is when the inhabitants of this world attempt to converse with one another about issues on which they disagree. Strangely, they call this “conversation”, although I think that description is probably less than accurate.

Regardless, it seems this art of conversation that used to be so precious is now rather passé. No longer are issues discussed or debated. Rather, a statement is vehemently made and whatever energy remains is then focused on either canceling any disagreement to the statement or discrediting the disagree-er. Seems reasonable, I suppose. Reasonable that is, if you don't understand what you're talking about, and also have no ability to defend it.

In the not too distant past, this act used to be much more interesting than it has now become. People used to spend the time dredging up old Facebook posts or rabid tweets gone wrong in order to prove how unworthy said disagree-er was. Now, even that has become much too drab and bothersome and so the easiest thing to do is either to call the person a bunch of nasty names, or just drop the “C-bomb”. That's right, if you post something that I think is ridiculous (for whatever reason), it's obviously because you’re a CONSPIRACY THEORIST. Or at the very least you're a sad victim of misinformation (saying it like this shows you how empathetic I am to your pathetic state).

Calling someone a conspiracy theorist is one of The Big, Bad Three (which you can read about here) because it's easy, it requires little to no thought, and you can basically make up the conspiracy as you go along.

People love conspiracies because it gives them a leg up on the conversation. It allows them to say stuff like, “Not a lot of people know this, but…” or, “Someday you'll understand, when we're all just smoldering piles of carbon.”

People evidently also love pointing out other people's conspiracy theories. Much has been written on why people get taken in by conspiracy theories, but not much on why people enjoy identifying them in others. Personally, I think it’s because it feeds their already existent superiority complexes and allows them to release pent-up angst from unfulfilling relationships.

But I don't know. It's just a theory…

Conspiracy theories afflict people of every political persuasion. On the right, they generally consist of shadowy governments with nefarious agendas, while on the left, they are mainly about a sinister white supremacy overshadowing literally everything that happens in the western world. Oh, and also the coming Armageddon spearheaded by a coalition of dimwitted science deniers.

One of the most common conspiracy theories on the right these days revolves around the World Economic Forum and The Great Reset. For some reason, Canadian Conservatives seem to believe that this mysterious group of influential elites has somehow managed to hijack our Prime Minister’s Office in order to send our clumsy PM bumbling around the globe to do their bidding.

The thing is, in order to believe this, we would also have to believe that Justin Trudeau panders to successful elites with lots of money and power and that he's more concerned about nominations to global political organizations than he is about his own citizens. We would also then need to believe that our Prime Minister is gullible and malleable enough to be open to ridiculous notions from these global organizations that make life harder for our citizens while providing no measurable good. It's like they think our guy is just waiting for his next chance to drop yet another policy announcement inspired by rich people who will remain unaffected by it, or implement sweeping orders-in-council or new legislation inspired by tragedies in other countries.

Ok, so maybe this is a poor example of a conspiracy theory. And why we'd even need to find a conspiracy around this I'm not sure. Doesn't actually sound like much of a stretch to me. Anyway, I tried.

Maybe if the definition of “conspiracy theory” wasn't so diluted by overuse, there would be more legit ones out there than there are, but guaranteed, it would still be far fewer than what we're currently being told about.

It seems we've gone from, “Everyone I don't like is Hitler,” to, “Everyone who doesn't like me is a racist,” to, “Everyone who disagrees with me is a conspiracy theorist”. Like I said, it's way easier than trying to refute a legitimate argument when you have no idea what you're talking about.

With all the conspiracy theories bombarding us these days, it's amazing how many of them keep turning out to be true. Remember the chemtrails stories from years ago? You know, jet planes spraying stuff into the air to control the weather and stuff? Well, there turned out to be some truth to that one. By the way, it's still listed as a conspiracy theory on Wikipedia.

In more recent history, (though it seems like a long time ago now) we had the whole Ivermectin fantasy. Ivermectin (we’re told) is some kind of horse dewormer drug that Donald Trump and his ilk were convinced would help prevent Covid. Well, apparently it's not just a horse dewormer and the “conspiracy” that it would help prevent covid - well, that turned out to be true as well. The part about it helping to prevent Covid, that is.

