I don’t understand conspiracy theories. Or, rather, I don’t
understand the people who believe in them, the theorists themselves. No matter
what explanations the psych types come up with (and there are many hypotheses),
none of them really explain why people are so willing to ignore common sense to
believe in them.
To make myself clearer, let me define what a conspiracy
theory generally consists of, according to the experts. Michael Barkun, a
political scientist, defines a conspiracy theory as the belief in a “secret
plot by exceptionally powerful and cunning conspirators to achieve a malevolent
end.”[i]
It typically has three elements in it, namely –
1) They “appear [and I stress ‘appear’] to make sense out of a world that is otherwise confusing.”
2) They claim the world is divided “between the forces of
light, and the forces of darkness… [tracing] all evil back to a single source,
the conspirators and their agents.”
3) They claim that
only they “know the truth”, having unmasked the “plotters' deceptions”, unlike
the “brainwashed herd” of the masses.
I would also add that most conspiracy theories seem to point
the finger at ‘The Government’, especially the US one, and/or its agencies. None
of them ever seem to adequately explain WHY government is supposedly doing these
things. It just seems to be assumed that it’s corrupt and evil, full stop. And
that they are the only ones who are ‘in the know’, so of course the government
wants to silence them… Basically then, conspiracy theories are all just more
sophisticated versions of “the gubmint’s out ta getcha”, and/or “we know
something you don’t, nah, nah, nyah, nah…”
Some conspiracy theories are pretty harmless. We can laugh
at the flat-earthers, roll our eyes at chemtrail believers, and shake our heads
at the Roswell crowd. But others are not so easily shrugged away. Holocaust
deniers, for instance, must cause a lot of hurt to Jews everywhere. And more
recently, parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting have been
subjected to incredible verbal abuse and vitriol by those who claim the whole
event was ‘faked’, that their children didn’t exist, and that the parents are
liars, paid by those with an anti-gun agenda, etc. The pain this must cause
those who have lost loved ones I can only imagine.
And then there’s the anti-vaccine crowd. I think they must
win some kind of award for the most harmful conspiracy theory on the planet.
Thanks to them, diseases once made nearly extinct or rare by high vaccination
rates have returned, with devastating consequences. People have become
extremely ill and even died as a result, or sustained horrible and sometimes
life-long damage, with many others left in a vulnerable state, but they shrug
all this off.
Government, along with the medical establishment, they
shrill, have conspired to conceal the ‘terrible harm’ that vaccines do. To
believe this, they must ignore all of the evidence presented by history,
statistics, the entire mainstream scientific consensus, and simple logic, and
instead resort to chanting the mantra of “but toxinz… but Big Pharma…but
gubmint…” (And I’m not even going to start
on the whole ‘vaccines cause autism’ garbage. Suffice to say it makes even less
sense than the rest of their crap, especially since Wakefield’s been thoroughly
discredited.) Like other conspiracy theorists, they believe that they have
somehow uncovered ‘truths’ denied to the majority of the populace.
But does any of this really make sense? Can we really be the
victims of a (or any) horrendous plot/s by governments, doctors, etc?
Think on it. Just think on it, for a moment. We’re a social
species. On the whole, we do not keep secrets well. We blab. We tell a friend
“in strictest confidence of course”. We get drunk, and boast to the bartender,
or the person next to us. We pillow talk, we gossip and chatter, natter and
prattle and “have you heard……!” Even things that governments try to keep
hidden, from Watergate to Abu Ghraib, have a way of working their way out of
the woodwork in the end. The only secrets that seem to be (more or less) kept
are those belonging to those who are disinclined by temperament to blab (e.g. spies).
And such people are a rare breed.
So the idea that hundreds of thousands, millions even, of
doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, politicians (an exceptionally gabby
species), civil servants, other health care workers, scientists and all their
ancillaries, over a very long period of time, and through umpteen changes of
governments, in dozens of different countries, are all in on some giant
conspiracy to - what? Get people sick, for some strange and evil end of their
own? – is patently absurd. It assumes, and sometimes anti-vaxxers even outright
assert, that ALL of the above professionals are either a) deluded, b) lying, or
c) incompetent to recognise a health issue when it presents itself, despite all
their years of training and practise and research… Plus know how to keep their
mouths shut about it.
All of them.
All the time.
Forever.
…Yeah right.
But then logic doesn’t seem to be a strong point of any
conspiracy theorist. Over the last few years, I’ve watched the hardcore anti-vax
crowd repeatedly and consistently do the following –
- present weak, incoherent, illogical or contradictory
arguments
- have a poor understanding of basic science, and refuse to
listen to those who have a better one
- think Google searches means that they know as much as
doctors and scientists who have studied and practised for years
- scorn anyone who defends vaccines as ‘sheeple’ or ‘paid
shills’ for ‘Big Pharma’, but swallow unquestioningly anything that comes from other
anti-vaxxers, even when they make wildly inflamed claims, have no professional
expertise in vaccines, and are pushing bizarre (and expensive) ‘cures’
- when asked to provide proof for what they allege, ALWAYS
link to at least one of the following –
1)
Reports describing shonky ‘science’, which has either been already
discredited/withdrawn/redacted, or can be easily demonstrated as bad or
pseudo-science;
3)
Articles and reports that don’t actually say what the headlines and/or the
anti-vaxxer are screaming – it seems that anti-vaxxers often don’t read beyond
the headlines, just grabbing links off AV websites that they think ‘prove’
something.
- most especially, they ‘shift the goalposts’ – as fast you
tear down one of their arguments, they switch to another. Mercury has been
disproven? Oh, it must be the aluminium. Or the formaldehyde. Or green monkey
cells, or aborted foetuses, or this, or that, or something else. On and on….
In short, they display an appalling lack of basic common
sense, and often seem to verge on outright hysteria, and yet present a very
real danger.
And after pondering all this, I’m still left with the
question - is it because I’m autistic, that I can’t grasp why anyone would embrace
the totally illogical, just to make themselves feel important and ‘in the
know’? Are their egos really that big? Or is there something else I’m missing? I
just…. don’t get it.
[i]
This, and all subsequent quotes, are from the Wikipedia entry on ‘Types of
Conspiracy Theory’.
