Here's something I wrote a few months ago, but seemingly didn't get around to posting.
I'm fond of conspiracy theories. Or rather, I enjoy picking apart the psychology of conspiracy theorists. The latest I've stumbled upon is The Obama Deception, viewable as a film on youtube.
The central thesis is: The Bilderberg group is a secret consortium of bank owners and major politicians, managing a hypercompetent conspiracy to form a world government. They engineered the current recession to help them form this 'New World Order".
Two things tend to strike me about this kind of theory.
One, the conspiracies are omnipotent and omniscient. They never miscalculate, never have second thoughts, and if anything happens, it's because they made it happen.
In this kind of notion, A single rogue element in the government killed JFK, then successfully bribed, intimidated or killed all the witnesses, and controlled the mass media for the next four decades - presumably letting Oliver Stone make his questionable movie as cover.
Or, thousands of people conspired to fake the moon landings as a PR stunt, and none of them ever thought to supplement their pension by writing an expose. Or if they did, the CIA used magic to infallibly find out and stop them.
And the second thing about conspiracy theories...the conspiracies are so weak they'd essentially fold if the general public knew about them. Somehow, for some reason.
The Bilderberg group do of course exist, as an umbrella for the most powerful men on the planet to do business. It's a private club, not a secret society. It's a talking shop for the superrich and superpowerful, not the headquarters of SPECTRE.
The irony is that what the group does in real life is quite sinister enough.
Here's a few more things I 'learned' watching the film:
- The Bilderberg group are utterly committed to the New World Order, and to secrecy.
- At least two members frequently supply the producers of this film with inside information.
- They meet in secret.
- Protesters easily find out where they meet, and picket them.
- They will happily kill anyone who threatens to expose or inhibit them.
- The don't shoot protesters, or people who make films like this one about them. And they don't seem to mind men with video cameras and anti-cooperate teeshirts wandering around openly filming in the hotels where they meet.
- Obama is nothing more than a PR puppet, controlled by the group.
- Obama is one of the 125 members of the group, so somewhat more than a puppet.
That's the third thing about conspiracy theories. They're complex and unrefutable, containing enough provisos and ad-hoc get-out clauses to counter any inconvenient questions or evidence from skeptics.
They're like the delusions of paranoid schizophrenics - except that paranoid delusions hold together better. Conspiracy theorists go slippery and vague when their ideas don't add up, evading the point, accusing the skeptic, or just ignoring what they don't want to hear.
Genuine paranoids are like dedicated theologians, making incompatible ideas fit together by increasing their complexity and reach until they form a jigsaw.
So there you have it. Conspiracy theories - a bit like some mental illnesses, but shoddier.
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