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The Dangers in Conspiracist Nonsense
by
Cheshvan 2, 5768, 10/14/2007
“A Conspiracy!” cried the delighted lady, clapping her hands. “Of all things, I do like a Conspiracy! It’s so interesting!” - Lewis Carroll, My Lady, Sylvie and Bruno (1889)
 Conspiracism is probably best characterized as a form of mental illness. Some researchers in psychiatry plainly agree. It is the attribution of control of world events to a hidden cabal of omnipotent conspirators. It is the claim that an organized "hidden hand" lies behind world developments. It is probably best treated in clinics with padded walls. Perhaps the best example of conspiracism in recent years has been the attempt to dismiss the fact that thousands of eyewitnesses saw passenger planes full of civilians crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9-11 and that the hijackers were all Arab al-Qaeda operatives. Crank conspiracists insist instead that the CIA, the Mossad, the Council on Foreign Relations (which publishes Foreign Affairs magazine), the Jews, the freemasons, the "Illuminati," the Vatican, or some other nefarious group were really behind the attacks. (In the case of the fabricator of the "theory" of a SHABAK conspiracy behind the Rabin assassination, it seems to be ALL of the above!) Many of us have a tendency to dismiss people making such conspiracist claims as harmless lunatics and amusing eccentrics. This is all the more true because quite a few conspiracy “theorists” also endorse crackpot claims about UFOs and abductions by space aliens. But conspiracism can be quite dangerous, and conspiracism in Israel has played a particularly harmful role in recent years. Moreover, Israeli conspiracists at times promote the very same “theories” as Holocaust Deniers and anti-Semites, and often on the very same web sites. In the US conspiracism has emerged with special popularity in relation to the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. Polls show that large numbers of Americans believe conspiracy "theories" about Kennedy's death. But there was no conspiracy there at all. The very best article debunking JFK conspiracism is still “Yes, Oswald Alone Killed Kennedy,” by Jacob Cohen in Commentary Magazine, June 1992. Outside Israel, conspiracism is closely linked with anti-Semitism, and many of the "grand cabal" theories of the conspiracists involve supposed plots by Jews (or “Zionists") to "take over" the world, or at least American foreign policy. Conspiracism is common among the Neo-Nazi fringe Right, the far Left, and the "anarchists". There are tens of thousands of internet web sites devoted to their “theories”. It would be a mistake to dismiss all such people as mere harmless buffoons. In North America a handful of university professors endorse conspiracy “theories” about the collapse of the World Trade Center, including Brigham Young University physics professor Steven E. Jones, and a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa Michel Chossudovsky (who is also a Holocaust Denier). It is all the more alarming to see the spread of conspiracism into Israel. Conspiracists see “evidence” of an invisible cabal and plotting where none exists. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgolin of small minds." Belief in a powerful cabal seems to serve a psychological need for some people. It provides them with an explanation and excuse for their own failures in life. After all, how can one succeed when up against such an ominpotent adversary? It also allows them to pretend to understand a complex world, without the nuisance of having first to study, research, and master analytic tools. Perhaps the best analysis of the conspiracist mindset is that of Daniel Pipes in his seminal book “Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where it Comes From” (the Free Press, 1997). Pipes defines “conspiracism" as “fear of a nonexistent conspiracy.” Pipes shows that nonsensical theories of a single institution or cabal plotting to take over the world go back at least 250 years. “Conspiracism,” according to Pipes, is a form of paranoid delusion that tends to take over the entire lives and personalities of believers. Embracing conspiracism strongly resembles the totalitarian immersion of cult members into herd thinking.  Conspiracism feeds on misrepresentation of facts, outright lying, and tendentious twisting of unrelated factoids into a grand theory. Conspiracists take the logical fallacy, the non sequitur, to incredible heights. They are notoriously prone to rearrangement of their perception of reality based upon the mere power of suggestion. The internet is full of web sites that claim that watching news tapes of the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center reveals explosions of bombs inside the buildings before the planes struck, thus proving that the buildings were brought down by "controlled explosions” from the inside. Suggesting that Elvis can be seen on the 70th floor in photos of the collapsing WTC would just as thoroughly convince these people that he was really there in his blue suede shoes. Michael Billig wrote, “The conspiracy theorist … is to the professional historian what the treasure-hunter is to the archeologist; only in the case of the conspiracy theorists, there is no means of convincing them that their quick dig among the documents has revealed only false gold.”
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Back to Sanity
by Arutz 7 Analysts
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