It's still not clear why that was ever an issue to begin with. I mean, you'd think that if some doctor suggested that a cheap and easily accessible drug might possibly help save lives during a world-wide pandemic, some scientist somewhere would’ve taken a few hours, or days, or whatever to check it out. Maybe if the Donald hadn't been the first one to promote it publicly, and maybe if a good portion of the doctors in this part of the world weren't absolutely terrified of being ripped to shreds on Twitter and by the media, someone would have checked it out sooner rather than later. Alas, it was just not meant to be.

The last two years have had no shortage of conspiracy theories - not necessarily because they were actual conspiracy theories, but mainly because government and media simply didn't like what was being said and weren't creative enough to come up with a different name for them. I can see government having an opinion on these matters (for obvious reasons), but the media is supposed to be above that right? Well, I think we're way beyond that at this point and so that also was not meant to be.

Fear not, I don't intend to get into all the other rational ideas that got normal people scoffed at, ridiculed, and vilified for believing something other than what those in control wanted them to believe. There are simply way too many and no one would make it to the end of this article. And anyway, by the time you’re done reading this, there will undoubtedly be another bunch of ex-conspiracies that are now fact. As has been said before - last month’s conspiracy is this month's policy.

Having said that, I do feel there are a couple of these that at least bear an honorable mention here. Incidents such as the existence of Hunter Biden's laptop which was widely condemned as “Russian disinformation” but is now an established fact and of course The Wuhan Lab-leak theory whose main opponents are still doubling down on their stance that it must have come from nature, despite the existence of no actual evidence. By the way, “misinformation” and “disinformation” are basically just other ways to call someone a conspiracy theorist. And as much as our elected leaders like to use these words, it seems most of the mis and/or disinformation in recent years has been coming from them.

An interesting development:

Just as I was finishing this up, I came across this article:

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines increase risk of cardiac-related death, says Florida Surgeon General

Well, I'm shocked. Ok, not really. The other thing that is decidedly not shocking about this is that as of the time of this writing, the only place you'll find this story is on so-called “right wing” media outlets. Must not be all that important then. I mean, it's just the Surgeon General of the third most populous state in the US, after all…

In case you don't feel like reading it, I'll save you the five minutes and just give you the gist. “The analysis found an 84 per cent increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination.”

EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT more likely to die of heart issues after getting the vaccine. Yes, I know we've been told for two years now how safe these vaccines are, and that those who say otherwise are feeding you misinformation, but that sure does sound like a big number to me.

As I mentioned earlier, by the time you read this, there will likely be more “conspiracies” coming true. I think it only feels good to say, “I told you so”, when there are actually people being held to account for the mess they've made. I guess we'll see...

So, obviously I'm not saying there are no legit conspiracy theories out there. I'm sure there are lots, but when everything not specifically sanctioned by the ruling elite is branded a conspiracy theory, we run a very real risk of not even knowing what an actual conspiracy theory looks like. That's when it becomes terribly easy for a large portion of the population to fall for a real one.

Here's a case in point: the Freedom Convoy that landed in Ottawa earlier this year was the target of several conspiracy theories, most invented by the very media that Canadians trusted to tell them what was actually going on there. The best one was a fabrication from CBC where Nil Köksal seemed to think it wasn't at all far-fetched to be concerned that “Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, perhaps even instigating it from the outside.”

Of course there was never a shred of evidence for this conjecture and yet it was apparently easy enough for many to believe. The same thing happened with the GoFundMe campaign which was shut down because of reports that it was being funded by “donations from abroad”. Again, no proof of this, but that still didn't stop the government from latching onto it and using it as a reason to invoke the Emergencies Act. Of course this too was proven to be a complete fabrication, but not until after significant damage had been done.

I suppose one could be forgiven for being taken in by something like this when it's being promoted by someone as trustworthy as our government and their media (assuming one actually believes that). It's much more difficult to forgive the naïvete.

It would be helpful at this point if the “tolerant left” would be a little more tolerant of other viewpoints. It would also help if some of those on the right were as well, but they're not the ones running the major media networks or our institutes of “higher learning”. In this context, their intolerance is probably more justified.

So, as history seems to prove over and over again these days, if you're thinking of calling someone a conspiracy theorist (especially if there's any hint of politics involved), you're probably better off to zip it for a week or two, you know, just so you don't look like a complete ass.